Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 April 15

= April 15 =

Linguistic borrowing
Hello. I've noticed that (historically) when languages interact and mix to such an extent that non-essential borrowing occurs (i.e., borrowing from language A into language B a word for a concept that already has a word in language B, not just to fill a lacuna), one of three things can happen: (1) The new word displaces the old word, so that the old word takes on a more restrictive/specific meaning, or becomes deprecated in favour of the new word (2) the two words coexist, with both about equally acceptable, or (3) the new word fails to displace/coexist with the old word and takes on a more restrictive/specific meaning than it had in language A. What are the linguistic terms for (1), (2), and (3)? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 01:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)


 * A somewhat relevant article is Semantic field (though it doesn't specifically discuss borrowing). AnonMoos (talk) 03:17, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Also Semantic change for two schemes in which processes (1) and (3) are named, though again not with regard to results of borrowing per se. Deor (talk) 11:23, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The hang up button on a phone
On older model phones- the kind we had before everyone got cell phones- there was a little button or lever on the cradle where, if pressed down, would hang-up the line. Anyone know what the technical name for that button is. I am writing a story that describes a person frantically pushing this button to get a dial tone in order to call the police, but I don't know how to describe it. Someone else said that it was the equivalent of what we now call the "flash" button...but saying "Jane Doe tapped frantically on the flash button, desperately hoping to hear a dial tone" just doesn't sound right. Any suggestions? Quinn ☂THUNDER 05:16, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It's called the "switchhook" or "telephone hook". See also Telephone which uses the term as well.  On early models, the entire cradle which held the handset was the switchhook, on later models a button inside the cradle served as the switchhook.  But the term you wish to use, which should be recognizable to most readers who would have known about such phones, is probably switchhook.  -- Jayron  32  05:28, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * "Telephone hook" or just "the hook" would be better understood in the UK. Alansplodge (talk) 11:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I've never heard "switchhook" before but I've definitely heard "hookswitch" to denote this component of a landline telephone. Note switchhook gets ~125k Google hits, hookswitch gets ~357k. Not to claim my word's better than yours is, but I wonder if the wider usage of one makes it a less-distracting choice in a work of fiction.  ☯.Zen  Swashbuckler  .☠  14:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Neither "switchhook" nor "hookswitch" is familiar to me. I've always known it simply as "the hook," most often in the context of expressing that a telephone receiver was "off the hook" (i.e. not properly rested in its cradle).
 * While I no longer own that style of telephone, I still would use the term "off the hook" to describe a situation in which a landline receiver was accidentally active (similar to the persistent use of the terms "dial" and "hang up" in modern contexts).
 * Alansplodge opines above that "telephone hook" or "the hook" would be better understood in the United Kingdom, and I'm inclined to believe that the same is true of the United States. (I'm American.)  —David Levy 14:34, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It's funny how old terms stick around. The "hook" goes back to the days when you would turn a crank to make the phones on the party line ring. It's been physically a "cradle" for most landline phones, for generations now. And the term "dialup" is still heard even though most phones have been touchtone types, instead of dial types, for decades now. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:36, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, and (at least in the UK) we still "ring someone up", even though most phones don't have bells. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:05, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Even more colloquially, (in London at least) you can "give someone a bell" or "get on the blower" to someone (which I believe refers back to the Speaking tube which you had to blow down to attract the other person's attention). Alansplodge (talk) 16:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Tangentially, but still on the topic of the persistence of old terms, don't forget to tune in to next week's show. HenryFlower 11:36, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A carryover from radio, most likely, which used an analogue dial to tune-in particular frequencies. Old-old TV sets also had a fine-tuning knob, which as I recall was kind of like a "ring" around the outside of the channel selecter knob. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:05, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, and the UHF knob (for channels above 13) didn't click. —Tamfang (talk) 04:47, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I find it particularly ironic when on the phone to a "machine" and I'm asked to "Dial 1 for [something], dial 2 for [something else]" etc. If I were to actually dial, I would not generate the DTMF signal required by machine. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * More often nowadays, I hear, "Please press 1", or whatever. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:58, 16 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Further info at the Hook flash article. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:40, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If I was writing it and it was set in the pre-cell era, I would say "She held down the button for a few seconds, praying the dial tone would be there when she released it." As an American 35 year old I would know exactly what that means.Thedoorhinge (talk) 07:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Qoph
This pertains to how something is witten in an article, so I'm not sure if I should have asked at the Help Desk instead. In any case, I'd like to know if the Hebrew letter Qoph must be capitalized when spelled out in English. Is "qoph" ever (or perhaps always) acceptable? My thought is no. Joefromrandb (talk) 05:31, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

My second question is: Is "Qoph"-capitalized or not-considered a bona-fide English word? Joefromrandb (talk) 05:36, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Absotively posolutely. Even the official Scabble dictionary recognizes it: search here for it.  Merriam-Webster recognizes it, see .  Why wouldn't it be a bonafide English word.  How would English speakers describe the Hebrew alphabet to other English speakers without using that word?  -- Jayron  32  05:51, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok. That answers my second question. Now for the first question, is it a proper noun? Joefromrandb (talk) 05:57, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * No, and neither is sigma. —Tamfang (talk) 06:59, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Joefromrandb (talk) 13:47, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

"Crwd"
This "word" is being used as part of a pangram. I can not find it anywhere. As it's used in the sentence, it appears to be an archaic spelling of crwth (which I suppose is itself, archaic). I know this insturment is sometimes called a "crowd", but I can find no mention of it being spelled "crwd", nor can I find "crwd" in any unabriged English dictionary. But, as I was wrong about "qoph", I could be wrong about this too. Can any of our illustrious Wikipedians identify "crwd" as a bona-fide English word? Joefromrandb (talk) 14:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This online dictionary has "crwd" redirected to "crwth". Alansplodge (talk) 15:44, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Quite interesting. Strange it would be there, yet not in the Oxford unabridged. I'll do some more digging. Thanks for the help. Joefromrandb (talk) 15:50, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A 1780 issue of Gentleman's magazine and historical chronicle says, "A crowd, crwd, or crwth, is an ancient musical instrument used by the Welsh, somewhat resembling a fiddle..." A modern-day reference can be found in a catalogue for violin strings, which asserts "The crwth or crwd, was played in Brittany before the Moorish invasions." Another source, rather recent, claims CRWD is a more economical form of CRWTH and that it is found in the OED. I don't have an OED subscription or a dead-tree OED anymore, so I can't verify. --jpgordon:==( o ) 15:51, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * OED online has crwth but not crwd. --Stfg (talk) 15:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * My second-ed. OED has the entry "crwd, crwth: see CROWD sb.1", directing the reader to the entry about the instrument. Oddly, there's a separate entry at crwth ("The Welsh form of CROWD sb.1"), complete with citations. Deor (talk) 00:38, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * x3 Translating Cymraeg into English is somewhat problematic as the Welsh orthography (that is the sound-to-letter relationship) is quite different; welsh has a lot of sounds which do not occur in English, and the English translator often faces a choice as to whether to preserve the original Welsh spelling (and thus see the word pronounced wrong in English) or to aproximate the Welsh sound of the word by changing the spelling in English. Two Welsh sounds that do not enter English all that easily are those represented by the "ll" digraph and the "dd" digraph. The dd digraph in Welsh is the Voiced dental fricative, which is usually represented in English as the "th" digraph, thus the original Welsh name "Meredudd" usually gets translated into English as "Meredith"; since English words tend to "devoice" the "th" sound at the end of words, there is also a change in pronounciation.  So, my suspicion is that the instrument may have been called a "Crwdd" at some point in Welsh, which ended up getting translated into English two ways: As "Crwd" for those who tried to preserve the spelling (and dropping the final d since having dd at the end of a word seems very unnatural for English) and as "Crwth" for those who tried to preserve the pronounciation (though Crwth is not prounced exactly as Crwdd would be, since the former would take a voiceles dental fricative, while the latter would be voiced.) -- Jayron  32  15:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This document supports its appearance in the OED. Alansplodge (talk) 15:56, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow! Thank you all! I don't think I'd be exaggerating to say that for each contribution I've made here, I've learned ten times as much. Joefromrandb (talk) 16:20, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Siberian Elephants
Does anyone know the etymology of the slavic root 'slon-', meaning 'elephant'? By this I mean, can it be traced back to P-I.E., and are there any cognate roots in other languages? --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  20:41, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * For the Proto-Slavic word slonъ, wiktionary has: "Possibly a deverbative from "sloniti sę" (to lean against), relating to a medieval story of an elephant sleeping leaned against a tree. According to some other sources, it's related to Turkish aslan." (lion) ---Sluzzelin talk  21:17, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Similarly: "The origin of the actual Slavonic word for "elephant", e.g. Russian slon, is uncertain. There are two main etymological suggestions (cf. Vasmer 1955, s.v. slon). One would connect the name with the word meaning "to lean" (Old Church Slavonic sloniti-sę, Russian slonit'-s'a) referring to a belief that elephants sleep leaning against a tree. The other would connect it with the Turkic word for "lion" (Modern Turkish aslan). But a change of meaning from "lion" to "elephant is considerably more remarkable than from "elephant" to "camel", and the etymology remains obscure." (W. Sidney Allen, "Creatures Great and Small": Some Cross-Lingustic Parallels in Productivity and Creativity: Studies in General and Descriptive Linguistics in Honor of E.M. Uhlenbeck, Walter de Gruyter, 1998, ISBN 9783110162172) ---Sluzzelin talk  21:29, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's a discussion-board thread in which (amid a bunch of OR) a few sources are cited in addition to the Wiktionary page. Deor (talk) 21:37, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

That's fascinating! The 's-l-p-nt' idea is intriguing - if only Greek 'elephas' began with a 'h'! --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:13, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, by Grassmann's law, a pre-Greek *helephas probably would have become elephas anyway (cf. ekhō "I have" < *hekhō < *seghō). But what won't work is connecting Greek ph (< *bh and *gʷh) with Slavic p (< *p). —Angr (talk) 08:26, 17 April 2011 (UTC)