Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 December 19

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December 19

Dots in Tamil script on the example of ல

I don't really get it: ல is a redirect to Tamil script #Basic consonants. There in the table, the letter is - like the others - written with a dot: ல் - which, entered into the search mask, just points to the aforementioned redirect again. I don't get what that means, with and without dot. It is probably explained in the Tamil script article, but hidden in a place long after the article has lost me on this. --KnightMove (talk) 19:10, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Looking at Tamil script #Compound table of Tamil letters, without the dot it stands for "la" rather than the bare consonant. In unicode, ல is 0BB5, a two-byte sequence, while everything else on that row starts with 0BB5 followed by two more bytes. So I get the impression that "la" is the basic character. Searching for ல on the page highlights every character on that row, even லௌ. This doesn't work the other way round, for instance searching for ல் does not highlight ல.  Card Zero  (talk) 21:23, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

The dot is a form of virama. It means “just the consonant without any vowel sound.” —Amble (talk) 01:00, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

And you can find the ல without dot in the table at Tamil script § Compound table of Tamil letters: go down in the second column until you see the letter l, and then one cell to the right, the column for a, together forming la.  --Lambiam 02:41, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Card Zero: @Amble: @Lambiam: Thank you all very much. One last follow-up question: While in the Tamil script article the virama diacritic is used for all basic consonants in the table, it is not used in Telugu script #Consonants - and only mentioned in the later section Telugu script #Other diacritics. Are there factual reasons for this different treatment of the pure-consonant diacritic between Tamil and Telugu - or was this just the personal taste of the respective authors of the articles? --KnightMove (talk) 10:25, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles typically grow from a first, often not well-designed stub, by mostly gradual changes into what you see now. The first authors may no longer be active. The development of separate articles is rarely coordinated between the users that edit them. The user who added the info to the Telugu script article never touched the Tamil script article or any other Indic script article; it is entirely possible their knowledge in the matter was entirely confined to this snippet of information. At the time, the ్ sign was not linked to virama; the link was later added by an anonymous IP editor for whom this was their only contribution to an article on an Indic script.  --Lambiam 11:27, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@KnightMove: One should note that pure-consonant diacritic in the Tamil script (which is not called virama but pulli, lit. 'dot') is technically equivalent to the virama in other Indic scripts, but is used in a slightly different way. Whereas most other Indic scripts use the virama only under very specific circumstances (mostly at the end of a word) and otherwise express consonant clusters through ligatures, Tamil does not have ligatures but consistently uses the pulli for vowelless consonants. It is also not uncommon in the case of Tamil to treat the vowelless consonant (with pulli) as the basic form of a consonant character, as can be seen from letter charts like this one. In other Indic scripts this would not be the case. So yes, there is a difference in how the writing system is conceptualized. --Jbuchholz (talk) 13:18, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

So much you can learn here in the reference desk - thank you very much! --KnightMove (talk) 14:17, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Homographs that are not homophones causing confusion

In the article French Phonology in section 2.6 (Length), there is a table. I struggled on line 3 of this table however, as the line reads, "faites ... faire ... fait" - but says that the vowel in each is the same phoneme. I was very confused as I read this as, "(you (plural)) do... to do... done (past participle)" in which case, the vowel for "fait" would not be the same as that of faites and faire. However, the article actually meant, "(you) do... to do... fact" Since "fact" and "done" are homographs in French but not homophones, and the line in question gives some conjugations of "faire" it seems misleading to then use a completely unrelated word where there is a homograph which would follow the pattern. So, what should i do to remedy this? Thank you EcheveriaJ (talk) 22:52, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello, EcheveriaJ. The place to discuss this is on the talk page Talk:French phonology, where it is more likely to be seen by editors who have interest and knowledge in the subject. --ColinFine (talk) 22:59, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@ColinFine: Thank you, I will ask this on the talk page. I was just thinking that the last response time over there was 4 months, so I might come to the reference desk for help as I'm likely to get a reply here in less time than that! Many thanks EcheveriaJ (talk) 23:02, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm confused. I'd say that the two senses of fait are not always pronounced the same, but still have the same vowel. The only difference I hear is whether the final ⟨t⟩ is silent or not.  --Lambiam 02:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I thought that, too, Lambiam, but I'm not a native speaker of French, so I presumed that there must be a subtle different of vowel. EcheveriaJ, if you don't get a reply on the talk page, you could try asking at any of the three WikiProjects listed at the top of the talk page. --ColinFine (talk) 11:11, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

As a native speaker, the three verb forms of faire listed above have the same vowel, and fait (fact) and fait (done) are pronounced the same. The final t is usually silent, but pronounced when followed by a vowel. This is most common with fait (fact) as in the expression "fait accompli", but it also works with fait (done), for example "il s'est fait avoir" (he was fooled). Xuxl (talk) 11:48, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. I had a few conversations with friends (whose French is better than mine) and looked it up in various dictionaries: it seems I'm badly mistaken on this one - my apologies for wasting your time. I was basing what I said last night off of wikipedia's IPA sound chart, where I thought /ɛ/ sounded nothing like what the French pronunciation is (and also due to my tiredness). Apologies for wasting your time. I'm completely aware of liaison in French, it was my knowledge of the IPA that let me down. Sorry about that and thanks for your help EcheveriaJ (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

No need to apologise (twice). Anything that helps you go from ignorance to enlightenment is well worth your time, and we are all volunteers who do not count the cost of helping others. In fact, there is no cost, because we wouldn't be here if we didn't want to do this work. If nobody ever had any doubts, questions, gaps in their knowledge, or mistaken beliefs, the world as we know it would cease to exist. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:55, 20 December 2021 (UTC)