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July 19

Some questions mainly on linguistic evolution

1: Is it possible that the Hangul letters that in modern speech are flattened to an unreleased T in syllable-final position may have originally (e.g., close in time to when Hangul was created) been pronounced with something closer to their syllable-initial values?

2: Does the presence of a soft C in “France” imply anything about whether first contact with the Franks was before or after late Latin C-palatalization started?

3: In languages with relatively fossilized spelling that has not kept up with more recent pronunciation changes, can the form of a foreign word indicate when it was borrowed?

4: Did Akkadian and/or Sumerian lose some distinctions between consonants when said consonants were at the ends of syllables? The Wikimedia Commons image for the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform syllabary shows some VC signs being used for two or more different final consonants. Primal Groudon (talk) 00:19, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re 2: The soft C only tells us something about when the English term was borrowed from a Romance language, in this case Old French. The earlier, purely Germanic names Franc-land or Franc-rice^[1] were pronounced with a /k/ (for the ⟨c⟩ in Franc; the ⟨c⟩ in rice was palatalized to /t͡ʃ/). ‑‑Lambiam 04:44, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

French also uses the soft C here. 17:51, 19 July 2025 (UTC) Primal Groudon (talk) 17:51, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re 3: The spelling of Neo-Latin is frozen to that of the times of Caesar and Cicero, also in Ecclesiastical Latin as spoken in Vatican City, the main source of new borrowings. The Neo-Latin word autocinetum (meaning "automobile") can be analyzed as being borrowed from Ancient Greek αὐτοκίνητον but with a semantic change from "living being" to "automobile", corresponding to the semantic loan seen in Katherevousa, leading to modern Greek αυτοκίνητο. Now the pronunciation of αὐτοκίνητον is with a lenited K (IPA /c/), while the Ecclesiastical pronunciation of autocinetum is with a /t͡ʃ/ (as the onset of English chip). This counterexample shows that we can deduce nothing about the time of borrowing purely from the form of a borrowed word.

The question as phrased involves pronunciation changes in the receiving language. If, on the other hand, it is the donor language that is subject to significant pronunciation changes, there may be cases where one can tell by its form whether an adapted borrowing is from before or after the pronunciation change. Our word rose comes from Latin rosa, which is thought to be derived from a variant of Ancient Greek ῥόδον (rhódon), which itself is thought to have been borrowed from some Eastern language, most likely Proto-Iranian *wardah ("flower, rose"). Now from the latter (reconstructed) Iranian form we can see this must have been an early borrowing, because its descendant in Persian became گُل (gul). The Turkish form gül shows that this was, via Ottoman Turkish, a much later borrowing from already Classical Persian. ‑‑Lambiam 06:47, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re 1: Yes, the final consonants would have been distinct in Old Korean and tended to merge over time in the Middle Korean period. In Middle Korean, a final s sound was still distinct from final t, which is not the case in modern Korean [2]. Note that even in modern Korean, these final consonants are still fully distinct when they are followed by (for example) -i, -eun, -eul, or -ida. --Amble (talk) 16:18, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

5. Was there a good reason not to post these unrelated questions in separate sections? —Tamfang (talk) 04:19, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey guys!

When I was kid growing up in Australia in the 1950s, a guy was a rope helping hold the tent up when we went camping, and when TV arrived, because we lived a long way from the transmitters, it was a cable that did a similar job with the tall pole holding up the TV antenna. We are now thoroughly Americanised (except for small things like the s in that word), and a guy is a bloke, a male person, sometimes even a sheila, a female one. Where did Americans get "guy" from? HiLo48 (talk) 05:13, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OED indicated guy as in a man, dates from 1796 and comes from Guy Fawkes. Merriam-Webster indicates guy as in a man dates from 1712 and again probably comes from Guy Fawkes. Merriam-Webster also indicates guy as in a rope dates from 1623, as is from the Dutch gei - a rope used to control a sail. MLWoolley (talk) 05:36, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So how did the man version become a major part of American English, but not British (and Australian) English? HiLo48 (talk) 05:39, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I blame Damon Runyon, Frank Loesser and, most of all, Frank Sinatra. Doug butler (talk) 07:51, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea of nothing to do. Some versions change it to ...gal in the sky..., ruining the internal rhyme to avoid any suggestion of homosexuality I suppose, but the guy seems to be the pilot, so that would be risky in any case; I doubt Cole Porter would really have wanted to distract him. Also annoying is the change from some get a kick from cocaine to perfume from Spain, which is strained at best. --Trovatore (talk) 18:37, 19 July 2025 (UTC) [reply]

Wiktionary quotes Twain in 1873 writing "some guy from Pennsylvania". Here in the Saturday Evening Post, 1915 there are many, many instances of tough guy, wise guy, old guy, big guy, thin guy, new guy, literary guy, fly guy, funny guy, fresh guy, another guy, and some guy from Hungry. The Saturday Evening Post, guys. I was searching for the phrase "some guy": here's an instance from 1894, "tell her youse had a job packing coal for some guy". I'm not seeing any early British uses, except in the context "some Guy Faux" to signify a revolutionary or bomber. Here's a good organic American use of "some guy" in 1868, about a travelling circus touring Texas: "as for stealing you never saw its equal. As soon as anything is laid down some guy standing by picks it up and walks off just as easy as if it belonged to him. If you say anything they pull a revolver and say you are a d——- Yankee." Card Zero (talk) 09:31, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In British English of 100 years ago and more, guy meant someone who was dressed weirdly or badly. In The Mikado, reference is made to "the lady from the provinces who dresses like a guy" meaning not that she dresses like a man, but rather that she dresses in ugly clothes. Or in Mapp and Lucia, Miss Mapp sees her friend Major Benjy dressed like a medieval king and thinks he "looked a perfect guy in his crown" meaning he looked ridiculous. So the fact that guy meant something completely different in British English probably prevented it from taking on its American meaning in the UK, until recent decades after the old meaning died out, and nowadays younger Brits use guy in American sense of "fellow, chap". —Mahāgaja · talk 13:09, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, it's the custom in England and Wales before Bonfire Night on 5 November for children to make an effigy of Guy Fawkes ("a guy") out of old clothes and stuffed with newspaper, to be burned on the bonfire. So "dressed like a guy" would be similar to "dressed like a scarecrow". The tradition has been displaced somewhat by American-style Halloween only in the last couple of decades. Alansplodge (talk) 18:21, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's still a peculiar lyric though. I understand that Ko-Ko is simply venting his poorly thought out prejudices, which may be assumed to coincide with Gilbert's, and that Gilbert is more confessing than taking pride in them. But this particular one seems to come from an aristocratic space that I wouldn't have expected Gilbert to share. What does he dislike about suburban women who dress unfashionably but are open to new experiences? --Trovatore (talk) 20:42, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a mistake to assume that Gilbert is voicing his own prejudices via Ko-Ko – he was far too astute a satirist. Rather, Ko-Ko's list, which has always been modified to reflect circumstances contemporary to the performance, in part reflects petty societal prejudices that Gilbert is in part holding up for ridicule, and in part minor annoyances for which execution would be a ludicrous over-reaction (as befits the play's premise of flirting having being made a capital offense). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.5.172.125 (talk) 09:47, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, that does make a certain amount of sense. Though I do get the sense that the audience is expected to agree emotionally with one or two of them.

Another lovely little G&S touch is the fact that this song is so memorable, but as soon as it does happen that a victim must be found, everyone completely forgets about the list. But of course Ko-Ko is basically a sweet person and has no real desire to find a victim. --Trovatore (talk) 19:20, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So it may have evolved from a derogatory term about being overdressed, as with dude. But I notice geezer comes from guiser (some guy in disguise), and I wonder if American guy might have that origin too. Reading Guy Fawkes Night, I'm unclear whether the early tradition involved costumes/effigies, and it sounds like it had almost died out by 1850 before being revived, so I wonder if British guy developed at around that time, independently. (My terrible OR.) Card Zero (talk) 15:24, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The original celebrations of Gunpowder Treason Day, which morphed into Bonfire/Guy Fawkes night and which were actually encouraged in law, usually featured the burning of an effigy of The Pope (which, given the geopolitical situation of the time, would be akin to Americans in the 1950s burning effigies of Stalin). The central emphasis shifted to Guido/Guy Fawkes over subsequent decades, but Pope Paul V (incumbent in 1605) and other modern deprecated figures are still also burnt in effigy at some current manifestations of the event, such as in Lewes. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.5.172.125 (talk) 20:24, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that the Lewes Bonfire is unique in England in burning papal effigies and has come under considerable pressure to desist, which they have so far resisted. Alansplodge (talk) 21:14, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

...flying too high with some guy in disguise.... Hmm. Have I been hearing it wrong? --Trovatore (talk) 19:18, 20 July 2025 (UTC) [reply]

Obligatory mention of Tough Guy Book Club, of which I'm a proud member. Despite the Americanish name, it was founded right here in Melbourne, and has spread worldwide. If there's not a chapter near you, start one! -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:23, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My first visit to England was in late October. I saw fireworks for sale and thought “Halloween,” though fireworks are not associated with Halloween at home! —Tamfang (talk) 18:15, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

July 20

Date format

Do people in Canada ever write today's date as 7/20/2025? "July 20, 2025" is more common than "20 July 2025" there, but what about all-numeric dates? And do any of English speakers ever write the dateas "20.7.2025" like many other languages? And do they ever write like "20.7. is today", where the dot after month is retained even in non-final position? And do any people in the US prefer to write day first, followed by month, and then year? --40bus (talk) 19:09, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As to Canada, I live there and I habitually look at things like receipts provided by different stores and other businesses. The answer is yes. Some write numerical dates in the order month-day-year, some write day-month-year, and a few get it correct with year-month-day. Dots after the month and day are a notation from German and some other languages to represent ordinals (i.e. 7. means "7th"), and are pretty much never seen in English. --142.112.140.72 (talk)

Disagree with your last assertion. Native English speaker here, and I always write the short date as 20.7.25. --Viennese Waltz 06:48, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But your user name is German... --142.112.140.72 (talk) 21:45, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it were German, might it be Wiener Walzer? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:07, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This Australian says that too. HiLo48 (talk) 07:17, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, 7/20/2025 is seen in Canada. It's probably more common than 20/7/2025. Of course, I use 2025-07-20 like all good-hearted people. Using stops as placeholders is very uncommon; you'll see slash marks much more often: 2025/07/20, but I think that's more frequent when just writing a month/day combination: 7/20. I wouldn't call it authoritative, but it may be instructive that Excel has no pre-built format for dates that uses stops or slash lines, but it will automatically assume that entering 7/20 into a cell means July 20 of the current year. Matt Deres (talk) 15:28, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Never seen dates written with dots like that in texts produced by native English speakers. I've only seen the use of / or - . That is, "today's date is 7/23" or "today's date is 7-23". As to order within a date, day-month-year is virtually never seen outside of military (and a few other categories) usage in the US. However, it is the format that I prefer, despite my never having been in the military. As for your question about week numbers, I can't remember ever seeing them on any calendar (whether large or small, for personal or business use). They are not seen (for example) on the desk calendars that I have just purchased for faculty members in my department here at my community college. -- User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:47, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have heard that the US sometimes uses its own week numbering system, where weeks run from Sunday to Saturday, and there are partial weeks at the beginning and end of the year (week number always changes when year number changes), for example, the last four days of 2025 are part of week 53 and first three days of 2026 part of week 1. In years when 1 January falls on ISO week 52 or 53, such as 2022, 2023, 2027 or 2028, the US week number is one more than ISO week number through the whole year. But does US ever use ISO 8601 week numbers? In Finland, 100% of calendars include them. --40bus (talk) 05:47, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I've ever seen week numbers in any US context (ISO or otherwise). In fact, I don't even see what the point of such numbers is. How are they used that wouldn't be simpler to just give an actual date. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:48, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does any English-speaking country present calendars like this, with ISO 8601 week numbers?

Wk	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
	August
31					1	2	3
32	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
33	11	12	13	14	15	16	17
34	18	19	20	21	22	23	24
35	25	26	27	28	29	30	31
2025

In Finland, every calendar is presented like this. --40bus (talk) 07:15, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's uncommon in Canada, but I have seen it on some calendars put out by businesses. I don't think I've ever seen it printed on standard wall calendars for typical personal use. We don't use weeks in that way, so printing it on a calendar would be meaningless for most people. Matt Deres (talk) 16:55, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

July 22

Two different types of “or” questions

I notice two different types of questions centered around the word “or.” The first type is one where the answer is expected to be (or at least involved) one of the words surrounding the “or.” For example: “Do you prefer helicopters or personal watercraft?” “Should I turn left or right here?” “Is this Wikipedia RefDesk question written in English or French?”

The other type of “or” question is one in which the expected answer is not one of the surrounding words, but either yes or no. For example: “Did you eat or drink anything high in sodium yesterday?” “Can the general read or write?” “Was there any rain or snow here in February 1879?”

Do these types have their own special names? How do they render differently when translated into other languages? What factors influence which type a hearer interprets an “or” question to be? Primal Groudon (talk) 04:30, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In computer programming, those correspond to the Elvis operator and the Logical or. Deliberate misparsing of the first type as the second has comedic potential. "Is this really true, or are you making it all up?" — "Yes". Card Zero (talk) 05:04, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the second group forms a type of question. It's rather that a single concept for which no simple word exists is broken into two simple words. The questions could be formulated as "Did you take in any nourishment high in sodium?" "Is the general literate?" "Was there any precipitation here?" The questioner is interested in whether you took up anything high in sodium, not in how you did so. Most people who can read can also write, so there's not really an alternative here. Somebody else will sure provide the proper term for the phenomenon. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:34, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. The inclusion of "or" in the second set of examples has nothing to do with them being a question and simply comes down to extraneous wording, idiomatic expressions, and similar. Matt Deres (talk) 14:09, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These questions can be split into a pair of questions, like Q1: "Did you eat anything high in sodium yesterday?" and Q2: "Did you drink anything high in sodium yesterday?". From the yes/no answers A1 and A2 to both questions (assumed to be truthful), we can compute the answer to the combined question A1 ∨ A2 by using the logical disjunction operation, equating "yes" with "true" and "no" with "false". That said, this is not specific to the issue being presented in question form. The answers to the questions reflect the truth values of the corresponding factual statements "The patient ate something high in sodium yesterday" and "The patient drank something high in sodium yesterday", and the answer to the combined question is the truth value of the disjunction of the factual statements. ‑‑Lambiam 17:08, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Suppose you think your keys have been stolen, because they're not in your bag. I could ask "did you use the keys recently, or start using the bag recently?" and you could say no, ruling out both lines of enquiry, no idiom involved. Card Zero (talk) 07:42, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The first type is also called an "alternative question". Unfortunately, this is by itself an ambiguous term:

If a participant seems hesitant or unwilling to respond to a specific question, have an alternative question ready to smoothly transition before any awkwardness ensues.^[3]
Well, we have an alternative question then: What gave you the most fun?^[4]
Think of it as an alternative question to why this firm?^[5]

‑‑Lambiam 17:33, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some languages have two different words for the two types of "or", e.g. Finnish tai and vai (see https://uusikielemme.fi/finnish-vocabulary/interesting-words/the-difference-between-tai-and-vai). --2A02:8071:880:91C0:213D:AC15:1C1E:12EE (talk) 07:30, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Dutch conjunction dan wel is used for mutually exclusive alternatives. It differs from tai by being exclusive, and from vai by being used normally only in affirmative clauses. ‑‑Lambiam 05:39, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the usage notes. Dan wel usually separates alternative cases unknown by the writer; it does not offer a choice. What is this saying you can't do with it? I don't understand how you can write (or speak) about alternative cases without knowing what they are. And I don't get how not knowing what your own words mean is opposite to offering a choice. Card Zero (talk) 12:06, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If someone asks, "How many lumps of sugar do you want in your coffee?", you can answer "twee of drie" ("two or three"). You cannot answer, "twee dan wel drie". The answer "twee of drie" suggests that 2.5 lumps would be just perfect, while "twee dan wel drie" would mean you don't not know your own current sweetness preference – maybe two, maybe three, who knows? If the question had been, "How many lumps of sugar had he put in his coffee?", and you don't know the exact amount, you can use either of "twee of drie" and "twee dan wel drie". The latter sounds more formal than would be used in casual speech. As an incomplete rule of thumb, if you can use "or else" in English, "dan wel" is probably OK in Dutch. ‑‑Lambiam 04:26, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the phrasing is terrible, but perhaps I'm just a tad hard of thinking. These abstract semantics are difficult and I can't phrase it any better myself, yet. A replacement phrase (however clumsy) is "or if not that then", which shows that the first option, and hence the second too, must be possibly wrong, and possibly right; it's the correctness of the cases that is unknown to the speaker, not the descriptions of the cases. It's funny that in "two or three" the options are exclusive, yet both correct. It reminds me of a certain flag passed to Windows GDI when selecting a font family: if all you want is text of some kind, you specify FF_DONTCARE. Card Zero (talk) 14:53, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

July 24

Replace a French caption

I've just gotten a new map for the local government areas of the Perth metropolitan area in Western Australia, and I'm replacing the old .gif map. Unfortunately, I can't replace the map at fr:Perth (Australie-Occidentale) because the caption says something about the colours: Le centre ville (city of Perth), la proche périphérie (en vert pâle) et la « banlieue ». Can someone write me a new caption that represents the new map's colours but otherwise is identical to the old caption? Nyttend (talk) 07:52, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's only one color mentioned, pale green, for the inner suburbs. Replace vert pâle with brun. Card Zero (talk) 09:51, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is Rottnest Island shown in dark-green, like City of Perth? As far as I understand it has nothing to do with Perth but is directly administrated by Western Australia? --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:54, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to the file history, the editor shaded Rottnest Island dark green because it's an unincorporated area – presumably the same as the other dark green area? --Viennese Waltz 11:58, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And according to Local government in Australia#Western Australia, that small dark green blob in the middle of Perth is not City of Perth but Kings Park, Western Australia. Although, it looks like that local government list should also include Rottnest. --Viennese Waltz 12:03, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

July 26

Chirtaloo (possibly Hindi)

Please see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Chirtaloo. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:51, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

July 28

Peace for our time sentence of Neville Chamberlain

"My good friends, this is the second time in our history there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour." I get the meaning, but don't understand this sentence grammatically and semantically. What is even the subject? --KnightMove (talk) 15:21, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As English is an analytic, rather than inflectional language, using a creative, flexible word order might be confusing, but I believe it would be the same structure-wise as "My good friends, this is the second time in our history that peace with honour has come back from Germany to Downing Street." 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:26, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See Dummy pronoun § Existential there. Another example is Adenauer's "There has arrived a moment pregnant with fate", probably a translation of a German sentence (Es ist ein schicksalsträchtiger Moment gekommen). The subject ("a moment pregnant with fate") in the usual SVO word order ("a moment pregnant with fate has arrived") is replaced by "there" while the original subject is moved to the end. In such constructions, the verb is intransitive, so there is no O in the SVO. Yet another example: "There has returned a certain pride in ourselves as soldiers and in our units".^[6] ‑‑Lambiam 05:53, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both. Indeed the additional object in between "from Germany to Downing Street" makes it particularly hard to recognonise the peace as the subject. --KnightMove (talk) 06:50, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Either way, he got it wrong. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:11, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

July 29

Semitic roots and LLM tokenisation

I recently was sent an abstract about failures of LLMs to correctly answer questions about the Quran in Arabic. That got me pondering. As I understand the tokenizers used in LLMs, they identify relatively frequent character sequences as tokens. That is a good match for languages that work (mostly) with a word stem and various pre- and postfixes for grammatical markers. But is this a good match for languages like Hebrew or Arabic that use multilateral roots and modify words by injecting extra characters in between the consonant roots? And is this the right desk or is this a computing question? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:17, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Homage - a vs. an

Is it a homage or an homage in American English? The Cable Guy has: The fight sequence at Medieval Times between Chip (Jim Carrey) and Steven (Matthew Broderick) is an homage to the Star Trek episode "Amok Time"... Jay 💬 13:19, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would say "an". As a rule, the article follows pronunciation, not spelling, and the "h" is silent. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:15, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would assert that the version with the silent h - usually along with the faux-French pronunciation with the stress on the second syllable - is a relatively recent arrival that has become a sort of buzz word that people use in mostly inappropriate places. All my life it was only ever HOMM-idge, until this weird o-MAHZH started cropping up about 20 years ago, particularly among pop culture people who think they're sounding sophisticated. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:42, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. After posting this, I saw more usages - two at Sofia Coppola, so realized it was not a one-off. I didn't even know "homage" can be pronounced with a silent 'h'. When I asked Google to pronounce the word, it did not make the h silent. When I asked it to pronounce with the silent h, it did not, but gave me further links. Later on the AI must have kicked in, and it gave me a drop-down with British and American pronunciations, with the silent h for American. Jay 💬 10:05, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To me the om-aazh pronunciaiton is very much the language of pseuds and poseurs. I tend to associate it with an excessive admiration for Bloomsbury and Wagner, but that's probably the people I first heard it from, them and late-night BBC2/Channel 4 "culchure" programmes. DuncanHill (talk) 11:57, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that originally there were two different but related words. Firstly, there's homage (pronounced with an /h/, stressed on the first syllable and ending with the "j" sound), which meant "respect paid to someone" and in a historical context "the oath sworn by a subordinate to his lord in the Middle Ages"; this word was inherited from Middle English, which borrowed it from Old French in the 13th century or so. Secondly, there's the doublet hommage (pronounced without an /h/, stressed on the second syllable and ending with the "zh" sound), which means "a work of art done in respectful imitation of another artist"; this word was borrowed from modern French probably in the 20th century. However, the distinction between the two in both spelling and pronunciation has become blurred in recent years, so that among younger people at least the spelling homage and French-like pronunciation (no /h/, second syllable stress, ending with "zh") is being used for both the general meaning and the art-specific meaning. Language changes, cry me a river. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:42, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Either pronunciation and either spelling is found on either side of the Atlantic Divide.

Uses of "a homage" by American authors: [7], [8], [9].
Uses of "an homage" by British authors: [10], [11], [12].

The prevalence is sounded /h/ in RP and silent ⟨h⟩ in American English.

For more, see Ben Zimmer's item 'Homage' in the New York Times Magazine column On Language. ‑‑Lambiam 19:01, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ngram Viewer verifies [13] it. Modocc (talk) 20:46, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's complicated.

h (or eta) hasn't been used in the Greek language since it was replaced with the spiritus asper diacritic in the Athenian Spelling Reform of 403 B.C. Therefore, such words are treated as beginning with a vowel even though the first syllable is aspirated. Nevertheless, in Latin—and by extension, English—we to this day continue to spell Greek-based words such as "hero," "habit," and "history" with the 8th letter for reasons of etymology. (And don't even get me started on the whole "ydor/hydrogen" "nero/aneroid" mess.)

Thus, to widely varying degrees, prescriptive English grammarians have insisted on using an before such words so as to honor their origin. Viz., some always use an; some always use a; and still others use every possible combination in between.

In my personal writing style, however, it's quite simple.

A.) if the first letter is silent then always use an

Silent h
an hour
an honor
an heir

and B.) If the first letter is not silent, then only use an if the word has a primary stress on the second syllable.

Primary stress on first syllable	Primary stress on second syllable	Primary stress on third syllable	Primary stress on fourth syllable
a hero	an heroic act	a hydroponic plant	a heterosexual man
a history	an historic occasion	a hyperactive child
a habit	an habitual offender	a homogeneous mixture

Most 21st-Century writers consider this somewhat dated. I myself, however, find that it still makes quite an impression!

Pine (talk) 23:50, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is an excellent answer! I learned something and will pay homage to you ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:28, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A small addendum to Pine's answer (which corresponds exactly to my practice in writing and formal speech): in accents such as Cockney that drop initial 'h' –so that, for example, hedge becomes 'edge – speakers usually treat the result as vowel-initial and precede it by 'an' – a hedge, an 'edge – thus avoiding the insertion of a glottal stop. (I myself do this when speaking casually.) In writing, however, this would only be applied if attempting to represent the accent in spoken mono- or dialogue. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.253.201 (talk) 11:50, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some people think the primary stress in homogeneous is on the second syllable though. Card Zero (talk) 12:02, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because they're pronouncing "-neous" as one syllable, as in the recent variant (and arguably incorrect) "homogenous"? That would make it the antipenultimate syllable, which (pace Pine above) is I think the underlying rule from original Greek pronunciation. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.253.201 (talk) 13:55, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed!

And I'd like to add that, according to the Oxford American Dictionary, Third Edition, homogeneous is the only correct spelling when used to mean all of the same kind, as in "Iceland's homogeneous population."

Said dictionary, however, also lists homogenous as a term once used in evolutionary biology meaning "having a common descent," but now more-or-less displaced by homologous.

Pine (talk) 17:43, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OED says "The spelling homogenous is less common than the pronunciation /həˈmɒdʒɪnəs/ , which perhaps owes its currency partly to the influence of the verb homogenize and its derivatives." It has citations from Websters, The Times, Elisabeth Palmer's translation of Andre Martinet, and Nature. As for the biological use of homogenous, it gives homogenetic, and in surgery homoplastic. DuncanHill (talk) 15:55, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

July 30

Downward comparison of English directional adjectives.

Hello, again! Unlike practically every other language on Earth, English remains notorious for having different ways to compare adjectives.

e.g.

Positive	Comparative	Superlative
soft	softer	softest
delicious	more delicious	most delicious

One saving grace, though, is that this usually does not apply to downward comparisons.

Negative	Negative comparative	Negative superlative
soft	less soft	least soft
delicious	less delicious	least delicious

When it comes to adjectives relating to dimensions such as "up," "east," "left," "away," and "forward," however, I am now stumped! For upward comparison, the rule is pretty easy!

Positive	Comparative	Superlative
down	farther (or further) down	farthest (or furthest) down

But how exactly does one decline a direction downwards? Would he say "least down," "nearest down," "closest down," "least far down," "least farthest down," or something else?

Thank you for reading this. Pine (talk) 00:14, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

EDIT: Removed an irrelevant mention of adverbs. Pine (talk) 00:28, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is the different comparisons really due to adjectives vs. adverbs? Cf. the famous example of 'dumb' and 'stupid', synonymous adjectives compared differently for phonetic reasons. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:24, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply different comparisons for adjectives vs. adverbs. Just adjectives as a whole. (I removed the mention of adverbs.)

Pine (talk) 00:29, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One can say "a more downward direction"^[14] and "a more upright posture".^[15] ‑‑Lambiam 05:16, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Less far down" looks clunky but sounds perfectly natural to my (British) ear. There are also "low down", "lower down" and "lowest down". -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 19:33, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

August 2