Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Ryusenshi]

I know about the "Transatlantic accent", which was the sound of the US North-East upper classes, and was also used a lot by actors until the 1950's. It does fit your description of adding a bit of RP over an American accent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent
http://dialectblog.com/2012/08/25/arist ... an-accent/
http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/why- ... ccent.html

Is it the one you're talking about?

[Raphael]

Probably yes.

[gestaltist]

Modern Poland has huge dialectal differences.

That's not what modern Poles seem to think.

Says the American.

I'm a few days late to the discussion but since no Polish person commented on this, let me.

Polish has minimal dialectal differences when compared to any other language I'm sufficiently familiar with. The reason for this is World War 2. Polish people were forced to migrate en masse (especially from what is now Belarus and Ukraine) and what dialects we had got all mixed up in the process. The notable differences are the few areas with minimal migration, i.e., Silesia, the Tatra mountains, and Kaszuby. Other than these three regions, you will find the occasional regionalism in pronunciation or vocabulary but mutual intelligibility will be close to 100%.

Example: I was born in one part of Poland, lived most of my life on the other side of the country, and now live on yet another side (so I covered the whole country in a triangle, so to say). In each of these places, I could count a few words that I had to learn/re-learn - but no more than 5-10 in each case. Differences in pronunciation are almost non-existent, although there are notable differences in prosody.

[Raphael]

Is in "capitalist", in the English language, someone who politically supports capitalism, or someone who practices capitalism by running a business?

[Travis B.]

Is in "capitalist", in the English language, someone who politically supports capitalism, or someone who practices capitalism by running a business?

A capitalist is generally someone who practices capitalism by running a business, as opposed to someone who merely supports capitalism.

[Raphael]

Is in "capitalist", in the English language, someone who politically supports capitalism, or someone who practices capitalism by running a business?

A capitalist is generally someone who practices capitalism by running a business, as opposed to someone who merely supports capitalism.

Thank you!

[Salmoneus]

I disagree. I think for most people 'capitalist' is someone who supports capitalism, rather than someone who runs a business.


It's true that the other meaning also exists, and is the dominant meaning in certain contexts. The meaning can also be triggered by certain modifiers - a "wealthy capitalist" almost certainly owns stuff. But I think that the ideological meaning is probably primary for most speakers.


When a teenager accuses their parents of being fucking capitalists, for example, they probably aren't referring specifically to their shareholdings.


There's also a third meaning - someone who acts in a mercenary and overly financially-motivated way, as magnates are imagined to do.

[Travis B.]

Personally I would not call someone a capitalist in the way that I would call someone, say, a socialist, or a Communist, or a Democrat, or a Republican - to me capitalist as a noun definitely denotes someone who runs a business, typically a large business in the sense that one would call someone a "captain of industry", albeit in a more neutral manner, without any particular positive or negative connotations.

[Travis B.]

For the adjectival meaning, I would rather go for pro-capitalist or more simply, and more frequently, pro-business when speaking of individuals. However, capitalist is what I would just as an adjective when referring to whole countries.

[Linguoboy]

For the adjectival meaning, I would rather go for pro-capitalist or more simply, and more frequently, pro-business when speaking of individuals.

"Pro-capitalist" and "pro-business" mean different things, though. A lot of "pro-business" measures are profoundly anti-capitalist.

I'm with Sal on this. Using "capitalist" to mean "businessman" or "entrepreneur" smacks of cant to me.

[Salmoneus]

For the adjectival meaning, I would rather go for pro-capitalist or more simply, and more frequently, pro-business when speaking of individuals.

"Pro-capitalist" and "pro-business" mean different things, though. A lot of "pro-business" measures are profoundly anti-capitalist.

I'm curious what distinction you're drawing there. I think some people would argue that the policies labelled as 'pro-business' (that is, pro-oligarch) are anti-capitalist in the sense of being contrary to the teachings of Smith, Riccardo, Hayek and Friedman. On the other hand, I'm not sure that capitalist and free market are necessarily synonymous, to the extent that the free market is necessarily harmful for holders of capital. So I can also imagine people making the opposite argument, that to be pro-business (i.e. pro-enterprise) you have to be anti-capitalist in the sense of opposing the power and interests of capital.

I'm with Sal on this. Using "capitalist" to mean "businessman" or "entrepreneur" smacks of cant to me.

I would say, this use is still standard in some contexts, particularly in economic and political theory, as it's more specific and objective than the terms you suggest.
I also think it can still be used this way by the general public in some contexts. For instance, if someone said that Davos was "a conference of influential statesmen and wealthy capitalists", I wouldn't immediately think they were trying to sell me membership of the communist party.

But I would agree that this use is secondary in most contexts, and that using it too much in this sense can suggest the recitation of cant.

[Travis B.]

For the adjectival meaning, I would rather go for pro-capitalist or more simply, and more frequently, pro-business when speaking of individuals.

"Pro-capitalist" and "pro-business" mean different things, though. A lot of "pro-business" measures are profoundly anti-capitalist.

Only if you view capitalism as inherently pro-competition, anti-unfair subsidies, and so on. But much of what is associated with capitalism in practice goes against the ideal put forth for capitalism.

I'm with Sal on this. Using "capitalist" to mean "businessman" or "entrepreneur" smacks of cant to me.

It might not be a common usage, but I find it hard to picture calling an individual "capitalist" so as to indicate that they are pro-capitalism.

[Salmoneus]

Did you sleep through that whole Cold War thing?

At least in the UK, the concept of conflict between communists and capitalists was fairly widespread.

[Pabappa]

There's still the phrase "venture capitalist", right ? Showing that context can matter.

[Linguoboy]

There's still the phrase "venture capitalist", right ? Showing that context can matter.

No one is disputing that context matters. Sal explicitly said as much in his first response:

I also think it can still be used this way by the general public in some contexts. For instance, if someone said that Davos was "a conference of influential statesmen and wealthy capitalists", I wouldn't immediately think they were trying to sell me membership of the communist party. But I would agree that this use is secondary in most contexts, and that using it too much in this sense can suggest the recitation of cant.

[Travis B.]

Did you sleep through that whole Cold War thing?

I was seven when the Soviet Union fell...

At least in the UK, the concept of conflict between communists and capitalists was fairly widespread.

One thing I should note is that calling groups of people capitalists, like referring to "the capitalists", works far more for me than calling an individual a capitalist, unless they run a business or are a venture capitalist or like, for some reason.

[Vijay]

Did you sleep through that whole Cold War thing?

I was seven when the Soviet Union fell...

I was three, but I've definitely seen capitalist be used to mean a supporter of capitalism. Isn't that the sense it's used in in Time Magazine's column "The Curious Capitalist," for example?

[Pabappa]

It seems sneeze and snore may be orthographic loans, a sort of spelling pronunciation, where an /f/ was read as /s/ because the letter shapes are similar. In some other English dialects, I think fn>n, and perhaps these dialects reborrowed an /s/ because of the well established spelling.

[Salmoneus]

Or the incredibly rare cluster that only appears in a couple of words due to obvious onomatopoeia and is otherwise out of keeping with the phonology may just have regularised to a more common and homorganic cluster.

[mae]

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