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December 4

Palatalization in Hunsrückisch?

Section Hunsrückisch § Phonology states:

"Palatalization also occurs, with Dorf (village) becoming Dooref, Kirche (church) becoming Keerisch, and Berg (mountain) becoming Beerisch."

I see no palatalization. The preceding sentence describes the vowel lengthening. Is it correct to describe the further change as the insertion of an epenthetic [ə] or [i]? Pinging @NeorxenoSwang:. --Lambiam 13:16, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose what the original author meant was the change from [ç] to [ʃ] implied in "Keerisch" and "Beerisch", but that's of course not really palatalization, but a fronting from palatal towards palatal-alveolar or thereabouts. And I can't see how the "Dorf" example would fit in with any of that, except with the vowel lengthening described in the previous sentence. But yes, the extra vowel would properly be described as epenthesis, I guess. Pity the whole article is unsourced. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some digging strongly suggests the statement is based on: Roland Martin, Untersuchungen zur rhein-moselfränkischen Dialektgrenze, Deutsche Dialektgeographie Vol. 11a, Marburg, 1922. I could not find online access to this monograph. --Lambiam 22:14, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved in an old edition at de:Hunsrückisch:

Überdies tritt Sprosslautung ein: Dorf wird zu Dooref, Kirche zu Keerisch, Berg zu Beerisch.^[1]

--Lambiam 07:37, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What is the possessive form of "works" in the sense of a factory?

The word "works", in the sense of a factory, looks plural in form but can be singular or plural. What is the possessive of "works" in that sense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.242.92.97 (talk) 15:28, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See apostrophe. Probably works's. "The works's managers". Card Zero (talk) 17:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I can't imagine anyone actually saying that. /wərksɨz/. That would sound very strange.

I think I would go with works' for that reason, whether it's precisely grammatical or not. --Trovatore (talk) 19:12, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, as does the British Parliament in 1886; ...a Bill relating to the Metropolitan Board of Works' Fire Brigade Expenses... [2] Alansplodge (talk) 20:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I guess you can't imagine me, then. Sounds perfectly normal to me.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:41, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Trovatore here. How does one even pronounce works's? Worksers? That's ugly. HiLo48 (talk) 00:12, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How is it any weirder than 'roses' or 'poses'?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 01:37, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There was a mummy passed off as the daughter of king Xerxes that turned out to be a modern corpse, and a false claim that Xerxes himself was an 8 foot tall giant. These are the Xerxes hoaxes. Card Zero (talk) 06:55, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Works's sounds fine to me (pronounced workses [where did you get the "r"?]). Clarityfiend (talk) 03:02, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I added the "R" to write something that would be pronounced the way I thought you would say this. I've never heard workses. HiLo48 (talk) 06:02, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably a non-rhotic R. I remember learning skat from the (British) Penguin Book of Card Games, and teaching it to my folks. The book said it was pronounced "scart", and I couldn't convince my dad to stop saying it that way. --Trovatore (talk) 20:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC) [reply]

About the same as "works is". --Amble (talk) 05:13, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's a grammar rule English acquired from Gollumish. Clarityfiend (talk) 14:12, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We use Juniper Networks's several times in the article Juniper Networks. In Skunk Works we have Skunk Works' once.--Amble (talk) 05:24, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And in Karl Marx, we use Marx's nearly 100 times. --Amble (talk) 17:50, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Marx's sounds fine to me, works's doesn't. Couldn't tell you why.

Or to borrow a cadence from Karl the Marx/A biting chipmunk never barx

--Trovatore (talk) 19:16, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly because your sense of grammar fails to see works as a singular. --Lambiam 10:24, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That could be it. --Trovatore (talk) 20:44, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 6

What is she saying (in Hebrew)?

The guy (Tzvi Yehezkeli, whose English is not too good) says in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzWrFZszW0&t=1h12m54s (at 1:12:54): "We need his [Trump's] help to know our Judaism point (sic). You see sometimes you need the other to tell you where to go." Right then the lady (Caroline Glick) cuts him off with a saying (or a quote) in Hebrew which I couldn't catch. Can someone who speaks Hebrew figure out what she says? (The guy then agrees "בדיוק!"). 178.51.16.158 (talk) 01:52, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

אָ֭ז יֹאמְר֣וּ בַגּוֹיִ֑ם הִגְדִּ֥יל יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה

part of psalm 126:2. [3] trespassers william (talk) 03:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the "Then they said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things" part. trespassers william (talk) 03:16, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

British Raj terminology

What terms would have been used by the British to identify an Indian person during the days of the British Raj? It's for an item I'm writing and in an ideal case, there'd be a term that today sounds dated and paternalistic, but maybe not horribly racist or offensive, as it's meant to highlight the age of the British speaker rather than insult Indians. What I'm going for is the kind of obviously dated stuff Mr. Burns sometimes uses on The Simpsons. Matt Deres (talk) 02:43, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Native. See for instance the opening sentences of Kim. Card Zero (talk) 07:23, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coolie although some do not consider it offensive. See https://www.coolitude.shca.ed.ac.uk/word-%E2%80%98coolie%E2%80%99 196.50.199.218 (talk) 09:07, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Card Zero above, "native" was the generally used term. British officials sometimes adopted Indian clothing and customs and were said derisively to have "gone native".

"Coolie" was specifically a labourer and could be applied to Chinese workers as well.

An educated Indian who worked in the British administration was known as a babu (or earlier "baboo").

People of mixed British and Indian heritage were known as "Anglo-Indians", "Eurasians" or "Indo-Britons". Alansplodge (talk) 10:40, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A more general term applied to anyone of first-degree mixed race (including Anglo-Indians) was "half-chat", meaning "Half-caste" or bi-racial. In some instances this could be intended perjoratively, but in, for example, the British army (where marriages between British soldiers and women from the countries they were posted to were commonplace), it was used purely descriptively, and was still current in the 1970s. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 13:13, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

About that Babu article ... should I change the Greek from papu to páppou? Then there's some Indian English going on in the phrasing of "the urban trend to call "babu" to girlfriends or boyfriends, or common-friends", in the "to call X to Y" construction and the term common-friends. Should I "correct" that, or leave it be? I guess it's still English, so maybe the usual "whoever got there first" rule applies, as well as the India-themed article context. Card Zero (talk) 11:37, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing I noted is that it seems to read as if the Swahili word is cognate to the Indo-European examples, which is a bit oddly phrased for a wanderwort. I'm not entirely sure on how to rephrase it, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:12, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the entire passage. All those words from non-Indian languages are quite irrelevant to that article, and the claim that they are cognates is plain false, and all of it was of course unsourced. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:29, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Like Wakuran says - and I didn't know this excellent term wanderwort - they probably are really distant cognates, like mama, which usually means "mother" all over the world (or "breast", or "chew", or sometimes "father"). Card Zero (talk) 12:48, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They are actually not wanderwort cases but mama–papa words, a somewhat different category. Wanderwörter actually are related, via borrowing, which can often be historically tracked with some precision. Mama–papa words aren't related at all, but believed to be independently innovated in each language via parent–child interaction in early langauge acquisition. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:55, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, OK. But it's like "no officer, I just happened to be passing the bank at the time and I wear this stocking on my head for fun, ask anyone." I remain suspicious. Card Zero (talk) 13:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And how does Sally Brown's sweet babboo fit in? —Tamfang (talk) 21:14, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting; I always considered Coolie to be a pejorative for Chinese labourers, but it's clearly more broad than that. That could work - thank you! Matt Deres (talk) 16:03, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Sranantongo, kuli is a slur for Indo-Surinamese people. It is not used for Chinese Surinamese. Both ethnic groups were originally imported, under false promises, as indentured labourers. --Lambiam 10:10, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen the term "Hindoo" used in older literature. Its obviously related to the modern "Hindu", but from the context I don't think it was exactly equivalent, and I think referred more to race or ethnicity than religion. Iapetus (talk) 14:17, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Consider the term Hindustani applied to the macrolanguage that includes Urdu. — I faintly remember reading that a prominent writer of the Indian diaspora in Latin America was known there as el escritor hindú, which amused him because his ancestors were Muslim. —Tamfang (talk) 21:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Norwegian only has 4.4m speakers worldwide, and is on DuoLingo, but why does Kinyarwanda NOT show up on DuoLingo even though it has ~20m speakers?

How come DuoLingo gets to have Norwegian but not Kinyarwanda when there are over 10m more speakers of the Kinyarwanda language in the world than the Norwegian language?

And how can I / we get DuoLingo to add Kinyarwanda to their repertoire of available languages to train ourselves on? --2600:100A:B03B:6996:D13E:4CBE:EF0B:CD17 (talk) 23:22, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Norway is a rich, Western, European country with a big economic market and widespread digitalization. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:05, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These are both questions for DuoLingo. There is a "contact us" button on their home page. Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speakers of Bengali sometimes complain that it doesn't have enough worldwide cultural prominence for being one of the languages with the highest number of speakers (the "seventh most spoken language", according to our article), but it's mostly spoken in only two countries (Bangladesh and India), and is the main national language of only one of them (Bangladesh). The languages with more global prominence than Bengali are the national languages of powerful / wealthy nations, or are spoken across many countries. The factors mitigating against the global importance of Bengali operate even more strongly in the case of Kinyarwanda. Also, U.S. and European tourists are more likely to visit Norway than Rwanda... AnonMoos (talk) 00:15, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English speaking visitors to Norway don't need to understand Norwegian. Norwegians almost all speak excellent English. HiLo48 (talk) 00:37, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But according to Uti vår hage (Norwegian comedy sketch TV program) the Danes aren't quite so happy, even with their own language... MinorProphet (talk) 19:20, 11 December 2024 (UTC) [reply]

HiLo48 -- Even so, many people might want to avoid being the stereotypical English-only tourist in non-English-language country. AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 7

From German to English, please translate this catchy Pippi theme song?

Can someone translate the lyrics, please? Thanks in advance. --2600:100A:B03B:6996:D13E:4CBE:EF0B:CD17 (talk) 02:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here you can read the lyrics in German and here what Google Translate makes of it. --Lambiam 09:32, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a Swede, I must add that this is a translation from Swedish, with the rhytm slightly altered . [4], [5]. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why do the lyrics have basic multiplication done incorrectly? --2600:100A:B051:1A2B:1962:BC0E:1BE6:A1A6 (talk) 20:34, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because in-universe, Pippi is (in)famously depicted as having a horrible understanding of mathematics, she refers to the "multiplikationstabell" (multiplication table) as "pluttifikationstabell" ("muddlyplication table" or something)... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pippi’s tendency to equate all school knowledge with “pluttification” (literally “fartification”) and her capacity to outsmart the teacher during her visit at school ridicules the quantification of knowledge and formal learning outside of any practical context. Card Zero (talk) 23:53, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that's a misunderstanding of the Swedish, fartification would be "pruttifikation" and "pluttifikation" would rather mean "tinyfication". As a noun, I guess "plutt" could also mean a small lump or chunk of something viscous, but it might be a somewhat strained interpretation. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:14, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

惑乱, thanks for your wonderful contributions. This here is a great explanation, and "muddlyplication" is a stroke of genius that's very hard to achieve in translations. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 15:15, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What does the Greek varia indicate?

The character ` (Greek Varia) is represented by the Unicode codepoint U+1FEF.[6]. But what is it good for? BTW, it's not listed in the disambiguation page Varia. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 08:47, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

varia is a modern (?) transcription of βαρεῖα (bareia), the greek name for the grave accent (see also the odd redirect Bareia (accent)). --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:05, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Modern Greek referred to as βαρεία, also for use in other languages such as French. The original /b/ pronunciation already turned into a /v/ in Byzantine Greek. --Lambiam 09:42, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence for this early transition is in the Cyrillic alphabet! —Tamfang (talk) 21:25, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But of course - thanks, Wrongfilter! I now see that it's already in the disamb page.
That said, the current link to Greek_diacritics#Grave_accent_rule could probably be improved. Either to subsection Greek_diacritics#Accents or to Ancient Greek accent#Grave_accent or to Grave accent, but then the name “varia” should be added to the linked section.
Thanks also to Lambiam; i read your post after an edit conflict. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 09:59, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okinawan and pitch accent?

Your article Okinawan language does not say a thing about pitch accent. Did you forget to mention it or does the language not have one? If the latter I would submit that pointing out the fact explicitly would make it clearer. There are Japanese dialects with no pitch accent. (For example the one spoken in Miyazaki). 178.51.16.158 (talk) 16:40, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You ask "did you forget . . .", but the article has existed for over 20 years and has had (if I've got the maths right) over 300 contributors, so the absence of mention is suggestive.

On the other hand, web searching the question retrieves (for me) AI assertions (unreliable) that it does, but only a weak statement by a speaker that they think it does (not very convincing) and no positive human-written passage detailing it.

Our article on Ryukyuan languages (of which it is one) states (in more than one place) "Many Ryukyuan languages, like Standard Japanese and most Japanese dialects, have contrastive pitch accent" (or similar wording): of course, "many" implies "not all".

Overall, this seems to me to be inconclusive, and needing the input of a genuinely knowledgeable linguist. Anyone? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 18:00, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Okinawan is considered a lexical pitch accent language".^[7] --Lambiam 23:33, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Featured articles that were deleted.

Hi. i was wondering if there are any featured articles that are not on the former featured article list since they were actually deleted. I see redirected ones but not deleted ones. Please let me know. Thank you. 50.100.44.204 (talk) 19:46, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why this is on the language refdesk, but I remember spoo, which was originally a nice-looking page about the animal/foodstuff from the Babylon 5 universe. Jimbo famously hated it because it was poorly sourced (not sure it had any sources really), but I don't think he put his thumb on the scale, and it was later deleted by the regular process. It's been recreated as a disambig page. --Trovatore (talk) 19:55, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 8

Please translate from Korean to English, the lyrics to this beautiful-sounding song "Saranghaneun Iege"

What are the lines that the man sings, and that the woman sings? --2600:8803:1D13:7100:DF19:733C:C7D3:4BD4 (talk) 05:43, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For a translation, see here. The two singers sing alternate lines of one running text; it is not a kind of dialogue between them. --Lambiam 17:34, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 10

Ollning

I happened to come across this recent article on sv-WP. The word is also on Urban Dictionary [8] and Wiktionary [9].

Does this word exist in English or other languages? Or something close? Google translate on the sv-WP article suggests "woolling" or "wooling", but I don't know if that's valid. There's some logic in it, I'll say that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's from ollon, Swedish for glans penis, calqued from Latin. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:26, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I knew that. But does a word for the act exist in for example English? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An English hyponym is the verb dickslap. --Lambiam 08:52, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is at least related, thanks. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:58, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam And thanks to you I just discovered Swaffelen. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:04, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Word for definition of requiring excellence

Is there a word for this type of problem. This is an example. A company wants excellent employees. They require that all applicants have a college degree with perfect grades. As a result, all applicants come from paper mill universities where you get a perfect grade just for paying for the course. Instead of getting excellence, the company gets worse employees than before imlpementing the rule that was intended to increase excellence. In general, I'm looking for a shorter way to say: The action you are implementing to get a good outcome will instead bring about the opposite. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:12, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What's a word for an editorial comment disguised as a question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:30, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Backfire 196.50.199.218 (talk) 13:32, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perverse incentive. Card Zero (talk) 13:37, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I got to that from Backfire, also Unintended_consequences#Perverse_results with many more examples of the type of thing I am trying to define. I will test it on a few people, but I feel that use of the word "perverse" will make it harder to understand than easier... a perverse result in itself. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In general it could be an example of Goodhart's law or Campbell's law: when you make an indicator into a target, it stops being a useful target. More specifically, it could be an example of educational inflation or "credentialism", where educational degrees or credentials are used as a target that is particularly susceptible to being gamed. --Amble (talk) 17:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another term that comes to mind (somewhat late!) is that the applicants are gaming the system, which redirects to letter and spirit of the law#Gaming the system. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 00:47, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 12

Italian surname question

What are some examples of Italian surnames ending in -i deriving from a notional singular in -io (and excluding -cio, -gio, -glio), like proverbi from proverbio? I know I've seen one or two but I can't recall them. 71.126.56.57 (talk) 04:17, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A few pairs of a noun x-io coexisting with a surname X-i:

acciaio – Acciai
allodio – Allodi
archibugio – Archibugi
batocchio – Batocchi
bottaio – Bottai

Although it is plausible that these surnames actually derive from the corresponding nouns, I don't know whether this is actually the case. Surnames may be subject to modification by the influence of a similar-sounding familiar word. --Lambiam 08:12, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 13

Japanese

Are there any pure Japanese words in which ぴゅ (specifically the hiragana variant) is used? 120.148.158.178 (talk) 02:10, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This list gives several examples of onomatopeia, mostly related to blowing winds and air. [10] 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:47, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 15

English hyphen

Does English ever use hyphen to separate parts of a closed compound word? Are the following ever used?

New York–Boston-road
South-Virginia
RSS-feed
5-1-win
Harry Potter-book

Neither Manual of Style nor article Hyphen mentions that, so is it used? --40bus (talk) 19:52, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can think of situations where such expressions could be used, as a creative (perhaps journalistic) form of adjective, but it would feel a bit affected to do so: as if the writer was trying to draw attention to their writing. For example, if writing about a Germany v England football match and you knew your audience would understand the reference, you could say the match had a 5–1-win vibe throughout (the reference being this match in 2001). Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 20:04, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My examples are nouns, not adjectives. In many other languages, this is normal way to use hyphen. --40bus (talk) 21:20, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, OK; in English a noun would never be made in that way. Using a hyphen in that way would make it look like an adjective. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 21:51, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In many other languages, a noun is like 5-1-win and an adjective is like 5-1-win-, with prefixed as 5-1-winvibe. And are there any place names written as closed compounds where second part is an independent word, not a suffix, as if South Korea and North Dakota were written as Southkorea and Northdakota respetively? --40bus (talk) 22:34, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Westlake might be an example of what you're looking for. GalacticShoe (talk) 22:54, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But lake may be a suffix there. --40bus (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, it seems strange to have lake be a suffix to north, but in any case what about Westchester and Eastchester? GalacticShoe (talk) 00:00, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the question. Compound (linguistics) says that if it has a hyphen, it's a hyphenated compound. If it's a closed compound, it doesn't have a hyphen. Do you want a word that can be spelled both ways? Try dumbass and dumb-ass.

Your examples, if compounds, are all open compounds.

There's wild cat, also spelled wild-cat and wildcat. The hyphen may be present because a compound is being tentatively created, giving a historical progression like foot path → foot-path → footpath. Or it may indicate different grammatical usage, like drop out (verb) and drop-out (noun), also dropout. Card Zero (talk) 17:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Street names used to be, e.g. Smith-street, rather than Smith Street.

Why in English, street name suffixes are not written together with the main part, as in most other Germanic languages? For example, equivalent of Example Street in German is Beispielstraße, in Dutch, Voorbeeldstraat, and in Swedish Exempelgatan, all literally "Examplestreet". And in numbered streets, if names were written together, then 1st Street would be 1st street or with more "Germanic" style, 1. street. In lettered streets, A Street would become A-street. --40bus (talk) 21:54, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. Lots of old place names are closed compounds, for instance the well known ox ford location, Oxford, and I think for the Saxons that included streets, such as Watlingestrate. So it's tempting to say that closed compounds went out of fashion through the influence of Norman French, which is the usual cause of non-Germanic aspects of English, but the Normans would have said rue, and somehow that didn't make it into English - yet they introduced the habit of keeping street a separate word? Maybe? Card Zero (talk) 07:06, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Years ago, here, I asked which of "instore", "in-store" or "in store" was the correct form. I don't remember getting a categorical answer. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:33, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2007_March_12#In_Store, and see also Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2010_May_12#Merging_of_expressions_into_single_words. DuncanHill (talk) 19:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When were street names hyphenated? I'd like to see an example of that, I've never noticed it. Card Zero (talk) 06:28, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At least until the 19th-century apparently - see examples from Oxford. Mikenorton (talk) 11:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Neat. I also found Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, which in 1505 was Whitnourwhatnourgate. Card Zero (talk) 16:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Korean romanization question (by 40bus)

In Revised Romanization, are there ever situations where there is same vowel twice in a row? Does Korean have any such hiatuses? Would following made-up words be correct according to Korean phonotactics?

구울 guul
으읍 eueup
시이마 siima

--40bus (talk) 19:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, having the same vowel twice in a row is pretty common. The word 구울 is a real word that means "to be baked": see wikt:굽다. That's not really a question about Revised Romanization, though. --Amble (talk) 19:47, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 16

Ancient Greek letter rho and Latin letters rh

Question #1:

The initial letter rho of Ancient Greek (which always carried a rough breathing) was transcribed in Latin as 'rh', 'r' for the letter and 'h' for the rough breathing. It was not transcribed 'hr' which would be just as logical.

On the other hand, in the case of a rough breathing before a vowel the Latin 'h' which transcribes the rough breathing preceded the vowel: for example an alpha with a rough breathing would be transcribed in Latin as 'ha' not 'ah'.

How can that inconsistency in the way the rough breathing was transcribed in these two cases in Latin be explained?

Question #2:

There are also cases of 'rh' in Latin which do not transcribe a rho with a rough breathing. There are even cases of medial 'rh' which obviously could never transcribe an initial rho in Greek, for example 'arrha' ('pledge, deposit, down payment').

What are those 'rh'? Do they always occur after 'rr' or 'double r' (as in the example)? Are there 'rr' that are not followed by an 'h'? In other words is this 'h' simply a spelling device indicating some peculiarity of the pronunciation of the 'rr'? Or are 'r' and 'rh' (or possibly 'rr' and 'rrh') two different phonemes in Latin?

178.51.16.158 (talk) 02:01, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A likely explanation for the inconsistency is that when such things were first devised by somebody, they weren't working to already-set rules, and went with the first idea that came to them, which might well have been inconsistent with similar things thought up by someone else, somewhere else, at some other time, that they didn't know about. This is a major difference between the evolutions of 'natural' languages and writing systems, and the creations of conlangs and their scripts (and also 'real' solo-constructed scripts such as Glagolitic).

Similar processes explain a lot of the frankly bonkers nomenclatures used in modern physics, etc., where someone makes up 'placeholder' names intending to replace them with something better, but never gets round to doing so, and others take them up. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 04:43, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- Latin alphabet "rh" fit in with other digraphs used when transcribing Greek into Latin, namely "th", "ph", and "ch". The sequence "hr" would only make sense if a rho with a rough breathing meant a sequence of two sounds "h"+"r", which I highly doubt. As for medial doubled -rr-, it also had a rough breathing over one or both rhos in some orthographic practices, which is included in some transcriptions -- i.e. diarrhea -- and ignored in others. By the way, words beginning with upsilon generally had a rough breathing also. AnonMoos (talk) 06:59, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A simple consistent rule is that the Latin ⟨h⟩ in transliterated Greek words immediately precedes a vowel or, exceptionally, another ⟨h⟩ digraph (as in chthonic and phthisis).

BTW, if a double rho is adorned with breathing marks, the first of the pair is marked with smooth breathing, as in διάῤῥοια.^[11] --Lambiam 10:11, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's most standard. I was looking at Goodwin and Gluck's "Greek Grammar", and it seemed that they had rough breathings over both rhos in an intervocalic doubled rho, but on looking closer, the first one is actually a smooth breathing, as you describe... AnonMoos (talk) 10:44, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wiktionary, latin arrha is from Greek, originally from Semitic: wikt:arrha#Latin. So it still has to do with how Greek words were borrowed into Latin, not to do with native Latin phonetics. --Amble (talk) 15:35, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English full stop

Can ordinal numbers in English be abbreviate with full stop, like 4. time (4th time) or 52. floor (52nd floor)? And does English ever abbreviate words with full stop to save space, similarly to many other languages, like in table columns, where e.g. Submitted Proposals -> Subm. Prop. would occur? There are some established full-stop abbreviations like US state abbreviations, but are there any temporary abbreviations which are used only when space is limited. And can full stops be used in dates like 16. December 2024? --40bus (talk) 21:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In some situations words are abbreviated with full stops, but in my experience they are never used with numbers in the way you suggest. HiLo48 (talk) 22:36, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) In British English, no to ordinal numbers (as far as I know), yes to abbreviations (for instance Asst. means Assistant in many titles, like this example), and yes for dates but only when fully numerical (today's date can be expressed as 16.12.24 - see this example from New Zealand, although a slash is more common, 16/12/24). Alansplodge (talk) 22:43, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In some cases, Romance languages use ª , º abbreviations, but English has a whole series of special two-letter endings for the purpose: -st, -nd, -rd, -th... AnonMoos (talk) 01:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In certain contexts a slight re-ordering may result in needing no ordinal indication at all: "Manhole 69", "Track 12", "Coitus 80" (all titles of J. G. Ballard short stories, by the way); "Floor 17", "Level 42", etc. This however might fall outside the scope of your query. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 03:16, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Afaiknew only German uses 4. for 4th. But see wikt:4. which says 4. is an abbreviation of vierte (=fourth), but also lists several other languages where it means 4th. 213.126.69.28 (talk) 13:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So does Turkish. "4. denemede başardı..."^[12] means "She succeeded on the 4th try...". --Lambiam 18:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the Romance superscripts, U S English has a special one-letter ending, seen for example in 14 Cal. App. 3d 289, which expands as "Volume 14 of the report of the California Court of Appeal cases, third series, page 289. 2A02:C7C:F0FB:B100:35EE:833D:15C4:3462 (talk) 19:01, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 17

Some questions

Are there any words in English where yod-coalescense appears with a stressed vowel?
Are ranges of times in English-speaking countries ever presented as: 7-21, 12-18, with 24-hour clock? Would most English speakers understand "7-21" to be a range of clock times?
Why does English not say "Clock is five", but "It is five"? In most other Germanic languages, as well as in some Uralic languages, word "clock" appears in this expression, such as in German er ist fünf Uhr, Swedish Klockan är fem, Finnish Kello on viisi.
Do most English speakers say that it is "seven" when time is 7:59? I think that it is "seven" when hour number is 7.
Are there any words in English where ⟨t⟩ is pronounced in words ending in -quet?
Why has Hungarian never adopted Czech convention to use carons to denote postalveolar and palatal sounds?
Are there any Latinates in English that have letter K before A, O and U?
Can it and they be used as distal demonstrative pronouns in English?

(More to come) --40bus (talk) 06:32, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3. Quick note that the German phrase given doesn't seem to directly use the meaning of "clock" (although of course noting the clock meaning of wikt:Uhr#German) GalacticShoe (talk) 08:12, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Also compare Dutch “Het is vijf uur,” where uur can only be translated as hour(s), not clock. The German and Dutch phrases can be calqued into English as “It's five hours.” (Dutch and German normally don't use the plural of units of measurement.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:42, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3. "It is five" or "It is five o'clock" would probably be in response to "What time is it?" If you responded "Clock is five", you would probably get some weird looks. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:59, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

4. If the time is 7:59, you wouldn't say it is "seven" - you would either give the exact time or else say "it's almost eight [o'clock]". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:59, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

5. Banquet I think everywhere, racquet in UK spelling, and sobriquet and tourniquet in American English pronunciation. GalacticShoe (talk) 08:11, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

6. You should ask the Hungarians that question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:05, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3. Note that "it is five" is short for "it is five o'clock", itself shortened from "it is five of the clock".^[13] --Lambiam 11:05, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Once again, the "why" questions aren't really answerable. There is almost certainly no underlying reason (no "why") that explains what happened. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

7. Kalends

Are there any Latinates in English that have letter K before A, O and U that were spelled with letter C in Latin (and possibly in French too)? --40bus (talk) 20:11, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1. To quote our article Phonological history of English consonant clusters, "In certain English accents, yod-coalescence also occurs in stressed syllables, as in tune and dune". ColinFine (talk) 16:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. No it's not used like that in the UK. I imagine that most people would guess that 7-21 would mean 07:21 (21 minutes past 7 am). I think 07:00 - 21:00 would be understood however, but in normal speech one would use "7 am to 9 pm", in the UK at least.

Alansplodge (talk) 22:19, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do English speakers ever refer an hour from 21:00 to 22:00 as "twenty-one"? Is there any English-speaking country where 24-hour clock predominates in writing, and 12-hour clock is used orally at most, but 24-hour clock is common orally too?

They may refer to 21:00 (9 pm) as "21 hours" or "twenty-one hours",^[14][15][16] but this means a time of the day, not a period lasting one hour. The one-hour period from 14:00 to 15:00 will most commonly be referred to as "from 2 to 3 pm" or "between 2 and 3 pm". Similarly, one may use "from 21 to 22 hours".^[17] --Lambiam 11:38, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A phrase such as "during the 5 o'clock hour" is sometimes used to denote the period from 5 o'clock until 6 o'clock. At least around where I live in NC.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:06, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English H

Why English uses letter H in words such as bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah and Utah? In the first two, the ⟨ah⟩ is pronounced as a schwa, so the spelling without H would be more logical (as spelling with H would indicate a long [ɑː] sound). But why Utah has letter H, why it isn't just Uta?
Why English uses ⟨ph⟩ instead of ⟨f⟩ in many words to indicate Greco-Latin Φ/ph? Why is it philosophy, phone, photograph, -phobia and not filosofy, fone, fotograf, -fobia?

--40bus (talk) 20:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(posting by banned user removed.)

In Portuguese, /s/ between two vowels becomes /z/, so spelling or "Brazil" with Z approximates the original word more closely. --40bus (talk) 20:54, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1. Mitzvah is a transliteration from Hebrew.[18] Here's a theory on Utah.[19] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. Here is some info on the photo- prefix.[20] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. Blame the Romans for the "ph", see Why does “ph” make an “f” sound?. Added to that, English spelling is not phonetic but conservative and tends to preserve the original regardless of current pronunciation. Alansplodge (talk) 22:12, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Romans are to blame, according to that article, because, when the pronunciation changed from /p^h/ to /f/ and the spelling no longer matched the original pronunciation, they "decided not to change the way it is written in Latin". I wonder, who decided this, the Roman Emperor, or the Senate, or was a plebiscite held? Is it known when this decision was made? --Lambiam 10:24, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some languages have chosen to respell "ph" as "f" -- see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fotografia and related Wiktionary entries -- but French, which has cultural ties to English, hasn't, nor has English. There's not really any central body in charge of spelling in the English-speaking world which could propose or enact such a change... AnonMoos (talk) 23:19, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One slightly odd (IMO) example is the Cypriot city of Πάφος, which was traditionally (and internationally generally still is) transliterated as Paphos, but is locally transliterated as Pafos. Iapetus (talk) 09:54, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That may have to do with Turkish orthography (Cyprus is bilingual, half Greek, half Turkish), which is rather consistently fonetik. An occurrence of ⟨ph⟩ in a Turkish word, as for example in şüphe, is pronounced as a [p] followed by a [h]. We also find, locally, the more phonetic Larnaka instead of the traditional Larnaca.^[21] and Kerinia for Κερύνεια instead of the transliteration Keryneia.^[22] --Lambiam 11:12, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't really have anything to do with Turkish. It's just that virtually all common present-day transcription systems for Modern Greek proper names transcribe <φ> with <f>. In Cyprus, this goes both for the PCGN (1962) system formerly used by the British administration, and for the common ELOT system the country later switched to (aligned with usage in Greece). See Transliteration of Greek for some details. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:40, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of ph vs. f, it's surprising (to me) how pervasive is the belief that Hitler spelled his given name "Adolph" when every reference worth a damn tells us it's "Adolf". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:10, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that is weird. I think it might be the case that "Adolph" used to be a normal-ish, if not that common, name among English speakers, so it's kind of an Anglicization, like "Joseph Stalin". These days of course you hardly ever meet an Adolph (though I once knew an Adolfo). --Trovatore (talk) 21:19, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1. While "mitzvah" is generally pronounced with a schwa in ordinary speech, this seems more like the general relaxation of vowels in conversational English. If I were pronouncing it as an isolated word (or phrase with bar or bat), the final a would probably sound more like the a in father. "ah" is a common way of writing that sound. Without the final h, I would tend to pronounce the a in Utah with the sound of a in cat. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:04, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What countries/languages use decimal separators for years?

I sometimes come across texts from various scientific fields where decimal separators are used for years, i.e. December 17 2,024 or 2 024. Does anyone know in what languages or countries this practice is common? The texts are in English but the authors are from around the world and likely write it that way because that's how it's done in their native language. --91.114.187.180 (talk) 21:02, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Our own Manual of Style states, "Do not add a comma to a four-digit year", giving June 2,015 as an example of an unacceptable date format. It is not hard to find examples where "2 024" occurs next to "2024" in one and the same text, so one needs to see this format used consistently before considering its use intentional. Conceivably, some piece of software that is too smart for its own good may see the year as a numeral and autoformat it as such. For the rest of this year, the wikitext {{formatnum:{{CURRENTYEAR}}}} will produce "2,024". --Lambiam 10:13, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing on Lambian's reply, a space separating the thousands column from the other three digits is recommended by SI and may similarly be a hypercorrection when used in years. Matt Deres (talk) 14:15, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 18