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October 23

Why do these sound changes appear to have not happened consistently?

One feature in the historical development of the Japanese language is the contraction of certain vowel combinations (typically ones where the second vowel is u) into long vowels. For example, the au sequence became a long o sound. However, there are some situations where this did not happen. For example, the verb 会う/あう (au) meaning “meet” did not become おう/ō. Likewise, 買う (かう/kau, “buy”) did not become こう/kō. The au phoneme sequence in the given name of the Ashikaga shogunate’s founder also did not contract to ō. Another category of seemingly inconsistent sound changing is for some godan verbs whose conjunctive (i-stem plus -te/て) and past (i-stem plus -ta/た) forms underwent some changes that resulted in something different from their normal stems, whereas the form that conveys the idea of wanting to do something (i-stem plus -tai/たい) did not. For example, the way to say “want to read” takes the normal stem of 読む and thus comes out as 読みたい and not 読んだい, whereas the conjunctive (読んで) and past (読んだ) use an altered stem appearance. If all three involve the stem and the T-sound, why would two of them exhibit this change while one doesn’t? Primal Groudon (talk) 03:57, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Primal Groudon, the answer to every historical negative in linguistic development is unknowable— or, if you prefer, "just cuz". Concerted effort by a number of regulars at this venue seems to have broken the habit one prolific querant used to have of asking this genre of question. That experience is likely why no one has bothered to respond to this thread over the past four days. Folly Mox (talk) 14:04, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

etymology of the zodiac symbols

Astrological symbol#Signs of the zodiac lists etymologies for the zodiac symbols, but they are unreferenced. Is there a reliable source explaining them? Double sharp (talk) 07:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Rudolf Koch has a brief discussion in his Book of Signs. Some of them, such as Aquarius, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, are fairly obvious (self-evident). By the way, I'm not sure that "etymology" is the best word to use in this context... AnonMoos (talk) 09:28, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess they are mostly simplified pictograms. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:00, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

They have explanations in the individual articles. You could copy appropriate info to the main article. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

October 24

What is the origin of the term "rainbow baby"?

The expression seems to be common, but I was unable to find any source of information about who and when started it, or made it popular. White Spider Shadow (talk) 03:04, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy links to Rainbow baby and wikt:rainbow baby. Neither can answer this question (yet). Commander Keane (talk) 03:21, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

In an issue of The Churchman from June 2, 1900, we see:

I call the little one the "rainbow baby" because he lives in the midst of all those bright cambric colors.^[1]

And in a book from 1910, we find about a child named Iris:

I recollect so well poor old Father telling me that it meant 'Rainbow.' We always called it 'the rainbow baby.'^[2]

And as late as 2000, we see this:

In fact "rainbow baby" is a term used to describe racially mixed children, particularly those of black and white heritage.^[3]

Uses in this sense of having mixed racial ancestry are found until around this time. The current sense therefore almost certainly became common only this century.  --Lambiam 07:32, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

"Rainbow Nation" for South Africa is from 1994. Josephine Baker's controversial adopted "Rainbow Tribe" is from the 1950's. The reasoning has precedents. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

"Not found until around this time", you mean, presumably.  Card Zero  (talk) 22:21, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

See also Rainbow Coalition. —Tamfang (talk) 20:47, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

That's more or less what I was looking for - although it's a completely different term, the article references Fred Hampton's Coalition as the origin. White Spider Shadow (talk) 03:35, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Two questions

1. Are there any words in Spanish where ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ appear in the beginning of word before another vowel?
2. Are there any words in English where ⟨u⟩ is pronounced as /ʊ/ in the beginning of word? --40bus (talk) 20:25, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

What's an example of an English word containing that /ʊ/ sound? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:05, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The "u" sound in "put", apparently. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:25, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

40bus -- As I explained the last time you asked this question, I couldn't find any (other than doubtful interjections) when I was making File:Initial Teaching Alphabet ITA chart.svg... -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

P.S. That answer was actually as to any normal words beginning with /ʊ/ exist in English, but of course if none occur at all, then obviously none occur with a particular spelling. AnonMoos (talk) 19:11, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

• In dialects that don't have the FOOT-STRUT split (i.e. Northern England English), almost all words starting u use /ʊ/ (any that in standard dialects would be /ʌ/). Most stereotypically, the word "up" - "It's grim oop north" as the saying goes - but it's also how the Yorkshire side of my family would pronounce "umbrella" or "unreasonable", for instance. Smurrayinchester 09:38, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

On Wiktionary: Iago (a male given name, variant of Yago); iatrofobia; iatrogenia; iatrogénico; ietsista; Ío (moon of Jupiter, priestess of Hera); iodo; iodopsina; ion; Ione (a female given name); iónico; ionización; ionizador; ionizante; ionizar; ionómero; ionosfera; ionosférico; ionotrópico; iota; iotización; Iowa; iowano; ióyana; iusnaturalista; iuspositivismo; uacarí; Uagadugú; ualabí; uapití; Uarzazat; uau; uigur; uintaterio.  --Lambiam 12:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

October 25

Question with missing antecedent

I noticed an oddity at Talk:Parade (magazine)#Marriage. An IP user asked (with no antecedent anywhere, and a question mark missing): "Did she marry Leonardo DiCaprio". This appears to be a question placed on the wrong page. Yet even though I have no idea who the writer was referring to by "she", the answer must be "no", since Leonardo DiCaprio has never been married. Is there some kind of linguistic term for this phenomenon -- a question which can be answered despite a missing antecedent? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Asking the original poster could be a challenge. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:46, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

You only think it's answerable because you felt your understanding/definition of what was meant by "Leonardo DiCaprio" was solid enough to answer. My point is simply that there's not necessarily a defined amount of antecedental knowledge required to answer many questions. It's not a yes/no situation where you either have it or you don't. Matt Deres (talk) 16:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I think that's just syllogism: if no woman has been married to Leonardo DiCaprio, then "she" – a specific, albeit unidentified, woman – has not been married to Leonardo DiCaprio. --Theurgist (talk) 21:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The OP is not asking why we can answer this specific question, but about a name for a kind of question, like there is the term "rhetorical question". An unanswerable question may be called a "conundrum". A question that is its own answer could be called an "autological question". Most questions with an unresolved referent need resolution before they can be answered, even granted sufficient knowledge about all other names and terms. Some can be answered, in spite of dangling references, in the same way that we can give the value of $x-x$ while not knowing the value of $x.$  --Lambiam 18:00, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Maximum synonyms

What is an English word with an unusually large number of synonyms? If I ask search engines this question, they just list synonyms for "unusually", "large", or "number of".  Card Zero  (talk) 22:03, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Supposedly the word "set" has a very large number of meanings, and its entry takes up a lot of space in comprehensive dictionaries, so it might also come with a large number of synonyms (not guaranteed)... 22:28, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I encountered that, but that's the answer to the opposite question (word with the most meanings). What I'm looking for is a meaning with (possibly) the most words. Eskimo words for snow mentions "WATER".  Card Zero  (talk) 22:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd imagine that vague words of approbation or disapprobation, such as good and bad, would have a large number of synonyms. (A Google search for bad synonyms, for example, turns up a link—reading "BAD Synonyms: 1101 Similar and Opposite Words"—to Merriam-Webster's thesaurus page.) Deor (talk) 00:14, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Oxford English Dictionary#Entries and relative size notes that set has been overtaken successively by make, good and run; the latter having 645 senses (meanings) distinguished. I have also heard jack mentioned as a word with many different meanings. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 19:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I am all things to all people. That is my joy and my tragedy. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:38, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Like Caesar's wife? DuncanHill (talk) 21:56, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. I place great store in always being seen to be beyond reproach. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:39, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Having done zero research into this question, I suspect that words with the highest number of synonyms (as opposed to separate meanings) are those where their communication is burdened by a certain amount of social sensitivity: words like die, vagina, cannabis, etc. Folly Mox (talk) 19:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

They certainly develop a large subset of those synonyms known as euphemisms. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 21:30, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

• WordNet is a computer-readable dictionary with "synsets", sets of synonymous words, and the largest synset in the database is... buttocks, ass, .... After that is dohickey, thingummy, .... For verbs, its's to love and then to botch and to bawl out. If I'm reading this correctly, it has 28 words for buttocks and 24 words for love. Those numbers do seem a little low to me, so it might not be including multi-word phrases or some very slangy terms. Smurrayinchester 13:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  I had thought of WordNet and investigated this myself. Somewhere along the way I read that the largest synset is "concrete", as in "real" or "substantial". But I didn't see a list of the synonyms, and began to doubt if "synset" really means a set of synonymous words. Perhaps it's more like a set of related concepts?  Card Zero  (talk) 17:40, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  I came across that too. The concrete group seems to refer to a larger collection of synsets - a slightly foggier group of polysemys (so taking into account that being synonymous is not a transitive property. "run" means "manage" and "sprint", but "manage" doesn't mean "sprint"). Smurrayinchester 09:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

October 26

Spoken Nynorsk

Quoting Speech from the throne#Norway:

Afterwards, the monarch and members take their seats and the Report on the State of the Realm, an account of the government achievement of the past year, is read (traditionally in Nynorsk), customarily by the youngest member of the government present.

I understand that the text could be written in Nynorsk rather than Bokmål, but since both of them are related to orthography rather than pronunciation, how can we say that a speech is read in either standard? Nyttend (talk) 05:58, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

There was the case of the "abominable snowman", a TV weathercaster in the 1960s who insisted on pronouncing the word for "snow" with what many Norwegian viewers interpreted as an ultra-Danish pronunciation, causing great controversy... AnonMoos (talk) 11:08, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Nynorsk tends to have different words for a lot of concepts, and where they are related, there would be different vowels and such, which usually aren't unstressed. You can hear Jon Fosse reading from his book in this video, which I assume is Haugesund dialect. [4] I think there are a lot more fricatives and affricates than in spoken Urban East Norwegian. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:07, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I could provide samples of later traditions of Genesis in Nynorsk and Bokmål for comparison. The situation might be similar to the differences between RP British and formal Scots, or so. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:26, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Nynorsk
1 I opphavet skapte Gud himmelen og jorda. 
2 Jorda var aud og tom, mørker låg over djupet, og Guds ande svevde over vatnet. 
3 Då sa Gud: «Det skal bli lys!» Og det vart lys. 
4 Gud såg at lyset var godt, og Gud skilde lyset frå mørkret. 
5 Gud kalla lyset dag, og mørkret kalla han natt. Og det vart kveld, og det vart morgon, første dagen.

Bokmål
1 I begynnelsen skapte Gud himmelen og jorden. 
2 Jorden var øde og tom, mørke lå over dypet, og Guds ånd svevde over vannet. 
3 Da sa Gud: «Det skal bli lys!» Og det ble lys. 
4 Gud så at lyset var godt, og Gud skilte lyset fra mørket. 
5 Gud kalte lyset dag, og mørket kalte han natt. Og det ble kveld, og det ble morgen, første dag.

Wow, I had no idea there were significant differences with anything aside from orthography. But then, my experience of Norwegian is limited to its use on stamps (even with "Noreg" versus "Norge", I figured they were pronounced the same), and I'd never compared the two or realised that there were vocabulary differences. Wakuran, you say "later traditions of Genesis" — do you mean that these are recent translations? I don't need to know either version of the language to recognise that it's the first chapter of the book. Nyttend (talk) 06:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I meant to write "translations". The Bible is a text that's been translated into almost every known written language. They are apparently recent translations into the two Norwegian varieties. The "orthography" explanation is mostly to clarify that there aren't only two different dialects of Norwegian. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nyttend: There are, in fact, essentially no orthographical differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk; essentially all words that are pronounced the same in both are also written identically in both. This has been the case since the 1917 reform of Bokmål, when Bokmål essentially adopted the orthography of Nynorsk. For instance, before the 1917 reform, [ˈmɛ̀nː] "men" was written menn in Nynorsk but mænd in Bokmål; since 1917, the spelling is menn in both. (Compare Danish mænd, Swedish män, Faroese and Icelandic menn, normalised Old Norse menn.) The differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk are overwhelmingly to do with differently pronounced inflexional morphology and differently pronounced forms of the same etymon, as well as some differences in vocabulary (plus a little syntax), while there is only a handful of mandatory orthographical differences. (Off the top of my head I can only think of skjære/skjere, -a; skåret/skore; skjær/skjer & skjær; bære/bere, -a; båret/bore; være/vere, -a & vêre, -a; vær/vêr & vær; lær/lêr; gjev/gjæv; dråpe/drope; såle/sole; tåle/tole, -a; måke/moke, -a; sprukket/sprokke; strukket/strokke; rukket/rokke; sluppet/sloppe; lege/lækje, -a.) A handful of words are written the same in Bokmål and Nynorsk but pronounced differently, e.g. meg "me", Bokmål [ˈmæ̀ɪ], Nynorsk [ˈmèːɡ].

Norge is pronounced [ˈnɔ̂rɡə] in "Urban East Norwegian", while Noreg is pronounced [ˈnôːreːɡ]. 2001:4646:2494:0:5417:D8C:2A29:308F (talk) 12:02, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Probably Arab

What does this
عايزة أسئلة دراسات للصف الاول الاعدادي الوحدة الاولى
mean?

Found in Talk:Perplexity AI / 2nd topic.

Please translate it there.

Ping welcome, Steue (talk) 11:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Google says it means "I want social studies questions for the first year of middle school, the first unit" ColinFine (talk) 18:24, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Lettered list

This is part of a note section in a WP article. An artist used the boy (Donald) as a model on several occasions. Is this list grammatically correct? Such as capitalization and completeness. I know the word "in" is usually placed before the years. But my main concern is the structure of the list. Thanks.
Donald's highlights follow: a. graduated from Horace Greeley School, 1941. b. took part in Operation Overlord (ADSEC unit). Landed on June 21, 1944. c. lettered in three sports at Rider College, 1946–48. d. worked as a sportswriter for The Daily Item of Port Chester, N.Y., 1948–49. e. worked as an associate editor for Progressive Grocer, 1956–61. f. attended the 65th anniversary ceremonies of the Normandy landings in France, 2009. JimPercy (talk) 14:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with the structure (consistent) and grammar (correct, in this context) of the list. My personal choice might have been to parenthesise the lc item letters (i.e. '(a)' not 'a.') and either begin each entry with a capital letter, or end each item with a semicolon, but that would depend on the styles present elsewhere in the article. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists, Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Bulleted and numbered lists and WP:MoS#Colons may be of help, as might Help:Footnotes.

Of course, all this goes out of the window if the text is a quote from a source, in which case it should be reproduced as it appears in that source. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 16:56, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. It's all my own wording. I also enclosed a couple "hidden texts" to back up the statements. So, another way would be using (a) (b) (c) instead of (a. b. c.). Still another way would be using semicolons instead of the closing periods. I thought it would look better starting every sentence with a capital letter. But the sentences are not complete (w/o an "He"). I suppose the sentences don't have to be complete in list format. So, I can capitalize the words "Graduated," "Lettered," "Worked," etc. OTOH. That might be a good reason to go the semicolon route (instead of capitalizing the first letter of incomplete sentences). JimPercy (talk) 18:08, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Why the a.b.c. tags at all? He graduated from Horace Greeley School in 1941. He took part in Operation Overlord (ADSEC unit), which landed on June 21, 1944. He lettered in three sports at Rider College, 1946–48. He worked as a sportswriter for The Daily Item of Port Chester, N.Y., in 1948–49. He worked as an associate editor for Progressive Grocer in 1956–61. He attended the 65th anniversary ceremonies of the Normandy landings in France in 2009. —Tamfang (talk) 20:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

October 27

A or an before abbreviations?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 28

What is a better word here?

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

First, what's new about this? Second, various synonyms work: class, category, type, etc. EO has another synonym or two.[5] But while it seems valid, "genre" is used more in connection with works of art. Unless someone thinks fried chicken is a work of art! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:18, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

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

• Culinary category
• Cuisine
• Gastronomy

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

Any Current Wikipedia Featured articles from the brilliant Freshing Prose Days

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

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

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

October 29

Oldest Featured article not currently at Review

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

Japanese language question

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

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

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

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

Three English questions

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

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

Question 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question 3

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

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

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

October 30

List of animals by gender

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minor capitalization question

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

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

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

October 31

Translating npc chatter from AC Odyssey

Greek. Sounds like:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 4

Five questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question 1

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

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

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

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

Question 2

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

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

Question 3

3. You can write "four and a third metres", 4+1⁄3m, or 4.3 m. (@40bus: Note your "four and a quarter metres" means 4.25 or 4+1⁄4, not what your wrote.) Bazza 7 (talk) 12:34, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Question 4

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

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

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

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

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

Question 5

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

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

See my answer to Question 4. I'm not convinced that Germany is any different to anywhere else [6]. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

November 6

"Only emergency exit"

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

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

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

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

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