Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 December 16

= December 16 =

South-African Officials - difficult names
While browsing some articles on South Africa, I noticed that some officials (unsurprisingly) have names containing click sounds. Are these used by English/Afrikaans/non-clicky language speakers when talking about them, or are they elided somehow? If they are, how are they left out (i.e. are they replaced, or simply not pronounced)? An example, South African Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo. Steewi (talk) 03:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)


 * What click is in Ngcobo? 75.41.110.200 (talk) 03:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Look at Xhosa language to see what the spelling "Ngc" represents in that language (though I have no idea if the name is actually Xhosa). AnonMoos (talk) 06:38, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think people unable to produce clicks often replaced them with /k/. +Angr 07:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Friends of mine who studied in South Africa but didn't learn much of the language often try to reproduce the click by doing something similar to a retroflex click....whatever it is that kids do where you put your tongue in a sort of retroflex position, suck, and slap it down against the soft base of your mouth behind the lower teeth. The one that makes a big wet, sloppy slap sound. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 16:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * They do q and x. I'm not sure about c. Looks like he's probably Zulu, which is practically the same language. "Engkobo" on "Engchobo" might be what you'd end up with. We'd have to ask native English-speaking South Africans. kwami (talk) 07:23, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You can ask User:Joziboy, User:Mohau, User:Pseudo daoist, or User:Vdiest. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:20, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As a probably-irrelevant data point, the American public radio network NPR pronounces that name "nGOBO". --Sean 15:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

upbraid usage
When was the word upbraid first used?--64.138.237.101 (talk) 20:04, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The OED online gives ca. 1000 for use as a verb: "God upbrede {th}one godspellican cwide", and lists a modern spelling at 1542 "Lest the others might thynke niggardship* to bee upbraided unto hym" (*see niggardly before ranting). As with all usage notes, those are the first instances that the OED could find record of - it is highly possible that the word was in use prior to those instances (say in day-to-day conversation). -- 128.104.112.87 (talk) 20:16, 16 December 2009 (UTC)