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March 14

Chinese question

Hi! About http://www.cdc.gov/other/languages/images/chi/cdc_header_chi.gif - What are the Chinese characters for "U.S. Department of Health and Human Services" used in this image? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 06:07, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

健康與人類服務部 See the bottom right of this page. There's a link. Oda Mari (talk) 08:25, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh! It looks like I missed the link. Thanks for pointing it out! WhisperToMe (talk) 17:10, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Olde Frenche

I have a couplet in Old French that's straightforward apart from one word:

On dit que cils fait la dorveille / Qui dort de l'ueil & dou cuer veille.

I assume cils is ceux and ueil is oeil, and cuer is listed in my dict. under coeur, but what is dou ? — kwami (talk) 07:12, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

doux? d'ou? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.254.208 (talk) 07:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Doux would probably have been dulz at the time. Maybe d'ou would work: who is asleep of eye and awake of heart ?? But I think that's forcing it. Is it just du, maybe? — kwami (talk) 07:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

(I think du is probably it: you'd expect a structure like that from the format anyway. Never mind, unless I got s.t. wrong. — kwami (talk) 08:05, 14 March 2012 (UTC))

Definitely just "du". When is this text from? That's how the combination of "de+le" is almost always spelled in the Old French I use (twelfth-fourteenth century stuff). In the context of the line it should also be a form of "de" to match with "de l'ueil". Adam Bishop (talk) 08:19, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that pattern is what convinced me.

ca. 1370.

Thanks — kwami (talk) 08:57, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Aha, that's the Prise d'Alexandrie! Definitely "du". Adam Bishop (talk) 09:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again. It's for an entry on dorveille at Wikt. — kwami (talk) 04:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Eppering

That word unknown to me found its way into the article egg tapping on 23 May 2010. Very few sources refer to it [1], [2]. What language is it? --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 16:14, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not in any English dictionaries up to and including the OED. --Colapeninsula (talk) 17:14, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

See also [3]. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 18:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

The article doesn't say it's English as such, but that

". . . Central European Catholics of various nationalities call the tradition epper. This likely derives from or is related to the German word Opfer, also used to name the practice, which means 'sacrifice' or, literally, offering . . . . Ruthenians have the same tradition, which can include either rolling the eggs or cracking them in the hand. The word epper is used [there] . . . ."

Its use in both Germanic and Slavic areas suggests to me a borrowing (presumably from Germanic to Slavic) of significant antiquity, but I don't know enough about the history of folk movements in the area well enough to make any further deductions. Jack of Oz's link corroborates the word's importation into American English by Central European immigrants; it might be difficult to establish if in English it's (solely) a recent (and likely multiple) borrowing from Europe, or also a little known (and poorly documented) dialect survival in Br/Am English (itself a West Germanic language). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.234 (talk) 00:14, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

March 15

prose so bad

I want prose so bad, as bad as this:

“ The morning was empty, like a chariot whose driver was not in it, out having lunch. Looking around, I could tell that waiting in this cold and gloomy place would be no picnic. I looked up at a church clock, and it said 7:15 (I'm making this time up, I don't remember exactly but it was early morning anyway). I flipped through my thoughts but came up empty-handed. I would have been shivering, for sure, had I not had 2-3 layers of clothing on. I wasn't too hungry either. Finally, I heard what could only be footsteps: footsteps. I looked in the direction I thought they were coming from, and sure enough they were coming from there. Before I could even recognize the person, however, I had no idea who they were. That's when they said something. "Hello" is what they said. (Again, they might have said "good morning" or "hi"). I said: "Are you John?" And John waited, at first he didn't answer. Was this the person I was meeting? Finally he said: "Yes, I'm John." ”

obviously this is bad on so many levels. I want to read more like this! A whole story. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 11:10, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh, pretty much anything by Ernest Hemingway should fit the bill. Or the Twilight Saga books. Angr (talk) 11:26, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

This promises to be pretty awful, as soon as they get more stuff out.--Rallette (talk) 12:23, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Hemingway has his defenders, I believe. You may be thinking of the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night" - WHAAOE. The full opening paragraph begins

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

It is held up as an example of purple prose, and has spawned a competition for terrible writing, The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Competition. BrainyBabe (talk) 13:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Brainy, did you ever compete? 134.255.45.244 (talk) 18:59, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Fanfiction.net --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:23, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems like it's trying to be the literal and rather joking way that Douglas Adams or possibly Neil Gaiman would write but not pulling it off as effectively. Dismas|^(talk) 14:57, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

"The spaceship hovered in the air, in exactly the same way that bricks don't." Yes, it takes talent, which is lost on many writers. IBE (talk) 05:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Denominations for "police"

I recently asked this question at the Finnish Wikipedia, asking for denominations for "an employee of the police forces", which there seem to be a wealth in the Finnish language. What is the situation with English? I only know of "police (officer)", "cop", and (derogatory slang) "pig". In German, I know of two words: "Polizist(in)" which is the standard, and "Bulle" which is slang. Are there any more? JIP | Talk 22:14, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

We've got List of police-related slang terms, which includes bulls, dicks, feds, flatfeet, fuzz (for leftover hippies), etc. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:25, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

In the UK we've got "bobby", particularly in the phrase "more bobbies on the beat" as a matter of public policy, meaning to get more police officers patrolling the streets. Other more formal terms in the UK are of course constable, police constable (especially abbreviated PC) and before gender neutral phrasing "policeman" and "policewoman" (or WPC - "woman PC"). --rossb (talk) 23:32, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

"Women PC" and similar is all but outmoded now. I remember (when I was very young) seeing a van marked "Police Dogs" and cracking the joke "...or Women PCs, as they're also known." That 80s charm has long since left me, and ditto the term "Women Police Constables". If they're referred to by anything, it's "officers", nothing gender specific. doktorb _words^deeds 23:54, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Whenever I hear "WPC" I expect the next words to be "Yvonne Fletcher", killed on duty in a manner still unresolved. Our articles on Constable and Police officer may provide other leads for the OP. BrainyBabe (talk) 09:25, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I have a friend who is a paramedic in the London Ambulance Service, who always refers to the police as "the Gendarmes". He also calls Firefighters "dripstands" because at traffic accidents, they are said to be only useful for holding up the Intravenous drip bags. Otherwise, the list linked above seems to be very exhaustive. Alansplodge (talk) 17:39, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

the filth, the old bill, woodentops, rozzers, plods, peelers... AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

We have one in anglo Canada that isn't on the list. I would need a wordsmith to spell it though. Gendarmerie royale du Canada (GRC), is the french name, and the GRC was lengthed to the phonetic grrr-silly-ehs(?)--Canoe1967 (talk) 10:30, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

March 16

is this Romanian?

If so - please give a literal translation - if not, what language is it? thank you

Cvartet cu pian in do minor  ?

It's the name of a piano quartet, but - not positive about what language it is in. HammerFilmFan (talk) 01:17, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's Romanian. Literally, "quartet with piano in C minor". Lesgles (talk) 04:17, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I Googled the phrase above, clicked the first link and picked up a virus! You have been warned. Alansplodge (talk) 21:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Need help in Georgian

Just to ward off jokes — it's Georgian language, not an eastern version of Southern American English.

Beneto9 is a native Georgian speaker with less command of English. S/he posted here (note that the request is now at WP:HD) asking for help with translating an article into Georgian; his/her userpage history appears to me to be a case of the user adding the translation on the userpage only to see another user replace it with a deletion tag. Since the user is newly registered both here and at ka:wp, I expect that s/he isn't very familiar with their policies, since the Help Desk post seems to be asking for help in understanding ka:wp policies. Therefore If you read this and you're familiar with Georgian, can you try to find relevant policies at ka:wp and give the user a simple explanation? They have a help desk, but because I know nothing of Georgian, it won't help me; I've searched in vain for an administrators' noticeboard over there. I understand that the user who blanked the userpage has left comments at Beneto's ka:wp talk, but the request for help was placed here after the last comment there, so a simple explanation of their policies (if you can find them) would be appreciated.

Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 03:49, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

If Georgian is similar to russian then Yahoo! Babel Fish may help?--Canoe1967 (talk) 10:41, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Georgian is very unlike Russian. -- Hoary (talk) 11:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

'When it comes to wages day'

Translating Val McDermid's The Wire in the Blood, I found the sentences as follow:

'... Seaford's a big village. Favours owed, favours paid.' 'As long as we don't cross the line when it comes to wages day.'

The speaker of the first sentence is a policeman getting compliment from his boss for his good work collecting information, and the speaker of the second sentence is the boss.

I don't understand what the second sentence means. Please help. --Analphil (talk) 06:08, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

As a non-native, I understand it as "pay day". Yet, he should have said: "wage day" (if not "pay day"). 77.127.219.111 (talk) 07:43, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Not necessarily. A wage (s.) is just a rate of payment (e.g. $25 per hour). But when one receives payment for a week or a fortnight's work, one receives one's wages (pl.). I've never heard of "wages day", but it seems a more apt counterpart of "pay day" than "wage day" does. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Googling the phrase gives me the impression that it might be a Scottish expression.--Rallette (talk) 09:56, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

It might be. The background is East Sussex, but the writer is definitely Scottish. The point is, however, not what wages day means, but what the meaning of the whole sentence is. --Analphil (talk) 12:03, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd guess it refers to the idea of having your finances balanced by wages day, i.e. not spending more than you've earned, not being in debt. It's like a day of reckoning or day of accounting - you can perform favours and receive favours but it should all balance out in the end. "Cross the line" might refer to going into the red/going into debt, i.e. not balancing the books - "the bottom line" and similar expressions are often used to refer to profits/losses but I can't find examples of "cross the line" in this context. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:16, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

It makes sense. Thank you. --Analphil (talk) 12:31, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I can't be sure without context, but what occurs to me is that it is about corruption (or rather, avoiding it). I interpret it as "favours owed either way are fine, but when it comes to wages day, i.e. actual money, we must be seen to be absolutely clean, i.e. not cross the line into corruption or the appearance of it". --ColinFine (talk) 12:43, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure I get it myself, but I feel ColinFine may be on the right track here. In the scene, two officers are presenting information to their superior, some of which has been gained illicitly, possibly from a bank in violation of banking secrecy: "A little bird helped us with some commercial credit checking." After the superior makes her remark about "not crossing the line", one of the two officers asks her, "Don't you trust us, ma'am?" to which she responds, "Give me five good reasons why I should." So maybe she's reminding her officers not to abuse their position to gain personal favours, especially not financial ones?--Rallette (talk) 13:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

How to teach Americans the RP accent of "or"?

Let's assume we'd like to teach a deaf GA speaker the RP accent of "or". Apparently, we have three ways to fulfil our task.

1. We can show them the exact IPA spelling of the RP "or". Unfortunately, the American speaker may be someone who does not read IPA.
2. We can write to them: "Try to say soh, yet without the s". Unfortunately, there isn't such a word like "soh", so that American speaker may fail to understand us.
3. We can write to them: "Try to say or, yet without the r". Unfortunately, the linguists claim that the o followed by r is pronounced by GA speakers as the o of "soft" is pronounced by GA speakers, or - in other linguists' opinion - as the o of "hope" is pronounced by GA speakers; Whereas, neither of those o's is similar to the "or" in RP.

I think I can solve the problem, provided that you accept my claim in my following thread. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 08:49, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

There are more precise ways of showing vowel pronunciation such as a Vowel diagram. But if you're teaching deaf people to speak, you don't show them IPA, you tell/show them how to physically pronounce the sound (see oralism). --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:57, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Of course I can teach them orally (by lip movement and likewise), but let's assume that - I don't trust that method - or I find it hard to use when teaching deaf people to speak. Anyways, according to User:Lsfreak (in the following thread), we can write to them: "try to say the first element of boy-diphthong". What do you think about this method? 77.127.219.111 (talk) 12:44, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your third method. It's probably applicable to many American speakers. However, there's a great deal of variability in the pronunciation of or in the United States. I think it's not uncommon for Americans to pronounce or like the vowel sound in caught (as in GA, not RP speech). Also note that probably 5-10% have two kinds of or; for these speakers horse and hoarse are pronounced differently. With them you'll have to use horse. 96.46.197.214 (talk) 12:51, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

As for my "third method" (as you've called it): Yes, that's what I'd thought, and you're the first here to approve of my hypothesis. As for "hoarse": I don't think it's relevant here, because I was talking explicitly about a [spelled] o followed by a [spelled] r - rather than by a [spelled] ar. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 13:26, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps, but for these speakers the vowel in force is the same as in hoarse, not horse. 96.46.193.139 (talk) 20:04, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

But you'd said: "With them you'll have to use horse", i.e. you'd claimed that the o in (RP) or is the same as in (GA) "horse", so how are you claiming now that "the vowel in force is the same as in hoarse, not horse"? Unless you think that the o in (RP) or is not the same as in (GA) "force", do you? 77.127.219.111 (talk) 17:21, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

The or in force is (for people who make this distinction, which is still robust probably only in Scotland and parts of Ireland) pronounced the same as the oar in hoarse, not the same as the or in horse. Spelling can't always be your guide here: for people who make this distinction, pork and fork don't rhyme, nor do short and sport. Angr (talk) 17:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I thought 96.46.193.139 had been talking about Americans rather than about Scots, hadn't they? Anyways, I agree with you that in their last response they were claiming what you're claiming now, but I was asking about what they had claimed in their previous response, which seems to be quite the opposite. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 17:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I was talking about Americans. What Angr is saying is that the distinction is not very widespread among Americans. That's true, but there are some regions where it's not uncommon. I gave the figure of 5-10%, but it's certainly lower if you restrict attention to younger or white speakers. I'm not sure what the contradiction is. I'm saying that a minority of GA speakers pronounce horse and hoarse differently. For these people, it's the vowel sound in their version of horse (and not hoarse) that you'd use to explain how to pronounce or in an RP accent. 96.46.193.139 (talk) 23:18, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

From your previous response I concluded that "force" is not equal to "horse" (for the GA speakers who make the distinction between horse and hoarse), whereas, from your pre-previous response I concluded that "or" is equal to "horse"; As a result, I concluded (in my previous response) that (in your opinion) "or" is not equal to "force" (for the GA speakers who make the distinction between horse and hoarse), was I correct? If you approve, then there's no contradiction. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 08:28, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

For Americans who make the distinction, or is like horse and force is like hoarse. You'll find this distinction recorded in the tenth edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, published in 1993. If I recall correctly, it is no longer recorded in more recent editions. I don't make this distinction, so to find out about a particular word, I usually have to look it up. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 23:10, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The General American accent of "o" followed by "r".

Some linguists claim the o followed by r is pronounced (in GA) as the o of "soft" is pronounced (in GA), while other linguists claim the o followed by r is pronounced (in GA) as the o of "hope" is pronounced (in GA).

However, I don't hear the GA o, followed by r, as similar to either of the other o's mentioned above. To my ears, the o followed by r is pronounced by GA speakers - neither as they pronounce the o of "soft" nor as they pronounce the o of "hope"" - but rather as the RP speakers pronounce the o" followed by r, or very similar to that accent (Yet, being rhotic, the GA speakers pronounce also the r, not like the RP speakers).

Do I hear well? 77.127.219.111 (talk) 08:49, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

In general - "or", "ore" and "oar" are homophones on the US. And not the same pronunciation from region to region. Collect (talk) 08:56, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I think there's dialect problems getting in the way. My understanding is that strictly 'correct' GA has [sɔft] (matching RP or), but in reality you're going to get a variety of pronunciations (which you've noticed - I live just outside 'GA-land' and I'd expect to hear any of [ɔ ɑ ɒ a] - I happen to have [ɒ]). The or-vowel, as I understand it, varies between [ɔ ~ o], so someone might assign it to the hope vowel depending on their interpretation (a closer or-vowel and a monophthongal hope-vowel), but I'd agree that it's usually quite different. As far as I know, the most stable way of describing RP or would be to hold the first element of the boy-diphthong, which as far as I know remains [ɔɪ] in most/every major accent, but it's rather un-intuitive and probably hard to explain to a layperson in a way they could replicate it easily. I'd say safest bet, barring an occasional outlier, would probably just be describing it as 'or without the r.' Lsfreak (talk) 09:57, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Given that some GA speakers pronounce the "or" as [ɒr] / [ɑr], I agree with you that the first element of boy-diphthong should be regarded as the closest (if not identical) to the RP or. Hewever, I (not like you) still think that the GA o of "soft" (pronounced [sɔft]) is not similar to the RP or (pronounced [o:]). 77.127.219.111 (talk) 12:36, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, bit of a misunderstanding there I think. It's soft that I would expect any of [ɔ ɑ ɒ a], and or is strictly [ɔ ~ o], though I could be being mislead by my dialect. I was thinking that even in places with cot-caught merger or a vowel shift, the sequence o-r is a kind of half-diphthong (thus a separate vowel) and remains unchanged. Also, RP or has [o:]? I was assuming a [ɔ:], which is what Wiktionary has for the entry.Lsfreak (talk) 19:03, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

The RP vowel for THOUGHT/FORCE/NORTH is usually transcribed /ɔː/, but for many speakers it's rather higher than cardinal ɔ, so that [oː] is a reasonable transcription. It's not at risk of merging with the GOAT vowel because the latter is strongly diphthongal with a fronted starting point, [əʊ]. But if you compare the way a cot/caught-distinguishing American says caught and the way an educated English person says caught you'll hear they're very different vowels, even though both sounds are customarily transcribed with ɔ. The American sound is more open than cardinal ɔ and could plausibly be transcribed [ɒ]; it also has a tendency to diphthongize in some accents. (Imagine Rosie O'Donnell saying thought or caught - it's basically [ɒə̯].) Angr (talk) 19:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree, and that's why I always wondered why the dictionaries indicate that the RP "or" has the same vowel as in GA "soft", while I always heard different vowels. Anyways, would you agree that the vowel in RP "or" is the closest to the GA vowel of "or" (which is, I think, quite similar to the first element of boy-diphthong and of low-diphthong)? 77.127.219.111 (talk) 17:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

In the American midwest, at least, "ore" and "oar" are pretty close to being homophones, with a long "o". Think "ower" (someone who owes money or something) and then run the two syllables into one. (In some parts of the land, "ower", with two syllables, is closer to how they would actually say the ostensibly one-syllable "ore" and "oar".) But "or" is different. The "o" s an "aw" sound, like in "paw" - or like the "oer" part of "George" the "or" part of "gorge". In New York and some other big cities, they drop the "r" and "or" actually is pronounced "aw" - or possibly, to this midwesterner's ears, more like "aw-wuh". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:01, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Canadian pronunciation of o followed by r. Is it like the o in "hope"?

77.127.219.111 (talk) 09:36, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I would say they are the same, both [o], but it's sort of the same as the answers for American usage given above. "Or" could have [ɔ] depending on the speaker. (On the other hand, Lsfreak mentions that "or" could have any of [ɔ ɑ ɒ a] in the US, but I would say that isn't true for Canada - and the stereotypical way that Americans think Canadians say "sorry" would seem to confirm that). Adam Bishop (talk) 10:24, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Are you referting to the whole diphthong of "hope", or to the its first element only? Btw, How about the o of "boy"? Isn't it similar to the o of "or"? 77.127.219.111 (talk) 13:08, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify, as I did above, I meant that any of [ɔ ɑ ɒ a] could be expected for soft, not or. Also, I suspect the sorry thing is just a dialect-specific 'oddity', like how some places happen to have /ɑn/ and others /ɔn/ for on, rather than anything revealing about the dialect's vowels overall. Lsfreak (talk) 19:32, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm also Canadian, and I think it's true that or is more similar to the vowel sound in hope than to any other non-rhotic vowel in my English. It's not the same as the vowel in soft. However, the vowel preceding r in my or is, I think, exactly the same as the vowel sound in the RP or or aw. 96.46.197.214 (talk) 12:39, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

If you really pronounce it like the RP or - being a monophthong, then it can't be identical to the o of "hope" - being a diphthong, can it? Unless you've referred - to the first element of the diphthong - only, haven't you? Btw, how about the o of "boy"? Isn't it similar to the o of "or"? Anyways, you're the first here to claim that the o of "or" is exactly the same as the RP "or" - as far as the Canadian accent is concerned. I thought it was true also for the General American accent (as I've claimed in a previous thread of mine), however nobody (except for you) has approved of my hypothesis, so far. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 13:08, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

"Or" and "hope" could both have [ow]; "boy" also has a diphthong but of course that's [oj]. I would say they all have [o] for me, whether diphthongized or not. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

When I took and later was a TA for phonetics at a Canadian University, we were told that before /r/ was the only position other than the diphthong in boy where we'd ever encounter [ɔ] in Canadian English. However, many if not most people in the class were pretty adamant that they pronounced store with the same vowel as hope. So both probably occur depending on the person. --Terfili (talk) 16:15, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah I can see that having either vowel, too. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

That's very possible, and I also think it's possible that perceptions get in the way. I can't tell the different between [oʊ] and [ɔɻ] based on sound, I have to go strictly by tongue movement - one glides close and the other retroflex, and if I start pronouncing stow, hold the vowel, and then shift to ore, the tongue drops and mouth opens. But it's not something I can tell just on sound. Lsfreak (talk) 19:32, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

77, I didn't say my or, without the r-colouring, was identical to my vowel in hope. What I said was that of all the non-rhotic vowels in my speech, the hope vowel is the one that's closest to or. In view of Terfili's remark however, I realize that I'd forgotten about the initial element of the diphthong in boy. That's identical to my or, just as Terfili and 77 suggest. I would have been in the minority in Terfili's phonetics class. Also, Canadians (from BC to Quebec) frequently have a mid-high monophthong in hope or something approaching one. In this respect, Canadians are similar to people in Minnesota and surrounding areas. 96.46.193.139 (talk) 19:37, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

The mid-high monophthong is especially common in unstressed syllables as far as I know. Also, since many people have trouble distinguishing [o] from [ow], it's likely that store was actually something like [stoɹ] for those people in the class. I doubt that [stoʊ̯ɹ] is a common pronunciation, if it even occurs at all. --Terfili (talk) 21:21, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

OP's summary: the Canadian accent (which is, I think, similar to the General American accent in this matter), has the vowel [o] in three cases: in the first element of boy-diphthong, of low-diphthong, and in nor (even as a monophthong, which is probably the more common case). 77.127.219.111 (talk) 18:29, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, not exactly. boy is [bɔɪ̯], low is [loʊ̯] (or sometimes [loː]), and nor is either [nɔɹ] or [noɹ]. --Terfili (talk) 09:06, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

What I understand from the comments of the other participants here, is that "boy" is pronounced [boɪ̯], and please notice that when I say that "boy" is pronounced [boɪ̯] I don't mean that it's pronounced [boʊ̯ɪ̯]. Similarly, "nor" is pronounced either [nor] or [noʊ̯r]. Of course, you're not committed to what I've concluded, but the other participants here are committed, because that's what is inferred from their comments. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 21:25, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

What I can conclude from 96.46.193.139's comments is that he pronounces boy as [bɔɪ̯] and or as [ɔɹ], since he said that the first element of boy is identical to his vowel in or, but that the vowel in or is not identical to the one in hope. That's pretty much what you'll find in the literature too. I don't think I've ever seen the diphthong of boy described as [oɪ̯]. Not even in my clinical phonetics textbook, which goes into ridiculous detail, even though it does say that some people find it difficult to distinguish toeing (which they transcribe with /o/) from toying (which they transcribe with /ɔɪ/). But of course there could well be speakers who pronounce that diphthong as [oj], as Adam Bishop claims he does above. --Terfili (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Note that 96.46.193.139 has claimed:

• "the vowel preceding r in my or is, I think, exactly the same as the vowel sound in the RP or or aw".

Note also that, the vowel sound in the RP or or aw, is [o] (as indicated also by User:Anger in the previous thread). 77.127.219.111 (talk) 21:32, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

If you'll read Angr's comment closely, you'll notice that he writes "for many speakers it's rather higher than cardinal ɔ, so that [oː] is a reasonable transcription." (emphasis on "many", meaning not all), but that the most common transcription is still [ɔː]. So it's reasonable to assume that when 96.46.193.139 thinks of the RP-vowel of or and aw, he is thinking of [ɔ]. But I'm not going to make assumptions about how people in this thread pronounce things based on their written posts. What I'm saying is that based on my studies and the literature I've read, the Canadian English diphthong of boy is [ɔɪ̯]. If a student at the Canadian university I went to had handed in a phonetics assignment I had to grade, and transcribed boy as [boɪ̯], I would have taken out my red pen, written [bɔɪ̯] next to it, and taken a mark off (and I probably did on several occasions). That student would then have been free to complain about it, and if he had made the point that he in fact pronounces boy as [boɪ̯], he would have gotten the mark back. But unlike the [stoɹ]/[stɔɹ] issue, I don't remember any student ever bringing it up. Which is probably a good indication that no one in fact pronounced boy as [boɪ̯], since students in my department were otherwise prone to forming angry mobs and complaining about pretty much anything that didn't go their way. That doesn't exclude that the [boɪ̯] pronunciation exists in Canadian English, but it's almost certainly rare. --Terfili (talk) 22:06, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, so I misundersood 96.46.193.139. Thank you for correcting me. I'd rather - be corrected - than think I'm correct while I'm not. Btw, I've just seen you've been (still are?) a TA for phonetics at a Canadian University. Which univresity? Btw, what's your native language? I couldn't find it on your user page. Thankxs. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 23:01, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I used to TA phonetics at Brock, but I've long since graduated. And I've moved around too much in my life and my dominant language has changed too many times for me to be able to say what my "native" language is...That's why I decided that I have three "near-native languages" instead. --Terfili (talk) 11:31, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

What's your mother tongue? i.e. what language did your parents speak to you - when you were born? 77.127.219.111 (talk) 12:11, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

My parents spoke two different dialects of Alemannic to me when I was small, but sometime during primary school I switched to speaking Standard German, then switched back to speaking Alemannic as a teenager. But since age 11 I've spoken mainly English outside the family anyways and English has been my best-spoken language since about age 16. Alemannic may since have replaced English though because I've been living in an Alemannic-speaking environment again for the past two years. --Terfili (talk) 14:13, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting case. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 15:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with Terfili's comments. In my mind, the RP version of aw is lower than [o], which I think of as being exemplified by the vowel sound in tôt in French, but higher than the [ɔ] in the word molle in French. (This could refer to either Canadian or Parisian French.) Perhaps I failed to take into account the variation that exists in RP, brought up by Angr, and relied too heavily on my own impressions of RP. In any event, this is how I would situate the initial vowel sound in my or and boy. 64.140.121.1 (talk) (Formerly 96.46...) 22:18, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Also, I think there's every reason to believe Terfili, given his expertise, will be more aware than I am of the variation among Canadian English speakers. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanx. 77.127.219.111 (talk) 23:01, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Same spelling but different meanings

How is Words like 1. wind(air), wind(twist) 2.live(verb), live(noun) 3.read(present), read(past) called? Thank you111.223.177.135 (talk) 09:07, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Homonym. BrainyBabe (talk) 09:28, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

More accurately, the examples given are homographs. Strictly speaking, a homonym should be both a homograph (i.e. same spelling) and a homophone (i.e. same pronunciation). AJCham 09:40, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

See "Fast" which has a huge number of even antonymic meanings! Collect (talk) 14:15, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Just FYI, "live" isn't a noun, "life" is a noun which becomes "lives" in the plural, and "live" can be an adjective, as in "live music"/"live animals", or an adverb as in "the band play live". - filelakeshoe 20:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

So "lives" (plural noun) and "lives" (verb form) fits the premise. By the way, "wind" (air movement) used to be pronounced with a long "i", the same as "wind" (twist), at least in poetic usage. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:53, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Like in the Songs of Innocence "The Chimney Sweeper"

"And by came an angel who had a bright key,

And he opened the coffins and set them all free;

Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,

And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

"Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,

They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;

And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,

He'd have God for his father, and never want joy."

--Shirt58 (talk) 05:26, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Common practice for translation samples

I applied for a job that requires some skills in my mother language. After a perfunctory phone interview, they sent me a 350 words long marketing text, which they want me to translate as a sample, without offering any payment. Is that common practice? PurpleSorceress (talk) 18:12, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Dunno if it's common, but it seems pretty dumb. I would certainly want evidence that you can translate relevant material, but the process being used gives you perfect opportunity to cheat. Not suggesting you would, but why not test your ability (and that of other candidates) in a somewhat more rigorous way? HiLo48 (talk) 18:49, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't even thought of that! My concern was actually the other way round: Whether they were just doing that to get some free translations by people who really try very hard to do the best they can. PurpleSorceress (talk) 18:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

When I applied for a job as a translator, I was sent a 500-word document as a test translation, for which I was not paid (but I did get the job). But they weren't getting a free translation from me - it was their standard test translation document, which they used only to evaluate applicants' translation skills; they didn't need the document translated for one of their customers! I assume it's the same with the company where you're applying. I'm not sure how sending you the text at home is giving you the opportunity to "cheat" - either you're a good translator or you aren't. Translators aren't expected to be able to translate without any outside assistance (dictionaries, the Internet, etc.) anyway, so what's wrong with using that assistance for the test translation? My company expected me to tell them honestly what materials I had used, but they didn't expect me to do it all off the top of my head without looking anything up. So if my experiences are typical, yes, it's common practice, and no, it's not dumb. Angr (talk) 19:04, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Free test translations are a controversial subject. See this essay. 96.46.193.139 (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Wow, what an excellent essay! The discussion shows many different opinions, including some close to Angr's. Thanks everyone for the help! PurpleSorceress (talk) 21:52, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

They should be able to discern if it's "cheating" or not, as someone fluent in the language should be able to provide a "natural" translation, whereas someone who tries to translate it from Google Translate would likely get boxed in by doing a literal (and probably stilted) translation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:55, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe my mind works in evil and suspicious ways, but I was thinking more along the lines of getting a friend more competent in the language to do it for me. HiLo48 (talk) 03:00, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Could be. But if the job hinges on that skill, they would probably take a more rigorous approach. In this case, if he did cheat, and they were to find out he really didn't know the language, he could probably have a chance to learn the word "fired" in several languages. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:16, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Silent words/clitics in Irish?

Irish phonology#Samples seems to suggest that some words in Irish are not pronounced at all - for instance in the second example from the bottom, the words "An" and "is" seem to correspond to nothing in the IPA. I think I remember this from some place names as well. Are these words somehow clitics or are they actually silent? - filelakeshoe 19:25, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I would define clitic by how a word behaves morphosyntactically, not phonologically. There are certainly function words in Irish (most of the words spelled a for example) that can disappear in rapid speech, but they're not necessarily clitics from the morphological or syntactic point of view. In the sample texts you link to, I can find cases of is being reduced to [sˠ], but I don't see any example of it disappearing altogether. The question particle an is often deleted in speech, as in An bhfuil na fataí chomh maith is dúirt sé?, which the phonetic transcription shows was pronounced simply Bhfuil na fataí.... Another missing word in those samples is the a in An Ghaeilge a labhraítear i gCúige Mumhan, which the phonetic transcription shows to be simply An Ghaeilge labhraítear.... In this case, the final [ə] of Ghaeilge and the [ə] that is a are probably simply run together into a single [ə] sound. Angr (talk) 19:36, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry yes, I had my definition of clitic the wrong way around, I meant whether the words' pronunciation changes (or disappears) based on the words preceding/following them. So that "an" disappearing is something like people asking "what you doing?" - filelakeshoe 19:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, pretty much. In addition, it can be thought of as a phonological rule of Irish that [ə] disappears next to another vowel, so that words starting with [ə] lose it when they follow a word ending in a vowel, and words ending with [ə] lose it when they precede a word starting with a vowel. This is shown in the spelling of some words (e.g. m'athair for mo athair 'my father') but usually not. The loss of the interrogative particle is probably a separate phenomenon since it doesn't happen to other words pronounced [ə(n)] (notably the definite article); but the underlying presence of the interrogative particle is recoverable because the verb that follows it always undergoes eclipsis and is in the dependent form of the verb if it exists. So any sentence that is heard to begin with an eclipsed verb -- or a dependent verb form -- can be assumed to start with an unpronounced interrogative particle an. Angr (talk) 21:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

What about the past tense particle do, which is preserved in verbs beginning with a vowel (d'ith sé, d'ól sé) and more generally in Munster Irish (do bhris sé) but not elsewhere (bhris sé)? jnestorius^(talk) 19:19, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I suppose that's pretty much like the deletion of interrogative an, except that the omission of do is reflected in the standard written language too, while the omission of an isn't. I don't know for sure whether an is deleted before vowel-initial words, but I doubt it. I suspect An ólann tú caifé? is always [əˈn̪ˠoːl̪ˠən̪ˠ...] and never just [ˈoːl̪ˠən̪ˠ...] or even [ˈn̪ˠoːl̪ˠən̪ˠ...]. Angr (talk) 21:12, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

March 18

Do two wrongs sometimes make a right?

There was a recent question on RD/E, headed "Whom is David Steinberg married to?", and it caused me to enter a state of cogitation.

Someguy1221 used the accusative "whom" because it's governed by "married to". That's an admirable effort, but somehow it just doesn't sound right in this construction.

There used to be a rule that you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition, and if that had applied here, the header would have been "To whom is D S married?". We're much more relaxed about that issue these days, but it still seems to be the case that, if you ignore that rule, you may have to compensate in some other way as well. In this case, the compensation would be to use "who" rather than "whom", because "Who is D S married to?" sounds much more natural to my years than what Someguy wrote, even though a pedant at 50 paces would spot two errors in it.

Am I overthinking this, or do two wrongs sometimes make a right? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:58, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

It's dative, Jack, not accusative. 'To' + accusative is used for motion in a direction. :) KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 09:06, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

"Whom ... to" is technically correct, but obsolete. "Whom" is only used in a few set constructions such as "to whom", and then only in formal registers. That is, it isn't actually accusative case any more. It's more like a formal version of "Jim and me went", where the conjunction and triggers the "accusative". — kwami (talk) 09:03, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not really accusative or dative (as KageTora said above), since modern English doesn't have those cases. It's the object case. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:10, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Which redirects to ... accusative case. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 09:13, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we could get away with calling it an oblique case, since it's used for constructions like "It's me" and not just for objects. — kwami (talk) 09:16, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Bah! That's what I meant, the oblique case. Sorry. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:17, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I notice that our English personal pronouns article speaks of "objective pronouns", and we have object pronoun, which says they're in the "objective case", but links to oblique case. The terminology is a bit murky. — kwami (talk) 09:26, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Case in English only exists in pronouns, and there is no distinction between what in properly inflected languages would be accusative and dative - we effectively have one case covering direct and indirect objects. --Nicknack009 (talk) 17:08, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

In answer to your question, yes, two or any number of wrongs can make a right when the violated rule doesn't exist. - filelakeshoe 10:21, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, you'll find any number of sources that say not to end a sentence with a preposition, so it was certainly regarded as a rule by millions of people. Unlike French, English makes up its own rules as it goes along, by common consent of the masses, and this was the consensus in formal registers for a long time. Just as splitting an infinitive was considered abhorrent by many; there may never have been a proper basis for such a rule, but so what, English does lots of things for which there's no proper basis.

What I want clear confirmation of is that, given a choice between "Who is he married to?" and "Whom is he married to?", it's preferable to write the former. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 17:57, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Well if by "preferable" you mean more natural, of course, and if you're looking to sound natural then prescriptive grammar rules made up by people who want English to work like Latin are counterproductive to that cause. If by "preferable" you meant less likely to set off a 1950s grammar school master's sensory issues, then both are wrong. - filelakeshoe 12:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

That's good enough. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 18:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Oujda

How is Oujda pronounced? The only indication on the page at present is in the infobox, transliterated (Wujda) beside another language [which?] whose character set my computer evidently lacks. -- Deborahjay (talk) 09:40, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

The language is probably some Berber/Tamazight one. 92.80.35.202 (talk) 12:36, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps Oujda? There is some related material here. Bus stop (talk) 12:52, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Judging by the Arabic, I'd say "ooj-da".Eiad77 (talk) 13:51, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

It is pronounced "wodʒ-dæ" in Arabic like it has been transliterated. --Omidinist (talk) 17:54, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't say it was pronounced "ooj-da" in Arabic. I said judging by the Arabic it's pronounced "ooj-da". If it were pronounced "wodʒ-dæ" in Englsh I'd imagine it would start with a W. Eiad77 (talk) 22:17, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

But it does start with a W. 87.68.241.159 (talk) 22:21, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

But it seems to be a Berber word - rather than an Arabic word, so the "j" is pronounced like a French j (as it is always in Berber) - rather than like an English/Arabic j. Yes, this word is written in Arabic, whose "j" is pronounced like the English j, but note that the Berber language is usually written in Arabic scripts (unless it's written in Tifinagh scripts). Additionally, the speaker here pronounces it with a French j rather than with an English/Arabic j. Yes, the speaker is from France, but note that a big Berber minority lives in France. 87.68.241.159 (talk) 22:21, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Oujda (وجدة) is a city in Morocco and has a page in Arabic Wikipedia: here. --Omidinist (talk) 04:57, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I may remind you the pronunciation of the word oui in French. --Omidinist (talk) 05:24, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I can't figure out why you remind me of obvious facts. Yes, it's a Moroccan city, who said it wasn't? But notice that most (or almost all) of the Moroccan geographical names are from a Berber origin, and that's why I claimed that the name of that city seemed to be a Berber word - rather than an Arabic word.

Btw, the word oui in French is pronounced like the English "We" (or very similar to it), but when not preceding a vowel, the French "ou" is pronounced like the English "ou" (in the English "route" and likewise). However, I didn't resolve whether or not the word "Oujda" begins with the consonant [w] or with the vowel [u]: The Arabic transliteration suggests the consonant [w], whereas the French transliteration suggests the vowel [u], as the speaker here - does.

87.68.241.159 (talk) 21:34, 19 March 2012

(OP): Two objectives here: (a) adding the IPA to the Oujda page, and (b) a Hebrew spelling, which by convention is based on the phonic values rather than an alphabetic transliteration. From the contributions above (thanks, all!), it seems that all the first syllable's phonemes may differ between the local Berber language and Arabic. What resolution do you suggest for present purposes? -- Deborahjay (talk) 06:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not easy to answer (a), because the Arabic transliteration وجدة - having the consonant [w] in the begining, gave us the consonants only - without vowels (although Arabic does have signs for vowels), and this transliteration contradicts the French transliteration Oujda - having the vowel [u] in the begining.

As for (b): if we trust the speaker here, then I (as a native Hebrew speaker), would write אוּזְ'דַא - which is probably the safest transliteration (or: אוּזְ'דַה, which is a more common way for transliterating such a word, yet it's less safe, because most of the Hebrew readers ignore the "Mapiq"s, whereas some of the ה 's that end words - are pronounced as the consonant [h], e.g. in להּ, which is properly pronounced: [lah] rather than [la], unless it's a the name of the tone la, in which case the word לה is pronounced [la]). 77.124.86.28 (talk) 09:00, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Ummm, I neglected to mention that our dedicated data base program disallows diacritics other than the apostrophe, hence we maintain our key word list with nearest approximations. I can, however, indicate the Arabic pronunciation [אוג'דה] as an alternative to the French [אוז'דה], and change the primary/secondary order if and when we discover that the Arabic is prevalent or closer to the Berber if that's dominant. Likewise the IPA for the Oujda page. -- Deborahjay (talk) 09:19, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

To transcribe it "אוג'דה" (i.e. with a 'ג rather than with a 'ז) - on the ground of the Arabic transliteration, is like to transcribe the most common Arabic name - into Hebrew: מוהמד - on the ground that the English transliteration for that Arabic name is Muhammad. In other words, מוהמד is not the (direct) Hebrew transliteration for the original name, but rather is the (indirect) Hebrew transliteration for the English transliteration for the original name. Similarly, אוג'דה is not the (direct) Hebrew transliteration for the original (local) name of the city, but rather is the (indirect) Hebrew transliteration for the Arabic transliteration for the original (local) name of the city. Note that Berber does not have the English consonant j, whereas Arabic does not have the French consonant j (pronounced like the English s in "measure"), and that's why the Arabic transliteration uses a letter pronounced like the English j - instead of a letter pronounced like the French j, although the original local name - being a Berber word - must be pronounced with a French j - rather than with an English j. Notice that the speaker here pronounces it with a 'ז, doesn't she?77.124.86.28 (talk) 10:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

[Sigh!] I've been trying to avoid all matters of transliteration between the various alphabets, and rather focus on determining the proper/standard/received pronunciation of this city's name - for inclusion in IPA on the Oujda page here - and then I'll use the conventional Hebrew alphabetic representation to suit. If there's an alternate pronunciation [e.g. per FR, per AR], that too. What shall we do? -- Deborahjay (talk) 11:01, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we have, so far, one testimony only. Do you trust it? 77.124.86.28 (talk) 11:17, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

And or but?

Which sentence sounds better?

French is his native language but he has a perfect command of the English language, which he has spoken since the age of 8 in order to communicate with the Canadian side of his family.

French is his native language and he has a perfect command of the English language, which he has spoken since the age of 8 in order to communicate with the Canadian side of his family.

Eiad77 (talk) 11:42, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

They both sound fine, depending on what you are trying to emphasize. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:53, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. The "but" version makes it sound as if it's surprising he is fluent in both, while the "and" version does not. StuRat (talk) 07:55, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Agree with StuRat, the "but" indicates that the speaker thinks it is remarkable or unusual that he also speaks English. Roger (talk) 09:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The "but" version would also be a better reply to a question along the lines of "Does he speak English?". Either one would work for "What languages does he speak?" depending, like StuRat and Roger say, on whether it's surprising that he speaks it. Smurrayinchester 14:02, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I think "although" could also work, if you were looking for an alternative. That would be an even stronger contrast than simply "but" and would (at least in my mind) emphasize that a native French speaker is not expected to be fluent in English. Obviously, whether this is the intended implication depends on the context, but it's an alternative possibility. 155.138.250.7 (talk) 19:29, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The fact he speaks English perfectly might be surprising simply because it's unusual for people to have perfect command of a second language, other than in special circumstances. A person living in France, say, who speaks French as their first language would not usually speak English perfectly. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 22:55, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

March 19

use of the word DANDER to refer to animal/bird detritus

I came across DANDER in a recent Reader's Digest book, where it was clearly referring to the dust deposited by animals; but I had never before come across this usage of the word, which to me, and all the dictionaries I could find in the house, list as a US expression relating to one's temper (or lost if it). (I live in the UK; so perhaps this is another common US usage that I'm not unaware of.) I found the 'dander' link in Wikipedia, but there's no explanation regarding the derivation. Do you know when this alternative usage came into being, and how or why it came to be used this way? Ditton25 (talk) 08:46, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

According to the OED, dander in the sense of a "ruffled or angry temper" is "[c]onjectured by some to be a fig. use of dander n.³, dandruff, scurf; but possibly fig. of dander n.², ferment". It appears that dander in the sense of the dust deposited by furry animals is a variant of dandruff, but OED does not state when the word first appeared. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 09:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

At my home in the southeast US, we speak of people being allergic to cat dander. I am not aware of other uses of the word. Falconus^{p t c} 09:38, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Me too. This is the first time I have heard of dander being used to mean a "ruffled or angry temper". The OED reports that this is originally a US colloquial usage. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 10:21, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The expression "to get one's dander up" is occasionally heard. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:31, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

It's heard in the UK too, although a bit archaic. I've never heard it in any other context. Alansplodge (talk) 16:33, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, kind of an old-fashioned expression. Nowadays someone probably wouldn't say, "it's getting my dander up", they'd say, "it's harshing my mellow." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:13, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

March 20

Complicatedly inflected languages

Given that most English speakers cannot even grasp the use of apostrophes for possessive nouns, or correctly use the parts of common irregular verbs like "lie", "buy" or "spin", I wonder how speakers of highly inflected languages get on. Are they constantly making basic errors, or are they for some reason more adept in this respect? 86.160.83.116 (talk) 02:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Everyone makes errors, some more than others. And some people have a greater natural aptitude for linguistic complexities than other people. But over and above all that is the question of education. These days, English-speaking people seem to make far more basic errors with the things you mentioned than was the case when I was younger. The things I was taught in school are no longer taught. They might be briefly mentioned and brushed over, but they're not taught. But people have surely not become less intelligent or less naturally adept at language, so the conclusion is inevitable. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

English speakers manage to do really well with our unpredictable phrasal verbs and our fairly rich periphrasis. --Atemperman (talk) 03:56, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

That's it, basically. In the end it all evens out more or less. The difficulties that are different from your own language just stand out more. Of course speakers make mistakes in highly inflected languages but not really any more than in English. KarlLohmann (talk) 04:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

With apostrophes, the reason many of us have trouble is that the written language is less natural to most people than the spoken one. As for lie and spin (past tense span in Britain?), the reason is that there is variation in the language, and what you're asking would really be, more accurately in my view, "Of the various alternatives that exist in the language for the forms of lie and spin, why are speakers unable or unwilling to choose the ones regarded as standard?" When the question is put this way, the reason for the difficulty is clearer. (For buy, I don't know any form besides bought. What are you referring to?)

This situation is different from ones in which everybody agrees. For example, you'll hear only nous aimons in French, practically never nous aime or anything else, so there is no variation to confuse people in this instance. Whatever errors exist are isolated. But in other forms subject to variation, one form may be frequent but be considered nonstandard. For example, the subjunctive form qu'il soye [swaj] is nonstandard for qu'il soit [swa]. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 07:03, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

@OP: where do you live to claim that people don't know irregular forms? Never in my life have I heard anyone say "buyed" or some such... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 07:11, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I've sometimes had the experience of "regularizing" verbs accidentally. This happens very occasionally (perhaps once every few days). It happens more often with rarer verbs, like weave. Usually I correct myself immediately. This is a different kind of mistake than would be a widespread nonstandard form like He laid [on the sofa for a while] instead of He lay, because it's not reinforced by usage. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 07:33, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

.

@Seb az86556: Is it a coincidence? Just one hour ago, my little daughter (2½) said to her brother: "I buyed you a car"... 84.229.239.89 (talk) 08:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Ouch. We're not talking about children in their learning-phase, are we? Of course a two-year-old will talk like that; any child in any language will make up stuff like that. We're talking about adults. And I've not heard anyone say "buyed" in the same way people frequently screw up on "whom"/"who" (which is sad enough) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Now that I've gone out on a limb and admitted I've accidentally regularized verbs before, are you saying you think most adults never do it? 64.140.121.1 (talk) 08:33, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

That's why I ask where that happens; the English-speaking world is large. The people I interact with indeed never do, and they range from university-professors to gas-station janitors (On the other hand, there are several "no parking at anytime"-signs and "you are subject to be towed"-warnings *sigh*...) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:39, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps this never happens to you. But I doubt that none of the people you interact with ever do it. I said that it's rare, but everyone makes speech errors occasionally. I've found an estimate that 0.004% of irregular verbs in the past tense are overregularized by adults. See [4] on page 45. That estimate wouldn't include people who catch themselves before making the error (resulting in a mere hesitation, which it can be assumed happens more often than actually uttering the incorrect form). 64.140.121.1 (talk) 11:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

To clear something up, I don't think I've ever heard an adult say "buyed". I imagine he means the "brought"/"bought" mistake that many make.  Omg †  osh  09:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

(OP) Yes, I mean the "brought"/"bought" mistake. 86.177.106.238 (talk) 12:32, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Re: irregular verbs, just watch Jeremy Kyle to witness British adults unable to differentiate the preterite from the past participle. "I done nuffing wrong! I come over to see him yesterday!" - filelakeshoe 10:16, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Many dialects of English have non-standard forms for irregular verbs. They may well be using correct dialectal forms. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The reason English speakers have trouble with apostrophes is because the suffix -s is used for so many different functions, all of which are usually homophonous. I remember once explaining to someone that the EME "checketh" is only equivalent to the 3rd person verb "checks" as in "he checks" , and this guy identified "he checks" as "the plural". This is just another example of the confusion. As with they're/their/there and other spelling errors which rely on understanding grammar, there are always going to be a lot of people who don't understand it and just write what they hear, so differentiating between the plural noun "checks", the verb "checks" and the possessives "checks'" and "check's" is too technical. In a more complex inflected language I know well, Czech, the situation is similar. They have no problem with using the complex inflection when it's phonologically unique, the errors native speakers make are e.g. between "mě" (me, accusative or genitive) vs. "mně" (me, dative or locative) which, like with the English examples, are homophones. - filelakeshoe 10:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The original question makes the common error of confusing language with writing. Language, as far as we can tell is, something natural to humans in the sense that almost every human who has ever lived has acquired one or more languages as a child, with all their complexities, and without apparent effort. Writing (including spelling and punctuation) is something that over human history most people have never learnt to do (until five thousand years ago nobody had ever thought of it), and everybody who has learnt it has done so with more or less application and effort. If you believe Chomsky, we're hard-wired to take linguistic complexity (and irregularity) in our stride - other views don't see this as hard-wired, but nevertheless it is clear that at a certain age children are ready to internalise the exceptions in their language to the rules they have already acquired. There is no reason to think that we have any similarly innate capability to learn to read, write or spell. --ColinFine (talk) 13:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

"The original question makes the common error of confusing language with writing." No, it doesn't. 86.177.106.238 (talk) 14:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

However, the question of "errors" according to a prescriptive written standard which are not actually errors with respect to colloquial spoken grammar is actually a rather different matter from real speech errors which are not well-formed or grammatically correct according to any speech norms. The first type of "error" is considered by linguists to be standard language / colloquial language interference more than simple speech errors... AnonMoos (talk) 16:50, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Foreign Language Proper Names

Why are foreign language proper names not spelled phonetically. They often seem to have no relation to their pronunciation in English and offer little help in understanding the names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.60.184.72 (talk) 07:00, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Give us some examples of what you're talking about. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I think 173 means, if somebody's name in French is Giguère, why don't we write Zheegair in English? English doesn't usually do this kind of thing, but a few languages do. For example, see az:Corc Uoker Buş, lv:Džordžs V. Bušs, tk:Jorj Uoker Buş. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 08:29, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what he means by "their pronunciation in English". Or why he's restricting the issue to proper names. (There are no words that are pronounced "the way they're written" in "Comment allez vous, je suis Jacques", if you're going by the default sound of each individual letter. But then, what about "Sinead bought eight knives for George"? That's just as much a disaster from a literal standpoint, but the difference there is we're used to seeing those words.) If you know how Giguère is pronounced, that's how you'd pronounce it, no matter what your own language is. If you don't know how it's pronounced, you'd have a go and maybe you'd get lucky, maybe not. But whatever way you say it, the spelling is what it is. Words from languages that don't use the Latin alphabet have to be romanised before most people have any chance of pronouncing them at all. Otherwise, we get by. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Trying to transliterate Roman-alphabet words opens a serious can of worms, in trying to determine what the "correct" English pronunciation would be. I expect the average French speaker who also knows English would be amused and/or appalled at Giguère being spelled "Zheegair". First, they would probably say that's a bad attempt at it, as "Zhi-ghewoh" would be closer. Second, they might consider it to be mockery. Retaining the original spelling solves that problem. For that matter, how about the way the city Paris is spelled and pronounced? We say PAIR-iss. The French say something like pah-WEE (at least to the ears of us English speakers). But we don't spell it "Pahwee", we spell it "Paris". In Spanish it's spelled París, pronounced pah-REECE, with a light trill of the R. But guess what: They're saying it the "same" way as in French, except that French handles R's and trailing S's differently than Spanish does. In English, we should "really" be saying it "pah-REECE" (without trilling the R). But we don't. And maybe it's just as well. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, "if you can't imitate French, don't copy it." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

In fairness, British English speakers generally say PA'-riss (PA as in pant, pat, parry), and the French definitely pronounce the R as a rolled R, not a W: "pa-REE"; obviously the S is pronounced if a liaison requires it. "pa-REECE" is the German pronunciation, too, but English has quite a lot of idiosyncratic pronunciations and spellings of foreign locations (and sometimes personal names, too). AlexTiefling (talk) 10:08, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I betrayed my midwestern roots with that "PAIR-iss", as New Yorkers, for example, would also pronounce it your British way, "PA-riss", the "a" the same as in pant, pat, etc. (as pronounced by Americans.) In the midwest we would rhyme "parry" with "Perry" and "carry" or "Barry" with "berry". In New York City, "parry" and "carry" and "Barry" would have a totally short "a" is in "pant". And by the way, to use midwesterners, the French "r" in "Paris" sounds like a "w". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:12, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

An old French teacher once told us (a class of lttle Cockneys that barely pronounced "r" at all) that a Parisian "r" sounded like a coal miner clearing his throat. We soon managed an approximation of it. Alansplodge (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

@Baseball Bugs: Ah, does Pontius Pilate in The Life of Brian sound like a Frenchman speaking English to a midwesterner? "People of Jewusalum, Wome... is your fwiend! To pwove our fwiendship, we will welease one of our wong-doers! Who shall I welease?" Man in crowd: "Welease Woger!" etc. Since we're on the Language desk, I'll take the opportunity of reminding that the coal-miner-clearing-his-throat sound is called a Guttural R. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:12, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

No, he sounds like a Britisher with a speech impediment akin to Elmer Fudd's. If he had said it with a French accent (like John Cleese atop the castle in Holy Grail), then it might have worked. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:05, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It's a matter of tradition. Only very few Latin-written languages have the practice of respelling foreign proper names according to their own spelling and pronunciation rules, and even in some of those languages the customs are changing nowadays, as their literatures and media prefer using the original orthographies of foreign names more and more often today. See here for a previous discussion on the matter. (By the way, Claudia Schiffer's surname should more precisely be spelt in Latvian as Šifere, rather than Šīfere as I wrote then.) By contrast, in all languages using non-Latin writing systems, foreign names undergo transcriptions based on their original pronunciations and not on their original orthographies. --Theurgist (talk) 08:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Transliterations into different Latin-alphabet languages can vary. Boris Yeltsin was 'Boris Eltsine' in French, in order better to emulate the sound of the original Russian. English has often has a problem with the different Russian initial 'e' sounds, hence Yekaterinburg, too. Russian, conversely, has problems with the English (and German) initial H, traditionally transliterating it with the same character as G, but more recently more often with the 'KH' character. (So it's Adolph Gitler, but Pizza KHat.) Complicated topic, and I don't think any one language or nation has a monopoly on weird outcomes here. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:08, 20 March 2012

I remember arriving in Vienna on the day of the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, and seeing the news displays about "Boris Jelzin" and "Vize-Präsident Janajew" and figuring out who they were (Yeltsin and Yanaev, as I was used to them). "Чайковский" is an interesting name to transliterate into different languages, Tchaikovsky in English, Tschaikowski in German, Tchaikovski in French, it would probably be something like Tsaicofsgi in Welsh! -- Arwel Parry (talk) 21:09, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

We'd have to start with some English names before we went on to foreign names, e.g. Ralph Fiennes, Chuck Palahniuk, John Boehner, none of which are pronounced anywhere near how they appear. - filelakeshoe 10:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I guess Fiennes is an English name, but the other two are only "English" names because their owners live in an anglo country. Would you say that La Guardia or Hernandez or Roosevelt are English names just because English-speaking people had them? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 10:26, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd say they are in a way now that they've been passed down English speakers long enough for their pronunciations have been dramatically changed, but I agree it's contentious.. what makes an English name? Celtic? Germanic? Do 11th Century French imports count? My point was that the pronunciations of "Palahniuk" and "Boehner" have just become arbitrarily random, completely unrelated from the original Ukrainian/German and the suggested phonetic value in English. Interestingly the ru.wiki article on Palahniuk spells the name Паланик rather than Палагнюк, so they're obviously treating it as an English name. - filelakeshoe 11:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Boehner isn't random; the first vowel has moved to the nearest English vowel because English doesn't have front rounded vowels. The rest of the word is pronounced according to English spelling rules. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:31, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The diphthong [eɪ] is closest to [ɶː]? [ɛː]/[ɛə] and [ɜː] seem closer to me, though I realise these carry complications with rhotic accents; in British English it would definitely be approximated "burner". I would have said that the whole name has been moved to be pronounced like the nearest familiar English surname, Bainer. - filelakeshoe 22:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

There isn't a uniform Cyrillic alphabet; each Cyrillic-written language has its own version of the script. There are letters that are present in some versions but absent from others; there are also letters that represent different sound values in the different languages where they occur. When borrowed across those languages, proper names still undergo transcriptions on a phonetic basis. The Russian and the Bulgarian versions of the alphabet are identical except for two extra letters in the Russian one, but the Bulgarian town of Търговище will appear as Тырговиште in a Russian-language text, even though the Russian alphabet does contain the letters <ъ> and <щ>. And the name of a river spelt in Serbian as Јањ will be respelt in Russian as Янь, which doesn't have a single common letter with the original version. --Theurgist (talk) 21:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

"Why are foreign language proper names not spelled phonetically. They often seem to have no relation to their pronunciation in English and offer little help in understanding the names." I find the way the question is stated very strange, because of the languages of which I know at least something, English is almost the furthest away from being spelled phonetically, or what I find more important, having a consistent mapping between written characters and spoken sounds. From my experience, only French is further away, what with words usually having at least half of their letters left silent and entire sentences running into a single, swiftly spoken word. JIP | Talk 20:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. I find French pronunciation more predictable on the whole than English, based on the spelling of a word. While there are cases where it's difficult to predict whether a particular consonant will be silent in French, for the most part, one can make a good guess based on general patterns. This source says "When English and French are compared, for instance, a deep orthography with many deviations from a simple one-to-one phoneme-grapheme writing system (English) is compared with a system with a much more predictable pronunciation of written words (French)." The same source considers Danish broadly comparable to English in this respect. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 20:45, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, I understand your point, but do you agree that the OP seems to think that "spelled phonetically" means "spelled like in English", where in fact the two are almost as far away from each other as possible? JIP | Talk 20:58, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think "spelled phonetically" means "spelled like in English," but most likely a very conventionalized and systematic kind of spelling. For example, you wouldn't use ough in any circumstances, only oo, oh, of, uf or ou. You sometimes see spellings like this in newspaper articles to help the reader with unfamiliar names. I stated above what my interpretation of the question was. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 22:49, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

"Brother-in-law", as the most bizzare relation in almost all languages, including English.

1. A is B's wife's brother, so B is A's sister's husband.

2. Either one (A or B) is the other one's brother in law.

Amazing, isn't it? Although A and B do not logically-relate to each other - the same way - as I've proved in 1, they still do nominally-relate to each other - the same way - as I've proved in 2.

However, there are two additional amazing points in "brother in law":

3. "Brother in law" (along with its obvious parallels: co-brother-in-law, sister-in-law, co-sister-in-law, sibling-in-law, co-sibling-in-law), is - probably - the only nominal relation between two persons - not logically-relating to each other the same way. For example, take the "uncle-nephew" case: A is B's father's brother, so B is A's brother's son, i.e. A and B do not logically-relate to each other the same way, and...they also do not nominally-relate to each other by any (unique) common relation, do they? (I added "unique", because they still relate to each other by the obvious common relation: "relative", which isn't unique to A and B - as a wife's brother or as a sister's husband).

4. English is not an "isolated" language on that matter, i.e. almost all of the other well known languages (probably excluding the Slavic ones) share the same bizzare property: "Brother in law" is unique (while the Slavic language do not have a common noun, as English has the "brother in law", for both wife's brother and sister's husband).

My question is whether you know of other languages (except for the Slavic ones) that do not share that bizzare property with English. In other words, I'm looking for languages which: either resemble the Slavic ones (in not having the bizzare case of "brother in law"), or have other bizzare cases (as English has the bizzare case of "brother in law").

84.229.239.89 (talk) 12:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't quite understand your threshold for "bizarre" here... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 12:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the OP is asking for examples of languages in which "wife's brother" and "sister's husband" are denoted by different, distinct nouns. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The Slavic languages are already known to have different distinct nouns, so I'm looking for additional language which share that property with the Slavic languages.

I'm also looking for languages which have other examples, other than "brother in law", i.e have a common noun denoting a relation between two relatives that logically do not relate to each other the same way. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 12:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

"Brother in law" - is a "bizzare" relation, in the following sense: although - the wife's brother and the sister's husband - do not logically relate to each other the same way (because John is David's wife's brother, while David is John's sister's husband), they still nominally-relate to each other the same way (because either one of them is the other one's "brother in law"). Notice that the Slavic languages don't have this "bizzare" property: Just as John and David do not logically-relate to each other the same way, they also do not nominally-relate to each other the same way, because the Slavic languages do not have a common noun, as English has the "brother in law", for both wife's brother and sister's husband. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 12:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

There are several different ways to break this down. Firstly, English has some relation-words which are generalisable ('brother' and 'sister' have a general term 'sibling') and others which are not ('uncle' and 'aunt', for example). Whether or not we break terms down to their finest level of detail affects whether relation-words appear 'bizarre' in this sense. For example, 'uncle' can mean 'mother's brother' or 'father's brother', which appears more bizarre than 'parent's brother'. But if we generalise differently, to 'father's sibling', we don't have a word at all. And it's quite common for 'uncle' to mean 'aunt's husband' (or in same-sex marriage jurisdictions, 'uncle's husband'), which is a relationship of affinity, not kindred, and thus more different from the other meaning than the two meanings of 'sibling-in-law' are from one another.

But there are examples, from the same Germanic language family as English, which behave differently. Swedish denotes many kindred relationships with compound nouns, so that 'maternal uncle' is 'morbror' - literally 'mother-brother'. Likewise for aunts, paternal relations, and grandparents.

And I've seen examples, from as recently as the late 19th century, of the 'in-law' being dropped, and people reporting (for example in censuses) their affine relations using the exact same terms as their kindred relations.

Latin, conversely, used different words - gener and socer - for 'father-in-law' and 'son-in-law', which could not be confused with the kindred words pater and filius. I don't know if the same went for siblings-in-law, but I expect so. AlexTiefling (talk) 13:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Albanian even lumps together 'brother-in-law' with 'son-in-law', both are dhëndër. I'm not sure what 'wife's brother' would be called, but I'm assuming also dhëndër. However, 'sister-in-law' is kunatë, whereas 'daughter-in-law' is nuse or reje (depending on the dialect). Interestingly, dhëndër and nuse also mean 'bridegroom' and 'bride'. --Terfili (talk) 13:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Latin has "levir" for "brother-in-law", but could also use "gener" that way, and "glos" for "sister-in-law", but those are derived from Greek and aren't really classical words. They would normally just use "frater" and "soror" with some other word or phrase clarifying the exact relationship ("wife's brother", etc). Adam Bishop (talk) 13:23, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Another thing about Albanian kinship terms is that nip can mean both 'nephew' and 'grand-son' and mbese both 'niece' and 'grand-daughter' (Latin had the same thing I think). On the other hand, father's siblings and mother's siblings are distinguished: axhe 'father's brother' & daje 'mother's brother' and halle 'father's sister' & teze 'mother's sister'. --Terfili (talk) 13:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure but I think Italian is similar to Albanian here, in that you can use nipote both for granddaughter (grandson) and niece (nephew). Tinfoilcat (talk) 14:13, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

If you are female, you use the same word for your male children, your sister's male children, and your mother's brothers. Would that be such a "bizarre" case? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing bizarre about it. A will call B (in German, e.g., Schwager), and so B will call A based on reciprocity. Note that German uses a proper word and not a composition like English. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

In English an "uncle" can be your father's brother, your father's sister's husband, your mother's brother, your mother's sister's husband, or an unrelated but usually older male acquaintance. It is also commonly used to refer to great-uncles. Is that bizarre? --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:34, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm at a loss as to the meaning of the word "bizarre" in this context. Having said that, I would point out that the suffix "-in-law" has had a different meaning historically in the UK: it has also been used to refer to adoptive relatives, such as "son-in-law" meaning adopted son. --TammyMoet (talk) 15:48, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Chinese differentiates between wife's older brother, wife's younger brother, elder sister's husband and younger sister's husband, each of which is known by a distinct term, although there is also a general term for wife's brother regardless of relative age. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

OP's comment: Maybe I was wrong with the adjective "bizzare". I've changed it - by opening a new thread, in which I've also clarified my question. Please respond ibid. I still think that the Slavic languages are the only well-known languages which do not resemble English on that matter. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, you were definitely wrong in the sense that the word "bizarre" has only one z but two r's. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 18:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The property I had been talking about, is not really bizarre; Yet, it's "bizzare" - in the sense I've explained above. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 19:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

If you're using the word 'bizzare' as somehow different in meaning from the word 'bizarre', you're going to have to define it for us, because it doesn't appear in any dictionaries I know of. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:16, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and I've defined "bizzare", see the section beginning with:

• "Brother in law" - is a "bizzare" relation, in the following sense... 84.229.239.89 (talk) 22:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I can't decide whether this whole thread is bizarre or merely bizzare. Probably both, really. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:28, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

What about “cousin-in-law”? --84.61.139.62 (talk) 21:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you're absolutely corrrrrrrrrrect !!! 84.229.239.89 (talk) 22:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm looking for languages that do not have an interesting property English has.

By a "natural" relation between any two relatives, I will hereby mean: either: 1. parent (i.e. father for males, mother for females); or: 2. offspring (i.e. son for males, daughter for females); or: 3. spouse (i.e. husband for males, wife for females); or: 4. any combination of the above (e.g. spouse's parent's offspring, mother's son's wife's father, and likewise).

Note that "parent" is not a symmetric relation (because if I'm your parent - then you can't be my parent), nor is "offspring"; However "spouse" is a symmetric natural relation (because if I'm your spouse - then you too must be my spouse).

Note also that "sibling" is not only a symmetric relation (because if I'm your sibling then you too must be my sibling), but is also a symmetric "natural" relation: Because, taking A and B (as two different persons), either one is the other one's sibling, if and only if either one is the other one's parent's offspring - being a "natural" relation (per definition, sec. 4). In other words, A and B - each of which is the other one's sibling, relate also to each other in the same "natural" relation ( = parent's offspring). Therefore, "sibling" is a symmetric "natural" relation.

On the other hand, "sibling-in-law", despite its being a symmertic relation (because if I'm your sibling-in-law then you too must be my sibling-in-law), is still not a symmetric natural relation: Because, taking A and B, if either one is the other one's sibling-in-law, then either: A is B's spouse's sibling - hence B is A's sibling's spouse, or the other way around. In any case, A and B do not relate to each other in the same "natural" relation. Therefore, "sibling-in-law" is not a symmetric "natural" relation (despite its being a symmertic relation).

Now, English (along with almost all of the other well known languages), has the following - interesting - property: "Sibling-in-law" (or brother-in-law and sister-in-law - if we consider gender, along with the obvious parallel co-sibling-in-law) is the only relation (between relatives) in the language, which is a symmetric relation, yet not a symmetric "natural" relation.

On the other hand, the Slavic languages, do not have that property, because they don't have a word denoting the sibling-in-law - as a symmetric relation.

I'm looking for additional languages, other than the Slavic ones, which do not have the property English has, i.e either: languages that don't have a word denoting a symmetric relation which is not a symmetric "natural" relation, or languages that have a word denoting another symmetric relation (i.e. other than "sibling in law") which is not a symmetric "natural" relation.

84.229.239.89 (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Your description is quite confusing. So apologies if this doesn't fit. Filipino languages do not have a word for "sibling-in-law", but not in the same sense as you seem to be meaning. We have two different words for sister-in-law (hipag) and brother-in-law (bayaw). Obviously if they are of different genders, A would be B's hipag while B would be A's bayaw.

It's curious, in fact, and one of the few exceptions to the rule. Except for mother, father, and Spanish loanwords (for aunt, uncle, grandfather, and grandmother), all of our other kinship terms do not differentiate genders. Age and generational differences are given greater weight than gender or even the degree of blood separation. e.g. brother and sister are both kapatid, son and daughter are both anak, niece and nephew are both pamangkin, son-in-law and daughter-in-law are both manugang, mother-in-law and father-in-law are both biyenan, etc. I suppose something similar exists in other Austronesian languages. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 19:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Of cousre your example does not fit, because neither "hipag" nor "bayaw" is a symmetric relation (because if I'm your "hipag" then you're not my "hipag", and the same is in "bayaw"). As I've explained above, I'm looking for symmetric relations. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 19:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It is symmetric actually. If you and I are both male and we're siblings-in-law, we'd both be each other's bayaw. It only becomes asymmetric (in the legal/customary context) if we belong to different genders. Other than that, it's the same thing in terms of blood relation. You'd perhaps be the asawa ng aking kapatid (wife/husband of my sibling) and I'd be your kapatid ng aking asawa (sibling of my wife/husband).

On the other hand, wouldn't English "cousin" also fit the bill? It's symmetric, A would be B's cousin, and B would be A's cousin. But in terms of blood, A could be B's father's niece and B could be A's mother's nephew. If so, then our word pinsan is also the same.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 19:33, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, bayaw is symmetric (sorry), but then you just give me the obvious example of brother-in-law and sister-in-law, which are again the case of siblings-in-law - that English already has, whereas I'm looking for examples - other than the one English has, as I have already explained in the beginning of the thread - in the section where I presented my question. Notice that I'm looking for languages which do not resemble English on that matter. As for cousin: it's really a symmetric relation, but it's also a symmetric natural relation. Actually, you could give the other example I have already indicated: spouse. However, I'm talking about symmetric relations which are not symmetric natural relations, as I have already explained in the beginning of the thread, in the section where I presented my question. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 19:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

That was what I was confused about actually. A cousin can both be a natural (i.e. by blood, consanguinal) relation or a legal/customary (i.e. in-laws, affinal) relation. Another example, aside from the first cousin of Atethnekos below: the son of my father's brother's brother-in-law is still a cousin, as there's no such thing as a "cousin-in-law". Plus you did not make stipulations about gender differences. Both bayaw and hipag are symmetric or asymmetric, depending on the gender of the persons involved.

I think, the criterion is simply not that clear-cut. Words can ignore or include the actual blood relationship, depending on the context (compared to what relation, in what situations, etc.) or the culture itself. In some cases extending it to unrelated people, e.g. "son" in English. In our culture where extended families are the norm, that is actually the default. We use the same words for blood relations that we do informally for unrelated people out of respect or politeness, depending on age difference (like in Chinese, I think?), especially if we do not know their names at all. e.g. I would always call an old woman lola, "grandmother". I'd also call any male the same age as my father, tatay, "dad" (only if he too has sons/daughters), or tiyo, "uncle". In turn they'd probably call me anak, "offspring/child".

I'm now curious, how do Slavic languages avoid this? Different words depending on which person you're talking about?

Anyway, like PalaceGuard's example below, the word magbiyenan in our languages means to be the parent-in-law of the other's offspring. Literally it means "co-parent-in-law". It's symmetric, but obviously not so in terms of blood. Kumare and kumpadre, meaning "co-godmother/godfather" are also symmetric but not by blood, not by gender, and they're only usable if there are more than one godparent to the child. It literally means "co-mother"/"co-father", both are from Spanish, though their importance as kinship ties in Anglophone cultures are lesser than in heavily Catholic-influenced cultures.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 21:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Chinese has several terms for respective relatives by marriage - if my child (either gender) is married to your child (either gender), then you (either gender) are my qinjia, and I (either gender) am your qinjia. If my husband is your husband's brother, then you are my zhouli, and I am your zhouli. If my wife is your wife's sister, then you are my lianjin, and I am your lianjin.

These are the general "reciprocal" terms. In addition to these, there are some further non-reciprocal terms depending on the exact situation. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 20:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I do not think that "brother-in-law" and "sister-in-law" are the only symmetric non-natural relation terms in English as you define these properties. For example, "first cousin once removed" and other similar cousin terms would seem to represent a symmetric non-natural relation. If you are my first cousin once removed, then I am your first cousin once removed, therefore symmetric, on your terms. However, for example, you are my parent's parent's offspring's offspring's offspring, whereas I am not that of yours, but rather I am your parent's parent's parent's offspring's offspring, therefore not naturally symmetric on your terms. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 20:32, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

See the six basic patterns of kinship terminologies at "Kinship terminology".

—Wavelength (talk) 23:20, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Languages having one word both for son-in-law and for bridegroom, or one word both for daughter-in-law and for bride.

So far, I know of only two languages having the property mentioned above, namely: Albanian (dhëndër for the masculine, nuse for the feminine), and Hebrew (חתן for the masculine, כלה for the feminine). Interesting enough, because Albanian is an (isolated) Indo-European language, whereas Hebrew is a Semitic language, i.e. from a totally different language family.

I'm looking for additional languages that have that property (indicated in the title). 84.229.239.89 (talk) 18:15, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

In Persian the first one is /dɒːmɒːd/ and the second one /æɾuːs/. --Omidinist (talk) 18:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. Btw, it's not hard to find a phonetic connection between the (Indo-European) Persian /dɒːmɒːd/ and the (Indo-European) Albanian dhëndër: Just drop the suffix ër (really a suffix only?), and you get "dhënd", which could easily have emerged from "dhënad", so the only significant difference between "dhënad" and /dɒːmɒːd/, is the n/m replacemnet, which is very reasonable, because both n and m are nasal consonants. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 19:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Romanian has ginere for both son-in-law and bridegroom, although the use of the word to mean bridegroom is a bit antiquated: nowadays we usually use mire (which according to the dictionary is a cognate to Albanian mirë, meaning "good"), the female equivalent being mireasă (daughter-in-law is noră). 92.80.36.80 (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

In Chinese, xifu can mean both daughter-in-law and wife (or bride, if you like). However, it is possible to avoid the ambiguity by using alternative terms for each -- erxi for daughter-in-law and qizi for wife (xinniang for bride). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 20:23, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

See the six basic patterns of kinship terminologies at "Kinship terminology".

—Wavelength (talk) 23:22, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

However, the classic "Morgan" kinship classification is based on cousin terminologies, not in-law terminologies... AnonMoos (talk) 00:14, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I would like to chime in with Hungarian: son-in-law (husband of one's daughter) is vő [vø:] and daughter-in-law (wife of one's son) is meny [meɲ]; bridegroom is vőlegény ['vø:lɛgeːɲ], a compound of vő + legény (meaning young man, lad, bachelor (unmarried)), and bride is menyasszony ['mɛɲɒsːoɲ], a compound of meny + asszony (a word for woman). 94.21.47.245 (talk) 12:46, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

What are they talking about here?

This page is a discussion page on the Japanese Wikipedia about spoiler warnings. I'm not exactly sure what they're talking about, and Google Translate didn't help at all about understanding it. Can somebody help me here about what they are talking about? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 13:15, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know Japanese but see Wikipedia:Spoiler for the concept of spoiler warnings. There have been heated discussions about them in the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I know that they are talking about spoiler warnings, I just don't get exactly what they are talking about. I don't know if they are talking about abolishing their use (like what happened here) or if they want to change some of their policies on them (like the ability to hide spoiler warnings). Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 15:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

They are talking about creating a new template at #2, stopping the use of all the templates for 6 months and see what would happen at #3, and revising a template at #5. Please don't ask me to translate. It's too complicated. Oda Mari (talk) 17:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Gigs?

Is 'gig' used as a unit of duration? For example, 'three gigs ago'? --Analphil (talk) 14:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Meaning what? Three performances ago, if you're a performer? - filelakeshoe 14:46, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

You don't mean click, do you? That's military slang for a kilometre (which is admittedly not a unit of time ...). Maybe you could provide more context, such as a sentence you've seen it in. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Musicians perform on stage in something that is often called a 'gig'. 'Three gigs ago' obviously refers to events that happened at a past performance, but no, a gig is not a unit of duration since the time between gigs is variable (from a few hours to several years). Astronaut (talk) 15:38, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

In some SciFi contexts, they have transitioned to metric time. This takes the form of SI prefix + seconds. So instead of saying "The Klingon/Kilrathi war ended a hundred years ago", they might say "... ended three gigaseconds ago", or, if you want to abbreviate in speech, "three gigs ago". -- 71.217.13.130 (talk) 15:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, how enlightening! — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:35, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I guess it could also be an abbreviation for "gigabyte" if you're downloading a large file from a slow server. "You don't need to download that linux distribution again, I've already got it on my USB stick" "You should have told me that 3 gigs ago". 59.108.42.46 (talk) 03:10, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

March 21

Telekommunikationsgesetz

Please translate sections 89 and 148 of the German Telekommunikationsgesetz into Japanese! --84.61.139.62 (talk) 09:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

We tend not to be too keen on doing what look like commercial translations for free. That said, maybe you'd have better luck at the Japanese reference desk, where you are more likely to find native speakers of Japanese. Marco polo (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

A hint: The Japanese FM radio band overlaps mostly with the German BOS 4 meter band. --84.61.139.62 (talk) 17:09, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Essentially, Section 89 states that people operating radio receivers may not receive, or communicate about, radio broadcasts not intended for the public. Section 148 states that people who violate Section 89 or Section 90 (which you haven't linked but which apparently has to do with radio transmission rather than reception) are subject to 2 years' imprisonment or a fine. Please do not construe this as any kind of legal advice, which we cannot offer, nor is my translation the most reliable, as I am not a native German speaker. Nor do I have any Japanese language skills. Marco polo (talk) 19:10, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

British English question regarding "50p"

From BBC: "The chancellor said the 50p rate was uncompetitive, raised "next to nothing" and would fall to 45p next year."[5]. Is "50p" pronounced "fifty pence" or "fifty percent"? Assuming it's the former, in what situation does "pence" replace "percent"? Anonymous.translator (talk) 15:28, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

It is correctly pronounced "50 pence" but more commonly "50 pee". "Fifty percent" means 50%, not 50p. - filelakeshoe 15:32, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

And in the context in which George used it, he means 50 pence in the pound, which is the same as 50%. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:33, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, yeah, misunderstood the question. When talking about taxes and similar charges, "pence" often replaces "percent" to mean x pence in every pound. If you were describing it to a non-English person it might be better to use "percent" instead, and write it as 50%. - filelakeshoe 15:36, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

So is taxation the only situation where "pence" is used instead of "percent"? Are there any similar situations like that? Anonymous.translator (talk) 15:52, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

It's "50 pence [in a pound]" only when you are talking about a portion of money. So if there is a context where "50 pence [in a pound]" makes sense other than taxation, you could also use it that way.

Interestingly, in Australia, while tax rates are officially prescribed as "x cents for each dollar..." http://www.ato.gov.au/content/12333.htm], a particular tax rate would not usually be called (for example) "the 45 cent tax rate", it would be "the 45% tax rate". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:56, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

For some reason, it is more commonly spoken of as 'pence in the pound'. Like PalaceGuard says, any discussion of proportions of money can be referred to in this way - here is a discussion of creditors being paid '20 pence in the pound'. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:05, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

It's slightly misleading to refer to a 50p tax rate as 50%, because of the effect the tax allowance has on the amount of tax paid and also the National Insurance contribution has an effect. You don't pay 50% of your gross income in tax, if you earn enough to fall into that tax band. You pay 50% of your income above the 50% tax band starting point. --TammyMoet (talk) 16:13, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

The US solution to that issue is to refer to an "x % marginal tax rate", meaning a tax rate of x % on income above a certain threshold. For non-English speakers, probably the best solution would be to refer to a "50% tax rate on incomes above £ x". Marco polo (talk) 16:53, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

March 22

Is Filipino Verb-Subject-Object, Subject-Verb-Object, or both?

In Filipino (or Tagalog), we have two kinds of sentences, "karaniwan" and "di-karaniwan" (I don't know their exact English translations). An example of a karaniwan sentence is "Pumunta si Juan sa simbahan" which translates as "Juan went to church." "Pumunta" is the verb, "Juan" is the noun, and "sa simbahan" is the object. However, another way to translate "Juan went to church" in Filipino is "Si Juan ay pumunta sa simbahan", where "Juan" is the subject, "pumunta" is the verb and "sa simbahan" is the object. So is Filipino VSO (verb-subject-object), SVO (subject-verb-object) or both? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 04:52, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Letter

Does the letter “W” technically have three syllables? 71.146.8.88 (talk) 06:33, 22 March 2012 (UTC)