Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 June 10

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June 10

The Bucket Lady's Dishy Vicar's Wife's Accent?

Is the vicar's wife's accent from Keeping Up Appearances Scottish or otherwise, and from what region particularly? μηδείς (talk) 02:11, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

According to her IMDB bio, the actress who plays the Vicar's wife, Marion Barron, is from Dumfries, Scotland: [1]. I can't see any reason why she would fake her accent for the show, so, I assume that's what you heard. StuRat (talk) 02:14, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Should have thought to check IMDB. She's not even listed as a minor character in our article. I'm impressed cause I told my mom (who asked) that she was probably from the southwest of Scotland, given she almost has a touch of Jane Horrocks' Lancastrian with her glide-free long vowels, but the nice fronted Scottish 'u'. μηδείς (talk) 03:47, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

OK, let me mark this Q resolved. StuRat (talk) 16:00, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Free Software suitable for making subsets from a wordlist?

I have a list of a few thousand words (or lexemes actually, including a definition, synonyms, antonyms, and maybe similar words from one or more other languages).

I would like to both edit these lexemes and put tags on them such as: "things you may find in a kitchen", "things made of steel", "foodstuff", "name on part of a building", "furniture", and then let me extract a subset and make a list of for example all the "things you may find in a kitchen" that are not "foodstuff".

(It would be very nice to also have the ability to for instance further limit this list down to: "only those lexemes which do not yet list any German translation", but this feature is not absolutely required).

What free software or freeware, could be used to accomplish something like this?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 14:36, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

This sounds like a relational database application. You could have one table like this:

WORD.BASE_WORD
WORD.DEF
WORD.SYNONYM_INDEX
WORD.ANTONYM_INDEX
WORD.SIMILAR_FOREIGN_WORD_INDEX
WORD.FOUND_IN_KITCHEN_FLAG
WORD.MADE_OF_STEEL_FLAG
WORD.FOODSTUFF_FLAG
WORD.PART_OF_BUILDING_FLAG
WORD.FURNITURE_FLAG

Each WORD.BASE_WORD would map to a single entry. Beware that the number of FLAG fields might grow quite large, but I don't see any way around it. You could add those flags fields, as needed, setting the initial values to FALSE.

Then you'd have sub-tables:

SYNONYM.INDEX
SYNONYM.WORD

ANTONYM.INDEX
ANTONYM.WORD

SIMILAR_FOREIGN_WORD.INDEX
SIMILAR_FOREIGN_WORD.LANGUAGE
SIMILAR_FOREIGN_WORD.WORD

Each SYNONYM.INDEX, ANTONYM.INDEX, and SIMILAR_FOREIGN_WORD.INDEX could map to zero, one, or many entries in that table.

You might want to also add a table like this:

LANGUAGE.VALID_LANGUAGE

This prevents having "German", "german", GERMAN", "germanic", "Germanic", and "GERMANIC" all listed under SIMILAR_FOREIGN_WORD.LANGUAGE as if they were different languages. Your INSERT statements to add new entries into SIMILAR_FOREIGN_WORD.LANGUAGE would first verify that those existed in LANGUAGE.VALID_LANGUAGE.

Once in this format, a single SELECT statement would do what you want. You could use CSV files to load the data.

I will let others recommend which free database app you should use (you might have better luck over at the Computer Ref Desk). What is your operating system ? StuRat (talk) 15:40, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Japanese

Why do some kana have different pronunciations than the others in their row (ta chi tsu te to, for example)? --108.227.31.161 (talk) 19:32, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Because sound changes have altered the original pronunciation of some of them. It's not just a matter of spelling: if you consider a verb like "tatsu", its negative is "tatanai" and its polite form "tachimasu". At the time when kana came into use, these would have been "tatu", "tatanai" and "tatimasu", but tu later became tsu and ti became chi.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that Japanese people who have not studied the matter may not regard "ta" and "chi" as having a different consonant: there is no syllable "ti" in modern Japanese, and anywhere you might expect it you get "chi". As an analogy, speakers of many languages (especially Indian ones) might wonder why in English we use the same letter "p" in "pin" and "spin", when the two sounds they write are so different. (/pʰ/ and /p/). English speakers are not usually even aware of the difference. --ColinFine (talk) 20:37, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

But surely they realize that cha (ちゃ) is pronounced differently from ta (た)? To be able to make a distinction like that, wouldn't they have to recognize that t and ch are different consonants, since the two sounds can both occur in the same environment (unlike the aspiration of voiceless stops in English)? --108.227.31.161 (talk) 21:47, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not a native speaker and I've never asked one, but I imagine they can tell the difference if they think about it but they probably don't notice it normally. I pronounce the Gs in "Go Giants!" differently, but I think of them as the same letter anyway.

"Ti" and "chi" are not as different as they look when romanized. "Chi" is really "tshi", if you think about it (but I bet you usually don't...), and the "sh" isn't as prominent as in English "ch".

Of course, "ti" is a mora in modern Japanese, written ティ and used in words like tiishatsu (T-shirt). -- BenRG (talk) 00:57, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

What's romanized as cha is spelled (and was originally pronounced) tya. The ch-sound is an allophone of the t-sound before i or y, and then the y was eliminated (or rather it was an allophone, loanwords have changed that). Hence there is a different between cha and ta, but it's because one has (or had) a y-sound in there. Lsfreak (talk) 04:40, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Gentile lettore, gentile lettrice,

The Italian Wikipedia is again putting up a big banner warning that they might be negatively affected by a bill in Parliament. As you can see from any page at it:wp, the banner message begins with "Gentile lettore, gentile lettrice,". What's the difference between "lettore" and "lettrice" in this context? Google Translate renders it "Dear reader, dear reader". Is it perhaps a gender issue? Nyttend (talk) 20:15, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, lettore is masculine, lettrice is feminine. Lesgles (talk) 20:20, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Lector, Lectrix. As in Hannibal and Hanniballina. μηδείς (talk) 20:37, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

And elector, electrics? --ColinFine (talk) 10:26, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I, for one, would like to electrify many of the people who've gotten elected around here. StuRat (talk) 14:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I suppose the memory of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, a gratifyingly Protestant heir to the perversely re-Catholicised House of Stuart is now lost. [Before anyone takes offence, I'm writing ironically about English attitudes of the time, not rendering judgement about the relatives merits of anyone's religion.] When the Catholic James II's Protestant daughters, Queens Mary II and Anne (reigned 1702-1714), died without further issue, the next forty or so in the line of succession were Roman Catholics, and thus unacceptable to the Parliaments born of the Glorious Revolution and to the general British public. So they bestowed the succession on the Electress Sophia and her Protestant heirs, leading to the Hanoverian King George I and his descendants including the present queen, Elizabeth II. Of course in secondary school history, one might have been a bit fuzzy about what an Electress is (one of the seven people who picked a Holy Roman Emperor), but the name & title would always show up in genealogical tables, and historical narratives. —— Shakescene (talk) 11:37, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Vivat Sophia Electrix! - But I'm afraid that to the best of my knowledge, only one woman ever voted as an elector - Maria Theresa, in the election in which her husband was elected emperor. Normally, an electress was simply the wife of the elector. AlexTiefling (talk) 12:13, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually, even Maria Theresa did not get to vote. She couldn't, being a woman, so she had her husband declared her co-ruler in Bohemia and Austria a month after her accession. This did not only enable him to vote on her behalf but also made him eligible for the throne of the Empire. Surtsicna (talk) 12:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you - I was unaware of this detail! AlexTiefling (talk) 12:43, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

See the (coincidental ?) discussion at the Humanities ref. desk of whether Sophia was ever formally installed as Archduchess of Austria. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:39, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I've made a thrilling list of the candidates. —Tamfang (talk) 23:20, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Treasonous Jacobite propaganda directed to winning away Her Majesty's forces and subjects from their true faith and allegiance !!

God bless the King, I mean the Faith's Defender,
God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all—that's quite another thing.

To an Officer in the Army, by John Byrom (1692-1763). —— Shakescene (talk) 03:10, 18 June 2012 (UTC)