Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 September 14

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September 14

"Mental health" as a negative

It seems that the term "mental health" is very often used to mean its exact opposite, viz. mental illness. I know that sounds stupid, but I've had a few online discussions with people who've used it that way, and their position seems to be that that's what people are now saying, so what's the issue?

Here's an example from today's news: I had … an acute episode of mental health.

This is from a hospital's website: mental health symptoms.

A symptom is: A perceived change in some function, sensation or appearance of a person that indicates a disease or disorder. Since when was health a disease or disorder? Wouldn't the sign have been better worded "Mental illness symptoms"? Yes, I know there's a kind of stigma around the expression "mental illness", but this is surely what the signage is referring to, no? Would anyone ever say "symptoms of physical health" and expect it to be understood as "symptoms of physical illness"? We have "indicators" of health, but "symptoms" of illness or disease. Why are they needlessly confusing these things?-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:46, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Euphemism? I can't reach the first link outside of Australia, or as a non-paying reader or something, the the second link states "Mental health is an essential aspect of overall well-being...", so it isn't really used the way you claim it is. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:33, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

You're always vigilant for auto-antonyms (because you're such a suspicious individual). This one reminds me of when you previously asked about "TLDR", along with the word "entitled". In all three cases we have a conversion from a mundane, ordinary, unexciting object - a tract that's long and intractable, a person who genuinely deserves respect, an unremarkable mind functioning without peril or distress - to the exciting thing people really want to discuss: a short and catchy summary, a snob to throw eggs at, a dangerously disturbed mind and the dramatic story about living with it and taming it. It seems that generally speaking, whenever there's a name for something trivial and usual, the name is liable to be converted into a name for the unusual, opposite thing.

Ideally I'd now test this theory by pulling out a few terms for dull routine situations, which ought to show signs of sometimes being used to mean the opposite. But I can't think of any more. I don't know, could "air quality" perhaps be a synonym for pollution?  Card Zero  (talk) 10:34, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

"It seems that generally speaking, whenever there's a name for something trivial and usual, the name is liable to be converted into a name for the unusual, opposite thing." - that's pretty much just restating the subject of my question. If I went onto social media and jokingly posted "I'm having acute episodes of mental health lately", meaning that my mind is in great shape, I would get a lot of responses saying they're so sorry, asking if I'm ok, am I getting all the support I need yada yada. This "language change" b/s is so insidious: It stops now! d'ya hear? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:32, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

For sure, by all the authority vested in you! It seems like some things only get mentioned in the negative when the positive side of it is "normal". Like when someone says we're going to have weather today. We have weather every day, but it's only a big deal when it's "bad" weather. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:03, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Clearly a weather episode! 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:58, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Overpowered is possibly another example: modern usage tends to be the gaming sense of "too powerful".  Card Zero  (talk) 20:36, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

We see, likewise, uses of just "health symptoms": "10 Health Symptoms Women Shouldn't Ignore",^[1] "6 Health Symptoms That You Should Never Ignore",^[2] "Don't ignore health symptoms amid COVID-19 pandemic",^[3] "Dr.’s Tips: Health Symptoms and Warning Signs That Should Never Be Ignored",^[4] "Warning Health Symptoms: Discover the crucial health symptoms you should always take seriously",^[5] and so on and so forth. I don't think these are a symptom of "health" being used as a term meaning the lack thereof. Uses of "acute episode of mental health", while strange, are possibly instances of sloppy shortening of typical phrases such as "acute (episode of) mental health crisis",^[6][7][8] "acute episode of mental health distress",^[9][10][11] and "acute (episode of) mental health issues".^[12][13][14]  --Lambiam 15:39, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I have long thought that news and tips about "computer security" actually deal with insecurity. --Error (talk) 20:11, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I think most of these cases can be explained by the fact that words like "health" have two very similar but different meanings. There is the more general, "health", that can be evaluated as either good or bad, depending on the circunstances. One has good health, one has bad health. However, we conversationally just use "health" to mean "good health". Same with the tentative example above. "Air quality" does not intrinsically mean good air quality: bad air quality is also air quality. We assume the non specified health or quality to be good, conventionally, but it could just as easily be the bad one. In the mental health case I think many times it has a humorous tone, as does in the case of weather. 195.37.181.241 (talk) 10:36, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Generally, people only notice healths that are less than great. Remsense ‥ 论 20:58, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Née question

The article Suoma af Hällström starts as:

Suoma Helena Loimaranta-Airila, (first married surname af Hällström), (née Loimaranta, before 1906 née Lindstedt) (10 March 1881 – 3 November 1954) was a Finnish doctor and an active member of the Lotta Svärd women's auxiliary paramilitary organisation.

Now "née" literally means "born". The way the article reads is that she was first born as Lindstedt, but in 1906 this was somehow retroactively changed so that she was actually born as Loimaranta.

Now I think the intended meaning is that she was born as Lindstedt but the family later changed their name to Loimaranta. How should this be properly written? JIP | Talk 12:26, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I changed it to "née Lindstedt; surname Finnicized to Loimaranta before marriage". Double sharp (talk) 12:28, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

A couple of questions (primarily about phonology)

Question 1

1. Is it known roughly when the Arabic feature of the L-sound in the article al assimilating into following coronal or sun letters arose? Primal Groudon (talk) 16:33, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Question 2

2. In Sino-Xenic languages, can a word’s syllable structure (which phoneme slots it has) as well as the specific phonemes that occupy those slots be used to aid in determining whether the word is native or derived from Chinese (loanwords from other sources are ignored for the purpose of this query)? Primal Groudon (talk) 16:33, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Probably in Japanese and Korean, anyway. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:40, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

What are some of the phonetic signs therein of native or Chinese origin? Primal Groudon (talk) 19:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

For Korean, here's a pretty comprehensive paper: [15]. The phonetics of Sino-Korean words tends to be more restricted than native Korean words. Sino-Korean words never or almost never use the tense ("double") consonants, compound final consonants, or aspirated "k", and they have fewer and more limited diphthongs. There are also some particular combinations of initial consonants plus vowels that are either rare or do not occur in Sino-Korean. There are characteristic ways that Sino-Korean words fit into a Korean sentence, such as using the helping verb "hada" (to make or do) instead of directly participating in Korean inflectional patterns. The paper also points out that Sino-Korean vocabulary includes words that do not exist in Chinese, but were derived in Korean by combining Chinese characters, and behave in Korean as Sino-Korean words. --Amble (talk) 21:40, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Question 3

3. Was the labial W-glide in Middle Chinese (and in early forms of Japanese that had it) only allowed with velar initials? Primal Groudon (talk) 16:33, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Question 4

4. Given the Tibetan script’s overall stability in the face of 1200 years of sound changes, can the presence of certain letters or letter combinations be used to aid in determining when a word entered the Tibetan language? Primal Groudon (talk) 16:33, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Question 5

5: Has greater global interconnectedness in recent times led to an increase in the prevalence of unadapted borrowings? Primal Groudon (talk) 20:00, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I will take recent to mean postwar or even later. I think this has to be the case in both directions relative to English, the global lingua franca: for loanwords being borrowed from English, it's obvious this has to do with the massive increase in global literacy during the 20th century, meaning that orthography became a far more common concrete realization of the vocabulary that was being borrowed into languages across the globe. This is also a factor for loanwords being borrowed into English, but I think there is also a critical impulse in institutions and certain classes of writers that orthography remain "unanglicized" to various degrees as a matter of cosmopolitan respect or self-awareness in addition to recognizability among bilingual readers. Remsense ‥ 论 22:36, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

By "unadapted", do you mean phonetically/phonotactically, and to what extent? So like, in English, would words like deja vu and double entendre be considered unadapted French loanwords for your definition in this q? Or in French, place names like "Boston" that's been phonotactically altered so the stress is on the final syllable, while articulation remains largely the same? The most "raw" borrowings can probably be seen in urban youth dialects, so see the diversity in borrowings in Multicultural Toronto English or similar, or else immigrant ethnolects like you see in a possibly-diminishing Italian-American slang (the nonstandard pronunciation of which apparently comes from the unique mix of regions the 20th-century immigrants primarily came from -- see end of link), some of which would seem a permanent fixture now of greater American slang.

As a stab in the dark, I'll refer first to Bromhan et al 2014 (free pdf link), from which I suggest you read the introduction section to get an overview of the complexity of the problem as currently studied. (The intro at a glance suggests that English might best fit "large, widespread languages that are often learned by adults" which "may become simplified" per citation (14), and if that's truly the general systems case then you'd expect borrowing, or the robustness thereof, to decrease in the long term.)

Anyway, I'd need you to specify your question more. Then I can ask Google Scholar :). SamuelRiv (talk) 15:13, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

There's a classification of "unadapted borrowing" on Wiktionary, but I think it's more about spelling and orthography than phonetics. Most borrowings would be adapted in some way to the language in which it is borrowed, is my impression. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:38, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Question 6

6: Do phenomena such as contraction of certain vowel combinations, elision of some word-final short vowels, and crasis still occur in modern Greek? Primal Groudon (talk) 22:24, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

We see, also in Modern Greek, αγαπώ next to αγαπάω, and Νικόλας < Νικόλαος.

Crasis and other forms of final-vowel ellipsis are fairly common, as e.g. in πάρ το < πάρε το, τ’ όνειρο < το όνειρο, and ουτ’ αυτό < ούτε αυτό. Note that crasis is marked orthographically by an apostrophe, unlike other forms of ellipsis. It is also fairly common to omit the space: τ’όνειρο, ουτ’αυτό.  --Lambiam 03:10, 15 September 2024 (UTC)