Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 February 21

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February 21

A few questions

1. Why don't Spanish and Portuguese have any apostrophised contractions (like French le -> l' and de -> d')
2. Is there any language which has letter combination ⟨qä⟩ and ⟨qö⟩?
3. Why does Finnish not use Indo-European month names derived from Latin?

--40bus (talk) 20:08, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

2. Possibly some Eurasian-Central Asian languages - when written in the Latin alphavet - like Tatar or Kazakh. I haven't checked it out thoroughly. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:15, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

for 2., according to the article, Azerbaijani alphabet in its short-lived pre-1992 Latin version, had spellings like "qähräman" (now spelled "kəhrəman" though). Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:28, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

⟨qö⟩ is common in Hopi language: see [1] 185.130.86.86 (talk) 10:04, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

1. Informal Spanish has pa' for para, p'alante for para adelante. But the contraction is not always marked if ever written. Pa na for para nada and cansao for cansado are also found. In formal orthography, the standard contractions such as al, del, aos, das don't use apostrophes.

Diccionario panhispánico de dudas says:

Como usos propios de la lengua española, se distinguen principalmente dos:

a) Para indicar, en ediciones actuales no modernizadas de textos antiguos, sobre todo poéticos, la elisión de la vocal final de determinadas palabras (preposiciones, artículos, conjunciones) cuando la que sigue empieza por vocal: d’aquel (por de aquel), l’aspereza (por la aspereza), qu’es (por que es).

b) Para reflejar, en la escritura, la supresión de sonidos que se produce en ciertos niveles de la lengua oral. Aparece con frecuencia en textos literarios cuando el autor desea reproducir el habla de personajes de escasa cultura: «Sacúdete el vestidito, m’ija, pa’que se nos salga el mal agüero» (Hayen Calle [Méx. 1993]).

--Error (talk) 13:48, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Estonian switched to Latinate month names, Finnish didn't. You can find the old names in early Estonian texts. (They're not identical to the Finnish ones, but many are close.) Don't know why Finnish kept the old names, whether it was an intentional nationalistic retention or simply that the Latinate words never caught on. They did adopt the Swedish (or something close to Swedish) names of the days of the week, but perhaps they didn't have a week before the Swedish conquest. — kwami (talk) 08:01, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

This is mostly speculation, but Finnish didn't really start to become a widespread written language until the 19th Century. Maybe Latin-derived names never really caught on, as Finland was somewhat geographically off Western Europe's influence, or maybe the Finnish nationalists preferred Finnish names as a way to emphasize the unique cultural individuality of the language. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:26, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Latin tag

A cartoon by John Dowie in the form of an armorial shield is clearly dedicated to those of the "Rats of Tobruk" who performed latrine duties. A framed copy (the original?) is held by the Australian War Memorial, who have translated its motto non fasces sed faeces as "do not move but the dregs", which makes no sense to me. Can anyone suggest the artist's intended meaning? Doug butler (talk) 22:57, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Looks like Dog Latin, punning on English' two usages of the word "but". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:04, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

@Wakuran Not all versions of English have what I assume you're referring to (the American English wikt:butt). Perhaps one of our Australian-English friends can tell us whether the joke would work in their part of the world. Bazza (talk) 11:01, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Bazza "Bum", "jacksie" or "arse" for the uncouth; "tail", "derriere" or "behind" for the polite — "butt", in the era of social smoking, was the remains of a cigarette. But "butt" as a second derivative pun of sed is the stuff of cryptic crosswords. Doug butler (talk) 13:44, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I actually thought of the senses "however" and "merely", but alright. "Do not move anything, except for the dregs", although that might be a strained dad-joke. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:42, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

"Not fasces but feces", no doubt (aside from the obvious pun) with reference to the fasces from which "fascism" is derived. Deor (talk) 23:10, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

It is still difficult to distill the intention. "Non A sed B " can be used as a motto to express a factual or aspirational "what we do or strive for is not A, but B" (non loqui sed facere; non multa sed multum), or it can be an assertion "not A is the case, but B" – which requires A and B to be statements (non est princeps super leges, sed leges supra principem). Is there an elliptic statement here ("[what the enemy produces is] not fasces but shit")? Or is it a mission statement, "shit is our business"?  --Lambiam 10:24, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I took it in the mission-statement sense: "We deal with shit, not fascists (dealing with whom is the job of others)." Deor (talk) 13:45, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

It's a parody of Non Angli, sed Angeli, ("They are not Angles, but angels") which every Commonwealth schoolboy would have known in the 1940s. I don't speak Latin, so can't comment on Pope Gregory's grammar. Alansplodge (talk) 11:02, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

It is self-deprecating humour, along the lines of 'We don't do the (apparently) important stuff, we do the (essential but) unmentionable jobs.' -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 11:42, 22 February 2023 (UTC)