Language desk
< July 23	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 25 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 24[edit]

Latin to English translation from Venus and Adonis[edit]

Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.

This quotation is at the beginning of William Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis. What is the English translation? Thank you. (64.252.34.115 (talk) 01:38, 24 July 2010 (UTC))[reply]

It's from Ovid's "Amores". "Let the crowd admire vile things; but let golden Apollo supply me with cups full of Castalian water" (i.e., the water of the spring where the Muses lived). Adam Bishop (talk) 04:12, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your helpful reply. Thanks. (64.252.34.115 (talk) 16:24, 24 July 2010 (UTC))[reply]

Persian question[edit]

A hopefully simple question on Persian: The title of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is translated as پیرمرد و دریا (pir mard o daryâ ?). As far as I know, in Persian adjectives are postponed with Ezafe, so I would have expected مرد پير mard-e pir instead of پير مرد pir mard (or pir-e mard?). But I'm sure there is an explanation. --84.190.141.240 (talk) 11:30, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Its verbatim translation is "mard-e pir o darya". Its more literary and more famous translation is "pirmard o darya". Nouns and adjectives can sometimes change their places, as in this case that "mard-e pir" and "pirmard" mean the same thing. In the former case we have two words (noun + ezafe + adjective), while the latter is only one word. I think I have seen its parallels in English too, but I can't remember any right now. You may help me. --Omidinist (talk) 15:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese[edit]

Honorifics are so confusing! Could someone help me? Thanks! --138.110.206.99 (talk) 12:58, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See Japanese honorifics. -- Wavelength (talk) 13:15, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a less all-encompassing question? What particularly is it that confuses you? TomorrowTime (talk) 17:09, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the quick & dirty guide:

Honorifics are added after a name (family name for more politeness or given name to show closeness). The most common is "san."

~san = most common, polite and usually a good default. ~sensei = always add to the names of doctors, teachers or professors. ~chan = used for babies, toddlers, pets and little girls. Although very "cutesy," it can be used for a woman if that's what the individual prefers. Listen to what others call her and follow suit. ~kun = used for young boys. Sometimes men to be friendly may refer to a woman or younger man with this. It gives kind of a brotherly or fatherly vibe. Older men seem a bit more likely to do this.

SPECIAL CASE: older family members. If you're close you add "chan" after their title (grandma-chan, father-chan, etc.) Families that are more formal with each other might use "san" instead. In otherworldly contexts like anime other suffixes might be used amongst family members but in reality that's pretty rare.

Less common honorific suffixes: ~sama = this is never used in real life except ironically, but in historical contexts or the alternate reality of anime is a sign of great respect or worship applied to the nobility or sometimes the person a main character has a crush on or their idol. ~dono = "my lord." Very archaic. Don't use in real life unless it's obviously ironic. Might come up in historic contexts or anime.

There are some others that are almost never used outside of things like anime. Don't worry about them. 108.3.173.100 (talk) 05:41, 26 July 2010 (UTC)TorreyOaks[reply]

Origin of "th" sound in English.[edit]

A question yesterday started me thinking. Is English the only Germanic language with a "th" sound? Modern Germans famously find it very difficult to pronounce. If so, did the invading Anglo-Saxons pick it up from the local Brythonic speakers (Welsh has both "th" and "dd" and Cornish has "th" and "dh")? Alansplodge (talk) 16:24, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proto-Germanic did have a th-sound (written as þ), which developed through the Germanic sound shift from Proto-Indo-European *t (cf. PG *þrijiz < PIE *treyes). Besides English, Icelandic is the other Germanic language to have retained it (cf. English three, Icelandic þrír). German (including Low German and Dutch) shifted this *þ to d, hence we have German drei and Dutch drie. A shift to t seems to have happened in the Scandinavian languages other than Icelandic (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian all have tre). And then there is also the voiced th as in brother, making things even more complicated, but I won't elaborate on it now. Anyway, you can see that English th is not an innovation but a retention. But of course you cannot rule out that Celtic substrate helped in retaining the th, though it could be difficult to prove that. --BishkekRocks (talk) 16:51, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We also have an article on Thorn (letter). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to the article on voiced dental fricative (as in "there"), that sounds occurs in Danish as well (example: the final consonant in "hvid"). ---Sluzzelin talk 17:47, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Faroese also has ð, but it "isn't assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons" Rimush (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks one and all, especially BishkekRocks. Job done in style. Alansplodge (talk) 19:36, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Southern American accent[edit]

Where can I listen to (the longer the better) a video that clearly shows what is generally known as a "Southern accent"? Most Youtube videos are made by non-Southerners attempting to do it instead of real speakers of the dialect. --Belchman (talk) 18:09, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there is no single "southern accent", so you might have to narrow it down. Texas sounds different from Florida, and from South Carolina, etc. Here is Civil War historian Shelby Foote, who was from Mississippi. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you can find a video of Lucas Black, he has a genuine, and very thick, Alabama accent. +An gr 21:21, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an example of him talking. +An gr 21:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you listen to both clips, you'll hear the two accents are very different, and I don't think the difference is primarily due to the geographic distance between Mississippi and Alabama. Shelby Foote has an educated, relatively upper-class, non-rhotic Southern accent, while Lucas Black has a working-class rhotic Southern accent. The age difference between them (Foote was born in 1916, Black in 1982) probably has something to do with differences between their accents as well. +An gr 21:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the second factor is primary, not the first one. Non-rhoticity used to be a feature of the South(-East) in general, not some kind of "Trans-Atlantic" mark of its upper class only. Most Southerners have reverted to rhoticity in the course of the 20th century, presumably to conform better with GA.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 20:49, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Even within a single state, you will find a wide range of accents, from thick to moderate to almost non-existent, among even the natives. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Parts of rural Virginia and North Carolina also pronounce certain words which sound, to me, like Candian: oot and aboot, for example. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 00:33, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are some Youtube videos with Hodding Carter III, who has a Mississippi accent. Also Red Barber, who likewise was from Mississippi. You can search for interviews of Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is from North Carolina. Or Southern politicians like Trent Lott or Thad Cochran. Someone seems to have uploaded the Eyes on the Prize documentary miniseries on the UK version of Yahoo Video -- that has the voices of black and white people from across the South. Really you can just find the names of prominant southeners on Wikipedia and then search for videos of them speaking on the Internet. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:28, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bugs is quite right that even natives of Southern states often have little or no discernibly Southern accent. Julia Roberts, for example, was born and raised in the Atlanta area but speaks fairly region-free General American, although as an actress she may have consciously suppressed her Southern accent if she ever had one. +An gr 05:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Andie MacDowell supposedly lost some roles because of her southern accent... AnonMoos (talk) 21:29, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Andie's voice got dubbed over by Glenn Close in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, because her accent was so strong. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:23, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Holly Hunter has an accent that could make paint peel. Fortunately, she didn't talk in The Piano. +An gr 05:58, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Our article on Southern American English links to "Tawkin' Suthern" which has a number of audio clips (and in turn refers to the Wikipedia article). I only listened to a couple of the recordings, and am not the best judge on authenticity, but supposedly they are spoken by native Southerners. ---Sluzzelin talk 05:55, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think they're authentic. It's interesting though that when he discusses /aɪ/-monophthongization (which he calls "lilt truncation" for some reason), he seems not to notice that the woman he's recording does not monophthongize /aɪ/ before voiceless consonants. He says, "light turns into laht", but then you play the audio and she very clearly says [laɪt] and not *[laːt] (although in other Southern accents, monophthongization does happen before voiceless consonants and it is [laːt]). +An gr 20:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly, the male speaker, when asked to say "I feel good", says "I feel good", not "I fill good". He adds: "I'm not sure about that. I think we do pretty good with 'feel' ". ---Sluzzelin talk 21:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've also heard rural northerners say "fill" instead of "feel". There's a built-in assumption that the midwest accent is as flat as the midwest is. However, there are rural accents that are distinctive and are not "southern" as such. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:38, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]