Content deleted Content added

Inline

Latest revision as of 10:49, 1 January 2025

Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

Shortcut

WP:RD/L

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
Note:
- We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
- We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
- We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
- We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

December 18

Pinyin

Is Hanyu Pinyin a writing system for Chinese of is it just a romanizations system? I have always thought it as a writing system for Chinese. Can it be said that e.g. "letter A is used in Chinese language". --40bus (talk) 22:30, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, it's not much used by native-language Chinese speakers to communicate with other Chinese speakers in connected sentences and paragraphs, because it lacks a number of the disambiguation cues which readers of Chinese characters are used to. Without explicit tone marking (diacritics or numbers) it can be rather ambiguous (see Yuen Ren Chao's clasic Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den). Even with tone marking, there can be some difficulties in understanding. Pinyin is used for many other purposes, though... AnonMoos (talk) 05:18, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess Latin letters are used for many purposes in generally Chinese writing, though, similar to Rōmaji in Japanese. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that Pinyin is used way more than Romaji. And, for the poem, is there any page where it is written in full, in both characters and pinyin? Wikipedia lists only the first verse. --40bus (talk) 13:21, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Latin letters "OL" are sometimes used right in the middle of Japanese kanji and kana to write the term "Office lady", which is a word fully adopted into Japanese (probably at least partly coined within Japanese). I wonder if that's found in China? AnonMoos (talk) 00:56, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From my experience, the most common way of typing Chinese in Mainland China is through the Pinyin input method. So it is used daily by almost everyone, but in the sense that it is used to type characters, not to type Pinyin for others to read. --Terfili (talk) 23:03, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are books and websites ever written in Pinyin? --40bus (talk) 07:50, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think Pinyin is used anywhere in isolation as a replacement of the regular Chinese writing. As mentioned already, the Chinese language has way too many homonyms even when the diacritics are added to distinguish tones. The one application I am aware of is in children's books for learning reading - but then primarily on top of the actual Chinese characters. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:57, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And in Taiwan they have Bopomofo. Nardog (talk) 12:38, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pinyin-only texts exist, e.g. in the journal Xin Tang. Double sharp (talk) 06:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

English-speaking countries

Are countries like India, Bangladesh, South Africa, Tonga, Ghana and Kenya, considered to to be English-speaking, as these countries do not have English as a majority native language, but it is used widely in administration. Why English has not become majority native language in South Africa like it has become in US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia? --40bus (talk) 22:35, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The India article says that Hindi and English are the main languages, and there are 22 Languages with legal status in India, presumably due to the many localized languages. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:22, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding South Africa, it's likely because in the other countries you contrast, Europeans, hence mostly preferrers of English over the indigenous languages, now greatly outnumber the indigenous speakers, whereas in South Africa first-language English speakers are around only 8–9% of the population, ranking around 4th to 6th, and outnumbered even by Afrikaans (evolved from Dutch), around 12% and 3rd. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 00:09, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And why English is not official language in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia and Mauritius, despite having been British colonies? And I think that The "Big Six" English speaking countries are UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but is South Africa the seventh? --40bus (talk) 06:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your first question: why? – because the legislators of those countries have not chosen to make it so. Sri Lanka's official languages are Sinhala and Tamil, with English officially a "link language" used in education, science and commerce. Myanmar's is Burmese, and English ceased to be the primary language used in higher education 60 years ago. Malaysia's is Malay, though English is used for some official purposes, and is official in the Assemblies of two States. Mauritius has no official language, but English is the official language of its National Assembly, though the use of French, actually more commonly spoken in the country, is also sanctioned there. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 10:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- Braj Kachru developed the concept of "Three Circles of English" for just this purpose -- the countries you named are basically "Outer Circle" countries (though some are more outer than others). AnonMoos (talk) 04:35, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could South Africa ever move to Inner Circle? --40bus (talk) 17:49, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The answer seems pretty clear: native speakers of European languages outside Europe are the where the descendants of European settlers became the majority of the population. The distinct case to mention here is Latin America, where most people are of both Indigenous and European descent, but where majority Indigenous-language areas are limited to Paraguay and subnational regions.

In areas with high linguistic diversity, whichever European language was introduced during colonization often becomes a lingua franca and means of leverage for the speakers of minority languages against those of the plurality language group (Hindi in India, Swahili in Kenya, Zulu in South Africa, Sinhala in Sri Lanka etc.) Remsense ‥ 论 05:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Belize speaks English commonly. Card Zero (talk) 11:39, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quite! Just to be clear since I'm not sure, was something I said misleading? Remsense ‥ 论 17:51, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, just agreeing. It seemed unusual enough to single out. Card Zero (talk) 06:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English is the official language of Belize, and spoken by over 60% of the population (whose majority is bi- or multi-lingual).

However, being spoken commonly doesn't in itself make English an official language of a country. The majority of Scandinavians and Nordics speak English, and different nationals of the region often use it to converse despite several of their languages being mutually intelligible or nearly so (the PIE but outlier Icelandic, and the non-PIE Finnish and Sami throw spanners into the comprehensibility works). 40bus and others might want to review Lingua Franca. 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:17, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

...being spoken commonly doesn't in itself make English an official language of a country. True. In fact English is not the, or even an, official language of the United States (though it is, oddly enough, the official language of California). I'm not really sure why you bring in official languages; the original question didn't mention them. --Trovatore (talk) 21:22, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But the OP did ask about them in his first follow-up question – "And why English is not official language in Bangladesh . . . [etc]." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 01:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In countries where English is not an official language, are government websites usually available in English? Are government websites of Latin American countries also in English? --40bus (talk) 23:14, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One has to be careful with terminology here. Neither the USA nor Australia has an official language, so English isn't an official language in either place. And of course almost all government websites are in English in both countries. HiLo48 (talk) 23:24, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia and Mauritius have English-language government websites? --40bus (talk) 23:28, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, an official language is one used by officials in official proceedings and communications. The official language of both Australia and the United States is unmistakably English, there's just no piece of paper that expressly states this is the case. Remsense ‥ 论 23:30, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, the US has no official language. That's kind of important. Anyone who says we do is wrong. --Trovatore (talk) 23:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard a filibuster on the Senate floor in Esperanto. This is a common misconception, but merely one conflating official status with the explicit codification of such. The former sense is a description of reality, the latter is relaying established legal fiction. Remsense ‥ 论 23:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it's not codified, it's not official. There is no such thing as de facto official. --Trovatore (talk) 23:42, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the distinction, and am just saying it's common for people to take "official" as meaning "codified as official". The language used to conduct the affairs of state is important, and the legal fiction thereof is also important, but one idea is more fundamental than the other. Remsense ‥ 论 00:05, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Official" does mean "codified as official". If you're talking about the de facto language in which government is conducted, you should call it something else. --Trovatore (talk) 00:22, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but codified means codified, and official means official—i.e. used by officials in an official capacity. Remsense ‥ 论 00:26, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, sorry, you're simply incorrect here. --Trovatore (talk) 00:29, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, in my view, you also have it the wrong way around as to which is more fundamental. Fundamentally, government in the United States could be conducted in any language. It isn't, in practice, because too many people wouldn't understand you. But it could be; there is no official barrier to doing so. That's more important than what language is used in practice. --Trovatore (talk) 00:30, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you would refrain from deciding it's an etymological fallacy, official here does truly mean "of and by officials", i.e. office-holders. Among other things, you'll note the language used by Official language—which is in pretty rough shape but many of its sources are okay—you'll notice among other things that states often declare and recognize, etc., an official language. This makes little sense if the declaration is itself what it means for a language to be official. What is even being referenced if not an underlying state of privileged use by authorities and officials? Remsense ‥ 论 01:03, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But that's the thing! Officially, there is no preference for official use of English in the United States (at the federal level). And this is super-important, because it emphasizes that American nationalism is civic, not ethnic. That's why I stick so hard on this point. There is really no official language in the US, and in my opinion there had better not ever be. --Trovatore (talk) 19:53, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The correlation between language and ethnicity is sort of fuzzy to begin with, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can take "not ethnic" as short for "not ethnic/religious/linguistic". --Trovatore (talk) 20:55, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's the U.S. Official English movement, though it seems to have lost steam at the federal level since the 1980s... On Wikipedia, "Official English movement" redirects to "English-only movement", though they're not always the same... AnonMoos (talk) 00:49, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The concept of "official" has taken a lot of hits in recent years. All sorts of things are now commonly deemed to be official when they're nothing of the sort. Here's an example, where a ranking of cities by liveability index placed Melbourne, Australia at the top.
- "IT’S official: Australia dominates in the world’s most liveable city stakes".
The analysis was conducted by some private organisation in a far-flung country, yet many Aussies (such as the journalist) displayed their national insecurity by proudly trumpeting this as an incontrovertible official declaration. Melburnians used it to fight the never-ending battle against Sydney, saying the independent referee had spoken, it's been officially decided, and there was no gainsaying it. Independent, yes. Scientific, perhaps. Official, most definitely NOT. Not in any sense of the word. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:07, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 19

Initial /r/ as obstruent in Indian English?

I recently watched an Indian movie primarily in English, and couldn't help noticing utterance-initial /r/ was frequently realized as what sounded to me like an affricate, [d͡ɻ̝]. I heard "jite" only to realize it was "right", and so on. They may have been [r̝] or [ʐ], but at any rate a sound with frication. "Rather" here also sounds to me like an obstruent. But to my surprise I can't seem to find discussion of this not only on Wikipedia but anywhere. Are there sources for this? Is this type of allophony commonly found in South Asia? Nardog (talk) 13:00, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Temperatures

Do people in countries that use metric system refer to temperatures in groups of 10, such as 0s (0-9 C), 30s (30-39 C), -10s (-19 - -10C), sometimes with "low", "mid", "high" added? How would people pronounce "0s"? -- 40bus

Its usual name is "degrees Celsius"... AnonMoos (talk) 19:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't say so, I think the differences between the lower and higher numbers might feel too big for general usage. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:52, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Terms like "the high 60s" used to be used by UK weather forecasters when Fahrenheit was standard, which was also when forecasting was less precise. Nowadays, with much more accurate forecasting enabling exact numbers, and with Celsius in use (which, as Wakuran alludes, anyway has degrees 1.8-times larger than Fahrenheit's) such ranges and terms are much less frequently used in the UK.

The range 0–9 was (in the UK) never routinely referred to as '"the zeros" (to my agéd recollection, though as a joke it would be understood). Terms like "below ten" (or whatever), or "X above zero" were used instead. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 01:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I know that some warnings in Australia use these ranges. And if 11 C is "low 10s", then -11 C is "high -10s", because negative temperatures have higher numbers colder. --40bus (talk) 06:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

-11 C would be very uncommon in Australia HiLo48 (talk) 10:24, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the Netherlands, there's occasional talk about "twintigers" (20s) and "dertigers" (30s), and also "dubbele cijfers" (double digits, ≥10°C), but it's more common to use adjectives like "warm" (≥20°C), "zomers" (summer-like, ≥25°C) and "tropisch" (tropical, ≥30°C). In a meteorological context, those adjectives have a precise definition. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:06, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK, low, mid, or high teens, twenties or thirties [degrees Celcius] are sometimes used, an example is this London radio station website:

"The rain and grey skies that have dominated the weather in recent weeks have slowly been replaced by sun and temperatures in the mid-twenties over the past few days. [1]

Or this national newspaper:

"There is a 30 per cent chance that temperatures could soar to the mid-30s next week" [2]

Or this from the Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service:

The heatwave of 2018 continues across much of England this week, with temperatures expected to reach the high-20s or low 30s Celsius across the Midlands" [3]

I have never heard this formulation used for lower temperatures, but "around zero" or "around freezing" are common. Alansplodge (talk) 12:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because those temperatures are so uncommon it might rarely apply but I would find saying "temperatures in the negative (mid-)20s" quite reasonable. Canadians, perhaps? -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:49, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus, heard on the BBC TV weather forecast last night; "temperatures in the low-single-figures" (i.e. between 2° and 5° celsius). Alansplodge (talk) 12:32, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 20

Sequences of aspirate stops in Ancient Greek and their reflexes as fricatives in Modern Greek?

There are in Ancient Greek sequences of aspirate stops: for example khthoon (earth), etc. I think there are even sequences of identical aspirates (double aspirates) but I couldn't think of any off the top of my head.

Now aspirate stop geminates or even sequences of aspirate stops are, I would think, fairly problematic from the point of view of phonetics.

I guess you could posit that those were sequences of aspirate stops (or double aspirate stops) only in spelling and that in actual fact phonetically there was only one aspiration at the end of the sequence. The problem with this assumption is that those sequences produce sequences of fricatives in Modern Greek, which would seem to indicate in fact two aspirates?

Or do people imagine more complex processes: where the 1st fricative was originally an unaspirate stop that became a fricative under the influence of the 2nd fricative (assimilation) but that only the 2nd fricative goes back to an Ancient Greek aspirate stop?

What's the answer? Is there a consensus?

Incidentally: do sequences of fricatives in Modern Greek only occur in words that are borrowed from Ancient Greek (literate borrowings) or do they occur also in Modern Greek words that are inherited from Ancient Greek?

178.51.16.158 (talk) 07:34, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In ancient Greek, geminated aspirates were written pi-phi. tau-theta, and kappa-chi: Sappho, Atthis, Bacchus. You can also see Bartholomae's law (though it doesn't apply in Greek)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, some of the non-geminate aspirate consonant clusters in ancient Greek came from the so called Indo-European "thorn clusters"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 07:51, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the non-homorganic clusters, I'd need to dust up my references for this, but as far as I remember, the natural sound change leading to Modern Greek actually dissimmilated these, leading to clusters of fricative + simple plosive, so Ancient χθ, φθ become χτ, φτ. The χθ, φθ clusters pronounced as double fricatives in Modern Greek are reading pronunciations of inherited spellings. Can't give you refs for the phonetic nature of the clusters before fricatization, off the top of my head. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:55, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Referring to Ancient Greek phonology, Koine Greek phonology and Medieval Greek, Wiktionary gives the 5th BCE Attic pronunciation for the geminates πφ, τθ, κχ as having both stops aspirated, the 1st CE Egyptian pronunciation with an unaspirated plus an aspirated stop, and the 4th CE Koine as well as later (10th CE Byzantine, 15th CE Constantinopolitan) pronunciations as having an unaspirated stop followed by a fricative. See Σαπφώ, Ἀτθίς, Βάκχος.

For the the non-homorganic clusters, the development seems to be different: both still aspirated in 1st CE Egyptian pronunciation and both fricative in Koine and beyond; see χθών, φθόγγος. --Lambiam 11:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect (sans evidence) that Greek khth and phth would be better understood as /{kt}ʰ/; that is, the ancients understood the aspiration to belong to the cluster as a whole rather than to the stops separately (or either of them). —Tamfang (talk) 22:09, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While that may be true, it raises the question why they then did not write φφ, θθ and χχ, and even went as far as writing explicitly ῤῥ. --Lambiam 12:56, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. —Tamfang (talk) 02:22, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 21

Were the concepts of "pitch accent" and "syllable" recently introduced from the West in Japanese linguistic science and grammar?

I was intrigued by the fact that Japanese linguists use the Western borrowed term "akusento" to refer to the pitch accent of Japanese? It seems hard to believe that for all those centuries Japanese linguists and grammarians never thought of studying pitch accent which is a prominent feature of most of the dialects of Japanese. (Korean linguists were certainly aware of the pitch accent of Middle Korean: pitch accent was even marked in some early Hangul texts). If that is not the case, and Japanese linguists have been aware of the pitch accent since the beginning of native linguistic science, then how come the Japanese do not have their own native term for the pitch accent?

Anecdotally, while young Japanese people who study linguistics or even study to become teachers, even primary school teachers, are taught about the Japanese pitch accent, the way the standard language and the dialects differ, etc. many regular Japanese people, particularly fairly old ones, still subscribe to the notion that Japanese pitch contour is a monotone. It is somewhat amusing to see them try and "help" foreigners learning Japanese with artificial demonstrations of how Japanese "ought to be spoken" that so obviously have nothing to do with the way they actually speak.

In the same vein, when was the concept of "syllable" introduced in Japanese linguistics? Is there even a native term for the concept of syllable?

In general Japanese people are aware of kanas (moras) because it is kanas that are written and it is in terms of kanas that the pronunciation of kanji (for example) is described. The so called syllabaries of Japanese are actually "moraic syllabaries". Japanese poetry counts kanas not syllables. Regular Japanese people seem to be completely ignorant of the concept of syllable. For example everyone knows To-u-kyo-u (the capital city) is 4 kanas (and so 4 moras) long but I've never ever heard anyone mention the fact that it has 2 syllables.

178.51.16.158 (talk) 03:45, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess Japanese could often have borrowed English terms, due to them being more specific than similar Japanese, often Chinese-derived, homonyms. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:16, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From what I've read, pitch accent in Japanese has a low "Functional load" (as Martinet would express it), and there are significant numbers of people who speak a form of Japanese close to the standard, but without pitch accent. As for borrowing the term from a European language, the fact that it's not a concept which is needed when analyzing the Chinese language could be relevant. (Of course, the concept "syllable" is quite relevant for Chinese.) AnonMoos (talk) 12:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For many languages the notion of syllable is rather artificial. Even if it isn't, it may be unclear. How many syllables do English library and Turkish sıhhat have? What are the constituent syllables of the Dutch word voortaan? Since the concept is not particularly meaningful for the Japanese language, it should not be surprising that its speakers are unfamiliar with it. The useful concept known to most Japanese is the on, a concept of which English speakers are generally quite ignorant. --Lambiam 12:47, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks guys for your insightful comments. Still, my basic questions are yet unanswered: Are the concepts of "pitch accent" and "syllable" a relatively recent borrowing from Western linguistics or not? (If they're not, and you do have examples of the use of these concepts in traditional Japanese grammar, what is the traditional terminology?) 178.51.16.158 (talk) 14:40, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese uses 音節 (onsetsu) for the concept of a syllable, possibly with the kanji borrowed from Chinese but with unrelated readings. --Lambiam 02:54, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Japanese term for the syllable is 音節. Funnily enough, the mora is known as モーラ, though the term was coined for analysis of Japanese. Nardog (talk) 05:11, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Japanese term 拍 (haku) is also used for a mora. --Lambiam 02:30, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would hesitate to say it "is" used, rather than "was", so far as I've seen. Nardog (talk) 12:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. And how about the pitch accent, アクセント? No native Japanese equivalent? And most importantly, no attestation of it being dealt with in traditional Japanese grammar prior to Western contact? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 13:10, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found this paper (Sugitō 1983) pretty informative. She notes 日本大辞書 (1892) was the first dictionary to mark accent, which it called 音調. But she also cites a paper from 1915 already featuring the term アクセント in the title. Nardog (talk) 14:12, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot. I've always been intrigued by this and have asked around for years without ever getting any answers. Finally you've provided some real data. Thanks again. Is 音調 also the Chinese term for "lexical tone" (one of the tones that Chinese "monosyllabic words" have, e.g. like the 4 tones of the standard language)? If it is, then I would guess this phrase is also used in Japanese to refer to those Chinese tones? Which might explain why they thought after awhile that it'd be more specific to adopt the Western term for the Japanese pitch accent? I can see the term 音調 is also used in Korean, hence the same questions? Standard Korean no longer has a lexical pitch accent but Middle Korean did (that was even at times notated in hangul) and some dialects still do, so Korean must have terminology for that.

Incidentally, are you somewhat familiar with the linguistic literature of the Tokugawa (Edo) period? Not only for Japanese but also possibly for Chinese or Sanskrit or other languages? If you are do you know if there are any Edo-jidai Japanese descriptions or grammars or textbooks of the Dutch language? Tokugawa scientific activity was not completely isolated from the West since the Japanese were importing Dutch books on science, medecine, mathematics, technology, etc. (as far as I know that imported learning was called "Rangaku" or "Dutch science"?) through Nagasaki (more exactly Dejima) so some Japanese people must have had some command of the Dutch language if they were to make any use of those books? How were they getting it?

178.51.7.23 (talk) 10:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I might have meant "distinct" rather than "specific", when I think about my phrasing, as well. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:22, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The modern term for phonological tone is (トーン or) 声調. I had never heard of 音調. I also saw 語調 in some papers by authors Sugitō mentions (particularly 井上奥本), but it now only means tone of voice or choice of words in general.

I'm no expert on Japanese history but there was Kokugaku, with Kamo no Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga discovering Lyman's law in the 18th century (hello Stigler's law). Note modern Western linguistics didn't start until William Jones connected Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in 1786, and monolingual dictionaries of contemporary languages had just started to become a thing in Europe; there probably didn't yet exist a large body of research into Dutch or any vernacular and I doubt the Japanese had much to learn from them. King Sejong was ahead of Europe by centuries. Nardog (talk) 11:24, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Two questions

Are there any French loanwords in English where French hard C was changed to K when it was borrowed to English?
Why most languages do not have native words for continents where they are spoken? For example, neither Finnish nor English have native word for Europe, nor does Swahili have native word for Africa.

--40bus (talk) 21:39, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@40bus: As an ordinary, little-knowing person, I think the 2. is quite obvious: when languages were emerging, people didn't know there is such thing like 'a continent' and that they were living on one. So there were no such concept known to them, consequently no need to invent either a general word 'continent' nor a specific name for the one where they lived. --CiaPan (talk) 22:04, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder how much the word continent was used before the Age of Sail! —Tamfang (talk) 18:21, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1. Thre only one that springs to mind is "skeptical" from the French sceptique. Here in Britain, the usual spelling is "sceptical", but apparently the "k" variant was preferred by 19th-century lexicographers in America, out of deference to its Greek roots. [4] Alansplodge (talk) 15:13, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your link asserts that skeptical derives directly from Latin rather than from French. Is the <c> really pronounced /k/ in French? That's not what I would have guessed, though I suppose otherwise it would sound the same as septique, assuming that's a word, which would probably not be desired. --Trovatore (talk) 20:08, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm that the "c" in "sceptique" is silent in French and that the word is a homophone of "septique", as used in "fosse septique" (septic tank). Xuxl (talk) 14:17, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Italian has an advantage over French here, in that the predictably formed cognates scettico and settico are pronounced differently in the first consonant ([ʃ] vs [s]). --Trovatore (talk) 02:35, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 22

To borrow trouble

I recently had occasion to use this phrase, which I believe I learned from my grandma, and it occurred to me I wasn't sure everyone knew it. I went and looked it up in Wiktionary, and found a definition I consider wrong, which I corrected.

But searching, it does seem like the "wrong" definition may actually have some currency in the wild.

My understanding is that to borrow trouble (against tomorrow/against the future/etc) is to spend a lot of effort worrying about or preparing for an adverse event that may never happen. I think this is clearly the definition that makes the most sense and is best historically grounded. Similar sayings include Jesus ("sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof") and William Inge ("worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due").

The other understanding is that it means "stir up trouble". A Quora post I found claims that this is actually the older meaning, which it dates from the 1850s, whereas the "worry" meaning it dates to the 20th century. This rendering, to me, makes much less sense — in what way is this supposed to be "borrowing"?

Anyway, I would be interested to know if high-quality attestations can be found for the "provocation" meaning, and how it might have come about if it actually predated the "worry" meaning. --Trovatore (talk) 00:57, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To me the 'stir up' makes sense. 'Borrowing' implies that you now actually have something: if you just worry about something, it may never materialise, but if you talk and/or act in the wrong ways, potential trouble may become actual. I (in the UK) have always read/heard the phrase as being about bringing trouble upon oneself unnecessarily.

The saying is an example of an idiom, where the literal meaning is not (at least any longer) what it actually means. Both individual words, and idioms and other sayings, can drift in meaning over long periods. They may also differ in current varieties of English.

Many expressions in English originate from sailing. The nautical meaning of borrow, "to approach closely to either land or wind" is quoted in the OED from William Henry Smyth's The Sailor's Word Book of 1867 and obviously describes a manouvre with some risk; See also the golfing use of the word – the amount a ball on a sloping green will drift to one side of the hole, which the putting player must compensate for. (If the player compensates too much, they are said to have "over-borrowed".)

May I gently suggest that if you want to correct (or otherwise edit) material in Wiktionary, you should (as here) do so only on the basis of published Reliable sources, not on "what you (or your Granny) know". Many (all?) families have their own internal expressions and word meanings, and every individual has their own idiolect – ones different from yours (or mine) are not automatically "wrong". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 03:09, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unlike Wikipedia, Wiktionary has no "reliable sources" requirement. --Lambiam 14:54, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why I made a suggestion, rather than issuing a ukase. Although Wiktionary does not have that formal requirement, it would be improved if editors there chose to follow it anyway. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 16:21, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really know the norms on Wiktionary in detail. I believe though that it's based on "attestations" rather than "sources". The only real sources for meanings of words are usually -- other dictionaries, which has an obvious circularity problem. (Similarly, at Wikipedia, which is a tertiary source, we should not ordinarily be relying on other tertiary sources).

As to the merits, the point is that "borrowing" innately involves the idea of the future. You borrow against income you expect to have tomorrow. If you're just creating trouble from scratch, that's not being a borrower, that's being a producer. But if you worry about something not under your control and that may never come to pass, that's borrowing that potential trouble from tomorrow, and making it actual trouble (for you) today. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The two senses coexist on a dictionary page hosted by Collins, which has,

Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition: "to worry about anything needlessly or before one has sufficient cause";
Penguin Random House/HarperCollins: "to do something that is unnecessary and may cause future harm or inconvenience".

Sense 1 is also found in Longman: "to worry about something when it is not necessary".^[5]

Sense 2 is found in Merriam–Webster: "to do something unnecessarily that may result in adverse reaction or repercussions".^[6] Dictionary.com has the stronger "Go out of one's way to do something that may be harmful".^[7] --Lambiam 12:07, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The earliest use I found, from 1808,^[8] is about unnecessary worry. --Lambiam 12:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Idioms are often literal nonsense. Back and forth implies returning before departing: Wiktionary's definition is "From one place to another and back again", not "Returning from a place and then going to it". Head over heels is the normal configuration for a human, and indeed the expression has inverted over time from an earlier heels over head. You can easily and naturally have your cake and eat it too. The difficult thing is eating a cake that you don't, at that point in time, have: or eating a cake and having it later, too. Card Zero (talk) 20:49, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The two senses have in common that the subject is doing something unnecessary, and that someone sees potential trouble ahead. In the first sense it is the subject who sees the (unprovoked) trouble, and what they do is worry. In the second sense it is the speaker who fears trouble if the subject does a provocative act. (The speaker may in this case coincide with the subject.)

Looking at books of idioms, it looks almost as if a switch-over occurred between 2008 and 2010.

For the worry sense:

1977, Early American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases.^[9]
1995, The Anthracite Idiom.^[10]
2008, Idiom Junky.^[11]

For the provoke sense:

2010, Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms.^[12] (labelled "North American")
2013, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms.^[13]
2015, Professional Learner's Dictionary of Spoken English.^[14]

These are "mentions", not "uses", and not usable as attestations on Wiktionary. For attestations of the "provoke" sense:

2016, Stacy Finz, Borrowing Trouble. Kensington, p. 22:^[15]
Brady hadn’t bothered to change his name, figuring it was common enough. But he stayed off Facebook and Twitter. When Harlee Roberts had wanted to write a feature story about him for the Nugget Tribune, he’d politely declined. No need to borrow trouble.
2024 June 11, Kristine Francis, “7 Little Johnstons Recap 06/11/24: Season 14 Episode 14 ‘Burpees and Burp Clothes’”, Celeb Dirty Laundry:^[16]
Brice didn’t want talk about it because he thought it was borrowing trouble.
2024 August 7, Colby Hall, “Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Defends Kamala Harris Avoiding Press to Fox News: Her Campaign is In ‘Euphoric Stage!’”, Mediaite:^[17]
From O’Leary’s perspective, shared during Wednesday morning appearance on America’s Newsroom, Harris is enjoying so much momentum at the moment, things are going so well for her since she became the nominee; she has little reasons to borrow trouble by taking tough questions during a press conference or a journalist willing to challenge her.

--Lambiam 13:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Against this is the fact that I (a Brit) have taken the expression to have the 'provoke' sense since the early 1960s. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 17:53, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can you find earlier uses of that sense in published sources? --Lambiam 23:52, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One "borrows" trouble from the future, often unnecessarily. It seems pretty straightforward to me. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:54, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But it's obviously not using "borrow" in the most normal way. HiLo48 (talk) 23:49, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Repetition

Does English use do-support when the verb is repeated? Can the main verb also be repeated? For example, are the following sentences correct?

This is why this street has the name it has.
Jack likes it more than Kate likes.
I drink milk and you drink too.

--40bus (talk) 08:27, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first is correct, the latter two are not.

In such cases, I'm pretty sure any transitive verb still requires its object to be explicitly stated. Remsense ‥ 论 08:35, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, the what in I know what you know preposes what is called a fused interrogative content clause. I don't go down syntax rabbit holes enough... Remsense ‥ 论 08:56, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In this sentence, the interrogative content clause is the object, what you know. The word what is a fused relative pronoun, not a clause. --Lambiam 11:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The other two would normally be phrased as:

"Jack likes it more than Kate does." (Or less commonly, "Jack likes it more than Kate likes it.")
I drink milk, and you drink it too." Clarityfiend (talk) 10:45, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or, "I drink milk and so do you." --Lambiam 11:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or "I drink milk and you do too". Pondering this street has the name it has, "I drink milk you drink" makes sense, and has a similar structure, but not the required meaning. Card Zero (talk) 20:59, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I consider the repetition of wording a sort of emphasis. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:53, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The third sentence is grammatical but may not mean what you think it means. (Intransitive "drink" in English tends to mean "drink alcohol", quite likely to excess.) --Trovatore (talk) 20:16, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reminded of the intransitive "go" (Does your wife go? She sometimes goes, yes.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:43, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aye aye nudge nudge say no more.... --Trovatore (talk) 20:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But does your wife come? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary lists 46 intransitive senses. --Lambiam 01:48, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my dialect of (American) English I think I would prefer does even in the first sentence, i.e. "This is why this street has the name (that) it does.", without necessarily considering 'has' wrong. As others have said, the lack of repetition of the direct objects is a bigger problem than not replacing the verbs with a form of 'do'. It makes the sentence sound wrong or have another implication (as "drink"=consume alcohol to excess) rather than just sound non-native. Eluchil404 (talk) 01:36, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The possibility to use lexical (i.e. non-auxiliary) have without do-support ("At long last, have you no decency, sir?") is quite exceptional; it is unique in this respect among lexical verbs. Colloquially, this is far more common in British English, but seems to be dying out also there, sounding stiff. --Lambiam 02:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds a bit categorical. There are a lot of archaic-sounding, but clearly grammatical, uses that allow such constructions. Stuff like know you not that I must be about my father's business?. It's not something you would likely say to communicate ideas in any ordinary context, but it's still completely clear what it means, and the syntax still works. --Trovatore (talk) 02:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, "not likely" is too weak; "no way" comes much closer. If "know you not" sounds syntactically acceptable to some, it is only because it is familiar from the syntax of the 1611 KJV, Wiſt ye not that I muſt be about my fathers buſineſſe?,^[18] with the familiarity kept alive through reuse in later revisions, such as Webster's revision from 1833 (knew ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?.^[19]), an archaism that, including the archaic ye, is retained in the 21st Century King James Version.^[20] --Lambiam 01:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, I disagree; know you not is syntactically acceptable. If you use it in casual conversation, you're obviously making fun, but it's not nearly as obscure as (say) "wist", and maybe less than "ye". --Trovatore (talk) 19:43, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Demonyms

How are demonyms of overseas territories determined? Are people from Isle of Man, Channel Islands and British Overseas Territories "British"? Are people from all French overseas departments, collectivities and territories "French"? Are people from both Caribbean Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten "Dutch"? And I have never seen demonyms formed from French overseas department names, such as "Réunionian", "Guadeloupean", "French Guinanan", "Mayottean", "Martiniquean", so are their people just "French"? Is this same from overseas collectivities and territories? --40bus (talk) 23:08, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Demonyms are generally listed in the articles. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:04, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is no system to it. The inhabitants of Corsica are French but still have a demonym, Corsican. The demonym Curaçaoan can be used for the inhabitants of Curaçao. In both cases these terms are ambiguous, because they are also used for members of specific ethnic groups. --Lambiam 01:37, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most regions, islands, cities, etc have demonyms, and even for those that don't, you can always say "a <toponym> person" or "a person from <toponym>" if you want to be more precise than just indicating the country. Or if you're asking whether those people are legally full British, Dutch and French nationals, then WP:RDH or WP:RDM would be a better place for that. --Theurgist (talk) 03:03, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are under the British Crown, but technically they aren't part of the UK. The demonym for the Isle of Man is "Manx" adjective (as in the famous tailless cat), "Manxman" noun, but you wouldn't be able to predict that. AnonMoos (talk) 03:16, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although Manx people (and Channel Islanders) are British Citizens. [21] Like everything connected with British governance, it's a tottering pile of complex traditions and reforms; we have never re-started with a clean sheet, and don't intend to either. Alansplodge (talk) 12:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. The French have the lovely word "DOM-TOM" to describe non-Hexagonal territories. On Wikipedia, that redirects to Overseas France, which might answer some of your questions... AnonMoos (talk) 03:20, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Martiniquais, Guadeloupéen and Réunionais are commonly used in French; I guess you just don't run across their English equivalents that often. For Mayotte, which has been in the news a lot of late, the demonym is "Mahorais" for some reason I haven't explored. Other overseas territories have demonyms as well (e.g. Guyanais); this goes even though their inhabitants hold French citizenship. Xuxl (talk) 14:49, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

American citizens include Californians, Texans, Rhode Islanders, Pennsylvanians, etc. Australians include New South Welshmen, Queenslanders, Victorians, etc. The Soviet Union was populated by Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, etc, all of whom were Soviet citizens. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 15:38, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Georgians could be both Sovietans and Americans, though... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:49, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly the French include Normands, Lorrains, Bourguignons and whatnot; though I am not aware of demonyms for the newfangled départements. —Tamfang (talk) 02:38, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Luckily French Wikipedia is. --Antiquary (talk) 15:39, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mahorais comes from Mahoré, the Maore Comorian name for Grande-Terre (and consequently the entirety of Mayotte.) GalacticShoe (talk) 19:05, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 24

Language forums

I was just reading this list of still active web forums, unfortunately there's no language section. What language, linguistics, etymology, and lexicography blogs and forums are there? Epigraphy? Deep knowledge and open attitudes are best. Temerarius (talk) 23:21, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Linguist List hosted some lively discussions in its early days, but by the time I stopped receiving it, it was mainly for conference announcements, job offerings, book announcements etc.; I don't know what it is now. Language Log is still operating, but only approved people can start new topics, and it's focused somewhat on Chinese language and linguistics in recent years. AnonMoos (talk) 01:00, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are also general question-answering websites such as Quora, but I don't know if any of them contain an interacting community of people with linguistic expertise. Back in the day, there was also Usenet's "sci.lang", but I haven't participated there for many years, and 2024 seems to be the year when general-purpose Usenet became definitively defunct (only certain niches survive). AnonMoos (talk) 19:14, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 25

Ways to improve proposed Help:IPA page

I currently have a draft of a proposed Help:IPA page for the Kannada language, and I was referred here by @Hoary to seek advice on ways I can improve it for potential inclusion in the Help: category. Any advice or criticisms would be much appreciated.

Link to draft: Draft:Help:IPA/Kannada Krzapex (talk) 12:18, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, @Krzapex. I have little knowledge of Dravidian languages, but I do have some comments about your draft.

"suit" is not a good choice for English approximation, because it has variant pronunciations as /sut/ and /sjut/.
I doubt that most English speakers could even tell you what the Korean currency is, and would be unsure how to pronounce it. According to Wiktionary, the currency is pronounced [wʌ̹n] in Korean, and /wɑn/ in AmE, /wɒn/ in BrE - none of them quite the /(w)o/ you want. I think the BrE "want" is probably closest, but I don't know how to convey that to an AmE speaker.
I really don't think that "Irish 'boat'" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is a good match for /aʊ/
'Hungary' has the sequence /ŋg/ in all varieties of English I've ever heard, and certainly in RP/ "Hangar" does not have the /g/ in most varieties of English (except in the Midlands and North West of England).
your use of "th" to key the dentals will not work for most English speakers outside India (and maybe Ireland). To most Anglophone ears, the salient feature of /θ/ and /ð/ is their fricative nature, not their dental articluation, and if you write "th" you will get θ or ð.

Of course, the whole problem with "English approximation" is that you are trying to capture distinctions that are completely imperceptible to most Anglophones. I see that Help:IPA/Hindi and Urdu addresses this problem in notes, and I think this is the better approach. ColinFine (talk) 14:36, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 27

Weird sentence

I recently removed this wording from an article because it looked on the face of it like a grammatical error, but reading closer, I see that it is likely correct but still confusing:

"He thus became a permanent ambassador at the at the time itinerant royal court."

Should it be left as is, or is there another way to write it that is less confusing? Viriditas (talk) 18:29, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"He thus became a permanent ambassador at the royal court, which at the time was itinerant." --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 18:38, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another way to say it would be to hyphenate at-the-time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:27, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have to admit this sentence threw me for a loop. It isn't often I come across something like this. Does it have a linguistic term? Viriditas (talk) 21:37, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not quite Garden path, but close.

I might have minimally amended it as "He thus became a permanent ambassador at the then-itinerant royal court," but Wrongfilter's proposal is probably better. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:47, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While yours is better than mine. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:56, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"ambassador to" would be better than "ambassador at". DuncanHill (talk) 22:01, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The wordy option (not always the best idea) is to replace at the time with contemporarily. I wonder if there's an equivalent word without the Latin stuffiness. I considered meanwhile, but that has slightly the wrong connotations, as if being an ambassador and having a royal court were two events happening on one particular afternoon.

Edit: I mean yes, that word is "then". But here we have a situation where if the word chosen is too fancy, the reader isn't sure what it means, but if the word is too unfancy, the reader can't parse the grammar. Hence the use of a hyphen, I guess. Card Zero (talk) 11:50, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is a rather common rule/guideline/advice to use hyphens in compound modifiers before nouns,^[22][23][24] but when the first part of a compound modifier is an adverb, there is some divergence in the three guidelines linked to (yes but not for adverbs ending on -ly followed by a participle; mostly no; if the compound modifier can be misread). They all agree on happily married couple (no; mostly no; no) and mostly on fast-moving merchandise) (yes; mostly no; yes). They are incomplete, since none give an unequivocally-negative advice for unequivocally-negative advice, which IMO is very-bad use of a hyphen (and so is very-bad use). --Lambiam 07:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Viriditas, have you now edited the article text? None of the rest of us can, because you haven't identified or linked it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 19:41, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is resolved. In the course of finding this I did a search for "at the at the" and fixed five instances that were errors. Card Zero (talk) 20:23, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 29

A few questions

Are there any words in German where double consonant is written after ⟨ei⟩, ⟨au⟩,⟨eu⟩ and ⟨ie⟩?
Is there any natural language which uses letter Ŭ in its writing system? It is used in Esperanto, a conlang, in Belarusian Latin alphabet, in McCune-Reichschauer of Korean, and some modern transcriptions of Latin, but none of these uses it in their normal writing system.
Why does Lithuanian not use ogonek under O, unlike all other its vowels?
Why do so few languages use letter Ÿ, unlike other umlauted basic Latin letters? Are there any languages where it occurs in beginning of word?
Are there any languages where letter Ž can occur doubled?
Are there any languages where letter Ð (eth) can start a word?
Can it be said that Spanish has a /v/ sound, at least in some dialects?
Are there any languages where letter Ň can occur doubled?
Are there any languages where form of count noun depends on final digits of a number (like it does in many Slavic languages) and numbers 11-19 are formed exactly same way as numbers 21-99? Hungarian forms numbers like that, but it uses singular after all numbers.
Why English does not have equivalent of German and Dutch common derivational prefix ge-?

--40bus (talk) 10:01, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ad 10.: Old English had it: wikt:ge-#Old_English. Then they got rid of it. Maybe too much effort for those lazy bums. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:19, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, English dropped it. Maybe it got less useful as English switched to SVO word order. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It disappeared early in Old Norse, as well. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The reason that "ge-" got dropped in English was because the "g" become a "y" (IPA [j]) by sound changes, and then the "y" tended to disappear, so all that was left was a reduced schwa vowel prefix. AnonMoos (talk) 00:05, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ad 1.: You mean within a syllable? Otherwise you'd have to accept words like vielleicht. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:24, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Strauss / Strauß, which except for a name can mean 'bunch' or 'ostrich'. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One can find plenty of references stating that a diphthong is never followed by a double consonant in German, including the German Wikipedia. The two examples given don't contradict this, since ß isn't a regular double consonant (as it does not shorten the preceding vowel), and the two l in 'vielleicht' belong (as already implied by Wrongfilter) to different syllables. People's and place names may have kept historic, non-regular spellings and therefore don't always follow this rule, e.g. "Beitz" or "Gauck" (tz and ck are considered double consonants since they substitute the non-existent zz and kk). -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 20:18, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ad 4.: Statistics? Only few languages written in the Latin alphabet use umlauts in native words, mostly German and languages with an orthography influenced by German. Similarly, only few use Y in native words. Very few use both. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:07, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Swedish has both umlauts/ diaeresis and Y (and occasionally Ü in German names and a miniscule number of loanwords, including müsli). Swedish still didn't see a need for Ÿ (and I can't even type a capital Ÿ on my Swedish keyboard in a regular way). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A similar situation applies to 40bus' native Finnish. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ad 7.: Seems to be used as an allophone of /f/ under certain circumstances. It's used in Judaeo-Spanish, if it is to be considered a dialect, rather than its own language. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:47, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding 10: Middle English still had y- which goes back to ge- "Sumer is icumen in" (here it is spelled i-); it is still used in Modern English in archaic or humorous forms like: yclad, yclept, and other cases (see the Wiktionary entry I linked to). 178.51.7.23 (talk) 18:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2 & 6: The Jarai language marks short vowels with breves (while leaving the long ones unmarked) so it uses ⟨ŭ⟩ (and ⟨ư̆⟩), while the now-extinct Osage language has initial ⟨ð⟩s. The Wiktionary entries on individual letters usually provide lists of languages that use them. --Theurgist (talk) 10:55, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 30

Teaching pronunciation for Spanish in 17th c. France and Italy?

Although it seems that Spanish 'x' and 'j' had both taken on the sound of a velar fricative (jota) at least among the majority of the population already in the course of the 16th c. (is this correct?) the French and the Italians pronounce the title of Cervantes's novel "Don Quixote" with an 'sh' sound (which was the old pronunciation of 'x' until the end of the 15th c.; the letter 'j' was pronounced like French j like the 'ge' in 'garage'; Judaeo-Spanish still uses these pronunciations).

So I've been wondering: Why do the French and the Italian use the archaic pronunciation of 'x'? Is it because this was still the official literate (albeit a minority) pronunciation even in Spain or had that pronunciation already completely disappeared in Spain but was still taught to students of the Spanish language in France and Italy?

178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Might just be an approximation, since French and Italian lack a velar fricative natively. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:12, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In French, the protagonist's name is always spelled "Quichotte", never "Quixote" or "Quijote", and is pronounced as if it were a native French word. The article on the book in the French wikipedia [25] explains that this spelling was adopted to approximate the pronunciation used in Spanish at the time. Xuxl (talk) 14:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which is odd since the final -e is silent in French but definitely not silent in any version of Spanish I'm aware of. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:51, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Was final e silent in French at the tme of the novel? —Tamfang (talk) 00:41, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

VIP

Is the acronym "VIP" ever pronounced as a word, as /vɪp/? --40bus (talk) 16:11, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my understanding, only jokingly or as shorthand in environments where the meaning would be understood. You probably wouldn't see it in a news broadcast, but I could imagine it being used casually by, say, service workers who occasionally cater to high-end clientele. GalacticShoe (talk) 16:27, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There was a German TV programme called Die V.I.P.-Schaukel, making a wordplay out of the fact that /vɪp/ sounds like Wipp- (from the verb wippen:to rock, to swing; Schaukel is a swing). It was based on interviews with and documentary bits about famous people. But that does not mean that V.I.P. would normally have been pronounced like that. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 16:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Dutch it's always pronounced /vɪp/, which has no other meanings than VIP. It's still written with capitals. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:11, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that is the case for Swedish, as well. Possibly due to the confusion about whether the letters of English abbreviations should be pronounced the English or the Swedish way. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Somewhat akin to VP for Vice President, typically pronounced "VEE-PEE" but also colloquially as "VEEP". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When I was a kid growing up in the UK I used to watch a cartoon called Top Cat (which was renamed Boss Cat in the UK as there was a cat food available called Top Cat). There's a line in the theme song that goes "he's the boss, he's a vip, he's the championship". Or does it say "he's a pip"? Most lyrics sites have it as "pip", but I favour "vip". Decide for yourself here: [26] --Viennese Waltz 10:21, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 31

Spanish consonants

Why in Spanish and Portuguese, /s/ sound can never start a word if it is followed by consonant? For example, why is it especial rather than special I think that in Portuguese, it is because of letter S would be pronounced /ʃ/ before a voiceless consonant, but in beginning of word, /ʃ/ would not end a syllable. But why it is forbidden in Spanish too? --40bus (talk) 08:50, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of explanation options can be found in this thread: [27]. I would mention that you can add sc to your list. An sc- at the start of a Latin word was changed into c- (scientia - ciencia), s- (scio -> se) but also into esc (schola -> escuela, scribo -> escribo). -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:13, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One might also note the elimination of the Latin -e in infinitives in Spanish and Portuguese (Example: Habere -> Haber, Haver) while Italian kept them. To avoid consonant clusters like -rst-, -rsp-, -rsc- between words which would be a challenge to the Romance tongue, (e.g. atender [e]scuela, observar [e]strellas), the intermittent e may have been required and therefore may have shifted to the beginning of such words. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are Italian dialects where final wovels of low functional load regularly are dropped, though. It's common in Sicilian, I believe. Also, I'm not sure on whether the two phonetic shifts would be related. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's quite normal in standard Italian to leave the final vowel off of the infinitive auxiliary verbs (or other verbs acting in a quasi-auxiliary role, say in saper vivere). But I don't think that's really what 79.91.113.116 was talking about. Anyway if the main verb starts with s+consonant you can always leave the e on the auxiliary to avoid the cluster, similarly to how a squirrel is uno scoiattolo and not *un scoiattolo.

As a side note, I actually think it's the northern dialects that are more known for leaving off final vowels of ordinary words, particularly Lombardian. I have the notion that Cattivik is Milanese. But I'm not sure of that; I wasn't able to find out for sure with a quick search. --Trovatore (talk) 23:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An AI bot on that Quora link mentions that there are no Latin words starting with st-, I see, which however is blatantly wrong. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For whatever reason, it's a part of the Spanish language culture. Even a native Spanish speaker talking in English will tend to put that leading "e", for example they might say "the United Estates". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:42, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An accent isn't generally considered part of the "culture" in the broader sense. It's not really part of the "English language culture" to refer to a certain German statesman as the "Fyoorer of the Third Rike"... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English speakers have typically always mispronounced Hitler's title. In fact, in Richard Armour's satirical American history book, he specifically referred to Hitler as a "Furor". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:29, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is kinda proper English, so when I think about it, a better equivalent might be an English speaker talking in German about "Der Fyoorer des dritten Rikeys" or so... (I need to brush up on my German cases...) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The reason why they do not occur in these languages is that the native speakers of these languages cannot pronounce onsets like /sk/. The reason why they cannot pronounce these onsets is that they do not occur in their native languages, so that they have not been exposed to them in the process of speech acquisition. --Lambiam 11:49, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

However, these onsets existed in Latin and disappeared in Spanish so at some point they got lost. See above for a more etymological approach. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:53, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The <surname> woman

In a novel I'm reading there are characters who are sometimes referred to as "the Borthwick woman" and "the Pomfrey woman". Nothing exceptional there. But then I got to wondering: why do we never see some male literary character called, say, "the Randolph man" or "the McDonald man"? We do sometimes see "the <surname> person", but never "the <surname> man". Yet, "the <surname> woman" seems fair game.

We also hear these things in extra-literary contexts.

What's going on here? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:30, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Traditinal gender roles, I believe. Men inherit their father's surname, while women change theirs by marrying into a new family, on some level being treated as possessions, I guess. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:35, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A possible reason is that, particularly in former eras, men generally had a particular occupation or role by which they could be referenced, while women often did not, being 'merely' a member of first their parental and later their spousal families. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another aspect is that these are usually intended as, and understood as, pejorative or disrespectful ways to refer to someone. There's no need to spell it out as, e.g. "that awful/appalling/dreadful Borthwick woman". Those descriptors are understood. How subtle our language can be. I suppose the nearest equivalent for a male referent would be their surname alone, but that would need a context because it wouldn't automatically be taken as pejorative, whereas "the <surname> woman" would. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:25, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's also the fact that this is not only understood as a negative towards the woman, but also an insinuation that the man is "lesser" because he can't control "his woman".--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 23:32, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That hadn't occurred to me. In the book I referred to above, the Borthwick woman is definitely not attached to a man, and the status of the Pomfrey woman is unknown and irrelevant to the story. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

English vowels

There are some dialects which have /yː/ and /øː/, such as in South African and NZ English, but are there any dialects that have /ʏ/ and /œ/? --40bus (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are some examples listed in the relevant IPA articles. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:45, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

January 1

Fraction names

How do English speakers say fractions of units? For example, is 50 cm "half a metre", and 150 cm "one and half metres"? Does English refer to a period of two days as "48 hours"? Is 12 hours "half a day", 36 hours "one and half days" and 18 months "one and half years"? --40bus (talk) 10:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]