Talk:Nuxalk language

Under-dotted sonorants

Bagemihl also lists a series of sonorants, m n l, with an under-dot, as phonemes. Are these glottalized, or just syllabic? kwami 08:02, 2005 August 20 (UTC)

Nater says they're syllabic. Mo-Al (talk) 04:39, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Consonant-only words

I don't have a problem with the concept of syllabic voiceless fricatives, but how do the plosive-only words work? Surely there must at least be voiceless [ə] between them?!? David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:28 CEST | 2006/4/25

They're aspirated, and the aspiration separates them. I suppose one could claim that aspiration is the same as a voiceless schwa. kwami 22:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh! Yeah! Logical! I forgot the aspiration because, confusingly, it's not written in the example words, despite the use of brackets rather than slashes.

But then… aspiration isn't voiceless. It can only be followed by a voiced vowel. Could it be that there are non-phonemic epenthetic vowels in those words? Or what else could I be overlooking?

BTW, do you happen to know if the aspiration is dropped in words like /ps/ and /sps/ in favor of syllabic [s]?

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 14:08 CEST | 2006/4/28

Aspiration is voiceless, and need not be followed by a vowel. I find [p^ht^h] perfectly pronounceable on its own. You could regard the aspiration as a very short voiceless schwa with comparatively heavy friction, but it's different from the voiceless vowel of Japanese [suki], which occupies a whole mora. In [ps] I suppose the 'aspirated' [p] is distinguished from [p's] by lacking the ejective release. Both [p^hs] with nuclear aspiration and [ps] with nuclear [s] are possible; I don't know which they use. I think I once read that the word [sts] 'birthmark'(?) is three syllables, in which case the aspiration on the [t] is a nucleus. ~ Anon_i, 13/8/2006

Sorry, I've just remembered it was [stt] that was three syllables, so that's not evidence for the above. ~ Anon_i, 14/8/2006

The whole concept of a syllable becomes difficult and is perhaps not applicable to some languages, especially ones like this. Trying to decide what the nucleus is of some of these words might be meaningless. kwami 18:18, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I find [pʰtʰ] pretty easy to whisper, but not pronounceable in a normal voice, because the sound that I recognize as [h] can only be released into something voiced because it contains a glottal tap of something. I drop that when I whisper because otherwise I hear [hʔ]. But who knows. Maybe those folks use the glottal fricative/approximant alone, without the flap. Maybe it's just me in the first place. ~:-|

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:17 CEST | 2006/9/7

'Whispering' isn't a bad description. The Nuxalk themselves have commented that some of these words can not be said very loud, certainly not yelled. 'Help' is one of them, though fortunately 'help me' contains sonorants and can be yelled. But [h] can be released into anything. See Icelandic for its "preaspirated" stops. kwami 18:18, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

There's a lemma for that: Words without vowels. It would be great to include or link to some sound clips though. The only audio in the Words without vowels article (in a Berber language) is in WAV files linked to from a Microsoft Word document that doesn't display well in LibreOffice. I don't know what problem some scientists have with making their stuff accessible. -- One more question. In [kʼxɬɬtʰsxʷ sɬχʷtʰɬɬtʰs (t͡s?)], what are the ɬɬ sequences? Shouldn't these be ɬː ? Or if they consist of two separate ɬ s, what separates them in pronunciation?--88.73.6.122 (talk) 14:25, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

(re. ɬɬ) I don't know. It's easy enough to have two pulses. That is, dynamically increase, decrease, and increase again. That's what separates "mm-mm!" for people who don't use a glottal stop. — kwami (talk) 16:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I would like to point out Shilha language#Vowels. The phonetic investigation linked there supports the conclusion that Shilha (and presumably other Berber languages, though apparently except Zenaga and Tuareg, see the table at Proto-Berber language#Vowels for why I strongly suspect they're exceptions), too, has words and syllables which are phonologically entirely devoid of vowels – even if schwa-like elements (i. e., non-phonemic epenthetic vowels – or vocoids, as they call them) tend to appear automatically under certain (predictable) circumstances. The study explains that clusters like /ts/ (without excrescent vocoid separating the consonants) or /tr/ (phonetically [t^ər], i. e., with a vocoid) are treated as a light syllable in Shilha, i. e. with /s/ or /r/ as nucleus, but I'm not sure about sequences of stops. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:18, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Nuxalk vs Nuxalkmc

What is needed to justify changing the term from Nuxalk to Nuxalkmc? I'm asking because when I made those changes, the page was reverted; it's only a very minor, fine point of contention on my part, but one that i'd be interested in arguing.

I knew that I didn't have any references or specifics to cite when I was actually making the changes, so I kinda thot that it was going to be challenged.

I'm not a linguist or a professional in the field(nor did I know how to readily put into words on the page itself the reasons behind the changes I made), so I will agree that it doesn't strictly mean the same thing(I argued that the suffix "-mc" meant "from" to justify changing "Nuxalk language" to "Nuxalkmc language" in the "describe changes" section of this page, but that was mostly due to limited space in the tag-line).

I only know that I am of Nuxalkmc heritage and have grown up in Bella Coola/Nuxalk Nation, and that the connotation today is for the word "Nuxalkmc" to be used in the same way as "English" or "French" or "Chinese", and to my mind it makes the difference between "French Fries" and "France Fries", or "Chinese Food" and "China Food"...or to put it in direct context to this post: "I am from England, I am English and I speak English" vs. "I am from Nuxalk, I am Nuxalkmc and I speak Nuxalkmc", etc.

Or, to put an even finer point on it, the word for "rainbow" in Nuxalkmc is s'il'ilayc, which translates directly as "something that goes round in a ring"(or something to that effect); now, should such an entry ignore what the term actually means or is used for? Focusing instead on its literal, proper translation? These are among my arguments, and if I am dead-wrong, then so be it, but I'm still interested in pursuing discussion on the matter :D

PS: I don't even know if this post is proper for wikettiquette, so I apologize if it is, but I don't know of any other way to bring up the issue; thanx!

PPS: If it helps, pg.41 of H. F. Nater's A Concise Nuxalk English Dictionary gives the verb "it" meaning "to speak", and the phrase "itnuxalkmc"(emphasis mine) as meaning "to speak Nuxalk", as well as "it'Atlsmc" as "to speak Chilcotin"...both with the connotation that it is the language they are speaking from the area/people/whatever(as in English comes from England, Chinese comes from China, etc). Malestrom (talk) 01:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I moved this to the end of the talk page, to make it in chrono order  Chzz  ►  00:12, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

This is actually a great argument for reverting to the English exonym, Bella Coola. Nuxálk (language) isn't correct, and Nuxalkmc is completely at odds with English phonology. Common sense needs to trump "political correctness" here. Lesson: Don't expect speakers of European languages to twist their tongues trying to pronounce a foreign name the native way. Just let them use the exonyms. You know, like nobody says langue française or deutsche Sprache in an English context, they simply say French language and English language. By insisting on the native endonym (and other such nonsense, such as impeding science for petty ethnocentric reasons and nationalist fervour), you essentially sabotage your own cause: Rather than increasing respect, you diminish it, by implying your language is irredeemably exotic and foreigners would rather have your language (perhaps even ethnic group) disappear to get rid of the annoyance or problem. Civilised language have exonyms. Only fanatic semi-savages insist on "politically correct" native designations counter to all reason. You are doing yourself, your ethnic group, your culture and your language a great disservice by annoying foreigners with such requirements, and even discriminating against them because they have simply never learned to pronounce the sounds and clusters needed for something like [sqʷχʷuʔməʃ]. Even as a trained linguist and phonetician, I struggle mightily trying to pronounce that. Nuxalkmc is not much easier. To derive the pronunciation from the spelling is also everything but straightforward. I cannot even spell Sḵwx̱wú7mesh in principle: my keyboard doesn't have a way to type all the necessary diacritics (the German Mac layout has a lot of extra characters and diacritics), and even finding them in the character map and combining them with the characters is a challenge. Don't ask me to remember either pronunciation or spelling. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

If I insisted that my surname be spelled according to the original Czech orthography, Blažek, and my first name be declined according to Latin grammar, people would laugh at me and tell me to sod off, and they would be totally right. It would just me being a dick, not a putative right not to be discriminated against and to have one's heritage respected. Even a famous person such as Prince could not get people to refer to him by a cumbersome unpronounceable symbol that required a custom font to print – and guess what? It's not part of Unicode, either. Prince was just being a diva expecting that the world succumb to his whims. This case is no different.

Know what? Squamish language and Lillooet language have been moved (back) to the easily-pronounced English exonyms. By a linguist and admin, no less, in the second case; in the first case after a requested move discussion. They don't like unnecessary, arbitrary and gratuitous hassle, either. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:13, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Written form

This article makes no mention of written Nuxálk. Does it have a written form? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.197.54.33 (talk) 00:09, 18 November 2010 (UTC)