Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 October 13

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October 13

Vienna University of Economics and Business

The infobox gives the rector's title as "o. Univ.-Prof. Dr." What's his full title? I didn't see anything relevant when doing a search for the string <prof> at Christoph Badelt, de:Christoph Badelt, and de:Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien. Nyttend (talk) 13:14, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

That would be "ordentlicher Universitätsprofessor", literally "regular professor", (plus "Doktor", i.e. PhD, obviously). It's the traditional German rendering of latin professor ordinarius, the title held by the head of a full "chair". de:Professor#Ordentliche Universitätsprofessoren (veraltet) has something about its use in Austria. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:21, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

"S" vs. "ss"

When I was last in Tampere, I heard a local say "Misä sä oot?" ("Where are you?"). Note the single /s/ sound in misä ("where"). This is a very definite sign of Tampere-area dialect in Finland, the standard grammatical form is missä, with a double /s/ sound (the first and the second s belong to different syllables).

The distinction is so profound in Finnish that it marks a grammatical difference. Compare kisa ("competition") with kissa ("cat") or kasi ("the figure eight") with kassi ("bag").

Are there any other languages with this distinction? I originally thought German had it, because of the Rammstein song Du hast, contrasting Du hast ("you have") with Du hasst (you hate), but I was told the words are pronounced exactly identically in German. They are pronounced nowhere near identically in Finnish, there is a profoundly audible difference.

So are there any other languages where the length of a consonant makes both an audible and a grammatical difference? JIP | Talk 22:48, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

See gemination. It's an important feature of Italian, one that gives Italian-as-a-second-language learners no end of trouble. --Trovatore (talk) 22:50, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Arabic does this as well, for example "kataba" means "to write" and "kattaba" means "to cause someone to write". Basically every verb works this way (well...a lot of them). Adam Bishop (talk) 23:36, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Italian "Anno, pl. Anni": year, years, "Ano, pl Ani": anus, anuses. the double n can clearly be heard (thankfully in this case).--11:31, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Once years ago, before the start of the school year, I was in an "intensive Italian" classes with other American students, and at some point we did a little acting-out-a-scenario exercise. Two of the girls pretended to be out in a cafe, ordering a meal. One of them ordered pene con pomodoro. --Trovatore (talk) 15:53, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

In French, many words have a double consonant and are falsely pronounced as if there was only one consonant. It is so common it has turned into the new normal way to speak French, on TV, on the radio, etc, everyone's language. But to purists or simply to French people who love their own language and enjoy speaking it correctly, it sounds odd and disgraceful and somehow disturbing. Double consonants are here for a reason, and they are here because of their Latin origins, and they participate in a game where a language is a living and intelligent thing, in a game where words can be heard not only as trigger-sounds for stupid animals, but also can be heard as intelligent means of communication and construction. Akseli9 (talk) 19:41, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

This is a tendentious claim, which has little relation to reality. French orthography, like English, is at base very conservative, and frequently represents sounds and distinctions which were present in earlier stages of the language but no longer survive in the spoken language. Doubled letters may well have represented geminates in earlier stages of the language, but do not usually do so in modern French, which has few geminates (ee French phonology#Geminates). I have heard that there is a traditional archaising pronunciation used for classical French theatre, but I have not found any details of this, so I do not know whether it restores other geminated consonants. --ColinFine (talk) 22:24, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Can you give an example of what you mean Akseli?--Lgriot (talk) 10:50, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Expressions like "immunité parlementaire", "dans l'immédiat", "Immédiatement", "collusion", many words like these. When one pronouces it as if there was no doubling, it really sounds like some kind of conscient effort to kill something, to sabotage something in the language. But my mention came from that the OP is Finnish, it reminded me a Finnish friend's 5 year-old child whose name was Onni, when he was visiting France, he had to listen to this same corruption performed on his own name, as the French were repeatedly trying to call him "Oni", as if "Onni" was so impossible to say and so uncool and so I-dont-know-what... Anyway, sorry for all that off-topic digression. Akseli9 (talk) 19:55, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

According to the "Grevisse" (Ed. 1988, §36): "La gémination est fréquente, dans le niveau soutenu, avec le préfixe in- et ses variantes : illégale, inné, irréel. La prononciation par une consonne simple est correcte cependant. Il est plus affecté de recourir à la gémination à l'intérieur de mots savants comme addition, syllabe, collège, grammaire...". Doubling is frequent, when using a formal level of language, with the prefix "in-" or its derivatives like in illégale, inné, irréel. However not doubling is faultless. Doubling is more affected when used inside a learned word as in addition, syllabe, collège, grammaire. I checked in "Le Petit Robert" (2004). "Illégal" : [i(l)legal] (doubling and no doubling). "Addition": [adisjɔ̃ ] no doubling, but quoted as a learned word in Grevisse). "Immunité": [imynite] (no doubling, but may be a learned word). Immédiat: [imedja] (no doubling). Collusion: [kɔlyzjɔ̃ ] (no doubling, may be a learned word?). – AldoSyrt (talk) 19:32, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

• In Dutch, the number of consonants following a vowel modifies that vowel. A vowel followed by a double consonant is a (generally) short, whereas one followed by a following by a single consonant is (generally) long. There is no difference in the pronunciation of the consonants, so not quite what you were after, but they do definitely modify the overall pronunciation of the word they are in. Fgf10 (talk) 21:32, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

  Well, that's the same in English, albeit with English's peculiar notion of what short and long vowels are. --Trovatore (talk) 21:35, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

'People who love their language' vs 'stupid animals'? Really? Grow up and be less high-handed. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:40, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm quite sure that I once read (in a scholarly, if very outdated, history of the French language) that double consonants in Modern French have a complicated history but do not represent the historical pronunciation of geminated consonants; they are either etymological spellings or, in the case of nasal consonants, signify a former nasal vowel. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 18:56, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Here is some discussion of the subject, but I'm quite sure that the source I read was somewhat more recent. Some of the sources cited there also give indication of vowel quality as justification for consonantal doubling; all sources seem to agree that older French orthography did not use them. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 19:03, 15 October 2015 (UTC)