Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 November 2

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November 2

"7" as a letter

Reading at random, I came across an article about the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, a First Nations people in the southern part of far western Canada. Not having seen a 7 used as a letter before, I was curious and looked up Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language, and I'm still not certain: what does it sound like? Is it perhaps like an ʿayin in Hebrew and related languages? The IPA version of the name of this group of people is sqʷχʷúʔməʃ I don't understand IPA, so I'm only guessing on the ʿayin. Nyttend (talk) 22:42, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the IPA, the 7 seems to represent /ʔ/, a glottal stop. Algebraist 22:50, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Wonder where that came from; "7" isn't really part of any transcription scheme I've come across before (except that in old Internet ASCII Arabic, "7" means the pharyngeal ح). AnonMoos (talk) 23:04, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Just venturing a guess here, but I assume that when an orthography for Sḵwx̱wú7mesh was being devised, they wanted letters that could be typed on an ordinary typewriter (ḵ and x̱ can be achieved on a typewriter by typing k or x, then backspace, then _). ʔ isn't on a typewriter, and they probably wanted to keep ? free for use as a punctuation mark, so they picked 7 as being roughly the same shape as ʔ. —Angr 06:19, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The somewhat traditional general-purpose way of transcribing a glottal stop on typewriters was as an apostrophe (as in Hawaiian, Saltillo (linguistics), etc.). By the way, we have an article section Glottal_stop_(letter)#Vernacular_orthographies (devoted to languages in Canada) which doesn't mention "7"... AnonMoos (talk) 13:19, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Again, this is pure speculation, but it's possible they avoided the apostrophe so that (for example) the consonant cluster [pʔ] could be spelled in a way distinct from the ejective stop [pʼ]. As for the section of Glottal stop (letter), 7 isn't mentioned because that article is about using ʔ as a letter in an orthography, not about the various ways the sound [ʔ] can be represented orthographically. —Angr 13:56, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

It's interesting how many native Canadian names are "officially" in an unusual spelling like that, when I (and I assume others) know them as simply "Squamish". This is also the case with Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) and Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl). Has this happened in the US too? Adam Bishop (talk) 06:58, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

It is quite often the case. Autonyms of tribes are often quite different from their common name - and sometimes even derogatory terms from tribal enemies. While the source of the word Eskimo (still in use among Alaska tribes) may be debated, other examples include Sioux which traces to an Odawa term menaing "speaks foreign language" while the Sioux call themselves various names including Lakota, Sicangu Oyate, etc., or Apache, possibly meaning "enemy" in Zuni but who call themselves Nde. Rmhermen (talk) 20:08, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

"Indigenously correct" names are standard-usage in Canadian, especially in B, media and acdemic circles. Nootka and Kwakiutl of names for particular gropus transposed to the whole ethno-linguistic group in each case; Kwakiutl is an anglicization (so-called) of Kwagyul, t he people at Fort Rupert that was extended by Franz Boas to mean all peoples speaking a lreated language; and yes some enmities were involved in that case and in others; Nootka means "go around" in the now-named Nuu-chah-nulth language, which were teh driections given Capt Cook when he popped by; the people at that location are the Muchalaht; "Nuu-cha-nulth" in that language mans "along the outside" ("of the mountains" or "of the coast" is implied apparently); not all members of th ethnic group accept it (Ditidaht, Pacheedaht, Makah - Makah is an English usage, though, adapted from another language, their name for htemslves is way more complex looking than that. The other two have been historically spelled and are on geographic names as Nitinat and Pacheena.) Anyway I meant to butt in by explaining that the "7" glottal stop characger is a print adaptation of a 7-like character wher e he tail drops below the baselin like a g or y; it's used in some native language orthographies and the ordinary 7-form hs becomde regularly used in major media like the Vancouver Sun and though I'd haev to give it some thought as to examples, it is familir to readers of English articles concerning BC (i.e. I mean in regular media in that context, local papers and such...; one place that comes to mind is Axa7, on the west side of Lillooet Lake from Mount Currie, on the fan or Ure Creek, where there was a notable logging protest back in the '80s; that's an older spelling system of hte language in question; today it might be "Axac" or "Aca7" I'm not sure which. Sta7mes is a Skwxwu7mesh village whose anglicization is better known as Stawamus Chief. /7/ is kind of a special case; other special characters that look more like regular English are harder to decipher; the colon in Sto:lo makes the pronunciation "Stahlo" and the apostrophes in St'at'imc make in combination with the t a /tl/ sound (in other languages this is often a plosive or ejective t). Although I'm opposed to complex roman diacriticals like underscore x's and overscript lines and superscripts and such, the 7 has no simplification other than maybe an apostrophe; but it's not the convention for hnames that use it, i.e. in the English as used in th regions where those names are found. True we're seeing a lot more underscore-g but to me it's all about typability and ease of use. "7" is jarring to see and causes a head-scratch; but at least it's easy to make compared to other special characgters....Skookum1 (talk) 23:41, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the articles for Aleph and Ayin, it seems the former is more often a glottal stop in Hebrew. jnestorius^(talk) 00:51, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Aleph is always a glottal stop in old Hebrew (except where it became silent in syllable-final position rather early, as in the word for "prophet" נביא). AnonMoos (talk) 13:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

When I saw the question header, I immediately thought of Se7en. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 15:24, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Somewhat related

Now that this I've understood a bit better (thanks!), I was curious about another use of 7: as you may know, J. R. R. Tolkien was professionally a professor of Old English, and therefore highly familiar with its use. Two volumes of the The History of Middle-earth series include some bits that he wrote in Old English; these texts often use 7 as "and". I've read some Old English, although a somewhat simplified version, but I've never seen such a usage outside of Tolkien. Is this a common feature of Old English, or rather more rare? I don't see it used at all when I browse random articles on the Old English Wikipedia. Nyttend (talk) 01:09, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep, it's very common in OE and other medieval manuscripts. See Tironian notes, including the image at top left right (although the version used in the insular pointed minuscule script in which most OE manuscripts are written looks even more like a 7). I'm off to look for an image. Deor (talk) 01:50, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Here, there are lots of them scattered throughout this page, as at the very beginning and the middle of the second line. Besides using the symbol for the conjunction and (or ond), scribes also found it useful for representing the negative or oppositional prefix and- (or ond-), corresponding to modern German ent-. To save parchment and labor, medieval scribes were wont to make liberal use of abbreviations and notae—less so in elaborate manuscripts such as fancy Bibles, but to a frequently bewildering extent in manuscripts intended for merely educational or private use. In modern editions, except for diplomatic editions, these are almost invariably expanded. Deor (talk) 02:13, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

The Tironian et has its own Unicode entity at U+204A ⁊; it's still used in Irish as an abbreviation for agus "and". (See the image at the bottom left of the page Tironian notes.) —Angr 06:17, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Tolkien represents the Old English writings of which I speak as the reminisces (sp.?) of an individual, not likely to be published to the individual's contemporaries, so I see how this would make sense. Thanks much for explanation! Nyttend (talk) 12:15, 4 November 2008 (UTC)