Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 April 6

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April 6

Latin-alphabet languages that don't use diacritics very much

Which languages that use the Latin alphabet other than the English language don't use diacritics very much--if at all? Futurist110 (talk) 16:22, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Dutch for one. See Dutch orthography. Xuxl (talk) 22:50, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

See the previous discussions on the topic: 8 January 2016 and 24 August 2010. --Theurgist (talk) 08:48, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Adding to the languages mentioned in those links, the Cornish language apparently has no diacritics, both in its medieval and revived forms. Here is the start of a mid-14th century Cornish religious poem. Alansplodge (talk) 13:55, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

The Basque language doesn't use them, unless you consider Ñ or Ç to have diacritical marks. --Jayron32 11:47, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

In that case, Polish doesn't use them either, unless you consider Ą, Ć, Ę, Ł, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź and Ż to have diacritical marks. — Kpalion^(talk) 11:35, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Languages having a preposition for the Accusative relation.

The English preposition "to" usually reflects the Dative relation/case, whereas the English preposition "in" usually reflects the Locative relation/case, and so on. English doesn't have a preposition reflecting the Accusative relation/case, and I wonder if other languages do.

Let's begin with simple sentences, e.g. "John saw Emma". Are there languages that use any preposition before "Emma"? HOTmag (talk) 22:14, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Latin and German have lots - in Latin, "ad" always takes the accusative, for one; "in" if there's motion involved; per, inter, contra, etc...I'm sure there are others that aren't immediately jumping to mind. In German I remember memorizing "durch, für, gegen, ohne, um" for accusative prepositions. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:47, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Let's begin with a very simple sentence: "John saw Emma". Does Latin / German use any preposition before "Emma"? HOTmag (talk) 07:18, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

German: "John sah Emma", no preposition. Jmar67 (talk) 07:46, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

These Russian prepositions take the accusative: в 'in(wards)', на 'on (top of)', за 'behind', под 'under', про 'about', через 'over', сквозь 'through'. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:38, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Let's begin with a very simple sentence: "John saw Emma". Does Russian use any preposition before "Emma"? HOTmag (talk) 07:18, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

No. However, in Romanian the preposition pe is in certain cases used as a marker of the direct object. See wikt:pe#Romanian and check the "Usage notes" there. And of course there's Hebrew את, which marks a semantically definite direct object. You as a Hebrew speaker are of course aware of that, but I'm mentioning it for the record. --Theurgist (talk) 09:02, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Interesting ! Now that I'm thinking about the Semitic languages, I can recall Babylonian Targumic Aramaic, that has the preposition "yat ". Are there other languages, besides Romanian and Hebrew (and Babylonian Targumic Aramaic)? (Thank you for the compliment. Actually, I wish I were a native speaker of either of those languages, but unfortunately I'm not. However, I can read and write, a little bit, in few Semitic languages - e.g. Aramaic and Arabic and [to a lesser extent] Biblical/Modern Hebrew, as well as in few Romance languages: French and [to a lesser extent] Spanish - yet not Romanian). HOTmag (talk) 09:39, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Hindi-Urdu uses the postposition ko to mark the direct object if it is definite (e.g. John ne Emma ko dekhā). The same postposition is also used to mark the indirect object (e.g. John ne Emma ko ek kitāb dī, "John gave a book to Emma"). --Jbuchholz (talk) 15:23, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Japanese also has an accusative marker that follows the noun: o (possibly the only word that currently uses the archaic letter wo). —Tamfang (talk) 03:39, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Spanish marks a direct object denoting a person with the preposition a. --ColinFine (talk) 23:05, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

The Tahitian language has direct object markers. The section Tahitian language#Aspect and modality markers shows

Tē tanu nei au i te taro: "planting I [dir. obj. marker] the taro", "I am planting the taro"

and the section Tahitian language#Word order gives

'ua tāpū vau 'i te vahie – "[perfective aspect] chop I [object marker] the wood", "I chopped the wood"

In both examples the direct object marker is i or ’i. Loraof (talk) 17:38, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

It's probably not worth mentioning, but "John looked at Emma" suggests that, in some formulations, "at" serves the purpose. Obviously, no native speaker would say "John saw at Emma", though. Matt Deres (talk) 13:46, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

"See" and "look at" are not the same thing. I can see something accidentally, but I can't look at it accidentally. HOTmag (talk) 14:13, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

My apologies; I thought you were interested in the general use of propositions in the accusative case, and not strictly limited to your specific example. Matt Deres (talk) 14:49, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

It could be argued that the preposition "at" enables the use of the intransitive verb "look" to take a direct object (accusative), but it is technically the object of "at" and not "look". Jmar67 (talk) 15:02, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

You don't have to apologize. I was really interested in the general use of propositions in the accusative case. "See" was only given as an example, of a verb whose object should take the Accusative relation. Had the phrase "look at" meant "see", you could have proved that also the object of "look" had taken the Accusative relation - reflected by the proposition "at". However, unfortunately, "look at" does not mean "see", so you haven't proved that the object of "look" should take the Accusative relation. HOTmag (talk) 13:12, 12 April 2019 (UTC)