Nativized loanwords vs. code switching?
Sonja Elen Kisa
language. Often their meaning or pronunciation becomes fixed, even if
the word continues to evolve in the language it was loaned from. Is
there a term for this? A sort of nativized loanword. Sometimes the
native speaker may not even be aware that the word they are using
comes from another language...
But there is another type of loanword where the speaker resorts to
another language to import almost quotable text in that language,
often because of lack of specialized vocabulary in their own language.
For example, discussing computer stuff in a minority language, and all
of a sudden there are 4 English words together (which often occur
together in that context in English) in the middle of an utterance in
the minority language. There even be so many of these imports in the
language that they could be argued as being fully part of the
language.
When descriptively documenting the minority language, how can the
linguist know whether all these loanwords or loan expressions are part
of the minority language? Most speakers are bilingual, so maybe
they're just resorting to English for words missing in their own
language. Or maybe all these English phrases are now part of the
minority language and the linguist needs to include them all as part
of the language itself, ignoring the fact that they were loaned from
English.
It's especially interesting with verbs. Like you might have the
English verb "call in sick" but with appropriate inflections at the
end of "call" to conjugate the verb appropriately in the minority
language and make it fit in the sentence gramatically.
Maybe the test is if you can find that the loanword has been around
for more than a certain amount of generations or years, then it's part
of the minority language. Otherwise it's still fresh and not part of
it yet?
Any thoughts or recommendations of linguistic textbooks that try to
explain this continuum of loaning to understand what is and what isn't
part of a language? How does one tell the difference, etc.
Sonja
Peter T. Daniels
> I can think of many loanwords that have become a normal part of the
> language. Often their meaning or pronunciation becomes fixed, even if
> the word continues to evolve in the language it was loaned from. Is
> there a term for this? A sort of nativized loanword. Sometimes the
> native speaker may not even be aware that the word they are using
> comes from another language...
That _is_ a loanword. If it isn't "nativized," then it isn't a loan.
What non-linguist English-speaker would suspect that "beef" is a
loanword?
> But there is another type of loanword where the speaker resorts to
> another language to import almost quotable text in that language,
> often because of lack of specialized vocabulary in their own language.
> For example, discussing computer stuff in a minority language, and all
> of a sudden there are 4 English words together (which often occur
> together in that context in English) in the middle of an utterance in
> the minority language. There even be so many of these imports in the
> language that they could be argued as being fully part of the
> language.
Then they _are_ part of the language. Do they take native inflection?
Do they reflect native phonology?
> When descriptively documenting the minority language, how can the
> linguist know whether all these loanwords or loan expressions are part
> of the minority language? Most speakers are bilingual, so maybe
> they're just resorting to English for words missing in their own
> language. Or maybe all these English phrases are now part of the
> minority language and the linguist needs to include them all as part
> of the language itself, ignoring the fact that they were loaned from
> English.
Do you really think there are examples where you can't tell whether a
word is foreign or part of the language?
> It's especially interesting with verbs. Like you might have the
> English verb "call in sick" but with appropriate inflections at the
> end of "call" to conjugate the verb appropriately in the minority
> language and make it fit in the sentence gramatically.
Then obviously it's not English.
> Maybe the test is if you can find that the loanword has been around
> for more than a certain amount of generations or years, then it's part
> of the minority language. Otherwise it's still fresh and not part of
> it yet?
So there's no such thing as a recent loanword? That makes no sense.
> Any thoughts or recommendations of linguistic textbooks that try to
> explain this continuum of loaning to understand what is and what isn't
> part of a language? How does one tell the difference, etc.
So this is secretly a way to move the "language/dialect" argument to
yet another thread?
Did you consult the literature on language contact, beginning with U.
Weinreich, Languages in Contact (1953)?
Harlan Messinger
> I can think of many loanwords that have become a normal part of the
> language. Often their meaning or pronunciation becomes fixed, even if
> the word continues to evolve in the language it was loaned from. Is
> there a term for this? A sort of nativized loanword. Sometimes the
> native speaker may not even be aware that the word they are using
> comes from another language...
>
> But there is another type of loanword where the speaker resorts to
> another language to import almost quotable text in that language,
> often because of lack of specialized vocabulary in their own language.
> For example, discussing computer stuff in a minority language, and all
> of a sudden there are 4 English words together (which often occur
> together in that context in English) in the middle of an utterance in
> the minority language. There even be so many of these imports in the
> language that they could be argued as being fully part of the
> language.
"Computer" has been an Italian loan word from English ever since it
became normal in Italian to use that word to refer to a computer. As far
as I know, this has been since the first report in an Italian-language
medium on the invention of the computer. With the definite article, it's
"il computer"; in the plural, it's "i computer", in keeping with the
usual Italian convention under which nouns loaned from outside are
invariant.
>
> When descriptively documenting the minority language, how can the
> linguist know whether all these loanwords or loan expressions are part
> of the minority language? Most speakers are bilingual, so maybe
> they're just resorting to English for words missing in their own
> language. Or maybe all these English phrases are now part of the
> minority language and the linguist needs to include them all as part
> of the language itself, ignoring the fact that they were loaned from
> English.
>
> It's especially interesting with verbs. Like you might have the
> English verb "call in sick" but with appropriate inflections at the
> end of "call" to conjugate the verb appropriately in the minority
> language and make it fit in the sentence gramatically.
How else would they do it? The borrowing speakers would normally not
know that the past tense is "called in sick" and the progressive
"calling in sick".
> Maybe the test is if you can find that the loanword has been around
> for more than a certain amount of generations or years, then it's part
> of the minority language. Otherwise it's still fresh and not part of
> it yet?
Are you thinking of pat phrases like "res ipsa loquitur" and "de
rigueur" and "sotto voce" that most educated people recognize as
non-English and that are also uninflected and non-productive, and words
like "Weltanschauung" which people who are likely to recognize them in
the first place are also likely to recognize as foreign? Then it's a
tricky question. I think it's uncontroversial that "et cetera" is used
routinely by most without thought as to its origin, while the same may
not be true of "et alia" (or its abbreviated form "et al.") and almost
certainly isn't of "ceteris paribus".
Jens S. Larsen
> I can think of many loanwords that have become a normal part of the
> language. Often their meaning or pronunciation becomes fixed, even if
> the word continues to evolve in the language it was loaned from. Is
> there a term for this? A sort of nativized loanword. Sometimes the
> native speaker may not even be aware that the word they are using
> comes from another language...
According to WP, Duckworth (1977) calls the not-yet-nativized
loanwords "foreign words".
[...]
> It's especially interesting with verbs. Like you might have the
> English verb "call in sick" but with appropriate inflections at the
> end of "call" to conjugate the verb appropriately in the minority
> language and make it fit in the sentence gramatically.
That would seem to indicate that the speaker uses English at work and
another language at home.
> Maybe the test is if you can find that the loanword has been around
> for more than a certain amount of generations or years, then it's part
> of the minority language. Otherwise it's still fresh and not part of
> it yet?
At the end of the day, the words do not belong to the language, but to
the speaker. The better the majority language is known by the
minority, the more can they sprinkle their minority speech with
foreign words of majority origin. Which foreign words to include in a
dictionary is a matter of lexicographic policy, not of linguistics per
se.
Jens S. Larsen
António Marques
> Sonja Elen Kisa wrote:
>> It's especially interesting with verbs. Like you might have the
>> English verb "call in sick" but with appropriate inflections at the
>> end of "call" to conjugate the verb appropriately in the minority
>> language and make it fit in the sentence gramatically.
>
> How else would they do it? The borrowing speakers would normally not
> know that the past tense is "called in sick" and the progressive
> "calling in sick".
Even knowing it, it's weird to use foreign inflections, since they mean
nothing and as such don't serve their purpose. 'Call-ar doente' or
'call-ando doente' would be a natural way to say it - a natural way to
use a foreign expression for which there is no equivalent at the moment
-, translating what's obvious (sick gets translated because one's
stalking about sickness anyway), leaving what's not (call is kept
because 'chamar' would make no sense, 'in' is likely lost) and adding
the appropriate native inflections.
--
António Marques
wugi
> I can think of many loanwords that have become a normal part of the
> language. Often their meaning or pronunciation becomes fixed, even if
> the word continues to evolve in the language it was loaned from. Is
> there a term for this? A sort of nativized loanword. Sometimes the
> native speaker may not even be aware that the word they are using
> comes from another language...
More than half of English vocab would be in this case...
> But there is another type of loanword where the speaker resorts to
> another language to import almost quotable text in that language,
(...)
> It's especially interesting with verbs. Like you might have the
> English verb "call in sick" but with appropriate inflections at the
> end of "call" to conjugate the verb appropriately in the minority
> language and make it fit in the sentence gramatically.
If it were borrowed as a unit, flection would apply to the unit rather than
to the English verb part. It happens with similar 'indigenous' constructs as
well.
So I'd expect, eg in Dutch: 'call in sick'en. Mijn collega 'call in sick't
te veel. Er wordt te veel ge'call in sick't.
In Spanish: 'call in sick'ar, 'call in sick'ando...
DKleinecke
Don't forget the notorious "parquear su carro".
John Atkinson
In Swahili, there's (for example) kupasiana, 'to pass to one another' (as in
football), which has the "infinitive" prefix ku-, the prepositional
suffix -ia, and the reciprical suffix -ana.
Many languages (though not European ones as far as I know) never borrow
verbs as verbs, but rather as nouns, and then either (1) use them as the
object of a native verb that means something like "make" or "hit" or "begin"
or "say", in a phrase of which a rough English equivalent would be "He made
'call in sick' "; or (2) convert them into a verb by using a standard affix
that converts nouns to verbs ("He 'call in sick'-ized").
Examples:
In Zapotec and Tequistlatecan languages borrowed Spanish verbs are used in
the form of a phrase consisting of a verb that means "make" and the Spanish
infinitive.
In Japanese, an English verb is borrowed as a noun and the verb suru
(roughly, "to do") is added: thus "kopiisuru" from English verb "to copy".
(Though it occurs to me that in this particular case it's not clear (to me)
why it's not the noun "a copy" that's been borrowed)
In Dyirbal, the English verb "work(ing)" is borrowed as the noun "wagi", and
them converted into a verb using the intransitive verbaliser -bi-l -- thus
"Bayi yara wagibigaliNu" the man worked quickly (with aspectal
suffix -galiNu, quickly, suffixed to the verb).
(These are just the first few I came up with. I'm sure others here can
think of better examples, probably in more familiar languages.)
John.
anal...@hotmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
What happens to these words can be fully predicted based on whether
they occur in everyday speech - ("exetra") - nativization working its
inexorable ways. Even scientists have found "formulae" unwieldy and I
think it is Americans who have given us formulas.
Words that occur only in writing and prepared speech (such as
Weltanshauung) will retain their original form.
John Atkinson
> On 2009-01-14, Harlan Messinger <hmessinger...@comcast.net>
> wrote:
>>
>> "Computer" has been an Italian loan word from English ever since it
>> became normal in Italian to use that word to refer to a computer. As
>> far as I know, this has been since the first report in an
>> Italian-language medium on the invention of the computer. With the
>> definite article, it's "il computer"; in the plural, it's "i
>> computer", in keeping with the usual Italian convention under which
>> nouns loaned from outside are invariant.
>
> grammatical gender assign genders to loanwords? Thanks,
Greville Corbett's book "Gender" (Cambridge) has good stuff on this -- with
particular reference to German and French, if I remember correctly.
John.
James Dolan
bagpipe <jsc...@gmail.com> wrote:
|One of the major problems in the British economy is that banks aren't
|loaning words and people are running out of things to say. I think
|the government needs to step in and pump at least 20 million words
|into the system to get the linguistic economy moving again.
this is because the english language is a ponzi scheme. turns out all
those "english" loan words actually came from other client languages.
--
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> António Marques wrote:
> Many languages (though not European ones as far as I know) never borrow
> verbs as verbs, but rather as nouns, and then either (1) use them as the
> object of a native verb that means something like "make" or "hit" or "begin"
> or "say", in a phrase of which a rough English equivalent would be "He made
> 'call in sick' "; or (2) convert them into a verb by using a standard affix
> that converts nouns to verbs ("He 'call in sick'-ized").
> (These are just the first few I came up with. I'm sure others here can
> think of better examples, probably in more familiar languages.)
>
Slavic languages do exactly this. E.g. with Slovak computer terminology,
from verbs we have bootovať, formátovať, uploadovať, sejvovať/sejvnúť
(this one had to be written in phonetic transcription). Verbs are always
domesticated, so that they can be conjugated.
Nouns are often declined, but some of them remain indeclinable, and
there are very few (but they do exist) loan adjectives and adverbs that
are indeclinable (quite opposite to the core language features), such as
fajn, super.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabík http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk |
-----------------------------------------------------------
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Nikolaj
> Slavic languages do exactly this. E.g. with Slovak computer terminology,
> from verbs we have bootovať, formátovať, uploadovať, sejvovať/sejvnúť
> (this one had to be written in phonetic transcription). Verbs are always
> domesticated, so that they can be conjugated.
In Slovene that happens only in the first phase of expansion of the
vocabulary until some more appropriate terminology is thought up. Some
terms probably remain like that even after the first phase, but I would
say that they are rare. Of course such loanwords are used a lot in
spoken language and in non-official communication (e-mails) mostly among
IT people (as it happens with any technical terminlogy among
professionals). On the other hand the non-IT users got used to the terms
MS Office nativization projects brought and they speak in Slovene
terminology.
1st phase - later
-------------------------------
to boot - bútati - zagnati
to format - formatirati - formatirati
to upload - aplovdati - naložiti
to save - sejvati - shraniti
to install - instalirati - namestiti
It seems that there are different levels of acceptance in different
verbs. Butati, aplovdati and sejvati are not accpted as Slovene and will
never be. I suppose they function as German (Italian, Hungarian)
loanwords that exist in paralel with Slovene words in some subgroups
(German - among Styrian and Carinthians; English IT terminology - among
IT professionals). "Instalirati" is quite accepted, but later
"namestiti" was selected and started to spread and "formatirati" is the
only word, in Slovenian it would be translated with a more descriptive
phrase.
Similar with nouns I suppose, but I think more of those are accepted
(but still not many).
John Atkinson
> John Atkinson <john...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>> António Marques wrote:
>
>> Many languages (though not European ones as far as I know) never
>> borrow verbs as verbs, but rather as nouns, and then either (1) use
>> them as the object of a native verb that means something like "make"
>> or "hit" or "begin" or "say", in a phrase of which a rough English
>> equivalent would be "He made 'call in sick' "; or (2) convert them
>> into a verb by using a standard affix that converts nouns to verbs
>> ("He 'call in sick'-ized").
> ...
>
>> (These are just the first few I came up with. I'm sure others here
>> can think of better examples, probably in more familiar languages.)
>>
>
> Slavic languages do exactly this. E.g. with Slovak computer
> terminology,
> from verbs we have bootovať, formátovať, uploadovať, sejvovať/sejvnúť
> (this one had to be written in phonetic transcription). Verbs are
> always domesticated, so that they can be conjugated.
Yes, I forgot about Russian.
Since I was introduced to Russian via the mathematical literature back in
the sixties, I'm very familiar with the verbs ending in -irovat', rather
than simply -ovat'. These all appear to be borrowings from German verbs in
which the suffix -ieren has been added to a noun, which itself has often
been borrowed from a French or English verb
Examples (all the ones starting with A- in my little Maths dictionary):
abstragirovat' (< abstrahieren <abstract (?)), adaptirovat'
Somtimes a Greco-Latin verbalizing suffix is removed before adding -irovat':
akkumulirovat' (<accumulieren < accumulate), approximirovat',
assotsiirovat'sya
Sometimes it isn't:
aktivizirobat', analizirovat'
In these last two cases, we have words that have acquired three successive
verbalizing endings in the course of their wanderings.
In the case of assotsiirovat'sya, the reciprocal clitic -sya has been added
as well, even though the German assoziieren doesn't require the reflexive
pronoun.
> Nouns are often declined, but some of them remain indeclinable, and
> there are very few (but they do exist) loan adjectives and adverbs
> that
> are indeclinable (quite opposite to the core language features), such
> as fajn, super.
I understand that a common deciding factor for nouns is whether or not they
end in sounds compatible with Slavic noun endings -- i.e, if they end in a
consonant, the main masculine declension works, with -a the feminine one,
with -o neuter -- but words like "taksi" (taxi) or "attaSe" (attaché) or
"ledi" (lady) or "kenguru" (kangaroo) don't decline.
John.
PaulJK
[...]
> I understand that a common deciding factor for nouns is whether or not they
> end in sounds compatible with Slavic noun endings -- i.e, if they end in a
> consonant, the main masculine declension works, with -a the feminine one,
> with -o neuter -- but words like "taksi" (taxi) or "attaSe" (attaché) or
> "ledi" (lady) or "kenguru" (kangaroo) don't decline.
How a particular borrowing gets handled depends sometimes
on what kind of concept it refers to. Has the actual concept
been also fully nativized or is still clearly a foreign one?
The following examples are from Czech, which doesn't treat
the foreign borrowings the same way as Russian.
(Well, it certainly doesn't in case of "taxi").
Strictly speaking, "lady" doesn't have a corresponding
Continental European equivalent, the aristocratic hierarchy
is different from the English one and every country/empire
has its own well established terminology. Consequently,
the word "lady" has never been nativized, and when used,
it refers to a genteel woman in a foreign country. It is never
declined, and its spelling has never been changed.
The Cz spelling dictionary lists it as "lady [lejdy]" to show
its nonstandard pronunciation. (BTW, there is only a handful
words in the whole dictionary that include a pronunciation
guide []).
The "taxi", on the other hand, refers to a perfectly native
concept. Some 80-100 years ago it gradually replaced the
original native terms such as "nájemný vůz" and hybrids
like "nájemné auto", "nájemný automobil" (i.e. hire car).
The short "-i" ending didn't fit with any existing paradigms
so the singular nominative became "taxík" (-ík being
a vaguely agentizing suffix) with the declension pattern
following one of the inanimate, hard ending, masculine
paradigms, "hrad".
"Auto" is an example of another loan refering to a solidly
native concept. However, the singular nominative "auto"
had no need for modifications. The "-o" ending made
it a perfect noun conforming to declension patterns of one
of the neuter paradigms, "město".
Whether the spelling of nominatives changes or not is
not always consistent. Unlike "lady", the spelling of
"attaché" was changed to "atašé" but like "lady", it's
never declined (not for case nor number).
pjk
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> "Auto" is an example of another loan refering to a solidly
> native concept. However, the singular nominative "auto"
> had no need for modifications. The "-o" ending made
> it a perfect noun conforming to declension patterns of one
> of the neuter paradigms, "město".
>
However, in Slovak, there is a root alternation in this kind of
neuter nouns (mesto->miest (gen. pl.)). The syllable "au" in "auto" is
not exactly a native one, but eventually it has been adopted as "áut" in
genitive singular - the u is a semivowel. All is well and nice,
until "euro" came.... Now, "eu" is even less native than "au",
"eu" in Európa (Europe) is _two_ syllables, however "eu" in euro is a
glide. Analogic modification "éur" does not work, since "é" [e:] is very
foreign to Slovak. So people started to adopt "eúr" [e.u:.r] for
genitive singular. However, some die hard prescriptivists at the Ľ.
Štúr Institute of Linguistics insisted on using the short form "eur",
since they do not considered the noun to be a domesticated one, and were
succcessful enough to shake out the dominant form "eúr" out of its
position, and now the usage is rather mixed (with the "proper" form
being "eur"). Now that the Slovak Republic adopted the Euro, the
domestication seems inevitable - however, for some decades the official
correct term will be "eur", I guess. Ah, the joys of language planning.
PaulJK
> PaulJK <paul....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Auto" is an example of another loan refering to a solidly
>> native concept. However, the singular nominative "auto"
>> had no need for modifications. The "-o" ending made
>> it a perfect noun conforming to declension patterns of one
>> of the neuter paradigms, "město".
>>
>
> However, in Slovak, there is a root alternation in this kind of
> neuter nouns (mesto->miest (gen. pl.)). The syllable "au" in "auto" is
> not exactly a native one, but eventually it has been adopted as "áut" in
> genitive singular - the u is a semivowel.
That's interesting, Czech doesn't have that problem with "auto"
since there's no root alternation, město->měst(gen.pl.).
The plural is just "aut" with a short "a". The slide "au" existed
in Old Czech, and now frequently occurs in foreign words
of German origin.
> All is well and nice,
> until "euro" came.... Now, "eu" is even less native than "au",
> "eu" in Európa (Europe) is _two_ syllables, however "eu" in
> euro is a glide.
Well, "eu" is a stinker in Czech too. Your European masters
should asked to pick another name for "euro". Or call it
"evr" (from Evropa) or "jur" (as pronounced in Engl.) :-)
Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
Europe Európa and not Evrópa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
> Analogic modification "éur" does not work, since "é" [e:] is very
> foreign to Slovak. So people started to adopt "eúr" [e.u:.r] for
> genitive singular. However, some die hard prescriptivists at the Ľ.
> Štúr Institute of Linguistics insisted on using the short form "eur",
> since they do not considered the noun to be a domesticated one, and were
> succcessful enough to shake out the dominant form "eúr" out of its
> position, and now the usage is rather mixed (with the "proper" form
> being "eur"). Now that the Slovak Republic adopted the Euro, the
> domestication seems inevitable - however, for some decades the official
> correct term will be "eur", I guess. Ah, the joys of language planning.
They should have called it a Tolar or Taler. :-)
It would be nice after centuries of hitching around the world
that word coming back home to Central Europe where it
was coined :-)
pjk
>> Radovan Garabík
Nikolaj
> They should have called it a Tolar or Taler. :-)
> It would be nice after centuries of hitching around the world
> that word coming back home to Central Europe where it
> was coined :-)
>
> pjk
He, he that would be nice. Then Slovenia would change its currency from
Tolar to another Tolar ;)
BTW: "au" and "eu" don't exist in Slovenian. Slovenian politicians
accepted a compromise when writing the name "euro" - the prefix "eur"
should be used and declined according to slovenian rules for declension.
But if I check with Google, it seems that such use is less frequent:
for instance, Google gives 605.000 hits for "eurov" and 4.210.000 hits
for "evrov". But I suppose it is strictly used in the official documents
in Slovene.
That compromise made linguists quite angry. Hopefully, some other
country (Litva, Hungary, Czech Republic, ...) will achieve that an
alternative spelling "evr-" can also be used in national documents and
also that is appears on the banknotes and coins.
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> PaulJK pravi:
>
>> They should have called it a Tolar or Taler. :-)
>> It would be nice after centuries of hitching around the world
>> that word coming back home to Central Europe where it
>> was coined :-)
>>
How would it be called in English then, if not "dollar"? :-)
>> pjk
>
> He, he that would be nice. Then Slovenia would change its currency from
> Tolar to another Tolar ;)
>
> BTW: "au" and "eu" don't exist in Slovenian. Slovenian politicians
> accepted a compromise when writing the name "euro" - the prefix "eur"
> should be used and declined according to slovenian rules for declension.
> But if I check with Google, it seems that such use is less frequent:
> for instance, Google gives 605.000 hits for "eurov" and 4.210.000 hits
> for "evrov". But I suppose it is strictly used in the official documents
> in Slovene.
>
> That compromise made linguists quite angry. Hopefully, some other
> country (Litva, Hungary, Czech Republic, ...) will achieve that an
> alternative spelling "evr-" can also be used in national documents and
> also that is appears on the banknotes and coins.
IIRC Latvia already uses eir-, _their_ problem was whether to use
eira or eiro (one was widespread, one was linguistically correct).
However, they are not going to adopt the e[ui]r[ao] anytime soon,
so the problem is postponed until they mint their own coins.
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
>> PaulJK <paul....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
> That's interesting, Czech doesn't have that problem with "auto"
> since there's no root alternation, město->měst(gen.pl.).
> The plural is just "aut" with a short "a". The slide "au" existed
> in Old Czech, and now frequently occurs in foreign words
> of German origin.
>
There are even more funny things going on with gen. pl.
E.g. the words "ego" or "echo" have the same problem - if you ask a
native speaker about genitive plural, (s)he will fault and stutter
and then think about it and admit (s)he does not know...
The number of concordances of gen. pl. of "ego" in the Slovak National
Corpus is exactly zero, and that's why the new dictionary does not
(exceptionally) list a genitive plural of this word - previous
dictionaries used some hard to come by linguistic theories and rules to
derive a wordform nobody really used.
> Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
> Europe Európa and not Evrópa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
Yes, exactly.
The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter moon
(Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have just Europa vs.
Európa.
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
> >> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That's interesting, Czech doesn't have that problem with "auto"
> > since there's no root alternation, město->měst(gen.pl.).
> > The plural is just "aut" with a short "a". The slide "au" existed
> > in Old Czech, and now frequently occurs in foreign words
> > of German origin.
>
> There are even more funny things going on with gen. pl.
> E.g. the words "ego" or "echo" have the same problem - if you ask a
> native speaker about genitive plural, (s)he will fault and stutter
> and then think about it and admit (s)he does not know...
> The number of concordances of gen. pl. of "ego" in the Slovak National
> Corpus is exactly zero, and that's why the new dictionary does not
> (exceptionally) list a genitive plural of this word - previous
> dictionaries used some hard to come by linguistic theories and rules to
> derive a wordform nobody really used.
>
> > Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
> > Europe Európa and not Evrópa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
>
> Yes, exactly.
> The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter moon
> (Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have just Europa vs.
> Európa.
Why should they be distinguished? They have the same origin, and there
aren't too many contexts where they might be confused.
PaulJK
> Nikolaj <nikolaj...@bla.si> wrote:
>> PaulJK pravi:
>>
>>> They should have called it a Tolar or Taler. :-)
>>> It would be nice after centuries of hitching around the world
>>> that word coming back home to Central Europe where it
>>> was coined :-)
>>>
>
> How would it be called in English then, if not "dollar"? :-)
Oh, why not good old germanic Thaler? :-)
>> He, he that would be nice. Then Slovenia would change its currency from
>> Tolar to another Tolar ;)
>>
>> BTW: "au" and "eu" don't exist in Slovenian. Slovenian politicians
>> accepted a compromise when writing the name "euro" - the prefix "eur"
>> should be used and declined according to slovenian rules for declension.
>> But if I check with Google, it seems that such use is less frequent:
>> for instance, Google gives 605.000 hits for "eurov" and 4.210.000 hits
>> for "evrov". But I suppose it is strictly used in the official documents
>> in Slovene.
>>
>> That compromise made linguists quite angry. Hopefully, some other
>> country (Litva, Hungary, Czech Republic, ...) will achieve that an
>> alternative spelling "evr-" can also be used in national documents and
>> also that is appears on the banknotes and coins.
>
> IIRC Latvia already uses eir-, _their_ problem was whether to use
> eira or eiro (one was widespread, one was linguistically correct).
What are they?
Are they just fem. and neut. versions of the word?
> However, they are not going to adopt the e[ui]r[ao] anytime soon,
> so the problem is postponed until they mint their own coins.
Well, that's good, I thought the Brussel gnomes would not
allow any such frivolity.
pjk
PaulJK
Who is that talking? I thought real PTD wasn't a prescriptivist. :-)
It's not a question whether they *should* be distinguished or not.
In Czech the moon and the continent have different names,
clearly different even in the casual speech. That's how it is.
Just like "Ind" is an Asian Indian and "Indián" is an American
Indian, even though one was called after the other just like
the moon after a continent, actually after the Greek godess
Europa, I suppose.
pjk
Peter T. Daniels
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Jan 18, 11:03 am, garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> > wrote:
> >> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
> >>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> That's interesting, Czech doesn't have that problem with "auto"
> >>> The plural is just "aut" with a short "a". The slide "au" existed
> >>> in Old Czech, and now frequently occurs in foreign words
> >>> of German origin.
>
> >> There are even more funny things going on with gen. pl.
> >> E.g. the words "ego" or "echo" have the same problem - if you ask a
> >> native speaker about genitive plural, (s)he will fault and stutter
> >> and then think about it and admit (s)he does not know...
> >> The number of concordances of gen. pl. of "ego" in the Slovak National
> >> Corpus is exactly zero, and that's why the new dictionary does not
> >> (exceptionally) list a genitive plural of this word - previous
> >> dictionaries used some hard to come by linguistic theories and rules to
> >> derive a wordform nobody really used.
>
> >>> Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
> >>> Europe Európa and not Evrópa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
>
> >> Yes, exactly.
> >> The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter moon
> >> (Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have just Europa vs.
> >> Európa.
>
> > Why should they be distinguished? They have the same origin, and there
> > aren't too many contexts where they might be confused.
>
> Who is that talking? I thought real PTD wasn't a prescriptivist. :-)
It's _anti_prescriptivist to suggest there's no reason to distinguish
homonyms using a stray accent.
PaulJK
> PaulJK <paul....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
>>> PaulJK <paul....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> That's interesting, Czech doesn't have that problem with "auto"
>> since there's no root alternation, město->měst(gen.pl.).
>> The plural is just "aut" with a short "a". The slide "au" existed
>> in Old Czech, and now frequently occurs in foreign words
>> of German origin.
>
> There are even more funny things going on with gen. pl.
> E.g. the words "ego" or "echo" have the same problem - if you ask a
> native speaker about genitive plural, (s)he will fault and stutter
> and then think about it and admit (s)he does not know...
In Czech, I would bravely spell it "ega"(pl.nom.), "eg"(pl.gen.),
"egům"(pl.dat.), "ega"(pl.acc.&voc.), "egech"(pl.loc.), and
"egy"(pl.instr.), but, I guess, the genitive as well as some of the
others is the first time in my life that I need to do so.
I almost spelled the locative and instrumental as "egách"
and "egami", but then I resisted the influence of the
nonstandard (Prague) ideolect.
> The number of concordances of gen. pl. of "ego" in the Slovak National
> Corpus is exactly zero, and that's why the new dictionary does not
> (exceptionally) list a genitive plural of this word - previous
> dictionaries used some hard to come by linguistic theories and rules to
> derive a wordform nobody really used.
>
>> Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
>> Europe Európa and not Evrópa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
>
> Yes, exactly.
> The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter moon
> (Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have just Europa vs.
> Európa.
>
PaulJK
Okay.
The Cz name Evropa for the Greek goddess and the continent
has been coined centuries ago. The old Bohemian wordsmiths
must have decided that the second letter in ευρυοπ– (wideeyed
or broadfaced) was to be transcribed as a "v", not "u".
Much more recently, the Jupiter moon's name "Europa" was
used by the Cz astonomers in the form it was given it by its
discoverers. I guess the Cz language institute isn't prescriptivist
enough to advocate a different spelling, "Evropa".
>> It's not a question whether they *should* be distinguished or not.
>> In Czech the moon and the continent have different names,
>> clearly different even in the casual speech. That's how it is.
>>
>> Just like "Ind" is an Asian Indian and "Indián" is an American
>> Indian, even though one was called after the other just like
>> the moon after a continent, actually after the Greek godess
>> Europa, I suppose.
pjk
Richard Herring
<paul....@gmail.com> writes
>garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
>> Nikolaj <nikolaj...@bla.si> wrote:
>>> PaulJK pravi:
>>>
>>>> They should have called it a Tolar or Taler. :-)
>>>> It would be nice after centuries of hitching around the world
>>>> that word coming back home to Central Europe where it
>>>> was coined :-)
>>>>
>>
>> How would it be called in English then, if not "dollar"? :-)
>
>Oh, why not good old germanic Thaler? :-)
That would be *daler in English (Eng. "dale" < Ger. "Thal" ;-)
--
Richard Herring
John Atkinson
> On Jan 18, 10:56 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Jan 18, 11:03 am, garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
>>> wrote:
>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
>>>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>> Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
>>>>> Europe Európa and not Evrópa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
>>
>>>> Yes, exactly.
>>>> The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter moon
>>>> (Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have just Europa
>>>> vs. Európa.
>>
>>> Why should they be distinguished? They have the same origin, and
>>> there aren't too many contexts where they might be confused.
>>
>> Who is that talking? I thought real PTD wasn't a prescriptivist. :-)
>
> It's _anti_prescriptivist to suggest there's no reason to distinguish
> homonyms using a stray accent.
Why do you think they're homonyms? My understanding (I'm sure Radovan will
correct me if Im wrong) is that in Slovak (just as in Czech) <a e i o u>
represent short vowels, while <á é í ó ú> are long. An important
distinction. Are you mixing them up with Spanish and Italian, where accents
*are* sometimes used to distinguish homophones?
>> It's not a question whether they *should* be distinguished or not.
>> In Czech the moon and the continent have different names,
>> clearly different even in the casual speech. That's how it is.
Quite. The same, apparently, in Slovak, though in Slovak the difference is
arguably less. That's how it is, though of course I've no idea why.
[...]
John.
Trond Engen
> PaulJK pravi:
>
>> They should have called it a Tolar or Taler. :-)
>> It would be nice after centuries of hitching around the world that
>> word coming back home to Central Europe where it was coined :-)
>
> He, he that would be nice. Then Slovenia would change its currency
> from Tolar to another Tolar ;)
Individual names in each language, following the traditional naming of
silver coins in the Thaler family. That was my favourite solution, too.
And if I'm not too mistaken, the French Ecu is a member of the same
family, so it seemed so close to being achieved -- way back when the
French name of the currency was proof of its being a conspiracy to steal
the life savings of decent people and Tony Blair went to Europe to have
it renamed. (The Florine/Gulden series and the Lira/Pound series being
equally good alternatives, of course.)
--
Trond Engen
- daler i kvalitet
Peter T. Daniels
> or broadfaced) was to be transcribed as a "v", not "u".
>
> Much more recently, the Jupiter moon's name "Europa" was
> used by the Cz astonomers in the form it was given it by its
> discoverers. I guess the Cz language institute isn't prescriptivist
> enough to advocate a different spelling, "Evropa".
>
> >> It's not a question whether they *should* be distinguished or not.
> >> In Czech the moon and the continent have different names,
> >> clearly different even in the casual speech. That's how it is.
>
> >> Just like "Ind" is an Asian Indian and "Indián" is an American
> >> Indian, even though one was called after the other just like
> >> the moon after a continent, actually after the Greek godess
> >> Europa, I suppose.
Which has nothing to do with the matter of the acute accent.
Peter T. Daniels
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Jan 18, 10:56 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>> On Jan 18, 11:03 am, garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
> >>>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>>> Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
> >>>>> Europe Európa and not Evrópa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
>
> >>>> Yes, exactly.
> >>>> The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter moon
> >>>> (Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have just Europa
> >>>> vs. Európa.
>
> >>> Why should they be distinguished? They have the same origin, and
> >>> there aren't too many contexts where they might be confused.
>
> >> Who is that talking? I thought real PTD wasn't a prescriptivist. :-)
>
> > It's _anti_prescriptivist to suggest there's no reason to distinguish
> > homonyms using a stray accent.
>
> Why do you think they're homonyms?
Why would they not be? In Slovak, do continent names, or heavenly body
names, get a long vowel to distinguish them from each other? (He
didn't say which form goes with which referent.)
> My understanding (I'm sure Radovan will
> correct me if Im wrong) is that in Slovak (just as in Czech) <a e i o u>
> represent short vowels, while <á é í ó ú> are long. An important
> distinction. Are you mixing them up with Spanish and Italian, where accents
> *are* sometimes used to distinguish homophones?
And French.
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
>
> Why do you think they're homonyms? My understanding (I'm sure Radovan will
> correct me if Im wrong) is that in Slovak (just as in Czech) <a e i o u>
> represent short vowels, while <á é í ó ú> are long. An important
> distinction.
Correct.
> Are you mixing them up with Spanish and Italian, where accents
> *are* sometimes used to distinguish homophones?
>
>>> It's not a question whether they *should* be distinguished or not.
>>> In Czech the moon and the continent have different names,
>>> clearly different even in the casual speech. That's how it is.
>
> Quite. The same, apparently, in Slovak, though in Slovak the difference is
> arguably less. That's how it is, though of course I've no idea why.
Because the vowel length tends to be less pronounces sometimes, e.g. in rapid
speech...
Besides, eastern Slovak dialects do not have long vowels, so hearing
"Europa" I'd assume immediately that the person comes from the east...
the Jupiter moon is, after all, not something that appears in casual
speech very often.
Whereas, a Czech pronouncing "Europa" will probably tend to overemphasise the
"eu" glide, because it _is_ a strange sounding word. Maybe not among
astronomers specializing on Jupiter, but then, I'd expect them to blend
the pronunciation with "Evropa" (well, I did some amateur astronomy when
I was a child, and we used "Európa" for the moon freely, because of
the familiarity)
Nikolaj
>> That compromise made linguists quite angry. Hopefully, some other
>> country (Litva, Hungary, Czech Republic, ...) will achieve that an
>> alternative spelling "evr-" can also be used in national documents and
>> also that is appears on the banknotes and coins.
>
> IIRC Latvia already uses eir-, _their_ problem was whether to use
> eira or eiro (one was widespread, one was linguistically correct).
> However, they are not going to adopt the e[ui]r[ao] anytime soon,
> so the problem is postponed until they mint their own coins.
Yes, it's Latvia, not Litva (Lithuania). But yes, that was what I meant,
the problem is postponed until another country with alternative spelling
changes it's currency for "evro". If they will achieve a change, then
IMO it will be for all alternative spelling...
Nikolaj
> Individual names in each language, following the traditional naming of
> silver coins in the Thaler family. That was my favourite solution, too.
Slovenian alternatives before selecting Tolar were Lipa (linden) and
Klas (ear - of a wheat) and Karant (from Caranthania).
PaulJK
> PaulJK pravi:
>
>> They should have called it a Tolar or Taler. :-)
>> It would be nice after centuries of hitching around the world
>> that word coming back home to Central Europe where it
>> was coined :-)
>> pjk
>
> He, he that would be nice. Then Slovenia would change its currency from
> Tolar to another Tolar ;)
Oh, nice one!
I didn't know you changed to tolars when you got rid of dinars in 1991.
It sounds real nice with the old dual:
1 tolar
2 tolarja
3 tolarji
4 tolarji
5 tolarjev
PaulJK
> On Jan 18, 11:41 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Jan 18, 10:56 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>> On Jan 18, 11:03 am, garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
>>>>>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>>>> That's interesting, Czech doesn't have that problem with "auto"
>>>>>>> The plural is just "aut" with a short "a". The slide "au" existed
>>>>>>> in Old Czech, and now frequently occurs in foreign words
>>>>>>> of German origin.
>>
>>>>>> There are even more funny things going on with gen. pl.
>>>>>> E.g. the words "ego" or "echo" have the same problem - if you ask a
>>>>>> native speaker about genitive plural, (s)he will fault and stutter
>>>>>> and then think about it and admit (s)he does not know...
>>>>>> The number of concordances of gen. pl. of "ego" in the Slovak National
>>>>>> Corpus is exactly zero, and that's why the new dictionary does not
>>>>>> (exceptionally) list a genitive plural of this word - previous
>>>>>> dictionaries used some hard to come by linguistic theories and rules to
>>>>>> derive a wordform nobody really used.
>>
>>>>>>> Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
>>
>>>>>> Yes, exactly.
>>>>>> The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter moon
>>>>>> (Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have just Europa vs.
>>
>>>>> Why should they be distinguished? They have the same origin, and there
>>>>> aren't too many contexts where they might be confused.
>>
>>>> Who is that talking? I thought real PTD wasn't a prescriptivist. :-)
>>
>>> It's _anti_prescriptivist to suggest there's no reason to distinguish
>>> homonyms using a stray accent.
>>
>> Okay.
>>
>> The Cz name Evropa for the Greek goddess and the continent
>> has been coined centuries ago. The old Bohemian wordsmiths
>> or broadfaced) was to be transcribed as a "v", not "u".
>>
>> Much more recently, the Jupiter moon's name "Europa" was
>> used by the Cz astonomers in the form it was given it by its
>> discoverers. I guess the Cz language institute isn't prescriptivist
>> enough to advocate a different spelling, "Evropa".
>>
>>>> It's not a question whether they *should* be distinguished or not.
>>>> In Czech the moon and the continent have different names,
>>>> clearly different even in the casual speech. That's how it is.
>>
>>>> Just like "Ind" is an Asian Indian and "Indián" is an American
>>>> Indian, even though one was called after the other just like
>>>> the moon after a continent, actually after the Greek godess
>>>> Europa, I suppose.
>
> Which has nothing to do with the matter of the acute accent.
What acute accent? There's no acute accent.
We are talking about a language with the following
set of vowels: a, e, i, o, u, (y), á, é, í, ó, ú, (ý). What you
think is an acute accent is in fact a length marker (čárka).
The vowel/syllable length is phonemic and has absolutely
nothing to do with accent which is never formally marked.
pjk
P.S. I'm posting again in UTF8, but not fixing the already
screwed up earlier text.
Peter T. Daniels
I'm not trying to type accents.
He said that one name is Europa and one is Euro'pa (he didn't say
which is which). There is no legitimate historical reason for the two
names to be pronounced differently, and the orthographic difference is
precisely an acute accent on top of the <o>.
PaulJK
> On Jan 19, 10:58 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Jan 18, 11:41 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>> On Jan 18, 10:56 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>>> On Jan 18, 11:03 am, garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
It was clear from the context, see:
<quote>
> Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
> Europe Európa and not Evrópa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
Yes, exactly.
The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter moon
(Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have just Europa vs.
Európa.
<unquote>
Since in English the continent is Europe and the moon is Europa
it is quite clear that what he is saying is that in Sk the continent
is Európa and the name of the moon is Europa while in Cz
it's Evropa and Europa, respectively.
> There is no legitimate historical reason for the two
> names to be pronounced differently,
Well, they are.
> and the orthographic
> difference is precisely an acute accent on top of the <o>.
Okay, you may call that orthographic marker an acute accent,
but, that's only as far as you can go. As far as both languages,
Sk and Cz are concerned, the accute marker doesn't imply any
accent or stress. It's a vowel length marker. In Czech speaking
countries the length is phonemic. The long vowels are markedly
long, longer than any English long vowels. As Radovan says, the
situation is similar in most of the Slovak dialects, except the
difference in lengths is not so great and farther east you go
the difference gets smaller and eventually in the far eastern
dialects vanishes (almost) entirely.
The Old Czech had many vowel diphtongs of which only
"ou" survived in any quantity in native words. Most of the existing
long vowels used to be diphtongs, such as ie->í, uo->ú, etc.
Ignoring the length vowel differences in Cz would result in large
number of homophones which would make the language
incomprehensible.
AFAIK, Slovak preserved more of the old diphtongs and with
a different vocabulary, especially in the East, the lengths are
not so important.
pjk
John Atkinson
> On Jan 19, 10:58 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Jan 18, 11:41 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>> On Jan 18, 10:56 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>>> On Jan 18, 11:03 am,
>>>>>>> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
>>>>>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> PaulJK <paul.kr...@
[...]
>>
>>>>>>>>> Oh, wait, I just noticed, is your traditional Sk word for
>>>>>>>>> Europe Eur¨®pa and not Evr¨®pa or Evropa(as in Cz)?
>>
>>>>>>>> Yes, exactly.
>>>>>>>> The Czech can, however, better distinguish between the Jupiter
>>>>>>>> moon (Europa) and the continent (Evropa). In Slovak we have
>>>>>>>> just Europa vs. Európa.
Would you say there is no "legitimate historical reason" why the
corresponding words in English are also both spelled and pronounced
differently, exactly as is the case in both Czech and Slovak? My guess in
the case of the two *English* words (and it's only a guess, I haven't
checked) is that the reason is because one word comes to us via French, and
the other is a more-or-less direct borrowing from the classical Greek or
Latin. Is that a "legitimate" reason? If it is, why are you so certain
that something of the same general sort doesn't apply to Slovak?
> and the orthographic difference is
> precisely an acute accent on top of the <o>
That is, they're spelled differently.
John.
Adam Funk
[Jupiter's moon and the similarly named continent in Czech & Slovak]
> I'm not trying to type accents.
>
> He said that one name is Europa and one is Euro'pa (he didn't say
> which is which). There is no legitimate historical reason for the two
> names to be pronounced differently, and the orthographic difference is
> precisely an acute accent on top of the <o>.
They're pronounced and spelt differently in English: I assume because
"Europe" comes from French and "Europa" directly from Latin --- is
that a legitimate historical reason?
--
I heard that Hans Christian Andersen lifted the title for "The Little
Mermaid" off a Red Lobster Menu. [Bucky Katt]
Peter T. Daniels
Because no one has suggested that it does?
What would be the differences in the source languages that produced
different forms?
> > and the orthographic difference is
> > precisely an acute accent on top of the <o>
>
> That is, they're spelled differently.
That's what I said.
Peter T. Daniels
only because that's its name
> but, that's only as far as you can go. As far as both languages,
Nor did I go any farther!
> Sk and Cz are concerned, the accute marker doesn't imply any
> accent or stress. It's a vowel length marker. In Czech speaking
Who suggested it does?? The acute accent is the mark of length.
If you don't have phonemic stress, you wouldn't mark it with an
accent, and most languages don't mark phonemic stress anyway!
> countries the length is phonemic. The long vowels are markedly
> long, longer than any English long vowels. As Radovan says, the
> situation is similar in most of the Slovak dialects, except the
> difference in lengths is not so great and farther east you go
> the difference gets smaller and eventually in the far eastern
> dialects vanishes (almost) entirely.
>
> The Old Czech had many vowel diphtongs of which only
> "ou" survived in any quantity in native words. Most of the existing
> long vowels used to be diphtongs, such as ie->í, uo->ú, etc.
> Ignoring the length vowel differences in Cz would result in large
> number of homophones which would make the language
> incomprehensible.
>
> AFAIK, Slovak preserved more of the old diphtongs and with
> a different vocabulary, especially in the East, the lengths are
> not so important.
So what does all that have to do with the alleged difference in
pronunciation of the two names?
John Atkinson
As it is in *modern* Greek.
I've no idea. Ï was hoping someone (Paul or Radovan?) would make a
suggestion, similar to what me and another did in the case of English.
The reason the word for Europe has a long vowel is pretty obvious -- it does
so in other European language that mark phonemic length -- Ancient Greek
Eurōpē (Ευρώπη), Baltic languages (Lithuanian Europa, but Lith <o> is always
long, so, unlike other vowels, takes no diacritic), and Finno-Ugric
languages (Hungarian Európa, Finnish Eurooppa, Estonian Euroopa) -- and
German and Latin, which don't mark length explicitly, have Europa, with
phonemic long o too (I'd assume Sk got it from one of these last two).
But what about the moon Europa? It was named by an Italian, and while vowel
length arguably isn't phonemic in Italian, it would be automatically
pronounced long in that language because it's stressed and followed by a
single consonant. So why is it short in Sk? And for that matter Finnish
(Europa)? What about German -- is the moon perhaps stressed on the first
syllable in German (so the second syllable becomes schwa, not long o)?
Just to confuse matters further, if you can believe Wikipedie: in Czech,
the goddess is Európa (not Evropa, as Paul says), the moon is Europa, and
the continent is Evropa -- *three* different words.
John.
Christian Weisgerber
> What acute accent? There's no acute accent.
>
> We are talking about a language with the following
> set of vowels: a, e, i, o, u, (y), á, é, í, ó, ú, (ý). What you
> think is an acute accent is in fact a length marker (čárka).
> The vowel/syllable length is phonemic and has absolutely
> nothing to do with accent which is never formally marked.
Oh, come on. "Acute accent" is the typographical term for this
particular diacritic. This does not imply anything about the meaning
assigned to it in the orthography of a particular language.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
António Marques
And I've never seen 'accent' used to mean 'stress' in english.
--
António Marques
Peter T. Daniels
> Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> > PaulJK<paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
Not in ordinary talk, where your "accent" is your regional etc.
dialect; but in distinguishing kinds of emphasis, linguists talk about
"pitch accent" vs. "stress accent." (English only has the latter.)
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> On Jan 20, 2:08 am, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Okay, you may call that orthographic marker an acute accent,
>
> only because that's its name
>
Its typographic name - it can be different from its semantic name
(though probably not in English). E.g. in Slovak we call the "^"
sign vokáň, but ONLY IF we are talking about Slovak letters - when
talking about French, we call the very same sign "circumflex" (sometimes
"cirkumflex").
And when talking (in Slovak) about Czech letters, we use often, but not always,
the Czech terms (háček, čárka) instead of Slovak ones (mäkčeň, dĺžeň) - the
diacritic signs are otherwise pretty identical.
The perception of diacritics in Slovak seems to be more oriented towards
semantic, not typography. Unlike in English (but see the difference
between umlaut and diaeresis).
This is probably the source of misuderstanding between you and Paul.
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> The reason the word for Europe has a long vowel is pretty obvious -- it does
> so in other European language that mark phonemic length -- Ancient Greek
> Eurōpē (Ευρώπη), Baltic languages (Lithuanian Europa, but Lith <o> is always
> long, so, unlike other vowels, takes no diacritic), and Finno-Ugric
> languages (Hungarian Európa, Finnish Eurooppa, Estonian Euroopa) -- and
> German and Latin, which don't mark length explicitly, have Europa, with
> phonemic long o too (I'd assume Sk got it from one of these last two).
I've located some historical grammars (continent only):
Czambel's "Handbook" from 1902 (pretty much the earliest grammar using
contemporary orthography) has Europa (short o!), and Asia (modern form
is Ázia).
Štúr's "Nauka" (1846) has Europa too, but Ásia - however, this
has overall vastly different orthography.
Controversial "Rules" from 1931 have Europa, Azia (!).
Highly purist "Rules" from 1940 have Europa, Ázia.
I'll locate some versions in between tomorrow in work.
There is also the very modern word (anti)europeizmus,
with (surprisingly) short "o".
Christian Weisgerber
> (Europa)? What about German -- is the moon perhaps stressed on the first
> syllable in German (so the second syllable becomes schwa, not long o)?
No, it's homophonous with the continent.
Brian M. Scott
<m....@sapo.pt> wrote in
<news:gl53n3$6g4$1...@nntp.motzarella.org> in sci.lang:
[...]
> And I've never seen 'accent' used to mean 'stress' in english.
In everyday usage 'accent' is more likely to refer to
dialect, especially pronunciation, than to stress, but when
stress is spoken about, 'accent' is, I think, more common
than 'stress'. There's even a humorous expression 'to put
the acCENT on the wrong sylLAble'.
Brian
PaulJK
Yes, sorry, I got carried away. I didn't really wanted to say:
"there's no acute accent". I am quite happy with "acute accent" being
an English name of that particular diacritical mark. However, AFAIR,
originally we were not discussing orthographical terminology,
we were talking about spelling and pronunciation differences in
Sk Európa/Europa, Cz Evropa/Europa, and E. Europe/Europa.
Peter said "there is no legitimate historical reason for the two
names to be pronounced differently". My point is that
both in Sk and Cz those names were borrowed from different
sources and nativized centuries apart. They are spelled and
pronounced differently and that's how it is.
Not that it matters, but would the differences be less legitimate
than differences in English names Europe and Europa? :-)
pjk
PaulJK
Yes, because it was pronounced that way.
[...]
pjk
PaulJK
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
[...]
>> What would be the differences in the source languages that produced
>> different forms?
>
> I've no idea. Ï was hoping someone (Paul or Radovan?) would make a
> suggestion, similar to what me and another did in the case of English.
The Cz names of the goddess and continent were acquired
centuries ago as Cz "Evropa".
The "v" was probably a result of an early decision. That is
the way it was pronounced and so it was spelled that way
in Czech even though the Czechs spelled it with a "u" in
Latin texts.
My guess is that "o" doesn't have the length marked since
the length marks were not used when the word was borrowed.
The lengths were not consistently marked as late as 16th
century. By the time, the various ways of representing long
vowels (or not representing them at all) were standardized
as acute accents, Evropa was already fully nativized word
and pronounced staccato by large numbers of hoi polloi who
had little knowledge of Greek.
There are some rules how the words from various languages
are to be spelled depending on whether they are foreign,
borrowed, or fully nativized.
When one looks at the lists of antique words in the Cz orthography
manual, one can see the length loosely corresponding to
what it was in the original Greek.
Dionýsos
Diogenes
Dórové (Cz plural)
pjk
P.S. It may surprise some that in Czech both Zeus and Dia
forms (Cz. case markers) are used. The Cz nominative is
"Zeus", gen."Diův", dat.&loc."Diovi", acc."Dia", instr."Diem".
"Zeus" is strictly reserved for nominative singular.
I don't think I ever used plurals in anger. :-) I suppose they
would be all the usual declensions of "Dia" form.
Odysseus
I've heard that more often as "to put the emPHAsis on the wrong
sylLAble".
--
Odysseus
Peter T. Daniels
> John Atkinson wrote:
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> What would be the differences in the source languages that produced
> >> different forms?
>
> > I've no idea. Ï was hoping someone (Paul or Radovan?) would make a
> > suggestion, similar to what me and another did in the case of English.
>
> The Cz names
Why do you keep going on about the Czech words when we're talking
about the acute accent on one of the Slovak words?
Brian M. Scott
<odysseu...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote in
<news:odysseus1479-at-D0...@news.telus.net>
in sci.lang:
>> [...]
You're right; that was a slip on my part.
Brian
John Atkinson
> John Atkinson wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>> What would be the differences in the source languages that produced
>>> different forms?
>>
>> I've no idea. Ï was hoping someone (Paul or Radovan?) would make a
>> suggestion, similar to what me and another did in the case of
>> English.
>
> The Cz names of the goddess and continent were acquired
> centuries ago as Cz "Evropa".
>
> The "v" was probably a result of an early decision. That is
> the way it was pronounced and so it was spelled that way
> in Czech even though the Czechs spelled it with a "u" in
> Latin texts.
Like Russian Evgeni -- borrowed from Greek, but Byzantine Greek, after <u>
had come to be pronounced [v] (and, in this case, after final eta had
changed to [i])
[...]
PaulJK
> PaulJK wrote:
>> John Atkinson wrote:
>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> [...]
>>>> What would be the differences in the source languages that produced
>>>> different forms?
>>>
>>> I've no idea. Ï was hoping someone (Paul or Radovan?) would make a
>>> suggestion, similar to what me and another did in the case of
>>> English.
>>
>> The Cz names of the goddess and continent were acquired
>> centuries ago as Cz "Evropa".
>>
>> The "v" was probably a result of an early decision. That is
>> the way it was pronounced and so it was spelled that way
>> in Czech even though the Czechs spelled it with a "u" in
>> Latin texts.
>
> Like Russian Evgeni -- borrowed from Greek, but Byzantine Greek, after <u>
> had come to be pronounced [v] (and, in this case, after final eta had
> changed to [i])
Paul spelled "Pavel" in Slavic languages. :-)
> [...]
>
>>> Just to confuse matters further, if you can believe Wikipedie: in
>>> Czech, the goddess is Európa (not Evropa, as Paul says), the moon is
>>> Europa, and the continent is Evropa -- *three* different words.
Well, that is interesting. In my high school, AFAIR, we usually
called the goddess Evropa, but were made aware that her
correct Greek name was Európa. I presume Wikipedia listed
the goddess's name spelling as the one preferred by scholars
(a Greek name) rather than what hoi polloi call her.
Unless things changed recently, I expect both spellings to be
allowed in the media and formal communication.
pjk
> John.
PaulJK
Isn't that obvious? Both languages Sk and Cz have been discussed
in this thread, as well as some others. A missing accute accent
that ought to be there in one language is equally interesting as
the one that is missing in a closely related language.
I was responding to John who was "hoping" for mine or
Radovan's suggestions. I don't know Slovak well enough to
even remember Slovak names for acute accent and hacek,
let alone be familiar enough with historical developments
leading to long "ó" in Sk Európa.
The names in both languages "ought" to have long "ó" since
the vowel "o" is long in Greek. The fact that a language closely
related to Sk, Cz, *does not* have long "ó" in written or pronounced
in either "Evropa" or "Europa" is interesting since words acquired
from Greek usually closely follow the Greek pronunciation
(see, for example, Cz names of letters in Greek alphabet).
I responded with my theory of different times of acquisition
and nativization of the names of Greek goddess and continent.
pjk
Nikolaj
>>> They should have called it a Tolar or Taler. :-)
>>> It would be nice after centuries of hitching around the world
>>> that word coming back home to Central Europe where it
>>> was coined :-)
>>> pjk
>> He, he that would be nice. Then Slovenia would change its currency from
>> Tolar to another Tolar ;)
>
> Oh, nice one!
> I didn't know you changed to tolars when you got rid of dinars in 1991.
Well it was a temporary solution before changing for evros. No one
really liked the name, only that the other proposed names (lipa, klas,
karant) were even worse. Maybe lipa could be accepted, if there wasn't
already an alternative private "money" circulating on the turn of the
nineties.
> It sounds real nice with the old dual:
> 1 tolar
> 2 tolarja
> 3 tolarji
> 4 tolarji
> 5 tolarjev
Yes, only that for me that is nothing special. Also
- evro: 1 evro, 2 evra, 3 evri, 4 evri, 5 evrov...
(evro is a masculine noun)
Some other nouns on an "-o" ending:
- ego: 1 ego, 2 ega, 3 egi, 4 egi, 5 egov
(masculine)
- mesto: 1 mesto, 2 mesti, 3 mesta, 4 mesta, 5 mest...
(neuter)
- dno (bottom): 1 dno, 2 dni (???), 3 dna, 4 dna, 5 dan (???)/dnov
(neuter)
No problem there with declension in Slovene, except for the monosyllabic
neuters, where there is an accent on 'o' (dnò). Without checking I would
say 2 dna ("2 dni" sounds wiers and collides with gen. plur. of "dan"
(day)) and 5 dnov, both belonging to masculine paradigm. "Dnov" is
actually mentioned as an alternative to "dan".