Why Some Languages Lack a P Sound

Ever wondered why some languages like Arabic have no p sound and others like Japanese and Vietnamese have a relative lack of p's? Watch this amateur linguistics video!
#language #languages #linguistics

[@annonymouslyannoying7297]

I will never take P's for granted ever again *sobs uncontrollably*

[@Jacob.D.]

Then PAY for it

[@Avicerox]

@@Jacob.D. BAY

[@sorayacatfriend]

sops uncontrollaply

[@chick2d]

this channel is the definition of underrated

[@ShauMapping]

I agree

[@snyn73]

seconded

[@totallynotnopysyoutubechanne]

Overrated (nippon) imagine

[@micosstar]

yes

[@snek_john_titor]

Yes

[@watchmakerful]

On the other hand, Slavic languages have [p] in many native words, but rarely have [f] in them (except interjections), [f] can occur either in loanwords or as a contraction of consonant clusters, usually [x] (or [h]) + [v]. The opposite process also occurs, especially in dialects: words with [f] are pronounced instead with [xv].

[@amabarbigrl]

You are right. I've heard that there is not any Serbian native word that starts on F. That's maybe not true, but the truth is that [p] is much more used than [f]. Before the name Filip was written and pronounced as Pilip. The sound [x] is even less frequent than [f] and [xv] is very often replaced with [f] in dialects. Instead of "hvala" (thanks) we usually say "fala" and instead of "uhvatiti" (to catch) we say "uvatiti" or "ufatiti" (both are not correct, but many people say like that) also "kafa" (coffee) was "kahva" before (muslims in Bosnia still say "kahva"). What is funny is that some people say "hvaliti" instead of "faliti" (which is correct form and means "to miss"), because they think "faliti" is incorrect form the same as "fala" and "fatati".

[@xXJ4FARGAMERXx]

@@amabarbigrl wait a second, we have a word in Arabic قهوة, which is pronounced /qahwa/, are you telling me it went like qahwa > kahwa > kahva > kaxva > kafa > kafe which is so similar to English/French cafe?

[@spaghettiking653]

@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx ‮‭I'm no expert in Arabic‭, but according to Wiktionary, the etymology is 'disputed',‭‭‭‭ qahwa is its own word. By cafe do you mean كافيه ? If so, then that supposedly comes from the French word, and the similarity with qahwa is supposedly just coincidental. ‮

[@ryuko4478]

@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx yup! Arabic ⟨قهوة⟩ /qahwa(h)/ → Turkish ⟨قهوه⟩/⟨kahve⟩ /kahve/ → Italian ⟨caffè⟩ /kaffɛ/ → French ⟨café⟩ /kafe/ → English ⟨cafe⟩/⟨café⟩/⟨caffè⟩ /kæfeɪ̯/ Arabic ⟨قهوة⟩ /qahwa(h)/ → Turkish ⟨قهوه⟩/⟨kahve⟩ /kahve/ → Italian ⟨caffè⟩ /kaffɛ/ → Dutch ⟨koffie⟩ /ˈkɔfi/ → English ⟨coffee⟩ /ˈkɒfi/

[@florianscompositions]

I think it's the same in Georgian 🇬🇪, which lacks a /f/ sound but has an aspired and an unaspired /p/ sound. The aspired /p/ is used to represent /f/, e.g., my name Florian would be ფლორიან (phlorian). Btw, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not an expert of Georgian.

[@HA-pu6ce]

As a Japanese I'd never realized that native words in my own language don't have P except when it's altered H, until you pointed it out. Wow, linguistics is cool!

[@ryuko4478]

that's why ぱぴぷぺぽ and ばびぶべぼ are derived from はひふへほ and why in rendaku /h/ becomes /b/ like in 星 (hosi) > 星星 (hosibosi)!

[@user-kp9of7re9q]

界隈では結構有名です

[@mucpougaming6092]

10/10 would argue for paizuri.

[@ryuko4478]

@@mucpougaming6092 paizuri is from oppai + suri, double /pp/ never becoming /h/ in the history of Japanese which should explain why there is an initial /p/ there.

[@mucpougaming6092]

@@ryuko4478 im aware and thats why i think paizuri should be heralded as a special and unique japanese word, for no reason other than linguistically :D

[@lopk4568]

The somali language also lacks the "P" sound. It was difficult for me to differentiate between the P and B sounds in English when I was learning it

[@seneca983]

Somali and Arabic are related so the lack of P might be due to the same reason.

[@lopk4568]

@@seneca983 maybe

[@valkeakirahvi]

@@seneca983 It's not, other Semitic languages much more closely related to Arabic (like Hebrew and Akkadian) have both b and p.

[@samantarmaxammadsaciid5156]

I think the consonant p was lacking in the original Afro-Asiatic, for that Soomaali and `Arabic still retain! It is the f that turned to p, rather than the p turning to f!

[@valkeakirahvi]

@@samantarmaxammadsaciid5156 I'm not an expert of this, but what I can find p has been reconstructed into both Proto-Afroasiatic and Proto-Semitic. Is there a competing reconstruction you are familiar with?

[@ryuko4478]

Here's a list of things I wanted to point out: @0:25 that is correct for modern loans in Modern Standard Arabic but loaning foreign [p] as /f/ in Arabic is not uncommon historically or modernly in an informal manner, many Malay words in the Arabian peninsula are loaned with a /f/ when they have a /p/ in Malay, also historically Ancient Greek /pʰ/ was loaned as /f/ but unaspirated /p/ was loaned as /b/, with some exceptions like Παλαιστῑ́νη /palai̯stǐːnɛː/ being loaned as /filastˤiːn/. @1:45 it's not "pronounced [p] out of convenience" it's that historical /Qp/ [pp] and /Np/ [mp] where not affected by the sound changes that lenited [p] to [ɸ] to [h], similar to how /hu/ isn't pronounce [ɸɯ̟ᵝ] "out of convenience" but rather than original [ɸu] never shifted away from it's original sound because the roundedness (whether protruded or compressed) for the /u/ preserved its bilabial nature, Japanese speakers are capable of saying /Nh/ in compounds like in 半々 /haNhaN/ "half-half" and /Qh/ [hh] in loans like /maQha/ [mahha] for "Mach (number/speed)". @video the overall video lacks looking into why *specifically* [p] gets lost, because all of the cardinal stops ([p t k b d g]) can lenite to sounds like [f θ x v ð ɣ], the thing is it's very frequent for specifically [p] and [g] to be dropped out of the cardinal six, suggesting that there is a tendency to avoid voiceless sounds at the front of the mouth and voiced sounds at the back of the mouth (further hinted at by the extreme rarity of [ɢ] compared to [q]). it should also be noted that with Arabic specifically the story might be more complex, while a very popular theory posits that Arabic only recently before the Islamic conquests lost its /p/ there's actually little evidence for that, Arabic *might* have not had any /p/ sounds for thousands of years for all we know, as most Semitic languages lack a /p/ sound (with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Akkadian being exceptions not the rule!) and many Afro-Asiatic branches also seem to lack a /p/ in many of its languages that might mean that the proto-language might have not had a /p/ (especially Amazigh, Cushitic, and maybe Chadic), and even in the languages that do have /p/ the rest of the labial series looks uneven, for example Middle Egyptian had this /m p β f w/ for it's labials, compared to Arabic /m b f w/, and Proto-Amazigh /m (b) β f w/.

[@hengsikai2862]

Totally agree with what you said about /p/ in Japanese. A lot of people (textbooks, language teachers) like to explain synchronic sound variations in a language (where a single underlying morphophoneme has different surface forms across different inflectional, derivational forms, etc) by saying "it's easier to pronounce" or "it's more convenient" and stuff... but the real reason for a lot of these variations is actually due to historical sound changes affecting the same sounds differently in different environments.

[@afesfrytuykjhyj]

I agree however, to a comment this long about inaccuracy, I have to say one word. NERD!

[@tisjustangie]

Rly interesting but i realized after reading most of it that I'll forget all of this in about 5 minutes

[@EragonShadeslayer]

Where can I learn this sort of thing?

[@dimaskr2000]

Thanks for the video! This reminds me: I've always wondered why many Sundanese speakers cannot differentiate p, f, and v. They mostly resort to using /p/ for all of them since it's in their alphabet, which is somehow the opposite of Arabic, Vietnamese, and Japanese.

[@exciton9861]

As a sundanese speaker, hardly but surely i'll get used to it. Its only because its appear on alot of loanwords

[@LDaz]

Arabic has F (ف) but it's much softer than the English f

[@ryuko4478]

@@LDaz There is no significant difference between Arabic ⟨ف⟩ /f/ and English ⟨f⟩ /f/, they sound almost if not completely identical.

[@LDaz]

@@ryuko4478 no they don't lol. Its fa and ef. يعني بتلاحض لو قدرت تتكلم عربي

[@ryuko4478]

@@LDaz بعرف اتكلم عربي، ولكن انت تقارن اسم الحرف وليس صوت الحرف، الصوت هو نفسه أو على الأقل مشابه جدا بحيث لا يلزم تمييزه، انما اسم الحرف الانجليزي (إِف) مختلف عن اسم الحرف العربي (فاء أو فا).

[@karonhiio_d]

As a member speaker of one of the Haudenosaunee languages (Mohawk), our language family is known for not having any native labial sounds. When we adopt words in Mohawk we normally convert a -b/p- sounds into -gw-, such as the name “Peter” is some dialects is said as “Kwíte.” Then we covert the -m- sound into either -onw- or -w- such as the name for “Mary it can be said as either “Onwá:ri” or just “Wá:ri.”

[@dayalasingh5853]

I've been learning Mohawk recently, it's such a cool language.

[@cupcakkeisaslayqueen]

Isn't mohawk from the Iroquoian family? That's the family known for lacking labial sounds

[@trafo60]

Okay, but another crucial detail is that /p/ is slightly harder to pronounce than other voiceless stops. Basically, for phonetic reasons, the further towards the front of the mouth you go, the harder voiceless stops become; the further towards the back, the harder voiced stops become. Which is why /g/ also has a certain tendency to be lost, and why voiced uvulars are especially rare.

[@fanqa9765]

a very similar thing applies with implosives and ejectives, which is why velar and uvular ejectives are most common, and bilabial and alveolar implosives are most common

[@haroothy]

Interesting, this is consistent with how the Arabic consonant ق /q/ is pretty hard to pronounce, it even rarely occurs in the dialects.

[@sakamotosan1887]

Strictly speaking, Japanese does not have an 'F' sound. It has a bilabial fricative, the same sound in Greek that gives us the 'PH' digraph in English being pronounced as 'F'. It's more like an 'F' if you pronounced it with your lips instead of your lips and teeth. In other words, t's a bilabial fricative rather than a labiodental fricative.

[@seneca983]

I'd say "F sound" can refer to both unvoiced labiodental fricative [f] and unvoiced bilabial fricative [ɸ] so saying that Japanese doesn't have an F sound is a bit wrong or at least misleading (though it's of course fair to note that it's a bit different from typical English F sound).

[@henryrichard7619]

For what it’s worth, lots of languages that developed f sounds went from /ɸ/ to /f/, like Hebrew and Greek (presumably the reason why phi, which is now pronounced /f/ in Greek, is used for the bilabial fricative). It seems to be a sort of unstable sound that shifts easily - I think Japanese has retained it before /ɯ/ since that vowel is formally pronounced with compressed rounding, which makes /ɸ/ sort of easier than the /h/ (or /ç/) it shifted to before other vowels. Since it’s becoming a separate phoneme in loanwords I wouldn’t be super surprised if in the future it shifts to /f/ - but I’m no linguist or prophet so I’m probably horribly wrong and it’s not going to happen lol

[@thepanremastered]

എന്താണ് ഫക്?

Nice job on this video! I learned a lot.

[@dalubwikaan161]

Here in my country (Philippines), northern luzonic languages don't have the letter p. Most of the time when the tagalog words use "P", it will become "F" on those Northern Luzonic languages like the "Ibanag Language".

[@DinoBryce]

Interesting in the way Philippines is pronounced (even though it comes from Greek)

[@urinstein1864]

There is very little info on Japanese language history easily accessible on the web, so I very much appreciate the point about Japanese p shifting to h. There more I learn about phonetics (Japanese or other), the more sense the kana system makes. As a European, the connection between h and b/p has eluded me for a long time as opposed to the other dakuten uses. I think what applies to P also applies to B, which likes to shift to V a lot, at least in European languages. I believe it has done that in all Germanic languages bar High German (compare "to have" vs "haben, "love" vs "Liebe"), in Modern Greek Beta has come to represent a V sound, and I think Castilian Spanish doesn't distinguish at all between B and V?

[@spaghettiking653]

As for Japanese language history, the English language Wiktionary is a good place to see the evolutions of words. Many common words have etymologies associated with them from which you can see lots of these evolutions, such as the progression from /p*/ (Proto-Japonic) to modern f, e.g. in 人 (hito); I don't know if you speak Japanese, so I can't say if it'll interest you though :) Unfortunately, you're right that there isn't much teaching about the truly ancient Japanese language; mostly just superficial glances at what the language sounded like during more recent periods. That said, the video 日本語の歴史 is certainly an interesting watch if you do speak Jap. Also you're right about b > v, certainly in Spanish many Latin /b/s have turned into /v/s and then been merged into the sound for /b/ again, so b and v are basically the same sound, β. Ain't that interesting how that affects so many languages?

[@seneca983]

There's a Japanese youtuber named Omizan Sakamoto who had a fun video on using dakuten (which turns unvoiced consonants into voiced consonants in kana) in Latin alphabet. So e.g. instead of D you could use T with a dakuten. I'll give a link to the video in a separate comment (so that this comment doesn't get removed).

[@spaghettiking653]

@@seneca983 I don't know whether you already posted the link, but if so, then it must've already been shadowbanned anyway.

[@seneca983]

@@spaghettiking653 I did. If you're curious you should be able to find it through the title which is "アルファベットに濁点を付けてみた Dakuten: a Japanese diacritic sign".

[@spaghettiking653]

@@seneca983 Ah thanks a lot, I checked out his channel earlier today and it looks like a real treasure :)) thanks for showing us!

[@lizavetabudnik3140]

that's a cool video, thanks! I'm sure your channel will grow fast :)

[@harveylam4294]

Technically, that wasn't the whole story for Vietnamese; while /pʰ/ did disappear from the language after spirantising to /f/ (likely during the Middle Vietnamese period), that doesn't explain how it lacks /p/ word-initially. Both were likely separate phonemes in Proto-Austroasiatic and Proto-Vietic. Historically, there appeared to be a chain shift in the initials that went somewhat like /p/ > /ɓ/ > /m/ (original *m- stays as /m/) from Proto-Vietic to becoming modern Vietnamese, leading to words like 'bốn' and 'muối' coming from PV *poːnʔ and *ɓɔːjʔ. The same process nearly happened with the dental series as well (via /t/ > /ɗ/ > /n/, where we get 'đẻ' and 'nước' from PV *tɛh and *ɗaːk) but /t/ was preserved as a phoneme from other processes, frequently from the fortition of /s/ > /t/. These changes were applied to Sino-Vietnamese loanwords as well.

[@dankmemewannabe7692]

It’s also really cool seeing how some older Vietnamese features are preserved in other Vietic languages :0 I don’t know Mường, but I remember the word for nước being like the example you gave, so like “đák,” and also the word for đi in Mường is ty :0 Do you know how I find some comprehensive history of Vietnamese linguistics? My Vietnamese is bad, but it’s okay if that’s all you point me to :0

[@harveylam4294]

Ferlus' and Haudricourt's works on Vietnamese and other Mainland SEA languages are great resources; Gong's 'Chinese loans in Old Vietnamese with a sesquisyllabic phonology' is also pretty interesting. I recall reading some considerable corpus of Middle Vietnamese text as well (not the de Rhodes' dictionary), but I haven't been able to find that :(

[@pabs4883]

An interesting opposite of this is korean, which often uses the P sound and even has two different letters for P sounds (ㅃ and ㅍ), all while having no F anywhere in their language or writing system. Loan words like coffee and sofa are written and pronounced with P.

[@birgbirg111]

Haha, same in my mother tongue - which is Chechen. We have many loanwords from Russian and we changed all the fs to ps. Examples: confetti -> conpetti, France -> Prance, Finland -> Pinland, federation -> pederation

[@hachiko9]

I came here to say the exact same thing 😄

[@davidjacobs8558]

Korean don’t have V sound either. R and L are not differentiated, at least not in English way.

[@josefruiz3435]

“P has a pretty frequent habit of turning into F” Arcade game named Puckman:

[@learnurduwithsara1068]

I have always thought about it. This is an interesting explanation.

[@yeozdemir75]

Good video, subscribed!

[@mathy4605]

Just a minor correction: "Pirahã" is best pronounced as "Pirahan". Completely eliminating the nasal sound at the end feels very strange to my ears.

[@MrMirville]

Pirahan has few vowels (a, i, u) few consonants but it has tones, which makes its phonetic system as elaborate as any other languages'.

[@anomalapithecus]

pirahã is the portuguese name for the language, although it is my understanding that the language has very small vowel inventory only if the analysis ignores the lengthiness and nasalisation distinctions. (But. it has been a while since i've researched it, so, citation needed, lol)

[@chandrahasanand4622]

This phonemic shift away from P is super interesting considering it happens in so many different languages! One language that i didnt see being mentioned in the comments is Kannada. A lot of native Old Kannada words underwent the phonemic shift from P to H directly (with no F in the middle i think?). Which is why when other dravidian languages have similar words starting with P, Kannada has it starting with H. Examples include- Milk - pāl(u) in Tamil/Telugu vs hālu in Kannada The number 10 - pattu in Tamil vs hattu in Kannada Pig - pandi in Telugu vs handi in Kannada Name - peyar/pēru in Tamil/Telugu vs hesaru in Kannada and so on... However, kannada keeps the letter p in words that it borrows from sanskrit (and there are a lot of words it borrows from sanskrit) so the phoneme is still pretty common in the language. It's a very interesting phenomenon!

[@santhoshrider7348]

In the case of kannada it might be due to the change in script which could have caused confusion among the people. Then the confusion was normalised. Then it got standardized.

[@user-bp5qz5jd3f]

Hokkien, Hockchow are the only Sinitic languages that retained the original "p" starting in words where it became "f" in other Sinitic languages. For example, 放 is "pang" in Hokkien, "fong" in Cantonese and "fang" in Mandarin. Not only that but it retained the original "h" initial too, for words where it became "f" in other Sinitic languages. For example, 風 is "hong" in Hokkien, "fong" in Mandarin and "fong" in Cantonese. Even the province that the language hailed from, which is 福建. 福建 is "Hokkien" in Hokkien, "Fokkien" in Cantonese and "Fu jian" in Mandarin. *pronunciation may vary across speakers. Mine is based on the way people in my area pronounce these words.

[@hengsikai2862]

Not just Hokkien and Hokchew, but almost the entire Min branch of Chinese.

[@yeungcharlie7296]

What an awful comment. Your romanization of those languages is such a mess. If you dunno the exact romanization, please use IPA. Also, the middle Chinese initial of 風 is/p/, not /h/. The reason why most min languages pronounce it as /h/ is, that most Sinitic languages underwent the /p/ to /f/ sound change while min does not, when min languages later import the 風pronounciation from mainstream Chinese, they could not pronounce the /f/, so they mimic it as /h/.

[@hengsikai2862]

@@yeungcharlie7296 The middle Chinese initial of 風 was actually /p/, not /b/, as it falls under the voiceless tone category.

[@yeungcharlie7296]

@@hengsikai2862 Sorry, my fault, corrected.

[@thegoldendragonacs]

Now knowing what I know, the question arises as to why the “b” sound was chosen in place of the “p” sound in words adapted into Arabic? Was this just the only choice that would’ve made sense, or is there actually a story behind that choice? Also, this is quite good as an explanation. Very clean and concise as a script. One would even say that this is classroom ready!

[@LingoLizard]

Because the b sound is very similar sounding to the p sound, the only difference is that b has a vibration in the vocal chords

[@AdamCrazyDude2007]

Some of us do use a special letter for the p sound: پ (it's also a full letter in Persian and Kurdish), however, it's often substituted for ب (b sound). Same goes for ڤ (v sound, also a full letter in Kurdish) for ف (f sound)

[@SerbAtheist]

Most languages approximate sounds they lack from foreign loanwords with phonologically close sounds they do have. For example, many languages do not have the 'th' sound, so it is usually approximates either as 's' or 't' and similarly the voiced 'th' sound (in 'this') is approximated either as 'z' ('zis') or 'd' ('dis').

[@Bacopa68]

@@SerbAtheist "Mayday, Mayday" "Bremerhaven Coast Guard here. What is your emergency?" "We're sinking!" "Oh, what are you sinking about?"

[@MrMirville]

The sound of P definitely exists in classical Arabic but it results either from a hamza crowning or followed up with a fa : (i)'flaTun is pronounced as Platon, or from any voiceless sibilant such as h or s followed with a b : isbania is pronounced as ispania. It is just considered as the result of the combination of other sounds, like sh, ch, sch, sci, which in so many languages have resulted from s + h or s + y merging into one sound. There is no specific letter or letter combination for the zh sound which is but rarely written as such (except in Proper nouns such as Zhivago) but it is very frequently heard in words such as garage, vision.

[@Garfield_Minecraft]

Arabic writing system is so beautiful

[@rudigernassauer6075]

I first wondered why in the Cameroonian language Éwondo "French", "français" is "plési". Eventually I got it: The letter "f" is substituted by "p", "r" substituted by "l", the nasalized "an" is substituted by plan "e" and the accent is shifted to the first syllable. Their word for "German", "ndjaman", is more comprehensible.

[@WagnerdsClan]

It’s so fascinating and makes so much sense that the Japanese writing systems reflect this as well! For example the character は, it is a devoiced consonant sound, but when you add this mark ば a “ducted” it becomes a voiced sound. HA becomes voiced as BA. Then lastly the plosive mark (don’t know the technical name) can be added ぱ to turn HA into PA. This mark indicates the sound is a plosive sound and requires a larger amount of air to make the plosive noise with your lips.

[@camelcaseco]

nice video! im not sure "pee" and "eff" are the most accurate names for these sounds but it certainly gets the message across so i wont complain.. well explained

[@sammo7017]

Hi, I speak Syriac Aramaic and Arabic and would like to add an information regarding Arabic. It seems that Arabic has dropped the letter P because it abandoned a Semitic feature that we call in Syriac as (the Qushai and Rukakh) which means (hard and lean -sounds-) this feature exists in 6 letters : B - G - D - K - P - T These 6 letters have 2 pronunciations, the Qushai which is the main one (the one above) and the Rukakh which makes the sounds become like this : V - Gh - Dh (th as in the) - Kh - F - Th (as in theatre) As you guessed the P sound and the F sound are the same letter ܦ݁ for P and ܦ݂ for F The same word can accept the two pronunciations depending on known rules or cases, for example the word ܦ݁ܽܘܡܳܐ which means 'mouth' is pronounced 'Pumo' but if you added ܕ before it to mean (because of - that of mouth) the word will be become ܕܦ݂ܽܘܡܳܐ 'dFumo' And Arabic doesn't have this anymore and treats the two sounds of 4 of these letters as separate different letters

[@ryuko4478]

Hello! Semitic linguist here: The process you explained here is a feature, called begadkefat, unique to Aramaic and versions of Hebrew that are heavily affected by Aramaic (basically most versions of Hebrew), it's the lenition of post-vocallic non-geminated unemphatic oral plosives (aka /p b t d k g/) into fricatives [f v θ ð χ ʁ], to explain the terms: post-vocallic (after vowels) non-geminated (not double) unemphatic (not [tˁ] or [q]) oral (not [ʔ h ħ ʕ]) plosives ([p b t d tˁ k g q ʔ]) fricatives ([f v θ ð s z ʃ χ ʁ ħ ʕ h]) Later those sounds became phonemic but that's the origin of this system. It is not "Semitic feature" and Arabic didn't "abandoned" it, it never happened in Arabic to begin with. In fact the lack of /p/ is much more common within Semitic than having it, out of the dozens and dozens of Semitic languages in the Middle East and Horn od Africa only few are attested with a native /p/ (Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Maltese, Cypriot Arabic, etc ), every other Semitic language lacks a /p/ sound As for Arabic having /θ ð χ ʁ/ those are not from /t d k g/ those are from kther sources, compare Syriac ܚܙܝܪܐ (/ħzira/ in the East and /ħziro/ in the West) and Classical Arabic /χinziːr/, here Arabic /χ/ is related to Syriac /ħ/ not to Syriac /k/-/χ/

[@sammo7017]

@@ryuko4478 Wow! Tawdi sagi, I didn't know that it's almost exclusive for Aramaic, thanks for clarifying I think I got that info wrong from somewhere

[@Twice_Tess]

honestly, the most unpeliavably interesting video I've seen in a while.

[@AjibPuteh]

kinda unique how a lot of languages shifted some words from p to f. because in Malaysia (it's acual more of malay speakers than malaysians), we tend to do the reverse. instead of pronouncing f, we pronounce it as p. tho, this only happens in dialects and not the entire language itself.

[@whisperSSG8]

very interesting, this is the opposite for indonesian and javanese, where f actually turns into p. For example faham (loaned from arabic) is often pronouced paham. nice vid tho

[@birgbirg111]

Fatima Patima

[@EDeeseLex1]

P is so shy in English. Pneumonia, Pseudo, the P is silent before n and s, then when it meets h, it makes and F sound (Phillip).

[@p3achyyp8p16]

Keep it up!

[@afesfrytuykjhyj]

So far, you are the first youtuber i have seen to pronounce Maori better than most other channels. I was so glad when i didnt here "Mayory". Thats how bad people are at saying it.

[@v7ran]

Ayy glad to see my language! IIRC the only two words in Vietnamese that start with p that isn’t paired with h (ph) are pin (your example) and pía, part of “bánh pía”, a durian pastry.

[@alal7194]

The opposite is in Georgian language where there is no F letter so loanwords with F are pronounced with P, same was with old Armenian language later F letter was added into Armenian alphabet. Such F to P transformations are common in some languages of the Caucausus region

[@sehr.geheim]

In my bavarian dialect there's no p. It's almost fully merged with b and the aspiration is completely gone.

[@tcoren1]

Hebrew has this feature where bgdcpt (but in modern hebrew just bcp) have two pronounciations, depending on where in the word are they. A soft b is a v sound; a soft c is a ch/h sound (this is not the english ch or h sound, I dunno what it's called); a soft p is an f sound. I believe the rule is, you use the hard sound if it's the beginning of a word or it's after a stop, and the soft sound elsewhere. You can use a small dot to indicate the hard sound, but nobody does it except sometimes with loanwords that break the rules like jeep

[@konstkaras]

I heard some rumours that some loanwords in Hebrew go with P instead of F (hence it's opposite to Arabic). Is it wrong?

[@rutkauljanowa]

I'm a proud 28th subscriber. You bought me with this video

[@Applestripe]

Also phonetically it's easier to pronounce a voiced front consonant than a voiceless one, like with back consonants, but the opposite

[@09onine]

before the Malays adapt to use roman alphabet, the Malays were mainly using arabic alphabet which were adapted from the arabian traders but the malay language has some vocabularies that aren't exist in arabic alphabet so the malays added few of their alphabets which became the "Jawi" variant of arabic alphabet which includes the "ch" sound and also the "p" sound.

[@fayhay8011]

This is true,there are other letters which the Malays create it to make the Abjad writing system more fitting to the Malay language.The examples are: ڠ (ng) ۏ(v) چ(ch) ڽ(ny)

[@09onine]

@@fayhay8011 I think the first one is supposed to be "ch" sound like "chat" or "cheese". "Kh" is ‌ك

[@fayhay8011]

@@09onine oh yea,my mistake,I'll edit it

[@Abhijeet-id3fs]

I'm a Hindi native, the aspirated p फ [pʰ] in my language has largely shifted to फ़ [f]

[@ryuko4478]

As far as I can tell that's more of an Urban thing in Hindi and in rural areas it's more common to say [pʰ] in any case it's pretty cool!

[@sollrandomguy]

The ending was golden

[@Sunflower-vq6vl]

In Japanese, /h/ came from /p/ historically

[@boghund]

He says it at the end

[@nehcooahnait7827]

@@Physche p with an aspiration ph, while the p faded out and the h remains. Japanese languages f also sounds like an h with a very gentle f sound ahead.

[@LingoLizard]

No, /h/ did not come from /p/ *directly*. It first shifted from /p/ to /ɸ/, and THEN shifted from /ɸ/ to /h/, which is a sound change that occurred in some other languages such as hawaiian (proto-polynesian /afi/ > hawaiian /ahi/).

[@kanef_videos]

old irish actually has absolutely no Ps anywhere, not even a letter in ogham, and it's also pretty absent in frequency outside of loanwords. meanwhile then you have welsh which uses it everywhere, but only with a k to p sound shift from the rest of celtic that gauls also had for some reason

[@kekroneplay4014]

The channel deserves much more attention than it got

[@JayaSaputra]

That is interesting because for most Indonesians it’s easier to say p than f. Most Indonesian words containing f were derived from foreign languages like Arabic. But most of the time we pronounce the f as p.

[@ilghiz]

2:37 "except after U" Did you mean "except before U"? F comes before U in Fuji. Great explanation, thank you 👍

[@josiahsaquiton8261]

Vietnamese historically had two p, /p/ and /pʰ/, the former merge with /ɓ/ while the latter became /f/

[@silpheedTandy]

the intonation of this guy's voice makes me feel like i'm watching an infomercial, haha. (i'm not complaining)

[@ezelio]

meanwhile sundanese struggling to not spell P

[@yuvalne]

Hebrew is somewhere in the middle of this shift, by the way. we have the /p/ phoneme which is realised as [p] when it's at the beginning of words or has emphasis in the root, and as [f] (historically [ɸ]) when not.

[@akutomo9080]

in my native language, Javanese, the F and P relationship is the other way around. We use a lot of P sound but almost no F sound. When we use word from other language with F (and sometime V), we turn it into P.

[@infinite5795]

Somewhat similar happens with Indo-aryan and Dravidian languages, which somewhat follow Sanskrit grammar( the former ones) or influenced by it( the latter ones). Sanskrit grammar( Astadhyayi) as codified by the Hindu Grammarian Panini in the 8th-6th BCE and Tamil grammar Tollakappiyam( 3rd century BCE), didn't have F, Q, Z sounds originally as the grammar books of other indian languages, which resulted in nearly no native Indian language having it( with some exceptions like Urdu, Punjabi borrowing it artificially from Persian-Arabic and Marathi, Assamese having similar internal developments on their own) . We traditionally have one non-aspirated p and K ( प and ख as in Hindi for instance) and an aspirated p and K( फ and ख़ as in Hindi). Indian speakers can easily make out loanwords from Arabic and Persian which have these aforesaid sounds more specifically and can only pronounce it with effort but out of laziness, we tend to pronounce F, Q, Z as indigenous Ph, Kh, J. We do have P in all our languages though. It is the reason, why Indian scripts didn't have letters for F, Q, Z until recently, many still use the letters corresponding to their native approximate sound value or with slight modifications to them by adding nuqta/Bindu to the already present native letter. For example in Hindi, ph is transcribed in Devanagari as फ, but F is फ़. Kh is ख, Q is ख़ J is ज, Z is ज़ Bonus- the hard guttural g of Arabic( Ghayn) is transcribed as an allophone of native g( ग), that is ग़.

[@theodiscusgaming3909]

ख़ is not aspirated, it's a voiceless velar fricative /x/

[@paradoxelle481]

Another thing to note on comparative phonology is Korean has p, but not f, so while the loan word in Mandarin is kafei, in Japanese koohii, in Korean it's something like keopi, or koppi. I don't why it is, but it's interesting to think that the loan words for 'copy' and 'coffee' sound similiar in Korean.

[@jeff__w]

Yes, and the English loan words _file_ (for computer file) and _fashion_ sound like “pile” and “passion,” respectively. The word for _France_ in Korean is pronounced (roughly) “peulangseu.” (Consistently, Korean lacks _f’s_ voiced equivalent _v_ as well.)

[@rm689]

In Filipino, coffee is called kape (from cafe in spanish)

[@chrisamies2141]

Coffee is 'kopi' in Indonesian and Malay also.

[@LDaz]

Brother, if you need any help with the arabic language and it's dialects i can definitely help. There's alot of nuance depending on locale and dialect that could be confusing, especially as "standard" Arabic is still spoken with an accent or even not spoken at all in some places (like the maghreb or egypt)

[@therongjr]

Hindi even differentiates between aspirated (प) and unassisted! (फ) . . . as well as the dotted aspirated version (फ़) standing in for the "f" sound in loan words from Persian or Arabic!

[@StealthySceptile]

Interesting.

[@thegoldendragonacs]

Interesting.

[@ennardboy]

Paie and paa:im not dead

[@frenchertoast]

I found hebrew kinda has the opposite case- where it's rare to found f, and much to found p. Ths most common case f appears in is in the coda, whereas p is never in the coda except for loanwords.

[@Moses_VII]

Arab here: I must watch. Too interesting. Why do we lack a P in standard Arabic? Well, let me tell you, in Iraq, we call a man who fixes flat tyres a "pentcherchy", from the English word "puncture" plus Turkish suffix "chi". The comparison with Japanese was fascinating. I almost forgot about how Japanese turned p into f into h, which I learned when I was curious about why they wrote p as a h with a half-voiced mark. The connection between h, b, and p in hiragana was strange, until I read about the half-voice mark's history on Wikipedia. This video reminded me of that. Did you know that Arabs used to turn the p in loanwords into f? Parsi, Farsi is an example. Plato, Eflaton is another. Now we turn it into b, but I think f is better than b. For example, fentsherjy instead of bentsherjy as a way to write pentcherchy without using Persian letters chim (gim with three dots) and pa (like ba, with three dots).

[@ryuko4478]

We still use /f/ to loan foriegn [p] just not as often as before, Saudis for example consistently loan Malay words with /p/ as /f/. Historically with Greek /pʰ/ was usually loaned as /f/ and /p/ was usually loaned as /b/.

[@PeterNguyen2k4]

it is true that we "mostly" pronounce "p" just like "f" in Vietnamese but it's only when p with h "ph" is more likely to pronounce like "f" other than that "p" is just like "b" and sometimes it can create some funny situations

[@ThunderK01]

Hebrew also changes /p/ to /f/ depending on the position of the letter for P (פ) and the letter preceding it. פ - F פּ - P

[@ryuko4478]

in Hebrew it's a different process called begadkefat where ALL non-emphatic stops (/p t k b d g/ but not /tˁ q ʔ/) were lenited into fricatives ([f θ χ v ð ʁ]) after vowels, which later became a phonemic distinction in Mishnaic Hebrew, in Modern Hebrew /θ ð ʁ/ were merged back into /t d g/ because many speakers had difficulty pronouncing those (ironic since the dominant pronunciation of /r/ became [ʀ~ʁ̞])so now the only pairs are /p/-/f/, /b/-/v/, and /k/-/χ/, but that's not the case for other liturgical varieties like Yemenite Hebrew. Interestingly Samaritan Hebrew completely lacks phonemic begadkefat, as it wasn't part of the Mishnaic tradition! In any case hope that explains why Arabic having /f/ with no /p/ but not have /v/ either is different.

[@hoangminhtran1100]

Slight correction (from a Vietnamese): In Vietnamese we do pronounce the 'p' (in 'pin') properly in the beginning of the word. In fact, all of my friends along with most of the people i met pronounce it as a 'p' with slight nasalisation.

[@octobixer]

In arabic we have a letter for p that we use to distinguish it from b but its not that commonly used it looks like this پ and is a loan from persian which does have p

[@theepicninja1936]

Arabic: lacks a P sound Jawi: does it for them Malays: calling people pp's now

[@acompletelynormalhuman6392]

I thought the text was stylized Elian script for a second

[@mep6302]

Sometimes I can't pronounce the p in Spanish (native language) while speaking spontaneously. I don't know why. But I change it to a soft b (it's represented similar to ß with IPA). Even words like "papá" (dad) occasionally I'll pronounce it as "babá" (with the soft b)

[@king.jaguar]

In my language (Mam) there is no F sound. Some people would pronounce loan words containing an F with a P instead, which is the opposite of what you just discussed.

[@b1battledroid882]

Also sorta explains how the "F" sound is sometimes represented by "Ph" in english.

[@dolorsitametconsectur]

I think that’s just because Greek used the bilabial fricative /φ/ which is pronounced in the same place as a p but in the same way as an h

[@Monibak]

You have seen my language yet lol😂😂😂 it’s even worse than this except we have P, F, and words so hard to say 😂😂😂

[@AhmetwithaT]

I had a friend whose native language was Arabic and I saw in him that if he really tried, he could pronounce P but during normal speech he defaulted to B. Turning policy into bolicy, for instance.

[@deece79able]

There is such a character in a dialect of arabic, but not MSA I believe. This is a statement from wikipedia. The third letter of the Kurdo-Arabic alphabet. Its name is پا‎(pa) and it has the sound of English P. It is preceded by ب‎ (bi) and followed by ت‎ (ti)‎

[@Theo-oh3jk]

Japanese /p/ only survived when it was geminated intervocalically. It shifted first to a bilabial fricative (not quite an /f/, more breathy and weak) and then happily shifted into an h, probably via an intermediary voiceless labiovelar fricative.

[@devofficialchannel]

Yoruba also lacks a /p/ sound, instead it has a /kp/ sound (ironically written as ). And you pronounce the /k/ and /p/ all at once. So Yoruba's "p" sound is more of a labiovelar stop than just bilabial.

[@ntombi105]

2:02 "... p has... frequent habit of turning into f" Explains so much. In South Africa, some languages (eg, Nguni languages) use f (say in the word "funa" = want) while other languages (eg, Tsonga & Venda), not too far from the region of the "f" language will make a pf sound ("funa" becomes "pfuna"). It's sort of this middle ground between a p and an f, but sounds like a very hard f... it's hard for me to make that sound. Interesting

[@syasol]

interesting, i've experienced the opposite with malay and tamil pronunciations, speakers tend to turn f-sounds to p-sounds. i think it's because F isn't native to the languages.

[@2life4ever777]

in Indonesia too! People in the rural areas find harder to pronounce the "f" and would rather make a "p" sound instead

[@lampboy926]

In the Japanese's case, The /f/ sound mentioned in the video is actually /φ/, which is bilabial fricative(sound that is pretty simillar to /f/ but you pronounce it only with your lips, which is sound when you try to pronounce "wh"o).

[@Arviragus13]

Nitpick, but the Japanese "f" is, outside of loanwords, an allophone of 'h' and is bilabial (and optional in some accents)

[@sadiq_op7800]

Fun fact, in the past, when Arabs Arabized words with P in them, they turned them into Fs, and now I understand why lol

[@IINGHII]

Exactly my same thought. I realized that when I was translating singapore to singafora 😂 and Plato to Aflaton

[@obay_humran]

in the old hijazi dielect there was p (arabic )

[@IINGHII]

شلون؟

[@gabriellawrence6598]

I've been wondering about this for a long time. I thought Arabic was the oddball in this case.

[@VideoNOLA]

So you're partly saying that, given time, P tends to shift to F and ultimately H in certain (especially ancient) languages. Makes sense. Would be cool if we had a phonetic term for that shift and/or descriptor for languages in which this tends to happen (or not) the most.

[@ryuko4478]

Ancient languages? in Japanese it happened around the 8th century, in German around the 11th century, in Persian it happened around the 9th century, in Indo-Aryan languages it is happening *right now* Just because you are more aware of it in Ancient languages (because it is kore clear then) doesn't mean Ancient Languages had tendencies that don't happen much anymore

[@Couryielle]

my native language tagalog has /p/ but no /f/, so being told that people find it easier to pronounce /p/ as /f/ is wild to me when i myself often slip into pronouncing /f/ as /p/ when i'm not careful 😅

[@aymnswlm9089]

It is true that old safaitic arabic had /P/ and it became /f/ In the safaitic you will hear p instead of f always even they got the same letter

[@holierthanmao1609]

As far as I know, Indo-aryan languages never changed their p's to f. Rather, f only occurs in loanwords for most. However, I have noticed some speakers switch aspirated ph to f. Change in progress

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

I've read somewhere that one reason p often changes to f is because our jaws have become shorter with modern diets. Hunter-gatherers will chew a lot more tough food that causes the jaw to grow larger, and when the jaw is further forward it's easy to make a p sound and somewhat hard to make an f sound but when it's further back the f is easier. So the reason is (maybe) ultimately because of soft food

[@ryuko4478]

This is actually based on one really bad study that assumes that humans only developed overbites very very recently (which might be true) and that before than labiodental sounds like [f v] did not exist or were exceedingly rare. But that's not true at all as we have many languages with labiodentals that have been attested for thousands of years not to mention reconstructed languages.

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

@@ryuko4478 AHH cool. I thought it sounded a bit weird. Especially that f sounds should be impossible. The core idea that labiodental sounds become slightly more easy than labial sounds, still seems fairly reasonable to me.

[@ryuko4478]

@@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug The effects would be slight at best, but yeah it's not completely unaffected, perhaps it affect labiodentals (upper teeth on lower lip) vs dentolabials (lower teeth on upper lips)? but dentolabials are rare even in regions where underbites are uncommon so it's back to square one. People seem to frequently overestimate how much environments affect language (see the discredited "mountains cause ejectives" hypothesis for another example).

[@cazwalt9013]

In turkic languages we don't have the sound th and we replace it with a t sound

[@litfill54]

In javanese pegon writing system that uses arabic letters, the /p/ sound is represented by ف /f/ not ب /b/

[@Pavme]

It is interesting that even in Japanese P, F, and H are in the same letter but only with a small sign on the top right to distinguish it

[@maxi7082]

They aren’t pushing P

[@siddheshgandhi7668]

Even in Kannada, the initial [p] sound shifted to [h]. Where Malayalam and Tamil have poovu, pogu and paalu, Kannada has hoovu, hallu and haalu.

[@chrisk5651]

I had a Filipino friend in grad school & he said that in their language that they did not have and "F" sound & that the name of their country is pronounced starting with a "P" sound instead of an "F" and that country was named by the Spanish. I hate to assume but his native language was probably Tagalog

[@hardee8742]

pushin 🅿

[@SirQuickenn]

in some parts of Indonesia, we pronounce f as p

[@jumpander]

No worries, I'll cherish my peas.

[@stat251097]

In Bulgaria we have the opposite "problem", we have very few f's and a lot of p's because our p's did not shift lol

[@oravlaful]

1:21 lol at "purezento". in portuguese this would mean that something is "mashed (potato) like"

[@lilith6072]

2:35 i never knew old japanese had front rounded vowels

[@maymeg6777]

That should be /j/

[@mollof7893]

I assumed "fu" in japanease was from /h/ being labialized.

[@ryuko4478]

nope! Diachronically speaking Japanese [ɸɯ̟ᵝ] is from [pu] > [ɸu] > [ɸɯ̟ᵝ] not delabializing, synchronically speaking you can analyze it as /hu/ labializing into [ɸɯ̟ᵝ] tho. It should be noted that [hɯ̟ᵝ~xɯ̟ᵝ] are valid allophones of /hu/ just rarer than [ɸɯ̟ᵝ].