Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 February 11

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February 11

He can eat a big pizza at one go.

I wonder if "at one go" is proper in a sentence like "He can eat a big pizza at one go." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.128.173.98 (talk) 03:13, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, in American English. Or "in one sitting". μηδείς (talk) 03:26, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The phrase "at one go" sounds British English, to me. StuRat (talk) 03:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I've only heard it as "in one go". Mingmingla (talk) 03:48, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Both sound cromulent to me. Being from the relatively barbarous NW Territories, Stu may be at a disadvantage. Or in a disadvantage. μηδείς (talk) 03:55, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm from Detroit. That link is to the Canadian territories. Perhaps you meant the Northwest Territory ? StuRat (talk) 04:09, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I was wondering why that link was giving me such crap. You frontiersmen are just so much more handy. μηδείς (talk) 05:20, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

As a Brit, it sounds American. I've certainly only ever heard it as "in one go". MChesterMC (talk) 10:05, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

As a locution, it may sound this way or that way. To this pedant, the floating "As ..." is a frequent source of giggles. —Tamfang (talk) 03:48, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I have an image of a person stuffing an entire large pizza into his mouth. I've tried, God knows I've tried .... -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:11, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Odd, my father usually eats an entire 18" pizza if we let him. I could too if I weren't watching my blood sugar, and so will my sister. μηδείς (talk) 05:20, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Cædmon's Hymn

I wonder what system of writing was it first written in by Caedmon himself? I mean the alphabet system. Was it in runes or was it in vernacular Old English with Latin alphabet? I couldn't find it in the article. I just want a brief answer that explicitly answers my question. If possible, you should add the information into the article also. Thanks.67.4.198.185 (talk) 05:31, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The article doesn't mention runic at all, and the earliest known manuscript is in the Latin alphabet. μηδείς (talk) 06:21, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Caedmon himself didn't write anything down, since he was illiterate, as the story goes. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:43, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Asking "Do you speak [insert language here]" in French

Based on my research, it seems that there are two major ways to ask "Do you speak [insert language here]?" in French:

• Parlez-vous [insert language here]?
• Est-ce que vous parlez [insert language here]?

Is one of these preferred over the other? 24.47.140.246 (talk) 05:42, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I've usually heard the first one. But if you're in France, you're better off asking "Do you speak English?" Then you'll either get a blank look or they'll tell you, in English, how confident they are with the language. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:36, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Anecdotally, you are better off asking (in french) "Do you speak (insert other language here, prefeably not German)?" followed by "Do you speak English?" when they inevitably say no. My grandparents are Polish, and would inevitably have French shopkeepers be perfectly happy to speak to them in a common second language, but feighn ignorance when a British person walked in, since the British person was expecting them to know English when they didn't know French. Of course, if you don't actually know the first language you ask, and they do, you're a bit stuffed... MChesterMC (talk) 10:03, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I can confirm this observation. I'm Swiss (from the German-speaking parts), and like most of us, speak a little bt of French. I used to go to Tunesia for vacation a lot before the Arab spring broke out, and you'll get *a lot* more help, friendly smiles and overall good attitute towards you if you at least try to speak to them in French. Even if you fail miserably, you'll often already have gained their sympathy. Hope that helps. :) ~ | twsx | ^talk_cont | ~ 12:37, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I would go one step further. Try to speak french first and pretend that you are not from any anglo-saxon country. French people have been very friendly and helpful and tried to speak english with me when I tell them I am from Sweden. My friends from England and from Sweden who have started off by speaking English have been ignored or scoffed by the offended party. I have seen similar things in Belgium with French and in Holland with German. DanielDemaret (talk) 14:55, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

When I've been in France I do try to speak French first, but the moment they hear my accent they switch to English. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:08, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

All of that works IF you are reasonably conversant in French. If your knowledge of French is limited to oui, non, merci and Parlez-vous anglais?, you're better off asking in English. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:26, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

It also helps if you're not American, I found. They can at least differentiate between a British and an American accent. They could never figure out what I was though - everyone always guessed Irish, but that was acceptable. (Except in Paris, of course.) Adam Bishop (talk) 00:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

If an Icelandic tourist came up to me and asked whether I spoke Icelandic, I'd think they were being rude, even if I could guess what he was saying. He can at least learn to ask "Do you speak Icelandic?" in English! I'd say no and the conversation would end, with no head-scratching on either side. --140.180.246.0 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:40, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The first is more common. You can also say "vous parlez (language)" with rising intonation. For example, my neighbour in France said hello to me in English one say, so I said "vous parlez anglais?" because it seems less formal, we already knew each other, and I was surprised. Another time, I was attempting to communicate with the owner of a Chinese restaurant, but we couldn't understand each other's accents, so I asked "parlez-vous anglais?" We didn't know each other, and it sounds a bit more formal. "Est-ce que vous parlez (language)" sounds even more formal to me, so formal that no one would ever say that in normal conversation. Also, if you used "tu" instead, "tu parles (language)?" would be way more common than the other possibilities. But that is simply my impression as a non-native speaker, so hopefully a native speaker can either confirm or point out why I'm totally wrong :) Adam Bishop (talk) 07:37, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The two sentences are equivalent. Parlez-vous [xxxx] ? is a little bit more formal than Est-ce que vous parlez [xxxx] ? and Vous parlez [xxx] ? is very usual and even used by educated people in relax situations. In general using the inversion of the subject and the verb is more formal and sometimes used only in elevated style or in old-fashioned phrases. Chanté-je ? is old-fashioned; in current speech/writing we say Est-ce que je chante ? Whereas Chantes-tu ? is simply more formal than Est-ce que tu chantes ? Beware! one cannot use inversion in all cases. For example we can't say Perds-je la tête ?, we must say Est-ce que je perds la tête ? Note. Using tu, il, nous, vous, ils is correct in these two last sentences. — AldoSyrt (talk) 09:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

...mutato mutando. —Tamfang (talk) 03:52, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

(ec) Agree with Adam, except that we should add that the very commonly spoken phrase structure "Vous parlez (language)?" would be considered incorrect in a newspaper or in a written essay by a French teacher in France. (spoken French and written French have diverged significantly). --Lgriot (talk) 09:29, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

On the sociolinguistic point, I think that you are better off in French-speaking countries at least asking the question in French. In general, you will get a much friendlier response if you ask "Parlez-vous anglais?" (or "Vous parlez anglais?") than if you start by asking "Do you speak English?". I think the latter is perceived as arrogant. Also, asking in French allows those who don't speak English to respond comfortably with non (or non, désolé) rather than fret about how to correctly pronounce a polite response in English. Anecdotally, I have found Paris to be unusually friendly for a big city if (as a white, middle-class foreigner) one can speak a bit of French. Marco polo (talk) 16:48, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:20, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

My experience in France is that if you start off with "Bonjour!" and a smile, folks are generally helpful, but people who start off in English get feigned incomprehension. In the Channel Ports however, shop keepers and information centre assistants are often keen to show-off their English skills and will interrupt your efforts to speak broken French. In Flemish-speaking Belgium, English seems to be preferred to French. Alansplodge (talk) 11:38, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

My experience in Flanders and Wallonia is that English is preferred to the "other" Belgian language. The problem is in guessing which language to start a conversation with in Brussels - I tend to start with "Bonjour, Dag!" so they can choose which language to reply in. I'm reminded of a visit to Prague in the 90s, when after initial pleasantries in Czech, I asked the hotel receptionist "mluvite anglicky, prosim?", and got the response "ah, ne!" after which she went to the back and emerged with who I assumed was her grandmother with whom I exchanged the names of different languages before we settled on "français" as our medium of communication. You do always get treated better if you at least 'try' the local language, however badly you do it. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 22:02, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I live in Bulgaria. As far as I remember, foreigners in the street have always used English when they've asked me if I speak it. But I agree with what's been said above in favour of trying to ask the question in French when you're in France. That's what I would do and have done in similar situations. --Theurgist (talk) 00:11, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Just consider the formality of the situation. My job has me calling Quebec a bit and Spanish-speaking places in Florida/the southwestern US a lot. I generally get by with an "anglaise?" and an "¿ingles?" respectively; it's clear that I don't speak the language, and it's also clear that I'm trying my best, although of course it wouldn't work in a written or more formal spoken situation, but nobody expects the phone survey guy to be formal or familiar with other languages. Nyttend (talk) 09:15, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Why is Icelandic such a stable language?

I have seen many claims to the effect that Icelandic has hardly changed over a very long period, that texts over a thousand years old are completely intelligible to present Icelandic speakers. Other languages have changed so much over similar timescales that many are not even recognizable as the "same" language at all. What has caused Icelandic to stop evolving at a pace comparable to other languages. BTW are there other similarly stable languages? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Dodger67 -- Iceland has had a small relatively literate population which traditionally valued being able to read the old sagas. This has achieved a certain degree of stabilization, in that modern Icelanders can basically still read the old sagas, but it is not true that Icelandic has remained completely unaltered. In particular, the pronunciation of Icelandic has changed quite a bit since the days when the sagas were written. AnonMoos (talk) 13:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

It is not the only language to do this. I am told that Italians can read Latin as easily as English speakers can read Chaucer, and that Greeks and Tamils can also read ancient texts. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:52, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I strongly doubt the Italian-Latin claim, since Italian has no noun cases while Latin has five or six, among other reasons (though it is possible to contrive a rather artificial text which makes sense in both Latin and Italian). Modern Greek speakers with some Katharevusa experience can often make some headway with New Testament koine Greek, but someone knowing Dhimotiki only would likely find that Classical Attic Greek strains comprehensibility (if it were pronounced in its original ancient pronunciation, it would completely destroy intercomprehensibility)... AnonMoos (talk) 14:09, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

To be fair, "as easily as English speakers can read Chaucer" is not saying much. —Tamfang (talk) 03:54, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, there are some complications. For one thing, Italians tend to study Latin in school, so you'd need to control for that.

My experience is that someone with a knowledge of modern Italian can read Dante easier than an English speaker can read Chaucer, and maybe about as easily as an English speaker can read Shakespeare. If I'm right about the latter, that's a differential of a couple centuries, not as impressive as the "Latin" claim, but still fairly striking. --Trovatore (talk) 04:53, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Here is a discussion of this question. To that discussion, where I think the key point is the isolation of Icelandic from external influences during most of its history, I would add that, for most of its history, Iceland had a small, socially and culturally homogenous population. Language change often occurs when subgroups in a language community adopt a different way of speaking as a way of expressing the identity and solidarity of the subgroup. This happens today among cultural minorities in the English-speaking world and even among generational peer groups. This may lead to the fracturing of the language community into varying dialects or, if the group initiating the linguistic change enjoys prestige, the change they initiated may spread across the language community. Because of its strong cultural and social homogeneity, this source of language change was absent in Iceland during most of its history. Marco polo (talk) 16:38, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. So the short answer is: Iceland had/has a small, homogenous, isolated, literate, socially egalitarian population. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:38, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

With a lot of pride in its literature. DanielDemaret (talk) 18:13, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Also, Icelandic has never had a significant number of second-language speakers, which would seem to be a guaranteed way to introduce change. It has never served as a lingua franca in the last couple of centuries, unlike Danish, which is notoriously quickly evolving. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:42, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Genitive apostrophe

As per Possessive apostrophe, shouldn't Wilms' tumor be titled Wilms's tumor? Cases like this always make me uncertain. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:36, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

If it were up to me, it would be Wilms's, but English usage is mixed in such situations. The WP style manual (at MOS:POSS, second bullet point) covers the three main schools of thought, and WP allows any of those styles, as long as it's used consistently in an article. Medical terms, however, tend to be fairly standardized; I'd go with whatever the preponderance of sources say. (The medicos have been dropping possessives entirely in lots of cases—it used to be "Down's syndrome", for instance, but now it's "Down syndrome".) Deor (talk) 21:50, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Somewhere I read (sorry, I can't remember where) that the current fashion is for medical eponyms to take the ​'s if they're named for a patient well known for having the condition (e.g. Lou Gehrig's disease) but not to take the 's if they're named for a doctor well known for discovering/treating the condition (e.g. Down syndrome). Following that rule, the tumor in question should actually be Wilms tumor. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:32, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

All over Wikipedia are the footprints of editors who believe (mistakenly, in my view) that the genitive of singular nouns that end in -s is always -s' and never -s's. It's hard to justify such a one-size-fits-all approach. True, it's relatively hard to talk of Jesus's parables or Moses's meanderings, so we tend to drop the final syllable and spell those genitives accordingly (Jesus', Moses' ). "Brahms' Lullaby" has entered the common consciousness, so insisting on "Brahms's Lullaby" would be contra-indicated. But most cases of -s words pose no such problems and require no protection from the supposed excessive super-sibilance of apostrophe-ess: Uncle Remus's tales, Tim Farris's lyrics, Tony Curtis's "acting", the abacus's history, Morris's men, Wilms's tumor ........ -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Yep, there's the rub. My understanding is that Jesus' and Moses' are fine because classical and biblical names (biblical names usually having been filtered through Greek and Latin, too) are treated like plurals in requiring only a plain apostrophe. But all other singular names should take the regular 's. I could understand the confusion if people tend not to pronounce [ˈbrɑːmsɪz] or [ˈkɜrtɪsɪz] like this, with an additional syllable; but if you do pronounce the possessives like this, there's no discernible reason to drop the second s at all. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:13, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Reckless Conduct Endangering Serious Injury

We hear and read strange things in the media, and in many cases I put it down to shoddy journalistic writing. That's what I did the first couple of times I heard that someone had been charged with "Reckless Conduct Endangering Serious Injury". I mean, it's possible to endanger someone's safety or even their life, but how is it possible to endanger an injury? But I kept hearing it, so I checked it out.

The relevant Victorian law is S.23 of the Crimes Act 1958:

• Conduct endangering persons: A person who, without lawful excuse, recklessly engages in conduct that places or may place another person in danger of serious injury is guilty of an indictable offence. [1]

That's fine. No mention of "endangering serious injury" there.

But digging further, I find that the actual police charge is indeed called "Reckless Conduct Endangering Serious Injury".

Does this weird wording have a counterpart in other jurisdictions? Anyone know why they'd choose to come up with such an apparently nonsensical form of words? Does "endanger" have a legal meaning that's different from its standard meaning? I checked out Endangerment but it sheds no light here. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:09, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if it's a formal charge or not, but Jack would be well aware of the common use by the same police force of the term "Drink driving". It's always puzzled me. One doesn't drive a drink. "Drunk driving" would make more sense. HiLo48 (talk) 03:54, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

"Drunk driving" is the usual informal term in the States. Officialdom doesn't like it much because it suggests that you have to be "drunk" to be forbidden from driving, which isn't true, at least for some people's notion of "drunk". --Trovatore (talk) 04:36, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

There's also Grand Theft Auto, which makes little grammatical sense, but is commonly used (at least in the US). "Reckless Conduct Endangering Serious Injury" has likely become a stock phrase as a contraction of "reckless conduct endangering persons and causing serious injury". --Xuxl (talk) 08:51, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

"Grand theft auto" thus punctuated is problematic, but "grand theft (auto)" makes perfect sense to me. Not that you'd use it in a sentence, but in, say, a list of offenses, it would be unremarkable. Jack's phrase, though, I don't see any way to fix just with punctuation. --Trovatore (talk) 09:06, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking along similar lines. An actual recent case in front of me is about a guy who led the police on a wild car chase down the Princes Highway, and this was just one of the numerous charges he incurred. Nobody was injured, so it seems to be about exposing people to the risk of serious injury. If anyone was actually injured, I imagine a more serious charge would be preferred. As it was, this guy got 12 months jail. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

According to Wiktionary, endanger has an obsolete meaning "To incur the hazard of; to risk; to run the risk of", for which they provide a quote from Francis Bacon: "He that turneth the humours back […] endangereth malign ulcers." Perhaps this sense is less obsolete among Australian policemen than for the rest of the English-speaking world. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:23, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

So the conduct runs the risk of persons? --Trovatore (talk) 09:27, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

No, the conduct uses the other sense of the verb. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:33, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

What other sense? It incurs the hazard of persons? That seems to be synonymous, and equally ill-formed. Did you mean something else? --Trovatore (talk) 09:38, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The first sense listed at Wiktionary, the nonobsolete one, "To put (someone or something) in danger; to risk causing harm to". So "Conduct endangering persons" in the written law means "Conduct putting persons in danger". The police charge "Reckless conduct endangering serious injury" uses the second sense, the obsolete one, and means "Reckless conduct incurring the hazard of serious injury". Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:49, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh, right, that actually does make sense. It's late. --Trovatore (talk) 10:04, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

These expressions are all from an earlier time, when police were not all that highly academically trained. Again in the same jurisdiction as Jack, I recall being in protest marches by university students in the 1960s, when the number of the police trying to manage the demonstrators and who had also been to university was zero. Formal sounding but mangled English is perhaps no surprise. HiLo48 (talk) 20:14, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but surely the formal wording of official charges is not a function of individual police officers making it up as they go along, no matter what their educational background is. Surely these charges are created at very senior levels, in collaboration with the government of the day and with expert legal advice to make sure they're consistent (or at least not inconsistent) with the actual legal offences on the statute books. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:31, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Maybe they meant to use engender? Matt Deres (talk) 20:42, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

That sounds plausible in itself, but seems unlikely to show up on FindLaw.

Since this is the language desk, what is the name for this sort of semi-plausible mis-hearing that people start using in preference to the original term or phrase? "You've got another thing coming", "Nip it in the butt", "Doesn't jive with that", etc. --Trovatore (talk) 03:33, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

eggcorn Djbcjk (talk) 05:03, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Ah, very good. Another one: "boldface lie". --Trovatore (talk) 06:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

"For all intensive purposes". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:10, 13 February 2014 (UTC)