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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. [3] 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.[4] 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 [5] 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]

I've noticed that it's possible to impose other tones, which are just tone of voice, on top of those tones. Card Zero (talk) 16:27, 7 September 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]

I'm not sure on what a "raven's farm" would be interpreted as, for a kenning. Maybe a battlefield, but that doesn't make sense as a settlement. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:59, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I thought maybe a battlefield too. Like a cadaver farm. But that's a good point, people are more likely to want to live on an actual farm. Card Zero (talk) 14:46, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Now I remember those old examples of Buddhist art with decomposing corpses. Presumably made for meditating on the fact of death. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:45, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kusōzu, hadn't heard of this before. Seems like memento mori, so I stuck a few "see also" links in. Card Zero (talk) 17:27, 7 September 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]

Or Wittgestein's Banana? --Trovatore (talk) 02:09, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Heh.

A banana is flying first class from New York to L.A. Two scientists, one in each city, are talking on the phone about the banana. Because it is moving in relationship to its noun, the referent of the word banana never occupies one space, and anything that does not occupy one space does not exist. Therefore, a banana will arrive at JFK with no limousine into the city, even though the reservation was confirmed in L.A.

But that link is a typo. Now you made me create the article Wittgenstein's Banana, possibly my finest work. Card Zero (talk) 14:43, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although there is no text named "Wittgenstein's Banana" in the book itself. There apparently is one named "Schrödinger's Cat", which thematically seems a better fit, anyway. I'm thoroughly confused. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:52, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The quote above is a subsection of the "Schrödinger's Cat" chapter, and it's titled "Wittgenstein's Banana". The next subsection is titled "Elvis's Charcoal Briquette" and it's similar (but slightly worse), and so on for the rest of the chapter, culminating in "George Hamilton's Sun Lamp". Hope that helps. :) Card Zero (talk) 16:13, 7 September 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

Illari Quispe Ruiz

https://overwatch.fandom.com/wiki/Illari

Would it be more accurate to state her full name (Infobox) as being Latin American Spanish or Quechua? Need to know for Wikidata purposes Trade (talk) 22:36, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Illari and Quispe is predominantly Quechua, Ruiz is Spanish but not necessarily Latin American. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:38, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The game is voiced in Latin American Spanish and English, according to the page. I say es-419. In game, the character could be considered to speak es-PE or whatever Quechua dialect she uses, but the work she is in is Latin American Spanish, I understand.

--Error (talk) 17:34, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Compare https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q828542 . Name in native language is "Winnetou (German)", not Apache.

--Error (talk) 17:38, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not even sure if Winnetou would even mean anything in Apache language. Once, I tried looking up a web-based Lakota dictionary to see if Yakari would mean anything, and the best I could come up with was "Sitting Crow", admitting that I know just about nothing of Lakota grammatical and syntactical rules... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:02, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Winnetou is very likely some kind of distortion of Manitou. It seems a little strange that this isn't mentioned in the article... AnonMoos (talk) 18:52, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 6

-ou

Are there any English words where final -ou represents /aʊ/ other than thou and the truncations thou ("thousand") and trou ("trousers")? 71.126.56.187 (talk) 14:53, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This list of English words ending in "ou" are all fairly recent loan words except "you". Alansplodge (talk) 15:37, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is mostly the fault of the fact that ow has become the standard spelling when it is final. Originally (in Anglo-Saxon) it was spelled u and pronounced like the modern English oo in moon. But because English was influenced by French, it became ou when Middle English evolved, and u was used for the modern descendant of the French u sound that English lacks. Because of the Great Vowel Shift, ou in English (which comes from Anglo-Saxon long u) became the sound it has now in out, and for some unknown reason was re-spelled ow at the end of a word. Long u in English (which comes from Anglo-Norman long u) became the you sound, which is now often simplified to oo after certain consonants. Georgia guy (talk) 15:48, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can I change Wikipedia so that articles appear in American English? If so, how?

I use Wikipedia a lot. The articles contain British spelling. I wish to change the Wikipedia content to articles with American spelling. Is this possible and, if so, how do I do this?

Thank you. Bcgura (talk) 18:19, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English --Viennese Waltz 18:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since Wikipedia does not use slang, it should be fairly easy to program a browser extension (a person I saw online in one weekend both learned the Chrome extension tools and made a basic version of this) or even, if your only interest is Wikipedia, your own customized CSS stylesheet, with UK-to-US replacement rules encoded.

As a template, you can view the source of Josh May's javascript tool (the javascript is linked in the webpage source, and the replacement dictionary is linked from that) and then tinker from there. (Also, be sure run the javascript source through a code beautifier to make it readable.) SamuelRiv (talk) 18:55, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are of course a lot of hazards and edge cases in doing this. Many names would be respelled, such as Victoria Arbour, various place names, and band names such as Living Colour. Exceptions such as Broadway theatre would be incorrectly corrected. Some differences are grammatical, for instance bath can be a verb in Br Eng, and that one would be left unchanged. I was also trying to come up with an ambiguity such as rearise, which could sometimes be parsed as re-arise, but at other times be equivalent to Am Eng *rearize, meaning "to make more rear". Fortunately that's not a word. Card Zero (talk) 05:20, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some respelling errors can be avoided by not touching terms that are not in the lower case expected for a common noun in sentence case; these are probably proper nouns. You also don't want to touch literal quotations, like Churchill's "Here indeed was the Irish spectre—horrid and inexorcisable!"^[6] Next to grammatical differences there are also lexical ones, e.g. British English boot (of a car) versus American English trunk. --Lambiam 07:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really that hard to read British spelling? Alansplodge (talk) 12:18, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried Conservapedia? Noting their policy on spelling. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 20:53, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 7

Egyptian personal names and gendered parentals

"Understanding Hieroglyphics",^[1] shot through with dubious claims, says "The terms that could be used for this designation were "born of" when using the mother's name and "made by" or "of his body" when using the father's name." (These are ms F31 and ir D4.) Interesting, but is it true? Temerarius (talk) 22:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC) Temerarius (talk) 22:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Wilson, Hilary (2019-07-25). Understanding Hieroglyphs. Michael O'Mara. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-78929-107-0.

September 8

French 'de le' --> 'du', and 'de les' --> 'des': an exception?

Quote: La mort de Le Corbusier m'a rempli d'une joie immense. Le Corbusier était une creature pitoyable travaillant en béton armé. (Salvador Dalí, 1969)

The first thing that I noticed was that it wasn't La mort du Corbusier .... Is this a standard exception for personal names and pseudonyms?

It doesn't seem to be the case for titles of books etc.

... la publication du "Pere Goriot" ^[1] - referring to the novel Le Père Goriot
Musique des pêcheurs de perles ^[2] - referring to the opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers)
many other examples.

Or was Dalí, being Spanish, speaking broken French? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} _'du',_and_'de_les'_-->_'des':_an_exception?" class="ext-discussiontools-init-timestamplink">00:17, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ [1]
^ [2]

[g838-1] Wilson, Hilary (2019-07-25). Understanding Hieroglyphs. Michael O'Mara. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-78929-107-0.

[2] [1]

[3] [2]

[1]

[1]

[2]