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April 4

Reading figures of section

As for figures of legal section, such as, "section 1234 of the Constitution," it should be read:

1. "Section one two three four of..." or
2. "Section one thousand, two hundred and thirty four of..."
3. Or it should be elsewise read.

Thank you, once again. — 118.172.68.170 (talk) 04:37, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Probably "section twelve thirty-four". rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:24, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

So, "section 103" is read "section one o/zero three," isn't that correct?

And what about "section 103-2" ("one o three dash two" ?), and "section 103/2" ("...slash two" ?).

Moreover, is that a fomal way of reading figures of section?

With thankfulness,, ^^

— 118.172.68.170 (talk) 05:57, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Usually it is "one o three" and not "one zero three". If there is a dash or slash, it should be read, but usually law texts use the § symbol, which is read "section".

In Britain, the / is called "stroke", as in "27B stroke six". Shii (tock) 17:43, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

"Tragedy" as generic term for misfortune or disaster

The use of the word "tragedy" as a generic term for any misfortune or disaster (whether or not it could fairly be called tragic according to the more proper use of the term involving a misfortune having its origin in a great man's "missing the mark" in a way wholly consistent with his character)dates back to about 1500. Does anyone know when this usage became commonplace? Fifty years ago, were accidents and natural processes often called "tragic"? What about 100 years ago? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.119.240 (talk) 05:26, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Exaggeration is older than time itself a very old practice. Probably the first person or few people to use the word in this sense were also the first to use it in an exaggerated manner. If you're only interested in recent history, I imagine if you looked, there'd be a correlation between the rise of literary education, a rise in usage of the word, and a rise in exaggerated use of it.
(Imperfect understanding of precisely defined words is also a time honored tradition :p) ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

A bit of hunting through Google News Search gave me the impression that 50 years ago disasters such as shipwrecks were commonly called "tragic", and 100 years ago the term was reserved for personal misfortune, and 150 years ago there had to be some kind of connection to classical history, the stage, or poetry; but you might form a different impression. 81.131.23.57 (talk) 11:55, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Assuming the information is correct, Hamlet, which was written over 400 years ago, is properly titled The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In more recent times, Mel Brooks has been quoted as saying, "Tragedy is if I have a hangnail. Comedy is if you get killed." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:59, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

As you say, tragedy has been used to mean a disaster since 1500, along side the tragedy of an individual meaning, and the nature of english someone will still probably try to claim that calling a huge fire a tragedy is wrong. The Tragedy of Pelee: A Narrative of Personal Experience and Observation in Martinique by George Kennan (a 1902 volcanic eruption), The Tragedy of the Korosko (1898), The Tragedy of the Negro in America: a Condensed History of the Enslavement, Sufferings, Emancipation, Present Condition and Progress of the Negro Race in the United States of America by P. Thomas Stanford (1897) are a few of the early use in the more modern sense. Also tragic in the manner of tragedy: An American field of Mars; or A universal history of all the important tragic events that have occurred in the United States of North America... by Benjamin Eggleston (1839). Calamity or disaster would have been more common words for this kind of tragedy, as to when and why tragedy supplanted them, I would guess in part it was due to the rise in melodrama. The classical rules of drama were followed frequently in the renaissance but there was a steady move away from them, works were too varied to be classed as either only comedy or tragedy. Tragedy turned from meaning one type of drama you could expect to go see and became a more abstruse definition which the people wanting entertainment didn't care to know. meltBanana 21:05, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all for your wonderful, thoughtful answers! Special thanks to those of you who took the time to research the answer to this question. 71.104.119.240 (talk) 05:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"Cowboy" builder?

Our article on the Fawlty Towers episode, "A Touch of Class", refers to Mr. O'Reilly as "a 'cowboy' builder". Is this slang? What is a "cowboy" builder? Is it similar to a shade tree mechanic? Dismas|^(talk) 10:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22cowboy%20builder%22 ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:11, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Should have known to check Urban Dictionary. Dismas|^(talk) 13:23, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

In the UK, a common sign on the vans of builders, plumbers or electricians of south Asian origin; "You've had the cowboys, now try the Indians!". Alansplodge (talk) 13:45, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd be afraid of being scalped. :-) StuRat (talk) 14:17, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

OOI, the point of that particular line is that he quite clearly is a cowboy builder. It's dramatic irony in the sense the audience know that, and have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen (as you almost certainly did). - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 19:49, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I wonder why there's an association between someone who herds cattle and a poor builder. Perhaps there was a particularly poor builder who liked to wear western clothes (cowboy hat and boots) ? StuRat (talk) 14:19, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Mr Google has let me down on the etymology of this one, but I can take a guess. A UK children's comic character called Desperate Dan has been around since the 1930s[1]. He's a larger-than life cowboy who lives in a (wierdly British) wild-west town and is always clumsily breaking things (he's the world's strongest man) and bodging them back together again. Maybe that's the association in the British psyche between cowboys and careless workmanship. Unless anyone knows better? Alansplodge (talk) 16:00, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

In the US, at least, cowboys are associated with the Wild West, the American Frontier that was wild and lawless, as compared to the more established cities to the east. The archetypal cowboy is ill mannered and crude, prone to gambling and drinking, has little regard for the law, is hot tempered, and is likely to rush into things with little consideration. Even the cowboy lawmen, though generally regarded favorably, dispense frontier justice. Calling someone a "cowboy" (in the US) implies that they are reckless (e.g "cowboy diplomacy"). See also Cowboy#Negative associations. -- 174.31.194.126 (talk) 17:15, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The OED's first reference to unscrupulous tradesmen is from The Times in 1972. Seems to have come to the UK from the earlier US meaning of a reckless driver, first recorded 1942 and apparently frequently used to refer to the juvenile delinquents of the 50s. Drugstore cowboy was used to refer to an idle young man, who wanted to be a cowboy and who hung around drugstores since at least the 20s. One other fairly negative use of the word is almost buried in the cowboy article is Claudius Smith's militant group. meltBanana 19:49, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if a "cowboy builder" is similar to a "shade tree mechanic". What is a "shade tree mechanic"? Here in the UK, a cowboy builder is the type of incompetant builder who will use substandard materials and/or deliberately breach regulations if it will help him make more money while avoiding as much actual work as possible. The van with "You've had the cowboys, now try the Indians!" written on the side is a deliberate play on the term cowboy builder, and is used by builders of south asian descent to claim they are better than the usual cowboy builders. Whether they actually are any better I have no idea. Astronaut (talk) 03:11, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Shadetree Mechanic (a TV series named after the slang). Apparently it means amateur. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 14:06, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

To me, that name implies a lazy mechanic who takes a nap under a shady tree, when they should be working. StuRat (talk) 14:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe bad builders became called cowboys because they habitually wear blue denim jeans rather than overalls or smarter trousers. Denim jeans are American clothing associated (in the minds of British people) with cowboys. Someone is probably going to point out that you should not wear jeans when riding horses, unless you use chaps, but nethertheless. During the seventies, when the expression began use, high-heeled cowboy boots for men were in fashion. It may also allude to the machismo and fly-by-night qualities sterotypically associated with cowboys. 84.13.53.211 (talk) 12:24, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The blue jeans explanation sounds like a bit of etymythology to me, unless some evidence can be found. --ColinFine (talk) 22:07, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

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

I've been looking for an English translation of "故鄉" in Chinese that captures the essence of the word. "故鄉" literally means "old country" ("country" as in a rural area, and as in "country-style", not as in a nation). It implies being born in and spending one's childhood years in a rural area, like a village, but that the place is no longer where one lives. It also suggests one has familial and emotional ties to the place. The word is meaningful in a society in which a lot of people were born in rural areas but have moved out of those areas (to cities) but people still emotionally regard their birthplaces as "home", a place where they're from. I guess you can translate it as "home" if the reader understands the context and the intended connotations, but is there a word in English that conveys the same connotations without needing explanation? --173.49.77.185 (talk) 18:05, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The phrase "old country" was used by American immigrants to mean the place of their birth, but doesn't often imply emotional ties for the reader. Shii (tock) 18:41, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware of that. I was trying to explain the meaning of the word so that people not familiar with it could still suggest English equivalents. "Old country" is a literal translation but not a correct translation (and, as I noted, the "country" in my literal translation of "故鄉" means a rural area, not a nation.) --173.49.77.185 (talk) 00:16, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"Homeland", perhaps? rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:41, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

My Old Country Home? Karenjc 19:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

故郷 is used in Japanese with the same meaning. See this online dictionary page. Oda Mari (talk) 04:46, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Another answer would be "motherland". --FOo (talk) 06:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I usually say "home village" or "hometown". -- Vmenkov (talk) 08:22, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I would translate it as "home --", where -- is whatever unit the term is being applied to - homeland, hometown, etc. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:07, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It's usually taught as 'home village', but sometimes people use it to refer to the town/village where their grandparents or great grandparents came from, and they've never been there. In these situations, 'ancestral village', or 'ancestral hometown' is better. For a Chinese person, it's important to know where your ancestors came from, even if you never live there. Thus there are a lot of people in big cities like Shanghai who were born there, and so were their parents, but they will still talk about their 故鄉, and tell people that they're from there. (This also results in my notion that not many of the 20 million people who live in Shanghai consider themselves to be Shanghainese, but people who happen to live in Shanghai). Steewi (talk) 00:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I presume you are talking about such people speaking in mandarin, because 故鄉 is not a commonly encountered word in Shanghainese. I would use the more technically correct 籍贯 if it was necessary to differentiate hometown from ancestral home. If asked, I would say that I am from Shanghai and that's my 故鄉 though I am of Zhenjiang descent (6 generations ago, in the male line). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

American pronunciation of foreign names

I've had the unfortunate experience of being in hospital for a day and was forced to watch CNN for hours on end. During this period I noticed that the American newsreaders continuously mispronounced Iran (as ee-ran when it should be ee-raan) and Iraq (as eye-rack when it should be ee-raak) yet took meticulous care in pronouncing Srebenica (shrer-ber-nitza?) correctly. My first question is - why pronounce the I's in Iran and Iraq differently? The second question is - why don't they take the same care to pronounce eastern terms correctly when taking care to pronounce (more difficult) western (European) terms? And yet the CNN newsreaders of non-American descent take such care in pronouncing all foreign names and terms correctly. I'd love to hear Americans' comments (BTW the eye-rack thing has always irritated me). Sandman30s (talk) 22:48, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I have always thought it is based on how familiar the word or name is. So newscasters go out of their way to make a showy pronunciation of "Medvedev", but they don't do the same thing for "Paris" or "Berlin", and I have never heard mainstream newscaster affect a Chinese accent. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:39, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Anthony Kuhn, NPR's current Beijing correspondent, and Rob Gifford, who preceded him, both take great care in their pronunciation of personal names in Chinese, including tones, e.g., Wēn Jiābǎo, Hú Jǐntāo, &c. They tend to relax somewhat when it comes to geographical names, especially those that are well-known to Westerners; you're likely to hear Yúnnán's tones pronounced distinctly, Beijing's less so. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:08, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've never understood why eye-rack is such a horrible mispronunciation when saying Kewba, Meks-ih-ko, and Iz-ree-uhl are perfectly okay. AlexiusHoratius 23:52, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, Iz-ree-uhl is not perfectly ok except in the US. The first two of those three are the standard pronunciations throughout the anglosphere, but Iz-ree-uhl and Eye-rack are particularly American things (they're pronounced Iz-rail and Ee-rahk elsewhere). Btw, I've never heard a non-Russian newscaster pronounce Medvedev, or Putin, correctly. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 00:05, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Me neither, but often I hear them make a show of it, while I never hear them make a show of "Eiffel tower". — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:11, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Could it be that Americans just don't know any better? After all, until Carl (CBM) just mentioned it, I didn't know that there was any other way to pronounce "Eiffel tower" other than "eye-full". Dismas|^(talk) 00:16, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I would say Americans have pronounced "eye-rack" and "eye-ran" that way for so long, it's almost become like a pronunciation exonym, like saying "pare-iss" instead of "pah-ree" for the French capital. In fact, saying "ee-rahn" sounds pedantic or "foreign" to an American ear. There is no alternate pronunciation of Srebenica as far as I know for U.S. broadcasters to use instead. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've usually heard "Israel" pronounced "Iz-rail" in the U.S. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"is-ree-ul" is very common in the US, along with "Is-rye-ell" in certain religious settings (especially in hymns where three syllables are required). — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:29, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

While we're here, I note Obama says Iran-ian, whereas everyone I've heard in the UK draws out the vowel: Ir-arn or Ir-ahn; Ir-ray-ni-an or I-rar-ni-an. Is this endemic in the US? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 16:33, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

While we're at it, what's with the British "nick-a-rag-yoo-uh" for Nicaragua or "koss-uh-voe" for Kosovo? Marco polo (talk) 00:40, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Huh? So how do Americans pronounce Kosovo then?--91.148.159.4 (talk) 01:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Every "o" is the same in American English for Kosovo, as in the o in "no". AlexiusHoratius 01:12, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Without the second one, I presume: Koe-suh-voe (that's what I find on youtube, too). Well, in British pronunciation, the "short <o>" as in "Kossovo" is more similar to the Serbian one than the "long <o>" would have been. Not to mention that the Serbian word has no long vowel there anyway, as far as I know. But I can see how the American pronunciation may be justified for American accents, because in most American accents, the "short <o>" is basically a Serbian /a/, so that the "long <o>" is actually closer to the Serbian vowel at least in terms of quality.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 01:30, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, now that you mention it, I suppose I probably do say "Koh-sah-voh" when saying it quickly, although if I were asked to speak it really slowly, I'd say "Koh-soh-voh". AlexiusHoratius 01:43, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, the point is that from the point of view of Serbian pronunciation of "Kosovo", the ideal thing would probably be to have the British vowel of "cot" in all three syllables (well, it's not exactly the same vowel, but it's the closest thing available). Of course, that's not even possible. As for the American Koh-suh-voh, it would probably suggest to a Serb a spelling like "Kousavou" (that is Kaw-oo-saw-oo-vaw-oo). The British "Kossovo" at least gets the stressed vowel (almost) right, suggesting a spelling like "Kosavou" (or perhaps "Kosaveu"). An American "Kossovo" would have been spelt "Kasavou", which is not better than "Kousavou". --91.148.159.4 (talk) 02:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

...or Los Anjaleez, but then again the US pronunciation for Los Angeles isn't correct in Spanish either, but then again it's been an American city for 150 years...I guess what I'm saying is that there isn't any "right" or "wrong" in the end, just different pronunciations based on where you're from. I'm still sticking to by my point about the Meksico thing - why demand Americans modify their pronunciation to what the natives use on one but not on another? Also, the person who made the point about ee-rahn sounding a bit pedantic to an American is correct, at least for me, anyway. AlexiusHoratius 01:00, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, there's no right or wrong here, pronunciation is just a matter of convention, and it is both unnecessary and impossible to reproduce foreign pronunciation. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 01:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Srebrenica has two Rs. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:53, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It's a question of how far you want to go in trying to imitate the correct local pronunciation vs. saying it the "English way". To really say "Israel" the right way, it should be more like "YEES-rrah-ell". Those who say it "Eye-ran" and "Eye-rack", I have long suspected are mispronouncing it on purpose, with a degree of contempt. Like those who pronounced "Vyet Nahm" as "Veet Nam". The Spanish way to say "Los Angeles" is actually phonetically not too far from the way we typically say it. Another example, the way "Paris" sounds to my ears, as spoken by a Frenchman, is something like "pah-WEE". The French drop the trailing "s" and round off the "r", which is not a natural thing to do in English. In Spanish its "pah-RREES", which is arguably the way it should be anglicized, except we emphasis the first syllable for some unknown reason, and turn it into an "eh" sound the way we say "pair" (or "pare" or "pear"), hence we say "PAIR-iss", which admittedly sounds both ignorant and apathetic, but the apparent bottom line is that we don't know and don't care. (I wonder how a Frenchman would pronounce "Albuquerque" or "Kankakee" or "Spuyten Duyvil"? And I know how Hispanics say "Chicago", namely "chee-CAH-go", which is not correct.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Don't assume too much with the Anglicized pronunciations of Iran and Iraq. The "mispronunciation" is so common that it is, essentially, correct. The word paris was borrowed a very long time ago into English, when stress worked differently in French so that it couldh ave been stressed on the first syllable in that language. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I doubt that any English speaker pronouncs "Iraq" correctly, unless they know better. The "I" and the "q" aren't even English sounds. (I know better but I still can't pronounce the "I".) Adam Bishop (talk) 03:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

When native speakers say those words, they sound like "ee-RRAHN" and "ee-RRACH" (the latter almost like the Scottish way to say "loch"). I usually say "ih-RAHN" and "ih-ROCK", which I fancy to at least be somewhat closer than "eye-ran" and "eye-rack". Americans aren't so good at pronouncing their own place names, though. I've heard countless persons pronounce Oregon as "or-ee-gahn" (as if it rhymes with "polygon") when it's more like "or-ih-gun" or even "or'gun". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:56, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

George Donikian is an Australian newsreader who prides himself on his correct pronunciation of foreign names, but for his troubles he's regularly spoofed by comedians. There's an Aussie cultural thing at work there, whereby people who actually care about proper pronunciation of non-English words are looked upon somewhat askance ("Are you a poof or something?"); and to avoid such criticism, the typically homophobic Aussie male will go out of his way to appear to be ignorant, sometimes astoundingly and unbelievably so, and will take considerable pride in how little he knows about how to say words more complex than "cat" or "rat". It's changing, but vanishingly slowly. The wider picture is that, as Baseball Bugs rightly says, the further one goes down the track of "correct" pronunciation, the more likely one is to be regarded as pretentious, and that doesn't work. Finding the right balance is tricky. The Eiffel Tower is probably mispronounced by more people than any comparable object in the world; but say "Eiffel" the French way to anyone but a Frenchman, and few people would know what you're talking about, which makes it all a bit pointless. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 04:17, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Making fun of people who try to use English correctly is certainly not limited to Aussies. :) I gather from the IPA stuff that "Eiffel" is supposed to be pronounced as if the "ei" and the "e" were long-A's, to rhyme with "hay-bale". Am I reading it correctly? "eye-ful" is perhaps closer to the German way to say the "ei". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:59, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it's pretty much as if you were spelling out F-L: "efel". The Germans would say "eye-fell". Anglos say "eye-full", or even "oy-full". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 06:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

One could add that since the surname Eiffel is originally German, Germans and others can be somewhat justified in pronouncing it the German way. Same with Noam Chomsky - Russians still use the original East Slavic pronunciation of the surname (roughly "Khomskee") and still treat the -sky part as a Slavic adjectival ending, even though this doesn't match the current American pronunciation and morphology.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've heard that many Russians are not aware that the polemicist Ном Чомски and the linguist Ноам Хомский are the same. (Or did I get that backward?) —Tamfang (talk) 00:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Chomski - not Chomsky - is a Polish surname. 83.31.77.212 (talk) 11:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It might be worth pointing out that pronouncing Srebrenica as "shrer-ber-nitza" is actually also incorrect, contrary to what the OP seems to believe. The initial "S" in the name is really a "s", it should not be pronounced as "sh".—Emil J. 14:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The same applies to Sri Lanka. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Does it? The article says that the local pronunciation is IPA: [ˌɕriːˈlaŋkaː], and as far as I can see, [ɕ] is closer to English [ʃ] than to [s] (for example, Japanese [ɕ] is routinely transliterated as "sh" into English).—Emil J. 16:02, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Apparently you are correct about the local pronunciation. I still pronounce the "s" as in "set". -- Wavelength (talk) 16:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It's mass displays of ad hoc pronunciation notation like this that make me glad IPA exists. There, I said it. ;-) Some smug fool^{with an opinion}18:26, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

IPA exists for (more or less) precise scientific designations, not for mass discussions involving people who are not language nerds. Typing, say, [ˈxomskʲii̯] instead of "khomskee" in such a context risks causing a complete breakdown in communication with 80% of the participants, in addition to taking noticeably longer time to format. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

How about another: is it Hay-tee or Hi-ee-ti? Ja-may-ca or Ja-my-ca? Grsz¹¹ 19:23, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Which are both in the karə-BEE-ən, or is it the kə-RIB-iən? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:35, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

On a related note, is "Sri Lanka" pronounced "sri laanka" or "sri lunka"? ~AH1^(TCU) 20:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I've never heard lunka, but I do hear differences between Shri or Sree. Grsz¹¹ 20:28, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm off to the Apple store to pick up an ee-PAHD. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:38, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

There you go, I've misspelled and mispronounced Srebrenica. I guess I qualify to become a CNN employee? Amazing what the mind concocts when on painkillers and antibiotics. BTW I've always said Shree-Lunka, not Sree-Lanka. I guess it's always down to 'you say toe-may-toe, I say toe-maa-toe'. Sandman30s (talk) 23:05, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

When I first heard Munich, Bach, Chopin and van Gogh in English conversation, I couldn't understand them. Oda Mari (talk) 06:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, don't make me bring up Gloucester. Forget Oregon, what about Worcestershire? Anyway, I think there is an old habit in America of pronouncing "i" as "eye". There is mountain near where I live called Mount Si. Before you check the link, guess the pronunciation? When I moved here I called it Mount "see", not realizing it is Mount "sigh". Anyway, when it comes to non-English place names, the better known places have standard pronunciations, which may differ in the various English dialects. But the lesser known place names have no established dialectical pronunciation, as so one must attempt to pronounce it the way the people who live there do, or invent something new. Naturally, as lesser known names become common, as in wartime, dialectical pronunciations take hold. It's no surprise that news reports use the standard dialectical pronunciations for common place names according to the audience they are addressing, but make some attempt at "proper" pronunciations of place names that have no standard dialectical pronunciation. This is part of why I enjoy listening to the BBC world news that is broadcast from time to time on the local radio station here in Seattle. It's not just the alternate viewpoints (sometimes wildly alternative), but the alternative pronunciations. I must relate a story about a trip to Italy. I heard an Italian talking on the phone to some speaker of English (American, British, who knows?), and she was trying to spell out the name of a hotel. She said, "it is spelled ee teh a el... no, no ee,.. no no, ee as in ee-tahlia!" Pfly (talk) 10:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I've always wondered how they get "Glouster" out of "Gloucester", "Wooster" out of "Worcester", and for that matter, "Folks'll" out of "Forecastle". The point about the long I is valid. Consider Hiawatha, whose correct pronunciation is like "hee-ah-wat-hah", but has evolved into "high-ah-wath-ah". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

How synchronistic that you should mention the name Hiawatha, given what I created only yesterday. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Wow. Well, as the tabloids might have said when Angelina married Brad, "The stars have aligned." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:32, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

You can always spell it Gloster if you prefer; many do [2] www.aviastar.org/manufacturers/0985.html [3]. Alansplodge (talk) 17:54, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Heh, last time I was in Boston I made an effort to pronounce Gloucester the way people tend to in Gloucester, Massachusetts, or so I was informed--something like glaah-stuh. Pfly (talk) 19:18, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Here's the list of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations. Featherstonehaugh is a good one. 213.122.3.202 (talk) 06:59, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The people in Worcester, Massachusetts pronounce it in what sounds to my California ear as "WUHS-tuh". But then, there was a waitress there who asked me if I wanted chad as my vegetable with dinner. It took a while to realize she was asking if I wanted chard. Woogee (talk) 02:21, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

English names are always good to trap visitors. Southwark,Greenwich and Leicester usually trip up a couple.And there are those names that are just pronounced differently I believe to amuse the natives when visitors mangle them or come out with something completely different. Cirencester used to be Sisitter or Sitter.Near us we have St.Juliet pronounced St.Jilt and Woolfardisworthy which truncates down to something like Wolsey. Lemon martini (talk) 00:27, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

American broadcasters can't even get American names right sometimes! I recently saw a network newsreader refer to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, pronouncing it like the city in California /ˈlænkæstər/ rather than the proper /ˈlæŋkɨstər/, used for the cities in Pennsylvania and England. — Michael J 21:57, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

It is my understanding that Americans pronounce Calais in a much more French-sounding way than the British which seems to rhyme with Callous. And let's not even get into Leghorn. Woogee (talk) 02:23, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

April 5

He is beside himself.

Why does the phrase "he is beside himself" mean that he is sad or grief-stricken or overwhelmed? How does the (presumably, physical) position of being "beside yourself" lend itself to this meaning or connotation? Thanks. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 16:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC))

My Webster's doesn't give the origin, but it does expand the definition to, "In a state of extreme excitement." Whether grief qualifies for that is iffy, but basically it's used to mean that one is in extreme emotional state - maybe separate from (or "beside") one's normal behavior? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

This site[4] says that "beside" was also used to mean "outside", and "beside oneself" was another way of saying "out of one's wits", i.e. not in control emotionally. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:12, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

There's a similar expression in Polish, used when someone is really very angry, which literally translates as "to walk out of oneself". — Kpalion^(talk) 18:59, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I suspect it may have something to do with the psychological phenomenon of appearing to be observing oneself from a short distance away, and thus "beside oneself". This can happen during periods of great stress. It happened to me once; there were two people in my office, and they were both me - the spookiest thing I've ever experienced. See also out-of-body experience. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:39, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"I'm feeling a little schizophrenic today." - "Hey, that makes four of us!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:56, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Just "beside himself" tends IME to mean "… with anger" (pace the third link I give below), however the phrase "beside himself with grief" is common with "beside herself with joy" maybe less so. See http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Conan_the_Barbarian_%28film%29#Thulsa_Doom , http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=7053 and http://www.infosquares.com/eslblog/blog_06172008.html to name but three. Tonywalton ^Talk 12:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that third link that you cite states: The phrase is said to date back to the times of Ancient Greece, when it was believed that during very emotional times, the soul leaves the body and is therefore "beside" it. Thank you. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 15:11, 6 April 2010 (UTC))

If you're beside yourself, does that lead to talking to yourself ? StuRat (talk) 14:12, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

could it mean your personality is split, like schitzofrenia?--79.76.239.84 (talk) 03:24, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

It's a common misconception that split personality, or Dissociative identity disorder, is a necessary feature of schizophrenia. It's not. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 06:56, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

In Schizophrenia the schiz does mean "split" and the phrenia does mean "mind" but it' mind split from reality rather than mind split into pieces (according to memory, and without checking references) --Polysylabic Pseudonym (talk) 07:53, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I recall from Psych 101 that schizophrenia means "splitting off from reality", which squares with what you're saying. True split-personality would presumably either be an extreme case of bipolarity (which is probably where the "beside yourself" situation manifests itself), or in the worst case, multiple-personality disorder. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:25, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to all for the input above. It was very helpful. Thank you. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 12:51, 10 April 2010 (UTC))

Phonetically

Just got this into my head and it won't go away until I've resolved it. To write something as it is pronounced is to write it phonetically. To pronounce something as it is written is to pronounce it...? Thanks 92.11.43.155 (talk) 20:51, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Literally? As written? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

In some cases, analogically would be appropriate—see Spelling pronunciation for our article on the topic. Deor (talk) 21:17, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It's the same word. 'Phonetic' refers to the correspondence between written and spoken symbols. whether you are making sounds and writing down equivalent symbols or looking at written symbols and creating their corresponding sounds it's an act of phonetics. The reason it's confusing is that we do the two things for different purposes. we write the symbols for sounds as an act of transcription (converting oral production into written text), but when we do it the other way we are usually trying to get at the semantic meaning of the sounds (the old Sesame Street "Duh - awe - guh, Duh-awe-guh, Duhaweguh, Dog" thing). --Ludwigs2 21:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

As spelled. --173.49.77.185 (talk) 03:01, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Intuitively? Doesn't quite fit exactly, but it's a useful word I forget all the time. -- the Great Gavini 16:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Spelling pronunciation might be relevant.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:08, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

April 6

Etymology of "This is why we can't have nice things"

Where did the phrase originate (I know it predates computers, so it can't be an internet meme), and where (outside of the web) is it most commonly used nowadays? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 07:54, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, someone broke something and someone else said this. ¦ Reisio (talk) 09:18, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

No more Death Stars for you, Darth. Wellll, maybe just one more. But that's the last one. I mean it. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:28, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

In what context did you hear the phrase used? I think it's used by parents to complain after a child or another family member has broken something in the home to lament the fact that "nice" things in their home are susceptible to being destroyed...--达伟 (talk) 11:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It's generally thought to have originated on The Simpsons (episode "Trilogy of Error", 2001). How do you know it predates computers? That's an interesting assertion. This discussion [5] attributes the use of it in comedy to Paula Poundstone, and also says that it was generally used by parents scolding children when they break stuff, and presumably still is. 213.122.3.202 (talk) 06:05, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The line was popularized by Paula Poundstone, who was using it by 1988: "She was one of those angry moms that use to get mad at absolutely everything. I remember the time I knocked a Flintstone glass off the kitchen table, and she said, 'Dammit, that's why we can't have nice things.'" There are anecdotal reports of non-famous people (usually mothers) saying this earlier, so she probably did not originate it. It was further popularized in 1999, when Colin Quinn used it on Saturday Night Live: "American warplanes attacked newly installed Iraqi anti-ship missile launchers along the Persian Gulf. An enraged Saddam Hussein scolded his troops saying, 'You see, this is why we can't have nice things!'" John M Baker (talk) 14:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

This was a common phrase used in southern Missouri during the first half of the 20th century, spoken after something precious was destroyed. -Paisley Amish

German garb, early 1940s

In a German-language list of garments and sundry textile articles produced in massive quantity for the Wehrmacht and the civilian population by an industrious Schneiderei in the Lodz ghetto, I don't understand what's meant by the following (if I've deciphered the printing correctly...):

• Feldblusen
• Windhosen
• Kragenbinder Kragenbinden

I have a rough idea from the literal components, but what would be the equivalent terms in English, either of that period or present-day? -- Deborahjay (talk) 11:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Feldbluse = field blouse for the army, according to the mr. Google, who also provides image results. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 12:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC) Martin.

(edit conflict)A Feldbluse is a field jacket (we don't have an article on that specifically, but see Army Combat Uniform#Field Jacket, M-1941 Field Jacket, M-1965 field jacket, etc., for some examples). The only meaning of Windhose I know of is tornado; I'm unaware of it being used for a literal pair of trousers (but WWII-era German military uniforms are hardly my area of specialty!). A Kragenbinde (plural Kragenbinden; I don't think Kragenbinder is a word) seems from the German Wikipedia article to be a kind of detachable collar used with field jackets. +Angr 12:18, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Would Windhose by any chance be Wendehose, or reversible trousers? The Kragenbinde is indeed a detachable collar protector, meant to protect your tunic collar from sweat.--Rallette (talk) 12:41, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Further from the OP: The lettering is clearly Windhosen, though perhaps by the hand of a non-native or undereducated speaker of German. It even occurred to me that it might be a back-translation from Yiddish, but checking my Weinreich YI>EN dico yielded only ווינדל (Windl), meaning "diaper" or "swaddling cloth". Might this be some garment that's padded or lined? Another possibility would be puttees or gaiters, if perhaps the Germans (military or civilian) used these? -- Deborahjay (talk) 13:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

This eBay page suggests it *might* be rain pants, i.e. pants you wear over your normal pants when cycling etc. in the rain. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 13:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC) Martin.

The German wikipedia "Regenhose" says that rain pants are pants which are wind an rain resistant, so perhaps Windhose and Regenhose are the same. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 13:59, 6 April 2010 (UTC) Martin

When I was young, we certainly had "Windjacken", i.e. jackets that had no stuffing, but worked as a windbreak - typically made from tightly woven and possibly waxed cotton. The term seems to have fallen out of use with the rise of high-tech functional clothing based on synthetics and Gore-Tex-like membranes. But I'd expect a "Windhose" to be pair of wind-resistant trousers to wear as an extra outer layer. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Exactly my thoughts, so the English term would *probably* be "wind pants" (or "rain pants"). Mr. Google has plenty of (modern) hits for these. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 14:27, 6 April 2010 (UTC) Martin.

In UK English, they would probably be called overtrousers[6]. Alansplodge (talk) 17:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

When I was in the Canadian Armed Forces, "wind pants" were a crucial part of our cold climate gear. These were heavy, insulated, waterproof overpants worn with suspenders. They were worn overtop the regular combat uniform pants, usually when the parka and mukluks were worn. pic. Seeing how armies borrow ideas/terminology from each other, this may we what you were looking for. caknuck _° needs to be running more often 23:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Here are some photos: [7]. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Auto / Otto

In my dialect of English, "auto" and "Otto" are homophones. Are they always homophones in English? In which dialects might they not be homophones? The Hero of This Nation (talk) 14:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

They are homophones only in accents with the cot-caught merger, which includes Canada and some U.S. accents, and maybe some Scottish accents. They're distinct in the rest of the English-speaking world. +Angr 14:23, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

They are distinct in Detroit. StuRat (talk) 14:28, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I think they're distinct in RP and Black Country/Brummie too. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:49, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

They're distinct in London and southern England too. Alansplodge (talk) 17:00, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The OP's user page doesn't indicate where he's from, at least that I saw. I'm in the American midwest, and the words are pronounced "AW-toe" and "AH-toe" respectively. They might be used in plays-on-words that might also include "ought to", but the pronunciations would not actually be identical. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:32, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Angr's link explains really clearly where these vowels are merged. Everywhere else, they are not. Marco polo (talk) 20:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

And those of us who live deep in cot-caught-merger-land have trouble understanding how "AW-toe" and "AH-toe" differ... -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:14, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

And those of us who can't remember any English word spelled with "ah" in a stressed syllable have trouble understanding what the hell is "AH-toe" supposed to mean anyway. Can someone write it in IPA, please?—Emil J. 15:44, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

When your midwestern doctor puts a tongue depressor in your mouth, he says, "Say 'Ah'." In New York City, I suppose he would say, "Say 'Aw'." To a midwesterner, "Aw!" is what you say when you see a new baby or a kitten or something. New Yorkers pronounce "water" as if it were spelled "wawter", to rhyme with "slaughter". Midwesterners pronounce it "wahter", to rhyme with "otter" (or maybe the Latin mater et pater). Which probably doesn't help that much to those who say them all like "aw". :) Anyone who can decipher IPA is welcome to clarify here. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:52, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's the problem—"slaugher," "water," and "otter" all rhyme, as far as I'm concerned! And I never figured out why "Dawn from Seattle" kept insisting that I was calling her by a man's name... -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:55, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

And I wonder how they get an "ah" sound from "au" or "aw". Of course, that does raise the question of why "laughter" and "slaughter" don't rhyme (except for the "er" part). And then there's "aunt", which can be pronounced either "ant" or "ahnt" or maybe even "awnt". Good ol' English. The way English works may well be an insidious plot, to drive crazy those foreigners who try to learn it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:02, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Water has several different pronunciations. Even in accents where otter and daughter don't rhyme, there's variation as to which of those words it rhymes with, though I think rhyming with daughter is more common around the English-speaking world. I've heard that the Philadelphia accent rhymes water with butter. As for "how they get an 'ah' sound from 'au' or 'aw'", the difference between the two for many Americans who distinguish them is just a matter of lip rounding, and since lip rounding usually doesn't otherwise distinguish vowel phonemes by itself in English, it's easy enough to understand why some accents would lose the distinction between two sounds distinguished that way. +Angr 16:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Ignis/Lapis

Is there any German word deriving from Latin ignis (fire)? Like in English: igneous, ignition, ignescent, ignicolist, igniferous, ignifluous...
And from lapis (stone), like lapidation, lapidary? I have only found Lapislazuli.--151.51.45.45 (talk) 14:22, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

See [8] and [9] for some German Wikipedia articles starting with those elements. I'm sure there are more words than just those, though. +Angr 14:27, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Angr's link for "ign..." suggests that there may not be any commonly used German words derived from ignis. Most of the German Wikiarticles beginning with those letters seem to be English titles or names of bands. There is the "ignitron", whose name came from its American inventor or his American employer, but I think this is a fairly obscure technical term. There is also Ignimbrit, a geological term, and that's about it. For lapis, there are a few non-technical words that most educated Germans would know. My German is these days a little short of fluent, but I can think of the word lapidar without even checking a dictionary. Marco polo (talk) 14:54, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Oronym

I learnt today of the word oronym and wondered what the corresponding word for prose is, as in the example 'Godisnowhere'. It reads 'God is nowhere' and 'God is now here' depending on what you see. Thanks 92.11.43.155 (talk) 15:40, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Rebracketing is the general etymological process. Not sure if there is a term for the word game. meltBanana 18:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

April 7

Welsh

Why are there so many mutations in welsh. It makes it too difficult.--79.76.239.84 (talk) 03:19, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, natural languages don't evolve in such a way as to be easy for nonnative speakers to learn. And native speakers don't have any difficulty getting the mutations right. The mutations serve a useful purpose for native speakers, providing a way to distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns, between subjects and objects, etc. +Angr 07:19, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Also see (?) lenition. I could have sworn I've seen this and things like it crop up quite a few times now. -- the Great Gavini 07:30, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

If you want something which can be seem even more exotic or difficult for learners whose native languages are typologically different, just look at Semitic roots... AnonMoos (talk) 09:09, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

If the question "why" is taken not as a complaint but as an actual inquiry about the cause, our article consonant mutation offers an explanation of sorts:

Historically, the Celtic initial mutations originated from progressive assimilation and sandhi phenomena between adjacent words. For example, the mutating effect of the conjunction a 'and' is due to the fact that it used to have the form *ak, and the final consonant influenced the following sounds (Ternes, Elmar. 1986. A Grammatical hierarchy of joining. In: Andersen, Henning. Sandhi phenomena in the languages of Europe. P.17-18).

This is, admittedly, pretty general and elliptic, but I couldn't found a more detailed account. By the way, I think Semitic roots are less weird to an English speaker than Celtic mutations: after all, English has (unproductive) internal vowel changes like foot-feet, goose-geese, write-wrote etc, but nowhere or almost nowhere in English grammar does the first consonant of the root simply change to a different one without any visible phonetic motivation. In English and many other languages, you normally expect the first consonant of a root to be the most stable thing in a word, or if it does change as in Norwegian ku /kʉ:/ 'cow' - kyr /çy:r/ 'cows', Nynorsk Norwegian koma /ˈko:mɑ/ 'to come' - kjem /çɛm:/ 'came', at least it is sort-of conditioned by another sound. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Since this is the language desk... The spelling is ku. Another consonant which behaves similarly in Norwegian is "g", as in gå (go), gikk (went); pronounced Gaw, yick. In contrast, in Spanish consonants occationally change to preserve the pronunciation, as in criticar, critiqué. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:35, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much, I must have confused it with Danish and Swedish. I've fixed it now (no strikethrough, because the sentence is tricky enough to read as it is).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:24, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

No im talking about the change in the first few letters of the welsh words, depending on what precedes them. I think its just a matter of laziness on the part of the welsh speakers. Am I correct?--79.76.239.84 (talk) 23:41, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, it's not laziness, or they probably wouldn't bother changing it at all (surely that's the easier way to do it, right?). The historical reason is that The 'y' that causes nasal mutation used to be pronounced 'yng'. When a word followed yng, it took on the nasal characteristic of the 'ng' at the end of 'yng'. So it was 'yng' + 'Bangor' = 'yng Mangor'. Then the 'ng' disappeared. Why say the 'ng' when the nasal change on the next word tells you that it's there? It's strange, sure enough, but not primarily to do with laziness. Steewi (talk) 00:45, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

This happens in English too, but in the opposite direction. You just don't notice it because the spelling doesn't change. "In Bangor", for example, is actually pronounced "im Bangor". Adam Bishop (talk) 02:39, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Hence the common pronunciation of my national capital as "KAM-bərə". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ...

That's just straightforward nasal assimilation (changing /n/ to /m/ before /b/). In Welsh ym Mangor (not *yng Mangor) the /b/ itself changes into /m/ – and (speaking synchronically rather than historically) not for phonetic reasons, but for morphological reasons. It's really not laziness, as there are strict rules governing mutation that have to be followed in order for the phrase to be grammatically correct. Another use of the mutations is to distinguish between the words for "his" (ei), "her" (ei), and "their" (eu), which are all pronounced the same in Welsh: "his cat" is ei gath, "her cat" is ei chath, and "their cat" is eu cath, and the only difference between them is the mutation on the noun meaning "cat". That's not laziness. +Angr 12:45, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

strict rules governing mutation that have to be followed in order for the phrase to be grammatically correct:

This sounds fairly prescriptivist. Would descriptivists see it that way? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 13:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I'm referring to the subconscious rules of grammar that all native speakers of a language follow, not prescriptive rules of what's "good" and "bad" grammar. (However, the descriptivist would point out that native speakers of Welsh don't always do the mutations in the way the grammar books say they should!) +Angr 13:28, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Say the following two phrases: 'Yn Cymru' (no mutations) and Yng Nghymru (nasal mutation). You will agree that the latter is very slightly easier to say, but the former is quite easy to say. Therefore the Welsh are being very lazy in pronunciation, but fastidious in their spelling of their simplified pronunciations. Weird?!

To a person trying to learn Welsh, words (such as 'Cymru') once learnt, then have to be relearnt (as Nghymru) with all the different possible mutations etc. Is this really sane? --79.76.236.198 (talk) 20:14, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I find yn Cymru easier to pronounce than yng Nghymru with its voiceless nasal, but either way, laziness has nothing to do with it. As for learning both Cymru and Nghymru, it's certainly no more insane than learning the vowel alternations that English has in pairs like finite/infinite, serene/serenity or the consonant alternations in pairs like electric/electricity, analogous/analogy, part/partial, shelf/shelves, etc. +Angr 20:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah, but you ignore the fact that, in your examples, the first parts of the word are the same and therefore quite recognizable and so I do not accept your argument. This is the difficulty with welsh mutations: unless you know the mutation being used, you cant look up the word in a dictionary!! This is why its difficult for learners (BTW I was a learner many years ago) -- which is what I said about 3 miles higher up this page.--79.76.236.198 (talk) 22:17, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Getting on famously

One of the meanings of 'famously' is 'to an unusual degree'. The only example I can think of where this meaning actually applies is where we’re talking about two people who’ve just met, they click instantly, and thereafter they 'get on famously'.

Are there other things one could do 'to an unusual degree', that might be described as being done 'famously'? I don’t believe there are any common ones, but maybe there’s an arcane example or two. If I’m right, why would the word 'famously' have this meaning in only one very specific context? Or is it a case of a meaning that was once used more widely, but has dwindled down to one last bastion? -- (JackofOz=) 202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:33, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

According to the OED, it was once used generally to mean "splendidly". It is attested in Shakespeare: "I say vnto you what he hath done Famouslie, he did it to that end"; and in Bulwer-Lytton: "I've contrived it famously". LANTZY^TALK 03:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, this simply comes from an older colloquial use of the adjective "famous" to mean "splendid" or "magnificent", as in the 1890 attestation "It is a famous place for a fair." The latest attestation is from 1960: "Both parties..were ready to claim a famous victory in the early hours of tomorrow." It seems to have been quite a common sense of the word. LANTZY^TALK 03:42, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

It probably derives from a something along the lines of 'in a way worthy of fame or praise' --Ludwigs2 05:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

"A famous victory" is back in vogue, at least among certain Australian sports commentators. When I heard them referring to something that had only just happened, literally 5 seconds ago, as "a famous victory", I wondered where they learned their English. But I now see they were more learnèd than I gave them credit for. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 05:57, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

It may be that, like others of my generation, they were exposed to the poem by Robert Southey that uses the phrase repeatedly. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 11:26, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe. And there's no denying these guys (they're mostly guys) know their English - after all, they've created so much of it from scratch.  :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:38, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Hebrew and Arabic

A lot of Arabic words seem to have very similar Hebrew equivalents. I have also heard native Arabic speakers say they can understand Hebrew without having studied it. Notwithstanding the issue of the many mutually unintelligible varieties of Arabic, are Hebrew and Arabic mutually intelligible? Rimush (talk) 10:53, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

As you say, and as is mentioned in our article Semitic languages, Arabic itself is divided into several dialects, some of which are not mutually intelligible, so it is unlikely that an Arabic monoglot with no prior exposure to the rather more different Hebrew would be able to understand much of it. That said, the two languages are related and share the 3-consonant Semitic root system which probably aids mutual intelligibility more that would be the case with similarly related languages that do not have this feature. Also, Hebrew has (since its 20th-century revival from a liturgical to a living language) probably been influenced to some degree by the Arabic spoken alongside it. The most important factor, I would suggest, is that most speakers of Hebrew and some speakers of Arabic will have been exposed to the other language for most of their lives in the flesh and in the media even without having formally studied it, and will therefore both consciously and unconsciously have learned it to some extent through the usual natural - as opposed to academic - language acquisition processes. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 11:19, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The phenomenon of diglossia in Arabic could also aid an Arabic speaker with a good command of Classical Arabic in understanding Hebrew. Classical Arabic, based on a version of the language spoken nearly 1500 years ago, is much closer to Hebrew (likewise based on an ancient language) than are any of the modern Arabic vernaculars. A speaker used to making the mental leap from his native vernacular to Classical or Standard Arabic would only need to leap a bit further (metaphorically) to grasp Hebrew. Marco polo (talk) 14:56, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to call you on that, Marco. On what evidence do you say that Classical Arabic is much closer to Hebrew than any of the modern Arabic vernaculars? I can't think of any obvious ways in what that will be true. Structurally, Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew are probably a bit closer to each other than either is to the other's modern versions, but even there I'm not sure that much similarity would be noticeable to the untrained speaker. --ColinFine (talk) 23:13, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

---

Arabic and Hebrew have a number of structural similarities which would make it much easier for an Arabic speaker to learn Hebrew than to learn a completely unrelated language, but they're not particularly mutually comprehensible when presented "raw' (i.e. an Arabic-speaker who knows no Hebrew and a Hebrew speaker who knows no Arabic would have an extremely limited ability to convey information purely verbally). On the other hand, some words are quite similar between the two languages, and if an Arabic speaker can learn to kind of mentally compensate for certain historical changes (such as the Canaanite shift, etc.), then it would be fairly easy to pick up a number of Hebrew words.

As for Classical Arabic vs. colloquial Arabic, there are a few details where Classical Arabic is more similar to Hebrew than most colloquial dialects are (such as the use of the consonantal root r + glottal stop + y to mean "to see"), but overall, many colloquial Arabic dialects have greater structural similarity to Hebrew than Classical Arabic does (e.g. absence of the dual, absence of distinctively feminine plural verb forms, suppression of case distinctions, etc.), due to quasi-parallel evolution or "drift". -- AnonMoos (talk) 05:49, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

reminds me of English/German; i.e. if you know both, you can see the great similarities in retrospect, but knowing one language doesn't help understand the other very much, without a lot of slow repetition, and even then only to a limited degree.Gzuckier (talk) 06:03, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Fluffy McFluffersons

Hi, where does the miniature snowclone formula of "Fluffy McFluffersons" come from? --Kjoonlee 12:36, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

(!) Google doesn't bring up a lot of results for "McFluffersons", but does a little better for something called "McFluffenstein" which could be related (?). Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea what either of these things are... Some sort of reduplication thing, maybe? -- the Great Gavini 14:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The question, I think, is not about the specific example but about a pattern — which I've more often seen in a form like "Grumpy McFrownypants", where the content-words are distinct but related. —Tamfang (talk) 04:58, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

"The --- that dared to be"?

Hi, I heard a long time ago, of something in mythology, or books, or something, to which I have forgotten exactly where and in which context I had heard it. BUT I heard of a "something" that dared to be. I thought it was "the one" that dared, but no matter.

I have searched fruitlessly through google. and just hoped if anybody out there knew the exact quote and where it came from, although my description isn't all too helpful.

My initial idea was I had heard it from somewhere in mythology, or perhaps an old religious tale of "The one that dared to be"??

Thank you in advance for all your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.47.123.128 (talk) 14:32, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Almost anything is possible. What immediately came to my mind, though, is a famous "dare not": Lord Alfred Douglas's 1892 poem Two Loves ends with the line that refers to pederasty as "the love that dare not speak its name". Bielle (talk) 15:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Did it just dare to be, or did it dare to be [adjective]? Aaadddaaammm (talk) 15:12, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The BNC, the COCA, and the Time corpus all yield no results for the [*nn1*] that dared to [vbi]. But I'm not so used to using these Web sites, so that might not be the correct syntax.—msh210℠ 18:17, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

You might have more luck with the [*nn1*] that who dared to [vbi]. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Conjugating verbs

Why do many languages conjugate verbs to agree with the subject? It seems like redundant information since you already know the number from the subject being pluralized or not. Some English dialects (Black English, Hillbilly English) don't do it ("they is going ..."), so it's clearly not necessary. Thanks for any insight. --Sean 15:11, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

There's some discussion of the usefulness of redundancy in language at Redundancy (linguistics). +Angr 15:15, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

In languages without fixed word order, the agreement is vital in helping to determine which part of the sentence is the subject.—Emil J. 15:30, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with that. Even without fixed word order, the verb agreement would still often be redundant (or useless); for example if both subject and object are singular. Surely marking the subject or object would be the only way to be certain. Matt Deres (talk) 16:14, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Many times the agreement is redundant, yes. So what? Many times it isn't. I doubt you can find a grammatical feature which is never redundant.—Emil J. 16:41, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I was going to say. It would be strange to only use the agreement suffix when the subject and the object have different numbers, wouldn't it? Once we accept that subject marking is helpful in some cases, it should come as no surprise that it is extended to others.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:53, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

You said that "the agreement is vital in helping to determine which part of the sentence is the subject". I am merely saying that subject-verb agreement only helps in the cases where the subject is singular and object is plural (or vice versa). So how "vital" could it possibly be? Matt Deres (talk) 18:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, so it's not always vital, just sometimes helpful. But one shouldn't underestimate the significance of "sometimes-helpfulness". Also note that many languages mark more features of the subject than just its number - for example, gender / noun class. This can enhance the disambiguating effect even more.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 21:15, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Also, many (perhaps most) languages with verbal subject agreement are "pro-drop"; in other words, they don't express the subject with a separate word, so the ending is not redundant but necessary: e.g. Latin amo instead of ego amo. Once both become obligatory, as they have in the Germanic languages (seen already in Old Norse and Old English, but not yet in Gothic), agreement is arguably likely to wither away (albeit at glacier speed), finally leading to the near loss of agreement in English (and complete loss in mainland Scandinavian). Or vice versa, it may be that the very transition to non-pro-drop in Germanic was the result of the decay of agreement morphology, which in turn resulted from phonetic and phonological processes.

Finally, I think that redundancy in general is useful, because while it does pose requirements on the speaker, it makes things easier to comprehend for the listener: the more "clues" signal the same thing, the more likely you are to understand even under adverse conditions or with minimal concentration.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:53, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

As Mr. 91.148 has pointed out, in some languages, such as Basque, Spanish and Catalan, the subject is optional and, if used, adds emphasis. For example, if someone tells you: "¿Has hecho los deberes?" (Have you done your homework?) you'd answer "Sí, los he hecho." (Yes, I have.). But if that person thinks that you might have copied your homework they could ask: "¿Has hecho tú los deberes?" and you would reply: "Pues claro que los he hecho yo." (something like "Of course it was me who did it."). --Belchman (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Subject-verb agreement is far from being the only "redundant" type of marking in natural language. Some languages have object agreement (this is true of Kurdish and some Bantu languages, see e.g. [10]), some have possessive agreement (most notably the Turkic languages), some have a small amount of case marking even though they have fixed word order (English and all the Romance languages, anyone?), some have double negatives (French), and I'm sure there are more things I'm not thinking of right now. This is just what languages do. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:39, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

And noun-adjective agreement, of course. And double/triple definiteness marking in adjective-noun phrases in most of Scandinavian (to a smaller extent double definiteness marking in German, Dutch and Danish).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 21:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

And subject, object and indirect object indexing in verbs in Georgian. And double definiteness in Hebrew (as well as optional object marking. And ... --ColinFine (talk) 23:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

...And Sumerian optional verbal agreement with the comitative, ablative and terminative participants (besides the equally optional agreement with the dative one and the obligatory agreement with the ergative and absolutive ones).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:13, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I have taken the liberty of adding a wikilink to the Sumerian language in your reply, Mr. 91.148. --Belchman (talk) 17:50, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

April 8

Different people have different tastes

à chacun son goût OR chacun à son goût.

Which is better French, s'il vous plait? -- 00:45, 8 April 2010 User:Wanderer57

Jack's son has the gout. That said, i hear the second version more often, although both would seem to be grammatically correct. Gzuckier (talk) 06:05, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

As Flanders and Swann put it: I don't care for sherry, one cannot drink stout, And port is a wine I can well do without. It's simply a case of chacun a son gout, Have some Madeira, m'dear! AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:39, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Not sure either of my sons would agree, Gzuckier. They're both pretty healthy.  :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:53, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Our List of French words and phrases used by English speakers article confirms what Gzuckier wrote, and adds chacun ses goûts and à chacun ses goûts - I'm assuming these are French phrases used correctly in that language. Googling sites ending in .fr shows à chacun son goût to be the more common of the two by a large margin, with the latter occurring mostly in song titles, etc. -- the Great Gavini 08:27, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

As a French native speaker (from France) I say: à chacun son goût. Of course it depends on the context, I could say: chacun a son goût particulier,…. Note, there is no accent on the a (it is a form of the verb avoir), in this latter phrase. The verb avoir can be ommitted like in chacun ses goûts as pointed out by The Great Gavini. Chacun à son goût seems to be used mainly by English speakers. I am not sure that it is correct in (modern) French (because of the accent on the a: à is a preposition in this case). — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I have to correct myself. We can say in French chacun à son goût. But I would not use it in the same way (Chacun à son goût = chacun selon son goût). I would say: Wagner ou Bach ? Á chacun son goût ! (Wagner or Bach ? It's a matter of taste! or Each to his own!) But: Ajoutez du vin blanc ou rouge, chacun à son goût.: Add some red or white wine, according to your own taste. Some may have a different opinion: I am not member of the Académie Française. — AldoSyrt (talk) 14:50, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps, De gustibus non est disputandum Rmhermen (talk) 18:08, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Sprachbund

From the article on Khmer language: As a result of geographic proximity, the Khmer language has affected, and also been affected by; Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and Cham many of which all form a pseudo-sprachbund in peninsular Southeast Asia, since most contain high levels of Sanskrit and Pali influences....but why is it a "pseudo-sprachbund" since the languages in a sprachbund needn't be genetically related?--达伟 (talk) 12:57, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the "pseudo"-part is because those languages have not (primarily) borrowed from each other, but have a shared borrowing from other languages (namely Sanskrit and Pali). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:28, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Translation from French into English

Can a user please translate the following from French into English: “Il y a au milieu de leur synagogue une chaire magnifique & fort élevée, avec un beau couffin brodé; c’est la chaire de Moise, … ils mettent le livre du Pentateuque, & en font la lecture.” Thank you. Simonschaim (talk) 15:20, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be something missing, but the passage is something like "In the middle of their synagogue there was a magnificent and high chair, with a lovely embroidered crib; it was the chair of Moses (?) ... they placed [there] the book of the Pentateuch and read it". rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:00, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Is chaire a chair or a pulpit? I think in this case, the latter. The word couffin in French means "basket" and by extension "a kind of basket used as a crib"; I think that a translation closer to the French meaning would be "Moses basket". But the translation will be ackward: "with a lovely embroidered Moses basket; it was the pulpit of Moses [~ dedicated to Moses]...". — AldoSyrt (talk) 17:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC).

(edit conflict)This page gives "In the centre of all is 'the throne of Moses,' a magnificent and elevated chair, with an embroidered cushion, upon which they place the book of the law while it is read" which I think is a little better. -- the Great Gavini 17:21, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

In hindsight, the translation I gave is probably the most preferable, because the original seems to be English and by a Mr. James Finn (as in the link I gave). -- the Great Gavini 17:23, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

According to this link the original language is Portuguese and the writer is Jean-Paul Gozani (a French Jesuit). Aside, in this book it is not a couffin (Moses basket) but a coussin (cushion), in old French some letters s looked like f: an error of transcription in the OP text? — AldoSyrt (talk) 19:53, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I have found the OP text here and, yes! it is coussin not couffin. — AldoSyrt (talk) 20:11, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Jean-Paul Gozani is apparently Italian, not French (don't have full access to journals, but see these results). But whether French or not, assumptions cannot be made from the French version as if it were the Portuguese original. -- the Great Gavini 11:51, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

According to this link, Jean-Paul Gozani was from Piedmont which was part of the House of Savoy at this time. This can explain his "French" first name. — AldoSyrt (talk) 17:17, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Then I would question the English translation linked by the Great Gavini. Chaire is almost certainly a pulpit, not a chair. When one is going to read from a book, one places the book on a pulpit, not a chair. The English translator might have been put off by the cushion, but it is easy to imagine the Torah resting on a cushion atop the pulpit. Marco polo (talk) 20:22, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

That's what I thought, but it's a synagogue, and a rather plain one at that, making it uncertain whether it is a chair or something fancier. I doubt that Marcopolo's and AldoSyrt's translation as "pulprit" is tenable since it is a synagogue. [C]haire could well be a French mistranslation from the Portuguese - I don't think chaires exist in synagogues. But in translating as "chair" I'm assuming Finn translated from the Portuguese original and not a French version. I've hunted high and low for the Portuguese original but in vain, making this whole exercise futile at best. -- the Great Gavini 11:51, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

According to this link the bibliography of Mr. Finn's book refers to the French translation (Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, écrites des missions étrangères). I have not found a reference to the original Portuguese text. — AldoSyrt (talk) 17:33, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

There's an article about the long s which explains why the letter 's' could look a bit like the letter 'f'. --Kjoonlee 23:32, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Is that usage of "chair" as "throne" or "pulpit", where we get expressions like "chairman" and "I have the chair"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:07, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Apparently OED. -- the Great Gavini 11:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The feature of the synagogue that is probably being described as a chaire is the bimah, which is more like a pulpit than a chair. Marco polo (talk) 15:53, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Is there really such a thing as the "Jewish Bible"?

I went to a religious school, and also went to church frequently, as a child, and throughout all that time since then up until a minutes or two ago I thought that 'the bible' only referred to the Christian bible. Now, reading the Bible article for the first time, I've been shocked to see that the article is not just about the bible (as I knew it), but also describes what is described as the "Jewish Bible", which I've never heard of before. I'm really shocked that if I refer to "the bible" then someone asks me which bible I'm refering to?! Surely there's only one, although it does include both the Old and New Testaments, and with some variation for the Protestant and Catholic versions.

So do Jewish people really refer to the Torah and so on as the "Jewish bible"? Wouldnt they actually just refer to it as "The Torah"? Isnt the phrase "Jewish Bible" just a phrase or metaphor someone has made up very recently, and which seems to be loaded with an agenda? I'm now an aetheist so I've no preference or loyalty to either religion. Thanks 78.144.248.81 (talk) 21:49, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

See Jewish Bible. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:01, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Isnt that like a metaphor? For example I could call the British Prime Minister "the British President". And then when someone refers to "the President" I ask "Do you mean the American president, or the British President?" 78.144.248.81 (talk) 22:40, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

If there had never been any such thing as the Christian bible, then the expression "Jewish bible" wouldnt exist either. So its a derived phrase. 78.147.131.74 (talk) 19:47, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

See Bible (disambiguation). -- Wavelength (talk) 22:15, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Cross posted to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Abrahamic religious_texts. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Please may I beg to disagree about it being cross posted, since the questions are not the same, although they are both about religious texts. 78.144.248.81 (talk) 22:33, 8 April 2010 (UTC).

See Definitions of Bible - OneLook Dictionary Search and http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Bible and http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Bible. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:40, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

78.144.248.81 — you are probably right. Based on personal observation I would say that common speech equates "Bible" with "Christian Bible." But the other usage is not unheard of. Bus stop (talk) 22:49, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The Concise Oxford Dictionary sixth edition has as its first meaning for bible the Christian scriptures, the second meaning says "Scriptours of other religions; authoritative book". It does not say anything about a Jewish Bible. How far back has the phrase "Jewish Bible" go in common use? What countries is it used in - I suspect it may be more used in North America perhaps.

Is there such a thing as the Muslim Bible then? Would Muslims refer to it as such, and not the Qur'an? 78.144.248.81 (talk) 22:53, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The Torah is only the first of three parts of the Hebrew Bible, also called the Tanakh so no, Jews would not confuse Torah with Tanakh. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 23:01, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Do Jewish people use the word "bible" in conversation between themselves? Wouldnt they use the word Tanakh? 78.144.248.81 (talk) 23:14, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Not always. See, for example, International Bible Contest. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Google's news archive has examples of the phrase "Jewish Bible" dating back as far as 1856, so it's not a new term. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:47, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

78.144.248.81 — "Tanakh" is not an English word. (It's actually a a Hebrew acronym.) Why would English-speaking Jews use a non-English term? Bus stop (talk) 23:53, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Because their Jewish? As Christians use as lot of non-English terms, such as "bible" for example. 78.147.131.74 (talk) 19:45, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Why not? Plenty of Jews I know say "Pesach" instead of "Passover", for instance. 128.135.222.164 (talk) 00:57, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Some Christians say "Pesach" too. Anyone can use any word that they choose. But the point I was trying to make is that an English-speaking Jew need not use a foreign-to-the-English-language term if a familiar English word is available. Exceptions certainly abound. The fact that someone uses a word (in this case) indicates very little. User:78.144.248.81 is questioning whether a Jew would use the word "bible." My answer, in a nutshell, is: possibly. Bus stop (talk) 01:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

More than "possibly". My Jewish friends refer to "The Bible" and what they are actually referring to is what us Christians called "The Old Testament". Keep in mind that "bible" is the anglicized word that simply means "book". Hence a traditional Christian bible is titled not just "Bible" but "Holy Bible" (holy book). Also, I think Muslims refer to the "Holy Quran", as the word "quran" by itself simply means "recitations" or something like that. Also, "Pesach" is Hebrew, and its exact translation is "Passover". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:42, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

If Fiddler on the Roof can teach you anything about Jewish customs, the book in question is usually referred to as "the good book". ;)-Andrew c ^[talk] 21:02, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

"The Good Book" is also used to denote the Christian Bible. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:14, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

78.144.248.81, what do you think the "Old Testament" is? —Tamfang (talk) 04:07, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Weighing in here as a 4th generation US Jew raised anglophone in the Reform Movement and since the mid-1980s a "secular" naturalized Israeli speaking Hebrew: American Jews refer to "the Bible" whose first five books are "the Torah." Apart from this is the Christians' Scripture which Jews refer to as the "New Testament" and includes the Four Gospels. The term "Old Testament" is in widespread usage, as it's known that Christians refer to the Bible as including both "Old" and "New." Jews are likely to use the term "[what non-Jews call the] Old Testament" outside the fold. Besides being fairly intuitive, the term "Jewish Bible" may be considered a euphemism (presumably among believing Jews) for "Old Testament" to avoid the qualifier "old" by those for whom the "new" isn't acknowledged as part of the Scripture. In general, a Jew referring to a "biblical expression" unqualified, would implicitly not consider the New Testament as included. Being characteristically ignorant of Hebrew terms (as Reform Judaism didn't embrace Zionism until 1970), I didn't know the term Tanakh (Hebrew acronym for "Pentateuch, Prophets, Writings"), though American Jews of the streams (Conservative, Orthodox) better grounded in Hebrew do perhaps use it in the vernacular, similar to the variant usage in English of Passover/Pesach noted above, or [the]Sabbath/Shabbat (Shabbos). Deborahjay (talk) 08:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The word "Tanakh" has occurred prominently on the cover or title page of Jewish Publication Society Bible translations since 1985. AnonMoos (talk) 09:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Describing the Tanakh as the "Jewish Bible" is I think a prime example of a Reification (fallacy). It presumably was originally used as a metaphor, now for some (possibly mostly North Americans, I'm just guessing) its used without being aware of the metaphor. 78.147.131.74 (talk) 20:00, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

In what way is calling the Tanakh the (Hebrew or Jewish) Bible an example of reification? Jews have just as much right to refer to their Scriptures as "the Bible" as Christians do, if not more right to do so. First, see our article Bible, which correctly states that the term Bible can refer to either the Jewish or the Christian scriptures. In that article, you will see that "The Greek phrase Ta biblia (lit. "little papyrus books")[5] was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books several centuries before the time of Jesus,"[6] and would have referred to the Septuagint.[7]". This Greek term, which is the origin of the English word Bible was used to refer to the Jewish scriptures before it was used for the Christian scriptures. Perhaps you grew up thinking that "the Bible" was always a reference to the Christian Bible. In fact, it is not. Marco polo (talk) 20:38, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

You clearly do not understand the concept of reification. 89.242.144.8 (talk) 11:47, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

It seems like the OP is saying that just because he never heard the Old Testament referred to as "The Bible", that somehow something's wrong. Although "Holy Bible" is now the predominant use of the term, probably thanks to there being so many more Christians than Jews, it's pretty evident that the Christians borrowed the term from the Jews. Just another example of Christians having borrowed something from Judaism (such as reconfiguring the Seder as the Communion). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:48, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Speculate all you like. 89.242.144.8 (talk) 11:47, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Past tense words

What are the types of different versions of verbs in the past tense called, such as "Mommy, it fell and broke" versus "Mommy, it didn't fall or break?" DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:09, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

See Participle. caknuck _° needs to be running more often 00:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the participles would be "falling", "fallen", "breaking", "broken", not any of the forms above.... AnonMoos (talk) 01:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Hm. When there's an auxiliary verb (here did), is the main verb called an "infinitive" though to is absent? —Tamfang (talk) 04:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

It's called "non-finite". rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:04, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes called the "short infinitive" (but the only verb where you can really tell based on morphological form in Modern English is "be"). AnonMoos (talk) 09:43, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

See English verbs. The forms you ask about are all examples of the English preterite. The affirmative forms use the inflected preterite form of the main verb. The negative forms use the inflected preterite form of the auxiliary verb do (i.e., did), plus the negative particle n't, followed by the "naked" or "short infinitive" form of the main verb. Marco polo (talk) 16:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

April 9

People from Krasnoyarsk

I've searched Google and read the article on Krasnoyarsk but I can't seem to find a demonym. I'm currently using Siberian as a placeholder but surely there is a more precise term to describe someone from Krasnoyarsk? Thanks 173.33.12.81 (talk) 23:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know – and, frankly, doubt – whether an English demonym exists, but Russian Wikipedia provides a Russian one: masculine красноярец (krasnoyarets), feminine красноярка (krasnoyarka), plural красноярцы (krasnoyartsy). The city's name comes from Красный Яр (Krasnyy Yar), literally "Beautiful Ravine" – in case you want to Anglicize it and create your own demonym out of that. — Kpalion^(talk) 23:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Finally someone posted a question on April 9th - just 40 minutes or so before the date expired. :P --Магьосник (talk) 00:50, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The foremost English demonym seems to be "Krasnoyarskian", for which there are twenty ghits, including a few in Google Books. LANTZY^TALK 02:31, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

April 10

Traduttore, traditore!

It's common for writers to discuss the problems of translation, but has a notable writer ever actually refused to allow their own work to be translated, either into a particular target language or in general? LANTZY^TALK 02:45, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to prevent people from translating their published works into other languages. Whether those translations ever see the light of day as separate publications is another issue; but there's nothing to stop anyone from coming up with their own private translation of any foreign-language book you care to name. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 02:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Perhaps I ought to clarify. Has there ever been a notable writer who opposed the translation of his work, whether or not he had the power to prevent it? LANTZY^TALK 04:43, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

See Copyright Advisory Network / Translation copyright. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:22, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Technically in Islam, the Quran cannot be translated, only "explained" or "interpreted"...But this is more figurative than literal, since "translation" does in fact take place...--71.111.229.19 (talk) 10:32, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

George Steiner, I seem to recall, will not allow his novella The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. to be translated into German, for fear that the words he put into Hitler's mouth in his defense speech might sound a bit too good for comfort in German.--Rallette (talk) 11:10, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

From Arturo Pérez-Reverte: He originally refused to have his novels translated from the original Spanish to any language other than French. --151.51.45.45 (talk) 11:57, 10 April 2010 (UTC)