Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 June 10

= June 10 =

what language is this?
. I looked up the ckb and didn't get a language code in the disambiguation. It looks Semitic at the very least. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 03:11, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

What you have there appears to be the Soranî Kurdish Wikipedia: AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:24, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, very good, thanks. Hmmm, I thought that language had an article (could have sworn I spotted it when I went to do editing at WP:KURDISTAN). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 03:30, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It does have an article, just under a slightly different name. I've created the redirect, so now your link is blue. —Angr (talk) 05:33, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Jack (connector)
Where does this usage of the word jack as a connection point in electrical circuitry come from? I looked in the article for an etymology, but there's nothing there. It seems unconnected to other ways the word is used, but that's probably just me. Anyone? HiLo48 (talk) 04:48, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Search me. :) --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  04:50, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry. Wrong Jack. :-( HiLo48 (talk) 05:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the noun jack has the following etymology: "late 14c., jakke 'a mechanical device,' from the name Jack. Used in M.E. for 'any common fellow' (mid-14c.), and thereafter extended to various appliances replacing servants (1570s)." And in the etymology of the verb jack, it says "Jack off (v.) 'to masturbate' is attested from 1916, probably from jack in the sense of 'penis'". Since the connector called a jack is the "male" part of a connection (the part that's inserted into a socket), it seems plausible that it too comes from the "penis" meaning. —Angr (talk) 05:31, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The OED defines "jack" in the mechanical sense as the "female" part of the connection:
 * 15. In various machines. d. Telegr., etc. A socket or receptacle having one or more pairs of terminals and designed so that insertion of a suitable plug enables a device to be quickly introduced into a circuit.
 * The earliest quote provided is: "1891 J. Poole Pract. Telephone Handbk. vii. 128  The effect of inserting a plug in one of the jacks is that the end of the plug lifts the line spring r from pin y." And the most recent: "1971 R. Thomas Backup Men xiii. 119   Is there another jack in this room?‥ Can you get another phone and plug it in?"
 * Farther down, under "Compounds" is mentioned "jack-plug n. Electr. a single-pronged plug for use with a jack (sense 15d)."
 * As for etymology, they say little more than "A pet-name or by-name, used as a familiar equivalent of John." Pfly (talk) 07:42, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes. As noted by Angr, EO has a long list of "jack" derivations, and most if not all of them seem to go back to a personification, using "Jack" as a generic name. It may be worth noting that folks dealing with electronics often used the terms "male" and "female" in reference to pins and recepticles for cables of various types. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:18, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Interestingly though a female connector of this type (e.g. an input socket on a mixing desk) would still be referred to by most people as a "jack". - file lake  shoe  17:11, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * And female masturbation is also called "jacking off". The etymological associations are no longer psycholinguistically present. —Angr (talk) 17:49, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The New Oxford American Dictionary gives "a socket with two or more pairs of terminals, designed to receive a jack plug" as sense 3 of the word "jack", and the etymology says, "late Middle English : from Jack, nickname for the given name John. The term was used originally to denote an ordinary man (hence sense 6), also a youth (mid 16th cent.), hence the [knave] in cards and [male animal.] The word also denoted various devices saving human labor, as though one had a helper (senses 1, 3, 9, and 10, and in compounds such as jackhammer and jackknife); the general sense [laborer] arose in the early 18th cent. and survives in cheapjack, lumberjack, steeplejack, etc. Since the mid 16th cent. a notion of [smallness] has arisen, hence senses 4, 5, 7, and 13." So according to this, it's because the device saves human labor. —Bkell (talk) 18:03, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks folks. Interesting discussion. I hadn't thought that it would have sexual connotations. Or maybe you all just have dirty minds ;-) HiLo48 (talk) 23:11, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There's nothing dirty about sex. Or, maybe Woody Allen had it right: Is sex dirty?  Only if done right.  :)  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  01:54, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

What is an imagefilm?
Today I came across this YouTube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APHCToZjBVk. Basically, it's a music clip but it seems to be advertising the NewYorker clothing brand. Firstly, does the term imagefilm exist in English? It seems like a German invention. Secondly, what is an imagefilm? 203.214.98.74 (talk) 07:25, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a German term only. There is no English equivalent. de:Imagefilm --Gryllida 10:07, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Industrial video or industrial film would be the English-language equivalent, a subtype of sponsored film. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:15, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Italian
Hey all, me again; I'm just too curious about stuff for my own good :) This is a question for the Romance language linguists out there: in Italian, there are words such as fiamma and più from their Latin roots flamma and plus respectively. What I don't get is how the /l/ in Latin (not even a semi-vowel) turned into the /i/ in Italian in these words (and others), especially since Italian is supposedly the closest living language to Latin in many ways. Can anyone shed some light on the 'phonological evolution' that happened here? THnkas. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 17:58, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Polite comment to the OP: Who is "me again"? I don't know who you are, or why you're saying "again". Are you aware that IP addresses can change at any time? And I am hopeless at remembering IP addresses anyway. Suggest you register and get a memorable name. I did it, and nothing bad happened to me. HiLo48 (talk) 23:07, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * For some reason, /l/ after a consonant (in the same syllable) seems to have got palatalised to /lj/, then to /ʎ/ (like "ll" in some varieties of Spanish)and then to /j/, irrespective of the quality of the following vowel. This is very obvious in Italian, but also occurred at least sometimes in Spanish "clamare" -> "llamar" and Portuguese "chamar". Not in French, though. -ColinFine (talk) 18:26, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I've often wondered about this. It would be one thing if it occurred before /i e ɛ a/, but /ɔ o u/ is odd. All I can find is,
 * "the change of earlier Itialian /l/ to /j/ in the groups fl-, bl-, pl- (e.g. florem > fiore, cf. bianco, fiamma, fiume, piace, piazza) must represent extensions of palatalised from contexts where it had originally been conditioned (some Italian dialects preserve a distinction in which only gl-, cl- are affected, and this, in turn, may not represent the earliest distribution)." — M. L. Samuels, Linguistic Evolution: With Special Reference to English, 1975:125.
 * — kwami (talk) 18:49, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Nice coverage in Lloyd 1987:224ff, From Latin to Spanish, Volume 1:
 * [...] The evidence of Italian and Rumanian indicates that the first change that occurred was a palatalization of the /l/ after /k/. This change can be conceived of as beginning as an assimilation of the dorsovelar articulation of /k/ to the succeeding lateral. The raising of the back of the tongue caused the tip to be retracted toward the palatal area. [I find this dubious, as these sounds were probably never retroflex. More likely that the /l/ lost its articulation with the front of the tongue, as /k/ is not pronounced with the front of the tongue.] The allophonic distribution of initial clusters with /l/ would originally have been as follows: . The spread of the palatal to the other clusters cannot be understood then as a similar phonetic development but rather as the allophonic unification of all clusters, with the palatal  of the last group being adopted by speakers as the articulation for all clusters (Tuttle 1975, 407–08). This pronunciation, in fact, is still found in a very conservative area of Hispania, upper Aragon, known for its preservation of other archaic phonetic features [...]
 * [...] The evidence of Italian and Rumanian indicates that the first change that occurred was a palatalization of the /l/ after /k/. This change can be conceived of as beginning as an assimilation of the dorsovelar articulation of /k/ to the succeeding lateral. The raising of the back of the tongue caused the tip to be retracted toward the palatal area. [I find this dubious, as these sounds were probably never retroflex. More likely that the /l/ lost its articulation with the front of the tongue, as /k/ is not pronounced with the front of the tongue.] The allophonic distribution of initial clusters with /l/ would originally have been as follows: . The spread of the palatal to the other clusters cannot be understood then as a similar phonetic development but rather as the allophonic unification of all clusters, with the palatal  of the last group being adopted by speakers as the articulation for all clusters (Tuttle 1975, 407–08). This pronunciation, in fact, is still found in a very conservative area of Hispania, upper Aragon, known for its preservation of other archaic phonetic features [...]

Goes on to say how the C was dropped before the el here as in other clusters. The question arises as to why this didn't happen with plaza and flor. Flaccu, floccu, fluxu, flōre, flamma, flaccidu > flaco, fleco, floxo, flor, llama, lacio. There are even pairs like plicāre > plegar vs. (ap)plicāre > llegar.

The Tuttle ref is,
 * Tuttle, Edward F. 1975. The development of PL, BL, and FL in Italo-Romance: Distinctive features and geolinguistic patterns. RLiR 39:400–31.

— kwami (talk) 19:24, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I wonder if the palatalisation of /gl/, /gn/ to /ʎ/, /ɲ/ was at all similar? These retain a historical spelling in both Italian and (for 'gn') French, which suggests that they may have occurred later. --ColinFine (talk) 23:29, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

As a side note: another part of the Romance language area where you find this is way in the north of France, in parts of Norman French. For example /kjoː/ and /bjø/ for Standard French cloche and bleu. Interesting case of parallel changes independently of each other. --Terfili (talk) 12:00, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

The pronunciation of "iron" in non-rhotic dialects
Do non-rhotic English speakers pronounce the "r" in "iron", or is it more of a glottal stop? The Mark of the Beast (talk) 19:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, since the "r" is postvocalic in rhotic versions of English (/aɪɚn/), the rhotacism just disappears in non-rhotic versions (/aɪən/). Marco polo (talk) 19:14, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The OED gives iron and ion as homonyms. — kwami (talk) 19:27, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * But surely the "o" is pronounced differently in iron and ion? In my dialect, the "o" in "iron" is not even so much as a schwa, but practically swallowed up.  The Mark of the Beast (talk) 19:29, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * That's interesting - I would have pronounced them /aɪən/ and /aɪɒn/.. - file lake  shoe  19:30, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * So does that mean that, in irrhotic speech, ionic and ironic are homophobes؟ μηδείς (talk) 19:45, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * homophobes?! AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:53, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Assuming you mean "nonrhotic" and "homophones", no, because in ironic /aɪˈrɒnɪk/, the r is prevocalic and therefore not dropped in nonrhotic speech. Ironic is related to irony /ˈaɪrəni/, not to iron /ˈaɪə(r)n/. —Angr (talk) 20:06, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * For me, South of England, definitely non-rhotic, "iron" rhymes with "lion" Jameswilson (talk)
 * Agreed (London). Alansplodge (talk) 23:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Northern England too. And wouldn't 'South of England' be the Channel Islands? Or even France? --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:53, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a difference between "south of England" and "the South of England". —Angr (talk) 16:22, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Angr, for pointing out Jameswilson's usage of the phrase without the definite article and thence my confusion. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  16:40, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Regurgitate
My daughter asks me why there is no word "gurgitate". I am stumped for an answer. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  21:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I am gruntled to hear of the musings of such a couth young lady. --Trovatore (talk) 21:12, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * ONE user definitely does NOT like seeing these icons in Wikipedia. Can we ban them? 86.160.211.189 (talk) 20:23, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Defenestration but no fenestration, explain and complain but no "plain"... all these words come from latin, which used prefixes more than Germanic languages. - file lake  shoe  21:14, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think gorge [on food] is from the same route. "from gorge throat, from Late Latin gurga". Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:21, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There is actually plain as a verb and the noun plaint but only plaintive is heard much nowadays. μηδείς (talk) 21:28, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. There is couth (also couthy) in Scotland. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  21:30, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There is actually plain as a verb and the noun plaint but only plaintive is heard much nowadays. μηδείς (talk) 21:28, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. There is couth (also couthy) in Scotland. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  21:30, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


 * To engorge would be the protonym of which to regurgitate would be the retronym. μηδείς (talk) 22:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe so, μηδείς. But my dictionary doesn't contain protonym or retronym. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  22:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps engorge is to preposition as regurgitate is to supposition. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  22:15, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Lol. So pills taken orally would be prepositories? μηδείς (talk) 00:30, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Kitty, retronym is well attested. Protonym, less so.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  22:42, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I just made the words up on the spot, not my fault if they were already being used with the wrong meanings. μηδείς (talk) 00:30, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Going out to dinner tonight. Have to make sure I'm looking very hevelled. HiLo48 (talk) 00:39, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I hope you walk out of there fully gusted. And if the waiter talks to you in French, be sure to remain combobulated. --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  01:52, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Rarely do I feel so outclassed. μηδείς (talk) 02:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I am unhappy with the increasing tendency of Refdesk questions to draw a dozen answers that are all purely off-the-cuff, with nobody bothering to look up the facts even when they are easily available. A simple check of Wiktionary says that the word is derived from Latin regurgitare, and that there was a corresponding Latin word gurgitare (meaning “to engulf, flood”) which did not get adopted in English. Looie496 (talk) 02:27, 11 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Quoting the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

gurgitate /0ˈgə:dʒɪteɪt/ verb. M17. [ORIGIN Late Latin gurgitat- pa. ppl stem of gurgitare: see gurgitation, -ate³.] †1 verb trans. Swallow, devour. rare. Only in M17. 2 ''verb trans. & intrans''. Discharge or be discharged with a swirling motion. E20.
 * (Note that the "†" for 1 means "obsolete".)
 * And:

gurgitation /0gə:dʒɪˈteɪʃ(ə)n/ noun. M16. [ORIGIN from Late Latin gurgitat-, pa. ppl stem of gurgitare engulf, formed as gurges: see -ation.] 1 The action of swallowing or absorbing. rare. M16. 2 Surging or swirling motion of a liquid etc. L19.
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 03:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)


 * In one of his movies, W.C. Fields said "Let's have breakfast" in this fashion: "How'd you like to hide the egg, and gurgitate a few saucers of mocha java?" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:52, 11 June 2011 (UTC)