Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 June 6

= June 6 =

Etymology of moin moin
Apparently moin moin is a Nigerian dish. However, "moin moin" is literally used as a greeting in some German dialects. What is the etymology of moin moin (the dish)? Does it come from the greeting? And if so, why? J I P &#124; Talk 08:45, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Here's someone claiming it's of Yoruba origin (which seems otherwise credible). Here's an old English-Yoruba dictionary. Personuser (talk) 09:53, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This may be a folk etymology, but many people who use "moin moin" as a greeting claim it come from the same root as "morning"; the etymology section of that article has more details and controversy, but that seems the most likely origin. Certainly "Morgen", short for "Guten Morgen" is a common casual greeting in Germany, along with assorted dialect variants. The spelling of the Nigerian term may be the same, but I'd suspect the pronunciation would be different. The Europeans grabbing stuff in Nigeria were also mostly Portuguese and Brits, not generally Germans, though admittedly northern Germany has always produced sailors, who went (and go) everywhere on ships under assorted flags. HLHJ (talk) 13:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The name for the dish is mentioned as a loanword of Yoruba origin in some more reliable sources, they don't give a more detailed etymology and this wouldn't rule out a "double borrowing" (which would be even less probable, at least for a German origin). Alternative spellings/names include "mai mai", "moyin moyin", "moyen moyen",... (these can be very misleading without some more context). It is a quite popular dish and seems to bring up local rivalities, which would make folk etymologies even more likely. An example would be mo eyin "stick to teeth" (the link I found is blacklisted, so this should probably be taken with even more caution, I couldn't find anything similar in reliable sources). For the greeting there is a long, but not so helpful discussion at . The German article may have some more details and additional sources, for those who can read them. Personuser (talk) 22:16, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * How do you pronounce the greeting? Temerarius (talk) 22:53, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't speak German natively, but I have learned it to a very good degree. As far as I understand, the greeting "moin moin" is pretty much literally pronounced as it is written, as is the case in most (but not nearly all) words in German. As far as I understand, "moin" is pronounced to rhyme with "loin" in English (discounting for minor variations in the vowels). J I P  &#124; Talk 00:18, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary:moin has some IPA transcriptions and an audio sample (keep in mind that the page includes unrelated words in other languages, and probably doesn't cover all the local variations and related or possibly related expressions in other languages, specially for such a common/colloquial word, left alone how the word was pronounced by nord German sailors more that one century ago or similar, which seems to be, using an euphemism, "challenging" to determine even for worlds with a clearer etymology). Personuser (talk) 00:58, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Make no mistake about it
I'm under impression that "Make no mistake about it" is used most frequently in American English, being a favorite phrase among US officials more than anywhere else. Is the phrase indeed more popular in the US? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 20:54, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * BrEng speaker here. The phrase is in common use in the UK, but normally just as "make no mistake", i.e. without the "about it". --Viennese Waltz 21:11, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I think its common use among politicians is similar to "let's be clear": it always prefaces a huge lie that they want to perpetrate on the media and the people. Elizium23 (talk) 11:49, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * According to the Corpus of Global Web-Based English, "make no mistake" appears 1289 times in US sources and 921 times in GB sources, while "make no mistake about it" appears 226 times in US sources and 119 times in GB sources. The total number of words from the two countries is similar (386,809,355 from US and 387,615,074 from GB). CodeTalker (talk) 19:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Apparently Nixon liked to use it (see this thread at Stack Exchange, also tracing it back to 18th century James Ussher in a technichally non-imperative (though subjunctive) form, and to 19th century John Poole (in its imperative form, though I actually think that example could also be about advising someone not to mess up a future action he is to perform). ---Sluzzelin  talk  19:36, 7 June 2021 (UTC)