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May 27

Root vs rowt

The standard American pronunciation of "route" is, as I understand it, /rowt/.

So, why do people sing of getting their kicks on "Root" 66, rather than Rowt 66? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:37, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Both pronunciations occur in American English. I would say that when "route" occurs before a number, the "oo" pronunciation is preferred, while in a phrase such as "postal route", the "ow" pronunciation would be preferred, at least in my speech. AnonMoos (talk) 02:15, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard it both ways as a prefix to a highway number, even by the same individual. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:32, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, same. I think the standard is that there is no standard. Matt Deres (talk) 20:22, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add another vote to the "both ways occur in virtually all circumstances" column. In more detail, it is always "Root" 66 (other, less famous, roads can vary), but mail delivery in the country is by rural "rowts". Other than those two (very specific) examples, I come across (and use) both versions fairly commonly. I would probably ask someone what "root" they took to get somewhere, but would also ask that a message get "rowted" to the proper person. But the oppsite usages would not surprise me at all. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:54, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's been my experience with NA English: "root" is the pronunciation for nouns; "rowt" for verbs. Folly Mox (talk) 16:15, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And that box that gets you internet access.... is that a rooter or a rowter? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:52, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the tossup between root and rowt for route, everyone I know/have asked (a sample of people that is mostly American) pronounces router as rowt-er. GalacticShoe (talk) 23:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In British English a router is pronounced "rowter", but a router is pronounced "rooter". DuncanHill (talk) 00:07, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In America, I've always heard the electronic device pronounced "rowter". Thought I can see why "rooter" makes more sense etymologically. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:40, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Australia they seem to say "rowter" for router, possibly because of the usual meaning of the word root. Strangely though, road numbers are referred as "roots" not "rowts". Router is pronounced "rowter". TrogWoolley (talk) 09:05, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose "My router keeps going down" would mean something else entirely if they used the "rooter" pronunciation. DuncanHill (talk) 21:44, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm always amused by senior US Army officers pronouncing route as a homophone of rout; "a panicked, disorderly and undisciplined retreat of troops from a battlefield". The potential for misunderstanding seems obvious. Alansplodge (talk) 16:02, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oddly enough, rout and route have the same etymology.[1][2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary gives an entirely different etymology for rout. --Lambiam 08:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the square root of 66 is an irrational number, 8.12403840464... Driving an infinite time should give a precise result at either end. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:14, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English itself often seems irrational. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:21, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Based on 40 years of working with the woodworking power tool, with the scars to prove it, I can attest that the power tool is always pronounced "rowter" in the United States. Cullen328 (talk) 06:28, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously because it is rout + -er, not route + -er. --Lambiam 07:58, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all, for the enlightenment. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:38, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

On British v American pronunciation differences, The Wordy wise feature in the Daily Mail of 23 May was contributed by a Derbyshire reader:

THE BALL GUY - footie fanatic.

THE CALL GUY - town crier.

THE GALL GUY - what a cheek!

THE HALL GUY - Albert habitué

THE MALL GUY - shopping precinct denizen...

I thought that the pronunciation of "mall" implicit in the rhyme was an Americanism, but now I'm not so sure. 2A00:23D0:492:6301:207B:B2D7:62D2:2142 (talk) 11:35, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Australians are not particularly known for adopting American ways, but the above is the only way we have ever said "mall". In fact, the first time I heard the Mall (in London) pronounced to rhyme with pal, gal, Sal, shall or Val, I thought, These silly English people don't even know how to speak their own language. The things one discovers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:38, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The term "mall" referring to a shopping centre is short for "shopping mall". The first uses of "shopping mall" were in the US, referring to a "pedestrian mall" lined on both sides with shops. Pedestrian malls were popular in the 60s, and that is when the term "shopping mall" came to be used in the sense of shopping centre. It was generalized to shopping centres in other forms than pedestrian malls when this type became less popular, the first step being the covered shopping mall. As pedestrian malls became rare, the remaining "malls" were shopping malls, so dropping the redundant qualifier "shopping" was a natural step. When the UK use of the term "mall" for a shopping centre was copied from the US, so was its pronunciation, but only for this new sense. --Lambiam 06:11, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So, potentially, there could be a /mawl/ located on The /mæl/? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:28, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 29

Jargon

What is the etymology of calling proposals/requests motions in some formal contexts? I move to/motion to dismiss, I move for [something I hope judge allows], parliamentary motion and so on. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:18, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The etymologies of "move"[3] and "motion" [4] may help. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:08, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the United States and perhaps elsewhere , Robert's Rules of Order has had enormous influence on such terminology outside the context of courts and legislatures. The section on "Motions" has lots of useful links. Cullen328 (talk) 05:24, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One pedantic technicality: "move" is a verb, "motion" is a noun. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:20, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Only in their technical parliamentary senses. Both words, move and motion, can be used in non-technical senses as nouns as well as as verbs. --Lambiam 07:51, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Paris, Peru.....Iraq, Iran....

There is a somewhat slow-moving discussion at Talk:Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing#Ukraingia about the pronunciation (and possible meaning) of a word in Stevie's spoken introduction of the song. The neologism in question occurs at 25 seconds. Anybody know what it is? There are unlikely to be any RS sources for this. I suspect Wonder himself wanted most of that jive to sound as impenetrable as possible. So maybe we shouldn't even try. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:34, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd never heard the song before, but I listened to it and it definitely sounds like Eurasia to me. A K sound would be easy to pick out, and he doesn't enunciate K at all. I agree with all you wrote on the talk page, and it seems daft for your nemesis to assume that Wonder just picked the word "Ukraingia" out of a hat (or an atlas). --Viennese Waltz 10:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's also a little surprising to be told that he just "looked at a map". Martinevans123 (talk) 10:17, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I wonder (no pun intended) if that has even occurred to the other editor. --Viennese Waltz 10:24, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps he used a tactile map? Alansplodge (talk) 11:28, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Or maybe, being a musical creative genius, he just made it all up in his head, in the studio, on the spur of the moment? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:10, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Martinevans123: I agree. I've added a comment to the article's talk page to that effect. Bazza 7 (talk) 13:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree it sounds like Eurasia: a technical and uncommon term but a very unspecific location, achieving the effect of self-exaggerated worldliness. Also Ukraine will have been labelled "Ukrainian SSR" in maps at the time. Meanwhile the second item might indeed be Beirut rather than Peru (with an unenunciated or unreleased final /t/), both because of how the first syllable sounds and because of the geographic locale. --Theurgist (talk) 22:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've always thought it might be Beiru'. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:42, 1 June 2024 (UTC) ...you might want to attempt an IPA transcription of that introductory passage that follows the opening "Eek! Eek!".... but just /ˈwɔt͡ʃjɔɹˈsɛlf/[reply]

I don't really hear any diphthong, there. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But neither is it reduced to [ə]. Also, unlike the initial consonant of Paris, the one here doesn't seem to be aspirated; for pairs like /p/ and /b/, the aspiration or lack thereof is said to be more of a distinctive feature than the actual voicing. But then, this syllable is unstressed, which may have neutralized that. --Theurgist (talk) 20:41, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As it's in a pseudo-Spanish accent and in alliterative wordplay, I still think Peru sounds more likely. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:16, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect Wonder was slightly less concerned than we are about aspirated consonants and diphthongs. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:39, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 31

Can someone’s native language affect how they hear other languages?

Can the phonology and sound rules of someone’s native language affect how they hear other languages (or how their brain processes the sounds being heard)? For example, say a person whose native language is one that does not allow consonant clusters or syllables ending in consonants (and who is not greatly familiar with any other languages) listens to someone speaking a different language that lacks these rules. Would the listener hear the speaker as vowel-padding their syllables, thus making them more akin to the syllable structure of the listener’s own language, even if the speaker is not actually doing such? Primal Groudon (talk) 00:49, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a native English speaker, my first three years or so learning Chinese I had a lot of difficulty differentiating /i/ and /y/, let alone tones one and two. And I was a lot less deaf back then. So anecdotally yes. Folly Mox (talk) 00:54, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

McGurk effect

Whatever the language, all listeners rely on visual information to a degree in speech perception. But the McGurk effect's intensity differs across languages. Dutch,[37] English, Spanish, German, Italian and Turkish [38] language listeners experience a robust McGurk effect; Japanese and Chinese listeners, weaker.[39] Most research on the McGurk effect between languages has been between English and Japanese. A smaller McGurk effect occurs in Japanese listeners than English listeners.[37][40][41][42][43][44] The cultural practice of face avoidance in Japanese people may diminish the McGurk effect, as well as tone and syllabic structures of the language.[37] This could also be why Chinese listeners are less susceptible to visual cues, and similar to Japanese, produce a smaller effect than English listeners.[37] Studies also show that Japanese listeners do not show a developmental increase in visual influence after six, as English children do.[40][41] Japanese listeners identify incompatibility between visual and auditory stimuli better than English listeners.[37][41] This greater ability could relate to Japanese's lacking consonant clusters.[37][42] Regardless, listeners of all languages resort to visual stimuli when speech is unintelligible; the McGurk effect then applies to them equally.[37][42] The McGurk effect works with listeners of every tested language.[10]

--Error (talk) 01:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speakers of languages in which [ɑ] and [a] are effectively allophones (e.g. Turkish) may have a hard time hearing the distinction between, for example, Dutch man ("man") and maan ("moon"); they sound the same to them. Similarly, Russian lacks a voiced or voiceless glottal fricative, so Russian speakers, hearing one, tend to map it to their phoneme /x/. Consequently, they then hear the Dutch spoken word hoed ("hat") as if the speaker said goed ("good").

Children of expats who were exposed at a young age to another language than their mother's tongue, and then move back with their parents even before they start to speak, have been shown to have an easier time later in life learning that other language's phonemic system than people who did not have such exposure. Apparently, the neural net for mapping the sounds to phonemes was developed at a young age and, while unused, remained somewhat functional. --Lambiam 07:13, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My sister speaks some Dutch, and was told that when she tried to say "hale good" (standard reply to "how are you?") it came out as "yellow hat" – spoonerizing the ‹h› /h/ and ‹g› /x/. —Tamfang (talk) 20:31, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's hele goed vis-a-vis gele hoed, I believe. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not entirely grammatical though. It should be heel goed and gele hoed, gele being the declined form of geel. Hele is the declined form of heel, but in this case it's an adverb, so not declined. Heel sounds more or less like English hale.

There's also the (probably apocryphal) story of the priest from West Flanders. In West Flemish, /ɣ/ is pronounced [ɦ] and /ɦ/ is dropped. The priest hypercorrected, talking about the geilige maagd (horny virgin) instead of heilige maagd (holy virgin). PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:12, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For sure. The way the speaker of a given language hears a foreign language is reflected in the resulting "accent" associated with the native speaker's language. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:26, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perceptual narrowing#Phoneme distinction. Nardog (talk) 15:08, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A possibly Norwegian woman taking refuge in a seaside town in eastern England during the second world war wanted eggs and carefully enunciated the word to the shopkeeper to ensure he would understand her, but it came out "eks" and he was bemused. I can say no more as I don't speak Norwegian. 2A00:23D0:492:6301:207B:B2D7:62D2:2142 (talk) 11:45, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

F.U.N.E.X? Alansplodge (talk) 16:57, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess that in Swedish and Norwegian, for the combination of a short vowel and a voiced plosive, it might be unvoiced before s. Then, Scandinavian speakers might still be aware of the distinction in English. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:24, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I once heard a slightly agitated Dutch traveler, about to disembark, tell a flight attendant that he wanted his rat back. It turned out, after some confusion, that he was looking for a red bag. --Lambiam 14:57, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or "ret back", more likely, but ret is not a common English word. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:24, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually more like "ret beck". In something along the lines of "I want my XXX beck", spoken by a furriner, a listener's initial inclination will be to interpret this by the replacement "beck" → "back", thereby coaxing the puzzled listener towards the replacement "ret" → "rat". --Lambiam 20:27, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I spent hours with a Portuguese friend who was telling me I say não with the wrong vowel. I'd say it exactly as she said it, then she'd say I was getting it wrong, and as explanation, she'd repeat it the same way again. Eventually she got tired, and said she was slippy. Card Zero (talk) 09:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not just between languages but even between dialects. I have the Pin–pen merger and cannot reliable hear or say the difference in those two words in my own language. Rmhermen (talk) 14:21, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Card Zero: There was a forum comment yesterday "I did re-add Born Slippy to my Spotify playlist so some good has come from this interaction" [5]. I never heard the expression before. 92.25.129.245 (talk) 09:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Almost all dialects of Norwegian and most Swedish dialects have a distinction between two different pitch-accents or “tonems”. People having languages without such accents – including Norwegians and Swedes lacking them in their dialect – often tend to not be able to hear the difference unless being trained for it. --T*U (talk) 07:41, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

June 1

"accidents and conveniences" (May 15)

banned user

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I don't think that Will Adam became Archdeacon of Canterbury by chance [6] (at 18:47). Don't you think that Keir Starmer looks a lot like Will Adam and [redacted] these days? Favonian appears to think so [7]. Will Adam's career at University and beyond mirrors that of [redacted] in many ways. After Favonian's intervention the interview with Adam was pulled from the University's website. - 92.25.128.239 10:08, 17 May 2024

And that was before the Diane Abbott debacle! Harking back to Future Perfect at Sunrise's outburst (08:06, 3 September 2008) Jon Stewart tells Fox News to "go f**k itself.^[1] Patrick Kidd in the Times of 23 May puts it very well:

Vennells is not a sympathetic figure, who seems to have lacked the charity and good faith [administrators please note] towards her flock that one might hope from an ordained priest. Anthony Trollope, that chronicler of Victorian churchmen as well as a high-up Post Office administrator in his day, would have depicted her as a rather cold and managerial archdeacon.

Is there a connection between these sentences or do they concern unrelated topics collected under one heading? As archdeacons of the Church of England are not selected by sortition, it is fairly certain that Adam's appointment was not "by chance". --Lambiam 11:50, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate." --ColinFine (talk) 14:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

^ The Daily Show (31 May 2024). "Jon Stewart tells Fox News to go f**k itself". Retrieved 1 June 2024.

June 3

Why are placenames are not pronounced the same everywhere?

I would have thought that placenames are pronounced the same everywhere. For example, both Cambridge s (in England and Massachusetts are pronounced the same [keim-brije], along with Gloucester [glos-te] (UK, USA). However, is Palestine (state) [pa-les-tain] and East Palestine, Ohio [pa-les-tin] really said that way? How about the Thames River (Connecticut)? Do people actually say [temz], as in the one thru London, or [theymz]? I was thinking that because they are likely familiar with the UK Thames and say it that way rather. Are all of the other Thames at thames (disambiguation) pronounced [temz] since they do not all list the IPA? JuniperChill (talk) 16:04, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Toponyms and hydronyms often retain significantly older pronunciations even as the surrounding language evolves, leaving them with often highly unintuitive written forms. See also Frome, Dong'e, et al. Folly Mox (talk) 16:09, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To me, having placenames pronounced differently is not the same as normal words. For example, I do see why water is pronounced in many different ways depending on the region. Another example I can think of is how Gaelic can be pronounced [ga-lik] as in Scottish Gaelic or [gei-lik] as in Irish Gaelic. I tend to say [gei-lik] for both.

But back to rivers, I do see that this is being discussed at Talk:Thames_River_(Connecticut)#Change_of_name so I need to see if people in Connecticut actually say it that way and not [temz]. Also, I (and possibly many) never heard hydronym before so I am linking it. JuniperChill (talk) 16:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll throw in Gillingham, Kent and Gillingham, Dorset. Just because. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gloucester, USA is in New England: consider New England English. If it were a place in, say, Alabama, like Birmingham, USA, the pronunciation might not have been conserved. Card Zero (talk) 08:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"I would have thought that placenames are pronounced the same everywhere" Why? They're words. Words are pronounced differently in different accents, dialects, and languages. Even fairly common words. I know of three ways to say "aunt" (and actually use 2 of them). My real life personal name isn't even the same to all English speakers, and it's a very common name. My mother's maiden name is pronounced differently by some of her own siblings. Why would you expect place names to be different? --- User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:13, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

People re-shape names to fit their native dialect. One of the many things Americans get legendarily wrong, is what we do to foreign and Native-American names. From my native Tennessee, I cringe when I remember how we pronounce Bolivar (TN) and Montezuma (TN), to say nothing of Kosciusko (MS); and Σάρδεις in the Lydian Empire was probably pronounced rather differently from Sardis, Tennessee. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:19, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this. Where the same placename occurs in two regions, even if it was originally pronounced the same, it will often have been subjected to pronunciation shifts, e.g. a name with historical -r may lose the -r in the speech of non-rhotic British accents but retain it in rhotic American accents. This may also be why even placenames created relatively recently and from a common origin develop different pronunciations, e.g. the NH vs NC places named wikt:Concord, both derived from the common noun concord, have different pronunciations. And in many cases, especially with the more obscure Biblical names that see use as US placenames, settlers may have picked the name out of a book and used a spelling pronunciation. Also, occasionally placenames only superficially look the same in spelling but have different origins (and had different pronunciations to begin with), though I can't relocate a good example offhand (the best I can find offhand is Moscow, Tennessee, and Moscow, Russia, which are pronounced differently by Americans and have different etymological origins, although Britons pronounce them the same). -sche (talk) 17:29, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The letter sequence "kansas" is pronounced differently in the names of the states of Kansas and Arkansas, both in the same general region of the United States...

-- AnonMoos (talk) 20:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And the Arkansas River is pronounced differently depending on which state you're in. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:12, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I heard once that the first senators from Arkansas disagreed on the pronunciation, so the presiding officer called on them as "the gentleman from Arkánzass" and "the gentleman from Árkansaw". —Tamfang (talk) 21:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of Kosciusko [sic]: That was how Australia spelled the name of its tallest mountain until only a couple of decades ago. We finally got the spelling right (apart from the Polish diacritics), but we've never got the pronunciation right, and probably never will, given our national ethos of not only being ignorant of the pronunciations of foreign names but actually being proud of that ignorance. It would never do to be seen to be knowledgeable in such matters; that would make you probably gay, certainly suspect. Yet we're among the most multicultural nations on planet Earth, and we're some of the most intrepid international travellers anywhere. Go figure. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:03, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it was good to see that spelling correction. Australians can't even agree among themselves about how to pronounce the name of the Queensland city of Cairns. Some pronounce it the same as the Campbells soup cans, while to others it's multiple piles of rocks. HiLo48 (talk) 23:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When I was in Western Australia, I mentioned the name of its southernmost city, Albany (there are some interesting references at the beginning of the lead), making the first syllable rhyme with "All-Bran". I was corrected (I suspected that would happen before I opened my mouth). The first syllable actually rhymes with "Albania". 2A00:23D0:EAC:C101:14CB:81DB:A836:FF5D (talk) 14:16, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first syllable of "Albany" is "Al". How do you make it rhyme with something that ends in an /n/ or a vowel? --Lambiam 16:09, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly meant to say the first syllable is like that of Alabama. —Tamfang (talk) 21:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see the city also has an aboriginal name (Kinjarling). I was unaware till now that they might have both. 2A00:23D0:EAC:C101:14CB:81DB:A836:FF5D (talk) 14:23, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just looked at the Cairns article and I think the IPA in the lead has changed. Do Aussies say cairn like they do for the city? Maybe the IPA should also be added to cairn because it may be pronounced completely differently to the city. Likewise, the '-bourne' in Eastbourne and Melbourne is different. I still pronounce both Palestine (the one people are familiar with) and East Palestine, Ohio (I only knew this because of the train derailment) the same way and I think I am not alone in this. JuniperChill (talk) 18:15, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The good people of Shrewsbury pronounce the name in one of two different ways, depending (as I was told by a Salopian) on one's perceived social class. Alansplodge (talk) 22:40, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Salopian might have some different connotations to a French speaker... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:55, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

June 4

How many solutions of perfect pangram exist?

In Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 May 17#Pangram, I asked “Use the symbol of the 118 chemical elements, and the abbreviation of the 88 constellations, and the abbreviation of the 50 states of America, what is the least words we need to make a pangram?”, and someone gave a solution of perfect pangram:

Aql, B, Cu, Fm, Gd, KY, NJ, Oph, Sex, VT, WI, Zr

I also found some other solutions from this solution:

Replace B to Yb, replace KY to K
Replace B to Bi, replace WI to W
Replace Cu to C and U
Replace KY to K and Y
Replace B to Bh, replace Oph to Po
Replace Sex to S and Xe
Replace Cu to Tc and U, replace VT to V

So, how many solutions of perfect pangram exist? Also, how many things (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) are contained in every perfect pangram? Or not contained in any perfect pangram? (I only know, by the answer of the one who gave the solution, every perfect pangram contains NJ, and thus no perfect pangram contains others containing the letter N such as N, In, Nor) 2001:B042:4005:546F:E921:9E13:BB77:C79F (talk) 00:12, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These solutions have at least 12 elements. I find in total 1,687,855 perfect pangrams, 476 of which have 11 elements. The lexicographically first 11-element solution is:

Ag, Bk, Ds, Equ, Hf, LMi, NJ, Oct, Pyx, WV, Zr

--Lambiam 10:41, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only things (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) contained in both of your solution and the solution given in Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 May 17#Pangram are NJ and Zr, but for Zr, we can replace Ag and Zr to AZ and Rg, thus NJ is the only thing (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) contained in every perfect pangram. (There are only 3 things (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) containing the letter Z: AZ, Zn, Zr, but Zn cannot be used since NJ must be used)

Also, how many things (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) are not contained in any perfect pangram? 220.132.230.56 (talk) 13:13, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Counting abbreviations that only differ by lower/upper case, I find 60 unusable ones: And, Ant, Aqr, Ar/AR, Ari, Au, Aur, Cae, Car, Cen, Cn, CrA, Cru, CVn, Del, Dra, Er, Eri, Gru, Her, In/IN, Ind, Leo, Lep, Lu, Lup, Lyn, Men, Mn/MN, Mon, N, Na, Nb, NC, Nd/ND, Ne/NE, Nh/NH, Ni, NM, No, Nor, Np, NV, NY, Per, Ra, Re, Ret, Rn, Ru, Ser, Sn, Tau, Tel, TN, TrA, UMa, Vel, Vul, Zn. --Lambiam 14:19, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

All of these 60 things can be ruled out by the letters J, Q, Z: (and limited the using of the letters A, E, L, N, R, U)

NJ is the only thing which contains the letter J, thus NJ must be used.
All other things (besides NJ) containing the letter N cannot be used, this would include Zn.
AZ, Zn, Zr are the only three things which contain the letter Z, but since Zn cannot be used, one of AZ and Zr must be used.
Since one of AZ and Zr must be used, all things containing both of the letters A and R cannot be used, this would include Aqr.
Aql, Aqr, Equ are the only three things which contain the letter Q, but since Aqr cannot be used, one of Aql and Equ must be used.
Since one of Aql and Equ must be used, all things containing both of the letters A and E, or containing both of the letters A and U, or containing both of the letters L and E, or containing both of the letters L and U, cannot be used.
Also, AZ and Aql cannot be both used since both of them contain the letter A, thus at least one of Zr and Equ must be used, and hence all things containing both of the letters R and E, or containing both of the letters R and U, cannot be used.

220.132.230.56 (talk) 15:48, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there are 1687855 perfect pangrams, and all of them contain NJ, besides NJ, which ones are used in the most number, the second-most number, the third-most number, etc. of the perfect pangrams? Also, besides the 60 unusable ones, which ones are used in the least number, the second-least number, the third-least number, etc. of the perfect pangrams? 220.132.230.56 (talk) 15:56, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The questions are endless, but less and less interesting. --Lambiam 18:40, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Besides, can you give all 476 11-element solutions? Thanks. (I think that there should be more things which are not contained in any 11-element solutions, e.g. the lexicographically first 11-element solution starts with Ag, this means Ac is not contained in any 11-element solutions, also, since the sets of Ca/CA is the same as Ac, thus Ca/CA is also not contained in any 11-element solutions) 220.132.230.56 (talk) 19:21, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They can be admired at User:Lambiam/Pangram. --Lambiam 07:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also Ara, Boo, Cnc, Pup, since they have repeated letters themselves. 220.132.230.56 (talk) 19:25, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thus there are 64 unusable ones. 220.132.230.56 (talk) 19:25, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right. My program throws them out right at the start, before commencing its search. --Lambiam 07:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why are English, Indonesian & Malay the closest natural languages to ISO Basic Latin alphabet?

(at least according to List of Latin-script alphabets and ISO basic Latin alphabet). Is it cause English has unusually high tolerance for inconsistent and non-phonetic spelling? Why are Malay and Indonesian alphabets so Englishy? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The notion that one can assign a measure of distance between a natural language and an alphabet is absurd. --Lambiam 07:02, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mentally replacing "natural language" with "orthography", this becomes one of those questions that is presented as asking about some subtle truth about language, which is odd to me because the answer is pretty much just that the Dutch were the ones to romanize Malay. Also, I will hiss every time someone says that English spelling is qualitatively more irregular than any other: surely you've read French at least once in your life?Remsense诉 07:08, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If one hears a French word pronounced, say /si.fle/ , its spelling can often only be guessed: is it siffler, sifflez, sifflé, sifflée, sifflés or sifflées? The champion may be /vɛʁ/: is it vair, vairs, ver, vers, vert, verts, verre or verres? The other direction, however, from spelling to pronunciation, tends to be rather predictable. For English you often also have to guess in that direction, as is made clear in the poem "The Chaos". I wonder if there are languages where it is the other way around: the standard orthographic rendering of a spoken word is usually predictable, but the pronunciation of a written word is often hard to guess. --Lambiam 09:51, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The technical answer is that the spellings of the three languages do not require the use of diacritic marks, or of letters beyond those found in ASCII. (Sometimes diacritics are optionally used in writing English in the case of words borrowed from other languages into English, or the "New Yorker dieresis", but it's never wrong to omit diacritics in English.) However, this has nothing to do with how good the spelling systems are in writing the languages. The Malay spelling system is quasi-phonemic, except in not having a distinct symbol for the schwa vowel, while English spelling is of course quite complex... AnonMoos (talk) 10:42, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English doesn't generally use diacritics because its orthography (spelling) was modeled after that of (Middle) French. That may seem surprising, since modern French makes heavy use of diacritics. But English orthography was first established in the late 14th century, and at that time, diacritics were not yet standard in French. Unlike other European languages, English never adopted diacritics, which in Europe are mainly used for vowels. The Great Vowel Shift radically transformed the pronunciation of English vowels. As a result, spellings that approximated vowel pronunciations around 1400 no longer did so, and the divergence was too complex for diacritics to remedy easily. Without a thorough spelling reform, they would just have added further complexity. Fortunately, there was no push to adopt them in English. Malay and Indonesian are essentially different varieties of a single language. They share the same basic orthography, which was developed under British and Dutch influence during the colonial period. (Previously, Malay had been written with the Arabic abjad.) Dutch, like English, has an orthography developed mostly in the Middle Ages, before diacritics were widely or systematically used. So you could add Dutch to your list of (mostly) diacritic-free languages. Malay and Indonesian follow a model based mainly on English, with some Dutch influence. Initially, Indonesian followed a Dutch model, and Malay followed an English model. In 1972, Malaysia and Indonesia agreed on a spelling reform that leaned more toward an English model. Marco polo (talk) 20:27, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also English mostly got rid of non-Latin graphemes over time like thorn, Æ, Œ and long s even though European languages usually added them if anything. Such as turning nn into ñ, ss to ß, vowel splits to å and ae oe ue to ä ö ü. Why did they die out? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:41, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Æ and Œ are non-Latin graphemes?????

The stunning revelation aside, the answer is "the Norman conquest", like has already been gestured towards above. English pretty much died out as an important written language from the 11th to the 14th centuries. I think it's true to some extent that the advent of the printing press finished them off for good, but it's not completely true since there were printed English publications where they printed Þ and Ƿ just fine. As you can discern from reading documents throughout the modern period, the long S did not fall out of use in English until the 18th century or so.Remsense 诉 03:33, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The ligatures ⟨Æ⟩ and ⟨Œ⟩ are not included in the Latin alphabet. They make their first appearances in the Middle Ages, first in cursive handwriting. --Lambiam 09:21, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but they were used to write Latin, which I feel is the pertinent sense in this context. Remsense诉 09:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Non-Classical Latin or JUW which might be more common than any other novelty for some reason? It is useful as IJUVW became different phonemes though th is 2 different phonemes and we got rid of those letters (which the first neo-English authors unused to Germanic glyphs were uninclined to resurrect? When did the average England resident stop pronouncing ð and θ "poorly" with Norman accent? Did some people do this longer in some places and castes not influenced by non-Norman languages without th-sounds?) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:32, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It might just be that ð and θ were more difficult to print than write by hand, I guess. I am more surprised that the sounds themselves have remained in English, when they disappeared in all continental Germanic languages. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:23, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They were not "more difficult to print". Again, it is largely French orthographic influence. Plus, Þ and Ƿ looked a lot like P, which didn't help their viability. Remsense诉 09:50, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can't really understand the questions you're asking, could you clarify? Remsense诉 09:52, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Did Norman have th-sounds (I've heard they're one of if not the rarest 2020s General American English phonemes in the world and in the Indo-Europeans) before 1066 and if it didn't then when did pronouncing IPA ð and θ with a Norman accent die out and who were the holdouts? Also what did ð and θ sound like with a Norman accent? I've heard it's sink for think in Modern Standard German? Also is it really true that relatively few European and world languages have the English r-sound or is it an artifact of transcription conventions and how specific the IPA charts in the database are? Maybe that English IPA letter (common w sound?) that's sometimes outside the main chart is more common than that database says? It's sometimes in the zone not always shown with the more "exotic" sound production methods like clicking. Is there any English vowel that'd be noticed in the accent of an English learner who only knew the language with the most vowel phonemes before learning English as an adult? !Xóõ and Ubykh with massive numbers of consonants don't seem to have all our consonants (and we don't have a few fairly common consonants like ñ, what's the most common phoneme in the world and Europe that English doesn't have? And what's the most common that people who only know English have trouble pronouncing, since some non-English phonemes aren't hard). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Picking and choosing which I answer, with varying levels of surety.

⟨th⟩ was used as a digraph representing Greek vocabulary in Latin and in most of post-Roman Europe. As English is one of the few European languages other than Greek to have /θ/, the orthography was naturally adopted when writing English. Normans who moved from Normandy to England generally didn't learn English, so they didn't often speak English with a Norman accent. If I had to guess, it would be how modern French speakers realize it, as /t/. Over time, their children began to acquire English naturally, and as such were native speakers.
I think [ɹ] is comparatively rare, yes.
I think all non-English phonemes are equally hard to pronounce by native speakers (i.e., we don't, like it usually the case.)

Remsense诉 17:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The English word "faith" has a [θ] from early old French [θ] (eliminated in later Old French). AnonMoos (talk) 19:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some others to pick and answer:

English has one of the largest vowel inventories of all (around 13, depending on dialect), a feature it shares with several of its European neighbours (German, French, Dutch, Norwegian). Such large vowel inventories appear to be a bit of a feature of the Standard Average European sprachbund. Interestingly, most of them have a set of rounded front vowels, which (most varieties of) English lacks. English fills in with additional central vowels or an unrounded back vowel. WALS lists German as the language with the largest vowel inventory of their sample (which includes less than 10% of the worlds languages). So there you have it: the vowels present in English, but not in German.
The most common sound not used in English? [ç~x~χ] is pretty common, but not used in most varieties of English. The same is true of trilled R's. [x] is an easy sound. Trills are harder (you have to find the right combination of air pressure and closing force to avoid both the fricative and the stop; if the articulator is too strongly damped, this may require excessive force), but most people manage the alveolar or the uvular trill, which tend to exist in free variation.

PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:51, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes the Spanish rr, that wasn't hard for me. One thing that was hard was saying Xinjiang. A native speaker of one of the Chinese dialects/languages said it to me, I tried to copy ASAP, repeat like 7 times, the later max effort exact copy attempt tries sounded to me like they should be well within normal variation but were wrong every time. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:30, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When I started learning Chinese, the hardest Putonghua initial for me to make was the [ɻ ~ ʐ] rhotic, of course. I was murmuring 热水 rèshuǐ into my phone for hours at a time trying to get the voice recognition to accept me.

Remsense诉 00:43, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A change in orthography might not necessarily indicate a change in pronunciation. When the Elder Futhark was replaced with the Younger Futhark in Scandinavia, the simplification caused a lot of minimal pairs in written form, whereas the phonetic inventory itself is believed to have increased. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The table at "ISO basic Latin alphabet#Alphabets containing the same set of letters" is using a weird and extraordinarily technical definition: it allows diacritics, ligatures, and multigraphs, but only as long as they do not constitute distinct letters. Thus it is stated that Malay and Indonesian "are the only languages outside Europe that use all the Latin alphabet and require no diacritics and ligatures", and no mention is made of languages like Zulu, which makes use of the 26 unmodified letters from A to Z and nothing else but has multigraphs counting as distinct letters. --Theurgist (talk) 23:35, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't that cause their alphabet to have 27 or more letters? Spanish dictionaries have/had? an LL section I think with llama somewhere between luna and muón in alphabetical order instead of before both. And cañon would be after cantar in alphabetical order. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:51, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you're only interested in collation, then yes. But appearance-wise, Zulu texts only have the 26 basic letters and nothing else, while in French (which is in the table) you will also see a lot of diacriticized letters and a ligature or two. --Theurgist (talk) 00:06, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

June 6

More-than-full rhyme

I recently revisited Georg Trakl's poem Die junge Magd (to understand what I'm talking about see also the English translation by Daniele Pantano (though I'm not very happy with that translation)). The poem uses ABAB quatrains, but "A" doesn't just rhyme with "A", the last word of each quatrain's first line is actually identical with that of the corresponding third line. Here's what I mean (identical words in boldface)

Oft am Brunnen, wenn es dämmert,

Sieht man sie verzaubert stehen

Wasser schöpfen, wenn es dämmert.

Eimer auf und niedergehen.

("stehen" and "niedergehen" rhyme, while "dämmert" and "dämmert" are identical)

My questions:

1) is there a word in literary studies for a rhyme scheme where two identical (not just "rhyming") words are rhymed?
2) regardless of question 1): Are there other examples in poetry where this is done systematically?

Thank you in advance! ---Sluzzelin talk 01:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1) Although rime riche has a very specific meaning in French poetry, I've seen the term applied to identical "rhymes" in other languages. In fact, Wiktionary gives a more general definition for this term:

A form of rhyme with identical sounds, as in "pear" and "pair.

The French Wikipedia states:

Rhymes between identical sequences of more than one syllable (in particular between homophone words) are considered very differently depending on the language: seen as imperfect in English, they are on the contrary valued under the name of rimes riches in French.

The article goes on to call the holorime "the extreme case". --Lambiam 07:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In German, de:Identischer Reim. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:30, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Arguably, it's more of an epistrophe than a rhyme. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, everyone! ---Sluzzelin talk 20:30, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

June 7

Use of "buttery" out of control

When did people start using "buttery" to describe everything from iOS interfaces to the feel of comfortable shoes? It's driving me batty. Can anyone explain where this came from, who is responsible, and where I can contact their manager? Viriditas (talk) 01:37, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What does it mean? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:05, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You haven't heard everyone using the word? You're lucky. In the context of footwear, it means "soft" or "smooth", having the qualities of butter. In terms of touch interfaces, it refers to the "buttery scroll" of iOS, such as inertial or momentum scrolling. Viriditas (talk) 02:11, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware of it until you raised this question. However, I've never been accused of being "hip". :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It might not be hip! First heard boomers using it in 2016. Now, I hear people using it more. It might just be an old term resurrected from the past. Viriditas (talk) 03:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd love to think that Swedemason was responsible for popularizing it. Card Zero (talk) 09:43, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely just a return of an old phrase. I remember lots of things being described as "buttery soft" or "buttery smooth" or "like butter" back in the 1980s.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think you're right. Any idea how it got started? Viriditas (talk) 17:56, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the "Coffee Talk" sketches on the TV show Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s, Mike Myers played a stereotypical New York Jewish woman who used Yiddish phrases and Jewish expressions. One of his catchphrases was describing something as being "like butter", not in reference to any physical attribute, but seemingly just as a generic positive adjectival phrase. It was the first time I'd heard this usage and assumed it was a phrase common in Jewish culture, perhaps the translation of a Yiddish expression. CodeTalker (talk) 18:50, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the context of white wine, it means heavily oaked. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 18:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, good point. Do you think it comes from wine culture and made its way to other things? Viriditas (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Its use to describe a tactile sensation is rather remote from the gustatory one in wine tasting (and beer tasting, where it is also used in reference to both taste and mouthfeel). I suggest that it arises naturally from the 'draggy lubrication' feel or consistency of butter, referenced in the long-established term 'buttery smooth'. In this sense, the OED cites uses dating back as far as 1719. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 22:47, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In England, it means a pretentious type of café trying to sound rural. Alansplodge (talk) 22:32, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it can mean "A room for keeping food or beverages; a storeroom" or, in the UK, "a room in a university where snacks are sold." There was one at the University of Nottingham, in the basement of the Trent Building, I seem to recall. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:43, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That word is etymologically unrelated to "butter" or the adjective "buttery" derived from "butter". The noun "buttery" ultimately dervies from Latin "butta" meaning a cask or bottle. The OED says the noun "buttery" is "< (i) Anglo-Norman boterie, boterei, botrie, buterie, butteri (1374 or earlier), and its etymon (ii) post-classical Latin buteria, buttaria (frequently from 12th cent. in British sources) < butta cask, bottle (see butt n.4) + ‑ria ‑ry suffix." CodeTalker (talk) 23:15, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a cousin to a larder. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

how to write reports

how to write good repots Albulushi66 (talk) 10:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Albulushi66. I suggest you start by learning about correct spelling and how to use sentence case, and work your way up to Wikipedia:How to write a great article. Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:25, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This question is difficult to answer, because there are many aspects to it.

Mastering correct spelling and grammar is important, but there is so much more to good writing. A sentence or paragraph may be written with impeccably correct spelling and grammar, but express its idea in such a muddled or convoluted way that a reader will not understand it. Being clear is at least as important as spelling and grammar. Read and reread what you have written and ask, Does this clearly express the idea or information I want to convey? Is there perhaps another interpretation of these words, not the one I mean to convey? Are there superfluous words, words that can be left out while leaving the meaning unchanged? In general, keeping it simple and straightforward is the best.
Then there is the audience. Who will read the report? The tone of writing should be adjusted to the purpose of the report. An informal trip report of an excursion to the foot of a mountain for a travel blog will be very different, not only in content but also in style, from a scientific report of a geological survey of the same area. Our article Report gives a list of various kinds of reports in the section Report § Types. The same article gives a general but useful overview of the typical structure of a report. If you are going to write a report, try to find other reports of a similar nature and study their composition.
Writing a good report requires that you know what it is you want to say. Concentrate on what is essential. Something that is not essential may become a distraction, and then it is better to leave it out. Sometimes it helps to write the "Conclusions" section first. Material that is irrelevant to the conclusions can be omitfed from the report.
If there is a lot of material that should go into the report, one way of organizing this material is to use separate slips of paper for each thing you want to say. Then sort these slips on a table or other flat surface to bring related things together. You will then have a small number of heaps, which will become subsections or paragraphs in the report. Often, you can sort the slips in a heap into an order of presentation in the report. Likewise with the heaps themselves; some should go into the report before some others.

--Lambiam 09:03, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Strange expressions

Thomas Robinson, 1st Baron Grantham says: "At the 1727 British general election he was returned as Member of Parliament for Thirsk on the Frankland interest, after his eldest brother, for whom the seat had originally been intended, resigned his pretensions to him."

What do the emboldened words mean?

on the Frankland interest:
resigned his pretensions:

I must say I rather like the idea of resigning my pretensions and becoming a normal person, but I suspect it means something else here. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see that you do not have any pretensions that you are a normal person. --Lambiam 07:25, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An appropriate click suggests that Thirsk was a rotten borough in the pocket of a landowner named Frankland. Pretensions is a synonym of claims. —Tamfang (talk) 21:47, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as in pretender. Card Zero (talk) 12:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

but not as in great pretender, pretending I'm doing well (woo-woo). --Lambiam 13:26, 8 June 2024 (UTC))[reply]

For the curious, the chap with big pockets was Sir Thomas Frankland, 6th Baronet. Alansplodge (talk) 22:27, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

He had no influence in the 1727 election, owing to not being conceived yet. DuncanHill (talk) 10:03, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

D'oh! My mistake, I should have linked Sir Thomas Frankland, 3rd Baronet (1685 – 1747), who was elected MP for Thirsk in 1713, 1715, 1722, 1727, 1734 and 1741. Alansplodge (talk) 18:07, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

June 8

Non-most important subgroup of people

What is the most common English idiom to label a subgroup of people not including the most important people in the group, but the next-most important? From analogy with German, I assume it is something like "the second row", "second rank" or similar. --KnightMove (talk) 15:58, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In a military context, "rank and file" is often used. This is sometimes used metaphorically in non-military contexts, but would not always be appropriate. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 16:24, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks. But that would be 'too low' in my contexts. --KnightMove (talk) 18:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've frequently heard "second rank" and "second tier". I think it matters what the context is; could you give us a hint? Deor (talk) 19:49, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One context: I want to collect the second rank (?) of the 27 Club, consisting of Robert Johnson and five other musicians. Other contexts include operatives in societies not included in the board or a somewhat equivalent top-level. --KnightMove (talk) 20:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Associates? Doug butler (talk) 21:22, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a few uses of "second tier": [8], [9], [10], [11], [12] The term implies a hierarchical division in levels, not a ranking based on somewhat arbitrary criteria, so it may not fit your intended use. --Lambiam 21:36, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea how one would go about grouping people in the "27 Club" into ranks or tiers. Popularity? It sounds very subjective to me. Deor (talk) 21:49, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course that's highly subjective, as is the 27 Club list of people listed by anybody. Still, there is a clear "Big Six" group of the most important members which the English Wikipedia article does not care to mention. They are represented by the graffito, although the graffiti artist has also included 'fellow' Jean-Michel Basquiat. And there is also a surprisingly meaningful follow-up group of 'frequent additions'. --KnightMove (talk) 06:32, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it's celebrities we're talking about then B-List is the correct term. DuncanHill (talk) 09:57, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good, thank you. --KnightMove (talk) 10:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

June 9

Fully and digitally transcribed hieroglyphic texts

Are there any Egyptian reliefs with transcriptions here or elsewhere that are copy and pastable? Temerarius (talk) 20:09, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly this? "Teaching of Ptahhotep. Converted automatically to Unicode using HieroJax." Going up one directory level reveals a whole slew of these things. Card Zero (talk) 23:30, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wonderful, thank you! Temerarius (talk) 23:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does Latin contain the letter J?

The chemical elements do not contain the letter J or W (name, not symbol, e.g. tungsten not W or wolfram) is because the name of all non-transuranium elements are from either Latin or Greek, but both Latin and Greek do not have the letter J or W, e.g. jodium become iodine, wismut become bismuth (for transuranium elements, it may contain, e.g, joliotium), Latin seems to not have the letters J, K, U, W (and use V in place of U), kalium is not Latin and instead it is Arabic, and if “junonium” (after 3 Juno, which was a proposed name for cadmium, just like cerium after 1 Ceres palladium after 2 Pallas, but its Latin name is “Iunius”, Start with I instead of J) was used in place of cadmium, then the English name of it should be junonium or iunonium? Also, Latin seems to have no J, but aren’t “major” and “junior” Latin? 2402:7500:92C:2EC4:C50:24C1:2841:C6B5 (talk) 21:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On the question in your heading, see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 12#Latin and the letter J. Deor (talk) 23:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)This question sounds familiar somehow. In any case, Latin letters I and V can be used as either vowels or consonants depending on the context. One example is the time-honored INRI on the cross of Jesus, which stands for IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDÆORVM. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So, maior and iunior? The articles on j and i explain that j was for a long time just a decorative i, although Latin i could stand for what I will casually refer to as a "y sound" (or more formally, but confusingly, /j/). Is it still used that way? Ja! Later this sound was replaced with the English "j" sound. And should we use i or j in a Latin context? It's optional, but if you're aiming for historical authenticity, try i, and if you're coining English derivations from Latin, j is what we are used to. Card Zero (talk) 23:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a Swede, I find "y sound" more confusing than /j/. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:51, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I deduce you didn't see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:33, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How is kalium not (Modern) Latin? FWIW, it is in the Lexicon Latinum Hodiernum. Double sharp (talk) 10:12, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The most directly relevant facts (somehow unmentioned in the 2014 discussion) are that before the 17th-century, I and J weren't considered to be distinct letters but merely swash glyph variants, and similarly U and V. The distribution of the forms "J" and "V" to write consonants and "I" and "U" to write vowels was established during the 17th century, but well into the 18th century, they weren't always considered separate letters (see the alphabets in the image File:Sampler by Elizabeth Laidman, 1760.jpg). So obviously there was no "J" used distinctly from "I" to write sounds in ancient Roman times. Whether there's a "J" in modern writings of Latin depends on the conventions that have been chosen. AnonMoos (talk) 10:21, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And Latin did use K, though in rather restricted use. See wikt:kalendae. ColinFine (talk) 12:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That the English names of the (cis-uranic) elements don't contain W or J is simply coincidence. Names like iron, zinc, tin, tungsten are purely Germanic, potassium and vanadium are Germanic names with a Latin-sounding suffix. J and W weren't used in classical Latin, but can occasionally be found in modern Latin. Apparently, the modern Latin word for tungsten is wolframium, borrowed from German. Just like W can be found in Italian, in loans from Germanic languages. PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wolfram almost became the normal English name of the element (source, and also see doi:10.1021/ba-1953-0008.ch005). In 1949, IUPAC wanted to make wolfram the scientific name as part of its cleanup of double-named elements (beryllium/glucinium, columbium/niobium, cassiopeium/lutetium, celtium/hafnium). But this was misinterpreted as ruling out the name tungsten altogether (even though it was still supposed to be an accepted commercial name), and the resulting outcry led to IUPAC changing back to tungsten pending another review. That pending review has never happened. (Personally, I would've preferred wolfram, chiefly because it would've meant one less odd symbol to explain.) Double sharp (talk) 16:02, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

June 10

[1] The Daily Show (31 May 2024). "Jon Stewart tells Fox News to go f**k itself". Retrieved 1 June 2024.

[1]

@@ Line 324: / Line 324: @@
 :An appropriate click suggests that Thirsk was a [[rotten borough]] in the pocket of a landowner named Frankland.  ''Pretensions'' is a synonym of ''claims''. [[User:Tamfang|—Tamfang]] ([[User talk:Tamfang|talk]]) 21:47, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 ::Yes, as in [[pretender]]. [[User:Card_Zero|<span style=" background-color:#fffff0; border:1px #995; border-style:dotted solid solid dotted;">&nbsp;Card&nbsp;Zero&nbsp;</span>]]&nbsp;[[User_talk:Card_Zero|(talk)]] 12:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
-:::{{small|but not as in [[The Great Pretender|great pretender]], pretending I'm doing well (woo-woo). &nbsp;--[[User talk:Lambiam#top|Lambiam]] 13:26, 8 June 2024 (UTC)}}
+:::{{small|but not as in [[The Great Pretender|great pretender]], pretending I'm doing well (woo-woo). &nbsp;--[[User talk:Lambiam#top|Lambiam]] 13:26, 8 June 2024 (UTC)}})
 ::::For the curious, the chap with big pockets was [[Sir Thomas Frankland, 6th Baronet]]. [[User:Alansplodge|Alansplodge]] ([[User talk:Alansplodge|talk]]) 22:27, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 :::::He had no influence in the 1727 election, owing to not being conceived yet. [[User:DuncanHill|DuncanHill]] ([[User talk:DuncanHill|talk]]) 10:03, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
+::::::D'oh! My mistake, I should have linked [[Sir Thomas Frankland, 3rd Baronet]] (1685 – 1747), who was elected MP for Thirsk in 1713, 1715, 1722, 1727, 1734 and 1741. [[User:Alansplodge|Alansplodge]] ([[User talk:Alansplodge|talk]]) 18:07, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 = June 8 =