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December 1

"Kadour Hachemi Karim Directeur des services vétérinaires au niveau du ministre de l agriculture"

https://radioalgerie.dz/news/fr/content/161739.html

What would the correct title for this position in English? Trade (talk) 02:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Literally it's Director of veterinary services at the level of the minister of agriculture, but I guess you're not asking that. It is a curious formulation! —Tamfang (talk) 03:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

More fully: "directeur des services vétérinaires au niveau du ministre de l'agriculture et du développement rural". Google translates this as "Director of Veterinary Services at the level of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development". This seems a fair translation but would imply that this directorial position pulls the same weight as that of a minister. That is hard to imagine; the veterinary services at the Algerian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development are clearly subordinate.

Elsewhere I find his position named as "Directeur des services vétérinaires (DSV) au ministère de l'Agriculture, du Développement rural et de la Pêche".^[1] It appears that Karim has been succeeded in this position by Imad Idres, also using the simpler title "directeur des services vétérinaires au ministère de l'agriculture et du développement rural".^[2]

So I'd go by, "Director of Veterinary Services at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development".  --Lambiam 04:14, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

buyer's remorse in reverse

Buyers' remorse is when you buy something and then regret doing so. What if anything is it called if you resist (say) a tempting Black Friday deal, and then afterwards regret that you didn't take it? Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:C426 (talk) 11:13, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

"Non-buyer's remorse" has some Google results, like Non-Buyer’s Remorse: All the Things We Didn’t Buy and Now Regret for example. Alansplodge (talk) 12:47, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe a retrospective "fear of missing out"? AnonMoos (talk) 23:11, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Korean romanization question

In the Revised Romanization of Korean, is it possible to have triple consonants like -ttt- within a word if a stop is followed by a tense consonant? (I'm not fully acquainted with Korean phonology, so my apologies if this is a dumb question.) 71.126.57.88 (talk) 20:01, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

It's a reasonable question. This would not happen in the middle of a single morpheme, so it would have to be at a morpheme boundary. The example I can come up with is tteok-kkochi, where we add a hyphen. This seems sensible, but I can't see that the hyphen is mandatory in Revised Romanization of Korean. So maybe yes? --Amble (talk) 19:02, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

December 2

English suffixes

Can suffixes like -onym, -gram, -graph and -al be added to native English words? For example if oral means "mouth", could it be also mouthal, Or if hydronym is a name of wather body, is then lakonym a name of lake? --40bus (talk) 22:08, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Not usually, but there a few humorous coinages and "nonce words". "Burial" is a native word with an "-al" suffix -- but not from the Latin adjective suffix. Some other non-Germanic-derived prefixes and suffixes are more promiscuous, such as "re-" (as in redo"), "-able" (as in "drinkable") etc. AnonMoos (talk) 23:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Also "bridal", though originally from bride+ale, is used as an adjective, according to OED, "by association with adjectives (of Lat. origin) in -al, as nuptial, natal, mortal, etc.". - Lindert (talk) 23:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

See Wiktionary categories wikt:Category:English_terms_suffixed_with_-onym, wikt:Category:English terms suffixed with -nym, wikt:Category:English terms suffixed with -graph, wikt:Category:English terms suffixed with -gram. There are some examples that get used, like shadowgraph and scattergram. You can add these suffixes to a native English word if you are knowingly coining a new term, but you will probably need to tell people what you mean by it. --Amble (talk) 00:14, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

But does "shadowgraph" really have a suffix, or is it an ordinary compound of the English words "shadow" and "graph"? And words like "candygram" do not really have the Greek -gram suffix, but have the second half of the word "telegram" appended to indicate a modified form of a telegram service, in exactly the same way that political scandals are often given names with the second half of "Watergate" appended. (Admittedly, that doesn't apply to "scattergram"...) AnonMoos (talk) 10:23, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

English is a slut. She'll consort with any suffix that comes down the pike. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:04, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” ― James D. Nicoll --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:54, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Instead of lakonym, try limnonym. In scholarly coinage, there is an unwritten (and not always adhered to) convention that a term formed with -onym takes an Ancient Greek root as its first part. In popular coinage, there are no rules.  --Lambiam 09:29, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

My observation has been that typical practice in popular coinage is adding a Greek affix to a Latin root, or vice versa. Folly Mox (talk) 12:49, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

No, @Folly Mox, I think that typical practice in popular coinage is adding an affix to a root, with no knowledge or interest in the origin of either. ColinFine (talk) 14:12, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

We are all (I hope) familiar with Poul Anderson's seminal work 'Uncleftish Beholding'. A similar essay might involve recasting technological and similar words of modern(-ish) coinage by replacing them with pure Latin or Greek (etc.) constructs rather than bi-lingual chimerae. I wonder how many one could fit in to a coherent narrative? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 10:46, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

December 4

Palatalization in Hunsrückisch?

Section Hunsrückisch § Phonology states:

"Palatalization also occurs, with Dorf (village) becoming Dooref, Kirche (church) becoming Keerisch, and Berg (mountain) becoming Beerisch."

I see no palatalization. The preceding sentence describes the vowel lengthening. Is it correct to describe the further change as the insertion of an epenthetic [ə] or [i]? Pinging @NeorxenoSwang:.  --Lambiam 13:16, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I suppose what the original author meant was the change from [ç] to [ʃ] implied in "Keerisch" and "Beerisch", but that's of course not really palatalization, but a fronting from palatal towards palatal-alveolar or thereabouts. And I can't see how the "Dorf" example would fit in with any of that, except with the vowel lengthening described in the previous sentence. But yes, the extra vowel would properly be described as epenthesis, I guess. Pity the whole article is unsourced. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Some digging strongly suggests the statement is based on: Roland Martin, Untersuchungen zur rhein-moselfränkischen Dialektgrenze, Deutsche Dialektgeographie Vol. 11a, Marburg, 1922. I could not find online access to this monograph.  --Lambiam 22:14, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Resolved in an old edition at de:Hunsrückisch:

Überdies tritt Sprosslautung ein: Dorf wird zu Dooref, Kirche zu Keerisch, Berg zu Beerisch.^[3]

 --Lambiam 07:37, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

What is the possessive form of "works" in the sense of a factory?

The word "works", in the sense of a factory, looks plural in form but can be singular or plural. What is the possessive of "works" in that sense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.242.92.97 (talk) 15:28, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

See apostrophe. Probably works's. "The works's managers".  Card Zero  (talk) 17:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. I can't imagine anyone actually saying that. /wərksɨz/. That would sound very strange.

I think I would go with works' for that reason, whether it's precisely grammatical or not. --Trovatore (talk) 19:12, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, as does the British Parliament in 1886; ...a Bill relating to the Metropolitan Board of Works' Fire Brigade Expenses... [4] Alansplodge (talk) 20:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, I guess you can't imagine me, then. Sounds perfectly normal to me.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:41, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm with Trovatore here. How does one even pronounce works's? Worksers? That's ugly. HiLo48 (talk) 00:12, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

How is it any weirder than 'roses' or 'poses'?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 01:37, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

There was a mummy passed off as the daughter of king Xerxes that turned out to be a modern corpse, and a false claim that Xerxes himself was an 8 foot tall giant. These are the Xerxes hoaxes.  Card Zero  (talk) 06:55, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Works's sounds fine to me (pronounced workses [where did you get the "r"?]). Clarityfiend (talk) 03:02, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I added the "R" to write something that would be pronounced the way I thought you would say this. I've never heard workses. HiLo48 (talk) 06:02, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Presumably a non-rhotic R. I remember learning skat from the (British) Penguin Book of Card Games, and teaching it to my folks. The book said it was pronounced "scart", and I couldn't convince my dad to stop saying it that way. --Trovatore (talk) 20:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

About the same as "works is". --Amble (talk) 05:13, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

It's a grammar rule English acquired from Gollumish. Clarityfiend (talk) 14:12, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

We use Juniper Networks's several times in the article Juniper Networks. In Skunk Works we have Skunk Works' once.--Amble (talk) 05:24, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

And in Karl Marx, we use Marx's nearly 100 times. --Amble (talk) 17:50, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Marx's sounds fine to me, works's doesn't. Couldn't tell you why.

Or to borrow a cadence from Karl the Marx/A biting chipmunk never barx

--Trovatore (talk) 19:16, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Possibly because your sense of grammar fails to see works as a singular.  --Lambiam 10:24, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

That could be it. --Trovatore (talk) 20:44, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

December 6

What is she saying (in Hebrew)?

The guy (Tzvi Yehezkeli, whose English is not too good) says in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzWrFZszW0&t=1h12m54s (at 1:12:54): "We need his [Trump's] help to know our Judaism point (sic). You see sometimes you need the other to tell you where to go." Right then the lady (Caroline Glick) cuts him off with a saying (or a quote) in Hebrew which I couldn't catch. Can someone who speaks Hebrew figure out what she says? (The guy then agrees "בדיוק!"). 178.51.16.158 (talk) 01:52, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

אָ֭ז יֹאמְר֣וּ בַגּוֹיִ֑ם הִגְדִּ֥יל יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה

part of psalm 126:2. [5] trespassers william (talk) 03:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

the "Then they said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things" part. trespassers william (talk) 03:16, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

British Raj terminology

What terms would have been used by the British to identify an Indian person during the days of the British Raj? It's for an item I'm writing and in an ideal case, there'd be a term that today sounds dated and paternalistic, but maybe not horribly racist or offensive, as it's meant to highlight the age of the British speaker rather than insult Indians. What I'm going for is the kind of obviously dated stuff Mr. Burns sometimes uses on The Simpsons. Matt Deres (talk) 02:43, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Native. See for instance the opening sentences of Kim.  Card Zero  (talk) 07:23, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Coolie although some do not consider it offensive. See https://www.coolitude.shca.ed.ac.uk/word-%E2%80%98coolie%E2%80%99 196.50.199.218 (talk) 09:07, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Card Zero above, "native" was the generally used term. British officials sometimes adopted Indian clothing and customs and were said derisively to have "gone native".

"Coolie" was specifically a labourer and could be applied to Chinese workers as well.

An educated Indian who worked in the British administration was known as a babu (or earlier "baboo").

People of mixed British and Indian heritage were known as "Anglo-Indians", "Eurasians" or "Indo-Britons". Alansplodge (talk) 10:40, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

A more general term applied to anyone of first-degree mixed race (including Anglo-Indians) was "half-chat", meaning "Half-caste" or bi-racial. In some instances this could be intended perjoratively, but in, for example, the British army (where marriages between British soldiers and women from the countries they were posted to were commonplace), it was used purely descriptively, and was still current in the 1970s. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 13:13, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

About that Babu article ... should I change the Greek from papu to páppou? Then there's some Indian English going on in the phrasing of "the urban trend to call "babu" to girlfriends or boyfriends, or common-friends", in the "to call X to Y" construction and the term common-friends. Should I "correct" that, or leave it be? I guess it's still English, so maybe the usual "whoever got there first" rule applies, as well as the India-themed article context.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:37, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Another thing I noted is that it seems to read as if the Swahili word is cognate to the Indo-European examples, which is a bit oddly phrased for a wanderwort. I'm not entirely sure on how to rephrase it, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:12, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I've removed the entire passage. All those words from non-Indian languages are quite irrelevant to that article, and the claim that they are cognates is plain false, and all of it was of course unsourced. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:29, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Like Wakuran says - and I didn't know this excellent term wanderwort - they probably are really distant cognates, like mama, which usually means "mother" all over the world (or "breast", or "chew", or sometimes "father").  Card Zero  (talk) 12:48, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

They are actually not wanderwort cases but mama–papa words, a somewhat different category. Wanderwörter actually are related, via borrowing, which can often be historically tracked with some precision. Mama–papa words aren't related at all, but believed to be independently innovated in each language via parent–child interaction in early langauge acquisition. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:55, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh, OK. But it's like "no officer, I just happened to be passing the bank at the time and I wear this stocking on my head for fun, ask anyone." I remain suspicious.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

And how does Sally Brown's sweet babboo fit in? —Tamfang (talk) 21:14, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Very interesting; I always considered Coolie to be a pejorative for Chinese labourers, but it's clearly more broad than that. That could work - thank you! Matt Deres (talk) 16:03, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

In Sranantongo, kuli is a slur for Indo-Surinamese people. It is not used for Chinese Surinamese. Both ethnic groups were originally imported, under false promises, as indentured labourers.  --Lambiam 10:10, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I've seen the term "Hindoo" used in older literature. Its obviously related to the modern "Hindu", but from the context I don't think it was exactly equivalent, and I think referred more to race or ethnicity than religion. Iapetus (talk) 14:17, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Consider the term Hindustani applied to the macrolanguage that includes Urdu. — I faintly remember reading that a prominent writer of the Indian diaspora in Latin America was known there as el escritor hindú, which amused him because his ancestors were Muslim. —Tamfang (talk) 21:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Norwegian only has 4.4m speakers worldwide, and is on DuoLingo, but why does Kinyarwanda NOT show up on DuoLingo even though it has ~20m speakers?

How come DuoLingo gets to have Norwegian but not Kinyarwanda when there are over 10m more speakers of the Kinyarwanda language in the world than the Norwegian language?

And how can I / we get DuoLingo to add Kinyarwanda to their repertoire of available languages to train ourselves on? --2600:100A:B03B:6996:D13E:4CBE:EF0B:CD17 (talk) 23:22, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Norway is a rich, Western, European country with a big economic market and widespread digitalization. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:05, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

These are both questions for DuoLingo. There is a "contact us" button on their home page. Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Speakers of Bengali sometimes complain that it doesn't have enough worldwide cultural prominence for being one of the languages with the highest number of speakers (the "seventh most spoken language", according to our article), but it's mostly spoken in only two countries (Bangladesh and India), and is the main national language of only one of them (Bangladesh). The languages with more global prominence than Bengali are the national languages of powerful / wealthy nations, or are spoken across many countries. The factors mitigating against the global importance of Bengali operate even more strongly in the case of Kinyarwanda. Also, U.S. and European tourists are more likely to visit Norway than Rwanda... AnonMoos (talk) 00:15, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

English speaking visitors to Norway don't need to understand Norwegian. Norwegians almost all speak excellent English. HiLo48 (talk) 00:37, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

But according to Uti vår hage (Norwegian comedy sketch TV program) the Danes aren't quite so happy, even with their own language... MinorProphet (talk) 19:20, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

HiLo48 -- Even so, many people might want to avoid being the stereotypical English-only tourist in non-English-language country. AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

December 7

From German to English, please translate this catchy Pippi theme song?

Can someone translate the lyrics, please? Thanks in advance. --2600:100A:B03B:6996:D13E:4CBE:EF0B:CD17 (talk) 02:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Here you can read the lyrics in German and here what Google Translate makes of it.  --Lambiam 09:32, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

As a Swede, I must add that this is a translation from Swedish, with the rhytm slightly altered . [6], [7]. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Why do the lyrics have basic multiplication done incorrectly? --2600:100A:B051:1A2B:1962:BC0E:1BE6:A1A6 (talk) 20:34, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Because in-universe, Pippi is (in)famously depicted as having a horrible understanding of mathematics, she refers to the "multiplikationstabell" (multiplication table) as "pluttifikationstabell" ("muddlyplication table" or something)... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:14, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Pippi’s tendency to equate all school knowledge with “pluttification” (literally “fartification”) and her capacity to outsmart the teacher during her visit at school ridicules the quantification of knowledge and formal learning outside of any practical context.  Card Zero  (talk) 23:53, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I'd say that's a misunderstanding of the Swedish, fartification would be "pruttifikation" and "pluttifikation" would rather mean "tinyfication". As a noun, I guess "plutt" could also mean a small lump or chunk of something viscous, but it might be a somewhat strained interpretation. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:14, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

惑乱, thanks for your wonderful contributions. This here is a great explanation, and "muddlyplication" is a stroke of genius that's very hard to achieve in translations. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 15:15, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

What does the Greek varia indicate?

The character ` (Greek Varia) is represented by the Unicode codepoint U+1FEF.[8]. But what is it good for? BTW, it's not listed in the disambiguation page Varia. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 08:47, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

varia is a modern (?) transcription of βαρεῖα (bareia), the greek name for the grave accent (see also the odd redirect Bareia (accent)). --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:05, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

In Modern Greek referred to as βαρεία, also for use in other languages such as French. The original /b/ pronunciation already turned into a /v/ in Byzantine Greek.  --Lambiam 09:42, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Evidence for this early transition is in the Cyrillic alphabet! —Tamfang (talk) 21:25, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

But of course - thanks, Wrongfilter! I now see that it's already in the disamb page.
That said, the current link to Greek_diacritics#Grave_accent_rule could probably be improved. Either to subsection Greek_diacritics#Accents or to Ancient Greek accent#Grave_accent or to Grave accent, but then the name “varia” should be added to the linked section.
Thanks also to Lambiam; i read your post after an edit conflict. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 09:59, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Okinawan and pitch accent?

Your article Okinawan language does not say a thing about pitch accent. Did you forget to mention it or does the language not have one? If the latter I would submit that pointing out the fact explicitly would make it clearer. There are Japanese dialects with no pitch accent. (For example the one spoken in Miyazaki). 178.51.16.158 (talk) 16:40, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

You ask "did you forget . . .", but the article has existed for over 20 years and has had (if I've got the maths right) over 300 contributors, so the absence of mention is suggestive.

On the other hand, web searching the question retrieves (for me) AI assertions (unreliable) that it does, but only a weak statement by a speaker that they think it does (not very convincing) and no positive human-written passage detailing it.

Our article on Ryukyuan languages (of which it is one) states (in more than one place) "Many Ryukyuan languages, like Standard Japanese and most Japanese dialects, have contrastive pitch accent" (or similar wording): of course, "many" implies "not all".

Overall, this seems to me to be inconclusive, and needing the input of a genuinely knowledgeable linguist. Anyone? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 18:00, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

"Okinawan is considered a lexical pitch accent language".^[9]  --Lambiam 23:33, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Featured articles that were deleted.

Hi. i was wondering if there are any featured articles that are not on the former featured article list since they were actually deleted. I see redirected ones but not deleted ones. Please let me know. Thank you. 50.100.44.204 (talk) 19:46, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure why this is on the language refdesk, but I remember spoo, which was originally a nice-looking page about the animal/foodstuff from the Babylon 5 universe. Jimbo famously hated it because it was poorly sourced (not sure it had any sources really), but I don't think he put his thumb on the scale, and it was later deleted by the regular process. It's been recreated as a disambig page. --Trovatore (talk) 19:55, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

December 8

Please translate from Korean to English, the lyrics to this beautiful-sounding song "Saranghaneun Iege"

What are the lines that the man sings, and that the woman sings? --2600:8803:1D13:7100:DF19:733C:C7D3:4BD4 (talk) 05:43, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

For a translation, see here. The two singers sing alternate lines of one running text; it is not a kind of dialogue between them.  --Lambiam 17:34, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

December 10

Ollning

I happened to come across this recent article on sv-WP. The word is also on Urban Dictionary [10] and Wiktionary [11].

Does this word exist in English or other languages? Or something close? Google translate on the sv-WP article suggests "woolling" or "wooling", but I don't know if that's valid. There's some logic in it, I'll say that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

It's from ollon, Swedish for glans penis, calqued from Latin. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:26, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I knew that. But does a word for the act exist in for example English? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

An English hyponym is the verb dickslap.  --Lambiam 08:52, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

That is at least related, thanks. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:58, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam And thanks to you I just discovered Swaffelen. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:04, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Word for definition of requiring excellence

Is there a word for this type of problem. This is an example. A company wants excellent employees. They require that all applicants have a college degree with perfect grades. As a result, all applicants come from paper mill universities where you get a perfect grade just for paying for the course. Instead of getting excellence, the company gets worse employees than before imlpementing the rule that was intended to increase excellence. In general, I'm looking for a shorter way to say: The action you are implementing to get a good outcome will instead bring about the opposite. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:12, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

What's a word for an editorial comment disguised as a question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:30, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Backfire 196.50.199.218 (talk) 13:32, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Perverse incentive.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:37, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes. I got to that from Backfire, also Unintended_consequences#Perverse_results with many more examples of the type of thing I am trying to define. I will test it on a few people, but I feel that use of the word "perverse" will make it harder to understand than easier... a perverse result in itself. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

In general it could be an example of Goodhart's law or Campbell's law: when you make an indicator into a target, it stops being a useful target. More specifically, it could be an example of educational inflation or "credentialism", where educational degrees or credentials are used as a target that is particularly susceptible to being gamed. --Amble (talk) 17:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Another term that comes to mind (somewhat late!) is that the applicants are gaming the system, which redirects to letter and spirit of the law#Gaming the system. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 00:47, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

December 12

Italian surname question

What are some examples of Italian surnames ending in -i deriving from a notional singular in -io (and excluding -cio, -gio, -glio), like proverbi from proverbio? I know I've seen one or two but I can't recall them. 71.126.56.57 (talk) 04:17, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

A few pairs of a noun x-io coexisting with a surname X-i:

• acciaio – Acciai
• allodio – Allodi
• archibugio – Archibugi
• batocchio – Batocchi
• bottaio – Bottai

Although it is plausible that these surnames actually derive from the corresponding nouns, I don't know whether this is actually the case. Surnames may be subject to modification by the influence of a similar-sounding familiar word.  --Lambiam 08:12, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

December 13

Japanese

Are there any pure Japanese words in which ぴゅ (specifically the hiragana variant) is used? 120.148.158.178 (talk) 02:10, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

This list gives several examples of onomatopeia, mostly related to blowing winds and air. [12] 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:47, 13 December 2024 (UTC)