Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 April 4

= April 4 =

Gabagool
Can somone explain to me why the word "capocollo" (Italian pork produxt) is pronounced as "gabagool"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.200.126.131 (talk) 00:55, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Did you read the sentence "The pronunciation 'gabagool' has been used by Italian Americans in the New York City area and elsewhere in the Northeast US, based on the Neapolitan language word 'capecuollo' (IPA /kapəˈkwol.lə/) in working-class strata of 19th- and early 20th-century" in our article Capocollo? It's similar to how pasta e fagioli became "pasta fazool" (like which the stars make you drool) because of Neapolitan influence in New York. Deor (talk) 01:19, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Hereabouts I hear it as "fažool", ≈ the soft French j, or the -gi- in buongiorno. – •Raven .talk 03:20, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Further info: "How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained". --Lambiam 08:20, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * From a purely linguistic standpoint, the letter pairs c/g and p/b in those words have the same place of articulation, and only differ by voicing. The c and p sounds are unvoiced (no vocal chord vibrations) while g and b are voiced (the vocal chords vibrate when saying them).  Given the similarity in the sounds, it is common for languages to, over time, alter the pronunciations between one and the other.  This is especially common in intervocalic consonants (those between vowels), but can occur just about anywhere.  -- Jayron 32 11:07, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps related to consonant mutation. Alansplodge (talk) 09:50, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

English prevalence in Scandinavia
Which Scandinavian country would be the easiest to live and work in for a monolingual English speaker? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:48, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * This may help. Of the Scandinavian countries I (an Englishman) have only visited Finland, which unlike the others does not have a Germanic main language, i.e. related to English (discounting its approximately 5% of native Swedish speakers), but I had no trouble whatever in Helsinki. I think the ease of living and working in any of them would relate more to other factors, like labour regulations, than to being understood. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.249.31.43 (talk) 10:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, general knowledge and prevalence of, as well as access to English language culture is quite high, overall. Although you might feel somewhat left aside by not knowing the native language, I don't think language itself often would become much of an issue. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:52, 4 April 2023 (UTC)


 * A relative who spent two six-month stints studying and working in Norway said that her attempts to learn Norwegian were hampered by all the Norwegians wanting to practice their English language skills on her. Communication was rarely a problem. HiLo48 (talk) 11:00, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * From my own experience (in Denmark), one-on-one conversations were no problem, but socialising was difficult: in a group of people, they would happily speak English to you, but still use their own language between themselves, so you'd have no clue about the many-to-many conversation going on. 185.130.86.86 (talk) 12:00, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I visited Norway and Scandinavia in the 1970s and found English spoken everywhere in Norway, even in a remote roadside shop in the mountains. In Finland, older people had German as a second language, but I suspect that this generation would be nearing extinction by now. Alansplodge (talk) 15:34, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Several of my English speaking friends have lived for decades in Sweden without learning any Swedish. I don´t know of any Swede who does not speak English pretty well. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * See also and (assuming you'll be staying in a city) § 2022 city rankings. The differences are not salient, but the data may be biased by differences in inclination to take the EF test.  --Lambiam 18:11, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

The real made of teeth
I would like to know the make of teeth, is teeth made of bones or what? AMOSABRAHAM (talk) 10:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Human tooth --Viennese Waltz 10:30, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Wrong section, but hopefully the answer would be good enough, anyway. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:54, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Why is it the wrong section? --Viennese Waltz 08:24, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It belongs in Reference desk/Science; it's about the Biology of teeth, not the Language used to describe them -- Verbarson talkedits 09:43, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see what you mean. I thought you meant that the link in my answer pointed to the wrong section of the human tooth article. --Viennese Waltz 07:15, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It would've been better to say "wrong reference desk". --174.89.12.187 (talk) 20:23, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Possibly. I'll try to bear that in mind until next time. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:31, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The ontological nature of Wikipedia's reference desk is that it is one Reference desk existing in seven sections – a bit like the Trinity doctrine. An unambiguous designation is therefore "wrong section of the Reference desk". --Lambiam 16:19, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Given the terminology of the main ref desk page, the term "category" might be better. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:42, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * We also have Category:Entertainment, Category:Humanities, Category:Language, Category:Mathematics and Category:Science, so this might lead to some confusion. --Lambiam 05:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It could be moved and see if it attracts any additional info to chew on. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:34, 7 April 2023 (UTC)