Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 February 4

= February 4 =

Alternate scripts for Latin
Is there enough evidence for the use of alternate scripts for Latin? I mean, the Franks Casket has some Latin text rendered with runes. Have there been other relevant examples of rendering Latin with, say, Greek, Arabic, Etruscan, Hebrew or Cyrillic letters? --Error (talk) 00:05, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * There may have been some early Latin written in the Old Italic script. -- Jayron  32  01:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The Praeneste fibula is a 7th century BC pin with an Old Latin inscription written using the Etruscan script, basically runic. μηδείς (talk) 01:34, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * "basically runic"? —Tamfang (talk) 08:19, 29 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Depending on how lengthy a text you are looking for, there is plenty of Latin written in the Greek and Arabic alphabets. But they would largely be names, titles, places, not necessarily big chunks of text... Adam Bishop (talk) 04:28, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Same for Cyrillic. Not Latin, but several Romance languages have been written in other scripts, which I imagine Error knows about: Mozarabic (Aljamiado), Judaeo-Spanish, Romanian Cyrillic, Moldovan Cyrillic... Lesgles (talk) 19:08, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I wasn't thinking in names or titles but phrases. More like the Franks Casket. The fibula would be an example, but it is too old to be very exciting. The ideal would be something like the Judaeo-Spanish examples written (or even printed) in Cyrillic or Greek alphabet, because that's what the society around used. Something like Arabic Afrikaans.
 * Hasn't there been a community of Latin-speakers who could not write it in Latin script but could in other script? Latin Ogham or something like this? The Kakure Kirishitan come to mind, praying in not-understood Latin and Portuguese.
 * Anyway thanks for the ideas. --Error (talk) 23:38, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

School district Arabic, Russian, Vietnamese, and Korean help
Hi! Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 08:59, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * What is "School districts in the United States by state" in Arabic, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese?
 * What is "School districts in California" in Korean and Russian?

Past tense double-letter usage
How do English-speaking writers know when to make a double letter or a single letter for past tense?


 * shred (past tense shredded)
 * taste (past tense tasted)
 * spice (past tense spiced)
 * travel (past tense travelled)
 * lace (past tense laced)
 * trim (past tense trimmed)

There is a pattern. For all the preterite-tense verbs, there is an additional -ed attached. For some of them, there is also an additional repeated letter after the root word (e.g. shred, travel, trim). 140.254.226.238 (talk) 15:40, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know if there is a rule as such, but in your first and last examples you need the double d and m to maintain the correct pronunciation. Without it you would have "shreded" which would rhyme with "needed" and "trimed" which would rhyme with "timed". For the ones ending in 'e', you don't need anything to maintain the pronunciation except that final 'd'. --Viennese Waltz 15:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * (ec) First, there are regional differences in the spelling of verbs like travel: traveled is used in the USA, while elsewhere travelled is preferred. Second, as you may have noticed, words ending in -e or in two consonants never receive a repeated consonant in the past tense. The same is true for verbs with a long vowel, such as "dream", "seem", "rout" and "cool". - Lindert (talk) 15:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * In the U.S., we tend to double the consonant when forming the past tense of a two-syllable verb if the base verb is stressed on the final syllable (patrolled, controlled, referred, regretted, etc.) but not if the base verb is stressed on the first syllable (traveled, reveled, parroted, etc.). In Britain, as Lindert points out, there's a tendency to double the consonants in the latter cases as well as the former ones, though not always. Deor (talk) 16:15, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * It's not just the past: a similar thing happens with other suffixes, both inflectional ('shredding') and derivational ('shredder'). The rule of thumb for the past is:
 * if the word ends with 'e', add 'd'
 * if the word ends with 'y' after a consonant, replace it with 'ied'
 * if it ends with another vowel or semivowel (i.e. 'y' or 'w'), add 'ed'
 * if it ends with a single consonant, double that consonant and add 'ed'
 * otherwise ad 'ed'.


 * There are of course exceptions, both systematic and sporadic, and some regional variations particularly in the case of '-el', but that does for most cases. It is not a coincidence that most words that end in a written consonant have a historically short vowel in the last syllable, and most words ending in 'e' do not. --ColinFine (talk) 16:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The doubling rule, as it is known, is that if the final vowel in a word is short, then the consonant is doubled before "ed" is added: if the final vowel in a word is long then the consonant remains single before "ed" is added. (I have to say that I learnt to teach English using this rule nearly 30 years ago, and sometime in the last 20 years it seems to have fallen into disuse for some reason. But it works on the whole, and I see no reason for not passing it on.) --TammyMoet (talk) 16:28, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * We were taught to double after short vowels consistently in the '70's: e.g., "travelled". At some point around Freshman year college it was pointed out that this had changed for certain consonants.  I still prefer and generally use the old style, although it annoys the spell checker. μηδείς (talk) 17:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * One that seems to elude many writers is the relatives of the verb occur. I see occuring and occured all the time.  To my eye, they can only be pronounced to rhyme with "curing" and "cured", but I know of no dialect in which they're actually pronounced that way.  I wonder why the doubling doesn't happen.  I never see anyone write "recured" or "recuring", when they mean "recurred" and "recurring".  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  18:44, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd suspect there is a psychological bias against two sets of double letters in one word which explains occured versus recurring. μηδείς (talk) 20:16, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah, that never occurred [sic] to me. Makes a lot of sense.  Thanks.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  23:58, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It's OR, but I do know I question myself whenever I see I have written a word with more than one set of double letters. μηδείς (talk) 00:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * People have this problem all the way from the Mississippi to Woolloomooloo. But we can accommodate them.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  02:20, 5 February 2013 (UTC)


 * How do you pronounce the word beloved? Does it have three syllables or two syllables?


 * be lov ed
 * be loved 140.254.226.238 (talk) 16:33, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Did early English speakers just pronounce the -ed sound? 140.254.226.238 (talk) 16:36, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * In Middle English "ed" was pronounced fully, which must be kept in mind for The Canterbury Tales to be read properly. The syllabic pronunciation remains in regular verbs ending in a /d/ or /t/ sound ("he invaded Poland, he fitted a pipe") and remains in a few words in other circumstances where it can be indicated with a grave accent.  In the phrases "dearly belovèd", "there is a markèd difference", and "he is a learnèd man", the ending has a vowel but the vowel is not pronounced in "his beloved pet poodle", "the teacher marked the paper" or "we learned (learnt) that yesterday." μηδείς (talk) 17:52, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I (and everyone I speak to regularly) would, I think, always pronounce 'belovèd' whether it was a wedding congregation or a poodle in question, and not usually say 'markèd', even in set phrases like the one you offer. But 'markèdly' would still be the typical pronunciation of the adverbial form. (UK, south-eastern). AlexTiefling (talk) 19:56, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * They are frozen expressions in the process of dying, so variation is not unexpected. You'll notice, for example, that the OED gives both pronunciations. I would never say there is a markt difference, only a markèd difference, although I have certainly heard the former.  But my dialect tends to be conservative and have a lot of forms that aren't heard in General American.  I have even had Americans accuse me of being an Englishman (1) on two occasions. μηδείς (talk) 20:13, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Liberated wife
When Stephen Hawking conceded his Cygnus X-1-bet with Kip Thorne, he "paid the specified penalty, which was a one year subscription to Penthouse, to the outrage of Kip's liberated wife." What does "liberated wife" mean in this context? --KnightMove (talk) 18:21, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * It means that the wife was a member of or sympathizer with the women's liberation movement. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  18:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Actually, I think it's a clever double-entendre. I guess Hawking wanted to imply, in addition to the harmless meaning, that the subscription liberated Mrs. Thorne from her 'marital duties'.Hans Adler 18:49, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Kip better be careful, or his wife might divorce him and liberate half of his assets. StuRat (talk) 06:19, 5 February 2013 (UTC)


 * That's sexual liberation, not women's liberation. μηδείς (talk) 18:59, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

How and why did the Dutch R change?
Around the 1970s, the pronunciation of the letter R in Netherlands Dutch changed from an alveolar trill to an uvular sound. How and why did this change happen across such a relatively large area in such a short timespan? Thanks a lot. Leptictidium (mt) 21:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Guttural R has been spreading from Paris to a number of areas and dialects of Europe since at least the early 19th-century; the article has a section on Dutch... AnonMoos (talk) 22:20, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * (ec) I'd question the premise, actually. Where do you base it on? The alveolar trill is still used in standard Dutch, and though there are regional differences, they have existed for a long time. - Lindert (talk) 22:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * AnonMoos has given the standard answer, and I have heard the uvular R in Dutch and Danish, as well as in German and French where it is taught as standard in the US. The map here is from a standard reference.  I cannot comment on Dutch as a whole or offer a reason for the change other than spread of a "prestige" form. μηδείς (talk) 00:19, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Uvular r often accompanies the "prestigious" Gooise r in non-post-vocalic positions. The latter originated in the Randstad and has spread to the rest of the Netherlands during the last two or three decades. From what I recall, the alveolar approximant used to be typically associated with "rich people's children". Its spread is probably due to the influence of the Hilversum-centered Dutch media and especially the Hilversum TV choir Kinderen voor Kinderen, which was immensely popular during the 1980s and early 1990s. Iblardi (talk) 08:58, 5 February 2013 (UTC)