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February 3

Question about the Spanish language

So the article Ollagüe contains the following text in a footnote: The ll in classical Spanish corresponds to the sound [ʎ] which matches the Aymara pronunciation (though today most Spanish speakers pronounce it [ʝ] or [ʒ]). The g in the name was inserted because using an intervocalic [w] consonant is foreign to classical Spanish and the closest approximation is [ɣw] (gü). The rendering of the vowels as o and e rather than u and i derives from the fact that Andean languages (including Aymara) generally do not distinguish between the vowel sounds [o] and [u], as well as [e] and [i], so the precise sounds can vary by speaker. Is there any person familiar with Spanish who can comment on the accuracy of this paragraph? I am wondering because it seems to me like most of the claims aren't actually supported by the source. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:34, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Most of the quote seems accurate to me. It may not be in a full agreement with the sources - I'll let others check that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:47, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

What's "classical Spanish"? – There are plenty of New World words with intervocalic /w/, written hu, as in ayahuasca. —Tamfang (talk) 02:32, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Classical Spanish is another name for Early Modern Spanish, 15th–17th century. —Stephen (talk) 14:55, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

• The note is accurate. I am fluent in Spanish and have studied Quechua, normally considered a congener of Aymara, and typologically similar in the relevant phonetic comments here. (See Anatole Lyovins' An Introduction to the Languages of the World for a sketch of Quechua.) The note itself seems like uberkill for an article about a volcano. But I'm an inclusionist. μηδείς (talk) 00:30, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Ya, I was thinking this as well which is why I moved it to a note. My concern was more that the sources don't appear to support the content and thus leave the note unsourced. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:01, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Medeis: Do you know of additional sources that might support the note? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:14, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, the description of Spanish is accurate and easily verifiable. I have read about Aymara in the context of Quechua and Quechaymaran which is treated variously as a family, a dialect continuum, or as a contact situation. The Aymaran language is both poorly studied and has fewer than 800 speakers. Unfortunately I do not have any sources on Aymara easily accessible. You should definitely read the Spanish article https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioma_aimara on Aymara, which accords exactly with what is noted above. μηδείς (talk) 03:52, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

References

February 4

Chinese to English translation of Water Margin Poem

The 120 chapter version of the Water Margin contains a poem describing unarmed combat between two characters. It is similar to one appearing in Journey to the West. I was hoping someone better versed in Chinese could provide a proper translation for the martial arts moves.

拽開大四平，踢起雙飛腳。

仙人指路，老子騎鶴。

拗鸞肘出近前心，當頭砲勢侵額角。

翹跟淬地龍，扭腕擎天橐。

這邊女子，使個蓋頂撒花；

這裏男兒，耍個遶腰貫索。

兩個似迎風貼扇兒，無移時急雨催花落。

I know the first four names are "Opening wide the 'Four Levels Posture", "the double-kicking feet fly up","The Immortal pointing the Way", and "Lao Zi Riding the Crane" because this is how Anthony Yu translates them in his revised 2012 edition of Journey to the West. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 13:32, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I am not versed in it. I just try to search in Chinese Internet and I find a comparison. Not only the first four names are the same as in Journey to the West:

Water Margin:

拽開大四平，踢起雙飛腳。

仙人指路，老子騎鶴。

拗鸞肘出近前心，當頭砲勢侵額角。

翹跟淬地龍，扭腕擎天橐。

這邊女子，使個蓋頂撒花；

這裏男兒，耍個遶腰貫索。

兩個似迎風貼扇兒，無移時急雨催花落。

Journey to the West:

拽開大四平，踢起雙飛腳。

韜脅劈胸墩，剜心摘膽著。

仙人指路，老子騎鶴。

餓虎撲食最傷人，蛟龍戲水能兇惡。

魔王使個蟒翻身，大聖卻施鹿解角。

翹跟淬地龍，扭腕擎天橐。

青獅張口來，鯉魚跌脊躍。

蓋頂撒花，繞腰貫索。

迎風貼扇兒，急雨催花落。

妖精便使觀音掌，行者就對羅漢脚。

長掌開闊自然松，怎比短拳多緊削？

兩個相持數十回，一般本事無强弱。

LoveVanPersie (talk) 15:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

February 5

Help writing dirty Latin

SCHOLARES ET LECTORI SALVTEM,

I've just barely started learning Latin, so I'm finding it hard to do this on my own. I'd like to write a fancy-sounding Latin phrase that would look good carved into stone, but actually means something vulgar--and includes a word declined/conjugated as "venti," "ventis," "ventus," "ventiri," or something along those lines. The foremost two examples would be most highly prized, as this would be wordplay on the surname of somebody I know. In my dictionary it looks quite promising, as there are words that start with vent- which mean "coming" (was this ever used in the sexual sense in classical Latin?) and "flatulence" and "gluttony."

A variation on veni, vidi, vici would be obvious, though not a bad idea.

"I came, was gluttonous, and broke wind" "Vocare ex (something)" "I farted and came at the same time" or "I came so hard I farted" "Even the noblest (man) farts" "The finest food also becomes wind"

Something along these lines, that has a nice prosody to it. It could be almost anything, really.

Bonus points if it could be ambiguously interpreted as both noble-sounding and naughty. "Coming" and "wind" could be either.

And beside all this, a link to vulgar phrases actually used in classical antiquity would be helpful too.

Gratias! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C1:8100:900:8CA:15B1:ADFB:DF14 (talk) 00:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

While you're waiting for a classicist to answer, take a look at Latin Profanity: How to Swear in Latin. Alansplodge (talk) 00:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Catullus and Martial are your go-to guys. Lesbia...nunc in quadriviis et antiportis glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes. Figuratviely... - Lesbia, now on the street corners and back alleys, sucks off the noble sons of Rome." Mentula tam magna est, tantus tibi, Papyle, nasus ut possis, quotiens arrigis, olfacere : Your dick is so massive, Papyle, and your nose so huge, that when you have a hard-on you can smell it. - But you should also check out the collections of street graffiti. - Nunh-huh 00:34, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

We also have a Latin profanity article, and the book The Latin Sexual Vocabulary by James N. Adams has a lot of great stuff in it, if you can find it (I believe you can see at least some of it on Google Books). Adam Bishop (talk) 01:21, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The pronunciations

English: Should we transcribe it ​/əˈdɪl ʃəˈmæzdɪn/?

French: Is it ​[kalvin ɛməʁi] or [- eməʁi]? LoveVanPersie (talk) 14:27, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Adil is /əˈdiːl/, but I don't know about the surname. It's either /ʃəˈmæzɪn/ or /ʃəˈmæzdɪn/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:32, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The surname is /ʃəˈmæzɪn/. Omidinist (talk) 04:22, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

What are scruggins?

Resolved

 – Delicious lardy bits!

In Farmhouse Fare: Recipes from Country Housewives collected by The Farmers Weekly, New & Enlarged (Third) edition, 1946, there is a recipe for "Scruggins cake". It is from Monmouthshire, and the ingredients are 1lb SR flour, 1/2 lb granulated sugar, 3/4 lb chopped scruggins, and milk and water for mixing. I would like to know what scruggins are. Neither the OED nor Geoffrey Grigson's The Englishman's Flora are able to help. I have seen several requests on a variety of internet fora for the same information, and by far the most convincing suggestion is that they are crab apples. The other common suggestion is the scraps left over after rendering down the lard. DuncanHill (talk) 14:43, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Most things thrown up in Google seem to be guesses, when readers have tried to answer a similar question - giving wildly contradictory results. This [1] from the National Museum of Wales perhaps has a bit more credibility, and comes down in favour of the fatty bits left after rendering the bacon for lard. Wymspen (talk) 15:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I just found that too! DuncanHill (talk) 15:11, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I have the 1973 edition of this book, which says in italics under the name "Scruggins cake": "Scruggins are the small pieces of fat left after the flair of a pig has been melted down." Would someone like to stick the "Resolved" tag on here? --TammyMoet (talk) 15:26, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Splendid, thank you Tammy :) DuncanHill (talk) 15:34, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I assume "flair" is "flare":

the cheapest stuff on the market is something called flare fat. This is the highly saturated fat that collects around the vital organs of the pig such as the kidneys. It was traditionally rendered into lard because you couldn't put it into sausages without it running straight back out again when they were cooked. It also clogs up your arteries. But now food scientisits are developing ways to make it hard so it doesn't ooze out.

From a 2003 Guardian story by Felicity Lawrence "Sausage Factory". Carbon Caryatid (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

For a radically different view of flare, see Praise the Lard from the Independent in 2012. As our article Lard points out, lard has a significantly lower saturated fat content than butter. DuncanHill (talk) 19:11, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

It's probably unrelated, but the OED has scroggin, an Australian/NZ word for 'A nourishing snack of raisins, chocolate, nuts, etc., eaten esp. by travellers' (etymology unknown). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

See Trail mix. Scroggin is thought to derive from the initial letters of the ingredients, sultanas, carob or chocolate, raisins, and others. Akld guy (talk) 20:30, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Princess Holiday

Would anybody have an idea of a translation for "Korogaru Ringotei Senya Ichiya"/"転がるりんご亭千夜一夜", in the context of the subtitle for the above linked game?--Jac16888 ^Talk 21:43, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't know Japanese... But Chinese is close to Japanese. In (Simplified) Chinese it's "回转苹果亭的一千零一夜", meaning "(the) thousand and one nights of rolling Apple Pavilion". LoveVanPersie (talk) 06:51, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

What is snuffy?

In our article Mike Mansfield we read "This gentleman went from snuffy to national and international prominence." What does "snuffy" mean? DuncanHill (talk) 23:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

see meaning 5. A grunt. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:57, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

See also Private Snuffy Smith, although I don't know if the slang came before the movie or vice versa. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:59, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I think I went too far guessing the etymology here; I think Snuffy Smith and the "grunt" meaning are unrelated (or not cleanly related). Google says "Private Joe Snuffy" is the most common reference. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:51, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

February 6

Lacking of stress symbol(s)?

Are transcriptions in Gijs van Dijk and Ellen van Dijk lacking of stress symbol(s)? LoveVanPersie (talk) 06:15, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The pronunciation in Gijs van Dijk lacks the symbol, but Ellen van Dijk has it: [ˌeːleːoːˈnoːraː maːˈriaː ˈɛlə(n) vɑn ˈdɛik]. The stress symbols are ˈ (primary stress) and ˌ (secondary stress). —Stephen (talk) 14:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, because I fixęd it. I'm not sure how to fix the first one though. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:15, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I always leave out the IPA stress symbols in transcriptions whenever I can, because their placement (before the beginning of the stressed syllable) has always struck me as quite unnatural and awkward (ever since I was a teenager). In the spelling systems of various languages, any orthographic indication of stress is more likely to be associated with the vowel of a stressed syllable... AnonMoos (talk) 20:42, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: Then you should read more on phonology and phonotactics of English, Spanish and other languages. There's a reason we must write /dɪsˈteɪst, esˈkwela/, not /dɪˈsteɪst, eˈskwela/. The placement is far from arbitrary. /dɪsteɪst, eskwela/ are strikingly incomplete transcriptions and can be even said to be useless. The reader can't be expected to guess the stress. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:24, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

That's an issue related to the syllabification of words. There's a reason why one writes /ˈɪn.sɛkt/ and not /ˈɪ.nsɛkt/ or /ˈɪns.ɛkt/, but it's OK if one writes simply /ˈɪnsɛkt/. Would it be too bad if I chose to indicate the stress, say, by bolding the stressed vowel or diphthong: /ɪnsɛkt, dɪsteɪst, eskwela/? --Theurgist (talk) 18:10, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Theurgist: /dɪsteɪst/ doesn't tell ESL speakers whether the first /t/ is aspirated (which it is), so it's incomplete. Other transcriptions seem fine. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:11, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Mr_KEBAB -- of course I'm aware of the linguistic importance of stress in various languages. The problem is that the VISUAL LOCATION of written IPA stress marks is exceedingly awkward and counterintuitive. Because of the stupid IPA written stress-mark placement rules, adding such stress marks to transcriptions is a clumsy and error-prone process for me, and everybody is probably better off if I just leave the stress-marks out of most phonetic transcriptions (it saves me from having to do something I dislike, and saves other people from having to deal with the errors that I would make). I've found the visual location of written IPA stress marks to be exceedingly awkward and counterintuitive for decades now, so my perceptions on that point are unlikely to change. AnonMoos (talk) 01:21, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

don't waste your time on this

@AnonMoos: It's not, at least not to the extent you seem to think it is. You should read more on permissible syllable onsets in various languages. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:11, 8 February 2018 (UTC) Dude, why is it that you're completely and utterly incapable of understanding that I have no problem with actual real linguistic phonological phenomena, but rather with the VISUAL PLACEMENT OF WRITTEN STRESS MARKS IN THE IPA WRITING SYSTEM?? You've only displayed this obtuseness twice so far, but I already find it to be exceedingly tiresome... AnonMoos (talk) 15:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC) P.S,. I would greatly appreciate it if you would refrain from "pinging" me if your future comments are along the same lines as your past pointless comments in this thread... AnonMoos (talk) 15:29, 8 February 2018 (UTC) I'll let your post speak for itself. This conversation is over. Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:30, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Since all words in Gijs Jan van Dijk are single-syllable, there's no point in using stress symbols, except maybe at ˈdɛik so that people don't stress it as VAN-dijk ("van" is a clitic). 78.0.197.69 (talk) 00:51, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

That's not true. Monosyllabic words can be (and often are) transcribed without stress symbols in isolation. When a monosyllable is a part of a longer phrase, stress symbols are pretty much mandatory. [ɣɛis jɑn vɑn dɛik] and [ɣɛis jɑn vɑn ˈdɛik] are equally bad transcriptions. The correct IPA seems to be [ˌɣɛiˌʃɑn vɑn ˈdɛik] (compare Klaas-Jan Huntelaar), with the /s j/ sequence being realized as postalveolar [ʃ] (before you ask, no, it's not a 'colloquial pronunciation', it's [s j] that's overly pedantic).

In Danish, even monosyllables in isolation can't be transcribed without stress symbols because many unstressed words lose stød. If I transcribed a stødless monosyllable without the stress symbol, you couldn't really tell if stød isn't there because the word is unstressed or because it really isn't there in any way. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:20, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

In Russian, some monosyllabic prepositions are stressed instead of the following noun. For example, на пол (на́ пол, not на по́л, "on the floor"), pronounced NApol; под ноги (по́д ноги, "under the feet"), pronounced PODnogi; на руку (на́ руку, "on the arm"), pronounced NAruku. —Stephen (talk) 22:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Getting the Tan "with fam and ham"

I want to know what play on words is "with fam and ham". I tried to find whether it's an expression, but as it appears it's not. Correct me if I'm wrong.

PS: the joke is about a picture of girls getting tan in a farm near a pig. --Hofhof (talk) 18:17, 6 February 2018 (UTC) PS II: I misread fam as farm.Hofhof (talk) 19:34, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

So how did you get the spelling correct when you posted here? :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:37, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Copy-and-paste? --Hofhof (talk) 19:55, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Fam as in family? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:19, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

"Getting the tan with fam and ham". Yep. So your eyes betrayed you, but your mouse and keyboard were honest. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:01, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

And ham as in the pig. It's not an expression. The joke is that the girls are probably related (family, fam), and there is also a pig (from which we make ham). Ian.thomson (talk) 19:20, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Hogs and kisses. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:23, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I sow that and tried to think of a suey-ter pun, but I couldn't pig just one. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:26, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Long as we don't start a boar war. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Hogwash! — Don't be a swine; go hog wild with pig puns and squeal with laughter. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:E133:4EB3:A20A:DD29 (talk) 22:21, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Posh accent Regency England

To my ear, the upper class characters in the various Jane Austen TV series/movies speak pretty much the same way. But the article on Received pronunciation implies this kind of public school standard wasn't a thing before the (late?) Victorian era.

So. How would Jane Austen have envisioned the speech of her upper class characters who came from different regions of England? For example, the Darcys (north, Derbyshire), or the Middletons (Devon) or the Eliots (Somerset). Would they have had Regional accents of English? Or would they really have sounded the same? I'd love to find sources. The internet footprint is a bit obscured by fanfiction writers blogging about how they wish they knew, but without actual answers. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 20:04, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

David Crystal (pop and serious linguist, who knows his stuff) says There was no inferiority associated with dialect variation in Shakespeare's time. Indeed, there are some famous cases of people achieving the highest positions in society while retaining their regional speech.... The eighteenth century changed everything. It was a century of manners, class, and politeness, and one of the ways in which class distinction was expressed was through language, and especially through the way one spoke.... At this point, the status of regional dialects and accents went into serious decline.

Talking Proper by Lynda Mugglestone (OUP) is a book dedicated to the subject. Henry^Flower 20:29, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

It's pretty clear that classic Daniel Jones post-WWI RP did not exist in that form in Jane Austen's day. But I don't think that any of the upper or middle class characters were intended to be speaking broad regional accents (the classic rustic "Zummerzet" dialect etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 20:36, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The best I could find was this American blog post which discusses whether JA would have spoken with a rural Hampshire accent. This seems highly improbable to me, given the importance attached to social distinctions at that time (Austen was as remote from Shakespeare as we are from Austen). Alansplodge (talk) 09:33, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I vote for David Crystal. (He and his actor son Ben Crystal have collaborated on something they call "Original Pronunciation" for Shakespeare's plays.) David's Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1995, 2003) has a relevant page (77 in this edition) which "illustrate some of the distinctive grammatical features of early 19th century English" in "polite society". A side bar discusses John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of 1791. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:46, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, friends. I was able to read a good chunk of Mugglestone's introduction at google books; it was fascinating as was the encyclopedia page. It seems that the popular craze for pronouncing dictionaries was just getting going when Austen was writing her first manuscripts in the 1790s, after a couple of decades of lone prescriptivists crying in the wilderness. I'm getting the impression that she might have imagined her elderly characters (e.g. Mr. Woodhouse), those who did not go to London (e.g. Sir William Lucas, the Musgroves) and perhaps women who were not well educated (e.g. Steele sisters) as probably having some regional markers here and there in their speech, while most of the others would sound pretty much similar...going to have to see if my library can get Mugglestone's or Crystals' books to get a better picture of what that sound actually was! Thanks again. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 21:35, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

For the 16th and 17th centuries (including Shakespeare), there's the classic work English Pronunciation 1500-1700 by E.J. Dobson (2nd edition published in 2 volumes, 1968). It comprehensively gathers the relevant available evidence into a convenient and relatively easy-to-use form (if you know some basic linguistic concepts and phonetic symbols). I'm not sure if there's anything comparable for Jane Austen's time period... AnonMoos (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

It's not actually all that long ago in real terms; my own great-grandfather was born in 1826, less than 10 years after Austen died. We're probably past the time when a living person can remember someone who was alive in the Regency, but only just. Alansplodge (talk) 16:15, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

February 7

Spanish pronunciation of Giovanni

Is Giovanni in Spanish pronounced [dʒoˈβani, ɟʝo] or [dʒjoˈβani, ɟʝjo]?

Giovanni Lapentti: [2], [3], [4]

Giovanni Moreno: [5], [6], [7], [8] LoveVanPersie (talk) 16:02, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Forvo: [9]

@LoveVanPersie: Definitely [ɟʝoˈβani]. There's no [j] and [dʒ] is just a regional variant of [ɟʝ] which shouldn't really be mentioned (per Help:IPA/Spanish). The correct place for discussing [dʒ] is Spanish phonology. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: Thanks! Do you know Giovani's Portuguese IPA? LoveVanPersie (talk) 23:44, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@LoveVanPersie: Nope. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:13, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Rhyming in English

Hi all,

How do you call words that are used together in English because they rhyme? Like space race, real deal, pay to play and so on. This concept is not found in some other languages. 2001:EE0:4041:47E2:B0AD:5A8:A755:D88A (talk) 16:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

The term you're looking for is Reduplication. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:37, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Looking at the examples in the English section of the Reduplication article, I am unconvinced that they match the examples given above. I suggest Assonance as a closer match. Wymspen (talk) 22:30, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

There are some examples in each article. I take the OP's question to cover expressions like higglety-pigglety, willy-nilly, hare-um scare-um, fancy-schmancy, etc. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:09, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

That's wikt:harum-scarum. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:16, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Aside from the typo (now fixed), I was thinking specifically of Hare-um Scare-um. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:00, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

There once was a bishop of Salisbury … —Tamfang (talk) 08:20, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Spanish pronunciation of Hugo Dellien

Is it [ˈuɣo ðeˈljen]? [10], [11], [12] LoveVanPersie (talk) 20:50, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

That looks right to me, except that the final /...ljen/ should be /...ljẽn/. —Stephen (talk) 22:09, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

You mean [-ljẽn], right? Nasalization isn't phonemic in Spanish. It's also not listed on Help:IPA/Spanish, so LVP should transcribe it simply as [ˈuɣo ðeˈljen]. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:13, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

It's not phonemic, but Spanish phonology makes use of /ẽ/ and so on to show nasalization. I had not seen Help:IPA/Spanish before. It's a very simplified page. I think that Help:IPA/Spanish is only meant for casual use, for those who know very little about Spanish and who are just trying to approximate the pronunciation of a word or two. —Stephen (talk) 07:46, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

February 8

Pronunciation of Sitak

Is the English pronunciation Sitak /ˈsiːtæk/ or /siːˈtæk/? [13], [14] LoveVanPersie (talk) 10:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

It's /ˈsɪtæk/, but he doesn't seem to have a native New Zealand accent. I wouldn't trust his pronunciation. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:26, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

[15], [16] The pronunciations in the two clips also sound /ˈsɪtæk/. LoveVanPersie (talk) 10:37, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

That's what they are. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

In the first clip, only the guy on the left has a New Zealand accent. Akld guy (talk) 18:03, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• What about his first name? In Russian, the last name is ambiguous without a specified accent, and none is given in his Russian article. (In fact Sitak redirects to Artëm Sitak. At least the pronunciation of Artëm is a given, as the only possible variation is /ar'tjɔm/. μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

French pronunciation of Montpellier

Is [mɔ̃pəlje, -pe-] correct? In Longman Pronunciation Dictioary it's [mɔ̃pəlje, -pɛ-]. LoveVanPersie (talk) 13:52, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

It depends on whom you ask. I expect you've read this? The French Wiktionnaire says \mɔ̃.pə.lje\. (For British English, the OED has /ˌmɒntˈpɛlɪeɪ/ and /ˌmɒntˈpɛlɪə/, with /ˌmɑnpəlˈjeɪ/ for American English, but that's not what you asked.) Dbfirs 14:02, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I've opened the ref but I don't know French... LoveVanPersie (talk) 14:26, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

They don't give IPA, but just discuss [montpeulier] /pø/, [montpélier] /pe/ and [montpéyé] (dark l) as French pronunciation spellings? Dbfirs 14:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

It seems so. And it's also [mɔ̃pəlje, -pɛ-] in Wikitionary, though it's not a reliable source. LoveVanPersie (talk) 14:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

The more open /ɛ/ looks more like an English pronunciation to me, but maybe there are regions of France where this is used?. Do we have any native French speakers reading this? Dbfirs 15:09, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I would agree with [mɔ̃pəlje], although as the middle -ə- is quickly glossed over (remember that in French the accent is always on the last syllable of the phrase), it doesn't matter terribly much what you put in there. 78.0.240.90 (talk) 19:01, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "French pronunciation" - do you want to know what a native inhabitant of Montpellier would say, or what a Parisian would say? The accent in the south of France is much more liquid than in Paris, hence the different variants mentioned above. Wymspen (talk) 19:16, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@Wymspen: The most prestigious variety of European French is Parisian. That's what we need to transcribe. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I'd advise against this when it comes to toponyms. As a native inhabitant of Zagreb, I find myself baffled by bizarre supposedly "Standard (Serbo-)Croatian" pronunciations found of local toponyms, often adorned with every possible IPA trinket (the native dialect here has neither pitch accent nor vowel length, and that's just the start of it), that would not have come out of the mouth of anyone but a Bosnian tourist. But apparently, that's what "Standard Croatian" means to whoever wrote them. As French has an even bigger variety of dialects and sub-languages than Croatian, the problem can only be worse. 78.0.240.90 (talk) 19:56, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: - sur un ton pince-sans-rire (I hope). If you mean that, we had better determine the most prestigious variety of English (probably Received pronunciation) and correct everything in Wikipedia that doesn't conform to it. Wymspen (talk) 20:29, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Popular Zagreb speech isn't prestigious, at least not the most prestigious. See Handbook of the IPA for an illustration of Standard Croatian. It's much more Bosnian than the popular Zagreb accent, which makes perfect sense - Standard Croatian, Standard Serbian, Standard Bosnian and Standard Montenegrin are all based on the same Eastern Herzegovinian dialect.

This isn't my opinion but a universally followed practice. People that learn French typically learn Parisian French and that's what they expect to see transcribed. Local pronunciations are optional additions. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:51, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, we understand the variations, but we were wondering whether the pronunciation /mɔ̃pɛlje/ is used anywhere in France. Dbfirs 19:27, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

In the ref it is said that out of 542 inhabitants of Montpellier, 90% pronounce [mɔ̃pəlje] and 10% [mɔ̃pelje]. It is pronounced [mɔ̃peje] in Occitan language. According to my experience (I do not live in "Occitania"), the usual pronounciation is [mɔ̃pəlje]. I have seldomly heard [mɔ̃pelje] and never [mɔ̃pɛlje]. Don't be fooled by the ref, when it is written [montpeulier] /pø/, it's the usual, non IPA, manner to refer to [ə] (by "stressing" it). --AldoSyrt (talk) 18:47, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. We don't need to change anything then. Dbfirs 22:40, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

paleo- and archaeo-

If the prefixes paleo- and archaeo- have the same meaning, why are they different?? Both are from Greek words meaning ancient. So how did they get to be so different?? Georgia guy (talk) 22:32, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

In ancient Greek, the adjective παλαιος meant "old, aged" as well as "ancient", while the adjective αρχαιος was derived from words meaning "beginning, origin", and its original meaning was presumably "from the beginning", which then shaded into "ancient". The two words had partially overlapping meanings, but were not fully interchangeable, as far as I can tell... AnonMoos (talk) 00:16, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by so different? The disciplines of paleontology, archaeology, and paleoanthropology have a lot of overlap and share a lot of tools and concepts. Matt Deres (talk) 01:12, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

• These terms didn't "get to be" so different. The concepts of studying all ancient (fossil) life forms was named palaeontology for the Greek "ancient being" (per AM) and the study of human origins beyond textual evidence was named (per AM) archaeology. Paleoanthropology is obviously the palaeontology of man, meaning the fossil study of hominins from pre-historic humans to that time of or last common ancestors with non-hominins. Study Greek. It's fun, and a lot better than treating our conceptual categories as if they were frozen Platonic Ideas. μηδείς (talk) 02:00, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Are our transcriptions of Serbo-Croatian overly complicated?

Split from one of the threads above - Mr KEBAB

There are people in France who speak Parisian French. The same cannot be said of Croatia and Standard Croatian (barring state television as such). Therefore IMO it would make sense to transcribe what is said amongst people who live there rather than a couple of anchorpeople (who slur their local dialect half the time anyway) and the language studies at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb. Regardless of all this, as for the prestigiousness of Standard Croatian in Zagreb, this sort of speech is not imitated by local inhabitants. When you talk like that in a formal situation (while not surrounded by members of other ex-YU republics), prestige is not the air you will be surrounding yourself with (just as if you were to speak Mid-Atlantic English in the British House of Lords) - as I said above. Another thing to consider is that the "acrolects" du jour in Croatia have changed greatly over the past century and continue to change, owing to the procession of various governments. Perhaps uncommonly for the rest of the world, it is the local dialects that remain immutable in comparison. I suppose this argument probably doesn't extend to the rest of the world, but it certainly is jarring to see all those mangled pronunciations that might well be "Standard", or more likely just a dialect of somewhere else. 78.0.240.90 (talk) 23:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian phonology disagrees with that. Minor differences such as no distinction between short rising and short falling vowels or no post-accentual length are an entirely different thing than a complete lack of pitch accent/length. This is a regional feature of the Zagreb dialect, not how all Croats speak. I'd expect strongly melodic speech in areas bordering with Vojvodina and Bosnia.

The fact that dictionaries distinguish all four accents and post-accentual length is precisely because the accent/dialect all four standards are based on is Bosnian. Since Standard Bosnian, Standard Croatian, Standard Montenegrin and Standard Serbian are one language, there's zero need for separate IPA transcriptions for them. Speakers who don't distinguish all four accents or post-accentual long vowels should read the IPA as it is natural for them. I think it'd be a good idea to start transcribing Serbo-Croatian words within phonemic slashes, rather than phonetic brackets (although we need a consensus for that on Help:IPA/Serbo-Croatian). That way, /ǎ/ and /â/ could be said to be diaphonemes realized as [ˈa] and [ˈa] in Croatia and Serbia and [ˈǎ] and [ˈâ] in Bosnia. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:40, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Maybe we should continue this somewhere else. I feel I've derailed the topic here. 78.0.240.90 (talk) 06:01, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Done. Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:08, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

February 9

Dasselbe oder die gleiche?

I was watching the show Babylon Berlin, and a character asks a ballistics expert about what weapon fired two bullets. "The same," he says. "Dasselbe oder die gleiche?" the detective asks. I think this was subtitled as "The same model or the same gun?" This was very interesting to me. I'd always understood 'dasselbe' & 'die gleiche' to both mean 'the same' with no difference. But this draws a clever distinction we don't have in English. It delineates 'sameness' in a way we can't.

If I were to go to a doener joint in Berlin, and my companion orders a doener, and I say "Dasselbe fuer mich," the doenerjockey would make me another order of what my friend had asked for. If I said "Ich habe die gleiche," would they understand that I'm sharing my friend's doener that they had just ordered?

It strikes me now that if someone asked me "Sind Sie *der* Dr Livingston?" and I were to try to translate the English "The same!" I would go for "Der gleiche," and never dasselbe. But that might be in hindsight. And in either case it would feel forced to me.

Am I interpreting this line of dialog totally wrong? Is 'das selbe' two words rather than one? I don't remember.

I'm curious about how any language could define 'sameness' to more than one degree. 'Sameness' is an odd concept to go about muddying up: to a logician, if x=x, and x=x, but they're different flavors of xes, what's going on?

'Isness,' too, while we're at it. The question "Was ist?" also strikes me a bit interesting in how it differs from the English, although it may be a simple shortening of "Was ist los?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C1:8100:900:8CA:15B1:ADFB:DF14 (talk) 07:03, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

The distinction between "der/die/das gleiche" and "der/die/dasselbe" is a long-standing prescriptive shibboleth in German. Most people ignore the distinction much of the time in colloquial speech, but according to the prescriptive standard the semantic difference is actually relatively clear: "der/die/dasselbe" means 'the same specific individual/instance', while "der/die/das gleiche" means "of the same type". So the translation in your gun case would actually be the other way round. "Dieselbe Waffe" means "the same particular gun"; "die gleiche Waffe" means "a gun of the same type". In practice, it's a bit more fuzzy in cases where people routinely switch between conceptualizing things as individual instances and of types anyway. For example, in the döner example, I end up getting "den gleichen Döner" (the same kind of doner), but I've chosen "dasselbe" (the same particular menu entry). Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:00, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

• These terms correspond exactly to "itself" and "the like" in English. I thought the Germans were at least as good at parsing their own language as the English are theirs. μηδείς (talk) 22:48, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Voynich_manuscript online =

Hello,

Is there a text file available online, that contains a transcript of the entire Voynich_manuscript (in some alephbet)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.125.78.146 (talk) 13:28, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

No, that isn't possible, because it isn't written in any known script that is used elsewhere. A text file would presume we had unicode characters to represent the characters in the manuscript. We don't because we don't know what the individual characters represent. There are scans of the pages you can find online, but transcribing the text into a computer text file would mean you would have to have characters coded to write that text. We simply don't have that. There is a code of sorts that was done in the 1940s, as noted in the article, where each Voynich character was transliterated to a Latin character. You can find information about that that by following this link from the references in the Wikipedia article. --Jayron32 14:03, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Seems to me that a transliteration, however (necessarily) arbitrary, counts as "a transcript … in some alphabet". —Tamfang (talk) 08:17, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Alund

Does he pronounce [aˈlunð] in the clip? LoveVanPersie (talk) 15:24, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

It's [aˈlun]. The [ð] allophone of /d/ is blocked by a preceding nasal, so it can't be that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:33, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Spanish pronunciation of Michael

Is it [ˈmaikol] or [maiˈkol]? [17] and [18] sound the former. But [19] and [20] sound the latter? LoveVanPersie (talk) 16:08, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Since "Michael" is not a Spanish word, it is reasonable to suppose that they would attempt to pronounce it the English way. Just like we would probably pronounce a name like José as "hoh-ZAE" rather than "JOHZ". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:21, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

You mean the stress is on the first syllable? LoveVanPersie (talk) 18:36, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

In English, the stress is on the first syllable for "Michael" - as in "MIKE-uhl". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:58, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I know you mean a loanword is pronounced in the way close to the original pronunciation, but stress doesn't have to follow this... What about the stress of Michael in the four links? Are they also in the first syllable? LoveVanPersie (talk) 19:12, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I can't necessarily vouch for the "theoretical" pronunciation. But in the interview, the questioner in both links pretty much pronounces it the American way, stress on the first syllable. I would say he says it more like "MY-cull" than "MIKE-ull", which kind of betrays Spanish enunciation, but otherwise it sounds like an American would say it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:35, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

About Spanish pronunciations

Dose Leonardo Mayer pronounces y ("como yo", "reyes") [ʝ] and ll ("llenó", "ladrillo") [ʎ]?

Does Diego Schwartzman pronounces his surname [ʃwaɾtsman] or [ʃwaɾdzman] in this clip? LoveVanPersie (talk) 18:57, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

To me it sounds like Diego is saying "SCHWARTZ-mahn". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:00, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

What's your meaning of TZ? Is it /ts/ or /dz/? LoveVanPersie (talk) 19:14, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I think he's saying it like "tz". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:24, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

To my American ears, Mayer is saying "y" and "ll" the same way, or nearly so. Sometimes a Spanish speaker will say a "y" sound more like "zh", as the French would say the "j" in bonjour, for example. Sometimes a Spanish speaker will say a "ll" sound like an "ly". He might be saying it that way, but if so, it's very subtle. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:31, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. LoveVanPersie (talk) 20:52, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

• Bugs, "tz" is an impossibility in English. phonetically, we say [ts] and the only alternative would be Shwardsman, like shards /dz/ of glass. This is do to phonetic assimilation. There's also the OP's odd obsession with /ɛ/, which reminds me of someone who used to ask about how they spoke French in Canada. But that's a whole nother tarbaby. μηδείς (talk) 22:32, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Well, I have no problem enunciating a "tz" as in "Schwartzmann". Maybe it's a regional thing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:58, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
    • German does have /tz/ in connected speech and in compound words, but it's just a sequence of a fortis stop and a lenis fricative, with both of them being voiceless. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:43, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

You mean the tz in the video is [ts]? LoveVanPersie (talk) 23:24, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

@Medeis: I had to correct this guy's transcriptions (mostly Slovak and Spanish ones) almost 20 times within the last two months, which means that about 5-10% of his transcriptions were wrong. It's a lot. Please don't discourage him from asking for input here. Mr KEBAB (talk) 00:01, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, this should probably go to talk, but we had a self-identified Chinese national who claimed to live in Montreal who was always asking incessant pronunciation questions, especially regarding the 'e' vowel. This guy seems a bit more sophisticated, but the time frame and the overlap of interest in how one pronounces French words strikes me as striking. I won't hat his questions, he can ask what he likes. But if you find you have to correct someone so eager to make edits where he has no expertise are you not yourself also so stricken? That brings up the second question, does anyone remember the username of the previous and now banned "How do they say in Quebec" user? That user was eventually blocked for disruption, and I had nothing to do with it, not being an admin myself. μηδείς (talk) 00:18, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

That was User:Fête, who has been blocked from all of Wikimedia. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:10, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

@Medeis: It does strike me as WP:INCOMPETENT (and I've already told him that), but he's also doing a good job with Serbo-Croatian transcriptions. At the same time though, having to correct him so often is frustrating and I don't want to have to do it anymore. Here's a list of all the corrections I had to make: [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34] (this one was discussed on my talk page), [35], [36], [37].

It's clear to me that he cares about quantity much more than quality. After I asked him to not transcribe Slovak words nor edit existing transcriptions, he just waited a few days and started doing that again, completely ignoring what I said: [38], [39]. I'm pretty sure that they're correct, but still...

He could be Fete, yes. The way he spammed my talk page with pronunciation requests (which I didn't mind answering until he started ignoring what I said and being dishonest about having read WP articles he'd barely glance at) surely does remind me of Fete.

Can someone check his French, Portuguese and Spanish transcriptions from the last 2-3 months? I'm sure some of them are wrong. I realize that's an outrageous request to make, but I can't really do more than what I've done. 12:43, 10 February 2018 (UTC)