Talk:Vowel harmony

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1

questionable paragraph about Hungarian language

The article states that

The only essential difference in classification between Hungarian and Finnish is that Hungarian does not observe the difference between Finnish 'ä' [æ] and 'e' [e] — the Hungarian neutral vowel 'e' [æ] is the same as the Finnish front vowel 'ä'.

What exactly is meant by this? Though the writing system uses the same letter for both vowels, for example the first and second 'e' in the word ember are clearly pronounced differently (the first one as [æ], while the second one as [e]).

Answer: see Hungarian_phonology#Vowels

„for example the first and second 'e' in the word ember are clearly pronounced differently” Nope. (A native speaker) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:AB88:59C7:C980:6596:1649:B6EA:9A87 (talk) 09:32, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hungarian and Finnic

I find it misleading that Hungarian is listed under "Uralic languages", whereas Finnic is listed under "Finnic languages", but they both belong to the Finno-Ugric languages within the Uralic language family. Eisfuechsin (talk) 14:29, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Archive 1

All discussions to which nothing has been contributed before 2017 have been archived at Talk:Vowel harmony/Archive 1. – Dyolf87 (talk) 14:48, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Lead too short"?

User: Megaman en m has seen fit to add the {{lead too short}} tag to the page, rather than trying to improve it. I'm not sure what he/she thinks needs to be added. I propose removing the tag if 'Megaman en m' does not contribute to this discussion. – Dyolf87 (talk) 12:42, 3 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The lead doesn't summarize the following sections: terminology, "long-distance", features of vowel harmony and other types of harmony. Additionally, it also fails to give any examples in the lead. Seeing as the lead fails to summarize the vast majority of the article, it should stay until it's improved.--Megaman en m (talk) 13:21, 3 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Synharmony and the reference to Skolt Sami

Suprasegmental palatalization is marked with the letter ʹ, which is a freestanding acute accent, for example in the word vääʹrr 'mountain, hill'.

Is there any reason that this sentence shows the MODIFIER LETTER PRIME, which is the character used in written Skolt Sami, and then claim it to be a freestanding acute accent? https://www.samediggi.fi/2018/08/02/sami-giellagaldun-koltansaamen-kielineuvonta-on-avoinna-ajanjaksolla-1-8-31-10-2018/ Rueter (talk) 20:38, 6 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Using lang template with apostophes within

The lang template is not fond of the Turkish examples containing an apostrophe, like Türkiye'de. Does anyone have an idea of how to get past that? Tynnoel (talk) 19:39, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Both {{lang|tr|Türkiye{{'}}'''de'''}} (Türkiye'de) and {{lang|tr|Türkiye'<nowiki/>'''de'''}} (Türkiye'de) seem to work. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 12:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect link for Kazakh

The correct link for Kazakh is https://kk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%B0%D1%83%D1%8B%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%80_%D2%AF%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D1%96%D0%B3%D1%96

I can't figure out how to set it though.

The current link is to *consonant* harmony. Ooof. 2603:6011:65F0:8690:B55F:1547:7EFA:6225 (talk) 07:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, I fixed it. 2603:6011:65F0:8690:B55F:1547:7EFA:6225 (talk) 07:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Too much jargon - useless for average reader

I consider myself an avid user of Wikipedia and of average intelligence. While I know next to nothing about phonology, I am a language professional. However, this page is completely unintelligible to me. I know as little about Vowel Harmony as I did before I read this page. What on earth is "vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class" supposed to mean?

With just a little work (e.g. giving an example of vowel harmony) this page could become accessible to the average Wikipedia user. As it is, this is useless for all but very few readers.

87.120.102.6 (talk) 14:00, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to break down that sentence:

vowel harmony is an assimilatory process^[a] in which the vowels^[b] of a given domain^[c] – typically a phonological word^[d] – have to be members of the same natural class^[e]

^ An assimilatory process is a process by which some sounds take on the qualities of other nearby sounds. e.g in English turnpike may be pronounced turmpike with /n/ being pronounced at the same location in the mouth as /p/ and becoming [m].
^ Vowels here are phonological vowels. Sometimes letters (a, e, i, o, u) are called "vowels", however in linguistics vowels universally (or near universally) refers to vowel sounds.
^ Domain doesn't have any technical meaning here. Vowel harmony occurs over some segment of speech, exactly which depends on the language, so domain is an intentionally vague word.
^ Phonological words are a way of dividing speech in phonology. They mostly coincide with the ordinary concept of word, but in linguistics there are a number of subtly different ways to divide speech depending on context. Naturally since this is a phonological context we are concerned with phonological words rather than e.g. grammatical words.
^ Natural class is a set of phonemes (in this case vowels) that shares some quality or qualities, and is operated on by a phonological rule. Like domain it's vague because vowel harmony can operate on a number of different natural class. It just means there is some quality that must be shared by the vowels.

I hope that helps. Having done the above I think there are a few things that could be improved here. I think it's a bit confusing that it calls it a "process", but then actually describes a rule rather than a process, I believe, in linguistics "phonological rule" and "phonological process" are synonyms, but to the common parlance "rule" and "process" are not. I also think that natural class is unnecessary here, it would be clearer to say "[...] have to share certain distinctive features". I'll make these changes, let me know if you still think it could be clearer.

Overall I think there are a couple of factors that make it hard to give a one-sentence summary of vowel harmony. First is that vowel harmony is very broad, and different languages can have vowel harmony in radically different ways. This makes anything that attempts to be accurate vague and anything that attempts to be specific inaccurate. The second is that a lot of (probably most) languages, including English, don't have vowel harmony in any form, and it's not intuitive rule if you only speak languages that don't have it.

Lastly I will point out that the page has dozens of examples of vowel harmony in the Vowel harmony § Languages with vowel harmony. I'm not sure if you were suggesting moving these earlier in the article or something like that, but they do exist if you want to read them. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 14:59, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] An assimilatory process is a process by which some sounds take on the qualities of other nearby sounds. e.g in English turnpike may be pronounced turmpike with /n/ being pronounced at the same location in the mouth as /p/ and becoming [m].

[2] Vowels here are phonological vowels. Sometimes letters (a, e, i, o, u) are called "vowels", however in linguistics vowels universally (or near universally) refers to vowel sounds.

[3] Domain doesn't have any technical meaning here. Vowel harmony occurs over some segment of speech, exactly which depends on the language, so domain is an intentionally vague word.

[4] Phonological words are a way of dividing speech in phonology. They mostly coincide with the ordinary concept of word, but in linguistics there are a number of subtly different ways to divide speech depending on context. Naturally since this is a phonological context we are concerned with phonological words rather than e.g. grammatical words.

[5] Natural class is a set of phonemes (in this case vowels) that shares some quality or qualities, and is operated on by a phonological rule. Like domain it's vague because vowel harmony can operate on a number of different natural class. It just means there is some quality that must be shared by the vowels.

[a]

[b]

[c]

[d]

[e]