#language theory

[theblasianwitch]

This one is for my ✨️ p o l y g l o t s✨️

So I'm washing the dishes and my mind wanders as it always does and it starts to think of a very specific TikTok where a guy who speaks English and Japanese talks about how his voice is higher with English but deeper with Japanese. (And now I'm thinking of the Spanish and English speaker who said basically the same thing but Spanish is higher).

HEAR ME OUT!!

From my experience as a Music minor focusing on singing, I learned that basically if you wanna sing higher you gotta train your vocal cords to be tighter, while if you wanna sing lower you need to learn to loosen your vocal cords.

What does this have to do with languages?

WELL

Have you have every noticed in English that when vowels are spoken your mouth opens more and when consonants (I think that's how it's spelled) your mouth generally closes? Did you know that your vocal cords are doing the opposite? So when your mouth does closed sounds the back opens and vice versa.

Do you see where I'm getting yet?

English has various accents that put more focus on changing the pronunciation of vowels and common consonants like H. The common accent taught for English to non English speakers is usually British English. So using that as a basis and comparing it to let's say the Tokyo Standardized Japanese. English is very vowel heavy and Japanese is very consonant heavy.

Now put that together.

More consonants = more closed sound = more open cords = deeper sound

More vowels = more open sound = more closed cords = higher sound

This isn't taking into account your biological base for your voice or self vocal manipulation. This is purely a language difference and I found it interesting and I'm too camera shy to respond with it on a TikTok but it's my theory from what I've witnessed and I'm very curious now of other languages vocal tonalities and IPA sound phonics in determining pitch.... Korean would do the same thing as Japanese I'm now realizing.... Spanish is more frequency as is Chinese given how easily words flow into each other... I'm gonna be up all night

[hermitthrush]

Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history; the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. 'Right' means 'straight'; 'wrong' means 'twisted'. 'Spirit' primarily means 'wind'; 'transgression', the crossing of a 'line'; 'supercilious', the 'raising of an eyebrow'. We say the 'heart' to express emotion, the 'head' to denote thought; and 'thought' and 'emotion' are words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden from us in the remote time when language was framed; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. Children... use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836) | IV. Language. The first use through which Nature is a vehicle of thought. The point about children being closer to that world of signs remind me of Jung.

[ocs-and-chapters]

I might now be extremely uncomfortable with the Korean language but it did teach me that you can't really make a perfect sound in ANY language without both a consonant and a vowel.

Whilst yes you can get close with trying to pronounce every single letter, it doesn't really work, even in english!

Now there might seem to be an exception to English that we can use two consonants together but to really flow theres a small very small vowel. Its how come trying to pronounce a word seemingly made entirely of vowels/consonants (actually i propose maybe many "consonants" are actually vowels now that I'm thinking of it) seems impossible.

Now I'm not a linguist or anything, if anything this is a theory but I feel in onto something here

[amphitritestudies]

Some old notes which I made for studying for A-Level exam in German :) Hope you have a nice day :)

[ollie-jpg]

So idk if you're in school, I feel like you've talked about school, what's your favorite class so far?

school doesn’t start up for me until september so i have abt a month before i go back but i’m taking a lot of classes for my major this semester!!! the one i’m most excited for is probably education psych & human and development

[haveyoueverconsideredpiracy]

on the words you choose

in languages there are often multiple options for words to choose from, and ive been doing some thinking about why we choose to use the words we use. you see, i think that our choice of words is dependent on our first language or primary language. so in english i use 'biscuit' to refer to these bitches, but only the bland kinds. anything with chocolate or nuts or anything isnt a biscuit. because in my first language i would call this a 'biscuit' or a 'biscuitje' (its pronounced very very differently but similar enough to notice the likeliness).

anything with chocolate or nuts or basically anything more fancy could be a 'cookie', because in my first language it would be a 'koekje', which is pronounced pretty similar.

now im not very good at the different kind of words used in uk english and usa english, but i think most people wouldnt use both of these words, as one is uk in origin and the other usa. i do mostly because i see similarities between what i would call these things in my first language and what i call them in english.

so does this theory go over with any others? do you also notice you tend to choose words similar to you native language when you can choose between multiple options?

[ultraraptorrex]

Random theory

what if math counts as a language? I've never bothered to learn another language before so i’m not sure whether it’s basically just remembering the word or comparing it to the words in native language. in math you have to remember all the formulas and relate them to specific questions and equations and blah blah (I don’t like math) if learning or knowing a second language is the latter option or similar then i’d say math should be considered technically a language in it’s own right. 

[julsidiomas]

How to start learning Hebrew? - Language Talks

Hebrew had begun to die out as a spoken language after the Babylonians conquered the Jews in 586 BC. Spoken Hebrew was replaced by Aramaic, but it has been retained as the language of culture, literature, and learning. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hebrew was resurrected as a spoken language as Modern […]