Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 August 12

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August 12

Russian possessive adjective in -ina

Can anyone give a good source or link that describes the origin of the Russian possessive adjective ending in ina derived from names ending in a? My po-Moskovsky is not good enough to allow me to search well in Cyrillic. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 00:17, 12 August 2012 (UTC) (PS, the source can be in any Romance or Western Germanic or Slavic or classical Western dialect, so far as I am concerned, with English, Spanish, Russian, German or French preferred. And no snarky 4th through 8th best movie comments, please.) μηδείς (talk) 00:20, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I can't answer your question as such, but here they’re not given any special name, but are just one of the 2 sub-classes of "Possessive Adjectives Pertaining to Persons". While they're derived from names ending in -a, not all those names are feminine like Anna, Maria, Elena etc. In fact, most would be feminine-looking but masculine-gendered diminutives of masculine names (Mikhail --> Misha; Nikolay --> Kolya; Ivan --> Vanya, etc). They occur not just in the feminine (-ina) form, but also in masculine (-in), neuter (-ino) and plural (-iny) forms, and all their oblique cases. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 20:22, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, a good website. I did know that the ending need not be feminine, but for some reason was only thinking of feminine possessed nouns in my head. I never heard this form until I studied a little Great Russian at university, hence my desire to know the origin. μηδείς (talk) 01:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

What does everyone say in this Fall of Gaddafi video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy1dsO-jKd0&bpctr=1344762809

See, all I understand from the video is "Moammar!" and "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Great.)

This was an exciting day for Libyans and pro-democracy individuals worldwide. The moment marked the fall of a die-hard dictator after a rule that spanned longer than I've been alive.

This is why that moment is worth translating.

Now, could anyone who knows Arabic translate everything else that was said in the video? I know it's quite a lot of shouts, but please translate whatever is intelligible. Thanks. --70.179.170.114 (talk) 08:33, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Didn't you already ask this recently? -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:04, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi, i'm arabic speaker. unfortunately the video is noisy and alot of people shouting. but here we go. They are mostly insulting him by saying "you dog". Others say "This is for what you did in Misrata" and slap/spit on him. Others say "Keep him alive". and finally some of the crowd say "A little mercy for him". --Hussain Durmush (talk) 03:17, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Great video, brings back memories of my days in Bavaria. μηδείς (talk) 02:00, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Nomenclature for a simulation typeface

Apparently "simulation typeface" is the term for an alphabetic script, e.g. Roman, styled with the characteristic appearance of another alphabet's script, e.g. Hebrew. I'm starting to research the use of Hebrew simulation typefaces in Nazi Germany and the countries it occupied, particularly in printed propaganda and for numerous Jewish badges. Besides "simulation typeface" (a term unfamiliar to me; possibly typography jargon?), what other search terms might I use to find information, preferably academic? -- Deborahjay (talk) 09:09, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Typically, Fraktur is associated with Nazi Germany (although scripts of this type have a long history, especially in Germany, but also in Scandinavia). Another terms for this type of script are Blackletter. V85 (talk) 17:44, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

OP clarifies: I'm specifically referring to Roman alphabet letters made to look like Hebrew letters. The illustration on the Yellow Badge page is one example. It was also used for these yellow-star badges in France ("Juif") and the Netherlands ("Jood"). I'm looking for the history and extent of the usage, also in printed propaganda posters. -- Deborahjay (talk) 17:59, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

My bad By analogy with Faux Cyrillic you could try 'Faux Hebrew' or 'fake Hebrew'. However, when I combined that with 'Nazi' in Google, I mostly ended up with websites discussing Holocaust denial ('Hebrew' and 'Jew' are apparently synonymous on Google). I did find this article about Nazi propaganda, that points out that 'When related to Jews, scripts and fake Hebrew are use' (my emphasis). V85 (talk) 18:13, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not having any more success than V85 above, except that I did find some "fake Hebrew" scripts to download, for instance "Ben Zion" Faux Hebrew Regular and DS Sholom. Not much help though I expect. Alansplodge (talk) 02:07, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Some success - a page called Hebraized Latin Fonts. Alansplodge (talk) 02:16, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

And an article that may be of interest; The Design Observer Group - Why Is This Font Different From All Other Fonts?; "Yes, it turns out there's also one (font) called Talmud, and one called Jerusalem, and a slightly more modified geometric version called — get ready for this one — CIRCUMCISION ." Alansplodge (talk) 02:28, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

More about spänn/spenn

I asked earlier about spänn (Swedish) and spenn (Danish/Norwegian). I have an additional question. Can these words be also used for other currencies than the Swedish krona (for spänn) or the Danish krone/Norwegian krone (for spenn)? I know that, for example, "quid" only means the British pound sterling, and "buck" only means dollar, but is spänn or spenn specific to one country or just a generic slang word for currency? JIP | Talk 11:25, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

As a Norwegian, I would say that spenn is a generic term for currency, but that practicality means that its use is largely limited to the kron-. The reason is obvious: If a Norwegian goes abroad on holiday and tells a friend he bought an item that only cost X spenn its ambiguous whether it means NOK X or X in the local currency, so spenn would most likely be reserved for NOK. However, I can imagine a group of Norwegians living abroad, for example in the UK, calling the GBP spenn, though I don't think that would be done frequently. (In my mind, spenn is a bit of a 'hipster' word, so it would only be used by certain groups of people.)

For the Scandinavian kron- it makes sense to use 'spenn': kron- is a two-syllable word which includes the r-phoneme that is said to be difficult to pronounce, so you have a word structure of C(r)VCV. Spenn on the other hand is a one-syllable word: CCVC. Other currencies are even easier: pund ('pound') as pronounced by a Norwegian is CVC, so if we assume that a speaker is looking for a word with fewer phonemes, calling the GBP spenn would increase the number of phonemes you have to say. V85 (talk) 18:34, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

The Danish word is spænd, not spenn. With the exception of some loanwords, Danish words do not end with two identical consonant letters. 85.166.47.199 (talk) 09:02, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Largest language without monolingual speakers?

80%+ of Danes and Dutch speak English

Scottish Gaelic, famously, has no adult monolingual speakers (or at least sufficiently few that they are statistically invisible) - everyone who speaks the language has at least minimal functionality in another language, presumably English in most cases. The same seems to be the case with Welsh. However, over the Irish Sea, our article on the status of the Irish language gives an uncited claim that there are still a small number of Irish monoglots, mostly elderly people in rural areas.

So, a question - not counting constructed languages or mostly liturgical/auxiliary ones like Sanskrit or Latin, what's the most widely spoken language with no monoglot native speakers? Andrew Gray (talk) 20:02, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

The article Esperanto says that estimates of number of speakers range from 10,000 to 2,000,000, which is so vague as to be almost pointless, but if you take the upper figure perhaps that could be a candidate. 86.176.208.101 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:04, 12 August 2012 (UTC) Oh, sorry, you said excluding constructed languages...

The article Multilingualism suggests the answer is going to be a language spoken in either subsaharan Africa or India where people routinely learn two, three, four or more languages as a child. There are also probably almost no monoglot speakers of Finnish (5 million) or Dutch (28 million) below a certain age. And what about mutually intelligible languages? Apparently the 12 million speakers of Czech can all understand Slovak. Does that mean none of them are monoglots? 184.147.128.34 (talk) 21:42, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

There are almost no Dutch or Danes who do not speak English. μηδείς (talk) 06:02, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I met three elderly Dutchmen who had no English, in Middleberg in 1999. Alansplodge (talk) 12:56, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Subsaharan: lots of languages where maybe only 10% are monolingual, but none? How close is close enough? There are languages where the speakers are embedded in another nation, and therefore all speak the wider language, but I doubt many of them have more than a few thousand speakers.

Passive comprehension wouldn't count, of course, or the idea would be meaningless.

This is really a question for Linguist List. — kwami (talk) 07:13, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

If you get the answer there, will you share it here? I'd love to know what they say. 184.147.128.34 (talk) 09:22, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Frisian is one of those 'embedded' languages, with at least half a million speakers, all of which know either Dutch or German. - Lindert (talk) 09:39, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Swahili is a sub-Saharan "creole" language wich functions purely as a lingua-franca. It isn't the native language of any tribe or ethnic group but is a second language for millions of people with dozens of different native languages. Roger (talk) 13:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Swahili is not a creole language, and it does have monolingual native speakers, though it has far more bilingual and second-language speakers than monolingual native speakers. As for Irish, I strongly doubt there are any elderly monoglots left, though I have met very young monoglots (under 4 years old). The latter will, of course, not remain monoglots for long. Angr (talk) 17:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

You certainly need to look outside Europe for a answer to this question. My guess would be Javanese, which has 84 million speakers, almost all of whom are bilingual with Indonesian. --BishkekRocks (talk) 18:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

All Chinese and Koreans and Japanese learn English from the age of 3. Even excluding the older people, you've got hundreds of millions in China alone learning the Lingua Anglica. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I have my doubts about those Koreans north of the 38th parallel! As to China and Japan, there's still a large residual number of monoglot speakers from before English education was standard, and there may be some question marks as to how effective the English teaching is in rural areas. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:48, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks all. I hadn't considered the cases like Czech/Slovak, but I think I was really looking for cases outside a sprachraum continuum (if that's the right word). Andrew Gray (talk) 11:48, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Obviously, in order for this question to make sense, a lower age limit has to be placed. For instance, there are certainly toddlers who speak Scottish Gaelic but not English. Breton has about 200,000 native speakers, of whom all the adults now also speak French. The number for Occitan is certainly above the million mark, and I believe all adult native speakers are bilingual. Another possible candidate or future candidate would be Tatar at 5 million. [iseees.berkeley.edu/bps/publications/2002_02-wert.pdf This paper] by a researcher at Berkeley, written in 2002, contains the following quote: "This statistic implies that 23 percent of the republic's Tatars were monolingual in Tatar in 1989. Based on (admittedly) anecdotal evidence gathered just eleven years later, I find that number to be rather high. I personally never encountered any monolingual Tatars, even in villages, and never heard of any monolingual Tatars under the age of 80." 96.46.194.95 (talk) 06:57, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

What is the pictured Aboriginal language?

What is the language between English and French?

Presumably the translation of these words are "welcome" and "thank you". At first I thought this was Inuktitut, but it does not correspond to anything at www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/inuktitut.php so I guess it is an Algonquin or Athabaskan language, per Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. Mathew5000 (talk) 22:21, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure it doesn't? ᖁᔭᓐᓇᒦᒃ is listed for "thank you", and that's definitely the second line on the sign, minus a dot above the gamma-shaped syllable (I've never looked into the Canadian syllabics in detail, so I have to refer to them vaguely like that, heh). I can't see anything matching the top line (presumably "welcome") there, but that doesn't mean it's not Inuktitut. It may be another word for "welcome" not listed there, or it may mean something else that was deemed more appropriate than "welcome" in a cultural context of some sort.  dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 01:33, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Transcribed, it reads "ariunnga iaarkujannamik" (I'm mostly guessing as to where the word break is). I don't know Inuktitut, but that is very clearly an Eskimoan language-- probably Inuktitut, and is certainly not Cree or an Athabaskan language. Cevlakohn (talk) 02:06, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Have to agree that is definitely an Inuit language, although my interest is general, and I have tried, but not been able to find a gloss. Perhaps Michael Fortescue's comparative dictionary will provide some clues. μηδείς (talk) 04:03, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Since the picture is from an ice cream parlor in Vancouver, it's quite possible that the Inuit language part is simply a botched attempt at writing an Inuktitut greeting, in the absence of a fully fluent person being able to check the final outcome. There are countless signs with poor French grammar or wrongly placed accents throughout Canada, including federal government signs, so a few errors in an Inuktitut one would not be a huge surprise. --Xuxl (talk) 08:48, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The first word, ᐊᕆᐅᙵᐃᐹ, is ariunngaipaa or welcome. The second word, ᖁᔭᓐᓇᒥᒃ, is qujannamik or thank you. Both can be found at the Inuktitut Living Dictionary exactly as written on the sign. I'm not sure if the first two links will work correctly. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 11:05, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Just realised I didn't really answer your question. They are both Inuktitut and ᖁᔭᓐᓇᒥᒃ seems to be a North Baffin (Baffin Island) dialect. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 11:26, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Mathew5000 (talk) 03:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)