Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 March 1

= March 1 =

How can the ambiguity of 'hook up' be solved?
'Hook up': a. To meet or associate: We agreed to hook up after class. He hooked up with the wrong crowd. b. To become sexually involved with someone, especially casually.

When a man asks a girl to hook up, what does that mean? He probably means 'a' but, due to 'b' he could always plausibly deny it.

Does any regional variation exist (that is, only 'a' or 'b' is a common meaning) making things even murkier? --Hofhof (talk) 01:01, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Most native speaker I know of "hang out" or "meet up" instead for A, because of this ambiguity. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:03, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * It can't, because you are making the same exact same mistake as IP 140 above in the topicalization discussion. Words do not have absolute intrinsic physical meanings and sentences do not behave like molecules.  JFCh!  I am considering a boilerplate essay for this.  Language is ambiguous and context dependent ALWAYS!.   ALWAYS!  .  If what you say is unclear, clarify in further speech or in writing with footnotes and codicils.  Are you and 140 the same person? μηδείς (talk) 02:49, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Htf, you conclude from my question that I do not believe in the ambiguity and dependence on context of language? I was just asking how to expand the context to make it less ambiguous. Hofhof (talk) 01:06, 2 March 2018 (UTC)


 * One thing to note: The second definition is much more recent, and it sounds like a euphemism. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:31, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Instead of boxing up comments you don't like, how about answering the questions? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:39, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Foot
What's the difference between foot and boot in their pronounciation?  Miss Bono  [hello, hello!]  20:35, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Many years ago, the two words used to rhyme, but that was long ago. See foot and boot for modern pronunciations.   Dbfirs  20:44, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Non-native English speakers sometimes have trouble with "oo" words which look like they should rhyme with "boot", for example, but which actually rhyme with "cook", "hook", "look", etc. Those words have kind of a "short" double-o sound, somewhere between a long-u (or "long" double-o) and a short-u, a sound which doesn't exist in Spanish, for example. It doesn't help that they're all spelled with that same double-o, so you can't tell by sight, you have to memorize them all. It gets even more complicated in regional dialects in America, where with the word "roof", for example, some pronounce the double-o as in "foot" while others pronounce the double-o as in "boot". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:28, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's the same in British English for roof. The OED puts the long u (/ruːf/) first followed by the short vowel (/rʊf/).  In some British dialects the words "cook", "hook", "look", and "book" still have the long boot vowel (/uː/), but this old pronunciation is becoming less common, even in the north.   Db</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  08:14, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Dbfirs - by "the north" do you mean the area you are familiar with (Cumbria)?  I think you will find that this pronunciation is the norm in Scotland. 92.19.174.150 (talk) 14:51, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant the north of England, rather than Scotland. Apologies to speakers of Scots and Scottish English further north in the UK.  Am I correct in thinking that you use a short /u/ or /ʉ/ rather than the long /uː/ or /ʊ/, or is vowel length variable?   <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  15:17, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The OP is not a native English speaker, and I have heard her confuse the sounds. There's really no way to address this other than youtube, which is prohibitively expensive whence hails the OP. μηδείς (talk) 20:40, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I did link to Wiktionary's audio files in my first reply, but I agree that the discussion has become too complex for someone who is not a native speaker of English. For anyone who wonders about the strange IPA symbols, Help:IPA/English and IPA vowel chart with audio might help.   <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  21:29, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I know the IPA symbols and their sounds, so that makes it much easier for me to understand the differences in pronounciation. I was wondering what the difference in the pronounciation would be like for someone from the countryside in Ireland. <span style="font-family:'Arial',cursive"> Miss Bono  [hello, hello!]  13:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)