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January 10

Phrase construction with alone adjectives

Hello. From Size-asymmetric competition#Definition of size asymmetry. This kind of construction is frequent in Latin languages but it is correct and a good choice in English? "Resource competition can vary from completely symmetric... to perfectly size symmetric"?Pierpao (talk) 13:39, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what an "alone adjective" is, but the sentence itself is perfectly fine and well-constructed (if a bit long). Clarityfiend (talk) 15:18, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Pierpao (talk) 16:05, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd have written "size-symmetric", with a hyphen. The spelling in the article is inconsistent; there are 16 occurrences of hyphenated noun–adjective compounds (12 × "size-asymmetric" including that in the title of the article; 3 × "size-symmetric"; 1 × "undersize-asymmetric") against 3 of unhyphenated compounds (1 × "size asymmetric"; 2 × "size symmetric" including the use in the sentence quoted above).  --Lambiam 09:49, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I've regularized the usage in Size-asymmetric competition, retaining the hyphen in prepositive compound adjectives and dropping it in postpositive ones (where it was present). Deor (talk) 00:41, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

January 11

Spark out

What is the origin of this phrase? I was looking at wikt:spark out and I see it means "Completely asleep or unconscious." But it says nothing about where it's from. Is it a Cockney thing? 205.239.40.3 (talk) 09:58, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Cartoon iconography or related? As in old comic strips and cartoons with boxers knocked out while stars orbit around their heads... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:17, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Possibly a bit of hyperbole for the spark of life being out. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 14:02, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd always assumed it was when you have to reach for a box of matches because the pilot light has gone out. Or maybe something to do with these. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:13, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

In the verb form, the meaning is similar to "punch your lights out." The construction is traced back to the 1960s [1].2A02:C7B:11B:9000:2C30:AE00:938B:1276 (talk) 16:38, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

That source does not so much trace as simply assert. My suspicion (from its being used in my family) is that it is somewhat older – the OED suggests its usage from 1879. I conjecture (no more than that) that it alludes to an absence of spark in an engine's spark plugs, leaving the engine unresponsive. (Note: the Spark plug was invented in 1860.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.104.88 (talk) 10:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I always assumed that it was a synonym for "seeing stars" when hit on the head. Our article is phosphene:

Another common phosphene is "seeing stars" from a sneeze, laughter, a heavy and deep cough, blowing of the nose, a blow on the head....

Alansplodge (talk) 11:42, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, although I have experienced phosphene, myself, occasionally, I hadn't thought about it being related to orbiting cartoon stars. It does make some sort of sense, when I think about it, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

But they're stars, not sparks? OED says here: "The earliest known use of the adjective spark out is in the 1870s. OED's earliest evidence for spark out is from 1879, in the writing of John Hartley, dialect poet and writer." It looks like the Etymology is now behind a paywall, but you can log in with a library card. The example given seems to be just a normal domestic fire. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Green's Dictionary of Slang (accessed through the Wikipedia Library) says "electrical imagery". Alansplodge (talk) 17:36, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

For those who don't have access to that OED page, the earliest instance they provide, from dialect poet John Hartley in 1879, is this:

"Th' fire wor spark aght." - J. Hartley, Orig. Clock Almanack 1880 17. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

"a hornet's nest" v. "a hornets' nest"

Why does the idiom go "to stir up a hornet's nest" with the singular possessive as well? This doesn't really seem to make sense considering that a nest always consists of multiple specimens. Hildeoc (talk) 17:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

You might argue that it's really the Queen Hornet's nest? There's only one of her! Martinevans123 (talk) 17:51, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

In book uses both are found, with hornet's nest being a clear winner, taking up about 70% of the uses.^[2]  --Lambiam 08:56, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Yes, but still, this is awkward language, isn't it? Hildeoc (talk) 19:46, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

No, it's an idiom. As long as the meaning is understood, the individual words used matter not. Bazza (talk) 19:59, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bazza 7: I know, but don't even idioms usually follow a certain sense of grammatical logic? Hildeoc (talk) 21:46, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Hildeoc it's the nest of "the hornet", the Platonic ideal object, rather than any individual hornet. Compare with, say, "the dwellings of Man", meaning human habitation in general.

This also recalls my ongoing conundrum with whether to prefer farmer's market or farmers' market (and I hope no one will defend the barbarism *farmers market). I think I really prefer the singular possessive on the grounds that it's the market of the Platonic farmer, but on the other hand there are so many people who don't know the plural possessive punctuation and it's such a good opportunity to teach it. --Trovatore (talk) 22:01, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

@Trovatore: More concerning is the tendancy for some of those establishments to not feature farmers, regardless of their apostrophic position or absence. Bazza (talk) 09:50, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, they never feature Platonic farmers either, not even Aristotelian ones, only potato's, tomato's and mango's. Am obviously going to the wrong one's. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, Trovatore, these conundra are enough to send one into tantra. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:09, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Hildeoc: The grammar is fine. Using the singular to cover a group is neither unusual nor wrong. Stating that "the platypus is an odd-looking creature" is not picking on a specific individual of the species. Bazza (talk) 09:46, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bazza 7: Yeah, but in this case you're applying the definite article. But I certainly see Trovatore's point about the Platonic ideal. Hildeoc (talk) 20:02, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Hildeoc: Regardless of the explanations above, and your analysis of why the idiom may be "wrong", it is what it is: "a hornet's nest", as shown in these reliable records of English usage:

• Cambridge, sometimes "hornets' nest"
• Collins, from 1730–1740
• dictionary.com, from 1730–1740
• Merriam-Webster, from 1740
• OED, only as "hornets' nest", from 1590

It's worth remembering that unlike, say, French or German, English is not a controlled language: it has evolved, and dictionaries such as those above record usage, not prescribe it. Bazza (talk) 21:07, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, though I never denied that ... Hildeoc (talk) 23:14, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Yay! Bring on the potato's. Plenty of written examples. But thanks Hildeoc for the Ancient Greek spelling bee. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

January 12

What is the correct way to say this?

When asking for the meaning of a foreign word or phrase, am I supposed to say “What does [phrase] mean in [target language]” or “What does [phrase] mean in [original language]”? Primal Groudon (talk) 18:01, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

You can always go with "How do you say [phrase] in [target language]?" --Amble (talk) 19:42, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Are you talking about asking in Google? I've found it to be pretty flexible. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:43, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

The sentence "What does artificial intelligence mean in Turkish?", although unambiguous since Turkish is obviously not the source language, comes across to me as a strange way of formulating the question. I'd interpret either of the questions "What does yapay zekâ mean in English?" and "What does yapay zekâ mean in Turkish?" as asking for a translation to English. The first version is unnecessarily long; one may as well simply ask, "What does yapay zekâ mean?" The second version has the advantage that it identifies the source language to the speaker. A problem arises when a term occurs in both languages, as in, "What does define mean in Turkish?" Google is not particularly helpful in answering this question.^[3] An unambiguous way to phrase the question is, "What is the meaning of the Turkish term define?" The answer should reveal that this depends on the context; is it used as a noun or as an adjective?  --Lambiam 10:58, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

yapay zekâ means nothing in English, of course. —Tamfang (talk) 02:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

It is a type of question that is apparently regularly asked:

• What does "señor" mean in English?^[4]
• What does the Hebrew word אַל־מָוֶת‎ mean in English?^[5]
• The Jewish scholarly community wrote a document called Dabru Emet to encourage discussion – what does this title mean in English?^[6]

Phrases expressed in natural language are often ambiguous. This does not matter as long as the listener, using context and common sense, understands the speaker's intention.  --Lambiam 09:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

The second version provides more info, since the responder to the first might have to ask, "What language is that?" However, neither would raise any eyebrows and mark you out as a dang furriner. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:44, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

The second version may be ambiguous, though.  --Lambiam 00:04, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

January 15

Spelling of non-English names--who decides?

A Chinese man who name is more or less pronounced "Shee" and an Arab whose name is pronounced "Cutter" immigrate to the US. Who decides how their names will be spelled on official documents? 24.72.82.173 (talk) 22:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

You seem to be asking about names written in writing systems other than the Latin alphabet. In many cases, the individuals themselves will decide, based on how they fill out the necessary forms. For people coming from the PRC in recent years, many of them would just use the standard Pinyin transcription of their names. For Arabic, there are a number of sounds which do not occur in European languages, an indefinite number of local Arabic colloquial dialects, even some national variations in the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic, and also the issue of French-influenced conventions for transcribing Arabic into the Latin alphabet vs. English-influenced conventions, so the possibilities are almost endless... AnonMoos (talk) 00:58, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This is not directly related, but I have a last name in Polish that can be declinated or not (Polish grammar is heavily inflected) when used in various grammatical cases. I choose not to be inflected. It's basically always the person who has the final say in how their name is written or pronounced. --Ouro (blah blah) 13:07, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Ouro -- In the Russian language, a name not inflecting for case is often a sign of a foreign name, and apparently in Soviet times, people sometimes wrote the names of their enemies, which theoretically should inflect, without such case endings as a subtle (or maybe sometimes not-so-subtle) way of implying that they were Jews! AnonMoos (talk) 14:37, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Well Polish is Slavic and has certain relations to the language you mentioned, and my last name technically isn't Polish - it's Ukrainian (grandparents from the Kresy on my father's side). However, this is my choice, I feel when my last name is inflected it just sounds weird. --Ouro (blah blah) 16:24, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Conversely, when Anna Karenina is rendered as "Anna Karenin", on the basis that that's probably how she'd have been known had she been born to Russian immigrant parents in the West, that looks super-weird. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:31, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Varvara Komarova-Stasova chose the masculine pen name Vladimir Karenin. She wrote a four-volume biography of George Sand, so she may have been gender fluid, like her biographical topic.  --Lambiam 10:50, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Even at the time she started writing (late 19th century), I could see the advantage of taking a male pen name to increase the likelihood of being accepted by a publisher.Naraht (talk) 15:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Synchronistically, last night I started reading Alex Beam's "The Feud" (2016), about a decades-long friendship between Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov that turned sour. On page xv of the Introduction I read: [Nabokov] inveighed against the feminization of Russian family names, and insisted on teaching Anna Karenin, never Anna Karenina. Nabokov was a great writer, but a very perverse human. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

In Greg Bear's "Eon", there's a character named "Joseph Rimskaya" who emigrated from the Soviet Union with his grandmother when he was a young boy, and got her surname because U.S. immigration officials weren't able to understand the two having slightly different name variants. Also, Czech-language Wikipedia adds fake feminine suffixes to women's surnames: Michelle Obamová etc. Katie Ledecky, who has a masculine version of a Czech name (analogous to hypothetical Anna Karenin) gets the feminine form of it: Ledecká... AnonMoos (talk) 21:23, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Not only will people from the PRC today choose to use Pinyin they will likely have little choice. Their passport, an official document of the PRC, will have their name in Chinese and Pinyin. So when filling in visa/immigration forms, buying airline tickets etc. they will likely feel obliged to use Pinyin. Doing anything else will likely result in confusion, delays and possibly being unable to travel/enter.

Once in the US, or another country other than China, they can call themselves whatever they want and many do adopt English names perhaps related to their Chinese one. But they might still feel it necessary to use their proper name, and use Pinyin, on official documents. --2A04:4A43:907F:FE10:7C89:51C9:85B7:E016 (talk) 16:14, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

the real answer is US immigration but this is a language question, right? Elinruby (talk) 12:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

January 16

Swapping V and W

What is the term that mean "swapping two sounds when speaking"? I've heard the term used for the Asian practice of swapping R and L. I just finished listening to a BMW presentation on wearable technology in which he said things like "This vearable chip communicates vith the car using a wariable code." It didn't take long to hear he was clearly swapping V and W, which made me start Googling the term that describes the practice, but I can't find it. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I think it's rare with speakers who regularly and consistently would actually swap two sounds, so that they systematically would be used incorrectly. What I guess is fairly common is a tendency to over-analyze a difference between one's native language and the target language (in this case English), leading to common hypercorrections, such as Italians adding initial h- to words such as eggs and apples, or Northern European people pronouncing video as wideo. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Or, I still think that actual swapping sounds improbable, since that would mean that a foreign language learner would have learnt the difference between the two sounds, but would still systematically use them incorrectly. What would be more probable is that the speaker might regularly use a "middle ground" phoneme, such as /ʋ/, which a native speaker might interpret as systematic swapping. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Some lower-class urban Dickens characters, such as Sam Weller, were written as swapping V and W, while in the late 1990s or early 2000s there was a UK teacher of South Asian origin whose pronunciation of "vertical" as "wortical" became controversial. See discussion by a linguist here... -- AnonMoos (talk) 03:34, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Sounds a bit like a German accent – not surprising for BMW. Using [ʋ] for w (in onset) is pretty common in German. This sound isn't used in English, so native English speakers may, depending on random fluctuations, interpret it as either v or w. German only really makes a two-fold distinction between f, v and w (or is anybody aware of a minimal triplet?). To emphasise the difference between f and v, the v may overshoot past [v] and turn into a [ʋ] too, a case of hypercorrection. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:57, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, an initial V in a native German word is pronounced in German like /f/; the component Venn in Hohes Venn is pronounced the same as Fenn. This makes the existence of a minimal triplet less likely.  --Lambiam 10:36, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Here, for what its worth, is an old ref-desk thread on the topic. Deor (talk) 21:29, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

January 17

succession vs accession

Are both "succeeded to the throne" and "acceded to the throne" correct? Is there a difference between them?

I see the first used at https://www.royal.uk/accession. Kk.urban (talk) 19:40, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

wikt:succession implies coming after an earlier holder. You cannot succeed to a newly created throne. wikt:accession does not imply an earlier holder. --Error (talk) 20:21, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

They only seem to mean the same because there is generally only one occupant of a given throne and a new occupant is rarely the first.  --Lambiam 06:42, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

With a bit of tongue-in-cheek, "acceding to the throne" is the act of sitting down on the chair, and "succeeding to the throne" means doing that after the previous occupant has left it. Charles III succeeded his mother at the instant she died, and acceded at the same time; the latter was formalised in the UK during this ceremony. Bazza (talk) 10:21, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Dutch phrase "ga je gang"

The Dutch phrase "ga je gang" (literally "go your going") is usually translated as "go ahead". Is it only used if there is motion implied: "Going to the store to get me a six-pack -- Go ahead", or may it be used even if there's no motion implied (just like the English phrase may): "Going to drink me a six-pack -- Go right ahead"? Thanks. 178.51.15.36 (talk) 21:23, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

That's all very interesting, but where's the question? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:38, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd forgot the question mark. Sorry about that. Just fixed that. The question is right before the question mark. Thanks. 178.51.15.36 (talk) 23:52, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

If you mean that the phrase could also be used figuratively, it does indeed seem like that. I found one example on Dutch Wikipedia where it was used as an encouragement for users to dare contributing with their own edits; Wikipedia:Voel je vrij en ga je gang (Wikipedia: Feel free and go ahead). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary confirms this. GalacticShoe (talk) 03:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Native Dutch speaker here. "Ga je gang" is a colloquial permission or encouragement to perform some action. Whether this action involves some movement is irrelevant. Usually it doesn't. Wiktionary mentions 5 senses for the word "gang" and senses 2 and 3 are often used figuratively. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:16, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks y'all. 178.51.15.36 (talk) 14:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done

January 18

Past participle of "to burn"

In my mind it is "burned", but I keep seeing it on Wikipedia as "burnt", which I consider an adjective. As a North American who spent years in London I find it *possible* that I merely hadn't noticed a small ENGVAR, and have been skipping the word in copyedits, but due to my current editing patterns I tend to see it in constructions like "the Nazis burnt all the synagogues" or "all the synagogues had been burnt by the Nazis", from which it would be a shame to detract with improper English.

Can someone reassure me that this usage is correct in standard British English? Thanks Elinruby (talk) 11:02, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Note that both forms can also be used as adjectives and I think "burnt" is generally preferred in Brit Eng? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

As long as people here tell me it is correct in some form of standard English I would be delighted to stop worrying about this. I'll check back in a few days, thanks. Elinruby (talk) 12:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Elinruby: When in doubt, check some reliable sources:

• Cambridge reports burnt and burned are both valid verb forms for the past tense and past participle (in British English), with the order reversed for American English.
• Collins notes that the "past tense and past participle is burned in American English, and burned or burnt in British English".
• dictionary.com lists verb forms as burned or burnt in American English, and burnt or burned for the British English version.
• Meriam-Webster is, I assume, American-focused, and lists burned or burnt as verb forms of burn, in that order.

All the above show burnt as an adjective in both English variants, and burned as a verb only. So your example of "the Nazis burnt all the synagogues" seems correct in both versions of English, although an American might prefer "burned" in that context. (Other English variants are available.) Bazza (talk) 12:21, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Meriam-Webster here says: "Both burned and burnt are acceptable forms of burn. Both words can be used as adjectives, such as "burnt toast" or "burned toast," and both are acceptable as the past tense, although "burned" is more common in American English."? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Martinevans123: Perhaps M-W is not such a WP:RS after all: that contradicts its own definition of burned. Bazza (talk) 13:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Perhaps we should both strike out. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:06, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Let me try rephrasing. If the sentence is "The Nazis had burnt down the synagogue", is there anything there that strikes anyone as wrong, or so distracting from the meaning of the sentence, that I should change it? It bothers me a bit, but I have already wrapped my mind around the fact that multiple cultures and educational systems have left me with a rather idiosyncratic ENGVAR, and if that is what this is, the topic area has actual issues with which I could more fruitfully and would rather concern myself. I see you are realizing why I wasn't sure, but that is the context for the question. Or is there agreement on what is the most reliable dictionary would be? Elinruby (talk) 14:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

"Burnt" is a verb per the OED [7]. You cannot probably find a better RS than that! Modocc (talk) 14:21, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

The sentence absolutely does not bother me (from a grammatical standpoint, of course: its content does). I regard that burnt as completely normal, and if I saw burned there, I would probably think "oh, that's an American writing that". ColinFine (talk) 15:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Given my stay in the US, it's entirely plausible that my English would have American elements.

I am hearing that "burnt" is correct and it seems the British are unanimous that it's standard English, ie there is no reason to change that verb. That's good; I am looking for certitude because yes, the content is disturbing enough. I'll check back in a few days to make sure there's no dissents. Thank you everyone for the brainpower. Elinruby (talk) 15:19, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

What's the contradiction? Nardog (talk) 01:19, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

banned user
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Certitude is difficult to achieve. Oxford English Dictionary says: The distinction in usage between the two modern forms of the pa. t., and pa. pple. is difficult to state with precision. Burnt is now the prevailing form, and its use is always permissible; burned is slightly archaic, and somewhat more formal in effect; it occurs more frequently as pa. t., or in combination with the auxiliary have than as ppl. adj.] The bracket at the end seems superfluous. 82.32.75.206 (talk) 15:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

really. I would have guessed the opposite, but apparently that just shows what I know. Interesting that this always happens with very basic words. I've had this in French with "sit", "shoe", and "name".

"Prevailing" would seem to be the way to go. Elinruby (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

The OED sense is talking about BrE, I presume? I guess I agree that "burnt" is acceptable in all forms, but I think I would use it mainly in fixed forms like "burnt offering". I would consider "burned" the main form.

I think I would find "burned" almost mandatory in cases that would correspond to a Romance-language imperfect tense. We talked as the fire burned, not *...burnt. Curious whether our British friends would agree with this last one at least. --Trovatore (talk) 17:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

"Burned" sounds more like past continuous to me, so yes better than "burnt" for a UK fire. But then I'm all burnt out over this one. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:07, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I really do find this particular point kind of interesting. It seems like there's an intuition that we both share that "burned" works better for this sentence. I wonder, is it more about the imperfective aspect, or is it that it's the intransitive use of "burn", or is it that this sense of "burn" is unaccusative (the fire not really having agency over its burning)? I wouldn't really have predicted that any of those would control which ending to use for the past. --Trovatore (talk) 20:34, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Is there a parallel here with spelled and spelt? As an Australian I routinely use spelt as the past participle of spell, but I have had it "corrected" to spelled several times by American editors. HiLo48 (talk) 00:54, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm British and have been accused of ignorance and illiteracy by Americans for using "spelt". "Smelt" would probably produce the same response. DuncanHill (talk) 01:44, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

So, in card games, are they dealed in the States? ;-)

And, more seriously, I still have trouble seeing "dove" rather than "dived". Bazza (talk) 11:06, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes. I often wonder for a moment how a pigeon got into the narrative ColinFine (talk) 11:54, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Spilled and spilt? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Girded/girt. 2A00:23C7:9C86:4301:DCCF:5E34:2FB:138D (talk) 13:44, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Here in Australia, the fourth line of our national anthem tells the world "Our home is girt by sea". We are very proud of being girt. HiLo48 (talk) 01:22, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Funny, I thought I knew "Waltzing Mathilda", but I don't remember that line. --Trovatore (talk) 21:20, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

In the spirit of MOS:COMMONALITY, spelt (except meaning the grain), smelt (except meaning the fish), and whilst are probably usually best avoided in Wikipedia article space, because their counterparts spelled, smelled, and while are generally acceptable to British readers whereas the former forms come across as affected or archaic to American readers (assuming they recognize them at all). In the other direction, we should probably prefer dived to dove and alternative to alternate (except in the meaning of "alternating"), for the reciprocal reason. --Trovatore (talk) 18:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure that is the spirit of WP:COMMONALITY. I'm sure American readers are as comfortable with the British English variations in spelling, which aren't seen by their writers as archaic or "affected", as British (and other) English readers have got(ten) with American variants. The spirit of WP:ENGVAR encourages us to bear in mind an article's natural, agreed or original variant, to achieve consistency regardless, and use WP:COMMONALITY when choosing vocabulary. Bazza (talk) 19:40, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

"Whilst" is alive and well on social media, where users typically (there are some noble exceptions) seem to have little appreciation of the normal rules and conventions of grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. I've asked people why they use "whilst" where "while" would do just as well, and they tell me that "while" is for informal use, while "whilst" is for formal use. How their atrocious utterances qualify as formal use, and how they seem oblivious to all the other rules but adhere rigidly to this fictitious one, escape me, but there you have it. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:48, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, I tend (not rigidly) to use "while" before words starting with a consonant, and "whilst" before words with a vowel, but that's just me. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.24.47.60 (talk) 21:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Do Brits say “Who smelt it dealt it”? —Tamfang (talk) 02:18, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course! DuncanHill (talk)

January 19

Do Americans typically pronounce "Bologna" (the place) as "Baloney"?

I once remember someone on YouTube making a comment in a video about how it seemed appropriate that this guy got his degree from the "University of Baloney". Related to some dubious medical treatment claims that a guy was making for fun and profit. Iloveparrots (talk) 03:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

No. It was a joke. Acroterion (talk) 03:38, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

We do have an article on Bologna sausage (no "i") that tells us it is informally known as baloney. It's my impression that that informal naming is in the USA. HiLo48 (talk) 03:55, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Dictionaries show /bəˈloʊni/ for the lowercase (but not anglicized) bolognia bologna. It might have not entirely been jocular. Nardog (talk) 03:59, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I've never seen it spelled "Bolognia" with an i, just Bologna. Is there an alternate or obsolete Anglicized spelling? Acroterion (talk) 04:05, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Just a note: Googling for "bolognia" gets hits overwhelmingly for a certain dermatologist, and some of the images that accompany the results are...not altogether lovely.

If you Google (or Google Maps) instead for "bolognia -dermatology", there's not much. There's an apartment complex in Mexico, some spot in Colombia, and a TripAdvisor report of an alleged spot in the province of Bologna, but I'm pretty sure that one's just someone's misspelling. --Trovatore (talk) 06:39, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh that was a typo, probably copied from the OP. Nardog (talk) 11:02, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. That was just my tyop. My bad. Fixed now. --Iloveparrots (talk) 12:12, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

How did "Bologna" become "Baloney" anyway? I remember seeing a question on here about gabagool a few months back. Same sort of thing? Iloveparrots (talk) 16:23, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Here's the etymonline entry for baloney. Unlike "gabagool", it doesn't really make sense as being derived from a regional Italian pronunciation. It seems to be a 19th-century American pronunciation variant, as explained here. I wish I could utter the line "Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not." in an authentic Lugosi accent at this point. Deor (talk) 16:56, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if this is related to a systematic pronunciation of final unstressed <a> as /iː/ which occurs in some accents (compare Tom Dooley). --Trovatore (talk) 19:37, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Also Grand Ole Opry. Deor (talk) 20:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Does that mean Missoura is a hypercorrection? —Tamfang (talk) 18:13, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Just by way of coincidence, today I watched part of a rerun of the February 18, 2001, episode of the American version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and this was a $100 question: "The name of which luncheon meat is used as an interjection that means 'nonsense'? (A) Pastrami (B) Corned beef (C) Baloney (D) Pimento loaf." So according to this episode's writers, the meat is not only pronounced but spelled as "baloney". --142.112.220.136 (talk) 23:14, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Despite the anecdote above, the commercial sausage product is universally labeled "bologna" in the United States, though widely pronounced "baloney". In my experience, Americans usually pronounce the Italian city as "Bolon-ya". Cullen328 (talk) 22:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

As another American, this has been my general experience with it as well. I imagine that people who don't know that the meat is spelled "bologna" wouldn't have any reservations about looking up how Bologna the city should be pronounced, while those who do know that the meat is spelled that way would probably have the wherewithal to check that the city is not pronounced like the meat. GalacticShoe (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Homophone-like combinations

How is it called when words become homophones only in combination with other words, e.g.: king's lair vs. king's slayer, Russian ненадолго (nenadolgo, "briefly") and не надо лгать (ne nado lgat, "don't lie"), etc. rather than in its own right? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 08:56, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

If you read the article which you linked, you'll find the answer is "homophone", sometimes "homophonous phrase". Further down the article, the Homophone#Same-sounding_phrases section has some examples.

I don't agree that your example king's lair vs. king's slayer is homophonous, at least in my native British English. lair is pronounced /lɛər/, whilst slayer is /ˈsleɪ.ər/. The merged "s" sounds in king's slayer are longer than the single "s" in king's lair: see Gemination#English. Bazza (talk) 11:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

In the American south they might pronounce "lair" like "layer", but otherwise not. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:16, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Even if they were pronounced the same, those two phrases would still not be homophones, for a couple reasons. First, "king's" ends in a voiced /z/ whereas "slayer" starts with an unvoiced /s/.

Second, while gemination is usually not phonemic in English, it can become so at word boundaries. The usual example is "night rain" versus "night train". I think I might have had a much easier time learning gemination in Italian if someone had thought to mention that example to me. --Trovatore (talk) 22:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

English questions

1. Are there any dialects that pronounce suffix -logy with a hard G?
2. Are there any dialects that pronounce words like unit and user with /u/ sound?
3. Are there any dialects that lack aspiration for unvoiced stops?
4. Are there any dialects that do not use schwa?
5. Are there any words in English where word-final ⟨a⟩ is pronounced as /ɑː/?
6. Are there any dialects that pronounce word Christmas as /krɪsmæs/ rather than /krɪsməs/?
7. Are there any words in English where letter C is pronounced as /k/ between ⟨s⟩ and a front vowel?

--40bus (talk) 22:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

1. No: -logy words are usually "scholarly" words derived from Greek, so not subject to insular dialectic variations. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.104.88 (talk) 22:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

7. scan, sceptic, perhaps scytale, many other sca- words. --Amble (talk) 23:17, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

a is usually not counted as a front vowel. —Tamfang (talk) 02:24, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if scare would count. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:27, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm going by what I find at front vowel. It lists the near-open front unrounded vowel [æ], as in "scan". --Amble (talk) 01:41, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Good point. Well, we'll have to say that English ca follows its etymology; the softening of /ke/ is far in the Romance past. – Curiously, English cat is rendered in Japanese as kyatto, but I am not aware of such an effect after other consonants. —Tamfang (talk) 18:32, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I thought it was due to Japanese lacking a native [æ], but I might be mistaken. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:58, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

5. wikt:spa and other examples at wikt:Rhymes:English/ɑː --Amble (talk) 23:21, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

3. Many Scottish accents have weak or no aspiration. See Scottish English § Phonology. This may be a rather quickly shifting phenomenon in English accents -- I believe Early Modern English had unaspirated onset stops (see e.g. Phonological history of English § Up to the American–British split). SamuelRiv (talk) 01:23, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

3 cont.: Note also that in any accents I can think of, stops are unaspirated if they follow a fricative in a consonant cluster (superscript "=" is a nonstandard transcription for "unaspirated"): e.g. "peak" [pʰi:k], "speak" [sp⁼i:k]; "outtake" [ɑʊʔ.tʰeɪk], "mistake" [mɪs.t⁼eɪk], "rifting" [rɪft⁼ɪŋ]; I think even [xt] may have this property for English accents or assimilations with a velar fricative (but since Scottish is the most prominent one that comes to my head, and many Scottish accents don't aspirate much anyway, I couldn't guess either way). SamuelRiv (talk) 19:19, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

4. Certain areas and times of Middle English (Medieval) certainly; modern areas of Indian English maybe in most ways you'd mean: the syllabic-timed stress pattern matches a tendency to pronounce the unstressed parts of words that most accents reduce to a schwa. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

January 20

Usage of 'Du' in German

Recently I have come across the German form 'Du' on several occasions, which seems to be a more polite form of adressing a single person than lower-case 'du'. First in online advertisements, and second in an e-mail after having ordered some goods from a small, independent German company. My active command of German leaves something to be desired, but my impression was that all adressing between unacquainted adults would use 'Sie', similar to the usage in Romance languages, but possibly there are nuances I am not aware of. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:56, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that I've seen fairly impersonal (e.g. workplace) Italian communications that used uppercase Tu rather than the more usual Lei (or in some regions voi). I think I saw it on a flyer at a school, addressed to the teachers. I'd just be speculating as to the rationale, but it's conceivable it has political connotations. Historically there was a tu di sinistra used on the political left (whereas Lei was considered bourgeois and voi possibly fascist). --Trovatore (talk) 01:27, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I would add that it's quite common for mass communications to use tu; few would take offense at being thus addressed by, say, a product manual, or an advertisement. --Trovatore (talk) 01:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Wakuran -- I've had quite amicable discussions on French Wikipedia (though my French is not fluent), except with one semi-annoying person. I wondered if he was subtly disrespecting me by addressing me with "tu", but he informed me that there's a quasi-universal "tu" among French Wikipedia collaborators. I don't think that random people who got into conversations on the street or on transit in French cities would necessarily start off with "tu"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:52, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I've also found that there's generally a tu for Internet discussions, in Italian. There's also a tu da palestra for people working out in the gym. It's all very complicated and mine-filled; I'm not sure you'd use that tu for your boss, even if you happened to be waiting for the machine he was using. But that's all speculation as I haven't really been in that situation.

But the general tension that makes it so hard for non-Italians to pick the right word is that tu can be insultingly familiar, whereas lei can be stuffy and pretentious, and there's not necessarily a genuinely safe choice. Depends on age, context, maybe even how the other person is dressed. Luckily they don't expect much of Americans so you get a little bit of rhythm for your mistakes. --Trovatore (talk) 07:36, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

The usage of du has generally become more wide-spread and accepted over the last decades, in particular since the 90s, I guess. It is standard in the German wikipedia (de:Wikipedia:Warum sich hier alle duzen). In advertising, it would depend somewhat on the target demographic; Ikea was a bit of a pioneer there as the usage of du transports a kind of Scandinavian flavour. I'm also not surprised that a small company would use du; again it would depend somewhat on the market they're in. As to capitalisation, there has been some confusion on this, with the reform of 1996 first abolishing capitalisation of du and the change of 2006 permitting it again. The current recommendation is to capitalise du when addressing the reader directly (and not doing so when reporting direct speech where someone else is addressed) [8]. --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:27, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

In the example addressing Elly, the text violates its own recommendation in writing Dir while not addressing the reader directly (except in case the reader is the new chairwoman of the Bach Association).  --Lambiam 10:26, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

As it's apparently Swedish-inspired, it might be worth noting that here in Sweden, the "polite forms" Ni/ Er has made somewhat of a slight comeback, lately, mostly in retail, advertising and official messages from companies, etc. It has been interpreted as a return to the older system, although others have remarked that the older system mostly was a complex system similar to English, where the polite way was to address a person by last name or title, and the "ni"/ "er" forms often a way for the upper classes to talk down to the lower classes, and despite being formal, not being particularly polite. (Most people still won't adress a teacher of doctor with "ni", though.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:05, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

But will a knight use it to address others? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 02:24, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Only at knight-time. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:15, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Most Polish people my age have been taught to always capitalize ty ('you') and twój ('your'), with all their inflected forms, regardless of context. Some do it quite mindlessly: the word ci is both the short form of the dative case of ty ('to you') and the virile plural form of the demonstrative pronoun ('these'); I've seen ci capitalized in both of these senses, even though it doesn't make any sense to capitalize it in the latter sense. — Kpalion^(talk) 10:08, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Does "virile plural" mean "masculine plural"? Virile and masculine overlap in meaning quite a lot, but virile is not used in grammar. ColinFine (talk) 11:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

In Polish, there is actually a further distinction – within the "masculine" gender, there is a sub-category of masculine nouns referring to male people, as opposed to male animals or inanimates that just happen to be grammatically masculine. I've seen the term "virile" for this "human masculine" or "personal masculine" category – it's also used that way on the Wiktionary page linked to by Kpalion. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:13, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

When speaking of the Russian language, masculine singular nouns for which the accusative and genitive are the same are usually said to be "animate", and the others "inanimate"... AnonMoos (talk) 23:29, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I think it's the other way around. The condition of animacy determines whether the accusative is the same as the nominative (inanimates) or the genitive (animates). From Russian declension: The category of animacy is relevant in Russian nominal and adjectival declension. Specifically, the accusative has two possible forms in many paradigms, depending on the animacy of the referent. For animate referents (sentient species, some animals, professions and occupations), the accusative form is generally identical to the genitive form (genitive-accusative syncretism). For inanimate referents (simple lifeforms, objects, states, notions), the accusative form is identical to the nominative form (nominative-accusative syncretism). This principle is relevant for masculine singular nouns of the second declension ... and adjectives, and for all plural paradigms (with no gender distinction). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:54, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Latin alphabet

Why has Japanese never been switched to be written only in romaji? --40bus (talk) 22:17, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Romanization of Japanese#As a replacement for the Japanese writing system mentions that in the Meiji era, some scholars actually advocated this, but it never caught on. I can imagine there are a few reasons why, including the difficulty in switching fully, general mixed attitudes on Westernization, and also the ambiguity that might arise when homophonous terms with different kanji get condensed into the same romaji. GalacticShoe (talk) 22:34, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Read Chapter 9 of "Writing Systems" by Geoffrey Sampson for some of the issues that would be involved. It would certainly eliminate a lot of complexity in the current Japanese writing system, but it would make a large amount of scholarly/technical vocabulary confusingly homophonous, and be a huge cultural break with the last 1500 years or so of Japanese cultural traditions. In the case of Turkish, Vietnamese, Korean and so on, the previous writing systems (Arabic, Chu Nom, Chinese characters) had only been mastered by a relatively small elites, and were not fully suitable for teaching large numbers of people to read using basically the language that they spoke. That's not the case in Japan, which has a high literacy rate... AnonMoos (talk) 02:28, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Why do you think it should? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 04:15, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Good point. There's no particular reason to, and many Japanese speakers seem to be well accustomed to English. Also, they do use western-style numbers. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:38, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

And maybe because people want to be able to read their spouses' diaries.--Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 11:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

As there's no reason to do so. Japan has kana which has a similar role to Romanisation, but is better as it much more closely matches how Japanese is spoken. Romanisation is always an approximation, as can be seen from the variety of Romanisation schemes that have been devised, with none clearly correct or best.--2A04:4A43:900F:F1A6:10B1:1D0F:14BE:DD6A (talk) 11:30, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Additional to the above, it's worth highlighting why Romanisations are so varied and all wrong in some way. It's as the Latin alphabet, i.e. Roman letters, have such wildly differing ways of being used in e.g. European languages.

So a Frenchman goes to Japan and devises a Romanisation based on French. A German based on German. A Scot based on Scots. Etc. No matter how close an approximation each is, they will all be different from each other. None is the correct or best; which gets used depends as much on luck or politics as any features of the particular scheme.--2A04:4A43:900F:F1A6:525:195:3223:C1B5 (talk) 21:41, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know. Hepburn romanization mostly has the consonant sounds similar to English and the vowel sounds similar to Latin or Italian. It's still widely used among Westerners without necessarily having either of the languages as their mother tongue. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:58, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

January 22

Monogenesis hypothesis

According to Proto-human language, it didn't gain much traction in academia. But, if I understand correctly, initial speakers of every language family must have spoken the language of their predecessors to develop a new language. With that in mind, correlation with early human migration routes must produce a chronological chain of emergence of every language family and language isolates from another ultimately leading to the proto-human language, probably somewhere in northern Africa (similar to evolutionary universal common ancestor). Does such reasoning validate proto-human language? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 20:05, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

No, it doesn't, for two reasons. First, that assumes that language developed before humans spread, but that is not necessarily the case. But the stronger argument is that signed languages do not necessarily follow the pattern you describe - in fact, we have solid recent evidence of the genesis of at least one such: Nicaraguan Sign Language. ColinFine (talk) 21:46, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

The origins of some spoken creole languages are almost as extreme as the origin of Nicaraguan Sign Language... AnonMoos (talk) 23:27, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly, pidgins and creole languages have had their own monogenetic theory, now generally discarded by linguists.  --Lambiam 10:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

The Saramaccan language is known to some linguists as a language which has zero mutual comprehensibility with any of its source languages, and where it's often difficult to even trace the origins of words unless you're a specialized linguist (as opposed to many other creoles, such as Hatian Creole, or Tok Pisin, where no matter how limited the mutual comprehensibility with the source language, it's easy to guess the origins of many words). AnonMoos (talk) 23:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Language almost certainly predates modern Homo sapiens by several rungs on our evolutionary ladder, based on the evolution of breathing and mouth structures. (by some definition of speech this was always believed to some extent, but to a sapiens level of articulation the review is newer: Boe et al 2019; lay writeup in [The Atlantic 2019-12-12.) The relative complexity of such language is debated, as there is little evidence of symbolic understandinding or spiritual reflection in non-sapiens hominids. BMC Q&A 2017

I agree however that there's nothing to be found through current historical linguistics techniques beyond an order of 10,000 years. Save for discovering new archaeology, like for example if that idea of extracting recorded audio from pottery engraving had been fruitful. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:18, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

SamuelRiv -- Some have interpreted archaeological behavioral modernity as the final transition to fully-modern human language from something that wasn't yet fully-modern human language (though doubtless still far more complex than anything chimpanzees can manage). AnonMoos (talk) 23:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

212.180.235.46 -- Linguistic reconstruction produces useful results only to about 10,000 years ago at most, so your assumptions can't be factually cross-checked. AnonMoos (talk) 23:27, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

To test the hypothesis that two languages are related need not involve an intermediate step of reconstructing a common ancestor. One can craft a sophisticated metric for measuring the similarity of two languages. Applying it to a wide variety of pairs of languages that are not known or strongly suspected to be related will result in a probability distribution. Two reconstructed proto-languages, say Proto-Afroasiatic and Proto-Indo-European, could then (conceivably) turn out to have a greater similarity than can reasonably be ascribed to coincidence, while the footprint of any shared ancestry is too thinly spread out over the languages to aid in further reconstruction.  --Lambiam 09:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I was including that in the 10,000 year round number (which some linguists would consider excessively generous even so). The Amerind languages as posited by Joseph Greenberg have not achieved scholarly respectability as a historically based grouping, as also the proposals of Sergei Starostin... AnonMoos (talk) 23:54, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

P.S. Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afroasiatic were not geographically adjacent, while Proto-Afroasiatic (as opposed to Proto-Semitic) is not very securely reconstructible, which are big problems right off. Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic may have been adjacent. AnonMoos (talk) 23:57, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

My main point was that showing statistically significant similarity need not require reconstruction. Here is a trivial example. The following seemingly random strings cannot have been generated independently; there are more commonalities than can be ascribed to coincidence. Yet it is impossible to make a reasonable guess at a common source.

OJHFEUOTIYZYVFOFUVNZGCZRYMLASBMVESKMBIDZKVVRLCECGSRUUOCCFCOCXGCAJ

OGTDINSCBJJALKEUZKKBGAURAOJYSFMWPFZMHEBQGVVRDWERYJQQUVFKOHUFBSCPD

^                   ^  ^    ^ ^    ^     ^^^  ^     ^         ^  

There also does not have to be a generally accepted reconstruction for the language families to be compared; one can (theoretically) develop similarity measures between whole families. The cradles need not have been geographically close if the founders of the proto-languages could have trekked the distance from a common ancestor site in a limited number of generations. Not being geographically close is in fact an advantage; otherwise similarities may be ascribed to contamination by contact; cf. Sprachbund.  --Lambiam 17:24, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I should have said Proto-Finno-Ugric, not Proto-Uralic. As for your method, that's basically known in linguistic circles as mass comparison... AnonMoos (talk) 00:26, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

What does M/S mean in front of Indian company names?

I was reading through some Indian railway literature and noticed that almost every time a company name is mentioned, it is preceded by M/S, i.e. "Three years ago, new electric equipment made by M/S Acme India Ltd. was installed." What does the M/S stand for? --188.23.206.25 (talk) 20:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

According to M/S: Messrs., especially in India as a prefix to a firm or company name. Your example doesn't really capture that. --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:52, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, didn't see that article since I typed it as m/s which redirects to a different article. Interestingly, it seems to be used also used for large corporations while for me Messrs. would sound more like a mom and pop business. --188.23.206.25 (talk) 21:03, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Only if mom and pop were both misters. It's rather obsolete in Britain, with the exception of legal firms. Alansplodge (talk) 22:51, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

It might depend on the surroundings, but I guess a pop and pop business might pop. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:16, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

January 24

Full stops in Chinese textbook

1912 textbook of the Republic of China, with punctuation marks to the right of characters

In this picture, used as an illustration for our article Chinese punctuation, the little circles indicating full stops abound at the end of the visible text (i.e. to the left). Here's the text repeated with simplified characters. (Minus the end of the previous chapter and the last character, which I would regard as part of the next sentence):
铁达尼邮船遇险记(二)
船既遇险、船张督率船员、百计救护 。既知无可为、乃发令下小艇。小艇既备、又令男子退后、妇孺登艇。男子。闻。令。卽。退、。穆然。无。有。喧。哗 。者。。
Up to the last two columns, the text makes sense to me, as well as to Google Translate. But the abundance of circles in the last two columns distorts their meaning, which, with the circles removed, Google Translate gives as “The men retreated after hearing the order, but no one was making any noise.”. What's the purpose of the circles? Creatively express the bubbles from the drowning ship? But that would be strange, given that this is a textbook which supposedly teaches proper writing. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 14:42, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I guess it could be emphasis, similar to bold Latin writing. Another idea is that ○ would be similar to a Japanese "maru" sign and signify that the marked text is correctly written. [9] 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:44, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your two suggestions. For the second one, I don't see a reason here, and particularly not to mark。every。single。word。 as correct. But the first one makes sense. I wonder why they would do that in this case. Was it that the rule “women and children first” was so foreign to the readers of the book then that it needed to be particularly pointed out that all men followed it ungrudgingly? ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 16:05, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Might it be loud exclamations, similar to an exclamation mark? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:25, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

That seems not so likely for a sentence that says “... no one was making any noise”. I've settled on a combination of your first two answers: If the 丸印 was used in China then, it could have carried the connotation “this is the correct comportment.” ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 07:15, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

We'll see if someone with bigger expertise comes along. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:54, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

January 25

Telescopic ladder

banned user
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The Daily Star Sunday of 31 December featured the usual word ladder - a four letter word has to be transformed to another four-letter word in six steps, each involving the change of one letter. There is a twist, however - the new word is the opposite of the old one. That week's puzzle was DAWN>DARN>TARN>TURN>TURK>TUSK>DUSK. What's the minimum number of steps in which a four-letter word (e.g. FAST) can be transformed to its opposite (in this case SLOW)? 2A00:23C7:9C86:4301:DDA8:3416:7CEB:4CEA (talk) 11:53, 25 January 2024 (UTC) Three? DAD>DAM>DOM>MOM? Oops, you specified four-letter words. I'm reasonably sure, with all the four-letter words out there, there must be a four-step example. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:27, 25 January 2024 (UTC) Voila: KIND>MIND>MEND>MEAD>MEAN. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:37, 25 January 2024 (UTC) There will always be multiple four-step paths for such transformations, but it is quite possible that for a given pair of words, all of the paths will contain at least one 4-letter sequence that is not a word in the English language. Someone IT-savvy (so not me) could probably write a computer procedure utilising a digital dictionary to investigate this. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.24.47.60 (talk) 16:36, 25 January 2024 (UTC) MALE>MALL>GALL>GILL>GIRL. Okay, so "girl" and "male" are not entirely opposite ("male" is not age limited), but it's still a pretty good example. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:15, 25 January 2024 (UTC) WELL>HELL. For example, as in "it went well" vs "it was hell". Modocc (talk) 20:03, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

January 26

Hungarians: Is EMMA (Women’s Association for Birth Rights in Hungary) an acronym?

Not speaking Hungarian, I failed to find it out: Is EMMA (Women’s Association for Birth Rights in Hungary) an acronym? Or is there another reason given why the association is named this way? --KnightMove (talk) 01:51, 26 January 2024 (UTC)