Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 November 9

= November 9 =

The French
I always hear some French speakers producing an h-like fricative sound at the end of some words and I came across this on the St. Takla Church French audio course again. Please listen to la nuit, which i hear as and could someone enlighten me on this? Are there any rules governing the use of this or is it just totally haphazard? Has anyone done any research into this? Or does this phenomenon even have a name? Thanks! Shane Shingrila 06:06, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I can only confirm that it must be dialectal, since it is certainly not standard French. In terms of rules, I think it can only appear after the sound [i], it would be extremely odd after another vowel and even more after a consonant. And with words ending in [i], your mouth is exactly in the right position to start a [ç]. I have never heard of a name for it. --Lgriot 08:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Lgriot. I'm not sure if it's a dialectal thing because when I used to study in England, I had a French friend who came from Meudon, which is just outside of Paris and I would expect her to speak standard French or at least a variant of it which is close enough to the Parisian dialect, but she seemed to regularly do this which she didn't even notice herself. And can this fricative sound have other realisations such as [x] after back vowels like [a]? Have you personally heard people doing this or do you do it yourself? Do people from your region do it? Merci beaucoup! Shane Shingrila 09:43, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It's really just phonetic vowel-devoicing at the end of an utterance. If the tongue position of the vowel [i] is maintained, but the vocal cords stop vibrating, and there starts to be some degree of occlusion in the mouth (i.e. the jaw closes slightly) while air continues to flow from the lungs, then you automatically get a German ich-laut type sound (IPA [ç]). I bet it has more to do with speech style than geographical dialects in the ordinary sense. AnonMoos 14:13, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * P.S. Occasionally the spelling "ouich" or "ouiche" is used to express the result of this process as applied to the word "oui" ... AnonMoos 14:20, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * AnonMoos, you're right, that sounds like a reasonable explanation for this, but le wiktionnaire transcribes ouiche as . Is a equally likely in this case then? Surely the tongue has to be moved to get a  rather than a ? Shingrila 17:42, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ouiche with that pronunciation is actually interpreting the German ich-laut sound in terms of ordinary French phonemes. // is the French phoneme which approximates the sound [ç] most closely.  I bet that sometimes ouich or ouiche is a crude transcription of [wiç] -- but when it's pronounced [], it's being made more into a separate real word of French (instead of being just a low-level speech-style variant of oui). AnonMoos 12:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If it's just phonetic vowel devoicing then it wouldn't be .  (and any other vowel) is dorsal; postalveolar sounds are apical or laminal. Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 19:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

In Belgium it is pronounced 'la nuit' like the word 'oui'

Corpora
Does someone out there know any corpora of spoken language online for free with a scientific quality?


 * I don't, but here's a good corpus of written language: --Janneman 17:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks anyway. Spoken language seems more complicated to get.


 * Um, your question was in two places? Anyway, the University of Michigan has free archive of conversations organized into a corpus.  Check it out here. --Cody.Pope 20:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If you want recordings, I remember seeing English sentences in 8bit 8kHz mono. There should be speech recognition or phonetics sites with samples. --Kjoonlee 04:26, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If you Google for "Ah Gloria you're not ugly" you should be able to access a site that links to some samples. If you know where the files are on the server, you can download them all. --Kjoonlee 04:33, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * But I'd feel uneasy with doing research using those files, which someone else had used to do their own research.... Hmmm... --Kjoonlee 04:35, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~tobi/ame_tobi/
 * The utterances accompanying the guide are available to any interested user, but only for non-commercial use.
 * The utterances that accompany the "Guidelines..." are now available both in Emu format at the Emu home page at Macquarie University and as wav RIFF files with accompanying praat TextGrid files.
 * --Kjoonlee 04:40, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

free public domain language courses
A while ago someone posted a link to a website that hosted free public domain language courses. They were from the US armed forces and dated back to the 60s. There were manuals and sound files to download. I've lost the link and can't find the site again through google. Does anyone have it? Many thanks. --Richardrj talkemail 15:22, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I found it - http://fsi-language-courses.com --Richardrj talkemail 23:00, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

When will American English mutate to being incomprehensible to British English speakers?
Seriously, this is not a criticism, it's a genuine question. Last night my wife and I watched a movie on TV starring Susan Sarandon as a nun who was counselling Sean Penn as a death row murderer/rapist (Dead Man Walking). It was set in Louisiana and both of us said afterwards that the accents were so heavy they were almost incomprehensible to us. I personally missed about 80% of the dialogues(s). Now I know as an Englishman living in Scotland that English varies across the globe. But I am increasingly conscious of the drift in American spoken English mostly because we watch so many US movies. And I am therefore curious to know whether, one day, those of us (non-Americans) who want to travel to or trade with America will have to buy a Berlitz course of US spoken English, and also what effect that might have on the global dominance of the US movie industry. It was a very powerful story with brilliant acting, no question of that. But I genuinely didn't understand the dialect. Do other, say, North American people have similar problems when listening to southern dialects? Thanks in anticipation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.93.21.69 (talk • contribs)


 * Its things like global dominance of the movie industry that prevents the split, I think the gulf has been thinning eversince cross atlantic communications were readily available, and trade of products that carried the accents, in the last century we have picked up hundreds of americanisms like the word ok, and phrases like sure thing. The accent has travelled across aswell, and often we dont even notice the accents anymore, but any particularly heavy accent seems incomprehensible, I saw a movie about essex boys were the speech was so slurred and heavy in local dialect that it needed subtitles, this doesnt mean essex is going to develop its own language of course. Geordie is another difficult one, but dialect is different from language, as they are so centrally controlled languages dont evolve as much, as when they do, it is just labelled wrong, and people revert to the original way. Philc  TECI 18:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * As Phil says, the volume of trans-Atlantic communication probably keeps the two standard varieties of English from diverging much further and keeps nonstandard varieties from diverging much further from their local standards. So the process of divergence which began roughly in 1700, depending on the colony, was arrested in about 1920 with the spread of radio and has remained arrested ever since.  If radio and television technology should disappear, which does not seem unlikely as fossil fuels run out over the next century, we might expect the two national standards to resume their divergence.  Typically, language varieties separated geographically become mutually incomprehensible in just a few centuries, say 400-500 years or so.  When you consider that Shakespearean English is near the margin of comprehensibility to present-day English speakers (despite the mitigating influence of mass media) this seems about the right timespan.  Considering that American and British English have already diverged for about 200 years (up to roughly 1920), another 300 years of separation should do the trick.  Oh, and, by the way, I saw Dead Man Walking.  I am from the northeastern U.S. but had no trouble understanding anything.  So your trouble is definitely trans-Atlantic in nature.  On the other hand, I have had trouble understanding speakers from parts of the rural mountain South (Appalachia).  Marco polo 18:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If I recall correctly, studies have shown that media and television actually have no significant impact on dialect and accent. You don't learn to speak from television, you learn to speak from the people physically around you.  I'd say that there are certain dialects that are already mutually unintelligible (as the example above indicates) but as far as General American ("standard" American English) and Received Pronunciation (standard British English) it might take longer than 300 years.  Maybe double that.  It's hard to say because language change is largely unpredictable.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 19:50, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well something has caused a collapse on local dialects in britain, hundreds of varying accents into about 3, northern, southern and midlands. Even these are under threat from what is known as BBC english. the name is the hint to where it has come from. Philc  TECI 20:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * As a foreign speaker, I think the standard varieties are much easier to understand than dialects. I saw Dead Man Walking with subtitles, thus I din't think about it being particularly difficult to understand, on the other hand, I saw Lord of the Rings without subtitles, and I thought Gandalf's and that dwarf's mumbling was very difficult... =S 惑乱 分からん 21:04, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I recall reading somewhere that around 1930, when the first talkies started coming out, British audiences would complain about difficulties understanding the dialogue in American pictures. Pretty soon they got used to Yank accents, however. I for one saw Trainspotting in a theatre in the UK (ie. without subtitles), and being a non-native speaker I couldn't make head nor tail of the dialogue. I imagine it would have been the same for many Americans. As to the OP's example, Sarandon is from New York and Penn from California, so they may have been laying the Louisiana accent on a bit thick, as actors sometimes do (haven't seen it myself).--Rallette 20:32, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe it already is. Anchoress 21:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks folks. I am grateful for all the above info., especially the bit about the two versions diverging until the arrival of movies etc. And I had forgotten that Penn and Sarandon were from different areas of the US and wouldn't have spoken with true local dialects. I live near where Trainspotting was made in Edinburgh and agree that anyone outside the housing estate where it was set would have had difficulty understanding it without subtitles.

Interesting. My wife hails from South America and has quite the opposite complaint. She has little trouble following American broadcasts, but can rarely follow any British telecast because of her problems with the accent (she has no clue watching Monty Python, for example).


 * The two versions didn't stop diverging because of movies. If anything, it's because of increased travel.  BBC English is considered the standard dialect, which is often considered superior and therefore more of an influence than other dialects.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 05:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * ....in the U.K. -THB 05:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

My Horse has fallen/fell down the toilet
I would like to know this phrase in as many languages as possible (please mention the language too) thanks! san 18:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)18:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)18:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

---(i'm at my work computer, so i can't type in japanese text)...'[boku/watashi/atashi/ore] no uma ga toire ni tsumazuita.' in polish: 'muj kon' wpad do toalety.' poor thing. :( --Coolsnak3 19:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)coolsnak3


 * Which one? My horse fell or my horse has fallen?  That's two phrases. Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 19:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I think there are two senses of fallen here, so the pun would probably look rather weird translated to several other languages. 惑乱 分からん 19:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

either is good thanks san 20:33, 9 November 2006 (UTC)81.243.78.213 20:33, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Finnish: Hevoseni putosi vessanpönttöön.--Rallette 20:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

French: Mon cheval (vient de tomber/est tombé/tomba) dans (le cabinet/la toilette).--Siva 21:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Italian: Il mio cavallo è caduto nel (something).--Siva 21:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * ("nella toletta", possibly...) 惑乱 分からん 00:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Latin: Equus meus cecidit in latrinam.--Siva 21:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Spanish: Mi caballo se cayó en el wáter.--Siva 21:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Swedish: Min häst har fallit ner i toaletten. 惑乱 分からん 21:09, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Norwegian: Hesten min har falt i do. 62.16.185.24 22:43, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Russian: Моя лошадь упала в унитаз, Moya loshad' upala v unitaz. What a weird sentence.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Polish: Mój koń wpad w toalete. I did a similar experient back when I was at school, except my phrase was (vulgar)"go 'sleep with' your mother" ;). My school was very multicultural and I found it interesting that each language seemed to have an insult which translated to mean that, both eastern and western cultures. I had 13 in the end. Vespine 23:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Even if the culture lacked such an insult, any natural language should contain all the necessary vocabulary to construct such a sentence. 惑乱 分からん 21:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * "boku/watashi/atashi/ore no uma ga toire ni tsumazuita" according to coolsnak3, which would be

Japanese: 僕の馬がトイレにつまずいた (boku no uma ga toire ni tsumazuita)


 * All of these words for "I" is correct, but they carry different connotations. "Watashi" is neutral. "Boku" is colloquial male speech, "Ore" the same but I think slightly more macho and "Atashi" is used by girls and women, see Japanese pronouns, unless you'd want to emphasize that it's my horse, it might be simplest to just exclude the pronoun and the "no" genitive marker

馬がトイレにつまずいた (The horse fell in the toilet) 惑乱 分からん 12:25, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

--danke schön for that one, wakaran. :D depending on the area of japan, some people use pronouns like they're going out of style. personally, i would rather say 'uma ga toire ni tsumazuita'. however, i would imagine a native japanese speaker would translate it using the pronoun just because it's such an odd sentence. it looks like something that belongs in one of haruki murakami's novels.

Chinese: 我的馬掉到馬桶下了 (wǒ de mǎ diào dào má tǒng xià le), the character for horse and the first character for toilet (the term I use anyway) are the same, but pronounced with a different accent for me, btw. And it actually means my horse fell under/below the toilet. You can say into the toilet, which would be the correct term to use when you "drop" something into the toilet. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 01:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Note: It should actually be 我的马掉在马桶里了 (wǒ de mǎ diào dào mǎ tǒng lǐ le). Both translations are acceptable, except 里 actually means "in." This is also simplified chinese.
 * Correct grammatically but that's why I left a long note. And mine was in Traditional Chinese, pronounciation in Mandarin. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:27, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Cantonese: 我隻馬跌咗落廁所度
 * (Edited) Or, in the predominant broad transcription notation used by Chinese dictionaries for transcribing Cantonese: --71.246.4.172 23:36, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Cantonese does not have voiced stops or affricates, instead, it contrasts aspirated and unaspirated stops and affricates. Please check it carefully before you correct something, as this will lead to confusion. You can learn more about its phonology in Standard_Cantonese. If you can't distinguish a voiceless unaspirated and a voiceless aspirated consonant, you can read more about it in aspiration (phonetics). Shingrila 04:12, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I was not wrong about the pronunciations, but we're using different notations. According to the Standard Cantonese Pinyin article, the notation that my dictionary uses is an IPA broad transcription system devised by S.L. Wong, in which the initials that you transcribed as and  are transcribed as  and  respectively. --71.244.101.6 16:55, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Teochew: 我隻馬跤留落廁所塊

Welsh: Syrthiodd fy ngheffyl lawr y toiled (my horse fell...); Mae fy ngheffyl wedi syrthio lawr y toiled (my horse has fallen....). Big toilet! -- Arwel (talk) 19:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

German: Mein Pferd ist in die Toilette gefallen. Rueckk 20:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Malay: Kuda saya telah jatuh ke dalam tandas (My horse fell/has fallen into the toilet.) Joshua   C  hi  e w 02:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

High Alemannic German, Zürich German variety (hey, you said as many as possible!): Mis Ross isch i 's WC gheit. ---Sluzzelin 20:50, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

English word meaning "a saying that at first appears to be insightful, but upon further examination is so obvious as to be trite"
I just can't remember this word. I know it was a fairly obsqure word, but it was common enough to be in my dictionary.

Any guesses?
 * Truism? --Richardrj talkemail 20:41, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

sort of like it, would be conundrum...
 * A logical fallacy? Counter-intuitive? Anchoress 21:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

'Really'?

Due to your suggestions, I was able to find the word I was originally looking for. "Vacuous"  It looks like I both mis-remembered a noun form, and thought it meant something much more specific than it really does, "an empty statement devoid of substance"

Thanks for the help!


 * Related to vacuum, by the way... 惑乱 分からん 00:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Platitude? --Shantavira 08:33, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you will find that "specious" almost fits the bill, if you substitute "not right" for "trite". 0atcake

A Question for the Brits
I was watching Richard Dawkins' new BBC documentary, and this guy from London used the word pedophilia. His pronunciation was very odd to me (something like pea-da-filly-ah), was this just this guy or is this akin to the aluminum British English vs American English pronunciation battle? --Cody.Pope 21:13, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That's the British pronunciation, yes. --Richardrj talkemail 21:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The explanation for that is that the word is actually paedophilia, and ae, at least in Latin- and Greek-derived words, is usually pronounced as (a long "ee" sound). I believe the reason why Americans say "PED-uh-filly-uh" is that they don't spell it with an ae (an unfortunate consequence of spelling reforms such as those advocated by Noah Webster).--Siva 21:32, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Firstly, what is aluminium British english? Secondly, jep that's the recieved pronunciation; please don't use british english, if you go to scotland, or wales or even parts of england things will be almost completely different in terms of pronunciation. Thirdly, I can't think of any other way of saying it; what is the recieved USA pronunciation of peadophile? P.S. what is the american version of recieved pronunciation / the queen's english? MHDIV Englishnerd 21:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, I meant the strong differences between the UK and the USA for words like "aluminum", "harassment", and "advertisement" for example. There are a lot of little differences, but these words always stand out to me as some off the strongest examples, now I can add pedophilia to the list. --Cody.Pope 21:42, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * We had a Californian friend stay with us in Scotland this year and I was taken aback when he replied to my offer of a drink that he would take any drink without 'carbonisation'. I would have asked for a still or a non-fizzy drink.


 * Yeah, even here in the states, we don't have a single word for soft drinks. --Cody.Pope 21:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I suspect that the word was not "carbonization" (which is something like charring &mdash; Edison's first light bulb used a carbonized cotton thread for the filament) but carbonation, which is what I would have said also. --Anonymous Leftpondian, 02:25 UTC, November 10.


 * Englishnerd, we Americans don't have anything that we call "received pronunciation". All the same, there is an unofficial U.S. standard pronunciation, with minor regional variants, sometimes called General American.  People in the U.S. with regional accents work to learn this standard pronunciation for broadcasting careers. Americans pronounce pedophilia "ped oh FEEL ee yuh" or "ped oh FILL ee yuh".  In either case, the first syllable rhymes with "bed".  Marco polo 22:53, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * In response to Siva, I would argue that Americans have merely accelerated the trend towards changing æ/ae and œ/oe to e. Think of words such as estuary and edify, which used to be æstuary and ædify, and which are universally pronounced with a short e. Lesgles ( talk ) 03:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Americans tend to think that anyone who uses "æ" should be tied up with a ligature and thumped with an encylopædia.. :-) StuRat 03:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * My favourite example is "vaginal". Brits and Aussies, not unreasonably, put the stress on the "i" exactly as in "vagina", but the Americans have turned it into "VAJ-inal".  JackofOz 05:44, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we're all getting this wrong... you sure that the original question wasn't asking about pedophilia (i.e., foot fetish) rather than pædophilia (i.e., kiddies)? (Do Americans really pronounce it as "PEDDA-filia"? That's just weird...) Oh, BTW, Lesgles, how do you explain the US pronunciation of æther? Grutness...wha?  06:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC) (please insert liberal use of smileys into the above)


 * Americans say ether. StuRat 07:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * As an American, I generally hear pay-do-philia or ped-o-philia, but I've always been under the impression that this is incorrect and that it is actually meant to be pee-do-philia. Though as one who generally hears such words from pretentious high schoolers and not from the news, a lot of what I hear is putting on airs. --Keitei (talk) 07:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd like to point out that the difference in pronunciation is not due to spelling. If anything, it's the other way around.  Spelling rarely affects pronunciation, especially in dialectal differences.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 07:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm so glad I asked the question because these are the best answers/rantings ever. --Cody.Pope 22:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * We're not done yet. The people who say "pay-do-philia" are probably the same people who pronounce Pedro and allegro as "Pay-dro" and "a-lay-gro".  God knows why they do that, it's just so far removed from the original.  JackofOz 05:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * ...and 'Bay-zil' for 'Ba-zil' (basil). What's up with that? Skittle 23:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

addition of word to the English language
Please help me settle an ongoing dispute. I am an amateur student of the language, and have often argued over the years that the word "wellness" is not an accepted part of the language, though we often see it used in the media and everyday life. I am fairly certain that it wasn't a word, but rather slang in common usage. I recently referenced it in several dictionaries. Is this a case of slang acceptance due to general use?
 * I checked both the Oxford English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary. Neither of them tags "wellness" as slang or dialectical, although the OED does mention that it is "rather a nonce word than of settled status like illness". I think that it is a perfectly respectable word, since it derives in a straightforward way from respectable Anglo-Saxon roots (well and -ness), but that's just my opinion. --Siva 22:25, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * English is very much still a live language. There is no "one single authority" on the English language and it is evolving constantly. Words obtain new meanings and new words fall into and out of common use more frequently then most people think. See here and here. According to answers.com wellness has been used since the 50s and came into common use in the 70s, I'd say that makes it as acceptable as any word. Vespine 23:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Or to put it another way, the words "not an accepted part of the language, though we often see it used in the media and everyday life" are self-contradictory. --Anonymous, 02:50 UTC, November 10.
 * Correct. What the OED accepts and what people on the street accept/create are different sets of words (with considerable overlap, obviously).  Words are created by the people on the street.   Except for infamous cases such as dord, dictionaries never create words, they merely record their existence and meaning, and by definition they are always behind the game.  There is still quite a bit of snobbiness in dictionaries, due no doubt to the snobbiness of the lexicographical community.  This is not a put down, just noting an occupational hazard of people whose business is words and who have their own favourites and relegate others to "slang".  Also, lexicographers tend to be highly educated and come from certain strata of society - so a lot of words that nobody in the 'hood would think twice about might need to pay their dues for a while as "slang" amongst the lexicographical community before being fully accepted as "words" without qualification.  JackofOz 04:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * "Wellness" was the official name of my high school gym (physical education)/health class. I've never heard it used in a slang context... (this is in New England). --Keitei (talk) 07:08, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * From The American Heritage Book of English Usage: "Like the adjective well-baby, the noun wellness has the ring of a recent coinage and medical jargon, especially when used attributively, as in a wellness clinic, but the word is first recorded in 1654. Despite serving a useful function as a means of describing a state that includes not just physical health but fitness and emotional well-being, wellness has never received the acceptance of its antonym illness. Sixty-eight percent of the Usage Panel finds the word unacceptable in the sentence A number of corporations have implemented employee wellness programs, aimed at enhancing spiritual values, emotional stability, fitness, and nutrition." dpotter 23:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)