Omaha and Ponca to Arabic: You're not so unique after all!

[shokooh Ingham]

Interesting to hear of the Omaha Ponca sound.  The Arabic one, or possibly something similar, still occurs in dialects of the South West ie some parts of 'Asir in Saudi Arabia and in Yemen.  The Arabs used to refer to their language as Lughat al-[ḍād], the Language of [ḍād] or Lughat al -'Ain the Language of 'Ain (the pharyngeal voiced sound, fricative, continuant or plosive, depending on who you believe), presuming that these sounds were not used by other people.  The latter is less rare, also occurring in Somali and Amharic and I think some Caucasian languages.

Ethnocentricity is widespread.  I remember as a boy in primary school being shown a map of the world and being told proudly by the teacher to note that England was in the middle of the world. The Chinese obviously used a different map.

Bruce

--- On Wed, 2/2/11, Bryan James Gordon <linguista at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Bryan James Gordon <linguista at gmail.com>
Subject: Omaha and Ponca to Arabic: You're not so unique after all!
To: "Siouan Listserv" <siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, 2 February, 2011, 2:10

Kees Versteegh, writing on /ḍ/ in the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics:


Sībawayhi (Kitāb II, 405.8-9) describes [ḍād]'s place of articulation as being "between the first part of the side of the tongue and the adjacent molars" (min bayna ˀawwal ḥāfat al-lisān wa-mā yalīhi min al-ˀaḍrās). The exact interpretation of this passage remains controversial. ... Cantineau (1960:55) is probably right in interpreting it as a lateral or lateralized velarized voiced interdental fricative ... IPA [ðˡ] .... This would make it, indeed, a unique sound among the world's languages (cf. Ladefoged and Maddieson 1966:154-56).


Ha!
Of course I use [ðˡ] or [ɫð] all the time when I use IPA to represent Omaha and Ponca words. Unique indeed. If the CSG has a phonology section, this should definitely be in it.


Sībawayh's description is over 1200 years old, of course, so it is not true of most forms of Arabic today, although many Arabic loanwords in other languages have laterals where ḍād should be.



-- 
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Bryan James Gordon, MA
Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
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