Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 October 26

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 26

Besides in English, where does PIE *w survive as [w] in any modern Indo-European language?

The phoneme *w of the Proto-Indo-European language has changed to /v/ or another phoneme in almost all modern PIE languages. This applies to Romance, where Latin V (originally pronounced /enwiki/w/] has universally become /v/. It applies to all varieties of Modern Germanic of which I am aware, save English, where "water" is almost identical to the reconstructed form. It had changed to /f/ I believe in Goidelic (not sure in Brithonic and was lost in Greek, except for certain now extinct dialects. In all standard national Slavic languages it is /v/. I am not sure about Armenian or the Indo-Aryan languages, although the reflex is written as 'v' in Sanskrit.

The reason I ask is because in the one class I took on standard Russian, I compared some of m dialectal differences, and it occurred that in (my version) of the Rusyn language the supposed /v/ of Slavic had three reflexes: [v], [w] and [f]. Dva "two" and tvoy "thy" had the [v] allophone, word finally, as in Lviv, it has the devoiced [f] allophone, but in other cases, such as čerweny "red" and zdrawy "healthy" (both of which trace back to PIE *w, the [w] allophone is present. The -ovat' verb suffix of Russian is -[owati] in Rusyn, and there are many other examples, but I am not sure they are not recent developments.

In any case, my question is, are there other surviving Indo-European dialects which retain a [w] allophone descended from the PIE *w phoneme? (I am not interested in cases like the Polish ł where a secondary [w] sound has evolved from a different source. Thanks μηδείς (talk) 00:22, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

If I do recall correctly, in some dialects of Dutch, "w" is /enwiki/w/. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 01:19, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

That is correct, particularly in Surinamese Dutch (and sometimes in Flemish and dialects in the south of the Netherlands). In Standard Dutch, /enwiki/w/ is also used for "w", but only in the middle of words (e.g. in "duwen"), while initial "w" is pronounced /ʋ/ (e.g. in "water"). - Lindert (talk) 01:35, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

User:Lindert or User:Tharthan, can you comment on walvis ("whale") in Standard Dutch and/or vs Flemish? μηδείς (talk) 17:49, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't think that "duwen" necessarily counts as a continuation from PIE, though. The proto-Germanic form is þūhijaną, which probably indicates a lengthening of the stem vowel or an excrescent glide between adjacent vowels as in isiZulu. However, wiktionary says "water" is /wa:tər/ in Belgium, which is unequivocal.

Any others? μηδείς (talk) 02:18, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

How about modern IA? First, was Sanskrit v (व) bilabial or labiodental? I don't think one can rely on modern Indian pronunciations of Sanskrit as those have been contaminated by the vernaculars, so the answer depends I guess on the interpretation of the ancient phonetic treatises. So what's the scholarly consensus? Skt. v: bilabial or labiodental? Next, I saw that in most cases Skt. v turns into something like v (Hindi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Punjabi, Sinhalese) or something like b (Bengali, Oriya, Assamese). Couldn't find anything about Marathi. Now Nepali and Kashmiri do seem to have a real w (it's not completely clear because the articles do not use the IPA). So are Nepali and Kashmiri w really bilabial? And are they reflexes of Skt. v? Contact Basemetal here 02:50, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Nepali phonology indicates [w] is an allophone of /u/, which would not indicate descent from a cognate of Sanskrit /v/. The Kashmiri article indicates the presence of /enwiki/w/ but gives no examples. μηδείς (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

We-ell, Sanskrit /v/ and /u/ are themselves descended from allophones... —Tamfang (talk) 09:13, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

To pick a nit: there are no "modern PIE languages"; PIE is Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor. You mean "modern IE languages". —Tamfang (talk) 09:13, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I have fixed the section title but I left the error in place elsewhere so your comment doesn't seem odd. μηδείς (talk) 17:42, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Unless you are saying /u/ and /v/ are allophones of the same phoneme in Sanskrit, Tamfang, your point is not relevant. There is a huge debate over the phonemic or allophonic status of w in PIE. But there is simply no question that w is a phoneme in English, ignoring /hw/ for simplicity sake. There's the question of transcription. The words knowing and going may be described as having non-syllabic u off-glides, and the words written two and clawing do not have any remnants of /enwiki/w/ in them. But there's no question that words like worm and vermis are reflexes of a sound that existed in PIE and which survives in English.

The survival of /enwiki/w/ in "sweet" and Sp. suave and other Western Romance languages might indicate a retention of /enwiki/w/ after initial /s/, but I am not sure if this is not just a learnèd borrowing from Latin suavis/suave into those languages as it is in English. The fact that it is not souave in French probably indicates something. μηδείς (talk) 17:42, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

KageTora had put this in the wrong section. I copied it here where it belongs. I hope that's ok. Contact Basemetal here 19:07, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

KageTora's edit starts here:

Has anyone considered Romanian? This is just a question, as I have not researched it yet. I would guess the /enwiki/w/ changed to /v/ as per Italian, but I have not checked. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 18:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

It has just done it again. I have clicked on the edit for this section only, and it has given me three sections. Naturally, I would edit at the bottom of the edit window, so this is why my edits are appearing two sections down from here. Must be a problem with Wikipedia. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 19:33, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Are you sure you did not click the 'Edit' for section 'October 26' by mistake. That 'Edit' is right above the 'Edit' for this section which is the first subsection of 'October 26'? In the history your edits look like edits of the 'October 26' section not of this subsection. Contact Basemetal here 19:45, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I do the edit the date mistake a lot.

Yes, I think I was confused by the very long title of this section. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 02:24, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Romanian phonology indicates /enwiki/w/ is not a consonant phoneme but that it is a part of glides like soare < Latin sol "sun", and in borrowings like "western" for the film genre. μηδείς (talk) 21:07, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me as if PIE /enwiki/w/ is likely to survive in Kashmiri and perhaps other Dardic languages based on entries in this dictionary. Marco polo (talk) 01:38, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I spent twenty minutes with that site, Marco polo but came up with nothing helpful. Can you give specific examples? For example, oduru, meaning wet, seems aweful close to water, hydor, but it has no indicated initial w. I know from some Indian speakers that short o and e get on-glides, so you hear the "wofficial yeconomic figures". I am not sure what language that was, however. And I doubt it was Kashmiri. μηδείς (talk) 01:50, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

At least some dialects of Hindi and, I believe, Punjabi, do have the sound generally transilterated as 'v' pronounced as a 'w' (but as a bilabial fricative). KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 02:24, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I was looking at entries such as "wanjĕr", meaning lameness, crippledness, which looks like a reflex of "u̯ā-" or "u̯en-", meaning "to wound". Others are "war", meaning "twisting" ("u̯er-": bend, turn, warp, wrap) and "wôwuru", meaning "weaver" (u̯ebh-: weave), though this last example would suggest—and the evidence from the glossary supports this—that IE /enwiki/w/u̯/ and /bh/ collapsed at some point into a single phoneme /enwiki/w/, which later differentiated allphonically into /v/ before front vowels and /enwiki/w/ before back vowels. It looks as though some of those vowels have since dropped out, so that /v/ and /enwiki/w/ are now phonemic in Kashmiri, but either of them may derive from either IE /enwiki/w/ or /bh/. I have not studied this thoroughly, though, nor have I found a source discussion IE correspondences in Dardic, so I could be wrong. Marco polo (talk) 14:10, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

The reflexes of *wen-, *wer-, and *webh- seem pretty definitive, as long as we can assume the unlikely w>v>w development never happened. Thanks, MP. μηδείς (talk) 17:28, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

No one's answered about v in Skt.! Florian? If Skt. v was generally more like [v] (when Dardic diverged from the rest of Old IA) then we would have w > v > w wouldn't we? But why is it that w > v is common while v > w so unusual? Contact Basemetal here 20:05, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Sanskrit is not proto-Indic. It is an archaic dialect artificially polished from whose vulgar version only some Indic (and not the Dardic) languages are descended. In stands in a similar position to Classical Latin, which is not the same as the Vulgar Latin from which Romance descended, or better yet, Church Slavonic, which was a very archaic dialect of South Slavonic; i.e., close enough to proto-Slavonic to be a stand in for it, but not the ancestor of East or West Slavonic, and somewhat close to Balto-Slavic but definitely not equal to it. That doesn't answer whether w>v>w happened or not, unfortunately. Here we'd need a source to quote and I have only the most General surveys, basically Comrie's World's Major Languages would probably be the best, source I have, and totally inadequate. μηδείς (talk) 00:37, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Shiksha indicates that v was indeed labiodental, but that is the Classical Sanskrit pronunciation; it was by a time (ca. 400 BC at the earliest) when the vernaculars were already in the Middle Indic stage, so I wouldn't count on Vedic by ca. 1250 BC or even 1500 BC to have been pronounced the same. Mitanni Indic probably still had [w]. That said, since Sanskrit is not a modern Indo-European language in any shape or form, it's irrelevant for the question.

Certain Slavic languages (Slovenian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, I think) retain [w] as a syllable-final allophone of /v/. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:39, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Duh, Brythonic does retain /enwiki/w/ where it wasn't converted into /gw/. It's often suspected that the areal contact influence of Brythonic kept Middle English from converting [w] to [v] (and from losing /ʍ/ and the interdentals), given that even the North Germanic languages participated in that change, so geographical isolation alone can't explain it (especially considering that English was never isolated from continental influences in the first place: there are Dutch loans, for example).

Apart from that, the replacement w > v (or occasionally b, as in outlying Bavarian dialects south of the Alps) has been virtually universal in Europe and also Indo-European Asia, even affecting some non-Indo-European languages such as Finnish. This change, the lengthening of vowels in open syllables, and to a lesser extent the loss of interdentals (not in the western and southern periphery of Europe, although Goidelic was also affected), possibly due to Latin/Romance influence, belong (in the realm of phonology) to the main typological (Standard Average European) traits and changes typifying Europe as an areal. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:54, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Armenian is often neglected – while it apparently hasn't preserved [w] as such anywhere, either, and (usually?) turned it into /v/ too, it has frequently turned it into /g/ instead (at least word-initially).

Medeis: Per Dardic languages#Classification, Asko Parpola believes that Vedic is the Indic dialect that the Dardic languages descend from! --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:21, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

As for v > w, I wouldn't rule it out too quickly. Something like this might have happened in Gaelic (broad bh apparently went [vˠ] > [w], although the point of departure could have been [βˠ]). But I'd have to ask Martin Kümmel, for example, who has worked on sound change typology.

As for Goidelic, it appears to have gone [w] > [v] > [f], so isn't a counter-example, either. The development [w] > [gw] (> [g]) may appear surprising if you do not realise that [w] really has two constrictions, a bilabial and a velar one, so it's more like [ɰβ̞], which is close to [ɣʷ]. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:53, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Word-initial w (< Proto-Slavic v < PIE w) is [w] in Lower Sorbian at least (not sure about Upper Sorbian) when it isn't palatalized. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:42, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Meaning of "wilderness variation"

I could not understand the meaning of "wilderness variation" in the following sentence, by the way is the sentence grammatical?
"For the activities of trekking and wilderness variation Kuppad Jubbal is an extremely important pavilion." Thanks. Vineet Chaitanya (talk) 13:09, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

As a native English speaker, the sentence doesn't make any sense to me. Can you provide us a link to the page where this was used? Or is it not on the web? Is Kuppad Jubbal a person's name? Because a pavilion is a building, not something that a person can be. Dismas|^(talk) 13:26, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Googling it suggests it's a site in the Himalayas. The sentence might just be a poor translation. A pavilion can be a shelter. Maybe they were trying to convey the idea of a pleasant place to be. The "variation" part might be a misspelling of "vacation" or maybe they're trying to convey the idea of a diversion from routine living. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:37, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

(ec)Just a guess; it could be that "pavilion" should actually have been "arena". I see such "wrong synonym choice" errors quite often in translations of highly idiomatic language. I found Jubbal, it's in Himanchal Pradesh India, but no luck with Kuppad. The topic appears to be wilderness tourism. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:05, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I was wondering if pavilion should be alpine hut so wilderness variation could be something like instead of a tent you stay in a house. Rmhermen (talk) 17:37, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Could "variation" be intended to mean "diversion"? In any case it can be neither Indian English nor an attempt at translating a standard phrase in an Indian language as Vineet would have recognized those. Maybe it's just somebody's isolated clumsy coinage directly into English. But if the thing this odd phrase "wilderness variation" is intended to refer to is a standard activity offered at that place then one should eventually be able to figure out what was meant. Contact Basemetal here 19:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I thought it might have been meant to be "wilderness diversity", but that's not an activity. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:37, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, almost certainly this should be: "For the activities of trekking and wilderness variation [diversity,] Kuppad Jubbal is an extremely important pavilion park." See images. μηδείς (talk) 03:54, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

One could still keep 'activities': "For the activities of [such as] trekking and [for] wilderness variation [diversity] etc." What would 'wilderness diversity' be? 'Wildlife diversity'? A diversity of landscape? Contact Basemetal here 19:38, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Presumably wildlife diversity was meant, but wilderness diversity can make sense, if wilderness is "ecological". μηδείς (talk) 20:55, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

"Variation" could simply be a typo or bad OCR of "vacation". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:25, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes Baseball Bugs had already made that suggestion which is tempting because it seems to require the smallest amount of deletion. But I still tend to go with Medeis's suggestion, I don't know why. In any case 'pavilion' can't stand as it is as it doesn't look like Kuppad Jubbal is just a 'pavilion'.Contact Basemetal here 19:38, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think it is much more likely this is a bad mechanical translation than a spellcheck error. μηδείς (talk) 20:55, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much to all the contributorsVineet Chaitanya (talk) 11:37, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

Indian names with "shit"

Anyone who goes to WP:UAA will be familiar with DeltaQuadBot's frequent comment of "Many names contain the string "shit" especially names from India". In Indian names, what function does "shit" fulfill? Is it a common word in one or more languages that's incorporated into names (comparable to English "son" or "smith"), or is it just a sound cluster that happened to end up in several common names? And in what language(s) is this a common name, i.e. from what language backgrounds do these names originate? Nyttend (talk) 21:02, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Not sure, but there's a clear difference between Shitole and shithole. Words like "malady" and "maladjustment" probably sound shitty in Hindi, though "mala" alone doesn't mean much in our language. Pure coincidence, I'd guess. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:13, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Pune City isn't all it's cracked up to be, either. Has a Shitō-ryū school, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:19, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I've seen Dikshit varied as "Dixit". I wonder if Anurag Dikshit has ever considered altering both his names. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:23, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

‹x› for /kṣ/ is defensible on two grounds: Sanskrit /s/ becomes /ṣ/ after most consonants; and I believe there are words with /kṣ/ that have Greek cognates with ‹ξ› (xi), though I don't remember any. —Tamfang (talk) 06:49, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Partial and tentative answer: Shit (शित = ʃɪt̪ not a homonym for the English word) was a rishi in Vishwamitra's clan. So my guess is that the many/most/all of the Indian last names that end in -shit/-xit are those of Brahmins who (nominally) trace the paternal lineage to the rishi. And if this etymology is right, then the language of origin would be Sanskrit, although only a miniscule minority of the people with those surnames nowadays will know the language. It is so difficult to google for this in English, that I cannot really confirm my informed guess; so take it with a pinch of salt. Abecedare (talk) 21:43, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Another possibility: -it (ɪt̪) is also used as a suffix in Hini/Sanskrit to form an adjective, ie Q-it = having the quality Q, or one who has been Q. So Indian names ending with -shit could just be be instances of the 'Q' ending in consonant sh. This is the more likely etymology, at least for first names ending in -shit. Abecedare (talk) 23:32, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Has anyone considered Romanian? This is just a question, as I have not researched it yet. I would guess the /enwiki/w/ changed to /v/ as per Italian, but I have not checked. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 18:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you're in the wrong section. I'll copy it where it belongs. I hope that's ok. Contact Basemetal here 19:05, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. This has happened a few times. I press the right 'edit' button, but end up in the wrong section. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 19:29, 27 October 2014 (UTC)