Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 October 11

= October 11 =

Low German map
In the Low German article, the first image represents with yellow color the Low German speaking area. Now, it has two grey "holes" inside it. The norther one should be Saterland Frisian, but I don't know what the other one is. --151.51.3.194 (talk) 10:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's the Oberharz dialect of Erzgebirgisch. +Angr 10:56, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * What is the standard pronunciation for the affix ‘stein’ that is commonly used at the front and back of some names of persons and places? It seems there is only one option if an ‘n’ is in the coda. That is /steɪn/. An approximate alternative is /staɪn/. Is this correct or is this an exonym from this dialect that a name like ‘Rothstein’ is commonly pronounced as /rɒθstɪːn/ (i.e. ‘stein’ as a 'stean' or 'steen' in the long vowels /ɪː/ or /iː/). Nevill Fernando (talk) 02:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean in the Erzgebirgisch dialect or in standard German? The standard German pronunciation of "Stein" is [ʃtaɪn]. "Rothstein" is pronounced [ˈʁoːtʰʃtaɪn] in German (though the pronunciation of the R varies from region to region).
 * According to the article, "Hohenstein" is pronounced [huːʂʈeː] in Erzgebirgisch, so "Rothstein" would be [ɰoːtʂʈeː] in that dialect. 195.50.180.194 (talk) 14:13, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The standards phonemic transcriptions that you provided seems to me a palatalized version than as to their actual representations either in German or in English. To my ears the fricatives ‘s’ in 'Stein' seems as an alveolar. But I do not know. Nevill Fernando (talk) 16:52, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Does grammar reflect the structure of the human world?
And does every human language have subject-object-verb? The Quicksilver (software) seems powerful because it is structured like grammar. Is there any more software that does this? 78.147.28.172 (talk) 13:47, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Probably not.
 * 2) Not exactly.
 * 3) Maybe.
 * --Sean 16:51, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * COBOL is pretty English-language/English grammar-oriented. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:56, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * For an example of a human language that doesn't use Subject Object Verb, see English. In fact, all five other possible orders exist, although some are more common than others.  See Subject Verb Object, Object Subject Verb, Object Verb Subject, Verb Object Subject and Verb Subject Object. -Elmer Clark (talk) 01:47, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I interpreted the question to mean not "Does every language use SOV word order?" but rather "Does every language have subjects, objects, and verbs?", to which my answer is: I've never heard of one that doesn't, but there are lots of things that I've never heard of. +Angr 05:32, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Grammar is fossilized phrasing: when people say the same thing over and over again, it gets automated, and may eventually get reduced to a grammatical expression, like "I am going to do X" (originally meaning only physical motion toward a goal) becomes "I'm gonna do X" (intention of a goal). So it does reflect society and the human mind, but not directly. If you've ever seen Carol Burnett's elevator skit, where "Floor?" means "Which button would you like me to press for you?" (in the entire skit, I think no sentence is more than one word long), you know how expressive language can be without any grammar whatsoever.

There is no category of "subject" that holds across all languages, so if the word is defined precisely enough to be useful, there are lots of languages without subjects: ergative languages, for example, and those with Austronesian alignment, and even nominative-accusative languages where the nominative is not conflated with a grammatical topic role. "Object" is similarly variable across languages. However, all languages can say s.t. like "X hit Y", where X and Y have different grammatical roles (in some cases, only as suffixes to the verb "X-hit-Y"). All languages have verbs. It's not clear that all languages have nouns: in the Wakashan languages, and to a some extent in Salishan, every lexical word can function as a predicate, so that a word usually translated as "deer" might be more accurately translated as "it-is-a-deer", and the equivalent of "I shot the deer" is both two words and two clauses: "I-shot-it. It-was-a-deer." kwami (talk) 05:59, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language is full of interesting stuff like this - well worth a read if you're interested in the topic. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:13, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Biblical name meanings
List of Biblical names gives the meanings behind the biblical names. So then where did Roswell Dwight Hitchcock get his list from? When and where did such an original list come from in the first place? Is there a prior list before Hitchcock's list? Why do we claim a biblical name on this list to have its meaning? --12.18.10.148 (talk) 21:29, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Moved from Humanities desk and edited to fit


 * I was going to suggest you ask the original author of the article, who presumably had access to the book - but that was an IP address that last posted in 2002. Have you looked in Google for the book in question? It's in the public domain, so it's entirely possible that the complete text - including footnotes and explanations, could be available online. Also, many books have the origins of names in general, and the names in the Bible are often Hebrew names whose meanings are well-known. Additionally, many given names have articles of their own in wikipedia. Elizabeth, for example. →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:53, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Your best bet, name by name, is the Jewish Encyclopedia, also on-line. By Hellenistic times, however, the etymology of Hebrew names was no longer in the forefront of anyone's mind.--Wetman (talk) 01:09, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I would like further also on this and looking at Google Books does not seem to produce anything. Also the Jewish Encyclopedia website shown from the article does not seem show anything. However with my skills that might not be saying much other than I need further help. For example in the original question of the article List of Biblical names it says the meaning behind Jesus: Jehovah is salvation, deliverer, and help. Where did that come from originally and where did professor Roswell Dwight Hitchcock get that from? --12.18.10.149 (talk) 17:45, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * "Jesus" is etymologically the same name as "Joshua". According to the list, both names essentially mean "savior". That's a subtlety that not everyone seems to understand. It's not like they called Him Jesus just because they felt like it. God told Mary to give Him that name, and for a specific and obvious reason. →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 17:47, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Bugs -- is that really so? Do you have a source for that assertion? Was the original Joshua's mother contacted by God to call him Joshua as well?  DRosenbach  ( Talk 02:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about Jesus. I don't recall offhand where the O.T. Joshua got his name. "And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins." (KJV) →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I see in the article List of Biblical names Jesus as: Jehovah is salvation; deliverer; help. Jehovah as self-subsisting. So I guess the end result is: "Self-subsisting is salvation." What does that mean? ALSO what does "deliverer" mean. Deliver what to whom? AND that of "help?" Help who with what? Dictionary "subsist": to exist, continue in existence, to remain alive.--12.18.10.153 (talk) 12:53, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It would be interesting to get a more specific answer to the above question. When I look in that list it shows Joshua as "a savior" and "a deliverer", not "the Lord saves." To me it looks like Joshua and Jesus meanings come out as the same. What is this of "Self-subsisting is salvation" and that related to the word "help"?--69.95.21.109 (talk) 14:26, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I wonder if the OP is asking for the origin of the word in the original language that gave rise to each name in the form we know it, and is thus why we claim a name mean thus-and-so. If the OP is looking for the sources for the meanings, that might be better asked on the Language Desk were there is a lot of etymological expertise. Bielle  (talk) 20:10, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Jesus is just the Greek form of "Joshua", and was used in the original Greek New Testament writings; they would not have been seen as different names. (And means "the Lord saves".) As to the meanings of them all: many are given in the text of the Bible, or given as footnotes by translators. Many of the meanings will  be obvious to language scholars, since they are formed from vocab words. I haven't looked at the WP article to see what meanings are given, but if you want to check any particular ones, then look in any footnoted Bible.  Gwinva (talk) 22:46, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * (ec) Many biblical names are transparent in Hebrew. For example 'Nathan' is the Hebrew root 'n-t-n', which means 'give' (specifically, 'nat(h)an' is the third person singular masculine perfective of the verb on that root, so its primary meaning is 'He gave' or 'He has given'. The many names beginning with 'Ye-' or 'Yo-' are presumed to have a form of the theonym Yahweh, often followed by a recognisable root (eg 'Yonathan' - 'Jonathan' -  meaning 'Yahweh has given).  Clearly in one sense we cannot be certain of these: perhaps one of them is a borrowing of an unrelated word in another lost language: but as many of them form a self-consistent system, it would seem perverse to discard the obvious etymologies without strong evidence pointing elsewhere. --ColinFine (talk) 22:51, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Some biblical names (esp. those of major characters in Genesis) have their etymology explicitly explained in the text. Some examples would be the names of Isaac, Esau, Jacob, all of the Twelve Tribes of Israel etc. Some other, later characters also have names that are explained in the text, eg Moses. --Dweller (talk) 14:14, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * However, the explanations of the names that are found in the text are very often folk etymologies. +Angr 14:23, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That's your POV and not what the source says. If you believed Moses ever lived, there's no reason to doubt that his name derived from an obscure word for the verb "to remove". If you don't believe he lived, it's largely irrelevant what the origin of a fictional person's name was. --Dweller (talk) 14:32, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC) It's also quite possible to believe both that he existed, and that his name is the common Egyptian name element (also rendered as "-mosis" and "-mose") meaning "son" (or "formed of" or "has provided"), perhaps with an original preceding Egyptian-god element such as "Tut-" removed to accord with subsequent Yahwehist sensibilities, given his upbringing as the adopted son of an Egyptian princess. And if you don't believe he existed, its meaning is still relevant to interpreting the folk myths in which the character appears. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 15:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I suppose that's possible if you believed he existed but that the bible postdated his life by some considerable period of time. An interesting POV. The bible's own etymology employs a word which is probably Egyptian, given its singularity and the fact that it's ascribed to an Egyptian (not Israelite) namer, which doesn't strike me as particularly "Yahweist", if I understand that word correctly. The OT elsewhere isn't shy of giving us Joseph's Egyptian name, nor, to give another non-"Yahweist" example, the decidedly idolatrous name of Esther (as well as mentioning that her Hebrew name was Hadassah). --Dweller (talk) 15:55, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, both an interesting POV and a far from uncommon one: see the Documentary hypothesis, which broadly postulates (in its various versions) that some or all of the original sources of the existing Torah were first written down something approaching half a millennium after the purported events of the Exodus. Time enough for oral traditions to acquire both unconscious and deliberate distortions, such as introducing folk-etymological explanations and eliminating the foreign-god element from the name of a Yahwehist hero, bearing in mind that Yahwehist thought followed a trajectory from "Yahweh is our particular god out of the many that exist" through "Other gods are our/our god's enemies" to "Yahweh is the only god that exists." As to contrary instances, complete consistency of approach is unlikely in a body of texts derived from multiple sources variously compiled and redacted at various times. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 17:08, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Why exactly would the existence of Moses render the writers of the bible immune from etymological error? Algebraist 15:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

A N.T. reference that comes to mind is when Jesus redubbed Simon as "Peter", which means "Rock" - play on words with his "confession of faith", which Jesus also termed a "rock". →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)