Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 January 31

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

January 31

sg in Italian

Italian has 3 spellings with 2 different pronunciations depending on what follows; c, g, and sc. Does sg occur sometimes in Italian?? If so, how is it pronounced?? If possible, please reveal both kinds of (theoretically valid) Italian sg words. Georgia guy (talk) 16:35, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, sg is a possible initial consonant cluster in Italian. It is pronounced /zg/. English speakers stumble over that, but they really shouldn't — it's just the voiced version of /sk/.

The only word that immediately came to mind as an example is sgozzare, which means to kill someone by cutting out the throat. I'm sure there are less emotional words; that's just the one I thought of. Make what you like of it. --Trovatore (talk) 16:40, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

That's hard sg. Do you know of any Italian words with soft sg?? (This question is for anyone who sees the question.) Georgia guy (talk) 16:45, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

No, as far as I'm aware, there is no "soft sg". --Trovatore (talk) 16:46, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

There is sgelare for example (Treccani). In certain dialects there are words such as sgigottare or sginzala. The "sg" is prononunced [zdʒ] in these examples. Basically, where you'd use the prefix "dis-" in English, you just use "s-" in Italian, so other constructions are conceivable. ---Sluzzelin talk 16:53, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Nice example. --Trovatore (talk) 16:55, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I'll make one more point: The s- prefix is not always a negative. Occasionally it's an intensifier, as in svendita. A vendita is a sale, but a svendita is a super-sale, like a going-out-of-business sale for example, but not always. The idea is something like "we're going to sell out our entire stock". I think Italian s- can derive either from Latin dis- or Latin ex-, and svendita should be an example of the second.

Italian political vocabulary is a never-dry well of neologisms. One that came up in the 90s was svalutation, a weird Italian–English hybrid meaning "devaluation" (as in currency). --Trovatore (talk) 17:08, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Good point, and for the sake of linking to our sister project: s- (and dis-). ---Sluzzelin talk 17:34, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Here is a better link to a Wiktionary category of Italian lemmas beginning with sg-: here. —Stephen (talk) 20:50, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

That's a good link for listing English Wiktionary's Italian lemmas beginning with "sg", but I'm not sure it's a better link for explaining the various meanings of the Italian prefix "s-" which had been my intention in providing the link above. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:54, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

See also wikt:disgregare and wikt:trasgredire.—Wavelength (talk) 00:31, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

See also wikt:Vosgi (it:Vosgi) and it:Transgender (transgenere).—Wavelength (talk) 14:57, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@Georgia guy: In addition to the given above answers a little stats. There are around 300 Italian words with the "sg" combination, and around 200 of them have that combination at the beginning of words. A good way to know what words or letter combinations exist in a given language is to check word lists like spelling dictionaries.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:09, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• I think I've seen sgi used to render /ʒ/ in Slavic words, by analogy with sci for /ʃ/. —Tamfang (talk) 06:43, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I haven't come across that in Slavic, but "s" by itself in Hungarian is pronounced "sh", so perhaps it assimilates to the voiced "g" in ceratain contexts? Otherwise the English sound "zh" is written "zs" in Hungarian.

What is this letter?

Hi! What is the first letter (looks like a U with a tail on the left) in the word ending with "ltramar" in this image? Thanks! —{{u|Goldenshimmer}}|✝️|ze/zer|😹|T/C|☮️|John15:12|🍂 17:30, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

It's just a U, in some typeface I'm not familiar with. The word is ultramar, which means "overseas". --Trovatore (talk) 17:34, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

The technical typographical term for such a tail is a "swash", though I've never really seen one in that position. Some fonts intended to be used by professionals come with a variety of swash forms of different letters which can be optionally used... AnonMoos (talk) 17:38, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Huh, cool, thanks! :) —{{u|Goldenshimmer}}|✝️|ze/zer|😹|T/C|☮️|John15:12|🍂 17:41, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Look at the illustrations in swash (typography)... -- AnonMoos (talk) 17:43, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

It's a μ, indicating that the card measures one microltramar. Ya know, I think I've seen that typeface in one of Dan Solo's collections. —Tamfang (talk) 06:46, 2 February 2017 (UTC)