Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 July 2

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July 2

Artifacts and artefacts

Little Thetford flesh-hook says that the subject of the article is an "artefact"; the word is linked to Artifact (archaeology), which gives "artefact" as an alternate spelling. In researching American archaeology, I've always seen this word spelled "artifact", but the flesh-hook was found in eastern England. Is this a matter of British/American spelling differences, or is there some other reason to account for the i/e difference here? I note that the author of the flesh-hook article hasn't placed a "(see spelling differences)" note such as the one that can be found at color. Nyttend (talk) 02:17, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Immediately to hand is my (UK) Collins Dictionary of the English Language (1979 Edition), which has the entries

"artefact or U.S. artifact . . ." and

"artifact . . . a variant spelling of artefact"

so yes, it is a British/US spelling difference, and the British spelling is the more appropriate for an article about a British subject. I would have thought that an explicit note about one of the very many such differences would be appropriate in an article about the differing word itself (as in your color/colour example), but not in an article about another subject that merely uses such a word, else very many articles would be littered with such notes. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 05:13, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Oops, I meant to say "author of the artifact article", not "author of the flesh-hook article"; it really would be very cluttering. Thanks for the help. Nyttend (talk) 05:46, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Fixed, and also I added a note to the Little Thetford flesh-hook talk page. --Senra (talk) 21:59, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

High-pitched speaking voices

A question at the Humanities desk about whether American accents have changed over the last hundred years or not prompts me to post this question, which I've long wondered about.

Old recordings and movie footage I've heard and seen make me think that people in the early years of sound and picture recording had generally higher pitched voices than they do today. I have wondered if it's an affectation, that it was considered more genteel, but occasional bits of vox pop I've seen seem to chime with this and for me that casts a doubt over that theory.

Of course, I can think of exceptions, but do you experts think:

a) the observation is accurate? b) if so, what is the cause?

Cheers, --Dweller (talk) 09:21, 2 July 2010 (UTC) [in falsetto]

I'd guess that at least part of the reason is seen in the "Lina Lamont" character of Singin' in the Rain — Lina is a great actress, but she has this horrid whiny and screechingly high voice. There were plenty of individuals who did well in silent films but not in talkies because they didn't have nice voices; perhaps this would be partially responsible for the situation you note? Nyttend (talk) 14:08, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I would venture a guess that the reason is technical -- namely, that early methods of voice recording were pretty bad at low frequencies. That is just a speculation though. No such user (talk) 14:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Your exception is not American, so it may be a phenomena that only took place there. I have noticed that people from some countries speak with lower or higher pitch. For example many Russians in low pitch and many Indians in a higher pitch. There seems to be surprisingly little about voice pitch in different cultures on the internet. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:35, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

It might be caused by noise pollution or machismo or both, but I have not found supporting documentation.

—Wavelength (talk) 14:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I do know that language is constantly changing. While I have no evidence for this particular pitch phenomenon, I have no trouble whatsoever with the idea that the generation whose voices made it to early media did speak with a higher pitched voice as a rule. Is that the case? Well, I don't know. Falconus^{p t c} 19:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Only a side note here: I recall reading a study that concluded that women who speak East Asian languages (Japanese and Mandarin were the languages studied) spoke with a higher mean F0 (correlating to higher pitch) than their English-speaking counterparts, and another that bilingual speakers might use a higher mean F0 in one language than in another. Steewi (talk) 04:23, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

This is anectodal only, but I've observed that Chinese females speaking English tend to have use a lower-pitched voice relative to their voice when speaking Chinese, and indeed relative to non-Chinese females speaking English. But the tendency is not universal.--达伟 (talk) 10:11, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

From a computational phonology perspective, we can see that tensed frontal vowels have some higher-pitched formants than their lax or backed counterparts, and we can also hear the old-movie accents as being more frontal (at least I can), so that would account for a perceived heightening of pitch. Speakers of Parisian French, if they have a good American English accent, sound like they drop pitch in switching languages, which would also fit that hypothesis. So my conclusion is that the midwestern "darkening" (that is, back and lax) of Standard American English would produce an audibly-lower perceived (just the base tone is lower, but the average should be the same) pitch. I should probably verify this on my spectra software though. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:42, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

People seem to pitch higher when they talk louder. If they were yelling into not-very-sensitive microphones, or had learned to yell their dramatic lines or oratory in pre-microphone days, speakers might tend to have higher-pitched voices. Just a theory.--Cam (talk) 06:07, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Lincoln reportedly had a relatively high-pitched voice which assisted in being heard throughout a crowd while loudly delivering a speech (without yelling as such). AnonMoos (talk) 17:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Correct form

Hello there I am looking for standard form of following statements:
There are 162,221,000 people lives in BD. When their own favorite team win/lose a match they act like the have achieved/lost their heart, what a patriotic nature for other country!!! But What a shame that we could not make 11 skilled football player who could have qualified themselves for WC 2010.
Is there anything wrong with these statements? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.234.152.159 (talk) 18:45, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

It is easily understandable to me, but there are some grammatical issues. The first is a nitpick; most of the time we would say "over 162 million," or say "162 million" and not be quite as precise, though it is by no means incorrect to do so. The second is that the word "lives" is incorrect there. The first problem with it is that "lives" can only be used with a third person singular pronoun ("he", "she", "it", "John", "the cat", etc). The second is that because of the linking verb "are" you have to say "living." "There are 162,221,000 people living in BD." The next thing is that I am not sure what "BD" is. If you wish to elaborate on that, it may not be a bad idea. If you are in England, saying that the "team win or lose a match" (for formal writing, you want to replace the "/" with "or") is correct, but if you are in America, it is incorrect, and should be "team wins or loses. That is merely a difference in dialects. "like the have achieved..." should be "like they have achieved." "Achieved" is not really the right word there. I would try to rephrase it a bit, maybe "feel pride in their heart" or any one of a number of things. I would personally change the comma between "heart" and "what" to a hyphen, but I am not sure that it is incorrect hte the way it is. Formal English only ever has one exclamation point at a time, but many people break that rule for emphasis, so I don't know that you need to change it. "But What a shame..." "What" should be lowercase. "Player" should be plural ("players"). Again, depending on the audience, you may want to write out "World Cup" rather than "WC". Also, some English speakers would advocate writing out "eleven" rather than "11" and the word "make" is not quite the right word. I would recommend "have" or "find". "Other" in "other country" should be preceeded by an article, specifically in this case "the". So, I would recommend "There are over 162 million people living in BD [write out BD - I have no idea what it means]. When their own favorite team wins or loses [if you are writing in American English like me] a match, they feel the pride or loss in their heart - what a patriotic nature for the other country! But what a shame that we could not have eleven skilled football players who could have qualified themselves for World Cup 2010!" I know that's a lot of suggestions, feel free to ask me to explain any of my suggestions. You did a good job; I could easily understand what you were intending (other than "BD"), which is the biggest purpose of writing. Falconus^{p t c} 19:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Kudos, Falconus, I wouldn't have had the patience to explain all of that. Judging by the IP and by the population figure, BD probably means Bangladesh - if that's the case, then British English rules would probably apply. Rimush (talk) 20:03, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Kudos, indeed. Just a couple of comments: I don't quite know what "what a patriotic nature for the other country!" means. The sort of sense of it that I get is "the other country finds themselves up against a team of players more patriotic than they ever expected". Is that what it's trying to say? "...football players who could have qualified themselves for ..." - the usual idiom is "qualify for", not "qualify oneself for".

And serendipitously you've come up with a rather fascinating idea. We could extend the various National Spelling Bees (I assume there are more than this one) into a "Word [sic] Cup". Great idea! -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:22, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I reread that two or three times, and I still mistyped two words... Oops. The sense that I got for "what a patriotic nature for the other country" was a statement of how patriotic the country was. Falconus^{p t c} 20:28, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Mmm, but one is patriotic for one's own country, not for an opposing country. It's a very odd way of expressing whatever the idea is meant to be. I'd suggest an alternative formulation if I had a clear idea of what it's trying to say. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:54, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

What I understood from that was this: Bangladesh didn't qualify for the World Cup, but Bangladeshi people still have a favorite team in the World Cup. For example, Johnny's favorite team is Uruguay. And he is "patriotic" in a sense, just not for Bangladesh, but for Uruguay - he feels Uruguay's wins and losses in his heart. Rimush (talk) 22:23, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

• Thank you so very much Falconus and others for the explanation. All of you have cleared up my mind very nicely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.234.152.159 (talk) 21:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

You are very welcome. I am glad that we could help. Falconus^{p t c} 23:34, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I see Muphrys law is still at work - the "l" in World Cup is italic for some reason, making it look like a "/"; or was that a deliberate choice? Astronaut (talk) 05:13, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

It was intentional since I changed it after the fact, but I've unitalicised it now because you are right about the "/". Falconus^{p t c} 17:25, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Marry merry mary merger

Hi all! I live in an area of the Marry merry mary merger and I was wondering how someone who does not would pronounce them. IPA is fine, but just in case also give a pronunciation respelling because i'm a bit rusty in IPA. THnkas ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.235.109.124 (talk) 21:02, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

They are all different in my accent (RP, give or take). The only differences are the vowels. In "marry" it's /æ/, in "merry" it's /ɛ/ and in "Mary" it's a diphthong, /ɛə/. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that will help, since the way IPA works means the same symbols are pronounced differently in different accents. The same problem prevents me from giving you a respelling version - the vowel in "marry" is the same vowel for me as in "bad", but you probably don't pronounce "bad" the same way I do either. --Tango (talk) 22:13, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I probably pronounce them in a very similar way to Tango. Marry has a short vowel with the tongue well-separated from the palate (mouth and throat fairly wide open), merry is similarly short but with the back of the tongue closer to the palate, Mary in my local accent is just a long version of the vowel in merry. I don't know whether this makes sense to those who use very different vowels. Dbfirs 22:28, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Here's the obvious solution - a recording of me saying the three words. --Tango (talk) 22:30, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

... but how does one play ".ogv" files? Dbfirs 09:49, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Probably one for the Computing RefDesk :-). 87.81.230.195 (talk) 11:19, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I was sceptical as to whether you actually had a /æ/ in 'marry', but then I listened to your recording and it is, indeed, much closer to /ɛ/ than I use, meaning your distinction between 'marry' and 'merry' is smaller than I usually expect. I feel like I should apologise for an assumption I never actually expressed. I also feel oddly disillusioned that you have a human voice ;) 86.164.57.20 (talk) 17:53, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Dunno if this will help, but a recording of my voice from 2003 is available, including these three words. AUE people, on hearing it, called me "MINMINM" ("Mary is not marry is not merry"). (The other thing that you might find interesting is the difference between calm /kɑm/ and com /kam/.)—msh210℠ 07:02, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

To my California ear, marry, merry and Mary are the same, but the first part of "merger" sounds like the first part of the name Murphy. DOR (HK) (talk) 03:19, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

No, merger wasn't part of it. The OP was referring to the merger (phonology) of Mary, marry, and merry.—msh210℠ 06:14, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

One more thing

Also why do languages lose things like case systems over time. for example latin had one of the most complex in the European languages but no modern major romance language, aprat from Romanian, has it, and even in Romanian is has been greatly simplified. 76.235.109.124 (talk) 21:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

They don't always lose them. Tocharian, for example, has more cases than Proto-Indo-European. +Angr 23:38, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

One rough and crude rule of thumb is that if a language has a strong stress accent which is generally not placed on the final syllable of polysyllabic words, and the final syllables of polysyllabic words typically consist of inflectional endings, then such inflectional endings will often be subject to great reduction and simplification over the long term. Of course, there are other circumstances which can favor the incorporation of originally separate words (postpositions and other particles) as agglutinative suffixes of the preceding word (as mentioned by Angr).... AnonMoos (talk) 00:27, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

By the way, the "t" of the old 2nd. person singular "-st" verb ending originated from a following word, and some linguists claim that the "-n't" of so-called "contractions" is actually a true morphological suffix (not a mere clitic), so English has had some historical morphological gains in word-endings (along with many more losses). AnonMoos (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

John McWhorter has a good book, The Power of Babel, that's all about this. It's written for a lay audience and is accessible to non-linguists (I read it before I studied linguistics; in fact, it's what made me want to study linguistics). rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:24, 3 July 2010 (UTC)