Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 February 6

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February 6

Melanau/Malay Calligraphy

I am trying to find a calligraphy sample of melanau, expressly the words 'mukah' and 'orangutan' Barring that(as I am not sure melanau has a written component other than the roman alphabet) the words 'Mukah' and 'orangutan' written in Jawi or other Bornean script would also be very helpful. I have found some translators online, but I want to make sure that I have it correct. Thank you so much for your help! 23:39, 5 February 2007 (UTC)01:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)LaughingOrangutan

I don't know anything of written Melanau, I'm afraid. That seems to be an unfortunate confusion! Whatever, as both orang hutan and mukah are standard Malay words, their Jawi spelling would be: اورڠ هوتن and موكه. — Gareth Hughes 15:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

No, I am a zookeeper and I am looking for a way to write it correctly on something. Thank you. 151.145.232.91

Well, you really don't need Jawi then: you write "Orang utan from Mukah in Sarawak". Unless I'm missing something, you seem to be making it overly complicated. — Gareth Hughes 18:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

No accounting for style. Thank you again for your help. LaughingOrangutan

A German mousepad

I recently got a German mousepad from a cultural diversity event, and I'd like to know what the writing means. There are three mice standing around a mousetrap, while a cat looms over them. One of the mice is saying: "Okee, Leute, lasst uns nichts übereilen - wir haben alle zeit der welt!" Can anyone please tell me the meaning? bibliomaniac15 00:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Rough translation: "Okay, guys, let's not rush things - we've got all the time in the world!"---Sluzzelin 01:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Double Degeneration, or "The Snitzel Syndrome"

First, a word is pronounced in a non-orthodox way, then the spelling is altered to fit the "mispronunciation". The archetypal example is "snitzel". This is still considered to be a misspelling for "schnitzel", but one that matches the way many non-Teutonic people pronounce the word. Where can I find more about this phenonemon? JackofOz 00:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Nucular comes to mind. Try Metathesis (linguistics); but it's not exactly what you're looking for. The List of words of disputed pronunciation gives me a laugh once in a while, as well. z ε n  08:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what this is called, and I'm curious to read more examples. (I didn't know that Snitzel was acceptable either, by the way). This is off-topic, but the question made me think of the the word bivouac which exists in German as Biwak and has an odd history of re-borrowing.

17th/18th century German cities had a Hauptwache (main vigil) residing in the watch's building headquarters, and Beiwachen (side vigils) stationed on the Glacis, in front of the fortification. These side-vigils had to camp in tents and were the first frontline protecting the cities.

The word Beiwache was imported by the French military via the Dutch word Biwake and soon became bivoque and bivouac in French. In the 19th century, the meaning was extended to military tents in the open field in general.

German language then re-borrowed the word in its new meaning from the French, and while the Beiwachen, the side-vigils themselves, ceased to exist in the 19th century, the Biwak has survived. ---Sluzzelin 10:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Some words with a similar history of re-introduction into the original language are: Boulevard, which is said to come from German "bollwerk", quiche from Alsatian "Küchle" (little cake) and Mannequin, from Flemish "mannekin" (little person > doll). — Sebastian 21:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to add the Russian "bistro", meaning "bistrot", the French word originally coming from the Russian "bystro" (meaning "quickly" or "hurry up!" - from the Napoleonic Wars again). - EAH

Maybe you need to ask the experts . ---Sluzzelin 10:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Aren't most of these words in French believed to be of Old Frankish origin? 惑乱 分からん 11:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Which words in French do you mean? ---Sluzzelin 11:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Words in French of Germanic origin, such as guerre, guarder, blanc etc. 惑乱 分からん 11:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd call it normal but that's just me.

In modern, largely literate society, there is a tension between the notion of writing as a transcription of speech and writing as an autonomous form of communication. It's clear that writing is never just transcribed speech, but just the same, no written language has ever managed to exist purely independently of the speech of its users. If you live in a society where multilingual literacy is the norm, then it may make a great deal of sense when explicitly using a foreign word in writing to keep its foreign spelling. Using a novel, phonetic spelling will only create confusion on the part of people who recognise the original foreign spelling just fine.

However, if you remove the presumption of multilingual literacy from the situation, the choices work differently. French armies during the Napoleonic wars were, fairly reliably, illiterate in French and often several other languages. Terms like bivouac were, therefore, adopted in speech long before they ever saw print and saw usage outside of literate and multilingual communities independent of writing. In that case, retaining the foreign spelling is likely to confuse readers who might well have encountered the word orally before seeing it print, and will not necessarily be able to figure out what is intended by some odd-looking construction. This applies equally to snitzel/schnitzel. I've always used the second, but I come from a community where bilingual German-English literacy was not rare. Those whose first encounter with breaded veal cutlets was eating them in a restaurant where no one spoke German might well see matters differently.

Sometimes, words move from writing to speech and get their spellings changed as part of the normalization process. This is a semi-official procedure in some languages, in others it's purely convention. In English, there is no systematic language authority, so there are inconsistent spellings for many words.

As for learning more, there is a fairly large bibliography on word borrowings in different languages, most taking a sociolinguistic perspective on the process. The linguistics of systematic writing are not very well studied, as writing is poorly viewed as a subject for linguists. Nonetheless, there is some work out there. However, I can't think of any broad treatment of the subject that I could recommend to you. In your shoes, I might start with the literature on contact linguistics.

--Diderot 13:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. It's obviously a big subject. I'm curious about your statement that "writing is poorly viewed as a subject for linguists". Do you mean "viewed poorly", as in, considered not a proper subject for linguists? That's a somewhat surprising claim. I'd have thought that written language and spoken language are generally closely connected, being 2 sides of the same coin, so to speak. Surely students of spoken language (like students of any discipline) must rely very heavily on written language to communicate their complex ideas to others. No? JackofOz 03:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I mean that written language is viewed as a poor subject for linguists to study. Obviously, no linguist goes without reading and writing.

There are some historical reasons for this. The roots of linguistics are in 19th century philology, which was very concerned with written language as a vehicle for culture, and thought poorly of the ordinary speech of normal people. This concern translated itself into a concern for proper usage and language as a vehicle for high culture rather than as a study of language as it actually is. Non-written languages, social and regional variants, and languages viewed as culturally less important were broadly ignored until the 20th century.

Modern linguistics reacted against this - and rightly so. Because written language is controlled by often very unnatural standards, it is seen as a poor subject for descriptivist study. This went even further in the age of the generativists, who often dealt only in native speakers' judgments of correct speech - ignoring any direct study of language data at all. Children learn spoken language directly, without formal study, simply by living in an ordinary social context, but most people have to go to school to learn to read. Furthermore, there are many languages which have never been written down, and humanity survived for millenia without written language. So it seems obvious that spoken language is more fundamental to human linguistic behaviour than the construction of written texts, which could easily be dismissed as a kind of constrained form of transcribed speech. It is in fact very easy to see written language not as "the other side of the same coin" but as a convenient addition to spoken language. An "extra", but not true language in its natural form.

I think most linguists would agree to some form of the above history. This part they won't all agree with:

I think modern linguistics went too far in its rejection of written language as a subject of study, and I think there is some change afoot. First, computational linguistics and corpus linguistics deal almost exclusively in digital, searchable texts. Few of these texts are literally transcribed speech. The applications of their knowledge also tend to be text-oriented: machine translation, search engines, online information resources, etc. Second, written language plays a large role in the kinds of problems people have with language. Few people think they have difficulty speaking their own native language, many fear that they can't write or spell it. Thirdly, sign language studies have forced linguists to redefine the word "speech" in an incoherent manner. Sign language is a form of communication that predates literacy and is present among people who cannot speak orally or read. Just like speech and writing, it uses arbitrary symbols with specific kinds of relations to communicate ideas. If sign language is really just as much a form of language as speech, and therefore an appropriate subject of study for linguists, they why isn't writing? Lastly, Derrida heavily criticised the idea that speech and writing are necessarily distinct or that one "preceeds" the other, in the sense that one is more central, more important, or more genuine. Both are communicative systems that use the same basic semiotic techniques. This critique has had very little impact on linguistics, although it should, but it has been influential in other parts of the humanities. --Diderot 12:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

This is fascinating. I hope JackofOz and readers don't mind, if I add another question. Who studies the interaction between written and spoken language?

Two perhaps banal examples: To what extent do hearing people hear language when they read it and how is it connected to what they read and the amount they read? The second example, perhaps the other way around: How does literacy, and especially the quantity a person reads, affect a person's spoken language? I live in a town where people speak one language and write/read another. One observation is that people will borrow entire phrases from the written or high language, sometimes translated to the vernacular, sometimes in the original. Because a corresponding vernacular expression doesn't exist, because they can't think of it, or because they want to emphasize their point (in which case it usually remains untranslated in the high language). It seems to me that people who do a lot of reading, do this more often, unless they're very conscious about using proper vernacular. Then again, the high language is heard daily on television and radio too... But do linguists study the interaction between the spoken and written language? ---Sluzzelin 13:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Sociolinguists and sometimes dialectologists do some of the kind of work you're talking about. There is some psycholinguistics study of what is happening in people's minds when they read, but that's not the same as systematically studying written language the way linguists systematically study speech. First, it's not always clear what goes on in people's heads when they read - the same parts of the brain are invoked as for sign language and speech. But, it's a fairly clear result from psycholinguistics that fluent readers do not really see the individual letters on the page when they read. Unless presented with a rare or novel word, people do not sound words out in their head.

Sociolinguists and dialectologists do talk about the relationship between standard languages and everyday variants. No written language has ever managed to operate completely independently of everyday speech. People bring their spoken usages to print, and use things they've seen in print in speech. The linguistics of bi- and in the past triglossia in Chinese are a subject that interests me a lot. Before 1912, there was a lot of tension between the artificially maintained forms of written Classical Chinese, the standard and high-status oral language of the bureaucracy (Mandarin), and the many varying everyday speech codes of Chinese people. Since then, the first has largely been abolished, but the issue lives on in the relationship between putonghua and fangyan.

To the extent that literacy touches on issues in sociolinguistics, there is more openness to studying written language there.

People find ways to express the things they want to say. Literate people might want to talk about the things they read about, and to do so it may be necessary to use in speech the type of language used in print, just as one might borrow a word from another language to discuss some novelty that has arrived from wherever that language is spoken. Depending on chance or circumstance, this can take the form of code switching or of calquing. Both are quite common phenomena. My mother uses both quite heavily when she speaks her rapidly dying native language, often to such an extent that she no longer considers herself to speak it. In extreme cases, you get languages like Michif, where bilingualism and code switching produce wholly novel kinds of speech.

I'd like to recommend some general work on the subject of the interaction of spoken and written forms, but I have to be honest and say I can't think of one. There might be linguists - particularly sociolinguists and specialists in contact linguistics - who can recommend something. --Diderot 14:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Diderot. :) I'm still digesting the articles you linked to. Speaking of mothers and calquing, mine usually speaks her unrelated native language with our family, but switches to the acquired local vernacular when things get emotional. She's the only non-native speaker in our family, yet she's the only one who does this. ---Sluzzelin 05:17, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that's commonplace - the stereotype is certainly the opposite. In sitcoms, the Hispanic woman always switches to Spanish when she's angry. But in real life, people often communicate more carefully when they're angry. Think of the stereotype of a mother, having found her child to have made a mess, calling him by his full name including middle name. It might be something of that sort: using the high language rather than the low because it commands attention. --Diderot 13:53, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Disrespectful/Disrespecting

Which sentence is more correct? "Johnny is being disrespectful to his elders" or "Johnny is disrespecting his elders"? The latter version seems to be more common these days but I am not sure if it is correct or not... --Candy-Panda 02:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Both forms are acceptable. Marco polo 03:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, although using "disrespect" as a verb is a fairly recent development within English, and will probably still raise the eyebrows of people over 50. "is being disrespectful to" is the safer choice. —Angr 08:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

In British English I think the second would be considered to be a slang/colloquial form. --Neo 09:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I think disrespecting and being disrespectful may have somewhat different meaning because disrespecting implies a kind of challenge, which may or may not be present when someone is disrespectful, which could be unintended. That's just my intuition. mnewmanqc 14:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

In the standard American dictionaries, "disrespect" is listed as a transitive verb. To my 40-something American ears, it does not sound like slang. So maybe the answer is to avoid "disrespect" as a verb if you use a British (and perhaps Australian, New Zealand, or southern African) variety of English, at least in writing. But I really think that there is nothing wrong with "disrespect" as a verb in American (and probably Canadian) English. (after edit conflict:) That said, I agree with mnewmanqc that "disrespect" has a connotation of willful defiance that "be disrespectful to" does not entail. So your choice of forms may depend onthe meaning you wish to convey. Marco polo 14:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Ahh.. I understand now, thank you all very much! --Candy-Panda 06:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

German e

I was taught that the German letter e is read as the same as English letter a. And hence, things like first e in gegen, eh in sehen are also read as English a (except that vowel length differs).

Is it true? Wikibook says e is roughly ay as in English bay. Again, ay appears. But in articles German language and German phonology, the e is clearly a monophthong. I don't really know which is correct.--Fitzwilliam 16:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

German e is in fact a monophthong. It is the first element in the diphthong that consitutes "long a" (phonetically eɪ) in English. English pronunciation guides typically refer to "long a" because it is the closest phonemic sound in English to German e. But it is not an exact match. Marco polo 17:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

English phonology lacks a "long e" in native words, the "ee" sound is a "long i", if anything... I should write IPA, but I'm a little lazy... 惑乱 分からん 19:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Some accents of English, though, such as Scottish English and some Midwestern U.S. accents, do have a monophthong FACE vowel. —Angr 19:55, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, what is a face vowel? I'm unfamiliar with the terminology... 惑乱 分からん 23:35, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

It's quite straightforward really: it's the vowel in the English word 'face' as pronounced in those dialects. — Gareth Hughes 00:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about the jargon. It comes from John C. Wells, who gives each vowel of English a name. The FACE vowel is the vowel of the word "face" (and other words with the same vowel, like "name", "take", "day", etc.); it's a convenient cover term because the exact pronunciation of it is different from accent to accent. Other vowels have other names like FLEECE, KIT, DRESS, TRAP, and so forth. —Angr 06:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm...that means the e is purely "e", and when read in words, it is always a monophthong unless when combined with other letters to form digraphs (such as eu). Thanks.--Fitzwilliam 01:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

ppl can understand you either way, and I see that you are a Cantonese speaker, the vowels in German should pose no problem for Cantonese speakers, as long as you just want to make yourself understandable. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 04:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Fitzwilliam, that isn't entirely correct. The letter e, when it stands alone, has more than one possible pronunciation in German. When it is a long vowel, typically represented orthographically by duplication (as in See), by a subsequent h (Reh), or when it occurs as a stressed vowel before a single consonant in a multisyllabic word (the first syllable of lesen, the second syllable of auftreten), it is pronounced with the {IPA} [e:] vowel that we have been discussing. However, when it is a short vowel, it is generally pronounced {IPA} [ɛ]. This is almost or exactly the same as the English vowell in red or deck. (In some southern dialects, German short e can be pronounced {IPA} [e], but that is nonstandard.) The orthographic signal for short e in German is the appearance of two or more consonants following the vowel (as in Dreck, Bett, or the first syllable of helfen. Finally, e in German can also represent a schwa, or {IPA} [ə], a sound that occurs frequently in English unstressed syllables (for example, the second syllable in sudden or central). E represents a schwa in German typically in unstressed prefixes (be- and ge-) and final syllables. Examples of the prefixes include genau and Besitz ; examples of unstressed final syllables include bitte, Fähre, and the second syllable of helfen or auftreten. Generally, if an e before a final, single consonant is stressed and therefore long, it will be duplicated or followed by an h to indicate that it is long (sehr, Lehm). Marco polo 14:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that. My only error is on treating the first e in gegen and eh in sehen as [eɪ]. :)--Fitzwilliam 15:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)