English questions

[bradrn]

That's what confuses me - I'm not sure about how to talk in English about the people who've cut my hair in my life. And the apparent cultural aspects worry me even more - if I would talk about my hair stylist, would people assume I live in a mansion?

To me ‘barber’ would be the unmarked term.

[Raphael]

That's what confuses me - I'm not sure about how to talk in English about the people who've cut my hair in my life. And the apparent cultural aspects worry me even more - if I would talk about my hair stylist, would people assume I live in a mansion?

To me ‘barber’ would be the unmarked term.

Thank you.

[Travis B.]

That's what confuses me - I'm not sure about how to talk in English about the people who've cut my hair in my life. And the apparent cultural aspects worry me even more - if I would talk about my hair stylist, would people assume I live in a mansion?

To me ‘barber’ would be the unmarked term.

To me 'hairdresser' or 'hairstylist' is less marked, as here they serve both women and men (even though most hairdressers/hairstylists themselves are women), while 'barber' is more marked as barbers specifically serve men here.

[WeepingElf]

That's what confuses me - I'm not sure about how to talk in English about the people who've cut my hair in my life. And the apparent cultural aspects worry me even more - if I would talk about my hair stylist, would people assume I live in a mansion?

To me ‘barber’ would be the unmarked term.

To me 'hairdresser' or 'hairstylist' is less marked, as here they serve both women and men (even though most hairdressers/hairstylists themselves are women), while 'barber' is more marked as barbers specifically serve men here.

The German-English dictionary I have here agrees with this. The usual term is hairdresser; hair stylist sounds like a luxury hairdresser, and a barber specifically serves men.

[Raphael]

Should a misogynistic scumbag be called a woman hater or a women hater?

[Richard W]

Should a misogynistic scumbag be called a woman hater or a women hater?

The former.

[Raphael]

Should a misogynistic scumbag be called a woman hater or a women hater?

The former.

Thank you!

[hwhatting]

Interesting, in the Netherlands there's the traditonal "kapper" (hairdresser) which employs mostly women, but there's increasingly more "barbers" that are focussing mostly, but not exclusively on men, and employ men, typically of North African or Turkish descent.

Same here in Germany, and they frequently call themselves Barber Shops, using the English term. But hairdresser / barber is generally considered a low-prestige, badly paid profession*), so it tends to attract immigrants / people with immigrant backgrounds also for the ones serving a female clientele.
Concerning the washing: It used to be that washing was part of the procedure mostly at hairdressers serving women, because of the longer hair or more complicated things besides cutting that needed to be done, but during COVID a requirement was introduced that hair had to be washed at the hairdresser before cutting in all cases. That irked me, because I wash my hair every day anyway, and the hairdressers used that rule to jack up prices. The requirement is gone now, and I can get my hair cut again without having it washed at the hairdresser's / barber's, but the increased price has remained...
*) Except if you're the kind of maestro who serves the rich and famous

[Richard W]

Should a misogynistic scumbag be called a woman hater or a women hater?

The former.

Just in case it's not obvious, the latter construct does occur with mutation plurals. I think it's now a case of native speakers not learning the rule correctly, but instead taking the rule as being to omit the utterance of ///z///. I suspect the modern rule, to use the singular, may be an approximation to using the old, endingless a-stem genitive plural, not unlike the case discord with Slavic numerals.

What happens in dialects of English in other similar cases? What happens with weak plurals? Do weak monosyllabic plurals, like the old Modern English kine and eyne, get used in noun stacks? What happens in dialects in which the redundant ///z/// is omitted after numbers - is the singular or the plural normally used when the word's plural is a mutation or weak plural?

[Travis B.]

Should a misogynistic scumbag be called a woman hater or a women hater?

The former.

Just in case it's not obvious, the latter construct does occur with mutation plurals. I think it's now a case of native speakers not learning the rule correctly, but instead taking the rule as being to omit the utterance of ///z///. I suspect the modern rule, to use the singular, may be an approximation to using the old, endingless a-stem genitive plural, not unlike the case discord with Slavic numerals.

What happens in dialects of English in other similar cases? What happens with weak plurals? Do weak monosyllabic plurals, like the old Modern English kine and eyne, get used in noun stacks? What happens in dialects in which the redundant ///z/// is omitted after numbers - is the singular or the plural normally used when the word's plural is a mutation or weak plural?

Unfortunately, I don't think too many of us here are sufficiently familiar with traditional EngE dialects to answer your questions.

[anteallach]

What happens in dialects of English in other similar cases? What happens with weak plurals? Do weak monosyllabic plurals, like the old Modern English kine and eyne, get used in noun stacks? What happens in dialects in which the redundant ///z/// is omitted after numbers - is the singular or the plural normally used when the word's plural is a mutation or weak plural?

The Scottish National Dictionary entry for kye includes a compound kye-time "the time for milking cows".

[Travis B.]

One word pair I am wondering about is talc /tælk/ versus talk /tɔːk/ ─ why are these different? Talc comes from MFr talc, itself from Arabic and then from Persian, whereas talk is from ME talken, talkien, itself inherited from an unattested OE form. Why didn't talc undergo the same al > aul / _(C)# change as talk (with /aulk/ later becoming /ɔːk/, as also found in words like caulk, chalk, and balk)? Was it borrowed too late to undergo this change (mind you the periodization for MFr is generally later than ME, with MFr considerably overlapping with EModE)? Or did it resist this change due to lingering French influence?

[Richard W]

One word pair I am wondering about is talc /tælk/ versus talk /tɔːk/ ─ why are these different?

Isn't talc in a different part of vocabularies? It's not part of my active vocabulary, and it's not even in Onions' Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Note also the unassimilated spelling- not really fit for conversion to a verb.

[jal]

Why didn't talc undergo the same al > aul / _(C)# change as talk (with /aulk/ later becoming /ɔːk/, as also found in words like caulk, chalk, and balk)? Was it borrowed too late to undergo this change (mind you the periodization for MFr is generally later than ME, with MFr considerably overlapping with EModE)? Or did it resist this change due to lingering French influence?

Etymonline says it's first attested in the 1580s, so the answer to "was it borrowed too late" is no. However, it also mentioned the form was "talke", so if that final "e" wasn't silent, we'd have two syllables, "tal" and "ke", which could explain.


JAL

[anteallach]

Why didn't talc undergo the same al > aul / _(C)# change as talk (with /aulk/ later becoming /ɔːk/, as also found in words like caulk, chalk, and balk)? Was it borrowed too late to undergo this change (mind you the periodization for MFr is generally later than ME, with MFr considerably overlapping with EModE)? Or did it resist this change due to lingering French influence?

Etymonline says it's first attested in the 1580s, so the answer to "was it borrowed too late" is no. However, it also mentioned the form was "talke", so if that final "e" wasn't silent, we'd have two syllables, "tal" and "ke", which could explain.


JAL

I think the 1580s might be late enough that "it was borrowed too late" is plausible. The OED records spellings of talk with au in the 16th century, and it would make sense for the vowel change (if not the loss of /l/) to have occurred before the monophthongisation of Middle English /au/ to give the ancestor of the modern THOUGHT vowel.

[Travis B.]

Why didn't talc undergo the same al > aul / _(C)# change as talk (with /aulk/ later becoming /ɔːk/, as also found in words like caulk, chalk, and balk)? Was it borrowed too late to undergo this change (mind you the periodization for MFr is generally later than ME, with MFr considerably overlapping with EModE)? Or did it resist this change due to lingering French influence?

Etymonline says it's first attested in the 1580s, so the answer to "was it borrowed too late" is no. However, it also mentioned the form was "talke", so if that final "e" wasn't silent, we'd have two syllables, "tal" and "ke", which could explain.


JAL

I think the 1580s might be late enough that "it was borrowed too late" is plausible. The OED records spellings of talk with au in the 16th century, and it would make sense for the vowel change (if not the loss of /l/) to have occurred before the monophthongisation of Middle English /au/ to give the ancestor of the modern THOUGHT vowel.

It should be noted that l > 0 / V[+round]_k is not even complete today; e.g. in this case there are people today who pronounce balk with /l/, and likewise folk and polka are often pronounced by people with an /l/. For me it is almost complete, though, as the only word which resists this change that I can think of is the name Salk.

[Richard W]

It should be noted that l > 0 / V[+round]_k is not even complete today; e.g. in this case there are people today who pronounce balk with /l/, and likewise folk and polka are often pronounced by people with an /l/. For me it is almost complete, though, as the only word which resists this change that I can think of is the name Salk.

There are a lot of spelling pronunciations out there, e.g. calm pronounced with /l/. There is also vocalisation of /l/ in all closed syllables, fairly well established in Estuarine English but by no means restricted to it. It is then one very small (and frequent?) step to progress /ɔːl/ > /ɔː/.

[zompist]

It should be noted that l > 0 / V[+round]_k is not even complete today; e.g. in this case there are people today who pronounce balk with /l/, and likewise folk and polka are often pronounced by people with an /l/. For me it is almost complete, though, as the only word which resists this change that I can think of is the name Salk.

alcohol, alky, alkaline, alchemy, alcove, calculate, calculus, falcon, recalcitrant, Valkyrie... all with /æ/, but you started with talc.

With /ɔ/: Balkan

[Travis B.]

It should be noted that l > 0 / V[+round]_k is not even complete today; e.g. in this case there are people today who pronounce balk with /l/, and likewise folk and polka are often pronounced by people with an /l/. For me it is almost complete, though, as the only word which resists this change that I can think of is the name Salk.

alcohol, alky, alkaline, alchemy, alcove, calculate, calculus, falcon, recalcitrant, Valkyrie... all with /æ/, but you started with talc.

I did say V[+round] above, which kind of excludes /æ/.

Of course, falcon is a weird case because if it had undergone regular sound change it should be /ˈfɔːkən/, since it was borrowed from OFr as faucon (with the l-vocalization being borrowed from OFr), but was then modified on the model of Late Latin falconem to reintroduce the /l/.

With /ɔ/: Balkan

Good point ─ I had missed that one.

[Travis B.]

alcohol, alky, alkaline, alchemy, alcove, calculate, calculus, falcon, recalcitrant, Valkyrie... all with /æ/, but you started with talc.

I should also note that the sound change I originally referred to was al > aul / _(C)#, and all these words have in common that a vowel or /j/ comes after the /k/, aside from recalcitrant, where the second ⟨c⟩ is an /s/.

And in that way Balkan is weird because it 'should' be /ˈbælkən/.

Edit: From doing a little bit of investigation, Balkan is from Ottoman Turkish, and modern Turkish has /ɑ/ in this word, which is reflected in SSBE with LOT (even though apparently THOUGHT is also an option in EngE here). Consequently GA /ˈbɔlkən/ could be derived from LOT + /l/, which is inconsistent in NAE varieties, as different NAE varieties may reflect it as /ɑl/ or as /ɔl/.