Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 February 11

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February 11

About Sohibanoo Zolghadr - her name in Farsi?

@HistoryofIran: Hi all. Zolghadr is OK, but the <oo> diagraph in "Sohibanoo" would appear to me what less ridiculous languages than English might transliterate as <u>.11:10, 11 February 2024 (UTC) Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 11:10, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps so, but "-oo" is how the English-language references spell it, so we go with that in accordance with Wikipedia:COMMONNAME. Farsi I can't help you with: anyone? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.107.217 (talk) 14:20, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

This website spells it Sahabanu Zolghadr, Persian: سهی بانو ذوالقدر. 59.102.15.82 (talk) 14:34, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

She also has an article on the Persian Wikipedia.  --Lambiam 15:55, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, forgot to reply to this. I’m not sure, there are sometimes some, I guess “unusual” English transliterations for Iranian names. HistoryofIran (talk) 23:21, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

There's a Wikipedia article about romanization of Persian, by the way. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:42, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Questions again

1. Is there any dialect that pronounces English word hear as /hiːr/? Is it so that in most major accents, /iː/, /uː/, /aɪ̯/, /eɪ̯/ and /oʊ̯/ cannot appear directly before /r/, instead a schwa should come between them.
2. Is there any Germanic language that allows /h/ in coda?
3. Can click consonants be geminated?
4. Did Latin not have reflexive verbs?
5. Can verb have be used like I have not a cat, without do auxiliary?
6. Is there any language in Europe which has many non-compund words with two consecutive long vowels separated by hiatus, like nonsense Czech words nééku, maáva, laóa and ókóís? Would these words be actually possible in Czech?
7. Can in Polish, /s/, /z/, /t͡s/, /d͡z/ and /n/ appear directly before /i/, or are they always palatalized to alveolo-palatal sounds?
8. Is there any Romance language that has non-open back unrounded vowels, /ʌ/, /ɤ/ and /ɯ/?
9. Can palatalized consonants appear at the end of word in Lithuanian?
10. Is the skulle + infinitive is Swedish a conditional mood? In Finnish, conditional is definitely a mood.

--40bus (talk) 20:25, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

1. Some Scottish accents don't diphthongise vowels in words like hear.

4. What is a reflexive verb? In English we can say "I confused myself." Is that a 'reflexive verb', or just a verb with a reflexive object? You can certainly use these in Latin.

4. I guess that would be verbs using a reflexive pronoun, such as Spanish se, German sich or even Russian -sya (although in Russian -sya is not used independently). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:21, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

5. When I was young, fifty or sixty years ago, have did not normally take "do-support" in British English, even when a full verb. I haven't a pen. and Have you any cheese? were perfectly normal, though in colloquial speech "got" was usually added: I haven't got a pen, Have you got any cheese. Phrases like We don't have and Do you have were Americanisms (unless they were being used in a habitual sense). This has changed somewhat, and most people do say We don't have and Do you have, but you still hear the older forms, especially with "got". (Note that I haven't got any nearly always means I don't have any, not I haven't been to get any: "got" is effectively an invariable particle in the construction). The particular construction in your question, however, has never been common in my experience: I haven't a cat or I've/I have no cat, but not I have not a cat. I think you'll find it in nineteenth century writing though. ColinFine (talk) 21:28, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, here we go: W. S. Gilbert, Ruddigore (1887), Act I: Sir Despard: "I have not a heart of that description". ColinFine (talk) 21:39, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Another example (of many): "we have not the faintest recollection of ever encountering any thing of the kind".^[1]  --Lambiam 15:11, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

@ColinFine: "I've an inkling that I've not the faintest idea what you're on about." Bazza (talk) 15:23, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Double sharp (talk) 09:17, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Is there any dialect that does not use do-support at all, and where Lee eats not apples is grammatical? --40bus (talk) 21:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not aware of a present-day dialect of that description. ColinFine (talk) 21:40, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

"Lee isn't / Lee's not eating apples" is correct, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:22, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Not lacking do-support, but not requiring it either, the sermonese dialect of English: "We celebrate not the day of birth, since it is the entrance to sorrow and all trials".^[2] Their eyes are veiled, so that they see not their misery by sin, and as being without Christ".^[3] "If you believe not what I say, I shall not wonder if you laugh at me".^[4]  --Lambiam 15:34, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Latin had inflectional passives and especially deponent verbs which served some of the functions of modern Romance reflexive verbs... AnonMoos (talk) 23:28, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

7. In loanwords it can happen, e.g. sinus, though I haven't checked if there's an example for all the consonants you mentioned. Double sharp (talk) 23:30, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I can think of examples for /t͡s/ (cirrus) and /z/ (Zanzibar). For /z/, you can also have a loanword with a native Polish prefix, as in zidentyfikować. I can't think of any examples for /d͡z/, but they might exist. As for /n/, however, I don't think you could find any; even in loanwords,〈ni〉would always be pronounced /ɲ/, /ɲi/ or /ɲj/. — Kpalion^(talk) 10:15, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Question 11

Why Korean has not switched to Latin alphabet like Vietnamese did? Are there any plans to switch Korean to Latin-only writing? --40bus (talk) 21:41, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

The short answer is that when Chinese characters were felt to be inadequate for purposes of modern mass literacy, both languages had a pre-existing alternative to fall back on -- Korean had the 15th-century Hangul quasi-alphabet, and Vietnamese the 17th-century missionary Latinization system. Why would Koreans give up a writing system carefully tailored to the characteristics of the Korean language for a Latinization scheme which would involve digraphs and trigraphs and diacritics? AnonMoos (talk) 23:25, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, from what I can see, Hangeul is perfectlu suitable for Korean with a logical orthography. As native literacy is widespread, there would be no actual reason to replace the alphabet. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:33, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but these "why doesn't language x use the Latin alphabet" come across as insulting and xenophobic. It sounds as if you are saying that the Latin alphabet is the be-all, end-all, god-king, best ever writing system and that any language that doesn't use it is backwards and deficient. If that is not what you mean to imply, you should seriously rethink your phrasings. Aside from that, the answer to ALL of these questions about a lack of script changes in languages, is that the people who speak, read, and write those languages don't feel the need to. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:47, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Not always. For Central Asian languages, the answer is linked to local and regional politics. --Error (talk) 15:35, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

The section you linked to says nothing about scripts, so I'm not sure what point you are making here. And, "following local and regional politics" (up to and including being forced at gunpoint) would still seem to fall under the speakers feeling the need to change.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:14, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

"Feeling the need" is a true answer for lots of "why" questions, but it is usually not helpful or enlightening. In the case of why Central Asian languages changed script several times, explaining local and regional politics would be more useful. --Error (talk) 11:53, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I suppose that what Error is alluding to in this case is the freedom to ditch the Cyrillic script (which was forced at gunpoint) and replace it with something else (with the Latin script being at least one of the alternative options). — Kpalion^(talk) 10:36, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Various central Asian languages were switched from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin alphabet in the early Soviet Union, then switched to Cyrillic under Stalin. After 1990, many of them switched yet again... AnonMoos (talk) 00:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

"Veronikahonkasalot"

This is a direct copy of the article fi:Jumalan teatteri on the Finnish Wikipedia, citing Jari Halonen in an interview:

tänä päivänä kaikki nämä veronikahonkasalot ja kaikki, ne on niin provokatorisia kuin olla ja voi

This literally means "today all these veronikahonkasalos and everybody, they are as provocative as they can be".

Now Jari Halonen was not literally talking about Veronika Honkasalo. Instead he used her name as a sort of "generic trademark" meaning all people like Veronika Honkasalo. Because of this, the word is spelled with a small initial letter and as a compound word.

How would this be done in English? JIP | Talk 21:09, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

You would just use the name directly, without any special marking: "all these Veronika Honkasalos and everybody, ...". --Amble (talk) 23:24, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Examples: "A fierce—but not always silent—struggle has been going on for more than a year among the Quislings of the occupied Netherlands."^[5] "It gave the bare facts about the sentence belatedly passed on one of the little Eichmanns of Germany."^[6] “Prepare, Prepare, Prepare”: Why Didn’t the World Listen to the Coronavirus Cassandras?^[7] Grammatically, using a proper noun this way turns it into a common noun, which may also lead to its losing its capitalization (as seen, e.g., in svengali and quisling).  --Lambiam 15:04, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Can you think of any examples where the full name loses its capitalization? --Amble (talk) 16:56, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I think I've seen "mickey mouse operation" before, but even that is uncommon.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 23:46, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

The name Svengali is only used as a mononym.  --Lambiam 14:55, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I find the word jamesbondish used many places (like here), sometimes with lower case 'j', sometimes with capital 'J' (and a few times also with capital 'B', 'JamesBondish'). --T*U (talk) 14:14, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Surely I can't be the only one to have parsed this as Veronika honks a lot. --Trovatore (talk) 23:47, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I have to stop myself from reading it like that everytime. GalacticShoe (talk) 01:59, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

LOL. "Veronika Honkasalo" literally means "Veronika Pine-Wilderness" in Finnish. JIP | Talk 08:56, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

In my part of the world (Southern England) there is a family, several of whose members were/are Solicitors or in other law-related occupations, whose surname is Pine-Coffin. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.107.217 (talk) 05:57, 15 February 2024 (UTC)