Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 July 24

= July 24 =

Vietnamese IPA phonetics
Could someone check the IPA in this passage from Facebook_real-name_policy_controversy?


 * In January 2015, a 23-year-old Australian bank employee claiming to be named Phuc Dat Bich posted a photo of his passport identification page to Facebook,.. The BBC reported that in Vietnamese the name is pronounced similarly to "Phoo Da Bi" (IPA: /fuq˦˥ ɗat˩ ɓic˦˥/).[14] ... Subsequently "Phuc Dat" published a further message admitting it was a hoax.

Several of the IPA symbols in the pronunciation gloss don't appear in Help:IPA_for_Vietnamese so I'd appreciate if an IPA cognoscente could verify them. Thanks! 173.228.123.121 (talk) 02:28, 24 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The only information I have on Vietnamese pronunciation is what is in "The World's Major Languages" edited by Bernard Comrie, but IPA [q] is almost certainly bogus.  A number of pronunciations might be possible if the full diacritics of Vietnamese orthography aren't included... AnonMoos (talk) 11:47, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary has a module that automatically generates IPA from Vietnamese orthography. The results are at wikt:User:Angr/Phuc Dat Bich; however, it is very likely that the original Vietnamese spelling has various diacritics which will change the pronunciation. So, is the u in the first name actually u, or is it ư? Is the d in the second name actually d, or is it đ? Is the a in the second name actually a, or is it â or ă? Do any of the vowels have any of the tonal diacritics? Without this information, there's no way to know exactly how the name is pronounced. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:58, 24 July 2017 (UTC)


 * You can hear Phúc Đạt Bích pronounced on YouTube. —Stephen (talk) 22:20, 24 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the IPA help and the youtube video. I remember the Phuc Dat Bich story from when it was in the news, and some native Vietnamese speakers saying it had to be a fake name and that "Bich" was a female first name.  On the other hand, Phật Phúc (translates as Happy Buddha) is a well known Vietnamese noodle house in London. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 04:48, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Does it actually though? Or did someone just think it funny in English to juxtapose the words "Buddha" and "happiness"? I don't know Vietnamese, but putting "Phật Phúc" into Google books gets a hit for "Phật phúc" where it is used to mean "Buddha's stomach". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:58, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Phật is obviously "Buddha" but phúc is harder to translate. As with many East/Southeast Asian words, there really isn't a one-to-one relation to a single English word. I don't see phúc in isolation very much; I usually see it in combination with other morphemes. It usually means "luck" or "good fortune" as in có phúc ("fortunate") or bạc phúc ("ill fate"). However it can also mean "happy" as in hạnh phúc ("happiness", "happy") and phúc lộc ("happiness and prosperity"). I'm not sure how it could mean "stomach" though -- maybe a typo for phục ("fat, chubby")? However the term "Phật Phúc" would be just about as uncommon in Vietnamese as "Happy Buddha" would be in English and sound just as contrived as a brand name.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 07:21, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Luckily the example I referred to happened to have Vietnamese and Chinese side by side, so I can see that "Phật phúc" is in this case corresponds to "佛腹", "Buddha stomach". I guessed that the "phúc" in the noodle restaurant's name refers to the concept of "fu", but wondered whether "Buddha-Fu" or "Fu-Buddha" is at all grammatical in Vietnamese (since it would be a very odd phrasing in Chinese) - so thanks for your explanation. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:23, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
 * This seems resolved, but for the sake of (my need for) closure, here is the IPA for "Phúc Đạt Bích" since nobody has actually given it yet:
 * Northern: [fuk͡p̚˧˥ ɗat̚˧˨ˀ bik̚˧˥]
 * Central: [fuk͡p̚˧˥ ɗak̚˧˨ˀ bic̚˧˥]
 * Southern: [fuk͡p̚˧˥ ɗat̚˩˧ bit̚˧˥]
 * It can be noted that to any native Vietnamese (or, quite frankly, anybody familiar with Vietnamese culture), this would be recognized as a hoax right away. Firstly, the closed set of Vietnamese family names is quite small, with just around 15 names making up over 90% of all surnames (ok, I just checked our article Vietnamese name and it says 14 names) and only about 80 more extremely uncommon surnames account for the rest. None of these three names are used a surnames. Secondly, Vietnamese names have a certain euphony both in the way the closing sequences of one name "flow" into the next and, probably more so, in the tones. These three names, in any order, are un-melodic and almost awkward to pronounce; to a native ear, they just wouldn't sound like a plausible name.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 07:21, 26 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the further answers; I love the erudition of this place. But we're still missing the IPA for "Phoo Da Bi", the purported pronunciation given by the BBC.  Any help?  173.228.123.121 (talk) 08:03, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Spanish demonym for people from Wales and Gaels
In Spanish, are the words Welsh/Gaelic, or being from Wales/from Gaels, homonymous? --Hofhof (talk) 18:10, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The Spanish word for "Welsh" is galés/galesa ("Natural de Gales, país del Reino Unido") and the word for Gaelic is gaélico/gaélica ("Grupo de lenguas celtas insulares habladas en zonas de Irlanda y Escocia"). Source being the Real Academia website. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:19, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
 * For Wales, it's "Galés" or "Galésa", depending on gender. "El es Galés." "He is Welsh." "Ella es Galésa." "She is Welsh." However, Gaelic people are the "gaélicos". the For future reference, this information can usually be found be going to the respective Wikipedia page, in this example "Wales", clicking on the version for your target language "español", and searching the infobox. In this case you are looking for the demonym, or in Spanish, the "gentilicio": "Galés/Galésa" unsigned comment by Human-potato hybrid 20:25, 24 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Except not capitalized in Spanish: "Él es galés. Ella es galésa." —Stephen (talk) 22:27, 24 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Except II that it's not written galésa, but galesa. Baseball Bugs got it right above.Clipname (talk) 23:36, 24 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It should also be noted that the Welsh are not strictly Gaelic. The Celts are broadly divided into two groups: Goidelic or Gaelic peoples (Irish/Scottish/Manx) and the Brythonic/Brittonic or British peoples (Welsh, Cornish, Breton).  To associate the Welsh with the Gaelic is wrong.  There was also a third group of Celts called the Continental Celts which includes the Gauls and the Celtiberians. -- Jayron 32 15:41, 25 July 2017 (UTC)


 * If you're wondering where the "G" comes from in the Spanish word for Wales it's because Latin didn't have a "W" and used a substitute.  Compare the Germanic name "William" and its Latin translation Gulielmus.   In Portuguese (and no doubt Spanish as well) the default stress is on the penultimate syllable - therefore (simplifying a little) use the acute accent if the stress is on the antepenult or the final syllable but otherwise no.   The word "Gaelic" comes originally from the Old Irish Goidel. 82.12.63.55 (talk) 17:55, 26 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Classical Latin did have a [w] sound; it was early Romance languages which added a "g" to "w"-initial words borrowed from Germanic (so that "warden" and "guardian" were basically originally the same word). "Gulielmus" (sometimes seen in the Italian-specific form Guglielmus) was a medieval Latin form, taken from Romance dialects... AnonMoos (talk) 23:09, 26 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The etymology of the word "war" is instructive: it came from a Germanic word which began with a "W", adopted into Romance languages as a "G" word (French "guerre", spanish "guerra", etc.) and entered English from French by converting the "G" back to "W". .  -- Jayron 32 10:55, 27 July 2017 (UTC)


 * According to the Oxford English Dictionary:


 * The Latin "W" sound was produced using the letter "U" or "V".  Example, vinum "wine", cognate with Greek oinos.
 * Before the seventh century the "W" pronunciation changed to a "V" pronunciation.
 * The "W" sound was then marked by "UU", which became "W".
 * The word "war" derives from the Old English uuerre (a derivation with which Jayron's source agrees). 80.4.70.229 (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2017 (UTC)