12-06-2025, 12:45 AM
Just to repeat what I said a couple of posts before:
This was not meant to refer to the simple example I gave, but to the whole concept of a mono-syllabic tonal language such as these exist in East-Asia.
There are many pros and cons across the board.
Here, not all of these languages are mono-syllabic and not all of them are tonal. But there are far more than people are often aware. There are dozens to hundreds of so-called 'hill tribes' in the area of S. China and most countries south of that. Most of these have their own language and these are mostly mutually unintelligible.
However, these are not the most interesting candidates. For the theory to work, the area would have to be well reachable by land or by sea, and represent an 'area of interest' in some way or another.
Anyway, the tones remain a problem, not for the native speakers of course, but for the foreigners.
People who have not learned to use them from infancy need considerable time to 'restore' the capability of properly using them.
I am reminded of a great anecdote in Formula 1 reporting some 5-10 years ago when two Austrian (?) reporters tried their best to properly pronounce the name of a Chinese driver, by asking him directly. They just got confused, and the problem was easy to understand: they concentrated on how to pronounce the consonant in his name, but the driver must have responded 'right' or 'wrong' depending on whether they got the tone right. Complete disconnect.
Anyway, again, the statistical comparisons are super interesting, but the story what would have happened has major issues, in my humble opinion. And there are still some statistics with issues. I suspect that vowel-consonant separation is one of them, but I have never done a good test. The Asian word structure tends to have relative clear alternation of vowels and consonants and very limited consonant clusters.
This alternation is not at all clear in Voynichese. But that's a bit more of an arm-waving argument than bsed on good evidence.
(09-06-2025, 10:06 AM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So: statistically this is super interesting. Historically it is very challenging.
This was not meant to refer to the simple example I gave, but to the whole concept of a mono-syllabic tonal language such as these exist in East-Asia.
There are many pros and cons across the board.
Here, not all of these languages are mono-syllabic and not all of them are tonal. But there are far more than people are often aware. There are dozens to hundreds of so-called 'hill tribes' in the area of S. China and most countries south of that. Most of these have their own language and these are mostly mutually unintelligible.
However, these are not the most interesting candidates. For the theory to work, the area would have to be well reachable by land or by sea, and represent an 'area of interest' in some way or another.
Anyway, the tones remain a problem, not for the native speakers of course, but for the foreigners.
People who have not learned to use them from infancy need considerable time to 'restore' the capability of properly using them.
I am reminded of a great anecdote in Formula 1 reporting some 5-10 years ago when two Austrian (?) reporters tried their best to properly pronounce the name of a Chinese driver, by asking him directly. They just got confused, and the problem was easy to understand: they concentrated on how to pronounce the consonant in his name, but the driver must have responded 'right' or 'wrong' depending on whether they got the tone right. Complete disconnect.
Anyway, again, the statistical comparisons are super interesting, but the story what would have happened has major issues, in my humble opinion. And there are still some statistics with issues. I suspect that vowel-consonant separation is one of them, but I have never done a good test. The Asian word structure tends to have relative clear alternation of vowels and consonants and very limited consonant clusters.
This alternation is not at all clear in Voynichese. But that's a bit more of an arm-waving argument than bsed on good evidence.