Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 January 19

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

January 19

Brain /Tongue

How many words is the brain ahead of the tongue?Think Spoonerisms. School Latin 50 years ago usually had us looking for the verb at the end of the sentence(except for Virgil where it could be anywhere in long unpunctuated sentences).Do different languages produce different brain usage/anticipation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.208.117.68 (talk) 00:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

There have been a number of jokes (from Mark Twain forward) about how it's necessary to "wait for the verb" until you can begin to understand or translate the basic meaning of a German sentence. Latin has a basic default SOV verb order in a number of contexts, but I'm not sure that "waiting for the verb" over a whole long sentence is generally as severe a problem in Latin as it can be in German... AnonMoos (talk) 09:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

This and similar questions form the focus of psycholinguistics. The answers are somewhat controversial, although I can come right out and say there's definitely no specific answer to your question (e.g. "the brain is exactly 3 words ahead of the tongue all the time"); many times this can't be measured, and besides there is ample evidence that the sort of phenomena you're talking about are often more constrained by syntactic or morphological boundaries (e.g. phrases) than pure number of words. rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

American English.

American English transposes ending 're' as in theater,center etc, but leave the relevent adjective in the 're' form.Why? John Cowell118.208.117.68 (talk) 01:21, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Not sure I understand. Are you talking about central? What's the equivalent for theater? And just a tip. Don't seek too much logic in spelling in English, whatever version. HiLo48 (talk) 01:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess he's asking why Americans don't say theateral and centeral. Some information about the change to -er here: [1] though it doesn't make any observation about adjectives. Possibly the answer is "because Webster's energies were limited." 213.122.48.63 (talk) 01:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) For example, theater, center, meter, color, rigor, humor and others are all spelt that way in the States because they make more sense, logically. But then, they come up with weird expressions such as "I could care less", which they want others to understand as the complete opposite, "I could NOT care less". So, it's clear that logic has limited application in language. Where it applies, it's rigorously enforced; where it doesn't apply, it's considered irrelevant and more-or-less regarded with contempt. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Presumably because that's how Americans pronounce it? American English -er is (at least traditionally) analyzed phonemically as /ər/ (schwa + r), and with this sort of viewpoint, the spelling -er (vowel + r) makes a lot more sense than -re (r + vowel for a sequence that's pronounced as vowel + r). You don't see "centeral" and "theaterical" because we don't pronounce any vowel there; it's cen-tral, not cen-ter-al. The real question, if you ask me, is why American spelling switched from -re to the more logical -er, but left -le as it was rather than switching it to -el (bottel?), since the situation with -le is pretty much completely analogous to -re. Voikya (talk) 01:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=center&searchmode=none and http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=theater&searchmode=none.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that this sort of thing affects the British as well. They have the word humour, but also humorous; colour, but coloration, and so on. 20:11, 22 January 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.185.234.63 (talk)

I am removing this from a separate section below as I think it was meant to be part of this same question. WikiDao ☯ 02:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC) English; theatre-theatrical
AmEng;theater-should be theaterical
English;centre-central
AmEng;center-should be centeral.
John Cowell.118.208.117.68 (talk) 01:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, the US IPAs are center = /ˈsɛn.tɚ/ (UK RP = /ˈsɛn.tə/) and central = /ˈsɛntɹəl/ (and not centeral = /ˈsɛn.təɹəl/). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

American English'

Pronunciation mostly irrelevent.Solder-sodder ,herbs-erbs,and rolling'R'sounds with no R's in the word. John Cowell.118.208.117.68 (talk) 02:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The "edit" link beside the section title is your friend. Besides that, the weird formatting effect is caused by starting the line with a space. 213.122.48.63 (talk) 02:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I fail to see a question here. Is this also part of the 'American English' section above? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:39, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

If I'm interpretting this correctly, this was probably meant as a response to my statement in the 'American English' section above about using "central" rather than "centeral" because that's how it's pronounced (though I'm not sure what the "rolling R" is referring to). Pronunciation, however, is not irrelevant here. Just because you can come up with unrelated examples of English words and pronunciations not lining up doesn't mean that pronunciation is the key reason Americans write "central" rather than "centeral". "Solder" and "herbs" have absolutely nothing to do with the American English shift of -re > -er. (Besides, as was mentioned above, apparently the spellings "center" and "theater" are actually older than "centre" and "theatre" are, although this isn't directly relevant). Voikya (talk) 06:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this user may be new to Wikipedia editing, I tried to explain it on his talk, but it doesn't seem to have had much effect. I saw this same thing happening with this user on the Science desk a few days ago (eg. as 118.208.9.92 here). WikiDao ☯ 03:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Kanji variants

Hi, are the two kanji in the link below actually the same character? Is there any difference in their usage in Japanese?

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/9216/kanjivar.jpg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.161.82.17 (talk) 01:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know, the left one is a simplified version of 備 only used on highway signs. See [2], [3], and [4]. This simplified font is called kōdan Gothic and it was developed by Japan Highway Public Corporation in 1963 for drivers. But NEXCO decided to replace it with Hiragino kaku-Gothic w5 in December 2010. See this. The right one is a sign using the new font. 備 itself is a simplified letter, but it's the standard in Japan today. Kyujitai is here. See the middle column on page 7. Oda Mari (talk) 06:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

They're the same character in Unicode (備), but the left-hand side is the Traditional Chinese form while the right-hand side is the one used in Japanese. The Simplified Chinese character is different again (备). 59.108.42.46 (talk) 06:18, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. The left-hand version is used in a modern Japanese textbook that I have. The context is nothing to do with road signs, so I guess they are just using an unusual font? The Japanese/Chinese distinction seems to make sense because, in my browser anyway, {{lang|ja|備}} shows the right-hand version and {{lang|zh|備}} shows the left-hand version. Mari, could you explain what the table in the PDF that you linked to is showing? I see the two variants side by side on page 7, but which are you calling the "kyujitai"? 86.135.173.159 (talk) 12:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I correct my last post. 備 is not a simplified version of 僃. I checked my kanwa dic. published in 1934 and found out 備 was 備 before the kanji reform. There is an entry of 僃 in the dic. too and simply says it is same as 備. So 備 was the standard then and 僃 was/is a variant in Japan. Unicode of 備 is 5099 and 僃 is 50C3. But this page of a Chinese site says 僃 is the traditional form. I have no idea which is correct. There is no entry of the left hand kanji, the one used on road signs, in the dic.. I think they definitely used an unusual font for the text book. Was the text book printed in Japan? Who wrote it? It seems strange to me that they used that difficult-to-find font. I cannot use the variant on my computer! The linked PDF page is a table of kyūjitai/traditional ja kanji and variants possible to use on Microsoft Word. Kanji on a pale gray background are today's standard kanji in Japan and kanji on a white background are traditional ja kanji or variants. Oda Mari (talk) 15:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I've not encountered 僃 before, to my knowledge. The Japanese dictionary at http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi, which I use quite a lot and which seems pretty reliable, seems to have no knowledge of it at all. The textbook I mentioned is printed and published in Japan, and generally seems to be an entirely Japanese production. Just out of curiosity, do the following two characters look different to you, and do they match the characters in my graphic here (ignoring irrelevant differences in font design)?

備備

If these characters look different, then which of them matches what you see in your post above where you say "Unicode of 備 is 5099"? I am not certain that we are all seeing the same character renderings... 86.174.47.61 (talk) 18:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

They're both the same Unicode codepoint, they just display differently in Chinese and Japanese (kind of like how in some fonts the letter "a" has a second story, and in other fonts it doesn't). Copy-and-paste them into a basic text editor (like Notepad, if you're using Windows) and see them magically change to the same character. 61.247.211.245 (talk) 03:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't contribute to this debate, but I can tell you I'm seeing two different characters, in the order they are in the original OP's linked JPG. I'm using Opera. (Interesting fact: in the edit page, where I'm writing this, both characters are the same, though - both are the left hand of the JPG, the character with the slight gray background. I've noticed this before - for me, characters sometimes appear different in the edit page then afterwards, when they are actually on the page itself.) TomorrowTime (talk) 19:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Where a font has different versions of a character for different languages (as here), I think some sort of system default must apply when a language isn't explicitly specified. For you and me this seems to be Chinese, so by default we see 備 as the left-hand kanji in my original graphic. I'm wondering if Oda Mari has a computer which defaults to Japanese, so by default she sees the right-hand kanji instead. 86.174.47.61 (talk) 20:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC).

OP, the characters you provided at 18:54 look differently on my computer and they do match the linked page. 5099 is the right-hand character. I have no idea why you cannot see these kanji as I do. Please try to change your browser settings/preference. Select MS P明朝 (serif), MS Pゴシック (san-serif) or MS ゴシック (san-serif) for fonts for Japanese. Of course, the character encoding is Unicode (UTF-8). And be sure that you have checked language setting for the system at the regional option on Control panel. My OS is Windows Japanese version and I use ATOK instead of MS-IME. How do you input ja on your computer? If you do not have the fonts above, I think you can download them at somewhere. At WWWJDIC, what I see is the right-hand version on a gray background of the JPG. How does this wikt page look like? Oops! Looking at [5], [6], [7] and [8], I notice it's only a fonts or typeface difference. I think generally ja publications uses the font on the right. That is why I thought the left one is uncommon. I myself hand write the character something in between. The 7th stroke is not that short as the font on the left, but not that straight and long as the left one. Sorry that I've been careless on this question. Both of these JPG characters are the same kanji. Oda Mari (talk) 06:40, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure some combination of system settings and/or fonts explains the difference in what we're seeing. The font(s) I'm using contain both 備 and 備, but these characters have the same Unicode code. My computer thinks the first one is Chinese and the second one is Japanese. When there is no information about which language is being displayed, it defaults to Chinese. When it knows the language is Japanese (like at the Wiktionary page you linked to, or like when I use {{lang|ja|備}}), it displays the Japanese character. Possibly if I played around with settings and fonts I could get it to display Japanese by default. (99% of the time this is not an issue because there is only one form of the character for a given Unicode code. Only a small number of characters, such as the one we've been discussing, have variants.) 81.159.79.102 (talk) 13:45, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Rabbits' habits and rebels' pebbles

There are lots of words with a double-b preceded by a short vowel: abbot, babble, bobbin, bubble, cobble, dobbin, dribble, gibber, gibbet, gobble, hobbit, hobble, kibble, (land) lubber, nibble, nobble, pebble, quibble, rabbit, rabble, robber, rubber, rubble, scrabble, scribble, scrubber, stubble, wobble, and probably a few more.

But the only words I can think of that have a single-b preceded by a short vowel are: exhibit, giblet, habit, inhabit, inhibit, prohibit, rebel (n.), robin, treble, and probably a few more.

Why are there proportionately so few of this latter group (9 compared with 28 in my count)? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:24, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I can think of some more examples of a short vowel, like abacus, Babel, riband, tribute, rabid, trouble, double, but vowels before a single B are often long, e.g. able, cable, table, fiber, tuber, etc.  English often doubles a consonant to indicate that the vowel before it is short, consider coma and comma, where the difference in pronunciation is in the "o", not the "m". Pais (talk) 12:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You're asking for logic in English??? For that matter, why does "you" rhyme with "yew" instead of "Yow!" I starting looking through EO,[9] thinking it was Latin vs. Germanic origins, but it's not quite so simple. All but one of the single-letter items are apparently from Latin via French. Rebelle is the source of "rebel", and the "proper" way to say it is "ree-bell" when a verb but "rebble" when a noun. Several, though not all, of the double-L items are from Germanic. The real kicker is that "Robin" and "Dobbin" both come from "Robert", which came to us from Germanic via French, and from the resultant nicknames "Rob" and "Dob" respectively. "Robert" in French has a long-o, of course. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

"You" DOES rhyme with "Yow" to Brummies! Alansplodge (talk) 23:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

French doesn't distinguish long and short vowels. But in English, Robert has a short o, so that's another one for the list. Pais (talk) 12:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

While it does have a short o, Brits tend to pronounce the o "longer", as in "Raw-bert", as opposed to the Yank pronunciation, "Rah-bert". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I disagree: the "o" in the standard BrE pronunciation is short, so that both syllables have about the same duration. You might hear something like "Rawbert" in some Scottish accents. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

As an American, when I hear an Englishman say "Robert" it sounds like "Raw-bert". But as you suggest, that might be just the standard English short-o. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

OK. So, I've added the suggestions from Pais, and a couple more I thought of myself, and the count now stands at 31:17 -

• abbot, babble, bobbin, bubble, cobble, dobbin, dribble, gibber, fibber, gibbet, gobble, hobbit, hobble, kibble, (women's) libber, (land) lubber, nibble, nobble, pebble, quibble, rabbit, rabble, ribbon, robber, rubber, rubble, scrabble, scribble, scrubber, stubble, wobble
• abacus, Babel, double, exhibit, giblet, habit, inhabit, inhibit, prohibit, rabid, rebel (n.), riband, Robert, robin, treble, tribute, trouble.

I guess my real question is not why the disparity in numbers, but whether the numbers are indeed of this order - or have I overlooked large numbers of examples that would provide a different slant? In this question I'm ignoring all the variants of each word (exhibit --> exhibiting, exhibits, exhibited, exhibition, exhibitions ...). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:02, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Babel has a long "a", like in bay. DuncanHill (talk) 22:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I have always heard it as a homophone of babble. In fact I more or less assumed that was where the word babble came from. --Trovatore (talk) 22:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Long a, per Chambers Dictionary and every sermon I've ever heard mentioning it. DuncanHill (talk) 22:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

This is a UK/US English difference. wikt:babel 81.131.13.218 (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

A few more for your list - abash, abide, abject, about, abreast, absent, abuse, cabal, corroborate, debit, debris, debut, ebullient, probable (x2), object, oblong, oblate, obtain, obtuse, obverse but also dabble, bobble. Mikenorton (talk) 20:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

And now I think about it, lots of words ending in 'able' and 'ible', like notable, palpable, possible, maleable, dirigible to name a few. Mikenorton (talk) 21:35, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike. I like abject, ábsent (but not absént), corroborate, debit, débris (but not debrís), probable, óbject (but not objéct), oblong, oblate, dabble and bobble. The others don't fit the pattern of having the short open vowel sound (as in rabbit, robber, pebble, nibble) preceding the single-b or double-b. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Er... because a doubled consonant or cluster is regularly used in English to mark short vowels? In turn because in Old and Middle English, simple vowels were regularly long in open syllables and short in closed syllables? What more do you want? --ColinFine (talk) 22:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Are you rudely answering my original question, or rudely answering my revised question, Colin? If it were as clear cut as you say, we'd be writing about the mating habbits of robbins. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:32, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Colin is correct about the rule (and, of course, "bj", "br" "bs" etc. count as double consonants, with "bl" variable), but there are a few exceptions where, for historical reasons, a single consonant followed by an "e" has the preceding vowel pronounced short. In some of these exceptions the long vowel is retained in some dialects. I think each exception needs to be explained from its individual etymology or a reason given for a change in pronunciation. The English language is full of exceptions to rules, but that doesn't mean that the rules are not useful in general. Dbfirs 08:00, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Malay question

Resolved

This is a spillover from ANI, where the editor who uploaded this item File:Pijak mafla indon.jpg has already betrayed a racist attitude towards Indonesians. The question is, what does mafla refer to in Malay? Google Translate does not have an English equivalent. Does anyone know? And if so, give it to us straight - no censorship. Thank you! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It appears that "mafla" is a corruption of "muffler", i.e. a scarf. I think that's the answer, but if anyone wants to comment, they can. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, probably. I can't be too sure for what I'll say, because I'm very much unfamiliar with Malay, but I think Malay wouldn't allow the occurrence of an "fl" consonant combination in a native word. --Theurgist (talk) 23:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Homophonic sentences?

There are so many thousands of homophones (and potential mondegreens) in English, I'm surprised that I haven't been able to find two grammatically correct whole sentences that are perfect homophones of each other, i.e. none of the words is to be duplicated in each sentence. So are there any? Googling "homophone" and "sentence" only seems to reveal example sentences containing single homophones.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Holorime has some examples. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

If I understand this right, a trivial solution would be single-word sentences whose words are homophones of each other. One example that comes to mind is "Die!" (cease to live) vs. "Dye!" (make a different colour). JIP | Talk 20:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Gneiss won! ---Sluzzelin talk 20:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Awl my nark rap... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.47.61 (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Whale oil beef hooked! -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

fr:Poème holorime and the external links cited there (e.g. this one) offer some fantastic French examples. French doesn't have a word-level stress, so all those pairs of verses are capable of being read as perfect homophones. An amazingly fascinating language, that's what French is. --Theurgist (talk) 22:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Inasmuch as exclamations can be taken as "grammatically correct whole sentences" -- they certainly are complete utterances -- I would draw your attention to the song by Pete Gold, which I wrote about on these refdesk a mere three years ago.

Comedy songwriter Pete Gold achieves the same effect by persuading his audience to sing along to a song with the refrain "Fucking hell" under various guises -- "For King Hal", the "far canal", etc.

Quite distinct from his "One Minute Filth Song". BrainyBabe (talk) 15:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I can clearly recall The Two Ronnies (UK comedy pair) singing a song on peak-time TV with the chorus "Over China, over China", how it passed the censors I have no idea. Richard Avery (talk) 09:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Being a native, you may enjoy the above mentioned Two Ronnies in their sketch "Four Candles" (aka "Fork Handles"), see here. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:13, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Practise, practice

Is there a simple means of remembering which is which? Thanks 92.29.114.231 (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Is is a verb, ice is (usually) a noun. But that works in reverse in those places where practice is a verb and practise is a noun. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I thought practise was British Eng and practice US? I'm a United Statesian and I only use the latter. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:03, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

If wiktionary can be believed,[10] "practice" is the noun form throughout English, whereas "practice" is the verb in American English but it's "practise" in English everywhere else. There's a wikipedia article about American vs. British English. I forget the exact title. But if this item is not on that list, maybe it should be. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:59, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Try American and British English spelling differences. And yes, practice is the noun, practise the verb. cf licence and license. Fairly normal English noun-verb pairs. DuncanHill (talk) 01:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Aha, such as "advice" and "advise". Except we Yanks pronounce the second one "advize". Do you say "practise" as though it were "practize"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

That would be rather outmoded. The "ize" pronunciation is listed in Chambers as "formerly". I dare say you'll find some poems which need it to be pronouced thus. DuncanHill (talk) 02:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Especially if written by William S. Gilbert. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Even for the verb, Google counts show both spellings in wide use in Britain, Canada, and Australia; in Canada the C spelling shows more hits. These are not highly reliable numbers by any means, but in this case I believe them. The specific searches I did were e.g. for +practicing site:uk, where the -ing form was chosen in order to ensure usage as a verb, and the + sign was to reduce the chance of Google assuming I didn't care about the spelling. --Anonymous, 04:52 UTC, January 20/11.

To answer the (British English) question, think device (noun) devise verb, advice (noun) advise (verb, hence practice (noun) practise (verb).--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes "practise" is still the correct spelling for the verb in British English, but people here read so many books published in America, or American books published here but not translated, that possibly a majority of people in the UK are confused by the "practise/practice" distinction, hence the high hit-rate for errors in Google. Dbfirs 07:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Those of us who were actually taught these things in school will always choose the appropriate word; but the later generations are slaves to spell checkers, and ones that usually use American spelling conventions to boot. Official agencies of government etc will still usually issue "licence"s, but vast numbers of Australian people have resumes that tell readers they have a motor vehicle, forklift, heavy rigid or whatever "license". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I am often accused of pedantry by colleagues, but on this one I just don't care. I've given up. Doesn't seem to matter most of the time. Only upsets worse pedants than I. (Did you like that last bit?) HiLo48 (talk) 08:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

There are no words to convey my disgust at your abject, craven capitulation to the dark side, Mr 48.  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

That's "worse pedants than me", because it's in apposition to the direct object of upsets. Pais (talk) 15:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your conclusion Pais, but reject your argument. What leads you to suppose that the word introduced by "than" is in apposition to the NP it modifies? I play the game called pedantry only against pedants.--ColinFine (talk) 18:50, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The original question was about an easy way to remember which is which . . . I always used the word 'ANNOUNCE' (A noun CE) which only leaves the verb to be SE. 194.223.35.225 (talk) 16:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC) (Gurumaister not logged in)

George Eliot chose to write Silas Marner with the characters speaking in dialect. Here are a few villagers, sitting in the pub, discussing the correct pronunciation of "practise". Mr Macey, the elderly tailor, responds to the landlord:

"Ask them as have been to school at Tarley: they've learnt pernouncing; that's come up since my day."

"If you're pointing at me, Mr. Macey," said the deputy clerk, with an air of anxious propriety, "I'm nowise a man to speak out of my place. As the psalm says--

"I know what's right, nor only so,

But also practise what I know.""

"Well, then, I wish you'd keep hold o' the tune, when it's set for you; if you're for practising, I wish you'd practise that," said a large jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his week-day capacity, but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of the company, who were known officially as the "bassoon" and the "key-bugle", in the confidence that he was expressing the sense of the musical profession in Raveloe.

Mr. Tookey, the deputy-clerk, who shared the unpopularity common to deputies, turned very red, but replied, with careful moderation-- "Mr. Winthrop, if you'll bring me any proof as I'm in the wrong, I'm not the man to say I won't alter. But there's people set up their own ears for a standard, and expect the whole choir to follow 'em. There may be two opinions, I hope."

The emphasis is hers. It's a good thing these refdesks have room for two or more opinions! BrainyBabe (talk) 22:49, 21 January 2011 (UTC)