Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 March 29

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March 29

Pronunciation of Vortigern

I would like to know how to pronounce the name Vortigern. Is vɔː(r)ti'gɜː(r)n correct? Any ideas why my signature (two dashes and four tildes) does not work any longer? --Babeuf 08:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm no expert at IPA, but for RP the best I can do is [vɔː(ɹ)tɪgə(ɹ)n], with the stress on the first syllable, or else [vɔː(ɹ)tɪgɜː(ɹ)n], with the stress on the first and last. Some English dialect speakers would pronounce both rs, and no doubt many Americans would, too. Xn4 12:55, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

You have to log in for your signature to work. --Omidinist (talk) 16:42, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

....says the man with the red signature....--ChokinBako (talk) 16:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Translation from Russian

Can someone please translate the text on this poster into English? --superioridad ^(discusión) 08:43, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Here goes. I'll use L and R for the person on the left and right, respectively. The lightning-like word above the L head says "crisis". The text on the scroll the L hand says "military plans". The bold font text at the bottom of the poster says "Same years, different "weather" [sic]". The words years and weather rhyme in Russian, but it still sounds quite lame. Sorry. The L and R thermometers say "American industry" and "Soviet industry", respectively. The text in a box under the thermometers says: "American figure - minus 22 per cent - indicates the nascent economic crisis in the US and, with it, the growing crisis in all the capitalist countries. Soviet figure - plus 20 per cent indicates the further mighty rise of Soviet industry". The signature says "Molotov". That's it. That's the very soap the brains were washed with. Scary... --Dr Dima (talk) 14:24, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Around 1932-1933, it wasn't that outrageous to claim that industry in "capitalist" countries was declining, while industry in the Soviet Union was rising. Of course, Soviet agriculture was collapsing at the same time... AnonMoos (talk)

The poster is from 1948, though. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 05:37, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Plural of "die"

Why does "die" have different plural forms depending on if you're talking about the metalworking equipment or the random-number generator? Are there any other nouns that have more than one plural form? --12.169.167.154 (talk) 18:54, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

"Index" has plural forms "indexes" and "indices". I suspect the "regular" plurals "dies" and "indexes" arise from linguistic analogy. --Diacritic (talk) 19:05, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

They have different plural forms because they are completely different words that just happen to be spelled the same. I can't think of any other examples of the plurals being spelled differently, but I'm sure there are some.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 19:10, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

The OED has quite a little essay on the matter under "die n.¹". "Dice" is the older form arising from the older sense of "die" having to do with luck or chance. It originally formed the plural with a siblant "-s", but over time it took "-ce" like other collective nouns such as "lice" and "mice", it being construed that way, retaining the siblance in that spelling. The "metalworking" sense came later, and it took "-s", it almost being construed as a different word. The OED mentions "pennies" as a similar development, that being a later, non-collective sense of "pence". (The two senses of "die" are not different words.) --Milkbreath (talk) 19:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean "sibilant" and "sibilance"? -- JackofOz (talk) 23:42, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeth. Urk. --Milkbreath (talk) 23:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit conflict - same source] The plural dice was once the regular form. Perhaps because it was often collective (you hardly ever spoke of just one), the plural ending was not seen as plural and did not change from /s/ to /z/ when that happened to other plurals; the spelling then had to change from dyse to dyce to show this. Other words this happened to were pence (from penny) and truce (from true - an old generic plural like news). Like news, dice is almost always the form used for the game; it's hard to even understand what people are talking about if they say 'die'.

In the mechanical sense, on the other hand, the plural form did change normally with the other plurals of the language, perhaps because the word was found often enough in the singular for people to keep track of it. You might argue that these are now two different words, but they originate from the same French source. — kwami (talk) 19:32, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I've found some other examples, but really they are the same word used in different contexts: staves (music)/staffs (sticks); mice (rodents)/mouses (computing); media (broadcasting)/mediums (spooky people); cloths (rags)/clothes (apparel).--Shantavira|^{feed me} 19:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

There are two things going on here. On one side, specialized usages may become fossilized when a word changes elsewhere. That's the case of staves, which is the form normally used in music, but is dropping out of use for sticks. The other side is metaphorical extension, where the object isn't seen as the same, and irregularities don't carry over with the root word. That's the case with mouses, though recently I've seen computer mice as well, perhaps because people are now completely comfortable with the object. You also see that with staff: as personnel, you can never have the plural staves, even though you can still use that form when the meaning is stick (especially in archaizing contexts, such as fantasy games). The same thing happens with verbs: a potted plant is hung, but a convict (metaphorical extension) is hanged, though of course a lot of people speak of a pot as being hanged and others of a convict being hung. Few of these are 100%. — kwami (talk) 19:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I have rarely heard 'mouses' even in the computer context, and have thought it odd when I have come across it. In The Language Instinct Pinker discusses and rejects the theory that it is transferred meaning or metaphorical extension which leads to words' losing their irregular inflections (one counter-example I remember is 'oil-mice' - people who steal small amounts of oil from small oil-wells. His explanation is that the special forms are lost when a word goes through being another part of speech (one of his examples is 'fly out', which he argues comes from the phrase 'fly ball', and therefore has lost its connection with the verb 'fly'). However, while I am sure there is something to what he says, I can't buy it all the way: in my idiolect, 'broadcast' is present and past, like 'cast', disagreeing with his statement on it; and though I do not use 'mouses' for computers, some people evidently do. --ColinFine (talk) 23:25, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting. I've rarely heard "mice" in the computer context. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:42, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I saw it in an in-store advertisement just a couple weeks ago; in speech, I know a lot of people scratch their heads and don't know what to say, since both mice and mouses sound wrong to them.

Colin, I wouldn't put much stock on anything Pinker says. With metaphor, I think the relevant issue may be how transparent it is to the speaker. With something like "oil-mice", the image is very much alive, whereas a lot of people won't relate to a computer mouse being a kind of mouse. Once the connection is broken, the two uses are free to evolve independently, and the one without an established history is likely to lose irregularities. — kwami (talk) 06:33, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

You might not put much stock on 'anything Pinker says', but I do. I am well aware that he is an arch-Chomskyan, and that some of the things he says are therefore contentious, and that he goes to some ridiculous lengths in How the Mind Works, but I think his analyses are worth taking seriously, even if I don't accept them all the way. I think his demolition of 'the language mavens' is masterful. --ColinFine (talk) 09:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

rebbetzin

What is the etymology of rebbetzin (rebbitzin)? The rebb is obvious (the root), and -in is the German feminine, but what about the -etz-? It doesn't look like the Hebrew feminine. Is it maybe the Latin feminine found in English as -ess? Are other Yiddish feminine nouns formed with -tzin? — kwami (talk) 19:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

My guess is that the -etz- is borrowed from Slavic and is related to the feminine suffix of tsar-its-a. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 19:56, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

If that's the case, I might be able to find an intermediate form ?rebbitsa. — kwami (talk) 20:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

In a meeting (date unknown / reference http://www.hagalil.com/deutschland/berlin/frauen/rabbinerin.htm) in Berlin / Germany the subsequent question was, it seems, not solved: "Übrigens: Die Frage nach der politisch korrekten Bezeichnung in Jiddisch für den Mann einer Rabbinerin konnte im Laufe der Konferenz nicht geklärt werden. Rebbetz, Rebbetzer...?"

In translation: By the way, the correct term for the husband of a female rabbi could not be determined. Is it Rebbetz, Rebbetzer..?

This would imply that rebbetz per se means "spouse of the (male or female) rabbi. Rebbetzin would be that plus the Germanic female suffix -in, rebbetzer ditto with the male ending -er.

As to the infix -etz- I could not find anything, but Angr makes sense.--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:37, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Or it could be a back-formation, with only the -in recognized as a meaningful suffix. There's long been a question of where the Esperanto word edzino 'wife' comes from, and this seems to be it. Edzo 'husband' would then be a back-formation. I'm just curious as to what that edz was originally. If Angr's right, then the Russian feminine suffix became a root meaning 'husband', rather a convoluted etymology. — kwami (talk) 21:54, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

"Etz", particularly in Etz Chaim / Etz Hayyim / Ets Haim synagogue, turns up quite frequently in Google searches. Maybe somebody with a Jewish background can give us some idea as to the meaning / root? --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

That's the Hebrew word for tree (עץ), which certainly does not have any connection with a Slavic agentive suffix... AnonMoos (talk) 22:33, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Slovenian family names often end with -ec, pronounced like -etz. I know there is a cognate -ić in Serbian/Croatian, but I don't know whether there is anything similar in East or West Slavonic. --ColinFine (talk) 23:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Got a response back from a Yiddish website that these are two feminine suffixes, though it was only implied that they were Russian and German. — kwami (talk) 06:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually (continuing my comment above) I've realised that the Russian diminutive suffix '-ич' (-ič), as in 'Царевич' ('Tzarevich') must be the same. --ColinFine (talk) 09:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

That makes sense. — kwami (talk) 17:57, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, they're Slavic and German, though not necessarily Russian. Suggestions were Ukrainian and Belorussian. Angr, would you happen to know the feminine suffixes in Ukrainian or Polish?

Also, do you know if this -itsa is cognate with English -ess? — kwami (talk) 21:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

(1) No, I don't know them. (2) I don't know but I rather doubt it. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 22:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

In Polish, the suffix meaning "wife of" is -owa, so a wife of a rabbi (rabin) would be rabinowa. — Kpalion^(talk) 23:32, 30 March 2008 (UTC)