Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 May 28

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May 28

Pronunciation of <ye> letter in Korean

I have noticed that in Korean, the <ye> letter is sometimes pronounced like /e/ (losing the /y/ sound). Are there any general rules as to when this may occur? 98.116.73.98 (talk) 04:39, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

The syllable 혜 in a feminine name is pronounced as 해. Also, the y in ye is pronounced strongly at the start of a word, but it can become weaker or disappear if it comes after a consonant or in the middle of a word. This depends a lot on the speaker's dialect [1]. --Amble (talk) 15:26, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

alike and similar

Do we have an article on Norman-and-Saxon legal twin phrases like devise and bequeath? —Tamfang (talk) 08:24, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Legal doublet covers many of them. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:31, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

In fact, Tamfang's example is listed as part of a legal triplet there: "give, devise and bequeath" ---Sluzzelin talk 11:00, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

apheresis

I'm reading Kipling's Just So Stories at the moment and can't place a conspicuous mannerism that crops up in just about every story, technically speaking an apheresis: there is a a small 'Stute Fish, the Camel is most 'scruciating idle, and the Hartebeest were 'sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over, etc. I'm not a native speaker, so I may be missing an obvious point, but what's the story here? Is he parodying anyone in particular? Or mocking American English? --Edith Wahr (talk) 17:09, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

The Oxford Companion to the English Language under "aphesis" says "Younger children often speak aphetically, a style that Rudyard Kipling imitates in Just So Stories [...]" -- BenRG (talk) 19:54, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Not mentioned in our rather thin article, is that the stories are written in the style that he would have used in telling them to his daughter Josephine, who had died three years before publication, aged seven. Josephine is the "best beloved" repeatedly referred to in the text. So it is an imitation of his lost daughter's style of speech. See Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Just So Stories’, Biographical Sketch of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and Josephine Kipling for further details. Kipling's wife was American by the way. Alansplodge (talk) 21:09, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

• I thought that one of Ben and Edith had made a spelling error, but it turns out that "aphesis" and "apheresis" are both recognised, and mean the same thing. What's going on there? It almost looks like "aphesis" is an example of apheresis. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:20, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

• The third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage says of aphesis "J. A. H. Murray's term for 'the gradual and unintentional loss of a short unaccented vowel at the beginning of a word; as in squire for esquire, down for adown... It is a special form of the phonetic process called Aphæresis for which, from its frequency in the history of the English language, a distinctive term is useful. Now also used in the sense of aphæresis'" DuncanHill (talk) 21:43, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Duncan. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:01, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I prefer 'phesis or 'pheresis. Also epenethesis, oprothesis, paragoget, and methatesis. Lesgles (talk) 20:48, 2 June 2015 (UTC)