Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 November 21

= November 21 =

Bowden cable pronunciation
How is the name "Bowden" as in Bowden cable pronounced? or ? For the non-IPA-compatible, does the first syllable rhyme with "go" or with "cow"? +Angr 08:26, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Not sure, but have known several people with the surname Bowden. who all pronounced it to rhyme with "cow". Alansplodge (talk) 09:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, before I asked this question I googled "Bowden cable pronounced" and "Bowden cable pronunciation" and couldn't find anything useful. But now I just tried googling "Bowden cable" alone and found this, which suggests it's pronounced to rhyme with "go". +Angr 12:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * According to Peter Ladefoged, the /oʊ/ represents the words as in ‘go’ and the /aʊ/ represents the words as in ‘cow’. However, I do not understand why the vowel on the rhyme should be unstressed if it has to rhyme as in ‘go’. Is there any phonetic rules?--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 17:54, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I was asking about the vowel in the first syllable, which is stressed. You can't tell from the spelling "Bowden" whether the "ow" represents the vowel of "go" or the vowel of "cow" . English even has two different words spelled "bow" but pronounced differently. "Bow" meaning "an instrument for shooting an arrow", "a tool for playing a stringed instrument (e.g. a violin or cello)" or "a decorative loop of ribbon" is pronounced to rhyme with "go", while "bow" meaning "to bend at the waist" or "a part of a ship" is pronounced to rhyme with "cow". +Angr 18:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * These are then the exceptions; homograph. I was wrong however, for just taking only few IPA examples of an author and relying on the examples as the correct grapheme and phoneme convention in general. Is there any chart that has the RP of UK or US grapheme-phoneme conventions of regulars, options, and parametrically limited?--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 19:03, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean like IPA chart for English dialects? +Angr 19:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It is also a usful page for a quick reference. Thanks.Mihkaw napéw (talk) 17:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I have known two people called Bowden, one of each pronunciation. I also knew that Lord Bowden lived in Bowdon, though I don't know his preference.  The best answer would be to pronounce it the way the inventor would have pronounced his own name, but that doesn't work for Halley's Comet for example. Sussexonian (talk) 17:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It might work, if the "Hail-iz" and "Hal-iz" camps could compromise on "Haul-iz". --  JackofOz (talk) 07:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"offhand"
What is the etymology of "offhand"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.27.14.18 (talk) 08:38, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * From the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

[ORIGIN from off preposition + hand noun.] Mitch Ames (talk) 09:13, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know. I can only guess that it was perhaps originally 'written off-hand', meaning from the hand, without notes, refs, or other preparation. kwami (talk) 10:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Etymonline claims: "Probably originally in ref. to shooting without a rest or support." --Pykk (talk) 12:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the biggest language without its own Wikipedia?
What is the language that has the largest number of either native speakers or total speakers, but doesn't have a Wikipedia written in it? --62.204.152.181 (talk) 15:00, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Xiang Chinese is #28 on the List of languages by number of native speakers and has only a test Wikipedia at the Incubator. Maithili is #32 on the list, but according to some sources has more speakers than Xiang, and it too has only a test Wikipedia at the Incubator. +Angr 15:59, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * [At the other end of the scale, "The Dutch language Wikipedia has the largest ratio of Wikipedia pages per native speaker from all of the top 10 largest Wikipedia editions." -- Wavelength (talk) 17:33, 21 November 2009 (UTC)]
 * That's not the other end of the scale, that's a different scale. I'd say the other end of the scale is Pitkern, which is the smallest language (less than 100 speakers) that does have its own Wikipedia. +Angr 17:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently, that doesn't protect them from vandalism (or NPOV/BLP violations), see—at the risk of spreading instead of quarantining the infection http://pih.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitkern_kulchur —— Shakescene (talk) 07:33, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * How about Volapük? I don't think anyone learns it at his or her mother's knee. —— Shakescene (talk) 23:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * But the OP carefully asked for "either native speakers or total speakers", and I bet Volapük has more total (non-native) speakers than Pitkern does. +Angr 07:04, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * According to our article, Volapük has 20 speakers. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 07:28, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Really? Well, I guess then Volapük is the smallest language with its own Wikipedia. That also explains why most of the articles there were written by a bot. +Angr 14:45, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I wonder how many fluent speakers of Old English there are. Deor (talk) 15:45, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That probably depends on what you mean by "fluent". Lots of academics specialising in the history of the English language will have some knowledge of it. --Tango (talk) 16:09, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I would consider it comparable to Latin. Plenty of people study it as a foreign language. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 16:34, 22 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, at least among medievalists I know, Old English is quite important; I know lots of people who also know Old Norse, Old Irish, Old French, etc etc. I'm pretty sure some of the professors, at least, are fluent in Old English and could speak to each other in it if they so desired. (Though I doubt they would contribute to the OE Wikipedia.) Adam Bishop (talk) 21:15, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * My own academic training is as a medievalist, and I have pretty solid knowledge of OE; I don't, however, think that I could employ it as a means of oral communication in any fashion other than the most halting. Maybe I've known the wrong Anglo-Saxonists, but I can't recall any whom I'd describe as fluent speakers of the language. I have known a number of fluent Latin speakers. Deor (talk) 21:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, since I am not an Anglo-Saxonist myself, I am just going by the statements of bewildered Anglo-Saxonist fellow students, which may be exaggerated :) I know some fluent Latinists too, but I've never found it necessary to speak it. (What is this, the 18th century?! Plain old English is good enough for everyone!) Adam Bishop (talk) 23:02, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

identify a language from annoyingly inadequate information
This question may be inappropriate for vagueness; I won't take offense if it's deleted.

I've just moved to Bellingham, Washington. The radio stations that I pick up seem to be divided about equally between Bellingham and Vancouver. Wandering the dial, I heard a language that I couldn't place; at first I thought Korean ("sounds a lot like Japanese but with some non-J sounds"), but then it seemed increasingly like Chinese without tones.

If I'm really lucky, someone will say "Oh yeah, I know just what you mean, that's the Serendipi Adventist Church of Ferndale, speaking West Serendipi with a Muggletown accent." —Tamfang (talk) 21:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Did you catch the station number? That could help pinpoint it. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 22:17, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't note the frequency because I was driving and my car radio's display is illegible in most lights. Alas. —Tamfang (talk) 05:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)


 * CHKG-FM - 96.1 FM Vancouver, BC seems to be a multicultural station broadcasting in Cantonese, Cambodian, Vietnamese and sundry other languages. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a mix: "...primarily Chinese with some African, Cambodian, Caribbean, Dutch, Hungarian,Italian, Korean, Laotian, Macedonian, Malaysian, Russian, South Asian, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese programming airing during the evening and on weekends." Intelligent  sium  22:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Being in Vancouver myself, I'll tell you that there is a number of non-English stations that originate from here, including full time Hindi and Punjabi Indian stations, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese stations, and a multicultural station that could have broadcast in any number of other languages, depending on time of day. Bellingham is closer to Vancouver than Seattle, so it's more likely to be a station from here.


 * See CHKG-FM, the one mentioned in another answer above, as a good bet, or follow the categories at the bottom of that page for more possibilties.24.83.112.118 (talk) 23:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Based on the information supplied above by the OP, and the lists of languages supplied by others, I would guess it was Korean (not mentioned above) as all the Asian languages mentioned (except Cambodian (Khmer), Malaysian, Hindi, and Punjabi (none of which sounds remotely like Chinese) are tonal languages. Korean is a non-tonal language that sounds similar to Japanese and also has a number of sounds which are very similar to Mandarin or Cantonese, so I would guess it was that, in the absence of any more information. --  KageTora - SPQW - (影虎)  ( talk )  23:14, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * (ED CONF) Sorry, Korean was mentioned. --  KageTora - SPQW - (影虎)  ( talk )  23:14, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with KageTora, if it sounded fast and agglutinate-y like Japanese then it may have been Korean (some people also think Korean sounds "guttural", so if you had that impression then it also could be Korean). I should point out that there are dialects of Korean that are tonal, such as the ones spoken around Pusan, but on international radio and TV I assume it would be far more likely to hear the non-tonal standard variety. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 23:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * True, but the dialects of Korean which are tonal are only tonal in the same way that Japanese is tonal - there is a distinction to be made between languages like this (which also include Swedish and Serbian amongst others) and other tonal languages like Chinese - I've forgotten what the actual terms are, but they are different. --  KageTora - SPQW - (影虎)  ( talk )  15:33, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Is it contour tone (Sino-Tibetan) vs. pitch/register/level tone (Japanese, Niger-Congo, etc.)? r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 16:37, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That didn't ring a bell, but according to the article here that would appear to be the case. As a side note, notice that section of the article begins with 'Most Chinese languages....'. I have no idea what this is referring to, whether it means dialects of Chinese, languages spoken in China, or whether it tries to imply that the Han Chinese have a number of different languages (as opposed to dialects). I think the ambiguity should be cleared up as it may be very misleading. --  KageTora - SPQW - (影虎)  ( talk )  17:38, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Added a link. The so-called 'dialects of Chinese' (i.e. Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Xiang, Min, Gan, Hakka) are considered separate languages by linguists, so "Chinese languages" refers to those languages (roughly constured as the languages in China that are written using Chinese characters), not other minority languages spoken in China (such as Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian, Tai, Bai, various Lolo-Burmese languages, yada yada). Basically, it is true that "the Han Chinese have a number of different languages".... the use of the term 方言 in Chinese is misleading and there is sometimes purely political disagreement over whether the Chinese languages are dialects or languages, but as far as I know no real linguist today thinks they are dialects, as they are not mutually intelligible. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 18:01, 22 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for adding the link in there. Also, I do realise that the 'dialects' are considered as 'languages' by some and 'dialects' by others, and that's why I suggested there should be some clarification in the article as it may be misunderstood. You've done that by providing that link in there, so cheers. --  KageTora - SPQW - (影虎)  ( talk )  18:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * KageTora, looks like you're active on multiple Help Desks:) In any case, you might be interested to know that there's a name for this phenomenon: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." More concretely, the definition of what's a language and what's a dialect depends on political-social status, not on linguistic science. What is it that French is a language while the vast majority of people from outside France -- perhaps even most of the French themeslves -- consider Piccard, Norman, Gascon, etc. merely "dialects"? --71.111.194.50 (talk) 03:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)