Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 July 9

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July 9

Books entirely in IPA

Are there books in English or other languages printed entirely in the International Phonetic Alphabet? I've seen some time ago some children's English books in the IPA (as I can hardly remember these were Winnie the Pooh or Alice in Wonderland or something) but now I can't find them.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:24, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you certain that those children's books were not in the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA)?

—Wavelength (talk) 04:31, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Definitely not. These were freshly printed, a sort of typographic experiment, with the standard English IPA transcription (maybe slightly simplified, I'm not sure), there were even used capital letters as well as standard punctuation.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:07, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

The closest thing I can think of is the journal Le Maître phonétique, which I learned about on this blog post. Lesgles (talk) 13:48, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe Evertype (talk · contribs) is working on an IPA edition of Alice in Wonderland, but I can't find it listed at his company's homepage, so I guess it hasn't been released yet. You could ask him for more details. Winnie-the-Pooh is still under copyright, so you would need permission from Walt Disney to publish that in IPA. Angr (talk) 20:58, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Walt Disney??86.156.86.12 (talk) 00:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Disney owns the copyright - see this article. Milne sold it to Stephen Slesinger in 1930, and his widow sold it to Disney in 1961. Tevildo (talk) 01:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

What in the world would be the point of making readers suffer through the author's choice of vowel allophones? God forbid the Author is from Buffalo NY, or Bayonne NJ. Imagine reading an entire book in a strict notation of Bill Clinton. Ah feel yoah pain. μηδείς (talk) 02:04, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Bingo! Yes, I've just found with Google the post about this book at John Wells's blog. Exactly this I've seen. I'm not sure whether it wasn't at Everson's site and I've seen it at Wells's or Everson later deleted the presentation of the book from his site. Though it seems it is the only book in the English IPA transcription at all.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

By the way, there was a curious book entirely written in an IPA predecessor: The essentials of phonetics by Alexander John Ellis. Exactly this was the reason for opening the topic.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:14, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

You can read text in the Shavian alphabet at http://shavian.weebly.com/index.html.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:22, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. I knew about this system, but I've never seen any texts in it. Looks like some alien alphabet from space-fiction. I hope it will be used for English in the future. :) --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 03:05, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I have read the Wells blog post, and anyone who expected me to read that RP version of Alice in phonetic IPA would have to pay me more than they would if they wanted me to read it in Spanish. μηδείς (talk) 03:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm preparing an edition of Alice in IPA. Also one in Unifon, in Shavian, in Ewellic, and in Deseret. :-) Shavian and Ewellic are nearly ready for publication; the others are still being edited. -- Evertype·✆ 08:30, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Don't you want to simplify and rhoticise your transcription? I believe length marks are redundant here. And well, leaving all /r/s will be more convenient for rhotic speakers. Non-rhotickers can simply give up postvocalic /r/s and lengthen previous vowels in their mind while reading.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:20, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

He probably wants to imitate Lewis Carroll's accent as closely as possible. If he wants to do a book in rhotic IPA, it should be something by an North American or Scottish or Irish author. Also, RP in IPA is well documented and highly standardized so it's comparatively easy to decide what's "right" in RP. Angr (talk) 18:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

It's a phonetic, rather than a phonemic transcription, which would be far less annoying. With practice it would become much easier, but at this point, my reading the phonetic transcription comes out sounding like someone mocking an Englishman who's had a stroke. μηδείς (talk) 19:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Being fair, it is very common quantitative-qualitative phonemic transcription widely accepted in modern English dictionaries. For learners who acquainted to it this book won't be difficult to read, however it will for English speakers outside of England (or its South-East, strictly speaking). Frankly, I don't clearly understand what for this book is printed. I thought it's an experiment for writing English phonemically instead of its horrible spelling, but it seems it isn't. Learner's dictionary transcription is not so convenient for writing and reading hole books in English, it's a little redundant as I've already said.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:00, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

It is most definitely a phonetic, not a phonemic transcription. A phonemic transcription, if read by an RP speaker would produce the same result, but not if read by a Northerner or an American. μηδείς (talk) 17:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Different accents/dialects have different phonemic sets. Caught and court in RP and other non-rhotic accents both has three phonemes, but three and four respectively in GA and rhotics. Some have no /ɔː/, some have no /ʌ/, many have different mergers and splits etc. But still it is possible to write with inter-dialect notation. Everson's version of Alice is in RP phonemic transcription. If it were in phonetic one it will have three allophones of voiceless stops ([p, pʰ, p̚ ]), different degrees of length ([iː iˑ ɪˑ]), much more unstressed vowel allophones etc.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 01:07, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Again it is phonetic because he gives specific off-glides of long vowels, rather than just indicating them as long, when all dialects agree on the long vowel phoneme (for example, long 'o' can be /ou/ or /o:/ or /eu/) but differ phonetically in how they express it. As for aspiration, it's pretty much the same everywhere, so he doesn't give a narrow transcription of that trait. As for differing rhyme sets in the 'a' vowels, that is easily handled by using more phoneme symbols than may exist in any one dialect, and telling people to ignore the difference between say, /a:/ and /ar/ if they don't have one. (I.e., let them treat those symbols as homophones if they like.) μηδείς (talk) 18:25, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Not a book, but David Madore's webpage has IPA versions of The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité. Gabbe (talk) 06:56, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

apparition vs. appearance

Is the word "apparition" just a fancy term for "appearance"? How does this word come to be? And why are there two nouns for the infinitive verb "to appear"? Below, I use the terms in sentences.

• The newspaper claims that there have been UFO apparitions in the neighborhood.
• The newspaper claims that there have been UFO appearances in the neighborhood.

Sneazy (talk) 00:32, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

"apparition" is usually used for things that are ghostly, supernatural, etc. 86.146.104.35 (talk) 00:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Such as claimed apparitions of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, etc, which are said to just materialise out of nowhere, and later dematerialise just as mysteriously. Whereas, an entertainer who makes an "appearance" at a shopping mall can be seen quite plainly walking onto the stage. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 00:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

An apparition is an appearance out of nowhere, an appearance can mean that, or how one looks at the moment. Does the OP lack a dictionary? μηδείς (talk) 02:00, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I am just going to assume that the two terms can be used interchangeably. So far, no one has complained about my usage of the two terms in the two above sentences. Sneazy (talk) 02:09, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, they can't really be used interchangeably, but "UFO apparitions" will probably fly heh heh heh because UFOs are thought of as being in the same rough category as the supernatural, in spite of the fact that there's nothing inherently supernatural about the notion of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. --Trovatore (talk) 02:17, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

No, they can't be used interchangeably in all contexts. See [1] and [2]. I don't think I've heard of a UFO apparition; probably a "sighting". -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 02:16, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

By all means, I do not see how any of us should prevent the OP from using the terms interchangeably, as he threatens to. μηδείς (talk) 02:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

They are not interchangeable,[3] although they come from the same Latin root. Basically "apparition" is a subset of "appearance", as in "unexpected or startling appearance". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:42, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall hearing the term "apparition" used for UFO's. The term "sighting" is what I would expect to hear. Although a UFO could be spooky too. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:44, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

These two nouns (wikt:apparition and wikt:appearance) can be compared with two other nouns (wikt:specter and wikt:spectacle).

—Wavelength (talk) 19:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

IPA questions

1. I am from southern England, and I pronounce "fast" as fɑːst, judging by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_for_English. How is the characteristic US pronuncation rendered in IPA?

2. In that table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_for_English, the vowel (+"r") of "north", "born" and "war" is presented as different from that in "force", "boar" and "more". In which version(s) of English is there any difference between those? 86.146.104.35 (talk) 00:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Fast is almost universally /fæst/ in the US, but see Northern cities vowel shift and listen to John Goodman's pronunciation of the /æ/ vowel when he does his local as in The Big Lebowski.

According to my mapping of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_for_English, /fæst/ is the way it is pronounced in northern England, but to me that sounds quite distinct from the US pronunciation, so I had discounted that. To me, the US version sounds more like fɛjəst -- but really, as I say. I don't know how to write it. 86.146.104.35 (talk) 02:35, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

In most of northern England (and Wales), the vowel is just /a/ not /æ/. Dbfirs 07:38, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

How can I best understand the the difference between /a/ and /æ/? 86.128.6.65 (talk) 11:22, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The vowels of trap and cat are phonemically /æ/ in General American and Received Pronunciation. The situation is more complex with /a/. In General American it is the phoneme found in father for those who don't have the cot-caught merger. (For those Americans who don't merge the vowels of hotdog, the first is /a/ and the second is /ɔ/. But those who merge them may say /hatdag/ (Midwestern) or /hɔtdɔg/ (Boston).) The British treat these vowels differently. In strict phonetic transcriptions, most English 'a' vowels are off center from the /a/ found in continental languages. But broadly speaking, in American and British you can think of /æ/ as the vowel of cat, and /a/ as a vowel close to that of father. We have plenty of British here versed in linguistics, they may be better at commenting here than I am. μηδείς (talk) 18:56, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I have to say, I can't visualise any difference between the vowel in my (southern English) pronunciation of trap or cat and the northern English pronunciation of fast, both of which are quite distinct from my pronunciation of father. 86.128.6.65 (talk) 19:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The vowel in "father" is long (/a:/ in northern English and Australian). /a/ is just the short version of this (as in northern trap, cat and fast) though some older northern dialects do pronounce "father" as /faðə/ (short a) instead of the more general /fa:ðə/. Dbfirs 21:10, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you saying the difference is only one of length? Is there no example of /æ/ in RP or British English in general? What dialect does IP 86 speak? μηδείς (talk) 21:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but I was writing about northern English, not RP (or IP 86's accent) which uses /æ/. Whenever I read pronunciations, I mentally convert /æ/ to /a/ for my local pronunciation in which /æ/ would sound foreign. Dbfirs 21:42, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The girl on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMPgtHIjHQg is from Liverpool (as she says, she does not have a very strong accent compared to some Liverpudlians). At 3:00 she says the words "bath", "grass" and "dance", which in the UK tend to follow the same pattern as "fast". To me, those vowels sound like I say "cat" or "trap" (/æ/), and not much like a short version of how I say "father", so I am still kind of confused. I think I'm quite poor at identifying differences in speech sounds, though, so am I mishearing it? 86.128.6.65 (talk) 23:09, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Scouse has some idiosyncrasies that are not shared by most of the remainder of northern England. I know only the older versions of Scouse, so I can't comment further. ( ... from the linked article: "The Scouse accent of the early 21st century is markedly different in certain respects from that of earlier decades.") Dbfirs 05:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

That girl is not a scouser at all. She is what we scousers call, a 'woollyback'. I am a scouser, and her accent nowhere near resembles mine. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:48, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Except for a few tell-tales, and her very obvious use of /a/ for /æ/ (e.g., rhyming and with wand), she could almost pass for American, especially with her very Americanized mannerisms. Odd she got the woodlouse question correct (we call them rolly-pollies (with long o/os)) then confused the critter with an earwig. Daddy-long-legs is also the correct American term for a harvestman but her stories about their venom and lifespan are old wives' tales. μηδείς (talk) 02:04, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

To get back to the point, what IPA vowel sound does she use for "bath", "grass" and "dance"? 81.159.105.254 (talk) 12:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

She's using either an /a/, or maybe an /ɑ/ which is a more back version of that vowel. μηδείς (talk) 18:13, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

So it's definitely not /æ/? I don't think my ear can distinguish the difference... 81.159.105.254 (talk) 20:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Northern UK English does not have /æ/. We use /a/ or /ɑ/, as Medeis says. It almost verges on /ʌ/ in some cases. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 06:49, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

English language in England seems to disagree, saying:

In general, Southern English accents are distinguished from Northern English accents primarily by not using the short a in words such as "bath". In the south-east, the broad A is normally used before a /f/, /s/ or /θ/: words such as "cast" and "bath" are pronounced /kɑːst/, /bɑːθ/ rather than /kæst/, /bæθ/. This sometimes occurs before /nd/: it is used in "command" and "demand" but not in "brand" or "grand".

81.159.104.78 (talk) 13:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

That section of the article seems to be comparing the south-east with RP. The northern short "a" is /a/ or /ɑ/ as mentioned above. Dbfirs 16:19, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

So what accent do you think it is saying has /kæst/, /bæθ/? 81.159.104.78 (talk) 00:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

RP (excluding south-east). (I must listen to Lilibet more carefully!) Dbfirs 06:37, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

According to Received_Pronunciation#The_BATH_vowel, there is some debate about whether /bæθ/ etc. can be allowed as an alternative to /ɑː/ in RP. However, when making a general distinction between RP and other varieties of English, it would be very strange to characterise RP as using /bæθ/ etc. It don't think that's what English language in England can be saying. The only interpretation that maks any sense to me is the one I originally assumed, i.e. that northern English uses /bæθ/ etc. 86.146.106.166 (talk) 11:34, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think you might be correct, though the OED does allow /bæθ/ as an alternative, presumably for RP. I wonder who uses /æ/ (other than Americans). What does it sound like in a British version? How does it differ from the standard northern English /a/? The article to which you link quotes Malcolm Petyt. I'll see him tomorrow, so I'll ask him. Dbfirs 21:23, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

According to the trap=bath split article, /bæθ/ would be expected in Ireland. μηδείς (talk) 21:42, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I asked Malcolm (our cited expert) today, and he confirmed that /æ/ is the old RP pronunciation from fifty years ago. He said that very few in the UK still use it. RP speakers in the south adopt the south-eastern /ɑː/ and northern RP speakers often make do with their native /ɑ/. Dbfirs 18:18, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Strange. Does he mean that /æ/ is the old RP pronunciation for speakers from southern England? I can't imagine that at all. Also, do you (or anyone else) have any hints about how I can differentiate /æ/ from /ɑ/? 86.169.185.180 (talk) 01:06, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

It's exhausting listening to recordings trying to spot "bath"-type words! I think "last" is in the same family, though, and at 4:15 here you can hear Queen Elizabeth in 1957 saying /lɑːst/, as expected. It would simply be weird if she said /læst/ there. 86.169.185.180 (talk) 01:16, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, she definitely uses /ɑː/ there. Malcolm did reproduce the (perhaps older?) RP /æ/ for me, but I'm not sure whether I can pronounce it myself. I don't speak true RP myself (I didn't learn it until I was in my late teens), and I'm not at all expert at IPA, in fact I struggle to distinguish the subtleties, so perhaps someone else can advise? Some of the American pronunciations of /æ/ in Wiktionary sound more like /ɑ/ to me. Is there a pondian difference in interpretation? Dbfirs 07:27, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the /fɛjəst/ you mention is exactly the vowel found in the NCVS I mentioned John Goodman having (more at /fɛəst/ and even higher in some dialects). You will especially notice it since it stands out. Even in my native dialect it is tensed; see especiallyTrap-bath_split#Trap.E2.80.93bath_split re Philadelphia. But the underlying and unmarked American pronunciation is /fæst/; a three-way distinction between /fæst/, /faðər/, /fɔt/ ("fast", "father", "fought"). How those vowels split, shift, and merge will tell you where an American originates. μηδείς (talk) 03:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

For the 2nd see the map.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:57, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

As Medeis indicates, there isn't really a single American pronunciation of the vowel in fast. News announcers and educated people speaking carefully will produce something like [æ], but in practice most people pronounce a diphthong or even a triphthong, which varies considerably by region. Marco polo (talk) 17:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Americans might pronounce the a in "fast" different regionally, but they should typically rhyme it with cast, aghast, last, mast, Nast, past, passed, sassed, vast, etc. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:56, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Those of us who have the Philadelphia version of the trap-bath split do not rhyme the lax vowel in sassed with the tense vowel in the other words you mentioned. μηδείς (talk) 17:51, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

verb conjugation?

Which of the following is correct, or are both correct, or is it a difference in American and British English?

There have not been any reports..."

There has not been any reports...”
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jtamad (talk • contribs) 06:04, 9 July 2013

Verbs must agree in number with their subjects, so it can only be "There have not ...". -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 06:10, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Admittedly, the waters have been very muddied by people appending "there's" to singular and plural subjects alike. It's not that hard to say "there are" when it's plural, really. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 06:12, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

With present-tense "be", "there's" is now almost universally the predominant form in spoken colloquial English – and not surprisingly so, because it's just the final logical consequence of the long-term syntactic reanalysis according to which the word "there", and not the following NP, is really the syntactic subject of the existential construction. But with perfect constructions such as "have been", that trend is nowhere near as strong, and the presence of negation, like in the OP's example, would further reduce the likelihood of a singular form, because it blocks contraction to "there's been". Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:40, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

"There's not been any reports" sounds perfectly natural to me... Though I'd probably use "There haven't been any reports" if contracting, or "There have not been any reports" if not. MChesterMC (talk) 08:23, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you asking "What do native speakers do?" or "What do educated native speakers consider correct?"? If you are asking the first question, then you can get away with your second sentence on either side of the Atlantic if you want to sound uneducated, but your first sentence sounds more natural. If you are asking the second question, only your first sentence is considered correct. Marco polo (talk) 16:24, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I find myself saying things like "There's apples in the fridge" not because I'm uneducated (I'm not) but just because as a rhotic speaker I seem to have a constraint against geminate [ɹ]: *[ðɛɹɹ] is ill-formed, and *[ðɛɹəɹ] is insufficiently contracted as it's more than one syllable, so the optimal output for there're is [ðɛɹz]. But I wouldn't do it before not, because there aren't is available as an option. Angr (talk) 18:12, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting, I do say there're all the time, where I have two syllabic /r/s in a row, which rhymes with how I say error. I had a co-worker once who had the marry-merry-Mary merger. She just about fell out of her seat when she heard me tell a client "/ð'r̩r̩ 'r̩r̩z/ in your order." At first she couldn't figure out what I had said. Instead of "th're're err'rs" with four syllabic /r/s in a row, she insisted I say "their are air ores". I told her to go back to South Dakota. μηδείς (talk) 01:56, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

However, so as not to confuse the questioner, educated English speakers (other than linguists) would consider "There has not been any reports" to be grammatically "incorrect". Don't you agree, Angr? I don't think it is fair to questioners who are probably learning English and who ask for a prescriptive judgment of grammar to respond that a usage is correct because some native speakers produce it, when we know full well that an English-language learner adopting that usage will be found amiss by educated native speakers who aren't linguists. Marco polo (talk) 18:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree: "There has not been any reports" is not standard English and I would not recommend a learner to use it in either speech or writing. But don't be surprised if you hear native speakers say something similar anyway. (I do think it's important for learners to learn the standard language, but it's also important for them to be aware of things they may hear from native speakers that they probably shouldn't imitate, at least at first.) Angr (talk) 18:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep. It's probably not a good idea to get into designations like "educated", which carry classist/elitist connotations. "Standard" vs "non-standard" (i.e. the way it's usually said) is more to the point - and "There has not been any reports" is non-standard, both from descriptive and prescriptive viewpoints. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 00:10, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

/ʌ/ for the English Northerners

I know that in the north of England there is no /ʌ/, but if Northerners want to speak or imitate RP, what vowel will they produce? Does this difficult for them? Does they substitute it for a vowel known and accustomed to them?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm a Southerner, so I can and do say strut, mud, dull and gun, but when Northerners try to imitate my speech they generally substitute /æ/. To them I apparently pronounce buck (as in a male deer) and back as the same, whereas I hear them pronounce buck and book as the same (except for some Northerners (or possibly north-midlanders) from around Stoke, who pronounce book and cookie with a long 'oo', as in 'hoot'). - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

If I may just interject as a Northerner - we'd probably transcribe your saying "the back of a buck" as "the beck of a back". The Southern vowels are distinct, just different to the ones we'd use. Tevildo (talk) 22:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the Great Vowel Shift hasn't fully happened yet in some parts of the north, and I think I've detected a further shift in some southern pronunciations within my lifetime, though I'm not sure if some are just local affectations or over-corrections by northerners who've moved south. I've heard the word "book" pronounced with four or five different vowels. Dbfirs 23:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

As I know their /æ/ is more central-lowered [a~ä]. Then their RP-imitated buck should resemble many continental European accents with buck [bäk], though back is usually [bɛk] there in the Continent and back-buck merger doesn't appear but rather beck-back. Am I right?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 10:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Many Northern accents do use the /ʌ/ for words with the "ar", car, part, mart, etc. -- Q Chris (talk) 10:22, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I've met Northerners who can produce /ʌ/ quite correctly for the purpose of affecting an RP or other Southern-England accent and don't merge it with any of their existing phonemes. Just because a sound isn't part of one's native phoneme inventory doesn't mean one is incapable of learning it. Angr (talk) 18:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Don't Northern speakers still have /ɘ/ in reduced syllables? How do they say unstressed "a" and "the"? μηδείς (talk) 19:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, some of us northerners, after fifty years of practice, can reproduce /ʌ/ quite correctly when speaking to southerners (to make our speech more easily understood), though I certainly don't use it for "ar" words. I'm not sure whether I use /ɘ/ or a normal schwa (/ə/) for unstressed "a" and "the". Is there anywhere that I can hear the difference? Dbfirs 20:50, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I meant to use the normal schwa there. I find some of the IPA characters hard to distinguish unless I magnify the screen. μηδείς (talk) 21:04, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

That's a relief! I thought you were asking about something too subtle for my hearing to distinguish! Yes, we use the normal schwa. Dbfirs 21:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Q Chris, do you really mean mid back [ʌ]? Isn't their "a" before "r" more low central [ä] quite equal to their cat, bat etc?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:39, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

You are right - I got confused! -- Q Chris (talk) 07:42, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Help with a French translation

Over at Wiktionary's entry on the French word bernard l'ermite ("hermit crab") I've added the following quote: Il y a un exemple qui me poursuit, sur lequel je reviens le plus volontiers, car je l’estime de nature à prêter grandement à réfléchir : c’est l’exemple du bernard-l’ermite. I translated it "There is an example that pursues me, to which I return all the more willingly because I esteem it for the thoughts it leads me to: this is the example of the hermit crab", but I'm not at all sure that's right. In particular, I'm not at all sure I've understood car je l’estime de nature à prêter grandement à réfléchir correctly. Can anyone help me figure out what it means, please? Angr (talk) 20:09, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm: something like "There is an example that haunts me (I would choose "haunt" here because the whole text just emits a certain urgency, a reverence to the crab in particular and nature in general), and to which I return most willingly, because I esteem it lends itself to be contemplated upon: this is the example of the hermit crab." I admit my English sounds a bit awkward, but it is an older text I presume. Lectonar (talk) 20:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Lectonar! Yes, the text is from 1932. Angr (talk) 20:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the last part could be translated a bit better, but texts like this do not lend themselves to literal translation....writing style has changed. And: it was nice talking to you here, directly, after such a long time since the meeting in Berlin..... Lectonar (talk) 20:45, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I would go with the slightly different: There is an example that haunts me, and to which I return most willingly, for I esteem it lends itself to great contemplation: it is the example of the hermit crab. Contemplation could also be reflection. Or you could rework the phrase a bit to use the word pondering, it lends itself greatly to pondering but that sounds a bit awry to me. 64.201.173.145 (talk) 21:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, after further consideration, I think that it should be for I deem it lends itself to - esteem is not an appropriate translation here, as "j'estime" means something between "I estimate" and "I esteem" (an esteemed estimate). Deem conveys the meaning well and is of a similar level of language. -The poster generally known as 64.201.173.145 198.84.198.188 (talk) 21:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

You're right; esteem in that sense is obsolete. I changed it to deem; both you and Lectonar are acknowledged in the page history. Angr (talk) 21:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Isn't "deem" a bit, well, officious? To me, it's equivalent to saying "It is so, because I say so". Whereas, the writer is merely expressing his opinion. Wouldn't "consider" or "believe" be better choices? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Deem means to form or hold an opinion - it can also mean to judge, either in the sense of exercising one's judgement, or in some cases to pass a sentence ("I deem you unworthy" can be made to sound pretty final), but that's not the primary meaning of the word. It also has a slightly archaic feel and belongs in the same register as "j'estime", IMHO. I think consider and believe are valid yet poor choices, but there are other valid translations: "I find it lends itself" would be the simplest. I think "deem" gives a similar feel to me in both French and English, so that's why I like it best, but it may be different for others. 198.84.198.188 (talk) 05:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree with IP198's reasoning. The original French author had other simpler verb options he chose not to use. μηδείς (talk) 17:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I deem a majority of two to overrule a majority of one. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:24, 12 July 2013 (UTC)