Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 10

= July 10 =

Facetious
In current use, "facetious" means "treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humour". However, I have some older dictionaries (one from 1977, one undated but I think 1950s) that define it more positively as "witty" or "always saying funny things"). Does anyone know when and why this change occured from "humorous, in a good way" to "humorous, in a bad way"? Iapetus (talk) 09:56, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * OED gives "Of style, manners, etc.: polished, elegant, agreeable." From 1549. Obsolete sometime after 1738. Also, "Characterized by or given to pleasantry or joking, now esp. when inappropriate or flippant; witty, humorous, amusing." From 1594 and still going. Myrvin (talk) 16:53, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Not every dictionary mentions a negative connotation—see http://www.onelook.com/?w=facetious&ls=a.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 18:34, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Which one of those 27 doesn't? Myrvin (talk) 20:37, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * There aren't 27 actual dictionaries there, y'know. But American Heritage gives the only definition as "Playfully jocular; humorous", which incidentally is exactly what I would have said. I hadn't heard of this negative connotation before. --174.88.133.209 (talk) 22:56, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. And I thought I'd have to go through all of them. I wonder why this one is different? Myrvin (talk) 00:59, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you may have found the cause of the questioner's problem. If s/he has come across the American Heritage definition at some stage - that would do it. I am surprised at what you say about your understanding of the word. I don't think I have ever heard or seen it as anything but a bad thing - and that's 60 odd years of UK English (with heavy doses of US from the screen). I always hear/see, "I'm fed up with your facetious remarks", and never, "Thank you so much for the facetious remarks you made about me." Myrvin (talk) 06:04, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I did look at them all - and there were a lot. There were several that denoted only pleasant activity, but then many included: flippant, facetious, tongue-in-cheek, Treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humour, not serious about a serious subject. Perhaps more in UK than in US definitions? And maybe the more recent ones too? I got the idea of a facetious person as being someone who is fun to listen to, but doesn't know when to stop being humorous, and might also be sarcastic. The word seems to be in flux. It may remain as just witty, but it could also descend into something nasty. Myrvin (talk) 06:25, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * In usage, this search gives a lot of uses of "don't be facetious", which seems to denote something worse than just witty. Myrvin (talk) 06:42, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * In his Slang book, Eric Partridge uses facetious and facetiously a lot. He seems to use it to mean funny/witty ("digital - A finger: facetiously", but often with a hint of sarcastic ("cherubims - Peevish children: ... Facetiously allusive to ‘To Thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry’"). I don't know what to make of, "wench - a child, is facetious and university-witted." Myrvin (talk) 09:03, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * In his Origins book, he traces facetious (pace the etymological fallacy) from words that mean, "Witty sayings, also humorous, esp if coarsely humorous, sayings". So, there may be some coarseness in the word. Myrvin (talk) 09:09, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I like this from Johnson's Dictionary: "FACE’TIOUS. adj. ... Gay; cheerful; lively; merry; witty. It is used both of persons and sentiments. 'Socrates, informed of some derogating speeches used of him behind his back, made this facetious reply, Let him beat me too when I am absent.'" Is there a hint of sarcasm in that? Maybe not. Myrvin (talk) 09:18, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The original Modern English Usage of H. W. Fowler has: "facetious (opp. glum) implies a desire to be amusing; formerly a laudatory word, but now suggesting ill-timed levity or intrusiveness or the wish to shine." A facetious remark, fellow, interruption. It's gone in later versions. Myrvin (talk) 09:31, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * For a modernish US usage, the Pocket Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus has: "fa.cetious ,'fa'sesHas/ adj. trying to be funny or clever about something that should be treated seriously. SYNONYMS flippant, flip, glib, frivolous, tongue-in-cheek. joking, jokey, jocular, playful. ANTONYMS serious." Myrvin (talk) 09:57, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The OED's Third Edition has "Characterized by or given to pleasantry or joking, now esp. when inappropriate or flippant; witty, humorous, amusing." for the modern sense, with an obsolete sense of "Of style, manners, etc.: polished, elegant, agreeable" (last cited from 1738).   D b f i r s   13:46, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Interesting - it seems from the above answers that the negative meaning was already present when the dictionaries I'd used were published, but not included in their definitions. Iapetus (talk) 10:52, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Pronounce ur ear ir
This is about ur, ear and ir in various words. As a non-native speaker of English I like to know if it is correct to pronounce burn, learn and girl the same way, or should there be a noticeable difference. --VanBuren (talk) 13:10, 10 July 2015 (UTC)


 * See English-language vowel changes before historic /r/.—Wavelength (talk) 14:55, 10 July 2015 (UTC)


 * To this American Midwesterner, the middle parts all sound the same. That might not be the case throughout the entire English-speaking world. Non-rhotics might pronounce "girl" more like "gull" than they do with the other two, for example. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:00, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, the non-rhotic varieties of English have the same vowel in burn, learn and girl, just as the rhotic varieties do - maybe excluding Scottich English (mentioned by Medeis) I'm not familiar with. HOOTmag (talk) 20:45, 11 July 2015 (UTC)


 * As far as I am aware, those sounds are all the same in American English dialects, but girl and learn are distinct in Scottish at least. μηδείς (talk) 18:14, 10 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Sometimes native speakers play with the spelling for fun, and it might help show you that most varieties of English have the fir/fur merger - Riot grrrl just removes the vowel - if we try to say grrrl, it comes out just like girl. Recently, some people spell it gurl for fun, so much that someone here has made a redirect to girl. I think the vowel is a schwa in all of your examples. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:17, 10 July 2015 (UTC)


 * It's actually a syllabic r, there's no schwa or vowel in the American dialect, although people who are taught there "has to be a vowel" analyze butter, bottle, bottom, and button in American English as if they had schwa vowels in the second syllable, although they really only have syllabic consonants. μηδείς (talk) 01:03, 11 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Forvo has recordings indexed at http://forvo.com/search/burn/ and http://forvo.com/search/learn/ and http://forvo.com/search/girl/. See also http://www.fonetiks.org.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 19:44, 10 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Please note, that the very word ear is not pronounced like the "ear"-part of "learn" (or whenever the "ear"-part is followed by a consonant), but rather like the "ear"-part of "hear" (which is pronounced like "here").
 * As for "burn" "girl" and "learn" (you've asked about), I've always heard - their vowel (in non-rhotic accents) - or their syllabic r (in rhotic accents), pronounced the same way.
 * Btw, why did you only ask about "burn" "girl" and "learn", and not about "her" as well? (again, no difference between its "er"-part and "ur"). HOOTmag (talk) 20:45, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * HOOTmag, my layperson's guess that it's because  is better behaved than the other ones mentioned here. Aside from oddities like "sergeant", stressed "...er(consonant)" syllables - linguists, how should that be written? What would be the correct notation? -  generally is pronounced /ɜr/ or /ɜ/, depending on whether you rhote or not. And as far as I know unstressed  is /ər/ (or something like that) in the other Germanic languages, as well as in English. (Thus of course letting slip my assumption that non-native speaker with perfectly good English therefore = native speaker of one of the other Germanic languages. )--Shirt58 (talk) 08:54, 12 July 2015 (UTC)


 * An unstressed vowel followed by an /r/, should not be discussed here. E.g. Heather, Arthur, Edgar, Eleanor, Trevor, Ophir, and likewise. All of these vowels (followed by an /r/) are pronounced the same way: /ə/. The discussion is therefore about stressed vowels (followed by an /r/) only. HOOTmag (talk) 20:10, 12 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, to be fair, Eleanor takes a secondary stress in some pronounciations. 20:25, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * That's why I also added a better example (of an unstressed "or" pronounced like an unstressed "er"). HOOTmag (talk) 12:17, 15 July 2015 (UTC)


 * If the discussion is restricted to stressed vowels, then learn, fur, and fir simply have no vowels in American English, because schwa is never stressed. Again, you are looking at syllambic consonants like rrrrrr and mmmmmm which need no vowel, given they are sonorants. μηδείς (talk) 03:29, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Depends on what you define as "schwa". If "schwa" is a central vowel (IPA /ə/) then it can be stressed as any other vowel. If "schwa" is a "central unstressed vowel in English" then it can't be stressed as the definition already excludes the stress. In both the cases the stressed vowel and the unstressed one may be written with the same IPA symbol /ə/. So the vowel /ə/ in "fur" /ˈfər/ is stressed, but it's unstressed in "sulfur" /ˈsʌlfər/. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:32, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with Medeis, because they explicitly referred to American English only, which really has no stressed /ə/ - at least not as a phoneme. For example: the words "curd" "herd" "lurk" - pronounced by Brits - with a stressed (long) /ə/ as a phoneme, are pronounced /krd/ /hrd/ /lrk/ - by Americans, and whoever pronounces them (in America) /kərd/ /hərd/ /lərk/ - cannot prove that this stressed /ər/ is not an allophone of a stressed /ʌr/ or of a syllabic /r/. For more details, see this thread. HOOTmag (talk) 12:17, 15 July 2015 (UTC)