Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 August 26

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August 26

major (officer) in French

Watching Into the Night, a Belgian-made Netflix show in which most of the dialogue is in French, I am puzzled that Sylvie pronounces Major Gallo's title approximately as méjor or mégeur, as if he were an Anglophone (he is Italian). Any ideas why she does that? Wiktionary gives for French a pronunciation that one would expect from the spelling. —Tamfang (talk) 00:47, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Because they are trying to honor his title in his native language. If you met the school headmaster in Madrid where your son was attending the British Institute school, wouldn't you try to address him as "Seenyohr Rodriguez"? And maybe he would respond to you in English as "Meestair Tamfang". That's why. Mathglot (talk) 01:11, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

But Gallo's title in his native language is maggiore, Italian pronunciation /maˈdʒːo.re/. A French speaker may have a problem with the gemination, but other than that they should have no problem producing this.  --Lambiam 09:37, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

It's hard to say, though. If the show is set in Belgium, the peculiarities of how a native Walloon speaking one of the dialects of Belgian French would choose to render an Italian word are perhaps quite different than someone in Paris might do it. These sorts of things are not necessarily predictable from first principles. Maybe it's not accurate, or maybe it's exactly the kind of tiny detail that makes it very accurate to the particulars of the character, but unless and until we have someone who is actually natively speaking the language in use by the character, like in real life, and saying the Italian word as they would say it in their own way, we really don't know. --Jayron32 10:55, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

I have fluent French and live in Brussels...no one of the native walloon speakers here (or myself) would pronounce it like mentioned above, rather more like Majoor (with a long o). Also, as French is a romance language, there would be no great difficulty to pronounce it in the "proper" (Italian) way . And I would probably say Commandant' anyway, sticking to the rank :). Also, it might be a tad more complicated, as can be seen here: Major (France). Lectonar (talk) 11:15, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for that explanation. That's why I asked! --Jayron32 12:18, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

See also Walloon language § Phonetics and phonology.  --Lambiam 11:15, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Other than characters whose native language is not (any variety of) French, I have noticed no other deviation from Standard pronunciation. —Tamfang (talk) 01:42, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

I might try to address an Italian as “Seenyohr”, but not a Castilian. —Tamfang (talk) 01:43, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Major Gallo is attached to NATO, so perhaps Sylvie uses an English vowel to subtly needle him for working for the Yanks? —Tamfang (talk) 01:48, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Or it might just be that tv-series aren't necessarily perfect :). Lectonar (talk) 11:19, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Question marks as emojis

In my world, question marks belong with questions. We understand that a sentence does not necessarily have to have the form of a question to be a question. "We'll be at your place tomorrow" - You're coming by train?. The bolded sentence has the form of a statement but its intonation when spoken tells us it's a question, so a question mark is required. So far, so good.

But it seems to me question marks are proliferating in the online space. All manner of sentences that are not meant to be read as questions are being ended with qms. Sentences expressing lack of information or doubt seem to be the main culprits:

• I don't know if there are any spleen specialists in this area?
• You may be right? I'm going to do some more research, though.

But I've seen them with such non-questions as "Hi there?" and others.

Are question marks effectively becoming emojis, which come with a licence to use them anywhere the writer feels like? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:23, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't interpret "Hi there?" as incorrect usage, but rather as an implicit query à la "I know you might just think I'm a big jerk, but this might be a good time to test the waters..." 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:52, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

[Edit Conflict] The first of your examples is surely an implied question (for which there's probably a hifalutin' term) and would probably be marked by an end-sentence uplift, like your ". . . train?" example.

The second implies uncertainty, so while not strictly a question is arguably adjacent to one, and would likely be spoken with different rhythm and intonation to a statement, a clue missing in print, so using a question mark helps to confirm the uncertainty.

"Hi there?" is again an implied question, as to whether the addressee is willing to be addressed by the locutor, and again would likely be spoken in a questioning tone – straightforward "Hi there!" is often written with an exclamation mark as I have just done. I don't think any of these uses qualifies as an emoji as I understand the term, since they deal with the meaning of the sentences rather than the writer's emotional responses to those meanings. No doubt an actual linguist will soon provide a scholarly appraisal. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.90.29 (talk) 23:54, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

You're at least 20 years late to the topic party? As far as I was willing to browse on Scholar was all stuff later than when I had last checked, at which point the literature was already pretty dense on this topic. But Necessary smilies & useless periods (2011) seems to be asking something similar to what you're after. Looking for studies on question marks alone is dull, but there's plenty of surveys of mass text and chat data, like Text messaging and IM (2007) or The impact of texting/SMS language on academic writing of students - What do we need to panic about? (2013). It gets even more fun if you look at other languages. To get at your question, this usage far predates emojis and smartphones as we know them today (although text emojis are extremely old). If you're worried now and you weren't twenty years ago, maybe the problem didn't get worse but you just got old? SamuelRiv (talk) 06:27, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia article is High rising terminal, though "Uptalk" is probably the more commonly used term... AnonMoos (talk) 01:03, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

The "Hi there?" example is new to me; I wonder if it's a sort of back-formation-type process? In messaging, it's not unusual to start conversations with a question to see if the respondent is available to text, you know? "You up?", "You there?", etc. Maybe simple hellos are absorbing the question mark by osmosis? Matt Deres (talk) 02:21, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Maybe everybody is becoming more tentative and developing a rational respect for fallibility? I choose to believe that's what this is?  Card Zero  (talk) 03:14, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Card_Zero -- In the 1990s, I knew a linguist who studied "uptalk", and she was most insistent that up-talkers were not actually asking questions. On the other hand, it might convey tentativeness and/or wanting to draw the listener into the conversation (where a falling intonation might convey self-confident assertion). AnonMoos (talk) 22:48, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if it's a manifestation of people associating the question mark with the raised pitch at the end of a question, rather than the fact of it's being a grammatical question. In that case, the mark could be used subsequently by those who have internalized that association for any statement or phrase that ends with rising pitch, regardless of grammatical function. I can think of some regional accents that could have that kind of mark at the end of almost every sentence. "My friend, George? He just arrived at the station? I need to go pick him up?" Mathglot (talk) 07:31, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

I think that habit has evolved from display questions, requiring the listener to confirm understanding. Some people will say "you know?" or "you get me?" or "you feel me?" or "narmean?" regularly throughout their speech. This turns into simply a way to maintain the listener's attention, without expecting any verbal response.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:17, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

See high rising terminal or "rising intonation". The Australian soap opera Neighbours has often been blamed for infecting British youth with this curious habit after arriving here in 1986, leading it to be named the "Australian Question Intonation". However, this BBC article, The unstoppable march of the upward inflection?, points the finger at California in the 1970s. Alansplodge (talk) 10:45, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Alansplodge: already linked above... AnonMoos (talk)

Ah yes, apologies. Alansplodge (talk) 10:27, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

As a Northern Californian, I associate the trend with Southern California, starting in the San Fernando Valley. It first came to mainstream attention as a result of Frank Zappa's 1982 hit novelty song "Valley Girl", which featured brilliant vocals by his 14 year old daughter Moon Unit Zappa. It is hilarious. Cullen328 (talk) 21:41, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

I suspect it received the most media coverage in the 1990s; that's when linguists started to seriously give it their attention. AnonMoos (talk) 22:50, 27 August 2022 (UTC)