Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 October 24

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 24

Can "decide" mean "determine"?

When the word is to mean "find out" or "calculate".

So, if there is a party and everyone would need exactly one cookie, could the procedure be:

"First, decide how many people will attend the party" or would it be (much) better to say: "First, determine how many people will attend the party"

Joepnl (talk) 00:17, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Can "decide" mean "determine"? Yes, "decide" can mean "determine" but there is an implication in "decide" that may be objectionable in that "deciding" implies controlling as in acting as a gatekeeper—letting some in and keeping some out. If you are for instance simply musing over what the need will be for paper plates and napkins you would want to "determine" the expected arrival of party-goers. If everybody should have one cookie and there should not be any cookies left over then indeed "decide" may be the right term. Bus stop (talk) 00:46, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

If you know that 500 people would be keen to attend the party, but there is room for only 50, then you could "decide" how many will attend, i.e. putting on a limit on numbers. Otherwise, it's more likely to be "determine". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:00, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

They are pretty much the same thing.[1] [2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:13, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Etymology of "chinois"

Hello, what is the exact etymology of "chinois" (cf. equally in French) in the sense of "sieve"?--Neufund (talk) 13:58, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Given that similar shaped strainer, though not so fine, is called a Chinese cap, it seems that the name is simply derived from the similarity in shape to the traditional conical Chinese hat. Wymspen (talk) 14:52, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

this agrees with your analysis. --Jayron32 15:02, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

"ch" = "sh"

We had an amusing incident last weekend over the name "Charlotte". My sister-in-law was perplexed by the pronunciation of the initial phoneme - she assumed it was the "ch" sound, as in "church". (Apparently she'd read Charlotte's Web, but hadn't heard it). She's a long-time, but not native, English speaker, so the goof was no big deal, but it did get us talking about how irritating the "ch" grouping is in English if you're trying to pronounce things. Anyway, is it reasonably correct to say that "sh" pronunciations are largely from the French? Most of the examples we came up with at the time (chalet, chic, Chardonnay, Cheryl, etc.) would seem to confirm this, but we were hardly exhaustive. The question above is completely coincidental, but conforms to the theory. Matt Deres (talk) 15:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

"Charlotte" indeed comes from the French.[3] "Church" is more complicated.[4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:44, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article titled Ch (digraph) which has some useful information. It's sadly unreferenced, but it does explain the origin of various words that use "ch" in English. The general trend is "ch as [tʃ]" are "native" English words like "church", "ch as [k]" as in "mechanic" are Greek in origin, while "ch as [ʃ]" are Romance Language (mostly French, some Italian and Spanish) in origin, like "charade". --Jayron32 15:55, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

<ch> is pronounced [k] in Italian. That's how you get a [k] sound before <e> or <i> (which would otherwise cause the <c> to be pronounced [tʃ]). --Trovatore (talk) 21:57, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Now that I've looked at the article, I see that it mentions "pistachio", which is an interesting case -- the word comes from Italian, but the usual English pronunciation does not (I'd guess it's following the pattern of French-origin words). "Pistachio" is a naturalized word, so I can't really say that pronunciation is "wrong". I have no such compunctions about bruschetta, which absolutely must be pronounced with a [k]. --Trovatore (talk) 22:21, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Then they shoulda spelled it with a "k". :) I always pronounce it as such, but the "sh" pronunciation is so common as to probably be the majority usage in non-Italian speakers. Matt Deres (talk) 14:11, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

And then there's chorus (sounds like k) and choir (sounds like qu). --Khajidha (talk) 21:44, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

And if you think "ch" is annoying, I would advise you to stay away from words with "ough" in them. --Khajidha (talk) 22:11, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Ch (digraph) (thanks User:Jayron32; I should have known we'd have an article) implies that "choir" is also simply the 'k' sound (with the 'oi" creating the rest of the rest, I suppose). Matt Deres (talk) 14:06, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I guess that article is analyzing it as ch giving the k sound, o giving the w sound, and the ir sounding like the word "ire". I could see it either way. The point is, a reader is unlikely to come up with the actual pronunciation of the word from looking at it. Even if they knew that CH could sound like K, the most likely rendition would me more like "core" than "quire". --Khajidha (talk) 14:12, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

There is no separate "qu" sound. It's just /kw/. Arabic has a [q] phoneme, I think (it's like [k] but further back in the throat), but English does not. --Trovatore (talk) 18:34, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I know that. My original analysis was that the ch in choir was being used to represent ths kw sounds usually written as qu in English. The Ch (digraph) page analyzes the word differently, in the manner I dedcribed in my later post.--Khajidha (talk) 19:45, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Like "kwire" or "quire". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:22, 26 October 2018 (UTC)