Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 February 8

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.

February 8

Pronunciation of Sitak

Is the English pronunciation Sitak /ˈsiːtæk/ or /siːˈtæk/? [1], [2] LoveVanPersie (talk) 10:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

It's /ˈsɪtæk/, but he doesn't seem to have a native New Zealand accent. I wouldn't trust his pronunciation. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:26, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

[3], [4] The pronunciations in the two clips also sound /ˈsɪtæk/. LoveVanPersie (talk) 10:37, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

That's what they are. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

In the first clip, only the guy on the left has a New Zealand accent. Akld guy (talk) 18:03, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• What about his first name? In Russian, the last name is ambiguous without a specified accent, and none is given in his Russian article. (In fact Sitak redirects to Artëm Sitak. At least the pronunciation of Artëm is a given, as the only possible variation is /ar'tjɔm/. μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

French pronunciation of Montpellier

Is [mɔ̃pəlje, -pe-] correct? In Longman Pronunciation Dictioary it's [mɔ̃pəlje, -pɛ-]. LoveVanPersie (talk) 13:52, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

It depends on whom you ask. I expect you've read this? The French Wiktionnaire says \mɔ̃.pə.lje\. (For British English, the OED has /ˌmɒntˈpɛlɪeɪ/ and /ˌmɒntˈpɛlɪə/, with /ˌmɑnpəlˈjeɪ/ for American English, but that's not what you asked.) Dbfirs 14:02, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I've opened the ref but I don't know French... LoveVanPersie (talk) 14:26, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

They don't give IPA, but just discuss [montpeulier] /pø/, [montpélier] /pe/ and [montpéyé] (dark l) as French pronunciation spellings? Dbfirs 14:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

It seems so. And it's also [mɔ̃pəlje, -pɛ-] in Wikitionary, though it's not a reliable source. LoveVanPersie (talk) 14:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

The more open /ɛ/ looks more like an English pronunciation to me, but maybe there are regions of France where this is used?. Do we have any native French speakers reading this? Dbfirs 15:09, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I would agree with [mɔ̃pəlje], although as the middle -ə- is quickly glossed over (remember that in French the accent is always on the last syllable of the phrase), it doesn't matter terribly much what you put in there. 78.0.240.90 (talk) 19:01, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "French pronunciation" - do you want to know what a native inhabitant of Montpellier would say, or what a Parisian would say? The accent in the south of France is much more liquid than in Paris, hence the different variants mentioned above. Wymspen (talk) 19:16, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@Wymspen: The most prestigious variety of European French is Parisian. That's what we need to transcribe. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I'd advise against this when it comes to toponyms. As a native inhabitant of Zagreb, I find myself baffled by bizarre supposedly "Standard (Serbo-)Croatian" pronunciations found of local toponyms, often adorned with every possible IPA trinket (the native dialect here has neither pitch accent nor vowel length, and that's just the start of it), that would not have come out of the mouth of anyone but a Bosnian tourist. But apparently, that's what "Standard Croatian" means to whoever wrote them. As French has an even bigger variety of dialects and sub-languages than Croatian, the problem can only be worse. 78.0.240.90 (talk) 19:56, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: - sur un ton pince-sans-rire (I hope). If you mean that, we had better determine the most prestigious variety of English (probably Received pronunciation) and correct everything in Wikipedia that doesn't conform to it. Wymspen (talk) 20:29, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Popular Zagreb speech isn't prestigious, at least not the most prestigious. See Handbook of the IPA for an illustration of Standard Croatian. It's much more Bosnian than the popular Zagreb accent, which makes perfect sense - Standard Croatian, Standard Serbian, Standard Bosnian and Standard Montenegrin are all based on the same Eastern Herzegovinian dialect.

This isn't my opinion but a universally followed practice. People that learn French typically learn Parisian French and that's what they expect to see transcribed. Local pronunciations are optional additions. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:51, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, we understand the variations, but we were wondering whether the pronunciation /mɔ̃pɛlje/ is used anywhere in France. Dbfirs 19:27, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

In the ref it is said that out of 542 inhabitants of Montpellier, 90% pronounce [mɔ̃pəlje] and 10% [mɔ̃pelje]. It is pronounced [mɔ̃peje] in Occitan language. According to my experience (I do not live in "Occitania"), the usual pronounciation is [mɔ̃pəlje]. I have seldomly heard [mɔ̃pelje] and never [mɔ̃pɛlje]. Don't be fooled by the ref, when it is written [montpeulier] /pø/, it's the usual, non IPA, manner to refer to [ə] (by "stressing" it). --AldoSyrt (talk) 18:47, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. We don't need to change anything then. Dbfirs 22:40, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

paleo- and archaeo-

If the prefixes paleo- and archaeo- have the same meaning, why are they different?? Both are from Greek words meaning ancient. So how did they get to be so different?? Georgia guy (talk) 22:32, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

In ancient Greek, the adjective παλαιος meant "old, aged" as well as "ancient", while the adjective αρχαιος was derived from words meaning "beginning, origin", and its original meaning was presumably "from the beginning", which then shaded into "ancient". The two words had partially overlapping meanings, but were not fully interchangeable, as far as I can tell... AnonMoos (talk) 00:16, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by so different? The disciplines of paleontology, archaeology, and paleoanthropology have a lot of overlap and share a lot of tools and concepts. Matt Deres (talk) 01:12, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

• These terms didn't "get to be" so different. The concepts of studying all ancient (fossil) life forms was named palaeontology for the Greek "ancient being" (per AM) and the study of human origins beyond textual evidence was named (per AM) archaeology. Paleoanthropology is obviously the palaeontology of man, meaning the fossil study of hominins from pre-historic humans to that time of or last common ancestors with non-hominins. Study Greek. It's fun, and a lot better than treating our conceptual categories as if they were frozen Platonic Ideas. μηδείς (talk) 02:00, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Are our transcriptions of Serbo-Croatian overly complicated?

Split from one of the threads above - Mr KEBAB

There are people in France who speak Parisian French. The same cannot be said of Croatia and Standard Croatian (barring state television as such). Therefore IMO it would make sense to transcribe what is said amongst people who live there rather than a couple of anchorpeople (who slur their local dialect half the time anyway) and the language studies at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb. Regardless of all this, as for the prestigiousness of Standard Croatian in Zagreb, this sort of speech is not imitated by local inhabitants. When you talk like that in a formal situation (while not surrounded by members of other ex-YU republics), prestige is not the air you will be surrounding yourself with (just as if you were to speak Mid-Atlantic English in the British House of Lords) - as I said above. Another thing to consider is that the "acrolects" du jour in Croatia have changed greatly over the past century and continue to change, owing to the procession of various governments. Perhaps uncommonly for the rest of the world, it is the local dialects that remain immutable in comparison. I suppose this argument probably doesn't extend to the rest of the world, but it certainly is jarring to see all those mangled pronunciations that might well be "Standard", or more likely just a dialect of somewhere else. 78.0.240.90 (talk) 23:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian phonology disagrees with that. Minor differences such as no distinction between short rising and short falling vowels or no post-accentual length are an entirely different thing than a complete lack of pitch accent/length. This is a regional feature of the Zagreb dialect, not how all Croats speak. I'd expect strongly melodic speech in areas bordering with Vojvodina and Bosnia.

The fact that dictionaries distinguish all four accents and post-accentual length is precisely because the accent/dialect all four standards are based on is Bosnian. Since Standard Bosnian, Standard Croatian, Standard Montenegrin and Standard Serbian are one language, there's zero need for separate IPA transcriptions for them. Speakers who don't distinguish all four accents or post-accentual long vowels should read the IPA as it is natural for them. I think it'd be a good idea to start transcribing Serbo-Croatian words within phonemic slashes, rather than phonetic brackets (although we need a consensus for that on Help:IPA/Serbo-Croatian). That way, /ǎ/ and /â/ could be said to be diaphonemes realized as [ˈa] and [ˈa] in Croatia and Serbia and [ˈǎ] and [ˈâ] in Bosnia. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:40, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Maybe we should continue this somewhere else. I feel I've derailed the topic here. 78.0.240.90 (talk) 06:01, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Done. Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:08, 9 February 2018 (UTC)