What language (other than English) do you speak?

[tron07]

I can speak 2 other language fluently and few other in bits and pieces.

[Paulbot]

"What meaning was extracted from the extract?"

Either I'm missing something or I pronounce one of the words "wrong"

[GoktimusPrime]

Either I'm missing something or I pronounce one of the words "wrong"

When extract is used as a noun then the stress falls on the first syllable.
e.g. "Made from natural plant èxtracts."
When it's used as a verb then the stress falls on the second syllable.
e.g. "The fossils were extràcted from the site."

[Paulbot]

Not the way I pronounce them

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

From the Pokémon Go thread...

It is a portmanteau of the words "Pocket Monsters." Pocket is pronounced "pock-et" (/ˈpɒk.ɪt/) in English (rhyming with docket and rocket), not "poke-it." Here is the original opening theme song for Pokémon. You can clearly here that it's pronounced "Pock-eh-mon," and not "Poke-ee-mon." Whoever officially transcribed the English title even placed an accent mark above the "e" to tell people where to place the stress on the word (which is very important because English, unlike Japanese, is a stressed☆ language). The accented é is the reason why we don't pronounce café as "kaffer" or résumé as "resume" (as in "resume your positions"), or touché as "touchy" etc.

Jumping in a bit late here.
that's all very good and well for those with Japanese experience, but for the however many kiddies that watched the English version of the cartoon, despite the accent being on the "e" on the title text, throughout the cartoon opening and the cartoon itself every time it's said, it's pronounced Poke-ee-mon. So no wonder that most English speakers will call them poke-ee-mon.

Expecting someone who has no knowledge of another language to adhere to that language's rules is a bit pricky.

[GoktimusPrime]

But it's from English... by the conventions of English phonology it should be "pock-uh-mon" (/ˈpɒkəˈmɒn/). Forget Japanese phonology, because their pronunciation would be /ˈpɒkɛˈmɒn/ since Japanese lacks the mid central /ə/ vowel.

Although this would only add to an already extensive list of English words which defy phonological conventions. Like how we pronounce the first "i" in words like finish, infinite, definite and indefinite differently from "finite." But 'finite' was mutated in the late 15th Century as English evolved from Late Middle English to Early Modern English (i.e. Shakespearean English), and one of the great catalysts for this change was the invention of the printing press. English was in far greater flux (and more prone to bastardisation) prior to the advent of printing as obviously the majority of people were illiterate. The mass production of books led to a significant boost in literacy in the Anglophone population, which is why even Early Modern English is significantly more intelligible to Modern English speakers today than Middle English, and Old English is practically an entirely alien language (more closely related to Modern Frisian, spoken mostly in parts of the Netherlands and some parts of Germany). King James was instrumental in the standardisation of Early Modern English.

Here's a comparison. For the benefit of those who don't read Old/Middle English letters no longer used in the Modern English alphabet, I've omitted those letters in place of modern equivalents with the exception of "æ," which is "a" as in "apple" (and not as in "cart"). Also note that the "th" used in the Old and Middle English texts below is pronounce as in words like "that," "those" or "weather," and not as in "thin" or "with."

Old English
Sothlice on tham dagum wæs geworden gebod fram tham casere augusto. thæt eall ymbehwyrft wære tomearcod

Middle English
Forsothe it is don, in tho dayis a maundement wente out fro cesar august, that al þe world shulde ben discriued

Early Modern English
And it came to passe in those dayes, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.

Now you can see how greatly English has changed between Old and Middle English, yet in the 600 years since Early Modern English very little has changed. Looking the example here we've lost the "e" in "passe" and "dayes." That's it. Other than that it's remained reasonably constant, and this was no accident. It was a very deliberate act from King James to standardise the English language and lock it in, and the fact that English from 600 years ago is still intelligible with English today is a lasting legacy of King James.

Also, many of the peculiarities between English spelling and pronunciation occurred between 1350-1600 during a three-stage period known as the Great Vowel Shift. And again, the advent of the printing press and edict of King James saw the end of the Great Vowel Shift as English spelling and pronunciation finally became standardised. But even then, it took 250 years in a pre-literate age for these mutations to occur, and much of it ended when literacy became widespread.

So it seems implausible that just mongrelisations would occur so rapidly in the modern age where we should have far higher rates of literacy and education overall*. In any case, most of the time I've corrected my students' pronunciation** (cos ya know, it's actually part of my job ). Although I don't do it anymore because my students all pronounce it correctly (I only had to do it once).

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*as public education in England came about in the 19th Century, although the Americans had it a few decades earlier and Scotland actually had free public education 300 years before the English! (take that, Brexit! ); up till then education was private and much of it was controlled by the Church
**not just of Pokémon but any other words they use; although correcting Latin is interesting because there are different ways to pronounce the words depending on which variant; Classical, Vulgar, Ecclesiastic etc. - I use Classical but I also allow my students to use other variants - it's hard to nitpick a dead language especially when even the HSC examination lacks any listening or speaking components!). And I must admit that I use a less common mouth trill for the German /r/, whereas most native Germans trill from the throat. But I do tell my students that I'm using a less common pronunciation because I personally find it easier and I encourage them to try and trill from the throat if they can.

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On a totally different note, I filled out the Census tonight and came across one problem with Question 15 for my daughter. And I did provide feedback to the ABS about it.

If they haven't fixed this by the next census then I might just tick "Other" and place both languages there.

I also noticed that you can't choose more than two options for "Other, ancestry" (although that's one more than the "Other" option for languages). I guess in this case people might need to manually enter multiple ancestries in one of the boxes.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

But it's from English... by the conventions of English phonology it should be "pock-uh-mon" (/ˈpɒkəˈmɒn/).

The cartoon consistently calls the pok ee mon, so kids being kids, is what they end up being called. Nevermind what the conventions of phonology are. The cartoon says poke ee mon. So the kids, they say da poke ee mons.

Fault lies in the voice director I guess

[GoktimusPrime]

Well, Transformers Combiner Wars looks set on mongrelising the pronunciation of "Caminus" as "cammyness" instead of the correct "KAH-mee-noos."

Segue time!

Does anyone else find it grinding when you hear some people - and it tends to be among some Americans - place the stress/emphasis on the first syllable in "Transformers" (TRANSformers)? In every English language Transformers cartoon and film, it's always pronounce correctly on the second syllable (transFORMers); just start singing the G1 theme song and you'll hear it. It only seems to be a minority though - every English speaker I've ever spoken to, American, Australian etc., places the stress on the second syllable. And every American actor in the Transformers cartoons and films also does the same, like when Cade Yaeger says, "I think we found a Transformer" or when Attinger says, "The age of the Transformers is over" (although Kelsey Grammer speaks with that lovely refined mid-Atlantic American English* - he would make a great voice actor for Tracks if he ever appeared in the live action films)

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*As opposed to Cade Yaegar's more crude sounding Boston accent... despite being a Texan. Remember that unlike most other English dialects, American English was initially constructed by educators and linguists such as Noah Webster etc.

P.S.: Fun fact... Vatican City is the only place where you can find ATMs which give prompts in Latin!

[GoktimusPrime]

From here:

Never assume the pronunciation of names (proper nouns), even if they are derived/taken from previously used words. Just take it as a new fictional robot's name, derived from a latin word, using the same spelling, but pronounced differently.

Edit - To add, has anyone officially stated that this particular character's name is in fact taken from the Latin word? Or is it a completeney ficticious name that happens to share the spelling?
See how ridiculous these trivial things can spiral into?

Edit - and I know of the TF titan Caminus, but he is a different entity so that is moot.

Nobody's explicitly stated that Optimus, Prime, Ultra, Magnus, Maximus etc. are from Latin, or that other names are from other language sources. But we know it because it's common knowledge and pronunciation rules are similarly applied.

Gok apparently thinks every TFs name needs to be sourced from real, literary sources. Primus alone knows what he thinks of Emirate Xaaron. Aside from that, he also appears to ignorant of one thing every student of linguistics ought to be aware of from the get-go: language changes.

This would be true if Caminus had been absorbed into English in that form or a similar form. English pronounces words like Optimus, Prime, Ultra, Magnus and Maximus differently from Latin, but this is different because these words exist in English in these forms or similar forms. Caminus doesn't. The nearest English equivalent of caminus is "chimney" which we get from Old French cheminee, and even this pronunciation has mutated because the pronunciation of cheminee is something like "shommee-neh". In fact, RiD Optimus Prime's voice actor Neil Kaplan has a voice-character based on the original Latin pronunciation of Optimus which he calls "Optimoose."

You can't simply chalk down isolated mispronunciations as language evolution (by this logic George Dubya's mispronunciation of "nuclear" as "new-kewlar" and reference to the Greek people as "Grecians" would be correct ), that's a wholly different thing. Also, as explained 2 posts ago, language evolution in languages was effectively halted after the advent of the printing press and languages like English have had relatively very little change in the past 600 years.

P.S.: if authors don't want people to notice hold standards of pronunciation for names, then just invent entirely fictitious ones. If you're going to draw references from the real world then of course people will naturally refer to them. It's like how Spider-Man 2 claimed that you can make nuclear fission from a single atom of tritium (H3O)... you literally cannot! On the other hand you can imbue fictitious metals like adamantium, vibranium or even transformium with magical properties because they're not real - there's no real world reference for anyone to disclaim it.

[Raider]

I think you are overthinking this waaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy too much mate. tom-AY-to, tom-AH-to really