Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 July 14

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July 14

Pronunciation legend

At the beginning of every printed dictionary is a legend explaining how to read the pronunciation given after every entry. I looked up "fenice" the Italian word for phoenix (as in La Fenice Opera House in Venice) and there was a character use in the pronunciation which looks like a German sharf s. Is this pronounced like double ss in English? I could find no pronunciation legend icon on the page, nor anything anywhere in your web site. Maybe I'm just not seeing it. There should be a link the such a legend on every definition page. So is it pronounced feneess, feneech, fenees-seh, or feneech-eh? Is there a possibility of an audio version, hearing a voice pronounce the word?Lynn Antinelli (talk) 17:27, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

• When you edit a question here, above the edit box will be a line that includes "special characters". Click on that. You will see Latin by default, either that or the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) should have the symbol you are looking for. We can then comment further. Also, can you name the dictionary so we can look it up in google books? μηδείς (talk) 17:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Forvo has audio recordings at http://www.forvo.com/search/fenice/.

—Wavelength (talk) 18:10, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Fenice - /feˈnitʃe/ is pronounced feh-nee-ch-eh. Italian phonology is pretty simple. That strange symbol is voiceless palato-alveolar affricate.--151.41.155.108 (talk) 18:27, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

The phonology is pretty simple, but one of the things you can't always guess is the location of the stressed syllable. (Italian doesn't really have a notion of "secondary stress" — usually there's one and only one stressed syllable per word.)

In this case, it's not a word I knew, and I would have guessed the stress was on the first syllable. But a quick search confirms your version. --Trovatore (talk) 03:30, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Five of Verdi's operas, including La traviata and Rigoletto, were premiered at La Fenice. But not Il trovatore, so you're off the hook about not knowing the word. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:03, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

My handle is the one I started using years ago on the Free Internet Chess Server. It really just means that I'm an Italophile and like to sing. Nothing much to do with that particular opera, which I really should get around to hearing one of these days. --Trovatore (talk) 11:19, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

At the very least, you should listen to Anvil Chorus. If you've heard it before, it should ring a bell. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:20, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

WTF!!! You've never even heard your own namesake?!! I have seriously overestimated you all these years.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:31, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Have you ever been to Oz in person? - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 08:22, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Only lived my whole life there ... -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:49, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Not yet, I hope. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:18, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

I suspect the OP - who refers to "your website" - is referring to a wiki site. As the Wikipedia article on La Fenice has a link to the appropriate Help:IPA for Italian, I'd surmise the reference is to Wiktionary where the entry for fenice gave the IPA pronunciation but without a link to the appropriate "Key" page in Wiktionary, I've now added this to the Wiktionary page (hopefully correctly). Valiantis (talk) 21:22, 19 July 2014 (UTC)