Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 December 15

= December 15 =

Additional S
Hi. I'm a native speaker of Italian. I've noticed in a lot of English videos that sometimes and S is added at the ending of singular words or in other places were it shouldn't be. A very common occurence is "but" --> "buts". For example take this video I was watching right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBqagDS7KmM&ab_channel=CameronChardukian At 2.57 "with the American GovernmentS, butS", 3.14 "in a professional environmentS", 4.00 "buts". Considering that English is not my native language I may be completely wrong and not understanding this right, but it is a thing that I'm noticing quite often. Can someone help me? Thank you! --212.171.18.157 (talk) 10:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * He's not saying "buts". --Viennese Waltz 10:45, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess what sounds to you like an "s" is actually the aspiration on the final t, which becomes particularly noticeable in these cases where the t is not tied to an immediately following word. Italian does not have aspirated consonants (to my knowledge), so that's where the confusion may come from. --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:06, 15 December 2021 (UTC)


 * It is purely a variation in how different speakers realize a Voiceless dental and alveolar plosives, in particular in word-final position. When you listen to Trevor Noah, you may hear, "Here is your moment s of Zen." The plosive has the same place of articulation as the sibilant phoneme Voiceless alveolar fricative (or, for some speakers, Voiceless dental fricative). While an  can be sounded for a sustained length of time and can have a gradual onset, a  is characterized by a sudden onset (with a burst of released air) and usually kept short. But, if sustained for a longer period, it morphs into an . This is called affrication; using narrow transcription, the result can be written as . Affrication is a systematic feature of some regional varieties of languages. An example is the affrication of  before a close (high) vowel in Quebec French, as heard in the pronunciation of poutine.  --Lambiam 11:49, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Which is actually a lot closer to the proper pronunciation of Vladimir Putin's surname than the way most Westerners mangle it. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:47, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll see your Boris and raise you an Oleg. MinorProphet (talk) 15:08, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't get me started with Alexy, Greesha, Sohnya, Arcadey, итд. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:17, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all! Very interesting. --62.211.162.165 (talk) 16:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

WP on contractions
I remember reading somewhere that Wikipedia does not allow English contractions for mainspace article writing, as this is informal writing and it's not encyclopedic. But I don't seem to find the guideline for this -Gouleg🛋️ harass/hound 14:29, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * MOS:CONTRACTIONS is what you are looking for. Bazza (talk) 14:34, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! -Gouleg🛋️ harass/hound 14:48, 15 December 2021 (UTC)