Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 August 24

= August 24 =

zero article?
why the sentence:

We do not want a single foot of foreign territory; but of our territory we shall not surrender a single inch to anyone.

is not like this:

We do not want a single foot of a foreign territory; but of our territory we shall not surrender a single inch to anyone.

Exx8 (talk) 00:57, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Both sentences are fine grammatically. The first is more general, treating foreign territory as an unspecified substance.  The second is saying we do not want the territory of some specific but unnamed foreign country.  It comes across as a strangely specific denial, almost like Bagdad Bob saying, "the Americans have not invaded, and we have defeated them", or, "we may want foreign territory, but the foreign territory we want isn't the territory of any one specific country." μηδείς (talk) 01:07, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * See the Wikipedia article "Mass noun".—Wavelength (talk) 01:26, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * "I have nothing to say, and I'm saying it". --  ♬ Jack of Oz  ♬ [your turn]  01:28, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, to expand on wavelength's comment, the difference is that in the first sentence, foreign territory is an unspecified substance like land or air or water or soup, while in the second sentence a territory is a specific defined province of some country, like a plot of land or a bowl of soup. The second denial is still strange, because one would tell a waiter who said your meal came with soup, "I don't want soup", not "I don't want a bowl of soup". μηδείς (talk) 03:27, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The first version is the way a native English speaker would likely say it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:52, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The OP seems aware of that, and asked why. —Tamfang (talk) 23:42, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Plot of Chinese movie
Can someone summarize the plot of this movie: ? I'm trying to write a new article about it but it seems there are very few non-Chinese sources talking about it. DHN (talk) 07:42, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * You might try reposting this on the entertainment page. μηδείς (talk) 01:55, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm just asking for a translation from the Chinese page linked. No viewing of the film is necessary. DHN (talk) 04:43, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

"Ahom" in Assamese script
I'm contemplating doing some clean up and expansion of the articles related to Ahom people and Ahom language. Can somebody give me the Assamese spelling of "Ahom" (or how the modern Ahom people refer to themselves in Assamese, written in Assamese script). I can't seem to find it anywhere. It is अहोम in Hindi, but a letter for letter transcription to Assamese (আহঔম or অহঔম) yields no results.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 18:56, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Nevermind. I found my mistake (coffee's not kicking in yet). I was using the independent ঔ instead of the combining form. আহোম gave me what I wanted.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 19:40, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

How to pronounce inuktitut sounds (syllables) ᔨ, ᔩ (ji), ᔪ, ᔫ (ju), ᔭ and ᔮ (ja )?
How to pronounce inuktitut sounds (syllables) ᔨ, ᔩ (ji), ᔪ, ᔫ (ju), ᔭ and ᔮ (ja )? The article Inuktitut syllabics says that these syllables are pronounced as ji, ju, ja. OK, but how to pronounce English "j" in this cases? As ʤ or as ɪa (ya)?

All ukrainian geographical atlasses render inuktitut -juk or -juak (means “asland”) as –джук (-ʤuk) and –джуак (-ʤuak). For example Амаджуак (Amadjuak Lake),  Інукджуак (Inukjuak), Кангіксуджуак (Kangiqsujuaq), Івуджівік  (Ivujivik). In all this examples Ukrainian -дж- is equal to English ʤ.

But I think it is may be not right to pronounce inuktitut sounds (syllables) ᔨ ᔩ, ᔪ ᔫ,   ᔭ ᔮ  as ʤi, ʤu ʤa.

For example inuktitut ᓴᓂᕋᔭᒃ is Sanirajak Sa-nee-ra-yak but not Sa-nee-ra-ʤak. Blast furnace chip worker (talk) 21:36, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Why are you working from the syllabics at the first place ? All syllabics can be transliterated directly into roman alphabet, wouldn't that be easier ? You can read this. I don't know anything specific about the mentioned syllables (or any others). Amqui (talk) 22:12, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * So how to pronounce English "j" in transliterations? As ʤ or as ɪa (ya)? That is my question. Blast furnace chip worker (talk) 22:45, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The chart at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/inuktitut.htm uses IPA symbols, including [j], which is pronounced like English consonantal . Ukrainian evidently does not conform to that pronunciation.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 22:59, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * No, the Ukrainian has no problem with pronunciation of . We have sound й which is equal to . Examples of transliteration: yes = йес, yellow = йеллоу, New York = Нью-Йорк.


 * Let's take these geographical objects Amadjuak Lake, Inukjuak, Kangiqsujuaq,   Ivujivik. How do English-native speeker pronounce sound j in these words? How do Inuktitut-native speeker pronounce sound j in these words? I almost understood the right pronunciation on inuktitut is Amad-y-uak Lake,  Inuk-y-uak, Kangiqsu-y-uaq, Ivu-y-ivik but not Amad-ʤ-uak Lake, Inuk-ʤ-uak, Kangiqsu-ʤ-uaq, Ivu-ʤ-ivik. Am I right? And is there sound ʤ in inuktitut? Blast furnace chip worker (talk) 00:24, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I did not deny the presence of [j] in Ukrainian. I said that Ukrainian evidently does not conform to that pronunciation, that is to say, for the consonantal part of the Inuktitut symbols ("ᔨ, ᔩ (ji), ᔪ, ᔫ (ju), ᔭ and ᔮ (ja )") in the names mentioned in the original post.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 00:54, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Inuit phonology says only one of "the Nunavut dialects of Inuktitut" has /ɟ/ (≈ʤ); in all others it has merged with /j/. —Tamfang (talk) 23:39, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry for trouble but I have to ask you about is /j/ equal to sound /j/ in yellow ['jeləu] or to the sound j in the word job? Though, I think first variant is right and I am almost near to the positive solution of the problem. Blast furnace chip worker (talk) 00:46, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * /j/ is, confusingly enough for native English speakers, a Palatal approximant. So yellow is the correct word from the two examples you gave. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 01:10, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It seems the Ukranian atlases are basing their pronunciation on English, not Inuit or the IPA. Go with j="y", not j=/dʒ/. μηδείς (talk) 04:08, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, you are right, the Ukranian atlases are basing their pronunciation on English, not Inuit as I understend now. But that is not peculiarity of the Ukranian atlases only. I can tell Russian atlases have the same specificity. Blast furnace chip worker (talk) 08:34, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, that is about of Greek? Blast furnace chip worker (talk) 08:41, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * As Tamfang said, some varieties of the Inuit dialect continuum have /ɟ/, which sounds very much like /ʤ/, so it's not necessarily the case that Ukrainian is getting its spelling through English. For one, why would they do this? For another, Russian-speakers contacted speakers of Eskimo-Aleut languages around the same time that English-speakers did, so I see no reason why there wouldn't be an independent Slavistic tradition of transcribing Inuktitut, which would carry over into Ukrainian. Cevlakohn (talk) 08:56, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * H'm.  Don't complicate it. I think that Ukrainian and Russian are getting their spelling of inuit settlements through English.  I think it was this way. Some russian (soviet) geographer has took some atlas or map of Canada on the English language and jast translated or transliterated English names of inuit settlements to the Russian. Then ukrainian geographer received russian  and english atlases or maps of Canada and has done the same to the Ukrainian. Blast furnace chip worker (talk) 18:55, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Ja tizh tak dumam. μηδείς (talk) 02:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I am unaware of any such distinction between /j/ and /ɟ/ or /dʒ/ in any Eskimo dialect, the neutralization of which could be described as a merger. There is no such distinction or merger in Proto-Eskimo-Aleut or in Fortescue's reconstruction. I am also unaware of any normal historical development from dzh > y in any natural language, although the reverse is obviously attested. μηδείς (talk) 23:10, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Confusing
At present the article Shavian alphabet reads, "Most dialectical variations of English pronunciation can be regularly produced from this spelling, but those who do not make certain distinctions, particularly in the vowels, find it difficult to spontaneously produce the canonical spellings."

Does this mean that all Shavian words must be spelled as in British English, regardless of dialect, or that some free spelling is permitted (though all must still spell "caught" as 𐑒𐑷𐑑)? Pokajanje &#124;Talk 21:38, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I assume it means that there's a standardized "diaphonemic" spelling (as with the Initial Teaching Alphabet, another effort from the same era). AnonMoos (talk) 02:28, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * But even though I pronounce "fast" /fæst/, must I spell it 𐑓𐑭𐑕𐑑? Pokajanje &#124;Talk 03:35, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The symbols all come out as question marks in my browser... AnonMoos (talk) 04:21, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * So then you need to download a Shavian font. V85 (talk) 08:35, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * If I had any great interest in the matter and/or were confident that my operating system and browser could handle beyond-BMP Unicode fonts, then I might do so. It would have been helpful for Pokajanje not to format his question in a way which requires the installation of esoteric fonts to answer it... AnonMoos (talk) 12:48, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Here are the two words shown using images: Pokajanje &#124;Talk 16:09, 25 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I am in no way an expert on Shavian, so take this with a grain of salt. The article doesn't say anything about what the 'canonical way' of writing Shavian as, neither does it say which types of English are better suited to be written which Shavian. As the goal of Shavian is to provide a way to write English phonetically, it would seem to me that the way in which you speak English should also be the way in which you write it. I.e. if you speak a variety of American English, you should write it as you would pronounce it. This will mean that English written in Shavian might give very different results, depending on your accent, than do the traditional UK vs. US spellings. Givan that Shavian is a very little used system of writing for English, I don't think that there is any fixed or highly regularised system of spelling for it (which, incidentally, might be a weakness for the whole system). V85 (talk) 16:52, 26 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, most previous English-language spelling-reform efforts (including the contemporaneous Initial Teaching Alphabet I mentioned before) do not allow words to be written differently based on low-level sound-correspondences between different dialects (though truly different pronunciations, such as aluminum vs. aluminium etc. may be accomodated). AnonMoos (talk) 18:50, 26 August 2012 (UTC)


 * As for cot/caught, it's fairly common where some dialects merge two sounds, but many other dialects retain them distinct, for the unmerged pronunciation (which preserves old distinctions) to be taken as the basis for a language's orthography in that particular respect. I don't see any great problem with this.  The "fast" case is more objectionable, since the other pronunciation merely has a different distribution of sounds (instead of preserving distinctions which are merged in your own dialect).  Probably the answer is that if you want to strictly follow early-1960's Shavian practices, then, then you should emulate the specially-published bi-scriptal edition of Androcles and the Lion (which seems to be the main guide to the details of the application of Shavian script).  If you don't care about that, then you can do whatever you want... AnonMoos (talk) 18:50, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

AAAT Speed index pronounciation
Is the Speed index pronounced "ay-ay-ay-tee" or "triple-ay-tee"? The pronounciation determined if we write 'a AAAT' or 'an AAAT'. Regards, Sun Creator(talk) 22:21, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I doubt it matters too much, though I would guess the latter. Pokajanje &#124;Talk 03:35, 25 August 2012 (UTC)