Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 May 15

= May 15 =

Different words for laughing and crying
There are many words like cry weep wail

Smirk giggle smile laugh

All are used in different way

I am typing from mobile so can't use proper punctuation.

how many common words are there to describe laugh and crying? Thapachang (talk) 03:54, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * A thesaurus will give you plenty of options but I like using a crossword solver. The often have many more synonyms. e.g. https://www.the-crossword-solver.com/word/laugh. (Scroll down for all the words.) How common they are depends on where you are from. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 06:18, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Embryo and fetus in Greek
Is there a way to distinguish "embryo" and "fetus" in modern Greek, as they're understood in other languages? All sources that I can find just give "έμβρυο" for both. Lazar Taxon (talk) 15:03, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * My research turns up that the same term is used for both; there doesn't appear to be any distinction in modern Greek, though zygote does have a distinct term: Ζυγωτό. When I look at the machine translation of the Greek Wikipedia page Έμβρυο, which can be seen here, it seems to translate έμβρυο as both "embryo" and "fetus" interchangeably.  -- Jayron 32 15:14, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I looked up "έμβρυο" in Babiniotis, Lexiko tis Neas Ellinikis Glossas, and his definition is explicit about the word covering all stages of development until birth. No trace of any conceptual distinction between an earlier and later stage. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:52, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The distinction between the terms "embryo" and "fetus" are etymologically kind of blurry. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:24, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

A few questions
--40bus (talk) 20:02, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Are there any country names in English which are written as closed compounds?
 * 2) Are there any numerals in Swedish, German or Estonian which contain the letter Ä?
 * 3) Which sound is the vocalic equivalent of labiodental approximant?


 * The Netherlands. AnonMoos (talk) 20:49, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Ireland? :) --Lambiam 06:28, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Guinea-Bissau. --142.112.220.184 (talk) 08:15, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * According to this, "Closed compound words are written without hyphens or spaces. For example, “babysitter” ...". --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  08:18, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * But according to Wikipedia, "A compound that uses a space rather than a hyphen or concatenation is called an open compound or a spaced compound; the alternative is a closed compound." That's what I checked before answering.  But I wish the question had been specified more clearly. --142.112.220.184 (talk) 20:09, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * So for starters, any country name ending in -land or -stan (and there are many) would be a closed compound. Shantavira|feed me 08:34, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose one could refine the question by stipulating whether we want only transparent English compounds, in the sense that the component elements should be recognizable English words – that would include the "-land" names, but probably not the "-stan" names. The latter are compounds in their source languages, but one might prefer not to analyze them as such in English. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:45, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding #3, that would be the Voiced labiodental approximant. -- Jayron 32 10:51, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The Dominion of Newfoundland (1907-1949) would be a closed compound of not just two, but three, common English words. How much you would consider it a country-name depends on how you count self-governing dominions in the British Empire & Commonwealth. She is now, as Newfoundland and Labrador, one of the ten provinces of the Dominion of Canada.
 * —— Shakescene (talk) 20:50, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * It should also be noted, if you consider names of people or nationalities to be the first half of a legitimate closed-compound country name, that (as stamp-collectors know) the British stuck the word "land" onto the names of local peoples and nationalities in naming countless places and colonies, such as Somaliland, Nyasaland (now Malawi), Bechuanaland (Botswana), Basutoland (Lesotho), Swaziland (recently changed to eSwatini), Griqualand West, etc.
 * —— Shakescene (talk) 20:59, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * #3: [ʋ̩], duh. Since "labiodental" doesn't tell you anything about the configurations of the tongue, it has no counterpart in the vowel chart. Nardog (talk) 11:44, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * #2. Would Swedish "fjärde" ("fourth") count? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:01, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * #1: Iceland and Greenland are both compounds of two everyday English words. The "-land" in country names is usually pronounced differently from the word "land", but for wikt:Greenland, Wiktionary includes the pronunciation of as "green + land". That's also the way Vizzini pronounces it in The Princess Bride (film). --Amble (talk) 16:44, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

1: There's the article List of country-name etymologies. Depending on how semantically opaque you're willing to go, you may or may not want to include countries such as Denmark, Montenegro, Singapore and Togo. Among former countries, Czechoslovakia is pretty transparent, while Yugoslavia is less so. --Theurgist (talk) 16:57, 17 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The latter is pretty transparent in, e.g., Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian. --Lambiam 19:39, 17 May 2023 (UTC)


 * They all are in their respective languages, but 40bus asked about English. --Theurgist (talk) 10:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

A question mostly to native speakers: Can't compounds be recognised as such even if not fully transparent? As a famous example, a cranberry is still a type of berry even though the "cran-" part is no longer understood. The same way, isn't any placename containing "-land" obviously a compound, or is that ending perceived as more of a mere suffix like "-ia"? And what about for example "-bourg" (Luxembourg) and "-stein" (Liechtenstein), which are likewise familiar and semantically heavy? --Theurgist (talk) 10:06, 19 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @Theurgist: I can't speak for my fellow (British English) native speakers, but I don't wonder, as I speak or read, whether a particular word is a compound or not: it just "is". Having said that, if, as here, I'm deliberately looking at words' construction, then something ending in "-berry" is almost certainly a fruit, even if I've never come across it before.
 * Countries are names, so have an extra clue in their uppercase letter and probably don't contribute as much to this discussion as "normal" nouns: if it's "X...-land", it's very likely to be a country or region; "X...-ia" quite likely. "X...-b(o)urg" is trickier as it may be a country, region, or settlement, but is nonetheless geographical. Closer to home, "X...-ton", "X...-bury", "X...-ham", etc are all readily identifiable as place names. These "rules" come from experience: they are not consciously learned. Does this answer what you were asking? Bazza (talk) 10:48, 19 May 2023 (UTC)