Linguistics Puzzle

by rrusczyk, Jan 17, 2009, 12:22 AM

Here's a fun linguistics puzzle Osud sent me:

Osud wrote:

OK, so here's a puzzle for you, since you brought up spelling. Phonetics and linguistics were to ancient India like geometry and philosophy were to ancient Greece, and the result is an alphabet that reflects the spoken language (near-)perfectly and actually has a sensible alphabetical order. So, here is an abbreviated version of the Devanāgarī alphabet, in alphabetical order. What are the principles behind the way they ordered the letters?

k g ng
c j ny
t d n
p b m

Try to figure it out without looking anything up on the internet. There's a method to both the columns and the rows.

linguistics

puzzles

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Yay, I feel so smart and can't help brag; I solved a puzzle without looking it up (and it's been a while since that happened...)! Well, this topic was my favorite before I became interested in math...

Letters in the same row, when pronounced are articulated in the same position in the mouth. The first row starts with the place furthest back in the mouth... (called velars if I remember correctly), and as you move down the rows, you eventually reach the sounds articulated at the lips (bilabials, were they?). Letters in the first column are unvoiced plosives (or stops); the ones in the second column are voiced plosives; and the third column has the nasal consonants.

The second row looks a little fuzzy; I'm not sure of the pronunciation of those letters. If the pattern is very strict, then I can guess what those sounds are supposed to be... but that would leave the language without any fricatives, which is weird...

OK so maybe I already knew all of it... not much to be proud of...

by leoxnlin, Jan 17, 2009, 2:02 AM

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Exactly!

Quote:

The second row looks a little fuzzy; I'm not sure of the pronunciation of those letters. If the pattern is very strict, then I can guess what those sounds are supposed to be... but that would leave the language without any fricatives, which is weird...

They're supposed to be palatal stops. English doesn't have them; I was trying to simulate them with the affricates [ʧ] and [ʤ] as best I could.

Sanskrit does have fricatives, I just didn't include them in this problem. The full alphabet, give or take a few letters, is this:

a ā i ī u ū ṛ ṝ (pure vowels, long and short)
e ai o au (diphthongs, long and short. Historically, ai > e, āi > ai)
k kʰ g gʱ ŋ (velar stops)
c cʰ ɟ ɟʱ ɲ (palatal stops)
ʈ ʈʰ ɖ ɖʱ ɳ (retroflex stops-- pronounced with the tongue curled back)
t tʰ d dʰ n (dental stops)
p pʰ bʰ m (bilabial stops)
y r l w (glides)
ʃ ʂ s h (fricatives + h)

by Osud, Jan 17, 2009, 3:18 AM

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Hi!
I know almost nothing about linguistics but these problems seem interesting so i ask do you know any books or webpages where one with almost no knowledge of the subject can find as a good start?

thanks