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December 6

What is she saying (in Hebrew)?

The guy (Tzvi Yehezkeli, whose English is not too good) says in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzWrFZszW0&t=1h12m54s (at 1:12:54): "We need his [Trump's] help to know our Judaism point (sic). You see sometimes you need the other to tell you where to go." Right then the lady (Caroline Glick) cuts him off with a saying (or a quote) in Hebrew which I couldn't catch. Can someone who speaks Hebrew figure out what she says? (The guy then agrees "בדיוק!"). 178.51.16.158 (talk) 01:52, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

אָ֭ז יֹאמְר֣וּ בַגּוֹיִ֑ם הִגְדִּ֥יל יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה

part of psalm 126:2. [1] trespassers william (talk) 03:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the "Then they said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things" part. trespassers william (talk) 03:16, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

British Raj terminology

What terms would have been used by the British to identify an Indian person during the days of the British Raj? It's for an item I'm writing and in an ideal case, there'd be a term that today sounds dated and paternalistic, but maybe not horribly racist or offensive, as it's meant to highlight the age of the British speaker rather than insult Indians. What I'm going for is the kind of obviously dated stuff Mr. Burns sometimes uses on The Simpsons. Matt Deres (talk) 02:43, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Native. See for instance the opening sentences of Kim. Card Zero (talk) 07:23, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coolie although some do not consider it offensive. See https://www.coolitude.shca.ed.ac.uk/word-%E2%80%98coolie%E2%80%99 196.50.199.218 (talk) 09:07, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Card Zero above, "native" was the generally used term. British officials sometimes adopted Indian clothing and customs and were said derisively to have "gone native".

"Coolie" was specifically a labourer and could be applied to Chinese workers as well.

An educated Indian who worked in the British administration was known as a babu (or earlier "baboo").

People of mixed British and Indian heritage were known as "Anglo-Indians", "Eurasians" or "Indo-Britons". Alansplodge (talk) 10:40, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A more general term applied to anyone of first-degree mixed race (including Anglo-Indians) was "half-chat", meaning "Half-caste" or bi-racial. In some instances this could be intended perjoratively, but in, for example, the British army (where marriages between British soldiers and women from the countries they were posted to were commonplace), it was used purely descriptively, and was still current in the 1970s. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 13:13, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

About that Babu article ... should I change the Greek from papu to páppou? Then there's some Indian English going on in the phrasing of "the urban trend to call "babu" to girlfriends or boyfriends, or common-friends", in the "to call X to Y" construction and the term common-friends. Should I "correct" that, or leave it be? I guess it's still English, so maybe the usual "whoever got there first" rule applies, as well as the India-themed article context. Card Zero (talk) 11:37, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing I noted is that it seems to read as if the Swahili word is cognate to the Indo-European examples, which is a bit oddly phrased for a wanderwort. I'm not entirely sure on how to rephrase it, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:12, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the entire passage. All those words from non-Indian languages are quite irrelevant to that article, and the claim that they are cognates is plain false, and all of it was of course unsourced. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:29, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Like Wakuran says - and I didn't know this excellent term wanderwort - they probably are really distant cognates, like mama, which usually means "mother" all over the world (or "breast", or "chew", or sometimes "father"). Card Zero (talk) 12:48, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They are actually not wanderwort cases but mama–papa words, a somewhat different category. Wanderwörter actually are related, via borrowing, which can often be historically tracked with some precision. Mama–papa words aren't related at all, but believed to be independently innovated in each language via parent–child interaction in early langauge acquisition. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:55, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, OK. But it's like "no officer, I just happened to be passing the bank at the time and I wear this stocking on my head for fun, ask anyone." I remain suspicious. Card Zero (talk) 13:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And how does Sally Brown's sweet babboo fit in? —Tamfang (talk) 21:14, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting; I always considered Coolie to be a pejorative for Chinese labourers, but it's clearly more broad than that. That could work - thank you! Matt Deres (talk) 16:03, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Sranantongo, kuli is a slur for Indo-Surinamese people. It is not used for Chinese Surinamese. Both ethnic groups were originally imported, under false promises, as indentured labourers. --Lambiam 10:10, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen the term "Hindoo" used in older literature. Its obviously related to the modern "Hindu", but from the context I don't think it was exactly equivalent, and I think referred more to race or ethnicity than religion. Iapetus (talk) 14:17, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Consider the term Hindustani applied to the macrolanguage that includes Urdu. — I faintly remember reading that a prominent writer of the Indian diaspora in Latin America was known there as el escritor hindú, which amused him because his ancestors were Muslim. —Tamfang (talk) 21:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Norwegian only has 4.4m speakers worldwide, and is on DuoLingo, but why does Kinyarwanda NOT show up on DuoLingo even though it has ~20m speakers?

How come DuoLingo gets to have Norwegian but not Kinyarwanda when there are over 10m more speakers of the Kinyarwanda language in the world than the Norwegian language?

And how can I / we get DuoLingo to add Kinyarwanda to their repertoire of available languages to train ourselves on? --2600:100A:B03B:6996:D13E:4CBE:EF0B:CD17 (talk) 23:22, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Norway is a rich, Western, European country with a big economic market and widespread digitalization. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:05, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These are both questions for DuoLingo. There is a "contact us" button on their home page. Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speakers of Bengali sometimes complain that it doesn't have enough worldwide cultural prominence for being one of the languages with the highest number of speakers (the "seventh most spoken language", according to our article), but it's mostly spoken in only two countries (Bangladesh and India), and is the main national language of only one of them (Bangladesh). The languages with more global prominence than Bengali are the national languages of powerful / wealthy nations, or are spoken across many countries. The factors mitigating against the global importance of Bengali operate even more strongly in the case of Kinyarwanda. Also, U.S. and European tourists are more likely to visit Norway than Rwanda... AnonMoos (talk) 00:15, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English speaking visitors to Norway don't need to understand Norwegian. Norwegians almost all speak excellent English. HiLo48 (talk) 00:37, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But according to Uti vår hage (Norwegian comedy sketch TV program) the Danes aren't quite so happy, even with their own language... MinorProphet (talk) 19:20, 11 December 2024 (UTC) [reply]

HiLo48 -- Even so, many people might want to avoid being the stereotypical English-only tourist in non-English-language country. AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 7

From German to English, please translate this catchy Pippi theme song?

Can someone translate the lyrics, please? Thanks in advance. --2600:100A:B03B:6996:D13E:4CBE:EF0B:CD17 (talk) 02:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here you can read the lyrics in German and here what Google Translate makes of it. --Lambiam 09:32, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a Swede, I must add that this is a translation from Swedish, with the rhytm slightly altered . [2], [3]. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why do the lyrics have basic multiplication done incorrectly? --2600:100A:B051:1A2B:1962:BC0E:1BE6:A1A6 (talk) 20:34, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because in-universe, Pippi is (in)famously depicted as having a horrible understanding of mathematics, she refers to the "multiplikationstabell" (multiplication table) as "pluttifikationstabell" ("muddlyplication table" or something)... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pippi’s tendency to equate all school knowledge with “pluttification” (literally “fartification”) and her capacity to outsmart the teacher during her visit at school ridicules the quantification of knowledge and formal learning outside of any practical context. Card Zero (talk) 23:53, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that's a misunderstanding of the Swedish, fartification would be "pruttifikation" and "pluttifikation" would rather mean "tinyfication". As a noun, I guess "plutt" could also mean a small lump or chunk of something viscous, but it might be a somewhat strained interpretation. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:14, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

惑乱, thanks for your wonderful contributions. This here is a great explanation, and "muddlyplication" is a stroke of genius that's very hard to achieve in translations. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 15:15, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What does the Greek varia indicate?

The character ` (Greek Varia) is represented by the Unicode codepoint U+1FEF.[4]. But what is it good for? BTW, it's not listed in the disambiguation page Varia. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 08:47, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

varia is a modern (?) transcription of βαρεῖα (bareia), the greek name for the grave accent (see also the odd redirect Bareia (accent)). --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:05, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Modern Greek referred to as βαρεία, also for use in other languages such as French. The original /b/ pronunciation already turned into a /v/ in Byzantine Greek. --Lambiam 09:42, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence for this early transition is in the Cyrillic alphabet! —Tamfang (talk) 21:25, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But of course - thanks, Wrongfilter! I now see that it's already in the disamb page.
That said, the current link to Greek_diacritics#Grave_accent_rule could probably be improved. Either to subsection Greek_diacritics#Accents or to Ancient Greek accent#Grave_accent or to Grave accent, but then the name “varia” should be added to the linked section.
Thanks also to Lambiam; i read your post after an edit conflict. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 09:59, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okinawan and pitch accent?

Your article Okinawan language does not say a thing about pitch accent. Did you forget to mention it or does the language not have one? If the latter I would submit that pointing out the fact explicitly would make it clearer. There are Japanese dialects with no pitch accent. (For example the one spoken in Miyazaki). 178.51.16.158 (talk) 16:40, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You ask "did you forget . . .", but the article has existed for over 20 years and has had (if I've got the maths right) over 300 contributors, so the absence of mention is suggestive.

On the other hand, web searching the question retrieves (for me) AI assertions (unreliable) that it does, but only a weak statement by a speaker that they think it does (not very convincing) and no positive human-written passage detailing it.

Our article on Ryukyuan languages (of which it is one) states (in more than one place) "Many Ryukyuan languages, like Standard Japanese and most Japanese dialects, have contrastive pitch accent" (or similar wording): of course, "many" implies "not all".

Overall, this seems to me to be inconclusive, and needing the input of a genuinely knowledgeable linguist. Anyone? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 18:00, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Okinawan is considered a lexical pitch accent language".^[5] --Lambiam 23:33, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Featured articles that were deleted.

Hi. i was wondering if there are any featured articles that are not on the former featured article list since they were actually deleted. I see redirected ones but not deleted ones. Please let me know. Thank you. 50.100.44.204 (talk) 19:46, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why this is on the language refdesk, but I remember spoo, which was originally a nice-looking page about the animal/foodstuff from the Babylon 5 universe. Jimbo famously hated it because it was poorly sourced (not sure it had any sources really), but I don't think he put his thumb on the scale, and it was later deleted by the regular process. It's been recreated as a disambig page. --Trovatore (talk) 19:55, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 8

Please translate from Korean to English, the lyrics to this beautiful-sounding song "Saranghaneun Iege"

What are the lines that the man sings, and that the woman sings? --2600:8803:1D13:7100:DF19:733C:C7D3:4BD4 (talk) 05:43, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For a translation, see here. The two singers sing alternate lines of one running text; it is not a kind of dialogue between them. --Lambiam 17:34, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 10

Ollning

I happened to come across this recent article on sv-WP. The word is also on Urban Dictionary [6] and Wiktionary [7].

Does this word exist in English or other languages? Or something close? Google translate on the sv-WP article suggests "woolling" or "wooling", but I don't know if that's valid. There's some logic in it, I'll say that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's from ollon, Swedish for glans penis, calqued from Latin. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:26, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I knew that. But does a word for the act exist in for example English? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An English hyponym is the verb dickslap. --Lambiam 08:52, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is at least related, thanks. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:58, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam And thanks to you I just discovered Swaffelen. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:04, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Word for definition of requiring excellence

Is there a word for this type of problem. This is an example. A company wants excellent employees. They require that all applicants have a college degree with perfect grades. As a result, all applicants come from paper mill universities where you get a perfect grade just for paying for the course. Instead of getting excellence, the company gets worse employees than before imlpementing the rule that was intended to increase excellence. In general, I'm looking for a shorter way to say: The action you are implementing to get a good outcome will instead bring about the opposite. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:12, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What's a word for an editorial comment disguised as a question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:30, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Backfire 196.50.199.218 (talk) 13:32, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perverse incentive. Card Zero (talk) 13:37, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I got to that from Backfire, also Unintended_consequences#Perverse_results with many more examples of the type of thing I am trying to define. I will test it on a few people, but I feel that use of the word "perverse" will make it harder to understand than easier... a perverse result in itself. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In general it could be an example of Goodhart's law or Campbell's law: when you make an indicator into a target, it stops being a useful target. More specifically, it could be an example of educational inflation or "credentialism", where educational degrees or credentials are used as a target that is particularly susceptible to being gamed. --Amble (talk) 17:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another term that comes to mind (somewhat late!) is that the applicants are gaming the system, which redirects to letter and spirit of the law#Gaming the system. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 00:47, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 12

Italian surname question

What are some examples of Italian surnames ending in -i deriving from a notional singular in -io (and excluding -cio, -gio, -glio), like proverbi from proverbio? I know I've seen one or two but I can't recall them. 71.126.56.57 (talk) 04:17, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A few pairs of a noun x-io coexisting with a surname X-i:

acciaio – Acciai
allodio – Allodi
archibugio – Archibugi
batocchio – Batocchi
bottaio – Bottai

Although it is plausible that these surnames actually derive from the corresponding nouns, I don't know whether this is actually the case. Surnames may be subject to modification by the influence of a similar-sounding familiar word. --Lambiam 08:12, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 13

Japanese

Are there any pure Japanese words in which ぴゅ (specifically the hiragana variant) is used? 120.148.158.178 (talk) 02:10, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This list gives several examples of onomatopeia, mostly related to blowing winds and air. [8] 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:47, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 15

English hyphen

Does English ever use hyphen to separate parts of a closed compound word? Are the following ever used?

New York–Boston-road
South-Virginia
RSS-feed
5-1-win
Harry Potter-book

Neither Manual of Style nor article Hyphen mentions that, so is it used? --40bus (talk) 19:52, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can think of situations where such expressions could be used, as a creative (perhaps journalistic) form of adjective, but it would feel a bit affected to do so: as if the writer was trying to draw attention to their writing. For example, if writing about a Germany v England football match and you knew your audience would understand the reference, you could say the match had a 5–1-win vibe throughout (the reference being this match in 2001). Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 20:04, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My examples are nouns, not adjectives. In many other languages, this is normal way to use hyphen. --40bus (talk) 21:20, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, OK; in English a noun would never be made in that way. Using a hyphen in that way would make it look like an adjective. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 21:51, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In many other languages, a noun is like 5-1-win and an adjective is like 5-1-win-, with prefixed as 5-1-winvibe. And are there any place names written as closed compounds where second part is an independent word, not a suffix, as if South Korea and North Dakota were written as Southkorea and Northdakota respetively? --40bus (talk) 22:34, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Westlake might be an example of what you're looking for. GalacticShoe (talk) 22:54, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But lake may be a suffix there. --40bus (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, it seems strange to have lake be a suffix to north, but in any case what about Westchester and Eastchester? GalacticShoe (talk) 00:00, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the question. Compound (linguistics) says that if it has a hyphen, it's a hyphenated compound. If it's a closed compound, it doesn't have a hyphen. Do you want a word that can be spelled both ways? Try dumbass and dumb-ass.

Your examples, if compounds, are all open compounds.

There's wild cat, also spelled wild-cat and wildcat. The hyphen may be present because a compound is being tentatively created, giving a historical progression like foot path → foot-path → footpath. Or it may indicate different grammatical usage, like drop out (verb) and drop-out (noun), also dropout. Card Zero (talk) 17:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Street names used to be, e.g. Smith-street, rather than Smith Street.

Why in English, street name suffixes are not written together with the main part, as in most other Germanic languages? For example, equivalent of Example Street in German is Beispielstraße, in Dutch, Voorbeeldstraat, and in Swedish Exempelgatan, all literally "Examplestreet". And in numbered streets, if names were written together, then 1st Street would be 1st street or with more "Germanic" style, 1. street. In lettered streets, A Street would become A-street. --40bus (talk) 21:54, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. Lots of old place names are closed compounds, for instance the well known ox ford location, Oxford, and I think for the Saxons that included streets, such as Watlingestrate. So it's tempting to say that closed compounds went out of fashion through the influence of Norman French, which is the usual cause of non-Germanic aspects of English, but the Normans would have said rue, and somehow that didn't make it into English - yet they introduced the habit of keeping street a separate word? Maybe? Card Zero (talk) 07:06, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Years ago, here, I asked which of "instore", "in-store" or "in store" was the correct form. I don't remember getting a categorical answer. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:33, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2007_March_12#In_Store, and see also Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2010_May_12#Merging_of_expressions_into_single_words. DuncanHill (talk) 19:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When were street names hyphenated? I'd like to see an example of that, I've never noticed it. Card Zero (talk) 06:28, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At least until the 19th-century apparently - see examples from Oxford. Mikenorton (talk) 11:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Neat. I also found Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, which in 1505 was Whitnourwhatnourgate. Card Zero (talk) 16:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Korean romanization question (by 40bus)

In Revised Romanization, are there ever situations where there is same vowel twice in a row? Does Korean have any such hiatuses? Would following made-up words be correct according to Korean phonotactics?

구울 guul
으읍 eueup
시이마 siima

--40bus (talk) 19:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, having the same vowel twice in a row is pretty common. The word 구울 is a real word that means "to be baked": see wikt:굽다. That's not really a question about Revised Romanization, though. --Amble (talk) 19:47, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 16

Ancient Greek letter rho and Latin letters rh

Question #1:

The initial letter rho of Ancient Greek (which always carried a rough breathing) was transcribed in Latin as 'rh', 'r' for the letter and 'h' for the rough breathing. It was not transcribed 'hr' which would be just as logical.

On the other hand, in the case of a rough breathing before a vowel the Latin 'h' which transcribes the rough breathing preceded the vowel: for example an alpha with a rough breathing would be transcribed in Latin as 'ha' not 'ah'.

How can that inconsistency in the way the rough breathing was transcribed in these two cases in Latin be explained?

Question #2:

There are also cases of 'rh' in Latin which do not transcribe a rho with a rough breathing. There are even cases of medial 'rh' which obviously could never transcribe an initial rho in Greek, for example 'arrha' ('pledge, deposit, down payment').

What are those 'rh'? Do they always occur after 'rr' or 'double r' (as in the example)? Are there 'rr' that are not followed by an 'h'? In other words is this 'h' simply a spelling device indicating some peculiarity of the pronunciation of the 'rr'? Or are 'r' and 'rh' (or possibly 'rr' and 'rrh') two different phonemes in Latin?

178.51.16.158 (talk) 02:01, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A likely explanation for the inconsistency is that when such things were first devised by somebody, they weren't working to already-set rules, and went with the first idea that came to them, which might well have been inconsistent with similar things thought up by someone else, somewhere else, at some other time, that they didn't know about. This is a major difference between the evolutions of 'natural' languages and writing systems, and the creations of conlangs and their scripts (and also 'real' solo-constructed scripts such as Glagolitic).

Similar processes explain a lot of the frankly bonkers nomenclatures used in modern physics, etc., where someone makes up 'placeholder' names intending to replace them with something better, but never gets round to doing so, and others take them up. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 04:43, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- Latin alphabet "rh" fit in with other digraphs used when transcribing Greek into Latin, namely "th", "ph", and "ch". The sequence "hr" would only make sense if a rho with a rough breathing meant a sequence of two sounds "h"+"r", which I highly doubt. As for medial doubled -rr-, it also had a rough breathing over one or both rhos in some orthographic practices, which is included in some transcriptions -- i.e. diarrhea -- and ignored in others. By the way, words beginning with upsilon generally had a rough breathing also. AnonMoos (talk) 06:59, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A simple consistent rule is that the Latin ⟨h⟩ in transliterated Greek words immediately precedes a vowel or, exceptionally, another ⟨h⟩ digraph (as in chthonic and phthisis).

BTW, if a double rho is adorned with breathing marks, the first of the pair is marked with smooth breathing, as in διάῤῥοια.^[9] --Lambiam 10:11, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's most standard. I was looking at Goodwin and Gluck's "Greek Grammar", and it seemed that they had rough breathings over both rhos in an intervocalic doubled rho, but on looking closer, the first one is actually a smooth breathing, as you describe... AnonMoos (talk) 10:44, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wiktionary, latin arrha is from Greek, originally from Semitic: wikt:arrha#Latin. So it still has to do with how Greek words were borrowed into Latin, not to do with native Latin phonetics. --Amble (talk) 15:35, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English full stop

Can ordinal numbers in English be abbreviate with full stop, like 4. time (4th time) or 52. floor (52nd floor)? And does English ever abbreviate words with full stop to save space, similarly to many other languages, like in table columns, where e.g. Submitted Proposals -> Subm. Prop. would occur? There are some established full-stop abbreviations like US state abbreviations, but are there any temporary abbreviations which are used only when space is limited. And can full stops be used in dates like 16. December 2024? --40bus (talk) 21:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In some situations words are abbreviated with full stops, but in my experience they are never used with numbers in the way you suggest. HiLo48 (talk) 22:36, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) In British English, no to ordinal numbers (as far as I know), yes to abbreviations (for instance Asst. means Assistant in many titles, like this example), and yes for dates but only when fully numerical (today's date can be expressed as 16.12.24 - see this example from New Zealand, although a slash is more common, 16/12/24). Alansplodge (talk) 22:43, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In some cases, Romance languages use ª , º abbreviations, but English has a whole series of special two-letter endings for the purpose: -st, -nd, -rd, -th... AnonMoos (talk) 01:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In certain contexts a slight re-ordering may result in needing no ordinal indication at all: "Manhole 69", "Track 12", "Coitus 80" (all titles of J. G. Ballard short stories, by the way); "Floor 17", "Level 42", etc. This however might fall outside the scope of your query. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 03:16, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Afaiknew only German uses 4. for 4th. But see wikt:4. which says 4. is an abbreviation of vierte (=fourth), but also lists several other languages where it means 4th. 213.126.69.28 (talk) 13:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So does Turkish. "4. denemede başardı..."^[10] means "She succeeded on the 4th try...". --Lambiam 18:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 17

Some questions

Are there any words in English where yod-coalescense appears with a stressed vowel?
Are ranges of times in English-speaking countries ever presented as: 7-21, 12-18, with 24-hour clock? Would most English speakers understand "7-21" to be a range of clock times?
Why does English not say "Clock is five", but "It is five"? In most other Germanic languages, as well as in some Uralic languages, word "clock" appears in this expression, such as in German er ist fünf Uhr, Swedish Klockan är fem, Finnish Kello on viisi.
Do most English speakers say that it is "seven" when time is 7:59? I think that it is "seven" when hour number is 7.
Are there any words in English where ⟨t⟩ is pronounced in words ending in -quet?
Why has Hungarian never adopted Czech convention to use carons to denote postalveolar and palatal sounds?
Are there any Latinates in English that have letter K before A, O and U?
Can it and they be used as distal demonstrative pronouns in English?

(More to come) --40bus (talk) 06:32, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3. Quick note that the German phrase given doesn't seem to directly use the meaning of "clock" (although of course noting the clock meaning of wikt:Uhr#German) GalacticShoe (talk) 08:12, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Also compare Dutch “Het is vijf uur,” where uur can only be translated as hour(s), not clock. The German and Dutch phrases can be calqued into English as “It's five hours.” (Dutch and German normally don't use the plural of units of measurement.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:42, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3. "It is five" or "It is five o'clock" would probably be in response to "What time is it?" If you responded "Clock is five", you would probably get some weird looks. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:59, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

4. If the time is 7:59, you wouldn't say it is "seven" - you would either give the exact time or else say "it's almost eight [o'clock]". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:59, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

5. Banquet I think everywhere, racquet in UK spelling, and sobriquet and tourniquet in American English pronunciation. GalacticShoe (talk) 08:11, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

6. You should ask the Hungarians that question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:05, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3. Note that "it is five" is short for "it is five o'clock", itself shortened from "it is five of the clock".^[11] --Lambiam 11:05, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Once again, the "why" questions aren't really answerable. There is almost certainly no underlying reason (no "why") that explains what happened. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

7. Kalends

Are there any Latinates in English that have letter K before A, O and U that were spelled with letter C in Latin (and possibly in French too)? --40bus (talk) 20:11, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kale evolved from Northern Middle English cale, cal, and ultimately derives from Latin caulis. As for ko and ku, I can't really think of any common English words that start with them and are not obviously of non-Latinate origin (e.g. koala, kukri.) GalacticShoe (talk) 05:22, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1. To quote our article Phonological history of English consonant clusters, "In certain English accents, yod-coalescence also occurs in stressed syllables, as in tune and dune". ColinFine (talk) 16:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. No it's not used like that in the UK. I imagine that most people would guess that 7-21 would mean 07:21 (21 minutes past 7 am). I think 07:00 - 21:00 would be understood however, but in normal speech one would use "7 am to 9 pm", in the UK at least. Alansplodge (talk) 22:19, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do English speakers ever refer an hour from 21:00 to 22:00 as "twenty-one"? Is there any English-speaking country where 24-hour clock predominates in writing, and 12-hour clock is used orally at most, but 24-hour clock is common orally too?

They may refer to 21:00 (9 pm) as "21 hours" or "twenty-one hours",^[12][13][14] but this means a time of the day, not a period lasting one hour. The one-hour period from 14:00 to 15:00 will most commonly be referred to as "from 2 to 3 pm" or "between 2 and 3 pm". Similarly, one may use "from 21 to 22 hours".^[15] --Lambiam 11:38, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A phrase such as "during the 5 o'clock hour" is sometimes used to denote the period from 5 o'clock until 6 o'clock. At least around where I live in NC.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:06, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. Not really no. 24 hour time is not in general use in the United States and is only vaguely familiar to most people. It is used in military and hospital contexts where people are expected to learn it. But it is not used for transportation timetables, broadcast announcements, or really any communications designed for the general public. An American adult can generally function perfectly well without being able to use or recognize 24 hour clock references. Eluchil404 (talk) 07:39, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any timetables in US that use 24-hour clock? And can 24-hour clock be used in articles with strong ties to US (I have seen no US-related articles with 24-hour clock) such as: "The Super Bowl begins at 18:40 ET? --40bus (talk) 06:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC) --40bus (talk) 06:29, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English H

Why English uses letter H in words such as bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah and Utah? In the first two, the ⟨ah⟩ is pronounced as a schwa, so the spelling without H would be more logical (as spelling with H would indicate a long [ɑː] sound). But why Utah has letter H, why it isn't just Uta?
Why English uses ⟨ph⟩ instead of ⟨f⟩ in many words to indicate Greco-Latin Φ/ph? Why is it philosophy, phone, photograph, -phobia and not filosofy, fone, fotograf, -fobia?

--40bus (talk) 20:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 1

1. Mitzvah is a transliteration from Hebrew.[16] Here's a theory on Utah.[17] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1. While "mitzvah" is generally pronounced with a schwa in ordinary speech, this seems more like the general relaxation of vowels in conversational English. If I were pronouncing it as an isolated word (or phrase with bar or bat), the final a would probably sound more like the a in father. "ah" is a common way of writing that sound. Without the final h, I would tend to pronounce the a in Utah with the sound of a in cat. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:04, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Really??? You'd pronounce Uta with a final [æ]? I'm not aware of any accent of English that permits a word-final ash in any normal word. I might not be too surprised to hear it realized in some sort of grunt, like Bah! or something, or maybe Mike Meyers's tyaah...and monkeys might fly outa my butt. --Trovatore (talk) 21:13, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Uta would be pronounced /juːtə/. Are there any polysyllabic words where final ⟨a⟩ is pronounced /ɑː/--40bus (talk) 12:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also expect a schwa in the Yiddish pronunciation; cf. בריאה ,הוצאה ,הנאָה ,משפּחה, which have [a] in their Hebrew etyma. --Lambiam 22:21, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But we aren't discussing Yiddish. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:49, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It might be that the pronunciation of mitzvah in English has more to do with the Yiddish than with the Modern Hebrew pronunciation. --Lambiam 00:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question 2

(posting by banned user removed.) - Future Perfect at Sunrise 21:05, 17 December 2024

In Portuguese, /s/ between two vowels becomes /z/, so spelling or "Brazil" with Z approximates the original word more closely. --40bus (talk) 20:54, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No no no! In the velha orthographia a Portuguese woman was uma portugueza. In the reformed spelling she's uma portuguesa. You are right, however, that the English spelling "Brazil" approximates (indeed is identical with) the original spelling by which the Portuguese identified their newly-discovered South American territory. 2.101.1.215 (talk) 21:02, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. Here is some info on the photo- prefix.[18] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. Blame the Romans for the "ph", see Why does “ph” make an “f” sound?. Added to that, English spelling is not phonetic but conservative and tends to preserve the original regardless of current pronunciation. Alansplodge (talk) 22:12, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Romans are to blame, according to that article, because, when the pronunciation changed from /p^h/ to /f/ and the spelling no longer matched the original pronunciation, they "decided not to change the way it is written in Latin". I wonder, who decided this, the Roman Emperor, or the Senate, or was a plebiscite held? Is it known when this decision was made? --Lambiam 10:24, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some languages have chosen to respell "ph" as "f" -- see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fotografia and related Wiktionary entries -- but French, which has cultural ties to English, hasn't, nor has English. There's not really any central body in charge of spelling in the English-speaking world which could propose or enact such a change... AnonMoos (talk) 23:19, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One slightly odd (IMO) example is the Cypriot city of Πάφος, which was traditionally (and internationally generally still is) transliterated as Paphos, but is locally transliterated as Pafos. Iapetus (talk) 09:54, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That may have to do with Turkish orthography (Cyprus is bilingual, half Greek, half Turkish), which is rather consistently fonetik. An occurrence of ⟨ph⟩ in a Turkish word, as for example in şüphe, is pronounced as a [p] followed by a [h]. We also find, locally, the more phonetic Larnaka instead of the traditional Larnaca.^[19] and Kerinia for Κερύνεια instead of the transliteration Keryneia.^[20] --Lambiam 11:12, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't really have anything to do with Turkish. It's just that virtually all common present-day transcription systems for Modern Greek proper names transcribe <φ> with <f>. In Cyprus, this goes both for the PCGN (1962) system formerly used by the British administration, and for the common ELOT system the country later switched to (aligned with usage in Greece). See Transliteration of Greek for some details. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:40, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of ph vs. f, it's surprising (to me) how pervasive is the belief that Hitler spelled his given name "Adolph" when every reference worth a damn tells us it's "Adolf". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:10, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that is weird. I think it might be the case that "Adolph" used to be a normal-ish, if not that common, name among English speakers, so it's kind of an Anglicization, like "Joseph Stalin". These days of course you hardly ever meet an Adolph (though I once knew an Adolfo). --Trovatore (talk) 21:19, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What countries/languages use decimal separators for years?

I sometimes come across texts from various scientific fields where decimal separators are used for years, i.e. December 17 2,024 or 2 024. Does anyone know in what languages or countries this practice is common? The texts are in English but the authors are from around the world and likely write it that way because that's how it's done in their native language. --91.114.187.180 (talk) 21:02, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Our own Manual of Style states, "Do not add a comma to a four-digit year", giving June 2,015 as an example of an unacceptable date format. It is not hard to find examples where "2 024" occurs next to "2024" in one and the same text, so one needs to see this format used consistently before considering its use intentional. Conceivably, some piece of software that is too smart for its own good may see the year as a numeral and autoformat it as such. For the rest of this year, the wikitext {{formatnum:{{CURRENTYEAR}}}} will produce "2,024". --Lambiam 10:13, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing on Lambian's reply, a space separating the thousands column from the other three digits is recommended by SI and may similarly be a hypercorrection when used in years. Matt Deres (talk) 14:15, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The way I read that recommendation is, that if you use a decimal separator, it's best to use a space (less confusing than dots or commas), not that one should use a decimal separator. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:06, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's very uncommon to use decimal separators in numbers of no more than 4 digits, except for alignment in a column also having numbers of 5 or more digits. As years rarely have more than 4 digits, they rarely get decimal separators. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:11, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 18

Pinyin

Is Hanyu Pinyin a writing system for Chinese of is it just a romanizations system? I have always thought it as a writing system for Chinese. Can it be said that e.g. "letter A is used in Chinese language". --40bus (talk) 22:30, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, it's not much used by native-language Chinese speakers to communicate with other Chinese speakers in connected sentences and paragraphs, because it lacks a number of the disambiguation cues which readers of Chinese characters are used to. Without explicit tone marking (diacritics or numbers) it can be rather ambiguous (see Yuen Ren Chao's clasic Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den). Even with tone marking, there can be some difficulties in understanding. Pinyin is used for many other purposes, though... AnonMoos (talk) 05:18, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess Latin letters are used for many purposes in generally Chinese writing, though, similar to Rōmaji in Japanese. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that Pinyin is used way more than Romaji. And, for the poem, is there any page where it is written in full, in both characters and pinyin? Wikipedia lists only the first verse. --40bus (talk) 13:21, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From my experience, the most common way of typing Chinese in Mainland China is through the Pinyin input method. So it is used daily by almost everyone, but in the sense that it is used to type characters, not to type Pinyin for others to read. --Terfili (talk) 23:03, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English-speaking countries

Are countries like India, Bangladesh, South Africa, Tonga, Ghana and Kenya, considered to to be English-speaking, as these countries do not have English as a majority native language, but it is used widely in administration. Why English has not become majority native language in South Africa like it has become in US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia? --40bus (talk) 22:35, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The India article says that Hindi and English are the main languages, and there are 22 Languages with legal status in India, presumably due to the many localized languages. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:22, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding South Africa, it's likely because in the other countries you contrast, Europeans, hence mostly preferrers of English over the indigenous languages, now greatly outnumber the indigenous speakers, whereas in South Africa first-language English speakers are around only 8–9% of the population, ranking around 4th to 6th, and outnumbered even by Afrikaans (evolved from Dutch), around 12% and 3rd. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 00:09, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And why English is not official language in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia and Mauritius, despite having been British colonies? And I think that The "Big Six" English speaking countries are UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but is South Africa the seventh? --40bus (talk) 06:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your first question: why? – because the legislators of those countries have not chosen to make it so. Sri Lanka's official languages are Sinhala and Tamil, with English officially a "link language" used in education, science and commerce. Myanmar's is Burmese, and English ceased to be the primary language used in higher education 60 years ago. Malaysia's is Malay, though English is used for some official purposes, and is official in the Assemblies of two States. Mauritius has no official language, but English is the official language of its National Assembly, though the use of French, actually more commonly spoken in the country, is also sanctioned there. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 10:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- Braj Kachru developed the concept of "Three Circles of English" for just this purpose -- the countries you named are basically "Outer Circle" countries (though some are more outer than others). AnonMoos (talk) 04:35, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could South Africa ever move to Inner Circle? --40bus (talk) 17:49, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The answer seems pretty clear: native speakers of European languages outside Europe are the where the descendants of European settlers became the majority of the population. The distinct case to mention here is Latin America, where most people are of both Indigenous and European descent, but where majority Indigenous-language areas are limited to Paraguay and subnational regions.

In areas with high linguistic diversity, whichever European language was introduced during colonization often becomes a lingua franca and means of leverage for the speakers of minority languages against those of the plurality language group (Hindi in India, Swahili in Kenya, Zulu in South Africa, Sinhala in Sri Lanka etc.) Remsense ‥ 论 05:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Belize speaks English commonly. Card Zero (talk) 11:39, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quite! Just to be clear since I'm not sure, was something I said misleading? Remsense ‥ 论 17:51, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, just agreeing. It seemed unusual enough to single out. Card Zero (talk) 06:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English is the official language of Belize, and spoken by over 60% of the population (whose majority is bi- or multi-lingual).

However, being spoken commonly doesn't in itself make English an official language of a country. The majority of Scandinavians and Nordics speak English, and different nationals of the region often use it to converse despite several of their languages being mutually intelligible or nearly so (the PIE but outlier Icelandic, and the non-PIE Finnish and Sami throw spanners into the comprehensibility works). 40bus and others might want to review Lingua Franca. 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:17, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

...being spoken commonly doesn't in itself make English an official language of a country. True. In fact English is not the, or even an, official language of the United States (though it is, oddly enough, the official language of California). I'm not really sure why you bring in official languages; the original question didn't mention them. --Trovatore (talk) 21:22, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But the OP did ask about them in his first follow-up question – "And why English is not official language in Bangladesh . . . [etc]." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 01:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 19

Initial /r/ as obstruent in Indian English?

I recently watched an Indian movie primarily in English, and couldn't help noticing utterance-initial /r/ was frequently realized as what sounded to me like an affricate, [d͡ɻ̝]. I heard "jite" only to realize it was "right", and so on. They may have been [r̝] or [ʐ], but at any rate a sound with frication. "Rather" here also sounds to me like an obstruent. But to my surprise I can't seem to find discussion of this not only on Wikipedia but anywhere. Are there sources for this? Is this type of allophony commonly found in South Asia? Nardog (talk) 13:00, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Temperatures

Do people in countries that use metric system refer to temperatures in groups of 10, such as 0s (0-9 C), 30s (30-39 C), -10s (-19 - -10C), sometimes with "low", "mid", "high" added? How would people pronounce "0s"? -- 40bus

Its usual name is "degrees Celsius"... AnonMoos (talk) 19:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't say so, I think the differences between the lower and higher numbers might feel too big for general usage. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:52, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Terms like "the high 60s" used to be used by UK weather forecasters when Fahrenheit was standard, which was also when forecasting was less precise. Nowadays, with much more accurate forecasting enabling exact numbers, and with Celsius in use (which, as Wakuran alludes, anyway has degrees 1.8-times larger than Fahrenheit's) such ranges and terms are much less frequently used in the UK.

The range 0–9 was (in the UK) never routinely referred to as '"the zeros" (to my agéd recollection, though as a joke it would be understood). Terms like "below ten" (or whatever), or "X above zero" were used instead. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 01:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I know that some warnings in Australia use these ranges. And if 11 C is "low 10s", then -11 C is "high -10s", because negative temperatures have higher numbers colder. --40bus (talk) 06:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

-11 C would be very uncommon in Australia HiLo48 (talk) 10:24, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the Netherlands, there's occasional talk about "twintigers" (20s) and "dertigers" (30s), and also "dubbele cijfers" (double digits, ≥10°C), but it's more common to use adjectives like "warm" (≥20°C), "zomers" (summer-like, ≥25°C) and "tropisch" (tropical, ≥30°C). In a meteorological context, those adjectives have a precise definition. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:06, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK, low, mid, or high teens, twenties or thirties [degrees Celcius] are sometimes used, an example is this London radio station website:

"The rain and grey skies that have dominated the weather in recent weeks have slowly been replaced by sun and temperatures in the mid-twenties over the past few days. [21]

Or this national newspaper:

"There is a 30 per cent chance that temperatures could soar to the mid-30s next week" [22]

Or this from the Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service:

The heatwave of 2018 continues across much of England this week, with temperatures expected to reach the high-20s or low 30s Celsius across the Midlands" [23]

I have never heard this formulation used for lower temperatures, but "around zero" or "around freezing" are common. Alansplodge (talk) 12:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 20

Sequences of aspirate stops in Ancient Greek and their reflexes as fricatives in Modern Greek?

There are in Ancient Greek sequences of aspirate stops: for example khthoon (earth), etc. I think there are even sequences of identical aspirates (double aspirates) but I couldn't think of any off the top of my head.

Now aspirate stop geminates or even sequences of aspirate stops are, I would think, fairly problematic from the point of view of phonetics.

I guess you could posit that those were sequences of aspirate stops (or double aspirate stops) only in spelling and that in actual fact phonetically there was only one aspiration at the end of the sequence. The problem with this assumption is that those sequences produce sequences of fricatives in Modern Greek, which would seem to indicate in fact two aspirates?

Or do people imagine more complex processes: where the 1st fricative was originally an unaspirate stop that became a fricative under the influence of the 2nd fricative (assimilation) but that only the 2nd fricative goes back to an Ancient Greek aspirate stop?

What's the answer? Is there a consensus?

Incidentally: do sequences of fricatives in Modern Greek only occur in words that are borrowed from Ancient Greek (literate borrowings) or do they occur also in Modern Greek words that are inherited from Ancient Greek?

178.51.16.158 (talk) 07:34, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In ancient Greek, geminated aspirates were written pi-phi. tau-theta, and kappa-chi: Sappho, Atthis, Bacchus. You can also see Bartholomae's law (though it doesn't apply in Greek)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, some of the non-geminate aspirate consonant clusters in ancient Greek came from the so called Indo-European "thorn clusters"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 07:51, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the non-homorganic clusters, I'd need to dust up my references for this, but as far as I remember, the natural sound change leading to Modern Greek actually dissimmilated these, leading to clusters of fricative + simple plosive, so Ancient χθ, φθ become χτ, φτ. The χθ, φθ clusters pronounced as double fricatives in Modern Greek are reading pronunciations of inherited spellings. Can't give you refs for the phonetic nature of the clusters before fricatization, off the top of my head. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:55, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Referring to Ancient Greek phonology, Koine Greek phonology and Medieval Greek, Wiktionary gives the 5th BCE Attic pronunciation for the geminates πφ, τθ, κχ as having both stops aspirated, the 1st CE Egyptian pronunciation with an unaspirated plus an aspirated stop, and the 4th CE Koine as well as later (10th CE Byzantine, 15th CE Constantinopolitan) pronunciations as having an unaspirated stop followed by a fricative. See Σαπφώ, Ἀτθίς, Βάκχος.

For the the non-homorganic clusters, the development seems to be different: both still aspirated in 1st CE Egyptian pronunciation and both fricative in Koine and beyond; see χθών, φθόγγος. --Lambiam 11:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]