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July 8

Individual conjecture

Journalist Nesta Roberts wrote in 1971 about the later so-called 27 Club members: "In what proportion drink, drugs, and desperation respectively contributed to those deaths is a matter for individual conjecture." I'm not sure what exactly she means with "individual conjecture": Is it "We can assume the proportion was different for each of those individuals", or "Everybody may make his own assumptions on this topic."? --KnightMove (talk) 15:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Definitely the second option ("Everybody can do their own guessing")... AnonMoos (talk) 16:14, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that that is what she did write, but is it what she actually meant to write? Why should anyone (including myself) care about what I think caused Jimi Hendrix's death? It seems to make more sense to state that each case must be assessed individually, and I suspect that she just formulated this poorly. Of course there's no way to know for certain. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

It's the same thing as leaving it up to the reader, which was already a cliché centuries ago. Jane Austen ended Northanger Abbey with the following rather sarcastic final sentence: "I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience." AnonMoos (talk) 17:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

In mathematics, and possibly elsewhere, the phrase is "...left as an exercise for the reader". --Trovatore (talk) 20:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I've read Northanger Abbey (twice) and I know a bit of mathematics and I'm still not convinced, although, it should be noted, I did agree about the literal meaning. The context of the sentence might help. --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:42, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

@Wrongfilter: "„Jim Morrison, vocalist of The Doors, who had lived in Paris since the beginning of this year, died here on July 3 in what has become almost the classic fashion of the folk hero of pop culture. Like Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix: and at the same age, 27, he was found dead. In what proportion drink, drugs, and desperation respectively contributed to those deaths is a matter for individual conjecture.“ --KnightMove (talk) 10:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Here purely a matter for individual conjecture is given as a definition for the term anybody's guess. In this definition, individual corresponds with anybody's – it refers to those doing the guessing. The subtext is that such guessing is baseless, also expressed in the saying your guess is as good as mine – I can't know, and neither can you. Paraphrasing, she is saying that speculation how much each factor contributed to these deaths is meaningless; we don't know and we can't know.

If one shouldn't engage in speculation about specific cases, guessing group statistics for the 27 Club as a whole is even more pointless, so for that reason it is also unlikely that that is what she meant. As I understand the sentence she takes it for granted, though, that each death should be considered on a case-by-case basis; in some inebriety may have played a major role in the events leading to a person's death, while in other cases it perhaps did not. We just don't know more than what is known.  --Lambiam 22:18, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

July 13

Der Alte (Fuchs?)

The German crime television series de:Der Alte is named The Old Fox in English, fr:Le Renard (série télévisée) in French, fi:Vanha kettu in Finnish, and sv:Den gamle deckarräven in Swedish.

All four of the translated names I have mentioned mean "the fox" or "the old fox". The original German name does not. It simply means "the old one".

Why is this? Is "fox" somehow implied from "old"? How is it possible that four unrelated languages (Finnish is not even Indo-European) have managed to do this independently? Or is there something I am missing here? JIP | Talk 19:56, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the series, but foxes are, in English (and I believe in Persian), proverbially crafty characters. An old one would be even more so. Reynard of course crosses cultures. Is the "Old One" of the series a cunning, crafty, type? DuncanHill (talk) 20:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

This RefDesk thread concerning the differences between being a person described as "old" in German and English might be relevant too. Alansplodge (talk) 22:11, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Quoting our article The Old Fox: 'By understanding the psychological make-up of his suspect, the "Old Fox" craftily leads the criminal into his own trap, to the great surprise of his often perplexed staff.'  --Lambiam 09:48, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

It does indeed seem that "Der Alte" in the series is a cunning, crafty type. The main Old Fox is an older Chief Inspector, physically slow, but mentally sharp with a deep understanding of human nature. Apparently Der Alte carries certain connotations in German as a Chief or Boss, implying that With Age Comes Wisdom and so forth. The TV series is a long-running institution in Germany, and the basic concept is indeed promising. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

As a native German speaker - Austro-Bavarian - who has never seen an installment of this TV series: "Der Alte" is generally a term of respect and even endearment to describe a person of seniority and superior experience. In my understanding, the above mentioned characteristics of foxy cunning is not part of the semantics. However, I repeat to never have seen any of the productions. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

In Das Boot

Jürgen Prochnow as Kapitänleutnant (abbr. "Kaleun", German pronunciation: [kaˈlɔɪ̯n]) and also called "Der Alte" ("the Old Man") by his crew: A 30-year-old battle-hardened but good-hearted and sympathetic sea veteran, he complains to Werner that most of his crew members are boys.[4]

--Error (talk) 20:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

July 15

Triple parenthetical phrases

We use [brackets] to enclose parenthetical phrases that are inside another parenthetical phrase. That is, brackets are for a double parenthetical phrase. But what do we use when there are three levels of parenthetical phrases?? What do we use?? Georgia guy (talk) 11:54, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

You're talking in English, right? What I've seen, on the rare occasions where it was necessary, was curved brackets {}: (enclosing [this {enclosing this} thusly]). --Orange Mike | Talk 12:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

From DPDk, with two levels it is (algunos estudiosos consideran su obra Fortunata y Jacinta [1886-87] la mejor novela española del siglo xix) but in mathematics and chemistry it is reversed [(4 + 2) × (5 + 3)] − (6 − 2). I remember from math class {2 × [3 × (4 + 5)] + 6} . Bracket (mathematics) says:

Square brackets are also often used in place of a second set of parentheses when they are nested—so as to provide a visual distinction.

--Error (talk) 22:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Bracket (mathematics) Glossary of mathematics#Brackets:

{□}

1. Sometimes used as a synonym of (□) and [□] for avoiding nested parentheses.

--Error (talk) 22:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Georgia_guy -- I think it's as common or possibly even more common (based on what I've seen) to use parentheses within parentheses: (...(...)...). This convention is reasonably clear (though it can be a little bit visually jarring if multiple ")" marks are side-by-side at the end). AnonMoos (talk) 22:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Bracket says:

Parentheses may be nested (generally with one set (such as this) inside another set). This is not commonly used in formal writing (though sometimes other brackets [especially square brackets] will be used for one or more inner set of parentheses [in other words, secondary {or even tertiary} phrases can be found within the main parenthetical sentence]).

--Error (talk) 22:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Scientific transliteration

Why can't every language romanize Russian using scientific transliteration? It would eliminate irritating conventions using ⟨y⟩ for iotated vowels and ⟨sh⟩ for Ш etc. and reflect language's Slavicness better. --40bus (talk) 19:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Why can't the English teach their children how to transliterate Russian? They can, but they don't feel like it. --Amble (talk) 20:33, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Languages do not romanize. Did you mean, why can't publications in every language use scientific transliteration for Russian terms (presumably mainly proper nouns)? Many languages do not use a Latin alphabet, and in several of those that do some of the transliterations use letters not in their alphabet. Even if it solves a problem, it addresses only a minute part of the general problem; most non-Latin scripts do not have a "scientific" transliteration, and many romanization schemes rely on the English pronunciation of letters.  --Lambiam 21:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

40-bus -- We discussed this exact same topic not too long ago. My basic answer is the same as before: Most English-language speakers have been rather resistant to the use of diacritics (except as optional marks of sophistication for some semi-unassimilated loanwords borrowed from a few foreign languages which use the Latin alphabet, especially French). In the case of Finnish, Finnish speakers are accustomed to diacritics, due to the use of ä and ö in the orthography of their language, and there's no native Finnish way of spelling the "sh" and "zh" sounds, so there was no problem with introducing š and ž into Finnish practices for transcribing foreign words. However, none of that applies to English. The average native English-speaker reading an article about Eastern Europe, if he cares at all about how words transcribed from Cyrillic are pronounced, wants a rough practical approximate guide based on customary English spellings, and does not want to worry about strange little marks flying around various letters. (And that's assuming that his news source would even include the diacritics -- in the days of Wade-Giles, its diacritics and apostrophes were almost always omitted in mass-market English-language newspapers, as has also been explained before.) AnonMoos (talk) 22:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

But West Slavic names usually appear with diacritics in English texts. If Russian used Latin alphabet, then there were no irritations and the alphabet would be similar to Czech alphabet. Thus I hope that Russian will eventually switch to Latin alphabet in next 30 years. --40bus (talk) 06:25, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

You may well hope, but there is no chance that Russian changes alphabets. Cyrillic is perfectly adapted to the language, has been in use for centuries, and is known by the entire Russian population. Why should there be a switch, except to please a few eccentrics in foreign countries who don't even speak the language? Xuxl (talk) 09:34, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

And most English speakers generally ignore the diacritics on West Slavic names. They get printed, but the average reader doesn't give a shit about them. My question is "why can't 40bus accept the fact that different languages are different?" Seriously, you keep asking questions phrased in such a way as to suggest that you know best and that any language that dares to deviate from your preferred methods is in some way deficient or wrong. STOP DOING THAT. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:35, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

He won't stop until he's forced to stop. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:03, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

No one can force so well-augured a user to stop—according to Myles na gCopaleen, "Fortuna favet 40 bus". Deor (talk) 16:36, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Interesting that you refer to "West Slavic" and then only mention the Czech alphabet. Do you think Polish orthography, which also uses digraphs, insufficiently reflects the language's Slavicness?

(In fact Polish does transliterate Russian using the Polish conventions, e.g. pl:Anton Czechow.) Double sharp (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

If Russia does after all decide to switch to the Latin alphabet, it may actually go for the English style, with ⟨sh⟩, ⟨y⟩, etc. That style is more internationally recognisable (which languages that chose diacritics weren't too concerned about when they did so), would make Russian orthography distinct from those of related languages, and already serves as the mainstream standard for romanizing the language. On the other hand, scientific transliterations, as the attribute scientific suggests, seek linguistic precision but not necessarily user-friendliness. --Theurgist (talk) 22:13, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

They could. It would be more recognisable for native English users, but wouldn't be much more helpful to native Latin alphabet users who aren't native English users. A user-friendly transliteration system must be tuned to the target language, otherwise it isn't any more user-friendly than a scientific system. Russian ш is transliterated as š for a Czech or Croatian audience, sz for Polish, sch for German, sh for English, sj for Dutch or Norwegian etc.

The problem of English-based transliterations is that they only work well for sounds that not only exist in English, but are also the standard pronunciation of some letter combination, which, given the chaotic nature of English spelling, is far from given. (Zh is a remarkable counter-example. The sound /ʒ/ occurs in English, but the zh digraph doesn't; yet it's understood.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:36, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Pinyin and the Hepburn system, both pretty much universal romanization standards, already use ⟨sh⟩ for "sh"-like sounds. If Russian switches to Latin, other Latin-written languages will no longer adapt Russian names but will cite them as they are. A ⟨sh⟩ would then be a clearer indicator of something going on than a diacritic over a ⟨s⟩, which, as discussed, would be ignored by many and often even omitted. --Theurgist (talk) 00:49, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

On the other hand, ch is in the Slavic languages using that digraph (Czech, Slovak, Polish) used for /x/, as it is used in German, Dutch and the Celtic languages. Using ch for /tʃ/ in transcriptions from Russian is more confusing for people who expect /x/ than using č. Over here, the newspapers usually get the diacritics right for Slavic languages. (Here, Russian /tʃ/ is usually transcribed tsj.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Where is "over here"? The Netherlands? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:10, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

How likely is that Uralic languages in Russia will move to Latin alphabet? --40bus (talk) 17:58, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

July 17

"Two English"

An American man and an American woman are "two Americans". This is gender-neutral and unambiguous. An Englishman and an Englishwoman are "two English". However, this is not that well understandable as it is not your first connotation when you hear "two English". What is talked about here? A translation from Spanish "to English"? Is the girlfriend of a Scottish boy "too English" for his grandmother? Is there a better, unmistakable way to address two mixed-gender people from England? --KnightMove (talk) 10:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Two English people? HiLo48 (talk) 11:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I think HiLo48 has the best answer. "Two Englanders" is understandable but will leave you sounding like a comedic stereotype. "Two Britons" is correct but less precise. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 13:00, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

When not in England, the term "Brits" (albeit in this particular case, as you say, imprecise) is something I've heard commonly used and used myself. Mikenorton (talk) 16:46, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm a little curious about this. When I hear someone described as a Brit I generally assume they're English; I don't really think of the Scots or the Welsh and certainly not the Northern Irish. Is that the common understanding? --Trovatore (talk) 20:30, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I worked in Norway as an ex-pat for over five years and the Brits included Scots and Welsh as far as I can remember, but that's just a personal recollection, no citations available, sorry. Mikenorton (talk) 22:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

In absolute terms, most Brit(on)s are English (84% of the UK population is in England).

Relatively, Northern Ireland is the only constituent country whose residents are more likely to identify as solely British (41%) (or solely Irish at 25%) than solely of their constituent country (21%). AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 09:45, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

• I am not aware of a generic & specific term for two people of mixed gender. The word "couple" may be useful, but it does not define two random people. Two Americans, two Britons, two Spaniards (or whatever) can be any combination of genders / sexes. And two Viennese könnten ja ein Paar Würschtel sein. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 13:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

  Are you drawing a distinction between thigs like " there's a couple of people standing in that corner" and "there's a couple standing in that corner"? Because I would say the first about any 2 people but the second only if they were romantically linked. Except I would also say "there's a couple in that corner" as a response to the question "how many people are in this room?" Again, without regard to their sexes, genders, or relationship statuses.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Occasionally, people use just "two English" as a noun phrase.^[1][2][3]  --Lambiam 14:55, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I think that would normally be considered non-standard, though. There are some (most?) demonyms which are both adjective and noun (e.g. American/an American, German/a German), some which have different words for each (e.g. Spanish/a Spaniard, Danish/a Dane) and some which are (generally) only used as adjectives (e.g. French, Irish, Chinese). Generally those in the third category need "person" added to make a noun phrase (or "-man"/"-woman" in some cases), and that's where I'd put "English". There seems to be a slight shift towards treating the third category the same as the first category and using the adjective as a noun (e.g. I've seen "a Chinese" instead of "a Chinese person"), which is presumably why there are a few instances of "two English" being used, but it still sounds odd to my (British English) ear. (Admittedly, it does sound a little less odd in the plural. "I saw two English walking down the street" would be odd, but "I saw an English walking down the street" would be downright bizarre.) Proteus (Talk) 15:27, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. Possibly the closest we can come in standard-speak is "The English are a curious race", or "You English are despicable". Not even "some English" works for me.-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 15:46, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I couldn't find the usage in the first and third links, and the second was definitely with nonstandard grammar.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:31, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Of course, here in Australia we also have the useful word "pom", sometimes expressed more fully as "pommy bastard", especially when an Ashes series is underway. Although the word almost always refers to male English people.HiLo48 (talk) 23:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

On my only visit to Australia many decades ago, I was proud to be referred to as a "to and from". Alansplodge (talk) 10:48, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Is that rhyming slang? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like it, but I've never heard that one. There are expressions used throughout our wide brown land, but then there are some others that have currency only within much smaller communities. The Aussie way is to use such little-known expressions on unsuspecting strangers, whether they be from other parts of the country or overseas, causing the strangers befuddlement. They ask for a translation, and this immediately marks them as "not a local", and hence automatically suspect until such time as they can earn a degree of acceptability. That may take a few minutes, or a few generations, or anywhere in between. Xenophobia works on many levels, not just between nations. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

"to-and-from n. [rhy. sl. = pom (see POMMIE n.)] (Aus.) a British immigrant to Australia." see Green, Jonathon. "to-and-from". Green’s Dictionary of Slang. DuncanHill (talk) 22:27, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't have so be an immigrant. "Pom" works for visitors too. I believe our King is visiting later this year. He will be called a pom by plenty of Aussies when he's here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HiLo48 (talk • contribs) 11:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

We Londoners are perfectly fluent in rhyming slang, so there was no befuddlement. Alansplodge (talk) 11:26, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

I should bleeding coco! Mikenorton (talk) 19:09, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

We have Terminology of the British Isles and Glossary of names for the British... AnonMoos (talk) 18:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

May someone tell me what language this video are in?

• File:Кампания ООН «Свободные и равные»- Союзники В Действии – Марсия.webm
• File:الأمم المتحدة أحرار ومتساوون- مساهمة الحلفاء-ات – مارسيا.webm

--Trade (talk) 21:11, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Based on the framed picture in the background, this is probably Daniela Mercury on the left and her wife Malu Verçosa Mercury on the right speaking Brazilian Portuguese. GalacticShoe (talk) 22:41, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The subtitles appear to be in Russian and Arabic, though. Or possibly some other Slavic language in Cyrillic, and Persian. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:07, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

The first video has no sound. I listened to the second and can confirm the language is Portuguese. Since I initially found the accent difficult to follow it is undoubtably the Brazilian variety. 2A00:23D0:7C1:5201:8531:C651:42DE:A528 (talk) 11:23, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

It does indeed have sound. Maybe you'd need to update your browser or something. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:06, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Not really interested in the subtitles. Only the audio Trade (talk) 12:14, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. Didn't even realized the videos featured celebs Trade (talk) 12:16, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Drone as a German word

Hey friends, having another puzzle over a wördle.de answer. Yesterday the solution was "DRONE" which has left me baffled. Any help on what the German language means by this word please? All I get from de.wikipedia are proper names. Thanks! 70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:53, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

German wiktionary lists only an English word under that spelling (without "h"). AnonMoos (talk) 23:59, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Exactly, that's why am confused.70.67.193.176 (talk) 02:23, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Could the alternative spelling "Drone" have become common in German in recent years? Given how much has been written, discussed, etc. about these unmanned flying machines in the past decade, I wouldn't be surprised. It's now become the standard term in French. Xuxl (talk) 07:56, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

In my experience, it hasn't. "Drohne" and "drone" are not just different spellings, but also pronounced differently. I guess many German speakers may be more or less familiar with the English term too, but in my perception at least the German term is still the one commonly used, in both meanings of the word (bees and flying devices). Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:12, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't appear as a German word on LEO.org either. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 08:47, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Short of a misspelling, the only think I can think of is the English word "drone" (as in "droning sound") that is sometimes used when talking about music. It doesn't seem sufficiently common to count as a loanword, though. In principle, it could also be the plural of a word *Dron, but that doesn't exist either. For a German (not English) word *Drone, the pronunciation would be the same as Drohne — the existing word Krone ("crown") is a perfect rhyme. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:42, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

As a native speaker (as is Fut.Perf.), I have never seen the AngloSaxon word "drone" used as a loan word in colloquial German. A typo can be excluded, as Wördle is a constructed linguistic game.

Is it possible, that the solution is NOT "Drone", but a similar German noun / verb / whatever? The OP seems to be Canadian. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:59, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

We're all native speakers here ;-) I entered "DRONE" into wördle today and it was accepted, which means that it is in the database. I haven't found out how the database was created and what is or is not in it (misspellings seem unlikely but not entirely impossible). Maybe the creator is a Sunn O))) fan and put Drone (Doom) in by hand... --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:32, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

d:Q650316 (Drone music) reports that the article is not present at de.wp, but gives Drone as the German label. Folly Mox (talk) 12:03, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

As has been noted, there exists a German Wikipedia article for Drone Doom. It is a rather niche genre, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:35, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for all the discussion. It's not the first time this database has been weird, so I guess that's what's going on here. "drone" was indeed the solution, it tells you :) 70.67.193.176 (talk) 01:33, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

It just might be the german spelling of the Drône (river), as we have no accent circonflexe in German. Lectonar (talk) 11:13, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Are other French river names accepted, such as LOIRE and SAONE?  --Lambiam 00:37, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

LOIRE is accepted, SAONE is not. RHEIN is also accepted. GalacticShoe (talk) 01:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Note that Drône is an archaic spelling; the current French orthography is Dronne. Since the Saône is a much more significant and better-known river than the Dronne, presence in the Wördle db as the Germanized spelling of archaic DRÔNE is IMO not a satisfactory explanation.  --Lambiam 09:34, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

July 21

Ur-pun

What is the world's earliest known pun? Any language, not just English. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:39, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

The Hebrew Bible has "explanations" as to why various people were given their names which are not always etymologically accurate; if such an explanation involves a similar-sounding word, I guess it could be a pun. The episode of Susanna and the Elders added to the Greek version of the book of Daniel has two specific puns on Greek tree names... AnonMoos (talk) 06:32, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Have you seen Pun#History_and_global_usage? Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:37, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Is backwards English a language?

If all English sentences had their word order perfectly reversed, could this still be a conceivably natural language? Or, would this new Hsilgne language have any unnatural features that would make it unique among other languages? 2600:8800:718D:8D00:D4AB:BD6F:4954:2F7 (talk) 04:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

For almost any order between several connected syntactical parts, such as a verb (V) with a subject (S) and an object (O), or a noun (N) with an adjective (A), there are languages whose grammar prescribes that order, so we have VSO languages, SOV languages, OSV languages, and so on. English is an SVO language, so English reverse would be an OVS language - a rare, but not non-existent type. Likewise, English is an AN language ("blank card"), but there are many NA languages, such as French ("carte blanche"). For more, see Linguistic typology, Word order and Head-directionality parameter. Some languages (e.g. Turkish) do many things in the reverse order of English; for exampe, "I don't know the man who stole your book" becomes "Book-your stealing man-the know-not-I". There is nothing unnatural about the word orders that reverse the word order of English. Therefore it is IMO a reasonable guess that kids growing up immersed in an environment where English reverse is spoken will pick it up just like they would pick up any natural language.  --Lambiam 07:07, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

OVS OSV isn't unnatural or forbidden, but it's typologically disfavored as the main default word order in a language -- it's the rarest of the six basic word order types by a significant margin... AnonMoos (talk) 07:28, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

OSV is even rarer, yet Warao kids have no problem learning it naturally, which is the issue.  --Lambiam 07:38, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant "OSV" (I had problems reversing just three letters!). I'm sure that OSV is viable as a language system, but it's very strongly typologically disfavored, as I meant to say. If you round to the nearest percentage, then the occurrence of both SVO and SOV among the world's languages is in the solid double digits, VSO is almost in the double digits, while the closest integer percentage to express the occurrence of OSV languages is 0%. AnonMoos (talk) 13:24, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

A minor aspect that would not be natural: the variation between an and a for the indefinite article, governed in English by whether the onset of the following syllable is zero. "An untied band is not a united band", reversed, should become "Band united a not is band untied an"; however, such a variation, originally a phonological process, being governed by distant phonemes, is not seen in natural languages.  --Lambiam 07:29, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Kilometre

Do average English speakers in countries that have metricated almost everything (such as Australia and New Zealand) use word "kilometre" in expressions to indicate an unspecified distance, such as "kilometres away", "a few kilometres", "several kilometres", "thousands of kilometres", in daily lives? --40bus (talk) 19:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if Canada qualifies, but the answer here is "mostly no". I mean, you could say it and be perfectly understood, but I'd bet more than half the people you'd meet would use "miles". Kilometers sounds formal and scientific, almost stuffy. Light travels 300,000 kilometers a second, but that town is twenty miles from here. I think younger folks tend to favour the metric more, so perhaps this is changing. Matt Deres (talk) 01:59, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Even though there isn't much scientific base for the metre's exact length, anyway. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Agree. In Canada you'd say about a family relocating to some far-away suburb: "they moved miles away from here", not "kilometres away" unless you want to specify a precise distance, which you would then include in the sentence. Xuxl (talk) 07:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, "miles away" carries a connotation of "a long way away", that "kilometres away" simply doesn't. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:57, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

How about "give him an inch and he'll take an ell"? DuncanHill (talk) 13:04, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Is "several kilometres" ever used? Is it common to say "a several-kilometre-long traffic jam". In Finnish is common to say "useita kilometrejä". --40bus (talk) 15:10, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

July 22

Philomena Cunk's English

The kind of English accent Philomena Cunk uses is obviously not RP. What would you call it? 178.51.74.75 (talk) 01:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Diane Morgan plays Philomena Cunk and she comes from Bolton, where they speak a type of Lancashire dialect. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 08:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Leaving out "to be"

I've noticed that many classic-format jokes, especially as found in joke books, do something odd with the tense: they have a tendency to remove the "to be" portion and I'm not sure what that would be called or what the purpose is. Example: "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut..." rather than the more standard "Two men are in a barbershop having their hair cut...". Is it just for brevity and flow? The setup to a joke typically needs to be executed quickly - is that all it is? Is there a term for this kind of formation? Matt Deres (talk) 01:55, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

"Brevity is the soul of wit"? But if you're telling a shaggy dog story, you'd leave in all of these extraneous words. Xuxl (talk) 07:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Can you give a full sentence exemplifying the phenomenon? There is nothing odd with the tenses in "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut were startled by a strange sound" – although I'd insert a couple of commas. Also, "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut" is a cromulent image caption.  --Lambiam 12:37, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

OSV and VSO words orders

A question I was reminded of reading the thread about reverse English: in the OSV and VSO order the predicate group is separated by the subject group? Isn't that a problem? Is the notion of "predicate" with verb and object (and other complements) belonging to it universal? Isn't it more natural that words belonging to the same syntactic group be close together by default? Do OSV and VSO languages have that notion of predicate?

VSO is of course the word order (is "worder" a word?) used in Ancient Hebrew, Classical Arabic, etc.: does the predicate group (if it does exist in those languages) being split have any implication? I've noted that the verbal forms in the past (the non-past is more complicated) have exactly the same order for the suffixed pronouns: verb + subject suffix + object suffix. I've also read somewhere that Ancient Egyptian cycled through various word orders at different stages in its long history. Is that true? Is there a natural way in which word order changes? 178.51.74.75 (talk) 02:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

About "natural", Latin word order mentions the frequent use of hyperbaton:

Thus, Caesar's hae permānsērunt aquae diēs complūrēs, with hae "these" separated from aquae "flood waters", means not "These floods remained for several days" but "This time, the flood waters (unlike the previous ones) remained for several days."

--Error (talk) 09:41, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

V2 languages (including the Germanic languages other than English) also regularly break up the predicate. The concept of predicate (first definition) isn't used in the traditional grammar of every language and not all modern theories of syntax use the binary distinction of subject vs. predicate. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Even in English, the predicate may be broken up. "The devil is in the details" is traditionally analyzed as subject "the devil" + predicate "is in the details". By asking, "Is the devil in the details?", the subject is transposed to a position inside the predicate.  --Lambiam 12:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

In modern linguistic theories, what 178.51.74.75 calls the "predicate" is often known as a verb phrase. In the four-word sentence "Who do you love?", there are two separate breaches of the boundaries of the verb phrase. The exact answer to 178.51.74.75's question would depend on the details of specific linguistic theories (and there's probably a lot more data and linguistic discussion about VSO than OSV)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:13, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Why is the verb yap considered a TikTok trend?

The practice of referring to senseless chatter as yapping or yapping on (about something) doesn't seem new to me. Of course, the word's entry on the list of Generation Z slang points out that it dates back hundreds of years, but still, its use in its modern sense seems to have been popular for at least a bit longer than some sources might have us believe. Here's a couple of examples I can recall from the top of my head:

Quit yappin' and start workin'!

— Doc Hudson to Lightning McQueen

Is it SHUTYERYAPS?

— Grunkle Stan while competing on Cash Wheel

I doubt that "yapping" would've sounded out of place in a 20th-century Warner Bros. or Hanna-Barbera cartoon. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Here it is used in a play from 1953, in the sense of needless talking. Perhaps it is used on TikTok to refer to any speech act.  --Lambiam 18:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

It goes back a thousand years, originally in reference to dogs barking.[4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:29, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Every generation rejuvenates old customs, mores, folkways, and linguistic usages, and then gives itself credit for having invented them. Gen Z is no different from any other generation in this respect. --Trovatore (talk) 21:17, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Suspend

The verb "suspend" seems to be undergoing a change, particularly in relation to political campaigns. Once, it meant that a campaign was being halted temporarily, but not permanently. Now, we read @ Kamala Harris#2024 presidential campaign:

• On July 21, 2024, incumbent president and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden suspended his campaign for re-election in 2024 with Harris and endorsed her as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Yet, everything I've heard and read tells me Biden has abandoned his campaign, permanently and irrevocably. It's over. It's not just suspended. I've also seen this language with previous contenders who pulled out. Nobody believed they were just re-grouping or whatever, and intended to mount a reinvigorated campaign in the near future. No, they were withdrawing permanently. It seems to be a purely American phenomenon, as far as I can tell.

Wiktionary:suspend tells me @ Definition 3, that suspend can mean:

• To discontinue or interrupt a function, task, position, or event, e.g. to suspend a thread of execution in a computer program.

That seems to be the only case where suspension can mean permanent cessation. All the other definitions are about temporary cessation. Computer jargon is often the most impenetrable rubbish, with expressions meaning things that are completely at odds with their natural meanings (eg. client). So, why is this computer jargon now being trotted out for use in political contexts? Is it that words that don't mean what they seem to mean are an obvious and natural fit for politics? </cynicism>-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I think this relates to some obscure aspect of American campaign-finance law. If you actually officially drop out, it triggers some sort of legal requirement or complication that "suspending" the campaign does not. So campaigns are almost never officially terminated, always suspended. I don't remember the details but I'm sure someone else can help you find them, or this might be enough of a clue by itself. --Trovatore (talk) 22:03, 22 July 2024 (UTC)