Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 September 19

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September 19

Standards

Ok, here's the thing. We have come to expect high standards in all things:

• customer service - a restaurant that is untidy or unclean will fail; a waiter who provides bad service to a customer will be reported, disciplined, or even sacked; a sales assistant who does not know the products they're trying to sell will not achieve their sales targets, or sell the wrong things, resulting in customer complaints
• work performance - an employee who fails to meet standards will suffer a similar fate
• construction - buildings are expected to be properly constructed, safe, habitable, professionally finished etc; a brick wall that has thousands of red bricks but a few stray white ones - or a wall that has sloppy cementing - would be regarded as sub-standard
• entertainment – a singer who consistently sings off key or forgets their words is destined for the scrapheap; a comedian who fails to make people laugh very much will not get gigs
• sport – a player who consistently loses will not advance in their career
• and the list goes on ad infinitum.

But when it comes to written English, there’s a definite trend in the opposite direction. Of recent years, there's been a burgeoning of material about style, grammar, punctuation, spelling and so on – but it mainly seems to be preaching to the converted. All the while, people are coming up through the "education system" without being told about nouns, verbs, adjectives and the rest, and the results speak for themselves. This is analagous to an electrician who knows nothing about volts, amps, resistance, or the risks of electrocution. People are not being held to the sorts of standards that were once taken for granted with English; further, they seem to be encouraged to write any way they like, as long as their intended meaning gets through. It's generally considered ill-mannered to correct anything anymore. That seems to also apply to teachers. I cite as evidence the fact that, with a few notable exceptions, most questions we receive on the Ref Desk contain egregious spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. I acknowledge that our questioners do not all come from English-speaking backgrounds, but my observations still appy to the ones who do.

So, to my question: Why have standards in most areas of life risen noticeably, while those in the area of the language we all use have dropped so markedly? Can anything be done about this, and does anyone in a position to do something about it care enough to change it? -- JackofOz (talk) 00:05, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Jack, my answer would be that, with the possible exception of entertainment (including sports), standards have not in fact risen in the past 40 or 50 years. They've been on a plateau at best. If anything, customer service has deteriorated. The bottom line is the bottom line. The only thing that matters any more to the corporate chiefs who rule our world is profit. In other areas of life, I think we are succumbing to cultural decadence and creeping barbarism. Obviously this is my POV. Marco polo (talk) 01:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively, the standards of English usage are no worse than they ever were, among people who are not professional editors. But now that the Internet exists, a great deal more of the writing that you see is not professionally edited. (Even print publications in some cases are less well edited than they used to be, because Internet competition has cut into their profitability.) Wikipedia, of course, is a proud to be a major part of the problem. --Anonymous, 02:06 UTC, September 19, 2009.

I don't agree. Before the emergence of the Internet, ordinary people used to write each other letters. As I recall, 30–40 years ago nearly everyone made an effort to conform to standards for spelling, grammar, and punctuation, even if less educated people did not always succeed in conforming to those standards. I think Jack is talking about a growing indifference to or willful disregard for standards, at least in written English. This disregard, I think, is something relatively new. I don't think this is entirely due to the Internet, though chat rooms have contributed to it. I think that the root cause is a mix of anti-intellectualism and the rejection of certain kinds of discipline. Marco polo (talk) 03:10, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

It is possibly not accurate to say that standards among non-professionals are no worse than they've been previously. The reason for this (i.e. the reason why standards may in fact have been higher in the future) is that since the 1970s, the study of language has leaned against prescriptivism. That means, at least in the United States and probably most English speaking countries, those in authority -- scholars and teachers -- are less willing to impose the same strict standards as they were before, when children were chastised publicly for "poor" grammar. This is also true in literature and poetry -- students are taught to use their "authentic" voice, regardless of whether they are following the "standard." My perception, with a certain amount of experience/exposure to back it up, is that things are somewhat--but not completely--different in countries such as France or China. France is certainly proud of its strict tradition in matters linguistic and surely likes to maintain them. In China (much of the reason being that Mandarin is not most peoples' mother tongue hence it has to be learned exogenously at school), a high emphasis is placed on using language according to the standard. Ordinary Chinese (Han) who want to be teachers have to take proficiency certification in Mandarin (even when they've spoken it fluently since the age of 7 or so), and there is extremely rigorous supervision of television and radio journalists to ensure they have a "standard" accent, and non-standard accents (for broadcasters) are very much frowned on.

I think Marco Polo has hit on something central to the answer to your question -- in the past (e.g. early 20th century), in the United States at least -- people of all levels of education had a strong awareness of "the standard" and believed that they were obligated to follow it as much as possible, even relatively minor things like personal letters.--71.111.194.50 (talk) 03:14, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

JackofOz, what you call "standards" other people call prescriptivism. Just because people aren't using the grammar you and I learned in outdated schoolbooks doesn't mean that their language is "worse"; it's just different. Keep in mind that French (one of the most staunchly defended languages today) was originally nothing more than "bad Latin", and lovely proper BBC English likewise used to be just a vulgar tongue. Languages don't get better or worse, they just change with use.

And, on a side note, it's quite silly to think that we can "change" the language of millions of people through nothing but a quick round-table discussion in a dark corner of the Internet. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:31, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Marco Polo hit a chord: "growing indifference to or willful disregard for standards" - to which I would add ignorance of standards. It's one thing to spurn standards and speak with one's own authentic voice, and that may have a certain merit; but it's quite another not to know what the standards one is spurning are in the first place. That's where the education system comes in. There's a great tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism, and both certainly have their role to play. But we cannot do without the teaching of fundamentals, and if that comes under the heading of prescriptivism, so be it. A person who wants to build a new type of machine must first know how existing machines are built. I realise that people acquire their language skills and habits from many sources other than dry academic tomes. But those books are still the basis of style guides and the like. Yes, they need to be regularly updated as the language changes, certain forms of expression become outdated, and new ones come into vogue. I'm not at all arguing against language change, because that would really be silly. But we see, for example, words ending in -ant often spelled as -ent, and vice-versa. These are still considered errors; no dictionary worth its salt would acknowledge "precedant" as a word, or even as a legitimate alternative spelling of "precedent". So what! - you might say. If the meaning is clear, what difference does it make how a word is spelled? - you might ask. To which I would ask, why bother having dictionaries and grammar books at all? -- JackofOz (talk) 06:18, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

No evidence is presented above to back up the assertion that standards of writing English have fallen. If the evidence is that a given set of discrete solecisms have become more commonplace, yes of course one can come up with such a set. One always could. Languages change; the contributory changes routinely infuriate those who aren't at the forefront of those changes.

As for spelling, I can't manage to work up even a microtizzy over the misspelling "precedant". It's a very understandable misspelling and I'd be surprised if it weren't common, either now or fifty years ago.

Most people's writing skills are mediocre. Nothing new here, as you'll see if you examine what's written on the back of decades-old postcards in junk stores. What's new is that subjects of particular interest to you are written up on this website (and elsewhere) by anyone, whereas decades ago writing on those subjects would have reached you via a set of filters -- higher education, professional copyeditors and proofreaders, and so forth.

[W]hy bother having dictionaries and grammar books at all? I do have an E-E dictionary, because it came as a package with the bilingual dictionaries that were my reason for buying an electronic gadget. I very rarely use the E-E dictionary, and certainly never for spelling. The grammar book is different: I have CGEL because I'm intrigued by certain apparent oddities in English and am curious about the patterns underlying them. But perhaps you're asking why schoolkids should have dictionaries and grammar books. On the former, I've no opinion. I've no reason to think that grammar books would be of any interest or use to them, unless those grammar books were conceived very differently from the soporific prescriptivist guides for the linguistically (and socially?) insecure. And may the gods protect both children and adults from such charlatans as "Strunk and White". -- Hoary (talk) 10:07, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The average citizen is not all that good with spelling and usage, nor does the average citizen think spelling and usage are particularly important. The internet is used by the average citizen. Need I say more? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 10:13, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, I could say a lot more, because you've hit exactly the point I'm wanting clarity about. When a guy buys a car, he wants it free from mechanical faults, with the duco gleaming brilliantly and without any imperfections. When we order a meal at a restaurant, we want it properly cooked, beautifully presented, and tasting great. When we pay good money to go the movies, we're upset when it turns out to involve less than good acting, or has a crap story, or whatever. We care about these things, and so many other things. They matter to us. We expect high standards. So why do so many people not care about the language they use all day, every day? My experience, for what it's worth, is that they used to care more than they do these days, mainly because they were taught the basics, and were taught they were important things to know; just as important as how many horsepower a certain car has, or how many goals some football team kicked in 1997, or where the fish are biting tomorrow. They may have never particularly cared, but they could not avoid knowing, because it was more or less drummed into them. Nowadays, it's not. The message from above is: it doesn't matter all that much, so just more or less make it up as you go along. Who decided it no longer matters, and how did they arrive at that conclusion? And why do many linguists, who do care about language, defend this system where many people who've gone through 12 years of school still need to do remedial English classes before being allowed to enter university? (Because that's the reality of what happens these days, and it's a relatively recent thing.) -- JackofOz (talk) 11:15, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

They don't care because they don't think it's important. A car free of mechanical faults is important. Writing "are" instead of "our", for example, they not only don't think is important, they'll criticize someone who criticizes it. Maybe it's just a passive-aggressive type of rebellion. I don't know. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 11:24, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd welcome some input from someone who does know. -- JackofOz (talk) 11:45, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm speaking from anecdotal experience here. Someone posted a sign, "Help keep are office clean." I commented on it out loud. I was told I was being "picky". I printed the word "our" on paper in the same font, trimmed it, and pasted it over the "are". By the next day, the sign had been taken down anonymously, never to be seen again. But that's the kind of thing we're up against. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:24, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

[1] rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 13:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Messing with public property that's alleged to be of historical value is different from messing with an internal office printout on plain paper and having no value at all. Although the fact that the government would see fit to immortalize a word like "emense" just goes to show that bad spelling is nothing new after all. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:06, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Jack, are you sure you're not just being an old fuddy-duddy? In 50 years I'm sure I'll be complaining that the youth of 2060 have such terrible habits compared to the golden age of the early 2000s... Adam Bishop (talk) 13:14, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Reminds me of something Larry Miller (actor) said in his HBO special a couple of decades ago: "My father held three jobs and went to school at night. If I go to the bank and the cleaners in the same day, I need a nap. If that laziness trend continues, I'll be telling my kids, 'In my day, we didn't have jet-packs; we had to drive to school!'" Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:20, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

But where would innovations and the convenience of new technology come from if each generation was stupider than the last? Adam Bishop (talk) 13:40, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

From the desire to be lazy, apparently. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:03, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

For those of you who can read French, Mort aux Jeunes is a good blurb about "old fuddy-duddiness". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 13:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

So why do so many people not care about the language they use all day, every day? My experience, for what it's worth, is that they used to care more than they do these days, mainly because they were taught the basics, and were taught they were important things to know [...]. They may have never particularly cared, but they could not avoid knowing, because it was more or less drummed into them.

People generally don't care much about the walking or sitting they do every day. First-language use usually isn't so very conscious, unless of course you're trying to do something like deflate a misunderstanding.

People could not avoid knowing what? If you mean morphosyntax, yes, you're right: that's the nature of normal first language acquisition. If you mean spelling, you're wrong; as you'll see on old postcards and the like. (Have you still not taken a look?) If you mean metalinguistic knowledge such which parts of speech are which; I doubt that too, given the disparity in other subjects (mathematics, second languages, etc) between (a) the amount of stuff that used to be "drummed in" back in the good old days and (b) the amount that was actually acquired, let alone retained.

When we order a meal at a restaurant, we want it properly cooked, beautifully presented, and tasting great. Speak for yourself. Me, I don't give much of a damn about the presentation; what pisses me off is muzak. As for the masses, they want Mcfood.

When we pay good money to go the movies, we're upset when it turns out to involve less than good acting, or has a crap story, or whatever. Again, speak for yourself. Little though I relish speaking ill of the recently deceased, Patrick Swayze got through the maudlin story Ghost with a fixed facial expression suggesting that he was trying hard to suppress an intense urge to fart. Audiences lapped it up. True, it didn't win an Oscar for "Best Picture"; that's an honor that goes to such horrors as the emetic Forrest Gump. Incidentally, if I may quote Wikipedia (not a RS, of course), this flick had gross receipts of $329,694,499 in the U.S. and Canada and $347,693,217 in international markets for a total of $677,387,716 worldwide. I'm far more troubled by the innumeracy of Wikipedia editors who'd solemnly perpetrate such pseudoprecision than I am by easily fixed (because fully comprehensible) gaffes of spelling and so forth. -- Hoary (talk) 15:42, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Art is subjective. I liked Forrest Gump. I didn't love it, but I liked it. I went to see another Oscar winner called No Country for Old Men and thought it was one of the lamest movies I'd seen in years, largely due to what Siskel & Ebert used to call the "idiot plot". Nearly everyone in the film who got shot pretty much deserved it, for being idiots. The acting was OK, but that's about it. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 15:52, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Sadly Jack, I feel that Hoary has summed up my feelings on the matter: the Internet is to a carefully edited work as McDonald's is to a three-star Michelin restaurant. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 18:12, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't focussing on the internet, although I did draw on Ref Desk questions to illustrate my point. The issues that concern me occur in far more places than the web.

So, "old fuddy-duddy", eh, Adam and Rjanag? That's a first for me, I must say. I'm not sure whether to laugh or get very offended. :) But seriously, does this mean that the next time anyone suggests to an OP that they've misspelled a word, or used non-optimal grammar - and it happens regularly on these pages, as we all know - they should be tarred with such an epithet? I certainly hope not.

It's easy to spot errors, and if I were paid for it, I'd be a millionaire many times over by now. But that's never been my focus here. My interest has been in the bigger picture: the general diminution of standards in English teaching, which has lead directly to a general diminution of standards in English usage, particularly in the written word. It's easy to find examples of these things from any era, Hoary, but isolated examples are missing my point. If others cannot see what I see happening out there, and are not the teeniest bit concerned about it, maybe I'm talking to the wrong audience. I never wanted this to veer into soapbox territory, so I'll leave it now and move on. Thanks for all your inputs. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:38, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I see language change happening out there, and I rejoice. Language change is as natural as living and dying. Keep in mind that human language has a history of several thousand years, whereas standardized language has only been around a couple hundred—the assumption that there is one "right" form of language, and that it must not change, is a relatively new assumption and it's far from being the natural way of things. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:48, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I've never assumed that. I did say above that I don't argue with language change. What I do take issue with is the apparent position that educators seem to have adopted, one of "Well, since the language is going to change whether we like it or not, and change more rapidly than it did in the past, there's no point in teaching our kids even the way it is at the moment, because by the time they graduate, much of it will be redundant". No matter how much or how quickly language will change, there will always be nouns and verbs and other basic building blocks of language. Yet these terms are as foreign to some graduates as words from a Martian dictionary. That scares the hell out of me. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Evolution of language is one thing. Butchery is another. In this day and age, clear communication is more important than ever, and if the kids don't know how to communicate clearly, they're going to find themselves at an ever-increasing competitive disadvantage in the world. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 05:42, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps this example pre-dates "standards", but even in the early 1800s most writers wrote better than this:

after the Council was over we Shot the air guns which astonished them much, the then Departed and we rested Secure all night, Those Indians wer much astonished at my Servent, they never Saw a black man before, all flocked around him & examind him from top to toe, he Carried on the joke and made himself more turribal than we wished him to doe. Those Indians are not fond of Spirts Licquer. Of any kind.

—William Clark, October 10, 1804. Note that the problems are not just spelling, which would be understandable given the era, even though many other contemporary writers, such as Meriwether Lewis, write basically like we do (where "we" means "us good modern writturs"). Here's another example. Butchery?

The Souex is a Stout bold looking people, & well made, the greater part of make use of Bows & arrows, Some fiew fusees I observe among them, notwith standing they live by the Bow and arrow, they do not Shoot So Well as the Northern Indians the Warriers are Verry much deckerated with Paint Porcupine quils & feathers, large leagins and mockersons, all with buffalow roabs of Different Colours. the Squars wore Peticoats & a White Buffalow roabe with the black hare turned back over their necks and Shoulders.

And I can't help adding one more:

One evidence which the Inds give for believing this place to be the residence of some unusial Sperits is that they frequently discover a large assemblage of Birds about this Mound is in my opinion a Sufficent proof to produce in the Savage Mind a Confident belief of all the properties which they ascribe it.

I'm not disagreeing with the idea that there's a trend toward butchery of words lately. Just that it's not hard to find turribal writing from the past (though Clark's poor writing is one of the more enjoyable things about the journals of Lewis and Clark). Pfly (talk) 05:53, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yep, I acknowledged that earlier. So, why isn't there an "immensely popular explanatory dictionary" of the English language? -- JackofOz (talk) 07:08, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

There are such things. Books like The Elements of Style and Eats, Shoots, and Leaves are widely read, even though they're hated by many linguists. I don't see what you're complaining about. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:17, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. If that was meant to mean "Stop complaining" - I wasn't complaining, just asking. If it was meant to mean that you don't understand what my question was - the two examples you cite are well known among a certain part of the population, but I'd never consider them "immensely popular". In my experience, Russians generally (including poorly schooled people) seem to take a great deal more interest in their language than English speakers do in theirs. That's all. I left this thread a little while ago. I'm really leaving this time. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:42, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Prof. Henry Higgins said something like, "The English language is the greatest gift that we possess." Unfortunately, it seems that too few appreciate it. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:06, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Who's to say what's 'immensely popular' and not? Elements is a book that many people who do writing have on their shelves—it's probably just as common as the MLA handbook. And there's no source in your article verifying that Shvedova's dictionary is "immensely popular", that's just the claim of some random Wikipedia article who wrote it back in 2008. If you have nothing empirical to back up your thoughts and feelings about how much people care about their language, I don't see what you hope to accomplish. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:04, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think that Strunk and White's silly little book is on many writers' shelves. I wonder how many of those actually read it. I'd like to think that few do, and guess that it's given by many parents because, well, they were given it by their parents, and though they couldn't make much sense out of it, it seems the thing to give; and all those terribly famous people say such nice things about it for Amazon's "editorial reviews". (Here's one by somebody recently in the news. Henry Louis Gates is quoted as saying I first read Elements of Style during the summer before I went off to Exeter, and I still direct my students at Harvard to their definition about the difference between 'that' and 'which.' Definition about a difference, Prof Gates? In my idiolect, just one word: "distinction".) ¶ Back to dead-trees dictionaries. None is likely be popular, as [plaintive voice] the young people of today [back to normal voice] have little appetite for removing their rear ends from chairs and walking over to a bookshelf to look something up. Particularly as any general purpose English-English dictionary is too large to hold in one hand as you type with the other: you need substantial desk-space for the thing. Thus the flourishing of various online dictionaries (of wildly varying quality), the degree of whose use is hard to estimate. -- Hoary (talk) 11:24, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

This debate is as old as the trees. For English, it goes back at least as far as Dryden. I think there should be a general knowledge of Standard English, which has been defined as "the consensual formal written usage of educated English speakers". This allows for great latitude, far more than formal French does, for example. If we wish to communicate clearly with one another, surely certain standards should be adhered to. A "disinterested judge" is not the same as an "uninterested judge". "To effect a change" is not the same as "to affect a change". "You like tennis more than I" differs in meaning from "You like tennis more than me". How many millions of misunderstandings can be avoided by adhering to the standard? Rhinoracer (talk) 11:48, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

However, this is an arbitrarily defined "standard". Yes, "disinterested" is not the same as "uninterested", and "more than me" is not the same as "more than I". But in each pair, the former subsumes the latter. You may choose not to use "disinterested" to mean "uninterested" (and I do choose not to use it so), but this meaning is very well established; whether or not "He speaks German better than I" is standard English, "He speaks German better than me" certainly is standard. And I can back up these assertions with a good historical dictionary and a well informed grammar book respectively. As for the charge that either of these divergences from standard formal English leads to unnecessary and undesirable ambiguity, I'd agree that all things being equal yes it may, but any careful writer can rephrase so that almost any literate reader will be untroubled by potential ambiguity. (The exceptions will include those who enjoy bristling at what they perceive as solecisms.) Thus there are unlikely to be "millions" of misunderstandings. -- Hoary (talk) 07:13, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

But, Hoary, there ARE millions of misunderstandings. I know this, speaking as a teacher of ESL and a translator with over 30 years' experience. Rhinoracer (talk) 08:04, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

And the people to whom I refer are not "careful writers". Anything but. That's my very point. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:12, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

All right, Rhinoracer; for the sake of argument, I'll grant that you're correct: that such substandard (?) English as the use of "disinterested" to mean "uninterested" does indeed lead to a total of millions of misunderstandings. Now the problem: this use is not substandard. Or it's only substandard if you adopt what to me seems a perverse understanding of "standard". See this. And there's nothing unidiomatic or ungrammatical about "You love tennis more than me" (where both parties are male, accurately known to each other as conventionally hetero, and conventionally nervous about admitting to even platonic "love"). See this. ¶ Well, we've reached the top of this page. Soon this conversation will be consigned to oblivion. After some slightly regrettable expostulations it has settled down to a most civilized conversation, and if somebody here would like to copy it to and continue it on a subpage of their own talk page, I'd be happy to continue there. -- Hoary (talk) 10:22, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Wrestling Fora

What is caw?

What is t2?174.3.110.93 (talk) 01:17, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I think CAW means "Create A Wrestler" and refers to computer games where you can create a custom character.83.100.251.196 (talk) 01:35, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Possibly "I thought t2" means "I thought that too" but I'm not sure.83.100.251.196 (talk) 01:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Assassination

Comparing the two versions here, which is more appropriate to say? I wouldn't think it makes sense to say that somebody died after being assassinated - they died because they were assassinated. I don't really know! Grsz¹¹ 03:48, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, the second version is better. Once you're assassinated, you're already dead. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:58, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

If we said somebody was assasinated and then died, we would say Reagan was assassinated but didn't die, and that doesn't happen. Grsz¹¹ 04:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The outcome matters. To avoid ambiguity, I'd write: Reagan was the target of a shooter in an attempted assassination. Reinhard Heydrich was shot by assassins and died a week later of his wounds (i.e. they did kill him, just not outright). -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:44, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

There are also ambiguous cases, where an assassination attempt was made, but the wound was minor and the target could have been saved had they received competent medical care. Unfortunately, the quacks they went to then killed the target. So, was this an assassination, medical malpractice, or both ? StuRat (talk) 21:02, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Whether any particular case was an example of malpractice is not that relevant to the issue here. We can certainly say that McKinley was assassinated. But we cannot say he was "assassinated on 5 September", because that implies he died the same day, which is not the case. We have to use some formulation such as "He was shot on 5 September and died of his wounds on 14 September". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:23, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

William Jay Gaynor, Mayor of New York from 1910 to 1913, was shot by a discharged city worker early in his four-year term (Aug. 1910), and died from the effects on a recuperative sea-cruise less than six months before its end (Sept. 1913). The shooting wasn't political in the sense of having a clear political end, so assassination may or may not be the best term for the crime. Assassination was attempted, but while unsuccessful in the short run, eventually killed the man, so you can't really say it was unsuccessful, either. It wouldn't be wrong to say that Mayor Gaynor was assassinated. I don't know if Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace ultimately died from the shots fired by Arthur Bremer for political reasons during the 1972 Democratic presidential primary campaign, but if so one could argue he was assassinated, though he survived the shooting by many years. —— Shakescene (talk) 21:48, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Andy Warhol's shooting in 1968 may have contributed to his death in 1987. Warhol nearly outlived his "assassin" -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Letters of marque

Would I be issued "a letter of marque" or "(a) letters of marque"? I thought it was the latter—that "letters of marque" referred to one or many—on analogy with letters patent (which I may also be wrong about). Our article seems to indicate I am incorrect. ÷seresin 04:10, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Must resist temptation... I've always heard/read 'letter of marque' when talking about one document. For what it's worth, the entry in my Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea has it as singular, and one of Patrick O'Brian's books was entitled The Letter of Marque, which I suppose would have been changed if it had been wrong. AlexiusHoratius 04:40, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The expression in Article One of the United States Constitution is "letters of marque and reprisal", which suggests plural usage in that context - that is, Congress wouldn't be restricted to issue just one such letter. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 09:00, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

It can certainly be used as plural, neither one is really wrong - just depends on the situation. You could say 'Captain so-and-so was granted a letter of marque' or 'during the war, the king granted letters of marque' or even 'Captain so-and-so held letters of marque' even if only speaking about one person. What I think would be wrong would be 'a letters of marque' and the idea that it can't be used in the singular. AlexiusHoratius 16:23, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Ç

Are there any languages which have both the letter “ç” and the sound [ç]? --88.76.254.9 (talk) 06:20, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, French has the letter "ç" and colloquial French often puts a [ç] sound at the ends of words ending in /i/ (e.g. oui as [wiç]. Or did you mean, are there any languages where the letter "ç" stands for the sound [ç]? I don't know of any languages where it does. +Angr 08:58, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

It occurs to me Manx has both the letter "ç" and the sound [ç] as a full-fledged phoneme (unlike French), but <ç> is not the letter that corresponds to /ç/. <ç> is used only in the digraph <çh>, which stands for /tʃ/, while /ç/ is spelled <ch> or <gh>. +Angr 10:00, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Older transliterations of Sanskrit use 'ç' rather than 'ś' for a sound which is at least kinda similar to [ç]. —Tamfang (talk) 04:02, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Unusual palatalized consonants

Are there any languages which have the sound [hʲ]? --88.76.254.9 (talk) 09:32, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

There are dialects of Irish that have been analyzed as having it, but it isn't clear to me that it's really phonetically distinct from [h] in some environments and from [ç] in others (and both /h/ and /ç/ are definitely phonemes of Irish). Put another way, Irish might have /hʲ/ as a phoneme distinct from /h/ and /ç/, but if so, its surface realizations seem to always overlap with those of /h/ and /ç/. +Angr 09:57, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if this and the one above are related to the "why can't x be a y word?" questions? --TammyMoet (talk) 16:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd AGF in the absence of evidence. +Angr 19:59, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

FWIW: IPs (as all previous questions mentioned by Tammy) are all Nordrhein Westfalen / Germany based. The last two questions seem valid. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Also consider what [hʲ] means phonetically and how it's distinct from [ç] or [j̊] (a voiceless [j]).

Often, [h] is articulatorily placeless (rather than pronounced with restriction at the glottis). If we consider [ʲ] to mean a secondary articulation (i.e. one weaker than another "primary" articulation) at the hard palate then [hʲ] is nonsensical and [j̊] would be more accurate.

However, there are languages where [h] is regularly pronounced with real glottal frication. If there is simultaneous weaker articulation at the hard palate, then [hʲ] would be accurate over [j̊] or [ç]. Because the distinction is subtle, possibly too subtle for the human ear to perceive, it's possible that some language or language or dialect has [hʲ] and [j̊] in free variation but, as Angr implied above, phonological concerns can easily take over so that the sound is considered a palatalized /h/ or a voiceless /j/ because of its relationship to other sounds and not because of its phonetic reality. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:39, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Are there any languages which have the sound [wʲ]? --88.77.234.55 (talk) 07:06, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I've been told Polish has it in loanwords. The difference between [wʲ] and [ɥ] is the same as the difference between [kʲ] and [c]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:27, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I.e., there is none? +Angr 16:17, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

It's my understanding that palatalized velar consonants are pronounced with a more forward articulation (rather than with secondary palatal restriction since the tongue dorsum is used for both palatal and velar articulations and thus can't be in two places at once) so that [k̟] and [kʲ] both indicate a single articulation somewhere between [k] and [c] (i.e. pre-velar).

I don't know of any languages that contrast /kʲ/ and /c/, though Czech might contrast /c/ with an allophonically palatalized /k/ before /iː/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:11, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Czech does not palatalize [k] before [iː] (or any consonant before any vowel, for that matter). Furthermore, Czech [c] is almost alveo-palatal; in other words, the difference between [kʲ] and [c] is essentially that the latter is used in IPA as a cover symbol for a wider range of articulation places than the former. — Emil J. 16:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

So then Czech /c/ might be more accurately rendered [t̠ʲ].

I find it surprising that there's no palatalization before /iː/ in Czech; even English does this. Are you sure there isn't a teensy bit of palatalization? Just an eensy weensy smidge? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:59, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The pronunciation of every sound is naturally modified by the sounds in its vicinity, this is forced by the fact that movements of human tongue and other active articulatory organs are continuous. However, such an influence of neighbouring [i] is not what the term palatalization normally means. Palatalization is only secondary articulation on the palate which is stronger than whatever is forced on the sound by its phonetical context, otherwise the term would be meaningless, there would be no distinction between [k] and [kʲ]. — Emil J. 15:50, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

While there are degrees of palatalization, I don't see why the common effect that [i] has on [k] can't be described as palatalization. Crosslinguistically, the tendency is for the contrast between plain and palatalized consonants to neutralize before [i]

Even if what you say is true (I wouldn't know, I have very little formal training in phonetics), I suspect that the distinction between normal phonetic context and "stronger" palatalization is not clear-cut. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:51, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Irish makes a phonemic distinction between /k/ and /c/ (or /kʲ/ depending on who's doing the reporting) which is still robust before /i/. But it's bolstered phonetically by the presence of a velar off-glide after the non-palatalized sounds: phonemic /ki:/ surfaces as something like [k^ɰi:]. Non-native speakers often interpret this offglide as ʷ and may actually say [kʷi:] though in fact there should be no rounding of the lips. +Angr 06:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Russian has a similar situation; these exceptions actually reinforce my point. To maintain a distinction between /k/ and /c/ before /i/, something other than palatalization needs to come to play. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)