Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 April 27

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[edit] April 27

[edit] Sylly

Are words like "hail" and "soil" one syllable or are they two syllables? 121.219.248.235 (talk) 03:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The "ai" and "oi" are diphthongs and they're counted as one syllable. -- JackofOz (talk) 03:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
"Soil" has two syllables, for me (I think...I mean, "hail" definitely has less syllables than "soil" although neither are clearly one or two). Adam Bishop (talk) 04:41, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
You get a slight epenthetic schwa between diphthongs and a following /l/. Maybe we could call this "sesquisyllabic"—not quite two syllables, but more than one. It's a good way to see that English /iː/ is a diphthong: peel [pijəl] vs. pill [pɪl]. Same with hail, soil, scowl, and for some people pole, pool. I'm guessing it feels more syllabic with soil than hail because there's greater tongue movement in the diphthong itself. (However, there still might be some dialects where there is a difference in the number of syllables, where /iːəl/ might contrast with /iːl/. Not sure, though.) kwami (talk) 06:43, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
In English, not all syllables are created equal. How many "syllables" -oil words have would depend on the purpose for which you're counting syllables. There's certainly no syllable boundary between which you could hyphenate, but you could go either way for the purposes of rhyming metre. Paul Davidson (talk) 08:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
We need some definitive help. Help, please, from someone with a copy of the OED! --LaPianísta! 22:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
The dialect being spoken is also important. Generally 'soil' and 'hail' are interpreted as one syllable for most purposes, but can be pushed into two syllables when necessary. Other words, such as the name 'William' can be two or three syllables [wil.jəm] or [wi.li.jəm]. In my (Australian) dialect, 'fire' is ambiguous. Is [fajə] a triphthong or a two syllabic word? It's often used as a single syllable, without strong evidence of its monosyllabic-ness. Steewi (talk) 02:26, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
The OED doesn't indicate syllable boundaries directly, so it won't resolve this. kwami (talk) 08:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
See Syllabification. The syllable in English is an unusual thing; English is based on words, not on syllables as so many other languages are. Other languages syllabify (syllabificate?) according to how a word is spoken. The weak correspondence between our speech and our spelling makes syllabification in English an abstract, mechanical process best left to the experts. We only ever need to worry about syllables when we are trying to decide where to hyphenate a word, and nobody would ever hyphenate "hail" or "soil". --Milkbreath (talk) 12:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

You could also think of how many moras each word has. As I recall, some English diphthongs like -oi in soil are analyzed (Hammond 1999) as trimoraic, whereas the tense vowel in hail (which is slightly diphthongized) is bimoraic. — Zerida ☥ 23:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic name in IPA?

Hi all,
That fine running midfielder Bachar Houli's name written in Arabic is بشار الحولي. What's a IPA rendering of his name as spoken in Modern Standard Arabic? This is definitely not homework. Any answers much appreciated!
--Shirt58 (talk) 11:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Here you are: bæʃɑːr al-hʊlɪ -- though I'm not much practised in IPA. --Omidinist (talk) 13:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

In MSA the last name is probably /ɛl ɦuli/. I wonder why the al- part isn't used in the English spelling? Adam Bishop (talk) 19:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Just for convenience, I suppose; Like von and de which are ommitted from some German and French names in English. --Omidinist (talk) 19:16, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
(Anecdotally but completely unreferencedly agree. Met more than a few of folks who've lost the "El" from their family names. s58)

The first sound of the last name is actually ħ, a voiceless pharyngeal fricative, giving /ɛl ħuli/. Some of the pronunciation of the vowels will depend on the accent used (i.e. country of speaker, no matter that it is MSA) Drmaik (talk) 19:27, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

(Yes, do realise there is no "one" MSA. Apart from that, completely ignorant. s58)

Isn't it ɦ, the voiced counterpart of h? Adam Bishop (talk) 02:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Arabic doesn't have a voiced glottal fricative. Based on our article on Arabic phonology, I'd transcribe it as [bæʃɑːr æl-ħuli] (assuming the vowel lengths already given are correct). — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 04:58, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Hmm. No wonder I can never pronounce that letter correctly. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Don't kick yourself too much. It's a hard one. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 08:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh now I get it, so the /a/ gets fronted to /æ/ Thank you all very much indeed!

[edit] Small follow-up question, tho

Is the "ch" for /ʃ/ in "Bachar" a French rather than English transliteration (as I suspect "ou" for /u/ may also be)? --Shirt58 (talk) 12:05, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

No doubt. The article says his parents immigrated from Lebanon, which was a French colony or protectorate or something from the end of World War I until the 1950s or so, so probably the French transliteration of Arabic was most familiar to them. —Angr 18:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
If that fine running midfielder's first name is Bashar as in Bashar al-Assad, it will have a geminate so it should be transcribed [baʃʃɑ:r]. What I am not so clear about is why the Arabic has the definite article when the English doesn't. Since he's Australian-born, I'd go by the English. If his name doesn't have a definite article, it should not have one in the transcription either. But if it did have one, then I'm not sure how it would be pronounced in Lebanese--perhaps [ɛl] as someone else suggested, but I'm not certain. Syrian has the same form as the Classical Arabic ([al]). Not sure why you'd want the MSA in any event; names should be transcribed as they are (pronounced, that is). — Zerida ☥ 23:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


Hi again. Thank you both so much. Zerida, I'll answer "Not sure why you'd want the MSA in any event", on your talk page. --Shirt58 (talk) 12:07, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "commute bw. A and B" = "live between A and B"?

If you spend your time working in A or living in B can you say that you "commute bw. A and B" or "live between A and B"? 217.168.3.246 (talk) 19:41, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

If you work in A and live in B, and travel between A and B every day, I'd say you commute between A and B. Saying you live between A and B sounds like you live in a town in between the two. Someone living in Arlington, Texas could say he lives between Dallas and Fort Worth, but that doesn't mean he commutes between them. —Angr 19:51, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Wiktionary says about "commute": (intransitive) To travel from one's home (usually in the suburbs of a city) to one's workplace (usually in the city itself, or in another city) to go to work, or vice versa.
"Live between A and B" may be used when, sarcastically, you are referring to the fact that most of your spare time / private life is spent to travel between your office in A and your bedroom in B.
--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, if you say you live between A and B, it will be interpreted as though you had homes in both A and B and that you divide your time between living in both. Same if you grew up between A and B. If you work in one of them but don't live there, then I don't think that's the expression you're looking for. — Zerida ☥ 23:27, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Science desk Help Wanted

This is on the Science desk. It might have more success if it were in English. Someone here to lend a hand and copy the result back over there? "Noise in potteries" doesn't quite seem to cut it. Thanks Lisa4edit (talk) 21:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC) Poteries

Peut-on enregistrer les bruits aux potteries? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.237.101.48 (talk) 20:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I have answered the question on the science page (the question referred to a story about sound having been accidentally recorded on ancient pottery, which is unfortunately not true). Lesgles (talk) 22:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I first though it was a joke, particularly with what looks like a typo, then I felt bad for not helping. Is there no reference desk in the French Wikipedia? Just illustrates the depth of my ignorance I guess. --71.236.23.111 (talk) 02:34, 28 April 2008 (UTC)