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May 9

Russian propaganda lessons

I wonder if this is the correct place to ask someone to confirm the translations of the names of topics covered by the Russian propaganda lessons?

This is because I am making a list of Russian propaganda lessons (currently at User:Minoa/Propaganda) and I want to make sure the translations do not drift too far from the original Russian text. Best, --Minoa (talk) 03:56, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Translators available may have some people to contact to help you out. --Jayron 32 11:40, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

Why in Latin, the dictionary form of verbs is the first-person singular indicative present, rather than the infinitive? Is there any Romance language which has same?
Is there any Romance language with morphological passive voice?
Is there any Romance language using letter Ç to indicate soft C pronunciation before back vowels where soft C sound is other than /s/?
Does English use hyphen when one of the parts of closed compound is a number, sign or abbreviation, like HIV-infection, @-sign, A-class?
Does Spanish have any word-final consonant clusters?
Are there an Spanish words ending in consonant which get just -s in plural ending, and not -es?

--40bus (talk) 15:49, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding #4: Absolutely. See Mercedes-Benz A-Class for one example of the "letter hyphen word" construction. There's uncountable numbers of other examples. Regarding #5: apparently no: [1], though there may be loan words which provide rare counterexamples. --Jayron 32 16:01, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If the question was does English ever use the hyphen like that, then yes, absolutely. But "HIV infection" and "@ sign" are standard, and "A class" could go either way. --174.89.12.187 (talk) 17:18, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They only said "Does English" and I took the examples to be representative, NOT exhaustive, here. Providing one usage case meets the requirement for "Does English..." The answer is an unambiguous "yes". I can find a second example if you think it would help; it certainly isn't hard to find them. --Jayron 32 17:57, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding #6: This has some examples of spanish words that end in consonants and use -s for plural (bonus content: It also has one of the loan word counterexamples I allowed for above, "los icebergs"). Of course, all of those -s plurals would also be words that end in consonant clusters. --Jayron 32 16:04, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding #3, Ç notes some different sounds (/dz/, /ts/, /θ/ and /ð/) in earlier versions of Portuguese and Spanish, but either changes in pronunciation (as in Portuguese) or in spelling reform (as in Spanish) has eliminated these uses. Occitan alphabet notes that it can be pronounced as /ʃ/ before the u vowel in the Auvergnat dialect, Catalan orthography#Ce trencada (c-cedilla) notes that it become voiced as /z/ in some contexts. --Jayron 32 16:12, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding #2, This paper, which I haven't read myself more than just skimming, may be useful in your research. --Jayron 32 16:17, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re #1, the traditional presentation of Greek and Latin paradigms for verb conjugations started with the first-person form of the present indicative: λούω, λούεις, λούει, ... and luō, luis, luit, ... One would then say that bibō (for example) is conjugated like luō. When dictionaries were first compiled, these forms were chosen to represent the verbs. --Lambiam 09:06, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The paradigms of e.g. Italian, Spanish, Polish, English and Finnish start with the same form. But why these languages have the infinitive as dictionary form instead. Also, does Spanish have any verbs ending in -güer or -güir? --40bus (talk) 17:17, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First question: Because scholars in different countries independently decided to follow different conventions: there was no secret international cabal of grammarians' manipulating scholarship worldwide. (But I would say that, wouldn't I?) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.210.77 (talk) 15:29, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

№ 4: My rule, at least, is to put a hyphen in such compounds only when using them as adjectives: "an A-class car" but "in A class" (or more usually "in class A"). —Tamfang (talk) 02:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I support that. I'm tired of being told that a three-year-old person is "three-years-old" [sic]. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:52, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Open central unrounced vowel

The open central unrounded vowel. I know that the reason why IPA has not assigned a specific symbol to it is because it is not reported to contrast with other open vowels (a, ɑ). But why it has not been assigned plain /a/ symbol even though languages with just one open vowel have usually central, not front of beack vowel? In my opinion, the /ä/ symbol is ugliest IPA symbol ever, and it is, like all vowel symbols with centralised diacritic, very "shocking". This is what I would do if I could change the vowel charts:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y	ɨ ʉ	ɯ u
Near-close	ɪ ʏ		ɯ̽ ʊ
Close-mid	e ø	ɘ ɵ	ɤ o
Mid	e̞ ø̞	ə	ɤ̞ o̞
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ɜ ɞ	ʌ ɔ
Near-open	æ̝ ɶ̝	ɐ	ɑ̝ ɒ̝
Open	æ ɶ	a	ɑ ɒ

You can see that plain /a/ stands for central vowel, /æ/ for open front vowel (current /a/ and near-open front vowel (current /æ/) is raised /æ̝/. --40bus (talk) 18:20, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- There was a kind of pamphlet published in 1942 by Bloch and Trager, "Outline of Linguistic Analysis", well-known to earlier generations of U.S. linguists, which has a completely symmetric vowel rectangle, where all degrees of height and fronting can freely co-occur, and all these combinations can occur either with or without lip rounding. I would guess that phoneticians have not found this as useful as the IPA, while for phonologists, it would allow a lot of theoretical low vowels which are rarely found to contrast phonemically with each other in languages. AnonMoos (talk) 01:07, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The biggest thing your missing is that vowels are a multidimensional continuum. You can transition between any two vowel sounds continuously, and travel through a literally infinite number of vowel sounds. In order to represent these sounds, by necessity, you need define a discrete set of symbols, which means each symbol represents not a single sound, but rather a small part of the multidimensional spectrum that most languages would consider "close enough" to consider all the same sound. However, there will always be edge cases where some vowel sounds may be classified with two different IPA symbols because they lie on the edge of what those symbols represent. This is unavoidable any time you try to fit a continuum phenomenon into a discrete set of classifications. No system would be free of this. Basically, it is always going to happen, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Now, regarding your " why it has not..." question: Those are unanswerable. It just wasn't. Also, related to that question and on your emotional responses to symbols (finding them "shocking"), that's mostly irrelevant. Symbols are ultimately arbitrary, and no one thought at the time they were inventing the IPA, what your future emotional response would be. --Jayron 32 12:47, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is also easy to overlook that the IPA phonemes are essentially labels; the positioning of these labels in the multidimensional continuum of vowel space is not absolute. Another multidimensional continuum is colour space, in which red is a region, not a single point. The red in the flag of Turkey is considerably brighter than the "Old Glory Red" of the flag of the United States. Likewise, the /a/ of French is brighter than the German /a/. --Lambiam 19:08, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

May 11

dif [Balkan Slavic langs]

why everyon get angry

What i differece between Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian, Serbian, Slovamolisano, Chakavian, Kajakian, Burgenland Croatian, Bunjevc and Shtokavian

What do different people think — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.188.134.165 (talk) 10:00, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ethnic conflict. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:15, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And more specifically, Yugoslav Wars. Alansplodge (talk) 12:45, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The warnings on Bosnian cigarette packets are semi-notorious among some. They supposedly contain the message "smoking kills" in the Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian languages, but the Croatian and Bosnian are identical, and the Serbian is also effectively identical, based on transliteration equivalences between the Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet as traditionally used to write Serbo-Croation... AnonMoos (talk) 04:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

American Umlaut

Are there placenames (especially names of cities/towns/villages) in the U.S. written with an umlaut? 79.13.168.175 (talk) 21:03, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Geographic Names Information System was not traditionally accomodating to diacritics (not sure what the exact situation is now). La Cañada Flintridge has attracted attention for unusually having a diacritic in its name, but this comes from a language commonly spoken in the U.S. Introducing diacritics from languages not commonly spoken in the U.S. would be somewhat pointless. AnonMoos (talk) 04:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tildes are common in Spanish and can turn up in English. Umlauts are also used in some Spanish words, though whether they appear in American geographic names, who knows? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:55, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The US Board on Geographic Names Policy VI "Diacritics" says:

In the past, the BGN did not customarily recognize diacritics as part of geographic name spelling in the United States. Many geographic names adopted from non-English languages have been assimilated into English language usage and lack the diacritics from the original spelling. Although diacritics are infrequently used in English, they constitute an integral part of the spelling and meaning of words in many other languages, notably Spanish, French, Hawaiian, and many Native Alaskan and Native American languages, from which numerous United States placenames are derived. Diacritics are especially important if their omission would result in a significant change in pronunciation or meaning. Therefore, the BGN will accept for consideration names containing diacritics.
Sec. 1 The BGN may approve a geographic name that includes diacritics.
Sec. 2 Proposals that include diacritics must meet the same basic criteria required of any other name proposal.
Guidelines
Appendix G provides a link to a BGN website on character sets providing a listing of approved diacritics

So now we just have to find some. DuncanHill (talk) 06:05, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And List of U.S. cities with diacritics might be a good place to start. DuncanHill (talk) 06:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking as someone who grew up nearby, "San José" (meaning California, not Costa Rica) is an affectation. The city council blessed it; good for them. It's not really in use in the wild, at least not among Anglophones. --Trovatore (talk) 06:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, decades ago, I was a guest speaker each semester at a class at Cañada College, not far from San Jose, California. The use of the tilde in that context encourages an approximation of a Spanish pronunciation very different from that of the very large country to the north of the US. Cullen328 (talk)

Yes, in fact my barbershop choir will be performing there this fall for our 75th anniversary. The member responsible for arranging the venue sent out an e-mail that said "Canada is secured" :-) --Trovatore (talk) 06:54, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A completely Americanized name is Cape Canaveral (/keɪp kəˈnævɹəl/), in which a Spanish speaker might not recognize Cabo Cañaveral (/ˈkabo kaɲabeˈɾal/). Not only is Zoe Saldaña often credited without diacritic, but the pronunciation of her surname is mangled accordingly. --Lambiam 11:12, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There was a Zoe in my form at secondary school. One of the teachers would deliberately mispronounce her name because of the lack of two dots. DuncanHill (talk) 11:17, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And on that very page we find Lindström and Mayagüez. Shells-shells (talk) 06:34, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The ü in "Mayagüez" is not strictly speaking an umlaut, though it's typographically indistinguishable. As to whether Mayagüez counts as part of the United States ... that could get controversial, from any of a number of perspectives. --Trovatore (talk) 07:08, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The proper term for the two-dot diacritical mark placed over the second of two consecutive letters to indicate that it is sounded separately is diaeresis. --Lambiam 11:00, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In "Mayagüez" the two dots are over the first of two consecutive vowel letters. DuncanHill (talk) 11:13, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant letter combination is gu, isn't it, or maybe gue. The diaeresis indicates that the u is sounded, cf. Spanish_language#Writing_system. --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:28, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to re-emphasize something that was glossed over. There is a very distinct difference, linguistically, between an umlaut and a dieresis, even though in orthography they use the same double-dot symbol, they mean different things. An umlaut indicates that the associated vowel sound is fronted, which is to say that the vowel sound itself changes to a different vowel sound. It is a marker saying "this vowel sound is different than what it usually is in this language". A diaresis indicates that the vowel is pronounced as a separate vowel sound, and is not part of a digraph for a single vowel sound or dipthong. In the French spelling of naïve for example, that is a dieresis because it is indicating that the "ai" is pronounced as two distinct vowel sounds, /na iv/ and not as a single vowel which the "ai" letter combination would normally indicate, being /ɛ/, so */nɛv/ as in words like faite /fɛt/ or vrai /vrɛ/. In Spanish orthography, the double dot is always a dieresis, in this case indicating that the "u" is pronounced. Normally, in constructions like "gue" or "que" the "u" is a "silent letter", not being pronounced. The dieresis is telling you to pronounce it. Thus Mayagüez is pronounced /ma ya gwez/ whereas Mayaguez would be pronounced /ma ya gez/. Spanish does not, AFAIK, do umlauts. Indeed, among European languages, it has one of the simplest vowel systems, with only 5 true monophthong vowel sounds. --Jayron 32 12:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

May 12

Redundancy problem

Is the phrase Personally, I don't think... redundant? I think it is, but I'm not sure. Thanks! Cessaune [talk] 05:16, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is redundant, but it's also fairly common usage. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:56, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It would totally depend on the context. "I think" is more likely to be redundant, I think, because what someone says or writes is invariably what they think. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:09, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not so fast. "I think Henry VIII had 9 wives" is somewhat less categorical than "Henry VIII had 9 wives". The first is a revelation of the speaker's belief, the second is an assertion. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Jack. To my ear, the subtle distinction between "I think . . ." and "Personally, I think . . ." is that the former is a little dogmatic, implying that the opinion is likely correct because it is the speaker's, while the latter implies a degree of admission that others may differ in their opinion of the matter concerned, or might be answering a contrary opinion already expressed in the conversation. (Had I chosen to express the above by commencing with the phrase, I would have begun "Personally, I think . . .".) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.210.77 (talk) 09:52, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd interpret it the other way round: "I think Henry VIII had 9 wives" sounds like someone trying to remember the answer while conceding they might not be recalling it correctly. Whereas "Personally, I think Henry VIII had 9 wives" sounds like they know their opinion is at odds with what is commonly believed, but are rejecting consensus in favour of their own opinion. Iapetus (talk) 12:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's almost opposite to how I read it. I'll only infer someone trying to remember a thing if they append an (optionally bracketed) question mark, like "I think Henry VIII had nine wives?", with an increasing number of question marks indicating decreasing certainty of recollection.

Whenever I introduce an opinion with "personally", this has nothing to do with what I anticipate majority opinion to be, but rather an awareness that opinions on the topic are generally highly subjective. I'm in rough agreement with unregistered editor .77 above that "I think" without "personally" can sometimes carry shades of "I think this and so should you", depending on context and the social dynamics of the parties.

So to answer the initial question: personally, I don't think so. Folly Mox (talk) 15:08, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Someone seen as a spokesperson for an organization may choose to interpolate a personal opinion, in which case the adverb serves to alert the audience that the opinion should not be ascribed to the organization. JFK, asked by a reporter if another round of nuclear tests by the Soviet Union was to be expected, responded, "I would think that would be— personally I would think that would be a great disaster for the interests of all concerned." The fact that he went back to modify the statement, making clear it was not a pronouncement of the official position of the USA, shows he definitely did not see this as redundant.^[2] --Lambiam 10:53, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A line spoken by Rolfe Sedan in a 1950s Superman episode about an attempt to rig an election: "Personally, I don't care who wins... personally." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:34, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Emphasis is never redundant; it adds meaning to a phrase to emphasize it. "I think <blah blah blah>" and "Personally, I think <blah blah blah>", the "personally" adds an emphasis to the spoken phrase in a way that indicates something different about how strong the belief is held, or maybe the speaker is trying to convey that they understand the strength by which others hold a contrary belief, etc. etc. --Jayron 32 11:53, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If I were to say "Emphasis is never, never, never, ever redundant". would you say any of those words were redundant? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:24, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say the sentence contains unnecessarily duplicative words that repetitively replicate information already provided and that therefore could and perhaps should be removed, omitted or left out, but that for some undisclosed reason were left to remain so that they are still there when they are not needed, although we do not know the reason why. --Lambiam 07:59, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"We are never, ever, ever, ever getting back together" -- Taylor Swift. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:08, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Pig's feet" vs. "pig feet", etc.

Hi,

I'd like to make the entry 'O pere e 'o musso more consistent in the use (or not) of Saxon genitive. To give an example (from the lead section):

 Its name refers to its main ingredients: pig's feet and cow snouts.

Would it be OK to say "pig feet", here? Similarly, the entry uses both "calf's snouts" and "calf foot". Could I say "calf snouts"? All in all, it would be nice if I could just remove all "'s"s in the expressions that refer to parts of animals. Would that introduce any error or make anything odd-sounding?

Thank you. —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 06:30, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would say pigs' feet, where the apostrophe after the s indicates a plural possessive. I think pig feet would also be acceptable. --Trovatore (talk) 06:34, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gennaro Prota, in American English, these are called "pigs' feet" as a culinary item. I believe that they are called "pig trotters" in the United Kingdom. See Pickled pigs' feet for the American dish. "Pig feet" would sound a little bit off in the United States, in my opinion. Cullen328 (talk) 06:41, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pig's trotters. We have a food called calf's foot jelly (misleading redirect), the Collins entry for which is suggestive: "calf's-foot jelly: a jelly made from the stock of boiled calves' feet..." DuncanHill (talk) 06:48, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have no personal experience of the dish, but my impression was that the phrase was calves' foot jelly. Google ngrams seems to show that your form is the older one, that the plural form appeared abruptly about 1820, and briefly outnumbered the other until 1830; but since about 1860, the two have mostly been neck and neck. However, since about 1935 and apart from a few years around 1960, calves' has consistently outnumbered calf's in British English, which may explain my belief. ColinFine (talk) 10:54, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just picking up on this observation: the only time I have encountered this dish is in More About Paddington, the second book in the Paddington Bear series. It was published in 1959 and, interestingly given what is said above about dates, uses the form calves' foot jelly. (Paddington is ill and his nemesis, grumpy neighbour Mr Curry, gives him a jar of it, "which he said was very good for invalids".) Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 11:48, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I recall it from The Great Muppet Caper, in which John Cleese and Joan Sanderson play a stuffy British couple dining together and discussing whether the Cleese character is bored. Sanderson asks "What would you buy if you were bored?" and Cleese, after thinking, responds "A jar of calves' foot jelly?" (I just looked at the scene on YouTube, and to my ear he clearly says calves' rather than calf's.) Deor (talk) 15:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia article aspic is probably also both relevant to this discussion. --Jayron 32 14:30, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Anecdotally, I have never encountered this substance in more than 60 years living in the Sceptered Isle and assume that the mentions above are intended to evoke a food which is both unpleasant and belonging to the distant past. The plural of "calf" is usually "calves"; Wiktionary says that "calfs" is "nonstandard". Alansplodge (talk) 17:31, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It was a staple of Aunt Effie's cuisine in the old Ernie comic strip, I recall. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:50, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone, especially to Trovatore who took the time to also edit the article. May I ask Trovatore or any other native speaker to also check the rest of the entry? It's not long. Alternatively, I can list the expressions I'm in doubt about here, and ask again for your help. One point worth noticing is that the name of the dish is "all singular", i.e. it means "the foot and the muzzle", not "the feet and the muzzles"; this makes me lean toward using singular throughout the article ("foot", "udder", etc.), the more so given that some of these parts, such as udders, are relatively big. But I'll leave the final decision to native speakers, especially since this might just be my perception and not something objective. Thanks again everyone. —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 08:45, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The dish seems related to khash. --Lambiam 18:44, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

May 13

Falling diphthongs in Romance languages

Hi, is there a reason why Portuguese and Catalan falling diphthongs are transcribed with /j,w/ as the second element, and Italian and Spanish with /i,u/? I noticed also that the Wiktionary transcribes also Italian falling diphthongs with /j,w/.-- Carnby (talk) 10:15, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Does Rhoticity still exist in Welsh English?

Are there any rhotic varieties of Welsh English left? Given the fact that /r/ is common in the Welsh language, especially as a word-final syllabic consonant (rhestr, for instance). Also other Celtic influenced dialects of English in the British Isles (Scottish English, Irish English, and Cornish English) are rhotic.95.144.204.68 (talk) 20:13, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

May 15

Different words for laughing and crying

There are many words like cry weep wail

Smirk giggle smile laugh

All are used in different way

I am typing from mobile so can't use proper punctuation.

how many common words are there to describe laugh and crying? Thapachang (talk) 03:54, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A thesaurus will give you plenty of options but I like using a crossword solver. The often have many more synonyms. e.g. https://www.the-crossword-solver.com/word/laugh. (Scroll down for all the words.) How common they are depends on where you are from. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 06:18, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]