(I lied, I’m getting another post in before I leave.)

Today on the bus there was a radio ad playing for some sort of storage company. This ad was an “interaction” between a female narrator and a male narrator, who, for some reason, was speaking mostly in Pig Latin.

Ackground-bay

For those unfamiliar with it, Pig Latin is an spoken English word game in which one removes the first consonant (or consonant cluster) in a word and places it at the end of the word, followed by the vowel sound /ei/ (as in “hey”, “play” or “may”). So, dog becomes “og-day”, blog becomes “og-blay”, and grammaticalization becomes ‘ammaticalization-gray’.

It’s relatively common, and has entered the popular domain in a number of places. Google (oogle-gay?) is available in pig latin, and the “ixnay on the ______” construction is fairly common (meaning “Don’t talk about/do ______”). Interestingly, there are similar (but not identical) language games played in other languages. Wikipedia has a list of some of these games which has some very interesting examples.

Anks-tay or anks-thay?

So, on this radio ad, at the very end of the ad, the female narrator said “Thanks”, and the male corrected her to “anks-tay”.

This is interesting because generally, the consonant is kept the same in pig latin, just moved to the back of the word. So, I’d expect it to be “anks-thay”, with a θ (the sound in “thistle”). This got me to thinking, why would this happen?

ut-whay oes-day onology-phay ave-hay u-tay u-day ith-way it-ay

Phonology, as I’ve mentioned before, is the study of sound systems in a language. Every language has a system of rules which dictate which clusters of sounds and sounds are valid, and which aren’t. For this reason, “lomin” sounds like it could be an English word, but “ngostla” doesn’t. If you try and pronounce something and have lots of trouble, chances are, it’s violating a phonotactic rule of your language.

So, what’s wrong with “anksthay”? Well, I tried pronouncing it. Even with my training in pronouncing strange things, it’s a bit troublesome to go from a k to an s to a θ without any vowels to rest. Since each sound is made in a different place in the mouth (the velum in the back for the K, the Alveolar ridge for the S, and with the tongue between the teeth for the θ), you have to do a lot of moving without any rest.

Compare this to “ankstay”. We have no problem with this (it’s very similar to “angst” an accepted English word) because the “st” cluster is pretty easy to make. To make an S, you bring your tongue up to the alveolar ridge (the bony ridge of the roof of your mouth, just behind the teeth) so it’s just far enough away to cause friction in the air. To make a T, you put the tongue in the same place, except you make a complete closure. To make an “st” cluster, your tongue stays in the same place, it just moves upwards to change the S to a T.

For English speakers, “kst” is a much easier cluster to handle than “ksth”. There may be a phonological or phonotactic rule to explain it, but I’m not sure what that rule would be offhand. However, if we just look at the clusters that exist in the language, we can figure out what’s allowed and what isn’t, and suddenly, it all becomes clear.

Languages games like Pig Latin may not be serious in use, but studying how people use language when playing them can reveal a great deal about the phonology and phonotactics of the language in question.

See, even the most serious linguist has a place in their life for fun and games.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Created Languages, Language Usage, Phonetics and Phonology | 5 Comments

03.22.07 | On vacation

A quick note about the site: I’m going to be travelling for the next week or so. It’s likely that I won’t have time to update from the road, but rest assured, I’ll be on the lookout for interesting use of language (and likely muttering odd sounds to myself) along the way.

Thanks for reading!

Tagged with Site News | Leave a Comment


The Quikboy Strikes Back

Just a few quick notes. Around a week ago, I wrote an article on the Typo defense which featured a comment from somebody posting as “Quikboy”.

Well, somebody claiming to be Quikboy (and I’ve no reason not to trust him) just posted a very courteous reply in the comments. I’ve since replied to his reply, and I wanted to let you all see his side of the argument.

This just highlights the fact that I consider everything on here a discussion. Comments are moderated (to avoid spam comments), but I’ve never once deleted a human-created comment. Rest assured, whatever you (as a human) post, it will get approved. If you don’t like what I have to say or want to defend another side, please do by posting a comment. I’ll reply, and I might even post something like this to make sure you get heard.

Find an error, get a link

In my Graduate Phonetics class, the professor carried a jar of candy. At the beginning of the first day of class, she explained that the candy is for anybody who corrects one of her mistakes in class. All throughout the semester, if somebody called her on an erroneous transcription or a misspeech, she happily handed over some candy and fixed the mistake. I like the idea, and want to try it here.

I’m just a student, and I’m often writing about things with which I’m by no means an expert. So, if anybody out there finds a mistake in my site, I’ll add a link to your blog (see the fine print below) in the sidebar in a “Found a mistake” section. If you find an issue, either email me or leave a comment, and if I think it’s one too, I’ll edit the mistake and give you your link. I really do want things on here to be fairly accurate, so if I mess up, I’d like to be called on it. So, let the games begin!

(The Fine Print: By “mistake”, I’m talking about misstatements, misrepresentations, and things that are fairly objectively wrong here. I’ll gladly discuss theoretical disputes or other such disagreements about opinions, but I’m not sure they qualify as mistakes. Also, I reserve the right to not post links to certain sites or types of sites. Sorry, but if your site has adult/not-safe-for-work content or is clearly an advertising-only or spam blog, I’ll offer to link to a different site, or at least give other recognition.)

Tagged with Followups, Site News | Leave a Comment

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