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March 13

is it possible to give most male readers an erection with 20 English words?

Is it possible to compose 20 English words such that reading them would give most male readers an erection? What would be an example? (You can blank out some words so they are still unambiguous, but leaving the sentence without the erectory effect). 82.113.121.104 (talk) 01:27, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Everyone is aroused by different things, indeed at different ages, and depending on degree of sexual self-awareness, what specifically turns them on, etc. Women are stereotypically more likely to be aroused by the written word, as opposed to men stereotypically more likely to be aroused by the visual, but that is not always true or that narrow. Have you done any research on this in Google? The internet is like hog heaven for purveyors of porn of all types, so I should think there would be no problem finding a flood of opinions on the matter, at the very least. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:39, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Although this also sounds a bit like a sequel to Monty Python's "funniest joke in the world" sketch. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:40, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

If the blanked out words are unambiguous then surely they would have the same "erectory effects"? It will be the meanings of the words, not the letters that make them up, that arouse people. As Bugs says, arousing someone with written words is more likely to work on women than men. --Tango (talk) 01:44, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

This one is from Henny Youngman: "A scantily-dressed young woman came up to me on the street the other day, and said for a hundred bucks she would do anything I could describe in three words or less. I gave her the hundred and said, 'Paint my house!'" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:49, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

XD...Anyway, afaik there must be a reason why guys watch porn and girls read it. So probably not... but then, I'm not a guy. I can, however, vouch for the effectiveness of the written word over visuals on females. Go on, read into that. I dare you. :) SS✞^(Kay) 01:57, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

You write porn. *gasp* ...Now that we've got over that, how do you know girls read it while guys watch it? Most of my females friends admit to watching it. And the one I live with has a list of websites in a small book next to her computer. (Why she can't bookmark them, I don't know.) Anyway, I always thought that girls simply didn't admit to things like watching porn. The numbers on this would be nigh-impossible to find; everyone lies. Vimescarrot (talk) 02:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I frequent parts of the Internet where women talk pretty openly about their kinks and sexual practices, as well as their fantasies. The general thing seems to be that they don't watch porn, although they do watch things that turn them on. These things are often the sort of thing that can be broadcast fairly openly, almost dog whistle porn, when there is reason to believe the creators intentionally played up the 'hotness' of the scene (for example, gratuitous use of bondage imagery, as seen in the llatest installment of Doctor Who). But this is not because they do not have a taste for more explicit stuff: much fanfic is most fandoms is pornographic, frequently very explicitly. These women read porn fics, they might even look at pornographic fanart, but they don't tend to look for straightforward porn to wach. Non-fen clearly read things like Mills and Boon, or their personal favourites from 'normal' books: there are some who are turned on by Heathcliff, some by Mr Darcy. I do wonder if it's a question of characterisation: in my personal experience, women are more open about crushes on entirely fictional characters, and often enjoy porn (or porn-a-like) featuring these characters who already have established characterisation and motives. Even Mills and Boon give some characterisation and outside motive, some emotional context for the sex. That's probably easier to achieve in writing: it's certainly easier to achieve in a fanwork that relies on the reader bringing context from the main work. There is an increasing trend for teenage girls to watch porn online, but surveys I've seen indicate it is driven by curiousity and a desire to see what normal grown bodies look like (sadly, porn is a poor source for this). 86.178.167.166 (talk) 03:38, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by the latest instalment of Doctor Who? Different episodes are shown at different times in different places. The most recent one shown in the UK (which gets them first) was The End of Time, which I don't recall having any bondage imagery. --Tango (talk) 03:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

See, you didn't even notice: it was nowhere on your radar. Meanwhile, the Internet is full of screencaps of and squeeing over The Doctor being tied up and gagged, The Master in his dog collar, etc. Yes, in The End of Time. It looked very deliberate, and Rusty is quite attuned to such things. To many women, those scenes were pornographically hot: personally I thought they were rather overdone. You didn't notice them, as was the intention. Do we have an article on fanservice? This is a textbook example of one definition of that. 86.178.167.166 (talk) 10:04, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I noticed people being bound. I wouldn't consider every binding to be bondage imagery, though. It's not like he was bound with a studded leather belt or anything, was he? --Tango (talk) 06:53, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I would recommend rewatching. Notice the ridiculous use of an actual dog collar and chain on the Master. Note not only that the Doctor is bound and gagged, but the way the Master is interacting with him at the time. I wouldn't normally recommend rewatching those episodes (they really were awful), but it really is there. You can google with the right terms and find endless women saying variations of "unf" in response. Endless icons and avatars from those scenes, endless motivational posters, endless picspams. This is how a certain target demographic received and interpreted those scenes, and Russell T. Davies is very familiar with this group, frequently playing with them. 86.178.167.166 (talk) 14:25, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

To answer the original question; you could probably give a fair number of males an erection with twenty words quite easily - in the right settings. It's embarrassingly easy to do. Five words would probably be enough. But I doubt anyone has done studies of this for us to reference. Um, have they? Vimescarrot (talk) 02:14, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I could not find a specific study through a quick Google (for some reason I'm grateful that I didn't...), although I came across this Telegraph article: All men watch porn, scientists find. I think that is a leading candidate for "Most Obvious Study Finding Of All Time."

Regarding the actual question, though, I have to agree with you, Vimescarrot: I think pretty much any man, especially younger men, could be aroused by a sentence or two, but exactly what that sentence contains may have to differ -- it might have to be a full 20-word description for some, but for others a name of a woman they found or find attractive might suffice. Xenon54 / talk / 02:39, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

How about 7 numeric digits and zero words. I get an erection if my phone rings and a certain number is on the caller ID. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 03:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I once (unintentionally) gave my boyfriend an erection by saying just three words: "I love you". +Angr 10:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Reactions to that expression, as with anything else, depend on the individual. To many, the response to that statement is, "Run away! Run away!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:14, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

To Vimescarrot above: Um... let me rephrase. I think girls are more aroused by reading that sort of stuff, than looking at porn, from personal experience. To me, big deal. It's just another picture/clip. In general, guys are more straightforward; girls have to... feel some kind of connection, I think. But then I'm not exactly average, so yeah. SS✞^(Kay) 07:36, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Jerry Seinfeld once said that for men, sex is like being a fireman - they can be ready in a few minutes; whereas for women, it's like fire - they can get very excited, but the conditions have to be right. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:47, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

A word that denotes the concept of incorrectly claiming (illegal) discrimination

I'm looking for a word that denotes the concept of incorrectly claiming (illegal) discrimination when some other (legitimate) factor was the cause. Consider these scenarios of legitimate discrimination claims:

• An Australian Aborigine applies for a job but the white caucasion boss doesn't give him the job simply because the man is black. This is racism.
• A woman applies for a job, but the male boss doesn't give her the job simply because she is a woman. This is sexism.

Now consider these cases (and assume that no affirmative action policies apply):

• The Aborigine applies for a job as an engineer but doesn't get it because he only has two years experience. Instead, a white applicant with ten years experience (ie better qualified) gets the job. The Aborigine claims racism, incorrectly assuming that he did not get the job because he is black.
• A woman applies for a job as an accountant at a large bank, but does not get it because she only has experience with a small family business. The job goes to a male applicant with several years experience at another large bank (ie better qualified). The woman claims sexism, incorrectly asserting that she did not get the job because she is a woman.

Is there a word (or phrase, if there is no single word) that describes these erroneous assumptions or claims of racism? The claims of racism/sexism may be honest (the failed applicant genuinely believes s/he didn't get the job because of colour/gender) or they may be deliberately "fraudulent" (applicant knows s/he is not the best for the job, and thus not entitled to the job, but attempts to get the job anyway, by shaming or taking legal action against the employer). Is there one word covering both (honest and fraudulent claim) situations, or a different word for each? Political correctness occured to me, but I don't think that this is correct. PC would describe the scenario where the employer hired the less qualified black/woman so as to avoid the claim of discrimination, but I'm looking for a word to describe the erroneous claim itself (or the concept thereof). Mitch Ames (talk) 03:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

"Claiming victimhood" (Google search) seems to be fairly frequently used, but perhaps most often by people who are assuming that the claim is self-serving or inaccurate. Deor (talk) 04:25, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

That's such a specific concept with little enough public discussion on it that I'd be surprised if there were a single phrase that was commonly used. "(Actions) misconstrued as racism/sexism" might work well to clearly articulate what you're talking about, for example:

• A pygmy applies for a job as a police officer but doesn't get it because he has a DUI on his record. Instead, a Swedish applicant with ten years experience and a congressional medal of honor gets the job. The pygmy misconstrues this as racism, thinking that he did not get the job because he is black."

Incidentally, one could argue that systemic racism contributes to fewer opportunities for people of color so that, even if one actually is less qualified, the lack of opportunities for them to become so would itself be characteristic of a racist system. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 07:06, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

It could just as easily be "heightism" in that example, unless there are specific regulations about policemen having a minimum height. The various "isms" apply when the nature of the job does not justify the "ism". For example, Queen Latifah might be a reasonable candidate to play in a film bio of Aretha Franklin, but would probably not be the first choice for a film bio of Brooke Shields. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:45, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

More generally, List of fallacies mentions Appeal to probability. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Lenny Henry did a number of sketches on this theme. Here's one: [1]--TammyMoet (talk) 16:55, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've heard making complaints about racism when there isn't really any evidence of it being called "playing the race card". --Tango (talk) 07:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

^^^"Playing the race card" was the first term that came to my mind, but it would really only apply to cases in which the aggrieved party claims discrimination based on race knowing that race is not the real issue, or is a side issue at best. The card metaphor connotes a calculated gambit to achieve a particular goal. Someone who honestly believes he or she has been discriminated against based on race and raises the issue would not be playing the race card, though he or she might be perceived as having done so by others. My own understanding of the term and a quick google search for examples of its use suggest that the term is generally directed toward another person, and is a pejorative; the person who claims, whether correctly or not, that discrimination has taken place could be accused of "playing the race card," but that same person would not be likely to say "hmm...my appeal to reason didn't work; maybe I'll try playing the race card." You end up with a sort of circular argument where one person is trying to distract attention away from the main issue by claiming the other is trying to distract attention away from the main issue (there's probably one o' them fancy Latin phrases for that, but I don't know it, or where to look for it right this second). "Playing the race card" also doesn't apply exclusively to the situations Mitch Ames describes above; it would apply to any situation where race is introduced in an attempt to influence opinion, belief, or outcome. Appealing to a group's (hidden or open) racism in order to convince them to do something would also be playing the race card. "Assumption of racism" per below or "perceived racism" would be closer, I think. Or if you're talking about some other type of discrimination, "assumption of" or "perceived" that. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 21:46, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I would probably use the term "assumption of racism" or "false racism", but I don't know if such phrases are used by other people. ~AH1^(TCU) 02:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

More generally, there is victim playing. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Comparative in English

Is it always correct to form the comparative by using the word "more"? For example: "Anne is more pretty than Jane" instead of "Anne is prettier than Jane." I realize that many adjectives do not add "er" or "ier" in the comparative, such as "beautiful", so the word "more" is necessary. 208.87.234.180 (talk) 17:02, 13 March 2010 (UTC) Sorry, I meant comparative, not plural!!208.87.234.180 (talk) 17:03, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I think in some cases, using "more" rather than "-er" sounds quite odd, if not absolutely ungrammatical. For example, I don't think a native English speaker would ever say "My brother is two years more young than me." I'm hesitant to call it flat-out ungrammatical, but it's definitely unidiomatic, and I wouldn't recommend saying things like that if you're learning English as a second/foreign language. +Angr 17:18, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Offhand I think you would use "more" when you're dealing with something that can't end in "-er". Example: Applicant A is more qualified for the job than applicant B is. You could say "more pretty", but it sounds funny to a native speaker. Then there's the clearly ungrammatical, "That woman is more prettier than her sister is". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. I think I messed up the title when I tried to correct it. What I meant was: If an adjective can form the comparative with "er" or "ier", is it also usually acceptable to use "more" with the positive form? I agree that it sounds strange to say: "My sister is three years more young than I". I also agree that some adjectives, such as "qualified", must use "more." But how about these examples: fast, strong, silly, ugly? Thanks. 208.87.234.180 (talk) 17:40, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I think there's a spectrum of acceptability. There are some adjectives, like "stupid" and "clever", that sound fine with either "more" or "-er", and there are others, like "young", where using "more" sounds distinctly odd. I'd say the examples you gave fall somewhere on the spectrum between "young" and "stupid". To me, "more fast" and "more strong" sound fairly odd, and are worse than "more silly" and "more ugly", although those themselves sound worse than "sillier" and "uglier". My answer to your question is: If an adjective can form the comparative with "-er", it is usually unidiomatic (to varying degrees, depending on the adjective in question) to use "more" with the positive form, but not flat-out ungrammatical. +Angr 18:39, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

This is my sense as well. Also, I think there is some drift over time. For example, I think that "commonest" sounds very strange, but I think someone with a more classical education would probably have been taught that "most common" should be avoided. The same goes for "cleverer". Also see [2] — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:54, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that I read somewhere that "er" and "est" are used with adjectives of one syllable, "more" and "most" are used with adjectives of three or more syllables, and adjectives of two syllables can form the comparative and superlative forms by using either of those two methods.

(Of course, "er" and "est" can not be used with participial adjectives, which end in "ing" and "ed".) Unfortunately, I do not have a source.

-- Wavelength (talk) 18:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I am a learner of English, and I can tell you what I was taught. Monosyllabic adjectives always take -er and -est. Adjectives with more than one syllable take "more" and "most" unless they end with -y, -ow, -er, -el, -le and maybe a couple of more endings that I can't recall now. And the adjective "stupid" (and maybe some more) can take both: "stupider, stupidest", or "more stupid, most stupid". About the examples you suggested - following that rule, they should be "faster", "stronger", "sillier", "uglier". --Магьосник (talk) 18:49, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I would avoid trying to learn such rules for English and just learn how each word works. There are so many exceptions to the rules that it is actually easier just to learn each word separately. --Tango (talk) 06:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all, for your help. Seems to me that here in northern Ohio we use the "more" method quite a lot. BTW, people here often pronounce "both" as "bolth"; just for your amusement. 208.87.234.180 (talk) 19:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

My Google search for "adjective comparative superlative er est more most" (without the quotation marks) found http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv268.shtml. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:01, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

An interesting case is that some people now seem to prefer "more well known" to "better known". - Jmabel | Talk 21:25, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The expression "well known" (or "well-known") is ambiguous, because it can mean "widely known" or "favorably known".

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:49, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever heard "well known" used to mean "favourably known". I would say "well regarded" or something if I wanted to say "favourably known". Wiktionary says (wikt:well-known) that it can also mean "renowned", which has connotations of favourableness, I suppose. --Tango (talk) 06:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Suffixes and Other Word-Final Elements of English, by Laurence Urdang (1982, Gale Research Company) says that -er is derived from Old English -or in the case of adverbs and through Middle English from Old English er, ere, re in the case of adjectives, and states: "By convention, the suffix is used chiefly with one-syllable words, sometimes with two-syllable words, and never with those of three or more syllables. In adverbs and adjectives of two or more syllables, the convention is to precede the modifying word (unchanged) with more." Webster's 3rd says: "used to form the comparative degree of adjectives and adverbs of one syllable [examples snipped] and of certain adjectives and adverbs of two syllables [examples snipped] and sometimes of longer ones; regularly accompanied by a coalescence with final e of the base word, changing the postconsonantal y of the base word to i, or doubling of the final consonant immediately after a short stressed vowel; see ²more." of ²more it says says: "often used with adjectives and adverbs to form the comparative <some of her ~ remarkable sons and visitors -- J. P. Marquand> <the ~ learned the writer...the harder it is -- W. T. Jones>" The only usage I can think to cite of "more" being used with a one-syllable word rather than "-er" is "none; none more black." Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 22:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Italianate

'Italian' seems to be the only demonym to which one can add the suffix –ate to make a different adjective ('Italianate'). There's also 'German-ic' and 'Frank-ish', and perhaps a handful of others, but only 1 example of an –ate adjective formed from a demonym.

How did this word arise, and why don't we talk about things being Hungarianate, Russianate, Romanianate, Americanate, Canadianate, Australianate, etc? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:10, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Because we mainly use the "-esque" suffix in such cases, I would guess... AnonMoos (talk) 21:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

By the way, there's supposedly an old Italian saying which goes something like Inglese italianato è diavolo incarnato ("An Italianized Englishman is the devil himself")... AnonMoos (talk) 21:32, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

-esque? Can you give me an example of an -esque word that relates to a country or a people?

-Esque is pretty much linguistically "productive" (in the technical meaning of that term); there's nothing to prevent anyone from using the words Hungarianesque, Russianesque, Canadianesque, Americanesque etc. on the spur of the moment (whether those words have been used before or not). AnonMoos (talk) 15:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Btw, "Italianate" can be used as a verb, a synonym for "Italianize". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 22:54, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Romanesque? 87.81.230.195 (talk) 01:04, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, that's one. Wiktionary tells me that most –esque words are named after people, such as the extraordinary word Schwarzeneggeresque! Hollywood, London and Rome are apparently the only places that have recognised –esque forms, but the last one is about Roman kinds of things, not necessarily specifically about Rome herself, and hence R/romanesque can appear with or without a capital r. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 03:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

"Italianate" is a slightly fancier way of saying "Italianize(d)". Where I've heard it in reference to Italianate architecture, a very popular 19th century style. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:47, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Disagree - "Italianized" would describe something that had been made "more Italian" than it had previously done, whereas "Italianate" implies something initially made stylistically Italian. Not really germane to the OP, though. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 01:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, you're disagreeing with Webster's, which redirects the reader from "Italianate" to "Italianize". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary agrees with Baseball Bugs here. Something can be Italianated, meaning made into an Italian style = Italianised. But these are very uncommon words, and the predominant meaning of Italianate is the adjective. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 03:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I found Genevate, Hispaniolate and Spaniolate in the OED but these are verbs, the only adjective was Tegeate. The choice of suffixes is often more to do with which are popular, and Italiante probably less meant "in the Italian style" and more likely meant "in the finest style of the time" which happened to be Italian when it was coined in the late C16th. Italianated is actually recorded earlier. The OED lists various cacophonous -esque words such as Americanesque, Greekesque and Japanesque. meltBanana 04:31, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Latinate? 66.127.52.47 (talk) 06:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

There is potassium ferrocyanide, also known as yellow prussiate of potash. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:40, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Close, but no cigar. The form I'm after would have to be Prussianate. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:24, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

For the origin of the form, the OED says it's from Italian italianato. Only some Romance languages are likely to have that specific form.

To my mind, the meaning is very specific: in an Italian visual style, especially architectural. (The OED doesn't agree with me, not mentioning this restriction; but it hasn't an example more recent than 1894: this is an entry which has not yet been updated from the second edition). Googling '"Italianate" -definition" gives 681 000 ghits, while '"Italianate" -definition -architecture' cuts it down to 423 000, and '"Italianate -definition -architecture -style' cuts it down to 285 000, which weakly supports my position, which is that it is not generalisable because it has a rather specific meaning. --ColinFine (talk) 19:20, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

And, of course, a prussiate is a salt of prussic acid (and I am surprised to find that it is prussiate not prussate). --ColinFine (talk) 19:22, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the acid should have been called Prussianic acid (cf. Germanic, not Germic). -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 22:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The "an" in "Germanic" is not a suffix but part of the root. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:28, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to all for, as always, an interesting and enlightening discussion. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:31, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

PIGS

Why is the term “PIGS” offensive? --84.61.135.112 (talk) 21:13, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Because pigs (the animals) are considered dirty. See Cultural references to pigs. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 21:24, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

But it probably relates more to "greedy" than "dirty", another connotation of "pig". - Jmabel | Talk 21:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Listen to the Beatles song about "Little Piggies" for a good analogy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:10, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

March 14

r̝̊

I thought diacritic marks are only below the letter unless there is a descender. How come r̝̊ violates this rule? Maybe the chart should be amended?174.3.107.176 (talk) 07:00, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

What you have said is certainly wrong for diacritics in general. Our article says "Sub-diacritics (markings normally placed below a letter or symbol) may be placed above a symbol having a descender" (my emphasis) This is subtly different from what you have said, but I haven't a copy of the IPA Handbook to check the authoratitive text. Unless the original has the prescriptive language you use, then it seems to me entirely reasonable to treat "r̝" like a symbol with a descender - though I guess it would not be wrong to put the "raising" diacritic on top instead of the "voiceless" one. And I don't know why you are suggesting on Wikipedia that somebody else's chart be amended! --ColinFine (talk) 11:17, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The raising diacritic can also be written to the right of the character it modifies. I would have transcribed the sound in question as r̥˔ instead of r̝̊, but nobody asked me. +Angr 17:20, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The general statement that diacritical marks are only below the letter may apply to IPA (I don't know IPA) but it is not true as a statement about diacritics in general. For Indic languages see Devanagari or IAST. If the number of phonemes in a writing system exceeds the number used in English, language-specific diacritics (not IPA) will be needed. Buddhipriya (talk) 22:09, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not true in IPA either, and sometimes it makes a difference whether an IPA diacritic is above or below. The diacritic for nasalization and the diacritic for creaky voice are identical except that the former goes over the letter and the latter goes under it. If you want to mark a letter with a descender as being creaky voice, you have to keep it under the letter, otherwise you're marking it as nasalized. [ỹ] is definitely not the same sound as [y̰]. +Angr 10:45, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

what are the synonyms for "encasement"?

What are the synonyms of "encasement"?174.3.107.176 (talk) 07:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary gives emboîtment.166.216.130.80 (talk) 07:51, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Only in the context of genetics, which isn't the most common usage of the world. --Tango (talk) 21:55, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Wnd

What is "wendo-croat"?174.3.107.176 (talk) 09:20, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, but I found this article: Wends. It refers to a type of Slav, so it stands to reason that Wendo-Croat is the version of Croat spoken by some Wends. Hopefully someone else will give a more conclusive answer! --Tango (talk) 09:50, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. I also find this odd, because as far as I knew "Wend" was another name for the Sorbs. The article Tango links explains that its use was much more varied than that - but there is no reference anywhere in it to the word's having been used for any group of South slavs. Since the writer talks about Slovak "forming the transition from Czech to Wendo-Croat" I find myself wondering whether he might mean Slovenian, which is at least geographically intermediate between West-Slavonic (sometimes formallyformerly collectively called "Wends", according to the Wends article) and South Slavonic languages such as Croat. But I admit that this is mere speculation. --ColinFine (talk) 11:29, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The word "Wends" is also used on page 4 of the same book where is appears to be synonymous with "Slovenes". It's one of the meanings disussed at Wends #Other uses. I suppose the author uses "Wendo-Croat" to mean either Slovenian and Croatian treated as a single language or some transitional dialect between Slovenian and Croatian. — Kpalion^(talk) 13:04, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

If Kpalion is right, then I think the author means Slovenian-Serbian. These south slavic languages are similar, and in many language books, they treat languages in a group.174.3.107.176 (talk) 13:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

You mean you interpret the "Croat" part of "Wendo-Croat" as "Serbian"? It doesn't make any sense to me if this is what you mean. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:06, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Serbian is more or less identical to Croatian.174.3.98.20 (talk) 20:53, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The linked text is from a work titled Racial Problems in Hungary. The author describes Slovak as transitional from Czech to "Wendo-Croat". Slovak is mutually intelligible with Czech but not with Slovene. It is even further removed from Croat. So I think we should look for a language more closely related to Slovak than Slovene or Croat. I suspect that the author may be referring to the Slavic language spoken in what is now Hungary before the arrival of the Magyars in the 9th century. Samo, who ruled territory during this period extending from the present-day countries of Slovakia and western Hungary into what is now Slovenia, was known as "king of the Wends". The language spoken in this region is supposed to have been transitional between proto-Slovak and proto-Slovene. Marco polo (talk) 15:54, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I have a primary source that says that slovak is NOT mutually intelligible with czech.174.3.107.176 (talk) 16:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

However see Mutually_intelligible#Written_and_spoken_forms--达伟 (talk) 18:09, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I would tend to very strongly doubt that, considering the descriptions of Czech and Slovak contained in chapter 17 of The World's Major Languages (ISBN 0-19-506511-5). -- AnonMoos (talk) 07:27, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Could it be Pannonian Rusyn? Or maybe Rusyn? I don't know if it has something to do with Wends, but Slovak could be considere a language somewhat between Czech and Rusyn. Or even the Prekmurian dialect, which is strongly linked to the term "Wend". Just an educated guess...--151.51.62.111 (talk) 17:47, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Just a side note. The term "Veneti" is used plentifully by protochronistic nationalists here in Slovenia, and it is a term that is claimed by them to be the name of the "great, tremendously advanced and now sadly gone without a trace" precursor to the Wend people. It survives today in the somewhat pejorative Austrian word Windischer. I'd bet some of the, ekhm, patriots here in Slovenia would get red spots just being confronted with the unholy word formation "wendo-croat" :) TomorrowTime (talk) 13:08, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Wends/Veneds/Veneti are so obscure that they probably have been claimed as possible ancestors by most modern Slavic nations. Polish Romanticist poet Juliusz Słowacki, for example, wrote Lilla Weneda, a play loosely based on both legends and historical theories of his time, about the peaceful tribe of Veneds – living in what is now Greater Poland – conquered by the aggressive Lechites. The play may be interpreted as an explanation of Poland's social structure, with serfs descending from the Veneds, and nobles – from the Lechites. See also Vistula Veneti. — Kpalion^(talk) 13:50, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

"KN RBL YMB" in summary

What do the abbreviations in the summary mean?174.3.107.176 (talk) 16:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Kings Norton Royal British Legion Youth Marching Band? Karenjc 16:10, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

[I am revising the section heading for informativeness. See Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Editing comments (permanent link here),

sub-subsection "Others' comments", point 12 of 18. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:30, 14 March 2010 (UTC)]

Not?

Adam says ""Procuratorate" could have meant "O procuratorship!", but alas it does not.". Why not?174.3.107.176 (talk) 16:29, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Because the Latin root of "Procuratorate" is a fourth declension noun. In second declension Latin nouns, "-e" signifies the vocative case (which translates in English as "O {noun}"). So if the root (meaning procuratorship) had been of the second declension, Procuratorate "O procuratorship" Adam Bishop was probably just making an in-joke (amongst Latin-speakers!). 68.76.147.34 (talk) 17:24, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, just a dumb joke. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:19, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Tamil அராலி (Araly?) and Tamil யாழ்ப்பாண நகரம் (Jaffna)

The Tamil article http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/அராலி (Araly?) has no interwiki links to other languages. The Tamil article http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/யாழ்ப்பாண_நகரம் is linked to the English article Jaffna. I used the article Tamil script to transliterate the first name. What is the relationship between Araly and Jaffna? -- Wavelength (talk) 19:00, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

To judge from the map at ta:அராலி, Arali seems to be a neighborhood or suburb of Jaffna. +Angr 19:20, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I was guessing the same thing, but I am hoping that someone who reads Tamil can answer from the first article. That is why I posted my question on the Language Reference Desk and not on a different one. Thank you, anyway. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:46, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

One of the only

Resolved

When I see the words "one of the only" in a sentence, I expect them to be followed by a number, e.g., "One the only three", which I would interpret to be synonymous with "one of the three", with the additional connotation of "three" being a small number in the context. However, over the past couple of days, I have come across the following:

1. "... it is one of the only provinces where ..." in Washington Post
2. "... he was one of the only hospital officials ..." in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (pg 274)

Is this use (strictly) grammatical and/or idiomatic? What does it mean exactly, "one of the few" or "the only", or ...? Abecedare (talk) 23:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought I had already googled for the answer, but apparently not: this column addresses my question. Abecedare (talk) 23:44, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

You are one of the only editors here who could answer such a question so promptly. Buddhipriya (talk) 23:47, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

"One of the only three" sounds horrendous to my British English ear, whereas without a number sounds like a noble member of the group of things I'd categorise as "correct usage that mysteriously seems to be incorrect, when one thinks about it." --Dweller (talk) 14:11, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Not sure I'd agree with that, Dweller. There have been 43 U.S. presidents, but only 2 of them - Truman and Kennedy - were born in the month of May. They were "the only two" with this distinction. Therefore, JFK was one of the only two U.S. presidents born in the month of May. No? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:20, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I would much prefer JFK was one of only two U.S. presidents born in the month of May. Not sure why, though. Algebraist 07:25, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe that's because any or all of them could easily have been born in May, but only 2 happened to be. It's "so what?" material; it's mundane (not to mention novomundane in this particular case). It's not remotely the first thing you'd mention about either of them. The "the" is certainly optional there. But try a different tack: one where the distinction is much less likely and consequently more noteworthy. Let me contrive an example. Of all the millions of notable people there have ever been, only 3 have been monarchs who've had a sex change. Which do you prefer now:

• X was one of only 3 people in history to have been a monarch who had a sex change
• X was one of the only 3 people in history to have been a monarch who had a sex change.

I'd go for the "the" version in this case. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:43, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry Jack, I'd go for the first again. "One of the only..." sounds completely wrong to my ears. And while I'm on, in formal writing I would never write 3 as a figure as in your example, I would always spell it out as a word "three". Just sayin', like. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 10:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, me too (or should that be "I, also"?). But we're among friends here and not being overly formal, are we?  :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

This blog is interesting reading. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:43, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Just my 2 cents worth, the "the" sounds really bad to my bastardised English too. And I'd don't think it sounds like it needs a number after it. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 17:14, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

March 15

"Xynthia" (origin and meaning)

What are the origin and meaning of the name Xynthia? It certainly appears to be from Greek, with initial X, vocalic y, and consonantal sequence nth.
-- Wavelength (talk) 01:34, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

As storms are often given human names, I believe "Xynthia" is derived from a Greek Κυνθία, Kynthía (from which the more common Cynthia also derives). Intelligentsium 02:26, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Don't know, but in Greek place names, an "-nth-" cluster is usually a sign of a word which was not formed from inherited Indo-European roots, but which was presumably borrowed from one of the unknown languages that were spoken in Greece before Greek arrived there... AnonMoos (talk) 07:15, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Book recommendations

I'm looking for books advocating linguistic prescription. Does anything come to mind? Thank you. -Pollinosisss (talk) 05:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Sure, the first edition of Fowler (before it was tamed by subsequent co-authors). You'd go nuts if you tried to conform every single one of your utterances to every single rule or prescription laid down there... AnonMoos (talk) 07:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The Elements of Style. Also try searching Language Log[3] which discusses prescriptivism a lot. --Normansmithy (talk) 11:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

No book actively advocate linguistic prescription under that name, because the word was coined by external observers. Most big-name usage books will do fine, if by "advocation" you mean "complaining about kids these days". Circéus (talk) 11:54, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I think William Safire was big on that, and he wrote some books. And the Academie Française prescribes at a national level. The American Heritage Dictionary caused a stir for trying to prescribe good English. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 12:13, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I found the constrained writing in Ella Minnow Pea to be thoroughly stimulating, and funny too! DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 16:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for all the suggestions. -Pollinosisss (talk) 17:56, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Another very pop one Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 17:11, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

IIe

What is IIe?174.3.107.176 (talk) 08:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Didn't follow the link, but in many cases French for deuxième... AnonMoos (talk) 08:06, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

In this case: Apple IIe. ---Sluzzelin talk 08:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Is that how a Frenchman might refer to Tasmania? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it's a reference number in this case, 2e. In other words, an Apple 2 with something special added! Maybe a Mac user will be along to confirm. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TammyMoet (talk • contribs) 12:47, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

e = "enhanced" (it's in the first paragraph of the article). Alansplodge (talk) 13:08, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

And here was I thinking it was the Welsh word for 'place'! (I was going to link to http://cy.wiktionary.org/wiki/lle [Is there a way to interlink to a foreign language Wiktionary?], but that doesn't seem to exist) --ColinFine (talk) 00:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

You need to get yourself some serifs! (And wikt:lle exists, but gives only a Galician word, not the Welsh one.) +Angr 00:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

To link to a foreign-language Wiktionary, type [[wikt:cy:lle]] or [[:cy:wikt:lle]]. If you put the language code first, you have to put a colon before it. +Angr 00:44, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

No, neither of those works. [[wikt:cy:lle]] goes to "cy:lle" in the English Wiktionary, and [[:cy:wikt:lle]] goes to "wikt:lle" in the Welsh Wikipedia. --ColinFine (talk) 00:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

They both work fine here: wikt:cy:lle, cy:wikt:lle. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Aha! There's deep server-fu here. I didn't follow the links, just looked at what they expanded to. There must be URL redirections (or rewritings, more like) for these things. Well, you learn something every day ... --ColinFine (talk) 19:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Both wikt:cy:lle & cy:wikt:lle go to the welsh wiktionary. There's something wrong. Maybe someone can notify the appropriate authorities?174.3.98.20 (talk) 21:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Apple II europlus
Sleigh (talk) 12:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Polish: monity

A colleague translating a Polish text is stumped by the last word of this sentence (transcribed here from her handwriting):

"Nie odpowiadat na żadne nasze monity."

We'd appreciate a translation to English (or Hebrew :-). Thanks! -- Deborahjay (talk) 09:11, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that the last word means: requirements, instructions (I'm not a native Polish speaker). HOOTmag (talk) 09:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It should be Nie odpowiadać na żadne nasze monity, which I would translate as "Do not reply to any of our dunning letters." If "dunning letters" don't make sense in the context, then please let me know and I'll look for other meanings. — Kpalion^(talk) 10:57, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I had never heard of dunning until I looked it up just now. Perhaps "reminder" might be more widely understood. Alansplodge (talk) 16:22, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking about "reminders" too, but wasn't sure which is better. I'm familiar with "dunning" because this is the word the English version of SAP uses. But SAP is a German company so they may not have used the most common English term. — Kpalion^(talk) 16:50, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Dunning is probably the best English word for its meaning, and it is in use, but it is probably not universally understood in the United States. For American English, a more commonly understood compound would be debt-collection letters or collection letters. Marco polo (talk) 18:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I just realized, Deborahjay, that what you took for a "t" could have been, even more likely, an "ł", which would make it Nie odpowiadał na żadne nasze monity, "He did not reply to any of our reminders." — Kpalion^(talk) 18:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Kudos for a deft pickup, Kpalion: odpowiadał it is! As handwritten, that terminal letter's "crossing" stroke is above and perpendicular to the downstroke; had it been at a slant I'd have been more likely to recognize the ł. -- Deborahjay (talk) 06:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I worked in accounts departments in the City of London for 25 years without ever hearing the word "dunning". We used to say "chaser" for a letter requesting payment, but that is a bit colloquial. Alansplodge (talk) 09:53, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

See here for my supposing that dunning might be more familiar in AE than BE. -- Deborahjay (talk) 10:02, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Caption, editorial cartoon from Nazi-occupied Serbia

View it here. Basically I need the word "ПOCЛA" in the main caption, as in "Jewish ..." – especially if it's idiomatic or ironic usage. (Caveat! Not sure I typed the fourth letter correctly, due to the stylized print and my only rudimentary knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet.) -- Thanks, Deborahjay (talk) 13:59, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Google Translate renders Јеврејска посла as "Jewish business". — Kpalion^(talk) 14:14, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

That's correct. "Posla" is plural of "posao"="job, business". When used in plural, it's ironic and means, how can I say, "Jewish ways" or "Jewish way to live", almost always in negative sense. No such user (talk) 15:09, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

On second thought, the most accurate translation would be "affairs". No such user (talk) 12:09, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

It's a bit of a pun - the several captions on the top are what seems like several different contemporary businesses, like "Gutman" and "Plavi Kamen" with a couple of nondescript captions thrown in, like "cement factory" or "leather cartel", which could be described as "posao", i.e. business undertaking. Then the main caption says "Jevrejska posla", literally "Hebrew (i.e. Jewish) affairs" - "posao" in this case has a strong negative connotation, so the meaning is close to "Jewish meddling" or something along that line. TomorrowTime (talk) 17:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, I ran the image through tineye.com and came up with a slightly better resolution color version of the poster: [4]. There is a whole bunch of Serbian WWII anti-semitic/anti-Communist posters in the thread where that came from: [http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?s=4fc1d48d3a777c9b0fddbbb6eb79924b&p=3453027] (beware, abundant Nazi propaganda in the link - it's a Stormfront forum thread) TomorrowTime (talk) 17:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

practice vs work

Why is it that when doctors and lawyers are performing their jobs they are said to practice, while the duties entailed in most other jobs is called work? Googlemeister (talk) 14:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Not only doctors and lawyers. Professionals are typically said to practise their professions. See practitioner. Also, from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

"practicing (adj.) is recorded from 1620s in reference to professions, from 1906 in reference to religions".

Profesionals are considered to be practised in their field. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 15:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

So then engineers and accountants practice as well? Googlemeister (talk) 16:27, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the implication is "following correct procedure." Thus "practice" is a locution used to highlight standards upheld. I think "practice" carries the implication of "well-rehearsed." This in turn would relate to the lengthy training (educational) period involved in professions. Bus stop (talk) 16:36, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Yep - if they are professionals, engineers and accountants practice in the US :) Zain Ebrahim (talk) 16:47, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Checking my Webster's, "practice" and its variants go back to Greek, and basically means "to carry out". That's opposed to "theory". So you study the theory (in school or wherever), then you practice it. That sense is the primary definition. Secondary is repetitive performance in order to "get it right", but it seems like the same overall idea - learning about doing vs. actually doing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Sapir-Whorf and Orwell

In the lingustic relativity article, there is a mention of Newspeak from Orwell's novel nineteen eighty-four, and how it related to linguistic determinism. I was wondering if anyone has heard of any further literature on this? 142.244.91.82 (talk) 19:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

My only contribution is pretty general: In case you haven't read it somehow, the Newspeak article is of course a good source; it has a number of related wikilinks at the bottom. Related is Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Not mentioned there is something Steven Pinker says in The Language Instinct: in real life, the Newspeak attempt would fail, because cases like creolization and the birth of Nicaraguan Sign Language show that when children are exposed to impoverished linguistic input, they don't grow up unable to think of things they don't have words for. Rather, they expand their language to include words for the things they can think of. As far as I know, virtually no linguists still believe the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. +Angr 20:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Virtually no linguists believe in a simplistic one-way deterministic broad-brush version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis ("the Hopis have no concept of the future", etc.), but studying culture-language interactions of a more subtle or complex kind isn't necessarily out of the mainstream... AnonMoos (talk) 21:48, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Angr, AnonMoos - what would you say the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis actually is? Linguistic relativity has a link to a fairly vituperative essay, The Great Whorf Hypothesis Hoax, arguing that such a thing never even existed. The fact that Wikipedia also has no article with the title "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" suggests - at least to me - that somebody on here must be of a similar mindset. I mean, if we're talking of articles about things that might not exist, we're allowed Greys, so why not Sapir-Whorf? Lfh (talk) 15:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

You can read the works of Whorf yourself (they're kind of interesting in their own way, and not all that technical), but the brief answer is that the rise of a popular interest in Whorf's works about 50 years ago ultimately led to a backlash among professional linguists, some of whom concluded that much of Whorf's work amounted to sweeping unjustified conclusions often based on shoddy primary linguistic data (the assertion that the Hopi have no real concept of the future as we understand it being one of the prime examples). Then the influential Berlin-Kay color terminology work started to swing the pendulum back a little -- but the new work was generally carefully classified under the rubric of "cultural linguistics" or similar, definitely not under "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis"... AnonMoos (talk) 16:27, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

If there isn't a specific statement or formula that can be identified as "the S-W hypothesis", perhaps the article should make it clearer that this term was only ever applied retroactively, to a general body of work, and that mostly of only one man; particularly in the absence of a dedicated article on the term "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis". Would you agree? Lfh (talk) 17:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm doing a research paper on Sapir-Whorf, and I would like to bring in a concrete example. I am having some issues really clearly describing it. Is 1984 a good example of this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.244.91.82 (talk) 20:41, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

See Genie (feral child). -- Wavelength (talk) 21:04, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

What does Genie have to do with linguistic relativity? Genie is usually cited as an example of the Critical Period Hypothesis. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:34, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

1984 is a good example of using Sapir-Whorf, assuming it is true. If you want a more modern issue revolving around it, research the Pirahã language. It is *very* controversial though, and you'll find few linguists who are convinced by the assertions that Daniel Everett makes. Steewi (talk) 23:36, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Other novels that embody the idea are The Languages of Pao, by Jack Vance, Babel 17 by Samuel R Delany, and Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin. The last is written by a linguist, and the way in which the language changes the society is left vague (to a degree which undermines the novel, in my opinion - but I suspect that she could not have brought herself to write the simple-minded Sapir-Whorfianism of the other books). The Delany takes the idea to an almost mystical level. --ColinFine (talk) 00:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Foreign language names of school districts

The following names of Fairfax County Public Schools are needed to be placed in text on here: * Arabic: http://www.fcps.edu/otherlanguages/arabic.htm * Chinese: http://www.fcps.edu/otherlanguages/chinese.htm

• • It may be 費郡公立學校 - Would anyone mind confirming if this has all of the characters of the district's name in Chinese?

Yes that's correct. 費郡 is an acceptable transliteration, albeit not 100% faithful. 費 is used here for Fairfax (2 syllables). 郡 = county. This is a common pratice. --Kvasir (talk) 22:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

• • • Thank you very much :) WhisperToMe (talk) 22:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
      • The only thing is--technically the terminology Fairfax County Public Schools, New York Public Schools, etc. etc. is synonymous with school district...would we want to establish a rule regarding translations of "XXX Public Schools" being the same as "XXX School District"?--达伟 (talk) 09:17, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
        • I guess it is up to the district - In terms of English names of school districts, XX Public Schools and XX School District roughly means the same thing, so a district with an English name XXX Public Schools can use a Chinese name that literally means XX School District. Anyhow, for Chinese names of school districts, I would use the Chinese name officially given by the said school district.
        • Also, would you mind checking the Chinese name at Commons:Category:School District of Philadelphia to make sure it matches the one at http://webgui.phila.k12.pa.us/offices/l/language/chinese/ ? WhisperToMe (talk) 10:46, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

The article name should be 费城教育局 (only 5 characters). As to your first question, 教育局 is more like "Board of Education", but it's an acceptable translations for "School District". I would probably translate "school district" as 校区/校區. Regardless, these are accepted translation used by the school and we'll have to respect that in our wiki article. --Kvasir (talk) 19:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much :) WhisperToMe (talk) 22:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

* Farsi: http://www.fcps.edu/otherlanguages/farsi.htm

• Korean: http://www.fcps.edu/otherlanguages/korean.htm

* Urdu: http://www.fcps.edu/otherlanguages/urdu.htm In all of those cases the text cannot be copied.

In addition, what is the name of the Long Beach Unified School District in Khmer? http://www.lbusd.k12.ca.us/Khmer/ has the name, but the text cannot be copied.

Add: Another one - the name of Montgomery County Public Schools in Korean (From http://web.archive.org/web/20071005091101/montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/personnel/docs/korean.pdf )

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 20:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The FCPS links have links to PDF documents from which text can be copied. Of course, you still have to be able to read the language in question well enough to recognize which bit says "Fairfax County Public Schools", which means I can't help you with any of these languages, but maybe someone else can. For the Khmer of the LBUSD, I can't read the text either, so I don't know which bit is relevant, but if someone else does, this is a link to a Khmer character picker that makes typing Khmer easy. +Angr 20:33, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if this is a normal feature of PDFs, but on three different computers, whenever I try to copy and paste Arabic/Persian/Urdu it comes out backwards. But in any case, the Arabic is "مدارس مقاطع فرفاكس الحكومة". I'll see if I can get the other two. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The Farsi is "مدارس ﻋﻤﻮﻣﯽ فيرفكس ﮐﺎﻧﺘﯽ" (that they spell "Fairfax" differently and "county" is transliterated...in case you're wondering). Adam Bishop (talk) 21:34, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Ugh, the Urdu is uncopyable, but it is an exact transliteration of "Fairfax County Public Schools", just like the Houston one. I'll have to copy individual letters from the Urdu alphabet article when I have more time. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's an Urdu character picker; it may go faster than copying letters one by one from the article. +Angr 21:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, too late, thanks though, that should be useful. The Urdu is "فيرفيکس کاونٹی پبلک اسکولز" (with another different spelling of Fairfax). Adam Bishop (talk) 22:04, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Adam, thank you very much for getting the Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu :) WhisperToMe (talk) 22:07, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Another question: http://webgui.phila.k12.pa.us/offices/l/language/arabic - Is Arabic: لدى إدارة مدارس فيلادلفيا Arabic for "School District of Philadelphia"? WhisperToMe (talk) 00:56, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Just Arabic: إدارة مدارس فيلادلفيا, yeah. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:35, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much :) WhisperToMe (talk) 10:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

While I'm trying to get help for the Korean, I found another Chinese name of a school district - this time it is the Alhambra Unified School District: http://www.alhambra.k12.ca.us/documents/EnrollEngSpan2010-2011.pdf (Page 5 of 15) - What is the Chinese name of the district? WhisperToMe (talk) 22:25, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

阿罕布拉聯合學區 --Kvasir (talk) 14:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Lemme start that category on the commons WhisperToMe (talk) 04:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

March 16

“T kofschip”-rule (Dutch grammar)

How did the dutch grammatical “t kofschip”-rule originate? Are there any known reasons for this? I have read the Wikipedia article, but want to know more about why this rule came into being. Trakorien (talk) 11:42, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

The spelling d or t comes from pronunciation. The 'rule' collects the letters that lead to a t spelling in a simple to remember Dutch word, kofschip or fokschaap. It's more an ezelsbruggetje (mnemomic) than a rule. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 12:19, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Martin.

See also Talk:'t kofschip for more info about the real rule and the mnemonic. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 12:27, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Martin.

Period and quotes

when you type quotes, does the period come before or after the quotes? 199.8.158.111 (talk) 13:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

In American English, the period comes before you close the quotes and in British English, as logic would dictate, the full stop goes after you close the quotes. See the fourth bullet at Differences_between_American_and_British_English#Punctuation. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 13:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

That's wrong. If the period is ending both the outer sentence and a complete sentence in the quotation, it's inside the quotes in British practice as well as American. (A fully "logical" style would require two periods, inside and outside, but nobody does that.) --Anonymous, 04:24 UTC, March 17, 2010.

My answer was incomplete but calling it wrong unconditionally is likely to mislead the questioner. In any case, they would have realised the actual British usage in the case you describe when they clicked on the link. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 14:24, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Russian Cyrillic

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2010_March_3#Russian_Runes

Some people confused that I was talking about the russian runes in the discussion preceding, but I was talking about the reforms about the cyrillic alphabet.

Let's give this a go again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.3.107.176 (talk) 14:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Could you please restate your question from scratch, because the original one did use the word "runes". Maybe the questioner was confused, not the respondents. Re-reading that thread, I'm confused as to what you're asking now. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:11, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't even see a question at all, much less understand what the questioner is trying to get at. I wouldn't say pre-reform Cyrillic was syllabic, nor that instances of it are scarce. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:28, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the second part of the original question was related with sentence "Attempted further simplifications in the early 1960s and late 1990s were met with public protest and were not implemented." I googled a bit and did not find any evidence of such proposals, so it would be better removed from the article, as it's unreferenced (well, just like the rest of the article); I'll mark it as such until a Russian speaker clarifies the situation. However, 174, this is really a question for the article's talk page. No such user (talk) 08:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's the question:

Attempted further simplifications in the early 1960s and late 1990s were met with public protest and were not implemented.

What were these proposals?174.3.101.191 (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Nobody here knows, apparently. Maybe someone responds at Talk:Reforms of Russian orthography#"Attempted further reforms". No such user (talk) 08:44, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

can you be very good at reading and writing a language

but cannot speak? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.217.109 (talk) 14:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. This is actually somewhat common for people who learned a language from books, rather than audio recordings or a native speaker. A number of languages (e.g. English) have non-trivial letter/glyph to phoneme matchings. Even for those with regular patterns, how they're matched may be different from what a non-native speaker is used to. For example, in Italian the pronunciation of the "gli" construction tends to give language learners issues - it's consistent once learned, but can be hard to understand unless you can hear someone say it. Some languages have sounds that might not have a direct correspondent in a learner's native language. For example, it may be all well and good to say that a particular vowel is pronounced as the œ in "bœuf" (an actual example from a dictionary pronunciation guide), but if you've never heard "bœuf" pronounced before, it can be difficult to match. Likewise instructions telling you that a sound is a voiceless palatal lateral fricative is not anywhere close to as helpful as listening to a native speaker pronounce it. For "dead" languages where all we have is the written form, historians may be adept with translations but may *never* know how they were pronounced, as we have lost the word->phoneme map that was implicit in the speakers' knowledge. -- 174.21.235.250 (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Forgot to add that even when one can learn pronunciation from a native speaker, it may be difficult or impossible to replicate it. The classic example is the difficulty native Japanese speakers have with /r/ and /l/ in English. The problem is there really aren't separate /r/ and /l/ phonemes in Japanese, the closest thing is a single one that's slightly between the two. Growing up speaking Japanese, the brain lumps all /r/ like and /l/ like sounds together under that phoneme, so transitioning to a language like English where they fall into distinct categories requires rewiring the sound processing and production centers in the brain, so that they can consistently distinguish and produce them as separate sounds. English speakers have similar problems transitioning to tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese. Native English speakers' brains aren't set up to distinguish between mā (high level tone) and mà (tone descending), and it may take some time to consistently recognize that these are very different words in Chinese. -- 174.21.235.250 (talk) 15:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

That works the other way around as well - I've met Anglophone people in Japan who could speak very good Japanese, but the Japanese sounded awkward because they just couldn't wrap their heads around the concept of the monophtong and they would automatically diphtognize everything. Nothing was wrong with their Japanese, other than that they couldn't pronounce it properly. Me, I'm having problems with spoken German - I learned German as a kid in school and from watching hours upon hours of German satellite programs, but I never really had the chance to practice everyday conversation, so I can understand German perfectly, but I have difficulties forming anything above the most simple sentences. I think if I went and lived in a German speaking country for a while I'd probably be able to overcome this in a month or two, but as it is right now, I understand German, yet cannot speak it properly. TomorrowTime (talk) 17:56, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm OK at reading and writing Spanish, poor at speaking, and almost useless at understanding the spoken language. (I think, in part, this was because I studied the language in high school, in an area where there were virtually no native speakers, including the teachers. The spoken materials I listened to were all "teaching aids" where the speakers spoke very clearly and carefully, compared to ordinary people. And of course the words they used were restricted to those we had studied, etc.) -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Nowadays, Latin is more often written and read than spoken or heard, but you can hear it spoken at YLE Radio 1 - Nuntii Latini.

-- Wavelength (talk) 17:04, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

This is my problem with all languages. I don't even speak English very well and it's my native language! I can read French, and I can even understand it when spoken, but I can't speak it. There is a French bookstore in Toronto, and when I went there I knew what they were saying, but just smiled like a moron because I couldn't respond. I also know people who have learned to speak Latin, but I find it impossible to follow along. What's the point? Adam Bishop (talk) 17:29, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

My experience with many business people from Japan is that they have studied English in school for many years, but they did not practice spoken English, which matches the question you pose pretty exactly. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

To answer a trivial aspect of the original question: Yes, for example, a number of deaf people are excellent at reading and writing English without being able to "speak" a single word of it. Gabbe (talk) 19:16, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A part of my job is to give my clients (job seekers) a questionnaire that helps to ensure they get the best support. Part of it is about their abilities in reading, writing and speaking English. Each of these 3 questions has a range of answers, from Very Well to Not at All. Typically, all 3 answers are the same, but they need not be. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I knew an American professor of Chinese history who starting his studies in the 1950s. He didn't think he'd ever be able to go to China, so he didn't bother to learn to speak the language, just read and write (extremely well). In the late 1970s, he finally got to go to China, and his contacts were astonished that he couldn't speak a word of Chinese. DOR (HK) (talk) 09:07, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Chinese has mutually unintelligible spoken dialects that are all written the same way, so I think you could be a native speaker from Beijing and not be able to understand anyone from Guangdong. There's similar issues (less severe) with other languages. I can understand (some) French as spoken by French people but not by French Canadians. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 05:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

"all written the same way" is an overstatement. Our article Written Chinese says in part "This version of written Chinese is called Vernacular Chinese ... Vernacular Chinese also permits some communication between people of different dialects, limited by the fact that Vernacular Chinese expressions are often ungrammatical or unidiomatic in non-Mandarin dialects". (This clarification does not invalidate the point being made, however) --ColinFine (talk) 08:37, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

What the hell?!?!

How the hell does a construction like "what the hell" make sense? I can understand "what on earth", but why why why has the "on" apparently transmogrified into a "the" in many expressions?

Aaadddaaammm (talk) 17:07, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

"What the hell" is short for "What in the hell", which is analogous to "What in the world..." Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:52, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A common albeit coarser variant is "what the fuck", which can't be explained by reference to a place. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:59, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

@ Tuttle: actually, I think it's short for "what in the name of hell", a reversal of "what in the name of God". could be wrong, though. --Ludwigs2 19:07, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, "for hell's sake". The "F" terms were probably derived from all the "H" stuff, when "H" was no longer "strong enough". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:12, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, the "heck" terms, in the other direction. --Tango (talk) 23:33, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any references for those claims, Tuttle and Ludwigs? The OED (s.v. "Hell", P4.d.) does not give a specific etymology for the phrase, and gives "in" as an alternative to "the", but its oldest citation (1785) is of "what the hell", and it doesn't list an example of "what in hell" before 1874 - which suggests to me that "what in hell" is an emendation by people trying to make sense of an opaque expression, rather than the other way round. Also notice that the parallel "what the devil" can hardly be "what in (the) devil", though it could be "what in the devil's name" I suppose.

There are other grammatically obscure uses of 'hell' and other expletives. The same OED article gives "the hell with" (again, recorded much earlier than "to hell with"); "does it hell!" "get the hell out of" (in this case the more readily explicable "get to hell out of" is recorded earlier); and "hell-for-leather"--ColinFine (talk) 23:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

It's the only explanation that makes sense to me. It's called an "oath" when you use a religious term in this way, and swearing by the name of the devil or hell simply adds more invective to the exclamation. "What in God's name", "what in the name of hell," etc. are all oaths cut from the same cloth, though much abbreviated when used simply as expletives. Paul Davidson (talk) 09:29, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It may make sense to you. But the annals of etymythology are crowded with explanations which "made sense" to people but are nevertheless wrong. In the absence of evidence, and given that the OED records "what the hell" nearly a century earlier than "what in hell", your explanation has little weight. You might be right, but without proof, I would not accept that. --ColinFine (talk) 18:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"Te voy a llevar a un pinche vaile!"

Moved from the Science Desk, Nimur (talk) 18:23, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

what does "Te voy a llevar a un pinche vaile!" mean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.246.254.35 (talk) 17:35, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

"Te voy a llevar a un pinche Baile!" is a Spanish sentence and means, more or less, "I'll take you to a goddamned ball(dance)". Note that in Spanish V and B have usually the same pronunciation. --151.51.62.111 (talk) 23:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Here's some word history, from various dictionaries: The normal use of pinche is "prick", i.e. a puncture or pin-prick. It would seem to be a cognate of the English "pinch", which my dentist uses in reference to the sensation of a novocaine injection, but "pinch" actually has a different term in Spanish, pellizco (from pellizcar, "to pinch"). The usage of pinche as in "damned" is an Americano slang term, origin not stated, but maybe someone equated being cursed with being punctured??? In any case, the sentence does translate roughly as "You I am going to take to a cursed dance/ball!" The Spanish verb for "to dance" is bailar (as in Para bailar la bamba...). The English terms "ball" and "ballet" (as well as "ballad") come from Old French baller, "to dance". French still uses bal for "ball" (a social event centered on dancing), and ballet of course refers to a specific type of dance. The verb now used for the more general "to dance" in French is danser, from Old French dancier, and baller seems to be obsolete in French. In Italian the verb forms are ballare and danzare. Late Latin also has ballare, which is from Greek ballizein. The classic Latin term for "to dance" is saltare, whose Spanish descendant is saltar, "to jump" or "to leap", which is also one usage of "to dance" in English. The English "sally" as a verb meaning "to rush forward", comes from Latin salire, "to leap". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Is the expression to be taken literally, or does it have a colloquial meaning not obvious to those of us outside its cultural context (like, say, "We're going to make love" or "I'm going to beat the shit out of you")? 87.81.230.195 (talk) 17:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

There are very few google references to that entire expression, be it with a V or a B. So it would probably take a native Spanish speaker - maybe at the Spanish wikipedia ref desk? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Vaile is clearly a typo for baile. The suggestion on a bloody/dammed good meaning seems quite reasonable to me, though I must say that in my country the idiom pinche... is not used. We would go for Te voy a llevar a un baile de la hostia, or something like that. Maybe a Mexican fellow wikipedian can confirm/correct what has been said so far. Pallida  Mors 14:31, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Living in Grand Central Station

What is the meaning of the simile "like living in Grand Central Station?" It is used by Beyoncé in the song Telephone. Arickp (talk) 21:20, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A common jab, perhaps mildly accurate, is that the New York City Subway is "home" to many of New York's homeless population. This New York City Dept. of Homeless Services Report encountered some 220 homeless individuals (12% of the surveyed population) living in the subway. Nimur (talk) 21:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I don't know the song, but the phrase generally means living somewhere very busy, where people are always coming and going. It has variations...I might as well be living in a bus station; this place is like an airport terminal. Gwinva (talk) 22:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Concur: the traditional British equivalent is ". . . Piccadilly Circus." 87.81.230.195 (talk) 00:11, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

There should be an article cataloguing the national varieties of this expression. In New South Wales, the comparison is usually made with Pitt Street, Sydney. In Victoria, it's more like Collins Street, Melbourne, but it doesn't seem to be as often-used an expression as the Pitt St one (maybe that's because I learned my English from Sydney-born parents). Other Australian states no doubt have their stock expressions. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Without knowing the context, either of the above could have been correct. I googled [telephone "lady gaga" "grand central station"] and several lyrics sites popped up. The context is, "I am sick and tired of my phone ringing / Sometimes I feel like I live in Grand Central Station / Tonight I'm not taking no calls / 'Cause I'll be dancin'..." That indicates that Gwinva has the right answer. It's a common joke, in the US at least, that if the phone has been ringing frequently, someone will finally pick it up and say, "Grand Central Station!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:26, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

In the New York area, it just means a very busy place with lots of people and/or noise...For example if a large number of people crowd into a room for a party, someone might say something to the effect of "What is this, Grand Central or something," or "I can't hear a word, it's like Grand Central Station in here"--达伟 (talk) 01:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, same idea - a place that's very busy, in particular maybe a little too busy for the one using that expression. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Forget the subway. The expression is about the railway station whose official name is Grand Central Terminal (or maybe before that, a predecessor "Grand Central" station on the same site -- see Grand Central Terminal#History). Today Grand Central this is a terminus for commuter/suburban trains only, but it can still get very busy at times. But at one time it was one of the city's major gateways for long-distance travelers as well, when it was also used for long-distance trains and those were a primary means of travel. In other words, it had a role like a major airport today, but all in one building. --Anonymous, edited 04:40 UTC, March 17, 2010.

Some time in the 1970s, Amtrak began closing Grand Central Terminal for a few hours each evening (from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. or so). Until that time, it had been open round the clock. Railroad police discovered three or four dozen people who'd been living in the place. Few of them would have been as attractive as Beyonce. --- OtherDave (talk) 02:11, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

"Grand central station" is a metaphor for a relative absence of restriction on the flow of people into and out of the indoor space referred to thusly. Bus stop (talk) 02:26, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

What Wikipedia projects have well-established standards for language-specific transliteration?

I am trying to find out what languages used on the English Wikipedia for article content have relatively well-defined standards for how to use language-specific transliteration schemes (not IPA) in articles. Within the Hindu and India category there are a variety of opinions on best practices. I want to see how various languages that require transliteration do it on the English Wikipedia. By "language-specific transliteration" I mean standardized ways of using diacritical marks with the English alphabet in order to show a range of sounds not present in English. The objection to using transliteration is that people who don't know the system are confused by diacritical marks. The benefit is that people who understand them will see more accurate rendering of language. Buddhipriya (talk) 23:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I found Wikipedia:Romanization, but it does not list any languages from India. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Manual of Style (India-related articles), marked as inactive. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestions, the Romanization article is very helpful. I am pretty familiar with the issues for the India-related articles, and you are correct that the effort to standardize there is at a dead end. I am trying to see how other languages that need diacritcal marks handle them, but I am too ignorant to know which languages those may be. Chinese? Greek? Plataplavian? Buddhipriya (talk) 00:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

You might find something useful in these pages (not all of them active).

• Diacritic
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)#Modified letters
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (France & French-related)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Iceland-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Ireland-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Kosovo-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Macedonia)/historical
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Philippine-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Portuguese-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Singapore-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (United Kingdom-related articles)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (national varieties of English)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling)

Also, you might wish to post your question at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject India and its talk page. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

What is Plataplavian?174.3.107.176 (talk) 03:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Excellent suggestions all, keep them coming. I am adding all your suggestions to a list that I am compiling for my own use. Regarding the languages of India, I have been trying to keep track of this issue for some time on a user note page of my own at [[5]]. That page has absolutely no value as a guideline, it is just my own set of notes on Indic issues. Any further ideas on languages that require diacritical marks are welcome. Plataplavian is a word that I made up because it sounded to me like a language that would require diacritics, sorry if someone has been researching it in vain. :) Buddhipriya (talk) 03:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Arabic can be transliterated with various diacritical marks. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Arabic) and Romanization of Arabic have more info. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

You can search in Category:WikiProjects and Category:Wikipedia style guidelines and Category:General style guidelines.

-- Wavelength (talk) 04:27, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

See also Phonetic Comparison Algorithm for Indian Languages – Santhosh Thottingal

and Kamat's Potpourri:The Trouble With Indian Names. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:02, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The following link is not directly related to your question, but it has some relevance. I am mentioning it, not for the Roman transliterations which it uses, but for the interrelationships between the four alphabets shown. Possibly, this website is helpful for your work, if that involves several different languages.

• Indian alphabet comparison page (Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, and Gujarati)

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:12, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:CHINESE has standards for Chinese romanization. Keep in mind that "transcription" doesn't necessarily mean diacritics; many languages can be transcribed in the Latin alphabet with no diacritics at all. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:29, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again to all of you for such great links. If any of you want to post additional ideas or just see the summary so far, feel free to edit my work page for this project: User:Buddhipriya/LanguageTransliterationStyleGuides. Buddhipriya (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

March 17

Mortar

Mortar means 3 disparate things. Is there any reason for these etymology?174.3.107.176 (talk) 01:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

As Mortar (weapon) explains, the weapon was so named because of its resemblance to the vessel for grinding. As Mortar and pestle explains, Latin mortarium meant both "receptacle for pounding" and "product of grinding or pounding"; the latter meaning explains the word for the building material. Deor (talk) 02:05, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Grandad

Wiktionary states that grandad is a common misspelling of Granddad, however it seems to be the preferred form (to me) in BrEng for that word. The OED shows that both forms have been known since the 1800s, so - is this another of those AmEng/BrEng differences or is this really a (very very) common mistake? Nanonic (talk) 02:06, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Caveats about linguistic prescriptivism in general aside, both spellings seem to be "right": The Free Dictionary, MW, Collins, OED, etc. Even though I sometimes edit there, I've always found Wiktionary a bit iffy to go by as a usage guide. I suspect this issue arises from the idea both the "grand" and "dad" elements of that word must be reflected in its spelling or something. -- the Great Gavini 07:13, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Defining a term/phrase

Hello there,

I have tried to look up this prase/term but did not get a speciic definition out of it via google and other sites either.

So i thought i might try the always handy 'wikipedia' (which i love using), but it seems that it is not there too.

So my question is: What does "ex aut oritate " mean?

Thank you for your time

Christina M —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.171.197.178 (talk) 13:09, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

It should be "ex autoritate", or "ex auctoritate", a Latin expression meaning "on someone's authority". For example:" tametsi non scriptos, ex autoritate Apostolica observari oportere" ("even if they are not written, ought to be observed on Apostolic authority"). --151.51.62.111 (talk) 13:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

French pronunciation

I've only actually seen the phrase "l'enfer c'est les autres" in print, and I'm kicking myself over not being sure of the pronunciation. Specifically, I'm trying to remember whether the final "s" consonants in "les" or "autres" are silent and what the rule is. Most of the French pronunciation I've had experience with is in vocal music, I don't speak the language (though I can sometimes figure it out since I know another Romance language). SDY (talk) 16:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The "s" is "les" is normally silent, but it is pronounced before a vowel as here; it is silent in "autres". I'd say [lɑ̃fɛʁ sɛlezotʁ].—Emil J. 16:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

See the use of liaison in French. --Kvasir (talk) 16:42, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Gaelic language

How do you say in Gaelic "Till we meet again my friend" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Artstonegardens (talk • contribs) 17:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Irish Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic or even Manx? I'm guessing Irish, since it's St. Patrick's Day. --Kvasir (talk) 22:44, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

In the Irish language, it's the simple, common phrase, "Slán go fóill, mo chara" - Alison ^❤ 03:52, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Autist

Is an autistic person called an autist? The Hero of This Nation (talk) 19:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

wikt:autist says they are. --Tango (talk) 19:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The word "Autist", with a capital "A", is used at Autist. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Are there any more authoritative sources for the legitimacy of the term than a dictionary anyone can edit and a personal web page? I would sure love to start using the word more throughout Wikipedia if it is legitimate. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 13:32, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

reference.com is a good place for looking up words, and lists "autist" as a related form under "autism"[6]. --Normansmithy (talk) 14:14, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

My Google search for "site:.edu autist" (without the quotation marks) found 193 web pages, including Sacks, Oliver : The Autist Artist. Wikipedia has an article about Oliver Sacks. You can perform the same search to find other web pages in the .edu domain. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:21, 18 March 2010 (UTC) My Google search for "site:.gov autist" (without the quotation marks) found 25 web pages, including http://kiev.usembassy.gov/files/visnyk_37.pdf, where the word "autist" is used in a heading on page 25. You can perform the same search to find other web pages in the .gov domain. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

You may also want to check non-US sites, for example the equivalent top-level domains in the UK are .ac.uk and .gov.uk. --Tango (talk) 16:09, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

My Google search for "site:.ac.uk autist" (without the quotation marks) found 39 web pages, including http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/reviews/Ayer.htm, which uses the word "autist" twice. (The title bar incorrectly hyphenates the expression "beautifully written". -- see User:Wavelength/About English/Punctuation/Hyphens and adverbs.) My Google search for "site:.gov.uk autist" (without the quotation marks) found 18 web pages, including Events Diary, which uses the word "autist" in reference to Temple Grandin. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC) My Google search for "site:.ac.au autist" (without the quotation marks) found no web pages. My Google search for "site:.gov.au autist" (without the quotation marks) found 53 web pages, including Screen Australia - Former AFC -AustralianFilmsAndAwards - Features 2005, which mentions twice the film Autist. My Google search for "site:.ca autist" (without the quotation marks) found 80 web pages, including http://www.ont-autism.uoguelph.ca/pdf/AAIWW12.PDF, which has the heading "Messages From An Autist" on page 4. My Google search for "site:.nz autist" (without the quotation marks) found 36 web pages, including EnfantsTerribles (by Dr Anne Ruth Mackor), which mentions "Normally intelligent autists" (I removed the spurious hyphen, because I do not want it to influence anyone reading my comments) and "the well-known autist Temple Grandin". My Google search for "site:.int autist" (without the quotation marks) found 2 web pages, including this one, which quotes the expression "a political autist". My Google search for "site:.info autist" (without the quotation marks) found 766 web pages, including autist :: Information about autist :: FindTheWord.info -- Crossword Help - Crossword Solver - English Dictionary - Crossword Dictionary. My Google search for "site:.net autist" (without the quotation marks) found 14,000 web pages, including the scholarly page Critical Phronesis (dated January 19, 2010), which uses the word "autists" several times. My Google search for "site:.org autist" (without the quotation marks) found 5,340 web pages, including Autism Spectrum / Asperger Syndrome and International Exchange — Mobility International USA - MIUSA, which mentions "Autist Mary-Minn " and "Autist Jane Meyerding". -- Wavelength (talk) 20:10, 18 March 2010 (UTC) My Google search for "site:.com autist" (without the quotation marks) found 531,000 web pages, including Access : The autist aesthete : Nature Physics, a web page inviting a visitor to register for a free subscription. My Google search for "site:.biz autist" (without the quotation marks) found 48 web pages, including nothing I found worthy of mention. My Google search for "site:.pro autist" (without the quotation marks) found 2 web pages, including The Speed of Dark | Nick.pro, where the first reviewer, Julia Noble, uses the word "autist" in her first paragraph. My Google search for "site:.travel autist" (without the quotation marks) found 2 web pages, including Aspen Travel & City Value Guide to Great Aspen Deals, which refers to "Dr Temple Grandin, recovered autist". -- Wavelength (talk) 00:14, 19 March 2010 (UTC) My Google Scholar search for "autist OR autist, OR autists" (without the quotation marks) found "about 1,430" pages, including SpringerLink - Journal Article, where the article is titled "Disordered recognition of facial identity and emotions in three Asperger type autists". My Google News search for "autist OR autist, OR autists" (without the quotation marks) found "about 53" pages, including How Do You Describe the Autism Spectrum?, where "autists" occurs twice and "an autist" once. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:56, 19 March 2010 (UTC) Definitions of autist - OneLook Dictionary Search has a link to Autist | Define Autist at Dictionary.com. My Google search for "define:autist" (without the quotation marks) found 2 web pages (one in Wikipedia and one in Wiktionary). -- Wavelength (talk) 05:29, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

It appears to me from the preceding information that you have a valid basis for using the word "autist" in Wikipedia articles. If you save a link to this discussion after it has been archived, then you can refer to it if anyone challenges your use of the word. (By the way, you may wish to see List of Internet top-level domains.) -- Wavelength (talk) 14:35, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

http://google.com/books?q=autist shows lots of use, too.—msh210℠ 18:10, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Ruthenian

Ruthenian was the main chancellery languages of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and an official chancellery language of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1697 when it was replaced by Polish. At this page: [7] you can find the list of the rulers of these two countries. Looking at their pages, I found that only Sigismund II Augustus has his name translated also into Ruthenian (Żygimont III Awgust I). All the other have only a translation into Polish and Lithuanian (and sometimes in German and Belarussian too). Does anybody know their names in Ruthenian? I'm seeking expecially for the names from Sigismund Kęstutaitis (1432–1440) to John III Sobieski (1674–1696).--151.51.62.111 (talk) 22:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The accurate Ruthenian forms of those names might require library or even archival research. The form that you have for Sigismund II Augustus seems to be a romanized form using Polish spelling, whereas Ruthenian was written in Cyrillic script. The Cyrillic form for this would be Жыгімонт III Aвгyст I or Жыгимонт III Aвгyст I . Marco polo (talk) 20:37, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

March 18

Cross-Purposes

What is the etymology of cross purposes?174.3.98.20 (talk) 03:57, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It is just a case of the adjective "cross" being used in a sense that is now rare, except in this particular phrase. From the OED: "contrary, opposite, opposed (to each other, or to something specified). (Now rarely predicative.)"--Rallette (talk) 08:25, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Virtually the opposite meaning of "cross" in 'cross-reference', which connects 2 things rather than separates them. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not that rare: compare "cross traffic", "cross talk". --Normansmithy (talk) 14:16, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

And don't forget crossing swords (what, no article ?). :-) StuRat (talk) 16:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's your article:-) I'd do it for fore play tho.174.3.98.20 (talk) 20:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

All forms derive from the Latin crux, and most all the ideas involve two lines crossing, as with the letter "X", which is often used as a symbol for the word "cross". Given that shape, it can imply opposites or interference, as with cross purposes, crossed swords, cross talk. It can also imply intersection, as with cross reference and a genetic cross. Cross traffic and a railroad crossing are a bit of both. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:21, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Along those lines, the ancient Sumerian cuneiform sign originally meaning either "stranger or enemy" originally had the shape of two diagonally crossed lines (a saltire). AnonMoos (talk) 02:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Now there's "cross post" (as in "Please do not cross post to different ref desks"). I see that one as a redundant use of "cross"; take it out of the sentence and you've lost none of the meaning. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. To post to a different desk sounds like it means to move a post, which is fine. The term "cross post" means to post the same Q on 2 or more Desks at once. StuRat (talk) 03:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

hmmmm... where does that leave cross-dressers? should we take that to mean priests? --Ludwigs2 02:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Men who dress like women. An intersection. Although the Latin roughly-equivalent "transvestite" employs the Latin trans ("across" or "through"), as the Romans themselves evidently didn't use crux that way in general. That's more of an English idiom, and we also use "crux" to mean a key point or a "crossing" in a dilemma or other puzzling situation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:07, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

That's a heritage of Usenet, and I'd argue that it's used here incorrectly. In original usage, "crossposting" refers to post to multiple groups/forums simultaneously, i.e. the same instance of the thread simultaneously appears in different groups (forums). That is in contrast to "multipost", meaning that you send distinct copies of the message in each group, and subsequent discussions are independent of each other. With those definitions in place, we're actually talking about "multiposting" here. One can actually crosspost a message to multiple Wikipedia reference desks only if he takes care to create a separate page for it, and transclude it into desk pages. No such user (talk) 08:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

acb

wp:acb redirects to wp:bp. What does "acb" mean?174.3.98.20 (talk) 14:42, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

"Account-creation block" would be my guess, considering the specific section of WP:BP that WP:ACB redirects to. Deor (talk) 14:52, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Charles The Fat

The 1st foot note mentions girth. Is this the thickness of his penis, the length of his penis, or his weight?174.3.98.20 (talk) 19:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

His weight. —Akrabbim^talk 19:55, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

"Girth" in general refers to the distance around a belly, so it is related to weight, but it is not the same thing as weight. It is more often used about animals than people, but when it is used for people, it usually means the person is bigger around than the norm for his/her height. I have never heard "girth" in reference to a skinny person or even one of average size. Bielle (talk) 01:27, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Is this kind of like Gresham's law where sexual usages drive out neutral usages? In the US, girth is probably used with reference to the male organ much more than for other purposes --达伟 (talk) 08:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

See Girth and Girth. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I not convinced that "penis girth" comes up, as it were, much in conversation. It would seem to be an internet phenomenon and only in written form. The only group to whom "penis girth" could be of consuming conversational interest is likely to be teenaged boys, but I still doubt they use "girth" in the "mine is bigger than yours" taunting. However, being long past teenage years, and never having been a boy, my knowledge of their vocabulary may well be incomplete. (It strikes me a mildly amusing that a word that nomally tends one to think of things of circumference measured in meters/yards should be used in marketing for so small a matter as a penis. "The girth of my penis is X inches/centimeters" just sounds silly.) With respect to the question we are answering, however, belly circumference is the likely answer. Bielle (talk) 16:37, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

While the members of the various Girth and Mirth clubs are likely also be interested in comparative penis size, the "girth" of their title does refer rather to belly circumference. +Angr 17:01, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Etymology

What is the etymology of "water under the bridge"?174.3.98.20 (talk) 20:08, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I used my Google-fu and googled "water under the bridge" definition and there are many explanations. The fourth link opines: "It means that something is in the past and no longer important. My sister and I fought when we were children, but that's water under the bridge. I think the analogy is that water under the bridge is constantly moving toward the sea. That's a little abstract, so you might also imagine dropping a leaf into the water from atop a bridge. By watching the leaf float down river you'd be witnessing the progress of the water." Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I would think this term would come from a flood, which could knock down a bridge. On the other hand, the water that's already passed is "water under the bridge", meaning nothing to worry about anymore. StuRat (talk) 03:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Or nothing you can do anything about. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that's the meaning of it, Bugs. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 04:41, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Nothing to worry about anymore; nothing you can do anything about anymore. Pretty much the same idea. Or "It's in the past and can't be changed". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The OED lumps the expression in with "various similative and figurative phrases, many of which are of biblical origin." It gives examples of these "various" phrases going back to the Blickling Homilies, but the first "water under the bridge/over the dam/under the mill/over the dyke" example cited is from Wireless World, 1913: "Much water has flowed under London Bridge since those days," this apparently drifting to Kipling, 1914: "Your articles..are a little too remote..but of course{em}much water, or shall we say much blood, has flowed under the bridges since they were written." Neither of these really implies the 'nothing to be done/worry about' meaning of the expression; the first citation that seems to carry that meaning in the OED is from a 1940 Nation article: "Last year's results are water under the mill." By C.S. Forester's Good Shepard," 1955, the 'nothing to be done' meaning is clearly there: "He should not have brought the men to battle stations at all... But that was water over the dam; no time for regrets at present." Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 13:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"dirty laundry"

What is the etymology and meaning of "put up one's dirty laundry" or "put up (insert name here)'s dirty laundry"?174.3.98.20 (talk) 20:44, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Others can help with the origin of the phrase, but I know the meaning: It means to air one's private grievances or arguments in public. A husband and wife at the supermarket openly arguing about their marital problems would be "airing their dirty laundry". Related is the song Dirty Laundry. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:47, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I would expect that the source of this is all the personal things you can determine by looking at a family's dirty laundry: "Looks like Johnny's bed wetting is back, and Mom's on the rag again, and what's that ? Is someone doing some anal sex ?". StuRat (talk) 03:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I remember back when I was a teenager and just starting to have sex I accidentally left a condom in my pants pocket, and my mother wandered (dare I say snuck) into my room while I was sleeping to collect laundry. she was actually fairly cool about it - she got my little brother to pretend as though he had found it. like I would really believe my little brother would be doing the laundry at 8:00 am; but I pretended and bribed him to keep quiet about it so that he could pretend that he wasn't going to tell my ma, so that she could pretend that...

and they say relationships are built on trust.

I suspect it's just that - certain stains you don't want to be seen cleaning down at the river bank; don't want to bring those out into the open air if you can help it, because everybody knows what caused them. --Ludwigs2 03:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I do not think the phrase has an origin in literal dirty laundry. Dirty laundry is simply something one doesn't wear because it is presumably soiled beyond wearability. Airing one's dirty laundry is resurrecting what has been retired from one's wardrobe due to defect. I don't have familiarity with it being used as the OP is using it. I generally hear of "airing one's dirty laundry," or "airing one's dirty laundry in public." All that is being referred to, in my opinion, is the impropriety of that general thing which is to be kept from public sight, inappropriately on full view. But real dirty laundry is unsightly, and the reference works that way too, I guess. Bus stop (talk) 03:54, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Then why wouldn't it be "wearing dirty laundry" instead of "airing" ? StuRat (talk) 03:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I can only guess. Because wearing brings up a visual reference. Airing, by contrast, relates to wind which in turn bears a relation to speech. Bus stop (talk) 04:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

the second definition of 'air' in my dictionary it 'to express a public opinion' - it probably relates to the way speech is carried by the air. thus 'airing dirty laundry' probably means 'talking about hidden dirty stuff in public'. --Ludwigs2 04:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

To "air" something is to bring it out "into the open air", be it laundry, a public opinion, or a radio or TV broadcast. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:50, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm guessing too, but I suggest it's because when you air a garment you leave it in one place for a period of time, fully exposed and unattended, so anyone could happen by and see it. In a sense it's more visible than if you were just wearing it. --Anonymous, 07:23 UTC, March 19, 2010.

Too old a reference for many of you young'uns! In ancient times, after doing the wash in your wash tub, you would hang the newly clean stuff on a clothes line outdoors (during warm weather at least) to let it air-dry. Airing clean laundry was standard procedure. Airing dirty laundry would not be; it would be putting "too much information" out in the open. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Still a commonplace practice in the UK and Europe. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:56, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

OED notes the expressions "to wash one's dirty linen at home," and "to wash one's dirty linen in public,' meaning either to or not to "discuss an essentially private matter, esp. a dispute or scandal, in public." The first example it gives is Trollope's Last Chronicle of Barset (1867): "There is nothing..so bad as washing one's dirty linen in public." Merriam Webster's Online dates "dirty laundry" in the sense above to 1967, but doesn't provide a source. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 13:27, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

See Image of local women busy doing their laundry. This photo was taken on the border of Ghana and Togo (West Africa).

-- Wavelength (talk) 14:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

See Laundry in the river, in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:49, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems that the usage has evolved from merely washing laundry in public, to hanging it on the line where everyone can see it. In addition to the time-honored "hush, the neighbors will hear", the modern equivalent is people talking on cellphones in a public place, about all manner of private things, seemingly unaware (or uncaring) that they can be heard. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:48, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

There are a lot of implications. Dirty laundry is produced by all of us. Thus the emphasis is not in producing something but in the fact of it being proper to keep some things from public view. Bus stop (talk) 17:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

2 queries

What is "ekhm" and "red spots":[8]?

Why does he need to get "some serifs!"? What is a "server-fu" and its etymology:[9]?174.3.98.20 (talk) 21:16, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

All of the comments you are referring to are "jocular", and not Serious, like most of the Reference Desk. Sorry about that. TomorrowTime's "ekhm" appears to be the same as "ahem", used to mean "The following word is what they call themselves, but I disbelieve their use of the term". The "red spots" reference means "they would become extremely angry" or "they would be incredulous at this". The "serifs" reference is obscure; I believe the poster was referring to the fact that Apple Computer generally called their computer the "Apple ][" rather than the "Apple II"; the "]" and "[" characters have serifs, whereas "II" does not have serifs. Adding "-fu" to anything is a Silicon Valley or geek term deriving from "kung-fu". I have most often seen it on these pages in the term "Google-fu", meaning "my ability to use Google"; "my Google-fu is weak today" means "I have been unable to find what I am seeking using the Google search engine. I humbly admit that my skills at using Google are poor today." The "-fu" suffix is supposed to give an aura of mysticism. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The 'serif' comment was in response to my (true but probably unhelpful) remark that I read the question as about 'lle' (with two lower-case letters 'l'), which I happen to know is the Welsh for 'place', and only realised when I saw other replies that the word had two upper-case letters 'i'. In a serif font these would be distinct, but in a sans-serif font they are easily distinguishedconfused.

As Tuttle says, I was using 'server-fu' to mean "obscure and clever knowledge of what you can do with a [web] server", because I had just realised that the redirects to cy.wiktionary.org don't happen in Wikipedia when you send them, but in the web server Wikipedia uses when it receives them. --ColinFine (talk) 23:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I have stricken my claim about the Apple ][. I have out-nerded you, ColinFine. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:18, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Colin, you mean that lower-case L (l) and upper-case i (I) are not easily distinguished in a sans-serif font. (Except for Verdana, the font I read Wikipedia in, which is generally sans-serif but makes an exception for upper-case i, giving it serifs exactly in order to avoid confusion like yours.) +Angr 17:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC) True. Corrected above ColinFine (talk) 18:54, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Some sans-serif fonts put a little curl at the bottom of the lower-case L; Trebuchet MS for example. Alansplodge (talk) 18:16, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The "-fu" suffix ultimately comes from the newspaper columns of Joe Bob Briggs... AnonMoos (talk) 01:59, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

的， 地， and 得

Hello all. I'm leanring Chinese, and there's a test next week. I'm having trouble with the difference between 的， 地， and 得. The meanings 地=earth and 得=earn I have no problem, but when they're used to join parts of a sentence I do have a problem. Could someone explain how I know when to use each? I especially need help when the following phrase is a compound construction, not a single noun, verb, etc. Thanks! --Richard —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.229.192.107 (talk) 23:12, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

• 的 is used as a possessive or in a relative clause: 我的车，我的衣服， etc.
• 得 is used to add an adverb (description of the action), when that adverb is the main idea of the sentence: 我说中文说得很好 "I speak Chinese well!". It is used after the verb.
• 地 is used to add an adverb when that adverb is just an extra detail, i.e. when you could remove it and wouldn't change the meaning of the sentence: 他很快地跑到市场 "he quickly ran to the store" (compare to 他跑得快 "he runs quickly"). It is used before the verb.

rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Rjanag. To be simplistic, the constructions are:

Noun/adjective - 的 - Noun

Verb - 得 - adverb/(adjective)

Adverb/(adjective) - 地 - verb --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:18, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I remember this from awhile ago: http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/tsongkit/notes/dik_dei_dak.html (unfortunately it's in traditional character and given in Cantonese pronunciation.) I'm surprise to see I'm one of the contributors there, I've almost forgotten about I helped out on this. :) --Kvasir (talk) 04:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's one with all 3 in it: 他洗的衣服很快地變得乾乾淨淨。

Of course there are idiomatic expressions like this: 他說的是。(what) he says (is) right. -> He is right. --Kvasir (talk) 05:17, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

(That, however, is still a relative clause: literally "[what he says] is".) rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:28, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

My favorite short-hand is that 的 is like 's . DOR (HK) (talk) 07:18, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

March 19

Did or do

In the line "Did you know", why there is not 'do'? --Extra999 (Contact ^me) 10:35, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"Did you know?" is the interrogative form of "You knew", while "Do you know?" is the interrogative form of "You know". One is past, the other present. AnonMoos (talk) 10:48, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Interesting question and I think there is more going on here than given by the above (correct) response. For example, the question "Did you know that Obama is the President?" is not asking whether someone knew that at some unspecified time in the past. It's asking whether they're aware of it in the present. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 11:11, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the prescriptive approach is here but I think do is more confrontational/interrogative than did. It implies that the person "should" (or is expected to) know the answer while the asker doesn't. For example Do you know what time it is? or even (with an accusatory tone) Do you know how long I've been waiting?. But did on the other hand makes it less personal - Did you know that Obama is the president?. It implies that even if the person doesn't know the answer, the asker does and will inform them anyway. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 12:31, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

But you wouldn't say "Did you know what time it is?". Alansplodge (talk) 13:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

No, because the current time is always present tense. In contrast "Did you know such-and-such fact or event" implies "Did you know before I just now told you?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:16, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

What you could say is, "Did you know this meeting is supposed to end right now, at the top of the hour (or whatever)?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:17, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it is in the past tense because the question itself provides the addressee with the very information under discussion; therefore the addressee's (possible) ignorance of this information is already a thing of the past. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 13:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

When you ask someone, "did you know Obama is the president," you're telling that person the fact (Obama is president) as you ask the question, so the person being asked knows the fact by the end of the question. The question therefore makes sense because it's saying "did you know [X fact] prior to my telling it to you right now?" "Did you know what time it is" doesn't work because the time is not provided. "Did you know it's 13:32 UTC?" would, because it is. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 13:33, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that's the point 194.* already made. I'm sure you're (both) right. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 13:39, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Apologies; I missed 194*'s edit in my initial read. Exactly what I was trying to say, but much more succintly. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 15:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. One of Johnny Carson's frequently used comments, when he would learn a new fact from a guest, was "I did not know that" implying "until now." That's a logical followup to the type of question raised here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:07, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The linguistic term for the addition of do in questions like "Did you know?", negatives like "I did not know", and emphatics like "I did (too) know" is do-support, an article I have been waiting for years for someone to write who has access to better sources than I do. Some Celtic languages like Welsh and Manx make use of do-support too, even more than English does. +Angr 18:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

'Recruitment'

Can the word 'recruitment' be used to refer to a single instance of recruitment? In other words, is it correct to say "there were X recruitments in 2009", or should it be "there were X cases of recruitment in 2009"? Of course I could say "X people were recruited in 2009" instead, but assume I want to use a noun. Many thanks, --Richardrj ^{talk email} 10:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"Recruits"? —Bkell (talk) 13:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

• That would refer to the people recruited, not the instances of recruitment. --Anonymous, 18:37 UTC, March 19, 2010.

Recruitment can be used as a kind of collective achievement (for lack of a better term), which might solve what you're trying to do -- e.g.: "Recruitment for the last 12 months exceeded 1,200 new hires." (By the way, "hire" can be used as an individual noun, including plural.)--达伟 (talk) 15:37, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

To my ears, referring to people as "recruitments" or "hires" sounds a bit de-humanising, as though you're reducing them to units of production. Alansplodge (talk) 18:19, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The recruitments would be the instances of recruiting; the hires are the people. The latter is a pretty common usage in North America, especially in the phrase "new hire" to mean a new employee. --Anonymous, 18:37 UTC, March 19, 2010.

Now on the original question: If by "can it be used" you mean you want to find it addressed in a dictionary, well, I haven't. They generally give definitions like "the act or process of recruiting", which is ambiguous as to whether it refers to the business of setting up a recruiting office (as it clearly can) or the business of recruiting one person through that office.

However, it certainly is being used to refer to the recruiting of one individual, as can be seen by Google-searching for the phrases "100..1900 recruitments" or "2100..20000 recruitments". I skipped numbers between 1900 and 2100 to avoid hits where the number before "recruitments" was a year. And it seems a natural usage to me. I'd say go with it. --Anonymous, 18:37 UTC, March 19, 2010.

As an American English speaker I would vote not to use "recruitments" in the plural. In the US, "hires" is certainly common. Can you give us an example of a complete sentence (or even better, a short passage or brief paragraph) in which you plan to use the word--we might be able to give better advice that way.--达伟 (talk) 19:50, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Storensay

What is Storensay What is it's etymology?174.3.98.20 (talk) 14:36, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

As this page makes clear, it's the name of an imaginary island in Scotland, confected for the book. The ay part is derived from the Old Norse for "island", as found in the names of a number of the Orkneys. The name may have been suggested by the name of the actual island Stronsay, or the Storens part may have been suggested by the place name Støren, or it may just have been chosen as vaguely Scandinavian-sounding. Deor (talk) 14:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Kiss And Tell

What does this mean and what is it's etymology?174.3.98.20 (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's the wiktionary entry:[10] Wiktionary is a good starting place for any etymology questions. To literally "kiss and tell" would be to have a private lovemaking encounter and than talk about it to others. Metaphorically or generally, it means betraying a confidence. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Words "than" and "then"

On this page, I have seen the word "than" misspelled as "then", and I have seen the word "then" misspelled as "than". Does this reflect a current vowel shift, possibly influenced by a popular entertainer? I have always understood them to rhyme with "man" and "men" respectively, when they are pronounced correctly. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:15, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Around here, both words are pronounced the same, and in writing if you misuse then for than or vv, people would still understand what is meant, so spelling would not appear to be very critical here. Googlemeister (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Where is that, Googlemeister ? They do rhyme with "men" and "man", here in Detroit, although some lazy speakers might say "then" for both. StuRat (talk) 18:43, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Does "than" rhyme with "man" when spoken in a sentence, or only in isolation? This is what I was getting to with my aside below...in my dialect at least, I always pronounce it with a schwa. I certainly don't say "I'm bigger thæn you". rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:57, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not a vowel shift, it's just that some people don't know the difference between the two words. Compare to lie and lay, sit and set, etc. I too pronounce "then" and "than" the same way, but pronouncespell them differently; in American English, the spelling doesn't reflect the pronunciation. For what it's worth, though, any differences in pronunciation that do come up, at least in my dialect, are attributable more to syntactic distribution than to the underlying sound. "Than" tends to show up in a non-stressed position in the sentence, and therefore is pronounced with a schwa; "then" takes stress more often, so can be pronounced with the full ɛ.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:31, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

And the Award for the Most Enigmatic Statement of the Year goes to .... I too pronounce "then" and "than" the same way, but pronounce them differently.  :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:37, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Oops! Thanks for catching that. Fixed. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:38, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Rjanag is right, it's not a vowel shift as such, it's just not knowing or caring that they're different. People also have that problem with "they're", "there" and "their", which are true homophones; and near-homophones like "then" and "than", or "affect" and "effect". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Latin or Italian names??

Are these names Latin or Italian and can someone tell me what they equal in English.

• De Romulo primo Romanorum rege = Romulus
• De Numa Pompilio secundo Romanorum rege = Numa Pompilius
• De Tullo Hostilio tertio Romanorum rege = Tullus Hostilius
• De Anco Martio quarto Romanorum rege = Ancus Marcius
• De Iunio Bruto primo Romanorum consule = Lucius Junius Brutus
• De Horatio Cocle = Horatius Cocles
• De Lucio Quintio Cincinnato = Cincinnatus
• De Marco Furio Camillo = Marcus Furius Camillus
• De Tito Manlio Torquato = Titus Manlius Torquatus (consul 347 BC)
• De Marco Valerio Corvo = Marcus Valerius Corvus
• De Publio Decio = Publius Decius Mus (consul 340 BC)
• De Lucio Papirio Cursore = Lucius Papirius Cursor
• De Marco Curio Dentato = Manius Curius Dentatus
• De Fabritio Lucinio = Gaius Fabricius Luscinus
• De Alexandro Macedone = Alexander the Great
• De Pyrro Epyrotarum rege = Pyrrhus of Epirus
• De Hanibale Carthaginensium duce = Hannibal
• De Quinto Fabio Maximo Cuntatore = Fabius Maximus
• De Marco Claudio Marcello = Marcus Claudius Marcellus
• De Claudio Nerone et Livio Salinatore = Nero and Marcus Livius Salinator
• De Publio Cornelio Scipione Africano Maiore = Scipio Africanus
• De Marco Portio Catone Censorio = Cato the Elder

Thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:01, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

These are not names, but they contain Latin names. They seem to be titles. Each begins with the word De, which in these phrases probably means "about". For example, the first one means "About Romulus, the first king of the Romans." Marco polo (talk) 19:20, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

O.K., these then seem to be De Viris Illustribus (Petrarch) of the table for Liber I.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:31, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

It looks like Scipio Aemilianus and Gaius Claudius Nero (of the article table) is NOT on this above list, correct?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Did I get the correct English name above (links) for each of these Latin names in the above Latin list?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 21:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

It looks right to me. Marco polo (talk) 22:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 23:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Curru

What is the Curry incident?174.3.98.20 (talk) 23:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)