Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 January 14

= January 14 =

Xhosa pronunciation question (letter "r")
At Nelson Mandela it is claimed that the name Rolihlahla is pronounced [xoliɬaˈɬa], but at Xhosa language it says that  is pronounced [r] (while  is pronounced [x]), so this is an apparent inconsistency. Can somebody review this please? --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 14:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Ah, I have discovered this video - skip to 0:50. She is definitely saying an [x] in Rolihlahla, although the stress pattern seems to be more like [ˌxoliˈɬaɬa]. Based on what I hear, I am going to change the primary stress, but the initial consonant does appear correct. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 14:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Found this - using the name Rholihlahla (note initial "Rh"), and on an official government website. This also resolves the inconsistency which I noted above. (I see that the Xhosa Wikipedia also uses Rholihlahla - see ). So I am going to change the spelling also. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 14:45, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

And more - see comments here. "Sadly, on the rare occasion when his proper name is used, it's misspelt - Rolihlahla rather than Rholihlahla". (In case the link goes stale, just to note that this is followed by an explanation of how plain R does not exist for indigenous words and is only used for loanwords and is implausible in the context.) Given this and other sources, I think we have to stick with plain "R" as the name for which there is the most evidence, even if it originates from a misspelling. I'll relegate the Rh version to a footnote. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 15:00, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

And finally - found a reference to the effect that orthographical conventions have changed over the years. Possibly too long a quotation to reproduce here in view of copyright, but a Google search for "Rholihlahla and not Rolihlahla" (including the quotation marks) should show you what I am referring to. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 15:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)


 * AFAIK Xhosa doesn't have phonemic stress. My Xhosa teacher put a high tone on the /i/ of Rolilhalha, and I've replaced the stress with tone in the IPA of the Mandela article. Perhaps there's something else going on, or a dialectal difference or s.t. on where the tone goes (and exactly which tone it is), but it shouldn't be written as stress.


 * As for the spelling, indeed, Xhosa orthography isn't completely standardized. Pedantic sources distinguish rh from r (there are actually two such r's, but AFAIK they're both always written r), but r is only found in loanwords, so most people don't bother. Similarly, some distinguish tsh from ths from thsh, but most don't bother, and spell all three tsh. So Rolilhalha isn't a misspelling any more than Soeharto is. I'm not sure it's a difference in era -- last I heard, it seemed that such fussy distinctions were being abandoned for a simpler, if less accurate, orthography, though for all I know that might've changed again. — kwami (talk) 07:46, 21 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2019 (UTC)