Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 June 29

Language desk
< June 28	<< May | June | Jul >>	June 30 >

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.

June 29

English ths

The above topic has reminded me another awkwardness of English phonetics. In general, English avoids consonantal clusters with two types of sibilants (alveolar and post-alveolar) put together, and even though there exist a dozen or so of the words with /sʃ/ (e.g. horseshoe, spaceship, apprenticeship) and /ʃs/ (brushstroke, washstand), overall they are restricted to the morpheme/root boundaries; not to mention that usually they are assimilated, e.g. horseshoe [ˈhɔːʃːuː]. In most other cases there tends to be an epenthetic vowel. Namely in the plural ending -es (the fishes) and in the verb ending -es (he fishes). But at the same time English knows no restrictions for the clusters with alveolar and dental sibilants: breaths, he breathes, and finally the ultimate sixths. I suppose most ESL speakers, even those who have (inter)dental sibilants in their native languages, have a great difficulty with the latter word. Why does English restrict and avoids one type of difficult clusters but does not the other?

At the same time, at the word boundaries dental sibilants and alveolar stops assimilate very regularly[1]:

• "in the": /nð/ → [n̪n̪]
• "read these": /dð/ → [d̪d̪]
• "get them": /tð/ → [t̪t̪]

However, how are /s/, /z/ and /θ/, /ð/ supposed to assimilate? "This thing" must be [s̪s̪] [2], but doesn't that literally mean [θθ]? But what about words like maths or sixths? --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:29, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

First off, don't confuse fast speech assimilations with those which take place in ordinary non-fast speech. Second any fast speech form of "get them" would actually be likely to be based on "get 'em". Third, I doubt that any form of standard English simplifies [θs] at the end of a word after a vowel ("Maths" is not used in American English, but "paths" etc. are)... AnonMoos (talk) 12:49, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Keep in mind maths in British is unvoiced, while paths is voiced in American. For "get them" I would either say /gɛɾm̩/ or /ɡɛtðm̩/. μηδείς (talk) 22:50, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

"Paths" does not have [ðz] in my version of American English... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:55, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Californian? My dialect is pretty conservative, and path is a old word in Germanic. μηδείς (talk) 03:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I would doubt whether [ðz] plurals are always historically more conservative than [θs] plurals. However, the 1937 Daniel Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary does list [pɑːðz] as the only pronunciation... AnonMoos (talk) 09:18, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Interesting: I use both pronunciations of paths; it seems to depend on whether the following word is accented ([θs]) or not ([ðz]). -- Elphion (talk) 16:43, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Любослов Езыкин: No, [s̪s̪] is a sequence of sibilants whereas [θθ] is not. I'm not sure whether /sθ, zð/ are simplified with any frequency (I always say [sθ, zð] in my imperfect General American accent and it has never raised eyebrows as being too pedantic, then again - my English is far from perfect, so that's also something to consider). In Cockney they'd be [s̪s̪, z̪z̪] or even short [s̪, z̪], with the dentality of /s, z/ being the only trace of /θ, ð/. I'm not sure about other accents. Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:07, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: I'm not sure if I've got the whole idea of the difference between sibilant and non-sibilant fricatives right. Yet the question remains open why English is reluctant towards one type of clusters, while it is OK with another type of clusters. By my opinion both the types include very closely articulated fricatives, and thus both are equally hard to articulate, and I suggest in reality something must have been happening, some sort of coarticulation, just like in the above-mentioned case with alveolar stops plus dental fricatives. Either the dental fricatives incline towards the palate, or the alveolar fricatives (sibilants) incline towards the teeth. The final result may have been something different than people tend to think. May be it is not exactly [s̪s̪], but close to that like [s̪θ]. The "testimonies" of speakers how they think they pronounce is not a good indication here: it is well known native speakers often have wrong ideas about the actual pronunciation. I think we may need here articulography (palatograms) or at least spectrograms. I tried to find it but nothing found of a sort.

What also surprises me here that I know few languages where clusters /sθ/, /zð/, or /θs/, /ðz/ really exist. Except for, may be, European Spanish or Modern Greek where they have a lot of words ending in /s/ and starting with /θ/ or /ð/; Greek has also a couple of dozens of words with -σθ-. But I have no idea how they actually pronounce it, either.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:19, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Sea-locked

I saw this the other day in reference to communities in Alaska that have no access other that by air or the sea. Is this a common phrase in the US? Is it used in any other variety of English? It seems a bit odd because I would not have thought that somewhere like Barrow, Alaska, with its airport, was really sea-locked. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 09:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I've never heard the term before, but it doesn't seem any less reasonable than describing somewhere as landlocked when they can also be accessed by air. I presume the terms predate air trave. And even then, that doesn't really invalidate the concept: a land-locked place can only be accessed by crossing land, and a sea-locked place can only be accessed by crossing sea. Iapetus (talk) 10:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

This - http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2014/09/sea-locked-countries-face-up-to-climate-change/#.WVTgdYjyuUk - shows the term being used by the UN - though they did put it in quotation marks. Wymspen (talk) 11:13, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I haven't heard this before. Presumably an ice road renders a community non-sealocked, but what of less formal transport, eg just skidooing or dogsledding across the frozen ocean from one village to another? Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:41, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

In temperate and tropical latitudes, having a seacoast has usually been a transportational advantage, so "sea-locked" sounds odd to me. It may make sense in Arctic zones... AnonMoos (talk) 12:57, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Having no access by road is very isolating these days - and it isn't only in the Arctic. See Inverie Wymspen (talk) 13:33, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

"Inaccessible by road" is the term I've usually heard. Sea-locked sounds strange to me. --Xuxl (talk) 17:00, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

It's not a term that would have been used a couple of centuries ago when sailing was the normal way to get to many places. Etymology online does not list it. It must be a modern variant on "land-locked" which certainly was an issue historically, though not today. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:15, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Island, anyone? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:49, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to be the most obvious usage referring to islands; but one may be living not on an island in theory, but be very isolated as a whole, thus living in practice like on an island. So they may still use such terms as "the mainland" when they refer to the more "civilized" rest of the country (it is a common usage in Russian Arctic, but I believe also everywhere else). --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:26, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

An example local to me is the Isle of Purbeck, still so called, which is merely a somewhat squat peninsula on the south coast of England with estuary/sea to its north, east and south, now easily accessible by road. However, prior to the 19th century the rather barren countryside to its west made it virtually inaccessible by land, hence the name. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.103.214 (talk) 00:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Google Books has a couple of hundreds of ghits (both with and without a hyphen), so this does not seems to be an entirely recent neologism.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:26, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks all. I haven't heard the term before, 40+ years in the Arctic, and wouldn't say that being sea-locked is necessarily the same as isolated. Try spending 10 days in a cottage in Wansford, East Riding of Yorkshire with no vehicle and having to rely on a relative to pick you up. We have 7 days airline service to Yellowknife and Edmonton but would still be classed as sea-locked and some would still think it isolated. Under the definition I saw all places, except for Baker Lake, Nunavut, in Nunavut would be sea-locked, see also Category:Road-inaccessible communities of Canada. Although islands, my first thought was Gigha and Sanda Island as sea-locked, would make sense, Barrow isn't on an island. But how big and how extensive would the road system have to be to not be thought of sea-locked. Great Britain, Newfoundland (island) and Vancouver Island are all fair sized islands but I doubt that anyone would call them sea-locked. On the other hand Victoria Island (Canada) and Baffin Island are larger than the first three islands but are probably thought of as sea-locked. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 12:41, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

This is an entirely different concept, but a casual search might confuse the issue: Our article on Lock (water navigation) contains several mentions of sea locks. E.g.

Sometimes a river is made entirely non-tidal by constructing a sea lock directly into the estuary.

A sea lock is one that connects a canal or river directly with an estuary or ocean. All sea locks are tidal.

Carbon Caryatid (talk) 13:11, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Latin: anima and mens

There's 'mens sana in corpore sano' but the sports equipment company Asics takes its name from an acronym of a variant: "anima sana in corpore sano". Is the use of Asics just a peculiarity of the company, maybe to make the acronym sound good? Or was anima=mens a common synonymous?--Hofhof (talk) 22:40, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Anima comes from PIE breath > spirit, mens from measure > mind. They have different meanings and connotations. μηδείς (talk) 22:54, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Google Books has a bare dozen hits for "anima sana in corpore sano" from before 1949, when ASICS was founded, so they weren't the first to use that variant, though they might have come up with it independently. --Antiquary (talk) 09:24, 30 June 2017 (UTC)