Talk:chalk

"chalk up" and "chalk up to" are phrasal verbs and as such should be moved off onto their own pages with links here in the "related terms" section only please. Hippietrail 23:52, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ok, will see about it (new here, was going by the Wiktionary:Entry layout explained.)

What kinds of practice are there regarding pronunciations? (Are there any, or is it "where you can't open your mouth without making someone despise you?") /tSO:k/ doesn't appear to be General American at all (from here it sounds like a non-rhotic reading of "chork"). Muke Tever 02:29, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No worries, I'm new here too but it newer entries are are doing one word or phrase per page and this seems to me to be the best. The pronunciation I put in matches both my own (Australian) accent but it's also the only one listed on dictionary.com which has a strong preference for American pronunciation. And you are right, in a non-rhotic accent the sound is 100% identical to "chork". GenAm merges a couple of phonemes which are seperate in RP and even even General Australian. For my IPA and SAMPA I use one common set of IPA used by many dictionaries published in the UK. Since all the dictionaries I can find which are published in the US do not use IPA, I've used the British scheme for those too. Hippietrail 06:33, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ah, I've heard horror stories about Australian vowels :) It'd probably be best for English words to list pronunciations separately, e.g. GenAm vs RP vs whatever AusE has. ...which is what I'm going to do with the GenAm pronunciation here. Muke Tever 06:53, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Generally you can make one IPA transcription which can be read as either RP or GenAm (plus others). For instance, I put an /r/ in parentheses if it's used only in rhotic accents. Also, this is the reason why I add "AHD" pronunciations for GenAm since American dictionaries use such schemes rather than IPA. Hippietrail 08:44, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

...which is why I don't like the pronunciation keys in American dictionaries, and I'd really not like to see Wiktionary emulate that. (I found that IPA use in English dictionaries started in dictionaries aimed at ESL speakers, and didnt take root normally till relatively recently.) IPA's a standard, that's what it's for, while every dictionary has its own scheme, and I don't see the need to endorse AHD's.

While it's true that one pronunciation can suffice for standard dialects in some cases, in others it's manifestly untrue: GenAm doesnt have /ɒ/ at all; they merge /d/ and /t/ between vowels (so mottled and modeled are homophones, and water is actually /ˈwɑdɚ/, which is sometimes even [ˈwɑɾɚ]--OED recognizes this in its "American" pronunciations; AHD doesn't acknowledge it at all); non-rhotic dialects don't just drop /r/, they often replace it with /ː/; AusE, from what I hear, has odd diphthongs like /ɵʉ/ and length contrasts outside of the rhotic phenomenon ('gone' /gɒːn/ vs. 'tonne' /tɒn/, for one). Muke Tever 16:34, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

chalk

Rfd-redundant: "(uncountable, climbing) A white powdery substance used to prevent hands slipping from holds when climbing." AFAIK climbers use actual chalk when climbing, as do wrestlers use it when wrestling, gymnasts when performing. Isn't this really a way of using chalk rather than a definition for it? Mglovesfun (talk) 22:26, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

And players of snooker etc. use it on the cue. The question is whether climbers' chalk is actually chalk (in the mineral sense). I do not know. Equinox ◑ 22:28, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be magnesium carbonate not calcium carbonate [[1]] Fugyoo 23:22, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

In snooker, it normally refers to the little cube of blue material, rather than the material itself. SemperBlotto 06:53, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Is that a separate sense, one that has a plural ("there are three chalks on the rack")?​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:48, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

It's uncountable, but none of our definitions seems to cover it right now. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:55, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

It's a different sense. Note that, in French, it's called magnésie, not craie (= chalk). Lmaltier 16:02, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, different especially because it's not always the same material. Keep. DAVilla 06:20, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Kept. - -sche (discuss) 04:04, 29 February 2012 (UTC)