Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 May 25

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May 25

When were spaces introduced in Hangul?

When Hangul was introduced, it was written like Chinese, without spaces between words. Now (and I've seen examples in the Japanese colonial period) it is written with spaces between words. When did this change? Who introduced the change, and how did it spread? --2A02:810C:8700:1778:56D:2C25:F2CA:D775 (talk) 10:52, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

It usually is not written with spaces. Are you talking about books for children? That is the case in Japan, where books for children have spaces in them, but only books for children. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 11:47, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

A quick look at our article on the Korean language, Korean Wikipedia, a random article from Chosun Ilbo or [1] shows that it is indeed normally written with spaces. --Taejo|대조 16:52, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

A stupid question this made me think of (I know no Korean, just a tiny little bit about the Hangul writing system): Suppose in a sentence a word ending in 악 is followed by a word beginning in 아, is the final ᆨ of the first word joined to the initial ᅡ of the second word to give 아가 (in which case the 가 would belong to both words at the same time, since it is composed of the last consonant of the first word and the first vowel of the second word, and a separation with a space would seem impossible) or are the two syllables kept separate like so 악아? Sorry if this is a really stupid question. Contact Basemetal here 17:21, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

This is in no way a stupid question. Korean does have considerable sandhi, and therefore words are often joined. This is why I said there are generally no spaces. At least, not in the books I have read. 82.35.216.24 (talk) 18:27, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

When and where were these books published? Can you take a picture? --2A02:810C:8700:1778:C86F:4CDA:96B:5C9D (talk) 19:38, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Korean is usually written morphophonemically today, meaning that the spelling reflects the underlying forms (morphemes) of the words, rather than how they are pronounced (though the pronunciation can be inferred). So one writes 읽다 and 읽어요 rather than 익따 and 일거요; thus, consonants do not move across the written syllable boundaries even within single words (at least in the case of conjugated verbs). I'm not an expert, though (I only know a very little Korean). --2A02:810C:8700:1778:C86F:4CDA:96B:5C9D (talk) 19:38, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Basemetal -- this doesn't happen in standard Korean spelling, but it's common in playful spellings used online: [2]. --Amble (talk) 15:33, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Although hangul was created in 1443, it wasn't widely adopted for a very long time. There were letters [3] and novels [4] written in hangul during the mid-Joseon dynasty (16th-17th century), which don't seem to have used spaces. In the late 19th century, hangul was promoted by Protestant missionaries, who published Korean Bible translations. The ones I find here, from the 1890's, don't use spaces between words: [5]. The style remains very close to Bible translations in Chinese. Around the same time, Korean newspapers began to be published. This edition of Tongnip Sinmun ("The Independent") from 1896 clearly does use spaces. It was published both in Korean and in English, and founded by Soh Jaipil / Philip Jaisohn, who had lived in the United States. The text is still vertical (or right-to-left, for the title and date line that are written horizontally), but besides that the layout is similar to the English-language edition. The newspaper came out around the time that hangul was adopted by progressives and modernizers and came into much wider use. Therefore, although I don't know for sure that Tongnip Sinmun was the first to use spaces between words, it may well have been (and I haven't come across an earlier example). If not, it was likely to be another newspaper around the same time and cultural context. --Amble (talk) 15:22, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Finnish accent in the German language?

Right yesterday, I was at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, and when I went to enter an installation room, the following conversation took place between the museum attendant and me:

• Die Karte, bitte.
• Natürlich.
• Natürlich. Sind Sie aus Finnland?
• Ja.
• Das hört man.

I spoke German to the attendant the entire time and she spoke German back to me. I never mentioned my home country or my name. Still she correctly identified me as Finnish. Is there something about how Finns pronounce German that gives their nationality away? As Finnish has an almost perfectly one-to-one correspondence between written glyphs and spoken sounds, I find it easier to speak German the same way too, as in German the one-to-one correspondence is only slightly weaker. Not like English or French, where the pronunciation rules are really complicated and there are one-to-many correspondences in both directions. But this is the first time a native German speaker identified me as Finnish before I mentioned it. JIP | Talk 20:12, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it was more due to your physical appearance? I've regularly encountered Finns during my travels, and you guys are generally rather easy to discern (round faces, cute noses, slightly Asian eyes). When combined with a foreign accent, she might just have made an educated guess. No such user (talk) 20:57, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

But she said Das hört man, not Das sieht man, leading me to think it was because of my accent. JIP | Talk 20:59, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it. When I go to Germany, they think I am from Holland. When I go to Holland, they think I am from Germany. When I go to France, they think I am from Belgium. When I go to Belgium, they think I am from Holland. Nobody has ever correctly identified my accent in any language I speak. I'm British. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 22:03, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not worrying. I'm genuinely interested. Whenever I have travelled abroad, no one has ever been able to identify me as Finnish without me saying so. The closest I've come to before this was in the Isle of Wight, England, UK, when I was at a pub, and some guy came to ask me about something I had no idea about, and then he said "Sorry, I thought you were someone else. Are you Nordic?" to which I replied yes. But this was the first time someone had been able to identify me as specifically Finnish without any prior hint. Usually, whenever I visit Germany or Austria, the locals compliment me on my German upon learning I am Finnish. JIP | Talk 22:09, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

In my personal, unreferenced perception and experience I think your attendant was either someone familiar with a Finnish accent (by personal acquaintance or otherwise) or someone with a particular ear for accents, in both cases above average. I am familiar enough with the sound of Finnish accents when speaking my particular dialect, because I know at least four Finnish expats who speak it, but I'm not sure I'd be able to recognize it just by hearing "natürlich" (though visual clues might help my guessing/showing-off, as implied by KageTora. Aside: I go out of my way to compliment people on their command of German, as it really sucks to learn it as a second language. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:28, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I did not mention anything about physical appearance. That was 'No Such User', not me. As for my appearance, I am brown haired, green eyed, white skinned. I doubt that has anything to do with guessing where I am from. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 11:49, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Apologies, KageTora and No Such User, for careless reading and the mix-up. ---Sluzzelin talk 15:50, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

It is easy to discern an accent if you are regularly in contact with them. I went to a Nordic church here in Liverpool a few months ago, just because my Chinese (now ex-) girlfriend was interested in Christian churches, so I took her there, and the curator showed us around the place. There were Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish paintings all over the place, but I managed immediately to pinpoint his English accent as Danish. Your pronunciation of "natürlich" may have given it away, with the stress on the first syllable (like in English 'Naturally'), rather than the second syllable. Finnish stresses the first syllable. Plus your intonation might have been a clue. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 02:19, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

As I understand Finnish has rather dental stops than alveolar like in German. If we look at the word "natürlich" Finnish also lacks short [ɪ] and [ç]. There may be difficulty with -r- after vowels. Finns might stress right but tend to give a secondary stress on the first syllable. As I result a Finn might say [ˌn̪aˈt̪yː(e)lik] instead of native [naˈtʰyːɐ̯lɪç]. Your accent might be not so rough but still something revealed you. Also Finnish intonation somewhat particular, I may say.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:58, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps if you uploaded a recording of yourself speaking this dialog, somebody could identify any Finnish-sounding aspects of your pronunciation? --139.19.252.80 (talk) 10:09, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I currently lack the means to make a recording of anything. I think I can use Audacity or something on Fedora 20 Linux to record sounds, but I don't have any microphone to capture them in the first place. Are there microphones available I could just plug into a USB interface or something? If I successfully manage to make a recording, can I upload it here on the English Wikipedia or on Commons? JIP | Talk 11:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

There is no need for you to go to the trouble of doing any of that. Sluzzelin has the correct answer. /thread --Viennese Waltz 11:41, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Wienerisch

Could anybody identify a Viennese expression transliterated as so-wos? or so-wos! (that is probably intended to be an English-orthography representation of the pronunciation)? Further clues: it's a mild exclamation, is or was over-used and probably risible to speakers of standard German. Thanks. --catslash (talk) 22:21, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not a native German speaker, least of all from Vienna, but it sounds like so war es, meaning "so was it". But this is just a guess, I might be completely wrong. JIP | Talk 22:24, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps 'so was?' or 'so was!' as in English 'so what?' or 'so what!'? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 07:39, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Spiegel online says: "Entgegen einer weit verbreiteten Vermutung wird "so was" in zwei Wörtern geschrieben, daran hat auch die Rechtschreibreform nichts geändert. Es handelt sich um die umgangssprachliche Verkürzung von "so etwas". Der oft zitierte Ausruf des Erstaunens wird weder in einem Wort ("Nasowas") noch in zwei Wörtern ("Na sowas") geschrieben, sondern in drei Wörtern: "Na so was!" ".

In English regional usage (Irish?) "so was" is used to mean "it was so much" which by extension can mean "indeed" or "well, well". I wonder how the expression reached Vienna? Dbfirs 08:02, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Aren't you confusing the English word "was" (imperfect of "to be") with the German word "was" ("what")? JIP | Talk 08:26, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I live in Vienna and my Hochdeutsch is passable, although my Wienerisch is abysmal. Anyway Dbfirs's quote from Spiegel is almost certainly correct. "Was" here is not the German for "what" but is a contraction of "etwas" meaning "something". The other possibility is that the OP is hearing "Servus", which means "Hi" and sounds like "so-wos". Pinging User:Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM who might have more to add. --Viennese Waltz 09:12, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

There are two (well, three) possibilities:

1 "So was!?" means "so what!?". It implies in Viennese (as it does in English) that the first speaker has made a statement which the second speaker considers to be irrelevant. It is the equivalent of shrugging off a statement as unimportant.

2 "So was?" means "Something like that?". It may be asked in a shop when you want to purchase some gadget you don´t know the name of. The sales assistant will get some likely item and enquire "So (et)was?" --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:06, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

3 A third interpretation is: "So was!" as an exclamation of wonderment and mild incredulity, a bit like "I can´t believe it!". --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:10, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, it's certainly 3 I can´t believe it! that I'm looking for. Is this the same as Dbfirs's Na so was!? Can you give me any etymological explanation? Is was here what?? --catslash (talk) 20:56, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

The was, as stated above, is an abbreviation of “etwas” (= something). It is a colloquial pronoun referring to some object or event. The Duden says it comes from the Old High German etewaʒ, thence further back to an Indoeuropean root. The original “was” / “waʒ” having been the neuter gender of “wer” (who), the masculine and feminine forms.

The original “wer” / “was” (who / what / possibly which) are used in German as relative and interrogative pronouns. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 05:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I should have mentioned that it is 1940s usage that I am interested in, and so it's possible that the expression is less prevalent today. Nevertheless, I have an answer, so thanks everybody. --catslash (talk) 23:19, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

What does 'tschicko? tschicko!' mean in German?

It seems to mean: 'understood? understood!', 'ok? ok!' (as here) but why I can't find it anywhere? Contact Basemetal here 22:39, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's the best translation. You could replace it with "in Ordnung" in German, and hence "alles tschicko" for "alles in Ordnung". I used that phrase for searching various spellings, and "tschicko" appears to be far rarer than "tschiko" ("Alles tschiko, Digga?") or "chico" ("In Hamburg ist eben alles Chico!"). I don't know anything about the origin (the second link is from 2004, the first one from 2014), nor is it really part of my passive, let alone active vocabulary. ---Sluzzelin talk 15:47, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Poking in the internet I found some German references. It is often spelled as CHICO. One source states that the term comes from the Spanish and means something like "young man". I checked the online Duden, and they have the same meaning. Unfortunately, this makes little sense in the dialogue shown. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:52, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Ignore, Sluzzelin has it anyway. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:54, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

The dialogue makes Basemetal's interpretation sound like the only possible one. "Boy boy boy boy ... I'll be back here in one month, and it's going to be impeccable. Chico?" - "Chico." (note that the first speaker uses "picobello" too, right before "chico" ... "... picobello. Chico?")

Another article from last year quotes the former interior minister of Schleswig-Holstein: "Alles chico hier". ---Sluzzelin talk 16:02, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Sluzzelin and Zoom. Regarding the spelling, isn't the 'i' short and wouldn't therefore a strict application of German spelling rules require two consonants between the 'i' and the 'o'? Contact Basemetal here 17:25, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

By "short i" you mean you hear [tʃɪko] instead of [tʃiko]? I don't. It sounds maybe somewhere in the middle, but probably closer to the latter. --Trovatore (talk) 18:11, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

By 'short i' I meant the vowel of the word 'nicht' as opposed to the 'long i' which would be the vowel of 'Liebe'. To me the 'i' of 'Chico' sounds more like the former. But I'm no native speaker. Contact Basemetal here 18:25, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually you're probably right. I listened to it again and I'm starting to agree with you. What do native speakers say? Contact Basemetal here 18:33, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm having trouble "hearing" exactly where the spoken (not to mentioned the whispered) vowel lies in the clip. For some reason it does sound somewhere outside standard German sound clusters, and for the same reason, perhaps, "tschiko" (not to mention "chico") look less "Germanic" than "tschicko" and might "feel" like a more natural way to represent this loanword. Even more so when you consider the ending and words like Schoko.

I still have no clue where it comes from. Like Cockatoo, I fail to see an obvious connection to "chico" (or cicco in Italian, or even chicco which is pronounced differently anyway (yet I did find "alles chicco" as well). Then again, the mentioned picobello is word-creation, a hybrid of Germanic and Italian, meant to sound Italian, but not part of the Italian vocabulary. It could even be some TV-reference, it could have lost a couple of final syllables, like Schoko, who knows? I couldn't find anything. ---Sluzzelin talk 13:28, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I saw this had been asked at German Wikipedia's reference desks, 2½ years ago: Herkunft: "Alles chico!"?. Still inconclusive, but there too, the oldest example was a (different) reference from 2004. ---Sluzzelin talk 13:48, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Do you get the feeling the older phrase is "alles chico" and the use of "chico" by itself is derived from it? Contact Basemetal here 13:54, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd thought about that too. It was of course easier to search the meaning we're talking about, by adding a German word. ("chico" alone won't do, and even when spelled differently, you'll find indigenous boys, cats, gangsters, etc. carrying a variety of that name.

It does not seem to replace "in Ordnung" in phrases such as "es geht in Ordnung", "das geht so in Ordnung", or ok in "ist schon ok" or "das ist für mich ok", for example (I googled a number of varieties). ---Sluzzelin talk 14:05, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

(obviously obsessed with its etymology now) I hadn't thought of Hungarian until I thought of another German word ending in -ko (but not in -cko): Tschako: csikó means foal, and csikós means horseherd, while csíkos means striped. So ... O.o? ---Sluzzelin talk 15:59, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

To add more inconclusiveness: my first thought when reading the question's title (with the double "tschicko") had been Carmen Miranda singing "O tico tico tá" (/t/ before /i/ becomes something like [tʃ] in a number of Brazilian Portuguese dialects). The Wiktionaries I checked (tico + pt:tico) include the meanings tic, nickname for Costa Ricans (like it's used in Spanish), male sex organ, and small fragment. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:23, 28 May 2015 (UTC)