Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 November 5

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November 5

G.A. and a / o differences

Can you hear a difference in pronunciation when someone with a general American accent says the first name "Rosaria" or "Rosario"? I cannot, but I am not a native speaker. I am wondering if it is only me, or if an American speaker could also be confused if there existed 2 such people in a comunity. --Lgriot (talk) 08:29, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I'd expect a difference. —Tamfang (talk) 08:37, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Tamfang. Here's a WAG: The speaker you're talking about misread the rare name "Rosaria" for the much more common "Rosario". --Trovatore (talk) 09:08, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Well I don't think it was misread, it is from Will and Grace. When Karen say "Rosaria", talking about her maid, I hear "Rosario". --Lgriot (talk) 11:06, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

The character's name is Rosario. If you hear 'Rosario', where does 'Rosaria' come in at all? AlexTiefling (talk) 11:38, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Lgriot -- "General American a / o" coalescence has to do with mergers of the sounds [ɒ], [ɔː], and/or [ɑː] (with different patterns before "r" than elsewhere). However, the final vowel of Rosario in Englicized pronunciation would be [oʊ], which is not any of the aforementioned three... AnonMoos (talk) 11:49, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Duh, I should have checked this, I thought the girl version of the name was written with an a. My lack of knowledge of Spanish-speaking cultures shows up here!! Thanks everyone, no problem then. --Lgriot (talk) 12:32, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I share the OP's confusion here. I assumed that this name derives from the Spanish, and I thought that in every case in Spanish the female version of an -a/-o name would end in -a, hence Rosaria, while the male version would end in -o, hence Rosario. Not so? Duoduoduo (talk) 15:15, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Not a very good reference site, but it seems that, indeed, not so: [1] --Lgriot (talk) 15:26, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Rosario - [2] (note the warning), [3].--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:47, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

The second of these says Rosario "is feminine in Spanish and masculine in Italian." Interesting. Duoduoduo (talk) 19:47, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Although the question seems moot, AnonMoos' explanation is correct, and presumably he's referring to the caught-cot merger which is not relevant here, since the 'o' and 'a' endings would be pronounced /oʊ/ and /ə/, not /ɔ/ and /ɑ/. μηδείς (talk) 17:13, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

With respect to stressed sylab. I would expect an Am speaker to say ro/sa/RI/a, and ro/SA/ri/o. No?Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:30, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Why? I'd stress sá in both. —Tamfang (talk) 19:34, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Seems like it would match ma/RI/a and MA/ri/o. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:32, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Consuelo is another female Spanish name that's sometimes hypercorrected to Consuela by well-meaning persons. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 18:26, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

It's short for something like Maria del Rosario, Maria del Consuelo, Maria de las Mercedes, Maria de las Dolores — different aspects of the Virgin. (What, no article for that sense of 'aspect'?) [Maria del] Pilar and [Maria de] Guadalupe refer to modern apparitions. —Tamfang (talk) 21:29, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe es.wp has a long list of such names? —Tamfang (talk) 23:35, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

In case this seems like a mistake on a TV show, there is also the real life actress Rosario Dawson. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:55, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Just to confuse matters, Rosario is a male name in Italian (Rosario La Spina) and Rosaria the female form (Rosaria Console). -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:03, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Capitalization in Spanish

En espanol, yo aprendi en la escuela que los meses y dias de la semana comenzaban en mayuscula: ejemplo: El Lunes, 12 de Noviembre estara cerrada la oficina, en commemoracion a Veteran's Day.

Por favor aclarar mi dilema. donde quiera que pregunto, las respuestas son diferentes. gracias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.187.167.18 (talk) 17:46, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Deberían ser en minúscula según el Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, punto 6. Eso es de hecho lo que yo tenía entendido, pero parece ser un error común. En un punto aparte, probablemente obtengas más atención y una mejor respuesta si haces tu pregunta en la Wikipedia en español — Frankie (talk) 18:56, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

(editing conflict :D)

Unlike for English, for Spanish (Castellano) there is an "ultimate authority", at least for Spain : the Real Academia Espanola [4]. According to the RAE, in plain text days of the week or monthes are written without capital (domingo), unless you refer to a special, named day : Domingo de Pentecostés.

En caso de duda con la lengua castellana, hablando del uso en Espana (!), lo màs fàcil a mì me parece es acudirse a la RAE [5], segun la cual los meses y las dìas no tienen mayuscula. (o solamente en casos especiales, como Domingo de Pentecostés) Pardon my German (Fiiiisch!) (talk) 19:09, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

You seem to have a grave problem, Fiiiiisch. μηδείς (talk) 23:11, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Oops. :D Pardon my German (Fiiiisch!) (talk) 00:13, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Russian romanization

Hello,

why isn't there just one English standard transliteration system for Russian cyrillic words? Why are there several types? Regards.--Tomcat (7) 21:06, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Because there is no central authority that governs these things. Basically people are free to use whatever method they like best, and there is no 'perfect' method, because different writing systems never directly correspond to each other in a systematic one-on-one relationship (or they wouldn't really be different systems). As long as one method is not overwhelmingly adopted by people and so suppresses the others, different transliterations will continue to be used side by side. Certainly it would be more practical if a single system were used, but simply acknowledging this doesn't change reality. It might also be practical if all people on Earth would use the same language. This could have many advantages, but that doesn't mean it's easy to implement. - Lindert (talk) 21:24, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I just want to add that while people are indeed free to use whatever method they like best, certain methods are more common in certain fields. Linguists, for example, favor scientific transliteration, geographic names are best rendered using BGN/PCGN, ALA-LC is commonly used in texts about history, and so on.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 5, 2012; 21:51 (UTC)

Just wanted to add that this is not specific for Russian but applies to other languages as well. See for instance Romanization of Japanese or the Romanization article. bamse (talk) 23:52, 5 November 2012 (UTC)