Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 September 16

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September 16

Any other persons

Is this gramatically correct "any other persons" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.54.22.130 (talk) 06:45, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Not by itself. But depending on context, it can work. Can you use it in a sentence? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

If the question is whether the plural of "person" can be "persons" instead of "people", the answer is yes. "Persons" is generally a more formal usage. --Anonymous, 08:13 UTC, September 16, 2009.

Strictly speaking, "persons" is the plural of "person," while "people" is a collective noun, but most of the usage guides seem to agree at this point that the distinction has largely faded. Myself, I think it's a useful one to have; if I say "persons who appreciate fine wine and literary conversion should consider joining my book club," I'm implying that there are individuals among those I'm addressing who may in fact have the interests I describe, and that I'm speaking specifically to them. If I say "people who enjoy arguing without the threat of physical violence often turn to the Internet," the actual people I'm talking about could be in Mexico City, Guam, Seattle, Mars, all of the above, or nowhere, and I'm not speaking to them, I'm speaking about them. But I'm not the author of any usage guides, so the value of my feelings on the subject ain't probably the highest. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 16:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

"Persons who appreciate fine wine and literary convers[at]ion should consider joining my book club" doesn't sound at all natural to me, I must say. I'd use "People who appreciate ..." or "Those who appreciate ..." or "Anyone who appreciates ...", before I'd consider "Persons who appreciate ...". -- JackofOz (talk) 22:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I doubt you're in the minority on that; after all, most of the print and online usage guides I looked at were either lamenting the blurring of distinction between the words (Wilson Follett), cheerily noting the blurring was already happening in Chaucer's time (Merriam-Webster's), or declaring the distiction utterly archaeic and dead (American Heritage, I think). My example was possibly not the greatest, especially since "persons" or "people" could be used equally correctly, but within two different context: "persons (in this room) who are interested..." vs. "people (in general) who..." where either word would be acceptable in the first case, but only "people" in the second. "Persons" does sound a little stodgy, in either event. I was trying to think of a better example, and came up with "Police have apprehended three persons of interest in the Green St. shooting investigation," to make clear that it's three specific individuals, all of whom bear some relevance to the investigation, who were apprehended, rather than simply three arrests made in a general sweep, but even there, I suppose you could just say "police arrested three people..." and be done with it. Maybe it's more of an interesting distinction than a useful one.

By the way, in my book club, I get you loaded and then browbeat you into liking my favorite books and authors, so "literary conversion" is appropriate. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:09, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Name For The Phenomenon Where.....?

This is something we all do from time to time and it happens to me quite often, just as often as anyone else. I was in the kitchen today making tea and coffee, and went to put the lid of the teapot onto the coffee jar. Simple mistake which we all do - nothing special about it. But it got me thinking about why I had done that. Obviously one part of my brain had the idea of putting the lid back onto the coffee jar, and another part of my brain was identifying the lid of the teapot as, simply, 'lid'. Somewhere along the way, this all got put together and I ended up trying to fit the (obviously smaller and completely dissimilar) lid of the teapot onto the coffee jar for a split-second. Now, is there a name for this phenomenon, as I would like to read a bit more about it? TIA! --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 09:12, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Not sure about that exact example, but the classic phenomenon of going to your bedroom to change your socks, and then ending up taking off your clothes and going to bed, since that's what you most often do when you go into your bedroom, is known as a "capture error" (though we don't seem to have anything on it at Wikipedia) -- see http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/term_654.txl , The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman etc. -- AnonMoos (talk) 10:06, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, AnonMoos. Maybe my example would fall under that heading, judging by the examples the author of that link gave. It'd be nice to find an article about it (either here or on another site) which gives some more detail about the brain processes involved. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 10:39, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Hangover? TomorrowTime (talk) 10:08, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Unmindfulness (spelled with a double L in the US). You will become more familiar with this as you get older. Buddhism has quite a lot to say about mindfulness and the lack thereof.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:47, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thinking is not linear. It is more complex than that. Universes of thought progress simultaneously. We have no trouble doing that, if we are healthy. I think the example you give is just a case of something not being important enough to monitor all the way through, to a point of conclusion. Or you got distracted, paying more attention to another thought, and also with a mindfulness that there were no potentially dire consequences to abandoning the particular line of thought that would have led to the correct lid being put on the correct container. I think that the absence of mindfulness in the example you gave seems to imply as well a presence of the mindfulness that the task at hand was not particularly important. Bus stop (talk) 13:07, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Like the story about the woman who was ironing clothes, the phone rang, and she "answered" the iron. Ouch! It's not just from old age, but maybe we become more aware of it as we get older. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 12:52, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

"Unmindfulness" isn't spelled with a double L in the US, but I'd call it absent-mindedness anyway. My sister once drew a cartoon called "The Lifecycle of Absent-mindedness". Childhood: Puts on two pairs of underpants. Adulthood: Drives to work instead of to Blockbuster. Old age: Leaves glasses in the fridge. +Angr 13:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Driving to work still gets me...and pouring orange juice in my breakfast cereal. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I resent the implication that short term memory fails in old people. I am old but assure you that there is nothing wrong with my short term memory nor is there anything wrong with my short term memory. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 14:29, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

My short term memory is on hold while my long term memory catches up. Bus stop (talk) 15:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

So the oldest member of the church is the last one out that Sunday and the preacher starts talking to him about aging, and whether he thinks about The Hereafter. The old man says he thinks about it all the time: Whenever he goes into a room, he asks himself, "What am I here after?" Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 11:06, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

T & D sound

I'm a non-native speaker of English. Now, hearing American people talking, I've noticed that, in some words, the letter T has the same sound of english CH (like in chocolate). This happens particulary in terms like traffic, transform, transport. A similar thing happens about letter D, for example in drink. To my ears, it sometimes sounds like a J (like in jaguar). I can't find any reference in English orthography table. So, is it a known phenomenon? Is it just my foreign ears? Is it something related to the letter r after t and d? Does it depend on one's dialect? --151.51.24.225 (talk) 14:07, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

This is indeed a fairly common pronunciation in American English. It has been noted by phonologists, for example in this paper. Marco polo (talk) 14:19, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

It's a phenomenon similar to what happens with the letter "p". There are actually two different "p" sounds in english, an aspirated p (like in the word "pig") and an unaspirated P (as in the the word "play"). Native speakers will have no idea what you are talking about as, to English-speaking-ears, the two sounds are identical, but for languages that use both sounds as seperate phonemes, they will notice the difference. Its the same with the two "T" sounds you note. The way that "tr" becomes more like "tchr" will not be noticed at all by an English speaker even if it becomes very obvious to a non-native speaker. This sort of thing is covered in various parts of the Wikipedia article Phonological change. --Jayron32 14:56, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't say the "p" in "play" is unaspirated; it's just that its aspiration is simultaneous with the following "l" (which is therefore voiceless). However, the "p" sounds in "spy" and "stop" are unaspirated. +Angr 15:03, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Angr is correct, you see unaspirated /p, t, k/ after an /s/, not necessarily before an /l/. This is evident because there are still perceptible aspiration differences--for example, the words "plight" and "blight", or "plume" and "bloom" (although, admittedly, in the latter pair the vowels are a bit different as well, at least for me). The place where you lose the aspiration is after /s/... in words like "stop", "spot", "skid", etc., if you record those words and then use a sound editor to cut out just the stop, a listener will tell you they're hearing [d, b, k]. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

(addendum) I guess technically the difference between the stops in "plight" and "blight" is one of voicing, not aspiration. But of course, in English those are confounded. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Which, by the way, is why Pinyin uses b for unaspirated /p/. —Tamfang (talk) 01:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a matter of palatalization, more than anything. The case of /t/ or /d/ in front of /r/ is fairly common across dialects, but it's very noticeable especially in Hawaii. --Kjoonlee 15:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to know in what part of the U.S. they say "chraffic" instead of "traffic". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 18:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Probably most of it, probably including you; as Jayron says, you just don't notice because you think you are saying "t". Adam Bishop (talk) 18:24, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Yep, everyone says "chraffic", "chruck", "chree", etc. If you try to literally pronounce [tri], it's actually quite difficult. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Not everyone says "chraffic", etc.  I don't – and I've taken enough university-level phonetics courses to know the difference between how I actually pronounce things and how I think I pronounce things. Saying [tɹ̥i] without affrication – or at least without complete affrication all the way to [tʃɹi] – isn't actually hard at all, and saying [dɹaɪ] with no affrication is even easier since there's no voiceless approximant trying to become a fricative. +Angr 19:30, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I've never heard anyone say "chraffic", that I can think of; and certainly not "jrink". But I wonder what country the OP comes from, because he might be related our "t" to a sound he knows. It reminds me of the way a "th" sound is used in an Indian word. It doesn't sound exactly like "th" to me, the way they say it - yet with I say it my normal Engllish way, they think it sounds right, even though to me it doesn't. Go figure. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 22:01, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Where I typically hear the "t" become a "ch" is when it's followed by "y", specifically in something like "got you" being slurred into "gotcha", as it's normally spelled, although phonetically it could just about be represented as "gah-chuh". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 22:03, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with Bugs here. Ain't nobody pronounces those sounds like a ch except in the example he gave. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 22:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

On the way home today, fittingly while stuck in rush hour, I vocalized "traffic", "chraffic" and "jraffic" a number of times, and remarkably they sound almost identical, and are made with similar positioning of the tongue. If you artificially put a vowel in front of the "r", they become distinctive again. However, to my ear it seemed more like the "ch" and "j" sounds were getting lost and they all sounded like "traffic". So, again, it would be interesting to know what the OP's language is, as maybe those sounds are more acute in his language, i.e. he hears them better than we Americans do. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 23:03, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with several people that this pronunciation is nothing like universal in American English. I don't think that it is my own pronunciation, though it's hard to be sure what my unselfconscious pronunciation would be! However, it is certainly a common variant. I think the variation is more idiosyncratic than regional, though I suspect that it may be especially common in Midland accents. Marco polo (talk) 23:57, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, transcriptions of any sort (even IPA) are just approximation, so to get more real let's have some sound samples. Here is myself pronouncing the words in the way that is natural for me, with the "ch"—so this is what I, and probably the OP, am referring to when I say I affricate them. The second sample is my attempt at pronouncing them /tr/ and /dr/, which for me is nearly impossible. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:38, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, now I can get "drink" without affrication pretty well...but I don't feel like going to the trouble to make another recording. And "truck"/"tree" without affrication are still beyond me. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:44, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not only so common in American English as to be unnoticeable, the same is true of British English pronunciation. It actually takes some effort for most Anglophones studying another language like Spanish to separate the "t" and "r" sounds in a word like "triste" or "contra". When one does it in most English accents, it just sounds rather artificial ("AR-ti-FI-see-ul" as vs "AHtuhFISHul") and affected. When an English or American child is learning to read aloud, he or she may in fact learn the common pronunciation of "tr" and "dr", just as he or she learns that "th" isn't pronounced "tuh-huh" or that "gh" in "through" is unpronounced. In the 16th Century the "-tion" at the end of many words (such as "Pronunciation") was not telescoped into "shun", but articulated as separate syllables. Similarly for the "d" and "r" in "drink"; an Anglophone has to learn how to separate the "d" and "r" sounds into a different diphthong in the Spanish or Greek pronunciations of "Andreas". ¶ However what may sound like "ch" today at the beginning of "traffic" sounds a bit different to my unschooled ears from the "ch" in "chaff", with my tongue starting and ending a little bit lower in "chaff" than in "traffic". But that could well vary among accents, mine being an amalgam of London, California and New England. ¶ Yet another, but rather distinct, issue, is the tendency of most Britons, Canadians and South Africans to pronounce "t" more sharply (and thus less similarly to "d") than Americans and many Australians do. In this American pronunciation is a little closer to Spanish, and British pronunciation a little further from it. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Indians really emphasize the "t" sound in words, especially at the end. I don't know if that is influence from England, South Africa, et al, or if it just comes naturally. That crossed my mind, along with the fact that Indians tend to trill the "r". So here's something I was just trying: If you trill that "r" in "traffic", as an Indian would, it's nearly impossible to say it as "chraffic", unless you've got a really talented tongue. The tendency in English to not trill the "r" nowadays (we used to do it a lot more, at least in acting and singing), maybe leads to that "chraffic" thing, and is also what led Ricardo Montalban to make a funny comment once on the Johnny Carson show. We have a sense of what Spanish sounds like. Johnny asked Ricardo what English sounds like to a native Spanish speaker. Ricardo said because of the rounded "r", English sounds like "barking dogs", as in "rowr-rowr-rowr" or whatever. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 04:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Indians pronounce t and d as retroflex [ʈ ɖ], under influence of Hindi and other local languages. — Emil J. 11:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Having written all that above, I realize that (for me at least), this kind of tch or dj pronunciation doesn't happen so often when the "t" or "d" comes at the end of a perceived word or part of a compound word, so I pronounce the t/d + r in "Cartwright" differently from that in "cartridge", "pet rock" differently from "Petrov", "heated rink" differently from "cola drink", and "Richard Rodgers" differently from "aerodrome". There's a grey area of compound words or phrases where I don't know how frequently I separate the sounds, such as in "cardroom" and "hot rod". Cockneys and some others who don't use Received Pronunciation are more likely, I think, to run the sounds between words together as in "Dontcha know?", but that's also becoming true, I think, of the classless amalgam called Estuary English (pron. "ESStchuhry Inglish"). But I'm no linguist and haven't been back to England for four decades. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:28, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

In the various examples you gave in the beginning of your message, the ones without affrication ("pet rock", "cartwright", etc.) are all words where there is a syllable boundary between the t/d and r. So, for example, the syllabification of "pet rock" is /pɛt.rɑk/ , whereas for "Petrov" it's /pɛ.trɑv/ . Phonological alternations (such as affrication) often do not happen across syllable boundaries. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:36, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

IPA request

I would like to add the pronunciation (International Phonetic Alphabet) of periodate to the article, but I can't figure out the symbols myself. Can anyone please help out? (It is pronounced like the words purr-eye-owe-date, not period-ate).ChemNerd (talk) 16:59, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Where is the stress? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:38, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

If i'm understanding your description right, it might be {{IPA|/pɜri'joʊdət/}}. But without knowing where the stress is I'm not really sure. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:41, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

The stress is on the "eye". ChemNerd (talk) 17:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Then it's probably {{IPA|/pɜr'aɪjədɨt/}}. "purr-EYE-uh-dit". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:51, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. ChemNerd (talk) 17:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Not so fast! My Random House Unabridged puts a schwa in the first syllable as well as the third, and agrees with the original poster (and me) that the ending sounds like "date" (which in IPA looks something like "de:t", I believe), not "dit". --Anonymous, 19:08 UTC, September 16, 2009.

dictionary.com has /pəˈraɪəˌdeɪt/. Because of the spelling, I suspect our in-house transcription would be /pəˈraɪɵˌdeɪt/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:50, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I changed the first syllable to schwa in the article itself a long time ago, and have now changed the last syllable as well. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:55, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I advocate erring on the side of fewer schwas. If you're speaking a dialect that reduces most unstressed vowels, then you'll reduce the /ɜ/ whatever is written; if you're speaking a dialect that does not, then /ə/ is wrong. (This is why I like the first OED's pronunciations better than the second's.) —Tamfang (talk) 01:20, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

This is some wording in a poster, I have a question on which is correct or the better to use

which is correct: Starts at Fort Washington, ends at Dana Park. or Starts at Fort Washington - ends at Dana Park. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.29.7 (talk) 19:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

The first one (with the comma) is better. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

It's a poster. Posters don't have to be punctuated like sentences in running text. Either one is fine, except that the second version should use a proper dash (em dash "—" or en dash "–", depending on your typographical style) and not a hyphen. --Anonymous, 19:11 UTC, September 16, 2009.

Though he is right that the comma looks better. It makes it a nice parallel construction, whereas the dash is, in my view, a little confusing. Nothin' wrong with some good punctuation... --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:24, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

They're sentence fragments, so their punctuation is a matter of taste and need. If they were complete clauses with a subject, then I'd suggest a semi-colon or colon. A colon would still work, but I'd recommend against a semi-colon. You could also experiment with the dividing slashes (or virgules): / , | and \ . Of course, no law prevents you from using the word "and" or an ampersand ["&"] if either of them would fit your style, idiom and purpose better. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Or even bullet points. Posters aren't so much about normal grammar as about visual impact. I have seldom if ever seen posters with semicolons. Although, in the old-old days, posters and signs and newspaper headlines often had periods at the end. This [1] is a painting, but it's based on a photo from opening day at Comiskey Park, 1910: "COMISKEY PARK" as its title, and underneath, its function: "HOME OF THE WHITE SOX." with a period at the end. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 05:06, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's a photo: [2] Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 05:08, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The period at the end of SOX is to balance the word against the longer word HOME. I have heard similar argument on balance by using IIII instead of IV on clock faces with Roman numerals, Cuddlyable3 (talk) 14:17, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's a semi-famous poster from the 19th century, whose words were worked into a song by the Beatles: [3] Note all the punctuation. I'm not saying to do your poster that way, these are just ideas. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 05:24, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I like the em dash better, myself, for a poster; from a distance, the em dash is a much clearer separator of the two clauses. Tempshill (talk) 05:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC)