Language desk
< July 23	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 25 >

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 24

'em after any consonant?

According to wikt:'em, it is used as a simplified them "now only in unstressed position following a consonant". However does this work for all consonants? If Arwen has rescued two Hobbits from the Nazgûls in the trilogy - could she have said "If you want 'em, come and claim 'em!" ? The second usage sounds rather wrong to me. --KnightMove (talk) 09:37, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds okay to me. But for me it could also occur after vowels. (Did you see 'em? --Yeah, I saw 'em.) Hard to judge just by imagining it, though. (That's the problem with Chomskyan "linguistics".) It would be interesting to see what restrictions we find in corpora of natural informal speech. — kwami (talk) 10:03, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it could mainly be the /məm/ ending that would sound somewhat unclear or jarring. By the way, etymologically 'em would have been derived from obsolote hem, not them. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:51, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Phonotactically, in English, "saw'em" and "see-em" will often have semivowels or a glottal stop before the "em" part, depending on the dialect, to create a type of vowel hiatus (diaresis) or epenthesis. In other words, if one has to add "em" after a vowel, something gets added back in to separate the vowels. --Jayron 32 15:13, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

How about "I calls'em as I sees'em" ? —— Shakescene (talk) 15:15, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like a form of epenthesis. Wikipedia doesn't have an article on intrusive s, but it does on intrusive r. --Jayron 32 16:39, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The word wikt:noseeum is formed in this way, with 'em following a vowel. --Amble (talk) 18:07, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Few minutes with Wikiquotes found all the consonants except ð, h, j and w, which not surprising. Not a completely accurate way to check because of not being sure how actual pronunciations were transcribed in each of these quotes, but seems likely all are possible for at least some speakers. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 18:45, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

p – keep ‘em

t – shoot ‘em

tʃ - punch ‘em

k – nuke ‘em

b – club ‘em

d – ride ‘em

dʒ - judge ‘em

g – bag ‘em

f – stuff em

θ – with ‘em

s – takes ‘em

ʃ - flash ‘em

v – leave ‘em

z – accuse ‘em

ʒ - camouflage ‘em

m – from ‘em

n – in ‘em

ŋ – (possibly) bothering ‘em

l – fool ‘em

r – for ‘em

vowel – to ‘em 70.67.193.176 (talk) 18:45, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all. --KnightMove (talk) 09:59, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First person in Eskimo

I am watching The Savage Innocents in Italian and I noticed that the main characters (presumably Polar Eskimos) speak of themselves in the third person with forms equivalent to "this hunter", "this man", "this stupid woman", "this woman". The English script (probably the subtitles rather than the script) follows the same usage. However the Inuit characters have no problem using "you". I looked to Inuit grammar and there is an example of a morpheme:

-junga: indicative first-person singular (itself composed of the indicative morpheme -ju- and the first person marker -nga)

The film usage reminds me of the Japanese honorifics but I am not finding anything useful about Inuit honorifics. So my question is: Does this illeism correspond to an actual Inuit-language feature or is it a film or book invention?

The article about the book author Hans Ruesch says:

Ironically, Hans Ruesch had never seen an Eskimo. He based his story on the Oscar-winning film Eskimo (1933), directed by W.S. van Dyke.

The 1933 film used actual Inupiat language (sometimes misspoken by southern actors) with intertitles. -- Error (talk) 11:36, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:CambridgeBayWeather, can you shed any light on this? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:49, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not very likely. But there is a vast range of dialects between Alaska and Greenland and I'm sure people don't speak that way in Inuinnaqtun but it may be so in other dialects. How much, if any, Inuit language was Hans Ruesch familiar with and what was used in the original book. I think in the script “Inuk” is being used to help the narrative along.

It's a bit confusing to know which particular group of Inuit because the source for the 1933 film, set in Alaska, was Peter Freuchen who travelled in Greenland but later lived in the United States. So he would have been familiar with Inughuit but the film used the language of the Iñupiat.

The book by Hans Ruesch, “Top of the World” was written in 1950 and the script link shows at least one error. I says “they still hunt with bow and arrow” but the 1933 film mentions that Mala wanted a rifle and by 1950 most Inuit would have had one. Also “it is not yet decided whether man or bear...is crown of creation. But, as plentiful as are the bear...so the women are scarce.” Women were not scarce an if the hero of the film was an adult and didn’t have a wife there was something wrong with him. His parents would have arranged his marriage while he was a child. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 12:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

From Highly inaccurate film:

The inaccuracies are not merely cultural, but historical as well. There is simply no period of time when the Inuit (or other Arctic groups such as the Inighuit, Inupiat, or Yupik) would have been unfamiliar with firearms and yet exposed to 1960s-style rock music -- these events are anywhere from 75 to 100 years apart, depending on the region. Inuit who went to trading posts would never be mocked by other Inuit, or by traders, at a trading post -- trading was serious business -- and would never be sold a gun with zero ammunition.

--Error (talk) 14:09, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have you seen Nanook of the North? Inuit today dislike the film. However, I saw it over 40 years ago when I was living in Ulukhaktok. At the time we didn't have TV and once a week a film arrived and we all gathered to watch it. The film was a big hit. Everybody loved it. Probably because nobody had ever seen Inuit starring in a film before. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 22:30, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, but I have a chance to watch it on the big screen. --Error (talk) 23:50, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm stunned, stunned I tell you, to see it suggested that a Hollywood film might contain cultural or historical inaccuracies! Why the word "Hollywood" is surely a by-line for scholarly rigour! DuncanHill (talk) 09:16, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your definition of "Hollywood" has cultural or historical inaccuracies:

The film was an international co-production, with British, Italian and French interests involved; in the United States it was released by Paramount Pictures. The film was shot on-location in the Canadian Arctic, with interiors shot in Britain's Pinewood Studios and in Rome's Cinecittà studios.

--Error (talk) 14:23, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]