Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 June 12

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June 12

Translation, bitte

The auto translator doesn't understand "Publikumsreis" in "Preisgeld: EUR 1.900,- (Hauptpreis EUR 1.100,-/Publikumspreis EUR 800". Clarityfiend (talk) 02:53, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

A Publikumspreis is an "audience award" -- an award at a competition made either by broad vote of the audience or by acclamation. Looie496 (talk) 04:16, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Obviously, it helps to spell it right. Publikums means "audience" and I take preis to be a cognate to "prize". Presumably "Preisgeld" would mean a prize made of gold? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:59, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

German has some fun word constructions (my favourite being the word for skunk, Das Stinktier (the stink animal)). Preis is also price iirc. The meaning is communicated by the article though. Hauptpries - head (as in head of state, lead) prize or head price, audience price, etc. =p Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 05:07, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

It appears that "price" and "prize" are related words, which figures. That's a funny thing about German, how literal or descriptive so many words are. My favorite would be bustenhalter, which means "busts holder". No euphemisms there! I wonder if The Price is Right would translate to Der Preis ist Recht? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:30, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

The correct spellings are "Hauptpreis" and "Büstenhalter". JIP | Talk 08:27, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

And the Dutch call it Borsthouder BH for short sesquepedalia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sesquepedalia (talk • contribs) 04:04, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

The abbreviation "BH" is used in German as well. I remember having read a conversation where someone said that Beast Machines was renamed "Beast Hunters" somewhere because the abbreviation "BM" reminds people of a bowel movement, and then someone replied that in Germany, the abbreviation "BH" reminds people of brassieres. JIP | Talk 04:37, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

My German is not at native level, but I'm pretty sure the full translation is "Prize money: EUR 1900 - (Main prize EUR 1100 - Audience prize EUR 800)". Looie496 (talk) 05:24, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I forgot Geld also means moneny and that haupt- really is main. :p Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 05:27, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Or its Yiddish variant, Gelt. Google translate says haupt by itself means "all". I'm guessing that means kind of like "all-encompassing", as opposed to alle? Hauptmann, for example translates as "Captain", but sounds like it would more generically mean "main man"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:33, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Originally, Haupt means "head", and that makes Hauptmann parallel to "captain", which derives from Latin caput, "head". Hauptpreis is the main prize (presumably awarded by a jury), Publikumspreis is the audience prize, and Preisgeld is prize money. Oh, and "The Price is Right" was Der Preis ist heiß (hot) in German, because Der Preis ist richtig doesn't sound good. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:25, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

And "Haupt" is cognate with "caput", unlike the ordinary German word for "head", "Kopf". --ColinFine (talk) 12:35, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't Kopf also come from caput? It looks closer to caput than Haupt does. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:16, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

In etymology, looks can be very deceiving. Haupt doesn't come from caput, but they're descended from the same Indo-European root. (Think of them as aunt and niece rather than mother and daughter.) Kopf, on the other hand, is a loanword from Latin cuppa, which means "cup" (and is also the ancestor of that English word). How did a word meaning "cup" come to mean "head"? Via slang. At some stage in some dialects of Vulgar Latin cuppa was a slang word for "head" (just as in somewhat old-fashioned American English slang, mug means "face"). And that word got taken over by German speakers, subjected to the High German consonant shift, and came out Kopf. Meanwhile, a different slang word for "head", testa, which literally meant "pot", became the standard non-slang word for "head" in Italian and French (tête). —Angr (talk) 14:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Fascinating. Kopf is cognate with cup. And "mug" is still in use, typically in connection with a face photo, such as a police "mug shot", or any face-only picture (especially if it's of mediocre quality). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:02, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

English Words with Accents

Some English words are written with accents. Most of these are words adopted from French & other languages. Here are a few examples.

cliché or cliche - Our article Cliché gives these two options, with and without the accent.

résumé; sometimes spelled resume - The article Résumé also gives two options.

naïve - The article Naïve gives four versions of the word. Naïve, naive, naïf and naif.

(I really do have a question. Where did I put it? Obviously not here; at least not so far.)

The Wiktionary page "Appendix:English words with diacritics" has about 260 items. It is an interesting mix. Some are words or phrases with accents which look familiar to me (crèche, coup de grâce, Noël), some are familiar words that I have rarely (zoölogy) or never (ëconomy) seen with accents, and some are words I don't recognize at all, with or without accents (filmjölk, kåldolmar, surströmming). (This last point is not meant to suggest that me not recognizing them means anything more than that they are relatively uncommon.)

To the question:

Why are there only a comparatively small number of English words with accents? Is it because:

a) Over time, many words with accents have been adopted into English but most of these have since lost the accents.

OR BECAUSE

b) Only a comparatively small number of words with accents have ever been adopted into English.

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 05:37, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I would say a bit of both. But mainly a.). Accents have only been retained when necessary for pronunciation, i.e. that typical English pronunciation (to the extent it exists) would be very different. 'Naive' looks like it should be pronounced the same way as knave for example. I think they are getting less common now, seeing 'naïve' is very rare. There is better reason with 'résumé' to avoid confusion with the English word 'resume', but as an English English speaker I avoid this by spelling it CV. The words you haven't heard of, well neither have I, they appear to be more recent borrowings, and I'm sure if they ever become common will submit to common spellings, accent free. 90.214.166.169 (talk) 09:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

All the words the OP listed as words he/she didn't recognise (filmjölk, kåldolmar and surströmming) are Swedish food names. As far as I know, "zoölogy" is a misspelling. The two-dot thingy there is not an accent mark but a diaeresis, meaning that the vowel's pronunciation doesn't change but the two "o" vowels belong to different syllables. Therefore the word "zoölogy" means "zo-ology" and not "zoo-logy", but there is no such thing as "zo-ology". JIP | Talk 10:19, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Eh? It's pronounced zo-ology (first o long as in go). DuncanHill (talk) 10:33, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I've never seen "ëconomy" either, but that would be a way of showing that the "e" was originally "oi" in Greek. I don't know why that would be necessary though, even in Latin "oi" was regularly spelled as plain old "e". Adam Bishop (talk) 10:57, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I've really only started to use accents properly in English since the spell-checker in Firefox and Google Chrome told me to. It allowed me to do so without using special key combinations on my keyboard. I hardly ever write anything freehand now, so what my computer does is a major influence. 11:15, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

The article zoology says:

The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον (zōon, “animal”) + λόγος (logos, “knowledge”).

The article trema (diacritic) says:

The trema is usually used to denote one of two distinct phonological phenomena: diaeresis (pronounced /daɪˈɛrɨsɨs/ dy-ERR-ə-səs), in which the trema is used to show that a vowel letter is not part of a digraph or diphthong; and umlaut (pronounced /ˈʊmlaʊt/ UUM-lowt), in which the trema illustrates a sound shift.

Now as far as I can see, both of these uses (diaeresis or umlaut) are wrong. The Greek words that "zoology" comes from are "zōon" and "logos", not "zōn" and "ologos". On the other hand, both of the "o"'s are pronounced the same, except for the length. It's not like it would be an "oö" diphthong (which is possible to conceive of, but isn't actually used in any language that I know of). If "zoölogy" is indeed a correct spelling, please explain in detail why. JIP | Talk 12:53, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I have not seen zoölogy written with a trema before, but this is an example of diaeresis as DuncanHill points out. According to the OED, zoology is accurately pronounced /zəʊˈɒlədʒɪ/ zoh-O-lə-jee, but popularly as /zuːˈɒlədʒɪ/ zoo-O-lə-jee. It is not pronounced /ˈzuːlədʒɪ/ ZOO-lə-jee, so the trema is used to indicate this. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 13:09, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

The original Greek spelling of zōon is ζωον, i.e. the ō is an omega and the o is an omicron. They are pronounced differently, and in Greek the word has two syllables. In the English word zoo, the two forms of o have been contracted to a single syllable. In zoology that is not the case. The word has four syllables when pronounced correctly. Hans Adler 13:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

So we should ideally be saying "Let's go to the zoh-oh", not "Let's go to the zoo". OK, pedants, get to it.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, zoo is really a contraction of zoological garden, so I guess the current pronunciation is simply a reproduction of the first syllable. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 06:44, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

The question then becomes: Is it pronounced "zoo-ological" or "zo-ological"? We usually hear the former, but I'd assume the latter is more "correct". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:26, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Assuming I have understood the pronunciations you have written right (English is not my native language), then going by Jacklee's reply above: "According to the OED, zoology is accurately pronounced /zəʊˈɒlədʒɪ/ zoh-O-lə-jee, but popularly as /zuːˈɒlədʒɪ/ zoo-O-lə-jee.", you are correct, "zo-ological" (with the first syllable rhyming with "oh no!") is more correct, but "zoo-ological" (with the first syllable rhyming with "I made a poo-poo!") is an alternative, but less "correct", option. I don't have personal experience on the matter, as I've never had to discuss zoology/zoölogy in English. JIP | Talk 19:32, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I take issue with Wanderer57's very first sentence: Some English words are written with accents. Name one. Just one will do. That would be a counter-example to my belief that English words contain precisely zero diacritics in their written form. Is any child at any school in the entire anglosphere ever taught about acutes, diaereses, cedillas, umlauts, tildes or any of the others? No, and that's because all those marks belong to words from other languages.

Now, we sometimes choose to use foreign words in texts and speech otherwise written or spoken in English. And if it really is a foreign word we're using, then of course it should be written with whatever diacritics are appropriate to it.

But English has stolen a lot of formerly foreign words, which have become fully-fledged English words, in the process losing whatever diacritic marks they may have had. Such as: the French words début, première and café, which became the English words debut, premiere and cafe. This causes a lot of people a lot of confusion, but I don't know why.

If we're communicating in English about the first screening, at an English-speaking location, of a new English-language movie, we would naturally choose an English word to refer to that event: its "premiere". The fact that that word was originally a French word, and one containing a grave accent, is irrelevant to what it is being used as now: an English word, and one (by definition) without a diacritic.

I tire of doing battle with the snobs in this project who insist on using French words like the accented ones above, in article space, when perfectly good English words are waiting patiently to be of service, and thankfully unencumbered with toffy-nosed diacritics.

Then there are the cases where they want to have their cake and eat it too: they'll write about musical works called "études", but typically spell it "etude", as if that word had become absorbed into English - but guess what, it hasn't. There is no diacritic-free English counterpart of "étude". We have the word "study" instead. So the choices are (a) the French word "étude" or (b) the English word "study". There is no intermediate option such as "etude", or if there is, it belongs to no language I know of, and certainly not to either French or English. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 12:35, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I was taught about them as a child at school in the Anglosphere (actually, a small county primary in Cornwall). DuncanHill (talk) 11:36, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't disagree with your basic premise. However, a word like "blesséd" comes to mind, spelled with an accent so that it won't be pronounced "blest". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:59, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

A lot of the things that children learn at school are only approximations to the full truth. This is one of them. Let me prove with some quotations that foreign (especially French) words do not necessarily drop their diacritics as they are incorporated into English as loanwords.

"[...] some French, Latin, and other words are now also English, though the fiction that they are not is still kept up by italics and (with French words) conscientious efforts at pronunciation. Such are tête-á-tête, ennui, status quo, raison d'être, eirenicon, négligé, and perhaps hundreds more." – The King's English (1906, when it was still common to write some loanwords with italics)

"The use of diacritics is minimal in English. Native speakers of English, accustomed to a largely diacritic-free script, sometimes object to diacritics on aesthetic grounds, complaining that they defile otherwise plain print with untidy clutter. There is, however, a range of diacritical useage in or related to English, including two everyday marks with diacritical properties: the dot [on lowercase i] and the apostrophe. These are so much part of the writing system that they are seldom thought of as diacritical. [...] The use of non-native diacritics is generally kept to a minimum in English. It is optional in such French loans as café and élite (with acute accents), and is provided in others where the writer and publisher consider the provision necessary for accuracy or flavour: for example, German Sprachgefühl (with umlaut)." – Oxford Companion to the English Language

"Exposé has been used in English since the early 19th century. [...] 'Exposé can be written either with or without an acute accent: [...] Both forms are widely used. The accented form is the more common of the two, possibly because it clearly indicates how the word is pronounced [...]." – Webster's Dictionary of English Usage

"Such usage [of née] demonstrates the extent to which née has lost its literal, French meaning in English." – Webster's Dictionary of English Usage

"You may also have noted that the unaccented cliche is sometimes used but the accented cliché is much more common." – Webster's Dictionary of English Usage

"In words now accepted as English, use accents only when they make a crucial difference to pronunciation: café cliché communiqué exposé façade soupçon. But: chateau decor elite feted naive. If you use one accent (except the tilde - strictly, a diacritical sign), use all: émigré mêlée protégé résumé." – Economist Style Guide

"Some foreign words that enter the English language keep their accent marks (protégé, résumé), others lose them (cafe, facade)." – New York Times Style Guide

And of course there are also plenty of English dictionaries. As far as I know, every single English dictionary contains a number of English words for which it gives the spelling with accents as the preferred spelling. (But they tend to disagree with each other in their choice.) Hans Adler 13:25, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I've removed "ëconomy" and "ëcumenical" from the Wiktionary Appendix page, because they quite simply do not exist. As to the question whether English words use diacritics, the answer is yes. English uses diacritic marks predominantly in relative recent loanwords (as well as a few forms like learnèd and names like Brontë), but accent marks aren't the only kind of diacritic. Letters can be diacritic too, and English uses the letter h as a diacritic in thoroughly native words. Tom Lehrer wrote a song about the magical Silent E, but few people talk about the h that can be added to c to change it from /k/ to /tʃ/, to g to change it from /g/ to either /f/ or silence, to p to change it from /p/ to /f/, to s to change it from /s/ to /ʃ/, to t to change it from /t/ to /θ/, and to w to change it (in some dialects at least) from /w/ to /ʍ/. (And English isn't the only one: Albanian and Irish have diacritic h too.) —Angr (talk) 15:14, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

...(EC) The point Jack of Oz raised strikes at the foundation of my original question. I appreciate that. He asked: "Is any child at any school in the entire anglosphere ever taught about acutes, diaereses, cedillas, umlauts, tildes or any of the others?" Touché! Or as we say in English: Ouch! I can't speak for recent school practise but in my antique experience in Canada none of that foreign muck got into my English lessons.

Are words such as "résumé" French words that have been adopted into English and are now English words as well, or are they French words often used in English? Do other editors feel as strongly about this as Jack does?

Regarding "surströmming", if I ignore the diaeresis and pronounce it as if it were English it comes out as a three syllable word. Editor JIP explained above that the diaeresis in "zoölogy" indicates the two "o" vowels are in different syllables. What is its effect in "surströmming" where there are no adjacent vowels?

(Surströmming is a Swedish dish consisting of fermented herring. It has a strong and sometimes overwhelming odour and is often eaten outdoors. I wonder if the odour affects the pronunciation.)

I investigated the spell-checker in Google Chrome and found that in English (Australia) mode "résumé" and "resume" are considered correct but "resumé" is not. In English (United States) mode only "resume" passes muster. If there was a English (Canada) mode I suspect it would include "resumé".

This is intriguing. Thank you all. Wanderer57 (talk) 15:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Drat, I just lost my edit... I think that if two native English speakers who do not know each other will use a word to talk or write to each other, then it is definitely an English word, regardless of accent marks. Imagine for example creating a job application and including the phrase "Please submit a résumé with the application." and having prospective English-speaking applicants ask you what you meant by that statement. I personally would be extremely surprised and disappointed. To me, "résumé" is as much an English word as "flower". Also, as a note, curriculum vitae are two Latin words. To me résumé is more of an English word than C.V., as résumé is more recognizable, but I think C.V. still qualifies based on usage alone. Falconus^{p t c} 16:50, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

(Not necessary to the point being made.) "curriculum vitae" was, and mostly still is, more recognisable than résumé to the British. Think the other way round to America. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Note that, at least in US scientific circles, a résumé/resume and a C.V. are two different things. A résumé/resume is a short (preferably one page, certainly no longer than two), job-specific summary of qualifications, usually used for industry (applied) positions. A C.V. is an exhaustive list (e.g. you're unlikely to get a non-beginning position with anything shorter than two pages) of anything with any bearing on your professional career, usually used for academic/scholarly positions. I've read rants by industry hiring people who castigate academics for sending a C.V. when a résumé/resume was asked for. - I think that's at least some indication of when a word becomes "an English word" as opposed to a foreign loanword: when we start making qualifications and distinctions which weren't necessarily there in the original language. My impression is that English words tend to lose the accents over time, especially now with keyboard use. Not to offend anyone, but my impression is that people who go off on big pro-accent rants tend to come off as pompous and stodgy. -- 174.31.219.218 (talk) 19:07, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

The diacritics in the three specified words are obviously useful because, based on the spelling, they would otherwise normally be pronounced clich/cleash, re-z(y)oom and nave. But spellings such as rôle serve no purpose in English because no normal spelling rule contradicts the pronunciation. As for the statements that the meaning of accents such as the dieresis, cedilla, and accent grave for stressed past tense endings aren't taught, well, maybe not in your neck of the woods.μηδείς (talk) 19:23, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I think you're confusing usefulness with accepted spelling norms. Yes, I can see some merit in using diacritic marks or some other means of disambiguation to distinguish "resume" from "résumé" - that's if the context were ever so diffuse as to permit a confusion of a verb (resume) with a noun (résumé). If you can come up with a context where it really is impossible to tell these two words apart, and we really do need some help, I'd be grateful. Otherwise, getting into clashes between English spelling and English pronunciation is an extremely slippery slope, because, heck, even the name of the language itself is pronounced in a way (inglish) that defies the spelling (English), or vice-versa, and it's all downhill from there. :) But we seem to get by despite this, if we allow ourselves to be guided by the context; we do not employ foreign diacritics to disambiguate the myriad of homophones we have, or to provide pointers to otherwise surprising things like Featherstonehaugh, pronounced Fanshaw. Btw, were you really taught the meanings of diacritic marks as part of an English-language lesson? My first exposure to them was in a French-language class, where they belong. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:57, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

An ambiguous example, similar to Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, is "reads, plays, and resumes".

—Wavelength (talk) 20:04, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

No, that won't do. We normally require an object after the verb "resume", making it clear just what is being resumed. But even if we put that norm aside, the example still cannot be a reference to reading "résumés" because that would require the absence of a comma between "reads" and "plays". Nice try, though, Wavelength. I must use it somewhere. -- [User:JackofOz|Jack of Oz]] ^{[your turn]} 20:13, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Another example is "reads letters and resumes standing".—Wavelength (talk) 02:45, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

[User:JackofOz|Jack of]] doesn't know what he's talking about, wavelength, your first example was a perfectly cromulent counterexample to his challenge. μηδείς (talk) 03:12, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

No, it was incromulent. It clearly could only refer to the verb "resume". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 04:19, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Meaning, of course, that you, Jack, were personally not aware that a "read" (as well as a play and a resume, of course) can be a noun. μηδείς (talk) 04:32, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, what a surprise! There are things in the world that I personally am not aware of. Who'd have guessed! But seriously, that's a huge stretch ... but I guess anything's fair game if your sole interest is in making a point. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:19, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Still, Jack, I do think learnèd and blessèd and coöperate are valid counterexamples to the hypothesis in your challenge, even though all of them can be (probably even more commonly are) written without the diacritic mark. —Angr (talk) 11:48, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I find it hard to accept those examples. As you rightly point out, they are most often seen without diacritics. You could go your whole life without ever seeing them written with diacritics. Sure, it's possible to accent any word we like, if deemed necessary in some special context. But that doesn't amount to diacritics being a permanent feature of the English language, in the same way as applies in French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Polish, Czech, Finnish and other languages. I've yet to see an English word that must always be written with a diacritic. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:46, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

@Angr: In Albanian orthography, insertion of ‹h› next to ‹t d s z x› changes their sounds form /t d s z d͡z/ to /θ ð ʃ ʒ d͡ʒ/, thus forming the digraphs ‹th dh sh zh xh› which count as separate entries in the Albanian alphabet, and that should be taken into account when Albanian words are to be arranged alphabetically. Hungarian, likewise, has a couple of digraphs and a trigraph, where insertion of an ‹s›, which by itself writes postalveolar /ʃ/, next to alveolar fricatives and affricates ‹z c dz› /z t͡s d͡z/, turns them into postalveolar fricatives and affricates respectively: ‹zs cs dzs› /ʒ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/. Moreover, ‹y› is there to palatalise ‹g t n l› /ɡ t n l/ to ‹gy ty ny ly› /ɟ c ɲ ʎ/, with the latter having nowadays evolved into /j/. Considering that, can we claim that contemporary Hungarian has diacritical s and diacritical y, especially as ‹y› doesn't exist as an independent grapheme in modern Hungarian, except in some traditional nobility-signifying family names that have retained their old spelling (Zsigmondy, Endrődy, which according to the today's orthography should read: Zsigmondi, Endrődi)? --Theurgist (talk) 20:20, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

It would save us all ever so much time, J of O, if you would simply post for us what we would have meant to say had we actually thought what we thought we were thinking, before we bother to do so for ourselves. μηδείς (talk) 01:58, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

If there is something you actually wish to say, be my guest and actually say it. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 02:15, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes I can't tell whether you people are joking or whether I've stumbled into the midst of an ongoing feud. Nevertheless, thank you all for your informative and entertaining answers. Wanderer57 (talk) 04:11, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, sometimes editors unnecessarily display a tad too much animus. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 04:19, 13 June 2011 (UTC)