Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

Select a section:

WP:RD/L

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
Note:
- We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
- We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
- We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
- We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

March 21

How do right-to-left languages print their sheet music?

Some languages are written in Right-to-left script. I am curious … in those countries and languages, what does their sheet music look like? Is it simply the “normal” / standard convention ... that looks like the examples on this page --> sheet music ... ? Or is their sheet music also written in "reverse", Right-to-left script? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:26, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would doubt that, I think sheet music would be standardized as an internationalized left-to-right variant everywhere. (I think it would rather be the lyrics that would be reversed in these cases, though that's just a hunch.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:27, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but music (notes, etc.) and lyrics go hand-in-hand ... no? As in this example (picture of Adeste Fidelis sheet music) below, to the right ... Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:23, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I found a couple of music forum discussions; Score mirroring in right-to-left languages and Hebrew language, the latter has a post (way down a long conversation about "mirroring" with music software):

I have recently seen a book which shows music written from right to left (The notes themselves, as in some examples above, not just the lyrics). The book is from the period after the state of Israel was founded, about 60 years ago. Some people thought that this might be a good practice. But this idea was abandoned and apart from this book I have never seen any music written like this (including Hebrew and Arabic music). There are many musicians in Israel, writing and performing music in many styles (western and oriental), and all the music is written from left to right.

Presumably with the Hebrew text being shown seperately from the musical notation. Alansplodge (talk) 09:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On this music sheet of Hava Nagilah, the separate syllables of the lyrics in the Hebrew script, each by themselves written right-to-left, are given in left-to-right order with the corresponding notes. It must be a bit to a Hebrew singer as it would be to an American if the convention had been to write musical scores right-to-left, and the lyrics to "Adeste Fideles" looked like "tes - phan - trium ti - Læ les - de - fi te - des - A". --Lambiam 11:20, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty much how I imagined it, it seems my hunch was right this time. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:42, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On a related note, lyrical notation on sheet music generally seems to be quite simple, compared to all tricks a skilled singer could do with his/ her voice. It's mostly just "Sing these lyrics in connection to the music notated", I'm not sure if there'd be more complex notations out there, specialized for singers. (Or are the notes then meant as the way to sing? I just thought the singing and the music could be different parts playing off each other.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:10, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:16, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

March 22

A Swedish surname

The articles Swedish phonology and Swedish orthography don't help me much to work out how to pronounce Oscar Reutersvärd's surname. Perhaps this just means that I'm rather thick. (Being rather thick might also explain why I can't quite grasp "there are much older examples, e.g. Hogarth's Satire on False Perspective, in addition to more recent well known example of the Penrose triangle and some others".) But anyway, how does one pronounce "Reutersvärd"?

(Anyone who actually knows and is fluent in IPA might beneficially add the pronunciation of the whole name, "Oscar" included, to the article. Which I recommend not only for its impossible figures but also for the somewhat disturbing photo "Oscar Reutersvärd with two of his friends".) -- Hoary (talk) 03:41, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's pronounced as though it were spelt röjtersvärd, which I can't write in IPA. DuncanHill (talk) 04:01, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, DuncanHill. Then perhaps it's something like røːjtersvɛːrd ? (One thing I do learn from the phonology article is that Swedish /r/ seems to vary at least as much as English /r/.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:19, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Aha, wikt:värd says /vɛːɖ/. -- Hoary (talk) 08:25, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a source for how the ⟨eu⟩ should be pronounced? It is not a recognized monophthong or diphthong in Swedish orthography. In the loanword neutral, the combination corresponds to /eːɵ/. According to the online Svensk ordbok the pronunciation of ⟨eu⟩ in greuelpropaganda is /ɔj/. --Lambiam 09:34, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The -värd (or -svärd?) bit should rather be [væːɖ] as the /r/ phoneme triggers both lowering of the preceding /ɛː/ and retroflexion of the following /d/. The Reuter- part is more puzzling as ⟨eu⟩ is indeed not normally found in Swedish words. It might originally come from German (just like greuelpropaganda). I think there are many examples for Swedish noble families having German surnames. --147.142.218.189 (talk) 09:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. sv:Suzanne Reuter gives the pronunciation as [ˈrœjtər]. --147.142.218.189 (talk) 09:51, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, all. [rœjtərsvæːɖ], perhaps? -- Hoary (talk) 13:36, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Reuter alone also exists as a surname, probably from some German variant, although 'eu' would rather be pronounced like [ɔʏ̯] in Standard German. As I could make out, the German surname might originally have meant cavalryman/ rider or land-clearer. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:04, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would expect the s to be more like ʂ, because of the r before it. DuncanHill (talk) 14:27, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I guess that might depend on it being pronounced with a stop between r and s or not. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:19, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I.e. in compound words such as burspråk (bay window) and mursten (tile brick), I think it might be pronounced more like [r's], although that depends on how carefully the speaker enunciates. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:52, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reuter+svärd instead of reuters+värd? Listen to burspråk and mursten on the SO. DuncanHill (talk) 20:58, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The source mentioned earlier by DuncanHill ("uttal: röjtersvärd") points indeed to [œj]; compare möjlig /²mœjlɪ(ɡ)/ and slöjd /slœjd/. --Lambiam 14:44, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There is a Reuterswärd family society, perhaps contact could be made with them. DuncanHill (talk) 20:58, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good morning (my time), all! Thank you for your continuing efforts. A couple of things that I do learn from the relevant articles (Swedish phonology, etc) are that, unsurprisingly, pronunciation varies quite a bit with area (as well as with age and perhaps social class, etc), and that there is no single, unambiguous Standard Swedish. Thus a narrow transcription (even if comprehensible) may well be misleading, but identifying the phonemes to which the phones are best abstracted for a broad transcription sounds like a job for a Swedish-proficient phonologist. -- Hoary (talk) 22:48, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm amused to read that Swedish wasn't even the official language of Sweden until 2009. Keeping their options open, I see. Card Zero (talk) 02:40, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This YouTube video has Oscar's sons discussing his work. If anyone has the time to listen to it (24 minutes), they might mention their surname. Alansplodge (talk) 14:58, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAa4dpUEt4A&ab_channel=Tehnolo%C5%A1ko-metalur%C5%A1kifakultetUB --79.36.50.78 (talk) 11:53, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So the second video seems to confirm the pronunciation [ˈrœjtəʂvæːɖ]. --2A02:8071:8C2:AF00:1D68:56B3:DDF7:AC7E (talk) 10:39, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

March 24

Different than/from

I'm a great disliker of "different than". Mainly because "than" goes with comparative adjectives, such as better, worse, bigger etc., and different is not a comparative. I also dislike "different to". My strong preference is "different from".

However, here's a heading from an article I read (all boldings are mine):

"Political leaders feel very differently about the ABC than the public does".

Simply replacing "than" with "from" doesn't work: it needs something like "Political leaders feel very differently about the ABC from the way (or from how) the public does". Maybe better pedantically, but it wouldn't satisfy the imperatives of short, pithy journalese.

Is there a solution that would satisfy everyone? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:19, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Shorter: "Political leaders and the public feel very differently about the ABC." I'm sure, though, that this formulation will not please everyone. --Lambiam 01:57, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It does not please me, and Jack wanted to please everybody. I say the "differently than" version should be accepted as the best one. I argue that "than the public does" is a subordinate clause, that using the clause is the natural way to express the difference, and that therefore a conjunction, than rather than from, is necessary. In a case like "Jack's opinion is different than mine", substituting "from" is fine because here no clause is needed. (And incidentally, "different" does introduce a comparison; it's just not a comparison of degree.) --184.144.97.125 (talk) 04:10, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would be inclined to write (and even say) "Political leaders feel very differently about the ABC than does the public", but my default style is somewhat old-fashioned (or pedantic, if you will). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.233.48 (talk) 15:16, 24 March 2022 (UTC).[reply]

I was about to say the "does" is unnecessary, but it would deambigufy a lot of mushy newspaper sentences. Temerarius (talk) 15:58, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I can't remember the word for leaving out implied parts of a sentence (which shows what a great authority on language I am), but if the way can be implicit then so can does, and leaving out both makes it less awkward:

Political leaders feel very differently from the public about the ABC.

(Rearranged to avoid saying the ABC from the public, which suggests that the ABC comes from the public.) Oh and I remembered the word: elision. Reading the article, though, that doesn't apply to entire words, only syllables. There must be some other word for the phenomenon. Card Zero (talk) 11:26, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See Ellipsis (linguistics), Gapping and Stripping (linguistics). Another common form of ellipsis found in many languages is known as "pro-drop". --Lambiam 17:22, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be a discussion about prescriptivist vs. descriptivisim in grammar. The question is whether proper language involves following immutable rules which shall never be violated, or whether it involves using a common set of (often evolving) rules in a way that the shared language community all uses them. The "never use than except in comparatives" is a prescriptivist rule, largely because it ignores the fact that many people do use it in other situations, and so commonly that it often isn't marked as non-standard for most people, even in formal writing and speaking. Is it a "rule"; I have no doubt that it is, or was. It may have even been common, but it is less so today. This is not necessarily wrong or undesirable; languages change over time; if they didn't we'd all be writing like the author of Beowulf did. --Jayron 32 15:59, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The thing is, in order for rules to evolve, we can't just all passively describe them. It entails making bold and futile attempts to win other people's compliance, like Noah Webster did. (Actually, reading that article, it says he didn't invent his prefered spellings, he just selected them from the zeitgeist. Even so, he was definitely applying some pressure with his thumb on the scales.) Card Zero (talk) 16:53, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There are certainly pressures applied; various things, like popular music, emulating preferred social classes or specific societal groups, etc. that all influence how language may change. Language change is unpredictable, but not unmotivated. --Jayron 32 17:12, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron, your point might have had validity if I'd said the heading was grammatically wrong. But I didn't. I said I'm a great disliker of "different than". We all have our likes and dislikes. Nothing to do with any kind of -ism. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And I generally don't dislike things, so that's probably where we tend to run into conflict on things. But you do you. --Jayron 32 11:02, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you want it in the most compressed headlinese, I think it would be "Pols, public differ on ABC". And if you want to go for clicks: "What political leaders really think about the ABC -- and why the public knows they're wrong". --Amble (talk) 18:01, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I like these ideas. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that there is anything wrong with the original phrasing. "X is different than Y" is generally considered to be bad grammar (and would sound odd to me), but that's not how the sentence is worded. I don't know enough about grammar to say exactly what the change to th esentance structure is or why it makes a difference, but I'm pretty sure that in that form, "than" is more appropriate than "from". Iapetus (talk) 10:32, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I (for one) do experience the original article heading as jarring. That is not an issue of like or dislike – just a feeling that something is off with the phrase. I kid you not, but jarring the phrase is. On the ABC issue itself, I'm sure the public also feel very differently about the ABC than the political leaders, which raises the burning question, which of the two sides feels the most differently? --Lambiam 11:27, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously the one which is most differenter, that is, the differentest. I've been itching to use these words all day. Card Zero (talk) 19:36, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jack's original observations are on the money. It's not either/or. In some cases, "from" is the right way to say it; in other cases, "than" is. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:45, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Different from is a USA usage. People in the UK and Australia say Different to, paralleling Similar to. Different than, in writing, is just lazy. 2600:1700:A3A0:1630:A8BC:66AE:DB82:2CE3 (talk) 01:44, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

March 25

A Hindi transliteration/transcription

I'm looking for the transliteration/transcription of the phrase "विकिपरियोजना वीडियो गेम्स". I know what it means so a translation is unnecessary, but how would I transliterate/transcribe the word? Maybe "VikiPariyojana vidiyo gemsa"? -Thibbs (talk) 01:50, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Google Translate, which provides also translitterations, gives: "vikipariyojana veediyo gems". --79.36.50.78 (talk) 06:43, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary transliterates परियोजना as "pariyojnā" and वीडियो as "vīḍiyo". Etymologically (Sanskrit), "yojanā" is appropriate, but (according to Wiktionary) the pronunciation in Delhi Hindi has two syllables: /joːd͡ʒ.nɑː/ In analogy with the orthography of "WikiProject Video games", I guess the camel case of "VikiPariyoj(a)na Vidiyo gems" is appropriate. --Lambiam 11:09, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for both of you! -Thibbs (talk) 11:53, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Thibbs: for academic audiences specific transliteration system from Devanagari transliteration will be okay. But it seems that you are likely to use transliteration for general audience in a wiki news letter. Unless you have a specific purpose to show transliteration system, then my pragmatic suggestion is retain 'W' in "WikiPariyoj(a)na", Video and 'games'. In 'Video' while pronouncing and writing in Devnagari 'O' will be pronounced as 'yo' even if you leave 'Video' as is if I am not wrong Hindi people likely to pronounce 'yo'.

In my personal opinion "WikiPariyoj(a)na Video games" too just be okay and general audiences will not need to refer to specific transliteration system.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 12:15, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

March 26

Arabic translation

Hi, I was fed up with English commentary on Pro Evolution so I changed to Arabic and it's so much better. What does "kora bayniya" mean? And how about "lamza bayniya"? 31.217.4.168 (talk) 01:56, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

[Courtesy link – presumably refers to Pro Evolution Soccer. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.233.48 (talk) 10:45, 26 March 2022 (UTC)][reply]

wikt:كرة and wikt:كورة probably explain the "kora" (it means football). wikt:كرة بينية (kura bayniyya) is "through ball". Is Lamza possibly a player's surname, such as Stjepan Lamza? Card Zero (talk) 12:49, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's definitely not my compatriot Štef Lamza. It could be lanza, lansa, or something similar. 31.217.4.168 (talk) 22:14, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds a bit like لسانيات بينية (lisāniyyāt bayniyy), meaning "interlinguistics", but this does not seem related to Pro Evolution. --Lambiam 23:03, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK, bear in mind this is a guess, but I think it might be wikt:لمح, lamaḥa. The dot under the h is because it's one of those interestingly phlegmy Arabic fricatives, and it might sound like z if you have nothing better to match it to. This word can mean "glimpse", so if my guess is right, the phrase would be "a glancing through ball", or maybe "a glancing cross" (not sure of the soccer terminology). Then again, maybe the glancing/looking is more literal than metaphorical: maybe it means the player is looking for an opportunity to pass the ball? I'm probably wrong anyway because searching for "لمح بينية" gives me no results. Card Zero (talk) 00:21, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That was very helpful, an untrained ear could very well mishear it for a zed. I think you're right about the translation too, my guess would be "[he] looks [to play it] through!". Cheers. 31.217.4.168 (talk) 07:44, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Or perhaps لَمْس (lams), meaning "touch". --Lambiam 03:55, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Plausible. 31.217.4.168 (talk) 07:46, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mutual intelligibility of Russian and Ukrainian

I have a few related questions about the mutual intelligibility of Russian and Ukrainian. My impression is that they are very similar languages, but how similar ? I wonder if the situation is analogous to Catalan-Spanish usage in Catalonia, where you'd be very hard-pressed to find a Catalan native speaker who didn't speak Spanish, while the reverse is not at all the case.

How easy is it for a literate native Russian speaker with little or no exposure to Ukrainian to read written Ukrainian—say, a lifelong Moscow resident handed a Ukrainian newspaper?
I'm of the impression that Ukraine is a largely bilingual country, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a native speaker of Ukrainian that doesn't speak Russian. True?
I'm guessing the flip side is not the case, and plenty of native Russian speakers who reside in Ukraine don't speak Ukrainian, or only at a basic level. True? What if we exclude eastern Ukraine?
If two strict monolinguals must have a conversation, and one speaks only in Russian and the other responds only in Ukrainian, can they communicate? Does each understand about the same proportion of the other, or is it skewed? (It's generally a lot easier for a Portuguese monolingual to understand spoken Spanish than vice versa; imho, this is due to the simpler vowel phonetics and lack of nasals in Spanish.)
What are the most common foreign languages spoken by Ukrainian adult native speakers? Guessing: 1) ru, 2) en; after that, I dunno, maybe: 3) Belarusian, 4) German or Polish? Does the order change, if we restrict it to younger than 30?

Fwiw, I'm aware of the differences between the two Cyrillic alphabets; I'm ru-1/uk-0, but I can "read" (that is, pronounce) Ukrainian without understanding it, or only scattered words. Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 07:28, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The differences in the respective alphabets are mostly a minor nuisance. Reportedly, understanding each other across the language barrier is much easier for written than for spoken text. It may indeed be difficult to find a strict monolingual Ukrainian speaker. Here, in a forum discussion about mutually intelligible languages, a Ukrainian speaker states, "I didn't mention Russian or how easy it is to understand for a Ukrainian, since we all know Russian anyway.". A Russian speaker writes, "My native language is Russian too, so there is no reason to tell about it again. But.. though it's considered to be similar to Ukrainian and Belorussian, but I can hardly understand those languages". (It is not clear in the context if this also applies to written text.) Scattered reports by monolingual Russian speakers how well they understand Ukrainian are actually all over the place, but together they give the impression that a newspaper article will largely be understood. Belarusian is reported to have a high mutual understandability with Ukrainian, and there are suggestions that Polish also scores high. Of course, national language education and the use of the standard language on national media turns national boundaries in language boundaries, but there is still a considerable continuity across national boundaries in the locally spoken language. --Lambiam 10:57, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. However, Russian is only 74% mutually intelligible with spoken Belarusian and 50% mutually intelligible with spoken Ukrainian. [1] Alansplodge (talk) 13:37, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure about these numbers? I heard that Russian is only 83.7% mutually intelligible with written Belarusian. I mean, the confidence with which this source states such precision for such a fuzzy concept should be enough to distrust them. (It is also not Fred Lindsay but Robert Lindsay.) These figures were not derived from experiments, but mostly from estimates provided by native speakers themselves, partially on Internet fora in response to not uniformly phrased questions, by averaging a number of estimates.^[2] The numbers given in the ultimate source are asymmetric; the "written intelligibility" of Ukrainian for Russians is reported as 80%, while the other way around scores 85%. As far as I could figure out, there was no correction or control for prior knowledge of the other language. --Lambiam 23:34, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambian: raised important issues regarding these % of mutually intelligibility questions: what does it mean actually/how do you define and measure understanding? Is it asymmetric? What's the previous exposure? Regarding the last point, almost all adult Ukrainians had some exposure to Russian language. Russians may not have any exposure to Ukrainian.

To all these sort of questions of similitude (regarding for example Scandinavian languages, Spanish/Italian/Portuguese, and many others that are in a spectrum) It might be a better gauge to observe the behavior of those using the language (do they watch movies, do they buy books, do they try to switch the language?). Bumptump (talk) 01:52, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever percentages may be used, they apply to the generality of the relevant populations. But humans usually communicate with individuals or small groups thereof, whose understanding of neighbouring languages will differ widely. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:54, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

March 27

Origin of 'clean up baseball cap'

Is a clean up baseball cap inspired by the cleanup hitter? How come the name arise? Would cleanup hitters wear a different cap? --Bumptump (talk) 00:25, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Where have you seen this? --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:35, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Example of the cap: [3]in Amazon. Bumptump (talk) 07:38, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to be one of that company's brand names, so it almost certainly would refer to "cleanup hitter". Another of their brands is "MVP", which of course means "Most Valuable Player". In short, just catchy names. The cleanup hitter would wear the same uniform cap as anyone else on the team. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:52, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To someone with no knowledge of the baseball term, it would be refer to the cap's heavily contoured peak, like a dustpan. Doug butler (talk) 13:35, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, no. If someone didn't know baseball, and made up their own meaning, it would be a false etymology. The real meaning is plainly by allusion to the cleanup hitter (linked above by the OP). --Jayron 32 14:44, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Number names of English origin

All cardinal numbers 1-9999 have names of native English origin. But what about ordinal numbers?? "Second" is of Latin origin. According to Wiktionary, this word replaced the native English word "other" as the ordinal of 2. Why?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:37, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that Proto-Indo-European *h₂énteros, the ancestor of other, did not simple mean "second", but "the other one of a pair", as in "on one hand ...; on the other hand", or "the other side of the coin". Not just in the branch that became English, but for the descendants of the PIE term in many languages, this was the original sense. In some languages the term was generalized from "the second one of a pair" to "the second one of an ordered collection" (of possibly more than two items). In other languages it was generalized to "any item from a collection apart from those just referred to". In most languages the original sense then became ambiguous and was dropped (although sometimes retained in idiomatic combinations: Dutch andermaal means "for the second time"). Swedish managed to introduce both generalizations and learned to live with the ambiguity. In any case, I think English "other" was historically not used as an ordinal number like "third" was. In Old English æftera, originally an adjective meaning "that which is after", could also serve as an ordinal.^[4] Note that Latin secundus was originally also not an ordinal number, but just an adjective meaning "following". --Lambiam 02:24, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And first means ‘leading’. —Tamfang (talk) 06:08, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia_guy -- I'm not sure why the matter is deserving of doubled question marks. In Old English, "other" was a dual word, like "either" and "neither" in modern English, or like its semi-cognate "uter" in Latin. It basically meant "one of two items", and in specific contexts could mean either "the first of two" or "the second of two". As the word shifted away from having a dual meaning, it became less suited to play the role of the second ordinal, and was then replaced in that function... AnonMoos (talk) 02:35, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And Latin alter was the other second word, or the second other word. Meaning second or other. Temerarius (talk) 18:42, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In French contrariwise, second(e) means ‘…of two’, in contrast to the analogic deuxième. —Tamfang (talk) 06:07, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that distinction a bit artificial? Take a phrase such as la seconde année la plus élevée après 2018.^[5] While la deuxième année la plus élevée is more common, insisting it is better seems schoolmarmish to me. --Lambiam 07:13, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

March 29

Ghetto homes made using junk materials

How do we describe the ghetto homes built with junk yard materials? -- Toytoy (talk) 12:37, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]