Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 March 3

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March 3

Signor Majeroni

In starting the article Eduardo Majeroni I boldly discounted "Edoardo" and "Edouardo" as misspellings, based on . . . can't remember, maybe published advertisements . . . but now I'm not so sure, as in going back I find the advertisement his widow placed in "Family notices", as "Edoardo". Doug butler (talk) 20:30, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I would not describe those as "misspellings" without better evidence. I tried searching in Italian-language pages (which doesn't seem to work too well -- many of the hits were clearly in English) and "Eduardo" and "Edoardo" seemed to get similar numbers of hits, of similar quality. I think "Edoardo" is the more common cognate of "Edward" in Italian (but I'm not sure of that; it's a pretty rare name in either spelling and I don't recall knowing anyone by that name).

You didn't ask about this, but I would be skeptical of giving the pronunciation as "M'rony" based only on an Australian newspaper entry. The Italian pronunciation would be /majeroni/ (mah-yeh-ROH-nee), just like it's spelled. It could certainly be that "M'rony" was what contemporary Australians called him. --Trovatore (talk) 20:50, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

That ref surprised me too, hence its inclusion. Doug butler (talk) 21:09, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

It seems like pretty thin sourcing for such an odd claim. I would leave it out unless you can find a better source. --Trovatore (talk) 21:14, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I am ashamed to say that, despite Australia being often called the most multicultural nation on earth, Australians generally have tin ears for any names - and words generally - not from the Anglo-Celtic heritage. I've mentioned this here before; a lot of Aussies seem to regard it as a badge of honour to have to struggle with foreign words. But it's very important to struggle unsuccessfully. They think they're doing really well when they pronounce Giovanni as "Jee-o-vahni". Anyone who has any facility with foreign languages is at risk of being looked upon as a bit pretentious. So please, take that advice to pronounce Majeroni as M'rony with all the salt you can muster up. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:12, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Point taken; I'll delete it after everyone's had a go at the long-suffering Aussie. My pet peeve is radio announcers proclaiming as a virtue having failed arithmetic ("mathematics" they call it). But we digress. What do I do about Eduardo? Doug butler (talk) 22:26, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

You might do something like

Eduardo Majeroni (1840 – 20 October 1891) was an actor...

It's not perfect, but it might be the best you can do with the sources you have. --Trovatore (talk) 23:27, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

To complicate the issue, in an 1875 booklet on the occasion of Ristori's company performing Victor Hugo's Lucretia Borgia in New York as part of Ristori's farewell tour, the name of the actor is given as EDUORDO MAJERONI.^[1] I can just imagine someone first wrote "Eduardo", and when someone else told them the name was written with an "o", they applied a "correction" but changed the wrong vowel. This announcement in an 1862 issue of a Florence (Italy) newspaper has "Edoardo". In the 19th century, people were not as fussy about the spelling of their names as they tend to be now. Passports were generally not needed, also not for international travel, and most people did not have any identity document issued by an authority. The name on someone's marriage certificate could use another spelling than their baptismal registration. For use abroad, it was not uncommon to switch to the local equivalent; Theodor from Königsberg could sign his name as Théodore when in Paris.  --Lambiam 00:19, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Case in point, Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin became Frédéric François Chopin on arrival in Paris. He did not in any formal sense change his name; he just used a localized variant.  --Lambiam 00:28, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks all. Doug butler (talk) 01:12, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

So, Maj- is pronounced like Mah-? It sounds more like Spanish than Italian to me. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:23, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

I suspect this was in response to my respelling as mah-yeh-ROH-nee? I was giving "mah" as the pronunciation of "ma"; the j goes on the next syllable, and is part of the "yeh". --Trovatore (talk) 18:24, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

The notes above suggest that it's "Ma-", and not "Maj-", that is pronounced "Mah-"; and that the following "j" is a vowel as described at Italian_orthography#J,_K,_W,_X_and_Y. Bazza (talk) 12:05, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

The name is likely an orthographic variant of Maglieroni, which would be pronounced /maʎ.ʎeˈrɔ.ni/.  --Lambiam 14:22, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

With the open o, ya think? Open v closed o isn't used especially distinctively where I was in Italy, but my intuition would have been closed. --Trovatore (talk) 21:01, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

They are indeed hardly contrastive even in stressed positions. Wiktionary gives us /fi.larˈmɔ.ni.ko/ for filarmonico and /mak.keˈrɔ.ni.ko/ for maccheronico, but /a.li.men.tatˈ t͡sjo.ne/ for alimentazione. There are also regional differences in the pronunciation, which makes it hard to be definitive, especially for possibly regional names.  --Lambiam 22:05, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Those pronunciations are intuitive to me. I wonder if an o in a stressed penult tends to be closed, but open in a stressed antepenult? --Trovatore (talk) 00:19, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

In sacerdozio /sa.t͡ʃerˈdɔt.t͡sjo/ the first o is open in a stressed penult, while it is closed in the stressed antepenult of polvere| /ˈpol.ve.re/, if we may trust the pronunciations given by Wiktionary – but the Italian Wiktionary agrees. So there may be no hard and fast rule. I don't know if there is a minimal pair establishing these as separate phonemes more than as preferential allophones.  --Lambiam 08:40, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

The syllabicity of sacerdozio seems a little ambiguous to me. I would probably think of the first o as being on the antepenult, notwithstanding that the io part is sort of legato. --Trovatore (talk) 04:52, 6 March 2022 (UTC)