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January 22

The second o in control

Although the second o in the word control is long, why is the l doubled in the form controlling?? Georgia guy (talk) 02:09, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In American English because the stress is on that syllable. Jmar67 (talk) 02:30, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So that it rhymes with "extol(l)ing"? But you've got me interested: Although a single "?" at the end of a sentence suffices to indicate that the sentence is a question, why do you double it? -- Hoary (talk) 02:35, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The word "extol" also has a long o. Words with long o normally don't double the final consonant before adding -ing. Words with a short o normally do. Georgia guy (talk) 02:37, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here you are again, trying to make sense out of English. Anyway, here's the etymology of "control"[1] and "extol".[2] Note that both of them come from words with double-l. And also note that it's "extolling". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:46, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At least in AE, the stress rule takes precedence. Elsewhere such a consonant is generally doubled (e.g., "travelling", AE: "traveling"). Jmar67 (talk) 03:53, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For me (Southern England, now Northern England), both control and extol have "short" /-ɒl/, not "long" /-əʊl/, so the double l makes perfect sense; though I know that is not true for everybody. --ColinFine (talk) 10:28, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia guy: I don't know how many times we can explain this to you, so we'll explain it again. English is not consistent. No natural language is consistent, but English is especially noted (especially in its orthography) for being inconsistent. There are some general rules, but every rule has so many exceptions that learning to read and write English is often an exercise in just memorizing specific words and how they are spelled, as any rule you can come up with has so many exceptions. You keep asking questions like "XXXX is a rule in English, so why does YYYY not obey that rule". If you spent any considerable amount of time around English, you quickly begin to learn that there often are not any useful reasons to explain why. I have previously linked you to several videos and articles on this very concept. Please go back, read those, and understand why your repeated questions in this vein rarely lead to simple or satisfying answers. --Jayron 32 13:04, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Remember, this is a language where the words rough, plough, through, though, cough, and thought do not rhyme, but pony and bologna do. A language where you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway. Where all my belongings were burned up when my house burned down. After which I had to fill out a form by filling it in so that I could turn it in to my insurance company. Quit trying to make sense of it. --Khajidha (talk) 15:28, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

“Why do we park on driveways and drive on parkways? Just to be silly!” –George Carlin 2606:A000:1126:28D:B10C:26A0:A0FF:5576 (talk) 01:16, 24 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And, in keeping with this madness, not all of the above applies to all variants of English in the same way. In British English pony and bologna don't rhyme, but parkways are railway stations, and downs are the highest points of some areas of the country. Bazza (talk) 15:47, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also, a driveway is essentially a short (or possibly long, if you are rich enough) private road leading to a house or garage, so you do drive on it, just not very far. Iapetus (talk) 09:57, 23 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The question is rather dispiriting, but some of the ingredients of some of the (non-) responses are too, and none more than the advice to "Quit trying to make sense of" (apparent oddities in?) English. Trying to make sense of apparent paradoxes in English seems an honourable enterprise to me. The problem is of how you go about this, and what your premises and expectations are. Also, I'm puzzled by the way in which a small number of people repeatedly ask questions about English without making it clear that they've digested, or attempted to digest, the relevant parts of relevant books. Duckduckgoing quickly turns up Edward Carney, A Survey of English Spelling; D W Cummings, American English Spelling: An Informal Description; Greg Brooks, Dictionary of the British English Spelling System; and more. -- Hoary (talk) 02:57, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Just to note that none of those would answer the OP's question of "why would..." rather than "what is..." which is not the question asked. We can say "what is the spelling of these words" or even "what historical events preceded the current spelling and what list of changes occurred in the spelling of these words", but the OP wanted to know "why" the difference are there, "why" being a question of causality and purpose. That is, "why" wants to know "for what reason did this thing happen". If you have a source to explain that, please share it. I've looked, and can't find anything. --Jayron 32 16:55, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Jayron32, I was interpreting "why" in a wider sense, one that I think is in fairly common use: the "reason why" such-and-such is that it's an example of a wider phenomenon, such and such. Why do I have ten fingers? Because I'm a human, and humans have ten fingers. (Of course this doesn't start to explain why humans have ten, or indeed why some humans have fewer or more, let alone why some non-humans have ten.) I confess that I haven't looked into any of the books I've named. For certain linguistic(s) areas other than spelling, I have looked in books. (I even possess a shelf-ful.) -- Hoary (talk) 23:06, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The book I'd recommend for the scholarly study of English spelling is Written Language: General Problems and Problems of English Spelling by Josef Vachek. AnonMoos (talk) 23:39, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

January 25

Translation of Chinese from Alchemical Source

The following comes from the Yellow Court Classic. I'm reading about alchemy in English sources, but I'm not sure how to translate the following: "至道不煩無旁午，靈臺通天臨中野，方寸之中至關下，玉房之中神門戶，皆是公子教我者." I know in the context of alchemical literature, 靈臺 refers to the heart-mind and 方寸, while sometimes referring to the heart-mind, likely refers to the lowest of three dantiens where the mind is focused. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 17:40, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish dialects

Is "Feliz Navidad" pronounced differently in Spanish from Spain, than in US Spanish? Particularly with regard to the dropped consonant at the end of Navidad in the US version, and similarly in other such words. Are the dialects as far apart as, say, Québécois French vs French from France? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:4FFF (talk) 21:14, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In general, it would be pronounced /feˈliθ naβiˈðað/ in most of Spain and /feˈlis naβiˈðað/ in most Western Hemisphere dialects, the main difference being the "z" in "feliz" which is /θ/ in most of Spain and /s/ in the Americas. The /θ/ (in Spain) in that position could be slightly voiced in rapid speech. Also, in many dialects of American Spanish, final "s" may sound like English "h" or disappear altogether in casual speech. See Spanish phonology for more details. Just as an FYI, "US Spanish" is not monolithic; there are many dialects of Spanish spoken in the US including Mexican Spanish and Caribbean Spanish among others (see Spanish language in the United States#Spanish sub-types for more). There are also many dialects of Spanish spoken within Spain. Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "dropped consonant at the end of Navidad"? Both "d"s in "Navidad" are pronounced as [ð] (an English voiced "th" sound as in "the").--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 00:46, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking of a sound like "Feliz Navidahhh", e.g. in José Feliciano's song. I can't access youtube to listen to it right now but it is there. I didn't realize there was that much difference between North American Spanish dialects but looking at the articles, I guess there is. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:4FFF (talk) 03:49, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In an English word like "granddad", the final "d" is pronounced as a stop with an audible release. The final "d" of Spanish "Navidad" is a dental approximant; there is no release. Although closely resembling the soft phoneme /ð/ of English, a dental fricative, its place of articulation is different, making it softer. Also, in American English, the voiced /ð/ is rarely heard word-final, and only before a following vowel. This may explain why this phoneme, not occurring so softly in English and not at all in this position in American English, can appear to have been dropped. Native Spanish speakers on either side of the Atlantic will have no problem hearing it. --Lambiam 18:11, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean a sound like the "th" in bathe or lathe? Hmm ok. When I described a dropped d, I didn't mean completely eliminated, but maybe shortened like the "u" in "ohio gozaimasu" if that makes any sense. I'll listen to the Feliciano track again when I can use an audio player soon. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 22:35, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is the voiced dental fricative. BTW, the final vowel in ohayō gozaimasu is not so much shortened as voiceless, indicated by the small circle below the [ɨᵝ] in the IPA transcription [o̞ha̠jo̞ː ɡo̞za̠ima̠sɨ̥ᵝ]. --Lambiam 12:04, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's José singing the song [3] [4] and here's a cover version [5]. 2A00:23C5:C710:1F00:3103:A481:F923:CC05 (talk) 19:19, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

January 26

Do the words miner and myna have any realation.

Background: I live in Sydney, Australia, where the endemic noise miner, and the imported Indian myna both serve as irritating alarm clocks, until today I thought that both species were "miners".

I'm just wondering if the two names are related, or are these birds as different as night and day.

Thanks --TheTomorrow (talk) 08:51, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Our article on Manorina says that "The name "miner" derives from a mid 19th century re-spelling of the Hindi name "myna", which they resemble, but was not formally adopted until the early 20th century" (with a source). Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:08, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the Australian miners are not anything like closely related to the Mynas which are members of "the starling family (Sturnidae)... native to southern Asia, especially India, Pakistan and Bangladesh", they have just borrowed the name. In much the same way, the Australian magpie is only very distantly related to the Eurasian magpie. This is why we need Latin binomial nomenclature. Alansplodge (talk) 17:21, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This happened many places all over the world; when Europeans encountered new flora and fauna across the world in their explorations, they sometimes asked native people what they were called (for example, the Virginia opossum, the original source of the name was a local native word) but often they just used a word they were familiar with they had used to describe what they thought was a similar animal, but which was only tenuously related to the animal in question. That's how we get such things as the North American buzzard being entirely unrelated to the Eurasian buzzards, or the Old World porcupine being mostly unrelated to the New World porcupines. --Jayron 32 13:13, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The word "opossum" is an interesting example, because in Australia it somehow lost its first letter and turned into "possum" to describe a very diverse group of only slightly related marsupials, because some of them look like north American opossums. HiLo48 (talk) 21:59, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Possum" is what most folks who don't happen to be zoologists call opossums, Stateside. --Trovatore (talk) 22:47, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And what many Australian mums call their kids. (Isn't that right, Peter Costello? - [6]) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:51, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's also the very public name of a sadly deceased New Zealand rally driver - Possum Bourne. He got the name for once crashing his mother's car while trying to avoid a possum on the road. Trying to avoid a possum on the road is close to a crime in New Zealand. The creatures are not highly regarded there. HiLo48 (talk) 23:25, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

January 27

Is there a term for excluding "The" when alphabetically indexing things?

For example, say I had an A-Z List of Books that ignored "The" at the start of their titles for how to alphabetize them, so The End would be under E and The Stand would be under S, but I had another list of movies where the T section was huge because The Shining and The Matrix and so on were all under T.

It's pretty common to exclude "The" like this, but there is a word or term for doing so, that you could describe the first list as being?--occono (talk) 12:25, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is not, as far as I am aware or can find with a search online, any specific word or phrase beyond the ones you have already used, to describe this concept. --Jayron 32 13:19, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a short but precisely written paper about the matter. It doesn't use any particular term. From this, I infer that if one wants to write about this, one doesn't have to trouble to think of (or dream up) technical terms for it. -- Hoary (talk) 13:41, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In morphological analysis (not the same as collation, of course), the term for ignoring stuff at the beginning to get to the essential part of the word is "prefix stemming"... AnonMoos (talk) 23:40, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See Stemming. -- Hoary (talk)

"The", "a" and "an" are generally placed among stop words. (There are exceptions: if there weren't, "The The" would evaporate.) So if you were really intent on an impressive/soporific way of expressing the idea, perhaps something like "implementing a stop word function". -- Hoary (talk) 00:55, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

lugbara

Which language do lugbara people in Uganda speak? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.210.146.200 (talk) 21:09, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably most of them speak the Lugbara language; a number may be bilingual or multilingual in one or more of the other Languages of Uganda (including English). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.239.195} 90.205.58.107 (talk) 22:34, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

January 28

Sophomore

How come so many people use this word simply to mean second?? Are there any similar words used to mean third, fourth, and so on?? Georgia guy (talk) 12:33, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See Sophomore, from the first sentence of the article "is a student in the second year of study at high school or college." By analogy, the word sophomore is often applied to other second efforts, such as a professional athlete's second season in the pros, or a band's second album, etc. I am not aware of any special terms applied similarly to any other situation for "third", "fourth" etc. (that is, there is no special word for a band's third album) --Jayron 32 13:07, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

But why do people use such a fancy word when "second" is more obvious?? Georgia guy (talk) 13:17, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Because sometimes people like to use fancy words. The use of synonyms in English is a way to add variety and texture to language. --Jayron 32 13:26, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you (User:Georgia guy) use two question marks when one is sufficient? --Khajidha (talk) 13:37, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I just think it's interesting. Georgia guy (talk) 13:55, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Adding varietyness and texturing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:38, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you want 'fancy', students in successive years at the university I attended were called Bejants, Semis, Tertians and Magistrands, and had a somewhat unusual dress code. That's what 6 centuries of tradition can land you with. (And don't mention the raisins!) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.58.107 (talk) 17:08, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please get a Wikipedia user name so that we'll know all your edits are the same person. Georgia guy (talk) 17:32, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There's no rule requiring registration, and "poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195" has never run afoul of any rules that I can recall. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:36, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also, unlike many IP users, TPFKA 87.etc uses a consistent identity. They've been here for years, and always identifies themselves as the same person. Get off their back, GG. They did nothing wrong, and there's no reason you should be bothering them. --Jayron 32 19:56, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize. Sometimes we have to "think outside the box" with how problems with Wikipedia can be resolved. Georgia guy (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Unregistered users are not a problem that needs to be resolved. --Jayron 32 20:06, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just for comparison, at the university I went to, undergrads were called first-year, second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students. "Freshmen" or "frosh" was used as well for first-years, but unofficially. And at the high school I went to, there were grade 9, grade 10, grade 11, year 4, and year 5 students. (Well, not all of those simultaneously. They changed the numbering the after I finished grade 11.) --142.112.159.101 (talk) 02:14, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My school career went from Sub A to Sub B to Standard 1 through Standard 9 and the 12th years is called Matric and us scholars were matriculants. Also my Kimberley Boys' High School as the teacher wear robes, by choice. Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 09:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the word is mainly used with this meaning in combinations like "sophomore album" or "sophomore book" for artists who had a successful launch of their first creations, naturally leading people to ask if these would turn out to be one-hit wonders. Publishing their second one proves they are not early dropouts. There appear to be more semantic undertones than carried by just "second". For the rest, language evolves by occasional innovations plus people copying what they hear from others. Fads come and go, and a few changes stick, in languages as well as in other cultural manifestations. Why some things spread while others don't, and why some fall out of fashion when they do, is not generally well understood. --Lambiam 08:58, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

January 29

Biographies of parents with both living and deceased children

If a parent has both living children and deceased children, what is the most tactful way to convey that information in a sentence or two? I ask after looking at the personal life section of Joe Bryant (Kobe's father). Various editors have been changing the wording, but nothing looks right to me. Zagalejo^^^ 03:34, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment it reads "In 1975, Bryant married Pam Cox, sister of former NBA player Chubby Cox. Bryant's son, Kobe, won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers. Bryant also has two daughters, Sharia and Shaya. Through his wife Pam, he is the uncle of professional basketball player John Cox IV. On January 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash, along with Bryant's 13-year-old grand-daughter Gianna and seven others.[10][11]"

Looks good to me. Factual and straightforward. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:52, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]