Talk:Common phrases in various languages

Geoffrey (the fun I could have by adding bad translations...but I didn't)

You mean things like "we go back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?" and such? ;) -- John Owens

This critter is a little long (38kb). I wonder if it isn't possible to split it into smaller pieces. Emperorbma 05:03 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For some reason, I think perhaps the length, it's not letting me edit some spellings or add new words. Manika

What part of speech is "Russian", "Greek", etc. supposed to represent? Is it referring to the name of the language or a speaker of the language (or someone of that ethnicity)? I ask because the current entry for "Greek" is the feminine adjective form, correct for a female Greek person, or for feminine-gendered non-person items (like the Hellenic Republic). However, it is incorrect for the name of the language, which is EllinikA, not EllinikI. --Delirium 22:26, Aug 30, 2003 (UTC)

Isn't scots a dialect? Should there be seperate entries for languages/dialects? --gorffy April 25, 2005

Contents

1 "bathroom" American English term? 2 il es nihil = welcome? 3 SAMPA into IPA 4 Chinese stuff 5 Japanese stuff 6 Slang 7 Phonetic/phonemic transcription 8 Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese 9 Turkish 10 Spanish Pronunciation 11 IPA template 12 Phrases not yet in this list 13 Shanghainese vs Cantonese 14 Englisc 15 Problems with the Afrikaans 16 Transwiki? 17 Ecclesastical pronunciation of Latin "mihi"

"bathroom" American English term?

Since I'm not a native speaker of English I may be wrong, but isn't the word "bathroom" an American English term when used as a synonym for "toilet"? Maybe there should be a note on this. My suggestion may sound quite petty, but the meaning of the phrase "where's the bathroom?" is not as clear as you may think. In German, e.g., a "Badezimmer" is always a place were you can take a bath, wereas a place to 'relieve yourself' is called "Toilette". A friend of mine told me he once had problems beeing understood in the US when he was asking for a toilet. So, you see, it is also possible for tourists in a country whose language they think they understand to get confused with a surprisingly short list of phrases. tobulax 00:05, 21 Aug, 2004 (CET)

• look what I've done in Portuguese. We also have two diffferent words (in fact we have more) "casa de banho" (northern Portugal), "lavados" (Portugal; wc -fewly used). I reedited Portuguese sounds. Not to offend but, I could easily notice that was a English-speaker, with terrible Portuguese phonology (he should search another school). I used IPA for Portugal (Lisbon/Coimbra) and Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) - two major countries that speak the lang. -Pedro 19:57, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A British radio announcer once committed a blooper that made it onto a 45 r.p.m. record I had as a teenager: "We now bring you an address by Her Majesty the Queen from the bathroom at Pump. (gasp, choke)...Oh, I am terribly sorry. I mean... the Pumproom at Bath." So I think "bathroom" is a euphemism in British English too. I can't think of an American English term to stand in the place of "loo" as a non-vulgar but unambiguous replacement for all the euphemisms, "lavatory, toilet, bathroom..." "W.C." is so little understood by most Americans that the name of the comedian W.C. Fields passed completely by me until I saw it explained someplace. P0M 00:51, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There are many non-vulgar slang terms for restroom in American English such as: potty (kid's speak); john; can; head (naval term); and the percieved vulger: crapper (named for Thomas Crapper).

In the UK, if you request the bathroom (other then a domestic house), you will get funny looks, as British people will ask for the toilet or informally the loo, not the bathroom or the restroom.159753 14:48, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

il es nihil = welcome?

I don't speak Interlingua, but the translation for "Welcome", il es nihil, looks suspiciously like "it is nothing", which would be very close in meaning to "you're welcome." If I recall, Spanish has an idiom, de nada (spelling here may be way off...), meaning something like "it's nothing," which is used in this way. When I see the word "Welcome" standing alone, I think more along the lines of "Greetings," as in "Welcome to my home." In that context, I'm guessing that il es nihil would make no sense. Anthropos 14:01, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Quite so. I've adjusted the section, but my Interlingua is a little rusty so someone else may wish to double-check my work. --Brion 14:33, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've moved three fictional languages to a new page called 'phrases in fictional languages'. It seems to me that fictional languages are really a different topic altogether: the people who are interested in them and the people who are looking for common phrases in different languages are likely to be coming from rather different angles. To be honest, it seems to me that there's also something a bit wrong with putting a 'language' from a book or a tv series (even if it's one you *really* like) on an even footing with a real language that people actually speak, and which is the product of thousands of years of, like, culture and stuff. --Tremolo 04:30, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've moved that page to Common phrases in constructed languages, and added some more constructed languages from this page to that one. -- pne 09:55, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I presume the Frisian language is West Frisian language as they are not mutually comprehensible. Secretlondon 23:04, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Hm. Do you speak English and Can you speak English are subtly different... but I suspect that the true intent is to get the person you are speaking to to speak in English. But I can't think of a better (polite) replacement for that purpose. - Zhen Lin 11:08, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Do you speak English?" is a polite request about a person's preference. It does not imply that the person might not be able to speak English. (But in the case that the person does not know how to speak English the speaker is reasonably safe because the person spoken to will be unlikely to understand the question either. So no offense would be given.) "Can you speak English?" sounds a little less polite. It could be interpreted to indicate the belief on the part of the speaker that the other person ought to be able to speak English (and is ignorant or stupid if unable to do so). It would be offensive if understood, regardless of whether the person spoken to could respond or not. I'm reminded of getting onto an airplane and sitting next to a lady from Great Britain. "Do you read?" she asked, offering me a book. "Can you read?" would have been the wrong thing to say. The other function of the original question is to give the person asked the chance to say, "Yes, I do speak English, but only a little. Please talk slowly." P0M 02:38, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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SAMPA into IPA

I disagree with User:node ue's decision to change the SAMPA into IPA - in my opinion, IPA support (especially in fonts) is not good enough yet that this will be an improvement. -- pne 12:52, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Same thing here. Did sie have to change to IPA? I don't know about hir, but for me, some characters (such as the postalveolar fricatives) don't display properly in that page. Perhaps we should change the font to Arial Unicode, or something like that? --Fibonacci 15:29, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Please no fixed font suggestions; that may look better for you but worse for others. -- pne 13:23, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

You're right, Linux users wouldn't see it right. But then, if that font is not used, what do you suggest? Plain Arial looks catastrophical to me. --Fibonacci 05:16, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I suggest that you obtain a font that contains all the characters you are likely to encounter and that looks good and set it as your browser's default. Alternatively, get a browser that does better font-substitution (e.g. setting the entire "word" in the same font rather than just certain characters, if that's what you prefer). Only you can decide what looks best to you, and only others can decide what looks best to them.

Unfortunately, that's much more easily said than done, since good fonts with a large range of glyphs are hard to come by, and you have little influence on the rendering engine of your browser or your operating system. But I think that would be the optimal solution. -- pne 15:03, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I found a font that contains all the characters I'm likely or unlikely to encounter, all the characters I've seen so far and possibly all the characters I'll ever see (can you guess what font is it?). Now, how can I mess with the rendering engine of my browser, so as to make it the default? --Fibonacci 23:39, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't know which font you found; perhaps Code2000, Bitstream Cyberbit, or Titus whatever-it's-called? And how to set up your browser will depend on which browser you have... I suggest you ask in a place dedicated to internationalisation and/or support for your chosen browser, since I don't know that many browsers and how to fiddle with their options. -- pne 09:39, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

I found Arial Unicode MS :P... I found the answer right here in Wikipedia, and configured it.

I would disagree with SAMPA being replaced by IPA since the makers of SAMPA say that it isn't an IPA replacement. It was only designed for certain European languages only. Fonts are an issue, sure, but if your browsers has trouble supporting IPA, wouldn't it also have trouble supporting most of the scripts used in the article already? --68.22.251.127 23:59, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm actually having trouble seeing any of the non-standard-font IPA symbols. Is that just my browser? Shouldn't the html &#...; coding be recognised by it? I changed my browser font to Ariel Unicode MS to no avail. Is there a way to change the page's set font to Ariel Unicode MS?--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo|TALK]] 20:32, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

I'm actually having trouble seeing any of the non-standard-font IPA symbols. Is that just my browser?

Probably; I can see them.

Shouldn't the html &#...; coding be recognised by it?

Yes, it should. Which browser are you using? Or are you maybe using MSIE?

Is there a way to change the page's set font to Ariel Unicode MS?

Possibly, but it would be a bad idea IMO; see further up in this section — not everybody has the same fonts installed, nor are there any fonts that are available for all systems that you can rely on being there. Better to (a) change your browser and/or (b) use a custom stylesheet for when you are logged in; i.e. fix the problem for yourself since the way to do so will, in general, be different for different people and the only person you can reliably influence is yourself -- pne 12:33, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Chinese stuff

I changed some of the information in the Mandarin Chinese section. In particular I removed the examples of measure words given by the poster because a) they were both (!) incorrect and b) not likely to be of particular use to people who don't already know what a measure word is. I changed it to simply saying that the existance of measure words would cause the 'ge' to be replaced, occasionally, with other syllables. I also mentioned the use of na as an alternate pronunciation of nei; while I don't say it that way myself it does have wide currency in Southern China.

The measure words given in the examples were zhi for chopsticks and zhang for a table. While these both seem logical, they aren't correct (at least not in the Mandarin I speak, which is standard on the mainland, at least). You could possibly make a case for zhi being used for chopsticks, but mostly you hear ba3, not zhi. Given that pens are zhi you'd guess it would be zhi for chopsticks too but that's not how the language works. Measure word categories are, in essence, much like grammatical gender -- sometimes logical but often not. As for zhang, that's just totally off. tai2 would be correct for a table, usually. Zhang is used for flat things, but they're usually flat and thin, as in "a sheet of paper", not as in a table.

Anyway, unlike in Japanese, which is very picky about measure words (or so I understand), many young people nowadays just seem to use ge for everything, or almost everything, which personally hurts my ears but it makes it easier for tourists to communicate.

Well, I definitely say zhang for tables. As for chopsticks, I say gen if I mean a single chopstick (one single physical stick) and shuang for a pair. -- ran 13:26, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Ran. It is very easy to be subjective about language -- even to the extent that one does not really hear how other people say things. P0M

I strongly agree with Ran and PatrickOMoran since we always say zhang for tables and gen or zhi for chopsticks here. Sometimes people would be over subjective for the things around them, especially for their native languages, since there is no standard usage for any language! -- Bellenion 00:35, Jan 28, 2005

Japanese stuff

I think the Japanese phrase entries could be simplified a little. The kana-only phrases that follow Kanji/kana mixed phrases seem redundant since the kana-only phrases are immediately followed by romaji. Also, where informal speech version is coupled with formal speech (keigo) version, I think the formal speech (keigo) version only would suffice. Since there are various ways to speek in different politeness levels, only the most important version should be mentioned.--68.22.251.127 00:06, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Slang

24.15.232.87 keeps adding a Polish slang version of "I don't understand", which I've already reverted three times. My thinking is that this is supposed to be a bare-bones phrasebook enabling tourists to survive in another country; this means that phrases included here may be stripped down for simplicity and should probably use polite speech.

I think that slang is inappropriate in such a phrase book, for two main reasons:

1. It would be incongruous to have slang or idioms coming from someone who knows very little or nothing of the language, since a knowledge of slang generally implies some familiarity with the language
2. slang is often not appropriate in all settings, but someone who needs this kind of guide is typically not in a position to judge its appropriateness.

For this reason, I would like to keep slang out of this article. I've already left a comment to this effect on that IP's talk page.

Opinions? -- pne 11:44, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Slang shouldn't be included. -- ran 03:59, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Slang also ages pretty rapidly. Never say "spitze" to mean "cool/awesome" in Germany. Say "toll" (or is it something else now?).--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo|TALK]] 20:26, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

Phonetic/phonemic transcription

There's something terribly wrong about this page. Maybe I'm being a pedant, but as a linguist also, I need to point it out. Currently IPA transcriptions of phrases are being used, but linguistic convention holds that phonetic transcriptions (which IPA is used for) should be notated within square brackets [ and ], not / and /, which are reserved for phonemic transcriptions. Phonemic transcriptions are useless to people who are not yet familiar with the phonemic structure of the language, so I suggest changing all the / / brackets to [ ] on this page. Any objections/requests for clarification?--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo|TALK]] 09:27, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't go so far as to call it "terribly wrong", but I agree that square brackets are probably preferable here. (Though I imagine the transcription is "broad phonetic" rather than "narrow phonetic", it's still phonetic rather than phonemic — or intended to be thus, at any rate.) -- pne 09:33, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

We'll need to rework most of the transcriptions if we want them to be phonetic. Also: if we convert everything into phonetic rather than phonemic transcription, then the resulting IPA would be completely incomprehensible to the vast majority of people — including those who've learned a bit of IPA to help them with learning English/French/German/whatever. Is that what we want? -- ran 03:59, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

There are always the English transliterations for those not familiar with the IPA, but if one is to learn how to pronounce the phrases properly without even hearing them, the IPA is necessary. Also, where is phonemic transcription used in the article? I was just saying that / brackets should only be used with phonemic transcriptions, of which there are none that I can see.--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo|TALK]] 09:31, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

Pretty much all of the IPA representations used seem to be phonemic rather than phonetic. The English examples, for example, don't indicate aspiration, t/d flapping, allophonic vowel length, the fronting of /u/, etc. -- ran 09:55, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

if one is to learn how to pronounce the phrases properly without even hearing them

I'd wager that tourists are unlikely to learn how to pronounce a foreign language properly, IPA or not :)

Also, where is phonemic transcription used in the article?

Another example is using /r/ regardless of which rhotic sound is meant in a given language. (Some languages have a more phonetic transcription than others, but there are some which look fairly phonemic, i.e. are more of an approximation, or are somewhere in between.)

And I don't think a narrow phonetic transcription (e.g. indicating aspiration in all cases) will be that useful for this sort of thing. -- pne 10:06, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree with your last statement, but I still think the transcription used in most cases is closer to a broad phonetic one than a phonemic one. Let's leave that for now though; it's of little import. However, the specification of which rhotic consonant is rather important, although I don't think one would be misunderstood, were one to use the wrong /r/, as I don't think many languages make a distinction between them. Id est, you can make yourself understood in German, French or English if you roll your /r/'s, despite the fact that the average native wouldn't, as the sound won't be confused with another one. Aspiration should remain optional, though, as a detail. Another issue is stress, which should be marked by an apostrophe before the stressed syllable. Stress can change the meaning of a word drastically in some languages. As for the fact that "tourists" won't be needing the IPA, I think this article will be useful for travellers who want to know they're pronouncing words competently in the native language without having to study it seriously or even learn to read it, although this article does help with that slightly as well. It has always frusterated me to find incompetent transilterations in travel books. Where else could a guide like this article be found if we were to fix it up for the linguists among us?--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo|TALK]] 20:20, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

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Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese

Removed the followings -

(Usage Note: The first term is in simplified characters and is used in mainland China, while the second term is in traditional characters and is used in Hong Kong, Macao and on Taiwan. Mandarin is not as popular as Cantonese and English in Hong Kong. Cantonese and Portuguese is spoken in Macao.)

Taiwanese or Min-nan is spoken mainly in southern part of Taiwan. In northern cities such as Taipei Municipality or Keeling City, Mandarin is also popular.

This is not the place to talk about general usage of a language / dialect not related to a particular phrase. They are discussed in respective articles on the languages themselves. (Furthermore, reference to "term" is ambiguous in the first paragraph above) -Hlaw 18:07, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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Turkish

I added Turkish once. Why was it removed? -taksim25

It seems like you messed up the Unicode - that may be why. See also: Mojibake. --68.22.251.127 23:34, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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Spanish Pronunciation

I'm a little confused by some of the Spanish pronunciations given; they don't follow what I've learned or heard at all. Example:

• where's the bathroom?: ¿Dónde está el baño? ['dondes'tael'β̞aɲo] (DON day esTAH el BA-nyaw)

I've never heard baño said with an "a" sound at the end, implied by BA-nyaw. Can someone explain this? -- asciident 11:14, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The "pseudo English" pronunciations for Spanish were more than usually eccentric, and would have given a very strange idea of how to pronounce the language. I've deleted them. rossb 09:33, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

IPA template

I've started adding the IPA template, which makes nearly all IPA readable in most browsers. I'll complete the job later, unless someone else wants to take this over. Maybe once this is complete we can get rid of Sampa altogether, as it's pretty confusing to have some of the languages in one, and some in the other. rossb 09:23, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Phrases not yet in this list

I was disappointed not to find "Driver! Driver! The cab has been struck by lightning!" a traditional classic. --Wetman 21:50, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Shanghainese vs Cantonese

Unlike Mandarin and Cantonese, Shanghainese actually has the direct "yes" (éh/ai) similar to English

In Cantonese there is, but the usage depends on what yes/no the answer is referring to. For have/haven't, Cantonese has the direct "haven't", but not the case for Mandarin. — Instantnood 00:01, Jan 29 2005 (UTC)

Englisc

I've converted the Old English pronunciation to IPA as best I can, but I'd welcome others looking at this, as I'm not wholly confident I've got it right. Also I'd be interested to learn what period and dialect it's intended to represent. rossb 10:21, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Problems with the Afrikaans

Something has gone wrong with the Afrikaans IPA. In particular there seem to be stress marks in the wrong places. Caould someone familiar with Afrikaans sort it out? rossb 16:38, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki?

Is this article encyclopedic or has it the potential of becoming encyclopedic? I'd say no — to me it looks more like a handy tourist phrasebook, which would be better in place at Wikibooks. See also What Wikipedia is not (Wikipedia is not a general knowledgebase). Any thoughts? — mark ✎ 12:08, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I tend to agree. Arbor 12:28, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is also not a usage guide. I've never liked these kinds of sections in any of the seperate language articles. I wouldn't mind VfDing this article.

Peter Isotalo 13:37, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. It would get my transwiki or delete vote. — mark ✎ 11:05, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

It's up for VfD now.

Peter ^Isotalo 10:19, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Ecclesastical pronunciation of Latin "mihi"

I was always taught that in ecclesastical pronunciation of Latin, the H in "mihi" & "nihil" was /k/ rather than the more usual /h/.

It may have been that way at some time during the history of spoken medieval Latin. Existing manuscripts contain many examples of written michi and nichil, which is the evidence behind that belief. Some say this represented /k/, others that it was meant to represent that the 'h' was truly aspirate in pronunciations where it usually was silent. In musical and liturgical Latin, it is usually /h/, at least now. -- Smerdis of Tlön 03:47, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)