Re: Love Those Double Vowels (was: Diving In...)

On Sun, 4 Nov 2001 18:21:20 -0500, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

>Josh Roth wrote:
>> (I read something once about a similar thing happening in English, with words
>> like "little" "itty-bitty" "tiny" (originally pronounced with a front vowel)
>> "teeny" (brough back to a front vowel!)
>
>That's a common phenomenon across languages.  Another good example is
>Japanese "chibi" for "small".  It just *sounds* little.  :-)
>
>In Uatakassi, I use _pifi_ for "small" and _zamuu_ for "large", also an
>example of my voiceless-voiced associations!  :-)
Similarly, Tirelhat has "tikrhi" for "little" and "nogli" for "big" (most
stative verbs end in -i); "vedi" (narrow) vs. "ugi" (wide), "tirri" (short)
vs. "zhafi" (tall). To some extent this may have been deliberate, but it
also seems to be the case that /i/ and /e/ more often "sound" like the
right vowels for little things, and /o/, /u/, or /a/ for big things. Still,
it's not hard to find exceptions: "zuruta" for "centipede", or "khilhki"
for "planet".

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