Language desk
< December 10	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	Current desk >

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

December 11

M. Chayet

Do the French have a way of indicating that M. Chayet (for instance) is Monsieur Chayet and not Michel or Marcel Chayet? Doug butler (talk) 01:46, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, this can be resolved by context. If a text refers to every gentleman as "M. Trucmuche, you can be sure that "M." in "M. Chayet" stands for "Monsieur". If the text leaves out the "M." in general and refers, say, to Lucien Fabre as "L. Fabre", than the "M." in "M. Genevoix" is more likely to be the abbreviation of a given name such as "Maurice" or whatever. However, also in contemporary texts, the default assumption of the French reader will be that "M." abbreviates "Monsieur". The style for Monsieur Camille Joseph Alexandre Chayet will be any of "M. Chayet", "M. Alexandre Chayet" or just "Alexandre Chayet", and rarely if ever "A. Chayet". --Lambiam 08:56, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Then you have cases like M. Pokora where it's not clear what the "M" stands for (unless you're aware his first name is Mathieu). Xuxl (talk) 15:40, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Even so, in the artist name it arguably replaces specifically the nickname "Matt", not the full given name "Matthieu". --Lambiam 11:34, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just now

Why do Scottish people say "just now" instead of "now"? Thanks. 81.154.245.178 (talk) 10:08, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Just now" is equivalent to "right now" in many other English varieties. Scottish English "resulted from language contact between Scots and the Standard English of England after the 17th century" which is why they have a distinct vocabulary. Alansplodge (talk) 13:19, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard it many times in American English. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:34, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But I'm not sure that it's used in the same way by Americans (or anyone else) as Scots do; see Wiktionary:just now (apparently the trait is shared by South Africans too). Alansplodge (talk) 18:50, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The examples in Wiktionary sound familiar. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:47, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

They dinna. They say "just noo". Clarityfiend (talk) 04:20, 12 December 2021 (UTC) [reply]

But sometimes they say "the noo". Martinevans123 (talk) 18:27, 12 December 2021 (UTC) [reply]

Why do Americans say "dove" instead of "dived"? Why do British people say "mobile" instead of "cell phone"? Why do Northern Irish people say "whenever" instead of "when"? Why do South Africans say "braai" instead of "barbie"? Why do Australians say "barbie" instead of "barbecue"? Because dialect. (And yes, thank you, I am aware that those are all generalisations, and some of them may even be stereotypes). --ColinFine (talk) 18:21, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And sometimes they use completely different words. For example, the South African word for "traffic lights" is "robot". 2A00:23C7:FB83:7A00:3D0B:D1B9:2F8D:B720 (talk) 19:02, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It appears from nl:Braai that the word was introduced by the Boers, who spoke a different language. 2A00:23C7:FB83:7A00:3D0B:D1B9:2F8D:B720 (talk) 19:11, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, braai is an Afrikaans borrowing. It's related to German braten and Dutch braden. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:02, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is the Goldeneye line "PC or Macka" BS?

The Maksutov was invented by a Russian so I assume a ton of ex-Soviet guys can say Mac. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:31, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a line from the film GoldenEye? Are we supposed to know the meaning of the term "Macka"? What did the Russian invent? A catadioptric telescope with a meniscus corrector? Is there such a thing as a PC telescope? --Lambiam 11:30, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[Edit Conflict] Not necessarily. In many languages a particular syllable or type of word might usually be followed by further sounds, rarely or never on its own, so habit causes speakers of that language to add a final vowel. For example, I have noticed (as an English speaker) when watching rugby matches commentated in Georgian, that the commentators almost invariably add a final "-i" to non-Georgian surnames ending in a consonant; so for example that fearsome trio of front-row forwards "Smith", "Jones" and "Robinson" become "Smithi", "Jonesi" and "Robinsoni". Doubtless a Russian-speaking and/or scholarly linguist Wikipedian will soon come along to elicidate on the example you specify.

[Re Lambiam's response, I presume that "PC or Macka?" refers to whether a personal computer is a(n IBM or clone) PC or a(n Apple) Macintosh (aka 'Mac').] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.227.133 (talk) 11:44, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not familiar with Georgian. Maybe few or no native words end in a consonant? (Can't check as Georgian uses an unfamiliar alphabet). If that's the case maybe it's like Portuguese, where very very few words end in a consonant (I believe this is a feature of Romance languages generally, Italian more than Spanish from a glance at the local projects and Romanian seems similar). As the speakers find it difficult to pronounce a word beginning with "s" they often put an "e" in front which then became part of the word (e.g. estrada, "road", from Latin stratum. 2A00:23C7:FB83:7A00:3D0B:D1B9:2F8D:B720 (talk) 15:10, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's simply that nearly all Georgian surnames end in an "i" sound, so the commentators unconsciously add it to foreign names that don't have it. However, it was only an illustrative example, which doesn't directly answer SMW's query. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.227.133 (talk) 15:34, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has a Georgian name article. The Georgian language is infamous for its heavy consonant clusters, so I doubt there's a problem with pronouncing a single "k" consonant at the end of a word, but foreign words or names could have suffixes added so that it's possible to inflect them grammatically in the same way that native words are. The basic Georgian nominative case suffix is "-i"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:23, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On the Georgian Wikipedia, in the article on the Macintosh line of computers, the terms "Mac" and "Macbook" are transliterated as ending with the letter კ. No other words have that ending. Of the more that 12,000 words in their article on the history of Georgia, not a single one ends with a კ. --Lambiam 19:05, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to be distracted by Georgian, which I only mentioned to illustrate a general linguistic point: who in the film actually utters the line? Although I gather from the article's plot synopsis that one of the film's characters is a Georgian, the majority of the "opposition" are surely Russian, and I doubt if the filmmakers would have worried about such a minor linguistic Georgian/Russian distinction, if there is one. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.227.133 (talk) 10:06, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, the word structure of "Mac" shouldn't pose any problem for Russians, although it seems that the short [æ] would be assimilated to [e] or [ɛ]. Cf. так (so, thus etc.). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:48, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately I have forgotten who said it. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The line might be delivered by the computer store manager, played by Constantine Gregory, an American actor with one Russian parent who is said to speak Russian. However, Bond films aren't known for scrupulous accuracy in their portrayal of ethnicity and language. They tend to be exaggerated and detached from any reality. Similar words do exist in Russian: wikt:мак#Russian is a perfectly good Russian word meaning poppy. The main difference I'd expect to hear between an American Enlgish speaker and a Russian speaker saying "Mac" (type of computer) would be in the vowel quality, æ vs ɛ. --Amble (talk) 20:04, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Then, even if there shouldn't be a problem for a Russian speaker to pronounce a word like [mVk], there's a possibility that a colloquial word like "macka" could be constructed to imply a diminutive -ka or something, what do I know? Then, it might just as well be some made-up phony Russian accent. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:06, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]