Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 December 19

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December 19

Seeking an article from the Ukrainian newspaper Ukraínskaya Pravda

I'm working on the article SpongeBob SquarePants and am trying to better understand an issue about the show that arose in Ukraine. In 2012, a group called Family Under the Protection of the Holy Virgin (which has been described by the Wall Street Journal as a "fringe Catholic website") sought to have SpongeBob (along with several other shows) banned from television in Ukraine. A government organization, called the Ukrainian National Expert Commission for Protecting Public Morality, reviewed the situation. From there, the details get really sketchy. Different English-language sources provide conflicting information, perhaps due to poor translation. I'm aware that at least some of these sources based their information on an article that was written for the Ukrainian newspaper Ukraínskaya Pravda. I have no idea how to find this article, much less would I be able to read it. Is anyone able to do a search for articles about SpongeBob that have been written for this newspaper? If you're also able to explain what the article says, that would be fantastic, but even just finding the article would be a huge help. I don't know if this is the best place to put my request, but it's the only place that I can think of. Let me know if there would be a better option for finding someone to help me. Thanks. --Jpcase (talk) 00:39, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

This link to the website of the newspaper (http://www.pravda.com.ua) might help other answerers.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:40, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

These links might be helpful.

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Ukraine#Participants
• Category:User uk (These users speak Ukrainian.)
• Category:Wikipedians in Ukraine
• Category:Wikipedians who contribute to the Ukrainian Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Local Embassy#українська (uk)

—Wavelength (talk) 03:17, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Wavelength! I've left a message at WP:UKRAINE. --Jpcase (talk) 03:40, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Note that the website of the morality commission looks extensive. It might have documents on the SpongeBob case (I can't read Ukrainian).--Cam (talk) 16:25, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Articles[1][2], news[3], solution[4]. I've no desire to translate, sorry.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:51, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Fantastic! Thank you! Again, just finding these articles really helps a lot. I'll leave a message here if I can find someone else to translate the articles, so if anyone sees this conversation and I haven't left a message yet, then know that I'm still looking for someone to help. I certainly don't need a word-for-word translation - just a general idea of what the articles talk about. --Jpcase (talk) 17:49, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Languages that lack standardization/spelling rules?

I am fascinated by constructed languages, and today while thinking about internet slang and 1337-speak a thought struck me. 1337 is a very fluid language, with no set spelling or grammar rules. For example, hacker, haxxer, haxxzorz, and h4x0r all mean the same thing and all are easily understood by anyone who's spent any amount of time on the sillier parts of the internet. Naturally none of these are proper English, but they are all proper 1337. So my question is, are there any real world languages that allow any amount of fluidity in their spelling and grammar? I know that Japanese allows for multiple readings of characters, creating different "spellings", but I'm thinking more along the lines of phonetically spelled languages. When you consider regional dialects or accents that would change the way words are pronounced, it seems to me that you'd expect a different spelling as well. In the US children are taught standardized spelling and grammar rules, so we all spell things the same, but are there any countries where this is not the case?146.235.130.59 (talk) 13:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Prior to the age of the great dictionary writers (Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, etc.) English was that way. There was a wide variation to how people spelled, often dependent on their own local dialects; though sometimes even the same person (sometimes in the same document) would show variation. English_orthography#History covers this a little bit. --Jayron32 14:05, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

That is an excellent point, and one I had not considered. Thank you. Reading old texts I've often noticed that words are mispelled, but the mispelling sometimes appears more phonetically correct than the standard spelling. Considering that the spelling and pronounciation of many English words doesn't exactly jibe, I'm curious to know if a language like Russian, which to my limited knowledge seems to have more strictly phonetical spellings, allows a wider variety of "proper" ways to spell a word.146.235.130.20 (talk) 15:10, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian shows considerable variation in its writing. While not strictly a phonetic writing system, so it may not meet your criteria, it was at least semi-phonetic, in that consonants (and certain long vowels) were regularly written, at least from the later Old Kingdom period. However, the writings of course spanned several thousand years, so it was bound to change, but even writings from the same period (and as said above, whithin the same text) show considerable variation. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 16:02, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

No I think that since the Soviet reforms (ca. 1917?) Russian spelling is pretty much phonetic and unambiguous. The only exception I can think of is that letter г which is sometimes pronounced as в in some well defined grammatical cases, e.g. его 'his' is pronounced ево. So except for a Russian kid using ево for what everyone else spells его, I don't see much room for variation. A language with spelling that is phonetic but ambiguous, and so could have spelling variants, is Spanish. For example 'v' and 'b', 'y' and 'll', refer in Spanish to the same sound. So conceivably you could find 'valor' spelled as 'balor' or 'llegar' as 'yegar', etc. In general spelling vagaries and variants are characteristic of languages with crazy systems of spelling like English and French (if they can even be called "systems"). Contact Basemetal here 16:08, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

There are some misunderstandings. 1) Russian spelling is not phonetic. 2) Russian spelling is based on three or four principles: phonemic (sometimes wrongly called phonetic), morphemic, traditional and differential. Though phonemic and morphemic were predominant in the past as well as they are today, the traditional one has much more prevailed before 1917. 3) The first book we can consider as an "official" set of Russian spelling rules has been written in 1885 by Grot. Before that, in spite there were dictionaries (like "Dictionary of the Russian Academy" of 1783) and grammar books (like Lomonosov's of 1755 and Grech's of 1827), there were no "official" spelling rules, but Russian spelling was based on the unformulated though quite established written tradition. 4) There are only two document we can consider as strictly official: the Soviet degree of the spelling reform of 1917, and the rules by the Soviet Academy of Science of 1956 (informally known as "The Rules-1956"). 5) As you can understand before 1783 there were virtually no rules at all. In older Russian documents (before the 18th-19th centuries) one can see a great variation of spelling variants exactly like it was in early English. But "no rules" did not mean there was a chaos. In both early Russian and English there was an established written tradition which was followed by the majority of writers.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:32, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

When people talk of "phonetic writing systems" they always mean "phonemic" not strictly speaking "phonetic" I believe. So the term "phonetic writing system" is best understood as a unit. That might not be strictly accurate but that's the usual terminology for all languages that have such writing systems, not only Russian. Is there a single writing system in common use that marks allophonic variations? That would be cumbersome and completely unnecessary. Russian vowel phonemes have indeed strikingly different phonetic realizations depending on whether they are stressed or not, and that is of course not marked in the spelling. Contact Basemetal here 00:44, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

You are correct. I know I have read of cases where missionaries or others have devised partially phonetic alphabets, being unsure whether a difference was phonemic or allophonic. In such cases the distinction was ignored by the native speakers--unfortunately I can't think of an example offhand. μηδείς (talk) 01:48, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I've seen a few examples of deliberate misspelling in Russian, using the ambiguity that results from assimilation. Since ‹в› is pronounced /f/ (rather than /v/) at the end of a word or before an unvoiced consonant, it can become ‹ф› – or vice versa – with no loss of phonemicity. —Tamfang (talk) 00:49, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

The Amharic language uses an abugida called "fidal", which has a number of letters that now have the same sound (they were distinct in the past). From what I have read, there is generally a historically correct spelling of words, but variations are much less censured than in English. --ColinFine (talk) 17:16, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• Just as a side-note, linguists probably wouldn't call 1337 a "language" per se, rather it is an English-based argot or cant; it's an intentionally obscured form of English designed to be used among a class of "insiders" and keep "outsiders" out. --Jayron32 17:22, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Regarding what Basemetal said above, does Spanish not have spelling rules set in stone, or are there actually correct spellings that people ignore in favor of personal preference? I would assume that if the letters in your example are truly interchangeable then a Spanish-speaker could understand a word no matter how it was spelled, so what dictates what letter is used?146.235.130.59 (talk) 18:13, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Standard Spanish spelling is pretty much fixed. So there is only one way to spell 'llegar' and that is this one. Some of the reasons why one spelling was chosen over another may be historical: whereas 'll' and 'y' are pronounced the same nowadays they used to be pronounced differently in the past. Same for 'v' and 'b'. I forgot to mention that there are some slight variations also for the spelling of the 'j' ('jota'). For example traditionally you spell 'México', 'Texas', not 'Méjico' or 'Tejas'. However the town of Jerez for example is only spelled 'Jerez' nowadays, never 'Xerez' which was the old spelling. However the 'x' ('equis') is only used in historical spellings and in some foreign borrowings. There are cases where 'x' is not pronounced as 'j' but I forget what all of them are. I'm pretty sure 'extra' is pronounced 'ecstra' and not 'ejtra' but there are other cases. Note that the 'x' and 'j' thing used also to be a matter of sounds that have become identical but were not in the past: before the 16th century 'j' was pronounced [ʒ] and 'x' was pronounced [ʃ] (variants of these sounds still exist in Ladino which has not undergone this merger) and they both merged in the modern 'jota' which is pronounced [x]. Another issue is that of Peninsular Spanish vs American Spanish. Some sounds are distinguished in Spain ('z' vs 's') but not in Latin America. In such cases the spelling used everywhere is that which reflects all the distinctions made throughout the Spanish speaking world not only some subregion of it. See Spanish orthography for further details. Contact Basemetal here 19:24, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Just adding for the record some cases I forgot. I'm sure there are others. Semi-literate spelling variants are also possible for ji/gi, je/ge, ci/zi, ce/ze (in Latin America, the Canárias, Andalucía: ci/zi/si, ce/ze/se). For example 'gefe' for 'jefe' or 'jitano' for 'gitano'. Also the final 'd' is often silent or at least so fainly pronounced that it is barely audible so one could conceivably imagine variants Madrí, salú, ciudá, Usté for Madrid, salud, ciudad, Usted. Are there dialects where a silent final 'd' reemerges as it were before a word beginning with a vowel? So to reiterate a point Medeis has already made: Spanish is a language where, except for a minute number of cases such as the pronunciation of some instances of the equis and some cases of borrowings from foreign languages where the spelling was never Hispanized (such as for instance 'foie gras', in this case it would be 'fuagrá' but I've never seen such a spelling used), there is never any doubt as to the correct pronunciation, whether the spelling is the official accepted one or one produced on the fly to record their pronunciation by some semiliterate speaker. This means that it is easy to be careless as you know that intelligibility will never be impaired even though your spelling may send the whole of the Real Academia into conniptions. Contact Basemetal here 16:56, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

To a certain extent, I live in such an area, where no one is taught how to write the language they speak (and the same probably applies to other diglossic regions too). One of the reasons is that the low language, Swiss German, is virtually never written and read in newspapers, books, instruction manuals, package inserts etc., unlike Swiss standard German. There is a very thin body of Swiss German literature, and hardly anyone reads it. The important exception are occasionally hand-written letters, and especially text messages and e-mails. Not everyone uses the vernacular here, but those who do, spell the words however they see fit. Not sure this is what you're after, but there it is. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• The Rusyn language has never had an official standard since it has not been a political entity since the middle ages. It is a dialect group found mostly in Poland, Slovakia, and the Ukraine, and has been written and published using Cyrillic, Polish, and Slovak orthography (probably Hungarian as well), and I have family documents written in an inconsistent mixture of Polish and Slovak orthography, even by the same person. Paul Magocsi wrote two grammars of spoken Rusyn, Bisidujme po-Rus'ky for the Prešov dialect and Howorim po-Rus'ky for the Transcarpathian dialect. And each book gives all forms in both a Latin and a Cyrillic orthography.

This is not at all an unusual situation for languages that are not the standard of a nation-state. For example, the Christmas greeting, "Christ is born!" is alternatively spelt Hristos/Christos Rozhdajetsja/Razhdajetsja, with o/a in the verb, and even then the zh can be written in many ways, with 'ž' being perhaps most common.

Spanish is an interesting case, at least in NYC. Although there are standard rules, many semiliterate people don't follow them, with sounds like y/ll and i (in diphthongs), b/v, qu/c, z/s and c before i/e all falling together. One might potentially see Vusquamos Alluda for Buscamos Ayuda as a "Help Wanted" sign. It is jarring to they eyes of some, but perfectly understandable and unambiguous when said allowed. μηδείς (talk) 20:20, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

When said allowed? So wee college graduates do it two? Contact Basemetal here 23:46, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

If I may be forgiven for injecting some pedantry into the examination of what was after all only an example made up in order to illustrate a point, I suspect a semi-literate person would probably interpret the pronunciation of 'vusquamos' as 'buscuamos' rather than 'buscamos', on the analogy of say, 'gua' in 'aguantar'. In any case I don't think the 'qua' and 'quo' sequences exist in Modern Spanish (those sound sequences are always written 'cua' and 'cuo') so the case is a bit different from those cases where both variants are used but a semi-literate person might not know which is the appropriate one to use in a specific case. Contact Basemetal here 01:05, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Strongly distinguishing regions (solid pink), regions with some presence of yeísmo (light pink) and non-distinguishing regions (grey). Note, Madrid falls in the solid yeísmo area, where the distinction has been lost

Yes, that was an exaggeration made up for example. But I have had enough Spanish speaking neighbors, roommates, superintendents and landlords over the years to have seen quite a few interesting specimens in the wild. One could argue the qua- point both ways (and I have indeed seen *quasi for "almost"), but there's no point in that. I think from memory that y/ll and choosing either b or v and sticking with it for all cases (the two letters are retained based on etymology but sound the same) are the two most common "illiterate" spellings. Not having studied any formal Spanish until late in life I constantly found myself being surprised words weren't actually spelt how I had imagined them. The funny thing is that it is very hard to be illiterate in reading Spanish, but quite easy not to worry about spelling it improperly causing any confusion. μηδείς (talk) 01:30, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I wonder why no one has brought that up yet, maybe because most people here are influenced by American Spanish. In proper Castilian, y [ʝ] and ll [ʎ] are distinguished. --2.246.16.88 (talk) 22:39, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I've added a map for ll in Spain. You'll see at the full article, yeísmo, that the distinction has lost a lot of ground in Spain and is only present in relict areas of South America. While I'll concede [ʎ]'s the proper pronunciation, that's sort of like maintaining that /hw/ is the proper pronunciation of "wh" in English. I think it's quite elegant, but my dialect and most dialects have lost it. This led to the odd situation of our reading teachers in elementary school insisting according to the curriculum that which and witch were pronounced differently, while they themselves were unable to produce the distinction. We had the spectacle of kids being marked correct if they attempted to say what as /wəhʌt/ when we would easily have understood if only someone had said that the sound is actually /hwʌt/. μηδείς (talk) 00:57, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Medeis -- In my high school, some were of the opinion that "wh" should theoretically be pronounced [ʍ], but it wasn't made into a big deal, and there were only one or two teachers or librarians in the school who made the distinction as part of their ordinary speech... AnonMoos (talk) 15:35, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Given the sound whenever I have heard it from native speakers (e.g., a woman of black/Cherokee descent from North Carolina born in 1910) it has always seemed pre-aspirated I don't prefer the voiceless w transcription. In fact, it wasn't until I had a visiting professor from Georgia (arhotic and unflapped; I presumed at first she was British) for Epistemology as an undergrad that I heard the sound clearly. After that I began noticing it among certain speakers. It's not native to the NYC or Delaware Valley dialect areas. μηδείς (talk) 02:43, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

My native language, Cebuano does not have a standardized spelling. And yes, this is mostly because of the numerous dialects, and it really only has three vowels - a, e/i, and o/u (bugnô, "fistfight" = bugnu, bugnô, bognô; lihok, "move" = lehok, lehuk, lihuk). In Cebu proper, the language is actually more derived than in the outskirts. Exhibiting far more linguistic evolution away from the archaic Cebuano, like L elision, where the letter L in between two vowels is omitted, and the first vowel is lengthened or turned into a diphthong (kalô, "hat" -> kawô; kalay, "crazy" -> ka'ay). This is also the case with most other native languages of the Philippines except Filipino/Tagalog.

As for b/v and ll, for old Spanish loanwords we pronounce and spell Spanish v as /β/ (e.g. bakuna = vacuna, "vaccine"; baka = vaca, "cattle"; bale = vale, "okay, so...", "alright, then..."). However, in proper nouns where the Spanish spelling has been retained (e.g. place names and family names), we pronounce Spanish v as in English, /v/ (e.g. Cavite, Villa, Veneracion), especially in Philippine English. Pronunciation of ll is always ʎ (though simplified to ly in native spellings, e.g. paella = Filipino paelya). -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 01:34, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. So you are saying Cebuano has a /v/-/β/ contrast? Is that for all speakers, or is it a learnèd distinction? Is it due to the influence of English? There are other three-vowel indigenous languages like Quechua that have the five vowel Spanish distinction in spelling, but the contrast is not present in most speaker's speech, no? μηδείς (talk) 02:08, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

English influence, and it's learned. Most Cebuano speakers today don't even know which words are from Spanish. However in words which look Spanish, people who know English tend to misguidedly mispronounce it using English sounds. Hypercorrection probably has something to do with it too. That is - the educated people look down on people who pronounce v as /β/, since it's also a common mispronunciation among the uneducated for English words (same confusion with other non-native consonants: p/f, th/d, s/z, j/dy). You're probably familiar with it as the "Filipino accent" (which we derisively call "Carabao English"), e.g. "people" -> "feefol", "friend" -> "prend", "the" - "da".

As for the vowels, it's the opposite of Quechua. There is actually a distinction in pronunciation between e and i, and o and u. But it differs depending on your dialect. So, for example, while most dialects will pronounce it tulo ("three"), some may pronounce it tulu, tolo, tolu, or təlo. Very few homophones are also created by substituting e with i, or o with u, which indicates that these sounds were originally not distinguished. A different word which uses the same vowels and consonants is tulô ("drip", also spelled tulû, tolô), but that is easily differentiated because it ends in a glottal stop (which is almost a separate consonant in Filipino languages). So however they are spelled or spoken, they are still understandable.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 02:38, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. But although you say there is a distinction between e/i and o/u you seem to be implying that any particular dialect of Cebuano will really only have three distinctive vowels, e/i, a & o/u. Or am I mistaken? My understanding of Quechua is that it natively has three vowels, but that i & u have low allophones e & o next to uvular consonants, and that eductaed speakers use these five vowels phonemically when using Spanish loanwords. Somewhat along the lines of how z & v, which were allophonic intervocally in Old English became phonemic in Middle English due to Norman French influence. μηδείς (talk) 04:28, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Not really. Presumably ancient Visayan languages only had three vowels . And indeed the local abugida writing system, Baybayin, lumped e with i, and o with u. Spanish and American colonial influence introduced the distinction. So modern Cebuano does have five vowels, and every dialect will use all of them. But where one dialect will use e, another will use i; where one will use o, another will use u. No particular rules how, as far as I know, but certain combinations are certainly becoming more prevalent (though I wouldn't exactly call those "standardized" yet).

So more like originally allophones that have started to adapt to a five-vowel alphabet. Another example is d and r, which were allophones in ancient Visayan languages. Baybayin also only had one letter for d and r. Evidence of this can be found in Waray-Waray language. A sister language to Cebuano. Where Cebuano uses a d, the Waray cognate will sometimes use an r if it's in between vowels.

Vowels in loanwords are usually preserved as they were originally pronounced (though consonants were switched out during the adoption of the Abakada alphabet (1940–1971)). It arbitrarily removed letters considered "foreign", resulting in Austronesian-looking words (or at worst, badly spelled English). The Abakada alphabet has been replaced, but the effects remain. Hence why bakuna is now spelled that way, the vowels are preserved, but the consonants are now phonetically spelled. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 08:39, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

"or" in Keats

I'm looking at the following snippet of Keats. It's from an early poem addressed to the spirit of someone who has died. The confusing (or, at least, grammatically surprising) part is pasted below:

There thou or joinest the immortal quire

In melodies that even heaven fair
Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire,
Of the omnipotent Father, cleav'st the air

On holy message sent

I've bolded the part I'm not quite sure I get. I checked the OED and couldn't find any analogous construction. At first I thought this was some obsolete or idiomatic use of "or" (I had Milton's "or ere" in mind as an example, which the OED mentioned), but the more I read it, the more I'm convinced this is our plain-ol' English "or". What's strange about it, as you've probably noticed, is that it's not doing its typical job of connecting two words or phrases that are being expressed as alternatives. In the first line I quoted, it seems to be fulfilling a function similar to how we would now use the word "either"—"Either this spirit is joining the immortal quire," Keats is saying, "or God will be sending him down to earth to act as a messenger."

Is my reading correct? And if so, are there other examples of this weird use of "or?" I've read extensively in English literature from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries and don't think I've ever seen a construction like this one. Evan ^{(talk|contribs)} 16:38, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

See wikt:or#Adverb.—Wavelength (talk) 17:18, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

No, Wavelength, that is the use which Evanh2008 has already considered and rejected. --ColinFine (talk) 17:25, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

(ec) Yes, it is. "Or ... or ... " is an archaic or poetic form of "Either ... or ... ". The OED has examples from 1325 to 1957 (the last of these being "Or far or near", fromDorothy L. Sayers' translation of The Song of Roland, so it was presumably deliberately archaising). --ColinFine (talk) 17:23, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and...and for the English "both...and" & or...or for "either...or" are very common constructions, more common than using two different words like we do, I suspect. Although I don't know a source off-hand for that impression. μηδείς (talk) 19:39, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Help with DE>AR name transcription

As the Language Ref desk on the Arabic Wikipedia seems dormant lately, I'd appreciate help on a query I posted there regarding the Arabic transcription of the name Josef Mengele. Thanks, Deborahjay (talk) 19:36, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Seems to be a common error. Joseph Goebbels جوزيف غوبلز, Joseph Stalin جوزيف ستالين, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) جوزيف راتزنغر are all spelled with a jiim also. If you go through the Josephs listed here and look at the corresponding Arabic WP articles (when there is one) you'll see that most are spelled with a jiim. But there's no consistency. For example in the case of Emperor Franz Joseph it's like Joseph Mengele but backwards: the article's name uses the correct spelling (with yaa': يوزف) whereas the text uses jiim. Still other cases use the Arabic version of the name (يوسف). In the case of the spelling which uses jiim could it be English or French influence? Contact Basemetal here 20:19, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Deborahjay -- I pointed out a long time ago that Famke Janssen was spelled on Arabic Wikipedia based on an incorrect English pronunciation of her name, but I'm not sure that anything changed... AnonMoos (talk) 20:35, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Nothing's changed as you can see. Contact Basemetal here 23:12, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Also the surname spelled in the page title vs. page content appears to end in different letters. I encountered this on my first project proofreading (German) names in an Arabic text, in a rudimentary way as I've only just learned the AR alphabet. I won't do a Page Move till I can get the proper spelling confirmed, but now I know to watch out for such distortions that indeed may have been caused by a third language interference. For now I can post my remarks on the associated Talk page. -- Deborahjay (talk) 21:08, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Re: surname, it not only appears to, it does. منجيل and منجليه would be equivalent to מנגיל and מנגליה resp. and other variations yet would be possible I think, including منجل (equivalent to מנגל), which would show no attempt to indicate either the presence or absence of vowels or any vowel quality. The spelling of such uncommon surnames is even more likely to be inconsistent. Note that Arabic (contrary to Hebrew) does not necessarily feel it has to indicate the presence a final vowel (as opposed to a word ending in a consonant) with a mater lectionis when transcribing foreign names probably because native Arabic words ending in a short vowel (and thus w/o any indication that there is a vowel other than vowel diacritics which are not used in normal writing) are plenty, contrary to Hebrew. Hence the first spelling. Also, two other considerations: Arabic does not have the tradition of כתיב מלא and has "officially" only three vowels, so the sound 'e' and 'o' have to be rendered somehow with 'i' and 'u'; of course in practice modern vernaculars and modern vernacular pronunciations of literary Arabic use all five short vowels. From a practical point of view maybe you should see if the Arabic WP has guidelines for the transcription of foreign names and if some of those forms fail to follow it. If there's no guideline it will be hard to determine the right transcription to choose. Doesn't the Arabic WP use vowel diacritics on an exceptional basis when the transcription of a foreign name is likely to prove troublesome for Arabic speakers? I think I've seen that done in some Arabic magazines but it always seemed to be on an ad hoc basis, and dependent on what the individual writer of the article thought may prove troublesome. Contact Basemetal here 22:20, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Deborahjay -- Hope your remarks receive more attention than my February 2009 comment here (but I wouldn't bet on it). By the way, I find the "ג׳" in קיסינג׳ר (the Hebrew version of Henry Kissinger's name) to be somewhat amusing, since it's based on an English mispronunciation of German... AnonMoos (talk) 04:22, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

AnonMoos's observation reminded me of another issue when transcribing foreign names in Arabic, which is that the most common pronunciation of the core consonants of Arabic does not include a [g] or a [p] sound. (By core consonants I mean those consonants inherited from classical Arabic, ignoring those that are specific to particular vernaculars, and by most common pronunciation I mean excluding pronunciations that are specific to particular vernaculars). When transcribing foreign names the lack of a [g] and a [p] sounds are dealt with inconsistently. For example the letter ج (i.e. ג) may be used to transcribe both the sound [g] and the sound [d͡ʒ] even though only the latter corresponds to the common Arabic pronunciation. You have both cases in the transcription of the name 'Joseph Mengele' for example. Yet in the transcription of the name 'Ratzinger' the 'g' is transcribed with a ghayn! (See what I mean?) On the other hand I've heard that it can also happen that transcriptions of the [g] sound actually differ across the Arab world depending on what consonant has a sound that most resembles [g] in a particular vernacular (e.g. in Egypt the jiim itself has the sound [g]). So it could very well happen that a particular transcription depends on where some individual WP editor was from. The lack of a [p] gives rise to similarly confusing results. One common solution is to transcribe it as a ب (i.e. ב), e.g. 'Napoleon' is transcribed نابليون (i.e. נאבליון) pronounced 'Naabuliyuun' or 'Naabuliiyuun' (I don't know which as I don't know if there's supposed to be a shadda on the yaa') نَابُلْيُون according to one online dictionary, so 'Naabulyuun' (actually that dictionary gives ناَبُلْيُون but the fatha was obviously mistyped), but I am almost certain there's other options, in general, for the transcription of a [p]. If you are going to try and check that the Arabic WP maintains consistency in its transcriptions, all I can say is: good luck! Maybe a more realistic goal would be to encourage them to at least provide the original spelling in the original writing system and the original pronunciation in IPA. Finally let me point out that Arabic is not the only language that transcribes from English rather than the original language: check out the transcriptions of "Julius Caesar" or "Spain" in Hindi or in Japanese and you'll see what I mean. Contact Basemetal here 01:20, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

According to the Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, even for the word "English", انجليزي is the Egyptian spelling, انقليزي is the Tunisian spelling, and انكليزي the less regionally-marked spelling. The Egyptian pronunciation of ج as [g] is a very widely-familiar regionalism... AnonMoos (talk) 07:08, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

P.S. "P" can appear as ف for certain historical-etymological reasons (فلسطين "Palestine", فيثاغورس "Pythagoras", etc.), but I get the impression that "P"=ب is pretty universal in random modern words (without special historical connections) borrowed into Arabic)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:36, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

You're right. I was compounding the [b] problems and the [v] problems. The sound [v] doesn't exist either. That is usually transcribed as ف, e.g. 'Venus' فينوس (that's the goddess; the planet has its own native Arabic name). Contact Basemetal here 16:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Does the Spanish eña eñe (ñ) go back to a double n (nn)?

There are actually two questions here: (1) Did Spanish spelling ever use a double n (nn) to write the palatal n which is written nowadays as the eña eñe (ñ), and (if the answer to the first question is yes then) (2) Does the squiggle (aka tilde) over the n in the eña eñe actually go back to an n? In other words was the eña eñe originally a miniature n on top of a regular sized n? Contact Basemetal here 20:32, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I recommend you read Tilde for its long and colorful history. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:45, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, WP:WHAAOE: Ñ. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:47, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Rather than give you a fish, since BBB and IT have taught you how to fish, I won't answer directly, but it's eñe, not eña (she's a songstress); and there are also workarounds, like 'nh' when your keyboard lacks an eñe. Writing anho is much better then writing ano when you're at a loss for a tilde. μηδείς (talk) 20:53, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Gasp! All my life I'd thought it was eña. Thanks Medeis. It was worth asking the RD if only for this. Something like this had happened to me before. For years I had called bedsheets 'hábanas' until I finally realized, I'm not sure how, it was 'sábanas'. To me the best workaround in the days the eñe (eñe eñe eñe) was not easily available would have been precisely a double nn (Espanna, mannana, etc.). Some Spanish people I knew used gn as in Italian but that is ambiguous in Spanish as there are Spanish words with a real g + n sequence. Yes the nh does work but it feels Portuguese. To stay consistent it is aesthetically more pleasing to me at least to leave lh and nh to the Portuguese and to use ll and nn in Castellano. Contact Basemetal here 21:15, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

The more common workaround that I have seen for no ñ on the keyboard is ny: anyo, carinyo, pinya, etc... Vrac (talk) 21:38, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

(ec) Well, Eña is quite beautiful and uplifting, so no foul on your part. The Catalan language uses ll and ny and certain Provençal dialects in France also use lh and nh. I have one correspondent hispanohablante with whom I regularly use nh, and omit accents unless I am on my Mac. As for embarrassing moments, I was asked, when I wrote apollar, did I mean "to support", or "to insert with a chicken". μηδείς (talk) 21:42, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

At least you didn't wish anyone a "feliz ano nuevo," like a former coworker of my brother's did. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:46, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Ja ja ja. A great slogan for a proctologist. Let's remember this one. Contact Basemetal here 21:53, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

OK, I admit it, I lol'd, though I must admit if someone said that to me I'd be worried they were about to rip me a new one. Speaking of high culture and low humour, I'm reminded of how the Melbourne-based Victoria State Opera went bust and was merged with the Sydney-based Australian Opera to form what the administrators where happy to call the "Australian National Opera". Until the multi-lingual singers heard about it, that is. True story, bros and ladybros.--Shirt58 (talk) 04:05, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

This is a good 'un, although in this case (opera!) they were talking about Italian 'ano'. To get back to the Spanish eñe it is a fact that many English speakers treat it as if it was there for purely ornamental reasons: witness this recent BBC page. Contact Basemetal here 05:44, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Compañero Basemetal, it does mention that it was a joke about Italian in the newspaper article I linked. Rather than quibble, I have now decided that the title of the Spanish translation of my yet to be published (and, truth be told, yet to be written) novel "One Hundred Beers of Solitude" will be "Cien anos de soledad". (Plot summary: Set mostly in pubs in Tasmania, the book opens with a man facing a firing squad remembering that distant afternoon when he drank his first ice-cold Cascade Pale Ale...)--Shirt58 (talk) 11:56, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I look forward to reading such an epic. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:07, 20 December 2014 (UTC) (p.s. I didn't know you had ladybros in Sydney!)

What was that? Are these novel underground meanings of 'ladybro'? Contact Basemetal here 17:57, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I went to the Real Academia Española website to see what they had to say about the word español. This may provide some enlightenment: Del prov. espaignol, y este del lat. mediev. Hispaniŏlus, de Hispania, España. In short, the eñe, in this case at least, equates to the "gn" sound in Italian and goes back to the "ni" ("ny") sound in Latin. Not really "double n". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:30, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I never meant a double n in pronunciation, only in writing. I was specifically asking about a double n recording the palatal n. See very first line of this section. I was asking if the eñe went back to a double n in that sense. If it was one n on top of another. And from the WP article on the eñe it seems the answer is yes. Contact Basemetal here 16:28, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally the site mentioned by Bugs is this one and WP has an article too. Have fun. Contact Basemetal here 17:05, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Not all modern eñes derive from an original -nn- sequence, but Latin -nn- does normally develop into Spanish ñ: annus > año "year", canna > caña "cane", and grunnire > gruñir "groan" (Penny, A History of the Spanish Language p62). Once the eñe existed it is not odd that it would be coöpted for palatal enns that had other origins. (The development parallels the palatalization of -ll-, e.g., Latin pullus > Sp. pollo.) μηδείς (talk) 21:28, 20 December 2014 (UTC)