Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 17

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March 17

Sentence structure

Resolved

In the following sentence, are there any grammatical errors (especially around the conjunction with the "and" joining the parts about the Spanish and Beta Clubs)?

"I was also involved in the Beta Club, where I placed first in the organization’s state science competition and Spanish Club, where I won first place in the verbal Spanish competition at the Net Olé foreign language conference as a sophomore."

TIA, 67.54.238.135 (talk) 00:53, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

There needs to be a comma after "science competition", to end the appositive. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, if you mean for "as a sophomore" to be modifying the whole sentence ("I was involved...as a sophomore") rather than just the Spanish competition ("won first place...as a sophomore"), then you need to either add a comma after "conference", or move "as a sophomore" to the front of the sentence. The latter option will make the sentence read much more smoothly.

As a sophomore I was also involved in the Beta Club, where I placed first in the state science competition, and the Spanish club, where I won first place in the verbal Spanish competition at the Net Olé foreign language conference.

(Note that I also removed "the organization's", which was redundant.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:03, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! :) That solves the problem, and now my letter sounds much better! 12.213.80.54 (talk) 08:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Origin of a last name

Hello again. I have a little "fun" exercise that shows how to guess the patrilineal origin of people by looking at their last names. If one speaks the language, one can go even further and guess what the last name tells (the example on the sheet: Smith > your ancestors were probably smiths). There is one name on the list, "Loughran", that I have not been able to tell anything about, except that it is a Germanic name (-gh- is nonexistent in any Romance language but is common in English). Unfortunately I do not speak any Germanic languages (English excepted of course!), so I haven't progressed any past that. Can someone illuminate the etymology/language of origin or meaning? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 01:45, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Loughran doesnt look germanic at all, I also don't know that -gh- is common in Germanic, I don't think it even exists outside of English. If it is a European name at all I would say it is likely to be of Gaelic origin.·Maunus·ƛ· 01:51, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

"gh" does look like (English-)Germanic in a sense, because English has historically expressed the sounds ɣ and χ with it (where German would use "ch"): cf. knight - Knecht, thought - dachte. "gh" for ɣ is also found in older Scandinavian orthography (Old Danish sighia, sighæ og sægh(i)æ for Modern Danish sige, Old Swedish sighia, säghia for Modern Swedish säga) and still preserved in some surnames: Bergh instead of Berg. In this case, though, the <gh> is Celtic, as pointed out by DuncanHill below.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Loughran is an Irish name - an Anglicised form of the Gaelic "Ó Luachra" meaning "descendant of Luachra" "Luachra" is a personal name derived from luachair, meaning rushes/sedges. Hanks, Patrick; Hodges, Flavia (1988). A Dictionary of Surnames. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 333. ISBN 0192115928. DuncanHill (talk) 01:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Surname in Swahili

Is the surname Nkruma in Swahili? Or any African language? HOOTmag (talk) 05:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Nkrumah is a given name in the Akan language. It indicates a ninth child. --Cam (talk) 12:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. HOOTmag (talk) 18:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of can't

Hello, I'm not a native speaker of English. But I've heard in many Hollywood movies "can't" is pronounced as canch.

• Correct pronunciation: "Kant" you move like this?
• Pronunciation I heard: "Kanch" you move like this?

I can't understand it. Please help. --Novagalaxy (talk) 07:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Define "Correct pronunciation". In North America "Kant" may be the norm, but in the UK there is a soft "r" sound in the middle, "Karn't". - X201 (talk) 09:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Technically, there is no "r" sound in UK (more precisely, RP) "can't", it's just that it has the same vowel as in father. But since people in most of the UK drop the "r" in "cars", this means that the "a" in "can't" and "father" does sound the same as the "ar" in "cars" and "farther" (cahz, cahnt, fahther). However, the similarity is not that both have an "r" sound, it's that both lack it. Unless by "soft r" one means "absent r", of course.:) --91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I suspect what you're hearing is a sloppy contraction of the t and you sounds, to make a chew sound, so in total you hear can chew. A similar thing happens with picture, when it becomes pitcher. HiLo48 (talk) 07:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. In a similar example, "want to" becomes "wanna". StuRat (talk) 07:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Can you help me with following sentences:

• Sometimes ya gotta start over.
• Gotta start readin'!
• I gotta start blogging again.

What is "ya", and "gotta"? Why reading is shortened as readin'? Is there any article or reference where I can learn more about sloppy contraction? --Novagalaxy (talk) 08:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

"Ya" just means you and "gotta" means got to. This is just the way people, especially Americans, speak. --Viennese Waltz 08:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It's probably worth observing that "got to" is not logical either. It translates to "you have to" or "you must". HiLo48 (talk) 09:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

In many regional accents in the UK. "you" is pronounced "yer". "Got" is almost universally used in the context HiLo48 criticizes above. Alansplodge (talk) 09:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Not a criticism. An observation. Yes, it is a common usage, but not logical. For someone new to the language, who may be looking for logic, it's worth mentioning. HiLo48 (talk) 09:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a very common but admittedly odd quirk in spoken English. You can say "I have", but when you say "I have got" or "I've got", somehow it has a slightly different meaning, like maybe a sense of urgency or strength that a simple "I have" may not convey, and maybe because of the stronger sound of the "g" and the "t". Here's a simple example: A fly ball is hit into the outfield between two fielders. The one who thinks he has the best chance to catch it could say, "I have it", but he's likely to say "I've got it" or "I got it" or just "Got it". In Spanish, the outfielders might say, <<Yo la tengo>>, which means "I have it", but with the "g" and the "t" in there, it's more audible, as with "I got it". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the so-called logic of got to, language isn't logic. Words can lose their meaning, instead turning into constructions that have a role in the grammar. This process is called grammaticalisation. --Kjoonlee 00:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Article at Relaxed pronunciation. Deor (talk) 11:39, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

But Bugs, the examples above were about the specific use of "have (got) to" to express obligation, so your example is not really to the point.

And Novagalaxy, "Reading" is not shortened to "readin'" except in its spelling. There is nothing omitted, rather the sound /n/ is substituted for /ŋ/ (and for the participle, though not for the gerund, is more faithful to the origins of the form). --ColinFine (talk) 00:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I find it odd that plain old palatalization can be called sloppy. I always thought that it happens all the time, and that without it, people would sound stilted and unnatural. --Kjoonlee 00:38, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

That is something of an overstatement. But yes, both velar and dental/alveolar consonants get palatalised in many languages, sometimes as free variation, sometimes as regular allophonic variation, and sometimes as a regular phonemic substitution. --ColinFine (talk) 01:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As for which spellings you should use; avoid "wanna", "gotta", "ya", yer", "readin'", "cancha", etc., in writing, except when it's in quotes for a character and you are trying to convey a regional dialect. "Got" should also generally be avoided, except when trying to convey dialects. StuRat (talk) 01:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Not if you're speaking American English. Got is quite frequently used in standard American. Corvus cornix_talk 01:43, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's some fairly recent reference-desk blather with regard to got. Deor (talk) 01:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As an American, I would avoid putting "got" in writing, except for some rather informal communications. StuRat (talk) 07:59, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

What/which

I am currently learning Italian, and I was recently asked to translate some text from Italian to English, which included the folllowing question: "Qual'è il capoluogo della Sicilia?" I translated it as "What is the capital of Sicily?", even though "qual'è" means "which is", since putting "which" in the English sentence sounded stilted to me. However my Italian teacher, who is a native speaker of both English and Italian, said that "which" was the only word that fitted into the English sentence as well. Is our little disagreement because of the way she was taught grammar (she went to school in the 1960s/1970s in Australia), or is it just because her Italian is interfering with her English? BTW the Italian book that I'm using was published in the 1960s and sometimes recommends some rather archaic constructions.

The most comprehensive page I could find on this subject after a quick Google search was this one, which seemed to indicate that "what" would be the best word in the original question, but it'd be better to use which when there are only a few options, like "Which is the capital of Sicily, Palermo or Catania?" Any other ideas? How about when the subject is plural, like "What/which are the most important islands in Italy?" Graham87 08:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, "Which is the capital of Sicily?" on its own would certainly be wrong, it should be "what". For your second example I would say "which" is preferable. --Viennese Waltz 08:47, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Unless there was a choice such as Catania or Palermo, either stated or implied, the question "Which is the capital of Sicily?" sounds completely wrong and unidiomatic to my Australian ears. And I suspect to other ears of the anglophone persuasion. You don't say, but I sort of suspect your teacher was the daughter of Italian immigrants to Australia, and her choice of words in one of her languages is influenced by her knowledge of the other language, and sometimes comes out not quite right. Natives are not necessarily natives, when it comes to language. I had a techo come and check out my work computer the other day. I'd had various dealings with him on the phone previously, and I knew his surname, which I assumed was Italian. While he was fiddling with my computer, we got chatting. His accent was subtle but still noticeably Italian, and his choice of words was sometimes typical of a migrant. I asked him whether his name was Italian, which he confirmed. I asked whether he was born there, expecting to have that confirmed, but was very surprised to hear him say he's lived all his life in Australia. So, you never know with accents. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 08:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, her parents were both Italian immigrants to Australia ... in fact, IIRC she was born in Italy but arrived in Australia at a very young age. About 99% of the time her word usage in either Italian or English is spot on, but there are times where an utterance in either language doesn't come out quite right, as you say. Usually they're just minor problems with pronoun or preposition usage, but I find these little mistakes fascinating. Graham87 12:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Me too. Endlessly. Other friends of mine with immigrant parents sometimes come out with things like "How is it like?" or "It is not to you to do that", or they use an English word or phrase or sentence in the middle of a spiel in another language, or vice-versa. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Singer/finger split?

Despite being a native English speaker, and despite what the article on English phonology says, I have never heard any difference between singer and finger. In fact, I have never heard sing pronounced as anything but [sɪŋɡ]. Pronouncing a "raw" [ŋ] feels quite "foreign" to me - I perceive it to be an allophone of [n] before a velar.
Am I hard of hearing? Or have I not searched long enough? (It took quite a while to find mention of (what I thought was natural) pronunciation of tr and dr as [tʃr] and [dʒr].)
Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 10:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

You can hear the distinction on Wiktionary: singer vs finger. Lfh (talk) 11:19, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. It's very strange, I've never heard singer pronounced that way before. Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 11:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean "sing-ger" vs. "sing-er"? In some parts of the USA, they do indeed say "sing-ger", "hang-ger", and such as that. It may be more of a northeast thing, which they make fun of when they refer to Long Island as "Long Gisland". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ —Preceding undated comment added 12:08, 17 March 2011 (UTC).

In most UK accents, it's "sing-er" and "fing-ger" except for the Birmingham dialect - known as Brummie - where it's "sing-ger" and "fing-ger". Alansplodge (talk) 12:30, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It has to be a local variation that appears in different places. Americans normally pronounce the word "English" as "Ing-glish". I recall being a little startled when an American teaching an English class called it "Ing-lish". Never heard that before or since, but maybe that's another variant. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

What part of the world are you from? In the UK, "singer" with a pronounced "g", same as "finger", is typical of some northern dialects. Most people from London and the south pronounce "singer" and "finger" differently. 86.160.211.97 (talk) 12:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Little question, how does one fing? --Jayron32 12:36, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I have to say, as a native UK Brummie speaker, that I have only once heard anyone use this pronunciation that sounds to me like "sinner", and that was a few weeks ago on local TV. Everyone - including Scots, Welsh, Irish - I have heard says "sing-er". Or is it that I am so conditioned that I don't even hear a second g in that word? --TammyMoet (talk) 13:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

What do you meant by "sing-er"? Do you mean "siŋə(r)" (no hard "g") or "siŋgə(r)" (like "finger")? Are you saying that you only once heard "siŋə(r)", but yet you don't hear a second "g"? How does that work? The "standard" pronunciation in all the dictionaries I have just looked at -- both BrE and AmE -- is "siŋə(r)". 86.160.211.97 (talk) 14:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

May I quote from our Brummie article (section: Accent / Pronunciation)? "The letters ng often represent /ŋɡ/ where RP has just /ŋ/ (e.g. singer as [siŋɡə]). See Ng coalescence.". Alansplodge (talk) 14:53, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Which demonstrates to the OP that "a native English speaker" can mean many different things in England alone, apart from all the other places in the world where English is spoken natively. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there is wide variation in pronunciation even within a fairly small area. For example, Scouse (Liverpool, England) has sing-ger to rhyme with "fing-ger" whereas my local dialect often has finger pronounced "fiŋə" (though I would never use that pronunciation when speaking my version of "standard English"). Dbfirs 13:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Strange title

Does Highways passing from Delhi sound like a strange title to anyone else? Could it be move to a better name? Astronaut (talk) 12:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I found this sentence: "The much-delayed Rs.10 billion, 27.7 km expressway was thrown open on January 23, 2008", so maybe the whole article is written in Indian English, in which case the current title may well be the most appropriate one. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I love "thrown open" :) Indian English sounds so alive and full of vitality to my ears. DuncanHill (talk) 13:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

"Highways passing from Delhi" sounds strange to me (BrE). 86.160.211.97 (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The article should be renamed "Highways originating from Delhi" or "Highways passing through Delhi", depending on which one is factually correct. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:35, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Highways originating in Delhi, rather than from? --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:03, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

If you're in some place along the way, you might speak of the road from (or to) Delhi. There's perhaps a philosophical question: if a road connects Delhi with, say, Patna, does it really originate in either city? But if you're talking about Delhi as the center of a network of roads (like Chicago), then I'd join Tagishsimon in saying "highways originating in Delhi. --- OtherDave (talk) 01:36, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

A google search for "highways passing from" gives on the first page also "Highways passing from Tikamgarh" and "Highways passing from Indore", which very much suggests that JackofOz is correct and this is a standard phrase in Indian English. If this is so, then WP:ENGVAR unequivocally says this is the correct title for the article, and people's speculations on what would be better in their own varieties of English are irrelevant (not to say, impertinent); though perhaps a redirect would be in order. Do we have a speaker of Indian English here who could clarify? --ColinFine (talk) 10:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Language Of In-Game Music

Does anyone know what language the music from this (time-linked) video is in? [For those who do not wish to click:] It is from the game Homeworld 2, and was apparently made by Paul Ruskay. I originally thought Hindi (purely from the music) but when I heard the words I realised it wasn't - it sounds more like Persian to me. Comments on that video say it may be Sanskrit, but I doubt that. Does anyone know? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Philosophical Term

What do you call a term like "sophistry?" That is, a term that can be used (derogatorily) and ironically refer to your own response? For some reason Straw Man comes to mind, but I don't think that quite encompasses what I'm looking for. Thanks Wikipedians! Schyler! (one language) 21:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Reminds me of the old teacher's axiom: "get in first, before they get you"! --TammyMoet (talk) 21:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Is there any possibility you can check and/or rephrase the question. I don't really understand the second sentence at all. Sophistry is a disparaging, depreciatory, derogatory term. And I suppose if I describe my own utterances - my responses - as sophistry, then I'm maybe being candid, or else ironic, depending on the context. What else are you looking for? --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:42, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion. Well, say debater 'A' has the subject of 'Responses to Nuclear Disasters.' 'A' orates well. Debater 'B' gets up and says "I could very well orate very well on the subject of which we speaking as well, but my contender's rationalization solely consisted of grotesque sophisms and demagogueries..."
Clearly 'B's' argument has no substance and is itself sophistry and demagoguery. So 'B' is ironically referring to the opponent's argument with the same denigration worthy of his response. Schyler! (one language) 22:11, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

That would be an ad hominem argument and a logical fallacy ... is that more the direction of your interest? Oh, and I guess there's a ladle full of hypocrisy involved too. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your time, but I don't think ad hominem is what I'm looking for. Maybe the context will help. I am looking at Basil's letter 234, fragment 1. He says, "the absurdities involved in this sophism are innumerable." This argument is clearly a sophism itself and he never debunks the assertion against which he is arguing. Clearly, I am taking an anti-Basil stance (perhaps even an anti-philosophy stance). Thanks. Schyler! (one language) 22:52, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Meta-sophistry ? See here: [1]. StuRat (talk) 01:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks! Schyler! (one language) 02:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Resolved