User talk:Rua/Archives/2015/April

Võro language

Dear CodeCat, I noticed you have done some good contribution to the article "Võro language". I would like to shortly discuss some details. 1) Nouns' table. Firstly, there is a problem with plural endings - there are existing much more plural endings (see Inflectional Morphology in the Võro Literary Language p. 59. We should think what to do in the Wikipedia article's table. Should we show there a) all endings, b) not plural endings at all, or c) just example words' paradigme, as it is done in synaq.org. Secondly, the accusative case - traditionally it is not seen as a part of Võro or Estonian case system. Even in Finnish it appears and is recognised only in some pronouns (see [1]). So it seems quite weird to present it in Wikipedia as a usual case of the Võro language. Maybe it could be better to skip accusative from the table and explain in text above the table that accusative coincides with other cases and is not usually seen as a dinstinctive case in Võro. 2) Palatalisation. It is marked with apostrophe only as a simplification for practical reasons, mainly in Internet, emails etc. In the handwriting and in printed materials (printed newspapers, school materials, dictionaries, fiction etc.) it is presented with accute accent (ń, ś, ŕ etc.), see for examle: [2]. I am a native speaker and teacher of Võro, my English is not at such good level that I could do these improvements into the article myself. But you (I saw English is your mother tongue) are welcome to take the information into account and make some changes in the article. With best wishes, --Võrok (talk) 09:16, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for your comments! I'm not a Võro speaker, nor even an Estonian speaker. I study these languages from a linguistic point of view, but I'm limited to what I can find online. So it's helpful to have a native speaker available to provide feedback.

1. We can't really show all these endings, but some of them are probably very rare. The two "main" types are the ones that are in the article now (-i- and -dE-). Replacing -dE- with -tE- is an automatic change that happens whenever a voiceless sound precedes (in other words, a combination like -sd- automatically becomes -st-). So this is really a subtype of the -dE- type. The -o- and -E- types are subtypes of the -i- type, where a former diphthong -oi-, -õi- or -ei- has been simplified to -o-, -õ-, -e-. We probably don't need to list the subtypes in the main table, but can describe this in a bit of text further below. I haven't seen the -isi- and -idsi- types before, could you give examples of nouns that have those endings?
2. I'm aware that the accusative case is not always considered as part of the inflectional system. This is presumably because the accusative doesn't have any forms of its own; it's always identical to either the genitive or the nominative. The problem is that the accusative "role" (complete object) does not neatly fit into any of the other cases. If you have a noun in the genitive singular form, and then make it plural, then you have to use either the genitive plural or the nominative plural depending on whether the singular form was really the genitive or the accusative role. Using the genitive plural as an accusative is incorrect. So this indicates that the accusative case is still a real case; it still has a defined "role" associated with it. Also, from a historical point of view, it's only an accident that the accusative singular is like the genitive singular. In Proto-Uralic, the genitive had the ending -n while the accusative had -m. In the Finnic languages, -m at the end of a word became -n, which then caused these two forms to become the same by accident (and then of course in Võro the -n disappeared altogether). So the Võro accusative is still a descendant of the Uralic accusative; if Võro no longer has an accusative case today, it would be necessary to find out when it disappeared.
3. I was wondering about the palatalisation marks myself. synaq.org uses the apostrophe, and since it is (I think) a normative dictionary, I figured that this was the way they think Võro is "supposed" to be written. But I don't really know what Võro speakers use in general, so it's helpful that you point this out. This should definitely be explained in the article. I wonder, though, if ' is still considered a letter of the Võro alphabet (like in the article) or if this is really just a mark that is used to create other letters. And which spelling should we use in this article? Should we use, for example, ütś or üts'? Some of the letters look strange with the mark: b́ d́ f́ ǵ h́ ḱ ĺ ḿ ń ṕ ŕ ś t́ v́. The English Wiktionary (wikt:Wiktionary:About Võro) has adopted the apostrophe mark, so should that be changed too?

CodeCat (talk) 15:16, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

1. Yes, I think the way you described for plural endings is fine. -isi-, -idsi- are not rear endings, they are belonging to the noun/adjective type 5 (inemine : inemiisi, tialanõ : tialaisi, alomanõ : alomaidsi, see type table) which is a very productive type. Also participes -nuq and -t/-duq (visanuisi, visatuisi) have this ending are also very productive.

2. Accusative. My opinion is still that it could be skipped from the table and mentioned/described in the text. But I will not argue or change the table if you want it to be in table.

3. Palatalisation. Yes, "tall" letters, especially b́ d́ f́ h́ ĺ look strange. In special Võro fonts wich are used for printed texts (see Võro keele fondiq here) there are used special "nicer" characters for these "tall" letters. But in the Internet, emails etc we have always used apostrophe as a simplified solution because UNICODE's tables and fonts do not include these nice variants used in Võro ortographic (actually Finno-Ugric phonetic transcription's) letters. I think we sould not change this tradition without possibility to use "nice" letters for all palatalised consonants. Best wishes--Võrok (talk) 13:14, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

1. In this case, the -is- and -ids- part really belongs to the stem of the word, doesn't it? At least for type 5 it does. I'm not sure about the participles.
2. Could you add the Võro name for "accusative" so that it matches the other cases?
3. How are the palatalisation marks normally written? Is it placed above the letter if it's a short letter, and to the right if it's tall? CodeCat (talk) 13:41, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I've added a comment about the palatalisation marks into the article. Can you check it to see if it's all correct? CodeCat (talk) 14:10, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

1. Yes, we can take it as a part of stem - but only plural stem - because such stem differs from normal (singular) stem and exists only in plural.

2. As I said, normally accusative is not seen as a part of contemporary Võro case system. That's why it has no distinctive Võro name. Speaking about foreign languages or language history we use just an adopted name akusatiiv.

3. In general, yes. See the normal characters with palatalisation marks (the first green column) here.

4. Correct. But in case of uppercase letters, normally the palatalisation mark is placed above the letters. --Võrok (talk) 23:58, 7 April 2015 (UTC)