Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 September 1

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September 1

Future and Conditional tenses of "Must" when using an adverb of degree.

Greetings!

Few verbs in modern English cause as much consternation as to have to. Once upon a time, the (now obsolete) mote stood as the present tense and must as the past tense. Now, however, must serves as the present indicative, and one substitutes some sort of periphrase for all the other tenses.

The confusion of "must" with "need" also compounds the problem, particularly when using an adverb of degree. To wit, constructions such as "I must not enter that area" or "I must hardly adjust the settings, or the computer will crash." imply degrees of obligation; whereas sentences such as "I need not enter that area" or "I need hardly adjust the settings to get the effect that we want" actually indicate degrees of necessity.

When it comes to the future and conditional tenses of must, though, this utterly bewilders me. Which, in your humble opinions, sounds the most proper when suggesting degrees of obligation?

ee.gg.

"I shall have not to enter that area?" "I shall not have to enter that area?" something else?

Or, would someone simply rewrite the sentence entirely by using a copulative tense?

ee.gg.

"I shall be obligated not to enter that area?" "I shall be prohibited from entering that area?" something else, yet?

Thank you. Pine (talk) 10:27, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

To my (British English, just in case it matters) reading, "I shall have not to" would mean "I shall be obligated not to" (i.e. "I am prohibited"), while "I shall not have to" would mean "I shall not be obligated to (but could if I wished, since I am neither obligated nor prohibited)". That said, "I shall have not to" sounds incredibly clunky to my ear, in a way that your last two examples don't, so I would go with one of those if that is the intended meaning. MChesterMC (talk) 15:29, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I would agree with this. "I shall not have to" is necessity rather than obligation, and "I shall be prohibited" is the best of the four. One could say "I shall have to not enter" to express (negative) obligation, but it's still an unnatural construction. Incidentally, if you insist on pluralizing "e.g.", it should be "ee.g." (exemplōrum gratiā instead of exemplī gratiā) - we have two examples, but still only two words and one benefit. Tevildo (talk) 15:37, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and "esteemed" would be better than "humble" in this context. Tevildo (talk) 17:18, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Rodrigo de Freitas

Hello, dear foreign colleagues. There is a problem with correct pronunciation of a geographic name, Rodrigo de Freitas, which is a lagoon in Rio-de-Janeiro. As you know, the Brazilian pronunciation differs from European Portuguese one. Maybe, someone can write the transcription of the Brazilian pronunciation with the IPA?

I would request in the Portuguese Wikipedia, but there the language reference page is out.

Thank you in advance.

--В.Галушко (talk) 20:07, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

/ʁo.ˈdɾi.ɡu d͡ʒɪ ˈfɾej.tɐʃ/ —Stephen (talk) 14:32, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

@Stephen G. Brown: Thank you. Is that the Brazilian pronunciation? I read allegedly the Brazilians pronounce the final "s" as "s", meanwhile the Portuguese read it as "sh".

--В.Галушко (talk) 15:27, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

It’s Brazilian. However, Brazil has different dialects or accents. For example, the word "de" in Rio is /d͡ʒɪ/, but in South Brazil /de/, Central northeastern dialect /di/, and Caipira dialect /di/.

/ʁo.ˈdɾi.ɡu d͡ʒɪ ˈfɾej.tɐʃ/ is what they say in Rio, with -ʃ. In São Paulo, it would end in -s. See this Youtube video, at 17s the speaker in Rio says Rodrigo de Freitas with /ʃ/. —Stephen (talk) 18:03, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Stephen. Your information is very helpful. The fact is that in Cyrillic script languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian) other language words, names etc. are being given not in original spelling, but in the transliteration (the transcription in the essence) in Cyrillic. That is very useful for readers, but it is quite difficult for editor. In English, French, Polish etc. there is the inverse situation: the transfer of names is very ease for editor, but pronunciation is quite difficult for readers.

--В.Галушко (talk) 15:32, 7 September 2016 (UTC)