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

= August 3 =

Dutch schwa
Is the schwa (/ə/) sound in Dutch ever spelled other way than $⟨e⟩$? It is spelled $⟨i⟩$ in suffix -ig and $⟨ij⟩$ in suffix -lijk, but is it ever spelled with $⟨a⟩$, $⟨o⟩$ or $⟨u⟩$, as well as $⟨i⟩$ in other places than the -ig suffix? And if it is not, can it be explained so that in both Dutch, English and German original unstressed vowels were reduced to schwa in all three languages, but English didn't change spelling, unlike other two languages, and that's why English has various spellings, but Dutch and German don't? Is this true? --40bus (talk) 18:54, 3 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Although Wikipedia only gives the pronunciation for Dutch avond, I think the pronunciation  is quite common. Middle Dutch also has the variant avent, suggesting that the schwa-pronunciation has a respectable age.  --Lambiam 13:33, 4 August 2023 (UTC)


 * There's also the word motor, commonly pronounced /'mo.tər/. The second o is resistant to change to e, as the plural is motoren /mo'to.rən/. The stress shifts to the second o, which also turns tense and isn't anywhere near a schwa. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:49, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Two questions
--40bus (talk) 19:54, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Why can't Latin alphabets have official status in Russian republics (that means that official languages of republics cannot be written in Latin alphabet). Why there is such a law?
 * 2) Why isn't Faroese available of Google Translate?
 * (1) How do you know there is such a law? (2) Have you asked the people who manage Google Translate? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:09, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * From Tatar alphabet: The Russian State Duma perceived the latinization of the two republics as a variety of language secessionism, and on 15 November 2002, they introduced an amendment into the law On the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation stating that all official languages of the republics within the Russian Federation must use Cyrillic alphabets. The Republic of Tatarstan challenged the amendment in the Constitutional Court of Russia, arguing that the State Duma doesn't have authority over the language policies of the constituent republics. On 16 November 2004, the Constitutional Court declined the appeal.
 * You're invited to follow these references for explanations. 147.234.72.52 (talk) 07:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I added the template &lcub;&lcub;reflist-talk&rcub;&rcub; to attach your references to this section. You should probably use that template if you use &lt;ref&gt; tags on the ref desk a lot. Card Zero  (talk) 08:26, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * (2) Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. Clearly, Google Translate cannot cater for all. As a service based on neural machine translation, it is critically dependent on the availability of dual language texts for training. A possible explanation for the absence of Faraoese is that the corpus of dual language texts for Faroese is currently insufficient for translation at an acceptable quality level. --Lambiam 12:54, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Isn’t Faroese basically the same as Icelandic anyway? 2A00:23EE:2028:1D15:B169:5FD4:9B1:75F1 (talk) 16:00, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * According to our article Faroese language, Faroese and Icelandic are not close enough to be mutually intelligible in speech, but due to etymological spelling in Faroese, they are closer in writing. Double sharp (talk) 16:10, 4 August 2023 (UTC)


 * (1) Isn't the Karelian language written in the Latin alphabet and official within the Republic of Karelia? --Amble (talk) 21:08, 10 August 2023 (UTC)


 * From Karelian language: In the Republic of Karelia, Karelian has official status as a minority language, and since the late 1990s there have been moves to pass special language legislation, which would give Karelian an official status on par with Russian. 2A00:A041:3BA3:F400:1919:6C28:6E81:8B87 (talk) 10:30, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Ancient Japanese Place Names
I our article called Fudoki it is written that: "Empress Genmei ordered in 713 that place names in the provinces, districts, and townships be written in two kanji characters with positive connotations. This occasionally required name changes. For example, Hayatsuhime (速津媛) became Hayami (速見) and Ishinashi no Oki (無石堡) became Ishii (石井)." Is there a list with the old place names before they were changed? Thanks! 82.61.95.54 (talk) 22:21, 3 August 2023 (UTC)


 * This might not be easy to find in English? For example, this 2021 book, A Handbook of Place Names in Japan: Their History and Significance claims to be "the first detailed description of place-names in Japan in any world language other than Japanese". (You might request the book through your local library.) So if you read Japanese, it might be worth asking this question on the Ref Desk for ja.wikipedia.org to get Japanese sources. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:51, 4 August 2023 (UTC)