Why Do Sound Changes Have Exceptions?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- In this video, I discuss some of the reasons why conditioned sound changes sometimes have exceptions, using both modern and historical examples. Thank you very much to my friend Scott Burchell for teaching me how to do the film emulation that I used in the 'skit' at the end.
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Genius. Does the Mr. Right character have a name? Clearly deserves a spin-off series.
I demand more!
@@InRegardsToMetal I second.
@@InRegardsToMetal I theerd
@@hond654i forth
I propose Henry Higgins as a name
the little skit at the end was amazing
I literally had that conversation on orthography and language in general with my dad. Took him quite a while to realize new=\=bad
Ur dad has a wrinkly amygdala
I was kind of expecting the blue hat to pop back up there. 🙂
So good! About to share the video just for that!
Makes a perfect point too.
Lovely bit of comedy at the end there
I’m sure,it is😂😂😂
14:56 I reckon this fellow would be absolutely _livid_ at himself for the "dropped t" here. 😉
honestly i can't wait for english to become grunts and hoots. i welcome this supposedly inevitable future
This has already happened to Danish
could be argued that it is even now.
Aren't all languages basically just an ape yelling nonsense?
I wonder what English would look like if people had kept the Late West Saxon standard and gone the Icelandic route.
I, for one, welcome our new grunt and hoot overlords.
that skit at the end, fantastic acting and writing. bravo
Armchair flatcap man is my favourite Simon character, long may this curmudgeon reign
The skit at the end was absolutely sublime. Although you could tell from the content of the conversation that it was a parody, the voices, the audio, just absolutely, absolutely felt like something out of an old recording. The oldtimey smug attitude too felt so real, with the diction, the word choices really selling it, making the parody all the more hilarious. Most people who would do such a thing, trying to parody an old recording, just don't know how to get the voice to sound real, and it ends up sounding cartoonish. Also, I'm not a video expert at all, but your film emulation there had be wondering if you actually shot that on film. The black & white filters people lazily use just don't look like actual film whatsoever, but your footage had me fooled.
Fascinating and charming as usual. I'll just add that in my dialect (Warshington State, fifties) an "oaf" was not only male and clumsy, but also probably overweight.
cheers from rainy Vienna, Scott
I reckon I'm fifteen years or so older than Simon, but from a similar broad part of the world to him. To me "oaf" does have a sense of the unintelligent as Simon says, but it definitely also contains the sense of being brutish, inelegant, ogreish, unwieldy.
10:53 caught me off guard, amazing stuff.
Fascinating as always. Loved the skit at the end - the Audio edit, the black and white, the naturalistic speech; I can see you had a very specific idea and it worked so well!
That last bit was amazing
The end bit reminded me of humorous mockumentaries like "This is Spinal Tap" and "A Mighty Wind". 🤣
I like how smoking make the scene more authentic.
When I was this damn early, the Proto-Indo-European was still being spoken!
I heard you've been "premature" a lot more recently and a lot more frequently than that.
the sketch at the end elevates this already good video to an excellent once
To be honest I’m so glad you’ve made the last couple videos about language. You briefly seemed like you were pivoting in a different direction that’s much more saturated on TH-cam. Makes my day when one of these is released!
A good example of cross-dialect borrowing causing an exception to a rule is the word "one", from Old English "an" (/ɑːn/). Mercian Old English /ɑː/ regularly becomes the diphthong we hear in words like "bone" and "stone" (OE "ban", "stan"), so the inherited form should be a homophone of "own". But with this word specifically, the native form was replaced by a loan from a different dialect (I want to say it was a West Country Middle English dialect?) between late Middle English and early Modern English.
Funny enough, we still have words that were derived from the pre-borrowing form that have the expected pronunciation though, like "alone" and "only".
Does such an analysis explain why some people, generally Southern, say ‘wun’ with the CUT vowel (typically the same as the COMMA vowel (schwa) these days though) and some, generally Northern, say ‘won’ with the LOT vowel? There are also some Northerners who use the PUT vowel and pronunciations can vary a lot from person to person in the West Midlands and East Anglia (I’m personally from the West Mids and I use the LOT vowel).
I never realized how American baseball caps look to me until Simon caught me off guard in one
One the more interesting examples is "Apfel" in German, which really should be "Affel". It kinda ran out of steam mid-word.
Also "Welpe" (puppy/whelp), which should be "Welfe", but "Welpe" was retained because the "p" sound somehow DOES make it cuter, which is appropriate.
"Pray tell me, how many syllables in the number after threy?" "'Threy'?" "No." "What?" "What?"
i never thought abt the etymology of "oaf". i think we should start using the word to mean 'changeling' again
Very interesting and well written. The sketch at the end Nadeem laugh, brilliant.
I know it's not the main point of the video, but like a lot of people are saying, the skit at the end was very well written and portrayed.
I have worked with so many people like this who have very little understanding of the thing they are arguing about, and are so stuck in their own small circle that they cannot fathom why they are bias towards something.
God, the way politics is at the moment! There is no compromise any more. People are like: I am right, I don't need to hear any evidence or opposing views, I know my point of view/beliefs are correct. I don't need to question them. It's a closed book for many people.
I always refer to my aunt as "you miserable insolent worm". Then I put on my armor and attack the Fantastic Four.
I'm looking forward to the video on lexical diffusion.
I suppose a third important category of exceptions to sound change is paradigmatic levelling whereby the different grammatical forms (e.g. conjugations or declensions) of a word tend to become more alike than regular sound change would suggest because they are related in the speakers' minds. This is where phonology and morphology interact and mesh with each other.
you got the black and white vintage effect pretty good
We need more of "chronicle Simon"!
In AmE, "sure" can be pronounced either ʃəɹ or ʃɔɹ (I prefer the former) and "lure" can be pronounced either ləɹ or lʉwəɹ (I prefer the former when saying the verb, but the latter when talking about the noun "fishing lure"). I also pronounce "manure" as mʌnʉwəɹ. For "pure" I would pronounce pjəɹ, but for "poor" I would pronounce pɔr. Relatedly, this sound change is probably the same reason the "t" palatalizes in "manufacture" (ʧəɹ). For all(?) Latinate words (fracture, juncture, etc.), I would say əɹ. As you can see, it's all mixed up in my dialect.
The ʉwəɹ ones might come from an attempt to say the ʊɹ of other dialects. I don't have that sound in my dialect, so perhaps that is why it becomes əɹ or ʉwəɹ. Or maybe ʉwəɹ begot ʊəɹ which begot ʊɹ əɹ and ɔɹ. I suspect the palatal sound that tends to be in front comes from a latent jʉw.
Relatedly I say "wool" as wəl̩ instead of using (the more traditional) ʊ. I also say "dull" and "lull" as əl̩ instead of ʌl̩. I still say ʊ in other contexts such as "wood" "hood" or "could".
For reference, I grew up in the Southeast US but moved to the Northeast when I was 12.
In my variety of American English, "poor" is [pʰɔɹ] but all the other [ʊɹ] words have [ʊɹ]~[ɚ]. "Sure" is [ʃʊɹ]~[ʃɚ], "pure" is [pʰjʊɹ]~[pʰjɚ], "cure" is [kʰjʊɹ]~[kʰjɚ]. With certain words, like "lure", "manure", "tour", [ʊɹ] is required and it cannot be reduced to [ɚ].
In my Australian accent, I say sure the same as shore but always use the CURE vowel in pure. (I've heard cultivated speakers say sure the older way.) In chaff, I use the first vowel in father, as in BATH/PALM. Australia's Macquarie Dictionary agrees that chaff uses that vowel, identifying it as the (non-rhotic) vowel in part.
I have a (Sydney) Australian accent, and I definitely pronounce 'chaff' with the 'TRAP' vowel rather than the 'BATH' vowel... and I don't think I've even heard someone say it the other way. Would you use the 'BATH' vowel even in the phrase 'to sort the wheat from the chaff'? I'm also curious as to whether your accent comes from farther south than Sydney. I've noticed that more southern Aussie accents tend to more often opt for the 'BATH' vowel in words that I would pronounce with the 'TRAP' vowel.
@@ARNervebag as a Tasmanian, I've always pronounced chaff with the 'BATH' vowel, so you might just be onto something with the more southern accents.
@@jasofthehollowWhich BATH vowel do you use though? Does it match TRAP or PALM? In Adelaide, almost everyone uses the PALM vowel in "graph". Within NSW, my dad always said there was a speech divide around Newcastle. He grew up further north and found he had to learn to talk differently in Sydney.
(Side note: Because the /l/ can change the quality of the vowel before it in some accents, speech therapists prefer to use the first vowel in FATHER instead of PALM.)
@@ARNervebagI'm originally from western Sydney but I lived in Qld for a decade and now I'm in WA. Yes, I would use the PALM/BATH vowel in "chaff", just as the Macquarie Dictionary says we do.
If you want to understand what's going on here, go to Wikipedia & look up "Variation in Australian English", then the "Phonology" section down the bottom. It has a chart comparing these vowels in 7 words across 5 of the eastern capitals.
While I have you, do you distinguish "hour" from "our"? I do but Macquarie says they're identical.
@@LearnRunes Oh yeah, right, of course... I was just assuming that the 'BATH' vowel was the one in 'PALM' and 'FATHER'... which in retrospect I shouldn't have! I've definitely noticed that friends from Newcastle pronounce a whole bunch of words differently compared to me!
Obviously there's not a single Aussie accent, so the Macq Dictionary simply can't be reflecting Aussie pronunciation per se (apparently it also plays pretty loose with the IPA phonetics). Even so, I've never heard 'chaff' spoken your way 'in the wild'.
Oh, bravo! The 60's man skit is genius. I shall say shewer instead of sure from now on
I was hoping you'd talk about what decides whether a certain word changes earlier or later on during the 'productive' period. For example, for the p > f change, how come 'happy' was last? Are there any factors besides word frequency? Could perceived 'formality' of a term be involved too? What else?
that kind of thing. Great video overall though!
The last bit was amazing. The dialog sounds 100% natural. Do you write the pauses, stutter, mid-sentence rephrasing,etc. as part of the script or you just improvise?
Convincing explanation, and such a fun character! Thanks.
I think we should ask Mr BlackAndWhite for his opinion on the displacement of the verb ‘lend’ by the noun ‘loan’ used as a verb, as evidenced by Simon in this video. I fear Mr B&W’s head might explode.
I very much enjoyed the skit at the end.
Awesome skit at the end!!!!!!!😂
Wouldn't one possible reason for exceptions be that if a sound change happened, the result would be too close of even identical to an already existing word?
Thank you. I appreciate that. :)
Hat-guy was fun too. Man, that strikes some memories up. I've been on both sides of that. Not the same script, but the meaning was the same. What I'm used to is good. What I'm not used to is wrong.
As an Australian, I would say 'tour' and 'cure' with two syllables like a Scot, but many people (like my brother) would say them your way with only one syllable.
simon roper the goat
Here in the south of the US we have a similar situation with the "price" vowel. For myself it depends on the word and context (register) whether or not I use the dipthong or monothong. In an informal situation in the word "I" I will almost always use the monothong, but in formal situtations it varies. And for the word "price" i will tend towards the dipthong in both formal and informal contexts. None of my usage is driven by a will to talk one way or another, it all happens subconsciously.
Great video, loved the skit!
It was very nice to see someone talk about dialectal borrowing! Now, I'm only a enthusiast, so I don't exactly have anything to back this up with, but regarding your second point (sound changes "diffusing" through the language itself) I suspect it is not entirely random which words will be affected by the sound change and not. So you could still have an "exception-free" change, just a more restricted one?
Taking your example, it seems to me that the words with an earlier /ʊə/ diphthong which haven't merged with /oː/ yet are exactly those where the vowel is preceded by /j/ (like *cure* and *pure*). It sounds like the vowel is dragged forward by the /j/ towards [ɵ] as you notated it.
Since English isn't my first language (nor do I live in Britain) I find it hard to hear the sound of these words in my head, but I guess that people who still pronounce *pure* and *cure* differently from *bore* and *score* may still pronounce *mature* and *endure* with /oː/ -- since the /tj/ and /dj/ clusters in those words have assimilated to /tʃ/ and /dʒ/, the vowel is not preceded by a /j/ and is free to merge. Or am I wrong there? I would like to know.
Haven't even watched it yet but this sounds like exactly what I need for my conlang rn
The ending was perfect.
ahahahah A+ bit. love it. needs to be a regular bit
Guy at the end is my mother insisting she (American) is the only person in the country whose tr- sounds aren't trending towards chr-
There’s a lot of that going on in England too, I strongly suspect it’s due to Jamaican influence, they’ve long said ‘dr’ as ‘jr’ and ‘tr’ (and even ‘thr’) as ‘chr’. Sometimes they drop the ‘r’ altogether, so ‘drive through’ becomes ‘jive chew’ and ‘tree’ becomes ‘chee’.
In my dialect, I have noticed one word that seems to resist a regular sound change. In almost all varieties of North American English, the sequence /æn/ is regularly pronounced [ẽə̃n] as in "pan" [pʰẽə̃n], "land" [lẽə̃nd], "manner" [ˈmẽə̃nɚ], etc. However, I pronounce "piano" as [pʰiˈænoʊ]. I think I may have inherited this single word from the Long Island dialect of my dad's family, since they gave us a piano when I was a kid.
A cool example from Estonian is the loss of word-final -n, only happening in nouns and not verbs. So compare Estonian and Finnish:
lapse - lapsen - "of the/a child", genitive of laps/lapsi "child"
elän - elan - "I live", 1st person singular present indicative of elada/elää "to live"
The likely reason for this is is that the loss in nouns did not cause any syncretism - the genitive is already distinguished by the weak grade. While in verbs it would cause many different forms to become the same.
Loved the skits~
Interestingly, in my diaclect, the -ure /jʊə/ sound has merged with -eer /iɚ/ so that 'pure' is homophonous with 'peer'/'pier', 'cure' sounds like "keer", 'fury' like "feery", etc
However, if the yod coalesces, then the vowel just becomes /ɝ/, so that 'sure' is /ʃɝ/ and not /ʃiɚ/
I like L vocalisation, and especially in non-Indo-European languages: in Veps L turned velar and vocalised in many places as well: Finnish jalka 'leg' correspondes in Standard Veps to jaug, and in Southern Veps it monophtongised much like in Scots, becoming jaag, which is I mean cool as hell
is that a pair of giant field glasses on the shelf on the left of the screen (to your right)? we have a really old pair and they're great for looking at the night sky if you don't have a telescope. we call them 'bignoculars' 😅
Thank you.
0:01 I like the hat Simon!
i thought you were gonna say that "upper" wouldn't become "uffer" because it comes from "up" and "up" isn't affected. is this a thing?
I was afraid you were going to reference something else while contrasting "aw"~"uah"
we're not ready for the hawk tuah merger
I’m not sure!
Do sounds such as vocal fry also count as sound changes?
Do some words ever resist sound changes to avoid homophony? I find in my own speech if I'm misunderstood I'll catch myself saying something like "no, not pour, poor!" with an exaggerated pronunciation difference when often in my rapid speech they're pronounced almost the same, and I wonder if the only thing keeping me from completely merging them is an effort to keep them distinct words.
cant lie I'm a big fan of the hat
13:34 Ha ha ha ha ha
14:13 “Those sound changes which have happened recently are bad. Those which happened a relatively long time ago are acceptable.” Ha ha ha ha ha
I wonder if, in terms of meaning and usage of the word and not so much the pronunciation changes, the "Elf" to "Oaf" transition will be similar to what's occuring for "fairy"... going from a mythological being to a derogatory term to describe a certain kind of person.
frankly I think fairy has already had that partially happen, but also has partially reversed as I don’t think I’ve heard the non-fantastical usage outside of very rare cases.
I do think that fairy could potentially move on to being mainly an adjective of “relating to the fae” as I feel like a good bit of media uses fae for the more mythical meaning now, perhaps in a way to sound less ordinary
coda /l/ also vocalised in brazilian portuguese, so = /aw/
For me it seems that RP /ʊə/ becomes /oː/ except after /j/, /l/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/ or /ʒ/, when it becomes /ʏː/. But this rule still has exceptions, like fluorine which I always say with /oː/, and after /ʃ/ I think I'm inconsistent.
Please release the skit as a separate video
I always assumed it was simply because of dialects, sociolects, etc.
"...those sound changes which happened recently are... bad." Lol
Honestly prefer this hat
Hi Simon
Grunts and hoots
“You’re what?” 👍😂
Grunts & hoots gang rise up ❤
First 😂. (Edit after watching: I love the sketch with the curmudgeon, more of this please! Actually laughed out loud)
It said '1 comment' when I started and my comment was stated as the first. So why was there '1 comment' when when there was in fact none?
Answer? ' No comment.'
this is Cinema
hi simon
👍
Honestly, I really have no feelings at all for the hat.
The hat is of no consequence to me
💬wow! 💭basedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbased
Why don't I see you in your office or library? I'd expect someone of your knowledge and caliber to be in a grand 60' high ceilinged, wood paneled library filled with exotic leather bound books and a ladder on wheels to reach them, and you constantly fiddling with a smoking pipe.
Holy crap! I asked that before seeing the end of the video. Wow I can't POSSIBLY be that prophetic!
They don't
Why wear a hat at all?
I always find it puzzling when people wear hats indoors.
One minute in and Only second comment. Bloody hell. Excuse my 1. Century Latin