# Vowel harmony with syllabic consonants: Krn, Prešern, Müllr



## iezik

_Krn_ is a mountain in western Slovenia. Its pronunciation is /'kərən/. The american English pronuciation of words _turn_, _burn_ has very similar syllabic structure and sounds, so its name is easily pronounced. /rn/ are here an example of syllabic consonants, as they're usually called. Which of the harmony class is to use for it? Or equivalently, what forms would have it?

The non-low accusative doesn't show the difference between front and back. This can be seen in sublative, Krnra (back) or Krnre (front). Internet shows front variant to be prevailing. I assume that rounded variant is not used. There are still two possible variants for accusative: Krnt (plain), Krnet (low). Internet shows plain variant to be used.

So, is plain front unrounded variant seen as correct by linguists (1)?

There might be a Hungarian name for Krn, I couldn't find it. I'm interested in translating phrases like "I see Krn", "from Krn to ...", "to Krn". There are probably few more Slavic geographic names without aeiou.

Syllabic consonants are also found with vowels, e.g. surnames Prešern, Murn, Strle, Škrlj. Is here again /ə/ taken as front unrounded vowel (2)?

The German surname Müller can be spelled Müllr. By the usual rules, the last vowel determines the roundedness. Is Müllr taken as front unrounded stem (3)?

Thanks, Iezik


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## jazyk

I'm thinking whether it's not better to say Krn hegy in Hungarian, which poses no declension problems. I see that some Hungarians online also use the Italian appellation: Monte Nero.


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## iezik

Thanks for suggestion of avoidance strategy, Jazyk. However, I'm interested at something else. Some Hungarians use inflected forms of Krn as they prefer it. I want to know what to do in such a case.


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## uress

Krn-hegy is a good solution,
BUT
if you don't want to use the word hegy, you have to do this: as we are speaking about a sonant r, listen to it, which vowel is the closest one to it's pronouciation, and decline it according to that vowel. E.g. in the ancient Indoeuropian language there was a sonant rlike that in many words (but only r, there were several sonants), and if I can remember well, in Sanskrit it usually became an a (á). So from now on the declension is a simple questionas in a word which has only one syllable. Otherwise the last syllable will show us the way. (I don't speak Slowakian but some single words but if you think about Slowakian words used by Hungarians, you can here zmirzlina in Hungarian as we hear this sonant m as something similar to i, this i comes not just by accident.
And what about the shwah (if your sign is the IPA-sign)? It' closest to ö in Hungarian, and still close to e.


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## francisgranada

_Krn_*t *(see e.g. _önt, volánt, csalánt,_ ... )

For some articulation reasons, nowadays the words ending in _-n_ mostly do not require any vowel before the accusative ending _-t_. It's worth to say that the accusative marker is _only -t_, the possible vowel before was originally part of the stem of the noun (see e.g. _szén/szenet, ló/lovat, szarv/szarvat, etc ..._). Later on, after the loss of the last stem vowels, a prothetic vowel  appeared - by analogy or for facilitating the pronunciation - also in some cases were there was no etymologic reason for it.

_Krn*ről*, Krn*re*_ (according to my personal feeling)

My _ad hoc _explanation is that _Krn _in the common spontaneous Hungarian pronuciation sounds something like _kürn/körn_, thus _-ről, -re,_ _etc_... seem to be more natural than _-ról, -ra,_ _etc ... _


jazyk said:


> I'm thinking whether it's not better to say Krn hegy in Hungarian ...


I agree.


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## Encolpius

iezik said:


> Which of the harmony class is to use for it? Or equivalently, what forms would have it?...



Very interesting question. 
What vowel harmony is used in foreign words without vowels (mostly proper nouns)? *I have no idea.* It would be interesting to find it in a grammar book for foreigners.



francisgranada said:


> _Krn_*t *(see e.g. _önt, volánt, csalánt,_ ... )
> _Krn*ről*, Krn*re*_ (according to my personal feeling)



I agree. I would use the same suffixes.

I can recall only one Hungarian word without vowels now: *hm*. And the verb derived is hümmög.
I think we hear ö in those words without vowels, so the vowel harmony for ö/ü could work.
I've never heard about Krn, but know the Croatian island Krk.

Francis, what suffixes would you use for Krk? (I think: Krkről, Krkre, Krket/Krköt?)


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## uress

These words contain *not only consonants!!! *A sonant (i.e. a frictionless liquid (continuant: lateral, tremulant or nasal (l, r, m, n, η))) *is *able to form a syllable and then it *is *considered being a *vowel*, never a consonant._ (And we haven't spoken yet about the semivowels...)_

Krik.


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## Encolpius

I am not a linguist so I see only consonants.


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## uress

You see and write but not pronounce.


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## iezik

jazyk said:


> I'm thinking whether it's not better to say Krn hegy in Hungarian, which poses no declension problems. I see that some Hungarians online also use the Italian appellation: Monte Nero.



On the second thought, using _hegy_ (mountain) or other suitable word for the class of proper name (island, town, Ms., etc) can be rather easy as such information is easily found. _Krn_ is also usually found written this way, so this is the preferred way.

Using a name of another language (like Italian) is less useful as it can be hard to find which language to use.



francisgranada said:


> _Krn*ről*, Krn*re*_ (according to my personal feeling)
> My _ad hoc _explanation is that _Krn _in the common spontaneous Hungarian pronuciation sounds something like _kürn/körn_, thus _-ről, -re,_ _etc_... seem to be more natural than _-ról, -ra,_ _etc ... _ I agree.


Internet agrees. So the second, less preferred option is to treat such words as with front rounded harmony.

Thanks.


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## iezik

uress said:


> These words contain NOT ONLY CONSONANTS!!!





Encolpius said:


> I am not a linguist so I see only consonants.


The terms like "consonant" or "vowel" are used in different ways. There are different definitions.

Perhaps the most common definition is by dividing the standard letters as used in a language into two groups, vowels and consonants. The full names of "consonant" and "vowel" would be here "consonant letter" and "vowel letter", but this is rather long and usually avoided.

Another definition relies on phonetic similarity or equivalence when using or not using schwa as separate vowel when followed by continuants /l, ʎ, r, m, n, ŋ, ɲ/ and similar sounds. Such sounds can be a center of syllable. They can be called syllabic consonants or vowels.

Several orthographies use both /er/ and /r/ for the same sound. A Slovenian example pair is (_moder, vrt_) (in English _blu, garden_). When unstressed at the end of word, /er/ is used. When stressed, /r/ is used. There was a grammarian (Škrabec) that suggested same writing at both positions (he wrote vrt>vert), but this caused the people to change their pronunciation (vərt > vert), so this was not accepted. Some Slavic given names use /r/ also when unstressed at the end of words (e.g. Petr), but this is not widespread. Nowadays it would be possible to change orthography to include letter /ə/, but the othographies don't change fast. Such words would be then spelled modər, vərt, Peter, Kərən, Prešerən, Mülər.

The continuants from the second definition don't exhaust all the possiblities for loudest moments of the spoken word. The words like pssst, ssssss, shshshshsh, pshshsh are used for describing the sounds of animals or silent communication. It can be said that they have one syllable, without any vowel or continuant. Is there any common name for the sounds or letters that are in the peak of syllable? Can "vowel" be used also for such sounds or letters?

The phonetic-physical definition of vowel can be "a sound that has most of its energy gathered in narrow clear frequencies". This is similar to the definition of clear tones (vs. noise) by musisians. But then again, i don't believe that most linguists have used sound analyzers and are familiar with such notions.


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## francisgranada

Encolpius said:


> ... Francis, what suffixes would you use for Krk? (I think: Krkről, Krkre, Krket/Krköt?)


 Krkről, Krkre, Krket  (rather than Krköt).

I'd like to add that as I speak Slovak from my childhood, I do pronounce Slovak (Czech, etc.)  names/toponyms with syllabic _r/l_ correctly even when speaking Hungarian, i.e. not  _kürn/körn, etc_. Inspite of this, _krnra, krnról ... _sound unusual to me.


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## Zsanna

francisgranada said:


> ... Krket  (rather than Krköt).


I don't know how Krk would be pronounced in Hungarian - although this is _not_ our original question here but it could be connected - but this is exactly the root of the problem: in deciding what suffixes to add after a foreign word in Hungarian will depend on its pronunciation_ in_ Hungarian.
So if the original Krn should be pronounced as /körn/, the suffixes would be Krn-t, Krn-ből, Krn-re, etc. (I would add a hyphen only to separate the word from the suffix only here.)
(And, according to the same idea, if Krk is pronounced as /krik/, the Accusative would be indeed Krket.)


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## iezik

francisgranada said:


> Krkről, Krkre, Krket  (rather than Krköt).





Zsanna said:


> in deciding what suffixes to add after a foreign word in Hungarian will depend on its pronunciation_ in_ Hungarian.


Thanks. So if Slavs don't hear any difference between /r/ in /Krn/ and /Krk/, the Hungarians can still pronounce them differently. For translating minor proper place names without easy-to-find pronunciation it's then perhaps best to stick to the citation form of the proper name and the corresponding class name (mountain, area, town) inflected as necessary.


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## Zsanna

Don't forget that I started off from your help ("rhymes with _turn_" for Krn) and uress's affirmation (Krk would be pronounced as /krik/ in Hungarian), I cannot tell why there is a change from "ö" to "i". (The shwa is usually closest to "ö" in Hungarian.)

Unfortunately, I couldn't even reassure you about whether the use of x mountain, y valley, etc. would be better to use (even if in theory that could really solve your problem) because it largely depends on the text itself. It could sound artificial or unnecessarily complicated, if used often.
If you needed to use it only once, it could work (or pass) but I have the impression that you are looking for the opposite: using it regularly.
I think the most natural solution in that case would be adding the suffixes directly. (It is another example for how important context can be.)


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## uress

iezik said:


> So if Slavs don't hear any difference between /r/ in /Krn/ and /Krk/, the Hungarians can still pronounce them differently.



1. Not the r makes the difference but the n - k. Consonants (and of course also vowels) _always_ have an influence on their neighbours. If the sonant is not obvious a foreign language takes the closest vowel.
2. Every language is economical and uses what is the easiest to pronounce in the given language if it can be chosen.


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## francisgranada

A side note:

In Hungarian _Krn _in theory should be pronounced exactly _krn_, i.e. there is no special "Hungarian pronunciation" or rule for the pronunciation of words like this. If someone is familiar with the Slavic pronunciation of the syllabic _r/l_, then he/she will pronounce words like _Krn _spontaneously without inserting an extra vowel even when using such words in the Hungarian language.

(It's the same as e.g. in case of the family name _Müller _which is pronounced by many native Slavs like _miler/milr. _However those who are familiar with the pronunciation of the vowel _ü_, will pronounce it _müler/mülr_, even when speaking their Slavic mother tongue.)

P.S. To the contrary, I think that even a native Italian will pronounce _Michelangelo _like /maɪ.kəˈlæn.d͡ʒə.loʊ/ and not  /mi.kel.ˈan.d͡ʒe.lo/ when speaking English ...


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## uress

"In Hungarian _Krn _in theory should be pronounced exactly _krn_"

???

In Hungarian you have to follow the Hungarian language rules and not the slovakian ones.
And there is a very strict rule: there is no syllab without a vowel in Hungarian.
There are no sonants in Hungarian like in the Slavic languages. Sonant r as such just doesn't work in Hungarian, it has no vowel value.


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## Zsanna

Yes, but let us admit that we are baffled at the sight of a name that contains only three consonants and would try to pronounce them as we see them even if we find it difficult (close to impossible). At best we'd say 'I don't know how it should be pronounced'.


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## Encolpius

Zsanna said:


> Yes, but let us admit that we are baffled at the sight of a name that contains only three consonants



How about abbreviations or what you call it? We have some, I mean: stb. we do not say: es-té-bé but something like: sötöbö, right?


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## uress

Abbreviations aren't proper words and you have to learn their pronounciation (=meaning).
(Quite the same principle for every language even if they have phonetic writing.)

As for stb (és a többi): we do say either (é-)satöbbi or estébé. Sötöbö is a very very low/poor level... (if not for joking).


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## Zsanna

We are drifting away from the original question. 

Encolpius, I wrote "name" to refern to Krn. (What else? In this thread...). 
We don't (or almost never) have a problem with pronunciation of a _Hungarian_ word. (That is our advantage compared to the English about their language.)


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## franknagy

Encolpius said:


> Very interesting question.
> What vowel harmony is used in foreign words without vowels (mostly proper nouns)? *I have no idea.* It would be interesting to find it in a grammar book for foreigners.
> 
> 
> 
> I agree. I would use the same suffixes.
> 
> I can recall only one Hungarian word without vowels now: *hm*. And the verb derived is hümmög.
> I think we hear ö in those words without vowels, so the vowel harmony for ö/ü could work.
> I've never heard about Krn, but know the Croatian island Krk.
> 
> Francis, what suffixes would you use for Krk? (I think: Krkről, Krkre, Krket/Krköt?)


I used to have a colleague Mrs. Hrk. We usually called her in her absence Mrs. Háerká, so the accusative could be formed easily: "Háerkánét".


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