Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 December 31
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December 31
[edit]Monarch vs Regent
[edit][1] This article in a couple of places refers to Danish Queen Margrethe as a "regent" rather than as a monarch. Is that intentional? What is the significance? Thanks. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:1927 (talk) 20:19, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
- According to our sister project Wiktionary, regent is the Danish word for "monarch", but can also mean "regent". It appears likely that somebody at the BBC assumed that the meaning was the same as the English word, but in this context it is extremely likely that monarch is the correct translation.
- Matt's talk 20:48, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
- Ah ... the problems of similarity in language. Blueboar (talk) 21:01, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
- The highly-technical linguistic term for this is "False friend"...
-- AnonMoos (talk) 22:01, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
- The highly-technical linguistic term for this is "False friend"...
Aha, thanks. I'd have expected the BBC to know better. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:1927 (talk) 22:36, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
- But there are worse horses than BBC. One of the readers they expected by chance would have been a Euro English reading Danish Prime Minister; maybe even others, her staff.. --Askedonty (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
- Historically, regent just meant "ruler", and not specifically "actual ruler in place of the nominal monarch". While it is now unusual (and potentially confusing) to use the term for a ruling monarch, it is not wrong. --Lambiam 11:36, 1 January 2024 (UTC)