Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 February 14

= February 14 =

"It"
What part of speech is "it" when not used as a pronoun; e.g.: "It is time to go home." 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:582A:4795:C7CE:A2D (talk) 05:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * It is still a pronoun, albeit a so-called "expletive" or "dummy" one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:58, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link.
 * This is also known as an "impersonal pronoun".  See . 156.61.250.250 (talk) 13:42, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Impersonal pronoun is a redirect to One (pronoun). Your reliable source (Macmillan) suggests this needs to be changed.
 * See also:
 * 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:ACE5:1011:8E:599C (talk) 19:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Min Chinese possibly?
The bottom of the second column of this newspaper from 1855 Hawaii has a list of Chinese words. I am a native Teochew speaker and it seems to me like the dialect here is either Teochew or a Min dialect instead of Mandarin or Cantonese. Can anyone tell if this is the case? If so this is odd since generally speaking the Min dialect people historically immigrated to Southeast Asia while the Cantonese groups immigrated to North America.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 06:34, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015408/1855-02-10/ed-1/seq-2/
 * The variety originally spoken in Chaozhou belongs to the Min group, so your question doesn't make sense. The expression "instead of Mandarin or Cantonese" is unnecessary and reduces Chinese to only two other dialect groups. It should be avoided. A quick search on Wiktionary alludes to the Chaozhou dialect, but who would better at recognizing it than yourself, a native speaker. Sound changes and and the awful romanization system should be taken into consideration. Furthermore, it is totally unprofessional to think of this as odd, especially for someone who likes studying old newspapers. Provided that Min-speaking Chinese generally went to Southeast Asia and Cantonese-speaking Chinese immigrated to North America, how do these statements say anything about Hawaii? --188.99.176.78 (talk) 23:05, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * You are doubtless already aware that the majority of Chinese immigrants to Hawaii were Cantonese speakers from Guangdong. If you look at the Min Chinese article, however, you will see mention in the lede that "Min . . .  is a broad group of Chinese varieties spoken by over 70 million people in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong, [etc.] . . ." Thus, immigrants from Guangdong to Hawaii (and elsewhere) probably included a minority of Min speakers.
 * The newspaper's staff and/or the original supplier of the list (one Mr P. W. Graves) may have had little or no idea of the great variety of different Chinese dialects/topolects/languages (or may not have cared, since the news article refers to their speakers as "coolies"), and so did not bother to distinguish the different linguistic origins of the "Chinese" words they listed, which in any case may have quickly become shared by the Chinese community as a whole in the context of their new domicile. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.203.118.169 (talk) 04:31, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Feeling blue
Is the idiom "feeling blue" derived from the depressive effect which evening twilight has on some people? Or is there a different etymology for this? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:9076:92A3:E19C:2F76 (talk) 07:01, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * "Blue" is used for all kinds of descriptives, both positive and negative. The EO entry doesn't specifically answer your question, but it has some hints. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:04, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The usage goes back 700 years.  The word "blue" meaning "sad" is found in Chaucer's Complaint of Mars c. 1385. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 13:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, OED says it's figurative, probably from skin being said to be of a blue colour with reduced circulation of blood. Thincat (talk) 15:09, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * More on the Origin of the of the phrase “feeling blue” at the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. Alansplodge (talk) 17:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Turning old w into modern v
Why did so many ancient languages with the w sound give rise to the v sound in their descendants today?? Native English words are among the few words that preserve the w sound. Why do so many languages have v derived from w?? Georgia guy (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * The wikipedia articles on the sounds usually represented in English by the letters "w" and "v" are at Voiced labio-velar approximant and Voiced labiodental fricative. The intermediate sound would be the Labiodental approximant which, as noted in those articles, is commonly in free variation in many languages with either or both of the English sounds.  Which is to say that the three sounds (Voiced labio-velar approximant <--> Labiodental approximant <--> Voiced labiodental fricative) exist on a continuum of articulation such that transitions between them are fairly easy.  Other sounds in this "family" also include the English "f" (the unvoiced version of "v"), the English "b" and similar sounds (see for example dialects of both Spanish and Greek where b/v sounds as known in English are in free variation) and "p" (which has a similar relationship to "f" as "b" does to "v").  I hope that helps.  -- Jayron 32 17:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * There are a number of terms that can be used to describe the way that linguistic changes affect sounds, such as fortition (basically becoming "stronger" by one or more degrees on the scale vowel-glide-sonorant-fricative-stop), lenition (going the other way on the scale), etc. A change of [w] to [v] is a fortition, and could also be called a "spirantization" or "fricativization" (becoming a fricative), except that those terms are usually used for cases of a stop becoming a fricative, not a glide becoming a fricative. AnonMoos (talk) 17:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Georgia_guy -- I doubt that there's much explanation as to why [w] didn't become [v], other than that English was "insular", and so not affected by a continental Sprachbund tendency... AnonMoos (talk) 17:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Polish does also contrast the [v]-sound (spelled as w) with the [w]-sound (spelled as ł). As evident from the spelling, [w] in Polish is an innovation which arose out of L-vocalization. I hope this helps debunk the claim that "languages tend to lose w" -- some languages' phonology develops in quite the opposite direction. --86.184.151.183 (talk) 20:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, Polish [v] (written as ) developed long ago from the Proto-Slavic *v, which was a labial approximant [ʋ], also realized as a bilabial allophone [w] in certain positions (as in modern Slovenian and Ukrainian). — Kpalion(talk) 11:53, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Georgia_guy's question does make me wonder: in how many modern Indo-European languages other than English does proto-Indo-European [w] still mainly show up in the modern language as [w] (i.e. at least in word-initial position when not part of a consonant cluster, possibly also elsewhere), and was [w] all along at intermediate chronological stages (as far as we know)? There probably won't turn out to be many such languages... AnonMoos (talk) 14:45, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, I imagine it's somewhat arbitrary to choose "w" for the analysis and then act like English is special because of that. I would imagine that many modern Indo-European languages have some sounds that could be so traced all the way back to proto-IE.  This reminds me of the anecdote told by Richard Feynman regarding the very human tendency to have our own biases influence our sense of what is "noteworthy".  "You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!" His point being that the sense of amazement we have when faced with what we perceive as unusual events is only colored by our cultural context.  Had someone said "I saw a car with the license plate ABC 123" it "feels" more unusual than "ARW 357" even though those two specific examples have exactly the same odds of occurring through random chance.  Likewise, because we're speaking of a unique feature of English, a language we all speak, it feels more "unusual" than a similar feature of any number of other languages, but taken in the corpus of linguistic study, it's not all that "weird".  -- Jayron 32 17:01, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I vaguely remember having read somewhere (Through the Language Glass, I think) that some changes are indeed more common than others. This is because speakers are lazy, but they're lazy in one direction. For example, b becomes p and p becomes f, but the reverse is less common. No need to go all culture-relative on this Asmrulz (talk) 19:33, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * another interesting thing is how p becomes f in the first place. Unlike vowels, which form a continuum, there are not many intermediate sounds between p and f. The way this happens, it said there, is that it's not the sound that changes but the relative frequency of one pronunciation vs the other. People don't have to switch to the other consonant all at once. (Btw I see a parallel with evilution here which I can't articulate) Asmrulz (talk) 19:42, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, voiced /b, d, g/ are easier to pronounce than /p, t, k/ in certain environments, as it can be seen in Romance and Celtic languages.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:01, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Not only in Romance and Celtic, but even in Danish, where /p, t, k/ are realized as [b̥ʰ, d̥ˢʰ, ɡ̊ʰ], and distinguished from /b, d, ɡ/ by the aspiration, not the voicelessness. --86.165.77.151 (talk) 21:51, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Jayron32 -- I wasn't so much "amazed" by the specialness of English in preserving PIE [w] (if I was even "amazed" at all, which I wasn't really); rather, I was intrigued that there is ANY feature of PIE which is better preserved in modern English than in the great majority of other modern IE languages... AnonMoos (talk) 01:18, 16 February 2017 (UTC)


 * How do we actually know what PIE might sound like? Are we sure it was [w] and not [ʋ] or [v] in PIE? --217.140.96.140 (talk) 09:50, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The article Proto-Indo-European language discusses methods used to reconstruct it. You can read that article, then follow more links to additional articles.  -- Jayron 32 14:12, 16 February 2017 (UTC)


 * 217.140.96.140 -- If a consonant sound is pretty much an allophone of [u] (as was the case in proto-Indo-European), that's a fairly clear indication that it's [w] rather than a fricative (or was originally [w]). AnonMoos (talk) 18:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Longest English word
Can I know the longest English word ??? Sawongam (talk) 17:26, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * There's no definite answer, but there are a number of traditional answers, starting with "antidisestablishmentarianism" and "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis", and going upward... AnonMoos (talk) 17:41, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * What about the tendency to pretend to be partially antidisestablishmentarian? Pseudoquasiantidisestablishmentarianism. Iapetus (talk) 10:16, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * If you just want to tack on indefinite prefixes, then you don't have to be as clever or cute as that, as seen from the semi-famous (among linguists) case of the "Anti-anti-missile-missile-missile" (which can be extended indefinitely) -- or even simpler, "great-great-great-great-...grandfather" AnonMoos (talk) 02:45, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has an article titled Longest word in English which you may read whenever you choose. -- Jayron 32 18:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The answer is: "Yes, you can know it, if you read the Longest word in English article".  2606:A000:4C0C:E200:ACE5:1011:8E:599C (talk) 19:51, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * But can you ever know it, if you never say it? Martinevans123 (talk) 19:55, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

What is "pay in black"?
What is "pay in black"? ECS LIVA Z (talk) 19:36, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * This source gives "pagare in nero" as "pay under the table", so essentially pay in private, or "in the shade" I think. See also this article Martinevans123 (talk) 19:46, 14 February 2017 (UTC) p.s. the video's a real winner


 * Cf: Black budget 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:ACE5:1011:8E:599C (talk) 19:55, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * And this, of course. But a good point - probably best keeping him at arms length. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Pay without paying taxes (It was said because of the rumors about Trump's taxes. Btw I think those rumors are wrong). HOTmag (talk) 08:10, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * "Black market" is a redirect from Black economy.  And of course, there's always the Dark web. 80.5.88.48 (talk) 08:32, 15 February 2017 (UTC)