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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 March 22

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March 22

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Questions

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  1. Do following languages have /j/ sound?
  • Portuguese
  • Greek
  • Georgian
  1. Do following languages have diphthongs?
  • Swedish
  • Russian
  • Georgian
  • Armenian
  • French
  • Japanese
  1. Is there any Celtic language with neuter gender?
  2. Does Swedish have any native words with letter combinations ⟨ji⟩ and ⟨jy⟩?
  3. Why do Spanish, Catalan, Italian and Portuguese forbid sound combinations /ji/ and /wu/?
  4. Why did none of the Romance languages inherit word equus for horse?
  5. Is there any non-Romanian, non-Creole Romance language which has retained noun cases?

--40bus (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your numbering is confusing, but Portuguese has a /j/ sound, whereas Greek has a fricative allophonic variant, and Georgian seems to lack it. This could easily be looked up in the Wikipedia articles.
Swedish has jisses (gee) and jycke (cur, runt), although as they're natively modified variants of loanwords, they might not count. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:51, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The relevant Wikipedia articles are named Portuguese phonology, Modern Greek phonology, Russian phonology, and so on.  --Lambiam 20:12, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding #4, Portuguese has égua for "female horse, mare". CodeTalker (talk) 18:12, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Spanish yegua. wikt:yegua says
Compare Catalan euga, Spanish yegua, Galician egua, Portuguese égua, Romanian iapă.
--Error (talk) 10:54, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I believe I've seen a map of French dialect words for 'horse', some of which look like cognates of equum. Likely, though, the intervocalic weakening of the only stop in the word often led that word to be abandoned for homophony. —Tamfang (talk) 02:29, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I would assume that, through regular phonological development, it would become something like *'eue' /ø/, and could might counfusion with 'eux' (they) or' œufs' (eggs). Or *'l'eue' /lø/ (the horse) would be confused with 'le' /lə/~/lø/ (stressed the), so the listener would expect some noun to follow. Besides, a word like Gaulish *caballos had been widely borrowed throughout Romance, anyway. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:58, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You have been admonished before about questions of the form "Why doesn't language-X do this differently?" But anyway: if they ever had /ji, wu/ (from what source?), likely they either became plain /i, u/ (perhaps lengthened, as the semivowel assimilates to the full vowel) or dissimilated to something like /je, wo/. —Tamfang (talk) 04:23, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- Old Irish had neuter gender, but as far as I can tell, none of the other attested Celtic languages of the British Isles does or did (I don't have information about Breton). As for [ji] and [wu] sequences, [j] is the consonantal version of vowel [i], and [w] of vowel [u]. In many languages, either [ji] and [wu] are forbidden, or [ji] and/or [wu] are allophonic variants of the simple sounds in certain phonological contexts. (In other systems, [ij] and/or [uw] sequences are allophonic variants of the simple sounds...) AnonMoos (talk) 19:31, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Swedish has "gift {n} /jɪfːt/", "gikt", "gips", etc, which is pronunced equally as the the "ji" in the informal "jisses". It also has "gyllene", "gycklare", etc. In terms of dipthongs, "Swedish is the only Germanic language which does not have any phonological diphthongs in its Standard Swedish variation." (glottopedia). This is were some of the popular dialects vary a lot. --Soman (talk) 18:55, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
40bus was asking about the spelling/ orthography, not the sound combination. Oh, well... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:52, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Units of currency named after the country or place

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The Euro is the European unit of currency, and the Franc used to be the currency unit of France. Other currency units like dollar, mark, peso, yen, pound, etc. don't sound anything like the names of the places where they are used. Are there some that I'm missing? I guess the Swiss Franc kind of sort of counts for historical reasons. Thanks. 2601:648:8200:990:0:0:0:C255 (talk) 19:59, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Boliviano. --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:03, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The dollar is a corruption of "thaler", which derives from Sankt Joachimsthal, or St Joachim's Valley, a silver mining town then in the Kingdom of Bohemia, but now known as Jáchymov in the Czech Republic. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:07, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The euro is also used in places which are not in Europe, as its article shows. Bazza (talk) 20:37, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note that "Franc" is not named after France (or French) but (like those two names) derives from the Franks. ColinFine (talk) 21:15, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The guinea is named after Guinea. Shells-shells (talk) 22:14, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I assumed at first that Mark could have been derived from a place name, but then it seems that "mark" only got the sense of "ground, soil" in North Germanic languages, so it seems that i was wrong. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:50, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. Boliviano is a good one. I can't count Thaler except in Joachimsthal itself. Guinea counts if it was actually used in Guinea. I.e. if Mexico had a currency called the "Canada" and vice versa, those wouldn't count either, but if would count if they were switched. Naming it after the people still counts though, I guess, so Franc is still there. Similarly if Scotland had a currency called the Scot, or the like. 2601:648:8200:990:0:0:0:C255 (talk) 23:51, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There's also the afghani, the monetary unit of Afghanistan, if "naming it after the people" counts. Deor (talk) 00:40, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are former currencies: Latvian lats, Lithuanian litas, Zairean zaire. --Theurgist (talk) 06:16, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Score! I wanted to find something and bam: The Florin, once minted in Florence, surviving until today as Hungary's Forint. --Ouro (blah blah) 06:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If florin goes, so should bolognino 82.166.199.42 (talk) 07:46, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Among former currencies, there were also Angolan angolar, Geneva genevoise, Português, Somalo and Venezolano 82.166.199.42 (talk) 09:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
History of Australian currency#Decimalisation tells us that the Austral was proposed as a name the forthcoming decimal unit of currency in that country, but dollar won the day. HiLo48 (talk) 06:27, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That name was later adopted for Argentine austral 82.166.199.42 (talk) 06:52, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How about Sierra Leonean leone 82.166.199.42 (talk) 07:00, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Florins (and, after them, forints) are named after the flower that is the canting arms of Florence.
I thought that the ekuele could be related to "Ecuatorial", but it isn't.
The name "Naira" was coined from the word "Nigeria" by Obafemi Awolowo.[13][14] However, Naira as a currency was launched by Shehu Shagari as minister of finance in 1973.
Livre tournois, livre parisis, European Currency Unit. Eusko is an local currency in some parts of the Basque Country. The ducats from the duchy of Apulia.
Local currencies (Complementary currency) usually have local-resounding names.
--Error (talk) 11:16, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Eritrean currency Nakfa, is named after a city in Eritrea called Nakfa. It is official Eritrean currency introduced post-independence in 1998 and it has historical connection as the nakfa region was where Eritrea freedom fighters began to gain victory in the 30 years armed struggle against Ethiopia in the independence movement (Currency and exchange facilities). Furthermore, there are three faces per currency, on the $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and$ 100) of Eritreans from the nine ethnic groups on one side of the currency. On the opposite side of the currency, it contains images of historical moments, places, and infrastructure.

Splinter, H. van der. (n.d.). Currency and exchange facilities. Nakfa - Eritrean currency. Retrieved from http://www.eritrea.be/old/eritrea-nakfa.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.189.94.2 (talk) 20:19, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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