Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 June 11

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June 11

Pronunciation of 'protocol'

When I was younger, so much younger than today, the final syllable of 'protocol' was always pronounced as written: col. But I now hear lots of people say it like 'call', as if it were written "protocall". And sure enuf, some people do think it's spelt that way, e.g. referring to IPs as Internet Protocalls.

(It's complicated by the existence of IT and HR companies actually called ProtoCall.)

Is this indicative of a language change occurring before our very ears/eyes, or is it still considered erroneous? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:04, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I've heard it both ways here in America, but more often as "call". My 20-year-old Webster's edition gives "call" as the primary and "cole" as the secondary. This kind of reminds me of the phonograph record, which in its early years was pronounced as spelled, "reh-cord"; and by the 1950s was pronounced "reh-curd". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:14, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Really? "Record" is just one of a large number of two-syllable words that are stressed on the first syllable when used as verbs but on the second syllable as nouns, and in other senses it's a word centuries older than photographs. The OED Online gives the pronunciation of the noun as "Brit. /ˈrɛkɔːd/ , U.S. /ˈrɛkərd/ (in sense A. 5c also) Brit. /rᵻkɔːd/ , U.S. /rəˈkɔ(ə)rd/ , /ˌriˈkɔ(ə)rd/", so they say that the accent on the second syllable exists as an alternate pronunciation in only once sense of the word—and that sense is a specialized usage in Scots law. --69.158.92.137 (talk) 21:44, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I searched for a corresponding merger at "Phonological history of English vowels", but without success. When you say "pronounced as written: col", that could mean "like 'coal' " or "like 'call' ". You context indicates that you mean "like 'coal' ".

—Wavelength (talk) 00:15, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

No. He means "like cawl". --Trovatore (talk) 00:34, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's it. Or caul. In my world, call, caul and cawl are mutually homophonous, and all different from col or coal. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:42, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

No no no. I was using "cawl" for /kɔl/. I would IPA "call" as /kɑːl/. I was trying to explain to Wavelength that, when you wrote "col" you meant /kɔl/ (same as "cawl") and not /koʊl/ ("coal"). The problem is, a lot of people here don't hear any difference between /kɑːl/ and /kɔl/, so they don't know what you're on about. (It's not that they can't hear the difference, if they listen to the two sounds played side-by-side, but since they make no distinction between them, they don't notice it if not listening specifically for it.) --Trovatore (talk) 00:59, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Jack, I for one have no damn idea how col is pronounced in Oz. —Tamfang (talk) 00:34, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Nor, for that matter, can I recall ever having occasion to pronounce it elsewhere. —Tamfang (talk) 00:23, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Help him if you can; he's feeling down. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:37, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Down under, that is.

No, Wavelength, neither coal nor call, but col, rhymes with boll, doll, loll, Moll, Noll, Poll, quoll, Sol. This is an American, but he says 'protocol' (from 43 secs) the way we (at least used to) do. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:52, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Huh. Sounds like (American) call to me. —Tamfang (talk) 00:23, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

My name is 'Col' and 'protocol' always meant an earlier version of myself. I always pronounce it /kɔl/ and most British do. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 01:21, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Jack, you should be aware that a lot of contributors here have the cot–caught merger and will not even know what you're talking about, because they already rhyme "doll" with "call". --Trovatore (talk) 01:33, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I tried to avoid all that confusion by linking a video of a man saying it the way I'm familiar with (above at 00:52). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:38, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I can hear what you mean, but I don't have the merger, or at least it isn't complete. A person who has the merger (and hasn't studied it at least at a casual level) just won't hear anything different — if you asked, did he say "protocol" or "protocall", they just wouldn't know; it would sound the same to them. --Trovatore (talk) 09:12, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

English English: "col" as it rhymes with "doll" - so /proʊtəkɒl/ Bazza (talk) 15:08, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I have the merger, and this whole question just confuses me. Pretty much all of the examples you have all given all rhyme. Mingmingla (talk) 16:08, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to help, folks. I'm a little stumped as to how to explain my dilemma. I can only once again point to examples of those who obviously think it's spelt and pronounced protocall – and to them, as it is to me, that's very different in both spelling and pronunciation from protocol:

• Mission Impossible 4 ghost Protocall Official Trailer 1080p (the movie is subtitled "Ghost Protocol")

• We're Breaking Protocall Here - Obama Quote (I'm sure if you asked Obama to spell the word he just used there, he'd say "p-r-o-t-o-c-o-l", but that's not how the videomaker is hearing it)

• Treatment protocall checklist (it's even written "protocol" on the piece of paper the guy's holding, but hey, so what, the maker of this video seems to think they know better).

These examples all seem to be from the USA, so there are some Americans who know what ahm talkin' 'bout. Why aren't they here, answering my question? Until I did this research, I'd only heard Australians mispronounce the word as "protocall" (or protocawl or protocaul), and I'd never seen it written any way but 'protocol', but it seems to be a more widespread thing than I imagined. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:25, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I think these are just people who can't spell. I wouldn't read much into that. --Trovatore (talk) 01:03, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

He said "Americans." :) Evan ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

USA here. I know exactly what you're talking about. Lacking IPA, I will just say that I can hear the difference you describe, but I also have (much of) the caught/cot merger. My NOAD gives: | ˈprōtəˌkôl, -ˌkäl |. My notions of regionalisms in USA are a bit off, as I've lived in several states, and most of my colleagues have also moved around a lot. But, in all my experience, only the Brits that I've worked with strongly hit the ô, as opposed to making a sound somewhere on the ä-to-ô spectrum (working in science, we use the word 'protocol' a decent amount). In the USA, I really think this is all about mergers, or lack thereof. I don't think anyone would say Obama's pronunciation is 'considered erroneous' here, though of course there is only one correct spelling. I don't think having the merger means that we can't hear the difference, we often just don't care. So, just chalk it up to "American Accent" if you wish, noting that of course we don't all say it exactly the same way. BTW, what is the pronunciation authority for AU? OED and NOAD don't seem quite right... SemanticMantis (talk) 14:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

(ec)I'm an American, and I think I have an incomplete cot-caught merger, or at least I can't tell the difference between the linked "Jack's way" of saying "protocol" and what I imagine "protocall" would sound like (do you have examples where someone is actually *saying* "protocall", rather than just misspelling it in writing?). Likewise doll and call sound very similar to me. (I can tell the difference in the way I pronounce them if I slow things down, but it's slight and would be lost at speed.) That said, I don't know of anyone who would think the spelling "protocall" would be a proper spelling of the word. So it's not the case that the spelling of the word is changing, I think it's just the case that people are just misspelling it "foneticly" (as people do on the internet with a range of words) and doing so with the cot-caught merger, so it comes out "obviously" wrong to someone who doesn't have the merger. "Protocall" still looks like a mistake to me, but not a forehead-slapping how-could-they-be-so-oblivious one. -- 160.129.138.186 (talk) 15:15, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

It is pronounced like this. Bus stop (talk) 16:44, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly the way an American Midwesterner would say it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:25, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

All of these pronunciations sound similar. Which is an example of a different pronunciation (from "American Midwestern" pronunciation)? I found a few more examples here, here, and here. Bus stop (talk) 19:55, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Yep, they all match my expectations. What I need is to find a video of someone saying it like "protocawl", to make the difference very clear. How to search for such a thing? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects, have you seen it? —Tamfang (talk) 05:16, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Simple past vs. present perfect in a business email

An English business email of a non-English enterprise starts with:

Two weeks ago we sent you an e-mail in which we informed you that your annual fee... is due. However, we have been unable to debit this fee...

Is it correct to use simple past tense in the first sentence and present perfect in the second? You might argue that the information mail has less direct consequence for the present than the failure of the debiting, but this seems to be very subjective to me. I'd use present perfect in both sentences - what do English native speakers think? --KnightMove (talk) 09:34, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

No. In the first sentence, to use the present perfect would imply multiple emails. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 09:40, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The use of the present perfect in the first sentence is pretty much ruled out by the presence of the definite time adverbial "two weeks ago", which almost always triggers the past tense in English. The second sentence, in contrast, is not hooked to such a specific point in time, but says that there has been no time point among all the possible time points within the entire time span from then until now at which a certain event occurred. This makes the present perfect appropriate. Using the past tense in the second sentence would imply that there was a single, limited point in time in the past during which they tried to debit the fee, and then stopped trying. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:09, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thank you 2. --KnightMove (talk) 10:12, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

Article or no article?

I am not sure whether to put an article "the" in front of an abbreviation that, when spelled out, would have a pronoun. Specifically, I am talking about this example.

• Charles Darwin travelled on the HMS Beagle (the Her Majesty's Ship Beagle).
• Charles Darwin travelled on HMS Beagle (Her Majesty's Ship Beagle).

So, should an article or no article be put before the "HMS Beagle" word? 65.24.105.132 (talk) 17:00, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

In US English, yes, but the subject matter makes me think you may want British English, where such articles seem to often be skipped. StuRat (talk) 17:04, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

So, it does not matter whether there is a pronoun within the abbreviation? 65.24.105.132 (talk) 17:10, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Read the Wikipedia article titled Ship prefix. The use of "the" is discouraged by both the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy, and by most style guides on both sides of the pond, according to that article. --Jayron32 20:09, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The relevant paragraph from that article is:

"Note that while calling a US ship "the USS Flattop" may make grammatical sense, the preliminary article "the" is discouraged by nearly all style guides, and the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy uses ship names without article, except for USS The Sullivans, named for the five Sullivan brothers, all lost at sea during World War II.[10] Its British equivalent ("the HMS Flattop") is also discouraged, since "the Her Majesty's Ship" would be grammatically incorrect."

However, despite what the style guides say, "the" is widely used in the US. If you said "I just toured Constitution", it would sound very odd here, as would "I just toured USS Constitution". StuRat (talk) 21:21, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I see no problem with saying "I just toured USS Constitution" as I would with "I just toured Haggerty Hall". Haggerty Hall may be the name of a building. Similarly, USS Constitution may be the full name of the ship. 65.24.105.132 (talk) 03:19, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

But that's different, StuRat. When the prefix ("HMS", "USS", MV" etc) is omitted, "the" is almost universal. The question is whether to use the article with the abbreviation. --ColinFine (talk) 22:57, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I covered both cases in my example. StuRat (talk) 03:34, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Why not spell out the abbreviated words in full the first time they appear in a paragraph or on a page—and of course omit what would be the ungrammatical article—and in subsequent uses omit the article but use the abbreviation? This way you are providing the reader with the meaning of the abbreviation, and you are alerting them to the oddity of the omitted article in later instances of the name of the ship. Bus stop (talk) 23:06, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, if the name of the ship only appears once in an area of a document, one can use parentheses similar to what we see in the originally posed question: "Charles Darwin travelled on HMS Beagle (Her Majesty's Ship Beagle)." Using this form, the reader would understand why the article was omitted. Bus stop (talk) 01:04, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

By the way, when Darwin was sailing in it, it was "His Majesty's Ship"... AnonMoos (talk) 23:44, 11 June 2014 (UTC)