Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 January 22

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January 22

Latin etymology of the word "conscious"

I would like to add some information to our article on "consciousness" concerning the derivation of the word from Latin. I am pretty sure of the basic facts, but not being a Latin speaker, not certain that I am handling the grammar correctly, so would appreciate if somebody can check up on me. Here is what I would like to say (some of this is already in the article):

Our word "conscious" derives from the Latin conscius, but the Latin version did not have the same meaning as our word -- it meant knowing with, in other words sharing knowledge about something with somebody. There were, however, many occurrences in Latin writings of the phrase conscius sibi, which translates literally as "knowing with oneself", or in other words sharing knowledge with oneself about something. Taken literally this is nonsense, but apparently it had the figurative meaning of knowing that one knows, as the modern English word "conscious" does.

These are not necessarily the exact words I would put into the article, but what I would mainly like to know is if anybody familiar with Latin sees anything there that is incorrect, or could be stated better. (For full disclosure, I'm also trying to write a book on this and would like to know for my own purposes.) Looie496 (talk) 01:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Not remotely an answer, but it's just occurred to me that our word "science" is related to "conscious". I wonder why we don't pronounce it as "shy-əns", analogously to "con-shəs". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

If we pronounced science that way, people would think we were crazy for talking like Sean Connery all the time --Jayron32 03:13, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, International Talk Like a Pirate Day is well established, why not International Talk Like Sean Connery Day? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 08:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

You pick a date. I'll do it if you will. --Jayron32 17:10, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

But how would Sean Connery be able to celebrate it? JIP | Talk 11:58, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

It would be like the last syllable of "conscience", surely. Shunce. 81.131.8.163 (talk) 05:56, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't call me Shirley.  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 08:05, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You have the right basic idea, but the details of the ramification of the senses of English words derived from conscius and conscientia and such is rather complicated. There's a whole chapter (Chapter 8) in C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words devoted to the topic (drawing also on the senses of similarly formed words in ancient Greek). The specifically medical and psychological (i.e., relating to the academic discipline of psychology) meanings of conscious and consciousness are fairly modern. Deor (talk) 01:52, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Mountainous area

I need other six letter words meaning "Mountainous area" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.2.151.131 (talk) 02:14, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Other than what? Sierra is a possibility. Deor (talk) 02:21, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe "upland". Alansplodge (talk) 03:06, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, other than what? Another suggestion: massif. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.173.208 (talk) 03:32, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a cross word puzzle. Alpine? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:10, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Character for dental clicks

I just discovered from the "ǀXam language" article that "ǀ" is the dental click sound, and according to Wiktionary "ǀXam" is a valid English word. That would make "ǀ" a valid English letter that's missing from the English alphabet, would it not? So where would "ǀXam" be listed alphabetically in a printed English dictionary? -- œ^™ 03:45, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I would say it comes under 'x'. Wiktionary also gives 'max' and 'XMA' as its anagrams. Also, the code for the language is 'xam'. This | does not appear in the code (nor in the anagrams - meaning it's not even recognized as a letter by the person who made the Wiktionary entry!). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Because a random person chose to edit Wiktionary and add a proper noun to an "English" entry of that website, our alphabet is suddenly wrong? Besides, there are plenty of sounds that are valid sounds of English but don't have their own dedicated letters (we have, thank goodness, a more or less phonemic orthography, not a phonetic one). rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I added a small clarification in my post --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:54, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

No worries, I was responding to OE, not you! rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:59, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I realised that, which is why I wrote in small print. I would have written in <smaller>smaller print</smaller> but that doesn't exist. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:26, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, ok, I thought you were adding the clarification because of my snarkiness, hehe... rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:16, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe you can use two nested "small" tags for really small writing. JIP | Talk 13:09, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Is it any smaller, though? Oh! Yes! Thanks! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:08, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Is the "ǀ" a "letter" or is it a diacritic? Even if it is a letter, is it an English letter? English has a fair number of loan words/names which contain "non-standard" letters/glyphs: Hawaiʻi, Bokmål, Ragnarök, etc. Note that the okina is considered a letter in it's own right in the Hawaiian alphabet, as are Å, Ä, and Ö in the Swedish alphabet, and Æ, Ø, and Å in the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. This, however, doesn't mean that they're considered English letters, even when we use them for "English" words.-- 174.31.216.144 (talk) 05:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

In that language it is a letter (it can have diacritics added to it; see Dental clicks). It is not a letter of English, though. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:29, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

But why can't it be an English letter? It would certainly make the English language even more versatile if we add the dental click to our alphabet. New English words are created all the time, why can't a new English word have a dental click? For that matter, why is tsk spelled with three letters when it can be spelled with one? "ǀ ǀ ǀ!" ;) -- œ^™ 08:30, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

New words are created using (usually) sounds already present in our phonological inventory. There's rarely a need to add a new letter to our alphabet. As for the presence of sounds that are not represented in our orthography, we also have a velar fricative in "ugh" and a glottal stop in "uh-oh" and at the beginning of most vowel-initial words, neither of which is reflected in our orthography, but we get along fine. As for "why can't it", I think you're already active enough at this desk to know that there is often no "logic" behind how languages turn out. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

To use the dental click example above: new words in English would indeed be allowed to have dental clicks in them - there are no rules against it. The problem is, the overwhelming majority of the English speaking world wouldn't have a clue what one sounded like, and so the sound would probably not catch on. Even if a letter was invented (or borrowed from |Xam) to represent it, it would end up as a silent letter in every word that it appears in (real life example is how we indeed pronounce the name of the language |Xam), and this would be yet another piece of ammo in the arsenal of those who think English spelling should be simplified. Short of it: there is no point in inventing or borrowing a new letter for a sound that wouldn't be pronounced. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:57, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. :) œ^™ 19:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

What are these palatal consonants?

I came across a description of a few consonants, but I can't figure out the precise term and IPA symbol for them. A rough English translation of the description goes like this: Affricates: "The front part of the tongue touches the hard palate a bit lower than it does for the retroflex consonants, more towards the teeth. The blade of the tongue touches the front part of the hard palate, while the tongue tip remains somewhat streched out." The fricative is described like this: "The two sides of the middle part of the tongue touch the gums of the upper molars, while the front part of the tongue is bent downwards, away from the teeth." --Uanfala (talk) 07:34, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

The description of the affricate sounds like a /ɕ/ to me (which is actually a voiceless alveolopalatal fricative), and the fricative sounds just like /j/ (which is a voiced palatal approximant). Can't be too sure, though. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:42, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I was going to suggest /ç/ (if voiceless) or /ʝ/ (if voiced) for the latter. Does your source not mention any languages where those sounds occur? And, by the way, is it in Bulgarian? --Theurgist (talk) 19:07, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

The original description is in Hindi and the language concerned is Kullu Pahari. The fricative is elsewhere unambiguously mentioned as being a fricative, so it can't be the palatal approximant. It is voiceless, and corresponds to /ʃ/ in Hindi cognates, while the affricate corresponds to Hindi /tʃ/.--Uanfala (talk) 20:20, 22 January 2011 (UTC)