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October 5

How exactly do you read this?

(unaspirated) /p/ - I watched YouTube videos, and they all make the sound sound like a soft b. It doesn't sound like a p phoneme at all. But I'm not talking about the sound. I'm talking about the slash. How do you say the slash? Do you just say slash-make a soft b sound-slash? Or do you say slash-pee-slash even though it sounds like a soft b? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:45, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

First, the interpretation of what goes between phoneme slashes is dependent on the specific language concerned, so /p/ with respect to English would include (aspirated), (unreleased) etc. In any linguistics class that I was ever in, written "/p/" on paper or chalkboard would be read out as /ðə foʊniːm piː/... -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:41, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

• AnonMoos has it right. The sound is not a "soft b" but a /p/ with no puff of air following. (English /b/ is voiced and unaspirated; /p/ is voiceless and unaspirated. Voicing and aspiration are independent phenomena, many Indian languages have all four possible combinations.)

Learning phonology from text is like expecting to ride a bike after reading a manual. You need a good tutor or course with feedback from a live teacher, since the book or video can't actually hear you. See if you can audit a class or get a trained French or Spanish tutor, since those languages have unaspirated /p/. German /p/ is aspirated, like English. μηδείς (talk) 17:59, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

/p/ sounds like a p as in "peas". /p/ (without aspiration) sounds like a b, as in "puppies" and "spoil". That said, for some reason, I always find that the Mandarin b and English b sound almost identical. The only difference is that the Mandarin b is sometimes unvoiced (no vibrations). So, /p/ is really a b phoneme. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 00:02, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

You seem to be confused between /.../ transcriptions and transcriptions, and between phonemes and phones. AnonMoos (talk) 00:37, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, the initial and medial /p/s in puppies are both aspirated (the double 'pp' is just a matter of orthography). This is simply not a matter amenable to a non-face to face discussion. The bottom line in English is that /p/ has an aspirated and unaspirated allophone, each of which is a voiceless consonant, while /b/ is voiced, and has no conditioned allophones. In other languages this works out often very differently. μηδείς (talk) 00:51, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Having a native tutor doesn't teach you phonology. You need someone who knows many languages for comparison and has done a lot of reading. --94.217.98.108 (talk) 22:09, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

German von etw leben

How would you translate "Das Projekt lebt von der freiwilligen Mitarbeit"?--Tuchiel (talk) 13:14, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I would go with "The project depends on voluntary co-operation." --Viennese Waltz 14:26, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Native speaker here. +1 to VieWa´s translation. Bear in mind that “von etwas leben” may also be used in a more literal sense (referring to nourishment or monetary income). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:01, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

German speaker here: How about "The project is carried by voluntary co-operation"? --87.147.189.144 (talk) 13:34, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Word by word: "The project is kept alive by voluntary contributions". --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 14:12, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

"kept alive" tends to the meaning of "life-sustaining-measures" --87.147.188.45 (talk) 22:12, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

"sustained"? Clarityfiend (talk) 00:37, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

"supported by"? Akld guy (talk) 02:29, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

As someone who studied German at school, I would say the "word by word" translation is "The project lives by voluntary co - operation". So far as I can see, the construction is active, not passive. 92.8.220.234 (talk) 13:00, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

"… studied German at …": Which level? Any degree? --87.147.187.185 (talk) 13:39, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you everybody for your suggestions, first of all! Regarding the last (literal) translation: Could "live by" really be used in this figurative sense here?--Tuchiel (talk) 11:53, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Not in normal everyday English or in formal English. However, it may be used in literature as a figure of speech, or in oratory where for example, a fundraising speaker, addressing a crowd, is figuratively emphasizing that the project will be doomed if contributions dry up. Akld guy (talk) 20:14, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a lot!--Tuchiel (talk) 18:57, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

October 6

Greek era

Is this written in ancient Greek or a more modern form? I'm on a slow Internet connection, so I can't load anything except the text-only version (which, judging by the English transcriptions of certain names, is a bad OCR job), and I'm not seeing a preface in that version. It's somehow related to Antiphon (orator), so it would make sense if this were in ancient Greek, but maybe it's a modern translation or something of the sort. I checked WorldCat, but claims that it's written in modern Greek, while says ancient, and clearly they're referring to the same book.

Nyttend backup (talk) 17:06, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't know much Greek, but I see instances of iota subscript, which I believe mark it as Classical. --ColinFine (talk) 17:14, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

That appears to be a concordance of the words in Antiphon's surviving works, so the lemmata and quoted contexts are clearly in ancient (Attic) Greek. The title and apparatus are in Latin because that's how things were done at the time (and still are in some cases; cf. the Oxford Classical Texts series). It's assumed that anyone who would be interested in such a thing can read Latin, no matter his or her native language. Deor (talk) 17:31, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

• It is apparently rendered in (post-)Attic Greek given the use of μητερ (not ματερ) for "mother". It seems like a later transcription in Koine, as if one were reading Chaucer in modern translation. The large number of biblical words as one skims the text seems odd, as the Septuagint apparently post-dated the Orator. You'll need a specialist. μηδείς (talk) 19:51, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm reminded of the anecdote about some rather unworldly CofE Bishop who, when chatting to his gardener, would follow all the Greek aphorisms and words he used with English translations, recognising that a person in such a lowly position had probably not learned classical Greek, but didn't bother to translate the Latin, because of course everybody understood that. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.217.210.199 (talk) 19:56, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Phi or chi; which letter came first??

In the way the Greek alphabet is best known today, phi comes before chi. But some sources say that in Western Greek dialects, chi came before phi. Any reason for this?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:12, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

In Bright and Daniels, The World's Writing Systems, Table 21.2 General Comparative Table of Early Greek Alphabets (8th-7th c. B.C.E.) lists Chi before Phi, while Table 21.3 Detailed Comparison of Eastern and Western Alphabets lists Phi first; but I can't find any discussion of the order in that section (by Pierre Swiggers) at all. --ColinFine (talk) 17:31, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Georgia_guy -- when the sound was written with a single letter, then everywhere in Greek-speaking areas basically the same shape was used (allowing for local variations). By contrast, when was written with a single letter, two quite different shapes were used, one "X"-like, and the other "Ψ"-like (though with straight lines, and sometimes having a form like File:Alph. Ahiram lettre 11.svg). In the Etruscan alphabet, the letter Φ comes before the "Ψ"-shaped (see Old Italic script). AnonMoos (talk) 03:52, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

That's psi, which was pronounced like the aspirated k in Western Greek. Psi came after phi and chi in all versions of the alphabet. But this is about the order of phi and chi, not psi. Georgia guy (talk) 14:41, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Whatever -- the names of the letters are attested much later than the letters themselves (and some of the adjectival suffixes to letter names, such as e/psilon, y/psilon, o/mega, o/micron date from an even later period, after a number of mergers of vowel sounds had occurred). We don't know the names of the letters ca. 700 B.C., and you're making an assumption (which may or may not be justified) that the fork-like letter representing the sounds in some alphabet variants is somehow the "same" as the fork-like letter representing the sound in other alphabet variants. It's a pretty safe bet that in Greek-speaking areas where a fork-shaped letter wrote a sound, that letter did not have the name "psi"!

Instead of using possibly anachronistic letter names in a rather confusing manner, why don't you specify exactly what you're trying to ask in the form of unambiguous letter-shape / sound-value pairs? AnonMoos (talk) 17:23, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

What I want to know is the reason for inconsistency in order, not sound. That is, I want to know why chi (not psi) came before phi in Western Greek alphabets but after phi in Eastern Greek alphabets. Georgia guy (talk) 18:23, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

If you use the Hellenistic-era letter-names of the Ionian alphabet alone (without any further explanation) to apply to non-Ionian alphabets of pre-Hellenistic periods, then unfortunately for you, other people must make assumptions in order to try to figure out what you might possibly mean. You could spare us this vague ambiguous muddle if you could be bothered to specify the letter of a particular shape which was used to write a particular sound in a specified variant of the early Greek alphabet (without getting involved with the distracting issue of the letter-names, which are unknown during early periods, and confusing when applied to letter-shapes which have drastically different sound-values in some forms of early Greek than they did in Hellenistic Ionian). AnonMoos (talk) 21:44, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

AnonMoos, do you have any arguments that support that the Western and Eastern Greek letters that look alike that come after upsilon are not the same letter?? Please focus on phi and chi. Georgia guy (talk) 22:20, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Look at a table of the Carian alphabet to have your mind blown with respect to what should be assumed to be the "same" letter.. AnonMoos (talk) 14:41, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

October 7

Using the word "of"

In proper English grammar, would I say "analysis of science or mathematics" or would I say "analysis of science or of mathematics"? --2601:642:C301:119A:C54E:B1EF:D0E9:D355 (talk) 01:10, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Either is OK. If you can give the full context, one may be preferable. StuRat (talk) 01:50, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I prefer "analysis of science or mathematics", because I think the extra "of" in the other sentence is redundant. Both are grammatically correct, though. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:13, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Ironically, your last sentence is grammatically incorrect. -- Jack of Oz 05:55, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

"Never use two words when one suffices."

Or...

"Do not ever make use of a pair of words at whatever time a word used singularly can be made practical and effective for the expression of the same thing." —2606:A000:4C0C:E200:6130:AA57:396F:78BA (talk) 06:58, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

KISS principle (originally from naval engineering systems but seems applicable here). Alansplodge (talk) 11:44, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

"For your homework please write an essay on the analysis of science or of mathematics" would be preferable to "For your homework please write an essay on the analysis of science or mathematics". Sometime keeping it simple makes it sound stupid. DuncanHill (talk) 22:27, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

If your goal is elegant prose, adopting the standards of naval engineers seems imprudent. - Nunh-huh 00:37, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Related quote: "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." —Blaise Pascal -- 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:CCE8:62C2:FF45:AE7B (talk) 05:02, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

• I see a difference in the two. The second is unambiguous: you are directed to analyse either science or mathematics but not both. The first requires that you analyze (science or mathematics). This is ambiguous: are you to produce single analysis of some dichotomy between these fields, or are you interpret this as either/or? This ambiguity is the reason lawyers use extra words in contracts. -Arch dude (talk) 02:24, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

This is a perennial feature of the way we express ourselves. For example, is 6x3+2 twenty ((6x3)+2) or thirty (6x(3+2))? I like to add in the brackets. There are two possibilities:

• (Analysis of science) or mathematics
• Analysis of (science or mathematics) equivalent to (analysis of science) or (analysis of mathematics)

Arch dude finds three possibilities. I'm not so sure about the third: what does "some dichotomy between these fields" refer to? 82.14.24.95 (talk) 09:25, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

My third possibility is that we are supposed to perform a single analysis of something that has to do with both fields. Example: Which field is more similar to philosopy: science or mathematics?" The use of the second "of" excludes this interpretation. Basically, the sdandlone "or" may be either inclusive (and/or), or exclusive (or but not both), or it may be "contrastive", requiring that you contrast the two objects joined by the "or." I don't know the correct term for "contrastive". -Arch dude (talk) 21:44, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

I think the lawyers would disagree with you Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 July 8#Can a renter decline to have electricity in the apartment?. 82.14.24.95 (talk) 11:42, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

peruna

In H. L. Mencken's hilarious essay on Thorstein Veblen (in the First Series of the Prejudices, 1919) I came across this sentence: Almost every year sees another intellectual Munyon arise, with his infallible peruna for all the current malaises. Finnish happens to be my first language, and in Finnish peruna means potato, but surely that's not what Mencken means here? And who or what the hell is Munyon? I use the annotated Library of America edition, but the annotations explain neither word. --Edith Wahr (talk) 21:24, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

James M. Munyon ? If so, then "Munyon" might be used as a synonym for "fraud". And peruna might refer to peruna tonic, a "patent medicine" which was really just a way to get drunk: . StuRat (talk) 21:59, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

ah, thanks. James M. doesn't show up in Munyon, though, it's not that I didn't look it up before posting...--Edith Wahr (talk) 22:23, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I added it. Even weirder, the US songwriter David Munyon has a German Misplaced Pages article, but no English Misplaced Pages article I can find. StuRat (talk) 22:44, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

And this may be your "peruna" - http://www.bottlebooks.com/Peruna_reprinted_from_collier.htm Wymspen (talk) 12:43, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

He/she/it endings of verbs

It seems rather strange that out of all the person verb endings in English, the only one that is different is the he/she/it form.

Is there a particular reason that the -s or -es ending is still added only for this particular form,and is there any reason why it could not be altered to fit in with the others in a simple regular pattern so whatever person is being used,the end is identical? Lemon martini (talk) 22:38, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Just to clarify, are you asking why the possessive forms are "his", "hers", and "its" instead of "he's", "she's", and "it's" ? Or are you asking about plural forms ? StuRat (talk) 22:50, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I think the OP is talking about these forms: I go, you go, we go, they go, he/she/it goes. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 23:01, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry if it isn't clear... yes I was referring to I ask,you ask,we ask,they ask,you(pl) ask, he/she/it askS and why the extra S came to be there and if it is needed there? Lemon martini (talk) 23:18, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Define "needed".

... is there any reason why it could not be altered ...? - No, there's no reason why not; language change happens all the time. But if you're thinking this possibly sensible reform could be implemented immediately by vote of the Misplaced Pages Reference Desk community, well, I have to tell you that that is not how language change occurs. Sorry. -- Jack of Oz 23:52, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Some articles which may be of interest to the questioner are : English verbs, Uses of English verb forms, and for some historical background Old English grammar. Grammatical person may also be helpful. DuncanHill (talk) 00:04, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Lemon_martini -- in grammar/linguistics, it's usually called the third-person singular present-tense verb ending. The reason why only the 3rd-person singular ending survived is partly due to accidents of historical attrition -- the plural endings for all the persons ("we", "you" plural, and "they") had already collapsed together at the Anglo-Frisian or "Ingvaeonic" stage; a number of endings disappeared due to general reductions in word-final unstressed syllables during Middle English; while distinction of number in second person forms (i.e. the pronoun "thou" and the "-st" verb ending, "-t" in some modals) was eliminated for basically sociological or sociolinguistic reasons around 1700. In the modern "Continental Scandinavian" languages, all person and number endings have been merged together or lost (though written Swedish until relatively recently had some plural verb forms which are considered archaic now). AnonMoos (talk) 00:07, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

October 8

Use of " and dots

There is something I don't understand in English. When we use " does the final " have to be used after the sentence's end or before? For example: Harry Potter said he "did not like his family." or Harry Potter said he "did not like his family". Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 01:08, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

It varies, depending on where you are. See Full stop#Punctuation styles when quoting. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 01:21, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response.Tintor2 (talk) 01:22, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

In the example that you gave, neither, because that is not a quote, unless he actually said "/ did not like his family." Otherwise, I think you're paraphrasing. I think that you should make sure that you understand what a quote is, and what it isn't. Plasmic Physics (talk) 06:05, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Just to clarify what Plasmic Physics is talking about above; a quote or "direct speech" would be Harry Potter said "I do not like my family". Your example is a reported or "indirect speech". See Direct and indirect speech. Apologies if I'm stating the obvious. Alansplodge (talk) 14:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

October 9

Do young children even have a native language if they are enrolled in an immersion program?

I once recently read that students are being placed into immersion language programs, where all the subjects are taught in the target language. The same report then talked about concerns of the children's native language and the foreign language, but I was thinking, if a child becomes a fluent, native-like speaker in the second language, then wouldn't that mean the child has two native languages instead of one? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 00:45, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Immersion programs are just during school hours. Based on my experience with kids in such programs, this is nothing like the immersion of real life in the native language of their homes and their locality. They may become quite fluent, but not truly native, in the language of their school. To be a native speaker, you must be using that language to talk to your parents, relatives, playmates, shopkeepers and neighbors; listening to that language on radio and television; etc. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

To put some numbers on it, in the US, at least, school tends to be about 7 hours a day for 180 days a year, or 1260 hours. There are 8766 hours in a year, and about 2/3 of those, or 5844, are waking hours. So, 1260/5844 = 21.5% of the waking hours using the "immersion language", and the rest of their waking hours using their native language. So, it certainly isn't anywhere near 50/50. StuRat (talk) 02:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't the word "native" mean "the one you were born with"? I've come across the term "Native American", which I'm told is correctly spelled with a capital N - is a "native American" what the founding fathers or their successors call a "natural - born American"? 82.14.24.95 (talk) 09:41, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Obviously "native language" doesn't mean "the one you were born with" as newborns don't speak nor comprehend any language; indeed, the word wikt:infant literally means "speechless". --92.27.207.68 (talk) 10:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Our First language article deals with the definitions. I think your premise is false, since While in womb, babies begin learning language from their mothers according to the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. Alansplodge (talk) 10:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Yet, being "able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language" doesn't imply any degree of comprehension, defined in wikt as "assimilation of knowledge". --92.27.207.68 (talk) 12:22, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The French immersion schools in Ontario start in grade 1, so kids have 5 or 6 years of speaking English (and/or another language) at home and in school before they start learning in French. Teaching is only 70% in French at first, then 80% in grade 4, and I'm not sure if it increases to 90% in higher grades, but I don't think it's ever 100% in an elementary immersion school. Maybe in high school it's 100%, but there are no physical French immersion high schools here - if kids want to continue the immersion program in high school, they have to do it in a sort of segregated program at an English school. This is of course only anecdotal evidence, but in my experience this means that kids in French immersion programs are taught in French most (but not all) of the time and talk to the teacher in French when they have to, but speak English at school the rest of the time with the other kids (at recess, lunch, on the bus, etc), and English (or their family's native language) at home. It's also rare for immersion schools to have native French-speaking teachers. I only know of one native French speaker, while the rest are all English speakers who learned French in school (this is probably how French immersion kids end up with a frankly bizarre French accent). In Ontario, there are also French-language school boards where instruction is 100% in French 100% of the time, but those are for native French-speaking families, and are completely separate from immersion schools. Immersion schools are part of the English school boards. Kids in English schools also learn French, but that is just one class a day. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:24, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The Latin nativus means "born". More studies: , , . 46.208.167.127 (talk) 14:18, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Etymological fallacy --92.27.207.68 (talk) 15:28, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

How do you figure? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 15:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The historical origins of a word are not identical to the modern usage of that word. Knowing what the latin word "nativus" meant to Latin speakers is interesting, but not useful for determining the exact meaning of the modern word "native", which is to say that words mean today what they mean today as they are actually used, not what they used to mean at some point in the past. The etymological fallacy is that word meaning is permanently fixed and cannot change over time. That has never been true. --Jayron32 16:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

I know what "etymological fallacy" means. I just don't know why the IP thinks it's a fallacy in this particular case. "Native" is what you're "born with". You're not literally born with any specific language, but whatever the language of your native environment is, is liable to become your native language. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 17:07, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

What is a "native environment"? By your definition of "native" you seem to be saying it's the environment a person was born in. Are you saying that if a person was born in China but moved to the UK a day later, and grew up speaking English, their native language is Chinese? CodeTalker (talk) 22:09, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Not unless they were born already knowing how to talk. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:57, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

"Native" has also come to mean "connected with something in a natural way", which would fit the moved-to-the-UK scenario. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 06:09, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Someone has already mentioned First language, which would seem to be a more precise term than "native language". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 06:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

"Native" and "natural" come from the same root. "Natural" is from Latin natura, "birth", and nativus means "born", so "natural born" is one of those redundancies about which Henry Fowler wrote . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.14.24.95 (talk) 11:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

You just did it again. Henry 15:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

October 10

Why do foreign language learners sound like robots?

The question phrased this way may sound offensive, but that's not the point. I'm just wondering what are the qualities of robot-like speech and why foreign language learners sound like robots to native speakers. I've observed this among native English speakers who are learning Chinese, and I've heard this in native Chinese speakers who are learning English. They all sound like robots. Even Siri sounds weird. And Siri is "made of silicon". 50.4.236.254 (talk) 05:48, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

You're projecting your personal observations onto everyone. I've worked with many non-native English speakers, and they don't sound robotic to me. And I've heard native English speakers who do sound robotic. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:55, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

It's probably just the pauses in the wrong places while searching for a word. Native speakers tend to store whole phrases in memory, but it takes a while for foreign language learners to reach this stage, especially if they are taught by older methods where individual words are translated mentally from one language to the other. Some native speakers of English also sound like robots when they are reading unfamiliar English text because they read one word at a time. Dbfirs 07:46, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Is that latter point a failure of the education system, or a lack of interest by the student when learning to read? Or some of both? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 07:56, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes just poor eyesight. Dbfirs 09:50, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Maybe the problem is that the robots of your acquaintance are themselves English-language learners, still thinking in their elegant and natural Robot'ho idioms. --Trovatore (talk) 08:05, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

This likely has to do with the teaching method. In a typical beginner's second language class given in a school context, a student will have little chance to actually use the target language in sentences. There are too many students for anyone to have time to have significant direct interaction with the teacher, who is the only one around who actually speaks the language. So students will tend to learn some vocabulary and grammar rules, and will develop their ear for the foreign language by listening to the teacher and various media, but the actual production of language is neglected, leading to a very unnatural way of speaking (what the OP calls "robotic"). In more a advanced setting, such as a language school which, if it is any good, will have a much lower student to teacher ratio, or in a university setting where there are more resources such as conversation classes, this is less of a problem. Same thing if someone learns the second language in a natural context, where he gets to interact with native speakers in a variety of situations, and not in a classroom setting. --Xuxl (talk) 13:00, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

It probably depends on what you mean by "robot-like". If you mean that there's a lack of inflection - if the tone itself seems monotonous - or if the words all seem follow the same cadence, it could simply be that the speaker is concentrating too hard to getting the correct words and grammar out to give their speech more normal flow. You get a similar effect with people who are nervous speaking in public. Matt Deres (talk) 14:41, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

50.4.236.254 - I haven't really noticed the "robotic" thing, but if some non-native speakers do sound quasi-robotic, it's probably because the intonation and prosody system of their native language differs from the system of the language they're trying to speak and/or because they're worrying so much about details of vocabulary and grammar that they don't have much attention left over for trying to make what they say sound expressive and fluent. AnonMoos (talk) 16:15, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Catalan's President?

I keep hearing news reports about "Catalan's President" saying or doing something.

Isn't he president of Catalonia, and isn't "Catalan" the demonym of his people and language?

Isn't "Catalan's President" like saying "French's President" or "British's Prime Minister"? -- Jack of Oz 20:05, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

He is the President of Catalonia, yeah. I haven't heard "Catalan's president" but that's definitely not right. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:42, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Common enough though. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 23:51, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

The people themselves are called Catalans, as opposed to Frenches or Britishes. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 01:09, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I could sort of accept "the Catalans' President", clunky and all as it is. But this "Catalan's President" B/S is coming from news organisations that have decent reputations and they really ought to know better. -- Jack of Oz 01:15, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Carles Puigdemont himself is a Catalan. Hence he is a Catalan president. However, the link CBW provided shows a proliferation of calling the country itself "Catalan", which is incorrect. Never underestimate the media's ability to invent new terms, be they right or wrong. I'm thinking of taking a vacation, to improve my language skills. First I'll go to Catalan, then to Spaniard. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 01:24, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

This isn't just about the president; there are plenty of google hits for "Catalan's separatists", "Catalan's independence", "Catalan's secession", etc. As Bugs says, these news editors must believe that "Catalan" is the name of the country. --82.69.159.206 (talk) 06:53, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Reminiscent of the Argentine / Argentinian debate. Alansplodge (talk) 08:43, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

This is where sub-standard education spawns even greater ignorance. These news editors are typically young, fresh people - people who know nothing about the world at large, who have never heard of most countries apart from their own and a handful of other usual suspects, who know nothing about the history of the world before the present time, yet who have burning desires to be in the news industry, which involves telling the rest of the world how it is. When they fail to make even the most basic enquiries about the actual name of the country they're reporting on, how could we possibly trust anything else they write - about anything, ever? . -- Jack of Oz 20:48, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Are there things more alliterative than the Pretty Princess and Penelope Pony Power Hour?

It's a big world, there probably are. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:57, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Go to about the 3:40 mark of this clip: ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 01:06, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler on Oscar Wilde: What has Oscar in common with Art? except that he dines at our tables, and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding he peddles in the provinces... -- Jack of Oz 01:10, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

There is when Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. It's very rare. Relative to talking pink ponies, anyway. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:45, October 11, 2017 (UTC)

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Akld guy (talk) 12:07, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Old Mother Hunt had a rough cut punt. Not a punt cut rough but a rough cut punt. Akld guy (talk) 12:09, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick - and a hundred other tongue twisters. Wymspen (talk) 12:31, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

October 11

Vowel length in "Samoa"

As I have heard it pronounced by Samoans (not sure if American Samoans or otherwise), the first vowel in "Samoa" is lengthened (not as in the idea of a "long vowel" as taught to American schoolchildren, but literally longer, held for a longer amount of time). This is typically elided in English because English doesn't really have vowel length.

But our article on American Samoa gives the pronunciation as , whereas our article on Samoa gives it as .

I don't really know what the second transcription means; it looks like a primary and a secondary stress on the same syllable. Does that even make sense? Is it a way of indicating vowel length? How do you indicate it in IPA? Or am I just imagining the whole "length" thing? (I really don't think the last is the case; I confirmed the lengthened aː with someone from there.) --Trovatore (talk) 16:27, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, partly answering my own question -- vowel length#IPA says the symbol for a long vowel is ː placed after the vowel. Huh. I thought that was for an off-glide. So why then do we use it in phonemic transcriptions like /ˈfɑːðɚ/ for "father"? To my ear, the aː in (natively pronounced) "Samoa" is much longer than the ɑː in "father". Is it just that I don't distinguish the underlying and vowels? (I don't really think that's it.) --Trovatore (talk) 17:23, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

This may be complete OR, but the sense I've had for a long time is that the spelling is similar to "cocoa", in that there are only 2 syllables, the second being spelt "oa" for who-knows-what-obscure-reason. In other words, if we were spelling Samoa for the first time today, we'd spell it "Samo". And pronounce it accordingly. -- Jack of Oz 20:36, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

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