Bianca joins us as we tackle a fun and wacky conlang with some serious phonological processes.
Top of Show Greeting: Neo-Simikaka
Featured Conlang: Alũbetah
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Hi guys,
Greetings from Melbourne, Australia.
Loving the podcast, keep up the good work. Only discovered it a few weeks ago, but have worked my way back through most of your back catalogue.
I had a question which you might have covered in your episode on loan words, but not sure. I am a high school language teacher (German/French/Chinese) and when I was talking with one class about loan words between languages we got off on a tangent about redundancies.
For example, near our school is a waterway called “Mordialloc Creek”. In the indigenous Australian language (Boon Wurrung) that was spoken in this area before European settlement, the word “Yallock” means creek. So the English name is essentially “Mordi Creek Creek”.
“Sahara” is also an anglicised version of the Arabic word for desert, so “Sahara Desert” is essentially “Desert Desert”. Mekong River is also something along the lines of “Khong River River”, roughly (technically the full name in Thai is Mae Nam Khong, which makes more sense as “Khong River”).
I know it happens in numerous other contexts.
Our question was whether there is an actual word for this phenomenon? Or is it just called linguistic redundancy?
Thanks, Aaron
