Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 March 22

= March 22 =

Is Filipino Verb-Subject-Object, Subject-Verb-Object, or both?
In Filipino (or Tagalog), we have two kinds of sentences, "karaniwan" and "di-karaniwan" (I don't know their exact English translations). An example of a karaniwan sentence is "Pumunta si Juan sa simbahan" which translates as "Juan went to church." "Pumunta" is the verb, "Juan" is the noun, and "sa simbahan" is the object. However, another way to translate "Juan went to church" in Filipino is "Si Juan ay pumunta sa simbahan", where "Juan" is the subject, "pumunta" is the verb and "sa simbahan" is the object. So is Filipino VSO (verb-subject-object), SVO (subject-verb-object) or both? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:52, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I have less than zero knowledge of Tagalog. But our article Tagalog grammar says "Tagalog has a basic verb-initial word order with the direct noun triggering the verb appearing last: verb - indirect - direct [...] A change in word order and trigger generally corresponds to a change in definiteness ("the" vs "a") in English." Based on this I would say that Tagalog does not really conform to the VSO/SVO model, but that generally the verb comes first in the sentence. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:44, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Letter
Does the letter “W” technically have three syllables? 71.146.8.88 (talk) 06:33, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The (English) name for the letter does indeed have three syllables. --Theurgist (talk) 06:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Unless you're a Texan, in which case it seems to be "dub-ya". StuRat (talk) 07:04, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * But they balance that by making nukular (as in the weapons) a three syllable word. HiLo48 (talk) 22:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The standard pronunciations (NOOK-lee-ur or NYOOK-lee-ur) also have three syllables. --Trovatore (talk) 22:35, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Really? Not to me, but I speak Australian. Maybe in American... HiLo48 (talk) 22:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd have to agree with Trovatore here. How do you say that word, HiLo?  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  02:51, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * With less than the very obvious three syllables in "nukular". Maybe it's two and a quarter. HiLo48 (talk) 16:49, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Not sure I get you. The separate word "clear" could have one or two syllables, depending on how you say it.  But the ending -clear of "nuclear" is different.  It would have two distinct syllables (klee-ah), since the -ar replaces the -us of "nucleus", and -cleus surely has two.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  22:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Various pronunciations are listed in the article linkted to by the OP. If it helps the OP (if he/she does not read IPA), the listed pronunciations are, approximately, "double-you", "dubuh-you", "dubuh-yuh" or "dub-yuh". The first three variations all contain three syllables, the last contains two.--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:17, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. 71.146.8.88 (talk) 02:40, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. 71.146.8.88 (talk) 02:42, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Amadou as a common first name in Mali?
President of Mali: Amadou Toumani Toure

Leader of the revolutionary forces: Amadou Sanogo

Spokesperson of the revolutionary forces: Amadou Konare

Coincidence? Or some other factor? Is it analogous to Kim in Korea?Anonymous.translator (talk) 13:44, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Well Kim is a family name in Korean, even though it comes first (see Korean name). Amadou is a given name, so you couldn't really compare the two.  I wouldn't be able to say myself how common it is though. —Akrabbimtalk 14:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * It's a variation of Ahmad, a very common name in many Muslim societies (see also Ḥ-M-D). Another spelling often found in Western Africa is Ahmadou (Ahmadou Ahidjo, Ahmadou Kourouma, Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye, ...). The corresponding variation of the even more common H-M-D name, Muhammad, is Mamadou. ---Sluzzelin talk  01:53, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Really? I assumed it was a French version of Amadeus, or Amadeo in Spanish.  Rojomoke (talk) 15:06, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The French would be "Amadé". That was actually the version of the name that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart preferred; he signed himself "Wolfgang Amadé Mozart" on his marriage certificate, for example. See Mozart's name for more details.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:29, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * If there is a Romance language where "dou" means God, perhaps that derivation exists too. Amadeu  exists in Portuguese (for example in lusophone Africa too) and in Catalan, but all the people named Amadou I found and checked are African with no Portuguese connection, and were born Muslim. I just saw we do have an article on Ahmadu. It doesn't refer to Ahmad, but I found such references on google books, though none of them came from studies on names or even language. "Ahmad" usually got added to "Amadou" parenthetically in the examples I viewed, implying that the latter is a variation of the former. ---Sluzzelin talk  18:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The normal Arabic noun inflection is "-u", which does become "-ou" in French (as seen also in Abdoulaye Wade, for example). I assume that would result in "Amadou" as well, if it really comes from "Ahmad". Adam Bishop (talk) 21:22, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Arabic Aħmadu is a "diptote" elative form, where the -u is a nominative case i'rab vowel of a type which is not usually pronounced in Modern Arabic except in certain special contexts (always in Qur'an recitation, sometimes in other formal or quasi-ceremonial situations -- the "u" in Allahu Akbar is a ceremonially-pronounced i`rab vowel). But it is true that when two words are juxtaposed in the middle of a sentence in a way which would create an unpronounceable consonant cluster, most colloquial Arab dialects tend to insert an epenthetic vowel (to break up the cluster) in a position where Classical Arabic would have an i`rab vowel, and it's considered theoretically desirable in Modern Standard Arabic to pronounce such vowels according to traditional i`rab norms -- however, only a fairly small well-educated minority would be able to consistently follow the Classical Arabic conventions.  In short, it's more common than not to omit the i`rab vowels when borrowing words from Arabic to another language... AnonMoos (talk) 05:03, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I did find one reference in Islamic Names (Annemarie Schimmel, Edinburgh University Press, 1989, chapter VI, 'A name too heavy to bear', p 77), stating "In West Africa, Muḥammad can become Mamadou, and Aḥmad, Amadou. A survey of names in Guinea shows Muḥammad as Māmādī,  'Abdallāh as Būrlay, Sa'īd as Sédou, al-Ḥasan as Lansiné, Khadīja as Kediā, and the title shaykh as sékou." There is no explanation on how or in which language these names were formed, and unfortunately I can't view the footnoted reference at all. ---Sluzzelin talk  06:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe for historically/religiously important Arabic named (like Muhammad and I suppose possibly also Ahmad), the classical endings were kept? We had a question recently about Hebrew/Greek names staying the same in French and other European languages, rather than going through expected sound changes. Maybe the same happened for Arabic in West African languages. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Most probably such forms were borrowed through Qur'an recitation and/or religious chanting, rather than from the ordinary spoken Arabic colloquial dialect forms of native Arabic speakers visiting Mali in the late middle ages or afterwards. Possibly the borrowed forms with final vowels could have been helped along by some historical Malian language not being fond of word-final "d" in its phonotactics.  I wouldn't have bothered to go into the subject in detail, except that "u" in Abdul- is not really the same as "(o)u in Amadou... AnonMoos (talk)


 * Yeah...that was a bad example, it was just the first one I thought of with "-ou" :) Adam Bishop (talk) 08:06, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

There are various Africanized versions of Islamic names in West Africa, but the prophet or other Quranical figures are never referred to by these versions. It should be noted that when deciding names for newborns, West African parents rarely reflect upon the original, Arabic meanings (this is quite different from the situation amongst Muslims in Arab world and South Asia. I'd guess that most people are even unaware of the original Quranic meanings of their names in West Africa.). Rather names are given after a close relative, that is being honoured by being assigned as the 'godfather'/'godmother' of the child. This is accorded great cultural and social importance, and the two individuals are bonded for life through the naming. --Soman (talk) 12:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Archaic Cyrillization of Greek
Except for the cases of individual letters (izhitsa, fita, etc.) I have not found on Wikipedia a unified discussion of Cyrillization of Greek words, especially borrowed words, in the archaic Cyrillic alphabet. I am also looking for information on Greek spelling conventions in Cyrillic, i.e. Г before a velar to represent the nasal velar, or Оу for u. Does anyone have more information? Ratzd&#39;mishukribo (talk) 19:13, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Am I understanding the second part of your question correctly that you're looking for Cyrillic spelling conventions for modern Greek words?
 * If so, I can say that the "hard" <γ> is usually written <г> /ɡ/, and the "soft" <γ> usually becomes /j/, that is, either <й>/<ј>, or <я> for <για>, or <ю> for <γιου>, or whatever other letter is appropriate according to the orthographical rules of the target language. And <ου> is uniformly <у>.
 * You might be interested in a system for writing Modern Greek words in Russian. I personally find it odd that the page makes no mention of <τζ> /dz/. The /dz/ is a non-native affricate consonant for Russian, but Russians do otherwise use <дз> to write, for example, the Italian /dz/. In any case, Modern Greek <τζ> is routinely spelt as <дз> in Bulgarian and as <ѕ> in Macedonian.
 * Also, the page recommends <аф эф> for the Greek voiceless <αυ ευ>. While the devoicing of /av ev/ to /af ef/ is usually reflected in romanisations of Greek, it essentially is a kind of final-obstruent devoicing, a process very typical for Russian too, so I'd think it'd be perfectly fine if Russians were writing <αυ ευ> as <ав эв> in all cases. In Russian-language terms of (Ancient) Greek origin, there's always a <в>. For example, one writes автомобиль 'automobile', not афтомобиль.
 * I hope this helps. --Theurgist (talk) 08:10, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, but I guess I wasn't clear enough - I meant Ancient Greek words, especially religious or religious-based (i.e. the last word with an izhitsa - myrrh) vocabulary. Ratzd&#39;mishukribo (talk) 19:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * According to Old_Believers, the "Old Believer" schism in Russia was partly caused by changing the spelling of Jesus in Russian from Ісусъ to Іисусъ... AnonMoos (talk) 00:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Though some exceptions are: --Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 18:45, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There is not any full set of orthographic rules for Church Slavonic, as well as obligatory normalizing orthographic dictionaries or grammars. The proper way of writing a word or a phrase is based almost entirely on tradition and imitation (e.g. as it is written in "approved" versions of the Bible and ecclesiastical texts – Menaion, Hirmologion, Triodion, etc.). So this is why there are also no proper rules of transliterating or adoption of Greek words, just tradition and convention. In the early age they were usually written according to their medieval Greek pronunciation. So Cyrill could be Kюрилъ or Чюрилъ. Special Greek letter (ypsilon, psi, ksi, etc.) were rarely used etymologically, for example, ѵ could be used in place of ю in Slavic words, and vice versa. Later on in the 14th-16th centuries Bulgarian and Serbian (and later Russian) grammarians began to "correct" and "clear" the language, which also meant "hellenization" of "corrupted" Greek borrowings. So they began to write Кѷрíллъ as it is closer to its Greek written form (Κύριλλος). Since then it is accepted to adopt Greek words letter by letter.
 * 1) Diphthongs ει οι αι are ϊ and е: оѯíа from οξεία.
 * 2) Several ways of representing ypsilon: ѵ after а and е, when it reads like в/ф; ѷ/ѵ́/ѵ̀ between consonants when it reads like и; digraph ου is ѹ at the beginning of words and ȣ in the middle; у҃ as the number 400.
 * 3) Greek endings are usually dropped, words are adopted according to Slavic grammar: Меѳóдій, not Меѳодіос; хламѵ́да, not хламѵс (from the root χλαμυδ- of the oblique cases); кéллїа, not келлїон, etc. But: легеѡ́нъ, апокáлѷѱїсъ.
 * 4) Greek stress can be shifted.
 * 5) Some letters can be altered (камóра from καμάρα).
 * 6) Note! There are some important peculiarities. Áггелъ (pronounced "aggel") means "a messenger of Satan". For an angel (a messenger of God) áг҃глъ (pronounced "angel") is used.
 * Thanks! This is exactly what I wanted. What about medieval Greek? I'm thinking specifically of the case of the first syllable of Ungro-Wallachia - Оуггро - was it pronounced Ungro, or Uggro? Ratzd&#39;mishukribo (talk) 02:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The "rules" work both for Medieval (pre-1453) and early Modern (post-1453) Greek words as they don't differentiate two periods. But note that when Medieval Greek and Early Slavonic coexisted there weren't any normalization for Slavonic, so words usually reflected their Greek pronunciation rather than their written form (see above Чюрилъ, etc). Virtually the "rules" can be applied to Medieval Greek but in practice nobody knew or used them consistently.
 * I'm not sure how it should be pronounced as it is not a Greek word. In Slavonic there is оугринъ (the early form is ѫгринъ /ˈɔ̃grinŭ/) "a Hungarian". So double г may indicate that it is a borrowing from Latin/Greek and the word has /ng/, as I don't see other reasons to write two г. If this had /g/, I'm sure, it would be written according to its Slavonic cognate. Where have you seen this word?--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 05:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * In Cyrillic Romanian (17th or early 18th century). Ratzd&#39;mishukribo (talk) 05:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * So I guess it's a Romanian word and should be pronounced like its modern or old equivalents.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)