Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 February 27

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded 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 27

Dantesque

I just came across "Dantesque" in a book I'm reading. In my head I pronounced it as "Dan-te-esque" (3 syllables). Then I queried myself, since it's spelt as if it's "Dan-tesque" (2 syllables). But I doubt it's actually spoken that way.

So, is this an example of a single vowel acting as if it were a double vowel, where each vowel has a different function and sound? Or am I pronouncing it wrong? Or should it be spelt "Danteesque"?-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Side question: Why are "Dante", "Grande" and probably others, which are Italian words, often pronounced in the anglosphere as if they were French up till the final e, then Italian for the final e? Italians would never say "Donte, Gronde" but "Dahnte, Grahnde", and the French would say "Dont, Grond", with the final e unsounded (approx prons, but you know what I mean). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:13, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Re side question: I'm probably not the best person to comment on this, Jack, because as a Midwestern American I tend—if I'm understanding you correctly—to pronounce "Don" (nickname of Donald) pretty much the same as the "Dahn" in Dante. The answer to your question, however, is probably lurking somewhere in the article Phonological history of English open back vowels. What gets me is the way Brits tend to pronounce Dante's name as /ˈdæntiː/ (rhyming with "shanty"). Deor (talk) 09:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

This North Carolinian seconds your point. I have no clue what distinction Jack of Oz is trying to make between "Donte" and "Dahnte", as I read those two exactly the same--Khajidha (talk) 14:24, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

The idea seems to be the French-like pronunciation as "Dawnte", as in "gone". Jmar67 (talk) 14:37, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

See cot-caught merger. You can keep giving examples; most Americans will have no idea what you're talking about. The vowel in gone, don, Dante, etc. are all the same in General American and most regional dialects, or are recognized to be within free variation along a continuum, and they will not recognize those as meaningful distinct sounds. --Jayron32 19:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

In the Midwest, "gone" rhymes with "dawn", "fawn", "lawn" and "pawn", not with "Don" or the "Dan" in "Dante". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:03, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

For me, "gone" rhymes with "on"; "Dawn", "fawn", "lawn", and "pawn" rhyme; and "Don" and "Dan" as in "Dante" are the same, but the sound in each group is distinct. --Khajidha (talk) 23:40, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

In the Midwest, gone rhymes with on, dawn, fawn, lawn, and pawn. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:38, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

See wikt:Dantesque. Jmar67 (talk) 02:57, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I was looking at that entry in the New Oxford American Dictionary on my iPhone. Either "Dantesque" or "Dante-esque". Jmar67 (talk) 03:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

The problem Americans have in hearing the distinction Jack is making is not due to the cot-caught merger but rather to the father-bother merger. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:12, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Even a frog-eater knows the difference between a and o. —Tamfang (talk) 01:39, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I think this is the rare example of an instance to follow the New Yorker's style guide and use diaeresis: Danteësque. Most people would probably go for Dante-esque. Dante-like or Dante-ish might work. If none of these work, it would be best to rewrite the sentence in a way that avoids the matter. Temerarius (talk) 05:32, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:16, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@JackofOz: I think it really is Dantesque, with just two syllables. The Italian word is dantesco. Like some others, I'm a bit unsure what your point is on the vowels; could you please supply IPA? (I do distinguish between the pronunciations of the man's name Don and the woman's name Dawn, but I don't understand what the difference is supposed to be between the first vowels of father and bother.) --Trovatore (talk) 00:38, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, User:Trovatore. Dɑːnte vs. Donte. Grɑːnde vs. Gronde. Fɑːðə vs. Boðə. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:32, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@JackofOz: I take your point to be that you don't speak IPA and you don't care to learn it just for this one tiny exchange. That's fair. It's a pity though; it would make a lot of these discussions easier and clearer. --Trovatore (talk) 18:41, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

No, I went to the trouble of finding out how to spell the relevant vowels in IPA: ɑː vs o. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:50, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

The /o/ vowel does not exist in English by itself (that is, as a monophthong). If it did, it would be like an American says "Oh", but leaving off the glide at the end. In Wikipedia conventions we would give the pronunciation of "Oh" as /oʊ/, but an RP speaker would actually say [ɛʊ]. I don't know enough about Oz phonology to hazard a guess as to how they'd say it.

So I'm not certain what vowel you wanted to put there, but it's definitely not /o/. Could be /ɒ/, maybe, which I've never figured out exactly how to pronounce. --Trovatore (talk) 19:58, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Brit (southern) English here: I'd use /ˈfɑːðə/ and /ˈbɒðə/ (without any "r"). I can get from ɑː to ɒ by making a slightly rounder mouth shape, and shortening the vowel. (And, for the original words, /ˈdænteɪ/ and /ˈdænteɪˌɛsk/.) Bazza (talk) 20:52, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Our General American English article claims that "[v]owel length is not phonemic in General American[....]" which may be part of why I have trouble getting the distinction. But rounding is a weird thing too. Generally people say that /ʊ/ as in "book" /bʊk/ is "rounded", but when I say it you will hardly see my lips move at all — yet it sounds almost identical to someone who does round his lips. So I'm not sure I'm going to be able to follow the effect of the rounding here.

As for using the ash sound in "Dante" — that's just weird. Why don't y'all stop that? --Trovatore (talk) 21:04, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Let me try again, then. Dante ought to be /ˈdɑːnteɪ/ but I often hear /ˈdɒnteɪ/. Grande ought to be /ˈɡrɑːndeɪ/ but I often hear /ˈɡrɒndeɪ/. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:38, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah, could be. I still don't really grok the difference between /ɑ/ and /ɒ/. --Trovatore (talk) 22:29, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

It occurs to me that another possibility is that my "Dawn" vowel is (or would be seen by a British speaker as) /ɒ/ rather than /ɔː/. So I don't have the Don–Dawn merger, but I might realize the distinction in a "shifted" way relative to RP. --Trovatore (talk) 06:57, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

@Jack: I thought you were referring at the beginning to the difference between "father" and "ball". The difference in your IPAs is like "palm" vs. "lot" (as given in the IPA doc). From an American perspective, this is just a question of vowel length, and many people would say it's the same sound. Jmar67 (talk) 11:15, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I see the problem now. If I were saying "That darn Donald Trump", darn and Don would sound very different, but coming out of a (general) American's mouth they'd sound the same. Aussies like their own way of speaking, but the younger ones do tend to take on Americanisms every day of the week, and that must be why I'm hearing references to, e.g. "Dante's Peak" and "grande" coffees from Starbucks spoken by Aussies as if they were Americans. I guess Arianna Grande is an honourable exception, as that is how she says her own name, and we should all comply. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

In most everywhere west of the American northeast, "darn" and "don" do not sound the same, because we pronounce the "r" (i.e. we're rhotic). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:39, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

How quaint. OK, say the sentence non-rhotically, if you can wrap your mouth around it. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:03, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure. It's easy. "That dahn Donald." Although they are not precisely the same, just very close. Thinking of a bit from Horse Feathers where Groucho (as the father) and Zeppo (as the son) are talking: "Anything fu'ther father?" "Anything fu'ther father? That can't be right. Isn't it anything father fu'ther?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:22, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Re the side question: I think this is an example of what I term "standard average foreign". People know the ways that certain letters are pronounced in "foreign" words, and guess that these apply to other "foreign" words. Examples I notice are "chorizo" with an Italianate "z", (/ts/) and Beijing with a French-ish "j" /ʒ/. --ColinFine (talk) 15:38, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Many people hear words spoken before they are written, so learn the pronunciation first. They are far less likely to get it "right" when reading an unpronounced, but Englishly unintuitively spelled word. Here's a blog post at Dictionary.com explaining the phenomenon, Here is a more scholarly work on the same concept. The basic idea is if you hear it first, and then later learn how it is spelled, you will continue to say it correctly. If you read it first, then try to pronounce it without hearing it, you're far more likely to get it wrong. --Jayron32 14:51, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

A trivial example: Pronouncing "Jints", an old nickname for the Giants, to rhyme with "mints" instead of "pints". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:31, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Translation request (French to English)

What does the French phrase "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait" mean? Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 20:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Google Translate, for what it's worth, says it means "If youth knew, if old age could", which sounds like various proverbs. An example would be, "Too soon old, too late smart." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:06, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I would prefer a translation by an actual human being rather than an automatically-generated computer translation. They tend not to be very good. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 20:08, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

It is a proverb. "If young people knew, if older folks still could" captures the meaning. Basically, young people don't know what to do with all their possibilities, and old folks, who would know how to use these talents, are no longer able to do so. Xuxl (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know French fluently, but the machine translation seemed to be on the mark and obvious. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:49, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

See Wikiquote. Deor (talk) 21:52, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Which exactly matches Google Translate, and shows how old the idea is. (It probably goes back to ancient times.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:46, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

There is a longer version of the saying: "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait, il n'y aurait rien qui ne puisse se faire." ("If youth knew, if old age could, there would be nothing that could not be done.") I prefer the pithier short version; next to suffering from explanitis, the apodosis overstates the potential of combining the vigor of youth with the wisdom of old age.  --Lambiam 07:49, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

The longer version is useful for those who don't get what the shorter version is saying. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:45, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Presumably younger folks. ;)  --Lambiam 15:11, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm an older folk and I didn't get the point until I saw the full version. Thanks, Lambiam. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 21:26, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I can't forbear mentioning that there's an ironic short story by the wonderful John Collier titled "If Youth Knew, If Age Could". It's worth a read. Deor (talk) 23:48, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I could also suggest "If youth knew how and age still could". Jmar67 (talk) 11:21, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Cuban vs. Puerto Rican Spanish

How similar are Cuban Spanish and Puerto Rican Spanish? Our articles don't really go into that question. Specifically, I've been watching One Day at a Time, which is about a Cuban-American family in Los Angeles. The show is in English, but three of the major characters do sometimes speak Spanish. Since the characters are either Cuban or of Cuban ancestry, you'd expect them to speak Cuban Spanish, but the actors--Justina Machado, Marcel Ruiz, and Rita Moreno--are actually all Puerto Rican, and therefore presumably speak Puerto Rican Spanish. Are the two dialects different enough that native Spanish speakers can hear the difference? Do Spanish speakers watch the show and say, "Why do these supposedly Cuban people speak with a Puerto Rican accent?" Alternatively, do the actors actually Cubanize their Spanish for the show so that they don't sound Puerto Rican? Or are the two accents so similar that no one can really tell the difference anyway? --Mahagaja · talk 22:09, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

When they say something like ¿Como esta?, does it sound like they've dropped the "s"? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Baseball Bugs: I haven't noticed; I'll try to pay attention. But dropping /s/ in the coda of a syllable, or turning it to /h/, happens in a lot of different varieties of Spanish. In Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown one character says "Estamos fugitivas" and pronounces it "Ehtamoh fugitivah", and she's from Spain. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:52, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

@Baseball Bugs: Not a native Spanish speaker, but is it possible they were conjugating it with "usted", which takes the 3rd-person singular conjugation? --Tenryuu (🐲 • 💬 • 🌟) 02:02, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I've watched a few more episodes and I'd say their treatment of coda s is variable. I've heard both "gracia[s]" and "gracia[h]", both "e[s]tá" and "e[h]tá". —Mahāgaja · talk 11:02, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know how they would be perceived by Spanish speakers, but both dialects fall into the Caribbean Spanish grouping... AnonMoos (talk) 04:27, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Here are links to some Quora questions with answers that strongly suggest the accents have diverged sufficiently to be perceptibly different. Of course, a good actor might be able to produce a passing imitation of a different accent than their own.

• Are Puerto Rican and Cuban cultures and their accents similar? Are the demographics of P.R. and Cuba similar? Which is more diverse ethnically/racially?
• What do Cubans think of a Puerto Rican accent?
• Do you prefer Cuban Spanish or Puerto Rican Spanish?

 --Lambiam 08:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Courtesy links for those without Quora accounts: [1][2][3] 93.142.73.32 (talk) 22:42, 28 February 2020 (UTC)