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June 29

Argumentative phrase

I'm having trouble thinking of a phrase about someone taking liberties with research. It has something to do with beginning with a conclusion and hammering the puzzle places into place to fit their own picture. That might be the saying itself, but I'm sure I've heard a more eloquent version of it somewhere. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 09:53, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How about "hammering a square peg into a round hole", or vice versa? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:45, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How about "twisting the facts to suit X"?

“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia, 1891.

Or possibly "putting the cart before the horse"? AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 11:11, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cherry picking, perhaps? Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 12:42, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dunno about a phrase but it put me in mind of Procrustes. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:39, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A similar thought came to Lord Justice Brennan when reviewing an important British legal case (see Computer Misuse Act 1990), where he described prosecutors' attempts to try a novel crime under an ancient and seemingly quite irrelevant law as a "Procrustean attempt". The term is apt, but I fear every time you use it you'll have to have a page of Bullfinch around to explain it to just about anyone (bar TammyMoet and Brennan LJ). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:52, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

think you're after something like argument from consequences or affirming the consequent in terms of pure logic. In research it's called massaging or fudging data, at least when it's done grossly. --Ludwigs2 13:54, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You also might be thinking of experimenter's bias. —D. Monack ^talk 20:27, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Translation from Finnish

Google translate thinks kaikki on mahdollista kunnes hyeena laulaa ja louskuttaa leukojaan means everything is possible until the hyena sings and champs one's teeth and jaws. The bold part sounds weird even to my English. Fix? I know Finnish so I know the meaning is about correct. --192.100.124.218 (talk) 11:48, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The OED gives "To make a biting and chewing action or movement with the jaws and teeth," and "To gnash (the teeth), close (the jaws) with violence and noise. Obs" as definitions for champ as a verb. I'm familiar with the term "to champ at the bit" meaning to be impatient, but had always assumed it was a regional pronunciation. The only fix I would make to the translation would be "and champs its teeth and jaws" if that would agree with the original Finnish. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 12:17, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It does. Notice the lack of a pronoun in the genitive case before the word leukojaan ("...'s jaws"). This definitely means that it's the hyena's own jaws it's champing. If it were someone else's jaws then the owner of the jaws would have to be mentioned. JIP | Talk 18:56, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(op here) Thanks. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 15:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Use of "me"

Which is correct as a caption to a picture of three people walking down the road? "John, Jim and me walking down the road" or "John, Jim and I walking down the road"? Any technical rules much appreciated. Thanks, Ericoides (talk) 13:38, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would say the first is fine. It gave me pause for thought as of course "John, Jim and me were walking down the road" would be incorrect in a proper sentence, but in the case of a caption which is not a full sentence "me" is fine. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 13:54, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) "me". Taking the others out of the phrase leaves you with "(This is a picture of) me walking down the road." Bazza (talk) 13:56, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As a rule of thumb, use the word you would use if the other names weren't there. "John, Jim and I walked down the road" (because you'd say I walked down the road), but "that's when Douglas met John, Jim and me" (because you'd say that's when Douglas met me). --Ludwigs2 13:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. Bazza 7, I like your reasoning. Ericoides (talk) 14:12, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I is the subject, me is the object. Compare he/she and him/her: "He loves her", "she loves him". As suggested, the easiest solution is to take the others out of the sentence:

"(John, Jim and) I (were) was walking down the road".

"Who was walking down the road?"

"(John, Jim and) Me." Hayden120 (talk) 14:33, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know all that stuff, but I didn't include it in my reply because it's not relevant, since we are talking about a phrase (a caption) not a sentence. Bazza7 is right, you apply the same principle to a phrase and the answer comes out "me". --Viennese Waltz ^talk 14:36, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I apologise. Yes, "me" is correct. I just thought I would explain the principle behind it. Oh well, maybe it will help someone else. Best regards, Hayden120 (talk) 14:38, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can avoid the question if you simply name the person represented by the first-person pronoun. Also, if someone looks at the picture 100 years later, it will be easier to identify that person from a name than from a pronoun.—Wavelength (talk) 15:17, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But that wouldn't be appropriate if the photograph is to appear in, for example, an autobiography or memoir. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 15:37, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quite. There are ways of avoiding it (one way would be " Walking down the road with John and Jim", where it is obvious that "I" am accompanying them, either because I am so well known or because of other images in the material), but this is an argument at work and this construction is the one under scrutiny; a colleague is suggesting that it must be "John, Jim and I walking down the road" because "I" is one of the subjects of the verb "walking". In a full sentence that would be undeniable, but this is a caption, and I can't find any eg Hart's Rules-type authorities that give grammatical guidance on the question. The best so far, as stated, is the assertion that a portion of the sentence is implicitly understood – ie (This is a picture of). This means that "I" is no longer the subject and "me" is correct usage. Ericoides (talk) 15:40, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bazza and Ludwig's argument has been trotted out by pedagogues and grammarians for decades, but there is no good reason to accept it. As Stephen Pinker points out (in Chapter 12 of The Language Instinct), "she and I go" does not imply "she go" (i.e. number does not carry over into the conjunction), so what grounds have we for assuming that case will do so? The argument might be valid, but there is no a priori reason for thinking so; and the natural speech of millions of English speakers in many times and places argue that it does not hold, except in a particular, and in some sense artificial, variety of English (see Joseph Emonds' 1985 paper A grammatically deviant prestige construction. For Emonds, any construction including "<someone> and I", as opposed to "<someone> and me" is part of a learned language which is not, and cannot be, anybody's mother tongue). --ColinFine (talk) 22:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

German vocabulary question

What are the differences in connotation or denotation between the words Etage, Ebene, Geschoss/Obergeschoss, and Stock, which all mean floor or story? Thanks, Reywas92^Talk 15:53, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about semantic differences, but I can tell you that (a) Geschoss is Southern German/Austrian according to Collins, and (b) I never heard Ebene used in this sense when I studied German (unlike the other three), and neither Collins nor dict.leo.org mention this usage either. Lfh (talk) 16:16, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Etage" is borrowed from French. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:33, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here in Austria (Vienna): 1) Etage is rarely used; 2) ~~I don't think Ebene is used for floor or story anywhere in the German-speaking world~~, though I might be wrong (I am, see below); 3) Geschoß (note long vowel and thus ß) is used here in three forms: Kellergeschoß (basement, a lot of times just Keller), Erdgeschoß (first floor in the US), Obergeschoß (upper floor, usually used in department stores), Dachgeschoß (attic), Zwischengeschoß (a "floor between the floors", Mezzanine, though Mezzanin in German usually refers to a Hochparterre, a "higher" US first floor) - you also hear Tiefgeschoß, which is used as an alternative for Kellergeschoß or (more rarely) for Tiefparterre (a "lower" US first floor); 4) Stock is used in most buildings for the floors (for example at the University of Vienna, or in apartment buildings), except for the ones which use "Geschoß" Rimush (talk) 17:23, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See de:Geschoss_(Architektur)#Wortherkunft. According to that article, "Geschoss" orginally referred to ballon-framed buildings, where horizontal beams were "shot" into the frame ("eingeschossen"). "Stockwerk" has its origins in jettied buildings. It referred to the actual timber material and could be translated as "processed rootstock" or "processed timber", I guess. According to the same article, "Geschoss" is today's terminus technicus in architecture, while "Stockwerk" and "Etage" are used colloquially (and confusingly, as, technically, the number of Stockwerke needn't be equal to the number of "Geschosse", and, in French, the "étages" are usually counted from the second floor on). I have seen the word "Ebenen" used in at least three German-speaking countries, particularly in real-estate ads. Often, it refers to levels that needn't be directly over each other and may include split levels, but the intended meaning can also simply be that of "Geschoss". ---Sluzzelin talk 18:21, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The word Ebene literally means "level", and it is used in German in much the same way that it is used in English. It is not the most usual way to refer to levels of a building (just as we usually call them floors or storeys), but it can be used, often in contexts in which level would be used in English. Marco polo (talk) 19:13, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I'm slightly confused (I'm not the OP). You say "confusingly, as (...) in French, the "étages" are usually counted from the second floor on." By this, do you mean the ground floor, first floor, second floor system? Because my understanding was that German, like French and British English, also follows this system. We were taught "Erdgeschoß, erster Stock, zweiter Stock...", with "Etage" as a synonym for "Stock", although with the "posh" connotation of being derived from French. Are you saying that, when German uses the word "Etage", it counts the ground floor as "erste Etage"? 86.164.57.20 (talk) 19:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, I was just reporting what the article said. I agree with what you wrote, and admit that the degree of confusion is perhaps academic. (added later: I was goint to argue that, perhaps, the editors meant that the set ofGeschosse even contains the Erdgeschoss (ground floor) by vocabulary, while no one says Erdetage. I have seen "Grundetage", however, though Parterre seems more fitting when speaking in the context of Etagen). ---Sluzzelin talk 19:27, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Greek in Gaudy Night

Does anyone here have an older edition of Gaudy Night, preferably one dating from a time when books were put together and proofread by human beings rather than computers? My edition is apparently computer-generated by some software incapable of handling Greek letters, and the two passages where Greek phrases are cited are completely botched up.

The first passage is at the end of Chapter III, the last sentence of the paragraph beginning "And suppose they actually did". The line is: "Bless their hearts, how refreshing and soothing and good they all were, walking beneath their ancient beeches and meditating on ____________ and the finance of Queen Elizabeth."

The second passage is about one-quarter of the way into Chapter XVII, the last sentence of the paragraph beginning "You would have seen through it in any case". The line is: "The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it—that is at the bottom of the ____________________."

In fact, I already have a suspicion as to what they say, so I only need someone to confirm if my suspicion is right. I suspect that "meditating on" is followed by ὂν καὶ μὴ ὄν, and "the bottom of the" is followed by ψευδῆ λέγειν ὡς δεῖ. Can anyone confirm or deny? Thanks. +An gr 19:42, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a copy of the novel at hand, but this guy's notes to it confirm your first guess. There's a lemma for the second passage but no note, and reproducing the Greek was apparently beyond his HTML abilities. Deor (talk) 20:06, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that page was one of the sources I used that led me to my suspicions! +An gr 20:08, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Google books has it, and you're correct on both counts. 213.122.63.97 (talk) 20:53, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can get a preview of it on Google Books? I tried that and none of the editions I could find have a book preview. But then, I know that some previews are available in some countries and not in others, so I wouldn't be surprised if you can see things I can't. +An gr 05:39, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first one I hit had previews, yes. They were just tiny snippets, a paragraph or less at a time, which appeared when I searched for your quotes within the book. 81.131.69.220 (talk) 02:02, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the short story "Delenda Est" by Poul Anderson contains exactly one medium-length Greek word in the Greek alphabet, and I've never seen it printed correctly... AnonMoos (talk) 13:23, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a copy of a paperback printed in 1981 from an edition of 1963 and the image is as shown here. I think your greek letters are accurate, but some of the accents on my image are different.

File:GaudyNight.jpg

Gaudy Night

--Phil Holmes (talk) 12:10, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, your book has two mistakes in the first quote - χαὶ instead of καὶ as the second word and υὂ instead of ὄν as the last word - and one small mistake in the second quote - ψευδῆ is missing the circumflex over the η. But it's good enough to confirm that I got the quotes right. By the way, Gaudy Night is not out of copyright yet, neither in the U.S. (it was published after 1923) nor in the U.K. (Sayers died less than 70 years ago), so now that I've seen the image, it should really be deleted again. +An gr 13:25, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In French: the meaning of l'axe

In French can the word l'axe have the connotation of a front such as in a military context, such as in the phrase "All is clear on the Western Front."LeonidasSpartan (talk) 20:59, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To clairify the phrase in question is in this sentence: Du 19 au 25 mai 1940 , le 97e effectue des actions retardatrices sur l'axe Péronne - Barleux. I just realized that might help me get the information I am looking for.LeonidasSpartan (talk) 21:03, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The usual translation into English is "the axis." So, the line or route between Peronne and Barleux in your example. Zoonoses (talk) 23:19, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

June 30

non-offensive wordlist

Does anyone know where I can get a wordlist that has all words that could possibly be considered offensive removed? I want to create random passwords and I don't want any embarrassing combinations. (And yes for this application, I do want words and not random characters.) Thanks, Ariel. (talk) 01:24, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Take your dictionary, and throw it in the trash, and you have removed all possibly offensive words. You don't need an obscure word, especially if you can't think of one. Consider something that would be obscure to others but familiar to you, like maybe a street near your first childhood home or something. Then replace the vowels with special characters and tack 01 on the end of it so you can keep using it by incrementing it after it expires. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:34, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure that based on Ariel.'s history, he or she is not doing this for his or her own passwords. Here is a page with links to many general word lists in English. I googled list of curse words and found the Banned Words List, "a resource for web administrators", and this list, which are nowhere near comprehensive; but what I would probably do is use a general word list, select the word(s), look up the selected word in the banned word list, and proceed if it's not banned. Comet Tuttle (talk) 03:52, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's not for my personal password, it's for a web application I'm making. (And I'm He.) Thanks Comet Tuttle, those links are very helpful and exactly what I need. Ariel. (talk) 04:25, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. Not that it's terribly relevant, but I always assumed you were a she. Presumably your name is, in fact, a reference to the typeface? 86.164.57.20 (talk) 13:22, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It may come as a disappointment, but you might want to know that this lady is a he, too.—Emil J. 13:54, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The typeface is spelled Arial. The name Ariel was a man's name for centuries until Disney got their greasy mitts on it. +An gr 14:05, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

D'oh! I think I was thinking of Ariel (The Tempest), who was played by a woman the only time I saw it, with contributions from Disney. 86.164.57.20 (talk) 16:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please also read http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Automated-Curse-Generator.aspx so you get an approximate idea of what you're getting yourself into ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 08:43, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind that while individual words may not be offensive, their combination may be. "eats" is benign, as is "hit", but they become rude when put together without punctuation. "camel" and "jockey" are both inoffensive on their own, but combined, even with punctuation, they may be construed as a racial slur. -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 18:22, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

... as the people who registered these URLs perhaps didn't sufficiently consider. (Or perhaps they did.) Deor (talk) 21:03, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What is the term for the person (other than a ‘pedant’)

who uses verbal excessively or over creatively for headings in articles? -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 01:37, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your question is a bit confusing, especially the "...uses verbal for..." part. Just a guess though, is verbose the word you're looking for? Dismas|^(talk) 02:40, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to the journalese / headlinese of traditional newspaper headline writers? They were more fond of short words and bad puns than verbosity... AnonMoos (talk) 03:51, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is it ‘snap’ or something else?

I think dictionaries do not give good definitions for the word ‘snap’ that is often used for in context. Is it the same, or is there any word that refers to a person who, for example, is not in favor to cite any academic references because in the belief that his or her highest achievement can therefore be jeopardized? -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 01:37, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As with your previous question, I understand all the words but they don't make any sense in that order. Could you clarify what you're asking? Dismas|^(talk) 02:42, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean "snapping at someone"? As in:

"Maybe you should cite this reference."

"I don't want to cite the damn reference!"

"Okay! No need to snap at me!"

Meaning a harsh, angry reaction, implying the person is figuratively trying to bite you?

Or do you mean saying "Snap!", implying that things match? Which would be a reference to the children's card game Snap. 86.164.57.20 (talk) 13:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It could be ’snob’ that I have mistaken for ‘snap’. How can I explain a situation is this—when I went out of a class, a teacher told students ‘he is snob’, which I didn’t get it correctly. But I was sure that knew that I was working with lots of Aboriginal people (not just renting apartments but also providing beddings for those who do not care for sleeping in bare floors, and providing taxi services and janitorial supplies free of charge). So I thought it couldn’t be ‘snob’. -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 17:08, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could it be "snub" then? Was the teacher making the point that he felt you had snubbed him in some way? By the way, "Aboriginal" would tie in with "snob", it's just the sort of word an upper-class twit would use these days! --TammyMoet (talk) 18:40, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Forearm limp

Hi all -

I am currently hobbling around with a broken ankle. As such, I've been on crutches for the last week, making my arms ache. At home, where I can, I am thus ignoring the crutches and crawling around on hands and knees. After using the crutches, I have an ache in my left shoulder, and as such, when I crawl I am favouring one arm over the other (no, this isn't a call for sympathy - there's a valid question coming up!)

When we favour one leg, we're said to be limping - but I can't think of an equivalent term for favouring one arm. I can't say I "have a limp in my left arm" - it sounds silly. is there an equivalent term for putting less weight on one arm than the other? Grutness...wha? 01:41, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's an "arm-specific" term. "Favoring" (which you already mentioned) is the only term I can think of that comes close to what you mean, although it can refer to both arms and legs. Fletch the Mighty (talk) 02:14, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, are you digging the crutch into your underarm? Try squeezing it between your upper arm and your body (after consulting with your doctor. I am not qualified to give medical advice, and this isn't any).—msh210℠ 04:33, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, but thanks for the suggestion. They're the hand-handle type of crutch, not the under-the-armpit type, but I bruised by collarbone/shoulder area at the same time as I broke my ankle and the added weight on my arms has made that shoulder ache. Grutness...wha? 07:06, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For some medical terms look in Dyskinesia and Hypokinesia. Ariel. (talk) 04:39, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Right to Left

Arabic is written right to left, so is Persian and Urdu. Are there any other languages that are written right to left ? Jon Ascton (talk) 02:28, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hebrew springs to mind. However, you should bear in mind that Persian and Urdu use Arabic script (albeit slightly modified), so it wouldn't be surprising that they are written in the same direction as Arabic. Uighur and several other languages are like this. Malay used to be written in the Arabic script, as did Swahili, as well as Turkish at some point. Chinese and Japanese, when written from top to bottom, are usually written right to left, too. Ancient Egyptian could be written in any direction, and right to left was not uncommon. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:36, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And what about Thai ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jon Ascton (talk • contribs) 02:42, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thai is left to right. +An gr 05:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See boustrophedon for texts that go alternately right-left and left-right. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:42, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Writing from left-to-right seems natural, as most people are right-handed, and this lessens the chance of smearing the ink as you go. I wonder why Hebrew and others go from right to left? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:28, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not all writing is done with ink. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:30, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Writing with a hammer and chisel is easier right to left when you're right-handed. +An gr 05:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Judaic tradition would maintain that the direction of the written language was provided by God. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 21:15, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'd agree in the sense that God gave us handedness, and the cleverness to invent writing, and the perspicacity to arrange writing in such a way as to make it most convenient. +An gr 19:45, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any language in the Arabic or Hebrew script (and perhaps others) is written right-to-left. Arabic: aao, acx, aeb, afb, ajp, apc, apd, ar, arq, ary, arz, ayl, ayp, az (though it's in Latin and Cyrillic too), bal, brh, chg, esh, fa, glk, gwc, ha (though it's in Latin too), khw, ks (Devanagari too), ku (Latin too), mzn, ota, pga, pnb, ps, sd, shu, ug (Latin and Cyrillic too), ur. Hebrew: arc, he, lad (Latin too), tmr, yi. (This information comes from wikt:template:langscript.) (Language codes can be looked up lots of places, one way to look up 'az', say, is by checking wikt:template:az.)—msh210℠ 04:30, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other right-to-left writing systems besides the Arabic and Hebrew scripts are the Syriac alphabet and the Avestan alphabet. +An gr 05:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And the same source gives, for those, language codes syr, ae.—msh210℠ 17:03, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The code syr stands for Syriac as a macrolanguage made up of aii and cld, but I think all Christian Neo-Aramaic languages are written with the Syriac script. The Mandaic alphabet (used to write the Mandaic language) is also right-to-left. +An gr 19:52, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is the Tāna script, which is also written from right to left. It is used to write Dhivehi, and there's the Dhivehi Wikipedia. --Магьосник (talk) 04:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any Semitic script that is written left to right? --Soman (talk) 17:50, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Maltese is written left to right, but that's because it uses a variant of the Latin alphabet. +An gr 19:45, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Somali is also written in Latin script, but is there any specifically Semitic script that uses left to right? --Soman (talk) 20:35, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Somali isn't Semitic, but Amharic is, and it's written in the Ge'ez script, which is left to right. +An gr 21:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese Mole

In Japanese, mole (the animal) is 土竜もぐら mogura, but its kanjis have the following readings (from Wiktionary): 土 (ground) = ど (do), と (to), つち (tsuchi); 竜 (dragon) = りゅう (ryū), りょう (ryō), ろう (rō), たつ (tatsu). None of these readings seems to be present in mogura. Am I missing something? --151.51.25.173 (talk) 08:32, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's ateji like 海豚 (イルカ). Oda Mari (talk) 09:39, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

French translation

http://www.20minutes.fr/article/389008/vous-interviewez-Vous-avez-interviewe-Cheryl-Cole.php

The sentence in question is "Tu le vois comment ton prochain album, dans le même style que «3 Words» ou dans un style différent? miika

Ce sera un peu plus dansant certainement, et le public français risque d'être ravi d'une chanson en particulier... Peut-être..."

My French skills are a bit rusty. Does this mean Cheryl's music will include more dancing, or the music will be dance, as in the music genre. I'd be extremely grateful for any clarification! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.49.100.47 (talk) 11:09, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It means the next album will be more danceable. I would roughly translate the whole thing as:

"How do you see your next album, will it be in the same style as 3 Words or something different?"

"It will certainly be a bit more danceable, and the French public will be delighted by one song in particular... maybe..."

--Viennese Waltz ^talk 12:22, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese

Is there a free program which works like the on-screen keyboard but with katakana/hiragana? It gets kind of annoying to go to katakana or hiragana and copypaste each individual character. --75.25.103.109 (talk) 21:09, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See http://www.lexilogos.com/clavier/multilingue.htm and scroll down to "Autres alphabets".—Wavelength (talk) 22:23, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/japanese.html. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:32, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you're using Windows, the Control Panel:Regional and Language Options:Keyboard settings will allow you to activate the Japanese IME - allowing you to switch between your standard keyboard settings and Japanese ones. The one that comes with English-language Windows is designed so that you can type in Latin letters and it will convert to hiragana/katakana/kanji as you go. Here's one guide: [1]. Steewi (talk) 01:55, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Greek translation

What is the translation of the following Greek words:

ATΔIOΣ ENΔIAITATAI

Googlemeister (talk) 21:10, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the second one is the third-person singular of ἐνδιαιτάομαι, "s/he dwells". If we assume that the T in the first one is a misreading of an iota (perhaps an uppercase iota with a mark of diaeresis, something like a Cyrillic Ї), it would be ἀίδιος, "everlasting". I'm assuming that we're talking Classical Greek here; I don't know much Modern Greek. Deor (talk) 21:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Putting those two parts together, it means "The everlasting one dwells". +An gr 13:15, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to you both. Googlemeister (talk) 15:28, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

July 1

most run-on letters?

Hey, I'm trying to think of a word ("real-life" or composed of roots) with the most run-on letters, that is, the longest stretch of the same letters in a single word.

The best I've got is Zoo-ontology, though is suppose it doesn't really count, seeing as it's hyphenated. What's the best you guys (real lexi-nerds, I imagine) can come up with? Riffraffselbow (talk) 02:47, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: Let me qualify this by ruling out onomatopoeias of the "stick letters together" form. Let's really not go there. It makes me sleepy... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Riffraffselbow (talk) 02:56, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some triple- and even quadruple-letter sequences, with some qualifications. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:26, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to this, Estonian has the words jäääär, kuuuurija, töööö. All of those are compound words: jää, "ice" + äär, "edge" → jäääär, "edge of ice"; kuu, "moon" + uurija, "explorer" → kuuuurija, "explorer of the Moon"; töö, "work" + öö, "night" → töööö, "night shift". --Магьосник (talk) 03:57, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is one of our recurring questions, so I'm giving my recurring answer. The Manx word for "will eat" is eeee, which isn't even a compound. It's just a verbal stem ee- "to eat" with the suffix -ee (cf. Scottish Gaelic ithidh, which means the same thing). To make it even more fun, Manx for "she will eat" is eeee ee. +An gr 12:50, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, and Manx for "she will eat it" (where "it" is something grammatically feminine) is eeee ee ee. +An gr 14:21, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure that's not the sound made by something that a Manx is about to eat? Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quite sure. No Manx cat could ever catch a dolphin. +An gr 17:01, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Eeek, that link has turned red. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese has hoooo (鳳凰), though this might be considered unfair since it would more commonly be romanized hōō, and in Japanese phonetic characters it's written ほうおう. Japanese also has the well-known tongue twister すもももももももものうち, but that's several words, and も is "mo". -- BenRG (talk) 05:57, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hard telling if this counts, but in The Road to Rio, Jerry Colonna was leading the cavalry and exhorted them to
"Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge!"
←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:22, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How about goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool in the words of a Latin American sports commentator? --Soman (talk) 02:40, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That sort of nonsense was ruled out by the original poster, remember? --Anonymous, 03:51 UTC, July 2, 2010.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch has four consecutive "l"s (ells).—Wavelength (talk) 02:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no it doesn't. It has two consecutive "double l"s. The Welsh double l is not a doubling of single l, it's considered a different "letter" entirely, and would be counted as 1 letter, not 2. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:40, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This page may of interest. --Anonymous, 03:51 UTC, July 2, 2010.

Screw this, English is agglutinative - let's make our own!

Abraham Lincoln was the freeer of slaves. The slaves were the freeees of Lincoln. (free-er, and free-ee, a French-adopted "ée" now prevalent in English)
I've got a pimple with two pus-holes - one is oozing, the other is cooozing. (co-oozing)
We have discovered a giant aardvark. I shall call it... The Ultraaardvark!!!
The future of the mall's grand! The mall'll be the best ever! ('ll - "will" conjunction, a cheat)

And the grand finale...

There are too many callgirls advertised in the papers. What if we could discourage prostitution by sending people llamas instead? They'd be CALLLLAMAS!

Thank you, thank you, I will accept cash prizes. SamuelRiv (talk) 05:02, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, you're proposing to promote bestiality with llamas, are you? That gives the phrase "breakfast with beasts" a whole new meaning. Somehow, I can't see the morals campaigners taking that one on, Samuel. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:15, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The use of Å in names could result in placenames such as Haaa, Blaaaasen, or Raaaaaaa. --Магьосник (talk) 20:43, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But they maybe don't count, because in those cases the double a is not a doubling of a, but rather a romanisation of ‹å›. (The same matter as with Welsh, see 202.142's comment above.) --Магьосник (talk) 20:54, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The trouble with the above coinages is that English has a pretty strong prohibition against sequences of three or more instances of the same letter. Where such might occur, we either reduce it to two (as in fully not *fullly) or put in a hyphen (as in cross-section and cross-stitch, not *crosssection and *crossstitch). So an emancipator would be either a freer (already the comparative of the adjective free) or a free-er, not a *freeer, and a freedman would be a free-ee. A pus-hole could be co-oozing, not *cooozing. A giant aardvark would be an ultra-aardvark, not ultraaardvark, and llamas of the evening would be call-llamas, not *callllamas. And I will bet a silk pajama there isn't any three-l lllama. +An gr 18:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking of sequences of identical letters in words that are not compounds. Manx eeee, which has been cited above, is a wonderful one, because it has four consecutive e's. Romanian has the forms fiii, "the sons"; copiii, "the children"; geamgiii, "the glaziers"; etc. Also, if there is a Latin fourth-declension word whose stem ends with -u, its genitive plural form would end with -uuum. Does anyone know one? --Магьосник (talk) 19:09, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My Latin is very rusty, but I doubt you'd ever find a triple u in a proper Latin word. The rule is to add -um, not -uum. Cornu (horn) is, from memory, a 4th declension word; its genitive plural is cornuum, not cornuuum. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:16, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)All fourth-declension words' stems end with -u (since the fourth declension is the u-stems), and the genitive plural simply adds -um to it to give -uum. And the Latin words that do have three u's in a row are standardized in modern spelling to uvu. For example uvula, which in theory would have been written VVVLA in Roman times, although the Oxford Latin Dictionary (which always uses u in lower case) spells it uuola, which most other dictionaries would spell uvola. +An gr 21:27, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I may not have been clear enough. I was meaning the root of the word, without that that changes for number and case. E.g. in manus what is always there in all forms is man-. Since it's a fourth-declension word, it receives an -uum ending to become a plural genitive, hence manuum, "of the hands". I can think of several second-declension words where the last letter of the stable part is a ‹u›. Let's take vacuus for instance. It consists of vacu- (root) and -us (singular nominative ending). But because it belongs to the second declension, in the plural genitive it gets the ending -orum to become vacuorum. If it belonged to the fourth declension instead, we would have vacu- + -uum → vacuuum for gen. pl.

As for cornu, it is one of the only three fourth-declension words that are grammatically neuter and therefore end with -u instead of -us in their base (i.e., nom. sg.) form, the other two being genu and gelu.

Please correct me if I'm talking nonsense. It's becoming late where I am. --Магьосник (talk) 21:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, without trying to sort out what "root" and "stem" mean with respect to Latin nouns (an issue on which historical linguists and Latin teachers disagree), we can say simply that there are no fourth declension nouns whose nominative singular ends in -uus (or -uu for neuters), so there are no nouns at risk of having a genitive plural in -uuum (or -uvum). +An gr 06:11, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Chechen alphabet

Why does the Chechen alphabet apparently use the Latin I, as shown in the table on Chechen language? It's especially strange since there's a Cyrillic version of the character, І, and all of the other letters are in Cyrillic. 70.162.12.102 (talk) 07:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See Decimal I (Cyrillic). It existed in the original Cyrillic alphabet and is still used in several alphabets, ~~not just Chechen~~. ---Sluzzelin talk 08:52, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, what Chechen has is not the Decimal I but the Palochka, which just happens to look the same. ~~The difference is that palochka doesn't have distinct upper and lower case forms, and it's a purely diacritic letter, not a vowel (or even a consonant in its own right).~~ +An gr 12:46, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent catch. Sorry for misinforming. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:51, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So the I and I in the table in Chechen language#Alphabets should be replaced with Ӏ and ӏ? Algebraist 13:28, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I guess so, in the Cyrillic table. The chart showing the Chechen Latin alphabet can stay as it is. I see from that article that I was mistaken in saying the palochka doesn't represent a consonant by itself; it does represent /ʡ/ in Chechen when used alone. I also see from reading the article palochka more carefully a second time that the palochka does have a lower-case form, which was added to Unicode more recently than the capital form. (Incorrect statements above have been struck.) +An gr 13:50, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've replaced the Latin capital I's at Chechen language with the capital palochka. I didn't use the lowercase palochka because I don't know to what extent it's really used. The fact that Unicode didn't have it until several editions later than the capital palochka makes me suspect it isn't terribly common (just like Capital ß, which has a Unicode point but which you will almost never see in use in German). I checked the Chechen Wikipedia and they too use the Latin capital I in place of the official palochka. +An gr 14:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology of Ælfwaru

At Template_talk:Did_you_know#.C3.86lfwaru I am struggling to discover the etymology of Ælfwaru. Any help would be appreciated. --Senra (talk) 10:45, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here [2] it say that it means "Elf-protection", protection by an Elf.--151.51.61.119 (talk) 11:44, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks so

Done --Senra (talk) 12:25, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, ælf does mean "elf" and waru does mean "protection" or "guard", but the conclusion from that that the name Ælfwaru means "protection by an elf" is probably not warranted. (Why not "protection from elves"?) Among the Germanic peoples, names were typically, or at least often, formed of two elements drawn from a limited stock of name parts, most of which were words in common use in the relevant languages (see our not-very-good article Germanic names and the article "Personal Names, Old English" here). Sometimes the combination of the elements seems to make some sort of sense, but often it doesn't. Although Ælf- is a common first element in Anglo-Saxon names, I think that few people who gave children those names were primarily thinking of elves, just as someone who names a girl Daisy today is probably not thinking primarily about flowers. Deor (talk) 12:38, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting and really information and useful. Much appreciated. Please look at the Ælfwaru article as it develops and also the Ælfwaru DYK discussion as it develops too! Not sure how this is going to end up but your input is helping, thank you. --Senra (talk) 13:57, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another possible meaning would be "protector (guard) with elfish skills or powers". Marco polo (talk) 14:16, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Or something/someone that protects elves. +An gr 14:23, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone not think of daisies when naming their child Daisy? It may not be the most important reason for the name but not think of it at all? Protecting your child from the nasty baby-snatching elves would have been a thought in some parents' minds at least. See Changeling. Rmhermen (talk) 15:41, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I said "not thinking primarily". :-) With regard to Anglo-Saxon Ælf- names, I happened to notice last night that J. R. R. Tolkien was of my mind; in his instructions for translators of LoTR into other languages, he wrote that his use of "Elf-friend" was "suggested by Ælfwine, the English form of an old Germanic name (represented for instance in the Lombardic Alboin), though its analysable meaning was probably not recognized or thought significant by the many recorded bearers of the name Ælfwine in OE". Deor (talk) 16:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

French phonotactics

Are there any French words with nasal consonants in word-medial codas? --84.61.154.154 (talk) 18:30, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mais certainement. +An gr 19:02, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any French words with liquid consonants in codas of syllables containing a nasal vowel? --84.61.154.154 (talk) 18:30, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

branle, chambranle, genre, Manre. +An gr 19:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's our old troll friend from Essen. No such user (talk) 09:57, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Healthwashing

The term "Healthwashing" refers to such matters involving health such as listing unhealthy procedures under a label of healthy procedures as a means of whitewashing an unhealthy procedure which is unhealthy. I can not find a description or a discussion of this term in the Wikipedia. Is concept of "Healthwashing" above and beyond Wikipedia knowledge or comprehension? Decapage (talk) 22:19, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More likely, the term is a neologism and articles about neologisms are very often deleted here at Wikipedia. See WP:NEOLOGISM. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:25, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So then it is a matter of waiting for "Healthwashing" to appear in an "approved" dictionary before it can be included in a list of derivative or related terms to "whitewashing"? That seems in defiance of WP:Ignore unless the true purpose is to curtail awareness of a relevant application of the term "whitewashing". Decapage (talk) 01:39, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It seems a little unreasonable to interpret the absence of a very newly coined word (one which I for one have never encountered before) in an encyclopaedia ongoingly compiled by entirely voluntary effort as a conspiracy to conceal knowledge. Since you're concerned about the matter, Decapage, what's stopping you adding some appropriately referenced text about "healthwashing" to the Greenwashing article. I would have suggested the Whitewashing article but I see that that article refers solely to a very particular (and in the current context inappropriate) meaning of the term rather than its more general one. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 05:25, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As a matter of fact a colleague came across the term while doing a Google search and posted it to the Related terms section but found it reverted, then further edits blocked along with his access denied despite citing the reference and invoking WP:IGNORE. He suggested in the discussion with the administrator or bureaucrat guarding the article that a specific reference should be left out to require readers to do their own Google search on the term in response to WP:NEOLOGISM. Before being blocked he managed to post the entry without a specific reference to the article discussion page. Someone else might want to take the chance of posting a copy of that entry to the Related terms section in the Greenwashing article. Under the circumstances deferring to a Google search is a better response to WP:NEOLOGISM than giving the reader nothing. Otherwise implementing policy as though it were hard and fast takes priority over pointing the reader in the direction of new knowledge or usage as if the Wikipedia is the final edition of a printed publication or written in stone. 71.100.0.7 (talk) 07:11, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I support not cluttering existing articles with references to neologisms, mostly because as an encyclopedia, neologisms aren't notable enough for us to mention. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:37, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The question appears to follow from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 June 24#term for hypocritical situation (last line).

—Wavelength (talk) 02:14, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

July 2

Artifacts and artefacts

Little Thetford flesh-hook says that the subject of the article is an "artefact"; the word is linked to Artifact (archaeology), which gives "artefact" as an alternate spelling. In researching American archaeology, I've always seen this word spelled "artifact", but the flesh-hook was found in eastern England. Is this a matter of British/American spelling differences, or is there some other reason to account for the i/e difference here? I note that the author of the flesh-hook article hasn't placed a "(see spelling differences)" note such as the one that can be found at color. Nyttend (talk) 02:17, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Immediately to hand is my (UK) Collins Dictionary of the English Language (1979 Edition), which has the entries

"artefact or U.S. artifact . . ." and

"artifact . . . a variant spelling of artefact"

so yes, it is a British/US spelling difference, and the British spelling is the more appropriate for an article about a British subject. I would have thought that an explicit note about one of the very many such differences would be appropriate in an article about the differing word itself (as in your color/colour example), but not in an article about another subject that merely uses such a word, else very many articles would be littered with such notes. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 05:13, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, I meant to say "author of the artifact article", not "author of the flesh-hook article"; it really would be very cluttering. Thanks for the help. Nyttend (talk) 05:46, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed, and also I added a note to the Little Thetford flesh-hook talk page. --Senra (talk) 21:59, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

High-pitched speaking voices

A question at the Humanities desk about whether American accents have changed over the last hundred years or not prompts me to post this question, which I've long wondered about.

Old recordings and movie footage I've heard and seen make me think that people in the early years of sound and picture recording had generally higher pitched voices than they do today. I have wondered if it's an affectation, that it was considered more genteel, but occasional bits of vox pop I've seen seem to chime with this and for me that casts a doubt over that theory.

Of course, I can think of exceptions, but do you experts think:

a) the observation is accurate? b) if so, what is the cause?

Cheers, --Dweller (talk) 09:21, 2 July 2010 (UTC) [in falsetto][reply]

I'd guess that at least part of the reason is seen in the "Lina Lamont" character of Singin' in the Rain — Lina is a great actress, but she has this horrid whiny and screechingly high voice. There were plenty of individuals who did well in silent films but not in talkies because they didn't have nice voices; perhaps this would be partially responsible for the situation you note? Nyttend (talk) 14:08, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would venture a guess that the reason is technical -- namely, that early methods of voice recording were pretty bad at low frequencies. That is just a speculation though. No such user (talk) 14:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your exception is not American, so it may be a phenomena that only took place there. I have noticed that people from some countries speak with lower or higher pitch. For example many Russians in low pitch and many Indians in a higher pitch. There seems to be surprisingly little about voice pitch in different cultures on the internet. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:35, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It might be caused by noise pollution or machismo or both, but I have not found supporting documentation.

—Wavelength (talk) 14:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do know that language is constantly changing. While I have no evidence for this particular pitch phenomenon, I have no trouble whatsoever with the idea that the generation whose voices made it to early media did speak with a higher pitched voice as a rule. Is that the case? Well, I don't know. Falconus^{p t c} 19:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Only a side note here: I recall reading a study that concluded that women who speak East Asian languages (Japanese and Mandarin were the languages studied) spoke with a higher mean F0 (correlating to higher pitch) than their English-speaking counterparts, and another that bilingual speakers might use a higher mean F0 in one language than in another. Steewi (talk) 04:23, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is anectodal only, but I've observed that Chinese females speaking English tend to have use a lower-pitched voice relative to their voice when speaking Chinese, and indeed relative to non-Chinese females speaking English. But the tendency is not universal.--达伟 (talk) 10:11, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From a computational phonology perspective, we can see that tensed frontal vowels have some higher-pitched formants than their lax or backed counterparts, and we can also hear the old-movie accents as being more frontal (at least I can), so that would account for a perceived heightening of pitch. Speakers of Parisian French, if they have a good American English accent, sound like they drop pitch in switching languages, which would also fit that hypothesis. So my conclusion is that the midwestern "darkening" (that is, back and lax) of Standard American English would produce an audibly-lower perceived (just the base tone is lower, but the average should be the same) pitch. I should probably verify this on my spectra software though. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:42, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

People seem to pitch higher when they talk louder. If they were yelling into not-very-sensitive microphones, or had learned to yell their dramatic lines or oratory in pre-microphone days, speakers might tend to have higher-pitched voices. Just a theory.--Cam (talk) 06:07, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lincoln reportedly had a relatively high-pitched voice which assisted in being heard throughout a crowd while loudly delivering a speech (without yelling as such). AnonMoos (talk) 17:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Correct form

Hello there I am looking for standard form of following statements:
There are 162,221,000 people lives in BD. When their own favorite team win/lose a match they act like the have achieved/lost their heart, what a patriotic nature for other country!!! But What a shame that we could not make 11 skilled football player who could have qualified themselves for WC 2010.
Is there anything wrong with these statements? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.234.152.159 (talk) 18:45, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is easily understandable to me, but there are some grammatical issues. The first is a nitpick; most of the time we would say "over 162 million," or say "162 million" and not be quite as precise, though it is by no means incorrect to do so. The second is that the word "lives" is incorrect there. The first problem with it is that "lives" can only be used with a third person singular pronoun ("he", "she", "it", "John", "the cat", etc). The second is that because of the linking verb "are" you have to say "living." "There are 162,221,000 people living in BD." The next thing is that I am not sure what "BD" is. If you wish to elaborate on that, it may not be a bad idea. If you are in England, saying that the "team win or lose a match" (for formal writing, you want to replace the "/" with "or") is correct, but if you are in America, it is incorrect, and should be "team wins or loses. That is merely a difference in dialects. "like the have achieved..." should be "like they have achieved." "Achieved" is not really the right word there. I would try to rephrase it a bit, maybe "feel pride in their heart" or any one of a number of things. I would personally change the comma between "heart" and "what" to a hyphen, but I am not sure that it is incorrect ~~hte~~ the way it is. Formal English only ever has one exclamation point at a time, but many people break that rule for emphasis, so I don't know that you need to change it. "But What a shame..." "What" should be lowercase. "Player" should be plural ("players"). Again, depending on the audience, you may want to write out "World Cup" rather than "WC". Also, some English speakers would advocate writing out "eleven" rather than "11" and the word "make" is not quite the right word. I would recommend "have" or "find". "Other" in "other country" should be preceeded by an article, specifically in this case "the". So, I would recommend "There are over 162 million people living in BD [write out BD - I have no idea what it means]. When their own favorite team wins or loses [if you are writing in American English like me] a match, they feel the pride or loss in their heart - what a patriotic nature for the other country! But what a shame that we could not have eleven skilled football players who could have qualified themselves for World Cup 2010!" I know that's a lot of suggestions, feel free to ask me to explain any of my suggestions. You did a good job; I could easily understand what you were intending (other than "BD"), which is the biggest purpose of writing. Falconus^{p t c} 19:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kudos, Falconus, I wouldn't have had the patience to explain all of that. Judging by the IP and by the population figure, BD probably means Bangladesh - if that's the case, then British English rules would probably apply. Rimush (talk) 20:03, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kudos, indeed. Just a couple of comments: I don't quite know what "what a patriotic nature for the other country!" means. The sort of sense of it that I get is "the other country finds themselves up against a team of players more patriotic than they ever expected". Is that what it's trying to say? "...football players who could have qualified themselves for ..." - the usual idiom is "qualify for", not "qualify oneself for".

And serendipitously you've come up with a rather fascinating idea. We could extend the various National Spelling Bees (I assume there are more than this one) into a "Word [sic] Cup". Great idea! -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:22, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I reread that two or three times, and I still mistyped two words... Oops. The sense that I got for "what a patriotic nature for the other country" was a statement of how patriotic the country was. Falconus^{p t c} 20:28, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm, but one is patriotic for one's own country, not for an opposing country. It's a very odd way of expressing whatever the idea is meant to be. I'd suggest an alternative formulation if I had a clear idea of what it's trying to say. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:54, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What I understood from that was this: Bangladesh didn't qualify for the World Cup, but Bangladeshi people still have a favorite team in the World Cup. For example, Johnny's favorite team is Uruguay. And he is "patriotic" in a sense, just not for Bangladesh, but for Uruguay - he feels Uruguay's wins and losses in his heart. Rimush (talk) 22:23, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so very much Falconus and others for the explanation. All of you have cleared up my mind very nicely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.234.152.159 (talk) 21:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are very welcome. I am glad that we could help. Falconus^{p t c} 23:34, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I see Muphrys law is still at work - the "l" in World Cup is italic for some reason, making it look like a "/"; or was that a deliberate choice? Astronaut (talk) 05:13, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It was intentional since I changed it after the fact, but I've unitalicised it now because you are right about the "/". Falconus^{p t c} 17:25, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Marry merry mary merger

Hi all! I live in an area of the Marry merry mary merger and I was wondering how someone who does not would pronounce them. IPA is fine, but just in case also give a pronunciation respelling because i'm a bit rusty in IPA. THnkas ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.235.109.124 (talk) 21:02, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They are all different in my accent (RP, give or take). The only differences are the vowels. In "marry" it's /æ/, in "merry" it's /ɛ/ and in "Mary" it's a diphthong, /ɛə/. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that will help, since the way IPA works means the same symbols are pronounced differently in different accents. The same problem prevents me from giving you a respelling version - the vowel in "marry" is the same vowel for me as in "bad", but you probably don't pronounce "bad" the same way I do either. --Tango (talk) 22:13, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I probably pronounce them in a very similar way to Tango. Marry has a short vowel with the tongue well-separated from the palate (mouth and throat fairly wide open), merry is similarly short but with the back of the tongue closer to the palate, Mary in my local accent is just a long version of the vowel in merry. I don't know whether this makes sense to those who use very different vowels. Dbfirs 22:28, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the obvious solution - a recording of me saying the three words. --Tango (talk) 22:30, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

... but how does one play ".ogv" files? Dbfirs 09:49, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Probably one for the Computing RefDesk :-). 87.81.230.195 (talk) 11:19, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was sceptical as to whether you actually had a /æ/ in 'marry', but then I listened to your recording and it is, indeed, much closer to /ɛ/ than I use, meaning your distinction between 'marry' and 'merry' is smaller than I usually expect. I feel like I should apologise for an assumption I never actually expressed. I also feel oddly disillusioned that you have a human voice ;) 86.164.57.20 (talk) 17:53, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dunno if this will help, but a recording of my voice from 2003 is available, including these three words. AUE people, on hearing it, called me "MINMINM" ("Mary is not marry is not merry"). (The other thing that you might find interesting is the difference between calm /kɑm/ and com /kam/.)—msh210℠ 07:02, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing

Also why do languages lose things like case systems over time. for example latin had one of the most complex in the European languages but no modern major romance language, aprat from Romanian, has it, and even in Romanian is has been greatly simplified. 76.235.109.124 (talk) 21:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They don't always lose them. Tocharian, for example, has more cases than Proto-Indo-European. +An gr 23:38, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One rough and crude rule of thumb is that if a language has a strong stress accent which is generally not placed on the final syllable of polysyllabic words, and the final syllables of polysyllabic words typically consist of inflectional endings, then such inflectional endings will often be subject to great reduction and simplification over the long term. Of course, there are other circumstances which can favor the incorporation of originally separate words (postpositions and other particles) as agglutinative suffixes of the preceding word (as mentioned by Angr).... AnonMoos (talk) 00:27, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the "t" of the old 2nd. person singular "-st" verb ending originated from a following word, and some linguists claim that the "-n't" of so-called "contractions" is actually a true morphological suffix (not a mere clitic), so English has had some historical morphological gains in word-endings (along with many more losses). AnonMoos (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

John McWhorter has a good book, The Power of Babel, that's all about this. It's written for a lay audience and is accessible to non-linguists (I read it before I studied linguistics; in fact, it's what made me want to study linguistics). rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:24, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

July 3

Correct terminology: eponym

What is the correct terminology for when an ordinary, everyday word is named after a person? Examples: the guillotine was named after Dr. Guillotin; pasteurized milk is named for Louis Pasteur. Also, is the common everyday word then supposed to be written in upper-case letters or lower-case letters? Thanks! (64.252.65.146 (talk) 19:46, 3 July 2010 (UTC))[reply]

Eponym. Capitalization depends on how common it is..."guillotine" for example is so far removed from Dr. Guillotin that it no longer needs to be capitalized. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The meeting about the boycott was so warm, I wished I'd left my cardigan--the one with the raglan sleeves--at home. (Despite the heat, I was starving; it was a good thing I had a sandwich. Janet, who'd come right from the gym in a deep green leotard, brought a lunch but had left it in her diesel car.) The proposed actions were downright draconian. Approving these ideas would only galvanize the opposition. I tired of the bunkum, so I yanked the lavaliere microphone off the dunce of a speaker. Janet restrained me from issuing a jeremiad. We stalked out past the lawyer with the ludicrous pompadour and the stentorian platitudes. Rain dripped off the mansard roof and through the wisteria as we crossed the macadam road, thinking only of a two-person saturnalia. --- OtherDave (talk) 00:04, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, good point. So, why do some eponyms retain capitalization (examples: Alzheimer's disease, Victorian era, etc.)? Or are those not considered eponyms, for some reason? Thanks. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 01:20, 4 July 2010 (UTC))[reply]

The Wikipedia article eponym (section: Orthographic conventions) suggests that eponyms retain capitalization if they directly refer to a proper noun. "Alzheimer's disease" and "Graves' disease" begin with a capital letter because they refer to the scientists (James Parkinson and Robert James Graves) who discovered them. A word is more likely to be lowercase if the word has gained a new meaning and is only related to the name of the original person (e.g., "guillotine" or "pasteurize").162.40.210.142 (talk) 05:55, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A word of clarification: Parkinson's disease was named after James Parkinson, and Alzheimer's disease after Alois Alzheimer. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 06:05, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course there are exceptions to that (i.e. to what 162.40.210.142 wrote). Down syndrome is almost universally capitalized although it is not possessive and so does not refer to Down (as it would if it were called Down's syndrome, but rather is the name of a disease). One sees Hermitian matrices but abelian groups, Lie groups but newtons (the unit of force). And many such words appear in both forms (i.e., with upper- and lowercase initial letter), often evolving over time.—msh210℠ 06:48, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Who says? "Down's syndrome" is universal in the UK (see eg here) and does indeed refer to Down. Until now, if I had encountered "Down syndrome" I would have assumed it was a mishearing. --ColinFine (talk) 15:47, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say Down's syndrome is not used in the U.K. I was talking about Down syndrome.—msh210℠ 16:22, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Many periods in geology are eponyms such as Jurassic, Kimmeridge, but not Cretaceous. Incidentally, while I am here, can you confirm that geology periods are all nouns by convention? --Senra (talk) 07:50, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on whether you're referring to the period or system, geologists tend to say 'the Jurassic' when talking about the period, but when they say 'a Jurassic sequence' they're talking about the system and it's an adjective. Mikenorton (talk) 08:21, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you mean by that. Words like Jurassic, Cretaceous etc are clearly adjectives. We sometimes use them loosely as if they were nouns ("During the Jurassic, X happened"), but they're really abbreviations for "Jurassic period" etc. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 08:20, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am now thoroughly confused. I am trying to correct the capitalisation of the paragraph "The village is on a boulder clay island sitting on a belt of mainly Jurassic, e.g., Kimmeridge, clays running south-west from The Wash. Surrounding the island are flat tracts of land consisting of geologically more recent river gravel, alluvium, and fen deposits. To the east of the area is a south-west running belt of Cretaceous chalk. To the west, again running south-west, is a scarp belt of middle-Jurassic limestone, sandstone, etc.". Is it correct as it now stands? --Senra (talk) 08:45, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. I might have written "...on a belt of mainly Jurassic clays, such as Kimmeridgian, running..." but that's just a stylistic difference. I noticed that the Jurassic article used adjective forms for stages like Kimmeridgian. I can easily imagine geologists using "Kimmeridgian" and "Kimmeridge" interchangeably, but it's not a field I know. --- OtherDave (talk) 10:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adjectives denoting geological periods are always capitalised, as far as I'm aware. Your text looks fine to me. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:02, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Acknowledged and thank you

Done --Senra (talk) 10:34, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

July 4

Kimmeridge, geologically

Is Kimeridge clay the correct term rather than Kimmeridge? --Senra (talk) 07:54, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kimmeridge Clay refers to a geological formation and the source for most of the oil in the North Sea, whereas Kimmeridgian is an age or stage in the Jurassic. Mikenorton (talk) 08:11, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) The OED allows both versions: "Kimmeridge. Also Kimeridge. A village on the Dorsetshire coast, where extensive beds of the Upper Oolite formation are developed. Hence, Kimmeridge clay, a bed of clay in the Upper Oolite containing bituminous shales. Kimmeridge coal, shale of the Kimmeridge clay containing so much bitumen that it may be burnt as coal; Kimmeridge coal money, disks of shale found near Kimmeridge, popularly supposed to have been used as coins by the ancient inhabitants.

Although the village name is now spelt Kimmeridge, the form Kimeridge is current in geological usage, reflecting the former spelling of the name; cf.:-1933 W. J. Arkell Jurassic Syst. Gt. Brit. xiv. 441 The spelling Kimeridge was used by H. B. Woodward.., by Damon.., and by most earlier authorities. The new form Kimmeridge was not heard of before Webster and Buckland introduced it in the [early] nineteenth century and seems to have no justification. 1947 - Geol. Country around Weymouth (Mem. Geol. Survey Gt. Brit.) v. 68 Inland towards Kimmeridge village. [Note] The name of this village was Cameric in Domesday Book and Kymerich by 1293; by the time of Hutchins' great work on Dorset it had become Kimeridge... The Ordnance map of 1811 (Sheet 16, Old Series) retained one 'm', and so did Damon in his Geology of Weymouth (1860 and 18848) and H. B. Woodward in 'The Jurassic Rocks of Britain', (vol. v, 1895), Mem. Geol. Survey. In the resurvey of 1892 (Sheet 342, New Series), two 'm's' were adopted and the Geological Survey followed suit in 1898."--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:14, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These days the single 'm' is almost never used in geological literature, not since the early 1960s as far as I can tell. Mikenorton (talk) 09:56, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Acknowledged and thank you

Done --Senra (talk) 10:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

figure out the accent of Tommy Wiseau

Tommy Wiseau, the famous director of the worst $8-million-and-up film ever refuses to identify his accent or his ethnic origins (simply that he has traveled, in particular to New Orleans and New York). I figure combined efforts here can help pin it down. See the trailer or a review or the film in three minutes or a video interview for help, perhaps. SamuelRiv (talk) 08:25, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Douchebag"

How did a word for a personal hygiene item become a word of insult? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.227.54.254 (talk) 14:57, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you think about the actual function and use of the object, you can understand that applying that term to a person -- at least among juvenile minds -- would not be a very nice thing to call someone. --达伟 (talk) 15:11, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not far removed from "scumbag". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:03, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking for a word

I've been thinking of a word that is on the tip of my tongue, but I can't get it. It's been driving me crazy. The word is a synonym of "associate" in the sense "I do not associate with immature people". I'm fairly sure it has a "c" and may be a co-, con- or com- word, but of that I'm less sure. Can somebody help me id the word? Thanks. --Larry —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.229.163.6 (talk) 15:42, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Consort. --ColinFine (talk) 15:49, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

also others such as collaborate, and conspire. --Senra (talk) 20:58, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What is the meaning of ‘sock puppet’ in general and for WP concerns?

As far as I know, a user is not limited to have one account, and almost no one has a true ID (s). The ‘sock puppet’ refers, as far as I know, to an activity that is conducted by one person as if they were two. For example, one person with two different IDs conducts a question and an answer. I did also this thing few months ago as I had not received any reasonable reply, but then I realized the awkwardness as one commenting his or her own post. If this type of posts (sock puppet) is to be avoided in WP, it is understandable. Otherwise, what is wrong with an edit that is similar with that of ‘sock puppet’? -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 20:55, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Glossary#S says a socket puppet is "Another user account created secretly by an existing Wikipedian, generally to manufacture the illusion of support in a vote or argument". The essence of sock puppetry is duplicity; it's manufacturing the illusion that several independent people hold a view, when if fact only the deceiver does. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:02, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, in fairness I should point out that that is my definition of a sock puppet in this context. While I added it to the glossary a very long time ago, the term was already in general use in Usenet, Meatball, and Wikipedia before then.-- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:06, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I also want to add this post though it is not directly a language question; just follows the above. Why there are so many problems for one to post or answer a question in this discipline? Unlike other disciplines, I think, the backbone of this discipline is question over questions even by ‘sock puppet’. Everyone has ID protections so that no one needs to worry about postings, even if they have communities’ recognitions that are to be maintained for institutions. However, there have not been any serious disagreements among posters lately though some answers were totally wrong. But there were many valuable posts as well. Any comments about why there are some problems here while there are many whom can be invited here to make posts that are more valuable for educated readers? -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 20:55, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Let me put it like this. Wikipedia Reference Desk is not a community of "the great and the good": it is a community of volunteers, who may or may not have specific expertise in any or all of the areas on the Desk. We could invite people to contribute, sure: but (a) how would we know who they are, and (b) they don't have to if they don't want to. This belongs on the Ref Desk Talk Page, really. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:49, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are many such people who are not known for their expertise. But I guess that they will not participate in this kind of environment, means—even if they do not care about critics and conflicts with posters but may care about the environment that welcomes their contributions and protects them from administrative mishandlings. I guess many people, retired academicians in particular, love to string in LD if a suitable environment is provided to them; even if they are more or less community minded.

Yes, I agree that this post belongs to the Ref Desk Talk Page and not here. -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 18:49, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

July 5

Japanese and Chinese Stroke Order

The Stroke order article mentions differences between the stroke order of otherwise identical hanzi/kanji characters in China and Japan, and the CJK Stroke Order project on Wikimedia Commons has some examples. Is there anywhere I can find a more complete list of all the characters with different stroke orders in Simplified Chinese vs Japanese)? I'm specifically not interested in characters with different forms in the two languages (e.g. 门 vs 門), only characters that are the same Unicode character and only differ in their stroke order.

61.247.211.245 (talk) 09:26, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

personal description

i want to describe a person as a english work.so i want to about our all body parts for doing my work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.88.249.58 (talk) 12:26, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Human body article is probably a good place to start. Add adjectives like "large"/"big"/"small", "fat"/"thin", "wide"/"narrow", "straight"/"crooked". There are more descriptive adjectives that can be used such as: "fleshy", "strong", "muscular", "stocky" and so on. There are specific words used to describe hair colour. The style of clothing is also an important part of a description. Astronaut (talk) 12:32, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a general term for something that accepts a screw

What is a general term for something that receives a screw? Is there a word that's applicable

whether the thing is fixed or movable
regardless of the material it is made of, and
regardless of whether the thing has a pre-drilled threaded hole or whether the screw creates the hole itself? --96.227.54.254 (talk) 13:35, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

An "anchor?" Could it be referred to as the anchoring material? "Mooring" is also a word conveying the notion of something to which an item is fastened. Bus stop (talk) 13:42, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My Google search for screw hole reported 15,400,000 results.—Wavelength (talk) 20:01, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure it did, but how many of them are related to the question, and how many of them are Not Safe For Work? +An gr 20:32, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Searching for "screw hole" on the other hand returns 233,000 hits and presumably a better ratio of related ones. Even then, one of the top hits is still from the Free Medical Dictionary and presumably not what we are looking for. AJ Cham 20:50, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

'Hostage to fortune' idiom

I would like a breakdown of the meaning for the English idiom "hostage to fortune", or "giving hostage to fortune." It is a rarely used phrase but the literal meaning to it has been plaguing me relentlessly. I should also further explain that I am not asking for the definition of the phrase; that would be a simple enough job by doing a quick internet search. I am, however, asking for the literal meaning of it. When 'giving hostage to fortune', does 'fortune' represent a desired outcome? And to give 'hostage' to it would be to make a comment or perform an action in which you don't fully know the outcome, but you're making it or doing it, anyway?72.70.140.90 (talk) 00:08, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]