Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 December 8

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December 8

Development of German Sibilants

I'm wondering about the development of German /s/, /z/ and /ʃ/. My understanding is that PGr *s voiced in certain positions and palatalized in others. Looking through etymologies, it seems to me like the most likely order is that /z/ formed first, word-initially and intervocally, followed or simultaneous with a change in other positions to a palatalized sound (I'll use /ʃ/). When this second change happened, original *sk merged to /ʃ/ entirely. Then, later, /ʃ/ depalatalized in non-initials before another consonant positions (/kastən/ in Standard German versus /kaʃtən/ in Swiss German), probably with the introduction of the new /s/ formed via the consonant shift. I guessed it was a depalatalization in most dialects, rather than a further development of Swiss German, because of words like Fisch and loeschen (which demands that *s palatalized at least before *k in these positions, and it seemed likely that it was in all positions rather than word-initially-plus-before-*k).

Well, I thought this explained it well enough for my purposes, until I ran into schoen/sollen, which were skoni/skulan; two sk- clusters where one become /z/ and the other /ʃ/. So I'm wondering what I missed, or if this is just one of those weird anomalies. Also, it'd be nice to know how right or wrong I was in my overall analysis. Lsfreak (talk) 00:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a source, but to me the most likely explanation would be that, in the Germanic dialects that became standard German and Dutch, skulan must have undergone a simplification to sulan or sullan before the other processes you describe took place. It's not so surprising that this word would have gone through this unique change if it was already in very frequent use as a modal auxiliary verb. The most frequently used words often undergo greater simplification than other words. Marco polo (talk) 02:08, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

"Linguistic memory"?

Hello. I have noticed that languages seem to have a "memory", of sounds that formerly existed but no longer exist in the modern language. Native speakers of that language can usually reproduce a limitted number of such sounds fairly well even though they no longer exist in their language; for example, I taught French for several years and I found that certain sounds, such as nasalisation or the [œ] vowel, native English speakers produce quite well overall, but speakers of languages such as, say, Russian, struggle with; could this be because English is descended from French? Another example: English speakers can produce [x] much better than Italian speakers, presumably due to Germanic influence. What could be causing this? I am not a linguist, just a foreign language teacher! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 03:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

"English is descended from French"? Hardly. I'd think a good place to start investigating this is, as you probably realise, in articles on linguistics, and in particular on phonemes. Not really my subject though - perhaps someone else can expand on this (or tell me I'm entirely wrong). AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I really don't think that such a "memory" (or influence of the ghosts of vanished sounds) exists. However, one thing that does sometimes happen is that a foreign sound can be more readily accepted if it fills a symmetric "gap" in the pattern of the native repertoire. So early modern English had the sounds [tʃ], [dʒ], and [ʃ], which might have made it more receptive to loanwords from modern French with [ʒ]... AnonMoos (talk) 04:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, very few French vowels are found in English and visca-versa. Many English vowel sounds are diphthongs, while nearly all of the basic French vowels are monophthongs without an English equivalent. I am not sure of historical English and French, but in modern terms it is actually quite difficult for native English speakers to get French "right" because of the difficulty in pronouncing the correct vowels. Many English speakers tend to substitute the approximate English vowel for the French vowel when first learning the language. --Jayron32 04:19, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

(Edit Conflicts) Although English is not, as AndyTheGrump has already said, descended from French (it is a West Germanic language), it has over the last millennium adopted a sizeable fraction of its vocabulary from French, in part because of the Norman Conquest. Moreover, during at least the last couple of centuries French (due in part to France's proximity and in part to her cultural and diplomatic prominence) has been the most usual living foreign language taught in Britain, a significant proportion of British people were/are therefore taught how to pronounce it, and many of them would (or do) use the occasional French phrase even in English conversation; consequently, even British-English speakers who had/have not been formally taught French will have likely heard and perhaps imitated some French spoken approximately correctly.

'X' is a less common but nevertheless well-employed letter in English: it's not clear what actual sound you refer to here - if you mean the gutteral "ch", note that although this doesn't figure in "English English", it's used in Scottish-English (notably in the common word 'loch') and also in Yiddish, so many UK English speakers beyond those categories are familiar with it.

Your notion that languages may have a "memory" of no-longer-extant sounds is right to an extent, though I think not in the sense you mean, in that before those sounds disappeared they may have caused changes to adjacent sounds, and those changes may have persisted - see in particular Laryngeal theory that supposes the former existence of some sounds in Proto-Indo-European (which itself evolved into daughter languages before the invention of writing and is therefore completely unrecorded) that have not themselves persisted into any of PIE's living descendents, but which have left clues in the form of some otherwise-unexplainable vowel pronunciations. When previously unknown written records of Hittite were discovered (some 3 millennia after that PIE-descended language had itself died out), it became evident that those 'larygeal' sounds had survived in Hittite and had therefore really existed as the theory proposed. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 05:15, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's quite common for educated people in Britain – from whatever background – to acquire the sound [x] (voiceless velar fricative) at some point, so they can use it in foreign names such as Bach. I don't know that it's a "memory" of German; it just seems to be one of those things that people tend to pick up. Lfh (talk) 11:28, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

[x] is, of course, an extremely common sound in Welsh, so English people can quite readily hear it if they want to! -- Arwel Parry (talk) 18:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

In my part of England the [x] sound is common anyway. No need to visit the valleys for it :) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:16, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly! Marnanel (talk) 22:22, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Down in London, we wind-up the Jocks by pronouncing "Loch" as "Lock". Works every time. Alansplodge (talk) 15:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Litfaßsäule

Why is “Litfaßsäule” still spelled with an “ß”, even if it is pronounced with a short “a”? --84.61.148.133 (talk) 11:24, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Is “Litfaßsäule” the last German word with an “ß” after a short vowel? --84.61.148.133 (talk) 11:24, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Litfaß is the name of the inventor of those columns; as names are not affected by the german spelling reform in 1996, the spelling of "Litfaßsäule" hasn't changed. So there will be many other names with a short vowel before a ß. -- Bgfx (talk) 13:20, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Without the ß it would be Litfasssäule -- I don't think I've ever seen a word with three s's in a row. Looie496 (talk) 17:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

There are words with 3 s's in a row in German since the spelling reform was implemented. An example would be Nussschale. Another would be Fitnessstudio (although the fitness part is borrowed). Rimush (talk) 18:01, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, German allows triple consonants, as long as one of them belongs to another word component than the other two. For example Bussstation or Sauerstoffflasche (oxygen bottle). Swedish, however, does not allow this. If a triple consonant would occur in Swedish, it is shortened into a double one. In Finnish this isn't even an issue, because Finnish words, or word components, can't end in a double consonant without a terminating vowel after it. JIP | Talk 20:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Bussstation isn't a word in German, because Bus as well as Station are spelled with only one s (the far more common term is Bushaltestelle, anyway). Oddly, the first two results for Bussstation on Google mention Umeå and Piteå, which I know to be Swedish cities - maybe they are misspellings (even though Buss is spelled with two s in Swedish, but you mentioned a rule and you're the Swedish expert so there :P). Another example with three f's from German is Schifffahrt Rimush (talk) 21:33, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Triple consonants are more common in the Swiss variant of German orthography, which always replaces ß by ss.

ser:Hans Adler|Hans]] Adler 13:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC) Is “Litfaßsäule” the most common German word still spelled with an “ß” after a short vowel? --84.61.182.248 (talk) 19:15, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Possibly, but only if your question is interpreted in a specific way:

• There are plenty of words with ß after two short vowels. (The spelling reform did not change the spelling for these words.)
• There is a number of words which are pronounced either with a long vowel or with a short one, with different defaults depending on the region: short in the north, long in the south. Examples: Spaß (fun), Ruß (grime, soot). Since the south is linguistically dominant (more speakers, and the dialects are closer to the standard language), the spelling with ß is the "correct" one. Since the new spelling presumably can't invalidate the northern pronunciation, the answer to your question, when evaluated in Hamburg, would be: No, Spaß and Ruß are more common.

By the way, while the name Litfaß was not changed in the reform, and therefore the spelling Litfaßsäule was not changed, another name was changed: Narziß (Narcissus) became Narziss. Therefore Narzißmus (narcissism) is now spelled Narzissmus. Hans Adler 13:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

PS: There is also a case in which the short pronunciation won (in Germany): Erdgeschoss (ground floor). I am from southern Germany and pronounce this with a long o. Apparently this is not an idiosyncrasy: Austrian orthography has not followed the switch, so the word is still spelled Erdgeschoß in Austria. Hans Adler 13:55, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

The only effect the word Liftfaßsäule has on me, even all these years after not learning German actively has been to refer to those things when I see them around campus with that very German word, as opposed to the English word for them. The Russian Christopher Lilly 04:40, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

How long is a moment?

People always tell me to "wait a moment". --Aspie aspie (talk) 12:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not rigidly defined any more, though according to our article it was once defined as "1.5 minutes or 1/40 of an hour". That seems too long for me these days; I'd use "moment" for lengths of time of no more than a couple of seconds. Matt Deres (talk) 14:16, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Although it's in common usage meaning 'a short period of time' I think that it can be more accurately defined as 'a period of experience that is indivisible for the person experiencing it'.

People commonly talk of 'living in the moment' or 'the present moment'.

Although we have increasingly accurate mechanisms for the measurement of time the rate at which we experience it passing varies by individual and activity. We've all had the experience of time either dragging or flying and meditators or sports people 'in the zone' can pack a huge amount of experience into a short time. The root of the word is the latin momentum which in this context can be translated as 'movement', i.e. a sort of personal quantum of time. Try reading a book like Making Time by Steve Taylor for a much more eloquent analysis. Blakk and ekka 15:55, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That's not the same usage, though. "Living in the moment" is just another way of saying "living in the present" or even "being engaged"; the OP is specifically asking about the phrase "waiting a moment". The closest analogue would be "waiting a minute", which, although minute can be described with as much precision as required, means "waiting a few moments" (i.e. anywhere from 30 seconds to (about) three minutes). Matt Deres (talk) 18:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The emphasis is on brevity but I think it is nonspecific. I've seen "moment" to equate to 30 minutes! Generally I'm told I could "wait" if I want—it will just take a moment. Fifteen minutes later I find myself reflecting on the range of time implied by the word moment. Bus stop (talk) 18:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

A moment is probably a smidgen over a tick. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't imply that moment was being used to mean the length of time you were left waiting. It can be that in the speaker's mind moment means nothing more than 150 seconds (just to pick a number), but that he was exaggerating when he said "it will just take a moment".—msh210℠ 18:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

When someone references a "moment" they are probably understating or underestimating the time required. Bus stop (talk) 19:23, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

A moment is a short amount of time. What you consider short might differ from what another person does, and what counts as short might be different depending on the activity (e.g., if your roommate asks you to wait a moment while he runs across the street to grab his laundry, a moment might be several minutes; if he asks you to hold a heavy box for a moment while he gets his keys out of his pocket, several minutes would definitely exceed a moment). rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:01, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it most commonly means "please wait a length of time which I'm not specifying in advance but I'm estimating will not be long enough to annoy you unless you're unreasonably impatient"? That would certainly be the usual British usage. Blakk and ekka 19:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

A "moment" or a "minute" in colloquial usage implies a "reasonable" short wait rather than something literal. An older expression is "2 seconds". In a similar vein, there's this one:

Q: What is the longest word in the English language?

A: The word that follows the statement, "Now for a word from our sponsor."

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:02, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

(c'mon Bugs, everybody who's anybody knows that the longest word in the English language is smiles!) rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

??? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

(it has a mile between the first and last letters) rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:43, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yipe! I fell right into that one. It's been too long since elementary school. :) That's a cousin to, "Which state is round on both ends and high in the middle?" and "Why does it take so long to run from second base to third base?" :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• This question is the subject of the Sorites paradox, also known as the paradox of the heap, which examines the linguistic problems arising from vague predicates. In short, the answer is, if the definition of "moment" bothers you, avoid using the word. - DustFormsWords (talk) 06:30, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

One of the many things about time that has made me curious, is why the SI people refer to the second as the Metric unit of time, when anyone knows there is very littl metric about time in the way the other base ten type units are. It appears they could fiddle with the good old pound and mile, but something that always affects everyday life would be too much, and rather than cause chaos by trying to get people to change to some ridiculous base ten type time system, time itself bet them, and soundly I hope, giving us at least one vestige of our glorious Imperial system which should never have been touched in the first place. As for the idea of a moment, to me mostly, it is say a few seconds, and most uses of the word moment would to me refer to those lengths of time well under a minute - but again, there are many different meanings to it, and just as the word era could refer to the Canterbury Rugby teams Ranfurly shield era of the 1980's, lasting three years, it could also refer to the glorious era of the 63 year reign of Queen Victoria, or even longer, the thousand year era of Rome from its founding around 753 BC to its fall in 410AD. So some of these time terms are given as less definite to be used at the person's own discretion - although even my use of a thousand years to describe what is more like 1162 years - I believe - ( my understanding is you don't add the BC years to the AD years , but go one year less because there was no year zero ) - somethings we round up or down - even when using a more definite term. The Russian Christopher Lilly 04:51, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

use of commas

I have a simple editing question about something that keeps coming up as I wander around.

• The article Andrew Stevens contains the sentence...

He is the only child of actress Stella Stevens and her former husband Noble Herman Stephens, both natives of Mississippi.

I think a comma is needed between husband and Noble. The result would read... ...her former husband, Noble Herman Stephans, both..... At the same time, (I'm not sure why) but I don't think a comma is needed between actress Stella Stevens. What I am searching for is a guideline for future use. The comma would signify that pause in speech one would make after reading the word husband. Thanks...Buster7 (talk) 14:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

My take on this would be that the husband's name is not essential to the meaning of the sentence, so it can be considered parenthetical, which is indicated by commas. The name Stella Stevens, however, is essential to the meaning so no commas are required before and after her name.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Unless she had more than one former husband, in which case the presence of commas around his name would be misleading. But I see she's married only once, so it's OK. In this case, it would make little difference whether you parenthesised his name or not; but if he had happened to be only one of a group of ex-husbands (which he wasn't), then it would have been mandatory NOT to have commas. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 16:50, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

To me it seems a little insulting to imply that the father's name is merely parenthetical. Since the purpose of the sentence is to name the parents of the subject of the article, I would say that "Noble Herman Stephens" is the more important half of the appositive; if I had to insert some commas to appease someone who claimed it was a non-restrictive appositive, I would rewrite the sentence to read, "… actress Stella Stevens and Noble Herman Stephens, her former husband, both …." But I suppose I wouldn't complain too loudly if it read, "… actress Stella Stevens and her former husband, Noble Herman Stephens, both …." (As a side note, I just discovered the false title article—apparently constructions of the form "actress Stella Stevens" are frowned upon by some.) —Bkell (talk) 17:19, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Very much so. And it seems to be confined to humans anyway. Do we ever say things like "Novel Gone With the Wind was written by Margaret Mitchell", or "John Lennon is famed for song Yesterday"? No, of course not. We'd naturally put the word "the" in front. But humans seem to merit a lesser treatment. It's a horrible, weird and nasty practice. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 17:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, yes, yes! I think of it (the omission of "the") as being a kind of tabloidese, and make of point a correcting it in Wikipedia articles. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:50, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yesterday (song), though credited to "Lennon/McCartney", was "written solely by McCartney," and "was the first official recording by The Beatles that relied upon a performance by a single member of the band, Paul McCartney." WikiDao ☯ (talk) 17:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Even more reason not to say "John Lennon is famed for song Yesterday".  :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting. It hasn't ever been brought to my attention before. (Interestingly enough, the false title article itself contains some false titles: "linguist Geoffrey Pullum" and "usage pundit William Safire".) It isn't always confined to humans per se—things like "Industry leader Microsoft announced today …" are common in newspapers, though it could be argued that they're anthropomorphizing Microsoft in that instance. —Bkell (talk) 18:20, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it's a function of age. I can remember a time when the media would always have used forms such as The Hollywood actress Lola LaRue has died in her Swiss chalet, or The Prime Minister, Joe Bloggs, announced today that .... Now, whenever I hear Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan is in hot water again ... or Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced ..., I cringe. It's not a question of resisting moving with the times or being a reactionary. Nobody would ever use these article-less forms in conversation, so how can they be justified elsewhere? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:45, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd use Prime Minister Julia Gillard in conversation (or at least Prime Minister John Howard, whom I've actually heard of). I treat that as a true, not a false, title. That's not true for Hollywood actress. I suspect mine is the common practice Stateside.—msh210℠ 19:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Not much point talking about Prime Minister John Howard any more. He was beaten over 3 years ago, and we've had 2 prime ministers since then. The latest WikiLeaks revelation are putting a lot of focus on the one in the middle, Kevin Rudd, who is now our Foreign Minister. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:57, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

But the point I was actually making is that we don't use the "President (Barack) Obama" form for our prime ministers or governors-general, and it sounds kind of loopy when they're referred to in that way (even by the Australian media, which has become completely craven in its subservience to certain novomundane forms of expression, the false title thing being among the main offenders. But then, the media has its own special vocabulary that nobody else ever uses but is nevertheless expected to understand - like "slammed" for "criticised", and interest rates being "hiked up", and whole cities and even countries being "in lockdown"). -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:19, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Can I victimise Margaret Thatcher?

See here Talk:Margaret_Thatcher#Spelling_errors

This is tricky one. It is a quote sourced from the New York Times, which has used US spelling - victimize - which looks odd in an article about a UK ex-PM. I'm almost inclined to correct it to 'victimi[s]e', though that looks messy. Should I change it to [victimise], or leave it as is? It wouldn't really be right to just alter the spelling in a quotation would it? I can't find the quote elsewhere. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:15, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The OED uses -ize, anyway. Marnanel (talk) 22:33, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, just claim to be using Oxford spelling... AnonMoos (talk) 22:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:MOSQUOTE doesn't include engvar spelling changes in its "allowable changes", so if you do change it it would have to be bracketed. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

In other words, the lady's not for victimising. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:41, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I don’t really see a problem. A US journalist and a UK journalist both transcribing the same speech by Thatcher would naturally spell certain words in their own national styles, for their own audiences. Neither is “right” or “wrong”. Hansard would probably have used the –ise version, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has to follow the official record down to the last detail of spelling and comma placement. I often see US titles such as Secretary of Defense spelt in the UK and Australian press as Defence – and vice-versa (the UK Ministry of Defence becomes the Ministry of Defense in the US). It could be argued that such spellings are quite incorrect, as these are official and formal titles, which are not amenable to being respelt just to suit a foreign audience. But words like victimise/ize are not in that category at all. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 22:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I've left a note on the talk page citing Oxford spelling. I hope this satisfies the OP. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I can't understand why anyone would want to victimise the Iron Lady for real, either. Some of the things she did - especially in the area of industrial relations, were never right, but overall she was a great leader of a great country, comparable to Winston Churchill even. The Russian Christopher Lilly 04:31, 15 December 2010 (UTC)