Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 February 1

= February 1 =

thesaurus-partner
Looking for an unusual word (or perhaps short phrase) to refer to a partner, as in a romantic relationship sort of partner, preferably something slightly exotic and foreign sounding. Any thoughts?

148.197.81.179 (talk) 03:39, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Paramour. |utmccn=%28organic%29|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=hammering%20out%20smoke-filled%20room&__utmv=-&__utmk=155393211 Here's a bunch more. Bus stop (talk) 03:51, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * As stated in that online dictionary definition, the primary meaning of "paramour" is an illicit lover of a married person. The word should therefore be used with care. --Viennese Waltz 08:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * POSSLQ ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Mitch Hedberg once said of such a relationship "I don't have a girlfriend, but there is this one chick that get's gets really pissed whenever I say that". -- Jayron  32  06:55, 1 February 2012 (UTC)edit: major correction has been applied to this post.  If the post confused you into taking advice or action based on the gross misuse of an apostrophe, please re-read it and take appropriate corrective action so that the universe does not end.  It is of vital importance.  -- Jayron  32  18:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * "that get's"? This is the language desk, after all :P 92.80.62.93 (talk) 15:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:54, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Terribly sorry about that. I have corrected my error.  Thank you so much for pointing that out, and I genuinely appreciate your efforts to keep Wikipedia accurate and correct.  Please keep up the good work.  -- Jayron  32  18:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It was in small font, and I even went through the trouble of adding a ":P" at the end... Sheesh, learn how to take a joke. 92.80.62.93 (talk) 22:23, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I took the joke just fine. But when jokes are returned to you, you apparently don't like it very much.  -- Jayron  32  02:46, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Inamorata or inamorato. Clarityfiend (talk) 11:10, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * For more exotic, you could have a look at the translations of lover in Wiktionary. Perhaps Swahili mpensi, or Scottish Gaelic leannan? Or, if you want to sound like Chaucer, you could use leman, though you run the risk of sounding as if you are calling the person a citrus fruit. Lesgles (talk) 18:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

So paramour is awkward, POSSLQ wouldn't be apropriate, and I am wary of random foreign words that just sound foreign and could mean anything. Inamorato I like, though, if it is a bit long. Guess I'll look through the list of translations and see what seems nice. unless more thoughts are forthcoming... 148.197.81.179 (talk) 21:10, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * How about "significant other"? Meelar (talk) 22:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Or if you want Japanese, how about 'mai kanojo' (or if there is two of them, the second can be called 'mai anazaa kanojo')? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:32, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * A "fling". Bus stop (talk) 03:16, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Most and least common phonemes
Which phonemes are in the most languages? What about the least? --108.225.115.211 (talk) 23:02, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * /p/ /t/ /k/ /m/ /n/ and the vowels /a/ and /e/ and /o/ (variations of which are /i/ and /u/ respectively) are in most languages. Ones which are rare are /θ/, /ð/, and the click sounds of Zulu and Xhosa and the Bushmen languages. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:23, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Alveolar trill is thought to be a phoneme unique to Czech and sj-sound is thought to be a phoneme unique to Swedish. (Follow the links to see more details about those.) Outside Europe, along with the click consonants that KageTora mentioned, you will also find "unusual things such as a labiodental flap", as an article calls it. --Theurgist (talk) 01:24, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Back Of The Neck Of A Pig
What is that meat called in English? In Hungarian it's 'tarja', which GT helpfully translates as 'pork'. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:16, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If you take a look at our article Pork, you will see charts of the various pork cuts as identified in British and American English. I don't think the back of the neck is a standard cut in North America, but I've found recipes on North American web sites for "pork neck".  In butchering terms, I think that this is considered a subdivision of the shoulder.  In British English, it is apparently called a "spare rib roast" even though it doesn't include any ribs.  Marco polo (talk) 23:42, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Boston butt or Boston shoulder seem to be the closest in American cuts. I also found this from a British site which identifies the area as the '[pork] collar' or '[pork] neck'.--  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   23:51, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Talmudic Aramaic, of all languages, has a precise name for this cut of pork - קתלי דחזירי. Ratzd&#39;mishukribo (talk) 03:47, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * We have an article on the back of the neck, but it has nothing on cuts of meat... AnonMoos (talk) 04:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Is 'tarja' mostly fat? If so, the English term would be 'clear plate'.--Itinerant1 (talk) 21:53, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Languages with the most phonemes
Which language has the most consonants? What about the most vowels? --108.225.115.211 (talk) 23:39, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Some languages of the Caucasus, like Abkhaz (phonology), and of Africa, like Margi, feature very large numbers of separate consonantal phonemes. As for the vowels, I was going to suggest Finnish and Estonian, but I'm reading that "Long vowels are phonemically perceived as two identical vowels in succession and vowel length is not understood as a phonemic quality in Finnish such as vowel height" and "Because short vowels [in Estonian] have similar formant values, long vowels are considered sequences of short values rather than separate phonemes" - that could mean that those two languages don't quite qualify as languages having enormous vowel inventories, although I'd be grateful to anyone who clarifies these sentences further as I myself somewhat don't fully grasp what they mean. --Theurgist (talk) 01:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Off the top of my head, Marathi also has a large consonant inventory, due in part to its four-way contrast in stops. I assume typologically related languages such as Hindi also have large inventories. rʨ anaɢ (talk) 01:32, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Swedish has one of the more extensive vowel inventories. (@Theurgist: In Estonian and Finnish, what nonnative speakers perceive as long vowels are not considered distinct from their component short vowels by native speakers; rather, they are considered to consist of a sequence of short vowels.) Marco polo (talk) 01:42, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * That's fine but then why does the IPA denote them like "genuine" long vowels, instead of transcribing Espoo as , Eero Saarinen as , Järvenpää as and eesti keel as , regardless of the fact that some non-native speakers might perceive them in some other way? I've seen this elsewhere too, for example in Gençlerbirliği S.K. , where the possessive ending -i of birliği (< birlik) surely does create another syllable. It is known that Chinese and Japanese learners of English are often unable to perceive that [ɹ] and [l]/[ɫ] are two different sounds, let alone to articulate them differently in their speech, but I believe no Chinese or Japanese textbook claims that English "r" and "l" are identical. After all, the vowel and consonant inventories, the phonological processes and the phonotactical restrictions of any language are rooted in the brains of its native speakers, even though native speakers themselves might not be consciously aware of those things, and linguistics does not invent or define those things but just studies and explains them from a native speaker's viewpoint... --Theurgist (talk) 03:15, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That may apply to Japanese, but I don't think it applies to Chinese. Standard Beijing Putonghua clearly distinguishes /l/ as in 路 (lù, road), realized unambiguously as [l], and /r/ in 入 (rù, to enter), the latter of which may be realized as either [ɻ] or [ʐ] depending on the speaker. 24.92.85.35 (talk) 04:07, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * A Chinese think ri and li are different but Beer and Bill are the same.--刻意(Kèyì) 18:55, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's not true. For a Chinese speaker of a non-rhotic variety of English, "Beer" is like "bee-uh", "Bill" is like "bee-oh" - or, pinyinised - "bi'e" and "bi'ou" respectively. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Mandarin Chinese does not have sounds [ɹ]/[ɻ] (which correspond to "r" in English), and English does not have the weird [ɻ]/[ʐ]/[ʒ] crossover that is denoted "r" in Pinyin. So it's a wash. --Itinerant1 (talk) 09:26, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Spoken Wikipedia has at least one article recorded with a Chinese accent: Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (recording here). --Theurgist (talk) 05:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Apparently, Sedang may be the language with the world's largest vowel inventory. Marco polo (talk) 01:56, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Some of the Khoi-San languages have large consonant inventories... AnonMoos (talk) 02:07, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * From my Google search for "Languages with the most phonemes", the first result was http://www.vistawide.com/languages/language_statistics.htm, which mentions the extinct language Ubyx (81 consonant sounds) and the living language !Xóõ (77 consonant sounds and 31 vowel sounds).
 * —Wavelength (talk) 19:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)