Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 September 1

= September 1 =

Translation of comment required
שלום

שלום קוראים לי מתן ואני מישראל, אני מזמין אותך לבוא למדינה שלי, תתרגם את זה גם עם מיליון בבילונים מצחיקים. המדינה שלי היא הכי הכי הכי יפה בעולם כולו, וזה לא משנה מה שאומרים לך. תבוא יהיה סבבה אצלנו, באמת. יאללה אוהב אותכם כולכולכם שבוע טוב ומבורך!!!!ישראלי כוסון 23:50, 31 August 2007 (UTC) [1]

Please leave the translation on my talk page as well please Y4kk 00:00, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * "Hello. They call me Matan and I'm from Israel. I'm inviting you to come to my country. You will translate this with a dictionary with a milion funny Babylons (ie, the translation software). My country is the most most most beautiful in the whole world, though this does not change that they tell you. Come, it'll be awesome here with us, really. C'mon, I love you guys, all all of you, have a good and blessed week!!! ". It's then signed "Israeli Hunk". I have a feeling this is spam... Macnas 16:17, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Whoops, misread a portion. Corrected translation above. Macnas 12:21, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
 * In the signature, the Hebrew word translated above by Macnas as "Hunk" is actually an extremely crass slang expression, being the m. sing. diminutive of a vulgar term for "vagina." ("Hunk" is more literally: חטיך, m. sing. = "piece of..." ). People enjoying such discourse might find this delightful, appealing, etc. My impression: receiving a foreign language message with such content gives the recipient an indication of how, or whether, to proceed. --Hope that helps, Deborahjay 13:58, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Pedantically, in the translation "that they tell you" should be (presumably is a typo for) "what they tell you". --Dweller 15:03, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Buffalo Stance
What is a buffalo stance? Seems to be some idiomatic expression, though it's not in any of my dictionaries. --84.191.213.113 15:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Here's a New York Times article T Style Magazine article from last March, that explains the word borrowing in Neneh Cherry's own words. It's an allusion to Ray Petri's fashion company "Buffalo", named after Air Force Ma-1 jackets worn by Guadeloupian bouncers or private security guards with "Buffalo" written on them, and also a reference to Buffalo Soldier. ---Sluzzelin talk  16:01, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Swiss German Expression?
I grew up in a small southern town that had been settled by Swiss-Germans (Orangeburg, SC). The earliest town-records, The Giesendaner (spelling?) Records were kept by a Swiss protestant preacher. At play, the boys (circa 1953) would exclaim "geh-hey man" when excited by a race or action on the movie-screen. This quickly disappeared as television made inroads and we went to school. I doubt if any of my classmates would recall the expression. Although my grandfather was a well-educated M.D., he had built his huge house in a white working-class neighborhood. This is where I mostly heard it. Do the Swiss Germans have such an expression? The "geh-heh" does sound like a form of gehen.69.201.141.45 16:44, 1 September 2007 (UTC)Linnaeus


 * The Giezendanners originated from the Toggenburg (most Swiss emigrants to the Americas came from rural areas), but I cannot figure out what "geh-hey man" could mean in Toggenburger dialect, or any other Swiss German dialect for that matter. "Gang hei", pronounced something like "gong hi" would mean "go home!", in some dialects it would be pronounced "gong hay". But "geh!" as an imperative of "gehen" isn't used in any Swiss dialect, as far as I can think. Puzzled and stumped, sorry. (The article on Orangeburg, South Carolina says a colony of Swiss, German and Dutch immigrants was formed in 1735. So I guess we'd need to consider older German and Dutch dialects as well.) ---Sluzzelin  talk  18:55, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I've come across "geh hei!" for gehe Heim! (go home!) Xn4 00:52, 2 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, omitting the e and saying geh heim is standard German, and the pronunciation of geh heim man is indistinguishable from geh hei man. --Lambiam 07:49, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I sent an email to a contemporary of mine that still lives in Orangeburg, asking if he remembered the expression. He remembers it quite well.69.201.141.45 17:49, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Linnaeus


 * Thank you for reporting back with this re-confirmation (seriously, many don't). "Geh hei(m), Mann!" or possibly "Geh hei(m)", man! (the last word in English) looks most likely now. "Go home!" is certainly an exclamation where I live. "Geheimmann" ("secret man") makes no obvious sense, and I can't come up with anything else. ---Sluzzelin talk  18:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

consultation on stress on word Chinese
My intuition tells me that the word in English Chinese has all mathematically possible stress patterns available depending on perhaps dialect and style, ,although I think (a) may be rare and perhaps (d) nonexistent. Anyone with deeper knowledge of phonetics wanna contribute before I tell my students about this?

(a), stress on the penult, (b) stress on both with primary on the penult, (c) stress on both with stress on the ult, and (d) stress on the ult:

(a) [ˡtʃaɪ niz] 	(b) [ˡtʃaɪ  ˌniz]  (c)  [ˌtʃaɪ  ˡniz] 	(d) [tʃaɪ  ˡniz] mnewmanqc 21:17, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If it means anything, both Merriam-Webster and dictionary.com approve of (d), and they also include the pronunciation [tʃaɪ  ˡnis].--El aprendelenguas 03:10, 2 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure it is meaningful to assign secondary stress in a stand-alone two-syllable word. I'd say that (d) is the standard stress pattern, while many multi-syllabic words will occasionally be realized with a stress pattern other than the standard one; I don't think the word Chinese is particularly special in this respect. Among the mathematically possible patterns you omitted [ˡtʃaɪ ˡniz] and [tʃaɪ  niz].  --Lambiam 07:31, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

In a sentence like "He's Chinese", the second syllable of the word will certainly normally receive greater stress, but in a sentence like "This is a Chinese box", the first syllable of the word will often have greater stress, due to certain phenomena when English words come together in a sentece. AnonMoos 12:41, 2 September 2007 (UTC)


 * That's an interesting observation AnonMoos, mind if I steal it for my class? Maybe we can come up with an explanation. It does not happen with Japanese or at least it's not required in the He's Japanese or Vietamese or even Siamese, although that can be said with one syllable. Curious.


 * That said, in response to Lambian, yes absolutely right. I should never have said mathematical possibilities. I should have said phonologically realistic possibilities. As for the isolated versus words in context, in the initial presentation of the material to students, I'm kind of stuck with presenting stand alone words. You can't hit'em over the head with all the complexity of phrasal stress. Still, Let me set out the question slightly more carefully because it is still a valid one, although I think after reading it you will see why I wanted to avoid it. mnewmanqc 02:27, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

What I'm calling primary stress is the same as (potential) tonic accent. (which should have its own Wikipedia entry; good extra credit assignment for one of my students????). Tonic accent was used I think by Peter Ladefoged to refer to the most prominent syllable in a tone unit, which is normally a string of words such as for example, an independent clause. There is only one tonic accent allowed in such a string by definition, so that's an axiom here. Now, when we say a word on its own, we are by definition creating a tone unit. In a multisyllable word that means that one syllable will have the tonic accent. That syllable has to be a stressed syllable.

In many cases of two syllable words there is only one stressed syllable, so there is no problem in determining which has the tonic accent. In a few words, like many compounds and words like phoneme, crayon, and acorn, there are two stressed syllables. If words like these are spoken in isolation and so form their own tone unit, then one of the two stressed syllables will be the tonic accent and the other just plain stressed.

In the three words above, that will invariably be the first syllable. A word like supreme also has two stressed syllables (for many though not all speakers), and  for this word, the final syllable will get the tonic accent assuming the word is assigned the tonic accent such as when it is spoken in isolation.

Now, here comes the point: If any of these words are placed into a sentence and the tonic stress is placed outside supreme, then the two stressed syllables will be more or less treated indistinctly. This would be the case in a phrase like ' the supreme commander ' where the tonic accent falls on commander.

I used the term "primary stress" basically to avoid this entire intricate technical discussion. However, as Lambiam noticed that the simple explanation was, while simple and intuitive, not necesarily accurate, and well, I had to enter into these technicalities to show I did know what I was talking about.

Are there other words that function like Chinese does with such wide variation in what is the primary stress (i.e., ability to carry the tonic accent)?

