Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language

Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

July 7

Czech Proverb

A bunch of sites with language quotes list as a Czech proverb:

"Learn a new language, get a new soul."

What is the proverb in Czech? 68.48.123.29 (talk) 00:34, 7 July 2011 (UTC)luos

Sounds apocryphal, at least in Czech - since {"nový jazyk" "nové duše"} gets all of two hits at Google and neither is relevant and I had no luck with other variants. Frederick the Great of Prussia is said to have said that a man who speaks two languages is worth two people who speak one, or some such.

There is the phrase "Nový Duch, nové srdce, nový jazyk" But that is more like "a new soul, a new heart, a new tongue" and is a born again idea, not a promise that second language learning expands the self. μηδείς (talk) 05:17, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

A google book search revealed that the same and similar quotes ("to acquire", "to gain" instead of "to get", etc.) are sometimes attributed to Charles V, whose more famous quote on the same topic goes "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to Women, French to Men, and German to my Horse." and appears to be a misattribution as well, see Wikiquote for example. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:11, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you all! 68.48.123.29 (talk) 13:36, 7 July 2011 (UTC)luos

There is a very well known phrase "kolik [řečí/jazyků] [znáš/umíš], tolikrát jsi člověkem", which was what I first thought of when I saw this. "You are once a human for every language you know". - filelakeshoe 13:43, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

And btw, duše is feminine (nová duše) - filelakeshoe 21:43, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I would have said duch based on the Lord's Prayer in my dialect, and it did look odd, so that I searched novy duch as well, but was relying on google translate for the Czech spellings. The quote you give above resembles the one I remember for whichever German emperor it was who said it. μηδείς (talk) 18:47, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Translating jobs...?

Hello, i've noticed most pages in English havent been translated to Spanish yet and im wondering if you guys have any positions for translators. Do you guys pay for transtaltions to begin with? Thanks a lot and have a nice day. Rudy Gonzalez. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RudyGlez (talk • contribs) 20:23, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. There are no positions. There is no payment. The entire project, in all of its many language versions, is run on a voluntary basis. That is at once both its magnificence and also one of its problems. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:28, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

wait, hold on hold on hold on WAIT A MINUTE!! You are saying the ENTIRE Wikipedia, in ALL of its entirety, is run on a voluntary basis??!! 1) That would never, ever work. 2) who's paying for all this then??? Files don't serve themselves, yuo know... --188.29.193.67 (talk) 21:57, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's all voluntary (well, almost). The servers and a small number of salaried technical support staff are maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation, an non-profit organisation that raises funds through donations, like the personal donations it solicits through the 'please donate' advertising every year. It accepts some other forms of charity. I think I've got that right. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:17, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I think that's right. The Wikimedia Foundation provides the technical and IT support for Wikipedia, but it itself is not Wikipedia. ALL of Wikipedia, 100% of it, is written by volunteers. Even Jimmy Wales, who is credited with creating Wikipedia and, I assume, derives income from Wikipedia-related PR activities, is not paid a red cent when he edits the encyclopedia wearing his volunteer hat as User:Jimbo Wales. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 00:53, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I wish you guys a lot of luck, but that will never work. People just don't work that way - you have to pay to get something of value. 188.29.193.67 (talk) 10:44, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

So, Wikipedia will never work, eh. Hmm. We'd better get the word out to the writers and editors of the close to 4 million articles we have (and that's just in the English language version) that their efforts over the past 9 years have been fruitless and they'd better quit now before Wikipedia grinds to a total halt and disintegrates before their very eyes. And we'd better alert all the users of the site, who have made it the 5th most visited site on the internet, that it's all coming to its inevitable end any day now. Thank God you told us about this, 188.29.193.67, because otherwise nobody would ever have known. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 12:14, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Next thing 188 will be telling us is that man will never fly, nor can bumblebees. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:16, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd hazard to guess the IP is being sarcastic. Apterygial ^talk 12:19, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I posted a message on Rudy's talk page, asking him to visit the Spanish Wikipedia. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:23, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Knockabout

Wiktionary tells me that the adjective "knockabout" means "boisterous". Is that its only meaning? I've often wondered about this. Young Australian adult males who have died suddenly (eg. on active service) are often eulogised as "a knockabout sort of bloke" or similar. The word is often associated with the term "larrikin", but not always. I never quite know what a knockabout person is, but boisterous is not the mental image I have. Fun-loving, definitely; but beyond that, the field's wide open, in my mind. And are women ever described as "knockabout"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 21:48, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Define: Knockabout got me a definition which seems to suit your mental image, Jack, but also the title of a comedy martial-arts film from Hong Kong (maybe with a different intended meaning of 'knock-about', as opposed to merely 'boisterous'). Clicking on the 'more' link gives additional definitions, one of which is indeed 'boisterous'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:10, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

EDIT - Actually, after delving a little more, your Wiktionary link gives one citation for the word, used as a description of comedy. My links also use the word in reference to comedy. It seems that that is the most common use of the word, as in 'slap-stick', and that 'boisterous' may only be a subordinate meaning. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:25, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

As another Australian, I feel knockabout has only a little to do with boisterous, but more to do with where someone is placed in society, often by choice. A knockabout kind of bloke is not interested in social climbing, often seeking outdoor, labouring type work (that's where boisterous might come in), enjoys a beer, hangs around with similarly inclined mates a lot, and doesn't wory about what others think of him. HiLo48 (talk) 22:27, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

My father (mid-70s, Northern England) just told me his definition is 'someone who is rough and ready, might have a fight, maybe win, maybe lose...,' and he seems to think that fighting is central to the meaning. This ties in with how we used the word 30 years ago, too, now I think of it. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:41, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

In my US English dialect, "knockabouts" are clothes you wear to do work or play that would damage good clothing. That's definition 2 here (although I use it as a noun, too, not just an adjective): [1]. However, our Wiktionary entry lacks that meaning. StuRat (talk) 22:44, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

That's sort of connected to my idea of a knockabout male. He's not shabby, but he certainly isn't the type to wear a suit either, except something ill-fitting and off the rack, worn only at a wedding or a funeral. He's casual in his general approach to things, without necessarily being irresponsible about them. He has a few close friends, and enjoys a good time, but is not the life of the party. He's generally seen around, but not heard a great deal. He knows about certain types of "stuff" (wink, nudge). There's something of an air of mystery about him, but he would never be described as "mysterious". Does any of this ring true with others? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:34, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Given that I have been known to do things, and was stabbed in the Bronx, yes? μηδείς (talk) 05:03, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Is that anywhere near the Gluteus Maximus?  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]}

Well, a Bronx cheer rather resembles a sound originating near there. :-) StuRat (talk) 18:37, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

July 8

p. 65 or p.65 ?

I'm accustomed to seeing page numbers written as

p. 65

(American) or

p 65

(British). But within Wikipedia I also find these:

p.65

and

p65

I don't recall that I've ever seen those anywhere besides Wikipedia. Are they conventional somewhere? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:15, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

No. It is nonstandard to omit the space between the abbreviation and the page number. If I came across such a mistake, I would correct it. Marco polo (talk) 01:08, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, the space should be a non-breaking space (  in markup) so you don't get a line break between the "p(.)" and the number. Angr (talk) 10:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

There are many many thousands, maybe millions, of instances of this in Wikipedia. Clearly lots of people are editing here who think it's standard. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:11, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I think it's particularly common among those for whom English is a second language. I'm presuming there are similar abbreviations in other languages - do they use a space? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:14, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, well, I think having two spaces after a full stop (period) is standard and Wikipedia won't stand for that, so I'm not going to get too worked up over the number of spaces in the instance of an easily understood abbreviation... Matt Deres (talk) 19:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

You're mistaken: Even those who put two spaces after a period do that only when it's a period marking the end of a sentence---not when it's the period in "Dr. Smith" or "p. 65". Michael Hardy (talk) 18:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm pleased to hear of someone else who uses two spaces after a full stop. I was beginning to think I was the last surviving user of this convention! Dbfirs 21:40, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe they put p.nnn instead of p. nnn precisely to avoid a line break, since that "non-breaking space" is not likely to be known by the average editor. In e-mails I use two spaces after a period, which is standard English writing. In wikipedia, you can put 2 or 3, or even 10 spaces in, as I've got within these square brackets [ ] but the display mechanism compresses it down to one. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:13, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I would deny that it's still standard English writing to put two spaces after a period. The Chicago Manual of Style explicitly prescribes just one space after a period or colon, and Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style says of putting two spaces between sentences, "Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit." Angr (talk) 13:04, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Looking through various business communications I've received via e-mail, there's no consistency. And I don't see how Bringhurst figures it matters. You can hit the spacebar once or twice with not much difference in effort or time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:15, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

He's not saying it would save time or effort, he's saying it's unnecessary and aesthetically unappealing. It started out with Victorian typography, which was dark and closely set and needed extra space between sentences. The habit passed over from typesetters to typists, but when typeset text got lighter in the mid-20th century and typesetters stopped making the space between sentences, typists didn't get the news and so generations of people learning to type were taught to put extra space between their sentences even though typesetters no longer did. (Bringhurst also considers the use of the unspaced em dash Victorian and recommends abolishing it in favor of the spaced en dash.) Angr (talk) 05:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I find it much easier to identify sentence breaks when two spaces are used, even in modern typography, but I agree that the convention is falling out of use.   When typing text to be read aloud, with whole sentences to be read at a glance, I often use three or four spaces.   I've just looked at a Victorian novel printed by Thomas Danks of Fleet Street and noticed that he used three spaces between sentences. Dbfirs 19:57, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Knutsson in all Scandinavian languages

What is all the form of Knutsson (son of Knut or Knut's son) in all the Scandinavian languages: Old Norse (bigger priority), Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish and any other form. Please list them with their language next to them. Also is it correct to be rendered as Cnutsson/Cnutson or Canuteson/Canutesson? --Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 02:16, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Knutsen and Knutssen exist. μηδείς (talk) 02:36, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I would probably stick to the Scandinavian spelling rather than rendering them in an Anglicised form. Canute is in any case considered rather old fashioned, history books now will use Cnut for the famous King (Knūtr is apparently the Old Norse). However I see no reason to use this form in a modern name. 90.214.166.169 (talk) 10:24, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Knutsson or Knutson in Swedish, at least if it's used as a name. Sjö (talk) 10:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Surnames didn't really exist in Old Norse times, but I think this is how you would say Knut's son: Knūts sonr. Marco polo (talk) 14:24, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, today's surname was at that time a patronymic.Sjö (talk) 16:04, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't asking for a surname. I was asking for a patronym. So is there a patronym in Old Norse of a son of a man named Knut?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 09:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

A patronymic is produced productively by definition (for example, if you were my father, I would have the patronymic Queen-Elizabeth-II's-Little-Spy-son in Old Norse, and Квин-Элизабет-II'с-Литл-Спаевич in Russian). So the answer to a question such as yours is inevitably yes (just as to the question "is there a sentence so-and-so in Old Norse?"). Now, even though the word "son" is indeed sonr in Old Norse and sonur in modern Icelandic, the patronymics end in -son in the nominative, for some mysterious reason. In the online Icelandic Saga Database, I find only one occurrence of Knútsson in the accusative (same as the nominative), one of Knútssonar in the genitive, but I suppose that's because the name wasn't that common in the first place (searching for occurrences of the name as a given name doesn't yield many results either).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:22, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There are plenty of Norwegian-Americans named "Canuteson", dating back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Just do a Google search. I don't know what "correctness" has to do with gathering a list of surname variants. Obviously there's no definitive version. LANTZY^TALK 15:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

If there were something wrong with odd last name variants I'd be in trouble on both sides of the family. I could imagine Germany might keep a list though, given they regulate Vornamen. Interesting the German law is not mentioned in the English article. μηδείς (talk) 03:06, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Also unanswered is what is the Norwegian and Danish form and if Cnuts(s)on is ever used?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 09:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Forms with C are either very rare or non-existent (it's not a very popular letter in the Scandinavian languages, compared to English and Romance). The "pure" Danish form is Knudsen. I think the "consistent" (or rather, consistently inconsistent) Norwegian form would be Knutsen, although it is always a contentious issue what constitutes "real Norwegian" linguistically (cf. e.g. Norwegian language struggle). Thus, the Danish version "Knudsen" is also very common in Norway because of the shared linguistic history of the two languages, and in addition, in the opposite extreme, surnames in -son (producing, in this case, "Knutson" as in Sweden) occur as well.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:58, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Verbs that take dative (in)direct objects

Consider verbs like German helfen "to help" and Latin parēre "to obey." The complement of these verbs is assigned the dative case (e.g. Ich habe deinem (dative) Vater geholfen "I helped your father"), even though the complement seems more like a direct object rather than an indirect object. How should these complements be labeled: direct objects with dative-case endings or simply indirect objects? And why is the other label unacceptable? Thanks.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:56, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

They are only direct objects when translated into English. German and Latin speakers would not regard them that way. We need to describe them from the perspective of those languages, not from the perspective of something irrelevant like English. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:15, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

That's not necessarily true, as with deponent verbs there can be a consciousness that grammatical form doesn't exactly fit underlying meaning and linguists and self-aware language speakers do distinguish between logical and grammatical case, as in the use of the genitive instead of the accusative for animate masculine Russian nouns. There is a huge literature on this. μηδείς (talk) 10:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I am quite sure a German would notice if pointed out to him or from curiosity that helfen is different from other transitive verbs in that it cannot take an accusative object while almost all other transitive verbs can.

Er kauft mir das Buch.

Er hilft mir mit dem Buch. but not

(!) Er hilft mir das Buch.

It doesn't require a knowledge of English to see the exceptionality here. (BTW, how does one indicate a real asterisk rather than a markup bullet?) μηδείς (talk) 11:08, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

&#42; and <nowiki>*</nowiki> will always give you an asterisk. Angr (talk) 11:39, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

That nowiki will be useful, thanks.μηδείς (talk) 19:08, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

See case government and government (linguistics), although they are rather stubby articles, and you'll find much more at the library. μηδείς (talk) 11:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Logically / meaning-wise, the complements of "help" and "obey" actually make more sense as indirect objects; you could call the verbs "transitive" based on the fact that they (usually) require a complement, but it still doesn't mean that the complement in question must be a direct object. When you're helping a person, you're not directly affecting or changing them, you're just doing something for them, a typical "indirect object" situation. The same applies even more obviously to obeying. I am myself a speaker of a language (Bulgarian) which uses a dative preposition with both verbs (basically, "I'm helping to him", "I'm obeying to him"), and the Russian and German constructions make perfect sense to me - i.e. I perceive no discrepancy between grammar and semantics here. Indeed, I would guess that when English still had cases, it too used the dative in these situations.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:35, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

That's right, Old English had "ic helpe minum freondum", "he Gode þancode", "ic forgiefe ðam þeowum" ("the servants"); in all of these cases Bulgarian has the dative preposition, whereas, interestingly, Russian uses the direct object with the latter two verbs (благодарить and прощать), so there's no universal here. Here's what I find on Google Books in "An historical syntax of the English language, Volume 1, Part 3", p.280-281 by Fredericus Theodorus Visser: "indirect object as sole object" was used with verbs where the "persons or things toward whom or which the action ... is directed in such a way that they may be regarded as a kind of recipient; in other words, the action is - either materially or non-materially - advantageous, serviceable, profitable, harmful or injurious to the person or thing denoted by the object". This includes "verbs of following, serving, obeying" (e.g. folgian, hieran, hiersumian), "verbs of liking, disliking, hating" (e.g. lician), "verbs of happening" (befeallan), "verbs of saying, confessing, reproaching, cursing, threatening" (andswarian), "verbs of injuring, harming, protecting or the opposite" (beorgan), "verbs of pleasing, comforting, honouring, flattering or the opposite" (e.g. forgiefan), "verbs of believing, trusting or the opposite" (e.g. belifan), "verbs of helping" (e.g. helpan), verbs of approaching, adhering, touching or the opposite" (e.g. feolan). Again, in most of these cases Russian would use the dative case and Bulgarian would use the dative preposition.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:00, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Verbs in German that take only dative objects include these:

gefallen, gehören, helfen, begegnen, folgen, bedürfen, dienen, huldigen, beitreten, weichen, aus | weichen, nach | gehen, widerfahren, entgegen | fiebern, antworten

(I've indicated separability of prefixes with a vertical slash.) I don't think these are properly considered transitive verbs. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:22, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I think there are also verbs that can take both a direct object and an indirect object and you don't have to include both. Thus:

Sie glaubt ihm jedes Wort.

Sie glaubt ihm.

Sie glaubt jedes Wort.

The second sentence above has an indirect object and no direct object (that never happens in English, AFAIK). Michael Hardy (talk) 15:24, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Should I have added scheinen? "Diese Frage scheint mir besser als die anderen." Michael Hardy (talk) 15:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Bedürfen takes the genitive, not the dative. Angr (talk) 15:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

You're right. I extrapolated from a couple of examples in which the objects were feminine singular nouns. With feminine singular nouns you can't tell the dative from the genitive. I think very few verbs behave like this. ("Erinnern" used to take genitive objects in addition to accusative objects. I think a couple of centuries ago people said "Ich erinnerte ihn seines Versprechens", where they now say "Ich erinnerte ihn an sein Versprechen".) Michael Hardy (talk) 15:51, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, erinnern + genitive sounds quite old-fashioned or elevated nowadays. Gedenken, semantically similar, also takes the genitive. Angr (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Here's a relevant question: Do sentences using helfen, folgen, etc., with their dative objects, admit passive transformations in which those objects become subjects? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:51, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

No. These verbs form impersonals rather than passives and the dative object remains in the dative, but thanks to the freedom of German word order, the dative object can move to the front of the sentence. Thus German for "The boy was helped" is Dem Jungen wurde geholfen. Making a true passive out of one of these verbs sounds childish in German: Verona Pooth made some commercials using the slogan "Hier werden Sie geholfen" (instead of grammatical "Hier wird Ihnen geholfen"), which was playing on her image as a dumb bimbo. Angr (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. Maybe that answers the original questions above. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Something a little bit related affects the verb "ask" in English. If you say

I didn't ask her that question.

Then "her" seems like an indirect object and "that question" seems like a direct object. But you can say

I didn't ask her.

despite the fact that presumably a sentence in English never has an indirect object unless it also has a direct object. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:40, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The posting from 91.148.159.4 above is quite interesting. I don't have usually have a strong gut feeling for these things. But I mentioned slightly anomalous behavior of the verb "ask" in English above. The German counterpart "fragen" also seems a bit weird to me, in that one says "Was hast du mich gefragt?" whereas somehow "Was hast du mir gefragt?" seems logical. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

English has no problem with using only an indirect compliment.

"I told." "I asked." "I told him." "I asked him." "I told the answer." "I asked the question." and "I told him it." and "I asked him it." are all well formed. μηδείς (talk) 19:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

BTW, I think you're confusing "compliment" with an "i" with "complement" with an "e". I think that pair appears in a list of easily confused words in some Wikipedia page. The complement disambiguation page says "In many different fields, the complement of X is something that together with X makes a complete whole—something that supplies what X lacks. Note the word "complete", since that's a useful mnemonic: a complement makes something complete. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Note also that in Romance the reflexes of adiutare (e.g. Sp. ayudar FR. aider) govern the accusative, as does the preposition ad, but you do find a tendency toward leismo with Spanish, which results more from the use of personal a with an animate object. μηδείς (talk) 19:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

"I told" and "I told the answer" are not good English. But "I didn't ask her" is perfectly fine. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:10, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The assignment of particular objects is a subjective choice of the speaker, and depends on polite deferral to others in a hierarchy. There is no way to answer this question without details about the subjective relationship of the speaker to his or her relatives, friends, and memberships. 99.24.223.58 (talk) 22:35, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

@99.24.223.58: That is nonsense. Language has standard conventions that are known independently of the biographies of individual speakers. And some excellent answers have been given here. That's not always true of things posted to Wikipedia's reference desks. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I am sure you are correct, but not sure your assertion is contrary to mine. 99.24.223.58 (talk) 23:48, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what language you speak natively, JackofOz, but a perfectly cromulent response to one sibling with a guilty conscience saying, "I hope you don't tell!" is the other responding, "Sorry, I already told." And a fine response to "Make sure you keep the answer secret" is, "Oops, I already told the answer." Their appropriateness is contextually determined but the statements are perfectly good English and their grammaticality is indubitable. μηδείς (talk) 22:42, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

No, Medeis. There are three different verbs "tell" with different semantics and different subcategorisation frames.

• "Tell" = "impart information" normally takes both direct and indirect objects, but the direct object may be omitted when it is recoverable from context. I think some speakers will allow the indirect object to be omitted, but I wouldn't, ("I told him what I knew". "So I told them".)
• "Tell" = "recount a story" requires a direct object; an indirect object is optional. ("He told a tale of woe")
• "Tell" = "report somebody's wrongdoing" does not take a direct object. It may take an "on" phrase for the person being given away - I'm not sure whether to categorise that as an indirect object or not. ("I'll tell!", "She told on me"). --ColinFine (talk) 00:24, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

That's an interesting theory of three verbs, which bizarrely have the same unrelated form, rather than one verb used three ways. How exactly one can tell without context that "I told" necessarily means "I told on you" and not "I told them what happened" amazes. I suppose the exchange "Please don't tell my wife you saw me at the bar last night" answered by "Oh, I'm sorry, but I already told" is bad English? The response should be, "Sorry, I already told on"? μηδείς (talk) 02:57, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

A native would reply "I/I've already told her", or "I/I've already told on you", but the latter is not considered adult language, so it would probably not be encountered in the context you mention. Childen are the ones who are into "telling on" their friends. Also, a native would not say How exactly .... amazes. More like I'm amazed that one can tell without context that "I told" necessarily means "I told on you" and not "I told them what happened". Or, what you had, but with the word "me" at the end (... amazes me, not just ... amazes). -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:09, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There's "tell" in the sense of "order" and "instruct", as well as "inform"; and also "tell" in the sense of distinguish: "you can tell a leopard by its spots", as in the old chestnut "You can tell an Irishman/engineer/Englishman/Scot/noble/Yankee/Old Etonian/Digger/Wikipedian/... , but you can't tell him much!" (with a direct object in the first clause, and both direct & indirect objects in the second). I haven't bothered to dig out the OED, but I'm sure there are at least a dozen numbered entries and several columns for "tell", e.g. "tell" for counting, as in teller's windows or parliamentary tellers. —— Shakescene (talk) 03:25, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Non-natives often have trouble with the uses of tell, say and speak. There are story tellers, who tell stories. But we don't say "Please tell a story", rather "Please tell me/us a story". Except if it's a specific story we've already heard and we want others with us to now hear it - "Oh, please tell the story about how you ....". We speak a language, we do not say a language. But we say words, and we can also speak words. We never tell either words or a language. We never speak or say a story. We speak to or with someone, we do not tell to someone or say to someone. But we can say to someone "This is terribly confusing". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:20, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

None of this negates the fact that in the simple everyday "to tell someone (dative) something (accusative)" either or both arguments can be left unstated and the resultant sentence, all other things being equal, be perfectly good English. I am sure it may be embarrassing for people to make the baldly false statement that tell in the simple sense to tell someone something has to have an explicit compliment or have some other sense. But they need never worry so far as I am concerned that their mistakes will be revealed, for I shall never tell. μηδείς (talk) 03:44, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

That's a very specific idiomatic phrase, used in a particular context. It can't be generalised. "What did you do today?" - I spent the day telling would only be a meaningful response if uttered by a bank teller. Otherwise, it makes no sense. It would have to be something like I spent the day telling lies or I spent the day telling my subordinates what idiots they all are. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 04:32, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

You make me laugh. The fact that one wouldn't normally say "I spent the day knowing" has nothing to do with the supposed inability of one to say "I know." But don't worry. I still won't tell. μηδείς (talk) 05:40, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Shall I interpret your first sentence as a compliment or a bit of a put down? It could easily be either, given the foregoing. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 05:54, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Do you seriously expect me to tell? μηδείς (talk) 06:23, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There's no telling how non-native users of language can make serious errors in their choice of expressions. I assume good faith, naturally, but assumptions do not always reflect reality. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll Never Tell, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Promise Not to Tell... μηδείς (talk) 17:44, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

So, to sum up, it is often the case that one language treats the complement of verb with a certain sense as a direct object, while another language treats the complement of a verb with the corresponding sense as an indirect object. While one may discuss which option, if any, "objectively" seems like a more natural expression of the semantics, one ought to consider the possibility that one's intuitions in this regard are predetermined by one's own native language.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:35, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Not exactly. I would say that there is a difference, in those languages which have case declensions, between the formal case assigned to the arguments of a specific verb and the logical role which they play. The term direct object usually corresponds with the accusative case, but the patient of certain transitive verbs may be formally expressed in the dative case (Ich helfe ihm, 'I help him' German) or the genitive case (Я удара Ивана, 'I am hitting John' Russian) depending on the verb itself and the language's idiosyncratic treatment of objects depending upon animacy and other factors. Spanish has the phenomena of a personal in which an animate Spanish direct object of either gender is governed by the preposition a ("to" or "at") e.g., Estoy matando a Juan "I am killing John" giving an indirect object form to what is logically a direct object. I would also point out the obvious unreliability of naive statements regarding the subject, and would refer one to reliable sources such as Case (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics)] for more informed opinions on the subject of verbs, their logical objects, and their formal expression. μηδείς (talk) 21:52, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

But there is no objective reason to consider the complement of "to help" or "to obey" to be, semantically, a patient, rather than a beneficiary/recipient. In other words, there is no objective reason to believe that the accusative is a more direct/natural expression of the semantics than the dative in such cases. You assumed and continue to assume that the discrepancy between syntax and semantics is found in (archaic) Germanic and Slavic rather than in Romance and (innovative) Germanic. I don't think there is any justification for this assumption - the only reason for such a notion is that one happens to be a native speaker of a language of the latter type (as in the case of el Aprel), and consequently finds the former type strange and unnatural.

BTW, your Russian example should be something like "я бью Ивана" (or я ударяю Ивана, but that's more like "I strike John [once]" and isn't very usual). --91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:21, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

As for the useful book you recommended, I note that its author supports my view that the accusative rection of Latin necare "to kill", tractare "to pull" and movere "to move" expresses a different semantic role from the dative rection in auxiliari "to help", parere "to obey" and fidere "to trust" (p.144). In the former case, you have "entities that are directly affected", in the latter - "entities that are not directly affected". BTW, based on these examples, it seems that Classical Latin was not unlike Archaic Germanic and Slavic in this respect.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:52, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure how the aspect of the Russian verb is relevant, when it is the genitive form of the object of the Russian verb which was primary in the example--and certainly not the proffered English translation. I am fully get why certain Indo-European verbs have patients in formal cases other than the accusative. But that itself is the issue. There is no way that I am aware of to determine the "objective" way for languages to do things--either they express issues efficiently and sufficiently coherently and sufficiently consistently, or they aren't languages. Sure;y Spanish and Russian with their oblique form objects of simple transitive verbs are no less rational than other languages which lack such constructions. Once again, I simply advise people who are interested to study the languages and their idiosyncrasies themselves, and to read the sources, such as the Cambridge title I suggested above.

Issues like beneficiary versus plain patient are matters of emphasis, ("He was the object of my help", vs. "I provided him with help") not "fact". If they were matters of "fact", language change would not exist.

The only "fact" I would emphasize here is that there are plenty of perfectly cromulent English sentences which use the verb "to tell" without any overt object, and that one shouldn't take the word of even "expert" native witnesses as if it were above reproach. μηδείς (talk) 05:17, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the form of the Russian verb wasn't important to the discussion, I mentioned it only as an aside to make sure that the information posted here is correct for all purposes (it wasn't just about the aspect, удара is not a Russian verb form at all). No comment regarding the rest, I think everything necessary has been said above.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Btw, it's not the genitive you're seeing in "я бью Ивана" or "я ударяю Ивана". It's accusative; the form just happens to be identical to the genitive in masculine animate nouns that end with a consonant. Had you chosen a feminine example, Mapия for example, it would have been "я ударяю Mapию", clearly accusative. Or even if you'd used Иван's diminutive form Bаня - "я ударяю Bаню", again, clearly accusative. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:43, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

So when I said above that there are languages like Russian where a direct object may be formally expressed using the genitive case form depending on animacy and other factors, and then intentionally chose an example that illustrated the point, I was making a mistake which you just corrected? Or did you have some other point? μηδείς (talk) 16:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The reason for this latter disagreement is that Russian paedagogical grammar usually describes those forms, which do coincide with the genitive, as a case of allomorphy. That is, if you learn Russian for practical purposes, you are told that the accusative form of animate masculines such as Иван is Ивана (which just so happens to coincide with its genitive form), whereas the accusative form of дом is дом. After all, the accusative of inanimate masculines and neuters formally coincides with another case, too - this time, the nominative. I don't know which description should be considered correct synchronically for theoretical purposes - diachronically, of course, this situation did arise in the same way as the Spanish type Veo a María = "I see Maria" did, as Medeis mentioned. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Medeis, I don't know why you get all defensive when someone makes an observation about something you write. All you needed to say was something like "Yes, you're right". End of story. Or, if you disagreed with what I wrote, you could have prosecuted your case and I'd have been very open to your argument. Keep it simple and honest; this is no place for mind games. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:57, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

That belligerent and defensive non-answer, Jack, to what it was you meant to correct by your "Btw, what you said is not X. It's Y." formulation, is ironically quite eloquent in its own way. μηδείς (talk) 02:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you insist I spell it out: Yes, you made a mistake, and I corrected it. As you haven't disputed what I wrote, I assume you agree with it - despite all your palaver. How ironic is that! -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:59, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

For the purposes of this thread, 91.148.159.4, it is entirely relevant to bring up the use of the genitive form to mark the direct object role of animate masculine nouns in Slavic in the diachronic context. It's an innovation within Slavic. Slavic grammars don't take a blindly synchronic view and posit a four gender system. The marked nature of the construction is surely obvious even to non-linguists, just as English speakers are aware of the difference between strong and weak preterite verbs, even if they don't know the technical lingo, and German speakers can note the asymmetry between the sentences "Ich half ihm" and "Ich hinderte ihn." The point is that at any level of metalinguistic introspection, even monolingual speakers can note the markedness of verbs with irregular case government, and distinguish between form and role. μηδείς (talk) 02:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Now you're at it again, despite the fact that we've already been through this. Your bringing up Slavic was and is irrelevant, because, whereas the Slavic animacy variation is indeed an instance of "irregular" (or rather untypical, and in any case split) role-to-case mapping (two different cases for the same role), the German one is a case of two different semantic roles receiving two different cases (as the book you pointed me to says for the parallel case of Latin). That is, you were wrong in your assumption that German helfen has "irregular case government" - an assumption which is based on the naive anglocentrist assumption that the complement of helfen in German must have underlyingly the same semantic role as that of help in English. Helfen in German, helpan in Old English, помагать in Russian, помагам in Bulgarian, auxiliari in Latin have perfectly regular government (dative) for their semantic role ("recipient", "beneficiary", "target which is not directly affected" or whatever you wish to call it), and that semantic role in turn is not "irregular" but entirely logical.

Not only do you mistakenly assume that the complement of "help" must have the semantic role of a patient (don't confuse it with "direct object", which is a term for the syntactic entity and not for the semantic role), but on top of it all you also are insisting that even native speakers of languages using the recipient/dative pattern must view it as irregular - even when I explicitly told you that I am a native speaker of a language following the German pattern and I don't perceive it as irregular. If anything, I perceive the English pattern as weird and irregular. Only some hypothetical native speaker that has thoroughly internalized English as a prism through which he views all other languages, including his own, could find his own native pattern "irregular". Concerning Russian - I'm not a native speaker of Russian, but I certainly don't think Russian speakers perceive the accusative=genitive construction as marked either. As I already told you, traditional, teaching-oriented grammars of Russian, also those intended for Russian pupils, simply treat Ивана as the accusative form of Иван, which just happens to coincide with the genitive.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:12, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh, my. Where, exactly did I say Russian or any other language was "weird" or wrong to have a class of verbs which take objects but not direct objects in the accusative case? You are simply assuming that whenever I say something is different that I must be implying it is wrong or inferior. The word irregular simply means following a different rule within the internal context of the language, not "different from English". I guess I can't speak for you on what you do and do not note about your own language. But English speakers, for instance, do note such things as the lack of infinitives and distinct third person forms for auxiliary verbs if they think about it, and they do not need to study languages with full conjugation systems first to do so. Likewise I am quite sure that a German can note the asymmetry in:

• Ich liebe ihn.
• Ich hasse ihn.
• Ich helfe ihm.
• Ich hindere ihn.

just as in your last sentence you yourself note the asymmetry in Russian that only certain animate masculine nouns use a form identical to the genitive case to express the accusative role.

μηδείς (talk) 14:18, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. Let this be my last post in this thread, if you don't mind. It's true that you did not use the word "weird" or "wrong", nor did I at any point believe that you had set out to vilify any language, you just insisted on an Anglocentric analysis of it without taking heed of the counterarguments. You assumed arbitrarily that a disparity between form and meaning was found in the German dative government of "help" and not, say, in the English accusative government of "help" (and German hindern). You assumed that verbs like "help" in German must represent deviations from the general rule (semantic patient = syntactic accusative), whereas English was consistent in following it. This arose from your assumption that their complements must have underlyingly the same semantic role as the one implied by the English government pattern, and that their government contradicted the semantic role of the complements - although I explained how it is, in fact, motivated by their semantics. Similarly, el Aprel originally observed that "The complement of these verbs is assigned the dative case ... even though the complement seems more like a direct object rather than an indirect object". Pray, what made him think that "the complement seems more like a direct object"? Of course, the fact that it is a direct object in English - to a native speaker of a language where it is an indirect object, such as yours truly, such a thought would have never occurred at all. Example quotes: in the German type the "grammatical form doesn't exactly fit underlying meaning"; "It doesn't require a knowledge of English to see the exceptionality here"; there is "irregular case government".

And yes, a speaker can be alerted to the fact that different verbs have different government - but this says nothing about whether he will perceive any one of them as exceptional, let alone that he will perceive as exceptional precisely the verb that has different government from the corresponding English verb. In the case of helfen vs hindern, lieben, hassen - yes, some complements that are not directly affected nevertheless take the accusative. To the extent that there is a semantic rule, that makes them the exception (this brings us to the meaning of "irregular" - it normally doesn't just mean "following a different rule", it means "unpredictably deviating from the general rule" - and these are the unpredictable ones). For example, in the book already cited, after the author has generalized with a view to verbs like auxiliari and parere vs necare and movere that "The accusative encodes entities that are directly affected whereas the dative encodes entities that are not directly affected", he goes on to note that despite this rule, "one cannot predict the case from the role", because some verbs with unaffected entities nevertheless require the accusative (e.g. amare "love" and videre "see"). By the way, the words for "to hinder" have dative government just like "to help" in Russian and Bulgarian (мешать, преча), making them a bit more consistent (or, of course, from an Anglocentric perspective, even less consistent) than German in this regard. Cheers! (and now I'll beg to be excused) --91.148.159.4 (talk) 21:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

July 9

Turkish baharat includes mint as the major ingredient.

"Turkish baharat includes mint as the key ingredient."

What I want to say is:

"Turkish baharat includes mint as the ingredient that is the largest relative majority."

What I mean by "the ingredient that is the largest relative majority" is a certain mixture may have:

• 2 parts water
• 1 part oil
• 3 parts milk

Milk = "the ingredient that is the largest relative majority"

, relative = in comparison with others

Is there a specific adjective I can replace with "key"?Curb Chain (talk) 06:49, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

You could use main, principal, chief, foremost or major. Thus "Turkish baharat includes ?mint as the (insert word) ingredient. I'm a little puzzled about the use of 'milk' and 'mint' in your question but that does not affect the grammar issue. Richard Avery (talk) 07:21, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Milk has nothing to do with the sentence, I'm just made that example off the top of my head. I thank you for your reply, and most cordially invite more.Curb Chain (talk) 07:34, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Is there a word that might have something that can lead the reader to understand "proportion"?Curb Chain (talk) 07:37, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I had the same problem ages ago when editing Hexagon pools, and I replaced "usually as hexagons" with the clumsy phrase "more often as hexagons than as polygons with any other specific number of sides". You probably can't make it clear in one word, so use lots of words. For instance "Turkish Baharat contains mint, and has more mint in it than any other ingredient".  Card Zero  (talk) 08:38, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't "...with hexagons as the most common polygon" be lot less awkward ? StuRat (talk) 15:06, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Yep. Nice rewrite job, there.  Card Zero  (talk) 15:56, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that entire article needed a rewrite and move, which I've now done. It looked like English was a second language to the original author. StuRat (talk) 16:07, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to merge the whole "similar places around the world" section into List of places with columnar jointed volcanics. The Hexagons Pool article can have "See also: List of places with columnar jointed volcanics" instead.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:29, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I was thinking of doing that myself. StuRat (talk) 02:28, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The second part assumes the first, so it can be shortened: "Turkish Baharat has more mint in it than any other ingredient". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 09:48, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

"Turkish Baharat includes mint as its main ingredient", or "the main ingredient of Turkish Baharat is mint", should be fine. To me, this has less potential ambiguity than "key ingredient", and even so, in both it seems very unlikely that someone would interpret the sentence as not meaning mint is the ingredient in the highest proportion. (Of course, it is logically possible for an ingredient to be "key" but not in the highest proportion, but the contexts where that difference matters are few, and that reading is even harder for me to get with "main ingredient" than it is with "key ingredient".) rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

The fine distinction being made here (almost certainly useless information, but who knows what a visitor might be looking for) is between:

1. An ingredient present in a larger quantity than any other single ingredient.
2. An ingredient present in a larger quantity than all the other ingredients put together.

... well, that's how I saw the problem, anyway. Might not be what the OP was worrying about.

 Card Zero  (talk) 10:02, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

What I was getting at was that an ingredient can be "key" for a reason other than its quantity. For instance, in many drinks the ingredient present in the largest quantity is water, but some other ingredient that is only present in a very small amount may be what gives it its special flavor. rʨanaɢ (talk) 07:18, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

That was how I wrote it first, but I added the preamble words "contains mint, and" because it bothered me somehow. You're probably right. It just seemed all like "huh, mint, where did that come from, is it a reference to something mentioned earlier, why are we talking about mint all of a sudden." If you see what I mean.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:56, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Which preamble? Card Zero, that's true, 1. and 2. doesn't matter, 2. just has a lot more of the "key" ingredient. I'm looking for an adjective that means that it is in bigger proportion than the rest; unfortunately, a mathematical adjective escapes me.Curb Chain (talk) 10:16, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Not really a preamble, sorry. Now I see a different problem: you want a word like "quantiful" (which I just made up). Words such as "main", "chief", or "prevalent" suggest overwhelming power, which is the wrong concept: and words such as "greatest" and "largest" suggest that the mint is in one solid countable piece. Probably "major ingredient" is the best option. (I'd still like to know if there is any word that does the job of "quantiful", though. There's also "abounding", and similar words - "plentiful" nearly fits - but those all imply "found all over the place" which is again slightly wrong.)  Card Zero  (talk) 10:33, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Yep, you are definitely right about all those words; I agree with all those extra semantics that those words are associated with. But I am now totally confused about your preamble comment.Curb Chain (talk) 06:25, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Heh. A preamble is an introductory statement, but I used the term to refer to just three introductory words that I had added near the start of the sentence. I wasn't really using the term correctly.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:01, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

primary96.42.196.192 (talk) 04:50, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I think 96.42.196.192 was suggest that mint was the "primary" ingredient of Turkish Baharat, I had been thinking to suggest "modal" but "primary" seems to fit the bill. EdwardLane (talk) 16:05, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Primary implies first, but I think modal would work better, but that is almost an obscure term for someone who doesn't understand mathematics, and I'm not meaning arithmetic, like simple 1+1.Curb Chain (talk) 09:55, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Old Norse

What is the Old Norse form of the name Sveinn Knutson?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 09:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Although not 100% sure I would think that Sveinn Knútsson was the Old Norse form of the name, since it would be spelled Svein Knutsson in modern Norwegian. --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:18, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry but can I get a 100% sure answer from a person who is skilled in Old Norse and other Scandinavian languages?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 09:27, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I see that it was User:Haukurth who added the Old Norse translation of Ælfgifu to the Svein, King of Norway page which I assume (very assuming of me, I know) you are working on. It says on his talk page that he's mostly inactive, but you could leave a message anyway. Seems likely that Haukurth left Sveinn Knútsson untranslated because it's the same in Old Norse.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:54, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Based on this, Saddhiyama is right it's Sveinn Knútsson. Mikenorton (talk) 10:19, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay thanks a lot everyone!--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 10:22, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Bear in mind that spelling names consistently is a relatively recent phenomenon (see "Spelling of Shakespeare's name" for a well-documented example in English). Old Norse orthography was not standardised in the way present-day English is. Gabbe (talk) 11:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

True, but a lot of old languages, including Old Norse, have a "neo-standardized" canonical orthography that you're taught when you start learning the language. So even if there are manuscripts or inscriptions where the first name is spelled Svein with just one n or the last name is spelled Knutsson without the acute accent, it would be considered a mistake to spell them that way today. Angr (talk) 12:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Google Translate......

OK, we all know Google Translate is just a bit of fun - especially to us professionals - and no-one takes it incredibly seriously. Still, it can be useful in getting the basic gist of a text in a language one does not speak, so long as you know how to sift through the garbage and rearrange the words into something meaningful. However, how can this happen?

To those who do not wish to click on the link, that is Google Translate, attempting to translate the simple Japanese phrase 'ato de ne' ('see you later') and churning out 'se you latter'.

There used to be a link saying 'Submit a better translation', but that has been removed. What are we to do now.....? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:20, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

If you click on the translation you can type in your improvement. Angr (talk) 12:49, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I think you would be surprised how many people do take google translate seriously. I have a website and I am amazed at how many hits are from google translate. I think that people who speak languages without a great web presence use it a lot. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:11, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm a professional translator and I take Google Translate seriously, but I know how to use it correctly. If I have a paragraph of running text with no matches in the translation memory, it's much faster for me to run it through GT and then clean up the translation than it is for me to translate it cold. I wouldn't use it to translate out of a language I don't actually know, except as KageTora says, to get the rough gist of what it says. And I'd never dream of using it to translate into a language I don't know. Angr (talk) 13:19, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

(EC) Oh, Angr, I sometimes use it for the same reason you do - merely as an aid in speeding up translating something that would otherwise have taken a little longer had I done it manually. As I said, you sift through it and rearrange until it's correct (something you have to do with TM from time to time as well, anyway). Getting back to what I was saying - I didn't realise you could type in your improvement. All I could see was the option to 'Use'. Having said that, does this actually get to Mountain View or does it just end up in our [now-]customized translation? Don't get me wrong, I don't wish to spend any massive effort in helping GT put myself and Angr out of jobs... ;) I would, however, like to reduce the little sillinesses like my example above at least as much as I can. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:08, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I think your corrections are remembered for the next time, but I'm not 100% sure. Angr (talk) 14:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't. I've tried it. I still get the same incorrect answer. Incidentally, if you press the 'listen' button, you get a voice that says 'south-east you latter'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:54, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

But how does it remember ? That is, does it remember the corrected translations for each word, changing "se" to "see" and "latter" to "later", or does it just remember that exact phrase ? Also, does it only remember it for you, or for others, too (which would seem to require a consensus process). StuRat (talk) 14:58, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, I'm thinking that the Japanese phrase in the example is remembered in Google as a single phrase, and has been given this single, erroneous translation as a single set phrase, rather than as three seperate words (the Japanese words 'ato'+'de'+'ne' do not correspond to 'see'+'you'+'later'). This would mean that Google only knows it as 'se you latter', and does not know that 'se' is a mistake for 'see', nor that 'latter' should have been 'later'. Correcting Google's translation here would only result in correcting it for this phrase pair alone, and not for any others which [coincidentally] may have the same spelling error. If 'mata ashita' ('see you tomorrow') were translated as 'se you tomorrow', for example, then Google would not correct the 'se' just because it had been corrected by the community is the case of 'se you latter'>'see you later', as it would not equate the two mistakes. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:16, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Excellent answers by Angr and KageTora about Google Translate in general and this gloss in particular. μηδείς (talk) 17:49, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible that someone came by and gave a "corrected" translation for this phrase, but unfortunately (or deliberately) misspelled the words? Astronaut (talk) 16:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Pop vs. soda

Anyone living in certain parts of the United States will be aware that many of us refer to it as pop, soda, or coke. There is a beautiful map that someone composed here [2], and my diligent observations have confirmed it 100%, at least in Pennsylvania (what can I say? I'm a language geek and a demographics geek: this stuff is like candy for me) - right down to the county line. I have some questions though after looking at the map:

• What is to explain the regional differences at all? The South I understand (they have a different dialect), but I don't understand the clean line running through the middle of Pennsylvania/New York/the northern tip of California.
• Why is the greater St. Louis so ridiculously pro-pop when no one in their vicinity is?
• Same question with greater Milwaukee, which is itself greater Chicago yet doesn't follow Chicago's rules.
• What are they calling it in parts of Southern Virginia and North Carolina? I notice a lot of green for "other" there.
• One thing I'm not curious about: the prevalance of soda in central/southern Florida; they have a large expat population from outside the South.

Magog the Ogre (talk) 14:03, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There is more than just Southern dialect in the U.S. See St. Louis dialect, Midland American English. (List of dialects of the English language has many more I would expect there is a map around here somewhere.) Rmhermen (talk) 14:17, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

[3] has a map but doesn't show St. Louis. [4] has a somewhat contradictory map which shows St. Louis and perhaps explains PA and NY but not Milwaukee. My greatgrandma, a South Midland speaker, called it "so-dee pop" which rhymed with her name Leota ("Low-dee") so I hate to think how she spelled it. Our Names for soft drinks says that "drink" and "cold drink" are common in southern Virginia and the Carolinas. (Say that where I live and you would always get a beer.) Rmhermen (talk) 14:24, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I've often heard "sodee" instead of "soda", especially when being hawked by ballpark vendors: "Hey, cold sodee here!" The prevalence of "Coke" for any kind of soda pop (as with "Kleenex" for any facial tissue, or "Xerox" for any kind of photocopy), I've always taken to be due to the fact of Coke being a prominent southern-made product (from Atlanta, GA). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:07, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

A language is made up of many elements (words, and also at different levels phonemes, grammatical rules, prosodies etc). There is absolutely no reason to expect the variations in all these to be totally correlated. Variations are substantially correlated (which is why "dialect" and "accent" are useful concepts), but why should you not expect to find some variations as you go from town to town, even neighbourhood to neighbourhood, even when the local dialect is in general the same. --ColinFine (talk) 17:14, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, a map of the various terms for "soda" constitutes one isogloss, and dialects are defined by isogloss bundles.

In the case of "sodee", older speakers of the Appalachian dialect raised final schwa in words like soda and Virginia to sody and Virginny. (Appalachian Speech, Wolfram & Christian, 1976 http://eric.ed.gov:80/PDFS/ED130511.pdf) Apparently final y and final schwa were in free variation in many American dialects at some point, hence "Santy Claus" and "Extry, extry, read all about it!" and the corresponding reverse hypercorrection of Missouri to Missourah. μηδείς (talk) 18:21, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

In many parts of the English speaking world outside the US "soda" is plain carbonated water - as in "scotch and soda". What do Americans call it to differentiate it from the sweet and fizzy beverages that they normally call "soda"? Roger (talk) 11:39, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Soda water if you want to distinguish it from sweet drinks, Seltzer or Club soda on the grocer's shelf. μηδείς (talk) 22:21, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

What does alle mean?

Hallo. At the moment I am translating the article St Giles-without-Cripplegate into the German Wikipedia. In that article there is a quote in some acient, presumely pre-Shakespeare English:

The xii day of September at iiii of cloke in the mornynge was sent Gylles church at Creppyl gatte burnyd, alle hole save the walles, stepull, belles and alle, and how it came God knoweth. (original Source)

Acutally pretty much is figured out, actually asking at our reference desk we couldn't reach consensus what the second alle does mean.

My first guess was aisle, as in save the walls, steeple, bells and aisle but others hinted that aisle in Middle English was ile (see Merriam-Webster) and suggested rather hall but that was halle in Middle English.

Any thoughts? --Matthiasb (talk) 15:19, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Facepalm Not all friends in English are false friends. All (or alle in German) makes perfect sense here. Here is a version with modernised spelling and more helpful punctuation:

The 12th day of September at 3 o'clock in the morning was Saint Giles' Church at Creppyl[?] gate burned – all whole save the walls – steeple, bells and all, and how it came God knows.

Hans Adler 15:30, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Cripplegate, incidentally. Tevildo (talk) 18:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, "four o'clock in the morning", since it's iiii and not iii. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:00, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) I assume "all". St. Giles church was burned, all whole (i.e. wholly) save (i.e. except) the walls: steeple, bells and all (were burned). Searching EO for "alle" [5] backs this up.  Card Zero  (talk) 15:32, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

It all makes sense but I never would have imagined to understand the comma after walles in the sense of a colon. Thank you, guys. --Matthiasb (talk) 16:43, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I understand that punctuation is a relatively modern addition to the English Language, and (without being able to confirm this) the colon might be a later addition than the comma was, which might explain your confusion. --TammyMoet (talk) 08:16, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I read it slightly differently (and I'm probably wrong) as St. Giles church was burned, all whole (i.e. wholly) save (i.e. except) the walls, steeple, bells and all (i.e. etc). EdwardLane (talk) 15:54, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The buck's gotta stop somewhere.

"The buck's gotta stop somewhere."

It seems a kind of famous quote. What does it mean?--Analphil (talk) 17:38, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

It apparently refers to the dealer button in poker. See wikt:pass the buck.  Card Zero  (talk) 17:54, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Possibly the most famous instance - and one which helped popularise the phrase in political circles - was the use by US president Harry Truman. See Buck passing#The Buck Stops Here for information on that, and other things. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:00, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

What's the significance of "I'm From Missouri" on the reverse of the sign? Is it that people from Missouri are famed for their responsibility? That side of the sign would normally be turned towards the president, though, so maybe it was just something he needed to be reminded of regularly?  Card Zero  (talk) 19:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

People from Missouri are known for their dubiousness. "I'm from Missouri, I doubt it." The Mark of the Beast (talk) 19:47, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

It's also called the "show me state". Adam Bishop (talk) 19:59, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I would think that fact, along with Harry Truman being from Missouri, are the explanation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:14, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Heh @ "I'm from Missouri, I doubt it." Reminds me of something confusing I heard recently: "I love you, me neither". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]}

Je t'aime... moi non plus, presumably. Tevildo (talk) 20:12, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

That's the one ... let's keep looking.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:32, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Kanbun readers

I am looking for somebody who can read kanbun as I need a translation of a few (not many) entries in the Shoku Nihongi. If you can make sense of texts like this, please let me know. It would go into this article. bamse (talk) 20:00, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

July 10

can jungle also mean rainforest?

Can 'jungle' also mean rainforest, besides for its usual meaning of "wild undergrowth"?

(there cannot be a jungle within a rainforest, according to wikipedia, because the trees of a rainforest by definition block all light from reaching the forest floor, and prevent anything from growing there)

(according to the dictionary on microsoft works it could, but i am not sure if its accurate)

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.81.199.45 (talk) 01:54, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

They are synonyms in my US English usage. This may be a case where the technical definition is at odds with the common one. Another case is a "desert". The technical definition (lack of rainfall), allows Antarctica to be called a desert. If the common usages came first, then it doesn't seem appropriate for scientists to declare their own definition and tell everyone else that the way they were using it all along is wrong. Instead, they should call it "vegetative growth zone, stage 4", or some such thing.StuRat (talk) 02:10, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

My Australian perspective is much like StuRat's, at least if the word tropical is placed in front. Doesn't work so well with temperate rainforests. HiLo48 (talk) 02:12, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think they are synonyms: a rainforest is a forest that grows in an extremely wet environment, a jungle is dense vegetation at ground level growing in an extremely wet environment. Jungle tends to form particularly around waterways, where trees cannot grow to block the light. It may also form after a fire or on steep slopes, or in swampy areas. Looie496 (talk) 04:33, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The forests of the Pacific Northwest are often referred to as a rainforest, and they are obviously not a tropical jungle. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:16, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Looie496 has it right so far as modern usage, jungle is land overgrown with tangled vegetation per OED. Supposedly jungle at the edge of the forest discouraged early explorers who thought the dense growth extended beyond the water's edge. The term is not used with any rigorous scientific meaning. Ironically, the word comes from Sanskrit jangala where it had the earlier sense dry land lacking trees, with the later sense of uncultivated wasteland. μηδείς (talk) 19:39, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

How did space become masculine?

I think "space" as used in English evolved from a French word. But on a video on youtube or I heard a German say (approximately)

Jeder braucht seinen eigenen Space.

pronouncing it just as in English. It was crystal-clear from the context that it did not mean "space" in the sense of physics or geometry, but rather just what it would mean in present-day somewhat informal English. The masculine nature of this word is not in any way present in English. But Germans somehow do this when they borrow words from English. Somehow a gender assigned to it gets universally agreed on. How does that happen? Michael Hardy (talk) 04:06, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Since English doesn't have grammatical gender, English loanwords in German are assigned a gender, usually in accordance with some native German (near-)synonym. In this case, Space is presumably masculine because Raum and Platz are both masculine. There are exceptions, though, such as Team, which is neuter even though its nearest synonym Mannschaft is feminine. English words with the suffix -ing (gerunds) are all neuter in German: das Styling, das Timing, das Meeting. Angr (talk) 05:32, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

This is the typical mechanism, which I think also applies to languages that do have grammatical gender. My example is French le tour (as in, say, Tour de France), which is die Tour in German, probably from die Rundreise.

In many cases, the agreement is not universal, though: while die E-mail (compare die Post) is the most common form, das E-mail also exists. Das Blog is more common than der Blog, but both are widely used. Everybody disagrees about what gender Nutella has, and in fact all three are used (there are regional variations). —Kusma (t·c) 05:52, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I had a German flatmate once who referred to my aloe vera plant as er (masculine pronoun), and I asked him why: it's die Blume, die Pflanze, and die Aloe, so why not sie (feminine pronoun). He thought for a moment and said "It's der Kaktus". And I said, "But aloes aren't cacti, they're in the lily family, and it's also die Lilie"! (I see from our article that aloes are no longer assigned to the lily family, but I didn't know that at the time.) Angr (talk) 06:01, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

These apparently arbitrary assignments of gender are often quite mystifying. Why they do it is one thing, but who actually makes these decisions is quite another question. Take the Russian word for coffee - romanized as kofe (sorry, my system is not supporting Cyrillic script lately). Now, Russian nouns ending in -e or -o are virtually universally neuter. But for some odd reason, kofe is masculine. Who made that decision, and why, that's what I'd like to know. It regularly trips up native speakers, who instinctively supply neuter adjectives rather than the technically correct masculine. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:48, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The underlying Romance Language word "cafe" appears to be masculine, which could be the reason. One theory (which does not necessarily hold) is that things that are "naturally occurring" could be feminine (made by "Mother Nature") and things that are "artificial" could be masculine ("man-made"). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:22, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

That theory doesn't account for languages like German, Russian, Modern Greek, Classical Greek, Latin, etc., in which all three Indo-European genders are present. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:44, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

In Czech, the Sun (slunce) is neuter and the Moon (měsíc) is masculine. I thought practically everyone speaking gendered languages would have agreed that the Sun is masculine and the Moon feminine. Gender is just arbitrary, especially when comparing the same words in different languages. Though, I seem to remember French usually just takes all loanwords as masculine. - filelakeshoe 22:34, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

In German, Sonne (sun) is feminine and Mond (moon) is masculine. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:33, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

In French, sun is masculine (le soleil) while moon is feminine (la lune). --Jayron32 05:21, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

OH, please, those are arbitrary innovations. Everyone knows that neither Quenya nor Sindarin, nor Pre-Proto-Indo-European nor Eurasiatic distinguishes grammatical gender for the Sun or the Moon or anything else. μηδείς (talk) 05:36, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The only thing I know about Quenya is that Barack Obama was born there. Michael Hardy (talk) 07:00, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Barack Obama was indeed born in Quenya. But his son wasn't, otherwise he wouldn't be residing in the White House right now. --Theurgist (talk) 22:17, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, I am convinced that Sarah Palin gave birth to Osama bin Laden in Honolulu, but I think that's getting off topic. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:14, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

x by y by z

When you say 'x by y by z' for measurement, which would height be? --Analphil (talk) 06:30, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Usually, but not necessarily, the height. Convention has length, breadth, height, in that order, but it is not always followed. Dbfirs 06:41, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Height = z, which is what I think Dbfirs meant to say rather than height = height. Cartesian coordinate system might help if there is any further confusion, although I don't see it mentioning anywhere the convention that, by default, the x-axis is aligned left-right and the y-axis is aligned front-back.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:07, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, yes, that's what I meant to write. Dbfirs 19:41, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I have to say I don't necessarily agree. I picked an item from my Argos catalogue, and it listed them height, width, depth. I think that sounds normal for a piece of furniture. In this case, depth (or 'length') was significantly smaller than the other two dimensions, if that makes a difference. (On a technicality, it did say which was which.) Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:58, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Furniture like a chest of drawers, yes. Furniture like a table, no. Tables are usually measured length, width, height. - This is actually consistent. The primary dimensions are usually listed first. For a chest, most people are interested in height mostly (because it varies so much), width secondarily, and depth third. For a table, the surface dimensions (length by width) are of primary importance, and the height is somewhat secondary (because they are relatively consistent). Something like a chair might be specified in either order, depending on the whims of the measurer. Usually the different orders don't matter all that munch in practice, because, as you mention, most people will specify what each measurement refers to, usually with something like l×w×h (length, width, height) or h×w×d (height, width, depth). As a final note, if you have something boxed, the shipping company will likely list its dimensions in descending order, regardless of what each corresponds to for the object inside. -- 174.31.204.164 (talk) 17:10, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Length being the longest dimension which isn't height, and width being the other one?  Card Zero  (talk) 17:25, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Not necessarily. For wood beams, which have no fixed orientation, the length is the longest dimension, and I'm not sure if they bother to name the other dimensions at all. For objects which do have a fixed orientation, like a TV set, height is assigned as the top-to-bottom distance, width as the side-to-side distance, and depth (or maybe thickness), in this case, the front-to-back distance. For most modern TVs, I would expect the width to be the biggest dimension, followed by height and then depth. StuRat (talk) 18:42, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Further to my earlier comment, this chest-of-drawers is listed H/enwiki/w/D; this dining table H/L/W and this barbecue H/enwiki/w/D. Dbfirs said 'L/enwiki/w/H' was standard; so in the least we can say that noting which is which would be necessarily to avoid confusion. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:19, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, what I thought was a convention that was usually followed seems not to apply to furniture. For parcels it doesn't matter since you just turn them round so that the length is the largest measurement, but I'll have to be careful if I buy furniture, and TVs are another exception to my "rule" Dbfirs 19:41, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Masscre is not supposed to be capitalized?

[6]

I posted the question at this location, because I am confused who why Massacre should not be capitalized.Curb Chain (talk) 06:42, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Probably someone regards the phrase Nanking Massacre as a proper noun. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:48, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I think I agree; likewise the French Revolution, Peasants' Revolt, Indian Mutiny, Charge of the Light Brigade and Defenestration of Prague; there are probably many more you can think of. Alansplodge (talk) 21:16, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

(Although the Light Brigade and Prague have initial capitals when used outside these phrases.) Itsmejudith (talk) 14:01, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes but so does Nanking. It was the capitalisation of Charge and Defenestration that shows that the usual names of many major historical events are proper nouns. I was suggesting that Nanking Massacre should be one too (if it isn't already). Alansplodge (talk) 18:07, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

So then should the phrase be removed from Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(events)#Examples? Many examples are shown where the noun with the toponym are next to ea. other, so they have become proper nouns, and so they should be capitalized?Curb Chain (talk) 06:24, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Antonym of goldbricker

So a goldbricker is basically a lazy douche that slacks off at work and doesn't do their appointed tasks (unacceptable on an archaeological dig), but what is the opposite. A very good and hardworking friend of ours has injured herself multiple times and during her recovery from the worst (a wrist with tendonitis), has tried working many times (though stops when we catch her at it) even though it will probably make things worse and is only slightly satisfied when she is given a strenuous task that can be done using one hand (patiching, using a trowel or mini pickaxe). So what do you call someone like that? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 14:56, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Seems a bit obvious, but surely that would be a workaholic. (I tried workahol once, but I didn't like it.)  Card Zero  (talk) 15:05, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Nah, not working all the time, but refuses to not work just because she seems to be down and out. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 16:51, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Following the links from workaholic, I found Presenteeism. She seems to fit the one definition of a presentee.  Card Zero  (talk) 17:03, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I like this quote. I have it attributed to St Vincent de Paul but can't confirm it. "It is the work of the devil, which he employs from time to time, to tempt good folk to do more than they are able, in order that they may be able to do nothing at all". Wise words. Perhaps you might quote them to your friend? --TammyMoet (talk) 16:53, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Well her arm is better now and so she can pickaxe and lift two buckets (each with about 8 kg of dirt) at a time once again. We gave her the special beaded vest for her work ethic though. (Y'all don't know about the DDMV). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 16:58, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Isn't there even lighter work she could do, like using a tiny brush to clean the dirt off each artifact, or cataloging the objects found ? StuRat (talk) 18:35, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I can confirm the quote, which comes from a letter of St. Vincent de Paul extracted here: C'est une ruse du diable, de laquelle il se sert pour tromper les bonnes âmes, de les inciter à faire plus qu'elles ne peuvent, afin qu'elles ne puissent plus rien faire. --Antiquary (talk) 18:30, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh well done! I've been trying to tie that one down for 15 years! Mwah! --TammyMoet (talk) 09:11, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

How come?

To me, the striking difference between "Why?" and the informal "How come?" is the syntax that follows it.

Why did you do that?

How come you did that?

Why is it done that way?

How come it's done that way?

Nobody says "How come did you do that?" or "How come is it done that way?"

Is there more of interest to say about this, that can be found in the linguistics literature or elsewhere, or does the above constitute a comprehensive treatise on this particular syntactic phenomenon? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:49, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

This is just a guess, but maybe "how come" means "how did it come to be." Bus stop (talk) 19:53, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

You're right: OED Online defines it thus: "colloq. (orig. U.S.) phr.: how did (or does) it come about (that)?". So the fact that it is not a direct replacement for why may explain the difference in syntax ("How come [= How did it come about that] you did that?"; "How come [= How did it come about that] it's done that way?"). — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:51, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

This thread is discussing it. Bus stop (talk) 19:58, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

But that thread does not mention the syntactic issue. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:30, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there is much more to say on it. "How come", for some reason, doesn't pattern like other WH-phrases. I can't think of any other exceptions. --ColinFine (talk) 19:42, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

July 11

Milkmaid figure

I suppose that's a rather round figure, isn't it? Would anyone understand it as such? (is that a fixed expression?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiweek (talk • contribs) 00:50, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

can you clarify this? It's been emotional (talk) 01:13, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I know of a similar usage in German: :"Milchmädchenrechnung" ("milkmaid calculation", meaning a naive (often mis)calculation) (see wiktionary link). See also "The milkmaid and her pail", where it is phrased "milkmaid's reckoning". I can't speak for native English speakers, but I don't think I've encountered this usage in English. ---Sluzzelin talk 01:26, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Please supply some context, otherwise I would assume it simply means a figure (which has several meanings) of a milkmaid. Why would you think it's round?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:41, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Milkmaids and similar people are/were popular subjects of porcelain figurines. Searching for "miklmaid" and "figurine" on Google gets thousands of hits for these little statues. Roger (talk) 09:23, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Judging from the original question and Sluzzelin's reply, I think the intended meaning is "figure" meaning "calculation". No, Wikiweek, that expression is so unfamiliar in English that most of the people who have replied to your question did not understand it. --ColinFine (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Could be way off the mark here but my instant assumption on reading this was that they meant a milkmaid figure as in someone's body-shape like someone being Pear shaped or Hourglass shaped etc. (Female body shape#Female shapes). I would assume it would therefore mean being 'buxom'? ny156uk (talk) 21:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

If you look up "milkmaid figure" on Google Books the words either refer to a figurine in the form of a milkmaid or to the physique of a person. I think "robust" would be a better description than "buxom". A girl that can handle milk churns and is used to manual labor. --::Slomox:: >< 13:07, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

naming custom of Salva Kiir Mayardit?

Can anyone explain the naming custom in use for this person? He appears to be consistently formally referred to as "Kiir", and not "Mayardit". --Cybercobra (talk) 00:59, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to be unique to him. A previous leader of South Sudan was John Garang whose full name was John Garang de Mabior. Both men were Dinka people, and checking other Dinka people at random, including Riek Machar (full name Riek Machar Teny), Valentino Achak (full name Valentino Achak Deng) and Manute Bol (full name not known, perhaps that was it), shows that such practice does happen among some other Dinka, though I can't find anything on the "system", per se. --Jayron32 04:31, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

It may be merely a matter of personal preference. It's not at all uncommon in the UK for people to use a second (or other) forename rather than their first in some or all everyday situations: see, for example James Gordon Brown. I myself use my first forename amongst family and at work, but my second amongst my own circle of friends. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.165 (talk) 07:52, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The "unused" last part of the name could be a clan name, patronymic or similar. Such naming systems are common in Africa though I don't have any specific knowlege of Dinka naming systems. Note to the previous poster: The usage is too common and consistent among South Sudanese (all Dinka?) for it to be merely personal preference - I believe it is clearly systematic. Roger (talk) 08:33, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I stand corrected and withdraw my, in retrospect, clueless speculation. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.165 (talk) 10:23, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Sum = "An arithmetical problem to be solved", not just adding up

I teach Mathematics in Australia. To me, a sum is an addition. Sum is a disambiguation page which, among other things, redirects to Summation, which is fine. But there's a usage of sum, at least in this country, which is reflected in that definition above, which comes from the Macquarie Dictionary. (Australia's own, for those unfamiliar.)

This means that any arithmetic problem, be it summation, subtraction, mulitplication, division, etc, can be described as a sum. It bothers me. Wikipedia doesn't cover this usage. So, does this usage occur elsewhere? Should we try to cover it in Wikipedia? HiLo48 (talk) 03:27, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

See WP:DABNOT. Sum (disambiguation) has a box with a link to the Wiktionary article wiktionary:sum which includes: "(UK) An arithmetic computation, especially one posed to a student as an exercise (not necessarily limited to addition.)" PrimeHunter (talk) 03:43, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's an informal usage common in Primary schools, but discouraged in Secondary schools in the UK. It is correctly recorded in Wiktionary, but hardly deserves a Wikipedia article. Dbfirs 06:27, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I would say put a hatnote or dab entry to math problem, but apparent there's no such article! --Cybercobra (talk) 07:21, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Nor should there be, imo. We have Mathematics and problem, which suffice. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:29, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. A dictionary tries to cover every nuance of meaning for a word, and Wiktionary does this. An encyclopaedia sets out information on a topic, and Wikipedia does this for summation. We shouldn't try to make either into the other. Dbfirs 11:35, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I for one have never encountered use of "sum" to mean any arithmetical problem, and I certainly hope I never will. It is a horrible abuse of mathematical terminology, only perhaps allowed for elementary mathematical tuition for pre-teenage children. I have not encountered this use of the term in my native Finnish, or in Swedish or German, either. JIP | Talk 18:55, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that this usage is related to the general "summation" definition: "What's your summation of this problem ?" StuRat (talk) 05:03, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard "summation" used quite like that. Outside of technical mathematical usage, I've only encountered it as the cliché and slightly thesaurusy-sounding "In summation, ..." --Cybercobra (talk) 05:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

The mis-use is not from "summation". The first arithmetic that young children learn is traditionally called "sums" because that is the calculation they are initially taught. When children go on to learn the other rules of arithmetic, they are not taught to call them "differences", products" and "quotients", so they (and sometimes, regrettably, their teachers) continue to refer to "sums" when they mean "arithmetic". Dbfirs 06:19, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that fits the usage I see. One of the sad things about teaching that I've observed is that the best maths students who become teachers naturally become high school maths teachers, leaving those who become primary teachers to be drawn from a pool of people not so good at maths. (But no doubt incredibly caring and brilliant at the other aspects of teaching, he says quickly, hoping to avoid being shot down in flames by sensitive primary teachers.) HiLo48 (talk) 06:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

English to Korean sentence translation requests

• Hi! I have some requests for translation from English to Korean:

주세진 died in San Antonio, Texas on October 10, 1997. Since he died more than 30 days from the crash, the 미국연방교통안전위원회 counts him as a survivor

• Died within 30 days in San Antonio, TX
• The National Transportation Safety Board held a public hearing on the accident in the 하와이 컨벤션 센터 in Honolulu, Hawaii on March 24, 25, and 26 in 1998

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 06:28, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

( CHN ) meaning of Hanzi on this farmhouse beam?

image here This is a beam in the roof of an old farmhouse in rural NE China. Sadly, I did not think to ask the owners the significance of the 4 characters while I was there, and I'm hoping someone here can sort it out? Thank you. The Masked Booby (talk) 14:14, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I can't make out the third character, but the rest are (right to left) 请神——位 - it's a request to the spirits to do something. As I say, the third character is hard to see. The final one means 'status'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:22, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I read it as 諸神退位 "all gods step back from their thrones" (compare these dictionary entries). —Kusma (t·c) 18:45, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

My Chinese reading skills have mostly evaporated, but apparently it is a chengyu, compare this. —Kusma (t·c) 20:34, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

This is a common Chinese folklore in some region, the complete sentence is "姜太公在此，诸神退位", or "Lord Jiang is here, all gods step back." This sentence is put in the main beam of house, it is hoped that Jiang will protect the house.--刻意(Kèyì) 21:38, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

July 12

Michael Fassbender's German dialogues in X-Men : First Class

Can someone tell me about the level of Michael Fassbender's German dialogues in X-Men : First Class ? I am also curious to know about the level of the German dialogues uttered by Fassbender/Magneto's mother and those uttered by the former Nazis in the bar scene in Argentina. Thank you for any help. Philippe Laurichesse — Preceding unsigned comment added by Philippe Laurichesse (talk • contribs) 18:06, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by level? --Jayron32 18:10, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

First response for First Class. Sorry for the ambiguity. I meant level of competency (in German). PL — Preceding unsigned comment added by Philippe Laurichesse (talk • contribs) 18:47, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

The actor Michael Fassbender speaks German very well, if that's what you're wondering (see Inglourious Basterds, for example). Gabbe (talk) 19:29, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in fact, that is what I am wondering. I was told by a German native that Fassbender's German was really bad, but I have my reasons to doubt this (obviously, since I am asking my question here). Furthermore, if at all possible, a commentary on Fassbender's German in X-Men : First Class would interest me more than a statement about his level of German in general (although all responses are welcome and appreciated). Philippe Laurichesse (talk) 20:36, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Is this the end of the love ? I appreciated the previous responses, and hope that more are to come. The question, however ridiculous, plagues me and every new response can only add to the pile.Philippe Laurichesse (talk) 00:47, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

"For toffee"

I have noticed that there is a British expression "can't do something for toffee", meaning that a person simply can't do something at all, no matter how much he/she wants to, or other people want him/her to. What is the etymology of this expression? As a non-native English speaker, I have guessed it comes from "can't do something even if given toffee as a reward", but I have no idea whether this is correct. JIP | Talk 18:52, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes you've got it! This confirms it.--TammyMoet (talk) 19:36, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

But why toffee? Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:41, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe because it's sweet and therefore desirable. It may be related to "can't do X for love nor money", or "I couldn't do X to save my life" or "I couldn't do X if my life depended on it". Or "I wouldn't do that for all the tea in China". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:45, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Unless it is polite for "can't do it for shit". After all, both treacle and honey are sometimes used as euphamisms for "shit"; see honey wagon. I don't see why toffee wouldn't be similarly used. --Jayron32 19:58, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I think you have that the wrong way round. "Can't do it for shit" is a term employed only by vulgarians, obviously. Decent people use proper language. :) But the question must be asked: Why would shit or any of its euphemisms be so highly prized (even among vulgarians), as the expression seems to be suggesting? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:40, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the meaning is that if the person can't perform the task even if the only reward is shit, how much less can he do it when the reward is more desirable. Angr (talk) 20:52, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe. But why would anyone even have an incentive to perform the task if the only reward were shit? Who'd bother, apart from a coprophiliac or a manure dealer? Give them money or sex or food or a knighthood or power or even a pat on the back, and then you might have a chance of them doing it. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 21:45, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Potentially answering my own question, would it be because toffee was a particularly desirable form of sweet (= candy), before solid chocolate was invented (in 1847, apparently)? Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:46, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

My sense of it is that toffee is a trivial thing, something children like that's not very important. So if you can't do it for toffee, then you can't do it in even a trivial, unimportant way. --Trovatore (talk) 22:48, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

My experience is that when a Britishism uses some arbitrary word to mean something completely different, it's usually derived from Cockney rhyming slang. Doing a quick Google search for "toffee rhyming slang" only give toffee as the elided link word for coffee replacements (e.g. "Fancy a molten?" -> molten (toffee) = coffee), rather than being the result of the process, though. -- 174.31.204.164 (talk) 05:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I live in east London and I've never heard of molten (toffee) = coffee, Bit of a long shot IMHO. Alansplodge (talk) 12:22, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I should clarify that I make no representation as to the prevalence or to the correctness (as far as one can apply the concept of "correct" to slang) of the example given. It's simply an example I ran across when I did the web search, showing what I meant when I referred to finding toffee used as an "elided link word". -- 174.31.204.164 (talk) 16:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Huh. Here I thought molten for coffee came from "molten lava", partially as rhyming slang for "java" (itself slang for coffee) and partially in reference to the temperature coffee tends to be served at. Angr (talk) 11:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

The OED doesn't venture an etymology for this phrase, but its first attribution (from 1914) says "Their opponents cannot ‘shoot for nuts’ (or ‘for toffee’, as one Tommy more expressly put it)", which suggests, at least, that "toffee" was a colourful variant for "nuts". It takes "can't ... for nuts" back to 1895, but still does not attempt an explanation. --ColinFine (talk) 07:09, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

July 13

Locations with the name -sex

What is the sense in which -sex is a suffix in the names of many locations -- Sussex, Essex, Wessex, etc. I'm assuming it has nothing to do with lewdness. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 01:53, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

It comes from the Old English Seaxe, meaning Saxons. The three names refer to three different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, inhabited by the South Saxons, East Saxons, and West Saxons respectively. Lesgles (talk) 03:24, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

For completeness, I should point out that there was a Middlesex as well (now swallowed up by the London sprawl) - though no North-sex (the Nor-folk and the Suf-folk were already there - Angles of course...) AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:04, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

The joke I had always heard was that there had been breifly a Kingdom of the North Saxons, but they died out in a single generation for obvious reasons (obvious if you follow the naming conventions for Essex, Wessex, and Sussex). --Jayron32 04:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

"In England they have a Middlesex. Here in the US, we only have the two." :-) StuRat (talk) 04:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

"I have three wonderful children, one of each sex."  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:38, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

In fact the USA has at least three Middlesexes. In Connecticut, Massachussets and New Jersey. Don't ever forget where your ancestors came from ;-)) Richard Avery (talk) 14:13, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Isn't the plural of Middlesex Middlesices? Angr (talk) 14:27, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Only if one could validly ask "What are the sices of your three children?". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Changing words from English to English

I think that this was answered, at least in part, once before on the RD somewhere but I can't think (or find) where. It's been noted that books originally in an English variant that spells "labour" with a "u" will, when published in the US market be spelt "labor" as will "colour" and "color". My first question is does this happen in reverse and is the "u" added to words. Now I have seen books where the "u" is dropped but non-American words and phrases are used rather than their North American equivalent. For example a book may contain reference to a bonnet or a boot and people may play draughts. So why would these words not be converted as well? Bonus points question. Would the British word rubber be converted due to possible confusion with the US slang word rubber? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 03:31, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

This is really a matter of print runs and costs. Publications in the USA tend to have large print runs, so it is more common to re-set the type with US spelling when books with non-US English spelling are published in the US. The reverse is less common. Novels published in the US are regularly marketed in the UK without spelling changes. We just get used to mentally inserting the missing letters. Regional words are seldom changed in novels because they enhance the realism of the setting. Technical manuals are often, but not always, "translated". Savvy teachers in the UK tend to refer to erasers rather than rubbers when they have pupils familiar with US slang. Dbfirs 06:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Here in Germany, English books sold in bookstores are generally the British editions, so most of the Stephen King novels on my bookshelf were printed in Britain for the British market. American spellings and usage are left intact, as far as I can tell (of course I've haven't compared these books word-for-word with their American counterparts). And I've seen American editions of British novels, and even though I'm American myself, it irritates me to see people in the Mapp and Lucia novels talking about doing someone a "favor" or writing a "check", as it seems to rob the books of their local colo(u)r. And although I've only ever read the British editions of the Harry Potter novels, I've heard tell that not only spelling but also vocabulary is Americanized in the American edition (e.g. booger replaces bogie). But that may be because they're thought of as children's books (or at least YA novels), and American publishers are under the impression that everyone under 18 is a drooling imbecile incapable of understanding anything not written in their own dialect. When it comes to books for adults, perhaps publishers who change centre to center but leave boot and bonnet alone think that changing a spelling is merely a proofreading change, while changing vocabulary is more editorial and shouldn't be done without the author's approval. Or maybe they just run an American English spellcheck, which won't catch words like boot and bonnet. Angr (talk) 06:27, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

As someone who spends some of his editing time here re-correcting incorrect spelling variant "corrections", it's been my observation that almost all of these are where UK English has been incorrectly "corrected" to US spelling by an enthusiastic editor trying to improve Wikipedia. That would fit the above scenarios. UK English users are familiar with US spelling, and can cope with it when it's used in the right context, whereas some US English users aren't even aware that there is another perfectly correct way to spell. HiLo48 (talk) 06:49, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

There's a curious phenomenon in Australia. Because international publishers often prepare two editions, one American (with color and harbor) and one British (with colour and harbour), and Australia uses predominently British spelling, it's the British version that gets sold in Australia. That's all well and good, except that the British version would also use pounds sterling and other specifically British units of measure - especially in non-fiction books. So you get this weird situation where you might be reading a book by an American author and dealing primarily with the U.S. and yet having to do a lot of mental arithmetics to convert from sterling into dollars. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 06:59, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

HiLo, my experience here is the opposite - I mostly see people incorrectly "correcting" American spelling to British spelling at Wikipedia, often even in articles dealing with an American topic. Angr (talk) 07:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh well, let's just keep correcting... HiLo48 (talk) 07:40, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Culturally, we are sort of at the crossroads between British and American influences here in Australia. In our national Parliament, the House of Representatives was modelled on the UK House of Commons (and the system as a whole is the Westminster system), but the Senate was modelled after the US Senate. We have a head of state who resides in the UK, and the UK was traditionally the "mother country" for many Australians, but since WWII we've become a lot more influenced in our language and popular culture generally by the US than by the UK. And it's accelerating: in the past week alone, I've five times heard TV journalists and lay people use the adjective "alternate" (the alternate suggestion), with the stress on the first syllable in the American style, rather than the word we always used to use and I will be continuing to use, "alternative", which has the stress on the 2nd syllable. The only "alternate" I recognise is a verb (The seasons alternate between hot and cold). But that's me. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:55, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Really? I can understand not liking the alternate suggestion (I've stopped using that myself) but do you really object to they sweep the street on alternate Mondays? --Trovatore (talk) 08:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

"They sweep the street every other Monday". DuncanHill (talk) 09:03, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Other than what? I've never actually understood that usage. I know it's common, and know what it means, but one doesn't want to dig too deep for the meaning. I like "every second Monday". HiLo48 (talk) 09:06, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I do object, Trovatore. It's not about the difference in meaning your examples demonstrate. The word "alternate" was never recognised as an adjective here at all; and even when people got slightly confused and said "alternate" rather than "alternative", they still stressed it on the 2nd syllable - all-TER-nuht (based on all-TERN-ativ), not ALL-tuh-nuht. The latter is an echt-uber-American pronunciation; like VAJ-uh-nul ("vaginal"), rather than our va-JY-nuhl; and IN-kwuh-ree ("inquiry") rather than our in-KWY-ree. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 09:19, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed a few features of American pronunciation creeping into UK speech - for example, "news" is increasingly being pronounced "noos" rather than "nyoos". Give it a while, maybe the English will become rhotic again. --Nicknack009 (talk) 10:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think "nooz" is quite part of high General American, though I'm not sure exactly what region it's a regionalism of. Personally I switch between "nooz" and "nyooz" fairly freely. --Trovatore (talk) 21:03, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Some Australian sports commentators have developed the flexible ability of putting the emphasis on the first syllable of defence when discussing football, and the second syllable when covering basketball. (Now we can argue about the spelling.) HiLo48 (talk) 10:45, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Sports commentators have invented a totally new language, or so it often seems. My pet peeve is when they're calling a match where the result is not in any doubt but the match is still in progress, or maybe it's only just finished. They'll call it "a famous victory by the <whoevers>". Famous? Maybe deserving of fame, but that's for the future to decide. Or the ubiquitous "So-and-so has delivered the <koo de grah>". Grrr, more likely. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 12:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, the coup de gras, or "blow of fat". That's when someone throws a glob of grease in your face after defeating you, to increase your humiliation. Angr (talk) 12:27, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Or fleur de lit, the flower of bed. --Trovatore (talk) 20:59, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

In some cases, some of those other words are converted; the example the immediately came to my mind was Harry Potter, and of course we have an article - Harry Potter in translation#Americanisation as translation. --LarryMac | Talk 12:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Some great answers thanks. @ HiLo48 and Angr. Canadian articles tend to get changed in both directions from time to time. As an aside I once had someone tell me that "centre" meant middle and "center" was used to indicate a physical object like the Community Center. As to the Harry Potter books the ones I have were printed in Canada and besides the title, "Philosopher's" rather than "Sorcerer's", they seem to have retained the British spellings. While looking at them I noticed a UK book reprinted in the US where the title, not sure about the rest of the book, retained the u spelling.

Translating historical fiction into French - tu/vous

I'm attempting to translate my webcomic, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, into French, and I'm looking for guidance on the second person singular. I know the basic rule - tu is singular and familar, vous is singular formal, and plural whether familar or formal. I just don't know how to apply it in the context of my comic, which is set in the Iron Age in an aristocratic warrior society.

For example, I have a couple of characters, Fergus and Cormac. Fergus is Cormac's foster-father, he brought him up and they are very close, but Cormac is the son of a king and therefore Fergus's social superior. How would they address each other, and would they address each other differently in private and in public? A similar example is the hero, Cú Chulainn, and his charioteer, Láeg. Cú Chulainn is Láeg's social superior and outranks him militarily, but Láeg is older, and has a tendency to familiarity, and they like each other. How would a king or queen address their vassals and subjects? How would a king and queen address each other, and would it be different in public and private? How would a king of one kingdom address a king of a rival or allied kingdom? How would a god address a mortal, and vice versa, and how would a god address another god?

Another thing - Irish has no word for yes, and Hiberno-English tends to avoid the word yes as well, so I have characters responding to things like "are you ready?" with "I am". In French, if asked "Vous êtes prêt?", does it make sense to reply "je suis"? --Nicknack009 (talk) 11:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

For tu and vous, I would recommend reading lots of Asterix in the original French to get a feel for how the pronouns are used there. It is of course anachronistic both in Asterix and in your Iron-Age comic, since the idea of a T-V distinction didn't exist in European languages until the Middle Ages, but then using modern language at all is anachronistic anyway, so that's not such a big deal. As for the answer to "Vous êtes prêt?", I'm not a native speaker, but my inclination would be to say "Je le suis". Angr (talk) 12:07, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) An idea may be to look to works written in Early modern English which preserved English's T–V distinction like the King James Bible or the works of William Shakespeare. Usage of "thou" and "thee" roughly correspond to "tu" in French, while the more formal "you" and "ye" correspond to "vous" in French... --Jayron32 12:10, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

The King James Bible makes no T-V distinction. It uses thou consistently to translate singular pronouns and verb forms in the original languages and ye consistently to translate plural forms. Angr (talk) 12:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Based on my understanding of how this worked in early modern times, when monarchies and aristocracies were still powerful, I'd recommend the following: Fergus says tu to Cormac in private, Cormac says vous to Fergus in private. In public, they say vous to each other, unless Cormac has assumed the persona of a prince and Fergus that of a commoner, in which case their public exchange would be the reverse of their private. Láeg says vous to Cú Chulainn, and Cú Chulainn says tu in return, even when they are being familiar. Kings and queens say tu to their vassals and to each other in private, assuming they have an intimate relationship. (If, on the other hand, it is a political marriage with little contact outside of ceremonies and the occasional conjugal visit to produce an heir, then their private conversation might be no different than their public conversation.) In public, I'd say it depends on the degree of patriarchy in the society. If women are respected and sometimes powerful, they might say vous to each other. In a more patriarchal society, she would say vous to him in public, and he would respond with tu. Kings would address one another as vous, except when insulting each other. Although Christians address their god as tu, I would have mortals generally addressing gods in a pantheon as vous. The Christian god is conceived a little differently from most pagan gods, whom one was supposed to respect and fear, whereas one is supposed to be on intimate terms with the Christian god. If the religion in your society involves personal devotion to a deity, then you could have the devotees address that deity as tu. Gods would certainly say tu to mortals. Among one another, you could use the distinction to mirror hierarchies among them as in human society. (Obviously, vous is also the plural form of tu.) Marco polo (talk) 18:41, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very helpful. I don't have any Asterix books in French, but I do have a volume of Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze in French, and I'm combing that for guidance as well. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:14, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Just two remarks on what Marco polo said (though I can't claim to be much of an expert, and my observations are cursory and superficial). First, I think it was pretty standard for upper-class husbands and wives to address each other with "vous" even in private (if this had been considered a sign of excessive formality, it would no longer have been standard). Besides French, it was reportedly characteristic, for example, of the Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire - not just the upper class, but also the common folk - where husbands addressed their wives in the second person plural, while wives responded in the third singular - presumably a custom they brought from the towns of mediaeval Spain. Again, this didn't necessarily impede familiarity significantly, nor did it express an unnatural coldness, formality and lack of love. In the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, upper-class and royal spouses would not only use "vous", but they would even address each other with titles (similarly in Le Morte d'Arthur, Guenever addresses Arthur as "Sir", not to mention the "ye"; cf also the general style of the letters that the wives of Henry VIII addressed to him). If this rule was, nevertheless, violated in private at the time, I doubt that we would have any documents to prove it - it just wasn't supposed to be, so even depictions of intimate speech don't show a violation. Second, I don't know about today, but I'm sure it was common practice to address the Christian God as vous (I remember some scenes involving children's bedtime prayers and such). The same applied to the Virgin Mary (here's Thibaut de Champagne (1201-1253) addressing Her: "Douce dame, reine couronnée, Priez pour nous, Vierge bienheureuse!") and all the Saints (say, Joan of Arc would, I believe, address each of the saints who guided her in vous). The French version of the Lord's Prayer used vous up to the great modernization of 1966 (see the French article [7]) - ah, those wild Sixties! This is very contrary to the contemporary (especially American) affinity for raw passion, gut feeling, immediacy and naturalness, but the Middle Ages were, so to speak, much more Japanese than they were American. On the other hand, just what this implies for an Ancient Irish-themed comic is another matter - I guess the etiquette reflected in the actual Irish sagas becomes relevant here. As does Astérix! --91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

One might add concerning the division between "in public" and "in private", that the entire division between "public" and "private" as separate legitimate realms developed only very gradually. In the pre-modern world, you were pretty much always a public person, 100% of the time, whether you liked it or not.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 00:14, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Spanish cities ending in -ona

Several Spanish towns and cities end in "ona". Barcelona, Badalona, Tarragona, Girona, Badalona, Pamplona, Cardona immediately come to mind, as well as the county of Osona. I looked through a list of Spanish municipalities, and found these as well: Bayona, Tarazona, Ulldecona, Xixona. Is there a common etymology to the -ona ending, and if so, what does it mean? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 16:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

What several of these place names have in common is that they were originally Latin feminine-gender place names ending in -o in the nominative and -onis in the genitive (-onem in the accusative, and so on). Normally, in Spanish, such nouns would have mutated to have the ending -ón (e.g., all of the words ending in -ción). However, in this case, these names took the ending -ona, which is the feminine version of the augmentative ending -ón, and which emphasizes the feminine gender of these words. Perhaps the name was meant to suggest the idea of la gran ciudad (the great (fem.) city). For the names that did not originate as Latin -o/-onis forms, I think that the name simply followed a feminine augmentative form. A similar pattern appears in Carcassonne and Narbonne in France and Savona in Italy, by the way. Marco polo (talk) 18:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)