Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 April 24

= April 24 =

Spanish: alacran vs. escorpion
My archaeology professor told me a story the other day about an animal in El Salvadoran folklore that is like a poisonous lizard. The locals call it both "Cantile" and "escorpion." When he first heard about the legend, he thought they might have been talking about scorpions, but he said the "correct" word for scorpion is "alacran." One webpage I found said that alacran is common in Mexico, while escorpion is common in El Salvador. Can anyone on here confirm this? --Ghostexorcist (talk) 01:16, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It appears that alacrán is from an Arabic word while escorpión is from Latin. As I recall from way back when, alacrán was the preferred term. This site, which is in Spanish, explains word origins and confirms what EO has to say about it. Neither of these directly answers your question. But notice that in El Salvador, alacrán is used as a synonym for herida, "injury or wound". My hemi-semi-educated guess would be that the Arabic al-aqrab was one of those Moorish terms that found its way into Spain, or at least parts of Spain. Oddly enough, the al- prefix means "the", so el alacrán effectively has a double "the" in it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:31, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Judging by Wikipedia and the RAE, there is no consistent distinction, and escorpión is the more widespread term. In different regions, it seems like the two words are sometimes used for different types of scorpion. In Mexico alacrán seems to be more common, and according to this discussion, escorpión is only used for black scorpions. To confuse things further, the mole cricket is sometimes called an alacrán cebollero, "onion scorpion". Lesgles (talk) 20:05, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 02:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In Venezuela the usual word for scorpion was always alacrán, and it would not have been strange to find another different creature, or a particular species of scorpion, called escorpión. This happens very often with plants in Latin America (cf. salvia, artemisa, apio etc.). In many cases, an indigenous word prevailed for the European species, while the original Spanish term was retained for a new American species. Nowadays, with globalisation, most young people speak the Miami dialect from cable TV cartoons, and I suspect most people under 30 in urban areas will say escorpión anyway. MT Editor (talk) 14:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

"In return" punctuation
In the sentence "If you do this for me, I will do this in return.", should the phrase "in return" follow a comma/hyphen? HueSatLum 01:21, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * No. But I give you credit for using a comma after "me" (these days, a lot of so-called native writers wouldn't be bothered; they're the ones with no ear for the rhythm, music and poetry of language).  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  01:31, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, thank you. HueSatLum 01:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * You would use a comma if you were to say, "In return, I will do this." μηδείς (talk) 02:03, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Or, "If you do this for me, I will do this for you, quid pro quo." StuRat (talk) 17:55, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

ɥ character
Currently, ɥ is a redirect to Labialized palatal approximant. Is this character ever officially called an "inverted h" or "inverted H"? If so, I'd like to redirect one or both to the LPA article, but I'm not going to create something that's implausible enough to qualify for R3 speedy. Nyttend (talk) 20:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * See http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/265/index.htm.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 21:12, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * It might be visually described that way, but it would be wrong to treat it as if that were what it is, just as it would be wrong to write an article about 6 calling it an upside-down 9, or the schwa, calling it an upside-down e. μηδείς (talk) 21:20, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * See hexadecimal 0265 at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf.  The official name of the character is "LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 21:27, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, I saw that the first time. The OP would still not be advised to create the redirects he is considering, although I wouldn't be one to delete them. μηδείς (talk) 00:21, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Very good; I didn't remember where to look for official names. I can't remember seeing a character that lacks an official name, so I figured that I just didn't know what it was.  I think I'll create turned h and turned H.  Nyttend (talk) 00:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)


 * On that same page, http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf, hexadecimal 0279 is called "LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED R", and hexadecimal 0280 is called "LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL R", and hexadecimal 0281 is called "LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL INVERTED R", so letter case is an important distinction in the naming of the characters, and I disfavor the use of "turned H" as a name for the character in question.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 01:58, 25 April 2013 (UTC)'

The Pullum and Ladusaw Phonetic Symbols Guide calls it "turned h", though I'm not sure how widely the term is known among linguists. The list of official Unicode character names unfortunately contains a non-negligeable amount of unfiltered strangeness and nonsense (such as "caron"[sic] and most of the names of Ugaritic characters), so a Unicode character name can't be taken as definitive in itself. AnonMoos (talk) 03:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
 * “Turned H” is the official IPA name of this symbol, as given in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.—Emil J. 13:08, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

By the way, "turned" is preferred to "inverted", because "inverted" could also mean mirror-reflected, while turned can only mean rotated... AnonMoos (talk) 19:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Naming conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet (version of 12:44, 27 February 2013) says that the IPA symbol name for &#x0265; is "turned h".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 19:19, 25 April 2013 (UTC)