Talk:Oneida language

message: Is it really possible that this language entirely lacks labials (even m)?
:Yes, there are several more like that in North America. [m] is reportedly considered baby-talk in some or all of them. – Note, however, that [w] is there. David Marjanović 20:55, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, note that Iroquois languages have nasal vowels which  tend to have a near -n or near-m sound depending upon how much the speaker closes the mouth to resonate.  In addition there are a few borrowed words from English or French that have stuck at least in Mohawk and the Labials , mostly M's, will be spoken but as a borrowed word.  it's rare to hear someone then build into that word, more Mohawk informational units.   I studied Mohawk, one of Oneida's closest cousins according to Lounsberry and Mithun,  and it never struck me as odd.  Speakers of Indo-European Langauges and especially of modern European languages expect a greater array of distinctly listed "consonants" to appear in Iroquoian langauges when in fact, they have a more complex grammar and informational encoding system than those of the Old World.  These are Polysynthetic languages and a huge amount of data is built into each utterance.  For example, a simple utterance can tell you both how many of something, what state of action those things are in, where they are and so forth.  Don't get me started on the large number of pronominal distinctions !  Another feature that makes the languages richer are specific consonant clusters that obey certain rules based on whether one voices them or not.  The consonant clusters behave almost as extra consonants.  When they are voiced, we hear them but if the rule is to not to voice them, the speaker will still form them with the mouth and simply not voice them.  I'm rather sad that after my class of Linguists came up through Graduate and post-grad work, most of us could not find grants or mentors to continue work in these areas and so we drifted to "sexier" areas of Linguistics or Anthropology.    BTW, I would suggest reading the article on Mohawk language, which I feel is less dense and far less dated.  It might give you a better understand about the consonant cluster issue. LiPollis (talk) 01:53, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  No labials? 

message: The body of the article says that there are 160 native speakers. The sidebar says there are 250 speakers total. Are there 90 non-native speakers, or is there an error in one of the numbers? 206.148.108.219 17:22, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of speakers 

message: I found the link to the article: http://articles.latimes.com/print/2008/feb/03/books/bk-treuer3 .  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.184.122 (talk) 02:45, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  LA Times Article 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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