Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 November 19

= November 19 =

Aramic language
How can I learn the Aramic language -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:3425:F300:2873:F3AD:5A3C:528F (talk) 00:28, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * First, it's called "Aramaic", and there have been many versions and varieties of it attested in the last 2,800 years or so. "Aramaic" is a language group, not a single language.  The version with the most written literature available is probably Syriac, but that's now a liturgical language (not a living language), and is pronounced very differently in the Eastern Syriac and Western Syriac traditions... AnonMoos (talk) 00:44, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

W in the NATO phonetic alphabet
The purpose of the NATO phonetic alphabet is to give each letter a special name. BEE and DEE can easily be misheard as the other name; BRAVO and DELTA resolve this. But why does W still need a special name?? DOUBLE YOO already sounds dis-similar and cannot be misheard. Georgia guy (talk) 01:14, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * How do you know it can't be mis-heard? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:43, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Each of the names starts with the letter it denotes. Would kinda break the system a little. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 05:09, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Presumably they wanted a consistent approach when they set up a phonetic alphabet. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:18, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, "double yoo" is only the way W sounds in English. In German it's like "vay", in French like "doo-bluh vay", and so on.  The phonetic alphabet is for speakers of all the languages used in NATO. --184.144.99.241 (talk) 07:48, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I wonder to what extent English speakers understand German or Polish speakers pronouncing "Juliett" as "Yule-yet". — Kpalion(talk) 12:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You're not ready to understand the difference between Christmas and yule yet, are you?? (Please don't take this question literally; it's how an anglophone would interpret User:Kpalion's statement as meaning. Georgia guy (talk) 12:38, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No it's not. I am an anglophone and I understand what the statement means. Bazza (talk) 12:47, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Someone pronouncing "Juliett" as (or similar, with an initial English-Y sound) would mean they are not using the NATO phonetic alphabet which, by definition, requires . Bazza (talk) 12:47, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, but then, the same goes for W. From a German or Polish speaker's point of view, it doesn't matter if they have to learn that W is "double u" or "whisky". Neither word contains the sound that the letter W stands for in their languages (which is [v]). — Kpalion(talk) 15:39, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Sort of. It's not a simple as "Germans say "V" where English speakers say "W".  In reality, there is a phonemic continuum of allophones between /v/ and /ʋ/ (see Voiced labiodental approximant) the latter of which sounds close to the English /w/ sound, depending on the dialect, idiolect, context, etc. etc.  A native German speaker would recognize the first sound of the English word "whiskey" as part of that sound class, furthermore as noted at German phonology, the word "whiskey" is pronounced in German with this sound (either /v/ or /ʋ/ or somewhere in between), so German speakers would absolutely associate the word with the letter in question.  -- Jayron 32 18:18, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And since Polish was mentioned, they also use the word "Whisky" as a loanword from English: See . So whatever particular sound they use, they will recognize "Whiskey" as that word, and in speaking, their pronunciation of "Whiskey" will be recognized by speakers of other languages in NATO.  This is probably part of the reason why "Whiskey" was chosen, given that it is usually borrowed as a loanword and not translated into other languages, making ideal for this purpose.  -- Jayron 32 18:28, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Getting back to the original question, another reason not to use "DOUBLE YOO" is it's two words and one could easily go missing in transmission, leaving you with ... YOO. And confusion. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 12:58, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The rather self-evident reason is that each word in the phonetic alphabet is supposed to start with the the letter in question. As is already noted in the article titled NATO phonetic alphabet, which the OP would have learned had they read the article before asking the question, To create the code, a series of international agencies assigned 26 code words acrophonically to the letters of the English alphabet (bold mine).  Now, that word "acrophonically" is not a common word, but it DOES have a convenient blue link in the article, which leads one to the article Acrophony, which states Acrophony...is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself (bold mine).  If, as the OP proposes, the letter "W" was represented with "DOUBLE-YOO", that would violate the primary principle of constructing the phonetic alphabet, as that word begins with "D".  -- Jayron 32 15:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * See also this recent RefDesk thread which covers much of the same ground. Alansplodge (talk) 16:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And by the same user. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:29, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But with a different (but alike in that they're both about the NATO phonetic alphabet) question. That thread was about spellcheckers and how Alpha/Alfa is spelled. This thread is intended to be about why W still gets a special name. Georgia guy (talk) 18:00, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Did you read what was noted above? As explained in the Wikipedia articles, the NATO phonetic word for W, Whiskey, was chosen to be a word that starts with "W" because that is how all of the words used in the alphabet were chosen.  "DOUBLE YOO" does not begin with "W".  -- Jayron 32 18:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Common to both threads is that it's just so interesting to explore the properties of the NATO phonetic alphabet and ask questions based on understanding the properties I know. Georgia guy (talk) 18:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The NATO phonetic alphabet is interesting, and its history and the care that went into producing it is certainly full of possible avenues of exploration.  -- Jayron 32 18:30, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

French -> Arabic -> English?
Can anyone help me turn the following archaic French transliterations of the names of Muslim kings of al-Andalus into (I hope) live wikilinks? I'm working on Prise d'Orange after reading about a fascinating discovery of a fragment of the text.

The names come from the long footnote continued at page 366 of volume 3 of Les épopées françaises by Léon Gautier. The names are as follows, rendered exactly as Gautier spells them. Thanks much in advance. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 01:18, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Abd-el-Vahid-Ben-Mougeith
 * Abdallah-Ben-Abd-el-Mélik
 * El Hakem (who I think is Al-Hakam I)
 * Bahloul
 * Aboutahir
 * Foteis-Ben Soliman
 * Zaïdoun


 * I don't think we have articles about most of them...some of them are listed in the Battle of Las Babias but they're still redlinks. Al-Hakam I is the appropriate Cordoban emir but I guess the rest of them are just generals or other aristocrats. Bahloul could be Bahlul Ibn Marzuq? Right time period at least, but not necessarily the right Bahlul. I would spell the others Abd al-Wahid ibn Mugayth, Abdallah ibn Abd al-Malik, Abu Tahir, Futays ibn Sulayman, and Zaydun. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:42, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh actually it should be Mughith but there were two brothers with that name - there's an article about one of them in Spanish (and Catalan, and Arabic, and Basque) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:47, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Adam Bishop, thanks a lot. Perhaps an article-creating opportunity! An area of history I know nothing about but would be useful background information for the poem. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 05:42, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Japanese question
At the bottom of the recruitment page for the Finnish sushi restaurant chain Hanko Sushi there is a picture of a red circular seal (you might have to wait a bit for it to appear) with Japanese characters in the middle. What does it say? Does it say "hanko" or "sushi" or something? J I P &#124; Talk 03:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It's wikt:印, which apparently just means "seal" or "stamp". Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:12, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Wheras wikt:判子 (hanko) apparently means the same thing, but is written using different kanji. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There's a slight difference, in that hanko primarily refers to the personal stamp that people have that act like a signature for important documents like opening a bank account. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:44, 24 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The same character also appears in the middle of the shop's logo's O, by the way. —Tamfang (talk) 02:36, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Japanese name order in translations
I don't know if anyone knows this, but: Japanese names are giving in reverse order from English: lastname, firstname. My question is, when a Japanese source (like a newspaper) translates one its articles for its English-language edition, is it common practice to "translate" the name order too, to make it firstname, lastname? Or do they just transliterate the name and keep the Japanese order? You'd think there'd be a generally common practice (maybe not), but I don't know what it is. Herostratus (talk) 07:36, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * They westernize the order, such as in this Asahi Shimbun article about Shohei Ohtani. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 09:09, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * For Wikipedia, Manual_of_Style/Japan-related_articles says that "spelling and name order used (for the title, and within the article body) should be that most commonly used in reliable, third-party English-language sources". Our article on Kanō Jigorō has surname first, although there are plenty of sources like this one which are t'other way about. Alansplodge (talk) 17:28, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That leads to some being shown in Western order, others not. Given this (unavoidable) inconsistency and the unfamiliarity of Japanese names to Western eyes, it becomes very difficult to know which is the surname and which the given name. No such problem for Hungarian names, which are  domestically but are virtually always reversed to  for external uses.
 * Test cricket watchers know this problem when teams from the Indian subcontinent are involved; sometimes the player's name shown is their surname, sometimes not. And then it gets worse, as sometimes one of their names is shown on the scoreboard but a different name appears on the back of their shirt. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:20, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That leads to some being shown in Western order, others not. Given this (unavoidable) inconsistency and the unfamiliarity of Japanese names to Western eyes, it becomes very difficult to know which is the surname and which the given name. I think the current workaround for this predicament is to use Family name hatnote. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:51, 24 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Within the last year or two, the Prime Minister of Japan expressed a preference that Japanese names not be flipped in foreign languages (as the names of Chinese living in China are usually not flipped; or is Zedong Mao or Tse Tung Mao usual in any language?). I think I've seen at least one serious news outlet comply. —Tamfang (talk) 04:17, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

In continental Europe, there's a practice of putting the surname in all-caps to make clear which it is. This would not be understood by most in English-speaking countries. AnonMoos (talk) 23:37, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Once twice thrice fource
From a Harry Potter fanfic:
 * Euterpe smiled, “Hey Hermione, what comes after ‘once twice thrice’? Hermione knows everything.”


 * Hermione didn’t admit to having looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary last spring. She just said, “Officially, there is no such word. But if you want to make something up, you’d use the number plus the Old English genitive ending, so you’d have fource, fifce, sice, sevence, eightce, nince, and tence, I think.”

Does that make any sense? And why the genitive? Is it like the German genitive which I think is something like a possessive? I don't see how that really fits. For that matter, what are the German words for once, twice, etc.? I had thought einmal, zweimal, etc. which is not a genitive at all afaict. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 23:25, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * In some contexts in some Germanic languages, when the genitive was still a genitive and not just a possessive, it could be used to form adverbs. See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/once#Etymology... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I speak German well although not natively, and for myself can confirm that the words are indeed einmal, zweimal and so on. J I P  &#124; Talk 04:23, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * According to Alastair Reid, it's Ounce, Dice, Trice, Quartz, Quince. --ColinFine (talk) 22:48, 21 November 2021 (UTC)