Language desk
< December 29	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 30[edit]

Possessives in names of workplaces[edit]

In a phrase like "I work in a florist's" or "There was a gas leak at the dentist's", is the apostrophe normally used? It make logical sense as an abbreviation for something like "dentist's clinic", but it looks wrong to me. I think I intuitively prefer "the dentists", which I guess might be a sort of synecdoche where the building is referred to by mentioning the occupants. Card Zero (talk) 12:37, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Dentists" is definitely wrong (unless you mean " dentists' ", in which case your bill is liable to be at least twice what it should be). "Dentist's" sounds fine and seems perfectly grammatical to me. "I work in a florist's", however, sounds a bit odd. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:55, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This issue comes up from time to time (see Arnos Grove). Some companies have made a point of restoring the apostrophe (see Sainsbury's), some haven't, pointing to possible problems with typing in the name of the website. 92.8.220.149 (talk) 14:53, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen is one example of dropping the possessive apostrophe. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:15, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

These examples from 92.8 and Bugs refer to corporate names, but the original question is about generic phrases. As the original poster surmised, expressions like "at the dentist's" and "in a florist's" are just short for expressions like "at the dentist's clinic" and "in a florist's shop", and are correctly written as possessives. Another example of this construction is when you refer to the house of the Kerr family as "the Kerrs'", meaning "the Kerrs' house"; in this case it's a plural possessive because you are talking about more than one person named Kerr. --69.159.60.210 (talk) 19:33, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Last time I mentioned "the Joneses' house" here, I got a few funny looks. But we're both spot on. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:18, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What accent do Bob's Burgers characters use?[edit]

I'll ask this here instead of at Entertainment since it's a dialect question. I'm sure someone could narrow it down better than me (um, Great Lakes? Davenport?) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:16, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article List_of_Bob's_Burgers_characters#Linda says Linda has a thick New York accent (and multiple sources on the internet agree). In an interview the guy who voiced her said: "It's a voice that I've always had--you know, my mother, and my aunts are all from Brooklyn, so I've always done that voice really naturally since I was a kid. ". I wouldn't assume all characters have the same accent, or to the same degree. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 01:43, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is a (typically working-class white) accent from Brooklyn or some parts of Queens. Think of Fran Drescher in The Nanny (from Flushing, Queens) or Jean Stapleton in All in the Family (from Astoria, Queens). μηδείς (talk) 19:55, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Words that are technically one language but that we anglophones pronounce as if they were another language[edit]

How many words do anglophones use of this kind?? We have:

maraschino (Italian, German)
forte [in the sense of a strong point] (French, Italian)

Are there in fact many words of this kind?? Please restrict this category of words to those where the second question's answer is not English. Georgia guy (talk) 22:01, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See 100 Words Almost Everyone Mispronounces.

—Wavelength (talk) 22:06, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Most comment ones in my experience are bruschetta (Italian, pronounced as if it's German) and chorizo (Spanish, pronounced as if it's Italian). Then, not quite on topic, there's the horrible pronunciation of French lingérie as if it were spelled langeré, that seems to be gaining ground. --Nicknack009 (talk) 22:52, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your second example is not valid, because ch in Italian is always before e or i. Georgia guy (talk) 23:14, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's the z that's pronounced as if it's Italian - chor-itz-o or chor-eetz-o, rather than chor-eess-o or chor-eeth-o. --Nicknack009 (talk) 23:29, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Most any foreign word is liable to be pronounced differently in English than in the language it comes from. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:55, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Do you really not understand that the question is about distortions not required by the differences between English and [source language] phonologies? —Tamfang (talk) 20:37, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hyperforeignism is relevant here; most of the examples given here are already mentioned in that article. --Theurgist (talk) 07:06, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Two more:

pistachio: from Italian (actually spelled pistacchio in Italian), but the ch is pronounced "sh" as if it's French
machete: the ch can be pronounced "ch" as in the original Spanish or "sh" as if it's French

--Theurgist (talk) 07:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a half-example:

jalapeño: People generally know enough to pronounce the j correctly, as h, but they generally don't know enough to pronounce the ñ correctly, so it comes out as /halapeeno/. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:26, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And then people hypercorrect habanero, assuming that since it's jalapeño, and a pepper, it must also be habañero. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 16:00, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
And in advertising for ¡Ajúa! hot sauce, it's jalapino pronounced more-or-less as Swedish. —Tamfang (talk) 22:46, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not another example - but a correction to the ones in the original question. Forte is not a French word which we pronounce as if it were Italian - it happens to be a perfectly good Italian word as well. The French pronounce it with one syllable, the Italians with two - but the meaning is the same. Wymspen (talk) 11:09, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As a musical term, it's an Italian word that we didn't change the pronunciation of. But in the sense "this is not my forte" it's a French word we pronounce as if it were Italian. Georgia guy (talk) 12:44, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

... and spell as if it were feminine! Dbfirs 12:57, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We pianists are prone to uttering drolleries such as "the piano is my forte". ") -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 13:14, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention chaise longue, which has turned into "chase lounge." Or a French dip sandwich "in it's own au jus" (not a mispronunciation as such, but no less a horror). Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:52, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I always assumed ceviche was a French word, and I pronounced it accordingly (səveesh). Only when I heard people on cooking shows giving it 3 syllables did I check it out and discover it was Spanish. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:58, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]