Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 February 11

= February 11 =

Serial comma in other languages
What's the practice regarding the serial comma in languages other than English? (Sorry if that's too broad a question; but I'm specifically interested in major European languages.) In Spanish, for example, I don't think I've ever seen a serial comma. Also, in the languages where it's not commonly used (of which I know Spanish to be one), is it at least allowable, or would it just be considered wrong? --Lazar Taxon 07:26, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Serial comma has some answers. Isn't Wikipedia wonderful? :) --Kjoonlee 07:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I don´t really know why you want information about that, so I can´t say how useful can be the things I have to say! But, if I were in your position (assuming you are an American), I´d be glad to know what other people think about serial comma. I hope you don´t get offended by this, but, to someone who speaks Portuguese like me, serial comma looks... well, really stupid. I´m only being honest here. I could change my mind about this, but I´ve learned since first grade that using the comma like that is just wrong. And not only me, but, as you can see in the article, everyone who uses the Latin Alphabet (a billion people) don´t use commas like that, with the exception of the people of the United States.


 * People from the United States actually seem to not understand a lot of grammar in general. They always use commas in a very wrong way, so much it is even a little embarassing to someone learning the language like me to know more than Americans about their own language than they do. Of course I still have a poor vocabulary and my pronounciation is not that great but, when it comes to grammar and punctuation, people which speak Romance Languages as their mother language actually write better than people which were born in the US. If I were to use the comma correctly in everthing I write in English, many Americans would think I´m writing it all wrong! A.Z. 10:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You will find the arguments for and against in the serial comma article. It can help to prevent ambiguity; this precaution is not necessary in certain languages with different grammars.--Shantavira 12:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The British have the same grammar and yet don´t use serial commas, as the article states! And that´s not even important, because on what concerns the subject of our discussion (the listing of items), the grammar of Indo-European languages like English, Spanish or Portuguese is the same. Any ambiguity problem which serial commas could help to solve can be solved by the semicolon and serial commas can many times introduce more ambiguity. A.Z. 13:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Please note that punctuation has nothing whatever to do with grammar. How Americans use commas is a question of style and is completely unrelated to how well we understand grammar. Also, while American English differs from British English in various areas (orthography, punctuation, grammar, pronunciation, etc.), that does not mean American English is "wrong". We simply have different conventions from the Brits. —Angr 07:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This is getting somewhat off the point but I just want to correct two statements. Punctuation does have to do with grammar in that commas are used differently, or are even unnecessary, in certain languages because of the way sentences are constructed. (That is partly why there is no simple answer to the original question.) Secondly, many British publishing houses do use the serial comma, as is clear from the serial comma article. It is, however, more common in formal writing such as reference works.--Shantavira 08:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it might have more to do with syntax than grammar. For example, a transcript of an unplanned, unscripted speech will/should include all manner of punctuation that never existed in the spoken words.  The speech itself may have been spoken in perfectly correct English, but many different transcriptions could be made of it, which might vary in things like commas, sentence length, etc.  Some of these trancriptions might be valid renderings of the speech, but others may introduce meanings never intended by the speaker.  Just have a look at the different versions of the Gettysburg Address, for example.  I'm talking about the actual words spoken by Lincoln, not necessarily the version(s) of the speech he prepared beforehand.  JackofOz 01:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

arse
Is arse a bad swar word? Lilyfan87 11:05, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Some people think so, others don't. Is "damn" a bad swear word? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 11:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I would say it also depends on who says it. For example, I would say it's a bad word for a three year old to say. - Akamad 11:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Like most words, it is a good word when used correctly in an appropriate context, especially in England, and when pronounced correctly. The word has an excellent pedigree, and although dictionaries will still recommend caution "in polite company", it is rapidly gaining "official" acceptance.--Shantavira 12:53, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Arse is usually accepted to be just an interjection. It would be bad for a three year old to say (as above) but would be ok in a situation such as school, workplace, conversation. (of course it depends on the context! by by itself, or ferering to the buttocks it's normally ok.)

(s)
In the article NATO is this phrase: "other member states will respond with military action against the aggressor(s)." I don't see a way out of it, but I'm curious, is this ever frowned upon by linguists? Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 16:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not very elegant, but it is a well established convention in formal contexts. (s) turns out not to be helpful, but someone could usefully mention it at bracket.--Shantavira 17:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, I added this sentence to the article: They can also provide a plural form for nouns - e.g., "the claim(s)". Xiner (talk, email) 18:02, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Real-time feedback on vowel production
Is there any computer software that would analyze input from a microphone and display what vowel it is hearing in real time, either by showing the appropriate IPA symbol or perhaps as a moving point plotted on the trapezoidal vowel chart? (Assuming the input was just elongated vowels, e.g. "aaaaaaaah, eeeeeeeee" etc.) It would be like an electronic tuner, except it would be analyzing the relative values of the formants instead of the pitch. If no such system currently exists, would it be possible with current technology? --Lph 18:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, the technology already exists---any speech recognition package should possess the ability to do this. Whether there's a user-friendly front-end on the market, I don't know, but I believe there are formant-based approaches to recognition. (By the way, I think it would be easier overall to extend the software to track moving formants than to artificially restrict your utterances to purely static vowels.) Tesseran 05:27, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

IPA trancription of Thoth
Can another editor who is familiar with both Ancient Egyptian transliteration as well as IPA verify my IPA transcription of Thoth? I assumed that the romanization was based on Semitologist transcription, because Transliteration of Ancient Egyptian does not use IPA at all. In fact, I can't find any article about the Ancient Egyptian language which uses IPA. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That's because very little is known about the vowels of ancient Egyptian (except through somewhat speculative reconstructions) until a rather late period. AnonMoos 20:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * P.S. Having looked at the article, IPA transcriptions are usually put within square brackets [], and the sound of the IPA symbol [ð] does not correspond with anything that would be expressed by "dj" in English spelling... AnonMoos


 * I know...that's part of the problem of assuming a semitologist transliteration. I'm aware of the lack of vowels in Afro-Asiatic writing, but the consonants are ambiguous (i.e. Is the /3/ symbol a glottal stop or pharyngeal fricative, or something completely different?). Specifically, the diacritics in the letters appear to differ, such as ḏ, which appears to be [ð] in semitology but something more like [dʒ] in Egyptian. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * For IPA, it doesn't matter about Semitology -- in IPA [ð] means the consonant sound as in English "the", and nothing else. If you're using the symbol "ð" to mean anything other than a dental/interdental non-sibilant voiced fricative consonant sound, then you may be using the conventional transcription commonly used in a particular field, but you're not using IPA. AnonMoos 21:29, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Adding IPA pronunciation to the article would be a Bad Thing. No ancient pronunciation of the name is attested. We have written records of the name, and these should be transcribed using the general rules for their source language (as is already done in the article). As the pronunciation of the ancient Egyptian language is unknown, a pronunciation guide in IPA should not be added. It might look big and clever, but it really isn't — it's misleading, and ostensibly original research (and a baseless one at that). — Gareth Hughes 16:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought there was a consensus though on the pronunciation of Egyptian consonants. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 13:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Partially, but there were probably a lot of changes over more than 2000 years, which are mostly not very evident in use of the original Egyptian script, but which clearly come into view when the Coptic alphabet was adopted. So with many words, it would be hard to say what the particular pronunciation at a particular period was with the confidence required for an IPA transcription (even for the consonants).  And conventional Egyptological symbols are not IPA at all. AnonMoos 14:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Couldn't there be an IPA indication of how the name is conventionally pronounced in English? (Does it rhyme with moth, with Goth, or with both?) —Angr 18:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * In English, it's commonly pronounced as rhyming with Goth. How could it rhyme with both? - Mgm|(talk) 11:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not? That it doesn't is no reason why it couldn't. 惑乱 分からん 12:28, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * To make clear, I wrote "Does it rhyme with moth, with Goth, or with both?", not "Does it rhyme with moth, with Goth, or with both?". In other words, is it pronouned (to rhyme with moth),  (to rhyme with Goth), or  (to rhyme with both)? I'll take Mgm's word that it rhymes with Goth and is therefore pronounced . —Angr 12:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For a lot of people, "Goth" and "moth" rhyme! AnonMoos 14:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * IPA is not "a lot of people's" standard, regrettably. z ε n   &#xF8FF;  07:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Lost in Translation?
In the manga BLEACH (which many of you may be familiar with)the article on Kisuke Urahara's inventions [] states that his third invention: Hōgyoku (崩玉) is translated as Orb of Distortion. I'm not good with characters from Japan but in most of the transaltion I've seen the translaters say that Hōgyoku is "Crumbling Treasure".

Can Hōgyoku be translated both ways?

Is the new one correct or the old one?

Thank you for your time and cooperation

虚ろ 20:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * 崩 can mean "collapse/crumble", so since the Hōgyoku "dissolves a boundary", 崩 seems like an appropriate character. "Distortion" may be a looser translation based on a broader description of what the Hōgyoku does.  玉 can mean "jewel" (or treasure, I suppose) but can also mean "ball" (or orb). --Lph 20:36, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

So, would it be appropriate if I changed the meaning on the page? would that land me in trouble? 虚ろ


 * I'm not familiar with the series at all, but to me "Crumbling Treasure" or "Crumbling Orb" sound as though "crumbling" is intransitive, as if it is the Hōgyoku itself which crumbles. "Orb of Crumbling" fixes that issue but seems unidiomatic somehow.  Based on my extremely limited understanding of what the Hōgyoku is and does,"Orb of Distortion" seems to describe it well.  What term is used in the publisher-sanctioned/official translations?  You could also start a discussion on the talk page, where you might be able to get a consensus from people more familiar with the series. --Lph 21:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Orb of Crumbling makes perfect sense though. It's an orb, and it 'crumbles' (destroys a power-level barrier or something). However, since the Bleach manga is officially licensed in English and translated up to the late teens, the official English translation of the Hōgyoku should be used. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 10:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)