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September 24

English word order

In English, are the following word orders correct? Can the be ever used?

Football played the children before school.
Before school the children played football.
In school learned Jack about animals.
"It is good", said he.
Book has he not read.
Eats Lee apples.

--40bus (talk) 08:59, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2 is fine. 4 is grammatically correct but sounds pompous and literary. The rest are not used. --Viennese Waltz 09:10, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My dialect would require a comma in 2. "Before school, the children played football." Is that not required in all dialects? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:43, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1 sounds like football is playing the children somehow. 6 sounds like there's a variety of apples called Lee. 3 and 5 sound like Yoda talking. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:38, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You mean "Like Yoda talking 3 and 5 sound." --Viennese Waltz 10:34, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No. 6 sounds like a Gaelic-speaker mixing their language's grammar into English. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:95E3:ED56:3A74:4334 (talk) 12:20, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Before school the children played football" is fine, no comma needed (British English). "It is good", said he" is OK, but does sound rather old-fashioned. The problem with using hash-signs to make a numbered list is that when people enter the editing window the numbers disappear. DuncanHill (talk) 12:07, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fronting focused elements is rarer in English than in some other languages, and when it does happen, the subject remains before the verb (unlike German). Therefore, if we want to front football to focus on it, we have to say Football, the children played before school. However even though that's grammatical, it still sounds unusual and a cleft sentence would be more natural: Football is what the children played before school. More natural still would be to do it with emphasizing intonation: The children played football before school. Again in sentence 3, the subject remains before the verb (unlike German): In school, Jack learned about animals. Sentence 5 not only has the wrong order, but a singular count noun like book requires some sort of determiner, e.g. That book, he has not read. In sentence 6, if we're wanting to put focus on eating, we have to say something like What Lee does to apples is eat them, but again intonation is the most natural sounding way: Lee eats apples; [he doesn't lob them at his sister's head]. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:31, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've seen phrasing similar to (1) used when referring to someone playing music, although it would be poetic or archaic. (And I can't think of any specific examples now). I don't think I've ever seen it used for sport or games though. Iapetus (talk) 12:38, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

4 kind of reminds me of a song from Iolanthe, in which the singer repeatedly sings, "Said I to myself, said I". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:09, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2 and 4 are fine.
1 does not readily communicate its sense (assuming it should mean the same as 2), but the structure is the same as "Hooray!" shouted the children before school, which is perfectly acceptable.
3 has echoes of In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree:, but in that case the auxiliary verb comes before the subject, and the main verb after as usual. 3 is not normally acceptable.
5 and 6 are not normally acceptable.

-- Verbarson ^talk_edits 13:56, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

4 is the standard word order in the other Germanic languages, which use V2 word order. English remained V2 here longer than in other contexts, so people consider it fine or old-fashioned instead of wrong. 1, 3 and 5 are also in V2 order (and fine in the other Germanic languages, except for the missing determiner in 5), but not acceptable in contemporary English.

6 is question order, but most verbs in English now require do-support for this. It's fine in Early Modern English, if you add a question mark. PiusImpavidus (talk) 18:05, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. The "do" is so built in now that I didn't even perceive the question order until you pointed it out. Matt Deres (talk) 14:11, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In my dialect (Canadian English), 1, 3, 5, and 6 are all incorrect. 2 would require a comma after "school". 4 would be acceptable, but marked as old-fashioned or pompous. Matt Deres (talk) 17:13, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

September 26

She's quite Marmite

Someone on reddit writes about vocalist Annie Haslam,[1] "I[n] my opinion shes quite Marmite and I preferred the instrumental sections and JC vox but on others she nails it ..."

I think JC vox refers to Jon Camp's vocals (another bandmember who sang on some of the tracks), but what does that mean about Marmite? Something like "bland"? This is British colloquialism I presume (the band was English), though I thought Marmite was Australian.

Haslam's vocals imho were extremely precise and they were the band's most distinctive feature. I can understand them not being to everyone's taste but either way, they were memorable, so I'm having trouble understanding what the Reddit poster was conveying. Would anyone describe Julie Andrews' voice that way? Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:F3FC:F0D7:CE7A:118F (talk) 04:24, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The second paragraph of Marmite quotes the marketing slogan "Love it or hate it.", which is certainly what the reddit poster alluded to. That's quite the opposite of bland. Our article will also tell you in the first sentence that Marmite is indeed British. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:09, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah thanks. I don't think that description of Annie Haslam's voice really fits, but ok. Some people swoon over it and I could imagine being a bit unmoved or finding it clinical at in places, but she hit very few bum notes and that sort of thing. So maybe more like "love or indifference"? But ok the Marmite explanation helped, so thanks. Here's a nice 3.5 minute live performance fwiw: [2] 2601:644:8581:75B0:F3FC:F0D7:CE7A:118F (talk) 08:30, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, very few bum notes. She's not noted for her flatulence. Like my Scottish friend once said, "She's like Marmite, you either hate her or loathe her". 86.187.230.16 (talk) 09:05, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For context, see this YouTube clip: American tries Marmite for the first time. It doesn't go well. Alansplodge (talk) 12:06, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Side note: You're likely confusing Marmite for Vegemite RE: Australian origins. The latter was created after trouble importing the former post WW1. Amstrad00 (talk) 13:04, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Side note: You're likely confusing Juliet Haslam, former Australian field hockey defender and midfielder, with vocalist Annie Haslam, English vocalist with progressive rock band Renaissance. Easily done, Bruce. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:22, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What kind of field hockey defender and midfielder is she now? —Tamfang (talk) 22:56, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"I can understand them not being to everyone's taste but either way, they were memorable" is a long way of saying they're a bit Marmite ;-)

AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 08:31, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Marmite is definitely not bland. It has a very strong flavour, that people stereotypically either love or hate. It's not something someone would be indifferent to. Iapetus (talk) 10:36, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

New words by decade

How can we tell the new words coined by each decade? Is there a record for slang words by each decade? Will Merriam-Webster Time Traveler help us on determining neologisms? 107.116.89.118 (talk) 10:53, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A Google search for New Words Oxford Dictionary 2025, and then making it back through the previous years, brings up meaningful links that will give you all the results. Of course there is a lag between the word being coined and making it into the dictionary, which may require a further search after identifying the word. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:E1BC:77C4:3092:E5C1 (talk) 11:07, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Slang words by each decade? 107.116.89.118 (talk) 11:27, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. You had me wonder what "sling words" are (or ignore the "sling" for that reason), the correction happened after my post. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:E1BC:77C4:3092:E5C1 (talk) 12:13, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And the Merriam-Webster time traveler? 107.116.89.118 (talk) 12:42, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

September 27

Transliterating an Old East Slavic name

I'm trying to rewrite the etymology section of the Chernobyl article to reflect this source, which indicates that the name most likely derives from the personal name Чьрнобыль (and not, as the article implies, from the Ukrainian word for mugwort). How should said name be transliterated? Zacwill (talk) 06:43, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which language would that be? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:11, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The place-name dates to the 12th century, so it would be Old East Slavic (the common ancestor of Ukrainian and Russian). Zacwill (talk) 10:18, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the transcriptions given in the section Old East Slavic § Literary language, this would come out as Čǐrnobylǐ. I have the nagging feeling, though, that the final ⟨ь⟩ is the soft sign and does not represent a vowel.

BTW, Чьрнобыль above contains a so-called soft hyphen; hardening it results in Чьрнобы-ль. Is dit intentional? ‑‑Lambiam 22:12, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at Old East Slavic § Vowels, you'll see that ь and ъ were still pronounced as vowels back then. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:44, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. The section has now been rewritten. (In answer to Lambiam's question, no, the inclusion of the soft hyphen was not intentional.) Zacwill (talk) 12:10, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

September 28

Diphthongs

Do Japanese, French, Swedish and Russian have diphthongs? Articles about these languages do not mention that they have any diphthongs. But I think that the ai in kanpai in Japanese is a diphthong, as wellas aï in maïs in French, oj in pojke in Swedish and ей in Russian Алексей are diphthongs. Is this so? --40bus (talk) 00:25, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Japanese, ai is effectively a dipthong, but it might not be perceived as such by native speakers, but rather as two distinct vowels that are adjacent. And in sung Japanese each one gets enunciated on its own and with equal timing, more or less.

The long-vowel forms of e and o are basically dipthongs, though: e is lengthened with i (as ei) and o is lengthened with u (as ou - so Tokyo, if transliterated literally would be Toukyou). 76.20.114.184 (talk) 00:56, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is that how ei, ou are genuinely pronounced, or is the kana spelling an archaism? —Tamfang (talk) 22:57, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The difference between a diphthong and a sequence of vowel plus semivowel isn't always very clear. Neither is the difference between a diphthong and a sequence of two vowels in separate syllables. Or the difference between a diphthong with a very small change in tongue position and a monophthong, and such diphthongs often occur only in some dialects. So it may be that you hear a diphthong, but there are reasons to threat them as something else. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:45, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A rule that sometimes works is that two adjacent vowel sounds in a word do not morphologically form a diphthong but belong to separate syllables when (in some context) they have a difference in pitch due to (word, lexical or prosodic) stress. ‑‑Lambiam 10:37, 28 September 2025 (UTC) An example is Japanese サイロ (sairo), which has a downstep between the [á] and [ì]. ‑‑Lambiam 09:09, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

September 29

Wilusa

Is it linguistically possible that Wilusa was named Wilukka at an earlier time?Rich (talk) 16:06, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you ask? What would the alternative spelling indicate? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:40, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because I wonder if there is a connection to Lukka, later called Lycia, to the south, but still in present day Turkey.Rich (talk) 21:06, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, thanks. As the name is attested in cuneiform I would guess that it's improbable, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:05, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

you can say him how you should like 130.74.59.57 (talk) 18:31, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

why did you murder your mother Rich (talk) 22:34, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just be clear, we're talking about the places Wilusa and Lukka attested in Hittitie cuneiform records and generally considered to be (as names) the ancestors of Classical Greek Ilion and Lycia. The short answer is certainly no. There is no evidence (either direct or indirect) for such a shift. On the other hand, it is, perhaps, not impossible. I am unaware of any evidence or speculation on the origin of either name, and the sound shift k>s is not particularly uncommon. Both areas are sometimes said to have spoken the Luwian language in the Hittite period but, the actual evidence for that is pretty circumstantial. Eluchil404 (talk) 01:05, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't words like Luka often referring to light, particularly from the planet venus?Rich (talk) 04:05, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If Wi were a prefix that meant north, then Wilusa could mean north Lukka or north Lycia.Rich (talk) 08:07, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hittite has the word lu-uk-ka-ri (to dawn). I wouldn't know if there would be any relation, though. Do you have a source for wi- meaning north, or is it just speculation? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:28, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

speculation Rich (talk) 01:14, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And if wi- meant "west", Wilusa could mean "West Lukka", so then Lukka would have been east of Wilusa. ‑‑Lambiam 19:55, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

your point is it'ss just as far west of Lukka as it is north of Lukka, at a 45 degree angle?Rich (talk) 01:13, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to historian and linguist Rostislav Oreshko, most of the Hittite records concern a centre of Lukkan power located in the eastern part of the Troad,^[3] which is to the east of where Wilusa is supposed to be located. But note that attempts to interpret wi- as a prefix, lacking further supporting evidence, are mere speculation. ‑‑Lambiam 08:41, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

October 1

Questions

Why romanization often tends towards transcription rather than transliteration? For example, why Slavic languages using Cyrillic alphabet are only in some instances romanized using an alphabet resembling Slavic Latin alphabets, and most often with similar spelling to the target language?
How likely is it that Uralic and Turkic languages spoken in Russia will move to Latin alphabet like Kazakh?
In adaptations of "Home sweet home", are both instances of "Home" replaced with another word, such as "Coffee sweet coffee" or "Car sweet car"?
In clock times, is "fifteen" ever used instead of "quarter"? Is :15 ever "fifteen past" and :45 "fifteen to"?
Would native English speakers ever say: "It is eighteen" at 18:00?
Is 1⁄4 ever "one fourth"
Are decimals ever read as words, such as 2.41 as "two point forty-one"?
Why "and so on" is abbreviated as "etc." and not "a.s.o."?
Is "for example" aver abbreviated as "f.ex." or "ex".?

--40bus (talk) 05:56, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

3. Maybe, in the case of "Tent sweet tent" or "igloo sweet igloo". Not in the case of Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily. Or "sweet" can be replaced, as in Home Shit Home (book by Étienne Sommentier)

Or, in a little bit of office humor that we used to see, "Cubicle sweet cubicle". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:59, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

4. It would be "fifteen minutes", not just "fifteen"

5. That would sound very weird.

6. Yes: fourth - Wiktionary, the free dictionary - chiefly in the US

7. Yes, people do, but it's incorrect to say "point forty-one" for "point four one".

8. Because it's short for et cetera

9. ex. and ex. gr. apparently exist. Addendum: also wiktionary:frex, informally.

AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 08:47, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2. Highly unlikely in the current political situation. It would require either independence (like happened in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan etc.) or at least the current repressive Russian nationalism to be reverted in order make this possible. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:31DC:B892:E66D:C10B (talk) 09:15, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but the Cyrillic alphabets tend to have a lot of letters symbolizing affricates and (sibilant) fricatives that tend to be written with two or more letters in most Latin alphabets. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:44, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1) If you are romanizing something for use in an English language text, it makes sense to do so in a way that English speakers will find easy to understand. Basically things like Đ or Dž are going to be just as foreign looking and uninterpretable to most English speakers as Ђ is. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:45, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

5. A native English speaker with a military background might say "18 hundred" or "18 hundred hours". Amstrad00 (talk) 14:03, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

5. You already asked this question on 20 September. The answer I gave there for US English speakers is that we do not use a 24 hour clock, so we don't recognize a time like 18:00. But for times using hour values from 1 to 12, it is normal to say something like "it is ten" at 10:00am, or "it is four" at 4:00pm.

For the rest, I agree with AlmostReadytoFly's answers, except for #4. It is normal in my dialect to say something like "fifteen to four" to mean 3:45 or "fifteen past four" or "fifteen after four" to mean 4:15. The first form "X to Y" is mostly used when X is a nice round number: "ten to four" sounds totally normal, while "seventeen to four" sounds pretty weird. CodeTalker (talk) 23:28, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. What dialect? I speak British English (Yorkshire to be more precise) and I would say that the rule is as you say, except at the half or quarter hour, when you would probably say e.g. 'quarter past' (even if it's not exactly on the quarter hour), maybe '15 minutes past' (to emphasise if it is exactly on the quarter hour) but not '15 past'. I've tried searching the British National Corpus on English-Corpora: BNC, which seems consistent with this (though it's my first time using the site) — the only instance of 'fifteen past' is in a different context. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 09:10, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know CodeTalker's dialect, but their comments on #4 are correct in mine (North Carolina). Usage of quarter past (or till or half past) was the common style in my youth, but almost unknown to those younger than me (ie millennials and younger). --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:53, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I speak US English, raised in Chicago and lived in California for 40 years. I searched for "ten past" in the GLOWBE corpora and I actually see more hits in British English than in US English: 29 in Great Britain, 18 in Ireland, and 6 in the US. Scanning the matches, it looks like almost all of them are indeed expressions of time, ten minutes past the hour. However there are indeed no matches for "fifteen past", which I guess is consistent with my impression that this construction is more common when used with a round number of minutes. It's true that even in my dialect, "quarter past" is more common than "fifteen past". CodeTalker (talk) 17:00, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Working at the local community college I observed a teacher coming out of the class room looking for her students who had not returned after their quarter hour break. The students protested that their break was not over as it had not been 25 minutes. This was my direct observation. I heard descriptions of several other instances of the same behavior. I doubt that the quarter past construction is familiar to most Americans born in the 21st century.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:05, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I find that particularly troubling, that an entire class of college students either think that there area 100 minutes in an hour, or that they don't know what the word "quarter" means, other than that a quarter dollar has 25 cents. Are the clocks in the classrooms analog or digital? I do wonder if replacing analog clocks with digital clocks is having an effect on young people's perception of time: with analog clocks you can see the fractions of the hours by the position of the minute hand, whereas digital clocks have no such visual representation. 76.20.114.184 (talk) 19:56, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Analog. And many of the students complain about that.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:32, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Analog clocks are harder to read if you have grown up with digital, in my impression. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:33, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Name of Swiss inventor

Hi. At 0:33 of this youtube video[3], the presenter says something like: "An inventor, Emil Shortz, which is the 'E' and the 'S' of Esco..."

My French (and English for that matter) is very very bad so I couldn't make out the name. Could someone please help me?

At the start of the video, they mentioned that video takes place in Les Geneveys-sur-Coffrane, and that this factory has always been in the same town, so presumably said inventor's name has French origins. Epideurus (talk) 10:45, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to this site [4], it's "Emil Schutz". Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:48, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I found this one: [5] -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:31DC:B892:E66D:C10B (talk) 10:51, 1 October 2025 (UTC) PS: It could also be an "Emil Schütz" (a more common German-language family name) with the Umlaut omitted or dropped. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:31DC:B892:E66D:C10B (talk) 10:53, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The founder was named Eugène Schmidt, first naming it COTEC. [6]. Lectonar (talk) 10:54, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Different company, different guy. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:58, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, everyone.

The IPv6 address poster brought on an interesting point so I'll ask two additional questions:

Question 1: Is this inventor's name German in origin? And if so, was the original name Schutz (meaning shelter) or Schütz (meaning shooter)?

These are apparently two different German names, but made complicated by the fact that Schütz is sometimes rendered as Schutz even in German. As all the references posted so far are in French, and the company is located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, it's possible that the Schütz family chose to render it Schutz. Or the inventor's birth certificate says "Emil Schütz" but he goes by "Emil Schutz" in that part of Swiss for convenience.

Question 2: Where and when was Emil Schutz born? (This is probably a Humanities RD question, but I'm interested in it primarily because the answer helps to solve Question 1)

I googled a bit but couldn't find any biographical data on this person. Epideurus (talk) 13:06, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Neither could I, perhaps you could try sending an email to the company? -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:31DC:B892:E66D:C10B (talk) 13:30, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I will report back if/when they answer.

Hopefully there's a bit more RS about him. I would love to start a short stub WP article on him, but so far there are only 2 or 3 sources and they each mention him in only one sentence.

Plus I'm not sure if he meets the Wikipedia:Notability bar. Epideurus (talk) 13:47, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the name Schutz/Schütz, according to [7] there could be several origins, one of them seems to be an original "Schutz" without Umlaut, from Germany. Still, Schütz is much more prevalent, and most the Schutz without Umlaut seem be be in French-speaking areas or in the US, making it a real possibility that the Umlaut was dropped. I noted the pronounciation in the Youtube video which is consistent with the German pronounciation without the Umlaut. (Plus the French would typically pronounce the u in the same way as Germans would pronounce the Umlaut-ü). This could be an indication that the Inventor called himself Schutz without Umlaut. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:31DC:B892:E66D:C10B (talk) 13:56, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Yes, I agree it's most likely Schütz, but rendered without the Umlaut for a French-speaking area. Let's see what info the company can provide. Epideurus (talk) 04:07, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the bottom line of my last comment was: The pronounciation by the speaker in the video (for German speakers: Schutz rather than Schütz; for French speakers: Choutz rather than Chutz) makes it more likely that he himself called and spelled himself Schutz. (And he must have come from an at least partially German-speaking family, due to 1. the pronounciation and 2. his first name being Emil rather than Emile.). But there is a fair chance that, a number of generations before, his ancestors were known as Schütz due to the generally higher prevalence of this version. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:6DEB:FC3F:2F7E:41F6 (talk) 06:26, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I actually hear Schütz (/ʃʏt͡s/), not Schutz (/ʃʊt͡s/). ‑‑Lambiam 11:24, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Upon listening again, you could be right. The English accent of the speaker makes it difficult to classify and it could be an attempt at an "ü" (which English speakers don't really have in their vowel repository). -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:6DEB:FC3F:2F7E:41F6 (talk) 11:53, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

October 2

Determinants of accents in a neutral environmental setting

Hi, now for me to ask a question. Is there some elucidating scientific knowledge about the "choice" of accents when there are several options with similar priors? I've got two sample scenarios:

- Scenario 1: Children with parent A from, say, Texas and parent B from England or perhaps even Scotland, growing up in a non-English speaking country and with little connection to the English-speaking world apart from their parents. Let's assume that intensity of communication with either parent is quite comparable.

Are those children more likely to: 1. "decide" on an accent that is close to one of their parents'? 2. Develop a mixed accent that has elements of the American and the British version of English? 3. Use the Texan accent with parent A (and parent A's relatives) and the British accent with parent B?

- Scenario 2: A perfectly bilingual speaker of French and Spanish who has learned English (at an age when one is bound to have a clearly distinguishable accent). There are a couple of characteristics which could distinguish a French-speaker's accent from a Spanish speaker's, like: 1. The pronunciation of the letter R is really different between Spanish and French, but both are really different from English. 2. French has a "tense" pronunciation of vowels, while Spanish vowel pronunciation is what I would call "classic", Latin-style, with limited variety. 3. French speakers typically don't pronounce the English H at all, while Spanish speakers might substitute it with Spanish J.

Similar to scenario 1, are these speakers likely to have an mixed accent when speaking English, or an accent that is much closer to a French speaker's or a Spanish speaker's? -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:6DEB:FC3F:2F7E:41F6 (talk) 06:43, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Without experimental observations these questions cannot be answered with certainty.

Scenario 1: My guess is the bi-accent choice 3, since children growing up with parents speaking different languages to them respond in the language they're spoken to. The child may initially not even realize that what they hear are varieties of a single language.

Scenario 2: Adult speakers learning a new language tend to map the phones they hear to already familiar phonemes, so a bilingual learner has a larger repertoire to "cherry-pick" from. The result can be expected not to be a kind of average, but a mixed bunch of French and Spanish phonemes. Since stress is a giveaway for identifying a French accent and stress in Spanish is much closer to English stress, a listener will more likely identify the accent as Spanish. ‑‑Lambiam 11:17, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Scenario 1 then of course raises the question how they'll talk among themselves. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:6DEB:FC3F:2F7E:41F6 (talk) 11:37, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know of scientific studies on this, but I have anecdotal evidence. I know a family living in Germany in which the father is American and the mother is British. The son grew up speaking English at home with his parents, but German at school and in the wider world. Rather surprisingly (to me), he speaks English with a German accent (and even makes typically German mistakes in his English). To scenario 2, here in Berlin I have met people who have grown up bilingual in German and Turkish and then learn English as a foreign language. The ones I have met sound German, not Turkish, when speaking English, though that may because they live in a German-speaking environment. Perhaps German-Turkish bilinguals who live in Turkey would sound more Turkish when speaking English. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:44, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Further anecdotal evidence, I know two people, one adult and one teenager, who were born and brought up close to London, but whose parents are from the North of England. They both use the trap-bath merger typical of Northern England English, rather than the split used in the South. Alansplodge (talk) 15:02, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In this case it is difficult to claim "neutral environment" or "similar priors" though, it is rather an (anectdotal) evidence of parental influence being stronger than location influence. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:6DEB:FC3F:2F7E:41F6 (talk) 15:31, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Alansplodge: what do they do with the foot-strut split? I'm not from England, but I have a suspicion that a Northern pronunciation like /baθ/ is much less stigmatized in southeastern England than a Northern pronunciation like /strʊt/. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:06, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In both cases, the rest of their speech is typically Southern, curiously only the trap-bath vowel persists. Alansplodge (talk) 16:45, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some observations:

People can switch between languages and also between a regional dialect and the standard language, treating them as separate languages. But people normally don't switch between accents. Most are barely aware of their accent.

There are many people, growing up in the Netherlands, who speak Riffian with their parents at home and Dutch at school. They speak Dutch with a distinctive accent. In fact, I heard the same accent in the speech of some French Algerians, grown up in France, speaking French. Those are native bilinguals, but one language shows up in the other as an accent.

My family comes from the north and east of the Netherlands, I grew up in the south. In the south, people think I'm from the east and in the east, people think I'm from the south. Apparently, my accent is a blend of my family's accent and my peers' accent. I think my consonants are more southern and my vowels more eastern. I do have the kou–kauw split though.

So I expect than in scenario 1 you'll get option 2: a blend of accents.

Scenario 2: This speaker would have less difficulty with the th than a French speaker (it's a relatively rare sound, but occurs both in Spanish and English) and less difficulty with the vowels than a Spanish speaker (French has a larger vowel set, matching more, but still not all of the English vowels). Some distinctive feature of both a French accent and a Spanish accent would be missing. I think you could call that a blend. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:33, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

October 3

/ts/ and /pf/

It is not uncommon to see the succession of /t/ + /s/ tied together in IPA transcriptions, such as in German /t͡sunt/. Indeed, it can be argued that this is actually a single phoneme. However, they same can be argued for /p/ + /f/, yet one will always see /pfʊnt/ and never /p͡fʊnt/. Is there some reason for this discrepancy? ‑‑Lambiam 11:11, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Affricate#Notation and also de:Affrikate#Notation actually show this combination represented in IPA with the tie bar. My naive non-IPA expert understanding would support this, as the f sound is already being fully prepared in the positioning, before the p is pronounced. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:C4D:5E0B:6334:3876 (talk) 11:44, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PS:I found it represented that way in the Wiktionary entries for Pfahl and Pfalz (but not for the others I've checked so far). -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:C4D:5E0B:6334:3876 (talk) 12:20, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. So I was wrong when I wrote one will never see this. Tying of /ts/ and /tʃ/ is also applied haphazardly in Wiktionary. ‑‑Lambiam 22:41, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, like Wikipedia, Wiktionary is a wiki, edited by lots of people, so consistency can be hard to achieve. In this particular case, part of the reason why /t͡s/ and /t͡ʃ/ are more common than /p͡f/ may be that people have often used the nonstandard ligatures /ʦ/ and /ʧ/ for the coronal affricates, and then bots come along and correct those to /t͡s/ and /t͡ʃ/. But since there is no ligature for /p͡f/ available in Unicode, people have always just used /pf/ for the labial affricate, and no one has written a bot to replace that with /p͡f/. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:01, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some languages distinguish between affricates and stop+sibilant clusters, e.g., Polish: octu /ˈɔt͡stu/ 'of vinegar' vs. od stu /ˈɔt.stu/ 'from one hundred'; czy /ʈ͡ʂɨ/ 'whether' vs trzy /tʂɨ/ 'three'. When transcribing such languages into IPA, the use of the tie bar is imperative. But for other languages, like German, it's often seen as merely optional. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:28, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Standard way of speaking in english

To impress people 37.111.223.96 (talk) 14:46, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is this intended to be a question? If so, you'd impress us more by explaining what exactly it is you want to know. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:48, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Queen's English. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:C4D:5E0B:6334:3876 (talk) 14:54, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unless it is a very particular group you're trying to impress you are best off with some form of Standard English, but since English is a pluricentric language there is more than one to choose from and which one is best depends on where you are and to whom you will be speaking. Eluchil404 (talk) 01:56, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. "Proper" English is the best way to impress an audience, regardless of any accent. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:17, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well there's at least this stereotype that American ladies are particularly charmed by smart-looking Englishmen's accents and ways of talking. (Like this one perhaps?). -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:740C:A665:40CD:1E94 (talk) 17:24, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Midatlantic accent.

Edit: our article has it titled "Good American Speech"; while it was/is probably mostly Americans that used/use it, there were several British actors from the earth/mid 20th century that also spoke with a Midatlantic accent. 76.20.114.184 (talk) 22:42, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

October 5

Is 'its' considered a valid alternative for 'it's'

My workplace did English proficiency tests for employees and one of the tasks was to mark lines which contain errors in a given text. One sentence was "The office; was moved to a different building its on the third floor now." I marked the semicolon and the missing apostrophe in the word 'its'. The examiner later told me the latter was wrong but couldn't tell me why (he only seems to enter the given answers into a software).

Is it correct to use 'its' instead of 'it's' as a short form for 'it is'? I've only seen the lack of an apostrophe in very informal contexts such as text messages. 188.23.236.88 (talk) 14:32, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The semicolon should move to after 'building' (or use a full stop and capital I for it's). There are two sentences that need to be separated. The apostrophe is always required when it's means it is; the lack of it indicates sloppy or lazy writing/texting. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 14:52, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Its" and "it's" have different meanings. "Its" is used in sentences like "The dog eats its food" and "Don't judge a book by its cover". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:23, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. "Its" is possessive, while "it's" is a contraction for "it is". So why doesn't "its" have an apostrophe for possessive, like many possessives do? Presumably for the same reason that "his" and "hers" don't have apostrophes either. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:20, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Early Modern English had the His genitive, so the equivalent to an apostrophe on his would be to write his his, but that would have to be written his his his his, and so on. We'd still be in 1610 today. Card Zero (talk) 04:39, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pronouns never get an apostrophe to make them possessive (in modern English; I've seen it in some Early Modern English texts, however, e.g. "it's", "your's" etc). In Middle English apostrophes weren't used at all, and proper names could be made possessive either by adding s at the end (with no apostrophe) or by having his/her following the name. But only in adjectival form, e.g. "That is John his book", but not "That book is John his". 76.20.114.184 (talk) 23:04, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's is often a contraction for it is but sometimes for it has. I think the latter applies only when has is being used as an auxiliary verb to mark the present perfect. I don't think you can replace that's my car; it has mag wheels with that's my car; it's mag wheels. --Trovatore (talk) 23:27, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

October 6

Compound Adjectives

If you look at ngrams of various compound adjectives with and without the hyphen e.g left handed vs left-handed, nine year old vs nine-year-old or [old fashioned vs old-fashioned, there is always a sudden rise in popularity in the hyphenated version and not in the unhyphenated version. Any reasons for this? 122.57.215.158 (talk) 05:24, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A typical but not invariable pattern for such compounds in English is for them to start as two separate words (e.g. 'left handed', begin to be hyphenated ('left-handed') and sometimes to eventually be merged as one ('lefthanded') (see Hyphen#Use in English). The overall process may take a couple of centuries, and does not always proceed to completion, particularly if the merge would create a doubled letter.

Proscriptive, conservative grammarians may decry the hyphenation and merging, slowing the rise of their adoption until social opinion, always unpredictable, crosses some indefinable inflection point and they become widely accepted. Or so I think: there are probably academic papers on this topic, which may well demonstrate I am mistaken. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.153.108 (talk) 06:59, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Though, as the article observes, its use is declining. I get the impression that compound-hyphenating is unfashionable now. Often I consciously dehyphenate a compound for fear of looking stuffy (but who am I kidding). Card Zero (talk) 09:31, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Card Zero: Welcome to the Stuffy Hyphenators Club. This may, of course, be a WP:ENGVAR thing. I'm of an age and English-variant that I prefer to use hyphens than follow the over-the-pond Germanic thing of running words together. I also suspect that compact keyboards (such as those found on smartphones) have had a part to play, with - and its siblings not instantly and immediately accessible. Bazza 7 (talk) 11:09, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I make a typographical distinction between attributive and predicative uses of compound adjectives:

This is a well-advised choice.

This choice is well advised.

Ngram counts do not recognize this distinction. ‑‑Lambiam 12:43, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Between the early 1800s and the early 1900s, it evolved from "base ball" to "base-ball" to "baseball". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:22, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An excellent illustration of my point above (though this is a compound noun, not adjective). If the original name had been "club ball" (not inherently ridiculous), I suspect that it might have evolved to "club-ball" but not further to "clubball". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.153.108 (talk) 06:09, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yet we have dumbbell from dumb + bell, and scrubbird from scrub + bird as well as scrubboard from scrub + board. ‑‑Lambiam 13:30, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I concede the existence of dumbbell, but (a) the 'b' of dumb is not sounded and (b) this has the accepted alternative spelling of dumbell. Scrubbird is very specialised and probably known only to Australian ornithologists. Personally, I would feel awkward writing scrubboard (which I have never encountered: in my experience this has always been called a washboard), and would hyphenate it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.153.108 (talk) 16:26, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is this alleged CC avoidance specific to bb, or is it thought to be more general? If the latter, I offer granddad, goddaughter, granddaughter, midday and headdress, as well as stepparent, sheeppen, dampproof and dripproof. ‑‑Lambiam 09:14, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not alleging it as a fact; I'm merely suggesting it as a possible historical factor, supported by the relative rarity of "-bb-" compounds. let's drop this. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.153.108 (talk) 05:06, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would, personally, separate the your latter 3 examples into two unhyphenated words (but hyphenating the latter two as required depending on their context in the sentence). I also see that those 3 are marked with a squiggly red line underneath them, so methinks they are probably nonstandard; and I would venture to guess less standard than "alright" is. (Which I see is not marked with a squiggly red line, interestingly...) 76.20.114.184 (talk) 23:19, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

October 10

Pronunciation of Tyen

How do English and French tongues pronounce Vietnamese make-up artist and photographer Tyen? --KnightMove (talk) 09:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[8] at 1:09; [9]; [10]; [11] at 2:53. You might choose the version you like best ... -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:CD03:6D59:F57B:96B7 (talk) 10:14, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Coinage of Zoombombing

When was the term, “Zoombombing”, coined? YourMadeZoom (talk) 11:09, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the article you linked says "The term had appeared in mid-March 2020 on technology and news websites" (with three references). Deor (talk) 12:40, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]