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August 23

Purple prose

Latest comment: 6 days ago6 comments5 people in discussion

There are some devastatingly overpowering (ok I better stop) adjectives like breathtaking, stunning, and so on. Their purpose is to evoke an emotional response and associate it with the thing they describe.

Is there a linguistic term for that sort of word? Not just adjectives of course, but the obvious ones are adjectives. Thanks 2601:644:8581:75B0:5E3A:1231:9276:1405 (talk) 04:31, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps not exactly the same as your examples, the devices of Hyperbole and Intensifier (which are usually adverbs) are closely related. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.210.150.115 (talk) 07:26, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, intensifier was kind of helpful, but I'm looking for a word class, or maybe a concept like markedness. I'm sort of surprised if there isn't one. 2601:644:8581:75B0:5E3A:1231:9276:1405 (talk) 08:28, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, as they technically are adjectives, there's no need for a separate word class, but maybe I just misunderstood you and you were just talking about terminology. Loaded word? (Perhaps not exactly.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:01, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Here stunning is called a "hyperbolic adjective". But it is the hyperbolic use of a term that makes it hyperbolic; the adjective stunning is also used in a non-hyperbolic sense.^{[1][2] [3]}  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:12, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Is WP:PEACOCK relevant here? HiLo48 (talk) 11:48, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Accent to ID

Latest comment: 4 days ago7 comments5 people in discussion

I assume this is an ESL speaker, but can anyone identify the accent / original language here? Video contains gameplay from Fallout, so somewhat NSFW. Matt Deres (talk) 12:51, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd say it's AI-ese.

If someone can explain to me why so many videos have these creepy, off-putting artificial non-human voices rather than something we can actually relate to, I'd sleep better at night. "We do it because we can" is no answer, btw. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:39, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

My assumption is that reading a script with good intonation and without stumbling is a lot harder than it seems, whereas AI voice generators can do so, although they almost always make a few different sorts of mistakes in pronunciation and emphasis. Also, if not a native English speaker, a video maker may feel they are unable to pronounce English well enough, and even some native speakers may may not like the sound of their voice or accent.

I can think of at least two series of videos in whose contents I am interested, but find the makers'/narrators' deliveries offputting: one is Italian, the other English but with a strong regional accent and a monotonous delivery. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.210.150.115 (talk) 10:20, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

It can even be an AI rendering of the AI translation of a non-English original or other AI-generated text. It may soon no longer be creepy and detectably artificial, which will not help me sleep.  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:15, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't think it's AI. There's no shortage of that stuff online, but the voice used here is more varied in tone and speed and more expressive than any confirmed AI I've heard. Matt Deres (talk) 14:08, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

YouTube tells me "Video unavailable. This video is private. Go to home". DuncanHill (talk) 14:22, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I got that as well. No idea what that's about. The user's page is here; any of the videos will do. Matt Deres (talk) 17:50, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Questions again

Latest comment: 1 day ago13 comments9 people in discussion

1. Why words January, June and July are pronounced with /d͡ʒ/ sound in English but with /j/ sound in other Germanic languages?
2. Is there any Romance language where names of these three months are pronounced with a /j/ sound?
3. Are there any words in English where ⟨sc⟩ is pronounced /sk/ before ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩? In Finnish most words loaned from words similar to these are pronounced with /sk/, such as skenaario, rektaskensio, skientologia and scifi.
4. Are there any words in English where ⟨kn⟩ is pronounced with /kn/ complex onset? Are there any words in English with complex onsets of type plosive+plosive, plosive+fricative and plosive+nasal? In Finnish, all of these occur in some loanwords. --40bus (talk) 15:09, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

   Regarding 4a, I don't believe so, apart from people doing it for humorous effect. A bit more here. Matt Deres (talk) 15:47, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

   (1) For the same reasons ‘j’ is so pronounced in nearly all English words. —Tamfang (talk) 05:55, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

1. English is by no means a purely Germanic language. There's a lot of Old French influence, which is probably why January, June, July and also Julius and Jesus and any number of other words beginning with J are pronounced with the /d͡ʒ/ sound. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:28, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Indeed. While modern French pronounces, for example, janvier with an initial /ʒ/: /ʒɑ̃.vje/, the pronunciation in Old French had /d͡ʒ/: /d͡ʒanˈvjeːɾ/. English retained the Old French (Anglo-Norman) pronunciation of ⟨j⟩. The phoneme /ʒ/ occurs in unadapted borrowings (jardinière, je ne sais quoi, joie de vivre) or non-initially also as the result of the yod-coalescence of /zj/ into /ʒ/, as in azure (/ˈæzjʊə/ → /ˈæʒə/) and fusion (/ˈfjuːzjən/ → /ˈfjuːʒən/).  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:45, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

3. One that immediately comes to mind is "skeptic", which in British usage is typically spelled "sceptic", but as far as I know it's pronounced "skeptic". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:28, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Baseball Bugs You are correct: it is pronounced that way. Bazza 7 (talk) 16:47, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

2. Romanian.  ​‑‑Lambiam 16:58, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

4. Knuthian, although some speakers may turn this into [kəˈnuːθiən] with an epenthetic schwa.

4. You asked about initial /kn/ in September 2023, again in November 2023, March 2024, January 2025, and now in August 2025. And behold, persistence works. English has knish as a loanword and used to have knut as a humorous adaptation of nut. --Antiquary (talk) 20:10, 23 August 2025 (UTC) Oh, and another foodie word borrowed from Yiddish, knaidel. --Antiquary (talk) 20:30, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Danish kings who ruled parts of England for a while included one that was long rendered as "Canute", but is starting to be seen as "Knut" or "Cnut" to better reflect its original spelling and pronunciation. [Side note: My partner's grandfather had the middle name Canute, but I doubt that anyone in the anglosphere would be game enough to name their child Cnut. I don't think I need to explain why.] -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:41, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Knute Rockne, who was often referred to like "Newt", properly pronounced it like "K'newt". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:36, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

If an entry in the OED qualifies it as an English word then I can add Knesset. --Antiquary (talk) 08:13, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Welsh mountain Cnicht is thought to be a borrowing of the word "knight", from the time when the consonants ⟨K⟩ and ⟨gh⟩ were still pronounced in English. Alansplodge (talk) 12:39, 28 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

August 24

Origin of "operating on all cylinders"

Latest comment: 4 days ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Where does the phrase "operating on all cylinders" come from? Lizardcreator (talk) 12:19, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Lizardcreator: It's a variation of "firing on all cylinders" and is a reference to a properly-working internal combustion engine. Bazza 7 (talk) 12:27, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also found as running on all cylinders^[4] and hitting on all cylinders.^[5] In its literal sense, the term assumes a multi-cylinder configuration.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:04, 24 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Checking Newspapers.com (pay site), I looked just for "running on all cylinders". Early references starting in 1907 referred specifically to cars. By 1910, it was being used metaphorically, as with a baseball report about a pitcher who had a good game. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:51, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Ford Model K, with no fewer than six cylinders producing 40 hp, high at the time, was introduced in 1906. It was a commercial success. This may be related to when the (still literal) use of the phrase took off.  ​‑‑Lambiam 01:57, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Interesting point. In fact, that pitcher story I mentioned actually said the pitcher was "running on all six cylinders." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:47, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

An internal combustion piston engine may experience a malfunction in some if its valves (if pesent), fuel injectors (if present) or spark plugs (if present) causing one of the cylinders to fail, reducing power output and maybe increasing pollution. "Operating on all cylinders" indicates the absence of such issues, so it means that everything is all right. But note that some piston engines, like some large ship's diesels and also some steam engines (which aren't internal combustion, but also have cylinders) can disable some cylinders on purpose. This can be for maintenance with the rest of the engine still running. In some configurations it could be used to increase efficiency at low power settings. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:56, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

August 25

Alphabetic principle

Latest comment: 3 days ago12 comments3 people in discussion

Yeah, I know that the alphabetic principle has been discussed extensively with the Latin alphabet. But what about Cyrillic alphabet? Or Thai alphabet? Or Mongolian alphabet? Or Korean alphabet? What about Arabic or Hebrew which would be abjads? If one learns Japanese kana and then the Chinese characters first, or Mandarin phonetic symbols and then the Chinese characters first, or even the old-school style of reciting the classics with the teacher first, then would the task of reading alphabets feel completely daunting? Or is that not-so-daunting because English language education is actually taught as a foreign language in the countries, starting in elementary school, making it more seamless for them? Yrotarobal (talk) 03:51, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu wrote for the introduction about her own experience having to learn English and its English alphabet as a girl ahead of her family's planned move to the US. Growing up in Taiwan, during her critical-acquisition period she became familiar with, of course, 漢字 and zhuyin. In her case (p. xv):

The determined effort to learn English was overkill, it turned out. My siblings and I learned to write the alphabet letters in no time. It was, to use an English idiom that took me many years to get right, a walk in the dark (park). There was just one problem: I had no feeling for the Western alphabet. I strained to relate to its form, despite the ease of picking it up. The written form was strangely empty of expressiveness, and the sounds attached to the letters felt arbitrary and emotionally flat without the tonal fluctuations of Chinese—the sounds I was born into.

Remsense 🌈 论 08:29, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the response.

I was born in China and came to America at the age of 4-5. I was only just exposed to the casual spoken language and Tang poetry, but the Tang poems were all recited. No written language exposure except for the newspapers that my mom and dad read and the children's books brought over from China. So, I naturally picked up the Latin alphabet; I don't know what you mean by "feeling" or "form". I used to think that English was the logical, more rational, language with strict grammatical rules and Chinese is the intuitive, more emotional, language with common sense. I was an introverted kid, so I interacted with books and the teachers more often than peers; and I might have adopted a very academic/educational writing style. I might have become more self-aware when I was 21, when I participated in that StraightDope online forum and one forum member complained how one forum member (me) would always write in complete sentences, respecting formal grammatical rules, asking questions as if I appeared from outer space. When I was in my high school sophomore class, I mentioned the word 'totalitarianism' in class and the American studies teacher and the class didn't know what I was talking about, but fortunately for me, I was more literate than I was social, so I spelled it out, and the teacher corrected me by stressing on the 2nd syllable, not the 1st syllable. Somehow, stressing on the 1st syllable makes a whole different word. I don't think it's a stress or tone or intonation or prosody issue, because both English and Mandarin have prosody and intonation and stress. Cantonese sounds choppy and more syllable-timed to me, but then again, that's not my Chinese background. It's just that, at the time, I was just exposed to the word by reading it instead of hearing it. LOL Yrotarobal (talk) 13:43, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

The "alphabetic principle" means, in its "pure", most extreme form, a one-to-one correspondence between a set of graphemes (letter signs) and the set of phonemes of a language, a phonemic orthography. I don't think there are 100% pure instances of uses of the Latin alphabet, but close contenders are Italian and Turkish. English is notoriously impure, as illustrated by the creative respelling ghoti.

Whether texts written in some alphabet adhere to this alphabetic principle does not depend on the alphabet itself, but on the orthography of a specific language for which it is used. Cyrillic is used for many languages (Church Slavonic, Rusyn, ...), many of which have their own (Cyrillic) alphabet. Their orthographies tend to largely follow the alphabetic principle, but there are notable deviations – which may be regular. For the uses of other alphabets the situation is similar. I don't think there are languages whose writing system uses an alphabet but whose orthography has totally abandoned the alphabetic principle.

The most pure instances can be expected when a new alphabet is created for some language, such as the Deseret alphabet for English, or when an alphabet is introduced for a language that before used a different writing system, such as the Latin alphabet for Turkish and Dungan, both (independently) in 1928. Αs time passses, impurities creep in.

Impurities arise mostly through changes in pronunciation that are not reflected in a more conservative orthography. The Old English adjective ruh and its Middle English descendant rough were pronounced with a final /x/, as is today's Scots roch. When the English pronunciation changed to final /f/, the spelling did not follow suit. When the Romans borrowed words from Ancient Greek that were spelled with a phi (Φ) or theta (Θ), such as φθίσις, which has both, these letters were pronounced both in Greek and in Latin with aspirated consonants, /pʰ/ and /tʰ/, which was reflected in the Latin spellings PH and TH. These spellings remained when /pʰ/ became /f/ in Latin (and first /ɸ/, later also /f/, in Greek) and /tʰ/ became unaspirated /t/ in Latin (and /θ/ in Greek). Learned borrowings from Latin in many English, French, German and other languages written in the Latin alphabet just copied the Latin ph/th spelling even if otherwise adapting the borrowing, and this orthographic relic was even carried over to newly coined words based on Greek stems, such as hydrophobic. For more on this, see Phonemic orthography § Deviations from phonemic orthography.

Like in English, the modern orthography of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, tends to be based on the pronunciation of the morphemes of which words are composed, ignoring phonemic changes due to neighbouring morphemes. Other than that, it is mostly phonemic.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:14, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I guess I wasn't sure what the original question was, because "is a perfectly shallow orthography conceptually difficult for those not accultured" didn't make much sense to me? Remsense 🌈 论 13:18, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't think any natural language evolved naturally from a community of people can be pure in the logical or rational sense. To subscribe to the alphabetic principle, a man-made concept, is a bit weird. Why would a natural phenomena subscribe to any man-made concept perfectly? Are man-made concepts like the alphabetic principle merely used to describe nature? Aren't these academic/university subjects derived from the study of natural philosophy? Yrotarobal (talk) 13:50, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Languages do not subscribe to principles. If principles are subscribed to, it is by people. The very notion of a writing system is a human contrivance, and an orthography for a natural language based on a writing system is doubly contrived. Yet, for recording spoken text in a language so that others can later read it and take note, I feel it makes sense to subscribe to the principle that it be recorded according to some shared orthography for this language. Moreover, it also makes sense (IMO) to design this orthography somewhat rationally and not assign arbitrary combinations of signs to words. As to the alphabetic principle, it is helpful for teaching, learning and using an orthography. So it is (IMO) good when creators of an orthography pay attention to it and apply it, not blindly but within reason.  ​‑‑Lambiam 01:34, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

You said: "The "alphabetic principle" means, in its "pure", most extreme form." I didn't know why in the world you had to go to extremes or purity or whatever. So, I responded: "I don't think any natural language evolved naturally from a community of people can be pure in the logical or rational sense." The focus was on the word PURITY. I merely added logic/reason because the "alphabetic principle" sounds like a rational explanation or plausible explanation for a natural phenomenon to me. Anyway, the rest of your post seems to be directed to creators of an orthography (often people who work in government or conlang people), and I am neither. I am just a regular student, studying to be a primary school teacher. That's all. Yrotarobal (talk) 02:25, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

There is nothing natural about any writing system. All (natural scripts, not conscripts, which are works of art, not meaningfully a system intended for use as writing) were created primarily to solve human problems, not for the properties they happen to display in themselves. Here's a fun fact: the alphabet was only invented once (see History of writing)—all other alphabetic writing systems adapted in social contexts aware of previous alphabetic writing. What we should take away from that is the notion of "individual sounds" as units we construct words and all language from is, in likelihood actually deeply counter-intuitive to humans not already acculturated to thinking about speech in such terms. As far as we can tell, pre-literate societies were aware far less, if at all, of language as a series of discrete events like sounds or words instead of a continuous flow of sound. Of course, words as an abstraction are quite useful in the same way, but we had to invent that concept and apply it where it didn't exist in our minds before, just like most every aspect of orthography. Remsense 🌈 论 06:35, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

"There is nothing natural about any writing system." Yes. That is exactly what my textbook (Speech to print : language essentials for teachers) says, that was mentioned once in my former course and mentioned again in this current course. Nothing natural about the writing system. That was NOT what I was saying in my original post. I mentioned "any natural language" in the sense of the spoken language, the language that a baby learns, not the markings on paper or wood or some kind of material. Yrotarobal (talk) 11:56, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Its is not uncommon to use the term "pure" in relation to the alphabetic principle:

• A complete analysis of the current writing system would reveal several deviations from a pure alphabetic principle.^[6]
• However, if the alphabetic principle were applied in its pure state, numerous extra symbols would be required.^[7]
• It is obvious that this is not true and that American English is more complex and departs from the pure alphabetic principle to a greater degree than do some other languages, such as the Hawaiian.^[8]

None of these linguists is claiming that purity is desirable or even achievable, but the notion helps in explaining the alphabetic principle.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:00, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I would rather use the term 'theoretical'. Their use of 'pure' means 'theoretical' in my mind. Translating it into my own idiolect. Yrotarobal (talk) 03:38, 27 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

August 26

Mená Jména

Latest comment: 3 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Slovak is closely related to Czech, to the point of very high mutual intelligibility. What I noticed is that a few Slovak given names are quite divergent from their Czech equivalents. They seem much more similar to their German/Latin version. Some examples of Czech - Slovak names are: Alexandr - Alexander, Jiljí - Egid, Jindřich - Henrich, Arnošt - Ernest, Evžen - Eugen, Bedřich - Frederik, Řehoř - Gregor, Štěpán - Štefan, Anežka - Agnes, Anděla - Angela. I wasn't able to find counterexamples of Czench names looking more "Germanic" or "Latinate" than their Slovak equivalent. Understandably a lot of names are similar or identical between the two languages. Is there a linguistic or historical reason for this difference? Thank you! 80.180.16.18 (talk) 08:40, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sometimes the differences might be due to different cultural influences, although I am not sure that is the case here. A noteworthy example is Hindustani, where higher vocabulary in Hindi seems to be taken from Sanskrit or English, and higher vocabulary in Urdu seems to be taken from Arabic. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:36, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

While I don't know if this has a major influence on choosing baby names, an obvious cultural difference is religion in Slovakia and religion in the Czech Republic. A majority of Slovaks identifies as Catholic, while almost half of the Czech population is irreligious, with only about 9% identifying as Catholic. Historically, Czech anti-Catholic sentiment goes all the way back to the Battle of White Mountain, fought on 8 November 1620, so this runs deep in Czech culture.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:14, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

August 27

Latin

Latest comment: 9 hours ago8 comments7 people in discussion

What does this say? The google translate output is terrible. Thanks.

Ullam qui culpa officiis quo accusamus et numquam. Non dolor exercitationem expedita et rerum. In corporis delectus et magnam rerum. Et maxime natus sed aut temporibus dolor qui.

2601:644:8581:75B0:A9D3:7DB9:DFD1:E1F2 (talk) 03:26, 27 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

My Latin is extremely rusty, but I suspect that the translation you have already obtained (and which I have also checked) is accurate, and that this is intentional nonsense, perhaps along the lines of Lorem ipsum. However, a genuine classicist may correct me. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.210.150.115 (talk) 07:32, 27 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it's "lorem ipsum" text (you can find it used as such on some websites), and it's completely jumbled gibberish – much more chaotic than the classic "lorem ipsum" text itself with its still-recognizable echos of its Cicero original. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:06, 27 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

My initial impression is that, unlike Lorem Ipsum, all the words seem to be actual Latin, though. They're just jumbled together largely random. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:16, 27 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

The text above is much more of a scrambled mishmash than most lorem ipsums, but many (perhaps all) words therein are found in the (proper) Latin source texts given in our article on Lorem ipsum, which also offers translations to English. It is not a completely random string of Latin words; there is a vague resemblance to sentences composed of constituent phrases, evoked by the use of function words such as qui, quo, et, sed and aut. But this text does not get anywhere near (possibly senseless but) grammatically correct Latin, so it is not even possible to give a word-by-word translation.  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:23, 27 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

As with the German gibberish used in "The Funniest Joke in the World". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:27, 27 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, the lorem ipsum explanation makes sense. 2601:644:8581:75B0:A9D3:7DB9:DFD1:E1F2 (talk) 20:40, 27 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's also worth noting that "Latin" sometimes refers to meaningless text used in typographic proofing, which is what this fragment likely is. -insert valid name here- (talk) 00:35, 30 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

August 28

Time expressions

Latest comment: 4 hours ago6 comments5 people in discussion

Does English ever say "half a year" for a period of 6 months? Or "every half a year" like Finnish puolen vuoden välein? Is a period of 18 months "one and a half years"? Is it common to write "1.5 years" or 11⁄2 years? Like "1.5-year-old child", with spoken as "one-and-a-half-year-old child"? Similarly, is 12 hours "half a day" and 36 hours "one and a half days"? --40bus (talk) 19:30, 28 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

In British English, "half a year" is a possible expression if meant vaguely, but is not normally used for a precise period of 6 months; specifying 6 (or 5, or 7) months is standard. One would also normally say (for example) "a year and a half" rather that "one and a half years", but it would be more common to refer to "eighteen months".

"1.5 years" is never (in my experience) said or written (probably because 0.1 of a year is not really a thing), and in general "1.5" anything is usually only used in a scientific or mathematical or at least precision measurement context.

Again, "half a day" might be said if precision is not involved, "It will take me half a (or the) day to do this task", otherwise the quantity of hours would be stated; and "a day and a half" rather than "one and a half days" is usual.

All that said, English is flexible, and tolerant of errors and oddities from non-native speakers, so all the forms you mention would be understood, though they would mark the speaker as non-fluent. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.210.150.115 (talk) 20:26, 28 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I am a native speaker of English and I find "half a day", "half a year", and similar expressions quite natural. However, outset of poetry I'd only expect them to see or use them in a context where "day" or "year" is the typical unit. For example, "How many more days do need to finish that project?" "Half a day." --142.112.140.137 (talk) 05:28, 30 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Fractional number of years is common in astronomy, though "Earth years" is often specified to distinguish from years on other bodies. cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 23:39, 28 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed (I read Honours Astronomy at university), but I thought this, like other highly specialised scientific usages, lay outside the scope of the OP's question. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.210.150.115 (talk) 08:24, 29 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Fractions of years is also common in finance, though they're usually fiscal years and the fractions are usually quarters and months/periods that are rarely expressed as decimals. Matt Deres (talk) 17:17, 29 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Is the word shush the only English word (besides its derivatives), containing two sounds of ʃ, and not being a compound word (like shapeshifter or shoeshine)?

Latest comment: 9 hours ago11 comments8 people in discussion

2A06:C701:745A:B800:B559:3320:A4F4:C460 (talk) 21:00, 28 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yogi Bear often used the interjection, "Sheesh!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:21, 28 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

No. Sheepish. Bazza 7 (talk) 22:55, 28 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also shortish, sharpish, hashish, shisha, baksheesh, mishmash etc. cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 23:47, 28 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

P.S. This Python script:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import re
with open('cmudict-0.7b.txt') as f:
 for row in f.read().splitlines():
  if re.findall(r'(.*\bSH\b){3}', row): print(row)

run on http://svn.code.sf.net/p/cmusphinx/code/trunk/cmudict/cmudict-0.7b found no words with three ʃ.

P.S. I must show conscientious appreciation for your initiation of the negotiation on our relationship ;-) cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 00:12, 29 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

By the way, I'm not sure on whether showshine is a typo for shoeshine, I've seen some products with names like showshine or showsheen, though... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:04, 29 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh, sorry, of course it was just a typo. Thanks to your attention, I've fixed it! 2A06:C701:745A:B800:B559:3320:A4F4:C460 (talk) 13:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I suspected as much. Alright. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:40, 29 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

shish kebab – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 12:05, 29 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

shish^[9] and shisha.^[10]  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:17, 29 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Looking at Wiktionary, there's also shash ("sash", "white noise"). And Oshkosh, while a proper noun, fits your criteria. -insert valid name here- (talk) 00:27, 30 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

August 30

Googol, silicon, Oregon

Latest comment: 2 hours ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I saw a video of Carl Sagan talking about large numbers, and I was struck by the way he pronounced "googol" with a syllabic l, /guːgɫ̩/ I think, rather than a full second syllable, /ˈguː.gɑl/ or something like that, as I'm used to.

On the other hand, Easterners tend to use a full syllable in "silicon" and "Oregon", where I would use a syllabic n, /ˈsɪlɨkn̩/, /ˈɔːrɨgn̩/.

Is this a recognized variation within American English? --Trovatore (talk) 06:20, 30 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Most English speakers will never have heard the word uttered. Wiktionary lists two pronunciations for General American, both broad: /ˈɡu.ɡəl/ and /ˈɡu.ɡɑl/. But note that for bottle it gives General American /ˈbɑ.təl/, plus a narrow transcription [ˈb̥ɑɾɫ̩]. I think that unstressed final [əl] following an obstruent is generally in free variation with [ɫ̩]/[l̩]; compare /ˈɡæɡl̩/ for gaggle.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:06, 30 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I'm not really distinguishing /ɫ̩/ from /əl/ here. I just don't like to use the schwa symbol and avoid it when I can, because it means so many different things to different people, and in particular doesn't play nice with dialects that have the weak vowel merger. Unfortunately many people use /ə/ when they really mean /ʌ/, and those might be the same thing in their accent, but not in mine.

But for me "googol" and "Google" are definitely not homophones, whereas for Sagan apparently they were, and our googol article also claims that they are, which language I think should be somewhat qualified.

Anyway I'm still curious about the variation for "silicon" and "Oregon", which seems to go in the opposite direction. --Trovatore (talk) 07:13, 30 August 2025 (UTC)Reply