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January 15

What does "created live" mean in this context?

What does "created live" mean in this context? Rizosome (talk) 14:32, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The artwork itself was created at the same time as the auction to sell it was taking place. --Viennese Waltz 14:35, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In this context, the artwork is the destruction of the painting rather than the original painting. As it literally occurred at the moment of the sale, it was "created live" in the sense of live television or a live recording, meaning in this case "simultaneous to..." --Jayron 32 14:39, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is a little myopic. It is a claim made by Sotheby's. Wasn't the work also created when Banksy assembled the device that would provide the shredding? Bus stop (talk) 17:04, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's a little marketing, that's what it is. --Jayron 32 19:29, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Created dead" also seems applicable. --Lambiam 21:27, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DOA: dead on auction. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:48, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking for a better word

Yallourn is described as a company town. But it wasn't. It was owned by the state government entity which delivered electricity and other products to the residents of the state of Victoria, Australia for around 70 years. The town was not owned by a company, so it wasn't a company town. I see some parallels with townships on military bases, but a look at a few articles about places like that hasn't helped me. What is a better word for Yallourn? HiLo48 (talk) 23:16, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think the meaning of "company" is broad enough to consider that a company town, personally, and I can't think of a more appropriate term. The question might be whether it's too pejorative: at my age, it doesn't seem like a judgmental/negative term but to older folks it might. Temerarius (talk) 00:06, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, "company town" is right. A government entity may actually be a company, but even if it isn't technically one, it acts enough like one for the usage to work. --142.112.149.107 (talk) 00:09, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I too think company town seems perfectly appropriate in this case. I am not aware of the term being pejorative, but then I am a mere stripling of 50. DuncanHill (talk) 00:11, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I said nothing about the word being pejorative. My concern is that it's simply wrong. The town was not owned by a company. HiLo48 (talk) 00:16, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I never said you did say anything about it being pejorative. DuncanHill (talk) 00:18, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, in past decades CIA employees always called the CIA "the company". If you referred to it as "the agency", that was a sign you were an outsider... AnonMoos (talk) 05:11, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can assure you that the government body that owned the town of Yallourn was never called a company, by insiders or outsiders. HiLo48 (talk) 05:34, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But that still doesn't mean that "company town" is inappropriate. --142.112.149.107 (talk) 08:22, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's literally incorrect, because it wasn't owned by a company. It's a term that's never been used (outside Wikipedia) to describe the place. I think that makes it inappropriate. HiLo48 (talk) 09:25, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why would a company town need to be owned by a private company? Not all red light districts have red streetlights. The point is in restricting the inhabitants choice of employer/industry/ability to pack up and leave. The company town page mentions towns that were never owned by private companies, like Pripyat. 93.136.206.110 (talk) 10:35, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever alternative we might or might not come up with, changing the defining sentence of the article is going to need discussion at the article talk page, where there are no doubt editors more familiar with the place and in a better position to decide, so I suggest you take the discussion there.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:35, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because the town was demolished in the 1980s, Nobody lives there any more, and the article sees very little activity. I thought of putting a discussion there, but expected very little response. HiLo48 (talk) 22:10, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[1] section 2.4 suggests "Government town". Bazza (talk) 11:14, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes (at least in the U.S.) "government town" can just mean a city with a lot of government employees, and not necessarily with a closed system like a company town. Austin, Texas used to be known as a government and university town before the late 1980s tech boom (or, as our article expresses it, "Emerging from a strong economic focus on government and education, since the 1990s Austin has become a center for technology and business")... AnonMoos (talk) 16:06, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

HiLo48, I think you're falling into the etymological fallacy. The origin of a phrase doesn't reliably tell us what the current meaning is. The question is what people use the prhase to mean. Certainly most uses of the phrase refer to a commercial company, but not all. The third hit for "company town" in the iWeb corpus is "Svalbards major employer was the state coal mining industry; Longyearbyen was essentially a company town whose daily life centered on the mining business", which seems parallel to Yallourn. --ColinFine (talk) 13:05, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would remove "company town" from the lede. In the lede I would place information found in the sentence from the "Design" section reading "The majority of the land and buildings, with the exception of the churches and several minor properties, were owned by the S.E.C.V." That wording is specific to the town of Yallourn. Bus stop (talk) 16:49, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The concept of "company town" goes beyond that of real-estate ownership; it also implies a controlling influence of one organization over the local economy by being the only large-scale job provider (a local monopsony on the job market), often accompanied by an undue control of local politics. --Lambiam 01:51, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The characterization is not justified. An indication of this is that we don't even find the term "company town" in the body of the article. Why should it be in the lede? Bus stop (talk) 02:59, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple reliable sources describe Yallourn as a "company town": [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. --Lambiam 10:42, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The lede should not be saying Yallourn was a "company town". The body of the article does not even use that language. "Company town" is relatively uninformative. I would consider for the lede wording such as "the State Electricity Commission was simultaneously landlord, employer and governor."[10] Bus stop (talk) 16:58, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"was simultaneously landlord, employer and governor". We have a word for that situation - company town. Is there a American English/other Englishes problem here? Rmhermen (talk) 00:12, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The lede is not for pigeonholing the subject of an article. "Company town" is slightly pejorative; it certainly isn't flattering. At our Company town article I find: "many have been regarded as controlling and/or exploitative...an economically viable ploy to attract and retain workers...isolated workers...control of workers by their employers...workers often had no say in local affairs and therefore, felt dictated to...political climate caused resentment amongst workers." Contrary to this characterization, associated with the term "company town", people seem to remember Yallourn fondly: "Yallourn grew into a beautiful town with lovely avenue of deciduous trees, sporting facilities. It had a look about it...Whenever Yallourn people were together they talked Yallourn...All these people have gathered over the years to talk about their memories in Yallourn and there is a great bond between all ages".[11] If there is no need for pigeonholing the town as a "company town" in the body of the article then why is there a need to pigeonhole the town as a "company town" in the lede? The lede is a more prominent part of an article. Bus stop (talk) 01:41, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia should go by WP:RS. If RS call a town a "company town", then it is irrelevant whether any particular editor feels this is unflattering. Several of the RS I linked to contain content, that could be used in the article, by itself justifying the use of the term for Yallourn. Not all of its history was sunshine and rainbows. --Lambiam 10:23, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Guys, as Shantavira wrote upthread, you need to box this up and take it to the article's talk page. --Viennese Waltz 11:04, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As I wrote up above - Because the town was demolished in the 1980s, Nobody lives there any more, and the article sees very little activity. I thought of putting a discussion there, but expected very little response. HiLo48 (talk) 01:11, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would place company town in the body of the Yallourn article but not in the lede. The internal link to company town in this article is easily justified by our mission to be educational, and as others have pointed out, the applicability of this term to this town is amply supported by reliable sources. The problem, as I see it, is that this arrangement is presently in reverse: we have company town in the lede but not the body of the article. I consider this to be the reverse order. Bus stop (talk) 15:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

January 16

Basta / bəsdir

I was thinking of Italian "basta" and Azerbaijani "bəsdir", both meaning "enough", "that's enough" and both having similar spelling and pronunciation. The languages are quite distant from each other, so I wonder whether it's a pure coincidence? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 13:42, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Italian basta is the third-person singular of bastare "to suffice", so literally "[it] suffices". Wiktionary suggests it may be derived from Late Latin bastum "stick, staff, rod, pole", itself from Ancient Greek βαστάζω (bastázō) "I lift, carry, bear, support (weight)".

In the Azerbaijani, the -dir part means "it is", while bəs "enough" is borrowed from Persian بس (bas) with the same meaning, which comes from Middle Persian.

For there to be a relation, either both terms must be traceable further back to a common Proto-Indo-European source or some even earlier borrowing must have taken place. I don't think it would be easy to prove either. --Theurgist (talk) 18:31, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. However, the Turkic language family to which Azerbaijani belongs is separate from Indo-European languages, so the possible involvement of the Proto-Indo-European language looks spurious. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 23:03, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As noted above (as per Wiktionary), the term was borrowed into Azerbaijani from Persian, which is an Indo-European language. --Theurgist (talk) 00:05, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Italian interjection comes ultimately from Ancient Greek βαστάζω (bastázō, "to bear"), thought to stem from a non-Indo-European Pre-Greek substrate. From the start, the ⟨st⟩ combination was part of the stem. The Persian term بس (bas) has no ⟨t⟩, and neither does its Old Persian etymon. The Azeri suffix -dir simply means "he/she/it is"; it can be used with any adjective. The similarity is purely coincidental. --Lambiam 01:40, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Folies Bergère

Presently the article Folies Bergère does not explain the word "Folies". According to various random Internet sources, as well as at least one dictionary, this is the (plural of the) French word for "madness" (cognate with English "fool", "folly" etc.), extended in this context to mean something like "mad extravagance". However, there is apparently another French word "folie", which has a different etymology altogether, an alteration of "feuille" (leaf), which somehow came to mean "pleasure house". See https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/folie#fr. At http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/fourpaintings/manet/folies_bergere/history.html, which looks authentic, they say that the "Folies" of "Folies Bergère" is actually from the second of these, not the first. Does anyone have any more information about this? 2A00:23C8:7B08:6A00:FC87:C528:216:BB30 (talk) 17:24, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Subsequent to this, I just thought to look at French Wikipedia. Their article (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folies_Berg%C3%A8re) says that "Folies" is from the "pleasure house" sense, but at that latter article, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_(maison_de_plaisance), the etymology is said to be disputed between the "mad extravagance" origin and the (ultimately) "leaf" origin. I guess that this explains the differences that I mentioned. Can I take the French Wikipedia explanation to be reliable and add this to the English article? 2A00:23C8:7B08:6A00:FC87:C528:216:BB30 (talk) 17:33, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note that "folies" and "follies" come from the same source.[12] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:17, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As I have already stated, there are many sources that say that "folies" is cognate with "folly" and similar "fool"-related words. There are also sources that say the word is from an entirely different origin. The question is whether one is correct and the other can be dismissed, or perhaps whether it is not truly known which is correct, and both should be mentioned. 2A00:23C8:7B08:6A00:FC87:C528:216:BB30 (talk) 20:07, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What would be the connection between Folies Bergère and leaves? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:50, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One thinks of fig leaves in connection with skimpy clothing or nudity. And then there are the ostrich feathers the ladies often wore (feathers cf. leaves), -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:17, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the references that I quoted. Please will people bother to actually read what I wrote before posting irrelevant replies. 2A00:23C8:7B08:6A00:FC87:C528:216:BB30 (talk) 21:50, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can't read French. You might need to translate them for us. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:15, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

He wrote in English. He said: "According to various random Internet sources, as well as at least one dictionary, this is the (plural of the) French word for "madness" (cognate with English "fool", "folly" etc.)" Your post at 19:17 was just an unnecessary restatement of that. --Viennese Waltz 07:08, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Where did someone else cite etymonline? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:13, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

He didn't need to specifically cite etymonline. He said "according to various random Internet sources", of which etymonline is one. --Viennese Waltz 08:27, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When did "random Internet sources" become a reliable source? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:37, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Folies Bergère are not a maison de plaisance. The contrast between the two concepts is stark, and if derived from that sense of folie, it is furthermore hard to explain why Les Folies is a plural. I do not trust that etymology. The French Wikipedia mentions it as a fact but does not provide a reference. A sense of French folie is also a type of comedic vaudeville, which, according to le Trésor de la langue française informatisé, served metonymically to form the names of certain theatres: "Le directeur des Folies-dramatiques venait de faire des offres superbes (Zola, Nana,1880, p. 1323). Le spectacle des Folies fit diversion. Le docteur goûta beaucoup les vieilles chansons interprétées par Yvonne Printemps (Aragon, Beaux quart.,1936, p. 224)."^[13] This is an authoritative source (published by the Académie française, the authority on the French language), and even if they were not an authority, it appears much more likely to me. --Lambiam 01:18, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dutch surname

Is "Monster" (as in Rob Monster) a plausible Dutch surname, or at least one less funny than it is in English? I believe that Rob Monster is Dutch, based on some forum posts and his slight Dutch accent (there are some vids of him speaking on Youtube). Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:313A (talk) 19:49, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This site claims that "The surname Monster is most widespread in The Netherlands, where it is held by 1,370 people". --Antiquary (talk) 22:31, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is a town in South Holland by the name of Monster, which may derive from Latin monasterium (compare the etymology of Münster). The Dutch surname may in turn derive from that of the town. The surname "van Munster" or "van Monster", obviously originally a geographic-origin disambiguator, is also found.^[14][15] For many Dutch surnames of the type "van town", a version without "van" is also found; e.g. "van Beek" and "Beek", "van Benthem" and "Benthem", "van Berkel" and "Berkel", ... . --Lambiam 00:47, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For reference, yes monster means the same in Dutch as it does in English. Fgf10 (talk) 09:58, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all. I've relayed this info to Talk:Rob Monster. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:313A (talk) 04:49, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Piping hot

What is the origin of the phrase "piping hot"? Does it really have anything to do with bagpipes? Thanks. 86.169.244.182 (talk) 21:34, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what EO has to say:[16] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:01, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This makes sense to me - "The derivation of this little phrase is the sizzling, whistling sound made by steam escaping from very hot food, which is similar to the sound of high-pitched musical pipes." And this says "The term piping hot means extremely hot. It is thought to have originated from the sound of the old pipe organs in large churches. It was first penned by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales. He wrote Wafers piping hot out of the gleed". HiLo48 (talk) 22:08, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah-ha, yes "Wafers piping hot out of the gleed". Obvious really. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:25, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Don't you just hate it when your gleed gets cold? 2603:6081:1C00:1187:8198:9810:E98D:8593 (talk) 06:21, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Similar to a "singing kettle" (BTW, see Wikt:gleed: "a glowing coal" and "wafer" probably refers to a type of flatbread cooked on an open fire). Alansplodge (talk) 14:48, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

January 18

Counterfeit words

Looking through a language activity book Lingua portuguesa 5.° anno, published by Porto Editora in 2011 (ISBN 978-972-0-20102-7) I encountered the word privacidade. This word does not appear in their 1980 Dicionário português, unsurprisingly, because it would imply derivation from the Latin word ~~privacitas~~, which does not exist. It appears to be a neologism - there was a discussion about this at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 December 18#Solidarity. It is listed in Collins Gem Portuguese Dictionary (Glasgow, 1990, ISBN 000 4586662) with the meaning "privacy". I can trace it back to a translation of the 1980 document OECD guidelines on the protection of privacy and transborder flows of personal data. Are there many of these words? 95.148.1.243 (talk) 13:27, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Could it not simply be a neologism? These happen all the time, in all languages, and in Western languages, many of them are based on a misunderstanding of Latin or Greek roots. By calling it a "counterfeit word", you imply that the word does not exist or is not used or was created to mislead, which is possible but unlikely. Xuxl (talk) 13:40, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Portuguese Wikipedia has an article on Privacidade, which is described as calqued from English privacy. French abounds with words formed with the suffix -ité, such as adaptabilité, while Classical Latin *adaptabilitas is not attested. --Lambiam 16:19, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

95.148.1.243 -- "Informatics" started out as a kind of counterfeit word (if you want to call it that) in English, since at the beginning it was used in English mainly by mother-tongue speakers of continental European languages, and is probably not a word that mother-tongue English speakers would have coined on their own. However, whether a word is a "real" word in a particular language depends on usage, not etymology... AnonMoos (talk) 20:30, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

English sawbuck is a calque of Dutch zaagbok, flea market is a calque of French marché aux puces, and cookbook is probably calqued from German Kochbuch. Are these counterfeit words? --Lambiam 10:04, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Where was the word 'chimpanzee' first used in English?

Everywhere I look online, I read that the word 'chimpanzee' was first used in English in 1738, but I can find nothing that tells me where this was. All help appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.26.11.118 (talk) 23:21, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In general nobody knows when the first use of a word in English was. Dictionary researchers only know when the oldest use in written English that they can find was. In this case, according to the OED Online, it was used in the London Magazine for September 1738 and the passage reads: "A most surprizing creature is brought over in the Speaker, just arrived from Carolina, that was taken in a wood at Guinea. She is the Female of the Creature which the Angolans call Chimpanze, or the Mockman." (I assume "Speaker" is the name of a ship.) --142.112.149.107 (talk) 23:42, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Speaker was a ship; a 1746 account of the same event in A Tour through the Animal World, or, an Historical and accurate account of near Four hundred Animals, Birds, Fishes, Serpents, Insects &c. (p. 126) says:

"Capt. Henry Flower, in the Ship Speaker from Angola, on the coast of Guinea, brought over in August, 1738, a Female Pygmy, or Chimpanzee, which was two Foot and four Inches tall. Its face was like that of a Man, and pretty fair, except upon the Chin, where appeared a few straggling Hairs, like as is sometimes seen upon the Chin of Ancient Women".

Alansplodge (talk) 12:34, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also called "the Ship Speaker" in this announcement; in the passage in the London Magazine the name is given in italics, while there is also mention of "a Boy on board" of which the captive chimpanzee is said to have been very fond.^[17] --Lambiam 14:38, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"...and gave great satisfaction to the ladies". ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, Flower's ape was not the first chimpanzee in England, just the first to be named so. Samuel Pepys in 1661 was shown "a strange creature... a great baboon but so much like a man in most things... it already understands much English; and I am of the mind that it might be taught to speak or make signs". [18] Another chimp arrived in 1698 but died soon afterwards and was dissected by Dr Edward Tyson, who published his findings in Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris. Alansplodge (talk) 16:46, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

January 19

What does "would have followed" mean?

Sentence: it was likely that Phoenix would have followed [Interview with the Vampire] by appearing as Susan Sarandon's son in Safe Passage (1994), a role that went to Sean Astin. Source Rizosome (talk) 15:39, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It means that River Phoenix, the actor in question, was scheduled act in the film Safe Passage after he acted in the film Interview with the Vampire, that is he was going to follow his role in Interview with the Vampire with a role in Safe Passage. He ended up acting in neither, having died shortly before filming of Interview with the Vampire was scheduled to begin. He was replaced in that movie by Christian Slater, and in Safe Passage by Sean Astin. --Jayron 32 17:14, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For the grammar of the construction would have followed, see Conditional perfect. Deor (talk) 17:20, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For a bit more on that, the lead of that article notes that conditional perfect tense is used in counterfactual cases. This means they describe things that did not happen, but which were going to happen but for some other event. In this case, Phoenix's death prevented him from acting in the films. --Jayron 32 17:26, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The quoted Guardian article has "Phoenix would have followed that by ...". Since the referent of "that", mentioned earlier in the Guardianarticle, would not be clear in the context of the quotation, the editor adding the quote replaced "that" by "[Interview with the Vampire]". Using square brackets is a standard convention for signalling an editorial alteration of an otherwise literal quotation; see Bracket § Uses in published text. --Lambiam 09:39, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Term for "play on words"

Is there a term in language that includes: Euphemisms, Malapropisms, Faux Pas, Metaphors, Idioms, Puns, Oxymorons and Double Entendres ? Charles Juvon (talk) 18:40, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some are Rhetorical figures, some are language mistakes, and some are wordplay in the literal sense (jocularities). AnonMoos (talk) 20:56, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@AnonMoos: Thank you. You have an amazing userpage!

January 20

Help translating llengua pròpia

There is an ongoing editing conflict in the page Valencian language about how to translate llengua pròpia from Catalan to English. In Spanish the equivalent expression is lengua propia. I don't know what the best translation is, but I'm positive that proper language is an unfaithful and misleading translation. Can anyone help? --Jotamar (talk) 17:59, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How about "own" language? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:17, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The other party rejects own, see his edit summary. --Jotamar (talk) 18:58, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What user:Taurus Littrow says is:

"pròpia" CAN be translated as "proper", although this translation is less common. Anyway, "own language" (in this context) is bad English.

Regards, --Jotamar (talk) 19:05, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I already changed it to "native language" and added a note saying that this term has no equivalent in English (which is true). As to "own language", I believe it must be preceded by a possessive pronoun (e.g., "his own language"). But we better ask the opinion of a native English speaker. Anyway, a previous wording (which I changed several months ago) said "official language", which was plainly wrong and confusing to boot. Taurus Littrow (talk) 19:14, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Native language" is probably clearer than "own language", though why you think that's "broken English" is hard to figure. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:16, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think in context the phrase would be something like The own language of the Valencian Community is Valencian, which I definitely agree is awkward English (for more than one reason, actually). I think this is one of those cases where the easiest solutions in English are likely to brush up against sensibilities. --Trovatore (talk) 21:23, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than your sentence, a possible wording is The Valencian Community declares Valencian to be its "own language". --Jotamar (talk) 23:42, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another note here: Anglophone readers (well, Americans anyway) are likely to misunderstand the reference to the Valencian Community, as "the foo community" has become a standard combining form. In Spain, it apparently refers not to a sociocultural "identity group" but to an actual semi-autonomous region with juridicial existence. I suggest that that be made explicit; it's wikilinked at first occurrence but you can't count on people following links if they already think they know what the text is saying. --Trovatore (talk) 21:32, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The name Valencian community is itself the result of political compromise, as other names are controversial for different reasons. --Jotamar (talk) 23:42, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A possibility, though perhaps not entirely satisfactory, might be "distinctive language". Deor (talk) 22:11, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"intrinsic"? -- 2603:6081:1C00:1187:100B:4F20:7E4E:A4F0 (talk) 22:26, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps, "the language belonging to the Valencian Community is Valencian". --Lambiam 22:28, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"The language native to the Valencian autonomous region is Valencian." or "The local language of the Valencian autonomous region is Valencian" -- Elphion (talk) 23:31, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

January 21

Poop

Human poop is typically emitted in tapered cylindrical segments colloquially called "turds". Turd is a count noun, while poop, feces, scat, and all the other such words I can think of are mass nouns or have a somewhat different semantic meaning. Is there a more formal scientific or medical count-noun equivalent of "turd"? Yes I have an actual reason for wanting to know this. I am not seeking medical advice, however. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:313A (talk) 03:48, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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 = January 21 =
+== Poop ==
+Human poop is typically emitted in tapered cylindrical segments colloquially called "turds".  Turd is a [[count noun]], while poop, feces, scat, and all the other such words I can think of are [[mass noun]]s or have a somewhat different semantic meaning.  Is there a more formal scientific or medical count-noun equivalent of "turd"?  Yes I have an actual reason for wanting to know this.  I am not seeking medical advice, however.  Thanks. [[Special:Contributions/2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:313A|2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:313A]] ([[User talk:2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:313A|talk]]) 03:48, 21 January 2021 (UTC)