User talk:HYC

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[edit] Welcome!

Hello, HYC, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! └UkPaolo/talk┐ 12:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Moving Pe̍h-ōe-jī article

I need help moving a page. I was moving Pe̍h-oē-jī into Pe̍h-ōe-jī. However, a wrong character "+" crept in during the process and now the article is at Pe̍h-ōe-jī+.

I need help renaming "Pe̍h-ōe-jī+" into the intended entry "Pe̍h-ōe-jī". A redirect won't do it, because it may result in a triple redirect, and also we don't need to keep the wrong name in the system. Thanks, HYC 21:18, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

All you need to do is move it again. Yes, that will create a double redirect, but you go and edit the redirect to be correct. Also, leave a note on my talk page when you are done, and I'll delete the extraneous redirect. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Done. There were a few other redirects that needed adjusting, but I've taken care of them. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:58, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portuguese Diphthongs

Hello. I noticed your additions to the Diphthongs article, and would like to make some comments.

  • You've added the diphthong /ae/, along with the example "Caetano". I don't know about Brazil, but in Portugal no one pronounces the "ae" in this word as /ae/. It's pronounced [ɐi], which is an unstressed allophonic realization of /ai/. In any case, this rising diphthong is not very representative of the Portuguese language. I can think of no other word with it, and "Caetano" is originally an Italian family name. I think you should withdraw it from the page.
  • You also seem to have let the spelling mislead you in other cases. Even though they're spelled differently, the unstressed endings "-ia" and "-ea" are pronounced the same way, as are "-ua" and "-oa".
  • In the pronunciations you give for the rising diphthongs, you seem to have forgotten that unstressed final "a" is pronounced /ɐ/, not /a/, and unstressed final "o" is pronounced /u/, not /o/, in Portuguese. It should be /iɐ/, /iu/, and so on.
  • Pronouncing the unstressed ending "-ie" as /ie/ seems affected and artificial to me. I would say most native speakers just pronounce it /i/, or perhaps /i:/.
  • You have also overlooked nasalization. The rising diphthong in "agüentar" is not /ue/, but /uẽ/.

Please make the necessary corrections to the article. Regards. FilipeS 14:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I tried to list all the diphthongs there, but I think the problem you are raising may involve the issue of regional differences in pronounciation. For instance, reduction of unstressed vowels is much less marked in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) than in European Portuguese (EP).
  1. Unstressed "a" preserve the /a/ value, and is not reduced to /ɐ/ -- not to the extent observed in EP. E.g., "banana": /ba'nɐna/ instead of /bɐ'nɐnɐ/. (In this case, even if the final "a" in "banana" is reduced, it still may sound more open than the middle "a" in the word, preserving some of the /a/ value.)
  2. It is true that the final "-e" and "-o" are usually reduced to, respectively /i/ and /u/, but many speakers make a distinction between the "-e" and "-i" and between the "-o" and "-u", and some others may alternate between the two pronunciations. Most notable in this regard is the Southern Brazilian dialect (or accent) -- I don't know if you have heard of the "terra do leite quente", so called because all letters are pronounced as they are written. Please refer to the table on pt:Língua_portuguesa#Fonética for the different regional values for letters "a", "e", and "o" in BP, as compared to EP.
  3. The diphthong in "agüentar" is /uẽ/, as you said. I should have used an oral diphthong, as in "bilíngüe"; it didn't cross my mind at the moment.
  4. I would concede that /ae/ is indeed very rare. The only other word I can think of is Paes, which is another surname. If it is Italian too, I guess you can remove it.
  5. As for /ie/ I would like to note that the ABL considers "ie" (as in "espécie") as a rising diphthong. See its Formulário Ortográfico, on section VIII-§29.
  6. Talking about "-ie", the ending "-uo" also comes to my mind. Just for curiosity, how do you pronounce "vácuo" -- as /'vaku/, is that right?
-- HYC 08:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I'm afraid I disagree that our difference of opinion has anything substantial to do with regional variation.

  1. "Paes" is just an old-fashioned alternate spelling of "Pais". Both are pronounced the same way, with the falling diphthong /ai/. Do not let the spelling mislead you.
  2. The pronunciation of final isolated vowels such as the "e" in "leite" has no bearing on the pronunciation of the diphthongs. In Portuguese, the pronunciation of the diphthongs is more stable than the pronunciation of unstressed single vowels. For example, even in the "terra do leite", I'm sure that the nasal diphthong in "aviões" is pronounced with /õi/, not /õe/, in spite of its spelling.
  3. The document by the Brazilian Academy of Letters to which you linked is about spelling, not pronunciation. Interestingly, though, what it says is Os encontros vocálicos átonos e finais que podem ser pronunciados como ditongos crescentes escrevem-se da seguinte forma: ea (áurea), eo (cetáceo), ia (colônia), ie (espécie), io (exímio), oa (nódoa), ua (contínua), ue (tênue), uo (tríduo), etc. In English, "Unstressed and final vowel sequences which may be pronounced as rising diphthongs are written as follows [...]" Their wording is ambiguous.
  4. I would say that, when speaking naturally, most Portuguese speakers (either in EP or BP) pronounce "vácuo" and "espécie" with /u/ and /i/ at the end, respectively, or perhaps with the corresponding long vowels, /u:/ and /i:/. Only in very careful, artificial registers, will you hear the hiatuses /uo/ and /ie/, or even the rising diphthongs /wu/, /je/. Both are learned words where keeping the spelling close to the Latin original was privileged over representing the actual pronunciation used by Portuguese speakers.

Looking forward to your reply. FilipeS 14:21, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

In the absence of further replies, I have reverted most of the changes, at least for the time being, but feel free to continue this discussion when you return, in my Talk Page. Regards. FilipeS 22:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


Sorry for the delay in replying to your question. I am now putting the appropriate "busy" notice on my talk page, as you can see. I know I am taking long to reply, but let me do it here, just to keep the whole discussion in one piece -- unless you want to move the whole conversation somewhere else, if that would be more convenient for you.

  1. That's an interesting info, that "in Portuguese, the pronunciation of the diphthongs is more stable than the pronunciation of unstressed single vowels." Do you mean it historically or geographically? And do you have a reference for that?
  2. Where is the ambiguity you see in ABL's document? That section is talking about encontros vocálicos átonos e finais. Some encontros vocálicos may be read in two ways, as hiatuses or as diphthongs, especially those átonos e finais (e.g. fé-rias and fé-ri-as, etc.). So I don't have a problem with the wording "may" there. But what is clear is that it says those words may be pronounced as ditongos crescentes (even if there are other ways to pronounce them).
  3. The NGB (Nomenclatura Gramatical Brasileira) is more explicit in this regard. It says, Os encontros – ia, ie, io, ua, eu, uo finais, átonos, seguidos ou não de s, classificam-se quer como ditongos, quer como hiatos uma vez que ambas as emissões existem no domínio da Língua Portuguesa: histó-ri-a e histó-ria; sé-ri-e e sé-rie; pá-ti-o e pá-tio; ár-du-a e ár-dua; tê-nu-e e tê-nue; vá-cu-o e vá-cuo. (NGB, Parte Primeira (Fonética), III, nota.) Please note that the diphthongs in série, tênue, and vácuo can also be read as hiatuses.
  4. A thought on the previous line: a vowel which is part a hiatus, would have the same value as a single vowel, wouldn't it? I am implying that if someone whose pronunciation preserves the final /e/ and final /o/ reads those words as hiatuses, he would also preserve the /e/ and /o/ endings, instead of reducing them to /i/ and /u/ as in diphthongs.
  5. Here is another site on Brazilian Portuguese, authored by a university professor in Espírito Santo, with a page on phonetics of diphthongs, triphthongs, and hiatuses. He does present a rich repertoire of them. Please note the /ye/ for cárie, /wo/ for aquoso, and /ya/ for história. [1]

Thanks for your pointers. This interaction has been informative for me, especially as to differences between EP and BP. I hope we can agree to disagree or arrive at some form of consensus. --HYC 10:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello again. I'm a little busy, myself, but will try to answer you. We can use this page; I've placed it on "watch".
  1. I meant two things. First, yes, geographically the pronunciation of the diphthongs does vary less than the pronunciation of isolate vowels. Two, within a word (for a single speaker), the pronunciation of graphic diphthongs varies much less than the pronunciation of graphic isolated vowels. This is based on my personal knowledge of the language, but it seems pretty uncontroversial to me...
  2. Regarding rising diphthongs / hiatuses such as série or vácuo, the pronunciations /ie/, /uo/, /je/ and /wo/ all seem artificial to me, to be found only in high registers, and very careful speech. To put it bluntly, that's how purists like to think they pronounce those words; it's not how they actually speak. In normal speech, everyone says /i/ or /i:/, and /u/ or /u:/. Granted, my experience is mostly based on the Portuguese of Portugal, and things may be different in Brazil, but I seriously doubt that. Note that most of the sources you have cited so far are prescriptive, rather than descriptive. The last one does not seem as prescriptive as the others, but on the other hand it's a little simplistic; for example, the author does not distinguish between open and close e / o.
  3. A thought on the previous line: a vowel which is part a hiatus, would have the same value as a single vowel, wouldn't it? I am implying that if someone whose pronunciation preserves the final /e/ and final /o/ reads those words as hiatuses, he would also preserve the /e/ and /o/ endings, instead of reducing them to /i/ and /u/ as in diphthongs. I'm not sure what you mean, to be quite honest, but let me note that the reduction of final unstressed /e/ and /o/ to /i/ and /u/ found in most dialects of Portuguese is quite independent of whether those vowels are preceded by a vowel/semivowel, or by a consonant.
Looking forward to your feedback. FilipeS 23:03, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks again for your comments.
  1. Those sources (i.e., ABL and NGB) are not only prescriptive; they are normative. The ABL is recognized as the final authority on Brazil's national language -- even academically and legally. And the NGB (Nomenclatura Gramatical Brasileira) is an official outline of grammatical rules of Brazilian Portuguese, including morphology, syntax, and phonetics. I wouldn't dismiss these sources lightly.
  2. That fact, however, does not necessarily preclude descriptive considerations on the part of those scholars in elaborating those "rules". For instance, the sentence found in NGB, "Os encontros . . . classificam-se quer como ditongos, quer como hiatos uma vez que ambas as emissões existem no domínio da Língua Portuguesa" (emphasis mine), sounds pretty "descriptive" for me -- the description that both pronunciations do exist in Portuguese was the basis for making acceptable to consider those encontros vocálicos either as hiatuses or diphthongs.
  3. As for the third source I mentioned (), it is not as "simplistic" as you say; it does make a distinction between the open and close "e" and "o" -- presented respectively as /é/, /e/, /ó/, and /o/ (although I would observe that the list contained many typographical errors, especially the placement of accents, e.g., historia, magoa, reu). Please note the distinctions it makes in /ey/-lei, /éy/-papéis, /éw/-chapéu, /ew/-teu, /óy/-heróis, and /oy/-boi. (I wouldn't blame the author, though; I think the errors could have crept in when the text was digitized and posted on the web.)
Regards, --HYC 09:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  1. I'm not sure where you're going with "prescriptive vs. normative". A norm is a prescription.
  2. What matters is whether what those authors claim reflects the way that native speakers normally talk. In my experience, it does not. For example, the pronunciation /kaetano/ for "Caetano" is an idealization based on orthography (the naive principle that words should be pronounced "as they are written"), not reality. Most people say /kaitanu/.
  3. Or take your third source. The author claims there is an diphthong /ye/ (non-standard phonetic transcription, but O.K.) in Portuguese words such as cárie (which he misspells). Well, ask yourself if you honestly know anyone who pronounces cárie as cá-ri-ê in their everyday lives... I don't — everyone I know says cá-ri.
  4. Incidentally, you say this author does distinguish between open and close vowels. Perhaps, but we were talking about rising diphthongs, and in his section on rising diphthongs he does not make the distinction clear. FilipeS 11:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
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