Musings from Kazakhstan

These musings from Kazakhstan record things Jonathan has smessed to Tristan while in Kazakhstan, as well as the replies necessary to understand Jon's later comments. Punctuation, IPA, abbreviations etc. have been cleaned up, and occasional corrections made. Messages are presented in chronological order (unless they relate directly to an earlier conversation) and headings represent conversations. Dates & times are in something which approximates Kazakh time.

English assimilation

26.06.06 16.03 

'meet' (v) - miʔmi, mitʃə, miɾɪm, mɪɾɚ, miɾɪt, miɾəs, miɾəm ... English is weird.

26.06.06 16.09 

'found' (v, pst. of "find") - fawmmi, fawndʒə, fawndɪm, fawndɚ, fawndɪʔ, fawndəs, fawndəm.

(Tristan) 

You're telling me! Thought those must've been Kazakh words at first, till I realised the initial m- and f- were no coincidence.

26.06.06 19.17 

Qazaq doesn't even really have [f] :-P

(Tristan) 

Yeah, the phonology's what made me try to work out what else it might be! Kazakh was just a working theory till I realised [...] !

Russian /ɨ/ in song

26.06.06 20.00 

[...] BTW, I found a good example of Russian /ɯ/ - download "Ty darila mne rozy (video)" from Nochnayje Snajpery's site, [snipers.net].

Kazakh phonetics (1)

28.06.06 17.07 

Today Qazaq 'i' and 'u' are sounding a lot like [ɛ] and [ɔ] respectively, or maybe [e] and [o]. 'e' and 'o' like [jɪ] and [wʊ]. A little like Tatar.

Kazakh fricativising

01.07.06 16.49 

I caught my host sister fricativising her /d/s in Qazaq. She was yelling upstairs, shouting slowlier each time; first [qɑzkjɪljɪt], second [qɑzir kjɪljɪðə], third with [d].

01.07.06 16.58 

That's qazir keledi, btw, meaning "she's on her way (upstairs)", lit. "now come-PRES/FUT-3rd". [...]

(Tristan) 

Probably a common thing to do if you have no underlying /ð/? Like Englishers fricativising /g/?

01.07.06 22.46 

Except she was sounding stuff out carefully; [Tatar] has almost only fricatives where once were voiced stops. Qazaq has recognised [fricativisation of] /g, b/, Kyrgyz even #w → /yb/, /b/ generally [w].

04.07.06 13.35 

[...] Sorry, I meant e.g. waqt → ubaqyt [uβɑχɯt]ish, like laq' → ulaq. Also baxt → baxyt [bɑχɯt], for contrast.

10.07.06 13.14 

Hey, my Qazaq history teacher uses [ð] instead of [d] intervocalically at least, much like Tartar. By the way, Turkic languages as Sythian-Hun creole seems like an interesting possibility.

Kazakh and Russian

02.07.06 20.57 

In even recent Russian "borrowings" in Qazaq, for my host family, /f/ is [p]. Many Turkic languages don't mind [f], but Qazaq really does. /pʊnɑg(ɯ)rɑm/ for 'dubbing' guess etymology?

02.07.06 21.09 

Yeah, phonogram. [...]

02.07.06 21.03 

It's more like Russian words with Qazaq phonology when they use Russian words in Qazaq, btw, and not really true borrowings.

Kazakh rounding harmony

10.07.06 13.26 

Yesterday, acquaintance said üyge "to home" twice loudly and I had a side profile view. It was definitely [üygö] but he protruded his lips more for [ö] than for [ü]—cf Kaun (2004)? [Which is probably A. R. Kaun. (2004). The phonetic foundations of the rounding harmony typology. B. Hayes, R. Kirchner, D. Steriade (Eds), Phonetics in phonology. Cambridge University Press.]

Kazakh evolution

16.07.06 21.34 

Proto-Turkic *bu → Qazaq bul, *o → ol, *bol+Ip → bolıp/bop, ... There's other strange /l/ stuff going on—I'll try to remember/pay attention.