Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 August 14

= August 14 =

Identify this accent.

 * Blow me down! The ship's becalmed!
 * Belay yer carousin' and haul wind smartly!
 * All me duty to ye, Cap'n. The ship be now a-sailin' at full speed!

Mango Languages is a company that provides resources for learning how to speak foreign languages to English speakers or teaching English to beginner speakers of English. The company also has a "pirate" language! Is this a real dialect?

Sneazy (talk) 03:43, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * It is on International Talk Like A Pirate Day. HiLo48 (talk) 03:47, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * West Country dialects. μηδείς (talk) 03:49, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * And see this past ref-desk thread. Deor (talk) 03:52, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Stripey and Sneazy, eh? μηδείς (talk) 03:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Two of the Seven Dwarf Pirates. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:53, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * More like corrupted Ents. μηδείς (talk) 01:55, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Origin of phrase
Do you have any idea where the phrase, "That's for me to know and you to find out," originated? I couldn't find any information on Google. NealCruco (talk) 06:23, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Clichés : over 1500 phrases explored and explained, by E. M. Kirkpatrick (1997, St. Martin's Press) says the phrase "dates from the twentieth century and was originally used to answer children in the rather high-handed attitude that adults adopt to children," but doesn't cite that assertion or give examples. The oldest reference I can find is from American Speech, Feb. 1941, in an article by Paul Brewster titled "More Indiana Sayings."  The author states "I have checked this list with students in three of my classes at the University of Missouri.  Many of the expressions were familiar not only to Missourians in these classes but also to students from New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Louisiana."  The phrase isn't addressed specifically past that, but if it was one of the ones familiar to students in the states Brewster mentions then it was most likely already well-established prior to 1941.  A Feb. 1943 article by Raven McDavid, also in American Speech, "Provincial Sayings and Regional Distributions," suggests that "a great many" of the expressions Brewster characterizes as "Indiana sayings" are in fact used throughout the South, and notes that "that's for me to know and you to find out" has also been observed in South Carolina.  --some jerk on the Internet    (talk)  12:58, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * ObPersonal: My experience as an Ukian is that this phrase is/was extensively used by British speakers born at least back into the 1930s, and I've never encountered anything suggesting it was adopted here from a US source. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 13:17, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Rather opposite in meaning to "Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies" often heard from a past generation of British parents, which seems a thoroughly dishonourable thing to tell children. Alansplodge (talk) 22:05, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Saying that to one's kids is not the best example to be setting, certainly. I've usually heard it expressed by one adult to another, in active voice: "Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:51, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Alright, thanks. NealCruco (talk) 00:21, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Why is I capitalised?
Sorry if this is an stupid question but... why I should be always be written in capitals and not just i :)  Miss Bono  [zootalk]  13:31, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * See here I_(pronoun) (I think it's a great question btw.) 196.214.78.114 (talk) 13:57, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks! :)  Miss Bono  [zootalk]  13:59, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Some inline citations in that article would be nice. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:46, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * It's not a stupid question at all, Miss Bono. As far I know, English is the only major language that capitalises its first person singular pronoun (but only in the nominative; me and my are never capitalised unless word-initial).  Other languages are more likely to capitalise the second person pronouns in certain contexts.
 * However, anyone searching for a question about capitalisation of pronouns would overlook the header "Stupid question". That's why we ask questioners NOT to head their questions with "Question", "Stupid question", "Strange question", "Silly question", "Excellent question" etc. but to actually give some clue as to what the question is about.  I have therefore taken the liberty of changing the header.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:44, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jack of Oz . I didn't know about that. I thought that everyone will be saying like: Hahaha that's a stupid queation. Thanks everybody for your answers :)    Miss Bono  [zootalk]  12:27, 15 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, they might, but that would not tell us anything about the topic. See the instruction at the top of the page: "Provide a short header that gives the general topic of the question".   --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  12:42, 15 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Jack of Oz so... that was a stupid question. Don't worry, I will provide a short header thats gives the general topic of my question next time. Sorry the bothers :'(   Miss Bono  [zootalk]  12:46, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Why do accents use specific sounds
What causes the differences in accents. For example, in the European French English accent, voiced ths become zeds, but in Quebec English accent they become ds. What causes this difference, and more generally, what causes one sound to be preferred over another in accents. reH ghun ghunwI' 14:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I would think we would have an article on it. But here's the deal: you grow up having conditioned both your speaking and hearing systems to pronounce and recognize native sounds, which often do not have a precise equivalent in a foreign language. Someone learning a second language tries to imitate the sounds as best as they can, but the sounds are filtered through what they already know. So a given language speaker tends to have a given accent in another language. If you try to speak Spanish to a native Spanish-speaker, they can tell right away that you're an English-speaker, unless you were immersed in that language when you were young and could absorb it. I recall one time a native Spanish-speaker (probably Fernando Lamas) was on the Tonight Show, and Carson asked him what English sounds like to a Spanish-speaker. Lamas said it sounded like barking dogs, "rau-rau-rau" or something like that, because we don't generally trill the R. By contrast, if you listen to a native Spanish speaker talking in English, any word starting with an S followed by a consonant he will tend to pronounce with an E in front of it - because Spanish generally doesn't have words starting with an S followed by a consonant. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:05, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * There are some ways we can trace, after the fact, how accents change or are inlienced by factors. For example, the various Northern/Southern distinctions in American English are often traced to the regions of Britain that produced the first migrants to those areas.  Even more famously, there's well known examples of linguistic shifts like the Northern cities vowel shift or Grimm's law.  However, these are historically descriptive and are not predictive in any way. NThat is, we cannot take a language today and reliably apply some rule to predict how it will change, we can only categorize and describe what changes have already occurred. -- Jayron  32  15:18, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Within a given language, sure. But the accept of a non-native speaker tends to be consistent, unless he's really good at hiding it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:22, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Let me rephrase my question. If I gave you the phonology of a certain language, could you predict how an English accent of a native speaker of that language would sound like, and also, why does quebec use d instead of z as a replacement for a voiced th. reH ghun ghunwI'
 * Possibly, but not with certainty. It's not just "phonology", it's the way the vocal cords and the ears have been conditioned. Some people are very good at picking up the proper phonology of a foreign language. Others are not so good at it. As for why French Canadians say a particular letter differently than French French do, it's part of language evolution; it's localization. It's the same reason that some of the actors in The Wizard of Oz (all of them American-born) say "Wiz-erd" and some of them say "Wiz-uhd". To their own ears, the way they're each saying it sounds right. To a French Canadian, the "d" might sound closer to our "th" than "z" does. And vice versa for a French French. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:35, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * So you don't really know, do you. I will try and find more information on the topic myself reH ghun ghunwI' 15:41, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think he got it right. Not sure what other answer you were expecting; an English speaker from South Carolina is going to pronounce French words differently than an English speaker from Minnesota (again, that's barring childhood immersion).  Those differences are mostly going to be heard in the vowels, but it's exactly the same principle.  If you're asking what, specifically, are the differences between Quebeçois French and Parisian French that lead to this specific differentiated pronunciation whereby "ð" becomes "d" in the former and "z" in the latter - that's not really answerable in writing unless you've memorized the entire International Phonetic Alphabet. To understand that specifically, you'll just have to listen to samples of both dialects. Here is one possible place to start with that.  ☯.Zen  Swashbuckler  .☠  16:51, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That's Québécois :) 24.92.93.248 (talk) 22:13, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

The linguistic term is "phonetic interference". We don't have an article on it specifically, but we do have Non-native pronunciations of English... AnonMoos (talk) 21:27, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Long/Large
What is the difference between those two?  Miss Bono  [zootalk]  17:54, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Large always means grande, long means largo and de mucha duracion. μηδείς (talk) 18:01, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks μηδείς. You have message in my talk :)  Miss Bono  [zootalk]  18:03, 14 August 2013 (UTC)