Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 27

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July 27

Missing the bark for the tree

How do you say it? Missing the tree for the bark or is it Missing the bark for the tree? 61.3.165.11 (talk) 05:48, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I know "Couldn't see the forest for the trees". On that basis, it would be "missing the trees for the bark". But idioms are not necessarily logical. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:51, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Like Jack, I've never heard the expression about bark, and would assume it is a translation of a foreign idiom. The phrase familiar to me is "can't see the wood for the trees" (not "forest") but we don't have many forests in the UK. The phrase was puzzling to me as a child, because I didn't know whether it meant "wood" = "collection of trees" or "wood" = "material in trees". --ColinFine (talk) 09:36, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

That was the point of the phrase. I'd never heard Jack's version before today but it misses the nuance. 86.141.140.204 (talk) 11:02, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Strangely, Jack's version is the one we have in the US, about as far from Aussie as you can get. I don't understand what you mean about nuance. "Can't see the forest for the trees" means you focus on individual items and don't see the overall picture. What does "Can't see the wood for the trees" add to that ? It could either mean "can't see the overall picture" (where wood = forest) or "can't see the details" (where wood = material). If so, I don't see any advantage to an ambiguous saying like that. Or does it mean you only see the middle level, and neither the overall picture nor the details ? StuRat (talk) 14:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

It means all those, hence the nuance. I suspect that most usage in the UK is about not seeing the overall picture, but the ability to be ambiguous is one of the things that makes our language not half bad. Bazza (talk) 16:35, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

There are times when ambiguity is a plus, like for double entendre, but how is it a plus here ? StuRat (talk) 17:06, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Because then it can mean either of two separate notions - A) you're missing the big picture because you're focused on the smaller entities (if wood=woods=forest). B) you're missing a detail because you're focused on the larger tree (if wood=biomass). SemanticMantis (talk) 17:37, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

That's a given, as described above. The question is why you would want to be unclear in your meaning. I get it when describing a sexual act, but this case makes no sense to me. (BTW, in UK English, "wood" directly = forest, as in "Hundred Acre Wood".) StuRat (talk) 17:48, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean "We don't have many forests in the UK?" Off the top of my head I can give you Epping Forest, New Forest, Kielder Forest, Thetford Warren, Sherwood Forest, etc. Scotland is full of them. In Nottinghamshire, apart from Sherwood Forest (Robin Hood's base), when you pass Rainford going north on the main road you enter a huge forest. That was where the Black Panther (a serial killer) came unstuck. He kidnapped a driver and forced him at gunpoint to drive up that road. When they reached the last outpost of civilisation (a roadside fish and chip shop) the driver swung the car round and brought it to a stop outside. The killer started fighting and was only subdued when the police handcuffed to him to the railings outside. 86.141.140.204 (talk) 11:14, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

It's all relative. Bigger places in the world have forests which take days to go through, and may well consider what we call forests to just be oversized copses. Bazza (talk) 16:35, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The UK doesn't do very well compared to other European countries, only the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland have less forestation. [1] Alansplodge (talk) 00:35, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I think you may be barking up the wrong tree? Rojomoke (talk) 12:12, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Aboriginal name of Tasmania

Does Tasmania have an aboriginal name? It's called Lutriwita in Palawa kani, but that's a modern constructed language. --195.62.160.60 (talk) 09:03, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Just as on the mainland, there were numerous tribes in Tasmania, which were as separate culturally and linguistically as the Vietnamese and the Mongols. Just as there is no "Asian language" or "European language", there is no "Aboriginal language". Now, each of the tribes would have had a word for the lands and waters they inhabited, but to talk of a word for the entire island supposes they had a sense that they were in fact on an island, and I don't know that they had such an awareness. Maybe an ethnologist can correct me. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:28, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I can understand how people living in Australia proper might not have known they were on an island, because circumnavigating it is a major task, especially on land. Tasmania is a lot smaller though, and I would expect that the natives both would have known that they were on an island, and that a larger landform (mainland Australia) was nearby. StuRat (talk) 14:39, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Just don't let the Tasmanians hear you talking about the mainland as "Australia proper". They're very touchy about being perceived as less than other Australians. Understandably so, particularly after the 1982 Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony in Brisbane, where a huge stylised human map of Australia failed to show any evidence of the island state. (See also Omission of Tasmania from maps of Australia.) I once read in an American almanac/fact book that "in 1901 Tasmania merged with Australia to form a new nation". I still wince whenever I remember that grotesquely inaccurate statement being disseminated to the wider world. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Australia is an island, a nation, and a continent. The island would not include Tasmania, while the nation does, and presumably so does the continent (since Tasmania is on the same tectonic plate). So, by "Australia proper", I meant the island. You used "the mainland", but I found that to be ambiguous, since there are many mainlands. The British call the rest of Europe "the continent", which always seemed funny to me, since they are part of the same continent. StuRat (talk) 20:43, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

In any discussion where the topic is Australia, "the mainland" has one and only one meaning. What else could it mean - Eurasia? I don't think so. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:06, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't seem so good in an archaeological context, because Tasmania was connected in the past. So, did "the mainland" include Tasmania at that time, or not ? StuRat (talk) 15:08, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Disingenuity, StuRat is thy name. We weren't discussing such a distant epoch; and if we had been, the word "mainland" would have made sense only from the perspective of some island off the coast of the combined Australia/Tasmania landmass. Those people who are human beings sometimes do, say or write things that are not entirely correct. Just accept that and move on. (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt as to whether you belong to the human category.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:19, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Abrasiveness, that is your name. We are talking about the origins of language on Tasmania, and that entails the time when it physically split from Australia, from whence the language split occurred. So, "mainland" is a problematic term to refer to Australia proper, during this period. Note that Tasmania didn't separate from Australia in a "distant epoch", it happened during the current epoch, the Holocene: See Tasmania#Physical_history. (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as to whether you are just here to stir up trouble.) StuRat (talk) 17:50, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

A rapid search through "Google Books" seems to give Trowena/Trowenna as possible aboriginal names for Tasmania. I don't know if they are reliable. --195.62.160.60 (talk) 11:07, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, this is already mentioned (in an alternative spelling of "Trouwunna"), in the already-linked Tasmania article, Section 2.2 Indigenous People. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 13:00, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

It seems doubtful that there would have been an aboriginal name for Tasmania other than a word meaning something like "land". Tasmania lies 150 miles from the Australian mainland, and its aboriginal peoples did not have seagoing boats. The Furneaux Group of smaller islands, lying between Tasmania and the mainland, ceased to be inhabited at least 4,000 years before Europeans arrived. Genetic studies suggest that Tasmania's aboriginal population had been genetically isolated from the population of the mainland for at least 8,000 years before Europeans arrived. It is not at all likely that aboriginal Tasmanians were aware of the existence of landmasses other than Tasmania, and therefore also unlikely that they had a name for Tasmania other than "the land". Historically, landmasses have been named only to distinguish them from other known landmasses. For example, the inhabitants of the Old World had no name for it—other than "the world"—before they discovered the New World. (Note that I am aware that others had discovered it before them.) Marco polo (talk) 18:16, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like it would take much of a boat to make that distance. A canoe with a rowing crew could make it, during calm seas (do they have nasty seas year round ?). And how about Australian Aboriginees visiting them ? Or Polynesians, they seemed able to cover long distances by boat, did they visit ? StuRat (talk) 18:51, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The climate was unfavourable (cold and wet), compared to the mainland, so the interest of outsiders in the land was small (compare the relative disinterest of the Māori in the climatically similar South Island), and the aborigines, due to their small number and isolation, lost techniques they must have had originally (such as fire-making and boat-building). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:10, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

They lost the ability to make fires ? So they went back to eating raw meat then ? StuRat (talk) 19:14, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The assertion that Tasmanians had lost the ability to make fire is disputed, but is based on a report made in 1831 by George Augustus Robinson: "As the chief always carries a lighted torch I asked them what they did when their fire went out. They said if their fire went out by reason of rain they [were] compelled to eat the kangaroo raw and to walk about and look for another mob and get fire of them." [2] Alansplodge (talk) 00:26, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Right. And WP states: "It is claimed that they only possessed lit fires with the men entrusted in carrying embers from camp to camp for cooking and which could also be used to clear land and herd animals to aid in hunting practices. However, other scholars dispute that the Aboriginal Tasmanians did not have fire; and, indeed, a document from 1887 clearly describes fire-lighting techniques used among Tasmanians." These statements are sourced. Check the article Aboriginal Tasmanians Contact Basemetal here 21:22, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

OK, Aboriginal Tasmanians#History describes it differently – apparently these questions are controversial and uncertain. But even if the Tasmanians had contact with outsiders after all before the Europeans came (which there does not seem to be evidence of), there would have been no particular reason to introduce a non-generic name for their country or for themselves. Lots of peoples, even modern people, use generic names for their homeland (e. g., something that translates to "the island") or hometown (at least colloquially, such as "the town"), and for themselves (Inuit famously means simply "people"). It's a matter of speech economy. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:22, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Sure there is. If you didn't come up with different names you would end up describing a meeting between natives and foreigners as "The people met with other people, who are like the people, but not really the people." StuRat (talk) 19:26, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm talking about endonyms, StuRat. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:57, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

This might not be the same as a word of indigenous origin prior to European contact. But wouldn't the Aborigines have developed words for Tasmania or Australia when they came into contact with Europeans or European translator developed nativized rendition of Tasmania or Australia to communicate ideas to the different tribes?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 00:49, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

See http://www.maoridictionary.co.nz/search?&keywords=Tasmania. (I am aware that Māori is native to New Zealand.)

—Wavelength (talk) 01:03, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Those are all just Maori renderings of the English-language name "Tasmania". What's the relevance? --Amble (talk) 02:44, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

The question is if an aboriginal language rendering of English-language place name (if one exist for Tasmania and Australia) constitute as an aboriginal name? Most culture usually create native language rendering for concepts/name that did not exist traditionally. --KAVEBEAR (talk) 02:55, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

The article Aboriginal Tasmanians states (without a source of course) that Aboriginal Tasmanians were called in "Tasmanian" "Parlevar or Palawa". Same name in all Tasmanian languages, right? Another Wikipedian with a sense of humor. Why didn't that guy come up with a "Tasmanian" term for Tasmania? Contact Basemetal here 21:22, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

When the Europeans made contact with the Eskimos they asked them what the name of the country was, and the answer was "Canada", which is actually the native word for "nothingness". Does anyone know if this word "parlevar" or "palawa" has any additional meaning? 86.134.217.46 (talk) 12:06, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Don't know where you got the "nothingness" story from (our article on Name of Canada suggests you may have been misremembering an obsolete folk claim), but it reminds me of the silly old German joke that the name goes back to the astonished exclamation of the first (German) explorer, on setting foot in the country: "Kaana da?!" ("nobody here?") – Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:25, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

There's an old Jewish joke that Moses brought the Jews to the ghastly place he brought them to just because he had a speech impediment: he said "Kanaan" but he had meant "Kanada" all along. Works better in Yiddish. Contact Basemetal here 15:15, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Meaning of "scenario" in the context of hypothetical prehistorical events

A third opinion is needed on Talk:Kurgan hypothesis. Thank you. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:21, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

EO's explanation of "scenario":[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:45, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I looked at the talk page of that article and couldn't find out which section you were referring to. Please be a bit more specific. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 14:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Both the first and last section. Sorry, I should have been more specific. Anyway, Wardog/Iapetus has already supplied very helpful suggestions. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

"Our thoughts remain with family and friends of the deceased"

What the hell is that supposed to mean? It's just a stock serif that the Police use. It is in fact gibberish, as their thoughts remain concentrated on other jobs. Why not just say, "This is a regretful incident," or words to that effect? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 13:44, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

They're trying to bring a little comfort. There's no harm in that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:46, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I believe that phrase started out as "Our prayers...", but was changed to be secular. (There was a time when most people felt that enough prayers would get God to help out the survivors.) StuRat (talk) 14:04, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

You hear "our thoughts and prayers" frequently even now. Knowledge that someone is praying for them could make them feel better. Psychology. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Sure, that is still a common phrase. But in the words of Bad Religion, " Don't Pray On Me" (song here [4]) - while some people would be comforted by the idea someone is praying for them, others may well just be annoyed or offended. I think Stu is right that it's a move toward a more secular style of condolence, but the only refs I can find are blog posts. Here's someone who doesn't like "our thoughts and prayers" because they don't like prayer [5]. Here's someone who doesn't like "our thoughts and prayers" because they like praying but don't think "thoughts" do any good [6]. So it seems that "our thoughts and prayers" can alienate both religious and non-religious people. Much like a Jewish person being wished "Merry Christmas", the general polite thing to do is accept that the speaker means well, even if something is a bit off. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:30, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't object to it in general, even if it is the most pathetically formulaic platitude ever invented. But it's not the job of the police to be dishing out stuff like this. Down here at least, they'll start their media op on the investigation of some shocking crime or accident with "This is an absolute tragedy for the family/community", then launch into "Our thoughts ...". Well, we actually knew it was a tragedy, and we didn't need anyone to confirm that. When it comes to bad things that have already happened, their focus ought to be on investigation and apprehension, not on being counsellors to the entire community. It's nice that the police wish to present a kindly and helpful and caring and human face to the community, but these sorts of scripted cliches just waste everyone's time. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:39, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Public relations is rather important for police. We've seen what happens when relations break down, then you get civilians and police at war with each other, riots, etc. Sure, showing sympathy is a small part, but it all adds up. StuRat (talk) 19:45, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

That wasn't relations breaking down, it's something the 24-hour news built up. No matter how smooth and polite a police spokesperson is to the reporters at a press conference, the narrative will come out the way the producers want.

That's not to say American cops and blacks don't have serious failures to communicate, just that it hasn't gotten worse/more important as suddenly after Michael Brown as the TV says it has. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:34, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

When you get anti-police riots, that's tangible evidence that community relations have broken down. Long before the riots there likely was already the attitude in the community that the police were the enemy. Note that this isn't always a racial issue. For example, the Stonewall riots occurred after homosexuals were targeted by police for years. StuRat (talk) 14:54, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

The first day did. These "powder keg" deals always take a spark. After that, it was up to the papers to fan the flames. Might not have been a second night, let alone a lasting impression, if it were left between police and the "forces of faggotry". Craig Rodwell knew the power of the press. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:25, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree totally with with good PR. But spouting cliches and scripted platitudes and statements of the bleedin' obvious doesn't achieve that, imo. All they achieve is to irritate this little black duck, and that's surely counter-productive. If your family was wiped out by a crazed gunman, how would it help for someone to come along and say "This is an absolute tragedy"? That's not even remotely my idea of expressing sympathy. It expresses a judgment on the event (a judgment nobody would disagree with, I'm sure, but a judgment nonetheless). They may as well say "This is a very bad thing". Well, duh! Sympathy is about showing you have some idea of the pain the person is suffering as a result of the event. It's about feelings, not judgments. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:24, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

It seems similar to small talk. Do you say "Hi" as you meet people ? Why ? It doesn't actually convey any information, does it ? Human communication is about more than that, you're also conveying mood, etc. (I have a brother who says "Hi" when in a good mood, but when he walks right by I know to avoid him.) In the case of police, they may not feel any regret when some people are killed, but they still better pretend that they do. StuRat (talk) 20:31, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

What good does that pretence achieve? If we can tell they're pretending (and we can), then it comes across as inauthentic, and for anyone who has the slightest distrust of or issue with the police, that undoes whatever good relations they've created. If we can put it down to small talk, that's just another excellent reason to not get into it at all. Who needs small talk when they're dealing with "an absolute tragedy"? I want to hear what the police are doing to apprehend suspects, investigate crimes or accidents, and the like. The rest of the blather is just that, and life's too short for that. < end of blather :) >-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:01, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Because some people will believe it. It similar to the statement I've heard: "Avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, even if no real conflict exists." Again, like much of PR, it's not honest, but it still is important. The whole field of PR is based on the difference between perception and reality. StuRat (talk) 21:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

For those who are so narcissistic as to insult well-wishers, I'm reminded of the old saying, "No good deed goes unpunished." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:13, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

We may think we are all "so clever and classless and free" to quote John Lennon, but social conventions do still matter in most contests. So when someone has died, especially what can be described as a tragic death, using this phrase or something similar ("our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the deceased") is just a way of expressing that the speaker understands that the deaths are a major loss for people who were close to the deceased, even if the speaker does not personally know these people. It does not mean that the speaker has ceased all activities to meditate about the lives lost or immediately headed off to a nearby shrine to pray, but simply that he sympathizes with the afflicted. It has become a stock phrase in recent years, and does in fact sound a bit cliché by now, but similar phrases have been used for centuries in such circumstances ("our deepest sympathies" or "our condolences" were popular terms in the past). --Xuxl (talk) 10:23, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Besides, many of us still believe in prayer. Got a problem with that? StevenJ81 (talk) 12:21, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

And movements like Black Lives Matter show that the perception is that the police do not value the lives of blacks, and freely kill them, rather than take the time to determine if they actually pose a danger, as in the case of the shooting of Tamir Rice. Any effort they can make to change that perception is badly needed. (Although I agree that actually changing their actions is more important than just pretending to care.) StuRat (talk) 13:29, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

"e" and "ä" in German

It's fairly well known that in German, "e" and "ä" are pronounced pretty much the same, as /e/, unlike my native Finnish, where "ä" is pronounced /æ/, a front vowel version of /a/. (In fact, I once had trouble teaching a native German speaker to pronounce the name of the Finnish band Värttinä correctly. He kept pronouncing it as "Verttine".)

Now why is this so? It seems inconsistent, as "ü" and "ö" are pronounced as front vowel versions of "u" and "o" in German. Actually "ü" is even more consistent than in Finnish, as Finnish writes the sound as "y". (So do all Scandinavian languages, but not Estonian.)

Also, from what I have read from German-language comic books, if someone shouts out for help it's "Hilfe!" but if the /e/ sound is lengthened it becomes "Hilfäää!". Why the sudden switch from "e" to "ä"? JIP | Talk 21:08, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

How far apart are /e/ and /æ/ for most people, really? StevenJ81 (talk) 12:20, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

In what language, English? Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:04, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

English and German. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:07, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, German doesn't have an /æ/ phoneme. Modern standard German has either two or three phonemes in the front/mid area: short half-open /ɛ/ (spelled either "e" or "ä", without phonological distinction), long half-closed /e:/ (spelled "e"), and long half-open /ɛ:/ (spelled exclusively "ä"). The functional load between the latter two is low, i.e. there are relatively few minimal pairs (Reeder vs. Räder, ich bete vs. ich bäte). The distinction is widely absent in many speakers, except in careful reading pronunciation (though the name of the letter "ä" is always pronounced /ɛ:/, even by speakers who otherwise won't use that sound in natural speech). There's also some lexical variation (e.g. for me, even though I do have the /e:/ vs. /ɛ:/ distinction, the word Mädchen has /e:/, despite its spelling.) On the other hand, confusingly, some southern forms of German have an additional phonological contrast, absent in the standard, between short /e/ and /ɛ/ (this distinction, again, cross-cuts with the orthographical one between "e" and "ä"; e.g. Mensch vs. Fest have different vowels.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:44, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

The details are complicated, but the main origin of ä is Middle High German /æː/ (in normalised spelling ‹æ›), the umlauted version of /aː/ (in normalised spelling ‹â›), for example in kæse "cheese". Frequent ways to spell the /æː/ phoneme were, as far as I know, ae and the ligature æ, and ae developped (via the process explained somewhere in umlaut) into ä. By analogy to ä for /æː/ and ü for /yː/, ä also came to be used for the secondary umlaut of short /a/, namely for /æ/ (for example in mächtig "mighty"), and the primary umlaut of short /a/, namely (closed!) /e/ (for example in Lämmer "lambs"). In the Central German dialects on which Standard German is based, /æ/ merged with /e/ and /ɛ/ (from inherited Proto-Germanic *e, although this could also become /a/ in some dialects, as in Thuringian, Weimar area /ʃvastər/ "sister") into /ɛ/, and /æː/ merged with /eː/ (from /ɛː/ from Proto-Germanic *ai, and from secondarily lengthened MHG /ɛ/ and /e/) into /eː/. The restoration of the contrast between long ä and long e in the south of the German-speaking area is a fairly artificial spelling pronunciation, but probably motivated by the fact that Upper German dialects generally have not merged the reflexes of /æː/ and /eː/, compare Swiss German /xæːs/, Central Bavarian /kʰaːs/ "cheese". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:29, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Upper German dialects have also partly retained the distinction between closed /e/ (the umlaut of /a/) and open /ɛ/ (which, if I recall correctly, is in some dialects opened to /æ/ or /a/, just like in the Thuringian example), as you mention, though at least in Central Bavarian the distribution does not reflect the original distribution (I remember encountering a quaint term like mittelbairische Vokalverwirrung, i. e., Central Bavarian vowel confusion, for this phenomenon). As for Mädchen, it does not originally have a long /æː/, but is adapted from Middle Low German mēgedeken, which might be the reason that even for some of those who usually pronounce long ä as /ɛː/, it is pronounced with /eː/. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:59, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that in Central Bavarian, /ə/ does not exist as a phoneme or even phone because all the inherited examples have syncopated or apocopated it or otherwise got rid of it, so the sound is alien to (Central) Bavarian (it appears to have been retained in some South Bavarian dialects, such as in parts of Tyrol) and prone to being replaced by /ɛ/ when read out or used in a Standard German borrowing. In fact, I was not aware that the pronunciation of unstressed e was /ə/ in northern German speech (often considered a neutral or "standard" accent, although northern-German-coloured speech sounds far from accentless to Upper-German-speakers); only at university I realised that my /ɛ/ pronunciation is not the pronunciation judged standard and described in the handbooks. To me, /ˈhɪlfɛ/ is normal and /ˈhɪlfə/ sounds incredibly affected, like talking with a hilariously fake French accent. :-Þ --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:17, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

To sum it up, /æ/ did exist in Middle High German (both long and short) and is actually the sound ä historically represents, and it still exists in dialects, but has merged with /ɛ/ in the standard language, which is why we tend to read ä as /ɛ/ and replace /æ/ with /ɛ/ (in English as well, although this "Bleck Hendbeg Problem" is also due to tradition). Also, the /ə/ vowel of Standard German can really be thought of as an unstressed version of /ɛ/ and is actually pronounced as such by some speakers (although this probably in essence a spelling pronunciation). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:31, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

As to JIP's "Hilfäää!" question (which no one has explicitly answered yet as far as I can tell): first of all the 'e' in "Hilfe!" is not an /e/ sound but an /ə/ sound. Now "Hilfeee!" would I suppose represent a (very) long /e/ sound, while "Hilfäää!" is meant to represent a (very) long /ɛ/ sound. The question then becomes: why when you lengthen an /ə/ sound do you get an /ɛ/ sound instead of an /e/ sound? I don't know so I'll let someone who does answer that. But I note that (conversely as it were) the WP article Standard German phonology says that "Some scholars treat /ə/ as an unstressed allophone of /ɛ/". Maybe the two things are related. Contact Basemetal here 16:49, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not a native speaker, but I have a couple of observations to add. The 'e' in Hilfe is an /ə/ sound in rapid, unselfconscious speech in most German varieties, but in careful speech, especially in the south, that 'e' is pronounced /ɛ/. Basemetal is right that the only way to lengthen that sound using German orthography is to use 'ä'. As for the pronunciation of 'ä', short 'ä' is pronounced /ɛ/ in all or nearly all German varieties, so it is homophonous with short 'e'. However, there is variation in the pronunciation of long 'ä' in unselfconscious speech. (The nonstandard repetition of 'ä' in "Hilfäää!" is meant to draw attention to the vowel and the [ɛː] pronunciation.) As Future Perfect says, some speakers distinguish between long 'e' ([eː]) and long 'ä' ([ɛː]). When I was living in Germany, I perceived a regional dimension to this. I lived in Berlin, and I was friends with Berliners as well as people from Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hamburg, and Niedersachsen. All of those people pronounced long 'ä' as [eː], exactly the same as long 'e'. At one point, though, I took a trip to Freiburg and was surprised to hear the [ɛː] pronunciation for long 'ä'. I think that this may be a mainly southern or southwestern, maybe Alemannic phenomenon. Marco polo (talk) 18:30, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Vowel hiatus in German spelling?

Given that several two vowel (letter) combinations have in German specific conventional orthographic values, is there a general way to transcribe a vowel hiatus in German? For example 'eu' has in German the value /ɔj/. So what do you do in German spelling if you want to transcribe an /e/ + /u/ hiatus? Specifically I remember a passage in one of Brecht's theoretical works where he was trying to coin a term for his concept of theater: so he says (in German) something like "let's not call it Theater let's call it Thaeter". But how did Brecht mean that coinage to be pronounced? Thäter (since in normal German spelling 'ae' has the same value as 'ä')? Or Tha-eter (that is with an /a/ + /e/ hiatus)? Contact Basemetal here 16:49, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

It's commonplace for the dieresis (a colon lying on it's side) to indicate that two vowels are not blended but individually pronounced. I don't know whether or not this is an option for German, because it looks like an umlaut, which modifies certain vowels in a specific way. 86.159.14.114 (talk) 16:59, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

This is exactly the problem. In French for example you can use either the diaeresis (diacritic) (trema, umlaut mark) or 'h'es between the vowels in hiatus (since the 'h' is always silent in French). Neither option is generally available in German. The umlaut for the reason you said, and the 'h' because it is not silent. So what's left? Contact Basemetal here 17:11, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

German normally doesn't use any diacritic to mark hiatus pronuncation: Kolosseum, Aleuten, Statue, Aida, Haiti, etc. The diaeresis is never used in this function; as you rightly said, it would be mistaken for an umlaut. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:16, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Well then, how do you pronounce Brecht's Thaeter? Contact Basemetal here 17:19, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

No idea. Hadn't heard of it before, and I haven't found an exact quotation of the context where he introduces it, to check for indications whether he intended the pun on Täter ('perpetrator'). Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:23, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Given the analogous Brechtian coinage of Misuk (for "Musik", same switch of vowels), the fact that he (among other) used dialogue when writing about "Thaeter" (which suggests an audible pun, rather than a mere eye pun), maybe also given the fact that a more conventional spoonerism wasn't possible because the first and the second consonant sound the same in "Theater", and last and definitely least, the fact that I'd instinctively pronounce it with hiatus in juxtaposition with "Theater" and am almost certain I've heard it pronounced that way, ... given all that, most of it unreferenced, my money is on Tha-eter.

Some words (all borrowed from other languages) containing "ae" pronounced as hiatus are "Paella", "Maestro", or names ending in "-ael" such as "Michael", "Rafael", "Israel", ... and my physics teacher always made a great fuss about pronouncing "Aerodynamik" as A-Erodynamik (hiatus). I guess you just need to know. Difficult when it's an arcane word mainly used by the author who coined it. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:55, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

A few (very few) German surnames mark a hiatus with a diaresis on the e. The best-known example may be Ferdinand Piëch, and there's also Bernhard Hoëcker. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:34, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

So there you have it. It's ambiguous, though, because standard orthography is to replace the umlaut where desired by "e", thus aepfel. 86.134.217.46 (talk) 12:06, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Is there such an absolute rule that you can always replace the umlaut on a letter with an 'e' after? I was under the impression in normal German words the umlaut is only ever used on letters a, o and u, so that rule may only apply to ä, ö and ü. Are spellings such as Pieech or Hoeecker ever found for those names? Contact Basemetal here 14:56, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

A diaeresis is not an umlaut (even though it looks the same in modern fonts) and cannot be replaced with ‹e›. A spelling such as Aepfel is only an accepted workaround when umlauts are not available, but the replacement is never actually desired in standard orthography (same with ‹ss› or ‹sz› for ‹ß›). However, historically, ‹ä› does derive from ‹ae› (actually ‹a› with a tiny ‹e› above it), it's just that the ambiguity of ‹ae› means ‹ä› is preferred whenever possible. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:18, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

There have been changes in German orthography along the way, as there have been in Chinese, Portuguese and Turkish. My mother went to Europe in the thirties and brought back with her a copy of Mein Kampf, which was written in Gothic script, but in the early twentieth century German books were printed the same as everywhere else. I think that "ss" was normal, not the letter that looks like a Greek "beta". There was a reform of German spelling some decades ago - I can look up the details but the use of the Greek "beta" symbol was made the norm. 86.134.217.46 (talk) 15:53, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Uhm, no, not really. Printing of German texts was regularly done in blackletter up to the mid-20th century and changed to Roman fonts afterwards. The "ß" symbol always was and still is part of regular orthography (except in Switzerland); the reform you are probably thinking of, in the mid-1990s, just shifted the distribution slightly (aligning the use of "ss" vs "ß" with the quality of the preceding vowel and thus making the use of either spelling more consistent within the paradigms of individual words). Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:06, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

German typesetting changed from Fraktur to "Antiqua" (?) (which is probably what Future Perfect calls Roman) in 1941. From WP Fraktur article: "This radically changed on January 3, 1941, when Martin Bormann issued a circular to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use". "Judenlettern"! This is hysterical. Where did Bormann get that? The article also adds: "Fraktur saw a brief resurgence after the War, but quickly disappeared in a Germany keen on modernising its appearance." See also Antiqua–Fraktur dispute which mentions that German scientific and technical writing had been using Roman from the beginning of the 20th century. Contact Basemetal here 16:30, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

The Ashkenazim, that is, east European Jewry, speak Yiddish, which is a German dialect. However, Yiddish is written in the traditional square Hebrew letters, such as you see in Torah scrolls (Old Testaments) and on Jewish buildings. These have thick black strokes. Bormann would have seen this German looking so like the ordinary secular German of the natives and decided that this was something the country could do without. 86.134.217.46 (talk) 18:13, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Right. Fraktur reminded Bormann of Hebrew. Your personal speculation or do you have a source? Or you can't recall where you put your smileys? Contact Basemetal here 18:49, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

My only source is what Bormann himself said. It's difficult for ordinary, sane people to understand the mindset of the Nazis, or of Daesh for that matter. 86.134.217.46 (talk) 18:55, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Per de:Fraktur (Schrift)#Verwendung der Fraktur in der Neuzeit, the true motivation for the phasing out of Fraktur was purely pragmatic. The Nazi leaders felt that the use of Fraktur was an enormous stumbling block for the purpose of understanding and learning German on the part of conquered and enslaved peoples, and Antiqua was far more effective. The silly term Judenlettern was merely a rationalisation they came up with on the spot to convince citizens of the Reich that the costly switch from Fraktur to Antiqua was absolutely necessary, despite the fact that Fraktur was thought of as quintessentially "German" already at the time, and Antiqua as somewhat foreign.

Stereotyping fanatics like the Nazi leaders as merely insane and unable to appreciate pragmatic considerations is very dangerous. It's their goals that are crazy, not necessarily the ways they try to achieve them. The Nazi leaders were not stark raving mad. They were frighteningly rational and effective most of the time. Nor were they a homogeneous mass. They often disagreed with each other violently. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:25, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't know why you would want to whitewash these people. Be they Bolsheviks, IRA or Daesh they all behave in essentially the same way, notably robbing banks to acquire their funding. 86.134.217.6 (talk) 18:46, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

"Whitewash"? Who's "whitewashing"? Florian was just saying that to just call them "unintelligible unpredictable lunatics" and be satisfied with that is a very dangerous thing because that preempts any rational attempt to understand why and how they did or do what they did or do. I personally agree 100% with Florian on this. It may make you feel better to use all kinds of colorful epithets for such people ("demented", "insane", "mad", "lunatics", "crazy") but that's no substitute for a rational factual study of their motives and their modus operandi. Contact Basemetal here 19:27, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

It wasn't me that used all those epithets. 86.134.217.6 (talk) 20:58, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

The strategy of all these organisations is defective, which is why they all ultimately fail. If the coalition showed a little gumption Daesh would be no more.

The allies in the Second World War were careful to conceal the fact that they had broken the Enigma messaging system - that was why Coventry was sacrificed and they allowed the Jews to perish in the gas chambers.

Hitler began communicating with his generals in a new "tunny" code which he thought was impregnable but was also broken. A group of psychologists was assembled who could accurately predict how he would react in a given situation. The allied commanders planned their moves accordingly and the war was considerably shortened as a result. 86.134.217.6 (talk) 10:26, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

86.134.217.6 (talk) is one of several London area IP sockpuppets of banned User:Vote (X) for Change