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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)

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)

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)

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)

Very interesting. Thanks, all. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:50, 17 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. LANTZY^TALK 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)

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)

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)

Filibuster? Adam Bishop (talk) 07:27, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Pontificate? Expound? Hold forth? --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, wait. You're looking for nouns. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Spiel? --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 18:39, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Try "harangue." --some other jerk on the Internet 21 March 2011

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

I used to work for a Brazilian reinsurance company in London. There were a couple of Portuguese nationals working there who didn't seem to have any difficulty conversing with the Brazilian management. When asked, they also used the US/British English analogy. That said, I once heard one of the Portuguese hold a long conversation with an Italian ice-cream man without either being able to speak the other's language. Alansplodge (talk) 12:46, 17 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)

Why don't you at least try to contact the publisher? Don't presume that they're going to not help you. Give them a chance. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:27, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

According to Worldcat, the only place with a digital edition of Exaltation of Larks is The Hathi Trust Digital Library. Their copy was digitized by the University of Michigan. Access is limited to searching within the text. Number of search matches and their page numbers are visible; the actual text search results are not. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a handy tool to use, if you already have a hard-copy of the book and are trying to find something specific. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

They also suggest it as a tool to decide whether a book is worth purchasing/chasing down at some obscure library, &c. Search a general but hard-to-find orthopedics title for Dupuytren's disease and see how many times it hits, for example. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 18:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

No need to go to that trouble. Just ask me, I'll tell you whether it's worth buying or not. The answer is, Yes, it's worth buying. I've had it in my personal library for about 25 years and I would not part with it for a lashings of Chinese tea. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The bottom line is that the only legal electronic copies you're likely to find would have to originate from the publisher. If someone else transcribed it, it is likely a copyright violation. The ref desk will not aid and abet copyright violations. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

At least not for good books... --Ludwigs2 18:01, 17 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)

In support of your initial claim I would suggest "none whatsoever". If the events are unrelated, then merging the sentences only serves to confuse the reader. Even if the events were indeed related, then the sentence should reflect that relationship (Hypothetically: "Due to his notable work on choral music, he was made professor [...]" or "During his time as a professor [...] he made some of his most notable work on choral music"). --DI (talk) 10:43, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense, thanks DI. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I forget the formal term for this (there is one), but it's an argument by improper association. it's related to the syllogistic fallacy illicit process of the minor term, in which two unrelated qualities are connected simply because some object happens to have both. --Ludwigs2 18:08, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I was actually after the grammatical terminology, not the rhetorical. I mean, I'm sure there's a better way of referring to these constructions than "a phrase followed hopefully by a comma and what would, had it not been for the leading phrase, have been a sentence in its own right". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:57, 17 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)

It was konotabino/このたびの. See this. As for desu and masu, see です and suffix ます. He always talks like that. Oda Mari (talk) 17:23, 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.

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 . 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)

An English translation of the speech is now available online: [3] 82.32.186.24 (talk) 18:06, 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)

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:[4] ←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)

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)

Sadly, the term "free beer" is rarely heard in the UK. If anyone knows where it is in common use, perhaps they would be kind enough to let us know. ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 12:34, 17 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 t^ht^h becomes tt^h (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)

Would penny and pen-knife be better examples? --Kjoonlee 00:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

It certainly avoids the problem of the changes which affect "t" in various positions in various dialects of English, but there would still probably be some differences with respect to the Italian contrast between -n- and -nn-- -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:17, 18 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)

There is a mistake in the French Wiktionary: it should be [proʃˈʃutto] (by my dictionary), not *[prɔsˈʧuttɔ]. At any rate, there is no ʧ sound. Lfh (talk) 10:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Are there any Italian words with the sound sequence [sʧ]? --84.61.170.180 (talk) 10:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

No.--151.51.60.184 (talk) 02:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

March 17

Sentence structure

Resolved

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.

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.

(Note that I also removed "the organization's", which was redundant.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:03, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! :) That solves the problem, and now my letter sounds much better! 12.213.80.54 (talk) 08:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

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)

"gh" does look like (English-)Germanic in a sense, because English has historically expressed the sounds ɣ and χ with it (where German would use "ch"): cf. knight - Knecht, thought - dachte. "gh" for ɣ is also found in older Scandinavian orthography (Old Danish sighia, sighæ og sægh(i)æ for Modern Danish sige, Old Swedish sighia, säghia for Modern Swedish säga) and still preserved in some surnames: Bergh instead of Berg. In this case, though, the <gh> is Celtic, as pointed out by DuncanHill below.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:09, 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)

Surname in Swahili

Is the surname Nkruma in Swahili? Or any African language? HOOTmag (talk) 05:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Nkrumah is a given name in the Akan language. It indicates a ninth child. --Cam (talk) 12:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. HOOTmag (talk) 18:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of can't

Hello, I'm not a native speaker of English. But I've heard in many Hollywood movies "can't" is pronounced as canch.

• Correct pronunciation: "Kant" you move like this?
• Pronunciation I heard: "Kanch" you move like this?

I can't understand it. Please help. --Novagalaxy (talk) 07:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Define "Correct pronunciation". In North America "Kant" may be the norm, but in the UK there is a soft "r" sound in the middle, "Karn't". - X201 (talk) 09:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Technically, there is no "r" sound in UK (more precisely, RP) "can't", it's just that it has the same vowel as in father. But since people in most of the UK drop the "r" in "cars", this means that the "a" in "can't" and "father" does sound the same as the "ar" in "cars" and "farther" (cahz, cahnt, fahther). However, the similarity is not that both have an "r" sound, it's that both lack it. Unless by "soft r" one means "absent r", of course.:) --91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I suspect what you're hearing is a sloppy contraction of the t and you sounds, to make a chew sound, so in total you hear can chew. A similar thing happens with picture, when it becomes pitcher. HiLo48 (talk) 07:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. In a similar example, "want to" becomes "wanna". StuRat (talk) 07:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Can you help me with following sentences:

• Sometimes ya gotta start over.
• Gotta start readin'!
• I gotta start blogging again.

What is "ya", and "gotta"? Why reading is shortened as readin'? Is there any article or reference where I can learn more about sloppy contraction? --Novagalaxy (talk) 08:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

"Ya" just means you and "gotta" means got to. This is just the way people, especially Americans, speak. --Viennese Waltz 08:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It's probably worth observing that "got to" is not logical either. It translates to "you have to" or "you must". HiLo48 (talk) 09:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

In many regional accents in the UK. "you" is pronounced "yer". "Got" is almost universally used in the context HiLo48 criticizes above. Alansplodge (talk) 09:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Not a criticism. An observation. Yes, it is a common usage, but not logical. For someone new to the language, who may be looking for logic, it's worth mentioning. HiLo48 (talk) 09:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a very common but admittedly odd quirk in spoken English. You can say "I have", but when you say "I have got" or "I've got", somehow it has a slightly different meaning, like maybe a sense of urgency or strength that a simple "I have" may not convey, and maybe because of the stronger sound of the "g" and the "t". Here's a simple example: A fly ball is hit into the outfield between two fielders. The one who thinks he has the best chance to catch it could say, "I have it", but he's likely to say "I've got it" or "I got it" or just "Got it". In Spanish, the outfielders might say, <<Yo la tengo>>, which means "I have it", but with the "g" and the "t" in there, it's more audible, as with "I got it". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the so-called logic of got to, language isn't logic. Words can lose their meaning, instead turning into constructions that have a role in the grammar. This process is called grammaticalisation. --Kjoonlee 00:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Article at Relaxed pronunciation. Deor (talk) 11:39, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

But Bugs, the examples above were about the specific use of "have (got) to" to express obligation, so your example is not really to the point.

And Novagalaxy, "Reading" is not shortened to "readin'" except in its spelling. There is nothing omitted, rather the sound /n/ is substituted for /ŋ/ (and for the participle, though not for the gerund, is more faithful to the origins of the form). --ColinFine (talk) 00:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I find it odd that plain old palatalization can be called sloppy. I always thought that it happens all the time, and that without it, people would sound stilted and unnatural. --Kjoonlee 00:38, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

That is something of an overstatement. But yes, both velar and dental/alveolar consonants get palatalised in many languages, sometimes as free variation, sometimes as regular allophonic variation, and sometimes as a regular phonemic substitution. --ColinFine (talk) 01:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As for which spellings you should use; avoid "wanna", "gotta", "ya", yer", "readin'", "cancha", etc., in writing, except when it's in quotes for a character and you are trying to convey a regional dialect. "Got" should also generally be avoided, except when trying to convey dialects. StuRat (talk) 01:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Not if you're speaking American English. Got is quite frequently used in standard American. Corvus cornix_talk 01:43, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's some fairly recent reference-desk blather with regard to got. Deor (talk) 01:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As an American, I would avoid putting "got" in writing, except for some rather informal communications. StuRat (talk) 07:59, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

What/which

I am currently learning Italian, and I was recently asked to translate some text from Italian to English, which included the folllowing question: "Qual'è il capoluogo della Sicilia?" I translated it as "What is the capital of Sicily?", even though "qual'è" means "which is", since putting "which" in the English sentence sounded stilted to me. However my Italian teacher, who is a native speaker of both English and Italian, said that "which" was the only word that fitted into the English sentence as well. Is our little disagreement because of the way she was taught grammar (she went to school in the 1960s/1970s in Australia), or is it just because her Italian is interfering with her English? BTW the Italian book that I'm using was published in the 1960s and sometimes recommends some rather archaic constructions.

The most comprehensive page I could find on this subject after a quick Google search was this one, which seemed to indicate that "what" would be the best word in the original question, but it'd be better to use which when there are only a few options, like "Which is the capital of Sicily, Palermo or Catania?" Any other ideas? How about when the subject is plural, like "What/which are the most important islands in Italy?" Graham87 08:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, "Which is the capital of Sicily?" on its own would certainly be wrong, it should be "what". For your second example I would say "which" is preferable. --Viennese Waltz 08:47, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Unless there was a choice such as Catania or Palermo, either stated or implied, the question "Which is the capital of Sicily?" sounds completely wrong and unidiomatic to my Australian ears. And I suspect to other ears of the anglophone persuasion. You don't say, but I sort of suspect your teacher was the daughter of Italian immigrants to Australia, and her choice of words in one of her languages is influenced by her knowledge of the other language, and sometimes comes out not quite right. Natives are not necessarily natives, when it comes to language. I had a techo come and check out my work computer the other day. I'd had various dealings with him on the phone previously, and I knew his surname, which I assumed was Italian. While he was fiddling with my computer, we got chatting. His accent was subtle but still noticeably Italian, and his choice of words was sometimes typical of a migrant. I asked him whether his name was Italian, which he confirmed. I asked whether he was born there, expecting to have that confirmed, but was very surprised to hear him say he's lived all his life in Australia. So, you never know with accents. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 08:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, her parents were both Italian immigrants to Australia ... in fact, IIRC she was born in Italy but arrived in Australia at a very young age. About 99% of the time her word usage in either Italian or English is spot on, but there are times where an utterance in either language doesn't come out quite right, as you say. Usually they're just minor problems with pronoun or preposition usage, but I find these little mistakes fascinating. Graham87 12:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Me too. Endlessly. Other friends of mine with immigrant parents sometimes come out with things like "How is it like?" or "It is not to you to do that", or they use an English word or phrase or sentence in the middle of a spiel in another language, or vice-versa. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Singer/finger split?

Despite being a native English speaker, and despite what the article on English phonology says, I have never heard any difference between singer and finger. In fact, I have never heard sing pronounced as anything but [sɪŋɡ]. Pronouncing a "raw" [ŋ] feels quite "foreign" to me - I perceive it to be an allophone of [n] before a velar.
Am I hard of hearing? Or have I not searched long enough? (It took quite a while to find mention of (what I thought was natural) pronunciation of tr and dr as [tʃr] and [dʒr].)
Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 10:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

You can hear the distinction on Wiktionary: singer vs finger. Lfh (talk) 11:19, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. It's very strange, I've never heard singer pronounced that way before. Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 11:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean "sing-ger" vs. "sing-er"? In some parts of the USA, they do indeed say "sing-ger", "hang-ger", and such as that. It may be more of a northeast thing, which they make fun of when they refer to Long Island as "Long Gisland". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ —Preceding undated comment added 12:08, 17 March 2011 (UTC).

In most UK accents, it's "sing-er" and "fing-ger" except for the Birmingham dialect - known as Brummie - where it's "sing-ger" and "fing-ger". Alansplodge (talk) 12:30, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It has to be a local variation that appears in different places. Americans normally pronounce the word "English" as "Ing-glish". I recall being a little startled when an American teaching an English class called it "Ing-lish". Never heard that before or since, but maybe that's another variant. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

What part of the world are you from? In the UK, "singer" with a pronounced "g", same as "finger", is typical of some northern dialects. Most people from London and the south pronounce "singer" and "finger" differently. 86.160.211.97 (talk) 12:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Little question, how does one fing? --Jayron32 12:36, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I have to say, as a native UK Brummie speaker, that I have only once heard anyone use this pronunciation that sounds to me like "sinner", and that was a few weeks ago on local TV. Everyone - including Scots, Welsh, Irish - I have heard says "sing-er". Or is it that I am so conditioned that I don't even hear a second g in that word? --TammyMoet (talk) 13:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

What do you meant by "sing-er"? Do you mean "siŋə(r)" (no hard "g") or "siŋgə(r)" (like "finger")? Are you saying that you only once heard "siŋə(r)", but yet you don't hear a second "g"? How does that work? The "standard" pronunciation in all the dictionaries I have just looked at -- both BrE and AmE -- is "siŋə(r)". 86.160.211.97 (talk) 14:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

May I quote from our Brummie article (section: Accent / Pronunciation)? "The letters ng often represent /ŋɡ/ where RP has just /ŋ/ (e.g. singer as [siŋɡə]). See Ng coalescence.". Alansplodge (talk) 14:53, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Which demonstrates to the OP that "a native English speaker" can mean many different things in England alone, apart from all the other places in the world where English is spoken natively. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there is wide variation in pronunciation even within a fairly small area. For example, Scouse (Liverpool, England) has sing-ger to rhyme with "fing-ger" whereas my local dialect often has finger pronounced "fiŋə" (though I would never use that pronunciation when speaking my version of "standard English"). Dbfirs 13:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Strange title

Does Highways passing from Delhi sound like a strange title to anyone else? Could it be move to a better name? Astronaut (talk) 12:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I found this sentence: "The much-delayed Rs.10 billion, 27.7 km expressway was thrown open on January 23, 2008", so maybe the whole article is written in Indian English, in which case the current title may well be the most appropriate one. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I love "thrown open" :) Indian English sounds so alive and full of vitality to my ears. DuncanHill (talk) 13:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

"Highways passing from Delhi" sounds strange to me (BrE). 86.160.211.97 (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The article should be renamed "Highways originating from Delhi" or "Highways passing through Delhi", depending on which one is factually correct. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:35, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Highways originating in Delhi, rather than from? --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:03, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

If you're in some place along the way, you might speak of the road from (or to) Delhi. There's perhaps a philosophical question: if a road connects Delhi with, say, Patna, does it really originate in either city? But if you're talking about Delhi as the center of a network of roads (like Chicago), then I'd join Tagishsimon in saying "highways originating in Delhi. --- OtherDave (talk) 01:36, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

A google search for "highways passing from" gives on the first page also "Highways passing from Tikamgarh" and "Highways passing from Indore", which very much suggests that JackofOz is correct and this is a standard phrase in Indian English. If this is so, then WP:ENGVAR unequivocally says this is the correct title for the article, and people's speculations on what would be better in their own varieties of English are irrelevant (not to say, impertinent); though perhaps a redirect would be in order. Do we have a speaker of Indian English here who could clarify? --ColinFine (talk) 10:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Language Of In-Game Music

Does anyone know what language the music from this (time-linked) video is in? [For those who do not wish to click:] It is from the game Homeworld 2, and was apparently made by Paul Ruskay. I originally thought Hindi (purely from the music) but when I heard the words I realised it wasn't - it sounds more like Persian to me. Comments on that video say it may be Sanskrit, but I doubt that. Does anyone know? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Philosophical Term

What do you call a term like "sophistry?" That is, a term that can be used (derogatorily) and ironically refer to your own response? For some reason Straw Man comes to mind, but I don't think that quite encompasses what I'm looking for. Thanks Wikipedians! Schyler! (one language) 21:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Reminds me of the old teacher's axiom: "get in first, before they get you"! --TammyMoet (talk) 21:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Is there any possibility you can check and/or rephrase the question. I don't really understand the second sentence at all. Sophistry is a disparaging, depreciatory, derogatory term. And I suppose if I describe my own utterances - my responses - as sophistry, then I'm maybe being candid, or else ironic, depending on the context. What else are you looking for? --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:42, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion. Well, say debater 'A' has the subject of 'Responses to Nuclear Disasters.' 'A' orates well. Debater 'B' gets up and says "I could very well orate very well on the subject of which we speaking as well, but my contender's rationalization solely consisted of grotesque sophisms and demagogueries..."
Clearly 'B's' argument has no substance and is itself sophistry and demagoguery. So 'B' is ironically referring to the opponent's argument with the same denigration worthy of his response. Schyler! (one language) 22:11, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

That would be an ad hominem argument and a logical fallacy ... is that more the direction of your interest? Oh, and I guess there's a ladle full of hypocrisy involved too. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your time, but I don't think ad hominem is what I'm looking for. Maybe the context will help. I am looking at Basil's letter 234, fragment 1. He says, "the absurdities involved in this sophism are innumerable." This argument is clearly a sophism itself and he never debunks the assertion against which he is arguing. Clearly, I am taking an anti-Basil stance (perhaps even an anti-philosophy stance). Thanks. Schyler! (one language) 22:52, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Meta-sophistry ? See here: [5]. StuRat (talk) 01:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks! Schyler! (one language) 02:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

March 18

Conjugations of "to souvenir" [?]

Greetings!

The other day, I couldn't help but notice that many people are now using souvenir as a verb, instead of a noun as was traditional (in English, at least). I'm curious, however, as to whether one would write the past tenses—and present participle—with a double-consonant.

Since souvenir has a stress on the last syllable, the rule states that it would conjugate as follows:

	Non-past finite	Present Indicative (3rd Person singular)	Past finite and Participle	Present Participle
to souvenir	souvenir	souvenirs	souvenirred	souvenirring

But practically every usage I've seen of to souvenir treats the verb as if it weren't stressed on the last syllable. (Mind you, this is by no means unique—one also treats to bayonet, to catalog, and to chagrin likewise.)

	Non-past finite	Present Indicative (3rd Person singular)	Past finite and Participle	Present Participle
to souvenir	souvenir	souvenirs	souvenired	souveniring

My question is simple: Which of these two would you consider proper? Pine (talk) 00:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

The doubling is partly different between British and American spelling (not based solely on stress) -- e.g. "worship(p)ed", "travel(l)ing" etc. A specific problem with "souvenirred"[sic] is that it looks like it should rhyme with "stirred"... AnonMoos (talk) 00:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As someone who has never heard the word used as a verb, I'm intrigued. What do these users mean by doing so? Looking for souvenirs; collecting souvenirs; repurposing objects as souvenirs; making souvenirs; something else? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.165 (talk) 00:45, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not seeing it in use as a verb. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:49, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

(EC with below) Me neither, except for one possible dictionary definition, which says as a verb it is Australian slang for 'steal' which is what got them all over there in the first place :) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

The online edition of the OED doesn't seem to be available on my library's website just at the moment, but the 2nd edition (1989) lists the verb souvenir with three different meanings, viz:

1. "To pierce with a bullet or shell...Mil[itary] slang (in the war of 1914-18)", with a single citation from 1915.

2. "To provide with or constitute a souvenir of (something). rare", with citations from 1917 on.

3. To take as a 'souvenir'; to appropriate; to pilfer, steal. Also absol[ute]. slang (orig[inally] Mil[itary])", with citations from 1919 on.

It also lists the verbal noun souveniring with a single -r-. The verb doesn't take a double -rr- in any of the OED's citations of the present participle, past participle etc. --Antiquary (talk) 20:49, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Fwiw, it's very common in Australia to say you're "souveniring" something when what you really mean is "stealing" something that just happens to have been left lying around. Or even in its correct place, but not currently protected by armed guards or CCTV. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 02:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah! In my ideolect that would be "'arf-inchin'" :-) . {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.165 (talk) 04:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

"Liberating" is what I call it (or "scrumping", but that should really be just apples). DuncanHill (talk) 12:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Possibly the classic example of the Australian use of the term is a visiting sports team on the way back home, "souveniring" a road sign with the name of the town they'd visited. (Because of the infrequency of regattas and the long distances they travel to get to them, Rowing clubs are notorious for this.)--Shirt58 (talk) 07:43, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't recall ever seeing it used as a verb, but my instinctive feeling is that the two r's look wrong. (BrE speaker.) 86.177.106.14 (talk) 01:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard or seen this verb in the U.S. or Canada, but now I have a vivid image of an Australian tourist in Québec souveniring auto license plates.

I have always believed that the correct verb is "to swag" ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 09:19, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

"Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong..." So the guy was a thief?

Yes that's the point. Tramp visits billabong (a spring), catches sheep and conceals in sack until interrupted by squatter (rancher) and 3 troopers, then drowns himself to avoid capture; ghost continues with annoying song. Hopefully Jack will correct any mistranslations. Alansplodge (talk) 20:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, you did ask.  :) A billabong is not a spring but as described at billabong. "Swag" is never used as a verb in Australia, always a noun; it's discussed at Swag (bedroll) and Swagman. The jolly swagman was a sheep stealer, but the "swag" there does not refer to his theft, but the bedding he carried on his back when trudging to his next job. (Btw, I don't think any Australian ever uses the words "jolly" or "merry" except in fixed expressions like "jolly swagman" or "Merry Christmas". Otherwise, they're considered incredibly naff words. Apologies to anyone named Jolly/Jolley.)

Now, as for this "annoying song" claim: you're entitled to your opinion. But "Waltzing Matilda" was one of the options when the question of Australia's National Anthem was last put to a popular vote, in 1977. It came second to Advance Australa Fair, but it still got close to twice as many votes as the third-place getter, the then existing anthem God Save the Queen. Even if the majority felt it was inappropriate for a national anthem, "we rather like it here" is probably the understatement of the century, and it has the status of an unofficial National Song, very much akin to Land of Hope and Glory in the UK. Which we also like here too. Well, I do, anyway. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I stand corrected on several points Jack, thank you. I don't know why I know all the words and can't remember learning them but there you are. "Swag" as a verb is used by UK rock climbers - it means to acquire equipment by the law of finders-keepers (rather like 'to souvenir' really). "Where did you get that?" "Oh, I swagged it at Froggy" is a typical climbers' conversation. I had always thought it was of Australian origin. Now I know better. Alansplodge (talk) 00:24, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Let that be a lesson to you. Go in peace and sin no more.  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 04:52, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Alansplodge -- The OED lists "swag" (noun) as 19th-century British slang for "plunder" or stolen property... AnonMoos (talk) 06:20, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you AnonMoos. Alansplodge (talk) 08:46, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

There's a Rolf Harris version of Waltzing Matilda where he stops to explain each line. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:54, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course - silly me. Also I'd forgotten about all those cartoons showing a burglar with a stripey jumper and a sack with "swag" written on it. Alansplodge (talk) 08:46, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Japanese nuclear accident vehicle

Is there an English article corresponding to this? If yes, maybe someone can make appropriate interwikis; if not, it might be interesting to translate the article. I don't read Japanese but from context I gather it is a Japanese military vehicle meant to deal with nuclear fallout (e.g. from a nuclear attack) and was used in some reactor cleanup in the 1990's. Thanks. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 07:21, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a chemical protection vehicle, similar to the M1135 Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Reconnaissance Vehicle (NBCRV) (and this second type of vehicle is NBC偵察車 in Japanese (page here)). The article you linked to suggests that the vehicle you point out only has chemical protection capability, but has been combined since 2010 with the biological protection vehicle (page here) to give rise to the current NBCRV capabilities of the JSDF. The article does not mention the earthquake and subsequent problems we are having with the nuclear facilities in Fukushima (there is a note at the top, however, saying that it's an ongoing story which may change and so anything added to the article may subsequently be edited), nor any other reactor cleanup it may have been involved in, but it does mention that it was deployed during the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 11:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

It appears to be a Type 82 Command and Communication Vehicle; a webpage that WP won't let me link to says; "An NBC reconnaissance version of the Type 82 command and communications vehicle is now in service. This has devices mounted at the rear for the collection of samples which can then be analysed." This vehicle is mentioned in our Japan Ground Self-Defense Force article under "Current equipment" but has a red link. If anyone out there is bored they could take up the torch. Alansplodge (talk) 16:34, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I do remember seeing someplace that it was used in an actual nuclear cleanup in 1995 or so. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 05:38, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Drag and burn

What does the term "drag and burn" mean ? Are there any terms which are on similar lines to the term "drag and burn" aniketnik 10:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniketnik (talk • contribs)

It refers to a feature in a CD/DVD/BD burning software where the user can simply drag the files intended for the target disc into a folder and burn them with the click of a button. The term is used to suggest simplicity and ease of use. I think it is safe to assume that this is now pretty much universal. --DI (talk) 10:59, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Juncture

"At that juncture in time" or "At that juncture of time" which is the right way to use in a sentence? Also Juncture and junction meaning the same aniketnik 13:59, 18 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniketnik (talk • contribs)

When "at this juncture" is used, the fact that the speaker means a moment in time is already understood. There is no need to specify a juncture in time/process rather than space/construction. "At that juncture" doesn't sound necessarily wrong to me, but it's rarely used, if ever. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 14:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't be prudent...not at this juncture. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:34, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I would say "at that juncture in time". Yes, you could omit "in time", but, since juncture could possibly mean some other type of juncture, it's not wrong to leave it in. As for junction, while it technically means about the same thing, it's not normally used in that expression. StuRat (talk) 18:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Both "at this juncture" and "at that juncture" sound fine to me. To express a preference between them, one would need to see the whole context. If you want to mention time (which you don't need to), then "... in time" sounds better to me. 86.181.169.37 (talk) 18:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

March 19

Translating an English page into French

I know that there is an article that explains this, but I'm still unsure how to begin making the translated article. For example, if I wanted to translate an English page into French, would I create an account on wikipedia.fr, then connect that article, somehow, to the English version? Is there a link on left of an article somewhere that says, "add a translation" or something? I know I could help translate, but I don't know how it works. Sorry if you've had this question a million times already.

Sincerely,

"Plugee" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Plugee (talk • contribs) 04:41, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

See WP:Interwiki. Basically you make a new article on French Wikipedia, and add an interwiki link to connect it to the English version. You might consider a Unified login (lets you use the same account on multiple wikis instead of having to make separate ones) if you don't have one already. And translation work is very much appreciated. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 05:33, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

grauben, gräuben

Are they pronounced differently in German? The latter is a girl's name in Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. Thanks for any help. --Omidinist (talk) 11:36, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

They are indeed pronounced differently in German, with the first one being like 'GROW-ben' and the second being more like 'GROY-ben'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:56, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify KageTora's response, the first syllable of grauben rhymes with cow, not hoe. Deor (talk) 13:12, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Aha - thanks. It never even occurred to me. I was thinking 'growl' without the 'l', and not 'grow'.... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:54, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Note though, that Verne actually spelled her name "Graüben". The vowels "aü" (unlike "äu") do not form a diphthong commonly used in Standard German. If I had to pronounce it, and knew it wasn't a typo for "äu", I might actually pronounce the diphthong "aü" as ɑ + y, the way it would be pronounced in rarely occurring compounds made from one word ending in "-a" and another beginning with "ü-", as in "Salsaübung" (for want of a better example). ---Sluzzelin talk 15:48, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Off-topic, but to give you an example of two verbs which only differ in their usage of "au" or "äu", and follow KageTora and Deor's pronunciation instructions (and also have an interesting relationship to one another): "saugen means "to suck", while säugen means "to suckle" (to nurse at the breast, wiktionary translates it as "to lactate"). "saügen", on the other hand, does not exist at all, and hurts my eyes. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:40, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Slaüzzelin has a certain slimy-oozy quality to it.  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:00, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I've been called slushbrain here, and pronouncing my moniker has been likened to being sozzled, but slime and ooze?! Shall we say pistols at dawn? ---Sluzzelin talk 19:17, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Your place or mine? -- Jack of Oooozze [your turn] 19:20, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, your eyes will be hurting too much to focus properly. You'd probably hit a passing bushwalker. Better find a more peaceful way. Shall we say Scrabble boards at dawn?  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:39, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Note that she is described in the book as a "Virlandaise", which as I understand it means somebody from the northern part of Estonia. Looie496 (talk) 17:43, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, see Vironians. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 18:56, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you all, though your discussion makes me a little puzzled. The girl's name in the book is spelled gräuben as I said earlier; see here, p 16.--Omidinist (talk) 19:52, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

That's the English translation; they seem to have cleaned it up. See the original here. --Trovatore (talk) 20:35, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Does French ever use umlaut to indicate diaeresis as sometimes occurs in English? For example, coöperate. See also Trema (diacritic). Perhaps Verne was just giving pronunciation instructions and the English translation is the mistkae. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 20:45, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think French does that, but I suppose your suggestion is borderline possible. It seems much more likely to me that Verne intended it to be a German spelling (yes, I understand that the girl was not German) but that he just wasn't very good at German, or his editors weren't. --Trovatore (talk) 22:41, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, Graüben is not a German name. I did, however, stumble upon a textual alnalysis where the author muses that Graüben may be a "pun" on the German verb graben (to dig / to excavate). If so, it strikes me as rather awkward and I (a German native speaker) would never have guessed the connection. Maybe we have an Estonian speaker who could comment on the name? --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe you that it's not a German name. Google results give me the idea that it's a name Verne made up himself. Virtually all the hits seem to be for the novel. Still, my speculation is that he made it up on the pattern of what he thought were German-ish names. --Trovatore (talk) 23:07, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

"Tell"?

I was randomly browsing some blogs a while ago, and came across this kind of comment: He will be here tell the 15th. What does "tell" mean here? Is it some feature of the English language I am unaware of, because of my having learned English as an entirely foreign language? JIP | Talk 18:49, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I would say it's a typo for "till". Or someone who genuinely believes that "tell" is the right word. Maybe the same class of people who write "then" or "that" when they mean "than". ("Obama is a better president then that than Bush".) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:55, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

The confusion of "then" and "than" is common enough, but I've been fortunate enough to not have seen "that" confused with either, so far. (I do then agree that a 3-way confusion is worse than a 2-way confusion.) StuRat (talk) 20:23, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to ruin your day, but here's an example of "that" used instead of "than". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:54, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

How do you know it's not just a typo ? StuRat (talk) 21:40, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Fair question, but how do we know "then" is not a typo for "than" in many cases either? I've seen "that" used instead of "than" often enough to make me believe there's a significant group of language users who think it's the right word. With what we see online (and elsewhere) these days, there seems no end of creative (= wrong) ways of writing and spelling. Where they get these ideas from in the first place - search me. I'm forever getting emails with the word "definitely" spelt as "defiantly". A colleague of mine spells "hotel" as "hottle". And I think I've mentioned before about the forms we hand out to clients, embarrassingly headed "Statuary Declaration". I could go on. It's not as if they actually pronounce these words the way they write them (except maybe "statuary"). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 00:31, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

"That" could be a literal translation from Italian. (Perhaps French or Spanish as well.) --Trovatore (talk) 10:30, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

My favorite is the "statue of limitations". Sounds as if it could refer to Lady Justice, in a negative way, as being incapable of telling the innocent from the guilty because, after all, she's blindfolded and can't see the evidence. :-) StuRat (talk) 10:25, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) It's probably a misspelling of till, shortening of until. Some accents make /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ very similar, if not almost indistinguishable. Lexicografía (talk) 18:57, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Can't let this go: The word till is not in fact a shortening of until. Till is a perfectly good word on its own. The misunderstanding that it's short for until seems to be behind the spelling 'til, which is arguably a sort of hypercorrection, although well enough established by now to be considered an acceptable variant (though I wouldn't use it myself). --Trovatore (talk) 19:40, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, right. Lexicografía (talk) 19:52, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

'How came you'

In the following usage:

"How comes it that the Church has attained such greatness in temporal power"(The Prince, 1513)

I understand that 'How comes it' is olde timey speak for 'How did it come to pass' or 'How did it come to be' but what I'm wondering if I can use that type of phrasing in the following ways:

How came you by this knowledge? (by what means, non-material)

How came you to my house? (by what means, material)

Is there a word governing this kind of usage, (besides: archaic, obsolete, old-fashioned etc.) I mean, is there some kind of linguistic concept for "how comes it" i.e. transitive, periphrastic, gerundive (not that those are options, i mean, those kind of words)

Sorry for my vaugeries, I'm not good at articulation199.94.68.201 (talk) 20:14, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

It's an impersonal verb, isn't it? Adam Bishop (talk) 21:53, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

The real question is not so much, why we say 'How did you come to my house?', but why we don't say 'How came you to my house?'. From Brittonicisms in English#Change from syntheticism towards analyticism:

DO-periphrasis in a variety of uses. Modern English is dependent on a semantically neutral 'do' in some negative statements and questions, e.g. 'I don't know' rather than 'I know not". This feature is linguistically very rare. Celtic languages use a similar structure, but without dependence. The usage is frequent in Cornish and Middle Cornish. e.g."Omma ny wreugh why tryge"="You do not stay here" and it is used in Middle Breton. "Do" is more common in Celtic Englishes than Standard English.

Middle Welsh too: "Ef a or6c a ... " = "He did and" often in the White Book of Rhydderch ("6" is not a mistake: it's one of the common ways of transliterating an obsolete letter which corresponds to "w" or "u" in later Welsh).

(OR warning): I conjecture that one of the factors behind the spread of do-periphrasis for negatives in English was that Jespersen's Cycle had left English with an uncharacteristic Head-Modifier order, e.g. "I go not". This doesn't account for interrogatives though. --ColinFine (talk) 01:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

While this feature exists to some extent in other Germanic languages such as in German dialects, I believe English is unique among them in using it so consistently. So you could say that you are opting out of the do-periphrasis. It is implicit in such a statement that you then use the same grammar for questions that the other Germanic languages do. Hans Adler 22:36, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I know not if you have had much exposure to Early Modern English. Hast thou ever read Shakespeare or the King James Bible? Then thou shouldst know what I mean. It was very similar to today's English, but it was still common to form sentences that nowadays sound like a word-by-word translation from German, Dutch or Danish. This paper describes how the do-periphrasis became obligatory in English questions during that period. Hans Adler 22:46, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

March 20

Strange or unique verbs

What are some very strange or unique verbs in Spanish and French? I don't mean necessarily extremely irregular (like être/aller ; ser/ir), but verbs that exhibit strange features. To give you an idea: the apostrophe is a part of the (single) verb in French entr'ouvrir (or was before the advent of Newspeak 1990 spelling reforms); s'asseoir has at least three complete and distinct ways of conjugation in the present indicative. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 02:06, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

One category is defective verbs, which lack certain tenses or persons in their conjugations. An interesting example in French is gésir, which is rarely used except in the phrase "ci-gît", "here lies", although authors sometimes try to resurrect or invent other forms, e.g. "je gésirai" or "je gîrai", "I will lie".[6] Lesgles (talk) 14:35, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Entr'ouvrir is not the unique verb with an apostrophe: entr'apercevoir, entr'apparaître, entr'appeler, entr'égorger, entr'aimer. — AldoSyrt (talk) 09:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Greek, Hindi, Russian, Punjabi, and Serbian help

http://www.peelschools.org/greek/home/ has the Greek name of the Peel District School Board, and http://www.peelschools.org/russian/home/ has the Russian, http://www.peelschools.org/hindi/home/ has the Hindi, and http://www.peelschools.org/punjabi/home/ has the Punjabi

How are the names typed?

I want to add the names to Talk:Peel_District_School_Board#Other_languages

And does http://www.peelschools.org/serbian/home/ have a distinct name for the "Peel District School Board"?

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 05:44, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I think "Το Σχολικο Συμβούλιο της Επαρχιας του Peel" is the Greek. "Peel" is not transliterated, and since that page always says "welcome to..." or "in the...", I might have gotten the declensions wrong. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

The Russian is "Школьныӥ Совет Раӥона Пил", but I know nothing about Russian grammar, so the first word is probably declined somehow after the preposition "в" (it also begins "welcome to..." Adam Bishop (talk) 09:35, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

No, "Школьныӥ Совет" is the accusative singular after "в", which happens to be identical to the nominative for a masculine noun and adjective. (I believe the same is true for the Greek, as it happens, though that one is neuter rather than masculine). Incidentally, "совет" is the word "soviet", which means "council". --ColinFine (talk) 10:04, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

The Hindi doesn't translate/transliterate the name at all. I'm pretty sure the Hindi just says "You are welcome (in)to" ("men apka svagata hain", I think). Similarly the Serbian: "Dobro došli u" = "Welcome to".

I must say that I'm puzzled why you think this effort is worthwhile. What's the point of filling the talk page with translations which will either never be referred to, or else will be used by people who are probably more proficient at the relevant language than you are? --ColinFine (talk) 10:14, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

1. Those translations are going to the Commons as soon as I can find a good picture of a facility of the PDSB - I wish to create an image category for the PDSB, and then state the different language names of the district in that category (Example: Commons:Category:Toronto District School Board)

2. Those are destination names for any possible Wikipedia articles about this district in other languages. Because this district has a parent/student base which speaks many languages, it would be worthwhile for Wikipedias of other languages to have entries on this school district.

WhisperToMe (talk) 15:05, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly it would be; but if somebody chooses to make an article about it in Hindi or Serbian, aren't they going to be more proficient in the language than you, or me? But maybe the Commons reason is a good one. --ColinFine (talk) 21:10, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Typically what I do for languages like Hindi and Serbian is that once I get the name of the school district, then I go to the local language Wiki and post at the Embassy or on an interested party's talk page and ask for a request to make a stub, and state "please post the article at XXXX". - If the language(s) is/are French, Spanish, and/or Chinese I try to make a stub myself, and hope that a person who is more proficient will expand the stub. I link to the stub from relevant pages so the stub is visible.

WhisperToMe (talk) 21:29, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Added Serbian and Croatian [7]. As in Russian, the accusative case is the same as nominative. No such user (talk) 10:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

deutsch grammatik

wo kann man einen kaffee trinken? Plz answer the question without any grammaticall mistake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Datarka5 (talk • contribs) 06:50, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Technically, the question itself has a grammatical mistake. JIP | Talk 10:10, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our policy here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. --ColinFine (talk) 10:23, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Google Translate says the sentence is asking, "Where can you drink a coffee?" There's more than one possible answer to that question, regardless of language. Does the OP want a series of possible answers, or is he looking for a specific answer to be translated back to German? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:54, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

If this is a homework question there is an answer which translates as "you can drink coffee in a coffee house". He should be able to sort his answer out from that. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:01, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Or "drink cafe in a cafe", as it were. But you can drink coffee most anywhere that doesn't have a sign saying "no food or drink allowed on premises." My answer would have been aus einer Kaffeetasse, or something like that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

That would be the answer to "Woraus kann man Kaffee trinken?" So it probably won't impress the OP's German teacher. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it great when the first respondent says the question is being regarded as homework and we're not going to answer it, and then the next respondent ignores that and just comes out with an answer. That's a really fine example of the collegiate spirit at work. Not. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

The question has not actually been answered, since we don't know for sure what the answer is supposed to be. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:52, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

That evades the point entirely, Bugs. It doesn't matter a tinker's cuss what the OP wants. It's a homework question and so we shouldn't be providing ANY answer. Period. Unless they come back with evidence they've made an attempt, or evidence it's not homework - neither of which has happened here. Otherwise, we may as well just tear up all the instructions at the top. Just because OPs routinely ignore them does not mean respondents should. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:15, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Then box up the section and be done with it. Did it ever occur to you that someone else might be interested in the question? I've asked a followup question that has still not been answered to my satisfaction. Is there a German language subtlety that somehow forces the answer to be "in a cafe"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:27, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

There is not; I expect the question was meant to test the use of prepositions with the indefinite article, or perhaps word order, so that any logical answer (café, kitchen, etc.) with the correct grammar would satisfy. Lesgles (talk) 19:37, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I see. Well, the OP hasn't been back. Should this section be boxed, or maybe deleted? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→

Delete your own posts if you must. But do not delete anything I've written. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not surprised that the OP hasn't come back. Textbook eample of "how to bite the newbies". First response is to attack the question, and that's followed by the usual ABF about anything that might possibly be a homework question, and demands the questioner proves his innocence. Still, I suppose the OP got an accurate picture of the Wikipedia community - a bunch of grumpy, suspicious, snide misanthropes. DuncanHill (talk) 20:09, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Along with attacking other editors in full view of the OP, which also adds to that picture. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:14, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • (ec) The question was hardly from the Parnassus of Good English, yet it was demanding we provide an error-free answer. That was well worth noting. It also strongly suggested the answer is needed for a homework assignment. We have a rule (remember "rules") that we do not do OP's homework for them. It's nothing to do with assuming bad faith. Colin Fine welcomed the OP, while also advising that we have a rule about not answering homework questions. It was all fine up to that point. Nothing grumpy or misanthropic about any of that. Then Baseball Bugs ignored the rule and provided an answer anyway. His thing about other people being interested in the answer too, is an incredibly silly smokescreen. Like, we can provide answers that are visible to the whole world, but invisible to the OP? Hmmmm. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec)The question appears to me to be from someone for whom English is not the first language. It's also the first post by a new user, which ought (but here never does) earn someone a little kindness (remember "kindness" Jack?). The very first response was an attack on the question - which might be "fine" to you Jack but strikes me as low. The template used by Colin is a blatant assumption of bad faith. Not one of you though it worth helping our OP by giving them a welcome box - I suppose none of you can see a redlinked talk page when it's staring you in the face, or maybe you just don't think it's worth trying to help new editors? DuncanHill (talk)

I'm really struggling with your defence of this, Duncan. Colin used the standard wording given to anyone who comes here asking what appears to be a homework question. I don't know who worked out the set of words, but they seem perfectly fine to me. It starts with a friendly "welcome". Then "Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation .." That is hardly an assumption of "bad faith". It's an assessment based on the evidence before us. It's not saying the OP is an evil person or has done a bad thing or anything remotely like that. It's simply advising them that we have a long-standing policy in these sorts of cases, and why. An apology in the event our assessment is flawed, is also not my idea of impropriety or unkindness, but exactly the opposite. The OP has had every opportunity to come back and respond, to correct Colin's misinterpretation, if indeed it was a misinterpretation. They have chosen not to do so. That's where the matter should have rested. Duncan, if you have any issue with us ever using the standard wording that Colin used in the first response to the OP, then please take it up in the appropriate forum. If you don't want to do that, then please do not criticise it piecemeal as an example of "unkindness". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:15, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

As soon as that template gets used, some people seems to stop thinking for themselves - you criticised those who seemed to think it acceptable to answer, and you demanded the OP prove himself innocent before anyone answer him. Questioners should not be expected to prove themselves worthy of our attention - if you don't want to try to help someone then fine, just don't do it. Instead you ask someone to prove a negative, and have a go at those who do try to help. You assumed bad faith of the OP, and you assumed bad faith of those who tried to answer, accusing them of lacking collegiate spirit. You really ought to take a step back and look at yourself. DuncanHill (talk) 22:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

High time this went to the talk page. See you there. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 00:33, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Any simple and short answer will follow the subsequent scheme: In (that is the most frequently used preposition) + einem / einer / einem (that is the indefinite article, masculine, feminine or neuter) + Lokus (that is a placeholder for the actual location, the gender of which must correspond to the preceding article). The location must be in the Dative case. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:29, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

PS: It is possible that your teacher expects you to repeat the kernel of the question when answering. If you omit this kernel then the sentence lacks a subject and a verb. So, a "proper" answer would be: Man kann einen Kaffee <insert fragment as per above guidelines> trinken. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:39, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Well I am sorry if what I did offended anyone, but I fail to see how giving someone a pointer which may be of use to them is "doing their homework for them". Surely it's the least we can do? --TammyMoet (talk) 21:39, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese help

I am trying to get the Chinese title of the document from page 1, but the characters become funny when pasted from this PDF

The document is at http://www.houstonisd.org/HISDConnectEnglish/Images/PDF/howmaywehelpyou.pdf

I am trying to post the name of the document since it is a source cited at zh:休斯顿独立学区

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 23:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

歡迎您加入休士頓獨立學區　我們怎麼樣來協助您? Oda Mari (talk) 05:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

March 21

Chinese to Sanskrit

A popular Chinese martial art legend says the Zen patriarch Bodhidharma wrote a treatise on Taoist-like breathing and stretching exercieses called the the Yijin Jing. This is commonly translated as the Muscle- or Tendon-Changing Classic (易筋经). Modern scholarship has shown this legend is spurious, and that the treatise was actually written by a Taoist during the 17th century. Despite this, I am interested to know how one would say Muscle-Changing / Tendon-Changing Classic in Sanskrit. I imagine Sutra would be used in place of Classic. This website lists several words for muscles, but I am unsure if they refer to a particular muscle. I am looking for an overall sense of the word. The same goes for tendon and change. Perhaps "metamorphosis" would be better? This is also used in English translations.

This is for a story I am working on. I do not intend to add the information to any article. Thank you in advance to all who reply. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 00:26, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Active user who knows Hawaiian language

Is there any active users who know the Hawaiian language out there?

Of the users listed in Category:User haw, none of the native or near-native speakers have edited in 2011. Of the intermediate level speakers, only User:Groink has been editing Wikipedia recently (three days ago). ---Sluzzelin talk 03:06, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

See http://librarieshawaii.org/services/reference.htm. -- Wavelength (talk) 06:05, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Vowels in Arabic, English, and German

At talk:Jamahiriya, I found this:

Due to the nature of the grammar of the Arabic language, related words in Arabic will often have the same consonants, but with different vowels in different places. This is highly-systematic within the Semitic languages,

I've never studied Arabic, but I've had some exposure to Swahili, and in Swahili it seems every bit as easy to tell which words are derived from Arabic as it is to tell which words in English are derived from Greek. I seem to recall noticing this variation in vowels there too. E.g. the noun safari and the verb safiri.

Now as it happens, I recently read part of John McWhorter's book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, and he seems sympathetic to the view that proto-Germanic came about as a result of mixing of ancient languages of northern Europe with Phoenician, a Semitic language (in particular, he mentions that fully 30 percent of proto-Germanic verbs cannot be traced to Indo-European, and says nothing like that happens in other Indo-European language groups). So I'm wondering: could this explain the way vowels change with forms in English, and to a greater extent in German? E.g. with tenses of strong verbs: find, found; get, got, swim, swam, swum, keep, kept. Or in some irregular plurals: mouse, mice, foot, feet, goose, geese, etc. (In English there seems to be only one adjective where the vowel is different in the comparative form: old, elder—and that one's used only when talking about people, and not always then. In German there are zillions like that.) Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

This isn't just a Germanic thing, although it is typical of Germanic strong verbs. It is found throughout Indo-European languages. See Indo-European ablaut. So, Phoenician, which is unlikely to have influenced Germanic languages anyway, probably also would not have influenced an already-existing system of sound changes in Indo-European languages, especially not by means of the Semitic system of triconsonantal roots, which is actually quite unlike what happens in Indo-European. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:10, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

hoành tráng

Please explain the origin of these 2 words. Thanhks