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October 29

Oldest Featured article not currently at Review

Hi. I was wondering what the oldest Current Featured article not currently at review is. Let me know. Thank You. 50.100.44.234 (talk) 00:07, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese language question

I took this picture of a packet of Japanese seaweed snacks. It has Japanese writing on it. What does it say? JIP | Talk 01:22, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sesame oil flavored Korean style. Domestically produced seaweed is lightly fried in delicious vegetable oil and seasoned Korean style with sesame oil and salt. Andre🚐 01:24, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! JIP | Talk 01:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be a pretty standard typeface, clear characters and prosaic writing. I think a smartphone could do a passable photo translation. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Three English questions

How common is ⟨er⟩ spelling (meter, liter, center) in Canadian and Australian English?
Are there any polysyllabic words that begin with checked vowels in English?
Do English speakers refer to measurements like 5.5 kg as "five and half kilograms" in daily conversation?

--40bus (talk) 15:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 1

On 1: We generally abhor -er endings Down Under, but as spellcheck continues its inexorable rise to world domination and Americanisms proliferate, such atrocities are finding their way more and more into written communications. Particularly from those who do not know the first thing about the language they (ab)use, such as journalists and users of "social" media. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just imagine if they develop a sister app for spellcheck, called "factcheck", which will ding anything that its AI considers to be factually incorrect.

When I see spellings like "metre" or "theatre", I'm inclined to pronounce them as "met-ray" and "thea-tray". :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:33, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Re 1: My US spellchecker rejects dioptre, fibre, goitre, lustre, mitre, nitre, philtre, reconnoitre, saltpetre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, titre, but accepts cadre, calibre, chancre, euchre, fiacre, genre, louvre, lucre, macabre, manoeuvre, massacre, mediocre, nacre, ochre, oeuvre, sabre, theatre, timbre, so these last may be acceptable in some contexts. In Australian English, metre is a unit of measurement with meter in other contexts, such as voltmeter, gasometer. Center appears in the phrase one per-center. My Macquarie dictionary grudgingly accepts diopter. Luster could be what Aussies call a "perv". Doug butler (talk) 21:40, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would imagine if we only had UK and US spellcheckers. What would happen to users of CA, AU and NZ and others? I would presume they would use UK English/spellchecker then? JuniperChill (talk) 13:06, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any differences between UK and NZ spellings? User:Nil Einne, any ideas? Canadian...well, that would be awkward. Here in Australia, we're basically identical to UK spelling, with the significant exception of politics: the Commonwealth government and most state/territory governments are currently controlled by the Australian Labor Party, even though organisations like the CFMEU are organised labour. So if we didn't have an Australian spellchecker, we'd just have to add "Labor" to the UK dictionary, and we'd be able to function rather well. As Jack notes, American influence is significant; at my workplace, nobody's ever bothered to change the office computers to prefer Australian English, so words like "licence" and "metre" get the little red underlines whenever we type them, just like on the laptop I'm using to type this; I bought it when living in the US, and it might not have come with an Australian option. Nyttend (talk) 19:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that despite being close to Australia, NZ English is closer to British English than Australian English. So effectively British English, but with a small difference. Like NZ doesn't use fairy floss (AU term for candy floss). Same can be said for Ireland (except that their police force is called 'Gardaí'). JuniperChill (talk) 19:50, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reminds me of that Flight of the Conchords episode, where the band gets an Australian manager (or similar), and they begin to worry about whether she's subtly mocking their accents. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:22, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That was indeed the case, back in the day. (I am Canadian). In the early days, word processors like Word Perfect only had the option of American spellings or UK spellings and we typically went with the UK one. That didn't work perfectly, but was more often the correct one, in part because UK spellings are almost always recognized as an acceptable variant here. American abominations like /thru/ and /tonite/ were generally not acceptable in formal prose in Canada, so it was better to have those identified as potential errors. Matt Deres (talk) 20:11, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 2

Re. 2: Loads of words: instance, example, enrich, episode, any, union, active, alloy (the stress being on the first syllable), answer (in American accent, i.e. with the first vowel pronounced like that of "at"), and likewise. I still wonder if there are words (not necessarily polysyllabic) that begin with the vowel of put.

Don't know what a "checked vowel" is, and can't think of any examples of a word being "unnecessarily polysyllabic", nor was I aware that the scouse accent was limited to the area around Liverpool, but in northern English many words begin with the vowel of "put". 2A00:23D0:7CC:A601:BC7E:CC68:E368:708 (talk) 11:54, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know what a "checked vowel" is. See checked vowel.

can't think of any examples of a word being "unnecessarily polysyllabic". The OP asked about "polysyllabic words", so I wondered if there were words, whether polysyllabic or not (that's what I meant by "not necessarily polysyllabic") that began with the vowel of put.

nor was I aware that the scouse accent was limited to the area around Liverpool, but in northern English many words begin with the vowel of "put". Yes, that's probably because you pronounce cud like could, so you probably begin the word under with the vowel of could. But what I wondered about was about words as pronounced by most English speakers (including those in Southern England), who actually do have the cud-could split. HOTmag (talk) 12:49, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In NA-English, after some consideration the only word I've been able to think of that begins with the vowel of "put" is oops. (Incidentally, I'm reading unnecessarily polysyllabic as "not necessarily polysyllabic", which makes sense.) Folly Mox (talk) 12:53, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, that's what I meant, thx. Regarding oops, yep... I guess that the rareness or infrequency of this phenomenon (of beginning a word with the vowel of put) makes some people pronounce the word oops with the vowel of food, or with the consonant w followed by the vowel of wood. HOTmag (talk) 13:01, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a Cockney saying "hood" or "hoof" or "hook", for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the same reason they also say "an horse" and likewise. HOTmag (talk) 20:12, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"A policeman's lot is not an 'appy one..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:01, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Whether E is, an honest one (as I'm used to say), or a honest one (as our Hungarian cop is used to say). HOTmag (talk) 10:19, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 3

On 3, yes that is normal speech but we are more likely to say "five and a half kilos". --Viennese Waltz 15:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In American English, the abbrevation "kilo" standing alone (with no specific substance mentioned) can sometimes have connotations of drug-smuggling, while unabbreviated "kilogram" could suggest science experiments... In U.S. supermarkets, soda (soft drink) bottles are sold in units of liters, but otherwise the metric system isn't used too much for everyday common items that people often buy, so that metric units can sometimes have foreign or scientific connotations. AnonMoos (talk) 15:57, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Britain, kilograms are sometimes abbreviated to "kay-gees" (in London at least). Alansplodge (talk) 13:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And in (American) medical contexts I often hear "milligrams per kilogram" pronounced "migs per kig". —Tamfang (talk) 21:04, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good for in-rhyming rap lyrics. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:40, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]