Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 June 13

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June 13

Persian pronunciation question

I'm trying to get a better grasp of Persian phonotactics, and I haven't been able to find an answer to this question elsewhere: how would a word like "esm-hā" ("names") be pronounced? Would it take an epenthetic vowel – [esemhɒː] or [esmehɒː] – or a syllabic nasal – [esm̩hɒː] – or something else? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 02:42, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

No, it doesn't take that vowel. It has only two syllables: [esm] and [ha]. And [m] is not nasal. Omidinist (talk) 03:38, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@Omidinist: [m] is not nasal. What do you mean?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:30, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. It is nasal. It was a slip. Omidinist (talk) 09:47, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@Lazar Taxon: See here. This cluster is perfectly divided as VCC-CV.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:28, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

However, on p. 330 of the same book (it seems this page cannot been accessed, though) it is stated that [h] of the plural marker is often (or usually?) elided after a consonant.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 10:02, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

No, it is not true. Sometimes colloquially it happens. Omidinist (talk) 10:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Are you Persian? In any case the author seems to be a recognized expert of the language so she must know what she's saying. She hasn't specified, though, at what degree that elision is widespread.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:15, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I am Persian, and the author of that book seems to be Persian too, or from Iranian parents. Would you please provide a picture of the page you are referring to. I am sure of what I am saying. Omidinist (talk) 11:38, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Here. (It seems different scans of the same book have different pages accessible.)--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:28, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Its application is definitely colloquial. The author must have mentioned this somewhere. Omidinist (talk) 13:13, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Japanese cat

Watching this video[1] and they show a cat that costs 918,000 yen, or appropriately $8300 USD. Does the information tag contain any hints on why it's so expensive? It it perhaps a rare breed of some kind? Scala Cats (talk) 04:58, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 October 29#Is Grumpy Cat really the world's most valuable animal?. 79.73.131.8 (talk) 08:34, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

This is a kitten in a pet store, not the embodiment of a meme. Rojomoke (talk) 09:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

There are hypoallergenic cats, which produce less dander or less of a certain protein that causes allergic reactions: [2]. I could see a cat that was bred or genetically engineered to be even less of a problem for allergy sufferers going for that much. StuRat (talk) 17:28, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

What is the relevance of that intervention? The OP asked a specific question about the content of the sign on the cat's enclosure. That's why this is on the Language desk. If you can't address yourself to the specific question asked, please refrain from posting. --Viennese Waltz 17:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Ditto, VW. Ditto.—Nelson Ricardo (talk) 04:18, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Is there not a language desk for Japanese? And I think StuRat's contribution is relevant. Although they do not understand the sign, they are able to provide potentially useful information. -Sb2001 (talk) 16:37, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

German Adverbial Conectors/Prepositions

I've been looking for a while for a table in Internet that has all "Satzverbindungen" I found a good example in a book but I wouldn't know how to label it so I can google it successfully.

I can only get small fragments of the table but not complete, I can google "list of conectors", "list of adverbial conectors", but never the whole table This is the table.

I want to know this because the Table in the book has not every word. And I would be interested as well in finding this table in distinct languages... 81.173.209.39 (talk) 08:16, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

The words in columns 2, 3, and 4 of that table would usually be called conjunctions in English, while the ones in column 5 are prepositions. AnonMoos (talk) 09:31, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

The interesting thing is that prepositions are connected through the connectors logically somehow. And even though I know some are prepositions and others are adverbs, I was looking for a more abstract term that represents this idea. 2.247.243.203 (talk) 15:31, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Woe is me

Why is the phrase "Woe is me" and not "Woe am I"? †dismas†|^(talk) 17:27, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/17/magazine/on-language-woe-is-not-me.html --212.235.66.73 (talk) 17:49, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

https://books.google.com/books?id=XXwVAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA91&dq=omission --212.235.66.73 (talk) 18:05, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Oy vey ist mir! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:55, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

The only reason for saying "Woe am I" (that you prefer to "Woe is me"), is because of "Who am I" (as a question whose answer is for example "I am the king"), but you can say also "Who is me" (as a question whose answer is for example "The king is me"), so I can't figure out why you prefer "Woe am I" to "Woe is me". Instead of you, I would have asked, why the phrase is "Woe is me" and not "Woe is I". HOTmag (talk) 20:42, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I rather like the expression used her - https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/296656/woe-is-me-what-does-it-mean - calling it an "extra-grammatical idiom." It may not follow the strict rules of grammar, but that doesn't make it incorrect. Wymspen (talk) 20:56, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

"Woe am I" makes no sense (it would mean "I am pain"). "Woe is me" means something like "to me there is woe", or "I have woe". "Woe is me" comes from Yiddish וויי איז מיר (vey iz mir), similar to Russian горе мне, and German weh mir. The phrase uses the dative to show possession or a state, a common grammatical feature of German and the Slavic languages. Other examples: mir ist kalt (German, "I am cold"), мне жарко (Russian, "I'm hot"). —Stephen (talk) 23:38, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Howard Beale seems to agree that "Woe is us" means only "woe to us", not "woe are we". InedibleHulk (talk) 23:43, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

"Woe is me" comes from Yiddish -- of course it doesn't: it appears in KJV bible, in Shakespeare, and as far back as Middle English. --5.29.249.116 (talk) 07:07, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

According to the OED it was used in Old English (in the form 'wa is me'); there's a citation from Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955 – c. 1010), giving it as a translation of the Latin 'heu mihi'. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:18, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

By the way, all modern English object pronouns (except "it") originally come from Old English datives. The "-m" ending in "him", "whom", "them" was dative in Old English. So "me" was originally a dative pronoun (though in most of our attested Old English texts "me" has become accusative also, displacing the original 1st person singular accusative pronoun "mec")... AnonMoos (talk) 11:45, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

"them" was dative in Old English -- There was no "them" in Old English grammar#Pronouns, only "him" (for singular and plural alike). "Them" is a much later (Middle English) borrowing from Norse. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 12:07, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

That really does not affect my basic point -- Old English had the definite article dative masculine and plural þǣm, and Old Norse þeim (the source of modern "them") was also dative masculine and plural... AnonMoos (talk) 12:23, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

P.S. Your "quote" misrepresented what I actually said above. I didn't say that "them" was found in Old English, I said that the "-m" ending found in the modern English words "him", "whom", and "them" was a dative inflection in Old English. AnonMoos (talk) 10:55, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

My point is that the "-m" ending found in the modern English word "them" isn't the dative ending from Old English, but the cognate dative ending from Old Norse. You may call me a point-scoring pedant if you like --46.121.242.252 (talk) 17:44, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I would say that it's a "distinction without a difference" in this context... AnonMoos (talk) 03:28, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• The term dates to PIE, it is hardly Yiddish. μηδείς (talk) 17:54, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

You mean the ancient Proto-Indo-Europeans were known to go around saying “wai h₁ésti h₁moi!” ? I didn't know that we had reconstructed entire sentences before. —Stephen (talk) 00:37, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, of course everyone knows there were no such things as actual sentences in PIE, just asterisked wordlists. And I said term, you point-scoring pedant, not phrase. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/woe#Etymology μηδείς (talk) 04:20, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

According to Google, you're the tenth person to call a fellow netizen a point-scoring pedant. You're also the #1 hit (but that glory is fleeting). Cheers! InedibleHulk (talk) 05:05, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

You have no idea how long I have been waiting to win the internet. μηδείς (talk) 22:33, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

@InedibleHulk: You the real MVP, answering important questions nobody asked. I would have just rolled my eyes and thought medeis was being unnecessarily combative and testy, but you went the extra mile. Thanks! SemanticMantis (talk) 19:47, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

"Vae mihi" exists in Latin although I suppose it might be translation of a Hebrew phrase. But "vae" definitely takes the dative in Latin anyway ("vae victis"). Adam Bishop (talk) 10:34, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Stephen G. Brown -- People have definitely reconstructed phrases as existing in proto-Indo-European, such as ḱlewos n̩dʰgʷʰitom for "imperishable fame". Entire sentences would be verging on Schleicher's fable territory... AnonMoos (talk) 11:06, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, @AnonMoos:, I was aware of that phrase and spent a half hour this morning looking for its reflexes, but could only find the Greek kleos aphthiton, otherwise I'd've posted it earlier. The putative *ne h2oiu kwid Fortson is only attested in Greco-Armenian, so its PIE age is dubious, if not unimaginable. Do you know to which other IE branches reflexes of *ḱlewos n̩dʰgʷʰitom might be attributed? μηδείς (talk) 22:33, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

There's śravaḥ akṣitam in Sanskrit (that's all I know). I long ago listened to Calvert Watkins give basically the same talk at two separate linguistics conferences, but my memories of the details are quite faded now... The book How to Kill a Dragon may cover this. AnonMoos (talk) 03:28, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I figured it was in Dragon, but sold the book as part of a lot, and could not find the Sanskrit through Amazon or Google Books. Of course not and ouk are also extremely close, if not identical. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 22:13, 16 June 2017 (UTC)