Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 July 12

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July 12

"SDB", what is it

What is a SDB?Curb Chain (talk) 00:32, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Possibly Silver Dangle Beads. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 02:09, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

"Silent Dut Beadly". KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 06:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Safe deposit box? I'm reading it as "I decided to throw it in my SDB..." --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:47, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe PalaceGuard has it correctly. I'm not sure KageTora followed your link at all... Matt Deres (talk) 16:10, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Ancient English accent

I heard a rumor that the modern day American accent is actually closer to how English people sounded like pre-revolutionary days. Is this true? What is the earliest recording of an English voice? ScienceApe (talk) 16:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

If you mean closer than present-day British English, it's true with respect to some pronunciation features but not others – for instance, the fact that most Americans pronounce their "r"s in words like "car" while most British people don't is a conservative feature, as is the fact that they pronounce "dance" with the same vowel as "man", rather than the same vowel as "palm". But then again, the fact that most Americans have the same vowel in "bother" as in "father" is an innovation, and in this respect British English has remained closer to earlier stages. The way these things can be historically reconstructed has little to do with old sound recordings though. Sound recordings have of course only existed since the invention of the phonograph in the 1870s. You can find a lot of information about these issues in various articles listed under {{History of English}}. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:59, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

In so far as Shakespeare didn't drop his arrs (rhoticism) and he didn't pronounce bath and grass to rhyme with father as they do in England, but with trap and happy as they do in America, some conservative American dialects are closer in some ways to Shakespeare than is Received Pronunciation. But that's a very complicated issue, and most Ameican dialects have developments in their vovel systems (NCVS, cot-caught merger, etc.) that move them far away from Shakespearean era English. Northern dialects in England that retain the arrs and the old vowels are probably much closer than American dialects--or maybe even some Irish speech. Listen to shakespeare in the original. As for earliest voice recording, that was Thomas Edison. μηδείς (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

You're (the two of you) obfuscating the issue somewhat by talking about Shakespeare in place of the pre-Revolutionary era. There's almost 200 years of difference between the two of those periods, and the English accent changed significantly in that time gap as well as it has between the pre-Revolutionary era and today. To answer Fut.Perf., yes, the modern-day American accent - or rather, the modern New England accent - is closer to the mid-18th Century English accent than the present-day English accent is (speaking in generic terms, as there are some English accents which differ). The generic English accent has in the last two centuries become non-rhotic, for example, whereas the New England accent is still rhotic - this hasn't changed from the above response. The shift from, say, pronouncing "qualities" as "kwa-li-tyes" (Shakespearean) to "kwa-li-tees" happened before the Revolutionary War, however. The video linked - the Kansas Uni one - is interesting, but not an accurate representation of 1760s English pronunciation. It's a source of some curiosity to me, though, that the New England accent (and from what I gather, American accents in general) does not seem to have shifted much in the last 200 years, whereas the English accent altered significantly in many respects. Falastur2 ^Talk 21:34, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Excuse me? I certainly wasn't talking about Shakespeare. As for the rest, I'm not sure what you mean by "generic accent", but New England is generally said to be among the non-rhotic areas within the US. And as for "does not seem to have shifted much", as Medeis and I both pointed out, it entirely depends on what areas of the phonology you look at. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:54, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Which particular English accent are you referring to? England had, and still has, a wide a variety of accents. Bazza (talk) 22:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I think I'm just going to strike out my answer entirely. It's not worth the effort it would involve to dig myself out of the hole I just made for myself with my careless response. Please accept my apologies here, all. Falastur2 ^Talk 22:16, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure Scottish accent is much closer and archaic of all.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 10:57, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Again: in certain aspects yes (e.g. treatment of /r/, retention of /hw/ vs /w/); in others, not so (e.g. treatment of vowel length, where Scottish English differs radically from pretty much every other accent). Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:28, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Whatever and Whatsoever

Right now I'm reading The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. One of the things I noticed about his writing style is that he uses "whatever" when I would use "whatsoever." For example (this is just a sentence of my invention): "He paid him no heed whatever for the rest of the voyage." I very rarely see this, and I'm assuming the two words are quivalent when used in this way. But, they wouldn't be if someone said "Whatever!" - they couldn't say "Whatsoever!"? Or could they? Thanks! --Yellow1996 (talk) 16:51, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Tangent comment. This was my favorite series of all time when I was little. I read them into tatters.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:34, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Dictionary.com has them as synonyms and I've always thought of them as interchangeable, with whatsoever sounding lightly more formal and maybe emphatic to my ear.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Right, I think they're essentially synonyms (but with whatsoever being slightly stronger) in essentially every situation except the contemporary "I'm ignoring you" idiom.

“ I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie
Wherever, whenever, or whatsoever the manner of death he die ” — Robert W. Service

--Trovatore (talk) 21:55, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

There's also the whoever/whosoever and whomever/whomsoever split. Citations exist for words such as howsoever, whensoever and wheresoever. Whyever is usually a misspelling of "why ever", but it can exist as a single word. Whysoever is not unknown but is probably archaic. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:08, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

...and the wild winds of fortune shall carry me onward, O whithersoever they blow (Man of La Mancha) --Trovatore (talk) 22:10, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper thithersoever thou goest. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:31, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

• "I'll have whatsoever he's having"? Nonsense! The longer word is usually an adverb, the shorter usually a pronoun. μηδείς (talk) 22:27, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The OP framed the specific use for emphasizing a negative statement, and whether in that context the words were synonyms – not a comparison of the words for all meanings.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:06, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. (In the negative case I would only use whatsoever). μηδείς (talk) 00:28, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, *you* might, but whatever is perfectly standard in that meaning. --Trovatore (talk) 00:30, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I have heard it, but it's not something I personally would produce as a "competent speaker". Perhaps it's more common in Britain? "I don't like that whatever" sounds unnatural to me. μηδείς (talk) 00:42, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

That one's bad either way; whatsoever doesn't sound much better. --Trovatore (talk) 00:45, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

There are plenty of more archaic terms like gotten you'll find in American versus British English. "At all" or "One bit" might be more common than "whatsoever". But the latter still doesn't sound off to me. μηδείς (talk) 01:57, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't sound good to me. I would accept "I don't like that in any way whatsoever", but in that sentence, replacing whatsoever by whatever seems fine. --Trovatore (talk) 02:04, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems to be a matter of WP:ENGVAR or even more regional than that. Free Dictionary says American Heritage, Collins and Random House all have separate emphases. We sang the hymn "Whatsoever You Do" in church, but that would only be "whatever you do" in American speech, or at least in my northeastern dialect. μηδείς (talk) 02:17, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

To my (British) eyes, "whatsoever" looks archaic, except as an intensifier with no, none, nothing or nobody. --09:46, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Wow - great turnout! (Special thanks to Jack for all those new archaic words to use; seriously, I'm always on the lookout for more!) :) Thanks, everyone! --Yellow1996 (talk) 01:13, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

You're especially welcome. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 02:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)