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November 27

Tuner - a movie musical?

I have an article from Variety Jan 1 1967 that twice uses the word tuner in a context that seems to mean a movie musical but I find no such meaning in the dictionaries. Can anyone tell me if tuner has ever had that meaning, or suggest a different word that Variety should have used? Below are the sentences:
[The Young Girls of Rochefort] has charm, sustained human observation, mixed with catchy music, dances and songs to come up as a tuner with grace and dynamism.
Though a fairly classic musical reminiscent of earlier Yank tuners, it has a Gallic froth, tinged with unobtrusive melancholy and character delineation. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:03, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Variety is famed for having a lot of jargon terms which are unique to that publication alone (or at best, are used among a rather small group of entertainment industry insiders). It was even parodied as "Varietese" in Doon... AnonMoos (talk) 09:32, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I've seen "oater" used occasionally to mean a western movie, and "actioner" for an action movie. I haven't seen "tuner" but it's clearly a formation on the same pattern. --Anonymous, 21:45 UTC, November 27, 2009.

Byzantine surnames

I notice different noble family in the Byzantine Empire had different form of their surname based on their gender. Lekapenoi is non-gender, Lekapenos is male and Lekapene is female. I want to know what the surnames Gabalos, Martiniakos, and is in non-gender and female form. Also are the names Mamas, as in Theophano Mamas, daughter-in-law of Emperor Romanos I, and the name Zaoutzes surnames of a family or nicknames or some sort?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 12:30, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Lekapenoi is plural (and so, I suppose, would be Gabaloi and Martiniakoi). I'm not sure if you can add -e to make those names feminine so someone with better Greek will have to figure that out. (And what did they do with non-Greek names like Zaoutzes? I don't know.) Adam Bishop (talk) 18:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Aha, of course, Zaoutzes' daughter was Zoe Zaoutzaina, so there is a feminine form. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Use or nonuse of prepositions

Graduate college or graduate FROM college? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.153.5.208 (talk) 14:26, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I've seen this question here before, a long time ago. I'm not going to look for it now because I haven't got time, but I think the general consensus was that in US English the former is quite common, while the latter is more common in UK English. In either case, both are OK. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 14:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

KageTora is correct about the regional variation in the use of the verb, but that does not mean "either is OK". It means that the version that is deemed approriate depends on the surrounding text. In addition, British English really only collocates "graduate" with "university", not "college". See college (disambiguation) to read about some of that word's many meanings. BrainyBabe (talk) 16:34, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I had thought of mentioning the distinction between 'college' and 'university' here in the UK, but didn't think it was necessary because the title of the question specifically states that the OP wanted to know whether the preposition needed to be used or not. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 21:18, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

"Graduate college" (noun phrase) in the UK has the meaning of a college attended by graduates - maybe doing a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education. "Graduate from college" (verb phrase) means that you complete your course and pass it, hence you graduate. Also in the UK we generally use "university" for the place where higher education is taught, but this usage is gradually changing following the liberalisation of higher education courses in the past 10 years or so. --TammyMoet (talk) 16:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

TammyMoet is correct about the noun phrase, which I had not taken into account. It is my impression, however, that one completes or finishes a college course, but graduates from university. For more info on post-compulsory education, see further education and Universities in the United Kingdom. BrainyBabe (talk) 17:32, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I searched the Archives for "graduate", and from the top 100 results I selected the following discussions as seeming to be the most relevant.

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 August 11#Was graduated
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 April 18#Graduating
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 January 26#Intern

-- Wavelength (talk) 17:40, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Search for examples of non-pronounced H and for explainations

Hello, I'm French. As you know it's not easy for us to remember that the H at the beguinning of a word must be pronounced in English because we don't do that in French.

But there is at least one exception. To say it's 1h30 you say "one (h)our and a Half". So 2 questions.

1) Do you know other examples of such words ? 2) Can you explain this or these exceptions ?

Thank you for your explainations. Reims (Champagne area)-France---82.216.68.31 (talk) 17:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe they've formed in English as they did in French, with the letters carried over from the preceding word, to skip the "h". In any case, any word with a initial "h" preceded by "an" instead of "a" is a candidate. These include: heir, honest, hono[u]r and hour, and derived words. Some speakers may create others, like "an 'otel" (like the French), but that's not universal. More information about how this came about can be found here.- Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

There is a small number of English words in 'h-' where the 'h' is never pronounced: Jarry's list above has most of them, but I'm sure there are a few more. ('Heritage' is not in the list, even though 'heir' is; and 'herb' is in this list for Americans, but not for British speakers.)

In all other English words an initial 'h-' is pronounced, except for some speakers when they want to put the indefinite article before a word that begins with 'h' in an unstressed syllable. These speakers drop the 'h' and use 'an' instead of 'a': "an historical event". But nobody says *"an history lesson", since 'history' is stressed on the first syllable. --ColinFine (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Or you're coming to London, you could learn Cockney and forget the "h" at the start of words like the rest of us. Alansplodge (talk) 20:35, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

We've been fighting against Cockney stereotyping for years, although that's mainly an American thing (the stereotyping, that is). - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 20:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

The way Cockneys talk is not the fault of Americans. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:33, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

No, but Dick van Dyke is! --ColinFine (talk) 23:45, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

So have we here Down Under. Many foreigners come out with Cockney when trying to do an Aussie accent, and they think they've nailed it, but to us they're laughably different. As different as the Australian and New Zealand accents are to each other. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:52, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Most Britons (so far as I know) pronounce the H in "herb" and "herbal" but many—probably most—Americans omit it. I've never been quite sure why. (The French say l'herbe rather than la herbe.) —— Shakescene (talk) 00:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The American pronunciation is the older one, as shown by the /h/-lessness of French herbe. The British inclusion of /h/ is a spelling pronunciation that became established. There are other cases where the /h/-ful spelling pronunciation became standard on both sides of the Atlantic, such as humble: pronouncing it "umble" nowadays sounds either quaintly dialectal or downright wrong, but 200 years ago the "h" in humble was as silent as the one in hour. +Angr 07:47, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, that sounds as if the "h" in "hour" had remained unchanged. But according to David Crystal, Cambridge Encyclopedia of language, 2nd ed., p. 331, "hour" was pronounced like "whore" in As You Like It, allowing the bawdy pun of Act 2, Scene 7. (That was course twice as long ago.) Since it came from Old French, it must have come without the "h", and then changed back and forward. — Sebastian 08:20, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The OED has an enormous note on the history of h in English, which is probably worth reproducing in its entirety.

Here it is

In late Latin, and in the Romanic languages, the aspirate was no longer pronounced, and consequently often not written; in modern Italian it is entirely omitted, as in eretico, istorico, orribile. In Old French similarly the mute h was originally not written, and it was in this form that many Old French words, such as abit, able, eir, erbe, eritage, onest, onor or onur, ure or oure, ympne, were originally adopted in English. From this stage we derive the still existing forms able, ability, arbour (= erbere), ostler. But at a later period, imitation of the Latin spelling, by scribes who knew that language, gradually led to the restitution of h in the writing of most of these words in French, and thence also in English. In French, the h, though thus artificially reinstated in spelling, remained mute; but in England it was gradually, after the usage of the native words, restored in pronunciation, so that at the present day only a very few words, viz. heir, honest, honour, hour, with their derivatives, remain with h mute; though others, such as herb, humble, humour, were so treated very recently, and are by some people still; and hostler (also spelt ostler) is so pronounced by the majority. A trace of the former muteness or weakness of h in other words is also seen in the still prevalent practice of using an before words with initial h, not accented on the first syllable, as heretical, historical, humane, hypotenuse, and in such archaic forms as ‘mine host’, and the biblical ‘an Hebrew’. In the ME. period, during which h was being gradually reinstated in words from Old French, these show great variety of spelling, the same word appearing now with, and now without h; this uncertainty reacted upon other words beginning with a vowel, so that these also often received an initial h (due probably in some instances, as habundant, to a mistaken notion of their etymology). This spelling has been permanently established in the words hermit and hostage, among others.
In Old English, as in the Teutonic languages generally, initial h was strongly and distinctly aspirated. But early in the Middle-English period it was dropped in pronunciation and writing before l, n, and r. The old hw was from the 12th c. commonly written wh, sometimes w only, in Scotch qwh-, quh-; indicating a variety of pronunciation (see W). Before vowels, in words of Old English or Norse origin, h has been regularly retained in the standard spelling and pronunciation: but in many English dialects, especially those of the midl. and southern counties (not in Scotland, Ireland, or in the United States), the aspirate has disappeared as an ordinary etymological element, and is now employed only with other functions, viz. to avoid hiatus (e.g. the egg, pronounced the-h-egg), and especially in the emphatic or energetic utterance of a syllable with an initial vowel; being then prefixed without distinction to words with or without etymological h; thus horse, ass, usually òss, àss, emphatically (or after a vowel) hòss, hàss.
In earlier periods, these dialectal habits naturally affected the written language of literature, where their influence was reinforced by the uncertainty that prevailed as to initial h in words of Latin-French origin; so that during the Middle-English period, and down to the 17th c., we find numerous instances of the non-etymological absence or (more often) presence of initial h in native words also. These characteristics are not confined to English: some modern Dutch and Flemish dialects, especially those of Zealand, Flanders, and North Brabant, have entirely lost h as an etymological element, and employ it to avoid hiatus, and to impart emphasis, exactly like the English dialects; while in Old High German, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, and, above all, Middle Flemish literature, the non-etymological absence and presence of initial h is even more marked than in Middle English. In this Dictionary, some of the chief forms found in earlier use with adventitious initial h are mentioned in their alphabetical order, with a reference to their proper spelling, especially when this is not seen by simple omission of the h; but in other cases it is to be presumed that, when a ME. word in h is not entered here, it will be found in the form without h.
In recent times, the correct treatment of initial h in speech has come to be regarded as a kind of shibboleth of social position; this has resulted in the cultivation of the educated usage in many quarters where it is not native. But even in educated pronunciation, there are cases in which h is usually mute, e.g. at the beginning of a syllable after certain consonant groups, as in exhaust, exhortation, and in such suffixes as -ham, -hope, in Chatham, Clapham, Durham, Greenhope, Stanhope, Tudhope, -herd in shepherd, as well as in the pronouns he, his, him, her, when unemphatic and as it were enclitically combined with the preceding word, as in ‘I met-him on-his horse’. In the corresponding neuter pronoun it, originally hit, in which the unemphatic use predominates, the h was long ago dropped in writing as well as speech. (But in Scotch the emphatic form is still hit.)
After a vowel, h is regularly silent, and such a vowel being usually long, as in oh, ah, bah, hurrah, the addition of h (so usual in modern German) is one of the expedients which we have for indicating a long vowel in foreign or dialect words. The silence of h in certain positions contributed to the currency of such spellings as the obsolete preheminence, proheme, abhominable.
By the combination of h with consonants, numerous digraphs are formed for the expression of simple sounds; the origin of this goes back to the ancient Greek alphabet, which used PH, TH, KH, for the aspirated consonants, which were afterwards provided with single symbols Φ, Θ, Χ, and sank into simple spirants. In Latin the digraphs were retained, and thence th, ch, and occasionally ph, were taken to represent German spirants or aspirates. In Old English, which had þ, ð, for the sound or sounds represented on the continent by th, these digraphs had little currency until after the Norman Conquest, which introduced th, ch, gh, and sometimes yh, for certain English sounds, and substituted wh for OE. hw; the development of a simple sound (ʃ) from the OE. combination sc, led, through sch, to the digraph sh; ph and rh (pronounced f and r) were adopted from Latin as the representatives of Gr. φ and ῥ; in more recent times kh has been used to express Slavonic and Semitic guttural spirants; bh, dh, gh, ph, th, kh, to represent Sanskrit and Indian aspirates, or other alien sounds; and zh (on the analogy, s:z::sh:zh) for the phonetic representation of French j in déjeuner, symbolized in this Dictionary by (ʒ).)

Algebraist 17:12, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

An interesting assortment of tidbits! I'm not sure how trustworthy all of them are; at least one can be easily refuted: "in modern Italian it is entirely omitted, as in eretico, istorico, orribile" - did they forget the ubiquitous "ho, hai, ha"[1]? Moreover, how can an an article about "H" bring up Italian and omit the one thing that's special about the Italian H, its use in words like "che", "chi", and "Ghia"!?) Also, it is odd to write that Greek "used PH, TH, KH", without mentioning the letter Η and its history. That, btw, is nicely described in our article Eta, and the discussion of the disappearance of /h/ there leads us back to the original question. So, "hour" was pronounced without /h/ when the English got the word from the French, with /h/ by Shakespeare, and then it lost it again? — Sebastian 21:05, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

"1h30" is not said as "hour and a half"; in referring to the time it is spoken as "one thirty" while as a period of time it is "one-and-a-half hours". This is usually written as 1:30 and not 1h30, although if the time is in p.m. then it is 1:30 pm in the 12-hour clock and 13:30 in the 24-hour clock. There are other ways of writing it, for example 1300z if it is 1:30 UTC. ~AH1^(TCU) 23:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

"Etc." in French

In French, there typically isn't a comma before the "et" at the end of a list. If a list ends with "etc.", is the comma still omitted before it, since the meaning of "etc." ("and so on") contains the word "and"/"et"? --70.247.253.131 (talk) 17:27, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but I observe that 'et' in 'etc' is Latin and not French. I doubt if French speakers feel that 'etcetera' contains the French word 'et'. --ColinFine (talk) 19:02, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

The older convention in written English (sometimes called the Oxford comma, q.v., after the Oxford University Press's style guide), was to put a comma after every item in an enumeration as in:

men, women, and children

and this is what was taught to me in the British schools of the late 1950's, but the more recent and more American convention is to omit commas before conjunctions, as in

men, women and children

This is a current and recurring topic of discussion in various contexts at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style: not so much whether to require the Oxford (or serial) comma, but more whether any guidance should be given one way or the other.

It seems to me that, since "et" stands for "and", one's preference for including or excluding a comma before "etc.", "&c." and "et al." would probably follow one's preference for including or excluding a comma before English conjunctions like "and" and "or". —— Shakescene (talk) 00:38, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

But on second thought, I almost always put a comma before "etc.", and almost never before "et al." and "&c.", so (since I usually though not always omit the comma before "and") I must be applying a different logic. The commas are there to separate different items, and the "etc." in "red, green, blue, etc." probably looks as if it needs separation from "blue". Another consideration is that "etc." usually stands for at least two more items not enumerated individually, so if the list were expanded to "red, green, blue, yellow, orange and brown", "blue" would precede a comma; I think putting a comma before "etc." indicates that more than one item is to follow. In the case of "et al." and "&c." the "and"-equivalent is more apparent. —— Shakescene (talk) 10:40, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe that the only way to deal with those who mispronounce et cetera as EXSETERA is EXecution with EXtreme prejudice. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:32, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

LANGUAGE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! If most people pronounce it that way, it is not a mispronunciation. Anglicising foreign words and phrases often involves some metathesis to make them fit common English patterns. 86.166.148.95 (talk) 17:19, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

etc = et cetera = "And the rest" in Latin. The French language borrowed "et" for their language, but in this case it is Latin A8UDI 14:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

In French typography there is always a coma before "etc." except when there is an ellipsis, a question mark, an exclamation mark, etc. before it. My reference: Traité de la ponctuation française, by Jacques Drillon, Gallimard 1991, section 134. — AldoSyrt (talk) 17:15, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

134. Avec « etc. ». Le mot abrégé « etc. » est toujours précédé d'une virgule, sauf quand il suit des points de suspension, des signes mélodiques ou un alinéa.

"Tens of ..." vs. "Dozens of ..."

As a native speaker (b. 1953) of American English, I grew up with the expression "dozens of [something]." I can only recall encountering "tens of..." since relocating to Israel, where I figured it influenced by Hebrew-English translation, or perhaps otherwise British English usage. Today I read of "...tens of generations..." in this article in the International Herald Tribune, which as far as I know adheres to AE usage as well as spelling. Is this perhaps a case of the author's preference, approved by the paper's editors, or because this is a science article, or what? Whence this decimal fixation, and what's happened to "dozens of..."? I've persisted in using the latter in my professional writing (which often goes unedited), but now I feel obliged to get this straightened out if possible. -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:24, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I was going to quote some Google numbers when I found that Google gives 8,250,000 hits for "tens of" and 7,230,000 for "dozens of". However, it gives 7,980,000 for "tens of thousands" and 43,400,000 for "tens of millions" - i.e. five times as many "tens of millions" as "tens of"; so I don't trust its numbers. '"tens of" -thousands -millions -billions' gives 4,600,000, which (if it can be trusted) is significantly smaller than the number for "dozens of".

Certainly "dozens of" feels more colloquial to me (British), except in those phrases: I have no reason to think that there's anything particularly British about 'tens of'. French has the word 'dizaine' as well as 'douzaine', and they seem to get 5,480,000 and 1,690,000 ghits respectively. --ColinFine (talk) 19:15, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree "tens of" is weird - I think the use is satirical as in the headline: Tens of Bush Supporters Take to the Streets. I think I've heard it in English only satirically - like, "literally tens of (sth)", which is quite funny in a satirical way as normally the expression would be tens of thousands, etc. 92.230.68.207 (talk) 19:20, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I concur (British English), and would always assume satire unless otherwise prompted by context. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 19:47, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It's interesting that we say "tens of thousands" but "ten thousand". I wonder why not "ten thousands". -- JackofOz (talk) 20:21, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

"Thousands" suggests a quantity between 1,000 and 9,999. "Tens of thousands" suggests increments of ten thousand, such as 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000. "Ten thousands" would be 10,000. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but we don't say "ten thousands" when we mean 10,000; we say "ten thousand". Why is this? -- JackofOz (talk) 23:53, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Er, because it's only one ten thousand. If it was more than that (i.e. 20,000 or 30,000) we would say "tens of thousands". To be honest, I'm not sure I understand why you're perplexed: we say fifty thousand, not fifty thousands and four hundred, not four hundreds, so it's not like there's a parallel being breaking down. When I say "ten thousand", that's exactly equivalent to saying "ten times a thousand"; if I had a thousand units of something in a bag and ten bags, I would say "I've got ten thousand units." But the term "ten thousands" isn't equivalent at all and is really rather ambiguous - do I mean "ten times a thousand" or "ten times some number of thousands"? Vagueness is okay - and sometimes desirable - but ambiguity is rarely useful outside of wordplay. For once English is being sensible; just be glad! Matt Deres (talk) 02:40, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Not sure I'm making myself clear. I'm not losing any sleep over it; just idly curious. You say: .. because it's only one ten thousand. If it was more than that (i.e. 20,000 or 30,000) we would say "tens of thousands". Well, I'd say "twenty thousand" and "thirty thousand". But apply your argument to "million" - "one million" is only one "million"; but "two million" is two "million", so why not "two millions"? That gets me back to square 1. Normally, we add a plural ending to a noun if it's plural; we say "one apple" but "ten apples". "Thousand" in "ten thousand" is by definition plural because it's governed by "ten", so why not "thousands"? Here's a quote by William Pitt referring to "three millions of people". That sounds rather antiquated now, but it at least shows these words were once pluralised in the standard way. -- JackofOz (talk) 03:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Usually the "tens of thousands" is used with an semi-indeterminate amount. For example, if you know some quantity is in the range of 10,000 to 90,000 but you don't know it exactly, you can say it's "in the tens of thousands". -- 69.128.159.185 (talk) 04:09, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we may be talking past each other a bit. To me, "one thousand" (or "one million") is singular; I have one group of a thousand. "Two thousand" is multiple; I have two times a thousand. But, saying "two thousands" is both redundant - the two has already indicated we're dealing with multiples of a thousand - and ambiguous - if "one thousand" is one times one thousand, is "two thousands" two times one thousand or two times some indeterminate number of thousands? There are specific times where it's okay though, such as if you're literally dealing with bags of a thousand jelly beans or something, you could say that you sold "seventeen thousands" to distinguish it from the bags of hundreds you'd sold: "Yeah, I sold seventeen thousands and ten hundreds." But at the end of the day, you'd say that you sold eighteen thousand because eighteen thousands is ambiguous - and in this case, very specifically incorrect. Matt Deres (talk) 13:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Imagine this conversation:

A. How many people live in Ruritania?

B. Millions.

A. Yes, but how many millions?

B. Seven million.

So, we use the plural form of these counting words (hundred, thousand, million ..) when the number is indeterminate, but as soon as we specify a number, we revert to the singular. It would be like saying "many houses" but "three house". We're all used to saying and hearing "seven million" and it doesn't sound odd, the way "three house" would. I'm just trying to track down why we make this exception now, when we didn't always do so. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:47, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a way of grouping. If you saying "ten thousand", you are estimating about 10,000. If you say "tens of thousands", you are saying it is several groups of 10,000. I mis-stated something earlier. "Tens of thousands" wouldn't be 10,000. It would be 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 or something under 100,000; indeterminate, except that it's several groups of 10,000 each. Does that make it clearer? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:01, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

No, but see Shakescene's tangent below, which is exactly what I've been on about here. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Restating the original query: What are the usage rules in practice for "tens of [x]s" vs. "dozens of [x]s," where [x] is a quantifiable noun (not another order of number)? Of possible relevance: AE or BE.-- Deborahjay (talk) 05:42, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The only thing I can think of here is since decimalisation in the UK, "dozens" has fallen into some disuse as it belongs to the imperial system of measurement: the metric system is now taught in schools in the UK, and generations have grown up using tens, centimetres, grams etc. Whereas our generation (now 50 plus) were used to dozens, inches, stones etc. Of course, imperial terms are still used because so many are still familiar with them and so you will still hear "dozens" used by (mainly older) people. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I once read a quotation from a woman in a metricating New Commonwealth country saying how she'd have to get used to getting ten-egg cartons rather than dozens of eggs. I presume that you can still get eggs by the dozen in Britain and Ireland, or has the Heavy Hand of Harmonisation ended that, too? Twelves fit not only into "12 inches to a foot" but also into "12 pennies to a shilling, so 3 shillings a dozen meant threepence each. —— Shakescene (talk) 11:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes eggs are still in boxes of 6 or 12 because a box of 5 doesn't fit well with machines. However, I saw a box of 15 eggs in Tesco's last week and had to buy it for the novelty value! --TammyMoet (talk) 12:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Here in Germany eggs are available in cartons of six or ten. If you want a dozen, you have to buy two six-packs. +Angr 13:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

When you're feeling flirty, do you play 30.48 centimeteries under the table with your beau? Matt Deres (talk) 13:36, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

:::::No I say "fancy a fuck" like anyone else does... --TammyMoet (talk) 15:51, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

On the original query, what I understand is that these expressions are colloquial and correct, which are understood free from ambiguities but are ‘week adjectives’ to form their semantic possessiveness. On the comment of the plural form of its quantifiable noun (e.g. thousand), it seems there aren’t any rules for explanation, other than, as pointed out that it is an irregular plural form for which the singular counterpart is in an equal grapheme and phoneme relation. Mihkaw napéw (talk) 16:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Could be day, week or month adjectives for all I know. But they provide an order of magnitude. "Dozens" is more than a single dozen but less than, say, a gross (a dozen dozen). "Tens of thousands" is several groups of 10,000 but probably well under 100,000, otherwise you would say "nearly 100,000" or "about 100,000" or "a little over 100,000". Orders of magnitude are what these numbers are about. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Tangentially, the British used to write (and presumably say) phrases like "seven millions of people" or "twenty millions of pounds". —— Shakescene (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

And indeed some older people, including polititians, still do, particularly when referring to money: I'm fairly sure I've heard Gordon Brown do so quite recently. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 15:01, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Eureka! Someone knows what I was talking about up above. I was sure I wasn't dreaming about this pluralisation of words like "million". -- JackofOz (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

OP again. Kindly advise me on these representative examples: would "tens of" be mandatory/preferred usage, or a matter of choice, or still peculiar (as this pre-millenial writer persists in using "dozens of")?

• Tens of children were already on line when the mall's Santa Claus arrived.
• Tens of local homeowners attended the "Neighborhood Watch" meeting.
• Tens of pet dogs will need to be quarantined in the current rabies scare.

-- Thanks, Deborahjay (talk) 05:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

They all sound unnatural to me. Susbtitute "dozens", and they would be much better. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

November 28

similar words

where can i find the explanations/applications of similar words (eg. over/above, recently/shortly etc. etc.) to polish my english. thank you. 124.43.149.51 (talk) 08:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

A good dictionary will have definitions of those words and will also give synonyms (different words with similar meaning) and antonyms (words of opposite meaning). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

For synonyms and (to a greater extent) antonyms, a thesaurus would be better than a dictionary. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:55, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

It depends on the thesaurus (which I was thinking of suggesting) and it depends on the dictionary. Some thesauruses explain the different shades of meaning, and some dictonaries give good lists of synonyms & antonyms, but others skimp on them. Some classic manuals like A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H.W. Fowler, or the works of H.L. Mencken and Eric Partridge, explain many distinctions that they think important or difficult. —— Shakescene (talk) 11:05, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

14th Century names - "fil'"

There is a reference book in my local library entitled "Members of Parliament -1213-1702", detailing the returns to early English and British Parliaments throughout that period. All very interesting, though one element has me scratching my head. Can the Language Desk assist?

There are instances where a device "fil'" is included in a Members name. For example from Wiltshire in the 1300 parliament a member "Petrus fil' Warini", or from the Parliament summoned in York "Henricus fil' Herberti" from Derby. What is this middle element representing?

doktorb _words^deeds 09:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Short for Latin "filius" meaning "son of". --TammyMoet (talk) 09:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I love the Language Desk! Thank you very much for your very swift reply! doktorb _words^deeds 09:58, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

So I would presume that many of those are Latinisations of the very common British surname suffix "-son" as in Williamson = son of William (just to cite U.S. Presidents' names: Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, 2 Harrisons, 2 Johnsons, Wilson and Nixon = Nick's son, out of 43 different men who became President). —— Shakescene (talk) 10:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

No doubt. "Herbertson" and "Warrenson" (?) possibly from the two examples found. Though of course spelling and pronunciation has caused many different versions of even these over the centuries :) doktorb _words^deeds 10:32, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The suffix "s" also denotes "son of", so Williams, Phillips, Johns, Nicks, Wills... --TammyMoet (talk) 12:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

As a side note, "filius" was pronounced "fitz" in medieval French, and was very often used by the French conquerors of England and Ireland. The examples could therefore mean "Peter Fitzwarren" and "Henry Fitzherbert." Adam Bishop (talk) 17:42, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

How did "fil" evolve into "fit"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

It didn't, it evolved into nothing, and the /s/ became /ts/. Actually I should say the 'li' evolved into nothing; in Spanish it evolved into /j/. That's pretty common in French, a lot of words are just the Latin word without the middle bit. I'm not exactly sure where the /ts/ came from historically but I guess the 't' compensated for the missing /l/ and /i/ (or /j/). Adam Bishop (talk) 22:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation of where and river

How to pronounce "where" and "river" in American accent? --AisanGiant33 (talk) 10:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary is your friend! See wikt:where and wikt:river. — Sebastian 10:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Which American accent? Boston, Southern? 75.41.110.200 (talk) 14:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Way more American accents than that... A8UDI 14:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

British and the American east coast and south might say "wheh" and "rivuh". The rest of the USA might say "where" and "river". However, if run together, the east-coaster might say "Where is the rivuh?", while the southerner might say "Whey-uh is the rivuh?" of "Whah is the rivuh?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:17, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I hear ‘where’ as /weɜ˞/ and ‘river’ as /rivɚ/, but I may be wrong. Mihkaw napéw (talk) 18:29, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't do IPA. Can you mention any words that you know of that rhyme? I'm thinking "hair" and "liver", for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Where: /w-air/ (w+eh+er) river: /rIv-e*r/ *e is technically upside down, or a schwa... If I could handwrite, I could do it the real IPA way.. A8UDI 19:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The right way to say words like "where" and "what" are with an aspiration, as if they were spelled "hwere" or "hwat". They are often spoken without the aspiration, as homophones of "wear" or "watt" (or "wut", except that's not a word). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:10, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Mmmm I dont think that is aspiration.. Aspiration is the breath of air after a STOP consonant, specifically K, P and T. Compare: Top vs Tap. Top has a strong aspiration as you can feel the breath of air, whereas tap is still aspirated, but not as strong. Better: /Pit/ vs /Spit/ A8UDI 19:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I've got the wrong term. In any case, the right way to say "what" and "where" is with a leading soft-H sound followed by a W. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:17, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

My dictionary: /(h)wət/ or /(h)wät/. Correctomundo.. i never knew that. But languages evolve. A8UDI 19:20, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

When speaking carefully, people still say "hwere" and "hwat". In casual talk, it's often "wear" and "wut". The latter, when stretched out in real or mock incredulity, is often more like "waaat?" Languages do evolve. "night" and "knight", which are now both pronounced "nite", were supposedly once pronounced "nickt" and "kuh-nickt" respectively. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:28, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Try telling the millions of people who don't ever say it the "right" way, that they're wrong. I remember as a child being told this "right" way of saying these words, but it always sounded like we were supposed to be talking like some British aristocrat. Needless to say, this instruction was ignored then, and this latest injunction will also be ignored. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:31, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

"Latest injunction?" We're quoting Webster, so it's not very recent. Everyone I know, when not speaking slangily, says "hwat" and "hwere". The right and not-so-right ways can be fairly hard to distinguish. The old expression, "Who, what, where?" is typically pronounced "hoo, wut, wear", for example, and it's hard to hear the difference from "hoo, hwut, hwear". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:42, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

There's a similar problem with "whet", as in "to sharpen", as in "whet your appetite" or "whetstone", which are often pronounced "wet". Hard to tell whether sharpening a kuh-nife on a wet stone would work. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Exactly my point. Vast numbers of people make no distinction between the pronunciations of "wet" and "whet", or between "wear" and "where". Certain jokes rely on there being no distinction ("Where's the soap?" - Yes, it does, doesn't it.) Dictionaries are very often unreliable in informing people how to speak, so telling a universal audience such as this the "right" way of saying certain words, based on what some dictionary says, is folly. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:00, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Hence the inter-lingual pun, the Latin expression "semper ubi sub ubi". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:27, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

[denting out]— I grew up in London and Providence, R.I., so I thought that the "hw" pronunciation was just an affectation or one of Ezra Pound's many antiquarian-jocular eccentricities, but my Anglo-Scottish mother (daughter of a free-lance contributor to Cassell's English Dictionary) said "hw" is indeed the correct pronunciation. It used to be spelled that way, too, until the kind of well-meaning spelling-reformer who put the "b" (from dubitare) into "dout" came along. There's a tongue twister from theatrical elocution classes that goes (I phoneticise slightly):

Hwether the weather be cold,
Hwether the weather be hot,
We'll be together,
Hwatever the weather,
Hwether we like it or not!

And, speaking of injunctions, let us all be grateful at this time of thanks-giving to a merciful Providence that has so far not made Wikipedia truly multi-media, in the way that Encarta aspired to be. Can you imagine the endless wrangles, probably out loud rather than mediated by the need to read and type, that would arise over Received Pronunciation, newsreader's English and WP:ENGVAR rules for pronunciation? (Should Scottish-related entries be articulated in Lallans and jazz pieces described in generic Afro-American accents, etc., etc., etc.) —— Shakescene (talk) 20:18, 28 November 2009 (UTC) I forgot to mention the broad, rich vistas that a speakipedia would open for vandalism, counter-vandalism and edit wars before those Talk forum wrangles had even begun! Imagine (if you have the nerve) all the possibilities! —— Shakescene (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Hm. interesting. Round these parts that poem/doggerel ends "We'll weather the weather whatever the weather, whether we like it or not." Grutness...wha? 23:47, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has Category:Spoken articles. -- Wavelength (talk) 01:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

It also has Wikipedia:Wikivoices. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Historically, the sound usually written 'wh' is an unvoiced bilabial approximant, written [ʍ] in IPA. This is a single sound, that stands in the same relation to /w/ as /f/ bears to /v/: to pronounce it, form your lips for 'w' and blow. I'm not sure whether anybody uses this sound in any dialect of English today: as Baseball Bugs says, some dialects and registers distinguish 'wh' from 'w', but they usually realise this sound as the diphone /hw/. --ColinFine (talk) 20:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

These are definitely dialects that preserve the distinction, but not the most numerically prevalent quasi-"standard" pronunciations in either the U.K. or the U.S. (see J.C. Wells The Accents of English 1: An Introduction, p. 228 ISBN 0521-297192). The change of "hy" (often also a single voiceless sound) to "y" (i.e. "human" to "yooman" etc.) is somewhat parallel... AnonMoos (talk) 05:57, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Who pronounces "human" as "yooman"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:02, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're in many parts of the U.S., lots of people... AnonMoos (talk) 06:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

A lot of Americans say "ain't", too. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:20, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

"yooman" is big in upstate New York and surrounding areas, among all ages and social classes. It's a regional thing, not an education or register thing like "ain't". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 11:33, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I used to have a business-studies lecturer from Lincolnshire (eastern England) who would amuse us by saying "It aint ooomanly (IE "humanly") possible!". Alansplodge (talk) 13:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Whine-wine merger is all about distinguishing or not distinguishing 'wh' and 'w'. --Tango (talk) 11:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Seem to have a whole article on Phonological history of wh... AnonMoos (talk) 14:05, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Does it mention "coolwhip" though?</obligatory "In popular culture" reference> - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 21:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

i would respectfully contest the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to pronounce any words. We live in a multi-dialect world and speech is dynamic. Maybe the way some word used to be said, or how most people say it now. the judgemental factor of right or wrong irks me. how the rest of the USA pronounce river and where must be in several different ways- which one is the right one. In fact the language has changed from its' ancestory(?) and indeed is said differently in several ways here in Blighty and other English speaking countries.--91.125.95.82 (talk) 20:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

"Whar dat ribber at?" would be the pronunciation used by some especially in the rural South. The Where" gets an "ah" sound. In some areas, again southern or midwestern, "Where" might be pronounced with an "uh" rather than an "eh" sound, and it is considered a regionalism to be avoided in educated speech or broadcasting. Edison (talk) 20:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

To me it suggests 19th-century minstrel songs... AnonMoos (talk) 19:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Sanskrit word for war

I've seen a few times on internet 'fact' lists that the Sanskrit word meaning war literally translated to "the need for more cows". This sounds like, well, bull, but is there any evidence to it at all or was it just made up?

Cheers, Prokhorovka (talk) 14:52, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's an urban legend, as is clear from the fact that none of these websites specify the Sanskrit term they are referring to. Sanskrit has several words for war, such as vignahaḥ, saṃgrahāraḥ, vairāraṃbhaḥ, vairaṃ, saṃgnāmaḥ, yuddhaṃ and, raṇaṃ (from Apte English Sanskrit dictionary) that are variously based on root words suggesting obstacle, enmity, to grab or seize, and even delight; but no reference to cows. Abecedare (talk) 15:39, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Sanskrit also has many words for cow, indeed it has many words for lots of things, and most Sanskrit words have multiple meanings, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone could concoct a homophone that meant both of those things. However I can find no evidence for it in this exhaustive Sanskrit Lexicon.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:01, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Apparently the magic word is gavishti गविष्टि gáviṣṭi meltBanana 16:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification and link, meltBanana!

Here are the links to गविष्टि gaviṣṭi and गव्यु gavyu in Apte; and to gaviṣṭi and gavyaṭ in Monier-Williams. Interestingly both the meanings ("desire(-ous) of cattle/battle") are traced right back to the Rigved. Abecedare (talk) 06:15, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, cheers guys. Prokhorovka (talk) 23:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

November 29

Ann

Who is this woman? She suppose to be a Anna of Burgundy who was the bastard daughter of a Valois Duke of Burgundy.--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 05:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Via check usage, I note this image is also used on the dutch wikipedia article nl:Anna van Bourgondië. Might be worth a looksee. Nanonic (talk) 05:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

From which you can also see her husband nl:Adolf van Kleef-Ravenstein—— Shakescene (talk) 10:10, 29 November 2009 (UTC) ¶ It also gives her dates of birth (about 1435) and death (1508). Since I don't know Dutch, I can't tell whether 1470 is the date of her marriage to Adolph or just of her betrothal. There's also a useful link to the picture's source the nl:Recueil d'Arras, which shows another picture of Anne of Burgundy (presumably the same Anne), nl:Bestand:Anne van bourgondië.jpg. —— Shakescene (talk) 10:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

¶ If you click on the image, it will open the picture's file and caption (including the artist) at Wikicommons. It will also allow you to see the image at full size, which may allow you to read what I presume is either an original inscription, or at least one written closer to the time it was drawn. The Wikicommons captions says

Description Anna van bourgondië.jpg

Portrait of Anne, Duchess of Cleves. Drawing. From the Arras Codex (Recueil d'Arras). Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale.

Inscription(s): Anne bastarde de bourgogne II femme de Adolph de cleves // et de Ravesteyn
Date

16th century
Source

Jozef Van Damme, Adolf van Kleef en van de Mark, heer van Ravenstein, onuitgegeven licentiaatsverhandeling, KU Leuven, 1967.
Author

Anonymous

The image was uploaded to Wikicommons on 9 June 2009 by Vincent Steenberg with the following original information in Dutch:

|Description=Portrettekening van Anna van Bourgondië als jonge vrouw in het Recueil d'Arras. Arras, BM. |Source=Jozef Van Damme, Adolf van Kleef en van de Mark, heer van Ravenstein, onuitgegeven licentiaatsverhandeling, KU Leuven, 1967.)

The image was scanned in May 2005. My non-expert translation of the inscription would be: "Anne, bastard of Burgundy II, wife of Adolph of Cleves and of Ravensteyn". My completely ignorant translation of the title of Josef Van Damme's book (since I know no Dutch) is "Adolph of Cleves and of the Mark, Lord of Ravenstein". English Wikipedia's stub article on Adolph of Cleves, Lord of Ravenstein (1425-1492) says that

Following Beatrice's death, Adolph married his cousin Anne of Burgundy (a natural daughter of duke Philip the Good). He didn´t have issue from this second marriage.

("Natural", of course, has the same meaning here as illegitimate or bastard.) See also the sketchy genealogical links from this article for Adolph of Cleves, Lord of Ravenstein and Anne of Burgundy (not to be confused with Anne of Burgundy, 1404-1432, the Duchess of Bedford).

Adolph's first marriage in 1453 was to the Portuguese princess, Infanta Beatrice of Coimbra (1435-1462). They had two children—who I presume would have become Anne's step-children—Philip (1459-1528, a future Admiral of the Netherlands, see nl:Filips van Cleef) and Louise of Cleves.

• [I knew absolutely nothing about any of this, apart from vague and irrelevant knowledge of Anne of Cleves, before seeing the query. The evidence, as Sherlock Holmes might have said, was sitting in plain view before anyone, including you, me, Dr Watson and Inspector Lestrade, who cared to look. It may be time for a refresher course at Queen Elizabeth's School for Little Spies.]

—— Shakescene (talk) 09:54, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Datasets for phonetic and cognational analysis of natural languages.

I am starting a programming project for conlang vocabulary generation, using phoneme frequency tables and markov chains. However, I would like to be able to offer the option of weighing the generated vocabulary by natural language equivalents (translations) of supplied terms.

For this, I am searching for usable (free) datasets of two kinds, for different natural languages:

• phonetic dictionaries (a table of words for some natural language and their pronounciations according to the international phonetic alphabet or some equivalent description schema)
• cognation/etymological structure. information regarding the particles of words in natural language and (ideally) their antecedents to create an etymological tree-structure allowing for a cognation metric.

For the former I am most hopeful, as I'm sure such datasets exist. As to the latter, there may be some data employed, for example, in stemming algorithms, that give the component parts of words in various natural languages. It is even possible that someone has already undertaken the task of creating an etymological hierarchy for some languages. In which case, such data would be greatly useful.

Unfortunately, I am not a linguist, nor am I familiar with the literature or canonical tools of computational linguistics, and as such request your help finding these data.

Sincerely, -nsh 78.32.249.98 (talk) 19:06, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

For the French language, you may like to see Le Robert oral - écrit. l'orthographe par la phonétique, in which words are listed according to their pronunciations. If I remember correctly from seeing this book at the local public library many years ago, the symbols are mainly IPA symbols, but with a few variations. For some sounds, the author(s)/editor(s) devised new symbols to accommodate recent trends in vowel merging. For example, there is one symbol representing both the open sound [ɛ] and the closed sound [e]. Another new symbol represents the merging nasal vowel sounds [œ~] and [ɛ~]. As a consequence of this arrangement, homophones such as French "vair", "ver", "vers", "verre", and "vert" are listed together, as are the words "un" and "hein" with merging vowel sounds. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:25, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you please tell something more (without confusing unnecessarily) about the purpose of the table of list?

Does ‘conlang’ mean to you ‘cognate’?

Does the phoneme 'frequency' mean that the frequency is measured in a X or Y scale (e.g. in hertz) or numbers of times?. Is this meant that you are searching something not of an alphabetic order but in a frequent hierarchy?

The 'Makov chains' is fine. But what do you mean by ‘However, I would like to be able to offer the option of weighing the generated vocabulary by natural language equivalents (translations) of supplied terms’? Can you give an example of this or attach something that you have already undertaken?

This is fine--phonetic dictionaries (a table of words for some natural language and their pronunciations according to the international phonetic alphabet or some equivalent description schema)--then you are searching something that is arranged in the frequency order?

But for this--cognation/etymological structure. information regarding the particles of words in natural language and (ideally) their antecedents to create an etymological tree-structure allowing for a cognation metric--do you mean a) ‘natural language’ as any language but a non-constructed language, b) ‘particle’ as ‘verb particles’(you are not searching of nouns or just to mean for ‘form of words’), c) ‘cognation metric’ as ‘cognates’ (or the ‘metric’ is something special to you )?

Also, i think the term ‘canonical tools’ usually refers to something that is ‘traditional’ (which is not evidential empirically). So you may explain something more about this query? Mihkaw napéw (talk) 16:13, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Conlang (he presumably wants to make his artificial-language words sound like they could be from a natural langage...). AnonMoos (talk) 17:28, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

For North American English, there is the CMU Dictionary.—eric 17:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

November 30

Word for ancient military

What would be a big long English word representing ancient military, like from ancient Rome or ancient Greece? In a sentence it would be something like: The combined fighing forces in the ancient battle of xxxxxxxxxxxxxx infantry was over 100,000 combined.--64.138.237.101 (talk) 00:37, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you referring to the Peloponnesian War? Or am I missing the point? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the sentence is more than a bit ambiguous, if you ask me. If the name of a specific military unit is what you're after, some of the following categories may be useful: Category:Ancient Greek infantry divisions, Category:Military units and formations of ancient Greece, Category:Infantry units and formations of ancient Rome. decltype (talk) 00:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the lists of ancient Greek military units. I like Thureophoroi and Chalkaspides. Do you have the etymology on these words and periphery?--64.138.237.101 (talk) 12:35, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The articles tell you. Thureophoroi are "thureos-carriers" and chalkaspides are "bronze shields". Adam Bishop (talk) 14:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

If you like big words for these sort of things, check out Pentakosiomedimnoi. --Dweller (talk) 13:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

'Cream' in coffee

Do Americans really habitually put cream in their coffee, despite its unhealthyness (see saturated fat article), or by "cream" do they actually mean milk? 78.146.171.75 (talk) 12:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

As if coffee itself were actually healthy! Coffee gives a caffeine kick, but it's also bitter-tasting, so a dairy creamer (such as Half-and-half) is often used (or a Non-dairy creamer) and/or some sugar. I like espresso with a couple of lumps but no creamer. I don't think "pure" cream is used all that often. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:53, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

There are certainly Americans who refer to any white liquid they put in their coffee as "cream" regardless of whether it's actual cream, half-and-half, milk, or non-dairy creamer. This imprecision can be a great grief to people who receive something of lesser value when they ask for cream. +Angr 13:33, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

What makes cream "unhealthy"? 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Food guide pyramid#Dairy group, Dairy product#Health risks of consuming dairy products. Wavelength (talk) 17:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) in milk threathens our health. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

You'll find a lot of people don't put a lot of stock in the industry and government-sponsored "food pyramid". Cream is perfectly healthy and lower in sugar, which means it's healthier than low-fat milk if you're diabetic. Paul Davidson (talk) 02:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Not all "creams" are dairy products. (http://www.onelook.com/?w=cream&ls=a) -- Wavelength (talk) 17:23, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Commercially prepared (no hyphen) creamers contain many ingredients. (What's In Your Coffee Creamer?)

-- Wavelength (talk) 17:48, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

When I first went to the States (1998) I remember asking for coffee white, and it causing some consternation. I thought it was due to the fact that any reference to colour, as it does here, causes problems but now I wonder if it was due to the more common cultural usage of creamer. Any help out there?--91.125.206.228 (talk) 18:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

"White" for coffee is just not a common idiom in the US, even though "black" is. "With cream/milk" or "Would you like/do you take cream/milk" are common ways to refer to it. "Cream" can often mean milk or non-dairy creamer in old-fashioned settings where there is a default creamer. At Starbucks etc. you refer precisely to what you want, whether nonfat milk, whole milk, 2% milk, or soy milk. --JWB (talk) 18:59, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

What, exactly, is "half-and-half"? I know the halves refer to milk and "cream", but is that cream actual fresh cream? That is, is half-and-half a blend of actual milk and actual cream, or just a descriptor for, say, thickened milk or diluted cream? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

See Half-and-half#Dairy product or ask Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mixed dairy products. — Sebastian 23:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Actual cream is certainly traditional (and there's nothing unhealthy about it). It significantly adds to the richness and smoothness of the coffee. However, many people might add regular milk or commercial creamer instead and still call it cream. Paul Davidson (talk) 02:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

There's a lot of rot talked about whether certain foods are "healthy" or "unhealthy". You can't just say that any particular food is either one or the other, without taking into account the context in which, and the quantity of which, it is eaten, and the particular metabolic and allergenic circumstances of the eater. Eating 5 kilos of "healthy" broccoli at a single sitting would do you no good at all. Eating small quantities of "unhealthy" cream or chocolate would do most people no harm. Eating even minuscule quantities of "nutritious" peanuts could kill a peanut-intolerant person. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:09, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, it could kill a peanut-allergic person. I doubt it would kill a peanut-intolerant person, although it looks like anaphylaxis is an rare symptom of intolerance. </life-saving pedantry> 86.166.148.95 (talk) 20:41, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Appointment

What's the word for when someone in power picks a family member for an appointed position? I know there's a word for it, but I can't remember what it is. 74.111.69.72 (talk) 16:35, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Nepotism. Nanonic (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

A line from Allan Sherman's version of "When I Was a Lad": "So I thank old Yale / And I thank the Lord / And I also thank my father / Who is chairman of the board..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Or Cronyism. You'll find you get a lot of references to 'cronies' when reading political commentary. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:10, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Foal-boat split?

On our IPA for English, it says:

oʊ boat, code, foal, bone, go

And I see plenty of other reputable-looking resources on English vowels that say this, so it seems pretty standard.

For me, the vowel in foal, pole, poll, troll, mole is not the vowel in boat, code, bone, go, show. I'm not just being thrown by the l, since I can say foal with the vowel in boat: it just sounds weird. Equally, I can say boat with the vowel from foal, and it sounds weird. I think the vowel in foal is further back?

I'd quite like to read something about this, or at least where it occurs both in terms of accents and in terms of context. I'm not having any luck with Google, but then you might not have luck finding the foot-strut split if you didn't know those were the poster words. Does anyone know of what I speak? 86.166.148.95 (talk) 23:21, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like a coarticulation issue to me. Because the first set of words end in dark L, the /o/ gets pulled back, as you suggested. (Although it should also be noted that dark L itself is vowel-like, so some of the different sound you hear could actually be the l rather than the o.) But the difference is not phonemic--that is to say, non-trained native speakers consider it the same sound, just as they consider the [t] in stop and the [t^h] in top to be the same sound. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:24, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, the OP is presumably a non-trained native speaker, and obviously considers it a different sound. A better way to explain non-phonemic, short of linking to the artice, may be to say: There are no two words which only differ in the pronunciation of /oʊ/. — Sebastian 23:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't detect any difference in how I pronounce the diphthong in all those words. Paul Davidson (talk) 02:12, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I can. I know exactly what the OP means, although I can't explain it; it seems like foal, pole, etc, don't have diphthongs, although I don't know if that's the real reason. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:51, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

In the American south, at least, I can imagine them saying "foh-wul, poh-wul, etc." but I think they would say boat, code, etc., without the two-syllable effect. And I think the editors above are right, that the "L" is what's doing it, like it was "UL". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:05, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The OP's IP address implies he's from the UK, and I know that there are varieties of English English, particularly in and around London, where the GOAT vowel is very different before /l/ in the same syllable, so that mole and moat have different vowels. There can even be a few minimal pairs, though, because the mole variety is heard also when a suffix has been added, so that wholly and holey (i.e. full of holes) have the vowel of mole, while holy has the vowel of moat. John C. Wells has blogged about this here. See also English-language vowel changes before historic l#Wholly-holy split. +Angr 06:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know anything either, but the "co" in "code" and that in "cold" are different to me, as are the "mo" in "mowed" and "mo[u]ld", the "so" in "sowed" and "sold", and the "go" in "goad" and "gold". —— Shakescene (talk) 12:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I speak RP (give or take) and I think the main difference between the vowels that I use for 'foal' and 'boat' is that the vowel is 'foal' is slightly longer (probably not sufficiently longer to justify one of those colon-like things in the IPA, but noticeably longer). However, that could be the 'l' tricking me by being vowel-like. I don't pronounce the 'oa' as a diphthong, but I could interpret 'foal' as having a diphthong of the 'oa' vowel and a schwa from the 'l'. --Tango (talk) 12:48, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys, this is really helpful! The information so far seems to fit, since I couldn't think of an example of the foal vowel that didn't finish on an l. Good call on the wholly-holy, Angr. :-) I'm off to read the links. And yes, RP (give or take). 86.166.148.95 (talk) 16:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

December 1

PIE cognates

Is the English word SAME cognate with the Greek syn? (as in syntax, symposium, etc) thanks

Duomillia (talk) 03:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

No, but it is cognate with "homos", in the same way that "six" and "seven" are cognate with "hex" and "hepta". Apparently "syn-" is from an older Greek form "ksun" which doesn't seem to be related to anything in English. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:48, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Another PIE. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand this source has them cognate. --Cam (talk) 06:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Kind of. "(Together) with" is the way they define "syn". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, and that page is kind of all over the place...the source for "syn" is Webster's, while for some other words they are using IE etymological dictionaries, so what's going on? Did the compiler just list every word that sounded kind of maybe sort of similar? Adam Bishop (talk) 21:38, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots seems quite sure that syn- derives from *ksun (Adam is correct that there don't seem to be any native English descendants, although two words with which most folks are familiar—soviet and Sputnik—are related), whereas same comes from a completely different root, *sem-. Deor (talk) 22:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm, yeah, I guess there may be some wishful thinking at my UT link. My syn-cerest apologies. :-) --Cam (talk) 01:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

"Spill" in the context of Australian politics

The Liberal Party of Australia just changed its leader. In Australian sources, and in the linked article for that matter, the process (or part of it) seems to be described as a "spill" (often "leadership spill"). I've not heard this word used like that elsewhere, and was wondering whether the usage just Australian, and what its origins are. The best explanations I can get using a dictionary are that it relates to "spill blood", or that it relates to the less common use of the word to mean "fall" or "stumble". (That would make sense if "spill" refers simply to the toppling of the current leader and not the election of a new one — does it?). Am I correct, or is there something I'm missing? -- 203.97.105.173 (talk) 04:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Spill: to stumble, trip up, fall down or put a foot wrong.DOR (HK) (talk) 07:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The mental image I always have is of a bunch of party leadership positions written on pieces of paper in a hat being overturned (= spilt as in milk) onto a table, where interested persons can then stake their claims to whichever job or jobs they want. In this case, the hat contained only one piece of paper, the leader's position. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:38, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

SOED suggests that it is an Australian term only, defining it thus: "spill noun [ORIGIN from the verb.] ... 4 A vacating of all or several posts of a parliamentary party to allow reorganization after an important change of office. Austral. M20." Mitch Ames (talk) 12:41, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The word is first recorded by the OED in Jack Lang's I Remember (1956) in reference to the political turmoil of 1929-32, the beginning of the great depression and James Scullin's term as prime minister. Whether the word was used in this sense in the 30s or was an coining by Lang in his 50s book is unclear. meltBanana 13:52, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

A leadership spill reminds me of a landslide victory. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it must be an Australian only term, since it's not used here in New Zealand, and we're usually the first overseas country to pick up Aussieisms (for instance, the term "rort" is slowly entering the NZ vocabulary). Grutness...wha? 23:02, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all the answers. -- 203.97.105.173 (talk) 04:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Mob Rules

Let's say there's a violent mob making a demostration outside a building, and the security fails to keep them at bay and the people manages to get inside it. Which the best correct word in english for such a situation? Invasion? Overrun? Taking over? Something else? MBelgrano (talk) 13:25, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

To my American ears, "overrun" and "taking over" would be the best options from those given. Invasion would suggest a military and a country being involved. Dismas|^(talk) 13:51, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Riot? Googlemeister (talk) 15:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Once the demonstrators have taken over the building, the word "occupation" and its related forms would be applicable. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I would say that the mob was storming the building when they were in the process of overcoming the security personnel. I agree with 87.81 that, once they had overcome security, the building would be occupied, or, as others have said taken over. Marco polo (talk) 16:21, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

In the US when student radicals broke into a campus building, such as a President's office or the Administration building, newspapers often referred to them having "occupied the building." They prevented the officials who worked there from performing their functions. If they had "taken over" the building they might have started admitting students, issuing diplomas, and performing other other functions normally done there, but the term "took over" was also sometimes used:[2]. A legacy of the U.S. civil right movement of the 1960's is the use of the term "sit-in" to describe nonviolent occupation. This may in turn have come from the 1930's term "Sitdown strike" in which workers on strike refused to leave the plant, to prevent strike-breaking scabs from replacing them. Edison (talk) 17:55, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Once the students or demonstrators (disdaining the term "mob") had taken over the building, with or without physical force, in the 1960's, they would often—in half-serious, half-jocular allusion to Ike, Ché, Ho Chi Minh and Daniel Cohn-Bendit—declare that it had been "liberated". But this of course would not be an objective description for a non-partisan research paper, newspaper story or Wikipedia article. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

The Iran hostage crisis of 1979, which sank Jimmy Carter's Presidency and put us on the road to where we are today with Iran, was referred to as a "takeover" and subsequently an "occupation". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Station wagons

Why are station wagons referred to as "estate cars" in British English? Is it solely because of luxury car makers calling their station wagons "estate" and "touring" and such and the single term of "estate" just sticking? Please forgive me for using the term British. I mean no offense. The station wagon article uses the term and it doesn't seem to be vandalism due to the fact that we have a British English article and all. Dismas|^(talk) 13:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Are we not allowed to say British English anymore? FreeMorpheme (talk) 14:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

News to me... I'd certainly like to know why "British" is now an offensive word - should I be offended by my passport? --Tango (talk) 17:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems to be common practice in some areas of the world (America) to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'Britain', rather than using that term to refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as the UK government and most Britons do. It then follows that they assume the term 'British' must only refer to the island of Great Britain, rather than the UK. Evidence that the UK government and most Britons use the adjective 'British' to refer to the country not the island is ignored, or treated as evidence that everyone else is wrong and the speaker is the sole voice of reason. Combined with genuine issues to do with what to call the islands that include Ireland and Great Britain, and the charged ground of when to use 'Scottish', 'English', 'Welsh', 'Irish,' 'British', it is fair to assume that a person not from these islands might be confused and feel it safer to apologise at every use, rather than risk the explosion. They might even have received the impression that every use of 'British' is offensive, but not seem to have an alternative to use. 86.166.148.95 (talk) 18:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much got it there. Americans, as a general rule, don't know when it's offensive to say "British". You can call an American a 'yank' or 'yankee' and we'll know what you mean. Even if the American being referred to is from a Southern state. They may feign offense but they know what you meant and normally don't get too bent out of shape about it. Additionally, another American may be referred to as a 'colonial' (not that we hear it much over here) even though they are not from one of the original 13 colonies that are now US states. And again, we'll know what you mean and not be offended. But call someone from one of those islands over there by the wrong term and you'll wish you'd have shagged the queen since that would be a less objectionable offense. And these people seem to congregate on the Ref desks. So, for my questions here, I apologize in advance, I clearly state that questions are not for medical advice, and I clearly define when I'm asking a homework question. Dismas|^(talk) 05:46, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Judging by the British Isles naming dispute on and off Wikipedia, I think it's fair to say that the peoples from those islands north of France can't agree on when it's offensive either. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 14:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Generally you are safe with "British". It's saying "English" or "England" when you mean the whole UK that tends to offend some people (usually the Scottish). --Tango (talk) 15:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Generally you are safe with "British" unless you're talking about Ireland or anyone from there. If you need to refer to someone or thing from Northern Ireland, you're safest not using either "British" or "Irish": someone is sure to take offence. I have the greatest sympathy for the confusion all of this causes. 86.166.148.95 (talk) 21:28, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I can't answer the question directly, but estate cars used to be known as "shooting brakes" back in the day (about 50 - 60 years ago!). I wonder why the usage changed? --TammyMoet (talk) 14:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The best dictionary definition for "estate car" I have been able to turn up (Collins English Dictionary of the English Language, Glasgow, Feb 1979) is "a car with a comparatively long body containing a large carrying space, reached through a rear door: usually the back seats can be folded forward to increase the carrying space." Unfortunately, no derivation is given.

One of the commoner meanings of the word "estate" in the UK is along the lines of "a house in the country with extensive farming or other land", from which the term "Estate Agent" (US: "Realtor") also derives. One of the pursuits of people who own such estates was/is shooting game birds, etc. I suggest, without being able to cite corroborative evidence, that when only relatively rich people could afford cars, the design of car called both a "shooting brake" and an "estate car" was in the UK specifically intended for driving around such estates with accoutrements such as muddy wellington boots, lunch hampers and retriever dogs, or on non-shooting days other bulky estate-maintenance-related equipment, in the back section, and although increasing wealth has greatly broadened the ownership and uses of such cars, the name has stuck. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 16:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

So, to reverse the question, why are estate cars called "station wagons" in US English? Is there any relation to the Australian "station", meaning a large farm or ranch? If so, the two names are very close, if an estate car is for driving round your estate.. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

According to dictionary.com: Originally a covered wagon used to convey passengers from a train station to their hotel.. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

They're always called "station wagons" in Australia, but I assumed that was an American term originally because we don't otherwise use "wagon" to mean any kind of motorised vehicle. "Station wagon" is never connected to the meaning of "station" described by Andrew, because most owners are city dwellers who've never seen a cattle station in their lives. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

[3].—eric 18:51, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that seems to confirm that estate cars are so named because of their uses on estates. And to the above who didn't know why Americans call them station wagons, it's in the station wagon article. The cars were used to carry people and their luggage from train stations. Thus 'station wagon'. Dismas|^(talk) 05:46, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

December 2

Fiat

In the Village Pump there is a thread about people doing something "by fiat". Despite I can guess the idea from the context, what does "fiat" means? Is it a real word, or is it an acronym of something else, such as LOL or IMHO? I didn't want to interrupt the thread with such an off-topic question, so I prefered to ask somewhere else MBelgrano (talk) 12:54, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It's Latin. See wikt:fiat. Algebraist 12:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia also has an article on Fiat (policy debate), but it's so badly written you'll probably be more confused rather than less if you read it. +Angr 13:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Near as I can tell "by fiat" (by "let it be done" - possibly from the verb "facere", "to do") is essentially the same as "by executive order". The car company called Fiat was originally an acronym. That article doesn't seem to say if they intentionally named it for "fiat" or whether it was a coincidence. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:58, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

This even led to jokes about Fiat having bribed the Roman Curia to promote their brand through product placement in Pater noster ("Fiat voluntas Tua"). — Kpalion^(talk) 17:54, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It's actually from fio which functions as the passive of facere but is etymologically unrelated to it. +Angr 14:03, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

See fiat lux. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

"See me right" in US English

I was listening to One Day Like This, by the magnificently named Elbow, and it occurred to me that the lyrics "One day like this a year'd see me right" includes not just colloquial ENGVAR but a British English colloquialism that isn't fantastically widespread, even in Britain.

My question is, when Americans (in particular) hear this lyric, do they intuitively understand the expression because of context? Or is the expression well known in America? Or are you baffled? I appreciate I'm asking for some subjective opinions, rather than generalising. I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who don't have much contact with Brits, especially northerners, like the members of Elbow.

Ta! --Dweller (talk) 15:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'll make a stab at it. I am not the most insular American, but I've never lived in the United Kingdom, and I'm not familiar with the song. The meaning of this lyric is not at all transparent to me, and the idiom is certainly not used in my variety of English. If I had to guess, I'd guess that "see me right" means something like "satisfy me". That is just an intuitive hunch, and I'm not sure where it comes from. Marco polo (talk) 16:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Also never been to the UK, though I have seen a fair number of Britcoms (haven't heard the song though). My initial impression is that it's talking about money, and that the day in question was particularly profitable - enough to live off of for a year. I also get the impression that on most days the speaker doesn't make much if any money. This impression is probably colored by the recent Black Friday in the US - a very large shopping day which puts retailers "in the black" (makes them profitable) for the year. -- 128.104.112.95 (talk) 17:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Again, American, never been to the UK, and watch a few shows like Dr Who and Top Gear. I'd take it the same as Marco Polo above. So who's right? Dismas|^(talk) 22:02, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm American, I have been to the UK on multiple occasions, I attend a Church of England church every week where at least 30% of the congregation is British, and I currently work with a woman from Yorkshire and a man from Lancashire, and I've still never heard this figure of speech. I too can only guess at what it might mean, namely "One day like this a year would be enough for me". +Angr 07:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

(native speaker here) You're both right, Marco and 128.104: obviously it depends on context. In the context of the song - a man waking up on a sunny day and realising for the first time he's in love - tells you it's Marco's version that's in use here. The idea is "if I only had one day like this each year I would be happy". We tend to use the second meaning in the sense of settling a debt. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm English but haven't returned to the UK from the States in four decades. Isn't there also sometimes an implication of something that will look after you, provide for you or protect you (not necessarily financially) as in "Good seamanship and good weather will see this ship right", "Listen to nurse, and she'll see you right" or "Just you see, British grit, the R.A.F. and Mr Churchill will see us right" — or is that more "see [us] through"? —— Shakescene (talk) 12:12, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I have no right to exist in this thread, but I'm going to anyway. The expression is sometimes heard in Australia, where it usually means someone is being assured they'll not be left uncompensated or out of pocket as a result of something they've been asked to do. -- JackofOz (talk) 12:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Interesting stuff guys, thanks. Yes, it's about being satisfied. In London colloquialism, we're more likely to say "that'd do me fine" or "that'd do me just fine" or just "that'd do". --Dweller (talk) 13:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd go along with JackofOz's definition above being equally applicable to English English. Bazza (talk) 14:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Rounded front vowels in English

As you can see from my IP, I'm no native speaker of English. I noticed some sounds that seem to be rounded front vowels in English. I know that there are some dialects which feature those vowels, like [y] and [ʏ] in Scottish, [ʉ:] in Australian or [ø:] in SAfrican English. But I also hear those vowels in "normal" English (BE and AE). So I hear for example [bʏɹi] instead of [bɛɹi] for "bury". And /ɜ:/ seems to be rounded for me, like [œ:] or [ɞ:]: "nurse" is [nœ:s]. Are my ears fooling me? Btw, the creator of Volapük also heard those rounded vowels ;) --88.73.110.160 (talk) 17:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Ahem... an IP address in Germany does not necessarily make one a non-native speaker of English. +Angr 17:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It probably depends on the region. I'm from rural Pennsylvania and my vowel in "nurse" is definitely [ɝ] (it's quite ugly). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:00, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you are right that front vowels are rounded in certain contexts in certain (nonstandard) varieties of English. This rounding is not phonemic, however. I would not be surprised to hear [bʏɹi] for bury, though offhand I can't say which varieties of English would have that pronunciation. A well-known California pronunciation of the word dude is [dy:d]. Certainly the vowel in nurse is rounded in some non-rhotic varieties of English, though not in Received Pronunciation. Marco polo (talk) 18:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the question is, since I'm only seeing little boxes for the IPA's. About the other thing, the ones who say "dyude" also say "cyool". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I've added IPA encoding so more editors can see the IPA.— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:40, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Not only is the vowel of bird rounded in many dialects (especially rhotic ones) but the acoustic similarities with front rounded vowels (or, more generally, non-back rounded vowels) are so strong that many English speakers pronounce Joseph Goebbels's name as [ˈɡɝbəlz] (as if it were spelled Gerbles) and Russian speakers attempting to pronounce this vowel in English tend to palatalize the preceding consonant (because a preceding palatalized consonant causes /o/ to be more front in Russian) so that bird is pronounced [bʲɵ̞d]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:40, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Often /r/ and /s/ show rounding which can spread (especially to vowels) since rounding is underspecified in English vowel phonology. Synchronism (talk) 01:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

/s/? I'd heard the postalveolar consonants in English were rounded, but not /s/. You sure you got that right? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:34, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Well what I wrote was hearsay too, but I think this [4] might have something to that effect.Synchronism (talk) 05:28, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Finnish

How do you say (and pronounce) in Finnish:

• Look at the socks!
• Look at the sea!
• Look at the mink!

--151.51.22.147 (talk) 20:21, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

• Katsokaa sukat!

• Katsokaa meri!
• Katsokaa minkki!

--KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 19:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

These sentences are ungrammatical, the object needs to be in the partitive case. Also, katsokaa is plural, while the English look is ambigous. With singular forms the translations would be:

• Katso sukkia
• Katso merta
• Katso minkkiä

These phrases sound similar to Italian cazzo succhia, cazzo merda and cazzo minchia, all of which have a rather vulgar meaning. At least the cazzo merda one is a well-known joke, I guess that's the reason why the (Italian) IP asked the question. --BishkekRocks (talk) 20:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Meaning of the phrase "touch Indians"

On his nationally syndicated (USA) radio show, Dennis Miller uses the phrase "touch Indians" in the following context. When he implores listeners to call the show, he says something like "Give me a call so we can touch Indians". What is the etymology of that phrase?Chief41074 (talk) 20:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's one answer. --LarryMac | Talk 20:40, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Eleven minutes; I'm impressed. ThanksChief41074 (talk) 21:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Knowing Miller's enjoyment of extremely obscure references, it makes sense. Lost in America. Go out and see the real America. Touch Indians. Yup. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I would like to have met................

Or......I would have liked to meet.....Or.......I would have liked to have met.......

I am English with a somewhat dusty English Language qualification but the older I get, the more uncertain I become about correct usages such as those above. Is it me, or this incredibly complex language? And is there any hope for me??? 92.21.53.35 (talk) 23:42, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for saying that - I'm glad I'm not alone! I was similarly confused about word order the other day, and Teratornis had a nice reply at User:Teratornis#Simple English Wikipedia. — Sebastian 00:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that both possibilities you suggest are technically acceptable, but technically have different meanings: "I would have liked to meet" means "At some point in the past, I wanted to meet". "I would have liked to have met" means something like "At some point in the past, I wished that further in the past I had met". You probably don't often need to express the second thought, and people often use the second expression when they really want to express the first thought, so even if you wanted to express the second thought, people would probably think that you were expressing the first thought poorly. So "I would like to have met" is probably what you want. Marco polo (talk) 02:40, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

(out) "Is it me, or this incredibly complex language?" Every natural language is complex. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:41, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

December 3

Double oxymoron/paradox

Hi. Consider the following phrase "I am not claiming to be a false prophet". Is it a double (or triple) oxymoron, or a paradox, or something else altogether? It does not seem to work as a regular paradox because changing one word does not seem to reverse its meaning. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 00:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

You could consider it a form of litotes, with an added double negative. The whole makes for a subtle attempt to claim to be a true prophet when appearing to do the opposite. Grutness...wha? 00:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It's kind of an ambiguity. He's denying that he's a false prophet. But is he thereby asserting that he's a true prophet? Or is he denying being any type of prophet? From just that one sentence, you can't tell. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Slightly off-topic, but I'm reminded of an incident a few years ago in a pub where my Science Fiction group used to meet twice monthly to discuss both SF/F and other literary, scientific and philosophical matters of interest to us. One of the daily regulars who didn't enjoy having his near-solitude interrupted once got up and left in a huff with the parting admonition of "You lot should stop pretending to be pseudo-intellectuals!" 87.81.230.195 (talk) 13:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

See also excluded middle and fallacy of the excluded middle. -- 128.104.112.95 (talk) 16:21, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how this is an oxymoron or a paradox at all. It means precisely what it says. Whether the person is saying he's a 'true prophet' or just saying he's not claiming to be anything, can be derived easily from context. (Although, if we're getting into that issue...when would this ever be uttered anyway? Who would ever call himself a false prophet, and who would accuse someone of doing such?) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. "I am not claiming to be a false prophet" would only ever be uttered with the intent to obfuscate. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 17:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe that's where Astro's notion of paradox comes in. One does not 'claim' to be a bank robber, rapist or murderer unless one is proud to be such, but one might 'admit' or 'acknowledge' it. So, if someone were claiming to be a false prophet, they'd be in the business of obfuscation to begin with, and proud of it. So, the original sentence could be seen as "I'm not admitting to being a false prophet ... because it doesn't suit my present purposes to make such an admission; but I'm not denying it either, because I am in fact a false prophet, and proud of it". That is, obfuscating about being an obfuscator. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Knights and Knaves.Synchronism (talk) 20:47, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

J and Y in English

In English, J is pronounced as in Jane, but everwhere else it is a Y word. For instance, Jew, Jerusalem, Jericho and Jesus are ALL Y words in their original Hebrew. Count Yorga sounds like a frightening name, but replace the Y with a J and you get the familiar George - Count George, Vampire - doesn't have quite the same impact, does it? What is this called and how did it come about? Myles325a (talk) 00:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

don't you get "Jorga"? :-s Rimush (talk) 10:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The article J has a lot of information about the letter. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

That's not universal. For example, in Spanish it's a guttural sound similar to the "ch" in Loch. And in French it's like a "zh", which is kind of a transitional stage to the English "j". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It went the other way around, [d͡ʒ] (English "j") was a transitional stage to the current [ʒ] in French. — Emil J. 14:35, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It's due to the general shift of initial "y" to "j" (i.e. "dzh") that happened from Latin to Old French. For example, the Latin word Iudicem (pronounced yoodickem) became "juge" in French, resulting in the English word "judge". However, "Yorga" does not have the same origin, but would appear to be due to the Greek shift of "g" to "y" before "i" and "e" vowels, or something similar... AnonMoos (talk) 07:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

More in general, from Latin to Romance languages. --pma (talk) 13:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Capitalising the i in iudicem creates the illusion that it's a lower case el. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

A similar question was asked two months ago. See: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 October 6 #The two pronunciation systems of J and Y. — Kpalion^(talk) 11:07, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

How do you translate "勢" in Chinese into English?

What would be a good English translation of the Chinese ideogram "勢"? The character is used in terms and expressions like "形勢", "勢力", "氣勢", "勢均力敵", "大勢已去". The character is in the title of Chapter Five of The Art of War. I've seen it translated as "potential energy" or "momentum" in that context (which I don't think are very good translations.) Is there a word in English with a closely matched meaning? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.114.146.196 (talk) 04:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I've added a Wiktionary link to the character. --JWB (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

WWWJDIC has momentum, energy, and military strength, and several of the compounds containing the character have translations containing "force". --JWB (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

There's not really a "translation" for single characters like this. It is used in many compound words, but by itself only has a very broad, general meaning. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, just FYI, Chinese characters are not really "ideograms", they are more like logograms; the distinction may seem trivial, but it was quite a source of contention in the past. For more information see Ideogram#Chinese characters and Chinese character classification. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

To me, there's broad concept that's common to the occurrences of "勢" in the examples I gave. The way I'd phrase it, it refers to some abstract notion of strength or power that's based on the totality of factors and circumstances. I tried to come up with a good English translation that matches that meaning, but couldn't. --173.49.10.60 (talk) 13:40, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

That's what I said above. Modern Standard Mandarin is mostly a bisyllabic language, so most characters like this only have "general concepts" and cannot be translated directly. In Classical Chinese, some of these characters did have just one meaning and could be translated, as they were full words by themselves (although their meanings may have varied depending on the context), but today, they are only used as parts of compound words. Oftentimes these compound words are built out of analogy to the broader connotations of the characters, and sometimes one character has more "weight" in the word than others (for example, in words like 火车 "train" and 汽车 "car", the character 车 for vehicles gives a lot more to the word's meaning than 火 'fire' and 汽 'steam'; you certainly would not take 汽车 as evidence that 汽's broad meaning has something to do with vehicles or transportation). Therefore, there's not really one single translation for most of these, as their meanings have spread out through analogy and metaphor and they are never used by themselves anyway. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Single or double quotes when referring to a word

For example, is it:

I like the word 'book.'

or

I like the word "book."

20.137.18.50 (talk) 14:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

British or American English rules? Googlemeister (talk) 14:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Let's say American. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 14:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Double, unless you're already within a larger double-quoted phrase. But outside of formal contexts it doesn't really matter. For instance, in conversations on Wikipedia, I use whichever one I feel like at the moment. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[ec] The American standard is to use double quotes in most cases, including this one. Quotes could be used in this case. However, the house style where I work is to make a word called out like this italic:

I like the word book.

I prefer this style, since it makes a distinction between a word under discussion and an actual direct quotation. Marco polo (talk) 15:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[double edit-conflict] I'd use italics rather than quotation marks: I like the word book. Usual American usage is to use double quotes whenever you put anything in quotation marks (except quotes within quotes), but in linguistics the tradition is to use single quotes for English glosses of foreign words thus: I like the German word Buch 'book'. +Angr 15:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

In which circumstances would the period/full stop be outside of the quotes? 99.166.95.142 (talk) 19:27, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It simply depends on what style you're using. The Wikipedia manual of style mandates that punctuation be placed outside the closing quotation marks in such cases, and I believe that's the practice advocated in British style manuals. U.S. manuals, on the other hand, tend to advocate punctuation inside the closing quotes. I agree, however, with the respondents above who suggest that italicization rather than quoting is the usual treatment of isolated words referred to as words. Deor (talk) 19:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

There is some related information at Use–mention distinction. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Tasty appetite

If your 'carnal appetite' is satiated, what is the word for your stomach being full? Your comestible appetite satiated? It's something obvious, isn't it? FreeMorpheme (talk) 16:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I think so: "satiated". --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 17:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Ha! Another word for my collection of words that are shorter in German! It only has one syllable: "satt". If we assume "that languages organize their lexicons in the way that the most frequent words become the shortest ones"[5], it would seem to indicate that Germans talk more about being satiated. Of course, that's only superficially true, since English speakers just talk about being "full" instead. — Sebastian 17:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Does satiated = sated? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

There does seem to be something of a connotation that "satiated" is an excess, while "sated" is just full. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 19:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

"Carnal appetite" means sexual appetite: is that what you mean? Afterwards you would be sated. 89.242.105.246 (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Offered to

It says on the front page today of Wikipedia "... that in the 1920s the Italian ambassador to the United States offered the U.S. authorities to disband the Fascist League of North America." This is bad grammar where I live in the UK; a more correct thing to write would be "offered to the US authorities". Is "offered the US authorities" correct in American english please? 89.242.105.246 (talk) 21:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)