Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 May 28

= May 28 =

Dive Live?
This question may have been asked before now, but can anyone explain why "live" (e.g. I live in...) and "dive" are pronounced differently? As a teacher of English to Germans, my students, whose language is much simpler than ours to speak, are not satisfied knowing there are not the same hard and fast pronunciation rules in English as in their language! Any insights would be most welcome.58.175.131.253 (talk) 09:10, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * They're pronounced differently because they have different origins. Live comes from Old English libban, which has a short [ɪ], which has stayed the same vowel ever since. Dive comes from Old English dȳfan, which has a long [y:]. The long [y:] later became [i:], which became the diphthong [aɪ] in the Great Vowel Shift. —Angr (talk) 12:02, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * But "live" rhymes with "dive" when we're talking about live eels or livestock. Alansplodge (talk) 17:27, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Right, because the adjective live is etymologically short for alive, from Old English on līfe, using the noun līf, which has a long vowel, which is why the modern English noun life has the [aɪ] diphthong. —Angr (talk) 17:42, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * They're pronounced differently because they have different origins. That doesn't explain why similar words would be pronounced the same way in German, or in pretty much any European language other than English or French. J I P  &#124; Talk 18:46, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * In fact, English is the only language that I can think of where the etymology, or indeed the meaning, of a word can have any effect on its pronunciation. In every other language that I can understand, or even have encountered, the pronunciation of a word depends only on its written form. English is a language where a word can have several different pronunciations depending on its meaning, even though they are all written exactly identically. I don't know of any other language that does this. And yet English has somehow established itself as the language spoken and understood in most countries. J I P  &#124; Talk 18:52, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * You're putting the cart before the horse. Spoken language is primary, written language is secondary. In all languages, the etymology of a word is what determines its pronunciation (with a few exceptions like spelling pronunciation). The thing about English is that it didn't adapt its spelling to reflect the changes in pronunciation, and that it has some ambiguous spellings. But in other languages (like Finnish, which I know is your native language), it is not the case that "the pronunciation of a word depends only on its written form", but rather that the written form of a word depends on its pronunciation. Still, English is not alone in having a spelling system that's more etymologically based than phonologically based. Faroese and Tibetan also have orthographies that tell you more about how the words used to be pronounced than how they're pronounced today; and most of the silent letters in French (le s li ts son t lai ds ) are there for etymological reasons rather than to indicate the pronunciation. —Angr (talk) 19:44, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I phrased my comment the wrong way. I didn't mean "the written form influenced the pronunciation", I meant "a word that is written one way is only pronounced one way". I don't know of any language other than English where a word that is written one way can be pronounced different ways depending on its meaning. I'm not saying such languages don't exist, but I can't think of any. J I P  &#124; Talk 19:52, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * See homograph and heteronym (linguistics), and the corresponding articles on the other language Wikipedias. Our article mentions several cases in Chinese, and I can also find examples in French (couvent, "convent" / couvent, 3rd person plural of couver, "to sit on eggs"), German (modern, "modern" / modern, "to rot"), and Russian (берег, "coast" / берёг, past tense of беречь). I think you're right, though, that this is most common in English. Lesgles (talk) 20:12, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * There are countless examples in my native Finnish where a word that is written the same way has various different meanings. The comic strip Fingerpori makes extensive use of them. However, the only place where it makes any difference on the pronunciation is if one of the meanings is a compound word and another is not, and that only affects the stress of the syllables, not the actual vowels/consonants pronounced. J I P  &#124; Talk 20:19, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary has heteronyms from a few other languages (Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Latin) at wikt:Category:Heteronyms. Getting back to the OP, who teaches English to Germans, you could point out to them cases in German like Osten/Ostern, Matsch/latsch, Bruch/Buch or (before the 1996 spelling reform) Nuß/Fuß, where the spelling doesn't tell you that the vowels in the words are different. —Angr (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

A large part of what is relevant is that English adopted a standardised spelling in the 15th century, before the Great English vowel shift had run its course, while other languages like Spanish and Russian have undergone more recent spelling reforms meaning their spelling better reflects pronunciation. Prior to this shift, English vowels had been pronounced mostly as in Latin. (The vowels of Chaucer, who wrote before the shift, are pronounced not as in Modern English, but as in French.)  This is somewhat analogous to the much more extreme case of Chinese, where what are separate and mutually incomprehensible spoken Chinese dialects share the same written system. Two English speakers from Brooklyn and Edinburgh can exchange notes while they might not understand a single word the other is saying. Germans simply accept Luther's usage as standard and whatever spelling reforms come down from on high, so much so that written Hochdeutsch is of no use to someone speaking Schwyerduetsch.

Let yours students read and listen to Chaucer at the same time, (But don't let them see the fake you-tube spelling) and they will see that while his spelling is largely modern, his vowels are pure continental. μηδείς (talk) 03:52, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Technically, Angr's explanations for the specific question are on the ball. μηδείς (talk) 03:55, 29 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Here are two examples of words with one spelling but two different pronunciation depending on the meaning, both taken from European languages other than English. Consider these two French sentences:
 * Je veux plus [plys] de café. – "I want more coffee."
 * Je veux plus [ply] de café. – "I don't want any more coffee." (the word ne is often ommited in everyday speech, so the pronunciation of plus is the only indicator of whether the sentence is negative or affirmative)
 * The Polish phrase w ogóle, when used in an affirmative sentence and in a more formal contex, means "in general" and is pronounced [fʔɔˈgulɛ]. In relaxed, everyday speech it is only used in negative sentences to mean "at all", and is then pronounced as [ˈvɔglɛ]. — Kpalion(talk) 11:09, 30 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Consider German umfahren 'knock over' (accent on the first syllable) vs. umfahren 'drive around' (accent on second syllable).--91.12.215.236 (talk) 23:12, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Goethe quote
Goethe is widely quoted (on the web) as saying (presumably in German) "Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them." Unfortunately I cannot find a source for this, so it remains suspect. Does anyone know exactly where this might be found?--Shantavira|feed me 14:24, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * This says it's from the preface to "Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert", about Johann Joachim Winckelmann. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:43, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * You beat me to it. The original German is apparently "Briefe gehören unter die wichtigsten Denkmäler, die der einzelne Mensch hinterlassen kann". Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:46, 28 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Brilliant! Thank you.--Shantavira|feed me 12:28, 29 May 2011 (UTC)