Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 September 22

= September 22 =

The 'th' sound in Ghana
I was listening to an interview on NPR the other day and was hearing an interview with a man from Ghana. Whenever he said Catholic he pronounced it like 'Cat-lick'. I work with a guy from Ghana as well (he's actually on a different shift and I don't see him much, so I never have the chance to ask) and I recall him having the same issue with the TH sound in various words. I see that the official language in Ghana is English. So does this, if it's a pattern and not just two guys that speak in a similar way, pattern come from the various other Ghanian languages? Do those languages not have a TH type sound in them? Dismas |(talk) 00:17, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems this sound is rare in the world and in Africa particularly.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 01:56, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * See also θ and voiceless dental fricative. According to the latter, "among the more than 60 languages with over 10 million speakers, only English, Standard Arabic, Spanish (Spain only), Burmese, and Greek have the voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative.". μηδείς (talk) 02:01, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Though the claim is more speculative than sourced (in fact there're more than 60, but in general I agree), the first three make up nearly half a billion only native speakers (excluding American Spanish with seseo).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:17, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Vault term origins wanted
I would like your help in finding the origin and definitions of 7 shapes that I came across today while using the book "Webster's College Dictionaru by Random House 1999. Under the word "VAULT" the shapes were labeled with the names: Sexpartite, Tiercon, Quadripartite, Underpitch, Barrel, Groin and Fan. The dictionary itself does no define these terms and with the exception of Sexpartite I cannot find these words at all with reference to the word vault. Please help me find out about these terms? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.108.23.125 (talk) 02:12, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * (I created a header for this. μηδείς (talk) 02:15, 22 September 2013 (UTC))
 * See "List of architectural vaults".—Wavelength (talk) 02:59, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Chinese dialects
This map makes sense of the historic evolution of Chinese dialects north and south of the Yangtze River. But why is there an area in southern Hunan that belong to the Mandarin group? --The Emperor&#39;s New Spy (talk) 02:45, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Your question is unclear. Are you mentioning some small discrete area?  I simply see the great area of expansion to the SW that occurred in the Ming era. Mandarin dialect covers this. μηδείς (talk) 02:24, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

There is a more detailed linguistic map of Hunan on p. 375 in the book A Synchronic And Diachronic Study Of The Grammar Of The Chinese Xiang Dialects by Yunji Wu. It indeed shows a small "island" of Southwestern Mandarin around Chenzhou (郴州), as well as a larger bilingual area (SW Mandarin + local dialects) in southern Hunan west of Chenzhou. This is the "Mandarin" area visible on our map too, mostly surrounded by Xiang (Hunanese), Gan, Yue (Cantonese), and Hakka. Wu's book does not seem to discuss the history of these Mandarin dialect islands, but there is apparently some literature in Chinese on this topic. There is actually an article entitled 为什么郴州话和西南官话相近 ("Why the Chenzhou dialect is similar to Southwestern Mandarin?"), but I can't view it beyond the 1st page, because you need to register and login to go to the 2nd page, and the login system seems to be broken. That article mentions 12 such "dialect islands" of SW Mandarin throughout south-eastern China (i.e., mostly surrounded by Xiang, Gan, Min, Yue, and Hakka). I did not get to the part of the article dealing with the actual history of the place, but I do assume that it had to do with population movements/transfers (esp. military families) during the Ming and/or Qing dynasty. Due to similar reasons, there are people who identify as ethnic Manchu (of course, all of them having spoken Chinese, not Manchu, for many generations) in virtually all provinces of China. -- Vmenkov (talk) 17:50, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Seeing her reminds you of someone?
Is this a valid English sentence:
 * Who does seeing her remind you of?
 * (hint: Seeing her reminds you of someone?)

Sorry, excuse my bad bad English - Justin545 (talk) 11:50, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes it is, although I'd be more likely say, "who does she remind you of?" in speech. Biggs Pliff (talk) 12:08, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! :) (Because I want to translate it from 看到她會讓你想到誰 in Chinese) - Justin545 (talk) 12:13, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You're welcome!Biggs Pliff (talk) 23:25, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The more idiomatic way to say this in Chinese might be "她是不是讓你想起誰？". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:34, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

么 and 麽
what is the difference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.14.196.239 (talk) 14:54, 22 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The Wiktionary entry 麽 says that the former is a simplified version of the latter. See "Traditional Chinese characters" and "Simplified Chinese characters".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 15:18, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * As I know, they are the same. 么 is Simplified Chinese while 麽 is Traditional Chinese character. - Justin545 (talk) 15:21, 22 September 2013 (UTC)


 * 么 is two words in one shape. 么 is simplified version of 麽, and 么 is an alternativeshape of 幺/ yao.--刻意(Kèyì) 09:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)