Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 August 28

= August 28 =

Fargo?
what's the etymology for the name "Fargo"? I've never seen it outside of the United States, so it seems like it must be fairly recent, but I can't find any information on it. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 01:07, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The city of Fargo, North Dakota and the bank Wells Fargo are both named for William Fargo. The Wikipedia article on him doesn't, however, mention his background beyond the fact that he had a brother, J. C. Fargo.  No idea where the name or family came from.  But it would give you a point of research, perhaps sources outside of Wikipedia cover the family and their background.  -- Jayron  32  01:42, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * This page says that the name derives from a fellow named Jacent Fargo who sailed from France to Wales in about 1662, and that the name is an anglicanization of JACENTZ FARGEAU. The name probably derives from Saint-Fargeau, a village in France presumably named after an eponymous saint. Looie496 (talk) 03:12, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Or Saint-Ferjeux, but in both cases the saint's name was originally Ferrutio in Latin. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:56, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Tahitian pronounciation
How do you pronounce Pōmare? Is it Po-Mare (like the horse) or Po-Ma-Ray?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 05:26, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know Tahitian, but it's pretty close to Hawaiian. I strongly suspect it's po-ma-ray, with the o in the first syllable significantly longer than the a and e in the second and third syllables. Pais (talk) 05:58, 28 August 2011 (UTC)


 * e/c Spelling pronunciation is almost always a mistake when you apply English (or French) rules to a non-European language. Our article on the Tahitian language has an IPA table. So the pronunciation would be something like Poe-ma-ray (Poe as in Edgar Allan). --  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   06:03, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

llama
If I'm reading it correctly, our entry at Wiktionary provides for two ways to pronounce the initial sound in the word llama. The generally accepted English method it to pronounce it with a simple "L", making it a homophone of lama, while the other, "rare, foreign" method is to pronounce it with a "Y". In this context, what does the "rare, foreign" mean? The etymology section seems a little confused to me, listing both Latin and Quechua as possible sources. Is "yamma" how they'd pronounce it in Quechua, or at least in South America in general? Back in my university days, my archaeology prof pronounced ll- Spanish words with a Y sound and I just assumed he knew what he was speaking about and have pronounced llama with a Y-sound ever since. Sense or nonsense? Obviously, I speak no Spanish at all. Matt Deres (talk) 14:46, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Spanish is a perfectly phonetic language, and in Spanish orthography the digraph ‹ll› always corresponds to the phoneme /j/ in Spanish, which may be realized as [j], [ʝ], [ʎ], or [ʒ] depending on dialect. All of these sound to a non-Spanish speaker like english [j] with the exception of [ʒ] and maybe [ʎ], but these realizations are largely confined to the Rioplatense and Estremadura, respectively. 24.92.85.35 (talk) 17:38, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The odd coincidence is that llama is also third-person singular of the Spanish verb llamar ("to call"). The two llamas in Spanish are of unrelated origins. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The one-l lama, / He's a priest. / The two-l llama, / He's a beast. / And I will bet / A silk pajama / There isn't any / Three-l lllama.* — Ogden Nash
 * * The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.
 * — Michael J 17:49, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * If it makes you feel better, I used to pronounce llama as 'lyamma'. Because the former [ʎ] sound of the Spanish 'll' has been nativized to [lj] in our Filipino languages. I remember being confused when I discovered that llama and lama were pronounced the same way in spoken English . I mean... how are you guys supposed to tell them apart? :P --  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   18:16, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * There aren't many lamas in South America and there aren't many llamas in Tibet, so it isn't too tough from context. -- Jayron  32  18:27, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Globalization pretty much makes that unusable though, heh. I bet I can find both lamas and llamas in California. :P --  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   19:01, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * And very possibly one being tended by the other. There must be a photo of a lama feeding his llamas, somewhere.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:30, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the responses thus far. Anyone care to tackle what they were called in Quechua? I don't often check etymologies of words, but I seem to have seen "comes from a Latin word that bears no apparent relation to the word you looked up" fairly often. A South American camel got its name from the Latin word "to call" and all those thousands of natives happily adopted the nonsensical appellation? It just seems unlikely to me. Matt Deres (talk) 20:06, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * According to etymonline: It comes from the native Quechua word for the animal itself. Dictionary.com seems to confirm, Oxford agrees.  It does seem to come from Quechua originally.  -- Jayron  32  21:14, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * That makes much more sense. I wonder where Wiktionary got the Latin source from? Matt Deres (talk) 11:29, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I think you're misreading the entry. There are three different words in Spanish which have different etymologies but the same spelling and pronunciation: llama "flame", from Latin flamma; llama "llama", from Quechua, and llama "[he/she] calls", from Latin clamat. The etymologies are given above the definitions, which can make it a little confusing to read. Lesgles (talk) 20:55, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

References – style variation and consistency
Will somebody please have a look at the references number 1 to 81 in the article Steinway & Sons. I am trying to write all the references the same way in the article Steinway & Sons. According to Style variation and consistency the references within each Wikipedia article should follow a consistent style. Therefore I am trying to make a consistent style in the article Steinway & Sons. So far I have changed the style for the reference number 1–81 to the same style be writing these references with the templates Template:Cite book, Template:Cite journal and Template:Cite web. It takes a lot of time, so before I make further edits I would like to hear if the references number 1–81 are written as Style variation and consistency would like them to be written. --Peoplefromarizona (talk) 16:39, 28 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not an expert, but if you don't get a reply here, you could try asking on the help desk (Help desk), which is the best place to ask questions about writing or editing Wikipedia articles. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:53, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Priority of agreement in French
bonjour mes amis ! :) I have a question about a certain pesky little gender agreement paradox: In the sentence "C'est l'___ des plus belles langues du monde", where 'ce' refers (of course:) to 'le français', should 'un' or 'une' go in the blank? 'Français' is masculine, but 'langue' is feminine, so it is a conundrum for me. Thanks for your help. `` — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.85.35 (talk) 17:30, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It should be une, to agree with langue, but there should be no l’ before it: "C'est une des plus belles langues du monde". (A claim that warrants a [citation needed] tag, of course). Angr (talk) 17:35, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It would also be "une" even if you specifically used "le français" instead of "ce" (just like "belles", everything would agree with "langue" because that is what you are describing). Adam Bishop (talk) 19:12, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Apart from the obvious fact that it's a dubious subjective claim, there is nothing wrong with "C'est l'une des plus belles langues du monde". Idiomatic French often inserts words that make no sense: for purely phonetic reasons. Hans Adler 20:10, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * For example you must always say "que l'on", because the alternative is too rude, haha. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:06, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * C'est con mais c'est bon ! Hans Adler 10:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * But in your Google search, how many of those instances actually meant "It's the one of the..."? Sometimes C'est l'une des... is exactly what you mean; just not in the OP's sentence. Angr (talk) 21:14, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It's all explained here by a French speaker of unknown qualification. Of the criteria listed there, only two seem to be relevant: (1a) "l'une" is elevated style. (1b) "l'une" is used to prevent a clash of two vowels. "C'est" ends with a vowel. There is no clash because in "C'est une" the t is spoken. But it doesn't sound very nice to my ears (and presumably some French ears), and given the choice between inserting t (because that's what it feels like for a French speaker) or inserting an l, I prefer the latter. Hans Adler 10:37, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

The strange things about chet (ח)
My understanding of Hebrew is still limited, but it seems like chet, when it's at the end of a word, almost always has an -a sound, like in פח, סמח, or פטוח? It also seems like in certain cases, such as סמח, it can have two vowel sounds in a row, but not have an aleph or a'ayin to separate the two. So my question is, what's so special about chet (or am I imagining this)? Of course, we all know it's the first letter in חלה, which is no small feat, but what else is so special about it that it appears to have these special rules or exceptions to other rules? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 22:55, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Historically (though not really in modern-day Hebrew) the letter chet represented a laryngeal sound (as did ayin, which shares many similar properties with chet). And, quite simply, laryngeal sounds don't play nicely with closed vowels like /i/ or /u/; there's a near universal tendency for laryngeal sounds in various languages to drag neighboring vowels in the direction of /a/. In the case of Hebrew, this resulting in vowel breaking, where a former single vowel split into two (so older *-eħ, where ħ represents the former laryngeal sound of chet, became -eaħ, with an additional -a- inserted in between the vowel and laryngeal to sort of ease the transition). Word-final ayin does exactly the same thing as chet, for the same reasons, with forms like modern Hebrew shomea (I/you/he hears) represents an older form *shomeʕ, which became *shomeaʕ to make it easier to pronounce; over time the sound /ʕ/ disappeared from Hebrew, which is why ayin is mostly silent today). Voikya (talk) 01:51, 29 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah alrighty, thanks, that does make sense when I attempt to say those words in this more difficult style (though p'tuch sounds familiar to me for whatever reason, I don't know why). I don't think that the bit about a'ayin is always true though, in certain Mizrahi forms, they still make use of it in speaking apparently, though I don't know really know any Mizrahim who use a more Mizrahic style of speaking (which incorporates this more difficult style as well, I believe), so I don't know what that would be like. (As a side note, I'm quite amazed I understood all those phonetic symbols, haha) Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 02:11, 29 August 2011 (UTC)


 * In the Tiberian niqqud tradition, all three of ח, ע , and pronounced final ה (i.e. he mappiq, to be distinguished from ordinary silent final "h") generate a non-syllabic short [a] vowel preceding them when they are word-final and preceded by long ē ō ī ū vowels. This phenomenon is known as "pathah furtivum", "pataḥ genubah", "patach g'nuva" etc. (depending on your choice of transcription, and whether you want to partially Latinize or not...). -- AnonMoos (talk) 11:55, 29 August 2011 (UTC)