Language desk
< September 23	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 25 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 24[edit]

origin of English idiomatic phrase[edit]

Hi all - a lot of English idomatic phrases either have clearly prosaic origins or are skewed enough that you can hazard a guess as to where they came from, but there's one that sounds as though it might have a bit of a backstory - "as right as rain". What is the origin of it, and why is rain seen as particularly "right"? Grutness...wha? 00:21, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, "right as rain" is but the latest in a whole series of "right as [x]" sayings, dating back several hundred years. None of them have much literal meaning, and "rain" has survived due to it's pleasant alliteration (right as ninepence also used to be quite common in Britain, but has died out since decimalisation). [1] FiggyBee 00:38, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I once met an Egyptian in England during a shower of rain, and he said thoughtfully "A rainy country is a lucky country". Xn4 03:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments/answers - Grutness...wha? 23:57, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Spick-and-span (& spick and span; & spick)[edit]

Greetings, esteemed colleagues. I was thinking about the expression spick-and-span and wondering what spick means by itself (apart from its pejorative racist use).

At first I figured that it’s a hyphenated expression and maybe spick doesn’t exist separately. I looked in Wiktionary, which tells me that spick is a word that means “completely neat and clean”, but the examples they give don’t actually use the word ("the apartment was immaculate"; "in her immaculate white uniform"; "a spick-and-span kitchen"; "their spic red-visored caps") – which kinda troubles me. Then I went to my own trusty dictionary and learned that spick-and-span can indeed be spelled as three separate words (spick and span). It also provides the etymology that it's short for spick-and-span-new, a variant of span-new, ultimately from some Scandinavian language. This tells me that spick-and-span-new means new as a recently made spike (nail) and chip of wood. So that’s where spick came from and what it originally referred to.

What I’m left with is that spick in this context is recognised as a separate word, but seems to have no modern meaning except when in combination with span. Which would explain why it's probably better to hyphenate spick-and-span. Would this justify the unhyphenated spelling spick and span being classified as a dehyphenated hyphenated expression, and are there are any other examples of this sort of thing? -- JackofOz 03:27, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems more reasonable to hyphenate the phrase if spick has never stood by itself as a word (like the doubled part in a reduplication). Now the problem is do you consider spick just a variant of spike, although their pronunciations slightly differ from other other? If you do, then spick (as a variant of spike) can of course stands by itself with dignity and without hyphen, just like our good kith in kith and kin.--K.C. Tang 06:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The comparison with kith and kin is not good, as kith is obsolete but spike (represented by spick) is alive. But I can't think of a good example.--K.C. Tang 09:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"spick" and "kith" are examples of cranberry morphemes. As regards hyphenation, English is more likely to hyphenate compounds used attributively ("a spick-and-span kitchen") than predicatively ("the kitchen was spick and span"). See adjective#Attributive, predicative, absolute, and substantive adjectives and English compound#Hyphenated compound adjectives though the latter in particular seems Original Research. jnestorius^(talk) 10:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, they would be more "Fossil words" (not sure why spick and span is listed in the Cranberry morpheme article). AnonMoos 11:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whether applied to words or morphs, fossil-ness is a subtype of cranberry-ness. jnestorius^(talk) 22:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That was quite interesting to learn! We still say spánnýr (span-new) in Icelandic but I'd never made the connection. Haukur 23:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@ K.C. Tang: I understand what you're saying, but regardless of its origin, "spick" no longer means "spike". We couldn't replace "the kitchen was spick and span" with "the kitchen was spike and span". Whether hyphenated or not, it seems to me that spick and span has a meaning only as a group of words, and the individual elements (except and) can't be assigned any meaning. I'm happy with the "cranberry morpheme" explanation, thanks Jnestorius (although I have to say I despise the term, which sounds more like the name of a rock band - but that's just me). This has been a revelation to me, actually. I always thought that all words have a meaning, and now I know there are exceptions. Thanks all. -- JackofOz 02:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cranberry morphemes are rather common, but phrases like spick and span and kith and kin are not that common, with the morphemes written separately. Of course kith was once a legitimate word, but spick has never been.--K.C. Tang 05:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Really? If it's legitimate in some context to write "spick and span" unhyphenated, then surely each of those 3 words is ... er, a word. No? -- JackofOz 13:32, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Ziehen"[edit]

Could you, please, cite the different meanings that German word can have? My dictionary says that it just means "to pull" and "to tear" but I see native German speakers using it in a way those meanings simply don't fit. --Taraborn 08:35, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There're so many of them... would you consider check it out first on this on-line dictionary?--K.C. Tang 09:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My God, better I'll give the context. Just one minute. --Taraborn 09:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, just found one meaning that seems to fit. Thank you, User:K.C. Tang. --Taraborn 09:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As Mark Twain said of the related word Zug, "Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull, Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition: but that thing which it does NOT mean—when all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been discovered yet." Twain jests that with the three words Schlag, Zug, and also, "the foreigner...is master of the situation...it doesn't make any difference how much the rest of the charge may scatter, you are bound to bag something with THEM." Wareh 16:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have an idea you're pulling our leg. - Xn4[edit]

What does this idiomatic expression used by our colleague Xn4 mean? --Taraborn 09:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To pull someone's leg means to be kidding around with them. Or to tell a small lie for the sake of humor. Dismas|^(talk) 09:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. --Taraborn 09:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In fact you can find out this not uncommon phrase easily on Webster or other on-line dictionaries, or simply by googling it. The Ref Desk is helpful, but for many purposes other online resources can give you an answer more quickly. Cheers.:)--K.C. Tang 09:20, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Woops, thanks for the advice. I'm sorry, then. --Taraborn 09:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Pulling our collective leg" gives me an interesting visual (I can visualize a collective mind, but a collective leg ?). StuRat 17:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can't visualise either of them, Stu. What does your image of a collective mind look like? -- JackofOz 21:26, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One huge head with 6 billion bodies attached to it ? (Or perhaps 100 billion, if we include the dead.) StuRat 03:49, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gross. That sounds more like my concept of a big head. But thanks anyway. :) JackofOz 22:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I can only think we must have a virtual leg to be pulled. Without one, I'd have needed to say "I have an idea you're pulling our legs", and that would have taken us into uncharted waters. We really don't want to find ourselves up the creek without a paddle, which could leave us without a leg to stand on. Xn4 20:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Effect of words in brackets on sentence[edit]

Assuming that a monkey umbrella is some sort of umbrella designed for monkeys, which of the following sentences if correct: "she gave him a [monkey] umbrella" or "she gave him an [monkey] umbrella" - does the fact that monkey is in brackets have any effect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seans Potato Business (talk • contribs) 11:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The a/an alternation in English is pretty "low-level" (as linguists would say) -- if you pronounce a word when reading the passage out loud, then that word influences the form of a directly preceding indefinite article, regardless of whether it's in brackets or not. AnonMoos 11:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Yes. I, the reader, interpret square brackets to mean that the matter inside them was interjected afterwards and therefore stands outside the text. The text should be composed as though the brackets and whatever they contain are not there at all, because they wouldn't have been. --Milkbreath 11:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since the brackets make it obvious that an editor has made a change there, I think you could safely change it to "she gave him [a monkey] umbrella". --Sean 14:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That would make the phrase read "she gave him umbrella" without the comment. I don't think that works. --Milkbreath 14:21, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I take brackets to mean some editing occurred, but parentheses to mean optional information. The former may change the grammar of the quote, but the latter may not. You see structurally necessary bracketed words all the time in newspapers. --Sean 15:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It really depends on how you would read it aloud. If you would pronounce the written sentence as "she gave him an umbrella", you write "an". If you read it as "she gave him a monkey umbrella", you use "a" in writing as well. If you say "she gave him an open bracket monkey close bracket umbrella", you use "an". --Lambiam 15:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd write "She gave him [a monkey] umbrella." --Kjoonlee 16:12, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See the contribution by Sean and the reaction by Milkbreath above. --Lambiam 16:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Sean's reaction to Milkbreaths's reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreath's question, please. That's my reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreaths's reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreath's post, and also my reaction to your reaction to my reaction to Milkbreath's post. --Kjoonlee 18:02, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Milkbreath did not post a question, and I see no indication that Sean's first contribution was a reaction to Milkbreath. When one contributor raises an issue with a prior contribution, it is not very useful to reiterate the earlier contribution without any reference to the issue raised. This, combined with a one-stop indentation level, created the impression that you were directly reacting to the original questioner without attention to the preceding comments. It is not clear to me from the question that the sentence is meant to represent a quoted text with an editorial modification. --Lambiam 19:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Milkbreath did indeed post a question on the first line. "[W]hich of the following sentences [is] correct[?]" And Sean's first contribution is indented once, as a reaction to the initial post. "Since the brackets make it obvious [...]" I think you have to ponder some more about how your own words apply to yourself, since my one-step indentation level was indeed addressed to the original questioner. You are correct that I did not notice Sean's post or how Milkbreath objected to [a monkey], but you could have noticed how I could have agreed (without knowing) with Sean's second post and disagreed with Milkbreath's objection. --Kjoonlee 20:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Then I was indeed correct in thinking that you might have missed these posts. So why is it a problem then that I brought them to your attention? For the rest, are you intimating that User:Seans Potato Business is posting questions for User:Milkbreath? If your reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreaths's reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreath's post is "See Sean's reaction to Milkbreaths's reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreath's question", then I must say it is a curious reaction. --Lambiam 20:40, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, you missed Sean's latest post (which I happen to agree with.) --Kjoonlee 21:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, in written Korean, you ignore any influence parenthetical words may have in pronunciation.

Note how "은/는" morphophonemically depends on the preceding word:
- 한국은
- 코리아는
Note how parenthetical words have no influence:
- 한국(코리아)은
- 코리아(한국)는
However, when you have to read those out loud, you're forced to say:
- 한국, 코리아는
- 코리아, 한국은

--Kjoonlee 18:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Say what? Geez, and people complain when I use IPA here without explaining it! —An gr 18:42, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You should stand up for yourself! BTW, to understand my examples, no knowledge of Korean is necessary if you understand "a/an" differences and can see the differences in Korean symbols. --Kjoonlee 18:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What could work in the opposite situation would be "she gave him a[n umbrella] monkey". It preserves how the sentence was before the editorial insertion of the bracketed comment, but also reads well aloud without ignoring the bracketed phrase. However, the only way I know to do that in the situation the original poster presented would be to cut the "an" so you'd have "she gave him... [a monkey] umbrella", where the "..." represents the deletion of text (in this case "an").-Andrew c ^[talk] 20:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it could work, but I'd give it a probability of about .0001%. If I saw "she gave him... [a monkey] umbrella" without any other context such as the above discussion, I would definitely understand that some text has been deleted, but I would assume the deleted text is almost anything other than the word "an". Syntactically speaking, "a" and "an" function virtually as the same word, so indicating the deletion of "an" only to insert "a" is in itself ~~confusing~~ misleading; and since the ellipsis appears outside the brackets but the "a" appears inside the brackets, this would further reinforce the reader's understanding that whatever's been deleted has nothing to do with just the word "an". -- JackofOz 22:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The question of how faithful to the original text one is in quoted material is not simple. Issues like:

Silently correcting a misspelling, or leaving it and adding "[ sic ]"
Converting locale-specific spellings
Changing font, italic, boldface
Toggling between single and double quotes
etc

I have no background in editing, but I suspect most editors would have no qualms about silently changing "an" to "a" when explicitly inserting "[monkey]". jnestorius^(talk) 22:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. -- JackofOz 22:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vampire[edit]

What is the term for someone who believes they are a Vampire? Hyper Girl 11:30, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would depend on why they thought they were a vampire. If they are adopting the role as part of the vampire lifestyle, the term might be "vampire" (or perhaps "vampyre" - at least, within that community. (Others might use less polite and more judgmental terms.) If they actually believe themselves to be a vampire (see Renfield syndrome) they would probably be called "mentally ill" or "schizophrenic." - Eron ^Talk 12:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unless they really are a vampire, of course... ;) FiggyBee 15:06, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

None of those automatic doors or bathroom fixtures work for us vampires.

(It really sucks to be a vampire.) :-ʒ StuRat 17:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That and having to wear evening dress all the time. FiggyBee 00:45, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We always just called them "dorks" when I was in school. However, the article on Cotard delusion, while not providing an actual answer, is vaguely related and interesting in its own right... Deltopia 20:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Otherkin. Corvus cornix 21:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Khmer language[edit]

I have a son who is half Camodian and would like to know how his name is spelled in Cambodia. His name is 'skyler'. Is there a translation for his name? Is so can you help me find it for him? Azucena Bruzon (Contact information removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.1.63.226 (talk) 18:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't find the information online, I recommend you contact the friendly folks at the Royal Embassy of Cambodia in Washington D.C. I've never known of a foreign embassy whose employees weren't eager to help Americans understand its culture. --M @r ē ino 20:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can't translate a word unless you know what it means; what, if anything, does skyler mean? If you mean transliteration, the short answer is yes: Cambodian script is essentially alphabetic, so there does exist at least a rough transliteration for anything that's not too hard for a Cambodian to pronounce. Just don't expect to find it pre-printed in a Cambodian souvenir shop! —Tamfang 23:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK, Skyler is a respelling of Dutch Schuyler, so we first have to find out what that Dutch name means. —An gr 04:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

According to the meanings given for Schuylkill at the Schuylkill River article, schuyler could mean something like "hider" (someone who is hiding) and would be spelled schuiler in modern Dutch. The Dutch Wikipedia mentions Schuiler as an alternative name for Scheulder, a village between Maastricht and Aachen. It is possible that the Dutch surname Schuyler referred to someone coming from that village. In any case, I think a transliteration is the recommended way to go. --Lambiam 12:19, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hanks & Hodges A Dictionary of Surnames (Oxford 1988) lists Schuyler as a cognate of Schuler meaning scholar. —Tamfang (talk) 02:30, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Diacritics in Slovenian names[edit]

Hi there. In the past I have created several articles about people whose names, I'm practically certain, would be expressed using diacritics, specifically in this case, Slovenian cricketers, including Egon Jakofcic - which I'm certain should be placed at Egon Jakofčić (which is in fact how his name appears at http://www.ljcricket.com/SCA_Pages/BelaKCC.htm), Robert Jakofcic, same deal, identical target but for the forename. Before I go ahead and transfer these pages to these locations, is this linguistically accurate?

I am planning to post the same message later at Wikiproject Cricket to gauge their opinion on the matter from a project point of view. Usually we post the same names as present on Cricket Archive (Egon Jakofcic's page is here), but greater linguistic knowledge and capabilities as are probably available here would be appreciated as to receiving an opinion on the article's location.

To sum up:

Should Egon Jakofcic's page be located at Egon Jakofčić?
Should Robert Jakofcic's page be located at Robert Jakofčić?
Should Damir Alidzanovic's page - not yet created - be located at Damir Alidzanović?
Where do Borut Cegovnik and Bostjan Cegovnik belong? Surnamed Čegovnik?

Thank you for your help. Bobo . 21:43, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions, it says -

Convention: Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly recognized by readers than the English form. The choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage (e.g., Besançon, Edvard Beneš and Göttingen, but Nuremburg, delicatessen, and Florence).

If I were you, I should use the forms with the diacritics for the name of the article, with redirect pages from the names as spelt without them. This parallels the approach with names which include accents we understand better, such as French and German ones: viz., André Antoine Bernard‎ is the main article, with a redirect page from Andre Antoine Bernard‎. (NB: new redirect pages from the former names of articles are created automatically when articles are moved to other spellings). Xn4 22:08, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS: People who live in English-speaking countries often drop the diacritics from their names, and if they have done that themselves, then perhaps it would be over-zealous to put them back. Anyway, Cegovnik seems to be correctly Čegovnik, and Bostjan is Boštjan. Xn4 22:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Opinions differ. In practice we usually do use the diacritics. Haukur 22:43, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. I was merely checking that these were the correct diacritics to use in the situation, I realize that I should use diacriticized versions as per English usage, and have redirected as per your advice, Xn4. Thank you for your clarification, also, Haukurth. Bobo . 00:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are names ending in -ić, but -ič is much commoner, and 'Jakofčič' appears in Tomaž Jakofčič on the Slovene Wikipedia. Xn4 03:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, ć is not a proper letter of Slovenian alphabet, but only of Serbo-Croatian Gaj's Latin alphabet and most native Slovene surnames end in -ič. However, people originating from other ex-Yu countries often choose to retain it, but some get "Slovenized". Now, case by case:

First two are "Jakofčič"
Alidžanović is of apparent Bosniak origin, so the last letter could be either way (i.e. Slovenized or not). It's definitely not dz but dž.
The Cegovniks are indeed "Čegovnik"; in addition, the latter one is "Boštjan"

For most cases, native speakers know what the original should be from the root. Some surnames are ambiguous (some of all of "c", "č" and "ć" might fit), and "cegovnik" might fit in that category; however, Google reveals that the surname "Čegovnik" is relatively frequent. Duja► 12:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Loss of Gender in English Between Old and Modern English[edit]

So here's a question that I've been trying to find an answer to for the past couple of days:

As you may have noticed if you are an English speaker and familiar with any of the Romance or Germanic languages, many of the words in those languages are masculine, feminine, or neuter. English however lacks this feature. Naturally words like buck and doe are masculine and feminine, respectively, but it is not the same as, say, German or Spanish. In these languages a word which describes a male could be a feminine word, and often the article must reflect the gender of that word.

Consider, English is based off of Anglo-Saxon which is a Germanic language brought by invading tribes. When English was Old English it still had gender associations with words, as it was still heavily Germanic. Then in 1066 the Normans, who speak French, take over England and proceed to bring Latin influences to the language. I'm confused as to how English could develop along such a different path.

Does anyone know when and why English dropped the genders to create our current, gender-neutral English language?

Patrick —Preceding unsigned comment added by PizzaSoviet (talk • contribs) 22:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Norman influence on the English was so great that Middle English resembles a creole in some ways—in other words, a fusion of Old English and French. The process of creolization tends to remove more "complicated" features of the parent languages, especially those features which require extensive inflection or agreement. Not only was grammatical gender pretty much lost by Chaucer's time, but the Old English declension system was mostly gone as well. Strad 23:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which isn't a view supported by historical linguists, I gather. I don't know the real reason either, but I suspect it's got more to do with the following:

unstressed vowels merged into schwa as time went
almost all words had stress on the first syllable
gender was indicated by the last syllable
so differences in the last syllable of a word were reduced, which meant gender disappeared
- as well as declension

--Kjoonlee 23:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's not very compelling. German also had all unstressed vowels (in grammatical endings) merging into schwa and stress on the first syllable. Yet it still has three genders. Haukur 23:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, don't argue with me. Argue with the Old English speakers for dropping their final syllables. --Kjoonlee 23:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But note also that Proto Indo-European had eight cases whereas German now has less than five. English has almost none (except in pronouns). --Kjoonlee 00:00, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

German also lost many final syllables. The Romance languages (well, most of them) lost all case distinction in nouns without losing gender. The mainland Scandinavian languages (except for some isolated dialects) also lost all case distinction in nouns without losing the gender distinction. Those languages did, however, go from three to two genders. Haukur 00:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And no, these changes I mentioned didn't happen overnight. They were always in progress, and the Battle of Hastings is just a convenient point to mark a period. --Kjoonlee 23:47, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it certainly ain't creolization (and defintely not with French), though this has been claimed, by e.g. Salikoko Mufwene. Interestingly, most Germanic languages have been reducing the number of genders (and cases): German is actually quite conservative. Dutch and Swedish have lost the fem-masc distinction, for example, while neuter is still different. So there's seems to be linguistic drift on that score. And as England was the site of people from lots of dialects arriving, there may well have been contact-induced simplification more than other places (this is very different from creolization), but early Anglo-Saxon texts don't seem to show much sign of this, so that's a problem with that theory. I still like it though. Drmaik 00:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The creolisation began at a deeper, grammatical level with the coming of the Norse-speaking peoples in the ?7th to the 9th centuries CE. The Normans' impact was less grammatical and more lexical. Gender would have been stripped away in geographical patches before the arrival of the Normans. Tony (talk) 01:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The motivations behind language change are often quite obscure - why has Cockney English lost their th ([θð]) phonemes, while other varieties have kept it? The change can partly be explained through the upheaval that was brought in when the Normans started using the Anglo-Saxon of the lower classes and the lower classes started using more Norman words, but that wouldn't be the only motivating factor. Part of it is also the changes that simply happen in languages as they are passed on to new generations. Another factor would be the previously mentioned loss of case marking and centralisation of vowels. There is evidence of the loss/confusion of features in pre-Norman English, so the Normans can't be blamed for everything. Steewi 02:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tony's statement is backed by "Que sais-je de l'histoire de la langue anglaise", which describes the clash between the two closely related languages (Anglo-Saxon and the language of the "Danes") with similar root words and the subsequent loss of a great deal of inflection. SaundersW 21:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A Norse English contact-induced leveling effect may very well have been the instigator of gender loss and some other simplifications of English morphology. However, as far as I am aware that is still speculative. BTW, there are still two cases in English nouns, general and possessive (aka genitive, e.g., the 's form). In that sense Romance languages are more leveled. I'm not a historical linguist; perhaps someone knows more. mnewmanqc 00:35, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help with name pronunciation, Peter Geach[edit]

Anyone know how to say his last name Peter_Geach ? SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 23:51, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The G is hard, as in "golf", and the name rhymes with "teach" or "leech". DuncanHill 23:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!, that was my guess but I was afraid it might be something like gey ack SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 23:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]