Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 June 8

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June 8

Which of following is grammatically correct?

My query @ WT:MOSCAPS seems likely to go unanswered. From some other previous discussion WT:MOSCAPS too, whether first letter in an article title after the numerical year should be in caps or not seems to be unclear. So my question is which of following can be described as grammatically correct?

• 1983 Women's March, Lahore – Present title, is this one correct?

• • 1983 Women's march, Lahore – or this one is correct
  • 1983 women's march, Lahore – or this one is better?

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 03:22, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

If the phrase "Women's March" is used as the proper name of the event, then the first one is correct. If it's just a descriptive expression, then the use the third one. I can't see any reason for the other to be correct. As to whether it's a proper name or not, I'd suggest determining it based on what its organizers called it, or by how it's rendered in reliable sources about the event. --174.95.160.48 (talk) 04:10, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Not a single one of the sources used in the article is treating this as a proper name, so the third version should be correct. --T*U (talk) 07:48, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

As per above analysis third one seems to be correct one in this particular case. Many thanks to both of you for guidance. Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 12:11, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Letter combination Ch

Are there any languages where letter combination Ch is a common letter combination, but doesn't form a digraph, and its letters are instead pronounced as letters of their own right, like [kh], [sh] or [t͡sh], depending on phonetic value of letter C? --40bus (talk) 20:06, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Turkish has no digraphs, and combinations like ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ph⟩, ⟨sh⟩ and ⟨th⟩ are always pronounced as two separate phonemes. But, although ⟨ch⟩ does occur (for example in sachane), this combination is not at all common.  --Lambiam 20:37, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

If c would be pronounced as ts, I could imagine a compound word with c-h pronounced as ts-h, but maybe that's not what you are asking about. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:13, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Does the "ch" in Loch count? --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:14, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

I can't see why it should. Although it isn't pronounced as [t͡ʃ], it tends to be pronounced as either [x] (as originally in Scottish Gaelic) or [k], both of which are even clearer single sounds than [t͡ʃ] (which is an affricate, arguably two sounds pronounced as one). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:16, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Pronouncing "loch" as a homophone of "lock" in Scotland will result in a stern correction. Alansplodge (talk) 10:57, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

They may loch you up.  --Lambiam 11:47, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

An aspirated C occurs in Sanskrit, for example in the word Vajracchedikā.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:26, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Although Sanskrit isn't natively written in the Latin alphabet, I still don't think this is relevant to the original query (if I didn't misunderstand your point). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:56, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Languages like Xhosa and Zulu use ⟨c⟩ for dental clicks and ⟨ch⟩ for aspirated dental clicks. That's close enough phonetically, although the aspirated ones are distinct phonemes. --Theurgist (talk) 12:50, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Aspirated dental clicks are still single sounds, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:49, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

That's what I tried to say with "distinct phonemes". But doesn't it come close enough phonetically? That's similar to how fork handles can be confused with four candles (video) – although not quite, because the speaker there drops the /h/ altogether. --Theurgist (talk) 13:56, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is the only word I know that contains an unvoiced sibilant affricate – dorsal fricative cluster. So I went to the Tskhinvali article, looked at the interwiki links and found that the following languages spell the name as Chinvali: Serbo-Croatian, Latvian, Hungarian, Albanian, Slovenian and Veps. Esperanto comes close with Cĥinvalo. By contrast, languages that write the voiceless alveolar affricate as <c> and a voiceless dorsal fricative as <ch> tend to double the initical <c> when transcribing the same name, as in Polish Cchinwali.— Kpalion^(talk) 09:28, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Technically it's the usage of ⟨c⟩ + ⟨ch⟩ that causes the double letter to appear. In the Czech and Slovak Wikipedias you'll see ⟨cch⟩ /tsx/ in Chinese-themed articles, because they have their own transcription systems of Chinese and use that in lieu of pinyin ⟨c⟩ /tsʰ/. --Theurgist (talk) 14:04, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

In Old English "ch" could occur and wasn't a digraph. You can find some examples in the text of Beowulf: [1]. I find wikt:æscholt, wikt:lichama (lichaman, also lichoma?), stearcheort (wikt:stearc+wikt:heort), þanchycgende (wikt:þanc+wikt:hycgan), wikt:Æschere, wikt:flæschoman (wikt:flæsc+homa as in wikt:lichama). Some of them appear several times, so they're not too uncommon. They are all compound words where the "c" is from the end of one constituent and the "h" is from the start of the other. In some of these examples, the "c" is itself part of a digraph "sc", but the "h" is separate. I also see "abealch" (wikt:abelgan) but this seems to be usually spelled "abealh" and I don't suppose it was pronounced any differently with the "c". --Amble (talk) 18:19, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

The Wiktionary entry is at the base form abelgan, which gives the usual spelling of the 3rd-person singular as abealg or abealh, suggesting that the "ch" in the Beowulf spelling is a digraph for a single consonant sound. Deor (talk) 18:32, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

And I see I edit-conflicted with your revising of your comment to say basically what I said. Deor (talk) 18:35, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

⟨ch⟩ is used for [k] in some Old Cornish texts such as the Vocabularium Cornicum, e.g. chefuidoc 'powerful'.  Tewdar  19:14, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

So then ⟨ch⟩ is a digraph. The OP asked explicitly for cases where the ⟨ch⟩ is not a digraph. Like a language in which ⟨c⟩ is normally used for /d͡ʒ/ and ⟨h⟩ for /ɥ/, and then ⟨ch⟩ is pronounced as /d͡ʒɥ/.  --Lambiam 00:45, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

There are quite a number of languages that use ⟨c⟩ to transcribe a distinct sound, but don't use ⟨ch⟩ as a digraph. But somehow, ⟨c⟩ + ⟨h⟩ appears to be rare in most of them for phonotactic reasons (cf. the Turkish example above which is a compound of loanwords). I have found two examples in Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan: Tsou chumu "water" and Seediq mchaya "like that", where ⟨c⟩ + ⟨h⟩ in both languages represents /t͡s/ + /h/. –Austronesier (talk) 07:54, 11 June 2022 (UTC)