Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 March 6

= March 6 =

Asian languages with the very same word for "chess" and "check"
Many (mainly European) languages use the same term for the game of chess and a check! in there, e.g. German Schach. Others, such as English or Spanish (ajedrez vs. jaque) use generically different terms. Others use a derived or slightly modified term, or the word for checkmate! also for the game as such, e.g. Armenian and Azerbaijani. Among Asian languages, using the exakt same word is apparently rare. In this list, the main source for Chess pieces, the only example is Turkmen language, küšt. Are there other Asian languages using the same word? --KnightMove (talk) 01:05, 6 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Not an answer to your question, but hopefully interesting: while the English terms are different, they are etymologically closely related. The term check comes from Old French eschec, and chess comes from its plural eschés. The Old French term ultimately comes from Persian shah, meaning "king". --Lambiam 08:54, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed interesting, thank you. While plausible from the modern French terms, I was not aware from this. --KnightMove (talk) 09:26, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Also from the Persian shah is the Arabic word shaikh or sheikh.  When I played chess it was de rigeur for a player who placed her opponent's king in check to say "check".   Now players don't seem to bother.   Also, when time ran out tournament games were "adjudicated".   Now there's a mad rush against the clock - all the difference between a replay and a penalty shoot-out in football, or playing the set to a finish and a tie-break in tennis. 2A00:23C5:318A:3100:D5E6:F2EC:EB77:6EF4 (talk) 13:58, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

English derivatives of Greco-Latin feminine -o nouns with -us in genitive
Wondering if we can predict the derivatives of e.g. Echo, Ino, Clotho, Sappho, Dido, Callisto that would be analogous to Iris > iridium.

At least a few take -onian in English, e.g. Calypso > Calypsonian, despite the fact that L&S only give gen sg -us for Calypso, but I don't know if they all behave that way. E.g. Dido has two gen sg forms, Didus and Didonis (and per Iris, perhaps if there are two forms we take the longer one for derivatives in English, parallel to the basic nouns in Italian and Russian?), but L&S only list an -onis form of Callisto for Virgil. Was gen sg -onis part of the assimilation to Latin, and didn't occur for all such words? For Clotho, L&S say "apparently used only in nom. and acc.", but don't give the acc stem. And like Calypso, some others such as Sappho, Echo, Argo are only given with -us.

So, for a hypothetical subsurface ocean, or inhabitants, of the moon Callisto, should we expect Callist(i)an? Callistoan? Callistonian? Or what about a follower of Sappho or crew of the Argo? Or is there no established pattern? -- kwami (talk) 04:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)


 * "Calypsonian" is the correct term in English to refer to Caribbean musicians, regardless of whether it would be derived correctly in terms of Classical Greek. The word "Sapphic" certainly exists... AnonMoos (talk) 05:27, 6 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Ancient Greek had the adjectives Σαπφῷος (Sapphōios) and Σαπφικός (Sapphikos). Latin Sapphĭcus probably came from the latter. The Latin genitive Sapphūs probably reflects Greek Σαπφοῦς (Sapphous) and likewise for other genitives on -ūs. According to L&S, the forms Calypsonis (instead of Calypsūs) and Calypsonem (instead of Calypso) are also attested in Latin. It looks like the Latin authors had the same kind of struggles with Greek case endings as English authors have with Latin plurals – is it formulae or formulas? There are two pathways: copy (if necessary with transliteration) the corresponding form from the donor language, or follow the pattern for (similar) words in the receiving language by analogy. The first one is open only to authors who know that corresponding form, so inevitably some will choose analogy. And, finally, some authors may choose the latter pathway, even though they know the corresponding form in the donor language, because they realize their audience may not share that knowledge. --Lambiam 08:17, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Where L&S say for Clotho, "apparently used only in nom. and acc.", I think it implies that the attested Latin accusative form is the same as the nominative, just as for Greek Κλωθώ. --Lambiam 08:30, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, both. I've seen sources that use "Callistoan" (e.g. the Callistoan crust etc.), and I figured they didn't know what to do so they just tacked -an onto the noun. And maybe they did. But if Σαπφῷος-type adjectives occur for the others (or would productively occur, even if they don't appear in surviving documents), maybe "Callistoan" is etymologically justifiable after all? "Echoic" follows the same pattern. The question, then, is whether that -oan should be stressed, per what one would expect from -ῷος and per "echoic". If it were just an ad hoc addition of -an to the noun, I wouldn't expect the stress to necessarily shift like that. — kwami (talk) 09:40, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

There's "Sapphonian" (Society etc.), but that might've been coined by analogy with the Ciceronian Society. Though you'd hope a literary society would get its Greek right. And "Clothonian" isn't terribly rare. The "Argonian Juno". Just don't know whether that's an epenthetic 'n', and ?Sapphoan, ?Clothoan, ?Argoan would be expected, or if "Callistoan" is an ad hoc form and Sapphonian, Clothonian, Argonian are what one would expect. — kwami (talk) 09:47, 6 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Astronomers and planetary scientists don't always use classically correct forms -- "Venusian" is hideously unclassical, but is apparently used to avoid any association with "venereal"... AnonMoos (talk) 10:58, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Granted, but I was wondering what those 19th to early 20th century-type style/pronunciation guide/dictionaries to classical names might recommend. E.g. Noah Webster's original dict had an appendix for proper names, and he was clearly going off syllable structure and Latin vowel length to assign stress in English. Such guides were very popular at the time. Sure, there are some established exceptions, not just for stress but for vowel quality (e.g. the Shakespearean pronunciation of "Titania" has the PALM vowel), but it's still useful to know what to expect, all else being equal. — kwami (talk) 00:04, 7 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Who are "L&S"? 2A00:23C5:318A:3100:D5E6:F2EC:EB77:6EF4 (talk) 13:52, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Liddell and Scott, I would assume. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:18, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually Lewis & Short. --Lambiam 10:04, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Heart = corona?
Why is the heart referred to as corona (such as in “coronary disease”)? Gil_mo (talk) 15:43, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It isn't the heart itself, it is the "crown" of blood vessels that supply the heart (named for the resemblence of this collection of vessels to a crown) that is named this, coronary disease is a disease of these blood vessels that supply the heart. See here or the wikipedia article titled Coronary arteries.  A coronary thrombosis is a blockage of one of these vessels, etc.  The Latin word for heart and heart related things is "cor", which might lead one to think that's the root of "coronary", but that's a false friend, the words "cor" and "corona" are not related, and the term for the arteries that supply the heart comes from "corona" meaning "crown". -- Jayron 32 15:55, 6 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The terms "cardiac" and "core" are from the same root, while the word "corona" is from elsewhere. And as Jayron suggests, "coronary" implies "crown-like". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:42, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you friends! Gil_mo (talk) 13:18, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Identical words for "poet" and "liar"
I've found this almost ungooglable, so I need some help.

I remember reading somewhere that there's a bunch of languages in which the words for "poet" and "liar" are the same. What are those languages and what are the words? --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  15:54, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Annoyingly, I could only find; "The word poet itself means liar in some languages", from The Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory 1933-1963 (p. 456). Alansplodge (talk) 17:46, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * This seems to make the argument for, and an etymology of, the terms in Arabic. Perhaps that is closer to what Jack is looking for?  -- Jayron 32 17:49, 6 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Oddly enough, ancient poets often used lyres. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:18, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * You should issue a warning when you write something like than. "Warning: May cause groans." — kwami (talk) 00:07, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Corn, home groan. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:36, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

It's a short jump from "storyteller" to "liar," so I'm sure you'll find more than one example. The first that comes to my mind is the Latin fabulari, and from that the Latin (and English) word fabulator. Temerarius (talk) 18:59, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Poul (Anderson) pronunciation
One of my favorite science-fiction authors is Poul Anderson, and unfortunately I don't really know how to say his name. What I've relied on all these years is a piece by Isaac Asimov, who was introducing one of Anderson's stories in The Hugo Winners. Asimov said something along these lines (from memory, not an exact quote):
 * I clearly heard the way he said it, a delicate perversion of the vowel that has to be heard to be believed. But I couldn't reproduce it.  He finally gave up and admitted that almost everyone said "Pole".

So going on that, I've always rendered his name as /poʊl/, but I've also known that it's not quite right, but not in what direction or how to fix it. Googling is not giving me anything very helpful, except that it's a Danish vowel that Anderson himself (being American) may not have pronounced in quite the Danish way. Can anyone shed any light on this? --Trovatore (talk) 19:22, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The name is a Danish cognate of "Paul" and Wikipedia has an article on Poul which has numerous entries; perhaps finding how one of those said it would be helpful. There's also Danish_language which has several candidates for how the "ou" bit might be pronounced.  Help:IPA/Danish unfortunately doesn't have any "ou" spelled words for comparison.  -- Jayron 32 20:27, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Jayron, those are useful leads, but my attempts to follow those threads have petered out. Still would like to hear from anyone with further information. --Trovatore (talk) 21:50, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Or pauled out. Have you looked for anything on YouTube? Like if he was being introduced to an audience of native speakers. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:24, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary gives the Danish pronunciation as Help:IPA/Danish. --Lambiam 04:06, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I had looked in Danish wiktionary but it hadn't occurred to me to look in English.  I think I can more or less figure out what that's supposed to sound like. --Trovatore (talk) 04:27, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm in the same boat as Asimov. I sat down with Anderson at a con in the late 70s or early 80s (I think it was a Minicon) and we tackled it for fifteen-twenty attempts or more, but this ol' cracker boy had no more luck with reproducing the Danish vowel than Asimov of New York City did. English just doesn't use that vowel. -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  05:34, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * You wouldn't happen to have a recording by any chance? --Trovatore (talk) 06:34, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * If it's a standard Danish name then maybe the pronunciation here would suffice. Orange Mike, does the one on that page sound like what you remember?  To my ear the "o" in that version is lowered like "pole" in English, but less rounded than the English version, and the "o" and "u" form a dipthong. 73.93.153.19 (talk) 08:49, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, that sounds familiar, 73.93. Sorry, Trov, but this was just two folks sitting in a room at an SF con, so nobody was recording us. (It's one of the glories of being part of traditional SF fandom, that at a con like WisCon or Icon or Chattacon you can be sitting around talking with world-renowned writers and it's taken for granted.) -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  17:09, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Could the difference Mr. Anderson heard in the non-native pronunciations be related to prosody (specifically, stød) rather than vowel quality? I don't know enough about Danish to be sure, but I believe as a monosyllable containing a long vowel or diphthong ending in a sonorant, Poul is a potential stød syllable. If it is affected by stød, it would be pronounced with a creaky voice which to a native Danish speaker would contrast with "normal" modal voice.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 21:27, 7 March 2020 (UTC)