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

= October 14 =

Voiced retroflex fricative/Voiced retroflex sibilant
Hi all, OK, help me out here - there's a page move request that has been sitting in the queue for a while, and this a bit beyond my pretty basic knowledge. I this good to go? Thanks! --Shirt58 (talk) 04:05, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Appropriate translation for Regierungsbaurat
Hi, what is the translation for Regierungsbaurat, which is I think is a German civil service rank or army rank. Thanks scope_creep (talk) 07:57, 14 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Divide it up - Regierungs = government, baurat = technical expert (of some sort). You also get an "oberbaurat" and a "baudirektor" - so it seems to be the junior grade. Wymspen (talk) 12:20, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Bau is "building". I'd try "building commissioner", but be aware that terms like this one are difficult to impossible to translate as they depend a lot on the administrative structure in which the positions are embedded. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:25, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yip, I don't think it is that, but I see what you mean. That is exactly what bing and google translate gave, and seems applicable to a whole bunch of fields, and the root word is correct. The man Johannes Marquart worked as a regierungsrat before being promoted, and ran Referat Ia of Group IV an an employee GDNA. Not a conscript, which I just found out, when I found a doc on him. Government technical expert, sound closer. I think we really need an article on it, or a translation from de wikipedia, if one exists. I'll go with that at the moment. He was a technical expert, specialist on hand cyphers, so it fits. Thanks Wrongfilter, Wymspen scope_creep (talk) 19:27, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The German article de:Baubeamter contains the sentence "Gleichzeitig wurde Baurat auch als nichtakademischer Titel verliehen", i.e. "Baurat" was also a non-academic title, not tied to any actual position, more like a honorific title. This was quite common before 1919 and reinstated in 1938 (Reichsgesetzblatt 1, page 1455; I can't find it online), so it may be that Marquart for some reason obtained such a title. That, of course, just makes it even harder to translate... --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:09, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Horizontal transmission to a great degree
I know the vertical transmission of words leads to cognates in different languages, and the horizontal transmission of words leads to loanwords. So, what happens if a language lends a whole writing system to another language? English not only borrows significant vocabulary from French and Latin, but also uses the Latin script. And I'm aware that Japanese embeds traditional Chinese characters in its own writing, even though it is a completely different language family. What is this called? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 16:42, 14 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I think it's usually just called adoption or adopted script. You'll find it in our articles on spread of the Latin script or kanji or adoption of Chinese literary culture e.g. ---Sluzzelin talk  01:47, 15 October 2017 (UTC)


 * One reason why there aren't standard expressions in the same way is that writing is, in a sense, not part of language, but a sort of technology used around language. Changes to a language, including borrowings, generally just happen: nobody (usually) decides that they are going to be adopted, nobody puts any effort into learning them, and few people consciously choose whether they are going do adopt them or not. Writing is something that people make a conscious effort to learn, and while some changes (eg to the shapes of handwritten characters) may happen and spread in a way akin to the spread of linguistic change, adoption or change of a whole writing system is much more like the wholesale adoption of a different language than any of the processes of language change. --ColinFine (talk) 12:10, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
 * And yet it does happen. English hasn't always been written in the Latin alphabet.  It was also written in the its own native alphabet which was adapted from earlier Germanic runes.  Even when the Latin alphabet was adopted, English still retained some runes which were useful for native writers, such as Thorn and Æ|ash and wynn and the Insular G/Yogh.  Some of these lead to interesting modern words, such as the misprounounciation of "ye" as in "ye olde shoppe" where "ye" is a transliteration of þe, pronounced "the", or as in the name Menzies where the "z" is not a zee/zed but a transliteration of the Insular G/Yogh.  The modern English alphabet wasn't really fixed to its current 26 letters until the 16th century or so.  -- Jayron 32 14:28, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Does language immersion still work when one is surrounded by cows?
If a human child lives on a farm and surrounds himself with cows every day, then is it possible to detect different moo calls and differentiate one's own cows from an unknown stray cow by the moo? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 17:52, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Simply answer, yes. scope_creep (talk) 19:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Here's some general information on cow sounds. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:36, 14 October 2017 (UTC)


 * [ec]
 * Complex answer, "Researchers found it was possible to identify particular cows and calves from the exclusive sounds they made." 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:7595:47BF:7C36:8BA6 (talk) 19:39, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Cool. So, a cow's moo is like a human infant's cry? Babies cry for food and attention and when their parents are absent. I notice the researchers literally record the voices and perform an "acoustic analysis" on them. But this leaves one question. What prevents humans to moo like a cow? Even the word moo is an onomatopoeia of a cow's voice, but not really what a cow sounds like. In English, dogs sound like "woof woof", but in Chinese, dogs sound like "汪汪 (wang wang)". Neither really captures the true sound. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 20:18, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Nothing prevents humans to moo like a cow -- try it! 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:7595:47BF:7C36:8BA6 (talk) 20:26, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Except that we don't have the same vocal aparatus as a cow. Humans can moo, but to moo like a cow would be the same as if cows could talk like a human.  We can make sounds, but we cannot make sounds which would be recognized by the cow as cow-like communication.  -- Jayron 32 14:20, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Humans certainly can moo like[1. having the same characteristics or qualities as; similar to] a cow (try it). And, There are plenty of youtube videos of talented humans mooing like a cow, with the cows responding in a way indicating recognition of cow-like communication. Hunters know that it is possible to convince other animals that the human animal is communicating as a member of that animal's species. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:198D:93E0:4AF4:F57D (talk) 17:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)