Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 April 20

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April 20

"-phobic"

Why do people often use words ending with "-phobic" to mean dislike, despite such words meaning fear? CZieges (talk) 03:11, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

According to Jedi master Yoda, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate." -- AnonMoos (talk) 03:32, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Words mean what they mean in popular usage, not what you think their etymology might suggest. One non-emotionally loaded example is hydrophobic, which describes a chemical compound with the property of "Repelling, tending not to combine with, or incapable of dissolving in water". Such a compound feels no fear. HiLo48 (talk) 03:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Etymological fallacy 82.166.199.42 (talk) 05:54, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

People dislike what they fear, so I see no contradiction. See -phobic. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:26, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

The obvious choice in Ancient Greek to base an ending on for just "dislike" without fear is the term δυσχέρεια (dyskhéreia), meaning "annoyance, disgust, unpleasantness".^[1] However, already in ancient times its meaning started to shift in the direction of (a general) "difficulty".^[2] The meaning in modern Greek is now just "difficulty, impediment", or, as a medical term, "distress", without an emotional load. This made this term unsuitable.  --Lambiam 08:38, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Also, -dyskhereia is a more clumsy ending to begin with. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:46, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, such an ending would have been very dyscheriic.  --Lambiam 13:19, 20 April 2023 (UTC)}

By the way, the element used in ancient Greek compounds to specifically mean "hate" is miso-, as in "misanthropy" and "misogyny", but it attaches to the front of words, which might be awkward in some cases. AnonMoos (talk) 11:18, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Ancient Greek did have a noun μῖσος mîsos, so in principle there's no reason we couldn't have words like "homomisos" in place of "homophobia", as well as "anthropomisos" in place of "misanthropy", but we don't. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:27, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

homomisia and transmisia have been used, although rarely. -insert valid name here- (talk) 15:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

"Homomisia" would have the exact same problem as "homophobia" -- logically etymologically they would mean "hatred/fear of [those who are] the same". "Transmisia" combines Greek and Latin, and contains a consonant cluster which could not exist in the ancient Greek language, and would literally etymologically mean something like "cross-hatred" or "hatred across" or "hatred of [those who are on] the other side"... AnonMoos (talk) 18:20, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

This is all a fun game to play, but it's pointless in answering the OP's question. English really does use -phobia in the context of "hatred against" in many contexts, and the concept of etymological fallacy, already mentioned in the third response, is the only really relevant answer for the OP. The rest of this is just creating new words for entertainment, and has no bearing on English as She Is Spoke. --Jayron32 18:25, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I do not find this reply entirely satisfactory. In my opinion it is valid to ask, "How come we use the word school for something that is obviously not leisure, while Ancient Greek σχολή meant 'leisure'?" This sense development did not occur at random; there is a good explanation for it. An example of an etymological fallacy would be to argue that attending school today is a form of leisure because that is what the term "really" means. Learned suffixes derived from Ancient Greek, often used to form scientific neologisms, are not chosen at random. If there had been a simple Ancient Greek term for "aversion", say zythos *, then we would very likely now have used terms like acrozythic, lipozythic and homozythic. A reasonable explanation for the use of -phobic is the lack of a better alternative.  --Lambiam 20:19, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

---

*Such a word does exist, but it refers to a type of beer.

I've sometimes thought that the term "homophobic" is tinged with politics. However, it's the term that's used, and dat's dat. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

The "true meaning" of politics is the art of being a good citizen.  --Lambiam 08:56, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Ironic, ain't it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:13, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Another example of etymological fallacy: "monotheism" was not coined to mean 'belief in one god'. That's an etymological fallacy introduced by Webster in the 19th century, though one that has now taken over. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, it meant 'belief in the one true god', as opposed to atheism, which was the absence of belief in the one true god. Thus Muslims, Jews and unitarian Christians were atheists, and only trinitarian Christians were monotheists. But of course that's no longer what those words mean. It's possible that at some point in the future, the word 'homophobia' will be re-analyzed as 'fear of the same', but that's just not how it's used now. — kwami (talk) 23:56, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

See Etymonline ("monotheism (n.) 'doctrine or belief that there is but one god,' 1650s"; "monotheist (n.) 'one who believes that there is but one god,' 1670s"), New World Encyclopedia ("The term 'monotheism' was coined in 1660 by Henry More (1614-1687), a member of the Cambridge Platonists, in order to better organize and categorize religions on a continuum (as progressing in an evolution from 'primitive' levels such as animism through to polytheism, eventually ending up at monotheism). Monotheism was seen as the most 'civilized' notion for conceiving of divinity and placed at the top of this hierarchy."), even the (explicitly Christian) Gospel Coalition ("The word monotheism was not coined until the 17th century when Cambridge don Henry More used it to describe any view that held to one person (or principle) as God."). – .Raven  ^.talk 01:35, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

More defined the term simply by "Monotheiſme or worſhipping one God ".^[3]  --Lambiam 09:26, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

And to clarify even further that he did not restrict that definition to Christians, in that sentence he is referring to Muslims: ... namely, to point at the Saracens hypocritical oſtentation of  'Monotheiſme or worſhipping one God ', which they doe mainly in envy and oppoſition to the Chriſtian profeſſion of the Trinity....

Pretty far from "Muslims, Jews and unitarian Christians were atheists, and only trinitarian Christians were monotheists." – .Raven  ^.talk 04:24, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

I love the long eſſes here. I kind of wish we'd use those in direct quotes in Wikipedia. --Trovatore (talk) 21:24, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

In the actual passage, I don't think More is attributing monotheism to Muslims, but saying that they falsely claim to be monotheists, while actually being pagans. Read on to the end of the paragraph. --Trovatore (talk) 21:30, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

"... while themſelves are under the Deſtroyer, and are ſtill as truly Pagans as the Aſſyrians and Greeks that worſhipped Adad and Apollo." 

But of course (even leaving aside the misidentification) each of those is only one deity, as well. – .Raven  ^.talk 23:54, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Accepting Translation

Hello i translated Polish Wikipedia Page To English And this Page Need To accept By Older Translators

please help me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ContentTranslation?from=pl&to=en&page=Hamid+Bavafa&targettitle=Hamid+Bavafa

tnx Mka21ad (talk) 19:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Help desk is a better place to ask for help.  --Lambiam 09:30, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

West Country English accent

While Northern English pronounces words like bath, grass, dance and can't with the a sound, how is the South West accent pronounced? Do they use the words the way Scottish and Irish pronounce them? And do they all sound like Samwise Gamgee from the Lord of the Rings films and Vickey Pollard (who is from Bristol) from the TV series Little Britain? 86.131.245.189 (talk) 20:45, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Regarding "do they all sound like" the answer is an unequivocal "no". Within any geographic dialect area, there will always be variation and a continuum of speech patterns, at the most granular level, every person has a distinct idiolect and their own unique way of speaking. Additionaly, dialects will vary within an area often based on social, economic, cultural, and other factors. For example, singer-songwriter Mary Spender was raised, and lived for a long time, in Bristol, and she speaks in a fairly typical Received Pronunciation dialect. Pull up some of her YouTube videos, and you'll see no hint of the traditional West Country English accent often associated with that part of England. In general, you will find a wide range of different accents and dialects in any area, and variation even within the same person; people often employ Situational code-switching and speak differently depending on the immediate context. Regarding your question on how the "a" is pronounced, see West Country English#Phonology, which covers it in the item on the TRAP-BATH split. --Jayron32 12:15, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

According to the Internet, the West Country accent is how pirates talk. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 15:43, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

According to West Country English#Phonology... 1: West Country accents are rhotic like most Canadian, American, Irish and Scottish accents, meaning that the historical loss of non-syllable-final /r/ did not take place, in contrast to non-rhotic accents like Received Pronunciation. Often, this /r/ is specifically realised as the retroflex approximant [ɻ], which is typically lengthened at the ends of words. Rhoticity appears to be declining in both real and apparent time in some areas of the West Country, for example Dorset. 2: The TRAP–BATH split associated with London English may not exist for some speakers, or may exist marginally on the basis of simply a length difference. In other words, some may not have any contrast between /æ/ and /ɑː/, for example making palm and Pam homophones (though some pronounce the /l/ in palm). For some West Country speakers, the vowel is even the same in the TRAP, BATH, PALM, and START word sets: [a]. The split's "bath" vowel (appearing as the letter "a" in such other words as grass, ask, path, etc.) can also be represented by the sounds [æː] or [aː] in different parts of the West Country (RP has [ɑː] in such words); the isoglosses in the Linguistic Atlas of England are not straightforward cases of clear borders. Short vowels have also been reported, e.g., [a]. 86.131.245.189 (talk) 21:19, 21 April 2023 (UTC)