Lack of Vowel Reduction in Southern Brazilian Portuguese

 In parts of southern Brazil, the unstressed mid vowels retain their full value. In other words, they are neither raised nor reduced. This is especially true of rural areas with significant immigration from Germany, Italy and Slavic countries.

The words importante (important) and carro (car) are pronounced with word-final high vowels in most of Brazil. This is also true in Portugal. However, in parts of southern Brazil, they are mid vowels. 

This phonetic characteristic is considered conservative. There may be two factors to explain it. Southern Brazil received many immigrants who spoke German, Italian and Slavic languages. The phonetic structure of their languages reinforced the articulation of unreduced vowels. Another is the geographical proximity to Spanish. The south has borders with Uruguay and Argentina. Constant historical contact with Spanish, a language that completely lacks vowel reduction, further stabilized the preservation of unstressed mid vowels in the region.

Vowel reduction, also known as vowel raising, is common in Portuguese. However, it is often resisted in the dialects of southern Brazil. This may be explained by the arrival of immigrants whose languages did not have vowel reduction and by the geographic proximity to Spanish.

Languages of Indonesia

The official language of Indonesia is Indonesian. It is similar to Malay, and in fact, Indonesian and Malay are mutually intelligible. In addition to Indonesia, many other languages are spoken in the country.

Javanese has many speakers, and most of them are on the island of Java. Sundanese also has many speakers, and many of them are found in the western part of Java. Madurese is primarily spoken on the island of Madura. In western Sumatra, there are many speakers of Minangkabau. Two other prominent languages are Balinese and Acehnese.

Though most Indonesians can speak Indonesian, many other languages are spoken in the country. After Indonesian, the most widely-spoken languages of Indonesia are Javanese and Sundanese. Indonesia is a  country of great linguistic diversity.

Words Used By Conservative Norwegian Speakers

Norwegian has many dialects. However, there are two official written languages. Though there are two written languages, the number of dialects is far greater. A number of Norwegian words are not official, but they are used by a minority of Norwegian speakers. They tend to be elderly and wealthy speakers.

Here is a small list of words used by conservative speakers. The word to the right is the official form.

ben bein (leg)

efter etter (after)

farge farve (colour)

frem fram (forward)

nu nå (now)

røk røyk (smoke)

selv sjøl (self)

sne snø (snow)

sort svart (black)

sten stein (stone)

The words used by conservative speakers are definitely in the minority. Words such as efter, farge and nu are definitely only used by a few. However, other words such as frem, sort and sten are more widely-used, but nevertheless by a minority of Norwegians.

Alternative Pronunciation of My

The word my can be pronounced the same as the word me. In England, the pronunciation is most common in northern England, the Midlands and working-class London speech such as Cockney. However, the pronunciation is also heard in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and parts of Australia and New Zealand.

The pronunciation of my with the same pronunciation of me only occurs when the possessive adjective is unstressed. In the question, Where's my phone?, the pronunciation of me is possible. However, this is not the case in the sentence It's my phone, not yours. The reason is that in this sentence the word my is stressed.

In England, the alternative pronunciation of my is common in the north, the Midlands and working-class London speech. It is common in all of the United Kingdom, Ireland and parts of Australia and New Zealand. However, the alternative pronunciation of my is only used when the word is unstressed. It is associated with casual speech.

The Spanish Pronoun Vos

In Spanish the second person singular subject pronoun can be tú or vos. In Spain only tú is used, but in Argentina the pronoun is vos. The pronoun vos is also used in Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica. In most of Mexico, speakers use tú.

The two pronouns have different conjugations. For example, the sentence You are my neighbour can be Tú eres mi vecino or Vos sos mi vecino. The subject pronoun is not absolutely necessary and can thus be dropped. Also possible are Eres mi vecino and Sos mi vecino.

Spanish has two pronouns to express the second person singular subject pronoun. In many countries, the pronoun tú is used, but in other countries vos is popular. In Colombia, the pronoun tú is used in Bogota, but vos is used in Medellin. The use of the pronouns can even vary in one country.

Months in Asturian

Asturian is a Romance language spoken in northwestern Spain. To illustrate the vocabulary of Asturian, here are the days of the months along with the months in Spanish.

January xineru enero

February febreru febrero

March marzu marzo

April abril abril

May mayu mayo

June xunu junio

July xunetu julio

August agostu agosto

September setiembre septiembre

October ochobre octobre

November payares noviembre

December avientu diciembre

Notice that two months are very different, November and December. The word for April is identical in both languages. Spanish uses a word-final o in seven months, but Asturian uses word-final u.

Russian High Front and Central Vowels

The Russian high front and central vowels are often in complementary distribution. The high front unrounded vowel is very common among languages, but the high central unrounded vowel is not. Russian has the five full vowels of Spanish, and it also has unreduced vowels. The high central unrounded vowel is classified as a vowel phoneme by many, but there are linguists who claim it is an allophone of the high front unrounded vowel.

The Russian high front vowel occurs after soft consonants, and the high central occurs after hard consonants. The soft consonants are palatalized, and the hard ones are not. All Russian consonants can be classified into two groups, hard and soft.

Though the two vowels are often in complementary distribution, there are instances in which their distribution is contrastive. They can contrast in word-initial position. For this reason, many linguists consider the high central vowel a phoneme.

The high central vowel is relatively rare among languages. It always follows hard consonants. On the other hand, the high front vowel always follows soft consonants. The high central vowel is a vowel that distinguishes Russian from many other languages.