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Is there a name for an English sentence, which when written in IPA, use all the phonemes found in English? Phonetic pangram? Are there any examples of English phonetic pangrams?
i.e. it should use both voiced and unvoiced "th" sounds (as in "thy" and "thigh"). It may require a particular regional spoken dialect to get all sounds or might not. —Pengo 00:10, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Panphone seems to have been used by others before. As to an actual example, I don't know of any. Lexicografía (talk) 01:14, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What are some rare or uncommon sounds (by which I mean rare in relation to the other major languages of the world) that exist in English? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 01:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
[ð] is rare even within English. Its voiced counterpart [θ] is not super-common cross-linguistically. Also some of our lax vowels, specifically [ɪ] and maybe [ɛ], are difficult for many learners (Spanish speakers come to mind). (Now I'll sit tight and wait while people swarm here to point out all the languages that have these phonemes and how terrible I was to forget about them...)
If you don't understand those IPA characters, see WP:IPA for English. Also, all the articles on phonemes have lists of their occurence in various languages, so you can go through WP:IPA for English and look up all those characters to see which ones don't occur in many languages. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:47, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Beyond the level of individual segments, too, we also have some consonant clusters that are not possible in many languages (although there are languages, like Russian and various Slavic languages, which have even worse ones). For example, "sixths" has a 4-consonant cluster (although in natural speech I think a lot of us might drop one), and I think there are bigger ones that I can't remember right now. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:04, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that some of the realisations of English /æ/ (as in 'cat') are rare. In particular most people in South-East England today produce a vowel which I have not encountered in any other language (it is more open than the old-fashioned RP version - which does seem to be quite common among languages - but not as fronted as in General American). --ColinFine (talk) 07:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here in Northern England, the vowel in "cat" is short and common. We do have some strange-sounding dialectal vowels that those from the south of the country find very difficult to reproduce, but they are well-known to speakers from some other countries. (Sorry my IPA isn't good enough to represent them.) Dbfirs 10:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have read that "strengths" is the most complex syllable in English: a three-consonant cluster, a vowel, and a four-consonant cluster. —Bkell (talk) 16:48, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Where's the fourth consonant?—EmilJ. 16:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Four consonants: /n/, /g/, /θ/, /s/. Lexicografía (talk) 17:04, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But there's no /n/ or /ɡ/ in /strɛŋθs/.—EmilJ. 17:23, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the way I pronounce it, there's /ŋ/, /k/, /θ/, /s/. —Bkell (talk) 17:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Seems I confused consonant with phoneme. But I pronounce it the same way as Bkell, now that I think about it. Lexicografía (talk) 17:26, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
About the alveolar approximant, or the R-sound in English: at least for Eastern Europeans, it seems to be the most specific English sound, as it differs noticeably from their native trilled R-sounds. Learners of English in my country, and especially beginner learners, tend to neglect some much more minor peculiarities of the English phonology, but will typically make an effort to render the English R (sometimes not very successfully).
And I would dare to somewhat disagree that [ð] is rare within English. Indeed, it may not appear in a large number of individual lexemes, but it is there in items of vocabulary like "the", "that", "there", "they", "than", "other", "with", all of which are very common in English and would make up a considerable share of all words realised in natural English speech. --Theurgist (talk) 14:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"With"? Pronounced with a [ð]? I've heard it artificially made to sound that way in order to rhyme (e.g. ... rhythm ... with him), but I normally hear people saying /wiθ/. That's in Australia, and on US/UK TV. Maybe it's different in foreign parts. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:27, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's definitely a UK thing, and seems to be associated with the north. LANTZYTALK 07:01, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, "with" had the dishonour of getting stricken out of my list, but "this" and "then" would fully deserve to be there. --Theurgist (talk) 07:32, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There's no shame in being wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. No shame at all, ðeurgist. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 08:15, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
θeurgist is correct here in the North, but perhaps Jack would consider us "foreign" :) Strangely, the pronunciation reverts to /wiθ/ once over the border in Scotland. Dbfirs 16:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I grew up in SE England knowing only /wið/. --ColinFine (talk) 21:39, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, on checking wið the OED, I see that wið is the usual pronunciation, and that wiθ is "chiefly north" (by which I assume that they mean Scotland), so Theurgist seems to be correct for the English spoken in England. Dbfirs 07:52, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But quite common in other languages. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Phonetically, the strange thing about English varieties is the number of diphthongs. It seems a bit more common than it is, because we're right next to all the other Germanic languages, but it's one of the things that makes Germanic languages special. Few languages on a worldwide scale have as many diphthongs as English, though Khmer language comes to mind as a counter-example. Steewi (talk) 03:34, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How comprehensible is Old Spanish to modern Spanish speakers, and Old French to modern French speakers? My first thought was to compare it to Old English and Modern English, but obviously that analogy doesn't pan out because we understand much less Old English than I would think French/Spanish speakers could understand of their own old- languages —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 03:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I guess it depends how you define "old". 9th-century French requires a dictionary, but I don't know exactly how much easier or harder than Old English it would be for a native French speaker. My intuition is that maybe it's not as hard since French still has most of the grammar that that period did (conjugations and stuff...I don't think OF had case-markings, as far as I can remember), and since I could get the gist of stuff written in that time period even though I'm not a native speaker (and I didn't need to learn a whole lot of new grammar, mainly I just had to look up a lot of words and get used to some unfamiliar structures and word orders). rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Old English is certainly more different from modern English, than either Old Spanish or Old French are from their modern counterparts. This is partly due to the Norman Conquest, which imposed a new, foreign elite language on England, resulting in dramatic changes to vocabulary. Neither France nor Spain underwent such a conquest after the 10th century. Also, Old English is in fact more ancient than either Old Spanish or Old French. Old Spanish and Old French have end dates in the 14th or 15th centuries, whereas Old English was supplanted by Middle English in the 12th century, so Old Spanish and Old French are chronologically closer to their modern counterparts. I'd say that Spanish has undergone the least change, since French has had more extensive changes in pronunciation and grammar. I think that the written forms of Old Spanish and Old French are largely, though not entirely comprehensible to modern readers of those languages, in the way that Shakespeare is somewhat accessible to modern English speakers and it is possible to make some sense even of Chaucer (who was contemporary with the later stages of Old Spanish and Old French). However, I am fairly certain that a modern speaker of French would not be able to make much sense of spoken Old French (any more than a modern English speaker could make sense of spoken Middle English) because of extensive changes in the pronunciation (and grammar) of French since the Middle Ages. There have also been important changes in Spanish consonants that would create some barrier to oral comprehension of Old Spanish, though maybe not as strong a barrier as exists for Old French. Marco polo (talk) 13:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was surprised to find Froissart's chronicles (14th century French) easier to understand than Middle English texts of the same period. Even though his French is influenced by Picard dialect (he's a Ch'ti). I also found early modern Spanish not too bad. Old English, i.e. pre Conquest, is near enough impenetrable. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Old French definitely depends on the period. I agree that Froissart is pretty easy, but something much earlier like the Chanson de Roland is much different and much harder. At first glance (at least, at my first glance), Old French seems to be almost a random collection of words with no syntax or grammar. To figure that par out (as well as a lot of the vocabulary), it definitely helps to know Latin. There are cases descended from Latin, but only a "subject" case and an "object" case from the Latin nominative and accusative (so, for example, "li cuens" and "le conte" are the two cases of "the count", but eventually the object case became the standard and case distinctions were lost entirely). It is also possible to figure out a strange Old French word just by trying to pronounce it out loud, since it might sound like its modern French equivalent even if it spelled bizarrely (so it definitely helps to know modern French too). Sometimes a word is halfway between Latin and modern French - enough consonants are missing that it's not Latin, but not enough are missing that it's modern French. I don't know Old Spanish, but this is also true for medieval Occitan and northern Italian dialects. And I agree with what Marco said about spoken French. Old French is (probably) pronounced more like it is spelled, a lot more so than modern French anyway. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a single verb for what taxidermists do to dead animals? I know they stuff them, they mount them, and do various other things to them, but I’m after a word that encapsulates their entire craft, if such a beast exists.
I ask, because it seems someone’s been very creative in our article Dinner for Schmucks, where we see: "... he taxidermies mice and arranges them into elaborate dioramas."
Wiktionary recognises no such verb as “to taxidermy”. Can anyone verify this is now how we’re supposed to be talking about what taxidermists do? -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 05:44, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Stuff" is fine in this context. The OED gives this specialized meaning: "to fill the skin of (a bird or beast) with materials to preserve it and present it in its natural form."--Shantavira|feed me 08:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OED offers taxidermize, dating it from 1889 129.67.37.143 (talk) 12:02, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
...which makes taxidermize a perfectly cromulent word. Just don't use it in a school essay.--Shantavira|feed me 14:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are 262,000 ghits for "taxidermied" and 752 for "taxidermying". I'd say that the verb "to taxidermy" exists, is used, and is understood, whether or not it has been dictionaried. LANTZYTALK 07:08, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in danger of being out-languaged here. Maybe someone should lexicographer it so that they can dictionary it. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:59, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My hunch is that the verb "to stuff" strikes many as too vague, especially as a past participle. A "stuffed bear" could be either a hunting trophy or a child's toy. "Taxidermied bear" is unambiguous. LANTZYTALK 09:00, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Verbification is permissible in English, as I'm sure you Language desk regulars must know... ;) WikiDao ☯ (talk) 10:00, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Google reveals that "taxiderm" is also occasionally used as a verb, and the past participle "taxidermed" has 2,460 hits. Personally, my instinct is to use "taxiderm" it as an adjective, by analogy with "pachyderm" and "echinoderm". LANTZYTALK 10:01, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not following you, Lantzy. Your first sentence is ok. But the second really confuses me. We're talking about (supposed) verbs here, whether it's 'taxidermy', 'taxiderm' or whatever. But now you're calling 'taxiderm' an adjective even though in the first sentence it was a verb, yet the analogous words 'pachyderm' and 'echinoderm' are neither verbs nor adjectives but nouns, aren't they? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:25, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I only meant that "taxiderm" looks (to my eye, intuitively) less like a verb and more like a Latinate substantive, which is what the other "-derm" words really are. They function both as nouns and adjectives. Admittedly, in modern English the nominal sense is ascendant, but you would not be incorrect to speak of a person's "pachyderm unflappability". LANTZYTALK 05:56, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see. I can relate to that, as one who has very thick skin and very broad shoulders but is not as ugly as that might sound. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was surprised to come across ff in this context [1]. Kittybrewster ☎ 07:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A lower-case double f has been used in place of a capital f in a number of names - see for example Rose ffrench, 1st Baroness ffrench. I haven't previously come across it in a month name. I have heard a suggestion that it was influenced by the double line in the capital F in some black letter fonts A modern 'Old english' font, but I don't know whether there is any evidence for this, or why only F should have been affected. --ColinFine (talk) 07:49, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@Shantavira: but that doesn't say anything about using double lower case f. --ColinFine (talk) 21:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It mainly comes from an old Scottish manuscript practice of writing "ff" in place of capital "F"... AnonMoos (talk) 10:22, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@AnonMoos - you give a little more detail than I did, but without a reference I cannot tell whether said detail is accurate or spurious. --ColinFine (talk) 21:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It comes from semi-scholarly works I read over 20 years ago; if you want to delve further into serious research, you're probably as equipped to do it as I am... AnonMoos (talk) 10:09, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a specific suffix or process that is used to form words like "cajón" and "tazón" from "caja" and "taza"? Lexicografía (talk) 17:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On one f your articles it says words, when inherited or borrowed from an older or 'parent' language rarely change gender (in the Romance languages, at least). Why the 'rarely'? Why/When would this happen at all (if it does happen I'd prefer an example like Latin>French or similar)? Thanks. 24.92.78.167 (talk) 17:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One obvious set of nouns that underwent a change in gender is the entire set of Latin nouns that were neuter in gender. Most modern Romance languages lack the neuter gender, and Latin neuter words became either masculine or feminine. For example, mare, which was neuter in Latin, became mer in French, which is feminine. Marco polo (talk) 18:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Latin 5th declension nouns generally merged with the first declension, and so became feminine. However, Spanish "día" is still masculine and "mano" still feminine... AnonMoos (talk) 19:13, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here are 12 examples of English words representing the mentioned changes: color, honor, fig, tree, ship, valley, emerald, sapphire, London, Paris, Thames, Seine. I am too busy to provide details, but please compare the versions in Latin, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
I'm not too busy, so I offer the following information based on Wavelength's suggestion:
Latin
Italian
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Romanian
color (m.)
il colore (m.)
la couleur (f.)
el color (m.)
a cor (f.)
un color (n.)
honor (m.)
l'onore (m.)
l'honneur (m.)
el honor (m.)
a honra (f.)
o onoare (f.)
ficus (f.)
il fico (m.)
la figue (f.)
el higo (m.)
o figo (m.)
un ficus (m.) o smochină (f., from Slavic)
arbor (f.)
l'albero (m.)
l'arbre (m.)
el árbol (m.)
a árvore (f.)
un arbore (m.)
navis (f.)
la nave (f.)
le navire (m., from Latin navirium)
la nave (f.)
o navio (m., from Latin navigium)
o navă (f.)
valles (f.)
la valle (f.)
la vallée (f.)
el valle (m.)
o vale (m.)
o vale (f.)
smaragdus (m.)
lo smeraldo (m.)
l'émeraude (f.)
la esmeralda (f.)
a esmeralda (f.)
un smarald (n.)
sapphirus (f.)
lo zaffiro (m.)
le saphir (m.)
el zafiro (m.)
a safira (f.)
un safir (n.)
Londinium (n.)
Londra (f.)
Londres (f.)
Londres (f.)
Londres (f.)
Londra (f.)
Lutetia Parisiorum (f.), or Parisii (m. pl.)
Parigi (f.)
Paris (m.)
París (m.)
Paris (f.)
Paris (m.)
Thamesis (m.)
Tamigi (m.)
Tamise (f., from Latin variant Thamesa)
Támesis (m.)
Tâmisa (m.)
Tamisa (f.)
Sequana (m.)
Senna (f.)
Seine (f.)
Sena (m.)
Sena (m.)
Sena (f.)
Now, for London, I understand that Latin neuter nouns sometimes mutated, via their plural, into feminine. For Paris, we have variant forms of different genders in Latin that might explain the modern variance in gender. For the Thames, again, Latin had variant forms of different genders. For the Seine, the Latin ending in -a normally signaled feminine gender, so it is understandable that the gender shifted to feminine in some languages. A similar process seems to have affected sapphire and fig. However, I am at a loss to explain the other transformations. Wavelength? Marco polo (talk) 01:09, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In French,we say "le vieux Londres" or "le grand Londres": the gender of Londres, in French, is masculine. — AldoSyrt (talk) 10:23, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have to correct myself. As usual nothing is simple in French. In everyday language, the names of towns are masculine, but in literature they are often feminine. There would be a rule: only names that end with a mute "e" are feminine. In conclusion, if you are a writer or a poet, Londres is feminine, otherwise it is masculine. (Ref. Grevisse — Le bon usage (12th ed.)) — AldoSyrt (talk) 19:33, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, I am unable to explain the transformations, without doing research. The article Language change might have answers. Incidentally, my information has Latin smaragdus (m., f.), Portuguese Paris (m.), Latin Tamesis and Tamesa (without h), and Latin Sequana (f.). (I am omitting the macrons this time.)
I expanded Marco polo's table to include Romanian. Romanian is the only surviving Romance language to have preserved the neuter gender, and the Romanian neuter is very common for second-declension nouns for inanimate objects. --Theurgist (talk) 04:02, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here are 14 additional words: partridge, serpent, seal (animal), rat, flower, fruit, cabbage, salt, tooth, lip, aid, air, art, current.
Note: In both tables the Romanian terms are preceded by indefinite articles ("un" for masc and neut, "o" for fem), because Romanian definite articles are postfixed and supplying them would have changed the words too much. --Theurgist (talk) 10:09, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here are 14 additional words: end, blood, pair, mile, margin, origin, eagle, horn (of animal), spider, debt, doubt, mule, spoon, nail (of finger).
According to my dictionary (Le Petit Robert (1986)), marge is feminine : la marge, une marge. — AldoSyrt (talk) 10:23, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My bilingual dictionary concurs with yours and says marge is indeed feminine. The English Wiktionary had it wrong. Thanks for the remark; I corrected the above table. --Theurgist (talk) 15:07, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For the English word mile, my information has Italian miglio (m.) [plural miglia (f.)], French mille (m.), Spanish milla (f.), and Portuguese milha (f.). Apparently, you provided translations for thousand.
That's right, and that's why the specification "thousand" is there in parentheses after the Latin mille. In Latin "mile" is a derivative from "thousand", and I decided to provide the primary term. --Theurgist (talk) 18:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Marco polo and Theurgist, for providing the tables. Someone may wish to start an article amalgamating the information into one sortable wikitable and adding a column for English. It could be titled Gender change from Latin to Romance languages.
I struck out Romanian ficus from the first table, because it actually doesn't really seem to fit there, as it doesn't appear to be inherited from Latin ficus, but instead loaned or artificially reintroduced. The inflected forms of Romanian ficus would be ficusul, ficuși, ficușii, ficusului, ficușilor, which would mean the Latin nominative ending has been made a part of the modern Romanian root, and that's not how Romanian inheriting of Latin terms works, cf. Lat. filius → Rom. fiu; Lat. ursus → Rom. urs; Lat. malus → Rom. măr. This dictionary entry informs that ficus actually refers to some exotic kind of plant. To refer to "fig" in the general sense, the Romanians use a word of Slavic origin, smochină. --Theurgist (talk) 15:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here are 14 additional English words: heat, pain, tumor, vapor, thorn, limit, smoke, seed, study, ice, honey, summit (Latin culmen), bridge, asparagus.
I think this thread would get unbearably overburdened and monotonous with one more table of that size, and that we have already illustrated the phenomenon the OP was interested in. --Theurgist (talk) 04:57, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
