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October 27

A or an before abbreviations?

It's usually clear when to say a or an: a NASA, an FBI, a UK, an EU. (eg, 'an' before a vowel sound, 'a' before a consonant sound) But the following trip me up: is it an FAC or a FAC (as some people read 'a featured article candidate', a/an HGV (heavy goods vehicle) and LGV (large goods vehicle), a/an NI (National Insurance) number, a/an MP (member of parliament), and especially, a/an SNES, which even discusses it within the article. It doesn't really matter in informal writing but it really matters when you have to write in a formal way. Is there anyway to fix this problem? JuniperChill (talk) 13:31, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Short answer to the general case is "no", although I'm sure some publisher style guides recommend one practice (acronym, initialism, read as full expansion) over others. It doesn't seem like we do, according to MOS:ACRO. For article development, I suppose the answer as usual is "follow the sources".

This was actually discussed just a few months back at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations § "a" or "an" (Summer 2024), with no conclusion. Folly Mox (talk) 13:50, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations/Archive 4 § "a RFC" vs "an RFC" (2012 & 2013). Folly Mox (talk) 13:58, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking people who type 'a RfC' means that they read it as 'a request for comment'. I tend to say 'an RfC' because I do say it letter by letter (like a BBC). However, I tend to write 'a LU', because I say it as 'a London Underground...'. But with a/an before HGV, is confusing as it has to do with the Brits on how to say the letter H. Its mixed, as some say /hei-ch/ rather than /ei-ch/. For example, this gov.uk website says both 'a HGV' and 'an HGV' in the same page. And a yt channel called Luke C in a HGV. JuniperChill (talk) 16:12, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's interesting to see the evolution of how people pronounce initialisms as terms become more commonplace: few people nowadays would read LOL as "laughing out loud" rather than /ell oh ell/ or even /la:l/; I've also heard BTW, WTF, TBH, JMO, and TL;DR pronounced as initialisms in spoken conversation. OTOH, some initialisms tend still to be read in expanded form: I've yet to hear anyone say /en gee ell/ for NGL instead of "not gonna lie", or /tee aye ell/ for TIL rather than "today I learned".

Of course, some acronyms become so accepted as regular words that pronouncing them otherwise would just confuse the listener: if I heard someone say /are ey dee ey are/ for radar or /ell ey ess ee are/ for laser, I'd assume they were spelling it out because their dog associates it with treats or something. Folly Mox (talk) 16:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I assume JMO is "just my opinion"? Never encountered it before. The initialisms containing W gain syllables compared to the things they're supposed to abbreviate, so this is a bizarre development. Card Zero (talk) 08:52, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Assumption correct; appears undocumented both here and at wikt:. Folly Mox (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion it depends on how the abbreviation is pronounced, which may be speaker-dependent. If people say /əˈspɒf/, you write "a SPOF". If they say /ənˈɛs.piː.oʊˌɛf/, you write "an SPOF". --Lambiam 17:15, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But then, some people completely avoid the use of "an". For them, it's a apple, a orange, a ectoplasm, a irritation, and a utterly stupid way of talking. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"The law is a ass" occurs in the mid-19th-century in Dickens, but you're right about the recent rise of this... AnonMoos (talk) 18:06, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds related to the phenomenon of modern Chinese speakers eschewing the prescribed system of Chinese classifiers (measure words) for the generic 個; ge in all cases. Folly Mox (talk) 17:32, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's dialectical. There are different ways of avoiding the clash between vowels. Some use schwa for a but begin apple with a glottal stop, others instead pronounce a as a diphthong /ei/. Either way, you get a consonant-like transition between the article and the noun. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

October 28

What is a better word here?

In the sentence “Chicken has de facto become its own genre of food [which refers to the diversity of chicken-centered food items],” what is a more apt word in place of “genre?” Primal Groudon (talk) 20:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First, what's new about this? Second, various synonyms work: class, category, type, etc. EO has another synonym or two.[1] But while it seems valid, "genre" is used more in connection with works of art. Unless someone thinks fried chicken is a work of art! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:18, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BB, you must not be from the Southern U.S. where fried chicken is indeed an art form. --136.56.165.118 (talk) 05:41, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Culinary category
Cuisine
Gastronomy

I feel less comfortable with the second two, I recommend the first. But perhaps say "a culinary category in its own right" rather than "its own culinary category", which just makes me think of chickens being fed to other chickens. Card Zero (talk) 08:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Any Current Wikipedia Featured articles from the brilliant Freshing Prose Days

Hi. I was wondering if there are any Current Wikipedia Featured articles from the Refreshing brilliant prose days back in the early 2000s. Please let me know. Thank You. 2605:B100:142:F42C:9CC9:8B9D:6417:A145 (talk) 21:39, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Byzantine Empire has been listed continually since 2001, when it was still just "brilliant prose", and was subsequently confirmed in 2004 (as "refreshing brilliant prose"), and again in 2007 and 2012. But it's currently under review and might well be delisted. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:44, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Now what is the oldest Wikipedia Featured Article Not Currently At Review. 50.100.44.234 (talk) 21:46, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

October 29

Oldest Featured article not currently at Review

Hi. I was wondering what the oldest Current Featured article not currently at review is. Let me know. Thank You. 50.100.44.234 (talk) 00:07, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese language question

I took this picture of a packet of Japanese seaweed snacks. It has Japanese writing on it. What does it say? JIP | Talk 01:22, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sesame oil flavored Korean style. Domestically produced seaweed is lightly fried in delicious vegetable oil and seasoned Korean style with sesame oil and salt. Andre🚐 01:24, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! JIP | Talk 01:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be a pretty standard typeface, clear characters and prosaic writing. I think a smartphone could do a passable photo translation. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Three English questions

How common is ⟨er⟩ spelling (meter, liter, center) in Canadian and Australian English?
Are there any polysyllabic words that begin with checked vowels in English?
Do English speakers refer to measurements like 5.5 kg as "five and half kilograms" in daily conversation?

--40bus (talk) 15:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 1

On 1: We generally abhor -er endings Down Under, but as spellcheck continues its inexorable rise to world domination and Americanisms proliferate, such atrocities are finding their way more and more into written communications. Particularly from those who do not know the first thing about the language they (ab)use, such as journalists and users of "social" media. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just imagine if they develop a sister app for spellcheck, called "factcheck", which will ding anything that its AI considers to be factually incorrect.

When I see spellings like "metre" or "theatre", I'm inclined to pronounce them as "met-ray" and "thea-tray". :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:33, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Re 1: My US spellchecker rejects dioptre, fibre, goitre, lustre, mitre, nitre, philtre, reconnoitre, saltpetre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, titre, but accepts cadre, calibre, chancre, euchre, fiacre, genre, louvre, lucre, macabre, manoeuvre, massacre, mediocre, nacre, ochre, oeuvre, sabre, theatre, timbre, so these last may be acceptable in some contexts. In Australian English, metre is a unit of measurement with meter in other contexts, such as voltmeter, gasometer. Center appears in the phrase one per-center. My Macquarie dictionary grudgingly accepts diopter. Luster could be what Aussies call a "perv". Doug butler (talk) 21:40, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would imagine if we only had UK and US spellcheckers. What would happen to users of CA, AU and NZ and others? I would presume they would use UK English/spellchecker then? JuniperChill (talk) 13:06, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any differences between UK and NZ spellings? User:Nil Einne, any ideas? Canadian...well, that would be awkward. Here in Australia, we're basically identical to UK spelling, with the significant exception of politics: the Commonwealth government and most state/territory governments are currently controlled by the Australian Labor Party, even though organisations like the CFMEU are organised labour. So if we didn't have an Australian spellchecker, we'd just have to add "Labor" to the UK dictionary, and we'd be able to function rather well. As Jack notes, American influence is significant; at my workplace, nobody's ever bothered to change the office computers to prefer Australian English, so words like "licence" and "metre" get the little red underlines whenever we type them, just like on the laptop I'm using to type this; I bought it when living in the US, and it might not have come with an Australian option. Nyttend (talk) 19:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that despite being close to Australia, NZ English is closer to British English than Australian English. So effectively British English, but with a small difference. Like NZ doesn't use fairy floss (AU term for candy floss). Same can be said for Ireland (except that their police force is called 'Gardaí'). JuniperChill (talk) 19:50, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reminds me of that Flight of the Conchords episode, where the band gets an Australian manager (or similar), and they begin to worry about whether she's subtly mocking their accents. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:22, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That was indeed the case, back in the day. (I am Canadian). In the early days, word processors like Word Perfect only had the option of American spellings or UK spellings and we typically went with the UK one. That didn't work perfectly, but was more often the correct one, in part because UK spellings are almost always recognized as an acceptable variant here. American abominations like /thru/ and /tonite/ were generally not acceptable in formal prose in Canada, so it was better to have those identified as potential errors. Matt Deres (talk) 20:11, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 2

Re. 2: Loads of words: instance, example, enrich, episode, any, union, active, alloy (the stress being on the first syllable), answer (in American accent, i.e. with the first vowel pronounced like that of "at"), and likewise. I still wonder if there are words (not necessarily polysyllabic) that begin with the vowel of put.

Don't know what a "checked vowel" is, and can't think of any examples of a word being "unnecessarily polysyllabic", nor was I aware that the scouse accent was limited to the area around Liverpool, but in northern English many words begin with the vowel of "put". 2A00:23D0:7CC:A601:BC7E:CC68:E368:708 (talk) 11:54, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know what a "checked vowel" is. See checked vowel.

can't think of any examples of a word being "unnecessarily polysyllabic". The OP asked about "polysyllabic words", so I wondered if there were words, whether polysyllabic or not (that's what I meant by "not necessarily polysyllabic") that began with the vowel of put.

nor was I aware that the scouse accent was limited to the area around Liverpool, but in northern English many words begin with the vowel of "put". Yes, that's probably because you pronounce cud like could, so you probably begin the word under with the vowel of could. But what I wondered about was about words as pronounced by most English speakers (including those in Southern England), who actually do have the cud-could split. HOTmag (talk) 12:49, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In NA-English, after some consideration the only word I've been able to think of that begins with the vowel of "put" is oops. (Incidentally, I'm reading unnecessarily polysyllabic as "not necessarily polysyllabic", which makes sense.) Folly Mox (talk) 12:53, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, that's what I meant, thx. Regarding oops, yep... I guess that the rareness or infrequency of this phenomenon (of beginning a word with the vowel of put) makes some people pronounce the word oops with the vowel of food, or with the consonant w followed by the vowel of wood. HOTmag (talk) 13:01, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a Cockney saying "hood" or "hoof" or "hook", for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the same reason they also say "an horse" and likewise. HOTmag (talk) 20:12, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"A policeman's lot is not an 'appy one..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:01, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Whether E is, an honest one (as I'm used to say), or a honest one (as our Hungarian cop is used to say). HOTmag (talk) 10:19, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 3

On 3, yes that is normal speech but we are more likely to say "five and a half kilos". --Viennese Waltz 15:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In American English, the abbrevation "kilo" standing alone (with no specific substance mentioned) can sometimes have connotations of drug-smuggling, while unabbreviated "kilogram" could suggest science experiments... In U.S. supermarkets, soda (soft drink) bottles are sold in units of liters, but otherwise the metric system isn't used too much for everyday common items that people often buy, so that metric units can sometimes have foreign or scientific connotations. AnonMoos (talk) 15:57, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Britain, kilograms are sometimes abbreviated to "kay-gees" (in London at least). Alansplodge (talk) 13:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And in (American) medical contexts I often hear "milligrams per kilogram" pronounced "migs per kig". —Tamfang (talk) 21:04, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

October 30

List of animals by gender

Could you add your examples to my list, that now includes five pairs only: bull cow, horse mare, rooster hen, dog bitch, fox vixen.

I don't need nouns with the prefix "she" (e.g. she-ape, she-ass, she-bear, she-camel, she-cat, she-crab, she-elephant, she-fox, she-goat, she-wolf, and the like), nor nouns with the suffix "ess" (e.g. lioness, tigress, and the like). HOTmag (talk) 01:30, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The "bull and cow" pair and the "duck and drake" pair are interesting, since the female term is used to refer to the species as a whole, contrary to the unmarked masculine default presumptions which apply elsewhere in English. In the "ram and ewe" pair, "ewe" is a very old word which goes back to Indo-European, and originally referred to the species as a whole (though not in modern English)... AnonMoos (talk) 02:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. If you're excluding words with feminine prefixes or suffixes, then "vixen" originally had a feminine suffix (though quite opaque in modern English). There's also billy-goat and nanny-goat for gender indicators other than "-ess" or "she-"... AnonMoos (talk) 02:40, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary has categories wikt:Category:en:Female_animals and wikt:Category:en:Male_animals. Of course you will still have to filter out all the elephantesses and she-walruses, and then match the remaining female animals to male counterparts (some of which are missing, since the male list is shorter). And many of these are weird and obscure, such as ram-cat. There are also cases where the same words apply to different animals in different pairings. For instance, doe is a female deer, rabbit, kangaroo, or squirrel, but buck is a male deer, rabbit, kangaroo, or shad (a kind of fish). (A female shad is however a hen, so here we have the pair buck/hen.) Then again, you can probably call a male squirrel a buck if you want to. You can probably call it a dog-squirrel if you want to - the odds of confusing people increase slightly, but really you can reach for any suitable metaphor in a crisis like this where you don't know what the word is, because nobody else knows either. Cock-squirrel, for instance, would still be comprehensible.

One common pair you missed is gander/goose. It may be stallion/mare (but beware all the other gendered words for horses of specific status, such as colt and filly, not to mention gelding). Then there's drone/queen/worker (bees are complicated). Rooster has synonyms cock and cockerel. In the form cock/hen this applies to most birds, and some fish. Male deer are not only bucks but sometimes stags or harts. Male cats can be toms, but female cats are just cats. Female pigs can be sows, but male pigs are just pigs. (Edit: or boars, in fact. Though of course a boar, as in wild boar, is a kind of pig, leading to the existence of female boars, and I suppose boar-boars. Forgive me if this is boaring.) Card Zero (talk) 05:23, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Gander and Goose" is another pair where the female term also refers to the species as a whole... AnonMoos (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As with "Goosey Goosey Gander". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

She-cats are queens in some contexts, I believe. —Tamfang (talk) 21:08, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to consider the Yak. In English this has come to designate both sexes, but in the local languages from which it is derived, it refers only to the male, the female being (something like a) dri, nag or hYag-mo (my grasp of Tibetan is nonexistant). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 15:40, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has an extensive list of animal names that gives male and female variants. Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:54, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, if surprising in places. I see sloths, anteaters, armadillos, racoons and kinkajous all get the titles sow and boar. Card Zero (talk) 12:03, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of these rare uses are ad hoc extensions that are copied over and over in lists because they found their way in print somewhere and are now self-replicating. It would be nice to have a list that distinguishes ad hoc [or even jocular] words and uses from ones that people actually use in normal speech. — kwami (talk) 23:31, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just like animal collective nouns? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:24, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see where that makes the distinction. — kwami (talk) 23:27, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Minor capitalization question

Is it "1st and 2nd Armies" or "1st and 2nd armies"? Clarityfiend (talk) 13:14, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1st Army and 2nd Army are proper nouns, chief 130.74.59.162 (talk) 15:17, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then there's the First United States Army Group commanded by Gen. Patton, which only existed on paper! AnonMoos (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

October 31

Translating npc chatter from AC Odyssey

Greek. Sounds like:

"ALOKOTON TAMALA."
"E! IGIGNETE!"
"OPTALMINO VOSSEVUSSI"
"PAFSON TUTU?"
"PAFSE!"
"DEVRONEXO! PROSSO!"
"UKETI!"
SINELFE, SINELFE!"

2A0D:6FC0:E95:CA00:3C00:EDC6:C79E:5A34 (talk) 02:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's Assassin's Creed Odyssey, to clarify. So these are presumably Ancient Greek. Perhaps even specifically Attic and Doric varieties. Card Zero (talk) 08:12, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I only recognize "uketi", which is οὐκέτι, "no more, no longer". "pafse" may be παύσε (in a more modern pronunciation), i.e. "Stop!". "pafson tutu" is the same verb, but unclear which grammatical form. Maybe first person singular, the "s" indicates a future tense (or one of the tenses/moods/aspects that I haven't learned yet), παύσω τούτου, "shall I stop this?" (although τούτου is genitive, and accusative τοῦτον/τοῦτο might make more sense)? --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:55, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I had a vague idea that "DEVRONEXO! PROSSO!" might be something like thunder upon!, but in this I'm just grabbing at the first vaguely similar words I see and guessing. Card Zero (talk) 09:52, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess "Optalmino" could be some dual inflected form of "Ophtalmos" (eye). If this is based on phonetical approximation from an outside perspective, I guess errors in transcription is likely, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:55, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Attic pronunciation of ὀφθαλμός was /opʰ.tʰal.mós/, with aspirated stops. --Lambiam 13:20, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

”SINELFE” could be “σῠ́νελθε” from wikt:συνέρχομαι. —Amble (talk) 15:44, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

”E! IGIGNETE!” could be "εἰ γίγνεται”, “if it happens”? —Amble (talk) 15:59, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Might this be an example of Minionese: that is, something deliberately meant to suggest some form of ancient Greek without being actually meaningful? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 19:37, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not likely. The other AC games keep to meaningful chatter - OP 2A0D:6FC0:E95:CA00:1989:7FB0:ABB4:1B53 (talk) 21:10, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"DEVRONEXO!" must be "el:wikt:δεῦρο ἔξω", "come out!". This phrase appears in the story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11. —Amble (talk) 21:36, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"PROSSO": wikt:πρόσω, also wikt:πρόσσω, “forward”. —Amble (talk) 02:13, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"ALOKOTON TAMALA": see el:wikt:ἀλλόκοτος, el:wikt:τα μάλα, "rather strange." --Amble (talk) 21:20, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Managed to make a recording of "Ophtalmino vessevussi" and "e! igignete!" here. Thank all! OP 2A0D:6FC0:E95:CA00:4054:7CE6:A04D:4932 (talk) 19:42, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I hear "[i ofθalmi mu pesevusi]", i.e. "οι οφθαλμοί μου [πεσσ?]εύουσι" – "my eyes are [...?]ing" - the words for "my eyes" are very clear and the ending must be that of 3rd person plural present indicative verb, but I'm not sure what that verb is – there is a verb "πεσσεύω", meaning "to play at draughts", but that doesn't seem to make much sense. In the second phrase, I hear "[e, ti jirnete]", which would be "ε, τί γυρνετε" (or "γυρνεται", or "γείρνετε" or "γείρνεται") – again, I'm not sure what exact verb form this is supposed to be. Note that all of this is (pseudo-?)Ancient Greek as pronounced by a Modern Greek speaker (as is customary in Greece); the speaker sounds like a native Greek speaker. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:48, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 4

Five questions

1. When has British English last had more native speakers than American English?

2. Why is word Canada not spelled by letter K, if it comes from word kanata?

3. If "four and a quarter metres" means 4.75, or 43⁄4 metres, how can a distance exactly one-third on the way from 4 to 5 metres be indicated? Is it "four and one-third metres", or 41⁄3 metres? "4.33333... metres" would seem too bad to write.

4. In which English-speaking region is the 24-hour clock in speech the most common? In such area, people would always read times from a 24-hour display as 24-hour times.

5. Does 12-hour clock have a written form in languages like German and French?

--40bus (talk) 11:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

how often do you dedicate to come up with these frivolous questions ?

don't you recognize how presumptuous it is of you to apportion with bold heading the subsections for answering to each of your question, and the required zone for contention between the contributors, and the practice of intense interpretation of the text, and,

to what end should i answer you, and, what is your purpose, not only in doing this, but in general ? 130.74.59.145 (talk) 21:16, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, 40bus is not the one who usually divides into subsections (check the page history). See here for my own previous annoyance, but 40bus is not as repetitive as he was then... AnonMoos (talk) 20:49, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the division is generally made by others, purely for practical purposes. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:15, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 1

Last time I looked, the population of the U K was about 70 million and the population of the U S was about three times that. It's not too difficult to establish when immigration caused the population of the U S to equal and then exceed that of the U K - the problem is establishing how many are native speakers, which may be difficult or impossible to do. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As the other anonymous reply notes, it should be easy to identify when the population of the US overtook that of the UK. And with sensible assumptions you could work out similar figures for just English speakers. I would think though that it happened when there was no distinction made between American and British English, which is a largely modern distinction, especially for the spoken language. A lot of the differences e.g. are to do with modern inventions such as cars/automobiles, motorway/freeway, or in modern uses of slang. Both are much more similar to each other than they are to the language spoken by Victorians. Spelling differences may have arisen earlier but you ask about speakers, not writers.--2A04:4A43:984F:F027:316B:EC1E:5955:64E2 (talk) 21:33, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English people who visited British North America / the United States in the late 18th century commented that the marked local or regional dialects which existed in the UK had mostly kind of been smoothed out in the United States (though of course, that didn't mean that everybody in the US spoke what was then considered British standard English). In the 19th century, British pronunciation developments stopped influencing United States English, and some prominent regional dialects started developing within the United States (especially Southern vs. non-Southern). AnonMoos (talk) 18:03, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe another question, but I have never really understood how Southern American English originated. Somewhat arguably, Standard American English does seem to have originated mostly in Western British dialects, and Australian English comes more or less from convict cockney, but Southern American sounds very distinct. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:18, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Check out this link https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002073585.pdf The authors --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:57, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 2

2: because before non-front vowels <c> and <k> were (and still are) equivalent, and the habit had not yet arisen of using <k> rather than <c> for foreign names. Compare wikt:Corea#English. ColinFine (talk) 14:14, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The word "Canada" was coined by the French from the original Iroquoian at a time when the letter "k" was hardly used in France, and before there was a formal writing system for Iroquoian. The choice of initial has absolutely no incidence on the pronunciation. Xuxl (talk) 14:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 3

3. You can write "four and a third metres", 41⁄3m, or 4.3 m. (@40bus: Note your "four and a quarter metres" means 4.25 or 41⁄4, not what your wrote.) Bazza 7 (talk) 12:34, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@40bus: There is a mistake in your question. "Four and a quarter metres" does not mean 4.75m, or 4¾m, as you say – it means 4.25m or 4¼m. It means "four metres plus one quarter of a metre". Spideog (talk) 08:45, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 4

In informal speech, I don't think people of any nationality favour the 24-hour clock. After all, on analogue clocks the world over the numbers only go up to 12. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are many english-speaking "regions" where qualifying times as "a.m" or "p.m" doesn't occur, such as on flight information displays at airports where 24-hour clock times are always shown. Philvoids (talk) 15:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And yet digital transformation is in progress. Simultaneously with it, some relational patterns are evolving. Do not get tricked by a specific cultural/linguistic/phonetic reluctance ( "..Teen Hour ?!! ) -- Askedonty (talk) 15:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

24 hour time is much used in the military (It's also known as "military time" in America). So I would guess the answer may be a region that's mostly or entirely populated by people in the military, e.g. British Indian Ocean Territory. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 16:36, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my (British) experience, it depends on circumstances. In a social or domestic setting, people usually express time in 12-hour terms, a.m./morning or p.m./afternoon/evening when the context is ambiguous, but in contexts involving timetable, such as bus and train times (whose timetables are given in 24-hour form) and perhaps things like office-diary bookings, 24-hour terms are usually or often used. Current and ex-military personnel (about 4% of the population), such as my Father, also often use 24-hour times with friends and family, sometimes jokingly but sometimes as an adopted habit: my father even uses the 'Zulu' terminology with me. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 17:17, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Austria or Switzerland? I have a memory that in the Chalet School books (set in the Alps, but I don't know at what period) the English-speaking pupils and staff would refer to times such as "sixteen o'clock". Or possibly this was just invented by EMB-D to cue the reader about exotic European timekeeping? -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 23:26, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Elinor Brent-Dyer had holidayed in the Austrian Tyrol (presumably in her late 20s) where the fictional school was (initially) located before starting the series in 1925, so would have known the local time conventions. The adoption of such terminology by English speakers living in the portrayed circumstances (which seem to have been set contemporarily), whether or not accurate, seems plausible and thus appropriate for a work aimed at an English readership and, given that some of her readership may actually have attended such schools or otherwise be familiar with the milieu, may well have been accurate, though corroboration would be nice. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 17:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

24h time is common (but not universal) in French, in my experience. —Tamfang (talk) 21:11, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 5

In my impression, the 12-hour clock is the most common in informal conversation, such as in the title of the classic Western movie Zwölf Uhr mittags. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:58, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course in German you can have written orthographical representation of the spoken 12-hour times, such as "zwölf Uhr" or "zwanzig nach zwei", but if by "written form" 40bus meant a written numeric form, such as "2:20 pm", then for German at least the answer is basically "no". Such a numeric rendering is quite uncommon in German. You'd expect "14:20" in all formal written contexts, and there is no conventionalized equivalent for the "a.m." and "p.m." abbreviations you need for proper 12-hour rendering as in English. (In fact, there isn't even a concept corresponding to the English time intervals of "a.m." and "p.m.". "a.m." could be "nachts", "morgens" or "vormittags", but there isn't a single word easily subsuming all three of these, and likewise, "p.m." could be "nachmittags" or "abends", again without a convenient cover term). You do sometimes find 12-hour rendering in computing, if for no other reason that English-based software systems have user options allowing you to select either 12- or 24-hour time, and German localization then has to come up with something to implement both, but it's not something I as a native speaker would ever expect to actually see. For instance, if you choose 12-hour display in your user preferences on an iPhone, you get plain "2:20" without any indication of "a.m." vs. "p.m.", which feels positively weird. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:33, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See my answer to Question 4. I'm not convinced that Germany is any different to anywhere else [2]. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does Spanish have a written numeric form for 12-hour clock? I have seen that Spanish even uses the same "am" and "pm" as English. --40bus (talk) 15:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed they do es:Hora. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:37, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This applies to the Hispanophone countries of Latin America, not to Spain. --Lambiam 20:11, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dutch is similar to German here. The traditional 12 hour clock is still used in speech (but not always) when the traditional form isn't too long and not too much precision is required. You may find the 12 hour clock in writing, fully written out in letters the way you'd say it, in works of fiction. Practically all other writing, including everything in numeric form, uses the 24 hour clock, midnight expressed as 0:00. In some 19th century railway timetables (last one I found was from 1899) you can find times in the 12 hour clock, sometimes with expressions like v.m. (voormiddag=a.m.) or n.m. (namiddag=p.m.). A timetable from 1928 uses the 24 hour clock, so I suppose the change happened in the early 20th century. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:30, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Even if most European countries writing in 24-hour clock, does any country use word equivalent to "o'clock", "past", "half" and to with number over 12? --40bus (talk) 06:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 6

"Only emergency exit"

This is the labelling of emergency exits in an office in a non-English speaking country. Do I get it right that this implies the specific emergency exit would be the only one - and the correct word order would be "Emergency exit only" only? --KnightMove (talk) 09:09, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree. --Viennese Waltz 10:34, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The word "only" can be confusing to non-native English speakers, since "only" can often have several possible positions in word ordering without changing its meaning, so that that it can end up being not next to the word or phrase whose meaning it modifies -- yet there are subtle limits as to how far it can move without changing meaning... AnonMoos (talk) 12:52, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the message had been "This exit is only an emergency exit", the labelling would have been both unambiguous and grammatically just fine. A standard labelling transformation will turn this sentence into the label "Only an emergency exit". A very common transformation, seen als in headlines, is to remove a definite or indefinite article, resulting in an ambiguous label – the label before the article was removed could have been "The only emergency exit". Labels should ideally be unambiguous, particularly when used as warnings or for emergency situations, but application of common sense helps to find their intended meanings, as in the labellings "Shake before use" and "Keep away from children". Note that "Emergency exit only" is strictly speaking also ambiguous; "exit" can be the subjunctive of the verb "to exit", and the words can theoretically indicate that Emergency better not use the marked door to enter, but only to exit. --Lambiam 14:00, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I think you're overcomplicating things here. You cannot have an emergency exit that reads "This exit is only an emergency exit", it's just ridiculous. --Viennese Waltz 06:51, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If all else fails, look around that office and see if there are any other emergency exits. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:03, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

wait until you're instructed to carefully slip and fall down （小心地滑） 130.74.58.192 (talk) 04:58, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 7

Aqua vitae in Greek

How would you say aqua vitae ("water of life") in Classical Greek? Thanks in advance 45.140.183.21 (talk) 18:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hudor Zoes υδωρ ζωης (sorry I can't conveniently do accents and breathings the way I'm posting this)... AnonMoos (talk) 18:38, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there would be possibilities of including the definite article (which is irrelevant for Latin). AnonMoos (talk) 19:45, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With accents and breathing: ὕδωρ ζωῆς. The term occurs in Revelation 22:17.^[3] With the (neuter) definite article, it becomes τὸ ὕδωρ. --Lambiam 09:59, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot, all of you! 45.140.183.21 (talk) 13:00, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 9

Russian sectors?

I'm struggling a bit of how to differentiate 2 Russian words in English. In 1865 St Petersburg was divided into 12 часть (alt. полицейский часть), which were then further divided into 56 участок. What would be a good translation here for these two terms? Google gives quite similar meanings. I want to avoid the translation 'District', since it will create a confusion with the later raion term. I was thinking of 'police precinct', but google has that for 'полицейский участок'. Sector, division, section? -- Soman (talk) 11:33, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For example, see here https://books.google.at/books?id=LW9GAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PT73 --Soman (talk) 11:37, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possible terms are borough and ward. See also List of terms for administrative divisions. --Lambiam 19:38, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 10

the χ from nowhere

Manichaeism is named for Mani. Where did the ch come from? —Tamfang (talk) 21:01, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The German and Greek Wikipedia articles on Mani report that there was an ancient Greek alternate name Μανιχαῖος, which they both claim (unfortunately without sourcing) came from Syrian "Mānī ḥayyā", 'the living Mani'. Our English article instead hints at two different possible derivations, but those don't sound very confidence-inspiring. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:31, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]