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June 4

How many solutions of perfect pangram exist?

In Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 May 17#Pangram, I asked “Use the symbol of the 118 chemical elements, and the abbreviation of the 88 constellations, and the abbreviation of the 50 states of America, what is the least words we need to make a pangram?”, and someone gave a solution of perfect pangram:

Aql, B, Cu, Fm, Gd, KY, NJ, Oph, Sex, VT, WI, Zr

I also found some other solutions from this solution:

1. Replace B to Yb, replace KY to K
2. Replace B to Bi, replace WI to W
3. Replace Cu to C and U
4. Replace KY to K and Y
5. Replace B to Bh, replace Oph to Po
6. Replace Sex to S and Xe
7. Replace Cu to Tc and U, replace VT to V

So, how many solutions of perfect pangram exist? Also, how many things (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) are contained in every perfect pangram? Or not contained in any perfect pangram? (I only know, by the answer of the one who gave the solution, every perfect pangram contains NJ, and thus no perfect pangram contains others containing the letter N such as N, In, Nor) 2001:B042:4005:546F:E921:9E13:BB77:C79F (talk) 00:12, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

These solutions have at least 12 elements. I find in total 1,687,855 perfect pangrams, 476 of which have 11 elements. The lexicographically first 11-element solution is:

Ag, Bk, Ds, Equ, Hf, LMi, NJ, Oct, Pyx, WV, Zr

 --Lambiam 10:41, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

The only things (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) contained in both of your solution and the solution given in Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 May 17#Pangram are NJ and Zr, but for Zr, we can replace Ag and Zr to AZ and Rg, thus NJ is the only thing (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) contained in every perfect pangram. (There are only 3 things (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) containing the letter Z: AZ, Zn, Zr, but Zn cannot be used since NJ must be used)

Also, how many things (chemical elements, constellations, states of America) are not contained in any perfect pangram? 220.132.230.56 (talk) 13:13, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Counting abbreviations that only differ by lower/upper case, I find 60 unusable ones: And, Ant, Aqr, Ar/AR, Ari, Au, Aur, Cae, Car, Cen, Cn, CrA, Cru, CVn, Del, Dra, Er, Eri, Gru, Her, In/IN, Ind, Leo, Lep, Lu, Lup, Lyn, Men, Mn/MN, Mon, N, Na, Nb, NC, Nd/ND, Ne/NE, Nh/NH, Ni, NM, No, Nor, Np, NV, NY, Per, Ra, Re, Ret, Rn, Ru, Ser, Sn, Tau, Tel, TN, TrA, UMa, Vel, Vul, Zn.  --Lambiam 14:19, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

All of these 60 things can be ruled out by the letters J, Q, Z: (and limited the using of the letters A, E, L, N, R, U)

1. NJ is the only thing which contains the letter J, thus NJ must be used.
2. All other things (besides NJ) containing the letter N cannot be used, this would include Zn.
3. AZ, Zn, Zr are the only three things which contain the letter Z, but since Zn cannot be used, one of AZ and Zr must be used.
4. Since one of AZ and Zr must be used, all things containing both of the letters A and R cannot be used, this would include Aqr.
5. Aql, Aqr, Equ are the only three things which contain the letter Q, but since Aqr cannot be used, one of Aql and Equ must be used.
6. Since one of Aql and Equ must be used, all things containing both of the letters A and E, or containing both of the letters A and U, or containing both of the letters L and E, or containing both of the letters L and U, cannot be used.
7. Also, AZ and Aql cannot be both used since both of them contain the letter A, thus at least one of Zr and Equ must be used, and hence all things containing both of the letters R and E, or containing both of the letters R and U, cannot be used.

220.132.230.56 (talk) 15:48, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, there are 1687855 perfect pangrams, and all of them contain NJ, besides NJ, which ones are used in the most number, the second-most number, the third-most number, etc. of the perfect pangrams? Also, besides the 60 unusable ones, which ones are used in the least number, the second-least number, the third-least number, etc. of the perfect pangrams? 220.132.230.56 (talk) 15:56, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

The questions are endless, but less and less interesting.  --Lambiam 18:40, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

OK. Besides, can you give all 476 11-element solutions? Thanks. (I think that there should be more things which are not contained in any 11-element solutions, e.g. the lexicographically first 11-element solution starts with Ag, this means Ac is not contained in any 11-element solutions, also, since the sets of Ca/CA is the same as Ac, thus Ca/CA is also not contained in any 11-element solutions) 220.132.230.56 (talk) 19:21, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

They can be admired at User:Lambiam/Pangram.  --Lambiam 07:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Also Ara, Boo, Cnc, Pup, since they have repeated letters themselves. 220.132.230.56 (talk) 19:25, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Thus there are 64 unusable ones. 220.132.230.56 (talk) 19:25, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Right. My program throws them out right at the start, before commencing its search.  --Lambiam 07:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Why are English, Indonesian & Malay the closest natural languages to ISO Basic Latin alphabet?

(at least according to List of Latin-script alphabets and ISO basic Latin alphabet). Is it cause English has unusually high tolerance for inconsistent and non-phonetic spelling? Why are Malay and Indonesian alphabets so Englishy? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

The notion that one can assign a measure of distance between a natural language and an alphabet is absurd.  --Lambiam 07:02, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Mentally replacing "natural language" with "orthography", this becomes one of those questions that is presented as asking about some subtle truth about language, which is odd to me because the answer is pretty much just that the Dutch were the ones to romanize Malay. Also, I will hiss every time someone says that English spelling is qualitatively more irregular than any other: surely you've read French at least once in your life?Remsense诉 07:08, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

If one hears a French word pronounced, say /si.fle/ , its spelling can often only be guessed: is it siffler, sifflez, sifflé, sifflée, sifflés or sifflées? The champion may be /vɛʁ/: is it vair, vairs, ver, vers, vert, verts, verre or verres? The other direction, however, from spelling to pronunciation, tends to be rather predictable. For English you often also have to guess in that direction, as is made clear in the poem "The Chaos". I wonder if there are languages where it is the other way around: the standard orthographic rendering of a spoken word is usually predictable, but the pronunciation of a written word is often hard to guess.  --Lambiam 09:51, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

@Remsense: The romanisation the Dutch introduced for Malay doesn't actually stick to the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It uses diaereses and acutes. The diacritics were abolished after Indonesian independence in the 1947 spelling. Double sharp (talk) 15:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh! Shows what I know. Remsense诉 15:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The technical answer is that the spellings of the three languages do not require the use of diacritic marks, or of letters beyond those found in ASCII. (Sometimes diacritics are optionally used in writing English in the case of words borrowed from other languages into English, or the "New Yorker dieresis", but it's never wrong to omit diacritics in English.) However, this has nothing to do with how good the spelling systems are in writing the languages. The Malay spelling system is quasi-phonemic, except in not having a distinct symbol for the schwa vowel, while English spelling is of course quite complex... AnonMoos (talk) 10:42, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

English doesn't generally use diacritics because its orthography (spelling) was modeled after that of (Middle) French. That may seem surprising, since modern French makes heavy use of diacritics. But English orthography was first established in the late 14th century, and at that time, diacritics were not yet standard in French. Unlike other European languages, English never adopted diacritics, which in Europe are mainly used for vowels. The Great Vowel Shift radically transformed the pronunciation of English vowels. As a result, spellings that approximated vowel pronunciations around 1400 no longer did so, and the divergence was too complex for diacritics to remedy easily. Without a thorough spelling reform, they would just have added further complexity. Fortunately, there was no push to adopt them in English. Malay and Indonesian are essentially different varieties of a single language. They share the same basic orthography, which was developed under British and Dutch influence during the colonial period. (Previously, Malay had been written with the Arabic abjad.) Dutch, like English, has an orthography developed mostly in the Middle Ages, before diacritics were widely or systematically used. So you could add Dutch to your list of (mostly) diacritic-free languages. Malay and Indonesian follow a model based mainly on English, with some Dutch influence. Initially, Indonesian followed a Dutch model, and Malay followed an English model. In 1972, Malaysia and Indonesia agreed on a spelling reform that leaned more toward an English model. Marco polo (talk) 20:27, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Also English mostly got rid of non-Latin graphemes over time like thorn, Æ, Œ and long s even though European languages usually added them if anything. Such as turning nn into ñ, ss to ß, vowel splits to å and ae oe ue to ä ö ü. Why did they die out? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:41, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Æ and Œ are non-Latin graphemes?????

The stunning revelation aside, the answer is "the Norman conquest", like has already been gestured towards above. English pretty much died out as an important written language from the 11th to the 14th centuries. I think it's true to some extent that the advent of the printing press finished them off for good, but it's not completely true since there were printed English publications where they printed Þ and Ƿ just fine. As you can discern from reading documents throughout the modern period, the long S did not fall out of use in English until the 18th century or so.Remsense诉 03:33, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

The ligatures ⟨Æ⟩ and ⟨Œ⟩ are not included in the Latin alphabet. They make their first appearances in the Middle Ages, first in cursive handwriting.  --Lambiam 09:21, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Sure, but they were used to write Latin, which I feel is the pertinent sense in this context. Remsense诉 09:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Non-Classical Latin or JUW which might be more common than any other novelty for some reason? It is useful as IJUVW became different phonemes though th is 2 different phonemes and we got rid of those letters (which the first neo-English authors unused to Germanic glyphs were uninclined to resurrect? When did the average England resident stop pronouncing ð and θ "poorly" with Norman accent? Did some people do this longer in some places and castes not influenced by non-Norman languages without th-sounds?) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:32, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

It might just be that ð and θ were more difficult to print than write by hand, I guess. I am more surprised that the sounds themselves have remained in English, when they disappeared in all continental Germanic languages. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:23, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

They were not "more difficult to print". Again, it is largely French orthographic influence. Plus, Þ and Ƿ looked a lot like P, which didn't help their viability. Remsense诉 09:50, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I can't really understand the questions you're asking, could you clarify? Remsense诉 09:52, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Did Norman have th-sounds (I've heard they're one of if not the rarest 2020s General American English phonemes in the world and in the Indo-Europeans) before 1066 and if it didn't then when did pronouncing IPA ð and θ with a Norman accent die out and who were the holdouts? Also what did ð and θ sound like with a Norman accent? I've heard it's sink for think in Modern Standard German? Also is it really true that relatively few European and world languages have the English r-sound or is it an artifact of transcription conventions and how specific the IPA charts in the database are? Maybe that English IPA letter (common w sound?) that's sometimes outside the main chart is more common than that database says? It's sometimes in the zone not always shown with the more "exotic" sound production methods like clicking. Is there any English vowel that'd be noticed in the accent of an English learner who only knew the language with the most vowel phonemes before learning English as an adult? !Xóõ and Ubykh with massive numbers of consonants don't seem to have all our consonants (and we don't have a few fairly common consonants like ñ, what's the most common phoneme in the world and Europe that English doesn't have? And what's the most common that people who only know English have trouble pronouncing, since some non-English phonemes aren't hard). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Picking and choosing which I answer, with varying levels of surety.

1. ⟨th⟩ was used as a digraph representing Greek vocabulary in Latin and in most of post-Roman Europe. As English is one of the few European languages other than Greek to have /θ/, the orthography was naturally adopted when writing English. Normans who moved from Normandy to England generally didn't learn English, so they didn't often speak English with a Norman accent. If I had to guess, it would be how modern French speakers realize it, as /t/. Over time, their children began to acquire English naturally, and as such were native speakers.
2. I think [ɹ] is comparatively rare, yes.
3. I think all non-English phonemes are equally hard to pronounce by native speakers (i.e., we don't, like it usually the case.)

Remsense诉 17:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

The English word "faith" has a [θ] from early old French [θ] (eliminated in later Old French). AnonMoos (talk) 19:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Some others to pick and answer:

• English has one of the largest vowel inventories of all (around 13, depending on dialect), a feature it shares with several of its European neighbours (German, French, Dutch, Norwegian). Such large vowel inventories appear to be a bit of a feature of the Standard Average European sprachbund. Interestingly, most of them have a set of rounded front vowels, which (most varieties of) English lacks. English fills in with additional central vowels or an unrounded back vowel. WALS lists German as the language with the largest vowel inventory of their sample (which includes less than 10% of the worlds languages). So there you have it: the vowels present in English, but not in German.
• The most common sound not used in English? [ç~x~χ] is pretty common, but not used in most varieties of English. The same is true of trilled R's. [x] is an easy sound. Trills are harder (you have to find the right combination of air pressure and closing force to avoid both the fricative and the stop; if the articulator is too strongly damped, this may require excessive force), but most people manage the alveolar or the uvular trill, which tend to exist in free variation.

PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:51, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah yes the Spanish rr, that wasn't hard for me. One thing that was hard was saying Xinjiang. A native speaker of one of the Chinese dialects/languages said it to me, I tried to copy ASAP, repeat like 7 times, the later max effort exact copy attempt tries sounded to me like they should be well within normal variation but were wrong every time. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:30, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

When I started learning Chinese, the hardest Putonghua initial for me to make was the [ɻ ~ ʐ] rhotic, of course. I was murmuring 热水 rèshuǐ into my phone for hours at a time trying to get the voice recognition to accept me. Remsense诉 00:43, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

A change in orthography might not necessarily indicate a change in pronunciation. When the Elder Futhark was replaced with the Younger Futhark in Scandinavia, the simplification caused a lot of minimal pairs in written form, whereas the phonetic inventory itself is believed to have increased. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

The table at "ISO basic Latin alphabet#Alphabets containing the same set of letters" is using a weird and extraordinarily technical definition: it allows diacritics, ligatures, and multigraphs, but only as long as they do not constitute distinct letters. Thus it is stated that Malay and Indonesian "are the only languages outside Europe that use all the Latin alphabet and require no diacritics and ligatures", and no mention is made of languages like Zulu, which makes use of the 26 unmodified letters from A to Z and nothing else but has multigraphs counting as distinct letters. --Theurgist (talk) 23:35, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't that cause their alphabet to have 27 or more letters? Spanish dictionaries have/had? an LL section I think with llama somewhere between luna and muón in alphabetical order instead of before both. And cañon would be after cantar in alphabetical order. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:51, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

If you're only interested in collation, then yes. But appearance-wise, Zulu texts only have the 26 basic letters and nothing else, while in French (which is in the table) you will also see a lot of diacriticized letters and a ligature or two. --Theurgist (talk) 00:06, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

June 6

More-than-full rhyme

I recently revisited Georg Trakl's poem Die junge Magd (to understand what I'm talking about see also the English translation by Daniele Pantano (though I'm not very happy with that translation)). The poem uses ABAB quatrains, but "A" doesn't just rhyme with "A", the last word of each quatrain's first line is actually identical with that of the corresponding third line. Here's what I mean (identical words in boldface)

Oft am Brunnen, wenn es dämmert,

Sieht man sie verzaubert stehen

Wasser schöpfen, wenn es dämmert.

Eimer auf und niedergehen.

("stehen" and "niedergehen" rhyme, while "dämmert" and "dämmert" are identical)

My questions:

• 1) is there a word in literary studies for a rhyme scheme where two identical (not just "rhyming") words are rhymed?
• 2) regardless of question 1): Are there other examples in poetry where this is done systematically?

Thank you in advance! ---Sluzzelin talk 01:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

1) Although rime riche has a very specific meaning in French poetry, I've seen the term applied to identical "rhymes" in other languages. In fact, Wiktionary gives a more general definition for this term:

A form of rhyme with identical sounds, as in "pear" and "pair.

The French Wikipedia states:

Rhymes between identical sequences of more than one syllable (in particular between homophone words) are considered very differently depending on the language: seen as imperfect in English, they are on the contrary valued under the name of rimes riches in French.

The article goes on to call the holorime "the extreme case".  --Lambiam 07:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

In German, de:Identischer Reim. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:30, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Arguably, it's more of an epistrophe than a rhyme. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! ---Sluzzelin talk 20:30, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

June 7

Use of "buttery" out of control

When did people start using "buttery" to describe everything from iOS interfaces to the feel of comfortable shoes? It's driving me batty. Can anyone explain where this came from, who is responsible, and where I can contact their manager? Viriditas (talk) 01:37, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

What does it mean? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:05, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

You haven't heard everyone using the word? You're lucky. In the context of footwear, it means "soft" or "smooth", having the qualities of butter. In terms of touch interfaces, it refers to the "buttery scroll" of iOS, such as inertial or momentum scrolling. Viriditas (talk) 02:11, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of it until you raised this question. However, I've never been accused of being "hip". :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

It might not be hip! First heard boomers using it in 2016. Now, I hear people using it more. It might just be an old term resurrected from the past. Viriditas (talk) 03:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd love to think that Swedemason was responsible for popularizing it.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:43, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Definitely just a return of an old phrase. I remember lots of things being described as "buttery soft" or "buttery smooth" or "like butter" back in the 1980s.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I think you're right. Any idea how it got started? Viriditas (talk) 17:56, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

In the "Coffee Talk" sketches on the TV show Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s, Mike Myers played a stereotypical New York Jewish woman who used Yiddish phrases and Jewish expressions. One of his catchphrases was describing something as being "like butter", not in reference to any physical attribute, but seemingly just as a generic positive adjectival phrase. It was the first time I'd heard this usage and assumed it was a phrase common in Jewish culture, perhaps the translation of a Yiddish expression. CodeTalker (talk) 18:50, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

In the context of white wine, it means heavily oaked. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 18:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah, good point. Do you think it comes from wine culture and made its way to other things? Viriditas (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Its use to describe a tactile sensation is rather remote from the gustatory one in wine tasting (and beer tasting, where it is also used in reference to both taste and mouthfeel). I suggest that it arises naturally from the 'draggy lubrication' feel or consistency of butter, referenced in the long-established term 'buttery smooth'. In this sense, the OED cites uses dating back as far as 1719. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 22:47, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

In England, it means a pretentious type of café trying to sound rural. Alansplodge (talk) 22:32, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it can mean "A room for keeping food or beverages; a storeroom" or, in the UK, "a room in a university where snacks are sold." There was one at the University of Nottingham, in the basement of the Trent Building, I seem to recall. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:43, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

That word is etymologically unrelated to "butter" or the adjective "buttery" derived from "butter". The noun "buttery" ultimately dervies from Latin "butta" meaning a cask or bottle. The OED says the noun "buttery" is "< (i) Anglo-Norman boterie, boterei, botrie, buterie, butteri (1374 or earlier), and its etymon (ii) post-classical Latin buteria, buttaria (frequently from 12th cent. in British sources) < butta cask, bottle (see butt n.4) + ‑ria ‑ry suffix." CodeTalker (talk) 23:15, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like a cousin to a larder. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

how to write reports

how to write good repots Albulushi66 (talk) 10:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Albulushi66. I suggest you start by learning about correct spelling and how to use sentence case, and work your way up to Wikipedia:How to write a great article. Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:25, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

This question is difficult to answer, because there are many aspects to it.

• Mastering correct spelling and grammar is important, but there is so much more to good writing. A sentence or paragraph may be written with impeccably correct spelling and grammar, but express its idea in such a muddled or convoluted way that a reader will not understand it. Being clear is at least as important as spelling and grammar. Read and reread what you have written and ask, Does this clearly express the idea or information I want to convey? Is there perhaps another interpretation of these words, not the one I mean to convey? Are there superfluous words, words that can be left out while leaving the meaning unchanged? In general, keeping it simple and straightforward is the best.
• Then there is the audience. Who will read the report? The tone of writing should be adjusted to the purpose of the report. An informal trip report of an excursion to the foot of a mountain for a travel blog will be very different, not only in content but also in style, from a scientific report of a geological survey of the same area. Our article Report gives a list of various kinds of reports in the section Report § Types. The same article gives a general but useful overview of the typical structure of a report. If you are going to write a report, try to find other reports of a similar nature and study their composition.
• Writing a good report requires that you know what it is you want to say. Concentrate on what is essential. Something that is not essential may become a distraction, and then it is better to leave it out. Sometimes it helps to write the "Conclusions" section first. Material that is irrelevant to the conclusions can be omitfed from the report.
• If there is a lot of material that should go into the report, one way of organizing this material is to use separate slips of paper for each thing you want to say. Then sort these slips on a table or other flat surface to bring related things together. You will then have a small number of heaps, which will become subsections or paragraphs in the report. Often, you can sort the slips in a heap into an order of presentation in the report. Likewise with the heaps themselves; some should go into the report before some others.

 --Lambiam 09:03, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Strange expressions

Thomas Robinson, 1st Baron Grantham says: "At the 1727 British general election he was returned as Member of Parliament for Thirsk on the Frankland interest, after his eldest brother, for whom the seat had originally been intended, resigned his pretensions to him."

What do the emboldened words mean?

• on the Frankland interest:
• resigned his pretensions:

I must say I rather like the idea of resigning my pretensions and becoming a normal person, but I suspect it means something else here. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I see that you do not have any pretensions that you are a normal person.  --Lambiam 07:25, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

An appropriate click suggests that Thirsk was a rotten borough in the pocket of a landowner named Frankland. Pretensions is a synonym of claims. —Tamfang (talk) 21:47, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, as in pretender.  Card Zero  (talk) 12:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

but not as in great pretender, pretending I'm doing well (woo-woo).  --Lambiam 13:26, 8 June 2024 (UTC))

For the curious, the chap with big pockets was Sir Thomas Frankland, 6th Baronet. Alansplodge (talk) 22:27, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

He had no influence in the 1727 election, owing to not being conceived yet. DuncanHill (talk) 10:03, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

D'oh! My mistake, I should have linked Sir Thomas Frankland, 3rd Baronet (1685 – 1747), who was elected MP for Thirsk in 1713, 1715, 1722, 1727, 1734 and 1741. Alansplodge (talk) 18:07, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

June 8

Non-most important subgroup of people

What is the most common English idiom to label a subgroup of people not including the most important people in the group, but the next-most important? From analogy with German, I assume it is something like "the second row", "second rank" or similar. --KnightMove (talk) 15:58, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

In a military context, "rank and file" is often used. This is sometimes used metaphorically in non-military contexts, but would not always be appropriate. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 16:24, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. But that would be 'too low' in my contexts. --KnightMove (talk) 18:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

I've frequently heard "second rank" and "second tier". I think it matters what the context is; could you give us a hint? Deor (talk) 19:49, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

One context: I want to collect the second rank (?) of the 27 Club, consisting of Robert Johnson and five other musicians. Other contexts include operatives in societies not included in the board or a somewhat equivalent top-level. --KnightMove (talk) 20:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Associates? Doug butler (talk) 21:22, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Here are a few uses of "second tier": [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] The term implies a hierarchical division in levels, not a ranking based on somewhat arbitrary criteria, so it may not fit your intended use.  --Lambiam 21:36, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

I have no idea how one would go about grouping people in the "27 Club" into ranks or tiers. Popularity? It sounds very subjective to me. Deor (talk) 21:49, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Of course that's highly subjective, as is the 27 Club list of people listed by anybody. Still, there is a clear "Big Six" group of the most important members which the English Wikipedia article does not care to mention. They are represented by the graffito, although the graffiti artist has also included 'fellow' Jean-Michel Basquiat. And there is also a surprisingly meaningful follow-up group of 'frequent additions'. --KnightMove (talk) 06:32, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

If it's celebrities we're talking about then B-List is the correct term. DuncanHill (talk) 09:57, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good, thank you. --KnightMove (talk) 10:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

June 9

Fully and digitally transcribed hieroglyphic texts

Are there any Egyptian reliefs with transcriptions here or elsewhere that are copy and pastable? Temerarius (talk) 20:09, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Possibly this? "Teaching of Ptahhotep. Converted automatically to Unicode using HieroJax." Going up one directory level reveals a whole slew of these things.  Card Zero  (talk) 23:30, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Wonderful, thank you! Temerarius (talk) 23:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Does Latin contain the letter J?

The chemical elements do not contain the letter J or W (name, not symbol, e.g. tungsten not W or wolfram) is because the name of all non-transuranium elements are from either Latin or Greek, but both Latin and Greek do not have the letter J or W, e.g. jodium become iodine, wismut become bismuth (for transuranium elements, it may contain, e.g, joliotium), Latin seems to not have the letters J, K, U, W (and use V in place of U), kalium is not Latin and instead it is Arabic, and if “junonium” (after 3 Juno, which was a proposed name for cadmium, just like cerium after 1 Ceres palladium after 2 Pallas, but its Latin name is “Iunius”, Start with I instead of J) was used in place of cadmium, then the English name of it should be junonium or iunonium? Also, Latin seems to have no J, but aren’t “major” and “junior” Latin? 2402:7500:92C:2EC4:C50:24C1:2841:C6B5 (talk) 21:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

On the question in your heading, see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 12#Latin and the letter J. Deor (talk) 23:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

(ec)This question sounds familiar somehow. In any case, Latin letters I and V can be used as either vowels or consonants depending on the context. One example is the time-honored INRI on the cross of Jesus, which stands for IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDÆORVM. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

So, maior and iunior? The articles on j and i explain that j was for a long time just a decorative i, although Latin i could stand for what I will casually refer to as a "y sound" (or more formally, but confusingly, /j/). Is it still used that way? Ja! Later this sound was replaced with the English "j" sound. And should we use i or j in a Latin context? It's optional, but if you're aiming for historical authenticity, try i, and if you're coining English derivations from Latin, j is what we are used to.  Card Zero  (talk) 23:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

As a Swede, I find "y sound" more confusing than /j/. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:51, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I deduce you didn't see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:33, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

That scene grated on me; am I (in this as in much else) alone? —Tamfang (talk) 19:50, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

It offends me in an engineering sense. How could some letter spots hold a man's weight when they're surrounded by crumbly ones? When Indy almost falls through to his death, we can see that there are no supports underneath. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

How is kalium not (Modern) Latin? FWIW, it is in the Lexicon Latinum Hodiernum. Double sharp (talk) 10:12, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The most directly relevant facts (somehow unmentioned in the 2014 discussion) are that before the 17th-century, I and J weren't considered to be distinct letters but merely swash glyph variants, and similarly U and V. The distribution of the forms "J" and "V" to write consonants and "I" and "U" to write vowels was established during the 17th century, but well into the 18th century, they weren't always considered separate letters (see the alphabets in the image File:Sampler by Elizabeth Laidman, 1760.jpg). So obviously there was no "J" used distinctly from "I" to write sounds in ancient Roman times. Whether there's a "J" in modern writings of Latin depends on the conventions that have been chosen. AnonMoos (talk) 10:21, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

And Latin did use K, though in rather restricted use. See wikt:kalendae. ColinFine (talk) 12:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

That the English names of the (cis-uranic) elements don't contain W or J is simply coincidence. Names like iron, zinc, tin, tungsten are purely Germanic, potassium and vanadium are Germanic names with a Latin-sounding suffix. J and W weren't used in classical Latin, but can occasionally be found in modern Latin. Apparently, the modern Latin word for tungsten is wolframium, borrowed from German. Just like W can be found in Italian, in loans from Germanic languages. PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Wolfram almost became the normal English name of the element (source, and also see doi:10.1021/ba-1953-0008.ch005). In 1949, IUPAC wanted to make wolfram the scientific name as part of its cleanup of double-named elements (beryllium/glucinium, columbium/niobium, cassiopeium/lutetium, celtium/hafnium). But this was misinterpreted as ruling out the name tungsten altogether (even though it was still supposed to be an accepted commercial name), and the resulting outcry led to IUPAC changing back to tungsten pending another review. That pending review has never happened. (Personally, I would've preferred wolfram, chiefly because it would've meant one less odd symbol to explain.) Double sharp (talk) 16:02, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

In fact, lawrencium contains W, and is the only element whose English name does so. Double sharp (talk) 09:42, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

There's no element that contains Q, which is a tolerably common letter in Latin. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:13, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

There's quicksilver, an alternative name for mercury. It's a Germanic name though. The classical (really classical, not Neolatin) name is hydrargyrum. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:46, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Also quadium. --Trovatore (talk) 05:36, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Why deuterium (²H) has symbol D and tritium (³H) has symbol T but quadium (⁴H) has no symbol Q? 118.170.47.29 (talk) 06:47, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I find "quadium" only in connection with the satirical novel that provided the name. It doesn't look like the name is in official or common use, and therefore there is no official or commonly used symbol. I have reverted your edits in Isotopes of hydrogen that hastily suggested otherwise. --Wrongfilter (talk) 07:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

There's no real point to naming higher hydrogen isotopes because they decay too quickly to have any chemistry. Muonium is a better way to extend the series, although in the opposite direction.

If we were to give them names as an exercise, though, it would make more sense to continue the series of Greek ordinals: protium, deuterium, tritium, tetartium, pemptium, hektium (or hectium if you'd prefer to transmit kappa as c), hebdomium. Double sharp (talk) 08:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

As to elements with q, you would have liked "Becquerelium" but that suggestion lost out to Darmstadtium. --Wrongfilter (talk) 07:19, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Also “sequanium” for element 93, see Chemical symbol#Symbols and names not currently used. 118.170.47.29 (talk) 07:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

June 10

anti-epicene?

Is there an antonym for epicene, meaning "having strong secondary sex traits", i.e. either hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine? I'll accept either an adjective or a noun. —Tamfang (talk) 20:18, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

June 11

skill vs technique

What is the diffrence between "skill" and "technique"? Skitechni (talk) 02:56, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Some starting points: Skill and Technique]. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Skill is an attribute that a person may have. Technique is a process to do something. As an example, I could state that I can kick a football (a skill) and show you the method I use do to it (the technique). You would never ask someone "Are you techniqued in kicking a football?" or "Can you show me the skill for kicking a football?" 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The first question is an ungrammatical sentence because the word technique exists only as a noun.  --Lambiam 11:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Both words have countable and uncountable senses. In many contexts, the difference is not strong. The idiomatic expression is survival skills, but these skills are actually a bunch of practical techniques.

In the following sentence,

Brigitte Engerer's interpretation of Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2, played with masterly  ______ , earned her a standing ovation,

one can use either term without change of meaning.

A difference is that skill indicates a person's ability to achieve a result, while technique refers to how a result is achieved. For example, in

now that you've mastered the technique of cutting bone out of chicken, you can showcase your skill in preparing boneless chicken with the following recipes,

the word skill cannot be replaced by technique, because here it refers to the ability to achieve the result (you can prepare boneless chicken) and not about how this result is achieved. The word technique could be replaced by skill, but in the context technique is the better fit. (Moreover, using the word twice in this sentence is stylisticly awkward, but that is an unrelated issue.)  --Lambiam 11:06, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

"The idiomatic expression is survival skills, but these skills are actually a bunch of practical techniques." But you need to be skilled in them for them to work. You can know the technique for starting a fire without matches, but unless you have some skill at doing it, you won't get your fire going. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:37, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

On the name of antimony

The paper doi:10.1021/ba-1953-0008.ch005 from 1953 mentions Sb as a case similar to tungsten/wolfram, with different languages using names based on either "antimony" or "stibium". So – what language was prominent in chemical publishing in 1953 and used a derivative of stibium for antimony's name? (It surely can't be Latin, since Fe and Sn for example are not listed.) Double sharp (talk) 09:49, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I would initially have suspected German, but looking through DWDS, it seems as if the term Antimon was adopted early. I found a few examples of "stibium"-like translations on Wiktionary, but they were often synonyms and basically never from any language "prominent in chemical publishing", even in 1953. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:24, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I have no idea if this is of any help, but back in the 1960s I did my undergraduate Science degree at the University of Melbourne, which likes to give the impression it follows in the tradition of the great British universities, particularly Oxford. To get a degree, students had to demonstrate competency in a Science Language. There were three choices, French, German, and Russian. HiLo48 (talk) 00:12, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

For my Ph.D. I had to do both French and German, though I think Russian was also a possibility. But calling it "competency" is setting the bar pretty low. Basically you had to be able to follow a math paper and translate it. I think it's well known that that's a lot easier than actually knowing the language, at least if you can follow math in the first place. --Trovatore (talk) 05:32, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

It's more or less as I suspected, but it only deepens the mystery, since none of those three use a derivative of stibium. French has antimoine, German has Antimon, and Russian has сурьма (a Turkic loan). This is looking more and more like it's a mistake in the paper, then. Double sharp (talk) 05:00, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

In the 1950s, German-language works compiled in earlier decades were still major international chemical reference texts (since most of the material was still valid, having been built on rather than superceded). Isaac Asimov, well known for Science Fiction (and also an author of many mystery stories and numerous popular science and other nonfiction works) but academically a Doctor of Biochemistry, wrote a story which hinged on someone posing as a chemist not noticing that another character's surname was Beilstein, the same as that of a German author of a foundational German-language chemical reference, which if a genuine chemist he would certainly have found memorable. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 00:34, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Couldn't they have made it just a little more different from antinomy? --Trovatore (talk) 05:22, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I will freely translate a part of the DE article on Antimony here: "The word antimon is derived from latin antimonium and goes back to Arabic iṯmid, which like Greek στίμμι, is related to Latin stibium, going back back to Egyptian-Coptic stim (from ancient Egyptian sdm). It is possible that the name as Greek Anthémonion goes back to the late Greek anthemon ("blossom"). This describes the stem -like crystals from Stibnit (antimonsulfide, SB2S3) that appeared as tuft -shaped blossoms." Its use goes back a rather long time (11th century at least), and might help to explain why the term was used when it came to naming the chemical element: it had already existed for quite some time. Lectonar (talk) 10:08, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Questions

1. Why stressed form of article a is pronounced /eɪ̯/, not /æ/ like stressed an?
2. Are there any monosyllabic function words in English with unstressed full vowels?
3. Are there any oxytones in English with more than two syllables?
4. Are there any stressed suffixes in English?
5. Are there any expressions or proverbs mentioning kilometer in English?
6. Is there any Germanic language other than English where half-hour (:30 in digital clock) refers to next hour, rather than previous?
7. Is it correct to say It were you? In this sentence, it is a predicative and you is a subject. In Finnish, it is possible to say Se olit sinä.
8. When English speakers see 24-hour digital clock times, do they read hours from 13 to 23 as their usual words?
9. Are there any languages in Russia written in Latin alphabet, other than Karelian and Veps?
10. Are there any verbs or adjectives in English that use letter J for /j/ sound?
11. Are there any placenames in English-speaking countries that use letter J for /j/ sound?
12. Is it correct to say I eat pizza and you eat too?
13. Is it correct to say the following:
    A: We didn't drink coffee.
    B: We drank coffee.
14. Is it correct to say the following:
    A: Do you like him?
    B: Yes, I like.

--40bus (talk) 19:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

12: No. Correct is, I eat pizza and so do you (assuming the person addressed is a pizza eater).

13: A is only correct if the speaking party didn't drink coffee; otherwise it is a fib. B is only correct if the speaking party did drink coffee.  --Lambiam 19:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

14: A is grammatically correct. B is not. If the respondent likes the person referred to, they should answer, Yes, I do.  --Lambiam 19:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary has some remarks on "The meaningless use of do in interrogative, negative, and affirmative sentences [...] mandatory in most questions and negations." We like saying do and we say it a lot more than is strictly necessary, we do.  Card Zero  (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

8: Yes. Deor (talk) 20:10, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

As for 1, consult checked and free vowels yet again... AnonMoos (talk) 20:44, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

As for 4, "-ation" is stressed, and "-ary" and "-ory" are stressed in American English (usually not in British). AnonMoos (talk) 20:46, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

As for 10, only a few loanwords, not too assimilated (except maybe "fjord") use the letter J to write IPA [j]... AnonMoos (talk) 20:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

7. No, only it was you? or was it you? work as standalones. You could see it as part of a larger sentence though, such as [would you act the same way if] it were you? GalacticShoe (talk) 23:08, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

GalacticShoe -- In "Would you act the same way if it were you?", the verb "were" is subjunctive (in traditional terminology), not plural. See If I Were a Carpenter etc. AnonMoos (talk) 19:50, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Whoops yeah, my bad; I switched over to just considering the sentence fragment without regard to the original intended meaning by accident, that's on me. GalacticShoe (talk) 23:38, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

5. In everyday British life distances are still measured in miles (which appear on road signs, etc.) Engineers and scientists (etc.) may use kilometers, but only in their professional disciplines, and English-language proverbs (in Britain) generally date back to before the (perfidious French) invention of kilometers. I cannot speak for other varieties of English.

10. As far as I know, only in foreign loan words that use it, or foreign names (though in my experience most English speakers would read such names incorrectly – I am a fan of a couple of Dutch musicians with 'J-' names, and hear them mispronounced constantly). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 00:54, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Bert Jansch, on the other hand, has been a victim of hypercorrection. —Tamfang (talk) 21:12, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

6. Didn't you ask that one before?

8. If the clock has 24 hours, you can either read it that way or "translate" it to its 1-12 hour equivalent and add P.M.

14. Or you could say "Yes, I like him." Saying just "Yes, I like" is a dead giveaway that one is not a native English speaker.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

188.220.136.217 -- As for Dutch names, I noticed long ago that Arabic Wikipedia uses a transcription of Famke Janssen's name based on an English-language (mis)pronunciation, not the original Dutch pronunciation, and it's still true today: Arabic article. The Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia uses an Arabic-alphabet spelling which means that her surname will be pronounced in Egyptian Arabic beginning with a [g] sound, which doesn't even really exist in Dutch. The Hebrew, Russian, and Greek Wikipedias use transcriptions which correctly indicate that her surname begins with a "y" sound (IPA [j]) -- AnonMoos (talk) 09:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

[g] as in golf, not as in gin? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:02, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

The Arabic letter ج is often pronounced "dzh" (English spelling "j" or soft "g") in Modern Standard Arabic, "zh" in a number of Levantine colloquial Arabic dialects, but [g] (English spelling hard "g") in Egyptian Arabic. See Wiktionary and Egyptian Arabic phonology (though it's buried rather deeply there, despite being well-known among Arabic-speakers). AnonMoos (talk) 14:45, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I was horrified to find that a Bible translated to some Polynesian language spelled Hebrew names according to English pronunciation. —Tamfang (talk) 21:13, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

8. Some English speakers, when talking about full hours, multiply the numbers by 100, e.g., they read "13:00" as "thirteen hundred hours", even though it doesn't make any sense. — Kpalion^(talk) 23:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's the standard form for the British armed forces. Alansplodge (talk) 11:36, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

A military usage in the U.S. as well. AnonMoos (talk) 19:49, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't standard military notation omit the colon between hours and minutes? Thus, 1:00 pm becomes 1300. That would explain the thirteen hundred, though "thirteen hundred hours" is still a little odd. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:48, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

And on railway stations, as I am based in UK. For my made up example, this is what you would expect to hear while waiting at a UK railway station 'The next train to arrive at platform 7, will be the 15:00 [pronounced fifteen-hundred; 3pm] East Midlands Railway service to Luton Airport Parkway. But anyway, it seems like those in the UK use either the 12 or 24 hour format on display (I set all my phones, tablets, laptops, etc. to 24 hour clock) but almost always the 12 hour clock in speech. In the USA, its mostly 12 hours for display but very rarely 24 hours in speech with the most notable exception of the military, hence military time. See Date and time notation in the United Kingdom#Time. JuniperChill (talk) 20:25, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

9. Yes. For example, when people in Russia write in English, they use the Latin alphabet.

10. Hallelujah (verb), "to cry 'hallelujah' in praise". Jagiellonian (adj.), "of or relating to the royal dynasty founded by Jogaila" (pronounced ¦yägə¦lōnēən according to Merriam-Webster). — Kpalion^(talk) 23:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

11. I don't think so. Even foreign names that start with a /j/ sound often have an English exonym with a /dʒ/ sound, Jerusalem for example. Alansplodge (talk) 11:44, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Number 12 could be acceptable if it means "I eat pizza, and you also eat (something, which may or may not be pizza, but probably is not pizza because if it were I wouldn't have put it this way)." --Trovatore (talk) 02:03, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

1: Because /æ/ is never final. 5: No. 6: Note that Americans do not say "half seven" in either sense. 7: No; what do you mean by that? 8: Either. 12: It is correct, but does not mean what I imagine you intend. 13: Yes, why not? 14: Unidiomatic, but may be said jocularly. —Tamfang (talk) 21:15, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

7. I think such a sentence would need to be rephrased to something like "That was what you were." or similar. Even "It was what you were." sounds a bit off. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:58, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

June 13

This looks like gruesome English to me

In our Bill Gates article, we have the statement that "On May 3, 2021, the Gateses announced they had decided to divorce...." Is "Gateses" really acceptable? HiLo48 (talk) 00:36, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

That would be a normal plural for names ending in "es". For example, the old saying, "Keeping up with the Joneses." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I've certainly heard that usage. But I don't think I've seen it written down before. HiLo48 (talk) 00:50, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, you certainly can't say "the Gates". Arguably might have been better to say "Bill and Melinda Gates", but if you want to use the surname only, this is the only choice. --Trovatore (talk) 01:55, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Bugs is right. It is a perfectly normal plural. DuncanHill (talk) 22:51, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Here's more about Keeping up with the Joneses. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Although correct, if you're extraordinarily concerned about phrasal oddity, you could always just split it into "On May 3, 2021, Bill and Melinda announced..." GalacticShoe (talk) 02:57, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

A few more examples: "the Abramses" (Maida and George Abrams); "the Addamses" (The Addams Family); "the Adkinses" (Rick and Maureen Adkins).  --Lambiam 07:40, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Also The Jameses - the family of Henry James and William James. Alansplodge (talk) 09:31, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the issue here is Wikipedia:COLLOQUIAL. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think Gateses is any more colloquial than any other plural surname. It might be worth discussing whether plural surnames are better avoided in encyclopedic writing (maybe with exceptions for things like dynasty names, which seem to have a slightly different function). --Trovatore (talk) 22:35, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Why make an exception to avoid them? It's just normal English. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:02, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

This reminds me of an article I read decades ago— might have been in Harper's Magazine but I'm not able to locate it online right now. At one point it asked a question about the possessive form of Sotheby's. I see the Chicago Manual of Style have now refactored it into an advert. Folly Mox (talk) 12:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I would add it's nothing particular to names, it is used for other English words such as bus/busses, dress/dresses. There are other ways of referring to multiple people such as “the Jones family” instead of “the Joneses”, so it's used less for names, but when used it's the correct way to form a plural.--2A04:4A43:904F:F254:4C30:AEE2:83D4:B16C (talk) 11:34, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Further, the possessive of such a plural is formed perfectly regularly (the Joneses' house), but it seems to present an insuperable difficulty to many people. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:38, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

As here. Deor (talk) 21:53, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

June 14

Kirinomitake

Is the Japanese term for Chorioactis (キリノミタケ kirinomitake) a kana-only name or can be written also in kanji? 87.19.45.23 (talk) 05:07, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Although it's exceedingly rare, I did find mention online of a kanji reading of the name as 桐の実茸. This literally translates to "empress tree seed pod mushroom." The Native Plant Society of Texas has a blog post and video that corroborates this meaning, explaining that the mushroom might indeed bear a superficial resemblance to the seed pod of the empress tree, although it is unclear what the source for their claim is. GalacticShoe (talk) 05:17, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

It looks vaguely like the five-lipped calyx, but not like the two-winged seed pod.  --Lambiam 08:35, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

How many chemical elements start with the same letter in the romanization of all of these languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Indonesian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese

Use the most common romanization, e.g. Pinyin for Chinese, Hepburn romanization for Japanese, Revised Romanization of Korean for Korean.

For example, element 56:

• English: Barium
• French: Baryum
• German: Barium
• Italian: Bario
• Spanish: Bario
• Danish: Barium
• Indonesian: Barium
• Russian: Барий -> Barïy
• Chinese: 钡 -> Bèi
• Japanese: バリウム -> Bariumu
• Korean: 바륨 -> Balyum
• Vietnamese: Bari

All of them start with the letter B, thus element 56 is a such element.

However, for element 19, English is potassium, start with P, German is kalium, start with K, Chinese is 钾 (jǐa), start with J, Japanese is カリウム (kariumu), start with K, there are J, K, P among them, thus element 19 is not a such element. 220.132.216.52 (talk) 08:34, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

It seems extremely unlikely that someone has examined this already, but you can figure it out yourself by visiting the List of chemical elements articles for each of those languages, harvesting the relevant bits of data and doing a comparison in Excel or a similar program. Matt Deres (talk) 13:57, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I guess the answer would depend on whether C and K would be counted as the same letter, and similar details. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:02, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

C and K are not the same letter, neither are L and R, thus, for example, element 57 is not a such element, since its English name is lanthanum (start with L) but its Japanese name is ランタン -> rantan (start with R). 220.132.216.52 (talk) 19:48, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

If that's the criterion you have chosen. It does feel like a rather eurocentric approach, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:12, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

In some languages there are variant spellings. Are you picking Calcium or Kalzium for the German name of element 20? Are you picking hassio or assio for the Italian name of element 108? Double sharp (talk) 15:38, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Why there may be two spellings? Is the German name of element 53 (Iod or Jod) a similar example? 220.132.216.52 (talk) 00:44, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

News media and such often use different, not necessarily systematic, methods of romanization than the scientific literature. There is no clear criterion for assigning a measure to how "common" a romanization method is; the relative popularity may change over time.  --Lambiam 04:34, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Some people feel strongly the opposite way, but once again Hanyu Pinyin's orthography shines (while messing up the premise of your question) Remsense诉 09:14, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

It's not really Hànyǔ Pīnyīn's fault, but I do wish that more people would follow the OP and quote Pīnyīn transcriptions with tone marks. If Vietnamese can have its tones preserved when quoted, why shouldn't Mandarin? I like to be able to pronounce names I read. :) Double sharp (talk) 15:43, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I felt the same way very strongly when I started learning Chinese! Now I find them a teensy bit tiring on the eyes when used for long stretches—selfishly, it helps that I know which tones nondiacritical pinyin should be much of the time now, sometimes even without the characters if I'm lucky.

It would help a lot if tone 3 used a dot below or something other than the caron—which is too easily misread as the macron, and vice versa.Remsense诉 15:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I want to add more languages in my question, however, for some languages such as Arabic, I don’t know its romanization, also I found that, in Spanish language, element 28 contains the letter Q, and in Danish language, element 26 starts with the letter J, and in German language, elements seem to be able to start with any Latin letter: 80 (Quecksilber), 53 (Jod), 74 (Wolfram), 1 (Wasserstoff), 54 (Xenon), 23 (Vanadium), are there other languages like German (i.e. there are elements starting with each of A, B, C, …, Z) Also, which languages have elements starting with J, Q, or W? If I do not want the first letter, in which languages there are elements containing each of the letters A, B, C, …, Z? In Chinese (Hanyu Pinyin), there are elements starting with the letter J, and in the cases like element 31 (jīa), it is translated from gallium, starting with G. 220.132.216.52 (talk) 00:29, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Dutch has jood (53), waterstof (1) and wolfraam (74), clearly related to German. No Q though; element 80 is spelled with kw. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:29, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Another question: Which chemical element starts with the most different letters in these languages? (Also use the most common romanization, e.g. Pinyin for Chinese, Hepburn romanization for Japanese, Revised Romanization of Korean for Korean), I think that the answer should be the “ancient” elements, i.e. the elements 6, 16, 26, 29, 47, 50, 79, 80, 82? 220.132.216.52 (talk) 01:00, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Question: Which languages translate elements 11, 19, 51, 74 by {Natrium, Kalium, Stibium, Wolfram}, and which languages translate them by {Sodium, Potassium, Antimony, Tungsten}? 220.132.216.52 (talk) 01:04, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

June 16

Is Huangci a legitimate Han Chinese two-syllable surname or is it something else?

The pianist Claire Huangci has an intriguing surname. "Huangci" 黃慈 is not among the common Han Chinese two-syllable surnames as far as I could ascertain. Is it a rare but nevertheless legitimate (i.e. traditional) one? Or is it a non-Han minority surname? Or is it something she made up from say the surnames of both her parents or in some other way? 178.51.88.232 (talk) 09:18, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it's a variation on what many Chinese people do with their Western name—e.g. incorporating their full Chinese name into it. Most that I've seen adapt their Chinese given name (名) to be the "middle" name, or they initialize it as a middle name or something. Here, I think she's just adapted her full Chinese name to be her Western surname. I've never seen that before, but it makes sense. Remsense诉 11:38, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Huang 黃 'd be her Chinese surname, Ci 慈 her Chinese given name? We'd know for sure if we only knew her parents surname. 178.51.88.232 (talk) 12:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I mean, her article says her name is 黃慈. It would be weird if they were flipped for this specific usage. Remsense诉 12:53, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Pages in Chinese use the characters in the Huang–Ci order.^[6][7]  --Lambiam 13:55, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

In Singapore, it is (or was) normal for people of Chinese ethnicity to be given at birth a name incorporating a English forename, their Chinese family name, and a Chinese personal name, as for example Harry Lee Kuan Yew, and to use the first two elements amongst Westeners and the latter two amongst Easterners and in formal situations. (My father met the aforementioned statesman twice, in social circumstances where he was addressed as Harry Lee, sadly, I was too young to attend.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 18:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

June 17

Tirwedd Cenedlaethol (Welsh mutations)

The new branding for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the UK is National Landscape, and per Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Wales, the Welsh translation is Tirwedd Cenedlaethol. This is found, for example, on the Welsh-language website for Natural Resources Wales, Landscapes Wales, and the logo of the Wye Valley National Landscape.

Now, tirwedd is a singular feminine noun, and according to both Literary Welsh morphology and Colloquial Welsh morphology, adjectives qualifying singular feminine nouns take the soft mutation, which would surely imply Tirwedd Genedlaethol? So my question is, what have I misunderstood? Is this a grammatical error on the part of the various official bodies? Or is there some reason why in this instance the soft mutation is not appropriate? Or is it optional?

I note that the Welsh Wikipedia page on AONBs doesn't seem to use the term at all, and I wasn't able to find the term (in either form) on websites of AONBs in more Welsh-speaking areas (like Llyn AONB). Kahastok talk 19:06, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

My information on Welsh is limited, but I wonder if instead of Noun + Adjective, it isn't Noun + Noun (with implicit genitive), as in "pren gwybodaeth" for "tree of knowledge" etc. AnonMoos (talk) 02:57, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Latin alphabet

Why Russian and Arabic have not switched to Latin alphabet yet? If Russia joins EU in the future, then the switch would be good to make. Also, awkward un-Slavic romanisation for English is also avoided by switching. Wht Arabic did not switch to Latin alphabet when Turkish did? --40bus (talk) 21:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

You asked that question three months ago, and a year before that. Nardog (talk) 21:45, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The Bulgarian language is already one of the Languages of the European Union. Euro banknotes already have Cyrillic on them. The Bulgarians (who are EU members) don't seem to feel the need to switch. Why would the Russians (who are not pursuing EU membership) want to do so? --Amble (talk) 22:53, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

40bus -- As has been explained before, both Russians and Arabs would feel it would be a denial or negation of their cultural heritage to switch, while some Arab Muslims would feel that it's tantamount to renouncing Islam. I really don't know why you discount these cultural factors, when they're important to many of the speakers of the languages in questions. As for Turkish, the Arabic alphabet was a very poor fit for the vowel harmonies of the language, and the form of the language that was written using the Arabic alphabet was a kind of Turkish-Persian-Arabic hybrid which was a literary plaything of a narrow class of Ottoman elites. Adopting the Latin alphabet for Turkish was a kind of reset maneuver, which allowed for a phonetically adequate writing system useful for recording something much closer to the spoken language, and which would be easier to learn, and so suitable as a foundation for mass literacy. The Arabic alphabet was invented to write the Arabic language, so there's simply not a situation comparable to that of Turkish. AnonMoos (talk) 02:45, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

At least I think that English should always romanize Russian using scientific transliteration of Cyrillic because it makes words look similar to Slavic languages using Latin alphabet. Why don't every language in the world romanize Russian as such? Finnish romanization looks very similar to Slavic Latin alphabets. Why English cannot write Juščenko every time instead of ugly Yushchenko? Czech names contain carons in English texts, so why Russian names cannot? --40bus (talk) 06:44, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

This at least helps distinguish Russian from Czech names, doesn't it? --Theurgist (talk) 08:20, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Because English readers, most of whom don't know anything about Slavic languages, would pronounce it as /dʒuˈʃɛŋ.koʊ/. With the ugly spelling, they get closer: /juʃˈtʃɛŋ.koʊ/. Not perfect, but better.

Romanisation systems for non-scientific use are tuned for both the source and destination language. The same letter may be transcribed differently when coming from Russian, Ukrainian or Bulgarian and also when going to English, French or Dutch. The purpose is to make the audience intuitively use the best possible approximation of the original sounds. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:17, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Russia isn't preparing to join the EU. Quite the opposite: they're trying to destroy it. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:17, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

June 18

Île Verte (Grenoble)

The first line of article is L'Île Verte..., here the L is left un bolded. Is there a reason for it or it is a mistake. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 10:31, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

It's an article, not part of the actual name. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:35, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Although it's arguable why to use a French article in the first place, I guess... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:36, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Klingon

In the Klingon language, does "MaSuv QaQ" mean "Against corruption"? (Question inspired by a level in "Lily's Garden".) 2601:646:8082:BA0:FDFD:D0C8:7BA1:6883 (talk) 11:52, 18 June 2024 (UTC)