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July 22

Does anyone has a list of languages that are both polysynthetic and agluttinative at the same time?

Looks like wikipedia has just separated lists for each.177.92.128.176 (talk) 11:51, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So the language would be polysynthetic in some ways and agglutinative in others? I've a hunch that such languages would be commoner than "pure" examples of any of the traditional four kinds. Consider English: inflectionally fusional (but impoverished), what with the 3rd-person singular present indicative "‑s"; derivationally agglutinative ("operationalizability", etc). -- Hoary (talk) 12:35, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hoary -- in the usage of some linguistic scholars, "agglutinative" refers to a way of adding morphemes in a row to the end of a word, where each morpheme has a relatively simple meaning and the morphemes tend to remain distinct. By contrast, in Greek and Latin, morphemes can have complex meanings, and can kind of merge together with adjacent morphemes in a difficult to disentangle way. So in that respect a language could be both polysynthetic (in how much it can include in a word) and agglutinative (in its method of stringing morphemes together). Edward Sapir in his 1921 book Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech has a table in which Nootka and Yana are listed as Polysynthetic in their degree of synthesis but as "Agglutinative (symbolic tinge)" as far as their predominant technique for combining morphemes... AnonMoos (talk) 12:58, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Johanna Mattissen writes: "Degree of fusion is independent of multiple morpheme synthesis, therefore polysynthetic languages may display agglutinating and/or fusional morphology." ("A structural typology of polysynthesis", Word 55(2), 2004). Unfortunately, I haven't seen any list that classifies polysynthetic languages into agglutinative and fusional ones. And some languages do not neatly fit into either catergory, e.g. Takelma is agglutinative with respect to affixes with "concrete" meaning (the typical domain of polysynthesis), but has highly fusional inflectional affixes for person, tense, mood etc. –Austronesier (talk) 13:13, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On both Wikipedia lists: •Algonquian; •Aymaran; •Eskimo–Aleut; •Munda; •Northwest Caucasian; •Quechuan; •Salishan; •Siouan. --Lambiam 14:19, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone post a link to these two lists? -- SGBailey (talk) 13:58, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Agglutinative language#Examples and Polysynthetic language#Distribution. There are also Category:Agglutinative languages and Category:Polysynthetic languages, which probably have still other languages in common. --Lambiam 14:59, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 23

Boys and bies (Forster)

~~In Three Cheers for Democracy,~~ E. M. Forster wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and bies; school was the unhappiest time of my life, and the worst trick it played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. [1]

When I first read this I assumed "bies" was a misprint. But it appears wherever the quote pops up. It's not explained anywhere. Wiktionary has no entry for such an English word, the closest being bys, the plural of by (n.)

Who or what are bies? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:27, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Errata: Oops, I was wrong. It wasn't in anything he ever published. I guess it was found among his papers, and quoted in Wendy Moffat's biography E. M. Forster: A New Life, p. 37. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:46, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

it was probably some insider term. It may be related to “the bye-and-bye.” It may be related to the bis or the Bois.Temerarius (talk) 07:27, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably school slang for girls, derived from by, "A secondary or subsidiary object, course, or undertaking; a side issue; something of minor importance". The traditional opening of a school speech would be "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls". DuncanHill (talk) 09:36, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to this, Forster used the term in The Spectator in 1936. Someone at WP:RX may be able to provide you with a copy of the article. DuncanHill (talk) 09:44, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that is the exact source of the quote. From what I'd read before, I wasn't aware it had ever been published in his lifetime. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:22, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Found a clue in this review of E. M. Forster: A New Life by Wendy Moffat, which says: "I had to look up bies = an evil spirit".

Wikipedia has an article Bies; "Bies /ˈbjɛs/ or bes (Template:Lang-ru [ˈbʲɛs]) is an evil spirit or demon in Slavic mythology. The word is synonymous with chort". Perhaps Forster's unhappy schooldays led him to put boys and demons in the same bracket? The context of the quote is an imagined dissolution of a school, presumably Forster was thinking of Tonbridge School which is still for boys only. Alansplodge (talk) 14:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Alan. I did see that article in my original search, but I discounted it. For starters, "bies" in this sense is a singular word, while "boys and bies" requires a plural. But more to the point, if we learnéd elders have to search high and low to find the meaning, it's most unlikely this Slavic word would have been immediately recognised by the readers of 1936. I think there's a somewhat more prosaic explanation. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:47, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The term occurs ten times in Volume 1 of The Boys Champion Paper (1885–86). From the uses I conclude that bies are schoolboys; the occurrences are all in quoted dialectal speech. --Lambiam 16:08, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. Probably not relevant directly, but here in Canada, "bies" would be understood as Newfoundland English for "boys" in the colloquial and familiar sense of "the lads". It would normally be written "b'y" in singular (as our article does), though I'm not sure about the plural. See also I's the B'y. Forster was born in Dorset Square, London; I have no idea if they have a similar short form, but that's the first avenue I'd check. Matt Deres (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So if bies means boys, how would we interpret "boys and boys"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:49, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think he added bies to give his address a local flavour; presumably that is how he, in his days at Tonbridge School, heard the boys being referred to. If the Kentish dialect was still common at the time (our section on it gives no dates), rounding of the diphthong of [aɪ] would have made by be pronounced like [bɔɪ], so perhaps this "bies" was a hypercorrection. --Lambiam 07:49, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tom Brown's Universe: The Development of the English Public School in the Nineteenth Century (p. 231) agrees a it's a dialect form of "boys":

'Frederick Temple (Blundells and Oxford) had a “marked provincial accent” which Rugby boys attempted to reproduce by “Bies, yer getting ruude: this must cease”'. Alansplodge (talk) 15:39, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all who helped us get to the nub of this. If the only thing we've done here is connect us to the truth, that's a good thing. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:28, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jack of Oz|Jack. I think he's just being jocular. If I'm reading the context correctly, he's speaking with regards to private schools and the "audience" there would be the parents ("ladies and gentlemen...") and the students, whom I assume would all have been male. In that latter group, he's singling out a subset affectionately. Perhaps it was a nod to the other closeted gays or just to friends in general? I guess I'm reading it like if I was addressing Wikipedia as whole by starting "Wikipedians - and RefDeskers - lend me your ears..." Matt Deres (talk) 21:25, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Matt. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:19, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese vocabulary.

Hi. Is the fact that Japanese word 'そして' (and thus) resembles the て form of そうする　"to do thus" a coincidence? Duomillia (talk) 06:40, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's a coincidence, Duomillia. According to Wiktionary そうして is an alternative form of そして. --ColinFine (talk) 09:05, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What is so significant about the phrase "Aaron earned an iron urn" by the people of Baltimore?

Can anyone explain the significance of the expression "Aaron Earned An Iron Urn" for the people of Baltimore, Maryland? --2600:1700:D740:1720:FCA6:6DB0:541A:750 (talk) 09:18, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to Baltimore accent, Baltimore speakers have a tendency to modify or omit vowels around /r/ in particular ways, so presumably this sentence shows several of these contexts. Looking at samples of the sentence posted on youtube, it sounds as if most of the vowels in the four words were neutralized, the whole thing sounding like "ahrn ahrn n ahrn ahrn". Fut.Perf. su 09:57, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are a number of examples on YouTube. Alansplodge (talk) 13:48, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Earned" and "urn" already have the same vowel in standard forms of modern English. AnonMoos (talk) 14:13, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Q: "What's a Grecian urn?” A: “About 30 shillings a week”. Boom, boom! Alansplodge (talk) 15:10, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies. (William Faulkner). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:34, 23 July 2020 (UTC) [reply]

There is nothing significant about the phrase. It's just a phrase that sounds funny when spoken in a Ballmer accent. Temerarius (talk) 01:23, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The first video in that Youtube link that Alansplodge posted went viral not too long ago, so the phrase earned some extra notoriety vis-a-vis the Baltimore accent. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:19, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Somewhat analogous to "park the car in Harvard Yard" for Bostonians, I suppose. 107.15.157.44 (talk) 19:34, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Y / I are interchangeable, in some pairs of words, e.g. in lucky vs. luckiness. Are W / U interchangeable, as well, in any pair of words ?

Except for loanwords - like Jew vs. Judea, and except for W 's very name: DOUBLE-U, and except for: plow vs. plough...

I'm not referring to Old English, but rather to Modern English only. 87.70.116.38 (talk) 22:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

First off, the letter "w" is not used to represent an independent vowel in English, only a diphthong element (except in a very few poorly-assimilated loanwords such as "cwm"), so its interchangeability with the letter "u" is rather limited. The letter "y" represents an independent vowel in English mainly when word-final, or stressed and occurring before a vowel letter, or corresponding to ancient Greek upsilon; otherwise it also is mainly used as a diphthong element... AnonMoos (talk) 22:55, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know that, but I'm still asking my question... 87.70.39.62 (talk) 03:53, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Plough used to be pronounced with a guttural ending.[2] <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 05:54, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know that, but please notice that your reference was not the one you had intended. 77.127.62.122 (talk) 06:10, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, I posted the one I intended. The "plough" info is farther down the "plow" page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In none of your examples has one letter been interchanged with another. That would result in luckyness, Jwdea and plowgh. A true example of interchanged letters might be realise/realize, or licence/license (in some English variants). I am not clear about what it is you are really asking. Bazza (talk) 12:13, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's fair to say that "lucky" has one spelling when it stands alone, and a different spelling when it has a suffix "-ness" added. I would call that an "allograph" (by analogy with the allomorphs of a morpheme), but our article allograph says the word is usually used with a different meaning. However, "Jew" and "Judea" are words that have a similar ultimate etymology, but historically came into the English language by very different routes, and are not too closely connected in modern English, so I'm not sure what the point of comparing the modern English spellings of the two words is... AnonMoos (talk) 12:35, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Last recorded in 1440, the word feute or fewte means the track of an animal. 77.101.226.208 (talk) 12:51, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The same is true for feuter / fewter, indicated in Wiktionary as two alternative spellings of the same word. 77.127.62.122 (talk) 13:12, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AnonMoos:, You did understand what I had meant (as opposed to Bazza who didn't, as they have claimed about themself). so I'm really asking about whether w / u are anywhere used as two different allogarphs (the way you had wanted to interpret this concept), for any route (in Modern English). 77.127.62.122 (talk) 13:12, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are some proper names which can be spelled with either u or w. William Euing's name was sometimes spelled as William Ewing. Skoyt (talk) 08:42, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thx. 87.70.49.174 (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

wikt:cauk and wikt:cawk? --Amble (talk) 23:09, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, this an excellent example, becasuse it stems from a general phenomenon: the "au" (e.g. in "caught") and the "aw" (e.g. in "law") are always pronounced the same way (with few exceptions e.g. "aunt" in most varieties of English). 87.70.49.174 (talk) 09:04, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Different spellings of the same colloquial variation of "chalk". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:00, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thx. 21:50, 28 July 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.70.49.174 (talk)

July 24

English IPA for this?

What would be the IPA in English for the name Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini also known as Doja Cat 🌸 1.Ayana 🌸 (talk) 15:19, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any clips out there where her name is pronounced? Takes the guesswork out. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 22:43, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few videos on how to pronounce this name,^[3][4] without supplying evidence supporting the claim that this is the correct pronunciation. They have "Amalaratna" in one word. In any case, what I hear is something like /ˌɑ.mɑ.lɑˈɹɑt.nɑ zɑnˈdi.li dlɑˈmi.ni/. The speaker in the second video has an accent and lengthens some vowels, which I have not attempted to notate. --Lambiam 09:01, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Zulu orthography is here. In Zulu the second-to-last syllable is stressed. That will create at worst a respectable guess at the person's own style of pronunciation. 93.136.103.194 (talk) 17:02, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The stresses in my IPA attempt above agree with that rule. I see that the ‹a› is a front vowel in Zulu phonology and the ‹r› is a trill, but most English speakers cannot produce these phonemes. --Lambiam 09:00, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 25

Chinese question

Last year I saw the film The Farewell. I don't understand anything about Chinese but one word that was often repeated was mengwa or menghwa or something. I picked up from context that it meant "America" or "the USA". Is this right, and how is this word spelled correctly? JIP | Talk 17:54, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"America" in Chinese is 美国, transcribed (pinyin) as měiguó (low tone on the first syllable, rising tone on the second). --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:07, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure but it sounds like "Màn Huà" or 漫畫 (comics) to me. The pronunciations of "America"[5] and "comics"[6] in Chinese are different. - Justin545 (talk) 11:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

They didn't mention comics in that movie at all. Given the context of the movie, Wrongfilter is correct in his assessment. bibliomaniac 1 5 23:57, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 27

Fecundity

It is said that while the etymology of the profanity f*&k is not fully known, its first usage is in a poem describing what the butchers are doing to the bakers wives, or something along those lines, if memory serves accurately. I would like to know if there has been any consideration that there may be a correlation to the word Fecund or fecundity. They would strike me as particularly similar especially if one were to put "ye olde-english" slant on this. Is there a known correlation or joint etymology, or could one actually be derived directly from the other. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.53.187.190 (talk) 10:11, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The English etymology for "fecund" is summarised here. I think you may be leading us down a bit of a blind alley. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:15, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The etymology of "fuck" is noted at the Wikipedia article and section Fuck#Etymology, and does not mention any connection to the word "fecund". That would be a False etymology. --Jayron 32 16:39, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It would be a f**kin fecund false etymology. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:25, 27 July 2020 (UTC) [reply]

More at Wiktionary:fuck#Etymology, which makes mention of a certain Roger Fuckebythenavele, a resident of Cheshire in 1310. Hopefully, he wasn't a teacher by profession. Alansplodge (talk) 19:34, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Disgraceful. Enough to give Roger a bad name. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:08, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 28

Entrenched clause in Spanish?

Is there a specific equivalent term in Spanish-speaking countries for entrenched clause or at least how it would be referred to in Spain? The Constitution of Spain has the Title X on constitutional amendment. StellarHalo (talk) 15:26, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In portuguese (sister language to Spanish) we would say something like "cláusula pétrea da Constituição" ("stone clause of the Constitution"). Mdob (talk) 17:07, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Our article es:Reforma de la Constitución española says Por otra parte las cláusulas de inmodificabilidad suelen ser ineficaces (on the other hand, the clauses of unmodifiability are usually ineffective).

Hebrew: the "ch" in the Biblical word Pacheggen (in the Book of Esther):

Is it pronounced like the "ch" in the English word "loch", or like the "ch" in the English word "check"? Eliko (talk) 18:23, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

When you say "ch" in the English word "loch", do you mean the ck sound that the English generally use when they mispronounce the Scottish word, or do you mean the actual Scottish pronunciation (what I'm not sure how to represent)? Iapetus (talk) 09:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A word of advice - don't ever say that "loch" is an English word in Scotland unless you enjoy hospital food. Alansplodge (talk) 19:09, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Neither Google nor I can find "Pacheggen" in the Book of Esther. Which chapter? Alansplodge (talk) 19:21, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Do you by any chance know where that word occurs in Esther? According to conventional transliteration, that word does not seem to exist, but it may be that the word you're looking for is פַּתְשֶׁגֶן (patshegen), a word that occurs in no other book of the Bible, but which is thought to be a variant/corruption of פַּרשֶׁגֶן (parshegen) that occurs in the book of Ezra. I suppose 'patshegen' could be transliterated as 'pacheggen' by someone who heard it, as the consonant cluster 'tsh' can sound similar to the 'ch' in check. You can hear the word pronounced in this mp3 at around 1:32. - Lindert (talk) 19:26, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, that's what I meant. So it's not the "ch" of "loch". Thank you. Anyway, it seems that Hebrew has the sound of "ch" in "check" (or something similar), doesn't it? Eliko (talk) 19:41, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but the 't' sound and the 'sh' sound must belong to separate syllables, so the combination can't occur at the beginning (or end) of a word (at least in classical/biblical Hebrew). - Lindert (talk) 19:50, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lindert -- Biblical Hebrew as pronounced in the late centuries B.C. and early centuries A.D. had both a voiceless velar fricative and a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. It didn't have any alveopalatal affricate unit sound (though sometimes "t" could occur before "sh", as has been mentioned). AnonMoos (talk) 00:26, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary considers פַּתְשֶׁגֶן‎ to be Biblical Hebrew and פַּרְשֶׁגֶן‎ Aramaic; both are said to be borrowings from the same Middle Persian word. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon calls the latter an "Aramaic loan-word [from Persian] in Biblical Hebrew". (The Book of Ezra contains passages in Aramaic, but the word occurs in Ezra 4:23 in a sentence in Hebrew immediately following the inclusion of a letter in Aramaic.) The word פַּתְשֶׁגֶן‎ can be found in Esther 3:14, 4:8, and 8:13. --Lambiam 05:55, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 29

Definition of the word "similetic"

What does the word "similetic" mean? I came across it in the summary of the book Emily Dickinson and the Religious Imagination on the Cambridge University Press website and I'm not finding a definition online. Here is the word in context:

"It argues that religious myths and symbols, from the sun-god to the open tomb, are essential to understanding the similetic movement of Dickinson's poetry..."

https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/literature/american-literature/emily-dickinson-and-religious-imagination?format=HB

Relating to similes. --Amble (talk) 18:24, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! 72.142.87.226 (talk) 19:06, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Revision as of 18:24, 29 July 2020 edit Amble (talk \| contribs) Extended confirmed users 5,155 edits →Definition of the word "similetic": simile ← Previous edit		Revision as of 19:06, 29 July 2020 edit undo 72.142.87.226 (talk) →Definition of the word "similetic": Thank you Next edit →
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	:Relating to [[simile]]s. --[[User:Amble\|Amble]] ([[User talk:Amble\|talk]]) 18:24, 29 July 2020 (UTC)		:Relating to [[simile]]s. --[[User:Amble\|Amble]] ([[User talk:Amble\|talk]]) 18:24, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

			::Thank you! [[Special:Contributions/72.142.87.226\|72.142.87.226]] ([[User talk:72.142.87.226\|talk]]) 19:06, 29 July 2020 (UTC)