Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 November 25

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November 25

Only

"One of the only ones,..." now seems to be perfectly normal English (only American English?), but why? To be the only one, really should mean there is 1, there is not one more only one. I know that logic, or normative, school grammar, is sometimes no real use in spoken language - double negatives are supposed to be stronger negatives and don't give a positive meaning of the phrase anyway, OK, but... P.S.: An U.K. pop- punk- band ("Another Girl, Another Planet") called itself "The Only Ones", but wasn't that a bit ironic?--Ralfdetlef (talk) 06:21, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a real contradiction there. There's nothing wrong with a sentence like "The only passengers to survive the sinking of the Titanic were...", where "only" has a plural meaning. The plural form "ones" doesn't have any real connection to the numeric value 1.0 integer, but is mainly a word used to prop up a bare adjective: "Put the red books on the shelf and the blue ones on the desk"... AnonMoos (talk) 07:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

If there's any doubt, "One of the few..." could work better. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:39, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree this usage of the only is peculiar. If we read that "Lesly, Soleiny, Tien and Cristin were survivors after the plane they were passengers in crashed", it supplies us with some information. If we instead read that they "were the only survivors", it tells us something extra, not about these four survivors, but about the crew and any other passengers aboard: we know they were killed in the plane crash. Now suppose that instead we read somewhere, "Lesly is one of the only survivors of a plane crash". In this case, the addition of the only does not give any extra information. It is tantamount to saying, "Lesly survived a plane crash that was only survived by those who survived it while all others (excluding the survivors, of course) did not survive it and thus were not among the only ones who survived the plane crash." The popularity of this peculiar usage of the only is relatively recent and largely confined to the combination one of ...,^[1] although some of the only is one of some of the only other uses.^[2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lambiam (talk • contribs) 13:36, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

This seems a similar issue to the usage one of the [comparative adjective]..., as in "The Force Awakens is often seen as one of the better Star Wars films outside the original trilogy". Or is it more parallel to one of the [superlative adjective]....? Either way, the same sorts of questions seem to arise. --Trovatore (talk) 17:45, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

sonority in Arabic

Whenever I see an Arabic word like waqf, I think: what about the sonority hierarchy? Do I need to remind myself that the hierarchy is only a tendency, or is there something about Arabic pronunciation (and/or transliteration) that I don't understand? —Tamfang (talk) 18:39, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Why Arabic and not English? For example: ripple, hacker... 2A06:C701:7470:7300:1C2C:6B30:1080:7184 (talk) 20:40, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Are you saying the f is syllabic? —Tamfang (talk) 19:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

No, those were poor examples; see my comment below in reply to the same comment. Brusquedandelion (talk) 22:26, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Those are poor examples (nom-examples, really) since those words are bisyllabic, where the /l/ and /r/ are in fact Syllabic consonants.

Better examples are sport, school, stork, storm, etc. You will often hear ESL speakers pronounce these as e-sport/i-sport, e-school/i-school, etc., epenthesizing an initial vowel because their native languages do not permit such a consonant cluster. Brusquedandelion (talk) 22:25, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Lambiam Tamfang -- such forms are Classical Arabic and/or Modern Standard Arabic with the i'rab vowels removed. In old Arabic, such clusters occurred without a following vowel at the end of a sentence at most (they were "pausal" forms), but not within a sentence (where i'rab or epenthetic vowels would have occurred). In spoken colloquial dialects, there are numerous changes to classical forms. Classical forms without i'rab are in some respects awkwardly between old Arabic and colloquial... AnonMoos (talk) 21:04, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

It seems you meant Tamfang, rather than Lambiam (even though each of both names has two syllables of which the first one ends with "am"). 2A06:C701:7470:7300:1C2C:6B30:1080:7184 (talk) 21:10, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Just like Rambam.  --Lambiam 10:34, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Wham bam, thank you, mam! 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:02, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Such forms, including the consonant clusters, are not "awkwardly between old Arabic and colloquial" -- they are perfectly valid colloquial Arabic, even if they originated from the classical language. Although in many cases the colloquial pronunciations differ from the classical forms, waqf is pronounced the same as it's written; the realisation of /q/ may vary, but in any case it's a plosive, violating the sonority scale.

In Maghrebian place names, sonority scale-violating consonant clusters are quite common, e.g. M'Daourouch (مداوروش) in Algeria or N'Kob (نقوب) in Morocco. These forms, too, are perfectly valid Darija (colloquial Arabic); and they are in no way related to the elision of Classical Arabic iʿrab.

One doesn't even need such exotic examples as waqf, as the much more familiar German Kopf shows a very similar violation of the sonority scale. 147.234.66.205 (talk) 14:20, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

At least pf is a homorganic affricate. (hm, is /tʃ/ homorganic?) —Tamfang (talk) 19:37, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

If M'Daourouch and N'Kob were Bantu names, I'd assume the initial nasal is syllabic. —Tamfang (talk) 19:39, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

147.234.66.205 -- Unfortunately, your examples of word-initial nasal+stop clusters and word-final "pf" are not at all comparable to word-final "qf", since syllabic nasals and prenasalized consonants are well-known, while German "pf" can also be considered a kind of functional affricate (see Voiceless labiodental affricate for a consonant which is very similar, though not quite the same). In contrast, "qf" is not a compound consonant of any kind.

Each Arabic colloquial is different, but I doubt that any of them allows word-final consonant clusters consisting of basically any two consonants in the language in any order, as is the case for Classical Arabic / MSA words deprived of their i`rab. AnonMoos (talk) 23:28, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I never claimed that the vernaculars allow "clusters consisting of any two consonants in any order", only that in the specific case of waqf, which piqued Tamfang's interest, that the vernaculars have no problem with the cluster. 147.234.66.205 (talk) 09:55, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

As you said, the sonority hierarchy is just a tendency. Counterexamples abound, from Arabic waqf to English school to German apfel. Brusquedandelion (talk) 22:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

New questions

1. Is there any Germanic language where future tense and conditional mood are formed with an affix rather than auxiliary verb?
2. Are there any nouns in French where singular and plural forms have different pronunciations in sentence-final position?
3. Are there any would in French where word-final unaccented ⟨e⟩ is pronounced?
4. Are there any words in French which have two consonant letters together without any vowel aftert them, and both consonants are pronounced?
5. Can click consonants be geminated?
6. Before Great Vowel Shift, names of letters A, E, I and O where /aː/, /eː/, /iː/ and /oː/. But was name of U then also /uː/?
7. Are there any words in English where C is hard before front vowels?
8. Is letter Y a vowel in English? If it is decided which letters are vowels and which consonants, is Y ever grouped with vowels?
9. Is there any Romance language where letter Y has its own vowel sound, which cannot be written with other vowel letters?
10. Why German and Dutch do not use letter Y in native words?

--40bus (talk) 18:49, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 1

1: As far as I know (I don't speak every Germanic language), the future is always made with an auxiliary.

Now what is the conditional mood? Germanic languages often have (I don't now about all) an indicative mood, an imperative mood and some irrealis often called conjunctive mood, which can be used for a bunch of situations, possibly including conditional. Our article mentions that at least German does so somewhat commonly, although an auxiliary could be used instead – in fact, the auxiliary is put in conjunctive mood, so whether the auxiliary or its conjugation mark the conditional is matter for debate.

Saying that the auxiliary puts the phrase in conditional mood is in general a bit iffy, considering that the auxiliary itself may be conjugated in indicative mood, while having a conjunctive conjugation too. It may also have other uses, like for tense. Some time ago I wrote a story in Dutch, in past tense, where at some point a character thought about the consequences a decision not taken in the past would have had. A future past tense (Dutch: onvoltooid verleden toekomende tijd, "zou leiden"; the consequences of said decision would be ongoing at the moment the character reflects about them) was to be expected just for tense, so a reader wouldn't interpret it as irrealis, which is the alternative use of the past tense of the auxiliary "zullen". I ended up putting the auxiliary in conjunctive mood, which is rather archaic in Dutch, but still somewhat productive. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Here is an illustration with an example in English. In the sentence were I subjected to any such treatment, I would swallow half a dozen sky-rockets,^[3] the clause preceding the comma is a hypothetical. Although were, here an auxiliary, is a "past subjunctive" form, as an auxiliary it merely serves to express the passive. The irreality of the clause is not signalled by the auxiliary but by the mood of the full verb form were subjected.  --Lambiam 10:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

The English would do and German würde tun is conditional mood.--40bus (talk) 15:47, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

The English modal expression would do can also be used for habitual action in the past, and as the past tense of the modal expression will do, which itself can have a future meaning, a volitional meaning, and a meaning of truculent determination. All of which goes to show how unhelpful and indeed nosensical it is to refer to it as a conditional mood. ColinFine (talk) 11:40, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

You gave two examples of what you consider conditional mood. That doesn't define it. Anyway, my question above was mostly rhetorical.

The Germanic languages have a mixed tense-aspect-voice-mood system. They also don't really have a separate conditional. There are constructions, using particular auxiliaries in particular forms, which may or may not be the indicative mood, which in certain contexts have the semantics of a conditional, but in a different context they may be something else. And in that context there may be an alternative way to provide those semantics. In this sense, the Germanic languages are not as clean as for example Latin (which, BTW, doesn't have conjunctive mood in the future tense). PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:22, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Are Swedish jag skulle göra and Spanish compraría conditional mood? Are Germanic and Romance conditionals different from Slavic and Uralic ones like Polish pisalbym, Finnish tekisin and Estonian ostaks? --40bus (talk) 17:34, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The Swedish form is sorta comparable to English, in that it could mean a lot of different things depending on context. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:37, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 2

2. I'm not sure if I understand you, but there are several nouns in French that have different singular and plural forms. Œuf is somewhat famous, due to the fact the singular form œuf is pronounced /œf/ and the plural form œufs /œ/. Plural forms being simpler and shorter than singular forms are apparently an extremely rare phenomenon cross-linguistically (although in this case it's only in pronunciation). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:05, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

The plural œufs is pronounced /ø/, with another vowel than the singular. The French word for eye is œil, pronounced /œj/, with (for the anatomical sense of an organ of the body) the strongly irregular plural yeux, pronounced /jø/. A whole class of irregular plurals are words on -ail with a plural on -aux (travail – travaux). The word œuf is special in that orthographically its plural appears regular.  --Lambiam 00:05, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Also the similar declination of -al/ -aux, such as for cheval, journal and decal. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:07, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Plural forms being simpler and shorter than singular forms are quite common for Arabic loanwords having more than four root consonants, as the pattern for plural allows only four:

• Arabic: wikt:إمبراطور, romanized: ʾimbarāṭūr, lit. 'emperor' -> Arabic: أباطرة, romanized: ʾabāṭira, lit. 'emperors' (from Latin)
• Arabic: wikt:برنامج, romanized: barnāmaj, lit. 'program' -> Arabic: برامج, romanized: barāmij, lit. 'programs' (from Persian)
• Arabic: wikt:زنبرك, romanized: zanbarak, lit. 'coil spring' -> Arabic: زنابك, romanized: zanābik, lit. 'coil springs' (from Turkish)
• Arabic: wikt:مغناطيس, romanized: maḡnāṭīs, lit. 'magnet' -> Arabic: مغانط, romanized: maḡāniṭ, lit. 'magnets' (from Greek)

82.166.199.42 (talk) 12:46, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

82.166.199.42 -- In some shorter native Arabic words, the base form is plural, as with حور "Houris", while the singular requires adding an individuating suffix: حورية. AnonMoos (talk)

In fact, Arabic: wikt:حورية, romanized: ḥūriyya has a regular plural form Arabic: حوريات, romanized: ḥūriyyāt. The article on singulative number explains the collective/singulative/plurative pattern, indeed frequent in Arabic, in more detail. --147.234.66.205 (talk) 08:20, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

The English word "diocese" has a regularly-formed plural but the pronunciation of the plural is the same as that of the singular. This is probably not unusual in French, but I would imagine it is unique in English. 2A00:23C5:E103:3301:454D:AF51:1ECF:109D (talk) 13:50, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure its quite so clear. This BBC article discusses various pronunciations of "dioceses" - I've always said DY-uh-sis (singular) and DY-uh-seez (plural). Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 13:58, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

An example recently discussed on WP:RDL was grand prix /ɡɹɒn pɹiː/ where the plural marker is written after the first word but pronounced after the second: grands prix /ɡɹɒn pɹiːz/ 147.234.66.205 (talk) 14:28, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

The singular grand prix is pronounced identically to the plural grands prix according to Collins, Cambridge and Oxford. MW suggests sounding the final /z/ in the plural is optional. Bazza (talk) 14:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

147.234.66.205 -- The form ḥūriyyāt does nothing to invalidate the fact that the basic unsuffixed form (which occurs several times in the Qur'an) is plural in meaning... AnonMoos (talk) 23:29, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

No, it's not plural: it's a collective noun, much like the English mankind is not plural in meaning. In particular, *72 حور is ungrammatical, and the cliché for the heavenly reward appears as 72 من الحور, "72 of the Houri". 147.234.66.205 (talk) 09:37, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Whatever -- My dictionary clearly says that it is plural, the number "72" does not occur at all in the Qur'an in this context, and A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language by Haywood and Nahmad shows the collective plural word niḥal "bees" directly followed by an adjective. You may not have as much knowledge of Arabic -- at least in a form which is useful for linguistic purposes -- as you think you do, and in future it might be better to refrain from offering "corrections" if you have no real insight to offer. AnonMoos (talk) 22:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Whoever -- Being followed by an adjective proves nothing, same as English mankind can easily follow an adjective, as in generous mankind. You'd need to show a collective noun used with a numeral to prove your point. Now, a verifiable dictionary clearly classifies حورية as a "noun of unity" (i.e. singulative) as opposed to a singular. What is unhelpful indeed are your arrogant insults and unreferenced claims. 147.234.66.205 (talk) 11:14, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Regarding plural forms being shorter than singular forms: In Sinhala, the plurals of most inanimate nouns are formed by eliding the final vowel, e.g. pota, "book" > pot "books". --Jbuchholz (talk) 12:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 3

3. This depends more on context than the words, themselves. In poetry and song lyrics, final -e is frequently pronounced. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:55, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Final -e is also pronounced in ce, de, je, le, me, ne, que, se and te (ce que je te dis), also when these are unstressed, as they will be in normal speech.  --Lambiam 21:22, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

I was once informed not to pronounce the last "e" in Que sais-je?, and our article indicates the same... AnonMoos (talk) 23:09, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

The memo has not reached the editorial director of the series.^[4]  --Lambiam 23:43, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Around 0.50, it does indeed sound like he says [kə sɛʒ], mentioning something like "la promesse de Que sais-je?". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 4

4. Many borrowed words, primarily, such as match, catch (wrestling), schtroumpf (smurf, creature), smurf (smurf, breakdance move). Cerf is native, but the final -f is rarely pronounced. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Except, at least, in the case of Bennett Cerf. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:39, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

4. "Ours" (French pronunciation: [uʁs]; "bear") is the only one I've been able to come up with, but I'm very rusty. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 12:27, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

"Mars", as in the name of the planet or of the month, also fits. Xuxl (talk) 13:51, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Also, "arc" (aʁk) and "parc" (paʁk), and "talc" (talk). Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 22:57, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

arf, serf. Bazza (talk) 12:09, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Do French poodles bark with a French accent? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:40, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Apparently it's the French people who bark, not the poodles... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:50, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

est (east), ouest (west), lest (ballast) —Tamfang (talk) 19:42, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 6

With respect to 6, pre-vowel-shift English [uː] would likely have become modern English [au]. What has been discussed before generally also applies to the letter name -- it became a front rounded vowel in Medieval French, then was borrowed into Middle English as [iw], or as something which eventually merged with [iw]... AnonMoos (talk) 21:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 7

7. Does "e" count? If so, the leading "c" in "Celtic" is usually pronounced like it were spelled "Keltic", except for the Boston NBA team. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

And the Glasgow soccer club. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.245.32 (talk) 11:31, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

The word soccer is itself such an example. 147.234.66.205 (talk) 12:02, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

In every English usage I've seen, including the NBA team and modern writing (such as puns in both the US and UK), the initial "C" in "Celtic" is pronounced /s/. The only time the "C" in such Latinized loanwords are often pronounced /k/ is when talking about them specifically in a relevant historical context (at which point they're no longer really loanwords, are they?). Not even Ecclesiastical Latin loanwords escape assimilation into English phototactics.

"Sceptic" is interesting because it's a Greek borrowing into Latin and French "sceptique", thence into English in the 16th century (OED) where its source language would probably still be pronouncing the "sc" as [sk]. It's only with the later English and American grammarians that the "skeptic" spelling gains traction (among many other new spellings in the Americas). "soccer" is entirely British home-grown slang for "association football". It looks like at least a few people were early on spelling it "socker". SamuelRiv (talk) 21:38, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

With respect to 7, there's the spelling "sceptic"... AnonMoos (talk) 21:11, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 8

8. Y is sometimes grouped with vowels, sometimes not, but what it "is" depends on usage/context. When representing the voiced palatal approximant, like in you, it is a consonant, but in words like happy, it isn't. The fact that y does double duty depending on context makes it so that you could categorize it either way. GalacticShoe (talk) 20:06, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 9

9. I went through the Wikipedia pages for a good number of Romance languages, and in all of them, there either isn't a letter y, or it exists only for words of foreign origin, or it is pronounced the same as the letter i. This last usage is typified by the fact that in manylanguages, y is called a "Greek i", as mentioned in Y#Name. GalacticShoe (talk) 21:03, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

The Romance conlang Venedic is (sort of) an example. Double sharp (talk) 09:58, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Calling it a "Greek i" is kind of the situation in German, too, where Y is called ypsilon - in Swiss German it's actually called i grec.  Mr.choppers | ✎  02:27, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Question 10

10. Y used to be common in various replaced Dutch orthographies. There's one hypothesis that ij might be derived from y, although perhaps it is less likely. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:20, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

The majuscule spelling BLIIDE of the word blijde ^[5] shows that ij is merely a variant of ii. Earlier also the spellings bliide, bliiſchap, bliideliick are found in minuscule.^[6] This book does not have any occurrences of j; we see (in Dutch) not jonck but ionck and (in French) not jeuſne but ieuſne.^[7]  --Lambiam 10:31, 26 November 2023 (UTC)