Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 December 26

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 26

Adverbial pronouns

Do other languages have adverbial pronouns like the French y and en? --107.207.240.46 (talk) 03:02, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Catalan and Italian (but of course they're closely related). German has the whole series of hier+preposition compounds, if you want to count those... AnonMoos (talk) 07:02, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

See Inflected preposition. Marco polo (talk) 17:15, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Castillian doesn't, which I have always thought a damn shame. μηδείς (talk) 21:00, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

That's a surprising comment, Medeis. Isn't the beauty of languages, or one of them at any rate, that they differ from each other in many important ways? Do you not take languages as they are, rather than wishing they were somehow differently organised? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 05:02, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Of all the facets of French grammar, the use of y and en fascinated and pleased me more than any other. English has the clumsy thereto and thereof, which aren't used in the same way, as well as thither and thence, etc., which are also not equivalent, and which most people neither understand nor use. The French use of the subjunctive also pleased me. But Spanish lacks en and y which is a grave aesthetic fault for a romance language in my book. You simply cannot say "Je n'en ai pas mangé" in Spanish. But to Spanish's credit, it is much more eloquent in its use of the subjunctive than French. And its cuyo ("whose") for the French dont (which sounds like something Homer Simpson would say) is also much more satisfying. μηδείς (talk) 22:17, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

To talk of languages having "faults", aesthetic or otherwise, is to miss the mark totally, imo. If faults there be, who is to be held accountable? Who can say a language should have evolved in this direction rather than that direction? Nobody can. (Well, not without making them seem somewhat arrogant.) -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 05:54, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Marco polo -- the "Inflected preposition" article is generally about tightly-bound preposition + personal pronoun compounds, which is not necessarily what the original questioner had in mind... AnonMoos (talk) 04:03, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking that they have a similar function, but maybe I misunderstood. Marco polo (talk) 01:29, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

No, your answer was perfectly relevant, Marco. μηδείς (talk) 03:55, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

What is Italian for y? —Tamfang (talk) 01:49, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of sixth in the United Kingdom

Starting at about 1:50 of this video, the speaker, who elsewhere in the video mentions that he works for the BBC, goes on a rant on the proper (as far as he's concerned) pronunciation of what I assume is the word sixth. According to him, it should be pronounced 'sikf' Also, I tried to listen carefully to his repeated pronunciation of what he says the wrong people say, and it sounds like he is saying 'sikfth,' where 'th' is a voiced dental fricative. Is 'sikf' the predominant pronunciation in the United Kingdom, and is 'sikfth' also heard? My pronunciation of the word is like neither of his. I say 'siksth,' where 'th' is an unvoiced dental fricative. But I'm from the United States. 20.137.2.50 (talk) 16:05, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Weird. I'd say "siksth" is correct (though I'm from Singapore, not the UK). I have heard some BBC World Service announcers say "sikth", though, which seems wrong to me. For what it's worth, OED indicates the pronunciation as /sɪksθ/, which is what you mentioned in your posting. — SMUconlaw (talk) 16:09, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

/sɪkθ/ is certainly heard in the UK, but /sɪksθ/ is usual. Any pronunciation with /f/ instead of /θ/ is definitely non-standard, though heard in London and the South-East. I agree that it sounds as if he is saying /f/, but I suspect that he is actually unaware that he is doing so, and the pronunciation (or "pronounciation", as he says) that he is objecting to is /sɪksθ/, but he either cannot say it, or is deliberately distorting it for ridicule. --ColinFine (talk) 16:51, 26 December 2012 (UTC) I actually got my last example wrong, and have corrected it by adding 's'

In my dialect, we pronounce voiceless 'th' as 't', so we say /sɪkst/. 'f' for 'th' is a southern English pronunciation (which is creeping north). Children in my area pronounce it this way (because it's easier when you have no front teeth), but they generally loose it when they get older and educated. Some, however, retain it. [Personal anecdote]: When I was about five, and I was learning to read, we were given flash cards by the teacher to take home. One of the words was 'with'. I couldn't read it, and my mum told me it was /wɪθ/, and I was totally confused because I'd never even heard the sound /θ/ before, and was unable to produce it as I had no front teeth (I lost them earlier than most children because of an accident), and didn't even understand what word it was, because everyone around me was pronouncing the 'θ' either as a 'd' or a glottal stop in this particular word. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:32, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Its called Th-fronting - in this previous thread, I commended Forty Fousand Frushes (1929) to those wishing to master the technique. See also "Wiktionary - Sixth - Pronunciation: (UK) IPA: /sɪksθ/, /sɪkθ/...". Alansplodge (talk) 20:34, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

So 'thought' and 'fought,' for instance, would sound the same? e.g., if someone said "I thought over the issues" and someone else just joined the conversation right before they said that and had no context to know that they had been thinking and not fighting, it would not be immediately clear just by listening to that one sentence said? 67.163.109.173 (talk) 02:01, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Correct. --ColinFine (talk) 10:27, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Anyone who says /sɪkθ/ should be condemned to repeat "The sixth sheikh's sixth sheep's sick" until they get it right!  :) -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 20:57, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I think we're entitled to a silent "s" if we want one. Wouldn't life be dull if we all spoke the same. Alansplodge (talk) 01:21, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

No. That's sick th. :) Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:26, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Alanplodge. I always wondered what his 'plodge' was. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I've always assumed it's a concatenation of his full name: Alan Splodge. If it were Alan's plodge, there'd be an apostrophe, wouldn't there? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 07:19, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Nearly - first part is Christian name Alan, second part old school knickname that I haven't shaken off yet (rhymes with surname). 86.140.99.77 (talk) 00:21, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Aye, but when you walk past a shop advertising "Potato's 50p", you wonder, "Potato's what? And why just one of them?" Many people have no idea how to use apostrophe's these day's. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

im onely to well a wear off that but i apply a corollary of WP:AGF, called WP:Asume corekt speling, to such case's.

(Now I'm gonna go and cut off my hands.) -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 09:06, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Like Titu's in Shakes'peares Titu's Andronicu's?--Shirt58 (talk) 09:49, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

What's wrong with potato's? The apostrophe is supposed to indicate a deleted letter, in this case, the e of potatoes. Angr (talk) 15:36, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I do not think that just any old letter can be 'epla'ed by apo'trophes ju't wh'n we fe'l l'ke it. English isn't a crossword puzzle. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:45, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Heh. Matt Deres (talk) 15:42, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

http://bendwavy.org/wp/?p=2397 —Tamfang (talk) 18:01, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if there are other languages with sθ/zð combinations. Maybe Modern Greek?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:11, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe the former may be possible in Icelandic (using the letter 'z' to represent 's'. There are not many languages actually with θ or ð. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 20:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

True, and even fewer with /ð/ than with /θ/. I saw a statistic somewhere showing that more languages have /ɬ/ (the Welsh ll sound approached with such fear and loathing by English speakers) than /θ/ (which Welsh also has). Angr (talk) 20:39, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

While searching I've found these lists .--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:34, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

It is true that the sound does exist in a small minority of languages (out of the 6,000+ that currently exist), but it is uncommon, and in many of those languages listed, consonant clusters are uncommon. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:05, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I remembered about Spanish Castilian and found in my dictionary about 300-400 words with /-sθ-/, not to mention such combinations at the word boundaries, which should not be too rare (las ciudades, etc.). Though, in the Icelandic dictionary there is only a dozen of words with -sþ-. In English /-sθ-, -zð-/ are found predominantly (or exclusively) in Graecisms.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 14:18, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I could see Popeye saying it that way, but hard to figure why anyone else would. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:31, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Paul Tench (Cardiff) "Simplifications in colloquial speech".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 14:29, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Long French Translation

Who is willing to translate Pages 167–172 of "Saura, Bruno (2008). Journal de la Société des Océanistes. 128. Musée de l'Homme." for me? It will be a lot of work. I can email the scan pages and provide a less than perfect/incomplete written version on one of my userspaces.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 21:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

You might like to ask again at Wikipedia:Translation, where a number of extremely nice people await your request. Tonywalton ^Talk 21:38, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Count me in. Don't expect wonders, don't use me to the exclusion of anyone else (Fr-2), don't expect it done right away (if it's urgent, I'll try to speed it up, but remember we're unpaid). Use my talkpage if you can in preference to email (somehow email doesn't seem to work for me here). I think a few pages of scans would count as fair use, wouldn't they? Also if you can, in a sentence or two, let me know what it's for (I can focus more on details that might be of particular interest). I've seen the thing on your userspace, and it looks hard, but I'll have a crack at it. I'll add the translation below your diff unless you request otherwise. IBE (talk) 23:28, 27 December 2012 (UTC)