Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 January 14

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 14

Xhosa pronunciation question (letter "r")

At Nelson Mandela it is claimed that the name Rolihlahla is pronounced [xoliɬaˈɬa], but at Xhosa language#Consonants it says that <r> is pronounced [r] (while <rh> is pronounced [x]), so this is an apparent inconsistency. Can somebody review this please? --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 14:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Ah, I have discovered this video - skip to 0:50. She is definitely saying an [x] in Rolihlahla, although the stress pattern seems to be more like [ˌxoliˈɬaɬa]. Based on what I hear, I am going to change the primary stress, but the initial consonant does appear correct. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 14:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Found this - using the name Rholihlahla (note initial "Rh"), and on an official government website. This also resolves the inconsistency which I noted above. (I see that the Xhosa Wikipedia also uses Rholihlahla - see [1]). So I am going to change the spelling also. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 14:45, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

And more - see comments here. "Sadly, on the rare occasion when his proper name is used, it's misspelt - Rolihlahla rather than Rholihlahla". (In case the link goes stale, just to note that this is followed by an explanation of how plain R does not exist for indigenous words and is only used for loanwords and is implausible in the context.) Given this and other sources, I think we have to stick with plain "R" as the name for which there is the most evidence, even if it originates from a misspelling. I'll relegate the Rh version to a footnote. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 15:00, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

And finally - found a reference to the effect that orthographical conventions have changed over the years. Possibly too long a quotation to reproduce here in view of copyright, but a Google search for "Rholihlahla and not Rolihlahla" (including the quotation marks) should show you what I am referring to. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 15:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

@Money money tickle parsnip: AFAIK Xhosa doesn't have phonemic stress. My Xhosa teacher put a high tone on the /i/ of Rolilhalha, and I've replaced the stress with tone in the IPA of the Mandela article. Perhaps there's something else going on, or a dialectal difference or s.t. on where the tone goes (and exactly which tone it is), but it shouldn't be written as stress.

As for the spelling, indeed, Xhosa orthography isn't completely standardized. Pedantic sources distinguish rh from r (there are actually two such r's, but AFAIK they're both always written r), but r is only found in loanwords, so most people don't bother. Similarly, some distinguish tsh from ths from thsh, but most don't bother, and spell all three tsh. So Rolilhalha isn't a misspelling any more than Soeharto is. I'm not sure it's a difference in era -- last I heard, it seemed that such fussy distinctions were being abandoned for a simpler, if less accurate, orthography, though for all I know that might've changed again. — kwami (talk) 07:46, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Thank you. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2019 (UTC)