Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 February 20

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February 20

Again

In everyday talk, the word "again" rhymes with "hen". But in song lyrics it is sometimes positioned as if it rhymed with "cane". Why?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:42, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

It had a diphtong in Middle English, as the spelling indicates, and can apparently still have it dialectally. Then, there's also the concept of slant rhyme. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:09, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

In my speech, "again" rhymes with "begin". Anyway, see also eye rhyme -- in the 19th-century it was semi-notorious that poets sometimes pretended that "wind" had a long vowel, and allowed a few other words to be deformed similarly, when convenient for the rhyme schemes of their poems. AnonMoos (talk) 17:02, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Does again not rhyme with cane? Dja1979 (talk) 18:36, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

From what I can see, the /eɪ/-variant of 'again' is found in regional British, but it is not a variant common in either Received Pronunciation, General American or Mid-Atlantic. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:42, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Here is an interesting discussion at Stack Exchange, with examples of the cane-rhyming pronunciation cited from sources ranging from Shakespeare to FDR to the Dictionary of American Regional English. I'm too lazy right now to pull out my OED to see what it has to say, but many online dictionaries, as here and here, give both pronunciations (with American ones including AnonMoos's pronunciation as well). "Now, once again, where does it rain?" Deor (talk) 19:05, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

The OED online gives both pronunciations for UK, and only /əˈɡɛn/ for US.

Eric Bogle, in No Man's Land (Eric Bogle song) sings "again and again and again and again" to rhyme with "vain" - and to my taste, it would sound much weaker without the diphthong. ColinFine (talk) 12:09, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

A couple of examples I can think of where it rhymes with "cane". One is the way Rex Harrison says it in "My Fair Lady". More recently is the way Adele sings it in "Skyfall", which is funny considering it's apparently intended to rhyme with "end", "ten" and "then". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:22, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that in the lyrics of My Fair Lady it is meant to rhyme with "rain" ("Now, once again, / where does it rain?").  --Lambiam 11:31, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

In my London accented English, I seem to use both pronunciations; it rhymes with "rain" when given special emphasis; such as "Oh no, not again!" Also if I were trying to enunciate clearly in public speaking, a reading of Philippians 4:4 springs to mind. Alansplodge (talk) 12:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

CIS / Tayma stone

1. What's the best scan or most usable form to use the CIS in? 2. Is there an error in the scan's construction here? I think the proper pg 113 might be missing because the intro and inscription number to the Tema stone aren't visible. One source has it listed as CIS number 113, which seems like it's not right. 3. Does anyone have a good recent transcription? The Louvre's repeats errors from a century ago. 4. How about a photo high quality enough to be legible? It's on permanent display to the public, I think, so there may be some. Temerarius (talk) 16:40, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

https://archive.org/details/CorpusInscriptionumSemiticarumII1/page/n125/mode/1up CIS on Tema stones Temerarius (talk) 18:49, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Four questions

1. Are there any words in English with three or more syllables that do not contain any schwas?
2. Does English use schwa more than Dutch and German?
3. Are there any words in English where suffix -ia is pronounced /ɪæ/, and are there any words where letter A stands for /æ/ sound when it forms a syllable of its own?
4. Is there any Romance language with /æ/ phoneme?

--40bus (talk) 21:25, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

4. According to near-open front unrounded vowel, Valencian (if considered another language than Catalan). In others, there seem to be complementary dstribution with /ɛ/. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:50, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

In English, [æ] is a "checked" vowel (see Checked and free vowels) so it can't ordinarily end a syllable. The rule is relaxed in interjections such as "Yeah" and "Baaaah" (bleating of a sheep). "Babysitting" is a four-syllable word without any schwas... AnonMoos (talk) 00:15, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

While there are a lot of examples of schwa-free multisyllabic words, my favorite one so far is the somewhat-meta multisyllabic. GalacticShoe (talk) 00:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

What version of English are you referencing? Because Meriam Webster shows two schwas in the pronunciation of multisyllabic. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:44, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm going off of wikt:multi-#English and wikt:syllabic#English. GalacticShoe (talk) 17:24, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

2:I haven't got a number, but English reduces its unstressed vowels a lot more than Dutch or German. On the other hand, Dutch and German have some common suffixes and prefixes with a schwa (ge-, -en), which have been mostly dropped in English. I just checked a single paragraph of Dutch fiction: 44 schwas in 121 words of prose, assuming it isn't dropped from the -en suffix. It's often dropped in eastern Dutch dialects. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:30, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Someone compiled a list of phonemic frequencies of various languages, including among them American English and German. The schwa frequency is 22.98% and 5.17% respectively. Unfortunately, no Dutch. GalacticShoe (talk) 17:29, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

The above mentioned paragraph of Dutch prose has 486 phonemes. PiusImpavidus (talk) 00:04, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Although a relatively small sample size, at a roughly 9% schwa count it's still significantly smaller than English's 23%. Also if you manually counted up all of those 486 phonemes, thank you for your work and also my sincerest apologies for making you do this by not finding a Dutch source. GalacticShoe (talk) 01:41, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

This tool gives some assistance, but produces so many 🤔s (on purpose? zo = /zoː/ is unambiguous) that schwa–non-schwa counting is still tedious.  --Lambiam 14:46, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I counted them manually, but Dutch has a fairly shallow orthography, so that wasn't too hard. It took a few minutes. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:29, 27 February 2024 (UTC)