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November 11

Prison learning

Imagine this Kafkaesque scenario: A man is locked in a prison cell for a very long time, let's say a life sentence. He is given plenty of food, water, light etc. The cell is large enough for him to do some exercise, but he is never let out. He has no reading or writing materials, sees no TV or movies, and hears no music. His guards are under strict orders not to talk to him, ever. Piped into his cell 24/7 is an unending stream of conversations and monologues in a foreign language that he does not understand at all, not a single word. It's always the same foreign language. Remember, he has no visual cues to go on, just the sound of people speaking all day and all night about god-knows-what in this utterly incomprehensible language. Assume he knows his own language fluently and has a good grasp of grammar, but has never studied his own language past secondary school and has never studied any other languages at all. Assume he remains in good physical and mental health, doesn't go deaf, and doesn't kill himself. Assume he quickly learns to sleep through the broadcast for as long as he needs. How long would it be before he begins to understand what's coming through the speaker, if ever? -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC) (JackofOz not signed in) Added link: Kafkaesque Mitch Ames (talk) 12:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Never- how would he, without any context, ever come to the conclusion that foobar means tree? Nadando (talk) 02:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

He might learn a few functional words ("the", for example) and work out some of the grammar, but while he might work out that foobar (to use Nadando's example) is a singular noun, there is no way he could ever work out which singular noun it is. --Tango (talk) 02:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, except that's assuming no common heritage with the language he speaks. Once he's tuned in, he has a good chance of picking up on any similarities with words he knows. Certainly he'll be at the mercy of false friends and suchlike, but it does give him a crack to start working at. And a crack is all he needs if this is all he hears for years on end. That is assuming his language shares some vocabulary similarities with the foreign language. 86.142.230.196 (talk) 03:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I interpreted "a foreign language that he does not understand at all, not a single word" as meaning there were no such clues. If there are, then it becomes vaguely possible. --Tango (talk) 04:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem your hypothetical prisoner comes up against is that he is bombarded with purely passive learning. He has no instruction, nor feedback to help him understand. A related experiment is the child who is brought up with television in a foreign language, but that is their only interaction with that language (i.e. the parents use a different one) does not learn the television language. This is again different from the Egyptian universal language experiment. Steewi (talk) 04:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think, given enough time, you could learn quite a lot from foreign television. Since you can understand the images you have a starting point. You could learn the names of foods fairly easily by watching cooking programmes, for example. The word they say as they pick up an ingredient is probably the word for that ingredient (you would want to watch multiple programmes involving each ingredient to make sure you've got the right word, eg. you want the word for "almonds" not "handful", so given just the phrase "add a handful of almonds" wouldn't give you enough information, but if you then heard in another programme "mix in two hundred grams of almonds" you could make an informed guess than the word both phrases have in common is the one you want). If all you have is sound, though, it is much harder. If whenever a new voice starts they say the same word you could guess that was a greeting, but getting much further than that would be hard. --Tango (talk) 04:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how it's possible to learn an unfamiliar language by hearing it over and over. Even if you could pick up some words, with no visual aids how would you deduce what the other words meant? It would be as futile as trying to decipher Hieroglyphics without a Rosetta Stone. The TV approach has much better possibilities. Decades ago there was a series of books called Through Pictures, with simple line-drawing illustrations captioned by phrases or sentences without otherwise directly explaining what the words meant (except in the glossary). A simple Spanish example would be a man indicating himself and saying Yo soy un hombre. Then a photo of a woman indicating herself and saying Yo soy una mujer. It wouldn't take much imagination to grasp that they were saying "I am a ." ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 06:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

You would have a little information about meaning, in terms of connecting words that are often heard together. For example if you often hear noun A and verb B together, you can be pretty sure that A = "apple" and B = "ride" is wrong. Although you might not ever be able to distinguish between A = "apple" and B = "eat" or A = "bus" and B = "ride". Even if you could keep very careful track of how words tend to sit in relationship to one another, there may still be many different plausible maps between words and concepts that would make sense. As you got more information you might be able to weed out choices, but there would likely be far more than you could reasonably keep track of, especially without being able to keep records. Rckrone (talk) 07:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess it separates into two questions:

• Is the information present to eventually produce a unique map between words and concepts that has a high likelihood of being correct?
• Could a human realistically perform this task, especially without anyway to record information or ideas besides their memory?

I think the answer to the second one is probably no. The first one I'm not sure about. Rckrone (talk) 07:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

i agree that it would seem impossible, except if both the foreign and native language had some root language , such as latin. i wonder how pigeon English is learned?91.125.34.20 (talk) 12:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

This would be most likely deemed cruel and unusual punishment if you tried such in the US. Googlemeister (talk) 15:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If it appears to be a 24-hour radio show, he would soon pick up the words for "good morning" and "good evening", and if there appeared to be regular features like weather and traffic reports, he could pick up words for "rain", "breakdown", etc. If there were news bulletins which mentioned well-known foreign countries or cities, that would help too. If there were a man and a woman conversing in sexy-sounding voices, he could probably pick up "I love you". There are other expressions that he could probably guess the meaning of from the context, such as "Don't shout!" and personal pronouns from exchanges like: "Are you hungry?" "Yes, I am hungry.". All this would be a good starting point. -Ehrenkater (talk) 17:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

But as said above, he wouldn't pick those up because he wouldn't have the necessary cues and feedback to let him know what they meant. — Ƶ§œš¹ 19:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Even with visual cues it cannot be taken for granted that he would understand. Consider the scenario from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations that Stoppard based Dogg's Hamlet on.

I know you are asking about an adult, and language learning by adults is entirely different from how children learn language; but an observation reported by Stephen Pinker somewhere in The Language Instinct is nevertheless interesting. At one time deaf parents with hearing children were advised to let their children watch a lot of television, on the assumption that they would learn spoken language from it. According to Pinker, this did not work, apparently because the speech they heard had no relation to their immediate environment. --ColinFine (talk) 23:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmm. So, the opinion seems strongly that it would never happen. I just have this idea that the brain could somehow, somehow, eventually make sense of it all. We'll never know for sure without a real-life trial, though. Any volunteers? -- JackofOz (talk) 08:05, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Our article on Language deprivation experiments gives some historical and fictional examples, though again these are for babies. BrainyBabe (talk) 14:45, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

the true answer

JackofOz, you're right, and they're wrong. I'll tell you the real answer right now. The answer is: if the conversations come from Harvard's, Yale's, Oxford's, whoever's language faculty, written to be authentic, and then recorded in a studio by voice actors (or, equivalently, written by staff writers and voiced in a studio by sitcom actors), then the answer is never.

But if instead we take the man's ear, and continually, after a random amount of time in each place, connect it to a randomly chosen (this is important) site from among all locations on Earth in which utterances in the target language are being produced, have just been produced, or are about to be produced by native speakers, and we make it so that the man's (invisible) ear is now so he can hear these clearly (but he doesn't get to look or feel or smell, only listen), then he will "begin to understand" the conversation in as early as before the first syllable (before any utterance). How can you "begin to understand" a conversation that is about to take place? If the rest of what you hear makes it obvious you're probably at a cafe/restaurant (utensils clinking, distant laughter, cars outside), then you already understand that (probably) everything you are about to hear is appropriate for a cafe/restaurant (though you could be mistaken that it was a cafe/restaurant, however you would not always be and eventually you really would listen in one). Secondly, once he hears people talking, the condition above that he will hear for a random amount of time means that he just might get a chance to hear how they part, and eventually will. Likewise, there are only so many things he is likely to repeatedly hear a woman yelling out during coitus (which he will come upon sooner or later, so to speak). If all you hear is an orgasming woman screaming: "xireixyd! xireixyd! xireixyd! xireixyd! xiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiireixyd", a word you hear all the time anyway, for example as a short utterance the other person clearly pauses for, and upon hearing it continues talking, and at other times a person can comment the other's speech with xireixyd while the other person doesn't even stop talking, now you know what it means. The point is, if what the man listens to is a representative, random sample of the world at a location where native speakers are at the moment and have just talked, are talking, or are about to talk, and he gets to listen to them for a while but not so long that he is deprived of other contexts, then he WILL learn the language, guaranteed, and as for a literal answer to your question "how long would it be before he begins to understand" I would say: as early as before the first syllable, as listening to whatever context his ear happens to be teleported into counts for beginning to understand the speech he then hears. And no, all you other (wrong) readers, the above isn't tentative, it's reality. You want proof? I never told you what xireixyd means. 85.181.150.6 (talk) 20:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that ... interesting viewpoint. Yes, I imagine that greetings and farewells would be picked up soon enough, as they almost always start and begin conversations and don't occur in the middle. But I figure there's at least a million things people can be talking about while sitting in a restaurant. Just knowing they're in a restaurant gives you no clues about their conversation. As for knowing what they're about to say before they've uttered a syllable - I'm afraid you've completely lost me there. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

As for "interesting viewpoint", this isn't a viewpoint, it's the fact of the situation, it's the reality. It's the answer to your question. It boils down to: yes, there are things you can never find out, like what color "mauve" is exactly (I don't know). But for almost all things, you can find them out, it just might take you a hundred thousand hours. If the time is a few hundred years ago and the language you're listening in on is an eskimo one in a tribe that lives in isolation/has no contact with anything you recognize, you will never learn what the different fish are that they eat, and it might take you a hundred thousand hours before you catch a mother scaring the child by imitating a predator, and then using THAT WORD, that word you've heard so many times!!! Now you finally know that it's a ... polar bear? Whatever it is, it's something they always talk about, beats me why, but damn, it would have been nice to hear the mother imitating it about a hundred thousand hours ago (this is a faceslap moment) as you had no idea what they were talking about, all you've known is that they "say it like it's a bad thing", but you've really been scratching your head as to the specifics, could be anything from an ice storm to a disease for all you know. Until you finally hear the imitation. 85.181.150.6 (talk) 21:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

by the way, don't think you won't catch little kids asking what stuff means. they'll ask about anything! "dad, what's a traffic."

You say it's "fact" and "reality" - but how do you know? Has this ever been objectively tested, or is this simply your strongly held belief? -- JackofOz (talk) 21:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

has what been objectively tested? Learning in only a target language, and passively? Yes, it has. 85.181.150.6 (talk) 21:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd love to see some detailed information about that. Do you know where I can find it? -- JackofOz (talk) 21:49, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

IPA - terribly confused

I've been trying to work out how to pronounce things based on the IPA in articles, and have found myself distracted by a puzzle.

I was looking up some symbols in Misplaced Pages:IPA, and saw some had audio attached. To check I was getting the distinctions right, I clicked on the audio for:

RP cot

This sounded just like the vowel I have in caught. But I don't have the cot-caught merger, I speak something RP/Estuary-ish. So then I wondered what the symbol was for the actual vowel I have in cot, but I can't see one for it. I had a look at what we have on the cot-caught merger, and it says:

But in Received Pronunciation, there are three sounds distinguished: the long /ɑː/ of cart, the long /ɔː/ of caught, and the short rounded /ɒ/ of cot.

I can imagine a very marbles-in-mouth accent using the vowel in that audio for cot, but then what is the symbol for my short 'o'? I'm a bit too overwhelmed with the symbols to look efficiently, especially as some of the symbols have strange relationships with English spelling conventions. 86.142.230.196 (talk) 02:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that audio file is an "open back rounded vowel" as the title says it is, but it is a long one. The vowel in "cot" is a short one. So in RP (which I speak), "cot" has , but the symbol for the vowel in that audio file is , that is a longer version of the same vowel. The vowel in "caught" is , which is very similar (but slightly further forward) to . The main difference between and , however, is the length (the former is still further forward than the latter, but that is much less noticeable than the length). --Tango (talk) 04:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe it's just that I can't hear the difference, but that long open back rounded vowel sounds like my vowel in "caught" ("awe") which feels like it's using the front/middle of my tongue (making is further forward?) and has my lips in an "oo" position, whereas the "o" in my "cot" uses the back of my tongue (making it further back?) and is less dependant on my lips. So, if I'm understanding you right, the vowel in my "cot" is indeed 'further back' than the vowel in my "caught", but if I lengthen my "cot" vowel I don't get the vowel in that audio file.

I can imagine RP accents that do have that vowel in cot, and I'm prepared for the possibility that I'm just hearing it wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm using a further-back vowel: it has more of an "omicron-ish" nature, rather than the more "a-ish" "awe" vowel in "caught". Is there a symbol and audio of a short, further-back "o" vowel so I can listen for the difference? 86.139.237.65 (talk) 19:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

What kind of a food is Misplaced Pages?

Many of us have seen the menus that offer Misplaced Pages to eat, such as page 4 of this menu (linked by the Signpost) or the menu pictured here. Can any readers of Chinese tell me the actual meaning of the word(s) translated "wikipedia"? Nyttend (talk) 05:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The Beijing menu is a joke; whoever was translating gave the name Misplaced Pages to a type of fungus. I can't find Misplaced Pages on the Massachusetts menu, though. DOR (HK) (talk) 05:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

花椒牛腩 or Beef brisket with Sichuan pepper F (talk) 12:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

花椒牛腩 is a Chinese delicalcy that anyone can eat it. It is maid from sliced Wales. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Shoogun Froid

I am interested in learning the meaning of the term SHOOGUN FROID. I am not certain of the spelling. My impression is that it refers to some type of situational delemma. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.155.78.24 (talk) 14:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps Schaudenfreude? --LarryMac | Talk 14:19, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Or even Schadenfreude? --ColinFine (talk) 23:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I bet you took great pleasure in pointing out LarryMac's unfortunate error, didn't you, Colin? BrainyBabe (talk) 14:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally I took great pleasure in picturing Freud decked out in samurai armor. :) Rckrone (talk) 19:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

don't I at least get props for decoding the title phrase within 17 minutes of the original post? --LarryMac | Talk 20:15, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Another Middle English word definition

What is the meaning of "meseles" which is either Middle English or perhaps more likely Medieval English? I know it is NOT measles. --64.138.237.101 (talk) 18:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

As always, you'd get a better answer if you gave the context in which you found the word. Middle English spelling was all over the place, and it's often difficult to identify a word in isolation, since forms of different words could be spelled the same. That said, the most likely answer is that it means "lepers". Deor (talk) 20:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I immediately thought "lepers" too, since "mezel" is "leper" in Old French. Looks like an obvious loanword. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Apparently it means "infested with tapeworms" (good old Google). It also seems to be a fairly common surname; "Aha, Mr Infested With Tapeworms I believe!" Alansplodge (talk) 12:25, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The OP says it is not measles, and I take it on trust that the unspecified context that led to this query is indeed measles-free . However, the OED lists "meseles" as an alternate spelling for measles, along with so many others that I got itchy just looking at them:

Forms: . (In plural form) ME maseles, ME meazeles, ME meseles, ME mesellis, ME meselyn, ME-16 mesels, 15 maisils, 15 massels, 15 maysilles, 15 meselles, 15 mesells, 15-16 masels, 15-16 measells, 15-16 measels, 15- measles, 16 maisels, 16 mazels, 16 measills, 16 measils, 16 meazelles, 16 meazells, 16 meazills, 16 meazils, 16 meezles, 16-17 meazels, 16-17 meazles, 17 meassles; Brit. regional 18 mezzils; Sc. pre-17 meassalls, pre-17 meaxells, pre-17 meazles, pre-17 mesels, pre-17 mesillis, pre-17 meslis, pre-17 messillis, pre-17 missells, pre-17 missels, pre-17 missillis, 17 meszels, 17 missellis, 18 maisles, 18 mezzles, 18- mizzles.. (In singular form) ME masyl, ME mazil, ME mesel, ME mesell, ME meselle, ME mesylle, 15 measel, 15 mesill, 15 mesyll, 15-16 meazell, 16 measill, 16 meazeall, 16 meazil, 16 meazle, 18 mizzle (Sc.), 18- measle

Not a measly haul. (The oldest OED citation for "measly", by the way, backs up the tapeworm hypothesis: "Esp. of a pig, or pork: affected with cysticercosis".) BrainyBabe (talk) 15:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if the French word had other meanings...it comes from Latin "misellus" which just means any sort of miserable person. If it could mean diseased in general, maybe that's how it came to mean something else in English. Adam Bishop (talk) 17:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't think that a citation was going to be needed to back up my response, but the relevant entry in the MED can be viewed here. Deor (talk) 17:25, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Van Gogh

I have looked in the archives and cannot find an answer. I would like to know the correct pronunciation of van Gogh, i.e. how the painter himself would have said it. major difference between the atlantic Sea. I wonder whether this is an influence of the French accent on his name. Would love it if a Dutchman could write and tell me the correct pronunciation. Thanks --91.125.34.20 (talk) 20:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not Dutch, but I can tell you the Dutch pronunciation, and it's neither the American "van go" nor the British "van goff". It's "van ghokh" (in IPA, ), where "kh" (IPA ) stands for the sound found in words like "loch" and "chutzpah", and "gh" (IPA ) stands for the same sound but voiced. There's actually a lengthy note about the pronunciation of his name, including sound files at Vincent van Gogh#cite note-1. +Angr 21:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

not sure how to reference the pronounciation from Misplaced Pages .On a[REDACTED] entry the Dutch way is to miss the G and pronoune the ogh as och in loch. there is a pronunciation on audio file. However it states there is contradictory evidence that Van Gogh was from Brabant and would have pronounced it differently. Any help out there, any Dutch? --91.125.34.20 (talk) 21:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

You can visit Dutch Public Radio: Zoek | Omroep.nl: "vincent+van+gogh" and listen to results of your choice from the column at the right-hand side of the page. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

According to our article, the Brabant dialect pronunciation of his last name would be . There is really no way to achieve that pronunciation using only sounds that occur in English. You will need to go to our article on IPA for guidance on how to pronounce those consonants. Marco polo (talk) 01:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Using comma

Isabella, Ferdinand and Francis

Which of these sentences (if any) is correct regarding the usage of commas:

• Isabella and Ferdinand, together with their cousin, Duke Francis II of Brittany, planned the alliance of their respective heirs.
• Isabella and Ferdinand, together with their cousin Duke Francis II of Brittany planned the alliance of their respective heirs.

I believe the first sentence is correct, but English is not my first language and I am not sure. In Bosnian, the first sentence would be correct and the second wouldn't. Surtsicna (talk) 21:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I also believe the first one is correct. The second one definitely isn't, as there needs to be something (a comma, a dash, or a parenthesis) to introduce Francis' name. Xenon54 / talk / 21:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I would have gone with a third option:

• Isabella and Ferdinand, together with their cousin Duke Francis II of Brittany, planned the alliance of their respective heirs.

I think this is easiest to read. +Angr 21:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. If there's a comma before "together", there must be one after "Brittany". You could get away with no commas at all, or two, but not just one. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 01:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Another option would be:

• Isabella and Ferdinand — together with their cousin, Duke Francis II of Brittany — planned the alliance of their respective heirs.

Setting off the dashes is more appropriate in this case if Francis played a lesser part than Isabella and Ferdinand. I don't know the history here, so I can't speak to whether this would be a good idea. Nyttend (talk) 22:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the first is correct. The option with dashes is also a good option. The difficulty is that we have a dependent clause within (and the end of) another dependent clause. If we used something like brackets to delimit clauses it would be clear:

• Isabella and Ferdinand (together with their cousin (Duke Francis II of Brittany)) planned the alliance of their respective heirs.

But, since we use commas, you can't make it clear that the 2nd comma is beginning a new clause and that both clauses end at the same time. The dashes help since they allow you to use different punctuation to delimit each clause (it would be even better if we could use a comma and a dash after the name to explicitly close the inner clause, but the English language doesn't allow that - it isn't entirely necessary, anyway, since you can't have overlapping clauses). --Tango (talk) 00:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Since the comma in English is used for stylistic and grammatical purposes, the both sentences seem correct.

On the question of the grammatical aspect, the problem on the first sentence is the constriction of the word ‘together’ as an adjective in the phrase ‘with their cousin’. The problem on the second sentence is that hearers usually register the modifier ‘together’ as an adjective subconsciously, though ‘together’ is an adverb (which modifies the verb ‘planed’). So I think the adverb must move closer to the verb without any commas in the sentence. --Mihkaw napéw (talk) 02:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

According to The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., 6.43: Appositives with or without commas. A word, abbreviation, phrase, or clause that is in apposition to a noun is set off by commas if it is nonrestrictive—that is, omittable, containing supplementary rather than essential information. If it is restrictive—essential to the noun it belongs to—no commas should appear.

The committee chair, Gloria Ruffolo, called for a resolution.

Stanley Groat, president of the corporation, spoke first.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, PhD, introduced the speaker.

Ursala's husband, Clifford, had been a student of Norman Maclean's. (In informal prose, "Ursala's husband Clifford had . . ." is acceptable.)

My older sister, Betty, taught me the alphabet.

but

My sister Enid lets me hold her doll. (I have two sisters.)

O'Neill's play The Hairy Ape was being revived. (O'Neill wrote several plays.) —Wayward 10:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

So we have to know whether or not Isabella and Ferdinand had other cousins beside Duke Francis II of Brittany before we can decide how to punctuate the sentence? +Angr 10:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I would have to disagree with the above; on the "restrictive" issue, Chicago seems to be either wrong, or overly prescriptive. People use stuff like "My sister Enid..." all the time, regardless of how many sisters they have, because it sounds less awkward than "My sister, Enid,..."; and the "I have two sisters" interpretation is not the first one that comes to my mind for this sentence. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 14:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

As to Wayward's comment, I think the sentences were little bit overworked; there are not any appositives. An example of an apposition would be: Duke Francis II of Brittany, the cousin of Isabella and Ferdinand,....

On the question of restrictiveness or non-restrictiveness, yes; an other issue whether the modifier uniquely identifies the noun it modifies or provides essential information (as stated in your miscellaneous examples).--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 17:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that Isabella (ruler of Castile) and Ferdinand (ruler of Aragon) were one party at the negotiations and Francis (ruler of Brittany) was another party. Isabella and Ferdinand negotiated marriage between their child and Francis's child, so I don't think that the following sentence would be fine: Isabella and Ferdinand (together with their cousin (Duke Francis II of Brittany)) planned the alliance of their respective heirs. Ferdinand did not plan the alliance of his heir and Isabella's heir while Francis helped them; Ferdinand's heir was Isabella's heir, so the Catholic Monarchs (as Ferdinand and Isabella were known for expelling non-Catholics from their realms) and Francis planned the marriage of their heirs. Perhaps replacing Isabella and Ferdinand with the Catholic Monarchs would solve the problem. Surtsicna (talk) 21:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

A's name, A's title, and B's name

I find sentences like these all over Misplaced Pages: He was the second child of Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge and Anne Mortimer. I have a strong feeling that there should be a comma after Cambridge: He was the second child of Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, and Anne Mortimer. However, there are so many sentences similar to the one I quoted (eg. Charles, Prince of Wales is the son of Elizabeth II instead of Charles, Prince of Wales, is the son of Elizabeth II) that I am not sure anymore. Surtsicna (talk) 21:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

You're right. It's a common mistake but it's still a mistake and one that can easily confuse readers. Unfortunately, it's about as easy to eradicate as the equally inaccurate use of "however" as a pseudo-pretentious synonym of the word "but". --NellieBly (talk) 11:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I think this is being (or has been recently) discussed at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style. I think that there should clearly be commas on both sides of such appositional phrases, in this case titles. Otherwise Barack Obama becomes President of Mrs. Obama in "Barack Obama, President of the United States of America and Michelle Obama" (compared to "Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"). There are two slightly trickier questions about whether one puts commas after years in full dates and after states in city-state combinations. "Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961, and attended schools in Hawaii, Kansas and Indonesia." I think succeeding commas are called for in both cases, but some feel they make sentences too choppy. —— Shakescene (talk) 23:05, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Then, though the use of parentheses is now being avoided in modern writings, in order to avoid the choppiness of a sentence, the solution is the use of parentheses for two reasons: a) parentheses have no grammatical rules in a sentence as in commas, b) parentheses avoid the grammatical interconnectivities of a sentence.

I think the commas on the following sentences can be replaced with parentheses for better grammatical correctness:

Isabella and Ferdinand with their cousin (Duke Francis II of Brittany) together planned the alliance of their respective heirs.

He was the second child of Richard of Conisburgh (3rd Earl of Cambridge) and Anne Mortimer.

And the comma (bolded) on the sentence bellow is a style comma; neither of grammar nor of manual style (e.g. Chicago, MLA, APA).

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961, and attended schools in Hawaii, Kansas and Indonesia.

--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 03:29, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean when you say it's a "style comma" but not a "manual of style" comma. In fact, the Chicago Manual of Style does say that in the month-day-year order of giving dates, there needs to be a comma both before and after the year: "The ship sailed on October 6, 1999, for Southamption", "The April 1, 2000, press conference elicited little new information". (However, in the day-month-year style, no commas are needed: "See his journal entries of 6 October 1999 and 4 January 2000", which to this American is a good argument in favor of the day-month-year style.) +Angr 12:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Wait, your evidence that is it not a "manual of style" comma comes from it being a comma recommended in a manual of style? 86.149.189.52 (talk) 13:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

A style comma (an idiosyncratic speech sometimes) is an interruption in an utterance that causes no grammatical errors. A manual of style is a conventionalized set of rules in speech (for wittings). For example, the sentence "Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961, and attended schools in Hawaii, Kansas and Indonesia." has two sets of series rules in the manuals of styles; one is for ‘date and time’ and for series of three or more words, phrases, or clauses is the other. That is, Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961 is one series (with the ‘date and time’ rule) and and attended schools in Hawaii, Kansas and Indonesia is the other (with a series rule, but it has only two series). And the latter clause is not an independent clause for coordinative conjunction to be used with a grammatical comma. Is this correct Angr?--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 17:49, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Right, the comma before the "and" isn't there to separate two independent clauses, since what follows isn't a complete clause. If the sentence were "Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, and he attended schools in Hawaii, Kansas, and Indonesia", then the comma in bold would separate the second independent clause from the first. +Angr 18:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

November 12

Flour and Flower

Do these sound the same in your dialect? --71.142.84.90 (talk) 05:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Yup. (Misplaced Pages tells me I speak West/Central Canadian English.) Adam Bishop (talk) 06:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Certainly do, central southern UK. 86.4.186.107 (talk) 08:08, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Then, it sounds like it's probably the same in all English dialects. Any exceptions you know of? --71.142.79.136 (talk) 08:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Heh. The above reminds me of a linguistics department variation of the How to Hunt Elephants joke: "THEORETICAL LINGUISTS describe the first two elephants they run into, note that neither of them has fur, and pronounce this the "Smooth Elephant Constraint" (or SEC). At the meeting of the Linguistic Society of America the constraint is declared a universal after a five-minute discussion with no dissent." rʨanaɢ /_contribs 15:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure. For me "flour" is one syllable while "flower" is two, just as the spellings suggest. But my speech is a mixture of different influences, so that doesn't tell you much. So I looked up "flour" in four of the dictionaries under www.onelook.com. The Cambridge International Dictionary of English shows "flour" with one syllable as US; looking at US dictionaries, Encarta shows only that pronunciation, Merriam-Webster shows it as either one or two without precedence (the schwa of the second syllable is just parenthesized), while American Heritage shows two syllables first and one syllable as "also". --Anonymous, 11:50 UTC, November 12, 2009.

They sound the same in London. Alansplodge (talk) 12:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Different in West Midlands. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:29, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed that people from slightly more upper class London backgrounds pronounce flower with a rather more pronounced W sound than flour, to the extent that the latter sounds like a combination of "fl"+"our". Having said that, the upper class tend to shun the w in "flower" too, but to a lesser extent. No sources I'm afraid so OR alert. --Dweller (talk) 15:44, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't understand much of our article on Received Pronunciation. Does it discuss this point? --Dweller (talk) 15:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Despite the dictionaries, they sound the same (two syllables) in both rhotic and nonrhotic pronunciations in New England and New York. Marco polo (talk) 15:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Similar sets of words include roil, royal; higher, hire; sigher, sire; sear, seer; dire, dyer; buyer, byre; lair, layer; mooer, moor; spier, spire; cuer, cure; vial, vile, viol; coir, coyer. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:27, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

What dialect(s) of English has lair and layer as homophones? In Australian English, lair rhymes with hair and layer rhymes with payer, and they're not even close. In fact, layer has two syllables in my lingo. Now, my Texan wife pronounced the "ai" and the "ay" of the two words almost identically, however layer has two syllables whereas lair only one. Curious. Peter Greenwell (talk) 10:07, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Mine, which is a variant of southern RP (British). But I know that a schoolfriend who also spoke RP did not have them as homophones, so I can only assume it's variable. Both are one syllable for me. 86.149.189.52 (talk) 13:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't agree on some of these. Eg mooer/moor. If you'd said Moor, more and moor, perhaps, but mooer is an oo-er word for me! I also would differentiate slightly between dire and dyer - for me, as with mooer, the latter has two syllables, but the former one. --Dweller (talk) 16:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

When I said "similar sets of words", I meant that they are similar to the set flour, flower in being potential topics of this type of question. However, they are also "sets of similar words", in that the pronunciations of the words in a set may be identical or nearly identical.

-- Wavelength (talk) 17:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

In the Australian English I speak, they're said the same. Peter Greenwell (talk) 23:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

They're similar, but not quite identical, in New Zealand - the "w" is stressed very, very slightly more than the "u" (but that may simply be a personal case, and I still have some residual Home Counties English in my voice). As for Australia, I suspect it depends whereabouts you are. There are several distinct Strine accents/dialects: to my ears at least, Breezebin and Seednee accents are harsher and rougher than Milbun and Ohbaht. Eddelide is softer still. Dunno about Perth or Darwin, but the best known residents of Canberra can only just handle the concept of language, poor dears :) Grutness...wha? 23:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

In defence of Kambra residents, I'll just say that the people to whom I believe you're referring, the politicians, are with very few exceptions only temporary residents of that fair city, who immediately wing their ways to their home bases the moment Parliament rises (usually Thursday afternoon), and come back the next week. Most of them wouldn't be seen dead there on a weekend - or at any other time - unless they have no choice but be there (which is more a reflection on them than on Canberra). For some of them, the first time in their lives they ever visit their nation's capital is after they've been elected to Parliament. And all they ever see of the city is Parliament House, their hotel or wherever they stay, the roads connnecting them, and the roads to and from the airport. On the basis of this, they proclaim that Canberra is not worth visiting. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I wondered if I'd get a bite from that tasty worm I dangled in the water :) Grutness...wha? 01:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

All good sport, mate. I just had to put the record straight about who lives there by choice (c. 350,000 people, most of whom have as little involvement in politics as they can get away with, and for the vast majority, none at all) and who doesn't.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 01:52, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so maybe you phoneticians can explain this to me. Looking at wikt:flower, the US IPA reads /ˈflaʊɚ/, but the Audio (US) definitely sounds like it has the Voiced labio-velar approximant in the middle and an /ɹ/ at the end. Or am I just imagining it? I might be imagining the /w/, it's such a small difference that I can't really hear it, but that really sounds like an /ɹ/. Indeterminate (talk) 08:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

You're not imagining anything, you're just being thrown off by transcriptional conventions. /aʊ/ and /aw/ are equivalent, as are /ɚ/ and syllabic /ɹ/. The word could also have been transcribed /ˈflawɹ/ (with a syllabicity mark under the ɹ). +Angr 12:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

In the American midwest, at least, "flour" and "flower" are pronounced the same way. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I came across when searching to see if has been discussed before a long time later. FWIW, flower and flour are normally pronounced quite differently in Malaysian English and Singaporean English. Flour is normally distinctly monosyballic something like flah (our Singlish article says /flɑ/). If you look at discussions involving Singaporeans or Malaysian, it's sometimes claimed the pronounciation is due to the British roots. However as discussed above in modern British English, the two are close to (or are) homophones AFAIK. Also in most other forms of English. At least whenever I heard it in Malaysia (which I admit wasn't that much), this was not the case. Not that I always asked them to pronounce flower, but even in the examples like the Cambridge dictionary, as well as any time on shows etc, the pronounciation of flour among British speakers sounds a lot like they would pronounce flower, which I didn't consider the case for the Malaysians. Edit: Found an example I think from Singapore of flour Nil Einne (talk) 12:08, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

What is the German word for button, you know the ones with the pins on the back?

What is the German word for button, you know the ones with the pins on the back or what the British call a badge? Part of the problem is that there is no one English word to describe it and those that are tend to be used for other things, too. Overpush (talk) 06:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The German Misplaced Pages article for these sorts of things is de:Button (Ansteckplakette). Adam Bishop (talk) 06:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The Finnish girl's name Päivi

How is it pronounced? Pah-eevee? Rhymes with gravy? An .ogg sample or an IPA transliteration would be great, if either could be provided. Thanks in advance. Peter Greenwell (talk) 23:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You're correct - it rhymes with gravy. In IPA - . Steewi (talk) 06:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)edited for formatting Steewi (talk) 06:09, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Finnish stops are not aspirated: . — Emil J. 11:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

So, is the äi combo a diphthong? From the IPA you two have given, it seems there's two vowel sounds there, unless I'm reading things wrong. Peter Greenwell (talk) 11:25, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

That's what a diphthong is. +Angr 11:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) The word has only two syllables, if that's what you are asking. Whether you interpret the first one as a diphthong (more precisely, ) or as a vowel followed by an approximant makes little (if any) difference; I followed our Finnish phonology article which calls it a diphthong. — Emil J. 12:06, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks all. Peter Greenwell (talk) 13:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

In what dialect does rhyme with gravy? (I pronounce gravy with an in its first syllable, not an , myself.)—msh210℠ 18:45, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

November 13

苏荷

I am not very good at searching chinese phrase/words. Can you help?

苏荷靓仔威威

Translate.google.com says the above means "Soho handsome Weiwei". We are talking about a guy, so handsome Weiwei I get it but what does 苏荷 could mean? --Lgriot (talk) 14:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

苏荷 does mean Soho; without any further context, it's hard to tell what else this might mean. Can you provide the context for this phrase?

Also, good resources for looking up Chinese words include http://nciku.com, http://dict.cn, and http://zhongwen.com . rʨanaɢ /_contribs 15:16, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The context is inside a gay publication, the photo of a young man with this caption. Could it be slang meaning "gay"? Did London Soho become so obvious that the word Soho has suddenly shifted to mean gay in Chinese?--Lgriot (talk) 15:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Can't it just be 'handsome Soho guy' (i.e., 'handsome guy from Soho')? Peking University's language corpus only turns up a few hits, most of which are about the district itself (苏荷地区 = 'Soho district'), google turns up mostly pages about bars or places, and Baidupedia's article specifically defines it as referring to NYC's Soho. According to this forum post, it also refers to Shanghai's soho ("最近，上海“苏荷”这一新名词颇引人注目，它指的是上海近年在旧城改造和产业结构调整中自然诞生的文化创意产业基地" -> roughly 'recently, in Shanghai the word "苏荷" has been attracting people's attention, it refers to the area in Shanghai's old town that has in recent years been developing a lot of culture/art stuff'). So as far as I can tell, the word is most commonly used to refer to a place itself... maybe in some of these contexts it has extended to mean something like "artsy, hipster, bohemian", which could also be relevant for your caption. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 15:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry forgot to say, the guy is from Schenzen if I understand well, nowhere in the west. Plus I have seen this qualifier on gay websites for other guys. I thought it was obvious, nothing as subtle as "bohemian", but I don't have that much understanding of the chinese gay world.--Lgriot (talk) 15:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

It might be; I'm not a native speaker so I'm less aware of subculture-y uses like that. A native speaker might be able to clarify more. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 15:59, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Is the Shanghai Soho around Suhujia, then? Steewi (talk) 01:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

A term for this class of words?

Is there a term for the specific type of adverb that can be formed by combining an adjective with a preposition? Example: whereupon, hereto, therefor, herein, etc. --BennyD (talk) 15:00, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Usually, that is the adverbial (or part of its function). The examples are adverbs. There may be a specifc term.--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 16:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

On SyuRat’s comment (which is disappeared), lawyers do mistakes as we do like treating the adverbs (like of the examples) as adjectives. Those are difficult to detect in a context whether such closed class of words are consciously meant to be the modifiers of verbs or not.--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 16:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll add my comment back in, which I had redacted earlier as not answering the Q, if only to show the correct spelling of my name: Sounds like lawyer-speak to me. Along with the needless use of Latin, and calling people by strange terms like "the party of the first part" instead of by their actual names. If they didn't do all this to confuse people, then people wouldn't need lawyers to decipher it all. StuRat (talk) 15:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I would have said 'prepositional compound', but I can't find anybody else using the phrase in this way, or a name for words of this type in either English or German. (There isn't an adjective in them, by the way: it's a preposition and a pronoun). There's some similarity with the Irish morphology#inflected prepositions in Irish and Welsh, but those really involve personal pronouns, whereas the Germanic examples all involve demonstrative pronouns. So no, there doesn't seem to be (a term) --ColinFine (talk) 17:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary sticks them in wikt:Category:English pronominal adverbs if that means anything to anyone. Nanonic (talk) 20:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

There are such words which are not archaic legalese, one of the most common being "nearby". "Forthright" might also qualify. —— Shakescene (talk) 22:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

And "forthcoming" which is (sadly) losing ground in the UK to the American "upcoming".Alansplodge (talk) 00:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

... a word that many people are now rendering as "up and coming", which has a completely different meaning. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:20, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

But "forthcoming" and "upcoming" do not mean the same thing—as far as I know, the latter is something about to happen (an upcoming event, etc.), the former is something about to be published or presented (a forthcoming article, his argument is forthcoming, etc.). More importantly for this topic, it's not made of prepositions ('coming' is a verb), and it's not an adverb (it's an adjective). rʨanaɢ /_contribs 01:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, you win on the adverb/adjective point, but in the UK, "forthcoming events" is a common phrase. However, now even BBC reporters refer to "the upcoming meeting". I had never heard the word "upcoming" or seen it in print until about 10 years ago and it still grates on my ear.Alansplodge (talk) 16:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The reason for many of these words was that historically basic prepositions didn't really directly take neuter pronouns as objects, so that compounds of "there"+preposition etc. were used instead. Modern German and Dutch still have a similar system (e.g. German daran, darauf, daraus, darin, darueber, darum, darunter etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 02:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

would

I'm not a native speaker of English, so this might be a stupid question, anyway: I stumbled over a passage in John O'Haras Appointment in Samarra: This guy "Al Grecco" is driving his car down a highway and passes another car whose driver he recognizes as Mr. Julian English. And then: Al also noticed that there was a woman in the car, slumped low in the front seat, low and as far away from English as she could get. That would be Mrs. English. I guess it means something like "This must be Mrs. English", but what is this "would" here in terms of grammar? Conditional or past tense? --77.185.228.115 (talk) 17:36, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not a stupid question; but I'm not sure I can answer it in the framework of English grammar you may have been taught. I would describe that as the modal auxiliary 'would', used in its epistemic sense. Formally it is in the past tense (as opposed to "That will be mother now") but I don't believe in tenses in modern English, other than the present/simple-past distinction (for example, since I know of no morphological or syntactic test that distinguishes 'I will go' from 'I can go', I find it unhelpful to refer to one as a 'tense' and the other not). Incidentally, 'would' as opposed to 'must' implies to me that Al Grecco has just deduced who she is. --ColinFine (talk) 17:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

There's not really any formal grammatical distinction, "would be" is just something some people use in place of "is" in some situations. For example, if people at a party are waiting for John, who's known for being late, and then the phone rings, someone may say "That would be John". I don't think there is any tense issue here. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 18:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I always thought the phrase "That would be X" is just an idiom for "That person is X", while indicating that you are identifying X for the benefit of someone who doesn't know the person; and the phrase would not be used in the range of hearing of X. The phrase "That would be X" sounds formal, and I think it's usually used with a little ironic formality. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:07, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that there is a subtle difference in meaning among "That would be Mrs. English", "That must be Mrs. English", and "That is Mrs. English". "That is", in this case, would imply certain recognition. It would suggest that Al has met Mrs. English in the past and recognizes the woman in the car as her. "That must", in this case, would imply that Al is not completely certain that the woman in the car is Mrs. English, but he is fairly certain that it couldn't be anyone else. "That would", in this case, means that Al deduces that this is Mrs. English. He isn't completely certain that it is Mrs. English, it just makes sense that she is. Marco polo (talk) 19:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't see any real difference between "that must be" and "that would be", in this case. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

"Would be" can often just mean "is" with a little twist of attitude (and perhaps does in the O'Hara passage). If someone asks me "Who's that woman over there?" I might answer "That would be my mother." I might be conveying a bit of chagrin at her behavior or some other nuance that a simple "is" would lack, but I'm certainly in no doubt as to her identity. Deor (talk) 00:39, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Helping and Modal Auxiliary Verbs says that would can "express a sense of probability". -- Wavelength (talk) 19:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

My idea here follows with 'that must be' = 'that will be', both used in the sense of probability, but here 'would' is used because the whole situation is set in the past, and 'would' is technically the past tense of 'will', c.f. 'At the party I met the lady who would later become my wife' - we are not talking about a probability here, it's an actual fact that 'she became my wife' at some point after our meeting at the party. In the excerpt cited by the OP, Al Grecco has guessed that the lady is Mrs. English, but will later find out for sure. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 08:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't must in this context imply that you don't actually know Mrs. English and that you've determined this through deductive reasoning of some sort? — Ƶ§œš¹ 19:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I thought that was what I and everyone else were saying here. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 13:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

November 14

How do English-speaking Canadians pronounce "Quebec"?

How do English-speaking Canadians pronounce "Quebec"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.49.12.245 (talk) 19:48, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

A lot of them seem to say something like kwa-bec. Pollinosisss (talk) 20:26, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

In Ontario people say either kuh-bek (more common) or kay-bek (less common), with the stress on the second syllable. Best, WikiJedits (talk) 20:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree, in Ontario it is something like "kuh-bek" or "kwa-bek". Something in between that, maybe. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:16, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with "in between"; I think it's "kwuh-BEK" with the W sound in the unaccented syllable faint enough that it gets dropped in rapid speech. When people are writing "kwa-bek" here, I think their A means a schwa, i.e. the same as I'm writing as "kwuh-BEK". (I live in Ontario and formerly in Alberta.) I don't often hear "kay-bek", and if I do, I consider that the person is attempting to pronounce the word as French. --Anonymous, 21:59 UTC, November 14, 2009.

Yes, "kwuh-BEK" is how we say it in British Columbia. The first vowel is schwa. I wouldn't say the 'w' gets dropped, though. The local city "Quesnel" is pronounced similarly. 220.29.16.77 (talk) 10:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

French é is a short pure vowel and may actually sound closer to English short i than to English ay. --JWB (talk) 23:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

See and hear Quebec pronunciation: How to pronounce Quebec in English. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

November 15

Snot

What is origin of this word plaese--79.67.82.206 (talk) 01:21, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

See , , , etc. A good resource for looking up word origins (known as etymologies) is http://www.etymonline.com . rʨanaɢ /_contribs 01:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Dirty cities

There was a question on the Humanities desk about the town of Fucking, Austria that got me thinking. Can anyone name towns (in the Anglosphere) that appear normal to English-speaking people, but which sound amusing or filthy in some other language? So, I'm not looking for something like Dildo, Newfoundland and Labrador, which is amusing in English (and in Newfie), but rather something that sounds mundane to us and yet would elicit giggles from someone familiar with, say, Pashto or Portuguese. And, for additional points, are the residents aware of the situation, as the 104 people in Fucking apparently are? Matt Deres (talk) 02:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure there are lots of things, not just for placenames but for any proper nouns. For example, I've seen Chinese friends get tickled at my dad's name, Ben, because it sounds like a Mandarin word for stupid (笨 bèn). rʨanaɢ /_contribs 03:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

In Scotland, I drove through Ruskie, whose name is not terribly obscene in Polish, but it may be a pejorative name for the Russians (or a perfectly acceptable name for cheese and potato pierogi). — Kpalion 10:07, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Not quite what you're looking for, probably, but two fairly well-known places in New Zealand have Maori names which sound innocuous enough in English but have less-innocuous names in their original language. Te Urewera, one of the country's national parks name literally means "The burnt penis". There's also Tutaekuri River, which translates as "Dog shit river". As for non-english placenames which sound amusing in English, my favourite is the Western Australian town of Koolyanobbing, which sounds to me like a way of saying "go take a cold shower". Grutness...wha? 10:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, not quite what you are specifically looking for, but there is Malacca. Ask a greek-speaker what that means! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 13:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The village of Knockin in Shropshire, England, is locally rather famous because the village grocery store has a large sign proclaiming "The Knockin Shop". In UK slang, a "knocking shop" is a brothel.Alansplodge (talk) 16:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

In Italian, the city of Chicago is pronounced as "ci cago" (chee-kah-goh), that means "I defecate in it". It's a common joke here :-) --151.51.20.160 (talk) 22:27, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

There's a place near Bolton called Nob End. I drove through it once, on my way to the unlamented (by me, anyway) Burnden Park. Nob End apparently is an SSSI - but sadly not because of its name. --Dweller (talk) 13:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

So...what does Malacca mean in Greek? —Akrabbim 14:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

See malakas. — Emil J. 14:34, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

there is always Wetwang, too. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) 17:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Pen (writing instrument)

I've recently discovered that the word for "pen" in Spanish is pluma, which I would speculate is related to plumage, in that feathers served as (at least some of) the first pens in the form of quills. Can anyone a) comment on this speculation and b) provide traslations for the word "pen" in other languages that show a link to such a feather-origin (or another origin, as in stylus, which just means "pen") DRosenbach 15:52, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

In French, "la plume" can be a pen or nib. In English, a "pen" is also a male swan. I've always assumed that they were linked. A stylus was a pointed stick that Romans used to write on wax tablets. It can also mean the needle of a record-player.Alansplodge (talk) 16:05, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) The word "pen" itself is from "penna", which is Latin for "feather". French has "plume", as in the famous phrase "la plume de ma tante". As you speculate, these all come from the use of quill pens. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

A french example that's even more famous: nom de plume. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 01:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. my dictionary (Chambers) says that the origin of pen=female swan is unknown. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Of course; a male swan is a cob. I apologise to any swans reading this.Alansplodge (talk) 19:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The German word for a fountain pen is Feder, which also means (and is cognate with) "feather". +Angr 16:41, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The Chinese word for pen, 笔, includes the Radical for hair, 毛. Since, of course, there they used brushes before they used pens. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 01:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

From the SOED: pen = writing instrument, has "ORIGIN Old French & Modern French penne from Latin penna feather, (pl.) pinions, wings, (in Late Latin) pen.". pen = female swan has "ORIGIN Origin unkn." Mitch Ames (talk) 23:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

(Not quite the same topic, but fun) The Uyghur word for "pencil" is قېرىنداش (qérindash), which is homophonous with the word for "relatives" (also qérindash). They come from entirely different words (the latter literally was something like "womb companion" or "person from the same womb", I don't remember the etymology of the former) but the pronunciations have happened to come together as a result of vowel harmony. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 01:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The Russian word for pencil is карандаш (karandásh).and it has one of the very few irregular plurals in Russian (karandashá, not the expected karandáshy). I wonder which language influenced the other. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

You can see the word declined at http://ru.wiktionary.org/карандаш. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:05, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The same page shows its etymology from two words meaning "black stone". -- Wavelength (talk) 17:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

At a guess, I'd suspect the Russian word is borrowed from some Turkic language whose word is cognate with the Uyghur word. That -ash ending looks very Turkic to me. +Angr 07:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems you're right - see Caran d'Ache and Caran d'Ache (company). I'd always assumed the Russian word came from the Frenchified version, not vice versa. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:11, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Slovene has two words for a fountain pen: nalivnik, which means about as much as "the fill-up implement", and pero (or nalivno pero), which means straight out "feather" (or "fill-up feather"). Don't know about other Slavic languages, but I wouldn't be surprised if more of them simply used the word "feather" for pen. TomorrowTime (talk) 07:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Back to Spanish, the word pluma is directly derived from the Latin pluma, which means of course feather. The word estilográfica is also used. That last word derives from Latin stilus, which has been explained above. For ballpoint pens, the words are birome (cf. biro) and lapicera (in turn derived from lápiz, and this last one from Latin lapis, e.g stone). Pallida  Mors 19:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Wallachia

I've never heard the word pronounced (in English), so what is the correct pronunciation? Preferably in American English, neutral or New York accent. Also, I'm IPA-illiterate :D Thanks in advance. Rimush (talk) 17:23, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Kenyon and Knott give /wɑˈleɪkiə/; for the non-IPA-compatible, that's wah-LAY-kee-uh. +Angr 17:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Hm. Odd... I've only ever heard it pronounced wah-LAY-sha, but the questioner - and K&K - are using American English, so perhaps it's another US/Commonwealth English difference. Grutness...wha? 22:43, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, the thoroughly British Longman Pronunciation Dictionary gives /wɒˈleɪkiə/, which agrees with K&K (but shows that the first vowel is that of "doll", not that of "Dahl", in dialects that distinguish them). +Angr 07:47, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Comma before "and"

I have a habit, which I have been informed is a bad one (I'm in the UK). I write sentences like this:

• Tom reached his important hundredth birthday last Thursday, and we wish him luck for the future.

Where the first clause is considerably more important than the latter (as I've tried to make here) I put a comma before the "and." Have I picked this up off someone or something? And publication address this sort of comma? Thanks, - Jarry1250  17:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Using a comma there seems completely natural to me, and I don't know by what "rule" it would be considered incorrect. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Serial comma may help. Essentially, it is one the many UK vs US differences. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Serial comma refers to a comma separating items in a list, not to a comma separating two independent clauses. The general rule of thumb is that if the clause following the word "and" could stand on its own as a grammatically correct sentence, a comma is used. In your example, "We wish him luck for the future" could be its own sentence, thus the comma is not only acceptable but also required. Keyed In (talk) 19:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Compound sentence (linguistics) suggest the comma is optional, now I look. Here is a second case, where I did use a comma (between the bold words) but I'm not so sure is correct:

• I spoke to Sally, who suggested that I ate something, and that I got some rest.

Clearly, the commas are not parenthetical, but I'd still feel the inclination to use one, where are pause would apply. Correct or not? - Jarry1250  21:50, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Fully acceptable either with or without the comma. It seems that a lot of people are strangely keen on dreaming up their own odd "rules" of English and then accusing others of breaking these. -- Hoary (talk) 00:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, Hoary, don't you know you should never begin a sentence with an adverb? — Ƶ§œš¹ 04:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Completely missing the forest for the trees there, are we? That wasn't a sentence to begin with, adverbially or not, but a sentence fragment. You'll have to concoct a different rule for one of those, won't you now? —— Shakescene (talk) 10:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that British writing today is significantly more likely to keep the punctuation minimal than North American writing. So, while the comma before "and" is certainly optional in this sort of construct, I think British writers are more likely to prefer not to use it; and perhaps some people would elevate this preference to the status of a rule. --Anonymous, 05:43 UTC, November 16, 2009.

¶ I favour commas. especially between clauses containing phrases that might get misattached by the reader to the conjunction ("and"). It's not just a matter of indicating where a spoken pause might (or might not) occur. However, there are other problems with that sentence to my eyes, ears and mind:

I would have written (or I hope spoken) it either as:

or

I prefer the latter, because I think a comma after Sally is the more important break. The trouble with having two commas in that particular sentence, each of which would otherwise serve a good purpose, is that there's no hierarchy in English-language punctuation to tell you which is more important. Another workaround is to impose a little hierarchy with a different punctuation mark:

But, as always, there are subtle changes in emphasis and meaning with each change in phrasing and punctuation. So none of my versions may be an accurate reflection of the intended meaning. The only person who knows what would be closest to the original meaning is the original author or speaker. An omnibus example of several points above might be:

The comma helps avoid the momentary reading that I "spoke to Sally and she".—— Shakescene (talk) 11:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The examples are interesting comma dilemmas in which each sentence elutes non-similar meanings, and that none of the sentence seems correct to guess what would be the closest meaning of the speaker. I guess the final clause is most likely the meaning with the strong comma.

Why? There are few grammatical explanations.--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 13:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Grammatical sidetrack

I'm sorry, but

(1) the semi-colon above just doesn't work in current Anglo-American punctuation. The usual hierarchy of stops is period/full stop , full colon , semi-colon and comma , with the various dashes falling somewhere in between. Semi-colons introduce independent clauses, which may be started with coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, etc.) by non-purists like me, but not by absolute purists. However, "and that I get some rest" is not an independent clause because it's introduced not only by the co-ordinating conjunction "and", but also by the subordinating conjunction "that" dependent on "suggested" at the beginning of a previous clause on the other side of the semi-colon.

(2) "ate" and "got" in the two examples above are just plain wrong, which is why I changed them in my own examples. The only time they'd be correct would be if Sally were making suggestions about something that I was doing at the same time or that I had already done before we spoke — and in that case they'd usually be in the past perfect ("had eaten and "had got" or "had gotten" ), past progressive or perfect progressive (if those are the correct names for those tenses). For example,

or

or

or

or (better)

If Sally were an unjealous woman who wanted to end our relationship without hurting me, then a totally different meaning would be given by

or

or (permissively; "Set Me Free")

You could use the past in the dependent clause if was something I was doing at the same time, especially if it were customary, for example

although it's possible that that meaning might be better conveyed with the past progressive:

or perfect progressive (or is it the past perfect progressive?)

—— Shakescene (talk) 06:42, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

One sentence paragraphs

Hey there all,
What's with the entire heuristic idea that most professors feel that one sentence paragraphs aren't entirely incorrect? I read from it says one sentence paragraphs are correct (so long as it meets the criteria). Is there a good rationale for this heuristic?
Thanks in advance! --Agester (talk) 19:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

It's unclear to me whether you're arguing for one-sentence paragraphs (where appropriate), or against them. Can you clarify your question, please. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm just merely trying to figure out why some feel one-sentence paragraphs are inappropriate for something like a college paper, and why (like the source I gave) would argue for it, in the setting of say journalism. Both are professional styles of writing. My professor personally hates single sentence paragraphs, where as, an article like that says it's okay (and I must admit I'm guilty for using one-sentence paragraphs).
In other words, there's conflicting arguments, just wondering what the real deal is, and is there a rationale for this. --Agester (talk) 20:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The heuristic method, applied to "normal" essays, would generally show that very infrequently a coherent point can be made in a single sentence. Had I not added this very second sentence, this may have been an exception. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The heuristic is best rationalized by the five-paragraph method of writing papers where each paragraph should make a claim, provide evidence for that claim, and provide analysis to show how the evidence backs up the claim. Of course, writing a five-paragraph essay is horribly formulaic, but it establishes the conventions and tendencies of essay-writing. I doubt you could accomplish this in one sentence unless this sentence was so long that you might as well break it up into multiple sentences. — Ƶ§œš¹

The best style guides, as I recall from a disagreement with my Portuguese teacher a decade ago, don't have a rule against one-sentence paragraphs. It really depends almost entirely on context. One-sentence paragraphs, if not watched very closely, can degenerate into a choppy, superficial style that doesn't fit most academic purposes. But remember that Hemingway and George Orwell (who, out of economic necessity and the political exigencies of his day, wrote many more essays than stories) were hardly averse to short paragraphs that reflected everyday speech and avoided disjointed breathlessness. —— Shakescene (talk) 11:26, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Writing styles differ by culture and for different audiences. As a bad example (non academic) single sentence paragraphs proliferate in Direct Marketing as they can be very powerful, if not over-used. Most cultures would see academic writing as more dry and therefore less needing of this kind of drama. --Dweller (talk) 16:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Mahmoud

How do you pronounce "Mahmoud" (as in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)? I heard something like "Makh-mood" on TV but I wonder if the "k" was actually supposed to be a glottal stop. 69.228.171.150 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:31, 15 November 2009 (UTC).

The article shows the IPA transcription: . So no, no glottal stop. --Belchman (talk) 21:03, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I think people are trying to pronounce it as the Arabic letter ha, which is /ħ/ in IPA. I don't know how to represent it with an English sound, it's like a deeper H I guess. It's not a K sound but it's sort of in the same general area of the throat. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:52, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

And of course, this sound does not exist in Persian. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 23:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

There's also the "kh", represented in IPA by /x/, as used particularly in loan-words and dialects. The best known example is probably the Scottish word "loch". Grutness...wha? 23:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

In Arabic, Mahmoud has a ha, like Adam Bishop says, but in Persian I think it might become a kha. Steewi (talk) 01:38, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

According to Persian phonology it is realized as a regular h. This does not occur finally in English or many other languages but you can approximate it by adding a vowel after ("ma ha mood") then repeating the word gradually reducing the vowel to as little as possible. --JWB (talk) 01:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I didn't see any pronunciation info at Mahmoud and hadn't actually looked at the article

November 16

the name of a test

A test having a number of wrong answers and exactly ONE correct answer is called a multiple choice question.

(     ) Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in the land is fairest of all?

(A) Michael Jackson

(B) "Queen"

(C) Snow White

(D) Rin Tin Tin

Now what's the name of a test having a number of correct answers? I thought it may be called a "multiple-answer question".

(     ) Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in the land are NOT fairest of all?

(A) Michael Jackson

(B) "Queen"

(C) Snow White

(D) Rin Tin Tin

Misplaced Pages does not seem to have an article for this kind of test. -- Toytoy (talk) 04:52, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I have seen these called "multiple response" questions - Pollinosisss (talk) 05:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I would still call this multiple choice. From the first sentence of our article (emphasis added): "respondents are asked to select the best possible answer (or answers) out of the choices from a list." rʨanaɢ /_contribs 05:09, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It would still be a multiple choice test. Dismas| 16:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I've had teachers refer to it as "multiple multiple choice" to distinguish it from standard multiple choice. (i.e. when explaining to students that they can't just circle the first correct answer they come across and call it done.) -- 128.104.112.237 (talk) 20:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Poll + pollex

What do you say about the relationship between "poll" (as in voting, in that people might have used to vote with a thumbs-up or -down) and pollex. The Talmud speaks of the Temple priests putting their thumbs into a circle so that an eenie-meini-moe sort of lottery could be cast to see who would be honored with various tasks in the Temple service. DRosenbach 13:05, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Poll means "head" in Middle English from various Germanic languages - a poll (vote) is a head-count. Pollex means "thumb" in Latin. I suspect it's just a coincidence they sound similar.Alansplodge (talk) 14:08, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

WI-FI

What does WI-FI mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.199.17.44 (talk) 14:36, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Did you see our article Wi-Fi? +Angr 14:40, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

How do you pronounce years 2009, 2012 etc.. ?

Hello you all! We are French and we wonder how the English speakers do pronounce the years following 2000. The article http://en.wikipedia.org/21st_century#Pronunciation is interesting but I read that you say for 2009 : "twenty OH nine" or "two thousand and nine". But I guess that one of these two pronounciations must be dominant. Do you have other ways to pronounce these years ? May be it's different from one country to an other ? Thank you for your help. --82.216.68.31 (talk) 15:42, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I don't say either of those, but "two thousand nine". However, I'm going to make a concerted effort to pronounce the years from next year on "twenty ten", "twenty eleven", and so forth. That wouldn't have worked for 2000–09, since "twenty hundred" sounds dumb, and "twenty one", "twenty two", ... "twenty nine" would sound like 21, 22, ... 29. +Angr 15:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

From 2000 through 2009, I use something like "two-thousand-nine". Anything above that, it is something like "twenty-twelve". That is just what is natural to me. Every once in a while I hear something like "two-thousand-twelve", but that is very uncommon. I have never heard "twenty-oh-nine". —Akrabbim 15:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Northeast US here. And the only thing I hear on a regular basis is something akin to "two thousand nine". Dismas| 16:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that, in the USA at least, "two thousand nine" is most common. People don't speak so often about years in the future, so I don't think that a "dominant" pronunciation has yet been established for 2010 or 2012. I've heard both "two thousand ten" and "twenty ten" about equally often. I suspect that by March or April, one pronunciation or the other will have won out. Marco polo (talk) 16:05, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Whenever I hear someone talking about the movie "2012" They call it twenty-twelve. Googlemeister (talk) 16:23, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

As I recall, 2010 was called twenty-ten, too. +Angr 16:47, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

So it was. That was in 1984, of course. I was used to thinking of the first movie and novel as "Two Thousand and One: A Space Odyssey", so I automatically thought of the sequel as "Two Thousand and Ten" by analogy and was surprised to hear the other pronunciation (and also that the movie omitted the novel's subtitle). Similarly, early in John Brunner's 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar there is dialogue referring to the year "twenty-ten", and I do not believe that on first reading I realized that that was supposed to be the year. But today I certainly do say that this year "two thousand (and) nine" will be followed by "twenty-ten". --Anonymous, twenty-three forty-four UTC, November sixteenth, two thousand nine.

When I hear people talking about "two thousand and twenty-five"and the like, I always want to ask them if they think the Battle of Hastings happened in "one thousand and sixty-six". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:53, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

In the UK 'two thousand and nine'dominates --77.166.169.185 (talk) 16:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure that I read a newspaper article on this subject - The Daily Telegraph perhaps. They had consulted the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, which in the UK is the absulute authority on time and date. Their opinion was that "two thousand and nine" was acceptable but that it MUST be "twenty ten". Unusually I can't a reference to it on Google, but there's a review of the arguments in the Misplaced Pages article for 2010.Alansplodge (talk) 17:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

You can listen to http://forvo.com/search-en/2008/ and http://forvo.com/search-en/2009/. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I was astounded to hear someone say "twenty three" recently, referring to the year 2003. (Or maybe it was another year this decade — I forget precisely — but the same idea.) (I, as others above, say "two thousand nine". I'm American.)—msh210℠ 18:36, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

This is discussed a little in our articles on 2010 and 2011. Apparantly, if the "twenty X" convention doesn't take hold for 2010, it will definitely do so for 2011 since "two thousand and eleven" is just way too friggen long. — Ƶ§œš¹ 19:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I usually hear "two thousand nine" or "two thousand and nine". Charles Osgood is one broadcaster who is trying to establish what I assume he believes to be the correct way to say it, as "twenty oh nine". "Twenty nine" would be wrong. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 19:13, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Two thousand; two thousand and nine; twenty-twelve. (Seem to be dominant here in the UK.) Two thousand ten sounds like an americanism around here. - Jarry1250  19:18, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Do all awkward phrasings sound like Americanisms in the UK? Even if they aren't common in the US (like in this case)? —Akrabbim 19:23, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Most. "Two thousand nine" also sounds American (although the "and" contracted to 'n' is not unusual). As for a rule, they either sound regional (particularly on the pronunciation of single words) or American. One could theorise it sounds correct but unusual in the UK, therefore it is a native but non-UK speaker, and therefore likely an American. - Jarry1250  19:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I think both Americans and Brits have a tendency to assign to the other side of the herring pond any linguistic phenomena that sound unfamiliar but not non-native. I've known German and Dutch people whose English pronunciation was so good you'd never know they weren't native speakers - except that everyone thinks they're native speakers of someone else's accent: the Americans think they must be British, and the Brits think they must be American (or Australian). I moved from New York State to Texas when I was 9 years old, and a girl my age there thought I must be from England because I didn't have a Texas accent. +Angr 20:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Heh. My ex-wife was born in Liverpool, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney. Her parents spoke Russian (and some other languages) but very little English. They wisely decided not to try to teach her English at home, but let nature take ts course. So, her first language was Russian, and she learned English only after mixing with other kids and going to school. But she learned so well and her words were so well-formed that people often asked which part of England she came from. She would answer "Liverpool". That seemed to satisfy them, even though she doesn't sound remotely like a Liverpudlian. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

This was anticipated by the movie released in 1968 which was usually called "two-thousand one: a space oddysey". As far as some self-appointed authority saying it "must" be twenty-ten next year; well, all the more reason to keep saying "two thousand ten". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 20:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

In line with the other things that have been said, that film is almost always called "Two-thousand-and-one: A Space Oddysey" in the UK. - Jarry1250  20:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we say "two thousand and one", too, but we spell it "Odyssey" for some odd reason.  :) -- JackofOz (talk)

Drat. This laptop does not a have a speelchkere. That's at you too, Bugs. - Jarry1250  20:56, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Always had trouble with that word, "odyssey". I often heard "two thousand and one" in addition to "two thousand one". NEVER "twenty oh one". Unfortunately, the year itself is never stated within the film. It's only in the film's creators and the critics talking about that those usages are heard. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 22:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

If you could find an audio clip of Arthur Clarke and/or Stanley Kubrick stating the title of the film, that would be telling. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 13:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Angr: It's unlikely that Brits will confuse Germans for Australians - Germans don't understand rhyming slang!! Alansplodge (talk) 09:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation of comfortable

Is non-pronunciation of the second 'o' and putting the 'r' sound after the 't' in comfortable, making it sound like 'comftɘrble' the norm in the English-speaking world, or is my pronunciation non-standard? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 17:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Not pronouncing the 'o' is very common in England, but we don't put the 'r' after the 't', primarily because most accents of the UK are Non-rhotic and we don't pronounce the 'r' anyway. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 17:16, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Sudden shift from England to UK there - "Flatten all the vowels and throw the "r" away", huh? :) Grutness...wha? 22:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I started by speaking from England, where I am, and broadened my comment to include the rest of the UK. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) 11:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Technically, I think you do put the r after the t, and then don't pronounce it. Otherwise you'd have something like "comfətbl". rʨanaɢ /_contribs 04:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. The '/ə/' in our pronunciation of 'comftəbl' is from the '-a-' in the final '-able'. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) 11:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes, that's also possible. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 16:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

According to the article on Metathesis, it's a "frequent pronunciation" --77.22.37.20 (talk) 17:26, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

My Oxford English dictionary has as the RP pronunciation, and as the US one. If is common, it's apparantly non-standard. — Ƶ§œš¹ 17:42, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's pretty common in the US. That's how I usually pronounce it anyway. Rckrone (talk) 18:01, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't the OED is a good arbiter of what's "standard" in the United States, if there is such a thing as a standard. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, edited and published in the United States, the primary pronunciation of "comfortable" is . It is quite rare here to hear any other pronunciation from a rhotic speaker. Marco polo (talk) 18:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

For this and similar questions, you may wish to see the appropriate Wiktionary entry.—msh210℠ 18:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree with Wiktionary's judgment that "comfterble" is unstressed and "comfortable" is stressed; I'd say that "comfterble" is colloquial and "comfortable" is formal. I for one would only pronounce "comfortable" in four syllables and with all consonants in their written order if I was being very careful and speech-conscious. My usual everyday pronunciation is "comfterble". +Angr 19:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

In the United States, at least, I think that the only context in which you might expect to hear "comfortable" with four syllables, according to the "formal" pronunciation (as suggested by Angr) might be in a rehearsed speech by a highly educated person such as a college president or the current president of the United States (but not the previous one). Marco polo (talk) 20:56, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, here in New Zealand it's except in the far south of the South Island, where is fairly common (the semi-rhotic Scottish-influence of the Southland burr plays a part in that - watch The World's Fastest Indian for Sir Anthony Hopkins doing a good job of imitating the Southland burr). Grutness...wha? 22:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

As of Ƶ§œš¹, if we have to use the same analogy, then we have to pronounce the word ‘college’ as /cʌledʒ/ (as closer as in Indian Enɡlish /caːledʒ/).

As of KageTora, it seems correct (I guess) that 'r' in most UK or US accents are non-rhotic except at the initial. That is, the initial 'r' is always pronounced (may be not the same way as in the IPA, but as a flap). Is this correct? --Mihkaw napéw (talk) 04:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't see where "as a flap" is coming from. And it's not true that most US accents are non-rhotic... more likely, most are rhotic (particularly, General American is). rʨanaɢ /_contribs 04:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

So how do you pronounce the ‘r’ in ‘rhotic’? You have two choices: a) as a tap or flap, or b) as a trill. However, the flap/tap is not the IPA of the US or UK English; a ‘trill’ is. Correct?--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 05:53, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it's generally an alveolar approximant. I can't think of any situation where an American English speaker would trill an r, or pronounce it as a tap. Perhaps you are confusing English with Spanish. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 06:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

OK. What kind of alveolar approximant do you use for ‘r’? Do you mean /ɹ/? Can you perhaps reference this for ‘rhotic’ (from any phonetic dictionaries of UK or US)? I think the ‘r’ in US or UK English is the trill (but a short) if it is rhotic. If not, this can be an approximant (depends on the vowel in the environment). Correct?--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 11:55, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I mean /ɹ/. You will not hear US speakers trilling. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 12:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I think they do (have to) but not a long drill like in other languages. Can you perhaps reference the /ɹ/ in 'rohtic' that the /ɹ/ is the phonetic transcription for 'r'? Thanks.--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 12:34, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

From http://en.wiktionary.org/rhotic , Of a phoneme, it has the quality of the said letter. This includes the sounds of the IPA symbols /ɹ/, /ɻ/, /ɚ/, /ɝ/, and some would say /r/, or has r coloring. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 15:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Mihkaw, I am an American, we don't trill r's. You can walk around the US for years and you won't find an American English speaker who trills their r's. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 16:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Otherwise, there would be no ‘r’ in the language, and the sound would be an approximant as in ‘car’ or ‘core’. If one does not drill or flap/tap, canot get the ‘r’ pronounced. To get an ‘r’ sound, the active articulator must drill or tap/flap. For example, if one pronounces ‘r’ of any word initials in English as in the word ‘rhotic’, there is very clear /r/ sound. Although, in a non-rhotic accent, the phonemes are not just /kaː/ and /kɔː/ for ‘car’ and ‘core’, but there must be approximants to hit the ‘r’ sound slightly.--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 17:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, American English is a language that does not have /r/ _{(see General American#Consonants)}. God forbid. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 17:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I do hear American English spears use a flap in words like three and thrill, but that's not all speakers. — Ƶ§œš¹ 18:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Chain conundrums, anyone?

I was reading The Game of Words by Willard R. Espy the other day. He mentions something called a chain conundrum, which is a sort of chain of puns that lead into each other. His example turns a potato into a beehive by calling a potato a specked tater, which is a spectator, which is a beholder, which is a bee holder, which is a beehive (or something to that effect). I was wondering if chain conundrums exist outside Espy. Does anyone know any famous ones or where to find them? Does anyone want to try their hand at making one up themselves (I'm so curious about these things!)  ?EVAUNIT 20:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

How do escape a room given only a table? Rub your hand until it's sore; use the saw to cut the table in half; put the halves together to make a whole; climb through the hole. Not exactly what you describe, but similar (popular in these parts). :) 22:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

For an extended version of the chain in the original posting, see this page. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I devised this 30-word chain, which contains both nouns and verbs: designs, draws, pulls, jerks, starts, introduces, presents, shows, spectacles, glasses, tumblers, jumpers, dresses, habits, customs, taxes, levies, levees, banks, stocks, blocks, bars, poles, polls, surveys, measures, bars, counters, adders, vipers. -- Wavelength (talk) 03:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

November 17

grammatical antipattern used in advertising

What's exactly going on in the commonly used scheme of writing advertisements with a bunch of sentence fragments separated by periods as if they were real sentences? The current WMF fundraising banner is an example: "Our shared knowledge. Our shared treasure." I don't really know any linguistic mumbo-jumbo, but I'm looking for an explanation like "those 'sentences' are interpreted as having an empty category where the verb and object are supposed to be. The listener unconsciously tries to apply transformations X, Y, and Z to fill in the blank, without success; however, the expended cognitive effort hitting the lexemes in the fragments from all different directions to get some meaning out of the sentence makes the listener's emotional response stronger". The expended effort from such a manipulation attempt is of course precisely what makes those ads so damn annoying. Is this an understood phenomenon? Could I be onto something interesting? Or does it just sound like nonsense? Thx. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 05:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It's interesting: you have said the verb and object are missing; I would say the verb and subject are missing. I would complete then as "Misplaced Pages is our shared knowledge. Misplaced Pages is our shared treasure." The fragments are noun phrases, but that article doesn't talk about what happens when they are used on their own, so I can really help. --Tango (talk) 06:34, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Well? We're waiting, Tango!  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 06:49, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

And now you've said that I can't even correct my typo because it would make you look crazy and, for some reason, that is frowned upon... Grrrr... ;) --Tango (talk) 07:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

But I am crazy, and proud of it. Didn't you know?  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 07:49, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Does ellipsis help? TomorrowTime (talk) 06:50, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Not really. Ellipsis (linguistics) might, though. ;) --Tango (talk) 07:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Damn. That's what happens when you don't check what you link to :/ TomorrowTime (talk) 08:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

They're not supposed to be sentences. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 07:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

This reminds me of the series of signs you sometimes encounter when driving into a French village. They usually look as if they were put up in the 1950s. Typically, first sign: Bienvenue à Montrond-dans-le-Val. Next sign: Son église XII siecle. Next sign: Son marché (samedi). Next sign: Sa piscine. Next sign: Son musée de poupées. (Translation: Welcome to Roundhill-in-the-Valley. Its 12th century church. Its Saturday market. Its swimming pool. Its doll museum.) The lack of verbs is the same as in the original example, but using "our" instead of "its" indicates a more subtle advertising technique, drawing the reader in. But in general, is it not typical of advertising to use slogans that are as reduced and punchy as possible? Itsmejudith (talk) 11:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I think these kinds of ellipses are common in advertising where the missing words or phrases or clause for the sentence of the speech deemed to be understood by the audience (targeted audience in particular) as deictic elements.--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 12:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Short phrases are often used in advertising. Their creators are trying to grab the reader's attention. Lengthy sentences are less likely to do so than a few short words. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 13:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

These are minor sentences. One could force them to be into the nominal sentence category, I guess. Pallida  Mors 15:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

And anyway, the rule is that complete sentences have to end with a period (or question mark or exclamation point), not that every string of words that ends with a period has to be a complete sentence. Seriously. Pais (talk) 16:34, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Should there be capital letters beginning words in the middle of a sentence, as in: "Misplaced Pages Is Powered by People Like You?" Bus stop (talk) 16:47, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In terms of impact, they are supposed to enjoy similar benefits to sound bytes. They're snappy and help cut through what advertisers call "noise". Pithiness is attractive in modern slogans, tag lines, mottos, strap lines and the like, which is curious because historically (and even recently) there are some outstanding ones that are anything but pithy. --Dweller (talk) 16:55, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

"Our shared knowledge. Our shared treasure" is the presentation of two ideas, the second of which qualifies the first. Knowledge is easier to accept than treasure, in terms of Misplaced Pages. Having accepted knowledge, as what Misplaced Pages has to offer, we are ready to consider whether it is treasure that we find here as well. One is less likely to reject the treasure designation after having first found little to object to in the knowledge designation. Bus stop (talk) 17:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Japanese translation

I'd be grateful if someone could translate this for me please. I believe it is a poem, possibly by or about Emperor Meiji (1852-1912).

• Asamidori sumiwataritaru ozorano
• Hiroki wo onoga kokoro tomogana

Many thanks81.156.126.150 (talk) 10:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It's archaic Japanese, so I may make a mistake. Even a native might have trouble with it:

浅緑澄み渡りたる大空の

The clear, pale green sky

広き己が心ともなが

Would that my own heart were also so broad

According to this list of poetry, it was indeed composed by the Emperor Meiji. Paul Davidson (talk) 13:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much, and for confirming the Emperor Meiji authorship.81.156.126.150 (talk) 13:10, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

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