Language desk
< July 31	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	August 2 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 1[edit]

Hungarian Verbs[edit]

Why does the Hungarian verb 'to be' usually come at the end of a clause, when most other verbs follow the SVO pattern? I am in Hungary at the moment, and have asked my Hungarian friends, and none of them have a clue. Can anyone enlighten me? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:02, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think SVO describes Hungarian very accurately, in fact it can be SVO or SOV, and the latter is used if you want to stress the object. Compare: Látom a buszt versus A buszt látom. The first version states that I see the bus (the opposite would be that I do not see the bus), the second version stresses that it is the bus that I see, not something else. With "to be", most of the time you stress what something is, hence you say Busz van - it is a bus. The version Van busz is also possible, the meaning is "There is a bus" as opposed to "There isn't a bus". The negation has to be Nincs busz, I believe, but the positive can be either Van busz or Busz van. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:59, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, SVO is actually quite rare in Hungarian, not only because one of the three elements is so often absent. Also remember that the thing qualified by "to be" is rarely parsed as an object in any language. "Busz van" sounds pretty strange to me btw, if you want to say "it is a bus" you would usually say "ez/ő egy bus" (zero copula for the third person, as opposed to Angol vagyok, szép vagy - no subject pronoun for the first or second person). The verb "van" is more often used to describe e.g. where something is, a virágok az asztalon vannak - the flowers are on the table (stressing on the table, as you would expect), if you say a virágok vannak az asztalon then it stresses that the flowers - not the fruit or whatever - is on the table, and having to do that with a whole sentence is not very common really. - filelake shoe  14:23, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your examples are much better, thanks. I keep forgetting to drop the copula... --Wrongfilter (talk) 14:49, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Jó van, köszi szépen! I have noticed verbs all over the place. I suppose it's just something I will have to get used to. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:53, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've gotta say this drives me insane too, even after having the stress rule explained to me there seemed to be loads of exceptions, but in a simple sentence with a transitive verb and a direct object the base word order is usually SOV, because the verb usually stresses the direct object. In questions the verb is usually first (so "látod a buszt?" is normal "can you see the bus?" whereas "a buszt látod?" is something like "is it the bus that you can see?"). In longer sentences with time/manner/place and indirect objects involved it's often something else being stressed, so I'm not surprised the verbs seem to be anywhere they like. - filelake shoe  22:46, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"I love me" vs. "I love myself"[edit]

Are both versions correct? (substitute love for heart, and put it on a t-shirt). OsmanRF34 (talk) 17:23, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess you mean "I ♥ me" versus "I ♥ myself"? This is tricky. The first version is grammatically wrong, but for this purpose it is better anyway, because it brings out the joke better. The first version would be seen by most native English speakers as a joke, the second as unpleasant self-love. Looie496 (talk) 18:10, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"I love me" could be OK in a contrastive/emphatic context ("YOU don't love me, but I love me"), but as an isolated stand-alone sentence it doesn't sound too good... AnonMoos (talk) 18:44, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd second Looie496 and AnonMoos, but just add that "I love me" sounds positive rather than jokey when directly compared to the second, maybe an expression of self-worth or positive affirmation from someone given to that kind of thing. "I love myself", in British English at least, is definitely negative, with implications of arrogance and narcissism. ("Ooh, he really loves himself, that one!") - Ka renjc 20:54, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's also "I love me some pork rinds" etc., but there "me" isn't a direct object pronoun at all, but what in Latin grammar is called an "ethical dative"... AnonMoos (talk) 21:33, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The assumed arrogance/narcissism of "I love myself" is an interesting one. Christians would have difficulty in doing without the Ten Commandments as their primary yardstick, but the one that says "Love thy neighbour as thyself" is usually interpreted in practice as "Love thy neighbour, but NOT thyself". That was not the idea at all. "I love myself" is not "I am the best person in the world". It is simply acknowledging what is true for all human beings, namely, that survival and self-preservation and attending to our own interests and giving a damn about our own welfare are the most important things in our lives. Not the only things, but the most important things. If you're dead or incapacitated, "you've lost a very important part of your life", and you can't do much looking after the needs of others. Plus, if you want to be a role model for your kids, they surely you want to provide a model of success and health and achievement, not a model of eternal sacrifice and drudgery and self-effacement and all those other things that have for too long masqueraded under the name of "goodness" and "holiness". -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 23:24, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blame the California self-esteem movement of the 1980s -- it tried to give loving yourself a good reputation, but with various oversimplifications and dumbing down by the time it reached the school system etc., ended up having somewhat the opposite effect... AnonMoos (talk) 23:37, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The myself type reflexive pronoun is a creation of early modern English from the earlier "I me self"... not much older than Shakespeare. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=myself μηδείς (talk) 03:14, 4 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To directly answer Osman's question, if you are making a T-shirt, definitely go with "I ♥ me". This comes across as cute, whereas "myself" sounds serious and somewhat offensive, almost like a shirt that says "get out of my way". μηδείς (talk) 20:01, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of "k" in Swedish[edit]

I have come to understand that "k" in Swedish is pronounced /k/ when preceding a back vowel but something like /tsh/ when preceding a front vowel. Such as /k/ in katt (cat), ko (cow), kunde (could) or kål (cabbage), but /tsh/ in känna (to know), kö (queue) or kyla (coldness). But how is it pronounced when preceding /i/? I just looked at the Swedish Wiktionary and saw that kille (boy, young man) is pronounced with /k/ but kika (to look carefully at) is pronounced with /tsh/. So is there any consistent rule here? And does "ke" differ from "kä" in the pronunciation in any way? JIP | Talk 19:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, there are strong and weak vowels (some call them hard/soft). The strong vowels (a, o, u and å) cause certain consonants (normally g or k) preceding them to be hard - katt, gott, Gud, etc. The weak vowels (e, i, y, ä and ö) make the vowel soft - ge, gift, kyrka, kärlek and köra. That's only half the story, though, since a double consonant 'strengthens' the vowel - compare kilo (tji-lo) and kille (/k/ille).

Then come the exceptions - certain imported words don't follow the rules - interestingly, I disagree with you on att kö, which is pronounce /k/ö, and is 'against the rules' - it should be 'tjö' as consistent with köra. Also words ending in a g seem to follow their own rules - compare tåg (hard g) with torg - soft g. This also holds in the definitive - tåget (hard g) and torget (soft g). I haven't worked out if there's a rule there yet... - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:24, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The rules concerning the final "g" are quite simple: "-rg" and "-lg" endings have a soft "g" (with inflectional endings not affecting the softness), otherwise the "g" is hard. Also, kö is in fact the French word queue respelt - that's why the "k" is hard in a position where it normally should be soft. --Theurgist (talk) 22:58, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a means of doing so, checking the Norwegian cognates of these words often reveals the correct pronunciation, since Norwegian almost always uses "kj" rather than simply giving K a different sound—känna → kjenne, köra → kjøre, and kyl → kjøl(e), while kö → kø and ko → ku for example. This site will allow you to enter a Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish word to see its equivalents in the other two, which makes it a good resource for this. (Beware, though: this trick does not work for all the other features of Swedish pronunciation. energi is spelled identically in both, but the Norwegian pronunciation has a hard [ɡ] while the Swedish has that [ɧ~ɕ] sort of sound that varies a bit by region; it's the "sj" in sju.) dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 10:38, 2 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are also Norwegians who say enersji, but it seems to be a pronunciation that's falling out of favour, while a genius (geni) continues to be a sjeni. V85 (talk) 23:28, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This came up in Språkspalten at Riksmålsforbundet a while back, actually; you can read the (somewhat lengthy) answer here. Both pronunciations of energi have been around a good while, but there are (and have been, at least since 1851) dictionaries that give only the "hard" G pronunciation, and most of the others do something to indicate some degree of preference for it over the enersji version. Interesting stuff, hm? dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 06:44, 7 August 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Note: Adding a "t" before the "sh" when pronouncing words like känna och kyla is very dialectal, and sounds quite Finland-Swedish to my (Stockholmian) ears. :) Gabbe (talk) 11:55, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Given that JIP gives his/her mother tongue as Finnish, that doesn't seem like such a bad guess! :-) 23:28, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Is English losing the distinction between the nominative and the accusative?[edit]

Is English losing one of the few traces of word inflection it has left, namely the distinction between the nominative and the accusative? I'm fairly sure I have often seen native English-speakers write things like "Him and me went there". I've often wanted to ask them if they would ever write "Him went there" or "Me went there", and if not, why would the first version be acceptable. I am certain I have seen the exact wording "How did us punish him? Took the child out to dinner." used by parents whose son's kindergarten teacher reprimanded him for standing up to another boy who called a girl ugly. I don't think they would ever write "Us took him out to dinner." JIP | Talk 20:06, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not really -- "whom" continues to slowly lose ground, and the subject and object pronouns are not always used in the same places where the corresponding forms were used in Latin grammar, but there's no particular tendency to eliminate the contrast... AnonMoos (talk) 20:20, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is actually an astonishingly complex issue. Steve Pinker discusses it briefly in a wonderful chapter called The Language Mavens in his book The Language Instinct; he references a 1986 paper by Joseph Emonds called Grammatically deviant prestige constructions for a full analysis. The basic point is that when you use "and" to construct a noun phrase, the result is plural. We say "George and Sally are here", not "George and Sally is here". Thus you can't handle "George and Sally" grammatically in the same way that you would handle George or Sally separately; and the same applies to "He and I" or other pronoun constructions. To a linguist it is not obvious that the accusative form of the phrase "He and I" is "Him and Me", or for that matter that the nominative form is "He and I". Emonds and Pinker say that it is not only not obvious, it is wrong. Looie496 (talk) 21:59, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of the examples you give seem very strange to me ("how did us punish him" sounds like it should at least be heavily dialectal). I feel it tends to be more common when it's a pronoun with a noun, e.g. "Billy and me went to the shop" or "the teacher called Billy and I up to the front of the class", which makes more sense, seeing as there one word inflects and the other doesn't. - filelake shoe  22:22, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The loss of case distinction in English is a trend that's been going on for centuries, and is almost complete. The last remnants of case are holed up in the pronouns, fighting a desperate rearguard battle for survival. They're starting to break down even there. Give it another century or so, maybe they'll be gone too. It's the direction the language is evolving in. --Nicknack009 (talk) 22:42, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so -- there could be considered to be some erosion in certain derived constructions, but in a basic declarative sentence, there's no weakening at all: "I saw him" is the only acceptable alternative, while "Me saw he" is completely unacceptable (unless you're a 3 year old or speaker of a highly non-standard dialect, or are an old fashioned kind of poet playing word order tricks). Edward Sapir, a still-respected linguist, predicted in 1921 that "its" was on its way out, but 90 years later it really doesn't seem to be going the way of "whom". As far as I can tell, no significant inflectional categories or inflectional endings have been dropped in standard English over the last 500 years, except for everything connected with 2nd. person singular pronouns and verb endings (the "thou"-"you" contrast disappeared due to sociological reasons much more than due to linguistic reasons as such), substitution of "-s" for "-th" in third person singular verb endings, and dropping of "ye" as second person subject in favor of using "you" for both subject and object... AnonMoos (talk) 23:01, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are many varieties of English where the leveling has already happened and the oblique forms are used as the subject, as in "us took him out to dinner." (The reverse does not happen except as hypercorrection.) But in the varieties that keep the distinction, it's robust and shows no sign of going away.

"How did us punish him?" is perfectly acceptable if you raise the pitch of your voice, open your eyes wide, and are talking to a dog. Well, maybe a bit nauseating.

As Looie496 noted, the forms are not nominative and accusative. I could see "him and me went to the store" eventually becoming acceptable in print, and people will pull out their hair over the loss of case inflection, but it's not the same thing at all. — kwami (talk) 23:15, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The nature of such types of English is that they're significantly creole-influenced, and differ from standard English in many more ways than merely collapsing the subject/object pronoun contrast. Anyway, shouldn't that be "I and I took him to dinner"?

-- AnonMoos (talk) 23:31, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No no, it's "me and me took im". Honestly, you'd think you'd never been to skool. — kwami (talk) 23:35, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that's what a Rastafarian would say, but all I know about the matter is derived from casual and intermittent listening to reggae songs... AnonMoos (talk) 23:40, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(Guess I didn't get your joke. — kwami (talk) 09:06, 3 August 2012 (UTC))[reply]

"Him and me", or "me and him", sounds fine to me. I say that all the time! No, it doesn't make any grammatical sense, but if you take it as a particular idiomatic phrase, it makes total sense. In this particular construction, the oblique forms are being used to introduce the subjects. It's not incorrect, it's just informal. Adam Bishop (talk) 05:46, 2 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I sometimes use Adam's dialectal informal case that would be considered incorrect in print. What surprises me is the increasing usage of "Someone and I" when both the someone and the "I" are the object of some action. This error seems to be becoming increasingly common on the BBC (and not just in Cornwall dialect). Does it result from a hypercorrection of the dialectal informal "Someone and me" that we were all taught was "wrong" in the nominative? Dbfirs 08:13, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think so. I remember having to be taught to avoid saying "me" in these contexts. I think w/o the Latin model of case, everyone would be saying "X and me went" by now, even in formal writing. — kwami (talk) 09:06, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was never so taught -- quite the reverse: if "me" alone sounds wrong in some context, then "someone and me" will also sound wrong. Most of my circle of speakers make clear distinction between nominative and accusative personal pronouns. "Whom", however, is a losing battle. :-) -- Elphion (talk) 13:08, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

English is not losing the distinction between subject and object case. There is no hint of such forms (outside creoles) as "Give I the book!" or "Me am going to the store." What does exist is a disjunctive pronoun just like the French moi which is used in certain predications (C'est moi: "It's me") and hypercorrection in phrases like "between you and I". μηδείς (talk) 17:14, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The paper by Joseph Emonds that Filelakeshoe mentions argues that English has indeed lost the nominative-accusative distinction, but replaced it with a different, syntactic, distinction which coincides with it in simple cases but not in more complicated cases such as coordination. --ColinFine (talk) 21:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]