Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 November 18

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November 18

Arabic pronunciation

How is the name Zahra pronounced? --70.250.212.95 (talk) 03:19, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

zahraː, zahrā. --Omidinist (talk) 04:33, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

How is the h pronounced? Is it silent? --70.250.212.95 (talk) 00:56, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

No, it is not silent. It is as strongly pronounced as h in hole. --Omidinist (talk) 04:58, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

The one

I understand the distinction between "I see a car on the road" and "I see the car on the road". Definiteness expressed like this is pretty common among languages. But in English, there's also a peculiar construct: instead of saying "I only have one car in my garage" people sometime say "I only have the one car in my garage". The word "the" in the second sentence seems kind of redundant. It doesn't appear to be at all like "Frodo has the One Ring", in which case the definite article is clearly necessary. Can anyone shed some light on this? Is there anywhere I can read up on this particular usage of the word "the"? Gabbe (talk) 09:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Wow, it's really hard to google for this. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:24, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

If you "only have one car" in your garage, you might have another (or more than one other) car on the driveway. If you "only have the one car" in the garage, you only have one car, and it's in the garage. To make this even more complicated, if you leave out "only", and you say you have "the one car" in the garage", it would mean that you definitely have two (but only two) cars and the other one is not in the garage. I'm not sure what this phenomenon is called or where to read more about it; actually I'm not even sure everyone would agree with my interpretation, so maybe someone will come along and explain a different reading of it. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

In the absence of any good references, here are more some examples I found online:

1. "Select the one underlined word or phrase that is incorrect."

2. "Cameron dismisses the one man indispensible to rapid reform of student fees."

3. "The one thing doctors can't laugh off is bad care."

4. "enjoy the best of the Cotswolds and the best of Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare all in the one holiday."

5. "The one shoe every woman must own."

6. "Garrett from Garrett, P.I. only has the one name."

7. "On the one hand, it is unacceptable to a great many reasonable readers..."

Most seem to mean only/single, principal, as a unified whole, or particular/specific (the last example is perhaps more idiomatic). Merriam-Webster gives "the one person she wanted to marry" with one meaning only, and it has other meanings of one as an adjective which seem to match the senses above.[1] --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:18, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Taking a different tack from both Adam and Cola, I consider this usage to be a normal (although somewhat informal) employment of the definite article to refer to "person(s) or thing(s) already mentioned, under discussion, implied, or familiar". With the "in my garage" omitted as a possible distraction, "I have only one car" leaves the identity of the car wholly unspecified, whereas "I have only the one car" refers to a specific car that the person being addressed already knows about—perhaps is actually looking at at the moment. In the two parallel usages among Cola's examples (numbers 4 and 6), for example, "the one holiday" presumably refers to a particular travel package that is the topic of the whole discourse, and "the one name" refers to a name (Garrett) that has been specified earlier in the sentence. Deor (talk) 11:35, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

"Smith has a dozen cars but I only have one" says something subtly different from "Smith has a dozen cars but I only have the one". The latter is saying that the one I have is still quite something, a claim that isn't being made in the former case. This works for "only the two" and higher numbers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:56, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

One simple issue here is the distinction between a as an indefinite article and one as a number. There is nothing unusual about putting the before other numbers. For example, "I parked the two cars I bought in my driveway." The one is the same kind of construction as the two. As a construction it is nothing remarkable, though, as others have noted, referring to "the one" of anything has all kinds of nuances. Marco polo (talk) 20:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

"I have one car in my garage" indicates only the number of cars. "I have the one car in my garage" refers to a specific car. For example:

• "There are many cars in the world, but I have the one car in my garage that runs on fairy dust and dreams."

Perfectly good usage, and distinct from

• "There are many cars in the world, but I have one car in my garage that runs on fairy dust and dreams."

The first usage implies that the car in my garage is unique in being the only car to run on fairy dust and dreams. The second sentence doesn't make such an assumption; there could be more than one car which runs on fairy dust and dreams, and I happen to have one of that group. The only difference between the two sentences is the "the" before "one", and it changes the meaning. --Jayron32 20:23, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I think I misunderstood the OP. It looks as though he/she wasn't confusing the number one with the indefinite article a but was assuming that the number one implies definiteness. In fact, numbers without a definite article or a deictic are inherently indefinite, so the meaning changes when you combine a number with a definite article. Marco polo (talk) 21:50, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Jayron32: In the phrase "There are many cars in the world, but I have the one car in my garage that runs on fairy dust and dreams" it is true that "the one" is synonymous with "the only". You could instead say "There are many cars in the world, but I have the only car in my garage that runs on fairy dust and dreams" and get the exact same meaning. Whether "one" is sometimes used as a synonym for "only" is not what I'm wondering about. In the phrase "I only have the one car", can you really change it to "I only have the only car"? Here, for example, is an excerpt from a Parliamentary debate when a man says "We only have the one laboratory to serve the whole of Glasgow". Is "the one", as used here, really synonymous with "the only"? Gabbe (talk) 09:21, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Rather - it means "we" only have one lab in Glasgow - not that we have the "only" lab in Glasgow. AFAICT. Collect (talk) 09:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

"I only have the one." sort-of implies that either the car is notable to the conversation in some way, or at least that the listener is already familiar with it.

(Perhaps it was referred to earlier in the conversation. "And that's my new car!" "You have a lot of them?" "No, only the one." In that case it emphasizes that not only do you only own one car, but that the one car you own is the same car you've just been discussing. ) APL (talk) 05:59, 19 November 2011 (UTC)