|
 |
Homophones in isolating languages | ||
Tags: Linguistics | Asian Languages | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6164 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English | Message 1 of 9 22 October 2009 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||
|
How does Vietnamese, Thai, and Burmese compare with Mandarin in terms of number of homophones?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6140 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 2 of 9 22 October 2009 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Thai and Burmese certainly have far fewer homophones than Mandarin. They simply have a
far larger number of possible syllables. In Thai there's only a few occasions where tone differentiates between two possible meanings. "ma" meaning both horse and dog is only one that really comes to mind (because it's one I have trouble with quite often!). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 9 23 October 2009 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
|
I remember "seua" being used as a common example by Thais of words where meaning depends on the tone. One
tone means "tiger", another "pretty", etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6164 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Korean*, English | Message 4 of 9 23 October 2009 at 3:47am | IP Logged | ||
What are the numbers? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6140 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 5 of 9 23 October 2009 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
Seua can be tiger, shirt or mat but it's quite unlikely that both meaning could fit in the same sentence, although I think tiger and short use the same classifier "dtua". Thai has 20 possible initials, 20 vowels (10 short, 10 long) and 5 possible stops. That doesn't take into account consonant clusters at the beginning of words or the numerous diphthongs and triphthongs that occur. Burmese has about 20 possible initials and nine vowels, with numerous diphthongs. But the tones in Burmese are not the same as Thai and Mandarin, the stopped and creaky tones (2 of the 4) are just syllables which end with either a harsh or lax glottal stop respectively. In fact, according to wiki (and backed up with some old but seemingly solid research) the tonal system in Burmese is thought to be in decay. And I realise I should have pointed out that Burmese isn't isolating, its structure is similar to Korean. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6164 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Korean*, English | Message 6 of 9 23 October 2009 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Is there a list of languages with the number of different sounding syllables possible in each one?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6140 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 7 of 9 23 October 2009 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
There may be a list for some languages but many languages have such complex syllabic structures e.g. Russian, that there would be no meaningful result. The fact that Thai has some initial clusters and some diphthongs which cannot take consonant finals makes in quite difficult to calculate the possible number of syllables. Much more difficult than a language with a simple CV(C) structure like Mandarin or Vietnamese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Qinshi Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5753 days ago 115 posts - 183 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 9 27 October 2009 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||
|
Well as a speaker of Vietnamese and learner of Mandarin, I can say that even though Vietnamese has quite a number of homophones (especially in Southern Vietnamese which merged two tones together) - Mandarin appears to have the most homophones simply due to the fact thst compared to Vietnamese, Thai and Burmese and even other Chinese languages like Cantonese, Mandarin merged a huge number of sounds and has the least number of distinct syllables of the group. I remember reading somewhere that Mandarin only had about 400 distinct syllables whereas in Vietnamese that number is around 6600.
Syllables consist maximally of an initial consonant, a glide, a vowel, a final, and tone. Not every syllable that is possible according to this rule actually exists in Mandarin, as there are rules prohibiting certain phonemes from appearing with others, and in practice there are only a few hundred distinct syllables. A famous example of this is through the poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den poem. Check this out: In Traditional Chinese characters (Hanzi) 施氏食獅史》 石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。 氏時時適市視獅。 十時，適十獅適市。 是時，適施氏適市。 氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。 氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。 石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。 石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。 食時，始識是十獅，實十石獅屍。 試釋是事。 In Pinyin (the modern Mandarin Romanisation system) « Shī Shì shí shī shǐ » Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì. Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì. Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì. Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī. Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī. Shì shì shì shì. In English Meaning in English: « Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den » In a stone den was a poet Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten. He often went to the market to look for lions. At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market. At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market. He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die. He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den. The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it. After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions. When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses. Try to explain this matter. Now compare that to say...Cantonese: « Si1 si6 sik9 si1 si2 » (Cantonese Jyutping) Sek9 sat7 si1 si6 si1 si6, si3 si1, sai6 sik9 sap9 si1. Si6 si4 si4 sik7 si5 si6 si1. Sap9 si4, sik7 sap9 si1 sik7 si5. Si6 si4, sik7 si1 si6 sik2 si5. Si6 si6 si6 sap9 si1, ci5 ci2 sai3, si2 si6 sap9 si1 sai6 sai3. Si6 sap9 si6 sap9 si1 si1, sik7 sek9 sat1. Sek9 sat7 sap1, si6 si2 si6 sik7 sek9 sat1. Sek9 sat7 sik1, si6 ci2 si3 sik9 si6 sap9 si1. Sik6 si6, si6 sik7 si9 sap9 si1, sat9 sap9 sek9 si1 si1. Si3 sik7 si6 si6. Imagine reading aloud the poem! Edited by Qinshi on 27 October 2009 at 5:59am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
