Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 November 16

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November 16

Name for pin

Wat is the correct word for this kind of pin: advertising pin, advertisement pin, marketing pin ? Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 05:04, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Lapel pin. Rojomoke (talk) 06:45, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

There are an awful lot of "see also"s on that article, not including badge, which is also used in British English. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 15:08, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't see a size of that object, so it could be a lapel pin, or it could be a badge. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:21, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

The image file labels it as an "advertising pin" of a Dutch company. Having no image of the back it is difficult to confirm if it is a type of lapel pin, or some other sort of clip or badge. It might have been issued to advertise the company - but even that cannot be certain (it could have been some sort of award for service). Wymspen (talk) 15:28, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

I would call it an advertising pin or a promotion pin. —Stephen (talk) 17:32, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Chinese translation

Here. Please, transcribe and translate.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:53, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

It is a bit difficult to read, but this is the poem "八阵图" by Du Fu, a Tang dynasty poet. In Western reading order:

功盖三分国
名成八阵图
江流石不转
遗恨失吞吴

There is a translation here (look for "The Eight-sided Fortress"). —Kusma (t·c) 21:04, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

This is maybe a better link (and has traditional characters like the original text probably has, and the same reading order). —Kusma (t·c) 21:05, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, you are of great help. Don't you know if it may have some other, apart from its literal, meaning? Like in fengshui? Why may a ceramic plate be decorated with it?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:27, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't know about another meaning (and I know basically nothing about Classical Chinese). The subject of the poem is Zhuge Liang, see e.g. Baidu Baike. —Kusma (t·c) 20:03, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

An interpretation of the poem is at Poem: the Eight-sided Fortress唐诗《八阵图》: "This poem is a glorification of Zhuge Liang’s remarkable achievement, and also shows the poet's regret about Liu Bei's failure because he unwisely turned a deaf ear to Zhuge Liang’s strategy of allying with Wu against Wei". I'm still none the wiser though. Alansplodge (talk) 20:39, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

This page (if I'm reading it correctly) says that the poem was "formerly used in divination". Perhaps something to do with I Ching? Alansplodge (talk) 20:52, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I read that as "八陣圖 can also be translated The Eight Diagrams", which are those of the I Ching. As another little information tidbit: the form of poetry is called Jueju. —Kusma (t·c) 21:47, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Okay, that makes more sense. Alansplodge (talk) 09:38, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't think anyone's linked to this yet: we have an article on this at Stone Sentinel Maze. It doesn't make much sense, but neither does the original myth. 197.201.4.179 (talk) 12:13, 18 November 2017 (UTC) (Henry Flower)

The poem is actually cited in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Chapter 84 (thank you Henry Flower for the link). See s:zh:三國演義/第084回. For another translation (by Charles H. Brewitt-Taylor), see wikia:threekingdoms:Romance of the Three Kingdoms/chapter 084. —Kusma (t·c) 19:21, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Yet another translation (in Moss Roberts' translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing 1994):

Deeds to vault a thrice-torm realm.
Fame at peak with the Eightfold Maze,
Now steadfast stones in the river's run –
Monument to his rue
That his king had choked on Wu!

Still no answer on why it is on a plate, though. —Kusma (t·c) 19:30, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody, especially to Kusma. The verse may be equally a filler text for Chinese calligraphy as well. At least I know now that it is not meaningless or ridiculous.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:38, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Which are universal linguistic sounds?

I am not sure whether mmm would be classified as a universal linguistic sound or a sound that can be produced by every single human. Is there a sound that every human can pronounce with little difficulty? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 20:58, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Laughter, for one. The expression "ha-ha" means the same thing in Chinese as it does in English. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:01, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Also, "ma" or some close variation is among the first sounds made by babies around the world, hence its close association with "mother" in so many languages. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:02, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

I googled "human universal sounds" and this is one item that came up, though it may not be precisely what you're looking for. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:21, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

The article is indeed about a relevant and potentially interesting scientific study, but the journalist seems to have inserted some ill-informed and linguistically naïve ideas of her own. Consider the opening two sentences:

"Even though you’re not fluent in different languages, you may be able to recognise words in others. In German for water is ‘wasser’, in Dutch it's 'water' and in Serbian ‘voda’.

Well of course those words resemble each other – English, German, Dutch and Sebian are all Indo-European languages, so all four words are descended from the original same word in Proto-Indo European (reconstructed as "*wódr̥"). This is not at all relevant to the phenomenon that the scientific study itself is concerned with. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.0.37.45 (talk) 03:11, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

There is a table here [1] listing all phonemes, and indicating (in the second column) what percentage of the languages included use that particular sound. The most common (m) is only found in 95% of languages, so there are none which are common to every human language. Wymspen (talk) 21:32, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

That answers my question. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 22:14, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

@Wymspen: thanks for that link, a very useful reference indeed, but I don't think it definitively answers the OP's question since the OP asked about "sounds" and the table only list phonemes which means it doesn't show sounds (phones) that may occur but aren't considered phonemes such as allophones. For example, in that table Japanese isn't included in the 95% under "m" because /m/ isn't an phoneme in Japanese; but [m] does appear regularly and often as allophone of /n/ (Japanese phonology#Moraic nasal). Still, I don't think 100% of every language that has existed has [m], but the figure is probably closer to 100 than 95.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 22:25, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

How does it not definitively answer the OP's question when the OP states, in a definitive way "That answers my question". It may not have answered your concerns, but you are not the OP. If the OP indicates that they are satisfied with the response, who are YOU to say that the OP is not satisfied? The OP gets to decide for themselves how they feel. You don't get to enforce your feelings on them. --Jayron32 15:08, 17 November 2017 (UTC) Striking my comment here. It was entirely uncalled for. I apologize to WilliamThweatt for this unjustified attack. --Jayron32 15:56, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

WilliamThweatt -- I'm pretty sure /m/ is a phoneme of Japanese: there's a whole row for it in the syllabaries, it appears twice in the famous mantra Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, once in the name of the founder of Sony (Akio Morita), etc. AnonMoos (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Ugh. Of course, you are correct. Thanks for that. I've recently been writing about final nasals in Austroasiatic languages and must be obsessing stuck thinking about finals (in which position [m] is in fact an allophone of /n/ in Japanese). I have struck my "example" above, but the point remains; the table seems only to list phonemes and excludes non-phonemic allophones.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 00:01, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I thank you too. The link you've supplied is quite interesting. I haven't been aware of its existence, so far. I think the most interesting phoneme is the consonant /ŋmkpɾ/, found in Tigon Mbembe language (spoken in Cameroon). Here is another insight I got from the link: The maximal quantity of vowels shared (as phonemes) by most languages is five, being (per frequency): /i/,/a/,/u/,/o/,/e/; Whereas the maximal quantity of consonants shared (as phonemes) by most languages is fourteen, being (per frequency): /m/,/k/,/j/,/p/,/w/,/n/,/s/,/t/,/b/,/l/,/h/,/g/,/ŋ/,/d/. HOTmag (talk) 22:28, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

for The sequence /ŋmkpɾ/, User:HOTmag. If the m and r are syllabic, I can pronounce that with not much effort, and /kp/ is a common cluster in many African languages, as are nasal sequences, and initial /ŋ/. See ITN Emmerson Mnangagwa. The Georgian language has six-consonant clusters, and [ŋkθs] is not unattested. μηδείς (talk) 00:09, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

See here, and also the 1441-st phoneme - here. Not /r/ (as you wrote it apart) - but rather /ɾ/ (as it is in the whole phoneme you correctly copied), and not a consonant cluster - but rather a phoneme, and that's why it's so interesting. HOTmag (talk) 04:55, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I saw and know the difference between r and the flap, but since I wasn't using brackets to mention the broad phones (you were not confused), didn't feel it worth the effort to open the box. I'll read your sources. μηδείς (talk) 18:19, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

140.254.70.33 -- I'm not sure that there's a linguistic sound which is included in absolutely every human language, but basically every language includes CV syllables as part of its phonotactics, where the possible consonants ("C") are almost certain to include several of [p], [t], [k], [m], [n], [s], while the possible vowels ("V") are very likely to include several of [a], [e], [i], [o], [u] (where the symbols enclosed between brackets [...] are "broad" IPA transcriptions). AnonMoos (talk) 22:22, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

I'll still need to see a much better source than these two lists, User:HOTmag, to accept blithely that /ŋmkpɾ/ is a five-segmented unitary phoneme. Does the source language not have /kp/, /gb/, prenasalized stops, or a separate /ɾ/? This seems to be nothing more than a cluster of segmentally prenasalized /kp/ followed by /ɾ/. Id like to see a full workup of the language, along with some sort of diachronic analysis, not just that the segment is attested in a list. μηδείς (talk) 03:21, 18 November 2017 (UTC)