Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 November 28

= November 28 =

IPA usage

 * The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.  No further edits should be made to this discussion.


 * BOLDly archiving. This is not a question for a reference desk and therefore there is no reason leaving it open here; as a policy question, it is a perennial complaint that is not worth wasting time on. But in any case, if people do want to waste time on it, other noticeboards have already been suggested, so there's no point letting this run here. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 15:35, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems clear to me after looking up other references to IPA that there will always be intellectuals and various anal-retentive types that find IPA both interesting and helpful. My original desire was simply to ask if there are many who find this IPA guide either "intuitive," "natural," or clear. I have a college education with 3.6 GPA and despite my dyslexia, my IQ (which I don't consider very meaningful) measures 134. Simply put, I think I'm above average in intelligence and yet I find the IPA references in Wikipedia consistently annoying and useless. I don't object to them being used inasmuch as there are those scholarly types who appreciate it, but I'm sure the overwhelming majority of your readers find it as useless and confusing as I do. There are so many other pronunciation guide methods available, why don't you try adding them? I am a successful fiction writer and I constantly use foreign and unfamiliar words and almost always include pronunciation hints in my writing. I prefer the informal use of common and familiar syllables, such as "eye" for I, with either bold face or upper case to indicate accent. You may find that inexcusably crude, but that doesn't make IPA any easier. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris selby (talk • contribs) 03:36, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't understand much of the IPA or have that much use for it, but many of Wikipedia's readers are not native speakers of English, and some of them can use the IPA as a check or guide to their own pronunciation. [Le Petit Larousse, similarly, includes an IPA glossary of its own pronunciation guide for the benefit of non-Francophones.] While I, too, can only really make use  of "real world" rhymes and analogies for pronunciation, the argument against using them is the wide variation in pronunciation among English-speaking Wikipedia readers: a good approximation for an Irishman, Liverpudlian or  Kansan might seriously befuddle or mislead a Pakistani, Australian or Jamaican.  I think that there are some artificial-speech programs that can read IPA entries and pronounce them for users who have those programs. ¶ However, you have as much right to express your opinion and to propose changes as any other reader or editor of Wikipedia. The forums that would be most relevant, I think, are Wikipedia talk:Lead section, Wikipedia talk:Accessibility and Village pump (proposals). Just as a suggestion, rather than any requirement or prerequisite, you might want to search the archives of the first two talk pages to see the history of the IPA entries and the earlier arguments for and against their inclusion. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * A more relevant place would be WT:PRON, Pronunciation's talk page. And yes, we are aware of your concerns, but there's nothing we can do at an international encyclopedia, besides making the IPA guides as easy as possible. And the only way we can do that is by knowing which parts specifically you find annoying and useless. --Kjoonlee 07:02, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi there. I am a linguistics major so I had to learn IPA. It is different but once you get a hold of it, it's really helpful for learning how to pronounce words. And it's extremely specific so that even accents can be pronounced in IPA. It's very difficult to explain online but I have a large chart in my textbook regarding IPA, if you'd like to learn more.  A8  UDI  13:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * You (the OP) may find the table at IPA chart for English dialects helpful. It's really not hard to interpret IPA pronunciations if you use that as a guide. Deor (talk) 14:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * There may be "many other pronunciation guide methods available", but I challenge you to find one that works for readers outside a particular variety of a particular language. I know that there are English speakers for whom 'cot' and 'caught' sound the same, people for whom 'marry', 'merry' and 'Mary' sound the same, people for whom 'put' and 'putt' sound the same, and people for whom 'lawd' and 'lord' sound different (yes, I am a non-rhotic southern-English speaker). Any scheme which depends on common English spellings, or example English words, is going to be ambiguous.
 * Your use of eye dialect is well established in fiction, but it mostly serves a different purpose from pronunciation guides in a reference work, in that it is mostly indicating pronunciations that most readers will recognise. (I remember coming across a spelling 'veddy' for 'very' in an American short story and being confused by it before I realised that the writer was trying to represent an upper-class English accent). The IPA in Wikipedia articles is to guide people who may not be familiar with the word in question. It may also be noting sounds or making distinctions which simply do not exist in most dialects of English. --ColinFine (talk) 16:46, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Apologies for going off-topic, but upper-class Englishmen pronounce "very" as "veddy"? That sounds more Indian to me... The stereotypical way to represent an upper-class English accent is to remove most of the vowels (and for a working-class accent, you remove the consonants). --Tango (talk) 20:44, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I first heard the expression "veddy English" decades ago. A slightly trilled "r" is almost identical to a "d". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:49, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It represents a certain type of stereotyped early 20th-century pronunciation. AnonMoos (talk) 06:14, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * IPA is very useful for someone who is interested in studying more than one foreign language. It is one positive feature which I consider when I purchase a foreign-language dictionary or even an English-language dictionary.
 * I have a pocket bidirectional pocket dictionary of English and French (by Larousse), with one set of symbols to explain English sounds to French-speking people and another set of symbols to explain French sounds to English-speaking people. I have another pocket bidirectional pocket dictionary of English and French, which uses IPA for both English and French words.
 * I have a pocket bidirectional pocket dictionary of English and German (by Langenscheidt) with one set of symbols to explain English sounds to German-speaking people and another set of symbols to explain German sounds to English-speaking people.  I have another pocket bidirectional pocket dictionary of English and German (by Oxford-Duden), which uses IPA for both English and German words.
 * Like the metric system, IPA is something which I might have invented myself if someone else had not already done so. I very much appreciate the work of Paul Passy! -- Wavelength (talk) 17:35, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I am revising my comment. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:46, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I am revising my comment again, because I prefer to keep the noun adjunct "pocket" adjacent to the noun which it modifies, "dictionary": "bidirectional pocket dictionary". -- Wavelength (talk) 20:34, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * There are some problems as well. For example, check the spelling and pronunciation of ‘Canada’ from this http://www.utexas.edu/courses/linguistics/resources/phonetics/vowelmap/index.html. So as the vowel 'a' has usually two phonemes (/æ/, /ɑ/ or /aː/) and the schwa if unstressed, thus is we write ‘Canada’ in its actual representations as '/kænədɑ/' or 'Canadian' as '/kənædiən/'. However, I think, the majority do not pronounce the 'a' as '/æ/' in 'Canada' but as '/ʌ/' while '/a/' is not the phoneme of the UK or US English. And if we check dictionaries, we will find many other kinds of explanations.Mihkaw napéw (talk) 18:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The IPA stuff may be useful to a linguist, but it's gibberish otherwise. The Webster approach of providing soundalikes for simple, common words is actually readable and is also more flexible, as it allows for regional accents and the like. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * But makes it very hard to provide comparisons between common pronunciations. So it might be useful for telling you a possible pronunciation in your own accent (if done carefully), but isn't very useful if you want to know how it was pronounced in the past or in other accents. Or if you want to know how to accurately pronounce a foreign word. IPA isn't gibberish if you take a little interest, and a good dictionary that uses it contains a gloss at the beginning. Most of the symbols for English sounds in IPA look something like possible representations of the sound in normal English orthography. For more subtle distinctions, you can look up the page in the front that explains it. 86.166.149.1 (talk) 19:44, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * IPA tells you the "absolute" pronunciations, whereas the Webster approach tells you "relative" pronunciations. Both bits of information are useful. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:58, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * In the United States, dictionary-users who look up pronunciations generally want to be able to work out what the pronunciation of the word is in terms of the sound system of their particular dialect -- but they don't really want to be told the pronunciation in terms of some other dialect which the dictionary publisher is setting up as being more correct than their own (as could be the implication if straight unmodified IPA were used). AnonMoos (talk) 06:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Many editors here (in reference desk/language) usually do good edits, but today’s edits seem too circular.Mihkaw napéw (talk) 02:50, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * You can say that again! :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:13, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This IPA discussion is perennial and useless, and might as well be closed. Complaints that "I don't understand IPA" don't do any good here. In the amount of time people wasted complaining about IPA here, they could have learned it.
 * And Bugs, saying "useful to a linguist" but not others is completely nonsensical. It's useful to anyone who has bothered to learn it, useless to anyone who has not, regardless of whether they're a linguist; any transcription system is the same in that way, and Webster is just as useless to someone who doesn't understand it. And there are millions of non-linguists who know and use IPA.
 * And also, it's entirely false to say "IPA tells you the absolute pronunciation, not the relative pronunciation". See Narrow versus broad transcription. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 10:48, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The IPA stuff is gibberish. This is the English wikipedia, don'cha know. I shouldn't have to learn a new language in order to understand the English wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:13, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

similar words
where can i find the explanations/applications of similar words (eg. over/above, recently/shortly etc. etc.) to polish my english. thank you. 124.43.149.51 (talk) 08:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * A good dictionary will have definitions of those words and will also give synonyms (different words with similar meaning) and antonyms (words of opposite meaning). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * For synonyms and (to a greater extent) antonyms, a thesaurus would be better than a dictionary. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:55, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It depends on the thesaurus (which I was thinking of suggesting) and it depends on the dictionary. Some thesauruses explain the different shades of meaning, and some dictonaries give good lists of synonyms & antonyms, but others skimp on them. Some classic manuals like A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H.W. Fowler, or the works of H.L. Mencken and Eric Partridge, explain many distinctions that they think important or difficult. —— Shakescene (talk) 11:05, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

14th Century names - "fil'"
There is a reference book in my local library entitled "Members of Parliament -1213-1702", detailing the returns to early English and British Parliaments throughout that period. All very interesting, though one element has me scratching my head. Can the Language Desk assist?

There are instances where a device "fil'" is included in a Members name. For example from Wiltshire in the 1300 parliament a member "Petrus fil' Warini", or from the Parliament summoned in York "Henricus fil' Herberti" from Derby. What is this middle element representing?

doktorb wordsdeeds 09:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Short for Latin "filius" meaning "son of". --TammyMoet (talk) 09:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I love the Language Desk! Thank you very much for your very swift reply! doktorb wordsdeeds 09:58, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * So I would presume that many of those are Latinisations of the very common British surname suffix "-son" as in Williamson = son of William (just to cite U.S. Presidents' names: Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, 2 Harrisons, 2 Johnsons, Wilson and Nixon = Nick's son, out of 43 different men who became President). —— Shakescene (talk) 10:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * No doubt. "Herbertson" and "Warrenson" (?) possibly from the two examples found. Though of course spelling and pronunciation has caused many different versions of even these over the centuries :) doktorb wordsdeeds 10:32, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The suffix "s" also denotes "son of", so Williams, Phillips, Johns, Nicks, Wills... --TammyMoet (talk) 12:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * As a side note, "filius" was pronounced "fitz" in medieval French, and was very often used by the French conquerors of England and Ireland. The examples could therefore mean "Peter Fitzwarren" and "Henry Fitzherbert." Adam Bishop (talk) 17:42, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * How did "fil" evolve into "fit"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It didn't, it evolved into nothing, and the /s/ became /ts/. Actually I should say the 'li' evolved into nothing; in Spanish it evolved into /j/. That's pretty common in French, a lot of words are just the Latin word without the middle bit. I'm not exactly sure where the /ts/ came from historically but I guess the 't' compensated for the missing /l/ and /i/ (or /j/). Adam Bishop (talk) 22:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation of where and river
How to pronounce "where" and "river" in American accent? --AisanGiant33 (talk) 10:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary is your friend! See where and river. &mdash; Sebastian 10:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Which American accent? Boston, Southern? 75.41.110.200 (talk) 14:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Way more American accents than that... A8  UDI  14:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * British and the American east coast and south might say "wheh" and "rivuh". The rest of the USA might say "where" and "river". However, if run together, the east-coaster might say "Where is the rivuh?", while the southerner might say "Whey-uh is the rivuh?" of "Whah is the rivuh?" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:17, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I hear ‘where’ as /weɜ˞/ and ‘river’ as /rivɚ/, but I may be wrong. Mihkaw napéw (talk) 18:29, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't do IPA. Can you mention any words that you know of that rhyme? I'm thinking "hair" and "liver", for example. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Where: /w-air/ (w+eh+er) river: /rIv-e*r/ *e is technically upside down, or a schwa... If I could handwrite, I could do it the real IPA way..  A8  UDI  19:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The right way to say words like "where" and "what" are with an aspiration, as if they were spelled "hwere" or "hwat". They are often spoken without the aspiration, as homophones of "wear" or "watt" (or "wut", except that's not a word). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:10, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Mmmm I dont think that is aspiration.. Aspiration is the breath of air after a STOP consonant, specifically K, P and T. Compare: Top vs Tap. Top has a strong aspiration as you can feel the breath of air, whereas tap is still aspirated, but not as strong. Better: /Pit/ vs /Spit/  A8  UDI  19:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe I've got the wrong term. In any case, the right way to say "what" and "where" is with a leading soft-H sound followed by a W. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:17, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * My dictionary: /(h)wət/ or /(h)wät/. Correctomundo.. i never knew that. But languages evolve. A8  UDI  19:20, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * When speaking carefully, people still say "hwere" and "hwat". In casual talk, it's often "wear" and "wut". The latter, when stretched out in real or mock incredulity, is often more like "waaat?" Languages do evolve. "night" and "knight", which are now both pronounced "nite", were supposedly once pronounced "nickt" and "kuh-nickt" respectively. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:28, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Try telling the millions of people who don't ever say it the "right" way, that they're wrong. I remember as a child being told this "right" way of saying these words, but it always sounded like we were supposed to be talking like some British aristocrat.  Needless to say, this instruction was ignored then, and this latest injunction will also be ignored.  --  JackofOz (talk) 19:31, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "Latest injunction?" We're quoting Webster, so it's not very recent. Everyone I know, when not speaking slangily, says "hwat" and "hwere". The right and not-so-right ways can be fairly hard to distinguish. The old expression, "Who, what, where?" is typically pronounced "hoo, wut, wear", for example, and it's hard to hear the difference from "hoo, hwut, hwear". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:42, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There's a similar problem with "whet", as in "to sharpen", as in "whet your appetite" or "whetstone", which are often pronounced "wet". Hard to tell whether sharpening a kuh-nife on a wet stone would work. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Exactly my point. Vast numbers of people make no distinction between the pronunciations of "wet" and "whet", or between "wear" and "where".  Certain jokes rely on there being no distinction ("Where's the soap?" - Yes, it does, doesn't it.)  Dictionaries are very often unreliable in informing people how to speak, so telling a universal audience such as this the "right" way of saying certain words, based on what some dictionary says, is folly.  -- JackofOz (talk) 20:00, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hence the inter-lingual pun, the Latin expression "semper ubi sub ubi". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:27, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * [denting out]— I grew up in London and Providence, R.I., so I thought that the "hw" pronunciation was just an affectation or one of Ezra Pound's many antiquarian-jocular eccentricities, but my Anglo-Scottish mother (daughter of a free-lance contributor to Cassell's English Dictionary) said "hw" is indeed the correct pronunciation. It used to be spelled that way, too, until the kind of well-meaning spelling-reformer who put the "b" (from dubitare) into "dout" came along. There's a tongue twister from theatrical elocution classes that goes (I phoneticise slightly):"Hwether the weather be cold, Hwether the weather be hot, We'll be together, Hwatever the weather, Hwether we like it or not!"And, speaking of injunctions, let us all be grateful at this time of thanks-giving to a merciful Providence that has so far not made Wikipedia truly multi-media, in the way that Encarta aspired to be. Can you imagine the endless wrangles, probably out loud rather than mediated by the need to read and type, that would arise over Received Pronunciation, newsreader's English and WP:ENGVAR rules for pronunciation? (Should Scottish-related entries be articulated in Lallans and jazz pieces described in generic Afro-American accents, etc., etc., etc.)  —— Shakescene (talk) 20:18, 28 November 2009 (UTC) I forgot to mention the broad, rich vistas that a speakipedia would open for vandalism, counter-vandalism and edit wars before those Talk forum wrangles had even begun! Imagine (if you have the nerve) all the possibilities! —— Shakescene (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm. interesting. Round these parts that poem/doggerel ends "We'll weather the weather whatever the weather, whether we like it or not." Grutness...wha?  23:47, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has Category:Spoken articles. -- Wavelength (talk) 01:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It also has Wikivoices. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Historically, the sound usually written 'wh' is an unvoiced bilabial approximant, written [ʍ] in IPA. This is a single sound, that stands in the same relation to /w/ as /f/ bears to /v/: to pronounce it, form your lips for 'w' and blow. I'm not sure whether anybody uses this sound in any dialect of English today: as Baseball Bugs says, some dialects and registers distinguish 'wh' from 'w', but they usually realise this sound as the diphone /hw/. --ColinFine (talk) 20:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * These are definitely dialects that preserve the distinction, but not the most numerically prevalent quasi-"standard" pronunciations in either the U.K. or the U.S. (see J.C. Wells The Accents of English 1: An Introduction, p. 228 ISBN 0521-297192). The change of "hy" (often also a single voiceless sound) to "y" (i.e. "human" to "yooman" etc.) is somewhat parallel... AnonMoos (talk) 05:57, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Who pronounces "human" as "yooman"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:02, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If you're in many parts of the U.S., lots of people... AnonMoos (talk) 06:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * A lot of Americans say "ain't", too. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:20, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "yooman" is big in upstate New York and surrounding areas, among all ages and social classes. It's a regional thing, not an education or register thing like "ain't". r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 11:33, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I used to have a business-studies lecturer from Lincolnshire (eastern England) who would amuse us by saying "It aint ooomanly (IE "humanly") possible!". Alansplodge (talk) 13:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Whine-wine merger is all about distinguishing or not distinguishing 'wh' and 'w'. --Tango (talk) 11:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Seem to have a whole article on Phonological history of wh... AnonMoos (talk) 14:05, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Does it mention "coolwhip" though? - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 21:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

i would respectfully contest the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to pronounce any words. We live in a multi-dialect world and speech is dynamic. Maybe the way some word used to be said, or how most people say it now. the judgemental factor of right or wrong irks me. how the rest of the USA pronounce river and where must be in several different ways- which one is the right one. In fact the language has changed from its' ancestory(?) and indeed is said differently in several ways here in Blighty and other English speaking countries.--91.125.95.82 (talk) 20:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "Whar dat ribber at?" would be the pronunciation used by some especially in the rural South. The Where" gets an "ah" sound. In some areas, again southern or midwestern, "Where" might be pronounced with an "uh" rather than an "eh" sound, and it is considered a regionalism to be avoided in educated speech or broadcasting. Edison (talk) 20:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * To me it suggests 19th-century minstrel songs... AnonMoos (talk) 19:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Sanskrit word for war
I've seen a few times on internet 'fact' lists that the Sanskrit word meaning war literally translated to "the need for more cows". This sounds like, well, bull, but is there any evidence to it at all or was it just made up?

Cheers, Prokhorovka (talk) 14:52, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's an urban legend, as is clear from the fact that none of these websites specify the Sanskrit term they are referring to. Sanskrit has several words for war, such as vignahaḥ, saṃgrahāraḥ, vairāraṃbhaḥ, vairaṃ, saṃgnāmaḥ, yuddhaṃ and, raṇaṃ (from Apte English Sanskrit dictionary) that are variously based on root words suggesting obstacle, enmity, to grab or seize, and even delight; but no reference to cows. Abecedare (talk) 15:39, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Sanskrit also has many words for cow, indeed it has many words for lots of things, and most Sanskrit words have multiple meanings, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone could concoct a homophone that meant both of those things. However I can find no evidence for it in this exhaustive Sanskrit Lexicon.--Shantavira|feed me 16:01, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Apparently the magic word is gavishti गविष्टि  gáviṣṭi  meltBanana  16:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification and link, meltBanana!
 * Here are the links to गविष्टि gaviṣṭi and गव्यु gavyu in Apte; and to gaviṣṭi and gavyaṭ in Monier-Williams. Interestingly both the meanings ("desire(-ous) of cattle/battle") are traced right back to the Rigved. Abecedare (talk) 06:15, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, cheers guys. Prokhorovka (talk) 23:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)