Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 February 26

= February 26 =

Cerdeña and Córcega
Does anyone know why the names for Sardinia and Corsica underwent a shift from /s/ to /θ/ in Spanish? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 11:42, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Anything to do with the Castillian lisp? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 14:09, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems like the answer requires a little more than just a reference to the rise of the dental fricative in Spanish. Typically, the Spanish soft c (pronounced as in Northern Spain) derives from Latin words with C (that is, a hard ). As is explained at the Wiktionary entries for Sardinia and Corsica, the names come from Latin with  (spelled s). In other words, this is strange because it's common for sounds to go k > θ in Spanish, but not k > s > θ.  The important changes leading up to the Spanish pronunciation with  might have preceded the 16th century. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]  17:58, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * This is speculative, but this has to have a complex history. This is not the normal phonological development from Vulgar Latin.  My guess is that Castilian was isolated from the Mediterranean during the early years of the Muslim conquest, and the native names for those two islands might have fallen out of use in the language, since there would have been no contact with them.  Later, Castilians may have picked up the spoken names of the islands from a Romance language, such as Catalan, where "c" before "e" or "i" was already pronounced [s], without knowing how the names of the islands were written.  Given that the sequence [se] (spelled either "se" or "ce") in Catalan was at the time often pronounced (in words spelled "ce") [s̪e] in Castilian, those Castilians might have assumed that the syllables should be pronounced [s̪e] in their language and spread that pronunciation in the Castilian-speaking region. In Castilian, [s̪e] later became [θe].  See History of the Spanish language.  Marco polo (talk) 18:30, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Looking at Sardinia, these two islands were linked as the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica and the crown "given" to the Kingdom of Aragon. Marco may be on the right track here as it seems the two names probably developed in medieval Aragonese and/or Catalan and then were adapted at some point into Castilian based on those pronunciations, instead of from the Latin or Italian.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 02:11, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Hector and hectoring
It's not exactly a compliment to call someone hectoring, but Wiktionary says the term comes from the Iliad's Hector, who has been revered as an exemplary figure over many hundreds of years and across cultures. How would his name come to be associated with something petty and negative? --BDD (talk) 15:32, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * According to oxforddictionaries.com, "Originally denoting a hero, the [noun] sense later became 'braggart or bully' (applied in the late 17th century to a member of a gang of London youths), hence 'talk to in a bullying way'". In contrast, Etymonline says the verb sense is "in reference to [Hector's] encouragement of his fellow Trojans to keep up the fight". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:20, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The connection, as per the EO link, seems to be that the Greek hero Hector was known for exhorting his comrades into the battle. Sometimes there's a fine line between leadership and bullying. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:25, 26 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Not for Teddy Roosevelt. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:31, 27 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Could also be seen as an example of pejoration (only brushed in the article on semantic change, but see one table with "Some examples" (silly, lewd, villain, ...). ---Sluzzelin talk  00:43, 27 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks all. It would help to see early usages of the word, but I can definitely imagine that it was once used in a more positive sense, started to be used sarcastically, and is now a negative term. --BDD (talk) 14:57, 27 February 2015 (UTC)


 * You know what happened to Hector in the end though right? I'm pretty sure being dragged naked around the city by horses is a pretty good example of intimidation/bullying. Hector says "For the next twelve days, Achilles mistreats the body".
 * My point is, what happened to Hector could have also influenced usage. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:53, 27 February 2015 (UTC)