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Close-mid Back Rounded Vowel

Close-mid back rounded vowel

The close-mid back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is o.

Features

- Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between close vowel and a mid vowel.
- Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.

Occurs in

- : kool , 'cabbage'
- : (AuE and NZE) ball
- In CaE, there is a tendency to monophthongize (usually during rapid speech); as a result, may occur alone in words like boat.
- : réseau , 'net'
- : Kohl , 'cabbage'
- : åka , 'travel', 'go'
- : tô , 'soup bowl' French /o/ is more close than German /o/, as symbolized by the raising diacritic, and is perhaps near-close. The German /o/ in turn is more close than Spanish /o/, which is a mid vowel (see below).

Mid back rounded vowel

Many languages, such as and , have a mid back rounded vowel, which to speakers is clearly distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic may be used: . Note that just because a language has only one non-close, non-open back vowel, that doesn't mean it's a cardinal mid vowel. The Sulawesian language , for example, has a close-mid , whereas the Moluccan language has a open-mid ; in neither language does this contrast with another open/close-mid vowel.

Occurs in

- : ωρολόγιο , 'clock'
- : 面白い , 'fun, interesting'
- : copil , 'child'
- : todo , 'everything'
- : kol , 'arm'
- : поїзд , 'train' Category:Vowels ja:半狭後舌円唇母音 ko:후설 원순 중고모음

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract where there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The additional requirement is that vowels function as syllabic units: it is this criterion that distinguishes vowels from semivowels (and approximants, which in some languages may be slightly more constricted). In most languages, vowels usually form the nucleus or peak of a syllable, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. However, some languages allow sounds that wouldn't normally be classified as vowels to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the sound of l in the English word table (the final e is not pronounced), or the sound of r in the Czech word vrba (meaning "willow"). The non-vowel sounds that may function as syllable nuclei are called sonorants. (In some languages, such as Tashlhyt Berber and Oowekyala, non-sonorant consonants can also form the nucleus of a syllable.) The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "uttering voice" or "speaking".

Articulation

The articulatory features that distinguish different vowels in a language are said to determine the vowel's quality. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the common features height (vertical dimension), backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip position). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic IPA vowel diagram on right. There are however still more possible features of vowel quality, such the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position.

Height

Height refers to either the vertical position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. In high vowels, such as i] and u], the tongue is positioned high in the mouth, whereas in low vowels, such as a], the tongue is positioned low in the mouth. Sometimes the terms open and close are used as synonyms for low and high for describing vowels. The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies seven different vowel heights, although no known language distinguishes all seven:
- close vowel (high vowel)
- near-close vowel
- close-mid vowel
- mid vowel
- open-mid vowel
- near-open vowel
- open vowel (low vowel) It may be that some varieties of have five contrasting heights. The Bavarian dialect of Amstetten has thirteen long vowels, reported to be distinguished as four heights (close, close-mid, mid, and near-open) among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels, plus an open central vowel: . Otherwise, the usual limit on the number of vowel heights is four. The parameter of vowel height appears to be the most primary feature of vowels cross-linguistically in that all languages use height constrastively. The other possible parameters, such as backness and roundedness (explained below), are not used in all languages.

Backness

Backness refers to the horizontal tongue position during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. In front vowels, such as , the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels, such as , the tongue is positioned towards the back of the mouth. The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies five different degrees of vowel backness, although no known language distinguishes all five:
- front vowel
- near-front vowel
- central vowel
- near-back vowel
- back vowel The highest number of constrastive degrees of backness is 3.

Roundedness

Roundedness refers to whether the lips are rounded or not. In most languages, roundedness is a reinforcing feature of mid to high back vowels, and not distinctive. Usually the higher a back vowel, the more intense the rounding. However, some languages treat roundedness and backness separately, such as French and German (with front rounded vowels), most Uralic languages ( has a rounding contrast for /o/ and front vowels), Turkic languages (with an unrounded /u/), Vietnamese (with back unrounded vowels), and Korean (with a contrast in both front and back vowels). Nonetheless, even in languages such as German and Vietnamese, there is usually some correlation between rounding and backness: Front rounded vowels tend to be less front than front unrounded vowels, and back unrounded vowels tend to be less back than back rounded vowels. That is, the placement of unrounded vowels to the left of rounded vowels on the IPA vowel chart is reflective of their typical position. Different kinds of labialization are also possible. The /u/, for example, is not rounded like English /u/, where the lips are protruded (or pursed), but neither are the lips spread to the sides as they are for unrounded vowels. Rather, they are compressed in both directions, leaving a slot between the lips for the air to escape. (See Vowel roundedness for illustrations.) Swedish is one of the few languages where this feature is contrastive, have both protruded-lip and compressed-lip high front vowels. In many treatments, both are considered a type of rounding, and are often called endolabial rounding (pursed, where the insides of the lips approach each other) and exolabial rounding (compressed, where the margins of the lips approach each other). However, other phoneticians do not believe that these are subsets of a single phenomenon of rounding, and prefer instead the three independent terms rounded, compressed, and spread (for unrounded).

Nasalization

Nasalization refers to whether some of the air escapes through the nose. In nasal vowels, the velum is lowered, and some air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth. French, Polish and Portuguese contrast nasal and oral vowels.

Phonation

Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages only have voiced vowels, but several Native American languages, such as Cheyenne and Totonac, contrast voiced and devoiced vowels. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. As in Japanese and Quebec French, vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced. Modal voice, creaky voice, and breathy voice (murmured vowels) are phonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, these co-occur with tone or stress distinctions; in the Mon language, vowels pronounced in the high tone are also produced with creaky voice. In cases like this, it can be unclear whether it is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used for phonemic contrast. This combination of phonetic cues (i.e. phonation, tone, stress) is known as register or register complex.

Tongue root retraction

Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa. The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles the tense/lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. ATR vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract.

Secondary narrowings in the vocal tract

Pharyngealized vowels occur in some languages; Sedang uses this contrast, as do the Tungusic languages. Pharyngealisation is similar in articulation to retracted tongue root, but is acoustically distinct. A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occur in the Northeast Caucasian languages and the Khoisan languages. These might be called epiglottalized, since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis. The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in the strident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where the larynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal chords. Note that the terms pharyngealized, epiglottalized, strident, and sphincteric are sometimes used interchangeably.

Rhotic vowels

Rhotic vowels are the "ar-colored vowels" of English and a few other languages.

Tenseness/checked vowels vs. free vowels

Tenseness is used to describe the opposition of tense vowels as in leap, suit vs. lax vowels as in lip, soot. This opposition has traditionally been thought to be a result of greater muscular tension, though phonetic experiments have repeatedly failed to show this. Unlike the other features of vowel quality, tenseness is only applicable to the few languages that have this opposition (mainly Germanic languages, e.g. English), whereas the vowels of the other languages (e.g. Spanish) cannot be described with respect to tenseness in any meaningful way. In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can only occur in closed syllables. Therefore, they're also known as checked vowels, whereas the tense vowels are called free vowels since they can occur in any kind of syllable.

Acoustics

free vowel The acoustics of vowels are fairly well-understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants, acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on a spectrogram. The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity, and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time. The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequences while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen at right: The and have similar low first formants, whereas has a higher formant. The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear at right, where the front vowel has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels the high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so a better measure of frontness is the difference between the first and second formants. For this reason, vowels are usually plotted as F1 vs. F2 – F1. This is the case for the vowel chart at the top of this page. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.) R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values. Rounding is generally realized by a complex relationship between F2 and F3 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are.

Prosody and intonation

The features of vowel prosody are often described independently from vowel quality. In non-linear phonetics, they are located on parallel layers. The features of vowel prosody are usually considered not to apply to the vowel itself, but to the syllable, as some languages do not contrast vowel length separately from syllable length. Intonation encompasses the changes in pitch, intensity, and speed of an utterance over time. In tonal languages, in most cases the tone of a syllable is carried by the vowel, meaning that the relative pitch or the pitch contour that marks the tone is superimposed on the vowel. If a syllable has a high tone, for example, the pitch of the vowel will be high. If the syllable has a falling tone, then the pitch of the vowel will fall from high to low over the course of uttering the vowel. Length or quantity refers to the abstracted duration of the vowel. In some analyses this feature is described as a feature of the vowel quality, not of the prosody. Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Arabic and Latin have a two-way phonemic contrast between short and long vowels. The Mixe language has a three-way contrast among short, half-long, and long vowels, and this has been reported from a few other languages, in not all of which is the distinction phonemic. Long vowels are written in the IPA with a triangular colon, which has two equilateral triangles pointing at each other in place of dots (). The IPA symbol for half-long vowels is the top half of this (). Longer vowels are sometimes claimed, but these are always divided between two syllables. It should be noted that the length of the vowel is a grammatical abstraction, and there may be more phonologically distinctive lengths. For example, in Finnish, there are five different physical lengths, because stress is marked with length on both grammatically long and short vowels. However, Finnish stress is not lexical and is always on the first two moras, thus this variation serves to separate words from each other. In non-tonal languages, like English, intonation encompasses lexical stress. A stressed syllable will typically be pronounced with a higher pitch, intensity, and length than unstressed syllables. For example in the word intensity, the vowel represented by the letter 'e' is stressed, so it is longer and pronounced with a higher pitch and intensity than the other vowels.

Monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs

A vowel sound whose quality doesn't change over the duration of the vowel is called a monophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that glides between three qualities is a triphthong. All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has all three types: the vowel sound in hit is a monophthong , the vowel sound in boy is in most dialects a diphthong , and the vowel sounds of way , flower (BrE AmE ) form a triphthong (dissylabic in the latter cases), although the particular qualities vary by dialect. The longest sensible word with most consecutive vowels is Finnish riiuuyöaieuutinen (courting night intention news [certainly yellow press stuff!]), syllabicated rii-uu-yö-ai-e-uu-ti-nen. In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether or not the vowel sound may be analyzed into different phonemes or not. For example, the vowel sounds in a two-syllable pronunciation of the word flower (BrE AmE ) phonetically form a dissyllabic triphthong, but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong (represented by the letters ) and a monophthong (represented by the letters ). Some linguists use the terms diphthong and triphthong only in this phonemic sense.

Vowels in languages

The semantic significance of vowels varies widely depending on the language. In some languages, particularly Semitic languages, vowels mostly serve to denote inflections. This is similar to English man vs. men. In fact, the alphabets used to write the Semitic languages, such as the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark all the vowels. These alphabets are called abjads. Although it is possible to construct simple English sentences that can be understood without written vowels (cn y rd ths?), extended passages of English lacking written vowels are difficult if not impossible to completely understand (consider dd, which could be any of add, aided, dad, dada, dead, deed, did, died, dodo, dud, dude, eddie, iodide, or odd). In most languages, vowels are an unchangeable part of the words, as in English man vs. moon which are not different inflectional forms of the same word, but different words. Vowels are especially important to the structures of words in languages that have very few consonants (like Polynesian languages such as Maori and Hawaiian), and in languages whose inventory of vowels is larger than its inventory of consonants.

Vowel systems

Most languages have 3–7 vowels, the following 5-vowel system being the most common: This particular configuration is common because it makes the most efficient use of the vowel space, so slight variations in a vowel are not easily confused for a different sound. Spanish and Modern Greek, for example, have this vowel system; Latin had a similar system that also distinguished between long and short vowels, although that distinction wasn't made in written Latin; it is for this reason that the Latin alphabet has five vowel letters. All languages have at least two vowels; the Tshwizhyi and Abzhui dialects of Abkhaz contrasts only and , with significant allophony. (There have been proposals to posit only one vowel in some Abkhaz dialects; however, most linguists who are familiar with Abkhaz do not accept this theory.) Three-vowel systems have been noted in a number of languages. These include:
- (Arabic, Inuktitut, Quechua),
- (Pirahã),
- (Wichita). A few languages, such as Navajo, have four-vowel systems that lack /u/ but there is no known natural language that lacks some form of a. At the other end of the spectrum, languages with more than twelve vowels are relatively uncommon, although some widely-spoken languages have large vowel inventories, particularly Germanic languages. For example, English has 14–20 vowels (including diphthongs) depending on dialect, and Swedish has 17 distinct vowel qualities in the height-backness-roundedness spectrum, although these also involve a length contrast, and the long vowels have diphthongized allophones. French has 16 vowel qualities, including nasals, and the previously-mentioned Sedang has 24 distinct monophthongs, which it achieves by contrasting phonation on seven vowel qualities. uses phonation and nasalization with five vowel qualities to achieve approximately 40 vowels, most of which may occur both long and short.

Written vowels

The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols used for representing vowel sounds in a language's writing system, particularly if the language uses an alphabet. In the Latin alphabet, the vowel letters are usually A, E, I, O, U, and in some languages Y, as in English and W, as in Welsh. There is necessarily not a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In the case of English, the five primary vowel letters can represent both long and short vowel sounds (some of the long vowel sounds in English are actually diphthongs). Furthermore, in English some vowel sounds are represented by combinations of vowel letters, such as the ea in beat or by a vowel letter and an approximant letter, as the ow in how, or the er in her. Other languages cope with the limitation in the number of Latin vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages, like English, make extensive use of combinations of vowel letters to represent various sounds. Other languages add diacritical marks to vowels, such as accents or umlauts, to represent the variety of possible vowel sounds. Some languages have also constructed additional vowel letters by modifying the standard Latin vowels in other ways, such as æ or ø that are found in some of the Scandinavian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet has a set of 28 symbols to represent the range of basic vowel qualities, and a further set of diacritics to denote variations from the basic vowel.

Written vowels in writing systems

- Arabic: دَ دِ دُ دَ‌ا دَ‌ى دِ‌ي دُو
- Devanagari: Independent vowels: अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ Dependent vowels: ा ि ी ु ू े ै ो ौ
- Guaraní: oral: a e i o u y; nasal: ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ ỹ
- Japanese: normal: あいうえお grammatical: へを
- Korean: ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ
- Latin: a e i o u
- Finnish: back: a u o; neutral: i e; front: ä y ö; long vowels doubled (aamu, uuma, etc.)
- Estonian and Võro: a e i o u ü ä ö õ (y), half-long and over-long vowels doubled
- Skolt Sami: u o õ å a, i e â ä (normal), u´ o´ õ´ å´ a´, i´ e´ â´ ä´ (centralized), long vowels doubled (lääij, nââ'ǩǩted, etc.).
- Norwegian and Swedish: back ('hard'): a o u å; front ('soft'): e i y æ/ä ø/ö
- Russian: non-iotating ('hard'): А О У Ы Э; iotating ('soft'): Я Ё Ю И Е

References

- Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, 1999. Cambridge University ISBN 0521637511
- Johnson, Keith, Acoustic & Auditory Phonetics, second edition, 2003. Blackwell ISBN 1405101237
- Ladefoged, Peter, A Course in Phonetics, fourth edition, 2000. Heinle ISBN 0155073192
- Ladefoged, Peter, Elements of Acoustic Phonetics, 1995. University of Chicago ISBN 0226467643
- Ladefoged, Peter and Ian Maddieson, The Sounds of the Worlds Languages, 1996. Blackwell ISBN 0631198156
- Ladefoged, Peter, Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages, 2000. Blackwell ISBN 0631214127.
- Lindau, Mona. (1978). Vowel features. Language, 54, 541-563.
- Stevens, Kenneth N. (1998). Acoustic phonetics. Current studies in linguistics (No. 30). Cambridge, MA: MIT. ISBN 0-2621-9404-X.
- Stevens, Kenneth N. (2000). Toward a model for lexical access based on acoustic landmarks and distinctive features. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 111 (4), 1872-1891.
- Korhonen, Mikko. Koltansaamen opas, 1973. Castreanum ISBN 951-45-0189-6

External links

- [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/contents.html Vowels and Consonants] Online examples from Ladefoged's Vowels and Consonants, referenced above.
- [http://www.oneletterwords.com Dictionary of All-Vowel Words]: a free online dictionary with over 1,000 words with no consonants and examples of usage from literature.
- roa-rup:Vocală ko:홀소리 ja:母音

Language

A language is a system of symbols, generally known as lexemes and the rules by which they are manipulated. The word language is also used to refer to the whole phenomenon of language, i.e., the common properties of languages. Though language is commonly used for communication, it is not synonymous with it. Human language is a natural phenomenon, and language learning is instinctive in childhood. In their natural form, human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for the symbols in order to communicate with others through the senses. Though there are thousands of human languages, they all share a number of properties from which there are no known deviations. Humans have also invented (or arguably in some cases discovered) many other languages, including constructed human languages such as Esperanto or Klingon, programming languages such as Python or Ruby, and various mathematical formalisms. These languages are not restricted to the properties shared by natural human languages.

Properties of language

Languages are not just sets of symbols. They also contain a grammar, or system of rules, used to manipulate the symbols. While a set of symbols may be used for expression or communication, it is primitive and relatively unexpressive, because there are no clear or regular relationships between the symbols. Because a language also has a grammar, it can manipulate its symbols to express clear and regular relationships between them. For example, imagine going on a walk with a person who only knew individual symbols, or words. If you saw a dog, he might say, "Dog scare" or "Scare Dog". Although any English speaker would have some notion of what he was talking about, the relationship between the words is unclear. Is he scared of dogs? Or just that dog? Or does he want to scare the dog off? Does he think the dog is scared? But if you respond, "I’m not scared of dogs," the relationship between dog and scare is quite apparent and hence the meaning of the utterance. Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing. That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian speakers nada means hope. However, it must be understood that just because in principle the symbols are arbitrary does not mean that a language cannot have symbols that are iconic of what they stand for. Words such as meow sound similar to what they represent, but they could be replaced with words such as jarn, and as long as everyone memorized the new word, the same concepts could be expressed with it.

Human languages

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science studying them is linguistics. Making a principled distinction between one language and another is usually impossible. For example, the boundaries between named language groups are in effect arbitrary due to blending between populations (the dialect continuum). For instance, there are dialects of German very similar to Dutch which are not mutually intelligible with other dialects of (what Germans call) German. Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not always possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.) The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache, and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

Origins of human language

Scientists do not yet agree on when language was first used by humans (or their ancestors). Estimates range from about two million (2,000,000) years ago, during the time of Homo habilis, to as recently as forty thousand (40,000) years ago, during the time of Cro-Magnon man. The nature of speech means that there is almost no data on which to base conclusions on the subject.

Language taxonomy

The classification of natural languages can be performed on the basis of different underlying principles (different closeness notions, respecting different properties and relations between languages); important directions of present classifications are:
- paying attention to the historical evolution of languages results in a genetic classification of languages—which is based on genetic relatedness of languages,
- paying attention to the internal structure of languages (grammar) results in a typological classification of languages—which is based on similarity of one or more components of the language’s grammar across languages,
- and respecting geographical closeness and contacts between language-speaking communities results in areal groupings of languages. The different classifications do not match each other and are not expected to, but the correlation between them is an important point for many linguistic research works. (There is a parallel to the classification of species in biological phylogenetics here: consider monophyletic vs. polyphyletic groups of species.) The task of genetic classification belongs to the field of historical-comparative linguistics, of typological—to linguistic typology. See also: Taxonomy, Taxonomic classification—for the general idea of classification and taxonomies.

Genetic classification

The world’s languages have been grouped into families of languages that are believed to have common ancestors. Some of the major families are the Indo-European languages, the Afro-Asiatic languages, the Austronesian languages, and the Sino-Tibetan languages. The shared features of languages from one family can be due to shared ancestry. (Compare with homology in biology.)

Typological classification

An example of a typological classification is the classification of languages on the basis of the basic order of the verb, the subject and the object in a sentence into several types: SVO, SOV, VSO, and so on, languages. (, for instance, belongs to the SVO language type.) The shared features of languages of one type (= from one typological class) may have arisen completely independently. (Compare with analogy in biology.) Their cooccurence might be due to the universal laws governing the structure of natural languages—language universals.

Areal classification

The following language groupings can serve as some linguistically significant examples of areal linguistic units, or sprachbunds: Balkan linguistic union, or the bigger group of European languages; Caucasian languages. Although the members of each group are not closely genetically related, there is a reason for them to share similar features, namely: their speakers have been in contact for a long time within a common community and the languages converged in the course of the history. These are called areal features. NB. One should be careful about the underlying classification principle for groups of languages which have apparently a geographical name: besides areal linguistic units, the taxa of the genetic classification (language families) are often given names which themselves or parts of which refer to geographical areas.
Constructed languages
One prominent artificial language, called Esperanto, was created by L. L. Zamenhof. It is a compilation of various elements of different languages, and it is intended to be an easy-to-learn language. Another prominent artificial language, called Ido, is intended to be reformed Esperanto. Other constructed languages strive to be more logical than natural languages; a prominent example of this is Lojban. Other writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, have created fantasy languages, for literary, artistic, or personal reasons. One of Tolkien’s languages is called Quenya, which is a form of Elvish. It has its own alphabet, and its phonology and syntax are modelled on Finnish. Linguist Mark Okrand has devised Klingon and Vulcan for Star Trek, which have since been developed into full languages.
The study of language
The oldest surviving written grammar for any language is believed to be the Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம்), a book on the grammar of the Tamil language, written around 200 BCE by Tolkāppiyar. Its classification of the alphabet into consonants and vowel was a breakthrough. The historical record of the study of language begins in North India with Pāṇini, the 5th century BCE grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, known as the (अष्टाध्यायी). grammar is highly systematized and technical. Inherent in its analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root; the phoneme was only recognized by Western linguists some two millennia later. In the Middle East, the Persian linguist Sibawayh made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 CE in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi an-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book he distinguished phonetics from phonology. Later in the West, the success of science, mathematics, and other formal systems in the 20th century led many to attempt a formalization of the study of language as a "semantic code". This resulted in the academic discipline of linguistics, the founding of which is attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure.
Animal (nonhuman) language
While the term animal languages is widely used, most researchers agree that they are not as complex or expressive as human language; a more accurate term is animal communication. Some researchers argue that there are significant differences separating human language from the communication of other animals, and that the underlying principles are not related. In several widely publicised instances, animals have been trained to mimic certain features of human language. For example, chimpanzees and gorillas have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language; however, they have never been taught its grammar. There was also a case in 2003 of Kanzi, a captive bonobo chimpanzee allegedly independently creating some words to mean certain concepts. While animal communication has debated levels of semantics, it has not been shown to have syntax in the sense that human languages do. Some researchers argue that a continuum exists among the communication methods of all social animals, pointing to the fundamental requirements of group behaviour and the existence of "mirror cells" in primates. This, however, may not be a scientific question, but is perhaps more one of definition. What exactly is the definition of the word "language"? Most researchers agree that, although human and more primitive languages have analogous features, they are not homologous.
Formal languages
Mathematics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, but also some that are far more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by some combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.
See also

- Common phrases in different languages
- Computer-assisted language learning (a historical perspective)
- Deception
- Ethnologue, which provides a fairly complete list of languages, locations, population and genetic affiliation
- Extinct language
- FOXP2 (Language gene)
- ILR scale (defines five levels of language proficiency)
- ISO 639 (2- and 3-letter codes for language names)
- Language education
- Language reform
- Language policy
- Language school
- Linguistic protectionism
- Linguistics basic topics
- List of language academies
- List of languages
- List of official languages
- Naming
- Non-verbal communication
- Non-sexist language
- Official language
- Orthography
- Philology and Historical linguistics
- Philosophy of language
- Profanity
- Psycholinguistics
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Slang
- Symbolic communication
- Speech therapy
- Terminology
- Tongue-twister
- Translation
- Whistled language
References

- Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Katzner, K. (1999). The Languages of the World. New York, Routledge.
- McArthur, T. (1996). The Concise Companion to the English Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- Kandel, Jessel, and Schwartz (1991). Principles of Neural Science. McGraw Hill (esp. p. 1173).
External links

- [http://www.zompist.com/ Mark Rosenfelder’s Metaverse] provides a useful listing of 5000 languages and dialects (grouped by their relationships), where the numbers one to ten in each language may be found
- [http://www.geocities.com/agihard/mohl/mohl_languages.html Museum of Languages]
- The [http://www.ethnologue.com/ Ethnologue], a catalog of the world’s languages
- [http://www.language-capitals.com Language Capitals] Guide to 8 major languages of the world with facts, characteristics and varieties
- [http://www.vistawide.com/languages/ World Languages and Cultures] — Practical information and resources on languages and language learning
- [http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/animals.html Animal sounds in different languages]
- [http://www.netz-tipp.de/languages.html Distribution of languages on the Internet]
- [http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/ Speech accent archive]
- [http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/G_Kunkel/homepage.htm a collection of bird songs] provides many kinds of bird songs
- [http://acp.eugraph.com The Animal Communication Project]
- [http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/categories/lang.html Language Articles]
- [http://www.primitivism.com/language.htm Language: Origin and Meaning by John Zerzan] Category:Technology als:Sprache zh-min-nan:Gí-giân ko:언어 ms:Bahasa nb:Språk ja:言語 simple:Language th:ภาษา

X-SAMPA

The Extended SAM Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at the University of London. It was designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, and extend SAMPA to cover the entire range of characters in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The result is a SAMPA-inspired recasting of the IPA into 7-bit ASCII.

Summary

Notes

- The IPA symbols that are ordinary lower-case letters have the same value in X-SAMPA as they do in the IPA.
- X-SAMPA uses a following backslash as an escape character to create a new symbol. For example O is a distinct sound from O\, to which it bears no relation. (Note that it is a convention among some conlangers to use an asterisk (e.g., O -) instead of backslash).
- X-SAMPA diacritics follow the symbols they modify. Except for ~ for nasalization, = for syllabicity, and ` for retroflexion and rhotacization, diacritics are joined to the character with the underscore character _.
- The underscore character is also used to encode the IPA tiebar.
- The numbers _1 to _6 are reserved diacritics as shorthand for language-specific tone numbers.

Lowercase symbols

Close-mid vowel

A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel. The close-mid vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
- close-mid front unrounded vowel []
- close-mid front rounded vowel []
- close-mid central unrounded vowel []
- close-mid central rounded vowel []
- close-mid back unrounded vowel []
- close-mid back rounded vowel [] Category:Vowels ja:半狭母音

Mid vowel

A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel. Mid vowels are commonly divided into two groups, the close-mid vowels like and , and the open-mid vowels like and . Schwa ([]), a mid central vowel, is not generally considered to be either close-mid or open-mid. Category:Vowels

Back vowel

A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. The back vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
- close back unrounded vowel
- close back rounded vowel
- close-mid back unrounded vowel
- close-mid back rounded vowel
- open-mid back unrounded vowel
- open-mid back rounded vowel
- open back unrounded vowel
- open back rounded vowel See also: List of phonetics topics Category:Vowels ja:後舌母音

Vowel roundedness

In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, while back vowels tend to be rounded, but some languages, such as and , distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height, while distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. In the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that occur on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, respectively , to indicate greater or lesser degrees of rounding. The 'more' and 'less rounded' diacritics are sometimes also used with consonants to indicate degrees of labialization. For example, in the Athabaskan language , voiceless velar fricatives distinguish three degrees of labialization, transcribed either or .

Types of rounding

voiceless velar fricative There are two types of vowel rounding: endolabial, or compressed, and exolabial, or protruded. In endolabial rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn slightly together and the lips may be compressed horizontally, but the lips do not protrude and only their outer surface is exposed. In exolabial rounding, the lips protrude like a tube, as when kissing; the inner surface of the lips is exposed. Usually, back rounded vowels are exolabial, while front rounded vowels are endolabial. However, in , the back high vowel is endolabial. Swedish is unusual in that it makes a phonemic distinction between the two types, having unrounded, endolabial, and exolabial front close-mid vowels. There is no dedicated IPA diacritic to represent this contrast, and without disambiguation both the word "rounded" and the symbols for the rounded vowels are understood to refer to exolabial rounding. The northern Iroquoian languages have no labial consonants. They do have , , and , but these do not involve noticeable rounding (protrusion) of the lips. It may be that they are compressed. It is not known how this might relate to the labialization distinction in Hupa.

Rounded vowel

Types of rounding

Australian English

Australian English (AuE) is the form of the English language used in Australia.

Relationship to other varieties of English

Australian English began to diverge from British English soon after the foundation of the colony of New South Wales (NSW) in 1788. The settlement was intended originally as a penal colony for British convicts. They were mostly people from large English cities, such as Cockneys. In 1827, Peter Cunningham, in his book Two Years in New South Wales, reported that native-born white Australians spoke with a distinctive accent and vocabulary, albeit with a strong Cockney influence. (The tranportation of convicts to Australian colonies continued until 1868.) A much larger wave of immigration, as a result of the first Australian goldrushes, in the 1850s, also had a significant influence on Australian English, including large numbers of people who spoke English as a second language. Since that time, Australian English has borrowed increasingly from external sources. The so-called "Americanisation" of Australian English — signified by the borrowing of words, terms and usages from American English — which began during the goldrushes, was accelerated by a massive influx of US military personnel during World War II. The large-scale importation of television programs and other mass media content from the United States, from the 1950s onwards, has also had a significant effect. As a result, for example, Australians use the word truck instead of the British lorry. Due to their shared history and geographical proximity, Australian English is most similar to New Zealand English. However, the difference between the two spoken versions is obvious to people from either country, if not to a casual observer from a third country. The vocabulary used also exhibits some striking differences.

Spelling

The exposure to the different spellings of British and American English leads to a certain amount of spelling variation such as organise/organize. British spelling is generally preferred, although some words are usually written in the American form, such as program and jail rather than programme and gaol. Publishers, schools, universities and governments typically use the Macquarie Dictionary as a standard spelling reference. Both -ise and -ize are accepted, as in British English, but '-ise' is the preferred form in Australian English by a ratio of about 3:1 according to the Australian Corpus of English. There is a widely-held belief in Australia that American spellings are a modern "intrusion", but the debate in fact goes back to the 19th century. A pamphlet titled The So Called "American Spelling.", printed in Sydney over 100 years ago, argued that "there is no valid etymological reason for the preservation of the u in such words as honor, labor, etc." At the time it was noted that "the tendency of people in Australasia is to excise the u, and one of the Sydney morning papers habitually does this, while the other generally follows the older form". Some Melbourne newspapers once excised the "u", but do not anymore, and the Australian Labor Party officially adopted the '-or' ending in 1912.

Irish influences

There is some influence from Hiberno-English, but perhaps not as much as might be expected given that many Australians are of Irish descent. Perhaps most noticeable is the widespread – but not universal – pronunciation of the name of the letter "H" as "haitch" , rather than the unaspirated "aitch" found in New Zealand, as well as most of Britain and North America. This is most often found amongst speakers of Broad Australian English and is thought to be the influence of Irish Catholic priests and nuns. Others include the non-standard plural of "you" as "youse" , which is common in some social circles, and the expression "good on you" or "good onya", although both of these are also encountered in New Zealand English and British English. Another usage indicative of an Irish influence is use of the word 'me' replacing 'my'. Example: Where's me hat?

Samples of Australian English

The ABC provides many [http://www.abc.net.au/streaming/ streams of their radio programs]. Many of these would make a good reference for the casual, relaxed Australian accent and use of the English language as opposed to scripted performances. Non-Australians can also gain an impression of Australian English from well-known actors and other native speakers. The voices of Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts are examples of General Australian accents, unless they are acting in roles as non-Australians. Several Australian actors provided voices for Finding Nemo: Nigel the pelican, the three sharks, and the dentist have Australian accents. Television star Steve "Crocodile hunter" Irwin has a Broad Australian accent (see below) and as a result his voice is often parodied inside Australia as well as out. John O'Grady's novel They're a Weird Mob has many good examples of pseudo-phonetically written Australian speech during the 1950s, such as "owyergoinmateorright?" ("how're you going mate, alright?").

Vocabulary

The origins of Australian words

Australian English incorporates many uniquely Australian terms. One of the best-known of these is outback which means remote, sparsely-populated areas. The similar bush can mean either native forests, or country areas in general. Many such words, phrases or usages originated with the British convicts transported to Australia. Many words used frequently by country Australians are, or were, also used in all or part of England, with variations in meaning. For example: a creek in Australia is any stream or small river, whereas in England it is a small watercourse flowing into the sea; paddock is the Australian word for a field, while in England it is a small enclosure for livestock and; wooded areas in Australia are known as bush or scrub, while in England, they are commonly used only in proper names (such as Shepherd's Bush and Wormwood Scrubs). Cockney and Australian English also both use the word mate to mean a close friend of the same gender (rather than the conventional meaning of "a spouse"), although this usage has also become common in some other varieties of English. The origins of other terms are not as clear, or are disputed. Dinkum (or "fair dinkum") means "true", or when used in speech: "is that true?", "this is the truth!", and other meanings, depending on context and inflection. It is often claimed that dinkum dates back to the Australian goldrushes of the 1850s, and that it is derived from the Cantonese (or Hokkien) ding kam, meaning "top gold". However, scholars give greater credence to the notion that it originated with a now-extinct dialect word from the East Midlands in England, where dinkum (or dincum) meant "hard work" or "fair work", which was also the original meaning in Australian English.[http://www.anu.edu.au/andc/ozwords/November_98/7._dinkum.htm] The derivation dinky-di means a native-born Australian. Similarly, g'day, a stereotypical Australian greeting, is no longer synonymous with "good day" in other varieties of English and is never used as an expression for "farewell", as "good day" is in other countries. Some elements of Aboriginal languages have been incorporated into Australian English, mainly as names for places, flora and fauna (for example dingo, kangaroo). Beyond that, very few terms have been adopted into the wider language, except for some localised terms, or slang. Notable exceptions are cooee and Hard yakka. The former is a high-pitched call (pronounced ) which travels long distances and is used to attract attention. Cooee has also become a notional distance: "if he's within cooee, we'll spot him". Hard yakka means Hard work and is derived from yakka, from the Yagara language once spoken in the Brisbane region. Though often thought of as an Aboriginal word, didgeridoo (a well known wooden musical instrument) is probably an onomatopaoeic word of Western invention. It has also been suggested that it may have an Irish derivation.[http://www.flinders.edu.au/news/articles/?fj09v13s02]

Varieties of Australian English

Most linguists consider that there are three main varieties of Australian English: "Broad", "General" and "Cultivated". These three main varieties are actually part of a continuum and are based on variations in accent. They often, but not always, reflect the social class and/or educational background of the speaker.

Broad Australian English

Broad Australian English is the archetypal and most recognisable variety and is familiar to English speakers around the world, because of its use in identifying Australian characters in non-Australian films and television programs. In reality it is less common than General Australian English. Broad Australian English is recognisable by a certain nasal drawl and the prevalence of long diphthongs. Broad Australian English is more likely to be encountered when travelling further away from the capital cities.

General Australian English

General Australian English is the stereotypical variety of Australian English. It is the variety of English used by the majority of Australians and it dominates the accents found in contemporary Australian-made films and television programs, such as Neighbours. This variety has noticeably shorter vowel sounds than Broad Australian English, among other differences. There is perhaps a trend towards General Australian away from the extremes.

Cultivated Australian English

Cultivated Australian English (CAE) has many similarities to British Received Pronunciation, and is often mistaken for it. CAE is now spoken by less than 10% of the population. An overwhelmingly large and growing majority of Australians now have either General or Broad accents. One effect of this is that the speech of people like Alexander Downer, the Minister for Foreign Affairs is mocked as sounding "affected", "snobby" or "aloof", when his accent is simply an example of Cultivated Australian English, which was once common among public figures in Australia.

Examples

Examples of each include the normal speaking voices of the following identities: Broad
- Prime Minister Bob Hawke
- actor Bryan Brown
- television personality Steve Irwin
- politician Pauline Hanson General
- Prime Minister John Howard
- actress Nicole Kidman
- actor Hugh Jackman
- actor Russell Crowe
- actor Mel Gibson (formerly)
- actor Jesse Spencer Cultivated
- Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser
- actor Geoffrey Rush
- singer Dame Joan Sutherland
- politician Alexander Downer
- actor Barry Humphries

Regional Variation

It is sometimes claimed that regional variations in pronunciation and accent exist, but if present at all they are very small compared to those of British and American English – sufficiently so that linguists are divided on the question. Overall, pronunciation is determined less by region than by social and educational influences.

Regional vocabulary

There is, however, some variation in Australian English vocabulary between different regions. An example often cited by linguists is the variety of names given by Australians to bland, processed pork products – known in other countries as pork luncheon meat or baloney – is so great, that these words are used by linguists to ascertain not only which Australian state or territory a person is from, but also regional origin within states in some cases. For example, in South Australia (SA) this product is known as fritz, for most people in Victoria (Vic) it is stras, in most of New South Wales (NSW) it is devon, in Western Australia (WA) polony, in Queensland (Qld) windsor, in Tasmania (Tas) belgium, and so on (see Australian words for processed pork smallgoods, for more details). There is also variety in the names of beer glasses from one state to another. For example, a standard 285ml (10 fl.oz.) glass, in different states or regions, is known as a middy (NSW/WA/ACT), pot (Vic/Qld/Tas), handle (NT/SA), ten (SA/Tas) or schooner (SA). Such variation causes great confusion, especially since a schooner is a 425 ml (15 fl.oz.) glass in every state that uses the word except SA. (see Australian words for beer glasses for a full list). Although an item of swimwear is known as bathers in most states, people in NSW and Queensland do not conform, preferring terms such as swimmers, cossie or togs (see Australian words for swimwear). The fact that regional variation does not respect state borders is shown by the fact that both Queenslanders and people from northern New South Wales say port (short for portmanteau) while people in the other states say case, school bag, backpack and/or knapsack. In the past variation was so strong that the residents of the NSW town of Maitland would use the word port where Newcastle, some 20 kilometres away, would prefer the latter term. Differences are increased by differences in non-linguistic traditions from one state to another: football refers to the most popular code of football in different States or regions, or even ethnic groups within them. Victorians start a game of Australian rules football with a ball up, Western Australians with a bounce down; New South Welsh people and Queenslanders start a game of Rugby League or Rugby Union with a kick off, as do soccer fans across Australia. The differences are not restricted to words. For example, it is often said that people from North Queensland end sentences with the interrogative "eh?", although this is also common in both New Zealand English and Canadian English. The steadily increasing centralisation of film, TV and radio production, however, may be spreading new words more rapidly and blurring such distinctions.

Phonology

Australian English is a non-rhotic variety. It is unique in its remarkable homogeneity over a vast area. Unlike most varieties of English, it has a phonemic length distinction. It has a reasonably standard consonant inventory.

Myths about Australian accents

Australian English is sometimes described as high-pitched, nasal, lazy, or drawling. The claims of high pitch and nasality are not entirely true, as many Australian English speakers perceive much of American English to be nasal, while laziness and drawling are impossible to test objectively. Similarly, stereotypes of Australian speech as having a "rising tone" or "questioning intonation", known in linguistics as high rising terminal, are not entirely justified by the empirical evidence. Many Australians' speech patterns do not conform to this stereotype, and the "questioning intonation" can be found in many regional speech patterns, such as those in the south of England, Northern Ireland, and even North America.

Use of words by Australians

Perception has it that a common trait is the frequent use of long-winded similes, such as "slow as a wet week", "built like a brick shit-house", "mad as a cut snake", or "flat out like a lizard drinking". Whether this perception is based in reality or has been produced by popular culture items of fiction such as the (successfully exported) television soap opera Neighbours and the films of Paul Hogan remains in question. Among the younger generations of Australians, it has become common to make a mockery of these similes by saying things like "slow as something that's really slow" and "tired as a person who is tired" amongst others. Many Australians believe themselves to be direct in manner, and this is typified by statements such as "why call a spade a spade, when you can call it a bloody shovel". Such sentiments can lead to misunderstandings and offence being caused to people from cultures where an emphasis is placed on avoiding conflict, such as people from South East Asia. Spoken Australian English is generally more tolerant of offensive and/or abusive language than other variants. A famous exponent was the former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who referred in parliament to opponents as a "mangy maggot", a "stupid foul-mouthed grub" and so on. He drew ire from then Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohammed for calling him a recalcitrant. This tradition was continued by fellow Labor MP Mark Latham who unapologetically described Prime Minister John Howard's sycophancy to George W. Bush as "an arse-licking effort". The widespread desire among Australians to avoid pomposity, leading to a rejection of even formal or dignified speech, is sometimes seen as reflecting a suspicion of success in general, a phenomenon sometimes known as the tall poppy syndrome.

Humour

An important aspect of Australian English usage, inherited in small part from Britain and Ireland, is the use of deadpan humour, in which a person will make extravagant, outrageous and/or ridiculous statements in a neutral tone, and without explicitly indicating they are joking. Tourists seen to be gullible and/or lacking a sense of humour may be subjected to tales of kangaroos hopping across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and similar tall tales. (See also Drop Bear.)

Diminutives

Australian English makes far more frequent use of diminutives than other varieties of English. These which can be formed in a number of ways such as adding -o or -ie to the ends of abbreviated words. They can be used to indicate familiarity, although in many speech communities the diminutive form is more common than the original word or phrase. Examples with the -o ending include abo (aborigine, now considered offensive), arvo (afternoon), doco (documentary), servo (service station, known in other countries as a "petrol station" or "gas station"), bottle-o (bottle-shop or liquor store), rego (still pronounced with a ) (annual motor vehicle registration), compo (compensation), leso (lesbian, also offensive, pronounced with a ), ambo (ambulance officer). The Salvation Army is often referred to as "The Salvos". The city of Fremantle is known by many of its inhabitants as Freo. Filipino youth in Australia refer to themselves as being a Filo, a word not used by Filipino Americans. Examples of the -ie ending include barbie (barbecue), bikkie (biscuit), bikie (member of a motorcycle club), brekkie (breakfast) and blowie (blowfly). The city of Brisbane is often called Brissie (pronounced with a ) Newcastle is known as Newie. Occasionally, a -za diminutive is used, usually for personal names where the first of multiple syllables ends in an "r". Karen becomes Kazza and Jeremy becomes Jezza. Also popular and common is the -z diminutive form (also found in British English) whereby Karen becomes Kaz and so on. Other diminutive forms include:
- last one or two syllables, prefaced with a definite article: for example, The Gabba for the Brisbane Cricket Ground at Woolloongabba; The Gong for Wollongong.
- first syllable plus "-s": turps turpentine (usually referring to drinking alcohol, e.g. "a night on the turps") or Ian Turpie; Gabs, pet form of Gabrielle.
- first syllable plus "-ers": Honkers (Hong Kong).

References

-
- Mitchell, Alexander G., 1995, The Story of Australian English, Sydney: Dictionary Research Centre.
- Peters, Pam. (1986) "Spelling principles", In: Peters, Pam, ed., Style in Australia: Current Practices in Spelling, Punctuation, Hyphenation, Capitlisation, etc.,
- The So Called "American Spelling." Its Consistency Examined. pre-1900 pamphlet, Sydney, E. J. Forbes. Quoted by Annie Potts in [http://www.bikwil.zip.com.au/Vintage19/Webster's-Dictionary.html this article]

External links

- [http://www.anu.edu.au/ANDC/ Australian National Dictionary Centre]
- [http://abc.net.au/wordmap/ ABC.net Australian Word Map]
- [http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/topics.html Introduction to Australian Phonetics and Phonology]
- [http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/ Macquarie Dictionary]
- [http://www.world-english.org/ World English Organisation]
- [http://www.nma.gov.au/play/aussie_english_for_the_beginner/ Aussie English for beginners -- the origins, meanings and a quiz to test your knowledge] at the National Museum of Australia. Category:English dialects Category:Sociolinguistics

New Zealand English

New Zealand English is the dialect of English spoken in New Zealand, occasionally referred to within New Zealand as Newzild. New Zealand English is close to Australian English in pronunciation, but has several subtle differences often overlooked by people from outside these countries. Some of these differences show New Zealand English to have more affinity with the English of southern England than Australian English does. Several of the differences also show the influence of Maori speech. The most striking difference from Australian English (and other forms of English) is the flattened i of New Zealand English.

Spelling

Possibly the most significant difference between New Zealand and British spelling is in the ending "-ise" or "-ize". Britons may use either ending (although "-ise" is by far the more popular), and some British dictionaries and style manuals prefer the "-ize" ending. New Zealanders tend to use the "-ise" ending exclusively. A peculiarity of New Zealand English is that the spelling "fiord" is preferred over the spelling "fjord" used in most of the English-speaking world. This spelling can be found in the name of the Fiordland National Park in the southwest of the South Island. Where there is a distinct difference between British and US spelling (such as words like colour/color and travelled/traveled), the British spelling is universally found in New Zealand. New Zealand English sticks very closely to British English in spelling - even more so than does Australian English. Some Americanisms have begun to creep into the country through their exposure in mass media (such as "thru" for "through"), though these spellings are frowned upon and are definitely regarded as non-standard. Despite mass media exposure (through early childhood programmes such as "Sesame Street") to the American English pronunciation "zee" for the last letter of the alphabet, the British English "zed" is standard. This is reflected in the short form of the country name "NZ" ("n-zed") and in a popular NZ band, Zed. The acronym is used in many organisational names including the band Split Enz; WINZ, Work and Income NZ, now a division of the Ministry of Social Development; TRADENZ, now NZ Trade and Enterprise; and ENZA which is the New Zealand Apple & Pear Marketing Board's trademarked brand for export pipfruit.

Māori influence

Many local everyday words are not English at all, being traditional Māori language names for local flora, fauna, and the natural environment, and some other Māori words have made their way into the vernacular. The dominant influence of the Māori language (te reo Māori) upon New Zealand English is lexical. An 1999 estimate based on the Wellington corpora of written and spoken New Zealand English put the proportion of words of Māori origin at approximately 0.6%; mostly place and personal names. Another sphere in which Māori is ever present and has a significant conceptual influence is in the legislature, government, and community agencies (i.e, health and education). Political discussion and analysis of issues of sovereignty, environmental management, health, and social well-being rely on te reo Māori at least in part. Māori as a spoken language is particularly important where ever community consultation occurs. The use of Māori words is increasing, particularly in the North Island, although there are regional variations. For instance, in most of the country the native wood pigeon is called "kererū", but in Northland it is called "kūkupa" and sometimes "kuku", and on the Chatham Islands, "parea". "Kia ora" literally means "be healthy" but it has also become a standard term of greeting, meaning "hello" or "welcome". It also signifies agreement with a speaker at a meeting. Other Māori greetings, "Tēnā koe" (one person), "Tēnā kōrua" (two people) or "Tēnā koutou" (three or more people) are also widely used. Similarly the phrase for goodbye, "Haere rā", which may also be the origin of the once much widely used NZ phrase for goodbye "Hooray". The Māori phrase "kia kaha", literally "be strong", is also frequently encountered as an indication of moral support for someone starting a stressful undertaking or otherwise in a difficult situation. Greeting someone on a cold morning is sometimes expressed as "Makariri nē?", (cold isn't it?). This phrase may have spawned the bastard Māori-English word "maka-chilly" which probably started as a joke and is not widely used. The slang word "buggered" is often equated with the Māori word for "broken", "Pakaru", and is synonymous with "Pakarued". Some hybrid words, part English and part Māori, have developed, the most common of which is probably half-pai (often written half-pie), meaning incomplete or or substandard quality (pai being the Māori word for "good"). Similarly, the Māori word ending -tanga, which has a similar meaning to the English ending -ness, is occasionally used in hybrid terms such as kiwitanga (that is, the state of being a New Zealander). Intriguingly, several Māori words are used in English as lighthearted, or even slang, equivalents of their more common English counterparts. The term puku for stomach, for example, is more likely to be encountered during a friendly chat than in more formal circumstances. The common Māori sentence ending nē (meaning literally isn't it?) is thought to possibly be responsible for the exclamational and/or interrogative use of "eh!" at the end of sentences in New Zealand English (as noted below). Evidence supporting this suggestion is the increased prevalence of the usage of eh in areas with a higher proportion of Māori population. It is thus a far more common usage in South Auckland, for instance, than in rural Canterbury.

Vocabulary

Examples of centuries old Māori names for native birds are the kiwi, kea, kakapo, tui and pukeko, the extinct moa, and the kotuku or white heron. There are also fish such as hoki, kahawai, tarakihi or terakihi and mako shark, and shellfish like toheroa and paua. Most of the native trees also have Māori names such as the kauri, rimu, totara, kōwhai, matagouri and pohutukawa. Other vegetation with Māori names includes the kumara, a type of sweet potato. The word kiwi has acquired other meanings, most commonly as an informal term for New Zealander, or as an adjective instead of New Zealand. The use of kiwi to refer to kiwifruit is not part of New Zealand English. Many Māori words or phrases that describe Māori culture have become part of New Zealand English. Some of these are:
- haka: a chant and (war) dance of challenge, popularised by the All Blacks rugby team, who perform it before the game in front of the opposition
- hangi: a method of cooking food in a pit; or the occasion at which food is cooked this way (compare the Hawaiian use of the word luau)
- hui: a meeting; increasingly being used by New Zealand media to describe business meetings relating to Māori affairs
- iwi: tribe, or peoples
- kia ora: hello, and indicating agreement with a speaker (literally 'be healthy')
- koha: gift
- kōhanga reo: Māori language pre-school (literally 'language nest')
- mana: reputation – a combination of authority, integrity, power and prestige
- Māoritanga: the sum of all Māori culture and existence. "Māori-ness".
- marae: ceremonial meeting area in front of the meeting house; or, the entire complex surrounding this, including eating and sleeping areas
- Pākehā: people of non-Māori origin, especially those of European origin
- puku: belly, usually a big one
- tāngata whenua: native people of a country, specifically the Māori in New Zealand (literally 'people of the land')
- tapu: sacred, taboo; to be avoided because of this; probably borrowed from Tongan tabu
- whānau: extended family Other Māori words may be recognised by most New Zealanders, but generally not used in everyday speech:
- aroha: love, affection
- haere mai: welcome, come here
- haere rā: goodbye to one who is leaving
- hapū: subtribe; or, pregnant
- hongi: traditional Māori greeting featuring the pressing together of noses
- ka pai: good; well done
- kai: food
- kapa haka: cultural gathering involving dance competitions
- karakia: formal Māori greeting in the form of a prayer, used in opening ceremonies
- kia kaha: literally 'be strong'; roughly "be of good heart, we are supporting you"
- korero: to chat; to speak in Māori
- mauri: spirituality
- rohe: home territory - literally the area associated with a specific iwi.
- tangi: to mourn; or, a funeral at a marae
- taniwha: mythical water monster
- te reo: the Māori language (literally, the language)
- tohunga: priest, shaman
- tūrangawaewae: one's own turf, "a place to stand" - also the name of the National Marae
- waiata: song
- wairua: spirit
- whakapapa: genealogy, to discuss family history New Zealanders also refer to Māori people, in the plural as Māori, not as 'Māoris', and this is often pronounced as 'maw-rri' with a trilled 'r'. Note that the term "mauri" above could easily be confused with this, however (it is correctly pronounced 'moh-rri', again with a trilled 'r').

Pronunciation of Māori place names

Many Māori place names suffered from a fairly ungainly anglicisation for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, but since the 1980s increased consciousness of te reo Māori has led to a shift back to correct pronunciations. The anglicisations have persisted most among natives of the towns in question, so it has become something of a shibboleth, with correct pronunciation marking someone as non-local. Examples
- Paraparaumu – para-pram
- Pauatahanui – part-a-noo-ee
- Oakura – okra
- Hawera – hara
- Te Awamutu – tee-a-moot
- Waikouaiti – wacker-wite or weka-what To further confuse matters, many southern Māori words, which have a distinctive pronunciation that differs from standard Māori, are frequently mistaken for anglicisations and "corrected". These include the pronunciation of Oamaru as Om-a-roo and of Kawarau as Ka-warra. A mixture of southern Māori speech patterns and anglicisation leads to a third trend, the removal of the final vowel of place names, or the reduction of final vowels to a schwa. This is particularly common in the southern South Island. This pattern also results in local shibboleths, and result in such pronunciations as Lake Wakatipu being referred to as Wakatip, and Otago being pronounced o-taag-uh.

Unique New Zealand English vocabulary

There are also many non-Māori words that are unique to New Zealand English. The following are shared with Australia:
- arvo – afternoon
- chips – "cold chips" as in US "chips" and UK "crisps", and "hot chips" US "french fries" and UK "chips".
- footy – football (usually Rugby Union or League, rarely soccer).
- G'day/ Gidday – standard New Zealand greeting ("good day").
- lolly – any sweet (candy). Iced lollies are "ice blocks".
- onya – short for "Good On Yer" (You).
- pom – British person, usually English (mildly derogatory).
- smoko – rest break during work (especially as smoking is totally banned in workplaces).
- super – old age pension scheme (from superannuation).
- sweet as – fine with me. The use of 'as' as an intensifier for adjectives has spread, for example 'It's cold as outside', or 'This summer has been hot as'.
- ute "utility vehicle" (i.e., Pickup truck).
- wagon US station wagon, UK estate car These are unique to New Zealand:
- bach – a small holiday home, usually near the beach, often with only one or two rooms and of simple construction. Pronounced "batch".
- cher bro pronounced chair – usually a strong voicing of thanks but also a parting salutation. Shortened from "cheers brother" although can be said to either male or female. Common in South and West Auckland.
- chip, punnet or pottle – depending on the region, the unit by which strawberries and certain other fruit are sold. Pottle is also a standard term for containers of yoghurt.
- chippies – or potato chips, as in US "chips" and UK "crisps"
- chippie – a carpenter (same as the nickname in the UK), or a fish and chip shop.
- choice! – excellent! Great idea!
- Clayton's – low-quality imitation, not the real thing. For example, a hasty, temporary repair may be only a clayton's solution to a problem. Originally from the brand-name of a non-alcoholic whisky-flavoured beverage.
- crib – another word for bach, more commonly used in the south of the South Island.
- The Ditch – the Tasman Sea, the "ditch" separating New Zealand and Australia. Occasionally also means the Cook Strait between the two main islands of the country.
- domain – as well as its common overseas uses can mean a public park, especially a small flat grassed area within urban surroundings (from demesne: any estate in land).
- eh! – used for emphasis at the end of a sentence, eh! (see note above on Māori influence. A similar but not identical usage is found in Canadian English).
- flatting – sharing a flat (apartment or rented house).
- footpath – pavement or sidewalk, shared by many countries outside US.
- freezing works – a meat-packing plant, an abattoir.
- flash – cool
- Jafa – a derogatory description (as "Just Another Fucking Aucklander") of Aucklanders used by non-Aucklanders. A play on the popular lolly, Jaffas.
- Jandals – as in US and UK "flip-flops", Australia "thongs"
- Lux – to use the vacuum cleaner, similar to British use of "hoover"
- Mainland – Usually, but not always, refers (sometimes mildly humorously) to the South Island, which, despite its much smaller population, is the larger of the two main islands of New Zealand.
- OE or Big OE – Overseas Experience, time spent travelling and working overseas, usually beginning in London.
- Pig Island – as per mainland.
- Queen Street farmer – a usually pejorative term for an investor in rural land with no knowledge of land use.
- Remuera tractor – a usually pejorative term for an SUV (compare Queen Street farmer, above).
- scarfie – a university student, particularly one at the University of Otago.
- tutū – to have a play or fiddle with something, as in "stop tutūing!". From the Māori word for trouble-maker.
- varsity – in New Zealand refers to the university itself, not to a sports team.
- WOF/Warrant – (Warrant Of Fitness), vehicle roadworthiness test, similar to British MoT and the Australian Roadworthy Certificate, except that it is required 6-monthly for older vehicles.

Unique and distinctive phrases

It is in metaphorical phrases that NZ English has made most progress or divergence. Often they reflect significant differences in culture, for example:
- Bring a plate is often seen as part of the advertisement for social functions. It means that the function is self catering; people attending are meant to bring a plate-full of food. Many new arrivals in New Zealand have mistaken this and turned up with an empty plate, but only once.
- Up the Puhoi without a paddle meaning to be in difficulties without an obvious solution. The Puhoi is a river just north of Auckland. Over the years the phrase has evolved and is now often heard as "Up the Boohai without a paddle". It is also sometimes attributed to other New Zealand rivers. It will be interesting if the phrase can withstand competition from the modern and very colourful variant "Up shit creek without a paddle". Similar phrases can be found throughout the English speaking world.
- A variant of the latter is up the boohai shooting pukeko with a long-handled shovel, meaning a fictitious place.
- Waikikamukau ("Why-kick-a-moo-cow") is also often used to represent a fictitious place, particularly as a sparsely populated rural area in the "back of beyond", and is a pun on the sound of many Māori placenames. Similar, but very rarely used now is Erewhon, the title of a book by 19th century novelist Samuel