Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 January 14

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January 14

Apostrophe in "girl's basketball"

When referring to a sports league composed entirely of girls, is it "girls basketball", "girls' basketball", or "girl's basketball"? The page I am working on has it as "girl's". Google turns up a lot of "girls basketball", but that doesn't seem right, and I notice that, when referring to adults, it's "women's basketball". Braincricket (talk) 02:59, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

It should properly be girls' basketball, which is the possessive plural. You see girls basketball a lot, but it is not really correct.

The difference with women's is that "women", although plural, does not end in an s. The apostrophe for plural possessives applies only when the plural ends in s. --Trovatore (talk) 03:04, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Girl is better used to refer to females who are not yet adults. If they are adults, women should be used.

Girl's basketball best refers to a basketball possessed by a single girl. Possessive plural is girls', with the apostrophe after the s.

Women's basketball could be used to describe a basketball shared by a group of women or the sport as played by women.

Girls/Womens basketball can only be used as to refer to the game as played by females. Some prescriptivists would say that it's "wrong," but descriptivism would point out that, in this case, girls/women is a Noun adjunct modifying the main noun "basketball" and attribute confusion to assuming that girls/women is intended to be a possessive noun phrase modified by "basketball," even though girls/womens is not marked with a possessive.

From this, it would seem temptingly economical to say that women's basketball should refer to a ball shared by a group of women (as womens basketball covers the sport), and that in turn girls' basketball should likewise refer to the ball shared by females.

Ian.thomson (talk) 03:37, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Noun adjuncts are generally used in the singular. I'm sorry, but the prescriptivists are right here. The usage is wrong. --Trovatore (talk) 03:52, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

COCA has 4 tokens of "woman's basketball", 817 of "women's basketball". Of course, some may be irrelevant: in "The women's basketball flew over the fence", "women's" is an attributive genitive and thus part of a specifier, not a modifier (or "adjunct"). Et cetera. Still, the numbers are worth a thought. Unless perhaps one is a hardcore prescriptivist, in which case I suppose such numbers aren't worth a thought. (Incidentally, I notice that the article "noun adjunct" isn't equipped with a single reference to a robust descriptive grammar: Compr GEL, Cambr GEL or similar.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:52, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

FIBA [1] uses "Women's Basketball" - and as they are the international governing body for the sport their choice should carry some weight. Wymspen (talk) 16:07, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

"Women's basketball" does not have a noun adjunct. "Women's" is a perfectly ordinary possessive. "Woman basketball", or "women basketball", would be a use of a noun adjunct. "Girls basketball" could also be treated as a use of a noun adjunct, but at least in American English, noun adjuncts are generally singular, so it would more naturally be "girl basketball", which is rarely encountered.

Admittedly it's a little different in British English (e.g. the Brits speak of "drugs traffickers", which we would call "drug traffickers"). However, the fact that you don't see "woman basketball" or "women basketball" also militates against reading this construction as a noun adjunct.

Womens basketball is just an error; there is no such English word as "womens", neither singular nor plural, neither genitive nor any other case. --Trovatore (talk) 23:18, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

For whole team sports, either girls or girls' makes sense, but in solo title competition, it's balderdash. One woman currently possesses the UFC Women's Flyweight Championship, and only one woman ever has. One man is in the exact same boat, except he can call himself the flyweight champion, being both a generic flyweight and a generic champion. Gets to title himself what he is instead of after the collective division, 99% of whom will never hold the belt. It's partially sexist, and partially just wrong. Totally acceptable in all belt sports, though. A girl doesn't have to worry about this when chasing her very own gold medals. In that regard, taekwondo is sort of cool. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:05, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Achoo in Japanese

The English word achoo is a very natural onomatopoeia, being (to my ears) the exact sound of sneezing, and I've been quite sure that a very similar (if not identical) sound must exist in all natural languages. However, today I was surprised to hear the corresponding Japanese word: ハクション (read: Hakushon. See here the exact transcription). Does that mean that Japanese people do not sneeze the same way Westerners do? Alternatively, do they really hear Hakushon when hearing a sneeze? HOTmag (talk) 19:27, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Here's an example.[2] Judge for yourself. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:46, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

The Lithuanian for "thank you" is Ačiū (pronounced AH-choo), [3] so I think your opening premise is mistaken. Alansplodge (talk) 22:55, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Are you talking to ME? If you are, then...not only should you fix the indentation, but you should also tell me what "opening premise" you're talking about. Please notice that the English word [spelled] achoo is really an onomatopoeia, even though the Lithuanian word [spelled] Ačiū is not. HOTmag (talk) 23:13, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Japanese people sneeze in the same way that Westerners do. They "hear hakushon when hearing a sneeze" in about the same way that anglophones "hear achoo when hearing a sneeze". (Whether I hear either depends on hard I listen and how seriously I consider the question, and I imagine that this is true for many people.) The two onomatopœas are pretty similar, actually: assuming that "achoo" actually starts with [ʔ] (as I guess it does for most people), then both start with a glottal sound; and each has a stop in the middle (though in English, it's part of an affricate). The Japanese one is of course rather more complex. -- Hoary (talk) 23:54, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

You may find this interesting: Cross-linguistic onomatopoeias#Bodily functions and involuntary sounds.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 11:49, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

In Croatian we write apćiha [aptɕixa] which to my ears sounds far closer to the sound of sneezing than achoo or hakushon ever could. Different people sneeze in different ways, though. 93.136.7.174 (talk) 03:46, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

It's a cultural thing, just like how the alleged sound made by cocks at morn differs greatly from culture to culture: cock a doodle doo in English, kukareku in Russian, kikeriki in German, gaggala gaggala gu in Icelandic, cocorico in French .... Here's a list. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:28, 17 January 2018 (UTC)