Language desk
< January 7	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 8

Too-wry-ay

What is the actual meaning of the (presumably) polynesian words tu lai e or similar (they’re found in various spellings and often with an r-sound instead of l) in the sea shanty John Kanaka and the folk song Mrs. McGrath? Cheers ✦ _hugarheimur 01:08, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's Hawaiian, but corrupted. Hawaiian has no 't', so the original consonant was likely 'k'. Kulaʻi means to push over, knock down, knock out, tackle, shove, dash to pieces, or hurl. The 'e' is probably ē, an intensifying particle. —Stephen (talk) 03:38, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I call ^{[citation needed]} on that! John Kanaka may have some connection with Hawaii, but similar riffs occur in many (particularly Irish) folksongs. See here for a (non-reliable) discussion. In addition, saying it's Hawaiian, and then pointing out that its phonology doesn't fit, seems rather a weak argument. If it is indeed Polynesian, wouldn't it be more likely to come from one of the languages which do have /t/, and indeed /r/? --ColinFine (talk) 12:52, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say the phonology doesn't fit. It's common with Hawaiian to drop ʻokina, leave off a macron, confuse k and t, etc. Also, Hawaiian originally had a retroflex /r/. It was changed to /l/ because of influence from invading English-speakers. I'm not going to bother looking up cites and refs for you, do it yourself. It doesn't bother me that you think it's Irish or whatever. —Stephen (talk) 17:13, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure it's polynesian? The phrase "Too wry ay" or "Too ra loo wry ay" or variations thereof appears in numerous songs from Ireland and the Irish diaspora; I don't know much Irish language, but it seems to be a stock musical phrase. Besides Mrs. McGrath, the phrase or variations appear in songs such as Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral or Come on Eileen, for just a few examples. See also Too-Rye-Ay, an album by the group Dexys Midnight Runners, English in Origin but founded by Kevin Rowland, a man of Irish extraction. I've found a few others on YouTube that don't have Wikipedia articles, such as [1]. The "John Kanaka" shanty is probably a south seas song, so in that song the phrase "tu lai e" may be polynesian, but in that case it's coincidentally unrelated to the phrase in "Mrs. McGrath". Then again, lots of Irish folks ended up on whalers sailing the south seas, so... --Jayron 32 12:03, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nationality names which can or can't be used as both a adjective and a (singular) noun

I was discussing the fact that there is no generally Gender-Neutral term for an Englishman/Englishwoman and various suggestions for a potential term included "an Englisperson", "an Englander", and "an English". This digressed into "an English", "a Chinese", and "a French" sounding ungrammatical whereas "an American", "a German", "an Italian", and "a Thai" are fine. One suggestion was that nationalities ending in "sh" or "ch" cannot be singular nouns. All examples we could think of obey this, but is it some unwritten rule of English? Does it result from the different etymologies of the nationalities, maybe "ch" and "sh" endings being borrowed from a language that does not permit this? -- Q Chris (talk) 11:54, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Q Chris: I'm not a native speaker and my English is not very good, but 'Chinese' does not seem to me to end with "ch" or "sh"... --CiaPan (talk) 12:09, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes you are right! maybe "z" endings need to be added to the list, or maybe it's a much more complicated rule! -- Q Chris (talk) 12:56, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Q Chris. I think you mean an adjective, rather than a verb. Rather than the final sound, isn't it simply the suffix -ish? ("French" and "Dutch" historically had the same suffix). --ColinFine (talk) 13:00, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - corrected! - Q Chris (talk) 13:06, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I came to this discussion hoping there would be some examples of nationalities used as verbs, but quickly realised the most likely ones would be as unpleasant ethnic stereotypes (e.g. "to welsh on a deal", to revoke a promise). Fortunately I don't hear these in conversation, but I do come across them in older written works. Likewise, "a Chinese" to refer to a person was common in British English, though now it sounds old-fashioned and offensive; nowadays in common language it refers to a meal, usually a take-away. ("Fancy a Chinese tonight?" "Nah mate, I've already told my brother we're going for an Indian." Hence the classic Goodness Gracious Me sketch, "Going for an English".) I think "a Brit" is the closest you're going to get for a gender-neutral nationality marker, though I note that in Pakistani English has another. I've just created the article for Carey Schofield, successor to Geoffrey Langlands; apparently, everyone wanted "a Britisher", and the best man for the job was a woman. --Carbon Caryatid (talk) 13:18, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Brit" is for Briton, the demonym for the United Kingdom. Inferring that this is the same as English can be taken as an insult. Bazza (talk) 14:55, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It may have to do with the notion that -ish is usually an adjective-only marker in English, and not just for nationalities. A color that is sort-of blue is "bluish", for example. That makes the noun use of any words that end in -ish sound marked, and thus lead to phrases like "...an English person" rather than just "...an English". If I said "...a bluish", you'd be like "A bluish what?". It should also be noted that in language, and especially in the English language, there are numerous sui generis constructions that don't follow predictable rules, they just are. The rules of language are kinda fuzzy, and sometimes we have a convention that exists for absolutely no reason at all, and we could not have predicted it, and yet we still have it. It's just something you do. --Jayron 32 13:47, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The more I think about it, it's really only the -an and -ian ending nationalities that do double-duty as adjectives and nouns, all other spellings tend to only be adjectives. Maybe, if there is a rule, that's it. --Jayron 32 13:51, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not that simple, you have "Thai" and "Pakistani" also. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:05, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Those are borrowed forms. The more "native" English forms would be Thailander and Pakistanian. --Khajidha (talk) 14:34, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As a native British English speaker, I could imagine hearing someone say "Thailander". But that certainly does not hold true for "Pakistanian". And I have certainly never heard or seen either. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:18, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As an AmEng speaker, "A Thai" and "A Pakistani" sounds marked to me, I would say "A Thai person" and "A Pakistani person". But that's why we have different dialects of English. --Jayron 32 17:52, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Martin, example: One in three Thais not getting enough sleep and Two Pakistanis held for trafficking. Alansplodge (talk) 08:59, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Thailander" sounds like someone trying to make a pun (insert image of Sean Connery dressed up like the King of Siam, explaining why there can only be one). "Pakistanian" just sounds wrong. The nouns are clearly "Thai" and "Pakistani", but I think what Jayron is hitting is that awkward red flag that says someone-might-think-this-is-offensive-even-if-I'm-not-quite-sure-why. I also see that red flag for "a Thai" and "a Pakistani" and probably wouldn't use them, but I don't think it's a problem in the plural, in a sentence like "Thais by and large favor policy X, but a majority of Pakistanis prefer policy Y." --Trovatore (talk) 19:56, 13 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

All which above babble is why the Refdesk without refs is a sump. [2] and [3], for a start. In answer to the question: no, there's no rule, except that most nationalities are the same as the adjectives, except the ones that aren't. [4] If you really want a rule of thumb, countries which English speakers have a long history of interaction with (basically, Europeans) are more likely to have an irregular noun. But "more likely" doesn't get you very far. Henry ^Flower 20:46, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The seventh edition of the Pocket Oxford Dictionary (ed. R E Allen, Oxford 1988, ISBN 0-19-8611331) has some useful appendices at the back. Appendix 3 includes a list of 113 countries with demonyms for all of them (except the Dominican Republic). I see that one of the links above gives "Dominican", but wouldn't this relate to an inhabitant of the island of Dominica? Or possibly there might be an argument that Dominican refers to the republic and Dominican refers to the island. 2A00:23C0:7903:B200:482E:ADE8:59C2:E548 (talk) 11:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]