Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 November 21

= November 21 =

Translation arabic - english
Hello, can someone please give me a correct translation of the text in the picture. It is from Qur'an, Sura 35. --Berthold Werner (talk) 10:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It is the first sentence of the second verse: (ما یفتح الله للناس من رحمه فلا ممسک لها)

You can find its translation here. But I prefer this one: "the door that God opens for people mercifully, no one can close." --Omidinist (talk) 16:44, 21 November 2010 (UTC) Thank you --Berthold Werner (talk) 08:41, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Wehe
How is the German language word Wehe pronounced? Is there a h sound or isn't there? J I P &#124; Talk 19:39, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No. If you wanted an "h" sound, the word would have to be spelled "Weche". TomorrowTime (talk) 19:53, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * My German is rusty, but I don't think that would be an h as conceived in English (voiceless vowel). Maybe some sort of voiceless velar fricative? --Trovatore (talk) 23:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * So, because there is the same vowel in two consecutive syllables, I'll have to pronounce it as /ve'e/ with a slight pause in the middle, then? J I P  &#124; Talk 19:59, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Essentially, yes. Let's stick around for someone to explain this in a more professional manner, though. :) TomorrowTime (talk) 20:06, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You can hear the word pronounced at http://www.forvo.com/search/Wehe/de/. The second e has a schwa sound.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 23:10, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That'd be, then? Or perhaps ? No such user (talk) 09:27, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * (Oops, too late. Heck, I'll post anyway...)
 * The two es are not pronounced the same. The h makes the first one long.  DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)


 * See German phonology, note 2 (permanent link here).
 * —Wavelength (talk) 00:53, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * @No such user: There is no glottal stop between those vowels.  Marco polo (talk) 15:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * And it's rather than . The latter would be the pronunciation of weher.—Emil J. 16:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * And even if there were a glottal stop in it, the symbol for the glottal stop is, not , which is a voiced pharyngeal fricative and AFAIK doesn't exist in German at all (though I wouldn't be too terribly surprised if it turned out some Germans used it as their realization of ). To get back to the original question, in ordinary pronunciation the h is silent, but in hyper-careful pronunciation (e.g. sounding the word out to tell the listener how to spell it, or when you're repeating the word for the 3rd to time to someone who's apparently hard of hearing), speakers might put a /h/ sound in. —Angr (talk) 22:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Grammatical number of plural-sounding place names in Spanish
I'm specifically interested in names like Las Vegas, Las Piñas, Los Melonares, Las Rosales, etc, which originally referred to a number of improper, inanimate nouns. It would be fine to say "Las vegas están acá" or "Los melonares producen melones", but if the term is used as the name of a place, does it not always take a singular verb? So that one says "Las Vegas me gusta porque tiene casinos", not "Las Vegas me gustan porque tienen casinos". I ask because I was watching the Latin American dub of an episide of The Simpsons in which Moe says, in reference to the Simpsons' house, "¡Oigan, me mintieron! ¡Esta no son Las Vegas!" The character is plainly associated with an uneducated, coarse manner of speech, so I'm not asking whether the line is "correct", but rather whether it is common in certain varieties of Spanish to refer to place names the way he does. Might an untutored hispanophone say "Me gusta una ciudad, pero Los Melonares no la son" ? or "Me agradan Dolores pero Las Flores apestan" ? L ANTZY T ALK 23:16, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Tipically, (ciudad de) Las Vegas would call for a singular form of verb. Esto no son las Vegas is better than the quote, but still ungrammatical, I believe. Definitely, "me agrada Dolores pero Las Flores apesta". Pallida  Mors  19:02, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I would translate esta/esto no son Las Vegas as "this are not Las Vegas". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:03, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Google translate says that expression "¡Oigan, me mintieron! ¡Esta no son Las Vegas!" is, "Hey, I lied! This is not Las Vegas!" I wonder if Spanish speakers would even say it that way, with that Americanized expression. More to the point might be, No estamos en Las Vegas (we are not in Las Vegas). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:08, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no way to know if this site would be considered reliable, but they refer to Las Vegas in the singular. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:11, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * According to the wikipedia article, las vegas means "The Meadows", and similarly in English the area in New Jersey called "The Meadowlands" is typically considered singular. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:13, 24 November 2010 (UTC)