Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 January 24

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January 24

Japanese つ and っ

When native Japanese speakers say words like 結婚 (けっこん), 出席 (しゅっせき), 実態 (じったい), etc., do they perceive that they are fundamentally saying けつこん, しゅつせき, じつたい, etc., but a natural phonetic mechanism is turning つ into っ? Or do they perceive these words as "new words" that are not exactly constructed by combining the sounds of the component parts? I am puzzled by this つ -> っ phenomenon because to me as a native English speaker, there seems no connection between the sounds. I would like to understand how Japanese speakers view it; any insights would be welcome! 86.174.167.131 (talk) 00:20, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Here are some articles you might find interesting while we wait for a native speaker: sokuon (the official name of the small tsu) and gemination, the process involved. By the way, Italian does this as well - I don't know if you can speak it, but it might be more familiar. TomorrowTime (talk) 01:26, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the OP is referring to the actual pronunciation of doubled consonants as such, but rather the thought processes involved when uttering words made up of two components, one of which is essentially forced to end in small tsu, and whether people are still conscious of the resulting hybrid as being the same as the original. I'm not a native speaker either, so I can't give my tuppeny's worth (about ¥2.6 by current exchange rates). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:42, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I am interested in the thought processes involved and whether けっこん, for example, "feels like" けつ + こん, or whether it "feels like" a separate new word. I guess I'm also asking how automatic and natural this process is to modern speakers, so if I made up some new compound from ～つ + か～, say, would speakers naturally want to turn it into ～っか～ when they spoke it? 86.174.167.131 (talk) 03:54, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Native Japanese speakers learn the difference between つ and っ by ear when they are infants. 来て/come, 着て/(verb)wear, 切手/postal stamp, 切って/(verb)cut. First two are both "kite", but the pitch accent is different. 切手 and 切って are, as you know, words with sokuon and the pitch accent of these two is also different. Native speakers unconsciously learn this kind of difference in the early stage of life. How to write them in hiragana/katakana or kanji comes later in school. Native speakers think nothing about sokuon. Like kite and kitte, not all words with つか turn into っか pronunciation. いつか/someday and 5日/the fifth day or five days are ituska and 一家 is ikka. So I think it depends if you made up a new word. There might be a rule what turns into っか and what doesn't, but I have no idea about it. Oda Mari (talk) 05:56, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry, I don't really understand what you mean by "Native speakers think nothing about sokuon". When you say けっこん, do you have in mind that you are saying けつこん but the pronunciation has been changed by a rule, or do you not have けつこん in mind at all? 86.185.72.113 (talk) 13:51, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Human beings are notoriously bad at describing how they know what they know about their native language. There's a whole field of psycholinguistics dedicated to designing experiments to tease this sort of knowledge out of people who don't realize they know it. Asking someone point-blank what their intuitions are when they're speaking their native language almost never yields useful results. Pais (talk) 14:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

A native speaker notoriously bad at explaining ja says "No!". Kekkon is always kekkon. I've never thought the word kekkon is a changed pronunciation of けつこん. As I wrote above, we learn the kekkon pronunciation first and never think the sound is a changed form of けつこん. Sometimes people, mostly young men, pronounce jokingly the word けつこん with his close friends or family members, but that does mean nothing. In English "al" is pronounced differently like Albert (ˈæl)/アルバートand Althorp (ˈɔːl)/オールソープ. I once asked a native British speaker about the pronunciation of two words starting with "al". If I remember correctly, one was "Almack". I don't remember another one, but it was also a name of a gentlemen's club in London. The pronunciation was different and I was told "do not ask me why they are different". Can you explain the difference? I think you know these words are pronounced (ˈæl) and those are (ˈɔːl) and never think about it. You just know them. And native ja speakers just know sokuon too. Oda Mari (talk) 17:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

"I've never thought the word kekkon is a changed pronunciation of けつこん ... we learn the kekkon pronunciation first and never think the sound is a changed form of けつこん." Thank you so much, that is exactly what I wanted to know! Given this, do you think modern Japanese speakers even know why the sokuon is a smaller version of the symbol for the "tsu" sound? Or is it just like some historical legacy that only specialists can explain? 86.185.77.84 (talk) 21:31, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Kekkon was written/printed けつこん before the 1946 reform, some books for children used small tsu though. It was a matter of spelling. See kanazukai. The pronunciation was kekkon then and I've never heard that the word was once pronunced けつこん. At least the pronunciation has been kekkon for more than a hundred year. Why should I have in mind the non-existent or long-forgotten pronunciation? What makes you think that native speakers think of けつこん? As for the use of small tsu, I didn't know and guess most of people don't either. So I googled. According to this blog page, small tsu is found in a book written by Zeami. But it seems to be a rare case. I couldn't find history of how small tsu was used before Meiji period. Sokuon is one of Japanese grammar#Euphonic changes (音便 onbin) and according to this page, sokuon pronunciation could be found in Nara period and was widely used in Heian period. See Late Middle Japanese#Onbin. Sokuon was first described with "ん" in Heian, then in the end of Heian and the middle of Kamakura period big tsu started to be used to describe sokuon. Because k and p were open-sylablized, but not t. Oda Mari (talk) 08:55, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. It would be nice to add a short "history" section in the sokuon article to explain some of these points. (I don't suppose you'd be interested...?) I can find no English-language coverage of this topic at all, and to non-Japanese it is quite an obvious question to want to ask. We see that けっこん (結婚), for example, is made up of one character that has a reading けつ and another character that has a reading こん, so it is natural to wonder about the nature of the relationship between the symbol つ and the symbol っ and how this corresponds to the pronunciation changes. 86.184.27.171 (talk) 12:45, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

It bears mentioning that the small tsu can be used in contractions where it replaces characters other than its big counterpart. There's for instance 格好 which is made up of かく + こう. There's Hokkaido, with another く being contracted. 切手, which was already mentioned here is arguably made up of きり +　て. Compounds with the first part ending in つ do lend themselves easiest to sokuon, but they are far from the only instances of its use. (And just one smaller thing I wanted to comment on, triggered by something Mari wrote - she says the sokuon used to be written by the big tsu, and in effect, it's still written by the same size as the rest of the character in furigana. Of course this is because all the characters are small in furigana, but it's interesting to sometimes run across this and be stumpted at whether the つ in the furigana is supposed to be read as "tsu" or as the sokuon :) TomorrowTime (talk) 20:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

It is difficult to add the information to the article as the links above are not reliable source, I personally think the information sounds good though. The difference between けつ and けっ reading of 結 is so small to native speakers that we accept it unconditionally. Is it difficult to learn the difference of sokuon words and non-sokuon words, 来て/kite and 切って/kitte for instance, for native English speakers? I've heard sokuon was difficult to pronounce for some learners, depending on their mother tongue. But I've never thought about the readings. As I wrote above, the difference is so small, and with the knowledge/instinct of native speakers, that we automatically distinguish whether it is sokuon or not when we see big tsu in furigana. Oda Mari (talk) 05:24, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

[outdent] I don't find it difficult to distinguish sokuon words from otherwise identical non-sokuon words in the kind of clear, well-articulated speech that you find in Japanese language lessons. I'm not sure about real everyday speech: I can't understand any of that anyway! I do find the sokuon one of the more difficult Japanese sounds to reproduce, but that's relative to an inventory of sounds that are on the whole fairly easy (not to pronounce perfectly like a native, maybe, but well enough to be intelligible). So, on an absolute scale, and compared to the sounds in other languages, I don't think it's especially hard to pronounce the sokuon. Please don't feel that you have to prolong this discussion further if you're tired of it, but I am now a little confused when you say "The difference between けつ and けっ reading of 結 is so small to native speakers..." From your previous reply, "I've never thought the word kekkon is a changed pronunciation of けつこん", I understood that you considered these readings completely distinct -- i.e. there is a big difference? 86.161.82.218 (talk) 21:16, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry if my explanation was difficult to grasp. Please understand, English is my second language. I think you found my English is clumsy with grammatical mistakes. Native speakers learn the pronunciation first, then learn how to write it in hiragana, けっこん. So when they learn the kanji 結婚, they accept it naturally. They learn 結 has two readings, けつ and けっ, but as they already have a large vocabulary of けつ sound words and けっ sound words, they do not think けっ is a changed form of けつ. They think them separately and simply accept 結 should be read as けっ if it's a sokuon word. The difference between sokuon and non-sokuon is big, but its importance is only when you talk and there are similar words like kita and kitta. The difference is imprinted when they are infants, and nobody mistakes it. I think you accepted "I am" and "I'm" unconditionally when you learned how to write them and sokuon is a similar matter to native speakers. "...was/were walking" is "歩いていた"/aruiteita, but a lot of people drop い and say "歩いてた"/aruiteta and some say "歩ってた"/arutteta, but nobody says "It's wrong". It may sound strange, the difference is big, but at the same time it's not that big. Oda Mari (talk) 17:28, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I see. Thank you. (Your English is good and normally easy to understand. I think it's probably more the case that questions like this about one's "feelings" about one's native language are inherently difficult to answer...) 86.183.171.169 (talk) 18:54, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Chinese question

Hey. I heard something about a controversy over the lyrics of (and I'm copy-pasting) a Chinese song called 我的祖国. What was the controversy? I read a Google translation of the lyrics but they seem pretty innocuous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.70.160 (talk) 01:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

You can read about it in English at My Motherland#White House state dinner controversy. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:57, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

(EC) A search of the Chinese Wikipedia brought me to My Motherland. Is this the song you mean? Also, shouldn't that article say '19 January 2011'? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:59, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I fixed the article. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:06, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Someone has now removed that entire section, on the basis of Wp:NotNews, so now the article doesn't contain any reference I can see to what connotations or controversy there might be. This is a shame, as surely a lot of people will look it up on Wikipedia to get the background context of this incident. It also seems odd, given how many good references were in the section. 86.164.58.119 (talk) 15:41, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Fortunately the history of Wikipedia pages is almost always available. See //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=My_Motherland&oldid=409694323#White_House_state_dinner_controversy. Pais (talk) 15:56, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Alternatively, you could just google 'my motherland whitehouse', and you get lots of links. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:32, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Well yes, I am not saying 'I cannot find this information' (and I'm not the OP), I'm saying this helpful information has been removed from the article. I am not remotely comfortable enough in my knowledge of anything to do with China to find a way to reinclude the information, so I point this out in case others feel able to. 86.164.58.119 (talk) 01:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I did actually think you were the OP - I will leave my post above for when (s)he comes back. As for the removal of the information in the article, I agree they have been correctly removed as per the guidelines, though I slightly disagree with the guidelines. That's not a discussion for here, though. Thanks for your clarification. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:22, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Translation to Latin please?

Hi - in a thing I'm writing set in the Nineteenth Century, there's a telegraph line with nerves for cables. I'm hoping for a Latin term for 'nerve-line'. Can anyone help?

Thanks Adambrowne666 (talk) 06:01, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Rete neuronorum means neural network (or "net of neurons"). I can't come up with a word for "line". Maybe "filum neuronorum" ("thread of neurons")? If you specifically wish to use "nerve" instead of "neuron", replace "neuronorum" with "nervorum". How about axon? ("axon" in Latin too). ---Sluzzelin talk 10:06, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I had forgotten about the 19th C. I don't think the word "neuron" was very widespread yet. In fact, it seems to have been coined sometime in the very late 19th C. I also don't know about axon then, though "axon" for "axis of the vertebrate body," seems to have been documented in 1842. [1]. So I guess that leaves me with "filum nervorum". ---Sluzzelin talk 10:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Another possibility might be "funis nervorum" (rope/cord/line of nerves). Funiculus (little cord) exists in neurology too. ---Sluzzelin talk 10:50, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, as ever, Sluzzelin - you're one of my favourite people Adambrowne666 (talk) 01:49, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it would simply be "nervum", because a nerve is already a type of cable in and of itself.

That's a good point, though it should be "nervus" (meanings include "A cord, string or wire; string of a musical instrument; bow, bowstring; cords or wires by which a puppet is moved.") ---Sluzzelin talk 02:59, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you - an interesting point. Adambrowne666 (talk) 21:47, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

What does "revirado" mean?

There is a composition by Astor Piazzolla titled "Revirado". What does "revirado" mean? I can guess it is Spanish for "wild" or "unruly" but I am not sure. — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 08:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

It can mean "unruly", "wild", "irreverent", and, according to various liner notes, that is the sense Piazzolla meant. It can also mean "crazy", and literally "twisted" (when "applied to fibers of trees"). It's the participle of "revirar" (from "virar" = "to turn"/"to veer") which can also mean "turn" or "twist", while the reflexive form "revirarse" can again mean both "to rebel" or "to go crazy". [2] I guess in English "twisted" can only have one of those figurative meanings, as sung in a different song. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:17, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

...!

One of my favorite bits of punctuation is "...!", as in "Well, here I go...!" It has kind of a breathless feel, an inconsistent trailing off in anticipation, a hesitation that ends on an up-beat.

Does this have any kind of canonical name? Are there instructions as to its use? Is it entirely improper? Is there a known oldest instance of its being used? I am curious, and Google of course is no use for searching punctuation, so I've no leads. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:32, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Googling "ellipsis followed by an exclamation mark" only led me to someone's blog ("if you put an ellipsis followed by an exclamation mark, you're being enthusiastically sinister or you're shouting and about to shout something else. Probably." [3]). Subsituting "ellipsis" with "dots" in my google search only gave me: "Julia Kristeva, writing about Céline, has commented how in his case linguistic disjointedness created by the frequent use of three dots followed by an exclamation mark, has the effect of dividing sentences into their constitutive parts, so making them independent of the central [...]" (can't view the rest of the sentence, can't read Kristeva's writings on Céline online either). (Ann Caesar, Characters and Authors in Luigi Pirandello, p 239) Probably not much of a help, but you never know...! ---Sluzzelin talk 13:14, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Our article interrobang features a quote from 1936 San Francisco Examiner "What the...?!" SemanticMantis (talk) 15:58, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, but ?! is as different from ! as it is from ? BrainyBabe (talk) 11:01, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

True, but "...?!" is fairly close to "...!", and our article explains interrobang usage in a manner consistent with the OP's description of "...!". SemanticMantis (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

提舉司

I'm wondering what 提舉司 is in English? Apparently it's some kind of official position and/or government office during the Yuan Dynasty. It's for Wikibooks. :) Thanks Kayau Voting IS evil 15:28, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I hope the following helps at least to explain what a 提舉司 is. It seems that during the Yuan dynasty it was the name of a bureaucratic organ which is in charge of a specific subject matter. Some examples include:

官医提举司 was the body in charge of the medical caste (one of the castes of the highly stratified Yuan society, consisting of certified doctors and descendants of such doctors), and specifically matters relating to civil conscription and litigation relating to the medical caste.

新运粮提举司 was the body in charge of building new roads, canals and quays for the transport of grain.

榷茶提举司 was the body in charge of tea trade.

大都陆运提举司 was the body in charge of grain transport by land to Beijing.

大都宣课提举司 was the body in charge of sales tax in the capital as well as general regulation of markets.

In the Ming dynasty there was a slightly different office, the 寶鈔提舉司, which was the office in charge of the issuance of paper bank notes.

I would translate it simply as "office" or "authority", though depending on which variety of English you use it might be better translated as "department" - basically a lower government body which is in charge of a discrete subject area. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:17, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Having consulted a couple of dictionaries, it seems that 提舉 began to be used as a title in the Song Dynasty, at first specifically for the official in charge of government granaries and related matters (gradually expanded to include transport, canals, ferries, markets, etc). The office itself had been in existence since the Han Dynasty, but this particular title was only used from the Song Dynasty. The same title was then used for offices created ad hoc, outside the formal scheme of the bureaucracy, to administer certain subject areas. One of these, the 提舉 In Charge of the Views of the Palace, was a sinecure.

In the Yuan Dynasty, 提举司 became the name of a government body headed by a 提舉. The usage continued through the Ming dynasty (but used less widely) and there were still some positions titled 提舉 as late as the Qing dynasty.

In general, 提举 was simply a position denoting an official in charge of some discrete subject area. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Having had a little look around and in context, it would seem to me that "提舉司" (literally "carry plan official") might refer to some kind of Sinecure --Shirt58 (talk) 14:09, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks PalaceGuard and Shirt! I decided sinecure looks reasonable, so I'll use that. Kayau Voting IS evil 14:25, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't entirely agree with Shirt58. 提舉 weren't always sinecures. The Commissioner of the Views of the Palace was certainly one, but the Note-Issuing Authority certainly wasn't. Any 提舉 that was equipped with a full complement of staff (i.e. 提舉司) would likely not be a sinecure. Likewise, "sinecure" in English usage refers to a position, not a government department.

In any case, sinecures are never named as such in English - see, for example, Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds or Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. My suggesting would be that something like "office", "authority", "department", or "commission" would be better.

提舉司 cannot mean "carry plan official", since it is a government body (yamen) headed by an official, the 提舉. Dictionary definitions suggest that 提舉 is a combination of "pull up" and "hold up", meaning "nominee", with the connotation that this official was nominated by the imperial court on an ad hoc basis to look after the subject area in quesiton. A better literal translation would be "the Department of the Nominated Official in Charge of X". None of the three characters seem to me to carry any sense of "plan". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:41, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I suggest a novel Chengyu along the lines of "Follow Guard, Ignore Shirt" might be appropriate here :-) --Shirt58 (talk) 10:29, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Food word question

What are the English language words for the "main part" of a food dish, such as the meat, fish, or vegetable combination, and the "supplementary part", such as potatoes or rice or such? JIP | Talk 20:06, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe the main part is the "entrè" and the supplemental parts are called the "side dishes"; though it of course depends on the style of dish. A giant casserole would resist such characterization, but if we're talking about a steak, a salad, and a potato, then those are the terms I would use. --Jayron32 20:57, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

See Entrée, Hors d'œuvre, Apéritif and digestif, Main course, Pièce de résistance, Side dish, and Dessert.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:07, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

(EC)See Entrée for, what that article describes as 'a smaller course that precedes the main course'. The main part of a meal is called the main course. Side dish is the name for the supplementary dishes. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:08, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I would call the it "the main course" and would include in that phrase the side dishes, whether the contents were in separate containers or not. Entrée is also used in North America to mean the main course, though originally it referred to what we usually call an "appetizer" or a "starter". In French-speaking countries, and those places in North America where French is the local language, an entrée remains the first course or the appetizer and the main course is usually le plat principal.

(ec) In American English, the entrée is the main course. (That is, the two words are synonymous.) Supplementary dishes are known as side dishes or "sides" in American English. A dish known as an entrée in France (and perhaps in British and other varieties of English) is known in American English as an appetizer. A more general American English term, including appetizers and sometimes soups or salads, would be starters. Starters are distinct from side dishes in that they precede the main course. Side dishes typically accompany the main course. Desserts, which follow the main course, are also distinct from side dishes. There is no single term in American English that encompasses all dishes other than the main course. Marco polo (talk) 21:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

But regardless of whether you call your main course "main course" or "entrée", it includes the starchy side dish like rice or potatoes. The whole "meat + 1 vegetable + 1 starch" combination is the main course/entrée. The meat part is just the meat, or whatever other protein is being served. Sometimes they're not really separable, like with spaghetti bolognese, where the spaghetti is the starch and the sauce is the vegetable and the meat, and all three are thoroughly mixed. Pais (talk) 10:49, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Except that pasta is supposed to be a primi (appetizer in Ameriglish, entrée in general English) and the secondi (entrée in Ameriglish, main course in general English) is a more conventional main dish with meat, vegetables and starch. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

"Supposed to be" by whom? Marnanel (talk) 13:42, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

By Italians, is my guess. But I'm not Italian, and in my house, when spaghetti is served, it's definitely the main course! Pais (talk) 13:53, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Another term in use in restaurants and foodservice distribution is "center of the plate", which usually refers to the large chunk of dead animal served as part of the main course. Matt Deres (talk) 14:16, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

That's made even more pertinent by the habit of stacking all the food on the plate into a vertical food tube rising from the centre of the plate, with 85% of the (oversize) plate being pristine. Why give us a plate that's uncomfortably large if you're not going to use most of it? Aesthetics can go only so far, and practicalities still have some role to play. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:52, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The answers offer a whole array of splendid English language words. TomorrowTime (talk) 20:16, 25 January 2011 (UTC)