Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 May 12

= May 12 =

Toe heal?
Translating Jefferey Deaver's Edge, I found the sentence as follows:

Then she said coyly, "You have to let that toe heal."

'She' is the assistant of the speaker, and the speaker is suffering from his scraped toe.

But there seems to be another meaning than the literal one, for the speaker takes it as a joke. What can it be? --Analphil (talk) 07:49, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps walking "toe to heel" (the toe of one shoe against the heel of the next, repeatedly), sometimes used to roughly measure dimensions ? StuRat (talk) 07:54, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * (ec) Probably a just play on the homophones heal/heel. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:56, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Republics and democracies in Modern Greek
The Modern Greek word for "republic" appears to be δημοκρατία dhimokratía, as in el:Δημοκρατία της Κίνας (Dhimokratía tis Kínas = Republic of China) and el:Δημοκρατία της Ιρλανδίας (Dhimokratía tis Irlandhías = Republic of Ireland). Yet el:Δημοκρατία is linked to Democracy, so by itself δημοκρατία also seems to mean "democracy". So how does Modern Greek distinguish between "democracy" and "republic", two terms which are far from synonyms? How would you express in Modern Greek that Great Britain is a democracy but not a republic, while North Korea is a republic but not a democracy? —Angr (talk) 11:34, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't exactly know this, but the Democratic Republic of the Congo is called Λαϊκή Δημοκρατία του Κονγκό in Greek, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is Λαοκρατική Δημοκρατία της Κορέας.
 * My bilingual dictionary gives δημοκρατία for "republic" and both δημοκρατία and λαοκρατία for "democracy". On the other hand, δημοκρατία is translated as "democracy; republic" and λαοκρατία is "people's rule".
 * See:
 * λαός
 * λαϊκός, λαϊκή, λαϊκό
 * λαοκρατία
 * λαοκρατικός, λαοκρατική, λαοκρατικό
 * --Theurgist (talk) 12:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Question about /ɛ/
On the Wikipedia page Open-mid front unrounded vowel I listened to the sound file, and in my ear it is not at all what I would expect, either from the General American sound as in "bed" or in the French sound in "flèche". I understand that part of the difference is muscular tension, but also I think the vowel sound is off. It sounds very similar to the close-mid front unrounded vowel recording. Is this just my ear (the lack of muscular tension throwing me off), or is the recording not accurate? I left a note on that talk page, but thought I'd also ask here. Falconus p t   c 16:17, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * On second review, it doesn't sound as similar to the /e/, but nevertheless, I still am not sure that it is right. Falconus p t   c 16:22, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * If anything, I'd say it's more open than it should be, i.e. closer to /æ/ than to cardinal /ɛ/. The creaky voice doesn't really help matters either. —Angr (talk) 17:13, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * According to Hillenbrand et al, for the average male speaker of "American English" (averaged over 45 males), the first formant of [ɛ] is 580 Hz, and the second formant is 1799 Hz. I measured the F1 and F2 of the sound file on the open-mid front unrounded vowel article with Praat, which gave F1=565Hz and F2=1930Hz, so the F2 value is significantly different from the typical AmEng [ɛ] and approaches AmEng [æ] (F2 of [æ] is 1952Hz according to Hillenbrand et al), as Angr mentioned. So, basically, it's not the best recording for that vowel, assuming AmEng [ɛ] is a faithful realization of a language-indifferent [ɛ]. A note to phoneticians: it may seem wrong that the F2 of AmEng [æ] is greater than the F2 of [ɛ], since we normally think of [ɛ] being more front than [æ], but that's not what Hillenbrand et al found. --el Aprel (facta-facienda) 04:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It sounds fine to me. Of course the creakiness at the end is awkward, but you can't expect it to be pronounced completely naturally (at least not by an English speaker, given that this vowel can't be in an open syllable in English). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 04:13, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd like to redo it, but I have no functional microphone at the moment, and I don't entirely trust myself to get it right, as Rjanag hinted at, it's a little weird for me to just say /ɛ/. Anybody else interested? Falconus p  t   c 05:53, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * If it's weird to just say [ɛ], you can record a phrase like "Say bed again" and then cut out everything except the [ɛ] of bed. —Angr (talk) 07:37, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Some accents (Australian and Southern English, I think) are said to have a pure [ɛː] in SQUARE words, even in open syllables. Oxford Dictionaries gives "air" as /ɛː/, and "square" as /skwɛː/. Lfh (talk) 10:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I've recorded a new version and uploaded it. I think the vowel was actually right on in the previous version, but the creaky voice was a bit irritating. To me the recording that's off is the one at close-mid front unrounded vowel, it sounds a little bit too open for me. --Terfili (talk) 20:20, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

"Tuttavia"?
I was reading the Italian Wikipedia article it:Cucina finlandese (from an interwiki link at Finnish cuisine) and was amazed at having found a Finnish word: tuttavia (roughly meaning "some friends/acquaintances"). But then I came to think that it might actually be an Italian word. If so, what does it mean? J I P &#124; Talk 18:49, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It means anyway, and it's constructed exactly the same way -- tutta = "any" (well, actually, "all", but close enough), via = "way". --Trovatore (talk) 18:51, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * That, or |en|tuttavia "however". --dragfyre_ ʞןɐʇ c 18:53, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, however and anyway are pretty much synonyms in context. --Trovatore (talk) 18:54, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

French adjectives
Hello all. In school I was taught that in French (as in any Romance language) adjectives always come after the noun except for certain special adjectives such as bon, grand, petit, vieux, etc. However, reading what I like to call "daily use French", ie texts written by and for native speakers, and listening to speech, I find that often in practice many adjectives beyond these exceptions (which we called "BAGS") may come before the noun. What are the "real" (non-pedagogical) rules governing which adjectives can go where? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 22:17, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, aside from the possibility that sometimes native speakers don't speak or write "properly" (in French as much as in English), a lot of French adjectives can go on either side of the noun, which then changes the meaning. For example, "une église ancienne" means "an old church" but "une ancienne église" means "the former church" (e.g. a building that used to be a church but is now something else). "Une certaine chose" means "something", "anything", but "une chose certaine" means "a sure thing", "a definite thing". Adam Bishop (talk) 08:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's difficult to give general rules, and there are cases when even the BAGS adjectives can come after the noun, e.g. whereas "un bon médecin" means a doctor who is good at his/her job, "un médecin bon" means a doctor who is a good person. For individual adjectives, you can look at the examples given in a French monolingual dictionary (such as http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/). You might also take a look at fr:Syntaxe de l'adjectif en français or this Comprehensive French Grammar, p. 107. Lesgles (talk) 20:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Very,very difficult. In my French grammar (Grevisse — Le Bon Usage, Duculot 12th ed. 1986), The "position of the epithet" takes about 20 pages. The beginning of the section 318 gives some insigth.
 * L'épithète peut, soit précéder immédiatement le nom, soit le suivre immédiatement, soit être séparée, détachée. [...] La postposition est l'ordre le plus fréquent : dans la documentation littéraire rassemblée par M. Wilmet et qui contient 29 016 épithètes, dont 3 835 adjectifs différents, 1° l'épithète est antéposée une fois sur trois ; — 2° un adjectif sur vingt préfère l'antéposition ; mais les adjectifs qui privilégient l'antéposition sont les plus courants. Si on envisageait des sources non littéraires et surtout des sources orales (de la région parisienne), [...] quelques adjectifs sont antéposés ; les autres presque toujours postposés. La langue littéraire [...] s'écarte souvent de l'usage ordinaire. D'autre part, il y a des différences importantes entre le français central et les usages régionaux, tantôt à propos de cas particuliers, tantôt d'une façon générale [...].
 * Sorry no time to translate. — AldoSyrt (talk) 19:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC)