Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 November 18

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November 18

Is there any language, other than Old Egyptian, which has a joint word - both for "fishing rod " - and for "waiting "?

In Old Egyptian, the joint word is probably intended to point at the fact that, the person using the "fishing rod" - "waits" for a fish to be caught.

Is there any other (modern ? ) language having this lexical property? i.e any other language, whose words - for "Fishing rod " - and for "waiting ", originate from the same word in that language? HOOTmag (talk) 08:51, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

They are etymologically unrelated ([1], [2]), they don't originate from Old Egyptian. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:10, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not talking about English, but rather about Old Egyptian, as clearly indicated in the title of this thread. Anyways, to make things even clearer, I've just changed the order of words in that title. HOOTmag (talk) 09:17, 18 November 2015 (UTC)\

BINGO !!!!!! Yes , there is such a (modern) language. This translator gives both meanings of the same word, which - btw - exist in both the biblical language and the modern one. 84.228.126.160 (talk) 09:32, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I would guess that it's not so much a "joint word" as a pun. —Tamfang (talk) 05:42, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I can't agree. The Old Egyptian hieroglyph for the verb "wait", is a picture showing something like this. HOOTmag (talk) 10:11, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

You might even find a language where the word "fishing" meant both fishing for fish and fishing for socks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:26, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

"fishing" should not be confused with "phishing". Two different words. HOOTmag (talk) 12:04, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that's a different word, because it uses different letters. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Saying "two different words" suggests it's possible (a) that one could be the same while the other is different, or (b) that there could be 2 identical words (e.g. "fishing" and "fishing"). Metaphysicians might have a field day with these possibilities, but mere humans rarely find it necessary to consider such abstruse things. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

If a word is printed, does its meaning change if it has a hyperlink? (see above). Martinevans123 (talk) 18:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Jack: Do you really think that "four" is not a sum of "two even numbers"? HOOTmag (talk) 08:48, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

"-ec" peoples in Spanish

In Spanish, it seems like epicene -eca is preferred for "old" peoples (olmeca, tolteca, azteca), but gendered forms -eco and -eca are preferred for "current" peoples (mixteco/a, zapoteco/a, yucateco/a, guatemalteco/a). Does anybody know why this is? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 12:56, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I can't say for sure, but the pattern seems to be that those older terms ended in "l" in the local language. Olmec, for example.[3] And according to the Real Academia website, azteca in its noun form is considered masculine. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:35, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Here's what the Real Academia website says about azteca:

(Del náhuatl aztécatl, habitante de Aztlan).

1. adj. Se dice del individuo de un antiguo pueblo invasor y dominador del territorio conocido después con el nombre de México.

2. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a este pueblo.

3. m. Idioma nahua.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:39, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Ae and Oe

Why do some English words have oe or ae? And how do you pronounce this weird spelling? Do you pronounce the first vowel or second vowel, or does it have its own pronunciation?

Examples:

• Aesop
• Oedipus
• bunyaviridae
• foetus
• manoeuvre 71.79.234.132 (talk) 15:29, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

You find these helpful:[4][5] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:45, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

The words have those letter combinations come from a number of sources. Some technically originated as Typographic ligatures or former letters no longer in use anymore, such as Æ (known as the "ash"). In almost all cases, they are Loanwords from other languages. Aesop and Oedipus for example comes from Greek, manoeuvre is French, and the -ae ending is from Latin. (See here). Foetus is a special case, it represents a misspelling of the original latin word "fetus" based on a hypercorrection because it was incorrectly assumed to be Greek. In English, there isn't necessarily any set of consistent rules for dealing with this; often the pronunciation mimics the source language. For example, in Oedipus, a Greek word, the "Oed" is pronounced like the first syllable of "Edward", while in German names that include the spelling, like Schroedinger, the "oe" is an alternate spelling of "ö", the pronunciation of which is covered at German_language#Vowels. --Jayron32 15:52, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

• That'd be the German pronunciation. In English we usually pronounce German "oe" or "ö" like an ordinary English "o". --70.49.170.168 (talk) 18:34, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

No we don't. Bazza (talk) 18:48, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

We do sometimes. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd say the pronciation shown in the Goebbels article is a hybrid between German and English, the sort of thing a non-German-speaker might produce if attempting the German pronunciation—as transcribed by a non-rhotic English-speaker. Anyway, it's unsourced. On the other hand, I give you Hitler Has Only Got One Ball, in which the Goebbels line is greatly weakened if "Goe" does not rhyme with "no". --70.49.170.168 (talk) 02:59, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

One might legitimately think "Goebbels had nöbbels" funnier. —Tamfang (talk) 06:00, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Before we saw the TV shows, Dad told me that Schroeder is pronounced with /ɛː/. Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes. —Tamfang (talk) 06:00, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

The actual German vowel is the Open-mid front rounded vowel, which is hard for English speakers to pronounce correctly, so most English speakers approximate it as an R-colored vowel instead, usually ɝ. --Jayron32 19:29, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

From German, there is also ae/"ä". StevenJ81 (talk) 19:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I assume your procreation of Oedipus is based on American usage. Over here the first vowel would more commonly be pronounced as the vowel sound in 'heat'. 82.8.32.177 (talk) 16:00, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

British English pronunciation of each of your words is:

• Aesop: /ˈiːsɒp/ EE-sop
• Oedipus /ˈiːdpəs/ EE-dip-us
• bunyaviridae /bʌnjəˈvɪrɪdaɪ/ bun-yə-VIR-id-eye
• foetus /ˈfiːtəs/ FEET-əs
• manoeuvre /mənˈoʊvə/ /mənˈuːvə/ mən-OO-vuh

Bazza (talk) 18:26, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

In American English, the letter combinations are frequently dropped in current usage. Proper names like Aesop and Oedipus keep them, and so do Latin plurals like -ae. But other words like fetus and maneuver are spelled without the "o", and encylopedia without the "a". StevenJ81 (talk) 19:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Just of note, the "o" wasn't dropped from fetus, it was added. See Fetus#Etymology, which also notes an "ae" variant as well. The other ones were letter dropping rather than letter adding. --Jayron32 19:16, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Re "maneuver": Do Americans refer to a writer's or painter's "euver" (rather than their "oeuvre"), and if not, why not? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:03, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

No, "oeuvre". I think initial letters are more likely to stay put. (Maybe that explains Aesop and Oedipus?) We use "aeronautics", too (although the US went to "airplane" from "aeroplane" rather sooner than the UK did). Aesthetics tends to keep its "a", too, though not always.

I understood your comment above about "fetus". But I suspect that in the US what happened is that "fetus" represents a dropped "o" from the hypercorrected UK version. I don't know that for sure, though. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:27, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I think we still have "aeroplane" over here; see [6], [7] and [8]. Alansplodge (talk) 09:49, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd say that "oeuvre" stays as it is because it's thought of as an unassimilated loanword. As for Aeschylus and Oedipus, the American simplification of ae and oe avoided personal names – this is the same reason why we write "Caesar" and "Phoebe". (Geographic names, though, can vary: "Judaea" became "Judea", but "Aegean" didn't change.) "Aerial" and related forms are somewhat of a separate beast: that root, unusually, contained a disyllabic āe in Latin rather than a diphthongal ae, so I think it's exempted from the reform for etymological reasons. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 08:07, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Also, regarding the "Do Americans..." question, especially the "Why not?" variety, the answer is just that language is never that consistent, especially English. This lack of consistency is not a unique property of American English, other varieties of English have their own inconsistencies among supposedly regular patterns in equal measure. They are just inconsistent in different ways. --Jayron32 23:25, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

@Bazza. I think you contradict yourself, regarding manoeuvre: If it's mən-OO-vuh, then it can't be /mənˈoʊvə/, because OO is never pronounced /oʊ/, at least not in English. HOOTmag (talk) 20:12, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Nah, not a contradiction, just a struggle with IPA! I should've typed /mənˈuːvə/, which I've corrected above. Thanks. Bazza (talk) 21:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Entirely OR, but in my experience in US English, the final r is always pronounced. shoy (reactions) 15:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

bazza has explicitely written: "British English pronunciation", so I don't find any problem in that. HOOTmag (talk) 13:56, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

See wikt:vertebrae and wikt:formulae and wikt:minutiae and wikt:algae.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:19, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

See wikt:does and wikt:goes and wikt:potatoes and wikt:tomatoes and wikt:doer and wikt:poet and wikt:poetic and wikt:brae and wikt:Israel and wikt:Michael and wikt:Nathanael and wikt:subpoenaed and wikt:Caesar.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:37, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is, Wavelength. Subpoenaed and Caesar are the only two here that have anything to do with the real topic here. (OK. I'm not sure about poem and derivatives.) The first five are standard English constructions that happen in the course of events to put oe next to each other. Brae is Scots. The following three are from Hebrew, where ae represents two consecutive, but separate, vowel sounds. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:30, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

The topic of the original post is English words with "ae" or "oe". —Wavelength (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah but it's pretty obvious that the words you listed are not the kind of words the OP is asking about. --Viennese Waltz 09:11, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

A triumph of Wikipaedia. Alansplodge (talk) 01:43, 22 November 2015 (UTC)