Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 April 3

= April 3 =

Plurals of words used to refer to the words
If I'm right, all such plurals use 's. That is, the plural of cat (the word referring to the animal) is cats (I have 5 cats in my house) but the plural of cat (the word meaning a reference to the word) is cat's (There are lots of cat's in this paragraph.) This includes plurals of plural nouns that are being used to refer to the word; an example is "I see lots of cats's (plural of cats being used as a word referring to the word) in your essay on pets."

Any exceptions to this?? How do we refer to the plural of a word ending in an ' when it refers to the word?? An example is mornin', which is slang for morning. An example is "I see your poem is inconsistent in that is has mostly morning's in the first half but mornin's in the second half." Georgia guy (talk) 01:51, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I would try very hard to avoid the use of a plural form completely in that situation. For example, I might write - There are a lot of uses of the word "cat" in that paragraph. I definitely wouldn't use an apostrophe. My English teachers would have conniptions if I did that. HiLo48 (talk) 03:01, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No, the plural of "cat" meaning the word itself is "cat"s. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 03:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The use of apostrophes for this sort of thing (and also for pluralizing forms such as abbreviations) used to be common but is now old-fashioned. Khajidha's method is reasonable, but if you have italics available, cats will work. --174.89.12.187 (talk) 04:21, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I've often seen plurals with apostrophes in them, which is usually incorrect. That usage is called "Greengrocers' apostrophes". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Those are plurals of words being used, not mentioned, for example if a store advertised "cat food's". --174.89.12.187 (talk) 14:57, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * There is nothing wrong with a properly used '. Using ''s for this purpose is bad style. --Lambiam 04:49, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Word "Shri-pati" refers to whom
Came across this t/p discussion by editor @AbhishekSaini1910. Answering the discussion there would be digression to that t/p so I brought topic here.

Their question seem to be Word "Shri-pati"  occurring in Awadhi language devotional hymn Hanuman Chalisa refers to whom? I do not know much about the said hymn or the language but brief search lead me to hi:wikt:श्रीपति and also refer page 61 of The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess: Goddess Traditions of Asia. United Kingdom, Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2007. seem to refer to Valmiki Ramayana 5.14.6 where in as per authors Hanumana refers Sita as 'Shri'. En wp has articles Shri, Śrī Sūkta.

''Idk how much above answer satisfies your expectation since I do not know Awadhi language. May be other users may provide more information.''

&#32;Bookku   (talk) 08:11, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I think Shri refers here to Lakshmi, so the term Shri-pati would refer to her consort, Lord Vishnu. --Lambiam 10:29, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * What I briefly read through above referred book 'Shri' seem to be one of early referred independent deity in Rigveda - after reading I felt probably independent article should be possible. The later various Avatara connections seem to be claims made for seeking scriptural legitimacy.  &#32;Bookku    (talk) 11:35, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * If the Hanuman Chalisa was composed in the 16th century CE by a Hindu poet, we probably need not seek an explanation in the Rigveda, composed some 30 centuries earlier, before Hinduism matured and also long before the Rāmāyana was composed that developed the Hanuman character. Note that in our article on the epic Lakshmi is called by the name Sita, and her husband Rama is an avatar of Vishnu. --Lambiam 12:37, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, you do have a point. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 04:09, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * You are quite correct that Shri refers to Lakshmi, but this hymn is written by Tulsidas and he belonged to Ramanandi Sect of Vaishnavas. Both Ramanuj sect and Ramanandi sect came from Sri Sampradaya. The basic difference between the both is that, for Ramanuj sect Vishnu & Lakshmi is the supreme deity and they calls Lakshmi as Sri and for Ramanandi sect Rama & Sita is the supreme deity and they call Sita as Shri.
 * So Tulsidas being an Ramanandi used Shri-Pati (Shri's Husband) for Rama, where Sita is being referred as Shri.
 * This the 13th verse of Hanuman Chalisa where it is used.
 * सहस्त्र बदन तुम्हरो यश गावैं।
 * अस कहि श्रीपति कंठ लगावैं॥ १३ ॥
 * sahasa badana tumharo jasa gāvai।
 * asa kahi shrīpati kantha lagāvai॥ 13 ॥
 * ''"Thousands of living beings are chanting hymns of your glories;
 * saying thus, Ram warmly hugged him (Hanuman)."
 * So Shri-Pati being used for Rama is also confirmed by this hymn because it was Rama who hugged Hanuman not Vishnu.
 * Any comments on this explanation or findings would be much appreciated. AbhishekSaini1910 (talk) 13:29, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Any comments on this explanation or findings would be much appreciated. AbhishekSaini1910 (talk) 13:29, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Two questions
--40bus (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Is there any Romance language where name of the letter Q is spelled with $⟨q⟩$? Nearly all Romance languages spell it as cu.
 * 2) Why letters Š and Ž are not considered separate letters in alphabet in Finnish, unlike in Estonian?


 * There's an explanation as to why the ancient Roman name of the letter Q was [ku] under Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 May 19 (and an even more detailed explanation of Roman letter names in a reply to you several months ago, but I can't find it right now). Unlike some other names of letters which became problematic in the Romance languages due to phonological developments (most prominently the name of H), there was no such problem with [ku]... AnonMoos (talk) 17:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * But Latin name of Q was qū, pronounced [kʷuː]. --40bus (talk) 18:11, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No it was not. The sequence [kwu] was semi-marginal in Latin, often analogically restored in paradigms where a stem ending in [kw] was followed by endings beginning with [u] and also vowels other than [u], but often simplified when no such analogies existed, as in "cum" the conjunction (from "quum")... AnonMoos (talk) 23:49, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Regarding 2; because each language does its own thing. There's no specific set of expectations or rules; linguistic conventions develop organically and arbitrarily over time.  Just because one language may treat something like Š to be the same letter as S but with a diacritic, does not mean that another language wouldn't consider them separate letters.  I thought we've gone over this before with other similar questions.  There isn't any "right" set of rules or conventions in this way; there is just what has happened independently and mostly arbitrarily.  We can tell you that a language has a certain feature or follows a certain set of conventions, but there is not really any reason "why" beyond "it just happened that way".  -- Jayron 32 18:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Do you feel like a broken record? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:15, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * 1: In Romance orthographies, cu follows the normal spelling rules, while qu or quu would be confusing. Spellings of names of letters are artificial since they aren't usually spelled out, and the sound of the letter Q is already covered by C.
 * 2: Perhaps Estonian sees these letters and their sounds as less foreign than Finnish does, since it has had more exposure to Slavic and Baltic languages than Finnish has. --Theurgist (talk) 19:04, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * 3. Are ther any languages where letter A can be pronounced as consonant?
 * 4. Is the retroflex approximant a semivocalic equivalent of sound [a]?

--40bus (talk) 19:23, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding 3., Others will likely give a more comprehensive (or more correct) answer, but I believe the the letter A started (in Proto-Sinaitic script) as standing for a glottal stop, which had to be pronounced with some following vowel sound (try doing it without!) and the word chosen to name it – 'alp(h), meaning ox – had the vowel "a": over centuries and the spread of the alphabet to other cultures, the significance of the vowel sound became more important until the letter instead signified only that. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.249.31.43 (talk) 22:21, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * There was no glottal stop in Greek, so Aramaic/Phoenician alpha was borrowed as alpha, and as the first sound of the name was what the letter transcribed, it changed from glottal stop to /a/. — kwami (talk) 23:39, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * as the first sound of the name was what the letter transcribed -- not quite: ayin became omicron, even though there is no [o] in its original name. Furthermore, in Yiddish, ayin stands for [e], even though there is no [e] in its original name, either. 185.130.86.86 (talk) 10:01, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I note that, of these two questions, only #3 and #4 have any relation to each other. What would be the sense of the community about urging 40bus to give each question its own new section?  I think it would make replies easier to follow. —Tamfang (talk) 22:53, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

40bus -- If any sound is the semivocalic equivalent of [a], it's the voiced pharyngeal approximant. AnonMoos (talk) 23:51, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Pharyngeal approximant is semivocalic equivalent of [ɑ], not [a]. --40bus (talk) 12:45, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I doubt whether that distinction is too meaningful in this context. For semi-vowel correspondences, all that matters is position at the top of the vowel triangle (or less often, position at the bottom of the triangle) and degree of lip-rounding (which is an independent parameter).  There's a lot less room at the bottom of the triangle than at the top, and the symbol [a] can be used as a "broad" IPA transcription of almost any non-rounded low vowel. AnonMoos (talk) 20:47, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

According to the French alphabet article on WP-fr, Q/q is spelled "ku ou qu ou cu". WP-en lists only qu. The Trésor de la langue française informatisé says,
 * More on 3, see Aleph, which is the ancestor of the symbol we use for "A", and which in many languages stood for the glottal stop, a consonant we don't have a letter for in English, but which represents the sound made when many english speakers say "uh-oh"; the closing of the glottis between the "uh" and the "oh" is a glottal stop, which is a consonantal letter found in many other languages. As noted above, Greek basically borrowed this symbol and pressed it into use for the vowel sound represented by the Greek letter Alpha, which was later borrowed into Latin as the letter A.  -- Jayron 32 12:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * On trouve le nom de la lettre écrite qu (Ac. 1835, 1878), cu (Ac. 1935), ku (Ac. 1835, 1878, Lar. 19e), kû (Lar. 20e).

Similarly in English there are various spellings, i.e. cue, kew, kue, que. — kwami (talk) 00:13, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

3: This probably doesn't ever occur in the true sense, but something of the kind is seen in conventional (non-scientific) transcriptions of Arabic. The letter ʿayn, pronounced /ʕ/, normally is either omitted or transcribed with an apostrophe-like symbol, but sometimes is represented with an ⟨a⟩, both in ad hoc cases (Aosman, otherwise usually Osman or Uthman or similar, scientifically ʿuṯmān) and in well-established ones (Kaaba, scientifically kaʿba). If such a word is read out with proper Arabic pronunciation, the ⟨a⟩ stands for /ʕ/. --Theurgist (talk) 00:58, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * ʿayn could be romanized as $⟨c⟩$ similarly to Somali orthography. --40bus (talk) 19:23, 10 April 2023 (UTC)