Language desk
< December 26	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 28 >

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.

December 27[edit]

Nachts Scheint Die Sonne[edit]

I stumped at user:Martinevans123es remark in the thread immediately above that "In German, of course, as in "Nachts Scheint Die Sonne" (the song's original title) etc etc". And indeed, Michael Holm's German song titles are listed in title case. In German, of course, title case is unknown, for capitalization marks nouns and onsets and the song's original title is "Nachts scheint die Sonne". Hence my question: Should foreign titles be capitalized in wikipedia according to English rules? --87.154.88.49 (talk) 16:51, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But you can see the ~~three~~ four differences between son and Sonne, can't you? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:56, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I guess Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Titles#Capital_letters (stuff at the bottom) is relevant. Anyway: Yes, I'd keep the German spelling for "Nachts scheint die Sonne" in an English WP article (though I just typoed "Nachos" for "Nachts" and autocorrect suggested "schist" for "scheint" ("schist" meaning "shits" in my dialect-which-has-no-standard-spelling) and "son" for "Sonne" which brings us back to Martinevans123 who will keep stumping us all, time and again, ---Sluzzelin talk 17:09, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

-er / norse r[edit]

It just occurred to me to wonder if the "-er" suffix (for nominalisation, like Berlin -> Berliner, 12-feet -> 12-footer) is cognate with the Old Norse -r (like in Vikingr).

Thanks

Duomillia (talk) 23:22, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The English examples you gave have two distinct etymologies. For the "-er" in "Berliner" see Etymology 2. For "12-footer" see Etymology 1.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 00:25, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The nominative ending -r of masculine Old Norse -a nouns simply comes from the PIE -os nominal ending, > -az in Proto-Germanic > (a)r by rhotacism and apocape in Old Norse. This parallels the development of Old Latin honos > Latin honor and the rhotic phenomenon survives in English wikt:lost and wikt:forlorn from the same root. It has nothing to do with an agentive or derivative suffix. μηδείς (talk) 02:52, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]