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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,^[1][2][3] 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]

Could you just drop the "at the time" section, making it "He thus became a permanent ambassador at the itinerant royal court."? I presume from the wording that the royal court was itinerant but later became not so, but that doesn't seem particularly significant to the statement about this guy becoming an ambassador. Iapetus (talk) 10:56, 6 January 2025 (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 [4] 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]

178.51.7.23 -- The letter "X" standing for a "sh" sound was still alive enough in the 16th century, that the convention was used for writing Native American languages (see Chicxulub etc)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:05, 3 January 2025 (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: [5] --Viennese Waltz 10:21, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that brings back some memories. It sounds like "vip" to me. One thing I'm now wondering: If the series in the UK was called Boss Cat, did they change the song lyrics at all? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:59, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not according to my memory, @Baseball Bugs. It was transparent even to kids that they'd been forced to change the title, but didn't change anything else. (The dialogue wasn't changed: "TC"). ColinFine (talk) 14:43, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Imported American culture rarely see any changes at all. The term "spaz" might have been changed to "ass" or something, occasionally, as "spaz" is considered more harsh in the UK (and "ass" less so)... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:26, 1 January 2025 (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: [6]. 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]

It's quite common cross-linguistically to insert a prothetic vowel before some initial clusters. Old French did it (though the /s/ has since often been lost): "étoile"; "escalier"; "épée". Turkish does it: "istasyon". Other languages simplify the cluster: English "knife" /n-/; "pterodactyl" /t-/; Finnish "Ranska" ('France') ColinFine (talk) 14:58, 1 January 2025 (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]

Here is a use of "the Abernathy man", here one of "the Babson man", and here one of "the Callahan man". These uses do not appear pejorative to me. --Lambiam 12:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds not perjorative by avoidance or distancing, but like a "non-definite" (novel? term) similar to "A certain Calsonathy," or "If a man comes by, tell them..." (this a nongendered pronoun regardless of gendered referent; feels newish)

Temerarius (talk) 17:42, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They were chosen to refer to specific individuals, but for the second I apparently have copied the link to a non-example. For the other two, they are Floyd Abernathy and Leonard Callahan. A better B example is "the Bailey man". Here we do not learn the given name, but he is definitely a specific individual. And here, although we are afforded only snippet views, "the Bailey man" refers to one Dr. Hal Bailey. --Lambiam 19:11, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Further to Jack of Oz's and Lambiam's observations above [in passing, I can't find the relevant usage in Lambiam's third link], for a male equivalence one might also use near synonyms like 'chap' or 'fellow'. "That Borthwick chap . . ." would be a casual and neutral reference to someone not very well known to the speaker or listener; "that Borthwick fellow . . ." might hint at the speaker's disapproval. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The use in the third link is the spoken sentence "He works during the day to [sic] the Callahan man that does the carvings." It occurs just above the blank line halfway down the page. --Lambiam 19:19, 2 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]

Yes to all, except that it would be "one and a half" rather than "one and half". Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) One does not say "one and half metres" but "one and a half metres". One can also say "one and a half metre" or "one metre and a half". Likewise for "one and half days/years". In "two and a half metres", one only uses the plural form. Note that "48 hours" can also be used for any 48-hour period, like from Saturday 6am to Monday 6am. --Lambiam 12:31, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is then 75 minutes "one and a quarter hours"? Is 250,000 "a quarter million"? --40bus (talk) 15:20, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In British English at least, 75 minutes = one and a quarter hours, or an hour and a quarter; 250,000 is a quarter of a million, or two-hundred-and-fifty thousand. Bazza 7 (talk) 15:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also in British English, "eighteen months" would be more usual than "one and a half years". It's common to give the age of babies as a number of months until they reach the age of two. Alansplodge (talk) 16:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All those usages are also found in America English. Also "a quarter million" is not uncommon in casual speech whereas "a quarter of a million" sounds formal. However, "three quarters of a million" is the only correct way to refer to 750,000 with this idiom though the 's' in quaters is often not audible. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Finnish it is common to give age of one-year-old babies as mixed years and months, such as "yksi vuosi ja kuusi kuukautta" ("one year and six month")? Puolitoista vuotta is very commonly used to mean 18 months. Also, puoli vuorokautta is 12 hours and puolitoista vuorokautta 36 hours. Does English use day to refer to thing that Finnish refers as vuorokausi, i.e., a period of exactly 24 hours (1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds), starting at any moment and ending exactly 24 hours later? --40bus (talk) 18:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In English ages between one and two years are more often given in months than mixed months and years. I.e. "18 months" is more common than "a/one year and six months" but both are heard. A one day period is more often called 24 hours because "day" would be ambiguous. "One day later" could mean any time during the next day. But using "one day" or "exactly one day" in that meaning would not be obviously incorrect either. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To my annoyance, "24 hours" and multiples thereof are often used as synonyms of "day(s)", not for precision but because more syllables make more importance. —Tamfang (talk) 23:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has an article Nychthemeron (an unambiguous expression in technical English)... AnonMoos (talk) 21:17, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The two pronunciations of Hebrew letter Het in Ancient Hebrew?

The Hebrew letters Het (ח) and ayin (ע) had two different pronunciations each in Ancient Hebrew: the Het could be pronounced like Arabic Ha (ح) or like Arabic kha (خ) while ayin could be pronounced like Arabic ayin (ع) or like Arabic ghayin (غ).

For ayin the clue that this was the case is the transcription into Greek (e.g. in the Septuagint) of Hebrew words like the names Gaza, Gomora, etc. compared to modern Hebrew Aza, Amora, etc. The Greek gamma is in fact a reflex of the ghayin pronunciation. When the letter was pronounced ayin it was not transcribed, e.g. in Eden.

But how do we know for Het? What are in the Septuagint transcribed Hebrew words that indicate that the letter Het had two pronunciations? In other words what are the two different transcriptions of letter Het in the Septuagint that are a clue to that fact? If I had to adventure a guess I would guess that the pronunciation Het was not transcribed (except possibly for a rough breathing), while the pronunciation khet was transcribed as a khi, but I don't know, and I can't think of any examples, and that's exactly why I am asking here.

178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:28, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't Biblical Hebrew survive as a liturgical language? Maybe that proviced pointers. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:44, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, not phonologically. From the point of view of the phonology you're mixing two meanings of "Biblical Hebrew" here. The pronunciation used when the text were composed and the ritual pronunciation of the text nowadays. That has nothing to do with the ancient pronunciation and in fact has developed differently in different traditions (ashkenazi, sefaradi, yemeni, iraqi, persian, etc. none of which preserves the double pronunciation of Het and/or ayin) which obviously cannot all be different and yet be identical to the ancient pronunciation. In any case I now changed "Biblical" to "Ancient". 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:54, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The het in הָגָר‎ (Hagar) is not transcribed in the Septuagint: ῎Αγαρ (Agar), while חֶבְרוֹן‎ (Hebron) is transcribed as Χεβρών (Khebrōn). --Lambiam 13:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Hagar you don't have a Het (8th letter) but a heh (5th letter). However I think the idea is good. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 13:14, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, yes, mistake. --Lambiam 13:27, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Did you check the breathing in Greek Agar is soft? I would say that's a surprise. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 13:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I did. The Vulgate has Agar. See also Ἄγαρ on Wiktionary. I suspect, though, that when the Septuagint was originally produced, breathings were not yet written. --Lambiam 13:41, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

חַגַּי‎ (Haggai) is transcribed as ᾿Αγγαῖος (Angaios), Aggaeus in the Vulgate. --Lambiam 14:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Biblical Hebrew#Phonology mentions the pair יצחק = Ἰσαάκ = Isaac vs. רחל = Ῥαχήλ = Rachel with non-intial ח. Another example of initial ח as zero is Ἐνώχ (Enoch) from חנוך. –Austronesier (talk) 16:25, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This conversation brings up the question "Does the LXX contain transcriptions?"

Temerarius (talk) 18:07, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 19:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Transcription" is perhaps not the right term. We have an article on Latinization of names, but AFAIK nothing similar for Greek. (Hellenization of place names is about a 19th- and 20th-century policy of replacing non-Greek geonyms by Greek ones, such as Βάρφανη → Παραπόταμος.) The Hellenization of Hebrew and Aramaic names in the LXX combines a largely phonetically based transcription of stems with coercing proper nouns into the straightjacket of one of the three Ancient Greek declensions. --Lambiam 00:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See "On Polyphony in Biblical Hebrew" (PDF here) for a discussion by a distinguished scholar (Joshua Blau), arguing in great detail for the polyphony of ח (and also ע), representing both a pharyngeal consonant and a velar fricative in "literary" or formal Biblical recitation Hebrew down to the late centuries B.C. AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. But except for the front and back covers (first two and last two pages) the PDF file is absolutely illegible. Were you able to get legible PDFs of this article?

Was this 1982 article the first time someone realized that these two letters were "polyphonic" in Ancient Hebrew?

I was once browsing through a Hebrew dictionary (the well-known Even-Shoshan) in its ca. 1960 edition and (looking in a grammatical-historical appendix in the last volume) it didn't seem like the author of the dictionary was at all aware of the "polyphony" of those two letters in Ancient Hebrew.

But when I looked in a ca. 1995 edition of that same dictionary (in a one volume so called "merukaz" edition, incidentally) that "polyphony" was clearly alluded to.

Avraham Even-Shoshan, the author of the dictionary, died in 1984 so I don't know if it was he who changed things there (not impossible, as he had two years to do it), or if it was someone after his death (there were new editions of the dictionary as late as the 2000s).

In any case I imagined that between ca. 1960 and ca. 1995 something had changed in our knowledge of the pronunciation of Ancient Hebrew but I didn't know whose contribution it was.

178.51.94.220 (talk) 19:54, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The built-in PDF-viewers of some browers (Opera, Chrome) indeed display this document atrociously, but after having saved it locally, I could easily open it with all kinds of PDF viewers and get a legible view of it. Blau devotes four and a half pages to the history of research velar transcriptions of ayin. –Austronesier (talk) 20:26, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It worked. Thanks. 178.51.94.220 (talk) 21:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The PDF worked fine for me. I strongly doubt that 1982 was the first time, because scholars would have been able to compare Septuagint transcriptions to proto-Semitic reconstructions decades before that... AnonMoos (talk) 20:37, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There remains the question why the first editions of Even-Shoshan didn't seem to know about this. 178.51.94.220 (talk) 21:17, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Meaning of "fauve" in native French and in Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"?

In his play "Rhinoceros" the Romanian-born French playwright Eugène Ionesco uses the word "fauve" to refer to the rhinoceros as if it just meant "wild animal". I would say no native French speaker would do that: am I right or wrong? To me "fauve" would be used mostly for big cats (tigers, lions, leopards). Maybe for bears and wolves? (Not totally sure though). But "fauve" would never refer to just any large dangerous animal like Ionesco (who was not a native speaker of French) does. What do you say? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:42, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looking up French Wiktionnaire and some French dictionaries, it does indeed seem that "fauve" is an acceptable - albeit perhaps dated - way to refer to ochre or wild animals in general, not a non-native misunderstanding. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:50, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Use of Old Norse in old Rus'?

The first rulers of Rus' were Swedes (the Varangians), for example Rurik and his descendants. Is there a record of when they stopped to speak Old Norse? What are some Old Norse words in Russian that came with the Swedes (as opposed to later borrowings from Swedish possibly)? (I know of Rus' and the name of Russia itself it seems. Any other?) How about Russian personal names that go back to Swedish ones? (I know of Vladimir which goes back to Valdemar. Any other?) 178.51.7.23 (talk) 13:32, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To start you off, Wiktionary have a Category:Russian terms derived from Old Norse. --Antiquary (talk) 13:45, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/Voldiměrъ, that derivation from Valdemar is something that "some sources speculate", and elsewhere (wikt:Valdemar) the borrowing is claimed to be the other way. ColinFine (talk) 15:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How about Oleg (from Helgi?), Igor (from Ingvar?), and of course Rurik (from ????) Incidentally, is Rurik a name that is still used in Russia these days? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 19:17, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This whole question is contentious, partly because of the sparsity of sources and partly because of political considerations. Some Soviet historians in Stalin's day appeared to believe that Viking assimilation with Slavic culture had been almost instantaneous because, I suppose, they wanted the foundations of the Russian state and nation to have as little foreign influence as possible. Russian historians still tend to argue for a more rapid assimilation than their Western counterparts do. However, there's a discussion of the language question by Elena A. Melnikova here which concludes that "By the mid-tenth century the Varangians became bilingual; by the end of the eleventh century they used Old Russian as their mother tongue", and my old student copy of E. V. Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse agrees that "the Rus themselves gradually lost their Scandinavian traditions and language; they must have been almost completely merged in the Slavonic people by the beginning of the twelfth century." [7] --Antiquary (talk) 10:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

English tenses

Does English ever use perfect instead of imperfect (past) to describe events that happened entirely in the past but still have connections to present time, such as "this house has been built in 1955", "Arsenal has last won Premier League in 2004", "When has Arsenal last won...", "this option has last been used three months ago", "humans have last visited Moon in 1972", "last ice age has ended 10,000 years ago"? And is simple present of verb be born ever used, since birth happen only once? And would sentences like "I am being born", "She is born" and "You are being born" sound odd? --40bus (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No to the first (except among the "unedumacated"). As for the second, I'm not sure this counts, but there is the religious "She is born again." The rest sound bizarre. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's not right as the question is stated. It's often fine to use use the present perfect (that's the better term than just "perfect") to describe events that happened entirely in the past. Say I have been promoted to colonel; you can use that if you're still a colonel, even though the promotion itself happened in the past.

What makes those sentences sound wrong is the explicit date on the sentence. That makes it very difficult to use the present perfect in idiomatic English. --Trovatore (talk) 22:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I study really hard, someday I will become underedumacated. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Another question: why in English Wikipedia, events listed in year articles are in present tense, but in Finnish Wikipedia they are in past tense? --40bus (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Present or past tense is acceptable in English (why, I have no idea). Getting back to the original topic, the title of the first chapter of David Copperfield is "I am born." Clarityfiend (talk) 22:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is the so-called historical present or narrative present. --Trovatore (talk) 22:37, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The worst of it, often seen on the internet, is using past and present tenses in describing the same event, such as in a movie plot. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:01, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am pretty sure that there are differences between British and American English in the use of the present perfect vs the simple past in such sentences. In American English all your examples sound wrong and should be simple past "this house was built", "Asenal last won", "When did Arsenal last win", "this option was last used", "humans last vistited", "the last ice age ended". When I see imperfect I thin of the past progressive tense: "was being built", "was winning", "was being used", "were visiting", "was ending" which wouldn't work in your example sentences. But I may be incorrect since my knowledge of grammatical categories is based on Classical Latin rather than modern descriptive linguistics. As for "be born", all your examples are perfectly good English. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While I do think BrE uses the present perfect a bit more than AmE, I don't think that's really the issue here. I'm pretty sure (one of our British friends can correct me) that the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth example sentences in the original post would also sound odd (if not outright wrong) in BrE. Again, the problem is not the fact that the action is entirely in the past, but that the sentence contains an explicit marker of time in the past (1955, three months ago, etc). The third sentence, when has Arsenal last won, I'm less sure about; I find it marginally acceptable, though it would be much more idiomatic to say how long has it been since Arsenal last won.

As to "imperfect", this is a little complicated. The imperfect tense in Italian, and presumably in the rest of the Romance languages, indicates a continuous or habitual action, or a background description. In Latin it was much the same, whereas the Latin perfect indicates a completed action in the past. The present perfect (or analogous construction) entered Romance languages later, maybe with medieval Latin or some such, and differs from the perfect by the emphasis on the importance of the event to the present time.

In German and English, there was never an imperfect tense per se; it was conflated with the simple past (preterite), which is the closest to the Latin perfect tense. It's true that you can use the past continuous or "would" or "used to" to emphasize certain aspects of the imperfect, but at the simplest level, the Latin perfect and imperfect are merged in English, with the present perfect being distinct from both.

Modern Romance languages keep all three tenses in theory, but usually pick one of present perfect or preterite to use overwhelmingly in practice (alongside the imperfect, so they simplify to two conversational tenses). Both French and the northern varieties of Italian rarely use the preterite in conversation, and I think Spanish (especially Latin American Spanish) rarely use the present perfect. However as far as I know they all use the imperfect and keep it separate, which was one of the hardest things for me to get right learning Italian. --Trovatore (talk) 05:43, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think one can say, What have the Romans ever done for us, and when have they done it? Similarly, Sure, Arsenal has won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, but when has Arsenal ever won the UEFA Cup?. --Lambiam 12:00, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To my ear there's a difference in acceptability between when has Arsenal ever won?, which is unassailable except by Arsenal fans I suppose, and when has Arsenal last won?, which strikes me as borderline, the kind of thing that sounds weird and you're not sure why. I guess it must have something to do with the word "last" but I don't have a well-developed theory of exactly what it has to do with it. --Trovatore (talk) 22:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Centuries

Does English ever use term 2000s to refer to period from 2000 to 2099? Why is 21st century more common? And is 2000s pronounced as "twenty hundreds"? --40bus (talk) 21:03, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is some ambiguity with 2000s; it could also refer to 2000 to 2009 (vs. 2010s), so that may be why 21st century is more used. It's pronounced "two thousands". Clarityfiend (talk) 22:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If 1900s is pronounced as "nineteen hundreds", then why 2000s is pronounced as "two-thousands"? And 2000s is sometimes used to represent the century, and the decade could be disambiguated by saying "2000s decade", "first decade of 2000s", with basic meaning being century. --40bus (talk) 07:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It could be, sure. And it is, sometimes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:04, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“One thousand nine hundreds” has six syllables, “nineteen hundreds” has four, saving two. “Two thousands” has three syllables, “twenty hundreds” has four, adding one. People just pick the shorter option.

BTW, 2000s refers to the period 2000–2099, but 21st century to 2001–2100. It rarely matters. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:29, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

xkcd:1849. Nardog (talk) 10:30, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For me, the '00s (decade) are the "noughties". Probably I would call the '10s the "twenty tens" or "new tens". (Dunno why I feel the need to disambiguate from the 1910s.) Double sharp (talk) 11:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like "noughties" or "aughties" never really caught on. But it's almost time for the '00s nostalgia craze, so I suppose they'll come up with something. --Trovatore (talk) 00:42, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As a side note, I once read (possibly in an SF fanzine) that when Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick co-wrote the film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke expected people to pronounce the title "Twenty-oh-one . . ." (as they do for 1901, for example), not "Two thousand and one . . .". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 12:03, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That story sounds familiar. Clark maybe didn't count on the public to keep it simple amid the grandeur, so to speak, of reaching a millennium. There's a late-1940s cartoon called "The Old Gray Hare", in which Elmer is taken into the future. The "voice of God" tells him, "At the sound of the gong, it will be TWO-THOUSAND A.D." That was the predominant media usage by the time it actually arrived. The "Y2K problem" or "Year two thousand problem", for example. By about 2010, the form "twenty-ten" had become more prevalent. As suggested above, one less syllable. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:28, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Back when it was 2008 (say), I would've said "two thousand and eight", but now that that year is in the past I'd say "twenty oh eight". Double sharp (talk) 03:34, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I still say "two thousand and [number from one to nine]", but it might be just me, or a wider 'elderly Brit' thing. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. One thing I recall is that Charles Osgood was kind of an "early adapter" to that style, saying "twenty-oh-one" and so on. Now, pretty much everyone follows that norm. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are 20th century years ever said like "nineteen hundred and twenty-five" for 1925? Does English put "hundred and" between first two and last two number in speech? --40bus (talk) 10:05, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to recall that Alex Trebek used to say years that way. Maybe it was a Canadian thing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Only in the most formal contexts; but see the 1973 song, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five which I suspect used that style to aid with scansion. Alansplodge (talk) 18:48, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An example of this very formal date usage is in this US Presidential Proclamation:

"In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twelfth day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-two..."

Alansplodge (talk) 18:58, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I often say, we need a wildcard digit other than '0'. I often write "197x" and "200x" but would not do so in an article. —Tamfang (talk) 22:49, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So does "the 19xx's" mean all the years from 1900 to 1999, or only the ones that are congruent to 8 mod 11? --Trovatore (talk) 21:01, 4 January 2025 (UTC) [reply]

Perhaps "the 19xy's" solves that problem. :) Double sharp (talk) 05:11, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

During the 20th century, I only ever heard the period referred to as "the 20th century". If someone had talked about "the 1900s" I would have assumed they meant the decade 1900-1909. Using "the xx00s" to refer to the whole century is something I've only encountered recently, although I don't know if it actually is a recent usage or just something that has recently been revealed via internet usage. Iapetus (talk) 11:10, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 3

Why is it boxes and not boxen?

Why is it foxes and not foxen? Someone who's wrong on the internet (talk) 05:45, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it sheep and not sheeps? HiLo48 (talk) 05:57, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget the related term "sheeps kin". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the plural of sheep was sheeple! Someone who's wrong on the internet (talk) 06:52, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly because "box" has its roots in Latin.[8] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:06, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, foxen is a word, just uncommon. GalacticShoe (talk) 06:07, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because Vikings. Maungapohatu (talk) 07:35, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As others have implied, "box" has always had an s-plural in English, and Vikings generally used the word "refr" for foxes. What's most surprising to me is actually that the old declensions "oxen" and "children" have survived. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:33, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Children is a pleonasm because childre (or childer) was already plural. See wikt:calveren and wikt:-ren. Card Zero (talk) 12:00, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Someone wrong -- You can look at Old English grammar#Noun classes to see the declensions of a thousand years ago or more. The regular pattern of modern English inflection comes from the Old English masculine "a-stems". The only nouns with a non-"s" plural ending in modern English (leaving aside Classical borrowings such as "referenda" and unassimilated foreignisms) are oxen, children, brethren, and the rather archaic kine, which have an ending from the OE "weak" declension (though "child" and "brother" were not originally weak declension nouns). There are also the few remaining umlaut nouns, which do not have any plural endings, and a few other forms which don't (or don't always) distinguish between singular and plural. In that context, there's no particular reason why "box" should be expected to be irregular. However, the form "boxen" has been occasionally used in certain types of computer slang: http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/boxen.html -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise, VAXen, Unixen and Linuxen are geeky plurals of VAX, Unix and Linux. --Lambiam 15:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nerd Wikipedians trying to be droll sometimes say "userboxen". Cullen328 (talk) 05:18, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 4

Pronunciation of "God b'wi you"?

How do you pronounce "God b'wi you"? For example in Shakespeare's Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3, Line 6 (Oxford Shakespeare). The pronunciation I hear in one recording is "God by you". Folger's Shakespeare has "God be wi’ you" in writing (you can find that text online at www.folger.edu). Does that indicate a different suggested pronunciation? How would you pronounce "wi'"? Are there other variants? (Either in the text of this play or anywhere else.) There's a "God be with you" entry in Wiktionary but none of these variants are recorded. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 08:32, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

David Crystal's Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation has [ˈbɪjə] for be with ye/you. Nardog (talk) 08:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. This is the original pronunciation. How is it currently commonly pronounced on the stage? I mentioned one pronunciation I heard where "b'wi" is pronounced "by". Are there other options?

Regarding the original pronunciation note videos by Ben Crystal (David Crystal's son) and those of A. Z. Foreman on his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@a.z.foreman74.

178.51.8.23 (talk) 12:05, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd pronounce it "God be with you" but with the "th" sound missed off the end of "with." That might not be how they did it in the sixteenth century, but I'm pretty sure no sixteenth century people are coming to see the show. Incidentally, that's what they did in the Olivier movie (the line didn't appear in the Branagh version). Chuntuk (talk) 11:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Correlation of early human migrations with languages

Assuming that earliest speakers of every language family had spoke some other language during the out of Africa expansion, were early human migrations successfully correlated with the consequential emergence of respective language families on migration routes? I've read about Linguistic homeland#Homelands of major language families, but wonder about the overall sequence of emergence. Brandmeister^talk 12:57, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand the question the answer is no. The migrations that you are talking about took place 100,000 to 25,000 years ago and well established language families only go back 10,000-15,000 years, often less. Even at that time depth the correlation between archeology and linguistics is often controversial. See Proto-Indo-European homeland for example. Studies such as A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories show that while there is correlation between human genetic and linguistic history, there are enough exception to make any precise conclusions impossible without other evidence. Eluchil404 (talk) 02:39, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There have been scholarly (and less scholarly) attempts to identify language families and relationships predating those more firmly established: see for example Nostratic and various other such proposals linked from it, but these are inevitably limited, largely because the evolution of languages is sufficiently rapid that all traces of features dating very far back have been erased by subsequent developments. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 07:01, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Although I cannot evaluate the likelihood, I find it conceivable that a future all-out statistical analysis of all available source material will result in a reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic that is widely accepted by scholars and much richer than what we have now. Perhaps this might even establish a connection between Proto-Afroasiatic and Proto-Indo-European beyond the few known striking grammatical similarities. Then we may be speaking about close to 20 kya. But indeed, there can be no hope of reconstructions going substantially farther back, by the dearth of truly ancient sources and the relative scarcity of sources before the Modern Era. --Lambiam 21:09, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reconstructions of Proto-Afroasiatic have been hindered by the fact that the only branches with significant ancient attestations are Semitic and Egyptian, and for most of its history, Egyptian writing almost completely ignored vowels... AnonMoos (talk) 20:46, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Attaining cadre

I hit "random article" for the first time in a while, and was directed to Adetoun Ogunsheye, the first female professor in Nigeria (still alive at 98). In the infobox it says she's known for "[b]eing the first Nigerian woman to attain professorial cadre", with the last two words piped to professor.

Does anyone recognize this locution of "attaining professorial cadre", or for that matter using cadre as a mass noun in any context? Is it maybe a Nigerian regionalism? Should we be using it in Wikipedia? --Trovatore (talk) 20:46, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That remark was added 7 years ago,[9] and the user who posted it is still active. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:56, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the collective sense is the older, just as for police and troop.

Here are uses of, specifically, teacher's cadre:

"The smaller the city the more the teacher's cadre demand administrative support"^[10]
"the cadre in which the teachers belong"^[11]

Other uses of the collective sense:

"The officers, non-commissioned officers, and corporals, constitute what is called the 'cadre.' "^[12]
"any one individual's decision to join a cadre",^[13]
"the cadre is appropriately composed in terms of skills and perspectives"^[14]

--Lambiam 23:43, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

None of those uses look like mass nouns to me; they all appear to be count nouns. --Trovatore (talk) 01:02, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, the phrasing is weird and probably just wrong (even in Nigerian English), so I've simplified it. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I think that's best. I'm still curious about the phrase, though. @HandsomeBoy: any comment? --Trovatore (talk) 04:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Promotion (in)to professorial cadre"^[15][16][17] is short for "promotion (in)to the professorial cadre".^[18][19][20] --Lambiam 14:13, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Lambiam, I can almost twist my brain into following that. So far it does appear to be a Nigerianism. My reaction till proved otherwise is that we probably shouldn't use it in English Wikipedia, given that (unlike Americanisms and Briticisms) it's not going to be recognizable in most of the Anglosphere. But it's reminiscent of the lakh / crore thing, on which I don't have a completely firm opinion and which still seems a bit unsettled en.wiki-wide. --Trovatore (talk) 21:39, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The term 'cadre' was/is (in my experience) extensively used in translations from Mandarin where in Communist China a distinct body or group, especially of military, governmental, or political personnel, is referred to: I have also seen it used in a similar fashion regarding communist regimes and parties elsewhere, so it has something of a Marxist flavour (I wonder if Karl Marx used it in his writings?), but also in non-communist contexts. I don't think it can be characterised as a 'Nigerianism'.

The Wiktionary entry is of course relevant. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 08:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 5

Name of Nova Scotia?

Is there any historical explanation of why the name of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia uses Latin. Is it an oddity with no explanation? Do you know of any other European colony (especially of the form "new something") that uses a Latin name instead of an equivalent in a modern European language? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 13:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The semi-Latin name Nova Zembla was until fairly recently^[21] the most commonly used English exonym of Новая Земля. (It is still the preferred exonym in Dutch and Portuguese.) --Lambiam 14:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is "Nova Zembla" semi-Latin or just a garbled version of the Russian? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 14:42, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In this borrowing, Zembla is clearly a phonetic adaptation, but (although this would be hard to prove), I find the most plausible explanation for the component Nova that it arose by alignment with the then many Latin geonyms found on maps and atlases starting with Nova. In any case, the evidence is that Nova Zembla used to be seen as a Latin name, as from the use of the accusative case Novam Zemblam here, in 1570, and the genitive case Novæ Zemblæ here, in 1660. --Lambiam 20:26, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It was named in 1621, when James I made William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling lord of the area. This lordship was granted in the royal charter, written in Latin. Praefato Domino Willelmo Alexander ... nomine Novae Scotiae. Though he left his own name as William and didn't change it to Willelmo, he apparently took the instruction to call the place Nova Scotia very literally. Card Zero (talk) 14:38, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Was Nova Scotia the only Scottish colony ever? Maybe it is a Scottish thing to use Latin? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 14:45, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There was also the Darien scheme, i.e. New Caledonia.--2A04:4A43:909F:F990:E596:9C8F:DF47:1709 (talk) 15:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And re-used for New Caledonia by James Cook in 1774. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 18:25, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And Sir Francis Drake claimed New Albion (or Nova Albion) in the California area in 1579. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 18:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Back then (the 17th century) it was a European thing to use Latin in a lot of contexts, particularly in law and academia. Consider for example Isaac Newton's magnum opus, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 18:10, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are the Carolinas (Latin for Charles). Matt Deres (talk) 17:31, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And Australia, from Terra Australis (Southland), for a while also known as New Holland. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thule (Greek/Latin, location uncertain) and Ultima Thule Peak (in a former Russian colony or territory; I don't know whether the Russians named it, but the Alaskans did in 1996). -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 17:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Guys, I am grateful for all your answers. I just want to point out that my question was not about names in Latin (there are other exmples btw: Virginia, Georgia, Columbia/Colombia, Argentina, maybe Guinea, etc.) but specifically names in Latin where an equivalent in a modern European language seems to be more natural. I was simply curious as to why "Nova Scotia" instead of "New Scotland". All your examples are great but for very few of them (if any) an equivalent into a modern European language comes readily to mind. For example "New Caledonia" would have no "equivalent into a modern European language". Caledonia is itself a Latinism. So is "Batavia" say. There are many places in Europe with classical equivalents. Using one of those is not exactly the same thing as using a Latin translation of a modern name. Clearly it is not always clear cut. "Hispania" and "Austria" would be considered Latin translations of "Spain" and "Austria", but "Lusitania" and "Helvetia" would not be considered Latin translations of "Portugal" and "Switzerland". Does it depend on whether the Latin and the modern language equivalent are related etymologically? Of if that relation is commonly perceived? If the city of New York had been named instead "Novum Eboracum" would we be in one case or the other? I'll let you decide. The two names are linked but it is pretty involved. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 18:11, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

'Caledonia' is no more of a Latinism than 'Scotia', and is sometimes used as a near synonym for 'Scotland' in modern British English (including Scots English, not to be confused with Scots, or Scottish Gaelic in which it's called Alba). It would be rather confusing if we called two different places "New Scotland" – I suppose Cook could have named his discovery "New Pictland", but I'm not sure if that would have gone down well.

You refer to 'modern European language[s]', but these (particularly English) have long since absorbed a great deal of Latin, both in assimilated and 'classical' form, so to me your attempted distinctions appears meaningless. Others may differ. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 10:18, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Austria" is a Latin coinage to begin with. Otherwise, there are a few languages which have calqued the native "Österreich" (Eastern Kingdom). Navajo has apparently the descriptive moniker "Homeland of the leather pants". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:47, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 6

Lowercase L that looks like capital I with an extra serif

I just came across on Harper's Bazaar's website a lowercase L that looks the like capital I with an extra serif sticking to the left in the middle (kind of like ⟨I⟩ superimposed with text-figure ⟨1⟩). See e.g. "looks", "Viola", "Winslet", etc. here.

Is this style of lowercase L something found in existing typefaces? The font is SangBleu OG Serif by Swiss Typefaces and it appears to be the only typeface of theirs that has this type of L. Nardog (talk) 05:22, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Beats me why they're calling those all one typeface instead of five. Anyway, in the "OG serif" incarnation, they got the weird arm on the lowercase L from Romain du Roi. The long s also has one. This incunable (from incunable) also has the nub (arm? Bar? Flag?) on lowercase L in many instances, but for some reason not all of them.

Edit: I think the nub is missing only in ligatures, mainly el. And I think this is originally a blackletter thing. This handwritten bible shows a similar but less distinct effect, due I think to the minim (palaeography). The scribe first draws a minim, then extends it to write the lowercase L. Caslon's specimen has it, but only in the blackletter face (top right). I think the explanation is thus the same as the origin of the nub on long S. Card Zero (talk) 12:08, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The ⟨eſ ⟩ pairs in the Valerius Maximus incunable also have nubless ⟨ſ ⟩es. --Lambiam 00:01, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, so there is precedent. Nardog (talk) 09:17, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a Swedish publisher, Modernista, that uses an st ligature in their logotype. I believe they also use it constantly and consistently within the books themselves, as a brand identity, which of course could come across as pretty strained. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In that Caslon specimen the ⟨b⟩ and ⟨h⟩ also have nubs. The letter ⟨k⟩ does not occur in the specimen's text, but here we also find the Caslon black ⟨k⟩ nubbed. --Lambiam 14:11, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unsatisfied, I dug up this brief discussion of Romain du Roi's lowercase L. The lowercase letter /l shows the most distinctive feature of the letters. It has a small serif on the left side at x-height, called ergot or sécante in French. The serif is a remnant of the calligraphic style which had not appeared in any previous typefaces. This serif makes the Romain du Roi unique. The reason why the Romain du Roi /l possessed the serif is not clearly documented. One theory says that this serif was used to distinguish it more clearly from the capital letter /l, which has the same height. The other theory claims that Louis XIV wanted to have an unmistakable feature in the /l, because his name began with this letter. Yeah. Thing is, Romain du Roi put the bars on the top and bottom of the glyph gratuitously, so if it then needed disambiguating from capital i, that doesn't seem like a very rational thing to have done. Card Zero (talk) 17:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 7

Examples of the use of "might" as a past tense?

The past form of "may", "might", is mostly used as a conditional: "He might have said that, then again might not have". Uses of "might" as a past tense meaning "was/were allowed to" seem to be much rarer: "He might not say that" is most often intended to mean (and understood to mean) "it is possible that he will not say that", not as "he was not allowed to say that".

But that usage is not completely unknown: for example Edna St Vincent Millay writes in her sonnet "Bluebeard": "This door you might not open and you did / So enter now, and see for what slight thing / You are betrayed".

Do you have other examples of "might" being used as a past tense of "may"? I mean examples from the literature, jounalism, etc. not examples made up by Wiktionary editors, or other dictionaries, not because I don't trust Wiktionary editors or dictionary editors, but because I'd trust more examples that were not produced specifically for the purpose of illustrating a dictionary definition.

I'm especially interested in examples where "might" is used as a past tense in affirmative constructions! The examples above are all with "might not". I have the feeling the use of "might" in a negative sentence would sound more natural than in an affirmative sentence (if there's any example of it at all). Do you agree?

178.51.8.23 (talk) 17:04, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach. Mark 3:14 -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 17:13, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great. Thanks. Please keep all kinds of examples coming, but watch out especially for examples where "might" is used in a main (or independent) clause (rather than a subordinate clause such as "(in order) that they might..."). 178.51.8.23 (talk) 17:32, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Francis Cottington, 1st Baron Cottington we find ...after the dismissal of the Short Parliament, he declared it his opinion that at such a crisis the king might levy money without the Parliament. --Trovatore (talk) 18:23, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another one, not directly subordinate in a that clause, though still notionally subordinate to a verb of speaking within a multi-sentence passage of reported speech, in a 19th-century summary of a parliamentary debate [22] "Mr BUCKNILL (Surry, Epsom) said, […] Member after Member had spoken of a particular company […] and, if he might use the expression, it had really in this Debate been ridden to death […]". Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just went to Google News and searched on the phrase "he might have done". Here was one of the hits, in the New York Times: "A former Marine who trained Daniel Penny to apply a chokehold said Thursday that images and video suggest that he might have done so improperly when he killed a homeless man last year." And this headline from Vanity Fair: "Trump's Missing Phone Logs Mean We Don't Even Know Half the Illegal Shit He Might Have Done on 1/6". And this from the Seattle Times: "Although there is an area he might have done better." And from the BBC: "But Peter persisted, and now he can reflect on the earlier disappointments and what he might have done differently". My native-speaker instinct insists that "might" is the only correct form in these cases and "may" is an error, although I know others use it. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 19:56, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To me "may have done" is usable if it is currently possible (that is, the speaker does not currently know it to be false) that it happened, whereas "might have done" is usable in that case and also in the counterfactual case (if this had happened, then that might have happened). Prescription alert: Saying "if this had happened, then that may have happened" is in my opinion an error.

But that isn't what the OP is asking about. The OP is asking about using "might" as a past tense of "may", in the sense that "A might do B" means "A was morally allowed, or otherwise had the permission or authority, to do B". This sense does exist but has become somewhat rare. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does this count: "I [...] did what I might."^[23]? --Lambiam 00:12, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also: "Then Titul took a knife from his belt and asked the Gaul if he could kill himself; and the Gaul tried, but he might not."^[24] --Lambiam 00:29, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. Both are past tenses. The first example is a relative clause. The second example is an independent clause. And both are affirmative constructions. Thanks. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 8

Pronunciation of "breen"

How do you pronounce the -breen that appears at the end of Svalbard glacier names? I went through all the Svalbard -breen glacier articles on Wikipedia at Category:Glaciers_of_Spitsbergen, and not a single one provides IPA. 2601:644:4301:D1B0:B94F:4C6C:A635:20B6 (talk) 02:32, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]