Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 November 7

= November 7 =

Pronunciation question: "Español"
How to pronounce the name of the language "Español".

Is the name pronounced ESS-PAN-YOLL (where YOLL rhymes with roll, pole, and goal, or is like "yole" in the Christmas carol "Wolcum yole!")

or is it ESS-PAG-NYOLL, or is it something else?

I read (in a little "tourist dictionary") that the letter ñ (with the squiggle) should be pronounced as "gn". But this does not tell me how to say the word. After all, in English sine and sign are pronounced the same way (at least they are in this neck of the woods).

Please do not answer in terms of IPA symbols. I think I could learn Spanish more easily than I could learn IPA.

Supplementary question: is there a correct name for the accent? I'm sure "squiggle" is at best wildly unprofessional.

Thank you, CBHA (talk) 07:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The squiggle is called a tilde. There's no /g/ sound in Español. I'm assuming the tourist dictionary you have is intended for speakers of French or Italian since the ñ of Spanish is like gn in those languages. The closest equivalent would be es-pa-NYOL, except that the "ny" is not a sequence of two sounds, as it is in English, but is a single sound, a palatal nasal. —Angr 07:20, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * We do have a single ñ sound in English: it's the n of the word "new". Repeat this word pair: no new.  no new.  no new.  The second n is the ñ.  We also use this sound in the word canyon.  Contrast: cannon, canyon.  Cannon canyon.  A big cannon!  The grand canyon.  It's not hard.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 19:46, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, in both "new" (for people who don't pronounce it "noo") and "canyon", English has a cluster of two sounds: an n-sound followed by a y-sound. The Spanish sound is acoustically similar, but it's articulated rather differently. —Angr 20:00, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * pardon my french, but wtf are you talking about? How is new pronounced n followed by y?  Does the sound in "then you go" sound like "the new go"?  No.  No one would mistake the two, because the ny sound isn't n-y.  Go ahead, prove me wrong, pronounce new on tape, and then make the n sound stutter by copying and pasting the first milliseconds of the recording -- you can't, because it's not n-y, in which case you could stutter the recording and get n-n-n-n-n-nyew.  (You would have to say that out loud, you couldn'st do it from a recording of the word 'new' without stuttering on the n, because the simple 'new' recording doesn't contain the n sound).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 20:49, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * A recording of me saying it wouldn't prove anything anyway, because I'm an American and say "noo". English /n/ may be somewhat palatalized before /j/, say, but it's not the palatal of Spanish, which is pronounced with the blade of the tongue on the hard palate and the tip behind the lower teeth. —Angr 21:37, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "pronounced with the blade of the tongue on the hard palate and the tip behind the lower teeth" is exactly how Americans who don't say noo pronounce new. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 21:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Pardon your French, but the difference in the standard pronounciation of the phrases "then you go" and "the new go" is not in the pronounciation of what you call the "n-y" sound, but rather in the pronounciation of the vowel before the two. The two "n-y" sounds, by the way, are pronounced exactly the same (at least so I've been taught). BTW, you have inadvertenly proven the essential inevitability of the IPA when it comes to matters of phonetics - two native speakers might pronounce such a simple and basic word as "new" (or, hey, "nuclear") in completely different ways, so directions consisting of: "pronounce it like you pronounce new" are meaningless. TomorrowTime (talk) 21:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I too hear the vowel difference between "then" and "the", unfortunately I couldn't think of an example (like "in you go" versus "ih new go" -- or anything else) that only had the one difference and not also a vowel difference. Anyway your idea of what Americans who say ny say doesn't count, because you don't say it that way. I say ny (not n-y) -- not everyone does.  Some people say noo for new.  But of the people who say nyew, they say it like the spanish N.  Just listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx5KDyvlG3Q  .  If you think the guy is saying an n, I'll go through the trouble of getting out a sound editor and stuttering his ny-ny-ny-ny-ny-ny-nyew math (which doesn't stutter to n-n-n-n-n-n-n-nyew math).  It's because he, as well as other non-noo-saying Americans, says it "pronounced with the blade of the tongue on the hard palate and the tip behind the lower teeth" -- exactly like the spanish ny sound.


 * For whatever it's worth, I've noticed that I pronounce union as : the nasal in the middle is not dental/alveolar. —Tamfang (talk) 06:45, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the inputs. I thought I was asking an easy question. Silly me. ;o)

Reading the above, I was thinking along the same lines as TomorrowTime, that the IPA is a valuable, if not an essential, tool. Unfortunately I have pretty much abandoned hope of mastering the IPA. Between the basic subject matter, i.e., isolated sounds, the foreign (to me) vocabulary (plosive, coronal, labial), and the strange symbols (ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ ɣ ʁ), it is daunting.

Having said that, is there a subset of the IPA that covers the sounds common in Spanish? Thanks. CBHA (talk) 23:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * See IPA for Spanish. -Elmer Clark (talk) 00:05, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The final syllable in 'Español' is pronounced to rhyme with doll and poll. Richard Avery (talk) 10:23, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * But those two words don't rhyme for everyone (like me for example). Adam Bishop (talk) 12:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe they meant Doll and Paul? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 14:55, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Doll doesn't rhyme with Paul either. Malcolm XIV (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not going to fall into the trap of saying that doll does rhyme with Paul, although the way I say them, they do rhyme. If, to you, they do not rhyme with each other, will you please provide examples of other words they DO rhyme with.  Just curious.


 * Turning back to the question of using the IPA to learn how to pronounce a Spanish word, will someone please provide a step-by-step example? Suppose I have a word which I know to be Spanish ("porque", for example) and want to learn to pronounce.  How can I use IPA to do so, without resorting to devices such as "it rhymes with the English word ____" and without asking someone who knows Spanish to say the word.  CBHA (talk) 19:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * For me, an Englishman speaking what people tell me is received pronunciation, the idea of Paul rhyming with doll is just weird! (No doubt I've just given the lie to the idea I speak RP!)  The way I pronounce them, doll rhymes with the col of collar or the fol of follow.  Paul rhymes with tall or all or call.  The ol of español rhymes with doll, but not poll which I pronounce to rhyme with coal.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.236.224 (talk) 21:18, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Could we say that the final syllable rhymes with dole and pole? The vowel sound of doll sounds nothing like the final vowel of Español, to me.   Little Red Riding Hood  talk  22:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. I thought the vowel sound of "pole" is a diphtong in most dialects of English, but I'm not a native speaker. The vowel in the final syllable of "español" is not a diphtong. This thread clearly illustrates why IPA is needed to meaningfully discuss pronunciation. If only it weren't so damned complex... --NorwegianBluetalk 10:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. The Spanish-speaking people I know (all from Spain) say a short vowel at the end of español, like the sound at the beginning of Oliver.  I have heard North Americans say the ol sound to rhyme with pole (or poll!) but can't imagine they do that at the beginning of the name Oliver.86.139.236.224 (talk) 14:31, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, they'd probably say something like "ah-liver". The problem is that the short O sound used in RP for words like "doll" (and the one in "español") is very rarely (if ever) heard in North American English. Have a look at IPA chart for English, which indicates that the vowels in "father" and "not" are identical in General American; in Canada, the same vowel is also used for "law". Malcolm XIV (talk) 16:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * In reply to CBHA's question in the middle: it is difficult to teach anybody how to articulate a particular language (or sound) without personal (or at least auditory) contact, just like any other physical activity. Phonetics would be a good start, and I had hoped to point you at articulatory phonetics, but there is little there. It does have a link to an interesting site http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~danhall/phonetics/sammy.html which shows you how various consonants are articulated, and written in IPA (more than just English ones, but not all possible consonants)
 * Unfortunately I haven't found a similar site for vowel sounds, but vowel is quite good at explaining how to produce different vowels and how to write them in IPA.
 * One problem that always bedevils discussions about 'how do you pronounce such and such' is that what is distinct varies from language to language. For example, in English we regard the /k/ sounds in 'kill', 'cool', 'skill' and 'school' are identical (the same phoneme) and most English speakers would find it difficult to hear any difference between them. But a more precise notation would show them as [kʲʰ], [kʰ], [kʲ] and [k] respectively (two of them aspirated, and two of them palatalised) and in many languages they would be regarded as two or even four distinct sounds. Thus (to return to your question) if we write /ɛspaɲol/ (I may have the vowel qualities wrong, as I am not a Spanish speaker) I am indicating that the final vowel is a Close-mid back rounded vowel, which is both more precise and less ambiguous than saying that it sounds like 'poll' or 'pole' or 'Paul'; but it still leaves some doubt as to exactly how high and how far back the tongue is, and how rounded the lips. --ColinFine (talk) 19:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

languages of scholarship and science?
What are, in order, the languages of scholarship and science in the world?

My impression is something like
 * 1) English
 * 2) French / German (tie)
 * 3) Spanish
 * 4) Russian
 * 5) Italian

But I have no idea what should come afterwards, and absolutely no clue where Eastern languages like Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, even Arabic fit in! (I'm specifically asking in terms of scholarship and science, not number of speakers.)

I also welcome your reactions to my list as written! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 19:43, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be somewhat easier to comment on your list if you specified what you are talking about. I'm assuming you mean the languages most researches and scholarly reviews are written in? If so, are you talking about the present or some other time? In the Middle Ages, for instance, Latin and German would be top of the list. In the present, I'm guessing at least Japanese (and possibly some Indian languages) would push some of your contestants from the top five list. TomorrowTime (talk) 22:01, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to make it a top 5, that's just as far as I got, and I suspected that Japanese would be above, say, Italian... How would your top n list look? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.214.224 (talk) 22:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It might be helpful if you narrowed down which sciences. When I studied chemistry the recommended second languages were very specific: German for organic chemists, French for analytical chemistry, Russian for physical chemistry. Rmhermen (talk) 01:09, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * These maybe the languages of sciences now, but during antiquity it was Greek, and Arabic during the Middle-ages. Eklipse (talk) 04:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There's a lot of scholarship in Chinese, but a lot of it is regarded with a skeptical eye by those who publish in English. Steewi (talk) 10:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * More information won't hurt him. Eklipse (talk) 17:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Arabic and Latin were historically highly scholarly languages, in this sense. The Jade Knight (talk) 11:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The OP didn't ask "what were", but "what are". --Lgriot (talk) 10:45, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

origin of phrase, "little pictures (pitchers?) have big ears"
Heard it in a John Prine tune then a friend about 60 yrs. old used it to mean watch what you say around children. thanks, Itlenne (email removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.64.123.205 (talk) 20:37, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It is "pitcher", and according to this link, it dates back to the 16th century. The meaning is explained there as well.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  20:59, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I would guess it was first used as a warning euphemism that small children (the subject of the warning) would not easily understand. Richard Avery (talk) 10:15, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense sounds of English
All too often in English-language cultures we hear nonsensical imitations of foreign languages. Asian languages are commonly parodied, although Spanish and Arabic have cropped up recently. The opening of this clip from Team America: World Police is a prime example. Does this phenomenon occur in non-Anglophone societies, and do they ever parody English? What does it sound like?  Plasticup  T / C  22:24, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * When I was teaching English in Japan, I heard Japanese kids quite often 'imitate' English by speaking Japanese with an American accent.--ChokinBako (talk) 23:31, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This is what a parody of English sounds like: fira shash mara ide oona -- hankwa doofanow!! ahahahahhahahahahahahaha!!!  I fatso americano.  hmph hmph hmph.  Ahahahahahahahahahaha!


 * Can you find any sound clips of this?  Plasticup  T / C  06:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There seem to be a few (though not really academic) examples on YouTube. If you just type 'imitates English' in the search field you will get dozens of pages, in which some of the videos are of people imitating English, but generally specific English accents, and not really of non-Anglophones trying to imitate English in general. There may be one or two there, but I don't really have time to go through all the pages to find them.--ChokinBako (talk) 12:02, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it occurs in non-anglophone countries too. Here is a link to a clip where Norwegian comedians Atle Antonsen, Harald Eia and Bård Tufte Johansen explain (in English with a Danish accent) how the Danish language has collapsed into meaningless guttural sounds. The mock-Danish that follows is exactly how Danish sounds to Norwegian ears, and possibly to Danish ears too - a Danish colleague of mine finds the clip hilarious. The only real Danish spoken is at 2:19 - "Hjelp - vi forstår ikke hinannen" (Help - we do not understand each other). --NorwegianBluetalk 13:27, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The bit about the complicated Danish number system recalls a memory of mine. In 1975 my family went to the Esperanto-kongreso en Kopenhago. In the conference complex was a candy-stand, whose keeper spoke adequate English except that she gave the price in what I assume to be Danish: "One of these and two of those, that I can give you for flip flop fiddly-oop." We always had to ask her to write the price. —Tamfang (talk) 02:44, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * See Non-native pronunciations of English. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:03, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This may also interest you: I've heard English parodies on Spanish television programs similar to how English speakers add /o/ to everything and pretend to speak Spanish (e.g. "I put the book-o on the table-o.") In Spanish they add "-ation" to words (e.g. "Puse el libration en la mesation"). Note, however, in most dialects of Spanish, /ʃ/ is not a phoneme, so their pronunciation may be approximated to the closest equivalent (probably /tʃ/).--el Aprel (facta-facienda) 19:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * See Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:33, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This hilarious actor would be a fine example of a great European comedian pretending to speak US American English. His performance is recognised as a tour de force of the most bitter political satire, comparable to Caligula´s horse in the White House.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:09, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

A Japanese comedian Tamori plays a mahjong game in fake Chinese, Korean, American English and Vietnamese in this sound clip. . He also shows his fake languages, pretending to be a Tokyo sightseeing bus tour guide in this video clip. (German, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, South Korean Korean and North Korean Korean). And this is the result of fake English search. Enjoy! Oda Mari (talk) 06:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)