Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 May 18

= May 18 =

Names starting Dd
I've come across a number of people from Uganda who have surnames starting with a double D. Not sure what language this would be. What is the significance of the double D in this context? --rossb (talk) 21:12, 18 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Luganda has dd, but I haven't found its significance yet, only that dda is the name of "the letter d". The Luganda edition of Wikipedia uses ttuluba for "categories". 82.83.73.250 (talk) 21:23, 18 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I found more. Buganda.com says "the Luganda consonants may be either stressed or hit softly. The letter 'b' is a typical example of this. It is either strongly hit which requires the sound 'bb' as in 'mubbi' (a thief), or it may be hit softly as in 'mubi' (a bad person). The double consonant in a word is used to indicate a single strong emphasis on the consonant"


 * but page 13 of the FSI pretraining material uses double consonant letters for long consonants. That makes sense for intervocalic consonants, but what is it supposed to mean at the start of an utterance? Perhaps the accompanying audio files help. 82.83.73.250 (talk) 21:38, 18 May 2014 (UTC)


 * AUDIO: Starting at 2 min 47 s here you can hear some statements ending in ddala. Here, at 0 min 23 s, you can hear Nagula dda essaati eno (I omit all special markup), and at 0 min 58 s of the same track, you can hear six questions with ddi "when?". 82.83.73.250 (talk) 22:23, 18 May 2014 (UTC)


 * There are not many languages that have geminate consonants at the beginning of a word, but there are some. Some dialects of Swiss German have them, for example, as does Chuukese. There's some discussion starting on page 5 of this article and the references cited there. Neapolitan has geminated consonants at the beginning of a word in certain morphosyntactic environments (as does Standard Italian, but in Neapolitan it's written down and in Standard Italian it isn't). Obviously it's hard to hear the difference when the consonant in question is a plosive and the word is at the beginning of a sentence, but in a context like Nagula dda essaati eno it's as easy to hear the long /d/ as if it were in the middle of a word. Angr (talk) 23:18, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I knew about Neapolitan but not Swiss. Does it apply to the Upper Valais dialect(s)? If I had a minimal pair for a word-initial plosive, I could ask the natives whether they know which word is meant when they say it to each other without any context.
 * Assuming the difference between Luganda dd and d is in fact quantity and nothing else, it would be interesting to know whether it is neutralized for plosives at the start (or end, but that probably does not occur) of an utterance. 82.83.73.250 (talk) 00:31, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't remember now which Swiss dialects have the initial geminates, I only remember that they correspond etymologically to the ge- prefix, so in these dialects the past participle of tanzen (or rather, its Swiss German equivalent) is effectively ttanzt, which would then contrast with the third-person singular present tanzt. In other Upper German varieties, ge- loses its vowel so that the past participle of tanzen is gtanzt, but these dialects take it a step further by assimilating the g to the following consonant, turning it into a geminate. Angr (talk) 18:44, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * There's a tiny bit at de:Alemannische_Grammatik, but it doesn't specify which ones do it. Highest Alemannic German dialects tend to use the "g(e)-" prefix, but a lot of High Alemannic German dialects use geminated consonants, including my own, Zurich German. As Angr wrote ggange, ttanzt would be a correct way to spell them, except there is no standard (at least none that anyone cares about). I used to not have to read Swiss German at all (unless I really wanted to read the lyrics of Swiss German songs for example), now I receive many electronic mails and messages in Swiss German, and everyone chooses their own spelling (many would spell these words "gange" and "tanzt", as context and grammar are usually sufficiently clear to realize it's a participle. When possible the spelling often also just switches to the tenser consonant "Ich dänke" >> "Ich ha tänkt", "Ich bache" >> "Ich ha pache". Yet others will spell the infinitives "tänke" or "pache" ... I have to confess I'm not an expert in Swiss German spelling, and I don't really enjoy reading it. ---Sluzzelin talk  20:29, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * If I understood de:Alemannische_Grammatik correctly, the equivalent of tanzen in such Swiss dialects would have to have an initial lenis to produce a geminate in the participle, whereas fortis-initial verbs do not have a geminate-initial participle in any dialect. 82.83.74.230 (talk) 23:08, 21 May 2014 (UTC)


 * As for 82.83's question, I'm not sure I understood correctly, but do you mean: Could I (native speaker) distinguish between "tanzt" and "ttanzt" without any preceding words, such as in the elliptical sentences "Tanzt." and "Ttanzt."? Though it's hard to imagine a point in conversation that works for both (typically a question, such as "What's he doing?" or "What was he doing?" but unfortunately both only work for one, the auxiliary verb "hätt" almost needs to be part of the question in order to be implied in the elliptical sentence), I still imagine that, if spoken with due emphasis and without haste, I'd be able to distinguish the two, even if I wasn't permitted to view the speaker, though the audio would need to be decent (e.g. headphones, but not necessarily on a regular cell phone or phone receiver). It's an interesting question, worth testing. It reminds me of ghost notes — hard to discern without context. ---Sluzzelin talk  23:35, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Sluzzelin and Angr. Yes, that's exactly what I meant. If it's a difference of only quantity but not things like degree of tension, I would think it impossible even under optimal conditions. Unless perhaps if you could look into the speaker's mouth. 82.83.74.230 (talk) 23:08, 21 May 2014 (UTC)


 * See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Russian/в#.D0.B2.D0.B2 and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Russian/с#.D1.81.D1.81.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 14:58, 19 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Welsh orthography uses dd to represent /ð/ (the voiced "th" sound in English, as in "than" or "that"). I don't know if it appears as the initial consonant in any words or proper names; Welsh does have other initial double letters in native names, as in Lloyd (name) or Llywelyn.  -- Jayron  32  23:07, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Welsh dd appears only word-initially as a mutation of d, so it doesn't appear at the beginning of the lemma form of any words, but it does appear when the grammar of the sentence requires it, e.g. o ddinas "from a city", Gwelodd e ddraig "He saw a dragon." Angr (talk) 23:18, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Really? AlexTiefling (talk) 21:13, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The page at http://www.forvo.com/languages-pronunciations/lg/ lists 22 Luganda words, including one word beginning with jj and one word beginning with ss.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 14:52, 19 May 2014 (UTC)