Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 August 29

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 29

Does philo- words automatically mean a person is not part of the thing but "loves" it as an outsider?

I am specifically considering Judeophilia and Sinophile. The Wikipedia article Sinophile provides a list of sinophiles, and none of them seem to be actually of Asian descent. I suppose if one loves one's own nation, then one is not a phile, but a patriot. And there is the term, Sinocentrism, which suggests that China is the most superior country [in the known parts of the ancient world from China's perspective]. But does that indicate "love" for one's own culture or is that a similar concept like American exceptionalism? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:21, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I can't find any example of a -phile term that would normally apply to one in the group bring emulated. Terms like jingoism and nationalism and chauvanism come to mind regarding irrational attachment to ones own culture. --Jayron32 03:28, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Off topic

Irrational? Or emotional? Emotion is not exactly rational. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Why irrational? The preference for one's own kind is natural: it is ingrained into human nature, and in many cases it has its own rationale. The other question is that it has become castigated and censured for ideological reasons in the West.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:08, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Are the two of you claiming that every form of attachment MUST be rational? Because I have never claimed the opposite, which is to say that I have never stated that every attachment must be irrational, so your argument is odd here... Who is claiming that attachments could not be rational?!?! I certainly never once did that. --Jayron32 11:40, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I understood you that you said the first things which came to your mind "regarding irrational attachment to ones own culture" were nationalism, etc. Which is not necessarily the case. Nationalism, despite its semantic overload, has not to be irrational; and in most cases it is not: it is very easily to explain why people like their own family, nation, country or simply persons which share some similarities (like language or race). Simply because people are egoistic by nature, they like themselves first of all, then they like the people/things which resemble them. So one cannot regard it as an irrational attachment. Even jingoism and chauvinism, despite being aimed outward rather than inward, may be rationalized. Frankly, I cannot say what attachment is irrational, everything may have some reason. When some people call some social phenomena "irrational", in many cases they say they dislike it and simply refuse to understand. Sorry for this off topic, I'm OK if we agree to disagree on that.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• Slavophile Шурбур (talk) 07:11, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Have, Haber, Happening

The English words, happening and have, have English/Germanic roots. Haber has Latin roots. Yet, they mean nearly the same thing! Is this a coincidence? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 13:21, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• No. Haben and habere are classic false cognates. Шурбур (talk) 14:54, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

  Unless they have the same PIE roots. --Jayron32 15:36, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

  Which they don't, as is Шурбур's point. (Germanic habban points to IE keh₂p- as per the Germanic consonant shift, Latin habeo to IE gʰeh₁bʰ-). Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:44, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

So, it is just a coincidence then. But a coincidence doesn't mean the two entities are related. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 16:23, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Right. Hence the term "false cognate". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• The English cognate to the Latin habere is, ironically, "to give". (Apparently the act was seen as reciprocal in PIE). The Latin cognate to have gives us the root of the Latinate capture. μηδείς (talk) 15:55, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

There was mutual influence between Germanic and Romance languages based on this coincidence -- during parts of the middle ages, there was an extensive Western European "sprachbund" zone in which there was a perfect verb tense (distinct from the simple past) which was expressed by HAVE + past/passive participle for transitive verbs and BE + past/passive participle for intransitive verbs. English is one of the relatively few languages in the former sprachbund which still has a robust semantic distinction between perfect and simple past verb tenses (though it's dropped the use of "to be" to form intransitive perfects, except in a few archaic relics such as "Christ is risen"). AnonMoos (talk) 15:27, 4 September 2017 (UTC)