Language desk
< November 5	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 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.

November 6

Dialect of English

Hello. In this clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_KRk4q3Y44) I am referring to the person who begins speaking around the 45 seconds mark; the person with glasses and a tie with stripes. He begins speaking with "Yes, me too.."

What accent or dialect or regional variation of English would his manner of speech fall under? The only think that comes to mind is a posh accent, however I would appreciate any more precise sorting, than what I have contributed.

Thank you 2600:1700:7830:DE40:84BB:179C:3FD6:DA7A (talk) 16:27, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See Received Pronunciation. This accent has undergone a considerable change over the last 50 years, the speakers in your clip (from Yes Minister) are using an older, more conservative style. An often quoted example of this shift is the difference in accent between King Charles III and his son, William, Prince of Wales. Alansplodge (talk) 18:56, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Spitalmeister

I've encountered the German term Spitalmeister while researching for an article related to 16th-century Pforzheim. Literally it translates to hospital-master. I suppose it's an equivalent of today's hospital supervisor or hospital manager but... not so sure. I know hospitals were very different places back then so was wondering if Spitalmeister was something more than just an administrative office? --BorgQueen (talk) 18:19, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This dictionary from 1801 just says "head of a hospital" or "hospital administrator" (the term Spital-Pfleger sounds odd to modern ears as it seems to imply a nurse...). --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:33, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The same dictionary gives "administrator", "supervisor" as the first meaning of Pfleger, while noting this sense is obsolete in High German but not in Upper German. Wiktionary indicates the sense is still current in Swiss German. --Lambiam 17:43, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A few questions

Why does English not have front rounded vowels? English is only Germanic language without front rounded vowels.
Why does Spanish not have letter combinations ⟨qua⟩ and ⟨quo⟩, and uses ⟨cua⟩ and ⟨cuo⟩? For example, why word for "four" is "cuatro" and not "quatro"?
Why North Germanic languages do not mark vowel length in spelling?
Is there any language which uses same word for both:

"this" and "these"
"that" and "those"
"both" and "all" --40bus (talk) 18:43, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese doesn't have separate words for this/these and that/those. This is 這, that is 那. Whether it's singular or plural has to be distinguished another way. 86.156.232.37 (talk) 19:04, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A key to this question might be when written Spanish was developed. The "qu" tends to be used mostly in front of "e" and "i", to make the "qu" a "k" sound. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:38, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish does use qu, but it's almost always pronounced as "k" and not "kw" as in "porque". In Spanish orthography, "kw" is usually spelled "cu". --Jayron 32 13:05, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So the question seems to conflate two sequences: 1. ⟨qui⟩ -- ⟨que⟩ -- ⟨ca⟩ -- ⟨co⟩. 2. ⟨cuo⟩ -- ⟨cua⟩ -- ⟨cui⟩ -- ⟨cue⟩. The orthographic peculiarity is in the first sequence only and arises because ⟨ci⟩ and ⟨ce⟩ are pronounced differently. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:13, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see some examples of words with front-rounded vowels. The article seems a bit murky. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:39, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

They are like in French œuf and tu, or German schön and über. --Theurgist (talk) 09:44, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bugs: Say "eeee", but pucker your lips like you're going to make a kiss. That's a front-rounded vowel, known as the Close front rounded vowel, represented by /y/ in IPA. As noted, they are very common in French and German. In German, the ü represents that particular front-rounded vowel. Since we don't have this sound in English, we replace it with the "strut" vowel, /^/, but that's not the sound in German. It's the "ee while puckering" sound I describe above. -Jayron 32 13:12, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The vowels are not front-rounded; they are both rounded (lips narrowed and often protruding) and front (tongue forward). —Tamfang (talk) 08:33, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- Prehistoric Old English had "oe" and "y" front rounded vowels, but "oe" already merged to "e" in the West Saxon dialect (which was the main dialect used for Old English literature) before the earliest manuscripts. The "oe" vowel persisted in some other dialects for a while, but it was lost by Middle English, as was "y", which merged with "i". The plural forms of the words foot/feet and mouse/mice have descendants of former front-rounded vowels. There was another [y] later on, based on "iw" or "ew" type diphthongs monophthongizing as well as borrowings from French, but that one eventually changed into a "yoo" [juː] sequence.
Also, in French, the word "both" standing alone is translated as "tous les deux"... AnonMoos (talk) 23:04, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have long been curious about that last: French for 'both' is literally 'all two', exactly parallel to 'all three' and so on. In either French or English you can of course say 'all' with no number, but I happen not to have ever encountered use of tou(te)s alone when the number is two. —Tamfang (talk) 08:36, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

3. I'd say North Germanic languages do generally mark vowel length in spelling, although there are exceptions with words retaining historical spellings.
4. I believe Japanese at last has no general distinction for this/these, as well as that/those. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:39, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wakuran --Japanese has basic demonstratives kore, sore, are "this, that, yonder", which can all take a -ra suffix for plural: korera, sorera, arera. I'm not sure that the use of the plural suffix is obligatory, though... AnonMoos (talk) 19:38, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1: Another Germanic language that atypically lacks them is Yiddish.
2: The usage of ⟨c⟩ for /k/ is not special. It's the usage of ⟨qu⟩ that's special. Because orthographic ⟨ce⟩ and ⟨ci⟩ don't work for /ke/ and /ki/, those sound sequences are spelled ⟨que⟩ and ⟨qui⟩ instead, as noted already.
3: They actually do, for the most part. Generally a vowel is short if followed by two or more consonants within the morpheme, and is long otherwise. See the examples at Swedish phonology#Vowels. --Theurgist (talk) 09:41, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

3: But why they leave written vowel unchanged and instead double consonants after short vowel? Why don't they double vowel letter when long instead? --40bus (talk) 15:53, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you're Finnish and in Finnish all four combinations of short/ long vowels and geminated/ ungeminated consonants are possible, and have to be marked in writing. In Swedish, they come in the two pairs of short vowel-geminated consonant and long vowel-ungeminated consonant. (And I believe the geminated consonant is considered as somewhat secondary.) For the pair of 'tal'/'tall', the long vowel would be naturally implied in spelling, and not necessary to write out. (That is the general rule, anyway, although there are some exceptions. It's not a perfect system, but it's far from completely random.)
An alternative system would be the Dutch system of 'taal'/'tal'. (Not sure if 'tal' is an actual Dutch word.) Why Swedish picked one system, and Dutch another is basically just a coincidence, I guess. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:11, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, tal is a Dutch noun. The Dutch spelling rules are (IMO) weird: the plural of taal is talen (both with an /a/), while the plural of tal is tallen (both with an /ɑ/). --Lambiam 16:55, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that none of Germanic languages have native CVCV-type words, so it makes sense that pair short vowel-ungeminated consonant is not possible. But pair long vowel-geminated consonant does occur in Finland Swedish, which corresponds to aspiration in Sweden Swedish. --40bus (talk) 20:37, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

CVCV? C usually means consonant, and V vowel, but I still can't interpret it in a way that makes sense. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:09, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wakuran -- He means a word consisting of two successive open light syllables. They were fairly common in proto-Germanic, and in some attested written languages (Old English sunu, nosu, cwicu), but are somewhat problematic in modern English due to properties of so-called "checked" vowels... AnonMoos (talk) 19:36, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Has any current Germanic language retained nasal vowels from Proto-Germanic? Also, do short [ɑ], [e], [ɔ], [u] occur in English? --40bus (talk) 21:13, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that all of [ɑ], [e], [ɔ], [u] would occur in some form of national native English, although no variant includes them all. See English phonology. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:25, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Like nonsense word simo would be pronounced [sɪmɔ] and word pulu would be pronounced [pʊlu]. --40bus (talk) 07:11, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, what? Are those Finnish words? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:00, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

These are just nonsense example words to show where short [ɑ], [e], [ɔ], [u] would occur if occur. --40bus (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hulu is pronounced as /ˈhuːluː/, apparently. Presumably, it would rhyme with pulu. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:21, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- The only nasalized vowels in proto-Germanic that I'm aware of were when V+[ŋx] changed to long nasalized vowel + [x]. Apparently, the nasal quality of the resulting vowels is only attested by means of a few nasalization diacritic dots in the First Grammatical Treatise. Anglo-Frisian probably later did the same thing to vowels which preceded the clusters [mf], [ns], [nθ] when the nasal consonants disappeared there, but those vowels aren't attested as nasal in the later languages. AnonMoos (talk) 21:37, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Why" is a fiendishly difficult question to answer for linguistics; mainly because there are two types of "why" questions: Those that ask about 'purpose' (why did you do that?) and those that ask about 'causation' (why did that happen?), and neither is relevant to linguistic change. No one makes a conscious decision to change an entire language's phonological system, so there is no 'purpose' to the change, and linguistic change is usually arbitrary and random; so there is often no cause to the change. English, in particular, had massive changes to its vowel system during the Great Vowel Shift in the Middle English period. This vowel shift was not caused by anything, it was just something that happened. So when you ask "why", regardless of whether you mean "For what purpose?" or "What caused this?", it's not really answerable. We can often tell you what happened, and can sometimes give proximate events that happened with it, so things like how contact between two languages can cause them to change faster than languages that don't have contact with others. In the case of English, the British Isles were the site of numerous linguistic changes, from Gaelic languages (both varieties), West Germanic (Anglo-Saxons), North Germanic (Norse), Romance (Norman French), etc. Every one of these introduced new quirks to the phonological system; it is quite likely that these kinds of contacts between vastly different linguistic groups had an effect on how English is spoken. --Jayron 32 13:05, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from the Portuguese word pule meaning "push" and puxe (rhyming with "bush") meaning "pull", the word estas ("these") from Latin ista ("this one") is used where we would say "those" and the word essas ("those") from Latin issa ("that one") is used where we would say "these". 79.76.43.88 (talk) 13:28, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

2: The section Spanish_orthography#History is informative: "Words spelled in modern Spanish with ⟨cua⟩, ⟨cuo⟩ (e.g. cuando, cuatro, cuota) were written with ⟨qua⟩, ⟨quo⟩ up until 1815." So this is a fairly modern orthographic choice that would have been adopted by the Royal Spanish Academy. You can read the official 1815 edition of the orthography on Google Books: [1]. Before 1815, in words with (cu)+vowel the "u" was always pronounced, but in words with (qu)+vowel the "u" was sometimes pronounced and sometimes silent. This state of affairs violated the two main principles that the pronunciation should be clear from the spelling (because (qu)+vowel sometimes had silent u and sometimes not), and that the spelling should be clear from the pronunciation (because (qu)+vowel and (cu)+vowel could represent the same sound). The easiest way to fix this was to let the (cu)+vowel words (which were already unambiguous) remain as they were, let the (qu)+vowel words with silent "u" (which already had only one possible spelling) remain as they were, and switch the other (qu)+vowel words to (cu)+vowel. So the new rule was that the "u" in "cu" is always pronounced, and the "u" in "qu" is always silent. In practice, this meant that all of the "qua" and "quo" words became "cua" and "cuo" words, but only some of the "que" and "qui" words became "cue" and "cui" words. They don't seem to have been troubled by keeping the unneeded letter "u" in "qu", since the goal was consistency more than simplicity. They just called it "in imitation of Latin" and let it stay. --Amble (talk) 18:22, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@AnonMoos: as was "y", which merged with "i". -- it actually merged with either [i], [u] or [e], depending on dialect; and the standard language exhibits all three outcomes. In a few cases, one outcome of the unrounding became the standard spelling, and another the standard pronunciation: such are build, busy and bury. See the last few paragraphs of Phonological history of Old English for details. --2001:BF8:200:396:84B3:E508:B808:B634 (talk) 16:30, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Long [yː] generally merged with long [iː], while short [y] merging with short [i] was "the normal (Anglian) development". I'm not sure how relevant the details of Middle English dialectology are in the context of the anwer I gave... AnonMoos (talk) 19:33, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Homey-jones

I encountered the word "homey-jones" in a book I'm reading, The Law of Similars (1999) by Chris Bohjalian. I know what a homie/homey is, but this variant escapes me.

The only reference I've found is this from the Urban Dictionary, but it doesn't seem to be at all relevant.

The context is that Leland, a lawyer in a small Vermont town, goes to a local homeopath named Carissa to see if she can help with a persistent sore throat and sniffle. They have a talk, then she sends him away while she studies her notes and comes up with a remedy. On his return a few days later, she gives him the remedy in the form of 5 pills that he has to keep under his tongue till they dissolve.

(Leland) "Will I need more" I asked.
(Carissa) "You sound like you want more".
(Leland) "I'm a junkie. I have a homey-jones, Carissa."
(Carissa) She grinned. "You might. We'll talk about that at your follow-up."

At this stage he does not know what's in the pills, but he's curious and keeps asking questions. She's reluctant to disclose it, but she finally relents, and asks him to guess. He asks if it's arsenic. She says "Bingo". Then he says:
(Leland) It's not just a homey-jones, Carissa. I got me an arsenic-jones.

He may as well be speaking Martian to this reader. Is there a Vermontese expert in the house? Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:35, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A jones is a craving. I'm guessing "homey-jones" is being used here as something like "craving for homeopathy". Later he finds out the pills have arsenic, and decides he must be craving arsenic. That sounds like an unfortunate position to be in. --Trovatore (talk) 21:48, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, indeed. [2]. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:42, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A Jones is a craving or an obsession. As with the satirical song, "Basketball Jones". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:55, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, arsenicum album is a very common homeopathic preparation. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:18, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The song "Basketball Jones" is a parody of an older song called "Love Jones", originally a 1972 gold record single by the one-hit wonder band Brighter Side of Darkness. A jones is an addiction; one can be said to be jonesing for the object of one's obsession, be it a lover or a drug. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:26, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all, This meaning of "jones" was new to me. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:01, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved