Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 July 1

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July 1

Silent w in wh- words

At Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 June 27#Culinary advice - permitted? I’ve just discovered that the word whortleberry is pronounced "hurtleberry". I can see already it's going to be a crackerjack weekend. That's the only wh- word I can think of where the w is silent, other than "whore".

Are there any others, and is it possible that these 2 words could be even remotely related? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:45, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Whoever said that got the whole thing wrong. Mikenorton (talk) 08:59, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Shit, what a goof-up. Crackerjack weekend, here I come. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 10:59, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Looks like you got it wholly wrong. --Jayron32 12:08, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't "who" have a silent w?194.176.105.39 (talk) 12:05, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I thought that my response had covered those two – I didn’t think that I had to spell it out. Mikenorton (talk) 12:42, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I have just noticed the three examples we have all have the letter "o" following the "wh". Are there any examples where the following letter is not "o"? 194.176.105.39 (talk) 12:23, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I was checking a few on Etymology Online, and it's not clear where the leading "w" came from, because most of the root words didn't originally have the "w". Meanwhile, we have the opposite problem when "wh" is following by a different vowel than "o" - the tendency to drop the "h". That is, to pronounce words like "what", "whet" and "which" as if they were spelled "wut", "wet" and "witch". (I'm not coming up with any normal "whu-" words just now.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:57, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I think we know more than three now: whortleberry, whore, who, whom, whose, whoever, whole, whoop - and their derivatives (whorehouse, whoremonger, whorish, whoreson, wholly, wholesome, wholesale, wholemeal, whooping). Probably others. I did a quick scan of my dictionary and the only such examples start with who-. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 13:00, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I pronounce the w in whoop, except in the specific phrase whooping cough (pertussis). --Trovatore (talk) 21:27, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I even pronounce it then. That is, they sound like hwoop and hwooping cough, when I say them. StuRat (talk) 21:50, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Might be able to help with how the initial w came about. According to our article on wh, /h/ and /hw/ originally contrasted, but before rounded consonants /h/ rounded, merging the two (and where thus spelled "wh"). The /hw/ sound then lost contrastive rounding in the same environments, giving us the "silent w" in those words. My unsourced guess the reason they're all "who-" (many, originally, just "ho-") would be the Great Vowel Shift: things spelled "hu-" had a glide inserted with the shift, making the /h/ palatalized instead of labialized. Lsfreak (talk) 15:18, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

The surname Whewell doesn't pronounce the first "w" (or at least William Whewell's name doesn't) even though the following vowel isn't an "o". Perhaps a proper noun isn't what you're looking for, but luckily the mineral whewellite is named after WW. The Oxford English Dictionary confirms that it follows the pronunciation of Whewell's name. In fact I now see it tells me that the interjection whew can be pronounced the same as the name Hugh, or alternatively with an initial "hw-" sound. --Antiquary (talk) 10:00, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

W is silent before o in the words two and sword as well, and for the same reason: after a consonant, the /w/ got swallowed up by the following rounded vowel. But in whole and whore, the w is unetymological; those words were never pronounced with /hw/, but have always had just /h/. Angr (talk) 15:56, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Why two and sword, but not sward, swathe, swaddling, swim, twitter, twit, twat, twelve, twenty? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 21:43, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Swathe, swim, twitter, twit, twelve, and twenty don't have a rounded vowel after the /w/, and the vowel of sward, swaddling, and twat was only rounded relatively recently in the history of English (the vowels of swaddling and twat are still unrounded, or unrounded again, in North American English). You didn't ask about swore and sworn, but the explanation I've heard is that they kept the /w/ to match the /w/ of swear. Angr (talk) 21:47, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

And what's with answer? --Theurgist (talk) 14:28, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Extended homonyms

Here's an interesting thing. I was reading a newspaper article and I came to this passage:

• It was great; the planets sort of lined up. But it wasn't all upside. The shy, introverted kid found the public demands trying.

When I first read it, the last 3 words (highlighted) made sense in themselves, but didn't seem to fit the context. Then the penny dropped. I was parsing them as:

• public = noun
• demands = verb
• trying = verbal noun.

That is, the public insists their would-be heroes at least try. It's a clunky way of putting it, but it still works.

But the way I should have read it was:

• public = adjective
• demands = noun
• trying = verbal adjective.

That is, the demands the public were placing on him were onerous.

Two very different but equally valid ways of interpreting the same sentence (were it not for the need to fit the context).

Naturally, I'm curious to find some other examples of a set of 3 (or more) consecutive words, where each of the 3 words exists as more than one part of speech, and there's more than one valid combination of these differing meanings, without changing the word order. It's like the extended version of a homonym, but is there a special name for this type of duplicate meaning applying to a whole phrase and also to every word element of the phrase, rather than just a single word? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 13:56, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean like Let Him Have It? A misunderstanding with perhaps the most tragic consequences.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:04, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

• Eats Shoots and Leaves? The gramatical term you are searching for is Amphibology. Another notable one is "Man eating cabbage seen at local diner" or some varient. Of course, we don't know from the grammar alone if this was a man who was dining on cabbage, or indeed if it was cabbage dining on a man. There are probably an infinite supply of these combinations. --Jayron32 16:05, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I think we're looking at syntactic ambiguity. Some examples there.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions so far. It is a form of syntantic ambiguity and, I guess, amphibology, but the examples given there and above don't seem to meet my criteria. "Man eating cabbage" is either unhyphenated 2-word verbal adjective + noun, or noun + verb + noun. Ignoring the word 'and', "Eats shoots and leaves" is either verb + verb + verb, or verb + noun + noun. Those do not meet my requirement that whatever the part of speech each word is in one case, it's a different part of speech in the other case. That must apply to all 3 words, not just 1 or 2 of them. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 21:39, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Noam Chomsky's famous example is "Fruit flies like a banana." Is it about the aerodynamic characteristics of fruit, or about the affections of small insects? Looie496 (talk) 23:34, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah, perfect. Thanks, Looie. "Fruit flies like" is either noun + verb + adverb, or adjective + noun + verb. Is there a list of similar examples, and what are these called? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 00:57, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

A variation, sometimes attributed to Groucho: "Time flies like an arrow / Fruit flies like a banana." Not quite the same idea, but also attributed to Groucho: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:34, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

There's also the ambiguity in the song "The Purple People Eater", about a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater. It turns out that the one-eyed, one-horned extraterrestrial is looking for purple people to eat. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:37, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Has the Singular Possesive Pronoun Gone the Way of the Dinosaur?

All,

I posted a question regarding the use of singular possessive pronouns at WikiProject Grammar, but I thought that some of the regulars on this list might have good input. Please join in the discussion if you have the inclination. Thanks! Ebikeguy (talk) 16:15, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

The title of this section doesn't make sense (the words "my", "his", and "her" have certainly not gone the way of the dinosaur), but the issue that Ebikeguy really wants to raise is whether it is okay to use "they" and "their" to refer to individual people. The question brings out what is widely recognized as the greatest deficiency in the English language: the lack of a universally accepted way to refer to a single person without specifying gender. Looie496 (talk) 17:33, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

But why is it that this particular challenge has eluded everyone forever, when other words get created every day of the week, and become generally accepted almost literally overnight? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 21:26, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Come now, JackofOz, you should know the answer to that! It's easy to create a word like "blog" or "sexting" because you are not playing around with the basic elements of a person's language. Changing the word "the", "is", "he", etc is obviously going to be impossible within a lifetime, just as it would be literally impossible to merge the basic grammar of French and English to create a third choice for Canada. It doesn't matter who would choose what amongst "est" and "is", "le" and "the", etc. That choice itself would be an exercise in futility. On the other hand, if a community were to decide for Canada, overnight, that it would use American forms -ize instead of British forms -ise, that could immediately begin to be used by every single Canadian, if they marketed the change right. Just like there is the great story of a country LITERALLY overnight changing the side of the road they drive on - to a man, every single person, all at once, just starting to drive on the other side of the road in the entire country. But you could never get even a handful of people to start walking differently. --188.29.154.125 (talk) 23:47, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

You talk as if you know me, friend 188. You're not Loomis 51 by any chance, are you? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 01:00, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure this isn't the greatest deficiency in the language. There are plenty of other things people complain about (for example, the many exceptions to various "rules"), and anyway this deficiency seems to be common across many languages. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:43, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I can't think of any other problem that has motivated such a diversity of attempts to fix it -- all unsuccessful. You might say the spelling; but I don't view spelling as a property of the language. Looie496 (talk) 23:30, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

That isn't actually a deficiency in the English language - as I understand it, there are actually *three* different, perfectly acceptable gender-neutral third-person singular possessive personal pronouns in English, although picky people come up with various reasons to dislike each of them. 1) "his" - the traditional choice, widely disliked because it's identical to the masculine-specific singular possessive pronoun, leading people to (incorrectly) conclude that a person using it assumes the default gender for people to be is masculine. 2) "their" - also widely and traditionally accepted (as in "back to pre-Shakespearean times"), but it irritates grammar perfectionists due to it also being used for the third-person plural possessive (although for some reason they don't seem to have an issue with "your" being used both for the second-person singular possessive and second-person plural possessive) 3) "one's" - generally disliked because it sounds stilted and stuffy - possibly because only stuffy people used it while everyone else was perfectly content with "his" or "their". -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 00:16, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

English finds a way, and that way is the singular "they", whether the purists like it or not. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:54, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

A 4th option is "it's", but this seems rather insulting. StuRat (talk) 04:39, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I hope you realize you're practically begging for a comment from Cuddly3. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:52, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Yep, I 'spose so. :-) StuRat (talk) 05:06, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

There is no limit to how much could be said about this, but I will content myself with giving a pointer to an essay by Douglas Hofstadter called A Person Paper on Purity in Language, which played a part in forming my own attitudes. Looie496 (talk) 00:32, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Wow. Thanks for that link! LadyofShalott 03:03, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Hofstadter is far from my favorite writer, but that's powerful. My own conversion began when my strong-willed daughter, aged 3, objected to a story book we were reading (about a non-human character referred to constantly as 'he'), stating emphatically, "Maybe it's a she!" From the mouth of babes . . . -- Elphion (talk) 21:37, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Pre-Proto-Indo-European distinguished between not gender but animacy in nouns, and possessed the distinction between he/it and who/what with the terms he and who indicating animacy, not masculine gender. The Hittite language, which branched off Proto-Indo-European the earliest, never had a feminine gender or pronoun. The feminine gender is believed to have arisen by the reinterpretation of the -a ending of *gwena "woman", certain kinship terms, and various abstract nouns ending in -a as the laryngeal system decayed. Hence it is not "he" which is a gender-specific pronoun indication masculine, but "she" which specifically indicates feminine, while the older "he" simply means animate, and not specifically feminine.

Note that Proto-Indo-European has semantic pairs for words such as fire and water which distinguish between animate and inanimate (active and inactive) genders:

• egni vs. *pur "fire"
• apa/*akwa- vs. *wodor "water"

where the first term indicates an active agent and the second a passive substance in the neuter gender (das Wasser, das Feuer). See also the conservative Latin Adjectives of the Third Declension http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension#Third_declension_adjectives with their often lack of distinction between masculine and feminine, and the common gender of certain Germanic languages.

The old pronoun system

he [+animate] it {-animate]

with the introduction of

she [+animate, +feminine]

causes the reanalysis

he [+animate not necessarily feminine] > [+animate +masculine]

The historic use of "he" as the default pronoun reflects this, as does the lack of any commonly reconstructable ancient feminine adjective system for Proto-Indo-European. The notion that this somehow embodies sexism is a rather historically facile modern misconception. If anything, the argument should be in favor of getting rid of the she pronoun, since it is the sexist neologism. μηδείς (talk) 20:14, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

To some extent, I think that's what singular they is doing -- introducing a neutral replacement for both he and she. Regardless of the linguistic history, there is no question that roughly half the population currently perceives he as non-neutral, and linguistic fiat won't change that. I think they is well on the way to becoming standard. In my lifetime it will not, of course, replace he or she in definite situations. Possibly down the road -- but only if the strong gender assumptions in our society become significantly less pronounced. -- Elphion (talk) 22:59, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

You seem to have missed the point entirely, and are begging the question as to the objectionability of he. "He" is the neutral form, as 140.142.20.229 asserted above, and I explained at length. The word "they" is just as objectionable as "she" since it implies an untruth, the plurality of the subject. μηδείς (talk) 02:58, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Luckily, there is no indication that the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European were sexist at all, so we can stop worrying about this silly thing that only directly affects half the population. 173.33.235.50 (talk) 01:27, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Do you have some source other than, perhaps, this, 173.? Because however entertaining one's pretense at victimhood, it doesn't amount to useful scholarship. Knowledge is fun, interesting, and liberating. Try it some time. μηδείς (talk) 02:58, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that one can fairly say that "he" is gender neutral in modern English because the equivalent in Proto-Indo-European was gender-neutral, it's kind of like saying that modern English is actually in its correct form written in runes, because that was the correct way to record Old English prior to 800. Modern English and Proto-Indo European are not at all the same language, and they have not been for a very long time. The crux of the matter is, when you walk up to the average native English speaker and say "Who's he", they are not going to clarify by asking you "Who, the man or the woman?". People can argue that "he" is to be used when the gender is unknown, but I don't think in most circles (at least in my experience) that "he" is gender neutral, where the word "he" doesn't automatically convey an image of a male person. Uh-oh, I just looked up from typing (I'm at an internet café) and I think that someone just lost his skirt. Now, how many of you honestly thought of a woman when you read that sentence, even given that in most English speaking places, a woman is far more likely to be the individual in question? (just to be clear, I made that up, both about being in an internet café and somebody losing their skirt) Falconus^{p t c} 03:58, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

While I agree with your points, I don't think that the solution is to revert to the plural when referring to an individual of indeterminate gender. "They" clearly refers to multiple people, although this might not have been the case hundreds of years ago. "She/he" or simply "s/he" is an accurate, gender neutral solution to the issue. Ebikeguy (talk) 04:03, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I do know where you are coming from... I think that it is clear that "singular they" is not widely accepted in formal English at the present time, but I think that it is gaining a lot of momentum among my generation in the US at least (to me, in context, they is perfectly singular, and I don't even question the singularity of "someone lost their skirt"). It will remain to be seen whether the trend continues or reverses. I don't like the idea of using a pronoun for both singular and plural (ambiguity issues), and the word "you" also bothers me greatly in that regard (I use "y'all" wherever I can for that reason), but I think that a development of singular they would be an improvement, because in my opinion, there is no singular version of they in English ("s/he" works, until you try to say it. Then it's three words ("she or he"), where ideally we'd only have to use one). Maybe in 150 years the grammar prescriptivists will go nuts about "they'all" or "th'all" ;-). Falconus^{p t c} 04:22, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) The argument that "they" implies plural gets you nowhere. Language changes, and the current meaning of language is only a convention among the current speakers of the language. "You", for example, once implied plural, but it no longer does. "They" in formal speech still implies plural, but in informal speech for a large and growing number of speakers has taken on new meaning to meet a perceived linguistic problem. Your saying that "he" connoting maleness is not a problem for you (while "they" used in the singular is) will not change that. My prediction is that eventually "they" will become (with much muttering and gnashing of teeth, as these things always happen) the standard indefinite third person singular personal pronoun. That's the way linguistic change happens: people gradually start talking differently. You can argue against that as much as you like, but you might as well argue against the tide coming in. -- Elphion (talk) 21:35, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Мы вас похороним? Before or after the Singularity and/or the unveiling of the 12th Imam? μηδείς (talk) 21:57, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, we will see. We've already lost the who/whom battle. The loss of that distinction actually bugs me much more than he/she/they, but even educated speakers ignore it or often get it wrong (as in "to whomever is still listening", which is wrong no matter how you slice it). Believe me, my prediction above is not the way I'd like it to turn out, but it involves the least linguistic pain for the most speakers, and so it's not surprising that the signs point that way. -- Elphion (talk) 22:28, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't see the matters as battles in the sense of crusades so much as in taking the effort to educate people above the level of illiterate playground hearsay. That is, I prefer children be taught their language by scholars with standards, not by their peers. (It's one of the nice advantages humans have over animals.) I frequently use they singular and who in oblique contexts in spoken speech and occasionally in writing. But I know what I am doing when I do it. There is nothing wrong with educating a child on proper forms (we corrected children's pronunciation, their misuse of irregular verbs, and such things as double negatives). Indeed, I don't consider an English speaker educated or connected to his culture if he cannot parse both pre-19th century English and at least the basics one foreign language. Yet actively teaching the idea that the use of he as the default third person is "sexist" is not an educated philological position but a modern ideological one. I am with Orwell. I am not in favor of dumbing down language in order to serve a political POV. μηδείς (talk) 17:44, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Arabic Dialect Comparison

Background...I'm taking Arabic I in the fall, and my textbook covers three dialects: Egyptian, Levantine, and Formal. However, I have a friend at my school who's on a foreign exchange program from Kuwait, where the "Gulf" dialect is spoken. I want to be able to converse with him as well as I'm able, so my question is, which dialect of Arabic is closer to the Gulf one? Egyptian or Levantine? I would assume (And we all know what happens when one assumes something...) Levantine would be more similar, since it is geographically closer, but honestly, hell if I know. Thanks! Bossadai (talk) 23:49, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Egyptian is the dialect most used on TV throughout the Arabic world, for dramas, comedies, music programs, and stuff, so if you use Egyptian you will definitely be understood by speakers of other dialects. Understanding them, however, may be a different matter.... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:27, 2 July 2011 (UTC)