Talk:Sacra conversazione

Move

I think this should have been raised here. In my experience art historians writing in English usually use the Italian term, which just sounds rather odd in English. It's mediocre translations from the Italian that use the English version. Johnbod (talk) 23:36, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I have changed the IPA from [ˌkomvɛrsaˈtsjoːne] to [ˌkonvɛrsaˈtsjoːne]. I don't have any source; I just find the version with the M to be fairly bizarre, not in accordance with my knowledge of the Italian language, which is not perfect but pretty decent for a foreigner. I'm guessing the M was a typo? If not, please explain. --Trovatore (talk) 07:36, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

So I see it has been changed back to /m/ by User:Aeusoes1. I went to the page cited in the edit summary, Help:IPA for Italian, and I found the following note:

The nasals always assimilate their place of articulation to that of the following consonant. Thus, the n in /nɡ/~/nk/ is a velar [ŋ], and the one in /nf/~/nv/ is a labiodental [ɱ] (though for simplicity /m/ takes its place in this list). A nasal before /p/ and /b/ is always the labial [m].

This claim is itself not cited.

I'm sorry, I still think this is just really really weird. I am not by any means a native speaker, but I think I'd have noticed if people were pronouncing this word with an m. I'm going to raise the question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Italy, and maybe at the language refdesk. --Trovatore (talk) 20:22, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Relevant citations can be found at Italian phonology#Consonants. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 20:36, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. I can swallow the "labiodental" claim a little more easily than the straight [m]. It's hard to see how you really distinguish that from a nasalized vowel followed by a [v].

So let's say for the sake of argument that I buy that. I still think it's distractingly weird to put an [m] there, which is bilabial, not labiodental. There is definitely no biliabial nasal in conversazione, and I would argue that it's phonemically an /n/. --Trovatore (talk) 20:42, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Another analysis would be that it is an archiphoneme that is neither /n/ nor /m/, but the IPA transcriptions shouldn't be too abstract (that's why we use brackets, rather than slashes). We decided not to incorporate the labiodental nasal in the transcription because it was simpler and readers don't normally appreciate the difference between a labiodental and labial nasal. AFAIK, no known language contrasts [ɱ] with [m]. My impression is that the labial nasal is closer phonetically to the coronal one, so it strikes me as a little strange that you feel like it's closer to the latter.

It is possible that there is an exception to the general rule about nasal assimilation in Italian, but we would want to find sourcing that articulates this a bit. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 20:49, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Let me put it this way: A foreigner who follows the guide literally and puts a literal [m] in the word is going to sound, in my estimation, "more wrong" than one who puts a literal [n] there. I think that perception, if confirmed by native speakers, should be weighted at least equally to general phonetic considerations.

Can we get some native speakers to weigh in here? --Trovatore (talk) 20:54, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

We might get more input at Help talk:IPA for Italian. I made the change here based on the same dispute in a few other pages. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:11, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Having looked at these other edits, I think we'd better take a look at it, yes. We should solicit wider involvement from the language refdesk and WP Italy. --Trovatore (talk) 21:26, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Time to move back to the Italian in the title?

I think so, see my 2010 comment above. It was moved without discussion back in 2010, which seems no more right today. Johnbod (talk) 17:16, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Well I've done it, as all the sources use the Italian, & the English hardly shows on Google. Johnbod (talk) 18:31, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Etymology

This is a Compound (linguistics) and has an etymology. Catchpoke (talk) 15:32, 12 July 2021 (UTC)