Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 October 8

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October 8

The royal they

The article royal we says:

The royal we, or majestic plural (pluralis maiestatis), is the use of a plural pronoun (or corresponding plural-inflected verb forms) to refer to a single person who is a monarch.

Is that only for first-person pronouns? E.g. is it a grammatically correct use of the majestic plural to refer to Emperor Naruhito or Queen Elizabeth as "they"? To be clear, this would not be the singular they, which some people consider ungrammatical.

Thanks. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 00:55, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Where have you ever seen that? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:04, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I've never seen it (afaik) but I haven't been searching for it or noting counterexamples. It occurred to me to wonder whether this usage would be correct. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 02:08, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Supposing you did see it, how would you distinguish it from the singular they? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:13, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Until recently I don't think it was common to use the singular they when the gender of the referent was known. Other than that, it would be like distinguishing between any other set of homonyms. Yes, in some cases it would be ambiguous. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 05:03, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Similar concept: For the 2nd person (singular or plural) with someone who is not a family member or intimate friend, German uses the 3rd person plural verb forms together with the word Sie (capitalized form of the normal 3rd person plural pronoun "sie") to indicate distance. Jmar67 (talk) 04:55, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Hmm. Standard English doesn't have a 2nd person plural that's different from the singular, but maybe a hypothetical Monarch of Alabama in that region's dialect would have to be addressed "Y'all's Majesty". 173.228.123.207 (talk) 05:03, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

In Early Modern English, the singular was thou/thee and the plural was ye/you, with details that varied by time and place. The T–V distinction was sometimes indicated with you for the formal. You can find this in Shakespeare if you're looking for it, though there are also lots of texts that don't seem to fit. --Trovatore (talk) 23:38, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

In Finnish, it's common practice to use the plural "you" "Te" instead of the singular "you" "sinä" as an honorific like the German "Sie" mentioned above. This is not limited to addressing royalty. Note that even some native speakers make the mistake of forgetting that when used as an honorific instead of a genuine plural, "Te" still uses the singular in verb perfect tenses, such as "Oletteko Te jo nähnyt tämän, teidän majesteettinne?" ("Have you already seen this, Your Majesty?") as compared to "Sotilaat! Oletteko te jo nähneet tämän?" ("Soldiers! Have you already seen this?"). JIP | Talk 11:50, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

In Croatian, the situation is the other way around. The honorific plural commonly and in standardized language uses everything plural, but some old people will mix plural predicate/auxiliary verb with a singular adjective/participle (example: "Vi ste to vidjeli?" - "Have you seen this?" (grammatical), "Vi ste to vidjela?" - "Have you seen this?" (ungrammatical, addressing a woman)). 93.136.47.32 (talk) 20:53, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Majestic plural is to be used in the first person by monarchs and sometimes gods, in the second person to refer to occasionally gods and never monarchs, and probably never in the third person for a monarch except sarcastically. And when it's used by a god, yhwh in particular, the "majestic" grammatical interpretation is largely a retcon meant to erase historical polytheism. Temerarius (talk) 03:43, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

However, when the Hebrew word "Elohim" in the Bible refers to the God of Israel, it almost always takes singular verb agreement (which is otherwise extremely unusual for a noun with a plural ending). The term may have originated from an earlier non-monotheistic context, but it's dubious at best whether it has meaningful non-monotheistic theological implications when used in the Bible. Also, the Tetragrammaton YHWH is not too relevant in this context... AnonMoos (talk) 16:28, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

I've heard some argue that the "we" refers to the Trinity. Which doesn't explain why God tells Moses His name is "I AM". Maybe only one member of the Trinity was on the conference call with Moses that day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:35, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Divine "We" occurs very few times in the Old Testament, while Elohim with singular verb agreement occurs probably hundreds of times, so I have very little idea what you're talking about... AnonMoos (talk) 16:41, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

What I'm talking about is in Genesis where God says "Let us make man in our image." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:44, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that's one very relevant example of the heavenly host/ancient polytheism. They're scattered about the old testament, which is nakedly and honestly a group of narratives about the cultural battle (and actual battles) between polytheism and monolatry/monotheism. Also, AnonMoos was correct to point out that I was wrong to mention the tetragrammaton here. I'd argue, though, that the polytheistic implications of the plural Elohim are far from settled. Temerarius (talk) 02:22, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Languages without front vowels

I was watching Pain and Glory last night and found out that the Spanish language apparently has no front vowels. Are there other languages still spoken today that have no front vowels? Italian, Russian and Japanese come to mind. And are there possibly any languages without back vowels? JIP | Talk 09:33, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

No front vowels? Spanish clearly has /i/ and /e/. What exactly do you mean that Spanish lacks? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:50, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Vowels that can only be used as front vowels, like the "y/ü", "ä" and "ö" used in Finnish, Swedish, Estonian and German for example. JIP | Talk 10:03, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

You must still be getting something wrong, I'm afraid. [i] and [e] are also unambiguously and always front. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:35, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

The sounds "y/ü" and "ö" are front rounded vowels (surprised that no one has linked to that article yet), while "ä" is usually basically a lowered version of [e]... AnonMoos (talk) 16:50, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

The simplest vowel phoneme inventories usually look something like /i a u/, which is a front-mid-back distinction. The phoneme article brought me to Arrernte and Ubykh which can both apparently have as few as two vowel phonemes in some dialects - /a/ and /ə/ - but the /ə/ phoneme in each is highly variable and can be fronted to [i] or backed to [u] depending on the environment. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 10:34, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

There was a mid-20th-century analysis of the Kabardian language as only having one vowel phoneme (with many contextual allophones). This has become part of the folklore or inside jokes of academic linguists, but I don't know how seriously it's taken by those who actually study Kabardian... AnonMoos (talk) 16:45, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

See Finnish phonology#Vowel harmony. In Finnish, JIP's native language, e and i are indeed front vowels in phonetic terms (and are in fact even more front than their rounded counterparts ö and y, as per this chart), but in phonological terms they act as "neutral" vowels (neither front nor back), while ö and y, along with ä, are front vowels both phonetically and phonologically.

The ö and ä correspond to IPA /ø/ and /æ/ respectively, while the remaining vowels are represented the same way in IPA and in Finnish orthography.

So, JIP's first question must be about languages without /ø, y, æ/. Actually, there are many of them. These are relatively rare vowels cross-linguistically.

And JIP's second question must be if there are languages without /a, o, u/, the Finnish back vowels. This is unlikely, because these, and especially /a/ and /u/, are extremely common vowels. --Theurgist (talk) 00:13, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

If I got this correctly, the question is if there are languages without Finnish front vowels (or respectively Finnish back vowels). In other languages with vowel harmony, /i/ and /e/ can be also be front, not to mention the case of languages without vowel harmony. 93.136.47.32 (talk) 20:35, 11 October 2019 (UTC)