Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 February 5

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February 5

Etymology of Leir

Following a tangent from this thread (King Arthur and English royals) on the Humanities desk, I just added some references to Leir of Britain. However, there were two statements I couldn't easily source:

"It is often erroneously claimed that there is a link between Leir and the Welsh and Irish sea-gods Llyr and Ler (derived from Common Celtic *Leros "Sea"), but the names are not etymologically related."

"Leir is the eponymous founder of Leicester (Legra-ceaster or Ligora-ceaster in Anglo-Saxon), known as Cair Leir in Old Welsh, where Leir is a hydronym derived from Brittonic *Ligera."

Would anyone with better search skills (or needing less sleep) or etymology knowledge like to take a crack at this? Thank you, WikiJedits (talk) 01:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

User:Cagwinn has supplied the references – thank you! Best, WikiJedits (talk) 13:23, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

And Then There Were None

I've a very odd question. In the book And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, the murderer (whose name I'm not telling), hides his name under two pseudonyms. In the English version, they are:
Ulick Norman Owen & Una Nancy Owen => U. N. Owen => Unknown (very clever, isn't it?)
Now, considering that this book is: the world's best-selling mystery and the seventh most popular book of all time, I wondered how intenational translators managed to localize this wordplay. Looking at Wikipedias in other languages, I was able to collect a short list of them:

• Czech: Norman Zacharias Namy & Nancy Zasu Namyová
• Dutch: N. I. Manth & Nancy Isabelle Manth
• French: Algernon Norman O'Nyme & Alvina Nancy O’Nyme
• Hungarian: V. A. Lacky
• Russian: А. Н. Оним
• Slovak: N. E. Znamy

My questions are:

• Could someone explain to me the puns behind these names? (the French one should be "anonyme", thank you)
• Could someone complete these names? (giving the male and female given names)
• It would be amazing to find other translations of this world's best-selling mystery (German, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Greek, Polish...).

--151.51.62.164 (talk) 18:43, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The Russian one is also roughly "anonyme", just in Cyrillic. Russian has borrowed a lot of words from French, so that's not too surprising. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:28, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Here's another one... in Chinese, the pun is lost. According to zh:无人生还, the name is translated as "U·N·欧文", which is a direct phonetic transliteration (the characters are pronounced like "oh-wen" and mean nothing in particular). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:30, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The German article suggests "Mr. Unknown" (I'm pretty sure this choice of "Mr" over "Herr" is deliberate). Bit boring. Good book though. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 19:56, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

What a waste! They could have chosen: Ulick Norman Backhunt => U.N.Backhunt => Unbekannt! --151.51.62.164 (talk) 12:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The Dutch name works much like the English: The initials "spell" Nimanth, which is pronounced the same in Dutch as niemand, meaning "no one". Marco polo (talk) 20:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't speak the languages, but Czech and Slovak N.E. Znamy and N.Z. Namy sound like they also refer to a word such as "neznamy" or "niznamy" or "nznamy" which would mean "no one" Rimush (talk) 22:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, neznamý means "unknown". Marco polo (talk) 02:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The Polish translator apparently didn't attempt to render the name in Polish and left it as "U.N. Owen". I didn't read the book, but I'd guess the game of words is explained in some footnote. — Kpalion^(talk) 10:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

As for Hungarian, V. A. Lacky refers to "valaki" meaning "someone" or "anyone", the prefix "vala-" corresponds to the English prefix "some-" or "any-" ("valahol" means "somewhere", "valahogy" means "somehow", etc.). ---Sluzzelin talk 11:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Although I haven't read the Japanese version, the Japanese wikipedia page lists the killer's pseudonyms as オーエン夫妻, i.e. "Mr. and Mrs. Owen". As with the Chinese, the pun is ignored. I suspect that with both languages, translators are frequently not all that competent in their source languages and completely miss puns and wordplay. (The bungling in Mandarin of the stalactite/stalagmite quip in Harry Potter is a good example.) 220.29.16.77 (talk) 13:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I've read the Japanese translation. If I remember correctly, the pun was explained in somewhere in the book. Probably in the translator's notes. In the ja article , it is explained too. Oda Mari (talk) 13:42, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it's a matter of competence, it may just be that they believe (or are taught, or what have you) that getting a phonetic translation is more important than preserving the pun. When Chinese people want to translate something with a pun they can do a great job of it (see, for example, 黑客, which both preserves the sound of "hacker" and creates a nice pun where there was none before). Also, in popular culture, while the vast majority of foreign names get translated phonetically, some are a bit of a mix (for example, Tiger Woods is more often called 老虎·伍兹, Tiger Wusi). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 13:45, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The Mandarin translations of Harry Potter were terrible (the mainland and Taiwanese versions both). The Japanese ones were very clever in a number of ways. See here for a good analysis. Steewi (talk) 04:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Hatmep

What is a girlie bar?174.3.98.236 (talk) 19:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

What has that link got to do with your question? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:49, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

A strip club. Rimush (talk) 23:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Although it could be a Baby Ruth. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

What is "hatmep"? Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Bugs: I think the connection in the OP's piped link is at Bottoms Up Club. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Babe Ruth?

What is a Baby Ruth?174.3.98.236 (talk) 19:32, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

A candy bar. You asked something about a "girlie bar", with a link to an unrelated article. I was trying to think of a candy bar with a girl's name, and Baby Ruth came to mind immediately. It was not named for Babe Ruth. Its name was a happy coincidence with the Babe's rise to baseball stardom. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:35, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

English AO words

I am trying to assemble a list of English words (not including proper nouns) that have the vowel combination ao, and so far, all I have thought up is aorta (which sounds like it was borrowed from Greek). Any other 'ao' words? Note that the word does not have to start with ao. Googlemeister (talk) 20:25, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Aorist, baobab, kaolin, laotian.--151.51.62.164 (talk) 20:27, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
(:-) ==> [1] --151.51.62.164 (talk) 20:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

http://www.morewords.com/contains/ao/ ny156uk (talk) 20:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

How could Laotian not be a proper name? I would have included Maori but for this condition. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:55, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Laotian is an adjective, not a proper noun. Laos is a proper noun. Maori is both an adjective and a noun. --151.51.62.164 (talk) 21:00, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Laotian, like Maori, is both a proper adjective and a proper noun. "The Laotian ambassador was unaware that the president had told his staff not to have any contact with the Laotian." Marco polo (talk) 21:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

CHAOS. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:57, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The OED also has aodai, aorn as an obsolete form of adorn, aoudad,

aoul, aoure as an obsolete form of adore, bacallao, balao, baobab, cacao, caouine, caoutchin, caoutchouc, capitao, chaodical, chaogenous, chaology, chaomancy, chaos (and other derivatins of chaos, chaotic etc), ciao, curacao, dhao, extraordinary, feijao, gaol, gaocracy, gaon, gherao, giaour, hao, haole, haoma, haori, jiao, kareao, kaolin, kaon, karaoke, lycaon, macao, mangeao, manoao, maomao, metaoleic, miaow, mormaor, naology etc, naos, naow, niaouli, ongaonga, paolo, pardao, phaometer, pharaoh, pingao, qipao, sabaoth, saouari, sertao, tao, taotai, tetraonid etc, tiao, urao, yao, yaourt. Obviously some of these are Chinese or Portuguese and probably rarely if ever used in English. Extraordinary, chaos, karaoke, and pharaoh are regular words though. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The only really English word in that lot appears to be gaol. Alansplodge (talk) 01:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you saying "chaos" isn't English? If by that you mean it's not of Germanic origin, then over half of the English language is not "really English". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I was also going to object to Alan's extraordinary claim. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 02:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

"Chaos" is from Greek via Latin. There are countless Greek and Latin words and roots in English. Regarding that British oddity "gaol", which to me always looks like it should be followed by "time", as the Flintstones might sing, "We'll have a ga-ol time!" Are there any other English words that start with "ga" and are pronounced as if they started with "ja"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:56, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes alright, point taken. I was trying to point out that "ao" mainly appears in loan words like "ciao". Alansplodge (talk) 18:42, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

G says: Generally, G is soft before E, I, and Y, and hard otherwise, but there are many English words of non-Romance origin where G is soft or hard regardless of position (e.g. "get"), and three (gaol, margarine, algae) in which it is soft even before an A. The only one of those latter three words that starts with g is gaol, so it looks like it's the only one. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:35, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

See mortgagor. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:24, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Words where the root is naturally a soft "g" (as with mortgage) make some sense. "Algae" and "margarine" are less clear, because their roots, "alga" and "margaric" are pronounced with a hard "g". "Get" comes from a Nordic language, and German itself is loaded with words starting with "ge" which are pronounced with a hard "g". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:17, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

"Algae" contains the digraph -ae, which until the traditional English pronunciation of Latin fell out of use in the twentieth century was pronounced /-i/, and so palatalised the preceding consonant. 'G' in Germanic roots (both Anglo-Saxon and Norse) is usually /g/: "get", "give", "begin". (They generally were palatalised in A-S, but to /j/ not to /dʒ/: in some cases such words are now written with 'y'). The pronunciation /mɑ:gə'rijn/ is known in the UK, though it is now rare. --ColinFine (talk) 21:12, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Seems there are only a few commonly used words with the ao letter combo. Googlemeister (talk) 15:57, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Metroad

What is the etymology of metroad?174.3.98.236 (talk) 22:12, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It's probably a portmanteau of metropolitan and road. Bʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{Speak up!} 22:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It might be confused with metro ad (subway advertisement). -- Wavelength (talk) 01:42, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly how I pronounced it. But if it's a portmanteau, then it would be pronounced different.174.3.98.236 (talk) 03:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The article would indicate that the "portmanteau" answer is on the money. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:52, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Stress in single-syllable words

Maybe this should go to Humanities section, if so, please move it.

I was taught that single-syllable words always have a stressed vowel. It seems, however, that for the purposes of meter in poetry, one can arbitrarily treat each one-syllable word as either stressed or not, e.g. in Meter (poetry) there is this example of iambic pentameter:

So	long	as	men	can	breathe,	or	eyes	can	see,
So	long	lives	this,	and	this	gives	life	to	thee.
da	DUM	da	DUM	da	DUM	da	DUM	da	DUM

In this example, all the words are of one syllable, so perhaps this could equally be trochaic pentameter, or even a trisyllable-foot meter with an extra syllable? Or is the idea that the words chosen to be stressed are usually content words, and unstressed ones are function words? If so, there are some violations of this in this verse. Is there no formal criterion for this sort of thing? --216.239.45.4 (talk) 23:42, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

This is one of the distinctions between grammatical words (function words) and lexical words. Grammatical words such as so, as, can, or, can in the first line are frequently unstressed. (Can there is an auxiliary verb, not a lexical verb.) The second line doesn't fit this pattern, though, as lexical "lives, gives" are also unstressed. I think this might be a difference between lexical stress and prosodic stress. In English, a word like arachnophobia said in isolation seems to have greater stress on the phob than on the rach, whereas lexically both syllables are simply stressed, because of extra prosodic stress on the phob. So the destressing of 'live, give' above might be due to metrical prosody rather than the words themselves. It seems to me that 'lives, gives' aren't nearly as destressed as the 'as, or' in the preceding line: The second line feels more like da DUM DEE DUM da DUM DEE DUM da DUM to me. I'm curious as to what others think here. kwami (talk) 23:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It is simply false that "single-syllable words always have a stressed vowel". --ColinFine (talk) 23:59, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

What Kwami and Colin said. See also Stress (linguistics) and Prosody. In languages (like English) that have stress-based poetic meters, it's poets' subtle manipulation of the differences between ideal metrical rhythms and the actual prosodic rhythms of speech that gives life to verse. (No one with a sense of normal speech patterns could possibly read your [216.239.45.4] example as trochaic, by the way.) Deor (talk) 00:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The stress comes not from the individual words, but from which ones have focus within the sentence. This involves issues of discourse, new/old information, and prosody. Put those same words in a different context, or mix them around somehow, and they would have a different stress pattern. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:53, 6 February 2010 (UTC)