Russian Hard and Soft Consonants

All Russian consonants can be divided into hard and soft. Soft consonants are consonants which are palatalized, and hard consonants are not. Most of the consonants form consonant pairs, consonants which differ only by the presence or absence of palatalization.

A few Russian consonants do not form consonant pairs. The voiceless alveolar affricate and the alveopalatal fricatives are always hard. In contrast, the voiceless alveopalatal affricate and the palatal glide are always soft.

Palatalization is extensive in Russian. Soft consonants can occur syllable-initially and finally. One example of syllable-final palatalization is with the minimal pair [mat] checkmate and [mat'] mother.

An important distinction of Russian consonants is hard and soft. The soft consonants are palatalized, and the hard ones are not. Most consonants form pairs with a hard and soft counterpart.

Swedish Tone in Paradigms

The Swedish language has two different types of tones. They are known as the acute accent and the grave accent, or simply as tone 1 and tone 2. These tones can even vary in a single paradigm.  Here are examples with the number for the corresponding tone:

katt (1) (cat) katten (1) (the cat) katter (2) (cats) katterna (2) (the cats)

hund (1) dog hunden (1) (the dog) hundar (2) (dogs) hundarna (2) (the dogs)

komma (2) (to come) kommer (1) (come/comes) kom (1) came kommit (2) come

skriva (2) (to write) skriver (1) (write/writes) skrev (1) wrote skrivit (2) written

One of the distinctive features of Swedish is the use of two different tones in words. It shares this feature with Norwegian. The tones can create a lexical contrast as in stegen (the steps) with tone 1 and stegen (the ladder) with tone 2. These tones often vary in paradigms.

Luxembourgish

Luxembourgish is a Germanic language. It is mainly spoken in Luxembourg, where it is also one of the official languages. Here are the Luxembourgish numbers from one to ten:

eent
zwee
dräi
véier
fënnef
sechs
siwen
aacht
néng
zéng

The Luxembourgish numbers are similar to the German ones. The number for six, sechs, is the same in both languages. The letter ë is pronounced as a schwa.

Clipped Words

Clipped words are very common in English. Many of them are monosyllabic. Here is a list of common clipped words:

ad advertisement
bike bicycle
bra brassiere
burger hamburger
champ champion
deli delicatessen
exam examination
flu influenza
fridge refrigerator
gas gasoline
grad graduate
gym gymnasium
lab laboratory
limo limousine
math mathematics
memo memorandum
phone telephone
photo photograph
plane airplane
pro professional
quake earthquake
tie necktie
typo typographical error
varsity university
vet veterinarian

Many clipped forms are now more common than the full ones. The words memo, tie and typo are more common than memorandum, necktie and typographical error. The word math is maths in British English. Of the 25 clipped forms on the list, 18 are monosyllabic. This accounts for 72% of the clipped forms.

Germanic Languages

The Germanic languages comprise one branch of the Indo-European language family. They can be divided into three groups: West Germanic, North Germanic and East Germanic. The East Germanic group includes Gothic, a language which is now extinct.

The West Germanic group includes English, Dutch, German, Afrikaans, Yiddish and Frisian. The North Germanic group includes Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faeroese. Of the two groups, the West Germanic has far more speakers.

Among the earliest Germanic texts is the Gothic Bible, which was translated around 350 AD. From around 200 AD inscriptions were carved into the runic alphabet. However, later Germanic texts mostly used adaptations of the Latin alphabet.

The Germanic languages include two of the most widely-spoken languages in the world, English and German. They both belong to the West Germanic group. The most-widely spoken North Germanic language is Swedish. All the languages of the East Germanic group are now extinct.

Spanish Pronominal Word Order

Spanish is an SVO language. However, pronominal word order allows the placement of the object pronoun before the verb and after the infinitive. Here are examples:

(Carlos wants to see you) 

Carlos te quiere ver. 
Carlos quiere verte.

(Carmen wants to thank you) 

Carmen te quiere agradecer. 
Carmen quiere agradecerte.

(Antonio wants to help me)

Antonio me quiere ayudar.
Antonio quiere ayudarme.

(Anita wants to advise me)

Anita me quiere avisar.
Anita quiere avisarme.

Though Spanish is an SVO language, SOV order can occur with pronouns. The SOV order consists of a pronoun which is placed before the verb. The SVO order is more formal than the SOV.