Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 August 10

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August 10

Rail fail

Overheard on the railway station this morning:

The 10:58 service to London Liverpool Street has been cancelled . This is due to tress-passers on the railway ["pass" rhyming with "farce" but without the "r" sound].

Is this something new or does the announcer simply not know what the word "trespassers" means? The service on this line is not good. When I used it two weeks ago there were no trains at all because of "a problem with the overhead wires". Last week it was "a failed train up ahead", leading the driver to remark "If you know of an alternative method of travel I would advise you to use it." 95.149.37.51 (talk) 10:29, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

That sounds fine to me. But I'm not from London. What is your concern? The pronunciation? Or simply the use of the word trespassers? HiLo48 (talk) 10:34, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

See Trap-bath split. Some dialects of English pronounce the "a" in "pass" with a broad "a" as in "father", rather than the short "a" of "ant". --Jayron32 10:40, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

I know about this. The south generally uses broad "a" in some words, the north not at all. I'm in the south and I never heard the broad "a" in "trespass" before. I've never heard the word pronounced other than with the stress on the first syllable. 95.149.37.51 (talk) 10:47, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't know what to say about that except that there are 400 million native English language speakers on Earth, and your singular, personal prior experience is unlikely to have encountered all of them. "I've never experienced it before" is not a synonym for "It doesn't exist". --Jayron32 11:06, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, I'm from a long way south, Australia, and I'd say that maybe your announcer was an Aussie. We all say it that way. HiLo48 (talk) 10:52, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Believe me, I can tell an Australian accent when I hear one. 95.149.37.51 (talk) 10:55, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

British English: I've never heard it pronounced otherwise than /ˈtrɛspəs/, /ˈtrɛspəsər/ Bazza (talk) 11:08, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with IPA, but the "Oxford English Dictionary" doesn't record it as being stressed other than on the first syllable, and it marks the "a" as short. 95.149.37.51 (talk) 11:14, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

(That's Wikipedia's friendly IPA — hover over the symbols for an approximation.) Bazza (talk) 11:18, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

I would expect to hear a Brit pronounce "pass" as "pahss" as the OP says (as in the Black Knight, "none shall "pahss") but I would expect "trespass" to be pronounced as "tressp'ss", as if the "a" weren't there. It's also said kind of that way in parts of America, as in "forgive us our tressp'sses". But for "trespasser" we would need to rely on how a native Brit such as Bazza says it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:21, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Also [1] [2] Bazza (talk) 11:27, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Could we be sure that the message was actually spoken by a human? Couldn't it simply be computer generated? Computer generated speech is getting so close to human speech that some people could be fooled by it. Doroletho (talk) 12:49, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

It may be a recorded message, but it's not an automated message because there are none of the artificial pauses which occur when train operating company names, destinations and times are included. 95.149.37.51 (talk) 16:50, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

"Tress-passers" is the usual pronunciation for us Londoners I'm afraid - like this bloke. Like it or lump it. Alansplodge (talk) 14:32, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

He doesn't sound like a Londoner, and that single (and slightly bizarre) Youtube video can't really be used to confirm "usual". (Amusingly, the voice reading the text in the video says /ˈtrɛspəsəs/. I still go with [3]. Bazza (talk) 15:09, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Point taken that he doesn't really sound like a Londoner, but it's somewhere south of the Watford Gap - it was the only video I could find in a quick search. However, "tress-passers" is how I and most people I know say it. Documentary proof is proving troublesome. I'm not saying that it's the correct pronunciation, just a common one in London and thereabouts. Alansplodge (talk) 21:15, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I once got lost in London and was approached by a landowner who told me I was "'trespassing". He didn't say I was "tress'passing". On one occasion I was walking past the back of Buckingham Palace. I came to a long, empty street with entrance doors which were wide open. Lucky I didn't walk down - it was during the bombings and it's the Royal Mews (the place where the Queen keeps her horses). Down the side of the Palace there is (or was) a door anyone could walk through. It's the tradesmen's entrance leading to a police office where deliveries are made. I was there one summer evening for some (lawful) purpose when some drinks which had been ordered were brought in. The officer commented "Her Royal Highness will be very pleased to receive these". 109.180.237.130 (talk) 09:52, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

"...approached by a landowner who told me I was "'trespassing". He didn't say I was "tress'passing". " Huh? What's the difference? HiLo48 (talk) 10:00, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

... just the stress. (Not passing tresses.) Dbfirs 10:27, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

And I have no idea what you're talking about. You see, I would pronounce both those words the same way. Not you? HiLo48 (talk) 10:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

All the forms of "trespass" I can think of stress the "tres" part. To say it as tres-PASS would sound rather odd, but maybe some dialects do that. Or maybe for some sort of emphasis. Like saying de-CADE instead of DE-cade, or al-SO instead of AL-so. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:11, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

How about equal emphasis on both syllables? HiLo48 (talk) 11:13, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Maybe somewhere. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:18, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

That's my impression of what happens in Australian English pronunciation. HiLo48 (talk) 11:28, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps someone has access to a Macquarie Dictionary to check whether this is common throughout Australia? Dbfirs 11:43, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

If it was a recording the seemingly odd pronunciation may be of mechanical origin. Bus stop (talk) 12:25, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

The first comment on the video says "tell them section 61 of the magnacarta the the right to bare arms..." Very useful in the hot weather. Reminds me of the gentleman proposing for motor insurance who entered his occupation as "Widow Cleaner". In Britain, decade and decade are equally acceptable. As I understand it, there are stress languages and tonal languages. In a stress language the primary stress will fall on a particular syllable, and Australian English is no different from any other variety of English. 109.180.237.130 (talk) 17:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree that the stress is often "wrongly" placed in "decade". According to the OED, stress on the second syllable is used only for the obsolete verb. The noun has traditionally always had stress on the first syllable. It's possible that the Third Edition (when they get round to updating the entry) might record the current fashion for shifting the stress. Dbfirs 07:17, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

A bit off-track, but speaking of occupations, Henny Youngman used to say that his brother-in-law listed his occupation as "diamond cutter". He mowed the lawn at Yankee Stadium. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:44, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

The term you're looking for describing how a language spaces out its stresses is called Isochrony. --Jayron32 18:00, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

The use of articles in establishing alphabetical order

For this question, I will just use hypothetical book titles, to make the examples easier. If the first word of a book title is an article (such as the word "the" or "a" or "an"), then that first word is ignored, and we move on to the next word, in order to alphabetize the title. My question: does this rule only apply when the article word is the first word in the title? Or does it apply to any occurrence of an article word? Just to make up an example: The Murder would get alphabetized before Poison (because the word "the" is ignored). What about when the article word is not the first word? For example: Singing in the Rain and Singing in Spain. Does the word "the" get ignored (or not) when alphabetizing these two titles? Are we alphabetizing Singing in the Rain or just Singing in Rain, when comparing the letters to Singing in Spain? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:38, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

There's no "rule": who would set it or enforce it? How you sort items depends on your own criteria. No doubt specific instances have their own policies on how to sort. For example, my own media server has a list of initial words to ignore when sorting audio titles: it's currently set to "The El La Los Las Le Les". I'm not sure about the value in ignoring such words when they are not the first in the title, but there's no proscription in adopting such a tactic. Referring to your example, I (personally) would expect "Singing in the Rain" to appear before "Singing in Spain", but that's not to say other people might like the reverse. Bazza (talk) 20:03, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. But, I am quite sure that there are "rules" out there somewhere, regardless of whether or not they are enforced. No? Why do we alphabetize "apple" before "banana"? I am sure there is some "rule" that says so. So, I was asking about a more nuanced application of those same "rules". Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:50, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

I was referring to your proposal that omitting leading articles (a, an, the, etc) from items when sorting counts as a "rule" which everyone is meant to follow. If it is, then who maintains it? Doroletho's comment about style guides below is pertinent. One might ask the same questions (and I would make the same comment about there being no specific rule) for sorting names such as O'Brien, McDonald, van der Waals, de Finetti, etc. Bazza (talk) 09:55, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

In English, the order in which we place letters of the alphabet (a before b) is a centuries old convention. For book titles and author's names, various institutions set rules for ordering. In the libraries where I have worked, the rules specified ignoring "a", "an", and "the" at the beginning of a title or name, but also how to order "O" and "O'" and "Mac" "Mc" and "M'". There used to be filing dividers that included a divider for "Mac/Mc", so that "McArthur" came before "Madden". Machine (computer) sorting of names has marginalized idiosyncrasies like that. - Donald Albury 22:09, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If you refer to the English Wikipedia when you say "we" then I have never heard of the idea that articles after the first non-ignored word should be ignored. Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort keys only mentions leading articles and says "transfer the leading article to the end of the key, as in {{DEFAULTSORT:Lady, The}}. Transferring to the end would make no sense for non-leading articles. But if words at the start are ignored then an article may "move to the lead" and then transfer to the end. See for example Category:Star Wars films where Star Wars: The Force Awakens is sorted as "Force Awakens, The", but it's not sorted as "Star Wars: Force Awakens, The" in any category. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:52, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Rules are defined in the respective manual of style of whatever organization you are writing for. Normally titles are ordered by author first.

You could also check what sorting algorithms are configured to do.

Normally they ignore the leading 'The', 'A' and so on, but not those inbetween.

The problem of not ignoring the leading 'The' is that you would get loads of titles (of books, movies, TV series, bands) lumped together under the 'A' and 'The'. Ignoring these solves this problem. Ignoring articles in the middle of titles doesn't offer any benefit (as far as I'm concerned). We don't ignore articles just for the sake of it.

Doroletho (talk) 21:36, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

We have an article Collation... AnonMoos (talk) 16:29, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Do most professional publication also ignore the leading "Of" when sorting? e.g. "Of Mice and Men".

Btw, I was looking at [List_of_books_by_title | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books/List_of_books_by_title], we need a bot to go through Wikipedia and we could grow this significantly. --Lgriot (talk) 13:40, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Very helpful. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:18, 16 August 2018 (UTC)