Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 December 25

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December 25

Chroma Zone

I keep hearing people who you would think should know better pronouncing "chromosome" "chroma zone". Is there a story behind that, like the Great Nuclear/nookyaler Schism? --Milkbreath (talk) 02:37, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

It's just that "-some" is not a very common suffix while "-zone" is. And "Chroma Zone" is certainly a more colorful phrase, isn't it ? StuRat (talk) 04:42, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's a kind of folk etymology, in one sense of that term (the second in our article Folk etymology). Like sand-blind from original sam-blind (=semi-blind).

Once the intervocal sibilant /s/ gets voiced (to make a /z/ instead; a very common sandhi phenomenon in English), the resulting -zome is especially vulnerable to reinterpretation as -zone. Compare to home in being reinterpreted as to hone in, even in some literati whose work one... might sometimes have edited.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 06:28, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Do tell, Noetica! BrainyBabe (talk) 09:48, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, wow, Noetica. I think we have a 2008 nominee for "Best Answer". (I think it's hilarious that "the pronunciation of the word 'sandhi' is rather diverse among English speakers", since practically all of them are linguists.) --Milkbreath (talk) 16:36, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Mistranslated donation remark

This appears in one of the banners for the donation drive:

Un projet beau et tellement utile que l´on se doit d´accomplir. — Julien from France, donated 30 EUR (A project so beautiful and useful it must be completed.)

I think that if Julien had meant what the English text says, he would have written Un projet tellement beau et utile que l'on (more likely qu'on) se doit de l'accomplir. 67.150.254.163 (talk) 17:18, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I thought people avoided saying "qu'on" because it sounds like "con". —Angr 17:33, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I think qu'on is more common than que l'on. In this case, que l'on seems even less likely because of the second l'. The idea that the reason for que l'on might be related to con had never occurred to me. I don't think that's the reason, though. You can say "L'on se souvient", with the same meaning as "On se souvient". My Petit Robert says it's a medieval expression meaning "les hommes". 67.150.253.137 (talk) 20:18, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Isn't the subclause more literally "we owe it to ourselves to complete" ? —Tamfang (talk) 04:23, 28 December 2008 (UTC)