Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 June 28

Language desk
< June 27	<< May | June | Jul >>	June 29 >

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.

June 28

Job (biblical figure)

Would I be right in claiming that Job (biblical figure) is the only English word (singular if a noun) whose spelling ends with an o followed by a consonant and the o is pronounced long?

For the purposes of this question, the w in -ow- or -ew- (low, mow, sew, sow ...) is considered a vowel.

All other words that end in a long o sound plus a consonant sound seem to fall into the following classes in relation to their spelling:

• final e: bode, bone, brose, choke, chose, chrome, clone, close (adj.), clove, code, coke, cole, cone, cope, cove, crone, dole, dome, dope, dose, dote, dove (v.), doze, drome, drone, drove, froze, globe, grope, grove, hole, home, hone, hope, hose, hove, joke, Jove, lobe, lone, lope, mauve, mole, mope, Nome, none (sing. of nones), nope, nose, note, ode, ope, phone, poke, pole, pone (?), pose, prone, quote, robe, rope, rose, rote, rove, slope, smoke, smote, snope, sole, spoke, stoke, stole, stone, stove, strode, stroke, strove, toke, tome, tone, tope, tote, trope, trove, vole, vote, woke, wove, yoke, zone

• extra preceding vowel (or vowels): bloat, blown, boat, Boaz, bowed, cloak, coal, coat, coax, croak, Croat, foal, gloat, goad, goal, goat, groat, grown, grows, hoax, hoed, Joan, load, loaf, loam, loan, lowed, lows, moan, moat, mowed, mows, Noel, oaf, oak, oat, own, road, roam, rowed, rows, sews, soak, shoal, shews (regards to Ed Sullivan), showed, shows, Sloan(e), sloat, slowed, slows, snows, soap, soul, sowed, sows, stoat, stowed, stows, toad, towed, tows

• extra consonant: comb, folk, gross, loll, moll, Ohm, poll, quoll, roll, toll, troll

• other: mauve, rogue, vogue (borrowed from French)

I don't claim the above lists are exhaustive.

Any counter-examples to my thesis? If it's true, how did its spelling arise, given that Noah, Boaz and similar biblical names all got -oa-? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:59, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

The answer is know (bow, tow, low, mow ...). Clarityfiend (talk) 01:37, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Job is a proper noun. There are all sorts of oddities in the pronunciation of proper nouns; take for example Menzies or even Ralph (traditional English pronunciation). Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:50, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

"For the purposes of this question, the w in -ow- or -ew- (low, mow, sew, sow ...) is considered a vowel." -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:26, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Ow. Me no read so goodly. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:56, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

It's a semi-vowel, and if it's a semi-vowel, why can't we call it a semi-consonant. It's half one, half the other, either way. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 15:19, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Because it's my question and I get to decree the parameters. I prefer to think of w and y not as semi-vowels or semi-consonants, but having dual roles: sometimes they operate as vowels, sometimes they operate as consonants. In the examples I gave, they're vowels, and therefore not relevant to my question. I was just making that clear, because some users might have taken the simplistic view that the only vowels we're taught in primary school are a, e, i, o and u, and all other letters must be consonants. Well, it's not as simple as that. I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:03, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Nob ody does. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:23, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

May vary by regional pronunciation, but control and possibly vitriol depending on exactly what the rules are. Warofdreams talk 02:02, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

In the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary I found control, extol, Interpol, patrol, petrol, sol, cosmos, kudos, Laos, Phobos, Michelob. Of course the boundary between English and foreign words is always fuzzy. E.g. I rejected Kronos, but included Phobos because it's a satellite of Mars. And I only included sol because I happened to know a non-Spanish meaning; I may have wrongly rejected other words for looking Spanish.

I think Boaz and Noah are red herrings since according to the articles the Hebrew pronunciations are ʾIyyôḇ, Bṓʿaz, Nōăḥ. -- BenRG (talk) 02:27, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I pronounce them /'boʊ.æz/ and /'noʊ.ə/, respectively, neither of which ends in a "long o followed by a consonant". Are there other pronunciations in English? --Trovatore (talk) 07:23, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Isn't Deimos also derived from an ordinary Greek noun? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:13, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

It isn't in CMUdict for some reason, and it didn't occur to me for some reason even when I wrote the thing about Phobos. -- BenRG (talk) 19:36, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I would reject Interpol, petrol, cosmos, kudos, Laos and Phobos because I don't think they're generally pronounced with a long final o. But I like control, extol, patrol, sol and Michelob. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:26, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Really? I can sort of see petrol, which isn't in my active vocabulary, but if you said it with a reduced vowel in the second syllable I suppose I'd know what you're talking about, and Laos could be just /laʊs/, I guess. But I really don't know how to say "Interpol", "cosmos", or "Phobos" without an /oʊ/ in the final syllable. --Trovatore (talk) 07:11, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

In British English the two vowels in "cosmos" have the same (short) value (and the second vowels of "Interpol" and "Phobos" also have this value). We (well, some of us) find the American "Kahz-moce" very strange. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:46, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

As with the way Carl Sagan said it in his TV series Cosmos. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:28, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

As long as we're doing proper nouns, don't forget Lompoc, California. -Trovatore (talk) 07:06, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

And Tone Loc, though I guess it's properly written Lōc. -- BenRG (talk) 19:40, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Given that Job's name in Hebrew is ʾIyyôḇ, how comes the transliteration is Job, rather than Ijob or Ejob? I get how the final v sound became b, as it parallels with Jacob (ends in a v sound in Hebrew) but the initial J in Jacob is more accurate than that of Job, as the latter's name has somehow lost a syllable before the J. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 19:47, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

If we ignore contemorary revised translations of the Bible into English, virtually all the Biblical names have come into English from Latin, from the Vulgata translation, which in turn was a translation of the Greek Septuagint Bible. So the route is Heb. אִיּוֹב > Gr. Ἰώβ > Lat. Iōb > Eng. Job (expectedly it has ended up with the long vowel). And according to our article on Biblical Hebrew and Ancient Greek, during the time when the Bible was being translated from Hebrew into Greek, both the beth and beta letters had the value of [b]. So it was quite natural for the Greeks to render beth into beta (not to mention the letters came from the common ancestor). As for the initial letters, the Greek writing had no means to render the Hebrew pronunciation, double iotas were impossible in Greek.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:15, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks. I don't read Greek, but I take it from what you say that the Greek transliteration had to be something along the lines of Yov, with Eyov/Iyov not being possible in that language? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 16:38, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

No, the Ancient Greek form reads exactly as in Latin, that is short [i] or semivowel [j] (English "y"), long [o], then [b]. "Yov" is read such a way only in Modern Greek. "Iyo-" was not possible (it must be written as Ἰιώ-, which is not allowed in the Greek orthography), "Eyo-" was possible (in theory Εἰώ-) but the Hebrew speakers did not say it that way.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:52, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Ljuboslov is correct in his explanation, Greek lost both the original PIE /w/ and /y/ sounds, and there was no use of double iota.

But if we are allowing words of foreign origin like Job which are attested in English, then the mantra Om is a counterexample to Jack's supposition. μηδείς (talk) 01:35, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

• OK, that's all good. There are a few examples, but not many. Thanks for all contributions. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:17, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Resolved

Syllabification of "Citra" (Indonesian word) using spaces

Anyone knows the syllabification of "Citra" (Indonesian word)? Use spaces to separate the syllables of "Citra". 111.95.114.227 (talk) 12:02, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Ci tra. —Stephen (talk) 22:31, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Conditional mood and subjective

Our article conditional mood says This is exemplified by the English sentence "If you loved me you would support me" – here the conditional would support appears in the apodosis, while the protasis (the condition clause) uses instead the simple past form loved. But isn't "loved" actually a subjunctive?

For example, "If I was rich you would love me" is rather common but still generally regarded as improper, whereas were would be used there to flag subjunctive.

This reminds me of a bonus question: in Gilligan's Island there is a well known line "Without the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost." The joke here is that this ought to be a sentence in conditional mood, about a ship that returned successfully, but instead, it actually is some sort of narration in which the ship did become "lost" (that too a pun, naturally). But what do you call that tense? Wnt (talk) 14:18, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

"If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost", by the way. Rmhermen (talk) 16:02, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

And since the Minnow's wreck is narrated in the past tense, it should, of course, be "If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would have been lost". But that wouldn't scan. Deor (talk) 18:36, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes loved is a subjunctive, whose form is, as your quote says, in the simple past form. One distinguishes the use (subjunctive) from the form (simple past form). From English subjunctive#Use of the past subjunctive:

As already mentioned, the only distinct past subjunctive form in English (i.e. form that differs from the corresponding past indicative) is were, which differs when used with a first or third person singular subject (where the indicative form is was). As with the present subjunctive, the name past subjunctive refers to the form of the verb rather than its meaning; it need not (and in fact usually does not) refer to past time.

Loraof (talk) 16:12, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

In the sentence "if you loved me, you would support me", the word "loved" is indeed in the (past) subjunctive, but "would support" is in the conditional. At least if you buy that these terms are applicable to English, which not everyone does.

In a language where the moods are morphologically distinct, like Italian, the sequence is clear: Se mi volessi bene, prenderesti la mia parte. Here volessi is unambiguously in the imperfect subjunctive, and prenderesti in the present conditional. --Trovatore (talk) 17:34, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

It's common to see the conditional used in both parts of the sentence:

• If he would have shown his face at the wedding, I would have killed him.
• The correct form is: If he had shown his face ..., I would have killed him. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:24, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

There's a vaguely similar phenomenon in Italian, where the imperfect indicative is (many would say substandardly) used in both halves: Se mi volevi bene, prendevi la mia parte. I think it's usually meant as a counterfactual in the past, and in that role, to be honest, I think there's an argument to be made for it. It's relatively unambiguous (I suppose you could interpret it as a material conditional in past time, but that seems to have limited applicability), and it's certainly less verbose than the "correct" construction se mi avessi voluto bene, avresti preso la mia parte. --Trovatore (talk) 21:43, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

• I have to object that "If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost" is indeed perfectly cromulent, if a bit old fashioned. First of all, "be lost" is simply the archaic use of 'to be' with the past participle of an intransitive verb. "Christ is risen", "the war is lost" and "the day is come" aren't heard much in spoken speech, "has risen" and "has come" reflect the fact that the present perfect is formed with to have in modern usage. But anyone who has studied early modern English or French or German will understand that "would be lost" is analogous in form to "would have hit the rocks." This is simply a perfect conditional.

The missing subjunctive is "If it were not for the courage..." The "it were is simply left out as implied. μηδείς (talk) 02:55, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't really buy that this use of "lost" is parallel to I am to Padua come. The use of "to be" as the auxiliary for (at least some) intransitive verbs is common in European languages and has a few small remnants in English, but "lose" is not intransitive. I think "lost" here is just the passive, not the perfect. Some not better described party (maybe humanity as a whole?) would have lost the Minnow, so it would have been lost by that party. --Trovatore (talk) 19:01, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Not only do on-line dictionaries define lose as both transitive and intransitive, they also give synonyms of lost such as disappeared, vanished, and gone which are all intransitive. It's overreaching to say that the meaning in the song was lost as in the Minnow "not knowing where it was", or lost as in the Minnow "having been defeated in a race". A headline could very well say "The Minnow's crew is lost to the sea in Hurricane Rita" and there would be no agent that lost them in any transitive sense. μηδείς (talk) 01:23, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

So then what would be the present-tense version? "*The Minnow's crew loses to sea"? --Trovatore (talk) 01:25, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

In modern English "is lost" has become a set phrase, but etymologically, the term meant perish, break up and a form with the prefix for- was the transitive form. Modern speakers have reanalyzed the term, just as we say has risen, instead of is risen. See EO. We are arguing at cross purposes. My point from the beginning was that the song makes perfect sense when analyzed from a diachronic perspective--it is archaicizing--while you are looking at it from the viewpoint of just the present time, and saying it has to be a passive because nowadays we use have + past participle to form the perfect even with intransitives. μηδείς (talk) 18:42, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

So I take your point, but no, I'm not saying it has to be passive because we use "have" nowadays. I was saying it has to be passive because I don't know of an active intransitive use of "lose" that means "founder". The EO link does look like maybe such a verb existed at one time, and that would make the rest of your point make sense. --Trovatore (talk) 23:28, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

It is getting ridiculous how often my favorite part of a song or movie is something that I'm now told never existed. Wnt (talk) 12:37, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

You can say that again, Sam. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:56, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

How much English, Chinese and Japanese languages have changed compared to past centuries?

I'm not a native speaker of these languages, so I have to ask, because nowadays I'm interested in ancient literature. To put it in simple way, can a modern Chinese speaker understand Li Bai or Du Fu poems? Are modern native English speakers able to understand Beowulf or King James Version of Bible? And how much Ki no Tsurayuki, Ono no Takamura or Ono no Komachi (or possibly older poets) are understandable to modern Japanese speakers? Thanks. Kouhi (talk) 20:24, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I have no idea on the first and third questions, but I think most educated modern native English speakers can at least get the gist of the King James Bible, though they'll certainly miss some fine points. Beowulf they won't get much from, unless they've specifically studied Old English at some point, though it doesn't take very much study to learn enough systematic differences to be able to make sense of a few things here and there. --Trovatore (talk) 21:12, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Most literate English people would be able to read Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1386) and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) with the aid of a glossary and a bit of perseverance. I actually found Malory harder work than Chaucer, but it's great stuff and well worth the effort. William Langland's Piers Plowman (c. 1370–90) is also fairly readable if a bit weird, as you can see for yourself. Modern translations are available, but something is lost in the process. Beowulf is entirely unintelligible to me I'm afraid. although J R R Tolkein claimed to be able to read it before learning any Old English (he's obviously a lot cleverer than me). Alansplodge (talk) 22:46, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Do you have a source for the Tolkien OE claim, User:Alansplodge? I have read his Letters, and don't recall it. Had he studied Norse or Gothic first, maybe. BTW, I agree Chaucer is indeed an easy read if you have an annotated version or a glossary--mainly because, as with Chinese, the orthography is largely frozen. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:14, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

My apologies User:Medeis, it came from a BBC2 documentary that I saw some years ago. A thorough Google search has only revealed that Tolkein first read Beowulf at school "using language primers", see J.R.R. Tolkien edited by Peter Hunt (p. 38), so it seems that either I or the BBC were mistaken. Alansplodge (talk) 15:40, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

The King James Bible (and Shakespeare) were written in what is technically called "Modern English". Compared to contemporary English, it looks old-fashioned, and has a number of words that are either no longer used, or have different meanings. But its essentially just a different dialect of the same language, and should be readable and (mostly) understandable to a contemporary English speaker. Beowulf was written in Old English, from which Modern English is descended, but has changed so much it is effectively a different language (and in early versions, was written with a different alphabet too). If a contemporary English speaker read (or listened to) Old English, they would probably recognize some words (just as they probably would with German or Norwegian), but overall are unlikely to understand it. Iapetus (talk) 09:20, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

An additional point relating to Middle English – much depends on which regional dialect is involved. At school I studied (small portions of) both The Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Though near contemporaries, the first is in the East Midlands dialect (also used in London and the South East) from which Modern English largely descends, while the second is in the North West Midlands dialect. While, per Alansplodge above, Tales is intelligible with glossary aid, Gawain is significantly more difficult. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 14:03, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

The situation with Chinese is very different - because although the spoken tongue may well have evolved over time (and is, in any case, not a single mutually intelligible language anyway) the logograms used to write the language have been standardised for over 15 centuries. That means that although a modern Chinese person might be completely unable to understand what a writer 1000 years ago would have said, they can still read it because the writing system has not changed. The same symbols can be used to write different languages - because each indicates a meaning, rather than a sound. Wymspen (talk) 14:32, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

In Japan, it is compulsory in Junior High and High Schools to learn both Classical Japanese and Classical Chinese, so it's not difficult for them to read. As far as how the languages have both changed over the years, they have, immensely. Chinese is now a bisyllabic language, largely, and Japanese has changed grammatically. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 21:28, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

The grammatical endings of Classical Japanese are completely different, but the vocabulary is remarkably similar. Looking at e.g. #85 of the Man'yōshū ([1] [2])—which may not have been written in AD 347 as our article claims but probably predates Beowulf—every word except ke is still in common use in modern Japanese aside from the inflectional endings. I don't even see any evidence of pronunciation changes except mukahe→mukae. -- BenRG (talk) 23:31, 29 June 2016 (UTC)