Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 September 15

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September 15

transposition of a text from the Czech language to its twin sister, the Slovak language, by please a Slovak.

Hello, if someone from Slovakia happens to be passing by and is one of the Reference desk volunteers, that is very kind of him/her. I would like to know how to transpose the following text from Czech into Slovakian, please ?

" Na kryoniku se vědecká komunita dívá skepticky kvůli poškození buněk způsobeném chladem, navzdory kryoprotektivům. V roce 2018 byl vyvinut nový proces, vitrifixace, ale postrádal zachování prahu excitability synapse. V roce 2023 je proto naléhavé zaměřit výzkum na zachování prahu dráždivosti synapsí během vitrifixace. " Thank you. 90.110.182.248 (talk) 10:43, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

No knowledge of either language, but Google translate gives something very similar (although it doesn't appear to have translated the last four words):

Na kryoniku sa vedecká komunita pozerá skepticky kvôli poškodeniu buniek spôsobenému chladom, napriek kryoprotektívom. V roku 2018 bol vyvinutý nový proces, vitrifixácia, ale postrádal zachovanie prahu excitability synapsie. V roku 2023 je preto naliehavé zamerať výskum na zachovanie prahu. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7B:11A:B900:201B:614B:4D4A:9563 (talk) 13:14, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

In fact, the Slovak persons know the Czech language which is twin sister of Slovak, so... Since, furthermore, google translate first translates in English before re-translating in the target language, I will be waiting that a Slovak person translates directly, please... This would be very kind of him/her.90.110.182.248 (talk) 13:54, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Google have heavily invested to make translations virtually indistinguishable from what a native speaker would produce. If you translate your piece into English you get:

"Cryonics is viewed with skepticism by the scientific community due to cell damage caused by cold, despite cryoprotectants. In 2018, a new process, vitrifixation, was developed, but it lacked the preservation of the excitability threshold of the synapse. In 2023, it is therefore urgent to focus research on the preservation of the excitability threshold of synapses during vitrifixation."

If you translate that into Slovak you get:

"Na kryoniku sa vedecká komunita pozerá skepticky kvôli poškodeniu buniek spôsobenému chladom, napriek kryoprotektívom. V roku 2018 bol vyvinutý nový proces, vitrifixácia, ale postrádal zachovanie prahu excitability synapsie. V roku 2023 je preto naliehavé zamerať výskum na zachovanie prahu."

So you're absolutely right. Google isn't as smart as they would have us believe. 80.43.75.165 (talk) 18:09, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

There is a Slovak Wikipedia [1]. This question may be better directed there. 2A00:23C3:9900:9401:CC8:65F3:DAAB:99FC (talk) 13:15, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

English H

Why name of letter H in English does not begin with an /h/ sound? English is only Germanic language where this is the case. If name of K is kay [keɪ̯], why name of H then is not hay [heɪ̯]? In German H is [ha:] and K is [ka:], and in Swedish, H is [ho:] and K [ko:]. So, why it can't be hay [heɪ̯] in English? --40bus (talk) 13:01, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

There doesn't have to be a reason - most language speakers are not logicians. For example, the letter "w" is named "double u" - no "w" sound there. 2A02:C7B:11A:B900:201B:614B:4D4A:9563 (talk) 13:18, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

It's from the Old French name of the letter.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:32, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

See Haitch for pronunciation and etymology. DuncanHill (talk) 13:38, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

C, F, G, I, L, M, N, R, S, U, W, X, Y - none of these names start with the default sound we teach our children. C (see) has a k sound; G (jee) has a hard g sound; L (el), M (em), N (en), R (ar), S (es), X (eks) - a vowel precedes the sound in each case; Y (wy) doesn't have a y sound anywhere at all. As for H, some say "haitch" rather than "aitch", which makes it drop off the list of exceptions. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:21, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

How did I and U get into your list? Crash48 (talk) 21:32, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Because we teach our kids to say the short i sound as in "bid", but that's not heard in the name of the letter. As for U, it starts with a y sound (yoo), and does not contain the short u sound (as in "but") that we teach our kids. So, U starts with a y, but Y starts with a w, and W starts with a d. What a glorious language! -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:38, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

For A, E and O, do you teach your kids the free vowel sound, and not the checked one, as you do for I and U? Crash48 (talk) 21:47, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

40bus -- I've already explained the original names of the 21 letters of the ancient Roman alphabet and their subsequent evolution into English letter names several times before. According to the principles which explain most of the ancient letternames, the name of "H" would be predicted to be [he], but it may have been [ha] instead. However, along the line of phonological development which led through Latin to French to English, [h] had already disappeared as a sound in French, so a new name had to be found for "H"... AnonMoos (talk) 22:34, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

How did German and Dutch get their letter names, as these languages start H's name with /h/ sound? As English, unlike Romance languages, generally pronounce H, it would be more natural to have [heɪ̯] in English. --40bus (talk) 16:05, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

German, at least, re-shaped some of its letter names according to classical models (the name "Vau" comes from ancient Greek). English is more faithful to medieval French, where it got most of its letter names from (though of course J, V, and W didn't have names in medieval French). Sorry that you don't consider the end-result of historical changes to be "natural"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:09, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Do we happen to have a reference for the name "Vau" comes from ancient Greek? It would make a fine addition into V#Name in other languages. 147.234.66.217 (talk) 20:40, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

"Wau" was the old name of Digamma, but I don't know exactly how it got into German... AnonMoos (talk) 21:02, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Do we have a reference for "Vau" being the German name of the letter V? It's not mentioned in the German Wikipedia article about V, nor does "vau" appear in the German wiktionary. DuncanHill (talk) 21:22, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, the German letter names aren't spelled out often; but I suppose https://books.google.com/books?id=kxL5jsKpLaMC&pg=PA1&dq=Vau is a RS, even if a very old one. 147.234.66.217 (talk) 21:37, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

It will save everybody time if you keep track of earlier answers to your questions. You recently asked a closely related question (#5). The answer given then also answers today's question.  --Lambiam 12:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

English W

In my opinion, letter W too in English has an undesirable name, because it is "double-u" and not independent name like the W has in German, Dutch and Polish. As W is more common than V in English, it should have an independent name. It could be wee [wiː]. --40bus (talk) 16:13, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

The letter "W" is the one letter of the basic Latin alphabet which was actually invented in England, so the English had a unconstrained free choice of what they wanted to call it, and they went with "double U" (of course the name of "U" covered both the shapes "U" and "V" in the middle ages). AnonMoos (talk) 17:14, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

According to OED, the glyph W had been created (by the English indeed) in the 7th century (and very soon thereafter, abandoned in favour of wynn), but the name double-u is first attested c.1465. So, we don't know how the English creators of the glyph used to call their own creation; and also we have no evidence that the name double-u originated in English. 147.234.66.217 (talk) 12:46, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Your personal opinion on this matter is not important. Meanwhile, it's interesting to note that the Spanish and Italian names for the letter W are also "double u", not "double v" or some other name. And keep in mind that the way the W sounds in those languages, in general, is a lot more like a "u" than a "v". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:12, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

In Spanish the letter can be a double u, ve, or uve, with the last of those being officially preferred. That aside, our opinions are all unimportant, but it is curious that English is stuck with a comparatively cumbersome name for a letter that it uses so heavily – see the famous absurdity of "www" having three times as many syllables as the thing it abbreviates. 71.126.56.88 (talk) 01:34, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

In Italian, the usual name of w is doppia vu; that is, double vee. (Sometimes it's even shortened to just vu, which is also the name of v, as in WWF, pronounced vu vu effe.) --Trovatore (talk) 22:36, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Side note on this — the letter w in Italian is often pronounced /v/, so the doppia vu does make sense. The w is actually not part of the "classic" Italian alphabet at all, which has only 21 letters (omitting j, k, w, x, y), so most words containing a w are foreign, and whether it's pronounced [w] or [v] depends on the source language. The name Walter is usually pronounced with a [v], as in Walter Veltroni; presumably they take this from German.) --Trovatore (talk) 22:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I actually think it's rare overall with languages having a similar [v]/ [w] distinction as English. Polish has, but that's due to different sound shifts. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

No, Polish ⟨v⟩ and ⟨w⟩ both stand for the same sound. Dutch, however, has a three-way ⟨f:v:w⟩ distinction, similar to English. 147.234.66.217 (talk) 09:51, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I was talking about pronunciation. Polish spells its native [w]-sound with a ł. The Dutch distinction seems to be between [f]/ [v]/ [ʋ] to be precise, with the last sound similar to Spanish. (Although it could vary quite a bit, depending on dialect.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:05, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I see what you mean. The [v:w] distinction is typical for Iranic languages, e.g. Kurdish and Ossetian; but they don't normally use the Latin letter W at all. 147.234.66.217 (talk) 10:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

It also seems I was wrong about Dutch and Spanish, by the way. Dutch generally uses [ʋ] and Spanish [β], which would be similar but distinct sounds. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:12, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

If you want a language that perfectly follows whatever rules and patterns you desire, then I suggest that you cease speaking English and get to work on your own personal constructed language.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 04:11, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Instead of meaningless syllables such as [wiː], unfortunately adopted by most European languages for their letter names, it would be far more useful to recycle the meaningful names from the Old English alphabet: ash, birch, coal, day, elk etc. 147.234.66.217 (talk) 13:03, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

That general system originated already with the Phoenicians, although there was a break when the Greeks added vowels into the mix. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:25, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

The Greek vowels (alpha, eta, iota, etc.) all retained their historic Phoenician names, with the sole exception of ayin, whose name had to be replaced in order to preserve the acrophony. 147.234.66.217 (talk) 09:55, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Why "they/them" or ".../theirs", and not ".../their"?

Preferred gender pronoun, lede:

“ In English, when declaring one's chosen pronouns, a person will often state the subject and object pronouns (e.g., "he/him", "she/her", "they/them"), although sometimes, the possessive pronouns are also stated (e.g., "she/her/hers", "he/him/his", "they/them/theirs"). ”

Naively, the version subject/object/dependent-possessive ("they/them/their", et cetera) makes the most sense, surely. Those three forms can't trivially be derived from each other, unlike the other two ("theirs" and "themself" or "themselves") - the one exception being the first-person forms "my" and "mine", but that's a non-issue in the context of gendered language. A corpus search shows that dependent-possessive forms like "their" are generally more common than independent ones like "theirs" by two to three orders of magnitude - the one exception being the second person now, which I'm guessing is due to closing expressions like "yours truly".

Anyway, as the article states, the two common versions use neither, or only the overall uncommon one of the possessive forms instead. How do you think that came about?

Speculation, off the top of my head: For "she", objective "her" and dependent-possessive "her" coincide. Both "she/her" and "she/her/her" might be perceived as not-quite-right as counterparts to "he/him/his" and "they/them/their". Or, maybe the independent-possessive forms feel more intrinsically possessive than the dependent ones, because of their "-s" endings which match the "-'s" possessive marker on noun's nouns?

- 2A02:560:5950:BE00:6C3A:C0A6:994A:926E (talk) 15:36, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Her/hers and their/theirs are both possessives, but in different usages. They probably don't want to make the list too long. Plus, is there any "official" version of such lists? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:32, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

I think it's simply that the English possessive of "they" is "their" when it's bound to a following noun as a possessive determiner, and "theirs" otherwise. Here it's not bound to any following noun, so it's most naturally "theirs". --Amble (talk) 20:42, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Examples would be:

The thing is hers. It's her thing.

The thing is his. It's his thing.

The thing is theirs. It's their thing.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:18, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh, okay, that helps. I was thinking only in terms of mentioning, as opposed to using, the words here, so I was not thinking about the immediate context, or lack of. But if I mentally add a bit of context, so as to blur the distinction - like, "I am a they/them/theirs/their" - I can see why there would be a drop-off in popularity, in that order. Cheers!

- (OP) 2A02:560:5993:9300:FDF6:CBFE:EBAA:2566 (talk) 21:50, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the multiplicity of pronouns is mainly useful when non-standard pronouns are required, and the various forms for different cases are not obvious. See Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns § Table of standard and non-standard third-person singular pronouns. If I say I wish to be referred to as 'he', most people guess 'him, his' correctly, but if I want to be called 'tey', not everyone would find 'tem, ters' obvious. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 17:35, 16 September 2023 (UTC)