Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 September 18

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September 18

I lost my grandmother's dictionary

Before I ever learned pronunciation in school, I learned pronunciation from a Winston Dictionary from the 1940s.

There was no schwa. The letters A, E, O and U each had one or two sounds differentiated by symbols on top that were simply called schwa when I first learned pronunciation in school.

There were also two different versions of o in dog. One was used in the words cord and law. That much I remember. So why is that not the o in dog? Both sounds had a pointy hat on top but one o (in dog) was italicized, and in my textbooks, the one sound had a dot.

Since my father moved out of the house I live in ten years ago, I haven't been able to find the dictionary. He might have taken it with him. When the house he lived in was being cleaned out after his death nine years ago, I didn't see it.

Does anyone know where I might find pronunciations that specific? Wikipedia seems to used the more simplified sounds I learned in school.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:11, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciations all depend on what accent you use. In my accent (Received Pronunciation) the o's in "cord" and "dog" are very similar, but not quite the same. I think the o is "dog" is more rounded. Wikipedia uses IPA, which is very specific, although the very precise notation isn't always used - see Phonetic transcription#Narrow versus broad transcription. --Tango (talk) 20:41, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The o in RP can be pronounced in many different ways: oh (long), cot (short clipped), off (o as in awe, similar to orf)... -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

There may be other sources that have the amount of detail the Winston Dictionary did. I'll ask my father's wife next time I see her, though I don't visit her often. I haven't found anything on Wikipedia, but it might be worthwhile to add the specifics if I can find them.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:21, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The first OED made more distinctions than perhaps any dialect makes; that is, it distinguished two sounds if any dialect (from some list) distinguishes them, even if no dialect makes all possible distinctions. Thus for any given dialect there appears to be some redundancy of symbols. The second (current) OED chucked that admirable system to adopt an IPA representation of RP. —Tamfang (talk) 02:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

a manor in Central Park

Hello, I am making a painting of a manor in Central Park and I would like to write on it the following text: " in the heart of Central Park a manor is for rent for XXX a day or weekly". Would you please tell me if this text is correct in english language? I must say I am french. The sense of the text that I would like to write is that in the park is a manor that would be rented for a certain price for a day or for a week. Thank you. Francis Martin

"In the heart of Central Park is a manor which can be rented for XXX a day" would be the most natural way of putting it. Tevildo (talk) 21:54, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

To add the "weekly" part, I'd say, "In the heart of Central Park is a manor which can be rented for $20.00 per day, or $100.00 weekly." The text would change a little if the intent is that the person writing that text is the owner or an advertiser of the place. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:10, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Francis Martin

¶ I'd prefer to keep the parallelism (and if possible avoid repeating "for"), so I'd write something like "...for rent at XXX per day or YYY per week" or "at XXX a day or YYY a week". Or else I'd recast it slightly (if you don't know the weekly rent) to "...rented weekly or for XXX a day." Think about how you'd compose it in French, whose style is usually not that different from English style.

Some very minor points: Many people would either put a comma (virgule) after "Park" to read "In the heart of Central Park, a manor is for rent" or change the word order (and perhaps your preferred emphasis) to "A manor in the heart of Central Park is being rented out by the week or for XXX a day." These are all suggestions and hints; there are no purely grammatical errors in your original wording, just questions of style: how smoothly and easily an English-speaker could read it. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:31, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Not sher

Is Sherpa a title or a name (e.g. Apa Sherpa, Babu Chiri Sherpa)? Clarityfiend (talk) 22:58, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it can be either. For the people you identify, it seems to be their name. For others, it's a "title" of sorts, but it really just refers to their ethnicity, in the same sense as "the Gurkha <name>" or "the Spaniard Pablo Picasso". It's also synonymous for "guide" when referring to a guide who happens to be of Sherpa origin. When I was a kid, I was taught that the person who accompanied Hillary to Everest was "Sherpa Tensing", i.e. I thought his given name was Sherpa and his surname was Tensing. I now know that Tenzing was his given name, his surname was Norgay, and "Sherpa" was a patronistic title. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:16, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The article says "Sherpa" comes from two words meaning "east people", and has come to stand for the mountain guides. It definitely suggests a title held in high esteem. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 00:14, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm interested only in the instances where it's attached to somebody's name. My suspicion is that it's a title bestowed on outstanding mountaineers (here Norgay is referred to as Tenzing Norgay Sherpa), but I can't find anything to back that up. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:33, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

It was originally a term for an ethnic group who were good at climbing mountains and subsisting at high elevations, and has evolved into a title of honor. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 11:26, 19 September 2009 (UTC)