Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language

September 23

Latin Word for Quote

What is the word for 'quote,' I can't find anything online. My dictionary doesn't have it.

(Quote in the sense of a quote by a person. i.e "Veni, vidi, vici.")

Thanks, Falconus 00:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's one of the many uses of the word locus. The word sententia is used for a quotation which is a maxim or motto (in the sense of a school, company, or personal motto). And commemoratio is also possible, though that has an overtone that what's said may not be word-for-word the same as the original. (Remember that 'quote' in the sense you mean is a slang word for 'quotation'.) Xn4 01:36, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks--Falconus 03:12, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Or dictum, which literally just means "thing said", but it can be used for "remark" or "proverb". —Keenan Pepper 15:20, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe you might find some answers if you look and ask somebody, or look at a Henle Latin text book, available from Memoria Press or Loyola Press, or look at a Latin dictionary in the bookstore. Thanks, Laleena 22:21, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Samples of Middle Norwegian

Hi, I'm looking for samples of Middle Norwegian. Does anyone know where I could get images of Middle Norwegian documents, or links where I could get them? I would like as much as possible. Also, the wikipedia article titled "Norwegian language struggle" states "The last example found of an original Middle Norwegian document is from 1583.". That document is expecially important to me, and I hope I could get it. Thank you very much.70.74.35.53 05:41, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Lots and lots of this here: [1] Nothing from 1583, though. Haukur 15:50, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

It's fun to browse through the 16th century letters. Some are quite close to Old Norse while some are very Danicized. Let's take an example from a 1561 letter which is rather old-fashioned. [2] It starts like this:

"Ollum mannum them som thette breff see heller hører

sender Vlff y Bredeuig Torbiøn Muggehus oc Biur aa Vedum suorne

larettis men j Fyrisdall quede gudz oc sine kunnoct giørende att

vij sagum oc hørdum handerbande tere manna som saa heytha"

Immediately you can recognize an old formulaic greeting, in standardized Old Norse it comes out as: "Öllum mönnum þeim sem þetta bréf sjá ella heyra sendir ... kveðju guðs ok sína". ("To all people who see or hear this letter send [senders' names] God's greeting and their own.") It then goes on with more formulas: "kunnugt gjörandi at vér sáum ok heyrðum handarband þeirra manna sem svá heita" ("making known that we saw and heard the handshake of those men so named"). There are more formulas still later on. Generally the language tends to be more grammatically conservative in the formulas. Haukur 16:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

So Norwegian is different from Old Norse because it's Danicized?70.74.35.53 07:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Svangaskarð pronunciation

Hi, is Svangaskarð Faroese or Danish? Can someone come up with an IPA transcription, please? --Kjoonlee 07:47, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been told (thanks!) it's not Danish since the eth is not used in Danish. Now I just need a pronunciation, which doesn't have to be precise. --Kjoonlee 08:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The đ implies Faroese or Icelandic. I don't speak Faroese, but after reading the Faroese language page, I would place an IPA of something like [svɛaːŋaskarθ]. The article doesn't say anything about stress, and the [sk] cluster may be pronounced [ʃ].Steewi 11:24, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The only thing I know about Faroese is that it's almost impossible to deduce the pronunciation from the spelling. —Angr 11:35, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

It's actually not so very bad in this respect (certainly much better than English - just yesterday I learned how 'depot' is pronounced) but it is very challenging to deduce the spelling from the pronunciation - possibly more difficult than in English. Haukur 13:13, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, which is it? In one breath you say it's better than English with regard to deducing pronunciation from spelling, and in the next you say it's more difficult than English. —Angr 13:17, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

There are two issues: Deducing the pronunciation from the spelling and deducing the spelling from the pronunciation. Faroese spelling makes the second of these atrociously difficult to do (lots of homophony) but the first is not as difficult (a given letter or cluster is almost always pronounced the same way). Haukur 13:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The 'ð' is not pronounced. I can read the name for you if you like. I'm not a native speaker, though. Haukur 12:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd IPA it [svɛŋkaskɛaːr]. Maybe they'd say [svaŋkaskɛaːr] in Suðuroy, I'm not sure - I've never been there. Haukur 13:10, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. So the "g" is devoiced? And the first two "a" letters are short? I would have thought short vowels would be stable, not changed to ɛ. --Kjoonlee 17:11, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

G is always devoiced in Faroese (as well as in Danish and Icelandic). The 'ng' environment has tended to bring about changes (though, as I said, I think they may still say [svaŋk-] in Suðuroy which has the most conservative dialect). Compare with Icelandic where 'svangur' is pronounced as if it were written 'svángur' (except by some people from the West Fjords). Haukur 18:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The article on the Faroese language mentions a ɡ sound, so I was a bit skeptic. Thanks for the hints! I really appreciate them. --Kjoonlee 19:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Right, that article could be improved. The difference between the "fortis" and "lenis" consonants is one of aspiration, not voice. Haukur 19:54, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I've just noticed that Talk:Svangaskarð mentions [svENg_0asg_0_hEar\], in other words, [svɛŋg̊asg̊ʰɛaɹ]. --Kjoonlee 18:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Right. Personally I think [g̊] is a rather fancy way to write [k] and I don't know what that aspiration is doing on the second [g̊]. I'm fine with ending it with [ɛaɹ], though. The diphthong probably wouldn't really be long except in somewhat artificial speech and [ɹ] is more accurate than [r] for most speakers. Be forewarned, though, that there are some pedants who insist on [r]. Haukur 20:46, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I am "humbled"

Why do athletes and celebrities and politicians say they are "humbled" after a significant success? Wouldn't it make more sense to be "humbled" after an embarrassing defeat? Are they just stupid, or are they really trying to say they are "humble" as opposed to "humbled"; i.e., "I have just been crowned the victor, yet I am still humble." If so, bragging about how humble you are is hardly a sign of humility..... --The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 13:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I.e., "To stand here, beneath the victor's crown, with the knowledge that the success was not wholly in my power and may as easily pass away outside of my control, is to see myself in a perspective that imposes humility on me." Call it a sincere didactic belief in the tragic vicissitudes of the world, or a shallow convention—either way, this desire to avoid cockiness by making this acknowledgment of the precarious footing on top of the world goes back at least to Pindar's Odes in honor of victors in the Olympics and other ancient athletic contests. And yes, of course, humility is something that can be performed to increase one's stature. Wareh 17:17, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

"When I keep the Rule, I break it too, because I feel pride in keeping it." —Angr 18:08, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I think many of those who find themselves at the centre of attention are genuinely embarrassed by it, and some see instinctively that (as Rabindranath Tagore put it) "We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility." Xn4 18:36, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't despair, Fat Man, I know what you mean and what the verb means. Yes, their language skills are not all they should be, but boy can they chuck a ball or make you love them or avoid a question. --Milkbreath 18:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

"He was a very humble man, and with good reason, he had much to be humble about." :-) StuRat 18:52, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course, it was Churchill who quipped "Mr Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed, he has a lot to be modest about." But Margaret Thatcher much later said of Attlee "He was all substance and no show". Xn4 18:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for providing the source. StuRat 19:05, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

That's right - any claim of modesty can be seen to be instrinsically flawed - however a combination of modesty AND stupidity explains a lot...87.102.17.252 18:56, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe they're going by the parable of Jesus in Luke 14:11, "For every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted". -- JackofOz 02:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

A question from es.wikipedia regarding the femeninity of boats

(This is a cross-post from the Wiktionary Tea Room here.)

The Spanish Wikipedians were surprised to encounter the sentence, "She was the only German submarine to be taken into Allied service and to fight for both sides in World War II." They're puzzling over the use of "she" in regards to this ship, since English doesn't generally assign genders to things that don't naturally have them (people, animals, etc.) I've already told them that it is common enough to refer to ships (and occasionally other machines and things) as "she".

Is this just some general, agreed-upon personification, or does it have particular roots, as some of them are speculating, in anglo-saxon and/or nautical tradition? --Dvortygirl 18:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I would guess it came about from lonely sailors (probably the same group that looked at a sea cow and saw a mermaid). StuRat 19:03, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

<stormwarning>MCP remark on the horizon</stormwarning>: Admiral Nimitz said "Because she costs a lot in paint and powder to be eye-pleasing and ready to go out." Xn4 19:12, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

That strikes me as an extreme example of the use. It's no wonder the Spanish noticed it. That "she" sticks out like a sore thumb, and I probably wouldn't have written it that way. But it is correct enough, don't get me wrong. I think nobody knows for sure why we do that with ships, but we also do that generally. We say "Let 'er [her] rip!" and "Put 'er down there." There's an old song "She's a Grand Old Flag." I think that men, once the only shipboard sex, just tend to do that, out of their cavalierly and indiscriminately affectionate nature. In the case of ships, one can't rule out the power of superstition. I certainly wouldn't want to insult the thing that's keeping me out of range of sharkbite by calling her "it". ---Milkbreath 19:49, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

As was said, arbitrary personification rather than dimly remembered grammatical gender: scip was a neuter noun in Old English. Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

We tend to personify and feminize any powerful, fine-tuned piece of machinery such a ship, a car, a jet fighter or even a rifle. I've never stopped to wonder why we do that, but it is actually quite common, especially with ships. In fact, the nomenclature section of our article on Ship has the sentence "Almost invariably she would also have a bowsprit but this was not part of the definition." Freud would probably have something to say about this. 152.16.188.107 23:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I have several female aquaintances who call their cars "he". FiggyBee 00:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

As a personal observation, I would associate this use of "she" with people with a close affinity with the object or class of objects so described, or people pretending to have such an affinity. A man (usually a man rather than a woman, I believe) might say "she's a beauty" proudly of his own boat/gun/etc, or ingratiatingly of another man's; a sailor might describe any boat as "she"; I (a landlubber) would feel ridiculous doing so. I'm not sure about personification: I guess it's illustrated by naming the object. Certainly all ships have names, but only small private boats have female names (unless they're named after some notable, as with the Queen Mary). If an individual give a name to their favourite car/gun/etc, the pronoun would accord with the gender of the name. Do FiggyBee's acquaintances call their cars "Bob", "Jack", "Carlos", etc? If not, I suggest using "he" is just jocular inversion of the sexist stereotype. jnestorius^(talk) 01:34, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I find it doubly odd that we continue the feminization even when the ship is named after a man. Hence, this line from our article on the aircraft carrier, the USS FDR, "On 13 September 1948, Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed from Norfolk for a second tour of duty with the Mediterranean forces, from which she returned 23 January 1949." And people think the US isn't ready for a female president... Matt Deres 02:02, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

It should, of course, say "...the Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed...". —Angr 04:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

When I was designing firmware, I had several coworkers who'd call the machine he. —Tamfang 06:27, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

September 24

origin of English idiomatic phrase

Hi all - a lot of English idomatic phrases either have clearly prosaic origins or are skewed enough that you can hazard a guess as to where they came from, but there's one that sounds as though it might have a bit of a backstory - "as right as rain". What is the origin of it, and why is rain seen as particularly "right"? Grutness...wha? 00:21, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Apparently, "right as rain" is but the latest in a whole series of "right as [x]" sayings, dating back several hundred years. None of them have much literal meaning, and "rain" has survived due to it's pleasant alliteration (right as ninepence also used to be quite common in Britain, but has died out since decimalisation). [3] FiggyBee 00:38, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I once met an Egyptian in England during a shower of rain, and he said thoughtfully "A rainy country is a lucky country". Xn4 03:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments/answers - Grutness...wha? 23:57, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Spick-and-span (& spick and span; & spick)

Greetings, esteemed colleagues. I was thinking about the expression spick-and-span and wondering what spick means by itself (apart from its pejorative racist use).

At first I figured that it’s a hyphenated expression and maybe spick doesn’t exist separately. I looked in Wiktionary, which tells me that spick is a word that means “completely neat and clean”, but the examples they give don’t actually use the word ("the apartment was immaculate"; "in her immaculate white uniform"; "a spick-and-span kitchen"; "their spic red-visored caps") – which kinda troubles me. Then I went to my own trusty dictionary and learned that spick-and-span can indeed be spelled as three separate words (spick and span). It also provides the etymology that it's short for spick-and-span-new, a variant of span-new, ultimately from some Scandinavian language. This tells me that spick-and-span-new means new as a recently made spike (nail) and chip of wood. So that’s where spick came from and what it originally referred to.

What I’m left with is that spick in this context is recognised as a separate word, but seems to have no modern meaning except when in combination with span. Which would explain why it's probably better to hyphenate spick-and-span. Would this justify the unhyphenated spelling spick and span being classified as a dehyphenated hyphenated expression, and are there are any other examples of this sort of thing? -- JackofOz 03:27, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems more reasonable to hyphenate the phrase if spick has never stood by itself as a word (like the doubled part in a reduplication). Now the problem is do you consider spick just a variant of spike, although their pronunciations slightly differ from other other? If you do, then spick (as a variant of spike) can of course stands by itself with dignity and without hyphen, just like our good kith in kith and kin.--K.C. Tang 06:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The comparison with kith and kin is not good, as kith is obsolete but spike (represented by spick) is alive. But I can't think of a good example.--K.C. Tang 09:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

"spick" and "kith" are examples of cranberry morphemes. As regards hyphenation, English is more likely to hyphenate compounds used attributively ("a spick-and-span kitchen") than predicatively ("the kitchen was spick and span"). See adjective#Attributive, predicative, absolute, and substantive adjectives and English compound#Hyphenated compound adjectives though the latter in particular seems Original Research. jnestorius^(talk) 10:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, they would be more "Fossil words" (not sure why spick and span is listed in the Cranberry morpheme article). AnonMoos 11:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Whether applied to words or morphs, fossil-ness is a subtype of cranberry-ness. jnestorius^(talk) 22:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That was quite interesting to learn! We still say spánnýr (span-new) in Icelandic but I'd never made the connection. Haukur 23:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

@ K.C. Tang: I understand what you're saying, but regardless of its origin, "spick" no longer means "spike". We couldn't replace "the kitchen was spick and span" with "the kitchen was spike and span". Whether hyphenated or not, it seems to me that spick and span has a meaning only as a group of words, and the individual elements (except and) can't be assigned any meaning. I'm happy with the "cranberry morpheme" explanation, thanks Jnestorius (although I have to say I despise the term, which sounds more like the name of a rock band - but that's just me). This has been a revelation to me, actually. I always thought that all words have a meaning, and now I know there are exceptions. Thanks all. -- JackofOz 02:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Cranberry morphemes are rather common, but phrases like spick and span and kith and kin are not that common, with the morphemes written separately. Of course kith was once a legitimate word, but spick has never been.--K.C. Tang 05:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Really? If it's legitimate in some context to write "spick and span" unhyphenated, then surely each of those 3 words is ... er, a word. No? -- JackofOz 13:32, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

"Ziehen"

Could you, please, cite the different meanings that German word can have? My dictionary says that it just means "to pull" and "to tear" but I see native German speakers using it in a way those meanings simply don't fit. --Taraborn 08:35, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

There're so many of them... would you consider check it out first on this on-line dictionary?--K.C. Tang 09:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

My God, better I'll give the context. Just one minute. --Taraborn 09:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, just found one meaning that seems to fit. Thank you, User:K.C. Tang. --Taraborn 09:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

As Mark Twain said of the related word Zug, "Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull, Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition: but that thing which it does NOT mean—when all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been discovered yet." Twain jests that with the three words Schlag, Zug, and also, "the foreigner...is master of the situation...it doesn't make any difference how much the rest of the charge may scatter, you are bound to bag something with THEM." Wareh 16:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I have an idea you're pulling our leg. - Xn4

What does this idiomatic expression used by our colleague Xn4 mean? --Taraborn 09:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

To pull someone's leg means to be kidding around with them. Or to tell a small lie for the sake of humor. Dismas|^(talk) 09:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --Taraborn 09:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

In fact you can find out this not uncommon phrase easily on Webster or other on-line dictionaries, or simply by googling it. The Ref Desk is helpful, but for many purposes other online resources can give you an answer more quickly. Cheers.:)--K.C. Tang 09:20, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Woops, thanks for the advice. I'm sorry, then. --Taraborn 09:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

"Pulling our collective leg" gives me an interesting visual (I can visualize a collective mind, but a collective leg ?). StuRat 17:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't visualise either of them, Stu. What does your image of a collective mind look like? -- JackofOz 21:26, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

One huge head with 6 billion bodies attached to it ? (Or perhaps 100 billion, if we include the dead.) StuRat 03:49, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Gross. That sounds more like my concept of a big head. But thanks anyway. :) JackofOz 22:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I can only think we must have a virtual leg to be pulled. Without one, I'd have needed to say "I have an idea you're pulling our legs", and that would have taken us into uncharted waters. We really don't want to find ourselves up the creek without a paddle, which could leave us without a leg to stand on. Xn4 20:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Effect of words in brackets on sentence

Assuming that a monkey umbrella is some sort of umbrella designed for monkeys, which of the following sentences if correct: "she gave him a [monkey] umbrella" or "she gave him an [monkey] umbrella" - does the fact that monkey is in brackets have any effect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seans Potato Business (talk • contribs) 11:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The a/an alternation in English is pretty "low-level" (as linguists would say) -- if you pronounce a word when reading the passage out loud, then that word influences the form of a directly preceding indefinite article, regardless of whether it's in brackets or not. AnonMoos 11:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes. I, the reader, interpret square brackets to mean that the matter inside them was interjected afterwards and therefore stands outside the text. The text should be composed as though the brackets and whatever they contain are not there at all, because they wouldn't have been. --Milkbreath 11:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Since the brackets make it obvious that an editor has made a change there, I think you could safely change it to "she gave him [a monkey] umbrella". --Sean 14:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That would make the phrase read "she gave him umbrella" without the comment. I don't think that works. --Milkbreath 14:21, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

• I take brackets to mean some editing occurred, but parentheses to mean optional information. The former may change the grammar of the quote, but the latter may not. You see structurally necessary bracketed words all the time in newspapers. --Sean 15:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

It really depends on how you would read it aloud. If you would pronounce the written sentence as "she gave him an umbrella", you write "an". If you read it as "she gave him a monkey umbrella", you use "a" in writing as well. If you say "she gave him an open bracket monkey close bracket umbrella", you use "an".  --Lambiam 15:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd write "She gave him [a monkey] umbrella." --Kjoonlee 16:12, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

See the contribution by Sean and the reaction by Milkbreath above.  --Lambiam 16:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

See Sean's reaction to Milkbreaths's reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreath's question, please. That's my reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreaths's reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreath's post, and also my reaction to your reaction to my reaction to Milkbreath's post. --Kjoonlee 18:02, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Milkbreath did not post a question, and I see no indication that Sean's first contribution was a reaction to Milkbreath. When one contributor raises an issue with a prior contribution, it is not very useful to reiterate the earlier contribution without any reference to the issue raised. This, combined with a one-stop indentation level, created the impression that you were directly reacting to the original questioner without attention to the preceding comments. It is not clear to me from the question that the sentence is meant to represent a quoted text with an editorial modification.  --Lambiam 19:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Milkbreath did indeed post a question on the first line. "[W]hich of the following sentences [is] correct[?]" And Sean's first contribution is indented once, as a reaction to the initial post. "Since the brackets make it obvious [...]" I think you have to ponder some more about how your own words apply to yourself, since my one-step indentation level was indeed addressed to the original questioner. You are correct that I did not notice Sean's post or how Milkbreath objected to [a monkey], but you could have noticed how I could have agreed (without knowing) with Sean's second post and disagreed with Milkbreath's objection. --Kjoonlee 20:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Then I was indeed correct in thinking that you might have missed these posts. So why is it a problem then that I brought them to your attention? For the rest, are you intimating that User:Seans Potato Business is posting questions for User:Milkbreath? If your reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreaths's reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreath's post is "See Sean's reaction to Milkbreaths's reaction to Sean's reaction to Milkbreath's question", then I must say it is a curious reaction.  --Lambiam 20:40, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, you missed Sean's latest post (which I happen to agree with.) --Kjoonlee 21:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

FYI, in written Korean, you ignore any influence parenthetical words may have in pronunciation.

• Note how "은/는" morphophonemically depends on the preceding word:
  • 한국은
  • 코리아는
• Note how parenthetical words have no influence:
  • 한국(코리아)은
  • 코리아(한국)는
• However, when you have to read those out loud, you're forced to say:
  • 한국, 코리아는
  • 코리아, 한국은

--Kjoonlee 18:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Say what? Geez, and people complain when I use IPA here without explaining it! —Angr 18:42, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You should stand up for yourself! BTW, to understand my examples, no knowledge of Korean is necessary if you understand "a/an" differences and can see the differences in Korean symbols. --Kjoonlee 18:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

What could work in the opposite situation would be "she gave him a[n umbrella] monkey". It preserves how the sentence was before the editorial insertion of the bracketed comment, but also reads well aloud without ignoring the bracketed phrase. However, the only way I know to do that in the situation the original poster presented would be to cut the "an" so you'd have "she gave him... [a monkey] umbrella", where the "..." represents the deletion of text (in this case "an").-Andrew c ^[talk] 20:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it could work, but I'd give it a probability of about .0001%. If I saw "she gave him... [a monkey] umbrella" without any other context such as the above discussion, I would definitely understand that some text has been deleted, but I would assume the deleted text is almost anything other than the word "an". Syntactically speaking, "a" and "an" function virtually as the same word, so indicating the deletion of "an" only to insert "a" is in itself confusing misleading; and since the ellipsis appears outside the brackets but the "a" appears inside the brackets, this would further reinforce the reader's understanding that whatever's been deleted has nothing to do with just the word "an". -- JackofOz 22:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The question of how faithful to the original text one is in quoted material is not simple. Issues like:

• Silently correcting a misspelling, or leaving it and adding "[ sic ]"
• Converting locale-specific spellings
• Changing font, italic, boldface
• Toggling between single and double quotes
• etc

I have no background in editing, but I suspect most editors would have no qualms about silently changing "an" to "a" when explicitly inserting "[monkey]". jnestorius^(talk) 22:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. -- JackofOz 22:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Vampire

What is the term for someone who believes they are a Vampire? Hyper Girl 11:30, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that would depend on why they thought they were a vampire. If they are adopting the role as part of the vampire lifestyle, the term might be "vampire" (or perhaps "vampyre" - at least, within that community. (Others might use less polite and more judgmental terms.) If they actually believe themselves to be a vampire (see Renfield syndrome) they would probably be called "mentally ill" or "schizophrenic." - Eron ^Talk 12:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Unless they really are a vampire, of course... ;) FiggyBee 15:06, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

None of those automatic doors or bathroom fixtures work for us vampires.

(It really sucks to be a vampire.) :-ʒ StuRat 17:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That and having to wear evening dress all the time. FiggyBee 00:45, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

We always just called them "dorks" when I was in school. However, the article on Cotard delusion, while not providing an actual answer, is vaguely related and interesting in its own right... Deltopia 20:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

See Otherkin. Corvus cornix 21:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Khmer language

I have a son who is half Camodian and would like to know how his name is spelled in Cambodia. His name is 'skyler'. Is there a translation for his name? Is so can you help me find it for him? Azucena Bruzon (Contact information removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.1.63.226 (talk) 18:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

• If you can't find the information online, I recommend you contact the friendly folks at the Royal Embassy of Cambodia in Washington D.C. I've never known of a foreign embassy whose employees weren't eager to help Americans understand its culture. --M@rēino 20:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You can't translate a word unless you know what it means; what, if anything, does skyler mean? If you mean transliteration, the short answer is yes: Cambodian script is essentially alphabetic, so there does exist at least a rough transliteration for anything that's not too hard for a Cambodian to pronounce. Just don't expect to find it pre-printed in a Cambodian souvenir shop! —Tamfang 23:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK, Skyler is a respelling of Dutch Schuyler, so we first have to find out what that Dutch name means. —Angr 04:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

According to the meanings given for Schuylkill at the Schuylkill River article, schuyler could mean something like "hider" (someone who is hiding) and would be spelled schuiler in modern Dutch. The Dutch Wikipedia mentions Schuiler as an alternative name for Scheulder, a village between Maastricht and Aachen. It is possible that the Dutch surname Schuyler referred to someone coming from that village. In any case, I think a transliteration is the recommended way to go.  --Lambiam 12:19, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Hanks & Hodges A Dictionary of Surnames (Oxford 1988) lists Schuyler as a cognate of Schuler meaning scholar. —Tamfang (talk) 02:30, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Diacritics in Slovenian names

Hi there. In the past I have created several articles about people whose names, I'm practically certain, would be expressed using diacritics, specifically in this case, Slovenian cricketers, including Egon Jakofcic - which I'm certain should be placed at Egon Jakofčić (which is in fact how his name appears at http://www.ljcricket.com/SCA_Pages/BelaKCC.htm), Robert Jakofcic, same deal, identical target but for the forename. Before I go ahead and transfer these pages to these locations, is this linguistically accurate?

I am planning to post the same message later at Wikiproject Cricket to gauge their opinion on the matter from a project point of view. Usually we post the same names as present on Cricket Archive (Egon Jakofcic's page is here), but greater linguistic knowledge and capabilities as are probably available here would be appreciated as to receiving an opinion on the article's location.

To sum up:

• Should Egon Jakofcic's page be located at Egon Jakofčić?
• Should Robert Jakofcic's page be located at Robert Jakofčić?
• Should Damir Alidzanovic's page - not yet created - be located at Damir Alidzanović?
• Where do Borut Cegovnik and Bostjan Cegovnik belong? Surnamed Čegovnik?

Thank you for your help. Bobo. 21:43, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

If you look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions, it says -

Convention: Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly recognized by readers than the English form. The choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage (e.g., Besançon, Edvard Beneš and Göttingen, but Nuremburg, delicatessen, and Florence).

If I were you, I should use the forms with the diacritics for the name of the article, with redirect pages from the names as spelt without them. This parallels the approach with names which include accents we understand better, such as French and German ones: viz., André Antoine Bernard‎ is the main article, with a redirect page from Andre Antoine Bernard‎. (NB: new redirect pages from the former names of articles are created automatically when articles are moved to other spellings). Xn4 22:08, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

PS: People who live in English-speaking countries often drop the diacritics from their names, and if they have done that themselves, then perhaps it would be over-zealous to put them back. Anyway, Cegovnik seems to be correctly Čegovnik, and Bostjan is Boštjan. Xn4 22:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Opinions differ. In practice we usually do use the diacritics. Haukur 22:43, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I was merely checking that these were the correct diacritics to use in the situation, I realize that I should use diacriticized versions as per English usage, and have redirected as per your advice, Xn4. Thank you for your clarification, also, Haukurth. Bobo. 00:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

There are names ending in -ić, but -ič is much commoner, and 'Jakofčič' appears in Tomaž Jakofčič on the Slovene Wikipedia. Xn4 03:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, ć is not a proper letter of Slovenian alphabet, but only of Serbo-Croatian Gaj's Latin alphabet and most native Slovene surnames end in -ič. However, people originating from other ex-Yu countries often choose to retain it, but some get "Slovenized". Now, case by case:

1. First two are "Jakofčič"
2. Alidžanović is of apparent Bosniak origin, so the last letter could be either way (i.e. Slovenized or not). It's definitely not dz but dž.
3. The Cegovniks are indeed "Čegovnik"; in addition, the latter one is "Boštjan"

For most cases, native speakers know what the original should be from the root. Some surnames are ambiguous (some of all of "c", "č" and "ć" might fit), and "cegovnik" might fit in that category; however, Google reveals that the surname "Čegovnik" is relatively frequent. Duja► 12:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Loss of Gender in English Between Old and Modern English

So here's a question that I've been trying to find an answer to for the past couple of days:

As you may have noticed if you are an English speaker and familiar with any of the Romance or Germanic languages, many of the words in those languages are masculine, feminine, or neuter. English however lacks this feature. Naturally words like buck and doe are masculine and feminine, respectively, but it is not the same as, say, German or Spanish. In these languages a word which describes a male could be a feminine word, and often the article must reflect the gender of that word.

Consider, English is based off of Anglo-Saxon which is a Germanic language brought by invading tribes. When English was Old English it still had gender associations with words, as it was still heavily Germanic. Then in 1066 the Normans, who speak French, take over England and proceed to bring Latin influences to the language. I'm confused as to how English could develop along such a different path.

Does anyone know when and why English dropped the genders to create our current, gender-neutral English language?

---

Patrick —Preceding unsigned comment added by PizzaSoviet (talk • contribs) 22:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The Norman influence on the English was so great that Middle English resembles a creole in some ways—in other words, a fusion of Old English and French. The process of creolization tends to remove more "complicated" features of the parent languages, especially those features which require extensive inflection or agreement. Not only was grammatical gender pretty much lost by Chaucer's time, but the Old English declension system was mostly gone as well. Strad 23:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Which isn't a view supported by historical linguists, I gather. I don't know the real reason either, but I suspect it's got more to do with the following:

1. unstressed vowels merged into schwa as time went
2. almost all words had stress on the first syllable
3. gender was indicated by the last syllable
4. so differences in the last syllable of a word were reduced, which meant gender disappeared
   • as well as declension

--Kjoonlee 23:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That's not very compelling. German also had all unstressed vowels (in grammatical endings) merging into schwa and stress on the first syllable. Yet it still has three genders. Haukur 23:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, don't argue with me. Argue with the Old English speakers for dropping their final syllables. --Kjoonlee 23:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

But note also that Proto Indo-European had eight cases whereas German now has less than five. English has almost none (except in pronouns). --Kjoonlee 00:00, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

German also lost many final syllables. The Romance languages (well, most of them) lost all case distinction in nouns without losing gender. The mainland Scandinavian languages (except for some isolated dialects) also lost all case distinction in nouns without losing the gender distinction. Those languages did, however, go from three to two genders. Haukur 00:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

And no, these changes I mentioned didn't happen overnight. They were always in progress, and the Battle of Hastings is just a convenient point to mark a period. --Kjoonlee 23:47, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, it certainly ain't creolization (and defintely not with French), though this has been claimed, by e.g. Salikoko Mufwene. Interestingly, most Germanic languages have been reducing the number of genders (and cases): German is actually quite conservative. Dutch and Swedish have lost the fem-masc distinction, for example, while neuter is still different. So there's seems to be linguistic drift on that score. And as England was the site of people from lots of dialects arriving, there may well have been contact-induced simplification more than other places (this is very different from creolization), but early Anglo-Saxon texts don't seem to show much sign of this, so that's a problem with that theory. I still like it though. Drmaik 00:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

• The creolisation began at a deeper, grammatical level with the coming of the Norse-speaking peoples in the ?7th to the 9th centuries CE. The Normans' impact was less grammatical and more lexical. Gender would have been stripped away in geographical patches before the arrival of the Normans. Tony (talk) 01:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The motivations behind language change are often quite obscure - why has Cockney English lost their th ([θð]) phonemes, while other varieties have kept it? The change can partly be explained through the upheaval that was brought in when the Normans started using the Anglo-Saxon of the lower classes and the lower classes started using more Norman words, but that wouldn't be the only motivating factor. Part of it is also the changes that simply happen in languages as they are passed on to new generations. Another factor would be the previously mentioned loss of case marking and centralisation of vowels. There is evidence of the loss/confusion of features in pre-Norman English, so the Normans can't be blamed for everything. Steewi 02:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Tony's statement is backed by "Que sais-je de l'histoire de la langue anglaise", which describes the clash between the two closely related languages (Anglo-Saxon and the language of the "Danes") with similar root words and the subsequent loss of a great deal of inflection. SaundersW 21:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

A Norse English contact-induced leveling effect may very well have been the instigator of gender loss and some other simplifications of English morphology. However, as far as I am aware that is still speculative. BTW, there are still two cases in English nouns, general and possessive (aka genitive, e.g., the 's form). In that sense Romance languages are more leveled. I'm not a historical linguist; perhaps someone knows more. mnewmanqc 00:35, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Help with name pronunciation, Peter Geach

Anyone know how to say his last name Peter_Geach ? SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 23:51, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The G is hard, as in "golf", and the name rhymes with "teach" or "leech". DuncanHill 23:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!, that was my guess but I was afraid it might be something like gey ack SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 23:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

September 25

Help with Latin quotation

I'm attempting to ascertain which version of this quotation is more gramatically correct. The former was my intial encounter with the quotation, from one of Rousseau's discourses. The latter is more prevalent.

"Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intelligor illis"

"Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli"

Wilymage 01:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

They're both fine, grammatically (except that 'intellegor' is a more usual form) but they have rather different meanings. The second makes better sense and also ties in with the most usual English translation, which includes 'for' or 'because' (quia). Both the versions you give are evidently quoted as being from Ovid's Tristia, and a good edition of that may explain the discrepancy. It may just be that Rousseau or someone else quoted it wrongly and people have been copying the mistake ever since. Xn4 02:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

PS: The text of Tristia online here at thelatinlibrary.com has 'Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intellegor ulli', a mixture of the two versions you quoted. But 'Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intellegor ulli' has more Google hits than any of the other permutations, followed closely by the one with the extra 'i' in 'intelligor' Xn4 03:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It's Tristia 5.10.37 (Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intellegor ulli). Xn4's intuition seems right: "The citation Rousseau either initially miscopied or copied correctly from a faulty edition on both occasions of the line's appearance in his œuvre," according to J.F. Jones, Rousseau's Dialogues (Paris: Droz, 1991), p. 190 n. 40. It appears that Rousseau used quia non intelligor illis: this is found in good modern editions, in Recueil de toutes les pieces qui ont été publiées a l'occasion du discours (1753), p. 6, in the 1756 edition of the Discourse, and in what purports to be the Magazin de Londres of 1749[4][5], but the date must be wrong, or there's more to it than I understand, because the magazine is referring to Rousseau. (I was about to get even more infatuated with Google Books & think I'd discovered the source of his misquotation before I realized that the magazine's source must have been Rousseau. Possibly several years are bound together and Google, as in other cases I've seen, went with the first title page. Can anyone fathom why they except this & many other public domain periodicals from their full view?) Wareh 03:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Quite a crux. The Google results for "discourse barbarus hic ego" return "Barbarus hic ego sum, qui(a) non intelligor illis." Looking closer, it seems the only results that have this exact variant -- other than personal web sites -- pertain to Rousseau's use of the quote. I have personally seen this in print for Rousseau's Discourses. Is it safe then to assume that the former variant is simply an old mis-quotation by Rousseau himself or an associate? Wilymage 05:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Dissecting responses thus far: "quia" is preferable; "intellegor" is preferable. Is "ulli" vs "illis" pertinent? Wilymage 05:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The answer is getting clearer. It depends who you want to quote. If Ovid, then 'Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intellegor ulli'. If Rousseau misquoting Ovid, then Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis'. Xn4 09:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

They are both wrong, as Xn4 pointed out and documented above. For a Latin sentence, getting Google hits is in no way a guarantee of correctedness... Paolo. --79.60.3.92 (talk) 08:04, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Idioms & Proverbs

An idiom is also a proverb? Would you mind telling me the difference between them? Could you give me some clear and easy examples to illustrate them? Thank you many times Binhco 04:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Idioms and proverbs are two quite different things. A proverb is a short phrase which expresses a common belief or lesson - for example many hands make light work, or you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. An idiom is a phrase which doesn't make much literal sense but requires a cultural understanding, like nose to the grindstone, which means "working hard", or green thumbs, which means "good at gardening". Metaphorical or otherwise obscure proverbs may be considered idioms (like the second example above; it's not really about omelettes or eggs, but about making sacrifices to achieve goals), but most idioms are not proverbs. FiggyBee 04:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Well-known proverbs are often quoted only in a partial form (e.g. "Too many cooks [spoil the broth]") or are alluded to rather than quoted. Such fragments may be promoted to the status of idioms (e.g. "clutching at straws", from the proverb "a drowning man clutches at straws") and even survive as idioms after the original proverb has been forgotten (e.g. "bear" (stockmarket) < bearskin jobber < "sell the bearskin before one has caught the bear"). However, there are idioms which are not proverbs, and proverbs which are not idioms. jnestorius^(talk) 14:51, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

In other words, there's an overlap between the two sets. A given proverb might also be an idiom, but not necessarily. A given idiom might also be a proverb, but not necessarily. -- JackofOz 21:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much for spending time answering my question. Your answer is very clear and useful. But someone told me that "Usually provers are sentences", is that right? (to my knowledge, very many idioms are sentences).And (he said)"...English is like that...many exceptions... so call it a proverb or idiom....it is your call...". If so, how can I say it is a proverb or an idiom even though I understand its meaning clearly? Please explain to me two more questions: 1./ What about an expression? Is there any difference between them (idioms, proverbs, and expressions)? 2./ I've found a word "proverbidiom" (from T. E. Breitenbach and Studio Tour). Is it a new English word and a kind of blends such as "motel", "brunch"...? If so , what does it mean? Thank you and Best Wishes Binhco 02:29, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Let's see... yes, proverbs are usually sentences, but like jnestorius said they're often referred to in shorthand with just a few words. To your questions;

1 - an expression is a common way of expressing an idea - that is, a common way of putting it into words. So both idioms and proverbs are expressions.

2 - "Proverbidiom" is the name of Breitenbach's poster. It's not a real word and doesn't mean anything. Just by-the-way, blends like motel and brunch are called portmanteau words.

FiggyBee 04:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Definition of the word "native"

I recently found myself under a huge fight about the term "Native American". I am from Canada, and in Canada it is very typical to associate the word "native" with "indigenous", particularly in this context. Wikipedia also uses it in this sense, although without citations. The US census also appears to do so, and a cursory look at a few dictionaries also confirms that "indigenous" can be synonymous for "native", among other meanings.

Nevertheless, I have on this occasion (and on previous occasions), found myself in the middle of a viscious pitched battle over what is a "Native American". Many appear to want to reserve the term "Native American" to refer ONLY to anyone who is born in the Americas, or potentially the USA. The claim has been made to me, repeatedly, that the "official legal definition" of the phrase "Native American" is anyone who is born in the Americas (or maybe in the USA). I am somewhat taken aback whenever I am confronted with this kind of dispute, and I was not able to find any such definition in a short search. Some of the fires of passion here are probably stoked by various political sensibilities.

So I ask, what is a "Native American"? What is the legal definition of the phrase "Native American"? Can similar things be said for the word "native"?--Filll 16:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Words don't mean what people want them to mean; people just say words which spread (or die out). The person who confronted you is a prescriptivist of the worst kind: people who try to force their words on other people. People speak differently. Period. You shouldn't force your own stance on anybody, especially when it comes to words. You don't force people to dress in a certain manner or eat in a certain manner, do you? Well you do have to keep your manners, but what you wear or eat in a civil way should be a private matter, off-limits to nosy parkers. So tell them that what you want words to mean don't change what words do mean. "This dictionary supports my claim," they might say. Scoff at them. Dictionaries are descriptivist, and they're more than likely to put more support on your own claims. --Kjoonlee 16:55, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

One thing you could use against him would be the difference in pronunciation between "blackboard" and "black board (a board which is black)." Compound nouns (and stock phrases) can mean something totally different from their constituent parts. Compound nouns have stress on the first syllable. If you want to mention something different from the compound, you have to put heavy stress on the second word. Is he putting heavy stress on American? --Kjoonlee 17:40, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to note that the legal definition of a word is rarely the same as the various dictionary definitions, which can be very, very flexible, even contradictory. The term Native American is ambiguous, so it is probably best avoided if you want to be understaood.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:50, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Words mean what people agree they mean. "Nimrod" used to be a compliment, but a late-twentieth-century Warner Brothers' ruling turned it into an official insult. You're in Canada, and I don't know as much as I probably should about the place, but here in the USA the government doesn't get to define words—the television does that. Also, in the USA the stand-alone noun "American" can only mean "citizen of the USA", and if you mean "the New World" you have to say "the Americas". I know that's hard to believe; I've had no end of trouble convincing Brits of that. To get back to the point, it occurs to me that there is a difference between "Native" and "native". To my mind, a "Native American" is an American Indian (North American, when I think about it) being referred to by someone who either doesn't think much about terms or thinks about them too much. A "native American" is anybody born in the USA. In speech there is ambiguity, which militates against the PC neologism, incidentally. --Milkbreath 18:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I looked in 23 general dictionaries and found that they all included "indigenous" as one of the meanings of the word "native", or "Native American". Interestingly, two (Encarta and Oxford) said this meaning is now viewed as derogatory (?? I never heard of this before...interesting??). I looked in 7 legal dictionaries and only 1 had a meaning similar to what he proposed, however it also said any person born anywhere who was in the USA on July 4, 1776 was a Native American and that Blacks and Indians are not US citizens. So that last definition might be a couple of hundred years out of date...--Filll 18:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Calling someone a native or speaking of 'native' is often likely to be seen as derogatory. Calling some a Native American however is notNil Einne 02:43, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The eternal problem of words and communication is the fact that words have multiple meanings (polysemy) and that we all have varying references. Just like wearing clothes sends different signals to different people, using certain words send different signals. Technically, you are both right. Similar problems can appear because a word changes meaning over time.--Berig 18:45, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope, when you claim someone else is wrong based on your own semantics, you are definitely wrong. --Kjoonlee 19:40, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

You might find useful information in the various articles linked from the page Native Americans, as well as in Race and ethnicity in the United States Census. jnestorius^(talk) 20:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

We have articles on part of this: see Native Americans and Native American name controversy. Rmhermen 20:12, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

There is generally no such thing as an "official legal definition" in English. However, if you want to out-pedant your foes, you can point out that 25 USC 3001 (part of a U.S. federal law) reads:

"(9) "Native American" means of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the United States."

-- Mwalcoff 03:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Some of the people the original poster was referring to may well have confused "native" with "natural born". As to the offensiveness of "native", it is obviously offensive now in the old-fashioned, colonialist sense (the natives are restless) - which was official in apartheid South Africa. And as to the original question, this is a pretty common "point" among a certain sort of smart alec, and has to my mind less to do with language prescriptivism than with thinking oneself quite clever and naughtily anti-pc.--Rallette 10:27, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

In my (American) experience the term "Native American" is usually used to refer to a member of the various indigenous populations, or "Amerindians", or whatever you want to call them/they want to be called. The other usage of the term is most often a political statement of some kind and can be distinguished in a number of ways. Emphasis: The first usage is often just said casually while in the latter usage the "Native" is emphasized (stress the first syllable), with a pause before the "American" is said. Context: If the person using the term has just finished ranting about immigrants and "them", "coming over here" you know which usage they're using. Also, the "native" to mean natural-born is especially common in the type of person just mentioned, who has also recently watched Gangs of New York; which portrays an anti-immigration gang called, "The Natives". Finally, maybe take a quick peek at Nativism. 38.112.225.84 15:39, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I've occasionally encountered the neologism Siberian-American. —Tamfang 06:35, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

… and, even more facetiously, Bering Sea Pedestrian. —Tamfang (talk) 02:38, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Percentage of English words derived from Latin or Romance languages

Now that I'm learning German I really miss those easily recognizable words that English has for us, speakers of Romance languages. My question is: what is, approximately, the percentage of English words that have Latin roots? --Taraborn 21:27, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

My guess would have been around 20% but it's over half! From Latin: English derives 60% of its words from Latin: largely indirectly through French, but partly through direct borrowings made especially during the 1600s in England. HYENASTE 22:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Your original guess is probably based on the fact that, though 60% of English's words are derived from Latin, the majority of those words used most commonly are from German or Scandinavian. Corvus cornix 01:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I read somewhere that the figure was 30%, but my experience with German clearly makes 60% much closer to reality. Being both Germanic languages, some time ago I thought that German could be easier for an Englishman than, for example, Spanish; but now seeing the greater grammar complexity of German and the fact that they share only basic vocabulary my mind has changed completely. --Taraborn 10:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The number of English words is not well-defined. You can pick your favorite dictionary and count the origins of its words. More instructive would be a graph of minimum-word-frequency against percentage-of-Romance-origin. As previous commentators suggest, the lower the tolerated frequency, the greater the proportion of Latin. Assigning a single percentage, however, is meaningless. jnestorius^(talk) 12:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the English-speaking questioner's experience learning German is pretty typical: it presents a far tougher vocabulary hurdle than the Romance languages. Yes, you have the satisfaction of seeing some very pedestrian & common words strikingly resembling English. But these words are so common, that even if you're studying Chinese, you'll pick them up soon. On the other hand, when it comes time to speak of (still pretty basic) things like "result," "impression," etc., etc., you find that you have to learn a new vocabulary to speak or read at this level (even if many of these words are calques). With Romance languages, once you learn the basic everyday words, you can do darn well faking the more abstract vocabulary on the basis of Latinate English words. Wareh 13:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

We're all aware that the "number of English words" is not well-defined, and, additionally, we all know (or should know) that percentage is an approximation and should be taken to satisfy one's curiosity, not as a scientific law. Please, next time think a little more before posting certain replies.

And, Wareh, you've described the situation I'm experiencing perfectly. The only words that are familiar are too common to actually be time-saving, and are those words you point out, which aren't that uncommon, by the way, that are a true pain. --Taraborn 14:06, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

If you're aware that "number of English words" is not well-defined, and thus that "percentage of English words" is not defined, you might at the least have the courtesy to point that out in your original question. Not everyone knows this—certainly not everyone who asks questions here knows this—so if you know that the correct answer to your question is not the one you want, it helps everyone if you make that clear up front. Also, percentages are not approximations; they are proportions. Tesseran 23:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that anyone doesn't know that the "number of English words" is not well-defined. On the other hand, if a number is an approximation, then a part of an approximation is also approximate. To sum up, what I meant is that I'm assuming the RD users are humans, that's why I can (or thought I could) ommit what is obvious to a human mind. --Taraborn 02:34, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I've taken or taught enough introductory linguistics courses to have seen questions like "which language has the biggest vocabulary?" come up far too many times, without any understanding of the issues that go into even properly defining that question. I envy you that you haven't come across this; for me, it got quite frustrating (or perhaps "disappointing" is better) to hear it over and over. (Fortunately, I got out of that field, so I'm mostly safe from such questions now.) Anyway, I think the tendency on the reference desks is to assume that the questioner knows little, rather than a lot. This is not to be rude; it's simply that most people in the world are not experts, or ever educated, in a given field. Similarly, even if something is obvious to the people answering your question, they may not want to assume that it's obvious to you. If answerers guess wrong regarding your background, certainly correct them, but remember that they're trying to help you. I must have misunderstood your comment about percentages. Tesseran 03:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me that the fact that this type of question comes up over and over (both here and elsewhere) demonstrates that not everyone understands that the number of words in a given language is not well defined. This is hardly surprising if "most people in the world are not experts, or ever educated, in a given field". Hence your disappointment surprises me, Tesseran. -- JackofOz 04:14, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I meant disappointed in the sense that my hopes were disappointed, not that I was disappointed in my students. Tesseran 07:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, now I understand. Sorry for any misunderstandings I may have caused. --Taraborn 12:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

September 26

Wizard of Oz lyrics

"The Merry Old Land of Oz claims:

There are not very many English words that rhyme with "Oz" (homophone of "ahz"), so the song has a number of words that are similar, and whose pronunciation is altered to rhyme: "strahz" instead of "straws", "brahz" instead of "brass" (or perhaps "bronze"), "clahz" instead of "claws", etc.

But to me, and my Canadian accent, all these words rhyme. I can imagine there are American accents where they do not rhyme; I remember being similarly bewildered that "walk" and "talk" do not rhyme for some Americans so I assume the same thing is happening here. But I am having trouble pronouncing them so they don't. These transcriptions don't help, either. Can anyone enlighten me? Adam Bishop 06:33, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

As an American, they rhyme for me too, with the exception of brass/bronze, neither of which do. Seems odd. -Elmer Clark 07:12, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

As a non-American, I wouldn't pronounce "Oz" as "ahz" to begin with, but I wouldn't rhyme it with straws, claws or brass either (and I wouldn't rhyme claws/straws and brass - they rhyme with pours and pass, respectively). "Walk" and "talk" definitely rhyme. FiggyBee 07:16, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Speaking with a southeastern English accent, the only word that rhymes with Oz is because. It does not rhyme with straws or claws (although they rhyme with each other) or with brass, which rhymes with class and arse but not with mass. (How I wish I knew how to get the IPA characters to illustrate this more clearly.)

In conclusion, to state categorically in the article that Oz is a homophone of ahz is yet another example of the American bias that permeates Wikipedia. If it's not true in Canada, or Britain, or countless other places, then it shouldn't be stated as fact. 80.254.147.52 11:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't realized that The Wizard of Oz was a Canadian-British production. (In case that's not clear: American-bashing is not Wikipedian.) More to the point, I can think of only one word, "ahs", that rhymes in my USAn dialect, and that's really a homophone, not a rhyme. --Milkbreath 11:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

"The American bias that permeates Wikipedia"??? You mean like the policy-violating moves of Humor to Humour and Yogurt to Yoghurt that cannot now be corrected? Anyway, regardless of the nationalities of the production companies, the actors were mostly Americans. Since most North Americans have the father-bother merger, the most commonly repeated rhymes of Oz in the song (namely tra-la-las and la-di-das) rhyme perfectly. "Straws" and "claws" only rhyme for people with the cot-caught merger; "brass" doesn't rhyme with "Oz" for anyone. (I'm reminded of the rhyme in "On the Street Where You Live" between rather and bother which only works if you combine the RP pronunciation of rather with the American pronunciation of bother.) As for the article, the claim that instigated this question is unsourced and smells like original research, so I'm off to remove it. —Angr 15:22, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the anon was intending to be rude, but it certainly didn't read that way to me. I read their comment on ""Oz" (homophone of "ahz")" to be pointing out that it is not true for everyone, so the sentence should indicate that it is a homophone as sung in the film or some such, or that 'Oz is pronounced 'ahz' in the film'. As to the bias, everyone tends to think Wikipedia is biased against their variety of English, since they tend to notice where it differs. On a different note, I differentiate between cot and caught (they do not merge for me), and yet straws and claws rhyme. Skittle 17:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I meant straws and claws only rhyme with Oz for people who have the merger. I think they rhyme with each other for everyone. —Angr 18:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah, makees more sense. I was repeating 'straws/claws' over and over, trying to find a non-rhyme... 'stros/claws'? :) Skittle 23:53, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

See cot-caught merger, Father-bother merger, trap–bath split. jnestorius^(talk) 11:54, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

BTW "We're Off to See the Wizard" rhymes was and because with both Oz and does, reflecting both of the common American pronunciations of was and because. jnestorius^(talk) 12:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I can think of another rhyme, the girl's name Roz, as in Roz Doyle. StuRat 15:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Or "bras". Which would be a different kind of movie, I suppose. - Nunh-huh 17:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Or "bahs", along the line of "ahs" above. Is a room full of Scrooges full of bahs humbug? Tesseran 23:40, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Er, sorry, I should have said that all the words except "brass" rhyme, since that one is different for me. Adam Bishop 22:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

This is regional even within the U.S. In New York (and much of the northeast) "cot" and "caught" are quite distinct vocally; on the West Coast they are not. I'm not sure about other regions, I'm not expert on this, but I'm a transplanted NY-er who lives in Seattle. - Jmabel | Talk 23:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't possibly comment.  :) -- JackofOz 23:56, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a common problem that in some parts of the English-speaking world two words rhyme, but in others they don't. In Somerset, I've often heard people say "Wales, the country" and "Wells, the place", because in the local dialect the two names sound the same. In the North of England, Newcastle rhymes with 'tassle', but in the South it rhymes with 'parcel'. Xn4 00:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You've reminded me of the time a California teenager told me "we're going well-washing" and eventually made me understand that she meant "whale-watching". —Tamfang 06:39, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

translation into Latin

Hi, I work at a Renaissance Faire and have been asked if I can find any way to translate three sentences into proper Latin. None of my contacts have been able to help. Can anyone out there help me? Some of them are risque, but all are rather punnish--those Elizabethan English LOVED their bawdy word plays! Thanks, and here they are:

First phrase: More horn, less filling (Reference: this almost one-gallon capacity buffalo horn tankard needs to be filled less often than a smaller one would.)

Second phrase: Chastity belts fitted here A graffitum scrawled on the chimney over the blacksmith's forge.

Third phrase: The harder the tip, the deeper the penetration. (Referring to quality of steel used in forging an arrowhead, but double entendre fully intended) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.116.114.105 (talk) 19:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

1. Plus cornui, minus replendi. 2. Baltei castitatis hic cincti (although that's not quite what you do with a chastity belt, I guess). 3. Quo aculeus fortis, eo introitus altus. Sorry, that's roughly off the top of my head, with some further research I'm sure we can find something better. Adam Bishop 22:05, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

3. How about Quo cacumen durus, eo introitus penitus? Xn4 00:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, perhaps the gerundive is better in 2 - cingendi, since it refers to belts that have not yet been fitted. And the medieval term for "chastity belt" appears to be "cingulum castitatis"; therefore, "cingula castitatis hic cingenda". Adam Bishop 01:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.210.170.48 (talk)

"How do you like my paragraph?"

Here something that I would think may have both grammatical (and context) errors. What do you think? Put it another way, what word or form in the paragraph do you believe I can improve upon?

Here it is:

Mr. Davis had enough things to worry about instead of accumulating his ravaged desk into something so capacious and immense he couldn't organize it. His day at the office had been constant trauma, but he still didn't bethink it ranked Number 1 among everything else that turned from pink and red roses into dark and dying flowers. His new Nissan Altima being fender bendered on the way highway to Route 16, his grandmother spilling a boiling cup of coffee onto his lap, Bingo piddling all in his work review(explaining the deadly surge of furious fire from Mr. Simmons, his boss), and last but now least Davis's wife asking for a divorce. The last one, he himself tried to prevent. He morbidly sits on the white couch of their little eight room house. He has no clue as to why Danietta is walking fast ---so fast, and quick ---- around the house desperately flipping through magazines, periodicals, books, and newspapers. He watches with his chin drooping down to the uppermost of his lap, tired and mostly stressed after the agonal lax at the office and to hear Mr. Simmons roar. He could still hear it if the room was silent and there was no one flipping papers around the house or speaking in mutterered phrases which didn't really mean anything but complete gibberish. Yet, this gibberish soon became it's own roars, louder than ever.

--75.44.155.52 22:01, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I love it. I would get rid of the apostrophe in "its" and maybe add a space after "review", but that's all. --Milkbreath 22:10, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

"accumulating"? "bethink"? "fast and quick"? Is "lax" a noun (other than Norse for salmon)? I'd hyphenate "fender-bendered" (or make it "fender-bent"); drop "highway"; hyphenate "eight-room house"; "mutterered" is misspellelled. —Tamfang 23:06, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

IMHO, I think it's overwritten. I had trouble following the long sentences, and I felt the tenses were mixed up in places. Unnecessarily obscure words are used a little too much, too. That said, it definately portrays an strong sense of despair (or something like that) which is what you're aiming for? Don't feel you have to take my opinion to heart - I'm a science student! Aaadddaaammm 23:16, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

A few thoughts:

• The string of words "His new Nissan Altima ... asking for a divorce" is a series of participial phrases and is not a valid sentence on its own. You could easily fix this by inserting a dash between this and the previous sentence (and adjusting the punctuation, of course).
• " ... last but now least Davis's wife asking for a divorce" doesn't quite make sense to me - maybe the "now" is better placed after "wife". Otherwise it reads as if this request for a divorce was previously a more significant matter but has now been relegated to lesser significance because of more recent events. (Later thought: Maybe you mistyped the word "not", in which case it makes perfect sense where it is when you correct the spelling)
• "The uppermost of his lap" is a slightly odd expression. Maybe "part" could follow "uppermost".
• "... after the agonal lax at the office and to hear Mr. Simmons roar" is a non-parallel construction - maybe try "and hearing Mr. Simmons roar".
• "He could still hear it if the room was silent and there was no one flipping papers around the house or speaking in mutterered phrases which didn't really mean anything but complete gibberish." - I think this tries to contain too many concepts in the one sentence. The point I think you're trying to get across is that he could still hear it if the room was silent and there was no one flipping papers around the house or speaking in muttered phrases. Whether those muttered phrases were intelligible or otherwise is not relevant. If they were in fact complete gibberish, that would be a new topic requiring a new sentence.
• Best of luck with whatever this is for. -- JackofOz 04:04, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You don't accumulate a singular item, so accumulating a desk is wrong. You would accumulate things on the desk. And what makes the desk ravaged? Did somebody take an axe to it? Others have commented on bethink -- that's medieval. And the second half of the "bethink" sentence rambles on so much that it makes no sense and kind of falls apart. The Nissan Altima sentence rambles without a verb, so there really isn't a sentence there. And it's last but not least. Bingo piddled on his work review (whatever that is). You switch from past tense to present in mid-paragraph. I don't think of an eight room house as little, so that throws me off. If his chin droops to his lap, he's quite a contortionist. "agonal lax" is meaningless. And there should probably be at least two, if not three, paragraphs here. (Don't mind me, I'm an editor.  :) ) Corvus cornix 18:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Sew what's new?

Why don't "sew" and "new" rhyme? Dismas|^(talk) 22:02, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Rhyme is determined by pronunciation. /soʊ/ and /nyu/ don't rhyme because the last stressed syllables of these words have different vowels. Or are you asking why "sew" is written like it is? I suspect that (as for "shew") it represents an earlier pronunciation that is now obsolete – although you can hear /səʊ/ in British English.  --Lambiam 22:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, "sew" rhymes with "too" for some speakers of British English, myself included. --Kjoonlee 00:52, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Is the vowel /u/ or /oʊ/? Tesseran 01:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, to expand on what I asked, if they're spelled the same, except the first letter of course, then why wouldn't they be pronounced the same? So you're saying that sew comes from an earlier word "shew"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dismas (talk • contribs) 04:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Not exactly. Although spelling and pronunciation were closely linked in earlier forms of English, before there was a standard, English has since diverted from these spellings. This is further complicated by irregularity in the choosing of standard spellings. In some cases, one pronunciation was chosen as standard, yet the standard spelling was based on a different pronunciation. This is most obvious in the word 'colonel', where the spelling was standardised from an Italian borrowing, but the pronunciation was standardised off a French(?) borrowing of the same word. I don't think they used to rhyme, despite the spelling.Steewi 05:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, "new" is /nju/, not /nyu/.--Estrellador* 14:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

(Response to Tesseran) In my case, sew is [suː] and too is [tuː]. I might pronounce sew as [səʊ] sometimes, but I'd always say "[suːɪŋ] needle" and never "[səʊɪŋ] needle." --Kjoonlee 15:34, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

But I nevertheless say [səʊn] instead of [suːn]. --Kjoonlee 15:36, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually they do rhyme, just to the eye, and not to the ear. They are called, appropriately, "eye rhymes."--Fuhghettaboutit 15:39, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

(In reply to Dismas:) 'Shew' is an formerly common spelling of 'show': the OED has examples up to 1880, and I'm sure it survived into the 20th century. --ColinFine 22:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed it did. I have a book published by Cambridge University Press in 1906 that uses the spelling "shew". —Angr 04:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

September 27

Are there translation sites where Japanese words are in English letter words instead of symbols?

I wanted to translate English sentences to Japanese, but they come up in symbols (kanji). So, are there sites where translating English to Japanese comes up with English letter Japanese words (like: Konnichiwa instead of こんにちは)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.238.155.66 (talk) 00:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

search around for "romaji dictionary" on search engines and you will find a ton. I can't recommend any though. -- Diletante 00:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

There're a number of useful sites which help convert romaji (what you called "English letters") into kanji and kana (what you called "symbols"), but it seems that there're no good sites which process the other way round.--K.C. Tang 01:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

sentence making

how can I make a sentence using word 'classifiacation'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.196.16.48 (talk) 01:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You just did. (Joseph A. Spadaro 01:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC))

Easily, but not without the red pencil hovering to strike. Xn4 02:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You probably mean classification. If you do aGoogle search for "classification", you'll find plenty of sentences using the word.  --Lambiam 04:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

They could also mean "word classification"... A.Z. 04:07, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

And there's a template for Google searches: classification. A.Z. 06:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Is "word 'classification'" a technique that could be used to construct sentences - it's a long shot but i don't wan't to miss any possibilities83.100.254.236 10:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC) eg these words are pronouns, these other words are verbs, etc eg pronoun, verb, noun marker, noun = "She jumps the house"?83.100.254.236 11:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

What is the Proper Term for This?

I am not sure if this is a question of psychology / science or of language. I have often noticed a particular phenomenon. When you ask a question, sometimes the respondant will not answer your question ... but will instead talk about a topic that he knows more fluently, as an "answer" to your question. That is, he does not answer your question, but he answers some other (somewhat similar) question about which he is more comfortable giving an answer. Here is just a hypothetical example, to illustrate. I ask "How many plays did the great writer Shakespeare write?" ... and I am expecting an answer like, say, 48 (or whatever). The person answering says something like: "Even though Shakespeare was considered a great writer, let's not forget about the great contributions to literature that were made by James Joyce." And then they go and on and on and talk at length about James Joyce (i.e., using the question as a platform to impress me with all their knowledge about Joyce -- which, although somehat similar, has no bearing to my question). Maybe a more commonplace example - I ask "How many miles is the drive from here to New York?" - expecting a numerical answer like "100 miles". And the person says, "Well, I can't tell you how many miles but do make sure that once you get there, you visit the XYZ tourist attraction because you will love it. And make sure you go in the spring and avoid the summer tourist season and if you get a chance, eat at Charlie's Steak House and ... (and on and on and on)." Something like that. Is there a "name" for this type of phenomenon? Not common parlance like, "avoiding the question" or "skirting the issue" or "dodging the question" or "rhetoric" ... but more of a psychological term to describe it, like "defensive evasion" or whatever? A technical / scientific term that a psychiatrist would employ -- not a layman's description. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro 01:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC))

One very interesting aspect of psychology is the Rorschach test. I'd strongly recommend reading up on it if you're interested in psychology. Terrific stuff. -Elmer Clark 02:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You ask whether there is a psychological term to describe this phenomenon, but let's not forget that (as Hector Hugh Munro puts it) "Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts". You may well wonder what he meant by that, but genius has no need to explain itself. In short, for the answer to your question, you could do worse than refer to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a major work of philosophical fiction in which lateral thinking reaches its... (continued on page 94). Xn4 02:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

To avoid this phenomenon myself, I'll use a more direct answer: none that I know of, although the phrase "avoidance behaviour" springs to mind. However, if I may also be allowed to indulge a little, the most obvious form of this behaviour is the politician. Using this as part of your research might help to clarify it.Steewi 05:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Good show Elmer and Xn4. 38.112.225.84 13:52, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a specific answer for you, but would like to add that, while such behavior is annoying in a formal debate, it's not in common conversation. In the "distance to NY" example you provided, they don't have the info you want, but do have other info which may well be useful, so it seems entirely appropriate, to me, for them to supply you with that info at that time. If their answer was simply "I don't know", and they walked away, that would seem positively rude. Also, if you'd asked "I have the toilet bowl full of ammonia, but that doesn't seem to be getting the stains out, where can I find a bottle of chlorine bleach to add to it ?", they would be positively negligent to talk about where the bleach is without also mentioning that this combo can produce poisonous chlorine gas. StuRat 13:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I may be mis-applying these terms but Irrelevant conclusion, and Proof by verbosity seem to be related to the question at hand. -- Diletante 15:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I would like to propose the word, "mobfuscation".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scandalium (talk • contribs) 19:30, 30 September 2007 (UTC) 

language arts

Hello, i have questions regarding idioms: literal and figurative meanings and how to go about getting an answer to what the different meanings are regarding these phrases:

 When you're thirteen in  our neighborhood you know the score.

 He's as hard as a rock and about as human.

 He thinks I'm a pain in the neck.

 "... the chips are always down when it's our turn..."

I have tried to look what the literal meaings would be and then what the figurative meaings of the above phrases are to no luck. Is there anyway you would or could help me with these problems. thank you so very much.

freshtulip —Preceding unsigned comment added by Freshtulip (talk • contribs) 03:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

"Know the score" needs some context to make more sense, but it probably means you know the unspoken rules of behaviour in that particular neighbourhood...like, maybe you know who the friendly adults are, and who the bad kids are, and the good and bad places to hang out. "Hard as a rock" probably means harsh and authoritarian, someone who makes a decision and won't be swayed by any arguments. The second part of course means "as human as a rock", so it's just an insult. "Pain in the neck" is a nuisance or an annoying person. "The chips are always down" means nothing ever turns out in your favour, which I assume comes from poker terminology. Adam Bishop 03:56, 27 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.210.170.48 (talk)

When you're thirteen in our neighborhood you know the score. Imprecise, usually followed by an explanation, but "to know the score" is to have no illusions. I don't know what this is from. I'd always thought baseball, the score of the game.

He's as hard as a rock and about as human. "Hard as a rock" is proverbial, the workaday simile for hardness. We have white as a sheet, dead as a doornail, happy as a clam, etc. The whole sentence is not an idiomatic expression. The writer made a play on words: he's as human as a rock.

He thinks I'm a pain in the neck. The speaker annoys him. The literal meaning is obvious.

"... the chips are always down when it's our turn..." "The chips are down" is the idiomatic expression. From the card game poker, I'm sure. It means that a crucial moment has arrived. In poker, the chips are down after the bets have been placed, and it's time to show your cards and decide the winner. --Milkbreath 04:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Freshtulip: for future reference, "when the chips are down", "know the score" and "pain in the neck", and many other idioms are defined in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary which is searchable online. jnestorius^(talk) 10:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Dutch to English translation for improvement of Wikipedia article

It would be nice to see this band's Dutch band page to be translated and used to improve its corresponding English page

Anyone able to translate? A direct (or loose) translation would work well for the Reputatie (reputation) section. The rest is pretty well covered on the English page.

Thank you. Guroadrunner 09:36, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

A quick translation, you'll have to adapt it yourself.

--START--

Unseen Terror was a grindcore band from Birmingham, England.

History The group was founded in 1987 by drummer Shane Embury (Napalm Death) and singer/quitarist Mitch Dickinson (Heresay). They were later joined by Pete Giles (Warhammer, Harmony as One, Scalplock) on bass.

After contributing two tracks to the collection 'Diminished Responsibility', the group landed a record contract at Earache Records. The album 'Human Error' was recorded in september 1987.

After their debut-album, Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris joined the band as singer. By then, Giles had left the group. The band organised a recording session for radio legend John Peel, and a one-off performance in Nottingham with bassist Wayne Aston.

The group came to an end after this. Embury became a fulltime bassist for Napalm Death and Dickinson became guitarist for the band Heresy

Reputation

The group was originally founded with the intent of producing hardcore punk and grindcore with a decent musical foundation. Due to the lyrics of several songs on the album 'Human Error', that used comic character Garfield as a subject, the group developed a pretpunk image. An undeserved label, according to many fans.

Note: the word pretpunk is Dutch. It denotes a musical genre, which can be translated approximately as funpunk. I don't know the English terminology, but without references, I doubt this sentence should remain in the article anyway.

Discography

Demos and albums: Rehearsal Demo 1987 Human Error LP 1987 The Peel Sessions recorded 22 March 1988, broadcast 11 April 1988, published as vinyl EP in 1989

Collections that feature songs by Unseen Terror: Diminished Responsibility : the tracks “Beyond Eternity” en “Expulsion Of Wrath” Grindcrusher: the track “Divisions” Hardcore Holocaust 87-88 : the tracks “Voice Your Opinion” Hardcore Holocaust II : the tracks “Incompatible” en “Burned Beyond Recognition”

--END--

Feel free to use this as you see fit. risk 13:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The recommended place to ask for this is at Wikipedia:Translation. --ColinFine 22:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Cheers Guroadrunner 06:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

what is the phrase "hairs on a bobbin"

who uses it and where does it originate. thank you. 77.234.78.244 10:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC).

I've heard it used by my relatives who were weavers in Lancashire's cotton mills.A bobbin is a smooth piece of wood so it's a valid comparison....hotclaws 10:36, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

What is a sentence they might use it in? What do they mean by it? 77.234.76.112 11:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

"As much use as hairs on a bobbin" that is something that is no use at all,or stops something being used correctly.--hotclaws 09:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

What does it mean? And don't say "a bobbin with hairs on it." --Milkbreath 10:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Is it like the Chinese idea of "the sound of one hand clapping"? Xn4 16:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Zen Britishism? --Milkbreath 16:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

So an equivalent simile would be as "as much use as a chocolate teapot" ? Gandalf61 10:42, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Miquelon; Basque, Spanish, both or neither?

I have been in a slow revert war at Saint Pierre and Miquelon over the origin of the name "Miquelon". I found a couple of citations for Miquelon being the Basque equivalent of Michael. Apparently the earliest Basque visitors to the Islands included several people named Miquelon, as noted in some related WP articles. Someone who claims that Miquelon is Spanish, not Basque has changed this a couple of times (I think that is his reasoning, but his English is bad enough that I do not know); he claims that the proper Basque name is Miquel, not Miquelon. I managed to get him to write his reasoning at [6] and I still do not get it. Can anyone shed some light on this? Is this some sort of Spanish Nationalist/neofascist anti-Basque thing? What is going on here?--Filll 15:10, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I see you know about Hoyarçabal, as you're the main author of the article Les voyages aventureux du Capitaine Martin de Hoyarsal, habitant du çubiburu. I'll try to think what I would do. Xn4 16:34, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually the correct Basque name is "Mikel", as is commonly seen in the news (when talking about Basque politicians, ETA members...) in Spain. On the other hand, I don't think calling someone who disagrees with you in such a trivial thing "Spanish Nationalist/neofascist anti-Basque" to be actually intelligent. --Taraborn 16:43, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe what I said was unintelligent. I do not understand what seems to be such a frenzy to change this. Maybe what is in the cited references is wrong. I do not know. I am just puzzled over what is going on and I have decided to get more information here.--Filll 16:58, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I have edited the disputed passage to read as below, restored the deleted references and added another, and also put a note on the Saint Pierre and Miquelon Talk page. I hope this will help. Xn4 17:37, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

“ The name of Miquelon was first noted as 'Micquelle' in Martin de Hoyarçabal's navigational pilot for Newfoundland. According to Marc Cormier, the name 'Miquelon' is a Basque form of Michael, though the usual modern Basque form is 'Mikel'. Miquelon is also close to the Spanish Miguelón, a form of Miguel (Michael). ”

Thanks. I appreciate it.---Filll 17:40, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

What does this mean?

What does the frase Sua Sponte mean? I believe its latin. MIKE —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.72.84.67 (talk) 16:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

It means "by his own will". We have an article, sua sponte. Adam Bishop 17:21, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

It usually refers to a legal situation, whereby the judge takes some form of action on his own and not as a response to one party's (or the other's) request. Usually, one party or the other will make a "motion" -- that motion is a request that the judge do something (take some action) -- usually deny the motion or accept the motion. If the judge takes action without having been asked by either party, you would say that the judge did so on his own, without any motion or prompting, or "sua sponte." Example: Judge Smith ordered, sua sponte, that the criminal's psychiatric records be sealed to the public. (Joseph A. Spadaro 17:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC))

initiative fits better than will, i'd say. —Tamfang 06:48, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

List of Latin phrases --Milkbreath 23:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The Scots leid

Given that in today's society, a second language seems to be a big plus for employers, is there any real reason (besides disingenuousness) for a native English speaker not to pad a CV with a claim of "being able to understand Lowland Scots", given that the two aren't widely known to be pretty much mutually intelligible? (Purely hypothetical, I'm happily employed at the moment :) ) GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 20:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a good case for Scots being a language rather than a dialect of English. We also have to say that speakers of Scots and Standard English can understand each other pretty well, though sometimes with a little effort on both sides and with a word needing to be explained here and there. I'd say that even if Scots is a language then there's a parallel with (say) Danish and Norwegian: a Dane wouldn't put on his CV that he speaks Norwegian, as Danes and Norwegians all know they can understand each other, with a little effort. You say "the two aren't widely known to be pretty much mutually intelligible", but it's widely enough known for someone on an interview panel to be likely to know and say to the others "this one is pulling our leg". Xn4 21:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't imagine any employer that wasn't in Scotland/didn't deal regularly with Scottish clients would care at all, and those who were/did would know enough to realize what (little) that statement meant. -Elmer Clark 23:51, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

September 28

Shortest sentence

Is there any sentence shorter than

My, or I am as sly as a pi.

that uses all nine parts of speech? (This has 17 characters with just letters, 19 with puncuation, and 27 with everything, including spaces.) Indeed123 02:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

If you care to use contractions (which still contain all the appropriate parts of speech), you reduce the first and third categories by one each. It's still 19 with punctuation, though. (My, or I'm as sly as a pi.) — Michael J 02:35, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Where's your preposition? jnestorius^(talk) 02:41, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought the second 'as' was being deemed to be a preposition, but I doubt it is. It strikes me that 'pi' can be an adjective, so you could say 'as pi as a mu'. Xn4 03:24, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

From Merriam-Webster:

as¹ ... Function: adverb ... 1 : to the same degree or amount <as soft as silk> <twice as long> ...

as² Function: conjunction .. 2 : in or to the same degree in which <soft as silk> -- usually used as a correlative after an adjective or adverb modified by adverbial as or so <as cool as a cucumber> ...

as⁴ Function: preposition 1 a : LIKE 2 <all rose as one man> b : LIKE 1a <his face was as a mask -- Max Beerbohm> 2 : in the capacity, character, condition, or role of <works as an editor>

So the first as is an adverb and the second is a conjunction. All caveats at part of speech apply. jnestorius^(talk) 08:54, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The choice of traditional "parts of speech" is largely arbitrary, and modeled on classical languages. Coordinators ("coordinating conjunctions", e.g. or) are very different than subordinators ("subordinating conjunctions"), which are not represented in that example sentence. Strad 04:31, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, see the discussion here recently on the question of the part of speech of "as" (where Strad and I also gave our 2 cents). Wareh 18:18, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how you can start the main clause with "or", grammatical prescriptions aside. How about "O, I'm as bi as a pi or mu." That's 16 letters (17 if you expand the contraction -- then again, if we allow contractions, why not replace or with 'n' ?). Am I right that you're considering articles to be a part of speech? If you are willing to start with "or", we can get down to "O, or I'm as bi as a pi." This (14 letters) seems close to optimal. Tesseran 04:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

What about "not". IIRC, that's a part of speech by itself.--Estrellador* 07:53, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

In traditional grammar, not is an adverb, a catch-all class also including yes. In modern grammar, there ain't nine parts of speech, so the whole discussion is moot. jnestorius^(talk) 09:21, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

O, if so, I'm U to a T! — 12 letters. jnestorius^(talk) 00:22, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I was always taught "I am" is the shortest sentance in the English language.--hotclaws 12:24, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

But the OP specified using all nine parts of speech. (Joseph A. Spadaro 01:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC))

how do you pronouce charis?

with a hard k sound (like care) or soft ch sound (like chinese)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.126.19.150 (talk) 05:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Considering other English words of ultimate Greek origin that begin with X (e.g. character, chasm), a hard k is more likely.--K.C. Tang 06:15, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

If you're talking about the name, then it is in fact k. Drmaik 06:25, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

It is definitely a hard k. As K.C. Tang says, this is the general rule when the Greek letter chi shows up in an English word. (The only exceptions occur when the Greek went very early into French or Italian and became naturalized there. Examples I can produce offhand are archbishop, and the other arch- words except for archangel, and machine.) Despite the general reliability of this rule, I have heard a Classics genius pronounce Cheops with the same consonant as lamb chops. Wareh 18:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

accent advice please

Hello.

I'm designing a promotional brochure which is pretending to be a menu (of services).

Should the word Entrees have an accent on the middle e? (ie the one after the letter r).

thanks 08:48, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Either entree or entrée is correct. [7] Lanfear's Bane 08:54, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

thankyou 83.104.131.135 09:00, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Since the intended effect is (apparently) mock elegance, I'd definitely include the accent. (But then I'd do so anyway 'cos I'm a pedant.) —Tamfang 06:50, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Englishman's home

We have a saying in England "An Englishman's home is his castle" meaning that an Englishman is inviolable in his own home. I'm guessing this was never actually true, but do other countries have an equivalent saying? Or is it a peculiarly English attitude?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:53, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

In the Netherlands, we don't have castles, but we have Dutch mouths ("You have a Dutch mouth!"), which means that we can ask for the way when we get lost. Lova Falk 10:01, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

It's "house", isn't it? A man's house is his castle. I, an American, have been aware of this maxim since childhood. Bill of Rights, don't you know. --Milkbreath 10:50, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

In England (Or even in the United Kingdom!) it's 'home'. Subtle difference, I wonder why? 4u1e 11:05, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's a true US/UK difference. "House" is probably just the first way I heard it. I just went and googled on the two variations unfiltered, site:edu, and site:uk, and "home" is much in the majority. That is not to say "house" is at all rare. Some of the earliest citations I saw even use both in the same sentence. But I'll continue to say "house" because it's parallel with "castle". --Milkbreath 11:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

In the literal sense yes, but I wonder if 'home' and 'castle' as more abstract concepts make a more interesting pairing? Both being places of security. 4u1e 12:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Growing up in the US, I always heard it as "A man's home", not "An Englishman's home". —Angr 12:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes - more appropriate in any context other than where I'm sitting! 4u1e 12:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Sir Edward Coke, English jurist, in his "The Third Part of the Laws of England", published 1628, has "For a man's house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium[and each man's home is his safest haven]". DuncanHill 13:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

This saying is used in Australia, pretty much the same ("A man's home is his castle"). It even forms the basis of a (very good) film a few years back - The Castle. --203.208.110.207 14:26, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I took the liberty of disambiguating the link. —Tamfang 06:53, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

In some states here in Amurika not only do we have this saying but it is referenced and actually codified in the so-called Castle Doctrine laws (see the "Origins" section for some more context on its roots in English Common Law). Laws which some might describe, disparagingly or otherwise, as peculiarly American. Contrast this with current British legal trends in regards to home intruders, which I'm led to believe draw more on Wikipedia policies such as AGF and NPA; the attacker/intruder must refuse your offer of tea and crumpets at least three times before you are allowed to politely ask him to leave the premises. Though I suppose that with so many CC cameras, everyone's safety is pretty much perfectly guaranteed by the state. Three cheers. 38.112.225.84 16:46, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I suspect you're joking, but it should be pointed out that most of the 'not allowed to repel burglars' things has come entirely from the tabloids, not from fact. In England, you're allowed to use reasonable force to protect yourself, your family, your possessions, etc. So certain people are asking that people be allowed to use more force than a jury finds reasonable. For example, a jury found it unreasonable to shoot a child in the back as the child ran away from your house, even though they had robbed you. As long as the right to trial by jury is preserved unsullied, I fail to see the problem :) 79.65.119.193 23:50, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

IPA for Australian name Brabham

Brabham (as in Jack Brabham and the Brabham Formula One racing team) is pronounced 'Brabbum' to the best of my knowledge. Going by the IPA chart for English, that would be rendered IPA: [bɹæbam]. Could someone from the sunny side of the English speaking world confirm whether I've got this right? Ta very much (It's for the FAC of Brabham BT19.) 4u1e 10:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm very much from the rainy side of the English speaking world, but the vowel in the second syllable is a schwa, and it needs a stress marker, so it'd be IPA: ['bɹæbəm], I think. --Nicknack009 11:09, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Compare the pronounciations [ˈdɜɺəm] or [ˈdʌɹəm] for Durham and ['gəʊtəm] for Gotham.  --Lambiam 13:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, I took 'a' from the IPA chart's representation of the 'u' sounds in 'run' - but that was because I'd already re-written it as 'Brabbum' in my head, I suppose. I will use the version Nicknack suggests. Cheers. 4u1e 16:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I can confirm Nicknack has got it in one. -- JackofOz 23:34, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

And with a name like that I'm guessing you are from the sunny side of the English speaking world? Thanks for the confirmation. 4u1e 08:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Classical Greek font

I am taking a Classical Greek class and am wondering if its possible to install a font or switch a setting to allow me to type (with my US keyboard) in Greek letters in Word, etc. Thanks. EdwinHJ | Talk 19:10, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a polytonic Greek system keyboard driver that is part of Windows (since XP I think). Some 3rd-party software for other customised keyboard layouts is also available ("Tavultesoft Keyman", "Antioch" and others). A polytonic Greek Unicode font (Palatino Linotype) is also part of all modern Windows installations, others are listed at "Alan Wood's Unicode Resources" (try google). Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:28, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

How do I use that? EdwinHJ | Talk 23:34, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

On the Mac, you can go to the control panel, and select Greek Polytonic. It's worth noting that Unicode support begins with Word 2004 (=Word 2003 under Windows) which is a prerequisite for being able to do polytonic Greek). Donald Hosek 20:47, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

If you're using Windows XP, I use this keyboard program (a package that includes Tavultesoft Keyman) and the Gentium font, and I'm convinced each is the best available solution (both are free). If you have Windows, then older versions of Word (at least back to Word 2002) have supported Unicode. Finally, if the appearance of Greek in Wikipedia is important to you, you might want to use a monobook.css file something like mine (which I borrowed & only slightly adapted). Wareh 02:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

If you want your Greek letters to look pretty, have a look at Junicode or Gentium. I think I heard that Junicode's Greek letters are classical, not modern, but I don't know if that's good or bad for you. --Kjoonlee 12:47, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

.polytonic { font-family: Gentium; }

If you put the above in your own monobook.css page, only polytonic Greek will be displayed in Gentium. --Kjoonlee 13:45, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I like the basic aesthetic of Junicode Greek, but the execution seems weak. Instant complaints: lambda is the height of alpha, not beta, and I get square boxes if I put a passage with Greek into italics (the font is beta, so maybe it will improve). My suggestions for runners-up to Gentium (which alone seems to work well as a browser screen font for me): Old Standard, Dioxipe (was available here, has disappeared). Wareh 18:39, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

For me, the typeface for Ancient Greek is Porson. The Greek Font Society has a very nice version called "GFS Porson" that I have in my monobook as the default font for anything tagged {{polytonic}} or {{lang-grc}}. It's not great as a screen font, but printed out it is simply what printed Greek is supposed to look like, IMHO. —Angr 19:00, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion this Porson is more attractive and Porsonian than the GFS, in the Greek (the Latin characters lack italics and might be considered a bit rustic, though). I am a purist, and Gentium is by far the least traditional of everything I've linked; it just works the best. Wareh 19:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, to each his own, I guess. I looked at "your" Porson, and I find GFS Porson more attractive. The image to the right shows GFS Porson on top and "your" Porson on the bottom. As you can see if you make the image to the right bigger, the spacing between the Τ and the ρ of Τροίης is unacceptably wide in the bottom version. Also, "your" Porson's glyph for upsilon with an acute accent also has a superfluous dieresis. —Angr 10:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the spacing (it is simply not a finely-crafted, fine-tuned font; it has obviously not been done with the care I see in the three free fonts I've actually recommended here), but I certainly don't get the diaeresis problem, and, quite apart from the fact that the GFS just doesn't resemble the classic appearance of an OCT as much (most importantly, I guess it's the lighter weight of the letters that seems inauthentic to me), there are some oddities, both in the font design (the spacing of the diacritics in Template:Polytonic is not right, and Template:Polytonic and Template:Polytonic don't seem as well aligned either), and in the drawing of the letter forms (that kappa is a notable departure from OCT Porson, the gamma is very curvy on its way up; then again "my" epsilon starts to look a bit odd under magnification). I personally think the capitals should slope like the rest of the letters, but that is un-OCT-like, so I guess I'm inconsistent. At the end of the day, I know no free Porson that's very convincing (the commercial ones used by Loeb, Oxford, and Mastronarde's textbook are better designed than either of these). Wareh 23:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Russian

What is the phrase for "April Theses" in Russian (both Cyrillic and romanization, if you can). Thanks. Neutrality^talk 23:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

апрелские тезисы, aprel'skie tezisy. --Reuben 23:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you forgot about the soft sign, Reuben. It's апрельские тезисы. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:39, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Yup, it's a typo. Thanks. --Reuben 22:39, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

September 29

latin poem

Can someone translate these four lines? "Ah, si mundus iste mendax, frater, te fefellit, quare / vehemeter ita mundum increpas, et indignare? / Cuncta fatum ab aeterno designavit in aeternum, / Calamasque currens ille nescit unquam remeare." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.190.135 (talk) 07:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh if that lying world of yours, brother, chances you, to querrel

More vehemently still than than an almond cretin, and to take offense?

Once fate has written itself, from eternity to eternity,

And this current crisis becomes ours once more.

Disclaimer: I flunked through 5 years of Latin this way. The above I basically made up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.83.229 (talk) 11:53, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Is that the Rubaiyat, in Latin?! "Ah, if that lying world deceived you, brother, why do you rebuke and scorn the world so vehemently? From eternity it designated all things to eternal death, and that running branch [calamus, not calamas] does not ever know how to return." Adam Bishop 12:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is from Edward FitzGerald's little known Latin translation. Also, vehemeter should be vehementer.  --Lambiam 13:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Learning to read

My sister recently told me of a time she taught a native German-speaking girl to read. She wrote Eine kleine (something, I forget what) on the table and started reading aloud. Right after the first word, the girl stopped her, saying Aber das ist doch kein A! ("But that's not an A!"). My sister replied that she was right, but it was more complex than that.

This is something I've never considered, because Finnish has pretty much a complete 1-1 correspondence between written glyphs and spoken sounds. How do German-speaking children learn to read? And how do English- and French-speaking children learn to read, when their pronunciation rules are vastly more complicated? JIP | Talk 17:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

English children are often taught a kind of "cheat" reading where they first learn words where the pronunciation is predictable: cat, dog, and, but, for example. Gradually, as they start to read the overall shape of the word rather than needing to break down the individual letters, words that are sort-of predictable: was, is, has, saw, says, for example, are slipped in. It's a process that can be tricky, and my 17-year-old son who is slightly dyslexic can spell long technical words and German words with more confidence than common English words.

French children are taught on a syllabic basis, with the syllable being generally consonant-vowel. This means that when the final consonant is followed by an "e" it is pronounced as a syllable that they learn to reduce to its initial consonant, eg poi-re. In French it is easier to predict how a word is pronounced than how it is spelled, so reading is less tricky than dictation. 62.30.217.57 18:09, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I have watched both my own children learn to read English, and how they do it is... gradually. As 62 says, they start with small simple words that have clear pronunciation rules. There are actually a number of pronunciation rules that are clear and consistent, and enough words that follow them that it is possible to read texts by following them, particularly simple ones designed for children, like Dick and Jane or The Cat in the Hat. This is the basis for learning to read by phonics, which really does work in English. (Well, it werked four mee.) Once children start to encounter the more difficult or exceptional words, learning through techniques like whole language takes over. (There are of course holy wars between the advocates of both phonics and whole language as teaching metods. The best method, in my opinion, lies in taking the best of both.) - Eron ^Talk 19:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

We should note that German has a much closer correspondence of letters to sound than English does. No silent e in German (or silent p, silent h, etc.). If a letter is there, you pronounce it. I have never figured out the system of silent letters in French, though. Rmhermen 23:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe that is because there is no system.  --Lambiam 03:30, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

May one assume that's a joke? The rules are complex (and often violated in monosyllables) but they are there. Complex because, as in German, pronunciation has changed considerably since the spelling froze. —Tamfang 07:21, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, German has a close correspondence of letters to sounds, but not as close as Finnish has. If the girl had been learning Finnish instead of German it would have worked like she originally thought. JIP | Talk 04:16, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't remember learning to read. I'm in my fifties now, but I used to try to remember when I was young, and I couldn't do it then, either. I think I must have figured out right away that English spelling isn't phonetic without even knowing what phonetic meant. They teach you the alphabet—"A" is for "apple", etc.—and that's enough to go on. If you've heard a word, it's a simple matter to correlate it with a fixed sequence of letters that approximates the word. It occurs to me that I have a lot of trouble reading phonetically now when I have to, like with drug names and Indonesian surnames, not to mention Finnish ones. Speaking of Finland, I've noticed that Finns, by and large, are very good at English. I wonder why that is, given the great difference between the languages. --Milkbreath 05:16, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's because we have to learn English as a foreign language, so we pay greater attention to getting it right. JIP | Talk 05:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

For the record, no language has 1:1 correspondence between its sounds and its writing systems. Phonological rules exist in all languages, and allophones are bound to be different from phonemes, so you can't predict 100% how written words would be pronounced in speech. Sure, you can get close enough by writing in a phonemic alphabet, but that's not the same as 100% 1:1 correspondence. Just look at consonant gradation for an example of phonological rules for Finnish. --Kjoonlee 07:14, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. Consonant gradation#Finnish says that in the same word, the same lexical consonant can have different forms depending on the grammatical case of the word. But the form change happens the same way in both writing and speech. Of course everyone knows that the genitive of pöytä ("table") is pöydän ("table's"), not *pöytän. But it's not as if Finnish writes the t consonant the same way in both cases but pronounces it as d in the genitive case. Of course there are such things that the actual physical sounds of the same vowels and consonants vary a little depending on where they are used but these changes do not affect the grammar. Similarly, it's not a grammatical error to forget to stress the first syllable of every unit word in a compound word, it just sounds weird. JIP | Talk 08:14, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

In that case I might have been wrong about the link. But nevertheless, doesn't Finnish have words where gg or something similar is pronounced as [ŋŋ]? There are doubtlessly more cases, and there are also allophones — native speakers tend to be unaware of these, but foreigners can sometimes hear Finnish speakers using different sounds for "a single Finnish sound", I'm sure. --Kjoonlee 22:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm nearly 50 now, and don't really remember learning to read, though I do recall that I learned to read Welsh (which has much more nearly 1:1 correspondence between spelling and sound) before I started school, and English in school - I remember being told off for writing my name on the bedroom wallpaper when I was 4! I do remember my mother stopped reading my Mickey Mouse cartoon book to me at bedtime when I managed to pronounce "outrageous", declaring that I could read English better than she could; I can also remember my older brothers laughing at me when I applied Welsh pronunciation rules to French and English placenames - Calais as "kal-ice" rather than "kal-ay", and Sandbach as "sand-bakh" rather than "sand-batch"! Still, I only made those mistakes once, and at least I was in the last year's intake in primary school which was taught to read traditionally rather than through the Initial Teaching Alphabet, for which I am grateful! -- Arwel (talk) 08:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Spanish has no 1:1 correspondence because the same sound can be spelt with different letters, but if you get a written text you can read it aloud all right without making a single mistake. There are fixed rules to say what sound every letter represents. We would also pronounce Calais as "kal-ice", but we would pronounce Sandbach as "sand-batch", because "ch" is always pronounced as in the English word "cheap". (J.J. Castaño) 18:46, 30 September 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.244.142 (talk)

That's a myth, due to the existance of allophones. --Kjoonlee 22:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

In the U.S., there are two main methods used to teach kids to read: phonics and whole language. The former emphasizes sound rules, such as the "silent e" that turns "short" vowels "long;" "hard" vs. "soft" g's and c's; and combinations like "tion." (I still remember the "T-I-O-N" song from The Electric Company: "T-I-O-N, shun shun shun shun / T-I-O-N, shun shun shun shun.")

In whole language, as I understand it, children are taught entire words at a time. The focus is on the meaning of the words, and kids learn to "write" before they learn how to spell. There's been decades of debate as to which process is better, but the current trend is to use both approaches. -- Mwalcoff 02:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Kiss Me

Hi. I'm wondering what the poetic construction in the style of "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer (lyrics online everywhere) is. It's sung (or read) without regard to the line breaks in print. I vaguely remember similar poems from school, so I know someone knows. Thanks a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.201.150.130 (talk) 19:28, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean enjambment? Also called run-on lines. jnestorius^(talk) 01:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes, exactly. Thank you very much. 69.201.150.130 18:11, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Japanese

From what my old highschool friend told me, in Japanese, Watashi wa kawaii desu means "I'm cute". He told me the wa is some kind of focus marker, and so the sentence literally reads "speaking of me, is cute". What if I would write it as Watashi kawaii wa desu? What would that mean? Would it even be grammatical? JIP | Talk 20:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know much about Japanese, but I believe that wa has to follow a noun phrase, and that noun phrase has to be in initial position in the sentence, so I expect Watashi kawaii wa desu is ungrammatical. And although in theory wa does not necessarily mark the subject of the sentence, in practice most of the time the word marked with wa *is*, in fact, the subject of the sentence, as in Watashi wa kawaii desu. —Angr 20:26, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Errrr.... I know very little Japanese but I know you can use adjectives the same way as in English (but they are written after the name instead of before), so Watashi kawaii wa <whatever> desu would mean "speaking of beautiful me, is <whatever>". The problem in your sentence is not the position of kawaii, but that you didn't actually say what "beautiful me" is. --Taraborn 22:18, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Er, one thing I think I know about Japanese is that modifiers – including quite complex ones – precede the head rather rigidly. —Tamfang 07:34, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I do not have a strong background in Japanese either, but I can tell you that wa marks the topic of the sentence. While topic and subject are not the same thing, the difference is irrelevant in simple sentences like "~ wa ~ desu." = "~ am/are/is ~." In other words, until you have more experience with Japanese, keep your sentences simple, and only put wa right after the subject.--El aprendelenguas 22:22, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, as far as I know, *Watashi kawaii wa desu is not grammatical. Adjectives come before nouns in Japanese, like in English. Even ?Kawaii watashi wa ~ desu seems wrong to me, as if you could say in English *Beautiful I am ~. I think some adjectives change when they are used attributely from when they are used predicately in Japanese, too.--El aprendelenguas 22:27, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Though it's not grammatical, I suspect that Watashi kawaii wa desu would be understood as "cuteness is me" – to paraphrase with a common English

expression, "if you look up cute in the dictionary you'll find my picture." A more grammatical version would be [...] wa watashi desu, where the first word is the noun form of kawaii whatever that is. —Tamfang 07:34, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The structure of the original sentence is not as people have assumed. Adjectives in Japanese are effectively a subset of verbs, and 'kawaii desu' is not a sequence of adjective plus copula, but a sequence of predicate + politeness-marker. (Its plain form would be 'kawaii', not 'kawaii da'). 'Watashi kawaii wa desu' is certainly not grammatical, but I suspect that it would be taken as something like 'watashi ga kawaii no desu' = 'That I am cute happens to be the case'. --ColinFine 23:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Symbol for the word Lively in Aramic,Arabic, or Korean

I wanted to see the symbol fo the word Lively. I would greatly appreciate this I am trying to get a tattoo dedicated to my mother saying the The Lively Lost One.

Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.184.84.28 (talk) 21:18, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

In general I'd advise against getting tattoos in a writing system with which the tattoo artist is not truly familiar. There are enough horror stories already of people who got a tattoo in Chinese or Hebrew or such, to find out later – too late – that through bad advice, or a copying error, or a seemingly irrelevant modification, their tattoos were actually misspelled, or grammatically incorrect, or incomprehensible, or meaningless, or worse.  --Lambiam 22:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's a funny story about that. A.Z. 22:40, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Hanzi Smatter, a blog "dedicated to the misuse of chinese characters in western culture", includes many bogus tattoos. —Tamfang 19:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

As a native speaker of both English and Korean, I can assure you there's no easy way to translate "the Lively Lost One" into Korean, and even if there were, it wouldn't have the same effect. --Kjoonlee 22:49, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

September 30

(In)transitive verbs

• "Our production will be touring next year. It will play Chicago, Philadelphia and many other cities" (ie. the play will be performed in these places)
• "Please write me if you have time" (ie. please write to me)

These and various other examples use a verb that is transitive in form but intransitive in meaning. Are they classified as transitive or intransitive? -- JackofOz 01:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The me in write me is an indirect object; the validity and identical meaning of write to me show that. Write is ditransitive, but it just so happens that it has no direct object in this sentence. The first sentence seems wrong to me, but perhaps that is an established usage. Strad 03:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

This transitive meaning of to play is listed in dictionaries: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/play.  --Lambiam 03:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I think by they you mean the two verbs in question. 'Write' is a transitive verb, and 'play' can be either transitive or intransitive: there's a technical word for that, ambitransitive. Xn4 03:19, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

In English, transitivity is not marked, so we can't say a verb is "transitive in form"; now what counts is only the meaning. In "write me", as you noted, "me" is dative (not accusative), with the object omitted (a letter/an email), thus "write" is transitive. In "play Chicago", as you noted, "Chicago" is locative (again, not accusative). There're no objects, thus "play" is intransitive in the middle voice. (In other modern European languages, e.g. in French, the production will "play herself" in Chicago, i.e. reflexive). All in all, the very idea of "transitivity" is a very clumsy one (it doesn't apply to many languages of the world), and perhaps we should not think too much over it.--K.C. Tang 03:29, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

There are cracks in grammar, and you've found a couple. We can "play" Chicago the same way we can "tour" it, but we sense a missing preposition with "play". It rings of slangy ellipsis; the "in" got dropped somewhere, but it's still there in our minds. So the meaning of "play" in this context takes a meaning somewhat different from its parent word, and it becomes transitive by default. Same goes for "write [to] me". You can "write" me the same way you can "contact" me. I do believe there are English-speaking places where "write me" still sounds mighty strange. --Milkbreath 03:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

You're right, Milkbreath, "write me" still has a barbarian ring in England, even after a generation of hearing it in American television. Xn4 04:50, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

How about "write me a sonnet"? —Tamfang 07:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Related old thread. (link to reference desk archives) A.Z. 05:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

In "Write me a sonnet", "me" is a dative used in the sense of "to me, or for my benefit" similarly to "cry me a river" or "buy me a present". SaundersW 08:11, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, all. (Btw, I would never use these expressions, which seem to be confined to North America; I was just curious). -- JackofOz 00:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

aspects of Mary

Somehow I got to thinking this morning about names like Dolores, Concepción, Consuelo, Guadalupe – which are short for Maria de los Dolores etc., different titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

• Is the pattern unique to Spanish-speaking cultures?
• How many such names are in use?
• I notice that the list of titles in the article is much longer than the list of feast days there, and most or all of the names I thought of are on the short list. Is it reasonable to suppose that the calendar was an important motive in the adoption of such names?

Thanks for indulging my curiosity. —Tamfang 07:58, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about the others, but Dolores at least is an Irish name as well as a Spanish one. Algebraist 10:40, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Dolores has become a common name in the English-speaking world, even among non-Catholics, but its origin is the Spanish name María de los Dolores. —Angr 10:46, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

My Spanish wife was born in early February and she is called Maria de los Reyes (Maria of the Kings - that is the Threes Kings (Reyes Magos) who arrive in early January. She was also born near Seville whose patron saint is Maria(la Virgen) de los Reyes, so a double reason. Richard Avery 16:19, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

My Spanish aunt is Maria de los Milagros which is Mary of the Miracles. She is universally known as Mila. I had a friend named Maria y Jesus who was always known as Chus. SaundersW 18:52, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Grammar

Is there something wrong with the sentence: "We never observed membrane ruffling when Jurkat cells were co-incubated with..."? I would have written "We did not observe..." but I don't know whether that's because the other is wrong. --Seans Potato Business 17:50, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

did not observe could be taken to mean that there was only one observation (and it was negative), while never observed emphasizes repeated observations. Nothing obviously wrong with either. —Tamfang 17:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with "we never observed" in everyday discourse, but the last part of the sentence sounds like it belongs in a scientific report, and those are usually written in a formal and precise tone. "In 10 experiments when Jurkat cells were co-incubated with Kzinti-Vulcan hybrids, membrane ruffling was not observed", that sort of thing. Of course, the "10 experiments" part could be left implicit if you've just described them. And if you're not writing for a publication that requires a formal style, there's no reason to use it. --Anonymous, 21:12 UTC, September 30, 2007.

Meaning of a phrase

Sixpence None The Richer sang in "There She Goes": "She calls my name, pulls my train, No one else could heal my pain"...What does "pull my train" mean? I've never heard that phrase with a possessive. 69.201.150.130 18:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

"If it rhymes, it goes". I'd hazard that he means something like "she floats my boat". --Seans Potato Business 19:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Latinized Dutch names

Why do so many Dutch/Afrikaans surnames seem to be Latin? For instance, Arondeus, Bolsius, Corstius, Couperus, Erasmus, Fabricius, Pistorius, Petraeus, Pretorius, Wiselius, etc. Obviously it was once a trend throughout Europe for public figures to Latinize their names, but rarely were these passed on to their children. Is there any particular reason why the Dutch have held onto the Latin names? Thanks! Bhumiya (said/done) 18:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Erasmus at least is easy to explain: Desiderius Erasmus was the (assumed) name of an eminent Dutchman. —Tamfang 19:02, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but other nationalities have Latinized their names as well. But there aren't many Frenchmen with the surname "Cartesius" or Swedes with the name "Linnaeus". It seems like it's a trend specific to the Dutch. Bhumiya (said/done) 19:10, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Before I looked at your links I thought you meant given names; Erasmus is the only one on the list that I recognized, and I believe it is now primarily a given name (Erasmus Darwin being a famous example) – I'd never before heard of anyone with that surname, other than the original. Given names often become family names, and your Rassie Erasmus may be descended from an example.

Carolus Linnaeus is a poor example: his father assumed the name Linnaeus (this was when family names were a novelty in Sweden) and the son changed it to von Linné when he was ennobled. —Tamfang 21:45, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The Dutch are also prone to Latinization of their given names. I have a dissertation written by a Dutchman whose full name is Ruben Florentius Hendricus Eduardus van de Vijver and another by a Paulus Petrus Gerardus Boersma. In real life, they go by "Ruben" and "Paul" respectively, but their full names on the front pages of their dissertations are in Latin (the dissertations themselves are written in English). —Angr 19:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Some Latinized-looking non-Dutch surnames (although some of them may have had Dutch forbears): Andriuškevičius, Brosius, Cornelius, Helenius, Kanzius, Sventenius, Thilenius.  --Lambiam 23:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone, for the responses. Bhumiya (said/done) 02:46, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Grammar

Is a grammatical error made in saying "make sure you brush your teeth" as opposed to "make sure that you brush your teeth", and if so, what is the relevant grammatical rule? --Seans Potato Business 20:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

No error. The word "that" is generally optional when it introduces a subordinate clause, and it's a matter of style whether to use it. It's most likely to be used in formal writing, least likely in informal speech. --Anonymous, 21:14 UTC, September 30, 2007.

Malaprops?

Anyone got a good Malaprop and or an image to go with it? Just out of curiosity, the ones on that page are kind of bland, so I thought I'd ask here. Yamakiri^T_C 09-30-2007•22:13:38

They had several by Archie Bunker, but not my favs: "Those Catholic priests are always sprinkling incest all over everyone" (incense), "Edith is going through mental-pause, so needs to see the groinocologist" (menopause, gynecologist). StuRat 01:23, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Russian for "Jew" vs. "Hebrew"

How to transliterate these two terms, in their noun (sing. & pl.) and adjective forms? I need to refer to them for a discussion about nomenclature of Communist vs. Zionist political parties with Jewish membership in early 20th C Russia. My understanding -- and please correct me if I'm mistaken -- is that in Russian, the word yevrei is the preferred, neutral term to indicate a Jew as the more direct equivalent, zhid, has a pejorative connotation. Also, is there a Russian equivalent for the Hebrew word Zion, or would it be used as a foreign term, as-is? -- Thanks, Deborahjay 00:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify your question, do you want a transliteration (and if so, of which Russian words), or a translation of the English words? -- JackofOz 02:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)