Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 July 23

= July 23 =

Explaining Indo-European syllables to Japanese people
How do they teach the concepts of Indo-European syllables to Japanese people? Japanese syllables all end in vowels or "n." When Indo-European names are transcribed into Japanese, their syllables are all Japanified -- thus, Frank Sinatra becomes Furanka Shinatora. It's one thing to explain to an American how to make a French "r" sound. But is it possible to explain, using Japanese words, how to pronounce the syllable "nat?" Can the average Japanese person easily grasp the concept of a syllable ending in a consonant other than "n?" -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The article Syllable has a link to the corresponding Japanese article . At the bottom of the page of the latter, there is even a link to an article about the Czech and Slovak tongue-twister "Strč prst skrz krk".  (Incidentally, if you see a link in a Japanese article, you can go to that linked Japanese article, and then look in the left-hand column for a link to the corresponding English article, to find out the meaning of the link in the Japanese article.)
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 02:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "Furanku Shinatora" (not "Furanka") doesn't sound as different from "Frank Sinatra" as the romanization might suggest. The two us and the o are hard to hear. An English speaker listening to the Japanese pronunciation would notice the rolled rs, /a/ instead of /æ/ in Frank, and possibly shi instead of si, but they probably wouldn't notice the extra vowels. A few Japanese people use nonstandard romanizations of their names with vowels omitted to match the pronunciation more closely, e.g. Toshihide Maskawa. -- BenRG (talk) 09:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I only have experience with some sounds, but here goes. Japanese has cases where other consonants end syllables. The sound can become either,  or  depending on adjacent sounds. Thus you can get words like Namba or manga. The first step is to get the speakers to recognize the differences in the place of articulation. The next step is to try stopping the following sounds before they come out. Also, final "su" might be devoiced so that only may be audible. --Kjoonlee 12:44, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Nat would be pretty easy, since there are words like chatta. The "little tsu" should be familiar to Japanese people. --Kjoonlee 14:01, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

formulating a name for a School Paper
I am looking for a word that would best describe our community which is surrounded by canning factories. I am intending to use that word as the name of our school newspaper which will be published this school year. Our school is surrounded by canning factories. The name of it is Talisayan National High School. What do you think is the proper word that would describe such place? Thank you and hope to hear from your website soon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Amqtan 20 (talk • contribs) 11:04, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You could call your newspaper Cannery Row, with a nice literary allusion. —Angr 11:24, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * But don't call it Canned News. That would mean prepared ahead of time, not fresh, not current. If the name is going to be in English, though, why stick too close to the canning process?  The Opening could have many meanings -- not only in relation to cans, but in relation to what you hope your school and your publication will do to young minds. OtherDave (talk) 15:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You could have a movie review section called "In The Can" (with a picture of a film strip so readers don't think it's some kind of bathroom review :-)) Astronaut (talk) 16:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "The Can Opener" ? As in opening up stories to the public ? StuRat (talk) 16:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "The Talis Spin", as in tailspin, "Talis" from the school name, and "Spin" from telling a story from one POV ? StuRat (talk) 16:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The Tin whistle Omahapubliclibrary (talk) 15:54, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Which Indo-European syllables for Japanese
An earlier question today explained something about the handling of Indo-European syllables in Japanese. I'm curious to find out if there is a rule that dictates which "extra" vowel should be added. For example: Frank Sinatra becomes Furanku Shinatora, but are Faranku Shinatara or Feranku Shinatura also "valid" spellings, or are there is a set of rules saying which is correct? Astronaut (talk) 16:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You can start by looking at Romanization of Japanese. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, you have misunderstood my question. I was not asking about the Romanization of Japanese, but about the Japanization of English syllables.  For example is the English letter "K" always represented by "ku" (ク) in Japanese, or can "ka" (カ), "ke" (ケ), etc also be used?  Astronaut (talk) 16:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You may find b:Transwiki:Transcribing English to Japanese helpful. --Kusunose 17:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * u is added after every consonant (where required to fit into Japanese syllable structure) except for ch, j, t, d. ch, j require i (i.e. chi, ji); t, d require o (i.e. to, do). So, faranku or feranku and shinatara and shinatura are not found. Another thing to mention about English loanword phonology is that the words are borrowed from an r-less dialect of English (like standard British), so the word car is not karu (as an American speaker might expect) but rather kaa with a long aa. And some words are borrowed from what seem to be plurals so peanut butter is not piinatto bataa but rather piinattsu bataa as if the borrowed word was peanuts butter. There are other loanword issues but they have to do with consonants not vowels – ishwar  (speak)  17:06, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That link reminds of an interesting thing about i and u insertion. After k and sh (and possibly also g?) there is variation between inserting i and u. The older pattern is to add a i, but the new pattern is to add the general u. For some words the i vowel is standardized, so you get cake > keeki (but not keeku). For others, you get variation: ink > iNki (older) ~ iNku (newer), text > tekisuto (older) ~ tekusuto (newer), brush > burashi (older) ~ burashu (newer).


 * The issue with Truman is that there are again three variant patterns. One older pattern is to insert o after the t as usual, which gives Truman > toruumaN, trunk > toraNku. The other pattern is to use u in which the t turns in to a ts (i.e. tsu), which gives tree > tsurii, cutlet > katsuretsu. However, in more recent loanwords you can get a u without t > ts, which gives turuumaN. So, President Truman (an older borrowing) is toruumaN but the movie name is turuumaN. Another example is two > tsuu (older) ~ tuu (newer). Older Japanese may not be able say tu very easily though.


 * Since your example only V insertion in English clusters, here are some examples of those:


 * fr > fur : friend > fureNdo
 * gr > gur : green > guriin
 * kl > kur : tackle > takkuru, clean > kuriin
 * ks > kus : box > bokkusu
 * ld > rud : bulldog > burudokku (or burudoggu),
 * pl > pur : couple > kappuru, plan > puraN
 * pn > puN : happen > happuN
 * ps > pus : chips, chippusu
 * sf > suf : sphinx > sufiNkusu
 * sl > sur : hustle > hassuru, slacks > surakkusu
 * sk > suk : skate > sukeeto, mascot > masukotto
 * sn > suN : lesson > ressuN
 * st > sut : test > tesuto, step > suteppu
 * zn > zun : season > siizuN
 * skr > sukur : script > sukuriputo
 * spr > supur : sprint > supuriNto
 * θr > sur : throw > suroo (= slow > suroo)
 * str > sutor : street > sutoriito, stress > sutoresu
 * tl > tor : little > rittoru
 * tr > tor : trick > torikku, trouble > toraburu
 * dr > dor : dry > dorai


 * – ishwar  (speak)  19:08, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Welsh and Greek
Are Welsh and Greek the oldest in use languages in Europe? 82.43.88.87 (talk) 16:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Saying one language is older than another is very problematic since all languages evolve over time. Welsh and Greek both grew from different dialects of Proto-Indo-European, as did all the other Indo-European languages, so in one sense they are all exactly the same age. However, sometimes people say one language is older than other to mean that one language has been written down (and is thus attested) earlier than another. We have a list of languages by first written accounts, according to which the oldest-attested European languages that have living descendants are Greek and Latin. The Germanic languages, Irish, Basque, and Georgian (if you want to consider that in Europe) are all also attested from earlier than Welsh. —Angr 19:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There is a sense in which Greek is the oldest surviving language in Europe, but it is not a very useful sense. Greek is the only example I can think of in Europe where we use the same name for a language spoken two and a half thousand years ago and its descendant spoken today. The fact that they use the same script, used by no other language in the modern world, encourages this view. But in fact, Modern Greek is no closer to Classical Greek than Italian is to Latin.
 * Welsh on the other hand has no great antiquity: the earliest writings that we can reasonably call Welsh (as opposed to P-Celtic) are roughly the same age as the earliest writings we can call English. --ColinFine (talk) 22:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep. "Welsh" as clearly distinct from the common ancestor of Welsh, Breton, and Cornish only begins to emerge around the time as those three groups of Celts were isolated from each other by the westward expansion of the Anglo-Saxons (about the 7th century AD). Strad (talk) 05:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

From what language is Latin derived?
OK, so we all know the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) derive from Latin, but my question is, what language is Latin derived from? 16:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * See history of Latin. Algebraist 16:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I did, but I still can't find a direct, clear-cut answer. 16:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've seen the forerunner of Latin called 'Proto-Latin', which doesn't seem to be mentioned there. Xn4  ( talk ) 16:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well Italic languages (Latin is an Italic language) says 'the Italic languages themselves show minor influence from the Etruscan and somewhat more from the Ancient Greek languages'. So I suppose Greek and Etruscan? She&#39;sGotSpies (talk) 16:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Tore Janson's A Natural History of Latin (Oxford University Press, new edition 2007) seems to say nothing on how Latin may relate to Etruscan and/or Proto-Indo-European. I suspect it's still more obscure than you might think. Xn4  ( talk ) 16:56, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Languages can be influenced by sister languages or neighbour languages as well. I think we can rule those out. --Kjoonlee 18:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

On the direct language descent tree, Italian is part of the Italic language group (like Oscan, Umbrian, etc.), and the Italic language group is often claimed to be part of an Italo-Celtic language grouping, and the Italo-Celtic languages are centum branches within Indo-European. Etruscan influenced Latin, but Etruscan was a non-Indo-European language, and so was not a direct ancestor language to Latin, and did not share any known direct ancestor language with Latin... AnonMoos (talk) 20:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * So to summarise, in case the OP is still confused, Latin descends from Proto-Italic, which descends from Proto-Italo-Celtic, which descends from Proto-Indo-European. (You could say it descends from Italic, which descends from Italo-Celtic, which descends from Indo-European, but some scholars might (will?) point out that these languages are not attested, and no-one can be 100% sure they existed.) Etruscan is just a neighbouring language from which words might have been borrowed by the Latin-speaking people. --Lgriot (talk) 23:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * To summarise even further (and to elaborate a bit on the Italic/Proto-Italic distinction mentioned by Lgriot), nobody knows. In the absence of surviving native speakers and any kind of audio recording techniques, we have no audio record to work with, and the written record is extremely sparse even for early Latin, let alone for any possible predecessor languages. Everything we know about what happened before Latin is based on comparisons of known languages and conjectures about possible predecessors. Long established, widely accepted and for the most part very plausible conjectures, yes, but if you want a direct, clear-cut answer, I'm afraid the only one we can give is "we don't know". -- Ferkelparade &pi; 00:37, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Wow, thanks for all the help everyone. This definitely has brought much insight to me. :) 74.12.21.169 (talk) 00:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Translating a phrase to Latin
Having struggled to translate this and failed, I throw myself on the mercy of the reference desk. I want a phrase that roughly translates as 'Make sure you find time to chill out mentally with a game of draughts occasionally.' or 'Don't forget to occasionally chill out mentally with a game of draughts.' or... you get the idea. Because I want it to be referring to the specific latin quote 'laxare animum lusu calculorum', I want to include these particular words (or at least their stems) as far as possible.

I suck at this. Help? 79.66.124.253 (talk) 19:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "Chill out" is a highly-colloquial slang phrase, which would almost certainly have to be replaced by a much more general expression (which probably wouldn't make any reference to temperature at all) in order to be very meaningful in Latin... AnonMoos (talk) 20:09, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The English I provided is deliberately very colloquial in hopes of getting a rough Latin translation that preserves the spirit. The 'chilling out mentally' is already in the Latin anyway ('laxare animum') although not in the right form. 79.66.124.253 (talk) 21:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Something like: velim animum laxes quandoque lusu calculorum? Maid Marion (talk) 14:26, 24 July 2008 (UTC) Or: memento animum laxare quandoque lusu calculorum


 * Or "cura ut animum laxes..." Adam Bishop (talk) 15:48, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Ooo, "cura ut.." meaning "take care that..."? That could work nicely. Thanks for the help so far, both of you. Is quandoque better than aliquando here? Something doesn't feel right about quandoque in here, but that might just be my ignorance shining through :) 86.139.232.189 (talk) 10:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't have a dictionary by me, but to me aliquando refers to a single occasion ('you should chill out some time'), whereas quandoque refers to repeated occasions ('you should chill out sometimes, or occasionally').Maid Marion (talk) 11:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)