Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 March 30

= March 30 =

Transliteration of East Slavic and Persian names into Italian
In Italian Wikipedia, East Slavic and Persian names are rendered with a scientific-style transliteration full of letters that are not present in native Italian words, e.g. it:ʿAlīreżā Firūzjāh, it:Aleksandr Igorevič Griščuk, it:Vasyl' Mychajlovyč Ivančuk, it:Barys Hel'fand. Is this a general practice? (If memory serves it was so for Russian names the last time I visited Italy, but don't recall seeing any of the others.) How did this come about (what standard is behind it), and what other languages are transliterated this way into Italian? Double sharp (talk) 04:48, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The Italian Wikipedia article it:Traslitterazione includes some useful tables for a variety of scripts. The tendency there is certainly to use scientific transliteration as you've noted; the relevant style manual page is at it:Aiuto:Nomi_stranieri. In the particular case of transliteration from Cyrillic (see also it:Aiuto:Cirillico) a short history of scientific transliteration can be found at Scientific transliteration of Cyrillic. The Italian Wikipedia model matches the Russian column in that article, with the exception of  used for Cyrillic <х>, which derives from the Preußische Instruktionen. Other transliterations are possible - as the Italian language article for Tchaikovsky - it:Pëtr Il'ič Čajkovskij - shows, and may even be more prevalent in the wider world, it's just that the Wikipedia prefers the scientific one. 203.194.54.20 (talk) 01:40, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Double sharp (talk) 03:13, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Changes to colours in many languages in 1990
I am pretty certain that I read somewhere that the colours of many languages changed in 1990 when Windows 3.0 came. This is in line with what I recall from colours in Swedish, English, Spanish and French. The changes were small, in the borders. In one colour something that I saw in one language as "pink" would be included in "red" in another language, for example. Now I NEED to find out support for this, since my daughter wants to know, but I cannot find any support for it anywhere. Please, could anyone find ANY source for this? Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 14:45, 30 March 2023 (UTC)


 * First off, Windows 3.1 was much more successful than Windows 3.0. For many purposes, it used a limited palette of 16 colors, but none of them was really pink.   Not sure why Windows adoption would change color terminology in a language.  We have articles about differences in color terminology between languages -- Basic Color Terms, Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate -- but the ones I've looked at don't mention Windows (nor would I expect them to)... AnonMoos (talk) 22:41, 30 March 2023 (UTC)


 * A colours is not primarily a quality, as Aristotle would have it, or a property of an object. Primarily, a colour is about perception. Each language has traditionally carved out its own boundaries for the colours that they named. Today, that is being slowly but surely lost, as colours more and more conform to a global standard. There is nothing wrong with that, except that I would prefer it if one remembered the old boundaries in archives just for purposes of understanding of cognitive processes. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 18:39, 31 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your kind input, AnonMoos. It is not terminology that was changed, but its perception. Historically, each language has had different perceptions of colours. Russian does not have a word for our blue, but has one for a lighter blue, and another for a darker blue. Traditionally, Asian languages have it the other way. They only have a word which includes both blue and green. Homer had only three colours, as do many languages still today. The larger languages are of course catching up, adding to the thousands of very recent colours we have today. I distinctly recall, as a child, that there were different perceptions of colours. Red, Rouge, Rojo and Rött were all recognizably red if taken at the focal points, but their boundaries varied wildly. Today, these have been homogenized. I am sure that I am not the only one to remember this. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 04:58, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not sure about windows. That is just something I read about 20 years ago that supposedly explained the shift. I wish I knew where that article is today. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 05:11, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This has nothing to do with either the Basic Color Terms or the Berlin and Kay argument. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 05:16, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * We still have Red, Rouge, Rojo and Rött today, but they are not exactly the same colours as they were 60 years ago. Or rather, Red is the same, the others have definitely shifted slightly at the edges. Star Lord  -   星爵 (talk) 05:20, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Specifically, the boundaries between red and pink differed in each language. Today, the boundaries are the same. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 05:37, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I saw differences between the boundaries in Yellow/green, Blue/green borders and Brown too, but my memory now fails me in exactly where Brown used to shift. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 05:59, 31 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I have tried to further read up, and I see that at least some of my observations were wrong, in that at least some of the differences have not disappeared. In Spanish, Azul, although translated as blue, is still strictly speaking only dark blue. Celeste, or often "azul celeste" is used for light blue. In French, Rose, is still strictly speaking only a light pink, and brun is still not brown. Instead, Brown splits into marron and brun depending on hue in French. Star Lord  -   星爵 (talk) 07:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

LATIN and Romance languages
I believe, with slight uncertainty, that what are today called Romance languages, we called LATIN languages in 1960, but I could be wrong. Any takers? Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 14:58, 30 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The first sentence of Romance languages says, "The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages...". Use of "romance language" became dominant in the 1880s (according to ngrams). A philological analysis of the usage might be interesting to find. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 15:26, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose that settles it. I must have heard its use in another language. Thank you. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 15:49, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What is ngrams? Do you a link? Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 17:00, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Google Ngram Viewer. For this particular example, . Note that I didn't search for the singulars of either, because "latin language" would be overly inclusive (though "romance language" wouldn't be.) It's not a very precise or exact tool, but it's interesting for a gross overview of usages. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 17:13, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Well done. Funnily, tried "Latin Languages" in brackets and got "Ngrams not found: "latin languages"" which makes the case for "Romance languages" even stronger". Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 18:03, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ngrams is differently picky than a lot of other programs. It cares about capitalization, and I have no idea what brackets make it do. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 00:34, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You can ask it to do some arithmetic; see books.google.com/ngrams/info and search for "Bigfoot" and "applesauce". The brackets function just as in elementary algebra. --Lambiam 18:40, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh! Cool! Thanks! --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 18:43, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Both [Latin Languages] with square brackets and (Latin Languages) with round brackets give a non-trivial graph. --Lambiam 18:44, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Here you can see when "Latin languages" lost its traction, which was much earlier than 1960. --Lambiam 18:54, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Fascinatingly, when I changed to a Captial "L" on Latin languages, it came on par with romance languages in 1960. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 08:43, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I cannot reproduce this. --Lambiam 18:56, 1 April 2023 (UTC)