Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 October 23

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

October 23

O'zapft or ozapft?

I just translated the article O'zapft is! from German. However, the apostrophe looks out of place, considering "o'zapft" is supposed to be a Bavarian form of "angezapft", where "o" corresponds to "an". I don't speak German natively, and Bavarian even less, so I don't know a definite answer myself. There is also discussion on the German Wikipedia at de:Diskussion:O’zapft is! about whether there should be an apostrophe or not. Does anyone who speaks German or Bavarian better than me know? JIP | Talk 15:35, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

I always assumed it stood for the omitted "ge" syllable. Apparently it isn't considered necessary and even wrong by some. (Conceivably it represents the silent "n" in "an-", however.) See also bar:Ozapft is.173.49.228.131 (talk) 15:50, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

There is no accepted orthographic standard for Bavarian, so every author can make up their own rules. But I see no strong argument for the viewpoint that a letter or syllable has been "elided" or "omitted". Where standard High German has Angabe, Bavarian has Ogob, since the prefix o- corresponds to German an-. I don't know the general rules for the formation of past participles in all Bavarian dialects, but German Angebatzter becomes Obazda, and zapft seems to be the past participle of zapfen in at least some dialect: A Beisl hod normal a große Schank, in dea wos Wein küht und Bia zapft wiad, ... (from the Wikipedia article Beisl); Aus dem Brunnen is bis zum Bau vo da Hochquönwossaleitung aa Trinkwossa fian Hof zapft wuan. (from the Wikipedia article Schloss Scheenbrunn).  --Lambiam 20:48, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Your examples are Austrian dialects – these are bairisch (they belong to the Bavarian dialect group) but not bayrisch (they're spoken outside of Bavaria). For the discussion here, one should look at the Munich dialect. I agree that the notion of elision here comes from taking standard German as a reference, which is not really appropriate. The conclusion of the discussion on de-WP to keep the apostrophe came from a reference that displayed some "official" usage. Unfortunately that web page doesn't seem to exist any more. The bar-WP article bar:Ozapft is (written in the Munich dialect) is without apostrophe in its title, but uses the apostrophe in the text. So: who knows... --Wrongfilter (talk) 21:52, 23 October 2021 (UTC)