Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 August 24

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August 24

Who is good at anagrams

I am making an anagram of my name for a nom-de-plume. The letters left over are L I Z U O A. I need to arrange them into a French or French-sounding surname. I can use one or two letters at a pinch for a middle initial, but no more! I'm really bad at anagrams; can somebody help me out? 68.76.159.51 (talk) 01:44, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Zouali would be a French transliteration of an Arabic surname. How about Alizou? I hints at "alias" and ends like some famous French nicknames do (such as Zizou and Zouzou). ---Sluzzelin talk 01:53, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Azouli? Aouliz? Aouzil? Ouazil? Oualiz? Zaouil? Those are also French-sounding spellings of Arabic-sounding names (actually Google suggests that's exactly what they are). Maybe also Louiza? Zaouli is an African word. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:44, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, Emile Zola was a famous writer -- that gets you within two letters. Looie496 (talk) 02:59, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

La Ouiz? Louiza? -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 04:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't help thinking of Esteban Loaiza when I look at those letters. Adam Bishop (talk) 06:16, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Louzai (LOO-ZAY) comes closest to sounding like an actual French surname, rather than an Arabic one. The letter "z" is not used so much in French, making it harder to come up with a perfect name. --Xuxl (talk) 16:50, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

"The synthetic solid was ground and sieved through 100 mesh for subsequent use."

"100 mesh" looks strange but is actually a technical term for a specific kind of mesh, so you can safely ignore that. I'm interested about the use of "sieve" as a passive verb here. I can't recall ever seeing it used as anything but an active verb - "He sieved the gravel." - and even then I'd probably refer to use "sift" or "filter" as the verbs. Is the header sentence grammatically correct? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 05:37, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Why couldn't it be used as a passive verb? Exploding Boy (talk) 05:45, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying it couldn't, I'm just saying I can't recall coming across such a usage before and would like the stamp of approval of people more knowledgeable than I linguistic affairs. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 05:57, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, Merriam-Webster and both American Heritage and Collins say there is a verb "to sieve", meaning the same thing as "to sift", and that it's been around since the 15th century. So the sentence is acceptable. Still, if I had been the one writing it, I would have used "sift". I'm not a language purist who objects to things like the verb "to access", but if the language has a separate verb available for use with the same meaning, then why use a "noun that has been verbed"? —Angr (talk) 06:07, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

It is a common technical term, '+sieved' gets 105,000 hits on Google Scholar. Mikenorton (talk) 06:28, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

To sieve is NOT the same as either to sift or to filter; it has a rather specific meaning.

• Sifting does not always separate components. Especially in baking, one often "sifts together" the dry ingredients to combine them. Sifting is usually but not always done with a sieve, but sieving is always done specifically with a sieve.
• Filtering conventionally means separating components, esp in the form of "filtering out" something; most people will also consider filtering to be removing solids from a solution or suspension.
• Sieving nearly always means "sorting by size", always implying solids; and the usual mechanism is, well, with a sieve. It can also mean forcing a mixture through a sieve, which causes larger pieces to be reduced in size, but it has nothing to do with separating components of a mixture.

Of course, meanings may have changed since I learned them :-). DaHorsesMouth (talk) 03:31, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

French pronunciation

Hi all, does anybody know the correct pronunciation of Buoux, possibly with the IPA? Thanks! --pma 09:10, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Is this a trick question? From the look of it, one would expect /bɥu/ (roughly bwoo), but guessing how the locals pronounce places' names is a mug's game. Deor (talk) 12:26, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Because Buoux is located in the South of France, the pronunciation would be /bjuks/ (according to this page). The French Wiki here says /byuks/. For a discussion you can see here. I think the better choice is /bjuks/ — AldoSyrt (talk) 18:16, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! --pma 20:08, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

How do you link South of France with /bjuks/ (rather than with /byuks/)? Are there any instances of /yu/ in French? Eliko (talk) 07:16, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The pronunciation of the last consonant of a toponym from the South of France is not unusual. In this case the letter x of Buoux is pronounced (/ks/). That's the link. People in South East of France tend to stress the words more than elsewhere. In this case the stress would be on /uks/, therefore there is a very little difference (for Parisian ears) between /bj'uks/ and /by'uks/. May be it is between the two. I am far from beeing a phonologist, neither an amateur, so take my explanations with caution. — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:12, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Again, I still wonder if French speakers can make a phonemic distinction between /yu/ and /ju/. Do you know of any French word having the sound /yu/ (being distinguished from /ju/ to any French speaker's ears)? Eliko (talk) 08:43, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Not an expert, but doesn't /yu/ mean the word has two syllables wheres with /ju/ it would only be one? In a syllable-timed language such as French that makes a huge difference. Buoux looks very much a two-syllable word to me, no matter whether the x is mute or not (which I find impossible to predict). --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:50, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, without reference to how it is pronounced by the inhabitants of Buoux, I would say /by.uks/ (two syllabes). But it seems that the inhabitants pronounce the name as one syllabe, hence the shift to /bjuks/. The one syllabe /yu/ is not euphonic in French and it's usual (a rule ?) in French to add letters (sounds) or to modify words to get euphony. To answer Eliko, French speakers would make a distinction between /yu/ and /ju/ (with no doubt if they are pronounced as separate monosyllabes). No French word with /yu/ comes to my mind at this moment, but you can say tu l'as vu ou entendu with vu ou pronounced /vyu/. — AldoSyrt (talk) 12:25, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh, word clusters like vu ou are rather common in French, and every French speaker can undoubtedly distinguish between /yu/ and /ju/, at least from a musical point of view, but I'm talking from a phonemic point of view, i.e. I'm looking for one word, containing the /yu/ sound (even as two syllables: /y.u/), as a phonemic sound, i.e. so that pronouncing this sound as /ju/ would change the meaning of the whole word. So, probably there isn't such a word, is there? Eliko (talk) 14:22, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I did not find any common noun, but French family names : Duhoux (/dy.u/) and Dioux (/dju/). — AldoSyrt (talk) 16:55, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh, your example proves that the sound /yu/ (being distinguished from /ju/) has a phonemic value in French. That's interesting! Thank you. Eliko (talk) 17:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion (but now, we all know how subjective is one's own language perception), /ɥ/ is much closer to /w/ than /j/. This is why some regional pronunciations merge the two former (fairly common in northern France and universal in Belgium), while I know of none merging the two latter. Furthermore, to answer Eliko's 14:22 post, /j/ is arguably much "more phonemic" (especially when written <ill>) than the two others, and hence likelier to be in contrasting position. And without raining on your parade, Aldosyrt, I think your example doesn't prove anything (although I agree with its conclusion) because "Duhoux" is simply "du" + "houx" ("from the holly"), while "Dioux" is perhaps a dialectal cognate of "Dieu" (in my region, they do say "nomdèdiou!"). JaneStillman (talk) 19:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I think there is a misunderstanding. I did not want to prove anything. I just try to answer Eliko's question: I'm looking for one word, containing the /yu/ sound (even as two syllables: /y.u/) [...] so that pronouncing this sound as /ju/ would change the meaning of the whole word. As requested, Duhoux and Dioux seems to me to denote two different "meanings", which you confirm. — AldoSyrt (talk) 16:43, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

It's true that it was not you who claimed to have proved anything. And, in the way you put it in your last post, I fully agree with you. I was not questioning your goodwill, I was just trying to further the debate. Sorry if you have found my reply offensive. JaneStillman (talk) 17:06, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

"Du bist der Star"

In the above German phrase, which I've seen and heard from time to time, why is Star in the nominative? I would have thought Star was the object of the sentence, and hence in the accusative den Star. No? --Viennese Waltz ^talk 11:59, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

"der Star" is a subject complement because it follows a linking verb (copula). The subject complement has the same grammatical case as the subject (nominative). It's the same in Latin: "vinum bonum est", "Statua pulchra est", etc. decltype (talk) 12:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 12:35, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

This is also why Who's Who is not *"Who's Whom". Marnanel (talk) 13:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Reminds me of the wag who was responsible for: "Some say getting ahead is not about what you know but who you know. Well, they're wrong. It's not who you know but whom you know." -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:33, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Languages written without diacritics

What languages are written (in the Latin alphabet) without the use of diacritical marks or other special characters? The only example I can think of is English, but surely there must be others. LANTZY^TALK 12:55, 24 August 2010 (UTC)]

Latin (except dictionaries, textbooks, and such).—Emil J. 13:02, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Swahili, I believe. Marnanel (talk) 13:08, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Ido. I was going to say Welsh but the article says it does use them! -- Q Chris (talk) 13:10, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

And I was going to say Hawaiian, despite the article saying the okina is a "unicameral consonant letter." (It represents the glottal stop in, for example, Hawai'i.) I suspect most people consider it essentially equivalent to an apostrophe or a single quote. But the College of Hawaiian Language's site shows many examples of macrons. --- OtherDave (talk) 13:19, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

There are many. Rotokas uses only 12 letters, none of which are with diacritical marks. Malay and Indonesian don't have diacritics either. Neither do many African languages like Xhosa or Zulu, nor a number of constructed languages like Interlingua or the above-mentioned Ido. --Theurgist (talk) 13:25, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Dutch makes minimal use of diacritics. It uses a dieresis in words like België to show that the e isn't part of the digraph ie, but English also uses the dieresis sometimes (naïve, for some people coöperate). And it uses the acute accent in a few words to distinguish meanings (een means "a", één means "one"; voor means "for", vóór means "before"), but only when ambiguity would result without the accents. But it doesn't use diacritics to show that a letter has a consistently different pronunciation from the non-diacriticked equivalent. —Angr (talk) 13:32, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I think diacritics are relatively rare in Australian languages, too. Of the three whose articles I just checked, Warlpiri and Arrernte seem not to use diacritics, while Pitjantjatjara uses an underline diacritic below t, n, l, r to mark them as retroflexes rather than dentals. —Angr (talk) 13:47, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Language recognition chart#Characters (permanent link here) (last change here), English, Hawaiian, Indonesian, Latin, Malay, Swahili, and Zulu contain the letters ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ and no others.Wavelength (talk) 14:00, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Hawaiʻian definitely does not. It only has 13 letters including the ʻokina, and the five vowels are modified with macrons when they are phonologically long: ā ē ī ō ū. Latin does not either. It never uses W, and it traditionally doesn't make a distinction between I and J, nor between U and V. --Theurgist (talk) 14:10, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Theurgist, of course you are correct. I made that comment without enough thought.—Wavelength (talk) 14:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

For Hawaiian, it depends on how old the text is. Modern texts use the ‘okina and macrons, but older texts (e.g. the Hawaiian Bible) don't use either, so that the syllables [a], [ʔa], [aː], and [ʔaː] are all written a without differentiation. —Angr (talk) 14:53, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

You do see W in Latin, just not classical Latin, and I guess only for Germanic personal names. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:27, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

If you include romanizations of languages for which Latin is not the official alphabet, there should be plenty. For example, the Revised Romanization of Korean, Wade-Giles for Mandarin, and Jyutping for Cantonese all don't use diacritics. As for official orthographies, after snooping around a little it looks like the orthographies of various Fula languages don't necessarily have diacritics, although they have some letters not in the original latin alphabet (Y with hook, etc.). rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:02, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Wade–Giles uses ü and ê, and originally also included û.—Emil J. 15:24, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Greenlandic doesn't have diacritics except in Danish names and loanwords. —Angr (talk) 15:21, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Cornish has a number of competing orthographies, but according to Omniglot only one of them uses diacritics. I'm pretty sure that pre-revival Cornish didn't use any. Manx traditionally didn't use any either, but Manx lexicographers in the 19th century found it intolerable that /x/ and /tʃ/ were both written ch, so they started using çh for the latter. I think that started out as something just for dictionaries and learners' materials, but nowadays it seems to be fully integrated into the orthography. —Angr (talk) 15:48, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Xhosa does not appear to have any diacritics, either. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:00, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Theurgist mentioned that above. —Angr (talk) 16:06, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

The Latin alphabet used in Uzbek includes Oʻ oʻ and Gʻ gʻ. Do they count as "diacritics or other special characters"? ---Sluzzelin talk 17:04, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

English is not actually an example of a language written without diacritics. Although its core vocabulary and fully naturalized words have no diacritics, standard dictionaries include spellings such as naïveté, jeté, and résumé. John M Baker (talk) 19:40, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

And a lot of Wikipedia editors insist on writing début, rôle, étude, première, etc. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:29, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

John M Baker -- English written text can be fancied up with diacritics in various cases, but it's never really outright incorrect to omit all diacritics (merely inelegant). This is not the case for languages where diacritics are part of the basic core orthography (such as French, etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 00:11, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

South Slavic languages. Of these, Slovene uses diacritics, but extremely rarely. There are, however, some extra characters - the haček characters š, č and ž in Slovene joined by ć and d with stroke (đ) in the rest of the languages. TomorrowTime (talk) 19:52, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I think for purposes of this question, we can treat the haček itself as a diacritic, used over s, c, and z in South Slavic languages, and over those letters in addition to others in the West Slavic languages except Polish. Likewise for the acute accent over the c. Even if these languages technically treat ć and č as separate letters from c, rather than as diacritic modifications of c, they are in their origin c with diacritic marks. —Angr (talk) 22:19, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I suppose so. It's interesting, though - I grew up with c and č in my alphabet, and I never once considered the latter only a variation on the first, they were (and are) two completely different entities to me, even if in the baby years of the Internet I always substantiated č for c for lack of language support. It's a matter of perspective, I guess, since there is logic in what you say. TomorrowTime (talk) 06:14, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I could point out that the Latin letter G is also in its origin C with a diacritic mark. Marnanel (talk) 13:31, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I suppose that we are not counting the English tittle. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:59, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

No we aren't, because i and j without the tittle - have no meaning in English, whereas the a without the German umlaut - still has a meaning in German. Anyways, I'd expect that we would count the English apostrophe as a diacritic mark, beacuse both boys and boy's (and boys' ) have a meaning in English. Eliko (talk) 21:11, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

In Turkish and Azeri, the tittle on the i is a diacritic, but the one on the j isn't. —Angr (talk) 21:24, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I emphasized: "have no meaning in English". Eliko (talk) 22:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Take a close one

In The Dark River by John Twelve Hawks, there is a sentence saying "Ganji took a close one there." What does it mean? Ganji was in dangerous racing with the speaker, could win the speaker but fell into risky situation.

Please help.--Analphil (talk) 19:42, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

It means exactly what you say - that he barely escaped from a very dangerous situation. Also called a "close call". TomorrowTime (talk) 19:53, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. --Analphil (talk) 20:14, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Difference between the Adessive and Superessive case

I can't understand the difference between the adessive case and superessive case after reading the respective Wikipedia articles (& other related ones). This is what I gathered from Wikipedia:

• Concerning Finnish, the case meaning both "on top of" and "at/by/near" is called Adessive in English.
• Concerning Estonian, there is no distinct "at/by/near" case; the case meaning "on top of" is called Adessive in English.
• Concerning Hungarian, the case meaning "on top of" is called Superessive in English, and the case meaning "at/by/near" is called Adessive in English.

(I speak Estonian natively but barely know the others' grammar)

So there seems to be a discrepancy. Estonian "Adessive" means the same as Hungarian "Superessive" while Hungarian "Adessive" means something different? -VillemVillemVillem (talk) 21:56, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Gelert

The legendary "faithful hound" of Llywelyn the Great of Wales: on which syllable of the name does the stress fall? "GEH-lert" or "Geh-LERT"? 71.104.106.143 (talk) 23:33, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Welsh words are almost without exception stressed on the penult. Marnanel (talk) 03:40, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. 71.104.106.143 (talk) 06:23, 25 August 2010 (UTC)