Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 February 5

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February 5

Possible Murray-Merry and Kerry-Curry merger or reversal

I enjoy listening to a radio talk show host who often speaks about political topics in the USA. He has what sounds to me like a very peculiar accent (he grew up near Philadelphia). To me, it sounds like he pronounces John Kerry's last name exactly like most people I know would pronounce the name (or the food) "Curry". Similarly he pronounces the name of libertarian Murray Rothbard like most people would say "Merry" or even "Mary" Rothbard.

Is this a known dialect of American English, or more likely just a quirk of this particular person's speech?

I lived in the Philadelphia area for a few years and never noticed anyone who talked like this, but I can be inattentive when it comes to language and dialects. --Captain Breakfast (talk) 06:43, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I've never heard anyone pronounce "Kerry" like "Curry". Steve Kerr is like "cur", but John Kerry is like "carry" (except for northeasterners who might pronounce "carry" with a very short "a".) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:59, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

• This is characteristic of the Delaware Valley accent. When I moved to NYC after high school I was laughed at by NY'ers for talking about the Staten Island Furry. Those of us with this accent distinguish Mary, marry & merry, but pronounce merry as if it were Murray. New Yorkers distinguish all four vowels. In much of the rest of the US the Mary marry merry merger is found. I trained myself to adopt the four vowel system, and people in NYC stopped accusing me of being a Southerner. μηδείς (talk) 02:50, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Oy. So do they sing that one Christmas carol as "God Rest Ye Murray Gentlemen"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:57, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• WHAAOE. See English-language vowel changes before historic /r/#Merry.E2.80.93Murray merger --Jayron32 21:07, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Thank you Medeis and Jayron32. that explains a lot. but does jayron's link explain the Kerry-Curry merger as well? A merger implies they no longer distinguish between the 2 vowels. But his pronunciations of what sound like "curry" and "merry" suggest that he does speak the 2 vowels, just not where most Americans would speak them. Maybe it's a kind of vowel shift peculiar to that region.--Captain Breakfast (talk) 02:24, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Are you sure there's a difference between this speaker's Kerry and Murray? If his pronunciation of both is between the two, then when you're expecting –er– it is likely to sound to you like –ur– and vice versa. (This is how we get the stereotypes that the Japanese swap r with l – do people still make that joke? – and Brooklynites swap oi with er.) —Tamfang (talk) 07:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I say "Murray" the same was as RP and General American speakers do. When in NYC, I code switch and distinguish meh-ry and Murray, which I consider /mɛɹi/ and /mɹˌi/. That is, merry has the get vowel, while Murray in my South Jersey dialect has a syllabic arr.

Interestingly, I say 'error' as a doubled syllabic arr), i.e; a two-syllable word with no standard vowels. This once led me and a co-worker (a Lakota Indian with a Minnesota accent) almost to blows. She insisted the word was pronounced "air ore" as opposed to my "er er" as in the word used to indicated hesitation in speech. Given I was the troubleshooter for the unit, I used the word constantly. μηδείς (talk) 21:49, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Rat-arsed

My neighbour he say he always get rat-arsed on a Friday down pub. What is origin of expression "rat-arsed" - I am thinking it mean "very drunk"? 109.144.219.137 (talk) 17:17, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

You're right, saying someone is rat-arsed means that they are very drunk. In Words in Time and Place: Exploring Language Through the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (p54) David Crystal links the phrase to the American don't give a rat's ass, but suggests that the link is not at all clear. The first use of the phrase is from 1984. It may be linked to ratted from 1982 (which has pretty much the same meaning) and probably comes from the earlier as drunk as a rat or as pissed as a rat. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 23:36, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I would comment further, but ceebs, tbh. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:54, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm very surprised the first use is from 1984 as I was using in the 1970s at university! But I guess nobody was transcribing my speech and publishing it then.--TammyMoet (talk) 17:45, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I did my best to transcribe it, Tammy, but it was rather blurred and I couldn't find a publisher. Sorry. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:52, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

How can IPA represent general nasalization?

If a variant of a language is generally nasal (for me, that would be some NY accents), how can the IPA represent this? --Hofhof (talk) 18:18, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Nasalization--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 21:59, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

That seems to represent a nasalization of a phoneme. But how you indicate that the whole intonation is more nasal than in other languages?--Hofhof (talk) 22:07, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

• Is there any chance, @Hofhof: that you could post a youtube clip exemplifying this? I am having a hard time thinking of an accent which fits the bill, although I can certainly imagine individual speakers with it. μηδείς (talk) 02:39, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I think that Hofhof is probably thinking of something like Fran Drescher's manner of speaking. Deor (talk) 16:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Nasal voice has some related information (but not about IPA). Loraof (talk) 17:55, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Likewise Hypernasal speech. Loraof (talk) 17:58, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Short translation

I'm looking for translations of these two phrases, which I believe are identical or nearly so:

πολλαὶ μὲν θνητοῖς γλῶτται, μία δ'ἀθανάτοισιν

multæ terricolis linguæ, cœlestibus una

Thanks! DonFB (talk) 20:41, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Both mean, roughly, "the inhabitants of earth have many languages; the inhabitants of heaven have one", as a simple Google search would have told you. For the Greek, "mortals" and "immortals" would be more literal translations than "inhabitants of earth" and "inhabitants of heaven". Deor (talk) 21:37, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

A simple Google search did not produce fully intelligible results, but thanks for helping. DonFB (talk) 21:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

See Samuel Bagster the Elder#Firm Motto. -- ToE 23:09, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, that's the edit I made after confirming the translation here and elsewhere. DonFB (talk) 03:33, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Ha! Thank you for your work on this and other articles. -- ToE 14:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)