Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 November 17

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November 17

Japanese polite negatives

Hi there, are じゃないです and じゃなかったです interchangeable with じゃありません and じゃありませんでした respectively? I have Googled it but I seem to be finding contradictory answers. 86.185.75.151 (talk) 00:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, in reality. But, strictly speaking, probably no in grammar. じゃないです and じゃなかったです are not good Japanese, young people use them though. It would be better and correct to say じゃないんです, じゃないのです, じゃなかったんです, and じゃなかったのです. And you must remember じゃ is colloquial, using informal or casual occasion. TV announcers do not use じゃ when they read news. Use では instead. ではありません and ではありませんでした would be the standard for polite negatives. Out of curiosity, I'd like to know the contradictory answers you found. Please let me know. Oda Mari (talk) 06:11, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Oda Mari, thanks for your reply. I did not keep any record of the places that I looked, but basically several of them were forums where one person said something like "yeah, you can use them interchangeably", and then another person said something like "the version with ありません is more formal", and then someone else said "no, じゃないです is bad Japanese" ... that kind of thing .... 86.173.171.171 (talk) 12:22, 17 November 2010 (UTC).

Question for polyglots, what does it mean to be able to understand a language but not "know it"?

I read a chatroom dialogue between two native Tamil speakers who were discussing languages they knew. One said "I don't know Malayalam, but I can understand it". Another said "I don't really know Malayalam either but I can understand it and can usually get by in a conversation!". To me, with one native language and bits of a couple of learned languages I just can't comprehend what someone means when they say they don't know a language but can understand it or get by in a conversation, I would class this as "knowing a little" of the language. It seems that polyglots, particularly those who have learned several languages from birth have a different conceptualisation of what it means to know a language. Is this right? Or perhaps their standards are so high that they wouldn't class a beginner's level as really knowing anything of a language?

I am particularly interested in hearing from any polyglots who would use and understand these expressions when describing their ability in a language. -- Q Chris (talk) 11:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Based on a smidgen of experience, I would say it means that another language is similar enough to one's own native language that it's comprehensible. For example, people who speak one Romance language fluently are often able to figure out what is being said in another Romance language, although they may not be able to reproduce it. Another example I'm reminded of is someone I once worked with who was from Bulgaria. Bulgarian is a Slavic language, and close enough to Russian that my co-worker could understand Russian, though could not speak it fluently. On the other hand, knowing German would probably not help much in comprehending Japanese, or vice versa. Make sense? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes that sounds possible. I have no idea of how similar Tamil and Malayalam are. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:22, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

What Baseball Bugs said. Languages from the same family are often comprehensible if you have a good grasp on at least one. Tamil and Malayalam are very closely related. Lexicografía (talk) 13:38, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Another issue is losing fluency. After 8 years of schooling in French, I was fairly fluent in it. However, I have had zero occasion to use it since then, so today I can read and understand French fairly well. If someone speaks slowly and clearly, I can work out the gist of what they are saying. But I have lost most of my ability to converse in French. I know enough French to be able to make a decent direct translation of English to French, but not idiomatically, though I do much better in the reverse (I can usually make a good idiomatic translation of French to English). Conversationally, however, I am pretty worthless. --Jayron32 15:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

What Jayron's describing is language attrition, which is most common among heritage speakers (people who spent their first few years of life learning a language that was not the majority language where they are living, and later switched over—for example, many immigrants in the US). The situation Bugs is describing above is more like that of mutual (or asymmetric) intelligibility, although that particular term is more often used to describe cases where two languages' intelligibility is inherent, whereas the situation described above is based more on an individual speaker's experience. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I speak and know American English. I understand British English, but I don't know it. When in the UK, I know to refer to the "tube" instead of the "subway", the "lift" instead of the "elevator", and so on, so I can speak a little British English (though I don't try to affect a British accent). I can certainly get by in a conversation. Now, Malayalam is probably a little more distinct from Tamil than, say, Estuary English is from General American, but only a little. Maybe the relationship between the two languages is roughly comparable to that between General American and a northern English regional dialect such as Geordie. Marco polo (talk) 18:47, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

it means you can decipher the language as spoken to you or in its written form but you are not fluent or literate and could not speak it nor write. for example, i am sure you could figure out that "americano" means american in Spanish or that Déficit means deficit, or maybe you're clever enough to figure out a more complex cognate such as pingüino, now assuming you don't speak spanish, i bet you could figure out that people where talking about an American Penguin Deficit, can you tell me how to say Canadian Kelp Attack? Probably not, would you know that what I was talking about if I said Ataque de algas canadienses (maybe you'd think it means attack of the canadian algae?) you'd be right, see how you can understand it but not know it?Hemanetwork (talk) 21:07, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I think you are touching on 2 separate issues. I'm fluent in 2 languages (Croatian and English) with Croatian being mutually intelligibility to different extent with many Slavic languages. I have also dabbled in Spanish and I posses most basic grasp of it. Firstly, I find that since attaining fluency in second language, I have stopped associating objects and concepts with corresponding word in my first language. Tree used to be just "drvo" but now it's neither a "tree" nor is it a "drvo", it's a separate concept of a plant that exists and fulfills certain conditions to be that. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I believe attaining fluency in another language is valuable exercise in flexibility of mind, if you will, regardless of if you find that language immediately useful. I think this touches on your "conceptualisation of language" part.

Secondly, what Tamil speakers are referring to is degree of mutual intelligibility. Croatian is related to most Slavic languages, ranging from virtually full mutual intelligibility with Serbian to picking out few common words every few sentence with Russian. I don't think that's related to change of language processing in the brain, I would compare listening to related but substantially different Slavic language to listening to somebody with very broken English skills. You might not get some words, but you pick out the meaning based on way they employ the words you pick up. And then you encounter ways of expressing things which they employ in their language, but your language doesn't ( just as example person with broken English might chose to string the words in unusual order or something like that).

I implore you to pursue attainment of fair fluency in another language because once you get past the awkward "this is just plain silly" phase and you delve into the language proper, you don't only discover ways to say this or that, but different ways to think and take a look at things and a different culture that helps you reflect on your own language, thinking pattern and culture. Melmann^(talk) 16:42, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I know speakers of Tamil from south India who say they don't understand spoken Tamil from Sri Lanka.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:34, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

International Phonetic Alphabet

I see the International Phonetic Alphabet spellings of many articles in the first paragraph. Yet I have yet to encounter anyone who was taught this at school. Do any of you know it and when did you learn it? Are there any american primary schools that teach this as part of the program? TheFutureAwaits (talk) 13:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The IPA was not really devised to be used in primary schools, but decades ago some schools used the Initial Teaching Alphabet... AnonMoos (talk) 13:39, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The ITA had very different goals, and only covers the phonological elements found in English. The IPA, on the other hand, can represent sounds that don't have a distinct meaning in English. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I was aware of that. A version of the IPA which (counterfactually) had as its main purpose being taught in English-language primary schools would probably somewhat resemble the ITA... AnonMoos (talk) 14:48, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I can read most of the usual English IPA, and some of the extra symbols found in German (for example). I was never taught it, but my English-German dictionary used it, with a key in the front, so I picked a lot up in secondary school to help with new German vocab, as well as from being interested and finding most of it pretty intuitive. I've improved over the years since I've been using and writing Wikipedia, and because I am interested in linguistics which really requires passing knowledge of IPA to understand some of the interesting phenomena described. But then, I never did anything about dinosaurs at school either, and yet I can still identify a handful of species, like most people. 86.163.213.68 (talk) 14:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I took a linguistics course in college, and the IPA was used in that. I knew it during that class, but in the 12 or so intervening years have lost most use of it. --Jayron32 14:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

IPA was not taught in the U.S. public (state) primary and secondary schools I attended. While I took some linguistics as an undergrad (a quarter of a century ago), I was already somewhat familiar with IPA, because I encountered it in dictionaries when studying German in high school (and French on my own while in high school). That said, I still don't recognize every single IPA symbol, but they are easy enough to look up. Marco polo (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Like everyone else, I didn't learn it in grade school, though I picked it up later, in linguistics classes and elsewhere. If the OP's (or anyone's) next question is "in that case, most people won't know it, so why do we use it in Wikipedia?", then I think the answer is that it's both the most standard system and (tied for) the most complete.—msh210℠ 16:53, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

(If that is the next question, there are plenty of past conversations about this we can link them to. "IPA is gibberish, let's stop using it" is a perennial proposal. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:22, 17 November 2010 (UTC))

Let's think about the original question, instead of second guessing the OP. It's an interesting one. AFAIK, the IPA is never taught to children in Britain either – though I'd happily be proven wrong about that. Lfh (talk) 17:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) Except that there is no mention of IPA on that page. The past conversations can be found at WT:IPA.—Emil J. 17:38, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

When I was in school (in Canada), we were taught French starting in grade 9. (I don't think it was widely known then that languages are more easily learned at a younger age). My parents gave me a French-English dictionary that used IPA for both languages -- for many years afterwards, this was the only place I ever saw it used for English. But I think at least some of my French textbooks during high school used it for French, but I no longer have them, so I can't be sure. I don't believe we were ever taught it, though; if it was in the textbooks then it was left as something we could pick up on our own if we liked. --Anonymous, 16:09 UTC, November 17, 2010.

off-topic beating of a dead horse. See previous iterations of this same argument. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:25, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Statistically speaking, nobody uses IPA or can read it, despite the protests of various PhDs in linguistics. (This is why IPA should be deprecated here on Wikipedia.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:30, 17 November 2010 (UTC) By the same faulty "statistic" reasoning, nobody reads or edits Wikipedia, despite the protests of various people who actually do. (Which is why Wikipedia should be deprecated) /Coffeeshivers (talk) 19:08, 17 November 2010 (UTC) I wonder if Comet Tuttle has that comment stored as a template somewhere that they subst in every time they see the IPA discussed somewhere. The same could be said of the smaller languages - "statistically speaking, nobody uses Lower Sorbian or can read it, so we should delete the Lower Sorbian Wikipedia". Or of musical notation - "statistically speaking", nobody uses that or can read it either, so we shouldn't use it. It doesn't matter how many times you make this claim (whose veracity is incidentally highly suspect), Comet Tuttle, the argument doesn't hold water, because what it boils down to is this: however much you dislike the IPA, there is nothing that could be used in its place. —Angr (talk) 20:03, 17 November 2010 (UTC) I did not advocate by my comment that nobody should use IPA, and I did not state that it was literally useless in all possible applications. What I definitely advocate is that the English language Wikipedia not use IPA as the standard way to denote pronunciation of words, because it is gibberish to, statistically speaking, all readers; whereas a dictionary-style sound-alike system, which everyone who has learned to use an English-language dictionary in grammar school (echoing the original poster's question) is familiar with, would, by contrast, not be gibberish, and would actually be used. Yes, IPA produces a higher-fidelity, more accurate result; but it is unusable by the general public, and is therefore useless for the purpose of letting the layman know how to pronounce a word. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC) Comet Tuttle, you seem to have an extremely odd notion of what statistics are all about, if you think that the millions of people (or however many there are) who know and use IPA can be reduced to "nobody" (above), and those who think it's gibberish can be expanded to "all readers". It's one thing to make a gross overgeneralisation (which is what I think you're on about) - but it's quite another to lend it some false authority by describing it as "statistically speaking". Your assertions have nothing to do with statistics. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC) But any given 'sound-alike system' is also not taught in schools, is frequently ambiguous or misleading, and still looks like gibberish to a fair percentage of people. At least if IPA looks like gibberish to you, you know you can't read it properly without looking up the key: sound-alike systems encourage you to think you do know how to read them properly, and then unexpectedly leave you saying it wrong because it wasn't written to match your personal accent and assumptions. When I was 11 and met IPA unexpectedly in my dictionary, I looked up the key in the front and worked it out: this is the same as what I did when I met the weird 'sound-alike system' in my primay school dictionary, and more reliable. When I meet IPA I don't know here, I follow the link that is right there in the symbols and look it up. Practically every week on this desk, we get a question or answer that descends into confusion because someone tries a sound-alike approach, and nobody interprets it the same way. Even just rhotic and non-rhotic accents cause trouble with this in unexpected ways. 86.163.213.68 (talk) 21:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC) Fine, fine, Jack, I'll restate: "The number of people who can read or otherwise use IPA is trivial compared to the number who can read or use dictionary-style sound-alike pronunciation guides, as used by all major English-language dictionaries." 86, as I said, I dispute your claim that dictionary-style pronunciation guides are not taught in schools; and I acknowledge that IPA is more accurate; but since IPA is only understood by a trival number of people, I consider it worse than useless, as in most articles it displaces a pronunciation guide that would actually be used. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:46, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I also learned it at university. I find it extremely helpful (now I can learn to pronounce Jamaican patois!), but oh well. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem with teaching and learning IPA is that you need some understanding of phonetics to make sense of it: you couldn't really teach it without. (The problem with a specific-language based system is that it can only really convey the sounds of that language - and two readers with different accents may understand the same symbols differently). --ColinFine (talk) 08:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

If nothing else, IPA on Wikipedia is great for those (few) people who want to really know how to pronounce "Seattle", as in Chief Seattle, and are willing to take the time to figure out, even approximately, how to say ˈsiʔaːtɬʼ. Or the earlier name for Stanley Park, X̱wáýx̱way (?!) Pfly (talk) 09:27, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I was taught the subset of IPA symbols used for English when I was in primary school in China. In the Eastern coastal area in China at least, a student who takes a European language in secondary school (almost universally English, but there are exceptions) would learn the relevant IPA symbols in either upper primary or lower secondary school, and in any case would know these by the time they enter university. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Saint Anne, Alderney

In the article it says "Though there is an associated eeriness with the war time fortifications, they have established their own importance by creating a close knit community who live in peace and enjoy their life now.[6]" Does this refer to a community of people - in which case who? Or is it flowery poetic imagery, referring to the German fortifications as a community? 92.28.249.235 (talk) 22:05, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

French

how did it become so the 3rd person plural -ent is silent? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 22:17, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

There were huge changes that happened to the pronunciation of French on its journey from Latin - for example 'huit' /ɥit/ from 'octō' or 'chanterai' /ʃãtəʁɛ/ from 'cantare habeo' - which happened gradually and as a combination of general processes and some specific accidental changes. Some of these changes happened before French spelling became fixed, others after (such as the loss of most final consonants). The only odd thing phonetically about '-ent' is that it has lost nasalisation on the vowel as well as the final consonant (note that in careful French, there is still a final vowel, /ə/). However its frequency in the language, the fact that an entire syllable seems to have been lost, and the fact that its loss neutralises the distinction between 'il marche' and 'ils marchent', all contribute to making it a very noticeable oddity to learners. But in reality it is scarcely more noteworthy than many other changes in French pronunciation. --ColinFine (talk) 08:47, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Note, however, that the -ent returns during liaison, with the nasalization of the vowel. Liaison is one of the oddities of French that points to its history described above. --Jayron32 16:34, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

"with the nasalisation of the vowel" is incorrect, I think. Only the t sound is pronounced in the liaison. That's what our article says, anyway, and what I was taught. Our article talks about "parlent-ils"; I can't think of many actual examples when people would make the liaison, but maybe I'm thinking about rather sloppy colloquial pronunciation rather than the most formal speech. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:49, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

— "in careful French, there is still a final vowel, /ə/"? I disagree, in this particular case, it is not a matter of carefulness, it depends on where the speaker is from. In the Northern part of France the "ent" is silent, whereas in the Southern part it may be pronounced /ə/. Actually, il chante and ils chantent are pronounced the same way by one speaker: with a silent "e" and "ent" in the Northern part and with a /ə/ sound for both in the Southern part. Note that the "ent" is always silent, for example, at the imperfect tense (imparfait): ils chantaient. Nonetheless, you can hear "-ent" pronounced /ã/ at the indicative present tense by (elder) country people in the West of France. — AldoSyrt (talk) 21:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)