Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 February 2

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 2

What is Neutral Spanish?

While browsing NetFlix, I noticed many movies have subtitle options like this:

English, French, Spanish (Neutral), Chinese Simplified, Portuguese

What is Neutral Spanish? RudolfRed (talk) 03:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

See Standard Spanish. Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 04:02, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. That helps! RudolfRed (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Phonetic evolution, or lack thereof, of classical personal names

How did phonetic evolution affect classical names? My first impression is that "learnedness" prevented many changes from happening, so "David" and, to a lesser degree, "Alexander" are recognizably similar to their respective original versions (rather than French having ?*Dage and German ?*Tät for David (did I get the sound-changes right?)). "John", however, seems to have taken the full brunt of linguistic change in every language. Can someone please point me to a discussion of this?
Also, did "unchanged" names (like David) sometimes develop doublets with evolved versions of the same names?
I'm also interested in the process by which biblical names, specifically, were updated in modern European languages from Greek- and Latin-based versions to resemble Hebrew more closely (Josue > Joshua, etc.).
Many thanks! Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 04:00, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Biblical names were borrowed into the Germanic languages centuries after Grimm's law had applied, so that Grimm's law changes would not be expected to be found. (However, local dialect forms in far south German dialects may have been affected by a second much later round of changes somewhat similar in effect to Grimm's law; I don't know the details.) Protestant translators of the Bible into English in the late 16th and early 17th centuries made a conscious decision to go back to the original Hebrew for many (but not all) Old Testament names, while Catholics stuck with the old Latin Vulgate forms of the names (mostly straightforward Latin adaptations of forms found in the Septuagint / Greek New Testament, where all Hebrew sounds not found in Hellenistic Koine Greek were omitted or clumsily indirectly indicated, case endings were sometimes added, etc.) until at least 1750. Some well-known or commonly-occurring names were left unaffected (Solomon, Moses, etc.), while other Old Testament names had their English forms fairly systematically revised in the light of Hebrew. This led to such anomalies as the Hebrew name ישוע Yeshua, Greek Ιησους being transcribed into English as "Jesus" in Biblical passages when it refers to Christ, but "Jeshua" in other contexts... AnonMoos (talk) 04:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

In the case of German, I'm thinking of the High German consonant shift, in which d > t in 8th or 9th century, certainly after all Germans were converted to Christianity. In the case of French, surely the disappearance of voiced intervocalic fricatives happened long after France was completely Christian? Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 04:24, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I think some of the difference must be due to the fact that before the Reformation, New Testament names were much more common than Old Testament names in daily life. In French, for instance, Matthieu, Jean, Paul, Pierre, etc. were all common names and thus had gallicized forms, whereas David, Abraham, Isaac, etc. would usually only be encountered in the church liturgy (or among Jews, of course), so they stayed closer to their Latin forms. I think we can say the same for German and English. Lesgles (talk) 05:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

That's what I thought. Though Matthieu seems not to have evolved fully (> ?*Macheu). On the other hand Jacob seems to have been fairly common in France, but it is only slightly modified as Jacques. Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 13:54, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Still, all these names did under the Great Vowel Shift in English, so we have [eɪ] rather than [ɑː] in David and Abraham and [aɪ] rather than [iː] in Isaac. Angr (talk) 15:30, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

English/French

je voudrais militer dans ce pataquès car les traductions automatiques en ligne, sont à la limite du Français "petit Nègre" ... Et Wikipedia mérite mieux, il m'est arrivé il y a qq instants de vouloir juste rectifier le français correct,la machine, m'a botté en touche! ! ! amitiés JCQ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johannkevinzero (talk • contribs) 15:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

C'est Wikipédia anglaise. La Wikipédia françaises est à http://fr.wikipedia.org. Bonne chance! --Jayron32 18:38, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Et on y peut poser des questions ici. Marco polo (talk) 14:24, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Ryuichi Sakamoto translate lyrics

I copied this from WP:RD/H. Nyttend (talk) 23:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Ryuichi Sakamoto's song "Diabaram", heard here, lyrics found here, what do those lyrics mean in English, and what language are they originally in? Bus stop (talk) 23:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Sounds African to me, and Google says that he wrote that song with Youssou N'Dour, so I'll guess that the language is Serer. Can't help with translation. It says elsewhere in the Internet that "diabaram" is "my wife" in Senegalese (which is, strictly speaking, a misnomer, because there's no single Senegalese language, there are at least three different languages spoken in Senegal, not including French.)--Itinerant1 (talk) 04:40, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Itinerant1. The language might be Serer as the lyricist of the song is Youssou N'Dour. According to the ja article of the album "BEAUTY", it's a song about a man who falls in love with his friend's lover. Oda Mari (talk) 05:14, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, everybody. It's a nice song. I hadn't a clue what it could mean, as the language is utterly unfamiliar to me, as are most languages. Bus stop (talk) 13:48, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

This: https://www.metafilter.com/123196/Diabaram-diabaram-diabaram-nena-dou-ko-baye says that it is in Wolof (corroborated by another military-seeming forum where someone asks for a translation as his Wolof is a bit rusty. The page I reference also says that there is a translation to French on some album cover 'which is almost enough to get the gist'