Appendices

Appendix C. Glossary

The number in parentheses is the chapter where the term first appears.

Access point (8). A word of your own, less used, that is a co-derivative of a word in the language you are learning: English capillary for Spanish cabello.

Affix (2). A piece attached to the root to change its job: a prefix goes before (re-, un-), a suffix goes after (-tion, -ly).

Apophenia (12). The tendency to see connections or figures where there are none. It is the engine of creativity and of mistakes at the same time.

Appropriation (11). The work of making your own a language that comes from outside. It happens with your first language and happens again with every new one.

Borderline case (3). A sound that sits on the edge between two categories, like the y of yes or the Spanish ll. It is written down without being forced into a class.

Bridge sentence (8). A sentence in your language bent to line up with another one, using real words of your language.

Class (3). Each of the seven regions of the mouth, with its own felt quality: Φ, Θ, Χ, Σ, Λ, Ϻ, Ξ. A class on its own means nothing. Also called OAS classes.

Code (4). A sequence of two or three classes, in order, taken from the skeleton of a word's root. A code orients a field of meaning; it does not define it.

Co-derivative (5). A word that descends from a common source with another word. It often keeps its code, but not always: the road can wear it down (Spanish hijo, from Latin fīlius, lost the f). Linguists call them cognates.

Convergence (12). A relation between two words with different histories that arrive at the same code and the same field of meaning, like much and mucho. It is not kinship, but it is a fact; its explanation is still open.

Correspondence (6). A rule by which a sound in one language shows up as another sound in a related language: where Latin has p, English has f.

Endolanguage (1). The deep organization of a language, beneath what it says: codes, rhythms, patterns you don't see.

Endolinguistics (1). The discipline that studies what languages carry inside. It was founded by Christiane S. Meulemans and José Ángel Elias Fernández y Cuevas.

Endorhythm (10). A person's inner rhythm: the way of moving through time from which all their speaking rhythms come. It forms before words do, and it shows in your accent.

Exolanguage (1). Language as it appears: the words you hear, the grammar, the spelling.

False friend (5). A word in another language that looks like one of yours but doesn't mean the same. It can be a relative that changed meaning or a stranger that just looks alike.

Folk etymology (12). A change in a word because its speakers thought they saw a connection it didn't have, like English crayfish.

Found, constructed and projected sense (12). Three ways a connection between words can exist: found (history guarantees it), constructed (a declared interpretation) or projected (a claim with nothing behind it: apophenia).

Grimm's law (6). A chain of changes in the consonants of the Germanic languages, described by Jacob Grimm in 1822.

Habence (13). A word of the Mexican philosopher Agustín Basave Fernández del Valle for the original "there is," before any measuring or naming.

Inversion (4). A change in the order of a code that keeps its nucleus: Θ·Λ and Λ·Θ.

Loan (5). A word one language takes, ready-made, from another, like tomato, from Nahuatl through Spanish.

Logos (13). The word, the concept, reason. In qualic metaphysics, it arrives after the experience.

Macrosystem (9). A large family of languages seen as a system: Indo-European, Semitic, Uto-Aztecan. Macrosystems are never mixed in the same comparison.

Meulemans zone (11). A region of the brain's right hemisphere where, according to a hypothesis of this tradition, codes, rhythm and the melody of speech would be processed.

Micromusicality (10). The finest details of the voice: tremors, pauses, tensions. They carry much of what a person feels.

Nucleus (4). The set of classes in a code, regardless of order: {Θ, Λ}.

OAS (3). Originating Affective Sounds: the name of the seven classes.

Open case (12). A relation you can see and check but that nobody has fully explained yet, like the resemblance between much and mucho. It is neither turned into a kinship that doesn't exist nor dismissed as "pure chance."

Proto-Indo-European (1). The reconstructed language from which the Indo-European languages descend. It left no written document.

Psychophonology (10). The study of the sound of language on three planes at once: structure, music and mind.

Quality (13). What an experience is as it is lived, which no number exhausts: red as you see it, the taste of a mango.

Qualo (13). In qualic metaphysics, the smallest unit of lived appearing, prior to words. It can't be measured; we only know its traces.

Root (2). The piece of a word that carries the meaning. The code is taken from the root.

Shared unconscious (13). What the speakers of a macrosystem share without knowing it. It is not universal: it is relative to each family of languages.

Skeleton (2). The consonants of a word, in order, as they sound.

Take away the scaffolding (8). Testing whether you remember something without the help you learned it with, to know if there was real learning or only suggestion.

Threshold (11). A place of passage between two states. The phonic threshold is the passage between thought and sound.

Tonal language (10). A language in which the pitch of the voice is part of the word, like Mandarin Chinese or Zapotec.

Tonogenesis (10). The birth of a tone when a language loses a consonant and the difference it marked moves into the melody of the vowel.