Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 January 20

= January 20 =

How to pronounce Kauaʻi ʻōʻō
I'm writing an English project partially on the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō and figured that I should probably provide a rough pronounciation since it is a pretty odd name for a bird English-wise. I can't seem to find anything about this however. Thanks in advance. Lampyscales (talk) 02:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Seems like the vowels are pronounced roughly as in Italian or Spanish, the macron represents a long vowel, and the ʻ a glottal stop as in the hiatus in uh-oh. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Lampyscales An initial attempt at some IPA for an anglicised pronunciation might be . Bazza (talk) 09:48, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * According to Dictionary.com, it's /ˈkaʊ.aɪ ˈoʊ.oʊ/ (cow-eye oh-oh). They give a 2nd pronunciation of 'Kauai' that AFAIK no-one actually uses, but which approximates the Merriam-Webster transcription of /kɑːˈwɑː.iː/ (kah-wah-ee). So either of those should be fine. The second, /kɑːˈwɑː.iː ˈoʊ.oʊ/ (kah-wah-ee oh-oh) would be a bit closer to the Hawaiian. — kwami (talk) 22:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Collins gives a British English pronunciation of kauai [sic] as, with  and  as American equivalents. Bazza (talk) 22:25, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Arabic Eschatology
Hello in which surah, hadith (or other) is "عندما تصبح الملائكة أنا ، سوف يسقطون في جهنم الجن الذي هو في حد ذاته ملاك. لذلك الجنة نفسها ستقع في الجنة."? 80.215.111.162 (talk) 11:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Probably from the Kitab Aleibarat Aleashwayiya (the Book of Random Phrases). --Lambiam 17:47, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

"Canadienne"
In the "nationality" field of Canadian passports, it says: "CANADIAN / CANADIENNE". (It says this regardless of gender.) So naturally, for the longest time, I just assumed that CANADIENNE is simply Canadian-French for CANADIAN.

But I looked it up today and apparently it specially means a "female French-Canadian".

So is the dictionary definition too narrow in this case? Or did the passport design people make a mistake here?

(I should note that the Canadian-French word "Canadien" is gender-neutral, so having it say "CANADIAN / CANADIEN" shouldn't offend any people.) Helian James (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

An additional point of data: there's the Canadienne cattle article, and cattle can be both male and female. Helian James (talk) 20:00, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The French words for "cow" (vache) and "breed" (race) are both feminine, so it is la vache canadienne and la race canadienne – which may be shortened to la canadienne. (They are bred to serve as dairy cows, not as prize-fighting bulls.) The generic word for a bovine animal is bovin, which is masculine, so when the adjective is used in combination with this word we see bovin canadien. --Lambiam 15:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Canadian/canadienne is an adjective attribute to nationality: "Canadian nationality", "nationalité canadienne" ("nationalité" is feminine). --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm not familiar with French, or gendered languages in general. Are you saying that there's a French grammar rule that says that when it's the case of "Adjective Noun", that the gender of the Adjective must match the gender of the Noun? Helian James (talk) 04:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That's correct, see Agreement_(linguistics). (Though of course it's "Noun Adjective" in French.) Card Zero  (talk) 06:46, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Unspecified sex is not the same as gender-neutral. If a Canadian is known to be female, one cannot say, in proper French, "Elle est canadien". --Lambiam 22:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I had not considered that there was a difference between unspecified and gender-neutral. In that case, it would make sense for the male passports to say Canadien and the female ones to say Canadienne then.Helian James (talk) 03:00, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * No, as Wrongfilter says, it's the nationality that's Canadian, and that's feminine. --142.112.220.65 (talk) 03:41, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In French, all nouns are separated by gender, for those that didn't know, already. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 04:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * For comparison, this official-looking page has a sample from a French passport, where the nationality of the clearly-male holder is given as Française. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:42, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not an expert on French passports, but as noted elsewhere, the word nationalité in French is a feminine noun, and articles as well as adjectives have to match the gender of the noun.
 * Both "his nationality" and "her nationality" would be sa nationalité.
 * On the passport, it looks like country name is an adjective noun (as in Jean's Canadian nationality) and so has to be feminine (la nationalité canadienne de Jean).
 * In the same way, since âge (age) is masculine, you'd use son âge actuel (masculine article, masculine adjective) for both "his current age" or "her current age." OtherDave (talk) 23:59, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

By the way does any passport or ID card state dual nationality or any nationality that is not redundant to the one indicated on the title of the document? --Theurgist (talk) 18:22, 21 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Per all of the above, in French, the "field" on any form or such will show gender agreement for the descriptor of the field. Since "nationalité" is feminine, the feminine version of the nationality would go in that field, for all countries and for all persons, regardless of the gender of the person.  If a person was American, but writing in French, then they would write "américaine" and not "américain" in that field, even if they were male.  This usage is different than conversational usage, where speaking of a male one would say "Il est canadien", in this case the "canadien" shows agreement with "Il".-- Jayron 32 13:26, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
 * And I thought all of this had been said before, silly me... --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:39, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I guess I was not correct. My bad.  -- Jayron 32 13:45, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes! In a British passport, the nationality field "British citizen" is not redundant. See British passport. Quīsquīlliān  (  talk  ) 23:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Similarly in the U.S., people born in American Samoa are U.S. nationals but not citizens; their passports say "U.S. National" rather than "USA" in the nationality field and include an explanation that the bearer is not a U.S. citizen. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:28, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm a dual national (Canada, US). Neither passport indicates nationality in the other country. Note that the U.S. State Department notes, "U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another. A U.S. citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to his or her U.S. citizenship." OtherDave (talk) 23:38, 26 January 2023 (UTC)