Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 September 29

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.

September 29

Italics for business names that also happen to be periodicals?

Hi,

Do I italicize The New York Times if it is being used as an example in a list of companies? So, as follows:

Companies such as Walmart, The New York Times, and McDonalds use this software program in their operations.

Thanks 184.151.61.58 (talk) 14:52, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I would say no. In your example sentence it would violate parallelism to capitalize just one of them. And The New York Times in the sense of The New York Times Company is a different entity from The New York Times in the sense of the newspaper. Duoduoduo (talk) 15:06, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, should it not be "organisations"? I'm not sure "The New York Times" qualifies as a company, but org's is more general. IBE (talk) 16:30, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

See The New York Times Company. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:47, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok, that wins ;0. At least I'll be able to outsmart the next person who asks this. OTOH, personally I think "organisations" is still clearer, or you could write "The New York Times Company" in the above list. Not exactly crucial, however, IBE (talk) 17:22, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you!184.151.61.58 (talk) 17:25, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

If possible, please. Thank you.

Can anybody review the spelling and grammar of short article El cumpleaños de Don Ramón which I have created to know if it's correactly written? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rezashirazz (talk • contribs) 16:37, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I've fixed some of the main grammar problems. Overall, it's not too bad, but if you are looking for advice, avoid the longer sentences - you are covering too many ideas in one sentence, and it is mucking up your grammar (and general sentence flow) as a result. IBE (talk) 17:32, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

are medal, mettle, metal, and meddle perfect homonymns in american english?

are medal, mettle, metal, and meddle perfect homonymns in american english? (or at least some of them)? How about just medal and metal? 178.48.114.143 (talk) 20:47, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Which American English? --Jayron32 20:53, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

No, but medal/meddle and metal/mettle are homophones in standard American English as she is spoke. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:55, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

No. In casual speech they are often reduced to the the same or similar forms, but in careful speech or citation form as well as underlying representations they are differentiated (metal>metallic, medal>medallion). μηδείς (talk) 20:57, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

In ordinary, non-formal speech, they are all pronounced the same, both in my native South and my adopted Milwaukee: the middle consonant is basically a d rather than a t. Only in the most formal of circumstances will people over-enunciate so clearly as to make the two pairs sound different. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:36, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

can you be more precise on why metal and medal aren't homonymns? are you telling me you can tell these apart with statistical accuracy in a blind a/b test:

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/pronunciation/american/medal

and

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/pronunciation/american/metal

(Click "pronunciation" button). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.48.114.143 (talk) 21:42, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

If someone pronounces them carefully, then yes, I can tell the difference, just like "putting" and "pudding". StuRat (talk) 21:47, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Plus, although your meaning is obvious, you are using the word homonym wrong. As for the pronunciation, I could record a casual diction of the phrase, "D'you eat? No, d'you?" It wouldn't make Jew and Did you perfect homophones. American English has a lot of generative phonology rules. It doesn't make the underlying forms perfect homophones. μηδείς (talk) 21:57, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

When I put "define homonym" into Google the first definition is homophone. "Each of two words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling (e.g., to, too, and two); a homophone." This is what I mean... 178.48.114.143 (talk) 22:40, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Homonym is two words of different meanings but spelled the same way, such as "stalk". Homonyms tend to also be homophones. But as you note, homophones are not necessarily homonyms. For example, "to", "too" and "two". Clarityfiend is right, that medal and meddle are homophones, and mettle and metal are homophones. But each pair is normally distinguishable from the other pair. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:53, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

You're directly disagreeing with Google here, which defines homonym firstly as possibly spelled differently. 178.48.114.143 (talk) 02:18, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know which site/s you're considering trustworthy, but Google will give the impression that a valid spelling of I'm is im. You need to read our article homonym, including its footnotes. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:33, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, using the query "define:" gives the meaning from Dictionary.com, "Phonetics . a word pronounced the same as another but differing in meaning, whether spelled the same way or not, as heir and air; a homophone ( def 1 ) . " Which is what I mean. pronounced the same and in this case also spelled differently. 178.48.114.143 (talk) 03:24, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Regardless, your question is whether they sound alike, right? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:30, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, yes, of course. 178.48.114.143 (talk) 03:24, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

It is unclear, at this point, why you are asking our opinions, IP 178. You seem already to have the answers you want. I'd advise you to put homonym in the search box at the left and see what happens, although it may not give you the answer you are insisting upon. μηδείς (talk) 02:29, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

From English phonology#Allophones of consonants:

In American English, both /t/ and /d/ can be pronounced as a voiced flap [ɾ] in certain positions: when they come between a preceding stressed vowel (possibly with intervening /r/) and precede an unstressed vowel or syllabic L. Examples include water, bottle, petal, peddle (the last two words sound alike). The flap may even appear at word boundaries, as in put it on. When the combination /nt/ appears in such positions, some American speakers pronounce it as a nasalized flap that may become indistinguishable from /n/, so winter may be pronounced similarly or identically to winner.

Duoduoduo (talk) 23:27, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Hence the importance of pronouncing them carefully, as StuRat said. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:01, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

As noted, it depends a LOT on context. The same person may pronounce them all essentially the same, unless they are intentionally drawing a distinction. For example, if someone asked "Is this medal made of plastic?" and the response came "No, it is metal", you may find the person makes a distinction between medal and metal. However, if you recorded the same person who wasn't being deliberate in trying to pronounce the two words differently, you may find no distinction. So the answers above, which is that they are sometimes homophones, and sometimes not, are probably as good as can be answered. --Jayron32 00:06, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

In the two macmillandictionary links above, would you say there is some difference in pronunciation I'm not picking up on, or does the female speaker, speaking quickly, make exactly the same speech sounds in this particular case? (i.e. for her reading of the dictionary word). I understand that in a different context she could have emphasized the t in metal. 178.48.114.143 (talk) 03:25, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

With my eyes shut, I couldn't tell the difference. Of course they both sound like "mel" or maybe "meh-el". I am not sure what American dialect that is supposed to represent but it sounds foreign to my own Midwestern one. Google translate has what seems more natural to me and I hear a difference there between the two. Not certain if they claim their pronunciations are AE. 75.41.109.190 (talk) 15:02, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I haven't listened to any of the audio files, but in my American English dialect, pronouncing an actual phonetic [t] or [d] (instead of a flap) after a stressed vowel and before a syllabic "l" or "r" would sound almost impossibly stilted in ordinary speech (it could be done when pronouncing an isolated word slowly and emphatically, but hardly at all when the word is used in a sentence). Yet, /t/ and /d/ which have become flapped can still be told apart much of the time; I think that part of it is that a "t" which has become a flap induces a kind of semi-creaky phonation (slightly glottalized, though no actual glottal stop is present), while a "d" which has become a flap doesn't (and so sounds semi-breathy in contrast). AnonMoos (talk) 18:10, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Listening to myself I agree that the t-flap seems to come out slightly glottalized, while the d-flap doesn't. Of course, self-diagnosis is notoriously unreliable in phonetics. Nevertheless, no American would say "it's a medallic substance" or say "he won a metallion at the fair". Further, although the t and d in writer and rider are reduced to flap, the words remain distinct because of the different effect on the vowels of the voiced and voiceless consonants. μηδείς (talk) 18:28, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

But most Americans say "congradulations". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:41, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I never heard "congradulations" until I moved to NYC, and have not heard it outside NYC, and only hear it from people with what I'll call an "urban" accent. (Neither is this a word where the t reduces to a flap according to the standard phonetic rules.) Everywhere else one hears "congrachulations". But it is not surprising you conflate the two, given the media do. μηδείς (talk) 00:16, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, New York, where the National Pastime is pronounced "bazeball", at least in some neighborhoods. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:55, 1 October 2013 (UTC)