Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 June 30

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June 30

Gairaigo

Are there any gairaigo in Japanese where English postvocalic R has been rendered as ル (ru) rather than chōonpu? For example, number would become ナンバル (nanbaru) rather than ナンバー (nanbā). --40bus (talk) 18:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

How about ビル？Duomillia (talk) 13:33, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

You must have meant ビール? It's borrowed from Dutch, not English. 185.130.86.86 (talk) 15:16, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

40bus, gaiters, leggings, puttees, spats, and probably other English words I can't think of have fluctuating and overlapping meanings, roughly corresponding to those of 脚絆 (kyahan), ゲイター (geitā), ゲートル (gētoru), 巻きゲートル (makigētoru), スパッツ (supattsu) and no doubt other Japanese words I can't think of.

Uh-oh: ja:WP (FWIW) says that gētoru comes from French guêtre. If this is so, then of course it’s not what you want; but I mention it because it’s a salutary reminder of the matter of cognates among languages whose influence on Japanese at times rivaled or exceeded that of English.

Yes, I was certain that ビール (bīru, “beer”) would be an excellent example. This is now the standard term. (ビアー biā is but a minor variant.) I have trouble believing that it came from either French or German – but yes, ja:WP (FWIW) says that bīru comes from Dutch bier.

English "cashmere" started as a spelling of what's now "Kashmir". Now of course they're separated (we don't read of unrest in Cashmere, or of a kashmir sweater). But FWIW the material is either カシミア (kashimia) or カシミヤ (kashimiya), whereas the area is カシミール (Kashimīru). -- Hoary (talk) 22:49, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Wiktionary also gives Dutch as the donor of ビール, citing five Japanese dictionaries. The Dutch agree their bier is an export product.^[1] A linguistic argument, next to the well-documented historical cultural contact, is that (as in English), the final ⟨r⟩ in the German pronunciation is not sounded in a way that is perceived as an /ɾ/ by Japanese listeners.  --Lambiam 10:37, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

For some reason, the actor Gerard Butler is known as ジェラルド・バトラー. It might be because he's Scottish and rolled R is close to Japanese /r/, or because the name was confused with the more common Gerald, which is transcribed as ジェラルド. My hunch is the latter. Nardog (talk) 15:45, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps, but note that the given names of both Gerard K. O'Neill, Gerard Schwartz, and many others, are written as ジェラード. The spelling ジェラルド is also used for Gerard Gordeau and Gerard Peter Kuiper (both Dutch) and Gerard Toal (Irish), which suggests a system. However, the Japanese Wikipedia uses this also for Gerard King and Gerard Way (both American).  --Lambiam 20:00, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

C and Ä

Are there any languages which use both C and Ä in native words? Are there any languages which has may words beginning with cä-? --40bus (talk) 18:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

If you include digraphs such as ch, ck and sch, plenty. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:06, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately the Deutsches Wörterbuch has words starting with C still in the original 1855 version by the Brothers Grimm. It only has Cäpselein on offer, which modern Germans would not spell with a C. —Kusma (talk) 19:15, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Looking up Wiktionary, German seems to have a few loanwords beginning with cä-, which might be deprecated. Otherwise, I found that the initial combination is valid in Volapük (which arguably might not count as being a constructed language) and the minor language Khumi Chin (which might not be written that often, but apparently has a produced Bible). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:37, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Cäsium, Cäsar and Cäsaropapismus are all still current, but definitely of Latin origin, so not native. —Kusma (talk) 19:58, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The first of these is sometimes (IIRC, more commonly in the past) nativised as Zäsium. Double sharp (talk) 04:22, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

There are some in Tatar. Here's their article on tt:Cäzwä, which in English (and Turkish) is Cezve. I guess that's not a native word, but perhaps tt:Cäyläw is. (I gather from the Polish version of the article that this is a kind of alpine pasture in Crimea, although my auto-translate has decided the Polish version of the word means "eggs", leading to confusing sentences like "There are 10 eggs in Crimea, occurring in two groups: western and eastern.").  Card Zero  (talk) 19:59, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

"Cäy" apparently means summer (?), which feels suspiciously native... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:56, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Tatar käcä, "goat", is almost certainly not a loanword. It has cognates in Turkish (and Azerbaijani) keçi and other Turkic languages, probably deriving from a Proto-Turkic term *keči.  --Lambiam 12:54, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Balkan Romani. Dinka. Skolt Sámi. Slovak. Welsh. — kwami (talk) 22:39, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Welsh too? --40bus (talk) 10:21, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

In Welsh, apparently the ¨ diaeresis is used to mark that a usual diphtong is to be pronounced with two separate vowel sounds, similar to several Romance languages, so the particular combination 'cä' might not be in actual usage(?) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:52, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Probably not, but the first question was whether any language has both letters. — kwami (talk) 16:53, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Scrabble_letter_distributions may help. Look for languages where both the C and Ä tiles appear in high numbers and low scores. This, of course, is not foolproof. In some language like French, the A tile would be used for ä – though it turns out ä is either nonexistent or vanishingly rare in French. But it's a starting point. – b_jonas 00:04, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Which... appears to be none. Seems that Scrabble has made little of cultural inroads into the few languages that would include the orthographic combination of 'cä', natively... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:16, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a shame that Azerbaijani uses Ə instead of Ä. Why the Ä was changed to Ə just half a year after introduction of Latin alphabet? If I were in a control of all world's languages' alphabets, I would replace Ə with Ä. As Azerbaijani uses C in native words, it would make ⟨cä⟩ if Ä were used. --40bus (talk) 14:50, 6 July 2023 (UTC)