Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 October 19

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October 19

Are both of these correct

Resolved

Are both of these correct? I have seen a similar sentence in a document I am reviewing:

1. Jack has the potential to pass the exam.
2. Jack has the potential of passing the exam.

I was going to change 1 to 2 as it looked slightly odd, but now I am not sure if it is just a style choice. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The both look grammatically correct to me, but the first feels more natural. --Jayron32 13:14, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

(ec) FWIW, sentence 1 seems more natural to me: it's 2 that seems slightly odd. Google (again, FWIW) seems to agree: "has the potential to be" - 33 million hits, "has the potential of being" - 2 million (smaller numbers but similar discrepancy with pass/passing). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:16, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

1 is better than 2, but neither of them is very good. "Jack is capable of passing the exam" would be better, if that's the intended meaning. Alternatively "Jack will probably pass the exam" or "Jack might pass the exam" or "Jack ought to pass the exam", if one of those is the intended meaning. Looie496 (talk) 19:26, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. 1 is perfectly natural. Your offerings give slightly different meanings. Here, the word potential implies that Jack still has some work to do before he is capable of passing the exam.  Omg †  osh  22:32, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Agree that the first feels better (and is definitely correct), I would say the second one is nonstandard, though would always be understood without confusion. - filelakeshoe 19:47, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks -- Q Chris (talk) 10:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Is כלום a portmanteau word?

Please note I am not certain of the spelling of כלום (having never written it before), but it is the word pronounced kloom (like heirloom) meaning no one. I am wondering though whether כלום is a portmanteau of כולם ושום. Is this the case or is it just a coincedence? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 21 Tishrei 5772 19:13, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but I observe that Segal and Dagut's dictionary lists the word (with your spelling), and gives a number of expressions using it, some of which it marks as colloquial and others as literary. It also gives derivatives כלוםי and כלוםיות. All of which seems to suggest that if it is a portmanteau, it's been in the language for a while. --ColinFine (talk) 21:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

While I don't know the meaning of the shoresh of .כ.ל.מ I think you may have confused Mem sofit (ם), the final form of mem (מ), with samekh, ס. Final mem, cannot be anywhere in a word except for the end. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 21 Tishrei 5772 21:27, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

True, I should have changed the ם to a מ when I copied and pasted your example and then typed additional letters. I assure you the words in question do have מ. They are glossed as "of no account, negligible" and "being of no account, being negligible". Your link "shoresh" is to an irrelevant article. --ColinFine (talk) 23:46, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, apologies. The meaning sounds very similar to כלום, so they do share the same root. My sincerest apologies, I thought that that article piped to semitic root and should have made sure it did (I could have sworn it did before, should make a disambiguation). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 21 Tishrei 5772 23:52, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I observe that this is English language Wikipedia. That word clearly doesn't belong here. HiLo48 (talk) 21:37, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

This is the language refdesk. It is routine to ask questions about languages other than English here. Asking a question in another language is a problem; asking them about another language is not. --Trovatore (talk) 21:39, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Such questions usually tell us what the other language is. This one didn't. Why should we be left to figure out that it's about another language, and then figure out which one, and then apply a concept from another language to it? What if I wrote "Is dungudjawala a portmanteau word?". I doubt if many people would make sense of it. The question seemed very presumptuous (or odd, or ignorant) to me. HiLo48 (talk) 23:10, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Truth be told, anyone who would actually have the appropriate knowledge would most likely already know Hebrew quite well (it also has a very distinctive alphabet so many people who don't speak it recognise it anyway, but that is not important here). So I don't see why it would be necessary for me to state it was Hebrew or how it is ignorant as you put it as a person who could not recognise it anyway would most likely not be able to give a proper answer. Also, if you would care to look through the archives of this refdesk you will see that there are regular questions about other languages.

You do give me another idea though for a question. Do portmanteaux exist in Hebrew? I know there is a unique thing where multi-word things (like the Hebrew name of the IDF) are shortened into odd set ups indicated by (סגן מישנה - סגם), but what about portmanteaux? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 21 Tishrei 5772 23:15, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

OK. Answer my question. HiLo48 (talk) 23:18, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Which question is that? --ColinFine (talk) 23:46, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

"Is dungudjawala a portmanteau word?" HiLo48 (talk) 17:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

You'd have to ask a Yorta Yorta that my good sir. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 23 Tishrei 5772 17:35, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

It appears that the concept of the portmanteau exists in Hebrew. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 03:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Hilo is right, it would have been nice to have some indication that it was Hebrew for those who didn't recognize the script. Even for those who did, it would have been nice to have a transliteration. Naturally anyone who can't read the Hebrew can't answer the question, but this is a public forum. Not only are you essentially asking for a response from everyone who reads it, but other people also enjoy reading the questions and responses just out of curiosity. Wording your questions so that they are comprehensible only to a few people and then dismissing everyone else as useless is uncouth, to say the least. (On the other hand, I suppose anyone who is even passingly familiar with the Reference Desk would know that you'd be asking about Hebrew, and it's probably for the best that you didn't transliterate it, but that's another story...) Adam Bishop (talk) 06:30, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

What would have been the benefit of such an action when the sole reason I asked the question was to get an answer, not to provide enjoyment to other editors? No offence to other editors intended, but the purpose of a refdesk is to ask a question and get an answer, not entertain (though there is nothing wrong with doing the latter so long as the former is accomplished). Hmmm, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't think you actually read my OP, or at least didn't read it carefully as I did indeed transliterate the word into the Latin alphabet (as I was not sure of the spelling). M'yes, it's my understanding that this is the spot to ask questions about any tongue and get the answers. I thought that Colin may have looked it up and been unfamiliar with the alphabet (given that the two characters in question look VERY similar oftentimes), but I was incorrect and do owe him an apology for that. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 21:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, so you did, I missed that. Adam Bishop (talk) 06:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

No worries, I miss half the shit people say. :p Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 23 Tishrei 5772 06:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. Refdesks get specialized questions. There's nothing wrong with asking about the Stone–Čech compactification at the math refdesk, even though ninety-percent-plus of even the folks who frequent that desk will have not more than the vaguest idea what you're talking about.

I don't see how this is different. Sure, it might have been nice to say "Hebrew" somewhere in the question, but it's awfully picky to stick on that point. If you don't understand a question, then don't bother with it. Or research it, or ask. --Trovatore (talk) 09:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The other thing is that I have trouble believing HiLo didn't recognize it as Hebrew. I can understand a Westerner not recognizing, say, Georgian or Indonesian or Armenian or Thai, or not being quite sure of the distinctions between the writing systems of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. But how can you not recognize the major alphabetic systems: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi? --Trovatore (talk) 10:08, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Truth be told I sometimes have trouble telling Arabic from Farsi, but that is just because I am not very familar with seeing them. HiLo is from Australia, and I am not sure they have a lot of exposure to Jewish culture there (I could be wrong). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 21:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

It could have been Yiddish. If Yiddish had a word "khlum", this is how it would be spelled. Pais (talk) 10:52, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

M'yes, but given the way that Yiddish works, it is likely that if כלום were to exist in Yiddish, it would have come from Hebrew, or could have come into Modern Hebrew via Yiddish, and so the answer would still be the same. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 21:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I tend to think that it's good etiquette to make a question intelligible to general speakers of English (and not just for example American speakers of English who would be more familiar with Hebrew than others - this is directed at Trovatore. This is the English Wikipedia, not the American English Wikipedia, and a Hong Kong English speaker for example is very likely to know the difference between Chinese, Korean and Japanese at a glance and not be able to tell between Hebrew and Arabic). On the other hand, based on the questions Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie asks on the refdesk it would seem he (I presume) has a new-found and passionate interest in all things Israeli, Hebrew and Judaism included, so we may just have to excuse the occasional question which is addressed to only those who knows what he is talking about. And it is true that the language desk in particular often incorporates more-or-less unglossed foreign text. But hopefully Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie can take the suggestions on board and at least preface a future question of this type with "Hebrew" or "Yiddish" or provide a transliteration. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:04, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not new-found, but RefDesk is the best place to ask as I do not wish to bother my Hebrew teachers, archaeology professors or anyone else who's busy with such questions. RefDesk is basically a place where you have people volunteering to answer your questions and so it is no bother to them at all. I am not really sure I would want an answer from someone other than someone who knows about the subjects I am referring to (I mean it's fun and all, but it doesn't answer the question properly and can sometimes give misinformation). The thought of it being interpreted as Yiddish hadn't crossed my mind until it was brought up, but I gave the answer to that below. The origin would most likely be the same as would the meaning. I'm not sure that even if I had called it Hebrew initially (everyone certainly knows it is Hebrew now), it would have contributed to the understanding of anyone who doesn't know Hebrew. If it'll make people stop complaining then I guess I will next time say in Hebrew explicitly. Though I don't think I've ever run into such reactions in real life. xD Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 23 Tishrei 5772 17:35, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

The word is defined at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/כלום.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

That whole set up where a negative requires a negative to work properly in Hebrew (it strikes me as being a sort of double negative); like some functions of אי. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 03:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

All this discussion and no one's actually answered the original question. First, כלום means "something" or "anything", not "no one". It only takes on a negative meaning when preceded by לא "no", i.e., לא כלום "nothing". And no, it is not a portmanteau כולם ושום, but it is in fact a contraction. My etymological dictionary says it's most likely a contraction dating to the Post-Biblical Hebrew period of כל-מאום "every speck". The BH equivalent was מאומה, which looks like a frozen accusative form of מאום; thus the form כל-מאום was presumably an emphatic variant. Voikya (talk) 17:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, hmmm, might be no one on its own in some Mizrahic dialect maybe? Really? A contraction? So then it's the same sort of principle as the shortening two words or more words with '' and then making them into one (except without the two apostrophes)? By the way, what is the name for those practices if it something other than contraction? Like סגן מישנה - סג''ם or צבא ההגנה לישראל - צה''ל? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 21:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

That's not really the same as a contraction. I guess you would call it an abbreviation? Maybe? But anyway it involves taking the first letter of each word and stringing them together (and in pronunciation, adding a linking vowel when necessary). Contraction is just joining multiple words together and then simplifying the pronunciation, generally through the loss of some of the phonemes. --Miskwito (talk) 22:03, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No wait! An acronym is what you would call it. --Miskwito (talk) 22:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, I guess it's an acronym, ya. xD They can sometimes incorporate the second or even third letters of some words. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 23:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Dardanus and Danaans

Hi, is there a linguistic connection between the "dan" in Dardanus and the dan in Danaans? The article says a legend has it that Dardanus came from the same part of Greece as the Danaans lived. In addition, the ancestors of Diomedes and Glaucus were friends. Thanks, Rich Peterson198.189.194.129 (talk) 19:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

You have left out the Tuatha De Danaan and the Danes, who seem to be connected to the Greek Danaans. (Dardanus has no special connection of which I am aware.) My suspicion is that these Danaan ethnonyms are related, even unto Kalaallit Nunaat. They seem to mean "(people of the) land" or "shore". But that's what's called OR.μηδείς (talk) 03:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

[Israelism]! Itsmejudith (talk) 19:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Dear Medeis, I haven't left the Tuatha De Danaan or Danes out because I wasn't asking about them, and I'm not playing any kind of game here. I asked about Dardanus and the Danaans, which you say you don't know of any special connection. Thanks for your input.24.7.28.186 (talk) 22:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Now now, no need to mock the poor fellow like this. I see what the OP was talking about. He unfortunately didn't check his Dardanus link, I believe. I assume he was talking about this city. It's a good question, and from what I remember from the Greek History, the Mycenaeans and other Greek peoples originally came from Anatolia, though I haven't gone over this stuff in a long while. Does anyone here know anything about err... would it be Archaic Greek at the time of Homer? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Tishrei 5772 23:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Who was being mocked and when? The OP? That is me, & if so it's ok, though I would like to know for what, so I can learn. Regardless, I did read that link, so what is it you think that I missed? Dardanus came from Greece--Arcadia or Attica part of Greece, according to legend. Also, Glaucus, in the Iliad, was Dardanian, fighting for Troy, and met Diomedes, an Achean besieging Troy, and they meant to do combat, but they decided not to fight since Glaucus's grandfather was a friend of diomedes grandfather. That increases to me the probability that the danaans and Dardanians had been related....I have never heard that the Greeks came from the Asia Minor/Anatolia region at least not at any time close to 1200 bc, although the Dorian segment may have come from the north and gone to Asia Minor also. In fact I was thinking of something more recent, circa 1200 BC, assuming the legend of Dardanus signified a migration of Danaans to Asia Minor, near Troy. I hope what I have said is not as silly as the British Israelite "I[saacson=Saxons]--was that what the mockery was? As far as the Danes and whatnot, I don't want to play games or get into a competition regarding peoples from all over the world who happen to have dan in their name. Thanks, Rich Peterson199.33.32.40 (talk) 00:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I mentioned British Israelism in a mocking way, didn't mean to mock you personally. I see you are quite aware of their tendency to find Dans everywhere. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Nope, I was saying you were being mocked (from what I could see). Read the Greeks by Ian Morris,[1] probably the finest history book I have ever read (cover to cover!) I think there is a hypothesis they came in at the end of the Early Bronze Age and then went back and came back to Greece again, very weird (though the evidence from the EBA is pretty sketchy from what I remember). I think you need a classics expert as well as someone who knows Archaic Greek (my prof would actually be useful for that). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 23 Tishrei 5772 00:42, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

What in the world are you talking about by mockery? Dardanus has no known historical connection with the Danaans that I am aware of. If I were mocking anybody I would not have pointed that out. But there has indeed been (not widely accepted) speculation of a connection between the Danaans of Greece and the Tuatha De Danaan Danann of Ireland. See also Danu (Irish goddess) whose name is connected to river names such as the Don and the Danube. The connections of that name with river and land could imply a connection with the shore. The word Dane as in Denmark has been connected to a root meaning sandbank or low ground. [2] If you do not dismiss the Eurasiatic languages hypothesis out of hand, it is interesting that the Eskimo-Aleut word for land is similar, tana- in Aleut, nuna- in Eskimo. μηδείς (talk) 19:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Apologies, at first glance those all seemed so unrelated by anything other than sound that I thought you were making fun of his linking to that God. I don't know either, but derp, I'm an idiot - my archaeology mentor is the world's leading expert on the Aegean Bronze Age! (and the Bronze Age in general really) Don't know if I want to bother him with this though, he's rather busy. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 24 Tishrei 5772 03:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I, too, am sorry, Medeis! Obviously you know a lot and I could learn a lot from you. so, thanks, what you say is quite interesting....To ItsMeJudith: Absolutely no offense taken. -Rich Peterson24.7.28.186 (talk) 03:35, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

S'alright. μηδείς (talk) 10:40, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Possibly a bit pedantic, but I'd just like to point out that the legendary Irish group are the Tuatha Dé Danann, double n, not Danaan, double a. That misspelling is far too common and misleads people to make a false connection with the Greek Danaans, who are in any case only spelt that way in English. --Nicknack009 (talk) 10:06, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

You are right to point out the mistake, but the derivation of the Irish name from the Goddess Danu was already a given, the possible correspondence is in the stem not the ending. μηδείς (talk) 10:36, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

British spelling

In Commonwealth spelling, a final L after a short unstressed vowel is doubled in inflected forms, for example travel produces travelled, travelling, traveller, etc. However, it says here that "the word parallel keeps a single -l- in British English, as in American English (paralleling, unparalleled), to avoid the unappealing cluster -llell-."

How did we get to know this? How do we know that the double L got simplified to a single one just because there happens to be another double L one vowel away? Why don't we just say that that word is a random exception, or a common misspelling? --Theurgist (talk) 23:08, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a standard random exception. That the final consonant after a short vowel is doubled is the standard rule. I prefer travelled to traveled and editted to edited. Even then, parallelled looks like a four-legged chicken. But you lurn what is normal and what is expected. Givven the irregularity of Inglish spelling, uhcasional assthetic icksepshns shood bee ikspected. μηδείς (talk) 01:40, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Could the exception in this case be because "parallel" is borrowed directly (more or less) from Greek? Adam Bishop (talk) 06:18, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Editted? Really? In my 22 years as a Brit, I haven't seen that one!  Omg †  osh  11:58, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I did'n't say it was seen. I said I prefer it since it is regular. Givven the strength of your reaction, I hope you didn't pull a mussel. μηδείς (talk) 18:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd prefer more consistency myself. If I were in charge of the language rules, we'd be spelling everything phonetically (those who employ the Cyrillic alphabet seem to do this) and there would be no irregular verbs (I think Chinese is like this but they have these nonsensically variable 'measure' suffixes on things). Midwestern Americans would stop pronouncing a 'tt' as 'dd' (as in 'little'), and Brits and Northeastern Americans would rhotically pronounce their R's as God meant them to be. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:23, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

"If I were in charge of the language rules, we'd be spelling everything phonetically (those who employ the Cyrillic alphabet seem to do this)". No they don't. There are all sorts of phonological rules of Russian that aren't indicated by the spelling, like vowel reduction and voicing assimilation. If English were to have a phonetic spelling, then we should allow speakers of different accents to spell words differently, according as they pronounce them. Thus non-rhotic speakers wouldn't put an "r" in "start", but rhotic speakers would. Speakers with flapping would spell "latter" and "ladder" the same; speakers without it wouldn't. And so on. We already have spelling differences between British and American English, but with a few exceptions (e.g. alumin(i)um), those spelling differences don't correspond to the pronunciation differences that exist. Well, why not? The Ancient Greeks coped with having different spellings for Attic, Ionic, Doric, etc., so English should be able to cope with pronunciation-based spelling differences for American English, English English, Scottish English, Australian English, etc. Angr (talk) 18:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Um, note that my jest above included the provision that pronunciation would be standardized too.

My comment about Cyrillic comes from my limited experience, not in Russia, but in Bulgaria where everything did seem to be spelled phonetically, at least for words that I recognized, like taxi, restaurant, magazine, etc. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, Mongolian, which also uses the cyrillic script, is pronounced very much unlike how it is written, as many of the shorter vowels are not even indicated in the script. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:33, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

@Amatulić: That's right, Bulgarian pronunciation is much closer to the spelling than Russian pronunciation is, but Bulgarian still uses a morphology-based orthography, so processes like final devoicing, reduction of unstressed vowels and consonant assimilation by voicing are not reflected in spelling. An orthography that is entirely pronunciation-based is that of Serbo-Croat (no matter whether you write it with the Cyrillic or Latin script), where there is a one-to-one correspondence between letters and phonemes, and the principle is "write as you speak and read as it is written". This results in some inflected forms and derivatives having very few common letters with the words they were derived from, and if you're a beginner in Serbo-Croat, the relation between some words could be unobvious. For example, otac means "father", but the genitive form is oca (*otc > oc + a; the "a" in the stem is a fleeting "a"), and the plural nominative is očevi (*otč > oč + ev + i). Also, učiti ("to study") produces udžbenik ("textbook"; uč > udž). I used the Latin script here for everyone's convenience, but it's exactly the same with the Cyrillic.

@KageTora: I'm not much of an expert in Mongolian, but are you sure it's not the other way around? As far as I know, certain Mongolian vowels, in certain environments, are only written but not pronounced. --Theurgist (talk) 13:12, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Proposals have been raised, including by Mark Twain (albeit jokingly), to replace the now-existing etymological English orthography with a phonetic one. Maria Rankova's Origin and Development of the English Language (Произход и развитие на английския език, 1971), p. 68-69, has some material on the question about phoneticising the English spelling, debating on whether the reluctance to make a reform is due to the English conservatism that makes Englishmen still keep driving on the left and making use of the imperial units, or whether some more serious objections exist, and thereafter lists a few possible serious objections against the employment of a phonetic spelling.

• Homonyms, which now at least differ in spelling (night and knight, pare and pear, no and know, missed and mist), would turn into homographs and won't differ in any way.
• Some important morphological elements with variable pronunciations would have to be spelt variably: -ed and -s are now pronounced as /t/ and /s/ in jumped and jumps and as /d/ and /z/ in turned and turns.
• The spellings of a huge number of older borrowings would have to become largely inconsistent with their spellings in other languages (neishon, nashonal in lieu of nation, national), and English renditions of international terminology wouldn't be readily recognisable to those who make use of written English texts in their speciality.
• All the sources written and printed prior to the reform would become unusable, and within a generation or two people would have lost their ability to read an enormous amount of English literature written in the course of many centuries.

The paragraph concludes that all this doesn't make it impossible to get rid of some useless difficulties, like the -ise/-ize inconsistency, the otiose U in words like colour and honour, the otiose double L in travelled, traveller, travelling, otiose letters like the B in debt and doubt, the P in receipt, the C in indict and others.

Vuk Karadžić used the phonemic principle when he reformed the spelling of his language, but Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb chose to design the orthography of Faroese on the etymological principle. The orthographies of languages like Serbo-Croat, Welsh and Greenlandic are based on the former principle, which enables learners to know with greater certainty how words are generally pronounced. The latter principle is the basis of the spelling rules, for example, of English, French, Modern Greek, Danish, Faroese and Tibetan. It hints about words' origins and could make it easier to guess their meanings. --Theurgist (talk) 13:20, 22 October 2011 (UTC)