Comments | linguaphiles: long personal pronouns

hector_von_kyiv in linguaphiles

long personal pronouns

Sep 23, 2009 18:05

In what other languages there are long personal pronouns (more that 1-2 syllables), like "wata(ku)shi" in Japanese or "жасасын" in Kazakh?

pronouns, personal

Comments 28

nerd4live September 23 2009, 19:39:24 UTC

Informal Portuguese: "a gente" (the people) to mean we/us

edricson September 23 2009, 19:54:15 UTC

Many Australian languages do that (I think Yidiny is one; or was it Dyirbal?). Anyway, a lot of those aren't really personal pronouns, but much more like nouns, e. g. as in Japanese. Thus for example in Australia they often shows agreement or case-marking patterns typical of nouns rather than pronouns.

n_true September 24 2009, 01:36:58 UTC

According to Mikael Parkvall's Limits of Language (p. 238):

The longest personal pronoun form I have come across is the "first person plural disharmonic" form in the Australian language Martuyhunira: nganajumartangara. "Disharmonic" here means that the form is used for those belonging to a generation above or below the speaker.

wiped September 24 2009, 03:34:42 UTC

which pronoun is жасасын supposed to be? as far as i know, it means "long live" in kazakh. only the сын part can be considered a pronoun, and that's monosyllabic.

hector_von_kyiv September 24 2009, 04:56:55 UTC

Oops, I must have confused something :( I thought "жасасын" means "we".

wiped September 24 2009, 05:07:09 UTC

no, "we" in kazakh is "біз." i'm surprised so many other people commented and no one caught this.