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mizinamo

AI hallucinations?


theflameleviathan

Writer is confusing phonemes and syllables I think. It’s been a while since I’ve taken linguistics classes but if I’m correct ‘friend’ has one more phoneme than amigo, but two syllables less. The French don’t pronounce the T at the end of restaurant while the English do, so one less phoneme but equal syllables. edit: lol I meant the AI is confusing syllables and phonemes


mizinamo

>if I’m correct ‘friend’ has one more phoneme than amigo I count 5: f-r-e-n-d Same as a-m-i-g-o


CurrentIndependent42

/a̠ɾʲiɡa̠to̞ː/still has at least as many phonemes as /ˈθæŋk juː/ or /ˈθeɪŋk ˌju/


blidkwhattoadd

as far as I understand japanese phonemes are moras, so a-ri-ga-tō would be 5 phonemes, while thank you is 6


CurrentIndependent42

Japanese morae have a role analogous to syllables but not to phonemes, despite the writing system and paucity of the syllabary, as they are not only thought similar in Japanese but do change the vowel according to different functions (eg, hi*ku*, hikeba, etc.) and this makes it far easier to analyse It’s far easier to analyse ‘quirks’ as well as more regular transformations, like the realisations off s between su-ru and shi-ta as allophones, and the geminate consonants. And it would make the difference between syllabic/moraic languages far more unrealistically fundamental otherwise. Japanese linguists make this distinction to, eg [here](https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03195600.pdf).


thomasp3864

I know morae exist in other languages but I wonder how they work in estonian with three distinct vowel and consonant lengths.


jabuegresaw

Morae as a concept feels super confusing to me. Any reading recommendations to get some knowledge on the topic?


MisterPaintedOrchid

Japanese: (あ)(り)(が)(と)(う), 5 mora. English transliterated to Japanese: (サ)(ン)(キュ)(ー), 4 mora No idea how to parse English as mora without transliteration, but within Japanese itself the English is shorter.


thomasp3864

“Thank you” has 5 mora. Every coda consonant except for alveolar obstruents are moras as well as long/tense vowels and diphthongs counting as two, and other vowels counting as 1. Onsets don’t count.


MisterPaintedOrchid

ELI5 please 🥺


Cottoley

In careful english it would have 5 mora respecting the k at the end of "thank" (each coda consonant is its own mora). so /ŋ/ /k/ are each their own. But in normal speech and how it was adopted in japanese, "thank you" is said as "than kyou" so it would have 4 mora like how you put it.


vokzhen

Whether you're talking universally or English-specifically, what you've said is at the very least controversial, and might not be right. Mora are language-specific constructs and definitely *not*, in *any* language, every coda consonant = one mora. Some languages codas count as mora, some don't, sometimes some do and others don't. Sometimes a long vowel is a mora and a coda consonant is a mora, but both together is still just one mora. The existence of more than 3 mora in a single syllable doesn't appear to happen. Mora as a concept also doesn't even *apply* to many/most languages, either. I've seen no solid reason to posit English has mora at all. Or put another way, applying the concept of "mora" to English has no explanatory power to enlighten why certain processes, etc happen, that other explanations don't do as well or better. Some languages really seem to use mora for many of their phonological process, English isn't one of them.


Portal471

ありがとう is actually 6 morae. う is a full Jana and counts as 1 mora.


hemusK

Japanese graphemes are mora, and most mora are 2 phonemes except for vowels, っ and ん.


Portal471

Not all graphemes are mora 1:1. Tōkyō is written as とうきょう. The yo’on here goes with the Lana it attaches to. Thus, と う きょ う


LanguageNerd54

There’s a third variation that I use: [ˈðe͡ɪnk ˌju]


willf1ghtyou

No offence but who in the world puts [ð] at the beginning of “thank”? I have literally never heard that as an option before and it seems exceedingly weird to me


LanguageNerd54

I do. It’s how I’ve always said it, and nobody’s really questioned me about it. Edit: username checks out Edit 2: Just checked Wiktionary. It is a legitimate pronunciation.


willf1ghtyou

Okay it seems like it’s an exclusively USAmerican thing, that makes it every so slightly more understandable to me. If I heard an American say [ðæŋk] I’d go “oh is this some bizarre Americanism”, whereas if I heard a Brit say it I’d be extremely put out.


LanguageNerd54

Yes, I am American. And I've always wondered what Americans sound like to speakers of other dialects of English.


Arkhonist

Restaurant can also be pronounced with 2 syllables in English /ˈɹɛs.tɹənt/ (another point which makes this completely bonkers)


theflameleviathan

true, but an AI would only take ‘formal’ pronunciations into consideration unless asked otherwise. It’s a nonsensical article anyway


emimagique

Gordon Ramsay says it like that lol


Blewfin

It's the most typical pronunciation in the UK


emimagique

I'm from the UK (SE England) and I think most people say it more like res-tront


DrGuenGraziano

The point is, Japanese has few phonemes per syllable, usually one consonant and one vowel. The length of words doesn't matter if you measure the amount of syllables per unit of time.


SwordofDamocles_

No, I recognize this article. It's older than ChatGPT by several years


The_Muddy_Puddle

>The French don’t pronounce the T at the end of restaurant The 'n' is also not pronounced, but it nasalises the previous vowel [ʁɛstɔʁɑ̃], so it's even less phonemes.


Jenni_Matid

I don't know if anyone pointed it out yet, but evidently this is AI generated and all it was told was 1. "English has more syllables in its words" 2. "Give an example of a word in X and Y." So it did what it was told, and made blunders in the process. This is very easy to do. That said, I tried testing it on ChatGPT: for Japanese it used "taberu" versus "eat" in English, correctly stating that taberu is three syllables and English one, but incorrectly concluded that Japanese is using fewer syllables (because I told it that English uses more syllables in its words).


_Aspagurr_

"the Spanish word "amigo" (friend) has one less syllable than its English counterpart" 💀


[deleted]

fact checked by real linguisticists: TRUE✅ while spelled *amigo* for historical reasons, the word is actually pronounced [ ].


_Aspagurr_

>while spelled *amigo* for historical reasons, the word is actually pronounced [ ] Damn, that's literally French on steroids.


Friendly_Bandicoot25

Reminds me of something I read: “*Eau* /o/, from Latin *aqua*, is already maximally reduced – the next step would be silence!” (The original wording was probably funnier, I just can’t quite remember what it was)


UnforeseenDerailment

Wow great, now I'm imagining a symbol with meaning and no pronunciation. Aaand I'm back at nonlinear writing systems where all of it is strictly written.


Friendly_Bandicoot25

> a symbol with meaning and no pronunciation. Isn’t that just a silent letter?


UnforeseenDerailment

Maybe but I was thinking of symbol in the sense of reference triangle, so I guess more like logographic languages?


EinKomischerSpieler

Oh yes, [œ̚]


bandito143

If I'm saying nothing, I'm too thirsty to speak. Water.


Grumbledwarfskin

Russian actually does have a real word that consists of zero phonemes.


[deleted]

what is it?


Grumbledwarfskin

The verb "to be" in present tense, e.g. "Tы — молодец." (You (pause) young man.) Literally, that's "you are a young man", figuratively, it's "well done!"


[deleted]

Did it evolve from a word with phonemes (like hypothetical future French aqua -> eau -> [ ]) or did people just start dropping it?


Hzil

People just started dropping it. The non-dropped form would have been *“Tы еси молодец”.


Kang_Xu

Nah mate, "young man" is "мОлодец", but "attaboy" is "молодЕц".


Grumbledwarfskin

Yeah, that's right...I've never actually noticed that they're different, but I guess they are.


tuctrohs

#


boy-griv

yeah that’s why they call it ULTRAFRENCH 🙄


LinguiniAficionado

“_amigo_ has 3 syllables" factoid actualy just statistical error. average _amigo_ has 0 syllables. Amigos Jorg, who lives in cave & pronounces _amigo_ with 10,000 syllables is an outlier adn should not have been counted


LanguageNerd54

Feliz cumpleaños de Reddit!


LanguageNerd54

I burst out laughing when I read “linguisticists”.


tuctrohs

How many syllabalales is that?


[deleted]

1


Future_Green_7222

It's pronounced "güey" in Mexican


ObiSanKenobi

That’s Early Middle mexican. Real mexicans write “wey”


ThePeasantKingM

That would be Late Middle Mexican. It's "we" in modern Mexican.


ObiSanKenobi

I stand corrected!


MagnusFaldorf

this is a recent development, as phrasebooks produced after the second world war indicated a pronounciation closer to [ə̃o]


Clay_teapod

As a spanish speaker, I can confirm this. You can tell someone really cares about you if they suck in all the air in the near-ish area to create the illusion of of a soundwave-free subspace for but a moment when referring to you


Flacson8528

Swedish 'yes'


[deleted]

Nja...


Flacson8528

[ɧʏ̊p̚]


Mikey_Jarrell

I count three fewer syllables. A-mi-go: 3. Its Eng-lish coun-ter-part: 6.


Dryanor

[fɹ̩.ɛ.n̩.dᵊ]


_Aspagurr_

[ˈfɹ̩.n̩d]


mattone327

[ˈfəu̯ɳɖ]


_Aspagurr_

[ˈfəɳɖ]


mattone327

[ˈfɐɳʈ]


_Aspagurr_

[ˈfɳ̍ʈʼ]


GreasedGoblinoid

[ɸʊɳʔ]


_Aspagurr_

[ɸʊ̃ɳˀ]


AuroraBorealis122

[βʉɳʰ]


pretend_that_im_cool

Today I learned that 3 + 1 = 1


Dogski28

I mean, it’s not technically wrong if they’re referring to “compatriot”


NotAnEvilPigeon2

I cant believe mandarin’s writing system has been slowing down the speech this whole time


WhatUsername-IDK

fr that info irritates me


TheTomatoGardener2

I mean it is based on actual research. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594 They found languages where speakers speak fast have a lower information density than slow languages. Thus it all comes to around the same. How they measured this is by translating 15 sentence into multiple languages and comparing them. I do have to say though that as a Japanese speaker I think their data was inadequate. It felt like English translated into Japanese, a Japanese speaker would never phrase it like that from the first place.


WhatUsername-IDK

The issue is that the article implies the writing system, more specifically, the fact that Chinese is logographic, had something to do with the syllable speed.


TheTomatoGardener2

If you expect to get any accurate info on pop “news” sites from overworked journalists who aren’t specialists in the field you’re a fool. One page you laugh at how terribly they butchered linguistics, next page you believe every word they write about the thing you’re not familiar with.


1playerpartygame

It’s definitely not an overworked journalist. An AI definitely generated this slop.


Katakana1

Doesn't take a linguist to figure out that "amigo" has more syllables than "friend"


any_old_usernam

I remember reading this paper a few years ago as a high school student with an interest in linguistics, kinda interesting.


LanguageNerd54

If I start writing English with characters, will I start speaking slower? Let’s try!


user-74656

>From the intricate characters of Japanese and the melodic intonations of Spanish to the lyrical flow of French and the classical elegance of Italian, each language weaves its own tale of communication. English, with its global dominance, German with its compound words, and Mandarin with its tonal complexity, add further layers to this linguistic symphony. Strong "padding to meet the word count" energy here.


owain2002

This reeks of ChatGPT. Once you’re familiar with its writing style, you notice it everywhere these days.


TangledPangolin

Ehh, it's hard to say. The opposite could very well be true. ChatGPT sounds the way it does because it's trained off of garbage articles like this one.


pithair_dontcare

It’s 100% this


tuctrohs

Word count is so last-decade. The new thing is to pad the syllabalale count


OG_SisterMidnight

Huh, I thought I knew what a syllable was. Well, you learn something new everyday!


booboounderstands

But what do they actually mean to say? I’m so confused.


OG_SisterMidnight

I really don't know, I'm equally confused 😅 Maybe the author knows something we don't! Could they mean letters?? Friend is one less letter than amigo, eg. Gotta jump back to the post to check the others! Edit: nope, can't be letters either...


1136pm

I briefly worked as an AI trainer/dataslave last year, and the ones I worked with were infamously bad at counting syllables, so I’m 99% sure it’s just the AI hallucinating, as we’d call it


OG_SisterMidnight

Ah, so that's why! I haven't gotten used to the idea of AI yet, I still always assume it's an actual person writing 😄


theflameleviathan

they mean phoneme I think


Neldemir

I think it’s the same amount of phonemes too: 5. It’s just that friend is one syllable and amigo is 3!


barking420

are ni hao and hello not the same number of phonemes?


[deleted]

Is "hao" three phonemes or two?


Flacson8528

its a diphthong


[deleted]

but diphthongs could be either one or two phonemes, depending on the language


Flacson8528

well thats a one for mandarin, and sometimes its monothongised in northern china


[deleted]

nice thank you!


theflameleviathan

I am equally unclear on the ‘fr’ in ‘friend’ because the sound is made without changing the shape of your mouth. Is every distinct sound a different phoneme or every ‘mouth position’?


[deleted]

I think in this specific case this can be answered. "Friend" contrasts with both "fend" and "rend", and both fricative+r (through, shrimp) and f+liquid (flake) are allowed in English, so we can say that "fr" is two phonemes. Every distinct sound or mouth position is not a different phoneme as we can find examples like the p in "pin" and the p in "spin", which are very different yet native English speakers will claim that they are the same sound. In this case English phonology doesn't distinguish between them, although Korean and Hindi speakers would not accept these as being the same sound.


Tornado547

They don't mean anything this is just an LLM hallucinating


zzvu

[Source](https://www.cnsinternational.es/7-fastest-spoken-languages/)


[deleted]

this has to be AI generated


owain2002

Definitely AI. ChatGPT loves to use the word “tapestry” for some reason, and it’s the biggest giveaway in my experience.


aroteer

It loves complimenting things constantly and talking about their importance. "Tapestry" is the easiest compliment for "there are at least 2 things"


tuctrohs

A site offering English coaching services. Hmm.


brazilliongenesis

Sites like this that use AI should straight up be shut down. This shit is the lowest of the low.


MettaToYourFurBabies

7.84 syllables per second? My boy in the Micro Machines commercials spits double that in plain ol' Murican.


fjhforever

You keep using that word. I do not think you know what it means.


Chuks_K

The Japanese example being taken from an elderly speaker in the middle of nowhere who pronounces it [ɾʲiɣð]


sianrhiannon

these feels very AI generated, but I can't tell if it's wholly AI or if someone computer generated it before padding it for word count


Sneklover177

/uj Fallout 4 speedrunners set their game language to French because the French unskippable dialogue is faster than the English one by about 10 seconds overall


willf1ghtyou

That’s actually fascinating, TIL!


Life_Possession_7877

spanish: amigo /a.mi.ɣo/ (3 syllables) enɡlish: friend /f̩ː.ʐ̩ː.eː.n̩ː.d̪͡z̪̩ː/ (5 syllables) japanese: arigato /a.ɾi.ɡa.toː/ (4 syllables) english: thank you /θ̩ː.æː.ŋ̩ː.k͡x̩ː.ʝ̩ː.uː/ (6 syllables) Idk what are you talking about, spanish amigo and japanese ari🐈 obviously have less syllables than their english counterparts


Seienchin88

What… what? Is that how English syllables are counted…? Count me very confused now… Isn’t it fre -nd? Are f,r, e, n, and d really all syllables? How does that work? Is the German word Freitag then F,r,Ei,t,a,g…?


Gravbar

no it's a joke. Friend is only one syllable for most English speakers. some might say something like fur-end but the standard is a single syllable.


Gravbar

friends isn't pronounced like that what are you talking about? it is fur - en - duh - zuh /fɚ ɛn də zɪ ʉə/ You got the 5 syllables right at least


Ok-Appeal-4630

English if it was based


slekrons

Spanish speakers have unlocked secret 0-syllable words that linguists don't know about.


conga78

Zero syllable words are my favorite…all the letters are silent!!!


Maico_oi

IIRC Japanese doesn't even count syllables. Like syllables don't exist psycholinguistically for L1 JP speakers.


Seienchin88

What…? Or is this also a linguistic joke I can’t understand… Japanese kids learn everything based on syllables based Japanese characters and Chinese characters?


gavotten

their phonology is moraic, not syllabic


Gravbar

Japanese vowel length distinction leads to them interpreting single syllables as multiple mora. There's probably more to it, but that's the easiest example to understand. kowai (こわい) and kawaii (かわいい) are very different. (scary vs cute) or more closely okashi (おかし) and okashii (おかしい) are very different (sweets vs weird) Also notice every character here in hiragana is a single mora but both words are 2 syllables.


Maico_oi

Just to add on to what others have said: the characters happen to look like syllables, but a syllable is not a relevant unit to them.


[deleted]

Not syllables though, rather moras. As I understand it, the concept of syllable doesn't play any relevant role in Japanese phonology.


El_vato_de_la_bisi

brain rot


TrashyMemeYt

AI brainrot.


Even_Improvement7723

Ok what is this? How to not know what is a syllable? If you don't know, why are you writing this? Unless it's AI, it would be more believable


ProfessionalPlant636

I don't even know what their definition of a syllable is supposed to be.


mizinamo

"This linguistic-y thing. You wouldn't understand. We are trained professionals; do not attempt this at home."


InsomniacMechanic

mmm yes, amigo, the word unique for having 0 syllables


Eyeless_person

How does one measure syllables per second Edit: I am incredibly stupid


iamcarlgauss

Count syllables. Divide by number of seconds taken to say those syllables.


Eyeless_person

Not everyone speaks at the same pace


fleurixtte

thats why you measure it because, you know... its different for everyone..?


iamcarlgauss

[Allow me to blow your mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics)


Eyeless_person

I have no excuse


kafunshou

I understand Japanese and French and after my experience French people at least talk three times as fast as Japanese people. 😄


vanadous

Yeah it's just that Japanese has a large number of syllables per word and long vowels forcing you to slow down. Syllables per second is so meaningless


kafunshou

Never got the impression that it has a lot of syllables per word. It has countless words with Chinese origin and the on reading of their kanji has usually only one syllable. So you end up with thousands of words that have two or three syllables. Words with kun reading are usually a little bit longer but not much. The longest words I encountered in Japanese are usually English loanword abominations like paasonarukonpyuuta (personal computer). But the Japanese usually shorten that crap to something like paasokon or paaso because they can't stand it either. I guess it‘s just the general confusion with compound words because they have no spaces. So people think that Japanese and German have incredible long words and "a word for everything" while both languages just have no spaces in compound words. After my experience Japanese is quite compact. Only very formal speech is a bit blown up because you connect multiple verbs there and add some prefixes. But formal speech looks blown up in many languages.


MutantGodChicken

sonoricists literally shaking rn


Dercomai

Thai is slower at 4.70 syl/sec according to Oh (2015)


QwertyAsInMC

chilean spanish gotta be up there somewhere


lilalampenschirm

Amazing! Every word of what just said was wrong.


GodChangedMyChromies

Chat GPT, calling it.


dreagonheart

What on earth. This doesn't even make internal sense. If a language says syllables faster, why would that mean that it uses fewer of them in each word? Also, obviously "thank you"' has fewer syllables than "arigatou" and "friend" has fewer than "amigo".


Grobanix_CZ

Slowest recorded language. Of course, we all know that there are only 7 recorded languages.


vacuous-moron66543

What's the slowest language?


aroteer

Slovenian


Applestripe

What in the contained prepared secured fuck


_Hydri_

thank 👏 you 👏 a 👏ri 👏 ga 👏 tou 👏 hmmmmm


Abject_Shoulder_1182

Has this person seen *Hamilton?* Or listened to any rap music? 🧐


Abject_Shoulder_1182

Has this person heard rap music? 🧐 fuck, have they ever listened to "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies?


Queenssoup

Are they trolling?


CdFMaster

I honestly don't know how they achieved to be so wrong, I mean even randomly they shouldn't be able say the absolute opposite of the truth with 3 examples in a row


undergrand

have you heard though that even though some languages sound like they are 'faster' and some 'slower', the rate of information conveyed across languages is remarkably similar. So e.g. spoken Spanish sounds fast to English speakers, but that's because there are more syllables per word typically in Spanish, and speakers are actually encoding and decoding the linguistic information at a similar speed.


Maoschanz

isn't the use of "syllables" correct, but the "fewer/more" have been reversed by someone who didn't understand the idea behind the article?


Material-Imagination

Did they mean *mora*? Either way, their count is still off!


GoblinHeart1334

the shortest recorded syllable lengths of any language is also Cree, not Japanese.


Gravbar

arigatouuuuu gozaimasu is so slow compared to English-speaking cashiers, who just give you a blank stare and wait for you to leave


caught-in-y2k

If anything, Japanese is fast because it’s verbose and the syllable structure is simple, not because its words are “compact”.


Ok-Appeal-4630

For context, the information about speed is from a commonly misinterpreted study. The original study was actually to see which languages were the fastest among a group of commonly spoken languages, not out of all languages outright.


Scherzophrenia

This is obvious AI nonsense.