Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 June 1

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June 1

Which is correct?

Is it "Wagnerites" or "Wagnerians"? (And I do not mean the ones who stand in line for days to buy tickets to Bayreuth every summer, I mean the other Wagnerites/Wagnerians]. 2601:646:9882:46E0:4E1:99BD:5FDF:29C4 (talk) 03:52, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I doubt whether I've seen either in news articles that I've read. "Wagner Group mercenaries" seems to be used by some sources. AnonMoos (talk) 07:17, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

"Wagnerites" has some usage in Ukrainian English-language sources, like this:

As a result of shelling by the Defense Forces of the "Wagnerites" who were retreating from the city, 80 invaders were killed and 119 wounded. [1]

"Wagnerian" is already an established term; see Wiktionary:Wagnerian. Alansplodge (talk) 08:45, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! So, Wagnerites it is for the Russian mercenaries, whereas Wagnerians are the ones fighting over tickets to Bayreuth -- right? (And the corresponding Russian word would be "Vagnerovtsy" ("Вагнеровцы" -- normally not capitalized), right?) 73.162.86.152 (talk) 08:55, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

The pro-Ukrainian Moscow Times has «Вагнеровцы ушли». Украинцы под Бахмутом подтверждают отвод наемников, [2] which apparently means "The Wagnerites are gone". Ukrainians near Bakhmut confirm the withdrawal of mercenaries. Alansplodge (talk) 12:49, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I think it's foolish to assume a consistent 1:1 correspondence between different languages. They have evolved differently. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:46, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. There's not even a 1:1 correspondence between English and English. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:33, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

As the regards the music, 'Wagnerian' is often used to refer to music by other composers influenced by Wagner, say Anton Bruckner. I'm sure that someone will contradict me, but I don't think that many in the queue for Bayreuth would actually call themselves Wagnerians - perhaps 'fans of Wagner' or 'Wagner lovers'. Some well-known conductors, say, George Solti, could be described as 'an experienced Wagnerian'. On the other hand, G. B. Shaw wrote The Perfect Wagnerite in order to debunk much of the accumulated nonsense about the Ring of the Nibelungs. You could say it's a slightly jocular term which encapsulates the highly enthusiastic approach of some opera-goers. Shaw was a full-time London music critic ('Corno Di Bassetto') 1889-1894. Full confession: I'm singing in the chorus of Götterdämmerung at Longborough Opera in the Cotswolds,, two more performances to go, we perform the complete Ring cycle next year. MinorProphet (talk) 05:29, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah yes, the Ring. I've heard of that. How does it go again? :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

"Dong-ding-ding, dong-dong, ding-ding." (Apologies to the Smothers Brothers) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:53, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

References

cɔzit

I once worked with a Vietnamese who regularly said

find out what cause it for the problem

and it now occurs to me that maybe he was saying

find out what causèd for the problem

Is one of these more plausible than the other as a calque from Vietnamese? —Tamfang (talk) 04:09, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Lipogram, Rebeccah Giltrow's Twenty-Six Degrees

In Rebeccah Giltrow's Twenty-Six Degrees, each chapter is a lipogram, it has 26 chapters, and each chapter excludes one of the twenty-six letters while using the other twenty-five at least once. And each of the twenty-six letters is excluded from one and only one chapter (for instance, one chapter excludes A, one chapter excludes B, one chapter excludes C, etc.), my question is: which chapter excludes A, which chapter excludes B, which chapter excludes C, …, and which chapter excludes Z? Is it chapter 1 excludes A, chapter 2 excludes B, chapter 3 excludes C, and so on? 118.170.39.15 (talk) 07:35, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know. I took a sneak peek at the Kindle edition and spotted all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet in the first few pages of the first chapter, entitled "Melanie". I found a rare two ⟨q⟩s, in the words "qualified" and "quid", before I encountered – bingo! – an ⟨x⟩ in the word "sexy".  --Lambiam 10:50, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

On her blog she describes "Betwixt The Cup and The Lip" as a lipogram. It is widely reported that "Twenty six degrees" is based on the well known Six degrees of separation, so it looks like whoever put the claim of it being a lipogram on the article either made an error or got it deliberately wrong.--Phil Holmes (talk) 13:03, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Word "Grand Prix"

Can the word "Grand Prix" pronounced [grænd prɪks] in English, with plural Grand Prixes? Are there any French words where final -x is pronounced? --40bus (talk) 09:51, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

@40bus: Your first question does not make sense.

The anglicised words are not pronounced /ɡrændprɪks/, but /ɡrɒnˈpriː/ (or /ɡræn(d)ˈpriː/, US alternative).

The plural is "grands prix": https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/grand-prix, pronounced the same as the singular. Bazza (talk) 10:07, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

The OP means "can the words be pronounced /ɡrændprɪks/ in English". --Viennese Waltz 10:26, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I have never heard grand prix pronounced with a final /ks/. The OED does not record any such pronunciation (though it does record a US variant with /nd/ in the first word).

Are you asking about French words in French or French words in English? Either way, the name "Aix" is an example, but I don't know if ther are any common nouns. ColinFine (talk) 10:09, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

In French: sphinx, lynx, bombyx, silex, fax. - AldoSyrt (talk) 11:48, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 April 1 § Grand prixs.  --Lambiam 11:36, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

In English, anyone pronouncing "Grand Prix" as [grænd prɪks] would be assumed to be making a crude joke (big penises). As Bazza says, the technically correct plural is "grands prix", but it is not uncommon to hear "grands prixes" with the second word pronounced as /ˈpriz/. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.221.195.5 (talk) 12:00, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Maybe that's exactly what the OP is doing! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:12, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

On one of the early episodes of It'll Be Alright on the Night there is a clip of a girl on a children's TV programme saying "Grand Pricks". It's much repeated. I was surprised nobody mentioned it last time this came up here. DuncanHill (talk) 12:15, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I haven't found the clip, but it's mentioned here. Alansplodge (talk) 12:55, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Correction, it's here (the last accidental double-entendre of five). Alansplodge (talk) 13:00, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

South African Grand Pricks, even. That's some racial profiling! 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:07, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Are there any French words where final -x is pronounced? Plenty. To start, a standalone x, the name of the letter. Furthermore, for example, fax, climax, anthrax, thorax, index, codex, silex, duplex, vertex, vortex, fix, sphinx, pharynx, larynx, bombyx and coccyx.  --Lambiam 12:56, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I still remember reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas as a pre-teen, and wondering whether the final x in Pierre Aronnax was sounded. I discovered that it is. But French surnames seem to have rules of their own, e.g. Berlioz. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:29, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

And as a side note, is it possible to say kanjis, hiraganas or katakanas in English? --40bus (talk) 16:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it be? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:31, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

@Baseball Bugs:That would mean kanji, hiragana, or katakana characters. --40bus (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

You didn't ask if it would be correct, you asked if it would be possible. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:49, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Mysterious "L" in citations

I'm standardizing notation for "liters" per MOS:UNITSYMBOLS and I've come across several uses of the lowercase letter "L" in citations. I can't tell if these are typos (sometimes OCR misreads the number 1?) or some sort of obscure but standard scholarly abbreviation? If the latter, I'd like to un-abbreviate for the benefit of readers who almost certainly won't know what it means. Any ideas? (The first few examples below.)

On Arkady Skugarevsky:

• Attack infantry: parsing of contentious issues. — Spb.: typography and Was Fjusno, 1888. -80 p., 1 l. heck.
• From the beginning of the 1812 war to Smolensk: practical techniques for the study of military history. -Kazan: Tipo-lithography Imperial University, 1898. [2], VI, 171 pp., 14 l. cards.

On Bakhrushin Museum:

• Great Soviet encyclopedia. GL. red. A. M. Prokhorov, 3rd ed. Vol. 25. String-Tikhoretsk. 1976. 600 p., Fig.; 30 l.

(Changed to "leaves" based on the below. -- Beland (talk) 20:37, 2 June 2023 (UTC))

On Bergen Evans

• The Natural History of Nonsense, by Bergen Evans (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1946) ix, 275, x p., 1 l. 22 cm.
• The Psychiatry of Robert Burton, by Bergen Evans, in consultation with George J. Mohr, M.D. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944) ix p., 1 l., 129 p. front. (port., facsim.) 23 cm.

Changed to "leaf" based on comments below. -- Beland (talk) 02:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

On Casablanca Children's Soup Kitchen:

• Minutes of Conference of JDC Directors October 1952 P. 132/496 l:36:40 [3]
• Staff Meeting March 6 1959 p. 5/11 l: 8-10

Changed to "lines" based on the comments below. -- Beland (talk) 02:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Beland (talk) 17:36, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Could it be a capital "I", standing for illustration? Xuxl (talk) 18:16, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I was wondering if it might indicate the line number on the page? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:34, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

My guess is that the ones of the form I. are supposed to indicate number of illustrations as User:Xuxl suggests, and the ones of the form l: are line numbers as User:Baseball Bugs suggests.

Do you have any examples where the glyph is not followed by a dot or colon? Or any where these possibilities definitely don't make sense? Folly Mox (talk) 19:15, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. There are definitely some examples which the context makes clear it's meant to be a pipe or the number 1, so I've fixed those. Others which may or may not fit any of these patterns:

On Combinatorial species:

• Yves Chiricota, Classification des espèces moléculaires de degré 6 et 7, Ann. Sci. Math. Québec 17 (1993), no. 1, 1 L–37.

Maybe that's supposed to be a "1" as in "11-37"?

Web search confirms that; fixed. -- Beland (talk) 01:55, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

On Constitutional right:

• California v. Ramos, 463 U.S. 992, 1014, 103 S.Ct. 3446, 77 l.Ed.2d 1171 (1983).

(Expanded to "Lawyer's Edition 2nd" based on below comments. -- Beland (talk) 20:38, 2 June 2023 (UTC))

Not a citation, but Dina Nagar says:

• Dinanagar town is situated about 14 l, North-East of Gurdaspur

(Corrected to "km" based on comments below. -- Beland (talk) 20:39, 2 June 2023 (UTC))

On Edna Henry Lee Turpin:

• A Short History of the American People. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911. xviii p., 1 l., 478 p. illus., maps. 20 cm. Copies at Vi and ViU

For this there are 478 pages in the book plus the intro goes up to xviii. Maybe this is supposed to be "I" for "introduction" or "index" as in "there's one index"?

Changed to "1 leaf" based on the below comments. -- Beland (talk) 02:04, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

On Extraordinary assumptions and hypothetical conditions:

• Appraisal Standards Board, Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice 2008-2009 Edition, The Appraisal Foundation, pg U-3 L-75
• Appraisal Standards Board, Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice 2008-2009 Edition, The Appraisal Foundation, pg U-3 L 82

Changed to "line" based on below comments. -- Beland (talk) 02:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

On Ferenc Dávid:

• Lampe, Histor. Eccl. Reform. in Hung. et Transylv. 228–230 L.

Changed to "p. 228-230" based on comments below. -- Beland (talk) 02:06, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

(Still sorting through more of these.)

-- Beland (talk) 03:11, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Here's Classification des espèces moléculaires de degré 6 et 7 (archived pdf), you're right, it was meant to be 11.

The l.Ed (should probably be L.Ed) in the Constitutional right article means Lawyers' Edition.

Dinanagar town is situated about 14 km North-East of Gurdaspur. Note that if you type "km" on a standard US keyboard, but your fingers slip one column to the right, you get "l,".

 Card Zero  (talk) 04:52, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

• I consulted a librarian friend, Michael Wares, who told me that the mysterious lower-case L stands for "leaves", referring to sheets of paper that are either blank or printed only on one side. (And therefore would be counted separately from numbered pages.) He quoted an example

vi, 146 p., 8 l. of plates, ill. (some col.), 28 cm.

which in modern usage would become

vi, 146 pages, 8 leaves of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 28 cm

--142.112.220.184 (talk) 05:25, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I think that solves the mystery, especially when "l." and "ill." are seen in the same citation! I have updated L (disambiguation) with this very enlightening tidbit. Many thanks! -- Beland (talk) 19:29, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

The citations in Extraordinary assumptions and hypothetical conditions, its fair to say, are a mess. I'm pretty sure you shouldn't cite the same book 50 times, separately, in order to refer to different pages. Each citation is in the form "pg U-42". What does the "U-" mean? Then there's links to three different dictionary definitions for presumption, and links to apparent requests to Google's digital assistant to define assumption, twice. There's more explanation about this at User_talk:KTrimble: it was originally intended to be one of around 100 or 150 pages on real estate valuation and appraisal that would be strongly interlinked with each other. I never bothered to attempt to write any of the other pages ...

Regarding Ferenc Dávid, is "l." possibly an abbreviation of an antiquated Hungarian word for page? It's used in two other places in the article, also references to a book by Lampe about ecclesiastical things in Hungary. If you look through the Hungarian authors listed here, this usage appears very frequently (including the specific reference to this work by Dávid). Evidence for this theory: here's the entry for notable author Elek Benedek, where we can see at the foot of the page a reference to some kind of almanac titled Sturm, which in 1888 should have material relating to Elek Benedek on page 176, if "l." means page. Here's page 176, QED.

Regarding the references in Arkady Skugarevsky, first of all I can confirm the work exists because it's mentioned in this book catalogue. "Spb." stands for St. Petersburg. "typography and Was Fjusno" almost makes sense, because Trenke i Fjusno were a printing house in St. Petersburg, but what's this "and Was" part? 1888 is obviously a publication date, but what's "-80 p., 1 l. heck."? The edition listed in that catalogue is 176 pages. What does the dash in front of 80 indicate? What does "heck." stand for? In what language? Other references in that list are also terrible. For instance, "./by k. n. Duropom and n. Jengel'gardtom. — Spb.: typography in. Demakova, 1875" - what is "./" doing there? Why can't I find the words (or names) Duropom and Jengel'gardtom anywhere on search engines, Archive.org or Wikipedia? If they're names, why aren't the initials capital? If they're the authors of this work, why is it listed as a work by Skugarevsky? If it was printed by a printing house called Demakova, what does "in." mean?  Card Zero  (talk) 05:57, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Maybe not relevant to your examples, but a lower-case "l" (usually italicised) was used well into the 19th century as an abbreviation for Pounds Sterling (from the Latin livre), so 10,000 l. would be £10,000 in a modern text. Alansplodge (talk) 13:19, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I actually ran into that a lot in old quotations, but managed to figure it out from context. But thanks to your reminder, I've added it to L (disambiguation). -- Beland (talk) 19:29, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

@Card Zero: Good sleuthing...I changed Ferenc Dávid to "p." since the notation should be in English even for non-English works. For Extraordinary assumptions and hypothetical conditions, sometimes documents have different sections with letters, and the numbering prefixes the section letter, like in a multi-section newspaper, so I think that explains the "U"? I changed "l" to "line". I wonder if you can't find some of the names on Arkady Skugarevsky because they are transliterated from Cyrillic? -- Beland (talk) 02:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Transliteration must be involved, I think so. I found Engel'gardtom in what appears to be the author's name for this Russian book of molecular biology. Then on Amazon I see a Russian edition of a paperback book by one Mikhail Antonov, which has Cyrilic on the cover but has been titled by Amazon as Providets: Perechityvaya A.N.Engel'gardta: Perechitywaq A.N.Jengel'gardta, which appears to be the same title twice in different langauges. The first one looks kinda Russian and the second looks kinda Polish? I suspect that perechityvaya / perechitywaq means "biography" or maybe "writings of" (I found perech as a plural of the Czech word for "pen") and the A. N. Engel'gardta is either the Alexander Engelhardt (scientist) or his wife, both A. N. Engelhardt. I see it written with the apostrophe sometimes. So ... it's probably a name, and it's probably transliterated from some Cyrilic language, and that might be Russian but the presence of the J on the front tends to suggest another language and I don't know what. None of which explains the connection to Skugarevsky as supposedly one of his works.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

"Durop" is most likely ru:Дуроп, Константин Николаевич, military writer and infantry general, contemporary of Alexander Engelhardt (scientist). Suffix -om marks instrumental case in Russian, but it's hard to tell why it is used in this sea of abbreviations. No such user (talk) 08:07, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm guessing this is an example, where the 1938 Australian pavilion in Glasgow raised l(£) 4,000 (not an undenominated 14,000). Doug butler (talk) 06:29, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

The messed-up references are a botched machine translation from ru:Скугаревский, Аркадий Платонович:

"typography and Was Fjusno" is Typography of Trenke & Fusno

"-80 p., 1 l. heck." is 80 pages, 1 sheet of drawings

"typography in. Demakova" is Typography of V. Demakov

213.137.65.242 (talk) 09:16, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

@Doug butler: It's definitely a "1", not an "l". The precursor of the pound sign (capital "L" with a horizontal bar") was italic small l after the amount. 2A00:23D0:D72:D401:45CE:6821:66BB:C848 (talk) 12:10, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

No it wasn't; see Pound sign#Origin 2001:BF8:200:392:B182:A7A5:54EF:A00F (talk) 12:22, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I think you'll find that the lower case "l" for librae always followed the amount and the upper case "L" as the same abbreviation always preceded it. 2A00:23D0:D72:D401:45CE:6821:66BB:C848 (talk) 12:38, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

ports.

Any idea what "ports." means in the following from Joseph-Hector Fiocco?

• Stellfeld, Christiane. Les Fiocco, une famille de musiciens belges aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Imprint [Brussels, Palace of Academies, 1941] Description 172 p., 3 l. illus. (incl. ports., facsims., music) 29 cm [4]

-- Beland (talk) 22:05, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

"Portraits" seems likely. Deor (talk) 22:27, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Aha! -- Beland (talk) 23:25, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

b.

On Patroclus, I see notation like:

pages=353 b. 16 l. 64–87

"Lines" makes sense for "l." and 353 for the page number, but I'm not sure what "b. 16" means here? -- Beland (talk) 23:25, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Presumably "book". The relevant passage is indeed lines 64–87 in Book 16 of the Iliad in Lattimore's translation, although in my paperback copy of that translation the lines are on page 332, not 353. (And the usual abbreviation of lines is "ll.", not "l.") Deor (talk) 23:47, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Wow, I could not have imagined a poem spanning multiple books. Thanks for solving the mystery! -- Beland (talk) 23:52, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Book has a somewhat specialized meaning in the context of ancient works, corresponding roughly to a chapter in modern works. The Iliad and the Odyssey are divided into 24 books each (corresponding to the number of letters in the Greek alphabet, usually designated Α–Ω for the Iliad and α–ω for the Odyssey). The division was probably the work of Zenodotus and may have been based on the amount of text that could conveniently be contained on a scroll. (Some later works, such as Paradise Lost, are divided into "books" in imitation of this ancient practice.) Deor (talk) 00:17, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, that makes more sense. I see we have an explanation of that at Chapter (books)#Book-like; I'll make some links there from those poems so others can be similarly enlightened. -- Beland (talk) 01:52, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

l.f.

On Ralph Chaplin:

• CHAPLIN, Ralph Hosea (1887-1961), papers, 6 l.f. Special Collections, Washington State Historical Society

"Large format" maybe? -- Beland (talk) 01:49, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps "6 leaves, folio".  --Lambiam 10:03, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

I can't figure out exactly what it stands for, but it's clearly some sort of library arcana. The library's collection of Chaplin papers, as detailed at the end of the document, consists of 5 (not 6) boxes containing numerous letter-sized and legal-sized file folders of items. Whatever it stands for, "6 l.f." can surely be omitted in the external link in the Chaplin article, and I'm going to delete it. Deor (talk) 15:54, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

l/s

On Sergey Abisov:

• Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia on March 26, 2014 № 354 l / s

Maybe some sort of Russian abbreviation? -- Beland (talk) 02:52, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

It is the transliteration of Russian л/с, the meaning of which in this context I have been unable to figure out. This abbreviation can be used for "лошадиная сила" ("horsepower") and for "лицевой счет" ("personal account"), but these cannot be the sense here. The Russian Wikipedia has several articles using this abbreviation, but the contexts do not suggest a specific meaning to me.  --Lambiam 10:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Thus far I've only seen it (with slash) appended to numbers of personnel. I see our article section United_States_Army#Combat_maneuver_organizations has some troop numbers: "450,000 in the active component, 335,000 in the National Guard and 195,000 in U.S. Army Reserve", while the corresponding Russian article has 450 тыс. чел. л/с, Национальной гвардии до 335 тыс. чел. и численности Резерва до 195 тыс. чел. Note that only the first of these has л/с. Elsewhere "чел. л/с" (which just means "person l / s") corresponds to "troops" in the English article. I think it might mean something akin to active duty. Maybe relating to Abisov being made acting Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Crimea.  Card Zero  (talk) 12:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

That'd be wikt:личный состав 213.137.65.242 (talk) 08:24, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Gandhi, not Ghandi

If my knowledge about Gandhi is right:

1. A common mistake for anglophones is to misspell it as Ghandi. This is most likely the fault of the fact that anglophones are far more familiar with initial gh than they are with dh except in compound words such as bloodhound.
2. Sanskrit is written with a special alphabet; each letter has its own transliteration in the Latin alphabet.
3. The dh is the transliteration of the Sanskrit letter that has the sound of an aspirated d sound; unlike English, Sanskrit distinguishes aspirated from unaspirated consonants.
4. Yes, India also has an aspirated g, but it's not in Gandhi.

Can you reveal:

1. How is Gandhi's name spelled in the Sanskrit alphabet??
2. What spelling would logically transliterate it as Ghandi??

Georgia guy (talk) 18:40, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

To start, there's not really a "Sanskrit alphabet" -- traditionally, Sanskrit was written in the alphabets of each major region of India. However, foreigners most often encounter Sanskrit written with Devanagari... AnonMoos (talk) 19:57, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

P.S. Also, Gandhi's native language was Gujarati... AnonMoos (talk) 20:06, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, his name is written Ghandi in Arabic. So it's not just a mistake made by English-speakers. Xuxl (talk) 20:31, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

The Mahatma's surname is actually written ^غاندي in Arabic. The ⟨h⟩ in the transcription is introduced by the convention of transcribing the letter ḡayn as ⟨gh⟩. In fact, no letter in the Arabic alphabet is conventionally transcribed as just a single ⟨g⟩.  --Lambiam 10:28, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

The Gujarati spelling is apparently ગાંધી, the Hindi spelling गांधी, and the Sanskrit spelling गान्धी. The Gujarati alphabet is related to the Devanagari, if you wonder why it'd look fairly similar. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:08, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Arabic simply doesn't have a plain G; even Gorbachev's name starts with a GH in Arabic. 213.137.65.242 (talk) 10:06, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps then, the misspelling in English was due to transcription from Urdu, the standardised language of colonial administration in the Indian Empire. The Urdu alphabet is ultimately derived from Arabic. Alansplodge (talk) 13:09, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Egyptian dialect famously has simple velar "g". Sometimes a foreign word with a "g" sound in the original can be spelled with غ or ج or ق in various Arab countries, in accordance with the prevailing local dialect in each country. However, the Arabic alphabet as used to write Persian and Urdu has an unambiguous way of writing a "g" sound (the letter ك with overbar). AnonMoos (talk) 21:42, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Or influence from English 'ghost', 'ghoul', 'ghetto', 'ghastly' and 'gherkin', which might not all be super-common words, but at least feel more familiar than -dh- which almost only exists in obscure loanwords... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:18, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Urdu, however, unlike Arabic, has a letter for plain g, and also for aspirated d. The Urdu spelling of Gandhi is گاندھی, which, just like the Gujarati or Devanagari version, would be transcribed as Gandhi. --2A02:8071:889:AA40:F072:9BFD:4A85:2697 (talk) 13:40, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction, another one bites the dust. Alansplodge (talk) 15:05, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

It is, of course, quite possible, that the misspelling "Ghandi" arises simply from English speakers' remembering that there's an h somewhere in the word but not remembering quite where. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:39, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

See my comment about "ghost" above... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:47, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Nobody mentioned Ghana as the possible donor. No such user (talk) 08:47, 7 June 2023 (UTC)