Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 October 4

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October 4

Lingua Franca

Can English be considered the Lingua Franca for business in the U.S.? Or is there a better term for this? A member of a online forum that I moderate posted a thread about how none of the staff besides the manager at a McDonald's spoke English and I thought that Lingua Franca might apply in this instance. As he is in the U.S., he expected the staff to be fluent in English. Yes, I know we don't have a national language here in the States, but I think it's logical that a non-ethnic based business would do business in the language which a majority of the population speaks. And this wasn't in the southwest, it was in Maryland. As far as I can see it would be a stretch for the definition of the term, so is there a better term? Dismas|^(talk) 01:51, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

You're not the only one trying to figure out what to call the relationship between the U.S. and the English language. Last year, the US Senate approved two amendments to the immigration-reform bill, one of which declared English to be the "national" language, and the other saying English was the "common and unifying" language of the country. Neither language would have had any substantive impact on the law, and the bill didn't pass anyway. -- Mwalcoff 02:11, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Cf. English-only movement.--K.C. Tang 02:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd say English is the only lingua franca for business in the US. 'Common language', mentioned by Mwalcoff, describes a language which the members of a group of people all share, although some or all of them have a different mother tongue, so you'd need to be careful in using it. When the forum member you mention in your question wrote "none of the staff besides the manager at a McDonald's spoke English", writing about a McDonald's in Maryland, I find it hard to take that literally. There's not too much of a problem with back-room staff who speak no English, so long as there's someone around who talks their language, but I should have thought McDonald's in Maryland would look foolish if English speakers couldn't be understood by all but one of the staff. Could the writer have meant that all the staff except the manager had some other language as their first language? Xn4 02:40, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

In his retelling of the story he stated that he was forced to use the number of the meal that he wanted in order to be understood by the clerk. He eludes to the idea that he first tried ordering using the specific names of the items that he wanted but eventually broke down to just the number and a simple selection of sauce. He went on to say that he lost something in the parking lot which must have slipped out of his pocket but that he went through three people trying to explain that he was asking if anyone had turned it in. The third was the manager and even the manager barely understood him. Thanks for the response. It seems that "lingua franca" would be the best term in this case. I didn't want to turn this into a political debate about the use of English in the U.S. but thought that the details helped in asking my question. Dismas|^(talk) 08:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think lingua franca is appropriate in this case. Lingua francas (linguae francae?) are used among multiple groups of people who do not share a native language. It makes sense to talk about English as a lingua franca in international contexts, but within the US, English is just the majority language, and there's only one major minority language. --Alivemajor 08:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

If he couldn't make himself understood in English, then it wasn't acting as a lingua franca! A lingua franca is one that is intelligible to all the people concerned (but not their fist language). SaundersW 11:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but why don't you just use the standard term, that english is the de facto national language of America? That's what we say about Swedish in Sweden (it's not recognized as the official language, but in reality, it is). Seems to me to be pretty obvious. --Oskar 15:49, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Syllable division signs in IPA

The IPA has a sign for indicating the division between syllables, but most pronunciation examples on Wikipedia don't use it. Is there any guidance as to whether use of this sign is required or optional? --rossb 10:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not aware of such a symbol. Could you tell me how it's like?--K.C. Tang 14:35, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

See IPA chart for English and look at the box at the bottom "IPA: Other symbols used in transcription of English pronunciation". -Andrew c ^[talk] 14:53, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The symbol is the period (full stop), and its use is optional. It's generally only used when the syllable boundaries within a form are important to the discussion at hand. —Angr 15:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Right, but I think I've seen more than several articles where there were unnecessary periods. --Kjoonlee 19:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me I've seen another symbol, possibly '$', used to mean "syllable boundary" (where '#' means "word boundary") in sound-change rules. —Tamfang 19:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Right, but when you're only dealing with transcriptions, we don't use those symbols or their syntax. --Kjoonlee 20:17, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Stress (American English)

I'm a little confused with stress. I read my text book and the article for stress. What exactly is it in layman's terms? My text book gives an example: Confused and that the CONfuse part is stressed. --Agester 17:54, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

In layman's terms, stress is extra emphasis put on certain syllables of words that have more than one syllable. If you compare the noun "a project" and the verb "to project" you can hear that the noun puts more emphasis on the first syllable--"a PROJect", while the verb puts more emphasis on the second syllable--"to proJECT". (With your example "confused", the stress is on the second syllable, "conFUSED". Does that help, or should I get more technical? —Angr 18:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but I'll give it a go. The vowel in a stressed syllable gets its full value. A vowel in an unstressed syllable is a schwa. An example is the word "defense" in its two common pronunciations, (duh-FENSS) [I'm using "uh" for a schwa], as it is pronounced in "self-defense", and (DEE-fenss), as it is pronounced by redneck football fans. The first has only one stressed syllable, "fence". The second has primary stress on "de" and secondary stress on "fence". Note that the vowel also gets its full value in a syllable with secondary stress. I can't imagine where you got "CONfuse". Boss Hogg might say it like that, though.

Hey! Not everyone who uses difɛns is a redneck! ¿SFGiДnts! ^{¿Complain! ¿Analyze! ¿Review!} 03:58, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

This is the layman's idea of stress. There is another concept to do with stress that I've heard of but know nothing about. --Milkbreath 18:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I would add that, in American English (and perhaps other variaties of English), the vowel in the stressed syllable is typically pronounced for longer and at a higher pitch than the vowels of unstressed syllables. The main exception would be the rule that, in questions, the last syllable of the last word in the question gets a higher pitch than other syllables in the same word, even if the last syllable is unstressed. In this case, the stressed vowel is still typically longer than the final high-pitch unstressed vowel. See Stress (linguistics) and Stress-timed language. Marco polo 18:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

According to my phonetics professor it's very difficult to define stress (he didn't bother), so if you feel confused, take it easy. :) Stress has many factors, such as pitch, length, muscle tenseness, amount of air involved, and loudness. BTW, Ladefoged said it's easier to tap your finger on the table when you're pronouncing a stressed syllable (rather than an unstressed syllable). --Kjoonlee 19:41, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

BTW, there are some counterexamples about stress and pitch. Let's look at my pet example,

Sentence: Ah, Gloria! You're not ugly! [You're gorgeous!]
Stress:   S     S       S        S
Pitch:    H     M  L    H     M  L  H

--Kjoonlee 19:41, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Ahh i understand much better with the "project" example. But would you be able to find the stress in noninterchangeable words like, "germane" (a review exercise in my text book), or "platypus". I had a lot of trouble noticing any stress in these words for the exercise. Also if it helps I understand IPA pretty well.
In response to the "confuse" comment by Hogg, I'll quote from my text book in case I made an error, "When we hear a word such as confuse, we recognize it not only because of the particular phonemes that comprise it but also because of the inherent stress pattern of the word. Try saying this word by changing the first syllable, that is, CONfuse. The word now sounds somewhat odd to you..." Okay it was my error. I apologize, i misread. --Agester 18:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, one way is to say the word multiple times, each time with an exaggerated stress on a different syllable, and see which is identifiably the same word and which is not. GERmane is clearly further from the pronunciation of "germane" than gerMANE, so we know MANE is stressed. Eventually you shouldn't need to exaggerate the stress and just "be able to tell." -Elmer Clark 07:12, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

But that sounds a bit like circular logic. You need to know the stress to find the stress. Is Agester a native speaker of English? --Kjoonlee 08:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

OK he is, according to his user page. In that case, Elmer Clark's explanation is pretty good advice. Sorry! --Kjoonlee 08:06, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're still confused about the stress on the word confuse. If you are having trouble figuring out how to say CONfuse (that is, how to say it with stress on the first syllable), try saying CONgress. Use that same CON sound, but with the fuse ending. It doesn't sound right because it's supposed to be conFUSE. Ingrid 01:23, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I think i got it! Thanks for all your help! Elmer your advice helped a lot on finding the stress, but i need to work on it. Better to have some strategy than none, which is what I had before. Thanks again! --Agester 02:10, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

what is the meaning of the following sentence in urdu?

Did you see a brown wallet this dawn? —Preceding unsigned comment added by John3 10 (talk • contribs) 20:49, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

But that sentence is not in Urdu. Perhaps you can clarify the question? Do you want a translation? FiggyBee 09:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

My guess is it's a literal translation of a highly idiomatic saying in Urdu; the editor is probably asking what it means.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 12:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

My guess is that the questioner is pulling our legs.  --Lambiam 13:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I suppose there's always a fine line between assuming good faith and knowingly wasting time on silly questions.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 13:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Aesop Translation

I'm looking for the original (Greek) text of Aesop's fable "The Gnat and the Bull." I would rather not have a translation BACK to Greek from English, but rather the original text. Thanks for any help-

Kevinebaugh 23:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikisource has them in Greek. Is this it? Adam Bishop 02:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't that mean The Ox and the Axle? I've been going through [1], but cannot find a title that looks right. Bessel Dekker 02:57, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Ha, I guess you're right. It also helps not to use a computer where every other letter shows up as a question mark! This must be it: Κώνωψ καὶ ταῦρος. Adam Bishop 03:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Κώνωψ καὶ ταῦρος is correct. -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 04:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

You have to admit, "cone-face" is a pretty cool name for a gnat/mosquito. Almost as good as Russian "honey-eater" for bear. Wareh 23:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)