(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

[Pabappa]

Perhaps there was a vowel shift. the "short O" vowel before a tautosyllabic /l/ is typically spelled a, as in all, ball, thrall, etc. (I have caught/cot merged so I dont know offhand which one it is.) Perhaps words like troll, poll, knoll, etc once had a short O but are now merged with the long O and so that vowel now can be spelled with either one or two L's following.

[Khemehekis]

@Khemehekis:
“Maxxinista” is proper-noun-derived, so I wouldn’t want to count it.

Well, at least *I* count it.

“Beta-buxxer” is new to me!

A couple of years ago, I answered this question on Quora:

https://www.quora.com/What-comes-to-min ... -name-Chad

Then a month ago, I got this A2A in my Quora digest in my email box:

https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean ... you-a-Chad

I learned what a beta-buxxer was from there.

What’s its etymology, if you know?

I would guess the "beta" part comes because they're beta males, with Chads being the alpha males. And I would guess the "buxxer" part comes from "bucks", since the main thing beta-buxxers offer to women is that they are providers, not that they are hot or provide great sex.

"Bucks" has a CKS, and "buxxer" may look less odd than "buckser" to some people.

Khemehekis:
The accented vowel in “patrolled” and “patrolling” is long, not short!
Why aren’t they spelled “patroled” and “patroling”?
Sim for “controled” and “controling”?

It's (accented or only syllable) consonant-vowel-consonant that seems to be the rule.

Of course, the norm in English is that the last vowel letter in a word, if it has at least one consonant but no other vowels after it, and is not part of a digraph, trigraph, or quadrigraph (like in "sign", "high", "sight", and "Hugh"), will be short. ("Be", "hi", "go", etc. are long, as are "cane", "say", "claim", "sundae", and "shillelagh", but not "car", "man", "bland", "last" or "schmaltz".) Think of how few words that have A as the last vowel pronounce it /ei/, except in dialects (like mine) wherein -ang and -ank words (hang, bang, spank, bank, Frank, orangutan, etc.) have /ei/. All I can think of are "a", the letter A, "bass", the surname of Colbie Caillat, and some pronunciations of "Croat" (so that it sounds like "Croatian").

There are exceptions, though: you have the -ild words (child, wild, mild), the -ind words (find, blind, mind, rewind), the -old words (old, cold, gold, told, sold, fold, bold, mold, hold), the -ost words (ghost, most, host, Yost, almost, post), pint, Christ, climb, bass, indict, Job, comb, the -ol(l) words (roll, poll, toll, boll, enroll/enrol, control, patrol), the -on't words (don't, won't), gross, and the -olt words (bolt, molt, Holt, colt, dolt). "Control" and "patrol" just happen to follow one of these patterns, although for reasons I'm unaware of, they don't double the L in English the way "roll" and "poll" do.

Then, of course, plurals of words ending in long vowels can have a similar effect: apostrophes, similes, hi's, mangos, pianos, tacos, flus, parvenus, and flybys all have the last vowel letter a long one.

Of course, in languages without the Great Vowel Shift, the vowels usually go something like /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/. As a result of this, English borrowed many words in the last few centuries wherein O made an /ou/ sound and U made an /u/ sound, and kept the pronunciation. So we have words like "yod(h)", "Vladivostok", "Rom" (as in Roma), "Carlos", "adios", "skosh", "Igorot", "Likud", "Marduk", "suq", "kun", "on" (like the kanji reading), "om", "qoph", "pfeffernuss", "Havmu-suv", "Vaduz", "cul(-de-sac)" (/kyl/ in French!), and "cogito ergo sum".

Finally, there're "sosh" and "fav", which rhyme with "gauche" and "save", not "Josh" and "Trav", because they are twentieth-century apocopations of words ("socialite" and "favorite") in which the O and A followed the normal rules.

So, the short answer is that the normal rules for VAC words conflict in this case with the normal rules for when vowels are short or long.

[Xonen]

Well, kind of. In general, though, doubled consonant letters in English are exactly the same as single ones, so <xx> = <x> = /ks/.

Doubling a letter can do weird things. Normally C is pronounced /s/ before E, I, or Y, but when you double the C in "tic" or "soc", you get "ticcing" or "soccer", which are pronounced /k/.

Yes, that's why I said "in general". Although in these cases, I'd argue that the statement actually kind of holds: the single <c> in "tic" and "soc" is pronounced /k/, and the doubled <cc> in the suffixed forms is... also pronounced /k/. If anything, this would seem to be more evidence that the rule of doubling stem-final consonants before suffixes if the preceding vowel is short is spreading to affect new letters. And as is usually the case, the doubling of the consonant in such situations has no effect on its actual pronunciation. It's just in opposition to the more general rule of how <c> (or <cc>) is pronounced before front vowels - which in turn is an exception to the more general rule of a doubled consonant letter being pronounced the same as a single one.

That is, the normal pronunciation of <c> before a front vowel is /s/, but that of <cc> (as in "vaccine", for instance) is /ks/. However, for word-final <c> it's /k/, and a stem-final <c> doubled before a suffix follows the same rule as any other doubled consonant, namely pronunciation stays unchanged.

The letter <g> displays similar behavior. Then there's <s>, which is often (though not regularly) /z/ between vowels, but almost always (although again, not quite regularly) /s/ when doubled. And no doubt some other weird stuff happens in a few words somewhere. But again, in general, I do think that's pretty much it.

[Salmoneus]

Well, kind of. In general, though, doubled consonant letters in English are exactly the same as single ones, so <xx> = <x> = /ks/.

Doubling a letter can do weird things. Normally C is pronounced /s/ before E, I, or Y, but when you double the C in "tic" or "soc", you get "ticcing" or "soccer", which are pronounced /k/.

Yes, that's why I said "in general". Although in these cases, I'd argue that the statement actually kind of holds: the single <c> in "tic" and "soc" is pronounced /k/, and the doubled <cc> in the suffixed forms is... also pronounced /k/. The doubling itself has no effect on the pronunciation.

Exactly. With a few exceptions, doubling is just a rule about preceding vowels.

That is, the normal pronunciation of <c> before a front vowel is /s/, but that of <cc> (as in "vaccine", for instance) is /ks/. However, for word-final <c> it's /k/, and a stem-final <c> doubled before a suffix follows the same rule as any other doubled consonant, namely pronunciation stays unchanged.

Yes, I'd emphasise here that most orthographic rules operate on stems, and ignore suffixes like -ed, -es, -ing, -er, etc. The doubling of intervocalic consonants after a short vowel is one of the few exceptions, and even then it's not entirely regular, with Americans often failing to double the consonant.

"Soccer" is actually an interesting word in this respect. The original word, "association", has <c> = /s/; but the abbreviation, "assoc.", has this hardened to /k/, not because of any phonological rule, but because of the orthographic rule (<c> is /k/ unless followed by a front vowel). And the suffix -er fails to change this, because it's external to the stem, but still triggers doubling (because it's one of the most basic rules).

All of which goes to show: English speakers have a high level of understanding of, and fidelity to, English spelling rules, even if not consciously, and spelling reformers often underestimate this!



I wouldn't treat 'vaccine' and similar words as examples of consonant doubling, by the way. I'd treat it as a cluster that just happens to look like a doubled consonant. Unfortunately, /k/ is <c> before consonants, and <c> is /s/ before front vowels, which means that /ks/ clusters can end up as <cc> through coincidence (or sometimes <cs>, or of course <x>, or <xc>, or...).

[Salmoneus]

Perhaps there was a vowel shift. the "short O" vowel before a tautosyllabic /l/ is typically spelled a, as in all, ball, thrall, etc. (I have caught/cot merged so I dont know offhand which one it is.) Perhaps words like troll, poll, knoll, etc once had a short O but are now merged with the long O and so that vowel now can be spelled with either one or two L's following.

FWIW, 'troll' and 'knoll' still have 'short O'; 'poll' can have either long or short, depending on meaning. [to /pQl/ = to cut the horns, head or branches off; to /poUl/ = to survey].

Meanwhile, 'all, ball thrall' all have a distinctly 'long O', although not the same long O as poll=survey.

[Salmoneus]

Of course, the norm in English is that the last vowel letter in a word, if it has at least one consonant but no other vowels after it, and is not part of a digraph, trigraph, or quadrigraph (like in "sign", "high", "sight", and "Hugh"), will be short. ("Be", "hi", "go", etc. are long, as are "cane", "say", "claim", "sundae", and "shillelagh", but not "car", "man", "bland", "last" or "schmaltz".) Think of how few words that have A as the last vowel pronounce it /ei/, except in dialects (like mine) wherein -ang and -ank words (hang, bang, spank, bank, Frank, orangutan, etc.) have /ei/. All I can think of are "a", the letter A, "bass", the surname of Colbie Caillat, and some pronunciations of "Croat" (so that it sounds like "Croatian").

You're making this way more complicated that in needs to be. It's not about being the 'last vowel', it's just that the 'magic e' makes the preceding single consonant intervocalic. The same rules apply to non-last vowels. The exceptions are usually unstressed vowels, or vowels (usually in Latinisms) reduced through trisyllabic laxing.

Oh, and because the rules stumble over suffixes, certain suffixes are usually (but irregularly) ignored for this purposes, like -ic. (hence path-E-tic, not path-ee-tic) - as though the stem were "pathet".

"Control" and "patrol" just happen to follow one of these patterns, although for reasons I'm unaware of, they don't double the L in English the way "roll" and "poll" do.

One issure here is that some -VlC clusters resulted in vowel lengthening, and this also includes some -ll clusters.

Regarding 'control' and 'patrol': both words used to have <ll> in them, but seem to have had the double reduced, probably by hyper-applying the 'double consonant when you add the suffix' rule. [i.e. "controlling : controll" > "controlling : control" > "controling : control"]

Then, of course, plurals of words ending in long vowels can have a similar effect: apostrophes, similes, hi's, mangos, pianos, tacos, flus, parvenus, and flybys all have the last vowel letter a long one.

Finally, there're "sosh" and "fav", which rhyme with "gauche" and "save", not "Josh" and "Trav", because they are twentieth-century apocopations of words ("socialite" and "favorite") in which the O and A followed the normal rules.

. I've never encountered "sosh", but I'd pronounce both those words with short vowels. There is a word with the long A, but it's spelled "fave".

[Khemehekis]

Of course, the norm in English is that the last vowel letter in a word, if it has at least one consonant but no other vowels after it, and is not part of a digraph, trigraph, or quadrigraph (like in "sign", "high", "sight", and "Hugh"), will be short. ("Be", "hi", "go", etc. are long, as are "cane", "say", "claim", "sundae", and "shillelagh", but not "car", "man", "bland", "last" or "schmaltz".) Think of how few words that have A as the last vowel pronounce it /ei/, except in dialects (like mine) wherein -ang and -ank words (hang, bang, spank, bank, Frank, orangutan, etc.) have /ei/. All I can think of are "a", the letter A, "bass", the surname of Colbie Caillat, and some pronunciations of "Croat" (so that it sounds like "Croatian").

You're making this way more complicated that in needs to be. It's not about being the 'last vowel', it's just that the 'magic e' makes the preceding single consonant intervocalic. The same rules apply to non-last vowels. The exceptions are usually unstressed vowels, or vowels (usually in Latinisms) reduced through trisyllabic laxing.

That might be a better way to put it.

Of course, the A remains long in the -ange words (range, arrange, change, strange, mange -- but not flange or Ange!) -- and the -aste words (waste, taste, paste, haste, chaste, baste). Also in "ache" (which as a noun used to be pronounced like "aitch" and as a verb used to be spelt "ake").

"Control" and "patrol" just happen to follow one of these patterns, although for reasons I'm unaware of, they don't double the L in English the way "roll" and "poll" do.

One issure here is that some -VlC clusters resulted in vowel lengthening, and this also includes some -ll clusters.

Regarding 'control' and 'patrol': both words used to have <ll> in them, but seem to have had the double reduced, probably by hyper-applying the 'double consonant when you add the suffix' rule. [i.e. "controlling : controll" > "controlling : control" > "controling : control"]

I never knew that! So that's why words like "child", "cold", and "bolt" have long vowels despite their E-lessness?

Finally, there're "sosh" and "fav", which rhyme with "gauche" and "save", not "Josh" and "Trav", because they are twentieth-century apocopations of words ("socialite" and "favorite") in which the O and A followed the normal rules.

. I've never encountered "sosh", but I'd pronounce both those words with short vowels. There is a word with the long A, but it's spelled "fave".

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... ember-2018

All of which goes to show: English speakers have a high level of understanding of, and fidelity to, English spelling rules, even if not consciously, and spelling reformers often underestimate this!

[Salmoneus]

Of course, the A remains long in the -ange words (range, arrange, change, strange, mange -- but not flange or Ange!) -- and the -aste words (waste, taste, paste, haste, chaste, baste). Also in "ache" (which as a noun used to be pronounced like "aitch" and as a verb used to be spelt "ake").

Yes, some clusters seem to act like single consonants in old words - so <st> has a preceding short vowel when final, but sometimes a long vowel before a vowel.

I never knew that! So that's why words like "child", "cold", and "bolt" have long vowels despite their E-lessness?

I think so, yes; likewise -nC clusters and -rC clusters, although all the rules around rhotics have messed up the last category. [and likewise some -lC words, where the /l/ ended up a vowel]

Although "bolt" has a short vowel. Like holt, colt, dolt and molt.


[Oh, and for me of course there's also a bunch of issues with clusters like -sC when they follow <a>. So, /plAst@/ (plaster) but /pl{stIk/ (plastic), but /peIst/ (paste)...

Finally, there're "sosh" and "fav", which rhyme with "gauche" and "save", not "Josh" and "Trav", because they are twentieth-century apocopations of words ("socialite" and "favorite") in which the O and A followed the normal rules.

. I've never encountered "sosh", but I'd pronounce both those words with short vowels. There is a word with the long A, but it's spelled "fave".

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... ember-2018
[/quote]

That article links to the dictionary entry... which spells it 'fave'. It just notes 'fav' as a less common spelling variant sometimes found.

[Khemehekis]

Of course, the A remains long in the -ange words (range, arrange, change, strange, mange -- but not flange or Ange!) -- and the -aste words (waste, taste, paste, haste, chaste, baste). Also in "ache" (which as a noun used to be pronounced like "aitch" and as a verb used to be spelt "ake").

Yes, some clusters seem to act like single consonants in old words - so <st> has a preceding short vowel when final, but sometimes a long vowel before a vowel.

Interesting! Are there any processes that covered which consonant clusters acted like single consonants and which didn't?

I never knew that! So that's why words like "child", "cold", and "bolt" have long vowels despite their E-lessness?

I think so, yes; likewise -nC clusters and -rC clusters, although all the rules around rhotics have messed up the last category. [and likewise some -lC words, where the /l/ ended up a vowel]

You mean words with silent L, like "walk", "folk", and "half"? Or, perhaps, words like "child", "wild", and "mild", in which a schwa developed before the /l/?

Although "bolt" has a short vowel. Like holt, colt, dolt and molt.

Wow, I pronounce those words just like "bold", "hold", "cold", "doled", and "mold", except with a /t/ (phonetically a glottal stop) instead of a /d/ at the end, respectively. Are the short vowel pronunciations the standard British pronunciation for -olt words? (I was surprised about "squirrel" the other day, so . . .)

Finally, there're "sosh" and "fav", which rhyme with "gauche" and "save", not "Josh" and "Trav", because they are twentieth-century apocopations of words ("socialite" and "favorite") in which the O and A followed the normal rules.

. I've never encountered "sosh", but I'd pronounce both those words with short vowels. There is a word with the long A, but it's spelled "fave".

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... ember-2018

That article links to the dictionary entry... which spells it 'fave'. It just notes 'fav' as a less common spelling variant sometimes found.

If "fave" is more common, that certainly attests to the intuitive grasp English speakers have of our spelling rules. Similarly, we have both "mic" (true to the spelling) and "mike" (true to the pronunciation) for the apocopation of "microphone".

Although this rapper seems not to grasp English spelling too well . . .

[Pabappa]

i was using the schoolboy definitions of short vowels there, i meant they were phonologically lax. not that they were of longer duration, which is not contrastive in most AmEng dialects and which i had in fact forgotten about when i made that post. sorry if any confusion. but the words "troll, poll" etc are almost certainly pronounced with /o/ of some duration by all American dialcets.

[Xonen]

Although "bolt" has a short vowel. Like holt, colt, dolt and molt.

Wow, I pronounce those words just like "bold", "hold", "cold", "doled", and "mold", except with a /t/ (phonetically a glottal stop) instead of a /d/ at the end, respectively. Are the short vowel pronunciations the standard British pronunciation for -olt words?

For what it's worth, the entries for dolt and molt on Wiktionary seem to distinguish the "UK" pronunciation, which has the short vowel, from both RP and the US, which have the long one. Seems to me it would make more sense to list RP as a(n obsolete or at least archaic) variant under the UK, but what do I know... The other words in that list just typically have both pronunciations listed, although for some it's noted that only the long vowel occurs in the US.

[Salmoneus]

Interesting! Are there any processes that covered which consonant clusters acted like single consonants and which didn't?

I don't know. I think it's only an orthographic decision about how to represent a long vowel before certain consonant clusters, rather than a phonological thing. In Ye Olden Dayes, there was a lot more use of the 'treat clusters as single consonants that you can 'shorten' with a following silent E' rule, often including double marking of length. Over time, spellings settled on one method or another, on seemingly a word-by-word basis. So what would have been often spelled as "wayste" or "waiste" is now spelled either "waste" or "waist", depending on meaning.

I never knew that! So that's why words like "child", "cold", and "bolt" have long vowels despite their E-lessness?

I think so, yes; likewise -nC clusters and -rC clusters, although all the rules around rhotics have messed up the last category. [and likewise some -lC words, where the /l/ ended up a vowel]

You mean words with silent L, like "walk", "folk", and "half"? Or, perhaps, words like "child", "wild", and "mild", in which a schwa developed before the /l/?

I meant words with alC sequences, which typically have O rather than A pronunciations (and no /l/ at all), and often short (salt, falcon, etc). "Almond" used to have O as well, although it's usually been regularised to a long A. ('salmon' isn't a counterexample, because it never had /l/ in the first place, that's just a 'corrected' spelling like the 'b' in 'debt' and the 's' in 'island').

Although "bolt" has a short vowel. Like holt, colt, dolt and molt.

Wow, I pronounce those words just like "bold", "hold", "cold", "doled", and "mold", except with a /t/ (phonetically a glottal stop) instead of a /d/ at the end, respectively. Are the short vowel pronunciations the standard British pronunciation for -olt words? (I was surprised about "squirrel" the other day, so . . .)

Errr... I don't really know what 'standard British' is, to be honest. Those words were mostly long in RP, but in SSBE they're mostly short. I sometimes have a long vowel in 'molt', and maybe occasionally in 'bolt' (i think it would always be short when talking of a bolt as in a lock, but might be long for 'bolt' as in flee, sometimes). This is presumably associated with the shortening of words like 'salt' and 'falcon', and may be associated with the more general (but rather unpredictable) shorting of BATH vowels in certain words, all of which have been going on at the same time, and are not yet complete.

I'm not sure how these words work in dialects outside of the South, though.

Although this rapper seems not to grasp English spelling too well . . .

/fl{v@ fl{v/? Yes, I always assumed in his case it was some sort of AAVE issue.

[eldin raigmore]

Wow!
My “short question” inspired plenty of answer!
Thanks, all! I’ll keep following!

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

When an umlauted letter "ü" is spelled out as a digraph sans the diaeresis "ue", would that still be called "transliteration" or is there another term for it ("transcription", maybe)? Just wondering.

[Sequor]

When an umlauted letter "ü" is spelled out as a digraph sans the diaeresis "ue", would that still be called "transliteration" or is there another term for it ("transcription", maybe)? Just wondering.

Transliteration is, in its strict sense, an accurate rendition of a script letter by letter (or grapheme by grapheme, if you prefer). For example, Arabic خمس ست سبع 'five six seven' could be transliterated as "xms st sbʕ".

Converting a language into the Latin alphabet in linguistics, often combining a transliteration with pronunciation in a slightly ad hoc manner, is properly referred to as doing a romanization. There are standardized romanizations for many languages in existence, but they're often not followed in actual works. That Arabic example could be romanized as "xamsun sittun sabʕun". In practice, people in language teaching/learning and conlanging circles sometimes refer to romanizations as "transliterations".

A transcription may refer to a transliteration (when transcribing an old engraving, say), a romanization, writing down something in a standard or altered orthography, or writing down the pronunciation of something with a system like the IPA or Americanist notation. Transcriptions of the sound [ˈxæmsʊn ˈsɪtːʊn ˈsæbʕʊn] could be "khamsun sittun sab`un", "خمس ست سبع", or "خَمْسٌ سِتًٌ سَبْعٌ" (with vowel diacritics), or /xamsun sit:un sabʕun/ (or the [ˈxæm...] equivalent).


I'd say adapting <ü> as <ue> due to limitations with diacritics or the availability of reasonable input methods is called "it's 2020, why can't I input some damn basic letter from the second Latin Unicode block, English is not the only language in the world, this is an OUTRAGE".

[sangi39]

When an umlauted letter "ü" is spelled out as a digraph sans the diaeresis "ue", would that still be called "transliteration" or is there another term for it ("transcription", maybe)? Just wondering.

Wikipedia has this to say:

"When it is not possible to use the umlauts (for example, when using a restricted character set) the characters Ä, Ö, Ü, ä, ö, ü should be transcribed as Ae, Oe, Ue, ae, oe, ue respectively, following the earlier postvocalic-e convention; simply using the base vowel (e.g. u instead of ü) would be wrong and misleading."

That would suggest "transcription" which also "the systematic representation of language in written form" (so, vaguely, "writing something down"), as distinct from "orthographic transcription" (writing a spoken word from one language using the orthography of another), and "transliteration" (converting one script into another).

I'd think transcription should work, although at least in the case of ü ~ ue, that's just a case of alternatives within an orthographic convention, i.e. they both represent the same sounds, but ue is written when ü is unavailable for use. In this case I'd guess "X can be alternatively written as Y".

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

Thank you guys. I wanted to know after a friend asked me a question about it. He's reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and took note of some German names in the book that seem to employ both strategies, e.g. "Bürgerbräukeller" written as "Buergerbräukeller". I assumed that was just a typo.

[Omzinesý]

Thank you guys. I wanted to know after a friend asked me a question about it. He's reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and took note of some German names in the book that seem to employ both strategies, e.g. "Bürgerbräukeller" written as "Buergerbräukeller". I assumed that was just a typo.

Names are written like parents decide hey are written. Steven and Stephen thing.

The name of the famous author is Goethe, not Göte.

But names are also transcribed very oddly sometimes. Even in one book there can be different versions.

[Xonen]

Thank you guys. I wanted to know after a friend asked me a question about it. He's reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and took note of some German names in the book that seem to employ both strategies, e.g. "Bürgerbräukeller" written as "Buergerbräukeller". I assumed that was just a typo.

Names are written like parents decide hey are written. Steven and Stephen thing.

The name of the famous author is Goethe, not Göte.

Well, strictly speaking, I don't think his parents decided on the spelling of their surname – although I suppose they might have, depending on how established the spelling was at the time. However, the Bürgerbräukeller wasn't a person (although no doubt someone's tried to name their daughter after it), and its... "parents" apparently used the spelling <Bürger Bräu Keller>, so that's clearly not the reason in its case. It's just a German spelling convention; <ä ö ü> are historically just shorthands for <ae oe ue>, and writing the digraph in full is still allowed, even if I don't think it's exactly commonplace anymore.

But yes, names (such as, indeed, Goethe) do often come in several variants, for a bunch of reasons. Typically some bearers of a name (or their parents or scribes or whatever) might have chosen to continue using a spelling that's otherwise obsolete in the current orthography.

[eldin raigmore]

There’s a chain of Basement Burger Bars in the Detroit metro area.
It looks like the “burger brew cellar” you’re talking about inspired a translationism!
Are the names related at all?