Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 September 28

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September 28

Norwegian Language Question

In World In Conflict, a WW3 wargame, there is a scenario which takes place in Northern Russia. The player's troops are backed up by some Norwegian units (which, for some reason, speak with very strong French accents). When giving orders to these units they sometimes respond in Norwegian (again with a French accent) and sometimes in English (with the same French accent). I can understand what they are saying, except for one phrase, which sounds like 'ge ge' (with hard 'g') or 'je je' ('j' as in Norwegian 'ja'). I was guessing it may be an alternative for 'ja ja' (yes, yes), but would like some confirmation. TIA! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 15:37, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Heh, found a video of the Norwegian voices. I can't discern any French accent, though. Sounds like a Norwegian accent in English and no accent in Norwegian. I'm not sure which sound you're talking about though? (The 'j' in Norwegian 'ja' is soft, so I'm not sure how 'je je' could be 'ge ge' with a hard 'g'). If you mean what they're saying about 4 seconds in to that video, that's simply "go go" in English, albeit with a Norwegian accent. --Pykk (talk) 20:27, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Ha! Excellent! Well found! However, that is not the bit I am talking about. In the game they do indeed shout 'Go! Go!', but there is another bit where the vowel is definitely 'e' (not present in the video). Also, the reason I said French accents is not only because it does actually sound like a French accent in the English part to me, but also because the same voice (and accent) is used in the scenarios set in France with French NATO units helping out. Maybe because it's the same voice and the scenarios in France come before the ones in Norway, and my judgement may be affected by that. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 20:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

As Pykk says, they speak Norwegian with no discernible accent, and English with what I would call a Norwegian accent. Perhaps they're simply saying "yeah, yeah", or maybe "ned, ned" (the d is silent)? It seems unlikely that the same voice actors did the French soldiers though, because they really sound like Norwegians. decltype (talk) 21:12, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Spelling and culture

When did spelling become a sign of being cultivated?--Quest09 (talk) 16:21, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that in any culture, in any language, prior to the last 100-200 years, anyone who was well educated was either already wealthy, or used their education to enter the upper reaches of society--in the vast majority of cases.[*] Some wealthy people were not well educated, but almost all educated people were considered cultivated to some degree, whether in Europe or Asia.

[*]In ancient Greece/Rome, slaves may have been the teachers and sometimes scholars, but even they wouldn't have been considered "uncultivated" merely because they were slaves.

--71.111.194.50 (talk) 17:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Nonstandard spelling for emphasis → That is trough, but to-hundrid yeres agoe, they roght lyke this. When did spelling become formalized and therefore a symbol of education (okay, writing that first sentence like that was a bad idea... Now I'm having trouble spelling properly). --Falconus^{p t c} 19:45, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Edit: when doesn't answer the question... I should have asked "why" was spelling formalized? --Falconus^{p t c} 19:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Back then many people misspelled on purpose because it was "cool"—in fact, one of the theories on where "okay" came from is based on this.

As for language standardization, it has many reasons. The reasons often have to do with nationalism, national unity, or economic development, although of course there are others. Wikipedia's article on Language standardization is woefully lacking in anything useful, but some books that are good, accessible treatments of this subject and should be available in a local library include Peter Trudgill's Sociolinguistics and John McWhorter's The Power of Babel. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Quest09, I did a quick search for stories in which someone who uses nonstandard spelling gets criticized. The earliest reference I've found so far is frm 1815 (Guy Mannering, [1]). Hopefully other editors can weigh in with earlier examples. (There are plenty in the Victorian era, for example, Vanity Fair, 1847 [2] or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884 [3], but I know you want the earliest.) English orthography says spelling was standardized between 1650 and 1800, so I imagine this cultural attitude originated in that period too. Best, WikiJedits (talk) 20:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering whether the premise of the question is a little flawed. Being able to spell (to whatever degree of "correctness") is an inherent part of being able to read and write. There was a time when being able to read and write was not the norm, being restricted to the clergy and some members of the aristocracy. Later, it spread to the general populace. They were taught to spell as part of being taught to read and write; some teaching was rudimentary, which leads to people making it up as they go along with unfamiliar words or words they've never seen written. Nobody is ever taught to spell incorrectly, but they can be incorrectly taught to spell. Even today, some people come out of a number of years of school with low-grade spelling skills. In some cases, there's a learning difficulty at work; but in the majority of cases, the teaching is at fault. That can apply as much to a "cultivated person" as to someone else, but there's probably a correlation between the degree of one's "cultivation" (however one defines that) and the quality of the schooling their parents can afford. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

@71.111: your answer doesn't make any sense to me. Thank to the rest.Quest09 (talk) 15:06, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not about spelling 'correctly' per se but rather being able to communicate in an intelligible form. This I'm sure has always been esteemed. Vranak (talk) 01:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if being able to spell is such an inherent part of being able to read and write . . . yes, the way you spell has to be close enough to the "accepted" spelling, if such a thing exists, that people can figure out what you mean, but there was literacy before there was such a thing as standardized spelling. Look at Chaucer and the other writers of his day, and isn't it true that Shakespeare was even known to spell his own name different ways on different occasions? Until reference works such as dictionaries were there to standardize things, spelling simply wasn't considered that big a deal. Nowadays, it often seems that a person's ability to spell doesn't necessarily correlate to his or her intelligence, general literacy, or even writing ability. (How many brilliant writers would be lost without their copyeditors?) - AJ

This is an interesting question, and one which deserves somewhat deeper analysis than perhaps the OP intended. Orthographical orthodoxy, i.e. conformity to the accepted norms of spelling, is a signature of conformity to the norms of spelling, typically as set out by the various definitives editions of dictionaries by which languages are determined, and is no more an indicator of cultivation (here presumably implying erudition and general savvy) than any other manifestation of conformity. The primary advantages are of utility, since it potentially removes a number of degrees of misunderstanding or ambiguity from the written intention, so that a well-formed lexical block can be more easily comprehended. An unorthodoxly formed word in a sentence will possibly have the reader pondering as to meaning, and since the point of writing is almost invariably to convey meaning, one is tempted at this point to exclaim, "Aha! Eureka, QED!". The downside to this is of course that the progress and direction of language under the thumb of dirigisme tends to be much abated since the uptake of new or variant spellings and neologisms tend to be checked in their stride by the mortmain of lexicography. Moreover much dead wood accrues over time; the English language is still hamstrung with any number of Dr Johnson's pronouncements on the orthodoxy, and if orthodoxy was not culturally enforceable the commonplace spelling of through would now almost certainly be thru, etc. Some would argue this a good thing. Some wouldn't. Sjc (talk) 03:35, 3 October 2009 (UTC)