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May 29

Are the verbs "to ascertain" and "to determine" complete synonyms?

Are the verbs "to ascertain" and "to determine" complete synonyms (used in the sense of seeking and discovering something - I know that "to determine" can also mean to cause something to happen in a particular way)? Often things which are almost synonyms have some subtle shade of meaning, is that the case here? -- Q Chris (talk) 14:15, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

"To determine" can also mean "to bring to an end", from Latin de of, from and terminare to finish. 87.81.147.76 (talk) 14:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

IMHO there is a subtle semantic difference: "acertain" is to discover external/objective information, while "determine" could mean to declare/define something. "The court, having acertained that the accused was not at the bank at the time of the robbery, determined that all charges were to be dropped." Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:53, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I think the OP is asking about the difference between ascertain and sense 4 (only) of determine. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:01, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Even so, User:Mandruss, to avoid possible ambiguity when writing for a readership that nowadays is increasingly likely to include non-native speakers, it's advisable to choose the word with fewer alternate definitions, thus minimizing the risk of a misreading. -- Deborahjay (talk) 08:38, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

@Deborahjay: I don't necessarily disagree with you on that point. But the OP didn't say anything to indicate they are talking about Wikipedia editing, and, in fact, most of the questions at the Reference Desks are unrelated to Wikipedia.

Anyway, and just because I can't resist a good conversation, I'm not convinced it serves non-native speakers to insulate them from common native English usage. Sense 4 of "determine" isn't going away any time soon, so the non-native speaker is going to be exposed to it somewhere, whether at Wikipedia or elsewhere. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:48, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

How about an answer to the OP's question? Yes, as far as I am concerned they are exact synonyms. "Establish" is also synonymous. --Viennese Waltz 09:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Examples in the above discussion indicate that "ascertain" and "establish" work well as synonyms. I still contend that the use of "determine" would require careful wording of context so that it couldn't be misconstrued as having another of its transitive-verbal meanings, namely "to decide." -- Deborahjay (talk) 12:10, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Haček in an American spelling bee?

I saw an article [1] which claimed that the Scripps National Spelling Bee used a sentence to provide context, "The priest, philosopher and reformer Jan Hus introduced the haček into Czech orthography." By their bolding I presume that haček was the word to be spelled.

What confuses me is that I don't recognize "haček" as an English word, because I don't see č as an English letter, because it has, well, a haček over it. I have no idea how you would say that letter in a spelling bee. I see Wiktionary lists wikt:hacek as an 'alternate spelling', though.

Anyway, I was kind of curious whether such strange letters have become valid in English spelling, or spelling competitions; or alternatively, whether they accept the stripping of any and all special marks and simply the recitation of the closest-looking English letter. Or did they use the alternate spelling as a loophole, and avoid such questions where one isn't present?

Incidentally, our article on č doesn't say how it is spelled out aloud. Wnt (talk) 14:55, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually it's an English word. At least so think Oxford, Collins and MW. By the way, Hus did not invent háček but a dot above for Czech (nevertheless a dot as a diacritic had long existed before him).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:51, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• The haček itself is the little hat, caron, over the Latin letter. It also appears over other letters like s and z. The symbol 'č' is called 'cee haček' when said aloud. The letter is actually part of my family name. I've always considered it an English word in the way that salsa, haggis, and sigma are English words. I've also seen the word spelt haczek (the Polish spelling) when the č symbol itself was not available. μηδείς (talk) 18:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• If it's an English word, when will the makers of Scrabble be introducing the tile marked Č? Or, for that matter, the tiles marked Á, À, Â, Ä, Ǎ, Ă, Ā, Ã, Å, Ą, Æ, Ǣ, ........ Ź, Ż and Ž? And, more importantly, what will their letter values be, given that they're used rather less often than the diacritic-free versions? Or, to put it another way, how can an English word contain characters that are not recognised - anywhere - as part of the English alphabet and English language? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:39, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Garcon! μηδείς (talk) 22:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

... noun, plural garçons [gar-sawn] (Show IPA). French -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I expected this response (hence my parenthetical comment), but, jalapeño, façade, naïve, and dejà vu are all perfectly english expressions, as are coöperate, and fiancée. We simply do without the symbols when practicality demands, yet the symbols still have English names. I am also sure the children are provided with the rules, whatever they are, and are coached in the contest; not swept off the streets and plopped in the beehive. The fact that some keyboards don't have certain symbols doesn't mean the symbols are in themselves problematic. The custom when you and I were young was for typists to add such symbols by hand when necessary. If English is limited to what 4th graders are expected to be able to parse, then Shakespeare isn't English either. μηδείς (talk) 05:28, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I am all in favor of expanding the confines of the English language to include commonly used words written with non-English diacritical marks, including the six words mentioned above. That should be based on common understanding and widespread usage by literate English language writers. But those six words mentioned above are widely accepted and commonly rendered and understood in English with or without the diacritical marks. I do not believe that the "hacek" word has yet achieved that status. I would certainly have no idea at all what was meant if I encountered it in an English sentence lacking strong context, though I would have no problem whatsoever with the other six words mentioned, with or without the diacritics. So, language evolves and opinions may vary, but I do not at this time recognize "hacek" or "haček" as standard English at this time. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:50, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Interestingly, the very names of the country and language whence the word originates, Czechoslovakia (as it was then) and Czech, are rendered in English using Polish (!) orthography, because Čechoslovakia would have had little or no chance of being understood or pronounced correctly. The haček would have been dropped, and the Cecho part would have been pronounced like "Setcho". So much for acceptance of hačeks in English. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:51, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I think Chekoslovakia would have been the likely outcome, Jack. But no such thing as Czechoslovakia existed before WWI, nor very long after the end of the Cold War. The haček was around quite a bit before that. μηδείς (talk) 20:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I suppose an interesting case is "habañero", which is certainly not a word in any language other than English. Still, my feeling is that User:Medeis' test cases can be gone through and addressed in different ways. To begin with, coöperate and naïve are genuinely English spelling, though I would say archaic spelling; the article Diaeresis (diacritic) says that this notation is the only case of English terms with diacritical marks. Because of how diaresis is defined, there is never a doubt that it sits atop an English letter like o or i. As for "facade", "fiancee", and "deja vu", I would say that these words are or would be English when they lack diacritics and are not italicized, but foreign when those two things are done. (Though it's not very clear to me that deja vu is accepted as English the way facade is) Which leaves us with the pesky ñ - except in very old borrowings like "canyon" people don't really feel comfortable, for reasons I don't understand, with the idea of replacing it with "ny" or "ni", yet rarely can reproduce the letter in print or are minded to. And yet... I feel like these words aren't always italicized either. So that's the most interesting case of the six. Wnt (talk) 10:56, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I have also seen diaresis used in words such as reëmergent, Wnt, which spellcheck is happy to take as reemergent, the latter looking like a term for a gent who reems. μηδείς (talk) 01:27, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

You also see role spelled with a circumflex, as in rôle. See here for example. --Jayron32 16:16, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

That, and début, première and various others bespeak confusion and/or snobbishness. Rôle, début, première et various al have all been absorbed into English to produce the very fine English words role, debut and premiere, which are written without diacritics. They are all available free of charge, and there is simply no case to use any French words or French orthography in an otherwise English-language text, unless the text is actually about how certain French words are the origin/source of English words (in which case the French words must be italicised). Or unless English simply has no word or expression of its own to call upon. For example, déja vu is clearly a French expression. It has been borrowed by English speakers because we have been too lazy or too unimaginative to develop one of our own. Just because it's widely used in English-language contexts does not mean it is an English expression. It remains French, and should be italicised in writing. Maybe one day it will be reborn as the English expression "deja vu" (without the acute é), but that hasn't happened yet. To consider it an English expression would be like considering перестройка an English word. Well, hardly. Not even its usual romanization, perestroika, is an English word. Acutes, graves, circumflexes and cedillas are just as foreign to English as Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Chinese or Japanese script. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:18, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

By the way, déjà vu also takes a diacritic on the "a" in French. One more reason to spell it "deja vu" in English... --Xuxl (talk) 14:49, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Jack, Czech is actually the original Old Czech spelling. It's just Poles who retained the old digraph. I cannot confirm when the name entered English.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:45, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:18, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

To address Cullen and Jack above, yes, haček is a relatively rare word, used mainly by linguists in English, as well as ethnically and liturgically, typically by Slavs who use the Latin alphabet. I'd expect it to be marked as such in an English dictionary, given fewer than 1% of native English speakers are likely familiar with it (or with the term. Ultimately, what matters with the spelling bee is their rules and the words they defined as canonical. Learning the names of various accent marks is indeed a part of standard grade school education for native speakers. Reading poetry and Shakespeare requires understanding a markèd accent. Luckfully, never having been ruled by Napoleon, we English speakers don't feel the need to codify our speech before we just get on with it. μηδείς (talk) 20:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

French spelling was codified well before Napoléon, though. But his name is diacriticized (is that a word?) --Xuxl (talk) 14:52, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

England has been always too backward comparing to France, this why the English never came to the progressive idea of a language institution like l’Académie. (Joke.) --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:36, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Napoleon lost the right to use the accent at Waterloo, Xuxl. μηδείς (talk) 18:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

My name is Fritz Jörn (or Joern where no ö is available, as in my e-mail address). I like the English alhabet: no nonsense, just characters, no diacritical signs. Ideal for sorting, say in phone books. In Germany my little ö is sorted as o or – in phone books – as oe (in Austria behind oz). The ß as in Straße, street, becomes ss. A mess, see here under German. In Sweden ö comes after z, thus no foreigner finds it.
 I can only suggest: Americans, declare a word to be English or not, but stick to your simple alphabet! Your spelling is hard enough to learn (vs. for example Italian).
 To the hacek. You can produce an ` and an ´ on the keyboard (on yours too, I think), a ~, but no hacek, not even a circumflex. Another good reason to leave it off. In German, despite a recent spelling reform, we too don’t have a character for the sound of č, we use tsch instead (we spell Hatschek). We still use the triphraph sch for the phonetic ​[⁠ʃ⁠]​, as in English until the late 15th century, now replaced by sh (exception: British pronunciation of schedule, and of chourse schnapps). It all dates back to the Romans, who didn’t have ​[⁠ʃ⁠], not in their 22 simple characters: » … in Latin scientia "science" was pronounced /sk/, but has shifted to /ʃ/ in Italian scienza.« – Fritz Jörn (talk) 07:41, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

References

Are you supposed to type one space or two spaces, after a period?

Are you supposed to type one space or two, after a period? Does Wikipedia have an article on this topic? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

It has a rather terrible article on it, called sentence spacing, in my opinion written with an agenda. --Trovatore (talk) 15:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

That's not the correct article, is it? Isn't that an article about the distinction between, say, single-spacing and double-spacing and triple-spacing, etc., lines of text? That refers to how much space there is vertically from one line to the next. I am asking about typing a single space (blank) character or two space (blank) characters after I type a period at the end of a sentence. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:32, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

That is the correct article. I'd have to read the whole of it to understand why it jumps from spacing the lines of text to the number of spaces between sentences, but for your purpose you can jump straight to the applicable sections #Digital age and #Controversy.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 29, 2015; 16:44 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I'll check it out. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:14, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

For Wikipedia articles, see WP:MOS#Periods (full stops) and spaces and WP:MOS#Spaces following terminal punctuation.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd like to read a "main space" article on the topic. Not a Wikipedia MOS (Manual of Style) guidebook. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:37, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Wars have been fought over this exact subject. You'd do best to back out the way you came in, and pretend like you didn't ask. Otherwise, you're liable to get caught in the crossfire. --Jayron32 16:04, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• My mother was a professional typist, and was taught two spaces after a full stop at the end of a sentence. This is what I was taught in the Eighties, and what I do myself. Certain modern word processing program-programmers have decided we are too stupid to make this decision on our own, and they override or "correct" what the user does. μηδείς (talk) 18:48, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

When I first was taught to touch type in 1973, I was taught two spaces after a full stop and also after a colon. Then in 1983 I went to secretarial school, and we were still taught two spaces after a full stop. However, in 1993 I was teaching word processing in an FE college, and in the meantime the RSA had changed its standards to only one space after a full stop and a colon. (UK) --TammyMoet (talk) 21:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Where I come from, the standard was 2. I never saw 1 until I started looking at Wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:00, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

And I don't think I've ever heard about using two spaces before I read this thread. - Lindert (talk) 11:48, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

An actually answer is that it depends on which style guide you are using. Both MLA style and Chicago Style Manual prefer single. Mingmingla (talk) 16:07, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all. I later realized that my question wasn't particularly clear. I was not asking: "Are you supposed to type one space or two, after a period?" What I was asking was: "Does Wikipedia have an article on the topic of whether you are supposed to type one space or two after a period?" Sorry for the poorly phrased question. Thanks. Since this is such a "big deal", I thought that Wikipedia would have an article on it. That is, a specific article, dedicated to this exact topic / "controversy". Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:06, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

The two spaces might have been more of a thing when all we had was typewriter fonts. With better computer fonts, the two-space approach looks somewhat overkill. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:03, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

That does seem to be the story that you hear, but it makes no sense to me. The function of a period is to help you find breaks between sentences. As far as I can tell, a period and a single space works better for that in monospace fonts (the typewriter-style ones) than it does in proportional fonts (the more modern ones). In proportional fonts, the periods have a habit of cuddling up against the last letter of the sentence and kind of getting lost, so a wide space seems even more important.

There's a very nice solution for this in the typesetting package LaTeX (actually I think it's the same in plain TeX). In LaTeX, it will put a wide space after a terminal punctuation mark (period or question mark or exclamation mark). Exactly how wide that is depends on other exigencies (like what's necessary to keep the text right-justified) but in general it's wider than a full space, but not as wide as two spaces.

The best thing of all is that if you don't want the wide space in a particular spot (say, if the period ends an abbreviation rather than a sentence), you can easily suppress the wide space in that location. --Trovatore (talk) 22:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Proportional or not, extra space after a sentence can help the reader tell whether the dot ends a sentence or an abbreviation. ("During my time in the U.K. I made a driving blunder or two.") — My last typewriter had a half-space key, so I used a space and a half between sentences. —Tamfang (talk) 06:12, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

But you should not be writing "U.K." anyway, you should be writing "UK". --Viennese Waltz 07:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

As a general rule, Americans are more likely to use abbreviations with periods, Brits without. I have actually been drifting towards the British style, partly because it's just easier to type, but also, Tamfang is right: If you use a single space after terminal punctuation, then it does become more difficult to distinguish terminal punctuation from abbreviations, using the American style. So if this (in my view unfortunate) trend towards a normal space after terminal punctuation is really here to stay, then that's a strong point in favor of transitioning to British-style abbreviations.

Again, LaTeX does this very nicely, though it does require a tiny bit of effort on the part of the author. When I want to use a period to end a sentence, I just type normally — one space or two, or seventeen, makes no difference; the engine will choose a wide space that's usually sufficient to mark the sentence break, while maintaining pleasing spaces in other ways.

But if I want to use an abbreviation followed by a period, Mr. or Dr. or what have you, I follow it immediately by a backslash-space, and the engine knows that the sentence is continuing and adjusts accordingly. --Trovatore (talk) 18:22, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Off-color, off-topic joke.

If a woman is involved, I find it best to give her as much space as possible, following a period. StuRat (talk) 23:03, 30 May 2015 (UTC) This type of comment is an example of the systemic hostility that women editors experience here. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:54, 31 May 2015 (UTC) Opinions will vary among both men and women. The opposing viewpoint is that such things shouldn't be taken too seriously, and that the trend toward being offended by more and more things is bad for society. This viewpoint is held by many women as well as men. Anyone claiming to know how the majority of either gender would feel about it is full of shit, unless they care to cite some peer-reviewed study that clearly supports them. What breaks this stalemate is that Stu's one-liner does nothing to answer the OP's question. In other words, I'd avoid humor that's both potentially offensive to some (I'm sure Stu is astute enough to know that) and off topic, as it's a net negative. I haven't seen such comments to be a pattern for Stu, so I'm guessing it was a slip of the fingers and he would refrain if he had it to do over. 2¢ ―Mandruss ☎ 07:11, 31 May 2015 (UTC) The remark in question falls into a subset of "jokes about behavior associated with exclusively female reproductive physiological processes" that are arguably delivered and received differently depending on the sex/gender of the jokester and audience. As a "woman editor...here" I suggest we consider why we see few if any jokes of a parallel subset ridiculing cisgender males' organs, processes, and associated effects. Perhaps it's related to the accepted (?) fact that Wikipedia participation is predominantly a male enterprise, and guys can dish it out better than they can take it while not particularly considering or caring how women take it? Unfortunately I lack any citation of such a comprehensive study with definitive findings as @Mandruss would require. Meanwhile we may consider the mood on the virtual street, as expressed in many topics and responses on social media networks, discussing the more innocuous elements associated with what feminists call rape culture. --Deborahjay (talk) 11:55, 1 June 2015 (UTC)-- That remark reflects the tastelessness that is sometimes present on Wikipedia. It's unfortunate that it appeared on such a public page rather than on a user talk page. Liz Read! Talk! 17:03, 1 June 2015 (UTC) Further discussed on the talk page. -- ToE 17:32, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:18, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Look at a book, made for reading: one normal space. But: justification "spoils" everything anyway. So I suggest modern typing, one space only – and one space before and after a dash. – Fritz Jörn (talk) 08:10, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

"Cogenidad"?

A friend got a report after an ultrasound that included the comment "baja cogenidad". So far as I can tell, "cogenidad" doesn't exist anywhere on the internet. Can anyone think of a word for which it might be a misspelling (in Spanish)? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Medeis (talk • contribs) 18:33, 29 May 2015

• We figured out it meant "low echogenicity" (ecogenidad) which makes sense given the procedure. μηδείς (talk) 20:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

May 30

The Rain In Spain

Does it actually fall mainly on the plain, or is this just an elocution lesson for people who have trouble pronouncing 'ai'? A bit like 'How now, brown cow', which has no verb and one would not expect an answer from a cow, whatever colour it was. 82.35.216.24 (talk) 10:39, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

The song doesn't say it falls on the plain but that it stays ("mainly") in the plain. Now seriously. Contact Basemetal here 11:30, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Since what is meant by plain us undefined, the answer is uncertain. Most of Spain except the coasts is a high plateau, rain clouds tend to rain out as they are forced to ascend, hence much of Spain is dry. The Northwest coast (especially Spanish Galicia) is rather lush. Much of the potential rain from the Atlantic falls there and in Portugal rather than inland. See climate of Spain. μηδείς (talk) 19:28, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I think the answer is clear — it's the second thing you said. Or more precisely, it's what the librettist thought would sound like an elocution lesson. The elocution teachers couldn't much care whether the statement reflected reality, and the librettist wasn't much more interested in whether real elocution teachers use such a phrase.

Compare Moses supposes his toeses are roses/but Moses supposes erroneously/for Moses, he knowses his toeses aren't roses/as Moses supposes his toeses to be. --Trovatore (talk) 21:38, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Prof. Enry Iggins was packing as many "ays" in there as he could. Eliza would say it, "The rine in Spine sties minely in the pline." Until she "got it", by George. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:00, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

The other one they used was "In Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen". Now, "hardly ever" says they have happened, if only rarely. I'm no meaty horologist, but I'd be surprised if hurricanes have ever happened in those parts. Conclusion: it wasn't meant to reflect the truth. Neither was the Spanish one. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:34, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

It sounded like Hertford, not Hartford, to me. DuncanHill (talk) 00:07, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Hartford. Start at about 1:15 in.[2] Or this, from :00.[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:23, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Hertford is pronounced like "Hartford", and presumably the line is referring to the places in England...also Hartford frequently gets hurricanes, doesn't it? So that part wouldn't make sense, not that it really needs to make sense, but anyway it's clearly referring to Hertford. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:43, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

See also pun. DuncanHill (talk) 00:47, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Aha, spelled Hertford but pronounced Hartford. That British peculiarity, in words like clerk, derby, Kerr, etc. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:08, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Hartford, Connecticut was actually named after Hertford, Hertfordshire, but I suppose that they had forgotten how to spell it while they were away. The spelling of the place was Herutford in the 8th century,[4] so I think we have continuity on our side. Alansplodge (talk) 18:03, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

And the irony is that they pronounce "hurricane" like "hurric'n". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:41, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

But they don't pronounce 'mobile' and 'missile' as if they were spelt 'moble' and 'missle'. And they don't drop the h in herb. So, all is forgiven. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:21, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

As it turns out, "erb" was correct from French, and later someone started enunciating the "h", from the Latin.[5] However, we Yanks say "herbicide", not "erbicide". You got us on "mobile" (or "Mobil Oil") and "missle", though I doubt that the French pronunciation ended with a homophone of "isle" / "aisle". But we say the formal name of a car as "aw-toe-moe-beel". Do you say "aw-toe-moe-byle"? Then there's "Moe-BEEL", Alabama, but it apparently is an unrelated word.[6] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:53, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

In my speech, the adjective meaning "able to be moved from place to place" is /'moʊbəl/, but the toy is a /'moʊ,bi:l/. --Trovatore (talk) 00:49, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

That would depend on whether you use "hurricane" in the strict sense where it is limited to a sufficiently powerful tropical cyclone in certain parts of the world, or whether you mean the word to include any windstorm of hurricane strength. Specifically, see Great Storm of 1987. --174.88.135.200 (talk) 23:10, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

"Tropical cyclone" and "typhoon" don't start with the letter "h". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:14, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

A typhoon in Troon would not affect the Toon. DuncanHill (talk) 13:13, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

What's this about the British pronouncing "Kerr" like "car"? Bill Kerr came over from Perth and went back there after working with Tony Hancock at the BBC. He was always a "cur" to us. Hancock went on tour to Australia and killed himself in Melbourne, like Jimmy Clitheroe did. When I was over there I was ticked off for pronouncing "Melbourne" to rhyme with "born" rather than "burn". I was also admonished for pronouncing "Albany" to rhyme with the American (shopping) "mall" rather than the British "mallet". Do Australians shop in the "mall" rhyming with "maul" like the Americans or do they say it in the British way to rhyme with "pal"?

Aussies wouldn't know that Costessey, a suburb of Norwich (rhymes with the first syllable of "coral" followed by "itch") is pronounced "Cossy". One stop down the railway line, Wymondham is pronounced the same as that town in the far north of Western Australia. Cutteslowe, a suburb of Oxford, is pronounced "Cutslow", but when I was living in the equivalent Perth suburb it was pronounced as written. I was amused to learn that Cottesloe is now the Beverley Hills of Western Australia. The smart places used to be City Beach and Floreat Park. I also lived in Northbridge, which had a bad reputation even in 1911. How do Australians handle the pronunciation of names like Beauchamp, Cholmondeley, Mainwaring and St John Stevas? 87.81.147.76 (talk) 13:42, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

In English, the word "south" at the beginning of a place name sometimes rhymes with the first syllable in "mother", thus Southall, a west London suburb, Southwark, a south London suburb across the Thames from the City (the "w" is not sounded), and Southwell, a Nottinghamshire town which you hear of in betting shops because it has a racecourse (again the "w" is not sounded). Does Australian pronunciation follow the same pattern? In Perth, between Mosman Park and Fremantle, there used to be a Shire of Peppermint Grove, which had its own council but consisted of about half a dozen streets. I believe it's been reorganised, but before it was would it hold the record for the smallest local government unit ever? 87.81.147.76 (talk) 13:59, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

What about Loughborough? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 14:04, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Well there you're getting to it. Slough, Brough Park, Lough Neagh, Loughborough (including the last syllable), they're all pronounced differently. It was George Bernard Shaw who decided that "ghoti" is actually pronounced "fish" - "gh" as in "tough", "o" as in "women", and "ti" as in "nation". 87.81.147.76 (talk) 14:16, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

You'd still be wrong if you pronounced Melbourne to rhyme with 'burn'. It's Mel-bən. And Brisbane is Briz-bən (not -bane). We shop in a "mall" (rhymes with Paul, not with pal), but yes, Albany is al-, not awl-. When I was at school, we were taught the proper prons of most well-known Australian places, so we knew Launceston was Lon-, not Lawn-; and Toowoomba had a short -oom- (like a Yorkshireman saying "plum"), not long (like "doom"); and Canowindra was "kə-NOWN-dra" (rhymes with Caloundra), not "ka-nə-WIN-dra"; and Wangaratta was wang-, not wong-, and so on. But listen to TV weather reports and you end up screaming at the presenters because they obviously have never even heard of half the places they tell us about, let alone have a clue how to pronounce them. So, with such a standard among the local "experts", we should go a little easier on our international visitors, many of whom are from overseas. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:26, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, I don't know who you're getting him confused with, but Jimmy Clitheroe suicided in Blackpool, England, and I can find no evidence he ever visited Australia at all. Also, Tony Hancock suicided in Sydney, not Melbourne. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:31, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Suicided? There's a word that should kill itself. DuncanHill (talk) 22:13, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, Bill Kerr resided in Perth when he returned to Australia, but he had had no previous association with that city. He was born in South Africa, and on migration to Australia his family lived in Wagga Wagga, NSW, a very long way from Perth. In the UK he was billed as "The Boy from Wagga Wagga". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:42, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

See "List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations".—Wavelength (talk) 14:53, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Wasn't Deborah Kerr pronounced "car"? In the UK, Bill Kerr was always pronounced "cur", and fissile missile rhymes. Widneymanor (talk) 20:55, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, Deborah Car and Bill Cur. What a team they'd have made! But they've both karked it (or is that kirked it, or kerrked it, or curked it ...?). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:42, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I once heard a BBC weather presenter gleefully report: "Strong winds off the Atlantic are likely to push the storms in the western Mediterranean all the way through to the Caucasus so - and I've been waiting to say this all my career - the rains in Spain are heading for Ukraine!" Grutness...wha? 05:29, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Pronuciation of Dupleix

What is the proper pronunciation of the French surname Dupleix? -- 79.237.64.216 (talk) 19:34, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

As far as I know the final 'x' is pronounced in both French and English and the 'ei' is pronounced as a short 'e' in English and as an open 'e' in French. Contact Basemetal here 21:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

But how is the X pronounced? --174.88.135.200 (talk) 03:35, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

According to this, it's pronounced like an "x". If so, "Dupleix" would be a near-homophone of "duplex". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:40, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

The 'x' is pronounced like an 'x', i.e. as 'ks'. In French 'Dupleix' and 'duplex' are perfect homophones. In English they only differ in the place of the accent: first syllable for 'duplex', last syllable for 'Dupleix'. Contact Basemetal here 04:57, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

"Dupleix" is originally an other spelling for "Duplessis" ( Duplessis (disambiguation)). It must have been pronounced then ( approximately ) "Du-place", or "Duh-play-iss". --Askedonty (talk) 07:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I thought the standard French pronunciation of that name was based on an erroneous literal interpretation of the 'x'. There are other examples. Many French speakers pronounce the 'x' in Auxerre or Bruxelles as 'ks' where it stands in fact for 'ss'. Similarly the 'tz' in Metz should be pronounced as 's' but many French speakers pronounce it as 'ts' (affricate). Similarly in English the pronunciation of 'Mexico' and 'Texas'. There ought to be a name for this sort of thing. My all time favorite is the Italian word 'ovest' (meaning 'west'). "Ye Olde Sex Shoppe" is something similar, if not identical. Contact Basemetal here 14:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

WHAAOI. --ColinFine (talk) 11:07, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Well I'm so familiar with French that it took me some time to understand in what way that could be erroneous. Between two teachers, one may be what I'd call a prescriber but the other will tell you if it's erroneous you get good semantic archeology behind, there you go. Unfortunately I'm much less literate that I'd wanted here. --Askedonty (talk) 15:47, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

It seems to be below Sound change; the nearest seem to be Metathesis (linguistics), perhaps Epenthesis: Bridging consonant clusters. --Askedonty (talk) 19:20, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

• The remarks above assume the Standard French pronunciation, but if this is a Languedoc language name, or from the Catalan language the x will be pronounced natively as sh in English. μηδείς (talk) 19:03, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Marquee project

In our article Gambit (2012 film), it says "Sutherland knew of a fledgling production company, Crime Scene Pictures, with equity financing from Southeast Asia, who were looking for a marquee project for their new company and felt that Gambit would fit the bill". What is a "marquee project"? DuncanHill (talk) 20:36, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

See definition 2 here [7]. The adjectival one. "very popular and well known, having or associated with the name recognition and attraction of one whose name appears on a marquee." A marquee is the giant sign that appears over the doors of theaters, where you put the names of the best known stars in a show to attract patrons. In the middle 20th century, the word got expanded to mean "well-known" or "well recognized". A "marquee project" is one that a company is hoping will be a huge hit that will attract the company itself customers and name recognition, in the same way that a star's name on a theater marquee would attract customers. --Jayron32 21:01, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. I was previously only aware of the tent. DuncanHill (talk) 21:11, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Synonyms might be "signature project" or "flagship project" (if it's the main one). StuRat (talk) 23:00, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I wonder how on earth we managed to stumble through our pathetic lives before they finally took pity on us and gave us adjectives like "marquee" and "boutique". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:14, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Isn't a "marquee display" on an electronic devices (e.g. old-style electronic typewriter) the term for where a single line of text runs laterally on a narrow rectangular screen, as with a teletype? -- Deborahjay (talk) 08:44, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

A similar use in sport - which I've particularly noticed in Australian soccer, so Jack will no doubt have heard it - is a "marquee player", i.e., a star player likely to draw supporters. Grutness...wha? 05:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Ah well, Grutness, that supposes I take any interest in soccer. Such a supposition would be contrary to the facts. I do take a sort of malicious interest in the utterly absurd things that come out of the mouths of sports commentators generally, but "marquee player" has not yet come across my radar. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:12, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

May 31

Where does the 'n' in the Arabic word for pharaoh come from?

In Egyptian there was no 'n' in the word for pharaoh (and neither is there one in Hebrew or English). In French the n of 'pharaon' comes from the Latin accusative (the declension is pharao, pharaonem). But where might the 'n' of the corresponding Arabic word 'firʿawn' (فِرْعَوْن) come from? Contact Basemetal here 12:46, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Classical Arabic contains an 'n' at the end of masculine nouns. 82.35.216.24 (talk) 13:44, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

There are thousands of masculine nouns in Arabic that do not end in 'n'. Are you talking about tanwīn? The 'n' at the end of 'firʿawn' is not tanwīn. Contact Basemetal here 14:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Etymonline only has "title of the kings of ancient Egypt, Old English Pharon, from Latin Pharaonem, from Greek Pharao, from Hebrew Par'oh, from Egyptian Pero', literally "great house."" so maybe it comes from French or Latin? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 15:37, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

The word is already used in the Qur'ān so I'd say French is out.

An early (pre-Islamic) borrowing from Latin? Maybe not impossible even though this would seem a fairly circuitous way to go about it: why Latin instead of Aramaic, or Hebrew, or Coptic, or some other neighboring language? But, leaving that aside, the Latin nominative does not have an 'n'. You'd expect languages borrowing from Latin to borrow the nominative not the accusative. Are there other examples of borrowings from Latin using the accusative as their model? The case of words inherited from Latin by languages descended from Latin is different.

Going back to 82.35.216.24's suggestion, I wonder whether something that could have started as a tanwīn form 'firʿawun' (فِرْعَوٌ) based on 'firʿaw' (فِرْعَو), which as you can see would correspond etymologically to the Hebrew form, could not have given the Arabic form of the Qur'ān: so 'firʿaw' > 'firʿawun' > 'firʿawn'? But how would an indefinite (as the meaning of tanwīn is) eventually become the basic form of the noun? Are there other examples of Arabic words that were originally a tanwīn form where the 'n' of the tanwīn form eventually became part of the basic form of the word?

Contact Basemetal here 17:34, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Joseph Henry Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament says "Φαραων" with an N at the end is a variant spelling in Josephus. That's pretty much exactly the same as the Arabic spelling, so maybe that was a spoken form, and that's how Muhammad picked it up. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:57, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

'How the scribe picked it up' :) Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:02, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Why "the scribe"? Do you imagine Muhammad dictated without the 'n' and the scribe took it upon himself to insert an 'n'?

I'm skeptical of a direct Greek connection: the Greek form has lost the information that there was an ʿayin there and where it was. If borrowed from Greek, where would Arabic have gotten the ʿayin and how did it insert it exactly where it corresponds to that of the Egyptian word? From Greek 'Φαραων' you'd expect, wouldn't you say, Arabic 'faraʾūn' or 'faraʾun' (فَرَؤُون and فَرَؤُن respectively: I hope I got my hamzas right) according as, when the word was borrowed, vowel length was still a feature of the Greek language or not. In the former case I'm assuming that the alphas were all short, which I don't actually know. I also ignored the question of the first vowel which is in fact 'i' in the Arabic word. I don't think that is a serious problem. Arabic short vowels are unstable.

But maybe Adam is getting closer. Indeed, where did Josephus (or the copyist responsible for this variant) pick up his 'n'? If not Hebrew (which does not have the 'n') could it be Aramaic? Can anyone find some Aramaic or Syriac forms of 'pharaoh'?

Not directly connected: Does the Latin nominative of the word really have a short 'o' (as Wiktionary says)? Or in fact a long 'o'? If the word was borrowed from Greek you'd expect a long 'o', plus Latin nominatives in 'o' (imago, leo, etc.) usually end in a long 'o', so analogy would also seem to make the long 'o' more likely. I wonder if, for Latin, Wiktionary makes a distinction between "short vowel" and "vowel of unknown length". It is mostly vowels in closed syllables (not the case here) whose length is unknown (so called "hidden quantity"), for obvious reasons.

Amazingly it turns out that (this is 2015!) there still is no decent etymological dictionary for Arabic in any language? Apparently some people are working on one in Norway. Hard to believe isn't it?

Contact Basemetal here 18:48, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, apparently it's difficult to make an etymological dictionary for Arabic? Maybe it's because Arabic is relatively new as far as classical languages go...but there isn't even a Semitic etymological dictionary in general. There's one for Hebrew though. Anyway, another thought I had was that "fira'un" was constructed as a plural, but there's no precedent for that in the other languages (and that wouldn't work with the actual plural, "fira'ina"). Also, as you mentioned above, the Arabic is (فِرْعَوْن, not فِرَؤُن, so it's actually not the same as the Greek, but I suppose -αων would be pronounced as a diphthong there. As for where the ayin came from if it was borrowed from Greek, are there any other words where something similar happened? I'm sure there are but I can't think of any - the only one I can think of is Constantinople, where the Greek taus became ط and the kappa became ق - قسطنطينية. But those are consonants reinterpreted to a similar sound, not a vowel becoming a new consonant. Are there any other Greek names or words with the sequence -αω- borrowed into Arabic? Adam Bishop (talk) 23:49, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Latin universitas, accusative universitatem, that's how we got "university" in English and universitaet in German. Neither language is descended from Latin. In fact, English seems regularly to get its Latin - derived words from the accusative - "imaginary" and "leonine" have been flagged above and there must be hundreds more - I can think of legal, marginal, ordinal, pontifical, regal, sacerdotal and virgin.

You get some very weird transitions - for example the Babylonian arach - samna became the Hebrew Marcheshvan through perfectly regular rules of lexical change. As for pharaoh, could "pharaonic" have arisen from the same process that turned "a" into "an", or Portuguese "em" + "o" into "no"? 87.81.147.76 (talk) 09:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

'An' didn't come from 'a', it was the other way around. 'An' was the Old English word for 'one'. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 12:18, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure about German, but English either gets all those words from French, or from Latin adjectives which slready used the base form, so that's a different process. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

A language like Sard, which is really Latin with different endings, is already showing the change to noun formation from the accusative/genitive/dative/ablative stem. Why shouldn't a word like "virgin", for example, be directly formed from the Latin virginem? 87.81.147.76 (talk) 11:54, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Etymonline says it's from Anglo-French/Old French "virgine". In other words it is from 'virginem' but not directly from 'virginem'. It's through Old French. And in Old French this is not a borrowing from Latin but a word inherited from Latin. Those words do come from the accusative. I have not checked all of the evidence of course but I was taught that borrowings from Latin into French, English, etc. all use the nominative as their model. The reason could be that to foreigners, and to European scholars who were using Latin as their scholarly language, it was the nominative that "represented" the word. Similarly it is the nominative that we use in Latin dictionaries to represent the word. Not quite the same thing but it may give an idea of the process. I'm not claiming this rule is absolute and that someone may not be able to find a borrowing from Latin that does use the accusative. If you wanna try you can basically limit yourself to those words of the 3rd declension that have a different number of syllables in the nominative and the accusative.

Regarding Adam's question whether Arabic speakers would hear a vowel hiatus in a ancient Greek as an ʿayin or as a hamza: Greek χάος gives Arabic كاوس if you believe Arabic WP. There are at least two possibilities for its pronunciation (couldn't find a vocalization) but at least you can see there's no ʿayin. One example, that's not a lot a lot. Maybe others can come up with other examples. (And please don't forget my request for Aramaic pharaohs if you come across one.)

Contact Basemetal here 14:18, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

There is apparently a letter in Aramaic to a pharaoh, which you can read about on JSTOR, but it doesn't give the Aramaic text...still maybe that help find the original text. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:25, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Here is another, with the Aramaic text - although the word for Pharaoh is the same as in Hebrew, no indication of an N. This is from the 7th century BC though, so that doesn't really help figure out if there was an N there 1000 years later when Arabic borrowed it. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

OK, outdent to make this easier...it seems that the Peshitta version of the Bible uses the word for pharaoh with an N at the end at Romans 9:17. My search is a bit hampered by my inability to read Aramaic or Syriac and my lack of proper fonts, but this Peshitta New Testament search tool can be used to show the Syriac as well as Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin transliterations (all of which also contain the final N). This might help explain where Arabic got it from...although that still leaves us with the question of where Syriac got it from. (If it's actually a Syriac form then maybe that's where Josephus got his variant Greek spelling.) Adam Bishop (talk) 17:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Alan. Lots of stuff. It could turn out it's all from Aramaic/Syriac after all. That would seem to be the more natural, or at least the more expected answer as the source of Biblical stories in the Qurʾān seem to have been Aramaic speaking Christians and Jews. You may remember the story a few years ago about the houris being allegedly not in the least pure virgins but just white grapes. I don't know where that particular story is at, as I haven't been following it, but it would seem only natural if there was a little Aramaic influence hidden in the Qurʾān. But, as you say, that would only beg the question: Where did Aramaic get the 'n'? We'll worry about that another time. "After all, tomorrow is another day". This said I'd love to know what the Akkadian word is for 'pharaoh'. You may know that Akkadian was used through the whole of the Middle East (even in Egypt actually) as a diplomatic language and that could have influenced Aramaic which followed it as the diplomatic lingua franca. Or in Nabatean, an Aramaic dialect spoken by people who were ethnically Arabs and which may have influenced early Arabic. Mutual influences of Semitic languages on one another in the Middle East could give any linguist a serious headache, not to mention us, lowly dilettanti. In the end, if there is one origin it can't very well be anything other than analogy or morphology. It could also be "totally random" but that's just another name for "we haven't figured out the answer yet". But, like I said, tomorrow is another day. Contact Basemetal here 20:16, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The Akkadian word seems to be "pirhu", obviously a borrowing, although they would also use their own word "lugal" to refer to a pharaoh. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

June 1

Native level of proficiency?

Is "native" a level? Some natives cannot read or write, and many have a very limited vocabulary. I am pretty sure that an educated foreigner could write better than the bottom 25% of the the natives. And that's being generous. Wouldn't that mean that something like "full professional proficiency" is sometimes higher than "native"?--Llaanngg (talk) 12:47, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article titled First language which covers the various ways this can be defined; under the "defining native speaker" section of that article, the most relevant definition for your purposes is likely "The individual is able to produce fluent, spontaneous discourse". Note, also, that most linguists treat spoken language different than written language, notably that a spoken language is acquired naturally, without instruction or intervention, by children, and will even be invented spontaneously by isolated populations with no contact with other languages (see Nicaraguan Sign Language which is the most famous case study for spontaneous language creation of this type). Written languages, on the other hand, are artificial constructs which exist to represent the spoken language, they must be taught, and are only acquired by a learner after mastery of the spoken language. Reading and writing are not important variables in determining linguistic fluency, many languages worldwide have no written form; and yet their speakers are self-evidently fluent in communicating with others in their own tongue. --Jayron32 13:01, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

• A native level of proficiency and a professional level of proficiency are not the same thing, otherwise all native speakers would be good writers and announcers. That's obviously not true. A look at the article Oral Proficiency Interview (run by an American company, but viewed as industry standard) and related topics such as the written tests and the various scales is a good way to start. μηδείς (talk) 19:12, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
• I dislike the term immensely. I am a native English speaker, can speak French passably well, Hungarian day to day, some Spanish, get by in Italian and Romanian and other Latinate languages. Even though I can pass off as a French speaker, I would never describe myself as native. The rule, if you are a professional translator, is you translate into your native language never out of it. It's not just the words but idioms &c. one is likely to miss. I have never met anyone in my life (and I have lived in six countries with six languages, oh and Wales) who is genuinely bilingual or can claim a second language as a "native" language. The designation is absurd. But unfortunately, forms for jobs etc often say "Native, Intermediate, Basic" so one has to put "Native" if one thinks one is more than "Intermediate". But I dislike the term. Si Trew (talk) 01:49, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Positive would be that before you check the square you're forced to think about what it means, and where you are. "Native" means that you've got the vernacular and if you do it just does make no sense to check "Intermediate". But again, that's a case where you have to be yourself clear about of where you are. --Askedonty (talk) 06:26, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

June 2

'uman rights and 'elf 'n' safety

The earlier question about apheresis reminded be of something that's been puzzling me for some time. In the UK, it seems to be commonplace for people who write letters to (or opinion pieces in) newspapers criticising health and safety or human rights legislation to refer to them as 'elf 'n' safety or 'uman rights. Does anyone here know what the purpose is of this apheresis? Is it supposed to be a parody of the supposed accent or manerisms of people that care about health and safety / human rights? (And if so, what accent is it meant to be and why the association?) Or is it supposed to represent something else? Iapetus (talk) 10:17, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I think maybe they are intended as more a parody of the kind of blind-obedience-without-understanding that sometimes surrounds this legislation. And the notion that they are so ubiquitous that they have become "slang words." One can of course easily imagine these being parrotted out by London cab drivers. See wikt:elfin_safety. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:29, 1 June 2015 (UTC) [8]

See the Wikipedia article titled eye dialect. WP:WHAAOE. --Jayron32 13:32, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Also in part another version of the irregular verb format (I am firm, you are obstinate, (third person pronoun) is as stubborn as a mule) - if one agrees with it/finds it useful it is human rights/health and safety, if opposed it is 'uman rights and 'elf 'n' safety. Jackiespeel (talk) 10:04, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The thing about all that that puzzles me is that - as the article says - eye-dialect is often used to suggest superiority over the people who supposedly talk like that. But the (stereotypical) London cabbie is more likely to be complaining about over-the-top H&S / HR laws rather than blindly obeying them. So essentially, the writers are parodying people who agree with them. Is this then meant to be a way of showing (claiming) that "Ordinary hard-working people agree with me"? Iapetus (talk) 10:17, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

"Elf 'n' safety" evokes a middle-to-upper-class person being stymied and frustrated by a jobsworth, someone of a lower class who nonetheless has the upper hand because he represents bureaucracy. The lower class person would, in London at least, stereotypically drop their aitches.

Upper-middle-class person: But I left my handbag in there!

Fluorescent-jacketed steward: Can't let you in luv. More 'n my job's worth. 'Elf 'n' safety, innit.

There is also a common stereotype of lower class people using 'human rights' to defend inexcusable behaviour, more out of a vague sense of entitlement than actual legal knowledge. "You can't give my Wayne detention! It's against 'is 'uman rights!" --87.224.68.42 (talk) 10:31, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm. I guess I just need to recalibrate my prejudices. I thought the stereotype was more about lawyers, upper-middle class liberals, ivory-tower intellectuals etc coming up with absurd, ideologically-driven rules that "ordinary, hardworking people"(tm) can see are nonsense. Iapetus (talk) 09:10, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Also, as in other contexts, intonation/facial expression - or which newspaper is using the phrase - can affect the meaning. (And sometimes the speaker wishes to say 'it isn't practical (for various reasons' or 'you are annoying me' and uses the jobsworth/elf and safety to fob the person off. Jackiespeel (talk)

Iapetus, it is used mostly disparagingly, that nobody can get any work done becase of elfin safety (I don't know where they get the elves from.) So it is used mostly in a sarcastic manner. The H dropping is intended to indicate the speech patterns of the lower classes (such as myself): Although apparently it is perfectly fine on "An Hotel" and so forth. where to say "A hotel" or "A ho'el" (with a glottal stop on the T) is de trop and far too common.

But actually, the Health and Safety at Work Act sometimes known as HASAWA is perfectly sensible and says you have a responsibility to take care of yourself, then a responsibility to take care of others. (I know, because I had to take it for my BTEC, many years ago). It has been loaded, in my opinion, by the ambulance chasers, particularly after lawyers were allowed to advertise on UK television. Si Trew (talk) 01:03, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "Blayac"

Can anyone tell me how to pronounce the French surname "Blayac", as in Jérémy Blayac? In terms an Englishman would understand if possible. Cheers. --87.224.68.42 (talk) 10:33, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The IPA is [bla'jak]. If you don't understand IPA, the French [a] sound is similar to the vowel in the English word black as it is pronounced in Wales and most of England, particularly in the North, but NOT as it is pronounced in America or in traditional Received Pronunciation (what you might call a plummy accent). So the English pronunciation is bla YAK, with a very slight emphasis on the second syllable. Marco polo (talk) 13:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Marco polo is right, in Southern English it is more a glissando or slur between the pure vowels,the tongue is already kinda reaching to the next sound so it slurs along the way. Which causes me no end of trouble in Hungary, where Ó Ö O and Ő are different sounds (all the same to me. I can write them, I can speak them, but I don't hear them: I get offered a wife when I want salt, am I the renicarnation of Lot?). Si Trew (talk) 01:29, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

No. Not even his reincarnation. You're probably just chopped liver. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

"All but..."

What exactly does this phrase mean? When you say 'experiments have all but ceased', does it mean they have completely ceased, or that they are continuing, albeit in a reduced state? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 11:24, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The latter. 95.103.235.200 (talk) 11:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

"In a reduced state" doesn't quite cover it. It means that they have almost entirely ceased. --Viennese Waltz 12:17, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• As in, they are about as close to having ceased as they could be, without having totally ceased. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:07, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Requested translation: What are the terms in File:China Airlines Flight 140 EN.svg in Chinese?

In File:China Airlines Flight 140 EN.svg what are the terms in Chinese in this document? For bustle I presume it is "A cover to protect and hide the back panel of a computer or other office machine." (from wiktionary:bustle)

Thanks! WhisperToMe (talk) 19:10, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I can't answer your main question, but I think bustle refers specifically to the cover of the stored evacuation slide. See the second paragraph of the linked article. Deor (talk) 22:53, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for answering that question! WhisperToMe (talk) 21:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Leo Marriot or Leo Marriott?

This may be the wrong section to ask, but the military author's name is spelled both ways, in hundreds of citations in Wikipedias of many languages, in thousands of websites, and even on his own book covers. This Leo Marriott is probably a different person. Art LaPella (talk) 23:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't see an article on Leo Marriott. If there were an article, and if his name was spelled in two ways, Leo Marriot should be a redirect. Maybe there should be an article on him. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:36, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

No there isn't an article, and yes, there probably should be an article on someone we cite so often. The existing problem is that we have so many misspelled citations, one way or the other. Art LaPella (talk) 16:09, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

He's Leo Marriott on LinkedIn [9]. 178.221.165.11 (talk) 19:37, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. That led me to his publishing website, where I was able to email Mr. Marriot(t) directly. Art LaPella (talk) 20:26, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

June 3

on line sites with English words hard for foreigners?

I have been searching on line, at a spanish-speaking friend's request, for sites that offer a list of hard-to-pronounce English words. One of the listed "anemone" as the most difficult. The obvios google results have been horrible. I am looking for something on an advanced level that gives words (mostly in the (American-, but also British-type dialects) that present a difficulty for non-natives. Phrases like six sixths, cowboy baby, and squirrel's strengths. Can anyone with ESL experience or a general knowledge of the topic recommend any appropriate site/references? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 01:23, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

You can find English tongue twisters listed at http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:32, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Websearching on 'difficult English words' gives a number of examples.

There are also Comparison of American and British English, Scottish English, Northern England English and (mostly humorous) books on how to speak the latter languages. Jackiespeel (talk) 12:59, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

What I am looking for is not so much tongue twisters (whose individual words are often easy to say), but single words that are difficult to pronounce. One example might be uncomfortably, which is easier in British than American because in British all the vowels are pronounced, while in American (my dialect at least) the word comes out "uncomfterbly" with metastasis. I did the same google search, and got the suggestion that rural and anemone were hard words to pronounce, which makes me wonder, for whom? μηδείς (talk) 21:30, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Anenome is a struggle for me (as a cockney), if I ain't careful, I make an enemy. And you don't want an anenome as an enemy. Rural is no problem to me, though: perhaps rubrick would be a better test? Si Trew (talk) 01:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I think some people turn the first vowel of 'rural' to a schwa, and then find the almost-consecutive 'r's difficult. I've known a lot of Brits insist 'temporarily' is pronounced the same as 'temporally', which seems weird to me. Other than the fact that it doesn't rhyme with 'telephone', I'm not sure what the problem is with 'anemone'. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:39, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I'd recommend Bill Bryson's book, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words. And being an American by birth, but living in England for twenty-odd years in his twenties and thirties, he acutely picks up on the differences, at least from his own experience. Anyway, early dictionaries were only "hard words", and mostly "for the benefit of the fairer sex. Si Trew (talk) 01:38, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

"Anemone" not a million miles (or kilometres) from its Spanish counterpart, "anémona" if Bing Translate is to be believed. Is the pronunciation wildly different? Alansplodge (talk) 17:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

The consonants and cadence are the same, the unstressed vowels are reduced in English, and we have a weird long ee ending as if it were uh-nem-uh-ny. μηδείς (talk) 19:18, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

An aborigine named Daphne was an expert in the use of the apostrophe, and that's no hyperbole. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:52, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Half a point off though, for mixing the Greek nominitive feminine nouns in -η (-ē) with the Latin prepositional phrase ab origine, "from the origin", nominative orīgō. μηδείς (talk) 03:21, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

This is the English language we're talking about here. I'm in rather good company when it comes to mongrelising every other language and cooking all manner of disparate things together in a linguistic casserole that would make Escoffier smile. Or Heston or Nigella or Marco or Julia. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:49, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Latin American surnames

Please excuse this question from an ignorant Anglo... but I have noticed from time to time a significant difference or two in the "Spanish" surnames of Central America and southern South America - for example, if a surname ends in -ez, it seems more likely to come from Mexico or Central America, whereas surnames ending in -arri or -aga seem to come from Argentina or Uruguay. Is there some reason for this? Do, for instance, the -arri and -aga endings have native American origins, or were the settlers in these regions originally from different parts of Spain? And are there specific "Spanish" surnames which indicate strongly that a person comes from one particular Latin American country? Grutness...wha? 05:19, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

One thing to remember is that, like the U.S., where English is the native language but not everyone's ancestry comes from the British Isles, in Spanish-speaking parts of the Americas, not everyone's ancestry comes from Spain. For example, 25 million Argentines claim Italian ethnic heritage; meaning that 60% of Argentina is of Italian decent (see Italian Argentine). Even though that Argentine is speaking Spanish, odds are better than 50/50 he or she has an Italian surname, and there's a large number of Argentines from other European backgrounds (see Ethnography of Argentina). One can also look to other Spanish-speaking Latin American notable persons and find loads of names from places other than Spain. Bernardo O'Higgins, Alberto Fujimori, Anthony Quinn, Louis C.K. (Székely), Che (Ernesto Guevara Lynch), Vicente Fox, etc. all come from Latin American countries, and all bear names from outside of Iberia. So, if you're finding that the names from one region of Latin America sound different from other regions, they may not even be Spanish in origin; indeed in the case of a country like Argentina, they probably aren't. --Jayron32 05:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, that's true with any country, and I can recognise those non-Spanish names fairly well (an obvious example would be the central European surname of Frida Kahlo, for instance). Similarly there are quite a few Portuguese names with -nha endings. It's the ones which sound as though they do have Spanish origins (which is what I mean by using "Spanish" in quote marks) that I'm intrigued by. Grutness...wha? 08:20, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

There's at least an even money chance that any name owned by a hispanophone that ends in -iaga or -izaga is Basque in origin. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:55, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

There are other Hispanophone names of Basque origin as well, Jiménez (surname) and García (surname) are two very common names with Basque origins. --Jayron32 06:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

...and anything ending in -chea or containing an x near the end for that matter. I didn't know about the Italian connection (I knew there were Welsh in Argentina, but not Italians). Thanks for the comments. Grutness...wha? 08:17, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Have you ever heard of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, whose Italian father migrated to Argentina and whose mother was Argentine-born of Italian descent? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:24, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Arantxa Sánchez Vicario was born in Barcelona in Catalonia, and "tx" is a feature of Catalan orthography. The original post is about surnames, and Category:Catalan people includes Antoni Pitxot.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:13, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

The -arrí ending is also Basque. Basque names certainly do occur in Mexico. They may be more common in South America. Perhaps people of Basque origins, coming from a climatically cooler region of Spain, were more likely to settle in parts of the former Spanish empire with more temperate climates, so that the more tropical territories had a lower proportion of Basque settlers. Marco polo (talk) 14:20, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

WP has an article about Basque surnames in general and often articles on individual Basque surnames. In such articles you can often find a list of well known people wearing that name. For example at Etxeberria (most common Spanish spelling "Echeverría") you'll find people from Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador (not to mention Spain of course). Articles on specific surnames may also be a way to explore other (non-Basque) Hispanic names and see where, in Latin America or elsewhere, they're found. Incidentally the -arri element means 'stone' (as a word it is spelled 'harri'). It can also occur at the beginning of the name as in 'Arrigorriagakoa' ("the one of the place of the red stones"). All of this comes from WP. If you didn't know the importance of the Italian element in Argentina you certainly have got a lot of exploring to do. Have fun. Contact Basemetal here 14:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

And then there is the great actress Lupita Nyong'o, born in Mexico to Kenyan parents, who has dual citizenship. Her first name is Mexican and her surname is Kenyan. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:50, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

"Autumn" in American speech

I'm not a native English speaker, however, when talking to Americans I use a perfect American accent - just as I use a perfect British accent when speaking with Brits.

Today I happened (by mistake) to use the word "autumn" (once only), in a long conversation with an American guy who doesn't know me. I wonder whether he got surprised to hear this British word come from a speaker who was using a perfect American accent during the whole conversation. Do you think he really got surprised? In other words, can the word "autumn" be used (even just rarely) by Americans? 77.125.249.98 (talk) 19:29, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Americans use both "fall" and "autumn". Searching for "autumn" at the LA Times site returns 1154 hits. Here's an example. The choice of the one or the other often depends on the rhythm. In this article "autumn tones" clearly sounds better than "fall tones". Contact Basemetal here 20:04, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much... 77.125.249.98 (talk) 20:59, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm just amazed how you manage to use both a perfect American accent and a perfect British accent without being a native English speaker. I'm not a native English speaker either. I have a better command of English grammar than very many native English speakers (although not even nearly all of them), but I still find my accent is horrible. Not as horrible as the famous "rally English" spoken by Mika Häkkinen or Kimi Räikkönen but nevertheless far away from a native accent. Maybe this is because I've had to routinely speak English for years now, but I've never actually lived in an English-speaking country? JIP | Talk 21:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Sounds extremely unlikely anyway. Even native American and British speakers can't imitate the other accent perfectly. OP's probably got a completely obvious accent and people are just being polite. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:37, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I never once caught out Hugh Laurie, although they may have removed bad takes from House. I was once asked where I lived in Oaxaca, by a Oaxacan, (waHAka) although I've never been to Mexico. And BTW, I have no idea where this silly notion Americans don't say autumn comes from.μηδείς (talk) 03:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

@JIP and @Adam Bishop (I'm the OP): I'm very good at imitating foreign accents, and I do that perfectly; Not only English accents (mainly General American and British RP), but also German accent, Russian, French, Arabic, Chinese, and the like, however, for achieving this goal I must speak very slowly; Really, when I speak rapidly or fluently - I can no longer hide my own accent. Anyways, most of the people I talk to (slowly) - in their native accent, get shocked when I tell them I'm not a native speaker of their language. I remember, some years ago, an American old man I met - who was sure I was a native speaker (just because of my speech) - tried to guess "where in US" I "come from", and eventually insisted that I must have come from NY, although I've never been to US... 77.125.249.98 (talk) 22:39, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Upload something to YouTube. Contact Basemetal here 23:09, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

In Chinese? Arabic? French? Or what? Choose a language first. Some years ago I took a part in a performance in which I had to read aloud a long text in six languages (including Amharic), something like "welcome to all of you, thank you so much for joining us tonight", bla bla bla. The audience enjoyed it. I think somebody has already uploaded the whole performance to YouTube, but I don't know where to find it.77.125.249.98 (talk) 23:30, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Which of those languages are you actually able to speak? I don't suppose you can speak all of those languages, so you mean you are able to learn by heart any text in any of those languages and then speak it back with a perfectly native accent? Contact Basemetal here 11:35, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

As for your first qurstion: none (as far as a native level is concerned). As for your second question: yyyyep... 77.125.249.98 (talk) 12:07, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

And when you learn the text, do you have to have a model (a recording of the text spoken by a native speaker) that you strive to imitate? Or are you able to make up the accent by yourself without any model? Contact Basemetal here 12:54, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I must have the text written in IPA, and I also must have a human model (whether recorded or not) - at least for other texts (in that language) written in IPA (if not a human model for the very specific text I have to read aloud publicly). Listening to the model - even in other texts (in that language), is very important in order to pick up - both the "music" of that language - and the connection between the IPA and the reality.

Let's take English as a simple example (maybe the simplest one). Everyone can hear it everywhere in the media (CNN, BBC and likewise), so the problem of finding a model for English has already been solved. As for IPA: when we were young students at school, we were asked to purchase Collins dictionary (English-English) that gives the exact IPA for every word (in RP accent). As an autodidact, I swallowed this dictionary (mainly its excellent introduction), and compared what I read there with what I was hearing on BBC. That's how I learnt the British accent (RP). Later, I purchased another dictionary giving the IPA in General American accent - which I could easily practice practically by the CNN programs or the American movies I was watching. 77.125.249.98 (talk) 15:43, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Pretty good. Seeing you going through the whole process is certainly worth a YouTube video. How about doing it for French and English? You realize that this is easier than carrying on an impromptu conversation in a way that would be undetectable to a native speaker. Not only have you got to produce that perfect accent as you go but that requires more than just a perfect accent. It requires grammar, proper usage of words, idioms, etc. In any case, I take it, you are able to achieve that perfect accent only when talking very slowly. (That's ok. That's what children do. I think adult foreign language learners often make the mistake of trying to speak too fast, as if they could obfuscate their imperfect competency that way.) PS: Seeing you swallow that dictionary would be worth a YouTube video all by itself. Contact Basemetal here 17:05, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

There is actually one sense in which the word "autumn" is used exclusively, even by Americans. That's the metaphorical sense, meaning "close to the end", as in "the autumn of his life". And the autumnal equinox is used exclusively to describe the equinox during autumn, just as the vernal equinox is used exclusively to describe the equinox during vern. :-) StuRat (talk) 03:40, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

In fact "spring equinox" and "fall equinox" are common usages. --174.88.135.200 (talk) 05:50, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

That is, the normal U.S. word is "fall", and the fancy word is "autumn" (hence its use in literary or scientific contexts). Art LaPella (talk) 04:07, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't know where this is coming from. The best that might be said is that the British consider fall an Americanism, if they do. The only thing we had to be taught about autumn as kids was the unexpected spelling of a word we already knew. In fact, checking EO, this is indeed all bee ess: Sense of "autumn" (now only in U.S. but formerly common in England) is by 1660s, short for fall of the leaf (1540s). μηδείς (talk) 04:19, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Speaking as a native American English speaker (20 years in Michigan and 43 years in California), I consider "fall" and "autumn" to be synonymns, and I have a slight personal preference for "autumn", since it is unambiguous. I do not really consider "autumn" to be much more fancy than "fall", except by a tiny bit. Just my personal perceptions, FWIW. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:38, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I think the cachet which adheres to autumn is its hidden en. In the noun form it's ought'm. But the adjectival form sprouts an en: oughtumnal. That's the source of the word's magic power. μηδείς (talk) 04:46, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

. . Bus stop (talk) 06:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Cullen, is the school semester before Christmas called "Autumn semester"? --Jayron32 06:24, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Jayron32, since I have been out of school for four decades, I no longer base my season names on semester names, and do not think I ever did. My vocabulary has never been based on that of pedagogical bureaucrats. I always though it strange to call a middle school principal "Doctor". Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Jayron's correct most college catalogs are for the spring and fall semesters, but autumn takes up more space. The opposite could be said, do we speak of fall leaves or autumn leaves? As noted above, the choice is often one of rhythm. This is why English is the best language in the world, it has so many words to choose from with which subtly to express the nuances of a concept, borrowed over the centuries without prejudice from so many sources. μηδείς (talk) 21:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Depends on whether his or her degree affords him that dignity. --Jayron32 06:35, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

We are straying a bit, but the only people I call "Doctor" in ordinary social speech are physicians, not those with a "piled higher and deeper" or an EDD degree. Let them throw the initials after their name in print. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:27, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

This is of course technically incorrect, as an MD only has a professional courtesy title of Dr, as they (usually) don't have a PhD. I stand by my right to use Dr. 131.251.254.154 (talk) 13:39, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Law, Doctor of Philosophy, etc. "Doctor" doesn't mean medical doctor. It means "expert". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:58, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually, it means "teacher", see [10]. Thus, university professors with PhDs are properly doctors. The occupation known as a docent comes from the same root word. --Jayron32 00:08, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

You may think you have a perfect British accent, but calling someone from the United Kingdom a "Brit" is a dead giveaway. We are English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish. Queen Victoria had a go at calling Scotland North Britain, and there is the term Briton, but it is not widely used and would probably be considered offensive. (I have a perfect cockney accent, by the way).

Leaving that aside, fall is in Shakespeare, and autumn also, about half and half. it was in transition at that time. at the cusp of the 17th century. Like many words, the Colonies (later to become the U.S.A.) kept the old English, and the English (this was before the Act of Union 1707) took the French "automne" and modified it. So the American is, in a sense, more English than the English. Si Trew (talk) 00:53, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Looking at English from the outside, I think that the originally latin words like autumn are usually a bit longer, fancier, for "higher" ("elevated") speach and writing, the words from the Germanic side shorter, "lower" in use, better to shout. — Fritz Jörn (talk) 08:38, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Yep. The words "vernal" and "autumnal" are from Latin, while "spring" and "fall" are from northern European languages. It's odd we have "autumn" in our vocabulary, but not "verna" or whatever it would be. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

The Latin for spring is ver, veris. I wonder why we stick an 'n' in there. Why vernal and not veral? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:29, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

It's not 'we'. The Romans already did. ("Ils sont fous ces Romains!") Cf Latin vernus, vernalis (both adjectives "of the spring"). So what's that 'n'? Is there a Latin adjectival suffix 'nus'? Any IEist around these days? Contact Basemetal here 12:49, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Inverno, winter in Italian, has an n, but that comes from Latin hibĕrnum, they say. And spring, primavera without n from popular Latin primavera, from classic Latin primo vere, meaning at the beginning of spring, which loops back to ver, veris. – Fritz Jörn (talk) 14:03, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Apparently there is a suffix -nus and it is the origin of the 'n' Jack was asking about. (I'm answering my own question not Fritz's comment; damn edit conflict). This page even gives the examples (the second example is the very word): *dius- + -nus = diurnus; vēr- + -nus = vērnus; *noctus- + -nus = nocturnus; pater- + -nus = paternus (middle of the page). (No 'a-nus' jokes here please) This page says that suffix is cognate to the English suffix '-en' (as in 'wooden', 'golden', 'brazen'). As to 'vernalis' it is not based on a '-nalis' suffix but on an -alis suffix used to form adjectives from adjectives: thus 'vernalis' is built on vernus + -alis. Another exemple would be diurnalis, built on diurnus + -ālis which gave our word 'journal'. Contact Basemetal here 14:14, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:47, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

The -n- suffix (the -us and other endings are separate) when added to things like Roma ended up being reinterpreted over time, so the original Roma-n-us became interpreted as Rom-anus. Hence the -anus ending came to be in Latin and -an in English. The original jovi-al (like Jove) becomes Jovi-an (associated with Jupiter) in post-mediaeval Latin. μηδείς (talk) 03:12, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Familiar forms of names in German

I once saw a German detective series episode where a local of southern Germany (possibly Bavaria) told the police that around here, people familiar with each other mention their names in opposite order, such as Ich bin der Wimmler Sepp. This immediately struck me as familiar with a Finnish custom for familiar people, such as Niinistön Sauli instead of Sauli Niinistö or Halosen Tarja instead of Tarja Halonen. This is used pretty much everywhere in Finland, but strictly only between people already familiar with each other. What makes it different from the German use is that the surname is in the genitive case, such as "Niinistö's Sauli" or "Halonen's Tarja", whereas in German the surname seems to be in the standard case. Is this way of addressing really used in Germany? If so, where? And how common is it? JIP | Talk 20:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

There's a little bit on this at German name#Order of names and use of articles. --Viennese Waltz 05:58, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I have never encountered this; but in the example above I took "der Wimmler" as genitive plural. --ColinFine (talk) 16:38, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Colin, "der Wimmler" would be nominative singular, a bit unpolite and colloquial, "der Peter", or "der Präsident" would be ok. - Fritz Jörn (talk) 09:09, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

The more south you go, the more people say Familyname Givenname. Bavaria, Austria, South Tyrol, all say: der Wimmer Sepp, especially when speaking dialect. In lists you might see a comma, to make it clear: Wimmer, Josef. But Josef Wimmer in "high German", in newspapers, written language. — Fritz Jörn (talk) 08:25, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

looking forward to seeing you

"I’d like to seeing you" – nobody would say that. But why do you say: "I’m looking forward to seeing you"?. "to see" is an infinitve we lean at school, but "to seeing"? – I wonder Fritz Jörn (talk) 09:02, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

"Seeing", in this phrase, is a gerund, which acts syntactically as a noun. "To" is not the infinitive marker, but the directional preposition "to", and as such it can govern the gerund-noun "seeing" just as it could govern any other noun. This prepositional "to" is a fixed part of the idiomatic phrase "look forward to". You "look forward to something", where something can be any noun phrase. You "look forward to your vacations", "look forward to our meeting", or, if you fill in a gerund phrase instead of the noun phrase, "look forward to doing something". Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:10, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Fritz Jörn (talk) 13:37, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

As an aside, I tutored a native Turkish speaker in English, and he simply could not understand that there was no pseudo-progressive infinitive with -ing as in "to seeing" and he quit my services after I assigned him a twenty sentence exercise on the matter. But the way to parse the above visually is (I'd like)(to see you) vs (I’m looking forward to)(seeing you). μηδείς (talk) 19:12, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Can you read this tombstone?

I can read parts of this inscription easily, but the weathered bits are playing tricks on me. What I can read, Google doesn't recognize. It's like a Hangman puzzle, but with whole words. Anybody good at that game (or good at recognizing 19th century verse) and want to help?

Just the poem bit, not the vitals. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:01, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

Here's the Findagrave profile, if that offers clues. Doesn't to me. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:04, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

"One little bud adorned my bower etc". It is a poem on the death of an infant. See here. Contact Basemetal here 11:08, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

(ec)I think it's this, the poem "Death of an Infant". I downloaded the picture and inverted the colors, which made it easier to read. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:09, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I couldn't read the simple words, after all! Thought that was "one little bird". InedibleHulk (talk) 11:17, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

That's quite a good bit of detective wortk, BB! Charles Sprague was quite an interesting character. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:20, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I deduce Bugs sees different colours from me, because inverting them made it harder to read, in my eyes. But that's why two heads are better than one. I also am led to believe Sprague has a forcefield around his headstone, because nobody can read this. Or can they? InedibleHulk (talk) 11:29, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain it says "Sprague". Oh, you mean the obelisk? The picture is not sufficiently high-def to be readable. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:31, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd meant that thing in the distance, but then I realized that's not even his. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:41, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

I didn't need to do anything other then inject into Google the few words I could read. Maybe you all need better glasses. Contact Basemetal here 11:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

You found it at the same time I did, and the same way. I also first thought it was "little bird", but it didn't quite work. Inverting the colors helped me because it made the letters jump out a bit more. But even knowing what the words are, it's kind of hard to read. Too much stuff growing on the stone. A local needs to fix that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

No, tombstones are supposed to gather moss. They're the opposite of rolling stones. When they topple, that's fine, too. Lets you know their time has passed. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:16, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

This guy gets it. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:27, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

We all need better tombstones. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:23, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

"Beneath this stone lies John Mound / Lost at sea and never found." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:27, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

"What's up Doc?" ... HERE LIES LESTER MOORE, FOUR SLUGS FROM A 44, NO LES NO MORE. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Some good shit here. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:47, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

Do I detect another new article being dug? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:00, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Are these ok? (Still a bit hard to read) Contact Basemetal here 12:38, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Do you think this guy had two kitchens, too? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:44, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Since he had two wives... Contact Basemetal here 13:05, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with two wives. And each wife married a man with two names. Thankfully, this isn't the math desk. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:33, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

Wait, my brain broke again. Only one wife was going to St Ives. They called her "Pee". InedibleHulk (talk) 13:36, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

My eyes work, it's my brain that was too narrow. I saw the picture of the little bird and the very possibility that it's about a little bud went out the window. Like how tons of people still can't see how "Puff the Magic Dragon" is about a literal magic dragon, not a little bud. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:26, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

Surely a song can be about two things at once? Or even more? Aboutness is hard to pin down, but I think you'd appreciate a skim. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:17, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

If Jackie Paper can whip up a dragon out of autumn mist, we can certainly interpret something like words and music however we'd like. And in the privacy of our imagination, of course we're right. But once that theory's out, it's vulnerable to attack.

Say the song's about duty or reincarnation or the Java War, people may hear you out. But say it's about weed, and somebody in the room will kneejerk mythbust you like you said Columbus discovered America or toads cause warts. The evidence is on their side, and they're glad to let you know this. It's essentially the only wrong answer.

I'll stick with "subject" over "aboutness", but thanks for sharing. It sort of includes theme better, just doesn't have a nice ring to it. John Hutchins' website is about machine translation and feels about 1995. But I'd just say those are what it's about, not those are its aboutness. People would tell me I'm wrong. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:11, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

Well-to-do

Wiktionary says that "well-to-do" is applied to plural subjects only. Is that correct? I'm sure I've read things like "She married a well-to-do merchant".

Also, is there an antonym of this expression that preserves the "-to-do" ending? What does "-to-do" refer to, anyway? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:26, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Maybe ne'er-do-well is an opposite. Maybe not quite. I don't find it weird if either is used for singular or plural objects, and haven't heard that anyone does till now, but I'd never really thought about it, either. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:44, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

I think what they "do" is just general business. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:46, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

Wiktionary says that the term used as a noun (as in "The well-to-do may not be happier than you or I") is plural in sense. It does not say that the adjective is used only to modify plural nouns. Deor (talk) 12:09, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Now that seems correct. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:18, June 5, 2015 (UTC)

Good Lord! That's the first mistake I've ever made. My life is in ruins. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 13:02, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I've told you a million times, don't exaggerate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:25, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Pretty sure there's no *poor-to-do or *bad-to-do, but there are the slightly related terms (in my AmEng) "well off", "better off", "worse off" &c. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:05, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the same in British English, and we also have the colloquial "badly off", though I wouldn't use it in formal writing. Dbfirs 15:37, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

The OED Online has three nineteenth-century citations for ill-to-do. (ill being the opposite of well, I think). 128.232.236.110 (talk) 09:54, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

BB in Nitzinger’s "Texas Blues"

What’s a BB or B-B in the song Texas Blues presented in April '72 by John Nitzinger in Puerto Rico during the festival Mar y Sol (Album)? To be heared on Youtube og0R6HLCzws (?t=6m9s). As far as I’ve researched: "Mama, if you put your brain on a razor blade it'd look like a BB rollin’ down a four lane highway – (the) girl’s not too sharp"? Quoted by Terry Moore in "Strangers in Paradise" No. 6, July 1995. BB coudn’t be a Blackberry, not yet invented, and far from rolling (–:) PS. I like Blackberries, both of them. – Fritz Jörn (talk) 08:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

BB gun Fgf10 (talk) 09:26, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

This, although it does not explain "rollin' down". --Askedonty (talk) 09:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)