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April 9

can anyone explain this mandarin sentence?

Hi, on this video, from easy taiwanese mandarin 5, around 4:00, there is a sentence I don't understand:

那你能接受大范围的... 台湾大范围的推广使用简体字吗?
Nà nǐ néng jiēshòu dà fànwéi de... Táiwān dà fànwéi de tuīguǎng shǐyòng jiǎntǐzì ma?
Can you accept a wide range of... Taiwan's promotion of the use of simplified characters?

I don't get the grammar. It reads like:

Na you can accept (wide range) ... Taiwan widespread de extend use simplified characters. I think tuīguǎng and shǐyòng are both verbs, right? So what is the "de" particle doing in that place? And is there a better word-by-word translation that makes both the sense of it and the underlying grammar transparent? Can it be "de extending using simplified characters"? Thanks, IBE (talk) 23:53, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Word by word: "Then, (那) you (你) can (能) accept (接受) wide-range (大范围的) ... Taiwan (台湾) wide-range (大范围的) promoting (推广) using (使用) simplified characters (简体字) [question]? (吗?)"

Literallly but in correct word order and grammar: "Then, can you accept wide-range ... Taiwan [undertaking] wide-range promotion of the use of simplified characters?"

Hope that helps. The "..." appears to be because the speaker went back to correct themselves by adding "Taiwan" before "wide-range". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:32, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely helps, thanks. Wide range promoting? That is, using your word by word version, I think it's like "Can you accept me promoting fruit juice to people?" Accept me doing such and such, so what part of speech are these: wide-range (大范围的) promoting (推广) using (使用)? Is wide-range an adjective modifying promoting? IBE (talk) 00:49, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 11

文, 语, 言, 话

I was trying to understand many names for the Chinese language (a short list here, and a longer list here). While I can grasp the difference between the first elements, I was puzzled by these four words.

As I suggest, 文 [wén] refers to something written, while both 语 [yǔ] and 言 [yán] refer to something spoken. However, I'm confused of what is the actual difference between the latter two, given that there is also a compound 语言 [yǔyán]. Plus Classical Chinese is called 文言 [wényán] and even 文言文 [wényánwén]. And there is also 话 [huà] which adds to the confusion.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:43, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Someone more knowledgeable may correct me, but basically: 言 is an old word for "speech", now used only in compounds; 话 is a more modern word with the same basic meaning; 语 means, broadly, "language" rather than "speech". Henry ^Flower 22:01, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a Chinese dictionary which gives the dates of the first usage for a word like it is done for English in the OED?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk)

话, huà, is often used for language; as well as Putonghua many local varieties of Chinese use it. Cantonese is called Guǎngdōng huà/广东话 for example, as well as 广州话, 白话 and 省城话. It seems to be used in China in places when we would use 'xxx dialect' or 'xxx English'. But translating it as such is tricky because of the contentious issue of whether Chinese is one language with lots of dialects or six or more languages which share a writing system.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:29, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is all four words can, in theory and in practice, mean "language". Moreover, they can be equally used in very similar compounds, e.g., 中国话 [zhōngguóhuà] and 中文 [zhōngwén] (why the second drops 国 is also puzzling); while 中國語 is tagged "rare". On the other hand, let's take the names for Russian or English: judging by Google search, there are 俄语 and 俄文, 英语 and 英文, and the compounds with 语 look to be more widespread, but there seems no or few similar compounds with 话 (the absence of the compounds with 言 is understandable if the word is outdated as explained above).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:14, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have only come across 话 for varieties of Chinese, in particular for varieties associated with a place. It’s always 'xx 话' where xx is a province, region or city, so you can think of them as local dialects. The odd one out is Putonghua, but it too is a dialect, of Mandarin, it just happens to be the official dialect. This only works to a point though, as Chinese uses 话 even for varieties of Chinese we would consider separate languages. See Varieties of Chinese for some discussion on this.

As for dropping the 国 this is common in Chinese. It’s 英国 and 英文 for example. It’s not so much the 国 is dropped, but those are two words 英国 and 英文 that share a common root, just as in English (England/English, France/French).--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:02, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and it makes sense to use a word which means "speech" rather than "language"; firstly because the various Chinese dialects/languages are primarily oral, and secondly because, as you point out, for political reasons China considers them as not separate languages. Lüboslóv, the difference between 英文 and 英语 is what you said in your original post; the former is more in the direction of literature, and the latter more in the direction of spoken language. There's a lot of overlap and fuzziness and redundancy, of course, but that's why we love languages. Henry ^Flower 20:43, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@JohnBlackburne: But why have they decided that in 中国话 there is a need for 国, while in 中文 there is no need for 国? Why not to write 国 in both or leave it in both? What's the logic?-Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:45, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

logic and language make strange bedfellows. Explaining 'why' for Chinese is beyond me, but it’s easy to think of examples of similar variation in English. In fact exactly the same example, ways of saying xxx language, where language is some variety of English. Here are some ways you can do it.

British English – just "xxx English" where xxx is a place.
Received Pronunciation (RP) – sort of a one-time standard, also called BBC English
Yorkshire dialect – "xxx dialect" where xxx is a place
Scouse – a named dialect

That’s four different ways to specify a particular variety of English, the common name for each. None of them is better, they are all correct and valid. And the same is true in Chinese: each word is correct and means what it does. There is no rule saying it must be one way or another.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 05:19, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 12

A list of cognates in romance languages

Hello,

Is there a downloadable file available online, with an extensive list of cognates in romance languages, alongside the Latin original word?

Something in a format similar to:

Spanish: ojo French: œil Italian: occhio Portuguese: olho Romanian: ochi Latin: oculus

Online resources I have found such as this offer a limited list of a few hundreds words, without the Latin original word.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.125.101.131 (talk) 07:05, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You might want an etymological dictionary of Romance languages, like this one. Шурбур (talk) 16:17, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Translation requests (Latin)

Hello. I'd like to ask for translations of the following Latin phrases:

1. "Sentire non est corporis sed animae per corpus"

2. "Pondus meum, amor meus"

I believe both are from the work of Saint Augustine. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:12, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sensing is not of the body, but of the soul through the body. (On the Literal Meaning of Genesis)
My weight is my love. (Confessions)

Шурбур (talk) 07:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The second quote is from Confessions. Specifically, Book XIII, Chapter IX. Alansplodge (talk) 16:40, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 13

Stopped her (from) doing it

How could one explain the difference between:

A.I stopped her doing it
B. I stopped her from doing it?

My sense is:

A means she had started doing it, and I caused her to cease doing it. Either I physically blocked her, or I commanded her to stop doing it (and she obeyed)
B means I did something that did not necessarily involve our personal interaction but it prevented her from starting to do it at all, such as locking a cabinet and denying her access to the key. It could also mean physically restraining her.

But couldn't the second case also be described using version A? What is the degree of interchangeability of these forms? In the case where she had been digging around inside the cabinet and I removed her from the site and locked the cabinet, I guess I could say "I stopped her doing it, then I stopped her from doing it". Is that a reasonable construction? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:44, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly, but it is best to avoid ambiguous constructions; if you want to say "I removed her from the site and locked the cabinet", then say that. The over-use of pronouns tends to create unnecessary ambiguity, and the more specific sentence is not significantly longer in terms of characters or words; if it takes the same effort to write or say the same thing, and it is less ambiguous, do that instead. --Jayron 32 02:18, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sage advice indeed. Still, I want to know what I asked. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:30, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A could mean the same as B in sort of a slangy way. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:34, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than random guesses, it would be more accurate to look in a dictionary. For example:

with object and present participle Prevent (someone or something) from performing a specified action or undergoing a specified experience.

‘several attempts were made to stop him giving evidence’

‘you can't stop me from getting what I want’

In the sense of prevent, the two are completely interchangeable, and there is no difference in register. Henry ^Flower 13:45, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Actually hearing others say things like that does not qualify as "random guesses", Mr. Blossom. It's akin to saying someone "graduated high school."[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:55, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Except in Br-En, at least, someone wouldn't say that — you can graduate, full-stop; or graduate from something, such as a high school, college, or drinking small measures of beer. Bazza (talk) 16:58, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 14

Milos Forman vs. Miloš Forman in English

With the passing of Miloš Forman, it seems that some US news sources are using Milos Forman (NPR would be an example) but some are using Miloš Forman (such as the LA Times). Is one format preferred in US print media? Does this take into account that s and š are different letters in Czech?--12.233.203.202 (talk) 18:16, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Newspapers in the United States have traditionally been very sparing in their use of diacritic letters. Neither Linotype systems as used in the U.S. during the first 60+ years of the 20th century, nor most of the mainframe and terminal systems used in the first round of computerization in the 1970s and 1980s, encouraged their use (in particular, the Los Angeles Times almost never used diacritics during most of the 1980s). That's how Ahmet Ertegun lost his umlaut when living in the U.S. -- and "ü" (since it occurs in German) is much less exotic than "š" from the U.S. point of view. U.S. journalistic organizations using "š" in his name are taking advantage of today's much less restrictive software and/or showing more international sensitivity than was common in the past... AnonMoos (talk) 04:03, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See also Baseball Campaign Puts the Accent on Spanish Names (NYT, August 2016) about a campaign to ensure that diacritics are always used for the names of Latino baseball players. The article confesses that "The New York Times has not generally rendered accents for the names of coaches and players in daily coverage of the major North American sports leagues". Alansplodge (talk) 12:08, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This also likely reflects the growing Hispanic population in the U.S., such that more readers would notice the difference. The percentage of U.S. readers who would notice the difference between s and š is likely in the low single digits. Far more would recognize the difference between n and ñ, and journalists might well get complaints for rendering "año" as "ano." Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, but it would be a bit odd to have a policy of using some diacritics but not others on the basis of popularity. Alansplodge (talk) 15:40, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I take that back, the NYT hasn't bothered itself with accents in Milos Forman, Oscar-Winning Director of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ Dies at 86 published a few hours ago. Alansplodge (talk) 19:13, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see an š on my keyboard. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:53, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is one - š - if you chose Latin in the box next to the word Insert just below the editing field with every use of the edit option. MarnetteD|Talk 19:58, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oh good grief you already know that or you wouldn't have been able to leave one in your post. My apologies BB. MarnetteD|Talk 20:01, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Don't apologize too soon. I simply copied it from the section header. But thanks for the tip on how to post non-English characters. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:02, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ah a copy/paste solution :-) You are welcome BB. I stumbled upon those alphabet options several years ago but rarely have a chance to use them. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 20:41, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty nifty stuff. Better late than never! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:41, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Also right above the editing window there is a series of icons and drop down menus, one of them is "Special characters". Some of the options under "Special characters" are "Latin", "Latin extended", "IPA", "Symbols" and so on. Basemetal 13:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For characters you expect to use often it's faster to use keyboard shortcuts. For example I'm picky about writing "El Niño" properly so it helps to know Alt+164 or Alt+0241 is ñ. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:06, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In MacOS it's option-n n, and š (with the Extended keyboard) is option-v s. (How do Linucists do it?) —Tamfang (talk) 08:46, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose they may do what MarnetteD does and what Baseball Bugs just discovered how to do, and what poverty stricken Windowers do... Here I must apologize for one day asking you to type some Sanskrit for me from your nifty Mac, which you kindly did. Later on I discovered there was this other way. Basemetal 13:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 15

Aheat

I find this in Keith's Sanskrit Drama (p. 81): "medicine aids the sick though given by one of inferior caste, as does water one aheat". The meaning of "aheat", if it is indeed a word, is clear. But why can't I find the word in any dictionary? Is it regional? (Keith was from Scotland). Thanks. Basemetal 22:23, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Aheat" is an entry in the OED, it has the following:

† aˈheat, phr. Obs.

[a (prep.¹ of state) + heat (n.)]

In or into heat.

1587 Golding De Mornay (1617) Pref., To chafe them a heate, that are waxed colde. - Lindert (talk) 22:42, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. It seems so rare (if the OED could find no example more recent than 1587; or is it 1617?) I'm surprised Keith's example is not in the OED. Basemetal 04:21, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I still have difficulty understanding the sentence, because I can't figure out what role "one" is supposed to have... AnonMoos (talk) 08:37, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible to submit examples to the OED editors: link. - Lindert (talk) 08:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

AnonMoos: "medicine aids the sick though given by one of inferior caste, as does water [aid] one [who is] aheat". The first one gives medicine, the second one receives water. Henry ^Flower 08:43, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"water aids one (=a person) who is on heat". —Tamfang (talk) 08:43, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The second edition of the OED (~~1991~~ 1989) does indeed call it obsolete, but the updated entry (September 2012) in the online edition ditches that description and instead calls it Scottish and rare. It adds further citations from 1836, 1901 and 1923, but if it's rare then they might still be interested in another example. --Antiquary (talk) 09:13, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 16

elektricität vs elektrizität

It looks like in the 1930s it was usual to write in Germany the word elektricität for electricity. But nowadays it is written Elektrizität. I am interested when and why it was changed. Famous for the word "elektricität" is the company AEG, the E stands for "elektricität" until today... the official page duden.de doesn't even know that --Saegen zeugen des sofas jehovas (talk) 01:08, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What is a sofa of Jehovah? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:17, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And what is US94111A1060 ? I asked something else. --Saegen zeugen des sofas jehovas (talk) 02:37, 16 April 2018 (UTC) [reply]

Something to do with Watchtower, apparently. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:21, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Google-Ngram shows that the modern spelling has dominated since around 1880, with the old spelling going extinct shortly after 1900. This suggests a connection with the spelling reform of 1901. Companies kept the traditional spelling of their names. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:05, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it is useful to mention the reason: actual German pronunciation of written "ci" and "ce" has always been "tzi" resp "tze", in turn written "zi" resp "ze". The spelling reform at the beginning of the 1900s probably decided that everybody should write what everybody was already saying all the time. It is funny that one of the several spelling reforms coming after 1996 stated that many such Roman "z" should be written again as "c", like "azeton" > "aceton" (ah tzeh ton), "zembalo" > "cembalo", "zentrum" > "centrum" 194.174.76.21 (talk) 13:31, 16 April 2018 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin[reply]

The article on German orthography reform of 1996 doesn't mention any actual changes to the spelling of c vs. z. --194.213.3.4 (talk) 14:19, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is not surprising, as I was explicitly talking of one of the reforms coming after the one of 1996. Sorry, I cannot give you a more precise reference, but after the reform of 1996 there have been several reforms of the reform, for example in 2004, 2006 and 2011. 194.174.76.21 (talk) 16:35, 16 April 2018 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin[reply]

PS I don't find references to the reform any more but on the contrary someone stating that the c-spelling was still alive in the 1970es and had a resurgence after 2000, with many people beginning again to write centrum, citrone and cigarettes possibly as a form of snobism independently from the reform (or as a reaction to it).

Pronunciation of Hebrew: Is there a WP standard?

Is there a WP standard for the pronunciation of Hebrew? For example Jesus#Etymology gives the pronunciation "moschiach" for משיח. Basemetal 14:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Help:IPA/Hebrew says: "Since Modern Hebrew has both non-Oriental and Oriental pronunciations in Israel, certain letters may be transcribed differently depending on the background of the speaker." --194.213.3.4 (talk) 15:03, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Are you certain by "background of the speaker" they mean "background of the WP editor"? Basemetal 15:16, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia seems to have two general transcriptions of Hebrew, for "Tiberian" and modern Israeli, and other types of transcriptions may be appropriate in certain specific cases. However, "moshiach" is inappropriate to the Jesus article, since it's not based on any systematic transcription conventions, and it's also completely anachronistic -- the "ch" spelling is a rather ambiguous way of indicating IPA [x] (a velar fricative), but this word did not start to be pronounced with [x] until many centuries after Jesus' time (and is still not uniformly [x] in all Jewish pronunciation traditions today).

Much more appropriate would be māšīaḥ (Semitological) or [maːʃiːaħ] (IPA). Of course, the pronunciation during Jesus' own lifetime would have been more likely mašīḥ / [maʃiːħ] (but that's another issue)... AnonMoos (talk) 16:03, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 167: / Line 167: @@
 :::The article on [[German orthography reform of 1996]] doesn't mention any actual changes to the spelling of ''c'' vs. ''z''. --[[Special:Contributions/194.213.3.4|194.213.3.4]] ([[User talk:194.213.3.4|talk]]) 14:19, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
+:::: This is not surprising, as I was explicitly talking of one of the reforms coming <U>after</U> the one of 1996. Sorry, I cannot give you a more precise reference, but after the reform of 1996 there have been several reforms of the reform, for example in 2004, 2006 and 2011. [[Special:Contributions/194.174.76.21|194.174.76.21]] ([[User talk:194.174.76.21|talk]]) 16:35, 16 April 2018 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin
+::::PS I don't find references to the reform any more but on the contrary someone stating that the c-spelling was still alive in the 1970es and had a resurgence after 2000, with many people beginning again to write centrum, citrone and cigarettes possibly as a form of snobism independently from the reform (or as a reaction to it).
 == Pronunciation of Hebrew: Is there a WP standard? ==