Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 May 14

= May 14 =

Film cliche phrases
What do we know about American film cliche phrases that appear in most movies (mostly action flicks), like "You know the drill!", "It's showtime!", "You think what I'm thinking?" Are there sources discussing them? Thanks. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 16:37, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Does this or List of film and television clichés help lead you in the right direction? -- Jayron 32 16:47, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I wonder if American phrases are discussed specifically somewhere, e.g. since when there's such a shower of them, etc. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 18:35, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * A quick look at newspapers.com (a pay site, and not comprehensive) indicates the expression "It's Show Time" has been around since at least the 1920s. (The spelling show-time or showtime appears to date from the 1940s.) "You know the drill" turns up in the 1940s. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:52, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Pronouncing inherit like "in-HER-it", i.e. /ɪn'hərɪt/ instead of /ɪn'herɪt/.
Would that sound non-native? 185.125.14.37 (talk) 20:38, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * In American, at least, the middle syllable is a homonym of "hair". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:11, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ... and in standard British English the pronunciation is similar (/ɪnˈhɛrɪt/) but with a shorter vowel than that in hair. There are some dialects in which the pronunciation might be /ɪnˈhərɪt/, but that pronunciation would be regarded as non-standard.   Dbfirs  01:12, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, shorter than "hair" by itself. Same as with "haircut", "hairpin", etc. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:08, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No, in British English, those haircut and hairpin words also have a long /hɛː/, longer than the short /hɛ/ in inherit. I appreciate that American English does not make this distinction.   D<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>  05:41, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Then there's the American south, where "hair" often sounds like "har". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:56, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ... and Liverpool, Merseyside, where hair sounds like her (/həː/).  <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>  06:06, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * What? Don't they (in the American south) make a distinction between fair and far? HOTmag (talk) 08:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Depends on where in the south, there not being one singular "southern" accent. The accent that would is that of Appalachian English which has very distinct characteristics from areas of the lowland south; however "fire" sounds more like "far" there; "fair" would have a vowel more like "fur".  This is related to the general "monophthongization" that happens in several southern US accents (though not in the same way in all of those accents), as well as the pin-pen merger. -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 11:51, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Please notice that my question about fair/far hasn't been answered yet. HOTmag (talk) 15:52, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The short answer is that Bug's response is probably not quite right. The longer answer is "maybe, for any given value of "southern" accent".  Bugs is perhaps recalling the faux-Appalachian accent put on for the song The Ballad of Davy Crockett, to wit "He killed him a bar when he was only three" where bear (that normally rhymes with "fair") is given the "bar" pronunciation.  That song, however, more shows what happens when people who don't speak a dialect try to mimic it.  The long, long answer is highlighted above: in Southern accents, and in Appalachian accents in particular, there are some noted vowel shifts which occur systematically which may be pretty close to the fair-far shift, but more probably, are closer to fair-fur or fire-far.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 18:36, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's risky to generalize about southern accents, because there is a whole range of them. I was thinking specifically of how Gaylord Perry pronounced it when talking about the various places he would rub his fingers in an effort to make the batter think he was up to something. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:31, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Also needs to be clarified as to what is meant by the "stressed schwa" here. Conventionally /ə/ in a stressed syllable represents /ʌ/, which has never made much sense to me.  My schwas are at least as likely to be a reduced /ʊ/ or /ɪ/ as a reduced /ʌ/. --Trovatore (talk) 01:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There are some accents that have schwas that reduce to /ɪ/, this is the "schwi" sometimes, as in words like "roses" -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 11:54, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * As Moses supposes his toeses to be. --Trovatore (talk) 18:13, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * My real complaint, though, is using the schwa symbol to represent the "but" vowel in stressed syllables. In my opinion it's just confusing and wrong.  The schwa is sometimes a reduced version of that vowel, but just as often not.  The "but" vowel should be notated as /ʌ/, never as /ə/. --Trovatore (talk) 18:37, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, this again is the phonemic vs. phonetic distinction between sounds; where one is the study of patterns of sounds, and the other with the specific articulation of those sounds in specific utterances. -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 19:19, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure, but the "but" vowel is not the same phoneme as the schwa. --Trovatore (talk) 19:23, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's why I brought it up. -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 15:12, 17 May 2018 (UTC)