Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language

Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

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.

Ready? Ask a new question!

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:

• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

April 22

Greek letters and origin

Are there any Greek letters or letter combinations that are more prevalent in some of these types of words than in others?

1: Native words.

2: Older loans, which refers to loans borrowed into Greek back when each letter and diphthong still had its Ancient Greek pronunciation.

3: Newer loans, which refers to loans borrowed into Greek after each letter and letter combination had already shifted to its modern Greek pronunciation. Primal Groudon (talk) 13:18, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Generally, letters and letter combinations like ⟨ω, η, υ, ει, οι, αι, αυ, ευ, γγ⟩ are indicators for a native word, because the sounds they represent have more 'straightforward' spellings, which loanwords generally use. To an extent the same goes for ⟨δ, θ, γ, ψ⟩, as their sounds are rare in the vocabulary that Greek borrows. On the other hand, ⟨τζ⟩ and, especially if initial, ⟨μπ, ντ, γκ⟩, are indicators for a loanword. --Theurgist (talk) 15:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

English ⟨ee⟩ tends to be transcribed in proper nouns as ⟨η⟩, though (for example Ληντς for Leeds and Στηλ for Steele), but neither this nor other conventions are set rules. And occasionally, for unclear reasons, the conventional Greek transcription of a name does not suggest its original pronunciation.  --Lambiam 16:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The Greek Wikipedia's article about the city is at Λιντς, while bearers of the surname are given as both Στιλ and Στηλ, the latter article also citing Στιλ as an alternative. I did not say those are absolute rules; variations exist especially for languages such as English and French which themselves spell those sounds variously, and less for others. --Theurgist (talk) 18:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

By “the sounds they represent” and “their sounds”, do you mean their current or original/ancient sounds? Primal Groudon (talk) 17:56, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Current. --Theurgist (talk) 18:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

@Theurgist: Now I'm curious: are there native Greek words with the loanword-indicating combinations you mentioned? Double sharp (talk) 18:20, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Initial μπ, ντ, γκ indicate voiced stops [b],[d], [g], but initial Ancient Greek stops became fricatives. AnonMoos (talk) 20:28, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

There are a number of native Modern Greek words with initial μπ, ντ, γκ; I believe most of them are the result of fusion of Ancient Greek initial "εν-" with a following plosive, as in μπαίνω < ἐμπαίνω < ἐμ-βαίνω 'enter'. Other examples are μπάζω, μπερδεύω, μπήγω, μπλέκω, μπορώ, μπροστά; ντόπιος, ντρέπομαι, ντροπή, ντύνω; γκαμήλα, γκαρδιακός, γκαστρώνω, γκρεμός and others. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:52, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I should have thought of these common words μπορώ and ντύνω/ντύνομαι – although sometimes the most common things are not representative because they are also the most irregular ones. And is there anything native with ⟨τζ⟩? Even τζατζίκι is in fact a loan from Turkish, and the cluster wasn't used in Ancient Greek. --Theurgist (talk) 12:11, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this corresponds to your 1: or 2:, but some combinations are thought to be characteristic of the Pre-Greek substrate. I have previously read somewhere that this includes the 'νθ' ['nth'] combination found in place names of pre-Greek origin such as 'Κορινθος' ['Corinth']. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 151.227.134.31 (talk) 15:48, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The onsets κτ-, χτ-, πτ-, φτ-, χθ- and φθ- signal that a modern Greek word is inherited from Ancient Greek.  --Lambiam 13:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Do initial χτ φτ exist? (None in my dictionary.) In all such sequences I know of, they match in voice and aspiration. (There are also a few words beginning βδ and one rare γδ!) I imagine that χθ φθ exist because the aspiration was considered to apply to the cluster as a whole. —Tamfang (talk) 03:29, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

χτ- and φτ- onsets are frequent in Modern Greek, but they are typically derived from either κτ-/πτ- or χθ-/φθ- respectively in Ancient Greek. There was a general rule of dissimilation where clusters of either two aspirates or two plain voiceless plosives were changed to these fricative+plosive pairs. Examples with χτ- in Modern Greek: χτες 'yesterday', χτενίζω 'comb', χτίζω 'build' etc (some of these have alternative spellings with either χθ- or κτ- reflecting the etymology); examples with φτ-: φτιάχνω 'make', φτάνω 'arrive', φτερό 'wing', etc. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:52, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks! (Likewise for your remarks on μπ, ντ, γκ.) —Tamfang (talk) 20:01, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Medial geminates do not match in aspiration -- see Bartholomae's law... AnonMoos (talk) 22:16, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I notice that all six of those combinations have a dental plosive as the second element. Is that the only type of initial plosive combination possible? Primal Groudon (talk) 03:10, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Ancient Greek phonology#Onset says yes, in Ancient Greek: Six stop clusters occur. All of them agree in voice-onset time, and begin with a labial or velar and end with a dental. Thus, the clusters /pʰtʰ kʰtʰ pt kt bd ɡd/ are allowed. Double sharp (talk) 05:28, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

New Deal protest sign

hello, on this sign, why is a word ("government") written that way? (reverse N/Cyrillic И (?)) ? Thank you everyone in advance Aecho6Ee (talk) 13:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Substituting in a few similar looking Cyrillic characters is sometimes used in graphic design to give a Russian flavour; e.g. the cover of "Superman: Red Son", about an alternate comic book world where baby Superman lands in the USSR and is raised by Russian peasants. Perhaps in the context of not accepting "government relief", the suggestion is that government relief is a Russian or (in 1940) Communist concept.

Or it's a typo. 91.194.221.225 (talk) 14:43, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Not in a literal sense, since the sign is evidently hand-written. Semi-literacy is possible, but unlikely since the short statement contains 4 correctly-written 'Ns' preceding the one in question. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 151.227.134.31 (talk) 15:43, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

They missed the obvious chance, though, to write GOVEЯИMEИT. Mistakenly copying the letter in a mirrored form seems more likely.  --Lambiam 15:51, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

For the low-point of pseudo-Cyrillic, see the name of the Paul McCartney album CHOBA B CCCP as released in the U.S. and U.K., where they fake-Cyrillic'ed an actual Cyrillic phrase! AnonMoos (talk) 17:14, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the letters are stenciled: if you look closely, you'll see that the "S"s of THIS and IS are completely identical, including slight serifs that would be quite unlikely in freehand lettering. It's therefore possible that the stencil for the second N in GOVERNMENT got turned around by accident and by the time the sign-painter noticed, it was too late and/or the sign-painter didn't care enough to fix it. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:57, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Good solution! --142.112.220.50 (talk) 02:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

April 24

O dialeto fluminense

O dialeto fluminense - please see pt:Dialeto fluminense and en Fluminense dialect and https://web.archive.org/web/20071030034105/http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/cvc/hlp/geografia/som90.html

Hello all, I would appreciate your assistance with this.

Also: what the actual firetruck is going on with this "cancel / Add topic" firetruckery nonsense when I simply want to ask a WP:RD/L question? (Self-answer, I guess: take it up somewhere else.)

Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:51, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Each question is a new topic, by the terminology of this page. Hence, to start a question you click on 'Add topic' (at the top of the page), and while typing it in, you may change your mind and 'Cancel' (and we will see nothing) or go ahead and 'Add topic', whereupon we will see it. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 12:51, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

As to your request for help, en-Wikipedia has no article for the Fluminense dialect (yet), and I suspect few regular respondants here speak Portugese, Brazilian or otherwise, hence the lack so far of a substantive response. I for one have no idea what it is that you actually want. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.144.58 (talk) 18:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Brazilian Portuguese#Dialects is as close as we get. Alansplodge (talk) 12:48, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

April 27

Of or In

Hello if an article is focused on highlighting a country's or city's attractions or venues or landmarks is it of or in? For example, Landmarks of Zambia or Landmarks in Zambia? Attractions of Seattle or Attractions in Seattle?

Wikipedia seems to be inconsistent. Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 21:37, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't suppose it matters much, but in seems more neutral, while of implies that the people or government of the region are responsible for the thing in question. So we have Slums in Chennai and Abandoned mine drainages in Colorado, not of in either case, whereas Castles of Albania says "these castles are a great asset to the Albanian nation".  Card Zero  (talk) 00:04, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Both are clearly correct. "Of" indicates association, as in prepositinal sense 8 here, "belonging or connected to"; "in" indicates location, as in prepositional sense 1 here, "within the limits, bounds, or area of". So it's a matter of preference. --142.112.220.50 (talk) 00:08, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I would tend to see "landmarks of" as more natural than "landmarks in". Native British English speaker. DuncanHill (talk) 00:10, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

@Card Zero - that was the same line of logic I had. Take for example, Pueblo Bonito which was built before the state of New Mexico even existed. To me it would feel more neutral to say it is a landmark in New Mexico. Thanks for the reply. Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 00:20, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

April 28

Questions

1. Are there any English dialects with short front rounded vowels, like /ʏ/ or /œ/?
2. Are there any words in English where checked vowels occur before /r/?
3. Are there any words in English where short full vowels occur in end of word?
4. Is there any language where epenthetic vowels or clitics can be stressed?
5. Are there any words in English where short vowels occur in stressed open syllables?
6. In Spanish, word país is pronounced [pa.ˈis]. The hypothetical word pais would be pronounced as [pajs], with a diphthong. But how would [ˈpa.is] be spelled, with a hiatus and stress on first syllable?
7. Can in English the OVS word order be used on emphasis?

--40bus (talk) 20:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

As for no. 2, checked vowels occur before intervocalic "r" in all quasi-standard dialects of English that I'm aware of. In the trio of "marry, merry, and Mary", short "a" [æ] traditionally occured in the first word and short "e" [ɛ] in the second. AnonMoos (talk) 02:14, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

New Yorkers, at least, tend to pronounce "marry" and "Mary" with a short a. In the midwest at least, marry, merry and Mary are generally pronounced identically, i.e. to sound like "merry". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

See Mary–marry–merry merger. In British English, this merger does not exist, the three words are pronounced with different vowels. Alansplodge (talk) 21:30, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of merging or not, checked/short vowels occur before intervocalic "r" in all quasi-standard dialects of English that I'm aware of. AnonMoos (talk) 23:17, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Is there an article on the Belvoir / Beaver merger? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:19, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

What is that supposed to mean? AnonMoos (talk) 23:21, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Belvoir and Beaver are pronounced the same. DuncanHill (talk) 23:48, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Learning this has just given me the same level of whiplash I felt when I learned that Cholmondeley is pronounced "Chum-lee." GalacticShoe (talk) 00:07, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

That's nice -- it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with checked vowels before "r", and so is exactly as relevant here as "Saturn has rings"... AnonMoos (talk) 00:41, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

As for no. 3, I already pointed out "yeah" and "baaah" (bleating of a sheep) previously. If you mean stressed short or checked vowels ending full lexical words (non-interjections), the answer is "no". AnonMoos (talk) 02:14, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

There is pho. Nardog (talk) 23:56, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Only if it's pronounced in a foreign way. AnonMoos (talk) 00:41, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

As for no. 5, there are many many English words where a stressed short/checked vowel occurs before a single intervocalic consonant (river, rubber, better, sinner etc. etc, where the orthographic double consonant letters do not indicate distinctive phonological geminate consonant sounds), but whether such a syllable is considered "open" depends on your theory of syllabification. AnonMoos (talk) 02:22, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

As for no. 4, there are a few forms in Tiberian Hebrew where an originally epenthetic vowel ends up stressed. The noun חדר "room" is Heder in the absolute state. It's a Segolate, so the first vowel is stressed, while the second vowel is originally epenthetic, but sometimes in the construct state the stress shifts to the second syllable... AnonMoos (talk) 02:44, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

See the first two pronunciations at Wiktionary (though not strictly Biblical). AnonMoos (talk) 23:20, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

As for no. 7, it's easy to get OSV with topicalization (focus fronting): "Him I don't like". OVS would be difficult outside of tortured poetry... AnonMoos (talk) 02:56, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

If an example of tortured poetry is needed, "Jawbone And The Air-Rifle" by The Fall contains the line "No bottle has he anymore". --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:39, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

V2 word order mentions some vestiges in Modern English. The section on direct quotations is relevant, as the quote can be seen as the direct object of the verb in the dialogue tag. So, ‘“Don't let us go too far!” said Frodo,’ is in OVS order. PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:52, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

It's kind of stretching the meanings to call a full sentence an "object". If by object we mean something which is typically given an accusative ending in case-inflected languages (due to its relationship with a verb), then OVS is quite marginal in modern English. (Notice that in the V2 word order article you linked to, the things that can cause V2 are listed as "topic adverbs and adverbial phrases" and quotatives -- not objects...) AnonMoos (talk) 22:15, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

4: Bulgarian has both. After the negative particle, pronominal and reflexive clitics are normally stressed: не те видях /nɛ ˈtɛ viˈdjax/ 'I didn't see you' (cf. днес те видях /ˈdnɛs tɛ viˈdjax/ 'today I saw you'), не се знае /nɛ ˈsɛ ˈzna.ɛ/ 'it is not known' (cf. това се знае /toˈva sɛ ˈzna.ɛ/ 'this is (well-)known'). Also the epenthetic vowel is stressed in добър /doˈbɤr/ 'good' (cf. the plural form добри /doˈbri/). Besides, in Arabic imperative verb forms, initial clusters are prevented by epenthesis of preceding vowels (themselves preceded by /ʔ-/ because a vowel cannot begin a syllable either), and compliant to the stress patterns of the language, such vowels can be stressed: اكتب /ˈʔuk.tub/ 'write!', اذهب /ˈʔið.hab/ 'go!'. --Theurgist (talk) 21:37, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

April 29

Deliberate misspellings

Is there a term for the deliberate misspellings used in advertising such as "nite" ad "kwik"? I couldn't find one in the extensive -onym article, though such crimes probably don't deserve to be listed there. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:48, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Sensational spelling. Nardog (talk) 09:17, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Ah, thank you! That's not a description I would have used myself. Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:25, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Shantavira, the term doesn't specify which sensation is evoked :-) Alansplodge (talk) 11:55, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

TV Tropes uses the term Xtreme Kool Letterz Iapetus (talk) 12:02, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

April 30

Latin alphabet

Why Bulgarian has not switched to Latin alphabet like Romanian did in 1860, and why Serbian can also be written in Latin alphabet in addition to Cyrillic, but Macedonian cannot? --40bus (talk) 21:28, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that it's been explained before that the basic correlation is with religion: Predominantly Catholic and/or Protestant in population means a strong likelihood of being written with the Latin alphabet, while predominantly Eastern Orthodox means a strong likelihood of being written with the Greek or Cyrillic alphabets (and of course, in the 19th century and earlier, predominantly Muslim meant a strong likelihood of being written with the Arabic alphabet). A deliberate decision was made to switch Romanian from Cyrillic to Latin to affiliate Romanian with French and the other Romance languages (and also because many Romanians disliked Russia). Bulgarian had no such reasons to shift. Serbo-Croatian was spoken by large numbers of both Catholics and Orthodox, so basically from the beginning of its significant use as a literary language, it was written in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. For complicated and specific reasons, the Latin alphabet had more use in Serbia than the Cyrillic alphabet had in Croatia. Macedonian (which was codified a century after Serbo-Croatian) was unaffected by this... AnonMoos (talk) 23:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Additionally, the Early Cyrillic alphabet was devised in Bulgaria in the 9th-century, so there's probably an element of national pride involved in its retention there. Alansplodge (talk) 12:00, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Sunless Sea - Original Game Soundtrack

Am i correct in assuming that the title of track 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 and 20 is Latin? Trade (talk) 22:53, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

"Elegiac" and "Benthic" are derived from Greek through Latin, but do not have the endings to be actual Latin words. And "Zombius" is not traditional Latin. -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:13, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Though it's implied in your answer, I think it's worth making explicit for OP that elegiac and benthic are English words. GalacticShoe (talk) 06:54, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Only #20, Undulata, is proper Latin. Other titles that look like Latin are dog Latin. The first word of #15, Vox, is a good Latin word, but while the term Zombius by itself could be a Latin adjective formed from a proper noun, the combination should then have been Vox Zombia, since vox is a feminine noun.  --Lambiam 06:23, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Out of interest, it seems likely that the term "Sunless Sea" is taken from Kubla Khan, a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Alansplodge (talk) 11:49, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

You are correct. Sunless Sea and its originating/companion game Fallen London are set in an alternative version of Victorian London, and thus make the occasional literary reference apt for the time. GalacticShoe (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

May 1

Tank legend

A Soviet M4A2 at Grabow in eastern Germany, May 1945.

Could someone kindly translate the Russian slogan chalked on the side of this Lend-Lease Sherman tank please? Alansplodge (talk) 13:19, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

"Forward to victory", although победе is misspelled as поведе for some reason. Xuxl (talk) 13:40, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, it appears to be a Б, the majuscule form of the б, with a long serif descending from the upper horizontal stroke. Вперед literally means "in the lead", "in the front".  --Lambiam 14:06, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

It's 'v' followed by 'p', but yeah. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:38, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Marvelous - thanks all. Google finds that it's a well-used phrase and alliterative to boot.

File:Аввакумов. По вражьей земле. Вперед к победе!.jpg Alansplodge (talk) 18:39, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Resolved

Vpered k pobede is arguably not alliterative, considering Russian consonant clusters. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:19, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I stand corrected, I was getting my Cyrillic characters muddled. Alansplodge (talk) 16:42, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

It's actually вперёд with the ё, pronounced something like vpyeriyód. Sound file at Russian wiktionary. The diaresis is often missed out by Russians, especially in capital letters as in Alansplodge's poster. There's probably a widely-understood pronunciation rule somwhere. MinorProphet (talk) 00:13, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

It apparently is or was a controversy on Russian Wikipedia; see the images in commons:Category:Russian letter Ё... AnonMoos (talk) 17:44, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I was lucky enough to learn Russian at school to O-level (GSCE), plus a year at university (not even worth an Ægrot. as per Sellar & Yeatman). I might feel bold enough to raise the point at ru:helpdesk/refdesk or equivalent. MinorProphet (talk) 00:26, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Deventer pronunciation

Does anyone here know why our article on the Hanseatic city of Deventer says Dutch: [ˈdeːvəntər], when everyone in the city as well as those driving and marshalling intercity trains to it seem to pronounce it more like [ˈdæjvəntər]? Is that pronunciation in brackets when it should actually be in slashes or am I just tone deaf? Thanks! – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 19:45, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I guess the local pronunciation might be considered dialectal and not official in Standard Dutch. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:18, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary gives the pronunciation /ˈdeː.vən.tər/, between slashes. In Northern Standard Dutch as commonly spoken today by e.g. TV anchors, the /eː/ is realized as a diphthong [eɪ̯]. The Dutch Low Saxon spelling is Daeventer, in which ⟨ae⟩ presumably reflects the local pronunciation.  --Lambiam 06:42, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

It would be best to put it in slashes, not brackets.

I find Dutch phonetic transcriptions here often overly narrow, as if attempting to pinpoint the exact town the speaker comes from. There is a dialect continuum, ranging from Low Saxon, as spoken in Twente on the eastern border of the Netherlands, to Northern Standard Dutch, as spoken on the west coast and used by most TV anchors (and, somewhat derogatory, called Randstad Dutch by those not coming from the west). Sallands, spoken around Deventer, is near, but not at, the east end of that continuum. The east has monophthongs, the west diphthongises the tense vowels; in the east, the vowels tend to be a bit more closed than in the west. City dialects are often a bit different from the surrounding countryside; less conservative and sounding more western. I don't know any people originating from Deventer, although I've a cousin currently living there. [æ] for the the first vowel sounds a bit too open to me, but I don't know the local city dialect. There are places where /e/ can be realised as such.

The standard announcements on trains are pre-recorded, by a small sample of voice actors. The pronunciation is usually non-local, sometimes completely wrong. Live announcements are spoken by the guard of the train, who can come from anywhere in the country and is usually not familiar with the local dialect. They are supposed to use reasonably standard Dutch, but there's no official standard and only the guards originating from the Randstad are likely to use Randstad Dutch. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:20, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

May 2

Why is Tresckow pronounced like -cow and and not -coff

• Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow (German: [ˈhɛ.nɪŋ fɔn ˈtʁeːs.ko] ^ⓘ ...

That's how I've always heard his name spoken in movies etc, but I thought maybe they were pandering to ignorant Englishers who don't know that -ow in German is normally said like -off. Not so in this case, apparently.

So why is Tresckow spoken that way? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:26, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I can't tell you why this is so, but the pronunciation is actually standard for German names, in particular in the North East, see for instance the Berlin borough of Pankow. Russian names, by contrast, are usually transcribed as -ow (e.g. Gorbatschow) and pronounced -off. It's confusing, but there is a pattern. --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:48, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

de:-ow has some info about these names. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:31, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Word-final ow in German is always pronounced [o(ː)]. There are a million examples, particularly place names, but also surnames. The former GDR is full of places ending in ow; in Rostock (district) alone, we find the municipalities Güstrow, Neubukow, Satow, Teterow, Retschow, Bützow, Tarnow, Warnow, Groß Schwiesow, Gülzow-Prüzen, Gutow, Lüssow, Dobbin-Linstow, Krakow am See, Wardow, Alt Sührkow, Schorssow, Sukow-Levitzow, Thürkow, Alt Bukow, Bröbberow, Kassow, Grammow, Nustrow, Thelkow, Kritzmow, Pölchow, and Stäbelow. The only German word ending with ow pronounced [ɔf] that I am aware of is Kromow, and that is the name of a fictional character in The Merry Widow who is supposed to be a Slav. In fact, the only other German word I can think of where word-final w is pronounced [f] is the name of the city of Calw.

There is something unexpected about the pronunciation of Tresckow, though: the spelling would have you expect [ˈtʁɛsko(ː)] with a short e. 2001:4646:2494:0:C6D:BAD6:4C79:F92E (talk) 18:08, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Not to be confused with Trescowe, by Tre, Pol and Pen shall ye know Cornishmen... Alansplodge (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Wow, that's something I've learned today, thanks Friend 2001:4646. I've always loved languages and have acquired a ton of info along the way, but I've never studied German formally. So until now I was under the clear mis-impression that German w is always spoken like v or ff. How wrong I was. Are there any other exceptions? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:58, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Chandrabindu

(I'm not sure if this belongs in RDL or RDC, because I don't know if it something real in the notation, or an artifact of the Google keyboard. But I thought I'd ask here first). These two look different (and Duolingo treats them as different) but I'm not sure if they are different things, or if the second is Google keyboard getting it wrong:

अँ 
अंँ

I created them both on the Hindi Google keyboard on my phone: the first by entering अ and then holding on the anusvara button. I get the second by completing the word including the anusvara, and then separately holding the anusvara button. Does anybody know if these reflect a real distinction in Devanagari? ColinFine (talk) 18:24, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

The bottom character is actually अं with an extra chandrabindu on top. I'm not a Devanagari expert (disclaimer: I know essentially nothing about South Asian languages), but a friend of mine who speaks Hindi pointed out that nasalizing अं would probably be redundant. GalacticShoe (talk) 19:04, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I see. So it's generating something that it shouldn't. (The reason this is happening is that the predictive text on the Hindi keyboard puts the visarga in, but never puts the chandrabindu, and Duolingo objects; so I either have to enter the word sound by sound, or I have to go back and add the chandrabindu - and I see now that it's adding without removing the visarga, which is plain wrong. That's not the only problem with its Hindi predictive text: it often uses a short ु when it should be a long ू ). Thank you for clarifying. ColinFine (talk) 19:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

May 3

invisible word breaks in Chinese

When I double-click on text, a word is selected. But Chinese is written sans spaces. If I double-click on a string of three or more Chinese characters, one or two characters are selected; and I cannot get overlapping pairs by double-clicking on different characters. Many modern Chinese words are two characters … but how does my browser (or OS) know which pairs are words? I have not found evidence of hidden zero-width breaks. —(If it is the sense of the assembly that this belongs in Computing, I will of course move it there.) —Tamfang (talk) 00:09, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Probably from a word list; there's nothing in the writing system itself which would indicate this as far as I know... AnonMoos (talk) 00:31, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

You don't say which OS but this is the sort of thing modern OSes have built in. MacOS e.g. the OS can translate any text you can select – including text in images – so it makes sense it helps you select blocks of text which makes sense to translate, by e.g. treating 'words' of two characters as single blocks. To do so it probably has to parse not just one or two characters but those surrounding it, however much is needed. --217.23.224.20 (talk) 11:03, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

This was really exciting actually! Firefox recently pushed an update allowing the selection of text by word in unspaced languages. If I had to guess, you either use Firefox or another app where this was recently implemented, As someone who's only been learning Chinese for a few years, I will soon be shocked that people used software for so long that didn't have this ability. Remsense诉 11:21, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

WHAAOE: Text segmentation Aecho6Ee (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Building upon the Firefox thing above, apparently, the relevant update was 122.0, where they call it "language-aware word selection." It is controlled by the flag intl.icu4x.segmenter.enabled, which means the feature is apparently using the ICU4X Unicode library and of that, the segmenter module. Looking at the code (or reading the comments, rather), the segmenter is apparently "using the LSTM model when available and the dictionary model for Chinese and Japanese." Aecho6Ee (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Neat, thanks for explicating! Remsense诉 22:55, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Russian sentence?

Dear hive-mind. I came across this sentence "[...] Павла Григорьевича Г. (род. около 1861), привлекавшегося в 1885 Варшавским губ. жанд. управлением к дознанию по второму делу «Пролетариата»." (https://imwerden.de/pdf/minuvshee_02_1986__ocr.pdf). Does this mean that Pavel Grigorevich was recruited by Warsaw Gendarmerie to intervene in the Proletariat case, or that he could have been arrested or accused in the case? -- Soman (talk) 11:44, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

[1] indicates that he was investigated. --Soman (talk) 11:59, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

May 5

Latin

In an attempt to improve Thomas Rymer, I came across this: (see Talk:Thomas Rymer#DoB and 1st para, 'Early life and education'):

"Thomas Rymer filius Radulphi Rymer de Brafferton in comitatu Eboracensi generosi Lit : Gram : per octo annos a Thoma Smelt apud oppidum Northallerton dictum institutus, annos agens septemdecem, admissus est pensionarius minor, tutore et fidejussore Johanne Luke in artibus magistro 29 Ap. 1658."

Although my O-level Latin allows me to grasp most of the above, there are a number of words/phrases whose meaning escape me, namely: generosi; dictum; and agens. Fidejussore = "guarantor, one who gives surety or goes bail. (uncommon)." {{acad}} says Luke gained his M.A. in 1656.

My version:

Thomas Rymer, the son of Ralph Rymer of Brafferton in the county of York generosi was prepared ('institutus...est') in Literature and Grammar for eight years by Thomas Smelt at/in the town of Northallerton dictum, [and] at the age of seventeen agens was admitted as 'pensionarius minor' by [his] tutor and guarantor John Luke as M.A. 29 April 1658.

Anyone feel capable of filling in the gaps? MinorProphet (talk) 01:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps apud oppidum...dictum means 'in the said town of Northallerton', although it may not have been mentioned previously. MinorProphet (talk) 01:44, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

References