Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 July 26

Language desk
< July 25	<< Jun | July | Aug >>	July 27 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 26

Vowels/Consonants at the End of Many Female/Male Names

How come in a lot of languages female names generally end with a vowel or a vowel-like sound (a, e, i, o, u) while male names generally end with a consonant or a consonant-like sound (ex. "Philippe" in French)? Futurist110 (talk) 04:01, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Philippe Petit is male. Be that as it may, the Latin-based languages typically have a trailing "a" to denote feminine gender, so it's reasonable they would do likewise with female names, including those derived from male names. "Paul" and "Paula" come to mind in English. You also have names like "Maria" and "Mario". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:39, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

moved here from the miscellaneous desk μηδείς (talk) 05:02, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

The OP didn't say that people named "Philippe" were female. He was saying that although it ends in a vowel spelling-wise, it has a consonant sound at the end pronunciation-wise. And yes, Mario ends with a vowel sound but that is, IMO, an exception to what the OP has observed. They did say "generally" after all. And in general, they're right. And looking at the US in the article List of most popular given names, the OP is correct... in general. The most popular names in 2011 for the US were Jacob, Mason, William, Jayden, Noah, Michael, Ethan, Alexander, Aiden, and Daniel. And those that don't end in a consonant sound generally end in an 'O' sound such as Mario, Alejandro, Santiago, and Mateo. Dismas|^(talk) 05:08, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

This phenomenon is largely restricted to the Indo-European languages. See Grammatical_gender#Indo-European. The -ā feminine is found in Greek, Italo-Celtic, and Balto-Slavic. In Germanic the -ā feminine changed to -ō. In the Indic languages the -ī feminine (Kali, Devi) was generalized. In the Semitic languages one finds an -(a)t feminine. μηδείς (talk) 05:12, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

The -o and -a found in Romance languages, with the -a changed to -e in French, result from the reduced first and second declensions of Latin. The masculine consonat-final declension is common to Greek, Slavic and Latin, if not more widespread. μηδείς (talk) 05:18, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

The Georgian language and the Eurasiatic languages except the Proto-Indo-European language lack gender. The latter probably acquired it as a reanlysis of its animacy system in conjunction with language contact form the North Caucasian languages which, like the Burushaski language and the Ket language gennerally have a four-part noun gender system. μηδείς (talk) 05:23, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Many female Japanese names end in -ko ("child") or -mi ("beauty") [1], but all Japanese names which do not end in syllabic -n end in a vowel. μηδείς (talk) 05:28, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Medeis -- The -i feminine of Sanskrit seems to have developed partly in compensation for the fact that the "a", "e", and "o" vowels of Indo-European mrged in Sanskrit. AnonMoos (talk) 06:27, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

My understanding was this was a common proto-Indo-Iranian feature. Avestan has parallel feminine nouns in -i. See here, scroll to page 76.

Merger of "a", "e", and "o" to "a" was also a common proto-Indo-Iranian change, but I only mentioned Sanskrit because you spoke of "Indic languages"... AnonMoos (talk) 03:18, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

The Italic Marius [2] and the Semitic Maria [3] have separate etymologies, although Maria could potentially be a feminine version of the Latin nomen Marius. μηδείς (talk) 05:37, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

---

The original noun feminine suffix in the Semitic languages was "t", but a disappearance of word-final "t" after an "a" vowel in several languages has resulted in an appearance that "-a" is the Semitic feminine suffix, coincidental with Indo-European (though if you put such a feminine noun in the construct state, or the plural, or add a pronominal suffix, then the "t" will suddenly re-appear). However, the original form of "Maria" is "Miryam" or "Maryam", so it does not have such an "-a(t)" suffix... AnonMoos (talk) 06:22, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

---

To summarise and expand some of the answers above: in Latin and Greek (and the Slavonic languages), most masculine nouns end in a consonant, and many or most feminine nouns end in '-a'. Since many of our names come from Latin or Greek, many of them show the same pattern. As a matter of fact, Germanic (including Old English) did not show this pattern strongly, and many of the female names listed in Germanic name do not end in '-a', though some do. --ColinFine (talk) 19:17, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Am I wrong in remembering that there were native feminine Germanic words ending in -o due to the shift from a to o? μηδείς (talk) 21:16, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the backstory is behind the name John-Mary.  Card Zero  (talk) 19:44, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

It is common for people in France and Spain (at least) to have two names: one personal, one that of a saint. The first name is the personal name and is gender-specific: the saint's name is not, it could be the favourite saint of the mother (or even a favourite relative). So you could have John-Paul or John-Mary: in both cases, the bearer is male. --TammyMoet (talk) 21:09, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I accept the OP's original premise. Just looking at names that are common and have a long history in the English-speaking world, for example, I find for example the following men's names that end in vowel sounds: Andrew, Anthony, Matthew, Henry, and the following women's names that end in consonant sounds: Jane, Joan, Catherine, Anne (which probably between them accounted for half the women in England in, say, the 16th C). In Italian (and a lesser extent Spanish), both male and female names frequently end in vowels as vowel-endings are the norm for nouns in Italian and very common in Spanish.

In European names very broadly, you could probably make a good case for a specific vowel sound (or group of similar sounds) - a (or a reduced version of it) being a strong marker of a female name and being generally avoided as an ending for male names (although the schwa at the end of Peter - and more modern names often borrowed from surnames or occupations like Hunter, Taylor etc. - sounds the same as a reduced a in non-rhotic dialects of English, though any spelling as -a rather than -er etc. such as Peta would strike me immediately as a female form). This probably comes from the Latin -a ending as ColinFine comments.

Also, just on ColinFine's point about masculine names ending in consonsants in Latin, it's worth keeping in mind that although the nominative of 2nd declension nouns ends in -us, the root is actually -o (the s is a nominative marker) and it's the -o root form which has survived in some of Latin's daughter languages (Marcus > Marco, Antonius > Antonio and so on). Valiantis (talk) 22:48, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

There's also a well-known Elizabeth often seen loitering about the place. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 23:43, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

"Elizabeth" is a slightly strange case -- it's Elišeβaʕ אלישבע in Hebrew, without special feminine ending (actually ending in a pharyngeal consonant), but it was transferred into Greek as Ελεισαβεθ, as if it had a Semitic -t feminine ending (though it didn't)... AnonMoos (talk) 00:13, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Suicide Bridge by Ian Sinclair

Maybe a long shot but does anyone know if the 1979 story "Suicide Bridge" by Ian Sinclair refers to Hornsey Lane Bridge\Archway in London? Difficultly north (talk) 11:11, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

en:WP => Writer Iain Sinclair's epic poem Suicide Bridge takes its title from a local nickname for the Archway Bridge. Grey Geezer 11:17, 18 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grey Geezer (talk • contribs)

If you're going to give us a reference from Wikipedia, please link to the article, so we can see whether or not it is reliably sourced. I haven't found that quotation in Suicide Bridge, Archway, London, Iain Sinclair or Suicide bridge, though A1 (London) confirms (with references, unlike Archway, London) that the name is used for that bridge. --ColinFine (talk) 11:53, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I take it back, the quote is in Archway, London, but lower down. It is, however, unreferenced, and is therefore of no value in answering the question. --ColinFine (talk) 11:55, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Several times in blogs (...) Maybe the connection was made from here. Otherwise nothing in GoogleBooks. Grey Geezer 13:03, 18 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grey Geezer (talk • contribs)

Article: The Hornsey Lane Bridge Anti-Suicide Campaign Bus stop (talk) 13:13, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any mention of Iain Sinclair in the article Bus stop cited. He is mentioned in the source Grey Geezer found, but it does not mention his novel or the idea behind it, and it only mentions the bridge in passing. --ColinFine (talk) 21:48, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

My mistake. I misunderstood. Bus stop (talk) 21:55, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

 Reopened

Thanks anyway. Actually, that article you mentioned will help me write the article. I'm not sure if I will include Ian Sinclair. Difficultly north (talk) 09:15, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Wasn't this question already asked recently? AnonMoos (talk) 16:37, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes. The OP reopened it in order to thank a respondent. Very courteous behaviour. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 23:40, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Street mouth?

The place where a river meets a lake or a sea is a river mouth. Is there an analogous name for the place where a street meets a square? Mouth? Exit? — Kpalion^(talk) 16:15, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Junction. At the junction of Foo Street and Bar Square. End. At the Bar Square end of Foo Street. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:38, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Tagishsimon! — Kpalion^(talk) 19:20, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

"The mouth of a river" is on my list of "10 Best (or Worst) Euphemisms". (It's not like the contents of the river are vomited into the ocean.) A more anatomically accurate term would be "the anus of a river". -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 23:37, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

It's pretty much a linguistic universal that body parts are used for geographical and direction descriptions such as foot of the mountain. (In Slavic, the cognate word for foot, pid, in my family's dialect, means beneath) Such terms are common with the indigenous peoples of Siberia. Equations of body parts with concepts of nature such as leaf=ear are also common among languages of certain typologies See Klimov as mentioned in Nichols. The notion mouth of a river is probably more common than you would think. I have never heard of the ass of a river, but there is the cloaca maxima.μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

meatus? —Tamfang (talk) 06:40, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Magpies (fear of)

Thread retitled from "Magpies (fear of)".

What is (or if there's no official term, would be) the term for "magpie phobia" / "fear of magpies" ?

doktorb _words^deeds 16:17, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

"Ornithophobia" is general fear of birds. Karakaxa is the modern Greek word for a magpie, so you could use that (have no idea what the ancient Greek word was). AnonMoos (talk) 16:35, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Medieval Greek apparently attests καρακάξα and a synonym γαγίλα. So using that, you'd get "caracaxaphobia" or "gagilaphobia". And if you extend the definition to crows and jackdaws to which they are very close relations of, you'd get "coracophobia" from κόραξ. The latter is actually Ancient Greek and remarkably similar to καρακάξα, so it might be a cognate. Though all of them are onomatopoeic, so it might not. :P Disclaimer: not real words.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 18:16, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

There is not even a formal term for "crow phobia", which must be far more common. It's hard to imagine why anybody would have a fear of magpies, which don't even flock the way crows do. Looie496 (talk) 19:03, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, someone who was superstitious might develop exaggerated beliefs around the darker aspects of some versions of the traditional rhyme One for Sorrow. My own mother, being a bit "fluffy bunny" about nature, greatly dislikes magpies because of their predation on the nestlings of other birds;I could see this sort of attitude developing into an obsession. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.109 (talk) 21:22, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

There was a flock of maybe two dozen chicken-sized common ravens occupying (in the military sense) the courtyard of the university library yesterday. It was the first time I was ever scared by birds, except once when I stumbled upon a blue heron standing silently about 12 feet away from me around dawn on the campus of Douglass College. μηδείς (talk) 19:10, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Looie, if the question was intended to apply not just to corvids but to any bird commonly known as a magpie, the Australian Magpie has a fearsome and well-deserved reputation:

• Spring in Australia is magpie season, when a small minority of breeding magpies (almost always males) around the country become aggressive and swoop and attack those who approach their nests, especially bike riders.

Btw, some people have every reason to be afraid of magpies. Carn the pies. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 23:23, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

(ec)There are perfectly sound reasons to be wary of the Australian magpie, a bird unrelated to the northern hemisphere magpies the OP is presumably talking about. FiggyBee (talk) 23:24, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Although Gymnorhinaphobia as a term would likely be misconstrued. μηδείς (talk) 23:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

The species name of the common magpie is Pica pica, so picaphobia would seem appropriate. μηδείς (talk) 19:10, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

In harmony with WP:TPOC (point 13: Section headings), I am adding an anchor link—"

Thread retitled from "Magpies (fear of)"."—in order to enable links to the archived section. In the future, someone may wish to link to this discussion in the archives, and square brackets in headings hinder the functioning of section links. See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 63#Dysfunctional links in archived section headings (September 2009).

—Wavelength (talk) 00:09, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I get your point now, I was not thinking about archives, this not being an article, the objection didn't seem relevant on merely stylistic grounds. You may have noticed there is at least one other title with a link in it on this thread. μηδείς (talk) 01:33, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

* "Picapicaphobia" has a nicer ring to it than just "Picaphobia", although my first thought, which also has a nice ring, was "HeckleJecklePhobia". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:09, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

And here I always though those two were crows. μηδείς (talk) 05:39, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

You are all ruddy marvellous, you know that, don't you? Thanks very much for the replies doktorb _words^deeds 06:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Nicz nebylo. μηδείς (talk) 05:41, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Help in writing an article

Help me on writing a tremendous article on the topic "Role of youth in nation's development". It's not my homework, I have to give a huge stage performance. Sunny Singh (DAV) (talk) 18:32, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Any particular nation? --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:36, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I have to do two things. First, to write article and then to give a speech. I will pay my attention on youth of the world. But, if you want to know a particular nation, then, that's India. Sunny Singh (DAV) (talk) 18:47, 26 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sunny Singh (DAV) (talk • contribs) 18:45, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Be careful, Sunny: a good Wikipedia article will not usually make a good speech, and vice versa. They are very different. In particular, an encyclopaedia article should have a level of detail which would be confusing or boring in a speech; and a Wikipedia article should not advance an argument. --ColinFine (talk) 19:22, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I suppose it depends on what you define as 'youth' (children, teenagers, people in their early twenties, anyone under 35 years of age). The Arab spring is usually seen as the result of the youth in Arab countries being dissatisfied with the situation in their countries. Similarly, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were students protesting, as were the demonstrators during the Thammasat student uprising. While such demonstrations can have an effect on politics in country, it seems to me that it's rarely the youth who parttook in these demonstrations who end up making the decisions on the way forward. E.g. the youth of Egypt might've toppled Mubarak, but it's the military that ran the show afterwards. V85 (talk) 19:36, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Per Colin's post, above, if we presume you're looking for notes for a speech you have to give, rather than wishing us to write a wikipedia article ... you probably want to think about the nature of the argument you'll make. You can be upbeat, along the lines of youth being able to innovate in technology yielding companies like microsoft, yahoo, google, etc. Ditto contributions to music. Or you can be more utilitarian and argue in terms of youth providing low cost entry-level labour necessary for the functioning of an economy. Or you could very legitimately argue that, currently in many western countries, there's a rebalancing of society which lays a historically disproportionate burden on the young - in terms of tuition fees, house prices, etc - which mean that Generation X loses out to the Baby Boomers, and Generation Y gets pretty well stuffed. In this scenario, the role of the young is to pay for things their parents got for free, and to be paid as little as possible with as shabby as possible pension provisions so as to transfer as much profit as possible to the owners of capital. So; yes. you can put together a very good talk on this subject. But you probably need to guide this conversation if you want to get any more from this forum. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:51, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I didn't get that Sunny is writing a Wikipedia article; just an article for some external publication. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 09:23, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I am not writing a Wikipedia article. I am, just, writing article for school students. Sunny Singh (DAV) (talk) 09:52, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Since you asked me for help at my talk page — you'll have to specify the way or ways in which you want me to help you. "Help me write an article" isn't specific enough for me to know what to do. Nyttend (talk) 11:52, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Looking for a Word for a Definition

I'm looking to describe a certain kind of cultural phenomenon where a fad, event, fictional series, or any other sort mass media event permeates many more layers and levels of society, which would not normally be affected by similar events, are affected. A few recent examples might include: large fictional series such as the Twilight and Harry Potter series or the war on Iraq or 9/11. I'm not really seeing it apply to individual people, though it could potentially apply to situations regarding these people. As well, I'm thinking of it being on a continuum, where a commonly accepted and "objectively significant" case of this is closer to the definition, and a more personalized and perception driven version is less like the definition. So between "A significant or defining mass media delivered event in a person's life" and "a significant or defining mass media delivered event in a culture". Or perhaps there would be two types, one objective and another subjective, and the continuum would rely on importance or size. I suppose a similar idea would be a household name, though I don't quite see it fitting with above definition.

Anything like this or along these lines would be appreciated, though the closer the better. I am looking more for a commonly defined term than to coin a new term or phrase. Thanks, Sazea (talk) 19:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Let me clarify this. Something like the death of Grace Archer, or maybe even World War 2, or the death of JFK? --TammyMoet (talk) 21:04, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Harry Potter would be described as a phenomenon. I suggest you look up that word or craze in an online thesaurus and then click on a word close to your meaning until you arrive at the word you want. μηδείς (talk) 21:10, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

You pose is an interesting idea about "an idea" of sorts, but I'm not sure if it has a specific name as such. Running the risk of sounding mundane, I would first call it "a very powerful meme". Thankfully the field of Memetics is much more mature and expertly developed than the "Internets" would have you believe, so you should check the article for a deep discussion on the subject before dismissing the whole meme concept. There are scientists who have developed an entire lexicon around memes, so you should check out Memetics glossaries such as this one for more ideas. As for the continuum you speak of, it sounds a lot like Zeitgeist, which usually refers to the sphere of ideas that stand out at a global level. For example, Google Trends, which denotes the most searched-for items, was previously called Google Zeitgeist. But it also reminds me of the Noosphere, the sphere of human thought, or even the collective consciousness, through which humanity shares common thoughts and ideas such as the ones you mentioned. So, maybe it could be better to call the phenomenon you talk about a "Zeitgeist event" or a "spark in the collective consciousness" or something like that. There's plenty of "ideas" to go around. :) --Kreachure (talk) 02:24, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Uyghur pronunciation

How is Ürümqi pronounced in Uyghur? The article only gives the English pronunciation. --146.7.96.200 (talk) 19:52, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Going by the Uyghur language article: /yrymt͡ʃi/, but that assumes it is written with a phonemic orthography. V85 (talk) 20:10, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Omniglot's Uyghur page gives the IPA for the Arabic, Cyrillic, and Latin systems of writing the language; that seems to support /yrymt͡ʃi/ as the correct pronunciation.  dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 21:12, 26 July 2012 (UTC)