Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 11

= March 11 =

Hindi Help
I'm trying to copy the name of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Hindi, but I have problems with some of the characters when I directly copy it from http://www.fema.gov/pdf/assistance/process/help_after_disaster_hindi.pdf

What is the Hindi name in characters so I can copy-paste the characters? WhisperToMe (talk) 00:12, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * फ़ेडेरल आपातकालीन प्रबंधन एजेंसी 'feḍeral āpātkālīn prabandhan ejensī'. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ   spik ʌp!  01:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 01:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's another. I'm trying to find the Hindi name for the Toronto District School Board. Some Hindi documents I found include: Do any of these contain a Hindi name for the TDSB? WhisperToMe (talk) 05:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/about_us/media_room/docs/Parent%20Survey%20-%20Letter%20From%20Director%20to%20Parents_Hindi.pdf
 * http://schools.tdsb.on.ca/humberwood/docs/ad.pdf
 * http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/about_us/general_asset_and_program_planning__gapp_/docs/Brochure_Hindi%20%282%29.pdf
 * टोरंटो डिस्ट्रिक्ट स्कूल बोर्ड, just the English name in Devanagari letters. --Soman (talk) 18:04, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 21:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Urdu and Lao Help
How do you type the Urdu and Lao names of FEMA? They appears in the first text pages of http://www.fema.gov/pdf/assistance/process/help_after_disaster_urdu.pdf and http://www.fema.gov/pdf/assistance/process/help_after_disaster_laotian.pdf - Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 00:28, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I see فيڈرل ايمرجنسی منيجمنٹ ايجنسی in the Urdu pdf but I think that's just a phonetic transcription of the English name Federal Emergency Management Agency.--Cam (talk) 00:34, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Alright - that works. Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I get ອົງການ ຄວບຄຸມໄພສຸກເສີນລັດຖະບານກາງ when I copy + paste for Lao, but no clue what that is phonetically. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ   spik ʌp!  04:25, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems like the Lao is correct. Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 22:37, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Decreased prosody of speech
A person whose has a speech with decreased prosody. What is the exact meaning/in what sense does the term "prosody" is used. What does the term "prosody" explain with regards to the person's speech? aniketnik 11:22, 11 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniketnik (talk • contribs)


 * See Prosody (linguistics). Roger (talk) 11:49, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Probably means basically "more robotic sounding"... AnonMoos (talk) 19:50, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Latin -ae plurals
Hi. What are the rules for pronouncing the "-ae" ending in plurals from Latin (e.g. "formulae", "tesserae", "antennae", etc.)? The dictionaries I've looked at seem to always give the pronunciation as "-ee" (i.e. rhyming with "tea"). Are other pronunciations (such as pronouncing "antennae" to rhyme with "high", as I do) mistaken? 86.176.212.20 (talk) 12:49, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you asking for the English rendering or a Latin pronunciation? Regarding the latter, there are indeed many renderings. The classic, restituted pronunciation (more or less what we have inferred the Golden Age Latin sounded like) has /ai/ for the ending. As this section shows, both -ae and -oe tended with time to merge into a kind of -ee . On the other hand, English tends to use the classical sound. Pallida  Mors  14:31, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * To clarify my previous post, I meant /ai/ to rhyme with high. And, to my surprise, my dictionary shows the pronunciation of antennae to have a final -ee sound. Pallida  Mors  14:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, having checked some dictionaries maybe I should take back my assesment about the English pronunciation keeping the classical sound. I deleted it, hoping a native speaker can clarify about it. Pallida  Mors  14:43, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * To answer your question, I am asking about the English pronunciation. 86.176.212.20 (talk) 14:52, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The English pronunciations of the Latin endings ae and ī are, respectively, "ee" as in "see" and "igh" as in "sigh". (They are interchanged with respect to their classical pronunciations.)  The pronunciation of the English word vertebrae ends with "ee" as in "see".  I spent only a few minutes in searching online for a supporting reference, but without success.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 15:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I will not disagree that the "correct" English pronunciation of the Latin ending -ae is "-ee" . However, in my experience, the more common pronunciation in the United States is "-ay" .  Marco polo (talk) 15:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The (admittedly somewhat dated) canonical source for "vertebrae" is of course the song The criminal cried from The Mikado:

He shivered and shook as he gave the sign For the stroke he didn't deserve; When all of a sudden his eye met mine, And it seemed to brace his nerve; For he nodded his head and kissed his hand, And he whistled an air, did he, As the sabre true Cut cleanly through His cervical vertebrae, His vertebrae! AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I suggest Mr Gilbert was deliberately using an incorrect rhyming of "vertibrae" with "he" there for added humour. Speaking as a Brit who has both studied Latin at school and maintained a decades-long interest in biology, I have never heard anyone our side of the Pond rhyme "vertibrae" with anything other than "hay" or occasionally "eye". Anglicisations of Latin tend to be erratic, perhaps because different fashions of pronouncing Classical Latin come and go pedagogically (e.g. "Kai-zar" v "Seize'er"), and because different ones become traditional in different specialisms (The Law, Medicine, etc). A. P. Herbert covered both bases in one of his Misleading Cases, in which a newly qualified barrister confuses the elderly judge with "modern" Latin pronunciations, until the judge cogently explains to him why a living technical vocabulary needs to retain its consistency rather than change according to the latest academic notions about 2-millennia-old usages. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 20:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That's vert e brae, not vert i brae (middles are just as important as endings). --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  21:33, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Quite right. Muphry's Law; blind spot :-) . {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 22:21, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that the /eɪ/ ("hay") pronunciation is more common nowadays in vertebrae, but I think the evidence points to the /iː/ ('he") pronunciation being standard (or "correct") up to at least the early decades of the twentieth century. As I understand it, æ and œ were seen as representing the same sound in English as a long e, which after the Great Vowel Shift changed from /eː/ to /iː/. It was only under the influence of Italianate Church Latin (/eː/) and the reconstructed classical pronunciation (/ai/), that confusion began to arise. Note also that in words which were originally spelled with ae, but which now have been simplified to e, /iː/ (hyena, museum, etc.) or sometimes /ɛ/ (estuary). The OED has an interesting discussion on this topic under "ae", and see also this blog post by John Wells.
 * As far as Gilbert goes, I'm sure Gilbert was trying to be humorous, but the fact of trying to rhyme anything with "vertebrae" is humorous in itself. I can't find another poem with "vertebrae", but compare these decidedly non-humorous verses from Byron, with the "he" rhyme: "Who made that bold diversion / In old Thermopylæ, / And warring with the Persian / To keep his country free". Lesgles (talk) 22:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree the proper traditional English Latin pronunciation of long  is "-ee", as in Caesar and antennae. Daniel Jones' Phonetic Dictionary of the English language (1913) gives , his English pronouncing dictionary (eleventh edition of 1956, reprinted in 1958) gives first and the other versions in brackets, with /ei/ last. The /ai/ (high)) version is restored Classical pronunciation, but the /ei/ (hay) version is just some kind of misunderstanding (in origin; of course, people are free to pronounce it as they wish).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:30, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. And even today I don't think anyone would pronounce Thermopylae rhyming with "hay".--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:32, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As for the place of restored classical pronunciation - my personal opinion is that it's appropriate when you actually speak Latin (in a Classical context), but its extension into the modern spoken language is about as justified as pronouncing Paris as Pa-REE - even more so in Neo-Latin words unrelated to the Classical period. One might as well start referring to civilization as kiwi-lization.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:50, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Male graduates are alumni; each one of them is a guy.
 * Female graduates are alumnae; each one of them is a "she".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 20:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * ... but they swap these gender sounds (alumni rhymes with he) in the Latin that some of us were taught (and much earlier than the 1990s (see below) ).   D b f i r s   19:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * There's also somewhat of a generation gap between different pronunciation schemes. When I learned Latin in the U.S. in the late 1990's, I learned a version that Pallida_Mors alluded to above: -i sounds like flea, -ae sounds like high. This short NYT article also shows that a certain amount of personal preference determines how it'll actually sound coming out of the user's mouth. To use Justice Breyer's example, I'd Anglicize amicus in "amicus brief" to rhyme with abacus, but if the entire phrase amicus curiae is needed, I'd pronounce it a-ME-kuss (like wuss) KOO-ree-igh.  Vertebrae VER-t-bray doesn't sound wrong to me, but that's I think because it's pretty much a well-rounded English word at this point (it's been in the language long enough to lose its foreign accent, so to speak).   ☯.Zen  Swashbuckler  .☠  22:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * ...and rolling the R's makes everything lots more fun to say. ☯.Zen  Swashbuckler  .☠  22:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * When I was at school, my maths and chemistry teachers always referred to "for-mule-ee", but that sounds very outdated now. They might not even teach formulae these days, for all I know.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  23:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * There are three pronunciations for vertebrae at wikt:vertebrae. See also http://www.onelook.com/?w=vertebrae&ls=a.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 00:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Cambodian/Khmer help
What is the Cambodian name of FEMA? The name should be in the http://web.archive.org/web/20061016185946/http://www.fema.gov/pdf/media/2006/cam_gen_guide.pdf document ... WhisperToMe (talk) 22:40, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I cannot read Cambodian, but if you look on those two pages you will see FEMA (in English) appearing a number of times (twice in the phone number, but other times besides that). It is possible that it is written like this in Cambodian. Words on either side of each occurrence of FEMA are different, except for two instances where the previous two words/phrases are the same, leading me to believe that there are no Cambodian versions of FEMA there. Of course, you will need someone to confirm this. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  19:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Italian
Hi. I currently speak French and English fluently and I speak Spanish pretty well too. I would like to be able understand written Italian, but unfortunately I don't have the time to study Italian formally :( Just to get me started though, what are some "cognate patterns"/similarities between Italian and French/Spanish, and what are the basics that I need to at least make out the gist of written Italian on the occasions when I encounter it? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 23:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There are too many of them to quickly summarize. Pick up an Italian newspaper.  You'll probably be able to read most of it (one nice surprise when I got back from Italy was that I could read the Mexican papers), and it'll start you on picking up the regular differences. --Trovatore (talk) 23:28, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Just a couple that I can think of off the top of my head, though: Generally a Spanish word that has ct between two vowels will correspond to a double-t in Italian (exacto vs  esatto).  A lot of Spanish consonants will get doubled in Italian (and Italian pronounces doubled consonants distinctively, which I think Spanish doesn't), or li may turn into gli between two vowels.  Medial gli is essentially the same sound as medial Spanish ll (by speakers who don't just pronounce the latter as a y), maybe a little more voiced. --Trovatore (talk) 00:07, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * One that's a little surprising at first: Latin , which generally survives as  in French and Italian, usually became  in Spanish. So Sp "hacer" = It. "facere", Sp. "hijo" = It. "figlio". --ColinFine (talk) 00:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * (Actually, facere is Latin. Italian is fare, although the middle syllable survives in some derived forms, like the imperfect facevo.) --Trovatore (talk) 01:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Legend has it that T. S. Eliot taught himself Italian by translating the whole Divina Commedia into English with only a modern Tuscan dictionary to help. Snopes.com has no info on this assertion.--Shirt58 (talk) 10:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey, that's one I never noticed! I had just memorized those.  Thanks.
 * Also brings up another regularity: Medial j in Spanish sometimes corresponds to Italian gli:  ajo &mdash; aglio. --Trovatore (talk) 01:29, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll throw in another one: Italian  = Spanish = French <ét>: stato/estado/état, stabilire/establecer/établir, etc. Lesgles (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * And Stefano/Esteban/Étienne. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  23:53, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Though this includes Portuguese, (some) Latin words starting with "cl...", "fl...", or "pl..." are interesting when compared with their cognates in daughter languages. In French the first two letters remain the same. In Spanish they get replaced by "ll". In Portuguese by "ch". In Italian, only the "l" gets replaced by a "i" (in terms of pronunciation anyway).
 * Example
 * {| class="wikitable"

! Latin|| French || Spanish || Portuguese || Italian
 * clamare || clamer || llamar || chamar || chiamare
 * flamma || flamme || llama || chama || fiamma
 * plicare || plier || llegar || chegar || piegare
 * }
 * See also David Brodsky, Spanish Vocabulary: An Etymological Approach, University of Texas Press, 2008, ---Sluzzelin talk  00:19, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
 * plicare || plier || llegar || chegar || piegare
 * }
 * See also David Brodsky, Spanish Vocabulary: An Etymological Approach, University of Texas Press, 2008, ---Sluzzelin talk  00:19, 13 March 2011 (UTC)