Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language

Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• 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.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

March 5

spanish translation, ribbed condoms

what do you call ribbed condoms in spanish? how would you say "ribbed for this generations numbness" in spanish? con lomitos para acalambramento de ésta generación maybeTroyster87 (talk) 12:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Ribbed condoms would be preservativos (or condones) texturados. I quite don't get the meaning of your last sentence, I'm sorry to say. Pallida  Mors 15:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

If by "numbness" you mean to refer humorously to youthful detachment and alienation, I would translate the sentence as condones texturados para ésta generación entumecida. LANTZY^TALK 00:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

• so it would be texturado para ésta generación acalambrada —Preceding unsigned comment added by Troyster87 (talk • contribs) 00:48, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

General foreign accent

The article Kissinger that "I watched myself on German television, so that I could finally speak without an accent. And I heard myself speaking with a Swedish accent!" let me thinking - do some people have a foreign accent in all languages that they speak? Does this phenomenon has a name? Under what conditions does it happen?--Mr.K. (talk) 12:51, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

You could say that everyone speaks their own ideolect. To someone from Boston, a US English speaker from Texas has an accent. Also, if (say) an English speaker hears (say) a French person speaking Russian, the French accent is easy to recognize even though the English speaker doesn't understand French or Russian. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 13:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

It's fairly normal for people who speak their non-native language fluently for an extended period of time, although the extent to which people are affected varies, just as the amount of accent varies. It's essentially a matter of the fact that you use different muscles and movements with different languages. They've been 'out of training'. If a native speaker returns to speaking his native language most of the time, then they'll usually revert to accent-free speech fairly quickly. I can speak a few languages with virtually no (foreign) accent. But I can't do so simultaneously. --Pykk (talk) 15:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I can speak english and spanish simultaneously, ha haTroyster87 (talk) 01:45, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Japanese pronunciation

Moved from Humanities Desk

Please: I need the correct pronunciation for Tanaka Shozo, a 19th Century Japanese conservationist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.83.133.250 (talk) 14:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly how it's written - TA-NA-KA-SHO (like English 'show')-ZO (like the '-zo' in the Greek drink 'Ouzo', or English 'zone'). (The 'stress' is on the 'TA' and the 'SHO').--92.41.122.215 (talk) 19:46, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The name is spelled wrong; it should be Tanaka Shōzō (ja:田中正造). Pronunciation is /tanaka ɕoːzoː/. Bendono (talk) 23:21, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mention that because English language conventions usually do not use the bar over the vowel to indicate length, just as we write Tokyo and not Tōkyō, or Osaka and not Ōsaka, and the pronunciations I gave ('show' and 'zo-' in 'zone') are long, anyway.--KageTora (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Straying from the original topic, but FYI:

• Britannica: Ōsaka (Japan)
• Britannica: Ōsaka (prefecture, Japan)
• Encarta: Ōsaka

Bendono (talk) 14:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Whatever, but if you want to be pedantic, Google gives over 35,000,000 hits for Osaka and only 34,000,000 hits for Ōsaka. I think that means that they are both used interchangeably. Never harmed my work, and I have been a professional translator of Japanese for over 15 years. Besides, the OP was not asking for the spelling in English.--KageTora (talk) 11:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Language proficiency displayed on one's person

Is there an officially recognized international standard for displaying, on one's person, information about one's proficiency in various languages? I am envisaging something somewhat equivalent to Wikipedia:Babel, and also somewhat equivalent to commercial signs such as the following.

English is spoken here.

On parle français ici.

Aquí se habla español.

Hier spricht man Deutsch.

Si parla italiano qui.

Oni parolas esperante ĉi tie.

Hominēs hīc Latīnē loquuntur.

Aqui se fala português.

Здесь говорят по-русски.

Such a system can be used by tourists meeting local residents and/or vice versa, by doctors meeting patients and/or vice versa, and by many other categories of people. The system might involve letter codes, number codes, color codes, and/or other codes for identifying various languages, and a method for indicating levels of proficiency. It might even distinguish proficiencies in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. (The use of flag icons for symbolizing languages, as practiced by some websites, is less than optimal, because a flag is associated with a country, and not every country is uniquely associated with one language.) The information might be displayed on buttons, on ribbons, on patches sewn onto clothing, and/or in some other way. (There might be less conspicuous versions for wristbands and wallet cards.) There might be an "introductory symbol" (a "heading symbol") to indicate the topic of all the other symbols. There might be an organization for testing, certifying, and updating one's language proficiencies specifically for such display. See Category:Language certification.
-- Wavelength (talk) 17:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Another common system I see on websites is the name of the language in the language itself. For example. If you were organizing a conference, for example, I could imagine a similar code system on everyone's name tag. As for an international standard – here's one example: the EU uses the two-letter country codes. Best, WikiJedits (talk) 19:51, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Those codes on that EU website are language codes. See User:Wavelength/Global data/Languages, countries, and codes#Analysis of codes. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

For the first system, List of names of the official languages of the European Union in the official languages is useful. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly how do you suggest that a person's proficiency in languages would be measured? A self-apointed scale is virtually useless (which is why I don't use W:Babel - a realistic person might say they speak a language to a medium degree and speak it almost fluently, while an optimistic person could likewise apoint themselves a medium degree speaker and yet know little more than basics; and an outside observer can't tell the difference), and the international language tests can have different results regarding proficiency levels from one culture/nation to another as well. Again, what is professional proficiency? I've seen hawkers on streets who could speak no more than three or four phrases of a foreign language, but that was enough to close the deal they were looking to make. Surely, those people were sufficiently proficient as far as their profession required it? Would you have different ribbons for more and less (linguistically) demanding proffesions? TomorrowTime (talk) 22:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Two more things that make an "easy" system unreliable would be that certain local languages don't have a "country code" associated with them. Another is that local dialects can be mutually unintelligible. I lived in Germany and speak a moderate amount of Low German. (Self assessment, but a heck of a lot more idiomatic than some school taught "experts" do.) OR has proven that trying to understand a conversation between two Bavarians while they are not trying to communicate with someone speaking their dialect is hopeless, although they'd be considered to speak German. Communicating with people from countries neighboring Northern Germany worked a lot better despite them speaking a different "official language". I once attended a conference where a Japanese guy could make out more of what a Scottish attendant was saying than either me or a guy from Kent were able to. Our movers here in the US and my hubby both hail from Atlanta. That should make one hopeful that mutual communication would be assured. I ended up having to translate, because their different cultural background made it hard for the two to understand each other. At a computer networking conference participants from different countries are likely to have more luck understanding each other than they would, talking about the subject with someone from their own country who's not familiar with the subject. Language is just a nasty can of worms. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 00:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed airline flight attendants often have flags on their name badges. I assumed those flags were to do with the languages they can speak rather then their country of origin. Astronaut (talk) 03:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Pre-handover, Hong Kong police had either a black or red (bilingually qualified) backing to their individual identity badge numbers. DOR (HK) (talk) 04:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

In Europe I've often seen folks at information kiosks (etc.) wearing lapel pins of national flags, used for this purpose. It is very common. They usually use a British flag to designate an English speaker. I don't remember seeing US flags used that way in Europe, but come to think of it I vaguely remember seeing information booth clerks South Korea's Seoul-Incheon airport with US flag pins to signify that they spoke English. I've also seen such flag decals on the windows of taxicabs, indicating that the driver speaks the corresponding language. As for proficiency, it really only takes basic skill in a language for (say) a taxi driver to take you where you want to go. Wearing a language pin doesn't indicate that the person is fluent enough to carry on erudite literary discourse. 76.195.10.34 (talk) 12:44, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for your comments. Here is my composite reply to some of the points which have been expressed so far. Additional comments are still welcome.

• A self-assessment is not perfect, and even a score from an international language test has limitations, but some information is better than none, as a guideline. (An amateur weather forecast is not perfect, and even a professional weather forecast has limitations, but some information is better than none, as a guideline.)
• There might be a way of indicating whether a score is to be understood as applying to a language in general, or to a specific area of use. If a specific area of use is not indicated, a viewer might assume that the wearer should have a level of proficiency at least sufficient for the usual requirements of the job being performed when the device is being worn.
• Even if a worker (for example, a hawker on the street or a taxi driver) can perform a job with a basic level of language proficiency most of the time, there are many ways in which a simple situation can become more complicated and require a more advanced level of proficiency. Knowing about the extra leeway can be of some re-assurance to all concerned.
• There might be a way of indicating a specific dialect (for example, en-gb or en-us), and there might be a way of indicating a specific speech register.
• If there is an officially recognized international standard, and especially if it is taught in schools and publicized by the media, wearers and viewers can proceed with some reference on which to base their decisions. If that standard does not exist, they might try to improvise as they best know how.

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Besides the points which I mentioned about flag icons in my original post, flags have other disadvantages.

• A letter code is easier to learn, to remember, and to reproduce than are most national flags. Many flags are highly detailed, and some are only subtly different from certain others. Without consulting a reference work about flags, how many flags does the average person know? How many flags in a display of unidentified flags (not in any special order, for example, alphabetical order) can the average person identify? Also, there might be legal restrictions in regards to the use of images of national flags.

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:15, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I did some searching with Google Image Search, and I found the following links, the best that I could find.

• National Park Service: Uniforms (Badges/Insignia) (bottom of page)
• Personalized Gifts for Every Occasion! Home Page (bottom of page)
• The Virtual Cub Leader's Insignia Guide (section "INTERPRETER STRIPS" with additional links)

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:22, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The following images are from the article Esperanto symbols.

• 
  The Esperanto flag
• 
  Jubilee symbol
• 
  A stylized green star

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The article Esperanto symbols is in Category:International flags, which has some flags of language organizations.

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The first result of my Google search for "language flag" (which I performed after all of my preceding postings)
is Why you should not use a flag as a symbol of language. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

At some international gatherings (for example, Earth Summit (1992)), attendees might wish to identify languages as well as countries. Therefore, a national flag might identify a delegation from a particular country, while another kind of item might be used to identify speakers of a particular language. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:52, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Russian dates

I'm working blind on a Russian page and am wondering what the additional text is after the year in Russian dates. For example, see ru:Радваньска, Уршула. Both the years 1990 and 2008 have "год" after them, and are wiki-linked. Does this have something to do with the Orthodox church? If I'm going to be working with dates, when will I need to change "год" to something else? Thank you! Maedin\^talk 19:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

According to wikt:год, it's the Russian word for year. Algebraist 19:37, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Heh. Should have thought to look! Thank you for doing the obvious for me, :-) Maedin\^talk 19:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Did you think it meant 'God'? As in 'the Year of Our Lord'? Easy mistake to make!--92.41.122.215 (talk) 19:43, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Either that, or something like AD or BC. I wondered if they always made it specific. Anyway, I certainly didn't think it would be quite as simple as "year"! Maedin\^talk 19:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

In English, we cut to the chase and just say "eighteen ninety-two" (5 syllables), no matter whether it's nominative or an oblique case. The Russian formal rules may have relaxed somewhat in recent years, but traditionally they made very heavy weather of dates, and of numbers generally. They would write "1892", but when reading it aloud they had to say their equivalent of "the one thousand eight hundred and ninety-second year" - which, for those who may be interested, is "тысяча восемьсот девяносто второй год" (týsyacha vosemsót devyanósto vtoróy god - 13 syllables). Hence, most Russian citations of years end with the word "год". That's just a simple reference to the year. But when it was in the context of a sentence like "<Something happened> in 1892", the preposition "в" (in) takes the prepositional case, which converts "второй год" to "втором году" (vtoróm godú); so we see examples such as " ..... в 1892-ом году". And when such a reference is part of a complete date ("Alexandrov was born on 13 November 1892"), the date 13 November 1892 is put into genitive case without a preposition (except that only the last word of a year is genitivised), so it appears on the page as "13-ого ноября 1892-го года" and is spoken as "тринадцатого ноября тысяча восемьсот девяносто второго года" (trinádtsatovo noyabryá týsyacha vosemsót devyanósto vtoróvo góda - 23 syllables compared to our maximum 13 syllables in "on the thirteenth of November eighteen ninety-two"). They usually dispense with the endings in shortened forms such as 13.11.1892 or 13.XI.1892. Another, real-life, example is the 1812 Overture. In Russian, it's "Торжественная увертюра 1812 гoда", which they have to pronounce as torzhéstvennaya uvertyúra týsyacha vosemsót dvadtsátovo góda ("Festival Overture of the One Thousand, Eight Hundred and Twelfth Year"). It's terribly complicated for outsiders (and no wonder Russians speak so quickly - they have a lot of ground to cover). -- JackofOz (talk) 22:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Terribly complicated for someone who hasn't learned a language with more than two cases, I imagine. I studied Latin before Russian, so it all seems quite natural to me. —Tamfang (talk) 06:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Cases per se are one thing. But while Russian uses 2 numbers (singular and plural) generally, they use 3 numbers (singular, dual and plural) when counting things. If the number of things is 1, 21, 31, 41 ... 91 or any higher number that ends in 1, 21, 31 etc (101, 151, 481, 1071, etc) - use nominative singular unless it's the subject of a verb, in which case use accusative; if the number of things is 2, 3, 4, 22, 23, 24, 32, 33, 34 ... - use genitive singular (whether it's an object or not); if the number of things is anything else - use genitive plural. And so it goes. Even for people who've learned Latin and understand the purpose of cases, it often just seems so arbitrary and unnatural to have think in terms of "1 man vs. 3 of a man vs. 7 of men". But they have no choice but memorise it. And when you start adding adjectives to the mix ("5 delicious oranges"), it gets worse because the number of the adjective does not necessarily agree with the number of the noun, whereas that's a sine qua non in any other context. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:27, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I had no idea that such complications existed! It's fascinating but bewildering (and I did study Latin for a couple of years, so I shouldn't be so surprised). Thank you, JackofOz, very much for such an in-depth glimpse into the intricacies of Russian! I appreciate it, :-) Maedin\^talk 12:58, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Не за что. (You're welcome). -- JackofOz (talk) 19:09, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Swedish song title

In Christina Charlotta Cederström, it says "Välkommen, o måne, min åldrige vän" translates into "Welcome oh Moon, my agening friend". Should that be "aging" (or is there a new kind of friend out there)? Clarityfiend (talk) 19:51, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Google translates it as "Welcome, o moon, my older friend". I think "agening" must be a typo. --LarryMac | Talk 19:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it simply means "my (very) old friend". --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) The editor, user:Aciram states on the user page that s/he is not a native speaker, so this may be the reason. It is also possible that s/he wanted to maintain some verse foot (a-gen-ing / ål-dri-ge = dactyl). According to the Wiktionary stuff on Swedish adjectives "åldrige" is the absolute definitive (positive ?) form and not the comparative (which would be åldrigare). Oops, I forgot to sign. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

To keep the same rhythm, would elderly work? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC).

Hang the rhythm - I've gone with "old friend". (I absolutely definitely positively have no clue what Cookatoo said.) Clarityfiend (talk) 07:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

"Aged" or "Elderly" is much better as than ageing (which isn't a typo but British English), which would translate in Swedish to "åldrande" ch¹⁰ · 08:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

"Agening" isn't a proper word, is it? Anyway, Chandler is right. "åldrige" translates best as "aged". "Old friend" is correct in the sense of "old" as in "aged", but it's a bad translation since the usual interpretation of "old friend" is "long-term friend". At best it's ambiguous, whereas the original has no ambiguity since the root of the word is "ålder" (age). --Pykk (talk) 09:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Prepositions

Prepositions tend to be difficult for us non-natives. Which sentence is correct, "The frequency of <symptom> in young adults who smoke is rising." or "The frequency of <symptom> among young adults who smoke is rising."? And should "who" be replaced with "that"? The MS Word grammar checker seems to think so (in some similar cases). Thanks, --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, all four combinations you suggest are fine, I'm sure if anyone wants to add anything more subtle to this answer, they will. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I think either "in" or "among" is fine. The hardcore grammar people might have a reason for one or the other, but either one should be generally understood. I would use "who" instead of "that" because it is people you're talking about. It's just because you use a common noun to describe them, MS Word doesn't recognize the noun refers to people. Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 20:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Who refers to people. That and which refer to groups or things. As "adults" are both people and a group, this handy rule should remove all confusing clarity. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:17, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Your example may just be made up, but if it were a sentence you want to use in real life, you might want to think about using a verb other than "rising". There would be absolutely nothing wrong with it if you'd been talking about drinking or some other activity. It's just that the juxtaposition of smoke with "rising" automatically gives me a mental image of smoke rising, e.g. from a cigarette into the surrounding air, which momentarily distracts me from focussing on what the sentence is actually about. Maybe "increasing" would solve this little problem. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Good point. However, the example was made up to illustrate the point without revealing too much of the real context. And hopefully, I'd have caught that one when re-reading the manuscript :-) --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that either preposition is okay. "Among" sounds a little more correct and formal than "in" to my ears. When you are referring to people, I think you have to use "who". Some native speakers would use "that", but using "that" for people is nonstandard and frankly suggests a lack of education. Marco polo (talk) 01:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

As to "in" vs. "among", I expect technical writing by doctors to use "in", while other people might use either one.

As to "that" vs. "who", both are correct, and interchangeable in this context. Marco and Cockatoo don't know what they're talking about, and here are the cites to prove it. All of these were found online using www.onelook.com:

Compact Oxford English Dictionary, sense 5 under that:

as pronoun (pl. that) used instead of which, who, when, etc. to introduce a defining clause.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, from the usage note under that:

In current usage that refers to persons or things, which chiefly to things and rarely to subhuman entities, who chiefly to persons and sometimes to animals. The notion that that should not be used to refer to persons is without foundation; such use is entirely standard.

And the American Heritage Dictionary, from the usage note under who'':

Some grammarians have argued that only who and not that should be used to introduce a restrictive relative clause that identifies a person. This restriction has no basis either in logic or in the usage of the best writers; it is entirely acceptable to write either the woman that wanted to talk to you or the woman who wanted to talk to you.

Will that do? --Anonymous, 05:38 UTC, March 6, 2009.

Well, no, actually. It is acceptable, but not "entirely acceptable". Some use "that" in relation to people without giving it a second thought; others cringe whenever they hear it, and edit it out of the writing of others, such as in high-quality WP articles. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:19, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Then those edits need to be reverted, like edits that just swap from one to another national spelling in articles not related to a particular country. --Anonymous, 05:01 UTC, March 8, 2009.

Well, I'd better set about creating a (very, very long) list of such edits. The ones that I alone have done over the past 5 years would amount to many hundreds, and nobody to my knowledge has ever objected to or reverted a single one of them. It seems pretty clear to me that anyone interested in quality encyclopedic writing would automatically edit sentences like "People that smoke are considered to be at risk of a range of serious medical conditions" to "People who smoke ....". -- JackofOz (talk) 20:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, everyone. I'll use "The frequency of <symptom> in young adults who smoke is increasing." --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

March 6

Latin: pecatoribus or peccatoribus?

In Latin, is pecatoribus spelled with one C or two? NeonMerlin 00:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Two, normally, although some medieval manuscripts may offer an alternative spelling. Iblardi (talk) 00:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thought-terminating clichés

Do "So's your mother", "That's what your mother said last night" and similar count as Thought-terminating clichés? --90.240.8.194 (talk) 03:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes. But there should probably be a separate section for inane non-sequiturs, as opposed to platitudes. LANTZY^TALK 05:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I have only recently discovered the rich seam of mother insults. Your mom! BrainyBabe (talk) 06:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The dozens is an enlightening read, for more on this topic. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:39, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Dangling superlative on CNN

How come I find the CNN slogan "The most news in the morning." so grammatically unsatisfactory. My mid keeps screaming for an adjective or defining phrase. "The most informative news..." would sound better. Even "The most news you can find on TV in the morning," doesn't cause the same discomfort. "In the morning" just isn't a satisfactory phrase to go with "most". Is that just me, and what's the cause? 76.97.245.5 (talk) 04:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It's perfectly satisfactory if you infer "Of all news channels, CNN has..." They leave that part unsaid, because if they didn't, it would be a pretty lousy slogan. The meaning seems perfectly clear to me. LANTZY^TALK 05:38, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I never normally pay any attention to CNN so I hadn't noticed this phrase, but I have to say my first thought on reading the slogan was exactly the same as the OP - my brain parsed it as a sentence with a missing word; and while on a second reading it does make perfect sense, for some reason it does sound wrong to me too. It may just be because I think the slogan's a fairly vacuous one, so my brain went looking for a less-stupid meaning. ~ mazca ^t|c 11:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it could equally be taken to mean that the majority of news on CNN is in the morning, as opposed to the afternoon, evening or night. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Which in many cases may be true, because news stories from overseas would generally break in the US in the morning, and later bulletins would be "updates" of the same story (which often means no additional information whatsoever). -- JackofOz (talk) 17:08, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not looking for an interpretation, I'd like to know why it feels as though it's wrong grammar. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 17:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it's simply because 'the most x' as a superlative is far more common - particularly in advertising - than 'the most' as a quantity. It's almost a garden path sentence. --ColinFine (talk) 17:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Colin! I can almost smell the fish pond. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 22:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

And I've just realized a further point: people who are discriminating about their news sources are likely to care more about quality than quantity. So if that's how you feel, you don't expect them to want to advertise that they have "the most news"; you expect them to want to advertise that they have "the most accurate news" or "the most up-to-the-minute news". When they talk about quantity, it seems wrong to you because that isn't much of a virtue, so it wasn't what you expected. But, of course, if that is the way you feel, then you're not the sort of person they're advertising to. --Anonymous, 02:53 UTC, March 7, 2009.

In many cases I'd settle for quantity. Take CNN Headline News, which (at one time) was on 24 hours a day. That meant 24 hours of news, right ? No, because they repeat it every half hour. Then 10 minutes is ads, 5 minutes is weather, 5 minutes is sports, and 5 minutes is fluff. So, you're lucky to get 5 minutes worth of hard news out of it each day. StuRat (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

To me the problem is that they used a comparison term, "most", without listing what they're comparing. Are they including newspapers, radio, or the Internet ? StuRat (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Latin>English translation to verify, please

This Latin epigram, from a Crusader-era text, discusses the identity of Acre in relation to another Eastern Mediterranean city:

Non est urbs Accaron

quam quilibet estimat

Accon illa Philistea

Ptolemaida dicitur ista.

If the following English translation is inaccurate (particularly estimat in this context), I'd appreciate corrections:

It is not the city of Accaron

that is recognized [?or valued]

It is Accon of Philistea

That is called Ptolemaida.

Thanks, Deborahjay (talk) 21:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much; I might say "It is not the city of Accaron that anyone thinks is Palestinian Accon; that city is called the Ptolemaidan city." (i.e. Ptolemais) Where is this from, by the way? Adam Bishop (talk) 04:09, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

The author of the translated text I'm editing gave no more detailed citation than what I provided above. "Accaron" is a putative reference to Ekron, if that's relevant. As for your wording (which makes better sense than what I started with, translated by a Franciscan monk (!): Now I'm confused again about the antecedents Accaron vs. Accon! If punctuated, would there be a semicolon at the end of the third line, and that city in the last line refers back to Accaron (and not Acco[n] in Philistea/Palestine) being the Ptolemaidan city? -- Deborahjay (talk) 08:34, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

No, it refers to Acco - Ptolemais was one of the crusader names for it (well, it's a Hellenistic name, really). I should have Googled, apparently the epigram comes from Thietmar of Merseburg and was quoted in some pilgrim texts. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:44, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Need quote attribution

Hi sir or ma'am, Do you know who said: Health is wealth. I found a reference to Virgil, but that seems unlikely since it rhymes in English. Perhaps he said something close to that. If you have an idea of the correct source, please let me know. Thank you for your time and attention to this. -Connee —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.175.110.44 (talk) 21:34, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'The first wealth is health,' if that helps. Here is the link.--KageTora (talk) 10:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

The Virgil guy might be the one who said "A healthy mind in a healthy body" (I don't dare trying my Greek on you) That has been translated, shortened, modified etc. but may still be credited to the original author. (Especially when the one saying the modified quote isn't well-known.)76.97.245.5 (talk) 11:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, "that Virgil guy" was Roman, not Greek. Secondly, mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) is a quote from Juvenal. Malcolm XIV (talk) 11:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Mens sana in corpore sano... AnonMoos (talk) 11:57, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Spanish

I believe "dios" is spelled correctly and means like "I am" or something. Now "dios lepake", what does that mean? I'm using "romanji" for "lepake", in that this is the word it sounded like.96.53.149.117 (talk) 22:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Dios means "God". I'm not sure what you're hearing, but my guess is Dios le pague, which means "May God pay you (for it)". It's another way of saying thank you. —Angr 22:43, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

March 7

Synonym

Are there grades of synonyms? Are there dictionaries or at least lists of perfect synonyms?--Mr.K. (talk) 11:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you referring to a thesaurus / Roget's Thesaurus? This [1] is an online tool which you may want to check. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 12:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I think what you might want to check out is visualthesaurus. While it may not indicate perfect synonyms, it does show relative closenesses of words. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Typing Korean on Windows PC

How is it possible to type Korean on a Windows PC? I have installed the language bar and have the Microsoft IME input method, but it doesn't work the way I want it to, i.e. properly. I try to type 'hanguk', and get ㅗ무혀ㅏ, which is obviously wrong. What is the point in this IME, anyway? It works perfectly well for Chinese and Japanese, but not Korean. Can anyone help me here?--KageTora (talk) 19:46, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Korean is not typed in romanization. Each phoneme is mapped to a key. You need to learn this layout. For example, 한국 (hanguk) is gksrnr. See here. Regards, Bendono (talk) 23:28, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Right, Keyboard layout#Dubeolshik has the details as well. BTW, I wouldn't call Hangul typing phonemic. --Kjoonlee 16:03, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

arabic word noor

what is the meaning of arabic word 'noor', light or reflected light

My Arabic dictionary defines نور nūr as "light, ray of light, light beam, brightness, gleam, glow, illumination, lamp" (with further meanings in combination). However, the main word for "light" in the abstract (as opposed to light in specific manifestations) is probably ضوء AnonMoos (talk) 23:02, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I've heard نور in the abstract quite a bit, though. Wrad (talk) 23:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Noor is used a lot in the Names of God, particularly Nur Ad-Din. Steewi (talk) 23:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Horse sense

As far as I know, the term "horse sense" is a synonym for "common sense". Is that correct? If so, what exactly is the connection with horses? I can't seem to find anything good on-line about this. Does anyone have any ideas? Does the term refer to the sense of a horse (i.e., that a horse himself has good "common sense")? Or does the term refer to the sense of a human (i.e., in dealing with a horse or any horse-related matters ... similar to, say, "fashion sense")? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC))

Yes, it's a near-synonym. Wiktionary gives the definition 'Common sense, especially with a connotation of folk wisdom independent from, and trumping, formal education'. I can't find an authoritative etymology. Google gives a number of possibilities, such as it being related to the perceived shrewdness of horse-traders, or being 'from the same association of "strong, large, coarse" found in horseradish' (Online Etymology Dictionary). Algebraist 20:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I was not able to find anything decent on-line ... hence, I posted here. I also found that comment about the "strong, large, coarse found in horseradish" ... and I have no idea what that statement is even trying to say. Any help? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC))

I think what it means is that in horseradish, horse means strong, large, coarse, and this may be the case in horse-sense. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 22:18, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

However, horses are considered pretty sensible as animals go, so in the absence of evidence, that would also make sense as the origin. To tell the truth, it never occurred to me that it was anything else until the question was asked here. --Anonymous, 05:03 UTC, March 8, 2009.

One possible origin for the phrase (OR alert) is that horses will (or are widely believed to be able to) take their riders home even if the humans get lost. The horse has enough common sense to know where the oats and dry stable are, and will act on that animal intuition/knowledge. If you want sources for the phrase, you could do worse than post your query at Wikiproject Equine. On the other hand, English is not a logical language. We also have the phrase "eats like a horse" to mean a voracious and indiscriminate eater, but horses can be quite finicky, and lethally stupid (will eat unripe apples, get bellyache, and die of colic). So don't expect language to make sense. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I think of eating like a horse as referring to eating large quantities of healthy food, like an athlete in training. I would describe a voracious and indiscriminate eater as eating like a pig. Matt Deres (talk) 15:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Eating like a pig = eating truffles ? :-) StuRat (talk) 02:02, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Subject verb agreement

This sentence comes from the Michelangelo article: It was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in the next major movement in Western art. I am confused about the subject / verb agreement. If you remove all of the "extraneous" (descriptive) words, this sentence is simplified to "It was the attempts." The pronoun "it" is singular, the verb "was" is singular, and the noun "attempts" is plural. Something seems not quite right here. But, the alternatives also don't seem right.

• It were the attempts. - This sounds awful and can't be correct, I think?
• They were the attempts. - This also sounds bad and doesn't accurately get across the concept of the sentence.
• It was the attempt. - This also seems wrong, since it was not one attempt (but many attempts) that resulted in the next art movement.

So, can anyone explain if the original sentence is correct ... and why exactly? I understand that the original question can be re-worded in style and structure to avoid this problem ... but that is not what I am asking about here. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC))

It was is correct usage as far as I know as a native speaker, but I don't know why specifically, I'm sure someone else may be able to help. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 22:16, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

This may be an expletive it, which does not refer to any specific entity (there is no antecedent to the pronoun). PS: I am not a native speaker, so wait for the gurus. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

(after ec) 'It' is an expletive subject: syntactically it is the subject, and the verb agrees with it, even though semantically 'attempts' is the subject. (Actually, I suspect that it would be more accurate to say 'the verb is in the unmarked form, which is singular', rather than talking about agreement, but that would be OR, including my assumption that the (morphologically more complex) singular is the syntactically unmarked form). --ColinFine (talk) 22:31, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

PS2: "It" may also be a cataphoric it, representing the subordinate clause "the attempts of artists to imitate". Same proviso as in my posting above.--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:34, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, at a purely syntactic level the subject of the sentence is "it", so the verb is in the singular in agreement with it; "attempts" is a predicate nominative. German syntax works differently: a verb agrees with a plural predicate nominative, so the translation would be Es waren die Versuche (lit. "It were the attempts"). This difference between English and German constantly trips up speakers of one language trying to speak the other one. (Incidentally, this "It was X that did Y" construction meaning "X did Y" is called a cleft sentence in syntax, not that anyone asked.) —Angr 22:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Angr, thank you for the additional information, about German syntax and about the expression cleft sentence. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The fact that a particular word is the subject "at a purely syntactic level" does not mean that the verb has to agree with it: a famous example is "a number of", as in "a number of men were walking by." However, the sentece we were asked about does not behave that way. If the subject is just "it", the verb does always agree with it. --Anonymous, 05:09 UTC, March 8, 2009.

True. Which is part of my reason for arguing that it's not a question of agreement at all. --ColinFine (talk) 18:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

---

Reminds me of Alice in Wonderland: AnonMoos (talk) 23:13, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Mouse

I proceed. "Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable—"

Duck

Found what?

Mouse ("rather crossly")

Found it, of course you know what "it" means.

Duck

I know what "it" means well enough, when I find a thing, it's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?

March 8

Amanda Strang

What is her biology, i.e.: is she half chinese, half french?70.73.145.207 (talk) 00:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Eurasian (mixed ancestry)? --Nricardo (talk) 05:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Communicating meaning with distant space aliens - no pictures allowed

Imagine that the two-way communication of signals between us and some space-aliens orbiting a distant star has been established. They are blind and immobile and cannot use pictures or diagrams of any kind. There is no pre-established code or alphabet. While I can imagine that eventually the meaning of mathematical or logical symbols might eventually be established (for example tranmitting many messages such as "..+..=...." would give meaning to + and =), would it be possible to eventually build up enough meaning from a zero base so that in time they would understand what was meant by the message "Last thursday my Uncle Bill went to the supermarket"? Helen Keller springs to mind. 89.240.206.60 (talk) 02:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how it's possible to go from 2+2=4 to any non-math concept. Remember, it was impossible to decipher hieroglyphics without help from the Rosetta Stone, even though they were written by human beings, and this would be n times worse (n >> 1). Clarityfiend (talk) 05:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Earth has blind, immobile animals called barnacles, and some humans have done research on how to talk with animals (http://www.howtotalkwithanimals.com/), but I have never heard of anyone attempting to communicate with a terrestrial barnacle. Instead of contemplating communication with alien barnacle-like creatures, why not ponder how we humans can communicate better with each other? -- Wavelength (talk) 06:45, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

LINCOS was a whole elaborate language (developed at length in a book) based more or less around that premise (though I think there were some abstract mathematical images included)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:00, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

H. Beam Piper's much-reprinted story Omnilinual has terrans cracking the Martian language by finding a periodic table. Unfortunately, the idea in the story simply doesn't work: the English names for common elements only make sense in the context of the history of science, not modern science (eg oxygen = 'acid-maker' and hydrogen = 'water-maker]; these are Graeco-Latin rather than English, but German for example translates the roots and still perpetuates the errors), so why assume that the Martian names would be meaningful? --ColinFine (talk) 18:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I coincidentally ran into the following article today ---> Pioneer plaque ... in which NASA scientists are, in fact, trying to communicate with distant space aliens ... albeit with the use of pictures. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

The essential bottleneck to get through may be that of naming geometric shapes, such as a triangle. A triangle could then be used to build up other shapes. The triangle could be named after being identified by its mathematical properties. If however they have no sense of the spatial, then you are stuffed. 89.243.72.122 (talk) 23:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

How can an organism distinguish between a random collection of perceptible stimuli and a purposeful collection of perceptible stimuli produced by intelligent design? How can it distinguish between a message and a non‑message?

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Humans or even sheepdogs or bees seem to have no problems with doing that. And if we humans recieved a signal from a distant star in the form of the Fibonacci series or any other simple mathematical series, then that would indicate that the sender was an intelligent being. 89.242.94.128 (talk) 11:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The series should not be too simple, as then we could not be sure it was not generated by some nonsentient physical process. The Fibonacci sequence in particular is a very bad example, as it is known to appear in nature without any involvement of intelligence, see Fibonacci number#Fibonacci numbers in nature. — Emil J. 13:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This fellow's research into a generalization of information theory that assumes no prior common language might be of interest, for a formal take on a specific variation of the question, which he calls "Universal Semantic Communication". The general strategy is to frame it as goal-oriented communication, which allows us to conclude that we've successfully communicated something when we can achieve some goal as a result of the communication faster than we would've been able to do without it. --Delirium (talk) 02:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It might be worth posting this question on the mathematics desk. I am sure that they would have ways of encoding mathematics that they would think recognisable (and going from simple operations to advanced formula). They might even have some insights in how to jump out of Mathematics. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I have copied the discussion to this point and pasted it at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics#Communicating meaning with distant space aliens - no pictures allowed.

-- Wavelength (talk) 15:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I have also copied the same text and pasted it at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science#Communicating meaning with distant space aliens - no pictures allowed.

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I wish you had not done that. It may create confusion, and seems to be bad etiquette. Even just a link back to here without copying the text may be too much. 78.146.99.239 (talk) 20:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The question posed by the OP is impossible. If the aliens in question were blind and immobile (immobile being the crux here), it would be extremely unlikely that they would have developed the technology to communicate with us, considering the fact that they can't even move around to make anything.--KageTora (talk) 11:03, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I admit I was mistaken to say they were immobile. So I now drop that requirement. I can imagine transmitting into space a long message which starts with the elementary maths and logic, and somehow builds up enough meaning to include at the end Wikipedia and many factual books and literature. I've never used the computer language Forth, but maybe it might work by building new definitions upon existing definitions, in the same way that the Forth interpreter does, although in this case there would be no pre-existing definitions.

A functionally similar situation is where you have two illiterate prisoners in two nearby dungeons. They can only communicate with each other by tapping on a water pipe, they cannot otherwise hear each other. As they are both illiterate, they do not have any existing written language or alphabet they could use as a code. So for example using one tap for "A", two taps for "B"....would not work. They also speak a different language.

If they were clever enough and had enough time and patience, and understood things like maths logic and geometry, could they in theory eventually create a tapping language from a zero base that was capable of expressing as much meaning as for example english? Or would this be impossible? 78.146.23.195 (talk) 00:28, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

what does anbu mean in japanese

what does anbu mean in japanese

It may be either of:

1. 暗部 anbu - dark part
2. 鞍部 anbu - saddle of a mountain

--Sushiya (talk) 07:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Or the name "Amber", or short for umbrella. Also;

あんぶ [暗部] (n) dark side (of nature, town, etc.)

あんぶ [鞍部] (n) col, saddle between mountains

あんぶん [案分, 按分, あん分] (n, vs) proportional division or distribution

あんぶん, あんもん [案文] (n) draft, draught

アンブッシュ (n) ambush

アンブレラカット (n) umbrella cut

--  Chzz  ►  07:50, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting in English?

Are any examples of syntax highlighting for plain English available online? NeonMerlin 06:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting is actually semantic highlighting. However, with natural languages, it's exceedingly hard to guess at the semantics from just the syntax, so my guess would be "No." --Kjoonlee 15:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

There have actually been databases of text sequences annotated with "Part-of-speech tagging" for a long time, if that's adequate... AnonMoos (talk) 16:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

spanish translation

how do you say fishing lure in spanish? i know bait is carnada, and fishing hook is gancho* *=i think.Troyster87 (talk) 09:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Hook is anzuelo. Fishing lure appears to be cucharilla, see here and here. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes; here in my country we call it cucharita, term which is our normal diminutive form of cuchara (spoon). Pallida  Mors 14:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

es:Aparejo (pesca) only seems to have floaters. Maybe one of the links form es:Pesca deportiva has something. Alternatively you could start a page with the translations the others gave you and see if it takes. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 16:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

From the DRAE: cucharilla. 4. f. Artificio para pescar con caña que tiene varios anzuelos y está provisto de una pieza metálica que con su brillo y movimiento atrae a los peces. (Rod-fishing device that has several hooks and is equipped with a metallic part, which with its brightness and motion attracts the fish). And regarding bait, I hadn't heard carnada, only cebo. You can see a discussion of the (slight) differences in usage between the words here.--NorwegianBlue ^talk 17:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

pawing: Can a horse "paw" the ground?

Would it be correct to say "The horses were pawing the ground?" I think I've heard this phrase, but of course, horses don't have paws.... How else could you say that?

Yes, it certainly can be said that way. In fact, that is the most common expression. You couldn't say "The horses were hoofing the ground." They paw for reasons of frustration or impatience, or as a precursor to fighting, or to scrape snow from the grass underneath.... There is no mention of pawing at Horse behavior. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC) PS See a basic google search here. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

It might be rare, but I think you can say "hoof the ground" [2][3]. Most dictionaries also list a verb "to trample with hooves", and in context it could be understood as equal to "paw". 219.102.220.90 (talk) 00:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The word piaffe might apply here, and it might not. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:04, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Equine#Participants. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

See 2 in the middle here [4]. Deer do it, sheep do it and horses in art do it. So it's safe to say real ones do it, too. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 00:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

See the definition of the verb in on-line dictionaries. Oda Mari (talk) 05:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You could say a horse "hoofed the ground", but it would usually mean something more like "trod" or "trampled" – there is an implication that the horse is moving along. What I think we are talking about here is when a horse (or other quadruped) stands still, scraping at the ground with a forefoot. That is indeed called "pawing", despite horses not having any paws. (They have forearms too, despite having no arms, and their "knees" are actually wrists...) As BrainyBabe says, horses often paw when frustrated, bored or impatient, and also to scrape snow, to smash ice, or sometimes when drinking in shallow water. Richard New Forest (talk) 16:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Pawing the ground is when one front foot is on the ground and the horse energetically scrapes the other foot over the ground or stamps with it. Typically, a horse will do this a few times with one hoof and then swaps over to the other hoof for a while. The back hooves don't do anything special. Pawing shows impatience or irritation. A horse may do this when waiting to be fed or if it is keen to go. Piaffe is something else entirely different to pawing the ground. It is when the horse trots on the spot. This is a two time movement in which the horse jumps from one diagonal pair of legs to the other. It can be done when the horse is in the field, as an expression of great excitment or to show off. Piaffe is often followed by passage - a lofty, slow gait which is also in two time - from one diagonal pair to the other - but where the horse also moves forward and additionally seems to hang in the air. Trot is also two time with the same diagonal pair sequence but it does not have the 'hanging in the air' look to it. A trot moves forward also. Getting a horse to piaffe and passage on demand while under saddle shows a great deal of training and rider ability, and to do them both well is difficult to achieve. In top level dressage, the piaffe-passage-piaffe part of a test is always scrutinized by the fans. A 'passagey' trot is marked down in competition because it detracts from the purity of the trot gait. 64.208.49.28 (talk) 17:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If I may be permitted to beat a dead horse here, (pardon the pun), yes, horses "paw" the ground as described above. So do cattle. I would point out that people also do not have paws, yet engage in (completely unrelated) behavior that we call "pawing." I don't know the etymological origins of words referring to assorted random uses of the forelimbs as "pawing" in creatures that don't have paws, but clearly it is there. Montanabw^(talk) 03:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I wondered when we'd get a horse expert with an account. Leave no dead horse unflogged in our attempt to satisfy the OP! BrainyBabe (talk) 03:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

March 9

Accent and deafness

I am not a fully qualified accent trainer but I am responsible for teaching ESL to (a) deaf child(ren) and I'm looking for some background to remedy my relative ignorance on the subject. Forgive me if I am inadvertently non-PC, and please let me know so that I can correct myself.

I have a firm background in linguistics and I'm trying to understand the (possibly "percieved") notion of nasality in the speech of deaf speakers, not limited to English speech. My assumption has always been that an inability to "see" nasals, or rather the lack of them, causes (many?) oral deaf to sound nasals seemingly arbitrarily (as in other examples such as Japanese where lacking an exact equivalent [and in many an inability to hear the differences] of /r/ and /l/ students may resort to either due to misunderstanding/inability to produce each consistently). Either that or technical difficulty in producing or removing nasals due to lack of feedback giving the same result. Is either, or both of these true? I've begun to doubt myself because I can't see why a certain amount of specific accent training wouldn't help drastically, and to assume that would be to assume that there are many oral deaf receiving inadequate speech training, and that makes me uneasy.

Also, if anyone has any information regarding accent correction/training for oral deaf, I would be extremely grateful. Thanks! 219.102.220.90 (talk) 01:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It does seem to be an area of significant research; a quick search of Google Scholar for +nasalization +deaf turns up a number of papers. Along the lines of your "'see' nasals" suggestion, one of the much-studied types of therapy seems to be exactly that, some method for displaying to the speaker a visual representation of their production. There's an old government report on the subject from 1974 here, and a more recent critical review of the use of electropalatography for the same purpose here. --Delirium (talk) 03:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow great thanks. I'm sure I'll be able to find some answers within those links. 219.102.220.90 (talk)

Sentence diagrams

Do most public schools (US preferred but other location input okay) still teach sentence diagraming? I learned it back in the early 80s but still don't see the point of it. And no, the article doesn't go into the "why" it just explains the "what". Dismas|^(talk) 03:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Some reasons are listed here: [5]. And, from a quick glance at appropriate websites, it seems that teaching this skill has gone the way of the dodo ... unfortunately. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

There are certainly some (few) teachers that still use it: [6] Rmhermen (talk) 14:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

According to 6 above, the sentence In the town parade, Sam carried the scout troop flag has only three nouns. Maybe it's a good thing people who don't know what they're talking about have stopped trying to teach grammar. Strad (talk) 19:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Strad ... what are you saying? That sentence does indeed have 3 nouns. I don't follow your comment. Do you disagree with the author of that web site page, that that sentence contains only three nouns? I take your comment to mean that the author of that web page "doesn't know what he/she is talking about" ... but why do you say that? In the "parade" sentence, there are 3 nouns: parade, Sam, flag. Many students will mis-identify some other words (namely, town, scout, troop) as nouns ... when they actually serve as adjectives in this sentence. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC))

Nouns and adjectives are lexical categories, not functions. A noun modifying another noun is still a noun, not an adjective. If it were an adjective, we'd expect to be able to modify it with adverbs. We can talk about a fairly large parade because large is an adjective, but not *a fairly town parade because town is a noun, even when it modifies parade. There are six nouns in the sentence (town, parade, Sam, scout, troop, flag) and three noun phrases (the town parade, Sam, the scout troop flag). Strad (talk) 17:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's fair. Perhaps implicit in his/her statement was that the sentence contains three nouns (that actually serve in the function of a noun ... as opposed to some other function). I thought that was understood. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:29, 11 March 2009 (UTC))

As far as I am aware, sentence diagramming (as a specific method) is completely unknown in the UK. I first came across it, as an adult, when a correspondent was using an adaptation of it for Lojban, but I assumed it was an ad hoc idea he had dreamed up. I was astonished when I discovered that there was a specific set of rules taught in American schools. --ColinFine (talk) 20:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I, for one, am glad this teaching method is gone. I could think of no quicker way to make students hate English, and school in general, than by forcing them to diagram sentences. Substituting something like creative writing, and correcting grammatical errors when found, is a far better way to teach the topic. StuRat (talk) 01:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but ... how would they even know the grammatical errors? That's like expecting students to do higher-level math ... but without first "forcing" them to learn their "times tables". And "forcing" them to learn times tables is a quick and easy way to make students hate math and school in general. Still, it has its place. Same idea with sentence diagrams. In my opinion, that is. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:07, 10 March 2009 (UTC))

Grammar can be learned at a more intuitive level. Just as you don't have to understand projectile physics to catch a ball, neither do you need to know how to diagram a sentence to write a sentence correctly. For example, I would be absolutely useless at diagramming sentences, yet I still manage to write grammatically correct sentences more often than not. Simply being around people who speak properly, and reading grammatically correct sentences, will convey proper grammar rules to the student. StuRat (talk) 19:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, agreed ... grammar can be learned at a more intuitive level ... as can mathematics ... or any of a number of other disciplines. Nonetheless, "forcing" students to learn the multiplication tables serves a valuable purpose. As does sentence diagrams. At least in my opinion. I can "learn" to speak French by going to France, living among the people, and absorbing myself in life there. That doesn't mean that I am learning to speak French correctly ... (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:33, 11 March 2009 (UTC))

? Isn't that is the exact best way to learn a language, particularly to learn it as it is used (i.e., correctly in the descriptivist sense)? Certainly far better than making you learn French grammar and vocabulary at the expense of time spent being exposed to and using it. 79.66.56.21 (talk) 07:50, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Being able to dissect a sentence into its constituent parts is important if you're ever going to study comparative linguistics, and it also helps in learning foreign languages, so it's not a useless task. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Amen, Mwalcoff! (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC))

Pah! Me in school no grammar learnt. And me are fine. Fribbler (talk) 18:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Grammar is learnt, intuitively and naturally, by every human who has ever lived (barring a very small proportion with various handicaps). Both Fribbler and, I venture, every native speaker of English who reads this will know that what Fribbler wrote is ungrammatical (and most will guess that this was deliberate). Many may not be able to explain why it is ungrammatical (though nearly all could provide a version that was grammatical). You don't need to be taught grammar to produce and recognise grammatical utterances. --ColinFine (talk) 23:34, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Waqf registry

If the page on Waqf answers this, I've missed it: what's a (or the) suitable romanized transliteration for English-language readers of the word waqfiyyah, which I understand (?) to be the documentation or registration of a property for a waqf. -- Deborahjay (talk) 04:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If by "suitable" you mean "pronouncable" for an English speaker who has no Arabic, then wahk-FEE-yah وقفية would be good enough, Qof ق being a guttural k that doesn't exist in English.--K.C. Tang (talk) 13:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks; however, I meant quite literally a romanized transliteration rather than transcription. (Pronunciation isn't an issue here.) By suitable I meant closest to what's practiced in Arabic-to-English nonacademic (i.e. mainstream reader) texts, representing each of the letters. For example, I'd favor retaining the q from waqf. I only know how contentious this can be in Hebrew.-- Deborahjay (talk) 13:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, what's wrong with what you used: waqfiyyah? —Angr 14:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Um, nothing wrong? It was simply my best guess based on a seat-of-pants Hebrew-English transcription (e.g. employing the q as noted above, doubling the y, and supposing a final h). As I'm far from mastering the Arabic alphabet, what I'm seeking is corroboration or correction. -- Deborahjay (talk) 14:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, "q" is a standard transliteration for ق just as it is for ק, and "h" is a standard transliteration for ة. I don't know about the doubled "y"; it depends on whether the pointed Arabic text includes the little ω-looking symbol that indicates gemination. —Angr 14:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It's a feminine nisba or "gentilic" ending, and the y letter always takes a doubling-mark (shadda) in that situation (though whether there's an actual geminated semivowel sound in the word depends on your phonological analysis). AnonMoos (talk) 14:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Deborahjay -- there's absolutely nothing "wrong" with waqfiyyah (which would be perfectly acceptable as a transcription in many contexts), but which transliteration is absolutely the best for Wikipedia purposes depends on Wikipedia policies towards Arabic transliteration. There's a page somewhere on this site devoted to Arabic transcription practices, and discussions of the same, but I don't know its exact location offhand. Meanwhile, Ibn Taymiyyah has about ten different transcriptions into English, and his Wikipedia article has been renamed several times... AnonMoos (talk) 14:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(Perhaps the page on Romanization of Arabic, though it requires knowledge of the Arabic alphabet.) -- Deborahjay (talk) 22:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there actually is a Wikipedia page dedicated to how Arabic words are to be transliterated here. All I found is Help:Arabic, which is about the rendering of the Arabic alphabet, not about transliterating it into Latin. Anyway, if I know Deborah, she doesn't want to transliterate this word at Wikipedia anyway, but for some project for the Ghetto Fighters' House. ;-) —Angr 14:54, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

There is also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Arabic), if that helps. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

To demystify for my perceptive and knowledgeable helpers: the source text is a Hebrew transliteration of this Arabic word, and to my chagrin I'm (still) quite ignorant of the Arabic alphabet. I did check WP as a first recourse, by looking at the Waqf page upon which I (surprisingly?) failed to find this word. And Angr is close to the mark, but this case I'm moonlighting for one of our local cultural enterprises (i.e. quite literally "homework" though not in the sense of a school assignment :-) Lastly, as I always want to be adding my findings to Wikipedia, I shall be more diligent in posting the germ of these threads to the appropriate page or Talk page for the benefit of future readers and editors. -- Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 20:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Untangle a sentence from Kipling?

This is from the preface of my edition of The Jungle Book: 'The demands made by a work of this nature upon the generosity of specialists are very numerous, and the Editor would be wanting in all title to the generous treatment he has received were he not willing to make the fullest possible acknowledgement of his indebtedness.' Magnificent sentence; but what does 'wanting in all title' mean? - can someone untangle that bit for me?

Thanks, Adambrowne666 (talk) 11:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This is 'title' meaning 6 at the OED: 'That which justifies or substantiates a claim; a ground of right; hence, an alleged or recognized right. Const. with inf., or to, in, of the thing claimed.' He means that if he failed to acknowledge those who have helped him, we would have no right to such generosity. Algebraist 12:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Somebody messed up! There appears to be an incursion of text into the first sentence cited. The phrase "wanting in all title" means "lacking all justification". A secondary but still-used meaning of "want" is as a verb/noun of absence: "For want of a nail the shoe was lost...for want of a horse the battle was lost." BrainyBabe (talk) 14:02, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That was me screwing up. Fixed now. Algebraist 14:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That sense of "title" is still seen in entitle. Gwinva (talk) 20:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

A full but loose translation: "Writing a book like this is really tough. The editor had a lot of help from many people. He would be a despicable human being if he did not recognise the generous assistance of these others. But, despite metaphorically talking of indebtedness, he is not actually going to share the royalties." BrainyBabe (talk) 14:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

How about "This book has had much generous help from specialists. The editor (author?) would not deserve this generosity if he were not extremely grateful." Richard New Forest (talk) 16:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

How about "The editor is very grateful for the generous help he has received from many specialists". -- JackofOz (talk) 19:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The editor would like to gratefully acknowledge the generous assistance of specialists. (Apparently the specialists didn't include a good writer.) Clarityfiend (talk) 19:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the definition of "good writing" has changed somewhat since Kipling's day. Such convoluted prose, involving (as in this case) the introduction of unnecessary concepts followed by their immediate denial, thus making their very mention superfluous, seems to have been the order of the day for a certain class of person. You'll find similar examples in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which was used to start off many Wikipedia articles because it was out of copyright. In many cases, those articles should be blown up and started again from scratch, using language that is actually comprehensible by modern humans. And, I have to say that my regard for Fowler, for all the good things he has to say, recedes weekly, because of this very issue. Sometimes he takes 50 words to say "The cat sat on the mat". -- JackofOz (talk) 19:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

"It would not be inaccurate to assert that our feline friend, far from being, as our wilder poets image, a creature of the open spaces that longs to escape beyond the rooftops of the present-day metropolis to yowl at the silver orb that bedecks the night sky, is in fact quite content to avail herself of our cosy hearths, and to give us her companionship, warm of fur and warm of purr, as we sit together before the glowing logs, entranced by the flames that, were it not for the protection of the firescreen, might spit and burn the very hearthrug we both so peacefully occupy in cross-species harmony." (I make that 110.) BrainyBabe (talk) 20:34, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Aw, you guys are just WP:RECENTISM fans. Personally, I'm with Kipling (and, yes, I've kippled a number of times in my otherwise uneventful life). Deor (talk) 23:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Did you you do it alone, or with a "friend", Deor?  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 01:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Both. :-) Deor (talk) 02:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)(UTC)

I'm with Kipling and Deor - I love that kind of construction, but only in moderation. Wonder if anyone's done a thesis linking the decline of sentence-length with the influx of TV and other media. The OP would be wanting in all title to the generosity of the respondents, whose magnanimity of the heart is as warm as the magma that gushes from the heart of that orb on which we wile our brief allotted hours composing strained similes and ramshackle sentences that would fall apart under their own weight were it not for the strength of the commas that hold them together, like the bent nails they somewhat resemble, were he not willing to make the fullest possible acknowledgement of his indebtedness. Adambrowne666 (talk) 01:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I too, while but a humble bystander who has little to offer, feel moved to express my deepest delight and sheer joy at the words of wisdom and encouragement offered by our friends Kipling, BrainyBabe, AdamBrowne, and esteemed others of that ilk, which has brought a gentle curve to my lips and a warming to my heart that shall be carried with me for the remaining hours of my day, enthusing and amusing me anew each time they are recalled to my otherwise distracted senses. Gwinva (talk) 02:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The only three ghits to "wanting in all title" are to this Jungle Book preface. (Why does Kipling call himself the editor, I wonder?) So we can claim the phrase as our own. BrainyBabe (talk) 02:47, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Ghit. I've learned a new word, thanks, Brainybabe. Will have to look up the pronunciation. I thought maybe Kipling refers to himself as Editor to suggest the stories were written by the animals themselves, or at least told by them and transcribed.Adambrowne666 (talk) 04:07, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe it's pronounced /ˈdʒiːˌhɪt/ (JEE-hit). —Angr 07:21, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Comma usage

Better: "A couple of hours ago I was informed..."? Or worse: "A couple of hours ago, I was informed..."? Better: "A couple of hours ago I was informed..."? Or worse: "A couple of hours ago, I was informed..."? ----Seans Potato Business 17:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I figure it's better with the comma. What about this one: "If you want to talk about it then I'm happy to listen but if you don't then that's fine too." - are commas necessary here? I used to put them in but I had an English lecturer who said something about inappropriate comma usage and now I wonder if I'm too sparing. ----Seans Potato Business 18:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It really depends who your English lecturer is (because everyone seems to have their own style book about commas), which is one of the silly things about English. Most stylists (!) would require at the very least one or two commas in the last sentence (after "listen", and before "too" is a common rule, too) but the more commas you use the more your sentence starts to look like it was written in 1850, and the more obscure rules you need to fabricate to justify each use. In the first sentence, I doubt most grammarians could think of a reason to justify inserting or removing the comma, so you're probably safe either way. 219.102.220.90 (talk) 23:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the foregoing, for whatever it's worth (folks do sometimes say I write well). You could also put a semicolon after listen and comma before each then. —Tamfang (talk) 05:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Meaning of "say"

I've come across a cartoon in which a man (very drunk) says to an ugly "woman": 'Say... You're lookin' better all the time...'. My question is: how could you paraphrase "say" here? Am I right that it does not mean "I want you to say x" in this context but rather something like "wow"? (I'm not a native speaker.) -- 93.132.191.39 (talk) 17:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You're correct; "say" is used as an interjection in this example. "Wow" could work, or maybe something like "Hey". Dgcopter (talk) 18:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! -- 93.132.191.39 (talk) 18:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The overall contextual meaning is often "Here's an observation I just happened to think of, which may not have any relationship to the preceding conversation". AnonMoos (talk) 20:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's definitely a "listen to me now as I speak an observation of mild importance" sort of interjection. 219.102.220.90 (talk) 23:46, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that "Say, ..." in this context means "I say, ...", "I declare, ...", "I do declare, ...", in the same way that "Pray, ..." in some contexts (and to other humans) means "I pray, ...", "I beg of you, ...", "Prithee, ...".

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

BTW, "by the way" may also work. StuRat (talk) 01:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Also a bit colloquial, but the first equivalent phrase that came to my mind was "you know what? ..." -Andrew c ^[talk] 04:43, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

March 10

Preposition for address

Do you send a letter to an address or only on an address? Is somebody available at an address or only on an address? 59.91.254.91 (talk) 08:04, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

You send a letter to John Smith at 125 Acacia Avenue, for example. On would not be used in this context. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 08:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I am the OP and my question is not addressed in the reply above. The question was about the preposition preceding the word "address", not a(ny) name.10:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.91.253.33 (talk)

You send a letter to an address. A person is available at an address. —Angr 11:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The question was adequately answered by Richardrj, FYI. --KageTora (talk) 15:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem here is that prepositions are the hardest words to translate accurately between languages. I would guess that the OP is not a native English speaker. There is rarely a one-to-one correspondance between a preposition in English like "on" and another single preposition in another language. The usage for each preposition must be learned from within the language itself, not by analogy to ones own native language. For example (because its the only other language I know well enough), take a French preposition like "à". It's usually translated as "to", as in "Je vais à la plage"; I go to the beach. But what about "Je suis à la plage"; I am at the beach or "Il est un ami à moi"; He is a friend of mine or "fait à la main", done by hand, or... you get the idea. The use of the preposition à has fairly consistant rules of use in French, but it doesn't match the rules of use for any one preposition in English.

Even in varieties of English, there are differences. Think of the word "in". "Our house, in the middle of our street" makes sense to the Brits, for them this just means the house is between the two ends of the street. For Americans, it sounds like the house is sitting in the median between travel lanes or something. It is not surprising that there would be confusion between phrases like "to" an address or "at" an address or "on" an address. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:25, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

And more to the point, in North America you phone someone at 345-6789; in Britain you phone them on 345-6789. But this variation does not exist with addresses. --Anonymous, 19:32 UTC, March 10, 2009.

We do sometimes talk about sending letters to an address, rather than to a person at an address. But it's still "to", never "on". (Jayron, I see you refer to both á and à above. Just to clarify, and not to nitpick, the French preposition is spelled with a grave accent - à, and only that way. Á / á does exist, but not in French. French alphabet#Notes tells me the only accents ever used with the letter "a" in French are the grave "à" and the circumflex "â".) -- JackofOz (talk) 19:54, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

My bad. I was working on a small laptop monitor and both accents looked the same in the little character menu at the bottom of the screen. I meant to type grave-a, even if I accidentally hit the acute-a. I fixed them all now, I think...--Jayron32.talk.contribs 22:41, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

One thing to consider--addresses CAN use "on", but only if it's non-specific. Eg: I live ON 1st St. In a case like this, "at" would be improper. If the address is specific (Eg: I live AT 100 1st St), then ON does not work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brewfangrb (talk • contribs) 07:26, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Question about Teacher's job

His Royal Highness,

Sir,

I am a very small person but I definitely have at least one agenda in my mind. I want to develop Thai children and make them capable to make a career anywhere in the world.

Please let me explain. I came to Thailand to do a TEFL International diploma course and then to teach English as foreign language in schools in and around Bangkok. When I started applying to schools for a teacher's job, I came to know that schools want only native English speakers as English teachers. I felt bad because I have studied in India in English and I am sure I also have almost equal knowledge of the language.

I am again going to be back in Bangkok from 12th March onwards only to look for a n assignment as a teacher, and hopefully will be employed. But I feel the Thai government should introduce another examination for people like me to know our knowledge of English language and those who clear the exam should be employed if not in international schools, may be in Government schools to start with. This will help the government to employ teachers whose English is as good as native English speakers (who seek jobs only in International schools because of the good compensation) to teach English in Government schools as well. Please consider my suggestion and oblige.

Thanking you,

Yours Sincerely,

Anil Sawant —Preceding unsigned comment added by Asawant03 (talk • contribs) 09:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but we can't really help you here. This is a reference desk for general knowledge questions and answers. You should be addressing your problem to the Thai authorities. Good luck. By the way, I removed your telephone number. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 10:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

If I run into Bhumibol, I'll forward your concerns. --Pykk (talk) 10:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you might have the wrong address for the letter. I doubt His Royal Highness reads the Wikipedia Helpdesk very often. You'd be better off sending it to him directly, unless you sent it here because you had a question to ask.--KageTora (talk) 10:54, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd say they should hire the best teachers of English they can find. If they can get all native English speakers, that would be best. However, if not, then hiring some who, as you put it, "have almost equal knowledge of the language", would be necessary. Perhaps you would do better to teach some other topic, at a school where English is also taught. For example, I'm sure they would be glad to have a math teacher who also speaks English, especially if they expect the students to speak English in all classes. StuRat (talk) 19:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Personality development

Moved to the Humanities Ref Desk

Radix malorum est cupiditas

A question regarding the word order of this Biblical quotation: could it also be rendered as "Cupiditas radix malorum est"? Wouldn't that be the more "normal" word order (with the verb coming last)? I don't know much about Latin, but that struck me as being contrary to other Latin phrases I've encountered. Thanks ... Dgcopter (talk) 18:24, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The word order in Latin is kind of free, but there are default word orders (as you mentioned). In constructions where an element is moved from its default position to the end of the sentence, there's often an emphasis placed on that element. By the way, there's a word missing... AnonMoos (talk) 18:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. What did you mean by "there's a word missing"? There's a word missing from the quotation? Dgcopter (talk) 18:47, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Never mind; I guess the Latin is just quite a bit more ambiguous than the original Greek. For the Latin phrase to express the same meaning as the original Greek, with a similar level of ambiguity, the translators from Greek into Latin probably should have added an additional word... AnonMoos (talk) 18:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It may be speculated that Hieronymus thought that either meaning of the term "cupiditas" was a good candidate for "radix malorum".--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The article Radix malorum est cupiditas (with macrons, Rādīx malōrum est cupiditās) explains that cupiditas (with a macron, cupiditās) in this context means love of money. If one were to amend the Vulgate to make the passage more precise, one could change cupiditas to cupiditas pecuniae (with macrons, cupiditās pecūniae), where pecuniae (pecūniae) means of money. See also http://multilingualbible.com/1_timothy/6-10.htm (third version in first column).

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:37, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

However, the basic general meaning of cupiditas is something along the lines of "eager desire, passionate longing", and it can also mean "ambition"... AnonMoos (talk) 21:02, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It is "usual" for the Latin verb to come at the end, but with esse it is also fine classical style to put it in the same position as in English (for example "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres"). However, the Vulgate is certainly not classical; the Latin is usually pretty good, but with simplified grammar and syntax. Jerome sometimes sacrificed style to make his translation as literal as possible to the Hebrew and Greek. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Comma here and give me an answer

Which is right?

• The term is associated with but not restricted to India.
• The term is associated with, but not restricted to India.
• The term is associated with, but not restricted to, India.

Clarityfiend (talk) 19:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I would take but not restricted to as an additional phrase to the main clause (The term is associated with India) so use a pair of commas, as a form of parentheses as in comma. But that's not a technical answer; I doubt you will get a yes/no anyway. I wouldn't use the middle option, though, because neither clause (before or after the comma) makes any sense on its own. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:04, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The placement of commas is often more a matter of style than of absolute rules. I do not think that a comma is absolutely required in that sentence, so the first example would be acceptable. I agree with Jarry1250 that the paired commas work to set off "but not restricted to" as a parenthetical phrase. So, I think the third example is also acceptable. I tend to agree with Jarry1250 that the second example looks wrong, though I'm not certain that there is a clear rule there, unless it is that commas should not separate prepositions from their objects except in a phrase set off by paired commas. Marco polo (talk) 20:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

You can remove "but not restricted to" and what's left - "The term is associated with India" - which makes perfect sense and is still accurate. Therefore, "but not restricted to" is a parenthetical clause and must be surrounded by commas if commas are used at all. It's no different from writing "The term is associated with (but not restricted to) India". You wouldn't have the left bracket but not the right, or vice-versa. But you can write it without any commas at all. It's an all-or-nothing choice: 2 commas or none at all, but not just 1. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, Untouchable has been...touched up. (But, what, if, you're, William, Shatner?) Clarityfiend (talk) 01:28, 11 March 2009 (UTC)