Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 December 15

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December 15

Additional S

Hi. I'm a native speaker of Italian. I've noticed in a lot of English videos that sometimes and S is added at the ending of singular words or in other places were it shouldn't be. A very common occurence is "but" --> "buts". For example take this video I was watching right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBqagDS7KmM&ab_channel=CameronChardukian At 2.57 "with the American GovernmentS, butS", 3.14 "in a professional environmentS", 4.00 "buts". Considering that English is not my native language I may be completely wrong and not understanding this right, but it is a thing that I'm noticing quite often. Can someone help me? Thank you! --212.171.18.157 (talk) 10:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

He's not saying "buts". --Viennese Waltz 10:45, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I guess what sounds to you like an "s" is actually the aspiration on the final t, which becomes particularly noticeable in these cases where the t is not tied to an immediately following word. Italian does not have aspirated consonants (to my knowledge), so that's where the confusion may come from. --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:06, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It is purely a variation in how different speakers realize a /t/, in particular in word-final position. When you listen to Trevor Noah, you may hear, "Here is your moments of Zen." The plosive /t/ has the same place of articulation as the sibilant phoneme /s/ (or, for some speakers, /θ/). While an /s/ can be sounded for a sustained length of time and can have a gradual onset, a /t/ is characterized by a sudden onset (with a burst of released air) and usually kept short. But, if sustained for a longer period, it morphs into an /s/. This is called affrication; using narrow transcription, the result can be written as [t͡s]. Affrication is a systematic feature of some regional varieties of languages. An example is the affrication of /t/ before a close (high) vowel in Quebec French, as heard in the pronunciation of poutine.  --Lambiam 11:49, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Which is actually a lot closer to the proper pronunciation of Vladimir Putin's surname than the way most Westerners mangle it. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:47, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll see your Boris and raise you an Oleg. MinorProphet (talk) 15:08, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Don't get me started with Alexy, Greesha, Sohnya, Arcadey, итд. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:17, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all! Very interesting. --62.211.162.165 (talk) 16:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

WP on contractions

I remember reading somewhere that Wikipedia does not allow English contractions for mainspace article writing, as this is informal writing and it's not encyclopedic. But I don't seem to find the guideline for this -Gouleg🛋️ ^harass/_hound 14:29, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

MOS:CONTRACTIONS is what you are looking for. Bazza (talk) 14:34, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! -Gouleg🛋️ ^harass/_hound 14:48, 15 December 2021 (UTC)