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August 22

Why do some people say "called as" instead of "called"?

I consider the use of "as" in sentences like "People who steal are called as thieves." to be unnecessary as well as improper; such a sentence should say "People who steal are called thieves." instead. My best guess is that some people see sentences like "People who steal are referred to as thieves." and run with the erroneous assumption that "as" should always go after a verb before a noun in cases where they really shouldn't.

Examples of correct uses of as:

John doe was called as a witness.
"John Doe was called a witness." would have a different meaning.
The battle was regarded as having been won.
The phrase "regarded having been won" wouldn't sound right.
The backup plan was considered as an option.
The phrases "The backup plan was considered an option." and "The backup plan was considered to be an option." mean the same thing, whereas the use of "as" would imply that the backup plan was indeed taken into consideration.
The CEO was derided as a menace to society.
The phrase "was derided a menace to society" would sound weird.
The Army veterans were praised as heroes.
"Praised heroes" would refer to heroes who are praised, so it could work in theory, though it would sound weird.
The chosen one was championed as a role model.
The phrase "was championed a role model" may not sound right.
The king was referred to as mighty.
The phrase "was referred to mighty." wouldn't sound right.

Examples of questionable uses of as:

The actor was called as a movie star.
"The actor was called a movie star." (people simply called the actor a movie star)

"The actor was cast as a movie star." (as though to portray a character; the meaning implied by the presence of the word as)

"The actor was called to be a movie star." (this would imply that the actor's destiny was to be a real-life movie star)
The campaign was considered as a success.
"The campaign was considered a success." (more correct)

"The campaign was considered to be a success." (same meaning)
The captain was deemed as worthy of honor.
"The captain was deemed worthy of honor."

"The captain was deemed to be worthy of honor."

Examples of incorrect uses of as:

The man in the yellow hat is named as Ted.
This phrase implies that some people are attempting to single out someone named Ted from amongst a crowd of people, and a man in a yellow hat has been singled out as possibly being the Ted that they're looking for.

– MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 14:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I consider that you are being unnecessarily over-prescriptive, and give the appearance of being unfamiliar with the whole gamut of (at least British) English usage. Some usages of, e.g., "called as thieves" have become somewhat archaic, but are still understood by the fully literate; ". . . named as Ted" is acceptable current BrE; and all your "questionable usages" are, to my elderly BrE ear, also acceptable English, the beauty of which language is that the same thing can be said "correctly" in many different variations, often with subtly differing implications. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 14:43, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's no lexical reason that this is incorrect other than it not being conventional to some ears: the lexical value of called and the syntactic function of as agree well enough. Remsense ‥ 论 21:06, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My personal opinions regarding the use of "as" could also stem from me being an American. In hindsight, my critiques would be no more valid than us being ridiculed for saying things like

This here /du:məhɪki:/ I done showed y'all way out yonder ain't doin' nothin' no more, so I'm fixin' to holler to the fellas that I reckon it done wonders for.

instead of

The device that I have shown you guys over there is no longer doing anything, so I'm about to talk to the fellows for whom I believe it has done wonders.

Flatland, Gulliver's Travels and Jesus's teaching about the speck in the eye came to mind as I was composing this. The beam in my case is a Grammar PD badge. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 21:34, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is also entirely a function of our being brainwashed into the cult of the written word: speech is a flowing thing, so the ideology that "y'all" is somehow a deficient word and not what it obviously is—a more parsimonious way of saying "you all"—wouldn't as easily take hold because it's not spelled out as a different-looking sequence of discrete symbols. To a lesser degree, this holds to the use of linking words, which seem to flow more freely and are less prescriptively scrutinized when a written dimension is not considered: there's a lot of evidence that the concept of the "word" itself as a discrete unit of language requires the adoption of writing for a society to really introduce to their language.Remsense ‥ 论 21:37, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Language isn't logical. If it was, Americans would never say "off of" Instead of Just "Off", or "could care less". HiLo48 (talk) 23:48, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's logical sometimes, just not strictly the logic we think to impose on it. Remsense ‥ 论 23:49, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We do expect formal prescriptive English in professional writing, it's just that some of the supposed rules are imaginary (like the proscription against using passives by a style guide that doesn't know what a passive is). Check with the OED as to whether 'called as' means the same thing as 'called'. (In my variety it doesn't.)

I don't have access to the full OED right now; maybe someone else can look it up. In the Compact, New and Shorter OED, I see no indication that 'called as' is considered standard for 'named'. None of the examples they give of this meaning use 'as', and this goes back centuries ('God called the light, Day'; 'the woman I was taught to call mother'). Generally IMO it's best not to use words that add no meaning, especially when the meaning they normally add is a mismatch for what the writer is trying to say. — kwami (talk) 13:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Economic and Management Sciences

We shan't accidentally troll ourselves with literally unanswerable questions Remsense ‥ 论 10:52, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

what the Distribution of profits

What the Legal requirements

What the Capital Contribution

What the Responsibility of business debts

What the Continuity of the business

What the Set up and Start up of this form of ownership.

Do you think a sole proprietor will be a more suitable form of ownership for this business? Briefly motivate your answer.

@ 41.113.123.42 (talk) 17:51, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Do your own homework. You will not learn properly if we feed you answers. Try using the Wikipedia search box at the top of every page (you may have to click a magnifying glass symbol to open it) to find articles on the terms in the questions, and read them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 18:16, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As cursing, phrases like "What the Capital Contribution!?..." and "What the Distribution of Profits!?..." have a nice ring to them, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The question makes no sense. What is Briefly motivate your answer supposed to mean? Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:39, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Re: Amphitryon

Can someone help me cleanup Amphitryon (disambiguation)? I'm not sure how to best add this info. I went looking for it, couldn't find it on the dab page, and only saw it buried in Amphitryon#Dramatic treatments and wanted to give it more visibility on the dab. I think it should also be copied to Wiktionary. Thank you. Viriditas (talk) 21:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, it looks like I fixed the Wiktionary entry. Somebody had added the wrong word to the dab page so the definition didn't show up. It's now there. However, I don't know how to best add the definition to the dab page like I did for visibility. Viriditas (talk) 21:33, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the changes that I made:[1] Let me know if that's okay. Viriditas (talk) 21:35, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

August 23

Why does arabic ba have a dot? What is it a variant of?

The arabic form for the letter ba has a dot underneath as part of its form. According to Arabic diacritics#I‘jām this is called an i'jam, and it's used to indicate that a letter is a variant form, or rasm. For example jim with a single dot below is a variant of the undotted ha. Looking at the rest of the Arabic alphabet we see that ta, tha, and pe are also variants of the same form as ba, with different numbers of dots above or below the form. But what would the original un-dotted form be? It is not present in the alphabet.

Comparing with the Hebrew bet, we see that it is a dotted form of vet. One might venture a guess that arabic or one of its precursors once had an original form va, now deprecated, that ba was the dotted rasm of. Would that be a correct guess? -lethe ^{talk + contribs} 13:10, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to look up the history of the Arabic alphabet, it seems as it was derived from the Nabatean alphabet, itself from the Aramaic script. The Nabatean script was used by both Aramaic and Arabian speakers, but it was only the Aramaic who had a phonetic b/v-distinction, which makes it rather odd that a dotted variant was the only glyph surviving in Arabic. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:15, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When several letters have the same rasm, that sometimes means they originated from the same Nabataean letter, but in other cases, they are originally different letters that just came to be written in the same way in the undotted script. The i'jam were added to distinguish them, but not in a very systematic way. In the case of ba, it was already a distinct letter in the Nabataean script. Adding a dot below did not create a new letter, it just clarified that the letter is ba and not something else. There’s not some other letter that ba was historically derived from and then lost. This is similar to the dot on the letter i in the Latin alphabet. The dot was not added to create a new letter, but just to further distinguish it from others in cases where they could easily be confused. —Amble (talk) 16:57, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lethe -- Amble is correct. 21 Nabatean letters were borrowed to write Arabic, and in some cases dots were added to expand this 21 to the 28 that were needed for early medieval Arabic, while in other cases dots were added to distinguish some of the original 21 letters that came to have a similar or identical shape in cursive writing. The dot under the "b" letter isn't any different from the dot over the "n" letter, or the two dots under the "y" letter -- there's no related letter to be distinguished, but the medial form of each of these letters is the same (a simple upwards squiggle), so that the dots distinguish the letters from each other (and from the "t" letter with two dots above, and the "th" letter with three dots above). The Hebrew diacritic dot in the middle of letters (only ever one dot) is known as "dagesh", and distinguishes allophones of the same phoneme. It has no connection whatsoever with the Arabic dots (one or two or three) above and below, which distinguish basic letters from each other... AnonMoos (talk) 19:21, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As AnonMoos says. The closest analogue to the Arabic dots is the dot one or other side of Hebrew sin/shin: again, there is no "basic" letter without a dot, and the dots distinguish two different letters. ColinFine (talk) 21:00, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The sin/shin dots appear only in dotted writing; they should be thought of as diacritics, just like the dot distinguishing בּ‎ from ב‎, or the dots distinguishing וֹ‎ from וּ‎. --Lambiam 23:04, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

August 24

Plural of walrus?

Can anyone explain, given that hippopotami, rhinoceri and platypi are correct, that "walri" isn't the correct plural for "walrus". 146.200.107.107 (talk) 03:31, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

because it's not a Greek or Latin word, it's Germanic. Rhinoceri isn't correct either; the plural of -ceros isn't -ceri. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 03:57, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The -rus is from ros, from hors, meaning "horse", like hippo in hippopotamus. The inexplicable thing is why we think any Greek or Latin plurals are "correct" in English. It makes some amount of sense while the words are new additions and clearly foreign, but by the time these animal names start appearing on wall charts that teach the alphabet, it's bizarre that they should be haunted by scraps of foreign (and ancient) grammar. But then again I guess we're accustomed to a lot of irregular verbs from Sanskrit (swam, sang) and irregular vowels (ei) and silent letters (h) from French, so whatever, make the best of it. Card Zero (talk) 04:19, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Zooming out, I suppose the Greco-Roman morphological loans have been part of English in some proportion ever since it started taking itself seriously as a literary language—so I don't see why we shouldn't treat them as part of English. It's fun to use them, it's fun to use them "wrong", and it's fun to say "really, they should be called octopodes." Fun for the whole family. That's the attitude most in vogue when we're talking the composite nature of other languages, so why not our own as well? Many misapplications from Latin or Greek that simply don't fit into English (e.g. the old proscription on splitting infinitives stemming from Latin not having multi-word infinitives to split) have basically been discarded, so all's well that ends well. Also, we should adopt the Anglo-Saxon / Norse / northern Middle English -en as a productive suffix for plural verbs again... Remsense ‥ 论 05:07, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wish there was a good plural for axis. I don't like that axes looks like the plural of axe, and nobody likes it when I use axises. Oh, Wiktionary is now offering axiis (edited in last year by user Binarystep, thanks for that). Maybe I can stomach that one. Card Zero (talk) 06:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See, this is perfect—plural of ax(e) can be axen, leaving axes for axis. Remsense ‥ 论 06:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

*Axen is appealing, but it suggests "made out of axe", like flaxen. (However, see boxen for relatively recent plural production). Card Zero (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But I don't see the problem! It's true! Remsense ‥ 论 06:23, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Look at all the different jobs English -en does. Taken, wooden, vixen, quicken, chicken, thinken ... Maybe this one suffix is all the grammar we really need. Card Zero (talk) 06:31, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

146.200.107.107 -- It's rather odd that two out of three forms you gave, "rhinoceri" and "platypi", are arguably not correct. AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Platypi is definitely not correct, although dictionaries have no choice but recognise it gets used regardless. From Wiktionary: The plural form platypodes is formed by application of the Greek (the language from which platypus derives) rules of forming plurals, precedented by the similarly formed plurals podes and octopodes (plurals of pous and octopus, respectively). However, being a fairly novel plural form, it is seldom used; the plurals platypuses, platypus, or, more rarely, platypi are more common. The plural form platypi is used sometimes under the impression that platypus is a masculine Latin second declension noun. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:00, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ignorami strike again. --Lambiam 23:11, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Card_Zero -- Germanic strong verbs do not come from Sanskrit, but continue early Indo-European ablaut (originally e/o/zero alternations -- Indo-European "e" and "o" merged in Sanskrit). AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I picked up from somewhere that they come from Vedic chant. I'm afraid that I'm liable to go on repeating that until I investigate it in a way that sticks. You're saying Sanskrit had a smaller range of conjugations, corresponding to only swim and swum without swam? Card Zero (talk) 08:05, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's the title swami, which supposedly could have confused someone, but it's not related to "swam". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:21, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then there's this hypothesis, mostly among Indian nationalists, that Sanskrit is - for all important details - identical to the Proto-Indo-European mother language, but it's generally discarded outside of these circles. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:27, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article does mention Sanskrit grammarians at the start of the first section, "history of the concept", so it's probably one of those popularizing-versus-inventing things. Card Zero (talk) 10:35, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sanskrit had complex verb conjugations, more so than any attested Germanic language, but it did not preserve Indo-European e/o ablaut, due to the well-known sound change of "e" and "o" merging with "a". Just look at Schleicher's fable, where Schleicher's original 1868 version, heavily influenced by Sanskrit, doesn't have "e" or "o", but these exist in all versions produced by later scholars, after linguists realized that Sanskrit wasn't as close to Proto-Indo-European as Schleicher thought it was. AnonMoos (talk) 17:29, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the non-present forms of the Germanic strong verb represent a conflation of the earlier Indo-European aorist and the Indo-European perfect. Strong verbs as such don't exist outside the Germanic languages (though the Latin perfect is a separate and independent conflation of the IE aorist and perfect), Sanskrit still has separate and distinct aorist and perfect forms (as does ancient Greek)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:42, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, another Classical word which causes problems is "Ignoramus". This is a verb in Latin, and the 1st person plural "-mus" ending here has nothing to do with the 2nd-declension masculine nominative singular "-us" ending. And it's not too clear what the plural of "virus" even would have been in ancient Latin. Whenever the classical plural form is in doubt or would sound odd, the remedy is to apply ordinary English "-(e)s"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Remsense -- The modern English system actually gets a lot of use out of its relatively minimal inflection. The third-person singular present "-s" ending distinguishes finite indicative verbs from infinitives in the most common person-number combination, and also distinguishes singular from plural in the third person. In a few cases, it can even distinguish indicative from non-indicative ("I insist that he leave the room"), though not always applied by all speakers. You can look at modern German verb and noun inflections if you're nostalgic about "-en" endings, but I find them rather cumbersome. Dutch has "-en" endings in the written language, but the "n" is usually not pronounced in the spoken language (which is similar to middle English before deletion of word-final schwas). AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly! One of the big things that initially attracted me to Chinese was its almost total lack of inflectional morphology—I like the little ways in which Chinese is closer to English than to other European languages.Remsense ‥ 论 04:41, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

pronunciation of element 107 in Polish

According to English Wiktionary, bohr (bohrium) and bor (boron) are homophones in Polish. But can it really be so, for two words in the same field? This link seems to suggest that they are not supposed to be homophones after all, assuming my Polish hasn't gone totally rusty through disuse. :) Double sharp (talk) 11:56, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Polish Wiktionary seems to indicate bohr has an ach-laut for the h. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that accords with what I thought the page I linked to said. I've updated the English Wiktionary entry. Double sharp (talk) 15:39, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You might have missed the [r̥], which I guess differs from [r]. I didn't understand how to edit it. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:21, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just a possible allophone of /r/ after voiceless consonants, per Polish phonology#Allophones (which gives wiatr as an example). Double sharp (talk) 04:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Polish Wikipedia article, "the Nomenclature Commission of the Polish Chemical Society recommends pronouncing the 'h' in the word 'bohr' in order to distinguish it from 'bor'." In modern Polish, the letter <h> is pronounced as /x/, which means that "bohr" should be pronounced /bɔxr/, rhyming with "ochr". — Kpalion^(talk) 07:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! After I made the change on English Wiktionary, some further changes were made by others, so that it now gives both the pronunciation with /x/ and the one without it (the sound file provided lacks the /x/). Double sharp (talk) 05:56, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

August 25

history of the Polish element names

What's the history behind why the Polish element names consistently don't have any suffix (e.g. lit for lithium, iryd for iridium)?
Are there other languages like that?

Double sharp (talk) 14:00, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese, see Chemical elements in East Asian languages#Chinese, uses single characters which phonetically are just single syllables, so no suffixes. This is not as limiting as it might first seem as Chinese, whether you consider just Standard Chinese or all varieties, is tonal. But as with other languages often the precise meaning will depend on context. --2A04:4A43:907F:F6B6:9100:DBAB:4B06:88E3 (talk) 14:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, now I feel very silly for not realising that Chinese was an example of (2), when it is one of my native languages. :) Probably I overlooked it because it does not exactly use the same Latin stems, but cuts them down to one syllable and makes them fit Chinese phonology as needed.

But (1) still intrigues me. Double sharp (talk) 14:41, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Polish is a highly inflected language, so one of the key criteria taken into account when adapting the names of elements into Polish is to make them easy to assign to specific declension patterns. Polish does have a number of nouns borrowed from Latin with the -um ending, but most of them belong to the "non-inflected" declension pattern, meaning they have the same ending in every single case (e.g., muzeum, gimnazjum, etc.; album is the sole exception). Having the same ending for every case in the names of elements would make it awkward when creating compound names, so I think this is the main reason why Polish nomenclature consistently drops the Latin -ium endings. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

re: 2.: Russian semi-consistently does weird things with the Latin and Greek nominative endings, e.g. Dionysus - Дионис 'Dionis', Hephaestus - Гефест 'Ghefest', but: Chronos - Хронос 'Khronos'. Equally for element names, e.g. Aluminium - алюминий 'aljuminij', Palladium - палладий 'palladij'. Sometimes also the Russian seems to be derived from an inflected (Genitive?) form: Venus - Венера 'Venera', Eris - Эрида 'Erida' etc Aecho6Ee (talk) 17:30, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, it seems that the Polish element names were not actually fully standardised until the early 20th century (source, doi:10.15584/slowo.2018.9.09). In Jędrzej Śniadecki's Początki chemii (1816 ed.), some elements are adopted with the Latin suffix (e.g. osmium), some have it removed as in modern Polish (e.g. rod), and some have a different suffix (magnezyan, wapnian, stroncyan – but baryt). So probably we must look a bit later for why the paradigm of borrowing them consistently without the suffix was chosen among the other possibilities that had already been used, not to mention other choices such as tlen vs. kwasoród for O. That one is also pretty interesting; when Jan Oczapowski (1853) proposed the former to replace Śniadecki's choice of the latter, he argued on the basis that not all acids contain oxygen, quoting Śniadecki himself for doubts about that term: W ostatnich latach wykładu chemji sam Jędrzéj Śniadecki czuł dobrze niedokładność takich wyrażeń dowodząc publicznie, „że nie sam tylko kwasoród ma własność kwaszenia, ale są inne ciała rodzące kwasy.” Dla tych samych powodów dzisiejsi nasi chemicy wyrzucają z nauki kwasoród, wodoród, saletroród, wyrazy niewłaściwe i niemogące obok innych ciał w naukowém znaczeniu utrzymać swéj gatunkowéj rodowości. Whereas Russian still uses кислород (likewise a calque of French oxygène).

(Incidentally, Śniadecki had irys instead of iryd, using the Latin nominative instead of the oblique.) Double sharp (talk) 06:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hooked by a bad review

There's a word that refers to the inclination to buy a book based only on a negative review.

A case in point: Tim O'Brien's novel Tomcat in Love probably would not have interested me, were it not for a bad review. The reviewer referred to O'Brien as "... an insufferably smug and fantastically verbose windbag". That clinched it for me. And I'm glad I bought it, as it was highly enjoyable.

The Streisand effect is sort of related, but that's an active attempt to censor or downplay something, which backfires badly. A book review is not designed to persuade potential readers not to buy it. What's the word I'm looking for? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 14:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's criticism of the character, though, not of the novel. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:33, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes, you're right. I was relying on my 15++ year old memory. I had collected that quote, and misremembered that it referred to the author. But either way, it's a winning endorsement for me. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:41, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I take it that 15 is now 16, but only after you used it. --Trovatore (talk) 19:40, 26 August 2024 (UTC) [reply]

I've pulled out the actual hard copy review from my "filing system". It's dated 26-27 December 1998, which makes 25 years and counting. Time flies.

It wasn't even remotely a bad review, as it turns out. He ends with "His brilliance is such that it remains as ridiculous as it is sublime".

Now, what's the word for a selective quotation making one (even the selector in his dotage) think the source is the total opposite of that which it is actually is? :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:55, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No comment on how you mutated a constant? You used to be able to actually do that, or so I'm told, in old versions of FORTRAN, which used call-by-name parameter passing but accepted numerical literals as actual parameters. So if you passed the value 2 to a function, and then within that function set the value of the formal parameter to 5, then after the function returned, any 2 that appeared in your program would be interpreted as 5. --Trovatore (talk) 06:44, 27 August 2024 (UTC) [reply]

I invoke the Everett Dirksen Principle: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:04, 27 August 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Yeah, and that's when a billion was worth something. --Trovatore (talk) 20:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC) [reply]

You might call yourself a contrarian, or more precisely someone who often has a contrarian response to bad reviews. --2A04:4A43:907F:F6B6:9100:DBAB:4B06:88E3 (talk) 14:48, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's similar to irrestably touching something that has a sign: "Do Not Touch!" or putting beans up your nose because somebody said not to -- which is called reactance. --136.54.237.174 (talk) 17:35, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Similar to reverse psychology (though the reviewer was not consciously using it). AnonMoos (talk) 17:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So bad it's good perhaps. That's usually applied to films but I don't see why it shouldn't apply to books or other media. Shantavira|^{feed me} 18:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can't think of a word, but perhaps that's a demonstration of, 'any publicity is good publicity'. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:51, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes a reviewer so obviously misses the point that one that you have to buy the book just to prove to yourself what an idiot they are. DuncanHill (talk) 20:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

Why Spanish does not spell hard C as ⟨k⟩?
Why English word consonant is not spelled with letter K?
Why English words yellow and day do not have /g/ sound, unlike in most other Germanic languages?
Has Italian ever used ⟨ja, jo, ju⟩ for ⟨gia, gio, giu⟩? Why does Italian not use letter J in that case?
Can possessive pronouns be used with indefinite articles, like my a car?
Can Dutch article een be pronounced as stressed /eːn/ in emphasis?
Is there any language that uses both letters Ç and Ñ?
Are there any closed compounds in English with more than two parts?
Can a native English speaker ever pronounce word England as /iŋglænd/, with a full A?
Are there any hiatuses in English where second vowel is a checked vowel?

--40bus (talk) 19:55, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 1

Because Latin didn't. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To the point, "K" is not a normal part of Latin or Latin-based languages. It only turns up in loanwords, such as "kilometers". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- As for 1, in Latin, "k" was commonly used only before the letter "a" in a few specific words, especially kalendae "first day of the month". Many centuries later, Old Norse and early German orthographies picked up on the letter "k" (though Old English and Old Irish didn't), but Romance languages were more heavily influenced by Latin in their spelling habits. AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Middle English, letter K was used before E and I, but usually not before A, O or U. Why? And The fact that English does not alwsys use letter K for /k/ sound is a thing that I don't like; I think that letter C should be used only in unestablished loanwords, foreign proper names and in digraph ⟨ch⟩. --40bus (talk) 05:14, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because the spelling of Middle English was copied pretty directly from Old French.

Also—that's one of the classic silly opinions to have about English orthography, if you'll forgive me. Next time you write a paragraph-length reply, try actually replacing every applicable ⟨c⟩ with either ⟨k⟩ or ⟨s⟩—I personally find the results wickedly unpleasant to read, with the new unforced etymological confusion (e.g. cell versus sell; raking versus racking → rakking...) by itself far outweighing any theoretical benefit. Remsense ‥ 论 05:53, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- JRR Tolkien had diametrically the opposite opinion to you. In transcribing some Middle Earth languages, he used the letter "c" to represent a [k] sound even before "e" and "i". Of course, when transcribing the language of the Dwarves, he always used "k"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Though there are a few Quenya names (Melkor, Kementári, Tulkas) that JRRT tended to write with K, FWIW. And there's also some more usages of K in the late linguistic essays, e.g. Findekáno (Fingon) in "The Shibboleth of Fëanor". Possibly JRRT decided that it wasn't worth insisting on C after names like Celeborn got mispronounced too often, but that's just a guess on my part. :) Double sharp (talk) 12:08, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What you think or don't like about English is irrelevant, as you've been told many times. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:16, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your insistence that English should follow your ideas of how to spell things is a thing that I don't like. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:23, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 2

Because Latin didn't. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 3

There's no letter "G" in yellow or day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for 3, in Old English the consonant letter "g" sometimes wrote a [g] stop consonant sound, and sometimes (more often, actually) wrote a voiced velar fricative (as explained in some of my replies to past questions). All the Old English velars were subject to palatalization, and the palatalized voiced velar fricative merged early with the "y" sound (IPA [j]). AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Similar things have happened in both Swedish and Turkish. ColinFine (talk) 20:36, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 4

Surprised this isn't actually on Italian orthography, but apparently ⟨gi⟩ was first adopted in Italy in the 12th century, if I'm reading this correctly. [2] Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't actually see that in that page. The closest thing I can find is this passage:

per la fricativa palatale sorda /ʃ/, la grafia ‹sc› è attestata in concorrenza con ‹ss›, ‹sci›, ‹si›, ‹sg(i)›, ‹gi› e ‹x› (quest’ultima in carte liguri dei secoli XI-XII)

which is not talking about the sound in question (/dʒ/) but rather the unvoiced palatal fricative /ʃ/, and the 11th-12th century date seems to be talking about representing it by <x> rather than by <gi>, and specifically in Liguria.

A little higher there's mention of

le affricate alveolari sorda, /ʦ/, e sonora, /ʤ/, indicate con ‹z› in grafia d’oggi

which I think must be a misprint; it means /dz/ rather than /dʒ/.

As to the original question, why in the world would Italian ever have used <j> for /dʒ/? The letter j was always just a variant of i. --Trovatore (talk) 20:39, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 5

The point of indefinite pronouns is that they are indefinite, so we definitionally are not specifying a specific car. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If we need to combine the concept of that being ~~an otherwise undescribed~~ a non-specific car with the concept of it being my property, we say a car of mine (not a car of me, btw). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:47, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Italian, I believe, has una mia macchina for "one of my cars". —Tamfang (talk) 17:19, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Italian has la mia macchina for "the car of mine", but I believe una mia macchina is disallowed and would be constructed as una macchina di me similar to English. My Italian is pretty rusty, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My a car would only work if you had a car model called an "A Car". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for 5, the English way of saying that is "A car of mine". "My" and "a" are actually both determiners, and it usually isn't possible to have more than one determiner preceding a noun... AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 6

No, if you pronounce een as /eːn/ it's the numeral one. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:51, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is the article een ever pronounced with a full vowel? --40bus (talk) 21:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article een is normally pronounced /ən/. It can be shortened to /ə/ or /n̩/. Dialectally /nə/, /nən/, /ˈe.nə/ and /ˈe.nən/also occur, derived from versions inflected for gender and case. As far as I know, /en/ isn't used for the article; it's the numeral one. This is also spelled een, but in positions where both could occur the numeral is spelled één.

Vowel or consonant length isn't phonemic in most Dutch dialects, so I skipped the length marks, but some people like them. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:01, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 7

Spanish, until recently. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, it's relatively uncommon, although there are still quite a few examples. Many of the languages which seem to have both in some capacity are Turkic, as per the Common Turkic alphabet, but even there sometimes it's unclear:

Crimean Tatar's Latin alphabet, Tatar's Latin alphabet, and the unofficial TB30 Latin alphabet variant for the Salar language use both characters.
Kumyk's 1991 Latin alphabet proposal and Kazakh's 2019 Latin alphabet proposal have both characters, but as proposals they likely lack widespread usage.
Bashkir, Karachay-Balkar, Nogai, and Uzbek are all listed on the Common Turkic alphabet article as having both in some capacity, but each individual language page doesn't quite seem to match up.
Turkmen's Latin alphabet had both until 1999, when it dropped ñ in favor of ň.

Outside of Turkic languages, the only two I found were Rohingya's latin script and Basque. In Basque's case, however, the ç is only found in loanwords. GalacticShoe (talk) 03:58, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the article, it appears that ç has been dropped from the final Kazakh Latin alphabet. (Maybe tş for Cyrillic ч, then?) Double sharp (talk) 12:20, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 8

There are some, as noted here.[3] One useful example is "plainclothesman". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 9

Sure. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for 9, we could pronounce it that way if we wanted to, but we basically never do... AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In England itself, we would only pronounced it "with a full A" if enunciating carefully, an instance that springs to mind is when singing the patriotic hymn. Jerusalem. Alansplodge (talk) 09:47, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can the A in England ever be pronounced as /æ/ in continuous speech? --40bus (talk) 21:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One may hear that 'a' in 'lay', and it is certainly possible to imagine it from some English speaker in 'land' (lay-nd), although perhaps very unstressed. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:12, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the 1987 movie The Last Emperor (which is mostly unrelentingly grim) there's a little moment of comedy. Instead of asking "Where are you from?", the 15 year old Puyi asks Johnston "Where are your ancestors buried?", and Johnston replies, "My ancestors are buried in Scot-land, your Majesty", with /skɔtlænd/ a spondee of sorts.--Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 02:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC) J'adoube. Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:19, 31 August 2024 (UTC),[reply]

Question 10

Many, including numerous derivations from Greek (archaeology) and Latin (algebraic) Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for 10, the word "reaction". AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

August 26

5th–8th place

Which form is correct?

5–8th place semifinals
5th–8th place semifinals

In Wikipedia articles, both versions are used. Even Google is uncertain on this matter. So, what's your opinion? Thanks, Maiō T. (talk) 21:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you would pronounce it like "five to eighth", you should write "5–8th". If, however, you'd say "fifth to eighth" (as I would), you should write "5th–8th". --Lambiam 23:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

August 27

As it were

Just struck me what an odd expression this is. The "were" appears to be the preterite subjunctive (or irrealis) but what is the rationale? Something like "as though it were the way I'm speaking"?

But that isn't what it seems to mean. It means something more like "this is possibly a slightly imprecise figure of speech, or maybe a deliberately provocative way of putting my point". --Trovatore (talk) 06:22, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the original meaning was more about how something appeared to be, while knowing it was mere appearance. I can imagine how "He looked as if he were a ghost" can turn into "He was, as it were, a ghost". (Just guessing.) --Lambiam 07:47, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary gives the Old English reconstruction *ealswā hit wǣre. The basic meaning of the conjunction ealswā is "as if". --Lambiam 07:58, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The comparative sense of "as it were" is frequently used in the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries:

Like as a lion that is greedy of his prey: and as it were a lion's whelp, lurking in secret places. (Psalm 17, v. 12, BCP)

And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia... Book of Revelation, ch. 6 v. 9, KJV

Alansplodge (talk) 10:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Especially the latter fits well with the as if meaning: John the Divine reports that what he heard sounded as if a great multitude were saying, Alleluia. --Lambiam 23:04, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've always thought of it as a fossilised phrase, particularly: "preserving of ancient linguistic features which have lost their grammatical functions in language". Vanishingly few users would even have heard of the preterite, let alone know what it means, so they use this expression mainly because others of their ilk have done so. The meaning comes not from the grammar or its deep etymology but from its more recent usage.

Here's a quote you might like: "We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind." (Sir John Seeley). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:59, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Preterite is really just a pretentious way of saying past. A lot of people know the past subjunctive for counterfactuals ("If I were a rich man"). Our English subjunctive article seems to be limited to the present subjunctive for some reason. I tried raising the issue at some point but couldn't get much traction. I might marshal up my sources and try again someday, but I suspect there may be people who hang around there who would push back, so it would have to be when I'm ready to deal with that. --Trovatore (talk) 20:00, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Trovatore -- Think of it as equivalent to "as it would be" in more modern English. AnonMoos (talk) 21:21, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't seem to capture the meaning with which it's used today. --Trovatore (talk) 18:38, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How does a tonal language get along with songs? Doesn't their music change the lexical tones, which actually influence the meaning of words?

Maybe the musicians compose an appropriate music, for the lexical tones of the given text to be kept under the appropriate music? If this is the case, then translating a given text from another language into a tonal language, while keeping the original music, won't be an easy task, will it?

It will probably be a bit analogous to the task of translating a given poem from another language into English, while keeping the rhymes, right?

HOTmag (talk) 10:24, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience of listening to far too much Chinese pop music tones are ignored. I can think of a few reasons for this. The main one is the challenge of combining a modern tune with the tones of speech. Many songs are intended for overseas markets where the tones would make no sense. In particular Chinese pop songs are often sung in different varieties of Chinese (so Mandarin songs are sung in Cantonese and vice versa), where the tones are totally different.

This is "in my experience" so it might not be universally true. In fact I can think of one example where lexical tones and music are combined, Chinese opera, though I have no real experience of that. --2A04:4A43:907F:F6B6:C44D:CDCA:A3DE:F694 (talk) 11:18, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. HOTmag (talk) 11:39, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here [4] is an academic article studying the differences in tone realization in singing in Mandarin and Cantonese. In modern-style Mandarin singing, as 2A04.* above pointed out, the tones are generally ignored, but Cantonese seems to have a pattern where some correspondence between musical melodic contours and linguistic tone is expected. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:48, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One more thought. Chinese pop songs almost always have subtitles. So any time you can't follow what's being sung including due to tones not being clear you can read what's being sung. It also helps speakers of other varieties of Chinese follow along.

Subtitles are widely used in Chinese video media, so in films and TV series. This means they can be sold in other markets where people speak other varieties of Chinese, as Written Chinese is the same independent of the variety of spoken Chinese. Or at least it's close enough that people can easily follow along.

For songs people want to not just follow along but also sing along, in e.g. Karaoke. There the small differences in the written language become important, and have to be dealt with. E.g. 不 is a common character "bu" which means "not" in Mandarin. But it's not used in Cantonese, which forms negatives in different ways. But if 不 appears in a Mandarin song which is sung in Cantonese the character is normally sung, as "bat", even though that then makes no sense in Cantonese. --2A04:4A43:907F:F6B6:C44D:CDCA:A3DE:F694 (talk) 12:33, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Moreover, it seems to be qualitatively the same as with any other language: it's telling that it's the exception rather than the rule for one to "know all the words" to a given song, right? It's always going to impact lexical comprehension, and the medium doesn't really require it as such. Remsense ‥ 论 12:37, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quite so. I may enjoy the music of David Bowie; the words and tune together make the song, but meaning is irrelevant, or secondary at best, witness mondegreens. "Chain chain chain/ Ouvrez le chien" doesn't need to mean anything to be memorable. Doug butler (talk) 13:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Des Pudels Kern, nicht wahr? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:32, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I'm just weird. To me, the tune is experienced by my whole body, but I listen to the words. If a word or expression is unclear to me, I enjoy the song less. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:19, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It really does depend on factors at every level (position in the meter, genre, penmanship...), including whether the discrepancies Genius would consider correct are actually mondegreens of my own perfect version.

Remsense ‥ 论 14:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Confused. Which Bowie song is that? Changes? Card Zero (talk) 11:20, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Ouvrez le chien". A rather late, relatively unknown song from the 90's, apparently. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:05, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like it's often ignored due to artistic license. I guess it could be somewhat compared to Eminem's rapping, where the intonation often is all over the place. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:32, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a similar issue really even in Western music. It's very challenging to sing falling stress when the pitch rises. The line placida è l'onda, from "Santa Lucia", I find almost impossible to sing without stressing the -ci- syllable. --Trovatore (talk) 17:56, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Without disagreeing with all of the above, it may be useful to understand that Chinese tones are not really musical, but rather a rising (like asking a question: "is it?"), falling (e.g. a sharp command: "STOP!") or a combination thereof. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 23:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rhyming slang

Does rhyming slang also occur in languages other than English? --40bus (talk) 21:34, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are various, similar cants, argots and language games worldwide. Backslang might be the most common variant, cross-linguistically. I haven't heard about rhyming slang varieties in other languages than English, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:18, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I clicked on all the language links for our article, French, Spanish, Russian, Finnish etc. They all say that it's peculiar to the English language amd originated in London. Alansplodge (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

August 28

Corvuso - The name comes from an Indian word that means "Gathering place for crows."

In Corvuso, Minnesota the claim is made that that name comes from a word that means "Gathering place for crows".

I looked for sources, and the Meeker County museum has this claim (in the sectiontitle) on its website. There are and were many "Indian" languages and claims like this are worth doublechecking.

Is this nonsense? Should we email the museum? Polygnotus (talk) 11:05, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an "Indian" language. Corvus is Latin for crow. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:17, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is such a weird and confusing claim. I doubt crows have regular meeting spots unless there is a large quantity of food there. The Crow people probably do, but I doubt it was over there. People in India speak many languages, and there are over a thousand known Indigenous languages of the Americas. I have deleted the claim. If anyone objects I want to see a decent source. Polygnotus (talk) 11:26, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect it derives from the nearby Crow River, which was called Khaŋǧí Šúŋ Watpá ("The Large Wing-feather of the Crow River") in the Dakota language.

The nearest I came to a reference was Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Minnesota (probably not an acedemic study) which says:

Corvuso: A bastardization of the Latin word corvus, which means "crow". The area must have had a lot of them.

Alansplodge (talk) 15:17, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, very interesting. I wouldn't describe Latin as an Indian language (but perhaps that is nitpicking). Polygnotus (talk) 16:44, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Crows 💯 have regular meeting spots, as anyone who has ever lived near a regular crow meeting spot can attest. You might be thinking of ravens, which are more solitary. Folly Mox (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox: is there a large quantity of food there? They are pretty smart so why would they regularly visit a spot unless there is a large quantity of food available. Polygnotus (talk) 01:57, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And of course rooks and ravens and jackdaws and magpies and crows are all crows. It all depends what you mean by "crows". DuncanHill (talk) 23:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, our raven article has it that [t]here is no consistent distinction between crows and ravens; the two names are assigned to different species chiefly based on their size. Still, it could be that bigger corvids tend to be more solitary; that's well outside my range of knowledge on the subject. --Trovatore (talk) 01:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that Corvuso was coined by Henry Schoolcraft, creator of countless macaronic place-names. —Tamfang (talk) 17:37, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ User:Polygnotus, re your "I doubt crows have regular meeting spots unless there is a large quantity of food there":

This is really synchronistic. For about 3 years in my youth, my family and I lived in the city of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. The name was taken from the local indigenous Wiradjuri language, and was thought to mean "place of many crows" (since "wagga" means crow). The foundation plaque on the local Catholic church, St Michael's, is written in Latin, and includes the word "Corvopolitanus", meaning "city of crows". From the article: "Crows are considered a symbol of the city of Wagga Wagga, appearing in the council's logo, coat of arms, and throughout branding of local businesses, as well as in public artwork."

Only because of your question did I check out the Wagga Wagga article for some detail, fixed some vandalism, and discovered this: "Since 2019, the Wagga Wagga City Council has recognised this meaning as incorrect, instead adopting "many dances and celebrations." My late Dad was the City Engineer with the Council; he'd be turning in his grave now. I hope he's not reading Celestial Wikipedia. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:45, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just looked up the article and saw that Wagga Wagga "straddles the Murrumbidgee River". Good luck reading that without hearing in your head

...who in the Murrumbidgee wilds had stalked the Kangaroo/and killed the Cassowary on the plains of Timbuctoo

Or maybe you can, how would I know. --Trovatore (talk) 19:33, 29 August 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Well, I could have, until I read your post 2 minutes ago. I know a bit of Robert W. Service's stuff, but "The Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail" had escaped my notice. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:27, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JackofOz:

Pluralization by reduplication is pretty smart.

Crowborough is gorse + berg meaning hill?

Ravenstone, Buckinghamshire is derived from the Old English for "Hrafn's farm"

Ravenstone, Leicestershire is somehow ALSO DERIVED FROM THAT SAME FARM???!??? despite being an hour drive

Etymology is incredibly confusing. Nothing is as it should be.

I was unable to find a place called murder.

Many dances and celebrations is objectively better than many crows.

Polygnotus (talk) 18:04, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"That same farm"? Hrafn was (and is) a common Nordic personal name as well as meaning 'raven'. Don't you think it possible that there were two Viking/Danish farmers living several tens of miles apart, both called Hrafn? Or that one or both of the farms had a prominent population of ravens so was/were named after them?

Incidentally, the term 'murder' for a group of crows was probably invented in the 15th century along with many other fanciful names for collections of animals, birds etc. It's unlikely that any old English place names derive from any of them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 20:35, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is also possible, but my headcanon is that this was a huge farm. Also, if Ravenstone,_Leicestershire#Historic_settlement is to be believed, it might've been a village instead of a farm. Polygnotus (talk) 22:17, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well Odin had ravens, and the vikings liked a kenning (and so did the Saxons, which is why Beowulf is so boring to read). It's probably Odin's farm in both instances. Like Grime's Graves. Card Zero (talk) 22:54, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Berlin is currently assumed to have gotten its name from a Slavic word for swamp, yet, the popular folk etymology of "Bärlein" (small bear) has led to a bear symbol still being widely adopted. Outside of Indo-European languages, I think pluralization of nouns by reduplication actually is fairly common. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:32, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One should never let reality get in the way of a good story. Polygnotus (talk) 22:22, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Humph! One of my bugbears is made-up stories which purport to explain particular phrases (eg "square meal", "piss poor", "stony broke"). One thing that many of them have in common is that the era is wrong - usually the phrase is not recorded till centuries after the circumstances or events in the story, or occasionally it's the other way round and the phrase is older than the time of the story. Another common theme is that they provide a context in which a (to me) obvious metaphor is given a literal origin. In my view this amounts to an assumption that "people in the past had no imagination", which is a diminution of people-not-like-us that also underlies racism. ColinFine (talk) 17:44, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ColinFine: So this one is incorrect? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/square_meal#Etymology Polygnotus (talk) 18:21, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. Michael Quinion says "Wonderful stuff. Rubbish, of course, but entertaining rubbish" of that and two other fanciful origin stories. https://worldwidewords.org/qa-squ3.html ColinFine (talk) 18:57, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ColinFine: Thank you, I deleted it. Polygnotus (talk) 19:04, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well done. I was considering doing that. But I wondered if it might be worth leaving a note as to the status of the story. ColinFine (talk) 19:52, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ User:ColinFine: Various people over the years have told me that "wog" is an acronym for "wily Oriental gentleman". When I doubt their story, they insist it's true. They can never give any evidence for it, other than "I've always been told that" (subtext: "therefore it must be true, and you can depend on it, and I won't be persuaded otherwise"). Then there's "fuck", which, so these etymological geniuses inform me, came from either "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" or "Fornication Under Consent of the King". Funny that it has two sources. The opposing camps should hold a pitched battle and settle it with blood and iron. Yes, that's the proper way these scholarly investigations usually take place. (I heard that somewhere, so it must be true.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WHAAOE: see List of common false etymologies of English words, which says "The use of acronyms to create new words was nearly non-existent in English until the middle of the 20th century". Alansplodge (talk) 11:24, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to that article, "wog" comes from "golliwog", a type of doll which keeps causing controversies in the U.K., but which most people in the U.S. have never heard of... AnonMoos (talk) 15:47, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the worst peddlars of false etymologies are the guides employed on HMS Victory, who by the end of a tour, will have convinced every visitor that almost all the proverbs and idioms in the English language have their origin in Nelson's sailing ships. Alansplodge (talk) 12:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Alansplodge: One of my best inventions is a great little template: User:Polygnotus/Templates/trustmebro. Polygnotus (talk) 12:06, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

:-) Alansplodge (talk) 12:08, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's an occupational hazard of tour guides. 😉

One of my favourite tours was at Berkeley Castle, where the guide would say "The story in this room is X, but the Castle Archivist says Y", giving you both options.

I'm a tour guide at two properties: I only tell two stories about the origins of words, and both I have researched and verified. ColinFine (talk) 17:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I remember (from 1986, wow) that the tour guide at Cardiff Castle, which belongs to the Marquess of Bute, said that the bars on the helm in Bute's arms represent the illegitimacy of his descent from Robert II of Scotland, a "bar to the throne". Never mind that the monarch (and every peer) also has a barred helm. —Tamfang (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if that is a misunderstanding of the word Bar: that article says Writing of Scots heraldry in English, Nisbet themself uses the term ‘bar’ for the bend sinister. ColinFine (talk) 22:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is some terminological confusion underlying all this. In British heraldry (which uses Anglo-French vocabulary), a bar is a horizontal band that can be neither dexter nor sinister. The bend, being diagonal, can be either, and the bend sinister was often used in Europe (including Britain) as a signifier of illegitimate royal descent (and thus of noble distinction). However, in French heraldry, a bend is called a barre, and with the close connection between Scotland and France promoting noble bilingualism, the bend particularly in Scotland (and probably elsewhere) was sometimes called a bar(re), leading to the anglophonically impossible "bar sinister". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.209.45 (talk) 23:13, 30 August 2024 (UTC).[reply]

In French, a bend is bande and a bend sinister is barre; bars in the English sense are fasces. —Tamfang (talk) 22:53, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Beefeaters at the Tower of London are notorious for amusing themselves by misleading gullible tourists. One confessed to telling visitors that he could open the bascules of Tower Bridge at any time, because he was a friend of the bridge operator. Having looked up the published times for the bridge openings, he would vigorously wave in the right direction at the appropriate moment and hey presto! Alansplodge (talk) 11:15, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Wittgenstein's Poker. Card Zero (talk) 23:09, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 3

What is the Origin of the Surname Kılıçdaroğlu?

I know that "oğlu" means "son", but don't know the origin of "Kılıçdar". A prominent person named "Kılıçdaroğlu" is Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. KKY883 (talk) 06:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary has and entry on it at wikt:Kılıçdaroğlu, deriving it from "kılıç (“sword”) +‎ -dar (“bearer”) +‎ -oğlu (“son”)." Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:49, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 5