:::I expect in the same way that American's "love your British accent". [[User:Alansplodge|Alansplodge]] ([[User talk:Alansplodge|talk]]) 21:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
:::I expect in the same way that American's "love your British accent". [[User:Alansplodge|Alansplodge]] ([[User talk:Alansplodge|talk]]) 21:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
::::There is not one single "English accent" or "British accent" - there are many different accents over different parts of the UK, readily identifiable to UK residents at least. Back in the eighteenth century those accents (and dialects) would have been much more distinguishable from each other than they are now, because of the relative lack of mixing between people from different areas - and would also have been different from modern accents. The accents of the settlers would have varied considerably depending on which part of Britain they came from, and the accents that then developed in America would have arisen from a mixing of the different accents in use at that time. [[User:Ghmyrtle|Ghmyrtle]] ([[User talk:Ghmyrtle|talk]]) 08:27, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
::::There is not one single "English accent" or "British accent" - there are many different accents over different parts of the UK, readily identifiable to UK residents at least. Back in the eighteenth century those accents (and dialects) would have been much more distinguishable from each other than they are now, because of the relative lack of mixing between people from different areas - and would also have been different from modern accents. The accents of the settlers would have varied considerably depending on which part of Britain they came from, and the accents that then developed in America would have arisen from a mixing of the different accents in use at that time. [[User:Ghmyrtle|Ghmyrtle]] ([[User talk:Ghmyrtle|talk]]) 08:27, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
:::::That is like saying "There is no such thing as blue" but only navy, ultramarine, and so on. [[Special:Contributions/92.15.27.8|92.15.27.8]] ([[User talk:92.15.27.8|talk]]) 22:38, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
::(e/c)Unfortunately the article does not mention when the first American accents emerged. --[[User:Saddhiyama|Saddhiyama]] ([[User talk:Saddhiyama|talk]]) 19:53, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
::(e/c)Unfortunately the article does not mention when the first American accents emerged. --[[User:Saddhiyama|Saddhiyama]] ([[User talk:Saddhiyama|talk]]) 19:53, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
::: This is a fascinating subject, and the truth often surprises most people. Patricia T. O'Conner has a cool section on this in her book ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=hsu47CBwJPUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=origins+of+the+specious&hl=en&ei=D2GaTM6rMpSlnge-pfDoDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false Origins of the Specious]'', which is what I'm using as a reference right now. The English that was spoken at the time of the thirteen colonies (the time period you are referencing) was the same on both sides of the pond. In fact, today's educated American English is closer to the English of that time period than today's British English is, and AmEn has preserved a lot of words and pronunciations from that time period that BrEn hasn't, as well as vice versa. But to answer your question, the two Englishes have been different pretty much since the American Revolution (the spellings pretty much since Samuel Johnson picked the "British" variants for his dictionary in 1755, and Noah Webster picked the "American" variants for his dictionary in 1828). I don't know who exactly was the first to notice the difference, but the Brits have been (often erroneously) complaining about the Yanks' language pretty much since the mid-nineteenth century. [[User:Lexicografía|Lexicografía]] ([[User talk:Lexicografía|talk]]) 19:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
::: This is a fascinating subject, and the truth often surprises most people. Patricia T. O'Conner has a cool section on this in her book ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=hsu47CBwJPUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=origins+of+the+specious&hl=en&ei=D2GaTM6rMpSlnge-pfDoDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false Origins of the Specious]'', which is what I'm using as a reference right now. The English that was spoken at the time of the thirteen colonies (the time period you are referencing) was the same on both sides of the pond. In fact, today's educated American English is closer to the English of that time period than today's British English is, and AmEn has preserved a lot of words and pronunciations from that time period that BrEn hasn't, as well as vice versa. But to answer your question, the two Englishes have been different pretty much since the American Revolution (the spellings pretty much since Samuel Johnson picked the "British" variants for his dictionary in 1755, and Noah Webster picked the "American" variants for his dictionary in 1828). I don't know who exactly was the first to notice the difference, but the Brits have been (often erroneously) complaining about the Yanks' language pretty much since the mid-nineteenth century. [[User:Lexicografía|Lexicografía]] ([[User talk:Lexicografía|talk]]) 19:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Revision as of 22:38, 24 September 2010
Welcome to the language section of the Wikipedia reference desk.
The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.
I plan on using my laptop to record speech for spectrogram analysis, but my laptop's built-in microphone is horrible for this. What should I look for when buying an external microphone to generate clean spectrograms? Can any fellow phoneticians recommend something? My plan is to plug it into my laptop and record in Praat. I'm assuming that's enough for good sound sampling and all I'm lacking is a suitable microphone. Not sure if Wikipedia's the best place to ask this, but I figured I'd give it a try Thank you!--el Aprel (facta-facienda) 00:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a phonetician so I don't know a ton about this, but you might want to check what is used in relevant articles related to what you're doing. For example, the facilities in my department have an ElectroVoice 767 microphone (among others; this is the only one I know off the top of my head). The only thing is, I imagine those sorts of microphones are quite expensive.
If you don't need a top-of-the-line microphone I think you can get by with just about any average one. For the intro phonetics class we teach, students have to do a project where they record themselves and do some spectral analysis, and we just let them use the regular microphones in a regular computer lab on campus; it's not the nicest ever, but it's certainly good enough to get a clean spectogram. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your answers so far. I've made notice of this question on the science desk. The ElectroVoice microphone looks great, albeit expensive as Rjanag points out. A short perusal of decent microphones sold online brought up a few options ~$20, mostly microphones intended for music, which make me a bit weary, at least those with "noise-canceling" features that make me wonder whether they'll filter out any meaningful frequencies of human speech, or have the potential of accidentally altering the speech signal. Is there some code-word I should look for in the product description that will tell me the microphone doesn't filter any of the signal, or certain descriptions of a microphone that would make it a good candidate for phonetic applications (I see this word dynamic a lot)? Also, I know a good amount of phonologists who have bought expensive portable recorders to plug the microphone into. I'm not sure if that's necessary--I just use a laptop, which I would think would be able to sample sound better than a higher-end portable device.... Plus for phonetic work, I'd be collecting data sitting down in a quiet room, so even a bulkier laptop isn't a problem. Are these portable samplers really any better?--el Aprel (facta-facienda) 04:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As for noise-cancelling, you definitely want to make sure it doesn't record or save stuff in mp3 or mp4 format; those are the ones that filter out some frequencies. Generally you're save if you use .wav format. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My husband does quite a bit of digital voice recording for work, directly onto a laptop using Audacity software. He uses a Shure SM58 microphone, which has been pretty much an industry standard for stage vocalists for many years, and tells me it's the best thing for the job for various technical reasons I don't understand, although I believe it tends not to pick up background noise, for one thing. There are some issues around cheap fake SM58s from unauthorised sources (see here) that any prospective buyer needs to know. Karenjc17:57, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Aprel: just in case you're wondering, Audacity is also free and is useful for sound recording (especially for stuff like cutting and splicing files), although if you're doing spectral analysis you're probably better off sticking with Praat, since Audacity can't do any of that sort of stuff (as far as I know) and Praat is just as good as audacity when it comes to the pretty basic editing stuff (Audacity is better for more advanced stuff). rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not to dissent from all the above, doubtless excellent, advice, but do not linguists in their published scientific papers specify the equipment and software they have used? If you have in mind extending the research on a particular area covered by particular previous papers (which you may well be citing) it might be good practice to duplicate, if possible, the more commonly used equipment and software to maintain maximal comparability. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 10:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(They do, that's why the very first bit of advice I gave was "you might want to check what is used in relevant articles related to what you're doing.") rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Dynamic microphones are described on the Microphone page--albeit not in detail, nor very well. If you want to record really clean sound, your best bet would probably be some kind of condenser microphone. I've used Shure SM58 microphone a lot, and while they are great workhorses, they are no where near as clean and clear as a good condenser microphone. I have a nice AKG and the difference between the AKG condenser and the Shure dynamic is very obvious. But then, you want to spend less than $20 or so? And you want to plug the microphone into your laptop without any extra hardware, like preamps? I dunno, good luck. Even Shure SM58s are the like cost closer to $80 or $100 new, as far as I know. You'd also want to make sure you can plug it into a laptop. The Shure microphones I've dealt with (and most microphones in general) use XLR connectors. Laptops don't have XLR. If you really want to go cheap and not deal with XLR and/or additional hardware, perhaps you should forget Shures and look instead for microphones specifically designed for use with laptops. I don't know much about that topic, but there must be USB or similar microphones out there for cheap, which while not great would be an improvement over whatever junk the laptop has built in. (Btw, I've played around with Praat, it's yet another amazing piece of freeware made by a Dutch genius) Pfly (talk) 11:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Films with American accents
Okay, throwing a spanner into the works just for the sake of a little comedy (?) relief here. My question is: Do British movie houses provide barf bags for the audience when they run films with American actors playing historical British characters - or even (gasp) an American cast doing Shakespeare?
And a follow-up question, are there any American actors that British audiences perceive as doing a truly believable British/Scottish/Welsh/etc. accent, and why? The vowels, the consonants, the rhythm, the elision . . . ? Just wondering. Textorus (talk) 01:28, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why do people never complain about the other way around? British people sometimes have laughable American accents. (Although I always thought Gary Oldman was American...and presumably most people don't know Hugh Laurie is British...but still! Still!) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:31, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As for an American with a believable British accent, I'd suggest Gillian Anderson. I even recall an episode of QI where Alan Davies insisted vociferously that she was English, even though she was born in Chicago. (Of course, she did spend some of her childhood in London.) As an American, I found that especially satisfying. I think British audiences have basically decided, for whatever mystical reason, that Americans are physiologically incapable of putting on a convincing British accent, so it's become a death sport for an American actor to attempt such a feat. No one wants to be the next Dick van Dyke. And it's not as though there aren't plenty of affordable Australians lining up to play British characters, so what's the point? LANTZYTALK03:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Last time I looked, there was a nice little explanation in our article Dick Van Dyke. His accent was so bad, it became the widely-derided example of an American doing a bad cockney accent, in Britain. It is taken as 'common wisdom' that the only British accents in American media are 'Hugh Grant' and 'Dick Van Dyke': exceptions to this are usually noticed and praised, often with some passing reference to Mary Poppins, but oddly not remembered next time the paper wants to write an article on accents in film and on TV. 86.164.78.91 (talk) 15:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't seen Mary Poppins in years, but come to think of it, I guess Bert does have a strong American accent in that picture. Please tell me Meryl Streep makes up for any offense caused. Textorus (talk) 20:16, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oi, LANTZY. Ah you saying Australians are cheap? !! (No offence take.) Australians know that it's extremely rare for any non-Australian to do our accent at all well. As for Hugh Laurie, I only knew him as British. Is not knowing that an American thing? I wonder how many here are familiaar with Simon Baker in the Mentalist? DO Americans think his accent is OK (for an Aussie pretending to be American)? HiLo48 (talk) 03:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, HiLo, I'm saying Americans are overpaid! Generally speaking, I'm impressed by the job Australians do with any non-Australian accent, but especially with American accents. LANTZYTALK03:51, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've never seen the Mentalist, but the Australian guy in True Blood sounds completely American to me. (The British guy, too). And Anna Paquin is not American either, is she? But she always sounds like one. Maybe that's because southern American accents always sound fake, even when they are real... Adam Bishop (talk) 03:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's a very good point. The ratio of phony to genuine southern American accents on film is probably something like ten to one. And it's always Mississippian or Texan. You never hear Virginian or Carolinian accents. LANTZYTALK03:57, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing grates on my ears worse than a Yankee actor pretending to tawk Suthun. They just don't get it. Ought to be against the law. And Lantzy is right; nobody in Hollywood ever seems to realize there is not one Southern accent, but many. Textorus (talk) 04:03, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think. There've been a succession of American actors (and British too) trying, and mainly failing, to do a good Australian accent. They all seem to think it's a close cousin to Cockney. I can hear a vague resemblance, that's all. But who am I to talk? I've lived here all my life and I'm a natural mimic, but try as I may I cannot make the sounds that a lot of younger Australian people make when they say "through", "grew", and similar words. They swallow the vowel yet somehow simultaneously make it sound very aggressive and accusatory, no matter what the context is. A very ugly and disturbing development. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'll let a Kiwi answer that; I've never seen that movie anyway. I'll just say that comparisons between Australian and New Zealand English should not assume any huge similarity based on mere geographic proximity. There are times when New Zealanders sound like Martians to Aussies; and I'm sure the opposite applies as well. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 03:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I usually can't tell NZ and Australian accents apart...and anyway, we almost never hear anyone from New Zealand over here. The only recent exposure is the guys from Flight of the Conchords. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Jack, on that note, the accent of your new PM sounds to my admittedly untrained ears, rather . . . um, how shall I say; would "informal" be neutral enough? ("Barmaid," I'm afraid, would definitely give offense, when I really don't mean to offend.) Noticeably different even to an American ear from the "Toy me kangaroo down" accent I've always thought of as typically Australian. Where does that come from? (And should we start a new thread on this, grin?)Textorus (talk) 21:51, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, she has her detractors here. Me, I don't care because she speaks very clearly and deliberately and I can understand every single syllable she ever utters, which is something I could not say about her predecessor. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 03:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No disrespect meant, no doubt she will do a fine job. In the one short clip I've seen of her, I thought she seemed a Down Under version of Reba McEntire, one of my favorite country & western singers, who is from just up the road here. I can't quite imagine Reba in the White House, though; but hell, who knows, we've certainly got a lot of entertainers in high places these days, in all parts of the country. Intentional or not. Textorus (talk) 03:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Australia's new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, while born in Wales (yes, we let foreigners do the job), spent her earliest schooldays in a less salubrious corner of Adelaide, which was typical for many British migrants of that time.I think it's those first years of school that set your style of speech, especially in a new country. HiLo48 (talk) 06:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that explains the unexpected accent. Which I suppose I could have figured out from her WP article if I'd had good sense. (Now I'll be up all night wondering if Reba has Welsh ancestry.) Thanks for the tip.Textorus (talk) 06:49, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For a British actor with a terrible American accent (or perhaps deliberately portraying an Englishman with Hollywood pretensions badly failing to use a convincing American accent), see the BBC's As Time Goes By (TV series). As someone born in London, I was at first taken aback by the accents of my fellow Shakespearean actors in Northern California, but in fact their accents were probably no further from Shakespeare's than those of Southeastern Englishmen and women in this century. Many "Americanisms" like "gotten" and "fall" for autumn are just common 17th-century English that has survived in America while dying in metropolitan Britain. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:33, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can't tell you how often I've pointed that out to British friends. And Americans, for that matter. It never sinks in. As far as most people are concerned, all Shakespearean characters (and all Romans) should sound like Oxbridge alums. LANTZYTALK07:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes. In fact, it pains me to read that Received Pronunciation is practically obsolete now. Pity. I saw in a documentary of some kind a while back, I think it was a member of the Royal Family, saying "okay" and otherwise chatting on like an American. I shuddered a little. Us colonials like the nobility and such to talk real good English, ya know? Otherwise, what would we have to joke about? Grin. Textorus (talk) 09:51, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It was the middle classes that invented snooty pronunciation. The aristocrats were, at least until recently, always lazy in their manner of speech. Studiedly lazy, in fact: "Ain't we goin' fox-huntin'?" Presumably in order to distinguish themselves from the belabored snobbery of the upstarts. LANTZYTALK10:13, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Texican is a term of offense here to large numbers of my compatriots. I advise not using it if you ever come south of the Red River. And laziness is an old canard about Southern speech in general, as Colin points out below.Textorus (talk) 20:16, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's nothing to do with laziness: its just fashion (in the sense of "the way that this group behaves"). Despite the spelling, there is nothing omitted in "huntin'", it's the substitution of one sound (/n/) for another (/ŋ/) not obviously more difficult to pronounce. But it is true that the English aristocracy and working class share a number of ways of behaving that sets the middle class apart: see Watching the English by Kate Fox, passim. --ColinFine (talk) 11:44, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how anyone could think Hugh Laurie was an American. I'm glad I usually watch House dubbed into German so I don't have to laugh out loud at his pitiful attempt at an American accent. Honestly, if they wanted Hugh Laurie, why not just make the character English? Then there's Christian Bale, who couldn't be bothered to turn off his phony American accent even for his profanity-laced tirade on the set of Terminator Salvation. I suppose speaking in his own accent would have broken his concentration too. —Angr (talk) 14:59, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That seems a bit strong. Laurie's current American accent, while obviously a put-on, isn't what I'd call pitiful. Christian Bale is another matter. Both of them occasionally give off that "Bicycle Repair Man" vibe, but they blow Cary Elwes out of the water. LANTZYTALK17:30, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is a request for information, not a request that anything WP does should change. But, I started off a mini-spat at Talk:Main Page over the use on the main page of the word "hometown" to describe Karachi, the home city of a Pakistani politician. To me, the use of that word in that way seems derogatory - Karachi is a major city and (to me) cannot be described in any sense as a "town", or indeed as a "hometown". But others (apparently, everyone else in that discussion) disagree with my interpretation, saying that the word "hometown" is a common neutral description of the place someone comes from, regardless of size. That definition is not one I have ever used - I know it is used in that sense, but I had thought it was used only in a self-deprecating way by someone describing their own place of origin, not as a neutral term which could be used by anyone about someone else's place of origin. I'm struggling to understand how my understanding of the word is so much at variance with that of others. Can anyone shed any light on this - or is it, in fact, just me with an attitude problem? I would add as background that I'm over 50, in the UK, with a long professional career as an urban planner behind me. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:05, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a US American and in my 30s. I've never heard "hometown" used in a derogatory way, whether the "town" actually is a town or a city. Yes, people make discouraging remarks about towns, cities, etc. For instance, many Chicagoans speak negatively of Berwyn. But someone would say "Oh, so Berwyn is your hometown!" and being using hometown to implicate anything about the city itself or the person from there. I regularly say that my hometown is Chicago (though I'm not from the city but it's easier to say that than some suburb that the questioner has never heard of) and Chicago is a major city. Dismas|(talk)08:13, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Melbourne, Australia is my home town. I do separate it into two words, but I don't feel in any way negative about telling you that. HiLo48 (talk) 08:19, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to pin this down further. In the UK, it's normal to use the word "city" for a large urban area and "town" for a smaller area. There are exceptions, of smaller places with historic city charters, but they are exceptions to the general rule. In the US (correct me if I'm wrong), the term is often (usually?) used for a particular type of administration, almost regardless of size. And, in the UK (in my view) the usual way to describe someone's place of origin would be "home town" if they originated from a home town, or "home city" if they originated from a larger urban area. In neither case would a single word be used, but two - "home town". In the US, the single word "hometown" is used (never "home city"), and that usage has now spread more widely so that it is a more common usage than before in the UK and elsewhere. Is that a fair assessment? Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:23, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is also the norm in the U.S., Ghmyrtle, to differentiate "cities" and "towns" on the basis of size, just as you said. However, "hometown" is a metaphorical word, if you will: residents of New York City as well as those of Podunk, Texas (population 300), would both use the word without any hesitation, and do. There is nothing whatsoever derogatory about the word; on the contrary, the unspoken assumption would be that the speaker would feel a certain loyalty to or affection for his or her "hometown," unless explicitly denied.
"Town" as referring to a particular type of administration - no, not really. Probably you are thinking of township, a historical form of local government in New England but unknown in most of the rest of the U.S. "Cities" of course would have much bigger, more complex administrative structures than small towns would, but the main difference again has to do with the size of the place.
"Home city," whether one word or two, is an unknown phrase here, unless perhaps referring to a corporate headquarters or something like that; not used for a person's place of origin. Textorus (talk) 08:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
From Frank Sinatra....
On State Street, that great street, I just want to sayThey do things that they never do on Broadway -- sayThey have the time, the time of their lifeI saw a man and he danced with his wifeIn Chicago, Chicago, Chicago -- that's my HOME TOWN
In the US at least, "town" is frequently used to refer affectionately to any municipality of any size, be it a village or a metropolis. New York City is a town; so is East Jesus, Alabama. In fact, you'd be more likely to use "town" to describe a large city than to describe a small village. However, it isn't as though it's a synonym of "city". It's used to refer to specific places, not to urban environments in general (except in archaic fossilized phrases like "town and country"). So you wouldn't say, for instance, "Rap music originated in towns." But you could say, "Los Angeles is a crazy town." And, at least in the United States, "hometown" is the standard term for one's native community, whatever its size or population. It's not slang. It's not in the least bit derogatory or even particularly informal. LANTZYTALK09:51, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"The standard term." Exactly. Not slang, not folksy, just standard.
Although, strictly speaking, one's hometown might not be the same as one's "native city"; the latter literally means the place where you were born, but as in my case, my parents moved when I was a toddler so I grew up for the next 20+ years in another city, which if anyone asked I would call my "hometown." Textorus (talk) 10:20, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd go so far as to say that the American usage of "hometown" has more or less broken free of the confines of the word "town", so that the term is now somewhat metaphorical. If "hometown" had a synonym, it would be something like "cradle" - a connotation of nativity, early and intimate acquaintance, and persistent loyalty, a concept entirely independent of geographical size, form of government, size of population, etc. Hell, I wouldn't be particularly surprised to hear someone say, "This island is my hometown." It's become a single, indivisible semantic unit. LANTZYTALK10:31, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm from the UK, and to me "hometown" (one word) sounds American and a bit folksy and parochial. To me, it does not seem appropriate to decribe Karachi as a politician's "hometown" in an encycopedia. 86.173.172.12 (talk) 12:02, 18 September 2010 (UTC).[reply]
UK, late 30s here, and I agree that 'hometown' is too folksy American to appear in an encyclopedia. One would expect Karachi to be full of hot dog stalls and rodeo shows and friends shooting each other for bets. I would go with 'place of birth'. To more directly answer the OP's question, however, I can say that I am from Liverpool - a major city - and I have no trouble calling Liverpool my home town (or hometown). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK)12:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
From my own UK perspective it would always be "home town", two words. "Hometown" (one word) sounds to my ears like an adjectival form: "The place seemed instantly familiar: there was a real hometown feel about it". Compare it with: "She came from a small town" and "Just a small-town girl / Living in a lonely world". If it's hyphenated or two words run into one, my radar would see it as descriptive. Karenjc17:41, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So - am I right in concluding that most Americans use "hometown" (one word) to describe their place of origin regardless of size, and that most Brits do not - though they may use the two word phrase "home town", in an informal way, to convey the same meaning? Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:44, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That would seem to be the consensus emerging here. FYI, notice this definition from the (American) Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
hometown: the city or town where one was born or grew up; also the place of one's principal residence
Example: She returned to her hometown to stay after college.
First Known Use: 1912
We find it very useful to have a single word that conveys all that might be meant by the definition, as shown. Which, as you see, potentially might apply to two or more towns or cities in the course of a person's life: where you are from now, or where you were from originally, etc. Textorus (talk) 18:42, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've led a sort of wandering, peripatetic, rootless, nomadic life. When I meet new people in my latest place, they'll typically ask, not where my home town is, but "Where are you from?". And I never know how to answer that. I haven't lived in my place of birth since I was 10 years old, so there's little point giving that as the answer. I've lived in six other places between then and where I live now, so just mentioning the most recent one seems a bit pointless too. I almost wish the standard question was "Where's your home town?" - then I could just answer it exactly, but qualify it by saying it's not my most recent place of abode. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:45, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can relate. It took me some time to figure out that when people ask, "Where are you from?" they don't really want to hear the story of your life. So now my answer is simply "I grew up in . . ." without further elaboration, which satisfies the questioner in most social situations. Usually it's a question asked when strangers can't think of anything else to talk about, after "nice weather isn't it" and before "are you married?" Textorus (talk) 19:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion is pretty much over but I'd also like to point out how common it is in American English to ask someone about their "hometown team" which carries no population/city size implications of any kind whatsoever. It literally simply means "the pro-sports team followed by those from the place where you grew up" ... The Masked Booby (talk) 06:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've just recently became aware of this discussion but I'd like to point out the claim hometown is only used in the US is incorrect. The term is used in Malaysian English quite a bit because of the balik kampung common among Malays and Chinese people during Hari Raya Aidilfitri and Chinese New Year holidays respectively [2]. The usage isn't quite the same and often one's hometown (or one's parents' hometown/s which may be more relevant if your grandparents are still alive and sometimes people may call their parents' hometown their hometown even if they didn't grow up there and finally some may call where their parents or grandparents live now their hometown even if in reality no one grew up there) won't be a city but it's hardly uncommon that Kuala Lumpur may be someone's hometown [3] and there's nothing degrogatory about it. It's unlikely someone will use home city or homecity Nil Einne (talk) 21:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
While it's possible this is American influence, I doubt it. The term is used because it's a simple term that conveys the meaning resonably okay (well the meaning does vary somewhat from country to country). Of course some people may be in a less clear situation and so an actual explaination may be better (I moved around a lot etc). Terms like 'native city' or 'home city' anything else which attempts to distinguish between cities and towns are somewhat missing the point. Whether your hometown is a city or town isn't relevant. Things like 'where I was born' also don't really convey the same meaning at least to me, as I would take the term literally. If you were born in Kuala Lumpur, perhaps your parents were visiting and you mother went in to premature labour or whatever but you grew up in Ipoh, Ipoh is your hometown but Kuala Lumpur is the place you were born. Even if for example you were born and spent the first 4 years of your life in KL, you still probably wouldn't consider it your hometown if you spent your next 20 years in Ipoh.
It's probably true that in a number of countries, people may be less likely to talk about their 'hometown' if they were born in a large city but it doesn't necessarily mean they will be offended if you call the city they grew up in their home town nor that they will say they don't have a hometown since it's a city. In parts of Asia, Malaysia being the obvious example but I would guess also India and Pakistan (as well as China) for cultural, social and development reasons, one's hometown is generally more significant then say in UK, so it's not surprising that the term is probably used more there.
Thanks Nil Einne, that's interesting and informative. If only you'd been at Talk:Main Page a couple of days ago, you would have been able to help avert a lot of time wasted in fruitless argument! Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
An anonymous IP in Koblenz has just added this sentence to the Guido Westerwelle article:
He is the first Homofuerst (german word for openly gay person) to hold either of those positions.
I see that fuerst or fürst means "prince" but I don't speak German. Can someone who sprechens sie Deutch tell me if this is a truly complimentary, or at least non-judgmental word in German? Or is somebody trying to insert a little homophobic joke into this English article? My tracking sensors lit up when I saw this, just wondering. Textorus (talk) 22:30, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ich spreche nicht viel Deutsch, but based on this and the obvious derivational relationship to English gaylord (as well as the fact that Google Translate translates Er ist ein Homofürst as He is a gaylord), I think it would be safe to guess that this probably isn't a 'complimentary or non-judgmental word'. Lexicografía (talk) 22:38, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, and I wouldn't trust Google Translate for colloquial usage, Urban Dictionary is fun but a lot of it is stuff made up in school one day. We need a speaker of modern, idiomatic German. DuncanHill (talk) 22:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Even if it weren't a schoolyard taunt inserted by an anonymous IP, why on earth would we need a German word to express such a simple concept? It's as if the Michelle Bachelet article contained the line, "She is the first mujer (Spanish word for female person) to hold the office of president". LANTZYTALK22:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(after edit conflict) A word from a native speaker of German: this is indeed clear, obvious and childish vandalism. I've reverted it as such -- Ferkelparadeπ22:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Now somebody from Mainz has just undone the "vandalism" committed by Ferkelparade, and the Homofuerst sentence is back. Hmm, what to do, what to do? Textorus (talk) 06:40, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a German native speaker. The german article de:Gaylord says Homofürst corresponds to Gaylord (inded, it is the literal translation), which is an insulting word, no expression of gay proud. Hans Urian (talk) 10:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've warned the IP editor to stop doing it, but only on the basis that we don't need to use a German noun in the English Wikipedia to denote such a simple concept - I hadn't seen this discussion at the time. I have the article watched now too, so we should be able to deal with it easily enough - we can get it semi-protected for a short while if necessary. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 06:46, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Or just as it is spelled? I suspect that answer was a humorous one, but if you google "vietnamese pronunciation guide" you will find quite a few websites that may help. Textorus (talk) 01:33, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's pronounced [hu.tjɤ.mḭ.tʰo 313.55.35.33]. The first syllable is like "who" (with a dipping tone); the second syllable is like dee-UH (with a high tone), the third is the same as "me" (with a rising and creaky tone), and the fourth is like American English "taw" (or UK English "tore"). Written with faux-English spelling it's "hoo-deeuh-mee-taw". There isn't really a stressed syllable in Vietnamese. Steewi (talk) 02:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
QE2LS -- The question is actually not too linguistically meaningful in the form in which you asked it; all languages are constantly changing in small ways, which add up over time. Some languages may have strikingly archaic features (such as the Icelandic case system, Classical Arabic phonemic system etc.), but no living language is overall the same as a language spoken a thousand years ago etc., and the stories about Elizabethan English being spoken in Appalachia etc. are just myths... AnonMoos (talk) 11:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is almost certainly untrue that "most language(s) came about via conquests in the last few thousand years". Most languages have probably not moved very far (geographically) in the last few thousand years, and rather few of them have spread by conquest. --ColinFine (talk) 20:35, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well Wiktionary gives pylons as the plural of pylon, presumably as it's a word that has been completely assimilated into English. My gut feeling is that either form would be acceptable. Rojomoke (talk) 09:40, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here's my take on the question, if I may. * Short: plural of "pylon" is "pylons", so plural of "tetrapylon" is "tetrapylons". Were it to be anything different would be absurd. * Long version: were "tetrapylon" a Latin or Greekloan-word, then there may be a minute, pedantic, and artificial{{POV}} rationale for not pluralising it by just adding an s. However, the word presumably didn't exist in Latin or Ancient Greek. It is not a loan-word, it's a native English neologism. It's made up of either (a) Greek (as it were) "loan-prefix" tetra plus Greek loan-word pylon, or (b) a Greek "loan-prefix" plus a former Greek loan-word, now thoroughly naturalised. Were I to hazard a guess, it would be that the modern Greek word for a tetrapylon is technically a loan-word, as it was probably used in English first. Or I may possibly be completely wrong about the whole thing. --Shirt58 (talk)Caveat: closest I came to Classics was reading Ulysses. And even then, I mostly only read the funny bits.
"Sticking to her own way and pace a little though, she's a hard worker"? But it is difficult to translate without context. 頑張り屋 could be translated into three different ways. See this. Oda Mari (talk) 14:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It may vary from one country to another, but in the UK you would only get this in a teacher to pupil relationship (if I understand your question correctly) See here for example.--Shantavira|feed me17:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Such rules of address vary greatly between cultures and societies, between different situations within cultures and societies, and over time - in much of my past experience, particularly the last 20 years (2/5ths) of it, what you say would simply not be true, but it might be in your own situation. For your question to be answered relevantly for you, you will have to specify your own cultural and social milieu, and someone with specific first-hand knowledge of it (likely an older adult) would have to reply. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 17:36, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Last name without title is to me (in the US) a formality used only in newspapers, and a term of endearment among highschool-college age guys. I don't think it's really used anywhere else here. Lexicografía (talk) 18:10, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Practice has changed in the UK. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, set in the latter part of the 19th Century, the protagonist and his colleague address each other as "Holmes" and "Watson". In a similar circumstance today they would almost certainly address each other by their first names. --rossb (talk) 19:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As others hinted above, this varies greatly from one person/group to another, as it's mostly a matter of personal style. Like Lexicografia points out, it's common among guys (I went through high school and college being called by my last name, and my friends from back then still call me that). Another common usage is for talking about someone who is not present, particularly professors/superiors (for example, "I haven't taken Smith's class yet, but I hear it's good"), but again there are probably big variations from one person to another in how this is used. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:05, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Up to WWII, in Britain colleagues who were not close friends would address each other by surname: "What do you think, Johnson?" I'm not sure when that changed - during the 50's I suspect. On the other hand, when my father wrote to one of my teachers (in the 70's) as "Dear Stokes", this was a joke; because he and Mr Stokes had been at the same school at the same time (though they didn't in fact remember each other). Certainly there are very few circumstances in Britain today, apart from the armed forces, where you would address somebody by their surname alone. --ColinFine (talk) 20:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your first sentence also applied in Australia, Colin. It certainly did in formal contexts, because there's the famous anecdote about the then Prime Minister, Bob Menzies (1949-66), who wrote to the Chairman of the ABC, Sir James Darling, and started out "My dear Darling". The only time I was ever addressed by my surname alone was by school teachers. It virtually never happens now. School friends are far more likely to come up with some goofy name arising from a particular incident which you had to be at to fully appreciate, rather than ever calling each other by their surname. Time was when people who did not know you but knew your name, would address you as Mr, Mrs, Miss <surname>. The police in particular always did this; but now, they take a look at your licence and routinely assume the legal given name shown there is the name you prefer to go by. Which is not always the case. Which is partly why I'm currently in the process of changing my legal given name from whatever it is to Jack. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:30, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Close friends call me by my last name all the time, but that's probably because there were lots of other Adams in elementary/high school, and now it's just a habit. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
US here as well. It's not uncommon for men to address other men as "Mr. <surname>" when they are coworkers or friends with no sense of superiority involved. For instance, the maintenance guys that I work with. Neither one of us is above the other as far as work goes. We're of similar age, salary, etc. But it wouldn't be unusual for us to say "Mr. <surname>" especially when one of us enters a room. Dismas|(talk)02:08, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's common here in Australia for schoolboys to call each other by their surname. You might also hear it from your boss if he's in a bad mood. Steewi (talk) 02:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is a home in New Orleans...
Apropos the "hometown" discussion and the consensus among non-Americans that the term sounded "folksy", I was wondering how speakers of American and Un-American English feel about the word "home" itself. My impression is that speakers in the United States use the term far more often, and in far more contexts, than speakers elsewhere. Americans say things like "Welcome to our home", "We bought a new home", even (shudder) "We live in a ranch home", apparently out of the sentiment, fostered by real estate agents, that there's something warm and welcoming about the word "home". It's for just this reason that I avoid it like the plague, preferring to use specific terms like "house" or "condo" or "apartment" or "mansion" or "brownstone" or "yurt". What is the situation in the UK, Australia, Ireland, et cetera? Has this mawkish overuse of "home" reached your shores? And on an unrelated note: In the sentence "I walked home," what is the part of speech of "home"? Is it merely a noun without a preposition, or is it actually an adverb, a contraction of "homeward"? LANTZYTALK17:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
From a UK perspective, the word "home" does tend to be used by agents in trying to sell buildings for living in, and when one wants to give the impression of somewhere warm, cosy, snug, to which people belong. But I think that Brits probably use the term less in that way than many Americans do. Your average Brit is much more likely to say "we're thinking of moving house" than "we're thinking of getting a new home", for example. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:57, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A house is not always a home nor a home a house. As for "walking home", it can mean more than walking towards home, it can also imply reaching it, as "he walked home alone." Cf. "he's just rounded third base and now he's headed home." [i.e. towards Home Plate in baseball], where the sense of direction as opposed to completion is implied in "headed". —— Shakescene (talk) 18:05, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding overuse of "home" by USians: I haven't really noticed that. I'm from the US and I could never picture anyone saying "we bought a new home", although the other examples you cite sound marginally better; as you point out, when you say "welcome to our home" you're not just welcoming someone into a physical building, but into a safe, cozy place. ("Welcome to our home" still sounds awkward to me pragmatically, if I were throwing a dinner party I'd say "welcome to my house!" or "you're welcome to come to my house anytime" or something; for a more illustrative example, imagine some dramatic movie stuff like "I welcomed you into my home and then you betrayed me!", where "I welcomed you into my house" just doesn't pack that punch). And, to further drive this point "home" (snicker snicker) and piggyback off of Shakescene's observation, "house" and "home" don't always overlap; take, for example, "and this house just ain't no home // anytime she goes away".
I'm American, born and raised in the Midwest. ‘Home’ to me means either a) one's current residence, even if on a trip and staying at a hotel or a friend's place or b) one's hometown or the place where one identifies as one's ‘neck of the woods’, so to speak. It usually brings a mental picture of somewhere comfortable and safe. A ‘house’ is just a specific type of structure, that may or may not be a ‘home’. I would only find it awkward to say “we bought a new home” if the ‘home’ was not inhabited yet. Lexicografía (talk) 19:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But what about "I live in a ranch home" or "town home"? I swear there are people who treat the word as a mere synonym of "house". Blissfully, I've never heard anyone speak of "climbing on top of the home", but if I did it wouldn't faze me. LANTZYTALK20:01, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When referring to the structure itself and not the concept of what it functions as, I'd find it wrong to use "home". "Ranch home" and "town home" would both be incorrect. Lexicografía (talk) 20:06, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In Australia, "home ownership" is highly valued. People will scrimp and save in order to put down a deposit on their own "home" (which admittedly isn't always a house as such, it can be an apartment or a unit); then, they'll invite their family and friends around for a "home house warming" party (which term is always used even if it's not a house as such). 'Home' is often used for the physical object, not just the usage of it. (Driving down an unfamiliar street, I saw some very expensive homes - although 'house' would fit there as well.) One doesn't jump to one's death from the top story of one's home, nor is there such a thing as a 'town home' or a 'semi-detached home' - only 'house' does there. When my kids complained of having to keep their bedrooms reasonably clean, I told them "This is and will always be your home, but it is not your house. The house belongs to your mother and me, and we make the rules. ...." (my parental rant would usually continue for some minutes; I'm just bringing you the relevant bits). -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:10, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, Lantzy has gotten the section header wrong, although I suspect he did that intentionally to highlight the use or (in his eyes) misuse of the word home. We have a nice article on the famous song, which should make it obvious why it refers to a "house," not a "home." Grin.
Second, Lantzy, don't work yourself up too much, buddy, over the delightful elasticity of the English language, which is in fact one of its glories. The word home is a perfectly good one and has been in constant daily use for more than a thousand years now, which is longer than any of us can remember. So lighten up a bit, will ya? Grin. Just a few short decades ago, many Britons were much exercised over "vulgar" (= American, natch) words such as weekend and okay too - but by all accounts, the horror has long since dissipated.
Third, as others have already alluded, the difference between house and home, no matter what country you live in, is one of denotation versus connotation. House means the physical structure; home suggests not only the place but also the feelings associated with it. Indeed, the immensely popular song Home, Sweet Home when played at public gatherings in the 19th century often brought grizzled miners, cowboys, soldiers, and other macho types to unabashed tears.
Although of course, one can have a home but not a house, as is the case with apartment dwellers and others. All the many possible meanings of home in its work as a noun, a verb, an adverb, or an adjective make a list as long as your arm; go look. Another example of the great versatility of our language.
Yes, for the past hundred years or more, real estate agents and builders in the U.S. have routinely advertised homes for sale instead of mere houses; see this example from the 1916 Sears kit house catalog. Which, though it may be a venial linguistic sin, is actually quite clever on their part when you stop and think about it: who but my friend Lantzy wouldn't prefer to acquire a new home instead of a mere house? Grin.
However, regional differences are at work here, as always. Speakers from one part of the U.S. may not be familiar with longstanding idiomatic usages in other parts of this big country. To give but one example: here in Texas, as across the Deep South generally, a common rural idiom from way back for "let's go home" is "let's go to the house." (Pronunciation is terribly hard to convey in writing, but it's something like "let's goat (th')house," approx. 3.5 syllables in quick succession.) Not something sophisticated, I'm-too-sexy-for-my-clothes city folks would ever say, but a common old-time way of speaking still heard today in the countryside. Which here shows the reverse of what Lantzy was asking about: the substitution of house when home (in the adverbial sense) is meant. (Compare the locative case of Latin domī; see also the French chez nous.)
Of course you're right that this isn't wrong, Textorus. It's nothing more than a shifting usage that happens to be a peeve of mine, and all peeves are silly from the linguist's standpoint. I suppose I could try to justify my peeve with a specious argument; I could argue, based on that Frost quote, that "home" is an abstraction and that to use it in a concrete way, to talk of "buying a home" or "selling a home", causes us to forget that abstract sense. But of course that's nonsense. A word may have many senses, some abstract and some concrete, and that's just fine. Actually, the only real reason I personally dislike "home" is because it has come to have a cuddly, cozy connotation, and a cold-hearted bastard like me prefers not to use cuddly, cozy vocabulary. (By the same token, I hate the word "folks", although it's perfectly valid, because it reminds me of speeches given at diners by politicians with rolled-up sleeves.) The purpose of my original post wasn't to solicit affirmation of my good taste in word use, but to determine whether this usage is peculiar to the United States. LANTZYTALK21:46, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Appreciate ya, buddy. Stop by the house sometime, make yourself at home, we'll have us some homebrew and a big house party. I 'spec underneath that cold, hard exterior you're just homefolks like the rest of us, after all. Grin. Textorus (talk) 22:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To me, as a born and bred American, "ranch home" sounds like an architecural style,, whereas "ranch house" sounds like a building on a ranch where the ranch owner lives. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 21:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I regard "condo", "apartment" and "mansion" as corruptions of the language when used by real estate agents.
I also recall what to me at the time was a strange usage of home from my youth in 1950s Australia. My grandparents, proud fourth generation Australians themselves, were planing the grand holiday to Britain. (It was a six week sea journey.) Grandfather announced that they would be visiting home. We were all very British then. HiLo48 (talk) 22:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
HiLo, I've occasionally read the same thing in other reminiscences by Australians. When did that identification with being British cease, and why, exactly? Apparently the same shift occurred in my own country very quickly, between 1763 and 1775, but the reasons are well documented in that case. Probably I should ask this question on the Humanities desk. Textorus (talk) 23:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hard to answer that objectively because I was there and part of it all, but it probably began in WWII when the dumb British generals got a whole lot of Aussies captured and made POWs by the Japanese in Singapore, then we said "no" to Britain wanting more of our troops in Europe while we were a bit busy fighting the Japanese in these parts. Later it just seemed a natural thing to question the point of a connection with a country 12,000 miles away which didn't seem to care much about us. They were our mortal enemies in cricket too. HiLo48 (talk) 02:33, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Another milestone was the creation of Australian citizenship on 26 January 1949 (an achievement of Ben Chifley's government). Prior to that date, Australians were legally British subjects. Chifley's successor Menzies (1949-66) would not have taken that step, as he proudly proclaimed himself "British to the bootstraps", and at a reception for the Queen in Canberra in 1963, he quoted "I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die" at her, which made her blush with embarrassment. Many Aussies blushed with the embarrassment of their Prime Minister so blatantly fawning to monarchy. It was around that time that Menzies became the first and only Australian to be made a Knight of the Thistle (hmm, funny that ...). Nevertheless, on the Queen's visits here from 1954 through to the late '60s, the people waving British Union Jacks far outweighed those waving Australian Flags. After a while, the numbers of flag wavers dwindled significantly in any case. No disrespect intended to the Queen there; the whole monarchy thing just became an irrelevance to most Australians. We voted to retain the monarchy at the 1999 referendum, but only because we were asked the wrong question. -- (Jack of Oz=) 202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strewth, and I thought I was going to be the non-objective one! LOL. As for that wrong question, opinion polls seem to indicate that we will end up abandoning the monarchy, but only after Elizabeth II departs the throne. That could be a while though, since her mum lived to 101. HiLo48 (talk) 03:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strewth = God's truth, obviously. Has this medieval expression survived all the way down to current usage in Australia, really? Gadzooks! Textorus (talk) 06:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We learned to sing "Waltzing Matilda" in elementary school, and I loved it. But all I remember now is something about a sheepherder sitting under a tree playing with his, um, billabong. Textorus (talk) 08:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, of course it was the wrong question. We weren't asked if we wanted to replace the monarchy with a republic. We were asked if we were happy to have one very specific way of running a republic, among many possible ways of running a republic, as an alternative to the monarchy. We did not as a nation fancy that very specific way of running a republic, so we said no thanks. The main question has still never been asked of us. Had a more transparent process applied in 1999, we would have become a republic in 2001 because the mood of the country was for change, the Queen's continuing to be alive notwithstanding. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 04:41, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well yes, but that's exactly why you need a specific question on a referendum. It's all very well asking 'Do you want change?', and then if the country's in the mood for change everyone says 'yes', but then what do you do with that? The choice isn't between 'Queen' and 'not-Queen', it's between one specific system of government that involves the Queen and...what? That's what needs to be decided and put on a referendum. You don't want to be handing legislators a blank slate to create a system of government, any system of government, just as long as it doesn't involve the Queen: you want them to create a specific system that you've chosen. If the system proposed in the referendum was the main alternative being considered and proposed, then it was exactly the right question. If there was a single different system being agitated for by most republican campaigners, then it was probably the wrong question and this other system should have been on the referendum. But you can't just ask 'Should we get rid of the Queen?' or 'Should things change?' or 'Do you want more nice things, and fewer bad things?', because you can't actually do anything honest and productive with the answer. 109.155.33.219 (talk) 12:29, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
All true. However, what I was getting at was this: only one specific republican model was presented as an alternative; that was rejected; that rejection was touted as the Australian people not wanting any change at all. It was like: you have an orange, but would you prefer this rotten apple instead? No thanks. Oh, that must mean that you dislike all apples, so I won't offer you one again. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 00:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, I see: frustrating. Similar to the Manchester public transport referendum, where people were asked "Do you want a congestion charge in Manchester but we don't have to stick to the plan we originally publicised, as you can see by the many creeping changes that we already made and didn't publicise or not in which case we'll cut all funding for improvements to the public transport system and cancel everything we already promised we'd do?" The people of Manchester, being stubborn and disliking being blackmailed by a London-based government (as it was perceived), voted 'no'. This was declared to be the people voting against any improvement to the transport system. Still, surely there are Australian parties and politicians who will continue to press for additional referendums? It didn't strike me as the sort of thing that would just go away. 109.155.33.219 (talk) 23:32, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When I moved from New England to attend college (university) in California, I was struck by the common use of the phrase "back East". If anything, it was used more commonly by native Californians, even those born to West Coast natives, than by those who came from an Eastern home. —— Shakescene (talk) 23:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When I started visiting New England I was struck with the common use of the phrase "Down East". I grew up in Buffalo, New York, not that far from Maine. But hearing "down east", my first thought is "Florida". To address the original question, phrases like "we bought a new home" or "we live in a ranch home" sound wrong to me, and I can't recall hearing people say such things, unless they are playing with words. And I'm American (in fact, I just spent some time trying to find info about any of my (paternal) ancestors' migration from Europe and failed with all but one line--every other line has been American longer than there are existent records). Pfly (talk) 09:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How odd - I've had a totally different experience. Literally every single California native I have ever known would use "out" rather than "back" to refer to the East Coast. As in, "Boy, I didn't think I'd like it out here in Boston [Washington, New York, Philly, etc.], but..." or "Yeah, I like coming out to the East Coast now and then..." I haven't heard the (to my ears) truly weird phrase back west but the day is young, figuratively speaking. Back home in Cali sounds perfectly natural, of course. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 15:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As a native Californian, I would never say "out", nor do I recall having ever heard anybody say that. And to me, "Cali" is offensive, unless you're a rap singer. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 18:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No offense intended - I haven't actually heard the "Cali" bit spoken aloud, it just sounded natural to my doubtless uncouth Eastern ears. But I have heard "out," describing the East Coast, from folks hailing from both the Bay Area and the Inland Empire. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 18:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Veering back to condo homes (which as you'll see might be condo houses): in my part of the U.S., at least, many if not most people think of "condo(minium)" as meaning "apartment building converted to individually owned units," though people who haven't considered buying them don't always understand the angle of shares in indivisible common property. Legally, a condominium is a form of ownership and has nothing to do with the type of building; a collection of apartments, townhouses, or even detached houses could be a condo. (For 7 years I was on the board of the first development built as a condominium in Virginia.)
For other terminology, I'm siding with those who've heard both "ranch home" and "ranch house." I'd say the former has a connotation of a type of building, while the latter has the connotation of a specific building: we were looking at ranch homes, and we found this great ranch house near the high school. If you're inclined to get the vapors over this, you must hide under the bed at the transformation of "out of pocket" (from "somebody owes me money" to "I'm unavailable") and the nearly unusable "begs the question" (from "avoids answering" to "brings up"). --- OtherDave (talk) 16:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For example, in Spanish, "minor key" is "tono menor" and "treble clef" is "clave de sol". As for what we call "clave" in the context of Afro-Cuban music, in Spanish they call it "clave" as well. LANTZYTALK21:56, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Man
In the phrase "three man team the barricades", is the word "man" a singular noun being used as a plural being used as an adjective to form a compound noun being used as a verb? Less ridiculously, what part of speech is the second word in the phrases "two egg omelette", "three dog night" and "four piece band"? Noun adjunct, sure, but is it a plural? 81.131.66.146 (talk) 23:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As in "We three-man-teamed the barricades". Not elegant, but it might be spoken in some contexts. Here "three-man team" is a compound of a compound converted into a verb. Plural forms are used in non-final elements of noun-noun compounds only in certain specific cases... AnonMoos (talk) 13:48, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How would a 'friend' be defined in 2010, to differentiate from an aquaintence or a collegue? When I was a child I had the usual circle of childhood friends. But none of my adult friendships have been as close as those friendships, perhaps inevitably due to the lack of time and many distractions. What differentiates a friend from an acquaintance? 92.15.12.54 (talk) 23:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For some people, nothing at all. That is to say, many people today use the word "friend" to mean "acquaintance", or perhaps "acquaintance not actively disliked". Obviously, others are more selective. The fact that there exists no consensus is, in my experience, a frequent source of confusion and comic tension. If you are one of the more selective types, how are you supposed to feel when someone you've just met starts explicitly referring to you as a friend? If you're the sort of person who assumes the best of others, you presumably find it agreeable, even flattering. If you're like me, you feel like you're being sold a car. But even I could never muster the pissiness required to set the person straight. There's no nice way to say, "I'm not your friend, palooka." So, in the end, the promiscuous prevail. LANTZYTALK00:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would say a friend is (1) somebody you enjoy being with, and (2) somebody you are prepared to do favors for and who is prepared to do favors for you. Looie496 (talk) 00:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Um, actually the world existed before the year 2010, and the meanings of the words you mention have not changed in ages. When I am curious about the difference in meaning between related words, I always find it very helpful to consult a dictionary:
Synonyms 1. Acquaintance, associate, companion, friend refer to a person with whom one is in contact. An acquaintance is someone recognized by sight or someone known, though not intimately: a casual acquaintance. An associate is a person who is often in one's company, usually because of some work, enterprise, or pursuit in common: a business associate. A companion is a person who shares one's activities, fate, or condition: a traveling companion; companion in despair. A friend is a person with whom one is on intimate terms and for whom one feels a warm affection: a trusted friend. 3. familiarity, awareness.
Having said that, let me also say that you are discovering one of the secrets of adulthood, which we don't usually tell children about. Probably for all but the most gregarious, extroverted people, the older you get, the fewer close friends you make; that's just the normal way of things, nothing to be particularly alarmed about. And as you suggest, the pressure of careers, lack of time for socializing, and perhaps family committments are contributory reasons. But the friendships you do make in adult life tend to be deeper than school or college ones, in my experience.
But some people are in the careless habit of using friend to mean anybody I happen to know, even if I met them just once. I remember back during the AIDS crisis, I sometimes heard people say things like "Over 200 of my friends have died." Which always came as a startling thought to me; obviously, they did not mean they had 200 close, intimate friends, or they would have been psychologically devastated, probably beyond repair. I lost one close friend and two acquaintances, which was very difficult. So don't be hung up on other people's use or misuse of the word friend: look into your own heart, and you will see your real friends' faces there. If you don't think you have as many as you want, join a group, club, or team of some kind and circulate a little more. Textorus (talk) 00:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If we're talking about current times, on the web, the discussion is clearly incomplete without mention of Facebook friends. (I have 102 of them! But I doubt if many of you care.) HiLo48 (talk) 00:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Surely somewhere in all this we must recognise that Facebook has hijacked the word 'friend' for its own feel-good purposes and the younger generation has embraced it as if it had some meaning. Caesar's Daddy (talk) 07:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As far as understanding Shakespeare, most reputable English dictionaries cover most of the unfamiliar words used there. There are also modernized versions of his plays available. (As well as No Fear Shakespeare that Textorus mentioned, there's No Sweat Shakespeare along the same lines.) Lexicografía (talk) 01:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you really want Old English, it is for all intents and purposes a foreign language, and you can't understand it with a "guide" alone. People take Old English classes just like they would take French, German, or Chinese classes; you have to approach it as a different language. 129.237.245.186 (talk) (=Rjanag) 01:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just as a bit of shakespeare-reading advice, you need to keep in mind that a lot of the chatter in his plays is bawdy innuendo and double-entendre's that would have made perfect sense to Elizabethan peasantry, but not so much so now. for instance, the whole extended bit about "biting one's thumb" at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet is the equivalent of saying 'eat me', and all the dialog is chopped logic as the manservants try to insult each other without looking like they're insulting each other. Same crap you'll see in grammar school, where each side is trying to egg the other to do something that they can run to the teacher about, just couched in 17th century euphemisms. it often helps to think about the context of the scene first, and then try to interpret odd phrasings in terms of whatever silliness the characters seem to be involved in. --Ludwigs205:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Like the many episodes of The Office in which Tim keeps asking Gareth about whether he'd invade another man's tunnel, take an enemy from behind, or various things like that... rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:13, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Shakespeare's Bawdy (1948) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0415050766) is the classic work on all the naughty bits in Shakespeare's work, by lexicographer Eric Partridge. And there's a lot of that, which was not really aimed at peasants, who were rural farm workers, but rather to the urban types who attended the plays, from working class groundlings up to people of rank. But Shakespeare and his contemporary writers were also in love with creating new and exuberant ways of expressing their thoughts in words, and in wordplay; which his audiences delighted in as being part of the entertainment. Nowadays, we generally prefer serious plays and movies to use ordinary language, though comedians have more leeway with puns and metaphors, etc. (Think Groucho Marx or Monty Python.) It really, really helps to watch a video or see a live performance of the play, not to read it out of a book - that wasn't at all how Will intended his work to be enjoyed. Watching the play being performed, you quickly pick up the sense of the words in a way many people find difficult to do from the dry black-and-white text alone.
You may (with justice) hate this suggestion, but the best way to learn a working (non-academic) knowledge of what Shakespeare's saying is to participate in a play of Shakespeare or one of his contemporaries, or to join one of the many renaissance faires or similar historical reenactments in some capacity. It definitely beats going (as I did in high school English) line by line, footnote by footnote through the text, most of which was written not for the printed page but as a screenplay is today: to be spoken and heard, while being kept under the severest guard from the jealous eyes of rival companies always looking for fresh material to steal (no effective copyright in those days, so usually not intended for publication). You'll consult the footnotes from time to time, but with a much better understanding of what they're talking about, and in live exchange with others who also want to figure out the best way of presenting the spoken text. It's also easier when you know roughly where a scene or act is going, and can keep the characters straight because you're seeing live human beings rather than names on a page. ¶ Comparing your favorite Bible passages (and I'm not proselytising here, since I'm not a believer myself) in the Authorised/King James Version of 1611, [or the contemporary Catholic Douai version, or the Jewish Publication Society translation of 1905] with any of several excellent English translations of the last 60 years, can also be very helpful. See http://www.biblegateway.com for the 1611 and many later English translations (with the unfortunate exception of several important Jewish, Catholic and Anglican ones that don't accord with the site's Evangelical beliefs or else may not have given it the necessary rights). ¶ As for videos of Shakespeare plays, two that I think are excellent are Derek Jacobi's portrayal of Richard II in the British/PBS Shakespeare Plays series of the 1970's, and Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. Robert de Niro is also good in The Merchant of Venice and I found, to my pleasant surprise, the Leonardo diCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet to be both a lot of fun and rather good even with its conscious popularisation set in the beach town of Verona, California. (Regrettably, Branagh's other two Shakespeare films, Hamlet and Much Ado about Nothing, are failures in my book. Directing yourself is fraught with perils that will usually defeat you.) Shakespeare in Love, while only using brief extracts from the Bard himself, is very true to the spirit of his plays. [Details about all these films and videos can, of course, be found, together with other opinions and other productions, at http://www.imdb.com ] —— Shakescene (talk) 06:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The original Douai Bible (before the 18th-century Challoner revisions) was known for often being a literalistic translation of the Latin Vulgate, and sometimes having inappropriately Latinesque vocabulary and syntax... AnonMoos (talk) 13:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good point that I didn't know (at least in detail) before. When I said "contemporary", I was thinking mainly that it was translated at almost the same time as the series of Protestant Bibles that culminated in the Authorised (King James) Version of 1611. Bible Gateway, I see, now lets you see passages (or books) from the 1899 version of the Doaui (or Douay-Rheims) Bible. I have no idea if the (U.S.) JPS translators of 1905 were working from an earlier English-language text, or created one of their own cast in roughly the same language as that of the Authorised/King James Version, the Revised Version and the American Standard Version. —— Shakescene (talk) 22:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When I was at school we had some books that acted as guides and explained all the obscurities. Blowed if I can remember what they were called though! "So-and-so's guide to Henry V" or something like that. You might like to see if you can find one of those. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:15, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, a good edition of a shakespeare play will also often include a glossary and explanatory glosses/footnotes for difficult cultural references and stuff. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:22, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There's a way to make understanding Shakespeare a doddle - learn Middle English. There is in fact a very well-known bit of the Canterbury Tales that sums this discussion up perfectly:
Another vote for watching a play - either live or DVD. The actors' job is to help you understand the meaning, even if some of the words are unfamiliar. Try not to concentrate on catching every single word but just allow the overall meaning to come across to you. You'll find as your ear becomes more tuned in, you'll pick up more. It's also best to try to find a production that has been well praised. My most recent favourite is the RSC Hamlet with David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius. With a DVD, you can also turn on the subtitles which might help. If you are in the USA (Canada, too, I think) you can stream this production of Hamlet for free from PBS Great Performances site - it will be available from there for some years.
Or, indeed, pick up a paperback and bellow bits at the kitchen wall a few times. Not only will it help make it comprehensible, but it'll provide hours of light amusement for anyone in earshot. Shimgray | talk | 18:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, but I think I'd prefer to take advantage of the RSC's 8 weeks rehearsal time that the actors put into making Hamlet understandable rather than my own unaided efforts, but perhaps you are a better actor than me!! Here's a fascinating 'scrapbook' of the RSC rehearsal process:
Hello. Can someone please give me a short summary about the following websites (i.e., what the sites are all about), preferably including links to English language Wikipedia articles (or websites) where I can find more information about the sites:
I came upon the links the other day, became curious about the sites' contents, tried Google Translate and searching Wikipedia on a number of keywords, but no satisfactory results. Many thanks. 125.163.228.192 (talk) 02:03, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(1)Arms of Savigny-sur-OrgeLouis-Nicolas Davout, Marshal of the French Empire Although it sometimes has problems with tense (e.g translating past as present perfect as in "I've been" instead of "I was"), the Google Chrome translation of the home page http://eurodesvilles.populus.org/ gives the general idea. Apparently, before the formal introduction of the euro and the suppression of the franc, mark, lira, peseta, etc., some towns in France were allowed to mint their own temporary "euros" for short periods between 1992 and 1998 to exchange at a fixed rate, in order to get citizens used to the new currency. The website's creator collects these relatively rare and highly temporary coins which are no longer legal tender. Before its adoption, the French favored calling it the écu (European Currency Unit), which is also the name of an old French coin; while the Germans and others successfully championed the name "Euro". (I personally think this was a bad choice, because I can think of half a dozen different pronunciations of "Euro", each of them perfectly valid in some language of the Eurozone). Hence the website's name Ecus et Euros de Ville ("Municipal Ecus and Euros" or "Ecus and Euros of the City"). The specific page for Savigny-sur-Orge (a commune or town near Paris) discusses both sides of the coin, one of them showing the lion from the commune's coat of arms, and the other the Napoleonic Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout [1770-1823] (born D'Avoût, but removing the aristocratic prefix during the Revolution, later named Duke of Auerstaedt in honour of his service at the Battle of Jena-Auerstaedt), who after serving the Emperor during the Hundred Days, became mayor of Savigny during the Bourbon Restoration of 1814-1830. Click the "français" link to the left of the articles for Savigny and Marshal Davout to get more information, pictures, maps, etc. (You might also have more luck with the automatic machine translations of those pages than you've had with others.) Although I could try a full formal blazon of the town's arms, let me try to describe it in semi-popular terms as a red lion rampant holding a Polish lance (with Polish pennant) on gold, underneath the gold French royal fleur-de-lys (lilies) on blue. —— Shakescene (talk) 03:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the excellent explanation. By the way, do English language Wikipedia have article on the (temporary Euro) coins? Also, was the coin legal tender only in the commune or also in entire France? 125.163.228.192 (talk) 04:03, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See History of the euro and the extensive set of Wikipedia articles listed in the Euro navigation box at the bottom, which, however, doesn't seem to answer your question directly. Now that some of the linguistic murkiness has been clarified, you might want to post the question about the status of these local coins at the Miscellaneous or Humanities Reference Desks, in case they're being watched by a numismatist (I was more of a philatelist in my youth). I didn't want to do detailed translation of those pages (my French being weak enough that it would take me significantly longer to do so than someone who speaks the language more fluently), but I should add one point from the Savigny page, that the coins weren't issued by the municipality itself, but by her merchants, partly to promote the 10th anniversary (1986-96) of their Marshal Davout fair (with the slogan "why search elsewhere for what you can find close to home?"). Along the edge of the reverse, you can read "The merchants of Savigny-sur-Orge"; "1986-1996 Davout Fair [or market]"; along the obverse, "5th anniversary [?] of the Euro, 18-31 March 1996" with the 12 stars representing the Eurozone's members at the time. The Savigny page also gives the merchant's website for information (no coins), together with the e-mail address and telephone numbers of "Francis", who might have some coins to offer (no guarantee, of course, that he speaks English). —— Shakescene (talk) 05:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
About the second site (www.deutsches-reich-heute.de): In short, it is apparently a Kommissarische Reichsregierung group. The group's obscurity, my lack of knowledge about German topics (and language), as well as its German content, made the site's identification rather difficult. 125.163.228.192 (talk) 05:01, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One interesting part of that site (I speak almost zero German myself) is the 1941 order from the Fuehrer via his secretary Martin Bormann deprecating the use of Fraktur (Old German) lettering as being the product of "Swabian Jews" in favour of the Latin type and script we're used to seeing today. There's also a PDF showing different types of German script and their finer points, such as ligatures and double-S. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Latin translation request
Afternoon Reference Desk. Sorry for bothering you, wondered if some of our Latin translators could help with the following request. I need something close to "We care only when asked" translated into Latin. It's part of private research. Any help would be fantastic. doktorbwordsdeeds14:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Curamus solum rogati"? Or Textorus' way, "non curamus nisi rogati", or "nisi rogamur". It's hard to do this unless we know what you are trying to say in English. You could also use "attendimus" or "animadvertimus" for "care", "quaesitus" for "asked", or numerous other words. Adam Bishop (talk) 17:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you all...I gave dictionaries and guides a good half-an-hour before realising that it was quite an obscure request. Thanks for the help, appriciate it. doktorbwordsdeeds21:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Fullness" isn't even a normal word in English. You won't be able to get anything other than a very silly translation unless you provide some context. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sure the word exists, but it is far from being in common usage. Your message above is the first time I think I've seen it used at all outside of like song titles or something, and you were using it in a marked way for pragmatic effect. Anyway, this whole issue is neither here nor there, as it's tangential to the OP's request (which Lexicografia has already addressed anyway, at least as best as can be addressed without further input from the OP). rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh no, you don't get away that easily. 'Fullness' is not a word most people use every day, but so what? Dieticians often talk to their clients about stopping eating as soon as they have a feeling of fullness, and nobody blinks an eye. When was the last time you said the words 'macroscopic', 'bluster' or 'frenetic'? They and many others remain "normal" words despite the infrequency of their use. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with 202.142. Having worked the ref desk for a whole week now, I'm seeing a definite trend: so many questioners and respondents seem to have the idea that anything they personally don't know, say, or do has no existence or validity; that their one tiny circle of experience constitutes the center of the cosmos, and the One Right Universal Way of thinking, being, and speaking. Most interesting. Is this what comes from a childhood run/ruined by helicopter parents? Just hypothesizin' . . . Textorus (talk) 04:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, congratulations all you guys, you have Shown Up Another Editor on the Reference Desk—I know that is a lot of people's ultimate goal. Perhaps I chose my wording poorly when I said "normal" instead of something else, but the point I was making should have been clear: asking for a translation for such a word without providing any context is pretty hopeless. Now, like I said, this entire discussion is off-topic (as the OP didn't ask for an analysis of how common the word is for English) and the original question has already been answered anyway (twice), so... rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:13, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You've really Shown'em Up, rjanag. Oh no, wait, now I've Shown You Up, too. Let's call this the day of Showing Up, and everybody kiss each other :) No such user (talk) 15:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If an editor says that something is so, and I have good reason to believe that it is not so, especially if it affects the answer to the asked question, I will find sources and say that the editor was wrong (if sources back me up). This is not Showing Someone Up, but correcting false information. This is especially relevant when the false information would suggest any true answer given was 'very silly'. Separately, implying insults towards editors and their parents is a stupid and disruptive thing to do: perhaps we should all ignore any contributions that do so, unless they bite newbies (in which case they should be removed)? 109.155.33.219 (talk) 23:21, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For French, I sometimes look things up at wordreference.com, they often have several translations, depending on which meaning you mean. Fullness, for example, gets four possible translations ("ampleur", "richesse", "rondeur", and "plénitude", as suggested by Lexicografia), plus a translation for "fullness of time" ("avec le temps"). ---Sluzzelintalk13:59, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The phrase "In the fullness of time" is in fairly common idiomatic use (662,000 results for the complete quote on Google) and comes from the King James Bible (Galatians 4:4 and Ephesians 1:10); a "traditional rendering of two similar Greek expressions"[10]. However, "fullness" doesn't appear in my otherwise reliable Collins French College Dictionary. Alansplodge (talk) 12:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It does in my Le Robert & Collins senior French-English, English-French dictionary (6th edition). Abondance, richesse, ampleur, exhaustivité (of a description), richesse de goût (of flavour), volume (of hairstyle), cœur débordant de chagrin (out of the fullness of his sorrow), avec le temps or en temps et lieu (in the fullness of time). — AldoSyrt (talk) 07:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Spanish pronunciation
I'm wondering if the sound /ŋ/ is present anywhere in Spanish. I'm a student of the language and the ŋ sound seems to be slipping in to my pronunciation of words like "quién", "con" and "están". Is this OK? Lexicografía (talk) 17:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That seems to be the case. Here is the paragraph in question:
Although there are only three nasal phonemes and two lateral ones, /l/ and the nasal consonants assimilate to the place of articulation of following consonants[27] even across word boundaries.[28] Nasals are only contrastive before vowels; for most speakers, only [n] appears before a pause, though in Caribbean varieties this may instead be [ŋ] or an omitted nasal with nasalization of the preceding vowel.[29][30]
So in other words, you get contrastive [m], [n], and [ɲ] word-medially before vowels, a bunch more allophones before consonants (but they don't contrast with each other), and in word-final positions only [n] (at least, according to this WP article). rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
American/British English differences? BBC UK's use of "with"...
A caption from this article reads "It is unknown how long the couple had been in Tenerife, a popular place with British holidaymakers." That immediately struck me as odd. I would have phrased it "...a place popular with British holidaymakers." As written, to my American eyes it is synonymous with "...a popular place that also happens to have British holidaymakers as an accessory worth noting." That's a bit over the top, but you get my point. Does the original text seem strange to anyone else? Is this an editorial goof, my own regionalism, or a American/British divergence? The Masked Booby (talk) 07:11, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a balance between two awkwardnesses, the one you noted versus the uncolloquial sound of following a noun with a modifying adjective. You wouldn't (in the last couple of centuries) say "a place popular" ("Let's go there, it seems to be a place popular"), so it sounds odd even when it's a contraction of "a place that[or which]is[or has been or has become]popular with British holidaymakers". I think it's just that different English-speaking communities (and people in different contexts) handle the difficulty differently. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One stray sentence in a single travel article should not be given undue weight as representing the prevalence any particular usage, good or bad; sometimes, as we wiki-editors know too well, you just screw up and get careless with the keyboard, ya know?
However, for the record, a simple google search reveals:
947,000 results for a general web search of "a popular place with"
109,000 results for a general web search of "a place popular with"
33 results in 19th century books for the phrase "a popular place with"
0 results in 19th century books for the phrase "a place popular with"
163,000 results in 19th century books for the phrase "popular with"
According to Adjective#Form (point 1 of 4) (permanent link here), "In English, attributive adjectives usually precede their nouns in simple phrases, but often follow their nouns when the adjective is modified or qualified by a phrase acting as an adverb."
Can someone tell me how to say "the miracle of the pope's return" in Latin? I'd appreciate it. It's for a short story I'm writing. Explaining the context is too involved.--162.84.161.15 (talk) 08:23, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Mirabile recursi Papae. Or Miraculum regressi Papae. Take your pick.
I think the difference between the various translations perhaps reveals the fact that with an isolated phrase such as this (as opposed to a complete sentence) it's very difficult to be certain what the most appropriate translation would be without an explanation of the context. --rossb (talk) 19:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Close/tight-knit communities
When some shocking event (murder, rape, take your pick) happens in a relatively small place, the media will invariably describe the community there as "tight-knit" or "close-knit". But why is it that communities are never so described in the good times? Or in tourist literature? Or in encyclopedias?
If they really were so "close-knit" as claimed, surely this would apply all the time. And be worthy of mentioning not only in the bad times. No? OK, maybe they're suggesting the community responds to the crisis and rallies to support the most grievously affected families or whomever. That's a nice image. But they don't become "tight-knit" only at that moment; they were always "tight-knit", but when the occasion demands, they're "tighter-knit".
Is this amenable to logical analysis, or is it just one more of those journalist cliches, like the way every funeral is described as "a moving ceremony" (as if that would surprise anyone, or be worthy of mentioning, as if to suggest the usual funeral is cold and unemotional). -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 09:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh Jack, in this mortal life it's always a mistake to say "never." Here's just a few articles I googled with "tight knit community" that contradict your assertion:
And the list goes on; those are just from the first page of 580,000 search results - some negative situations, yeah, but plenty of positive ones too. Textorus (talk) 09:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with those comments. However, in my experience "tight-knit" can also sometimes be used by the press as a euphemism for "keeping their business to themselves", and not willing to talk to outsiders, journalists or (perhaps) the police. Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It can mean anything. This from our Bob Dylan article: "Dylan’s parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone, were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community."Bus stop (talk) 11:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And children in tragic accidents are always popular, bright, well-loved and have lots of friends, it seems. As I have always understood it, it's just journalistic convention/padding to lighten up a rather gloomy passage, doesn't do anyone any harm. - Jarry1250[Who?Discuss.]19:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, children in tragic accidents were always popular, with lots of friends. I don't understand its purpose being to lighten up a rather gloomy passage but rather to amplify sadness. I think its aim is to make that which is already tragic to seem even more tragic. Bus stop (talk) 20:21, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Surely we are talking about good old journalistic cliches. Brainless reporters with small vocabularies writing articles by using all the tired old phrases they have heard and assume must be used in this or that context. Papers and TV reports are riddled with them. Can anybody tell me who manages the "danger list" in any hospital. In the UK no hospital has a 'danger list', it is a made up figment (oops, tautology) of non-enquiring journalists' minds. Richard Avery (talk) 21:59, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Admittedly that didn't make much sense. What I meant was, it gives a light counterpoint to the gloom (even if the overall effect is to exaggerate the contrast). - Jarry1250[Who?Discuss.]22:03, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't be too over-analytical or harsh in judgment about these things, guys. Journalists have to write hundreds of such stories every year, and what exactly is it you would like them to say each time, in an ideal and perfectly logical world? "Kid croaked. Fell in reservoir. Parents shocked. Funeral Wednesday." --? When you've had the actual duty of writing things like this over and over - and when you've actually held the lifeless body of someone near and dear to you in your arms, beyond all recall - then perhaps you would be better able to judge the appropriate expression of information in such cases. It's not like reporting the minutes from the last city council meeting. There's a human factor to be considered here, just as important as the intellectual one. More so, actually. Textorus (talk) 06:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Members of the so-called community were struggling to give a damn about the inevitable death of the dim and smelly kid from number 14, who was playing chicken with passing lorries". "And he didn't have any friends anyway. Really—no one liked him. He was voted the least popular kid in our class at school." "The funeral was held on Friday, at the cemetery, in the rain. 3 people attended. It was pathetic."
Passive voice
Hi,
These sentences use passive voice? Do they need correction, if so, how do I do so?
It was the last element found in nature, though some synthetic elements have later been found in nature.
and
It is the second-rarest naturally occurring element; in fact, it is estimated that only as little as one ounce is present in the earth’s crust at any one time.
"It was the last element found in nature, though some synthetic elements have later been found in nature.": The second clause is indeed in the passive voice, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. You may want to somehow remove the word "nature" from one of the clauses, since having it twice might be a little repetitive, but otherwise the sentence looks fine.
"It is the second-rarest naturally occurring element; in fact, it is estimated that only as little as one ounce is present in the earth's crust at any one time." The only passive voice in this one is "it is estimated", but the rest of the sentence is OK. Lexicografía (talk) 23:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The main issue here is that the sentences use what Wikipedia calls "weasel words" (see WP:WEASEL). Instead of saying "it is estimated that..." you should say who estimated it, and give a reference. Looie496 (talk) 23:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think the use of the passive voice in the first sentence is OK, because the reader probably doesn't care who found the other elements, and indeed mentioning the person who found the other elements may seem like too much detail. However, the first sentence is confusing logically. You say this element was the last one found in nature, then say someone found another element in nature. And if the second element is synthetic, how can it be found "in nature?" This is confusing to me. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:31, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are no grammatical errors with either sentence. The first one sounds a bit awkward with the repetition of "nature"; why can't the sentence simply stop after the first clause? ("It was the last element found in nature." OR "It was the last naturally occurring element discovered.")
Also, I wonder if the two sentences could be recast for better clarity and concision. Suggestion: Of all the naturally occurring elements, X was the last to be discovered and is the second-rarest. Perhaps as little as one ounce is present in the earth's crust. Textorus (talk) 06:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The punctuation would be improved with a comma after 'second-rarest' and a hyphen between 'naturally' and 'occurring'. To my taste 'in fact' is redundant. Caesar's Daddy (talk) 07:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I agree about 'naturally-occurring', but I disagree about a comma where you say. That would mean that, of all the elements, it is the second-rarest one; and it also happens to be a naturally-occurring element. But that is not what the sentence is saying. It's saying that, of all the naturally-occurring elements, it is the rarest one. So, no comma. Since we're discussing commas, I'd definitely have a comma between 'my taste' and 'in fact' in your last sentence. Some may disagree. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 09:00, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Troop:" plural until killed, then 1 equals a troop?
How come "X troops were killed" is what the media report when X individual soldiers, sailors, marines or airmen are killed? What year did this usage begin? Various dictionaries [11] report that "troop" means "A group or company of people, animals, or things." See also [12], which says a "troop is 60 to 250 soldiers, or 2 to 8 platoons." Another source says a "troop" is two or more platoons. Historically, I read things like [13] "A detachment of Troop H, Second United States Cavalry, was fired on late this afternoon by Mexican Federal cavalrymen." from 1913, clearly not referring to an individual soldier. "Troop" was clearly used as an adjective, as in "troop train" and "troop ship." It was a collective noun as in "Troops ordered out (1902) referring to soldiers in the thousands. Yet when a military helicopter crashes and all aboard die, the story says "A Black Hawk helicopter crashed Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, killing nine American troops. When and why did this odd use of "troop" commence? Does anyone say "My son is a troop in the US Army?" Or "I was a troop in Vietnam?" Is "troop" just a default term to describe soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, while avoiding the recent horrid US government term "warfighters" which sounds like they are entities from Terminator (franchise)? Edison (talk) 05:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Further to Michael Quinion: He's right about the OED's omission, but he fails to mention that the singular "troop" for an individual member of personnel was added to the OED in 1993, as an irregular formation from the plural "troops", in "chiefly Mil." usage. And the OED has a cite for that usage from 1832, albeit in inverted commas. Troop is certainly a useful word: U.S. marines, for example, don't take at all kindly to being called "soldiers", even if some insist it is correct. Finally, I can't resist linking to this, though it's old news.--Rallette (talk) 07:10, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There's a similar issue with "police". Usage has changed since I was in school, where I was rigorously drilled about referring to individual "police men" or "police officers", or groups thereof. You could have "three policemen arrived" or "the police arrived", but never "three police arrived". But "three police arrived" is considered quite OK these days. And yet, the answer to the question "What do you do for a living?" is still never "I'm a police". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 08:53, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
IIRC, in the British Army, a troop is a subdivision of a cavalry regiment, analagous to a platoon in the infantry (also the cavalry has squadrons, where the infantry has companies). It is also used by units with a cavalry heritage such as the Royal Horse Artillery. A trooper is a cavalryman, where an infantryman is generally a private. Robert Baden-Powell was a cavalry officer, hence the use of troops and patrols in Scouting. "Troops" is however a general term for a number of soldiers, whether infantry or cavalry; for example in troop ship. Alansplodge (talk) 10:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, wikipedians. I've come for your help again. :)
The above phrase, "Indeed there is", is what I have a question about. How can I classify this phrase? It is necessarily an embedded clause, but is it covered otherwise by linguistic terminology? THank you in advance. 88.90.16.226 (talk) 17:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was reading Boswell's Life of Johnson and came across the anecdote of the Earl of Marchmont's accent being mistaken for an American one in the 1770s. It got me thinking that the thirteen colonies were colonised by native English speakers from Britain and so how long has the American accent been noticeably different from the one spoken in England? When did Americans or Englishmen first comment on the difference? Does anyone know the answer?--Britannicus (talk) 19:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is not one single "English accent" or "British accent" - there are many different accents over different parts of the UK, readily identifiable to UK residents at least. Back in the eighteenth century those accents (and dialects) would have been much more distinguishable from each other than they are now, because of the relative lack of mixing between people from different areas - and would also have been different from modern accents. The accents of the settlers would have varied considerably depending on which part of Britain they came from, and the accents that then developed in America would have arisen from a mixing of the different accents in use at that time. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:27, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is a fascinating subject, and the truth often surprises most people. Patricia T. O'Conner has a cool section on this in her book Origins of the Specious, which is what I'm using as a reference right now. The English that was spoken at the time of the thirteen colonies (the time period you are referencing) was the same on both sides of the pond. In fact, today's educated American English is closer to the English of that time period than today's British English is, and AmEn has preserved a lot of words and pronunciations from that time period that BrEn hasn't, as well as vice versa. But to answer your question, the two Englishes have been different pretty much since the American Revolution (the spellings pretty much since Samuel Johnson picked the "British" variants for his dictionary in 1755, and Noah Webster picked the "American" variants for his dictionary in 1828). I don't know who exactly was the first to notice the difference, but the Brits have been (often erroneously) complaining about the Yanks' language pretty much since the mid-nineteenth century. Lexicografía (talk) 19:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Everard would have been more precisely correct to say "there is no single American accent," although of course outside the classroom, ordinary people use the term all the time, without needing to be extra-precise, as the heading for a large category of regional accents - which are usually ignored when it comes to making Hollywood movies, unless needed for local color, or to emphasize the difference between the hero and the villain. By the same token, if we want to be exact about it, there is no single British, French, Spanish, German, etc., accent either; but the category headings suffice to indicate what we mean in everyday language.
Having said that, I don't know exactly when our English cousins first noticed that we sounded different from them, although our colonial forebears started coining "Americanisms" practically from the moment they first reached these shores: Captain John Smith used "opossum" in his Map of Virginia, ca. 1610. Presumably pronunciation began to diverge in the 17th century, and by the following century was different enough that both Ben Franklin (1768) and Noah Webster (1789) commented on it - favorably, of course. These and other interesting observations on these points are found in Robert J. Menner, "The Pronunciation of English in America," Atlantic Monthly, March, 1915,[14] and in H. L. Mencken's classic work, The American Language, 1921, esp. Chap. 2, part 6, "Colonial Pronunciation."[15]
Thank you, Lexicografia, for your helpful reply. It is refreshing to see a reply that does not split hairs but does actually answer the question I asked.--Britannicus (talk) 18:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The accent of the American South changed due to African influence. Boston stayed closer to the English source. Accents in Britain changed over time. Folks living 100 km distant in the UK speak with grossly different accents. Folks 100 km apart in the US speak similarly with each other, except perhaps for the north-south variation either side of the Mason-Dixon line, y'all. Edison (talk) 04:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Philo-
I was thinking about philosophy recently and the meaning. I've been told it translates "love of wisdom." 'Philo-,' I know, means love, which got me thinking even more. Why does it precede -sophos? In other words, with philo- it always seems to follow the noun, or at least is the subject. Examples: Philology (study of what is loved, philo- being the subject), pedophilia (-philo being the desciptor). Just wondering. Thanks Wikipedians! schyler (talk) 22:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Umm, philology is the science of language (phil + logos). Just a thought, both philosophy and philology do come pretty much straight from the Greek, but pædophilia is a created word. DuncanHill (talk) 22:10, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c) Merriam-Webster lists about 160 entries for "philo-", about 60 for "-philous", about 20 for "-phily", and about 35 for "-philia". I don't see any strong trends, but a lot of the ones prefixed with "philo-" were formed in Greek, while a lot of the others were formed in either New Latin (otherwise known as modern science) or English. Lexicografía (talk) 22:17, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
DuncanHill the misremembering pedant: please don't be a rude person to one who is unwillingly ignorant. Anyways, Philology can be translated several ways. I guess the modern interpretation of phil- is a matter of social convention then, eh? schyler (talk) 00:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Between the two of you, Duncan and schyler, you have shown how the word philology is inconsistent with most other -logies. Though it does have several definitions (see also Philology#The_term), none of them seem to mean "study of what is loved". So it doesn't follow the pattern of zoology (study of animals), biology (study of life), anthropology (study of humans), ... There are erotology and of course sexology for the study of carnal love, but I couldn't find a specific greek term for "study of friendship" or "study of that which is loved". ---Sluzzelintalk00:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just to reinforce: @schyler, Duncan was not being rude, and you were flat-out wrong—"philology" has never meant "the study of what is loved". rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, I didn't think Duncan was being rude either. He did annoy me though, by edit-conflicting me :P, and I had to revise my answer, which was almost identical with the first part of Duncan's answer. If it was the "Umm" that bothered you, schyler, then I think you misinterpreted it as condescending or rude. I've been familiar with Duncan's writing for quite a while, and I am certain that is not how Duncan meant it. ---Sluzzelintalk00:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But given its now-obvious potential to appear to be condescending - and remember, if a receiver feels offended, then offence has been caused whether or not the writer intended it - it's probably best if editors generally avoided the use of umms and ers and the like (I include myself in this imprecation), or at least be more judicious in their use. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Great balls of C19H28O2, what a cutthroat business the ref desk is. Damned if you answer a question, and damned if you don't. No wonder the women Wikipedians stay away in droves. I may join them. Textorus (talk) 00:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You never know. The women may be here, but too smart to participate. They're probably having a wikipedia party and watching all that goes on and chuckling to each other about the fallacies of man. Lexicografía (talk) 01:06, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The fact is Duncan felt it necessary to correct me without having any insight into my inquiry. I do apologize but at the same take up defense. My question still hasn't been answered though. Maybe if I clarify it: What is the determining factor in the different translations of some Greek roots which can be used as prefixes and suffixes, such as -philo-?schyler (talk) 03:08, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know whether there is a general rule, and even in the case of "-phil-", there seem to be several determining factors, and possibly some random factors as well. In terms of references, I didn't find a lot, except several snippets stating that the prefix phil- implied an active meaning (examples: philantropy (active love of mankind) or Philippe (active love of horses), while the suffix -phile implied a passive meaning (Theophilus, beloved of Zeus)[16]. This may have applied to ancient Greek (hopefully someone can comment on this). Yet in modern English haemophilia isn't the state of being loved by blood and bibliophiles aren't loved by books, they actively love books. So the date and location and context of when and how some of these words entered the English language seem to play an important part too. Are there any neologisms of this kind beginning with philo- or phil-? ---Sluzzelintalk20:55, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Castellano
Why is it that Castellano (or "Spanish Spanish") features the [θ] sound while almost every other Western European language I know (obviously excluding English and possibly Greek) doesn't? Thanks. 24.92.78.167 (talk) 22:16, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
According to the article, it appears in these European languages: Albanian, English, Galician, Greek, Castilian Spanish, and Welsh (as well as a few more rare ones which you may or may not care about). Lexicografía (talk) 22:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, [θ] in Spanish is not a separate phoneme, but just an allophone of [s]. correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are minimal pairs [θ]-[s] (unlike English, for example: "sink" and "think"). And of course, Latin American Spanish doesn't even have [θ], as far as I know. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That article shouldn't be titled "ceceo". Most Spanish dialects have seseo, and the majority of the rest of dialects has distinción. "Ceceo is a phenomenon found in a few dialects of southern Spain", as the article itself says. Rimush (talk) 10:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Romeo and Juliet
How are "Montague" and "Capulet" pronounced? I've always pronounced them /mɑːnteɪg/ and /kæpjuːleɪ/ but that might be my French experience creeping in. I've recently heard them pronounced /mɑːntəgjuː/ and /kæpjuːlɛt/; is this correct? Also what is the point of having [ɳ] if it is basically the same as [nj]? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 23:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When I am unsure how to pronounce a word, I find it very helpful to consult a dictionary. In this one, you can even hear the word Montague pronounced. Rhymes with barbecue.
Note that Romeo and Juliet are supposed to be Italian, not French: "... in fair Verona, where we lay our scene ...". To a rough approximation, Italians pronounce all the letters (there aren't the "silent" letters as with French). I'm not great with IPA, but the latter seems to be the only way I've heard them said. -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 00:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If it was /mɑːnteɪg/, then any line including the name (such as "Thou art thyself, though not a Montague / What's Montague? It is nor hand nor foot…") wouldn't scan. Marnanel (talk) 00:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And since in the play Shakespeare rhymes "Montague" with "thou art true" and "Capulet" with "love is set", the intended pronunciations are clear. Deor (talk) 00:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If it was "montaigue" it would be pronounced the way the OP thought (aigue being medieval French for "water", as in "Aigues-Mortes", although "water mountain" wouldn't make much sense). When we first read Romeo and Juliet in high school, I thought it was pronounced that way too, because I knew a Montag family. But their name was probably German. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Mantua
On a related note, how is the exonym "Mantua" pronounced? The village in Ohio is pronounced MAN-uh-way, but I don't think that's how Shakespeare said it. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:15, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I could hazard a guess that they initially said "Man-too-ay" (not too far removed from how the rest of us say it, but with a mid-Western nuance), which was corrupted to "Man-uh-way". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 08:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Really this depends on whether the sequence is one phoneme or two in the language in question. English is not normally analysed as having a phoneme /ɳ/, that symbol is not usually used in transcribing English: Spanish and Amharic do have that phoneme. --ColinFine (talk) 18:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What is the correct preposition for the phrase "claims made from insurance firms?" I'm talking about the general case, since I understand that there are special contexts where the preposition is peculiar to that situation, for example, if there are any options for which particular insurer, one might say: "I'm making a claim through the other person's insurer rather than my own." It's been emotional (talk) 01:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I understand the question. Working back from the example, I wonder if you're asking how to say "claims made directly against the policy held by my own insurance company" (rather than against the policy held by someone else's)? If that's the case, then I'd say "claims made to insurance firms." If you wanted to keep out the second-party factor, maybe "claims made directly to..." (This is usage I've heard and seen in the U.S., where in ordinary usage "claims made from insurance firms" would imply it's the firms that are doing the claiming.) Am I close? --- OtherDave (talk) 01:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good points. You hear "He has too many claims on his policy, so his rates went up" in the U.S., as well as "claims against" (meaning the same thing). I just don't recall a "claims from companies" that had the same sort of meaning. --- OtherDave (talk) 14:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for those answers. I know about "claiming on a policy," but this is different. I'm specifically interested in the sentence as given, whether "claims made from" is correct when the object of the preposition is "insurance firms" and the verb is "(claims) made." The "second-party factor," as described by OtherDave's first post, was only to differentiate the general case (my main interest) from a more specific case (not my main interest) which popped up on google when I did my research. In the setting described in my original post, people do talk about "making a claim through the other guy's insurer," but that is, from what I can tell, a specific exception, so I was drawing attention to it to neutralise it, in case people thought of it for themselves, and used it as a good example. As for the general case, so far, OtherDave has given me "claims made to," for which I thank him, but I would be interested to see if there is any consensus out there, or a range of opinions. I don't think a casual reader would pick up on something like this, but I'm working on something I deem important, and I would like to get it right. Any further help greatly appreciated. Thanks again, It's been emotional (talk) 00:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need to recap on what's happening in the real world. A claim of loss or damage is made to an insurance company. A payout or recompense is received from the insurance company. Against this backdrop, "claims made from" is clearly wrong. It could be argued that the phrase is a diminution of "a claim made [for recomponse] from an insurance firm", but if so, it's clumsy and untutored given there are more logical constructions to be had. --Tagishsimon(talk)00:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Etymology, First attestation of "Lord Love a Duck"
After hearing this phrase used in the movie Nanny McPhee, I spent a bit of time looking for it on the internet. What I found is that no one really knows the origin but have narrowed it down to the British, perhaps London, and probably the lower classes. Also, its earliest attestation seems to be near 1900.
My own conjectures include three veins. First. Perhaps Duck is a mispronunciation of Duke, maybe the French spelling, Duc. The close proximity of Lord and Duke might be the cause of the surprise element of the meaning, as if one meant: "Oh, Look, there's a Lord...Duke!"
Furthermore in this same vein, I googled Lord Duc and found Duc de Levis, who had dealing with the British, and was the author of the notable quote "Noblesse Oblige", the nobility have an obligation.
Secondly. Duck is a term of endearment between men and women in lower class Great Britain. Perhaps Lord Love a Duck was part of a Sermon based on the New Testament passage "There is no greater love than when one is willing to lay down his life for a Friend" John 15:13.
Thirdly. In the same vein, perhaps it derives from the passage Matthew 10:29, A sparrow doesn't fall to the ground without god knowing it, and God loves you more than sparrows."
As a Cockney, I can confirm that it is a Cockney expression, but I have no idea of its origin. However I note (and this might be a complete red herring) that "love" is a nil score in tennis and a "duck" is a nil score by a batsman in cricket, so could it originally have been "love or duck" meaning nil?--Shantavira|feed me17:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not necessarily offensive, even if it is rhyming slang for "fuck" (which is plausible, as it would often be uttered where the f-word might otherwise be used). Religiously, it's a sin to utter the name "Jesus" as a profanity, but one can sort of get away with 'gee', 'jeez', 'jeepers' et al. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Partridge'sDictionary of Slang and Unconventional English labels "Lord love a duck" as a "mild proletarian expletive" in use by 1923, and doesn't mention any rhyming slang connection. The Duc thing is the kind of "just so story" which almost never turns out to be true in etymologies; however, "Ducky" goes back to 1830... AnonMoos (talk) 19:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Using Google Books I managed to find a reference as early as 1895 ("Lord love a bloomin' duck!") , but nothing earlier. It might be worth noting that the phrase "Lord love you" was very common throughout the 19th century. Looie496 (talk) 23:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Slang and adding words
How is slang created and popularized? Does someone just randomly decide to coin a word or use an existing word in a new way? How does it spread, then? Obviously I realize that some slang might be coined and popularized through a major film or TV series or book's use of it, but what about those that are not? Thanks. 24.92.78.167 (talk) 22:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is a toughie. Usually slang starts within a small group of people as a variation or shortening of or a new meaning put to an existing word (i.e. phat from fat, celebutard from celebrity and retard, meatball meaning stupid person), a new word formed from existing parts (horsiculture), or, somewhat more rarely, an entirely new word without derivation from other parts (lollapalooza). Then it is popularized within that group. A lot of slang is isolated enough that it never makes it into the mainstream (look through wikt:Category:Slang and see how much you know), which is why it is indeed called slang. Usually if a slang word survives long enough to make it into public awareness, it is through public media: songs (music is a great way of conveying words - many terms have their first mainstream reference in a song), film, movie, TV series, book, newspaper, or radio. You might want to contact a better linguistic 'authority' though, like Language Log. Lexicografía (talk) 22:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One of the key features is that it's picked up either within a group, becoming an identifier of that group, *or* it is picked up by a person or group of influence, and disseminated by them (by people who want to identify with that person/group). As examples, consider the way internet memes are spread about - it's a similar mechanism. It's also how internet slang moves about. Someone of influence uses it (say, on their blog/twitter/whatever), expanding it outside its smaller in-group use (for example 4Chan, Slashdot, etc.). Steewi (talk) 03:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Picture Assonance
I need to represent assonance with a photograph and have had very hard time finding one. I just need to be able to explain how the photograph represents assonance. Napolite2 (talk • contribs) 23:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest coming up with an assonant phrase or several, and plugging them one after another into google images until you find an image that you can relate to your assonant phrase. Odd assignment, but oddly satisfying. --Tagishsimon(talk)00:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Resolved
-- AnonMoos (talk) 12:31, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
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