Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 February 6

= February 6 =

Lacking of stress symbol(s)?
Are transcriptions in Gijs van Dijk and Ellen van Dijk lacking of stress symbol(s)? LoveVanPersie (talk) 06:15, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * The pronunciation in Gijs van Dijk lacks the symbol, but Ellen van Dijk has it: [ˌeːleːoːˈnoːraː maːˈriaː ˈɛlə(n) vɑn ˈdɛik]. The stress symbols are ˈ (primary stress) and ˌ (secondary stress). —Stephen (talk) 14:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, because I fixęd it. I'm not sure how to fix the first one though. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:15, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I always leave out the IPA stress symbols in transcriptions whenever I can, because their placement (before the beginning of the stressed syllable) has always struck me as quite unnatural and awkward (ever since I was a teenager). In the spelling systems of various languages, any orthographic indication of stress is more likely to be associated with the vowel of a stressed syllable... AnonMoos (talk) 20:42, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Then you should read more on phonology and phonotactics of English, Spanish and other languages. There's a reason we must write, not . The placement is far from arbitrary. are strikingly incomplete transcriptions and can be even said to be useless. The reader can't be expected to guess the stress. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:24, 7 February 2018 (UTC)


 * That's an issue related to the syllabification of words. There's a reason why one writes /ˈɪn.sɛkt/ and not /ˈɪ.nsɛkt/ or /ˈɪns.ɛkt/, but it's OK if one writes simply /ˈɪnsɛkt/. Would it be too bad if I chose to indicate the stress, say, by bolding the stressed vowel or diphthong: /ɪnsɛkt, dɪsteɪst, eskwela/? --Theurgist (talk) 18:10, 7 February 2018 (UTC)


 * doesn't tell ESL speakers whether the first is aspirated (which it is), so it's incomplete. Other transcriptions seem fine. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:11, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Mr_KEBAB -- of course I'm aware of the linguistic importance of stress in various languages. The problem is that the VISUAL LOCATION of written IPA stress marks is exceedingly awkward and counterintuitive.  Because of the stupid IPA written stress-mark placement rules, adding such stress marks to transcriptions is a clumsy and error-prone process for me, and everybody is probably better off if I just leave the stress-marks out of most phonetic transcriptions (it saves me from having to do something I dislike, and saves other people from having to deal with the errors that I would make).  I've found the visual location of written IPA stress marks to be exceedingly awkward and counterintuitive for decades now, so my perceptions on that point are unlikely to change. AnonMoos (talk) 01:21, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * It's not, at least not to the extent you seem to think it is. You should read more on permissible syllable onsets in various languages. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:11, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Dude, why is it that you're completely and utterly incapable of understanding that I have no problem with actual real linguistic phonological phenomena, but rather with the VISUAL PLACEMENT OF WRITTEN STRESS MARKS IN THE IPA WRITING SYSTEM ?? You've only displayed this obtuseness twice so far, but I already find it to be exceedingly tiresome... AnonMoos (talk) 15:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * P.S,. I would greatly appreciate it if you would refrain from "pinging" me if your future comments are along the same lines as your past pointless comments in this thread... AnonMoos (talk) 15:29, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I'll let your post speak for itself. This conversation is over. Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:30, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Since all words in Gijs Jan van Dijk are single-syllable, there's no point in using stress symbols, except maybe at ˈdɛik so that people don't stress it as VAN-dijk ("van" is a clitic). 78.0.197.69 (talk) 00:51, 7 February 2018 (UTC)


 * That's not true. Monosyllabic words can be (and often are) transcribed without stress symbols in isolation. When a monosyllable is a part of a longer phrase, stress symbols are pretty much mandatory. and  are equally bad transcriptions. The correct IPA seems to be  (compare Klaas-Jan Huntelaar), with the  sequence being realized as postalveolar  (before you ask, no, it's not a 'colloquial pronunciation', it's  that's overly pedantic).


 * In Danish, even monosyllables in isolation can't be transcribed without stress symbols because many unstressed words lose stød. If I transcribed a stødless monosyllable without the stress symbol, you couldn't really tell if stød isn't there because the word is unstressed or because it really isn't there in any way. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:20, 7 February 2018 (UTC)


 * In Russian, some monosyllabic prepositions are stressed instead of the following noun. For example, на пол (на́ пол, not на по́л, "on the floor"), pronounced NApol; под ноги (по́д ноги, "under the feet"), pronounced PODnogi; на руку (на́ руку, "on the arm"), pronounced NAruku. —Stephen (talk) 22:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Getting the Tan "with fam and ham"
I want to know what play on words is "with fam and ham". I tried to find whether it's an expression, but as it appears it's not. Correct me if I'm wrong.

PS: the joke is about a picture of girls getting tan in a farm near a pig. --Hofhof (talk) 18:17, 6 February 2018 (UTC) PS II: I misread fam as farm.Hofhof (talk) 19:34, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * So how did you get the spelling correct when you posted here? :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:37, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Copy-and-paste? --Hofhof (talk) 19:55, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Fam as in family? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:19, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * "Getting the tan with fam and ham". Yep. So your eyes betrayed you, but your mouse and keyboard were honest. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:01, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * And ham as in the pig. It's not an expression.  The joke is that the girls are probably related (family, fam), and there is also a pig (from which we make ham).  Ian.thomson (talk) 19:20, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Hogs and kisses. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:23, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I sow that and tried to think of a suey-ter pun, but I couldn't pig just one. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:26, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Long as we don't start a boar war. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Hogwash! — Don't be a swine; go hog wild with pig puns and squeal with laughter. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:E133:4EB3:A20A:DD29 (talk) 22:21, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Posh accent Regency England
To my ear, the upper class characters in the various Jane Austen TV series/movies speak pretty much the same way. But the article on Received pronunciation implies this kind of public school standard wasn't a thing before the (late?) Victorian era.

So. How would Jane Austen have envisioned the speech of her upper class characters who came from different regions of England? For example, the Darcys (north, Derbyshire), or the Middletons (Devon) or the Eliots (Somerset). Would they have had Regional accents of English? Or would they really have sounded the same? I'd love to find sources. The internet footprint is a bit obscured by fanfiction writers blogging about how they wish they knew, but without actual answers. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 20:04, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * David Crystal (pop and serious linguist, who knows his stuff) says ''There was no inferiority associated with dialect variation in Shakespeare's time. Indeed, there are some famous cases of people achieving the highest positions in society while retaining their regional speech.... The eighteenth century changed everything. It was a century of manners, class, and politeness, and one of the ways in which class distinction was expressed was through language, and especially through the way one spoke.... At this point, the status of regional dialects and accents went into serious decline.
 * Talking Proper by Lynda Mugglestone (OUP) is a book dedicated to the subject. HenryFlower 20:29, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * It's pretty clear that classic Daniel Jones post-WWI RP did not exist in that form in Jane Austen's day. But I don't think that any of the upper or middle class characters were intended to be speaking broad regional accents (the classic rustic "Zummerzet" dialect etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 20:36, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * The best I could find was this American blog post which discusses whether JA would have spoken with a rural Hampshire accent. This seems highly improbable to me, given the importance attached to social distinctions at that time (Austen was as remote from Shakespeare as we are from Austen). Alansplodge (talk) 09:33, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I vote for David Crystal. (He and his actor son Ben Crystal have collaborated on something they call "Original Pronunciation" for Shakespeare's plays.) David's Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1995, 2003) has a relevant page (77 in this edition) which "illustrate some of the distinctive grammatical features of early 19th century English" in "polite society". A side bar discusses John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of 1791. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:46, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, friends. I was able to read a good chunk of Mugglestone's introduction at google books; it was fascinating as was the encyclopedia page. It seems that the popular craze for pronouncing dictionaries was just getting going when Austen was writing her first manuscripts in the 1790s, after a couple of decades of lone prescriptivists crying in the wilderness. I'm getting the impression that she might have imagined her elderly characters (e.g. Mr. Woodhouse), those who did not go to London (e.g. Sir William Lucas, the Musgroves) and perhaps women who were not well educated (e.g. Steele sisters) as probably having some regional markers here and there in their speech, while most of the others would sound pretty much similar...going to have to see if my library can get Mugglestone's or Crystals' books to get a better picture of what that sound actually was! Thanks again. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 21:35, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * For the 16th and 17th centuries (including Shakespeare), there's the classic work English Pronunciation 1500-1700 by E.J. Dobson (2nd edition published in 2 volumes, 1968). It comprehensively gathers the relevant available evidence into a convenient and relatively easy-to-use form (if you know some basic linguistic concepts and phonetic symbols).  I'm not sure if there's anything comparable for Jane Austen's time period... AnonMoos (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It's not actually all that long ago in real terms; my own great-grandfather was born in 1826, less than 10 years after Austen died. We're probably past the time when a living person can remember someone who was alive in the Regency, but only just. Alansplodge (talk) 16:15, 9 February 2018 (UTC)