Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 October 11

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October 11

English s and French s

All of the above got me wondering about when the French final s became silent. Am I right in thinking that English plural marker s is of French origin? After all the related languages such as Dutch and German normally use en for pl. and Old English did too (you still find such plurals in oxen, brethren, kine, etc.) And am I right in concluding therefore that since English s is not silent, at the time that French s was borrowed into English it was also not yet silent? Contact Basemetal here 17:33, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

First of all, you are incorrect from the get-go here. English's plural suffix -s is a continuation of Middle English's -es plural suffix (which, especially in the later parts of Middle English's life, was often written simply as -s). Middle English -es is derived from the Old English nominative and accusative case ending for a-stem masculine nouns (though, later on in Old English's life, it was extended to other nouns as well) -as. It was the most common Old English plural marker (used for around 40% of Old English nouns). The -en plural suffix that you mention derives from the Middle English -n (in words ending in a vowel) and -en plural suffixes (which were also used for dative plurals as well), that were used more so in southern dialects of English than in northern dialects of English. Middle English -n and -en derive from two separate Old English case endings. The first is the nominative-accusative plural ending of weak nouns in Old English, which can be seen in Old English nama → naman, ēare → ēaran and the like. The twoth is late Old English -un and -on, which are weakened forms of the Old English dative plural suffix -um. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 18:27, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for this clarification. Well then when did French final s become silent? That was my primest question. Contact Basemetal here 18:47, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

According to Phonological history of French, in the 16th and 17th centuries (though some remnants still exist in the form of liaison [z])... AnonMoos (talk) 19:05, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Basemetal -- In early Indo-European, "s" appeared in many plural endings of nouns and adjectives (though "s" didn't appear in all plural endings, and didn't appear only in plural endings), so it's not entirely an accident that both English and western Romance (French, Catalan, Spanish etc.) seized on "s" as a mark of the plural. The accusative plural form appears to have been the main pivot around which "-s" was analyzed as a general plural morpheme in both cases. The English plural "-s" ending really wasn't borrowed from French, but I suppose it's possible that Old French or early Norman could have been an influence on how "-s" was generalized and spread to cases where it had not historically been present... AnonMoos (talk) 18:56, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Question about Dutch transliteration - Paul Haarhuis

Hello, can someone who speaks Dutch help me here please? How do you transliterate the name of Paul Haarhuis into English? (a Dutch former tennis player and Davis Cup captain)

Thank you. Tdunsky (talk) 15:16, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean a phonetic transcription to indicate pronunciation? ("Transliteration" usually refers to a conversion between different writing systems, but Dutch and English both use the Latin alphabet.) -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:49, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, I may have phrased wrongly. I mean the phonetic transcription. Tdunsky (talk) 15:52, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Until a native Dutch speaker comes along, I will throw my 2p worth in and say that when I learnt Dutch a few years ago, I was taught a pronunciation that tells me that the closest we have in English is the word "whorehouse". I wouldn't be surprised if he preferred a different pronunciation! --TammyMoet (talk) 16:06, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Native speaker here, and unfortunately the 'whorehouse' pronunciation gets both vowels quite wrong. Especially the second vowel, 'ui', is a sound not used in English at all, and of the top of my head, I wouldn't know what to compare it too. The first vowel is a long a, definitely not an o sound. Imagine the a in the word father as spoken by someone from the North of England. Until some linguist comes around and uses those unintelligible IPA runes, I'm afraid I can't help much more. EDIT, apparently the IPA for the two vowels is aː and œy, if that helps anyone. Though the pronunciation guide for the second one in the IPA table here on wiki is plain wrong.Fgf10 (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. Some continuity questions, if you please.

Would you say that the pronunciation "au" (each vowel pronounced separately) is the closest thing English has to this pronunciation?

A couple more: is the second h silent, or is it pronounced? And the s at the end - is it pronounced "s", or "sh", or something else?

Thank you again. Tdunsky (talk) 16:29, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Actually, come to think of it, that's pretty close yes, if you slur them together a bit. Hard to explain if you haven't actually heard it being spoken. Second H is definitely not silent, they very rarely are in Dutch. The s would normally be a plain s, not sh, though this depends on your dialect a bit. Fgf10 (talk) 16:49, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much. one last question - the pronunciation of ui is definitely not anything like a plain "a", right? "au" is much closer. Your answer would help settle an argument... :) Tdunsky (talk) 16:57, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Nowhere near an a. Fgf10 (talk) 17:02, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Tdunsky (talk) 17:08, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Online pronunciations sound just like "har house" to me. See [1], [2] - but this one sounds like "har hugh's" [3] Rmhermen (talk) 20:01, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

You must have a very non standard-pronunciation of the word house for them to be just the same (I guess the highland Scots pronunciation of house comes pretty close in a way). The last link you gave is clearly an American pretending to speak Dutch, it's awful. Fgf10 (talk) 20:48, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Go here and click on either speaker icon. Contact Basemetal here 00:07, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I would transcribe that (and Rmhermen's examples) as "Hargh-house", not using any sort of systematic process, of course. The second syllable does sound to me like a perfectly normal English pronounciation of "house", though. Tevildo (talk) 09:46, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

When Dutch names get adopted into English, the unpronounceable ui /œy/ often gets altered to the English PRICE vowel /aɪ/, e.g. Schuyler pronounced "Skyler". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:57, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I think I've heard more pronunciations of Kuijken than I've had hot breakfasts. And I'm still none the wiser. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:36, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

But it's not that hard! Try this: say "hut hiss" then excise the t of "hut" and the h of "hiss": you're left with some kind of an approximation of the Dutch pronunciation of "huis" (=house); if "hut hiss" doesn't work how about "cut it": excise the t of "cut": you're left with an approximation of the Dutch pronunciation of "kuit" (=calf (of the leg)). Angr: a "Skyler" approximation for Schuyler is surely better than "scowler" which is what pronuncing "house" for "huis" amounts to but is still far from the original (and the consonant represented by Dutch "ch" in "sch" is, without being identical to it, more like Scots "ch" in "loch" or "eneuch"). Plus for some reason Dutch "ij" (the ij in Kim Clijsters's name) is also often approximated in English using the long i of price even though the English long a would be a much better fit. Tevildo: I know Google's text-to-speech is not great but I just can't understand how you can say that the Dutch pronunciation of "huis" sounds to you like a perfectly normal English pronunciation of "house". Maybe if you listened carefully to several iterations of the word huis? I've noticed that hearing a word several times in succession acts a bit like a magnifying glass for me although I would much prefer to just be able to slow down one iteration of huis. Unfortunately that is not yet offered by Google Translate. Pay attention to the second part of the Dutch diphthong "ui". It resembles the palatal glide which is the second element of the vowels found in the English words voice, race and vice not the bilabial glide which is the second part of the vowel in house. The first part of the Dutch diphthong "ui" sounds a bit like the vowel in "cut" or closer yet "fur", but without the r, assuming you're a speaker of a rhotic variant of English. Hope this helps. No need to butcher that poor name! Contact Basemetal here 21:53, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

No, sorry, still sounds like "house" to me, with perhaps a _very_ slight Scottish inflection. I must have a tin ear in such matters. Tevildo (talk) 23:35, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Using those instructions, it does sound a bit like how some Northern UK accents pronounce "house". I'm rubbish at identifying accents, but I'm thinking maybe Liverpudlian (or possibly Geordie) - one of those where "house" is very similar in sound to "mice" (and further back and slightly more nasalized than RP). Bluap (talk) 23:41, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Sounds kind of like a Belfast pronunciation of that vowel, /əʉ/...so not quite right, but just shifted up slightly from /œy/. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:23, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

It really depends on the accent: [ɛɪ] for ij, [ɔʊ] for ou and [œʏ] for ui are quite archaic pronunciations, from a dialectological point of view. Many non-standard dialects have opened them to [aɪ], [aʊ] and [aʏ] (or alternatively [ɔʊ]) respectively, just like in English and Standard German basically. Conservative speakers may frown on these pronunciations, but they have encroached on Standard Dutch too, where they are known as the "Polder Dutch accent". Dutch people I encounter usually employ this pronunciation (admittedly, they are usually young people, where it is particularly common). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:12, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

By the way, a traditional German pronunciation of ui or uy in Dutch names is [ɔɪ] or [ɔʏ], which also seems to occur in Dutch dialects.

I'd also like to point out that the diphthong [œʏ], while typologically unusual, does occur in Finnish, for example. I have been told that in traditional Kentish dialect, house was pronounced with a quite similar vowel as in Dutch. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:27, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Transfer of question

I was asked by a user on the Humanities desk to transfer this question here as it was considered difficult to answer due to the words used:

Hello, I am studying for Ph.D in Political Sciences and I am struggling to understand a political concept. If we were to understand the political 'thesis' as such in regards to cultural agendas, Marxist theological and dialectic origins could deserve admirable credit in regards to human application and thereof. However is it possible that such human application could be used to speculate social-economic tendencies within communities that adhere to the 'lumpenproletariat' or perhaps even the 'Petit bourgeoisie'? Marxists texts proclaim such articles as somewhat abhorrent, so I need this contradiction answered as it has left me a little confused. Thanks guys! --Saderette (talk) 19:54, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Your question isn't easy to understand, I'm afraid. Am I right in thinking that English isn't your first language? I don't think "theological", "human application", "speculate" and "articles" are the right English words to use. You may be able to get a better translation of your question if you ask at WP:RD/L - we'll then be able to answer it properly here. Tevildo (talk) 20:15, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. --Saderette (talk) 20:25, 11 October 2014 (UTC)