Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 August 25

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August 25

history of the Polish element names

1. What's the history behind why the Polish element names consistently don't have any suffix (e.g. lit for lithium, iryd for iridium)?
2. Are there other languages like that?

Double sharp (talk) 14:00, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Chinese, see Chemical elements in East Asian languages#Chinese, uses single characters which phonetically are just single syllables, so no suffixes. This is not as limiting as it might first seem as Chinese, whether you consider just Standard Chinese or all varieties, is tonal. But as with other languages often the precise meaning will depend on context. --2A04:4A43:907F:F6B6:9100:DBAB:4B06:88E3 (talk) 14:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, now I feel very silly for not realising that Chinese was an example of (2), when it is one of my native languages. :) Probably I overlooked it because it does not exactly use the same Latin stems, but cuts them down to one syllable and makes them fit Chinese phonology as needed.

But (1) still intrigues me. Double sharp (talk) 14:41, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Polish is a highly inflected language, so one of the key criteria taken into account when adapting the names of elements into Polish is to make them easy to assign to specific declension patterns. Polish does have a number of nouns borrowed from Latin with the -um ending, but most of them belong to the "non-inflected" declension pattern, meaning they have the same ending in every single case (e.g., muzeum, gimnazjum, etc.; album is the sole exception). Having the same ending for every case in the names of elements would make it awkward when creating compound names, so I think this is the main reason why Polish nomenclature consistently drops the Latin -ium endings. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

re: 2.: Russian semi-consistently does weird things with the Latin and Greek nominative endings, e.g. Dionysus - Дионис 'Dionis', Hephaestus - Гефест 'Ghefest', but: Chronos - Хронос 'Khronos'. Equally for element names, e.g. Aluminium - алюминий 'aljuminij', Palladium - палладий 'palladij'. Sometimes also the Russian seems to be derived from an inflected (Genitive?) form: Venus - Венера 'Venera', Eris - Эрида 'Erida' etc Aecho6Ee (talk) 17:30, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, it seems that the Polish element names were not actually fully standardised until the early 20th century (source, doi:10.15584/slowo.2018.9.09). In Jędrzej Śniadecki's Początki chemii (1816 ed.), some elements are adopted with the Latin suffix (e.g. osmium), some have it removed as in modern Polish (e.g. rod), and some have a different suffix (magnezyan, wapnian, stroncyan – but baryt). So probably we must look a bit later for why the paradigm of borrowing them consistently without the suffix was chosen among the other possibilities that had already been used, not to mention other choices such as tlen vs. kwasoród for O. That one is also pretty interesting; when Jan Oczapowski (1853) proposed the former to replace Śniadecki's choice of the latter, he argued on the basis that not all acids contain oxygen, quoting Śniadecki himself for doubts about that term: W ostatnich latach wykładu chemji sam Jędrzéj Śniadecki czuł dobrze niedokładność takich wyrażeń dowodząc publicznie, „że nie sam tylko kwasoród ma własność kwaszenia, ale są inne ciała rodzące kwasy.” Dla tych samych powodów dzisiejsi nasi chemicy wyrzucają z nauki kwasoród, wodoród, saletroród, wyrazy niewłaściwe i niemogące obok innych ciał w naukowém znaczeniu utrzymać swéj gatunkowéj rodowości. Whereas Russian still uses кислород (likewise a calque of French oxygène).

(Incidentally, Śniadecki had irys instead of iryd, using the Latin nominative instead of the oblique.) Double sharp (talk) 06:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Hooked by a bad review

There's a word that refers to the inclination to buy a book based only on a negative review.

A case in point: Tim O'Brien's novel Tomcat in Love probably would not have interested me, were it not for a bad review. The reviewer referred to O'Brien as "... an insufferably smug and fantastically verbose windbag". That clinched it for me. And I'm glad I bought it, as it was highly enjoyable.

The Streisand effect is sort of related, but that's an active attempt to censor or downplay something, which backfires badly. A book review is not designed to persuade potential readers not to buy it. What's the word I'm looking for? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 14:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

That's criticism of the character, though, not of the novel. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:33, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh yes, you're right. I was relying on my 15++ year old memory. I had collected that quote, and misremembered that it referred to the author. But either way, it's a winning endorsement for me. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:41, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I take it that 15 is now 16, but only after you used it. --Trovatore (talk) 19:40, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I've pulled out the actual hard copy review from my "filing system". It's dated 26-27 December 1998, which makes 25 years and counting. Time flies.

It wasn't even remotely a bad review, as it turns out. He ends with "His brilliance is such that it remains as ridiculous as it is sublime".

Now, what's the word for a selective quotation making one (even the selector in his dotage) think the source is the total opposite of that which it is actually is? :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:55, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

No comment on how you mutated a constant? You used to be able to actually do that, or so I'm told, in old versions of FORTRAN, which used call-by-name parameter passing but accepted numerical literals as actual parameters. So if you passed the value 2 to a function, and then within that function set the value of the formal parameter to 5, then after the function returned, any 2 that appeared in your program would be interpreted as 5. --Trovatore (talk) 06:44, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I invoke the Everett Dirksen Principle: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:04, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, and that's when a billion was worth something. --Trovatore (talk) 20:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

You might call yourself a contrarian, or more precisely someone who often has a contrarian response to bad reviews. --2A04:4A43:907F:F6B6:9100:DBAB:4B06:88E3 (talk) 14:48, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

That's similar to irrestably touching something that has a sign: "Do Not Touch!" or putting beans up your nose because somebody said not to -- which is called reactance. --136.54.237.174 (talk) 17:35, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Similar to reverse psychology (though the reviewer was not consciously using it). AnonMoos (talk) 17:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

So bad it's good perhaps. That's usually applied to films but I don't see why it shouldn't apply to books or other media. Shantavira|^{feed me} 18:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Can't think of a word, but perhaps that's a demonstration of, 'any publicity is good publicity'. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:51, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Sometimes a reviewer so obviously misses the point that one that you have to buy the book just to prove to yourself what an idiot they are. DuncanHill (talk) 20:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Questions

1. Why Spanish does not spell hard C as ⟨k⟩?
2. Why English word consonant is not spelled with letter K?
3. Why English words yellow and day do not have /g/ sound, unlike in most other Germanic languages?
4. Has Italian ever used ⟨ja, jo, ju⟩ for ⟨gia, gio, giu⟩? Why does Italian not use letter J in that case?
5. Can possessive pronouns be used with indefinite articles, like my a car?
6. Can Dutch article een be pronounced as stressed /eːn/ in emphasis?
7. Is there any language that uses both letters Ç and Ñ?
8. Are there any closed compounds in English with more than two parts?
9. Can a native English speaker ever pronounce word England as /iŋglænd/, with a full A?
10. Are there any hiatuses in English where second vowel is a checked vowel?

--40bus (talk) 19:55, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 1

Because Latin didn't. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

To the point, "K" is not a normal part of Latin or Latin-based languages. It only turns up in loanwords, such as "kilometers". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

40bus -- As for 1, in Latin, "k" was commonly used only before the letter "a" in a few specific words, especially kalendae "first day of the month". Many centuries later, Old Norse and early German orthographies picked up on the letter "k" (though Old English and Old Irish didn't), but Romance languages were more heavily influenced by Latin in their spelling habits. AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

In Middle English, letter K was used before E and I, but usually not before A, O or U. Why? And The fact that English does not alwsys use letter K for /k/ sound is a thing that I don't like; I think that letter C should be used only in unestablished loanwords, foreign proper names and in digraph ⟨ch⟩. --40bus (talk) 05:14, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Because the spelling of Middle English was copied pretty directly from Old French.

Also—that's one of the classic silly opinions to have about English orthography, if you'll forgive me. Next time you write a paragraph-length reply, try actually replacing every applicable ⟨c⟩ with either ⟨k⟩ or ⟨s⟩—I personally find the results wickedly unpleasant to read, with the new unforced etymological confusion (e.g. cell versus sell; raking versus racking → rakking...) by itself far outweighing any theoretical benefit. Remsense ‥ 论 05:53, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

40bus -- JRR Tolkien had diametrically the opposite opinion to you. In transcribing some Middle Earth languages, he used the letter "c" to represent a [k] sound even before "e" and "i". Of course, when transcribing the language of the Dwarves, he always used "k"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Though there are a few Quenya names (Melkor, Kementári, Tulkas) that JRRT tended to write with K, FWIW. And there's also some more usages of K in the late linguistic essays, e.g. Findekáno (Fingon) in "The Shibboleth of Fëanor". Possibly JRRT decided that it wasn't worth insisting on C after names like Celeborn got mispronounced too often, but that's just a guess on my part. :) Double sharp (talk) 12:08, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

What you think or don't like about English is irrelevant, as you've been told many times. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:16, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Your insistence that English should follow your ideas of how to spell things is a thing that I don't like. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:23, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 2

Because Latin didn't. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 3

There's no letter "G" in yellow or day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

As for 3, in Old English the consonant letter "g" sometimes wrote a [g] stop consonant sound, and sometimes (more often, actually) wrote a voiced velar fricative (as explained in some of my replies to past questions). All the Old English velars were subject to palatalization, and the palatalized voiced velar fricative merged early with the "y" sound (IPA [j]). AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Similar things have happened in both Swedish and Turkish. ColinFine (talk) 20:36, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 4

Surprised this isn't actually on Italian orthography, but apparently ⟨gi⟩ was first adopted in Italy in the 12th century, if I'm reading this correctly. [1] Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't actually see that in that page. The closest thing I can find is this passage:

per la fricativa palatale sorda /ʃ/, la grafia ‹sc› è attestata in concorrenza con ‹ss›, ‹sci›, ‹si›, ‹sg(i)›, ‹gi› e ‹x› (quest’ultima in carte liguri dei secoli XI-XII)

which is not talking about the sound in question (/dʒ/) but rather the unvoiced palatal fricative /ʃ/, and the 11th-12th century date seems to be talking about representing it by <x> rather than by <gi>, and specifically in Liguria.

A little higher there's mention of

le affricate alveolari sorda, /ʦ/, e sonora, /ʤ/, indicate con ‹z› in grafia d’oggi

which I think must be a misprint; it means /dz/ rather than /dʒ/.

As to the original question, why in the world would Italian ever have used <j> for /dʒ/? The letter j was always just a variant of i. --Trovatore (talk) 20:39, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 5

The point of indefinite pronouns is that they are indefinite, so we definitionally are not specifying a specific car. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

If we need to combine the concept of that being an otherwise undescribed a non-specific car with the concept of it being my property, we say a car of mine (not a car of me, btw). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:47, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Italian, I believe, has una mia macchina for "one of my cars". —Tamfang (talk) 17:19, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Italian has la mia macchina for "the car of mine", but I believe una mia macchina is disallowed and would be constructed as una macchina di me similar to English. My Italian is pretty rusty, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

My a car would only work if you had a car model called an "A Car". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

As for 5, the English way of saying that is "A car of mine". "My" and "a" are actually both determiners, and it usually isn't possible to have more than one determiner preceding a noun... AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 6

No, if you pronounce een as /eːn/ it's the numeral one. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:51, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Is the article een ever pronounced with a full vowel? --40bus (talk) 21:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

The article een is normally pronounced /ən/. It can be shortened to /ə/ or /n̩/. Dialectally /nə/, /nən/, /ˈe.nə/ and /ˈe.nən/also occur, derived from versions inflected for gender and case. As far as I know, /en/ isn't used for the article; it's the numeral one. This is also spelled een, but in positions where both could occur the numeral is spelled één.

Vowel or consonant length isn't phonemic in most Dutch dialects, so I skipped the length marks, but some people like them. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:01, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 7

Spanish, until recently. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Overall, it's relatively uncommon, although there are still quite a few examples. Many of the languages which seem to have both in some capacity are Turkic, as per the Common Turkic alphabet, but even there sometimes it's unclear:

• Crimean Tatar's Latin alphabet, Tatar's Latin alphabet, and the unofficial TB30 Latin alphabet variant for the Salar language use both characters.
• Kumyk's 1991 Latin alphabet proposal and Kazakh's 2019 Latin alphabet proposal have both characters, but as proposals they likely lack widespread usage.
• Bashkir, Karachay-Balkar, Nogai, and Uzbek are all listed on the Common Turkic alphabet article as having both in some capacity, but each individual language page doesn't quite seem to match up.
• Turkmen's Latin alphabet had both until 1999, when it dropped ñ in favor of ň.

Outside of Turkic languages, the only two I found were Rohingya's latin script and Basque. In Basque's case, however, the ç is only found in loanwords. GalacticShoe (talk) 03:58, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Reading the article, it appears that ç has been dropped from the final Kazakh Latin alphabet. (Maybe tş for Cyrillic ч, then?) Double sharp (talk) 12:20, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 8

There are some, as noted here.[2] One useful example is "plainclothesman". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Question 9

Sure. Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

As for 9, we could pronounce it that way if we wanted to, but we basically never do... AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

In England itself, we would only pronounced it "with a full A" if enunciating carefully, an instance that springs to mind is when singing the patriotic hymn. Jerusalem. Alansplodge (talk) 09:47, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Can the A in England ever be pronounced as /æ/ in continuous speech? --40bus (talk) 21:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

One may hear that 'a' in 'lay', and it is certainly possible to imagine it from some English speaker in 'land' (lay-nd), although perhaps very unstressed. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:12, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

In the 1987 movie The Last Emperor (which is mostly unrelentingly grim) there's a little moment of comedy. Instead of asking "Where are you from?", the 15 year old Puyi asks Johnston "Where are your ancestors buried?", and Johnston replies, "My ancestors are buried in Scot-land, your Majesty", with /skɔtlænd/ a spondee of sorts.--Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 02:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC) J'adoube. Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:19, 31 August 2024 (UTC),

Question 10

Many, including numerous derivations from Greek (archaeology) and Latin (algebraic) Remsense ‥ 论 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

As for 10, the word "reaction". AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)