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March 11
Hindi Help
I'm trying to copy the name of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Hindi, but I have problems with some of the characters when I directly copy it from http://www.fema.gov/pdf/assistance/process/help_after_disaster_hindi.pdf
What is the Hindi name in characters so I can copy-paste the characters? WhisperToMe (talk) 00:12, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- फ़ेडेरल आपातकालीन प्रबंधन एजेंसी 'feḍeral āpātkālīn prabandhan ejensī'. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 01:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 01:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Here's another. I'm trying to find the Hindi name for the Toronto District School Board. Some Hindi documents I found include:
- http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/about_us/media_room/docs/Parent%20Survey%20-%20Letter%20From%20Director%20to%20Parents_Hindi.pdf
- http://schools.tdsb.on.ca/humberwood/docs/ad.pdf
- http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/about_us/general_asset_and_program_planning__gapp_/docs/Brochure_Hindi%20%282%29.pdf
Do any of these contain a Hindi name for the TDSB? WhisperToMe (talk) 05:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- टोरंटो डिस्ट्रिक्ट स्कूल बोर्ड , just the English name in Devanagari letters. --Soman (talk) 18:04, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 21:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Urdu and Lao Help
How do you type the Urdu and Lao names of FEMA? They appears in the first text pages of http://www.fema.gov/pdf/assistance/process/help_after_disaster_urdu.pdf and http://www.fema.gov/pdf/assistance/process/help_after_disaster_laotian.pdf - Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 00:28, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I see فيڈرل ايمرجنسی منيجمنٹ ايجنسی in the Urdu pdf but I think that's just a phonetic transcription of the English name Federal Emergency Management Agency.--Cam (talk) 00:34, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- Alright - that works. Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I get ອົງການ ຄວບຄຸມໄພສຸກເສີນລັດຖະບານກາງ when I copy + paste for Lao, but no clue what that is phonetically. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 04:25, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- It seems like the Lao is correct. Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 22:37, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Decreased prosody of speech
A person whose has a speech with decreased prosody. What is the exact meaning/in what sense does the term "prosody" is used. What does the term "prosody" explain with regards to the person's speech? aniketnik 11:22, 11 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniketnik (talk • contribs)
- Probably means basically "more robotic sounding"... AnonMoos (talk) 19:50, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Latin -ae plurals
Hi. What are the rules for pronouncing the "-ae" ending in plurals from Latin (e.g. "formulae", "tesserae", "antennae", etc.)? The dictionaries I've looked at seem to always give the pronunciation as "-ee" (i.e. rhyming with "tea"). Are other pronunciations (such as pronouncing "antennae" to rhyme with "high", as I do) mistaken? 86.176.212.20 (talk) 12:49, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- Are you asking for the English rendering or a Latin pronunciation? Regarding the latter, there are indeed many renderings. The classic, restituted pronunciation (more or less what we have inferred the Golden Age Latin sounded like) has /ai/ for the ending. As this section shows, both -ae and -oe tended with time to merge into a kind of -ee (/eː/).
On the other hand, English tends to use the classical sound.Pallida Mors 14:31, 11 March 2011 (UTC) - To clarify my previous post, I meant /ai/ to rhyme with high. And, to my surprise, my dictionary shows the pronunciation of antennae to have a final -ee (/iː/) sound.Pallida Mors 14:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I'm sorry, having checked some dictionaries maybe I should take back my assesment about the English pronunciation keeping the classical sound. I deleted it, hoping a native speaker can clarify about it. Pallida Mors 14:43, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- To answer your question, I am asking about the English pronunciation. 86.176.212.20 (talk) 14:52, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- The English pronunciations of the Latin endings ae and ī are, respectively, "ee" as in "see" and "igh" as in "sigh". (They are interchanged with respect to their classical pronunciations.) The pronunciation of the English word vertebrae ends with "ee" as in "see". I spent only a few minutes in searching online for a supporting reference, but without success.
- —Wavelength (talk) 15:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I will not disagree that the "correct" English pronunciation of the Latin ending -ae is "-ee" (iː). However, in my experience, the more common pronunciation in the United States is "-ay" (eɪ). Marco polo (talk) 15:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- The (admittedly somewhat dated) canonical source for "vertebrae" is of course the song The criminal cried from The Mikado:
He shivered and shook as he gave the sign For the stroke he didn't deserve; When all of a sudden his eye met mine, And it seemed to brace his nerve; For he nodded his head and kissed his hand, And he whistled an air, did he, As the sabre true Cut cleanly through His cervical vertebrae, His vertebrae!
AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I suggest Mr Gilbert was deliberately using an incorrect rhyming of "vertibrae" with "he" there for added humour. Speaking as a Brit who has both studied Latin at school and maintained a decades-long interest in biology, I have never heard anyone our side of the Pond rhyme "vertibrae" with anything other than "hay" or occasionally "eye". Anglicisations of Latin tend to be erratic, perhaps because different fashions of pronouncing Classical Latin come and go pedagogically (e.g. "Kai-zar" v "Seize'er"), and because different ones become traditional in different specialisms (The Law, Medicine, etc). A. P. Herbert covered both bases in one of his Misleading Cases, in which a newly qualified barrister confuses the elderly judge with "modern" Latin pronunciations, until the judge cogently explains to him why a living technical vocabulary needs to retain its consistency rather than change according to the latest academic notions about 2-millennia-old usages. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 20:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- That's vertebrae, not vertibrae (middles are just as important as endings). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:33, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- Quite right. Muphry's Law; blind spot :-) . {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 22:21, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that the /eɪ/ ("hay") pronunciation is more common nowadays in vertebrae, but I think the evidence points to the /iː/ ('he") pronunciation being standard (or "correct") up to at least the early decades of the twentieth century. As I understand it, æ and œ were seen as representing the same sound in English as a long e, which after the Great Vowel Shift changed from /eː/ to /iː/. It was only under the influence of Italianate Church Latin (/eː/) and the reconstructed classical pronunciation (/ai/), that confusion began to arise. Note also that in words which were originally spelled with ae, but which now have been simplified to e, /iː/ (hyena, museum, etc.) or sometimes /ɛ/ (estuary). The OED has an interesting discussion on this topic under "ae", and see also this blog post by John Wells.
- As far as Gilbert goes, I'm sure Gilbert was trying to be humorous, but the fact of trying to rhyme anything with "vertebrae" is humorous in itself. I can't find another poem with "vertebrae", but compare these decidedly non-humorous verses from Byron, with the "he" rhyme: "Who made that bold diversion / In old Thermopylæ, / And warring with the Persian / To keep his country free". Lesgles (talk) 22:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I agree the proper traditional English Latin pronunciation of long <ae> is "-ee" (iː), as in Caesar and antennae. Daniel Jones' Phonetic Dictionary of the English language (1913) gives /iː/, his English pronouncing dictionary (eleventh edition of 1956, reprinted in 1958) gives /iː/ first and the other versions in brackets, with /ei/ last. The /ai/ (high)) version is restored Classical pronunciation, but the /ei/ (hay) version is just some kind of misunderstanding (in origin; of course, people are free to pronounce it as they wish).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:30, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- P.S. And even today I don't think anyone would pronounce Thermopylae rhyming with "hay".--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:32, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- As for the place of restored classical pronunciation - my personal opinion is that it's appropriate when you actually speak Latin (in a Classical context), but its extension into the modern spoken language is about as justified as pronouncing Paris as Pa-REE - even more so in Neo-Latin words unrelated to the Classical period. One might as well start referring to civilization as kiwi-lization.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:50, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- That's vertebrae, not vertibrae (middles are just as important as endings). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:33, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I suggest Mr Gilbert was deliberately using an incorrect rhyming of "vertibrae" with "he" there for added humour. Speaking as a Brit who has both studied Latin at school and maintained a decades-long interest in biology, I have never heard anyone our side of the Pond rhyme "vertibrae" with anything other than "hay" or occasionally "eye". Anglicisations of Latin tend to be erratic, perhaps because different fashions of pronouncing Classical Latin come and go pedagogically (e.g. "Kai-zar" v "Seize'er"), and because different ones become traditional in different specialisms (The Law, Medicine, etc). A. P. Herbert covered both bases in one of his Misleading Cases, in which a newly qualified barrister confuses the elderly judge with "modern" Latin pronunciations, until the judge cogently explains to him why a living technical vocabulary needs to retain its consistency rather than change according to the latest academic notions about 2-millennia-old usages. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 20:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- Male graduates are alumni; each one of them is a guy.
- Female graduates are alumnae; each one of them is a "she".
- —Wavelength (talk) 20:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- ... but they swap these gender sounds (alumni rhymes with he) in the Latin that some of us were taught (and much earlier than the 1990s (see below)). Dbfirs 19:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- There's also somewhat of a generation gap between different pronunciation schemes. When I learned Latin in the U.S. in the late 1990's, I learned a version that Pallida_Mors alluded to above: -i sounds like flea, -ae sounds like high. This short NYT article also shows that a certain amount of personal preference determines how it'll actually sound coming out of the user's mouth. To use Justice Breyer's example, I'd Anglicize amicus in "amicus brief" to rhyme with abacus, but if the entire phrase amicus curiae is needed, I'd pronounce it a-ME-kuss (like wuss) KOO-ree-igh. Vertebrae VER-t/ə/-bray doesn't sound wrong to me, but that's I think because it's pretty much a well-rounded English word at this point (it's been in the language long enough to lose its foreign accent, so to speak). ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 22:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- ...and rolling the R's makes everything lots more fun to say. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 22:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- When I was at school, my maths and chemistry teachers always referred to "for-mule-ee", but that sounds very outdated now. They might not even teach formulae these days, for all I know. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- There's also somewhat of a generation gap between different pronunciation schemes. When I learned Latin in the U.S. in the late 1990's, I learned a version that Pallida_Mors alluded to above: -i sounds like flea, -ae sounds like high. This short NYT article also shows that a certain amount of personal preference determines how it'll actually sound coming out of the user's mouth. To use Justice Breyer's example, I'd Anglicize amicus in "amicus brief" to rhyme with abacus, but if the entire phrase amicus curiae is needed, I'd pronounce it a-ME-kuss (like wuss) KOO-ree-igh. Vertebrae VER-t/ə/-bray doesn't sound wrong to me, but that's I think because it's pretty much a well-rounded English word at this point (it's been in the language long enough to lose its foreign accent, so to speak). ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 22:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- There are three pronunciations for vertebrae at wikt:vertebrae. See also http://www.onelook.com/?w=vertebrae&ls=a.
- —Wavelength (talk) 00:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Cambodian/Khmer help
What is the Cambodian name of FEMA? The name should be in the http://web.archive.org/web/20061016185946/http://www.fema.gov/pdf/media/2006/cam_gen_guide.pdf document ... WhisperToMe (talk) 22:40, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- I cannot read Cambodian, but if you look on those two pages you will see FEMA (in English) appearing a number of times (twice in the phone number, but other times besides that). It is possible that it is written like this in Cambodian. Words on either side of each occurrence of FEMA are different, except for two instances where the previous two words/phrases are the same, leading me to believe that there are no Cambodian versions of FEMA there. Of course, you will need someone to confirm this. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Italian
Hi. I currently speak French and English fluently and I speak Spanish pretty well too. I would like to be able understand written Italian, but unfortunately I don't have the time to study Italian formally :( Just to get me started though, what are some "cognate patterns"/similarities between Italian and French/Spanish, and what are the basics that I need to at least make out the gist of written Italian on the occasions when I encounter it? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 23:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- There are too many of them to quickly summarize. Pick up an Italian newspaper. You'll probably be able to read most of it (one nice surprise when I got back from Italy was that I could read the Mexican papers), and it'll start you on picking up the regular differences. --Trovatore (talk) 23:28, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- Just a couple that I can think of off the top of my head, though: Generally a Spanish word that has ct between two vowels will correspond to a double-t in Italian (exacto vs esatto). A lot of Spanish consonants will get doubled in Italian (and Italian pronounces doubled consonants distinctively, which I think Spanish doesn't), or li may turn into gli between two vowels. Medial gli is essentially the same sound as medial Spanish ll (by speakers who don't just pronounce the latter as a y), maybe a little more voiced. --Trovatore (talk) 00:07, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- One that's a little surprising at first: Latin <f>, which generally survives as <f> in French and Italian, usually became <h> in Spanish. So Sp "hacer" = It. "facere", Sp. "hijo" = It. "figlio". --ColinFine (talk) 00:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- (Actually, facere is Latin. Italian is fare, although the middle syllable survives in some derived forms, like the imperfect facevo.) --Trovatore (talk) 01:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Legend[citation needed] has it that T. S. Eliot taught himself Italian by translating the whole Divina Commedia into English with only a modern Tuscan dictionary to help. Snopes.com has no info on this assertion.--Shirt58 (talk) 10:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- (Actually, facere is Latin. Italian is fare, although the middle syllable survives in some derived forms, like the imperfect facevo.) --Trovatore (talk) 01:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Hey, that's one I never noticed! I had just memorized those. Thanks.
- Also brings up another regularity: Medial j in Spanish sometimes corresponds to Italian gli: ajo — aglio. --Trovatore (talk) 01:29, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- One that's a little surprising at first: Latin <f>, which generally survives as <f> in French and Italian, usually became <h> in Spanish. So Sp "hacer" = It. "facere", Sp. "hijo" = It. "figlio". --ColinFine (talk) 00:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- I'll throw in another one: Italian <st> = Spanish <est> = French <ét>: stato/estado/état, stabilire/establecer/établir, etc. Lesgles (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- And Stefano/Esteban/Étienne. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:53, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Though this includes Portuguese, (some) Latin words starting with "cl...", "fl...", or "pl..." are interesting when compared with their cognates in daughter languages. In French the first two letters remain the same. In Spanish they get replaced by "ll". In Portuguese by "ch". In Italian, only the "l" gets replaced by a "i" (in terms of pronunciation anyway).
- Example
Latin French Spanish Portuguese Italian clamare clamer llamar chamar chiamare flamma flamme llama chama fiamma plicare plier llegar chegar piegare
- See also David Brodsky, Spanish Vocabulary: An Etymological Approach, University of Texas Press, 2008, ---Sluzzelin talk 00:19, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
March 12
Japanese word order
Curious to see the Japanese article on the Sendai Airport, I put its URL into Google Translate and was confronted with a notice of "This page is vandalism or edit wars for such policies in accordance with Mamoru Yasushi editing is." Has the translation software mangled the word order, or is that how the Japanese words are really arranged? The original text is ここのページは荒らしや編集合戦などのため、方針に基づき編集保護されています。 Nyttend (talk) 00:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is the Japanese word order:
- ここのページは = This page (topic)
- 荒らし = trolling/vandalism
- や = and
- 編集合戦 = edit-warring
- など = etc.
- のため、 = because of,
- 方針 = policy
- に基づき = in accordance with
- 編集保護されています = is edit-protected
- Google Translate has mangled it, which is pretty typical. 86.177.106.19 (talk) 02:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Japanese is a head-final (subject-object-verb) language, so where we would say [this page is protected [because of [edit warring]]], a Japanese speaker would say [this page [edit warring [because of]] is protected]. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- I can't imagine why Google Translate would choose to render 保護 as "Mamoru Yasushi" instead of "protection", but this isn't the first time it's happened. -- BenRG (talk) 05:43, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
More Arabic help
What is the Arabic name of the Toronto District School Board?
The name is somewhere in http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/parents/parents/docs/directorsprnt%20letter%202008-arabic.pdf this document
Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 00:53, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- مجلس التعلیم المحلی بتورونتو --Omidinist (talk) 05:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Thank you very much WhisperToMe (talk) 07:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Proper use of "big" in "it is that big" and "how big is this"
Hello,
I would like some feedback by native speakers or experts. I plan to use the sentences fairly often in a scientific text, and in order to avoid embarrassment I wanted to check if they are not silly. "How big can this be?" (as in "How big can the group of people/ the set of suitable options/the collection of planets..") "If it is that big, then...."
- I am neither a native speaker nor an expert, but I think that in scientific texts the more formal (or rather, less informal) word large is preferred. --Pxos (talk) 16:50, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Agreed. "Big" isn't wrong, but "large" is better in this formal context. Lesgles (talk) 17:48, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Many thanks for the responses. Would "large" also be suitable when speaking of "large parameters" (as in: the temperature in a room)?81.82.86.83 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:25, 12 March 2011 (UTC).
- Do you mean that the parameter itself is "large" (the temperature can vary from absolute zero to millions of degrees) or that the temperature is "large" when it is hot? I think that the temperature is a variable, not a parameter. --Pxos (talk) 20:04, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- My immediate response would be this: "A parameter can be more or less important in a model, and it can have a large or small value." However, googling shows that "a large parameter" (meaning a parameter with a large value) appears to be used in mathematical literature, (example). Some examples from computer science turned up as well. --NorwegianBlue talk 20:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Note that when we talk of values, they will typically be high, and not big or large in a scientific text. However, on the other side of the scale, we have both small and low values. Thus, "high parameter values" and "high temperatures". No such user (talk) 13:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Origin of term hellcat
I am curious as to the origin of this term used to describe a nasty, unpleasant female. It seems to have been used a lot in 19th and early 20th-century USA. Thank you.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- My SOED dates the first use to 1605, with a possible connection suggested to the name Hecate. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- 1605!? -Was it that long ago, and did it originate in England or Scotland? I am wondering when it became used in America?--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:51, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- The two earliest citations in the OED are both from the English drama: Thomas Middleton's The Witch (dated ante 1605 by the OED; see our article for another view) and James Shirley's The Ball (1632; credited by the OED to Chapman and Shirley). No American citations. Deor (talk) 15:48, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- The online edition of the OED gives several American citations, the first being from Bennett Wood Green's Word-book of Virginia folk-speech from 1899 and the newest being from 2006. It even claims that the term is "Now chiefly US." -Elmer Clark (talk) 07:21, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- The two earliest citations in the OED are both from the English drama: Thomas Middleton's The Witch (dated ante 1605 by the OED; see our article for another view) and James Shirley's The Ball (1632; credited by the OED to Chapman and Shirley). No American citations. Deor (talk) 15:48, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- 1605!? -Was it that long ago, and did it originate in England or Scotland? I am wondering when it became used in America?--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:51, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Anna at the door
There is a knock on the door. Wife goes to answer, and later the man asks: "Who was at the door"? -"It was Anna," replies the wife. A question of grammar. Could the reply have been "She was Anna" as well, or is it merely awkward, or maybe ungrammatical even? --Pxos (talk) 16:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- "She was Anna" isn't really possible here, but I'm not exactly sure why. I think part of it is "she" is too particular; it implies a specific person whose gender is known. In fact, the only context that I can think of in which you would use "She was Anna" (or any pronoun + was + name) is when you are talking about a name change, e.g. "She was Anna, but now she is Hannah". Lesgles (talk) 17:45, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- The way I see it is, 'it was Anna' answers the question 'who was at the door', because it says 'it was Anna [who was at the door]'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- That's right. The question could have been answered in the "A (<verb> B)" form ("Anna (was at the door)"), but they chose to use the "It is/was A (who <verb> B)" form ("It was Anna (who was at the door)"). This latter construction is fixed in its essential form ("It is the Queen who makes the final decision"), and the "it" is like the "it" in "It's raining" - it does not refer to an identifiable doer of an action, so its use in sentences that do happen to have an identifiable doer (lika Anna) should not be confused as referring to that doer, and the temptation to "correct" it to "he" or "she" or "they" should be avoided. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for the reply. I agree as the construction is equally unacceptable in my native language (Finnish), but let me put the question another way. If the man asks the question "who is knocking at this late hour" and the wife, having seen Anna through a window, replies "It is Anna!", can she also make a point by saying "She is Anna!"? Is that merely odd, or unacceptable? And what if this happened in a nunnery? I'm not trying to make a joke here, I have thought about this too long and I have lost touch (with all languages...) --Pxos (talk) 19:13, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Theoretically it may be possible for the wife to add 'She is Anna!' - if Anna was a topic of conversation recently and the husband had no idea who Anna was. In which case, the sentence-stress would be on the word 'she'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:19, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- The way I see it is, 'it was Anna' answers the question 'who was at the door', because it says 'it was Anna [who was at the door]'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- The answer "She was Anna" seems somewhat more natural if the man had asked: "Who was the woman at the door?" rather than "Who was at the door?" But "She was Anna" strikes me as an awkward response in either case. Wanderer57 (talk) 20:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- The following continuation of this discussion was posted on my Talk Page, so I am moving it here where it really should be:
[Start] Could the reply have been "She was Anna" as well, or it is merely awkward or is maybe even ungrammatical?
Certainly an interesting one, including your input.
And if we search for descriptive answers, the problem of pronominal and binding ambiguities are divided into roughly two syntactic principles; which regards pronouns as genuinely ambiguous between referential and bound uses, and 2) which refers the ambiguity as utterly semantical and that pronouns should be given a uniform treatment with the context in question.
But explicating the details of this difference between referential and bound uses of pronouns is far from a trivial matter as for how to characterize the ambiguities. One proponent of the view that natural language pronouns are ambiguous is Chomsky ( Government_and_Binding_Theory). Also, Schoubye's analyses on ‘Pronominal ambiguity' seek some answers to this question.
If those analyses do not give an accurate answer to this particular question about the anaphoric pronoun that is in contextual deixis, then, as for its descriptivism, I tend to see this as the question of the verb’s inherent modality, namely, whether the verb is a copulative one or a linking verb.
Example:
- Who was at the door? It was Anna. (the verb is a linking verb; cannot be ‘She was Anna.’)
- Who is she? She was Anna. (the verb is copulative; cannot be ‘It was Anna.’)
Mr.Bitpart (talk) 00:20, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- The differences between languages are great fun. Finnish does not use 'it' for the subject in sentences like "It is raining", we simply say "rains" as in Italian "piove". And in Finnish the equivalent of it (se) has broader use than in English. It can be used to refer to persons, animals, objects as well as something definite (but it is not the definite article). It comprises the English words 'it', 'she', 'he', 'the' and 'that'. In this regard, the reply "It was Anna" has the same basic meaning as in English, but at the same time, implicitly, can be construed to have the meaning "She was Anna" (at the door). On the contrary, the real personal pronoun hän (he or she) cannot be used in this context.
- And furthermore, Finnish uses the past tense where, say, in Italian the present is called for. I remember saying to an Italian that the man who actually visited our house was the mayor. My friend thought that the man is an ex-mayor as I said it in Italian (era il sindaco = he was the Mayor) which was a direct translation of the Finnish implicit sense He who was here, is the mayor. The Finnish 'it' causes sometimes confusion among learners. --Pxos (talk) 02:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
[End] Sorry for the formatting. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:36, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Looking for name of English tense or term
Could someone tell me what the term or tense is of the following phrases, and if there's a difference other than number? "Like the swan in the evening moves over the lake" as opposed to "Like the swans in the evening move over the lake".
It's from the song "She moved through the fair". I was wondering about this as I was listening to a few versions of it, and some sing the second phrase, which sounds less poetic to me. Obviously, the first is singular and the second is plural, but somehow the first one seems less specific, as though it's describing a general swan, while the second seems more reality based. Any suggestions? Snorgle (talk) 17:34, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Here's a past discussion, regarding the generic use of the singular, that seems related to your query. Jesperson's grammar, referred to there, might be a good place to look for a formal discussion, but I don't have it at hand at the moment. Deor (talk) 22:26, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- That looks very useful, thanks! Snorgle (talk) 23:19, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
double translation
Hi, I'm looking for examples of (quality) English literature that has been translated into a foreign language, then, as an exercise, translated back by someone else not familiar with the original. The qualification is that the translations be by reasonably qualified people, preferably who at least thought they were producing them for some kind of professional or commercial use. Of course they needn't be entire texts, because no one would spend heaps of money translating all of Macbeth from Russian back into English just out of curiosity, but I feel that linguists must have tried this for shorter passages for the sake of comparison. I've been googling (no luck), and I've also tried google's own machine translation, but it actually reproduces the original with remarkable fidelity, I trust because it follows its own rules and assumptions consistently in both directions. Try Hamlet's famous soliloquy, for example. Thanks in advance, It's been emotional (talk) 19:43, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Hello! This is very interesting. Do you qualify me as a translator? I happen to know parts of the soliloquy in English, but I could begin translating Hamlet from the beginning of the play (from an excellent translation into Finnish) back into English. --Pxos (talk) 20:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Please do feel free - I would be very interested. However, perhaps I was unclear - I meant "try the soliloquy" on google translate for your own amusement. It goes back and forth between languages with near perfect fidelity. There is in fact an amusing game of google-translating a saying (eg. "a stitch in time saves nine") back and forth between English and Japanese, until the translation becomes stable, i.e. doesn't change with further translation. It comes up with some memorable stuff, but I'm mainly looking for anything that was produced by professional tranlators, to see how close they were able to get to the original. Please have a go anyway if you enjoy the challenge. You can post it on my talk page if you run out of time here. It's been emotional (talk) 20:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Ok, here goes.
HAMLET Act One, scene Two (back translation from Finnish to English without consulting the original)
The same region. A fest hall. (The King, the Queen etc.)
King: Though the memory of the death of our dear brother Hamlet is still fresh, and thus we should in grief sigh, and the realm should wrinkle to a single forehead of sorrow, still the reason at least has conqured the nature, so that we mourn him with our senses, and remember ourselves too.
We have therefore our former sister-in-law, the present our queen, this gallant heiress to the power, so to speak, countered with joy - water'd the one eye, clear the other, with wedding cries and festive delight, and equally the joys and sorrows weighed - married, without hinderance and by hearing your sound advice that freely to this have bent. I thank you for that!
Now, know you, that has the young Fortinbras, despising our grace, or by thinking, that by the demise of our dear late brother, our power from its hinges has loosened - based on this dream of victory, seen fit to blackmail us by a messenger, to have back the lands that his father to our brave brother by law has forfeited. - That much for that. Now to ourselves and this session!
- It is safe to say that because the Finnish is lyrical and old, I was not able to grasp everything even in my mother tongue. But it was fun. --Pxos (talk) 21:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Google Translate cheats sometimes because it has officially translated texts in its database. (Try translating the Vulgate Bible with it - it will give you the KJV English.) Maybe it also knows Shakespeare and Shakespeare translations. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:11, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- My favourite of the washing-machine process is when the original phrase "Out of sight, out of mind" comes out as "Invisible idiot." Almost like a riddle :)
- By the way, I finally compared my rendering of the Bard to the original, and I can say that I might have a brilliant future as the invisible idiot. Well, perhaps Shakespeare did write things like "advice that has bent", or "countered with joy", but Sir Francis Bacon quickly bought him out of the project. Oh well. --Pxos (talk) 12:38, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Here's the only example I can remember of a double translation done by professionals, though done inadvertently rather than as an exercise. The writer Halldór Laxness included an Icelandic rendering of the first verse of an old American song in his novel Paradísarheimt. When the translator and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson turned the novel into English as Paradise Reclaimed he failed to identify the song and had to simply translate Laxness's Icelandic back into English, as follows:
- Far beyond the farthest forests
in the year that gold was found,
there lived a smith who shared his dwelling
with his daughter, I'll be bound.
- Far beyond the farthest forests
- Shortly before publication Magnusson realized the song was "Clementine", which is perhaps not the quality English literature you were asking for, Emotional. Oh, I don't know though. --Antiquary (talk) 13:03, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Another similar example is the chronicle of William of Tyre, which was written in Latin, and translated into French shortly after William's death. The French was far more popular than the Latin in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, someone translated it back into Latin, since he didn't know about the Latin original. (Unfortunately I don't know how his Latin compares to William's.) Adam Bishop (talk) 13:46, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Benjamin Franklin's autobiography was first partially published in French translation, and an unauthorized translation of the French into English followed... AnonMoos (talk) 14:10, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- A bit off the point: in Kage Baker's science fiction novel, Sky Coyote, the 17th-century Chumash Indians sing this:
- Put all my sorrows in a basket
- I sing quietly as I go out upon my journey
- Raven, farewell
- A woman stays awake to greet me
- She is as sweet as honeydew
- Raven, farewell
- Not in Chumash, of course, but if it were and you tried putting it into English, I'm not sure you'd hit upon Bye Bye Blackbird. --- OtherDave (talk) 11:14, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- A bit off the point: in Kage Baker's science fiction novel, Sky Coyote, the 17th-century Chumash Indians sing this:
Thanks for the answers folks. I was wondering for a moment if Oh My Darling Clementine might have some relationship to the Megan Washington song Clementine, but something about these lyrics tells me maybe not. It's been emotional (talk) 01:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
The Queen as Granny/Grandma/Gran/Nana
What do the Queen's grandchildren call her? 74.14.13.241 (talk) 19:49, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Prince Charles called her "mummy" in public once, so I doubt they would call her "Your Majesty." It's been emotional (talk) 20:26, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. However, I would like to know what they do call her. 74.14.13.241 (talk) 20:50, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Her own husband calls her "Cabbage". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:58, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Googling told me the grandchildren call her Maam. This was on some Royal watching website, but I can't remember the exact link. It's been emotional (talk) 01:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
What would you call someone who studies carnivals?
Feel free to be creative. It's for a story...
Adambrowne666 (talk) 20:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- A carnivalatrist. A carnographer. A carnivalographer. I think the last has a nicer rhythm. Wanderer57 (talk) 20:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- "Carnographer" sounds more related to carnivores. Try "carnivalographer". StuRat (talk) 21:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks, both; I like them, though is 'ographer' as evocative as 'ologist'? - is an 'ographer' someone who makes notes, as opposed to an 'ologist', who's someone who makes a study of them? Still, ologist is a bit predictable here... Still thinking about it. Adambrowne666 (talk) 21:50, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Rotary notary, / Washington Ferris was / building a bridge with a / surplus of steel; / making him famous with / carnivalographers, / since in their business he's / quite a big wheel. Marnanel (talk) 01:28, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Bravo!! Wanderer57 (talk) 04:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, quite good, although I might change "in their business" to "in their circles". :-) StuRat (talk) 08:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Fastnachtsprofessor? Foirest? 74.14.13.241 (talk) 22:00, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- How's about 'festologist'? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:58, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Faschingist. (At first I tried "Faschist", but there's a problem with that.) --jpgordon::==( o ) 01:14, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- According to the Latin Wikipedia, the Neo-Latin word is Carnelevarium, so carnelevarist is a possibility. If you want an -ologist term, I'd go with a Greek combining form and coin apocriologist (or apokriologist). Deor (talk) 01:39, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Oops, it occurred to me that you may be referring to funfair carnivals rather than the pre-Lenten Carnival, as I and at least some of the other respondents had assumed. If so, disregard my comment above. Deor (talk) 01:48, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, yes; I did mean funfairs - sorry, should have been specific. I still like apokriologist, though. Adambrowne666 (talk) 04:01, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Oops, it occurred to me that you may be referring to funfair carnivals rather than the pre-Lenten Carnival, as I and at least some of the other respondents had assumed. If so, disregard my comment above. Deor (talk) 01:48, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Alphabetizing names
Consider the case of a name such as Josef von Sternberg. Under American (United States) conventions, is his last name alphabetized under the letter "v" or under the letter "s"? And why? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:58, 12 March 2011 (UTC))
- The Chicago Manual of Style is the standard reference for US usage, its guidelines for alphabetising names is at the bottom of this page. It is basically down to the preference of owner of the name, if they capitalise the Von it is considered part of the last name and listed under V, as von Sternberg does not capitalise the von it will be listed as Sternberg, Josef von. Advice the Wernher von Braun article seems to ignore. meltBanana 03:10, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not sure it's as cut and dried as that, Melt. About the capitalisation, I mean. It is certainly down to the owner's preference. But the owner might prefer not to capitalise the "von" but still consider it part of their surname. Look at the soprano Frederica von Stade, as American as you can get. I can only assume one of her forbears came from Germany, where he would have been considered a "Stade" for sorting purposes, ignoring the "von". She, however, is a "von Stade", not a "Von Stade", and not just a "Stade".
- My only concern about the Wernher von Braun article is that he's referred throughout as "von Braun" (or "Von Braun", sentence initially), but the Defaultsort function is set to "Braun", so that he appears in all his categories under B for 'Braun', not V for 'von Braun'. That's an inconsistency that needs to be resolved. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- We do have a Von article which contains a section about capitalization. Zoonoses (talk) 00:54, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Words of indeterminate etymology
What are some English words (preferably relatively common) whose etymologies we haven't even a guess on? I say "words" implicitly excluding things like company names, etc. Thansk. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 23:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- We have no certainty about the origins of shark or penguin. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:20, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- I wanted to suggest hockey, but wiktionary has an entire category of over 200 words in English: wikt:Category:Unknown_etymology. In most cases, as far as I could tell (especially on etymonline), some people have had a guess though. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:39, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Jack; I thought penguin came from pinguid? No? - on QI the other night, Stephen Fry said we don't know the origin of the word 'dog' - until a certain point in history they were always some variation on hound; then the shift... Adambrowne666 (talk) 23:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- I heard that 'penguin' came from the Welsh 'pen-gwyn', meaning 'white head'. Then there is the word 'bad' - not related to the Persian 'bad' (same pronunciation, same meaning). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:01, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- (EC)Jack's right, as ever - penguin - of course, there are lots of slang words and profanities of unknown origin, since they arose outside the sight of most philologists. Adambrowne666 (talk) 00:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- "Hassle." It started to be used around World War II. No one knows where it came from. One of the ironies of etymology is that relatively new words often have unknown origins. "Nerd," for instance. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:21, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- On the other hand, sometimes the creation of a word can be pinned down to an exact date and time, and an exact creator (if one whose name is known only to himself). I used "novomundane" at 15:12 on 17 September 2008, in one of my ref desk posts here. I never imagined I was in fact coining anything, because it seemed the most obvious word to use, and I was as surprised as anyone to learn that nobody had ever used the word before, or, if they had, they’d never recorded it anywhere. But now, thanks to me, it's constantly on the lips of all right-thinking wordsmiths. No? Well, no, actually ... but what the hell, it's still my baby. It probably doesn't merit a place in wiktionary yet, but one day, one day ... -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 00:44, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- You play Final Fantasy, then? (Scroll down, or ctrl+f for 'novomundane'). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:55, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- No, not me. I tip my hat to one of my many acolytes. :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:45, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- "Hassle." It started to be used around World War II. No one knows where it came from. One of the ironies of etymology is that relatively new words often have unknown origins. "Nerd," for instance. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:21, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- (EC)Jack's right, as ever - penguin - of course, there are lots of slang words and profanities of unknown origin, since they arose outside the sight of most philologists. Adambrowne666 (talk) 00:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- I heard that 'penguin' came from the Welsh 'pen-gwyn', meaning 'white head'. Then there is the word 'bad' - not related to the Persian 'bad' (same pronunciation, same meaning). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:01, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Jack; I thought penguin came from pinguid? No? - on QI the other night, Stephen Fry said we don't know the origin of the word 'dog' - until a certain point in history they were always some variation on hound; then the shift... Adambrowne666 (talk) 23:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
March 13
The article "a" versus "an"
Which is correct?
- He received a (unofficial) nomination in 1935.
- He received an (unofficial) nomination in 1935.
They both seem "wrong". I understand that I can reword and rewrite the sentence to avoid this problem. Nonetheless, I'd like to know the answer to this particular scenario, without any rewording or rewriting. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:32, 13 March 2011 (UTC))
- An is correct, as "an" is used before a vowel sound and "a" before a consonant sound. Saying "An un..." does perhaps sound a little awkward but it is correct. meltBanana 03:17, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Words inside brackets are parenthetical, meaning they can safely be discarded without doing damage to the essential meaning of the sentence. But if you do choose to include them, they have to be taken into account for a/an purposes, just as they're included in a word count. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:44, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- My vote is for He received a(n unofficial) nomination in 1935, though I doubt most copyeditors would let me get away with it. It also wouldn't work for the opposite situation, He received a (non-binding) award in 1935. —Angr (talk) 15:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- There is no single answer. The choice between "a" and "an" is entirely phonological, not orthographical, but this sort of construction is pretty well confined to writing. I would write "an", but others may disagree. --ColinFine (talk) 19:14, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- My vote is for He received a(n unofficial) nomination in 1935, though I doubt most copyeditors would let me get away with it. It also wouldn't work for the opposite situation, He received a (non-binding) award in 1935. —Angr (talk) 15:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- ColinFine ... can you please clarify your answer? I didn't understand what you were saying. Nor did I understand the distinction between phonological and orthographical. In other words, dumb it down for me. I am not a linguistics / language expert. So, those terms mean nothing to me. Thanks! (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:18, 13 March 2011 (UTC))
- It's the difference between writing (see orthography) and sound (see phonology). LadyofShalott 20:25, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- ColinFine ... can you please clarify your answer? I didn't understand what you were saying. Nor did I understand the distinction between phonological and orthographical. In other words, dumb it down for me. I am not a linguistics / language expert. So, those terms mean nothing to me. Thanks! (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:18, 13 March 2011 (UTC))
There are two elements that are related to the above sentence. First of all, the correct way of representation is "an unofficial", but if looked closely the word/term "unofficial can also be represented and replaced by another word/term.
So the use of "an" before unofficial is because "unofficial" starts with an "u" and as it starts with a vowel sounding alphabet hence use of "an"
While having a conversation between two persons the use of "a/an" is not that important matter, but while narrating a subject or representing a written subject matter the use of "a and an" matter a lot. "An" is used in front of vowels. aniketnik 08:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniketnik (talk • contribs)
Square as surname
Are there any recorded historical instances of the word Square being used as a surname? I can see that it was used for a fictional character in the book Flatland, but have any real people ever had it? If not, what are some other surnames which are similar in pronunciation?--99.251.211.17 (talk) 03:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is slightly off topic, but I think the book was credited to "a square", not to a character named A. Square. The narrator is never named in the book itself, and the A on the cover isn't followed by a full stop, while Abbott's middle initial immediately below it does have a full stop. (The modern UK convention is to omit the full stop, but I think that wasn't true back then.) -- BenRG (talk) 05:28, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- That seems to be true, though Ian Stewart, in his "sequel" Flatterland, interprets "A. Square" as a name and proposes that the A stands for Albert. —Bkell (talk) 23:43, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is slightly off topic, but I think the book was credited to "a square", not to a character named A. Square. The narrator is never named in the book itself, and the A on the cover isn't followed by a full stop, while Abbott's middle initial immediately below it does have a full stop. (The modern UK convention is to omit the full stop, but I think that wasn't true back then.) -- BenRG (talk) 05:28, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Seems to be a recognised surname, at least in one country. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:35, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- FamilySearch has some tools for this sort of search, but when I looked it gave me no hits. I have a friend whose last name is Squares, however, and the previous editor seems to have found something. Wabbott9 (talk) 03:41, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- I can't say I've seen it as a surname, thouigh others have already found examples, I see. Squire isn't that unusual, but that has very different roots of course. I think that most English surnames are either descriptive of a person ('Brown'), a profession ('Smith'), or a location ('Lincoln'). Though 'Square' might describe a place, it seems a little over-specific to be that common. The fact of the matter is that surnames are probably largely arbitrary, in that 'implausible' ones can multiply, and 'common' ones die out over time, due to paternal inheritance. There is probably some maths to this, which will show that eventually everyone would have the same surname... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:45, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Findagrave.com lists 78 individuals with the surname "Square". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:51, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- The link given by Jack of Oz suggests it is a variant of Squire. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:35, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Is SpongeBob Squarepants close enough? HiLo48 (talk) 03:55, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- That would be his aristocratic English relations, the Square-Pantses (pronounced "squippence", of course)--Shirt58 (talk) 07:15, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website has four British men named Square out of more than 1.7 million records. One was from Guernsey. Alansplodge (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- That would be his aristocratic English relations, the Square-Pantses (pronounced "squippence", of course)--Shirt58 (talk) 07:15, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Findagrave.com lists 78 individuals with the surname "Square". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:51, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- I can't say I've seen it as a surname, thouigh others have already found examples, I see. Squire isn't that unusual, but that has very different roots of course. I think that most English surnames are either descriptive of a person ('Brown'), a profession ('Smith'), or a location ('Lincoln'). Though 'Square' might describe a place, it seems a little over-specific to be that common. The fact of the matter is that surnames are probably largely arbitrary, in that 'implausible' ones can multiply, and 'common' ones die out over time, due to paternal inheritance. There is probably some maths to this, which will show that eventually everyone would have the same surname... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:45, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
If a Square married a Root, they could become the Square-Roots. LadyofShalott 20:20, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
http://www.whitepages.com/dir/a-z/square lists quite a few people named Square in the US. --Soman (talk) 02:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- By the way, "Carré" is a common last name in French. --Xuxl (talk) 16:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Singular or plural nouns and verbs
How do you reconcile the use of singular/plural nouns/verbs in situations such as these? And what are the underlying reasons?
- There was only one, or perhaps two, Senators in agreement. (Should the verb be "was" or "were"? Should the noun be "Senator" or "Senators"?)
- He had many ideas. Only one (or two) is feasible. (Should the verb be "is" or "are"?)
- He had many ideas. Only one, or perhaps two, is feasible. (Should the verb be "is" or "are"?)
Also, in the above examples, does the punctuation itself make any difference at all in determining singular/plural nouns/verbs (e.g., if I decided to use parentheses versus commas versus dashes, etc., in delineating the "perhaps two" modifiers)? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:40, 13 March 2011 (UTC))
- I don't know the answer to that, both sound awkward to me, but if rewriting is a possibility I would just do something like "There was only one senator in agreement, or perhaps two", etc. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:58, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- (ec) Without some rewriting, they're irreconcilable. 'One' takes singular agreement, anything higher than 'one' takes plural agreement - that's the inherent feature of number in English. So, you can't have agreement about something that includes both one and two. I'd be writing:
- There was only one Senator in agreement, or perhaps two.
- He had many ideas. Only one is feasible; two at most.
- or something like that. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 05:01, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Don't say "only one, or two". The word "only" gives a message of certainty, which is then immediately contradicted. A sentence that contradicts itself can't ever work. Looie496 (talk) 17:36, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- I somewhat agree with your (generally valid) point about the word "only". However, the same issue/problem arises even if the word "only" is removed from all of the above examples. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:16, 13 March 2011 (UTC))
- @Looie496: Jack's examples seem to disprove your contention. --ColinFine (talk) 19:17, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Looie496, I can see what you're getting at, but I don't think that "only" provides the certainty you say it does. As opposed to, say, 20 Senators in agreement, there were only two in agreement; or only one; or only one, maybe two. If you needed a minimum 20 to pass the bill, it little matters whether you have only one, or only two, or only 10, or only 19 for that matter. "Only" acknowledges that the number in question is lower than some other desired number, but does not set the precise number in stone. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:45, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- "Only one or two" functions as a noun phrase with the word "ideas" omitted so you would write "Only one [idea] is...", "Only two [ideas] are...", "Only one or two [ideas] are..." and the first would be "There were only one, or perhaps two, Senators...". The commas, parentheses, dashes etc are largely irrelevant to the word choice and are best ignored when deciding on words like "is" or "are". Thinking of punctuation as delimiters that dictate how a sentence is broken down is probably what is giving you problems. Better to think of the punctuation as places you would pause when speaking the sentence and that might help you. This kind of construction is awkward, and would be better rewritten, but it is relatively common in transcribed speech or people typing as they think and changing their mind on what they wish to say part way through. meltBanana 19:21, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks. The punctuation issue was merely an after-thought. My real issue centers on a noun/subject that is ambiguously singular or plural ... and how to make the verb agree. Also, I don't think that a speaker's (or writer's) hesitation or changing mind is relevant at all. I can very definitely state that there were ONE or TWO of something. Meaning, I am sure that it was a small number (like 1 or 2 Senators, but certainly no more than that). So, I don't think that being hesitant or changing one's mind (mid-thought / mid-speaking) comes into play. One can be very definite that the matter in question involved one or two items. That is the rub ... as Jack says. "One" dictates singular; "two" dictates plural. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC))
- In my spontaneous English (and I suspect that of most people, including most of those who have replied above), the answer is unquestionably "one or two are". The corpora agree, though weakly: BNC has 16 instances of "one or two are" and none of "one or two is"; COCA has 17 and 2 respectively. (It actually returns 3, but one is a different construction). The "logic" is irrelevant: languages do not work by logic (at least not always) and the fact that some of the things we say are not adequately explained by logical arguments is no reason not to say them when our meaning is perfectly clear. --ColinFine (talk) 22:27, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks. The punctuation issue was merely an after-thought. My real issue centers on a noun/subject that is ambiguously singular or plural ... and how to make the verb agree. Also, I don't think that a speaker's (or writer's) hesitation or changing mind is relevant at all. I can very definitely state that there were ONE or TWO of something. Meaning, I am sure that it was a small number (like 1 or 2 Senators, but certainly no more than that). So, I don't think that being hesitant or changing one's mind (mid-thought / mid-speaking) comes into play. One can be very definite that the matter in question involved one or two items. That is the rub ... as Jack says. "One" dictates singular; "two" dictates plural. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC))
- I agree that "one or two are" sounds more natural, but probably only because of the proximity between the words "two" and "are". Would the scenario be any different if we reversed the words in the sentence to "two or one"? In that case, the proximity of words would seem to render "two or one is" as the more natural choice. I think? Consider a sentence such as this: Two votes, or even one vote, is sufficient to overturn the Mayor's decision. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:35, 13 March 2011 (UTC))
Which letters
Boxing 84.61 troll |
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Which letters can start a word beginning with a consonant sound? --84.61.186.139 (talk) 10:53, 13 March 2011 (UTC) Which letters can start a word beginning with a vowel sound? --84.61.186.139 (talk) 10:53, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Note also, that the letter 'y' in English can be used to represent both a consonant and a vowel sound. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
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British accent
Please don't feed the trolls |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Why do British people sound so conceited? --70.244.234.128 (talk) 17:03, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
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March 14
French stress
I have always been told that in French there is no concept of stress as it is thought of by English speakers, and when we (as Anglophones) hear the French "stress" the last syllable of every word we are actually hearing the "prosody". Is this true? If so, why is it that on many pages on this Wikipedia French pronunciation is given with the IPA stress notation « ' »? 72.128.95.0 (talk) 01:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- In our stress (linguistics) article, it has a nice explanation: "French words are sometimes said to be stressed on the final syllable, but actually French has no word stress at all. Rather, it has a prosody whereby the final or next-to-final syllable of a string of words is stressed. This string may be equivalent to a clause or a phrase. However, when a word is said alone, it receives the full prosody and therefore the stress as well." I'm not sure if that's linguistically exactly accurate; how can there be prosody with only one word? But anyway, a word in isolation has stress just like English words. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:47, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- I guess the reason why some people say French has no stress is because they equate "stress" with "word stress" (i.e. with emphasis always being placed on a certain syllable of a certain word); however, if we define stress phonetically, as emphasis through loudness, length, and intonation, then both English and French have stress; it's just that English stress placement is determined at the level of the word (say, "next-to-the-last syllable of the word with some exceptions", although it's really a lot more complex than that), whereas French stress placement is determined at the level of the phrase ("last syllable of the phrase"). Both are stress, and certainly both are "prosody". The word "prosody", which covers all kinds of stress and much more besides, is not really needed here, I think (and sure, there can be "prosody" - tone, length, stress - within one word, or within one syllable for that matter).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- In connected conversational speech, French stress generally occurs on the last non-schwa vowel of an "intonational group" of several words pronounced closely together as a unit. As has been explained, it has much more to do with determining where and how the overall intonation of a sentence/phrase will be expressed than with pronouncing one syllable of a word more strongly than other syllables in the word... AnonMoos (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Hindi help
What is the Hindi name for the Vancouver School Board?
The Hindi name is in this document http://nootka.vsb.bc.ca/March2010_Parents_budget_multi.pdf - On page 10.
Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 01:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- It's not Hindi, it's Punjabi. ਵੈਨਕੂਵਰ ਸਕੂਲ ਬੋਰਡ, 'vainkūvar s(a)kūl borḍ'. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 02:49, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Ah, I see. Thank you very much! BTW for the Toronto School Board stuff at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Hindi_Help, that's Hindi, right? WhisperToMe (talk) 03:46, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, that is Hindi. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 08:04, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Ah, I see. Thank you very much! BTW for the Toronto School Board stuff at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Hindi_Help, that's Hindi, right? WhisperToMe (talk) 03:46, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
You talkin' to me?
Is there some nefarious difference between taxi drivers and cab drivers that the British are hiding from the rest of the English-speaking world? The Office for National Statistics states "one in seven Pakistani men in employment was a taxi driver, cab driver or chauffeur". Clarityfiend (talk) 04:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- See Hackney carriage - a 'Taxi', as opposed to Private_hire#Public_Carriage_Office - a 'minicab'. Only Taxis are legally allowed to ply for hire in the street - though the law is often flouted. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:18, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- To clarify further. A 'minicab driver' will be booked over the phone - "I want a cab from number 10 Some Street, Somewhere to...." and the driver can presumably look up the start and destination on a map, whereas a 'taxi driver' will (at least in London) have 'the knowledge' and if you get in, and say "drive me to number 10 Some Street, Somewhere" he/she is supposed to know where it is - in addition, minicab fares are negotiable, whereas taxis have fixed rates (at least in theory). A chauffeur would theoretically be a driver employed by an individual for their own use. In practical terms, this means that if I want to get my grandmother to the railway station, I'd phone for a minicab (I'm unlikely to see a taxi for hire in my street), but if she wants to go from the station to my house, she will probably take a taxi (they are waiting outside the station for trade, and should be able to find my house). If my grandmother can afford a chauffeur, he can find his own way here... AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Taxis also have minimum standards. You will never see one for hire with a scrape on it. Kittybrewster ☎ 08:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- It should be noted that, to increase the confusion, nearly everyone in london calls a taxi a "black cab". --85.119.27.27 (talk) 10:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- The original full name is taximeter cabriolet, so "taxi" and "cab" are both contractions of this that have specialised in various directions. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:07, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is sort of a side question, but are London taxi drivers allowed to use GPS? I have been in taxis in three different countries in the past year and all of them had GPS devices...but I suppose The Knowledge is still a point of pride. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Satnav would be preferable to some alternatives - I was recently nearly knocked off a Boris bike by a taxi whose driver was reading the A to Z. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:01, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is sort of a side question, but are London taxi drivers allowed to use GPS? I have been in taxis in three different countries in the past year and all of them had GPS devices...but I suppose The Knowledge is still a point of pride. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- The original full name is taximeter cabriolet, so "taxi" and "cab" are both contractions of this that have specialised in various directions. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:07, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- It should be noted that, to increase the confusion, nearly everyone in london calls a taxi a "black cab". --85.119.27.27 (talk) 10:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Taxis also have minimum standards. You will never see one for hire with a scrape on it. Kittybrewster ☎ 08:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- In NYC, you can call "gypsy cabs" to pick you up, but only officially medallioned taxicabs are legally allowed to be hailed in the street... AnonMoos (talk) 15:11, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Q: What's worse than raining cata and dogs? A: Hailing taxis. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- So, if you hail something other than an official taxicab, you're breaking the law? Or, are you saying that only official cabs are allowed to respond to a hailing? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- The second. See Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Medallion_taxicabs_and_livery_taxicabs for an explanation; basically the medallion taxis are the yellow cars with the medallions on them (little metal badges with serial numbers) which grants the driver the right to pick up passengers from the street corner. Other cars-for-hire, called "livery cabs" are other colors (i.e. NOT yellow), respond to specific calls for specific trips (usually a contracted trip with specific start and end points, like "from your house to the airport") and may not pick up passengers on the street. In NYC, you wouldn't think to hail a car that wasn't yellow so it would be unusual to hail a livery cab from the street. The article Illegal taxicab operation covers more as well. --Jayron32 20:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Sounds like it's basically a monopoly granted by the city government, under the reasonable justification of traffic control. I would assume that picking up friends in your car is immune from these rules, presuming they are not paying the driver. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Though there is an element of traffic control and revenue collection (licences aren't cheap), I am sure the primary justification (at least in the UK) is the protection of passengers from thieves and rapists masquerading as bona fide drivers: licenced drivers undergo a degree of scrutiny by the licencing authority before being licenced and can have their licences withdrawn for various misdemeanors and improper behaviours, and the taxicabs' display of official driver IDs inside, and cab licence numbers inside and outside the vehicle, allows traceability. The public is periodically warned to either flag down only properly marked taxicabs, or ensure that the supposed minicab they get into is really the one they've ordered. Rapes and murders, etc, have occasionally been carried out by fake minicab drivers picking up people outside nightclubs, for example. Private arrangements are not subject to such regulations, though technically someone taking 'petrol money' for transporting a fellow commuter as a regular arrangement is supposed to declare it for income tax purposes. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 19:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- "licences aren't cheap". Understatement as a NY taxi medallion goes for over $640,000.[1] 75.41.110.200 (talk) 20:30, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Makes total sense. They're granted a monopoly, but with that comes scrutiny and responsibility... and an expectation by someone hailing an approved cab that they'll be transported safely. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:15, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Though there is an element of traffic control and revenue collection (licences aren't cheap), I am sure the primary justification (at least in the UK) is the protection of passengers from thieves and rapists masquerading as bona fide drivers: licenced drivers undergo a degree of scrutiny by the licencing authority before being licenced and can have their licences withdrawn for various misdemeanors and improper behaviours, and the taxicabs' display of official driver IDs inside, and cab licence numbers inside and outside the vehicle, allows traceability. The public is periodically warned to either flag down only properly marked taxicabs, or ensure that the supposed minicab they get into is really the one they've ordered. Rapes and murders, etc, have occasionally been carried out by fake minicab drivers picking up people outside nightclubs, for example. Private arrangements are not subject to such regulations, though technically someone taking 'petrol money' for transporting a fellow commuter as a regular arrangement is supposed to declare it for income tax purposes. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 19:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Sounds like it's basically a monopoly granted by the city government, under the reasonable justification of traffic control. I would assume that picking up friends in your car is immune from these rules, presuming they are not paying the driver. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- The second. See Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Medallion_taxicabs_and_livery_taxicabs for an explanation; basically the medallion taxis are the yellow cars with the medallions on them (little metal badges with serial numbers) which grants the driver the right to pick up passengers from the street corner. Other cars-for-hire, called "livery cabs" are other colors (i.e. NOT yellow), respond to specific calls for specific trips (usually a contracted trip with specific start and end points, like "from your house to the airport") and may not pick up passengers on the street. In NYC, you wouldn't think to hail a car that wasn't yellow so it would be unusual to hail a livery cab from the street. The article Illegal taxicab operation covers more as well. --Jayron32 20:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- While the distinction between taxis and "private hire cars" seems to be made in most British municipalities, I have not met the word "minicab" outside London (in fact I thought for many years that the term was obsolete, apparently because I hadn't heard it since I moved out of Greater London in 1980). --ColinFine (talk) 00:46, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Couple
The couple has no children or the couple have no children? Kittybrewster ☎ 08:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- I would go with "have". --Viennese Waltz 08:32, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is an American-Commonwealth difference, and also subject to personal preference, context, and other things. See this thread. LANTZYTALK 12:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- See collective noun. Roger (talk) 12:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Could you not say "They have no children"? DuncanHill (talk) 01:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- See collective noun. Roger (talk) 12:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is an American-Commonwealth difference, and also subject to personal preference, context, and other things. See this thread. LANTZYTALK 12:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Looking for semantic labels
I'm a policy writer, and I'm trying to label some key attributes of policy statements. I've been looking through the references from the linguistics portal, but I don't know the language of linguistics well enough to formulate a search. Specifically:
- What is an appropriate and simple label of that attirbute of a statement that shows where it lies along the spectrum from mandatory to discretionary? This will be what I use to determine whether a statement is either a guideline or a requirement. I've come up with some absurd labels, like "optionality", "mandatoriness", or just "force", but I'm lost.
- Similar to the above, but slightly different, what would be a good label to capture whether a statement is normative/prescriptive versus informative/descriptive? From the sources I've consulted, both requirements and recommendations can be classified as normative/prescriptive, with varying degrees of the previous "mandatoriness" attribute. This might be similar to mood, (imperative vs. declarative), but I'm looking for a word that's a little more user-friendly.
Sorry if this is too vague a question, or if this is the improper forum for it. I appreciate any input anyone can offer. Glenn R. Marshall, Eagan, MN (talk) 20:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- For the first one, how about "degree of discretion permitted" ? You could then use a percentage scale, say from 0% meaning you will be arrested and charged for failure to comply to 100% meaning you can do as you please. StuRat (talk) 22:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- (Not a native English speaker), but for 1) "optionality" sounds OK to me, and Wiktionary agrees: "Quality or state in which choice or discretion is allowed. ". For 2), there is "wikt:normativity", <awkward>under which title also exist books.</awkward> Wiktionary gives "prescriptivity" as a synonym. No such user (talk) 08:02, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Rating quality of content
Is anyone aware of a process for making a step-by-step analysis of the content quality of a print or online article? I have noticed that some sites/magazines have content which I value and others leave me unimpressed (Wikipedia articles are almost always what I would rate as high quality and hopefully the content on my own website, <identifying information removed>, would also rate high.). I am wondering if there exists a procedure for assigning a content value to articles of all kinds. I'm not sure of what the proper procedure is for asking/answering this question... can someone with ideas about this concept of a step-by-step process to assign a value rating to articles e-mail me? <identifying information removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.143.120.143 (talk) 23:31, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- Per reference desk policy, all of your personally identifying info has been redacted. I'll leave it to others to answer your question. --Jayron32 23:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- This shouldn't be on the Language Desk. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 05:13, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- I dunno: the subject involves, though extends beyond, evaluation of written language. Although Humanities might have been a better choice, I think of the RefDesk subject areas not so much as rules, more guidelines (ah-harr). We can't expect possibly WP-naïve OPs always to evalute subjects in the same way that we might. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 16:46, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- This shouldn't be on the Language Desk. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 05:13, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
March 15
Deloculated
What does the term "deloculated" mean? For instance the term is used in a sentence like "an abscess was deloculated". What does the term "deloculated" stand for? aniketnik 12:35, 15 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniketnik (talk • contribs)
- It seem to mean, remove or fill a locule (or loculi). meltBanana 13:41, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
A positive rant
I'm looking for a word that has the meaning of 'rant,' or 'diatribe' but without the negative connotations. 'Soliloquy' and 'monologue' both sound a little too theateresque to me. Any ideas?209.6.54.248 (talk) 17:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- I disagree that monologue is necessarily theatrical. I think that it is the best, most neutral term for a person going on and on without interruption. If you want a word for a "positive rant", or a speech of praise, panegyric is a good word. Marco polo (talk) 18:30, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- And what's wrong with just "speech" ? In particular, a "keynote speech" sounds positive, to me. A "testimonial" is a speech endorsing a particular person or product, and also has a religious connotation. StuRat (talk) 20:48, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- "Jeremiad" is, if not necessarily positive, at least semi-obscure and somewhat Biblical-sounding and dignified... AnonMoos (talk) 01:25, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- "Encomium" is nice, "eulogy" would do, but does tend to be associated with funerals. DuncanHill (talk) 01:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- And despite our article (which seems to me a clear violation of WP:DICDEF), screed can be used neutrally to refer to a written mass of verbiage of rantlike character. Deor (talk) 01:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- How about "rave", as in rant and rave. Shadowjams (talk) 04:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Bizarre Sentence Stress on UK News Reports
I have been noticing for a while now strange stress patterns on UK TV news reports. An example would be:
"There was an explosion at the No.1 reactor this morning, after the No.2 reactor suffered a similar explosion yesterday, while this afternoon No.3 reactor exploded......"
I am talking about placing stress on words which have already been used a number of times, as if they were new, rather than the more usual stress pattern of (in the example above) stressing the numbers. What is the reason for this, and is there a name for this particular pattern? Personally I think it might be done to drum certain words into us, but it actually sounds to me like the newsreader isn't paying attention to what he/she is saying (and coupled with mumbling the most important words in an attempt to sound sympathetic/ominous/vaguely interested, it makes for a very annoying news broadcast, to be honest). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:42, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- I think you might find, if you experiment with reading those sentences without the stress, that there is a tendency to slur those words. News readers very often are trained to use unusual stress patterns in order to make difficult words come through distinctly. Looie496 (talk) 19:15, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- One of the most extraordinary examples is the correspondent Robert Peston, whose mannerisms are much imitated. By impressionists. Though he, himself, blames it on over-coaching by the BBC. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:44, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Right, so that's what it is. They are actually instructed to do this. I have also noticed it a lot with gameshow hosts reading out the possible answers that a contestant could give ("ten-thousand, twenty-thousand, thirty-thousand, or seventy-five [pause] THOUSAND"). I took that particular one as being boredom at the sheer repetitiveness of the job, but could not quite understand why it has extended to newsreaders. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Oh, if only some correspondents/newsreaders were amenable to instruction. I'd have a long list of dos and don'ts for them. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:36, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Could the teleprompter also be to blame ? That is, if the word doesn't come up quite fast enough, wouldn't there naturally be a pause followed by emphasizing the word ? StuRat (talk) 20:46, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Possibly, but not all the time and in such a recognizable pattern, I'm sure. I'm guessing from Jack's comment it's not just us Brits who are plagued by this, either. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Not at all. "I have been noticing for a while now strange stress patterns on [Australian] TV news reports". And not just speech patterns. There's a whole gamut of contrived, cliched, unnatural things they do. And all terribly predictable, which is the worst sin of all. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think this is a new thing with British commentators. Eric Idle was one who made fun of this perhaps "over-dramatic" style, clear back in the early 70s. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:19, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- This problem has spread to other countries, too. Here in Bulgaria, newsreaders used to speak more or less normally, but now they are trained to slavishly imitate the style of English-language newsreaders, including the illogical sentence stresses, as well as the overall intonation tunes. I'm glad to learn that at least you too are feeling the discomfort of the disease you've infected us with.:) --91.148.159.4 (talk) 11:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think this is a new thing with British commentators. Eric Idle was one who made fun of this perhaps "over-dramatic" style, clear back in the early 70s. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:19, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Not at all. "I have been noticing for a while now strange stress patterns on [Australian] TV news reports". And not just speech patterns. There's a whole gamut of contrived, cliched, unnatural things they do. And all terribly predictable, which is the worst sin of all. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Possibly, but not all the time and in such a recognizable pattern, I'm sure. I'm guessing from Jack's comment it's not just us Brits who are plagued by this, either. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Scrabble word list / dictionary disparity
I've downloaded the Official North American Tournament Scrabble Word List from a couple of sources. It has 8691 words. In the article Scrabble it says the word list is compiled from 4 dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster. In the article Wiktionary I read that Miriam-Webster has 475,000 entries. Why are there apparently hundreds of thousands of words, something like 98%, missing from the Scrabble word list? 213.122.48.199 (talk) 22:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Are you sure that you've counted correctly? Our article says that the list contains 178,691 words. Deor (talk) 22:44, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Oh, good deduction, you're right. Turns out SciTE's line numbering wraps round to 0 when it gets to 9999. Ta. (I guess the remaining disparity is accounted for by obsolete words, or peculiar conjugations?) 213.122.14.131 (talk) 23:13, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Well, I suppose it excludes words that are impossible in a Scrabble game, such as words that can't be spelled with the limited number of letters and blanks available, as well as words of more than fifteen letters. I'd imagine, however, that most of the difference between Merriam-Webster and the Scrabble word list is accounted for by the many open and hyphenated compounds (e.g., iron oxide) that constitute lemmas in the dictionary but, to the best of my recollection, are inadmissible in Scrabble. Deor (talk) 01:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
(G/K/Kh/Q)addafi
Which is correct? --70.244.234.128 (talk) 23:15, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- They are all attempts at transliterating Arabic. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:17, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Google Translate prefers "Gadaffi", and the Arabic comes out like this, for what it's worth
القذافي
←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:21, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- القذافي(EC)
So, from this, we see that 'Q' is correct, but in the Libyan dialect of Arabic (like Egyptian), this is pronounced as 'G'. See Phonology Of Libyan Arabic for this. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:29, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- What is "correct" depends on what you mean by "correct". Do you mean "what is the best representation of how the name is pronounced by those who bear it", or do you mean "what would be consistent with that used for [n] dialect of Arabic"? DuncanHill (talk) 23:54, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- (EC) Perhaps I should clarify (though I am not sure if your post, Duncan, was a reply to me or the OP). 'Q' is generally the transliteration for the letter 'qaf', which is the first letter of the name, when transliterating literary Arabic, but it is pronounced as 'G' in the Libyan dialect. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Well I was replying to both you and the OP. "Correct" is one of those words which needs nailing down when it is used. DuncanHill (talk) 00:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I should have thought of that, yes, you are quite correct :) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Well I was replying to both you and the OP. "Correct" is one of those words which needs nailing down when it is used. DuncanHill (talk) 00:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- (EC) Perhaps I should clarify (though I am not sure if your post, Duncan, was a reply to me or the OP). 'Q' is generally the transliteration for the letter 'qaf', which is the first letter of the name, when transliterating literary Arabic, but it is pronounced as 'G' in the Libyan dialect. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- What is "correct" depends on what you mean by "correct". Do you mean "what is the best representation of how the name is pronounced by those who bear it", or do you mean "what would be consistent with that used for [n] dialect of Arabic"? DuncanHill (talk) 23:54, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- Our article Muammar_Gaddafi#Name has some discussion of this, which may help the original questioner. DuncanHill (talk) 23:58, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- This user seems to be a troll; his previous questions here have been hidden. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 00:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Whatever the nature of his previous questions, this one is reasonable. So long as people will insist on using a huge variety of languages, dialects, and alphabets worldwide difficulties will inevitably arise. DuncanHill (talk) 01:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- This user seems to be a troll; his previous questions here have been hidden. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ spik ʌp! 00:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Our article Muammar_Gaddafi#Name has some discussion of this, which may help the original questioner. DuncanHill (talk) 23:58, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- I would say that the most "correct" transliteration, in the sense of most accurately reflecting classical Arabic norms, would be either Qadhdhāfī or Qaððāfī (depending on whether you favor digraphs or IPA characters to represent the Arabic ذ letter). Of course, these transliterations would not reflect the most common vernacular pronunciations in Libya itself... AnonMoos (talk) 00:46, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- This and this may be of interest. These articles also note that when the Libyan leader wrote to second-graders in Minnesota in 1986, he signed the letter "Moammar El-Gadhafi". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:41, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- It's strange that both of those articles get it slightly wrong regarding the (standard Arabic) q sound; they just say it's the same as "k" and forget to mention it's a "deep"/uvular/"emphatic" one. If it were simply the same as "k", there would be no reason for a separate letter.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 10:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Is it more like the Spanish "J" or the Scottish "ch", or for that matter the "ch" in "Chanukah"? Seems to me that natives of Iraq say it like "Irach", with the "ch" being like in the Scottish "loch". Is that correct? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I have always heard Iraqis pronounce the 'q' of 'Iraq' as a glottal stop (when not pronouncing it as 'q' (or indeed 'g')), but never as /x/. It is mainly an area that uses Gulf State Arabic variants (though Egyptian influence is as ubiquitous here as anywhere else). The article I linked to above, however, does mention that in Libyan Arabic, 'q' can sometimes be pronounced as /x/ (translit. 'kh'), so I guess this could happen in Iraq too. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Back to Baseball Bugs' question - in "proper" Modern Standard Arabic, the sound in Iraq is like a "k", but pronounced deeper in the throat: technically, a voiceless uvular plosive, which is what is usually transcribed with the letter "q" in IPA. There's a passable sound file in our article, too. There is no similar sound in English. It's not particularly similar to how most people, even Scots, would pronounce "loch". However, one could say that there is some similarity to the sound in German Bach (χ): it is articulated in the same place in the mouth - though not in the same manner (q is a stop and χ is a fricative). Here is what the useful Forvo site has to offer us in that connection (also in Persian).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 18:24, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I have always heard Iraqis pronounce the 'q' of 'Iraq' as a glottal stop (when not pronouncing it as 'q' (or indeed 'g')), but never as /x/. It is mainly an area that uses Gulf State Arabic variants (though Egyptian influence is as ubiquitous here as anywhere else). The article I linked to above, however, does mention that in Libyan Arabic, 'q' can sometimes be pronounced as /x/ (translit. 'kh'), so I guess this could happen in Iraq too. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Is it more like the Spanish "J" or the Scottish "ch", or for that matter the "ch" in "Chanukah"? Seems to me that natives of Iraq say it like "Irach", with the "ch" being like in the Scottish "loch". Is that correct? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- It's strange that both of those articles get it slightly wrong regarding the (standard Arabic) q sound; they just say it's the same as "k" and forget to mention it's a "deep"/uvular/"emphatic" one. If it were simply the same as "k", there would be no reason for a separate letter.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 10:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- This and this may be of interest. These articles also note that when the Libyan leader wrote to second-graders in Minnesota in 1986, he signed the letter "Moammar El-Gadhafi". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:41, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
March 16
Polytheama / Politeama
I was sent here from the Humanities desk:
- There are several Politeama theaters in Italy, Portugal and Brazil. Apparently there is even a Polytheama in Greece. So what is the story behind the name? What does Polytheama mean in Greek? Is it a famous theater of Antiquity? A placename? A mythological character?
From the answers there, it means something like "a theatre or act where different kinds of shows are performed". Can you confirm? --Error (talk) 00:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- As near as I can figure, it's a compound of Πολυ and Θεαμα "spectacle". Unfortunately, the newly-revamped Perseus.tufts.edu search interface to the full Liddell & Scott lexicon appears to have a lot of quirks and errors, so I'm going by my smaller paper version... AnonMoos (talk) 01:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I agree. The word in modern Greek is defined as "an organized spectacle, composed of many individual elements and artistic events (sound, music, dance, movement, drama, pictures, etc.)" ([2] and Google translate). Lesgles (talk) 03:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- AnonMoos, the LSJ on Perseus gave me "polytheamon", or "things having been seen" or something like that. It didn't give a root verb for it though. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- The whole Perseus search form didn't give me anything very directly relevant to ΠολυΘεαμα (see further my comment on Talk:A Greek-English Lexicon); polytheamōn with omega is an agent noun with the rather different meaning "one who sees / has seen much". However, the basic verb is Θεαομαι "to view, look at". AnonMoos (talk) 10:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- AnonMoos, the LSJ on Perseus gave me "polytheamon", or "things having been seen" or something like that. It didn't give a root verb for it though. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I agree. The word in modern Greek is defined as "an organized spectacle, composed of many individual elements and artistic events (sound, music, dance, movement, drama, pictures, etc.)" ([2] and Google translate). Lesgles (talk) 03:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- As near as I can figure, it's a compound of Πολυ and Θεαμα "spectacle". Unfortunately, the newly-revamped Perseus.tufts.edu search interface to the full Liddell & Scott lexicon appears to have a lot of quirks and errors, so I'm going by my smaller paper version... AnonMoos (talk) 01:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Brazilian Portuguese
The article Brazilian Portuguese says that "Roughly speaking, the differences between European Portuguese and standard Brazilian Portuguese can be defined as comparable to the ones found between British and American English." It links to a supposed source for this claim, but I don't actually see where the supposed source says this, or anything like it. I've read elsewhere that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are greater than those between BrE and AmE. Does anyone here have any knowledge of this? 86.160.218.94 (talk) 04:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I've no idea whether this is true, but saying that it "can be defined" looks over-exact. It is worth pointing out that there are two different issues when considering linguistic difference - those between spoken variants, and those between written ones. (there is also the question as to whether 'British English' is a particularly useful concept to use for comparisons, given the wide variations, and less-than-universal comprehensibility...) AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- According to this source and our own article (from which the sentence you cite seems to have been removed), the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese include substantial and profound differences in grammar, including differences in personal pronouns and in verb conjugations. These differences, and wide differences in pronunciation, mean that speakers of "standard" dialects of Brazilian may have trouble understanding speakers of standard European Portuguese. They also mean that the two versions of Portuguese amount to separate languages for translation purposes, in that a translation into Brazilian Portuguese would not be acceptable to readers of European Portuguese and vice versa. Clearly, the differences between the English of southern England (to avoid Andy's objection to the overgeneralized term British English) and the English of the United States are not as extreme as this. There are small, subtle differences in grammar between these two versions of English, but not enough to impede comprehension. Certainly, there is very little difference in the use of pronouns and verb forms (apart from a handful of irregular verbs). Also, a translation into either version of English requires only minor edits before publication in the other market. So, I think there is a strong case that Brazilian Portuguese is further from European Portuguese than American English is from the English of southern England. Marco polo (talk) 15:24, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Hi, sorry, some time after posting my original question here, I made this edit, which I forgot to note here. 109.153.234.145 (talk) 20:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- According to this source and our own article (from which the sentence you cite seems to have been removed), the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese include substantial and profound differences in grammar, including differences in personal pronouns and in verb conjugations. These differences, and wide differences in pronunciation, mean that speakers of "standard" dialects of Brazilian may have trouble understanding speakers of standard European Portuguese. They also mean that the two versions of Portuguese amount to separate languages for translation purposes, in that a translation into Brazilian Portuguese would not be acceptable to readers of European Portuguese and vice versa. Clearly, the differences between the English of southern England (to avoid Andy's objection to the overgeneralized term British English) and the English of the United States are not as extreme as this. There are small, subtle differences in grammar between these two versions of English, but not enough to impede comprehension. Certainly, there is very little difference in the use of pronouns and verb forms (apart from a handful of irregular verbs). Also, a translation into either version of English requires only minor edits before publication in the other market. So, I think there is a strong case that Brazilian Portuguese is further from European Portuguese than American English is from the English of southern England. Marco polo (talk) 15:24, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
An Exultation of Larks
I am hoping to find an electronic copy of this book AN Exultation OF Larks by James Lipton availal on the internet for payment or not. It is about collective nouns. Does anyone know? 117.241.120.50 (talk) 06:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- It appears to still be in print. If you can't find it via Google, have you tried contacting the Bravo TV network where Lipton works, or the publisher Penguin Books? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- i have not because I suspect they would just send m to by a printed copy wich are readily avail.able in the US (though I' m not there!!!) I am looking for an ebook therefore 117.241.121.182 (talk) 09:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Have you looked into the various e-book devices that are out there, and whether this book is available on any of them? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Yes. I ve also tried the old-world mode of searching google 'exaltation of larks lipton ebook OR pdf' to no avail......... 117.241.123.203 (talk) 09:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Is the book orderable from the Penguin website? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Your not being helpful -- I want the book in electronic fromat. It is not availble in electornic format from any of the obvious places I ve looked. Obviously. 117.241.122.193 (talk) 04:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- Is the book orderable from the Penguin website? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Yes. I ve also tried the old-world mode of searching google 'exaltation of larks lipton ebook OR pdf' to no avail......... 117.241.123.203 (talk) 09:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Have you looked into the various e-book devices that are out there, and whether this book is available on any of them? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- i have not because I suspect they would just send m to by a printed copy wich are readily avail.able in the US (though I' m not there!!!) I am looking for an ebook therefore 117.241.121.182 (talk) 09:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Commentary on a writing issue
I'm after some commentary so that I can better get my head around an issue. See this edit, where an editor has merged:
- He is particularly notable for his choral music
with
- He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge
to produce:
- Particularly notable for his choral music, he was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.
Now, those 2 facts seem as unrelated as:
- He was an only child, and
- He married his second wife in 1893.
I certainly hope I never see a sentence like: An only child, he married his second wife in 1893. But many Wikipedia articles seem to suffer from this obsession some editors have to connect facts by use of the form: <clause phrase>, <main statement>, where the two parts often have only the most tenuous of connections, so one day I'm sure it will happen.
Does this construction have a name or is it better described than my feeble attempt? Why is it so favoured by many writers, even where the raw materials contraindicate its use? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I would have called it a non sequitur, although our article doesn't really reflect my understanding of a non sequitur.--Shantavira|feed me 10:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Neither "An only child" nor "Particularly notable for his choral music" is a clause, contra the question. The former is a noun phrase and the latter an adjectival phrase. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Tks for the correction. Question amended. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I actually don't see any problem with the merged sentence: it reads like things I came across when studying music, and particularly things from Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Maybe, Tammy, it's a case of "see an error often enough and it no longer seems like an error". But maybe calling this an "error" is overstating things a little.
- Stanford was indeed particularly notable for his choral music. He wrote choral music throughout his life, starting decades before he ever became a professor of music. The problem is that connecting these activities in the one sentence suggests the former led to the latter. It certainly wouldn't have hurt, but he also wrote a pile of symphonies and much organ music, so what about them? There is no particular connection between him writing choral music and him becoming a professor of music. Some professors of music (most, in fact) are completely non-notable as composers, some hardly composing anything at all. Most composers never become professors of music. There is no innate connection between these two things, but the merged sentence would seem to have us believe otherwise. Or, if it's not intending to say the one led to the other, what justification is there for putting them together like this? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I would have agreed with you had the sentence used the word "became". However, it didn't, so I don't see that implication there. --TammyMoet (talk) 12:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Right. So again I ask: if being a noted choral composer is quite separate from being a professor of music, what is the reason for putting these facts together in the same sentence? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:37, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I would have agreed with you had the sentence used the word "became". However, it didn't, so I don't see that implication there. --TammyMoet (talk) 12:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Akihito's speech
Can any Japanese speakers dispense some linguistic wisdom regarding the emperor's speech to his country? As a non-speaker, I'm wondering first of all about his greeting, which sounded to me like "konnotamino", but if this is the true rōmaji I haven't been able to find the word through Google. It certainly wasn't "konnichiwa" anyway! News reporting I've seen in the Anglophone media has mentioned that his style was, although formal, perhaps surprisingly direct. In any case, the difficult courtly register of his father's 1945 broadcast seems to be a thing of the past. Or is it, behind the scenes, or in the emperor's new year addresses, for example? Next, I noticed throughout that he often ended sentences with a word that sounded like [mas] (nine or so times by my count), with most of them ending in what sounded like [te.i.mas]. What does this mean? Finally, has anyone got a link to either a video with a dubbed English translation of the full speech, or a transcript of it in English. BBC and others have been broadcasting excerpts totalling about 30 seconds, but it would be good to read the full thing. Actually, one more thing! I noticed that he bowed at the start and end, something which as it happens I asked about yesterday at Talk:Etiquette in Japan. Any input welcome. Thanks! 82.32.186.24 (talk) 15:36, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Couple of things-he may be saying "contamination"-modern Japanese includes perhaps 10% foreign words. The "kono" may be "this" as in "this and that". Words that end in "-masu" are action verbs, like "ryorishimasu"-to cook, "arukimasu"-to walk, "hashirimasu"-to run.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 16:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict:merge with previous question) I've read that when Emperor Hirohito addressed the Japanese people to tell them WW2 was lost, few could understand anything he said, because he spoke some sort of "court Japanese" or formal archaic Samurai Japanese rather than the language of the people. Was the difference one of vocabulary and grammar, or just of pronunciation, so that when written out everyone would read and understand it? Did Hirohito give public speeches in the postwar years, and did he switch to common Japanese? In English, what would be an analog to Hirohito's non-understood 1945 radio speech? Would it be as if Queen Elizabeth delivered in address in Shakespearean English? Now Emperor Akihito has addressed the Japanese people on TV. Did he speak ordinary Japanese, and did he also speak Hirohito's formal version? Edison (talk) 16:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is how the British newspaper "The Telegraph" described it:
Dressed in a dark suit, and seated against a backdrop designed to evoke the appearance of a traditional paper screens, Emperor Akihito spoke in mannered but modern Japanese – not the formal courtly language which is incomprehensible to many of the country’s residents.[1]
- Roger (talk) 21:13, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- That might be interpreted to the effect that the "court" still speaks the "formal courtly language," whatever it is. Does Wikipedia have an article discussing that type of Japanese versus the commonly used version? Edison (talk) 22:25, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- This is outside my area of expertise, but I think that courtly Japanese was based on classical Japanese, with extensive use of honorifics. An analogy to English might be something like the court language of the Tudors, as if Queen Elizabeth II were to say "Our graces vouchsafe to bestow upon our dearly esteemed subjects our very gravest sorrow for the disaster lately visited upon their esteemed selves. May the heavens forfend that their suffering endure...". I suspect that courtly Japanese isn't much used outside of ceremonies any more and that the emperor's mannered but modern speech is something like his everyday speech. However, it would be good for someone more knowledgeable to confirm this. Marco polo (talk) 02:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't know Japanese that well, but do know Chinese, and the Chinese Wikipedia page gives a side-by-side translation of Hirohito's speech (as well as providing images of the original document) here [2]. The text is described as 日文文語體 (Classical Japanese, Bungo-文語), and as a comparison of the translation between the original text and the formal (i.e., non-colloquial) Chinese translation attests, is essentially lexically very similar to Classical Chinese (but syntactically very different due to the inversion of the word order). The pronoun the Emperor used to refer to himself (朕) was the form of address that Qin Shihuang used to refer to himself, and the text is terse and very literary in form. The important thing to keep in mind is that Hirohito's speech was a recitation of a written document that was composed in an archaic style utilized solely for written correspondence, it was (I'm 98% sure) not reflective of any spoken vernacular utilized at court. I found the Japanese text of Akihito's speech on the Imperial Household's Agency's website:
この度の東北地方太平洋沖地震は,マグニチュード9.0という例を見ない規模の巨大地震であり,被災地の悲惨な状況に深く心を痛めています。地震や津波による死者の数は日を追って増加し,犠牲者が何人になるのかも分かりません。一人でも多くの人の無事が確認されることを願っています。また,現在,原子力発電所の状況が予断を許さぬものであることを深く案じ,関係者の尽力により事態の更なる悪化が回避されることを切に願っています。
現在,国を挙げての救援活動が進められていますが,厳しい寒さの中で,多くの人々が,食糧,飲料水,燃料などの不足により,極めて苦しい避難生活を余儀なくされています。その速やかな救済のために全力を挙げることにより,被災者の状況が少しでも好転し,人々の復興への希望につながっていくことを心から願わずにはいられません。そして,何にも増して,この大災害を生き抜き,被災者としての自らを励ましつつ,これからの日々を生きようとしている人々の雄々しさに深く胸を打たれています。
自衛隊,警察,消防,海上保安庁を始めとする国や地方自治体の人々,諸外国から救援のために来日した人々,国内の様々な救援組織に属する人々が,余震の続く危険な状況の中で,日夜救援活動を進めている努力に感謝し,その労を深くねぎらいたく思います。
今回,世界各国の元首から相次いでお見舞いの電報が届き,その多くに各国国民の気持ちが被災者と共にあるとの言葉が添えられていました。これを被災地の人々にお伝えします。
海外においては,この深い悲しみの中で,日本人が,取り乱すことなく助け合い,秩序ある対応を示していることに触れた論調も多いと聞いています。これからも皆が相携え,いたわり合って,この不幸な時期を乗り越えることを衷心より願っています。
被災者のこれからの苦難の日々を,私たち皆が,様々な形で少しでも多く分かち合っていくことが大切であろうと思います。被災した人々が決して希望を捨てることなく,身体(からだ)を大切に明日からの日々を生き抜いてくれるよう,また,国民一人びとりが,被災した各地域の上にこれからも長く心を寄せ,被災者と共にそれぞれの地域の復興の道のりを見守り続けていくことを心より願っています。
Which is written in modern colloquial Japanese (including foreign loanwords like magnitude マグニチュード). As Oda Mari pointed out, his first words were この度の konotabino, which is not a greeting, it means "this time, this particular instance". Hope this helps. 71.167.144.217 (talk) 05:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Ambiguity of 'free' in other languages
Do other languages also have the ambiguity of the English 'free'? I know for sure that in German and Spanish there is no way of confusing both meanings...
- Which two of the many meanings of 'free' are you referring to? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:31, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I assume he means the two most common definitions, being free as related to liberty, and free as related to money. In english this is commonly expressed as "Free as in beer" versus "Free as in speech"; as always WHAAOE, the article Gratis versus libre discusses the two meanings in some detail, though it doesn't really delve into how other languages deal with the two concepts. --Jayron32 19:55, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Of course German has the ambiguity. Free software = freie Software, free beer = Freibier. That Freibier is written in a single word is just an accident. What is different in German is that there are several very natural ways of expressing free as in free beer. Using "freie Software" for software that is free of cost would be slightly less natural than "Gratissoftware" or "kostenlose Software", but that's enough to reduce the potential of confusion. Hans Adler 19:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I would never understand Freibier as anything different than gratis bier. In German, excluding the case of "freie Software" which could be misleading, I don't see much potential for confusion. 212.169.179.181 (talk) 19:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- ??? Would anyone understand "free beer" as anything other than gratis beer? Of course the question was about free software. In English it's ambiguous and potentially confusing. In German it's just as ambiguous as in English, and it's also potentially confusing, although slightly less so. That was my point. Hans Adler 20:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- I would never understand Freibier as anything different than gratis bier. In German, excluding the case of "freie Software" which could be misleading, I don't see much potential for confusion. 212.169.179.181 (talk) 19:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Finnish most certainly has no such ambiguity. Finnish has two entirely different adjectives for "free": vapaa is free as in speech, i.e. not restricted, while ilmainen is free as in beer, i.e. not costing anything. JIP | Talk 20:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
There is no ambiguity in English when you understand that "free" beer or software is an abbreviated way of saying "free of charge". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
In fact, "gratis" to mean "free of charge" is a relatively new concept. "Gratis" actually means "(for) thanks", as noted in EO:[3] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- But the problem is that free software is a different concept of "software at no cost". It is entirely possible for such software to exist that is available free of charge, but is still completely proprietary, meaning that the only thing you can practically do it with it is run it in your own personal use. I certainly have seen many examples of it. JIP | Talk 21:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- You can download it at no charge, right? I assume you're making a distinction between free-of-charge and (not-)free-to-distribute? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- That is the distinction, yes. It's not something JIP has just coined. As far as I'm aware, free software doesn't have to be free of charge, only free to modify. Vimescarrot (talk) 22:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- That would be the opposite situation from what I'm describing. Each is "free", but neither is "totally free". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- That is the distinction, yes. It's not something JIP has just coined. As far as I'm aware, free software doesn't have to be free of charge, only free to modify. Vimescarrot (talk) 22:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- You can download it at no charge, right? I assume you're making a distinction between free-of-charge and (not-)free-to-distribute? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
In Polish, the word wolny is ambiguous, but in a different way: it means both "free" (as in "free speech") and "slow". Interestingly, powolny means both "slow" and "obedient", so it's at once a synonym and an antonym of wolny. "Free" as in "free beer" is darmowy, completely unrelated to wolny. — Kpalion(talk) 21:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Doubled consonants
Hi. I've noticed some languages, such as Arabic and Italian, have (in their IPA phonetic transcriptions) doubled consonants. FOr example, the word prosciutto is pronounced /prɔsˈʧuttɔ/ (scroll to the bottom, sorry it's French Wiktionary but the French just seem better at building a dictionary; the enwikt has no Italian IPA for this entry). How is the /tt/ pronounced? The only way I can think of not to run the /t/ together is to add a glottal stop in between but this would sound ridiculous even to me who does not speak Italian. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- In many lnguages geminat consonants are pronounced as having longer duration than single consonants , meaning that there is a longer pause between the stop and the release of the airflow. Also if there is a syllable break between the two consonants there is often two separate releases for every consonant. ·Maunus·ƛ· 21:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- The technical linguistic term is "geminate" or "geminated" consonant. The easiest hint is probably that one syllable ends with a consonant sound, while the immediately-following syllable begins with this same consonant sound. The consonant is pronounced distinctly as part of both syllables, but there's usually not any "release" between the two parts of the geminate. So in languages with a distinctive contrast between aspirated and unaspirated consonants (ancient Greek, Sanskrit etc.), a doubled thth becomes tth (i.e. the breathy release of the first consonant is suppressed) and so on. AnonMoos (talk) 21:37, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- The French Wiktionary has no French for pronunciation and the Italian Wiktionary no Italian for pronunciation. I don't see that the French is much ahead in this instance. But maybe we all say it the same way? 75.41.110.200 (talk) 21:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Consider the difference between /t/ in whiter and /tt/ in white-tie. Deor (talk) 21:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- However, there's a kind of a stem-boundary between two stressed syllables in "white-tie", and the "t" of "white" would be heavily glottalized in some accents of American English, none of which would happen in the Italian pronunciation of a word like otto ("8")... AnonMoos (talk) 22:51, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- See Gemination. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
You can hear Prosciutto here: http://it.forvo.com/word/prosciutto/#it For PALA/PALLA see here: http://it.forvo.com/search/pala/ http://it.forvo.com/search/palla/ --151.51.60.184 (talk) 02:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
March 17
Sentence structure
In the following sentence, are there any grammatical errors (especially around the conjunction with the "and" joining the parts about the Spanish and Beta Clubs)?
"I was also involved in the Beta Club, where I placed first in the organization’s state science competition and Spanish Club, where I won first place in the verbal Spanish competition at the Net Olé foreign language conference as a sophomore."
TIA, 67.54.238.135 (talk) 00:53, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- There needs to be a comma after "science competition", to end the appositive. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- Also, if you mean for "as a sophomore" to be modifying the whole sentence ("I was involved...as a sophomore") rather than just the Spanish competition ("won first place...as a sophomore"), then you need to either add a comma after "conference", or move "as a sophomore" to the front of the sentence. The latter option will make the sentence read much more smoothly.
(Note that I also removed "the organization's", which was redundant.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:03, 17 March 2011 (UTC)As a sophomore I was also involved in the Beta Club, where I placed first in the state science competition, and the Spanish club, where I won first place in the verbal Spanish competition at the Net Olé foreign language conference.
Origin of a last name
Hello again. I have a little "fun" exercise that shows how to guess the patrilineal origin of people by looking at their last names. If one speaks the language, one can go even further and guess what the last name tells (the example on the sheet: Smith > your ancestors were probably smiths). There is one name on the list, "Loughran", that I have not been able to tell anything about, except that it is a Germanic name (-gh- is nonexistent in any Romance language but is common in English). Unfortunately I do not speak any Germanic languages (English excepted of course!), so I haven't progressed any past that. Can someone illuminate the etymology/language of origin or meaning? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 01:45, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- Loughran doesnt look germanic at all, I also don't know that -gh- is common in Germanic, I don't think it even exists outside of English. If it is a European name at all I would say it is likely to be of Gaelic origin.·Maunus·ƛ· 01:51, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)Loughran is an Irish name - an Anglicised form of the Gaelic "Ó Luachra" meaning "descendant of Luachra" "Luachra" is a personal name derived from luachair, meaning rushes/sedges. Hanks, Patrick; Hodges, Flavia (1988). A Dictionary of Surnames. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 333. ISBN 0192115928. DuncanHill (talk) 01:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)