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I've been watching clips of River Monsters and I've noticed that presenter Jeremy Wade sometimes arranges his phrases so that the word that appears at the end. I don't have a specific example, but it would be something like "A red-bellied piranha, that." or "A common meal among these people, that." Is this just his own idiolect or are there places where that's standard? He's from Ipswich, but is obviously very well-traveled and could have picked up it anywhere. Matt Deres (talk) 15:31, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A long-established construction, that. OED illustrates it with a string of usages going back to 1795, the earliest being "Miss Plin. Last night three minutes before twelve, I ascended the expecting couch. Mr. Fash. Very happy expression that!". --Antiquary (talk) 18:41, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is a casual, idiomatic phrase in the US "and all that" which can end a sentence. I suspect that the British usage is a shortened version. Cullen328 (talk) 08:42, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Something similar exists in colloquial Australian English, though it's becoming more rare. A neighbour of mine, of mature years like me, finishes a lot of his sentences with "and that". It's mostly a filler, adding little extra meaning to the sentence. He grew up in Williamstown, an old port suburb of Melbourne. Whether being a port is relevant, I don't know. HiLo48 (talk) 09:04, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As others have said, it's common in British English, and it doesn't only happen with 'that'. You might say something like "He's funny, he is." Note the redundancy/reduplication there, which can also happen with 'that,' as in "That's weird, that." The best I can explain it is that it's done for emphasis. You wouldn't say something like "It's on the floor, it is." in response to someone asking "Where's the chair?" so it's only used where you're trying to be emphatic or to highlight something. Athanelar (talk) 13:21, 24 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please, please help me. I cannot find this word anywhere else besides the sentence, ‘Of subterranean wind transprots a hill’ in Book 1 of Paradise Lost. Is this a typo no one fixed? Is this an archaic spelling? Why can’t I find any other records of it?
VergilSparkles (talk) 13:40, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm certainly not a fan of the original sprot either, and I welcome all mutations of this type. I used to consistently mis-read the brand name on an extractor fan as 'Exelpair', and it was 30 years before I saw another one, and realised it was an 'Expelair'... Anyway, my favourite London Transprot is this one, of delight. MinorProphet (talk) 19:07, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The edition published by ‘Duke Classics’. I was also seeing it in a lot of ‘reader’s guides’ and spark notes versions without any comment on the typo. VergilSparkles (talk) 20:47, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Expecting contemporary students to spot errors will only lead to disappointment. For all the marvels (whatever they may be) of our wonderful modern education systems, detail is definitely something that's never focussed on. Add that to the lack of training in the fundamentals of our language, and it's no wonder that spelling and grammar have gone down the tubes. Hence, only old persons such as I ever notice errors (you may be the rare exception). But there's a good side: it gives us some joy in the autumn of our years to comment ceaselessly on the shocking decline of standards, exactly as we were taught to do by our parents, who seemed to have similar views on our generation when we were younger. Strange, that. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]03:48, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Cease your pretend moaning, antipodean elder citizen. I suggest that you are wholly bound up in this joyous, instant moment, this actual here and now, embedded in one of the infinite ecstasies of time itself. You know you like it, really. MinorProphet (talk) 16:11, 24 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Where did I ever say I wasn't enjoying it? I wouldn't have lurked around Wikipedia for 22+ years if I didn't enjoy getting hot under the collar by the tragic failures of the lower orders. Yourself, for example. :) :) Nollaig shona dhuit. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]21:30, 24 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
re: 5, it is not quite contradictory, and there are words that contain the letter u in the middle of the word that are pronounced "ju"(/"yoo") in some dialects and "u"(/"oo" in others. Several words have "ju" in British English and "u" in American, and the word "figure" is the other way around. I do not think there are any (native) English words that begin with u that is pronounced "u"(/"oo"), in any dialect, but I could be wrong! ~2025-42413-82 (talk) 19:17, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, pronouncing it without the initial /j/ would make it sound like 'oozer' (one who oozes) or the rarer Ooser, leading to possible ambiguity and almost certain hilarity. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2025-31359-08 (talk) 21:03, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Khajidha: We may have not read the ambiguous question the same way as you have. I took it to mean "kn" anywhere in the word except the beginning. It would be nice, occasionally, to get some acknowledgement or clarifications from the OP. Bazza 7 (talk) 19:16, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3. No. In Spanish, u is silent after q, so such letter combinations would sound identical to ca, co et cetera and so there would be no need to have qua etc. Q in Spanish is only used for the purpose of having an /e/ or /i/ following a /k/ (as in "que" or "qui", pronounced "kay"/"kei" and "key"/"ki"). Words that contain, e.g., the sound combination "kwa", that would be spelled "qua" in other languages must be spelt with C in Spanish. Compare the words for "four", Italian quattro, Spanish cuatro, both with same pronunciation. ~2025-42413-82 (talk) 19:32, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4. Every word where 'ph' makes the /f/ sound is a holdover of a Greek spelling quirk. Namely, in ancient Greek there was an aspiration distinction between /p/ and /ph/, which were represented by the letters pi and phi respectively. Pi was romanised into Latin as 'p' and phi was romanised into Latin as 'ph'. Greek then underwent a sound change that caused /ph/ to shift to /f/, but phi was still used to represent the new sound. Hell, you can even see it in the spelling of phi, which is pronounced 'f-eye' of course.
The name 'Philippines' comes from the name of a King Philip, and the name Philip is from Greek Φίλιππος; that's a phi at the start, there. So as you can see at wikt:Φίλιππος the pronunciation evolved in Ancient Greek from /ph/ilippos to eventually /f/ilipos, but because it was still spelled with a 'phi' we write it as 'Philip' becsuse the Romans set the standard that Φ equates to 'ph' in the Latin alphabet rather than 'f', even now that it is pronounced as /f/. Athanelar (talk) 13:11, 24 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly, that's English holding on to ph long after Spanish shifted to f. In Spanish, the name of that Spanish king is Felipe and the islands were the Felipinas, later Filipinas. When borrowed to English, the f was changed into a ph because the English still spelled Philip like that.
For what it's worth, in Dutch, the name of that king, our arch-enemy, is still spelled with ph, but the spelling of the name of the country has been modernised to use f. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:23, 24 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As in Albert Maige — is it pronounced /mɛːʒ/ in French? And when referring to a family of French origin in the United States, I suppose it is most likely pronounced like the English word “mage"? —Amble (talk) 21:47, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In French, "ai" is a diphthong for /ɛ/ as in "bed" (which is a short vowel), therefore it is reasonable to assume it would be pronounced /mɛʒ/, not /mɛːʒ/. GreatMageMai (talk) 21:59, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The 'I' is an illusion. Therefore it would appear that an illusion exists. Hmmm, what if existence itself is an illusion? ‑‑Lambiam09:48, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
'X' was merely a shorthand way of writing or standing for 'Christ', since in Greek (the language that the works of the New Testament were written) the word (as Baseball Bugs shows above) begins with the Greek letter 'Chi', Χ.
Writing 'Xmas' (or the equivalent) as a kind of shorthand goes back half a millennium, but it's unclear (to me at least, does anyone else know?) when people started pronouncing it "Exmas". 'Xtianity', another writing shortcut, is normally pronounced in full as Christianity – I've never encountered it being pronounced "Extianity". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2025-31359-08 (talk) 19:08, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another example is the phrase in Xto, shorthand for in Christo, Latin for "in Christ". You can find this used in the Latin sentence obiit in Xto ("he died in Christ"),[6] but also, code-switching from English (or some other language) to Latin, in the formulaic phrase "your servant in Xto", used by Catholic clerics at the end of a letter just before the signature.[7] ‑‑Lambiam22:22, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The origins of these legitimate usages can fade from the general public's knowledge and sometimes seem irreverent or blasphemous. I'm thinking of Stan Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$", in which one of the pseudo-advertisers remarks, "As sure as there's an X in Christmas..." ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 00:57, 27 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand the question. Does the notion of a markedness ranking refer to the degree of use of marker particles, so that Creole languages have a high rank while synthetic languages have a low rank? Or do synthetic languages rank high because very little is unmarked? And what does the consistency refer to then? If the ranking is consistent, with what is it supposed to be consistent? ‑‑Lambiam22:14, 27 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So would a counterexample be that in language A the perfective aspect is unmarked while in language B the imperfective aspect is unmarked? ‑‑Lambiam11:44, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Sranantongo, the unmarked form of a dynamic verb denotes the equivalent of the French passé simple or the present of past perfect, in all cases describing an action in the past that has been completed. Examples are found in this version of Genesis 1:
Gen. 1:1: Na a bigin Gado meki heimel nanga grontapu. – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Gen. 1:31: Dan Gado luku ala sani di A meki èn den ben bun fu tru. – God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.
To make this imperfective requires marking with a particle.
Gen. 1:2: A Yeye fu Gado ben e beweigi abra a watra. – The Spirit of God was moving over the waters.
Here the particle e makes this progressive ("-ing"), while ben places the action in the past ("was"). Just ben beweigi, without e, would mean: "had moved" .
In contrast, the imperfective aspect can be left unmarked in English dynamic verbs, both for an ongoing action ("she stares him in the eyes without blinking") and for a habitual action ("I take my tea with milk"). ‑‑Lambiam23:05, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The term gas to denote a non-liquid fluid, such as carbon dioxide at room temperature, was coined already in 1648. And while electron could be a romanized transcription of Ancient Greek ἤλεκτρον, it was not borrowed as such; historically, the name of the elementary particle reached its stable form by simplifying electron < electrion, where the latter was a repurposing of a term that originally meant, not a particle, but the least possible charge of a negatively charged ion, a name achieved by contracting an even earlier electrolion. ‑‑Lambiam18:05, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
New words coined on Industrial Revolution include: “train,” “revolver,” “pulley,” “telegraph,” and “camera” This always change the human life, but for the world. (as a temporary account|he/him) ~2025-43569-93 (talk) 17:11, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The English words train and pulley are inherited from Middle English. The term train was already in use for a sequence of vehicles proceeding one by one, each next one following the previous one. What was new in the 19th century was that an existing word was used for a new invention, a sequence of mechanically coupled cars. The term pulley can be seen used on this page of Gulliver's Travels (1726) in the same meaning it has now. ‑‑Lambiam00:20, 31 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Etymology online has "pulley" in its current meaning from "late 13c." They were used on sailing ships long before the industrial revolution.
Most people know how their culture pronounces the name of the country Jamaica (as a Brit, I would in contrast to Bugs say "jǝ-MAY-cuh" or "ja-MAY-cah"), but fewer are aware of the drink (I would have assumed exactly the same pronunciation as the country) – in what way do you, OP, pronounce it differently from the country (assuming you do; clip-clop, clip-clop)? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2025-31359-08 (talk) 20:04, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The name of the drink comes from Mexican Spanish agua de Jamaica, which would be pronounced like / ˈa.ɣ̞wa.de.xaˈmai̯ka/.Jamaica (Spanish) ‑‑Lambiam23:53, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As posed, the question is as unanswerable as, "Which is the correct one: Jefferson (surname) or Jefferson (given name)?" Obviously (I think), the OP had two different pronunciations in mind, so at least one would then be different from /d͡ʒəˈmeɪ.kə/. I was trying to guess which other pronunciation the OP might have had in mind. Note that the question does not specifically mention English pronunciation. The OP may have heard this Spanish term for hibiscus tea spoken by someone who learned it from Spanish speaker. ‑‑Lambiam22:55, 31 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But how do you pronounce the name of the drink? As kha-MIGH-kah? The correct pronunciation is the one that makes others understand what you mean. Where I am, the correct pronunciation for ordering a cup of Jamaica is high-BIS-kuhs-tee, or else you may get a blank stare or a polite beg your pardon? ‑‑Lambiam10:32, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Languages borrow words from each other. Are there cases where a borrowed word entered ordinary usage in its new language (more than just a passing fad), but was later discarded or forgotten enough that it became a foreign word again? I don't care which languages, just whether it's been known to happen. TooManyFingers (he/him · talk) 06:39, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Katharevousa was a partially successful conservative movement in the Greek language that persisted for several centuries with the goal of removing loan words and other foreign influences from modern Demotic Greek. As for "unborrowing", the word is "returning", which can apply to my neighbor's lawn mower or a conservative language movement that tries to return to older usage perceived as more authentic. Cullen328 (talk) 20:52, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Great minds, Cullen. I was also thinking about lawnmowers, and the next time my friend Bert borrows my mower and forgets to return it, I'm going to go around to his place and ask if I may unborrow the mower. That's a cool coinage, TooManyFingers. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]21:46, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
"Returning" works for lawnmowers, but not for words. Unless people do travel to another place and an earlier time saying "We don't need this anymore, so we brought it back; we changed the sound a bit, hope that's OK". TooManyFingers (he/him · talk) 21:54, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It kind or works like this sometimes. Modern English crack, which evolved from Middle English crak, meant something like 'pleasant conversation'. Irish borrowed this in the mid-20th century and spelled it craic, while the original word reached a low ebb in British English, but then was repopularised from the Irish usage and initially spelled craic, though crack is now once more the usual BrE spelling.
Equally, the English faze meaning 'worry' (doubtless a cognate of the Scots fash, as in "Dinnae fash yersel'.") was taken to America and was current during the early 1900s in, for example, New York, with various spellings (Algernon Blackwood, an English writer sometime resident in NY, puts it into the mouth of a New York landlady in one story), but dropped from currency in the UK. When the word, again variously spelled, re-crossed the Atlantic in the later 20th century, most British people perceived it as an American term. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2025-31359-08 (talk) 23:38, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
In the early 20th century many French loanwords were commonly used in German. "Trottoir" was probably the most common word for sidewalk, "Paraplü"(parapluie) for umbrella. Nowadays they are very uncommon in Germany (it's Bürgersteig for sidewalk and Regenschirm for umbrella, even though they may still be in some use in Austria and Switzerland. Other words have survived, e.g. Portemonnaie (wallet) or Journalist (with a pronounciation much closer to the French original than its English pronounciation), even though some nationally oriented Germans may have tried to push Zeitungsschreiber as an alternative. -- ~2026-57595 (talk) 22:07, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
What led to our fairly predictable English pronunciation differences in those French-origin words that have become thoroughly absorbed into English, such as garage? TooManyFingers (he/him · talk) 06:59, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously, but there are fairly consistent and predictable differences between the two countries' pronunciations of these words, and I'd like to understand why, and do you even have a clue what I'm asking about? TooManyFingers (he/him · talk) 21:48, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly neither is authentically French, but with this and other similar words, the British version usually has been more modified to sound like other English words, and the American one mimics French a little more. TooManyFingers (he/him · talk) 23:17, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, most of us Brits pronounce it "GARR-idj" (spelled 'garridge' if colloquial speech is being represented), unless they're consciously using a French or US pronunciation. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2025-31359-08 (talk) 23:43, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. I could have made it simpler by saying the Brits stress the first syllable and the Yanks stress the second. Either way, it sounds like the American pronunciation is slightly more "authentic". ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 23:59, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
So ... any ideas why this difference exists? (It's only in words that are solidly identified as English; American pronunciation of some French-derived American place names is very, very non-French.) (Versailles pronounced Vursales comes to mind) TooManyFingers (he/him · talk) 01:19, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If it is an American place name,I don't see how the pronunciation could be said to be butchered. The American pronunciation of an American place name is whatever American usage says it is. The fact that it was named for a French place is irrelevant to the pronunciation in American English.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:22, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
No, but quite close to me in Southern England is a village (quite well known for motorcar-related reasons) named Beaulieu. In French this would be pronounced something like 'Bow Lee-oo', but in English it's 'BEW-lee'. {The poster formerly known as 87.881.230.195} ~2025-31359-08 (talk) 23:09, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I did say "something like". Obviously non-IPA spellings (which I am deliberately avoiding) are less than precise (and I used to be moderately proficient in French, though I have spoken it very little in the last 50-odd years). {The poster formerly known as 87.881.230.195} ~2025-31359-08 (talk) 06:42, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Phonemically no, phonetically maybe. It's a little hard to be sure whether I'm hearing a real stress at the end of the word, or whether it's just that my ear expects the last syllable to be de-stressed in most words and therefore hears equal stress as a stress on the final syllable. But sometimes I hear French stress on the penult, so not sure what that's about. --Trovatore (talk) 22:08, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
At high school in Illinois, I had one English classmate. Overheard: "I don't know how your mum knew it was me on the phone." "You didn't say tomato, did you?" "No I did not say tomahto. I didn't even say garridge." —Antonissimo (talk) 00:28, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't fully understand which pronunciation differences you refer to, as there are similar, and I don't know which ones you'd consider more important. Besides the time frame and the assimilation to English phonetics, another reason for the differences with modern French might be that the English words largely are derived from old Norman French, while today's Standard French (Metropolitan French) mostly is based on older upper-class Parisian French. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:17, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think the issue is more with recent loans from French, rather than words that entered Middle English from ONF, which could justifiably be called English words now. Alansplodge (talk) 18:56, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Why did the name of the ill-fated Swiss bar take a masculine article? Was "Constellation" acting as an appositive to another, implied noun, like "bar"? (And is this a way that businesses are commonly named in French?) ~2026-34426 (talk) 17:47, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Only partly related, but I like how "Le Mans" is not a fossilized name, as demonstrated in "Les 24 heures du Mans" - it's as if they said "This Mans is the only one that's been found so far, but maybe there are more." TooManyFingers (he/him · talk) 01:05, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It is a French rule of grammar: we don't say "de le" or "de les" but "du" or "des" (there are exceptions as always in French). Le Mans, "la ville du Mans", Le Caire, "la ville du Caire", Les Estables [[10]], "la commune des Estables". If you can read French see this. Notice that "du" and "des" are not capitalized. AldoSyrt (talk) 10:04, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Me too. My understanding of this remark is "Le" (capitalized) is replaced by "du" in "24 heures du Mans" and it is wrongly deduced that this "Mans" is the only one "Le Mans" (or vice-versa), whereas it is only a grammatical matter. May be I am wrong. Waiting for TooManyFingers explanations - AldoSyrt (talk) 18:43, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You can see it as an exception, but it is a rule. The rule is not the same for toponyms (Le Mans -> du Mans) and for names of persons (Le Corbusier --> de Le Corbusier). The grammar of French language is not easy. Note that the error is common ("du" Corbusier) even for native speakers. AldoSyrt (talk) 07:21, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
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