Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 May 11

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May 11

dif [Balkan Slavic langs]

why everyon get angry

What i differece between Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian, Serbian, Slovamolisano, Chakavian, Kajakian, Burgenland Croatian, Bunjevc and Shtokavian

What do different people think — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.188.134.165 (talk) 10:00, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Ethnic conflict. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:15, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

And more specifically, Yugoslav Wars. Alansplodge (talk) 12:45, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The warnings on Bosnian cigarette packets are semi-notorious among some. They supposedly contain the message "smoking kills" in the Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian languages, but the Croatian and Bosnian are identical, and the Serbian is also effectively identical, based on transliteration equivalences between the Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet as traditionally used to write Serbo-Croation... AnonMoos (talk) 04:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

American Umlaut

Are there placenames (especially names of cities/towns/villages) in the U.S. written with an umlaut? 79.13.168.175 (talk) 21:03, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The Geographic Names Information System was not traditionally accomodating to diacritics (not sure what the exact situation is now). La Cañada Flintridge has attracted attention for unusually having a diacritic in its name, but this comes from a language commonly spoken in the U.S. Introducing diacritics from languages not commonly spoken in the U.S. would be somewhat pointless. AnonMoos (talk) 04:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Tildes are common in Spanish and can turn up in English. Umlauts are also used in some Spanish words, though whether they appear in American geographic names, who knows? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:55, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The US Board on Geographic Names Policy VI "Diacritics" says:

In the past, the BGN did not customarily recognize diacritics as part of geographic name spelling in the United States. Many geographic names adopted from non-English languages have been assimilated into English language usage and lack the diacritics from the original spelling. Although diacritics are infrequently used in English, they constitute an integral part of the spelling and meaning of words in many other languages, notably Spanish, French, Hawaiian, and many Native Alaskan and Native American languages, from which numerous United States placenames are derived. Diacritics are especially important if their omission would result in a significant change in pronunciation or meaning. Therefore, the BGN will accept for consideration names containing diacritics.

Sec. 1 The BGN may approve a geographic name that includes diacritics.

Sec. 2 Proposals that include diacritics must meet the same basic criteria required of any other name proposal.

Guidelines

Appendix G provides a link to a BGN website on character sets providing a listing of approved diacritics

So now we just have to find some. DuncanHill (talk) 06:05, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

And List of U.S. cities with diacritics might be a good place to start. DuncanHill (talk) 06:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who grew up nearby, "San José" (meaning California, not Costa Rica) is an affectation. The city council blessed it; good for them. It's not really in use in the wild, at least not among Anglophones. --Trovatore (talk) 06:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

On the other hand, decades ago, I was a guest speaker each semester at a class at Cañada College, not far from San Jose, California. The use of the tilde in that context encourages an approximation of a Spanish pronunciation very different from that of the very large country to the north of the US. Cullen328 (talk)

Yes, in fact my barbershop choir will be performing there this fall for our 75th anniversary. The member responsible for arranging the venue sent out an e-mail that said "Canada is secured" :-) --Trovatore (talk) 06:54, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

A completely Americanized name is Cape Canaveral (/keɪp kəˈnævɹəl/), in which a Spanish speaker might not recognize Cabo Cañaveral (/ˈkabo kaɲabeˈɾal/). Not only is Zoe Saldaña often credited without diacritic, but the pronunciation of her surname is mangled accordingly.  --Lambiam 11:12, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

There was a Zoe in my form at secondary school. One of the teachers would deliberately mispronounce her name because of the lack of two dots. DuncanHill (talk) 11:17, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

And on that very page we find Lindström and Mayagüez. Shells-shells (talk) 06:34, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The ü in "Mayagüez" is not strictly speaking an umlaut, though it's typographically indistinguishable. As to whether Mayagüez counts as part of the United States ... that could get controversial, from any of a number of perspectives. --Trovatore (talk) 07:08, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The proper term for the two-dot diacritical mark placed over the second of two consecutive letters to indicate that it is sounded separately is diaeresis.  --Lambiam 11:00, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

In "Mayagüez" the two dots are over the first of two consecutive vowel letters. DuncanHill (talk) 11:13, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The relevant letter combination is gu, isn't it, or maybe gue. The diaeresis indicates that the u is sounded, cf. Spanish_language#Writing_system. --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:28, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

• I just want to re-emphasize something that was glossed over. There is a very distinct difference, linguistically, between an umlaut and a dieresis, even though in orthography they use the same double-dot symbol, they mean different things. An umlaut indicates that the associated vowel sound is fronted, which is to say that the vowel sound itself changes to a different vowel sound. It is a marker saying "this vowel sound is different than what it usually is in this language". A diaresis indicates that the vowel is pronounced as a separate vowel sound, and is not part of a digraph for a single vowel sound or dipthong. In the French spelling of naïve for example, that is a dieresis because it is indicating that the "ai" is pronounced as two distinct vowel sounds, /na iv/ and not as a single vowel which the "ai" letter combination would normally indicate, being /ɛ/, so */nɛv/ as in words like faite /fɛt/ or vrai /vrɛ/. In Spanish orthography, the double dot is always a dieresis, in this case indicating that the "u" is pronounced. Normally, in constructions like "gue" or "que" the "u" is a "silent letter", not being pronounced. The dieresis is telling you to pronounce it. Thus Mayagüez is pronounced /ma ya gwez/ whereas Mayaguez would be pronounced /ma ya gez/. Spanish does not, AFAIK, do umlauts. Indeed, among European languages, it has one of the simplest vowel systems, with only 5 true monophthong vowel sounds. --Jayron32 12:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)