Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 September 2

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September 2

Zero Copula in Slavic Languages

Zero copula#Russian discusses Zero Copula in Russian. Is this present in other Slavic languages, or particular to Russian? I have a Serbocroat textbook that suggests kuća je mala.

• The zero copula is typical of East Slavic. In the Rusyn language which is usually described as the westernmost of the East Slavic dialects it is archaic and optional. It is used in the Lord's Prayer, for example, which is influenced by Church Slavonic. In Slovak and Slovene the present tense copula is normally used, in Polish it is optional. The third person present copula (jest') is indeed actually found in Russian, with the restricted meaning of "there is".
  • Medeis, jest’ is not restricted to "there is", it has some additional usage including "is".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:19, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
    • Ґей, сут. μηδείς (talk) 17:33, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

ouch... stoopid Google Asmrulz (talk) 13:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I was teasing Ljuboslov. "Ґей, сут" is transliterated Hey, sut and means "yes, [there] are" in my dialect. I should have realized the Ґ, which stands for /h/, which is not a Standard Russian phoneme, might be mistook for Г /g/, giving the word for "gay" (Гей) which leads to some not very work safe google results. μηδείς (talk) 16:38, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I think it's the other way around. In languages having Ґ (like Ukrainian and Rusyn), the Ґ is pronounced /ɡ/ and is usually transliterated as g, and is peculiar to loanwords, while the Г corresponds to the Proto-Slavic /ɡ/, but, due to a historical sound change, is now pronounced /ɦ~ɣ/, and is usually transliterated as h. In the Czech and Slovak languages, the Proto-Slavic /ɡ/ likewise results in /ɦ/, and their Latin-based orthographies represent it as ⟨h⟩. Or are you talking about some specific Rusyn dialect where the Ґ stands for /h/ (/ɦ/)? --Theurgist (talk) 01:22, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I'll have to go into storage to check, I learned what little spelling I know in Latin, and thought Magocsi used г for g and ґ for h. I may have been entirely wrong. The big problem is there's no standardized language. I've run into the same issue with Zulu, where some use b and ɓ where others use bh and b for the same sounds, ɓ being a much more common phoneme and b being used in more recent texts to transcribe it. μηδείς (talk) 04:13, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I suspect you are right Theurgist, since all I have been able to find shows that /h/ and /g/ are separate phonemes, but the texts are written in English and Slovak, and I have not yet come across an example of ґ, while I have seen plenty of г's which are spoken as /h/. For example, его (with the same meaning as Russian "him/his") is /'jeho/ in my dialect. I still haven't found the Magocsi primer, I'll post what I find when I do. μηδείς (talk) 20:42, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Upon further research, it appears the normal reflex of East-Slavic Г is /h/ spelt Г in Rusyn, although this survives as /g/ in specific environments, such as ниҐде nigde (nowhere). But the word for yes is indeed, гей, hey, which is bound to cause some confusion if one assumes a hard g is meant based on the spelling.

The copula is retained, but it wasn't used much by my informants except in questions or for emphasis. μηδείς (talk) 18:34, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Help translating a sentence of Korean

I'm watching a secretly-filmed video about life in North Korea, but I can't find an English transcription of it anywhere. In this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOM-iLDa-BQ

what does the reporter say at 1:57 about the dead (?) people lying on the ground, and at 2:06 about the girl on the railroad track?

Many thanks! --98.232.12.250 (talk) 03:55, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Turkic countries and places with "-stan" in their name

Why do so many countries and places with Turkic populations have a name that uses the Indo-European "stan" suffix? The -stan article says it is used in "areas where significant amounts of Persian culture were spread or adopted", but many of these places have not been under Persian control for hundreds of years, or at all. 62.172.108.24 (talk) 12:41, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

But either a) they were when they were first named or b) the areas had significant contact with Persian peoples or c) the modern name has entered the lexicon through the Persian language. Merely because they are not, at the current moment, populated by Persian or related peoples doesn't mean the name is not correct or true. We have many words in English which have word origins that may no longer connect to the cultures that originated the word. Swiss chocolate can still be called chocolate even if it isn't actually made by Nahuatl speakers. You don't have to be arabic to use algebra. And your country can be called -stan even if it is not populated by Persian speakers. Ain't language great! --Jayron32 12:44, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

There is no need of political control for cultural influence. Korea and Vietnam has not been under China for a long time and Japan has been never, but still the Chinese language and culture have had a great impact on these countries. Persian was de facto a lingua franca in the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent (the language of the court, the elite and the army in the Mughal Empire was in fact Persian). Arabic was a rather language of religion and books than of streets and bazaars, while Persian was a language of both refined literature and everyday communication. Ottoman Turkish was not only heavily Arabicized but also heavily Persianized. Afghanistan and Tajikistan in fact use variations of Persian. I cannot assure when the Turkic countries of Central Asia began to use -stan (in their language there is the native word el~il for "country"), but it seems to be since quite a long time ago.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Most Turkic languages borrowed heavily from Persian during the time of the Seljuk Empire, beginning in the 11th century. Marco polo (talk) 16:19, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I very doubt that the Seljuks had anything to do with Persianization. Such peoples as Tatars, Bashkirs, Kyrgyzes, Uyghurs have close to zero connections with the Seljuks. That was rather cultural.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:33, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• One might consider that Greece (in English) is named for the province of Hellas closest to Roma, that America is a Latinized spelling of an Italian name and that France is named for a Germanic tribe. μηδείς (talk) 17:27, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

  More: Indianapolis is not in Greece. Moscow, Idaho and St. Petersburg, Florida speak little Russian, and there aren't any Pharaohs in Memphis, Tennessee. A name is just a random collection of grunts and squeaks we all agree refers to some thing or concept. It doesn't have any meaning on its own, and there's no immutable law of the universe that a place with the name -stan has to be populated exclusively by modern Persian speakers merely because the -stan suffix comes from ancient Persian. --Jayron32 17:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, Jayron, at one level that`s true. That other St. Petersburg was called St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, and then St. Petersburg again, but it was still the same place. On the other hand, sometimes names give you insights into history or choices. There are still Dutch and Swedish place names in the Hudson and Delaware River valleys because of the colonies those countries built there during the European exploration of the American east coast. A name like Rome or Moscow could be because some vista reminded an early settler of Rome or Moscow ... or because early settlers were of Italian or Russian origin, and wanted a name that reminded them of home.

Also, do the local language names end in -stan, too, or only/mainly the English names? If the former, then what Lüboslóv Yęzýkin said above is accurate. If the latter, the Persian influence may have been more on British explorers and Colonial Office bureaucrats than on the local culture. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:13, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

You can figure that out easily; just use the interlanguage links on the left side of the article page for each country name. For example, Here is the Kazakh-language article on Kazakhstan. The name is Қазақстан in the local language. My Cyrillic is rusty, but I'm pretty sure стан = stan. --Jayron32 19:36, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Touché. All the local names end in something recognizably -stan. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

The snappy word for "the name that inhabitants of a place call it" is endonym. Also, in the vein of what StevenJ81 noted about etymological history, much of Central Asia (and other parts of the world for that matter) was not divided into nation-states until the late 19th century at the earliest. Nationalism is a much younger concept than a lot of people today seem to intuitively realize. Before that, in a lot of regions you just had fuzzily-defined areas where different peoples lived. So when nation-states were carved out, it seems people in that region tended to go with the really practical naming. "Oh yeah, that's the land of the Kazakhs over there." --71.119.131.184 (talk) 07:35, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Though I cannot confirm if they used -stan in their languages, because there were not any -stans as such in the past, but various political entities (usually called khanates). In the Russian Empire Central Asia was called collectively as one Turkestan (which was divided into Western or "Russian" Turkestan and Eastern that is the modern Xinjiang-Uyghur region). I suppose this entered into Russian from a local usage. In the Soviet times, when the Central Asian republics were created they were called as -stans (though unofficially, officially they were called the Uzbek SSR, Turkmen SSR etc., no -stan). In 1991 they all became -stans officially.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:47, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Up the spout

Is the expression "up the spout" commonly used in the US or only in the UK? In Britain it seems to have two meanings distinct meanings - one "gone to waste" or "ruined" (similar to the expression "gone down the tubes" - presumably down the drain?), and another meaning "pregnant" (as in "up the duff" - not sure where this is from, but often this is for an unmarried/ unwanted pregnancy). Does anyone know where this phrase originates? Is it suitable for use in polite conversation -in, say, the genteel drawing rooms of middle-class Surrey? Or is it a nasty Northern thing? 217.38.173.108 (talk) 21:47, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

wikt:up the spout doesn't say anything about it being UK-only or Northern only, but I must admit I've never heard it here in East Anglia --217.140.96.140 (talk) 22:13, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

You might find this useful. But no mention of US. It seems to have originated from pawnbroking. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:21, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:OR this USian (lived in several states for several years each, midwest, west, and south) has never heard the expression. We do sing itsy bitsy spider to kids, but that's "up the waterspout", and rather literal. SemanticMantis (talk) 23:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:OR I'm old enough to remember 'gone up the spout' being used by people of my father's generation and older when I was a boy in the 1950s and 1960s. It was always used to refer to an item or appliance that was broken, malfunctioning, or ruined, eg. "What's wrong with your car?" "The distributor's gone up the spout", and also to a proposal that had been cancelled, eg. "The mayor's bridge project has gone up the spout. He's been turned down by the finances committee." I don't recall the expression being used in any of the other ways listed at wikt:up the spout, and certainly not in the sense of 'pregnant'. Akld guy (talk) 00:45, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

PS the maternal and paternal sides of my father's family emigrated to NZ from Reading, UK (in 1872 and circa 1910 respectively). Akld guy (talk) 01:00, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

US here (Detroit), and never heard that expression. StuRat (talk) 01:34, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Me neither (sic) (NJ). StevenJ81 (talk) 02:25, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I remember hearing it used in both meanings in the UK pre-1974 (that's when I left) but I couldn't say from where. It would have had to have been around London, in the Midlands or the west coast of Scotland. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 12:15, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Another ageing Brit in whose idiolect this resides in both of the OP's senses. I can't shed any light on a regional origin, as I'm an army brat and thus inherit from my father both London-centric and Army-adopted terms, often without knowing which is which. With regard to politeness level, this definitely falls into the informal/working-class register and would impact in a genteel drawing room somewhat like Eliza Doolittle's "Not bloody likely." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.74.232.130 (talk) 13:07, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the expression was common here in northern England years ago, but I haven't heard it recently. The OED records both senses, with cites starting in 1829 for the "ruined" sense, and from 1937 (Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang) for the pregnant sense. Dbfirs 13:41, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Certainly understood in both senses in London, but you'd expect an older person to be saying it. This page says it originally meant that something had been pawned without hope of redemption, from the chute used in pawnbroker's shops to bring items back down from an upstairs store room. The same meaning appears in The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech so I can only assume that it has passed into obscurity on the other side of the pond. Alansplodge (talk) 16:47, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Just to confirm my last remarks, Slang: a Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, of Bon-Ton and the Varieties of Life published in London in 1823 says: "Put it up the spout' — pawn the articles. ' Knight of the spout,' a pawnbroker, or his man. 'Tom is up the spout' — he is imprisoned, — at the hospital, — or otherwise reduced in life". Alansplodge (talk) 16:56, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Definitely not current in the United States. I've lived in various places in the Northeast, as well as Chicago and California, for more than half a century and have never heard the expression. Marco polo (talk) 17:59, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

This is surprising, given the long history of pawn-brokers in the US. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I would imagine that the disconnect between the original meaning and the colloquial usage happened a good while ago. Alansplodge (talk) 12:29, 4 September 2015 (UTC)