Talk:Somali phonology

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Linguistics: Phonetics

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Somalia

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Untitled

"Common Somali has 22 consonant phonemes. It has at least one consonant at every place of articulation on the IPA chart (except epiglottal)."

Is this a very accurate statement? To say it includes every POA on the IPA chart is, as far as I can see, corrent; but as epiglottal is mentioned should we not also mention the other places of articulation such as linguolabial, dentolabial, alveolopalatal, prepalatal, and *epiglotto-pharyngeal? That would greatly reduce the accuracy of the first statement. --user:Cevlakohn

I don't really know why the point about epiglottal is in brackets since it is the single exception to the statement. Perhaps we should say the main IPA chart? I can't see any reason to mention the other places since they are not on the main chart. Gailtb 09:40, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Uvular-epiglottal consonants

What about the uvular-epiglottal consonants? There's an article Uvular-epiglottal consonant that says that Somali has [q͡ʡ] which isn't mentioned by this article. Pittmirg 14:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Per Jerold Edmondson (2005) The valves of the throat and their functioning in tone, vocal register, and stress: laryngoscopic case studies, Somali contrasts breathy and harsh voice, not ±ATR. I'll correct if I get a chance, but it might be a while. kwami (talk) 00:29, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

/ɢ/

'They may be "Somalized" by replacing them with the stop /ɢ/.' But /ɢ/ isn't shown in the chart. Is it really an allophone, or is [ɢ] merely an allophone of /χ/? 71.13.148.220 (talk) 05:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was also confused by this. Somali alphabet says /ɢ/ is spelled <q> and /χ/ is spelled <kh> and doesn't mention /q͡ʡ/, so I would guess that the chart should have ɢ instead of q͡ʡ. Also, upon further investigation I've found that this part of the article probably is from http://www.grafixdesign.net/www.sig.co.uk/pdf/SOMALI.pdf, whose chart does have ɢ where this one has q͡ʡ. But I think someone who actually knows something about the language (i.e. not I) should fix this. brtkrbzhnv (talk) 18:24, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Vowels

"Somali has five vowel articulations which all contrast breathy voice and harsh voice as well as vowel length." But the chart shows what it calls a "front-series" and a "back-series." I certainly don't know Somali, but it doesn't appear to me to be front/ back distinction per se; maybe the left-hand column is further front than the right-hand column, but it looks like there are other distinctions (tense/ lax?) as well. In any case, the text (breathy/ harsh) should be reconciled with the chart (front/ back). Mcswell (talk) 21:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Vowel harmony

"Roots have front-back vowel harmony." I don't know what it would mean for a *root* to have vowel harmony. What I think this might be trying to say is that the vowel of the root conditions vowel harmony on suffixes.Mcswell (talk) 00:14, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Front and back series

Somali apparently has ten vowel qualities, but five vowel letters: a, e, i, o, u. Each letter represents a front and a back quality: a stands for /æ/ and /ɑ/, e for /e ɛ/, i for /i ɪ/, o for /ɞ ɔ/, u for /ʉ u/. So is there some way to tell which vowel quality is represented by a vowel symbol in a given word, or are the symbols ambiguous? This puzzles me. Is it like the ambiguity between /æ/ and /ɑ/ in Egyptian Arabic; /ɑ/ occurs in words that contain a pharyngealized consonant, /æ/ elsewhere? Or something else? — Eru·tuon 19:34, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This college course page says that "front" or "back" quality works in a way analogous to vowel harmony. Certain roots have distinctive "front" or "back" quality of their vowels, and other bound morphemes or words assimilate in quality to the word to which they are added, or to one of the words in the phrase to which they belong. So it's essentially word- or phrase-level "backness" harmony. Not sure what happens when two or more words in a phrase have vowel qualities that disagree (that is, when a phrase has one root with a "back" vowel and another with a "front" vowel). Presumably there's some way of deciding whether the phrase has "back" or "front" vowels in that situation.

It's not exactly backness because /e ɛ/ are distinguished by both height and backness according to the vowel chart given in the link.

The process is apparently described in more detail by Saeed 1993, which might be the same book as Saeed 1999 listed in the Wikipedia article. Despite the fact that I live in an area with many Somali immigrants, my library does not have the book. — Eru·tuon 22:54, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Erutuon: I've added the vowel chart to the article. Phonetically, the main difference seems to be definitely in backness, not height, as all of the 'back' vowels are, well, more back than the 'front' ones. The height is secondary. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:51, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We should also allow for the possibility that the vowel chart shows /ɛ/ in a wrong place (too low and/or too front). The reason I'm sceptical about it is that AFAIK languages generally tend to be consistent in such cases. A kind of a related example is Dutch /oː/ - when it is diphthongized to [oʊ], it is very likely that a speaker who does that will also diphthongize the other close-mids /eː, øː/ to [eɪ, øʏ]. There's a paper on this phenomenon, but I don't remember its name nor author.

However, if the vowel chart is correct, a kind of a logical explanation would be that the close-mid front vowel /e/ is the lowest of the 'palatal front' vowels, whereas /ɛ/ is just 'front' and therefore more 'dark sounding', just as a centralized [e] would be 'dark sounding' compared with the front [e]. You might want to take a look at Basbøll (2005) and his classification of Danish vowels, I think he discusses it. Again, I might've misquoted him. Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:19, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Latin Alphabet

I am new to Somali and am trying to understand which phonemes correspond to the Latin letters used in written Somali. Would someone knowledgeable be able to add that? PinusStrobus481 (talk) 21:50, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@PinusStrobus481: That is covered at Somali Latin alphabet. Nardog (talk) 22:10, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nardog - Thanks. I've used Wikipedia for a long time but just set up a user name today for the first time to ask this question, so obviously I am a total newbie. Would it make sense to add a reference to Somali Latin alphabet to this article to help people who come here first find the place on Wikipedia that correlates the phonemes to the Latin letters? I don't know how to do it myself as I am a complete newcomer, but I thank you very much for the information. You have answered my question but a cross-reference would probably help others.PinusStrobus481 (talk) 02:19, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]