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.
When I was taking high school world history and learning about China, I remember being puzzled about the names I was learning and their transliteration and pronunciation in English. There were a few questions I had:
I was taught that the Jiang Jieshi I was learning about was known to my parents as Chiang Kai-Shek, and that the former name was more accurate to the Chinese pronunciation or something. How could something roughly pronounced "jee-shee" be mistakenly transliterated as something pronounced "kie-shek"? I have trouble believing that it was simply an issue of an ignorance of Chinese phonemes.
Also, I was taught that Qing was pronounced "Ching". I was told that what used to be transliterated with a ch was now being rendered with a q, to more closely match the Chinese alphabet from which it came. This did not make sense to me, as I reasoned that the purpose for transliteration was to use the target language's alphabet accurately, original alphabet be damned. Just because English doesn't have a letter to represent the first phoneme in Qing doesn't mean that we should completely redefine an unrelated letter, especially when we are only expected to pronounce it with the English ch phoneme.
I understand that I am most likely tragically misinformed and shamefully ignorant of all the linguistics involved, so feel free to completely and callously undermine my undoubtedly incorrect base assumptions behind my questions. I am just trying to rectify what I was taught six years ago with what is actually going on. Thanks —Akrabbimtalk03:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Jieshi" is not pronounced "jee-shee", it is pronounced more like "jye-shi" (ye as in "yep", sh as in "shred"). Standard Mandarin does not have an alphabet, but a system has been developed by the Chinese government to transliterate Chinese, pinyin, in which "q" represents the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate. "Chiang Kai-Shek" is an example of a transliteration in the older Wade-Giles system, now somewhat obsolescent. One must remember that when transliterating from Mandarin tones into Wade-Giles, the letters do not make the same sounds as they would in normal English. For a more thorough treatment of the odd behaviour of the Latin alphabet in Wade-Giles transliteration, see Wade-Giles#Technical_aspects. However, if you do not speak Mandarin, it is not likely to be of much help. Intelligentsium04:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) In response to your first question, Jiang Jieshi is the Mandarin pronunciation of the characters 蒋介石 (his name); Chiang Kai-Shek is the Cantonese pronunciation. (Chinese characters have different pronunciations in different Chinese languages. A comparable example is this: two is the English pronunciation for the symbol "2", and dos is the Spanish pronunciation for the same symbol.) He was famous before Mandarin had become the national language of China, so the Cantonese transliteration was the one more commonly used for him at the time (and is still more commonly used in most Western countries). And, for what it's worth, "chiang" and "jiang" are roughly the same pronunciation, it's just that ch and j are two different ways for transcribing the sound sound ʨ (ch is how that sound is transcribed in Wade-Giles and the older Cantonese romanization, j is how it's transcribed in pinyin). rʨanaɢtalk/contribs04:12, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As for your second question, q is what is used in pinyin to represent the sound ʨh, which sounds similar to <ch> to English speakers. This letter was chosen because ch was already being used in pinyin to represent a different sound ʈ͡ʂ, which to English speakers sounds more or less the same. So anyway, nowadays we use Q because that's what pinyin uses. (Using the 'native' spelling or transliteration is not all that common—for example, we don't respell French borrowings, we still write savoir-faire instead of savwar-fair.) rʨanaɢtalk/contribs04:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That was a stunningly accurate and complete answer; well done! However, a student encountering Jiang Jieshi / Chiang Kai-shek for the first time really just needs to know that there are several systems for rendering Chinese characters into alphabetic symbols, and that most publications will use the most common version. Hence, Chiang Kai-shek for a well-known historical figure, but Beijing (not Peking, Peiking or other variations) for the capital city. DOR (HK) (talk) 09:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Beijing vs. Peking is a slightly more complex issue. No it's not directly due to the Cantonese-Mandarin divide. The first factor at play is transliteration: the "b" is Beijing is the same sound as the "P" in Peking, using the now-obsolescent Wade-Giles romanization...technically Chinese doesn't have a voiced "b", so the first letter of Peking and Beijing should be pronounced the same. (The old spelling "Tao" as in "Taoism" is an example--pronunced "d", now spelling "Dao" in the pinyin system. Second, the "king" part comes from an archaic dialect of Mandarin used by nobles in Beijing several hundred years ago -- see Mandarin_phonology#The_.22ki-.22_sequence (the "ki" sequence).--71.111.229.19 (talk) 12:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What he said: Peking/Beijing just come from two different romanization systems for transliterating the same word. Since Mandarin has many sounds that aren't present in most languages using the Latin alphabet, people had to map Mandarin sounds onto Latin letters, and different systems had different mappings. rʨanaɢtalk/contribs16:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My parents know Chang Kai-shek as Chang Kai-shi for some reason. Apparently that is how he is known in Russian and by extension also in Communist Romania. It seems neither Cantonese nor Mandarin. Dubious. Rimush (talk) 13:32, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Probably just the way an unfamiliar name was originally adopted into their language's phonology. The same thing happens with, for example, Greek names coming into English and Romance languages (Plato is Platon in French and Spanish, Aristotle is Aristote in French and Aristóteles in Spanish). rʨanaɢtalk/contribs16:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Jiang Jieshi is pronounced using two consonants that don't exist in English and didn't exist in Latin. As others have said, the Pinyin system of Romanization (as opposed to the alternative Wade-Giles system) happens to use J and SH to represent those consonants. About the closest you can come to the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of Jiang Jieshi with a phonetic spelling in American English is <jyahng jyeh shur>. (The Mandarin sh sound modifies an i following it to sound something like ur in American English. ) As you probably know, the Chinese normally do not use either system of Romanization to write their own language. They use characters, each of which corresponds to one syllable in Chinese. The most common systems of Romanization aim to represent the pronunciation of each Chinese character in the Mandarin Chinese language (or dialect). In fact, the same system of characters is used to represent several different Chinese languages. These languages are sometimes called dialects, but they are as different from one another as are languages such as, say, French and Italian. (See Varieties of Chinese.) Anyway, Cantonese is a Chinese language alongside Mandarin, using the same (or nearly the same) set of written characters. It so happens that Jiang Jieshi's name in Cantonese sounds more like Chiang Kaishek. Chinese has not had a unified spoken language since at least the time when Latin was a widely spoken language so it is not surprising that the same name would sound so different in two Chinese languages. A French name like Jean-Jacques Rousseau doesn't sound much like Giovanni Giacomo Rossello, but that is how Rousseau's name would sound in Italian if it had evolved in Italian from the same Latin roots. The same process of divergence explains the different forms of Chinese names in different Chinese languages. Marco polo (talk) 18:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As an extra reference, the eponymous article has a section on his different names. Pre-PRC/ROC Chinese historical figures had a number of names, even aside from dialect/language variation. 130.56.65.24 (talk) 00:44, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(Not OP.) I get most of the above, which was interesting, but I thought I'd ask to see if I could clear one thing up. I've always, rightly or wrongly, pronounced Chiang Kai-shek with a trailing hard "K", something to my eyes completely missing from "Jieshi". Why is this? I'd struggle to believe that this is a Mandarin/Cantonese transliteration difference (maybe it is). - Jarry1250[Humorous? Discuss.]21:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just a transliteration difference. These are different languages (or dialects, according to some) - please see the examples of different pronunciations of "2", or of "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" vs "Giovanni Giacomo Rossello" above. — Sebastian21:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I fully understand the difference in status between Mandarin and Cantonese, I was merely suggesting that the "K" was unlikely (and I'm probably wrong on this point) to be a difference between a Cantonese and Mandarin interpretation of his name, or what he was called by those groups of people. I take it, then, that that is that point on which I am wrong, and not in my pronunciation with a hard "K"? - Jarry1250[Humorous? Discuss.]21:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, if you're just concerned about pronouncing his name correctly, then don't worry. In English, I pronounce his name with the final "k", too, since I think that's the closest to how he would have pronounce it himself. — Sebastian23:16, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's no different than "c" having pronunciations as both "k" and as "s" (or other fricatives in other Western languages) and "g" having pronunciations as both hard "g" and as "j" (or other fricatives in other Western languages). The original Latin C and G were palatalized in some contexts in the ancestors of each modern language, and not in others. Suppose you see the word "gye" or "gie" in an English sentence, would you pronounce it like "guy" or like "jee-eh"? In East Asia, the length of time the different Chinese dialects have been diverging is also almost 2000 years. Mandarin has had wholesale palatalization of many syllables where Cantonese has not. On the other hand, Hokkien and Vietnamese have even less palatalization than Cantonese. As for losing final "k", this is analogous to the loss of many final consonants in French, that are often still written but no longer pronounced. --JWB (talk) 23:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So, if we got a do-over ...
So, knowing what we know on this subject today, would we have all been better off understandingwise, if we had used "Chinese" ONLY as a nationality, and NOT as the name of a language? Would everything be clearer if we got it through our heads that "Some Chinese people speak Mandarin, and other Chinese people speak Cantonese, and those are two different languages?"
It's a little more complicated than that. There are a lot of factors that influence how languages are grouped together, and with the so-called Sinitic languages (or Chinese languages) it's particularly messy. The shared literary tradition and shared Chinese characters give the languages a sense of "togetherness", and even today some people get offended if you talk to them about the "Chinese languages" (such people often insist that the others are dialects or 方言). A good reading on this topic is the following:
Great answer and link, but I think there is a simple answer to DaHorsesMouth, which is "Yes". Given that we have a term like "Sinitic languages", we don't need to say "Chinese languages". (That still doesn't mean that we have to rename that article, because we have to go by the most common name, not by the most logical one.) — Sebastian17:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Chinese language" means different things in different contexts. It can mean any or all Chinese languages depending on the context.
Like it or not, logically speaking, there is a concept of a unified Chinese language, and it's one of the unifying factors of the Chinese nation. That said, the same language is called, in Chinese, not the "Chinese language" but the "Han language", since there are millions of Chinese people whose first language is not a/the Chinese language. And for these people, "learning Chinese" is, almost without exception, the same as "learning Mandarin", or "standard Mandarin" to be precise.
By the same argument as you raised above, should we abolish the concept of "Mandarin" because it's imprecise, and refer individually to "standard Mandarin", and (for example) Beijing Mandarin, Shandong Mandarin, etc?
Langauges are rarely logical, and whether two tongues are different languages or different dialects are determined by a more or less arbitrary line which is deceptively accurate. It's a useful distinction, but its deceptive simplicity masks all the complexities of reality. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 22:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sigh! We are not the self-appointed Committee for The Establishment of Correct Names for Sinitic Languages and for the Abolition of Incorrect Names, we're just a bunch of volunteers who are trying to help with people's questions. A simple question deserves a simple answer, and there's nothing wrong with saying that things would be clearer if we didn't use "Chinese" for "Sinitic languages". — Sebastian22:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
PalaceGuard's comment about the Chinese word for the Chinese language brings up an interesting point. In addition to "Han language" (汉语), the other common appellation is 中文. The first character refers to the nation of China (it means "middle", as in "Middle Kingdom") and the second emphasizes written language rather than spoken language, and so this focus on written language could be construed as stressing the politically important claim that "China" shares a common written language even if people speak differently. (That's not really linguistically accurate, but whatever.) Another common appellation, although less formal, is 中国话 (literally "speech of China"), which also emphasizes the national characteristic of it. (The girl-band S.H.E. even has a horrible patriotic song about how the whole world is learning 中国话, and they're not even from 中国...). Anyway, none of these terms are unique to Chinese (there are analogous terms for all the other major languages) but the way they are used in China does reveal some interesting political/cultural stuff.
Well, one can have different opinions on how much we want this to be a chat room[1]; I'm just a bit weary of this particular discussion. We had a very similar discussion here, and it still seems not resolved. — Sebastian23:02, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did what a reference desk is supposed to do, which is direct the user to further resources that can answer their questions. After that, I don't think there is any harm with chatting in more depth once the OP has been helped. If someone isn't interested in the discussion, they're free to ignore it. rʨanaɢtalk/contribs23:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not like I'm offended by the thoroughness of the answer that I have received :). Yes, my question was initially answered, but the following discussion was not off topic and was incredibly informative (continuing to provide more references), unlayering many aspects of my initial misunderstandings, etc. This kind of thing is what makes WP:RD so unique and useful. In the end, it should always be treated like a reference desk, but it can be (and is) so much better than that. —Akrabbimtalk13:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by John C. Wells, brinjal is /ˈbrɪndʒəl/ and jackal is /ˈdʒækɔːl/ (i.e. "jack all") in RP. The second pronunciation surprises me, as I (an American) pronounce it /ˈdʒækl̩/ to rhyme with "hackle", which LPD suggests is less well received in Britain than "jack all". (I don't have any intuitions about "brinjal", as I never heard the word before reading this thread.) +Angr08:46, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm amazed. Perhaps that's an age-related thing? The usual British pronunciation is in my view undoubtedly "jack all" (with the emphasis on the first syllable). Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oops. I was mid-reading the pronunciation as having a long second syllable. Having thought more about the shapes that my mouth is forming I agree with Ghmyrtle. Sorry about that.--Frumpo (talk) 10:00, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
UK native here - I thought jackal was said as seen, with both a's pronounced as in "apple". I've never heard it pronounced in any other way! --TammyMoet (talk) 09:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto UK native. I would never say jackle as in jack-all - the second a is far too long. It's much closer to jack-ul - rhyming, as others say, with hackle and apple. (Phil Holmes) --205.168.109.130 (talk) 12:25, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think /ˈdʒækɔːl/ is correct but "jack all" is a confusing representation of what it sounds like. The emphasis should be on the first syllable. We are reading "jack all" as 'jack-awl' when we really need something like 'jackuhl'.--Frumpo (talk) 13:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Meh. I disagree re the British pronunciation. My Concise Oxford Dictionary says: jǎ'ckal (-awl). I agree with that. It also says brĭ'njal (-awl). (From Portuguese berinjela, aubergine, by the way.) Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly enough, my 1960 Webster's has "cackle", "crackle", "hackle", "shackle", "tackle", etc., pronounced with a trailing apostrophe-l, while jackal has a trailing o topped by a caret, which makes the word to be "jack-awl", as with the other dictionaries. However, I've always heard it in the USA as "jack-'l", so that could be just the evolution of the language. For comparison, the word "record", as in phonograph record, used to be pronounced "rec-ord", and over time it has come to be pronounced "rec-'rd". We do that in English. Maybe kind of like how "forecastle" came to be pronounced as if it were spelled "focsle". ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 14:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As with so many words the pronunciation depends on the speaker and obviously North Americans are going to say the word in a different way from most UK residents. however there will be a variability in the way it is spoken in both countries by dint of regional accent and in the UK by the social class of of the speaker. For instance HRH, The Prince Charles would almost certainly say 'jeck-awl'. And of course he would be right. But then again so would everybody else. Caesar's Daddy (talk) 15:18, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The OED first edition, this section of which was published in 1900, shows only the pronunciation with the vowel of "walk", i.e. jack-all or jack-awl. And it has an interesting historical note: "The English was was formerly (as still in some dialects) stressed on the second syllable; the current form, and the obsolete Jack-call, show association with the proper name Jack, and names of animals containing it." On the other hand, when I saw the movie The Day of the Jackal, I'm sure the British characters pronounced Jackal to rhyme with "hackle" and "crackle", the same as I would -- anything else would have seemed wrong to me. (Cf. The Maltese Falcon, where Humphrey Bogart pronounces "falcon" with a short A as in "fat" while Sydney Greenstreet uses an "aw" sound as in "fall".) --Anonymous, 20:50 UTC, February 9, 2010.
Bogart being American and Greenstreet being British. However, old-school sports announcer Vin Scully, in the days when he used to do NFL TV coverage, referred to the Atlanta Falcons as the "Fawlkens", when most every other announcer then and now calls them with the short "a". ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 20:58, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And yet, a person who breeds or trains falcons is always given the long a, hence the surnames Faulkner, Fawkner, and yes, even Falconer - all pronounced the same way, fawk-. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:02, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Looking in an American dictionary, a 1979 edition of the RHU, the common noun "falconer" is listed with three pronunciations, all trisyllabic, none like "Faulkner". It says the first syllable can rhyme with "call", "Cal", or "caw" (i.e. "aw" with the L sound optional, or short A with the L), followed in each case by "kuh-ner" with two schwas. It does not list Falconer as a personal name but does list it as a place name, with the first of these pronunciations: "fawl-kuh-ner". Of course, personal names may vary according to preference. --Anonymous, 19:17 UTC, 2010-02-10.
A student rights about an indigenous groups 'right to self-determination'. At first glance, it reads awkwardly. I can't quite decide why it would be gramatically wrong. Of course, we usually talk about the 'right to self-determination', which is something you might have. Self-determinate would be, I guess, something you would do. Maybe the student is trying to be stylistically interesting. Is there anything clearly incorrect about the 'right to self-determinate'? Thanks if you have a considered opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.238.113 (talk) 19:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The right to self-determination is a fairly well established idea in politics, referring to the rights of an indigenous group to have political control over their territories, resources, social structures, and etc. it was a response to colonial era tendencies to try to 'bleach' native people (reform their societies and cultures to mirror European norms) while subjecting them to political control from afar.
I'm a bit confused, however - you are talking like you are grading someone's paper, but your own writing has several spelling errors, awkward phrasings, and an apparent lack of knowledge about conventional political tropes (which you could have easily gotten from a google search). what's am I missing here? --Ludwigs219:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I'm having trouble interpreting your first sentence. I know it's only setting the context in which 'right to self-determination' appears, and is secondary to the main point - but still, I can't work out whether it's about a student's rights, or some students' rights, or maybe it's a student writing, or even some students rioting. And then, it would be an indigenous group's 'right to self-determination'. On the main question, 'right to self-determination' can be used holus-bolus in the same way as 'right to freedom of expression' can be, without any need to change a noun into a verb. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:58, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, I need to be more careful. I did write the question too quickly. I did, in the first sentence mean 'write', but wrote right, since the question was about 'rights'. Right? Here is what I was trying to ask...a student wrote this sentence: "Despite the successes of these movements--which helped them gain national and international attention on their political, cultural and socioeconomic situation--indigenous peoples in Latin America have been unable to attain the right to self-determinate." Yes, I am giving feedback on the paper. Since I do know what the 'right to self-determination' is, I could have easily advised the student to change the sentence to the most common usage. But I thought, 'well, maybe this student is trying to write something a little more stylish'. Whenever I do that, somebody is quick to criticize. Maybe I'm not so stylish myself. So I thought I could check here on whether or not the phrase 'self-determinate', which as the student used it would be a verb I think (an action, something people (or in this case, 'a people' would do), is somehow incorrect grammar. Is the student's original formulation grammatically incorrect, or just uncommon, and if it is incorrect, what is the mistake, so that I can properly advise the student. I'm not an editor, and I hoped I might find some useful information here. And since my quickie question was so full of mistakes, maybe I should post grammar questions here more than about once a month, though what the point of that comment was escapes me. Baseball Bugs, 'what's up, Doc' with your comment, though I don't take it negatively? Finally, I won't forget how to spell the word grammatically again. Cheers people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.238.113 (talk) 21:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My "once a month" comment had to do with concerns that you might not be back here for another month, but here you are, so no problem.
That clarifies a couple of things, especially what the student actually wrote. "The right to self-determinate" is not correct, as it's an adjective. Maybe "right to be self-determinate" could work, but that's kind of awkward usage. "Right of self-determination" would be grammatically better than "right to self-determination", as the latter also treats "self-determination" like a verb. But it seems to be in common usage that way. "Right to self-determine" could work also. Not so commonly heard, though. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 21:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No problem about the mistakes; I was just confused by them. I think if I were in your shoes, I'd advise the student that 'right to self-determination' is a phrase that can't be broken down into its component parts: either s/he should say "indigenous peoples in Latin America have been unable to secure their rights to self-determination" or s/he should say "indigenous peoples in Latin America have been unable to attain any measure of independence sovereignty.". The phrase in its entirety should be treated as the name of a concept, not as a normal phrase. --Ludwigs2 22:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC) sovereignty is actually more apros pos in this context. --Ludwigs223:09, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Self-determinate" is a perfectly reasonable, and perfectly comprehensible, back-formation from "self-determination", which doesn't happen to have been used very often (or, perhaps, at all) or made its way into any dictionaries. It has parallels in the verbs 'determinate' (listed as obsolete in the OED) and 'terminate' (very much alive). Perhaps some day it will achieve currency, but at present it appears to be a nonce-word. --ColinFine (talk) 23:43, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The phrasing is conceptually incorrect. A "right to self-determination" is a right to have a status, a thing called "self-determination", which is not the same as "determining [one's] self". Broken down, this might be described as "a right to undertake a process where a people (as defined in international law) can determine their own collective national status and political system, the process which we call "self-determination" as a shorthand."
As Ludwigs pointed out above, "self-determination" is thus a concept by itself. "Determinate" is not a word, but even back-forming "self-determine" would change the meaning of that special concept, because it loses the legal meaning of "self-determination", and simply reduces to the common meaning of the words "self" and "determine" - to "determine [one's] self", which of course is nonsense.
The correct way to avoid using "determination" and to use a verb here would be to talk about "the [name of people]'s right to determine their own political system/national status/etc etc". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Conceptually incorrect it may be, but that tells us nothing whatever about whether or not it might get used in that sense. Language is what people use to communicate, not what pundits say they should use. Your argument would rule out 'baby-sit', which is certainly a (back-formed) word in use, but is not "*sitting a baby", whatever that might mean. I would not be at all surprised to hear that some nationalist group had demanded the "right to self-determine". --ColinFine (talk) 23:29, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't you? I've never heard it used in this sense. A google search for "right to self-determine" seems to indicate that that phrase is used as an unrelated technical term in relation to, I think, euthanasia. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ukrainian to English Translation produced "North narichchya (speak) 1 zakhidnopoliskii 2 serdniopoliskii 3 skhidnopoliskii South-eastern napichchya (speak) 4 naddnpiryanskii 5 slobožanskii 6 stepovii South-zagidne napichchya (speak) 7 Volyn 8 podilskii 9 naddnistryanskii 10 nadsyanskii 11 pokitskobukovinskii 12 hutsul 13 boikivskii 14 zakarpatskii lemkivskii speak napichch zakodonom speak with risami pevogo narichchya" but I was not able to copy it electronically and so I copy-typed it letter by letter (including the hachek for number 5). -- Wavelength (talk) 06:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm getting close to finishing, but I'm not sure I understand what the distinction between говори and напічч is. The last two items "говори напічч закодом" and "говори з рісами певного наріччя" seem to translate as "trans-national dialect dialects" and "dialects with features of a dialect", respectively. — Ƶ§œš¹[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]09:11, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Speaker of another Slavic language here. I think that, in Slavic linguistic tradition, "naričie" means a "dialect", "dialect group" or "super-dialect", while "govor" means a "speech" or "sub-dialect". Don't know what are the criteria to classify something as a "speech" or a "dialect", but the point is that the one is subordinate to another. I think that translations make more sense now. No such user (talk) 10:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
First, a caveat: I don't speak Ukrainian, but, as a native Polish speaker and learner of Russian, I can undersand some of it. From Ukrainian Wikipedia I can see that Ukrainian linguists distinguish three levels of dialects: a language is subdivided into several наріччя (narichchia), these are further subdivided into говори (hovory) or діалекти (dialekty), and these into говірки (hovirky), the lowest level. Here's my translation of the legend:
Sure. I had modified the original, though someone pointed out that the English Wikipedia is not the only one that uses the image so it was reverted and reuploaded. See translated image at right. — Ƶ§œš¹[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]07:28, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So why don't they say "deionized water"? Or are they trying to convince their customers that the product is not made largely of water? Astronaut (talk) 04:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't find any explanation, apart from the alchemists' ad pharmacists' tradition of labeling ingredients in Latin. Yet for most items with common English names INCI seems to use the English word nowadays, "aqua" being the exception. According to this French site, "aqua" without attribute (such as "purificata"), e.g. needn't even mean deionized, but can be "distilled, from the source, or filtred". ---Sluzzelintalk04:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Aqua" is sometimes described as the "European trivial name" for water, as defined by the INCI. This site suggests that it is one of the "common names that should be more easily recognized by consumers in the EU where 11 different languages are spoken. The trivial names are based primarily on designations taken from the European Pharmacopoeia." Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That jibes with what I always assumed was the reason: namely that ingredients lists in Europe are always in a multitude of languages. For food items, you just have to give the ingredients list separately in each language, but for cosmetics and toiletries, water is the only thing whose name is significantly different. So rather than giving four ingredients lists where everything is virtually identical except that one says "water", one says "Wasser", one says "acqua", and one says "eau", they just give one list that says "aqua". +Angr09:31, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but if the product's package is otherwise predominantly in English and oriented toward an English-speaking market, might it not make sense to just put "water" is parentheses after the "aqua"? An extra word wouldn't seem to be that budget-unfriendly...--Dpr (talk) 10:19, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Adding the common name for different languages does mean that the manufacturer needs to keep different versions of the same list for different markets. But English has become so common that maybe they can use the same list with the added English word in all markets. If I felt like you I'd write a short letter or e-mail to my preferred provider of toiletries, thank them for making a product I've used for years, and ask that question. Most businesses love such mails from their customers and it's likely that you'd get a thoughtful response. If you do so, please let us know what came from it. — Sebastian17:39, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Although the cost of producing multiple labels for different markets would itself be comparatively trivial, the additional procedures and precautions necessary to ensure that the right labels always go on the right market-destined products (and recalling the inevitable mistakes) might well be more costly. (I speak from some knowledge of the multinational pharmaceuticals packaging industry.) 87.81.230.195 (talk) 14:26, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In modern Greek. I need it for a propaganda poster I'm doing it for a history project. Also what about the same phrase in Portuguese. It seems Greek is a way too complicated language.
SebastianHelm was yanking your chain (as anyone who is familiar just with the Greek alphabet could see). From dribs and drabs of info gleaned from here and there, I've come up with ΣΥΝΤΡΙΒΕΤΕ ΤΟΝ ΚΑΙΖΕΡ, which would probably be understandable to a Greek, but whether it's the best way of expressing the intended meaning I have no idea... AnonMoos (talk) 02:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Κομπλιμέντο, your knowledge of Greek is really άμεμπτος! — Not! Before you contradict others, please check your facts. In some words (especially in foreign words), "μπ" is pronounced [mp] (Μαυρούλια, Γεοργαντσή, Τα νεα Ελλινικά για ξενόγλοσσους, 1979, p. 15). — Sebastian07:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AnonMoos, my respect for your translation; I couldn't have come up with anything better. I'm sorry if my second reply came out harsh; it was just so tempting, given the two -μπ- words. — Sebastian16:00, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And I'm intrigued by it. Why did you render "the" as θε, when it's pronounced /ðə/, and Greek spells /ð/ with δ? And why did you put a τ into "reference"? +Angr17:34, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good question! I had tried to come up with a transliteration, rather than a transcription; especially since I didn't know if the answer was expected in Modern or Ancient Greek. (Also, I wanted it to work not just for English words.) Since, for the purpose of a transliteration, there's no difference between voiced and unvoiced "th", "θ" is the obvious choice. The "τσ" is harder to explain: I couldn't use simply "σ" for "c", since that's already the natural transliteration for "s". So I thought about other languages in which the "c" sounds roughly like the "c" in "reference", but still different enough to require a different transliteration. Since Slavic languages, Esperanto, and German (which is less precise and unambiguous about it), all pronounce it like "ts", I chose "τσ" (the sound in ρετσίνα). I now realize that"ϡ" would have been a better choice, because, as I just read, it has been used to transliterate German "ß". BTW, I had also thought about how best to represent the "u" in stump; I didn't use "υ" since it would have been pronounced too differently, and I wanted to reserve that for "y". I had thought of using the digraph "ȣ", but I thought that would be too esoteric. I haven't thought it all through yet; maybe I should ask a question here about how to transliterate Latin letters into Greek. ;-) — Sebastian20:10, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ukrainian/Russian names
Looking at Ukrainian people's pages, I often found that their name is given in both Ukrainian and Russian spellings. For example: Viktor Yanukovych: Uk: Віктор Янукович, Ru: Виктор Янукович.
Some others have their name russified in the Russian Wikipedia: Yulia Tymoshenko: Uk: Юлія Тимошенко, Ru: Ю́лия Тимоше́нко; Anatoliy Kinakh: Uk: Анатолій Кінах, Ru: Анато́лий Ки́нах; Valeriy Pustovoitenko: Uk: Вале́рій Пустово́йтенко, Ru: Вале́рий Пустово́йтенко; Vasyl Durdynets: Uk: Василь Дурдинець, Ru: Васи́лий Дурдине́ц; Pavlo Lazarenko: Uk: Павло Лазарéнко, Ru: Па́вел Лазаре́нко.
Is there an explanation for this habit? Were these people born with a Russian name (some of my examples are ethnic Russian) and then they Ukrainified it when they become well-known? Is it a compulsory thing? Is every person in Ukraina expected to have two versions of their name and surname? Do only people born in Soviet Union have two names? Is it just a Russian habit to localize contemporary Ukrainian names? Does this happen only in Ukraina or also in Belarussia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Moldova... --151.51.62.164 (talk) 13:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ukrainian is the sole official language in Ukraine, but Russian is also widely used and, especially in eastern and southern parts of the country, many people are native Russian speakers. I thinks it's natural then that Wikipedia articles give both Ukrainian and Russian spellings of their names. The spellings are different because Ukrainian and Russian alphabets are not identical. I suppose some Russian-speaking Ukrainians might object to having their names written in their passports in the official language rather than in their native tongue, but most probably the same happens in the opposit direction to Ukrainians and other Slavs living in Russia. — Kpalion(talk)14:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The difference between the Ukrainian and Russian alphabets does not explain why the names are respelled. For a comparable Latin-based example, the Polish alphabet is different from the Czech alphabet, yet you don't see Polish names mangled to conform to Czech spelling in Czech publications, nor vice versa. The same goes for English, French, German, etc. The usual convention for languages using variants of the Latin alphabet (with some exceptions like Croatian) is to leave names from other languages using variants of the Latin alphabet unchanged (apart from cosmetic changes to things like diacritics, which are primarily motivated by technical difficulties). I have no idea why is it so different within the Cyrillic-writing world. —EmilJ.14:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Croatian isn't alone. Have you ever heard of the U.S. president Bils Klintons? That's not just a spelling difference; he even gets a nominative case ending added to each of his names. +Angr15:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
English does this all the time. From Anton Dvorak to Vienna to Lech Walesa. Slightly less common with some names now though.
English anglicize names only of historical people or monarchs. This happens in almost every language. Queen Elizabeth is Regina Elisabetta in Italian. Sometimes foreign letters or symbols are localized, but that's just a matter of technical difficulties. You can easily find Jan Novak instead of Jan Novák, but never John Newman--151.51.62.164 (talk) 16:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a different situation. In Lithuania: Lithuanian law stipulates that everyone who has Lithuanian citizenship and resides within the country has to forcibly Lithuanianize their name (i.e. spell it in the Lithuanian phonetics and alphabet). Also, there seems to be a strange custom to phonetically localize EVERY foreign name in both Lithuanian and Latvian (in Estonian is the exact opposite). Besides, as far as I know, in the Ukrainian case, it's not a matter of just sound. Names seem to be translated (Павло turned into Па́вел). In the Lithuanian case, Krzysztof should have been translated into Kristupas, not Kšyštof. --151.51.62.164 (talk) 16:20, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Christoffa Corombo is known as Cristoforo Colombo in modern Italian, Cristóbal Colón in Spanish, Christopher Columbus in English and still other names in other languages. It's the same pattern here, except that it applies not only to well known historical figures, but to everybody. — Kpalion(talk)18:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's more complicated than that. Noun adjunct says "Noun adjuncts were traditionally mostly singular (e.g., "trouser press") except when there were lexical restrictions (e.g., "arms race"), but there is a recent trend towards more use of plural ones." (Whoever wrote that chose a telling example, since "trouser" doesn't normally occur in the singular at all, except by staff in clothing shops). --ColinFine (talk) 23:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Math vs. Maths... It's just a dialectical difference, really. North Americans refer to bands in case sensitive, British do it in the plural, even when the band name is singular, generally speaking. It's just one of those things. 70.79.246.134 (talk) 00:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Math/maths is not comparable to sport/sports. The former are alternative abreviations of MATHematicS (mathematic, with the same meaning, is obsolete according to SOED); the latter are not abbreviations. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Careful, there's a load of things being conflated here:
The question was about the use of the plural form for a noun adjunct. I believe the section I quoted is about as full an answer as you will get to this question.
I don't think it's much to do with dialect (though particular phrases may be in use on only one side of the pond). For example, "Sports jacket" and "sports car" are definitely British expressions.
The use of a singular or plural verb with a collective noun is an entirely different question from the number of the noun. Yes, there is a difference between UK and US, but it's not as simple as 70.79 suggests: Americans generally use only singular verbs with collectives, in Britain both singular and plural verbs are possible, depending on whether the collective is being regarded as a unit or as a collection of members.
Finally, "math/maths/mathematics" is singular in all varieties of English AFAIK, notwithstanding the 's', so it is not relevant to the question. --ColinFine (talk) 00:06, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
According to SOEDmathematics is plural - originally plural of mathematic, although the singular is now obsolete - but now treated as singular. Originally it was the sciences (plural) of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy etc. Now it is "the abstract deductive science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement...". Mitch Ames (talk) 02:50, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Surely that means that mathematics is now singular, whatever number it may once upon a time have been regarded as having. The SOED is not usually known for engaging in horticultural circumflagellation, and this is not the place for it to start. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 08:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly so, Jack: it is singular.
I have struck out my comment about dialect above: I was wrong (as this thread on the help desk has shown me). I did not realise that 'sport' in the singular does not get used as a general term in the US. --ColinFine (talk) 08:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Direct quote from SOED, 6th edition. Note the "noun pl" on the first line:
“
'mathematics /0maθ(ə)ˈmatɪks/ noun pl. M16.
[ORIGIN Pl. of MATHEMATIC noun, prob. after French (les) mathématiques, repr. Latin mathematica neut. pl., Greek (ta) mathēmatika: see -ics.]
Orig. (treated as pl., freq. with the), the sciences or disciplines of the quadrivium collectively; later, these and optics, architecture, navigation, etc. Now (treated as sing.), the abstract deductive science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement, including geometry, arithmetic, algebra, etc., studied in its own right (more fully pure mathematics), or as applied to various branches of physics and other sciences (more fully applied mathematics). Colloq. abbreviation maths, (N. Amer.) math.
”
I trump your SOED with the online OED:
"In early use always construed as a plural, and usually preceded by the. In modern use regarded as a mass noun, except when used of calculations."
Agreed. In any case, my original point was that math/maths are different abbreviations of the same word (ie mathematics, regardless of whether that word is singular or plural), rather than different usages of singular/plural, as is the case with sport/sports - ie math/maths is relevant when discussing the use of sport/sports. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
February 11
English grammar question
In the sentence
The balloon burst into a hundred pieces.
what kind of grammatical construct is the phrase "into a hundred pieces"? An adverb complement? (Is the phrase a complement?) An adverbial prepositional phrase? Something else? --173.49.16.103 (talk) 03:37, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
An adverb isn't a preposition, a preposition isn't an adverb. This can't be an "adverbial prepositional phrase" because nothing can be (unless perhaps you have a very idiosyncratic definition of "adverbial"). It's no less a prepositional phrase than is "into the bottle" within "He pushed the cork into the bottle"; into merely has a different and less common meaning. -- Hoary (talk) 03:43, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would certainly describe it as an "adverbial prepositional phrase" -- that is, it's a prepositional phrase that's functioning as an adverb. Likewise "into the bottle" in Hoary's example. I can't imagine why Hoary thinks there is something odd about that. Perhaps his or her definition of "adverbial" is different than mine. (And Merriam-Webster's and Oxford's and Encarta's.) --Anonymous, 06:45 UTC, February 11, 2010.
well, grant that 'into the bottle' (a shift of location) is a bit more concrete than 'into a thousand pieces' (since that really means it became a thousand pieces; it didn't move 'into' them), so that might be part of the confusion. --Ludwigs207:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It can correctly be described as a prepositional phrase used as though it were an adverbial phrase. English 'prepositions' are not always the heads of preposition phrases, they can have various grammatical roles. So, it could also be that 'burst into' is a phrasal verb, and 'a thousand pieces' its object.Synchronism (talk) 07:23, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Remove the phrase headed by "into" and the meaning remains the same, although of course less specific. So it's odd to say that it's a phrasal verb. Consider this pair: "The car ran over the boy", "The boy was run over by the car". The incident was unfortunate, but the English is unproblematic. Now this one: "The balloon burst into a hundred pieces", "A hundred pieces were burst into by the balloon". Uh, I don't think so. -- Hoary (talk) 07:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
True and true, but the problematic example is mostly so because it breaks a common construction ('break into a thousand pieces', 'ran over the boy' is thankfully not such a frequent construction. The semantic roles of your contrastive example are different than those of the example in question, '(Agent) ran over (Patient)' and '(Patient) burst into (Manner)', so while passive voice movement is possible with most (A)(P) type sentences, it is not the case with other examples, the one in question included, where the patient is already the grammatical subject. Furthermore, the entire construction 'burst/break into a (number) pieces' could be said to have been grammaticalized due to its frequency and use as an idiom i.e. 'When I saw her face for the first time in years, I burst into a thousand pieces'.Synchronism (talk) 08:18, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
First, "functioning like an adverb" is very odd, in that adverbs and adverbial phrases are a kind of miscellaneous category: "functioning like an adverb" would mean something like "functioning like miscellanea". Secondly, dictionary definitions of grammatical terms are near worthless (a point made more or less vocally and politely by actual grammarians). At least one Merriam-Webster dictionary straightfacedly calls "my" etc a species of "adjectives", a notion (politely) dismissed as bollocks by actual grammarians (Jespersen etc) for over a century but (groan) faithfully regurgitated by this encyclopedia. -- Hoary (talk) 07:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why you think "functioning like an adverb" is odd. Adverbials modify a verb or the sentence as a whole. Being "a kind of miscellaneous category" is a description but not the defining characteristic of adverbs. --173.49.16.103 (talk) 12:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The American Heritage Dictionary gives one definition of "into" as a preposition meaning "To the condition, state, or form of" with one example "dishes breaking into pieces"[2], which is strong evidence that "into a hundred pieces" is a prepositional phrase (compare also "after graduation he went into banking" or "burst into flames", "into life", etc, for other uses of "into" as a preposition not describing literal motion). --Normansmithy (talk) 12:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Under the bed is where I found the missing piece of the puzzle". "Under the bed" acts as a noun, "of the puzzle" as an adjective. --Anonymous, 00:55 UTC, February 11, 2010.
Probably not, since the Romans didn't really have the same concept of progress that we do. I'm sure we can come up with something though. What exactly do you mean to say in English? Adam Bishop (talk) 21:55, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Reminds me of an elegiac distich from an Icelandic poem by Jónas Hallgrímsson: "Það er svo bágt að standa' í stað, og mönnunum munar / annaðhvurt aftur á bak ellegar nokkuð á leið." My translation: "It is so hard to stand in one place and people move / either backwards or a bit further along the road." An English translation of this poem is here: [3] but the meaning of these two lines is sacrificed (the translator maintains the structural alliteration of the original). Haukur (talk) 22:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, because "progress" in English has taken on a somewhat nonliteral meaning of "advance" (which suffers from the same problem), as in a society or technology, etc. Literally progress means "moving forward physically", and likewise regress means "moving backward physically". Another possible translation is "non ut amplio est ut peior", but that may not be correct Latin. Intelligentsium23:20, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not...why do machine translations always give "ut" for "to"? They can't even tell an infinitive from a result clause. Anyway, I'm sure some of the moral philosophers said something pithy about personal advancement, and there was advancement in the cursus honorum, so maybe we could do something with that. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:56, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rhyming free verse
Verse that has meter, but no rhyme is blank verse. Is there a technical term for verse that has rhyme, but no meter, other than Doggerel?:) Or, as a special case, poems that use the same foot, but varying number per line, e.g. first line iambic pentameter, second line (rhyming to first), iambic tertrameter or trimeter, or hexameter? --216.239.45.4 (talk) 21:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not a general term, but one verse form that has rhymes but no fixed meter is the clerihew. (My own favorite is "Lord Byron / Once succumbed to a siren. / His flesh was weak; / Hers, Greek.") Deor (talk) 00:36, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
February 12
Glass balls with fake snow stuff inside
Hi.
You know those glass balls with fake snow stuff inside. when you shake the orb, it looks like a snow scene.
Interesting. I have never heard the term "snow globe", and would call it a "snowstorm", or "snowstorm toy". The OED lists this meaning of "snowstorm" from 1926. I'm off to add it to snow globe ... --ColinFine (talk) 08:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the way the discussion is worded, the "newbie fort" in this case merely consists of the most recent new admin. Once the next new admin comes along, that admin will be holding down the newbie fort and the previous guy will no longer be. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 12:36, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, who should I believe, you or Webster? :) "Fisher" is not an obsolete term, just not used nearly as much, and used more in connection with animals such as the kingfisher bird. I didn't see a "farmer man" or "sailor man" listed. And note that "farmer" and "fisher" refers to humans, while "sailer" is something that sails, while "sailor" refers to humans. That's English for you. Inconsistency. And let's not get into terms like "fishwife". ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 13:29, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) "Fisher" is an older form - remember "fishers of men" in Mark 1:17 - and is of course a fairly common surname. I don't know when it died out in favour of "fisherman". An amusing article here suggests there might be attempts to revive "fisher" as a sex-neutral version. "Fishman" would suggest "fishmonger" to me. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:23, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just off the top of my head, if someone said they were a fisherman, I would take it to mean someone involved in the fishing industry. An amateur with a rod and line would be an angler. "Fisher" sounds rather Biblical to me. Jobs with "man" in the title were common until the 1970s; postman, policeman, fireman, gas man, insurance man, woodsman, repair man, linesman etc but sound a bit odd now. Alansplodge (talk) 16:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you look around, you can sometimes find "fisherfolk" used to refer to a group of people (typically rather primitive) whose lives center around subsistence-level fishing. Nyttend (talk) 06:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of occupation words - and proper names - are derived from commoner occupations: Cooperman (a barrel maker), Fletcher (an arrow maker), Smith (short for blacksmith), Miller (grain worker), huntsman (a hunter). Originally they probably all would have had 'man' attached (except for female occupations - nurse, washerwoman, maid - which would have had 'woman' or 'maiden' incorporated somehow). whther the word retained the suffix over time probably is a matter of conflicts in usage - 'fisher' is already in use for animals, and sounds too much like fissure, so there's an incentive to retain fisherman; Cooper doesn't have that problem, so Cooper has become more common that Cooperman (though the latter is still kept as a proper name). --Ludwigs209:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misevaluation, but it is our policy here to not do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn how to solve such problems. Please attempt to solve the problem yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. No such user (talk) 16:09, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To the OP: Question 1 and 2 don't seem to have meaning that isn't common. Don't you think question 2 would be answered if question 1 was answered? You should ask you teacher about this. --Lgriot (talk) 23:18, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am currently reading Anthony Collins' Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1st ed.), and on page xxx (page xxv on this 1737 Google books edition) in the introduction he mentions a quote from the Epistolae of Hugo Grotius that goes like this: "He that reads ecclesiastial history reads nothing but the roguery and folly of bishops and churchmen." Unfortunately he only gives the reference "Grotii Epistolæ, p. 22" with no information of the edition of the work, which is unfortunate because there apparently exists several works by Grotius which has Epistolae in the title. I am interested in knowing what the original sentence sounded in Latin and specifically if Collins is paraphrasing or making a literal translation. Googling the translated sentence brings up a few hits from an astrology book from 1926 that uses Collins translation (without mentioning him), and citing the quote as being from "22d epistle" rather than page 22. I have found a site containing the correspondence of Hugo Grotius, and they have numbered the letters. No. 22 is this one, but I am not sure if the numbers of the letters on the site corresponds with the one from the earlier editions, or even if it is not an error that they cite epistle 22 instead of page 22 in the earlier reference. My knowledge of Latin does not go beyond some simple word recognition. Are there anyone able to help me in my search for the original sentence? --Saddhiyama (talk) 17:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The only word in there that could be translated by a single useful Googleable word is "of bishops", so searching for "grotius episcoporum" gives "Qui legit historiam Ecclesiasticam, quid legit nisi Episcoporum vicia?" (or "vitia Episcoporum"). That's pretty much what the English says, and this book says it is "Epistolae, p. 7, col. 1". The link you gave doesn't have this quote so it's not letter 22, but it should be in there somewhere. Adam Bishop (talk) 17:20, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, the site you linked to has a search function. It's letter 300, "
Qui Ecclesiasticam Historiam legit, quid legit nisi Episcoporum vitia?" (A more literal translation might be "What does he who reads ecclesiastical history read, except the vices of bishops?") Adam Bishop (talk) 17:29, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much! I am in awe not only of your thoroughness but also at how fast you were able to answer my question. It looks like Collins has elaborated a bit, but not enough to actually call it a paraphrase of Grotius. Thanks again, I think I will be able to use the quote in related study work, and it is always nice to be able to use the original. --Saddhiyama (talk) 17:46, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Or William the Bastard, perhaps the most notable of the lot (he really was one). Anyway, while I'm not an expert, my guess is that eau (water) has absolutely nothing to do with Bastareaud; the "eaud" segment seems etymologically unrelated to "water" (eau/aqua)--it may be an augmentative.--Dpr (talk) 23:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This website[4] says: "Origine incertaine, mais le nom pourrait venir du Sud-Ouest (à rapprocher de Basterot, porté en Gascogne). Dans ce cas, il désignerait un lieu où pousse l'ajonc, le genêt épineux (gascon basta)." All we need now is someone who can translate better than I can! Alansplodge (talk) 01:52, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It means: "Origin uncertain, but the name could come from the Southwest (closely related to Basterot, carried into Gascony). In that case, it would designate a place where gorse, thorny broom (basta in the Gascon language), grows."
I was (probably mistakenly) trying to compare it to an English surname. I've never met anyone called Gorse, but "a place where gorse grows" is a Heath, which is a very common English surname (Bastard is not unknown either[5]). Sorry to confuse. Alansplodge (talk) 20:40, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Does it make sense to use personal pronouns like "his" or "her" regarding to countries? (For example, "her national borders") Isn't the correct form to use always "its"? I thought so, but after seeing such usage at some books, I have the doubt. MBelgrano (talk) 21:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's more usual these days to use "its", but you'll find many older references to countries being female. For example, the Australian poem My Country. (Another FAQ for our list, but damned if I can find the earlier times this was asked.) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 22:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(EC) The feminine personal pronoun (she, her) is very often used in place of 'its'. I have not once in my lifetime heard anyone say 'the people of Germany fought hard to defend his national borders against the Soviet onslaught' even though it was referred to as a 'Fatherland' and not a 'Mother Country'. 'His' just sounds ridiculous here. --KageTora - (影虎) (A word...?)22:10, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is it that puzzling? An avuncular, kindly old chap kind of seems appealing to soldierly types (who apparently first coined, or popularized, the name)--Dpr (talk) 23:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it's not what I would have thought, but it seems true; it works for John Bull, too. Maybe my premise was wrong, and sex doesn't sell as well. A glance at the table in national personification reveals that there are just about as many male personifications as female: 30 male, 37 female, 4 groups, 8 animals, and 4 that I wasn't sure of. — Sebastian23:16, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Can't we distinguish a concept of a nation from the personification thereof--in other words, popular imagery might use a masculine personification (Uncle Sam) but in language patriots might apply feminine attributes and pronouns to the same country (e.g. "Fight for America...defend her purity" or somesuch)...--Dpr (talk) 23:24, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's sort of what I had in mind. Of course, it helps that "America" is a grammatically a female word. But the distinction is very fuzzy; it's not impossible to say "Fight for Uncle Sam ... defend his honor!"; for all I know some countries which only have a masculine personification might say that and be no less motivated to fight. That said, clearly the ship wearing World Power cutie is much more inspiring for a good fight than The Good Soldier Švejk. — Sebastian00:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by "it helps that "America" is a grammatically a female word"? In some languages, nouns ending in -a are more or less automatically feminine, but that isn't so in English. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 00:12, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking of different countries and languages, not just the US. In English, the concept of "grammatical gender" doesn't apply so well; all that remained are the personal pronouns. But you can look at perceived natural gender instead. I had male coworkers whose name ended in "-a", and everyone assumed they were female. Similarly, it would feel odd if you named your son "Australia", while "Ozzy" would work. ;-) — Sebastian00:40, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See below - Columbia, although that's a different country ;-). Anyway, if you heard the name "Australia Smith", would you assume its a man or a woman? — Sebastian01:43, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's Colombia, and the Colombians I've known (not many, but some) insist their country is pronounced the way it's spelt, -LOM-, not -LUM-. "Australia Smith" - hmm, probably a female. You'd be just as likely to come across an "Australia Nguyen" or an "Australia Mavropoulos" these days. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 01:57, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, you're right, of course! As an excuse, in 42 languages (taken from the interwiki links), it looks like it is pronounced like "LUM", too. (But 80 languages have "LOM".) — Sebastian03:32, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Translating "have sex" to "procreate" reflects old-fashioned thinking. A better translation of the question is: Do countries screw each other? The obvious answer to that is: "Yes, all the time." --173.49.14.67 (talk) 16:36, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I posted this on the entertainment desk a few days ago, but I didn't get a reply, so I thought I might try here. There is a line in the Switchfoot song "Free" (from Hello Hurricane, 2009) which goes "There’s a hole in the neighborhood/Where the shadows fall". When I heard it, it reminded me of the line in the Elbow song "Grounds for Divorce" (from The Seldom Seen Kid, 2008) that goes "There's a hole in my neighbourhood down which of late I cannot help but fall". Is the Switchfoot line an allusion to the Elbow song, or are they both drawing from a separate phrase that I am unfamiliar with? —Akrabbimtalk03:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose then that it is reasonable to assume that nobody else has heard of it before, Elbow coined it, and Switchfoot alluded to it. —Akrabbimtalk01:57, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OED help, please?
D'oh! includes the following quote about the word's inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary: "Eight quotations are cited: the earliest is from 1945; two others are Simpsons-related." I'm confused by this statement; does it mean that one is from 1945, two are Simpsons-related, and five are newer than 1945 and unrelated to the The Simpsons? Nyttend (talk) 06:50, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The OED lists two from 1945, in ITMA scripts spelling it Dooh and Doh. One each from 1952, 1989 and 1991. One from 1993 in a technical document prefaced with the words "as Homer Simpson might say...". Then the first one with the apostrophe and from the Simpsons in Simpsons Comics strike Back! (1996) and one later that from a different program's script. The OED has a separate entry for duh dating it to 1943 in a Merrie Melodies cartoon. meltBanana14:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Grammar & punctuation
Please critique the following sentences for grammar and punctuation based on standard American English rules.
Version A: My last question is would I be able to pass a test and receive credit for English 1102 without completing the course?
Version B: My last question, would I be able to pass a test and receive credit for English 1102 without completing the course?
I'd say that version A is acceptable but that a comma after is would be usual, and I would prefer to capitalize would at the beginning of the direct question (though that is optional)—so "My last question is, Would I be able to pass a test and receive credit for English 1102 without completing the course?" You could, of course, rephrase the question as an indirect one: "My last question is whether I would be able to pass a test and receive credit for English 1102 without completing the course." Deor (talk) 15:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Version B is acceptable with a colon in place of the comma: My last question: Would I be able to pass a test...?. +Angr15:56, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, because the office of monarch of the United Kingdom is supposed to be passed on to a relative. It would only be nepotism if it was an office that was supposed to be assigned to someone on the basis of merit. +Angr13:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's right. And even if Lizzy did not want to become queen, but preferred the life of a wandering troubador or an international tennis star, she would have had no choice. The law made her queen; end of story. She would have had to abdicate to get her way - and she couldn't even do that unilaterally. If the parliament refused to allow her to abdicate, she stays put; end of story. Her only option then would be suicide. For the third and, sadly, final time, end of story. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 22:16, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Or a jockey. I think if ERII had actually said, "I won't serve", they would have found a way to accommodate her somehow. Ironically, if Charles were to say that, I suspect they would take him up on it. However, the Royals are raised with a strong sense of duty, and aside from the occasional aberation (i.e. Edward and Mrs. Simpson), there is little likelihood that a British monarch will abandon that duty. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 07:37, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If Good Queen Bess has anything like her mother's longevity, she'll probably outlive her son anyway. Will that make Camilla the Queen Stepmother? +Angr11:54, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Technically yes, although the title "Queen Mother" seems to have been a title granted to her mother on QE2's accession by QE2. I've not found any other use of it in history. I suspect Camilla's title will be something like "the Dowager Duchess of Cornwall". --TammyMoet (talk) 16:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Technically no. "Queen Mother" means a Queen who is Mother to the monarch. If Charles dies before Elizabeth, Camilla will never be Queen - the title is not applied retrospectively. There is at least one example of a woman in that position using the title Queen Mother even when she wasn't entitled to it, though. We do, of course, have an article, Queen mother, which explains all this. --Tango (talk) 17:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can think of at least two dozen books or texts written in Elizabethan English that I'd love to read, but unfortunately much of it is totally incomprehensible to me. I could just read notes and study guides alongside King Lear and The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, but that'd kind of spoil the experience for me. Can anyone recommend to me a resource -- preferably online -- that can help me understand the vocabulary, the syntax, the rules, etcetera? It'd be appreciated. Heracles Thunderface (talk) 14:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have a copy of Romeo and Juliet somewhere with a side-by-side "translation" into current English (I'm sure they exist for other texts too). That might be a good option. Glancing across to the opposite page when you don't understand something shouldn't detract from your enjoyment as much as opening a study guide would. By far the best way to get used to Elizabethan English is to expose yourself to it (the same applies to learning any language), so I think trying to find a Teach Yourself Elizabethan English textbook, or similar, would be unwise. Some of the problems with understanding Shakespeare, though, isn't the language changes by the cultural changes, eg. "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" (R&J, Act 1, Scene 1). The vocab and syntax are identical to current English usage, but it means nothing to us without the knowledge that biting your thumb was, when the play was written, equivalent to sticking your middle finger up at someone now. I don't know any better way to understand those kind of comments than a study guide, or annotated copy of the play. --Tango (talk) 14:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I read some of the Canterbury Tales and best of all Sir Thomas Mallory's Arthurian legends without any training. They're a lot older and harder than Elizabethan. The trick I used was just to read it out loud - it usually makes sense if you just imagine that they're rubbish at spelling. Keep your thumb in the glossary at the back to look up any words that are too weird. Keep going and you'll suddenly get with the flow. Well, it worked for me. Alansplodge (talk) 20:20, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Middle English is much harder than Early Modern English (although I think Shakespeare wrote rather more poetically than Chaucer, which counters it a bit - that may just be my minimal experience of Chaucer talking, though). While you may have been able to understand it by reading it out loud, you would have been completely mispronouncing everything. Chaucer pre-dated the Great Vowel Shift. --Tango (talk) 21:03, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, you're a philistine. In particular, modern pronunciation can destroy both the rhythm and the rhyme of Middle English poetry, since words may not have the same number of syllables or stress in the same place as they did 800 years ago, and two words that rhymed then may not still rhyme now. +Angr21:59, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you can, the best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see a *good* performance first rather than just reading a play yourself. The actors and director put a lot of effort into understanding the text in rehearsal and how they play it in performance helps audience understanding. Then read the play yourself afterwards. Most editions have explanatory footnotes or analysis to help understanding. The problem in my recommended approach might be in finding a good performance. There are some I've seen that left me cold but then other productions of the same play have been stunning. If you have access to an R2 DVD player, I recommend the recent David Tennant/Patrick Stewart/RSC Hamlet. The R1 version is out later this year. I also quite liked Kenneth Brannagh's Hamlet and also his Henry V. There aren't many Shakespeare DVDs to choose from though, so look out for live theatrical performances also. If you then later want to go on to read other plays and books that you can't see performed, you'll have had a start in getting your mind/eye attuned to the language.
"Who Dares Wins" is the motto of the SAS and sounds kind of cool, you could probably get away with using it if you're in the US or something where few people would know that, but it might sound silly if you're using it for a kids soccer team in England or something. I've always liked "Today is the day, come what may", which isn't really a motto so much as a line from Crime and Punishment, and now that I think about it that one is probably more fatalistic than encouraging, but I've always liked it. I don't know... AlexiusHoratius18:23, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Although I'm not a fan, the Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club motto: "Audere est Facere"[8] often translated as "To Dare is to Do" is as elegant as any. Maybe it's the root of "Who Dares, Wins". Where they got it from, I don't know. Alansplodge (talk) 20:11, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Length per se is not the deciding factor. Metternich said that Italy is not a country, merely a geographical expression. At the other extreme: "If you don't tidy up your room, I'll thrash you to within an inch of your life". Child sobs uncontrollably. Parent says "There, there, I didn't mean it literally, it's just an expression". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 22:07, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
According to the first dictionary listed at Definitions of expression - OneLook Dictionary Search, an expression can be a symbol. There is neither a minimum limit nor a maximum limit to the size of an expression.
Demonyms, the adjetives that point the country of origin or the noum (such as "Argentine", "British", "French", etc.) must be capitalized. But what about when the word denotes a languaje, such as "Spanish" or "Italian"? Do usages of the word that are mentioning the languaje rather than the demonym go capitalized as well? And what about ethnic groups, are the adjetives that point belonging to an ethnic group denomyns? Meaning, are those capitalized or not? MBelgrano (talk) 01:47, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, languages and ethnic groups are also considered proper nouns and are thus capitalized in correct writing (as might hopefully be found in our articles). There may be an exception, but I cannot at this moment think of one. Intelligentsium01:58, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In Spanish, for example, use of capitalization is much more restrictive than in English. Country names are capitalized, their peoples and languages are not. Sentences start with caps as in English. En España, los españoles hablan español. (In Spain the Spaniards speak Spanish). ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 05:44, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And French practice is halfway between that and English: "En France, les Français parlent français." Was the original question meant to only be about English, though? --Anonymous, 08:58 UTC, February 15, 2010.
English orthography is different from the orthographies of many Continental European practices, in that derivatives of proper names (adjectives etc.) are generally capitalized. AnonMoos (talk) 04:47, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure it's Yiddish in this context. "Thank you" in that language can be a dank aykh or a sheynem dank or simply a dank, and it seems to be a response to being given the Mensch's Barnstar, where the Yiddish word מענטש (mentsh) is written. +Angr14:18, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
is there any website where you can translate bangla into english? I am trying to translate this statement into English: bangla gaan oila ba bahisab aroh bala oila na. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.117.43 (talk) 15:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi All, are there any website/documents ,where we can learn to respond to sarcasm/cynicism/double meaning queries or expressions from the people, which makes our lives miserable due to unavailability of similar response of bigger intensity?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.122.36.6 (talk) 16:45, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Quick comebacks are effective for some people, but not for others; it's really a matter of personality. If you want to learn how to do it, then best thing to do is practice - whenever someone says something sarcastic to you, think about it for the rest of the day and make up a really good response (then enjoy it and forget about, because it will obviously be hours late). if you practice like that for a while, however, it will soon become second nature and snappy comebacks will roll right off your tongue.
however, it's not the only response. me, I use a backhanded approach: when someone says something sarcastic to me, I look at them with a wide-eyed, innocent, uncomprehending expression - kind of an "I don't understand what you mean but that doesn't make a lot of sense" look. Almost everyone will get flustered by that look, thinking that they said something dumb instead of something witty, and as soon as they look flustered enough I laugh at them. big yucks ll around. --Ludwigs216:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To learn how to make snappy comments, study Groucho Marx and Don Rickles, for example. To learn how to make snappy comebacks, study those same two guys. Or if you don't want the argument to keep going, study how the wizard toward the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail simply stared at the king when he asked for help. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 21:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
1- Can anyone translate the sentance 'colourless green ideas sleep furiously' into gramatically correct Latin for me?
2- What was the original, untranslated inscription on the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno?
3- I read somewhere that the Spanish sometimes criticise a messy place by saying 'This looks like a republic in here', but what would that have been in Spanish?
I can answer 2: Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: fecemi la divina podestate, la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore. Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate
As for your Latin request, I am stuck because I don't think that there is a single word that means "colorless" in the sense of being without color. You would have to use a circumlocution such as non coloratae ("not colored" or "uncolored"), or, if you are looking for a contradiction, you could use something like rubrae ("red"). Assuming that you want to preserve the meaning, you could try Notiones virides non coloratae vehementer dormiunt. Marco polo (talk) 20:03, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Whoever vs. whomever
I did check out Fowler, but find I'm no clearer. That man's writing gets less plain English by the day.
A. "Whoever keeps doing this deserves to be shot".
B. "I am going to shoot <...> keeps doing this".
In B, my head says that "whomever" is the right word, but my gut says "whoever", and I've learned to trust my gut. It seems that the object of "shoot" is not just "whoever", but "whoever keeps doing this", so the 'whoever' is not declined.
I guess I am going to shoot whomever you choose could be an example of what you're looking for. Whomever is the object of choose and the whole subordinate clause whomever you choose is the object to shoot. Pallida Mors20:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The case of "who(m)ever" gets decided by the "downstairs" clause, i.e. the narrower clause within the sentence. So Jack's gut is right that it's "I am going to shoot whoever keeps doing this" and Pallida is right that it's "I am going to shoot whomever you choose". It's also "Whomever you want to marry will always be welcome here", because it's the object of "marry" in the narrower clause, while the object subject of "will" is the whole "whomever you want to marry". +Angr21:09, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, Angr, isn't the close "whomever you want to marry" the subject of will [be], rather than the object? Or maybe I just missed something in your post... Pallida Mors22:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a word that means specifically a line of dialogue from a play? I guess something like 'stanza' for a poem, but referring to the line spoken by a single character. That line could span multiple sentences.
Obviously within the context of talking about plays 'line' will do just fine since every line within a play is dialogue (unless it's a stage direction, which I guess would be referred to as such). However sometimes you might want to refer to the play meaning from outside that context, and it seems cumbersome to say 'line in a play', and too nonspecific to say 'dialogue line'.
"Speech" is commonly used for a gobbet of uninterrupted dialogue spoken by a single character. Is that what you're referring to? Deor (talk) 23:20, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Deor, I want the word to refer to smaller dialogue too like interjections and between-character banter... Also it needs to be technical enough to recall the context of a play from outside that context, in the way that 'stanza' does with poetry - 'speech' is in too common general use to immediately bring to mind plays. Amoe (talk) 23:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
-- AnonMoos (talk) 14:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
--Ludwigs2 16:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
--Ludwigs2 21:53, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
![[8]](http://pitchinvasion.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/audere.jpg){kind=link}
