Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

Select a section:

WP:RD/L

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

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

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

March 24

extrémité/French skeletal anatomy

I am having some trouble with the sentence "des calcifications engainantes localisées, principalement rencontrées au niveau de la voûte crânienne et de l'extrémité distale du membre supérieur et inférieur gauche." I don't really speak French, so I've been using Google translate and relying on most of the science words being really similar. It is describing pathologies on a skeleton, and I get most of it, but I'm having trouble with the end. It's coming out as something like "and the distal end of upper and lower left," but that isn't a particularly helpful statement - does it mean the arms and legs, or the upper and lower halves of the arms?

Also, I'm having trouble with "extrémité" in general. Does it have a specific scientific use? How can I tell if a particular case means the ends of the arm bones, or the hand, or the fingers?

Thanks in advance. 174.30.208.36 (talk) 03:48, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(1) I'm surprised it didn't translate membre, which, in most cases I've seen it, equates to English limb (it might also mean member as a certain other part of the body), which would mean the arms and legs. (2) I've also seen extrémités, plural, taken to mean limbs (although sometimes also the hands and feet). In the singular, it might just be end, as you suggested. -- the Great Gavini 05:06, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(1) So its referring to the upper and lower left limb? I don't think it's plural, so what is it referring to - arm, leg, or both? (2) Thank you! So it's just a general sense, like in English I might say that there's evidence of infection in the bones of the arms? 174.30.208.36 (talk) 05:27, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Calcifications are localized [...] at the distal end of the upper left limb and of the lower left limb. My understanding (in French too): localized at the left arm, at the left leg or both.— AldoSyrt (talk) 09:08, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And "distal" refers to the furthest of these extremities, i.e. fingers and toes on a human, although the original passage in French would seem to refer to an animal, so whatever the equivalent is in that species. --Xuxl (talk) 16:03, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The original sentence is from this paper: Maladies dans l'Antiquité et au Moyen-Âge. Paléopathologie comparée des anciens Gallo-Romains et Hongrois It refers to a human fetus. According to the figure 30 of the paper, the effects of the congenital syphilis are not limited to the toes and to the fingers.— AldoSyrt (talk) 17:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see the images from that, but thank you for another source! I'm actually looking at a different document, but it may just be a reprint or something. I'm still having some trouble with this, so I'm going to ask really specifically. I know that in this context "distal" should be referring to the end of specific bones, rather than limbs in general. Does it mean that the calcifications are at the distal ends of the left humerus, tibia, and fibula? 174.30.250.190 (talk) 05:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the pictures are not shown, fortunately you can look at figure 30 on page 67 of the pdf file. The pathological areas are shown in black, normal are hatched and missing bones are in white. (A picture is worth a thousand words - attributed to Napoleon) — AldoSyrt (talk) 09:30, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, I missed that one. Thank you! 174.30.250.190 (talk) 15:57, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

O.T., but the RD pages aren't updating for me when logged out - does anyone know why that might be? -- the Great Gavini 05:08, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That happens when they get overloaded. It should resolve itself. StuRat (talk) 20:55, 24 March 2011 (UTC) [reply]

The right way to represent an object or a thing

The student was found in the room with TV on top of him OR The student was found in the room with TV at top of him. Which of the above two sentences is correct ? This is precisely asked with respect to the use of "on" and "at" aniketnik 08:56, 24 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniketnik (talk • contribs)

I'd choose "on". I'd also use an article before "TV" - whether definite ("the") or indefinite ("a") will depend on the context the sentence appears in. If it's an isolated sentence, it doesn't matter which one - but you must have one for the sentence to sound idiomatic. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:06, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed: "on top of" is the only idiomatic way to say this. I suppose there's also "atop" (as in "with the TV atop him") but that sounds rather strange and old-fashioned. (Perhaps "at top" comes from a mis-hearing of "atop".) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

O'bama instead of Obama

When Americans say O'bama, with what are they trying to associate the president? 77.231.17.82 (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any other way of saying "Obama"? --TammyMoet (talk) 14:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, some call him Osama supposedly by mistake. Quest09 (talk) 21:10, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The O' prefix is typical of Irish surnames. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:23, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Saint Patrick's Day? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:22, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, yes, I forgot that Obama has Irish ancestry. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:46, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Russian language question

The second verse of the song "Moscow Nights" contains the phrases: "Речка движется и не движется" and "Песня слышится и не слышится". Literal translations could be "the river is moving and is not moving" / "a song is heard and is not heard". Somewhere way back I recall that this kind of form (postive + negative) is used in Russian to convey ambiguity, and can be translated as "the rivers seems to be moving" / "a song seems to be heard". My questions are: Is this a correct interpretation of this construction? Is there a linguistic term for this? Do other languages use this too? Thank you in advance! ---Sluzzelin talk 18:46, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to come down to the simile/metaphor difference. That is, do you say "that man is like iron" or "is iron" ? I would tend to go with the literal translation here, rather than risk introducing a subtle change in meaning. StuRat (talk) 20:42, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Literal translations are rife with issues, particularly when it comes to poems. Plus, Russian is especially rich in idiomatic expressions that simply do not mean what they seem to literally mean. My sense is of a river that seems to be hardly moving, maybe because it's being viewed from a distance in the moonlight (see this translation); and a snatch of a song that is faintly heard from afar, so faintly that the listener is not sure he's heard anything at all. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:52, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but isn't it better to do the literal translation, then let the reader decide what it really means, than have the translator add in his opinion of what it means ? StuRat (talk) 23:28, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, not as a general approach. How do we know the readers could make any sense out of individual words all literally translated, unless they had some good knowledge of the source language and its idioms? Because, if they had that knowledge, they wouldn't generally be needing a translation into another language to begin with. "From the horse's mouth" is not generally translated into other languages by use of their words for "horse" and "mouth", because they don't share this idiom with English, and readers would be scratching their heads until Doomsday wondering what the reference to horses and their mouths was all about. Generally speaking, translations are for people who know the target language but not the source language. It's the translator's job to render the meaning as closely as possible, and it's a very tricky business. A translator is not just a machine that converts words, computer-like, from one language to another. They bring their own history and world-view and communication skills into the equation, and yes, their opinions. Which is why you can pick up 6 different translations of War and Peace and find that, while some passages are translated identically, many others differ in some material particulars. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:55, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In a case where there's really only one possible translation, like "put your nose to the grindstone", then that's fine. But the cases given here seem to have multiple translations possible, so picking one at random does a disservice to the author. If he had intended for it to be unambiguous, he would have written it that way. StuRat (talk) 02:01, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "at random". Where do you get such ideas from, Stu? It's (assumed to be) the translator's conscientious belief as to what the writer intended, based on their own knowledge of Russian and its peculiar idioms, what they can discover about the writer and his style and his personal history particularly around the time the passage in question was written, etc. "If he had intended for it to be unambiguous, he would have written it that way" - how do you know he did in fact intend it to be ambiguous? Is your knowledge of Russian such that this conclusion is inescapable? I studied Russian for three years at university, married into a Russian-speaking family, and have been using the language on-and-off for over 35 years, but I certainly can't answer this question. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 02:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't believe that either "Речка движется и не движется" or "Песня слышится и не слышится" has a single unambiguous interpretation. If you find a reliable source that says they do, then those would be good translations. Otherwise, they should be translated literally. StuRat (talk) 07:42, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It really isn't about what non-russophones can or can't believe, Stu, because their beliefs are ipso facto pretty irrelevant. No offence. But I'm done with talking about this; it's not getting the OP any closer to an answer. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For that matter, if you can find any language where the "A is B, A is not B" usage has one specific meaning, I'd be very surprised. StuRat (talk) 22:20, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks both of you! I am not seeking to write or publish or sing a translation, I want to know what it means to a native Russian speaker (which doesn't mean the answer needs to be provided by a native speaker). In English, this construction is quite unusual, no? - it sounds more like a Western translation of Zen poetry or something like that, to me anyway. What does the original mean to Russian ears? Is it as unusual, or is it actually a commonly used phrasing?

Jack, you may be on to something there, I had thought about coming back and adding that another translation might be "barely moving" and "barely heard", or hardly and faintly, as you put it. And thank you for that translation link. I still remain curious about this lyrical Russian construction in general, or is it more or less unique to this song? ---Sluzzelin talk 23:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that it means different things to different Russian speakers. Like many forms of art, poetry is often left to be interpreted by the viewer. In such a case, I believe that the artist's intent (that it should be left undefined), should be preserved. This type of oxymoron isn't unheard of English either, such as "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Imagine if that was hacked into "It was the best of times in some ways, such as .... while the worst of times in other ways, such as ...". StuRat (talk) 00:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another possible meaning of "the river is moving and not moving" is that, while the water within the river moves, the river itself does not (well, it does, but only over the course of many years). StuRat (talk) 00:36, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another possible meaning of "the song is heard and not heard" is that the words were heard, but the meaning was not truly understood. StuRat (talk) 00:47, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Two possibly irrelevant comparisons: -- the river thing could be inspired by Heraclitus' most famous saying; and I don't know of any general linguistic construction "A is X and not-X", but some languages use a construction "A is X and B is not-X" as their version of the comparative (i.e. "John is strong and Mike is weak" would be those languages' way of saying "John is stronger than Mike")... AnonMoos (talk) 15:25, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This literary device appears in the Bible.

At least one "Dick and Jane" book teaches "relativity". "Dick is big. Sally is little." "Sally is big. Tim is little." [1]

—Wavelength (talk) 15:18, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

[I am correcting my punctuation. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:55, 27 March 2011 (UTC)][reply]

I'm not a native Russian speaker either, but my experience with the language is decent. I don't think that the specific pattern (It's moving, and it isn't moving) is a fixed pattern that forms part of standard language use (i.e. it's not a common prosaic way of expressing "barely" or "seemingly"). It's not a particularly common or conventionalised literary device either. Overall, I'd say that it's just a relatively individual poetic choice of words that occurs in this particular song and that we pretty much owe to this particular author (Mikhail Matusovsky). In English, I can imagine something like "The river is moving - or is it?" or "The river is moving - and yet it isn't." I'd say that English constructions such as "yes and no" and "X is Y-ing - or is it?" are actually more commonplace and conventionalised than the Russian phrase under discussion. Of course, you can say things like "мне этого хочется - и не хочется" ("I want this - yet I don't"), or "я тебя понимаю - и не понимаю" ("I understand you, and yet I don't"), but it's not specific to the language, these are instead highly individual expressions that you would normally follow up by an clarification. That's what I think, at least; native speakers' input would be more relevant, of course.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 21:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that! And thank you everyone for your replies, efforts, and interesting tidbits. ---Sluzzelin talk 05:10, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed a request for comment from a native speaker at WT:RUSSIA and thought I'd chip in. Folks above do have a point about the lyrics meaning different things to different people—there certainly isn't anything in the song to make one absolutely sure what the ambiguity here means. My personal opinion (and it is by no means the "correct" one; just one I personally feel to be most likely) is that the lyrics are trying to convey the singer's perception that while everything around is in motion, the evenings are so peaceful and quiet that it feels as if everything is standing still. That is, the river is of course flowing, but it feels and looks as if it isn't. Same goes for the song, which is being sung, but it doesn't feel as if it is. For what it's worth,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 28, 2011; 13:46 (UTC)

Thanks for that thoughtful answer, Ezhiki! ---Sluzzelin talk 05:10, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Changing meaning of happiness

I've heard it said on tv or radio, more than once, that the meaning or definition of happiness was different in the past.

Is this true? What was its meaning in the past? Evidence-based answers are particularly welcome. Thanks 92.24.188.210 (talk) 21:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This might be slightly off-topic, but the Inn of the Sixth Happiness seems to use a different meaning, where they are items that can be counted. This is likely a (mis)translation from Chinese, though. StuRat (talk) 22:42, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain what you mean. That article says nothing about the 1 to 6 or more happinesses. 92.28.242.170 (talk) 22:01, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Our article doesn't name them, but I found a site that does (which Wikipedia seems to block due to SPAM ads). Here's the list of the first 6 Confucian happinesses:

1. Good health

2. Good wealth

3. Long life

4. Good career

5. Plenty offspring

6. Good food

As you can see, the "6th happiness" is good food, making it "The Inn of Good Food". StuRat (talk) 07:21, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As I dimly remember it, the movie The Inn of the Sixth Happiness coyly doesn't say what the sixth is, but as the protagonist is a missionary I supposed that it's meant to be Salvation. —Tamfang (talk) 00:14, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If the commentary that you heard had to do with the phrase the pursuit of happiness, there is an argument that, by happiness, Thomas Jefferson meant the classical Greek concept of eudaimonia. See this article. Marco polo (talk) 18:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My quick reading of that and the eudaimonia article suggests that the older meaning is that of doing your best, including being ethical, and provided you have done your best then you should be able to take misfortune(s) without being overcome by it. It reminds me of the poem Invictus. The modern meaning is more like continuous pleasure. Since people sometimes do things that will bring them unhappiness, such as taking part in wars or civil protests, then eudaimonia may be a higher goal than mere happiness. 92.28.242.170 (talk) 19:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if the full version of the Oxfiord English Dictionary gives any indication that the meaning has changed over the centuries. I do not have any access to it right now. 92.28.242.170 (talk) 19:11, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Happy used to mean lucky, and is related to "perhaps" and "happen". Here's the etymonline search to back that up: [2] 213.122.33.172 (talk) 01:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that this usage is related to happenstance. StuRat (talk) 21:32, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

March 25

Names for "second" and "minute" (units of time)

I am wondering about names for the "second" (the unit of time) in various languages. It seems that either:

the word for "second" is a loanword or
the word for "second" is derived from a word meaning "second" in the sense of "the first but one", or a phrase meaning "second part" (with a minute being the "first part" in this reckoning).

To me, this seems a bit strange. At least intuitively to me, it seems absurd to think of a second as a small subdivision of an hour (as implied by the words) rather than to think of an hour as an aggregate of seconds. Enough can happen in a few seconds, or even in a single second, that the interval is clearly not any kind of subdivision. Are there any counterexamples to my hypothesis? Perhaps the Chinese character "秒" will do, but I am not sure: at least in Japanese, this character can also mean an arcsecond. What is the etymology of this character, anyway?

Also, I am wondering about the word for "minute" in various languages as well. Where it is not a simple loanword, does it always mean a part or a piece of something etymologically? What surprises me is that I have never seen a root meaning "sixty" or "a sixtieth part" here, even though it is in terms of such that a minute is best described. Anyone adding hours on a timesheet knows exactly what I mean.

75.44.12.112 (talk) 07:02, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that they did start as divisions of an hour, with "first" = minute, "second" = second, "third" = 1/60th second, and "fourth" = 1/60th of a "third". (I'm not sure why a second retained it's name but not a "first"/minute.) To understand why the hour was the primary unit, you have to understand that long ago, very few things had to be timed by the second, while many things were timed in hours. For example, if two people were going to meet, it would be set for a certain hour (as it often is today). Also, before clocks, a sundial could measure hours, but not seconds. See hour, minute, second, and units of time. StuRat (talk) 07:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think a minute was ever referred to as a "first" - that's a sort of backronym. I think the sequence is: you have your unit (hour, degree, whatever). You find it convenient to divide it up in to little bits, which you call "minutes" (meaning "small" - the factor of sixty is not part of the meaning, but just what the Sumerian astronomers found natural). Later you find you want to subdivide minutes, so you invent a "second" division, and a "third".

I agree that it is interesting that these words are generally loan-translated, rather than, say substituting a word meaning "sixtieth". I don't know why that should be, except to note that terms of science and technology are often either borrowed or loan-translated. I'm thinking of German "Sauerstoff" and "Wasserstoff", which translate the "oxy-" and "hydro-" from the Greek roots of "oxygen" and "hydrogen". --ColinFine (talk) 08:34, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, if you look at the etymology of "second" [3], you see that it derives from the Latin for "secunda pars minuta (“second diminished part (of the hour)”)". When humans started keeping track of time, there really wasn't any way to measure times shorter than a day accurately. Probably the first tool that allowed you to do that was the sundial, which in practical use is only accurate to about an hour (etymology: "a period of time" [4]). When mechanical clocks were made, a finer subdivision of an hour were now possible, so the "minute" (from minūta [5] ("diminished" [6]) akin to minute/"small") was added. When clocks got really accurate, the second minute was added. Since even the second was probably more accurate than most humans need for day-to-day usage, it stopped there. -- 174.21.235.112 (talk) 16:39, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Second" is indeed the second fractional part of an hour, using sexagesimal fractions. An obscure word for 1/60 of a second is tierce. Although the first part may not ever have been called "first", according to our article, it was once called primus.

Also of interest is that, once upon a time, these fractional parts were indicated by roman-numeral superscripts -- that is, what we now write as 12:34:56 was once transcribed as 12 34^I 56^II. Over time the roman numerals evolved to single and double primes and/or quote marks, which are still used today for minutes and seconds of a degree: 12°34'56". (And also for feet and inches; dunno how that happened.) —Steve Summit (talk) 10:20, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Does that mean the degree sign ° started out as a superscript zero? Pais (talk) 16:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article ° confirms that. --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Everyday usage of Standard German in Germany

What German city uses the closest to Standard German variety in everyday usage nowadays? --Belchman (talk) 12:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think Hanover has that reputation, but I can't vouch for the accuracy of the claim. Pais (talk) 13:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Its without direct reference, but de:Standarddeutsch calls the region around Hannover the one with the "best" Standard German, in accordance with my forespeaker. --129.206.196.211 (talk) 13:03, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That article also says that until the 20th century, the best Standard German was spoken in Prague. Pais (talk) 16:51, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hanover and the former Low German-speaking areas in general, because they esentially learned Standard German as a foreign language and weren't influenced by local dialects. "You write it, we read it" goes the quip, since Standard German evolved as a written language not based on a specific local High German variety. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 17:22, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm that Hanover has that reputation, although it's not completely pure Standard German either. The most obvious difference is that syllable-initial st or sp is pronounced essentially as in English (a general feature of northern forms of German), whereas in Standard German it is pronounced sht or shp the way everybody in the south does. I think they also tend to use idioms that are either local or antiquated, such as "das ist nicht an dem". Hanover German sounds affected to me (from the south) in a way that Standard German as used by the broadcasters never does. I think this may have something to do with vowel quality, but I am no expert. Hans Adler 17:42, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know several people from Hanover, Braunschweig, and Salzgitter, and not one of them ßtolpert über ßpitze ßteine, as the saying goes (i.e. pronounces initial sp and st as [sp st] rather than [ʃp ʃt]). That's a characteristic of much further north: Hamburg, Lübeck, and Kiel. It's true that the grammar is not always 100% as Duden prescribes (e.g. das ist meinem Vater sein Wagen or damals wie ich ein Kind war or da hab ich Angst vor), but as far as pronunciation goes, I think it's as close as you're going to get in any colloquial local accent of German. On the other hand, I'm not sure how widespread the pronunciation of word-final g as [x] with concomitant shortening of the preceding vowel is; maybe Hanoverians do say [tax] for Tag and [tsʊx] for Zug instead of [taːk] and [tsuːk]. —Angr (talk) 22:57, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it depends on the person's level of education or social awareness or whatever: you hear both in Hannöversch. Various examples with the sp/st-pronunciation (and others with the schp/scht variety) can be heard at Wir sind Hannoveraner (see also here). You can hear parodists Siggi and Raner and the crowd singing both "spricht" and "schpricht" in this clip too, e.g. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:07, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

German: -ess like in 'Delikatess'

I know that -ess is a suffix, and therefore 'Delikatess' does not mean "delicated food". Which other German words end with -ess? Quest09 (talk) 17:52, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The German word is Delikatesse, not Delikatess. It is derived from the French délicatesse, meaning "delicacy". Marco polo (talk) 18:02, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Um, I always thought the word was Delikatessen, deriving from essen, which is German for eating. Looie496 (talk) 18:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the etymology, I think this is a sort of interlinguistic pun. In French -esse is a suffix, and délicatesse does mean "delicateness". But to a German, the word looks like "Delikat + esse", which translates as "fine food". In any case, "-esse" is not a standard suffix in German. Looie496 (talk) 18:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a pun that anyone would recognise unless you specifically draw attention to it by making it the punchline of a joke, for example. Delikatessen is simply the regular plural of Delikatesse, which is from French delicatesse and is in no way related to essen. Hans Adler 18:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see that our delicatessen article actually explains this. Looie496 (talk) 18:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would be surprised to learn that a suffix -ess exists in German. Delikatess (without the e) normally only appears in composite words such as Delikatess-Wurst. It doesn't really follow any regular pattern that I am aware of, and looks to me like 19th century marketing speak that has become part of the standard language. Hans Adler 18:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, then, the suffix is original from French only. But, do other loan French words with the same French suffix exist in German? Quest09 (talk) 18:19, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Of course: Petitesse, Finesse, Raffinesse, Mätresse, Noblesse. There are also words of Latin origin that do end in -ess, such as Abszess, Rezess, Prozess. Hans Adler 18:25, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the latter three cases, -ess is not a suffix, of course. If I'm not mistaken, Stewardess, Hostess(e), Baroness, Komtess all use a (originally) French diminutive suffix as a female gender marker (as does Mätresse). Tristesse goes along with Petitesse, Delikatesse and the like. --Jonas kork (talk) 19:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Although the plural of Delikatesse "delicacy" and a hypothetical compound Delikat-Essen ("delicate food(s)") would be spelled the same, they wouldn't be pronounced the same. Delikatessen as the plural of Delikatesse is [delikaˈtɛsn̩], while the compound Delikat-Essen would be [deliˈkatˌʔɛsn̩], with stress on a different syllable and a glottal stop between the t and the e. So the pronunciation assures us that the source of English delicatessen is the German plural of Delikatesse, borrowed from French délicatesse, not a compound of delikat and Essen. —Angr (talk) 22:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Correct Latin Quote

Made an edit on the Horace talk page earlier today before remembering this could probably help me more. I need someone who speaks Latin. I was told that Horace once said this quote: "Lusisti satis, edisti satis atque bibisti; tempus abire tibi est". The translation is meant to be "You've played enough, you've eaten and drunk enough; it's time for you to go away." I need to know if the Latin is completely sound though. It's pretty important to me and any help would be greatly appreciated. --81.129.208.128 (talk) 23:01, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The original can be found here, lines 214 and 215. --Wrongfilter (talk) 00:32, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In case there's any confusion, the quotation comes at lines 214-215 of the second poem in Wrongfilter's link. You've quoted Horace's Latin correctly, and the translation is accurate as well. --Antiquary (talk) 19:27, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. You've helped me a lot. It was for my grandmother's funeral tomorrow and I wanted to get it perfect. --86.137.116.241 (talk) 14:18, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

March 26

Intelligibility

Which languages have changed the least in history; i.e., modern-day speakers would be able to understand speakers from the furthest back? 72.128.95.0 (talk) 02:37, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't exactly know the answer to your question, but I believe that Icelandic has changed relatively little over hundreds of years. 86.160.211.9 (talk) 03:04, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The same example occurred to me. It might be an impossible question to answer definitively though, as we can only look at written language, and pronunciation may have changed over time. I'd suspect that a situation like Iceland might be most likely to preserve linguistic intelligibility well though, compared to other situations. A combination of relative geographic isolation, and a sufficiently-large population to filter out the random 'drift' you'd get in a smaller group might well help for a start - and then there is the long-standing tradition of Icelandic Sagas, which may also encourage linguistic continuity. This is guesswork though - I don't know whether linguists can come up with more concrete evidence. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:13, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

86.160.211.9 -- The written Icelandic language has changed relatively little, but the spoken pronunciation of the language has changed quite strongly in a number of respects since the time the sagas were written... AnonMoos (talk) 05:10, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you google "most conservative language" you will find a number of discussions linguist list, straight dope, etc., and Icelandic gets mentioned often, as does Lithuanian. Within the family of German dialects it is said that Highest Alemannic German is the most conservative, and, in fact, I experienced this when first reading medieval German texts at school as a teenager; they always reminded me of Walliser German which I had been familiar with since childhood. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:20, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One should not forget "dead" languages. Most of them disappear without a trace like a flock of squaking dodos, but there are exceptions like Classical Latin. I have no idea if Cicero and Joe Ratzinger could waffle away in the Vatican without the odd confusion, but by definition a dead language is not changing a great deal. It is, of course, a moot point if Latin is (or has ever been) "really" dead. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:43, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's right. It's still used far too widely - if selectively - to be properly considered dead. Is there a universally accepted definition of "living language", "dead language", "moribund language" etc? If not, this would be as bad a gap as the lack of definition of planet until a couple of years ago. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:56, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Would that make Pluto a dead planet ? How appropriate, for both Pluto (god) and Charon (mythology). StuRat (talk) 22:23, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The usual criterion for language death is the dying out of a community of native speakers. By that criterion, I think Latin counts as dead. (A moribund language is one with an aging community of native speakers but one that is no longer being acquired by children.) I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few oddball parents here and there who speak Latin to their children at home, but there is no community of native Latin speakers. Marco polo (talk) 00:23, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are consistently several thousand people who claim that their native language is Sanskrit in censuses of India, but Latin and Sanskrit have not really been evolving with the centuries in the same way that truly living languages do -- Cicero and Panini are still considered arbiters of correctness -- so it wouldn't necessarily be a fair comparison for the purposes of the original question. AnonMoos (talk) 01:08, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Although Biblical Hebrew has many differences from Modern Hebrew, Israelis can easily understand the latter after 2,500 years. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:51, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Modern Hebrew has not evolved for 2500 it was created for less than 150 years ago based on biblical Hebrew, which sort of makes the high intelligibility understandable.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:03, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Hebrew was used without interruption for all of those years, albeit not as anoyone's only language, as the article you cite makes clear. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:55, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It was read, not spoken. Just like latin it was a dead language that retained liturgical functions. Dead languages don't change unless they are revived which was what happened in the late 19th century. Hebrew has been changing sine then only.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:58, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point, but Hebrew did change between ancient and modern times -- see Medieval Hebrew. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 14:30, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Medieval Hebrew is special in the same way as Medieval Latin is, but that still isn't "normal" language evolution. If, as many now believe, Mishnaic Hebrew was a spoken language that naturally evolved from Biblical Hebrew, then we may get a glimpse of how Modern Hebrew differs from what it would have been if it had never become extinct, in that it has actually moved back towards Biblical Hebrew in a few respects. Some of these features are /m/ instead of Mishnaic /n/ in grammatical endings, use of the imperfect as a future rather than as a subjunctive mood, use of the present active participle for the present only but not for the future, mostly final instead of mostly penultimate stress.(here is a description of Mishnaic Hebrew). --91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:21, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There was also Medieval Latin, but it reflected vernacular influences more than the results of any natural-language-like process of change, and at the end of the Medieval period, people went right back to Cicero as the arbiter of correctness. Similarly, the core of modern Israeli Hebrew is basically mostly taken directly from Biblical Hebrew of the B.C. period, with some omissions of semi-esoteric grammar and/or features that would not be distinguished in a modern Sephardi type pronunciation (such as wayyomer type verb forms, and the distinction between the ha- definite article prefix and the hă- interrogative, etc.), and with some few features taken from Mishnaic/Rabbinic Hebrew of the early A.D. period (such as always prefixing infinitives with ל, interpreting אםרתי amarti / אני אוםר ani omer / אוםר omar as a simple past / present / future verb tense distinction, etc.). Rather little of modern Israeli Hebrew comes from post-Mishnaic medieval Hebrew, as far as I'm aware, except a few scattered vocabulary items... AnonMoos (talk) 15:23, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just an addition: the "shel" possessives are also an important Mishnaic-like feature of Modern Hebrew.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I now realize that nobody has mentioned Persian and Arabic. The so-called "New Persian" stage of the history of the Persian language has been going on for more than a thousand years, and the language hasn't changed too much, so educated speakers are, I believe, still able to sort-of read texts from the beginning of the period. The present-day Modern Standard Arabic is basically the same as the Arabic of the Quran (7th century) with a few modifications (even fewer, I think, than the differences between Biblical and Modern Hebrew). Of course, the actual spoken Arabic dialects have changed a lot more during that time, but it's remarkable that MSA is able to function as an official and literary language at all. All in all, these are examples of astonishing linguistic conservatism.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 22:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds

Hey, me again. I've noticed that the vast majority of sounds, consonant or vowel, are produced by blowing air out. Are any produced by inhaling in? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 20:24, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think most are neutral, and don't require you to be breath in or out to make them (unlike whistling). StuRat (talk) 20:37, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am confused by this comment. Do you mean that most consonants and vowels do not require the passage of air (as whistling does), or that whistling requires breathing out? Because neither of those appear to be true. Voiced consonants and I think all vowels require air flow, and I can whistle breathing in as easily as breathing out. 86.164.69.241 (talk) 15:59, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Really ? I can't whistle while breathing in. (I can make some sort of noise, but it's not what I would call "whistling", it sounds more like "slurping".) StuRat (talk) 22:41, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I started doing it when I was about 12, when I was experimenting (and failing) with circular breathing, and after a few years I could do it as easily both ways, although the ranges are slightly different (it's easier to control into the high notes breathing in). It means I can whistle nearly non-stop until my lips hurt ;) It really does make sense, since there is nothing in the mechanics of whistling that requires air to flow in one specific direction. 86.164.69.241 (talk) 17:51, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All pulmonic egressive sounds (e.g. all the sounds in English, and pretty much any sound you've come in contact [exceptions are clicks, implosives, and a few others]) require you to expel air from your lungs. You know how when you blow up a balloon and then let it go and all the air comes out? You didn't apply force to the balloon, yet it deflated. The same thing happens with your lungs for speech: the differences in pressure dispense a flow of air to the oropharyngeal tract without much action from the diaphragm. Perhaps whistling requires a faster flow of air, and requires more involvement from the diaphragm, which may be why StuRat perceives whistling as requiring more exhaling compared to speech.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:31, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Airstream mechanism and Ingressive speech are relevant articles. Pallida Mors 20:44, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You will find Airstream mechanism#Pulmonic initiation particularly interesting. Note that there are sounds created by sucking air into the oral cavity that do not require any lung activity; these sounds are called implosives and clicks. They occur in a variety of languages, though if you look at the sound inventories of all the world's languages, they're very uncommon. Now, sounds that involve inhalation, i.e. an ingressive mechanism driven by the lungs, aren't attested as a systematic speech sound (phoneme) in any of the world's natural languages that we know about (and it's very doubtful there would be one). The WP article I referenced points to Damin, but this is not a natural language. It also mentions that an "ingressive voiceless nasal with delayed aspiration" exists in !Xoo, but I don't know if this is a pulmonic ingressive mechanism (all clicks involve a velaric ingressive mechanism). There are also interjections in languages that are pulmonic ingressive, but we wouldn't say that these languages contain ingressive phonemes since they're extremely limited (compare the [χ] sound in the English word Ugh!). There are many pulmonic-ingressive interjection examples in the article Ingressive sound which should probably be merged with Ingressive speech.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:43, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ingressive "yes" ("ja") is sometimes used in Norwegian, when said as a separate sentence (ie an affirmative answer) Jørgen (talk) 18:33, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

March 27

Toilet Words in Mandarin

I had a few Chinese friends over for dinner a few days ago and was confused by the phrase "zha (3rd tone) xi (1st)" and "zha (3rd) nn (?)" in Mandarin. Apparently they mean to pee and to poo, respectively, but I'm of Chinese descent and have never heard them before. They're from Hangzhou, if that helps- maybe it's a from a dialect?

Thanks in advance, 27.32.104.185 (talk) 06:04, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe not relevant, but rather dated but polite UK children's usage for those functions is "number ones" and "number twos". I doubt that there's any crossover from provincial Mandarin however ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 00:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

These are Wu dialect terms for urinating and defecating respectively. The first part is the verb, meaning "to expel (urine or faeces)", the second part of the two terms mean "urine" and "faeces" respectively. The Hangzhou dialect has strong Mandarin influences but these two terms are not loans from Mandarin. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Palaceguard- is it possible to get the Chinese characters? I'm interested in what the individual words are. 27.32.104.185 (talk) 08:45, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In Shanghainese they are usually written as 撒尿, 撒污. I'm not sure whether the first character is used phoentically here, if so then the Hangzhou dialect may choose to use a different character. The second character in the first term has two pronunciations in Mandarin, "niao" and "sui". The usual Wu pronunciation is closer to the latter. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:21, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of Fukushima

It's a word in the news a lot lately, so we need to get the pronunciation right. The article Fukushima, Fukushima currently gives the pronunciation as [ɸɯˈkɯɕima], but that doesn't jibe with WP:IPA for Japanese, which doesn't use the symbol ɯ and doesn't use the stress mark. Could someone who genuinely knows please bring the transcription in the article into line with the conventions given at WP:IPA for Japanese? Thanks. Pais (talk) 13:37, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese doesn't really have word-stress as such (though some dialects have pitch-accent, which is very different). AnonMoos (talk) 14:20, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know Japanese but not IPA. WP:IPA for Japanese suggests u͍ and u͍̥ for voiced and unvoiced u, but Japanese phonology uses ü͍ (for voiced u, presumably), but also includes a chart that uses ɯ with various diacritics. I can't believe there's really this much confusion over the proper transcription of a common sound in a language with > 10⁸ speakers. An additional problem is that u͍̥ renders incorrectly in both IE and Firefox 3.6 for Windows (the browsers I have handy at the moment). The diacritics are superimposed but I imagine they're supposed to be stacked. Regardless, I changed the pronunciation to match WP:IPA for Japanese. A native speaker of Japanese and IPA should probably review this. -- BenRG (talk) 19:44, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an article that should address any doubts: Hideo Okada (1991). Japanese. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 21, pp 94-96 doi:10.1017/S002510030000445X. Unfortunately, I can't access it, even though I'm at a university and thought I used to have access to this database (here's the link to it from Cambridge Journals Online). Anyone else have any luck?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 20:26, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the Japanese /u/ has no phonetic symbol in the IPA, and there is no diacritic that captures what makes it distinctive, which is that it has a different kind of rounding than [u]. There are many ad hoc transcriptions that try to capture it, but none of them succeed very well, including, ironically, that article in the IPA Handbook. The best they can do is capture secondary details. (Well, maybe [uᵝ] would do it, but no-one transcribes it that way.) — kwami (talk) 21:11, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can hear the pronunciation at http://www.forvo.com/search/Fukushima/.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:14, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

US news readers tend to emphasize the third syllable, "Fu-ku-SHI-ma'" while Japanese news readers emphasize the second syllable, while making it basically a 3 syllable word: "Fu-KU-shma." If there is an "i" pronounced in the middle of "shima" it receives very little emphasis. Edison (talk) 23:12, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, English speakers tend to stress the third syllable of four-syllable Japanese names, which often sounds completely wrong (to me, anyway). It's better in this case to stress the second syllable, which in reality is pitched higher than the other three. Unfortunately there are also many four-syllable names with stress on the third syllable. I don't know whether there's a general rule to distinguish them. It's too bad that the IPA symbol for the pitch accent comes after the pitch-accented syllable—"Fukuꜜshima" looks like it has an accent on the third syllable, especially to English speakers who are predisposed to expect that. -- BenRG (talk) 03:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think my old Webster's said that English in general tends to stress the next-to-last syllable of long words. Pres-ti-di-gi-TA-tion, for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese pitch accent changes, depending on what word comes after or dialect. The accent is described with high and low of morae. As for Fukushima, it's a word of four morae and the word Fukushima itself is low/high/low/low. But when it combines with other words, most of the time it changes. Fukushima dai'ichi genpatsu/Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant is unchanged and l/h/l/l/-l/h/h/h-h/l/l/l. But Fukushima ken/F prefecture would be l/h/h/h-l/l/ and Fukushima ken san/produced in F pref. is l/h/h/h-h/h-h/h and Fukushima ken chiji/governor of F is l/h/h/h-h/h-h/l. Listen to this news clip. Oda Mari (talk) 05:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A multi-syllabic word must have a main-stress assigned to some one syllable in order to be pronounceable in English at all. Japanese words with four open syllables seem to often be adopted into English with vacillating second- or third-syllable stress, with tendencies to lengthen the vowel of the stressed syllable (especially if i or u) and reduce the vowels of many unstressed syllables. So "Hiroshima" becomes either [hɪrəˈšiːmə] or [hɨˈroʊšɨmə]. I would tend to doubt whether there's too much correlation between the original Japanese pitch-accent and English stress in such cases... AnonMoos (talk) 09:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lao help: Seattle Public Schools

At http://www.seattleschools.org/area/bfc/lao/Lao%20Services.htm

Can someone tell what the Lao name is for Seattle Public Schools? The commons at is at Commons:Category:Seattle Public Schools

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 14:09, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Normally"

I have recently had the wonderful opportunity to speak with a number of different French speakers. My French is okay, and their English is by and large excellent. I have noticed however, on numerous occasions with at least three different people, that the word "normally" seems to convey a different sense than what I understand that word to mean. Examples: "Normally we turn it [one time assignment] in tomorrow." or [in regards to a one-time meeting] "I will bring normally three people." Is there a meaning to the French word "normalement" that would lead to this usage in English? It seems to be a very common and recurring thing. Thanks! Falconus^{p t c} 18:34, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As noted in EO,[7] the root word norma refers to rules and standards. Where they're saying "normally", we might say "as a rule" or something similar. (I typically say "typically".) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:46, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This page appears to directly answer your question. -- BenRG (talk) 19:48, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The French "normalement" can be translated as the English modal verb "should" in these contexts. So, the first example would be: "We should hand in our assignments tomorrow". I guess you could call them false friends. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:00, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thank you. That makes more sense to me, as I was wondering if I was misusing the word "normalement" in French. Falconus^{p t c} 23:35, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the interesting link to "False friends". I remember a press report about the Channel Tunnel and co-operation between British and French firefighters. In the UK, firefighters attend a fire, whereas attendre means "to wait" in French. Having the same word which meant "stop" on one side of the Channel and "go" on the other was obviously a bad idea. Alansplodge (talk) 13:04, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This reminds me of a flap when, if I understand right, Gérard Depardieu mentioned in an interview that he had once assisté at a felony (rape?), meaning that he had witnessed it. —Tamfang (talk) 00:25, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is the term normal school related to this usage ? StuRat (talk) 22:11, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that explained in the first paragraph of Normal school#History? Deor (talk) 22:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. It says it comes from the French "normale", meaning roughly "model". That sounds related to the French "normalement", but, not being a French speaker, I could be wrong. That's why I asked. StuRat (talk) 22:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ask a fuzzy question, you may or may not get a fuzzy answer. —Tamfang (talk) 00:28, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've heard C'est normal! meaning "obviously, that's natural, that's to be expected". —Tamfang (talk) 00:25, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of non-native speakers also use "of course" in places where natives wouldn't, and that's no doubt because the equivalent expression in their languages is used more widely. For example, if I'm asked a neutral question to which various answers could reasonably apply, such as "Do you often shop here?", I would never say "Of course", because that could easily be taken the wrong way to mean "Obviously, and how stupid of you to even ask such a question". But I've heard non-natives give that reply to that sort of question. In their cases, it means "Oh yes, very much so", and it has nothing to do with obviousness or putting the questioner down. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:48, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"That" as relative pronoun

I have been having a discussion with a user called "Aaron" at stackexchange/english (arising out of my answer to a particular question). At one point he startled me by asserting "'That' is never a relative pronoun." I challenged him, and he offered this online textbook, which I see does argue the case: even in relative clauses, "that" is a complementiser not a RP, but a rule ensures that at least one of "that" and the RP gets deleted.

I can see the theoretical value of the argument, but introspectively it just seems wrong to me. I can't believe it hasn't been challenged and discussed back and forth. Can anybody point me to such a discussion? --ColinFine (talk) 22:55, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's been a while, but I think the CP chapter of David Adger's textbook Core Syntax (2003) might talk about this. I think the "that as a complementizer, with a zero pronoun" perspective is what the Minimalist camp subscribes to. 13:18, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

"Gadhafi"-"Gadaffi"-"Ka-daffy"

How many different spellings of this dictator's name are presently used in the world, in the English language press (with cites, please)? Is there a "standard?" Why does this name have more variant transliterations to English than the name of "The Prophet?" which range from "Mohammed" to "Muhammad" to "Mahomet?" By comparison, from some Asian languages to English there are only 2 or 3 different versions, but this dictator has over 30, by some reports. Mainstream US news media, even, use many different spellings. Edison (talk) 23:07, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Previously discussed here. --ColinFine (talk) 23:22, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The core problem is in trying to transliterate from a foreign alphabet, possibly complicated by variant pronunciations within that foreign language. One guy that immediately comes to mind is Mao Tse-Tung, which is now rendered something like Mao Zadong, but I doubt his actual name was changed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:35, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mao's name never changed - it's that the new Romanization system (Hanyu Pinyin) is preferred over the old one (Wade-Giles). WhisperToMe (talk) 01:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely. And I doubt Qadaffi's name has changed either. Nor Muhammad's. The discussion cited by Colin leads to good detailed info about the various attempts at rendering Qadaffi's name in English. I think it turns out that he himself used Gadafi when writing in English. That would be the most obvious guide, but various news organizations have their own approaches. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:02, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As previously mentioned, the most "standard" transliteration of قذافي — in the sense of most accurately reflecting classical Arabic norms of pronunciation — would be either Qadhdhāfī or Qaððāfī (depending on whether you favor digraphs or IPA characters to represent the Arabic ذ letter). However, if various people transcribe various vernacular Libyan (or in some particular cases, probably Egyptian) dialect pronunciations of the name with informal ad-hoc transcriptions into English letters (without using diacritics or professional linguistic expertise), then it's easy to understand why there are many divergent spellings in newspapers etc. AnonMoos (talk) 09:23, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Edison: have you looked at our article on this? Muammar Gaddafi#Name. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I recently heard an angry but possibly mixed up caller to a local shock-jock calling him President Mugaffi. HiLo48 (talk) 19:14, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The BBC uses "Gaddafi", as does The Times, The Guardian, FT and the Daily Mail (all online versions). I think that's by far the prevailing consensus (I saw it spelled with a "Q" the other day in a mainstream paper, can't find which one). Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Economist (which describes itself as a newspaper, though many would call it a magazine) uses Qadaffi, as here for example. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 19:59, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it was that, I was reading it the other day. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:03, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Like The Economist, The New York Times uses the spelling Qaddafi. (See this article, for example.) So I don't think that there is a consensus on the spelling. Marco polo (talk) 23:04, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The most sensible thing seems to be to use the English transliteration of his Arabic name that he and his government use in English documents. The English press does not persist in "Muscovy" rather than "Moscow", or "Peiping" or "Peking" rather than "Beijing," or "Bombay" rather than "Mumbai," so why do various papers have to use many different transliterations of this man's name? It is arrogant in the extreme for some English language writer to claim that he knows better than the dictator how his name should be spelled in English. Edison (talk) 01:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Except that he has used multiple versions of his own name at the same time. At one point it was noted that his official website had three different spellings of his name in English. Rmhermen (talk) 03:28, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Edison -- That would be the sensible thing to do in many analogous cases, but it really does not overwhelmingly commend itself in this particular case. Anyway, the Russian form of Moscow is "Moskva", and I'm afraid we still do use Munich instead "München" etc. (see Exonym)... AnonMoos (talk) 09:16, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

True. We have the expression "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". Well, the Romans have no such word as "Rome". They call the place "Roma". We should practise what we preach and say "When in Roma, do as the Romans do". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Or we should say "si romae fueris romano modo vivito" (IIRC) --ColinFine (talk) 22:41, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A few days ago, a quiz was posted on the trivia site Sporcle inviting the user to try to name as many (actual) spellings of his name as possible. Kansan (talk) 16:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(Value judgement alert): the NYT's and the Economist's "Qaddafi" is, IMO, a fine compromise between a hardcore philological transcription of standard Arabic and the actual abilities of the typesetters. The majority choice "Gaddafi" sux. While fully recognizing the right of Libyans to pronounce standard Arabic q as [g], Arabic is still officially considered a single language and ought to be transliterated in a unified way regardless of dialect. The best basis would be the existing standard phonological system, which includes the phoneme /q/ as separate from /g/. Taking all the local pronunciations into account would just result in chaos. It's a bit like "transliterating" the same English language name as "Tom" or "Tahm", "Richud" or "Richurd" depending on whether the person is from Britain or America. US president Jimmy Carder, the PM of the UK Mahgret Thatchah and so on.--91.148.159.4 (talk)

March 28

Cambodian/Khmer help

Hi! I'm trying to find the Cambodian/Khmer names of several districts.

Would someone mind checking these:

Thank you WhisperToMe (talk) 01:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Undersell the big shots

What does "undersell the big shots" mean? Context: "A Russian immigrant, she built the mart from a pawnshop into the largest furniture store in North America. Her strategy was to undersell the big shots, and she was a merciless negotiator.". Thanks 92.15.14.4 (talk) 21:03, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you'd like to check out wikt:undersell and wikt:big shot? Lexicografía (talk) 21:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was already aware of those meanings thanks, but they do not make any sense when put together in the phrase quoted. 92.15.14.4 (talk) 21:24, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It means that she set lower prices in her store to draw customers away from the larger and more established furniture companies. Lesgles (talk) 21:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see, so by "big shot" is meant a large furniture chain, not a person. It's a long-winded way of just saying that she ran a discount furniture store. 92.29.126.172 (talk) 13:29, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Slangy, but not long winded. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:48, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"A Russian immigrant, she built the mart from a pawnshop into the largest discount furniture store in North America." No need now for the second sentence, as it is implied by 1) her running a discount store, 2) being the expected characteristics of a successful business person (I mean, you don't last long in business if you buy dear and sell cheap), and 3) probably being journalistic invention/imagination to pad things out. As I said, long winded. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 19:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

March 29

Books on English grammar

Please suggest some standard authoritative books on English grammar. --Reference Desker (talk) 09:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Essential Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy [8] fits the bill, it's for elementary level. Also there is this one for intermediate level. --Viennese Waltz 09:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For which variety of English? Roger (talk) 14:41, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Modern English and American English. The books suggested by Viennese are elementary level books, suggest some authoritative books for advanced level. --Reference Desker (talk) 14:59, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The standard text used to be "Fowler's English Usage". I know it was updated about 15 years ago (I have a copy) but I don't know if any updates have happened since. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I started typing "Fowler is not a book on grammar" - but then I realised it is. But with a different meaning of grammar from what I was thinking of. So, Reference Desker, do you mean a book which will tell you the details of how to use particular words so that people won't judge you as uneducated (which is what Fowler will give you) or do you mean a book which will explain the underlying structure of how English works? --ColinFine (talk) 20:23, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The original Fowler which was actually written by Fowler was rather idiosyncratic (and in places eccentric), and was somewhat notorious for inventing out of whole cloth a number of "correct usage distinctions" which had never existed in actual English language usage. I really don't know that it's ever been the "standard text" (in the U.S. it seems to have been far outsold by Strunk and White for many decades), and the successive revisions since 1965 have greatly watered down its original "Fowlerness". I wonder if TammyMoet has ever read through many of the entries of the original 1926 edition... AnonMoos (talk) 10:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. And also Dr Johnson's dictionary, which is even more idiosyncratic. However, as an ex-English teacher, and ex-proofreader, that's the text we always used to reach for. To use ColinFine's other definition, the teaching book that seemed to fit the bill most of the time was one of the Cobuild series (pick one to suit the level and the situation). --TammyMoet (talk) 11:31, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't claim that these are the best ones, since there are a number that I've never had occasion to use, but two that I've consulted and found useful are Randolph Quirk, et al., A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language and, for a more traditional approach, George Oliver Curme's A Grammar of the English Language. Deor (talk) 22:30, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of Muralitharan

How is Muralitharan pronounced in Tamil? (Preferably IPA, but whatever.) Lfh (talk) 11:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You should probably double-check this with a Tamil-speaking Wikipedian, but having examined Tamil script and Tamil phonology, and assuming that they are accurate, I conclude that IPA would be as follows: mʊɾəɭɪðəɾən. (Note the retroflex lateral approximant.) According to this text, Tamil words do not have distinctive stress, but such stress as there is tends to fall on the first syllable. Marco polo (talk) 14:13, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great, and thanks for your hard work. Lfh (talk) 08:35, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More than idiom

Hi. I'm looking for some idioms (I think idiom is the right word, perhaps colloquial metaphor - feel free to correct me) for "more than". All I've come up with is "more than most people change their socks" or "more than you've had hot dinners". As many as possible really :D Thinking of creating a set of Editcountitis userboxes which are a little more interesting. Worm^TT · (talk) 11:46, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for, but I recall the US Army used to use the catchphrase of "We do more before 6 a.m. than most people do all day." Is that the kind of thing you're looking for? Matt Deres (talk) 13:27, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was hoping for more countable ones, but that one is certainly helpful, yes Worm^TT · (talk) 13:28, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of "more than" expressions come about in reference to very specific things. "That political movement's got more splinters than a lumberyard," "She's got more books than the Library of Congress," "I got more stories than J.D.'s got Salinger!" Of a house full of heroin addicts or knitting enthusiasts: "More needles in there than a pine forest." Of a particularly brave man: "Dude's got more balls than a bowling alley!" I don't know how generalizable the expression pattern is while still remaining witty - for it to be repeated, I think the expression generally needs to be clever/funny, and the best of those are very specialized like the above. Poetically speaking is another matter. It is often said there are more (whatever) than there are stars in the sky, grains of sand on a/the beach, blades of grass on a plain, fish in the sea, etc., etc., etc. But I think these uses are remembered less for the fact of their use than because whatever they are describing really is that massive/numerous and mind-blowing, thereby fixing even a pedestrian description in one's mind. ☯.Zen Swashbuckler.☠ 17:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's an expression I've only come across in American books, "More [whatever] than Carter has pills". And Groucho Marx could have suggested another one: "More women than you can shake a stick at, if that's your idea of a good time." --Antiquary (talk) 18:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which "Carter" has a lot of pills ? StuRat (talk) 19:11, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's a reference to Carter's Little Liver Pills, a famous patent medicine that we really ought to have an article about (our articles on patent medicine and Bisacodyl mention them). Looie496 (talk) 19:29, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"He/she has more front than Myers" (Americans read Macy's, Brits read Harrod's). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:39, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What should Americans substitute for front? —Tamfang (talk) 00:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Boldness, brazenness, fearlessness, daring, etc - but used in a pejorative sense, suggesting the he/she has little or no sensitivity but just comes out with whatever they want to say. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Chutzpah... AnonMoos (talk) 02:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are five different comparisons at PETULA CLARK - MY LOVE LYRICS. (The text has the adjective "everyday" where it should have the adverb phrase "every day".)

—Wavelength (talk) 00:22, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all for some brilliant ideas. Worm^TT · (talk) 08:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I heard one particularly funny neologism idiom in the early 1990s on some American comedy show: "Your momma is so fat she has got more chins than a Chinese phonebook." JIP | Talk 17:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For more comparative metaphors than you can count, find any of Dennis Miller's "rant" books. For example, in reference to some D.C. scandal some years back, he said, "Washington has more overused escorts than Budget Rent-a-Car." Or something like that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agent vs. Officer and Office vs. Bureau vs. agency

Translating Jeffery Deaver's Edge, I found the sentences as follows:

"Um, Agent Corte."

"Officer Corte." I corrected. My organization is an office, not a bureau or agency.

Apparently, the speaker isn't a police officer. He is with a secret governmental organization.

I want to know what the difference between an agent and an officer, and among an office, a bureau and an angency are.

(At least why the speaker emphasizes the difference.)

--Analphil (talk) 18:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like a rather pedantic distinction. If such a distinction originally existed, the meanings now thoroughly overlap. StuRat (talk) 19:06, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, different organizations use different terms. State police officers in the U.S. may prefer the term "trooper," while county police officers may use the term "sheriff's deputy." A CEO or CFO is an "officer" but not an "agent." Same with a military officer. Or, perhaps as StuRat says, the speaker is being extremely pedantic, thinking that only an "agency" can have "agents." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

State police officers are happy with officer too. Marco polo (talk) 00:42, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that Corte means "the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency have 'Agents', but I'm not with either of them; I'm with the Office of Something Secret, whose agents are called 'Officers'." —Tamfang (talk) 00:52, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To continue with this line of thought, wouldn't FBI employees be "bureaucrats" or "investigators", FDA workers be "administrators", SEC employees be "commissioners", and NOW members be "organizers" ? StuRat (talk) 06:28, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Where would functionaries work then? — Kpalion^(talk) 11:22, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Metaphorical? Hyperbole? Figurative?

If I say: "charging 25% interest is criminal" when in fact the criminal rate of interest is 50%, what would it be called? The use of the word "criminal" is not meant to be taken literally. I would call it a hyperbole or a use of figurative language but is there a more precise term? Eiad77 (talk) 23:59, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Exaggeration. (Too obvious?) It's also rhetoric, but that's less precise than hyperbole. You could combine the two and have "rhetorical exaggeration", if you want to excuse the statement's literal untruth. 81.131.66.235 (talk) 00:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it just means "should be a crime" instead of "is a crime". Also note that usury rate laws will vary by jurisdiction. StuRat (talk) 01:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't mean it should literally be a crime, I mean it is morally wrong. It is like saying "cheating in chess is criminal". Of course it is not literally against the law to cheat in chess, but it is a really bad thing to do. Eiad77 (talk) 04:00, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, then, "as bad as a crime". (But of course, there are also some crimes that don't seem to be "morally wrong", like many obsolete statutes that stay on the books forever.) StuRat (talk) 06:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think hyperbole is exactly the right word. Looie496 (talk) 16:19, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

March 30

liquidation

I'm curious about the history of liquidate as euphemism for kill (political scapegoats).

What's the core metaphor here? Converting useless 'assets' into something that can at least be used as fertilizer? Or were enemies of the People sometimes put into blenders?

I have the impression that it originated under Stalin. Is that anywhere near accurate? If so, what's the Russian word?

I may later remember other related questions. —Tamfang (talk) 00:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a metaphor from financial liquidation (which meant converting something into "liquid" assets)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The OED says it is indeed from the Russian word likvidírovat. The first citation is from 1924 and refers to the elimination of the Workers' Opposition. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably similar to the Polish usage where zlikwidować typically means "to get rid of". — Kpalion^(talk) 13:26, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

'Liquidate' was used prior to 1924, here's a 1911 example, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/twwliqus/index.htm --Soman (talk) 17:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the OED dates the first citation in English to 1924. The Russian usage is certainly older than that. Interestingly, the Russian example you're giving isn't really an instance of the use in the sense "to kill" - it's a reference to a current among Russian Marxists around 1910 that was derogatively dubbed "the liquidationists" (ликвидаторы) for wanting to "liquidate" = disband the old illegal revolutionary underground cells of the Social Democratic party and replace them by legal organisations such as worker's unions or cooperatives that could eventually develop into a legal party.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 22:10, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aha, thanks! —Tamfang (talk) 23:02, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In Russian, the verb "liquidate" is the usual one for "get rid of" or "destroy." Russians don't know that the verb does not have such a broad meaning in English (or French) and thus use it too often when speaking Western European languages. That's how it got tagged with the special meaning of "physically eliminating an opponent" because there was a lot such liquidation activity going on in tsarist and revolutionary Russia in the early years of the 20th century. --Xuxl (talk) 17:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Multiple association of converting Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese"

I've just nominated this article for renaming because the present title sounds like Chinglish to me — however, the incomprehensibility of the present title means that I can't come up with a good replacement suggestion. Is there any standard academic way of referring to this phenomenon? I know nothing of Chinese, so I can't imagine how I could search for such a subject. Nyttend (talk) 04:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have no expertise either, so this is just a stab in the dark, but how about Multiple Associations Between Traditional and Simplified Chinese Characters. Eiad77 (talk) 05:59, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Or "Converting Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese". StuRat (talk) 06:19, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ambiguities in Chinese character simplification —Tamfang (talk) 09:46, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(pile on)Mapping between Traditional and Simplified Chinese. No such user (talk) 16:47, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How do you pronounce the surname Florescu?

And what country does it come from? --112.213.145.95 (talk) 08:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like Romanian. —Tamfang (talk) 08:26, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Almost certainly the Romanian language, the -escu ending being a dead giveaway, but that language is also widely spoken in Moldova. Florescu (surname) lists a notable Moldovan person with this Romanian surname. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:13, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly neither the disambiguation page for Florescu (surname) or any of the articles about people with this surname have a pronuciation guide, so maybe, just maybe, it is pronounced as it is written Flor-ess'-koo. I tentatively suggest that if it were not straightforward then the English WP would have pronunciation guidance. Regrettably I am not familiar with IPA. Richard Avery (talk) 13:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The IPA pronunciation is more like floresku, or in rough English phonetic transcription, "floe RAY skoo", in which the R is rolled. 192.251.134.5 (talk) 15:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are probably right, but I have also heard it pronounced "flor (rolled 'r') -es - koo." --Ghostexorcist (talk) 15:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To be precise, the Romanian /e/ and /o/ are mid vowels. Since Romanian doesn't contrast between close-mid and open-mid vowels in the way that German or French do, they are conventionally rendered by the IPA symbols for the close-mid vowels, e and o. Think of something in between the vowels in French fée and fait, or German Fehl and Fell. Or something in between English "rest" and "race", but without the /i/ glide that is found at the end of the English diphthong in the latter word. If you are just looking for a usable English pronunciation, I'd recommend something like [flɔːˈrɛsku] (flaw-RESS-koo) or [fləˈrɛsku] (flə-RESS-koo). Lesgles (talk) 16:48, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that flo-RESS-coo is way better than flo-RAY-scoo, at least from the perspective of a speaker of a language that doesn't contrast close-mid and open-mid (I don't know what the French would think). I think that it's much more important to avoid a final glide and prolonged pronunciation of the vowel (as in RAY) than to get the quality of the vowel exactly right. I'm puzzled by how most American speakers seem not to notice the length and the offglides (Y and W sounds) that characterize their BANE and BONE vowels, and consequently to consider them to be excellent renditions of standard European short /e/s and /o/s. Similarly, the length of the vowel in German Fehl makes it inappropriate for a normal short /e/, be it an [ɛ] or an [e]. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 20:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. Lesgles (talk) 20:54, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

flo-RAY-scoo is definitely wrong. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 22:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly the following sentence means?

"The doctor knows that the fact that taking care of himself is necessary surprises Tom."

In particular I would like to know: What does the doctor know? What surprises Tom? 117.211.88.149 (talk) 12:14, 30 March 2011 (UTC)Vineet Chaitanya[reply]

Tom is surprised by the fact that taking care of himself is necessary - the doctor knows that Tom is surprised. - X201 (talk)

I agree with X201's interpretation but would like to add that the insertion of a comma after "necessary" would greatly improve the intelligibility of the sentence. Roger (talk) 13:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you can really put a comma there, though. It's not like you've got two clauses which can be separated with a comma. It's just a bad sentence and nothing can save it except for a recasting. --Viennese Waltz 13:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

May I propose "The doctor knows that Tom is surprised by the fact that taking care of himself is necessary." or "The doctor knows that Tom is surprised by the necessity of taking care of himself." Roger (talk) 14:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can put a comma there, some people use that sort of comma and some don't. It's a stylistic issue. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:59, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Farsi help needed at the Science desk

An IP poster apparently from Iran has posted a question at the Science Refdesk using what looks like English from a machine translation - which is quite unintelligible. See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Spreading mineral matters on earth. The OP is not responding to requests for clarification. We would appreciate it if someone fluent in Farsi could contact the OP to explain the problem with their original post. Thanks Roger (talk) 16:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

using of "the"

why we use "the" in this sentence?

today`s lecture is about the effects of background music on employee performance and retail sales.

why we don`t use "the" before "background"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mhadis (talk • contribs) 17:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you say "the background music" you are refering to a specific instance of background music. It's the same as the difference between "I like apple pie" and "I like the apple pie". In the first case you are expressing a positive feeling towards apple pies in general, in the second you are refering to one particular pie. Roger (talk) 17:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"...the effects of the background music..." sounds fine to me. After all, they are referring to the background music that the employees and customers hear, not just any background music. Likewise, "effects of background music" or "effects of the background music" seem fine. I think there's no particular logic to it. -- BenRG (talk) 18:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that BenRG is mistaken. There is a difference between a definite article and a zero article in English that does have a "logic" to it. You may want to review the linked Wikipedia article. It is possible to imagine a case where the phrase "the effects of the background music on employee performance and retail sales" would make sense. This would be a case in which the speaker or writer was referring to a type or use of background music that has already been discussed. Then the speaker or writer would be referring to a specific instance of background music, and the definite article the would be called for. However, in this case, the sentence begins "Today's lecture is about the effects of background music ...". In this case, it would be incorrect to use the before background music, because this is an introductory statement in which we are just being introduced to the use of background music in general. The speaker has not yet discussed any specific instance of background music.

As for why the precedes effects, that is a little more difficult to answer. Actually, I don't think that it would necessarily be incorrect to omit the before effects in this case, especially if the speaker intends to discuss some but not all effects that background music might have. However, in this case, by putting the before effects, the speaker is indicating that he or she is going to discuss, individually, every effect of background music on employee performance and retail sales. In this case, the effects implicitly means '"each of the specific effects". Marco polo (talk) 19:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would add that English differs from some other European languages in its use of the definite article. In some European languages, the definite article is used for mass nouns, such as music. However, English does not use the definite article for mass nouns. Instead, they typically get a zero article (that is, no article). If the questioner speaks a language in which the definite article is used for mass nouns, I can see why he or she would expect the before background music. Marco polo (talk) 19:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Music" may be a bad example, Signor Polo. "The music of the 20th century" - that's still a mass noun, no? -- Jack of Oz [your turn]

...but by modifying "music" with the requirement that it be from the 20th century, you are indicating a particular subset of music, thus qualifying for use of the definite article. You wouldn't use "the music" to refer to all music, just a particular set of music. Conversely, "Music of the 20th century" doesn't require the definite article to fix the meaning, and "water" can be generally "all H₂O," or you can fix a definite set of water, say, "the water of the Indian Ocean." ☯.Zen Swashbuckler.☠ 20:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How about "The music of the 20th century took on a very different character from that of the 19th". While it is indeed about a particular sub-set of music, it's still a mass noun, is it not? Yet, the "the" is still required here. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Jack, there are certainly instances where English puts a definite article in front of a mass noun, such as the examples you have given here. In all of these cases, you are referring to a specific instance of that mass noun. For example, you would say, "I like the music of the 19th century", but you would not say, "I like the music" if you mean "I like music in general." Similarly, if you say, "The baby likes milk", you mean that she likes milk in general. If you say, "The baby likes the milk", you clearly mean the milk that she has at the moment, or a particular type of milk. In French, "Le bébé aime le lait" means that the baby likes milk in general. Marco polo (talk) 20:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, the difference between English and languages such as French is that, in English, a definite article is optional with a mass noun and only correct when one is referring to a specific instance of the mass noun. In French and languages like it, a definite article is mandatory before a mass noun. For example, in French, you cannot say *"J'étudie histoire". You must say "J'étudie l'histoire" ("I study history" in English). Marco polo (talk) 22:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just wasn't sure about the apparent categoricality of the original statement "English does not use the definite article for mass nouns". Thanks for clarificnation. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not mass nouns: les arbres vs trees, say, shows the same rule: Romance languages give the general case an article, English doesn't. —Tamfang (talk) 22:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please throw me the ball, in Spanish and Japanese.

Just wondering what the best translation for "please throw me the ball" would be in Spanish and Japanese. The online translators are not always perfect. Also, "can you throw me the ball please?".

Spelling them out is just fine, as it would appear in Spanish, and the English written equivalent in Japanese. Thanks! 198.168.27.221 (talk) 20:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish: Por favor, lánzame la pelota should work for your first sentence; ¿Podría lanzarme la pelota, por favor? for the second one. Lexicografía (talk) 20:45, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Vice Minister?

In countries where they have ministers (of health, interior, etc.), what are some names of the deputy position? (i.e., what is the analogue for Vice President, replacing president by minister) I look for one less cumbersome than "vice minister" or worse, "deputy minister" (although I'm sure these are in use). THanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 21:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The pecking order in the UK is, AFAIK, Secretary of State, Minister of State, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State.

South Africa has Deputy Ministers. The next in line is the Director General. Ministers and Deputy Ministers are Members of Parliament while the Directors General are civil servants, not elected office bearers. Roger (talk) 22:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Australia has an Assistant Treasurer, and has in the past had Assistant Ministers for other things. We also have Parliamentary Secretaries, who have ministerial-like duties, increased pay, and are entitled to "The Honourable" as ministers proper are, but are technically answerable to their minister. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How do I word brother and sister in law

Is it: My brother and sister in law Jack and Jane. or My brother in law and sister in law Jack and Jane. Or something else? My brother in law and his wife, Jack and Jane? It seems awkward no matter how I word it. Maybe: My brother in law Jack and Jane? (Sort of like how a wife is addressed as Mrs. Husbands-name in formal letters.) PS. This is for mentioning them to someone else, not for addressing them. Ariel. (talk) 23:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you say "brother in law and sister in law" then they needn't necessarily be married. If they are, "My brother-in-law Jack and his wife Jane" seems OK to me. This is assuming Jack is closest to you (i.e. your sister's husband or your wife's brother). If Jane is closest then I would say "My sister-in-law Jane and her husband Jack". 86.177.108.189 (talk) 01:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

March 31