Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 October 20

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October 20

Are there any words in Canadian English that are spelt differently in British English? --The Dark Side 00:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. See Canadian English#Spelling. -THB 00:21, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

"Differently" is also spelt "differently" in British English. Laïka 14:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

You know, I almost fell for that. --Charlene.fic 03:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Kangaroo sounds

What does a kangaroo sound like? And what would be a sensible way to transcribe this sound into English? The only info I found during a brief search was this. I have never actually heard a kangaroo, neither in person or in film.

If it helps any, some transcription of kangaroo sounds in Japanese are niyari, gurururu, kuiin, kuun, fun, fushuu, shisshisshissh, and po, but Japanese animal sounds are often wildly different transscribed than English counterparts (for example the dog's sound is "wan-wan", cats are "nyaa-nyaa" and frogs are "kero-kero").

I understand this question sounds very weird. I assure you that I am completely serious. I need to know this for a translation project for the video game Bare Knuckle 3, which sports a kangaroo.

-- Truncated 08:00, 20 October 2006 (UTC) (I put this at the top instead of the bottom when I posted it yesterday. Hopefully I'm doing it right this time. Sorry for my newbie behaviour.)

Kangaroos are silent, but the cartoon ones always go "boing, boing". --Shantavira 08:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

• Try and find an eposode of "Skippy" the TV series;he appears to make a chittering sound and a lip-smacking sound.(hotclaws**== 15:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC))

Heh, I had the same idea, hotclaws. Kangaroos sound like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, who you can hear at the National Film and Sound Archive. You can recreate the noise by quickly flicking your tongue against your palate twice in succession. 'T t', or 'ts ts' would be close. Natgoo 10:27, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Learning Dutch.

I am a native English-speaker (currently monolingual) interested in learning Dutch. Aside from the Wikibooks tutorial, are there any useful online resources to aid me? My attempts at googling only turned up half-assed audio courses that progress too quickly and expensive CDs. Pesapluvo 14:42, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

By googling myself, I find quite a few free resources. Have you tried ielang.com? It's quite good. -- the GREAT Gavini 21:34, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

One thing you should try to do as much as possible when learning a language is to listen to it. With a world receiver, tune in to a Dutch station. Of course, you'd need to be able to understand at least something of it. Maybe something for kids, where they use simple (but hopefully correct) Dutch. Or if you can't get a spoken source, read children's books. DirkvdM 06:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Etymology

I was wondering about the etymology of the word Gym. I always thought that it had Greek roots but I was surprised to find some notes by a literary professor from Wisconsin that it might have an Indian background from the word Gymkhana. The Greeks had many contacts with India from time immemorial and actually invaded it under the leadership of Alexander the Great. Did they copy this word at that time or did the Indians copy it from them? Does anybody have any info. on this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.223.69.204 (talk • contribs) 15:13, October 20, 2006 (UTC).

I don't know the Indian language, so I can't say whether Gymkhana might be derived from Greek, though this seems unlikely. In any case the Greek is not derived from it. Gymnasium in Greek is gymnasion, and it's derived from the adjective gymnos "naked," by way pf the verb gymnazô "train (naked)," because the ancient Greeks exercised (and competed in Olympics, etc.) naked, an etymology given correctly in the article Gymnasium (Ancient Greece). Wareh 23:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

"Gymkhana" seems to be a much more modern word in English than "Gymnasium", anyway. You could check out gymkhana and gymnasium at Meriam-Webster. I'd guess the words actually are unrelated... 惑乱 分からん 02:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Magnetic flux density symbol B

I considered asking this at the science desk, but it's really an etymology question. Why is the magnetic flux density (magnetic field) represented by the symbol B, instead of, say, M for magnetism? Does it stand for something in a different language? —Keenan Pepper 16:34, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Taken from magnetic flux density:

We use the symbol B for it and for the sake of mathematical simplicity (one symbol instead of seven).

Hope that helps. -- the GREAT Gavini 16:53, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

O Great Gavini, please admit that does not help a bit. I'm becoming confused : where are the six other symbols ? When did someone propose that "B" convention ? With three fingers (picture in the cited article), one is the direction, one the "B", one the "C"urrent. Is this a hint ? -- DLL ^{.. T} 18:57, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Very funny, Harvestman. I just quoted something out of an article on this encyclopaedia, just what the article says. If you are "confused" about something that is or is not in the aforementioned article, it's not my fault. I'm only human! -- the GREAT Gavini 21:30, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Current is I for French word "intensitie" or thereabouts so B is probably from a French or German word rather than from someone's name. Could not find a reference to nail down the origin. Much of this nomenclature was determined in the 1880's, and Scientific American or Scientific American Supplement reported on it as it happened.Edison 23:50, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I know this sounds absurd but I'm wondering whether it's connected to German Bernstein, "amber". -- the GREAT Gavini 06:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

• It's "B" as in "Northern". Borealis. Comes from Biot and Savart's early work on the stuff where they were looking at how the direction of a compass needle changed with distance to a conducting wire. So they denoted the respective ends a and b for australis and borealis and: "Enfin nommons B et A les intensités de chaque résultante, lorsqu'elles agissent sur une quantité de magnétisme austral égale à l'unité." So they're talking about the force on the A and B ends in terms of magnetic flux in the southern direction. But if you deal with the simple infinite straight wire case, then you can simply think in terms of one end, the natural choice then being the northern end since it points in the direction of the current. So B got carried over to the force intensity and from there to the field intensity. (Oh and that cited article bit has terrible language. Someone should clean that up. Who's "we"?) --83.145.46.141 13:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

As for an explanation for the seven symbols (sorry, great Gavini) : borealis is northern ; the great bear is near there and bears seven stars ... -- DLL ^{.. T} 18:30, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Pashto questions

1. In Pakistan, two of its provinces speak Pashto, North-west Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Are these Pashto speakers are Afghanis or Pakistani natives living in these provinces?

2. When it comes to Pashto language, are Pakistani Pashto different from Afghani Pashto?

The situation is a bit complicated. One can distinguish between Northern Pashto, Southern Pashto and Central Pashto, which may perhaps be considered to be rather inter-intelligible but nevertheless different languages, each with a number of distinguishable dialects and sometimes subdialects. There is no good criterium for deciding whether to call these three very similar languages, or three rather different dialect groups. Of these, Northern and Southern Pashto are spoken across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, while Central Pashto is confined to Pakistan. Southern Pashto is furthermore spoken in Iran. When people started drawing lines on the map, they drew them right through areas where communities lived, putting relatives on different sides of the borders. In this specific case, people who live near the border may have no idea where the border actually is. It's somewhere around here, they know that, but where? They are natives of where they were born, but they may sometimes not know what country that was.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Punjabi

When I read the article about Punjabi, it did tell the differences about the writing system which is Pakistani is Shahimukhi while Indian is Gurumukhi. But, it didn't tell the differences about the grammar between Pakistani Punjabi and Indian Punjabi. Can someone explain the difference between these two? Thanks.

We do (unfortunately) not even have information on the phonology and grammar of the Punjabi language continuum, which is much more urgent to have than information about dialectal differences.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:26, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

My guess is they would be very minor, if any. Panjabi is closely related to Hindi, and Urdu and Hindi are written in different scripts and even have different vocabulary in the higher registers especially, but their grammar is described in most sources as "virtually identical". I haven't been able to find anything concrete on what constitutes any actual differences. By extension, my guess is the same is true for Panjabi. - Taxman ^Talk 15:38, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Tamil

I read the article about Tamil and it didn't tell the differences between Indian Tamil and Sri Lankan Tamil languages. Could someone please tell the differences between these two? Thanks.

There is the literary standard language Centamil, which is the same everywhere. The differences in the spoken dialects are mainly in phonology and vocabulary. You will find some information at Tamil language#Dialects.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:39, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Bumper / Bumber

A number of times, I've seen people use the word "bumber" when they actually mean "bumper". Where does this come from? Anyone have any ideas? The P and B are nowhere near each other on the (QWERTY) keyboard, so I don't think it's a misguided finger. In fact, if the person is typing with the standard typing hand positions, then the B and P are used by seperate hands as well. I'm in the U.S., so maybe this has something to do with some sort of regional dialect where the P was pronounced as a B and thus was typed that way by the typist? Dismas|^(talk) 20:43, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Your dialect theory may hold some water as both B and P are bilabial plosives. Hyenaste ^(tell) 21:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The following is essentially my original linguistics research, but I think it might help: Some dialects have dropped the "p" in "bumper". In some forms of English, such as the Baltimore dialect, two consonants adjacent to each other across syllable boundaries tend to be reduced to the leftmost consonant in the pair. So "bumper", [ˡbʌmpɚ] in General American, may be realized as something closer to [ˡbʌmɚ], which sounds like "bummer" to other English speakers. In spelling, the "m[p]" portion of a word like "bumper" might be easily confused with words like "plumber", where a "b" is spelled but not pronounced. szyslak (t, c, e) 21:35, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Just because they're not near each other doesn't mean that it's not a typo. The fact that they look similar and that they represent similar sounds makes the connection and considering how fast typists can go, such mistakes aren't unreasonable. The voicing of /p/ before /m/ isn't very plausible. Bumber looks more to me like it would be pronounced identically with bummer (just like plumber, dumber but then again there is also number). Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:27, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

And cucumber, encumber, lumber, Humber, slumber et al. JackofOz 20:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I see a pattern with these examples. With plumber, morphologically it's |plʌm+ɹ| where |ɹ| is an affix added to a verb to indicate an entity that performs the act of said verb. Dumber is |dʌm+ɹ| where |ɹ| is is a affix that intensifies an adjective. however all of the examples that have the /mb/ prenasalized voiced stop are root morphemes in and of themselves (so they can't be split up into smaller morphemes). So bumber looks to me like it would sound like bummer because bumper is |bʌmp+ɹ| (something that bumps) and bumber, coming from bumper, has that same morphology.

Or it could be because it looks really similar to bomber. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

your welcome

French word for 'potato chip' (US)/'crisp' (UK)

Does anyone know what the French call potato chips/crisps? It isn't mentioned in potato chip as far as I can see, nor can I find it in a Google search. My own experience of going to France in my youth tells me it's 'les chips', whereas my girlfriend (who is Canadian) says she thinks it's 'Croustilles', but that may be particular to Canada, which isn't what I want. Can anyone help? Ta! Phileas 23:12, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely, les chips. Google evidence: sachet de chips, paquet de chips (the latter being much more common). Wareh 23:41, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Phileas 23:44, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it has about the range of American "chips." I noticed there were examples of tortilla chips in my Google links. You could always specify pommes chips in a rare case of ambiguity. Wareh 23:46, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Your girlfriend is right, though: croustilles is used in Canada [1]. Note one pecuiliarity: even in the singular, the French use the form chips: "Je peux avoir une chips, s'il te plaît ?" Also, it is usually pronounced /ʃips/ (sheeps). Lesgles (talk) 03:19, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

French lacks initial voiceless postalveolar affricate, right? It's similar in Swedish, too. The word is borrowed, but generally pronounced something like /ɕɪps/. 惑乱 分からん 14:34, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I"m pretty sure that French doesn't use [ɕ]. It uses the same exact sound as English sh, down to the lip rounding. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:27, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, French has the phoneme, but only in loan words, such as tchèque /tʃɛk/ (Czech). Lesgles (talk) 15:27, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Alright, but at least then it's indicated in spelling... =S 惑乱 分からん 16:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew: Davka and Bidyuk

In Hebrew, what is the difference between the words "davka" דווקא and "bidyuk" בדיוק , and between "bikhlal" בכלל and "legamre" לגמרי (preferably with examples)? Mo-Al 23:37, 20 October 2006 (UTC)