The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.
Did any of English speakers consider it significant when in early 21st century, there were one date in each year when the day and month number combined formed the number of the year? The first such dates was 20-01-2001 and the last one 20-12-2012. The next will be 21-01-2101. And when combined with 24-hour clock time such as 20:12, was it significant event like it could be for most other languages? There are no such dates in the MDY format; the last one was 12-31-1231 and there will never be such dates again, but there will be several in the DMY format.
10 February 2001, thus 10-02-2001, was the first palindromic date in the dd-mm-yyyy format since 29-11-1192 (thus more than 800 years). Did any English speakers notice that?
Which is the English name of a storey in an apartment building that is partially above ground and partially underground, due to curvature of terrain? In Finnish, it is called pohjakerros, and is one storey below ensimmäinen kerros. Normally pohjakerros and ensimmäinen kerros are synonyms, but not in this case.
Are there any words in French and Spanish that use Latin plurals like English datum - data and phenomenon - phenomena? As French and Spanish are direct descendants of Latin and English belongs to entirely different language group, it would make more sense for French and Spanish to have Latin plurals than English.
Does English ever use perfect tense when describing action that occurred entirely in the past but have strong connections to the present time? In Finnish, perfect is more common than imperfect in this case. For example, "Tämä kuva on otettu vuonna 2011" is more common than "Tämä kuva otettiin vuonna 2011", because the picture in question still exists. Does English ever say: "This picture has been taken in 2011"?
3: curvature of terrace The term might be "lower ground floor" in the UK, although what's described there is a specific feature of hundred-plus-year-old terraced townhouses. The front is below ground, and has a door for servants that opens onto a railed-off sunken area called "the area": the rear garden is level with the basement floor, I believe. (top view) But in the US, this phrase just means the first basement level. (I don't know what the equivalent feature is called on a brownstone.) Card Zero (talk)13:31, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the (artificially modified) terrain does slope, or rather, the gardens behind the terrace are one floor lower than the street in front. But a heavily developed townscape (or "improved", the Georgians would say) is not very Finnish, so yes, "walk-out basement" is the best answer. Card Zero (talk)19:29, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How would the imperfect tense look, anyway? "This picture was being taken in 2011"?
In Wikipedia articles I found several examples of "has been revived in [year]", "has been completed in [year]", and "has been repaired in [year]", but somehow it would be strange to say it about taking a photo. It seems to slant the meaning in a particular way. I can't describe what way that is, but I could imagine a detective announcing a deduction in those words: "I perceive that this picture has been taken in 1911 ... Watson." Card Zero (talk)10:37, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4. If anything I would expect fewer Latin plurals in French and Spanish, precisely because these languages are descendents of Latin so all Latin words should have undergone the same historical development. The prescriptive policies of the Académie may have supported that. I'm too lazy to look up the history (but 40bus could do that if they're interested), but that may have led to the Greek (!!!) phenomenon to become regular French phénomène/phénomènes. Note that datum entered the English language twice, first giving "date/dates" (presumably via French), subsequently giving the technical term "datum/data". --Wrongfilter (talk) 14:32, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2. It's hard to prove a negative. I'd guess many people using the dd-mm-yyyy format, including Englsih speakers, noticed the palindromicity. Only people scoring high on the nerdism spectrum will have figured out that the last palindromic dd-mm-yyyy date before 10-02-2001 was 29-11-1192.
4. The word phenomena is originally Greek. It makes sense to use Latin plurals if the singulars are unadapted Latin borrowings, which they are not for these words in any Romance language. ‑‑Lambiam16:19, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Finnish wikipedia article about palindromes lists palindromic monents (both day-month, year and clock time combined are same in both directions). There have been three such moments:
10-01-1001 at 10:01
11-11-1111 at 11:11
20-02-2002 at 20:02
The next three will be:
01-01-2112 at 10:10
21-12-2112 at 21:12
22-02-2222 at 20:22
These require both DMY format and 24-hour clock, so do any English speakers consider it amusing? In Finnish Wikipedia, the 2002 event is even mentioned as one of the events that happened in February 2002 in article about the year 2002. And do any English speakers ever consider 22:22 time significant? On Twosday, 22 February 2022, a party was organized in Prague at 22:22 on tram line 22. Would any English speakers do the similar in feel of 2's? And did any English speakers consider that day significant as it was a Tuesday, which is the second day of week in most countries? The words Twosday and Tuesday are homophones, but what about it being the 2nd day of week? And do English speakers see any relation to days in numbers that can be formed by day and month combined? I see relation of this date to number 209. --40bus (talk) 18:10, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3. The French may, depending on which floor has the main entrance, the rez-de-chaussée (street level, or ground floor) and a rez-de-jardin (garden level, that's also how google translates it). In German, Gartengeschoss may be used to distinguish from Erdgeschoss. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:C32F:8068:E6A1:2B84 (talk) 18:19, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4. Are there any words in French and Spanish that use Latin plurals like English datum - data and phenomenon - phenomena?
Correct, except you would say l'uovo for the singular. (If you didn't have the elision it would be lo uovo because the word starts with a vowel, but the elision is all but mandatory here.)
There are a lot of words like this, by the way. Sometimes the feminine plural applies only to a matched set. For example "the bedsheet" is il lenzuolo. The plural is le lenzuola if you mean a matched top-and-bottom sheet, but i lenzuoli if you mean just a whole bunch of sheets heaped in a pile ready to be washed. --Trovatore (talk) 01:12, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why does English have any native words with onsets /kv/, /tv/ and /sv/, unlike many other, even other Germanic, languages? In Swedish for example, all three are common and the last occurs in the name of the language svenska, and the country, Sverige. Why English does not have such onsets? And why English does not have any native words with a consonant + /v/ at the end, unlike e.g. Swedish and other North Germanic languages? --40bus (talk) 22:48, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The clusters /kv/, /tv/, and /sv/ represent proto-Germanic /kw/, /tw/, and /sw/. English retained the /w/ (see e.g. queen, twelve, and sweet), whereas in the other Germanic languages, it became /v/. Zacwill (talk) 23:42, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's also the matter of the exact realisations of these consonants. The exact nature of the /f–v–w/ split can be tricky in the Germanic languages, in particular if there's only a two-fold phonemic contrast there. Also, a phonemic voicing contrast isn't always really a phonetic voicing contrast. For what it's worth, in Dutch this /kw–tw–sw/ typically becomes /kʋ–tʋ–zʋ/ and the exact realisation of /ʋ/ varies quite a bit, but it's not [v].
Native speakers might correct me but I feel that the l isn't necessarily fully "executed" in words like twelve, elves and that the touch between tongue and teeth becomes looser than it would be in-between two vowels, or may even disappear into a borderline u in order to make space for the lips and teeth forming the v. Even though it is represented as twĕlv in IPA in Wiktionary. sv (as in names like Sven or Svalbard) would seem much easier in this respect.-- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:31C6:FA52:465:3A4A (talk) 10:34, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Native American-English (not Native-American English) speaker, and as far as I know the l is always fully realized in words like twelve and elves. There ARE several words with l + /v/ where the l is mostly or entirely silent, e.g. calves, halves, salve, but in twelve and elves the /l/ is fully present, and this is mandatory. 76.20.114.184 (talk) 19:25, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The English language needs a new word to concisely convey an abstract concept, that concept being a number that is large in the absolute but minuscule as a percentage of the whole. With such a word, we won't need to clarify what we mean by a "large" number. We can workshop the word here and then I will release it to the public. I would expect to see it in dictionaries within ten years. Only partly humorous. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 23:14, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, here I have to jump in, this being the language desk, and point out this very common misuse of technical language. Statistical significance is a precise concept from inferential statistics that means an observation would be unlikely to be seen under the null hypothesis ("unlikely" is the only imprecise part here, but see p-value). It has nothing at all to do with whether the observation is important to humans.
So "hundreds" is "statistically significant" if it's enough to refute some hypothesis being considered (say, "no one ever dies in a plane crash"). It has nothing whatsoever to do with, say, whether we consider this to be an acceptable risk individually or socially. --Trovatore (talk) 19:44, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the info, but I fail to see how it contributes to discussion of the issue at hand. Maybe a bit "unnecessarily tangential"? I do that all the time, I'm afraid, especially when I know what I'm talking about. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 20:17, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I know. But Bugs isn't the only one who has to read the comment. (A Wikipedia Instant Message function would be nice.)Or maybe I'm in a grouchy mood? It could happen! ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 20:28, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I wanted everyone to read it, because this misuse is one of my peeves, and the subject having come up, I thought it needed to be pointed out. --Trovatore (talk) 20:33, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I can't speak for anyone else. I doubt I'll remember the distinction long enough for it to do me any good. It's not something that comes up a lot. But I digress, while criticizing you for digressing. Exit stage right. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 20:45, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Words shape our thinking. The English language is praised for its rich library of words conveying very nuanced abstract concepts. Some languages lack such a library, and the people who speak them are not good with abstract concepts. Words are the vehicle by which we transfer concepts between each other. (Much is often lost in the concept→word→concept translation, but that's a different discussion.)A new word like what I seek would help some people stop being afraid of flying. This is different from spending thirty words explaining why they needn't be afraid, since they would have previously learned the aforementioned abstract concept. They don't need to comprehend and learn the concept, they just need to apply it to a new situation. They trust the concept, since they have applied it to previous situations with positive results. That's faster and more reliable. Communication improves with language efficiency and "information density"; that's why concision is important and verbosity is usually a hindrance to communication (see WP:TEXTWALL). And that's just one example. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 11:12, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hundreds of people die in plane crashes every year.
Yes, but that's megnomomalic.
I think we need a word we can pronounce. "Infinitesimal" takes some practice, but most people can master its pronunciation without too much practice. I'm not sure I could ever master "megnomomalic", and I can pronounce "polymorphism". ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 13:04, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From Google AI: "Claims that certain languages lack the capacity for abstract thought are not supported by linguistic evidence. Such claims often stem from misunderstandings or are based on the now widely challenged Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggested that language determines thought."
To be useful, a word must be understood. Except for jargon words (which are widely used in a tiny community), this means that the word must be widely used or transparently derived from such widely used words and, optionally, widely used affixes. I don't think megnomomalic qualifies.
As for the issue at hand: people already know that flying is usually quite safe (safer than driving to the airport, although less safe than taking the train to the airport, as people in Europe tend to do), but that knowledge doesn't stop the emotion of fear when the aeroplane lifts off the ground. Personally, I don't fear a crash when I fly, but I do fear making an unreasonably large contribution to disastrous climate change. I haven't flown in 15 years, except for a short tour in a glider. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:57, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Who knows. This could take weeks, months, or years. We don't yet have a viable candidate, let alone a few from which to choose, but it's been less than two days. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 13:29, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hundreds of people die in plane crashes every year.
Yes, but that's relative.
Sufficient? Maybe. Is there any important nuance that requires a different word? I don't know. But we might be able to wrap this up early (then we could all go home to our significant others and children). ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 15:31, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The larvae of a mungous number of species in the order Coleoptera are used as food in various cuisines. (The number is over 300, which may be larger than the number of mammal species that serve humans as food sources.) The number is not humungous though; it pales when compared to the total number of Coleoptera species, estimated to be roughly 400,000. It is merely mungous. ‑‑Lambiam19:50, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary says humongous is huge with the termination of monstrous. In the context of fearmongering there's the word bogeyman. "Big bogeyman number" might be catchy and easy to understand. A more intellectual ( = less easy to understand) variation could be "chimerical number". But that's not quite right because the number is real: the exaggeration is to the salience. Card Zero (talk)13:30, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because it seemed related to truncated graphs and other forms of misleading graphs, I looked there for a word that might fit Mandruss's purpose, but found nothing so far. Maybe someone more familiar with that topic might remember or come up with something suitable ... ---Sluzzelintalk19:40, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure I understand. Spanish has wikt:muchito, "a little lot", though it is often used as wikt:mucho with an endearment connotation.
Well, the Spanish diminutive often functions more as a colloquial endearment, than a literal interpretation that the object is smaller than expected. "Muchish", "a lottish"? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:44, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I actually like my English with a dash of Spanish. And a dash of French, and a dash of Italian, and even a dash of German. They add spice to the dish. I would like to see more words borrowed from Scandinavian languages. The other ~7,150 languages, I won't miss them too much and wouldn't be able to pronounce a lot of them. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 13:15, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any English words where ⟨all⟩ is pronounced as [æɫ] or [ɑːɫ] instead of usual [ɔːɫ]
Are there any native monosyllabic English words whose vowel is [ɑː], as in made-up words [kɑːp], [spɑːt], [tɑːn] and [klɑːk]? The [ɑː] sound was the pre-shift pronunciation of [eɪ̯], but are there any post-shift pronunciations with that vowel?
2.)This is complicated by the Cot–caught merger. For me, and many speakers your "made-up words" are homophones of 'cop', 'spot', 'tawn', and 'clock'. Even those varieties of American English that don't have the merger the vowel is pretty close to [a:] rather than [ɒ:] in words like 'cot', 'bot', and 'pond'. Lexical set#Standard lexical sets for English Well's PALM lexical set has some monosyllables but I don't know if you would count any as "native". I don't think any descended directly from Old English belong there. Eluchil404 (talk) 21:17, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2.) I guess there are quite many, when I think about it, often in connection with the r, such as 'are', 'bark', 'far', 'fart', 'hart', 'heart', 'tarn', 'yard', 'yarn'... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:40, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any such words where such words have not a connection with /r/? Are there any words where aCe is pronounced [ɑː], iCe is pronounced [iː] and uCe is pronounced [uː], where C = any consonant? --40bus (talk) 19:18, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In a book [Iola Hack Mathews; Chris Durrant (2013). Chequered Lives. Wakefield Press. ISBN9781743052587.] about the Hack family, early settlers of South Australia, "Bbe" is introduced without comment as an alternative name for Bridget Hack, née Watson, born to a wealthy Liverpool Quaker family of cotton traders.
The book offers no clues as to origin, meaning, or pronunciation, but it is used in such sentences as "Barton and Bbe were conscientious parents . . .", "Henry and Bbe's parents . . ." — far more often than her given name, also (in parenthesis) in the index. Am I missing something? Doug butler (talk) 23:20, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You don't need RD for this, and you'll get a better answer from Google AI. I did, but it's too long to copy here (and I always lose important formatting when I do that). Just submit the exact same question there. I assume you know how to do that on your platform; if not, best get busy learning how. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 15:12, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely better written. More correct? I suppose that depends on one's opinion of AI in general. It has served me fairly well so far, although it gave me wildly different answers to multiple asks of "How much is 13 lbs of gold worth?" within a minute. Like 70% variation. Still puzzling over that one. The answers to "When was Elizabeth I born?" are consistent and I assume correct. I wasn't there. lol. I try Google AI and judge for myself. AI is not omniscient. Yet. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 15:53, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When it does not find the correct answer in the data it has been fed, an LLM type AI will confidently produce an answer that sounds plausible but is mere confabulation. So you must always carefully check the result, also if the AI produces what look like supporting references – these may be bogus too. ‑‑Lambiam19:20, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Considering that few people will always carefully check the result—when did the population learn to think critically, I must have missed it—that is as scary as hell. And I don't scare easily. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 20:33, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How does it know when it has found the "correct" answer, Lambiam? For the date of someone's birth 500 years ago (or 25 years ago, for that matter), all we have is what various sources tell us, because we weren't there, and if the sources disagree, how does AI choose between them? -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]20:52, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Twain had a typewriter in 1874, and said he wrote the manuscript for Tom Sawyer on it (so, 1876?) ... and that he was the first. Though apparently he was sick of it already after a few months. Oh, but there's a footnote ... sounds like this was the first typewritten novel to be begun, but Life on the Mississippi was the first to be finished (though Twain didn't do the typing). Oh, but it says "chapters of": early chapters of the Mississippi story. I don't understand in what sense that invalidates Tom Sawyer, then. Card Zero (talk)16:06, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
DuncanHill; although his later stenographers are known, Josephine Hobby and William Edgar Grumman, both of these were hired after 1900. As far as I can tell, the Mississippi typist is only known as "a stenographer". Your sausage may be in jeopardy. Alansplodge (talk) 16:59, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's my hundred pounds at risk, your sausage. I am certain that "the Mississippi typist" had a name. Their name may be unknown, but that is not the same as them not having a name. They were not nameless. I am sure that had Twain (the most famous man in America, probably) been known to employ someone with the singular quality of having no name, someone would have noticed. DuncanHill (talk) 18:05, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No need to be pedantic. As you well know, when Alansplodge said that the stenographer was nameless, he meant that we don't know their name – a perfectly cromulent use of the word. --Viennese Waltz13:05, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The first book manuscript to be submitted in typewritten form (with a few handwritten insertions and corrections) in the UK is thought to be Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, who was an enthusiastic early adopter of the portable typewriter to aid his office work in managing The Lyceum Theatre for Henry Irving, and likely typed the final copy himself.
(I have delved into this because I possess an 1896 typewriter that is (from clues in the novel) likely the same model and theoretically could be Stoker's actual machine, though of course the odds are thousands to one against.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.153.108 (talk) 17:04, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the novel, which as you doubtless know portrays the protagonists defeating the old-fashioned Count Dracula by using then-modern information and communication technology, Mina Murray/Harker makes frequent use of her typewriter.
Although the model is not explicitly named, it is referred to as portable (and as being routinely carried about by Mina), as 'the Columbia machine' (or similar, a reference I cannot for the moment track down in the text on Gutenberg, but remember reading, and various editions do have textual changes), and as 'the "Traveller's" typewriter'.
All of these references best fit the Blickensderfer typewriter Model 5, the first truly portable typewriter, launched at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and advertised as "The Traveller's Companion."
It seems to me very likely (though not of course proven) that Stoker would have visualised in the novel the typewriter that he himself was using while writing it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.153.108 (talk) 22:03, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a pity our article on the Hammond Typewriter is far less detailed than on the Blinkensderfer; perhaps I'll use this reference to extend it slightly (I need to re-find a source for Dracula being the UK's first submitted novel typescript, as I can't remember where I read that).
Nevertheless, the clues in the novel still suggest that Mina's typewriter was a Blickensderfer Model 5, so I can continue my plan of getting mine restored (it's missing one key button, but otherwise is fully working and just needs cleaning by someone who knows what they're doing) and donating it to a Dracula-relevent museum. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230195} 90.193.153.108 (talk) 15:58, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone help explain to me the intricacies of Russian and Korean naming conventions? For example: Kim Jong-Un, Kim Jong-Il, Kim Il-Sung? If I was to make them be by an english naming convention, would I write it as "Jong-Un Kim", etc? TheClocksAlwaysTurn (The Clockworks) (contribs) 14:34, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The explanations in Korean name, perhaps in combination with Generation name for the given names, are quite extensive, you might find your answers there. Korean names are basically always transcribed in the order of Family Name - Given name but when they come to live in a Western country then the official formats may lead to this order being reversed. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:4155:DC39:C62C:A501 (talk) 15:34, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's more of a taunt. For reference (was it you asking the question back then?) this earlier request. From what I can figure it's one girl telling the other that she's got a secret but won't tell her, and a bit of back and forth around it, she knows it from her mum who asked her not to tell. Then at the end she can't really keep that secret and is basically giving it away (the other girl's birthday present). -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:69F:5CDB:6681:ED7B (talk) 19:29, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I guess the joke is that Madicken finds Elisabet naive and easy to fool, but in the end she realizes she hasn't only tricked Elisabet, but also herself in having her birthday gift spoiled in advance. "Nyah-nyah to you and me." 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:33, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Before school the children played football" is fine, no comma needed (British English). "It is good", said he" is OK, but does sound rather old-fashioned. The problem with using hash-signs to make a numbered list is that when people enter the editing window the numbers disappear. DuncanHill (talk) 12:07, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fronting focused elements is rarer in English than in some other languages, and when it does happen, the subject remains before the verb (unlike German). Therefore, if we want to front football to focus on it, we have to say Football, the children played before school. However even though that's grammatical, it still sounds unusual and a cleft sentence would be more natural: Football is what the children played before school. More natural still would be to do it with emphasizing intonation: The children played football before school. Again in sentence 3, the subject remains before the verb (unlike German): In school, Jack learned about animals. Sentence 5 not only has the wrong order, but a singular count noun like book requires some sort of determiner, e.g. That book, he has not read. In sentence 6, if we're wanting to put focus on eating, we have to say something like What Lee does to apples is eat them, but again intonation is the most natural sounding way: Lee eats apples; [he doesn't lob them at his sister's head]. —Mahāgaja · talk12:31, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've seen phrasing similar to (1) used when referring to someone playing music, although it would be poetic or archaic. (And I can't think of any specific examples now). I don't think I've ever seen it used for sport or games though. Iapetus (talk) 12:38, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1 does not readily communicate its sense (assuming it should mean the same as 2), but the structure is the same as "Hooray!" shouted the children before school, which is perfectly acceptable.
4 is the standard word order in the other Germanic languages, which use V2 word order. English remained V2 here longer than in other contexts, so people consider it fine or old-fashioned instead of wrong. 1, 3 and 5 are also in V2 order (and fine in the other Germanic languages, except for the missing determiner in 5), but not acceptable in contemporary English.
In my dialect (Canadian English), 1, 3, 5, and 6 are all incorrect. 2 would require a comma after "school". 4 would be acceptable, but marked as old-fashioned or pompous. Matt Deres (talk) 17:13, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Someone on reddit writes about vocalist Annie Haslam,[1] "I[n] my opinion shes quite Marmite and I preferred the instrumental sections and JC vox but on others she nails it ..."
I think JC vox refers to Jon Camp's vocals (another bandmember who sang on some of the tracks), but what does that mean about Marmite? Something like "bland"? This is British colloquialism I presume (the band was English), though I thought Marmite was Australian.
Haslam's vocals imho were extremely precise and they were the band's most distinctive feature. I can understand them not being to everyone's taste but either way, they were memorable, so I'm having trouble understanding what the Reddit poster was conveying. Would anyone describe Julie Andrews' voice that way? Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:F3FC:F0D7:CE7A:118F (talk) 04:24, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The second paragraph of Marmite quotes the marketing slogan "Love it or hate it.", which is certainly what the reddit poster alluded to. That's quite the opposite of bland. Our article will also tell you in the first sentence that Marmite is indeed British. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:09, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah thanks. I don't think that description of Annie Haslam's voice really fits, but ok. Some people swoon over it and I could imagine being a bit unmoved or finding it clinical at in places, but she hit very few bum notes and that sort of thing. So maybe more like "love or indifference"? But ok the Marmite explanation helped, so thanks. Here's a nice 3.5 minute live performance fwiw: [2]2601:644:8581:75B0:F3FC:F0D7:CE7A:118F (talk) 08:30, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, very few bum notes. She's not noted for her flatulence. Like my Scottish friend once said, "She's like Marmite, you either hate her or loathe her". 86.187.230.16 (talk) 09:05, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Marmite is definitely not bland. It has a very strong flavour, that people stereotypically either love or hate. It's not something someone would be indifferent to. Iapetus (talk) 10:36, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A Google search for New Words Oxford Dictionary 2025, and then making it back through the previous years, brings up meaningful links that will give you all the results. Of course there is a lag between the word being coined and making it into the dictionary, which may require a further search after identifying the word. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:E1BC:77C4:3092:E5C1 (talk) 11:07, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to rewrite the etymology section of the Chernobyl article to reflect this source, which indicates that the name most likely derives from the personal name Чьрнобыль (and not, as the article implies, from the Ukrainian word for mugwort). How should said name be transliterated? Zacwill (talk) 06:43, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the transcriptions given in the section Old East Slavic § Literary language, this would come out as Čǐrnobylǐ. I have the nagging feeling, though, that the final ⟨ь⟩ is the soft sign and does not represent a vowel.
Do Japanese, French, Swedish and Russian have diphthongs? Articles about these languages do not mention that they have any diphthongs. But I think that the ai in kanpai in Japanese is a diphthong, as wellas aï in maïs in French, oj in pojke in Swedish and ей in Russian Алексей are diphthongs. Is this so? --40bus (talk) 00:25, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Japanese, ai is effectively a dipthong, but it might not be perceived as such by native speakers, but rather as two distinct vowels that are adjacent. And in sung Japanese each one gets enunciated on its own and with equal timing, more or less.
The long-vowel forms of e and o are basically dipthongs, though: e is lengthened with i (as ei) and o is lengthened with u (as ou - so Tokyo, if transliterated literally would be 'Toukyou). 76.20.114.184 (talk) 00:56, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The difference between a diphthong and a sequence of vowel plus semivowel isn't always very clear. Neither is the difference between a diphthong and a sequence of two vowels in separate syllables. Or the difference between a diphthong with a very small change in tongue position and a monophthong, and such diphthongs often occur only in some dialects. So it may be that you hear a diphthong, but there are reasons to threat them as something else. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:45, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A rule that sometimes works is that two adjacent vowel sounds in a word do not morphologically form a diphthong but belong to separate syllables when (in some context) they have a difference in pitch due to (word, lexical or prosodic) stress. ‑‑Lambiam 10:37, 28 September 2025 (UTC) An example is Japanese サイロ (sairo), which has a downstep between the [á] and [ì]. ‑‑Lambiam09:09, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just be clear, we're talking about the places Wilusa and Lukka attested in Hittitie cuneiform records and generally considered to be (as names) the ancestors of Classical Greek Ilion and Lycia. The short answer is certainly no. There is no evidence (either direct or indirect) for such a shift. On the other hand, it is, perhaps, not impossible. I am unaware of any evidence or speculation on the origin of either name, and the sound shift k>s is not particularly uncommon. Both areas are sometimes said to have spoken the Luwian language in the Hittite period but, the actual evidence for that is pretty circumstantial. Eluchil404 (talk) 01:05, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to historian and linguist Rostislav Oreshko, most of the Hittite records concern a centre of Lukkan power located in the eastern part of the Troad,[3] which is to the east of where Wilusa is supposed to be located. But note that attempts to interpret wi- as a prefix, lacking further supporting evidence, are mere speculation. ‑‑Lambiam08:41, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why romanization often tends towards transcription rather than transliteration? For example, why Slavic languages using Cyrillic alphabet are only in some instances romanized using an alphabet resembling Slavic Latin alphabets, and most often with similar spelling to the target language?
How likely is it that Uralic and Turkic languages spoken in Russia will move to Latin alphabet like Kazakh?
In adaptations of "Home sweet home", are both instances of "Home" replaced with another word, such as "Coffee sweet coffee" or "Car sweet car"?
In clock times, is "fifteen" ever used instead of "quarter"? Is :15 ever "fifteen past" and :45 "fifteen to"?
Would native English speakers ever say: "It is eighteen" at 18:00?
Is 1⁄4 ever "one fourth"
Are decimals ever read as words, such as 2.41 as "two point forty-one"?
Why "and so on" is abbreviated as "etc." and not "a.s.o."?
Is "for example" aver abbreviated as "f.ex." or "ex".?
2. Highly unlikely in the current political situation. It would require either independence (like happened in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan etc.) or at least the current repressive Russian nationalism to be reverted in order make this possible. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:31DC:B892:E66D:C10B (talk) 09:15, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1. I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but the Cyrillic alphabets tend to have a lot of letters symbolizing affricates and (sibilant) fricatives that tend to be written with two or more letters in most Latin alphabets. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:44, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1) If you are romanizing something for use in an English language text, it makes sense to do so in a way that English speakers will find easy to understand. Basically things like Đ or Dž are going to be just as foreign looking and uninterpretable to most English speakers as Ђ is. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:45, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The IPv6 address poster brought on an interesting point so I'll ask two additional questions:
Question 1: Is this inventor's name German in origin? And if so, was the original name Schutz (meaning shelter) or Schütz (meaning shooter)?
These are apparently two different German names, but made complicated by the fact that Schütz is sometimes rendered as Schutz even in German. As all the references posted so far are in French, and the company is located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, it's possible that the Schütz family chose to render it Schutz. Or the inventor's birth certificate says "Emil Schütz" but he goes by "Emil Schutz" in that part of Swiss for convenience.
Question 2: Where and when was Emil Schutz born? (This is probably a Humanities RD question, but I'm interested in it primarily because the answer helps to solve Question 1)
Hopefully there's a bit more RS about him. I would love to start a short stub WP article on him, but so far there are only 2 or 3 sources and they each mention him in only one sentence.
Regarding the name Schutz/Schütz, according to [7] there could be several origins, one of them seems to be an original "Schutz" without Umlaut, from Germany. Still, Schütz is much more prevalent, and most the Schutz without Umlaut seem be be in French-speaking areas or in the US, making it a real possibility that the Umlaut was dropped. I noted the pronounciation in the Youtube video which is consistent with the German pronounciation without the Umlaut. (Plus the French would typically pronounce the u in the same way as Germans would pronounce the Umlaut-ü). This could be an indication that the Inventor called himself Schutz without Umlaut. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:31DC:B892:E66D:C10B (talk) 13:56, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Yes, I agree it's most likely Schütz, but rendered without the Umlaut for a French-speaking area. Let's see what info the company can provide. Epideurus (talk) 04:07, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the bottom line of my last comment was: The pronounciation by the speaker in the video (for German speakers: Schutz rather than Schütz; for French speakers: Choutz rather than Chutz) makes it more likely that he himself called and spelled himself Schutz. (And he must have come from an at least partially German-speaking family, due to 1. the pronounciation and 2. his first name being Emil rather than Emile.). But there is a fair chance that, a number of generations before, his ancestors were known as Schütz due to the generally higher prevalence of this version. -- 2A02:8424:6281:D401:6DEB:FC3F:2F7E:41F6 (talk) 06:26, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, now for me to ask a question. Is there some elucidating scientific knowledge about the "choice" of accents when there are several options with similar priors? I've got two sample scenarios:
- Scenario 1: Children with parent A from, say, Texas and parent B from England or perhaps even Scotland, growing up in a non-English speaking country and with little connection to the English-speaking world apart from their parents. Let's assume that intensity of communication with either parent is quite comparable.
Are those children more likely to: 1. "decide" on an accent that is close to one of their parents'? 2. Develop a mixed accent that has elements of the American and the British version of English? 3. Use the Texan accent with parent A (and parent A's relatives) and the British accent with parent B?
- Scenario 2: A perfectly bilingual speaker of French and Spanish who has learned English (at an age when one is bound to have a clearly distinguishable accent). There are a couple of characteristics which could distinguish a French-speaker's accent from a Spanish speaker's, like: 1. The pronunciation of the letter R is really different between Spanish and French, but both are really different from English. 2. French has a "tense" pronunciation of vowels, while Spanish vowel pronunciation is what I would call "classic", Latin-style, with limited variety. 3. French speakers typically don't pronounce the English H at all, while Spanish speakers might substitute it with Spanish J.
Without experimental observations these questions cannot be answered with certainty.
Scenario 1: My guess is the bi-accent choice 3, since children growing up with parents speaking different languages to them respond in the language they're spoken to. The child may initially not even realize that what they hear are varieties of a single language.
Scenario 2: Adult speakers learning a new language tend to map the phones they hear to already familiar phonemes, so a bilingual learner has a larger repertoire to "cherry-pick" from. The result can be expected not to be a kind of average, but a mixed bunch of French and Spanish phonemes. Since stress is a giveaway for identifying a French accent and stress in Spanish is much closer to English stress, a listener will more likely identify the accent as Spanish. ‑‑Lambiam11:17, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know of scientific studies on this, but I have anecdotal evidence. I know a family living in Germany in which the father is American and the mother is British. The son grew up speaking English at home with his parents, but German at school and in the wider world. Rather surprisingly (to me), he speaks English with a German accent (and even makes typically German mistakes in his English). To scenario 2, here in Berlin I have met people who have grown up bilingual in German and Turkish and then learn English as a foreign language. The ones I have met sound German, not Turkish, when speaking English, though that may because they live in a German-speaking environment. Perhaps German-Turkish bilinguals who live in Turkey would sound more Turkish when speaking English. —Mahāgaja · talk12:44, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
People can switch between languages and also between a regional dialect and the standard language, treating them as separate languages. But people normally don't switch between accents. Most are barely aware of their accent.
There are many people, growing up in the Netherlands, who speak Riffian with their parents at home and Dutch at school. They speak Dutch with a distinctive accent. In fact, I heard the same accent in the speech of some French Algerians, grown up in France, speaking French. Those are native bilinguals, but one language shows up in the other as an accent.
My family comes from the north and east of the Netherlands, I grew up in the south. In the south, people think I'm from the east and in the east, people think I'm from the south. Apparently, my accent is a blend of my family's accent and my peers' accent. I think my consonants are more southern and my vowels more eastern. I do have the kou–kauw split though.
So I expect than in scenario 1 you'll get option 2: a blend of accents.
Scenario 2: This speaker would have less difficulty with the th than a French speaker (it's a relatively rare sound, but occurs both in Spanish and English) and less difficulty with the vowels than a Spanish speaker (French has a larger vowel set, matching more, but still not all of the English vowels). Some distinctive feature of both a French accent and a Spanish accent would be missing. I think you could call that a blend. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:33, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is not uncommon to see the succession of /t/ + /s/ tied together in IPA transcriptions, such as
in German /t͡sunt/. Indeed, it can be argued that this is actually a single phoneme. However, they same can be argued for /p/ + /f/, yet one will always see
/pfʊnt/ and never /p͡fʊnt/. Is there some reason for this discrepancy? ‑‑Lambiam11:11, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. So I was wrong when I wrote one will never see this. Tying of /ts/ and /tʃ/ is also applied haphazardly in Wiktionary. ‑‑Lambiam22:41, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
