Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 November 7

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[edit] November 7

[edit] Use of the word "horta" as evil/demon

I have read the definitions given in wikipedia and dictionaries.

I saw an old Vincent Price movie-believe the title to be "Diary of a Madman" but I may be wrong. The invisible demon was called a horta and destroyed by fire. It "spoke" to Price and the children in the school where he taught. To avoid communicating his intentions to the children or the horta, he had to think of a stone wall. Apparently the horta was unable to leave a locked room.

I think I have heard or seen the word used in this context before, but don't know where or how it came into being. Perhaps Yiddish?

Can anyone give me a clue?

Thank you!!

"Woe to us! Woe to man! He has come, the--the--what does He call himself--the--I fancy that he is shouting out his name to me and I do not hear him--the--yes--He is shouting it out--I am listening--I cannot--repeat--it--Horla--I have heard--the Horla--it is He--the Horla--He has come!" Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla) ---Sluzzelin 09:44, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
You're also confusing and conflating several things. The old thinking-of-a-brick-wall-to-stop-the-children-knowing-what-he-was-thinking trick was in either Village of the Damned or Children of the Damned (the latter, I think). And the horta was a silicon-based life form in an episode of Star Trek called "The Devil in the Dark". Grutness...wha? 09:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Both the Village and the Children are based, of course, on John Wyndham's novel the Midwich Cuckoos. The brick walk device was used in the Village of the Damned to stop the children detecting that the professor had a bomb. Clio the Muse 10:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Four different types of PDF file(s)

A recent "correction" to an article prompts me to wonder which is correct: "these are four different types of PDF file" or "these are four different types of PDF files"? Context: Portable Document Format#External links. Notinasnaid 18:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I would go for 'file'. And "there are" is preferable to "these are" too. --Richardrj talk email 18:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I tried to keep it short, but "these are" follows on from another part of a rather horrifically long sentence in the original context. Notinasnaid 18:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I think I'd use "files", although I often interpret plural sentences with an impersonal singular otherwise. For instance, I recently wrote constructions like X is common, similar to It is common with constructions like X. 惑乱 分からん 23:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Definitely files. It's "two types of people" not "two types of person". --Kjoonlee 01:33, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Why do people keep on asking questions that assume there is only one answer? Language doesn't work that way.

You're welcome to carry on saying 'two types of files' Kjoon, but however 'definitely' you do so, you're not going to stop me saying 'two types of file'. Definitely. ColinFine 16:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm usually a descriptivist, so I should have said "I would definitely say files." --Kjoonlee 01:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
But tell me, would you say "two types of person?" --Kjoonlee 01:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I have no doubt you'd say "two types of furniture," and I'm asking to see if you treat file as an uncountable noun. If so, do you never say "two files?" --Kjoonlee 01:28, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'Half assed/half arsed'

Does anyone know where this term originates (e.g. 'doing a half assed [or 'half arsed' for the Brits] job')? I notice that WP has an article on the Half Ass (or Onager). Does this have anything to do with it at all? Which came first anyway - 'half assed' or 'half arsed'? --Kurt Shaped Box 19:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the phrase itself, but Americans use ass when others would use arse because, for some reason, ass came to refer to both the animal and the rear. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:22, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I looked the phrase up in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and in two American dictionaries: Merriam Webster's and American Heritage. The two American dictionaries listed the term (as "half-assed"); the OED did not list it in any form. According to Merriam Webster's, the first attestation of the phrase dates to 1932. This suggests that the term originated as American slang. This makes sense, because the word "ass"—conflating ass/donkey, with its connotation of stupid, and ass/arse, an awkward or vaguely embarassing body part—plays a big role in American slang. Think of expressions like "ass-backwards", "dumb ass", or for that matter, "dumb-assed". Marco polo 20:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Do Americans ever use 'assed' in the context of "not being 'assed'" to do something? "Not being 'arsed'" is quite a common occurance amongst us Brits... ;) --Kurt Shaped Box 21:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Occasionally, but not commonly. --Wooty  Woot? | contribs 21:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I've never heard it and wouldn't have known what it meant. People might assume you were saying "not being asked" to do it - in some dialects, "asked" sounds enough like "assed" that there might be confusion. I do this; I live in Canada, though. --Charlene 22:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Not 100% certain of the etymology but I *think* "I can't be arsed" originates from "I can't be bothered to get up/it's not worth getting up off my arse to do it". --Kurt Shaped Box 22:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I dunno, I've never heard anyone say "I can't be asked to do it.". --Wooty  Woot? | contribs 22:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Cassell's Dictionary of Slang dates it to mid 19th century America but doesn't offer a cite. Perhaps it is related to half-cocked, dated to early 19th century. If half-cocked originally meant badly primed as in a gun, half-assed may have developed to highlight its double meaning. MeltBanana 00:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Calling somebody "a horse's arse" used to be a very derogatory insult. Maybe it came from that. JackofOz 08:36, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
What I meant to say was that it is still a very derogatory insult, but it's not commonly heard these days. JackofOz 08:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki from Waka Waka?

Article Wiki claims: "waka waka, a Hawaiian-language word for fast." Is that true? --Li-sung 20:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

"Waka waka" is vandalism that slipped in at some point, which I have removed. If you look on the WikiWikiWeb article, it says that the name came from reduplication of the Hawaiian word wiki meaning "fast".
Pac-Man was obviously a precursor to the name Wiki. :P --Wooty  Woot? | contribs 21:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding r after words ending with vowels

Ever since I moved to the UK it's been bugging me that people sometimes add an r at the end of some words, seemingly at random. "No idear" (no idea) would probably be the best and most common example.

Why do people do this, does it have a name and is it an exclusively British thing? My reason for thinking it's a British thing is that when I lived in Sweden, most of the English that'd come to me through movies, TV, etc would be American, where I never noticed the "r thing". -Obli (Talk)? 22:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like an accent thing, though I once had a professor that added R on words ending with -a though ("Chinar"). So I dunno. --Wooty  Woot? | contribs 22:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
It is simply an accent (I'm not quite sure exactly where, though-it sounds a bit West Country). Try travelling around: you will find great variations from region to region, nation to nation. Clio the Muse 23:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
In most British accents, an 'r' is pronounced after final vowels only when the following word begins with a vowel. In such an accent, a person would say "I have no idea" but "I have no idear if she knows". The same thing happens in American accents that leave out final 'r's, such as the Boston accent. See rhotic and non-rhotic accents. Marco polo 23:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Rhotic accents are those that routinely pronounce R where R is written; nonrhotic ones don't except before a vowel. Thus to nonrhotic speakers, "super fine" sounds like "supa fine", and this spelling "supa" will be seen in British brand names. Pronouncing "idea" like "idear" when a vowel follows is a related thing but not known by the same name. I have seen it described as "hyperrhotic" and as the "intrusive R". --Anonymous, 23:54 UTC, November 7.
Intrusive R. It's not random, because the R is only present when there's a following vowel; law and order is pronounced like "lore and ordə". --Kjoonlee 00:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
The main reason (in common with many phonological rules) is "ease of pronunciation". --Kjoonlee 00:24, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
That's an awfully strong statement to make. I would say it's more likely to be hypercorrection, but that could be argued. Tesseran 10:44, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
As a speaker of RP, with both linking R and intrusive R, I disagree extremely strongly with the common accusation that intrusive R is hypercorrection. --Kjoonlee 10:53, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
At this point, of course the reason is simply that it is a feature of the dialect; what I should have said is that (I believe) this phenomenon originally began as hypercorrection. (That doesn't mean that my comment was an accusation, though.) A question: if the reason for intrusive R is ease of pronunciation, why not have intrusive L? "The ideal of it" is also easy to say---but my feeling is that such a hypothetical "intrusive L" would never arise spontaneously. Tesseran 11:14, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
  • If it is hypercorrection, it must be conscious. Intrusive R is automatic (like other phonological rules) and people might not even be aware of it; I was unaware till a few years ago, for more than 15 years.
  • If it is hypercorrection, then people must regard intrusive R as correct, and "no intrusive R" as incorrect. It is the opposite, since some people proscribe against intrusive R.
  • It does ease pronunciation since you don't have to insert silence and stop your vocal folds from vibrating, and you can avoid saying two schwas in a row. I think the R can also make recognition easier, but I'm not sure about that. --Kjoonlee 11:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
1) Hypercorrection does not have to be conscious, even when it first takes hold. 2) What you should say is that people must regard non-rhoticity as incorrect ("marked" would be a better term), which has certainly been true in many [NOT all] areas of America in the last century. 3) I don't disagree that linking R and intrusive R both can make pronunciation easier. I don't see how intrusive R can improve recognition, though, since it creates homophones that otherwise would be distinguished. Tesseran 11:44, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
1) I agree about the first bit, but is there an example of initial hypercorrection being unconcscious? 2) I don't understand. Non-rhoticity is the norm in RP, AFAIK, and I not all people with RP have intrusive R, AFAIK. Rhoticity doesn't have much to do with intrusive R in RP, AFAICT. --Kjoonlee 12:00, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
3) Dissimilation of vowels. (Not words.) --Kjoonlee 12:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
The origin of intrusive R is probably the fact that lore and law are homophones. --Kjoonlee 11:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry but the ease of pronunciation argument doesn't work. When one vowel follows another, the easiest thing to do is to is not to insert an [ɹ], but a glottal stop, dissimilate, or simply drop one element. No one would insert an [ɹ] (meaning consonantal r) in the ant you either dissimilate as in standard rules or drop the schwa as in many non-standard variaties or insert a glottal stop. Also, the hypercorrection explanation makes no sense in Britain because the non-rhotic varieties are more prestigious than the rhotic ones.

The answer is, as Kjoonlee also says, entirely phonological rule. Here's the somewhat complicated explanation: First phonologically non-rhotic speakers have a phoneme /r/ in words like lore car and deer, meaning that the /r/ is there in mental representation of the word. There are different variants to this phoneme. That means the speaker has rules that says that this phoneme can be realized in different ways depending on various factors. One variant is zero (meaning silence) and another is [ɹ] in cases like lore. Another possibility is [ə] (schwa) in cases like deer. Which alternative to [ɹ] is used (zero or schwa) depends on the preceding vowel and dialect. In either case, [ɹ] is used fairly systematically before vowels, but in many non-rhotic dialects in cases of emphasis. However, the bulk of the time, the /r/ is zero or schwa, depending again on the preceding vowel.

Second, speakers often classify words that happen to end in vowel combinations that are also the results of the r-dropping phonological rule as having an /r/. Sometimes, these become homonyms of words ending in /r/: such as law and lore. Therefore, in circumstances, such as a following vowel or emphasis that they would pronounce the /r/ as [ɹ] in lore, the do the same with law . At other times, they are not strictly homonyms, such as with idea, which has the characteristic vowel plus schwa combination of r-dropping. Where they would pronounce an [ɹ] in deer they do it with idea. Proof that this is right explanation is that they do not add an intrusive r to words like dew Jew"' or "bee or see because these vowels are not the results of r-dropping. That's as simple as I can think to make it. mnewmanqc 14:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I think your second explanation makes perfect sense, and that was what I had in mind when I said "ease of pronunciation". --Kjoonlee 14:53, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Mnewmanqc, re "No one would insert an [ɹ] (meaning consonantal r) in the ant", I have heard Australian TV journalists doing this. Not with those exact words, but with something not too dissimilar (I wish I could remember the actual examples). But that could be attributed to journo-speak, which as we know is often sub-standard. I've never heard real people do this, so your point is reasonable. JackofOz 01:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Maybe they were saying the rant (only kidding). I guess the moral is never say never. mnewmanqc 13:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)