Language desk
< May 13	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	Current desk >

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

May 14

Chinese origins for words for parents

When did 妈妈 and 爸爸 became more used than 娘, 母, 爹, 父? Was 妈妈 and 爸爸 influenced by foreign languages like English or are these words rooted in Chinese history? And then you have 阿妈 which was Manchu for father. KAVEBEAR (talk) 00:49, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't really able to find much about this from my searches, but your intuition feels correct. 母 and 父 are the oldest forms, clearly attested to since the days of oracle script, and the earliest mention of 妈 and 爸 (which are clearly pictophonetic) as I could see was from the Guangya, which is from the early 3rd century CE. By that time there would have already been centuries of extensive contact with western peoples (via the Silk Road, for instance), and with that contact probable Indo-European linguistic influences. bibliomaniac 1 5 21:53, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Toffee-nosed

Where does the phrase "toffee-nosed" come from and is it connected to Moffat toffee? 86.175.173.45 (talk) 12:04, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No. Indications are that it's from "toff".[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:41, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

An alternative but less well accredited story is that 'the origin appears to derive from the unsightly brown droplets that dripped from a gentleman's nose after taking snuff - which of course was only taken by the "upper class"'. [2] referenced from Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style by Ian Kelly (p. 159). Alansplodge (talk) 16:29, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not this type, surely. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:31, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ooops! DAB failure! Please see Snuff (tobacco). Alansplodge (talk) 16:46, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Past tense verb form of "accession"

How does one say "Party X (became a member by means of accession) the treaty on <date>."? "Accessed" just doesn't sound right to me. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:58, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Acceded, although having "the treaty" as the object is strange. [3] gives "Albania acceded to the IMF in 1990" as an example. Bazza (talk) 13:19, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Bazza 7, I'll figure out the phrasing, I just needed the word. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:47, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think the usual expression would be, "X became party to the treaty on <date>." --Lambiam 22:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

leave no man behind and no man left behind

I was very surprised to not find anything about these expressions on Wikipedia or Wiktionary. And is nemo resideo real Latin or incorrect pseudo-Latin? Shouldn't that be nemo residet? The Internet is full of claims that this is an ancient Latin expression, but no reputable site even mentions it.

My attempts to find the origins of leave no man behind and no man left behind and evidence as to which is older also failed. --Espoo (talk) 17:29, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The full OED does do phrase origins as well as word origins. Perhaps someone with the paid subscription can look it up for you? --Jayron 32 19:31, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No result for either form in the OED. My impression is it's an Americanism, and quite a recent one too (that is, latter half of the 20th Century). DuncanHill (talk) 20:00, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is no particular reason for the phrases to appear in dictionaries since their meaning is understandable from the individual words. On the other hand, if it's a slogan expressing a policy (and that wouldn't surprise me from stuff I've seen on the TV series NCIS, but then that's fiction) then a Wikipedia article might be appropriate. If you look at the deletion history for no man left behind you'll see that someone did try to create one, but it just asked a version of Espoo's question instead of actually providing information on the answer, so it was correctly deleted. A candidate for WP:Requested articles, maybe? --76.71.5.208 (talk) 21:53, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Neither expression appears in the Corpus of Historical American English. Both appear in tiny quantities in the GloWbE corpus: each four times in US sources, and "leave no man behind" a further six times in six different regions. Nemo resideo looks as if it is trying to be an ablative absolute (translated as "with no man left behind") but the Latin should read nemine ressesso. --ColinFine (talk) 20:57, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The expression, of which, both are the same simply worded differently are an Americanism and relate to the US Military. This is not a Latin phrase and is a 20th century development following and during the Vietnam War, where to assist with troop morale, the phrase and policy was developed. No man would be left behind whether dead or alive. This in itself probably does deserve an article or at least nomination for a required article. 86.186.232.80 (talk) 10:00, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The phrase nemo resideo is ungrammatical Latin. The verb form is for the first person singular, so a word by word translation results in the equally ungrammatical "no one I am left behind". While nemo residet is not per se ungrammatical, it does not convey the same sense. It is a factual statement. Also, the verb resideo has many meanings; the phrase nemo residet may as well mean any of "no one is tarrying", "no one is sitting", and "no one is idle". A better verb for the intended meaning is relinquo, "I abandon", "I leave behind". To introduce the deontic aspect, one can use the imperative "leave no one behind". Then "no one" is the direct object and requires the accusative, giving relinquite neminem. Or one can use the passive subjunctive, "no one be left behind", giving nemo sit relictus, found in actual use.^[4] The word order in Classical Latin is rather free, so permutations such as nemo relictus sit are also acceptable.^[5] --Lambiam 22:52, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest US military mottoes have never found themselves obstructed by such subtleties. 93.136.107.237 (talk) 05:07, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Meanwhile, the British Army motto: Illegitimi non carborundum, is still being argued over by pedants. Alansplodge (talk) 12:21, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

During the Second World War British soldiers labelled crates of defective equipment "U S" (unserviceable). The Americans riposted by labelling them "G B" (gone bad). 86.179.121.164 (talk) 16:43, 18 May 2020 (UTC) [reply]

Term for a major scale

Why do the Germans call major scales "dur" instead of their word for major?? It looks like dur means hard/harsh; what's "hard" about major scales?? Georgia guy (talk) 19:05, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Georgia guy: According to pl-wiki it's not German but rather Latin durus, but it's the same 'hard'. OTOH minor scales are moll, from Latin mollis - soft. --CiaPan (talk) 19:13, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

But why do the Germans call it by such a term?? What's hard about them?? Georgia guy (talk) 19:17, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The etymology section of the German article refers the origin of the terms Dur and Moll to hexachord, specifically to hexachordum durum and hexachordum molle. So, next you'll have to figure out why these are "hard" and "soft"... --Wrongfilter (talk) 19:21, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Major and minor in English don't have any inherent meaning; much of the emotional weight we give them is baked into the conventions of Western music, and not any immutable laws of physics. Using two opposing terms for them seems reasonable, but the particular terms (major/minor or hard/soft) are not particularly meaningful on their own. We could have called them "upper/lower" or "left/right" or "truth/beauty" or any of a number of other arbitrary pairs of terms. The terms meant something in a sort-of "ex post facto" way to the people who first came up with them, but the actual words chosen are not particularly useful or more meaningful than other ways of describing the scales. Heck, they aren't even universal in English. For example, they are also called Ionian and Aeolian, two of the seven common so-called "Western Modes", which is just another way to think about organizing scales. I'm sure there's an explanation why German chose hard/soft, but of course the music is neither harder nor softer in either scale, anymore than it is more "major" or "minor" (whatever that means). --Jayron 32 19:25, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Duden: "mittelhochdeutsch bēdūre < mittellateinisch b durum, zu lateinisch durus = hart; nach der als „hart“ empfundenen großen Terz im Dreiklang; vgl. Moll". Jmar67 (talk) 19:38, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) @Jayron32: You seem wrong. Based again on pl-wiki the 'dur' scale, also called 'major' scale (from Latin maior – bigger, which refers to Major third interval between the first and the third note of the scale) (transl. from pl by CiaPan). Similarly 'minor' in the name of a scale comes from minor third between the two notes. --CiaPan (talk) 19:46, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but the terms could have been "big third" and "small third" or "upper third" and "lower third". Or "whole third" and "half third". You've just moved the problem back one step, and it's still not entirely less arbitrary. The point was not that there isn't any meaning behind the words, it's that the meaning is not that big of a deal in terms of the scale itself. The scale and its properties exist independent of whether we call them major and minor, or Ionian and Aeolian. They're still the same scales. --Jayron 32 19:54, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So per Duden, the sound of the major third is considered "hard". I interpret this as "firm, resolute, decisive", not "harsh" in the sense of dissonant. Jmar67 (talk) 21:34, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I repeat my reference to hexachords and the Guidonian hand. Germans did not invent those terms but took them from a medieval tradition associated with the name of Guido of Arezzo. One would have to find out what prompted the medieval musical theorists to use the terms hexachordum durum. hexachordum molle and hexachordum naturale, and it may be hard to impossible to find sources for that. Incidentally, this is closely linked to the question why the note B is called H in German musical notation. --Wrongfilter (talk) 07:50, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just a minor correction, the modern major/minor modes aren't actually named after the hexachords, but both the modes and the hexachords are ultimately named after the "b durum" and "b molle", the two semitone variants of the note b, which are involved both in defining the characteristic tone steps of the hexachords and the major/minor thirds characteristic of the major/minor scales. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:14, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, Duden's etymology is an often repeated wrong interpretation based on most people in fact experiencing minor scales as much softer and major scales as much harder. For example, melancholic melodies and funeral marches are almost never in major and are intrinsically softer, in addition to rarely having loud performance indications (dynamics). But the real etymology is based on harder and softer i.e. rounder shapes of https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_durum and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_molle as explained here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dur#Etymologie --Espoo (talk) 08:17, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 May 14

Contents