Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 March 23

= March 23 =

Is this Persian etymological theory accurate?
The following Perso-Arabic letters have their sounds changed in Persian. Furthermore, the sounds that they were changed to are sounds that other letters already cover.
 * 1) The letter ث was changed from a voiceless dental fricative in Arabic to an S in Persian.
 * 2) The letter ح was changed from a voiceless pharyngeal fricative in Arabic to a voiceless glottal fricative (same sound that ه makes) in Persian.
 * 3) The letter ذ was changed from a voiced dental fricative in Arabic to a Z (voiced alveolar sibilant, same sound as ز, ض, and ظ) in Persian.
 * 4) The letter ص was changed from a pharyngealized S in Arabic to a regular S (voiceless alveolar sibilant, same sound that س and ث make) in Persian.
 * 5) The letter ض was changed from a pharyngealized D in Arabic to a Z in Persian.
 * 6) The letter ط was changed from a pharyngealized T in Arabic to a regular T (same sound as ت) in Persian.
 * 7) The letter ظ was changed from a pharyngealized version of the voiced dental fricative in Arabic to a Z in Persian.
 * 8) The letter ع was changed from a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Arabic to a glottal plosive (same sound as the hamza ء) in Persian.

Using this information, I’ve devised a theory that these letters are primarily in loanwords from Arabic. My theory also predicts that these letters should not appear in native Persian words (Possible exceptions being the ayn because the homophonous hamza is not really one of the 32 letters of the Persian alphabet and the tha because the sound had the Old Persian cuneiform symbol 𐎰). So far, none of the words I have tested this theory on seem to contradict it. Is this theory generally correct? Primal Groudon (talk) 00:57, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Certainly in broad terms when the Arabic alphabet was used to write the Persian language, a number of the letters were found to be superfluous for the purpose of writing Persian words, but when Arabic words were borrowed into Persian, they kept their original Arabic spelling. However, the letter &#1590; was not likely pronounced as a pharyngealized [d] in the form of medieval Arabic which influenced Persian.  Pharyngealized [d] is mainly a modern tajwid pronunciation, created so that modern Arabs can have a way of pronouncing &#1590; and &#1592; differently using sounds which are somewhat natural for them... AnonMoos (talk) 01:15, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Your theory is confirmed by this book chapter (p. 42). Also, ق also only appears in Arabic loanwords. Originally it led to the introduction of the phoneme /q/ into Persian; this has by now merged into /ɣ/, except in Afghanistan. Double sharp (talk) 04:37, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I didn’t include the qof because the Wikipedia articles on the Persian and Arabic alphabets list it as making the same sound in both languages, though I might’ve been a little suspicious of the ghayn. Primal Groudon (talk) 15:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Family relationship
Is there a specific term for the nephew of a nephew (Justin II and Justin I)? Clarityfiend (talk) 01:11, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * If you have three individuals, where A is the uncle of B and B is the uncle of C, then if A's father is the same as B's grandfather and also the same as C's great-grandfather, then A is the great-uncle of C.  Otherwise, I'm not sure any special name exists... AnonMoos (talk) 01:34, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Here's a chart that may or may not help: ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:06, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * [Sound of head exploding] Never mind. Now that I think about it, "nephew of a nephew" is actually easier to understand. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:17, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * In the case where my nephew's nephew is his sibling's son, that sibling is also my nephew or niece, so the son is my grand-nephew. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  10:35, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Baseball_Bugs -- We have similar, sometimes better graphics on Commons: File:Relatives Chart.svg, File:CousinTree.svg, File:Canon law relationship chart.svg, File:CousinTree kinship.svg, etc... AnonMoos (talk) 23:18, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Upward comparison of 2-syllable adjectives.
Hello, again!

I have a quick question on how to form comparative and superlative forms of 2-syllable, English adjectives (not including ones ending in the /i/ sound).

Namely, the Oxford American Dictionary, Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, and American Heritage Dictionary all list approximately 70 such adjectives that take the -er/-est declension and recommend the more-/most- comparison for the all others.

e.g.

able abler ablest

common commoner commonest

stupid stupider stupidest

Wiktionary, however, lists hundreds more.

e.g.

painful painfuler painfulest

foolish foolisher foolishest

complex complexer complexest

Now, my intuition tells me to use only the -er/-est inflexions recommended by the mainstream dictionaries and take Wiktionary with a grain of salt.

Do you agree? Would native speakers accept forms such as "silenter" and "frequentest" as proper?

Thank you for reading this. Pine (talk) 12:25, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * 'Native speakers' is a very broad category – this BrE native speaker would (a) understand them but (b) assume the user was either foreign or a young child or older but uneducated or (most likely) joking: so, not "proper." It's possible that Wictionary lists them as having been observed "in the wild", taking an extreme Descriptivist stance.
 * The problem with using such non-usual forms is that although they might be both understandable and possibly not "wrong" as grammatical constructions, their unfamiliarity distracts the listener's/reader's attention from what is being said. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 5.64.160.67 (talk) 12:49, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary actually gives the forms painfuller and painfullest. Note that 19th-century authors had little qualms using painfuller:, , , , . But as prescriptivist proscribe these forms, their use may dwindle. --Lambiam 23:08, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Translator of English and non-native speaker here. Being 41 this year, I've been learning and using English since I was five. Well, I believe there would be a context, e. g. a loose, informal or perhaps jocular conversation, where I wouldn't shy away from using 'foolishest' or 'complexer', but I don't think I would ever come to use such forms in the professional context, intuitively going with 'more complex' and so forth. --Ouro (blah blah) 02:21, 24 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all of the responses!


 * It would be nice, in my humble opinion, if Wiktionary made more of an effort to distinguish between tongue-in-cheek inflections and standard ones. But I suppose that I mustn't complain since (unlike its competitors) it's completely free of charge, and as the old saying so rightly goes, "beggars can't be choosers."


 * Apropos painfuller, it might have actually made sense back when painful was sometimes spelled painfull before Johnson, Webster, Jameson, et al standardized English spelling.  (Cf. full fuller fullest.)


 * But nowadays, it actually transfers its intended meaning to the poor reader as well as toward the written character. :)


 * Pine (talk) 08:46, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Finding location of a Lebanese church
I was expanding some Bsharri related wikipedia articles with this source published by the Lebanese army. Per their image policy all images are public domain so I normally upload them. The problem is I don't know what church it is or where it is. I was thinking it most likely says in the article but I don't speak Arabic and a lot of translations don't make any sense. If there is a better place to post this please tell me. Just to clarify I am looking for these 2 churches. Church 1 & church 2 Here is the article PalauanReich (talk) 16:40, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Here church 1 is captioned as "Lebanon - Bechary District, Tourza – Mar Sarkis Wa Bakhos Church", meaning it is located in Tourza and dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this identification. --Lambiam 23:27, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Here is an independent confirmation. --Lambiam 10:10, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Church 2 is identified here as Qannoubine Monastery, Qadisha Valley, Lebanon. So it is not a church. --Lambiam 23:36, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If the second picture is uploaded, the article Qannoubine would benefit by having it added. -- Verbarson talkedits 13:26, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Did all Americans during the Revolution speak in British accents?
There is a theory that George Washington and the rest of Founding Fathers of America spoke in British accents. The people living on Tangier Island and the rest of Islands off Pamlico Sound, Outer Banks, and Chesapeake Bay speak in British accents, which according to scholars and linguists dated back to the Colonial era. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 16:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Which British accent? The forms of spoken English... vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. Bazza (talk) 17:04, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I mean did all Americans during the Revolution sound similar to "Hoi Toiders" or the residents of Tangier Island. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 17:28, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * 95.144.204.68 -- During the 18th century, there was a process of Koineization in British North America / the USA, which is what happens when speakers of different dialects of the same language are in extensive contact. Certain dialect peculiarities get levelled out, so that people who came from the UK speaking one narrow local UK dialect had children who grew up in America speaking a somewhat unified form of English which is not identical to any of the source dialects in the UK.  The traditional speech of Tangier Island is an example of a local American dialect which was not much affected by broader American Koineization.   In the 1800s, there was a kind of accommodation between the speech of Whites and the speech of Blacks in the U.S. South (large numbers of Southerners were raised by Black nannies or "mammies"), which is how the Southern accent arose.  I'm not sure whether much is known about George Washington's individual speech, but he grew up in the 1730s and 1740s, when Koineization probably hadn't developed as far as it later would (not sure why he would have had any Tangier Island particularities)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:37, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Americans of this era came from all parts of the British Isles and colonies, so you would have heard accents shaped by the origins of the local settlements, as influenced by the neighbors (the koineization process AnonMoos talks about). But yes, the Americans of that time would sound closer to a generic mix of Hoi Toiders, high-mountain Southern Americans or various British rural dialects of the sort that are currently declining, than they would like "Americans" of our present era. I recommend any of the websites you can easily find which compare and contrast modern-day Shakespearean English to the English of Willie's own day. The latter probably gives you a clearer impression of how the typical American's grandparents would have spoken. As one site puts it, "like a funky combo of Irish, Scottish, and Southern American accents". That pronunciation was already shifting towards something more like modern British by the time of the Revolution (especially in the Court and in London), but the American immigrants, as usual, were not going to be shaped by the modern developments in the Old Country. (Ask any Italian who encounters "Italian-American" cultural events.) Remember that the Founding Fathers, being of the gentry or at least prosperous, would not want to sound like peasants or backwoodsmen. -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  17:56, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * To be honest with you guys, I think 18th-century Americans would have sounded more closer to 21st-century Brits rather than 21st-century Americans. The Hoi Toider and Tangier Island accents sound nothing like the rest of American accents. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 20:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, which "Brits" are you talking about? There is no "British" accent. Bazza (talk) 20:59, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * But there's a bunch of accents that clearly identify the speaker as British. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:36, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Nearly half of the residents of Pennsylvania during the American Revolution were either German immigrants or of German ancestry. Most spoke the German dialect called the Pennsylvania Dutch language and presumably spoke English (if they knew it) with German accents. Cullen328 (talk) 22:13, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * From a certain point of view, all the Americans at the time had British accents no matter what their exact accent.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:29, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The vast majority, those who descended from British colonizers, but not those with other ethnic backgrounds, not a negligible number. --Lambiam 00:00, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't living in a British colony make them British subjects? And the accent of a British subject is, in some sense, a British accent. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 04:36, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * When speaking English, Kissinger has a pronounced accent that makes me think of Dr. Strangelove. I think he would surprised to hear that he has, from a certain point of view, a pronounced American accent. --Lambiam 13:53, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Henry's brother Walter shed all trace of his Bavarian accent. When asked how he had done so while his brother retained such a thick accent, Walter said "Well that's simple. Henry doesn't listen!" DuncanHill (talk) 14:16, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That should be Franconian, not Bavarian. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:30, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @JackofOz: "Clearly" is up to the listener, and is often anything but. I have been assumed, by English-speakers from other countries, to be Australian, a label I'd be happy to carry were it not a falsity. Bazza (talk) 10:08, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Are Cockney and Geordie and Glaswegian and Scouse accents not British accents? —Tamfang (talk) 03:25, 28 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Actually, in the period of British Colonization of the New World, most British people spoke with rhotic accents. Received Pronunciation, which made non-rhoticity the standard for British English, didn't come about until something like a century after the American Revolution.  This video explains some of this very well.  Many of the British dialects of the time (and by extension, many the American ones as well) would have more closely resembled West Country English than any of the more stereotypically non-rhotic British accents of modern times.  Again, watch the video I linked above.  While it is called "A tour of U.S. accents", it explains the historical context of those Accents, and goes into some detail of the sources of and likely features of colonial American English.  -- Jayron 32 00:10, 27 March 2023 (UTC)