Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 July 25

= July 25 =

Questions
--40bus (talk) 17:41, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Are there any words in French where final -ent is pronounced as a nasal vowel?
 * 2) Are there any native words in French where letter X appears medially with a sound, like texe or minixes? All French words containing X that I know have it as silent final letter, as in faux or paix.
 * 3) Are there any languages where name of letter K has the same vowel as letters B, D, G, P and T?
 * 4) Does Spanish have dark L?
 * 5) Is there any Uralic language with vocative case?
 * 6) Is there any Germanic or Romance language where conditional mood appears in if-clause, and do the Slavic languages do the same?
 * 7) Is there any modern Germanic or Romance language which do not (usually) use Indo-European month names derived from Latin?
 * 8) Why in Dutch, oe and eu do not come in lax/tense pairs, despite that oe is similar vowel to i and u and eu is similar vowel to e and o?
 * 1. vent, couvent, torrent. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:02, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * 2. exil, examen, fixer, vexer…70.67.193.176 (talk) 19:34, 25 July 2023 (UTC)


 * 40bus -- The name of the letter K had a different vowel than those of B, D, G, P and T in Latin, as I've explained before, so such a pattern would be an innovation.  However the Esperanto letter names are "a, bo, co, ĉo, do, e, fo, go, ĝo, ho, ĥo, i, jo, ĵo, ko, lo, mo, no, o, po, ro, so, ŝo, to, u, ŭo, vo, zo" according to here... AnonMoos (talk) 22:52, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Turkish speakers use next to . Kids being taught the Turkish alphabet in school will hear . But AKP is generally pronounced as . The pronunciation of PKK varies; one may hear, , or even .  --Lambiam 09:14, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Albanian. --40bus (talk) 15:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)


 * 8. This was due to an unfortunate oversight of the Vowel Subsubcommittee of the Dutch Phoneme System Design Subcommittee, which overlooked the fact that these digraphs represent monophthongs. The issue may be addressed in the next release of Dutch, Post-Modern Dutch (beta). --Lambiam 08:57, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Seriously, this is the result of some 600 years of history. We have an article on the history of Dutch orthography, but it isn't very detailed. The basic idea, as I understand it, is that around 1400 there were 5 main vowels (a, e, i, o, u), the exact pronunciation of which isn't entirely sure, each coming in a short (lax) and a long (tense) version. The long vowels were written in closed syllables by doubling the vowel or by adding an e or i, short ones could be forced in open syllables by doubling the following consonant. This basic principle still applies in most Germanic languages (including English), but in most it's more obfuscated than in Dutch. Add some language evolution, and length difference turned into a quality difference. Long i even turned into a diphthong (ij). At the same time, some old diphthongs turned into monophthongs (ie, eu, oe). PiusImpavidus (talk) 07:39, 27 July 2023 (UTC)


 * 4 6 Diccionario panhispánico de dudas:
 * Debe evitarse el uso en la prótasis del condicional simple o pospretérito, propio de hablantes españoles del País Vasco y zonas limítrofes como Navarra, Burgos, Cantabria y La Rioja, y que también se da en algunas zonas de América: ⊗‍Si tendría dinero, me compraría un coche.
 * [...]
 * También en este caso debe evitarse el empleo en la prótasis del condicional compuesto o antepospretérito, que se da, como ya se ha indicado antes (→ 1.1.2.a), entre hablantes de algunas zonas de América y del norte de España: ⊗‍Si lo habría sabido, te lo hubiera dicho.
 * Sorry, what? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The Royal Spanish Academy disapproves the use of the conditional in the if-clause found in and around the Spanish Basque Country and "parts of the Americas". --Error (talk) 19:46, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I roughly understood that. But it didn't have anything to do with the question(?)... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:51, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I see it now. I used the wrong number. I'd rather would use subheaders rather than numbers to mark the questions. --Error (talk) 09:00, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * 5 Romanian calendar:
 * All the traditional names of the months are of Latin origin, which indicates that their use predates the Slavic contact around the 8th century. Six months have their names derived from characteristics of the months. Five are derived from the Latin names now used in the Gregorian calendar (and earlier in the Julian calendar). However, each of these has a folk etymology and an additional meaning. The last month, December, derives its name from that of Saint Andrew.
 * There was also the French Republican calendar.
 * Sranan Tongo is based in English among others. From srn:Mun (ten) it doesn't seem to use Latinate names but ordinal numbers:
 * Foswan, 31 dey
 * Fostu, 28 dey, 29 ini 366-dey-yari, ofu 30 opo som okasi
 * Fostri, 31 dey
 * Fosfor, 30 dey
 * Fosfeyfi, 31 dey
 * Fossiks, 30 dey
 * Fosseybi, 31 dey
 * Fosagti, 31 dey
 * Fosneygi, 30 dey
 * Fosten, 31 dey
 * Foserfu, 30 dey
 * Fostwarfu, 31 dey
 * I checked Ladino Wikipedia and they seem to use Spanish/French names in the Gregorian calendar. I am not sure about Yiddish.
 * --Error (talk) 14:54, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The Yiddish names are very close to the Standard German names, in particular. Cf. listing on Wiktionary. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:55, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Sranantongo foswan means "first", and fosten means "old-fashioned", "antique", "from times gone by". The other words above are not in actual use in Sranantongo and will generally not be understood. (They appear formed by prepending fos to the names of the numerals from 1 to 12, but in Sranantongo 3 = dri, 4 = fo, 6 = siksi, 8 = aiti, 10 = tin.) The commonly used month names are januari, februari, mart, aprel, mèi, juni, juli, augustus, september, oktober, november, deisèmber, borrowed from Dutch but adapted to the phonology and orthography of Sranantongo. --Lambiam 09:55, 27 July 2023 (UTC)


 * regarding 4: I am not that familiar with different varieties of Spanish, but among English dialects in Latinx communities, which are often influenced by the Spanish dialect also spoken in those communities, there are both dark-L and light-L varieties depending on community. This is a fairly long video that analyzes the main features of various North American English dialects, and among the dialects it discusses are Latinx dialects of English which can be identified by the L sound they use in English.  Again, I am unsure if this reflects the l sound that they use in Spanish, but it seems likely to me there to be some correlation.  -- Jayron 32 18:04, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Dark l seems to be . If so, Linguistic features of Spanish as spoken by Catalan speakers says:
 * How a Catalan speaker's Spanish manifests depends heavily on individual sociolinguistic variables related to age, native language, and the differing environments of language use. It is therefore not a uniform variety with little variation. Many of the features listed below are present with very different frequencies in different speakers, and some of the features could be absent in many speakers (particularly those whose main native language is Spanish, who transfer fewer typical Catalan features).
 * [...]
 * /l/ can be velarized [ɫ], especially in coda position.
 * --Error (talk) 19:46, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Describing Arkansas's pronunciation
We all know that the state is always pronounced "AR-kan-saw". But studying this quote:

It should be pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final "s" silent, the "a" in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables.

This would imply the pronunciation "AR-kahn-SAH", not "AR-kan-saw". What am I getting wrong?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:41, 25 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The contrast between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ in open syllables has not always been stable even before the modern cot-caught merger. Compare Utah, Wichita, Chicago, etc. Grandpa even has the alternative spelling grandpaw. It's likely the last syllable of Arkansas was pronounced with /ɑ/ too but /ɔ/ won out. Nardog (talk) 21:39, 25 July 2023 (UTC)


 * What's the source of that quote? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:47, 26 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Why isn't "Kansas" pronounced with the same final syllable as "Arkansas"? HiLo48 (talk) 02:01, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Arkansas Code 1-4-105. Nardog (talk) 02:38, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Looking at the articles for those two states, they seem to have the same origin, but came to us by different paths. Note also that the Arkansas River is pronounced like the state of Arkansas if you're in Arkansas, but like ar-KAN-zas if you're in Kansas. This is a bit like the two different ways that Appalachian is pronounced depending on your region. Or in the word "kilometer", whether you stress the first or second syllable. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:18, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * When Australia introduced the metric system in 1975, stressing the first syllable of all the metric units was declared official by the government's Metric Conversion Board. However, the Australian prime minister at the time, Gough Whitlam, insisted that for, kilometre, stressing the second syllable was correct because of the Greek origins of the two parts of the word. Australians are still divided on the matter, as they are over Gough. HiLo48 (talk) 22:36, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * So the two ends of the Appalachians have their own appellations. --Lambiam 08:49, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Much to everyone's aggravation. -- Jayron 32 12:33, 26 July 2023 (UTC)