Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 June 13

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June 13

Shears and goose

Found the phrase in a photo caption in a US President Andrew Johnson biography (cf photo added to William Andrew Johnson); gather from Google that this is the professional "symbol" of tailors. But what does "goose" describe here? Also interested in general phrase/word history/etymology. I tried OED and nothing came up TIA jengod (talk) 09:27, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

According to Wiktionary, a wikt:goose iron or "wikt:tailor's goose" is an old-fashioned pressing iron heated with coals. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:17, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

• The "goose" seems to come from the fact that the curved handle was shaped like the neck of two geese. Also see our article on clothes iron. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 14:39, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

OED says "A tailor's smoothing-iron. Plural gooses. [So called from the resemblance of the handle to the shape of a goose's neck.]" DuncanHill (talk) 14:46, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

And you can see a picture of Andrew Johnson's goose here, courtesy of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site. DuncanHill (talk) 15:08, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Bravo everyone and thanks. Will link to wikt. Much appreciated. jengod (talk) 16:13, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Enumeration

1. Does Polish use letter Ł in enumeration?
2. Does Slovene use letters Č, Š, Ž in enumeration?
3. Does Icelandic use letters Þ, Æ, Ö in enumeration?
4. Does Spanish use letter Ñ in enumeration?
5. Does Estonian use letters Õ, Ä, Ö, Ü in enumeration?

--40bus (talk) 20:08, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Re 1: No, letters with diacritics are not normally used for enumeration in Polish. — Kpalion^(talk) 21:43, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Re 4: I am not aware of any Spanish numbers (be they cardinal or ordinal) which contain the n-with-tilde. Here's an article about Spanish numbers.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:29, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The query is probably about "counting" with letters, like Section A, B, C and so on... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Aha. Supposing they even do that in Spanish, it seems unlikely they would use special characters, such as CH, LL, RR or Ñ. But it would be interesting to see a Spanish example of using letters "as numbers". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:04, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Chinese occasionally enumerates 甲、乙、丙、丁... Not exactly Ordinal letters, but see Sexagenary cycle for further info. Folly Mox (talk) 23:25, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Street sign in Mannheim

For what it's worth, in German I and J are traditionally regarded as equivalent for this purpose. For example, the city centre of Mannheim has a unique addressing system, where each block has a combination of a number and a letter (e.g. A1, C3, etc.). In this system, there is no I, but only a J, which is, however, pronounced not "Jot" (the German name for the Letter J) but "I". --Jbuchholz (talk) 08:32, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

In classical Fraktur fonts there was no distinction between the I and J majuscules,^[2] which means one could not use both in an enumeration (or, rather, an "elitteration".) Later Fraktur versions created an artificial and minimal distinction by making the tail of the I shorter and that of the J longer – ℑ versus 𝔍. I suppose the lack of an I in the Mannheim system goes back to this lack of distinction.  --Lambiam 11:29, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Lambiam -- I and J weren't distinguished as separate letters (nor U and V) in the Latin alphabet generally before the 17th century. Even after the visual letter-forms J and V were specialized for consonantal use, and I and U for vowel use, the question of whether I and J were separate letters of the alphabet was sometimes still unclear or disputed. See this 1760 sampler where U and V are sometimes distinct, sometimes not, but I and J are not distinct... AnonMoos (talk) 18:05, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

True, but the indistinguishability of the majuscules in Fraktur persisted long after also in German typography the miniscules i and j came to be used like they are today. See for example here, where the I and J of "Im Junius" use the same grapheme, while the i and j of "mit jungem" are distinct.  --Lambiam 23:12, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I looked at some Scrabble boards, which use letters to enumerate the column. Polish, Spanish and Estonian Scrabble boards do not use any of these letters for enumeration. Slovene puts the given letters at the end of the alphabet, so they are beyond the number of rows on a board, and I couldn't find a Scrabble board in Icelandic. If it's of any interest, the Scrabble derivative bcl:Dama Nin Tataramon uses the ng digraph for the column between N and O.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:12, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

While Polish doesn't use the letters Ą, Ć, Ę, Ł, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź, Ż (or the digraphs Ch, Cz, Dz, Dź, Dż, Rz, Sz) in enumeration, it does use Q, V and X for that purpose, even though they aren't used in writing of any native Polish words. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Some apartment buildings in Poland use letters to name their entrances, and some of them (at least in Poznań) use letter Ł. In fact, all such buildings that have more than 12 entrances (those that go past L) use Ł. One building in Poznań use letter Ż and another there uses letter Ź (according to OpenStreetMap). None of the buildings use Q, V or X. And can you find any example of using special letters in enumeration in any language which has many special letters between basic Latin letters (like Slovene, Hungarian, Icelandic or Romanian)? Esperanto does not qualify. --40bus (talk) 14:39, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

What I wrote holds for Polish legal documents, that I'm sure of. I don't think I've ever seen "Polish letters" used in building numbering; I'd like to see an example. I tried to look at maps of residential areas in Poznań at Targeo, but could only find instances of entrance L followed immediately by entrance M, not Ł. — Kpalion^(talk) 07:39, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

This seems to be an exception of a general practice, as it is in Winogrady like my observations of using Ł. You can clearly see that Ł is used in nearly all buildings there. I have never seen using Ł in other Polish cities, and while Poznań uses J in all buildings, some other cities do not. --40bus (talk) 16:17, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the example. It does seem to be an exception, like you say. I suppose these buildings are so long, they had to resort to using all kinds of letters. — Kpalion^(talk) 00:26, 17 June 2023 (UTC)