Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 April 29

= April 29 =

Oleksiy Gai
Can you advise if the name should be Gai or Hay, Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 07:10, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * FWIW, Google translates his name (Гай Олексій Анатолійович) as Gai Oleksiy Anatoliyovych. 136.56.52.157 (talk) 07:57, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * So should I replace Hay with Gai throughout? GrahamHardy (talk) 08:20, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I got "Guy Oleksiy Anatoliyovych". --Lambiam 17:53, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * According to Russian transliteration systems (of which there are many), it should be Gai, Gay or Gaj, according to Ukrainian transliteration systems it should be Hay, Hai or Haĭ. This person is Ukrainian, but the subject could be a bit sensitive these days. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:47, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Romanization of Ukrainian recommends the use of the Ukrainian National system of 2010 for the romanization of Ukrainian terms and names in Wikipedia. Using the table given at Romanization of Ukrainian/Ukrainian National transliteration table, the surname becomes Hai, and the given names Oleksii Anatoliyovych. Here you can see this spelling used for the footballer, and here you can see a different person with the same name using this spelling. --Lambiam 17:36, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Questions again
1. Are there any languages where relative clause precedes noun and which use relative pronouns? The WALS map does not display any such languages. 2. Why voiced pharyngeal and glottal plosives are not possible? 3. Can fricatives be preaspirated or breatchy voiced? --40bus (talk) 18:07, 29 April 2023 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell Sanskrit sometimes had relative clauses (containing relative pronouns) which occurred before the relativized noun, though this was not the only relative construction. Fricatives don't release the way stops do, and so would not have release-specific features, though general phonations might apply. AnonMoos (talk) 21:44, 29 April 2023 (UTC)


 * 2: In a voiced plosive, there's an obstruction that gets released only after the airstream past the vocal chords has started, allowing them to vibrate for a couple of centiseconds. During this time interval, the air must accumulate between the vocal chords and the obstruction. In a [b] or [d] this is easy, as those have the obstruction near the front of the mouth, so there's plenty of room for the air to accumulate. For [g] it already gets harder, so this sound is rarer. There's very limited room for the air to accumulate, so the negative voice onset time gets short (or the pressure will build up too much and the airflow through the vocal chords will stall) and the contrast with [k] gets small. It's easier in languages where /k/ is realised with a strong aspiration, like English. In pharyngeal or glottal plosives, there's just no room for the air to accumulated, so no voicing is possible. PiusImpavidus (talk) 00:09, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * As to 1, languages to look at are Amis and Urarina, which combine Relative clause-Noun with VS word order. Some feature such as relative pronouns is needed then to avoid ambiguities. --Lambiam 04:40, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Lambiam -- I zeroed in on Sanskrit because I knew it has basic ("unmarked") SOV word order, which is often associated with preposed relative clauses, while a number of early attested Indo-European languages had relative pronouns... AnonMoos (talk) 23:30, 1 May 2023 (UTC)