1245: Phonetics of Loan Words May 7, 2018

Spelling is not a motivator for major linguistic change, but does contribute to some phonetic variation. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that English spelling no longer matches up with pronunciation, but neither do are English speakers known for bending over backwards, so to speak, in order to accommodate for the pronunciation of foreign words. For instance, the Catalan word 'paella' is pronounced /pajejə/ in US English (and Spanish and Catalan), whereas in the UK it is produced as [pajelə]; this however does not make speakers in the UK 'wrong', that is unless they try to use it in Spanish or Catalan that way, because words change when they enter another language. This of course also happens both ways, with English loan words changing to accommodate for other languages' phonetic rules or normalities, such as how 'merry christmas' changes in Hawaiian, or how the country 'Kiribati' (pronounced /kiribas/) comes from the name 'Gilberts'.

1234: sample and example Apr 26, 2018

There are plenty of words that sound alike but by random chance happens to have a similar phonetic composition as another word with a different meaning and etymology. These such homophones including 'dear' and 'deer' are fun but are not especially insightful. What tends to be more linguistically rich is looking at words that have one origin and have since split. For example, 'example'—as with most words beginning with 'ex-'—comes from Latin 'eximere' meaning 'take out', however, while 'ex-' is often a prefix, it actually does not relate to 'ample, but does have the same root as 'sample'. This diverged from the Old French 'essample' as a noun, however in many ways, 'sample' as a noun can usually be replaced by 'example', though it might sound a little weird.
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1232: Are Filler Words Actually Words? Apr 24, 2018

When does a noise or a pause become a word?

Historically, linguists did not consider 'uh' or 'um' to be words because they were not seen to be "intentionally produced", and there is necessarily syntax for them. However, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest otherwise. First, from a logical standpoint, if these filler words were unintentional, there would not be different versions in various languages and various dialects; not only is there a dialectal difference between the more American 'um' with the British 'erm' or 'em', but there is the Chinese 'nage' and 'zhege', or the Japanese 'eto' and 'ano' to name a few. And furthermore, referring back to a post on Word Facts the other day, there are places where these fillers are more likely to appear, meaning that there is some argument for their having a syntactic role as well. Considering that 100 years ago, 'the' and 'a(n)' were considered adjectives rather than being their own class of articles, it is certainly imaginable that one day there will be another lexical class in English. What do you think?

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1220: Eggcorns are Phonemic (Often) Apr 12, 2018

A few examples of eggcorns (i.e. errors in phonetic-/spelling-reproduction that still make some sense) vary from the original phrase because of voicing. For instance, "nip it in the butt" rather than "...bud" or “old-timer’s disease” instead of "Alzheimer's disease" hinge upon [t]/[d]; the only difference between those two sounds is that the vocal cords vibrate for [d], but everything else is the same. Looking over many lists of eggcorns available online, there is a noticeable trend of eggcorns which only deviate from the original word or phrase by one sound, making them what linguists call a minimal pair. Other common sounds that are the source for these mishearings is [n]/[m], such as with 'medium strip' instead of 'median strip'.

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1120: Vocalic Assimilation in Kalaallisut Jan 2, 2018

English has plenty of examples of assimilation: when a sound consistently changes due to the phonemic context, i.e. the sounds around (particularly after) it. This can be seen with [n], which becomes [m] before sounds like [p] (e.g. 'impossible' is the negating 'in-' prefix + 'possible), or [t] becoming [t͡ʃ] before [ɹ] (e.g. the sound modified from 'tail to 'trail'). In Kalaallisut (a.k.a. West Greenlandic) this is even more extreme. At first glance it may seem that there are between 5 and 11 vowels, but because of assimilation there are only 3 vocalic phonemes: [a], [i], and [u]. Funnily, the alphabet for Kalaallisut contains 5 vowels—A, E, I, O, and U—but E and O only appear before [R] and [q]. All of the other vowels are allophones of [i], [a] or [u], even though they would be considered separate phonemes in other languages such as English. To see the range of each of these Greenlandic vowels, look at this graph below (citation after the links). You can also support Word Facts on Patreon for more content: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.

Fortescue, Michael (1990), "Basic Structures and Processes in West Greenlandic", in Collins, Dirmid R. F., Arctic Languages: An Awakening (PDF), Paris: UNESCO, p. 317, ISBN 92-3-102661-5

1095: Dropping Fricatives if e'er They're in the Middle Dec 8, 2017

People who have studied literature are probably familiar with the form of 'e'er' for 'ever', or other examples—particularly in poetry—where the fricative (usually [v]) is dropped from the middle of a word. This can be seen repeatedly in the first four lines of An EPITAPH by Joseph Giles(*):
If e'er sharp sorrow from thine eyes did flow,
If e'er thy bosom felt another's woe,
If e'er fair beauty's charms thy heart did prove,
If e'er the offspring of thy virtuous love...
By the eighteenth century, this was fairly common in poetry, though not as popular in everyday speech. What was becoming more common at that time was to drop a fricative from the contracted forms, so 'isn't' might become 'in't', which is still used by some people as an alternative form of 'ain't, but also this occurred with 'wasn't and 'hasn't' and many other words. As is always the case with the evolution of language, it was faced with some protest, but there are still some traces today.
Tomorrow is the 3-year anniversary of Word Facts, and the start of a week of posts covering syllables and stresses.

(*) A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. V. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 92-93. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.005). Retrieved from http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org

1020: Mucosa Sep 24, 2017

There is somewhat of a stereotype that opera singers are larger than average. Though generalizations like these are often unfounded, David Drexler et al. from the University of Iowa found that a certain amount of fat on the vocal cords can help a singer sound better. A mucosa on the vocal chords softens the impact when they come together, but extra amounts can improve the quality of sound. It was also found that the mucosa can add more vibrational energy to air as it is exhaled, which also allows opera singers to perform better. There are many other factors that come into this as well, and it is not at all the case that all opera singers are overweight at all, but having extra fat in general could mean there is some extra fat on the mucosa. Also, sometimes when one has scarring on the throat, surgeons can inject more fat onto the larynx for this same reason.