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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 January 18

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January 18[edit]

Paul Meara[edit]

How do I email Paul Meara to tell him that one of the words on his Plausible Non-words List, homoglyph, is a real word? Khemehekis (talk) 02:17, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Typing the words Paul Meara email into Google gave me this as the first hit. It contains his email address. It's also on his website. What exactly did you try before asking here? Matt Deres (talk) 16:32, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I googled "paul meara" email, with quotes, which for some reason didn't pull up any pages where I saw his email on the first few pages. Khemehekis (talk) 03:34, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, by the way. Your google-fu is better than mine. Khemehekis (talk) 03:36, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The word is a neologism and doesn't yet appear in printed dictionaries, though I expect it will soon. It is well cited in Wiktionary. Dbfirs 13:52, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
How odd. I copy-pasted what you typed into Google and the first hit was still the Cardiff site. Matt Deres (talk) 16:47, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Leipzig[edit]

From German cruiser Leipzig: "Prinz Eugen struck C on her port side, just forward of her funnel, cutting her nearly in half - the forward point of the clipper bow of Prinz Eugen actually stuck out beyond the starboard side of Leipzig."

What does "struck C" mean here? Mũeller (talk) 02:36, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It means that a previous contributor messed up slightly while working on the paragraph. Fixed. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 03:44, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Are there other words where the Arabic consonant غ interchanges with the Hebrew consonant ר?[edit]

According to this site the words غنى and רנה/ רנן are from the same root. If it's true, then my questions is: Are there other words in which the Arabic consonant غ interchanges with the Hebrew consonant ר? ThePupil (talk) 10:42, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a usual or ordinary correspondence, which would be غ / ע (as you probably already know), and none of the Biblical Hebrew words derived from such roots are shown with Arabic cognates with غ in Brown-Driver-Briggs. I don't understand the Slavic language on the linked web-page, so I can't tell what evidence (if any) is offered for the idea... AnonMoos (talk) 11:31, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that the basic assumption of that site is wrong. Actually, the Arabic root غ.ن.ي (meaning "sing") is analogous to the Hebrew root ע.נ.י (meaning "sing", whether in binyan qal as in Numbers 21 17 Psalms 147 7 etc., or in binyan kaved as in Exodus 32 18 etc.), whereas the Hebrew noun רנה derives from the Hebrew root ר.נ.נ (meaning "sing"), being analogous to the Arabic root ر.ن.ن (meaning "scream"). 185.46.78.10 (talk) 11:47, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]