26: Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization

Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

Science

4.8 • 791 Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A letter stands for a sound. Or at least, it’s supposed to. Most of the time. Unless it’s C or G, which each stand for two different sounds in a whole bunch of languages. C can be soft, as in circus or acacia, or hard, as in the other C in circus or acacia. G can be hard, as in gif, or soft, as in gif. Why can C and G be hard or soft? And why don’t other letters come in hard and soft versions? In this episode of the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the group of sounds that are pronounced with the back part of the roof of your mouth, aka the palate. When one sound in a word is produced at the palate, it tends to pull neighbouring sounds towards the palate as well, and this palatal attraction explains so many weird mismatches of sound and spelling. Why can C and G be hard and soft? Why do T and D sometimes get different pronunciations as well, as in nation and didja? Why are Irish and Scottish Gaelic names spelled that way? Why is it so hard to spell the clipped forms of “usual” and “casual”? How are cheese and cacio e pepe and queso and Käse all related? This month’s bonus episode was about how to have fun at (or just survive) academic conferences. Whether you’re new to academic conferences, or have never been to one and want to know how they’re different from other large gatherings like conventions, this episode has all the info! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and 20 previous bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm This is also our anniversary episode! Whether you’ve been with us for the whole two years or you’ve joined us more recently, we’re glad you’re here. Thank you to everyone who has helped bring the show to more language fans in honour of our anniversary. There’s still a bit of time to get your name on the special thank you post and help more people get a fun language thing in their ears by recommending Lingthusiasm on social media before the end of the month. For links to everything mentioned in this episode visit https://lingthusiasm.com/post/180153994181/lingthusiasm-episode-26-why-do-c-and-g-come-in

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Linguism, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm Gretchen
0:21.6	McCulloch. And I'm Lauren Gorn. And today we're getting enthusiastic about palatalization.
0:26.4	That is to say, what the heck is going on with G and C? But first, thanks to everyone for your
0:32.2	enthusiastic recommending during our November recommendathon. Yes, thanks so much for all your tweets and posts and shares and all of the new people that
0:41.4	you've brought in with you to listen to Linkthusiasm.
0:43.8	We will be thanking every one of you who made some kind of public declaration about their
0:49.4	love of Lingthusiasm, and we'll give you until the end of the month to add yourself to that esteemed group of
0:55.2	people so we can thank you all in our annual anniversary post. Yes, so you have till the end of
1:00.8	November 2018 to be part of this year's recommendathon thank you post, which will live in
1:06.7	perpetuity on our website. Last year we thanked thanked 100 people, so this year, I think we
1:11.8	can thank even more. I'm really excited by what we've seen so far. I'm feeling very confident
1:15.6	about that. And of course, you can continue to recommend us to anyone who needs a little more
1:19.5	linguistics in their life any time of the year. I also want to thank everybody who came out
1:24.8	to the live shows. Yay! I'm not going to lie, we're recording
1:28.8	this before the live shows. So we're really hoping people actually come. So we are just going to
1:34.2	have to assume that they were an absolute rolling success. We're recording well in advance
1:40.5	at the moment to make sure that we have episodes for when Lauren's on leave,
1:50.0	and we're very excited about those live shows. I assume they were great. Thanks so much to everyone who came out in Melbourne and Sydney, and it was so fun to get to see those cities.
1:54.8	We also want to remind you that if you're thinking about getting
1:58.1	a linguist or language enthusiast in your life, if you want thinking about getting a Lingthusiasm merch for any linguists or language
2:02.3	enthusiasts in your life, if you want to get someone a scarf with the international phonetic
2:06.3	alphabet, or tree symbol diagrams on them, or a tie with the IPA on it, or various baby outfits,
	...

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