Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 March 17

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March 17

Hebrew-Aramaic contact

From Ecclesiastes#Composition:

The presence of Persian loanwords and Aramaisms points to a date no earlier than about 450 BCE...

I understand the Persian loanwords being relevant to "no earlier than about 450 BCE", but how is Aramaic relevant? Hebrew and Aramaic first came into contact long before; for example, Jews entering Mesopotamia after the fall of Jerusalem (586 BC) would have encountered it, as would have their ancestors during warfare with the Assyrians. Nyttend (talk) 02:06, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

See Middle Aramaic. Its vocabulary is a bit different from Ancient Aramaic. However, also Ancient Aramaic has left its footnotes in the Bible, even in Genesis (31, 47). 147.235.211.112 (talk) 12:01, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

The relevant sentence in the book to which this statement is sourced is,

The abundance of Aramaisms (Aramaic loan words, forms, and constructions) also points to the postexilic period, when Aramaic became widely used in Palestine.^[1]

 --Lambiam 12:30, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah, so it's the quality of Aramaic usage, not merely its existence in the first place. I've changed "Aramaisms" to "numerous Aramaisms" to reflect "abundance" in the source. Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 02:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Aramaisms are not common in Ecclesiastes. However, they belong to Middle Aramaic. 147.235.209.127 (talk) 01:08, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Sort of tautological but the essential reason for this assumption is that other Biblical texts have relatively few Aramaisms until the end of the Biblical period, even though there are a few and there was a lot of Aramaic contact. Aramaisms are common in Ecclesiastes, especially compared to the other Hebrew books. Contrary to what an IP is claiming here, there is no distinction whatsoever between the Aramaic of יגר שהדותא and the Aramaic idioms and loans of Ecclesiastes. Both יגר and שהדותא would be perfectly ordinary words to find in Aramaic texts even into the common era. GordonGlottal (talk) 03:11, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Japanese Katkana for U (ウ) used in place of chōonpu (ー)

Hello! So while I was cleaning up the Japanese on List of Pokemon characters, I noticed a strange oddity that was consistent across the entire article. That is, whenever there should be a chōonpu in the Katakana, instead there was the Japanese Katakana for U (which is ウ). I don't know why this was done as it doesn't make much sense. Anyone have any sort of idea why this may have been done? (and yes I checked, none of the names when converted to Romaji would've used the Katakana for U) ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 13:34, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe automatic conversion of English/ Romaji (ou), or similar. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:30, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not understanding what you mean here by "automatic conversion of English/Romaji (ou) or similar". All of the ones using the U kana instead of the choonpu were either a macron u or macron o. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:34, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

What I meant was that someone would write the names with "ou" in Latin letters, and then changed it into katakana through a computerized automatic process, such as a web service. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:50, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Or it could be a mixup of the orthographies of hiragana and katakana, in some way. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:54, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

That might be more likely, although if it was a macron o it didn't use the Katakana for O. The article on the Katakana for U it says "When lengthening "-u" or "-o" syllables in Japanese braille, a Chōonpu is always used, as in standard katakana usage instead of adding an う / ウ." so maybe it was somehow converting from Braille? I have no clue honestly. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 15:57, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

The regular way to spell, for example, the name Kojirō using hiragana is こじろう, and blindly transcribing this character by character into katakana results in the irregular spelling コジロウ. But, for whatever reason, this is also the spelling used on the Japanese Wikipedia: コジロウ (アニメポケットモンスター). Perhaps this was some conscious decision of the creators of these characters to make them stand out. It is somewhat irregular already to spell out a Japanese name (小次郎) in katakana instead of hiragana.  --Lambiam 23:50, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

That passage is incorrect. The use of the choonpu tends to be confined to loanword adaptation and paralanguage, but that doesn't mean ou isn't found in loanwords, not to mention native (native native or Sino-Japanese) words do get written in katakana in various contexts, in which /oː/ is written ou. See e.g. ソウル, ミョウガ. Nardog (talk) 02:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)