Language desk
< September 2	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 4 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 3[edit]

What is a sense of epigonentum when it's at home?[edit]

In Scally, Robert J. (1975). "Introduction". The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition: The Politics of Social-Imperialism, 1900-1918. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 15. ISBN 0691075700. we read:

All over Europe the enervation of the traditional Center had been accompanied by the language of decline, decadence, and impending chaos. In the sense already mentioned, the insurgent Social-Imperialists employed the same rhetoric, but the established leaders gave every sign of being bewildered and demoralized by their sense of epigonentum and by the increasing aggressiveness of the forces they felt were arrayed against them, feeling more or less powerless to arrest or survive them in the long run" [italics in original]

What is meant by "sense of epigonentum"? The word does not appear in the OED, nor is it in Chambers 20th Century Dictionary. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 00:28, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Browsing @ the google results for "epigonentum", I get that it's a German word meaning unoriginality, imitativeness, or epigonism. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hum, well "epigonism" is another one that isn't in the dicker... William Barnes may have had a point. If it means "sense of being epigoni" where "epigoni" means "the less distinguished successors of an illustrious generation" then I suppose it makes sense. DuncanHill (talk) 01:17, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is a German noun that should be analyzed as Epigonen + -tum, equivalent to English epigonedom, which could mean the quality of being a follower or imitator, or the collective of all those possessing that quality. It is not clear to me which of these is meant in the quotation, but it could refer to a following that is blindly following a leader. --Lambiam 08:59, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

An Epigone often has the connotation of being a shallow Abklatsch of something that is considered past glory, cf. de:wikt:Epigone, definition [2]: unbedeutender Nachfolger bedeutender Vorgänger (= "insignificant follower of significant predecessors"). So "the less distinguished successors of an illustrious generation" sums it up well. –Austronesier (talk) 09:18, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The book Lateness and Modern European Literature has a chapter with the title “Epigonentum in Germany of the 1830s”. The uses of the term in this chapter fit this characterization well. Epigonentum is associated with decadence and degeneracy, with a sense of a lamented but inescapable lack of originality. Here are two highly relevant passages:

First, on p.101, referring to Karl Immermann's novel Epigonen (1836):

"Following the doctor’s list, one can provisionally identify four main kinds of Epigonentum: the post-Revolutionary (aristocratic/feudal); the post-Industrial (mercantile/commercial); the post-Napoleonic (political/military); and the post-romantic (literary/philosophical)."

This sentence has a footnote to p. 127, referring to an essay by literary scholar Benno von Wiese, "Zeitkrisis und Biedermeier in Laubes Das junge Europa und Immermanns Epigonen", Euphorion vol. 36 (1935), pp. 163–97, stating:

"Von Wiese suggests a different way of categorizing Epigonentum, breaking it down into three thematic types: 'as the sins of the fathers visited upon the children; as an inescapable historical situation that is the fate of a late generation; [and] as an existential crisis in which Man despairs of ever being true and authentic'. See von Wiese, 'Zeitkrisis', p. 190."

--Lambiam 11:38, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all, appreciated. DuncanHill (talk) 00:46, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Th-[edit]

I have heard it said that there are multiple ways to pronounce the "th-" sound in English. I recall being told that there are 5, though this figure may be false and is based purely on memory. There is th- as in "the"; there is th- as in "booth". What are the others. I was told that native English speakers are not able to hear the subtle differences in some of these. I was also told that non-native speakers are not able to pronounce many of these hence the broken English "de" sound instead of "the" as in "it was dare" rather than "it was there". 1. What are the different sounds. 2. Is it true that English speakers can't hear some of them? 3. Why can't non native speakers pronounce these. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.53.187.135 (talk) 10:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lengthy discussion of this general topic in Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩. Regarding item 3, it can be hard to reproduce sounds that don't exist in your native language. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:58, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One other pronunciation is as in Thomas and Thames.--Khajidha (talk) 12:58, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This brings up the distinction between phonetics and phonemics. The former deals with the exact physical production of sounds (that is, how the vocal apparatus has a specific orientation to produce a specific sound) whereas the second deals with how a language uses sounds or groups of sounds to produce meaning. The distinction here is relevent because of things like allophony and minimal pairs and things like that. There are many different ways to produce a specific phoneme in English, but these may not have any meaningful distinction. For example, some dialects of English may have Th-fronting or something like that, producing a distinctive way of forming the "th" phoneme, but English speakers will still recognize that variation as "th". So it can be unclear when one asks "what are the multiple kinds of th in English" if one means "how many different phonemes are represented by the "th" letter combination" or "how many different distinct sounds can be produced to represent the "th" phoneme" or something else. --Jayron 32 13:10, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The lead of our article on pronunciations of ⟨th⟩ in English already lists five realizations: /ð/, /θ/, /t/, /tθ/ and /t.h/, so your memory is fine and you do not have to read the detailed fine points of the remainder. You shouldn't call this the "th-" sound, though. All five are different sounds, but they are different ways to pronounce the two-letter combination ⟨th⟩ in English words. As to the second question, there are various issues at play. One is practice. Chinese and Japanese people have no problem eating with chopsticks, purely because they have been trained to do so from a young age. Practice a lot, and you too will master this skill quite well. It helps to have someone who understands how to do this give feedback and advice. For English speakers it is hard to pronounce two successive plosives as in /kt/ at the onset of a word; attempts to do this will initially come out like /kət/, yet both Ancient and Modern Greek are replete with these, and native Greek speakers do this effortlessly in words like κτίριο (/ˈkti.ɾi.o/). A next problem occur when, while learning a language, you hear a sound but have no idea how to reproduce it – when you try, you hear it comes out all wrong. For English speakers, the close front rounded vowel /y/ of French, German and many other languages poses a sheer unsurmountable problem. A common advice is to purse your lips as if to whistle while pronouncing an /i/ as in "tea". With some luck it may start to resemble French tu. A third, more insidious problem is that many languages have allophones: different ways of phonetically realizing a phoneme. Native speakers with a phonetically untrained ear often do not perceive these as distinct sounds; they are simply perceived as the phonemes they represent in their native tongue. But in some other languages they actually do represent distinct phonemes. An example is seen in /ɑ/ as in Dutch man (/mɑn/) versus /a/ as in Dutch maan (/maːn/). In Turkish these are allophones; Turks learning Dutch as a second language may hear the (relatively unimportant) difference in length, but miss perceiving the decisive difference in quality, and so be unable to correct their pronunciation by themselves. All of these may play some role in the difficulty ESL learners have to realize the English /ð/ and /θ/ sounds. --Lambiam 13:15, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

31.53.187.135 -- It took me well over three years of French classes before I was able to pronounce a reasonable approximation to a French uvular "r", so I can sympathize with speakers of other languages who find it difficult to pronounce English "th" sounds... AnonMoos (talk) 20:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes sounds can be difficult even when they do exist in your native language. I once took a Welsh class and there was one young woman in the class who was completely incapable of pronouncing /ð/ in Welsh words, even though she was a native English speaker and no problem pronouncing it in English words at all. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:20, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are really only 2 sounds in English where the th is a single sound, the "soft" th as in "think", and the "hard" th as in "there". The examples in the lead talk about stuff like "Thames" but the h is silent in that word. In a word like "lighthouse", the t and h just happen to be next to each other. It was probably originally spelled as 2 words. As regards "eighth", I've heard it pronounced both with a hard t and soft th, and with no hard t at all. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:56, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Help:IPA/English lists three "th" consonants, ð (thy, breathe), θ (thigh, math[s]), and θj (enthuse). Alansplodge (talk) 14:00, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The expression of those phonemes will show significant variation as well depending on dialect. Irish English speakers will use different expressions of those phonemes than someone from London, who will sound different than someone from Alabama or Australia either. Furthermore, some dialects may lack the third option all together, or so may perceive the sound as two distinct consonants rather than one "diphthongish" consonant as expressed here. Language is shockingly variable, and there's a lot of variation in English. --Jayron 32 14:10, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, 'round here in NC the TH in "enthuse" is the same as in "thin".--Khajidha (talk) 16:08, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also not sure there's a meaningful difference between saying that the TH in Thames is pronounced /t/ and saying that that H is silent. --Khajidha (talk) 16:14, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a Midwesterner, and the th in "thigh" and "enthuse" would be the same. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:17, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The same for all those who drop their yods. Alansplodge (talk) 18:49, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As English is not my native language, I have never learned to pronounce the "th" sound. I pronounce it as separate "t" and "h" sounds in succession. JIP | Talk 11:31, 8 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See also here: "The definite article has one graphic form the, which is pronounced in two ways: [∂ı:] before a vowel sound [∂ı: ΄æpl] and [∂ə] before a consonant sound [∂ə ΄pen]. This article is used before nouns in the plural, as well as before nouns in the singular number."

"Th" replaces the Old English Thorn letter and the old English Eth letter: "Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) is a letter in the Old English, Gothic, Old Norse, Old Swedish, and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th, except in Iceland, where it survives. The letter originated from the rune ᚦ in the Elder Fuþark and was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune poems. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although the two are historically unrelated.

It is pronounced as either a voiceless dental fricative [θ] or the voiced counterpart of it [ð]. However, in modern Icelandic, it is pronounced as a laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative [θ̠],[1][2] similar to th as in the English word thick, or a (usually apical) voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative [ð̠],[1][2] similar to th as in the English word the. Modern Icelandic usage generally excludes the latter, which is instead represented with the letter eth ⟨Ð, ð⟩; however, [ð̠] may occur as an allophone of /θ̠/, and written ⟨þ⟩, when it appears in an unstressed pronoun or adverb after a voiced sound."

Eth "Eth (/ɛð/, uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð; also spelled edh or eð) is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese (in which it is called edd), and Elfdalian. It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages but was subsequently replaced with dh and later d. It is often transliterated as d. The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

In Old English, ð (called ðæt by the Anglo-Saxons[1]) was used interchangeably with þ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme /θ/ or its allophone /ð/, which exist in modern English phonology as the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives now spelled "th"."

See also this video. Count Iblis (talk) 12:28, 8 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]