Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 July 16

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July 16

Velopharyngeal fricatives

According to Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, the character ʩ represents a velopharyngeal fricative (snoring sound), which often occurs with a cleft palate. What does this mean? Are most velopharyngeal fricative sounds produced by people with cleft palates (i.e. the minority is non-cleft palates who can produce it), or are most people with cleft palates able to produce velopharyngeal fricative sounds (i.e. the minority is cleft palates who can't pronounce it)? Nyttend (talk) 05:52, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's meant to be about ability, about who can or cannot produce a velopharyngeal fricative, but about where you might hear it as part of spoken language. According to "FrathWiki", for example, it is not used phonemically in any natural or constructed language. The sound is categorized among articulation disorders (see for example Arnold Elvin Aronson's Clinical Voice Disorders, Thieme, 2009, p 58).

Another source says

"A velopharyngeal fricative produced without simultaneous oral articulatory activity would be transcribed with the symbol [ʩ]: thus SAFE as [ʩeɪʩ], although this is generally felt to occur only rarely in speech related to cleft palate, as usually the friction is simultaneous with an attempt by the speaker to produce an oral target."

(Cleft Palate Speech: Assessment and Intervention, Sara Howard and Anette Lohmander, John Wiley & Sons, 2012, p 133) ---Sluzzelin talk 17:46, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

The sound may not be used as a phoneme in a language, but I think this sound can be used in Nonverbal communication, e.g. a snort [1] can indicate derision or incipient laughter -- see e.g. these examples on Google Ngram [2]. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:29, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Jack In The Box

What would be the plural of this?

• Jacks in the box? - this woud mean multiple Jacks in one box
• Jack in the boxes? - this would mean the same Jack in all of the boxes
• Jacks in the boxes - this seems to be more logical

KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 21:11, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Methinks you've asked this question before; see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 February 4#Jack In The Box Plural. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:25, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I have indeed. Thank you for pointing that out to me. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 23:01, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

You're most welcome. See, I'm a lazy sod, and I'm attracted to anything that avoids us having to reinvent the wheel. (But I have this fantastic new idea, about everyone in the world being connected through their computers, and antiquating many existing forms of communication. Radical, sure, but it just might catch on. I wonder where the nearest patent office is ... ). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:17, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

You're a sarcastic b*stard, but you know I like you. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 00:55, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Bustard? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:07, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

• bistard? bestard? bustard? byStard? boostard? baystard? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:16, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I always thought a bustard was a driver who didn't know his route. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 14:51, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Not to be confused with a busturd, which is what the homeless guy on that backseat leaves behind. StuRat (talk) 15:29, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Greek epsilon with caron

I'm looking for the Greek letter ε with a háček/caron needed for the IPA of pinyin. --2.245.175.139 (talk) 23:50, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

See fr:Ɛ̌.—Wavelength (talk) 23:57, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

The hexadecimal HTML codes Ɛ̌ and ɛ̌ produce Ɛ̌ and ɛ̌ respectively.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:29, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

The proper glyph for open-mid front unrounded vowel, /ɛ/ is the latter, U+025B ɛ LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN E. No such user (talk) 08:19, 19 July 2014 (UTC)