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November 16

Name for pin

Wat is the correct word for this kind of pin: advertising pin, advertisement pin, marketing pin ? Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 05:04, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lapel pin. Rojomoke (talk) 06:45, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are an awful lot of "see also"s on that article, not including badge, which is also used in British English. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 15:08, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a size of that object, so it could be a lapel pin, or it could be a badge. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:21, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The image file labels it as an "advertising pin" of a Dutch company. Having no image of the back it is difficult to confirm if it is a type of lapel pin, or some other sort of clip or badge. It might have been issued to advertise the company - but even that cannot be certain (it could have been some sort of award for service). Wymspen (talk) 15:28, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would call it an advertising pin or a promotion pin. —Stephen (talk) 17:32, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese translation

Here. Please, transcribe and translate.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:53, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is a bit difficult to read, but this is the poem "八阵图" by Du Fu, a Tang dynasty poet. In Western reading order:

功盖三分国
名成八阵图
江流石不转
遗恨失吞吴

There is a translation here (look for "The Eight-sided Fortress"). —Kusma (t·c) 21:04, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is maybe a better link (and has traditional characters like the original text probably has, and the same reading order). —Kusma (t·c) 21:05, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, you are of great help. Don't you know if it may have some other, apart from its literal, meaning? Like in fengshui? Why may a ceramic plate be decorated with it?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:27, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about another meaning (and I know basically nothing about Classical Chinese). The subject of the poem is Zhuge Liang, see e.g. Baidu Baike. —Kusma (t·c) 20:03, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An interpretation of the poem is at Poem: the Eight-sided Fortress唐诗《八阵图》: "This poem is a glorification of Zhuge Liang’s remarkable achievement, and also shows the poet's regret about Liu Bei's failure because he unwisely turned a deaf ear to Zhuge Liang’s strategy of allying with Wu against Wei". I'm still none the wiser though. Alansplodge (talk) 20:39, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This page (if I'm reading it correctly) says that the poem was "formerly used in divination". Perhaps something to do with I Ching? Alansplodge (talk) 20:52, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I read that as "八陣圖 can also be translated The Eight Diagrams", which are those of the I Ching. As another little information tidbit: the form of poetry is called Jueju. —Kusma (t·c) 21:47, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that makes more sense. Alansplodge (talk) 09:38, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think anyone's linked to this yet: we have an article on this at Stone Sentinel Maze. It doesn't make much sense, but neither does the original myth. 197.201.4.179 (talk) 12:13, 18 November 2017 (UTC) (Henry Flower)[reply]

The poem is actually cited in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Chapter 84 (thank you Henry Flower for the link). See s:zh:三國演義/第084回. For another translation (by Charles H. Brewitt-Taylor), see wikia:threekingdoms:Romance of the Three Kingdoms/chapter 084. —Kusma (t·c) 19:21, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another translation (in Moss Roberts' translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing 1994):

Deeds to vault a thrice-torm realm.
Fame at peak with the Eightfold Maze,
Now steadfast stones in the river's run –
Monument to his rue
That his king had choked on Wu!

Still no answer on why it is on a plate, though. —Kusma (t·c) 19:30, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everybody, especially to Kusma. The verse may be equally a filler text for Chinese calligraphy as well. At least I know now that it is not meaningless or ridiculous.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:38, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Which are universal linguistic sounds?

I am not sure whether mmm would be classified as a universal linguistic sound or a sound that can be produced by every single human. Is there a sound that every human can pronounce with little difficulty? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 20:58, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Laughter, for one. The expression "ha-ha" means the same thing in Chinese as it does in English. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:01, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, "ma" or some close variation is among the first sounds made by babies around the world, hence its close association with "mother" in so many languages. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:02, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I googled "human universal sounds" and this is one item that came up, though it may not be precisely what you're looking for. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:21, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The article is indeed about a relevant and potentially interesting scientific study, but the journalist seems to have inserted some ill-informed and linguistically naïve ideas of her own. Consider the opening two sentences:

"Even though you’re not fluent in different languages, you may be able to recognise words in others. In German for water is ‘wasser’, in Dutch it's 'water' and in Serbian ‘voda’.

Well of course those words resemble each other – English, German, Dutch and Sebian are all Indo-European languages, so all four words are descended from the original same word in Proto-Indo European (reconstructed as "*wódr̥"). This is not at all relevant to the phenomenon that the scientific study itself is concerned with. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.0.37.45 (talk) 03:11, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is a table here [1] listing all phonemes, and indicating (in the second column) what percentage of the languages included use that particular sound. The most common (m) is only found in 95% of languages, so there are none which are common to every human language. Wymspen (talk) 21:32, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That answers my question. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 22:14, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Wymspen: thanks for that link, a very useful reference indeed, but I don't think it definitively answers the OP's question since the OP asked about "sounds" and the table only list phonemes which means it doesn't show sounds (phones) that may occur but aren't considered phonemes such as allophones. For example, in that table Japanese isn't included in the 95% under "m" because /m/ isn't an phoneme in Japanese; but [m] does appear regularly and often as allophone of /n/ (Japanese phonology#Moraic nasal). Still, I don't think 100% of every language that has existed has [m], but the figure is probably closer to 100 than 95.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 22:25, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How does it not definitively answer the OP's question when the OP states, in a definitive way "That answers my question". It may not have answered your concerns, but you are not the OP. If the OP indicates that they are satisfied with the response, who are YOU to say that the OP is not satisfied? The OP gets to decide for themselves how they feel. You don't get to enforce your feelings on them. --Jayron 32 15:08, 17 November 2017 (UTC) Striking my comment here. It was entirely uncalled for. I apologize to WilliamThweatt for this unjustified attack. --Jayron 32 15:56, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WilliamThweatt -- I'm pretty sure /m/ is a phoneme of Japanese: there's a whole row for it in the syllabaries, it appears twice in the famous mantra Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, once in the name of the founder of Sony (Akio Morita), etc. AnonMoos (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh. Of course, you are correct. Thanks for that. I've recently been writing about final nasals in Austroasiatic languages and must be ~~obsessing~~ stuck thinking about finals (in which position [m] is in fact an allophone of /n/ in Japanese). I have struck my "example" above, but the point remains; the table seems only to list phonemes and excludes non-phonemic allophones.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 00:01, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I thank you too. The link you've supplied is quite interesting. I haven't been aware of its existence, so far. I think the most interesting phoneme is the consonant /ŋmkpɾ/, found in Tigon Mbembe language (spoken in Cameroon). Here is another insight I got from the link: The maximal quantity of vowels shared (as phonemes) by most languages is five, being (per frequency): /i/,/a/,/u/,/o/,/e/; Whereas the maximal quantity of consonants shared (as phonemes) by most languages is fourteen, being (per frequency): /m/,/k/,/j/,/p/,/w/,/n/,/s/,/t/,/b/,/l/,/h/,/g/,/ŋ/,/d/. HOTmag (talk) 22:28, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

^{[citation needed]} for The sequence /ŋmkpɾ/, User:HOTmag. If the m and r are syllabic, I can pronounce that with not much effort, and /kp/ is a common cluster in many African languages, as are nasal sequences, and initial /ŋ/. See ITN Emmerson Mnangagwa. The Georgian language has six-consonant clusters, and [ŋkθs] is not unattested. μηδείς (talk) 00:09, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See here, and also the 1441-st phoneme - here. Not /r/ (as you wrote it apart) - but rather /ɾ/ (as it is in the whole phoneme you correctly copied), and not a consonant cluster - but rather a phoneme, and that's why it's so interesting. HOTmag (talk) 04:55, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I saw and know the difference between r and the flap, but since I wasn't using brackets to mention the broad phones (you were not confused), didn't feel it worth the effort to open the box. I'll read your sources. μηδείς (talk) 18:19, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

140.254.70.33 -- I'm not sure that there's a linguistic sound which is included in absolutely every human language, but basically every language includes CV syllables as part of its phonotactics, where the possible consonants ("C") are almost certain to include several of [p], [t], [k], [m], [n], [s], while the possible vowels ("V") are very likely to include several of [a], [e], [i], [o], [u] (where the symbols enclosed between brackets [...] are "broad" IPA transcriptions). AnonMoos (talk) 22:22, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll still need to see a much better source than these two lists, User:HOTmag, to accept blithely that /ŋmkpɾ/ is a five-segmented unitary phoneme. Does the source language not have /kp/, /gb/, prenasalized stops, or a separate /ɾ/? This seems to be nothing more than a cluster of segmentally prenasalized /kp/ followed by /ɾ/. Id like to see a full workup of the language, along with some sort of diachronic analysis, not just that the segment is attested in a list. μηδείς (talk) 03:21, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

November 17

"graveyard cashier"

When someone works as "graveyard cashier" in a Shell tank station, what does this person do? How is that different from other cashier jobs?--31.4.137.179 (talk) 02:39, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A graveyard cashier is a cashier that works the graveyard shift—i.e., overnight. Typically, there will be day shift, swing shift, and graveyard shift, but that will vary by workplace. Less colorfully, they may be 1st, 2nd, and 3rd shift. - Nunh-huh 02:42, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You get robbed more often. --Jayron 32 12:00, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please see graveyard shift and Shell Oil Company. Bus stop (talk) 14:10, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What's a "tank station"? Is that another name for what I call a gas station? --69.159.60.147 (talk) 21:00, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be a non-English term, as with File:BP Tankstation.jpg in the Netherlands. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:36, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tanks! (Sorry!) --69.159.60.147 (talk) 23:08, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Groucho is turning over in his graveyard. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:10, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

November 18

Tintin's (Traditional) Fonts

From where I can download those traditional Tintin fonts, please ? 124.253.253.208 (talk) 17:59, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just type 'tintin font' and you'll find several options. --B8-tome (talk) 19:13, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

November 19

Decrypting newly found languages

After a first contact with humans whose language does not resemble ours, like new world folks, or isolated African tribes, how can it be established what words mean what concept? We could draw an animal or point to a tree, but what about more abstract concepts like "hope', "liberty", "fair"? -- 20:47, 18 November 2017 B8-tome

The word "decryption" usually refers to trying to understand fixed written texts. Trying to learn a spoken language is quite different. Presumably discussing abstract matters would require greater language fluency than learning the names of physical objects in the vicinity... AnonMoos (talk) 03:52, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I can't answer the question but we have Uncontacted peoples and First contact (anthropology). And this makes brief reference to language as concerns "uncontacted tribes". Bus stop (talk) 04:27, 19 November 2017 (UTC) Bus stop (talk) 04:21, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This may be OR, but logically it is probably the case that as context and familiarity with the language increases, the ability to infer the meaning/presence of such abstract notions may become easier. Purely as a thought experiment, if there's some Aesop-like story about two animals and one of them is cheating or something along those lines, one may be able to deduce from this context the words for "fair" or "unfair," etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.15.48.37 (talk) 05:54, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Luckily for European explorers, European languages such as English, French, and Spanish are easy to learn. In the Americas, the usual process was that a Native American linguist would learn to speak the explorers' language (as the Aztecs and Incas did by learning Spanish), and then the Native American linguists would tell us the meanings of their words (for example, La Malinche, the Nahua woman who served as interpreter for the Spanish Conquistadores). Soon after, Catholic (usually) missionaries would arrive to convert the natives and would begin learning the native language. Once they learned the native languages, they would create word lists, vocabularies. These lists eventually became very important as the native languages began to die out. Sometimes the orthography that the priests used was not sufficient, as in the case of An Ethnologic Dictionary of the Navaho Language by the Franciscan Fathers. Many of the words in the dictionary cannot be understood by modern speakers of Navajo, because the orthography was too blurry. Nevertheless, it's an important work and still useful. —Stephen (talk) 08:31, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"European languages such as English, French, and Spanish are easy to learn" for whom? Those european languages have many constructionslike the analytic perfect tense andarbitrary gender which are rare in the Americas (if they exist at all), while European languages lack ergativity, clusivity, alienable vs inalienable possessives, or the obviative or fourth person where "different pronouns are used in the expression his dog killed his cat depending one we are speaking of one owner or two different owners. Phonological systems can be wildly different. Ease of a task depends on both the origin and the destination. μηδείς (talk) 01:33, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Easy to learn for most people who don't speak English. We're talking about spoken language, not written. The perfect tense does not present much of a problem for speakers of most Native American languages, who find it a highly simplified form of a common verbal aspect. While speakers of analytical languages find agglutinative languages impossibly difficult, the speakers of agglutinative/synthetic languages find no barrier in the simplicity of analytical languages. The missing obviative just makes European languages all the more simple. I know a good many Native Americans who did not learn English until, at a later age, it became necessary, and they all agree that it is very easy. Gender in Spanish and French does not pose much of a problem, since most American languages have similar noun classes. As most North American languages are much, much more complex and difficult than English, Spanish, and French, the early learners found them surprisingly simple and easy to learn. In the U.S., we get an enormous number of foreigners who need to learn English, and they say that, although some of the sounds are difficult at first, it's an easy language to learn. The only people who say that English is a difficult language are native English-speakers (I'm not sure why they think this... maybe the spelling). —Stephen (talk) 07:15, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Same question asked at 58:20, not really answered. Шурбур (talk) 09:29, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The result of a fairly recent thread here (which I can't find now) was that the languages of uncontacted tribes rarely stand in isolation, so it is generally possible to find another local language which has some mutual intelligibility as a starting point. Alansplodge (talk) 19:34, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to be blunt, but did the poster a few paragraphs above really say, "Luckily for European explorers, European languages such as English, French, and Spanish are easy to learn"? --216.15.48.37 (talk) 03:29, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I said that. In the heyday of geographic exploration, it was a boon that the explorers' language was easy to learn, as is the case with many European languages such as English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, German, Norwegian, and others. For the Native Americans whose first contacts were from Russians, thought by many Europeans to be difficult, the Americans found Russian logical and easy to learn. If the explorers of America had been speakers of a Khoisan language or a Caucasian language, for example, they would have had to develop and rely on a simplified pidgin or creole. —Stephen (talk) 07:27, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Articles and Latin Speakers

Given that Latin had no real article while Greek had definite and/or indefinite articles, is there evidence that Greek written by non-native Greek Romans displayed faulty or missing articles? (Perhaps like some native Slavic speakers when using English, etc.) A bit of an obscure question perhaps (but aren't those the best ones?) --216.15.48.37 (talk) 01:52, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Classical Greek had only a definite article (ὁ, ἡ, το). (At the earlier historical stage of Epic Greek, this word was more of a light demonstrative, like French ce, than a true article.) AnonMoos (talk) 03:43, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. However, do we know if native Latin speakers displayed (in written evidence) difficulty in using this Greek definitive article? --216.15.48.37 (talk) 11:24, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't personally know, but you could look at scholarly commentaries on individual Roman authors who wrote in Greek, such as Claudius Aelianus... AnonMoos (talk) 12:24, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A hard one... ["This is nothing of which I would say I am proud of"]

(after precipitate auto-archiving) @Trovatore: Now, to recapitulate: Are we speaking in terms of style or grammar here? This is not something about which I would say I am proud of — is that grammatically (!) wrong or not?--Herfrid (talk) 14:49, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"This is not something about which I would say I am proud" or "this is not something which I would say I am proud about" - with the first being the pedantically correct form avoiding the preposition at the end of the phrase. You can not add an "of" at the end - in this case you are saying that you are not proud about something, rather than that you are not proud of something. Adding the "of" when you have already used the preposition "about" is a grammatical error. You could say that you are proud of it, or proud about it - but never that you are proud about of it (or proud of about it). You can use of, or about, but not both together. Wymspen (talk) 16:05, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, it's an ungrammatical pleonasm to use two prepositions here. μηδείς (talk) 18:17, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Wymspen and Medeis: Hello and thank you both! My point is: "about" is supposed to refer to "say" (i. e. "to say sth about sth", meaning "to give a certain comment on sth"), not "proud"! Now, assuming we wanted to rephrase the sentence a bit, one could say: "I would not say about what happened that I am proud of it". I admit, this sounds very stiff and artificial, but from a purely grammatical point of view it should be correct, shouldn't it? If so, then it would consequently also have to be correct with the given relative clause.--Herfrid (talk) 22:57, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, it would still be a pleonasm, and horrible style, if technically grammatical. No native speaker would be comfortable with it. Your options are:

"I would not say I am proud [of what happened]," or

"I would not [say about it] that I was proud."

The emphasis is different, and the verbs are phrasally really different. One is "say" and the other is "say about". Consider:

"I would not say I am proud [of what happened], but of my reaction" or

"I would not [say about it] that I was proud, so much as relieved."

They are not interchangeable, and the sorts of phrases they contrast with are different, as you can see. μηδείς (talk) 03:23, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Use

The word "user" in a legal document actually means "usage", so things are not always what they seem, but isn't the phrase "He didn't used to socialise with us all that much" in The Daily Telegraph of 11 November wrong? It was spoken by a Japanese and reported by an Englishman. 92.8.223.3 (talk) 17:26, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If it was spelled "He didn't use to..." (without the final "-d"), then it would be OK (especially as UK English). Of course, in that meaning, "use" is pronounced IPA [juːs], not [juːz]... AnonMoos (talk) 17:33, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

didn't used to appears to be quite common among native anglophones, though. —Tamfang (talk) 19:29, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The grammar of that spelling doesn't seem to make any sense, while the pronunciation would be exactly the same as "use to". Plenty of native speakers write "would of" also...

-- AnonMoos (talk) 20:26, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I consider myself a native speaker of English, and I have always been taught that “would of” is grammatically incorrect. That rule stuck with me to this day. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 21:31, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That was my point... AnonMoos (talk) 12:07, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

From the CUP dictionary - "The negative of used to is most commonly didn’t use(d) to. Sometimes we write it with a final -d, sometimes not. Both forms are common, but many people consider the form with the final -d to be incorrect, and you should not use it in exams" [2]. Wymspen (talk) 10:47, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A more correct, though perhaps old-fashioned, version of the sentence would be ""He used not to socialise with us all that much." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.0.37.45 (talk) 08:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For a while, there was even a contraction "usedn't" (which Wiktionary lists as "nonstandard, dated, Britain")... AnonMoos (talk) 12:07, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Or from the desk of Willard Mullin.[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

When a Spaniard says: "Learn how to deal in a restaurant"

I'm no sure about what they meant. Did they wanted to say "Learn how to order at a restaurant." Could it be "How to deal with clients"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.143.77.81 (talk) 17:40, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's no way we can answer this without being there and asking him to clarify himself. In any case, portarse is "to behave" and pedir algo is order (ask for) something. μηδείς (talk) 18:14, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

According to the only results I got from googling that phrase, it appears to be from an English course given in Málaga. Unit seven in that language course, “Sabor a Malaga” part 1, includes "Read about an e- shop", "Study conditionals and wish sentences", "Learn food vocabulary", "Listen to a piece of news about “Sabor a Málaga”", and "Learn how to deal in a restaurant". Link: "Se abre el plazo de inscripción para los cursos de inglés de Málaga Bilingüe en 40 municipios la provincia". ---Sluzzelin talk 14:52, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, "deal with" can be translated as tratar (a Spanish word (see wikt:tratar) meaning "treat" as well as many other English concepts not expressed by "treat") which can be translated back into English as "behave towards". So it seems like a confused word choice by a non-native English speaker who misses the subtleties introduced by the prepositions in the English verb phrases, and accidentally confuses "deal in" with the proper behave in. μηδείς (talk) 01:14, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It appears Pedro Carolino is alive and well! --ColinFine (talk) 11:31, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

November 20

Witwatersrand

The University of the Witwatersrand is sometimes abbreviated to "Wits University". Is the Witwatersrand commonly abbreviated to "Wits"? The plural of "wit" makes this a hard keyword search, even if I require "south africa" and ignore pages mentioning "university". Nyttend backup (talk) 17:49, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is in the fourth paragraph of the lead section of the article on Witwatersrand. --Jayron 32 18:20, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, you're right; sorry. Nyttend backup (talk) 21:28, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What have you done with the real Nyttend? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:09, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You forgot a comma after "real". I've been doing some work from home, so I've brought my work computer home with me (I finish a task, and I might as well log in and do something), and I don't log into the "real" account on the work computer. Nyttend backup (talk) 00:30, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good plan. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:36, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How grammatical are these in UK/Ireland/Aus/NZ?

"Is it cause I is Scot?"

[I started having sex at 13] "and I felt hot shit about it, too"

(they sound very ungrammatical in Standard American but so does "the home side are winning" and that's the Queen's English) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:14, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You appear to be questioning the "is [Scot]" and the reverse order of "shit hot". In NZ, neither of those is grammatical and I don't think I've ever heard such constructions. The normal usage would be "am" or "I'm" and "shit hot". Akld guy (talk) 20:39, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It may exist, but Google does not index it (the first quote). However, the second quote can be found in a novel said by a character. I cannot find any information about that author (Valentina Faye), though. In Standard American, both are considered ungrammatical/wrong/incorrect. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 20:45, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think the first is a snowclone of the catchphrase of Sacha Baron Cohen's character. See "'Is it because I is black?' Race, humour, and the polysemiology of Ali G" by Richard Howells here. Wikitionary defines "hot shit" as "An exceptionally impressive person or thing" [4]. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 21:04, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My (UK) opinion would be that the first of those is deliberately ungrammatical, using a fake Afro-Caribbean dialect, for comic effect. The second is grammatical, though it does use a slang phrase (hot shit). Replace that with a more common word (try "happy") and the grammar is fine. Wymspen (talk) 14:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also UK and "hot shit" seems wrong in that context. A correct context would be "You stole it from the British Museum? You're going to need a shit hot fence to get rid of that hot shit". -- Q Chris (talk) 14:10, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hot shit is idiom in American English meaning "cool". See [5]. It is more often-than-not used ironically for someone who has a high opionion of themselves, but strictly speaking it just means "cool" or "good". So the phrase "I felt hot shit about it" means in American English "I felt great about it" or "I felt self-important about it" or "It made me feel cool". It is natural and comfortable grammar (even if the idiom is slang and slightly off-color). --Jayron 32 14:15, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I get it now, I was wondering why it wasn't something like "and I felt like hot shit (because of it)". Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:57, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the phrase has only been used once in the history of the Internet, and that on Pitcairn, I doubt Jayron's linguistic intuitions. Henry ^Flower 17:28, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron's post is not a direct response to whether the sentence posed by the OP is grammatical. My guess is that even in the US, one wouldn't refer to oneself as hot shit; I think that word order would be used by another party, as in "He thinks he's the hot shit", same as it's used in NZ. Akld guy (talk) 01:45, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In American English, hot shit does not take an article. "He thinks he's hot shit" would be the normal expression. Also, there's nothing ungrammatical about referring to one's self as hot shit; the only oddity is that the phrase is usually used facetiously, so it comes off as self deprecating.--Jayron 32 02:27, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The ungrammaticality is that in the OP's phrase it's being used as an adjective, not a noun. Henry ^Flower 10:09, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The OP's phrase is idiomatic of Multicultural London English, which as User:Carbon Caryatid points out, was lampooned by the character Ali G. Alansplodge (talk) 11:10, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The first phrase is; the second is apparently unique to Pitcairn. 105.235.137.53 (talk) 12:13, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Henry ^Flower 12:27, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

November 22

Russian "возвращение"

Hello! I'm from the Thai Wikipedia and I have a problem concerning the translation of the name of a Russian medal, Medal "For the Return of Crimea". My question is: what does the term "возвращение" (or "return") in the name of this medal actually mean?

Coming/going back (as in "the return to innocence", "the return of Jafar", "the return of Godzilla", etc)?
Giving/bringing/delivering/sending back (as in "the return of property")?
Or else?

Thanks a million! --หมวดซาโต้ (talk) 12:34, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think since it's "for" something, the second meaning (i.e. actively bringing Crimea back) is more likely. Cf. "за освобождение ..." ("for the liberation of ...") etc 78.53.241.150 (talk) 12:49, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It may be of interest that the de: version of the article uses the transitive (="bringing back", as opposed to the intransitive "coming back") meaning. --194.213.3.4 (talk) 13:20, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Meaning number 2 above is closest. Thai ฟื้น, คืน and กลับคืน all have a similar sense to how "return" is used there.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 05:47, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Linguistic term to describe possessives, dependent clauses, and adverbial inflexions as one collective entity?

I don’t know a good way to describe 的得地. In informal writing, 的 does the job. In formal writing (literature), strict rules are held in place, each having a separate function. Is there a word to describe everything? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 19:55, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure exactly what you're asking (and I can't read the Chinese characters), but there's Adjunct (grammar)... -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:42, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose the OP is referring to the homophone particles 的, 得 and 地 in Mandarin Chinese, all of them pronounced de, each of which marks a different type of grammatical adjunct/modifier, and whether there might be a plausible linguistic analysis of these items as fundamentally the same, i.e. some kind of universal adjunct-marking particle. I haven't got an answer to the question, but it seems like an interesting one to consider. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:52, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

November 23

Translation from German needed

How would you translate "Wenn ich das tue, bekomme ich Riesenärger mit meiner Freundin"?--Herfrid (talk) 15:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"If I were to do that, I would get major grief from my girlfriend." --Viennese Waltz 15:32, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"If I do that, I will get..." is slightly more accurate. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:35, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Google Translate says: "When I do that, I get huge trouble with my girlfriend." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:50, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

off-topic except where Wrongfilter agrees "when" is a possible but less likely translation Rmhermen (talk) 17:49, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

That is a formal false friend. "Become" and "bekommen" is another very common pairing. Tevildo (talk) 22:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Which "that" are you referring to? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:17, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

He means that "wenn" does not mean "when", it means "if" ("wann" means "when"). And I don't know why you persist in providing google translate answers to questions asking for translation. It's pointless, especially if – as in this case – perfectly good answers from actual people have already been given, and when the machine translation is actually wrong. You don't know German, so please leave this kind of question to those who do. --Viennese Waltz 08:19, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree that google translate should not be used for these questions (in particular as OP is German himself and is more interested in the idiomatic expression in English rather than understanding what the German phrase means). However, it is not wrong in this case. The conjunction wenn can be translated as "if" or "when". I prefer "if" in this case on the assumption that it has not been decided yet whether the speaker will do whatever they're supposed to do. ("Wann" is the question word, "when?") --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:32, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably the OP could have already tried Google Translate, but there was no indication of having done so. Also, where does the OP indicate being a German native? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:45, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't change the point: referring to Google Translate was a useless distraction here, so please don't do that again. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:47, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The other point is that VW shouldn't attack other editors in front of the OP. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:49, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's an overall good thing for other editors to be advised of constant problematic behaviour, like you, again with the Google translating. Not on the talk page, not on your user talk page, but here in public where everyone can see it. If you just stopped doing it, you would solve the problem yourself. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:29, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Showing people up does nothing except invite defensive behavior. That's why it was agreed, a long time ago, on the talk page, to not attack other users in front of the OP. Going to a given user's talk page is the polite thing to do, and is much less likely to result in defensiveness. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:57, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Advising another user of his problematic behaviour does not constitute an "attack". And I'd like to see a reference for your claim that raising issues on a user's talk page was agreed. When was anything ever agreed on the ref desk talk page lol. --Viennese Waltz 15:39, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how citing a well-known internet site constitutes "problematic behavior". As for the agreement, see last March or May (I forget which) in a discussion posed by Guy Macon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:57, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Models or theories or hypotheses in linguistics and impact on the brain and their philosophical bases

Besides Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis in linguistics, are there theories, models or hypotheses in linguistics and how do they impact on the brain? Also, what is the philosophical basis of linguistics and as well as what is the philosophical basis of each model, theory or hypothesis? Donmust90 (talk) 23:57, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Most working academic linguists really do not spend too much time concerned with Sapir-Whorf stuff. A more central concern of many is whether a "Poverty of the stimulus" available to children requires innateness of "Universal grammar" for successful first language acquisition to occur -- while the behaviorists of the 1950s thought that language acquisition happened through generalized stimulus-and-response conditioning, generalized pattern-matching, and other generalized learning strategies, without any real need to posit language-specific abilities of the human mind. (Of course, the behaviorists usually hated the word "mind" to start with, while their more recent competitors the cognitivists have a very different attitude...) -- AnonMoos (talk) 11:00, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

November 24

@@ Line 253: / Line 253: @@
 ::"If I do that, I will get..." is slightly more accurate. --[[User:Wrongfilter|Wrongfilter]] ([[User talk:Wrongfilter|talk]]) 15:35, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
 :::Google Translate says: "When I do that, I get huge trouble with my girlfriend." ←[[User:Baseball Bugs|Baseball Bugs]] <sup>''[[User talk:Baseball Bugs|What's up, Doc?]]''</sup> [[Special:Contributions/Baseball_Bugs|carrots]]→ 15:50, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
+{{hat|off-topic except where Wrongfilter agrees "when" is a possible but less likely translation [[User:Rmhermen|Rmhermen]] ([[User talk:Rmhermen|talk]]) 17:49, 24 November 2017 (UTC)}}
 ::::That is a formal [[false friend]].  "Become" and "bekommen" is another very common pairing. [[User:Tevildo|Tevildo]] ([[User talk:Tevildo|talk]]) 22:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
 :::::Which "that" are you referring to? ←[[User:Baseball Bugs|Baseball Bugs]] <sup>''[[User talk:Baseball Bugs|What's up, Doc?]]''</sup> [[Special:Contributions/Baseball_Bugs|carrots]]→ 04:17, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
@@ Line 264: / Line 265: @@
 :::::::::::Advising another user of his problematic behaviour does not constitute an "attack". And I'd like to see a reference for your claim that raising issues on a user's talk page was agreed. When was anything ever agreed on the ref desk talk page lol. --[[User:Viennese Waltz|Viennese Waltz]] 15:39, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
 ::::::::::::I don't see how citing a well-known internet site constitutes "problematic behavior". As for the agreement, see last March or May (I forget which) in a discussion posed by Guy Macon. ←[[User:Baseball Bugs|Baseball Bugs]] <sup>''[[User talk:Baseball Bugs|What's up, Doc?]]''</sup> [[Special:Contributions/Baseball_Bugs|carrots]]→ 15:57, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
+{{hab}}
 == Models or theories or hypotheses in linguistics and impact on the brain and their philosophical bases ==