Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 August 19

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August 19

Meaning of Proc in German

The following phrase occurs in a German academic paper published about 120 years ago:-

"würde sie doch erst Einfluss gewinnen (½ Proc.), wenn sie dreimal grösser wäre."

or "It would only have an effect (½ proc.) if it was three times larger."

What does "Proc" mean? Percent would be "proz". Dionne Court (talk) 13:55, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

@Dionne Court: Before the German Orthographic Conference of 1901 (see de:Orthographische Konferenz von 1901), "Procent" for percent would have been possible in German (with some regional variation). —Kusma (talk) 14:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Spanish questions

1. Are there any native words in Spanish that begin with X?
2. Are there any native words in Spanish that end with C?
3. Why does Spanish not use grave accent?
4. Are there any dialects of Spanish where /z/ phoneme has not changed to /s/?
5. Why does Spanish not use ⟨ss⟩ letter combimation? --40bus (talk) 19:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Do you consider the name Xavier to be native? As to accent grave, maybe because it's not needed. As to z, Castilian Spanish pronounces the z and the soft c as "th", not s. As to ss, are you sure it's not used? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:17, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

For no. 2, also in the names department, there's Enoch, whose name in Spanish is Enoc, Melchizedek, whose name in Spanish is Melquisedec, and also Isaac. Given that these are all Biblical names, whether that counts as being "native" is up for interpretation. In any case, it seems at least somewhat likely that they've been spelled that way in Spanish for a while. GalacticShoe (talk) 23:37, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Not really an answer, but a slightly related and fascinating TED Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX_OxBfsvbk. (Less than four minutes long.)

Xavier, Spain is the origin of the name, and that word comes ultimately from the Basque language "Xabier". --Jayron32 12:47, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

(3) It did back when it was Early Modern Spanish. Now it doesn't.

(4) As seems to be a pattern with these questions: Ladino (e.g. Spanish decir vs Ladino dezir). Double sharp (talk) 04:04, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Your item 3 sounds familiar. Didn't 40bus ask this same question a couple of months ago? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:11, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Apparently, yes (and in fact exactly one month ago).

P.S. the development of sibilants in Ladino is the same as that in Portuguese, according to Ralph Penny's A History of the Spanish Language. So [ts] merged with [s] and [dz] merged with [z], but the voicing distinctions were kept intact, leaving a four-way distinction today in most cases. Double sharp (talk) 04:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

One month ago, the question was whether. Now it has become why. One use of the grave accent in languages employing it in their orthography is to make a sound distinction, like in the French minimal pair dès versus dés. No such distinctions are needed for the complement of vowel sounds of Spanish. Another use is to indicate stress, as in Catalan. So one may wonder, did the REA have an acute reason to prefer the acute accent for indicating stress instead over the grave accent?  --Lambiam 09:58, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

According to Stress (linguistics)#Spelling and notation for stress, Italian is unique in indicating (primary) stress with grave accent; all other languages that do mark stress at all, use acute accent for that. 2001:BF8:200:396:38E8:FF5C:1466:CEA2 (talk) 14:00, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

The stress in the Catalan word català is marked with a grave accent. Maltese also uses the grave accent for marking stress, as in alaxanxè.  --Lambiam 03:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Many thanks for these examples; I've now updated the article accordingly. 82.166.199.42 (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Lambiam -- Both Italian and Catalan have a contrast between low-mid vowels ([ɛ], [ɔ]) and high-mid vowels ([e], [o]) in some contexts, and stressed low-mid vowels are written with a grave accent, while stressed high-mid vowels are written with an acute accent.    Spanish doesn't have this contrast. AnonMoos (talk) 21:44, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

The rule was formalized in the "Discurso proemial de la orthographia" of the first dictionary published by the REA in 1726: "y assi es error decir que el accento grave sirve para alargar la última sylaba en las voces de dos, tres, quatro, y mas vocáles: como Arnés, Amó, Amará, Enseñará, Apercibirá, porque esto es próprio del accento agúdo, que es el que baxa de la derecha à la izquierda de este modo ´, y la razón es porque hace agúda y fuerte la pronunciación: lo que no conviene la grave, que la deprime y modéra" ("and so it is wrong to say that the grave accent serves to lengthen the last syllable in words with two, three, four, or more syllables, such as Arnés, Amó, Amará, Enseñará, Apercibirá, since this is the proper role of the acute accent, which is the one that goes down from the right to the left like this ´, the reason being that it makes the pronunciation sharp and strong, for which the grave one, which depresses and moderates it, is ill-suited").^§  --Lambiam 13:53, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

• 3 and 5 are still unanswerable because because "why didn't" questions are not answerable about these topics. Linguistic change does not have a purpose, there is no one who makes decisions and can explain why they didn't do something. --Jayron32 12:42, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

True. I've asked them, and they don't know why. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:55, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

3 and 5 are questions on orthography. Several languages, including Spanish, have a central body deciding on an official orthography; see Royal Spanish Academy. They can tell exactly why something is the way it is; see the quote supplied by Lambiam above, which answers 3.

As for 5, a quick glance at /usr/share/dict/spanish shows that only r and l are commonly doubled and, if doubled, they stand for a different phoneme. In some Germanic languages, consonants can be doubled to make the preceding vowel checked, in Finnish or Italian it's done to make the consonant longer, but neither of those are needed Spanish. The dictionary also lists a small number of Spanish words with doubled c, e or n and a handful with doubled a, m, o, p, s, u and z. Undoubtedly, most are derivations, compounds or loans.

And as I downloaded the Spanish word list anyway, for 1, it lists xenófoba, xenofobia, xenófobo, xeroftalmía, xi, xifoidea, xifoideo, xifoides, xilófaga, xilófago, xilografía, xilográfica, xilográfico, xilórgano, xilotila; for 2, it mentions almanac, almástec, bambuc, baurac, bistec, calambac, carric, cifac, cinc, clac, coñac, cornac, cric, duc, fondac, frac, lilac, oc, ruc, sic, tac, tic, tictac, vivac, yac, zinc. Your choice to say which are native, if any. PiusImpavidus (talk) 07:54, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Most mentioned words starting with x are loan words from Greek, usually not deeemed as native, since there are learned words. The quoted words ending in c are mostly loanwords (bloc is notably missing from that list), though you could argue that tic and tac are native words onomatopoeicly derived. Pallida  Mors 13:51, 25 August 2023 (UTC)