Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 April 23

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.

April 23

G-dropping

I notice that a lot of American politicians drop their g's in speeches and interviews. For example, they will say "thinkin'" instead of "thinking." I find this surprising considering that they mostly have middle class backgrounds and college educations. Is this the way they normally speak or is it an affectation? Do educated Americans speak that way in colloquial conversation? TFD (talk) 04:49, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Very common in America, often depending on the circumstance. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:06, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Educated Americans come in all shapes and sizes and have a wide variety of ways of speaking in conversation - colloquially or otherwise. Accents tend to depend on where one was raised - and yes there are exceptions to that generalization. MarnetteD|Talk 05:21, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Our article Phonological history of English consonant clusters has a section called G-dropping which indicates that this phenomenon is found historically in the UK as well as in the US. Some sources say that it is associated with the working class, the American South and with African Americans. Maybe so, but I hear Americans from various regions and various ethnic and socioeconomic groups say nothin' in casual conversation quite frequently. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:28, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

You may recall a cereal called "Nut & Honey Crunch", whose commercials would typically use the joke that the name sounded like "Nuttin', Honey". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:32, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

A Stan Freberg song from the 1950s, "Nuttin' for Christmas".[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:35, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

And of course "Elderly Man River", in which he was enjoined to stop saying "He don't say nothin'" in favour of "He doesn't say anything". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Classics! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:33, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

To be really PC, that should be "Senior Citizen River". Clarityfiend (talk) 22:17, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Nowadays, yes. Elderly once had more positive connotations. And if the late Mr. Freberg were to have redone the song, not only would he likely have changed it to "Senior Citizen River", but also would have changed all the "hes" to "theys". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:19, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

It used to be a feature of some English upper-class speech, as in the stereotypically upper-class pursuits of "huntin', shootin' and fishin'" - see here for example, which claims that children picked it up from lower-class stable workers. There's an episode of Absolutely Fabulous (series 5) titled "Huntin', Shootin' & Fishin'". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 05:59, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

This article claims that G-dropping is finding its way into modern forms of received pronunciation, former British prime minister Tony Blair being cited as a culprit. Alansplodge (talk) 21:07, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

A little of both? Dropping terminal Gs is extremely common in American English, but American politicians are also generally trying to appeal to the common man and have said common man identify with them. While in other countries politicians might be advised to train themselves out of such speech, here there is no such pressure and there may even be pressure on some to "loosen up" their speech. --Khajidha (talk) 15:10, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Note that in recent centuries, nothing really "drops" phonologically. Rather, an [ŋ] sound is replaced by an [n] sound... AnonMoos (talk) 16:25, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

There's quite a difference in sound between "nothing" and "nothin'". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:32, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

But it's still just one sound being substituted for another. The only dropping going on is in the written form. --Khajidha (talk) 18:35, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

That's splitting hares. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:41, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

It is not uncommon to drop the "i" phonetically in "-ting", since the tongue is already in position for the "n" after the "t". My father was from Alabama and often complained about TV Westerns that were "just a lotta shoot'n' and killin'". Jmar67 (talk) 21:46, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Or shoot'n' 'n' kill'n'. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:18, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Jmar67 -- what "i-dropping" means is replacing a sequence of unstressed vowel + [n] with a syllabic nasal... AnonMoos (talk) 05:26, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Polish el

Polish orthography has two versions of the letter l: l (L), and ł (Ł). I'm sure people confuse them from time to time (indeed, I've heard polophones speaking English in which every l-sound was spoken as an ł). But how widespread is this confusion among the general polophone populace? And among Polish writers? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:19, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Since they're pronounced quite differently in the Polish language, I doubt that there's all that much confusion. (If they were pronounced the same, then there would be more scope for error.) English-speakers sometimes have the idea that diacritics are quite mysterious and exotic, but they're not usually perceived that way by speakers of most European languages... AnonMoos (talk) 16:21, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

When your language doesn't use them, it is hard to understand how an L is not an L when you put this little squiggle on it. On the other hand, if your language does use them you tend to see "letters with diacritics" as individual things. To put it in terms more accessible to Anglophones, L and Ł are no more confusing for Poles than C and G are for us. --Khajidha (talk) 17:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I grew up in the states living together with Polish grandparents in a town that was predominatly Polish American, speak Polish myself and lived twelve years in Poland (2002-2014), and I never once heard any Pole confuse the two sounds, whether they were speaking Polish or English. Like never ever. In spite of hearing Polish people speaking Polish and English every day for the bulk of my life.

And I've never seen a Pole make an orthographical error with L and Ł. There are letterpairs that Poles sometimes mix up, like Ż and RZ, CH and H, Ó and U, but never have I seen a mix up between L and Ł (except when writing L for Ł when a keyboard does not support the latter, which is not a real orthographical mistake).

Also, Anon Moos and Khajidha's comments about diacritics is spot on. What appears to you to be an L with a squiggly line through it is, in the mind of Poles, a completely different letter altogether, representing a completely different sound.

While Poles do often have trouble pronouncing English L, especially at the end of words, this has nothing to do with the difference between L and Ł in their own language, but with a difficulty in reproducing the various shades of L in English.

Dollars to doughnuts, your original post was prompted by the the fact that a lot of Poles pronounce "ball" like what sounds to English speakers to be "bowl", or even "bow". Quite frankly, though, to my American ears, it sounds like a lot of native English speaking UK citizens do the same, and the Poles seem to be imitating that pronunciation. 2601:181:400:D262:954D:E4B8:A106:7D1E (talk) 00:33, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Ŵęłł, thãt šëţţłes iţ. Ťĥaňķś, äłł.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:34, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I shudder to think what that would actually sound like ... --Khajidha (talk) 13:16, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

In fact even the letter G originated as a variant of C, but no one views it as such any longer. --Theurgist (talk) 21:45, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

The one relic of that is that sometimes the ancient Roman name "Gaius" is interpreted incorrectly as "Caius"[sic], due to a misunderstanding of Roman abbreviation practices... AnonMoos (talk) 16:00, 26 April 2019 (UTC)