Language desk
< February 7	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	Current desk >

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

February 8[edit]

International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects[edit]

Are devoiced voiced stops so common in English? Even not in contact with a voiceless one, at the beginning of a word or between two vovels? It seems very weird to me, never heard of that. 176.128.237.169 (talk) 19:29, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes they are. This is because the main difference between so-called "voiceless" and "voiced" obstruents in English is actually aspiration rather than voicing. In environments where "voiceless" stops are not aspirated (e.g. after /s/) they tend to sound very similar to initial "voiced" stops; if you play around with some recordings of people saying words like "sport" and "bought" and isolate the bilabial stops you'll hear this. With this in mind the sensible terms to describe English obstruent phonemes are "fortis" and "lenis" rather than "voiceless" and "voiced". More indepth source on that here [1] – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 09:59, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Seems weird to me perhaps because in standard French the fortis/voiceless and lenis/voiced traits are almost always correlated for stops. This would then be more like Korean or Mandarin, where aspiration and/or the lenis-fortis opposition are phonemically relevant? 176.128.237.169 (talk) 13:32, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@176.128.237.169 Check out This video from linguist Geoff Lindsey, which EXACTLY covers your question. In general, his YouTube channel is a fantastic resource for English phonology; he does a very good job of explaining English phonology AND providing actual exemplars in regular speech. --Jayron 32 13:44, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Great video indeed. 176.128.237.169 (talk) 18:53, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why does English...[edit]

...not use V2 word order, like In school learned I about animals is nor correct?
...not use any diacritics?
...have separate reflexive pronoun for every person, most other Germanic languages have separate only from 3rd person?

--40bus (talk) 21:20, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why does 40bus not understand that language development doesn't follow predictable patterns? Why does 40bus expect all languages to be the same?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 23:52, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[Edit Conflict] As you may possibly have been told before, "why" questions about language are rarely possible to answer, we can usually only observe what was or is, and Why often boils down to "because its easier to say." That said:

It's not entirely incorrect, but it would sound/look extremely odd in any normal speech or writing. It is occasionally found in poetry, either to give a somewhat archaic feel, or to fit the poetry's metre, or both. I would not raise my eyebrows if I found it in a poem by William Morris, for example.
English spelling evolved using the basic letters of the Latin alphabet, and "expected" people to know already the "correct" pronunciation of words – it was only meant to give prompts and clues, not exactly prescribe. Diacretics are sometimes used for words more recently borrowed from foreign languages, either because they are present in those languages, or because otherwise their correct pronunciation would be unobvious. For example, the originally French "naïve" is often spelt thus so people don't pronounce it "nayve", and "blessed" is usually pronounced "blest" but sometimes (in, for example, Christian scriptures) as "bless-ed" so in those instances is spelled "blessèd" to show the emphasised second syllable.
Because all languages evolve, and those ones evolved differently from their and English's common roots. Also, English absorbed elements of several different Germanic languages (because various different peoples migrated to the British Isles) which sometimes differed in these words, and English, after regional mergings, ended up with some from one and some from others.

All of the above is extremely simplified (and may be wrong in part). Large learnèd books can and have been written about these and similar topics. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.141.181 (talk) 23:59, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- The long-term trend in English has been to move to a more strictly SVO word order (with some limited exceptions remaining) than was the case in early Germanic. And as I already said under November 25, "For good or bad, English spelling has never been big on diacritics. In Old English, there was the `apex', an acute accent type mark placed over letters representing long vowels, but it was very sporadically used. When someone attempted a thorough spelling reform of Early Middle English (see the Ormulum), he used lots of doubled consonants, not diacritics. Since then, diacritics have been more of a mark of sophistication than part of the basic functionality of the writing of English. However, they occasionally can be used in words not now considered foreign" (see Nov. 25 entry for examples). And in the Old English of 1200 years ago, the old reflexive pronouns beginning in "s-" were already gone from the language, except for the possessive "sin" (with long vowel), which was mainly used in poetry. AnonMoos (talk) 00:44, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One place where English still uses V2 is after "only" phrases, as in "Only after much work have we begun to understand the scope of the problem." This is something I often have to correct when proofreading something written in English by a German, because Germans are so accustomed to "correcting" their natural inclination to V2 when they write or speak English that they overcompensate in the few places where V2 is correct. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:37, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

V2 word order § Vestiges in Modern English lists several more cases in which V2 order in English is normal. --Lambiam 20:28, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Countering disinformation[edit]

Is there a single word to describe countering/fight against disinformation, fake news and/or dismantling conspiracy theories, possibly similar to counterintelligence? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 21:59, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Truthtelling? Honesty?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 23:49, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Debunking. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:48, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Also deMAGAfying or unGOPing. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:56, 9 February 2023 (UTC) [reply]

Mythbusting? Pedantry is now a term of abuse. Doug butler (talk) 01:04, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

With the understanding that it's pedantry only when others correct me. When I correct others, I'm performing a vital social function. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:16, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fact-checking, especially if combating fake news and disinformation. I think debunking is a term more commonly associated with the skeptical movement, but there is overlap here. Shells-shells (talk) 05:35, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fact-checking it is, thanks, forgot. I was more into a term on which we have an article. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 08:49, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]