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January 17

Possible error on Seine

"The name "Seine" comes from the Sanish Sequana..."

Should "Sanish" be "Spanish"? I'd change it myself, but I'm not a linguistics expert so I'm not even sure if it is a typo or if it's just something obscure that I've never heard of. --75.15.161.185 (talk) 03:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

No, it was vandalized a couple of weeks ago, it should be Latin. (The river is also not 776486 km long...I've changed it back.) Adam Bishop (talk) 03:19, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Last June someone vandalised the page, by inserting something like a signature, once styled as "Harkiran" and once as "нαяκιяαи". That had been staying on the page until just now, but I removed it and it's no longer there. --Theurgist (talk) 14:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if anyone is keeping of track the longest intervals between vandalism and its reversion on Wikipedia. I've seen some cases where deletion vandalism (like deletion of a whole paragraph or section) has gone unreverted for years, because it's not as obvious to the casual reader as addition or modification vandalism. Pais (talk) 14:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The much maligned (on beans/gaming the system grounds) Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia, I think may go some way to answering that question. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:09, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Latin declension of "nomen"

Is the Latin word "nomen" typically undeclined in post-classical Latin? Psalms 149:3 in the Vulgate, for example, is "Laudent nomen eius in choro", but I would have expected accusative case "nominem". The "Christus factus est" text likewise says, "Propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum, et dedit illi nomen quod est super omne nomen," which seems confusedly ungrammatical in using "nomen" twice where other cases would be classically grammatical. Are these cases of actual language change or just sloppy grammar by the authors of the texts (who may not have spoken Latin natively)? 76.204.127.175 (talk) 04:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Nomen is neuter, so the accusative and nominative forms are identical, in classical and pre- and post-classical Latin, as far as I know. Wiktionary's entry confirms this.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's definitely classical. (A quick look through Cicero's In Verrem turns up lots of examples, such as "in tuas tabulas ullum nomen referres".) Only masculine and feminine third declensions ending in "-o" have "-inem" in the accusative (homo, nemo, consuetudo...and Cicero too although that's not quite the same). Adam Bishop (talk) 05:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, the Vulgate was the work of St Jerome at a time when translating into Latin was making it accessible: he can be expected to know how to decline 'nomen' ;) 86.164.67.42 (talk) 22:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Some famous lines including clearly declined forms of the word are "non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam" and "in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti". Marnanel (talk) 22:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Those expressions are discussed in the articles "Non nobis" and "Trinitarian formula". Some other expressions are De Dubiis Nominibus, eo nomine, In Nomine, In nomine Domini, Liber sine nomine, (list of Roman nomina,) Missa Sine nomine, Missa Sine nomine (Josquin), nomen, nomen dubium, nomen illegitimum, nomen nudum, nomen mysticum, nomen nescio, nomen novum, nomen oblitum, Nomina Anatomica, Nomina Anatomica Veterinaria, nomina sacra, Nomina Sunt Odiosa, Nomina Villarum, sine nomine, and sub nomine.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Mathematics and software for linguists

What software + maths could be/is useful for linguists? Which options are often obligatory in university degrees? Quest09 (talk) 13:04, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It really depends what kind of linguistics you're doing. (Random examples: A phonetician might get a lot of use out of Matlab and Praat, whereas a discourse analyst might have little use for those and spend more time with Transcriber; a corpus linguist or a phonologist or syntactician working with corpus data might have little use for any of those but might live on NLTK or Perl.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:07, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

A good knowledge of probability and statistics would be very useful for computational linguistics and for conducting practical experiments in e.g. experimental phonetics and psycholinguistics. Knowledge of the physics of acoustics and familiarity with audio editing/processing software would also be useful in phonetics. But for large areas of linguistics, you don't need any math or any software skills more advanced than knowing how to get the funny symbols to show up in your word processor. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

One more example: for semantics, I would recommend a course on mathematical logic (especially the lambda calculus), which lies at the intersection of linguistics, math, and computer science. But I agree that it depends on your specialization. Lesgles (talk) 16:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipolicy concerning use of the gender-neutral "singular they"

I have always been taught that the gender-neutral use of the "singular they" is a modern construction that is politically correct but grammatically incorrect. As I tend to be much more interested in being accurate than politic, I usually use the term "one" or simply structure my sentences to avoid the pronoun entirely. If I am forced into it I tend to use the "generic/universal he." Recently, however, I have seen the gender-neutral "singular they" applied to transgender and transsexual people and I am not sure how this should be dealt with. My gut feeling would be to use the pronoun corresponding with the gender that the person uses to self-identify (if the use of the pronoun cannot be avoided). So a transsexual person born with male anatomy but self-identifying as a female would be referred to as "she." While I am willing to see the definition of gender tweaked, I am not happy to see the rules of grammar broken. Of course I am also not in charge of Wikipedia...

I have searched the archives here and have come up with little more than inconclusive arguments over the grammaticality of the "singular they." So rather than asking which is more grammatically correct - a point on which opinions seem to vary - my question concerns the wikipolicy on this point.
I am interested in finding out whether any Wikipedia policy or guidelines cover the use of the "singular they," and if so what Wikipedia's stance is.
Thanks -Thibbs (talk) 14:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

You've read singular they and you still refer to it as a "modern construction"??? --ColinFine (talk) 23:34, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I said that that's what I'd been taught, not that that was the truth of the matter. Please examine the corrections I made to the article that was the original reason for this post (lined below). I think you'll agree that the uses of the "singular they" employed in that article do not match the historical (generic) uses covered in the "singular they" article, but rather they are a form of specific "singular they" that I doubt even the Gender-neutral language movement would embrace... -Thibbs (talk) 14:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language says, "There is no Wikipedia consensus either for or against the singular they (“Each politician is responsible for their constituency”). Although it is widely used in informal writing and speech, its grammatical validity is disputed." Personally, I have no objection to it when it doesn't refer to any specific individual, as in the "each politician" sentence, but using it to refer to a transsexual/transgender person seems downright offensive to me. "Mary told me they were going home now and were going to phone their mother, but I might see them later at the party tonight" is not only insulting (where each "they/their/them" refers to Mary alone), but really difficult to understand. Pais (talk) 14:35, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree, that's daft. You should refer to people using the identity they prefer to use. I try to avoid singular they by using "he or she", "his or her". "S/he" informally, for example on talk pages, but not in article mainspace. I don't mind when I see it because it is becoming the norm. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

As an aside, it was recommended in the style guide of one of the universites for which I taught that this construction be used in preference to gender-specific ones. At this point I can't remember which university it was (and I don't think the guides are online). --TammyMoet (talk) 15:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not entirely modern - see the article. Rmhermen (talk) 16:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I saw the article - and then I linked it here. I'm not interested in discussing usage but rather policy/guideline. -Thibbs (talk) 17:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the help so far. Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language is probably the closest to a perfect answer for me. I notice that it is an essay and not policy/guideline, but I also see it's linked from the MoS so I think that's probably good enough. If anyone has any further policy/guideline-related insights then please feel free to add more. Otherwise thanks for all the help. -Thibbs (talk) 17:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

"They" is not "politically correct", it's just much less clumsy than saying "he or she" all the time. While it may make grammarians cringe, it works, and it's here to stay. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:33, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The OP did not ask for "Bug's opinion", but for the wikipolicy. --Lgriot (talk) 18:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The OP's first sentence begins with a mostly-false premise. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It is because the issue is debatable that I didn't want to get into it. I gave my own preferred usage to explain why I was asking the question in the first place but if you'll notice I specifically and repeatedly asked for only the wikipolicy on the matter. I respect your opinion that my premise is false but if you would like to debate the issue, please contact me directly on my talk page instead of arguing political correctness in a wikipolicy thread. Thanks -Thibbs (talk) 14:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You're asking about wikipolicy at the language ref desk, and hence you're courting responses that have to do with language. For policy questions, you probably should have asked at the help desk. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

*Sigh* I had assumed that those at the language desk would be more familiar with the policy guiding language-usage than the general help desk. I had also assumed that my repeated pleas to only discuss wikipolicy would not fall on deaf ears an would perhaps stay those who wanted to turn the thread into a political talking-piece. I suppose my assumptions regarding the topic of discussion have been incorrect. -Thibbs (talk) 14:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

That was not necessarily an unreasonable assumption. But if you scan through the topics on this page, they tend to be about language in general, not about wiki policies. For questions that are specifically about wikipedia and its policies, you're liable to get better results by starting at the help desk. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

To conclude this first part of the thread, I just wanted to mention that I have corrected the issue I was originally speaking about and I invite other editors to review my work. The original article can be viewed here, and the version I have newly edited can be viewed here. I also brought the issue up on the article's talk page here. Essentially I removed most uses of the term "they" or "their" based on the fact that these uses were unclear and imprecise in violation of the MoS guidelines. I have tried hard to avoid the loss of any information from the article but I'd be happy to have some oversight. -Thibbs (talk) 14:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

self-definition: no article

The above got me thinking about a term. I use the phrase "self-definition" when explaining to people that saying "he" about a transsexual that refers to herself in the feminine is offensive to her. I mean that I try explain that it is not for the speaker to define her as feminine or masculine, but it is for the person herself (they sometimes reply that nature decides if someone is male or female, and then I have to explain that any language, and therefore the use of he or she, is a product of a specific society and cannot be considered "natural", but that is not my point). However, we don't have an article on the concept of self-definition. Is there a generally accepted term ?--Lgriot (talk) 17:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Gender identity? Pais (talk) 17:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The OP uses the term "self-identify", which I've often heard before. Not sure what the noun form would be: presumably "self-identification", but I don't think I've ever heard it used. By the way, I don't think your argument about language being a product of a society holds water, because it implies that nothing which can be described is natural (or at least that we can't know what is). You'd be better off arguing that the distinction is (usually) natural but not meaningful, and that the natural state has no special status as a morally correct state. 81.131.68.227 (talk) 18:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(EC) No, Pais, self-definition is broader than that. It is the idea that "Thou shall not define someone else, they shall be doing that themselves" kind of thing. It works for ethnicity as well. You shouldn't decide if someone is "black" or "of mixed ethnicity", it is for them to define themselves, because there isn't a good way to formally define it. So we use self-definition instead, which has the advantage to be considerate. --Lgriot (talk) 18:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Self-identitification redirects to Identity, which is too wide, I am afraid. Also inside the article, it is used in a different meaning. To user with IP 81.131: for the language being a social construct comment, I'd say "fair enough", I guess what I mean is that some language may not have the he/she distinction, so one cannot say that using he or she is universal, and certainly not imposed to us by nature. But you are right, you could define he and she formally, and then use these formal concepts to decribe the world according to these definitions. It may be formally correct to do so, but not necessarily socially useful or clever. --Lgriot (talk) 18:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I am now half-way through the list of basic self topics, and haven't found the right article yet. I think my neurons which recognize the word "self" are getting tired. Edit: how about identity negotiation. "More often than not, the identity negotiation process seems to favor self-verification, which means that people tend to develop expectancies that are congruent with the self-views of target persons." I think that's what we're talking about, although as ever with psychology, I can't quite be sure. It's not phrased as advice ("thou shalt.."), either. 81.131.68.227 (talk) 19:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

"...explaining to people that saying 'he' about a transsexual that refers to herself in the feminine is offensive to her." The OP is perhaps guilty of the very thing they're complaining about: Presuming to speak for someone else and to define them. This can be called "the political correctness trap". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:31, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I would qualify that as another unhelpful intervention from Bugs....--Lgriot (talk) 18:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

And that would qualify as another unhelpful personal attack. Way to go. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

No, I see what Bugs is saying - a better (but long-winded) version would be "... is likely to be offensive to her, in the absence of information to the contrary". The transsexual might just not care. It's only a kind of etiquette guideline. 213.122.44.13 (talk) 19:37, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The best policy would be to ask, rather than making any assumptions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It is unhelpful, because that is not the question. The question is "what is the generally accepted phrase for the concept described, if any?". Not "What is bugs' opinion on whether this concept is P.C.?"--Lgriot (talk) 09:34, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

My comment is more helpful than yours, because mine raises a new question, while yours is merely an attempt to stifle thought. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Please try to avoid highjacking other's questions for your own purposes. If you want to ask a new question to the ref-deskers, please create your own section, so that the people really interested in providing me with some help with my question can answer here. --Lgriot (talk) 13:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

When someone asks a question here, they're trying to learn something. If part of their question is based on a false premise, we have a responsibility to point that out. In fact, you said somewhat the same thing that I did, in your first response, except it was less clear. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but the question "what's this called?" isn't based on the premise "this is the right thing to do". Down that road lie such horrors as the gratuitous correction of punctuation errors. (Having said that, Lgriot started it by including beside-the-point stuff in his question.) 81.131.12.91 (talk) 02:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) - That negative assumption is clearly a personal attack, Bugs. Wouldn't it have been better to ask whether Lgriot was trying to stifle thought? Either way, I think the sniping that is now going on in this thread is counterproductive to reaching an answer to Lgriot's original question. As for that question, I am not sure what the official term would be, but I know that in Law they use a related expression which is "to hold oneself out to the world as." That's a pretty cumbersome way to say it, but it comes up in family law when discussing marriage (same-sex or even more commonly, Common-law marriage). -Thibbs (talk) 14:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

He was telling me to shut up, and that qualifies as an attempt at stifling thought. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:15, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for that phrase, Thibbs. I have just been thinking that this concept is widely used, at least in the US, in census and other related population studies. I think that government forms for government employees, census studies, etc. sometimes ask people to define themselve at least on 2 aspects (please correct me if I am wrong here): religion and ethnicity. So it is quite common and must have a name. There are 2 types of questions you may sometimes be asked to answer on a government form, one type where they ask you some things that are easily verifiable (are you married, what is you income etc.) and another type where you are asked to define yourself, like what is your religion and what ethnic group do belong to. You could say someone is lying when he says he is protestant (because he is not doing what other protestants do or whatever), but in reality, there is no point, if he wants to define himself as prostestant, then he is counted as protestant. --Lgriot (talk) 15:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Lgriot—you are referring to attributes of the person. The general term is attributes I think. Is that the sort of terminology you are looking for? Bus stop (talk) 16:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Are we talking about speaking in the transexual's presence? If the transexual wishes to be referred to as 'he' or 'she' we should follow their wishes. If we are speaking about them but not in their presence I don't think it makes that much of a difference, unless our choice of words is likely to get back to them. Is there a term for the decision-making process involved at arriving at which term to use? I think politeness would be very applicable. But the speaker's feelings have to be taken into consideration too, especially when the transexual is not in earshot. That comfort level might relate to topics such as homophobia. But if I'm not understanding the question, I'm willing to listen to elucidation. Bus stop (talk) 16:08, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) No, sorry, Bus stop, the transsexual example was a bad example, I am looking for a concept that would be more generic, that can apply to at least religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity. In all these areas, many people believe that it is hard to give others a label, and that it is easier to let them label themselves, if they want to. (But I acknowledge, not all people agree with this, for example Nazi people believe they can define who is a Jew. I beleive only the person in question can tell me if he/she considers himself/herself a Jew).--Lgriot (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It seems indeed that attribute of an individual is used in census vocabulary. But it applies to objectivily verifiable features of a person as well (one attribute I have seen with a quick googling is the number of rooms in their house for example). Maybe it doesn't exist as a set phrase, and sociologists just use a long sentence each time to explain that their ethnic / religious / whatever classification is based on answers from the persons themselves, not from their (possibly) narrow view of the population they are studying. Thanks for your help everyone. --Lgriot (talk) 16:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion the term that covers "religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity" is attributes. Another term that comes to mind is dimensions—these are "dimensions" of a person's identity. Bus stop (talk) 16:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

That is a very good phrase, we are getting close. Bus stop, in your vocabulary, when you are discussing these identity issues, would attributes of a person and dimension of a person's identity exclude something like their age? (I am asking about age as an example because one does not usually use what I call self-definition for it, you use an objective measure instead, like a calendar). --Lgriot (talk) 16:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It depends. If you are speaking of one individual, in my opinion age would be an attribute. But since it (age) varies among members of a constituent group, I don't think age can be considered an attribute in the same league with race, gender, nationality, religious identity, sexual orientation. These are really just my own opinions. I tend to agree with you that age would be different tan the other attributes. Bus stop (talk) 21:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

January 18

German - sealed envelope

what is AR-Beschluss zur Kuvertrunde see http://www.schienenfahrzeugtagung.at/download/PDF2007/1Tag%20Vormittag/2_Wehinger.pdf Slide 7

From the context I assume it refers to "sealed envelope bids" , but I can't work out what AR-Beschluss is exactly. Thanks in advance.Sf5xeplus (talk) 01:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Google translate says it means "AR-round decision on the envelope". That's not too helpful, but it's a start. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:06, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Above translation of "big G" is useless. Ar-Beschluss is shorthand for Aufsichtsratsbeschluss meaning "Decision of the board of directors", sealed envelope bids should be correct, it is part of the bidding process for the referenced purchase. As a whole it reads in translation: A [waiting] period of nine months from the decision of the board (of directors) to the sealed envelope bid. --129.206.196.116 (talk) 08:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - so that must mean the decision of the board of directors took place 9 months after receiving the sealed envelope bids.Sf5xeplus (talk) 08:16, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Let's not inflame this further. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:37, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

And I want to thank the German drive-by for the personal attack. Aufsichtsratsbeschluss zur Kuvertrunde literally translates as "Supervisory Board decision to cover/envelope round." Not a very idiomatic translation, but at least a hint of what it's about. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC) But that's not what you said at the first attempt Bugs. It was useless and not worth posting. We have enough unhelpful answers already, you have demonstrated that you can at times be very helpful - but not on this occasion, as you said yourself. Sometimes nothing is more helpful than irrelevance. Caesar's Daddy (talk) 08:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC) It was a hint to the OP to consult Google and to try Google Translate. If you think those kinds of sources are "useless", I don't know what to tell you. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC) Then you should just have said "try Google Translate", except that that would have been equally useless. When someone asks for a translation, they can expect a proper answer from someone who knows the language. We have plenty of German speakers on this desk, you didn't need to jump in with your useless intervention. --Viennese Waltz 10:38, 18 January 2011 (UTC) Open your insulting trap again and we can meet on the talk page. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC) Personal attacks tend to reflect more on the attacker than the attacked. You merely shame yourself, Bugs. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:45, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Bugs, we should not be referring Language Desk querents to Google Translate, because it sucks for most translation purposes. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not perfect, but I've had pretty good luck with it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) "Beschluss" is "decision", but more often in a slightly formal sense. I strongly suspect that "AR" is short for "Aufsichtsrat", usually "board of directors". "Kuvertrunde" seems to be a very Austrian word, but from the way it is used in various documents, it's indeed a sealed bid round. However, unlike the more familiar one-step process, it seems to be the last step in a multi-round negotiation. So first all potential bidders negotiate in the open, and then they hand in their final bid in a Kuvert, i.e. a (closed) envelope. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Firstly let me say that I did not mean my comment about "Big G" to be an attack on the one posting it, merely a colloquial pointer towards the inaccuracy of the translation. Secondly I agree with Mr. Schulz, that it means a period of nine months from the decision to buy to the actual contract of purchase, while the period of nine months is the bidding period during which competitor may enter the bid. --129.206.197.81 (talk) 10:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I now know what "AR" refers to.

Resolved

Linguistic future

Seeing the question above about singular they made me think... Are there any credible works published about what current aspects of non-standard grammar are becoming standard? Obviously the future of language evolution is far from simple, but I would be curious to see what trends are gaining momentum. Falconus^{p t c} 02:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The current exhibition at the British Library is Evolving English, which deals with these issues. Their advertising features textspeak and innit, for example. The catalogue of the exhibition, by everyone's favourite avuncular linguist David Crystal, bears the same title. BrainyBabe (talk) 22:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't have any references handy right now, but lots of published articles in journals like Language and the Journal of Pragmatics, especially syntax-oriented ones, specifically discuss such aspects of grammar. (For instance, there is an entire subfield specifically about "gonna".) rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

There were many theoretical linguistics articles about the syntax of "wanna" ca. the 1970s, and at one point new articles about the syntax of "wanna" were supposedly banned from the journal Linguistic Inquiry... AnonMoos (talk) 09:20, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Cool, thank you. Falconus^{p t c}

This book [1] The Unfolding Of Language: The Evolution of Mankind`s greatest Invention, by Guy Deutscher, does not only address the current evolutions of modern languages, it also addresses past evolutions, but it certainly explains a lot regarding the mechanisms through which the evolution happens, and the current example are well described. I learned a lot from it. --85.119.25.27 (talk) 18:15, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Corridor coach

Is there an North American term equivalent to "corridor coach" ? Sf5xeplus (talk) 02:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Are you talking about those train cars often seen in British films, with each compartment having two bench seats facing each other... as if they had taken several stagecoaches and mounted them on a flatcar? Do they even use those in America? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

That would be it. We even have an article for the Corridor coach which explains its original purpose. HiLo48 (talk) 08:06, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You might be thinking of Compartment coach which are seen in very old Sherlock Holmes films... there were "corridor coaches" in The Cassandra Crossing if that helps. Just to confuse you there are lots of scenes in corridor coaches in this sherlock holmes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8mooMMPpYA or here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy4lcH1SNew&feature=related 1.50 to 2.30mins Sf5xeplus (talk) 08:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

All of those are British or otherwise European. They tend to turn up in Hitchcock movies, for example. But are they / were they ever used in America? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:16, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure I've seen them in American movies (The Sting?), but I guess we'll just have to wait for the US folks to wake up and supply the answer. The eponymous article could do with expanding.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Bugs is American, and so am I, but we still don't know for sure, because hardly anyone travels by train in the U.S. anymore. The few times I've been on a train in the U.S. (between Philadelphia, NYC, New Haven, and White River Junction) there haven't been any corridor/compartment coaches, but the smallness of the sample size means I can't definitively state they don't exist. If they ever did exist, then presumably in the "golden age" of rail travel in the U.S., between about 1880 and 1930. Pais (talk) 11:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

What we need here is a ferroequinologist. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Somewhat confusingly, information on American corridor coaches are located in the Compartment coach article: see Compartment coach#American corridor coach. According to this, corridor coaches were an American invention and were also known as "American coach" or "American system" elsewhere. If this is true, then it is somewhat sadly ironic that we are discussing whether such trains even exist in the US anymore. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

And even more confusingly, Open coach says it was the open coach that was called "American system passenger coaches" or "American coaches". Pais (talk) 14:06, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Anyone trying to tidy up or reconcile these articles might like to note that the corridor connection article is more comprehensive than the others.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Corridor coaches do exist in the US, but I think they are mostly just called "sleeping cars" (I think the corridor and compartment model is the only construction currently used in this country). The most relevant information seems to be at Sleeping car#Modern times. Lesgles (talk) 16:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The mention of Hitchcock above brought back memories of his very effective use of the train tunnel metaphor in North by Northwest. Nice short YouTube sample here. That train had a corridor. HiLo48 (talk) 22:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

---

Okay, let's get this straight. There are three designs of single-deck passenger coach that have been in common use.

An "open" car typically contains one big room and is entered by doors at one or both ends. It normally has a central walkway and seats on each side. On busy railways, like subway (metro, underground) systems and some commuter lines, additional doors are often provided at intervals along each side. Open cars were adopted as standard in North America very soon after passenger railways began operating.

"Compartment" cars consist of a bunch of separate rooms (originally modeled after stagecoaches) spanning the full width of the train. Each room has two bench seats facing each other and its own separate door to the outside. Once the train leaves the station you must stay in your compartment. These cars were adopted as standard in Britain and I believe in many European countries in the early days of passenger railways, but when it became normal for long-distance trains to have facilities like dining cars and toilets, compartment cars were no longer suitable. In Britain they continued in use for commuter services for many years, but are no longer used in regular service. I believe this is for both safety and cost reasons.

A "corridor" car is a compromise between the above designs. It has a bunch of separate rooms, but they only span most of the width of the train, because there is a walkway -- the corridor -- along one side. Usually these cars have entrances at one or both ends and maybe in the middle, although they can be built with doors on one side leading directly into the compartments and on the other side leading into the corrdor directly across from each compartment. Corridor cars were standard for long-distance trains in Britain and Europe for many years; you'll normally see them in any movie made there in the black-and-white era where people are traveling by train in the daytime. But I have never heard of them being used in North America and I do not believe there is an American term for them. If speaking of them without sufficient context, I would tend to refer to them myself a "compartment-and-corridor" cars to avoid any confusion on the listener's part.

As noted above, sleeping cars in any country often have a layout resembling a corridor car. (Other sleeping-car layouts have upper and lower berths lengthwise on each side of a central walkway, or small rooms on each side of a corridor.) But the term "coach" is not properly applied to sleeping cars. In North American rail usage it specifically means an ordinary passenger car with seats for day travel.

Sorry, no references. I have a lot of familiarity with these things both from reading and actual use in various countries, but I don't know a single place where it's all written down together.

--Anonymous, 05:08 UTC (minor edits 11:45), January 19, 2011.

Re "I have never heard of them being used in North America": Wasn't the setting of the good guys' attempt to scam Beeks out of the crop report in Trading Places a compartment in a corridor car? (Was the New Year train supposed to be a Washington, D.C. – Philadelphia run? I can't recall.) I have no idea whether such cars are used in the real world, though. Deor (talk) 12:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Haven't seen it. A sleeping-car bedroom in its daytime configuration would have a similar appearance, though. Two things to look for: a bedroom probably has a closed upper berth above each seat and no windows on the corridor side, whereas a compartment in a corridor car probably has windows to the corridor and a shelf above the seats for light hand baggage. --Anonymous, 18:45 UTC, January 19, 2011.

Excellent delination of the different types of carriages by Anon. I also recommend The Man in Seat 61 for all long-distance rail travel queries. BrainyBabe (talk) 20:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Grammar

Is there a website where they have a game that will increase your English Grammar and as well as vocabulary?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.43.48 (talk • contribs) 19:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

FreeRice is pretty good. Lexicografía (talk) 21:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Ha, I (German) took the test and my very poor knowledge of school French helped me a lot more than my German and English knowledge combined did... is that actually supposed to be a French test?--178.26.171.11 (talk) 17:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Presumably they assume more latinate words are more difficult for English speakers than germanic words. But it does have some strange biases, and I often find myself baffled by the 'difficulty' assigned some of the words: there's a good amount of dialect in there, which seems odd, making it easy for some and ridiculous for others. And I always find myself disputing some of the 'right' definitions :) 86.164.164.183 (talk) 10:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I got up to the low 40s and it started getting difficult. But if you know German and French, then you pretty much know English. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:34, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It might be good to point out that FreeRice is turned into a grammar game (rather than the default vocabulary game) via the "change subjects" link. (I for one did not know about this.) 81.131.12.91 (talk) 02:32, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

January 19

Brain /Tongue

How many words is the brain ahead of the tongue?Think Spoonerisms. School Latin 50 years ago usually had us looking for the verb at the end of the sentence(except for Virgil where it could be anywhere in long unpunctuated sentences).Do different languages produce different brain usage/anticipation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.208.117.68 (talk) 00:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

There have been a number of jokes (from Mark Twain forward) about how it's necessary to "wait for the verb" until you can begin to understand or translate the basic meaning of a German sentence. Latin has a basic default SOV verb order in a number of contexts, but I'm not sure that "waiting for the verb" over a whole long sentence is generally as severe a problem in Latin as it can be in German... AnonMoos (talk) 09:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

This and similar questions form the focus of psycholinguistics. The answers are somewhat controversial, although I can come right out and say there's definitely no specific answer to your question (e.g. "the brain is exactly 3 words ahead of the tongue all the time"); many times this can't be measured, and besides there is ample evidence that the sort of phenomena you're talking about are often more constrained by syntactic or morphological boundaries (e.g. phrases) than pure number of words. rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

American English.

American English transposes ending 're' as in theater,center etc, but leave the relevent adjective in the 're' form.Why? John Cowell118.208.117.68 (talk) 01:21, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Not sure I understand. Are you talking about central? What's the equivalent for theater? And just a tip. Don't seek too much logic in spelling in English, whatever version. HiLo48 (talk) 01:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess he's asking why Americans don't say theateral and centeral. Some information about the change to -er here: [2] though it doesn't make any observation about adjectives. Possibly the answer is "because Webster's energies were limited." 213.122.48.63 (talk) 01:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) For example, theater, center, meter, color, rigor, humor and others are all spelt that way in the States because they make more sense, logically. But then, they come up with weird expressions such as "I could care less", which they want others to understand as the complete opposite, "I could NOT care less". So, it's clear that logic has limited application in language. Where it applies, it's rigorously enforced; where it doesn't apply, it's considered irrelevant and more-or-less regarded with contempt. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Presumably because that's how Americans pronounce it? American English -er is (at least traditionally) analyzed phonemically as /ər/ (schwa + r), and with this sort of viewpoint, the spelling -er (vowel + r) makes a lot more sense than -re (r + vowel for a sequence that's pronounced as vowel + r). You don't see "centeral" and "theaterical" because we don't pronounce any vowel there; it's cen-tral, not cen-ter-al. The real question, if you ask me, is why American spelling switched from -re to the more logical -er, but left -le as it was rather than switching it to -el (bottel?), since the situation with -le is pretty much completely analogous to -re. Voikya (talk) 01:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=center&searchmode=none and http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=theater&searchmode=none.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that this sort of thing affects the British as well. They have the word humour, but also humorous; colour, but coloration, and so on. 20:11, 22 January 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.185.234.63 (talk)

I am removing this from a separate section below as I think it was meant to be part of this same question. WikiDao ☯ 02:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC) English; theatre-theatrical
AmEng;theater-should be theaterical
English;centre-central
AmEng;center-should be centeral.
John Cowell.118.208.117.68 (talk) 01:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, the US IPAs are center = /ˈsɛn.tɚ/ (UK RP = /ˈsɛn.tə/) and central = /ˈsɛntɹəl/ (and not centeral = /ˈsɛn.təɹəl/). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

American English'

Pronunciation mostly irrelevent.Solder-sodder ,herbs-erbs,and rolling'R'sounds with no R's in the word. John Cowell.118.208.117.68 (talk) 02:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The "edit" link beside the section title is your friend. Besides that, the weird formatting effect is caused by starting the line with a space. 213.122.48.63 (talk) 02:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I fail to see a question here. Is this also part of the 'American English' section above? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:39, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

If I'm interpretting this correctly, this was probably meant as a response to my statement in the 'American English' section above about using "central" rather than "centeral" because that's how it's pronounced (though I'm not sure what the "rolling R" is referring to). Pronunciation, however, is not irrelevant here. Just because you can come up with unrelated examples of English words and pronunciations not lining up doesn't mean that pronunciation is the key reason Americans write "central" rather than "centeral". "Solder" and "herbs" have absolutely nothing to do with the American English shift of -re > -er. (Besides, as was mentioned above, apparently the spellings "center" and "theater" are actually older than "centre" and "theatre" are, although this isn't directly relevant). Voikya (talk) 06:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this user may be new to Wikipedia editing, I tried to explain it on his talk, but it doesn't seem to have had much effect. I saw this same thing happening with this user on the Science desk a few days ago (eg. as 118.208.9.92 here). WikiDao ☯ 03:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Kanji variants

Hi, are the two kanji in the link below actually the same character? Is there any difference in their usage in Japanese?

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/9216/kanjivar.jpg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.161.82.17 (talk) 01:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know, the left one is a simplified version of 備 only used on highway signs. See [3], [4], and [5]. This simplified font is called kōdan Gothic and it was developed by Japan Highway Public Corporation in 1963 for drivers. But NEXCO decided to replace it with Hiragino kaku-Gothic w5 in December 2010. See this. The right one is a sign using the new font. 備 itself is a simplified letter, but it's the standard in Japan today. Kyujitai is here. See the middle column on page 7. Oda Mari (talk) 06:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

They're the same character in Unicode (備), but the left-hand side is the Traditional Chinese form while the right-hand side is the one used in Japanese. The Simplified Chinese character is different again (备). 59.108.42.46 (talk) 06:18, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. The left-hand version is used in a modern Japanese textbook that I have. The context is nothing to do with road signs, so I guess they are just using an unusual font? The Japanese/Chinese distinction seems to make sense because, in my browser anyway, {{lang|ja|備}} shows the right-hand version and {{lang|zh|備}} shows the left-hand version. Mari, could you explain what the table in the PDF that you linked to is showing? I see the two variants side by side on page 7, but which are you calling the "kyujitai"? 86.135.173.159 (talk) 12:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I correct my last post. 備 is not a simplified version of 僃. I checked my kanwa dic. published in 1934 and found out 備 was 備 before the kanji reform. There is an entry of 僃 in the dic. too and simply says it is same as 備. So 備 was the standard then and 僃 was/is a variant in Japan. Unicode of 備 is 5099 and 僃 is 50C3. But this page of a Chinese site says 僃 is the traditional form. I have no idea which is correct. There is no entry of the left hand kanji, the one used on road signs, in the dic.. I think they definitely used an unusual font for the text book. Was the text book printed in Japan? Who wrote it? It seems strange to me that they used that difficult-to-find font. I cannot use the variant on my computer! The linked PDF page is a table of kyūjitai/traditional ja kanji and variants possible to use on Microsoft Word. Kanji on a pale gray background are today's standard kanji in Japan and kanji on a white background are traditional ja kanji or variants. Oda Mari (talk) 15:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I've not encountered 僃 before, to my knowledge. The Japanese dictionary at http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi, which I use quite a lot and which seems pretty reliable, seems to have no knowledge of it at all. The textbook I mentioned is printed and published in Japan, and generally seems to be an entirely Japanese production. Just out of curiosity, do the following two characters look different to you, and do they match the characters in my graphic here (ignoring irrelevant differences in font design)?

備備

If these characters look different, then which of them matches what you see in your post above where you say "Unicode of 備 is 5099"? I am not certain that we are all seeing the same character renderings... 86.174.47.61 (talk) 18:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

They're both the same Unicode codepoint, they just display differently in Chinese and Japanese (kind of like how in some fonts the letter "a" has a second story, and in other fonts it doesn't). Copy-and-paste them into a basic text editor (like Notepad, if you're using Windows) and see them magically change to the same character. 61.247.211.245 (talk) 03:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't contribute to this debate, but I can tell you I'm seeing two different characters, in the order they are in the original OP's linked JPG. I'm using Opera. (Interesting fact: in the edit page, where I'm writing this, both characters are the same, though - both are the left hand of the JPG, the character with the slight gray background. I've noticed this before - for me, characters sometimes appear different in the edit page then afterwards, when they are actually on the page itself.) TomorrowTime (talk) 19:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Where a font has different versions of a character for different languages (as here), I think some sort of system default must apply when a language isn't explicitly specified. For you and me this seems to be Chinese, so by default we see 備 as the left-hand kanji in my original graphic. I'm wondering if Oda Mari has a computer which defaults to Japanese, so by default she sees the right-hand kanji instead. 86.174.47.61 (talk) 20:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC).

OP, the characters you provided at 18:54 look differently on my computer and they do match the linked page. 5099 is the right-hand character. I have no idea why you cannot see these kanji as I do. Please try to change your browser settings/preference. Select MS P明朝 (serif), MS Pゴシック (san-serif) or MS ゴシック (san-serif) for fonts for Japanese. Of course, the character encoding is Unicode (UTF-8). And be sure that you have checked language setting for the system at the regional option on Control panel. My OS is Windows Japanese version and I use ATOK instead of MS-IME. How do you input ja on your computer? If you do not have the fonts above, I think you can download them at somewhere. At WWWJDIC, what I see is the right-hand version on a gray background of the JPG. How does this wikt page look like? Oops! Looking at [6], [7], [8] and [9], I notice it's only a fonts or typeface difference. I think generally ja publications uses the font on the right. That is why I thought the left one is uncommon. I myself hand write the character something in between. The 7th stroke is not that short as the font on the left, but not that straight and long as the left one. Sorry that I've been careless on this question. Both of these JPG characters are the same kanji. Oda Mari (talk) 06:40, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure some combination of system settings and/or fonts explains the difference in what we're seeing. The font(s) I'm using contain both 備 and 備, but these characters have the same Unicode code. My computer thinks the first one is Chinese and the second one is Japanese. When there is no information about which language is being displayed, it defaults to Chinese. When it knows the language is Japanese (like at the Wiktionary page you linked to, or like when I use {{lang|ja|備}}), it displays the Japanese character. Possibly if I played around with settings and fonts I could get it to display Japanese by default. (99% of the time this is not an issue because there is only one form of the character for a given Unicode code. Only a small number of characters, such as the one we've been discussing, have variants.) 81.159.79.102 (talk) 13:45, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Rabbits' habits and rebels' pebbles

There are lots of words with a double-b preceded by a short vowel: abbot, babble, bobbin, bubble, cobble, dobbin, dribble, gibber, gibbet, gobble, hobbit, hobble, kibble, (land) lubber, nibble, nobble, pebble, quibble, rabbit, rabble, robber, rubber, rubble, scrabble, scribble, scrubber, stubble, wobble, and probably a few more.

But the only words I can think of that have a single-b preceded by a short vowel are: exhibit, giblet, habit, inhabit, inhibit, prohibit, rebel (n.), robin, treble, and probably a few more.

Why are there proportionately so few of this latter group (9 compared with 28 in my count)? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:24, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I can think of some more examples of a short vowel, like abacus, Babel, riband, tribute, rabid, trouble, double, but vowels before a single B are often long, e.g. able, cable, table, fiber, tuber, etc.  English often doubles a consonant to indicate that the vowel before it is short, consider coma and comma, where the difference in pronunciation is in the "o", not the "m". Pais (talk) 12:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You're asking for logic in English??? For that matter, why does "you" rhyme with "yew" instead of "Yow!" I starting looking through EO,[10] thinking it was Latin vs. Germanic origins, but it's not quite so simple. All but one of the single-letter items are apparently from Latin via French. Rebelle is the source of "rebel", and the "proper" way to say it is "ree-bell" when a verb but "rebble" when a noun. Several, though not all, of the double-L items are from Germanic. The real kicker is that "Robin" and "Dobbin" both come from "Robert", which came to us from Germanic via French, and from the resultant nicknames "Rob" and "Dob" respectively. "Robert" in French has a long-o, of course. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

"You" DOES rhyme with "Yow" to Brummies! Alansplodge (talk) 23:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

French doesn't distinguish long and short vowels. But in English, Robert has a short o, so that's another one for the list. Pais (talk) 12:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

While it does have a short o, Brits tend to pronounce the o "longer", as in "Raw-bert", as opposed to the Yank pronunciation, "Rah-bert". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I disagree: the "o" in the standard BrE pronunciation is short, so that both syllables have about the same duration. You might hear something like "Rawbert" in some Scottish accents. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

As an American, when I hear an Englishman say "Robert" it sounds like "Raw-bert". But as you suggest, that might be just the standard English short-o. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

OK. So, I've added the suggestions from Pais, and a couple more I thought of myself, and the count now stands at 31:17 -

• abbot, babble, bobbin, bubble, cobble, dobbin, dribble, gibber, fibber, gibbet, gobble, hobbit, hobble, kibble, (women's) libber, (land) lubber, nibble, nobble, pebble, quibble, rabbit, rabble, ribbon, robber, rubber, rubble, scrabble, scribble, scrubber, stubble, wobble
• abacus, Babel, double, exhibit, giblet, habit, inhabit, inhibit, prohibit, rabid, rebel (n.), riband, Robert, robin, treble, tribute, trouble.

I guess my real question is not why the disparity in numbers, but whether the numbers are indeed of this order - or have I overlooked large numbers of examples that would provide a different slant? In this question I'm ignoring all the variants of each word (exhibit --> exhibiting, exhibits, exhibited, exhibition, exhibitions ...). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:02, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Babel has a long "a", like in bay. DuncanHill (talk) 22:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I have always heard it as a homophone of babble. In fact I more or less assumed that was where the word babble came from. --Trovatore (talk) 22:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Long a, per Chambers Dictionary and every sermon I've ever heard mentioning it. DuncanHill (talk) 22:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

This is a UK/US English difference. wikt:babel 81.131.13.218 (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

A few more for your list - abash, abide, abject, about, abreast, absent, abuse, cabal, corroborate, debit, debris, debut, ebullient, probable (x2), object, oblong, oblate, obtain, obtuse, obverse but also dabble, bobble. Mikenorton (talk) 20:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

And now I think about it, lots of words ending in 'able' and 'ible', like notable, palpable, possible, maleable, dirigible to name a few. Mikenorton (talk) 21:35, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike. I like abject, ábsent (but not absént), corroborate, debit, débris (but not debrís), probable, óbject (but not objéct), oblong, oblate, dabble and bobble. The others don't fit the pattern of having the short open vowel sound (as in rabbit, robber, pebble, nibble) preceding the single-b or double-b. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Er... because a doubled consonant or cluster is regularly used in English to mark short vowels? In turn because in Old and Middle English, simple vowels were regularly long in open syllables and short in closed syllables? What more do you want? --ColinFine (talk) 22:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Are you rudely answering my original question, or rudely answering my revised question, Colin? If it were as clear cut as you say, we'd be writing about the mating habbits of robbins. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:32, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Colin is correct about the rule (and, of course, "bj", "br" "bs" etc. count as double consonants, with "bl" variable), but there are a few exceptions where, for historical reasons, a single consonant followed by an "e" has the preceding vowel pronounced short. In some of these exceptions the long vowel is retained in some dialects. I think each exception needs to be explained from its individual etymology or a reason given for a change in pronunciation. The English language is full of exceptions to rules, but that doesn't mean that the rules are not useful in general. Dbfirs 08:00, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Malay question

Resolved

This is a spillover from ANI, where the editor who uploaded this item File:Pijak mafla indon.jpg has already betrayed a racist attitude towards Indonesians. The question is, what does mafla refer to in Malay? Google Translate does not have an English equivalent. Does anyone know? And if so, give it to us straight - no censorship. Thank you! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It appears that "mafla" is a corruption of "muffler", i.e. a scarf. I think that's the answer, but if anyone wants to comment, they can. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, probably. I can't be too sure for what I'll say, because I'm very much unfamiliar with Malay, but I think Malay wouldn't allow the occurrence of an "fl" consonant combination in a native word. --Theurgist (talk) 23:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Homophonic sentences?

There are so many thousands of homophones (and potential mondegreens) in English, I'm surprised that I haven't been able to find two grammatically correct whole sentences that are perfect homophones of each other, i.e. none of the words is to be duplicated in each sentence. So are there any? Googling "homophone" and "sentence" only seems to reveal example sentences containing single homophones.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Holorime has some examples. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

If I understand this right, a trivial solution would be single-word sentences whose words are homophones of each other. One example that comes to mind is "Die!" (cease to live) vs. "Dye!" (make a different colour). JIP | Talk 20:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Gneiss won! ---Sluzzelin talk 20:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Awl my nark rap... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.47.61 (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Whale oil beef hooked! -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

fr:Poème holorime and the external links cited there (e.g. this one) offer some fantastic French examples. French doesn't have a word-level stress, so all those pairs of verses are capable of being read as perfect homophones. An amazingly fascinating language, that's what French is. --Theurgist (talk) 22:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Inasmuch as exclamations can be taken as "grammatically correct whole sentences" -- they certainly are complete utterances -- I would draw your attention to the song by Pete Gold, which I wrote about on these refdesk a mere three years ago.

Comedy songwriter Pete Gold achieves the same effect by persuading his audience to sing along to a song with the refrain "Fucking hell" under various guises -- "For King Hal", the "far canal", etc.

Quite distinct from his "One Minute Filth Song". BrainyBabe (talk) 15:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I can clearly recall The Two Ronnies (UK comedy pair) singing a song on peak-time TV with the chorus "Over China, over China", how it passed the censors I have no idea. Richard Avery (talk) 09:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Being a native, you may enjoy the above mentioned Two Ronnies in their sketch "Four Candles" (aka "Fork Handles"), see here. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:13, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Practise, practice

Is there a simple means of remembering which is which? Thanks 92.29.114.231 (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Is is a verb, ice is (usually) a noun. But that works in reverse in those places where practice is a verb and practise is a noun. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I thought practise was British Eng and practice US? I'm a United Statesian and I only use the latter. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

If wiktionary can be believed,[11] "practice" is the noun form throughout English, whereas "practice" is the verb in American English but it's "practise" in English everywhere else. There's a wikipedia article about American vs. British English. I forget the exact title. But if this item is not on that list, maybe it should be. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:59, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Try American and British English spelling differences. And yes, practice is the noun, practise the verb. cf licence and license. Fairly normal English noun-verb pairs. DuncanHill (talk) 01:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Aha, such as "advice" and "advise". Except we Yanks pronounce the second one "advize". Do you say "practise" as though it were "practize"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

That would be rather outmoded. The "ize" pronunciation is listed in Chambers as "formerly". I dare say you'll find some poems which need it to be pronouced thus. DuncanHill (talk) 02:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Especially if written by William S. Gilbert. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Even for the verb, Google counts show both spellings in wide use in Britain, Canada, and Australia; in Canada the C spelling shows more hits. These are not highly reliable numbers by any means, but in this case I believe them. The specific searches I did were e.g. for +practicing site:uk, where the -ing form was chosen in order to ensure usage as a verb, and the + sign was to reduce the chance of Google assuming I didn't care about the spelling. --Anonymous, 04:52 UTC, January 20/11.

To answer the (British English) question, think device (noun) devise verb, advice (noun) advise (verb, hence practice (noun) practise (verb).--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes "practise" is still the correct spelling for the verb in British English, but people here read so many books published in America, or American books published here but not translated, that possibly a majority of people in the UK are confused by the "practise/practice" distinction, hence the high hit-rate for errors in Google. Dbfirs 07:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Those of us who were actually taught these things in school will always choose the appropriate word; but the later generations are slaves to spell checkers, and ones that usually use American spelling conventions to boot. Official agencies of government etc will still usually issue "licence"s, but vast numbers of Australian people have resumes that tell readers they have a motor vehicle, forklift, heavy rigid or whatever "license". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I am often accused of pedantry by colleagues, but on this one I just don't care. I've given up. Doesn't seem to matter most of the time. Only upsets worse pedants than I. (Did you like that last bit?) HiLo48 (talk) 08:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

There are no words to convey my disgust at your abject, craven capitulation to the dark side, Mr 48.  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

That's "worse pedants than me", because it's in apposition to the direct object of upsets. Pais (talk) 15:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your conclusion Pais, but reject your argument. What leads you to suppose that the word introduced by "than" is in apposition to the NP it modifies? I play the game called pedantry only against pedants.--ColinFine (talk) 18:50, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The original question was about an easy way to remember which is which . . . I always used the word 'ANNOUNCE' (A noun CE) which only leaves the verb to be SE. 194.223.35.225 (talk) 16:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC) (Gurumaister not logged in)

George Eliot chose to write Silas Marner with the characters speaking in dialect. Here are a few villagers, sitting in the pub, discussing the correct pronunciation of "practise". Mr Macey, the elderly tailor, responds to the landlord:

"Ask them as have been to school at Tarley: they've learnt pernouncing; that's come up since my day."

"If you're pointing at me, Mr. Macey," said the deputy clerk, with an air of anxious propriety, "I'm nowise a man to speak out of my place. As the psalm says--

"I know what's right, nor only so,

But also practise what I know.""

"Well, then, I wish you'd keep hold o' the tune, when it's set for you; if you're for practising, I wish you'd practise that," said a large jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his week-day capacity, but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of the company, who were known officially as the "bassoon" and the "key-bugle", in the confidence that he was expressing the sense of the musical profession in Raveloe.

Mr. Tookey, the deputy-clerk, who shared the unpopularity common to deputies, turned very red, but replied, with careful moderation-- "Mr. Winthrop, if you'll bring me any proof as I'm in the wrong, I'm not the man to say I won't alter. But there's people set up their own ears for a standard, and expect the whole choir to follow 'em. There may be two opinions, I hope."

The emphasis is hers. It's a good thing these refdesks have room for two or more opinions! BrainyBabe (talk) 22:49, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

January 20

Allophone?

I'm not sure if the thing I'm talking about is strictly an allophone; bear with me. Your article says that allophones are different sounds that are used to express the same phoneme in different "situations", if you will; what about sounds that a completely or nearly interchangeable in a language, or (subtly different) sounds that are not distinguished within a language. I will give an example from a dialect that I do not speak because we do not tend to notice them in our own dialects: in the Sichuan dialect of Chinese, for example, the word 湖 (lake) can be realized "hu" (sorry I don't know IPA for CHinese) or "fu", and these two are used interchangeably. What is this called? The concept is somewhat similar to a merger. Thanks. 24.92.70.160 (talk) 02:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

In Sichuan, are the "f" and "h" sounds indistinguishable? Perhaps the environment, such as the last sound of the word preceding, does influence the use, which would make them allophonic. In English, the classic example is the /p/ sound, which comes in aspirated and non-aspirated allophones. The aspirated p appears in the word "pot" and the non-aspirated p appears in the word "stop". English speakers cannot hear the difference, but many langauges consider these meaningfully distinct sounds and would not use one in the place of the other. In English, there's also the issue that certain dialects will consistantly pronounce letters differently, such as the way rhotic and nonrhotic dialects deal with the letter "R". Which situation better describes what you are going after?--Jayron32 02:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, using an example we're not familiar with can make it much more difficult to figure out what is happening just because there's not enough information. However, based on your description alone, it sounds like you're describing a case of free variation. Voikya (talk) 03:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

OP may need to clarify what he means by 湖 being pronounced as either "hu" or "fu". Do you mean this changes by context (as Jayron32) described? Or do you mean that it always comes out as something between "hu" and "fu"? I ask because some speakers of southern dialects pronounce the Mandarin "h" sound as something like "f" because those two sounds do not exist as distinct sounds in their native dialects. This is similar to the well-known phenomenon of "r" and "l" being undistinguished in Japanese. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Meaning of Czech name: Ořešila

Does such a name exist? Would it have been used in the 16th century? What does is it mean? (I suspect 'nut' - is this correct?) Also, is the given spelling correct? Thanks, Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 15:54, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Never heard of such a name, but it does not sound impossible. The meaning or etymology is not clear to me, it could be derived from ořech "nut", but it could also have something to do with řešit "to solve", or it could be a mangled form of some name of foreign origin. The spelling looks OK.—Emil J. 16:20, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I should have made the purpose of my question clearer. I encountered references to a 16th-century woman, a prominent member of the Jewish community of Prague, whose Yiddish/German name was Nüssel, i.e. nut (in diminutive form). Hebrew sources quote Czech documents that give her name as "אורשילה", which later sources interpret as "Ursila", a variant of Ursula. This seemed unlikely to me (in fact, historians who did not see the Jewish community records and knew her only by her Czech name stated with certainty that her Jewish name "must have been" 'Reizel' or something like that. However, I thought I may have found a more plausible explanation. Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 16:51, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, that's intriguing. Do the Czech documents quoted in the Hebrew sources still exist, or are they only known through the Hebrew quotation? Otherwise I don't think this is solvable more reliably than guesswork. Nüssel does not have a native Czech equivalent as a name; the literal translation of the word (preserving the diminutive) would be oříšek, but being a masculine noun, this is unsuitable for a woman's name. In view of this, I can well imagine someone inventing Ořešila as a translation of the name, it's cute enough after all. That is, your explanation is possible, and I tend to agree with your sentiment that it is more likely than a mangled version of the name of a Catholic saint, but as I said, all this is just guesswork. The only Google hits I got for something like Ořešila used as a name are [12][13][14][15], none of which seems to have anything to do with anything Czech.—Emil J. 18:32, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The documents definitely still exist; I have a recent (90's?) book written by a researcher who saw them in the Prague archives. He goes so for as to give a precise reference to at least one mention of her name: "Manuscript 2118 folio 398b". As I mentioned, older (more careless) researchers rendered her name in a way that suggests a German variant of Ursula, but not this recent transcription (who seems, throughout his book, to have examined the archives quite thoroughly). Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 21:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

洋 (Japanese)

Hi, does anyone know the history of how in Japanese the character 洋 came to mean both "ocean" and "Western" (in the sense of European/American)? 86.161.85.97 (talk) 20:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

There are two words 東洋 and 西洋. According to this page, the origin of the word 西洋 seems to be China. 洋 means Western in Chinese too. See this. And there is a ja idiom, 洋の東西を問わず. See [16] and [17]. 西洋 is shortened to 洋 and used to mean Western. 東洋 is not shortened. Probably because it is less used in daily life. Most of the time people use country names like "中華風/a Chinese style" instead of Oriental as Japan is also a part of 東洋. A word 洋楽 might be a good example. It is a shortened form of 西洋音楽 and the meaning is Western music. Oda Mari (talk) 06:30, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

[edit conflict] The word has the same two meanings in Chinese as well as Japanese, so that's where it probably comes from. The "ocean" meaning came first, as you can see from this page (use the tabs to see the definition from 2 old Chinese dictionaries, the Kangxi Dictionary and Shuowen_Jiezi); I don't have a reliable source but the second meaning is probably because foreigners came from over the ocean. Oda Mari's explanation is more likely to be correct 59.108.42.46 (talk) 06:39, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

In Chinese (and I'm quite certain the sequence in Japanese usage is broadly the same) 洋 means "ocean", and from thus, "overseas". Lands over the seas are classified according to the direction from which one travels, over the seas, to reach them. Thus 西洋 means the "western ocean" or "land(s) beyond the western ocean", 東洋 means the "eastern ocean" or "land(s) beyond the eastern ocean", 南洋 means the "southern ocean" of "land(s) beyond the southern ocean". 北洋 only means the "northern ocean" but not "land(s) beyond the northern ocean" since there were no lands that were reached by crossing an ocean towards the north.

With me so far? Now to map these words to actual locations - these meanings changed as Chinese maritime exploration progressed. In the Ming dynasty, 西洋 or the (land beyond) the western ocean meant lands to the west of (approximately) Brunei, since Brunei was the country reached by sailing directly south from the south coast of China. Thus, large portions of south-east Asia, India, and the east coast of Africa, would have been seen as "(land beyond) the western ocean" - hence why the voyages of Cheng Ho were known as 下西洋, "down the western ocean". Over time, as China came into contact with Europeans in the modern era, who by and large also came to China through the "western ocean", Europe was added to the set of lands that was "beyond the western ocean". Eventually, due to the cultural dominance of Europeans in other parts of the world, 西洋 came to mean the whole world other than Japan and South-East Asia (see below), as more of a cultural concept than a geographic one. It was this expansion in scope of the "western Ocean" that led to 洋 gradually displacing 西洋 as meaning "Western" rather than just "foreign".

東洋, or the eastern ocean, on the other hand, has almost always meant Japan. Other nearby states such as Korea or Ryukyu were not included in 東洋, since they were close vassals of China and so were not strictly "foreign".

南洋, or the southern ocean, meant those lands which lay south of China, and included the Phillipines, modern-day Indonesia and Malaysia, and sometimes Indochina as well. The Nanyang Archipelago is roughly the same as the Indonesian archipelago.

However, in the Qing Dynasty (and continuing into the early Republic of China era), 南洋 also had an alternative meaning. For the purposes of regulating international trade, the Qing government divided the country into two zones. The Minister of Beiyang Commerce ("Commerce of the Northern Ocean") was in charge of trade and, at times, foreign affairs in the northern part of the country, while the Minister of Nanyang Commerce ("Commerc of the Southern Ocean") was the counterpart for the southern part of the country. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the great answers folks. Very interesting. 81.151.33.21 (talk) 12:35, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

January 21

Swedish pronunciation

I've been trying to figure out how to pronounce "Tjikko" as in Old Tjikko. I assume its a Swedish name, and I'm no expert in phonetics so any help would be appreciated. If anyone is familiar with using the {{IPA}} templates feel free to answer by editing the article itself. --ErgoSum•talk•trib 00:53, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd have a go, but as Wikipedia's version of IPA as used in Swedish pronunciation is different to the form used in my Swedish Dictionary, and I have had difficulty in the past making what I type correspond to what others see with IPA, I won't. DuncanHill (talk) 01:11, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand IPA, and I'm not familiar with Old Tjikko, but AFAIK, "tj" in Swedish is pronounced "tz", so it would be pronounced something like "tzikko". JIP | Talk 05:51, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the so-called 'tje-sound' would come into action. My guess would be something like /ɕɪkɔ/. --Kjoonlee 10:22, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

”Trädet fick sitt namn efter upptäckaren Leif Kullmans hund Tjikko.”, that is, "The tree got its name after Tjikko, the dog of its discoverer Leif Kullman." Leif Kullman is a professor at the Umeå University, and apparently a Swede, therefore his dog's name is likely pronounced in the Swedish way. In Swedish, ‹tj› is normally a way of spelling /ɕ/, as in tjugo, tjänst, tjock. My guess would also be something like /ɕɪkːɔ/, even though the natural Swedish spelling of the long "k" consonant is ‹ck›, in contrast with Danish and Norwegian, which use the here-present ‹kk›. In order to receive a fully trustworthy answer, you may consider asking this question at the Swedish Wikipedia's reference desk. (It won't be much of a problem if you post there in English, because Scandinavians almost exclusively many Scandinavians speak it.) --Theurgist (talk) 15:40, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Really? I'd have thought very few Scandinavians exclusively speak English. Pais (talk) 16:05, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. It's my bad command of English. I'm just a learner of English. --Theurgist (talk) 16:12, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

You might try universally or invariably next time, or just always. (Not that you asked.) 81.131.65.219 (talk) 18:57, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Whereas "tj" in Swedish is pronounced as this /ɕ/ sound, which I transliterated as "tz" above, this sound does not occur in native Finnish. On the contrary, in Finnish, "tj" is pronounced "tj", for example in the interjection "tjaa..." which is pronounced something like "tyah" in English. The reason why I'm writing this here is a recent Finnish advertising campaign for the travel agency Tjäreborg, which makes fun at the Swedish pronunciation by using phrases like "Lähdetjä?" which is intended to be pronounced like "Lähdetsä?", colloquial Finnish for "Will you go?". JIP | Talk 20:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

From where do you get the transliteration "tz"? As a Swede, that strikes me as wrong, unless the "z" means something specific and unrelated to the letter z. Pronouncing the 'tje', 'kje' and such sounds more "s"-like than they should be strikes me as something you would typically do when pretending to have a strong Finnish accent. (Particularly, a Finnish Finn having learnt Swedish from Finland-Swedes). Regarding the name "Tjikko" in the question, it is not a Swedish name. The double-k spelling indicates to me that it is Sami, or made-up to look like Sami or Finnish. So, the "tj" should most likely be pronounced like in Finnish, making the sound quite close to the beginning of English "chick". /Coffeeshivers (talk) 13:12, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

(I corrected Coffeeshivers' wikilink, because it originally pointed to a disambiguation page.) The double "k" may, purely theoretically, be due to the fact that the name of the dog is a compuond word, consisting of tjik [ɕiːk], whatever that could mean, and ko [kuː], meaning "cow". But that's surely not the case here. --Theurgist (talk) 18:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

The transliteration "tz" comes mostly from my own assumptions. For a native Finnish speaker, all these different "s" sounds are hard to keep track of. You know our Slavic friends just to the east of our country? They have seven different "s" sounds. Finnish has all of - count them! - one, plain old "s". In Finnish Swedish, "tj" is pronounced either "ts" or "tsch", but I guessed that in proper Swedish, it's supposed to be pronounced voiced, like "tz". That guess might have been wrong. JIP | Talk 22:27, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation: name "Crooijmans" of person from Netherlands

Could someone please give me a layman's (not IPA) pronunciation of Crooijmans? I'm meeting a fellow by that name at a conference and haven't a clue how to pronounce it. He's from the Netherlands, if that helps. Thank you. The Masked Booby (talk) 04:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

The only tricky bit is the IJ digraph, which is pronounced (and treated by Dutch) as a single letter. If I am reading the IPA correctly, the pronounciation of IJ is something like the vowel sound in the word english word "fail" but more "back". As far as pronouncing the whole name, I think the closest English approximation would be "Croy-mans" though I don't know enough about Dutch to get the stresses right. Maybe someone who knows more Dutch could take a better stab at it. --Jayron32 04:47, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

That's not bad. Lengthen the "o" a little bit, and make sure you don't say "mans" like English "man's", but rather like German "Hans". And ask him, "Hoe is het weer in Amsterdam?" Ciao, Drmies (talk) 05:31, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

For non-Dutch speakers it is merely an enquiry about the weather. Richard Avery (talk) 07:54, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you ask it that way regardless if the person is from Amsterdam or not? :D Rimush (talk) 08:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

• It's the only place that matters. :) Drmies (talk) 16:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify a bit - "Crooij" rhymes with the English name "Roy" and "mans" rhymes with the words "buns", "sons", "puns". If I can suggest a useful mnemonic, think of the phrase "Roy and Sons". Roger (talk) 09:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe an even better English rhyme would be "once", because the pronunciation of the English (plural) ending "-s" is traditionally described as /z/ after voiced consonants (buns /bʌnz/, sons /sʌnz/, puns /pʌnz/), and in the case given we need an /s/ sound: once /wʌns/. --Theurgist (talk) 16:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Hyphened word

Should the word "title decider" have a hyphen between title and decider? The context for this word would be in sports or competitions. In other words a game or match that will decide who wins the title. I found the use of the word in the article North_London_derby#Cup_semi-finals_and_title_deciders but I'm not sure if it should have a hyphen. --MicroX (talk) 09:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Since it's unambiguous as stated I see no reason to hyphenate it, but one would need to see it in a complete sentence to decide whether the lack of a hyphen could lead to ambiguity.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I would definitely use a hyphen - a similar example would be "Beckham's goal was a match-winner". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:44, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, I think it makes it easier to read as it shows clearly that the two words go together. Alansplodge (talk) 12:09, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Usage might be different in the US, but in the UK The Oxford Manual of Style recommends using a hyphen only with good reason. "In general the tendency is for new or temporary pairings of words to be spaced [rather than hyphenated]... As the combination becomes fixed over time, it may pass through the hyphenation stage and finally come to be set as one word."--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm a fan of hyphens, but I don't see the need to use hyphens in these examples. In each case the first word of the pair is just attributive usage of the noun as an adjective describing the second word. If the pair forms a single adjective (match-winning goal, title-deciding match), then there is a good case for a hyphen because the pair of words forms a single adjective. Dbfirs 17:21, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

A hyphen distinguishes a man-eating shark from a man eating shark.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:39, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

The standard I go by is that when the first word is the object of a verb and the second word is the agent noun formed by using -er or a similar suffix on that verb, then a hyphen is required. Title-decider, man-eater, English-speaker, and so on. "Need to distinguish" is not a factor. If it becomes an established phrase, then maybe it can be written without a hyphen. --Anonymous, 05:07 UTC, January 22, 2011.

Integral

Oh dear, oh dear. You would think the BBC would look up their own guide on pronunciation before pronouncing "Integral" with the emphasis on the second syllable. Kittybrewster ☎ 14:09, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

As the name suggests, it's just a guide, not a formal set of rules which shall not be broken lest the individual suffer eternal damnation. Anyway, they have been getting the pronunciation of Liu Xiaobo wrong ever since they first heard of him. There was a news item about him with three different reporters speaking, three different pronunciations, and none of them correct. Even their correspondent in 'Beiʒing' was saying Looʒaobow.... Then you get the 'expert' journalists who get into North Korea for a documentary, and fairly straight away I am aware they are reporting on a country they know nothing about, when they start saying 'Kim Yong Il', presumably because they think every 'foreign' J is pronounced as a Y, unless it's French (or Mandarin, inexplicably). Quality journalism! Remember, the BBC is the one we pay for. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:35, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

From OXford Dictionaries: "There are two possible pronunciations for integral as an adjective: one with the stress on the in- and the other with the stress on the -teg-. In British English, the second pronunciation is sometimes frowned on, but both are acceptable as standard." Pais (talk) 14:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

schwa

I'm italian and I have difficult to say schwa at the begin and in the middle of word. Usually I change this vowel with a or e. For example ago becomes "ego" and about becomes "abaut". My question for english native speaker is: is there a big difference in my (and many Italian people) pronuciancion? For me It's very similar and I'm not able to recognize the difference.--93.47.14.94 (talk) 16:26, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Have some sympathy for the reverse problem: To an untrained anglophone ear, scoraggiare and scoreggiare sound exactly the same :-) --Trovatore (talk) 01:05, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there is any problem with retaining the initial vowel in most words, but don't change "ago" to "ego". The schwa is just a lazy pronunciation that is common but not mandatory in English. Dbfirs 17:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing "lazy" about the schwa, and it's absolutely mandatory if you're aiming for an even remotely native-like pronunciation. Pais (talk) 17:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Judging from user pages, you, Pais, are an American, and Dbfirs is British. One of the "criticisms" of American pronunciation is that they tend to use the schwa sound heavily. That is, for words where the British English pronunciation has a clear short e or short a (or other vowel sound), Americans use the schwa sound instead. This "Short a, short e - who cares? Just use schwa!" propensity might be considered "lazy" by some (c.f. "lazy American" stereotype). Given the large number of English Language accents, there's probably at least one which hardly ever uses the schwa sound, though I'm not knowledgeable enough to know which. -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 18:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct, though I was thinking of British laziness, with no implied criticism of Americans. My point was that there are much more serious errors that betray a "foreign" accent than careful and precise pronunciation of short vowels that are less precisely pronounced in "RP" or "standard English". I think I could get by (just) in British English without using the schwa and without sounding "foreign". This might be less true in American English. My own original (strong northern) accent made more extensive use of the sound than does my current pronunciation, especially when reading aloud. Dbfirs 08:27, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

One of the essential qualities of schwa, it seems to me, is that it has no essential qualities--certainly not stress. I could venture a guess and say that this results from the particular Germanic focus on emphasis rather than on vowel length. If you try to pronounce the syllable less, so to speak, with less emphasis, that might help. Schwa is located in the middle/back of the mouth, tongue down--"uh...uh..." Drmies (talk) 19:30, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a stressed equivalent of the schwa, the ʌ in IPA, but functionally it is pronounced exactly like the schwa. Think of the first syllable in words like "buggy" or "bumper". Compare to the last syllable of "comma". Same sound, different stress... And both British and American english pronounce the schwa in "comma". --Jayron32 20:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

In my world, the first syllable of 'buggy' and 'bumper' is ʌ, not ə. Quite distinctly different. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:29, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree — my schwa is often (though not always) more like an unstressed "book" vowel than an unstressed "buck" vowel. --Trovatore (talk) 23:35, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

140.142.20.229 -- The British complaints are probably about unstressed [ɪ] in British becoming [ɨ] in many cases in many American accents. However, both British dialects and American dialects make abundant and frequent use of the schwa sound. Before the mid 20th century, some dictionaries (such as the OED) didn't include any separate pronunciation symbol for schwa, but a dialect of English which didn't include the sound schwa would be quite remote from any form of standard English... AnonMoos (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I would say that if you have trouble with the schwa, try to replace it with the appropriate "short" vowel, such as ʌ in "ago." I know that when I (a native speaker) was teaching English as a second language, I had trouble teaching the "pronunciation" sections because I couldn't tell the difference between schwas and short vowels. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 07:18, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Say the word "ago" out loud a few times. Now say "three months ago" a few times. You might find you're using a ʌ when "ago" is spoken by itself, and a schwa when it's more naturally preceded by other words and placed in a context. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:53, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Danish Pronunciations and Immigrant Name Changes

I have posted here before concerning genealogical research. I have recently found some good information about my ancestor. It seems, though, that his surname is slightly different from what it is today.

According to the 1860 Danish census his surname was "Raaub." After his immigration to Montreal, Canada and later Buffalo, New York the name was spelt "Raadt."

Questions: 1)How is "Raaub" pronounced in Danish, and 2) what could be the reason behind this discrepancy?

Thanks Wikipedians! schyler (talk) 18:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

For your second question, you might be helped a little by the article "Name change", especially by the subsection "Norway".

—Wavelength (talk) 03:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Re 2, sounds like anglicisation to me. An immigration agent might've written the name down incorrectly or maybe your family decided that it would be less problematic for them in an English speaking country if their name was less "ethnic" --Hutcher (talk) 04:24, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Language speaker question

Approximately how many people in the world speak (not necessarily natively) at least one of these languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish. FOr my purposes, people who speak more than one of these languages should only be counted once. Thanks. 24.92.70.160 (talk) 21:46, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

A couple of problems there. First, I doubt if anybody has compiled stats for just that particular set of languages. Second, what do you do about someone who is equally fluent in multiple languages if you can only count them once? I think I misread the question. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:32, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

If you were asking about native speakers this would be pretty easy, just add up the numbers for all those languages and you'd have a reasonable approximation. (Of course it will vary depending on what statistics you use, since the counts for any given language vary widely, and because some people--although definitely a minority--are native speakers of more than one of these languages at the same time.) Including second-language speakers, though, makes it more complicated, since you can't just add in the numbers of L2 speakers overall—for instance, if you calculated the number I just described above and then added in the number of second-language speakers of English, you'd be double-counting many people, since a large number of people from all those groups speaks English as a second language. There are certainly statistics around on L2 English speakers by language (e.g., an estimate of the number of Mandarin, French, and Spanish speakers who also speak English as an L2), although I don't know off the top of my head where to find them; comparable statistics for those other languages might only be available in those languages. Another issue is what you mean by "speak"; how proficient do you want someone to be to be counted? The estimate you get will vary widely depending on how you answer that question. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:43, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

On the excellence of accents

I am in a literary frame of mind today.

We doubt if there is a people under the sun, that so murders its own language as the English. There are many dialects, even in England. A well-educated man cannot understand the working-people in country parts. Some drop the letter h., where it should be used, and vice versa, and others give every letter a wrong sound. Surely it ill becomes any one belonging to such a country to find fault with American pronunciation.

(From London by Day and Night, by David W.Bartlett, 1852 - Chapter 5 - Costumes and Customs, reproduced on Victorian London. Mr Bartlett is an American visiting the capital of the Empire, probably for the Great Exhibition.)

It is commonplace to prefer one's own accent and hear others' as grating and erroneous and degraded. Historically, and still in some places now, it is commonplace to secretly or not so secretly despise one's own accent, and to disparage it, while holding up to esteem that of another people as purer, more melodious, more correct. My question is: was it ever thus? Was there ever a time when all different mutually comprehensible accents were held as socially and intellectually equal? Somehow I think not. Keeping to English for the sake of simplicity, was there ever a time when most Americans wished to sound like the British, or vice versa? I am aware of accent reduction classes, e.g., for Indians working in call centres, and of course the long history of elocution lessons to assist social mobility. I also remember Mark Twain's remark of Montreal, that it was the only place he knew where a French accent was not of social benefit. BrainyBabe (talk) 23:05, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd suspect that the answer is that there has never been a time when all accents and dialects were considered socially equal. One's dialect has always betrayed one's social class, and it has often been seen as a ticket to a different class to learn to speak like them. See, for example, Pygmalion (play)/My Fair Lady (film). --Jayron32 03:19, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

As an Australian from Melbourne visiting the USA I was often told "Oh, I really love your accent." Trouble was, even though I understood them pretty well, they didn't understand half of what I said. Even ordering a Coke was difficult. I think Australians are exposed from birth these days to their families and neighbours speaking Australian, with American and British shows filling all the gaps in our TV schedules. We have immigrants from other English speaking places such as New Zealand, South Africa, India and south-east Asia, with probably the most extreme case for us Melbournites being our popular last Lord Mayor John So. (If you read his article you will see that it's valid to say popular.) He came from Hong Kong in his teenage years and although now in his 60s still has the most extreme Hong Kong English accent. It cracks a mention in his article here. We are used to variety. Not everyone else is. I think that makes a difference. HiLo48 (talk) 03:16, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

My experience (and I don't know if this is a place thing, an age thing, or just my own experience) is that foreign accents, especially British (or Australian or South African or anything that sounds vaguely British) or French sound "posh" and sophisticated to our North American ears, and even other accents are exotic and therefore desirable. I've heard many times things like, "Oh wow, your accent is so cool, say something for me." So it's quite the opposite of the idea that our own accent is preferable and others are grating. An obvious exception might be calling for tech assistance and hearing a (for instance) Indian accent, but that's more a case of, "Oh no, we're is going to have trouble communicating" rather than the actual sound of the accent being bothersome. Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 06:55, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

That particular American experience of sensing sophistication (and even higher intelligence) in an English accent seems to have been confirmed in polls. (Mentioned, for example, in the "Europhilia" entry (p 245) of Volume 1 of Class in America: An Encyclopedia, Robert E. Weir, ISBN 9780313337192). Janet B. Ruscher sees this as an exception to the "standard-implies-competence" rule. More often, a speaker of the standard accent will be seen as "more intelligent, as having higher status, and as being more dominant and competetent" in comparison with a non-standard speaker. ("Standard" meaning whatever the local standard happens to be). She refers to studies documenting this for Mexican-American accents in the US and for Scottish accents in England. English and Japanese accents are given as examples coming from a culture perceived as higher. (Prejudiced Communication: A Social Psychological Perspective, Guilford Press, 2001, ISBN 9781572306387, p 108) ---Sluzzelin talk 07:39, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

January 22

Latin etymology of the word "conscious"

I would like to add some information to our article on "consciousness" concerning the derivation of the word from Latin. I am pretty sure of the basic facts, but not being a Latin speaker, not certain that I am handling the grammar correctly, so would appreciate if somebody can check up on me. Here is what I would like to say (some of this is already in the article):

Our word "conscious" derives from the Latin conscius, but the Latin version did not have the same meaning as our word -- it meant knowing with, in other words sharing knowledge about something with somebody. There were, however, many occurrences in Latin writings of the phrase conscius sibi, which translates literally as "knowing with oneself", or in other words sharing knowledge with oneself about something. Taken literally this is nonsense, but apparently it had the figurative meaning of knowing that one knows, as the modern English word "conscious" does.

These are not necessarily the exact words I would put into the article, but what I would mainly like to know is if anybody familiar with Latin sees anything there that is incorrect, or could be stated better. (For full disclosure, I'm also trying to write a book on this and would like to know for my own purposes.) Looie496 (talk) 01:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Not remotely an answer, but it's just occurred to me that our word "science" is related to "conscious". I wonder why we don't pronounce it as "shy-əns", analogously to "con-shəs". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

If we pronounced science that way, people would think we were crazy for talking like Sean Connery all the time --Jayron32 03:13, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, International Talk Like a Pirate Day is well established, why not International Talk Like Sean Connery Day? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 08:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

You pick a date. I'll do it if you will. --Jayron32 17:10, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

It would be like the last syllable of "conscience", surely. Shunce. 81.131.8.163 (talk) 05:56, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You have the right basic idea, but the details of the ramification of the senses of English words derived from conscius and conscientia and such is rather complicated. There's a whole chapter (Chapter 8) in C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words devoted to the topic (drawing also on the senses of similarly formed words in ancient Greek). The specifically medical and psychological (i.e., relating to the academic discipline of psychology) meanings of conscious and consciousness are fairly modern. Deor (talk) 01:52, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Mountainous area

I need other six letter words meaning "Mountainous area" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.2.151.131 (talk) 02:14, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Other than what? Sierra is a possibility. Deor (talk) 02:21, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe "upland". Alansplodge (talk) 03:06, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, other than what? Another suggestion: massif. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.173.208 (talk) 03:32, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Character for dental clicks

I just discovered from the "ǀXam language" article that "ǀ" is the dental click sound, and according to Wiktionary "ǀXam" is a valid English word. That would make "ǀ" a valid English letter that's missing from the English alphabet, would it not? So where would "ǀXam" be listed alphabetically in a printed English dictionary? -- œ^™ 03:45, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I would say it comes under 'x'. Wiktionary also gives 'max' and 'XMA' as its anagrams. Also, the code for the language is 'xam'. This | does not appear in the code (nor in the anagrams - meaning it's not even recognized as a letter by the person who made the Wiktionary entry!). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Because a random person chose to edit Wiktionary and add a proper noun to an "English" entry of that website, our alphabet is suddenly wrong? Besides, there are plenty of sounds that are valid sounds of English but don't have their own dedicated letters (we have, thank goodness, a more or less phonemic orthography, not a phonetic one). rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I added a small clarification in my post --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:54, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

No worries, I was responding to OE, not you! rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:59, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I realised that, which is why I wrote in small print. I would have written in <smaller>smaller print</smaller> but that doesn't exist. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:26, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, ok, I thought you were adding the clarification because of my snarkiness, hehe... rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:16, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Is the "ǀ" a "letter" or is it a diacritic? Even if it is a letter, is it an English letter? English has a fair number of loan words/names which contain "non-standard" letters/glyphs: Hawaiʻi, Bokmål, Ragnarök, etc. Note that the okina is considered a letter in it's own right in the Hawaiian alphabet, as are Å, Ä, and Ö in the Swedish alphabet, and Æ, Ø, and Å in the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. This, however, doesn't mean that they're considered English letters, even when we use them for "English" words.-- 174.31.216.144 (talk) 05:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

In that language it is a letter (it can have diacritics added to it; see Dental clicks). It is not a letter of English, though. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:29, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

What are these palatal consonants?

I came across a description of a few consonants, but I can't figure out the precise term and IPA symbol for them. A rough English translation of the description goes like this: Affricates: "The front part of the tongue touches the hard palate a bit lower than it does for the retroflex consonants, more towards the teeth. The blade of the tongue touches the front part of the hard palate, while the tongue tip remains somewhat streched out." The fricative is described like this: "The two sides of the middle part of the tongue touch the gums of the upper molars, while the front part of the tongue is bent downwards, away from the teeth." --Uanfala (talk) 07:34, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

The description of the affricate sounds like a /ɕ/ to me (which is actually a voiceless alveolopalatal fricative), and the fricative sounds just like /j/ (which is a voiced palatal approximant). Can't be too sure, though. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:42, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I was going to suggest /ç/ (if voiceless) or /ʝ/ (if voiced) for the latter. Does your source not mention any languages where those sounds occur? And, by the way, is it in Bulgarian? --Theurgist (talk) 19:07, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

The original description is in Hindi and the language concerned is Kullu Pahari. The fricative is elsewhere unambiguously mentioned as being a fricative, so it can't be the palatal approximant. It is voiceless, and corresponds to /ʃ/ in Hindi cognates, while the affricate corresponds to Hindi /tʃ/.--Uanfala (talk) 20:20, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

January 23

Sith

What kind of fallacy is it to say "there are no absolutes." Similarly, what fallacious argument was Obi-Wan Kenobi exposing when he said "Only the Sith believe in absolutes" (because that would make him a Sith, if "only" the Sith believe in absolutes). Thanks Wikipedians! schyler (talk) 03:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Hypocrisy, tu quoque, pot calling the kettle black? rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:26, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

So simple I overlooked it. Thanks. Any further input is welcome. schyler (talk) 03:44, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe also No true Scotsman, or Epimenides paradox? Adam Bishop (talk) 06:50, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Can someone translate this Indian phrase?

Atleast, it might be punjabi or bengali, or another Indian language. This text:

amethunake baloboshi

For context, it's probably something which would be in a love note. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Legolas52 (talk • contribs) 07:53, 23 January 2011 (UTC)