Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 February 20

= February 20 =

Japanese name of Swiss agency
http://www.uus.admin.ch//pdf/10072300_SB.pdf has the Japanese name of a Swiss accident investigation agency, the UUS. What is the Japanese text? WhisperToMe (talk) 00:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * スイス連邦政府鉄道船舶事故調査委員会 Oda Mari (talk) 06:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Mari! WhisperToMe (talk) 08:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This is the most common Japanese translation for the UUS:
 * 連邦政府の鉄道船舶事故調査委員会
 * スイス Swiss (su-i-su)
 * 連邦 federation
 * 政府 government
 * の "政府の" means "the government's"
 * 鉄道 railroad
 * 船舶 ship
 * 事故 accident
 * 調査 investigation
 * 委員会 commission


 * -- Toytoy (talk) 09:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info and explanation! It's interesting that the official Swiss page does not have the "no" but the more common translation does WhisperToMe (talk) 18:10, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's becuase the former is formulated as a formal name, putting the "Federal government" into the title, as if it was named "The Swiss Federal Government Investigation Bureau...", whereas the altter occurs as part of a longer sentence, where the "Federal government" part is a descriptor and not treated as part of the name, roughly equivalent to saying "the UUS of the Swiss Federal Government". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:39, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Arabic name of Egyptian agency
What is the Arabic text that is the Arabic name of the "ECAA" - See the logo on the first page inside http://web.archive.org/web/20060214062337/http://www.ntsb.gov/events/ea990/docket/ecaa_report.pdf

Thank you WhisperToMe (talk) 01:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It says " الهيئة المصرية العامة للطيران المدنى". Adam Bishop (talk) 09:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Adam! WhisperToMe (talk) 18:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Chinese help
In 暗坑仔 - The first two are Ànkēng but is the third "zai" or "zi"? It's an old name for Xindian District. Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 06:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Generally, in Taiwan, "仔" usually pronounce "zai3". However, it is supposed to be pronounced "zi3" if you consult a dictionary. The number is for Chinese intonation.


 * "暗坑仔" (an4 keng1 zai3/zi3, dark + pit + little) is the traditional name for today's "安坑" (an1 keng1) -- a neighborhood in Xindian, New Taipei City, Taiwan.


 * The word "仔" usually means a kid or a little thing.


 * "牛仔" (cowboy, niu2 zai3/zi3). Literally: 牛 bovine + 仔 kid.


 * "仔牛" (calf, zai3/zi3 niu2). Literally: 仔 little + 牛 bovine.


 * "豬仔" (pig, zhu1 zai3/zi3). Usually a colloquial from of the pig, regardless of age and size.


 * "豬仔議員" (corrupted legislator, zhu1 zai3/zi3 yi4 yuan2). A legislator who sold his/her vote to the powers that be.


 * "狗仔隊" (paparazzi, go3 zai3/zi3 dui4). Literally: 狗 dog + 仔 little + 隊 team


 * "星仔" (Cantonese: sing zai) A nickname for Stephen Chow of Kung Fu Hustle while he was a young and inexperienced movie star. Now they all call him "星爺" (Grandmaster Sing).


 * "仔仔" (kiddie), a young adult actor in Taiwan is known by this stupid nickname.


 * In fact, this word is much more frequently used in Cantonese than in Mandarin Chinese.


 * Cantonese: 公仔 (a doll), 衰仔樂園 (sucker's land, Hong Kong's title for South Park) -- Toytoy (talk) 12:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the info! I think what I'll do is have both the "written" and "spoken" forms indicated in the Pinyin. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:12, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's not quite correct - Toytoy, it is not responsible to say "if you consult a dictionary..." when clearly you have not. The distinction is not that "仔" is pronounced zi when spoken and zai when written - that makes no sense since modern Chinese is "read as spoken". "仔" has three readings, each of which has a different meaning.
 * The most common pronunciation is "zǎi", which is a word which generally means "a young person or animal", and can in compound mean things like "cowboy" (when placed after "cow"), "piglet" (when placed after "pig"), "girl" (when placed after "female"), etc, usually used in a compound noun.
 * A second, less common pronunciation is "zǐ", which means "small" or "fine", as an adjective.
 * Finally, a third, archaic pronunciation is "zī", which means "to shoulder responsibility".
 * When used as part of a geographic name, the character is almost certainly pronounced using the first pronunciation, and unless there is some evidence that it is locally read with either of the two less common readings, I would go with zǎi. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, PalaceGuard! I'll modify the page accordingly WhisperToMe (talk) 20:32, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I think he could use a "fishing area"

 * http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2103311/Thierry-Henry-fish-tank-Arsenal-striker-plans-rebuild-6m-home.html
 * http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/02/18/article-0-11CD744C000005DC-317_634x487.jpg


 * "Honey, what do we have for dinner?"
 * "Fish! Freshly caught fish!"


 * "If you don't like baked Nemo, I can get you Dory, sweetheart ..."

Seriously, what are the differences between a study and the "reading area"? -- Toytoy (talk) 08:52, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The differences will depend on your level of pretentiousness. Richard Avery (talk) 09:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It's possible the "study" in this case is a computer room and the "reading area" is more of a library. Alternatively, judging from how the reading area joins onto the terrace, it could be a more casual area than the study - a few sofas and a couple of bookshelfs just to fill in a bit of space. Searching for "reading area" finds a few mentions of this kind of casual arrangement, although mostly in schools. Smurrayinchester 09:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * "Historically, the study of a house was reserved for use as the private office and reading room of a family father as the formal head of a household" (Study (room)). In addition, the study would have an office desk and filing cabinets, and the reading area wouldn't.--Itinerant1 (talk) 18:08, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

is ⟨c⟩ ever /ts/ in English?
Can anyone think of an English word or name (one that's not too obscure), where ⟨c⟩ is stably pronounced /ts/? I'm not counting things like dance, because for many people that's just /s/. — kwami (talk) 10:49, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Well if you don't count those you might exhaust all the possibilities (dance, dunce, fence, once, since etc etc...every one-syllable word that ends in -nce has a /ts/ for me). Adam Bishop (talk) 11:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I want an example that works for English speakers in general, not just those who happen to conflate prince and prints. — kwami (talk) 12:04, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Except for the cases you've ruled out, I don't think that c is ever pronounced /ts/ in a native English word or name. I remember when I studied Czech, that pronunciation seemed completely alien to and difficult to master for (American English) learners who hadn't been exposed to a Central European language before.  Marco polo (talk) 14:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * That's exactly what I want it for: s.t. for people to latch on to. I don't expect a native word. Maybe a foreign name that's well-enough assimilated that people don't mispronounce it. Like for the "y" sound of J: We've got hallelujah and Jägermeister. Something like that. — kwami (talk) 14:50, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * In English, -nse, -nce, and -nts are homophonous. Prints and prince, mints and mince, quints and quince, dents and dense. For native speakers of English, these pairs are all pronounced the same. I believe that's because of the way that the voiced nasal "n" transitions to the unvoiced sibilant "s"; the tongue has to transition through the "t" position, and in the process is devoiced, which gives a "t"-like sound when pronouncing the words, and likewise, in words with the "t", the "t" sound tends to be slightly "destopped", as one transitions ones tongue. The result is that the two sounds end up the same.  In other words, the actual sound is somewhere halfway between a pure "ns" and a pure "nts".  See   for this concept used to hilarious ends.  -- Jayron  32  14:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You're right on all but one count: dents has a much stronger t than dense does. (Until that example, I couldn't even imagine what pronunciation the other guy was giving to prince that was different from prints.  oh okay, prince like dense).  84.2.147.177 (talk) 15:05, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * We just had an amazingly heated debate about this exact same question less than a month ago. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you're right. I thought ns and nts were homonyms for me too, but dense and dents aren't. — kwami (talk) 16:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * When I first heard Oscar Wilde's story The Selfish Giant (on radio when I was a young boy), and it got to the part about "the prints of two nails", I was left wondering who this "Prince of Two Nails" was. It seemed odd to introduce a character but not explain who he was.  The penny finally dropped.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:33, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Or the pence. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:06, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The only even halfway example I can think of is if one were to pronounce "czar" with a more Russianly-correct pronunciation than is usual... AnonMoos (talk) 16:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Toyed with that, but at the very least it's not stable, and most people won't accept /ts/ at the beginning of a word. There are various /ts/ words spelled -tcy, but that's really just /s/ for the ⟨c⟩. — kwami (talk) 16:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Found a few, but they're almost hopelessly obscure. The least rare were letovicite (though /s/ is given as a 2ary pron.) and privat-docent, but they're pretty much useless for illustration. So I think it's gonna have to be proper names. The only familiar Czech city with a c is Olomouc, but how many have even heard of it? Katowice is a little better. — kwami (talk) 16:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I doubt you'll find anything more common. Polish is probably the most obvious source language, but, at least in America, Polish words and names are usually heavily anglicized (e.g., the name Wysocki here is pronounced /waɪˈsɒki/ more often than /vɨˈsotski/). And I suspect that people who are familiar enough with makowiec or Adam Mickiewicz to pronounce them properly are probably not included in your target audience. Lesgles (talk) 17:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, maybe Podgorica is best; it is a capital after all (although unfortunately I think many English speakers wouldn't know that the country exists). Lesgles (talk) 17:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I was hoping there might be someone famous in the US or UK who has a name like that that had survived anglicization. — kwami (talk) 17:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Kwami, as I said before, I'm afraid this doesn't exist. The name Kosciuszko is somewhat well known in the United States, but it is typically pronounced kɑsɪ'juːskoʊ or something similar.  City names such as Podgorica and Olomouc are not at all well known in the United States or I think anywhere in the Anglosphere. We are lucky if news announcers get them right on the rare occasion when such a name comes up in the news.  (I don't think I've ever heard a news report that mentioned Olomouc, however.)  Basically, only very learned English speakers (or immigrants from Slavic countries or perhaps Germany) will know how to pronounce these names.  If you showed people on the street in the United States a piece of paper with the name Podgorica or Olomouc written on it, I'd be surprised if 1 out of 100 pronounced the name correctly. Marco polo (talk) 18:41, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Václav Havel was very well known in the West. I've often heard the "vaklav" pronunciation, but "vatslav" was slowly seeping through to the consciousness of the tin-eared.  Anyone who'd ever heard of the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky would have twigged that these names are related (although the misleading "Vaslav" spelling in Nijinsky's case seems to have been made up.  I've been querying this very issue recently on his talk page, and anyone who can help settle the issue for me would be most welcome).   --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:43, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Jack that Havel is probably your best case. Certainly most news announcers eventually got his name right.  Still, I think if you wrote his name on a piece of paper and showed it to people on the street (in the US anyway), an overwhelming majority would get it wrong. The /ts/ pronunciation for c is simply foreign to English.  Marco polo (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * In the UK we do get exposed to some exotic names through the medium of football. For instance Petr Cech and Tomas Rosicky. The second is interesting - there seems to be quite a split of pronunciation between 'Rozhitski' and 'Rozikky'. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Many Jewish people in Western countries have names that are German/Yiddish transliterated into Polish. These often have a c representing a ts sound (z in German), even as they're typically pronounced by English speakers. Typical examples are Rozencwajg or Berenholc. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 20:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And Jeannot Szwarc. Speaking of footballers, we have an AFL player named Justin Koschitzke, whom the announcers insist on pronouncing "ka-ZITS-kee", presumably to avoid saying "ka-SHITS-kee".  I'm glad we don't have an Indian-heritage player named Dikshit or an Eastern European player named Lifshitz or Lipschitz.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:13, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I was going to suggest Rosický, since even BBC commentators who are usually appalling at getting foreign names right manage to pronounce the c (but not the s) in Rosický correctly. My experience is that when c is followed by another consonant (e.g. in Rosický or Václav) they're more likely to pronounce it correctly than when it isn't (e.g. in Kadlec or Katowice), I always hear the BBC guys say "Kadleč" and friends from England talk about Katowicie (both with a "ch" sound rather than "ts"). - file lake  shoe  01:16, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * For place names, how about Oświęcim? Everyone knows that one, although they may not recognize it right away as Auschwitz. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The "c" is not pronounce "ts" in "Oświęcim". More like a "ch" as in "cheese". That's the closest you can get with English sounds. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:42, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, that's Polish, not Czech. Oops. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:37, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I think Havel is probably the most well-known, and should do nicely. The footballers are probably more nationally known, I'd think. — kwami (talk) 21:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * A lot of people in England know who Rosický is because he plays for Arsenal. But, if you're trying this in the States then Hável is probably as close as you can get. - file lake  shoe  01:21, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If you are considering languages other than English, the Pin Yin orthography for Mandarin Chinese uses the Roman letter "c" to represent the sound "ts". David Spector (user/talk) 02:35, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the OP was asking specifically about English. English speakers who are unfamiliar with Chinese generally have no idea about this pronunciation. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 14:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What does OP mean? It is not one of the listed WP abbrevs. David Spector (user/talk) 01:15, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Original poster. It's a Web-wide abbreviation, not unique to Wikipedia. Angr (talk) 01:23, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm surprised the letter "c" to represent the sound "ts" isn't better known, since ISO 9 is widely used and that's the way it is there. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  03:20, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Even in German, where the letter is named /tse:/, it isn't. Austrian train announcers still have trouble calling Jesenice, Lesce... - file lake  shoe  14:11, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Still, German keeps the /ts/ written as "c" in Latinate names: Cäsar, Cäcilie. --Theurgist (talk) 18:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

If "-nce" and "-nse" in word-final positions are [nts], what about words like, for example, pencil? --Theurgist (talk) 21:30, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That has [nts] for me. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:43, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Really? You really hear a "t" sound in "pencil"?  It's impossible to say "pent-sil" without almost making it 2 words.  Maybe what you hear is just a glottal stop?  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  23:50, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Of course. Before the other thread about this subject, I would have thought it was impossible not to put a t in there. Without the "t" I would make the "s" a "z" I guess. Or, that is where I would add a glottal stop, between the "n" and the "s". Another example is "tinsel". (An example the other way is "damsel" which does have a "z", and if it didn't, I would pronounce it like "dampsel".) Adam Bishop (talk) 23:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * See, I'm half deaf but I can hear clear differences between the pronunciations "dam-zel", "dam-sel" and "dam-psel". --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  07:36, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I can hear the difference, and I can pronounce "pencil" without a "t" and "damsel" with an "s"...but I don't, normally. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:40, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

French -ai/-ais/-ait
Are they pronounced like é (/e/) or è (/ɛ/)? I've tried looking online, but various places have given completely different answers (both are è; both are é; -ai is é and -ais/-ait are è). Which one is correct? --108.225.117.174 (talk) 22:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I was always taught the latter (that -ai is é and -ais/-ait are è), to be honest though, I would bet anything that all three are correct across different dialects. Phonological distinction between verb endings is hardly necessary in a language where subject pronouns are mandatory. - file lake  shoe  01:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * There's a lot of variation. If you're talking about the verb endings (future, simple past, conditional, imperfect), certain dialects retain the distinction described by Filelakeshoe, but in France I think it is more common nowadays to pronounce all of them as è (which does create some ambiguity with the verb tenses). See fr:Prononciation du français. Some dialects, on the other hand (southern France?), have é in all open syllables. Lesgles (talk) 02:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * In Quebec, conditional and imperfect endings are /ɛ/; 1st person singular future is /e/. Conservative Metropolitan French speakers and dialects also retain the difference.  But you can't tell just on the basis of whether the word ends -ai versus -ai(s/t): the month of May, "mai", for example, is /mɛ/ (I think this is the case for pretty much all French dialects). --Atemperman (talk) 03:54, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * For words ending in -et, -aie, -ais, -ait and -aix, things are very clear: they're /ɛ/. Words ending in -ai are divided. As Atemperman said, j'ai and the future tense ending -rai are /e/. In Quebec, for example, mai, geai, quai have /e/, while vrai, balai, délai and essai have /ɛ/. I believe the pronunciation /mɛ/ for mai is perceived as characteristically European. The best advice is to look -ai words up in a dictionary. As for the /ɛ/-/e/ pair word-internally (which you didn't ask about), always use /ɛ/ in closed syllables. (In Quebec exceptions occur only in English loanwords like steak or in highly stigmatized varieties of the language.) In open internal syllables, the most difficult case, ai is more likely to be /ɛ/ in careful speech, allowing a distinction between maison and méson. But this is harder to perceive and it's not likely to be noticed by most people. Quebecers would generally be more sensitive to this than French people, however. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 05:58, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I used a reverse dictionary to find all words ending in -ai and checked their pronunciations in a Quebec dictionary. We have /e/ in: bai, geai, mésangeai, gai, mai, rai, quai. We have /ɛ/ in chai, lai, balai, déblai, remblai, délai, virelai, brai, minerai, frai, vrai, essai, étai. According to the TLFI, the only words for which /e/ is still possible in France are apparently gai and quai though at one time some others were pronounced this way as well. (Some sources also place geai in this category.) The change occurred under the influence of the spelling. Now it's possible to use /ɛ/ in all these words in France. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 07:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Correction: sais, sait and vais are exceptions in that they have /e/. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 07:56, 21 February 2012 (UTC)