Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 April 19

= April 19 =

Pronouncing "vehicle" like: "veer-cle" by rhotic English speakers.
Is it common? rare? existent?

The theoretical rhotic pronunciation of veer-cle is supposed to rhyme with that of the existent word tiercel, mentioned in Merriam-Webster dictionary, and in Collins dictionary, as well as in this dictionary.

I'm asking, because non-rhotic English speakers do pronoucne "vehicle" like "veer-cle", so maybe also rhotic English speakers do. Just like the word "colonel", prnounced like "kernel", both by non-rhotic English speakers and by rhotic English speakers.

However, perhaps "vehicle" is not pronounced like "veer-cle" by rhotic English speakers, just as they don't pronounce "idea" like "I dear", even though non-rhotic English speakers do.

To sum up: I'm asking if the case of "vehicle" is analogous, to the case of "colonel" (pronounced like "kernel" by all speakers), or to the case of "idea" (pronounced like "I dear" by non-rhotic English speakers only). 2A06:C701:745F:A700:DC9F:33C8:C70F:8A4D (talk) 11:30, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * You may want to read the Wikipedia article titled Linking and intrusive R. -- Jayron 32 12:12, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Correcting myself. Please don't read that article.  Avoid it at all costs.  My bad.  I apologize for my continued wrongness.  I will try to do better.  I won't succeed, mind you, but I will try.  -- Jayron 32 15:53, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * What's the pertinence? /iː_ə/ is not a typical environment for an intrusive R (and you would still have yet to explain why the /ə/ elides), and rhotic accents typically don't exhibit intrusive Rs. Nardog (talk) 13:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Check: Colonel, in rhotic English. 2A06:C701:745F:A700:DC9F:33C8:C70F:8A4D (talk) 15:04, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I fail to see the pertinence of your reply as well. I was responding to Jayron32. Nardog (talk) 15:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * You've claimed "rhotic accents typically don't exhibit intrusive Rs", so I mentioned the case of the word "colonel": Doesn't it contain a sort of an intrusive R, in rhotic English (yet not in non-rhotic English)? Admittedly, it's not the classic intrusive R, and that's why I've added "a sort of".
 * Anyway, I'm still asking, if the case of "vehicle" is analogous, to the case of "colonel" (pronounced like "kernel" both by non-rhotic English speakers and by rhotic English speakers), or to the case of "ideas" (pronounced like "I dears" by non-rhotic English speakers only). 2A06:C701:745F:A700:DC9F:33C8:C70F:8A4D (talk) 15:41, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No, /r/ in colonel existed long before non-rhoticity gained prestige, is not intervocalic so it's not intrusive, and is often absent in rhotic accents. Nardog (talk) 15:50, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * That's why I've admitted it's not a classic intrusive R, but only a "sort of". Anyway, how about my original question? If you are a General American speaker, you can easily answer it, can't you (if you are)? 2A06:C701:745F:A700:DC9F:33C8:C70F:8A4D (talk) 15:56, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Our article Linking and intrusive R does not discuss whether any intrusive R exists in rhotic English. 2A06:C701:745F:A700:DC9F:33C8:C70F:8A4D (talk) 15:41, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I know of no accent that has /r/ in vehicle. I think you've got it backwards: it's /iːə/ that merges with /ɪə/ in non-rhotic accents, through the processes John C. Wells calls "pre-schwa laxing" and "syllabicity loss". See Wells's Accents of English vol. 1, § 3.2. Nardog (talk) 16:11, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I have no idea r where this thread is veering to but I'll try a hypothetical answer to the original question: I could think of a rhotic "veercle"-like pronunciation of 'vehicle' as a form of hypercorrection from a less prestigious non-rhotic accent to a more prestigious rhotic accent (something like Gershwin's Let's Call the Whole Thing Off for 'oyster'), but frankly, I don't know if this ever actually happens. –Austronesier (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, English has only one diphthong which ends with a schwa ə and which begins with a front-close vowel, e.g. in the word "idea"', whether this diphthong is /iːə/ in General American accent or /ɪə/ in RP, so I really don't know what you mean by "it's /iːə/ that merges with /ɪə/ in non-rhotic accents". Does John C. Wells mention any merger of the kind you've mentioned? If he does, does he give any example of this merger? 2A06:C701:745F:A700:DC9F:33C8:C70F:8A4D (talk) 16:29, 17 April 2023 (UTC)


 * In my distinctly non-rhotic London-suburbs accent, there is no 'r' anywhere in 'vehicle'. It's 'veeacle'. Or possibly 'veeakw', depending on context (see register (sociolinguistics)). AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:35, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The fact that non rhotic accents have no R followed by a consonant, is not expected to surprise anybody. That's why I've asked about rhotic accents only. 2A06:C701:745F:A700:DC9F:33C8:C70F:8A4D (talk) 17:04, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * /iːə/ in General American is not a diphthong but two syllables, /iː.ə/. /ɪə/ in idea etc. in RP is a result of the merger of /iː.ə/ with /ɪə/, unlike /ɪə/ in near etc., which derives instead from /iːr/. Wells gives freer, truer, theory, brewery rhyming with dear, sure, dreary, jury, and be a, do a becoming homophonous with beer, dour on p. 240 (the lack of the CURE-FORCE merger is implied). Nardog (talk) 16:40, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Does he claim non-rhotic English did distinguish between "Idea" and "I dear" in some period? 2A06:C701:745F:A700:DC9F:33C8:C70F:8A4D (talk) 17:07, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Not really. He suspects that idea had already become disyllabic when non-rhoticity arose, as far as the prestige accent in England is concerned (pp. 220ff). Nardog (talk) 19:14, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * This general American respectfully denies at least half of Wells's alleged rhymes. —Tamfang (talk) 02:45, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course you do. Wells isn't "alleging" they rhyme in GA. Nardog (talk) 09:55, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, misread. —Tamfang (talk) 21:57, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

MFE - MediaForEurope, Mediaset and Mediaset España
I'd like to expand the articles MFE - MediaForEurope, Mediaset and Mediaset España, but I need some assistance from those who are fluent in either Italian or Spanish. JSH-alive/talk/cont/mail 08:58, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmm, Mediaset España is an extensive article in Spanish, but the other two listed articles are shorter than their English equivalents, anyway. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:05, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Greek prefix for cyan
The article cyanobacteria says cyano- is a prefix for blue. Does anyone use a separate prefix for cyan?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:05, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Color terms are complex, and languages deal with them in many different ways. In English, we use the basic "red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple" color scheme as our understanding of "primary" and "secondary" colors, and conceptually, we think of colors outside of those 6 basic colors as variations of those 6.  So, we tend to think of chartreuse as a sort of yellow-green color, cerulean as a shade of blue, and so on.  In English, in common uses, most people would think of cyan as a shade of greenish-blue  See here.  In general, the set of greek-and-or-latin based specialist prefixes will draw from that same basic color set, plus possibly black and white, so you get lists like: this or this etc.  The point being, no one makes such fine distinctions in the sense of color prefixes; in the sense that cyan is "in the blue family of colors", then yeah, sure, something which was strictly "cyan" would also get the "cyano-" prefix.  But that's only because we're not making finer distinctions in the system.  -- Jayron 32 19:35, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems as if the Modern Greek term corresponding to "cyan" is "galázio". "Galazio-" sounds like a good enough prefix to me, but I'm not sure if anyone would actually use it...Edit. Possibly kyanós as well. My Greek is far from sufficient to assess the connotations of near-synonyms. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:43, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 * In Greek, the two words γαλάζιος (galázios) and κυανός (kyanós) originally cover different parts of the blue color scheme. Galázios is used for 'sky blue', 'pale blue', 'light blue', while kyanós covers 'azure', 'cyan', 'turqoise', 'ultramarin', 'cobalt blue'. In modern Greek, the loanword μπλε (ble) may cover alle kinds of blue, perhaps most commonly used for darker shades of blue. It is also often used with a qualifier: 'blue of xxx' etc. The interpretation of the three words overlap significantly, so that all three words can be seen used for the same colour. Both the two original words can be used as a prefixes (galazio-, kyano-), μπλε can not. --T*U (talk) 14:42, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Kyan- and Cyan- are alternative transcriptions of the same stem. By the way, British PM Gladstone famously thought that discrepancies between modern European and ancient Greek usage of color words meant that the Greeks had defective vision... AnonMoos (talk) 22:00, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 * There are people who still believe that. I heard some TikToker claim the Ancient Greeks "couldn't see the color blue" just a few weeks ago. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:32, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * WHAAOE, see Wine-dark sea (Homer). -- Jayron 32 12:19, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I already linked to Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age above... AnonMoos (talk) 23:57, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Not knowing the finer distinctions, I just thought of Cyan as basically a synonym for Blue, or perhaps as a purer shade of blue. That may be becaue I probably first encountered the word alone (as opposed to the beginning of Cyanide) as part of the printer's CMYK colour scale (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK.
 * [By the way, and off-topic, different scales, e.g. CMY — Cyan-Magenta-Yellow — or RGB — Red, Yellow-Black — are used for light projection, where red, yellow and blue combine to make a white light rather than the black or brown shade that would print on white paper. Still other scales are used for electronic transmission, as on television or over the Internet; see Web colors.] —— Shakescene (talk) 13:34, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * So, like literally every word in existence in every language ever, words take on different (sometimes subtle, sometimes significant) meanings in different contexts. In the context of non-specialist, everyday, mates-at-the-pub speech, "cyan" basically means "light blue".  However, in the context of color theory, a specialized field of study, cyan is more precisely defined in relation to the subtractive color schema, specifically it is one of the three primary subtractive colors; and is distinct from blue in that system, because blue is the color obtained by mixing equal portions of cyan and magenta.  In the additive color schema, cyan is a secondary color obtained by mixing equal portions of the colors blue and green.  So, if you want to know what definition one is using, you need to pay attention to the context of the conversation where the color is mentioned... -- Jayron 32 15:29, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

the last name treitl or treitel or traitel
Is anything known in the Slavic or German language with the consonants TRTL meaning lion? טל ומטר (talk) 22:46, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It sounds like a Yiddish name, from what I can see, so I guess the -(e)l ending could be a diminutive. I don't know where the meaning "lion" comes from, though, since the Yiddish word is "leyb" and Slavic words tend to be similar to "lev". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:58, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The nearest German word is Drittel for ⅓. No lions though. 82.166.199.42 (talk) 05:54, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Written in Yiddish (Hebrew) script, the name is טרייטל. German Drittel corresponds to Yiddish דריטל (Dritl). --Lambiam 09:00, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * This treatment has "Treutel" (together with many cognates, including ones with vowel ei) as being derived from an old German word trût ('friend', 'beloved'). Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:09, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, so presumably the root would be related to German treu and trauen and English true, then(?) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:43, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * In Sweden, we have a somewhat similar German-souding name, Treutiger, apparently stemming from an immigrated pharmacist from East Frisia. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * About relationship with "treu", "true" etc: I would have guessed so, but according to Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch (lemma 'traut') it may in fact be unrelated: MHG trût / Mod.German traut derives from pre-High German Germanic *dr-, while treu/true have common Germanic *tr-. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:45, 20 April 2023 (UTC)