Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 October 15

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October 15

Greek

Why do the greeks have separate letters for clusters 'ps' and 'ks' but not for 'ts' and 'dz' when 'ts' and 'dz' are regarded as single sounds while 'ps' and 'ks' are not?--Quand tu chantes (talk) 15:20, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

English is weird in this respect, too, with "x" making either the "z" or "ks" sounds, while "th", "sh", and "ch" seem to be one sound each ("th" can be two different sounds, but only one at a time). StuRat (talk) 15:40, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Quand_tu_chantes -- [ts] and [dz] are not usually considered "single sounds". Rather, they're common affricates, which in many languages can be considered a phonemic unit. Also, ancient Greek did have a letter for "dz" -- the pronunciation of the letter Zeta in various dialects of ancient Greek was commonly either [zd] or [dz]... AnonMoos (talk) 17:20, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Quand tu chantes, I suspect the answer is mostly that they had a use for them. The sequences /ks/ and /ps/ were and are common in Greek. /ts/ was rare in Ancient Greek, being usually assimilated to /ss/ or /s/. I think in Modern Greek it is mostly found in loan-words. --ColinFine (talk) 23:30, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

The best-known forms of ancient Greek (Attic/Ionic/Koine) completely lacked [ts], but it may have been present in some earlier forms of the language and/or obscurer dialects. The Linear B syllabary symbols conventionally transcribed as "za", "ze", and "zo" probably wrote affricates of some kind, both voiced and voiceless. AnonMoos (talk) 02:51, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Cebuano Wikipedia

I noticed (here) that Cebuano language Wikipedia has the 2nd largest number of articles, nearly as large as English WP and much more than (#3) Swedish. The Cebuano language, a regional language in the Philippines mostly limited to the southern half (which I've never heard of before) has only about 21 million native speakers. Is there some reason why their WP is so big? — 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:4C0B:CDC2:99AA:D3FA (talk) 16:58, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Lsjbot Шурбур (talk) 17:08, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

StuRat -- It's extremely difficult to imagine how any inclusionist editorial policy in combination with human-written encyclopedia articles could result in Cebuano having 250% as many articles as either French or German... AnonMoos (talk) 17:14, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

[After repeated edit conflicts]

2606:A000:4C0C:E200:4C0B:CDC2:99AA:D3FA -- It's called Lsjbot; see the previous discussion on Talk:List of Wikipedias#Lsjbot... AnonMoos (talk) 17:10, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm ... interesting; thanks. — 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:4C0B:CDC2:99AA:D3FA (talk) 17:18, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

German "auf etwas kommen"

How would you translate "Wie kommt man bitte auf so einen Namen?" (e. g. referring to an exotic name given to a child)?--Cleph (talk) 17:06, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

The literal translation is something like "Can you please tell me how you came up with such a name ?", but, depending on how they said it, this may imply that the speaker is unhappy with the choice, and thinks it too unusual. StuRat (talk) 17:16, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much – "come up with" is exactly the idiom I was looking for! Best wishes--Cleph (talk) 17:57, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Cleph, refering to the headline, my first translation is: "how can You get such idea". Reading the complete question, I think "what makes You choose this name" would fit. Yes, the question sounds as a typical reaction of an exotic name. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 07:17, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Duck test

Per the article: "The duck test is a humorous term...". (Ignoring the fact that it is not really "humorous"). Is there a term for what type of term this is? Its not quite an idiom, maxim, adage or epigram. — 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:4C0B:CDC2:99AA:D3FA (talk) 19:17, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I notice this is pretty much the exact opposite of "You can't judge a book by it's cover." The duck test says that you can do just that. StuRat (talk) 19:26, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

A razor? ---Sluzzelin talk 19:27, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

The article has been changed (here), removing - is a humorous term for - per WP:REFERS by user:Deor; a good solution, since evidently, it is what it is. Razor (philosophy) added to 'See also' as related but perhaps not exactly what it is (pending source stating otherwise). 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:4C0B:CDC2:99AA:D3FA (talk) 20:35, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

It can be used in a humorous way (I recall Mark Russell doing a song about it regarding politicians and/or political issues) but is by no means always humorous. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:47, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Aphorism? Or Saw (saying), a specific type of aphorism?--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 04:47, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Mirror refers to it as a maxim,[1] but I don't consider Mirror to be a paragon of reliability. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:198D:93E0:4AF4:F57D (talk) 15:50, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

How to get started on IPA?

• Is there a beginner's guide on how to read IPA so I can learn to produce all kinds of phonemes?
• What do the fancy terms mean? "Move the tongue back." "Move the tongue forward." "Make a nasal sound." "Touch the roof of the mouth." Most of the time, people make pronunciation easy, but in reality, these descriptions don't describe exactly how one produces the sound. Touch the roof? Very tightly or loosely? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 22:50, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
  • If it were me, I would start by studying how my own language's sounds are made in my mouth, compared with the descriptions of making those sounds. That could give you a better understanding of what these various terms mean. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:52, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
    • Yes, that's a good way to start. If you have a mobile phone or tablet and are confident in your English pronunciation, then the best way to learn the IPA sounds in that language is Macmillan's Sounds app and it's free! I have used it with many students. It will take you a few weeks to learn the sounds. If English is not a good starting point for you, or you are ready to move further afield, then I have found 'head charts' very helpful (I can't access Wikimedia Commons because of a bug, but you might find more charts there). Of course, you'll only really make progress in pronunciation by getting some feedback, so you might want to join an online language-learning community and ask people to comment on your pronunciation of various words/phrases in their language. The reasons that they give for your errors may not be helpful, but the yes/no feedback will be. Matt's talk 09:37, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

See Help:IPA/Introduction and Help:IPA/English. Loraof (talk) 00:48, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Reading the article in the first link, I am beginning to think that IPA is intended to be written as a pronunciation guide for monolingual native English speakers. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:07, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

If IPA had been written for monolingual English speakers, surely the authors would not have chosen the the character "j" to represent the palatal approximant (<j>) sound, since that is a 'false friend' for English readers? Moving from speculation to fact, our article on its history hints that the most important target audience was French learners of English. Matt's talk 09:37, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

That figures. The IPA also uses the character "p" to represent the b in Hanyupinyin. In Standard Mandarin, b and p are distinct sounds, and b sounds nowhere like a p. This representation, I believe, is too misleading. On the other hand, I am aware that some non-native Mandarin learners really do have a hard time distinguishing the b and p in Mandarin. Perhaps, the IPA authors are one of them. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:24, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

A visual compare method is very helpful. Шурбур (talk) 07:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)