Talk:Hiw language

Vowel chart

Just letting anyone interested know, I deleted the vowel chart from this article, and I did it after seeing relevant comments in the "Mass edits to phoneme tables" section of WP Talk: WP Linguistics. The vowel chart that was here previously just seemed like OR to me. The sources that have been cited so far don't really mention how Hiw speakers think about or categorize their vowels, or their vowels' exact qualities. Erinius (talk) 01:51, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Sources have been added, thanks Womtelo so much! That vowel chart in François 2011 is really cool. — Erinius (talk) 20:28, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, mate — Womtelo (talk) 21:15, 14 June 2022 (UTC).

Loanword "rurube"

Cited from p. 422 of http://alex.francois.online.fr/data/AlexFrancois_Hiw-lateral_Phonology_published.pdf, this word appears to come from a Mota-like language with preservation of both "r" and "b" and final "-e" instead of "-ə" (probably Vëqöyö or Vësëv). If we assume a Proto-Torres-Banks *ruruᵐbe, we get **ɡ͡ʟʉɡ͡ʟʉpə. Does the expected variant exist? Kwékwlos (talk) 16:52, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

hi Kwékwle,

No, such a variant does not exist. The form [rʉrʉᵐbe] must be a recent word. In fact, it is not really a word in the language: it is first and foremost a meaningless sequence of syllables sung by the dancers [rʉrʉᵐbe, rʉrʉᵐbe]; and the dance is (metonymically) named after that song. It is not even clear if it is borrowed from another language; it is probably just song material, only present in Hiw culture.

In sum, this sort of word has marginal status: we should not expect it to follow regular sound change, let alone reconstruct to PTB.

PS: Why "probably Vëqöyö or Vësëv"??

best -- Womtelo (talk) 22:16, 6 September 2024 (UTC).

Oh, this one could work out. I was speculating if any of the two extinct dialects Vëqöyö or Vësëv were the source of the word, turns out it is just song language. Kwékwlos (talk) 01:28, 7 September 2024 (UTC)