Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 March 7

= March 7 =

Why was English more wordy the further in the past?
Less info per thousand phonemes or graphemes. I have guesses but don't know what's considered most responsible. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:31, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * What's the basis for this assertion? <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 03:58, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * One of the reasons I have never been able to get into Jane Austen's and the Bronte sisters' novels is the excessively wordy way in which characters are made to speak. I can only assume they reflected normal practice at the time. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:21, 7 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The context in which Jane Austen wrote is usually called "Augustan prose", but our Augustan prose article focuses almost entirely on the subject-matter of the writings, with very little on linguistic style. There are certain fixed phrases which were required by the etiquette of the day, and the nature of the snappy repartee between Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice means that personal criticisms were often expressed in a rather abstract form, but I don't find Austen to be excessively verbose... AnonMoos (talk) 08:55, 7 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The verbiage of their characters may have been class-dependent. --Lambiam 09:35, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The authors of the U.S. Constitution (1787) and Declaration of Independence (1776) used some very elaborate locutions to handle indelicate subjects such as (please forgive my indelicate language) slavery or the Native American Indian tribes (and their lands).
 * Although I'm an ardent believer in both documents, I would suggest reading and interpreting the list of specific grievances that follow the noble Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. And the Constitution's text (before the emancipating Thirteenth Amendment of 1863) almost never uses the word slave or slavery, using various wordy and indirect phrases when it does indeed touch upon the Peculiar Institution. Shakescene (talk) 21:31, 9 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Many anti-slavery advocates in the 19th century before 1865 thought it was a positive thing that the U.S. Constitution didn't use the word "slave", since to do so would have declared that slavery was a legitimate part of the system, while not using the word meant that the Constitution recognized certain necessities caused by the existence of the "institution" without endorsing it. Much of the wording of the CSA constitution was directly borrowed from the U.S. constitution, but the CSA constitution openly used the words "slave" (a number of times) and "slavery".  And the U.S. constitution called Indians "Indians"... AnonMoos (talk) 07:36, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Interesting. How did it refer to native Americans? -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * "Indians". Regarding slavery, the term "other persons" was used, as noted in Slavery and the United States Constitution and Three-fifths Compromise. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:21, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Several euphemisms were used -- "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit" in the clause prohibiting a ban on the transatlantic slave trade before 1808, "Person held to Service or Labour" in the clause about returning fugitive slaves, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 23:53, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

raisu in Japanese
The Guardian has an article today about karē raisu. Is raisu a common name in Japanese for rice, or only as a loanword in the context of this imported dish? Following interwiki links gets me to ja:米, and searching for that character plus "pronunciation" gets me something that sounds quite different. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 15:34, 7 March 2024 (UTC)


 * No 2 is correct (it would be bizarre for Japanese people to borrow the general word for their traditional staple food from alien civilizations where rice was much less important). AnonMoos (talk) 16:46, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks (sure, but I didn't know if it's a loanword or a native word that shares an etymology with "rice". I assume "rice" has eastern origins.) AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 18:06, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * For reference, here's the etymology for rice: rice. Although by that section there are possible "eastern" origins going as far as the Austroasiatic languages, I'm pretty sure that if Japanese had inherited such a term, it wouldn't have been so phonetically similar unless by very big coincidence. GalacticShoe (talk) 18:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)


 * If you replace "ja.wikipedia.org" in the URL of what you linked to with "en.wiktionary.org", then you get to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B1%B3, which has lots of info on the character and its pronunciations in various languages... AnonMoos (talk) 22:49, 7 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The name of the dish, written in Japanese characters, is カレーライス. The characters are katakana, which is typical for loan words. The donor language is clearly English. The article on the Japanese Wikipedia states that the dish was introduced to Japan from England during the Meiji era. --Lambiam 19:50, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Aside from compounds, ライス alone is also commonly used to refer to a plate of rice. 米 rarely refers to cooked rice, and 飯 and 御飯, the native words for cooked rice, more commonly refer to a meal or food in general. Nardog (talk) 01:07, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The Japanese Wikipedia also has articles on チキンライス (chikin raisu – chicken rice) and オムライス (omu raisu – omelette rice). --Lambiam 08:19, 8 March 2024 (UTC)