Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 August 27

= August 27 =

Morphological prescriptivism
This is bonkers. A bit of a dilemma: arguing against this kind of thing is likely to be a great waste of time (in view of all the mistaken premises); not arguing against it of course leaves it unchallenged. -- Hoary (talk) 01:40, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Both words (flutist and flautist) have been in English more than a century, but flautist seems more foreign-influenced, which could be an advantage in the eyes of some, and a disadvantage in the eyes of others... AnonMoos (talk) 01:50, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * True. Well, and I have tried, though I doubt that we will persuade. -- Hoary (talk) 04:32, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we'll see what happened. Wikipedia used to have an article about this subject. Graham 87 05:43, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * The argument that language miscegenation is unacceptable means that "unacceptable" is inacceptible. We will not be allowed to socialize — from the stem of Latin socialis + the suffix -ize from Greek -ίζω (-ízō). We also can't watch television; it should be either teleops or longivision. --Lambiam 07:17, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * It's not stupid to point out that there are lexical strata in English and that certain affixes from one stratum don't sit easily with stems from another stratum. Indeed, any introductory morphology text in/about English points this out, as an empirical fact (either citing a corpus or verifiable with a corpus). What is stupid is to declare that such-and-such is "incorrect" despite ample evidence that plenty of proficient users of the language say it and write it and don't immediately correct themselves thereafter. -- Hoary (talk) 09:03, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Etymonline's entry for flutist says that it's preferred in the US while flautist is mostly British English, so you can fall back on the old Wikipedia rule that whoever got there first wins, in Br Eng Vs Am Eng, if you want to avoid a debate. Much of the language used in orchestral music has Italian origin, and it would probably be silly to replace it all with Anglo-Saxon (I guess a piano would have to be called a "soft") to reduce elitism, but what's special about this flautist word is that it has a more natural English form in flutist, so it's a trap for the unwary and a potential shibboleth. (I assume this is really an argument about which word the person is more comfortable with, and not about words having mixed origin, although flautista is apparently pure Italian and plenty of English words of Latin origin are mangled in more severe ways than just removing one letter from the end.) Card Zero  (talk) 08:06, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * "...silly to replace it all with Anglo-Saxon..." Percy Grainger always used Anglo-Saxon terms in his scores, preferring, for example, 'louden lots' to 'molto crescendo'. The term for the piano is an abbreviation of pianoforte, which can play both soft and loud according to the touch of the felt-covered hammers, unlike the harpsichord etc. whose plucked strings have only one pre-set dynamic. MinorProphet (talk) 10:12, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * There are many musical terms supposedly based on Italian which really aren't. Glissando is not an Italian word, for example. Also, see Rage Over a Lost Penny for Beethoven's confusion between "ongarese" (Hungarian) and "zingarese" (gypsy) to produce the non-word "ingharese". --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  08:35, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Some people believe, as their most core, basic, and immutable belief, that different is a synonym for wrong, and will not ever be persuaded from that position. It is not usually useful to try to convince them that there are multiple acceptable ways to do things, because they don't believe that to be possible.  -- Jayron 32 12:13, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * To illustrate how idiolectical this can be, I as a native BrE speaker and non-musician had only ever (in my 7th decade) heard the term "flautist", until less than 2 years ago when I became aware of a Finnish flautist who always calls herself (when speaking English) a "flutist." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.179.94 (talk) 15:21, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * According to the OED2 on CD-ROM, 'flutist', cf. Fr. flûtiste dates from 1603, and 'flautist', cf. It. flautista, from 1860, but the former is now definitely American, cf Walter Piston's The Incredible Flutist, and the latter is British English, as most British classical musicians will tell you. Anyway, Ella and Louis discussed this many years ago. MinorProphet (talk) 10:12, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

British English oddities (?)
A couple of things I've noticed, and wondering if it's just a British thing or more of a regional thing. One is the pronunciation of words like "county" and "mountain". We Yanks often say it like "count-y" and "mount-ain". Brits (or at least some of them) say "coun-ty" and "moun-tain", with almost a pause between syllables. Are they consciously trying to avoid running the two syllables together, or is that just normal Britspeak? The other is the word "peninsula", which some Brits pronounce as if it were spelled "peninshula". How common is that? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:19, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * On the second one, that's a process called yod dropping that has occurred in many varieties American English (and some British as well) whereby the "y" sound (aka the Voiced palatal approximant) is "dropped" after certain consonants. -- Jayron 32 12:32, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Isn't this an instance of yod coalescence, found further down in the same article? Pronouncing peninsula with /ʃ/ instead of /sj/ is coalescence (aka fusion), while pronouncing it with simply /s/ would be dropping/elision. Orcaguy | Write me | Mon œuvre 18:09, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Quite right, they're all related processes. It's hard to elucidate which particular difference Bugs was after, but that article covers all possibilities.  -- Jayron 32 12:19, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * In my own speech, I notice that the syllable breaks in the words you mention are variable depending on whether I am just pronouncing the word or using it in a sentence and even how I am using it in the sentence. For example, "county" is "coun-ty" when I speak the bare word, but is "count-y" if I am naming a county. But it becomes "coun-ty" again in things like "county clerk". --Khajidha (talk) 16:36, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The field of linguistics that studies things like syllables and how they are stressed and the like is called Prosody (linguistics). That would be a place to start to look for information on this concept.  -- Jayron 32 18:15, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * To my ear, a marked pause between syllables is a feature of Welsh English, but I'm not finding anything that agrees with me. Alansplodge (talk) 19:54, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree it's a common thing to emphasise when putting on a Welsh accent, but from personal experience I haven't noticed it particularly in people in South Wales, for what that's worth. Fgf10 (talk) 08:01, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I think you're generally right. Where's the salad. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:41, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Probably it has more to do with British having a real [t] sound, while American English often has a flap consonant (often a single nasal flap sound corresponding to both the written letters "nt", when preceded by a stressed vowel and followed by an unstressed vowel). AnonMoos (talk) 21:19, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Re peninshula: There's an ad on TV here for a program called "SAS Australia". The speaker is English. He calls our country "Osh-tralia" every time. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:38, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * That's not usual in any English dialect AFAIK, must be just him. Alansplodge (talk) 23:17, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Here, at the end. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  08:23, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Video unavailable: The uploader has not made this video available in your country. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:41, 28 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm struggling to think how else you'd pronounce peninsula? Fgf10 (talk) 08:01, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * With a sibilant "s" rather than a "sh". Alansplodge (talk) 09:16, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * That question came from watching BBC's Escape to the Country, which has several presenters from different parts of England. The only one who says "peninshula" is Ginny Buckley, who's from Manchester area originally and spent a number of years in Australia. The others all say it "peninsula". Ginny, as well as Anthony McCrossan covering the Vuelta cycling race currently, say "coun-tee" and "moun-tain" respectively. Some of the other presenters also say "coun-tee" but with a less obvious gap in the syllables. Maybe depending on how fast they talk. And maybe too small a sample. But just things I haven't heard in American, and wondering how typical they are in British English. There are other things, like any word ending in "-ary" or "-er(r)y" or "-ory" tends to be pronounced as if the vowel before the "r" isn't there, like "libree" or "bluebree" or "lavatree". But those I know well. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:53, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem here is the use of the term "British English". Accents and dialects vary a lot across the islands. Bazza (talk) 11:03, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * True. But there are elements that appear to be primarily British, not American. Another oddity is that Belvoir Castle is pronounced as if it were "Beaver Castle". Hard to tell what the explanation for that is. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The explanation of the divergence between written and spoken place names is that for many centuries, a place name would be passed from one person to another without reference to the spelling, which has remained conservative. In the case of Belvoir Castle, almost a thousand years has elapsed since the name was coined in Old Norman French, which was never the language of ordinary English people anyway. Note that similar divergences have occurred in America over a much shorter time frame; Boise, Idaho springs to mind. Alansplodge (talk) 13:35, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * BrEng has more odd pronunciations than you can shake a stick at. Off the top of my head, we have Happisburgh in Norfolk, the surname Cholmondeley, Costessey, aso in Norfolk, Tasburgh (Norfolk), Stiffkey (Norfolk).  Looks like Norfolk people liked their odd pronunciations...--Phil Holmes (talk) 13:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Sometimes the spelling has changed to match pronunciation; Whipps Cross in my neck of the woods was originally Phyppys Crosse (i.e. Philip's Cross), but the local dialect changed the "f" sound to a "w", rather like the speech of some Dickens characters, and the spelling changed accordingly in the 17th century. Alansplodge (talk) 13:48, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * A shibboleth of sorts where Jack and I am is the pronunciation of this city in northern Tasmania: Tasmanians pronounce the "Laun-" to rhyme with "John", whereas "mainlanders" (except me) tend to pronounce it as "lawn". (For those of you for who m there is no difference, locally the  is /ɒ/, across Bass Strait it is /ɔː/.) Both pronunciations, and in terms of consonants rather than vowels, would come as a surprise to the inhabitants of the Launceston in Cornwall. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 04:14, 29 August 2021 (UTC) ( On second thoughts, I have decided to follow the way English is evolving wrt who and whom here... it still makes perfect sense, doesn't it? )
 * A perfect example, because the original Launceston, Cornwall is pronounced either "Lawnst'n" or "Lahnst'n", whereas the Australian one is pronounced with all three syllables. Alansplodge (talk) 20:19, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * For the "proper Cornish" experience, the "t" is silent - the first pronunciation given by the BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Place Names is /'lɑnsən/ or la'anssŏn, which is how I recall it from living nearby. You did, in the 70's at least, see it spelt Lanson in some contexts - I think on the backs of temporary road-signs, to indicate which depot they came from, and on some police bollards likewise. DuncanHill (talk) 12:53, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I suspect AnonMoos is right about the flap. People who say "coun-tee" probably distinguish latter and ladder; people who don't distinguish them probably pronounced "county" the way you're used to it.

We in the US don't have a lot of the odd (if you go by spelling) Brit pronunciations because the chain of oral transmission has been broken, so people go by the spelling. There are a lot of odd regional pronunciations of place names in the US as well, but they haven't been developing for as long. You certainly get spelling pronunciations of foreign words in the UK as well, e.g. for "jaguar". — kwami (talk) 07:48, 29 August 2021 (UTC)


 * The fact that the middle consonants in "ladder" and "latter" are both flapped in many American English dialects doesn't mean that they're automatically homophonous (have an identical pronunciation).    That's kind of an additional step...
 * The reason why "peninsula" is sometimes pronounced with a "sh" sound is that there was a sequence of "s" consonant plus "y" consonant in earlier pronunciations of the word (IPA [pənɪnsjələ]).    This would not apply to the other words mentioned... AnonMoos (talk) 21:43, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * "Earlier" or just places without yod dropping. Alansplodge (talk) 18:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)


 * The issue is that there are three distinct pronunciations here, which to some extent and in some dialects may be in free variation or may be allophonic, to the point where native speakers may some or all of them interchangeably, while in other dialects some of the pronunciations may be marked as non-standard. This is, after all, what makes dialects a thing.  In terms of peninsula, I can thing of three distinct variations on the last two syllables: 1) /sjuːlƏ/ -SYOO-luh, 2) /ʃuːlƏ/ -SHOE-luh or 3) /suːlƏ/ -SUE-luh.  These represent 1) the one with the full "y" sound, 2) the one undergoing "yod coalescence" where /sj/ becomes /ʃ/ and 3) the one undergoing "yod dropping" where /sj/ becomes /s/.  Without knowing someone's native dialect, it is unclear which form or forms they may find natural and normal, and which ones they find marked.  -- Jayron 32 16:10, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * In British English, your first pronunciation with a "y" sound is the formal received pronunciation, whereas the second "sh" sound is an informal or dialect version. The third is not used as far as I know. Alansplodge (talk) 13:36, 3 September 2021 (UTC)