Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 April 10

= April 10 =

Term for a group of n pendulums
In a pendulum wave, different numbers of pendulums come together at different moments in time. I'm uncertain what to call these groupings in the graph below, and thought of the following: What is the standard terminology?

Thanks, cm&#610;&#671;ee&#9094;&#964;a&#671;&#954; 03:52, 10 April 2023 (UTC) cm&#610;&#671;ee&#9094;&#964;a&#671;&#954; 03:52, 10 April 2023 (UTC)


 * An amplitude of pendula? --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  05:14, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, though amplitude in physics has another meaning. It needn't specifically refer to pendulums, just any n objects. Cheers, cm&#610;&#671;ee&#9094;&#964;a&#671;&#954; 05:54, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Why not use "6 groups of 2", "4 groups of 3", "3 groups of 4"? --Lambiam 06:34, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Great idea, thanks. Done! cm&#610;&#671;ee&#9094;&#964;a&#671;&#954; 12:01, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I guess you could use Tuple or n-Tuple. Random person no 362478479 (talk) 17:13, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Questions

 * 1) Is there a language where letter I is directly followed by letter K in alphabetical order?
 * 2) Are nasalized close-mid vowels ([ẽ], [õ], [ø̃], [ɤ̃]) possible? French and Yoruba are examples of languages with nasalized open-mid but no close-mid vowels.
 * 3) Is there any Uralic language with
 * vocative case
 * moving stress?

4. Has the abjadi order ever been made to other languages using Arabic script, such as Persian, Urdu and Sindhi? Have abjad numerals been calculated differently to other languages, such as non-Arabic letters have different values than the base Arabic letters?

5. Why name of English letter H doesn't rhyme with name of the letter K, unlike in most other languages?

6. Is there any Indo-European language which uses letter Ä for [æ] sound consistently, so that Ä is pronounced only [æ]?

7. Is there any Slavic language with two low vowels?

8. Is there any Slavic language with front rounded vowels?

9. Why does English not have front frounded vowels? --40bus (talk) 19:36, 10 April 2023 (UTC)


 * 1: Vietnamese. 9: This was covered here. --Theurgist (talk) 20:12, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * That discussion for 9: you cite doesn't tell why English lost its front rounded vowels, it just notes that English lost its front rounded vowels, which is to say that ancestors to modern English had them, and that those vowels changed at a point in history.  "Why" that happened is unanswerable.  It doesn't have purpose or causation, in the sense that it had to happen or was meant to happen.  The change was arbitrary, so lacks any reason why.  -- Jayron 32 16:21, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * 5: The English letter names for H and K came through Middle English from Old French. In current French they are and .  --Lambiam 08:08, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

In some alphabetic listings in English as late as the 19th century, I and J were not distinguished. Look at the alphabets in the 1760 sampler image. The order of Abjad numerals has never really been the main alphabetic order of Arabic, but their ordering is relevant for letters used as "Roman numeral" equivalents, or for numerology (isopsephy) in Persian, at least. Earlier English did have front-rounded vowels, but the mid front-rounded vowel (long and short) was eliminated early in the Old English period in most dialects, and the high front-rounded vowel (long and short) in middle English. There was another high front-rounded vowel (usually long only) of non-umlaut origin in some versions of late Middle English and/or Early Modern English, but that became "yoo" [ju:]... AnonMoos (talk) 20:38, 10 April 2023 (UTC)


 * The letter J (I lunga "long I") and K (cappa) are not considered part of the standard Italian alphabet, so in this 21-letter alphabet I is followed by L. --Lambiam 08:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * For #5, the etymology of "aitch" as the name of "H" is explained quite well here. For #9, I think we've already told you that questions like "why doesn't" some thing occur in some language are fundamentally unanswerable, because language changes do not happen with purpose.  We can tell you what the features of a language are, and also how they have changed over time, but mostly why they didn't change in different ways than actually happened are not answerable questions.  -- Jayron 32 11:47, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * What's a good word or expression for asking the same question over and over? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:35, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No no, the correct form of that question would be: Why doesn't Greek have a good word or expression for asking the same question over and over? —Tamfang (talk) 02:21, 13 April 2023 (UTC)


 * 6. According to Ä, Luxembourgish and Emilian-Romagnol. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:46, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * 2. Portuguese has as its only nasalized mid vowels, while contrasting  with  among non-nasal vowels. 6 and 7. At least some varieties of Slovak. 9. English doesn't have front rounded vowels because it lost them. West Saxon (the best attested dialect) lost  (unrounding it to ) quite early, but retained  for several centuries longer. However,  had apparently been unrounded to  by the time of the Norman Conquest, since French words with  were adapted to the English phoneme  (which later became ). If English had still had an  phoneme, the French words would presumably have been assigned to it. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:34, 13 April 2023 (UTC)