User talk:Flet

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Again, welcome! User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 12:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Contributions

Indeed, thank you for continuing to add pronunciations! It is a good thing to see. :) User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 12:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Your Latin pronunciations are unfortunately incorrect. I'm not an expert in pronouncing Latin, but you need to learn about Latin stress, vowel length, and syllable breaks before you add pronunciations. Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:04, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I see, Marcus has short a. I'll let you do the syllable breaks though, phonology is not my strong point. (Flet (talk) 19:39, 14 August 2012 (UTC))

Well, except when you forget to add syllable breaks, your English IPA is good. Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:41, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

[1]

Why? Ƿidsiþ 11:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Because the schwa is not optional. (Flet (talk) 13:51, 20 August 2012 (UTC))

Yes it is. In fact most UK dialects, including "modern RP", have a syllabic [n]. Ƿidsiþ 14:09, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Right. "Syllabic" [n] = schwa + [n], just as "syllabic" [l] = schwa + [ɫ] (in IPA). (Flet (talk) 14:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC))

Well, that's certainly one way of interpreting it, but hardly the only way. [n̩] and [ən] are different, even if you represent them both as /ən/. But many sources distinguish them anyway, eg the OED gives the ending of (deprecated template usage) prestidigitation ((deprecated template usage) digitation is still unrevised) as /ʃ(ə)n/ for US English and /ʃn/ for UK English. Ƿidsiþ 14:24, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

If you remove the schwa in the original transcript, you'd have had [n] (incorrect) not [n̩] (correct but not standard here). We'll have to agree to disagree that /n̩/ and /ən/ are different phonetically. In any case, all the other phonetic transcripts of -ation on Wiktionary are /-eɪʃən/ not /-eɪʃn̩/, therefore /ən/ is the standard (and requires less expertise from non-English-speakers since they don't have to learn special case syllabic consonant pronunciations and can just get on with reading and pronouncing words). Therefore I would urge you not to "correct" /ən/ to /n̩/. (Flet (talk) 14:35, 20 August 2012 (UTC))

I did not "correct" anything, you are the one who decided to change the page. And I did not say there was a difference between /n̩/ and /ən/, I said (correctly) that there is a difference between [n̩] and [ən]. And I would point out further that /(ə)n/ is an extremely common convention in dictionaries to represent this range of values. Ƿidsiþ 14:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

It is also common in dictionaries to transcribe velar /ɫ/ as /l/ and approximant /ɹ/ as /r/. Let's not be distracted by what is common, and instead concentrate on what is correct, consistent, useful and meaningful. (Flet (talk) 14:49, 20 August 2012 (UTC))

Listen I don't know who you are, but what is correct, useful and meaningful is exactly what is at issue here and should not be the subject of a unilateral decision from a new user. Currently, I note that both /n̩/ and /ən/ are permissible under Appendix:English pronunciation. Ƿidsiþ 15:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I note equally that /(ə)n/ is not listed as permissible under Appendix:English pronunciation. (Flet (talk) 15:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC))

(my 2 cents) I agree that there's a distinction between [n̩] and [ən] (the latter implies there's a longer syllable there than the former implies), but whether this should be carrier over into /broad/ transcriptions is a harder question to answer. I'd tend to favour it — that is, keeping /n̩/ and /ən/ distinct — but this might be something to raise in the WT:BP. (I suspect there may be minimal pairs of phrases distinguished by /n̩/ vs /ən/, whereas there aren't pairs of words distinguished by [l] vs [ɫ].) - -sche (discuss) 09:16, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

battle

I've reverted your edit to [[battle]], because I'm reasonably confident that English does not have a distinct /ɫ/ phoneme; rather, [ɫ] is an allophone of /l/. Do you believe otherwise? —Ruakh_TALK 14:33, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe otherwise, no. Is it not useful to make the allophone explicit so that non English speakers can learn to pronounce the word directly from the transcript? Otherwise there is not sufficient information for them to do so, and they have to learn the whole phonology of English as well. (Flet (talk) 14:39, 21 August 2012 (UTC))

Sorry, but that doesn't really make sense. The /.../ notation is specifically for giving a phonemic transcription. Trying to distinguish [ɫ] from [l] inside /.../ would be like trying to distinguish it in the headword-line by writing {{en-noun|sg=battɫe}}: just as the latter is wrong because ɫ is a phonetic symbol, not a letter, so can't be used in spelling, the former is wrong because ɫ is a phonetic symbol, not a phonemic one, so can't be used in phonemic transcription. (I mean, if it's a phonetic symbol. Obviously it can be a phonemic symbol, but you don't seem to be suggesting we use it that way for English, so it's moot.) —Ruakh_TALK 15:02, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

OK. I will fix up the entries I did already. (Flet (talk) 07:45, 22 August 2012 (UTC))

dangle

Hi! I'm a fan of [narrow] transcriptions, so I'm glad to see you adding them. One thing, though: it'd be best if you could add them without removing the /broad/ transcriptions. The narrow transcriptions are great for people like you and me, as we are familiar with the IPA, but the broad transcriptions are useful for people who aren't familiar with so many IPA symbols and/or who only care about the phonemes. There are a couple of ways you can add multiple pronunciations to an entry, including by repeating the IPA template (which is usually best if the pronunciations differ in some way, as at [[colour]]), or with a pipe. Cheers, - -sche (discuss) 09:25, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Stop!

Please stop adding Occitan etymologies to everything that's not moving. Middle English had direct contact with Old French (that little thing in 1066...), but not with Occitan. please don't add Occitan to English etymologies where Old French is plausible, unless you can provide evidence. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:44, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Middle English had direct contact with both Old French (langue d'oïl) and Occitan (langue d'oc). In 1151 Henry II of England became duke of Anjou and married Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was a native Occitan speaker. Occitan was spoken in the English court alongside Old French until at least the mid 14th century - most nobles would understand both languages. Richard the Lionheart fancied himself a great troubadour, which involves writing poetry and singing in Occitan. Large parts of Occitania were under English rule for long periods (the areas of Gascony, Anjou, Aquitaine, Limousin, etc). Edward the Black Prince wrote correspondence in Occitan. English troops served in Occitania and there was extensive trade. It is not unreasonable to consider that a derivation may have come via either langue d'oïl or langue d'oc. In many cases you seem to have reverted my contributions in an ad hominem manner without even considering the content, simply because it was me that added them. Take revenge for instance, where it is pretty clear that this is an Occitan derivation and you cannot provide any other etymology. Or consider pétanque where a quick Google will show you that the word originates from Occitan. You might like to actually consider each of these submissions on their own merits, rather than deciding that you just don't like my face so you will blanket revert every submission I make. Flet (talk) 09:23, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

My reverts, for the most part, were simply based on what was plausible: anything derived from Middle English would be impossible to have come from Occitan as Wiktionary defines it, since Modern English and Occitan start at approximately the same time. I'm not saying that Occitan never made it into English, just that it was relatively rare, and that w:Occam's razor would argue against considering it when Old French is assumed by most published etymologies.

The main problem I had with your edits was that they made a systematic change in the way we do etymologies without any consensus to do so or presentation of evidence. Feel free to post a topic at the Etymology Scriptorum (WT:ES) to make your case. It's entirely possible that some of your edits might be justifiable, if done using the correct language code. Also, your use of the etyl template without an "-" in the second parameter was adding lots of entries to Category:English terms derived from Occitan (which you single-handedly increased by six or seven times) where Occitan was only given as a cognate.

You have to understand that we get lots of people who are really familiar with (and want to promote) a language, and add it to every etymology (if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail). We're still trying to figure out what to do with a flood of questionable Albanian "cognates", for instance. It takes time and expertise to check such edits, so we tend to be leery of anyone adding a bunch of them out of the blue. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:24, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I understand now from Ungoliant that Wiktionary calls medieval langue d'oc "Old Provençal" (a term I don't believe any Occitan speakers have heard of) and that "Occitan" only refers to langue d'oc spoken since the 20th century. I apologize for my use of the etyl template, I was not aware how to use this correctly. Flet (talk) 07:11, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Old Provençal vs. Occitan

In Wiktionary, Old Provençal means the ancestor language of all Occitano-Romance languages, not just of the variant spoken in Provence. Occitan, on the other hand, means one of the modern language descending from it. There are almost no English words descending from modern Occitan (the currently entryless Vergonha is one). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 03:03, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I am happy to mark these submissions as Old Provençal in that case, although Occitan as a language has not substantially changed since it was referred to as langue d'oc in the Middle Ages except of course by adding neologisms (modern Occitan speakers can understand troubadour poetry just fine). Flet (talk) 09:27, 2 September 2013 (UTC)