User talk:Gheuf

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Welcome!

Hello, Gheuf, 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:

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[edit] License tagging for Image:Soprano clef.png

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[edit] English pronunciation of Latin

Am I right in thinking that you somehow found a page where I had written on this topic? Or do I know you under some other name? Just checking what the context is here...RandomCritic 05:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes I found a page where you had written on this topic.
A public page? Or a user page? RandomCritic 06:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry to intrude without introduction. I thought since you seemed knowledgeable you might be able to critique my attempt.--Gheuf 05:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, just checking. Well, if you have seen my full discussion of the subject, then you probably know that it's a little more complicated than your algorithm (so far) has it; for instance, not all unstressed syllables go to schwa. It's certainly possible to do an algorithm that would mostly produce the correct result, but since there are several historical layers of sound-change lying behind the current pronunciation, the algorithm will be quite complicated. For instance, you just say "break the word up into syllables" -- but at different stages in the development of this pronunciation, there were different syllabification rules, and all of them affect how the vowels were eventually pronounced.RandomCritic 05:59, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see, you saw my note at Help_talk:Pronunciation_respelling_key. Which means you didn't see User:RandomCritic/Sandbox3.RandomCritic 06:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not totally sure what you're saying about Iphigenia. The pronunciation I'm familiar with is [ˌɪ.fə.dʒəˈnaɪ.ə]. This follows from the following algorithm:
  1. Ιφιγενεια (Morphologically, ιφι+γενεια)> Iphigenīa
  2. Iphigenīa > I.phi.geˈni.a (stress on the ni)
  3. Secondary stress on I in Iphi based on the presumed primary stress of the first element (ˈi.phi)
  4. Primary stressed penult i > [ aɪ ]
  5. Secondary stressed i > [ ɪ ]
  6. Other unstressed, noninitial vowels > [ ə ]
  7. ph > [ f ]
  8. g before front vowel e > [ dʒ ]

And voilà.

My basic problems with putting this up as an article are, first, that it needs some revision in certain corners (I've made quite a few corrections even in the last few days), and second, that it is a big fat target for a WP:OR challenge. I have been trying to find supporting documentation, but most of the relevant publications (and some of the data) are, at the latest, early 19th century and long out of print. RandomCritic 06:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll add the couple of 19th-century citations to the sandbox page tomorrow, with notations; it's rather late here now.RandomCritic 07:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Iranian phonological history

The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 25:1/2, 1997, has a brief article (pp. 7-26) which summarizes developments from I-E to Old Persian and Avestan. Mackenzie's Concise Pahlavi Dictionary gets you back from Modern Farsi, through "New Persian", to the Sasanid period (though it's better at providing data than analysis; happily the changes from Pahlavi > NP are fairly manageable). Between Avestan and Pahlavi I know of no sources (not even bad ones), and as the changes are rather extensive this is unfortunate. Many of the sound changes are simple, but others are not (as, say, how one gets from *Spantaδātah to Isfandīār (Farsi ɛsfændijɒr). I have a friend who has studied Iranian languages more intensively than I have, so I can ask him if he knows anything that covers this period.RandomCritic 07:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vowels

Your treatment of vowels before "r" in RP in the sample text seems to me peculiar. In particular, I think we should have: vɛərɪ̩ʼæbɪlɪs 'kjʊəræt and ɒb'djʊəræt

Possibly. However, in listening to samples of RP, I confess that I cannot hear this schwa as distinctly as you can. In the transition from vowel to [ ɹ ]. it is, of course, probable that for some speakers there would be a short period in which the features [ - consonantal] and [ + coronal] overlap (probably producing a sound more like [ ɚ ] than [ ə ]). However, this is a phonetic detail which need not be represented at this level of transcription, being wholly predictable from the surrounding environment. In American English, a word like "hard" might well be transliterated [ hɑɚd ] instead of [ hɑɹd ] with zero difference as to phonetic realization; however, the convention is to use the (ostensibly) consonantal symbol [ ɹ ] (note, though, that the use of the former transcription would make assigning equivalences between American and British English a bit simpler!). In my opinion, there really isn't any significant phonetic difference between [ ɛəɹ ], [ ɛɚ ], and [ ɛɹ ]. I expect the vocalic quality of the [ ɹ ] may be more salient to your ear if your variety of English lacks many other occurrences of [ ɹ ] following a vowel; e.g., if your pronunciation of hard is [ hɑəd ] or something similar, you are perhaps more likely to expect postvocalic reflexes of / ɹ / to be vocalic.
I think your use of [ ɪ̩ ] to represent what in American English is pretty consistently transcribed [ i ] (from prevocalic i) is rather more interesting, and may reflect a phonetic difference between RP and American that goes beyond the symbolic.

(Is it even necessary to show the three different accents? this seems beyond the scope of your purpose.)

The primary objection to some of the IPA transcriptions on WP (and some of the basis for the "Pronunciation Respelling" project) was, I gather, that it was too parochial (too American, or too British). I attempted to avoid such a critique by trying not to assume a single "correct" pronunciation -- which would too likely reflect American prejudices. Even the American pronunciation does not reflect my native Mid-Atlantic dialect, but is a sort of compromise between "General American" and other American varieties that would preserve most of the underlying distinctions; e.g., it reflects both the cot-caught distinction (absent in my native dialect) and the merry-marry-Mary distinction (which is present in my dialect, though not in most Midwestern English, and would be reflected in Anglo-Latin Verres/Varro/Varus).

Also, I think lots of the schwas in RP should be /ɪ/

That's interesting, and it would be helpful to try to predict exactly where those would show up -- I'm guessing in medial reflexes of e and i? Assuming your intuitions are correct (and working with recording and spectrogram equipment has convinced me that intuitions are not always correct -- I believed myself to be making distinctions which turned out not to be audible, or spectrographically distinguishable, at all) the question is then whether all such instances surface as [ ɪ ], or if there are predictable environments conditioning the variation between [ ɪ ] and [ ə ]. Think about it and see what you can come up with; I can provide you with a list of words which show various environments if you want it. If you want to do some phonetic experiments on your own, I'd suggest getting a copy of Praat or something similar. RandomCritic 04:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate your comment that the diphthongization before "r" is not a distinction which needs to be shown in the transcription, but it is for that very reason that I think having 3 separate transcriptions is unnecessary in the first place. For your purposes, you should be able to construct fairly easily a "pan-English" transcription that will relate to traditional accent-specific transcriptions by simple rule.

I'll look into it, but I think it presents a lot of problems. It's probably easier to construct a unified transcription for Australian and British English than it is for British and American, since the latter effectively involves reconstructing a pronunciation of c. 1750 which is quite unlike anything anybody speaks today. Moreover, it would largely result in obliterating many of the position-based distinctions which I'm interested in recording.

If you are going to present 3 separate transcriptions, though, I think you should use the transcriptions considerd "standard" for those accents. In the case of "curat", it's not that I personally hear a schwa there; but the presence of the centering diphthong (as opposed to a monophthong) is considered to be one of the clues that differentiate RP from other English accents (see J. C. Well's "Accents of English"). In my transcription of "variabilis", the vowel "i" was supposed to be a small capital "i". The little subscript dot was put in by accident. But yes this is the vowel of "KIT" and not of "FLEECE": RP differs (I believe) from English in its treatment of prevocalic "i". I am an American and pronounce "ee", but standard RP transcriptions (like the OED) generally have "ih" in this position.

There are a variety of possible transcriptions used by different authors, and in choosing among them I'd prefer to use the ones that are phonetically most accurate, rather than the ones that are "standard". There are even a number of features of the transcription I've used which I regret despite their being "standard", because they are phonetically (and phonologically) inaccurate; for instance, I dislike [ eɪ ] [ oʊ ] for what would much better be [ ej ] [ ow ]. A good many features of "standard" transcriptions of American English are, unfortunately, based on imitations of British analyses that differ strikingly from American speech. In fact, some of them differ from ordinary SE British English. For instance, the "standard" transcription of final unstressed -y is [ ɪ ], but most southern Britons actually pronounce something much closer [ i ]; though it should be noted that the qualities of unstressed vowels are rarely identical to those of stressed vowels, and many of these variants are really neither [ i ] nor [ ɪ ] but a third quality.

For the quality of unstressed vowels I was again going off J. C. Well's book; he develops some time to explaining how, in RP, "abbot" and "rabbit" don't rhyme, because unstressed "ih" and schwa haven't merged.

That's a different case, as it involves final syllables, which, like initial syllables, are somewhat more stressed than internal unstressed syllables. I'm dubious as to whether there is a real phonetic distinction between / ɪ /, / ɛ /, and / æ / in fully internal open position.
Anyway, my consideration of Wells' arguments will have to wait for another month, as current business prevents me from attending as closely as I'd like to these questions. It may end up being desirable to distinguish the pronunciation of "British English" from "RP" -- or omit RP altogether, as it seems to be increasingly non-standard both from the point of view of British speech and from the point of view of "pan-English". RandomCritic 22:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {{IPAGuide}}

I like your list - but it doesn't fit in the standard infobox for most browsers. We could, however, use my subtemplate idea to cause it to cobble together a list of only the symbols from your guide that are actually used in a given word - plus the unexplained symbols that need no explanation (such as "t") - in order. This would work for most mid-length words - longer ones could be broken up into subchunks. --Homunq 00:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Subtemplates are additional templates for each letter, at somewhere like IPAGuide/x. I think that the guide should include the unexplained symbols, as in "pron. guide: k, æ=lAd, t". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Homunq (talk • contribs) 00:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Re: Raddoppiamento sintattico

Hello,

Thank you for your stub submission. You may wish to note that it is preferable to use a stub template from Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types instead of using simply {{stub}}, if you can.

Thanks! Rosemary Amey 00:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IPA suggestion

I like the table you've created, but I just have one suggestion: I think you should use [ɑɚ], [ɛɚ], [ıɚ], [ɔɚ], [ʊɚ], [ɝː], [ɚ] for the rhoticized vowel diaphonemes, which I think is the best harmonization of the standard transcriptions of RP and GA (both of which use the lax symbols). --Lazar Taxon 06:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

As I said on Antimoon, it's really just a sort of arbitrary convention. I think in RP, "ferry" and "fairy" (or "serious" and "Sirius") really do differ by the presence or absence of a schwa; but in rhotic American English, as you point out, I think it's more an issue of "r-coloring" and not vowel-breaking strictly speaking. I think the rhotic diphthong symbols are nice for cross-dialectal compatability, but it is just a suggestion. --Lazar Taxon 02:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Monobook.js

Loos like User:Gheuf/monobook.js is messed up. Try removing all the content and then just copying and pasting everything from User:Nohat/monobook.js. Nohat 03:15, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Historic counties

I noticed your question that you raised about the Historic counties of England- to answer this in short, it is disputed as to how long they lasted.

Some counties were tiny Kingdom's which existed after the Roman conquest of Britannia, but before the formation of England, and so exact dates are either unknown, or vary depending on the origins of the county.

Many people (myself included) believe these counties have changed with successive legistlation from the government, with the boundaries changing over time. There is a minority view, particularly centred on an outsider political pressure group called CountyWatch, that insist the Historic counties of England actually still exist in a traditional and geographic sense. These two opposing views have often clashed on Wikipedia and so it was decieded that the article was best left as it is now to accomodate all the views.

Interestingly, there is an offical wikipedia policy found here that states that, based upon legal and historic evidence, we use the majority view that the Historic counties no longer exist, and we should instead use reference to the Ceremonial counties of England, which is the most modern county system.

I hope this helps answer your query, Jhamez84 01:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nicely Done

Hey, I just noticed a lot of your edits to music related articles - so I decided you deserved this:

The Barnstar of High Culture
Very nicely done- you definitely know more about music than I ever will! danielfolsom 23:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image:G_clef.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:G_clef.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. OsamaK 19:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Subbass_clef.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Subbass_clef.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. OsamaK 19:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] pronunciation of Classical names

Hi Gheuf,

You mentioned some time ago that you'd like to see (or write) a page for the English pronunciation of Classical names. I've started one at Help:Pronunciation of Classical names, basically just moving some material from other pages. It's only a start (not even an alphabet chart yet), but I'm sure this has all been done elsewhere by people who actually speak Latin and Greek, so I'm not too motivated to put too much time into it. I'd appreciate anything you have to contribute, including renaming the page if you want, since there's essentially nothing linked to it right now.

We should include all three pronunciation systems in common use, or at least link to other pages that cover particular systems. It's not intended to be an in-depth article, but rather a help key for articles such as 'surface features of the Moon' which are full of Classical names but where the editors object to adding English pronunciations, or where it's simply too much effort to work out each one.

Also, I see some variation between your IPA chart and the one I put up at Help:Pronunciation, and I like yours better in some ways, though that's probably because I'm a GA speaker. There haven't been any criticisms of that apart from representing reduced vowels, but you can always start a discussion there if you like. (We can automate any changes that we decide on.) (Well, Random Critic has made his rants, but since he fails to provide anything of substance, I don't pay too much attention. Shame, he could contribute quite a bit if he put his mind to it.) kwami (talk) 03:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)