Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 October 6

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October 6

Word for people worried about current moral decay

Every generation has members within it that think that the coming generation is filled with degenerates, sociopaths, whores, and criminals. There's a song in the Carmina Burana, for example, that whines on and on about the impertinence of the kids in those days (1250s AD) and how girls are just whoring themselves out, etc. etc. Is there a word to describe either the kind of person who feels that way or a word that describes the whole endless cycle of supposed degeneracy itself? Kind of a morality-based ludditism, I guess. Social disintegration is close, but not quite it. Matt Deres (talk) 03:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

One semi-unofficial term is the "These kids today..." syndrome. →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

"Generation gap" seems slightly related. Bus stop (talk) 03:47, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

That's the word that describes the situation, for sure. "Don't trust anyone under 30!" →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 04:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

There's an article called Moral panic but I know nothing about it. (My morals are extremely high.) Bus stop (talk) 03:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I can't honestly think of one outright that precisely describes the group, of which I find myself ever more frequently a likely candidate for membership. Reactionary comes fairly close, and would work were it not for the explicitly political connotations, since it is entirely possible to be disapproving in this way from any shade of the political spectrum. There is an evident gap in the language waiting to be plugged here by some bright spark. The trope Grumpy Old Men and Women tends to characterise the preponderance of this set, and if a neologism is required, may I offer up initially the acronym gomaw as the singular form? As in the possible sentence: "The gomaws stared at the gang of youths with a mixture of disgust and revulsion.". Sjc (talk) 04:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Given that approach, "dinosaur" comes to mind. →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 05:29, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Not exact, but perhaps Casandra ? DOR (HK) (talk) 06:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Unhappy. Vranak (talk) 18:38, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Might I suggest whippersnapperism? (You heard it here first.) Clarityfiend (talk) 21:45, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Hey, you kids, get off my ref desk! I mean it, punks! What's the matter with you, anyway? Can't you hear? Laudator Temporis Acti (talk) 23:30, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Moral panic is pretty close, probably the closest so far, but it's not quite there. Moral panics are transitory; they flash through culture and then either get exposed or at least melt into mainstream consciousness. What I'm looking for is the seemingly universal feeling that the coming generation is morally inferior. The question came to me while my wife was watching a TV special about how sexualized teenagers are "these days", with startling revelations such as that young people sometimes behave in irresponsible ways and try things that are probably not good for them. There was also ground-breaking news on the "teenage girls are very sensitive about their bodies and fitting in" front. Truly a slow news day, but it got me thinking that there must be a term for that kind of thinking - especially considering how old it is. I was going to tie it to the similarly perennial complaint about how kids "these days" don't know how to read or express themselves, but was afraid some would take offence. ;-) Matt Deres (talk) 00:11, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I saw that. You can't hide behind links around here, you know.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 08:29, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

IPA question

Which of the following is the symbol for the vowel of sick? Is it ˈɪˈ or 'ɪ'? And what sound is represented by the other? Thanks, 169.231.34.158 (talk) 05:00, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

Aren't those the same symbol? The Unicode point for the symbol is U+026A, at any rate, but outside Unicode any lettershape identifiable as a small capital I will do. +Angr 06:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, they're the exact same character (I tried replacing one in my browser, it was a null edit). The only thing that's different are the quotes you put around them. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it's just my browser then because for me the first I has serifs but the second doesn't. 07:02, 6 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.231.34.158 (talk)

That's just the fonts that your browser uses to format them. The first is surrounded by stress marks, which only occur in IPA fonts. Therefore (I'm assuming) your browser formats the sequence with a font that contains stress marks. The second uses apostrophes, and so (I assume) your browser uses a more common but less complete font that includes the small-cap I but not the stress marks.

We can settle in by forcing the formatting. Here they are again, but both force-formatted as IPA:

ˈɪˈ or 'ɪ'.

Do they look alike now? kwami (talk) 08:36, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

They don't look alike to me either. The one on the left is larger and serif, the one on the right smaller and sans serif. I use Firefox. When I copy&paste into MS Word they appear the same.80.123.210.172 (talk) 09:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The {{IPA}} template (or rather, the .IPA CSS class) only forces particular fonts for M$ IE, it is designed so that it has no effect on other browsers (on the grounds that any decent browser is capable of finding a suitable font containing a given character by itself). — Emil J. 10:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

So, it is the browser. Thanks. Is there any way I can get it to use the same throughout? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.231.32.194 (talk) 08:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

If you get an account on Wikipedia, you can customize the CSS by putting something like

                              .IPA { font-family: "font name" }

in User:YourUsername/monobook.css, where "font name" is your favorite font containing IPA characters. (There may be more of them, separate the names with commas.) — Emil J. 10:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation

Why punctuation in a lot of countries are similar or the same, and they have been like this since early times?--Mikespedia (talk) 09:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Somebody else will have to come along with the details, but generally speaking here's why. In Ancient Times (Latin) my understanding is that they had absolutely no punctuation or even spaces. So what would now be written as "Vir hoc legere potest!" would have been "VIRHOCLEGEREPOTEST". The reason that so many languages have similar punctuation now is that most languages in Western Europe use the same basic alphabet. Precisely when and why this developed across all Romance languages is somewhat of a mystery to me. According to punctuation, this development is due to large numbers of the bible being written down in the 400's, when Latin was still the Lingua Franca in Europe. It also mentions that certain languages, such as Greek and Hebrew used punctuation earlier as (the ninth century BC in the case of Hebrew). Note that there are still plenty of minor differences in punctuation, such as using inverted ?/! in Spanish, «» for quotes in French, comma usage, etc. Hope this helps, Falconus^{p t c} 11:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Ancient Latin did have the interpunct to separate words, especially on monuments. You can sort of see them on the Arch of Titus, for example. Regular Latin prose also uses words as punctuation; English translations are usually peppered with "therefore"s when those words often just mark a new sentence. There is sometimes punctuation in medieval Bibles, as the punctuation article says, but it's rare to see any extensive punctuation before the Renaissance; you might see an inverted semicolon or something, but it's nothing like modern punctuation. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

If you (the OP) want more detail, there's an interesting book, by a medievalist paleographer, on the early history of punctuation in Europe. Deor (talk) 13:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The two pronunciation systems of J and Y

I noticed that there are two pronunciation patterns of J and Y. 1) j = [j] and y = [y], as in Post-Classical Latin, IPA, German, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, Esperanto, ... 2) j = [(d)ʒ] and y = [j], as in English, French, Turkish, Chinese (Pinyin), ... The former seems to be the classical pronunciation, as "J" developed from "I" and thus stood for consonantic "I" Post-classic Latin (classical had no "J"). Also, "Y" comes from the Greek alphabet and was used for the vowel sound [y] (nowadays [i]). The latter must have arisen later. I don't know it's origin, though. I have 3 questions: 1. What's the origin of the second pron. pattern? 2. Why is English the only Germanic language that does not use the first pattern (besides some Greek loanwords, of course; and "Hallelujah")? 3. Is it just me or are all languages that got the Latin alphabet (or an official transcription) recently using the second one? (Turkish, Chinese, Japanese) Why is that so (maybe because of the English influence?)--88.73.126.169 (talk) 13:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

English is the only Germanic language that pronounces J that way because we got that pronunciation from French. I forget the name of the specific process by which the Latin I became the French/English J, but it probably sounded like that in Vulgar Latin or late antique/early medieval Latin, from which French developed. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Complicating matters is that in Spanish, or at least some dialects of Spanish, the leading "Y" is pronounced not unlike the French leading "J". So at least to an English speaker's ears, the word "yo" (which means "I") sounds like "zhoe" or "joe" in English. Meanwhile, the Spanish "J" does not follow the Germanic "J" at all, as it's pronounced like a strongly guttural "H". It's been compared to the Scottish "ch", as in a word like "loch". →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

(Specifically, J is pronounced that way in Rioplatense Spanish--and maybe related dialects, I'm not sure-- and the "guttural H" in Spain Spanish is more or less /x/, the velar fricative. I think.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the "X", which is why "Mexico" is pronounced as if it were spelled "Mejico". →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 16:47, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The origin of pattern 2 is really French. As Adam Bishop says, the Latin [j] shifted to [ʒ] (Old French, Old Iberian languages) or [dʒ] (Old Italian, Norman French), much as Spanish [j] is in the process of doing today in some dialects, as Baseball Bugs notes. In the case of Castilian, that [ʒ] later evolved into a [x]. In Old French, Norman French, and Castilian orthography, 'j' continued to refer to the phoneme historically cognate with the Latin [j] even though that phoneme had shifted to [ʒ], [dʒ], or [x]. By contrast, Italian used a new grapheme, 'gi' (or 'ge'), to refer to the same shifted phoneme (compare jeu and gioco). Italian (and Latin as pronounced in Italy) preserved the connection between the grapheme 'j' and the phoneme [j]. Probably under the influence of the Roman Church, this orthography was also adopted in Germany, Scandinavia, and Poland. Meanwhile, after the Norman Conquest, English adopted the Norman French orthography, according to which 'j' stood for [dʒ]. In the case of other languages that follow the English orthography, they adopted this orthography in modern times based on the English example. Marco polo (talk) 15:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Hallelujah is an anglicized version of the original Hebrew, which is actually transliterated more accurately as halleluyah, as a compound word derived from "hallelu" (give praise") and "yah" (a name of God). A similar finding exists with most Hebrew words that are anglicized -- the "y" sound" gets switched to a "j" sound, with some exceptions, in which the "y" sound is dropped and the "i" or "e" sound immediately following it is allowed to remain: Jeremiah (Yirmiya), Ezekiel (Yechezkel), Isaac (Yitzchak), Joshua (Yehoshua), Jerusalem (Yerushalayim). DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 02:54, 12 October 2009 (UTC)