Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.
Select a section:
Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

  • Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
  • Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
  • Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
  • Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
  • Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
  • Note:
    • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
    • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
    • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
    • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.



How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

  • The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.
See also:

March 15[edit]

Have never vs. never have[edit]

I could/would have never done that
vs.
I could/would never have done that.

The former seems to be the favoured version in the USA, if movies and tv shows are any guide. The latter is the one preferred in Commonwealth countries (possibly excluding Canada).

Is there a particular reason for this difference, and does it have anything to do with the (always-wrongheaded) proscription against splitting the infinitive? (Not that "have done" is an infinitive per se, but it is two parts of the same verb in the same way that "to do" is.) -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 01:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure the two sentences have the same meaning. To me, the most natural interpretation of the first sentence assumes that the speaker actually did whatever it was, and means "It's possible (counterfactually) that I never could have done X", while the second means "It's impossible that I could have ever done X". AnonMoos (talk) 04:07, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm sure one could find all manner of nuanced meanings. But take a scenario where the speaker has been accused of something reprehensible, and their response is as above. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 06:26, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The second sounds more emphatic to me too. I half expect the first to be followed by an "except" or "if only". Clarityfiend (talk) 08:53, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's also "I never could have done that." Or, maybe poetically, "Never could I have done that." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Similarly, there is "would have not been possible" vs. "would not have been possible". While the second is much more common, the first has been steadily gaining relative popularity.[1] Selecting the "British English" or "American English" corpus makes little difference. But "has been steadily gaining" has steadily been losing popularity to "has steadily been gaining".[2]  --Lambiam 08:58, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interchange of /ɪks/ and /ɛks/, while pronouncing the prefix (initial) "ex" of English words.[edit]

Some IPA-oriented dictionaries, e.g. Collins dictionary, give an initial /ɪks/ for some words, e.g. "expand" and "expect", while giving an initial /ɛks/ for some other words, like "expend" and "expectorate".

If somebody who is currently speaking English, while pronouncing English words that begin with the prefix "ex" of both kinds, permanently pronounces this "ex" with the wrong vowel, whether the vowel of "set" or the vowel of "sit", can this be considered to be a Sibboleth, i.e. a sign of being a non-native English speaker, to a native English speaker's ears?

Additionally, does the answer to my question depend on whether, the speaker pronounces the initial "ex" with the wrong vowel of "set" instead of the correct vowel of "sit", or vice versa, i.e. the speaker pronounces the initial "ex" with the wrong vowel of "sit" instead of the correct vowel of "set"?

Note I'm only asking about the prefix (initial) "ex", rather than about the very phonetic distinction between "sit/set" and likewise. 147.235.223.23 (talk) 13:09, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your question is at odds with the British English version I use:
The American version seems to show the same four pronunciations with an alternative for each beginning ɛ in place of ɪ.
It's worth adding that not all English speakers have the same accent; and that English dictionaries record, not prescribe, usage of spelling and pronunciation — there is no rulebook. Bazza 7 (talk) 13:22, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I find that the pronunciation of the initial vowel gets changed by the way my tongue rises in preparation for the 'k' sound. If I say 'expand' very slowly (but without stopping the vowel sound until just before the consonant), the vowel becomes an e-i diphthong, as in 'ache'. However, if I heard someone speaking the word slowly, then I would expect the e-sound to predominate, and the i-sound on its own would sound incorrect. -- Verbarson  talkedits 13:42, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
147.235.223.23 -- I think there's a lot more toleration of variations of prononunciation in unstressed vowels in English than in stressed vowels. But if you got it wrong as to when to pronounce "x" as [ks] and when to pronounce it as [gz], that would sound very strange. -- AnonMoos (talk) 13:46, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of eksausting us, would you like to egzblain your last sentence by a simple eksample? Oh, sorry for forgetting the "h" in the third word. Oh, sorry for egz-janging the "p" by a "b" in the nineth word. It won't happen negzd dime, I promise. I'm pretty bad at spelling, yet I'm an egzbert in pronunciation. 147.235.223.23 (talk) 14:24, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you pronounced "exact" or "exaggerate" with [ks] instead of [gz], it would sound a bit strange. The [gz] pronunciation only happens intervocalically, usually immediately preceding a stressed vowel, so most of your examples don't work... AnonMoos (talk) 23:06, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So I've failed. But what about you? Would you like to give a few instances, just to clarify your last sentence in your previous contribution? 147.235.223.23 (talk) 14:24, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I already gave examples of "x"=[gz]; examples of "x"=[ks] are a dime a dozen. AnonMoos (talk) 23:25, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you think your examples (which I haven't noticed yet btw) are better than mine? 147.235.223.23 (talk) 14:24, 15 March 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A06:C701:427F:A900:B552:C10D:40A2:7B31 (talk) [reply]
My examples are where [gz] occurs according to the dictionaries, and where [ks] could also occur without causing any pronounceability problems, while many of 147.235.223.23's examples (egzblain egz-janging negzd egzbert) are non-existent and nonsensical, since in English phonotactics [gz] cannot occur before a consonant. (It only occurs intervocalically -- including before a letter "h" in spelling which is silent in pronunciation -- and in most cases only directly before a stressed vowel, though linguistic analogies have produced a few cases where either [ks] or [gz] can occur before a non-stressed vowel, as in "exit".) AnonMoos (talk) 18:53, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Things can vary. Such as the word "exit", which I've heard both as "ex-it" and "eggs-it". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but that's because if it were stressed as a noun (e.g. "an OBject") it would naturally have the [ks] pronunciation, while if it were stressed as a verb (e.g. "I obJECT") then it would be followed by a stressed vowel, which would favor the [gz] pronunciation. I don't think that many people today distinguish between [ks] in the noun and [gz] in the verb, or pronounce the verb with second syllable stress, but that's how the [gz] possible pronunciation of "exit" originated... AnonMoos (talk) 02:15, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have source for the claim that the stress in the word exit used as a verb was originally on the second syllable? The verb is derived from the noun, so I find this implausible.  --Lambiam 14:04, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's difficult to figure out how any [gz] could occur unless there were some circumstances when "x" was before a stressed vowel. AnonMoos (talk) 19:10, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary also gives pronunciations /ˈɛɡˌzaɪl/ and /ˈɛkˌsaɪl/ for the noun (and verb) exile. Likewise, it gives both /ˈɛksədəs/ and /ˈɛɡzədəs/ for the noun (and verb) exodus.  --Lambiam 14:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just before /ks/ or /gz/. How do you pronounce "any"? I think I grew up saying /ɪniː/ (my mother was from the South) but at some point I switched to /ɛniː/ because it sounded more like what my peers said. When I looked up Skeeter Davis's "The End of the World" I was struck by her pronunciation like the way I knew it as a child.
I would be surprised if we didn't have an article somewhere that covers this pair, but I don't know where to find it. --Trovatore (talk) 17:36, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Trovatore -- I have "agin" for "again", but pronounce "enny", not "inny". See Phonological history of English close front vowels#Pin–pen merger... -- AnonMoos (talk) 19:08, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

March 17[edit]

mercurial breasted[edit]

It's in a book from five centuries ago titled A History of the Levant Company. What does it mean? Omidinist (talk) 07:01, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

More context, please, like the full sentence it's used in. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. 'The mercurial breasted Mr. Harborne so noised the name of our island among the Turks that not an infant of the cur-tailed, skin-clipping pagans but talk of London as frequently as of their prophet's tomb at Mecca.' Omidinist (talk) 07:49, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That passage contains a number of insults against Muslims in the space of a few words ("skin-clipping" means circumcising). I would guess that "mercurial breasted" could mean that he's changeable in his emotions (unless it's some kind of fixed phrase). AnonMoos (talk) 11:54, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tuchman is quoting Thomas Nashe, who published this description of Harborne in his last work, Nashes Lenten Stuffe (1599). The passage is also quoted in the entry on Harborne in the Dictionary of National Biography. Other compounds with -breasted I found were foule-breasted[3] in a sermon by Thomas Adams (1583–1652), true-breasted[4][5] in a play by Thomas Kyd (1558–1594) and a poem by Thomas Heywood (early 1570s – 1641), and open-breasted, out-breasted, sweet-breasted, all in a 14-volume edition of the works of Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) and John Fletcher (1579–1625), where -breasted is glossed as meaning -voiced.[6] This fits with the other uses, foule-breasted meaning "foul-voiced" in the context of the sermon, and true-breasted meaning "speaking truth". So it appears that Nashe is implying that Harborne spoke in a mercurial manner, that he was (quick)silver-tongued. The term "noised" supports the hypothesis that the attribute is meant to characterize his way of speaking.  --Lambiam 12:38, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What about an association with Mercury, the god of commerce, financial gain, but also eloquence and trickery? --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Silver-tongued seems to be the exact meaning. Thanks everyone. Omidinist (talk) 19:10, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tobacco smoke enema[edit]

"blow smoke up someone's ass"[7] is a common expression.

Tobacco smoke enema was an old medical practice.

Are the two related in anyway? Because their concepts are very similar. OptoFidelty (talk) 17:45, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to Snopes, there is no direct connection; the vulgar idiom came into use only long after rectal fumigation was no longer practiced. Notwithstanding Wiktionary's claim that the verb blow smoke arose "By shortening of the full expression blow smoke up someone's ass, deemed less vulgar", my original research leads me to think that the direction is the reverse, and that we are dealing here with a humouristic lengthening – very possibly informed by the abandoned 19th-century medical procedure – of an idiom originally not related to medicine, but more to the production of metaphorical smokescreens.  --Lambiam 22:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Lambiam Thank you! OptoFidelty (talk) 06:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved
OptoFidelty (talk) 06:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Letter usage[edit]

  1. Why German uses Ü instead of Y for /y/ sound?
  2. Why Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian (outside digraphs) or Romanian do not use letter Y in native words?
  3. Is there any Germanic language that never uses letter C for /k/ or /s/ sound in native words, but uses it for another sound in native words?
  4. Why word price in English is not spelled by an S, despite that it has /s/ sound?
  5. Is there any language that uses letter C but not letter B?
  6. Is there any language in Europe that does not use all of the letters A, E, I, O and U in native words?
  7. Why so-called identification marks, common in Romance languages, that are diacritics put on letters to signify sound change or stress, are almost always added to vowels and almost never to consonants? --40bus (talk) 20:36, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    4. Because prise means something else and is pronounced differently. Similarly device and devise, advice and advise. And then there's practice and practise. Bazza 7 (talk) 20:46, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Funny enough, price used to also be spelled prize. GalacticShoe (talk) 22:02, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    1. The vowel mutation found e.g. in the irregular plurals of some German nouns (called "umlaut" – not the diacritic but the phonemic switch) was originally denoted by adding the letter ⟨e⟩ after the mutating vowel: Acker → Aecker, Vogel → Voegel, Bruder → Brueder. For the plural Brueder, see e.g. these manuscripts: [8], [9], [10]. Later, instead of writing an ⟨e⟩ after the vowel, a small ⟨e⟩ was written over the mutating vowel, like e
    u
    . When the shape of a handwritten letter ⟨e⟩ changed to a zigzag (see Kurrent), the small superscript ⟨e⟩ followed suit. The former ue now looked like и
    u
    . The next step was to replace the superscript zigzag by two strokes, still common in handwriting: ıı
    u
    . Finally, in printed text, the strokes were replaced by dots: ü. There was simply no reason to treat the digraph ue differently from the digraphs ae and oe.  --Lambiam 22:29, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    1. It does use Y in Greek loanwords, e.g. Psychologie /ˌpsyː.ço.loˈɡiː/, Elysium /eˈlyːzi̯ʊm/, Typ /tyːp/... Double sharp (talk) 06:48, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Why -se at the end of word is pronounced /z/ and not /s/?--40bus (talk) 20:49, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why do people who write questions like these not know how to construct questions in English? --142.112.220.50 (talk) 21:35, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because they're Finnish, evidently... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:44, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here at the Reference desk we do support such questions.  --Lambiam 22:31, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More importantly, why does 40bus continually fail to understand that "why" is not really a valid question to ask in most of these cases. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:08, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not always. Practise, as I mentioned above. Bazza 7 (talk) 22:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As for question 4, "price" does not have original etymological [s] (from Latin pretium), while "ice" does, so that the spelling of "ice" could be considered more striking. Of course, the purpose is to have a spelling which unambiguously means [s], without any possibility of being interpreted as [z]... AnonMoos (talk) 01:31, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of course English could have spelled [z] as z, so that s would unambiguously mean [s] and there were no need for ce, but why take the easy solution? PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:30, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In Old English, the sounds [s] and [z] were allophones of the same phoneme, while the letter Z occurred rarely, and with the sound-value [ts]. The letter Z often meant [ts] in Old French as well. The contrast between the sounds [s] and [z] didn't become fully phonemic in English until the loss of word-final schwas in Middle English (some of which have visual remnants as so-called "silent e" in modern English spelling). The association between the sound [z] and the letter Z didn't take hold until even later, when there came to be substantial numbers of loanwords from ancient Greek in English, maybe too late to use the letter Z to radically re-shape English spelling. Z has always been one of the high-value Scrabble tile letters in English (along with J, X, and Q -- though J wasn't a separate letter from I before the 17th century). In any case, it might not really be much of an "advantage" if the English noun plural ending, noun possessive ending, and verb third-person singular present ending, were all to be spelled with "-s" when attached to some words, but "-z" when attached to other words... AnonMoos (talk) 23:26, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

5. Is there any language that uses letter C but not letter B?[edit]

As for question 5, if you go way back, Etruscan did not have a contrast between voiced and voiceless stops, so it did not really have any use for letters for [b], [d], and [g]. This meant that when Etruscans adopted the Greek alphabet of Cumae, the letters B/Beta and D/Delta were kept in the theoretical "model alphabet", but were not actually used to write Etruscan sounds, while in some versions of Etruscan writing practices (the version which most directly influenced the Romans), the letter Gamma was used to write [k] before the vowels E and I, the letter Kappa was used to write [k] before the vowel A, and the letter Qoppa was used to write [k] before the vowel U (the vowel [o] did not exist in the Etruscan language, so that the letter O also only existed in the theoretical "model alphabet" in Etruscan). That's how the descendant of the Greek letter Gamma came to write [k] in Latin, and was the origin of the Latin letter C, so that the Romans had to create a differentiated letter G (i.e. C with an added line) to have a symbol to write the sound [g]. So it could be said that Etruscan (some versions at least, and discounting letters which were only in the "model alphabet" without actually being used to write Etruscan), had C without B... AnonMoos (talk) 01:31, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess my answer to question 5 also answered question 6! AnonMoos (talk) 01:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some versions of the Quechua alphabet for native words. --Error (talk) 01:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. Why Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian (outside digraphs) or Romanian do not use letter Y in native words?[edit]

In the case of the Romanian alphabet, I think it is because they followed Italian. I thought that avoiding confusion with U (Cyrillic) in the Romanian transitional alphabet may have had an influence, but our article says it used uk (Cyrillic). --Error (talk) 01:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3. Is there any Germanic language that never uses letter C for /k/ or /s/ sound in native words, but uses it for another sound in native words?[edit]

Some of the transliterations methods listed in Yiddish orthography and Cimbrian and Wymysorys languages, from a glance at their pages. --Error (talk) 01:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hard to prove a negative. Dutch uses c a lot in the ch digraph (pronounced /x/) in native words: 43300 of 418690 words in /usr/share/dict/dutch have ch. The other uses of c are typically pronounced /s/ or /k/ and I'm pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of those 49484 words are loans, or at least have the c in a borrowed morpheme, but it's a lot of work to prove that none are native. Many of those loans have been around for centuries. The same applies to Frisian, which is more aggressive in making native spellings for loans, substituting an s or k for the c. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the Germanic languages have one or several di- tri- or tetragraphs containing C, but I guess that these combinations were excluded from the question. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:08, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

7. Why so-called identification marks, common in Romance languages, that are diacritics put on letters to signify sound change or stress, are almost always added to vowels and almost never to consonants?[edit]

Is identification mark a phrase in English? Do you mean diacritics? --Error (talk) 01:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are of course ignoring the Cedilla and the Romanian Ș. Off the top of my unexpert head, I suggest it's because vowels are much more open to variant pronunciation, while most consonants are fairly consistent, or their variations are less often significant and noticed in Romance languages, unlike in, for example, Indo-Aryan languages. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.213.188.170 (talk) 04:48, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When those marks apply not to a single phoneme, but to the entire syllable (like stress marks), it makes sense to put them on the nucleus of the syllable, which is normally a vowel. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:16, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, that wasn't good enough for the inventors of the International Phonetic alphabet, who chose to decree that the IPA stress marks should be placed BEFORE the stressed syllable, something which I've always found rather unintuitive and awkward (at least I'm very awkward at using this cumbersome and strange convention -- I've always left out stress marks from my transcriptions whenever I could possibly get away with it...) AnonMoos (talk) 23:27, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that would explain why in the past you have mistaken mine, placed after the syllable, for an apostrophe. {The poster formerly knwn as 87.81.230.195} 51.241.39.117 (talk) 05:43, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

March 19[edit]

Why do these characters sound so different?[edit]

Usually when two Chinese characters are the same syllable with different tones, they sound like the same syllable with different tones (examples are sān/三 and sǎn/伞). However, the syllables rendered as “er” sound like radically different syllables. Ér/儿 sounds a bit like a filler word (the exact sound of the E here is hard to describe), but èr/二 has the E a lot more A-like, ending up sounding closer to the English word “are.” Why do these characters sound like totally different syllables as opposed to the same syllable just with different tones? It’s been a long time since I heard 耳 and I’ve only encountered 尔 very few times (almost exclusively in writing), so I don’t 100% remember what I heard them as, but I think they were closer to 儿. Primal Groudon (talk) 14:10, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm that the vowel quality is often quite different in èr compared to the other tones. (Not in my idiolect, though.) Erhua claims (but without a citation) that this is a change that took place in recent decades. Double sharp (talk) 14:55, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Appositive pronoun cases[edit]

There are 4 situations where one case of a pronoun is prescribed in formal writing but where another case is used in everyday talk. These are:

  1. Compounds (e.g. you and me)
  2. Appositives (us followed by a noun)
  3. Predicate nominatives
  4. Who or whom

The second of these I see no references to anywhere in Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia have an article talking about the use of "us" followed by a noun as a subject?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:58, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Who vs. whom isn't really comparable to the others, since in this case the old object form is slowly leaving the language and being replaced by the old subject form -- while in the other situations, the object form replaces selected uses of the subject form, but there is no tendency for the subject form to be eliminated from the language. In some cases when this happens, the object pronoun is being used as a disjunctive pronoun, but I'm not sure that explains conjoined pronouns... AnonMoos (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, "It's I" is rather stylistically discordant (elevated formality of pronoun vs. the more relaxed level of speech of the contraction), while "It is I!" might be used by a melodrama villain to announce his arrival on stage, but not in too many other contexts. It's hard to get away from "It's me" and sound at all natural in 21st century English... AnonMoos (talk) 18:39, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The only character I can think of who regularly uses the phrase is Monsieur Roger Leclerc. DuncanHill (talk) 02:08, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. A very culturally prominent use of "us" + appositional noun in the mid-20th century U.S. was Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens... -- AnonMoos (talk) 02:46, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Shiver my timbers! Them chickens can talk!  --Lambiam 08:19, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we were not chickens, would you say "nobody but we"? --Tamfang (talk) 19:05, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The only way that "we" would be formally correct there would be if "but" were a conjunction, rather than a preposition, which seems doubtful. AnonMoos (talk) 01:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is nobody here except we chickens. DuncanHill (talk) 02:11, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"There is/are naught here save we chickens"? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.241.39.117 (talk) 06:26, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would work against the ethnic nature of the joke. Plus it might make the farmer even more suspicious. <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 02:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's an old joke that someone at an office picks up a ringing telephone and says "To whom am I speaking?", and the caller says "Did you just use the word `whom'? Sorry, I must have misdialed" and hangs up... AnonMoos (talk) 05:11, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Duncanhill -- According to Wiktionary, the word "except" is also a preposition... AnonMoos (talk) 05:11, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Translation of a Ukrainian memorial plaque, please?[edit]

I'd be so grateful for a translation of this memorial plaque. I know it commemorates Stepan Kovnir from eternity to eternity in the mind of the grateful city of Vasylkiv for building the church, but my Ukrainian is not good enough to capture the spirit of the writing. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 20:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For people wanting to give it a try, the text on the plaque is
з глибини віків
у глибінь віків
хай славиться
ім'я
Степана Ковніра
1695•1786
творця храму
окраси міста нашого
вдячні нащадки
земляку своєму
у знаменний рік

1000
ліття
Василькова
1993
With the help of Google translate [and Theurgist], this is, more or less,
from the depths of the ages
to the depths of the ages
let be glorified
the name
Stepan Kovnir
1695•1786
the creator of the temple,
the ornament of our city
the grateful posterity
to their compatriot
in the special year of
the
1000'th
anniversary
of Vasylkiv
1993
 --Lambiam 11:26, 20 March 2024 (UTC) [edited 20:36, 22 March 2024 (UTC)][reply]
A couple of things:
  • It actually starts "з глибини віків / у глибінь віків". The words глибина, -и and глибінь mean the same thing.
  • The actual word is нащадки nashchadky 'descendants'.
  • "у знаменний рік" seems to be a way of introducing an anniversary. This bilingual document translates "у знаменний рік 20-ої річниці" as "in the special year of the 20th anniversary".
--Theurgist (talk) 11:15, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, so changed – except that Wiktionary gives a sense posterity for the plural of нащадок, so I have left that since the grateful plaquists are not likely to be descendants of the architect.  --Lambiam 20:36, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't aware that "descendant(s)" can only be used in the literal sense. Meanwhile I fixed the romanization from nashchadki to nashchadky, using the standard representation of и /ɪ/, as opposed to і /i/. --Theurgist (talk) 00:14, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

March 23[edit]

James is having an effect on the teacher since Monday.[edit]

When I see a sentence like this one, I would wish to have it rephrased as either of the following:

  • James has been having an effect on the teacher since Monday.
  • James has had an effect on the teacher since Monday.
  • James had an effect on the teacher since Monday.
  • James had had an effect on the teacher since Monday.
  • James is having an effect on the teacher as of Monday.
  • James started having an effect on the teacher on Monday.

Would I be correct to assume that the "is having" sentence above (shown in italics) would demonstrate an erroneous usage of the word since, or is that just my presumption? - MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 20:11, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence in the section title is not very natural in English, and is reminiscent of things that Continental European speakers sometimes say ("I am living in Paris since 1992" etc). I'm not sure that "James had an effect on the teacher since Monday" is much better, but the others are OK. The short explanation is that continuing action up to the present moment usually requires the perfective construction in English... AnonMoos (talk) 22:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's poor English, so it's impossible to tell what the intention of the sentence actually is. That being the case, it's impossible to be certain about how to correctly rewrite it. HiLo48 (talk) 22:54, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I'd go with "James has been affecting the teacher since Monday" as what comes most naturally to an English speaker, assuming that is what is really meant. I think we may need more context. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:59, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with "I have been living in Paris since 1992." being one of the best ways to rephrase it, and now that I've thought about it, "I lived in Paris since 1992." kinda sounds like an incomplete sentence. - MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 02:31, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, the truly Continental way to misuse "since" would be "I live in Paris since four years" (the way some people with weak English skills would mistranslate the impeccable French sentence "J'habite à Paris depuis quatre ans"). AnonMoos (talk) 09:31, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a non-native English speaker, I would also say that "I have been living in Paris since 1992" sounds most natural, but then, is there a difference in meaning between that and "I have lived in Paris since 1992"? — Kpalion(talk) 08:57, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

March 24[edit]

Relative prosodic length of a long vowel in Arabic: 2x or 3x a short vowel?[edit]

I was watching a video that gives the rules for the recitation of the Quran and something puzzled me: it said Arabic long vowels have naturally a "madd" مَدّ (that literally means "extending") of twice the length of a short vowel (in their terminology a "madd" of two "harakaat" حركات, one "harakah" حركة being the length of a short vowel). That's the so called natural madd المدّ الطبعيّ and let's not even worry about the other kinds of madd which are irrelevant here. But that would give a total of three "harakaat" for the long vowel which would make it three times the length of a short vowel since the madd is the extension of the vowel beyond the duration of the short vowel, not the total length of the long vowel, that is (again in their terminology) the length of one of the three extension letters that are used to write long vowels in Arabic. In most languages a long vowel is twice the length of a short vowel. Am I misinterpreting their rules or are Arabic long vowels really supposed to be (at least in the context of the recitation of the Quran and possibly the recitation of poetry) three times as long as short vowels? Thanks. 178.51.93.5 (talk) 03:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Absolute durations of vowels and consonants measured in milliseconds do not have simple arithmetic relationships with each other, and in many cases if you're looking at a spectrogram, it's very difficult to say precisely where one sound ends and another begins. Usually in various languages, long vowels are enough longer than short vowels that there's a Categorical perception distinction between the two types. Of course, Qur'anic recitation has special features; what Wikipedia has on the subject is in article Tajwid... AnonMoos (talk) 04:03, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. The traditional Western term for "extension letters that are used to write long vowels" is matres lectionis... AnonMoos (talk) 04:07, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Traditional prosodists (be they Latin, Greek or Indian) make statements like "a long is worth two shorts". I was not concerned with spectrograms and measurements in milliseconds but such statements. My question was: What does Arabic traditional prosody actually say? The way I understand statements made in videos made by people of Arabic origin apparently familiar with traditional Arabic prosody is simply in contradiction with statements made in your article Tajwid such as that "[p]rolongation refers to the number of morae (beats of time) that are pronounced when a voweled letter (fatḥah, ḍammah, kasrah) is followed by a madd letter (alif, yāʼ or wāw). The number of morae then becomes two." (at paragraph "Prolongation"). This is in contradiction with the way I understand Arabic theory which is that "the number of morae is then increased by two" (as opposed to "becomes two"). Your article mixes traditional terminology and Western terminology (what it calls "prolongation" is the "madd" and "morae" are the "harakaat") but its statement is otherwise clear. But is it correct? Did your article misunderstand Arabic theory and was it me? That is basically my question. 178.51.93.5 (talk) 13:46, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When those grammarians say something like "a long is worth two shorts", in a context such as parsing dactylic hexameter verse, they're referring to the "mora" linguistic unit, which strictly speaking is a property of syllables as a whole, though in some contexts moras can be associated with individual vowels or syllable coda consonants. The original purpose of the mora was mainly to serve as a unit of syllable prosodic weight for purposes of determining poetic scansion and/or stress placement, not really as an absolute measurement of vowel length. I know some things about linguistics and the Arabic language, but nothing about traditional Qur'an recitation, so if there are discrepacies between a Youtube video and the Wikipedia "Tajwid" article (not mine, I don't think I ever edited it), I can't help you in resolving them, sorry... AnonMoos (talk) 18:28, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for trying. By "your" article I meant Wikipedia's. I meant the collective body of Wikipedia's editors. I can see how my use of "duration" may encourage one to believe I was interested in absolute measurement. I guess "prosodic length" should be clearer. Changed it as I believe strikethrough in section headings messes up searches. There is enough uniformity in various videos and tajweed sites on this point to conclude that this must be a real feature of the Arabic theory and not a random error. Whether I interpret it correctly that's another story. That's why I wouldn't say I'm certain there is a real discrepancy between the article and the traditional theory. That's what I'm trying to find out. I was hoping there would be some knowledgeable Muslims here. The next best option is to contact a couple of creators of those Tajweed resources and ask them directly. I may wait until after Eid al-Fitr though. Thanks again. Cheers. 178.51.93.5 (talk) 19:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

March 25[edit]

Ducks in a row[edit]

Where does the idiomatic phrase "to get all one's ducks in a row" come from? Thanks. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 14:30, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Under the alternative form have one's ducks in a row, Wiktionary conjectures, "Perhaps from the image of ducklings following their mother in an orderly line. See also line up one's ducks." For the latter, Wiktionary offers a conjecture from rather different imagery: "Most likely a reference to the line of ducks in a shooting gallery."
Here we find these two idioms in a mash-up: "He had it all planned out before he brought it up for discussion, my Uncle Roy being a man who liked to have his ducks lined up in a row before shooting them."[11]  --Lambiam 15:06, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So nothing to do with snooker or bowling then? 205.239.40.3 (talk) 15:09, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here are Michael Quinion's thoughts on the idiom. He does mention that some have proposed the cue sport of pool as a possible origin but dismisses that suggestion. Deor (talk) 15:22, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Have you ever watched a mother duck with her ducklings? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:46, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Where they all follow in an unruly gaggle and the mother duck just leaves them to it... Wouldn't that be getting all your ducklings in a line? Martinevans123 (talk) 10:22, 26 March 2024 (UTC) Maybe your ducklings are just much better behaved?[reply]
Line and row are synonyms in this sense and the shorter "duck" might be favored over "duckling".--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:08, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason I imagine a line of ducklings like a queue and a row of ducks like a shooting gallery. For me it depends on the orientation! Martinevans123 (talk) 16:14, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The orientation of the viewer, not the ducks themselves.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:34, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The orientation of the ducks is an added complication. As is the position of the viewer. I might accept they were synonyms from a God's-eye view. If the ducks were flying overhead, however, I'd not describe them as being in a row. Perhaps one has to assume stationary ducks, which are physically within reach. Although, of course, they are only idiomatic notional ducks. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:16, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why wouldn't flying ducks be in a row? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:12, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, possibly just my personal use/understanding of the word "row". And I can't actually claim to have ever seen either. Unlike geese, ducks seem a bit more random in their flying formations. And I'm not sure you can have a line, or a row, of just two. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ducklings follow their moms in orderly rows: Why ducklings follow in a row. Then, of course, the idiom reappropriates their innate behavior of doing that to our own ends. Modocc (talk) 20:25, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Who does the getting? It looks somewhat too innate to be managed, least of all by Mom? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:32, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Their moms are known to lead them in and around the water. When in the water, they have a distinct advantage of surfing each other's wake in an orderly row per the article I linked to. Modocc (talk) 21:10, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, sure they lead them, and generally not looking back. If "getting one's duck(ling)s in a row" is idiomatically expressive of leadership, then I guess that's consistent. But I suspect the phrase generally means something more/else. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:01, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By following their mothers in orderly lines, the ducks are well-organized. Thus the idiom means "to get things ready, be well-organized, to put things, especially affairs, in order" as in "completing preparations for doing something". Modocc (talk) 00:18, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I can see the similarities, but am still not convinced, sorry. Another issue is the fact that as soon as the mother duck stops, the ducklings' orderly line disappears. The idiomatic ducks seem to be deliberately and carefully placed in a static formation? I've looked at the definitions over at wikt, but they seem to have no sources to support them at all? Martinevans123 (talk) 09:13, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can we be sure it's not related to bowling? Bowls is an ancient sport. This book [12] says:

One tale takes us to the early history of bowling when the bowling pins were clunkier and squatter, earning them the nickname "ducks". Before fancy machines did the job, someone had to manually line up these "duck pins" after each round. So having your ducks in a row was like having these bowling pins all neat and tidy before rolling your next ball.

This book [13] traces it back to forte dux in aro (forty ducks in a row) found in Caesar's De bello Gallico. I don't recall it despite it being a set book at school. 2A00:23D0:73F:FC01:2DB6:579E:2C6E:580A (talk) 10:25, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

March 26[edit]

Wordplay type?[edit]

Is there a term that describes the type of wordplay or pun where similar-sounding words are substituted, like "flutter-by" for butterfly or "dangle-lion" for dandelion? I was reading about Charles Rumney Samson who referred to German Uhlans as "ewe-lambs". Alansplodge (talk) 11:54, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Malapropism. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 11:59, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Eggcorn? Nardog (talk) 12:19, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Flutter-by would be a single word variant of a spoonerism. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:54, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Eggcorn might be the closest, but most of the examples quoted in our article are unintentional mishearings, rather than being intended for humorous effect. Alansplodge (talk) 14:13, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For a related concept, see Mondegreen. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.241.39.117 (talk) 17:49, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
'Flutter-by' for 'butterfly' is a Spoonerism - swapping the initial sounds of two words, or in this case, two parts of one word. -- Verbarson  talkedits 17:26, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, but I was asking about substituting asonant words as a type of joke. Another example might be the Great War soldiers' versions of local names, such as "Eat apples" for Étaples or "White sheet" for Wytschaete. Alansplodge (talk) 18:40, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Or Wipers for Ypres. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:12, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These appear to be simply known as one of two kinds of puns: "... or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning, a play on words.". For example, see Puns, Palindromes, And More: 14 Types Of Wordplay "Puns that involve similar sounding words:" Modocc (talk) 01:23, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]


March 28[edit]