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

= August 24 =

Who invented the sh- thing
As in "books, shmooks" meaning something like "ok, books. whatever, i don't care". What's the origin, etc? Joepnl (talk) 01:38, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It's a Yiddish shtick. It's more than "I don't care", it's ridiculing the target. One of the most common usages is "fancy, shmancy!" or "fancy, schmancy!". Like a sarcastic "big hairy deal!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:47, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It's a type of reduplication. It comes to us as said, through Yiddish.  It probably has to do with Semitic root formations, but that is a guess; others will know. μηδείς (talk) 02:52, 24 August 2013 (UTC)


 * We have an article shm-reduplication. It doesn't very closely resemble Semitic consonantal root derivations at all... AnonMoos (talk) 04:11, 24 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Indeed Yiddish is a Germanic language, not Semitic. Its Hebrew component largely comprises Judaic religious terminology and assorted terms from everyday life. As for the query, Yiddish lexical elements probably entered American English through Jewish entertainers in vaudeville and later in film and television, who were themselves Yiddish-speaking immigrants from (largely) Eastern Europe or the offspring thereof. -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:05, 24 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I am quite aware Yiddish is not Semitic, I was suggesting a language contact influence from the Semitic to the Germanic. The former does form root variations with prefixes.  Of course that's totally speculative, so no need to continue. μηδείς (talk) 16:53, 24 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Semitic consonantal root derivation is about adding vowels (and sometimes supplemental consonants) amongst and adjacent to an abstract C-C-C consonantal frame. So from root Q-T-L קטל you get qatal "he killed", yiqtol "he will kill", qetel "slaughter, etc.  There are some prefixes, but nothing like reduplicating a word and substituting something else in place of the initial consonant or consonant cluster.  Both Semitic root derivations and shm-reduplication could be considered nonconcatenative morphology, but otherwise there's not any very close resemblance between the two... AnonMoos (talk) 23:01, 24 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Exactly. But in contact situations you do get new forms that don't continue genetically anything in either parent language, like French words in -ing that don't have anything to do with actual English usage, or Brewsky which has humourous effect and no connection to the meaning of the Slavic ending.  Speakers of Germanic familiar with the Semitic tendency to add prefixes and the large number of sh- words as noted could easily respond to a correction or what they see as humorous with an etwas schmetwas. μηδείς (talk) 18:09, 25 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I really don't know that there's a general "Semitic tendency to add prefixes"[sic]. Semitic languages do have some prefixes (including certain inflectional prefixes, a type of morpheme which is of very limited occurrence in Indo-European), but they're much less prefixing than many other languages (such as the languages of the Bantu family). AnonMoos (talk) 20:58, 25 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have studied Zulu. I am not sure what the point is bringing up Bantu, or why you have 'sic'-ed the "Semitic tendency to add prefixes".  There are all sorts of language games.  This appears to be one, and is not bizarre in a contact situation between Germanic and Semitic, especially given the marked structures of the latter in the context of the former. μηδείς (talk) 00:28, 26 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The Hebrew/Aramaic influence on Yiddish was somewhat channeled, and did not lead to any significant tendency to apply Semitic-style root-and-pattern morphology to Germanic vocabulary. And reduplication with partial replacement is not a common Semitic-language process, and any meaningful similarities between reduplication with partial replacement and Semitic consonantal root derivation exist only at a somewhat abstract level of linguistic analysis. AnonMoos (talk) 15:27, 26 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I checked Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, and he doesn't directly speculate on where it comes from, but he does point out that a number of popular Yiddish words start with the "sh" sound followed by a consonant. He also casually refers to this usage as "Yinglish", which would suggest it's not "true" Yiddish, but a construction invented by Jewish immigrants to English-speaking countries. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The words in the shm-reduplication aren't Yiddish words that start with sh but English words that have sh+ consonant, prefixed when repeated. Why that phoneme? Possibly because it's not a sequence found in English (except [shr]) and therefore sounds humorous, and that it occurs at the beginning of Yiddish words that have entered English like shmooze, shmeer, shmaltz, and shmatteh, plus the numerous  pejorative terms for people that might have been popularized by Jewish comics : shlemiel, shlimazl, shmo, shmendrik, shmegegge and that perennial favorite shmuk. -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:12, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Such a reduplication but only with m- exists in Turkish.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:49, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! At least now I know the official term, and I love how many aspects get discussed for such a simple question. The tremendous power of internet needs no more proof than the existence of this reference desk where people from all over the world reply within hours or even minutes to questions that without internet would need weeks of research only to find one single vision. Joepnl (talk) 00:09, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * See also: Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2010_February_25 — Kpalion(talk) 01:54, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Irish word: "Camailín?"
Hi there, everybody:

Every once in a while, my father (who is in his late 70s and comes from County Leitrim, Ireland) comes out with a word or expression that gets me wondering about etymology etc. The other day, he was talking about different kinds of songs and referred to "corants and camailíns(?)" - the former presumably coming from coranto, the latter almost certainly a word from Irish Gaelic. I haven't been able to find any references to it online, but it may be spelt wrong. He pronounces it as [kə'mɑlʲiːn] and explains it as being not a fully-blown song, but instead is 2-4 lines and tends to be comic. His example of a camailín: "when Irish eggs are frying/with the bacon on the pan/you can hear the kettle whistling/Alexandra's ragtime band." Has anyone ever heard of this word or knows where it comes from?

All the best

--94.197.122.90 (talk) 06:05, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Fernando Alonso's Spanish
In this story Formula 1 Driver Fernando Alonso (born in 1981 in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain) discusses some rumors and says "Also, we learned doing four press conferences in the weekend in three different languages; two of them are not in my mother language and I am from the north, so don’t speak perfect Spanish…it means there can be mistakes and there can be misunderstandings."

Shouldn't his Spanish be excellent? (He also speaks, Italian, French, and English.) Is he claiming that he makes mistakes or misunderstands standard Spanish due to a local northern dialect? Hayttom 09:30, 24 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hayttom (talk • contribs)


 * The section in our article, Asturias, says "The only official language in Asturias is Spanish. The Asturian language, known as Bable, is also spoken, but not very much...". One suspects it's like a Welshman claiming not to be able to speak English, but I don't know for sure. At least Spanish and Asturian come from the same family of languages. Alansplodge (talk) 10:44, 24 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I have never heard this person speak Spanish before, so I can't comment on his particular dialect, but according to the sources I found at Asturian language and this map, Although Castillian ("Standard European Spanish") is the "only official language" it is not native to Asturias. Asturian is the language spoken by the natives. The "not very much" that Alan refers to is because, since the 1950s, Castillian speakers, who do not learn Asturian, have been migrating to the area and now account for about 43% of the population. If Alonso's first language was Asturian instead of Castillian, there will be communication difficulties. Asturian is part of the Asturo-Leonese family of West Iberian languages and only "about 80% intelligible with Spanish" (Hall 1989) "enough to cause disruption of communicative ability" (1992 T. Erickson).--William Thweatt TalkContribs 22:29, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Although I imagine that he was sent to school and had a television, and so would have had more than a passing acquaintance with Castillian Spanish. Alansplodge (talk) 22:38, 24 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Here's the Lord's Prayer in Asturian (and Castilian for comparison)
 * Padre nuesu que tas en cielu:
 * santificáu seya'l to nome,
 * amiye'l to reinu,
 * fáigase la to voluntá
 * lo mesmo na tierra qu'en cielu.
 * El nuesu pan de tolos díes
 * dánoslo güei,
 * perdónamos les nueses ofenses
 * lo mesmo que nós facemos
 * colos que mos faltaren;
 * nun mos dexes cayer na tentación,
 * y llíbramos del mal.
 * Amén.
 * μηδείς (talk) 17:49, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It would be really surprising to me if Alonso did not speak completely fluent Spanish. Do we have a Spanish speaker here who is familiar with his speech who could comment? Alternatively, could a Spanish speaker have a look on YouTube or somewhere for clips? (There's no point me looking; I wouldn't know if he was speaking Spanish or Italian ... well, maybe just!) 86.167.19.165 (talk) 20:13, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USDgFfB8Cw4 - he speaks very good Spanish. 92.81.68.23 (talk) 22:44, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed, this sounds like standard Castilian. μηδείς (talk) 00:10, 26 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Excellent! Thanks to all contributors.  I will conclude - also partly because of the context which involved relations with Ferrari - that Alonso was just being a bit disingenuous when he claimed to have poor Spanish.