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

= March 29 =

Is Balzac now a bad word???
In English, does Balzac stand for something indecent??? Because I remember my high school history teacher (who was Polish, with the last name Walczak) telling us that his pet peeve was when students call him "Balzac" -- and, just a couple days ago, when me and a lady friend of mine were at a museum and saw a post-Cubist painting titled "Balzac" (which, TBH, did not look very much like a portrait of the writer), she giggled hysterically as if she had just heard a super-dirty joke which was only intended to be told in all-male company. So, does it really stand for something else besides the writer's name??? 2601:646:9882:46E0:C63:7399:2917:AFB (talk) 04:10, 29 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Ball-sack. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 05:32, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Philosopher Immanuel Kant has a similar problem. If you want to avoid such ambiguity you can use the full name "Honoré de Balzac" or use the French pronunciation (not unreasonable for a French name). Random person no 362478479 (talk) 06:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It's kind of the opposite problem. Kant's name sounds offensive to English ears if pronounced correctly in German, while Balzac's is fine in the original French. —Kusma (talk) 06:57, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * that's an odd thing to say about Kant. The /ʌ/ phoneme does not exist in German, and I'm not aware of anything that sounds particularly like it phonetically. --Trovatore (talk) 17:07, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Good luck explaining to someone who thinks you just insulted them that you said /kant/, not /kʌnt/. —Kusma (talk) 17:18, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * They are sharply different to the Anglophone ear. --Trovatore (talk) 17:23, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The story at Sidney Morgenbesser asserts the opposite 2A02:5080:2D12:B00:6CF1:C584:4778:5636 (talk) 17:46, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, hard to say without having been there. Maybe Morgenbesser had an unusual accent, or maybe he was simply misheard in a confrontational situation. --Trovatore (talk) 18:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Whichever way you pronounce Kant isn't flattering to him. Either obscenity or hypocrisy. DuncanHill (talk) 11:24, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Pronouncing the name of the writer the French way does not help much in Holland.  --Lambiam 09:34, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Your teacher was peeved by people misnaming him? I think most people would be. DuncanHill (talk) 07:43, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The OP didn't say "misname". It was likely a nickname. Bazza (talk) 09:16, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Calling him by a name that was not his and which he expressed a dislike to being called by? That's misnaming. DuncanHill (talk) 11:17, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd guess he won't be honoréd'... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:45, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Aside: In The Music Man's "Pickalittle (Talk-a-Little)" number, the provincial townswomen cite, with particular emphasis, "Balzac" as an example of the "dirty" authors that the librarian Marian Paroo advocates (along with Chaucer and Rabelais). Though they're supposedly referring to B.'s subject matter, I think the sound of the name definitely contributes to the humorous effect of the scene. Deor (talk) 16:10, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You do all realize that the question was more than sufficiently answered in the very first response by IP 41.23 and the rest of this discussion is needless distraction, right? -- Jayron 32 17:39, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * In that case, let me add another unnecessary pop-culture distraction: In the Futurama episode "War Is the H-Word", the head of Henry Kissinger, attempting to negotiate an end to a war between Earth and a planet of ball-shaped aliens, says, "Please, gentlemen, we must put an end to the bloodshed. We have all seen too many body bags and ball sacks." Deor (talk) 18:02, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Also related (and yes, I know I'm adding to the problem I just complained about. Sue me.) is the term bozack, fairly common in rap lyrics of the late 80s-90s.  -- Jayron 32 18:09, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Isn't that just Ebonics pronunciation? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The non-pejorative term is African American Vernacular English, or sometimes AAVE, which covers a range of accents and dialects with sometimes conflicting features, and some features in common. It is a word that originates in that dialect; whether it is a distinct word on its own, or an eye dialect spelling of the words 'ball sack' is probably up for debate; there's probably arguments to be made either way.  AAVE has introduced a number of words into the general American English lexicon, such as finna, aight, fo sho, and many others, often through the phonological processes that give AAVE its distinct nature, things like consonant-cluster reduction, L-vocalization, dough-door merger, etc.  -- Jayron 32 11:39, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I didn't think the term would be considered pejorative. I'll try avoiding it in the future. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:09, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The origins of the term were well intentioned, but it has become problematic. Random person no 362478479 (talk) 12:29, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * See Ebonics (word) which explains some of the controversy. The relevant passage from there is "While the term is generally avoided by most linguists,[18] it is used elsewhere (such as on Internet message boards), often for ridiculing AAE, particularly when this is parodied as drastically differing from Standard American English.[19] African American linguist John McWhorter argues that the use of the term does more to hinder black academic achievement than to help it, in that considering AAE to be a completely different language from English serves only to widen the perceived divide between whites and blacks in the United States.[20] Walt Wolfram, a long-time researcher into AAE, points out that discussion of this variety of English "gets politicized and trivialized by the very term Ebonics."[21]"  If you don't know the historical context, you may be unaware of how the term has been co-opted for pejorative reasons, and is thus avoided in scholarly usage.  Don't feel bad, sometimes we don't know what we don't know.  I hope that clarifies things.  -- Jayron 32 12:41, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * [un-indent] Thanks, everyone! And yes, I really didn't realize that when spoken, it could stand not just for the name of the author, but for something which he had and his wife didn't! 2601:646:9882:46E0:5C72:67AC:7906:BD7C (talk) 00:32, 30 March 2023 (UTC)