Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 June 8

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June 8

Iconic but canonical?

Why canon, canonical not canon, canonic, per icon, iconic? Ericoides (talk) 04:02, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Some have both options: comic/comical, conic/conical, magic/magical. But not ironical, or chronical (that's a mispel of chronicle), or cubical (cf. cubicle), or artical (cf. article), or icical (cf. icicle), or spectecal (cf. spectacle). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:47, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd be fascinated to know your grounds for objecting to 'ironical'. Henry^Flower 06:39, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

[1]. Not totally outlawed, but not preferred (depending on who's doing the preferring. Or not.). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:52, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the OED has many cites for "ironical", dating from 1536 to 2012, but makes the laconic comment "ironic is now the more common term."
"Canonic" seems to have fallen out of use after 1879 (Grove's Dictionary of Music), but is not marked by the OED as obsolete.Dbfirs 07:59, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Ironically, "ironicly" is shunned. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:44, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

How laconical.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:02, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I've seen 'cubical' quite often in US math(s) publications. 'Artical' isn't a word, but there's also no adjective 'artic' instead. AlexTiefling (talk) 16:28, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Like most questions about language which start with "why", this has no answer more illuminating than "Because that's how it is". We can sometimes answer "how did it get that way?" questions, and occasionally a "why" will have an answer to do with some perceived authority ("Because X used it/put it in his dictionary/wrote an influential article about it"), but mostly language change and norms just happen, with nobody intentionally changing or setting them. --ColinFine (talk) 09:48, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

There are also a few that have both formations as acceptable: e.g. symmetric/symmetrical, dynamic, dynamical. Some usage guides prefer the former -ic forms, and consider '-ical' to be sort of redundant because there are two adjectival morphemes. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:25, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

"Also"? See my first reply above. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:00, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Oops; should have said "here are a few more that also have". SemanticMantis (talk) 17:34, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

unicode ttf font with zhuyin or pinyin

Hi. Can anyone recommend a source for a free unicode ttf font for simplified Chinese which will include pinyin or zhuyin (I'm not picky:) included in the glyph?

Alternatively, can anyone recommend a good annotator that would accomplish the same effect?

Thanks

Duomillia (talk) 17:56, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I doubt such a font would be feasible, since a very large number of characters have more than a single reading, so you can't really match unicode characters to pinyin transcriptions one to one. As for annotation software, current text processing software such as MS Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice should be able to produce Ruby characters. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:37, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I know it DOES exist for Traditional Chinese (because traditional characters and zhuyin are both used in Taiwan) [2] After some googling, I think, if I am not mistaken, [3] is what I'm looking for, and it has 6x versions of the font, for the alternative pronunciations of the same character. Duomillia (talk) 19:17, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

@Fut.Perf: Same pinyin can result in different characters, but this can't be said vice versa. Most characters have only one reading. 多音字 (characters with more than one readings) are not the standard. I think you are referring to Japanese or Korean. --2.246.5.214 (talk) 13:16, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

2.246.5.214 -- Polyphonous characters are not the norm in Chinese (as they are in Japanese), but there seems to be a relatively small but still significant percentage of characters which have more than one reading, even if the readings differ "only" by a tone (i.e. 钉/釘), or one of the readings is more common than the other(s) in the modern language... AnonMoos (talk) 14:20, 12 June 2014 (UTC)