Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 March 26

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March 26

Arabic translation

Hi, I was fed up with English commentary on Pro Evolution so I changed to Arabic and it's so much better. What does "kora bayniya" mean? And how about "lamza bayniya"? 31.217.4.168 (talk) 01:56, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

[Courtesy link – presumably refers to Pro Evolution Soccer. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.233.48 (talk) 10:45, 26 March 2022 (UTC)]

wikt:كرة and wikt:كورة probably explain the "kora" (it means football). wikt:كرة بينية (kura bayniyya) is "through ball". Is Lamza possibly a player's surname, such as Stjepan Lamza?  Card Zero  (talk) 12:49, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

No, it's definitely not my compatriot Štef Lamza. It could be lanza, lansa, or something similar. 31.217.4.168 (talk) 22:14, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

It sounds a bit like لسانيات بينية (lisāniyyāt bayniyy), meaning "interlinguistics", but this does not seem related to Pro Evolution.  --Lambiam 23:03, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

OK, bear in mind this is a guess, but I think it might be wikt:لمح, lamaḥa. The dot under the h is because it's one of those interestingly phlegmy Arabic fricatives, and it might sound like z if you have nothing better to match it to. This word can mean "glimpse", so if my guess is right, the phrase would be "a glancing through ball", or maybe "a glancing cross" (not sure of the soccer terminology). Then again, maybe the glancing/looking is more literal than metaphorical: maybe it means the player is looking for an opportunity to pass the ball? I'm probably wrong anyway because searching for "لمح بينية" gives me no results.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:21, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

That was very helpful, an untrained ear could very well mishear it for a zed. I think you're right about the translation too, my guess would be "[he] looks [to play it] through!". Cheers. 31.217.4.168 (talk) 07:44, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Or perhaps لَمْس (lams), meaning "touch".  --Lambiam 03:55, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Plausible. 31.217.4.168 (talk) 07:46, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

I nearly forgot: same game, but Greek commentator. He says something to the extent of "sakhlina". Is there anything at least remotely similar to "sakhlina" in Greek language? 31.217.4.168 (talk) 01:40, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Greek σαχλή (sakhlí) is the feminine form of σαχλός (sakhlós), meaning "stupid", "silly", "schmaltzy". That is as close as I can come with a single word. Perhaps two words, σαχλή να (sakhlí na)? The particle να can only be translated in context.  --Lambiam 15:25, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Well wikt:κλίνω (klino) is "bend". Then in the third person there's κλίνει (klinei). So I was trying to invent some phrase to mean "he bends [it]!" but I can't figure out the first word, or the conjugation. ας κλίνει maybe? wikt:ας is used in a bunch of informal constructions along the lines of "let's go!" so maybe the commentator is saying "let's bend it!"?  Card Zero  (talk) 15:27, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Mutual intelligibility of Russian and Ukrainian

I have a few related questions about the mutual intelligibility of Russian and Ukrainian. My impression is that they are very similar languages, but how similar ? I wonder if the situation is analogous to Catalan-Spanish usage in Catalonia, where you'd be very hard-pressed to find a Catalan native speaker who didn't speak Spanish, while the reverse is not at all the case.

1. How easy is it for a literate native Russian speaker with little or no exposure to Ukrainian to read written Ukrainian—say, a lifelong Moscow resident handed a Ukrainian newspaper?
2. I'm of the impression that Ukraine is a largely bilingual country, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a native speaker of Ukrainian that doesn't speak Russian. True?
3. I'm guessing the flip side is not the case, and plenty of native Russian speakers who reside in Ukraine don't speak Ukrainian, or only at a basic level. True? What if we exclude eastern Ukraine?
4. If two strict monolinguals must have a conversation, and one speaks only in Russian and the other responds only in Ukrainian, can they communicate? Does each understand about the same proportion of the other, or is it skewed? (It's generally a lot easier for a Portuguese monolingual to understand spoken Spanish than vice versa; imho, this is due to the simpler vowel phonetics and lack of nasals in Spanish.)
5. What are the most common foreign languages spoken by Ukrainian adult native speakers? Guessing: 1) ru, 2) en; after that, I dunno, maybe: 3) Belarusian, 4) German or Polish? Does the order change, if we restrict it to younger than 30?

Fwiw, I'm aware of the differences between the two Cyrillic alphabets; I'm ru-1/uk-0, but I can "read" (that is, pronounce) Ukrainian without understanding it, or only scattered words. Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 07:28, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

The differences in the respective alphabets are mostly a minor nuisance. Reportedly, understanding each other across the language barrier is much easier for written than for spoken text. It may indeed be difficult to find a strict monolingual Ukrainian speaker. Here, in a forum discussion about mutually intelligible languages, a Ukrainian speaker states, "I didn't mention Russian or how easy it is to understand for a Ukrainian, since we all know Russian anyway.". A Russian speaker writes, "My native language is Russian too, so there is no reason to tell about it again. But.. though it's considered to be similar to Ukrainian and Belorussian, but I can hardly understand those languages". (It is not clear in the context if this also applies to written text.) Scattered reports by monolingual Russian speakers how well they understand Ukrainian are actually all over the place, but together they give the impression that a newspaper article will largely be understood. Belarusian is reported to have a high mutual understandability with Ukrainian, and there are suggestions that Polish also scores high. Of course, national language education and the use of the standard language on national media turns national boundaries in language boundaries, but there is still a considerable continuity across national boundaries in the locally spoken language.  --Lambiam 10:57, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. However, Russian is only 74% mutually intelligible with spoken Belarusian and 50% mutually intelligible with spoken Ukrainian. [1] Alansplodge (talk) 13:37, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Are you sure about these numbers? I heard that Russian is only 83.7% mutually intelligible with written Belarusian. I mean, the confidence with which this source states such precision for such a fuzzy concept should be enough to distrust them. (It is also not Fred Lindsay but Robert Lindsay.) These figures were not derived from experiments, but mostly from estimates provided by native speakers themselves, partially on Internet fora in response to not uniformly phrased questions, by averaging a number of estimates.^[2] The numbers given in the ultimate source are asymmetric; the "written intelligibility" of Ukrainian for Russians is reported as 80%, while the other way around scores 85%. As far as I could figure out, there was no correction or control for prior knowledge of the other language.  --Lambiam 23:34, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

@Lambian: raised important issues regarding these % of mutually intelligibility questions: what does it mean actually/how do you define and measure understanding? Is it asymmetric? What's the previous exposure? Regarding the last point, almost all adult Ukrainians had some exposure to Russian language. Russians may not have any exposure to Ukrainian.

To all these sort of questions of similitude (regarding for example Scandinavian languages, Spanish/Italian/Portuguese, and many others that are in a spectrum) It might be a better gauge to observe the behavior of those using the language (do they watch movies, do they buy books, do they try to switch the language?). Bumptump (talk) 01:52, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Whatever percentages may be used, they apply to the generality of the relevant populations. But humans usually communicate with individuals or small groups thereof, whose understanding of neighbouring languages will differ widely. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:54, 27 March 2022 (UTC)