Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 April 16

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April 16

Correct preposition: account ... a website

The usage of prepositions in this context is a little complicated. While in most cases any content seems to on a website, the usage for account is more inconsistent.
"account in/to/on/for/at this website" have all several million hits (in decreasing order). Which preposition(s) is/are considered correct? --KnightMove (talk) 08:12, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

"Account in/on/at this website" have one meaning which is different than the meaning of "account for this website" (not sure what "account to this website" would mean)... AnonMoos (talk) 08:17, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

So... what does for mean here? --KnightMove (talk) 08:21, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Presumably an account giving access to the website. Marco polo (talk) 14:13, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

In phrases with "account for", "account" is much more likely to be a verb than a noun, the phrasal verb "account for" having a meaning much like "explain"... AnonMoos (talk) 16:50, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

"account to this website" may be Global English in the sense of "key to this door". --Pxos (talk) 15:30, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Is Global English a term covering versions of English that native speakers would consider incorrect? Marco polo (talk) 19:10, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes. That was my intention. English = "car keys"; Finnish/Spanish/Italian translated into English becoming Globish = "keys of the car". Easy to understand, frowned upon by the lucky few who happen to speak English as their mother tongue. --Pxos (talk) 20:10, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I've come across some extremely strange websites in my travels, and I find myself asking "What could account for this website?". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:42, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

So, is there consensus that at, on and in can be used interchangeably in this case?

About the "for": Well, there are even some commercial or scientific websites using this expression, from international organizations which at least have many English-speaking officials:

• "You can request that your user account for this website be deleted..."
• "...your account for this website is independent of your primary Riseup account..."
• "Persons given a user account for this website..."

Is this still wrong, and those entities neglect proofreading? --KnightMove (talk) 12:04, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Keys and the car

Actually, would "keys of the car" be incorrect among the natives or just odd? --Pxos (talk) 14:54, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Just odd, I'd say, though it would depend on the context. Lesgles (talk) 16:42, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

The car rental agreements in Europe sometimes seem to contain phrases like "you must keep the keys of the car (under your pillow)...". --Pxos (talk) 16:56, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Proper grammar question

Which sentence is grammatically correct (note possessive at end)?

1. Nick drives to the home of his cousin and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick's.
2. Nick drives to the home of his cousin and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick.

Is it 1 or 2 (or both)? Jason Quinn (talk) 13:03, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

The second has the correct use of the possessive. Possessive takes either of two forms: "FOO of Nick" or "Nick's FOO". The construction that combines the two, "FOO of Nick's", is common enough in spoken English, but it is not standard grammar. --Jayron32 13:13, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not so sure of that. See English possessive#Double genitive: Some writers regard this as a questionable usage,[6] although it has a history in careful English. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 13:18, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Jack is right. The usual argument is that we idiomatically use possessive pronouns in such constructions ("a college acquaintance of mine", "a college acquaintance of yours"), so it's consistent to use the possessive Nick's in the OP's sentence. Deor (talk) 13:57, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

This is probably a vestige of the genitive. When the possessive ceased to perform all of the functions of the genitive, of would have been inserted before the genitive form because it no longer sounded right to say "... a friend Nick's". Marco polo (talk) 14:10, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

"A friend of Nick's" is perfectly cromulent, and means "one of Nick's friends", while a "fried of Nick" may also be a friend of Bob and Mary. No one complains that phrase has two genitives. We had this discussion a year ago, and there's a term for the "of Nick's" construction, although I don't remember it. μηδείς (talk) 22:01, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, everybody. Jason Quinn (talk) 12:00, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Similar root words, similar meanings...

Are there subtle differences among these words, or can they be used interchangeably in most cases?

• tolerance vs. toleration (as in "Emma is lactose-tolerant" or "Some people are sick and tired of the government's toleration of the bigger and more dangerous foods that are falling out of the sky, as if there is no problem at all, even though the streets are cluttered, the roofs are leaking orange juice, and the tomato tornado is making everyone sneeze.")
• causation vs. causality (as in "correlation is not causation" or "causality in physics")

Note how the words are all used in a similar fashion. Same part of speech. Same root word. Similar spelling. Under what circumstances would there be exceptions? 140.254.227.70 (talk) 14:31, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

According to this source, toleration isn't used is scientific contexts (e.g., you wouldn't say "Emma's lactose toleration has improved since she began the new medication," you would use "tolerance" instead). The source goes on to say that both nouns can be used to describe acceptance of others' beliefs/behaviors, but that "toleration" implies a more reluctant acceptance.--Dreamahighway (talk) 18:04, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, causation and causality are used interchangeably.--Dreamahighway (talk) 18:05, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Pakistan Post motto

On Pakistan_Post, if its motto is indeed "serving everyone, everyday, everywhere" (I can't read Arabic to tell), shouldn't "everyday" be spelt "every day"? cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 17:20, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes - IMHO, "everyday" can only be used as an adjective (e.g. "an everyday event"), though I realize I'm fighting a lost cause here. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:32, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I'm not alone - I see Wiktionary describes it as a "Common misspelling of every day. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:35, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I'd say it should be every day. Pedants of the world unite! — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:25, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

We should note, of course, that it's not in Arabic, it's (probably) in Urdu. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:49, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Preclude

This is not a big deal ... it is only a very small quibble in an article, but for my own interest I would like to hear other people's opinions about whether the word "preclude" -- or, in fact, the whole phrase "To preclude making ..." -- is exactly correctly used in the following sentence:

To preclude making any military threat Wilson made only minimal preparations for war and kept the army on its small peacetime basis despite increasing demands for preparedness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.4.167 (talk) 19:12, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Looks like a perfectly appropriate use. "Preclude" means to make something impossible. In this sentence, Wilson makes a military threat impossible by limiting the size of the army. - Eron^Talk 19:26, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

(That said, some might quibble over "preclude making any military threat" vs. "preclude any military threat". Is he making a military threat impossible, or making it impossible to make a military threat?) - Eron^Talk 19:28, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that one of the issues -- not sure whether it's the only one -- is the "danglingness" of the participle "making". 86.128.4.167 (talk) 19:31, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

That could be addressed by deleting "making" from the sentence. Looking at the whole thing in context, I don't see the sentence as particularly problematic. I suppose it could be made a bit more clear as to whom is being precluded from making threats, perhaps "to preclude any military threat from the United States, Wilson..." - Eron^Talk 19:47, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

No, the purpose of the word "making" is to prevent you from reading it that way. The sentence says he kept the army small so that the US would not make (i.e. be seen as making) any military threats. And it's not a dangling participle; it's a gerund, as in "making the meaning clear is what the word is there for". --50.100.193.30 (talk) 21:55, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

You're right, I muddled up my terminology, but the point remains that the subject of "making" is unclear. 86.128.4.167 (talk) 23:05, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's key, it's not the avoidance of an actual military threat he was after (in fact, he would have liked to make the military large enough to be an effective threat). He wanted to avoid the appearance of a threat. It could be worded better: "Wilson made only minimal preparations for war and kept the army on its small peacetime basis, despite increasing demands for preparedness, to avoid a threatening posture." StuRat (talk) 23:43, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

That's better. I was thinking I would not have used the word 'preclude' in the original sentence, but wasn't sure what my alternative would be. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:53, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Transliterating names

Hi, all-

I'm wondering if there's a term for a particular aspect of transliteration; namely, the transliteration of given names, and the odd changes that often ensue while changing them from one language to another. For example, I've always been intrigued as to how the Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ entered English variously as Joshua and Jesus, both by way of the Greek Ἰησοῦς, which (apparently as Greeks were wont to do) saw fit to add a sigma where the original language didn't call for it. And I'm sure this happens in other languages as well. Is there a name for this phenomenon? Perhaps not the practice of transliterating names generally, but changes of that sort? Evan ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:18, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Maybe not quite the same thing, but the Russian names Александр, Алексей, Максим and Оксана should be romanised as Aleksandr, Aleksey, Maksim and Oksana respectively, but tend to become Alexander, Alexei, Maxim and Oxana. This is more a respelling of -ks- as -x- rather than introducing uncalled for letters per se, but to my mind it's as inappropriate as respelling 'flatulence' as 'phlatulence', or 'Canada' as 'Kanada', just because we could.

Then there are oddities like Tchaikovsky. In Russian it's Чайковский, which romanizes to Chaykovskiy. The Germans write Tschaikowsky, which accords with their orthographic conventions (the /ch/ sound is always 'tsch'). We anglophones could at least go for Chaikovsky. But somewhere along the way a T was introduced, and so we have an initial 'Tch-', which fits with no language known to me. There's also Tcherepnin and a few others. We even used to see Tchekhov, but Chekhov has finally won the day. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:21, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Did I catch you making a mistake? --Jayron32 10:59, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh, yes. How exciting for you! (See AnonMoos's elucidation below; but note I was referring to "initial 'Tch-'", not just any old -tch- . I'm sure a tcharming tchap like you can appreciate the point.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:45, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, next time we're in New Orleans together, we'll head down to Tchoupitoulas Street and buy some tchotchkes at a little gift shop. Maybe then we'll head down to the gym and play a game of tchoukball. Maybe go fishing in the Tchefuncte River while we're there. --Jayron32 01:04, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I can't wait to see all those lovely reminders of Merrie Englande and its quaint little language. When is my flight leaving? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:19, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Jack of Oz -- "tch" = [tʃ] fits with French orthographic conventions. And "Alexandr" is often preferred to "Aleksander" because it's obviously derived from the Greek name. One cumbersome convention in German is that [dʒ] has to be spelled as "dsch" (Dschungel is German for jungle)... AnonMoos (talk) 03:13, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:45, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Evanh2008 -- Late Biblical Hebrew yēšūʕ became Hellenistic Greek iēsūs because ancient Greek didn't have a semiconsonantal "y" sound as a phoneme (at most only an allophone), didn't have a contrast between "s" and "sh" sounds, and didn't have any pharyngeal consonants. As for the "-s" added at the end, that was necessary if the name were to be declined in Greek (i.e. have distinct case forms for at least nominative, accusative, and oblique). Some Biblical Hebrew names were borrowed into Greek as indeclinables, but that gave them a somewhat exotic or alien feeling in Greek, which was more suitable for place names, or names of minor characters, not names of important figures. So iēsūs was about as close as Greek could realistically come to yēšūʕ... AnonMoos (talk) 03:22, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

• It's also important to note that names themselves are not immune from the process of linguistic evolution. Words and sounds change and vary over time and place constantly, and always have, and always will. Names are not immune. Another example of a name undergoing what (appears at first) to be stark changes is the Jacob --> James transition. See James (name) for a rather simple history of those transitions. --Jayron32 11:03, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

We still haven't found a specific term, but I think this falls into the category of naturalization. Compare Latvian, in which foreign names are almost always rendered in the Latvian alphabet, with Latvian case endings: Baraks Obama, Džordžs V. Bušs, Hilarija Klintone, Pēteris Čaikovskis. Lesgles (talk) 16:33, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

By the way, Joshua did not enter English by way of the Greek Ἰησοῦς. It was based on the Hebrew original, as presented by the translators of the King James version of the Bible. Marco polo (talk) 15:44, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Correct! A momentary lapse on my part. Thanks for the replies, everybody. Evan ^{(talk|contribs)} 05:28, 22 April 2014 (UTC)