Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 November 12

= November 12 =

About phrase "pulled over your eyes" in The Matrix
Morpheus says to Neo about the Matrix:


 * Morpheus: You can feel it when you go to work...when you go to church......when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes...to blind you from the truth.

Is the phrase "the wool" omitted before "over your" here? Rizosome (talk) 00:27, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No, it sounds like he's making a play on words between "wool" and "world". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * As Bugs said. "that has been pulled the wool over your eyes" would not be coherent syntax. —Tamfang (talk) 02:33, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there a vowel harmony in any Indo-European language?
Is there a vowel harmony in any Indo-European language, like in Finnish and Hungarian? --40bus (talk) 14:59, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The article vowel harmony mentions:
 * Italo-Romance languages: several Swiss Italian dialects (including total vowel harmony systems).
 * Iberian languages
 * Astur-Leonese
 * Galician and Portuguese dialects
 * Catalan/Valencian
 * Eastern Andalusian Spanish
 * Murcian Spanish
 * -- Q Chris (talk) 16:18, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

That article also mentions Assamese, Bengali and a dialect of Scots. --Theurgist (talk) 11:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Also, Finnish and Hungarian are not Indo-European languages, despite being spoken in Europe. They are Uralic languages.  -- Jayron 32 13:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think you are confused. The original question didn't say anything about Finnish and Hungarian being Indo-European. It was using them as examples of languages with vowel harmony and asking if any Indo-European languages had that characteristic.--Khajidha (talk) 15:51, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry. I read the question as using Finnish and Hungarian as examples of Indo-European languages, not as examples of vocal harmony.  Mea culpa.  -- Jayron 32 15:53, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there a word for this 2D signage-related concept?
I'm looking for a word that is related to an illustration technique used to resolve issues of depth or overlap in a two-dimensional image; in particular, which of two elements is in front of the other. One sees this technique consistently used in iconic, flat illustrations destined for wordless signage to indicate overlapping image elements in 2D, such as a walking man, to show which leg is in front of the other. This technique uses a thin white border around a part of the foreground element, to identify it as the foreground image with respect to another element that is "behind" it. The border matches the contours of the foreground element and may be straight or curved, and matches the background color (usually white) around the foreground element.

What is this technique called, and is there a name for the thin, contoured gap? (The gaps in the examples may not be easily visible at this resolution; click through to see full images where the gaps will be apparent.) Backstory here. Mathglot (talk) 21:38, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Outline? Maybe not. ± Wakuran (talk) 21:54, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Mathglot -- I think the visual technique was used for interlacing or knotwork before it appeared on signage. AnonMoos (talk) 03:23, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * , good find; something like that even sounds vaguely familiar, maybe from Scouting? Makes me wonder how far back the technique goes, maybe antiquity? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 10:39, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * See Celtic knotwork and Interlace (art) for possible pointers. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.225.31 (talk) 17:10, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * calls it $2 1/2$D and seems to refer to those segments as thickened curves. A bit heavy for me, but someone else might make lighter reading of it and come up with an answer. Bazza (talk) 10:51, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Bazza 7, nice; I learned crossings and visual break from that interesting paper. The latter term seems pretty close to what I'm describing; not sure if it's the exact same thing. Mathglot (talk) 09:35, 14 November 2021 (UTC)


 * You can also see this, for example, in woodcuts. Here it is IMO not an issue of resolving depth or overlap, but rather of making sure that shapes representing distinct things do not merge into one unrecognizable shape. This illustration is from 1919, but I bet a diligent search can find much older examples. --Lambiam 14:31, 13 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Initially, I would have considered something like "layering", but it seems that the term mostly would be used with other meanings, and might be ambiguous... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:57, 13 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I immediately thought of fimbriation, but alas it does not appear to be used in this sense. --ColinFine (talk) 13:33, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Good idea though! —Tamfang (talk) 17:49, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * ColinFine, Wow, excellent thought! 15th c. < late L. fimbria, "fringe". "Hey, Joe: gimme a bit more fimbriation around the top leg, there." &mdash;"Okay; maybe we should fim another 2px." Can you just see it? Mathglot (talk) 18:24, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Solved, then. Fimbriated visual break crossing. (Until someone comes up with the real answer.) Bazza (talk) 20:30, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I need to specifically call out, who created commons:File:Interlocked fimbriated rings.png just for this discussion. Big 'thank you' for that; really nice job illustrating this point. I encourage anyone in this discussion to add categories or keywords to it (I'm not entirely sure how search success happens best on Commons) so we can find it again; I'm sure fimbriation is in my short-term memory until around Thursday or Friday, and then it'll be gone the way of the sock the dryer ate. Mathglot (talk) 23:32, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Why didn't spelling of words keep track of pronunciation changes during the great vowel shift?
In the English language, words are written according to the way they were pronounced before the great vowel shift. Take e.g. the sentence: "I came from my house, now I'm here". If we pronounce this according the sounds of the letters in the words, then we get close to the correct pronunciation in the year 1400.Or take the word "nightingale", which in the 1400s used to be pronounced as written. So, why didn't the spelling change with these gradual changes in pronunciation during the great vowel shift? Count Iblis (talk) 22:53, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Count Iblis, please re-write the following words according to how they should be spelled based on your idea that the GVS should have changed the spellings of words:
 * mate
 * meet
 * mite
 * boat
 * boot
 * about
 * Georgia guy (talk) 22:56, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * meet
 * miet
 * myt
 * boot
 * boet
 * abaut
 * Count Iblis (talk) 23:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Count_Iblis -- the basic answer is that if spelling X is identified with pronunciation A, and then sound A shifts to sound B, then spelling X will be naturally now be identified with sound B, with no conscious change to orthography habits required. A phonetic orthography would also break connections between related words, such as "sane" / "sanity" etc. AnonMoos (talk) 23:28, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Please note that the most interesting part of this fact is that whereas the Great Vowel Shift didn't change the spellings, Grimm's Law (which changed consonant sounds) did change spellings. (If I were to guess a reason, I would guess it is because the GVS is a relatively modern sound change and Grimm's Law is a not-so-modern sound change.) But, suppose Grimm's Law (like the GVS) didn't change spellings. What spellings would English have??
 * P would have the f sound.
 * B would have the p sound.
 * Greek phi would have the b sound.
 * T would have the (voiceless) th sound.
 * D would have the t sound.
 * Greek theta would have the d sound.
 * K would have the h sound.
 * G would have the k sound.
 * Greek psi (not chi; in the Western Greek alphabet that the Latin alphabet arose from psi was the aspirated k sound) would have the g sound.)
 * QU would have the wh sound.
 * GU would have the qu sound.
 * (I'm omitting the gu sound because in English the gwh initial sound of PIE merged with the bh; both gave rise to English b.) The l, m, n, r, s, w, and y sounds would be spelled the same. The sh sound would be spelled sk. I don't know about the ng, v, voiced th, and z sounds. (Please note that this is simply information about a difference between Grimm's Law and the GVS; it answers the question "How would English consonant sounds be spelled if Grimm's Law didn't have this difference; that is, the old spellings are preserved??") Georgia guy (talk) 00:04, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Georgia_guy -- Grimm's Law predates any form of Germanic writing, so that there were no "old spellings" to preserve, and your post is a counterfactual hypothetical. However, apparently the same letters of the Armenian alphabet which write the sounds [p], [t], and [k] in Eastern Armenian are pronounced [b], [d], and [g] in Western Armenian (see Western Armenian). AnonMoos (talk) 03:18, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This, by the way, has the curious effect that Armenian surnames may be spelled differently in Armenian publications appearing in Turkey and in Armenia. For example, Agos spells the name Hrant Dink as Հրանդ Տինք, which in Armenia is pronounced more like "Hrand Tink". An Armenian newspaper will therefore use the spelling Հրանտ Դինք, which a Turkish Armenian will now read as "Hrand Tink"! --Lambiam 14:53, 13 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The alphabetic orthography of any language is a balance – not necessarily a well-designed and consistent one – between the extremes of a purely phonemic orthography and a purely conservative etymology-cum-morphology-based orthography. A purely phonemic orthography has three problems. A major one is that the phonemic representation of a given word may vary, both for a single speaker depending on things like prosody, and between different speakers, often reflecting regional differences. A standardized pronunciation-based spelling has to make a choice, which will often reflect the pronunciation of a privileged class. Another serious problem is then that when the standard pronunciation changes, the spelling needs to be changed – phonemic orthography is by nature non-conservative. And, finally, as observed above, it may obscure the relatedness of cognate terms with diverging pronunciations. If the spelling of English had followed the way the pronunciation changed in the course of time, older written records would quickly have become incomprehensible. --Lambiam 15:19, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed. How would Mary spell marry, merry, cot, caught, etc? Bazza (talk) 15:55, 13 November 2021 (UTC)


 * In addition to the erudite linguistic discussions above, consider also the effects on English spelling evolution of the introduction of printing, mentioned for example here. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.225.31 (talk) 17:17, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Article translation Fre/Eng
Hi, I've translated the bulk of an article from French to English. It's not perfect, need to brush it up a bit, but my question is - how do I quote when all the citations are in French? And, how do I reuse the picture and info box used in the original article? The article I'm writing is on the actor Axel Auriant, translating from the original. Ah yes, how do you make a link to a draft or a wiki in another page an internal link? I don't know what the preface is, so I just have to write the URL as if it were an external article. Many thanks EcheveriaJ (talk) 23:12, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * To quickly answer some of your questions (I have to run): For the infobox, you have to use an appropriate one on this WP (Infobox actor, maybe), filling in whatever info you can. Since the image is on Commons, you would just enter "Marche des fiertés de Paris 2019-3.jpg" in the infobox's "image" field. Deor (talk) 23:27, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I formatted your links for you. Note that to link to another Wikipedia requires an extra ':'; else it would create a link in the "Languages" sidebar. (Similarly a link to a Category would otherwise put the page into that Category.) --Tamfang (talk) 02:31, 13 November 2021 (UTC)


 * See Draft talk:Axel Auriant for some suggestions on reffing etc. >MinorProphet (talk) 05:56, 13 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I fixed some red links turning them blue. Please be aware of template interlanguage link (or ill ) when an article exists in French, but not yet in English. Left you some tips on sectioning; see the page history. If you need any help with translation issues or questions, please contact me on my Talk page. Good luck! Mathglot (talk) 19:19, 14 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you everyone ever so much! This is great help. EcheveriaJ (talk) 19:54, 14 November 2021 (UTC)