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.
February 27 Information
Dantesque
I just came across "Dantesque" in a book I'm reading. In my head I pronounced it as "Dan-te-esque" (3 syllables). Then I queried myself, since it's spelt as if it's "Dan-tesque" (2 syllables). But I doubt it's actually spoken that way.
So, is this an example of a single vowel acting as if it were a double vowel, where each vowel has a different function and sound? Or am I pronouncing it wrong? Or should it be spelt "Danteesque"?--
Jack of Oz[pleasantries]02:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
Side question: Why are "Dante", "Grande" and probably others, which are Italian words, often pronounced in the anglosphere as if they were French up till the final e, then Italian for the final e? Italians would never say "Donte, Gronde" but "Dahnte, Grahnde", and the French would say "Dont, Grond", with the final e unsounded (approx prons, but you know what I mean). --
Jack of Oz[pleasantries]02:13, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
Re side question: I'm probably not the best person to comment on this, Jack, because as a Midwestern American I tend—if I'm understanding you correctly—to pronounce "Don" (nickname of Donald) pretty much the same as the "Dahn" in Dante. The answer to your question, however, is probably lurking somewhere in the article
Phonological history of English open back vowels. What gets me is the way Brits tend to pronounce Dante's name as /ˈdæntiː/ (rhyming with "shanty").
Deor (
talk)
09:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
This North Carolinian seconds your point. I have no clue what distinction Jack of Oz is trying to make between "Donte" and "Dahnte", as I read those two exactly the same--
Khajidha (
talk)
14:24, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
See
cot-caught merger. You can keep giving examples; most Americans will have no idea what you're talking about. The vowel in gone, don, Dante, etc. are all the same in General American and most regional dialects, or are recognized to be within
free variation along a continuum, and they will not recognize those as meaningful distinct sounds. --
Jayron3219:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
For me, "gone" rhymes with "on"; "Dawn", "fawn", "lawn", and "pawn" rhyme; and "Don" and "Dan" as in "Dante" are the same, but the sound in each group is distinct. --
Khajidha (
talk)
23:40, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
I think this is the rare example of an instance to follow the New Yorker's style guide and use diaeresis: Danteësque. Most people would probably go for Dante-esque. Dante-like or Dante-ish might work. If none of these work, it would be best to rewrite the sentence in a way that avoids the matter.
Temerarius (
talk)
05:32, 29 February 2020 (UTC)reply
@
JackofOz: I think it really is Dantesque, with just two syllables. The Italian word is dantesco. Like some others, I'm a bit unsure what your point is on the vowels; could you please supply IPA? (I do distinguish between the pronunciations of the man's name Don and the woman's name Dawn, but I don't understand what the difference is supposed to be between the first vowels of father and bother.) --
Trovatore (
talk)
00:38, 3 March 2020 (UTC)reply
@
JackofOz: I take your point to be that you don't speak IPA and you don't care to learn it just for this one tiny exchange. That's fair. It's a pity though; it would make a lot of these discussions easier and clearer. --
Trovatore (
talk)
18:41, 3 March 2020 (UTC)reply
The /o/ vowel does not exist in English by itself (that is, as a monophthong). If it did, it would be like an American says "Oh", but leaving off the glide at the end. In Wikipedia conventions we would give the pronunciation of "Oh" as /oʊ/, but an RP speaker would actually say [ɛʊ]. I don't know enough about Oz phonology to hazard a guess as to how they'd say it.
So I'm not certain what vowel you wanted to put there, but it's definitely not /o/. Could be /ɒ/, maybe, which I've never figured out exactly how to pronounce. --
Trovatore (
talk)
19:58, 3 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Our
General American English article claims that "[v]owel length is not phonemic in General American[....]" which may be part of why I have trouble getting the distinction. But rounding is a weird thing too. Generally people say that /ʊ/ as in "book" /bʊk/ is "rounded", but when I say it you will hardly see my lips move at all — yet it sounds almost identical to someone who does round his lips. So I'm not sure I'm going to be able to follow the effect of the rounding here.
It occurs to me that another possibility is that my "Dawn" vowel is (or would be seen by a British speaker as) /ɒ/ rather than /ɔː/. So I don't have the Don–Dawn merger, but I might realize the distinction in a "shifted" way relative to RP. --
Trovatore (
talk)
06:57, 4 March 2020 (UTC)reply
@Jack: I thought you were referring at the beginning to the difference between "father" and "ball". The difference in your IPAs is like "palm" vs. "lot" (as given in the IPA doc). From an American perspective, this is just a question of vowel length, and many people would say it's the same sound.
Jmar67 (
talk)
11:15, 4 March 2020 (UTC)reply
I see the problem now. If I were saying "That darn Donald Trump", darn and Don would sound very different, but coming out of a (general) American's mouth they'd sound the same. Aussies like their own way of speaking, but the younger ones do tend to take on Americanisms every day of the week, and that must be why I'm hearing references to, e.g. "Dante's Peak" and "grande" coffees from Starbucks spoken by Aussies as if they were Americans. I guess Arianna Grande is an honourable exception, as that is how she says her own name, and we should all comply. Thanks. --
Jack of Oz[pleasantries]21:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Sure. It's easy. "That dahn Donald." Although they are not precisely the same, just very close. Thinking of a bit from Horse Feathers where Groucho (as the father) and Zeppo (as the son) are talking: "Anything fu'ther father?" "Anything fu'ther father? That can't be right. Isn't it anything father fu'ther?" ←
Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→
04:22, 5 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Re the side question: I think this is an example of what I term "standard average foreign". People know the ways that certain letters are pronounced in "foreign" words, and guess that these apply to other "foreign" words. Examples I notice are "chorizo" with an Italianate "z", (/ts/) and Beijing with a French-ish "j" /ʒ/. --
ColinFine (
talk)
15:38, 1 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Many people hear words spoken before they are written, so learn the pronunciation first. They are far less likely to get it "right" when reading an unpronounced, but Englishly unintuitively spelled word.
Here's a blog post at Dictionary.com explaining the phenomenon,
Here is a more scholarly work on the same concept. The basic idea is if you hear it first, and then later learn how it is spelled, you will continue to say it correctly. If you read it first, then try to pronounce it without hearing it, you're far more likely to get it wrong. --
Jayron3214:51, 2 March 2020 (UTC)reply
It is a proverb. "If young people knew, if older folks still could" captures the meaning. Basically, young people don't know what to do with all their possibilities, and old folks, who would know how to use these talents, are no longer able to do so.
Xuxl (
talk)
20:19, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
There is a longer version of the saying: "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait, il n'y aurait rien qui ne puisse se faire." ("If youth knew, if old age could, there would be nothing that could not be done.") I prefer the pithier short version; next to suffering from explanitis, the apodosis overstates the potential of combining the vigor of youth with the wisdom of old age. --
Lambiam07:49, 28 February 2020 (UTC)reply
How similar are
Cuban Spanish and
Puerto Rican Spanish? Our articles don't really go into that question. Specifically, I've been watching One Day at a Time, which is about a Cuban-American family in Los Angeles. The show is in English, but three of the major characters do sometimes speak Spanish. Since the characters are either Cuban or of Cuban ancestry, you'd expect them to speak Cuban Spanish, but the actors--
Justina Machado,
Marcel Ruiz, and
Rita Moreno--are actually all Puerto Rican, and therefore presumably speak Puerto Rican Spanish. Are the two dialects different enough that native Spanish speakers can hear the difference? Do Spanish speakers watch the show and say, "Why do these supposedly Cuban people speak with a Puerto Rican accent?" Alternatively, do the actors actually Cubanize their Spanish for the show so that they don't sound Puerto Rican? Or are the two accents so similar that no one can really tell the difference anyway? --
Mahagaja ·
talk22:09, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
@
Baseball Bugs: Not a native Spanish speaker, but is it possible they were conjugating it with "usted", which takes the 3rd-person singular conjugation? --Tenryuu (
🐲 •
💬 •
🌟)
02:02, 29 February 2020 (UTC)reply
I've watched a few more episodes and I'd say their treatment of coda s is variable. I've heard both "gracia[s]" and "gracia[h]", both "e[s]tá" and "e[h]tá". —
Mahāgaja ·
talk11:02, 29 February 2020 (UTC)reply
Here are links to some Quora questions with answers that strongly suggest the accents have diverged sufficiently to be perceptibly different. Of course, a good actor might be able to produce a passing imitation of a different accent than their own.
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.
February 27 Information
Dantesque
I just came across "Dantesque" in a book I'm reading. In my head I pronounced it as "Dan-te-esque" (3 syllables). Then I queried myself, since it's spelt as if it's "Dan-tesque" (2 syllables). But I doubt it's actually spoken that way.
So, is this an example of a single vowel acting as if it were a double vowel, where each vowel has a different function and sound? Or am I pronouncing it wrong? Or should it be spelt "Danteesque"?--
Jack of Oz[pleasantries]02:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
Side question: Why are "Dante", "Grande" and probably others, which are Italian words, often pronounced in the anglosphere as if they were French up till the final e, then Italian for the final e? Italians would never say "Donte, Gronde" but "Dahnte, Grahnde", and the French would say "Dont, Grond", with the final e unsounded (approx prons, but you know what I mean). --
Jack of Oz[pleasantries]02:13, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
Re side question: I'm probably not the best person to comment on this, Jack, because as a Midwestern American I tend—if I'm understanding you correctly—to pronounce "Don" (nickname of Donald) pretty much the same as the "Dahn" in Dante. The answer to your question, however, is probably lurking somewhere in the article
Phonological history of English open back vowels. What gets me is the way Brits tend to pronounce Dante's name as /ˈdæntiː/ (rhyming with "shanty").
Deor (
talk)
09:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
This North Carolinian seconds your point. I have no clue what distinction Jack of Oz is trying to make between "Donte" and "Dahnte", as I read those two exactly the same--
Khajidha (
talk)
14:24, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
See
cot-caught merger. You can keep giving examples; most Americans will have no idea what you're talking about. The vowel in gone, don, Dante, etc. are all the same in General American and most regional dialects, or are recognized to be within
free variation along a continuum, and they will not recognize those as meaningful distinct sounds. --
Jayron3219:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
For me, "gone" rhymes with "on"; "Dawn", "fawn", "lawn", and "pawn" rhyme; and "Don" and "Dan" as in "Dante" are the same, but the sound in each group is distinct. --
Khajidha (
talk)
23:40, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
I think this is the rare example of an instance to follow the New Yorker's style guide and use diaeresis: Danteësque. Most people would probably go for Dante-esque. Dante-like or Dante-ish might work. If none of these work, it would be best to rewrite the sentence in a way that avoids the matter.
Temerarius (
talk)
05:32, 29 February 2020 (UTC)reply
@
JackofOz: I think it really is Dantesque, with just two syllables. The Italian word is dantesco. Like some others, I'm a bit unsure what your point is on the vowels; could you please supply IPA? (I do distinguish between the pronunciations of the man's name Don and the woman's name Dawn, but I don't understand what the difference is supposed to be between the first vowels of father and bother.) --
Trovatore (
talk)
00:38, 3 March 2020 (UTC)reply
@
JackofOz: I take your point to be that you don't speak IPA and you don't care to learn it just for this one tiny exchange. That's fair. It's a pity though; it would make a lot of these discussions easier and clearer. --
Trovatore (
talk)
18:41, 3 March 2020 (UTC)reply
The /o/ vowel does not exist in English by itself (that is, as a monophthong). If it did, it would be like an American says "Oh", but leaving off the glide at the end. In Wikipedia conventions we would give the pronunciation of "Oh" as /oʊ/, but an RP speaker would actually say [ɛʊ]. I don't know enough about Oz phonology to hazard a guess as to how they'd say it.
So I'm not certain what vowel you wanted to put there, but it's definitely not /o/. Could be /ɒ/, maybe, which I've never figured out exactly how to pronounce. --
Trovatore (
talk)
19:58, 3 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Our
General American English article claims that "[v]owel length is not phonemic in General American[....]" which may be part of why I have trouble getting the distinction. But rounding is a weird thing too. Generally people say that /ʊ/ as in "book" /bʊk/ is "rounded", but when I say it you will hardly see my lips move at all — yet it sounds almost identical to someone who does round his lips. So I'm not sure I'm going to be able to follow the effect of the rounding here.
It occurs to me that another possibility is that my "Dawn" vowel is (or would be seen by a British speaker as) /ɒ/ rather than /ɔː/. So I don't have the Don–Dawn merger, but I might realize the distinction in a "shifted" way relative to RP. --
Trovatore (
talk)
06:57, 4 March 2020 (UTC)reply
@Jack: I thought you were referring at the beginning to the difference between "father" and "ball". The difference in your IPAs is like "palm" vs. "lot" (as given in the IPA doc). From an American perspective, this is just a question of vowel length, and many people would say it's the same sound.
Jmar67 (
talk)
11:15, 4 March 2020 (UTC)reply
I see the problem now. If I were saying "That darn Donald Trump", darn and Don would sound very different, but coming out of a (general) American's mouth they'd sound the same. Aussies like their own way of speaking, but the younger ones do tend to take on Americanisms every day of the week, and that must be why I'm hearing references to, e.g. "Dante's Peak" and "grande" coffees from Starbucks spoken by Aussies as if they were Americans. I guess Arianna Grande is an honourable exception, as that is how she says her own name, and we should all comply. Thanks. --
Jack of Oz[pleasantries]21:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Sure. It's easy. "That dahn Donald." Although they are not precisely the same, just very close. Thinking of a bit from Horse Feathers where Groucho (as the father) and Zeppo (as the son) are talking: "Anything fu'ther father?" "Anything fu'ther father? That can't be right. Isn't it anything father fu'ther?" ←
Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→
04:22, 5 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Re the side question: I think this is an example of what I term "standard average foreign". People know the ways that certain letters are pronounced in "foreign" words, and guess that these apply to other "foreign" words. Examples I notice are "chorizo" with an Italianate "z", (/ts/) and Beijing with a French-ish "j" /ʒ/. --
ColinFine (
talk)
15:38, 1 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Many people hear words spoken before they are written, so learn the pronunciation first. They are far less likely to get it "right" when reading an unpronounced, but Englishly unintuitively spelled word.
Here's a blog post at Dictionary.com explaining the phenomenon,
Here is a more scholarly work on the same concept. The basic idea is if you hear it first, and then later learn how it is spelled, you will continue to say it correctly. If you read it first, then try to pronounce it without hearing it, you're far more likely to get it wrong. --
Jayron3214:51, 2 March 2020 (UTC)reply
It is a proverb. "If young people knew, if older folks still could" captures the meaning. Basically, young people don't know what to do with all their possibilities, and old folks, who would know how to use these talents, are no longer able to do so.
Xuxl (
talk)
20:19, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
There is a longer version of the saying: "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait, il n'y aurait rien qui ne puisse se faire." ("If youth knew, if old age could, there would be nothing that could not be done.") I prefer the pithier short version; next to suffering from explanitis, the apodosis overstates the potential of combining the vigor of youth with the wisdom of old age. --
Lambiam07:49, 28 February 2020 (UTC)reply
How similar are
Cuban Spanish and
Puerto Rican Spanish? Our articles don't really go into that question. Specifically, I've been watching One Day at a Time, which is about a Cuban-American family in Los Angeles. The show is in English, but three of the major characters do sometimes speak Spanish. Since the characters are either Cuban or of Cuban ancestry, you'd expect them to speak Cuban Spanish, but the actors--
Justina Machado,
Marcel Ruiz, and
Rita Moreno--are actually all Puerto Rican, and therefore presumably speak Puerto Rican Spanish. Are the two dialects different enough that native Spanish speakers can hear the difference? Do Spanish speakers watch the show and say, "Why do these supposedly Cuban people speak with a Puerto Rican accent?" Alternatively, do the actors actually Cubanize their Spanish for the show so that they don't sound Puerto Rican? Or are the two accents so similar that no one can really tell the difference anyway? --
Mahagaja ·
talk22:09, 27 February 2020 (UTC)reply
@
Baseball Bugs: Not a native Spanish speaker, but is it possible they were conjugating it with "usted", which takes the 3rd-person singular conjugation? --Tenryuu (
🐲 •
💬 •
🌟)
02:02, 29 February 2020 (UTC)reply
I've watched a few more episodes and I'd say their treatment of coda s is variable. I've heard both "gracia[s]" and "gracia[h]", both "e[s]tá" and "e[h]tá". —
Mahāgaja ·
talk11:02, 29 February 2020 (UTC)reply
Here are links to some Quora questions with answers that strongly suggest the accents have diverged sufficiently to be perceptibly different. Of course, a good actor might be able to produce a passing imitation of a different accent than their own.