Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 January 9

= January 9 =

Why do Germans call New Year's Eve "Silvester?"
In reading the refs listed at New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, I learned that Germans refer to New Year's Eve as "Silvester" nacht. My only association with such a name was a cartoon cat. The Silvester article says that European countries call the night Silvester to honor a pope of that name, who was an antisemite. So why do European countries with no established Roman Catholic church, including Germany, use that name. Why don't English-speaking countries use that name? If Silvester was antisemitic, why on earth would Israel honor him by naming the day after him? Edison (talk) 02:05, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The Silvester article is rather awkwardly written. But the feast day is on the date of his death. So maybe they're celebrating that? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:17, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The origin of the cartoon cat named Sylvester is the scientific name of a wildcat, felis silvestris, which means "forest cat" ("sylv" or "sylvan" meaning "of the forest"). Not sure if there is any relation to this usage of the name, though. StuRat (talk) 06:59, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * In France too, you can hear "la nuit du Nouvel An" or "la nuit de la Saint Sylvestre", everybody will know what night it is that they are talking about. Akseli9 (talk) 08:50, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * There is more information about the celebrations in Israel here, and about the German celebrations here. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC).

I know this is an old debate at Wikipedia, well I find it very strange that we already have a big article about facts that are not yet elucidated and can only be based on frenetically new sources with no possible distance and perspective, since the facts themselves are only a few days old. I thought being Encyclopedic meant being as Universal and Neutral as possible, like somehow "timewearproof"..? Akseli9 (talk) 09:11, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Akseli9, policy already has a firm prohibition: don't use primary sources, and news reports are among the best examples of primary sources. However, try to enforce that, and ignorant-of-their-own-ignorance people will throw a big fit.  Nyttend (talk) 15:40, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The Wikipedia article you need to look at is Pope Sylvester I which explains all. Our Silvester article seems a bit superfluous and as Bugs says, needs work if we're going to keep it.  Alansplodge (talk) 10:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Other articles say this pope was antisemitic, such as getting Jews banned from residing in Jerusalem, but the Pope Sylvester article appears to have been scrubbed by pope-admirers so that he is presented in a more favorable light as having been instrumental in converting Constantine, with zero mention of having been nasty to the Jews.. Edison (talk) 04:26, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * (Probably off-topic here, but there isn't a ban on primary sources. The policy only says to be careful with them, avoid synthesis and defer to secondary sources where available. See also Identifying and using primary and secondary sources. "Just because most newspaper articles are primary sources does not mean that these articles are not reliable and often highly desirable independent sources.") Smurrayinchester 11:42, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Pronunciation question
How is Oce pronounced in the name of this company? 2.120.39.235 (talk) 15:33, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Type the name into the Youtube search field and you can hear it in some videos: OH-say.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:43, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Forts in French
Go to fr:Special:Allpages and look for Fort, and you'll get a mix of "Fort-Whatever" and "Fort Whatever" articles. Lots of the "Fort Whatevers" are from non-francophone countries (e.g. fr:Fort Davis (Texas)), so they can be discounted. However, what's the linguistic difference between fr:Fort-Lamy and fr:Fort Benoit, or between fr:Fort Dauphin (Briançon) and fr:Colonie de Fort-Dauphin? Nyttend (talk) 15:49, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I cannot think of any meaningful difference. Handling of hyphens in French is difficult because there is no consistency. One of the rare easy rules about hyphens is not grammatical, it is a mail rule that says, always put a hyphen between each word for cities on an enveloppe or a form, even if the usual city name has no hyphen. Akseli9 (talk) 19:49, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * In French "Fort Whatever" is probably the name of an actual military fortification, whereas "Fort-Whatever" is probably something (such as a city) named after a "Fort Whatever" that is an actual fort. But proper names can be idiosyncratic.  Peter Grey (talk) 02:51, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * That would make a good, logical rule. I don't find many French good links about le trait d'union. Here's one I find quite good: http://monde.ccdmd.qc.ca/ressource/?demande=media&id=94369&format=original Akseli9 (talk) 09:45, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Photographic prompts

 * Photographer: "Watch the birdie." "Say 'cheese'."
 * Parrot: "Polly wants a cracker."

What non-English-language expressions are equivalent to the English-language photographic prompts "Watch the birdie" and "Say 'cheese' "? Also, what variant equivalent expressions are there in the English language? —Wavelength (talk) 16:34, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Our article on Say cheese lists a number of equivalents. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:39, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much.—Wavelength (talk) 16:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The French pianist and composer Charles-Valentin Alkan wrote a "Marcia Funebre sulla Morte d'un Papagallo" (Funeral March on the Death of a Parrot), scored for two sopranos, tenor, bass, three oboes and bassoon. I have a recording of it, and it's a hoot.  It includes an extremely sinister-sounding and almost impossibly deep bass voice at the start, intoning the words "As-tu déjeuné, Jacot?", which we're informed is what the French say to parrots.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:47, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * "Have you breakfasted/lunched?" A French polly must be more of a gourmet than the average polly. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:58, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * They are French parrots, after all. Joie de vivre is in their genes.  Here's that recording.  Listen for the devil at 1:43. I'd forgotten that "As-tu déjeuné, Jacot?" are the only words the singers have, which they repeat throughout the piece.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:17, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Note that "Watch the birdie" is for babies, who will hopefully look in the direction of the fake bird, and thus in the general direction of the camera. StuRat (talk) 21:15, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

"-ity" vs. "-osity"
Greetings!

In English, there occur quite a few adjectives ending with the Latinate suffixes "-ous" and "-ose." And often, nouns derive from said adjectives by using the (also Latin-based) suffix "-ity." Now, in the case of adjectives ending in "-ose," the derived noun ends in "-osity."

In the case of adjectives ending in "-ous," however, the usage is very far from uniform.


 * }


 * }

You'll note, in the above collapsed examples, the adjectival "-ous" simply drops, as the nominative "-ity" replaces it. In the collapsed examples below, however, the two suffixes sort-of "coexist" in the noun (but not the adjective).


 * }

At first, I figured that many (or all) of these usages are lexically specified; to wit, words such as fabulity and hilariosity would simply "sound weird" and so remain completely ungrammatical. Recently, however, I couldn't help but wonder whether there exists another reason that I haven't considered. I mean, why don't impetuity or sedulosity exist? Surely they don't sound any less—or, at least that much less—euphonious than their more-standard forms. Does anybody here know whether any etymological, morphemic, or other non-lexical reason may have caused this quaint pattern to develop?

Let me elaborate: Perhaps in the case of the "-ity" nouns, said nouns came first, and the adjectives later got derived from them; whereas, in the case of the "-osity" nouns, the adjectives came first. Did, thus, prescriptive grammarians develop—or, at least, greatly expand—the rule of using -osity to preserve this distinction, akin to the -ion/ive/ness "rule."? Or does, maybe, the -ity/-osity pattern reflect each word's independent borrowing from Latin, French, or some other Romance language? Or did, peradventure, the distinction arise due to there being such things as, for instance, "genera"—hence, homogeneity, not homogeneosity—but no such things as, say, "geners"—therefore, generosity, not generity. Is there any scholarly explanation apart from "because the OED says so"? If so, then please let me know at your earliest convenience because I am completely in the dark, here.

Thank You.

P.S. I already know that some of these adjectives may also use the (Germanic) "-ness" suffix to form nouns, but this does not relate to my question, so please don't point it out.

Pine (talk) 19:02, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Great work (really, I like such an approach). The -ous > -osity words seem to come from the Latin pattern -ōsus > -ōsitās (e.g. fābulōsus > fābulōsitās), while the -ous > -ity words came from -us > -itās. So -ous in English corresponds to two Latin endings -us and -ōsus (technically the latter is not an ending but a part of the stem plus the ending -us).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:39, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply, Lüboslóv! I should never have guessed that the pattern results directly from classical usage.  For all the talk of Latin being a "dead tongue," it truly seems to live on in the grammatical rules of English, Greek, and the various Romance languages.  I'd also like to point out that I made two errors—now corrected—in the above tables; namely, the nominative form of gibbous is gibbosity, not gibbity, and that of luminous remains luminosity and not (also) luminous.


 * Since, as you say, I did "great work," however, then perhaps wikipedia will not revoke my deriver's licence. :)
 * Pine (talk) 11:52, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Note, not all the listed words came definitely from Latin itself. Some, of course, came from the Classical Latin directly, some might have come from newly constructed words of Medieval Latin, some from or through Old or Middle French, some have been constructed in English from known roots and patterns. What is definite that all of them show the influence from French: the suffux -ity came not from Latin -itās, but from French -ité. As well the suffix -ous came from Old (Norman) French (in Modern French it is now spelled -eux (m) / -euse (f), this as well came from two sources: Latin -ōsus or -us). So every word must have its own history. For example, luminosity is attested in English in the mid-17th century, while in French luminosité first appeared in the mid-15th century, where it must have come from Medieval scholastic Latin lūminōsus plus the suffix -ité. And French lumineux was already in the 13th century, which later became Middle English luminous. So it is dificult to say what the original source of these two English words, much in etymology is interdependent. They both might come directly from French, or coined independetly from Latin on the English ground, or coined from Latin but under the influence of the already existing (and known by English speakers) French words.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:17, 11 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Note 'bogus' > 'bogosity' which may have started however as a facetious coinage. Contact Basemetal   here  16:22, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Would it then have the property of facetosity? -- Jayron 32 20:28, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * That would have to be 'facetiosity'. In all 'seriosity'. Contact Basemetal   here  20:37, 11 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, I'll abstain from recommending that one not use "bogosity," in highly formal writing or legal documents, due to it's—obviosity?—obviousty?—obviousy?—obviety?—obvity?


 * Maybe just obviousness. :)
 * Pine (talk) 09:47, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Some links. Especially informative the former, even if it is in German. It says that -ietās (> -iety) is derived from Latin -ĭŏ stems. Note that not every English -ious word came from Lation -ius words. Such words as audācius did not exist in Latin, but audacious was coined in English (through French) from Latin audāx (the stem audāci-), so we have audacity, not audaciety (Latin audācitās did not exist as well).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:37, 13 January 2016 (UTC)