Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 October 21

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.

October 21

Unfortunate or intentional?

I recently came across a Vietnamese noodle soup restaurant named Phở King. Is this pronounced the way I think it is? Is this an old joke that I just haven't seen in my sheltered life? SDY (talk) 01:57, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Common enough so people want to put pictures of the various so-named restaurants in the article. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 02:07, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

There's apparently a Vietnamese restaurant in Canada called Phở Shizzle, which I think is cleverer. +Angr 05:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

And there's a place in the Seattle area called What the Phở. I think clearly some of the proprietors of Phở restaurants have a healthy sense of humor. :-) Jwrosenzweig (talk) 06:52, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

PH is pronounced as an aspirated P. See Phuket. I'm not sure where the F pronunciation comes from but it's not used in the East.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:29, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

(undent) That's Thai pronunciation, which may not be similar (Thai is Sanskrit-influenced, Vietnamese more Chinese-influenced). Different (albeit linked) language families. SDY (talk) 15:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Since I have no idea what the squigglies on Vietnamese letters do, I always pronounced that word like "foe". I guess I've never actually heard anyone say it correctly. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to try to decipher the IPA used in the Phở article (although I'm confused as to why it links to "IPA for Vietnamese". Surely an international phonetic alphabet shouldn't need such distinctions?). But anyway, my understanding is that a more correct pronunciation would be "fa" as in "a long long way to run". However, when asking a friend to lunch, I'll say "let's go for 'foe'". --LarryMac | Talk 12:05, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Even the International Phonetic Alphabet has to adhere to certain language-specific conventions, especially for broad transcription. Having language-specific IPA pages also reduces the number of symbols a reader has to wade through to find the one he's looking for. +Angr 16:32, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad to know that the restaurants around here aren't the only ones with kitchy sorts of names. "Wok and Roll" and "Men at Wok" are two names of Chinese restaraunts near me. Dismas|^(talk) 08:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm still amazed that no Greek food place I've ever seen has had the wit to call itself "You Should be Souvlaki". It would be very appropriate to have such a place in Kylie Minogue's (and my own) old haunt, Camberwell, Victoria. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

My favorite was Dr Ye's dental clinic in Taiwan. The dentist's given name was Ling, and the sign maker decided it should be advertised as the Yelling Dental Clinic. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:12, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not even going to try to do the IPA, but on a recent episode of The Amazing Race in Vietnam, they seemed to be pronouncing it as something like "fuh". 99.166.95.142 (talk) 15:39, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

That brings to mind the old one about a census taker in a place with a high Asian-American population, San Francisco perhaps. Two consecutive houses, the man of the house is named Fu King. At the third house, the weary census taker says, "You Fu King, too?" And the man says, "No we watching terivision!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Our article discusses a putative French etymology from feu, "fire", which is one way of explaining the pronunciation (as noted above, roughly "fuh").

The origin of the word was one subject in a seminar on phở held in Hanoi in 2003. [Nguyen, Andrea Q., "The Evolution of Phở," San Jose Mercury News, reprinted at Pho 24 website] One theory advanced at the seminar is that the name comes from the French feu (fire), as in the dish pot-au-feu, which like pho uses the French method of adding charred o­nion to the broth for color and flavor, one of the techniques which distinguishes pho from other Asian noodle soups.

BrainyBabe (talk) 07:13, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

To get back to the pronunciation, in Vietnamese phở is pronounced [fɤː] (with a "dipping tone" that English speakers needn't worry about because we won't get it right anyway). That is indeed like "foe" (pronounced with a Scottish or a North Dakota accent), but with unrounded lips. Basically, spread your lips as if you're saying "fay", but retract your tongue as if you're saying "foe". Speakers of non-rhotic accents (most of England, Wales and the Southern Hemisphere) can probably get away with making it homophonous with "fur"; speakers of rhotic accents (Scotland, Ireland, North America) can pronounce it like "fuck" without the final /k/ sound, i.e. to rhyme with "duh!". +Angr 10:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Origin and explanation of common definitions of Atheism

Hi, I was recently embroiled in a discussion regarding Atheism vs Agnoticism. I have a tangential query at the humanities desk regarding the origin of the concept of 'weak atheism', but here I am wondering about the definitions that I have come across.

From what I have seen there is a prevalence of the 2 following definitions:

S: (n) atheism, godlessness (the doctrine or belief that there is no God)

S: (n) atheism (a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods)

On reading one of the sources[1] used in the Atheism article I find that it states:

This would seem to imply that an Atheist is either:

A person who is without a belief in any deity. This definition would mainly include those who are simply unaware of the existence of any deity. It would also include a person who is either too young or who lacks the mental ability to conceive of a deity. A person who totally rejects the existence of any deity. Some may keep this belief to themselves; others may assert this belief to others.

emphasis mine.

So my question is, does the above definition / explanation seem authoritative? Is the source considered reliable for a definition, and more importantly an explanation of the definition, which is somewhat elusive to find.

Thanks! Unomi (talk) 09:31, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The concept of descriptive linguistics would seem to say that if the word is used both ways in practice, then neither one is authoritative. Some sources distinguish "strong atheism" from less strong versions, where strength means about what you'd expect. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 09:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I am not quite sure what to expect regarding strength, excluding the case of being unaware of a deity, the weak position seems exactly encapsulated by agnosticism, it seems a somewhat strange expansion of the domain of the word atheism, especially when you consider that there are a number of sources that refer to atheism as the doctrine of, or philosophy which leads to the position that there are no gods. How weak atheism relates to those unaware of deities, I do not know. If you would though, could you point me to the sources that use the weak / strong wording and do you have any thoughts on how prevalent its use is in literature? Unomi (talk) 09:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't really follow such things, but the article Weak and strong atheism might be a good place to start. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 10:25, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

These definitions may not be universally accepted, I would define the terms like so:

• An agnostic doesn't know if there are any gods or not so doesn't have an opinion on the matter (this would include those that have never considered the matter, IMO).
• A weak atheist thinks there probably aren't any gods so works under the assumption that there aren't.
• A strong atheist thinks there definitely aren't any gods.

It is worth pointing out that I have never met or even heard of a strong atheist. Strong atheism is basically a religious belief - it has the same characteristic lack of evidence and claim of absolute Truth. People usually want someone out of their religions, and you don't get anything out of strong atheism, so very few people subscribe to it. --Tango (talk) 10:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Richard Dawkins would beg to differ. :) He would probably argue that atheism is liberating. Atheism is not a religion, although it seems to have some characteristics, especially the rejection of anything that doesn't fit the premise; specifically, that religion has value to many of those who subscribe to it. Atheism falls more into the area of "skepticism": "You claim there is a God - prove it." Obviously, you can't "prove" a religion in the scientific sense, or there would only be one religion. The "proof" to believers is self-evident but is hard to pin down. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:15, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Dawkins is, I think, a weak atheist in Tango's scheme. It's a rather odd scheme, though. I am a weak atheist in the same sense that I am a weak believer in the existence of the sun: all the evidence supports it, but I'm aware that I could somehow be mistaken. Algebraist 12:29, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Dawkins has a slightly more granular scheme (see Spectrum of theistic probability) and puts himself just short of what I've described as strong atheism. It seems we all have different examples of things we think are possible in the same way the existence of deities are possible! Algebraist has doubts about the existence of the Sun, Dawkins thinks there might be faeries at the bottom of his garden and I think that when I hold up a pencil and let go of it it might fall up. We are all trying to make the same point, though. --Tango (talk) 12:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Believing in a physical object vs. a spiritual being are two different things. Also, there is no dispute that I'm aware of as to the existence of the sun or of gravity. No one has gone to war over the nature (or lack thereof) of those things. And you can demonstrate their existence over and over, so they pass the scientific test. Fairies in the garden, eh? Dawkins might be playing a joke there. There is one thing in common among these beliefs, or lack thereof - subjectivity; or narcissism, to put it more bluntly: The notion that whether we believe in the existence of something or not, has anything to do with whether it really exists. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I really don't understand any of that comment. I suspect you have misunderstood me - you do realise I was intentionally overstating the amount of doubt we have regarding the sun, faeries and gravity, don't you? We certainly haven't made any claims that our beliefs affect reality... --Tango (talk) 13:06, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm just saying that believing in something or not believing in it has nothing to do with whether it really exists. Those objects can be subjected to scientific tests. Religion cannot. And that's the reason why religion is controversial, while the sun and gravity are generally not controversial. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:22, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Atheists beg to differ. Religion can be subjected to scientific tests, and fails (in part). That is how the atheist conclusion is reached. Your argument that religion is somehow exempt from reasoning that can be applied to everything else seems quite hollow. /Coffeeshivers (talk) 13:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Nobody has claimed that belief does affect existence, so there is no need for you to say that. While we can test the existence of the sun (eg. by looking at it), we can't distinguish scientifically between the sun existing as a mass of incandescent gas and, say, it all being an advanced illusion by some alien species or a mass hallucination or whatever (similarly for gravity and faeries). In that same way, we can't distinguish scientifically between there being no gods and there being a god or gods that just make it look like there aren't any (since we don't observe any evidence of gods). In the case of gravity, faeries and the sun we choose the simplest option (that things will continue to fall down and won't suddenly change to falling up, that there are no faeries at the bottom of the garden rather than faeries that we can't see and that the sun is exactly what it looks like rather than being something else that we are somehow made to see as if it were the sun). We should apply that same logic to religion and choose the simplest option, which is there being no gods. We can't be sure that we are right about any of these choices, but Occam's razor does tend to give useful results. --Tango (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

My position, as an agnostic, is one where I do not believe that there are gods, but I also am conscious of not believing that there are not gods. I think the crux of my interest in this matter at this point comes from a certain resentment that 'new age atheism' is seemingly trying to blur the distinction between the blind faith that I take most atheists to have and skepticism. I find that the position of atheists to be peculiar, particularly as they seem to feel entitled to take it 'for free'. That is, completely reject one side of a binary proposition without admitting to have taken the other side. The agnostic position is not one of rejection as much as it is of exploring. I don't view agnosticism as 'weak atheism' but rather as strong rationalism. I find the popular trend of expanding the bounds of Atheism as cheap way to claim numbers, this is particularly bothersome in the example of List of atheists now pointing to the veritable catchall that is list of nontheists. Anyway, time permitting, may we all see interesting discussions ahead. Unomi (talk) 16:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Using the terminology I defined above, only strong atheists have anything that could be described as "blind faith". Weak atheism is just an application of scientific principles to the question of the existence of deities. In science there are no absolutes, we just weigh up the evidence and when we have a theory with a very large amount of evidence we assume it is correct (unless we're actually testing the theory). If you apply that to theism you find that there is lots of evidence for an absence of gods (at least, gods that actively intervene in human existence, which is all that really matters) and absolutely no evidence for the existence of gods, so we assume they don't exist. --Tango (talk) 17:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Bertrand Russell always made an interesting distinction (in the days before any difference was made between flavours of atheism hmm, good name for a rock band, that.) in that he was an atheist (that is, he did not believe in any gods) as a matter of practice, but technically remained an agnostic from a philosophical standpoint as the entire matter was beyond empirical examination. To me, that is now what we would now call "soft atheism". The edge to "hard atheism" is much harder to pin down. For some people, it's a matter of saying "There's no point in remaining agnostic over everything, no matter how unlikely, and I consider gods to be unlikely, so I therefore explicitly deny the possibility that they may exist and am a strong atheist." Other people feel a more definite affirmation is required. Requiring "more than that" leads to essentially a religious attitude (hard belief about something for which there is no proof either way) and is, in my opinion, unneeded and unhelpful (and as noted above, very unlikely to be a serious position). Matt Deres (talk) 16:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

When did the terms 'strong' / 'weak' and what I take to be the somewhat less colloquial 'positive' / 'negative' first see use? Unomi (talk) 12:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

The 3rd paragraph of Weak and strong atheism answers that question, albeit not very well (there is a citation needed tag). --Tango (talk) 12:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Right, I was hoping someone would hold in their possession more information on the matter, from our articles it seems they are constructs posited by proponents of atheism. Implicit/Explicit in Atheism:_The_Case_Against_God (Google can provide a pdf) and positive/negative here Where the author, Flew, states that this is an interpretation of atheism that is not consistent with 'establised common usage'. Both of these are from the late 70's / early 80's. Unomi (talk) 13:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

german spelling

Is "Über den ersten und vierten Gaußschen Beweis des Fundamental-Satzes der Algebra" correctly spelled (particularly "Gaußschen") and capitalized? Thanks. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 09:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The German WP uses "Gaußschen" for Gaussian and does not use a hyphen, ie they write "Fundamentalsatz". --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 10:45, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The OP should have mentioned that this is the title of a book published in 1920 and, yes, in 1920 this was correct spelling, capitalization and hyphenation. Today you would indeed spell "Fundamentalsatz" without a hyphen - the rest is still correct195.128.251.53 (talk) 23:12, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, I kept the hyphenation from the original work [2], but changed "Gaussschen" to "Gaußschen" on the idea that the original spelling was due to typography limitations. I hope I did the right thing. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 03:03, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

The article ß lists the ss vs. ß spelling rules, including the effects of the 1996 spelling reforms. (summary: both pre- and post-1996, 'ß' is acceptable.) Also note that the title in your link is in all caps. It's conventional to represent 'ß' as 'SS' when capitalized, as 'ß' is lower-case, and doesn't have a capitol form. -- 128.104.112.179 (talk) 18:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, the transcription from all-caps to mixed-lower-case is why I made the change from SS to ß. I just wanted to make sure it was correct, which it sounds like it is. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 02:26, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

According to the reformed spelling, it should be either "Gauß'schen" with apostrophe if the capitalization of the proper name is kept, or "gaußschen" if not. 85.178.226.237 (talk) 17:56, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation of River Lugg

How is River Lugg that flows through Wales and England pronounced? Is it [lʌg] as one would expect, with the STRUT vowel and homophonous with 'lug'? Or is it perhaps [lʊg], with the PUT vowel? Or something else? Ideally, I'd like to know how someone who knows the 'correct' local pronunciation would pronounce it in RP. --Iceager (talk) 12:28, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

As someone whose family is from that area, the pronunciation used locally is to rhyme with "bug". However, it's on the edge of the Brummie/Black Country dialect, and it's possible that the vowel might migrate to the front of the mouth on occasion. RP, note, is not a local dialect and there are very few people from that area who use it. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:45, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure the above is correct, but in the Welsh name for it, Afon Llugwy, the U is pronounced rather like the English I in PIN. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alansplodge (talk • contribs) 19:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! So [lʌg] it is, then? I specified that I wanted to know how it would be pronounced in RP because I saw that some local dialects like Brummie don't have the foot-strut split according to Wikipedia, and wondered which vowel would be used by someone who does have the split, like an RP speaker. Usually when we want to know the pronunciation of a place name, we don't try to follow the local dialect phonology but find out what the correct phonemes are and pronounce them according to our own varieties of English (most of which do have the foot-strut split), so I thought that might help. --Iceager (talk) 01:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Ahem. As a Brummie I do have the foot/strut split. (I presume that means that foot and strut are pronounced differently.) I'm not an expert in phonetics though so I'm not going to change the article. Sometimes the experts can pontificate all they want, but the real experts are the ones who actually do the speaking... --TammyMoet (talk) 12:21, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It means foot and strut don't rhyme (of course the f- and the str- parts are different). And even if it's true that the Birmingham accent generally lacks the foot-strut split, that doesn't mean that 100% of all Brummie speakers do it 100% of the time. +Angr 12:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Of course, any description of dialects should be taken with a grain of salt, since the literature tends to become outdated quickly and you wonder whether the generalized descriptions were correct in the first place. I'm not familiar with the Brummie dialect, but if I compare the dialects and accents I know well and the descriptions I find on Wikipedia and elsewhere, I usually find a number of outdated or bizarre descriptions. --Iceager (talk) 11:36, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The new Great Vowel Shift

Is it just me, or are vowel sounds changing in US language? There's an ad on TV for a regional supermarket whose slogan is "what you want, when you want", but the announcer says, "whut you wunt when you wunt". I just heard somebody on the radio talking about a light "bolb". And I'm always hearing people pronouncing -el- like -al-. An example was a radio announcer in Los Angeles who always referred to the airport, LAX, as "al a x". Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I was always confused when I heard people talking about "the Golf War". -- JackofOz (talk) 20:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, vowels are shifting in most dialects of English. Within the United States, the nature of the shifts varies regionally. Marco polo (talk) 01:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

You can read about one such series of shifts at Northern cities vowel shift (the section "Backing of /ʌ/" in which may explain the "bolb" observation). Deor (talk) 10:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I heard another one today, on the radio again. The word "ultra" with the first vowel pronounced like the a in "all". Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 23:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Italian to English Translation

Google translate keeps giving me weird answers. If anyone is bilingual, i would really appreciate it. Also, the spaces or spelling might be mixed up, so if it doesn't make sense, try rearranging the spaces or the spelling. Thanks in advance!!!

Normal mente qui la sera vedo le stelle ma oggi vedo solo due stelle verdi strana mente negli occhi di lui

71.58.87.38 (talk) 23:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

"Normally here in the evening I see the stars but today to my surprise I see only two green stars in his eyes". A rough translation, but you get the idea. Marco polo (talk) 01:51, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Both instances of "mente" above should be written together with the preceding word: Normalmente and stranamente. Otherwise I think the spelling is correct. +Angr 10:12, 22 October 2009 (UTC)