Comments on: From car sales to prostitution: phonological fun in every day life

By: opit

opit — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:08:30 +0000

“Volvo” is Latin for “I Roll” - already a linguistic pun.

By: grundes

grundes — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:15:53 +0000

I wonder if your teacher left Russia before Volvo’s became fairly wide-spread, because I think Вольво is mostly pronounced with an /o/ in the end — although it may be different in different parts of the country.

Also, молоко can be pronounced with all distinct /o/’s in rural regions along the Volga river — but you probably know that. Lot’s of jokes about M. Gorky (Горький) are based on him speaking that way.

By: will

will — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:12:21 +0000

Chris,

That’s a whole different wing of Phonology that I’d never really considered. Generally, I try and avoid writing systems where I can, but the challenge that romanization presents sounds incredibly complex and interesting. Perhaps this an area of computational linguistics into which I should have a look.

Thanks!

Will

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:10:20 +0000

Interesting site. I found it via a link on The Linguistics Zone. FYI, There’s a challenging and unintended consequence to these phonological differences: finding names in databases. The State Department, banks, educational institutions, etc. all have large databases of names of people from various cultures, and there’s no standard way of transliterating those names into a Romanized alphabet (there have been many ATTEMPTS at standards, hehe, but none have actually emerged as generally followed).

Imagine someone in Korea applied for a visa and is asked to write their name down on a form. How do they transcribe their name? There are at least FOUR different Korean-English transcription systems: 1) the official South Korean transliteration system (very new); 2) The McCune-Reischauer system (a bit old); 3) ALA-LC Romanization Guidelines (rather obscure) and 4) IPA (technical).

If that Romanized name were put into a large database, then searched for by a third party, it would require a linguistically savvy search algorithm to retrieve the name. And in fact, this is a hot area of research within computational linguistics (often referred to as “name recognition”).

Just thought you’d like to know.
Cheers.

By: Michael Zbyszynski

Michael Zbyszynski — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:32:21 +0000

For what it’s worth, some of these reductions are explicit in other slavic languages. For instance, milk in Polish is mleko (and also czech, I think), both of which make the pronunciation more clear in the spelling. I think the etymology is Slavonic via Germanic, for what its worth. Sorry, but I don’t know how to say Volvo in Polish.

By: Viola

Viola — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:27:50 +0000

In the aftermath of a large glass of wine, I found this story delightfully vulvar–I mean vulgar. More! More! Tell us more!

By: The Ridger

The Ridger — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:46:51 +0000

But why wasn’t she saying “vulvo”? I don’t get it. I don’t mean I doubt it, I’ve heard plenty of Russians overcompensate and get sounds wrong that Russian has. I just don’t get why the long English O of Volvo disappeared.

By: ben

ben — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 20:38:02 +0000

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there isn’t much of a semantic difference between car sales and prostitution either.

By: will

will — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:54:23 +0000

Thanks Emma. I’m glad you enjoy the site, and it does my heart good to hear some feedback.

By: Emma

Emma — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:48:05 +0000

That’s a hilarious story. I love your blog by the way. I wish I had more time to read every post, I would learn a lot.