Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 February 23

= February 23 =

Usage of "rapide" in English
There were a British airplane and sports car called "xxxxxx Rapide". Why was the 'e' added to "rapid" ? My guess: used the French spelling to make it sound more classy ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.139.183.13 (talk) 09:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps. It also probably made the name trademarkable, as 'rapid' could have been turned down as being too generically descriptive of a vehicle. Rhinoracer (talk) 12:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Vincent Motorcycles, another British manufacturer of motorised road vehicles, produced a series of bikes named Rapide dating back as far as 1936.
 * There was a car named "Rapid" without the "e" at one point too, a Swiss manufacturer of mowing machines named "Rapid" ran a very limited test series of 36 "Rapids", nicknamed the "Swiss Volkswagens", in 1946.
 * Yes, I think the French spelling was chosen to suggest elegance and class. See also the new Aston Martin Rapide's press release. How is this model pronounced in English? Like the word "rapid", or in a faux French manner, "rah-PEED"? ---Sluzzelin  talk  14:54, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Usually the faux French, but more like "rapp-EED". Xn4  02:33, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Younger Futhark
How does one use Younger Futhark to write Old Norse/Icelandic? There doesn't seem to be a one-to-one correspondence between runes and ON/Icel. letters. --Śiva (talk) 16:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * As the article says, the Scandinavians got rid of 1/3 of the letters of the earlier Runic alphabet, even though the Old Norse languages were developing more phonemes than had existed in the "common North-West Germanic" of the earlier runic inscriptions. The Anglo-Saxons went completely the other way, and added new runes for new sounds that developed in early Old English, and also for letters in the Latin Alphabet for which there weren't corresponding runes (q, x)... AnonMoos (talk) 18:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

That's just my question: If the Scandinavians had fewer runes than phonemes, how did they write their language? What rules did they use to map phonemes to runes? --Śiva (talk) 18:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know all the rules, but I think that each pair of voiced and voiceless stops were written with the same letter, to start with. AnonMoos (talk) 19:28, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

OK; how about the vowels? There seem to be only a, i, and ą. --Śiva (talk) 19:38, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Languages in India
What was the governmental role of the regional languages of India (pre- and post-independence) before the States Reorganization Act? For example, was Tamil used as a governmental language in the Madras Presidency, or Kannada in Mysore State, or Telugu in Hyderabad, or Bengali in Bengal Province? Or did all these governments just use English (or Persian or Hindi-Urdu) as an administrative language? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 17:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Help writing how to pronounce a name
I want to put a reference on how to pronounce a village name on a page - but am not sure how to go about it - help please!! The name is Navenby and it is prounced like the nave of a church - rather than like a navvie. But I don't know the correct little character thingys to use. Thankyou. --Seahamlass 18:57, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * [nejvn̩bi] (in my dialect). --Śiva (talk) 19:03, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The standard transcription for British English (or General American) would be [ˈneɪvn̩bi]. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't forget the — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  23:48, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Gabba gabba hey!
What does "gabba gabba hey!" mean and where did it start from? J I P | Talk 21:38, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi JIP. Please see Gabba Gabba Hey. I say this not to be corrective at all but simply to inform: this is what Google is for. I copied the phrase into Google and found our article on it as the first entry literally less than five seconds after seeing your question.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)