A brief look at sound change
Hello! I didn't have time to write a proper newsletter before I went on vacation, and it turns out that, even with a keyboard, writing on a tablet kinda sucks. But I do have some cool news!
News
I can finally share the table of contents I've been sitting on for months. My translation of multi-award-winning German writer Aiki Mira's “Schritt ins Leere” will be appearing in the anthology Amplitudes, edited by Lee Mandelo, to be published by Erewhon Press next summer. There are some amazing people in the TOC, so it's gonna be a great book. Not that I'd expect anything else from Mandelo and Erewhon.
4th St
I had a great time, as usual, at 4th St, and I took so many notes that my brain is digesting, and I can't wait to try them out.
Obligatory Linguistics Content
Because I was trying to finish a draft of my kickstarter book to send to beta readers before I left AND trying to stay on top of my paying work, I wasn't able to write a newsletter, and I didn't have time to decide what I want to write about. A lot of my writing process involves pulling up articles saved on my computer from grad school and using my extensive bookmarks collection on my 24” iMac. Which, as you may imagine, is difficult on a Samsung Galaxy A8. (I prefer Android on my mobile devices.)
So you're going to get a quick, improvised musing on a couple sound changes I'm noticing. (Quick may still be relative.)
One truism in historical linguistics is that sound changes can occur repeatedly. There is a first Germanic sound shift (which occurred before the Germanic tribes had writing), and the name implies there's at least one more. (The second one is just as frequently referred to as the high German sound shift, because it mainly took place in Switzerland and Bavaria, with a partial shift occurring in the central region of Germany.)
The first Germanic sound shift, also known as Grimm's Law, is the accepted explanation for why Latin words that start with p, like piscis, start with f in the Germanic languages (fish). The rule goes like this: Going from Proto-Indo-European into Proto-Germanic, 1) voiced aspirated stops became unaspirated; 2) voiced stops became voiceless; and 3) voiceless stops became fricatives. That is, bh went to b; words that already started with b went to p; and words that already started with p went to f. This is probably confusing, but, as always, Wikipedia has you covered.
The second Germanic sound shift went one step further. The voiced stops became voiceless, and this is why English has day, but German has Tag. Voiceless stops either fully fricatized (p to f) or affricated (p to pf), which is why English has apple, but German has Apfel and, in some dialects, Affel. The fricatives didn't have anywhere to go, so they just stayed there.
One hypothesis for the mechanism of voiceless stops becoming fricatives is hyperaspiration. That is, voiceless stops get a puff of air (which they do in English; hold your hand in front of your mouth and say “top”) and then this puff gets bigger over time.
Now we have the background necessary to discuss the first thing I noticed, and I'm out of academia and have no idea if anyone is actually researching it. There seems to be some ongoing hyperaspiration in words like clear. The next time you watch a video, keep an ear open for it. It'll sound kind of like khlear. It'll probably be a different word than that, but I've mainly noticed it with the c/k sound, not so much with p (though I noticed David Attenborough doing it pretty consistently when I watched Prehistoric Planet). Try it out yourself! Say clear or planet normally, then exaggerate the puff of air.
The other two things I'm noticing are possibly related to each other and involve vowels. Here's a fraction of the necessary background for this.
The vowel space is essentially a trapezoid, with the two parallel lines at the nose and tongue, and the intersecting lines representing the pharynx (back of the mouth) and the area between the front teeth and the bottom teeth when the mouth is open. Vowels can be front, center, or back; open, open-mid, closed-mid, or closed. Schwa is the most central vowel; on a D&D chart, it would be true neutral. The BIT vowel is a closed front vowel, as is the BEAT vowel. These two vowels have a distinction referred to as tensing and laxing; BEAT is tensed.
I have noticed, though I haven't figured out any common characteristic among people who use it, a tensing of the BIT vowel in words like thinking or thing. In thinking, it’s usually on the -ing part, but sometimes on both syllables. It sounds like theenkeeng, kind of.
Simultaneously, but possibly in a different group of people, I have noticed a centralizing tendency in the front vowels (BIT, BEG). This means bit almost rhymes with but and beg with bug. This is part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. I wonder, with absolutely no data to be able to test this, if the BIT-tensing is a regional reaction to the NCVS's centralization. I've caught myself both tensing my INGs and schwa-ing my BEGs. So I hope there's some PhD student out there watching a ton of YouTube and figuring out what's going on.
Media I Enjoyed
I'm really enjoying AMC's Interview with the Vampire. Like a lot of people who were teens in the 90s, I had an Anne Rice phase when the Cruise-Pitt film came out, then I dropped it at some point (it was after Armand, possibly immediately after) because it was getting ridiculous. But I still have a fondness for the melodramatic, so when people started tumblring about this new series last year, I decided to watch it. They made a lot of changes (Louis is Black, as is Claudia, who is in her teens, not 5), and these changes make it more in touch with today (and also so much less creepy, ugh). I am stunned by the casting of Santiago, the lead actor at the Theatre in Paris; he is camp and vicious and compelling and evil. Anyway, season 2 is currently airing, so have a look.
See you next time!
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