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April 12

Baingan bharta

The article baingan bharta tells us that "Baingan bharta (mashed eggplant) is a dish from the Indian subcontinent", and then proceeds to talk about "Baingan ka bharta" (my emphasis). Below, it adds "The dish has several regional names, such as: baingan ka bhurtha" (my emphasis) in Hindi; none of the names listed is "baingan bharta". What language is "baingan bharta", how should the sadly non-polyglot anglophone refer to (ask for) this dish when talking to a speaker of Nepali (not one of the languages mentioned) or Hindi, and what would these be in IPA? -- Hoary (talk) 07:46, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Can't help you with the other variations, but "ka" is the genitive particle (the masculine singular inflection of the genitive particle in Hindi). AnonMoos (talk) 11:23, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, AnonMoos. It's easy to imagine that a genitive particle is optional. (Also, that whatever vowel is found in Hindi "bhVrtha", it could reasonably be written as either ⟨a⟩ or ⟨u⟩.) -- Hoary (talk) 11:43, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

The corresponding article in the Hindi Wikipedia has the title बैंगन का भर्ता (baingan ka bharta), but starts: बैंगन भर्ता (baingan bharta), just like here using two terms, but then the other way around. The article states that the dish stems from the Punjab region, so the last word may be Punjabi ਭੱੜਥਾ (bhaṛathā). I did not find this word in any online Punjabi dictionaries, though. But Yandex translates Bengali ভর্তা (bhartā) as "mashed",^[1] which fits the manner of preparation, so this may be the origin.  --Lambiam 22:25, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Good stuff. Thank you, Lambiam! Now all I need is the pronunciation. . . . Hoary (talk) 13:17, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

In which dialect of which language?  --Lambiam 06:40, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

In a more or less standard dialect of Hindi and ditto of Nepali, I'd been thinking. And, come to think of it, ditto of Urdu. But, while I slept, Jbuchholz has done much of the answering.... Hoary (talk) 23:02, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Phonological differences between Hindi and Urdu are minimal. Some even call them "all but indistinguishable" in phonology and grammar.^[2]  --Lambiam 08:18, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

According to the Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary, भरता bhartā [ˈbʱərtaː] and भुरता bhurtā [ˈbʱʊrtaː] are two variants of the same word, meaning "a mash of boiled or fried vegetables". Note that the spelling in Devanagari should be भरता, not भर्ता, the latter being a Sanskrit loanword that means "lord" or "husband" (the pronunciation is identical, though). The usual spelling in Roman script would be bharta or bhurta (depending on which form of the word one prefers). The spelling bhurtha is unusual, but may be influenced by a South Indian language, since dental t is often transcribed as th in South India. --Jbuchholz (talk) 09:06, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, Jbuchholz! I doubt that I can manage to distinguish [bʱ] from the way I render /b/ in the languages that I happen to speak, and I also doubt that I could manage a trilled [r] right in front of [t]; so it will probably come out as something fairly close to [ˈbʊɹtaː]. Can I trouble you about बैंगन? The reason is that I find myself looking at Japanese-language menus in what are more or less credibly South Asian restaurants, and this dish is about equally listed as [what, romanized, would be] "beigan" and "baigan" (though occasionally "beingan" or "baingan"), followed by "baruta" (or occasionally "buruta"; Japanese phonotactics demands a vowel between its /r/ and its /t/). I'm guessing something fairly close to [bɛɪŋgan]. (All this being in Hindi. I also guess that Nepalese restaurants provide [more or less] Hindi names, rather than Nepali names, for popular "Indian" items on their menus, perhaps using Nepali names for the "Nepalese" items.) -- Hoary (talk) 23:02, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure if you are looking for the Hindi pronunciation or some kind of approximation thereof, but in Hindi, /bʱ/ and /b/ are clearly distinguished. How the Hindi word is pronounced by an English or Japanese speaker is of course a different question. Anyway, the Standard Hindi pronunciation of बैंगन baiṅgan is [bɛːŋɡən]. --Jbuchholz (talk) 06:51, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

P.S. Regarding the th, Lambiam seems to be right: bhartha/bhurtha may actually be a transcription of the Punjabi word ਭੱੜਥਾ bhaṛthā / ਭੁੜਥਾ bhuṛthā (see [3] and [4]). So forget what I said about South Indian languages. --Jbuchholz (talk) 07:53, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

In this transcription, ⟨th⟩ stands for the aspirated consonant often written as [tʰ].  --Lambiam 08:36, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Simpson's clouds

What are "Simpson's Clouds" and are they connected with George "Sunny Jim" Simpson (1878–1965), past President of the Royal Meteorological Society? 86.175.173.84 (talk) 12:34, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

According to several Google search results, they are cumulus clouds that resemble those seen in the opening credits of The Simpsons, as shown here. I think I can faintly hear Mr. Fergusson, my old geography teacher, rotating in his grave somewhere. Alansplodge (talk) 13:53, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

One time my sky's clouds looked like a neatly arranged array of little muffins, and my friend and I simultaneously thought: they're Magritte clouds! —Tamfang (talk) 01:06, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Like this? Perhaps we've uncovered a secret homage to Magritte by David Silverman. Alansplodge (talk) 17:37, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

More regular than that. —Tamfang (talk) 00:30, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Ci in Italian

The word "ci" in Italian seems to have two uses:

• as a personal pronoun meaning "us"
• as an adverb (is that the correct description?) meaning "there", "to it", etc. (I think of it, perhaps wrongly, as equivant to "y" in French.)

It occurs to me that there could be occasions on which it's ambiguous which meaning is intended. How can one tell, in a particular sentence, which it is? rossb (talk) 12:58, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

"One can tell" is also ambiguous. I have two sons. One can tell which it is, the other cannot. Basically any natural language has many ambiguities. "You wouldn't recognize little Freddy. He has grown another foot." In this case, common sense rules out the The Far Side interpretation of Freddy having become tripedalian, but in other cases, there is an interpretation that was not intended by the speaker but is a plausible interpretation, occasionally even leading to tragic results. A careful speaker would realize their sentence admits different interpretations and rephrase it to avoid the ambiguity.  --Lambiam 17:30, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Where I first heard that joke was Gracie Allen on an old-time radio sketch, and it was probably a lot older than that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:55, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Italian ci has lots of different meanings. Some of them are explained at ci. I'm not sure that list is really complete or completely correct; I'm not sure where it would put lui non sa cosa farci ("he doesn't know what to do about it"); it's similar to usage 8 under Pronome but doesn't seem exactly the same. Also it's used when you want to form the si-impersonale of a verb that's already reflexive — this is mentioned in usage 6 underPronome but as an "emphatic form", which I don't think is necessarily true. --Trovatore (talk) 18:25, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

April 13

Do other Europe languages mark work titles by use of italic format?

Do some other Europe languages (i.e. Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Italian) italic work titles like the English lanugage? I heard that the German language uses „der Spiegel“ instead of italic text. --Lopullinen 18:43, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

French uses italics for names of books, newspapers and the like. Xuxl (talk) 19:05, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

For German there is no fixed rule. Often a title is not typographically distinguished from the surrounding text, like here in footnote 277 "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers". Or when quotation marks are used, they may be inward-pointing guillemets, like the single ones seen in the same book in footnote 219. (For the spectrum of choices, see the lines for German in Quotation mark § Summary table.) When books were commonly typeset in Fraktur, italics were not an option, as the typeface did not have an italic style. In recent years, italics has become more common; for instance, this web page and also this one (and other pages on these two sites) present book titles in italics.  --Lambiam 20:34, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Use of italics in titles is customary in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish and officially recommended at least in the first two. Also in Greek italics are commonly used. --T*U (talk) 21:43, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

I was going to question your premise, until I realised you meant "work titles" to mean the titles of works (War and Peace, etc), not the names of employment positions (Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief, etc). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:40, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

At least you didn't assume it meant working titles, as I did at first! --184.147.181.129 (talk) 22:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Also, "italicize" is more common than "italic" as a verb... AnonMoos (talk) 23:04, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Spanish italicises titles of works, whenever the medium has italic types available (otherwise quotation marks may be used). Guerra y paz, Lost in translation, etc. Notice that, unlike English, Spanish prescribes caps for only the first word in the title (though this rule is frequently ignored in practice, with all words capitalized). Pallida  Mors 00:48, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Simple use of Wikipedia shows that various languages use italics for this. I can guess that Madame Bovary is pretty well known outside the French- and English-speaking pedias. So I go there, click on "Suomi", and find that Rouva Bovary says for example "Rouva Bovaryn julkaisu 1857 aiheutti skandaalin ja sitä syytettiin siveettömyydestä", from which I can infer that yes, Finnish can use italics for this purpose. And the same for Turkish, etc etc. -- Hoary (talk) 01:15, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

The rules used in other-language Wikipedias may not be indicative for the general use in these languages. In Turkish newspaper obituaries of Adalet Ağaoğlu, who died last year, the titles of her novels can be seen in roman type between quotation marks^[5][6][7] or not distinguished typographically in any way.^[8]  --Lambiam 06:39, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree that other Wikis should not be used as evidence here. Articles in other languages are often at least partly translated from or at least based on the English article, and the use of a specific typographical style may be "contamination" from English. This is underlined by the fact that many Wikipedia articles in other languages also have adopted the English style of using "Title Case" (with caps in each word), even if this is not commonly used in other langauges. --T*U (talk) 07:29, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Be that as it may, usage can eventually become established to a point where it doesn't really matter if it came from Wikipedia or not. Especially in small countries, Wikipedia is a powerful tool when it comes to language change, for good or for bad. --Theurgist (talk) 23:47, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

April 16

Jules Verne's French

I've always wanted to learn French (and Italian, and Latin, and Czech, and maybe Russian). I've recently started a somewhat more concerted effort than previously. Some of the authors I'm interested in are Jules Verne (for his early science fiction precursors) and Alexandre Dumas (for the Three Musketeers). I can get many of these books via Project Gutenberg. But I wonder: these books are about one and a half centuries old. How much does the language differ from current French? I don't mind some anachronisms (I enjoy them in German and English, but then I'm reasonably comfortable with these languages), but I don't want to appear like a person from another century when I pick up too much outdated language... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:41, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Probably as much as current English does from English novels of the 1870s (which, of course, are extensively studied by native English speakers, to their undoubted linguistic improvement). IMHO (pending disagreement from experts) they would make acceptable foundations for someone to learn the written language, but one would obviously seem dated, though understandable, if one's spoken language was based on them. Would this necessarily be a bad thing?

A word of caution if you plan to use English translations as parallel texts to aid your learning. Many of Verne's works were extensively pirated and first appeared in English badly translated with extensive cuts and alterations. Try to use good editions, such as those translated and/or edited by I. O. Evans. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.219.35.136 (talk) 07:10, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I was aware of that. I do have German translations of most of Verne's books, and they are usually ok (unless you get one that was specifically neutered for a very young audience). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:54, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

There are considerable differences between "standard French" as it is spoken and the literary register of French. While there would be the occasional anachronism (mostly idioms but also words that have fallen in disuse), I think that the main risk is more one of sounding bookish than dated. For example, the passé simple is almost absent from spoken French but common in written French, even in contemporary children's books. For another example, in speech the part ne in such forms as ne ... pas, obligatory in writing, is often omitted, as heard in Céline Dion's song "Je sais pas", not only in its chorus but also in ça m'effraie pas and j'suis pas victime – in which the contraction j'suis < je suis is also virtually absent from written text. But unless you're seeking street cred – in which case you have to learn yet another, rather different register – you might actually be complimented for speaking "proper" French.  --Lambiam 09:29, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

There's also the role of the Académie Française to bear in mind. This lot try and preserve the integrity of the French language, and have been at it since 1635. As a result French has changed less over time than other languages have, so the differences between 19th century writing and current French will be less marked than in the case of English writing. --Viennese Waltz 10:12, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks all for the comments - that is helpful. My main goals are a) getting by when travelling, b) being able to read French texts in the original, and c) understand French movies in the original. Three or four years ago I was invited to an interdisciplinary event, and my ego was badly bruised when I noticed that one of the philosophers there at least spoke Finnish, Swedish, Englisch, German, French and Italian fluently (ok, I deduced the Finnish - he was a Finnish citizen from the Swedish minority). I suspect he also could read Latin and ancient Greek, because why not? ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:54, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

There is definitely a difference between speaking and writing English. I had some German colleagues who had clearly learned written English by training but spoken English by ear. Their spoken English was excellent, but their written English I considered to be often kind of stilted. If someone spoke English the way my colleagues wrote it, it would come across poorly. I expect that situation could be true for any second language. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:52, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

A tip for improving French as she is spoke is to watch French films with the French subtitles turned on. You can pick up all kinds of phrases and idioms and (hopefully) when to use them. Alansplodge (talk) 10:21, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

I tried that, but I've had a very hard time finding French movies with French subtitles. They usually come with subtitles in any other language, but not French... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:49, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

That's curious - do they have no deaf people? I used to have a subscription to TV5Monde which showed a lot of classic French films and had French subtitles available. Alansplodge (talk) 14:21, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

I suspect that's not the market for movies I like. But you gave me an idea - there are plenty of movies in the Arte mediathek, and some of them have French subtitles. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:58, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Do they have closed captioning? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:22, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Reminiscent of George Borrow, the 19th century linguist, who taught himself literary Welsh (analogous to the English used in the King James Bible) before embarking on a walking tour of rural Wales, much to the astonishment of the locals. Alansplodge (talk) 10:14, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Idries Shah had a story about an Arabic scholar berating some poor railway official at great length over some inefficiency or other, calling down a variety of curses and comparing the official to any number of unclean beasts, only to get the reply in admiring tones "Such beautiful Arabic Effendi, I didn't understand a word of it". DuncanHill (talk) 10:40, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Glad to see the official wasn't effended. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:43, 18 April 2021 (UTC)