Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 April 29

= April 29 =

Research on Hempl's theory
(This is an extension of a section of the 3/23/2017 reference desk)

Doing research by reading the available online part of Hempl's book says that one argument supporting Hempl's theory is that Spurius Carvilius Ruga never spelled his last name as Ruca. Does this argument make sense as supporting Hempl's theory?? Georgia guy (talk) 19:52, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Presumably you're referring to Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 March 23. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:09, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Transcribe Tanoh Kpassagnon
I have no idea how to use this IPA thing. Any chance anybody can help do a pronunciation for Tanoh Kpassagnon an American football player? His name is pronounced "taw-no pass-en-yo".-- Rockchalk 717 23:50, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Erm... how would "ta" be pronounced "taw"? That doesn't make any sense. "ta" is pronounced "tah", not "taw". This is precisely the reason we use IPA, because individual people trying to transcribe words with their own orthographical system causes many problems. In this case, it seems that Rockchalk717 has the cot-caught merger (Rockchalk717: This means that you pronounce words like "cot" and "caught", "chock" and "chalk", "tock" and "talk" the same way. Please understand that people don't generally do that unless they live in a region in the country that has that merger. Otherwise, people pronounce those pairs of words differently.) Tharthan (talk) 21:38, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Please do not bite the newcomers. I don't know why you're being so harsh and didactic (albeit with good faith) when Rockchalk717 has expressed nothing against IPA (if anything s/he respects it since s/he has reached out to this talk) and "taw-no pass-en-yo" probably isn't her/his own transcription. That aside, "taw" is one that does make more or less sense because of the cot–caught merger as Tharthan said; "en" and "yo" are the ones that don't follow English orthographic conventions. Especially the latter sounds like it's actually given the spelling, but people's names could be rather arbitrary so  sounds about right (and would be non-OR). Nardog (talk) 01:04, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah—Jesus!—Rocktalk's upfront stated they don't know how these things work and is looking for help. Where does slamming them over the cot–caught merger help anyone?  Particularly as the majority of likely readers of such an article speak a variety of English displaying the cot–caught merger. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:40, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * You're right, I was being somewhat harsh. I just loathe the cot-caught merger, the Mary–marry–merry merger and the hurry–furry merger, so I try to educate people who have them so that they can understand their own dialectal biases in those cases. Those mergers keep on spreading and spreading and it worries me that there may come a point when few if any people know the distinctions.
 * I don't know about that. I wouldn't presume something like that, personally. Tharthan (talk) 03:42, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * You should look at the numbers, then. Regardless, you're obviously well enough aware of how prevalent it was that "That doesn't make any sense" was entirely uncalled for. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:44, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. But like I said, I was trying to be informative more than anything else. Tharthan (talk) 03:55, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I just wanted help. I've tried using IPA once and failed miserably. I would have been happy to provide some links to assist with the pronouncation. Don't be so harsh when someone needs help≈. While I don't know how to use IPA I'm far from an inexpierenced editor. Most of my edits are related to American football, my favorite team added a player with a name difficult to pronounce or even spell so I wanted help adding a pronouncation so others can easily see how to pronounce his name.-- Rockchalk 717 04:41, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * You have my sincere apologies, Rockchalk717. Tharthan (talk) 07:13, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you I appreciate the apology.-- Rockchalk 717 14:21, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I know this is an old discussion and the article isn't remotely one of the top priorities on Wikipedia, but it recently occurred to me that there are Wichita and Utah, so $\langlea\rangle$ representing  (even when not preceded by  or followed by ) isn't entirely unheard of. I don't know if that's enough reason to go back and change it, but I just thought it was interesting and worth pointing out. (It might be a good idea insofar as it would technically be less-OR and the spelling is far from phonetic to begin with. But some of the notations in the sources are too idiosyncratic to even comprehend, making them a fairly good showcase of why we prefer IPA.) Nardog (talk) 11:31, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Where I come from, Utah is pronounced, and Wiktionary lists both and  as pronunciations of Utah. Tharthan (talk) 18:08, 21 July 2017 (UTC)