Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 April 27

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April 27

Olga Badelka

Can someone clueful about the relevant dialects please fix the spelling in the article about Belarusian chess player Olga Badelka? It spelled inconsistently in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. I don't know if the Cyrillic inconsistency reflects a difference between Belarusian and Russian spellings, but this article is from Belarus and uses a different spelling than the beginning of the Wiki article. The infobox uses a combination of both. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 02:09, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

The Russian Wikipedia gives her name as "Баделько, Ольга" (Badelʹko, Olʹga), adding that in Belarusian her name is "Вольга Бадэлька" (Vólʹha Badelʹka). (The transliterations are mine.) I cannot explain why her surname was masculinized in Russian; in a Russian Wikipedia mirror the surname has been changed systematically to "Бадэлька" expect in the infobox. Chessbase.ru has "Ольга Баделька" as one would expect. The disambiguation page for Вольга on the Russian Wikipedia gives as the first sense: "a Belarusian female name related to the Russian name Ольга". Note that the name of the Volga river is spelled differently in Cyrillic: "Волга", with a hard /l/. Apparently, she chose to present herself on the international stage with a familiar form of her given name. Interestingly, when the Russian name Olga is copied in Belarusian, like that of Olga of Kiev, it is rendered as "Олга" (Ólha) with an unlenited /l/.  --Lambiam 07:16, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

The Russian form "Баделько" is not masculine. Surnames ending in "ко" in Russian are indeclinable and do not have distinct masculine and feminine forms. The difference between "ко" and ка" is because the unstressed vowel is reduced. The Belarusian language reflects this unstressed vowel reduction in its spelling ("о" reduced to "а"), but the Russian language does not. --Amble (talk) 19:24, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

About Olga of Kiev, her name is not really Russian. It belongs to the Old East Slavic language that is ancestral to Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. The various Wikipedias have ru:Ольга (княгиня киевская), be:Вольга (княгіня Кіеўская), and be-tarask:Вольга (княгіня кіеўская), all spelled with a soft sign. The spelling Олга Киевска is not Belarusian but Bulgarian (bg:Олга Киевска), spelled without a soft sign (although the soft sign is available in the Bulgarian alphabet), or Macedonian (mk:Олга_Киевска, where the combination "ль" is available as a single letter Lje but not used here). --Amble (talk) 16:29, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

You (the original poster) are right, the difference is between Russian and Belarusian spellings. The English Wikipedia article gives the Belarusian spelling. The article you linked is from Belarus but written in the Russian language. Names are typically "translated" among Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. Therefore, the spelling you see in a given source reflects the spelling rules of the language the source is written in, which isn't necessarily the same as the person's own primary language or preferred spelling. That also means the multiple spellings can all be "correct". For our purposes we need to know whether the subject of the article relates to the Belarusian language, Russian language, or both. Given that she is from Belarus, any of those could be appropriate. See Languages of Belarus, and for an example, Alexander Lukashenko. --Amble (talk) 19:42, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 02:38, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

All you ever want*

I'm a native speaker of Italian. Recently I was listening to an English song called All You Ever Wanted by Rag'n'Bone Man and noticed something strange (to me) about the pronunciation of the word "wanted". Besides the common elision of the final consonant "d", to my foreing ears it sounds like the second vowel (the "e") is pronunced with two very different sounds by the same person. In some instances with a sound like an Italian "e" and in others like an Italian "i". In the following video the "e" is at 0:55, 1:07, 2:04, 2:27, 2:50, 3:02 while the "i" is at 1:52, 3:07. What is happening? Do you have any idea? Thanks! Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA-zoyipi6A&ab_channel=RagnBoneManVEVO --82.48.36.71 (talk) 16:40, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

In English, vowels in unstressed syllables undergo what is known as vowel reduction, see also Stress and vowel reduction in English. In linguistics, the sound of the reduced vowel is known as a schwa, which has a variety of expressions; depending on accent, letters around it, or really just random variation, the specific expression of the schwa sound can vary somewhat. All of these vowel sounds are in free variation, and speakers will think of them as allophones of the same sound. While, as a non-native speaker, you may pick up on these differences, native speakers treat them all as basically the same sound. --Jayron32 18:03, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I'll also point out that Rag'n'Bone Man is from the Home counties and IIRC speaks a form of Estuary English as a native dialect; he also has characteristics of Multicultural London English in his speech. Perhaps you are picking up on some of the characteristics of that dialect. --Jayron32 18:06, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Spot-on Jayron. Not bad at all for an American. Alansplodge (talk) 11:22, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. My correctness is through no fault of my own, but thank you anyways for the encouragement. --Jayron32 13:53, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

OP here. I agree. A really thorough answer. I appreciated it! What I'm left wondering is, are you native English speakers able to pick the differences I hear in my example when I point them to you or is it really all the same for you? --82.48.36.71 (talk) 17:29, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

So, with a careful listen, I can hear the differences you point out. However, in normal conversation, I would not make any note of them. That's how free variation works; every language has sets of sounds in free variation, though which sets of sounds are interchangeable varies from language to language. It's why foreign speakers can often pick up on these things better than native speakers (unless the native speaker is deliberately listening for it), native speakers have learned intuitively which variations are meaningful, and which ones can be "lumped" together as "the same sound". This is not a deliberately trained process; you do it basically automatically and without conscious thought. They have even done studies where infants far too young to understand language develop this trait, see for example [1]. --Jayron32 17:59, 28 April 2021 (UTC)