English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

22:01

@tchrist It seemingly sounds like "cueillou" in French : fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Uk-%D0%9A%D0%B8%D1%97%D0%B2.ogg

alphabet

Example: I (like many?) always pronounce "that" as /ðæʔ/, meaning basically no dictionaries give the pronunciation I use.

tchrist

@alphabet Dictionaries don't give real pronunciations. Ever.

They never include allophonic variation.

They give only abstract phonemes, but these always require translation into your own ideolect for any given utterance, which varies.

@CrissyFroth-Seapickle My word!

Yeah, nothing we can even come close to saying in English.

alphabet

(At least in most contexts. I would say /ðæd/ in "that is" due to AmE t-voicing.)

tchrist

@CrissyFroth-Seapickle Wikipedia seems to think that that one's [ˈkɪjiu̯].

But I can't hear that. I hear what you wrote.

@alphabet Oh I don't think that would ever happen, would it?

You think it's a flap in "that another"?

Maybe.

I definitely never use the same sound there as I use in Dad.

It's more dental.

alphabet

@tchrist For me there's definitely a /d/ sound in "that is." Same as in "dad."

tchrist

22:10

But "that is" and "Dad is" don't have the "same" "d sound" there.

At least for me.

But I wouldn't say they're phonemically distinct, either.

Just more allophonic variation. But not random.

I just wouldn't ever represent those two sounds using identical phonetics.

alphabet

@tchrist For me they do have the same /d/ sound, though the vowel in "that" is much shorter than in "dad."

tchrist

It's hard to judge these when both is and some forms of that are regularly reduced to "weak" forms. So without greater context, I don't know how to measure it.

> I don't think that that is likely.

There, the first that is weak, the second strong.

Do you have DEEZE in "I don't think that he is gone yet"?

alphabet

Yes, I have "deeze" there.

tchrist

ok

alphabet

I don't usually say "that that is" instead of "that that's" so I'm not quite sure with that one.

tchrist

22:20

Well, this is the problem with writing vs speaking.

Just because you write "that that is" doesn't mean you say that. You don't.

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

@tchrist I hear something between que and qui in French, but very soft + you in English. I'm terrible with the IPA, but isn't jiu close to ju with k before (k-you). Anyways.

Like cue.

tchrist

Yes.

I'd probably mangle it into some sort of /kjyw/ thing. :)

If I tried to pronounce it the way that clip does.

Romanian has a strange-for-Romance vowel that may derive from contact with the Slavic tongues.

> /ɨw/ râu /rɨw/ ('river'), brâu /brɨw/ ('girdle')

> The sound of Polish ⟨y⟩ is often represented as /ɨ/, but actually it is a close-mid advanced central unrounded vowel, more narrowly transcribed [ɘ̟].[60] Similarly, European Portuguese unstressed ⟨e⟩, often represented as /ɨ/, is actually a near-close near-back unrounded vowel,[61] more narrowly transcribed using ad hoc symbols such as [ɯ̽] (mid-centralized), [ɯ̟] (fronted) and [ʊ̜] (less rounded i.e. unrounded)

The Romanians even use that sound in stressed position, usually spelled î or â.

> /ɨ/ is uncommon as a phoneme in Indo-European languages, occurring most commonly as an allophone in some Slavic languages, such as Russian (see ы).

Close central unrounded vowel

The close central unrounded vowel, or high central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɨ⟩, namely the lower-case letter i with a horizontal bar. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as barred i. Occasionally, this vowel is transcribed ⟨ï⟩ (centralized ⟨i⟩) or ⟨ɯ̈⟩ (centralized ⟨ɯ⟩).The close central unrounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the rare post-palatal approximant [j̈].Some languages feature the near-close central unrounded vowel (listen ), which is slightly...

jlliagre

@CowperKettle pro-football-reference.com/players/B/BadeJo00.htm

tchrist

> Some languages feature the near-close central unrounded vowel, which is slightly lower. It is most often transcribed in IPA with ⟨ɨ̞⟩ and ⟨ɪ̈⟩, but other transcriptions such as ⟨ɪ̠⟩ and ⟨ɘ̝⟩ are also possible. In many British dictionaries, this vowel has been transcribed ⟨ɪ⟩, which captures its height; in the American tradition it is more often ⟨ɨ⟩, which captures its centrality, or ⟨ᵻ⟩,[4] which captures both.

All this "tradition" stuff is why you really can't know what a dictionary means just by looking at the symbols. You go look them up and you see something different.

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

22:35

@tchrist I hear like a long eux in French.

tchrist

@CrissyFroth-Seapickle If you mean the pronoun, I think that's /ø/?

But not "long" per se there as it seems to be here.

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

@tchrist It's possible because I'm from Quebec those sounds are slightly different for me, less "high".

tchrist

Ah, I see.

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

Or less round.

More like euh.

tchrist

It's like throwing darts at the formants. :)

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

22:40

\ə(ː)\ maybe.

tchrist

What a terrible chart: I didn't notice /œ/ and /ɶ/ being different there. Bad fonting in my browser, maybe.

There are also more central sounds, /ɘ/ and its rounded version /ɵ/. I'd probably get lost distinguishing any of those from schwa.

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

I speculate that Romanian rau is close to my prononciation of preuve (without the p). Food for thought.

tchrist

Yours should be a little rounded, I reckon. I guess theirs is, too, but the thing I quoted spells it as a falling diphthong ending in /w/.

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

Re-euh something I guess.

Hahaha. I'm terrible at this.

Totally oblivious to all these phonetics notions. Quite interesting though.

tchrist

Yeah, I am terrible at it, too. Normally in Parisian French I think preuve has /œ/ so the rounded version of the "open e" of English DRESS. But I know kaybecker phonology often works differently, and my own ear is no guide.

In any event, that sound clip of the Ukrainian pronouncing what we transliterate as Kyiv is really hard for me to assign values to.

Do you yourself have the same vowel in jeune as you have in preuve?

I can't do Dutch or Danish vowels, either. :(

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

22:58

For me with jeu(ne), it's very close to just je. In preuve it's closer maybe to... bruh in English. Really not sure.

alphabet

@tchrist Yeah after the /j/ there's a diphthong of...something and something. I've heard other clips from Ukrainian speakers where it does sound more like it ends in a consonant.

Crissy Froth-Seapickle

Maybe a very subdued w/v sound.

Anyways, thanks for the insight!

jlliagre

@tchrist Jeune or jeûne ;-)

tchrist

23:20

@jlliagre I must be too jejune for all these red–vs–blue isogløsses.

jlliagre

@tchrist You need a good pair of glosses to clearly distinguish them.

tchrist

Oh, the langues d'oïl don't have a jejunus cognate, only the langues d'oc do.

You have jeûne.

ieiunus

Adjective: iēiūnus (feminine iēiūna, neuter iēiūnum); first/second-declension adjective

fasting, abstinent, hungry
(figuratively) dry, barren, unproductive
(figuratively) scanty, meager
insignificant, trifling

Just more whittled down.

jejunus

== Latin == === Étymologie === Étymologie obscure : Il est pour *se-junus : la seconde partie du mot fait supposer un ancien *juna qui est pour *diusna (« repas du jour ») de dies comme vesperna dérive de vesper (« soir ») → voir jento (« déjeuner, prendre le repas de midi »). Comparer avec la construction de sobrius pour le sens et Juno pour le lien entre dies et *juna. Apparenté au grec ἄγος, ágos (« expiation »), यजति yájati (« sacrifier ») en sanscrit. === Adjectif === jējūnus \jeːjˈjuː.nus\ À jeun, abstinent. tam jejuna fames? — (Juvénal) (Sens figuré) Nu, dépouillé, improductif....

These pages need to get their stories straight.

I looked at the wrong spelling and the found the wrong nothing.

jejunus

Adjective: jējūnus (feminine jējūna, neuter jējūnum); first/second-declension adjective

Alternative form of iēiūnus

Is why.

Verb, noun ayunar, ayuno are normal words in Spanish. But that isn't what jejune means much anymore in English.

Think: desayuno. You're "undoing" your fasting.

> 3. a. Unsatisfying to the mind or soul; dull, flat, insipid, bald, dry, uninteresting; meagre, scanty, thin, poor; wanting in substance or solidity. Said of thought, feeling, action, etc., and esp. of speech or writing; also transferred of the speaker or writer. (The prevailing sense.)

> b. Puerile, childish; also, naïve.
¶ This use may owe its origin to the mistaken belief that the word is connected with Latin juvenis young (comparative junior), or French jeune young

yeesh

@jlliagre Seems that English has also confused these!

The citations for the possibly-catachrestic 3b sense are:

> 1898 G. B. Shaw Arms & Man ii. 29 His jejune credulity as to the absolute value of his concepts.
1975 Economist 22 Nov. 14/1 Is anybody..now so jejune as not to realise that the state ownership of the deadweight of present nationalised industries must prevent Labour governments from being able to follow..their social policies.
1982 N.Y. Times Mag. 8 Aug. 10 Other people..write in to correct you if you define the word..‘jejune’ as ‘childish’.
1982 M. Howard Eppie (1983) xxxiii. 271 Mother seemed jejune, at times, with her enthusiasms and her sense of mission.

I should look up who wrote in the NYY that Other people..write in to correct you if you define the word..‘jejune’ as ‘childish’.

Oh it wasn't Safire! He was on vacation!

Will Weng is crossword-puzzles editor of Times Books. William Safire is on vacation.

> Other people still have old dictionaries and write in to correct you if you define the word ''intrigue'' as ''fascinate,'' or the word ''jejune'' as ''childish.''

Then there are such words as Arnel, barber, waterfront, E-boat, stevedore, erose, Spode, sheet and patsy. What they have in common is that they can lead a crossword editor to drink, assuming he doesn't already drink.

Stevedores are the the Stephens that carry the pommes d'or.

E-boats carry ultramar E-mail.

> E-boat: ''British W.W. II craft.'' Not so. It's a German version of the PT boat. The only dictionary where I can find the word is the Ran-dom House Dictionary of the English Language, which is misleading because it starts its definition with ''Brit.'' in italics, which tends to throw one off at the start. No mention of Germany at all.

Rom-dom houses.

> Pier experts will tell you in no uncertain terms that a stevedore is the one who hires and supervises, and the longshoreman is the one who does the actual work.

It's weird reading forty-year-old peeves.

Which are not the peeves of forty-year-olds.

> Then there is an ailment that might be called the crossword editor's syndrome. It sets in after one has spent four or five hours knee-deep in three- and four-letter words.

> One puzzle had a word in it that I read as ''re-in.'' I was sure that there was no such word but decided to double-check. After all, there is such a word as ''re-up,'' which means ''re-enlist.'' So ''re-in'' just could be included as a word meaning ''to enter again.'' I was already well toward the ''R'' section of the dictionary when it dawned on me that the word was ''rein.'' There is no cure for this disease. At least in my case.

Oh, I know that syndrome. Copyeditors get it.

jlliagre

23:45

Dis-jejunare (to break the fast) gave both déjeuner and disner/dîner in French. The time of the day they refer to gradually shifted in France where déjeuner is to lunch and dîner is to have dinner while in Belgium and Québec, déjeuner is breakfast and dîner is lunch.

tchrist

I never knew that about dinner!

jlliagre

cnrtl.fr/definition/dmf/d%C3%AEner

tchrist

It seems that jejune used to mean fasting in English as well, but not very often this side of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock.

> †1. Without food, fasting; hungry. Obsolete.
a1620 M. Fotherby Atheomastix (1622) ii. ii. §2. 199 When their Bellies are distended, and full; yet their appetites are ieiune, and emptie.
1670 J. Beale in Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 5 1162 Poor and jejune people, who are accustomed to drinks almost as weak as water.
a1754 J. MacLaurin Serm. & Ess. (1755) 156 That cold, jejune, lifeless frame.

jlliagre

I learned the word jejune today.

tchrist

I'm disappointed with the OED. Again. It always stops at French.

Which does not reveal the connection between breakfast and dinner.

> Etymology: < Anglo-Norman (rare) dener, denyr, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French diner (also digner , disner ; French dîner ) first large meal of the day (first half of the 12th cent. as deigner ; use in the sense ‘evening meal’ is not paralleled in French until much later than in English: 1814), time at which this meal is eaten (early 13th cent. or earlier), use as noun of diner dine v. (see discussion of the semantic development at that entry).
Compare post-classical Latin dignerium, dinarium, dinerium, dinnerium, disnarium (frequently from 12th cent. in British and continental…

jlliagre

23:51

I initially though jejune was a pun that I was missing :-)

tchrist

hah

jlliagre

The word doesn't look English.

tchrist

It does not.

jlliagre

nor French.

tchrist

I think it got lifted from Latin directly.

jlliagre

23:54

Hok ille

tchrist

> Pronunciation: Brit./dʒᵻˈdʒuːn/, U.S./dʒəˈdʒun/
Frequency (in current use): (Frequency band 3)
Etymology: < Latin jējūnus fasting.

> Band 3
Band 3 contains words which occur between 0.01 and 0.1 times per million words in typical modern English usage. These words are not commonly found in general text types like novels and newspapers, but at the same time they are not overly opaque or obscure. Nouns include ebullition and merengue, and examples of adjectives are amortizable, prelapsarian, contumacious, agglutinative, quantized, argentiferous. In addition, adjectives include a marked number of very colloquial words, e.g. cutesy, dirt-cheap, teensy, badass, crackers. Verbs and adverbs diverge to opposite ends of the spec…

@jlliagre Don't worry, most native speakers don't know most of those Frequency Band 3 words, either. :)

At least the big long Latin ones.

jlliagre

I have no problem with at least ebullition, amortizable, agglutinative, quantized, argentiferous ;-)

tchrist

Nope.

Contumacious? It's usually what a judge gets pissed off at you for.

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