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August 17

Better and best, but not good

There are two virtually equivalent expressions: "<subject> had better <verb>" and "<subject> had best <verb>". The "had" is often omitted.

Examples: You('d) better go now before your father gets home. I had best eat now as we won't get another chance for 6 hours.

But we never say "<subject> had good <verb>". Why is it ok to use better or best, but not good? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:39, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is what OED says about the usage: "In Old and Middle English, the comparative adjectives liefer, better, etc., were constructed with be and the dative, e.g. him were better ‘it would be better for him’ (see e.g. better adj. A.4a.i, lief adj. A.1c). Constructions with have and the nominative arose in Middle English, as he had better ‘he would hold or find it better or preferable’. Use with positive and superlative adjectives arose later, as did use with adverbs (apparently from a reinterpretation of liefer, better, etc., in these constructions as adverbs" which may or may not help you. DuncanHill (talk) 12:51, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Compare Mark 14:21 in the KJV: "good were it for that man if he had never been born." --Lambiam 21:04, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Like the OED, I think that better and best in this idiom have become to be interpreted as adverbs, so one had well wonder why we never say "<subject> had well <verb>". --Lambiam 21:07, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think the comparative element is important, which is why "<subject> had as well <verb>" does occur, though it's rather old fashioned. ColinFine (talk) 22:23, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semantic correctness of a phrase

I wonder whether the phrase a vegan anti-livestock farming film is semantically correct. Does "vegan" refer to "film"? Leyo 21:29, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think it does, but the punctuation should be "a vegan anti-livestock-farming film". Deor (talk) 21:43, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Would probably be better phrased more along the lines of "an anti-livestock-farming film from a vegan perspective". --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:09, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this phrase would be linguistically better. My concern above was whether a film may be characterized as "vegan". --Leyo 22:38, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's a sort of shorthand phrasing. It doesn't really make sense to describe a film as being vegan, but the meaning is pretty clear to most fluent speakers. User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 23:19, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There can be vegan food, and vegan people, but not really a vegan film. HiLo48 (talk) 00:24, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've increasingly seen "vegan" on labels of products other than food, to indicate that no animal products or animal labour were involved in the manufacture. Clothing is a relatively common example. In the case of Dominion 2018 film, the sense is vegan advocacy. Folly Mox (talk) 00:38, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Does "vegan" describe the film (motion picture) or the film (physical medium on which the motion picture is photographed)? If the former then I would take "vegan" to apply to the editorial or artistic position of the motion picture. If the latter, a "vegan film" would be one in which the film stock did not contain any animal-derived product (just as one can buy vegan shoes). To the best of my knowledge all photographic film contains gelatin, so could not be classified as vegan in the sense which I have just suggested. DuncanHill (talk) 00:42, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's the former meaning, i.e., not any materials used to physically produce the film. :-) --Leyo 08:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Were any fossil fuels used for the energy needed to produce the film? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:52, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

How is that relevant? I can't see any reference to fossil fuels in the original question, or any of the replies so far. Bazza (talk) 09:55, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you missed Duncan's comments. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:58, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find any reference to fossil fuels or energy consumption in DuncanHill's contributions. --Lambiam 21:22, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

He posed the question of whether a film could literally be vegan. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What does that have to do with fossil fuels? Were you eating strawberries while posting your question? --Lambiam 11:41, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Are all fossil fuels derived from plants? Or are some of them derived from animals? If the latter, does the use of them compromise the "vegan" concept? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:10, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The vegan lifestyle is an ethical choice, seeking to exclude all forms of exploitation of animals, whether by keeping them captive, breeding them, trading them, killing them, or eating them. It is not a dogmatic religion lending itself well to abuse by casuistry. Wheat flour and other plant-based flours will unavoidably contain some percentage of animal protein, and so will fruits, roots, tubers, beans and nuts. The soil on which edible plants grow is kept healthy by the natural activity of earthworms. Only people opposed to the ethics of veganism will draw the conclusion that vegans are not allowed to eat bread or cabbage. --Lambiam 09:19, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My concerns about the phrase "a vegan anti-livestock farming film" would be "in what way is it anti-livestock? And in what way is it a farming film?" I suspect the original author meant "anti livestock-farming". DuncanHill (talk) 00:46, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There has been some debate about the wording of the lede in Dominion (2018 film). One option was the phrase above, of which I was unsure whether is it semantically correct. --Leyo 08:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:PREFIXDASH says it should be anti–livestock farming. Bazza (talk) 09:31, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"a vegan anti-livestock farming film" can be interpreted in two ways:

a vegan film that is against livestock farming
a vegan farming film that is against livestock

I think most people will read it in the intended first sense, but the ambiguity is there. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 14:41, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A way around this would be to rephrase, e.g "a vegan film against/criticizing live stock farming". -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 14:44, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

August 19

Meaning of Proc in German

The following phrase occurs in a German academic paper published about 120 years ago:-

"würde sie doch erst Einfluss gewinnen (½ Proc.), wenn sie dreimal grösser wäre."

or "It would only have an effect (½ proc.) if it was three times larger."

What does "Proc" mean? Percent would be "proz". Dionne Court (talk) 13:55, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Dionne Court: Before the German Orthographic Conference of 1901 (see de:Orthographische Konferenz von 1901), "Procent" for percent would have been possible in German (with some regional variation). —Kusma (talk) 14:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish questions

Are there any native words in Spanish that begin with X?
Are there any native words in Spanish that end with C?
Why does Spanish not use grave accent?
Are there any dialects of Spanish where /z/ phoneme has not changed to /s/?
Why does Spanish not use ⟨ss⟩ letter combimation? --40bus (talk) 19:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Do you consider the name Xavier to be native? As to accent grave, maybe because it's not needed. As to z, Castilian Spanish pronounces the z and the soft c as "th", not s. As to ss, are you sure it's not used? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:17, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For no. 2, also in the names department, there's Enoch, whose name in Spanish is Enoc, Melchizedek, whose name in Spanish is Melquisedec, and also Isaac. Given that these are all Biblical names, whether that counts as being "native" is up for interpretation. In any case, it seems at least somewhat likely that they've been spelled that way in Spanish for a while. GalacticShoe (talk) 23:37, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not really an answer, but a slightly related and fascinating TED Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX_OxBfsvbk. (Less than four minutes long.)

Xavier, Spain is the origin of the name, and that word comes ultimately from the Basque language "Xabier". --Jayron 32 12:47, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(3) It did back when it was Early Modern Spanish. Now it doesn't.

(4) As seems to be a pattern with these questions: Ladino (e.g. Spanish decir vs Ladino dezir). Double sharp (talk) 04:04, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your item 3 sounds familiar. Didn't 40bus ask this same question a couple of months ago? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:11, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, yes (and in fact exactly one month ago).

P.S. the development of sibilants in Ladino is the same as that in Portuguese, according to Ralph Penny's A History of the Spanish Language. So [ts] merged with [s] and [dz] merged with [z], but the voicing distinctions were kept intact, leaving a four-way distinction today in most cases. Double sharp (talk) 04:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One month ago, the question was whether. Now it has become why. One use of the grave accent in languages employing it in their orthography is to make a sound distinction, like in the French minimal pair dès versus dés. No such distinctions are needed for the complement of vowel sounds of Spanish. Another use is to indicate stress, as in Catalan. So one may wonder, did the REA have an acute reason to prefer the acute accent for indicating stress instead over the grave accent? --Lambiam 09:58, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

According to Stress (linguistics)#Spelling and notation for stress, Italian is unique in indicating (primary) stress with grave accent; all other languages that do mark stress at all, use acute accent for that. 2001:BF8:200:396:38E8:FF5C:1466:CEA2 (talk) 14:00, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The stress in the Catalan word català is marked with a grave accent. Maltese also uses the grave accent for marking stress, as in alaxanxè. --Lambiam 03:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for these examples; I've now updated the article accordingly. 82.166.199.42 (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lambiam -- Both Italian and Catalan have a contrast between low-mid vowels ([ɛ], [ɔ]) and high-mid vowels ([e], [o]) in some contexts, and stressed low-mid vowels are written with a grave accent, while stressed high-mid vowels are written with an acute accent. Spanish doesn't have this contrast. AnonMoos (talk) 21:44, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The rule was formalized in the "Discurso proemial de la orthographia" of the first dictionary published by the REA in 1726: "y assi es error decir que el accento grave sirve para alargar la última sylaba en las voces de dos, tres, quatro, y mas vocáles: como Arnés, Amó, Amará, Enseñará, Apercibirá, porque esto es próprio del accento agúdo, que es el que baxa de la derecha à la izquierda de este modo ´, y la razón es porque hace agúda y fuerte la pronunciación: lo que no conviene la grave, que la deprime y modéra" ("and so it is wrong to say that the grave accent serves to lengthen the last syllable in words with two, three, four, or more syllables, such as Arnés, Amó, Amará, Enseñará, Apercibirá, since this is the proper role of the acute accent, which is the one that goes down from the right to the left like this ´, the reason being that it makes the pronunciation sharp and strong, for which the grave one, which depresses and moderates it, is ill-suited").^§ --Lambiam 13:53, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

3 and 5 are still unanswerable because because "why didn't" questions are not answerable about these topics. Linguistic change does not have a purpose, there is no one who makes decisions and can explain why they didn't do something. --Jayron 32 12:42, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

True. I've asked them, and they don't know why. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:55, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

3 and 5 are questions on orthography. Several languages, including Spanish, have a central body deciding on an official orthography; see Royal Spanish Academy. They can tell exactly why something is the way it is; see the quote supplied by Lambiam above, which answers 3.

As for 5, a quick glance at /usr/share/dict/spanish shows that only r and l are commonly doubled and, if doubled, they stand for a different phoneme. In some Germanic languages, consonants can be doubled to make the preceding vowel checked, in Finnish or Italian it's done to make the consonant longer, but neither of those are needed Spanish. The dictionary also lists a small number of Spanish words with doubled c, e or n and a handful with doubled a, m, o, p, s, u and z. Undoubtedly, most are derivations, compounds or loans.

And as I downloaded the Spanish word list anyway, for 1, it lists xenófoba, xenofobia, xenófobo, xeroftalmía, xi, xifoidea, xifoideo, xifoides, xilófaga, xilófago, xilografía, xilográfica, xilográfico, xilórgano, xilotila; for 2, it mentions almanac, almástec, bambuc, baurac, bistec, calambac, carric, cifac, cinc, clac, coñac, cornac, cric, duc, fondac, frac, lilac, oc, ruc, sic, tac, tic, tictac, vivac, yac, zinc. Your choice to say which are native, if any. PiusImpavidus (talk) 07:54, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

August 22

Which other languages pronounce ‹eu› like [ɔʏ̯]?

Apparently just some unresearched OR

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The article Betelgeuse contains the unsourced statement “Pronunciation in German and several other European languages is [ˌbetaɪ̯ˈɡ⁠ɔʏ̯⁠t͡sə]” (my highlighting). Are there any other European languages that generally pronounce ‹eu› like [ɔʏ̯]? Or is that supposed to be a specialty of this particular name? (In which case it would need a reference, and we could close this general question here.) ◅ Sebastian 12:45, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm...it might be due to the fact that de:Beteigeuze is spelled differently, and subsequently pronounced differently. I see now real gain in keeping the statement about different pronounciations in the article. Lectonar (talk) 12:59, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your quick reply, Lectonar. What gain do you see? I might see some benefit talking about the significant spelling difference of ‹el› vs ‹ei›, but none really for the pronunciation; at least not for German alone, since that's just the standard any other word with these letters would be pronounced. On that note, I should add that a few other wikipedias spell the name with ‹ei› like German, but these are just German dialects, since they don't have their own navy. ◅ Sebastian 13:09, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's supposed to say no real gain, sorry. I need some coffee. Lectonar (talk) 13:12, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad we agree on this. ◅ Sebastian 13:18, 22 August 2023 (UTC) Some coffee might be good for me, too. I just corrected the first ‹ei› to ‹el›. ◅ Sebastian 13:20, 22 August 2023 (UTC) [reply]

Re. “it might be due to the fact that [[:de:Beteigeuze]] is spelled differently”: I don't think so. The different spelling of the second and the fourth syllable have no effect on the third syllable in German standard pronunciation. ◅ Sebastian 13:18, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that statement can safely be removed. The claim about German and "several other languages" was first inserted without any comment by an IP in May this year [1], but with a different pronunciation of the "eu" syllable ([eu:]), which is of course quite implausible even for German itself; it was then "corrected" (for German) by another editor pointing to the German Wikipedia article. Maybe the original IP meant to say just that German and several other languages had a hard "g" sound rather than the English [dʒ]? In any case, the statement is pretty much off-topic even if it were true, so nothing is lost by removing it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:33, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Fut.Perf.; I see that you have already done that, and agree with it - that was just unresearched OR. So, back to the original question: in reality no other [ɔʏ̯]ropean language has the same odd pronunciation of ‹eu›, right? ◅ Sebastian 14:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not, at least I can't find any comparable pronunciation listed at List of Latin-script digraphs, or on Wiktionary pages for wikt:Europa and its cognates. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:03, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, with that we can close the question. ◅ Sebastian 15:40, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

August 23

Lord and Word rhyming?

Is there any dialect of English, either current or historical where lord and word rhyme? When I read the LDS hymnbook, there are a *lot* of hymns where that have that as a rhyme.Naraht (talk) 09:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hymns are notorious for terrible eye rhymes; there are any number of examples of "move" rhymed with "love" for example. A famous one is Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, which tries to rhyme "come" with "womb". Alansplodge (talk) 11:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The word "lord" has a rather complex etymological history, since a compound of two stems was eventually whittled down to a monosyllable, a process that took centuries to complete. By contrast, "word" has been a monosyllable for well over a thousand years (in the nominative and accusative cases), since word-final short vowels deleted in various circumstances in pre-Old-English. As a teen, I was kind of baffled when I saw "wind" and "mind" rhymed in an old poem (a much simpler case). Wikipedia article is Eye rhyme... AnonMoos (talk) 11:58, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article eye rhyme covers two somewhat different things, visual rhymes and historic rhymes (where the example obey/tea is not even visual). I find the idea that hymns, which are meant to be sung and heard, employ purely visual rhymes to any significant extent rather implausible. To me it seems conceivable that word used to be pronounced /wɔːd/ until maybe even quite recently. Wiktionary gives historic pronunciations only for Middle and Old English, which is a bit old. Also, move and love (given that neither pronunciation has much to do with the spelling) conceivably diverged from a common pronunciation. I've seen these sort of "eye rhymes" also in Wordworth or Coleridge, for instance, and would love to see a reference that connects these to the evolution of pronunciation. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:24, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Phonographs not being available before the late 19th century, the usual way for linguists to infer historic pronunciations is by analyzing rhymes, so that any answer to your question would be by way of circular reasoning. 82.166.199.42 (talk) 16:25, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No. Linguists and others who described the pronunciation of their day existed before the invention of phonographs. I'm always reminded of a scene in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme which clearly describes the rolled r that was used in Molière's time but isn't in modern French. --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The term "wind", as in air movement, can be heard in some early phonograph records pronounced to rhyme with "mind", or like the same as to wind a clock. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:05, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In music class in school we were taught that the "winds" in A Life on the Ocean Wave ("the winds their revels keep") is pronounced to rhyme with "minds". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently wind's transition from long i to short i began in the 18th century.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:08, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

Does Spanish have any words where letters ⟨ue⟩ and ⟨ie⟩ appear in beginning of word without preceding ⟨h⟩, as if words huevo, hueso and hielo were spelled uevo, ueso and ielo?
Do other Germanic languages than English also have gerund?
Does English have any native words which have letter K before A, O or U?
Are there any Western European languages where letter Q can not be followed by only U in native words?
Are there any English words with onset /ks/ or /ps/, or coda /mb/ or /ŋg/?

--40bus (talk) 19:59, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For #3, English has thousands of words which contain a K followed by A, O or U. You'll have to explain what you mean by "native word", but some examples are "askance", "backache", "backup", "beckon", "blackout", "blockade", "breakable", "cookout", "cuckold", "drunkard", "hickory", "hookup", "jackass", "kale", "konk", "kooky", "kudos", "likable", "lookup", "oakum", "pickaxe", "skate", "skoal", "skull", "skunk", "talkative", "walkout" and many others. CodeTalker (talk) 22:53, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

About 2., I'm not sure on whether I get the distinction, but it seems that other Germanic languages use the present participle similarly. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:22, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For question 1, I found "uebos" and "iertare" by browsing Wiktionary. RudolfRed (talk) 00:22, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

uebos is Old Spanish and iertare is Romanian. Wiktionary does list the Japanese surname Uehara as occurring in Spanish as well, and there's the proper noun Uezán. For ie, it only gives ietsista, an adherent of Ietsism. The reason /we/ and /je/ are always spelled with a silent h at the beginning of a word is that several centuries ago, no predictable distinction was made between i and j or between u and v. Therefore, hierba and hueso were given silent hes so readers would know they weren't *jerba and *veso. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:12, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For question 4, consider French cinq, coq, etc. GalacticShoe (talk) 01:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For 5, dialectically yes for /ŋg/. Some dialects do have a hard "g" at the end of words that end in the /ŋg/ sound, see for example the film Forest Gump, where the title character has such an idiolect. --Jayron 32 12:10, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This /ŋg/-with-a-hard-g, both in and at the end of words, is also a feature of some English Black Country accents such as that of Birmingham. Think Ozzy Osbourne.

(Note for Americans – 'Black Country' is a reference to the landscape-blackening soot and other pollutants arising from the coal mining and heavy industries that flourished in the area – nothing to do with anyone's skin colour.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.140.169 (talk) 18:55, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(5) When reading out mathematical formulae, I'd pronounce the names of the Greek letters xi and psi with initial /ks/ and /ps/ respectively (because otherwise it's hard to distinguish them). Double sharp (talk) 12:36, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. I learned xi as "zigh" and psi as "sigh", clearly distinct. --142.112.221.64 (talk) 13:40, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

August 24

@@ Line 154: / Line 154: @@
 :For question 4, consider French ''cinq'', ''coq'', etc. [[User:GalacticShoe|GalacticShoe]] ([[User talk:GalacticShoe|talk]]) 01:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 :For 5, dialectically yes for /ŋg/.  Some dialects do have a hard "g" at the end of words that end in the /ŋg/ sound, see for example the film ''[[Forest Gump]]'', where the title character has such an idiolect.  --[[User:Jayron32|<span style="color:#009">Jayron</span>]][[User talk:Jayron32|<b style="color:#090">''32''</b>]] 12:10, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
+::This /ŋg/-with-a-hard-g, both in and at the end of words, is also a feature of some English [[Black Country dialect|Black Country accents]] such as that of Birmingham. Think Ozzy Osbourne.
+::(Note for Americans – '[[Black Country]]' is a reference to the landscape-blackening soot and other pollutants arising from the coal mining and heavy industries that flourished in the area – nothing to do with anyone's skin colour.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} [[Special:Contributions/51.198.140.169|51.198.140.169]] ([[User talk:51.198.140.169|talk]]) 18:55, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 :(5) When reading out mathematical formulae, I'd pronounce the names of the Greek letters xi and psi with initial /ks/ and /ps/ respectively (because otherwise it's hard to distinguish them). [[User:Double sharp|Double sharp]] ([[User talk:Double sharp|talk]]) 12:36, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 ::Interesting. I learned xi as "zigh" and psi as "sigh", clearly distinct. --[[Special:Contributions/142.112.221.64|142.112.221.64]] ([[User talk:142.112.221.64|talk]]) 13:40, 24 August 2023 (UTC)