Language desk
< July 5	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 7 >

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.

July 6

Delightful German word

In this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0Ql0VfcRg&t=515s

around minute 8;35, Mr.Pispers says a word, a believe for stroppy, that's comes across like "pampich"

the only related German word I could find was schlampig, but it distinctly feels like the aforementioned "pampich, pampish"

I would appreciate any help in finding this peculiar word

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:7830:DE40:5075:93C9:D090:217C (talk) 06:40, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The word is pampig. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:44, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

hmm, how has this evaded me? Regardless, Thank you 2600:1700:7830:DE40:5075:93C9:D090:217C (talk) 07:18, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can find out, it's indirectly related to English pampering (originally over-feeding), from some root originally meaning something like "cram, stuff, enlarge, embiggen". Swedish has "pampig" ("pompous") and pamp "tycoon, honcho", but I guess the initial p- and relatively late attestations might indicate German or continental West Germanic influence. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:41, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

PAMPIG came from the niederdeutschen word "pampig"; which means breiig, klebrig, modrig - "Nether-German" is the old German of the northern part of the country, but it seems the secondary meaning frech, unverschämt, patzig is not that old (early 20th century). At least according to the 1989 "Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen" (Wolfgang Pfeifer, b. 1922, et alii linguists from Berlin).--Ralfdetlef (talk) 18:07, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the standard English word is Low German. All the Continental Scandinavian languages show a massive influence from Middle Low German, by the way. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:30, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

number of ASL users compared to other sign languages

I was reading the List of sign languages by number of native signers article and the ranking is very surprising to me. Before opening the article, I knew that American Sign Language is used in the USA and English-speaking Canada; the population of USA plus English-speaking Canada is roughly 350 million.

My naive assumption was that different countries have roughly the same rate of deafness, and thus the number of sign language users would be roughly proportional to the country's total population. Thus, I naively assumed was that ASL would be among the top five most used sign languages.

It turns out that the following sign languages have more users than ASL:

- Indonesian Sign Language has 900,000 users. Population of Indonesia is 273 million.

- Russian Sign Language has 715,000 users. Population of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc is roughly 250 million.

- Brazilian Sign Language has 600,000 users. Population of Brazil is 214 million.

- Egyptian Sign Language has 474,000 users. Population of Egypt is 102 million.

What's the reason for these these 4 sign languages having more users than ASL?

Do these countries have a higher rate of deafness? Or maybe USA and Canada has a higher median income, and thus more American/Canadian families can afford cochlear implants? Or is it some other factor? Daniel T Wolters (talk) 21:59, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Curiously, looking up the languages in their own articles, the numbers listed are generally much lower, for the nationally standardized varieties. (Btw, ASL is apparently also somewhat of a Lingua Franca among international signers although I think it's not really comparable to English among speaking populations.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:12, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good find. Thanks!

Russian Sign Language article says 120,000 users (vs 715,000 on List of sign languages by number of native signers)

Brazilian Sign Language article says 200,000 users (vs 600,000 on List of sign languages by number of native signers)

So these two are roughly in line to their countries' population. Daniel T Wolters (talk)

For ISL, it seems unclear whether it's really a unified language or more or less mutually intelligible varieties spread across the nation. For ESL, there's apparently very little data overall.

Although there are no official statistics on the number of deaf people or the number of people who use Egyptian Sign Language as their primary language, Gallaudet University's library resources website quotes a 1999 estimate of 2 million hearing impaired children, while a 2007 study by the World Health Organization places the prevalence of hearing loss in Egypt at 16.02% across all age groups. Egyptian Sign Language is not formally recognized by the government. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:49, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Very cool. Thanks again. Daniel T Wolters (talk) 00:07, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note that strategies for educating hearing-impaired children differ widely between nations, and there has historically been no concensus over whether the main emphasis should be on sign language or lip reading. Lip reading#Deafness mentions the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf in 1880, which decided that oralism was superior to manualism, and that children should be prevented from using sign language as it was believed to slow their progress in understanding spoken language. The effects of this decision continued well into the 20th century and will have impacted many older deaf people. See also bimodal bilingualism. The availability of technology such as cochlear implants is also likely to affect the number of sign language users. Alansplodge (talk) 10:09, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Due to contacts with American missionaries and teachers, there are also many international varieties of American Sign Language, although the overall mutual intelligibility seems to have been poorly studied. I guess you can make a comparison with the spread of English – although Received Pronunciation, General American and Standard Canadian have high mutual intelligibilty, speakers of a standard variety have significant difficulties with thick Jamaican Patois, and even more with Tok Pisin. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:40, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Except that British Sign Language is the basis of sign languages in the Anglosphere outside of North America. Alansplodge (talk) 12:28, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]