Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 February 12

= February 12 =

Place names
A few questions about pronunciations of place names.
 * 1) Why "Sault" in Sault Ste. Marie (both in Michigan and Ontario) is pronounced as /suː/ and not as /sɔːlt/?
 * 2) Are there any places named Greenwich that are pronounced /griːnwit͡ʃ/?
 * 3) Why "Sioux" is pronounced /suː/  (same as "Sault") and not /suːks/? --40bus (talk) 17:04, 12 February 2024 (UTC)


 * 1. The lt is not pronounced because of the French (this can be seen from the original Les Saults de Ste-Marie.) As to why it became /su:/ and not /so:/, I am unsure. GalacticShoe (talk) 18:13, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Why l is not pronounced in Sault, despite letter L is normally pronounced at end of word in French? --40bus (talk) 20:43, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm sure someone can answer with more specifics, but it's worth noting that sault is, in Modern French, written saut, with a corresponding lack of a pronounced consonant at the end. I imagine that in older times, sault may have been pronounced similarly. GalacticShoe (talk) 02:03, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Similarly, French veut was spelled veult in Norman French, as seen in the phrase Le Roy le veult. The French verb sauter was still spelled saulter in Middle French; compare Catalan/Italian/Portuguese/Spanish/Venetian saltar, in which the ⟨l⟩ is pronounced. --Lambiam 11:02, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * While the old spelling "sault", reflecting the word's Latin origin, was still used at the time the place was named, it was already pronounced with the final two letters silent. French orthography was only simplified some years later, with a lot of these extraneous letters being dropped, but the old spelling was retained in this instance. Xuxl (talk) 14:09, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Item 2: wikt:Greenwich "(town in Massachusetts, town and village in New York): (US) IPA(key): /ˈɡɹinwɪt͡ʃ/". --Amble (talk) 17:27, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * 3. Because of the French. Sioux has it as a shortening of the original Nadouessioux, which our article on the Sioux suggests is from Ojibwe naadawesi plus French pluralizing -oux (which I would assume is largely equivalent to -eaux, save for pronunciation.) GalacticShoe (talk) 18:04, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Using "x" instead of "s" is a common way of forming the plural of words that end in "ou" (e.g. hiboux, choux, bijoux, etc.), even if by rule "s" should be used. In all cases, the x is silent. Xuxl (talk) 14:12, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Makes sense, would you happen to know how if there are rules that determine what ending to apply for a word of foreign origin? e.g. -oux in the case of naadawesi. GalacticShoe (talk) 02:05, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The name was given by explorers before spelling rules were set in stone, not by linguists. As I mentioned above, the most common French words that end in "ou" tend to form their plural with "oux", even if the current rule states that it should be "ous". Xuxl (talk) 13:53, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I believe there are only a few French plurals in oux, including choux, hiboux, cailloux, genoux, joujoux, poux (these are listed in dialogue in Le Bouclier Arverne, Astérix № 11). Many more in aux, as plural of al (cheval, chevaux, etc.). —Tamfang (talk) 19:10, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, these are the exception to the general rule (i.e. un clou, des clous), but the exceptions represent some of the most common words to end in "ou". In the past, French schoolchildren had to memorize such lists of exceptions, hence they would have immediately understood the joke in the Bouclier Arverne. Xuxl (talk) 21:03, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

/ji/ and /wu/
Is there any language where diphthongs /ji/ and /wu/ are common? Many languages forbid them, but why? And Chinese seems to have them, as there are $⟨yi⟩$ and $⟨wu⟩$ in pinyin, but in reality it does not have them, since they are used only in beginning of word, and are merely equivalents or $⟨i⟩$ and $⟨u⟩$ at beginning of word, and are pronounced /i/ and /u/. And why does French not also have combinations /ɥy/, /jy/ and /wy/? --40bus (talk) 21:13, 12 February 2024 (UTC)


 * In some languages (including early Indo-European) [i], [j], and/or [ji] and/or [ij] are allophones of a single phoneme (and similarly with [u] and [w]). Some linguists would ascribe prohibitions against [ji] or [wu] to the workings of the Obligatory contour principle... AnonMoos (talk) 22:57, 12 February 2024 (UTC)


 * In Maltese many verbs have conjugated forms starting with /jɪ-/: jikteb 'he writes', jipproduċi 'he produces'.
 * In fact even English has /wʊ/ (wood), /wuː/ (womb), /jiː/ (yeast), and even /jɪ/ in not-so-common words like yip. --Theurgist (talk) 08:32, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * /wu/ is common in Polish, e.g. Łódź /wut͡ɕ/.
 * /ji/ is common in Ukrainian, e.g. Київ /ˈkɪjiw/. — Kpalion(talk) 09:14, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Swedish has /jɪ-/ and /jiː-/ (and also Norwegian, I believe), although they more or less only appear at the beginning of words and aren't strictly diphtongs. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:13, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Polish is always a consonant and it may even be syllabic, as in jabłko 'apple', pronounced either  or . Sol505000 (talk) 14:03, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There a no syllabic consonants in Polish; jabłko is always two syllables, either /ˈjabw.kɔ/ (careful speech) or /ˈjap.kɔ/ (normal speech). --Kpalion, 17:05, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * "Jabłko" clearly has three phonetic syllables in careful pronunciation, a syllabic consonant in the middle and an initial stress. "Starowiślna" (a name of a street in Cracow) also has a syllabic approximant, a syllabic not dissimilar to the one in Czech Vltava. This is a major omission in all descriptions of Polish phonology and it shows that not all native Polish words are stressed on the penultimate syllable - syllabic consonants can disturb that pattern (also Brda sounds awfully like, with two syllables and a final stress, another thing that supposedly does not happen in native Polish words. Well, it clearly does). Sol505000 (talk) 20:11, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * On second thought, maybe "jabłko" is up to debate - after all, a syllabic is  and we don't say "jabuko". But in older pronunciation,  is syllabic. However, the reason we don't hear it as "jabuko" might have to do with the mandatory initial stress. Sol505000 (talk) 09:53, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If these 'exceptions' are brought about by the 'syllabic' consonants everywhere where the latter occur, then they are not really exceptions, and the consonants are not syllabic, at least not in phonological terms (though phonetically they might be like that). Hence the stress placement, also in examples like centymetr [tsɛnˈtɨmɛtr] and Przemyśl [ˈpʂɛmɨɕl]. This contrasts with Czech and Slovak, where such are full syllables in all senses. --Theurgist (talk) 09:57, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Pinyin ⟨yi⟩ seems to represent /i/. I know not why. —Tamfang (talk) 19:02, 26 February 2024 (UTC)