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July 13

Locations with the name -sex

Resolved

What is the sense in which -sex is a suffix in the names of many locations -- Sussex, Essex, Wessex, etc. I'm assuming it has nothing to do with lewdness. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 01:53, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It comes from the Old English Seaxe, meaning Saxons. The three names refer to three different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, inhabited by the South Saxons, East Saxons, and West Saxons respectively. Lesgles (talk) 03:24, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For completeness, I should point out that there was a Middlesex as well (now swallowed up by the London sprawl) - though no North-sex (the Nor-folk and the Suf-folk were already there - Angles of course...) AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:04, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The joke I had always heard was that there had been breifly a Kingdom of the North Saxons, but they died out in a single generation for obvious reasons (obvious if you follow the naming conventions for Essex, Wessex, and Sussex). --Jayron32 04:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"In England they have a Middlesex. Here in the US, we only have the two." :-) StuRat (talk) 04:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"I have three wonderful children, one of each sex." :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:38, 13 July 2011 (UTC) [reply]

In fact the USA has at least three Middlesexes. In Connecticut, Massachussets and New Jersey. Don't ever forget where your ancestors came from ;-)) Richard Avery (talk) 14:13, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the plural of Middlesex Middlesices? Angr (talk) 14:27, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Only if one could validly ask "What are the sices of your three children?". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC) [reply]

Those with an interest in heraldry will know that the counties of Essex and Middlesex have an Old English pun on their coats of arms; a picture of three Seaxes. Alansplodge (talk) 22:02, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Changing words from English to English

I think that this was answered, at least in part, once before on the RD somewhere but I can't think (or find) where. It's been noted that books originally in an English variant that spells "labour" with a "u" will, when published in the US market be spelt "labor" as will "colour" and "color". My first question is does this happen in reverse and is the "u" added to words. Now I have seen books where the "u" is dropped but non-American words and phrases are used rather than their North American equivalent. For example a book may contain reference to a bonnet or a boot and people may play draughts. So why would these words not be converted as well? Bonus points question. Would the British word rubber be converted due to possible confusion with the US slang word rubber? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 03:31, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is really a matter of print runs and costs. Publications in the USA tend to have large print runs, so it is more common to re-set the type with US spelling when books with non-US English spelling are published in the US. The reverse is less common. Novels published in the US are regularly marketed in the UK without spelling changes. We just get used to mentally inserting the missing letters. Regional words are seldom changed in novels because they enhance the realism of the setting. Technical manuals are often, but not always, "translated". Savvy teachers in the UK tend to refer to erasers rather than rubbers when they have pupils familiar with US slang. Dbfirs 06:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Here in Germany, English books sold in bookstores are generally the British editions, so most of the Stephen King novels on my bookshelf were printed in Britain for the British market. American spellings and usage are left intact, as far as I can tell (of course I've haven't compared these books word-for-word with their American counterparts). And I've seen American editions of British novels, and even though I'm American myself, it irritates me to see people in the Mapp and Lucia novels talking about doing someone a "favor" or writing a "check", as it seems to rob the books of their local colo(u)r. And although I've only ever read the British editions of the Harry Potter novels, I've heard tell that not only spelling but also vocabulary is Americanized in the American edition (e.g. booger replaces bogie). But that may be because they're thought of as children's books (or at least YA novels), and American publishers are under the impression that everyone under 18 is a drooling imbecile incapable of understanding anything not written in their own dialect. When it comes to books for adults, perhaps publishers who change centre to center but leave boot and bonnet alone think that changing a spelling is merely a proofreading change, while changing vocabulary is more editorial and shouldn't be done without the author's approval. Or maybe they just run an American English spellcheck, which won't catch words like boot and bonnet. Angr (talk) 06:27, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who spends some of his editing time here re-correcting incorrect spelling variant "corrections", it's been my observation that almost all of these are where UK English has been incorrectly "corrected" to US spelling by an enthusiastic editor trying to improve Wikipedia. That would fit the above scenarios. UK English users are familiar with US spelling, and can cope with it when it's used in the right context, whereas some US English users aren't even aware that there is another perfectly correct way to spell. HiLo48 (talk) 06:49, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's a curious phenomenon in Australia. Because international publishers often prepare two editions, one American (with color and harbor) and one British (with colour and harbour), and Australia uses predominently British spelling, it's the British version that gets sold in Australia. That's all well and good, except that the British version would also use pounds sterling and other specifically British units of measure - especially in non-fiction books. So you get this weird situation where you might be reading a book by an American author and dealing primarily with the U.S. and yet having to do a lot of mental arithmetics to convert from sterling into dollars. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 06:59, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

HiLo, my experience here is the opposite - I mostly see people incorrectly "correcting" American spelling to British spelling at Wikipedia, often even in articles dealing with an American topic. Angr (talk) 07:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh well, let's just keep correcting... HiLo48 (talk) 07:40, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Culturally, we are sort of at the crossroads between British and American influences here in Australia. In our national Parliament, the House of Representatives was modelled on the UK House of Commons (and the system as a whole is the Westminster system), but the Senate was modelled after the US Senate. We have a head of state who resides in the UK, and the UK was traditionally the "mother country" for many Australians, but since WWII we've become a lot more influenced in our language and popular culture generally by the US than by the UK. And it's accelerating: in the past week alone, I've five times heard TV journalists and lay people use the adjective "alternate" (the alternate suggestion), with the stress on the first syllable in the American style, rather than the word we always used to use and I will be continuing to use, "alternative", which has the stress on the 2nd syllable. The only "alternate" I recognise is a verb (The seasons alternate between hot and cold). But that's me. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:55, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I can understand not liking the alternate suggestion (I've stopped using that myself) but do you really object to they sweep the street on alternate Mondays? --Trovatore (talk) 08:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"They sweep the street every other Monday". DuncanHill (talk) 09:03, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Other than what? I've never actually understood that usage. I know it's common, and know what it means, but one doesn't want to dig too deep for the meaning. I like "every second Monday". HiLo48 (talk) 09:06, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I do object, Trovatore. It's not about the difference in meaning your examples demonstrate. The word "alternate" was never recognised as an adjective here at all; and even when people got slightly confused and said "alternate" rather than "alternative", they still stressed it on the 2nd syllable - all-TER-nuht (based on all-TERN-ativ), not ALL-tuh-nuht. The latter is an echt-uber-American pronunciation; like VAJ-uh-nul ("vaginal"), rather than our va-JY-nuhl; and IN-kwuh-ree ("inquiry") rather than our in-KWY-ree. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 09:19, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed a few features of American pronunciation creeping into UK speech - for example, "news" is increasingly being pronounced "noos" rather than "nyoos". Give it a while, maybe the English will become rhotic again. --Nicknack009 (talk) 10:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think "nooz" is quite part of high General American, though I'm not sure exactly what region it's a regionalism of. Personally I switch between "nooz" and "nyooz" fairly freely. --Trovatore (talk) 21:03, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Nooz" is definitely part of "high General American" as you put it. Yod-dropping after coronals is the norm in America; only some Southerners would say "nyooz" naturally, as the map you'll see if you click the link shows. If I heard it from anyone else, I'd think they were either excessively speech-conscious or putting on an affectation. (I pronounce new and tune "nyoo" and "tyoon" when I'm singing, but that's a conscious affectation because I sing in a choir that's predominantly British.) Angr (talk) 07:15, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, well, may be my Southern heritage, then. "Nooz" sounds sort of lazy to me. "Tyoon" does indeed sound affected, though, except in a song. --Trovatore (talk) 11:17, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some Australian sports commentators have developed the flexible ability of putting the emphasis on the first syllable of defence when discussing football, and the second syllable when covering basketball. (Now we can argue about the spelling.) HiLo48 (talk) 10:45, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sports commentators have invented a totally new language, or so it often seems. My pet peeve is when they're calling a match where the result is not in any doubt but the match is still in progress, or maybe it's only just finished. They'll call it "a famous victory by the <whoevers>". Famous? Maybe deserving of fame, but that's for the future to decide. Or the ubiquitous "So-and-so has delivered the <koo de grah>". Grrr, more likely. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 12:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, the coup de gras, or "blow of fat". That's when someone throws a glob of grease in your face after defeating you, to increase your humiliation. Angr (talk) 12:27, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Or fleur de lit, the flower of bed. --Trovatore (talk) 20:59, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In some cases, some of those other words are converted; the example the immediately came to my mind was Harry Potter, and of course we have an article - Harry Potter in translation#Americanisation as translation. --LarryMac | Talk 12:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some great answers thanks. @ HiLo48 and Angr. Canadian articles tend to get changed in both directions from time to time. As an aside I once had someone tell me that "centre" meant middle and "center" was used to indicate a physical object like the Community Center. As to the Harry Potter books the ones I have were printed in Canada and besides the title, "Philosopher's" rather than "Sorcerer's", they seem to have retained the British spellings. While looking at them I noticed a UK book reprinted in the US where the title, not sure about the rest of the book, retained the u spelling. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 01:13, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I've wondered about that. Why DID the Sorcerer turn into a Philosopher? They are words with quite different but clear, non-problematical meanings to me. Is a sorcerer something really bad in North America? HiLo48 (talk) 07:25, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You have it the wrong way round, the original British version used Philosopher and the US translation Sorcerer. The explanation I heard is that the US publishers thought that having Philosopher in the title would put kids off, making them think it was intellectual and serious rather than exciting and fun. -- Q Chris (talk) 07:32, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I bet if it had been any Harry Potter book other than the first, they wouldn't have bothered. Later books could have been called Harry Potter and the Drying Paint and still would have flown off the shelves. Angr (talk) 07:44, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did later books retain words like jumper? —Tamfang (talk) 03:55, 29 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See philosopher's stone. —Tamfang (talk) 03:55, 29 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On my first visit to England, I saw a poster for The Colour of Money and chuckled because the title makes sense only in American: it relates the green baize of pool tables to the green backs of US currency. —Tamfang (talk) 03:55, 29 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Translating historical fiction into French - tu/vous

I'm attempting to translate my webcomic, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, into French, and I'm looking for guidance on the second person singular. I know the basic rule - tu is singular and familar, vous is singular formal, and plural whether familar or formal. I just don't know how to apply it in the context of my comic, which is set in the Iron Age in an aristocratic warrior society.

For example, I have a couple of characters, Fergus and Cormac. Fergus is Cormac's foster-father, he brought him up and they are very close, but Cormac is the son of a king and therefore Fergus's social superior. How would they address each other, and would they address each other differently in private and in public? A similar example is the hero, Cú Chulainn, and his charioteer, Láeg. Cú Chulainn is Láeg's social superior and outranks him militarily, but Láeg is older, and has a tendency to familiarity, and they like each other. How would a king or queen address their vassals and subjects? How would a king and queen address each other, and would it be different in public and private? How would a king of one kingdom address a king of a rival or allied kingdom? How would a god address a mortal, and vice versa, and how would a god address another god?

Another thing - Irish has no word for yes, and Hiberno-English tends to avoid the word yes as well, so I have characters responding to things like "are you ready?" with "I am". In French, if asked "Vous êtes prêt?", does it make sense to reply "je suis"? --Nicknack009 (talk) 11:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For tu and vous, I would recommend reading lots of Asterix in the original French to get a feel for how the pronouns are used there. It is of course anachronistic both in Asterix and in your Iron-Age comic, since the idea of a T-V distinction didn't exist in European languages until the Middle Ages, but then using modern language at all is anachronistic anyway, so that's not such a big deal. As for the answer to "Vous êtes prêt?", I'm not a native speaker, but my inclination would be to say "Je le suis". Angr (talk) 12:07, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Je le suis" sounds really strange to my ears. To me, that means, "I am it", rather than simply "I am" Mingmingla (talk) 17:26, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) An idea may be to look to works written in Early modern English which preserved English's T–V distinction like the King James Bible or the works of William Shakespeare. Usage of "thou" and "thee" roughly correspond to "tu" in French, while the more formal "you" and "ye" correspond to "vous" in French... --Jayron32 12:10, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The King James Bible makes no T-V distinction. It uses thou consistently to translate singular pronouns and verb forms in the original languages and ye consistently to translate plural forms. Angr (talk) 12:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Shakespeare uses the distinction rather inconsistently (eg in the banquet scene, Macbeth says "How say you" either to Lady Macbeth or the ghost, but he addresses each of them as "thou" within a line or two). Everyman, a century earlier, shows no obvious rationale for the choice between "thou" and "you".

Based on my understanding of how this worked in early modern times, when monarchies and aristocracies were still powerful, I'd recommend the following: Fergus says tu to Cormac in private, Cormac says vous to Fergus in private. In public, they say vous to each other, unless Cormac has assumed the persona of a prince and Fergus that of a commoner, in which case their public exchange would be the reverse of their private. Láeg says vous to Cú Chulainn, and Cú Chulainn says tu in return, even when they are being familiar. Kings and queens say tu to their vassals and to each other in private, assuming they have an intimate relationship. (If, on the other hand, it is a political marriage with little contact outside of ceremonies and the occasional conjugal visit to produce an heir, then their private conversation might be no different than their public conversation.) In public, I'd say it depends on the degree of patriarchy in the society. If women are respected and sometimes powerful, they might say vous to each other. In a more patriarchal society, she would say vous to him in public, and he would respond with tu. Kings would address one another as vous, except when insulting each other. Although Christians address their god as tu, I would have mortals generally addressing gods in a pantheon as vous. The Christian god is conceived a little differently from most pagan gods, whom one was supposed to respect and fear, whereas one is supposed to be on intimate terms with the Christian god. If the religion in your society involves personal devotion to a deity, then you could have the devotees address that deity as tu. Gods would certainly say tu to mortals. Among one another, you could use the distinction to mirror hierarchies among them as in human society. (Obviously, vous is also the plural form of tu.) Marco polo (talk) 18:41, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that's very helpful. I don't have any Asterix books in French, but I do have a volume of Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze in French, and I'm combing that for guidance as well. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:14, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just two remarks on what Marco polo said (though I can't claim to be much of an expert, and my observations are cursory and superficial). First, I think it was pretty standard for upper-class husbands and wives to address each other with "vous" even in private (if this had been considered a sign of excessive formality, it would no longer have been standard). Besides French, it was reportedly characteristic, for example, of the Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire - not just the upper class, but also the common folk - where husbands addressed their wives in the second person plural, while wives responded in the third singular - presumably a custom they brought from the towns of mediaeval Spain. Again, this didn't necessarily impede familiarity significantly, nor did it express an unnatural coldness, formality and lack of love. In the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, upper-class and royal spouses would not only use "vous", but they would even address each other with titles (similarly in Le Morte d'Arthur, Guenever addresses Arthur as "Sir", not to mention the "ye"; cf also the general style of the letters that the wives of Henry VIII addressed to him). If this rule was, nevertheless, violated in private at the time, I doubt that we would have any documents to prove it - it just wasn't supposed to be, so even depictions of intimate speech don't show a violation. Second, I don't know about today, but I'm sure it was common practice to address the Christian God as vous (I remember some scenes involving children's bedtime prayers and such). The same applied to the Virgin Mary (here's Thibaut de Champagne (1201-1253) addressing Her: "Douce dame, reine couronnée, Priez pour nous, Vierge bienheureuse!") and all the Saints (say, Joan of Arc would, I believe, address each of the saints who guided her in vous). The French version of the Lord's Prayer used vous up to the great modernization of 1966 (see the French article [1]) - ah, those wild Sixties! This is very contrary to the contemporary (especially American) affinity for raw passion, gut feeling, immediacy and naturalness, but the Middle Ages were, so to speak, much more Japanese than they were American. On the other hand, just what this implies for an Ancient Irish-themed comic is another matter - I guess the etiquette reflected in the actual Irish sagas becomes relevant here. As does Astérix! --91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One might add concerning the division between "in public" and "in private", that the entire division between "public" and "private" as separate legitimate realms developed only very gradually. During most of the time before modernity, at least in the societies in question, you were pretty much always a public person, 100% of the time, whether you liked it or not, and you were supposed to act and be treated accordingly.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 00:14, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am pondering with the following question: In German (the following is an extract from the T-V distinction article) works of art and literature (such as books and movies) depicting events at least several centuries in the past, or in a "past-like" fantasy setting, require an oldfashioned T-V distinction even if modern German is otherwise used in these works; indeed, using the modern Sie in such a setting would be considered an out-of-place anachronism. Thus in German there are three possible types of dialogues: Using 20th century T-V distinction appropriate for everyday life or using an out-of-date (19th century or earlier) T-V distinction appropriate for fantasy settings or, finally, a non-distinction (all T) for settings that are timeless. I wonder whether French has similar possibilities (or difficulties from the point of view of a speaker of a language without T-V distinction) --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 12:44, 14 July 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Spanish cities ending in -ona

Several Spanish towns and cities end in "ona". Barcelona, Badalona, Tarragona, Girona, Badalona, Pamplona, Cardona immediately come to mind, as well as the county of Osona. I looked through a list of Spanish municipalities, and found these as well: Bayona, Tarazona, Ulldecona, Xixona. Is there a common etymology to the -ona ending, and if so, what does it mean? --NorwegianBlue^talk 16:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What several of these place names have in common is that they were originally Latin feminine-gender place names ending in -o in the nominative and -onis in the genitive (-onem in the accusative, and so on). Normally, in Spanish, such nouns would have mutated to have the ending -ón (e.g., all of the words ending in -ción). However, in this case, these names took the ending -ona, which is the feminine version of the augmentative ending -ón, and which emphasizes the feminine gender of these words. Perhaps the name was meant to suggest the idea of la gran ciudad (the great (fem.) city). For the names that did not originate as Latin -o/-onis forms, I think that the name simply followed a feminine augmentative form. A similar pattern appears in Carcassonne and Narbonne in France and Savona in Italy, by the way. Marco polo (talk) 18:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! There's also Ancona, Cremona and Verona in Italy. Ancona is according to the article derived from Greek Αγκων (Elbow), so in that case, the -on part of the ending stems from the Greek name. I now found the article List of city name changes, which lists these:

Barcino → Barcino Nova → Barcelona
Gerunda → Gerona → Girona
Pompaelo → Pamplona
Tarraco → Tarraco nova → Tarragona

So it seems that there is no single common pattern. The idea that -ona endings may have been used to suggest greatness sounds reasonable to me. --NorwegianBlue^talk 07:19, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

July 14

pronunciation of -tion ending

Is there a rule of thumb for the way -tion ending is pronounced in different words like nation and question? Thanks for comments. --Omidinist (talk) 04:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my US English dialect they are "nay-shun" and "kwest-chun", so I guess the "s" in front of "tion" changes it from "shun" to "chun". StuRat (talk) 07:51, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's also /tʃən/ in digestion, combustion, exhaustion, and congestion. I think the general rule is /tʃən/ after /s/; /ʃən/ everywhere else. I can't think of any excep/ʃən/s, but some speakers may lose the distinction between /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ after /n/, so that words like intention can be said to have both. Angr (talk) 07:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The pronunciation of that syllable in the word Attention in military drill commands around the world would make an interesting study. HiLo48 (talk) 08:15, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't Coleridge write: "As idle as a painted ship upon a painted otion"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:39, 14 July 2011 (UTC) [reply]

Voiceover for Game - Translation Request (German)

Hello guys,

I have a request. A mate of mine is making a mission for a well-known game, and he needs a voice-over doing. This needs to be in German. Anyway, he has asked me to do it. While I speak German, I don't have the confidence to be able to say my German is perfect, and for this reason I would like to ask you specialists to help me out with a translation. The text he wants me to say is:

"Shit, the Americans are landing here! We need immediate fire support! Can anyone hear this transmission? We need immediate fire support! Co-ordinates to follow, standby!"

I can get as far as this:

"Scheisse, die Amis sind heir! Wir brauchen [immediate fire support]! Kan niemand hoeren diese [transmission]? Wir brauchen [immediate fire support]! Die Ko-ordinaten folgen! Stehen zu!"

I know this is wrong, and that is why I am asking. Cheers, guys!

--KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:16, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is no general German term for "fire support", I'd say "Wir brauchen Artillerieunterstützung" if you're asking for artillery support, or something like "Wir brauchen mehr Bodentruppen" if you're asking for ground troops. I would leave out the "transmission" - translated literally it would be "Übertragung" or Sendung", but "Kann uns irgendwer hören?" sounds much more idiomatic. I'd also leave out the "Stand by" at the end, it would be possible to translate but I don't think it would be very idiomatic in German in that context. By the way, if you want the line read by a native speaker with a bit of acting experience, send me an email :) -- Ferkelparade π 12:29, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ferkelparade is a native speaker and I'm not, but I still have some comments to make. I'd say "Die Amis sind da" rather than "Die Amis sind hier", and I would leave out the definite article from "Koordinaten folgen" (just as it was left out in the original). I wouldn't omit "stand by"; I would translate it with "bitte warten". Angr (talk) 12:34, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Bitte warten" is certainly a fitting translation for "stand by", I'd mainly leave it out because I think it would break the flow...I imagine the whole thing to be read in a rather panicky voice, and "bitte warten" just makes me think of the overtly calm voice of a telephone operator telling me to hold the line :P -- Ferkelparade π 12:44, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers! I am sure you will do a better job than me. I have a Luxembourg accent - not appropriate at all for a German radio operator in WW2. I don't know how to email direct. Can you instruct me on my talkpage, and I'll get back to you immediately? Cheers! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:36, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just go to Special:EmailUser/Ferkelparade. Angr (talk) 12:38, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers, Angr. Wikipedia should be paying you. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pfft. They couldn't afford me. ;-) Angr (talk) 13:46, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Couldn't"? You mean they've tried? Or do you mean "wouldn't be able to"? A lovely conditional, that only makes sense in English and when translated directly into Japanese as a simple past...... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:34, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I meant könnten, not konnten. Angr (talk) 17:06, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the previous replies, and my (non-native) knowledge of German, I would translate this as: Scheiße, die Amis sind da! Wir brauchen unmittelbarer Artillierunterstützung! Kann uns irgendwer hören? Wir brauchen unmittelbarer Artillierunterstützung! Die Koordinaten werden folgen, bitte warten! I have never heard of "Amis" meaning "Americans", the normal German word is "Amerikaner". I don't know the German word for "transmission", I would have used "Nachricht" (meaning "news") but it would probably not be the right word. I almost wrote "bitte warten Sie" at the end, as I've become accustomed to using "Sie" to any unknown German person, but such a style would not probably be used in a war-time transmission. Please also note that I have not checked the overwhelmingly copious different endings of nouns that German has, so a native speaker can correct me. JIP | Talk 19:47, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"transmission" would be something like "Übertragung" or "Sendung", in this particular case I would think of a "Funkspruch" or "Nachricht": "Kann jemand diese Nachricht/diesen Funkspruch hören". However, I would leave it out and prefer Ferkelparade's version.

Amis is informal and more accurate in this case.

"Die Koordinaten werden folgen, bitte warten!" Though correct, it would hardly be heard in this situation. It would be much shorter: "Koordinaten folgen!"

My suggestion would be: "Scheiße, die Amis sind da (or: Scheiße, die Amis kommen), wir brauchen sofort Hilfe (Hilfe is more general because I don't know the context: Artillerie-, Luftunterstützung, Bodentruppen etc. could also be possible) Kann uns (or: mich) jemand (also possible: irgendjemand, irgendwer) hören? Wir brauchen sofort Hilfe! Koordinaten folgen!" "Bitte warten" seems to be redundant, it's implied by "Koordinaten folgen!"--91.12.215.127 (talk) 22:45, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Muhammad's cat

We have a stub on Muezza, but no information on the name. What does "Muezza" mean, if anything? LANTZY ^TALK 17:25, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, but searching for معزة is hampered by the fact that the Arabic word for "goat", maʕzah, is spelled the same. I know very little about Arabic, but it looks like Muezza probably has the same mu- prefix as Muhammad and Muslim, which means we should be looking for a verbal root that starts with ʕ-z- or something. Angr (talk) 17:48, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably it's from the ayn-zayn-zayn root that has to do with power and strength, which also produces 'Izz and 'Aziz in Arabic. al-Mu'izz is one of the 99 names of Allah and according to that article means "The Giver of Honour". The cat has a feminine form of that word/name. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:21, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Topf <-?-> Pot

Do the German Topf and the English pot come from the same Germanic root? (Unfortunately their entries on Wiktionary don't go back that far.)--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:29, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, they don't. "Topf" (Middle Low German "dop(pe)", Low German "Dop" 'paring', esp. 'eggshell' in some dialects) is related to "tief" 'deep'. The origin of "pot" is rather unclear. There are many theories, here are two of them: maybe it comes from Old French "pot" (Pfeifer, Etymolog. Wb. des Deutschen, de Vries, Etymlog. Wb.), Vulgar Latin *pottus, or from Germanic *putta 'rotund' (de Vries). English pot is related to German "Pott" (borrowed from Low German/West Central German).--91.12.215.127 (talk) 23:11, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

July 15

--ope, etc.

Consider first antelope, elope, misanthrope, and perhaps even hope itself. Fine English words.

Then, there are calliope, Penelope, Antigone, and epitome, all of which have four syllables.

What's the etymological or ancestral difference between words in each group, such that the final "e" is pronounced in one, silent in the other? And second, will the answer tell me how to pronounce, say, Asterope?

Thanks in advance to the linguists, among whose numbers I will never be counted... (Took one grad course on the subject, just to fill a hole, and consider myself lucky to have "escaped undamaged". :-) ) DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:15, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. It is not necessary to add additional examples to the word groups.

OK so i think the latter group features words that had "e" at the end IN the original greek words from which they were derived. And in Greek you pronounce the final e as a syllable. The words in the first group either are not derived from Greek at all but even when they were the E was added on later, during the Middle English days.--Fran Cranley (talk) 01:49, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They're not all from Greek. 'Recipe' is from Latin. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:34, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The distinction is made between words that entered English before the establishment of the Silent e convention (and thus, which have evolved to obey that convention), and those loanwords from other languages that do not have the Silent e convention. For the most part, if the final "e" is pronounced, its a loanword from another language where that "e" is pronounced, though "hypercorrection" screws this up sometimes in both directions; the car style known as a "coupe", refering to the automobile body style, is frequently pronounced "coop" in many dialects of English, despite the final "e" being pronounced in the original French. Conversely, the word forte meaning "personal strength" is usually pronounced "for-TAY" despite the fact that, in the original French, the final "e" is silent. Also bona fide is another one where we can't agree on whether the final "e" is pronounced (some dialects "bow-na-fayd" and others "bow-na-fee-day"). --Jayron32 04:07, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The piano is my forte. I've been waiting years to say that. :) I've seen 'bona fide' spelt "bonnified". True story. Now just waiting for the back-formed verb 'to bonnify' to make its appearance. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 04:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I always assumed "forte" was from Italian. By contrast, "dilettante", is certainly from Italian, where the final e is pronounced, but is usually pronounced by English speakers as if it's French. --Nicknack009 (talk) 10:43, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Forte" in French is just the feminine form of the adjective "fort" (strong). The equivalent to the English "forte" would be "force", so the English word is more likely borrowed from Italian. Dilettante also exists in French (borrowed from Italian), with the final e silent; I expect it reached English via French and kept the French pronunciation. --Xuxl (talk) 14:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your expectations are at variance with the OED, which says English "forte" was formerly also written "fort" and pronounced /fɔːt/ (this is in a non-rhotic British pronunciation of course), and was borrowed from French; but makes no mention of French in its etymology of "dilettante". --ColinFine (talk) 20:31, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

although "forte" used in musical notation is certainly from Italian along with most of the rest of it. Rckrone (talk) 17:57, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Complexity of Japanese grammar

I've read contradictory opinions from random people on forums, blogs etc. that Japanese grammar is simpler than English, that it's more complex than English, or that it's simpler in some ways and more complex in others. Based on my beginner-level understanding of Japanese, its grammar seems quite a lot simpler to me than English, but it could be that I just haven't yet been exposed to enough "grown-up" Japanese. I guess this is a bit of a fuzzy question since there is (I assume) no exact way to quantity grammatical complexity, but is there any sort of consensus on this point amongst language experts? 86.183.1.14 (talk) 02:30, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus (at least the consensus here whenever a similar question is asked) is that all grammars are complex, and in some languages some things are comparatively simple, and in some languages other things are comparatively complex. No language is universally simpler than any other. It seems like we would have an actual article about this, but I can't find one. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, perceived "complexity" of language is entirely dependent on your native language. You could say that Japanese grammar is markedly different from English grammar, which is true, but it's meaningless to say the whole grammar is "more complex". We do have an article - Difficulty of learning languages. - filelake shoe 09:57, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my inexpert opinion, languages have both subjective differences in complexity (dependent on one's native language) and absolute, or objective, differences in complexity. Discarding the subjective differences, a comparison of objective complexity nevertheless ought to be possible. However, I am not sure how this would be done, and I am not sure if, as Adam seems to be implying, the answer would be that "all languages are about the same". For example, I don't know any Chinese, but I've read (more consistently, I think) that Chinese grammar is reckoned to be pretty simple (objectively). No? 86.176.211.64 (talk) 11:53, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm studying Chinese now. While I would agree that, when it comes to the usual grammatical parameters for European languages (gender, case, tense, mood, etc.), Chinese grammar is "simple", in fact there is greater complexity in areas such as aspect and causativity than I have encountered in any European language. Also, whereas European languages may have up to 3 genders for nouns, the system of Chinese classifiers means that Chinese nouns may fall into one of dozens (or hundreds, depending on the register) of classes analogous in some ways to gender. Finally, like other East Asian languages (though probably not to the same extent as Japanese), Chinese has a more developed system of register than European languages, with a large formal vocabulary that replaces the unmarked vocabulary depending on the social circumstances of an utterance. Marco polo (talk) 12:48, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Japanese grammar is for the most part regular, with no irregular noun declensions, verb conjugation by person, arbitrary gender classes, or consonant mutations to learn. Its phonology is much simpler than that of Tlingit or Ubykh. The difficulty of the writing systems and the complexities of politeness are not properly grammatical issues. Anyone who thinks all languages are of equal complexity hasn't compared Spanish to Russian or Japanese to Georgian. μηδείς (talk) 13:25, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How then is Spanish less complex than Russian, without comparing it to English? I know native speakers of Slavic languages tend to love waxing lyrical about how their language is so difficult and esoteric and mysterious compared to the next, and in my experience it seems to just be an opinion that isolating languages are simpler than fusional ones because they have less morphology. - filelake shoe 15:19, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Phonologically, depending on the analysis, Russian has about twice as many consonant sounds and allows much greater complexity in consonant clusters; free stress combined with the case system and the phenomena of akanye and ikanye highly complicate pronunciation; there is no ambiguity in how to pronounce the written word in Spanish. Consider здравствуйте "hello" spelled zdravstvujte and carefully pronounced, roughly to the English ear. ZDRAHFST-vweetsyah. Compare this to buenos días.

The verb systems might be described as of equal complexity, but it is not possible to predict the form of the infinitive from finite forms in Russian, nor is there a way to know with certainty the corresponding perfective or imperfective verb form based on its counterpart.

Russian nouns have three genders in six cases and two numbers, Spanish has masculine/feminine and singular/plural with no cases and no essential difference in form between nouns and adjectives. The Russian case system is highly complex, both in its forms, with, for example, the word "tongue" being pronounced roughly yih-ZICK in the sing nom, iz-zick-YEH, in the sing prep, and in its governance, with, for example, the use not only of the singular and plural but also the genitive case depending on in number expressions. Adjectival case endings in Russian are not the same as nominal endings.

Compare: "The English language"/"In the English language", La lengua española/En la lengua española, Русский язык/В русском языке (Russkij jazyk/V russkom jazyke) pronounced ROOS-kee yuh-ZICK/VROOS-kuhm iz-zick-YEH. Note the Russian form involves separate changes in the endings of the noun and adjective and an opaque change in pronunciation of the noun based on the application of stress rules to an underlying stressless noun stem *yah-zick. μηδείς (talk) 18:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Subjectively, Russian strikes me as very rich in its ability to express full sentences with no more words than there are stems:

"The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" - 11 syllables

Дух бодр, плоть же слаба (dukh bodr, plotj zhe slaba) - six syllables

el espíritu está dispuesto, pero la carne es débil - 18 syllables

Russian is excellent for drama, I would love to listen to Shakespeare in the original Russian. Listen to the Devil in this clip of an adaptation of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. Spanish delights me in the subtle implications of its verbs. It is especially suited to songs about broken hearts. Soy Infeliz, En el ultimo trago, Piensa en mi. μηδείς (talk) 18:53, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am pretty sure Shakespeare wasn't originally written in Russian. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:07, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Then you have a lot to learn about "Shakespeare" -[2], [3]. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 12:24, 16 July 2011 (UTC) [reply]

I wonder about that masculine singular ending красный for the plural expression Все книги; in the singular, книгa is feminine, of course. I'm not up on my Russian plural attributive adjectives, so you may well be correct with красный, but my gut says otherwise. If pressed, I'd go for the plural ending красны.-- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:47, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, красные. μηδείς (talk) 21:04, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That sentence was rather artificial and had some deeper problems, so I changed the example to comparative translations of Matthew 26:41. μηδείς (talk)

Cool. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:30, 15 July 2011 (UTC) [reply]

Shakespeare's Hamlet soliloquy, TaH pagh, taHbe', in the original Klingon.

CHN (Area west of Mississippi)

At zh:User:WhisperToMe/夏威夷州教育部 - How do I say "area west of the Mississippi River" in Chinese? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 08:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Literally, 密西西比河以西的地区. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:29, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For "在(area west of the Mississippi River), 夏威夷州教育部是最古老学区", I would suggest "夏威夷州教育部是美国密西西比河以西最早成立的学区", literally "the Hawaii Department of Education is the school district with the earliest establishment in the US west of the Mississippi River", which is a little more idiomatic in Chinese (but not sure if there is a distinction between "oldest" and "first established" that I missed).

A comment on "是夏威夷州的教育部和夏威夷州的学区" -- the idea that a department of education is also a school district seems very strange in a Chinese context, and probably bears a little explanation. I would suggest something like "是夏威夷州的教育部，同时也指该教育部所管辖的、包含整个夏威夷州的单一学区" ("is the Department of Education in Hawaii, but also refers to the single school district administered by this department and including all of the state of Hawaii").

A final point - usually in Chinese a sub-national government department is called a 厅, not a 部, which I think this should be unless the Hawaiian government has a preference for its departments to be known as a 部. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:38, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for giving me the suggestions! I will add them into the proposed article on the Hawaii BOE.

In that case, http://doe.k12.hi.us/civilrights/Equal%20Educational%20Opportunity/EqualEducationalOpportunityPamphlet2009_ChineseMandarin.pdf has it translated with "部" at the end.

WhisperToMe (talk) 02:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

TRANSHIPPED - Meaning

Sir, Could you please explain the meaning of the word 'transhipped' which I happened to read a well reputed Indian news paper THE HINDU, and found no such word in the Oxford Dictionary.Kasiraoj (talk) 10:39, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It means "transferred from one ship to another" - see this page at Wiktionary. The OED may possibly use the alternative spelling "transshipped".Gandalf61 (talk) 11:08, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer the spelling with two s's. Otherwise it looks like it should mean "transferred from one hip to another" (e.g. a mother carrying a baby). Angr (talk) 11:41, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Me too. I prefer 'transsubstantiation' to 'transubstantiation', because I don't know what an "ubstance" is. Nor do I know what an "append" is, but apparently they're plentiful in some parts of the world because doctors are always performing appendectomies. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:49, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Haplology. μηδείς (talk) 19:08, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No it's not. Angr (talk) 23:07, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article haplology has no relevance to JackofOz's implied *appendixectomy > appendectomy? μηδείς (talk) 19:42, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I thought you meant the loss of "s" in transhipped and transubstantiation was haplology, which it isn't, but even *appendixectomy or *appendicectomy > appendectomy isn't really haplology (or "haplogy" as I call it) since the suppressed string isn't a duplicate of one of its neighbors. Angr (talk) 20:05, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Btw, I've never heard the word "appendixectomy" till now and so I couldn't have been implying it, although I have no control over what others infer. "Appendicectomy" is the word I had in mind. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 21:15, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Then your argument, Angr, is with the article and its source (Merriam Webster) which says the deletion "of one or more similar", not identical, "sounds". μηδείς (talk) 21:20, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't even go so far as to call the sounds similar. We're removing the /ɪ(k)s/ from /əpɛndɪ(k)sˈɛktəmi/, and I'm not seeing or hearing anything similar next to it. If it were /əpɛndɪkɛktəmi/, maybe. And whatever M-W says, I do think it has to be a syllable (or at least, the string deleted has to include a vowel and at least one consonant). Angr (talk) 21:32, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So your points are, first, that as far as you can tell, /ɪk(s)/ and /ɛk/ are not even similar sounds, and, second, I should not have linked to the article haplology for the benefit of JackofOz because you personally (ignoring for the moment that the two -lo- sequences in your own example haplology are not pronounced the same) don't accept the phenomenon as existing unless it is the reduction of identical sequences, sources be damned? Well, okay then, to each his OR. μηδείς (talk) 23:39, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looked it up in the OED Online. "Transhipped" is under the "tranship" entry. It also says less commonly transship. Two meanings are given: 1. To transfer from one ship to another; also transf., from one railway train or other conveyance to another. 2. Of a passenger: To change from one ship or other conveyance to another. Pfly (talk) 20:44, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Difference between accuracy, precision and resolution.

In an article about a South African missile testing facility there is a statement: "Fixed and mobile doppler radar receivers to track missile velocities with 3 cm/s accuracy". (BTW, it isn't a complete sentence because it's part of a list.) I'm not entirely happy with the word "accuracy" in that context but I'm not sure which of "precision" or "resolution" is the better option. For the record, South African English is my native language. Roger (talk) 11:09, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think "accuracy" is fine -- the sentence sounds fine, grammatically -- maybe the word "with" is not the right one. What does "with 3 cm/s accuracy" mean? that if it printes 1040cm/sec, the truth could be that that missile is going 1043 or 1037 cm/sec relative to the ground, but not a single cm/s faster than the former or slower than the latter? 188.222.102.201 (talk) 12:24, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To my US English ears, the phrase, including the word accuracy, looks fine. Of your two alternatives, I prefer precision, since I think the word resolution is associated with visual images, whereas this phrase refers primarily to data (even if they may be displayed visually). Marco polo (talk) 12:33, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AIUI what the phrase is saying is that the margin of error of the radar's velocity measurement capability is 3cm/s. I've found this article - Accuracy and precision - which only serves to confuse me even more. Perhaps this question should be passed over to the science desk? Roger (talk) 13:09, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If it's the margin of error, then I think accuracy is the correct term. Angr (talk) 13:26, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think accuracy is more connotative of the concept of "degree of accuracy" than precision is connotative of the concept of "degree of precision". The sentence could be rearranged to include the phrase "degree of precision". But this is unnecessary with the word accuracy, so I think the sentence is well-written with accuracy as it is. What is the objection to the word accuracy used as it is in that sentence? Bus stop (talk) 14:00, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the skinny on "accuracy" and "precision". Imagine you have a gun and fire 100 shots at a target:

The gun can be said to be accurate if the bullets lie roughly evenly distributed around the bullseye. That is, once you average all of the distances from the center of your shots, the "center" of the pattern your bullet holes make is also at the "center" of the target. The two centers line up, so the gun is accurate.
The gun can be said to be precise if the bullets lie close to each other. That is, a precise gun puts the bullets in a tight little pattern, while an imprecise gun places the bullets in a wider pattern.
These two are independent concepts. Thus a gun that sprays bullets over a wide area, but the center of that area is at the center of the target is said to be accurate but imprecise. The converse, a gun that shoots a tight pattern where all the bullets strike very close together, but where that point is some distance from where you are aiming the gun is said to be inaccurate but precise.

The opening sentence is ambiguous, if we don't know whether the writer of the sentence meant accuracy or precision, there is nothing in the context to indicate the correct word. Consider:

receivers to track missile velocities with 3 cm/s <BLANK>

If you replace <BLANK> with "accuracy" you mean "The receivers are able to track missle velocities to within 3 cm/s of how fast they are actually traveling"
If you replace <BLANK> with "precision" you mean "The receivers would track multiple missles all traveling the same actual velocity would show a spread of measurements to within 3 cm/s" without making any statement on how close the recievers read-out was to the actual velocity, just that actually identical velocities would show no more than 3 cm/s difference.

What we are left with is to take the writer at their word. If they wrote "accuracy" we can only assume they meant "accuracy" because there is nothing in the context to let us know they chose the wrong word. --Jayron32 14:42, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article on Accuracy and precision and Jayron seems to be correct. Resolution also comes up in that article. Bus stop (talk) 19:04, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What's "skinny"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:18, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See the slang definition at skinny. Bus stop (talk) 20:27, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I got the meaning from the context, but was curious how it came to mean that, especially being an adjective and all. Skinny what? It might be rhyming slang for tip (skinny dip), but the link doesn't corroborate that. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:41, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I assumed the word skinny in slang use alluded to the leading edge of something. I figured it meant that by the time the fat portion reached the masses that thing would be old news. (Just a guess.) Bus stop (talk) 20:53, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The OED says "the semantic motivation in sense [the US slang thing] is unclear." Pfly (talk) 21:02, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I always think of accuracy and precision in terms of geographic coordinates, with precision referring to the number of significant digits (48.38638596, -121.38769874 being more precise than 48.386, -121.387), and accuracy referring to how well the coordinates map to the actual thing/location. Precision does no good if your accuracy is off. Pfly (talk) 20:57, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If a robot is to perform surgery on a human being we are obviously going to be very concerned with its precision. This means that we want it to be very fine-tuned to distinguish between very small movements. We are not thinking about its accuracy because we don't think it is going to perform surgery on the head when it was cardiac surgery that was called for. Bus stop (talk) 22:18, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speak for yourself, Pollyanna. "Surgeon operate wrong" gets over 5,000,000 hits on Google, and I know people, plural, who have personally corrected the surgeon on which limb needs operation themselves before surgery. Robots do not yet have any guilt or conscience or worry or shame. μηδείς (talk) 02:31, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, it is disrespectful to the family name of Christian Doppler d.1853 to spell it without a capital D. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 22:40, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No it isn't (and my assertion has just as much force as your assertion). --ColinFine (talk) 22:06, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

July 16

Ditched, crashlanded, forced to land

I'm wondering if these terms have precise meanings.

The aircraft "ditched" on the icecap.

The aircraft ran out of fuel and was "forced to land" on the icecap.

The aircraft "crashlanded" on the icecap.

My sense is that "crashlanded" means came to the ground not under the control of the pilot, that "was forced to land" means the pilot controlled the landing. "Ditched" I associate with water.

Am I correct that the three terms mean different things?

Other question: should one say "the aircraft ditched" or "the aircraft was ditched"?

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 02:16, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ditched doesn't necessarily imply water, it just means "landed" whatever the circumstances, runway or not. OED does not give any closer sense than to smear. μηδείς (talk) 02:26, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but no. As Wiktionary notes, to 'ditch' an aircraft is to "deliberately crash-land [it] on the sea". [4] (My copy of Chambers 20th C Dictionary concurs), on this basis, you seem to be correct that "ditched on the icecap" is simply wrong. Regarding 'crashlanded', I think it has a meaning intermediate between 'crash' and 'land' - a landing under at least partial control, but resulting in damage to the aircraft. Again, Wiktionary concurs: [5]. Sadly, the distinction isn't always understood by the media, who recently chose to report what was clearly a forced landing as a 'crash' - possibly because the aircraft subsequently burnt out. [6] Note to that those on board made the obligatory 'miraculous escape'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:35, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But a crashlander, of course, is someone from We Made It. --Trovatore (talk) 02:45, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) "To ditch" is a synonym for "to abandon" [7]. My understanding is that "ditched" is usually implies a situation where takeoff would be impossible, usually to the point where any reuse of the aircraft would be impossible. That's probably why you associate it with water, as that's one situation where aircraft abandonment is assured, and for most land landings a pilot would attempt to preserve the airplane. So if a pilot was "forced to land" on an icecap, I would expect he'd take off again once the weather cleared or repairs were completed. If he "ditched" his aircraft on an icecap, I would assume that there likely a mechanical fault that rendered the plane unflyable, but still allowed him to land safely (and then hike out/signal a rescue ship). If the airplane "crashed" on the icecap, the pilot didn't have control. On the final point, my understanding is that as it's the pilot who does the abandoning, it's "the aircraft was ditched". -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 02:50, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need an etymologist here, or at least someone with more information. I suspect that 'ditch' in the general sense of 'get rid of' is a different (and perhaps later?) usage of the word than the aircraft-specific one. Possibly the answer can be found in a search for early aircraft-related usage - though that would be WP:OR. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:55, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a pilot, I do associate "ditching" with water, but not always. For example, I wouldn't think twice about it if you said someone ditched an airplane in a field, though I maybe would not say that myself. I associate ditching an airplane with, as 140 hinted at above, doing what's necessary to ensure that the passengers get out of the plane safely on the ground/water, without regard for damage to the airplane, and with the acceptance that the plane probably won't fly again, at least not without major repairs. A "crash landing", which isn't a term that we really use much as pilots, would be a landing where the airplane was at least partially under control and there was significant damage. An example of that could be if I somehow came in nose low, and knocked out the nose-wheel and propeller (and that is a heck of a lot harder to do than it sounds). A forced landing is, to me, a landing that is forced by the circumstances, and I associate the term with off-airport landings. The degree of damage in a forced landing isn't relevant to me; I would consider an engine failure and a flawless landing with no damage to be a forced landing, just as I would an engine failure resulting in a [controlled] landing with catastrophic damage, as was the sad case with the Liberty Belle the other week, when thankfully nobody was hurt. Does that help? Those aren't official definitions, but those at least are how I think of them. As for usage, "the pilot ditched the aircraft", or "they ditched in a lake". I don't think I would use "The aircraft ditched", though it certainly would be clear what is meant. Falconus^{p t c} 03:48, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The OED gives as meaning 6b "slang. (a) trans. To bring (an aircraft) down into the sea in an emergency. (b) intr. To come down into the sea in an emergency." so it specifically mentions the sea. Of course dictionaries describe, they don't prescribe, so if fliers use it otherwise than this, then the OED is incomplete. --ColinFine (talk) 20:37, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if the etymology has anything to do with landing in the English Channel, which I have heard described as "The Ditch" in the same way as the Atlantic is sometimes called "The Pond". The first overseas flight for new pilots in WWI would have been across the Channel and Battle of Britain pilots were frequently shot down into it. A possibility? Alansplodge (talk) 17:44, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Me again. After a bit of Googling, I've found that it is indeed RAF slang....

The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: Colloquialisms and Catchprases by Eric Partridge, Paul Beale says "1) To throw overboard (into the sea: see next entry): nautical ca. 1870. Bowen; Granville. 2) To land (an aircraft) on the sea: RAF since ca. 1939. 3) To discard (something no longer useful): since ca. 1942: orig. RAF then Services' and gen. coll." Eric Partridge also wrote a "Dictionary of RAF Slang" in 1945, so should know what he's talking about.
Also The Mariner's Mirror: the Journal of the Society for Nautical Research, Volumes 63-64 says "The Ditch. The new Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (AG volume, published 1972) gives under ditch sbl 2.c. '(a) Naval slang. The sea; (b) RAF slang. The English Channel or the North Sea'."
Lastly R. A. F.: the Story of a British Fighter Pilot (publ 1941) says "We lost Bill Bradley, and Marshall bailed out— fell in the ditch and was picked up by a Navy motor boat." Alansplodge (talk) 18:16, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just one more; Illustrated London News and Sketch, 1919 says "If they 'fall into the ditch', as the aviators' slang has it, there they must stop until some kind ship comes along and pulls them out." Alansplodge (talk) 18:39, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Français

Bonjour! Quick question: Yesterday I volunteered for our local Bastille Day celebration, selling various France-themed merchandise, and some of our customers spoke French (yes, there are French people even in Tennessee, I was surprised too). I wanted to say "Your coffee will be [ready in] a moment", and I said "Il faut un moment pour le café". Was this correctly idiomatic French? OR Is there a better way to say it? thnx — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.88.206 (talk) 03:51, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They'd've understood you unless they were trying very hard not to. Et parce qu'ils etaient dans les etats unis, il n'y en aurait rien plus important que l'essayer entendre, non? μηδείς (talk) 04:18, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But he didn't ask if it was merely understandable, he asked if it was idiomatic French and if there was a better way to say it. Angr (talk) 06:24, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I am not a native French speaker (if there are any here, speak up!) but it is the first foreign language I learned in school. I would not have blinked. It is certainly not unidiomatic. I suppose I might have said faudra une minute instead of faut un moment, but that's only if you are looking for something forced for the sake of argument. μηδείς (talk) 13:25, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would say: Votre [ton] café sera bientôt prêt, Votre [ton] café sera prêt dans quelques instants/dans un instant, or Votre [ton] café sera prêt dans une ou deux minutes. If I hear Il faut un moment pour le café (perfect French), I understand: "We need to keep some time for a coffee break". And, for the record, I would say: Et parce qu'ils étaient aux Etats-Unis, rien n'aurait été plus important que de faire un effort pour comprendre, non ?. — AldoSyrt (talk) 13:50, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense to me. μηδείς (talk) 15:08, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More translations in my previous post. — AldoSyrt (talk) 16:47, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks (Merci;)) One more quick q: To say "Next!" (think the line at the DMV and the window person calling loudly for the next person), I said "Le prochain, s'il vous plait!". The volunteer next to me used "Ensuite!", which I understood as "Then!", unless it is an idiomatic usage? What would be the correct way to say this, preserving the concision of the English "Next!" which "Le prochain client, s'il vous plait!", while unquestionably correct, does not? merci de nouveau ;] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.88.206 (talk) 21:07, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To be concise we say in French: Suivant !, Au suivant !, but it could be a little bit rude. To be more polite say: Personne suivante s'il vous plaît !, Client suivant s'il vous plaît !. Aside, "Au suivant" is a famous song by Jacques_Brel (for adult only !) — AldoSyrt (talk) 06:26, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

'Folk psychology'

I'm looking for a term for 'folk psychology' - the way we all form opinions about others mental states, about how others minds work etc - as opposed to psychology as a scientific discipline. We all do it, all the time, and there is a tendency to just call it 'psychology'. In most contexts this is fine, and you can tell what is meant from the context . In the particular case I'm interested in, I need a word for 'folk psychology' which makes it clear that I don't mean the scientific discipline. Does anyone have any suggestions? AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:09, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The term that is generally used in the literature is Theory of mind -- I'm personally not very fond of it but that is the term that is most commonly used. Looie496 (talk) 19:24, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

--- Headology 86.148.163.239 (talk) 20:46, 16 July 2011 (UTC) what about pop psychology? 24.92.88.206 (talk) 21:13, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I read an academic book by a psychologist which used the exact term "folk psychology", so if you find "theory of mind" too much like gobbledigook, your own term has at least some pedigree, and is quite clear. If, on the other hand, you want the academic term that is most current, listen to others - this was just something I was reading once. It's been emotional (talk) 04:31, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. 'Theory of mind' is rather obscure for the context - if I can find "folk psychology" used in the sort of context I need, perhaps that will do ('pop psychology' isn't quite right for the context, I think). AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:49, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Easy French translation

For an article I am writing, I need a translation from French of parts of this book. My basic French is sufficient for most parts, but I got stuck with the following sentence and would appreciate help with translation: Le 8* mois de la 12* année (74O), Hirotsugu ayant fait de faux rapports sur plusieurs affaires importantes , Makibi et Genbō représentèrent au Daïri qu'il devait s'attendre à une révolte, s'il ne renvoyait pas Hirotsugu. (from page 70 of the book). "Daïri" is the Emperor. bamse (talk) 22:53, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"On the 8th month of the 12th year (740), after Hirotsugu had made false reports on several important matters, Makibi and Genbō warned Daïri that he should expect a rebellion if he did not send Hirotsugu back." --Viennese Waltz 23:47, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Maybe there is a better word for "send back". Some background information: Makibi and Genbō were together with Daïri (the emperor) in the capital. Hirotsugu had been exiled (given a government position in a distant place) two years earlier (under the same emperor). So the meaning of "send back" could be something like "dismiss Hirotsugu from his government position in exile and give him a position close to or in the capital." ? bamse (talk) 00:00, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Recalled"?—Chowbok ☠ 14:09, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes that is definitely better than my "send back". --Viennese Waltz 17:46, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Dismiss" or "fire" would be my translation. "Renvoyer" does not translate to "recall", the author would have used "rappeler" to meant that. French speaker here. 194.6.163.244 (talk) 09:21, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hyphenation of French double-barrelled given names

What's the deal with hyphenation of French double-barrelled given names? I know there was a decree from on high (the Académie, I suppose) at some stage, but I don't know how widely that was adopted. I still often see a mish-mash. Jean Sylvain Bailly is a case in point. It's Jean Sylvain in the title and the infobox, but Jean-Sylvain the lede and some (but not all) of the sources. Even the French article has both styles, so that's not much help. Is there a general rule that all such names should now be following, or does it depend on the case, and how would one ever know if the sources can't even agree? Merci. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 22:56, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In Québec, it is a matter of parental (or individual once they are old enough) choice. I have a friend Jean-Guy and a friend Yves Marie; they are both called by the two names. I would think that it is how they designate themselves, and we can find in sources, that should matter to Wikipedia. Bielle (talk) 23:02, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For M. Bailly, here is something that appears to be quasi-official, at least. My looking about comes up with no hyphen to hyphen at about 3:1. (I know: WP:OR) Bielle (talk) 05:27, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In France, in modern French, if it is a compond given name, it must be hyphened "Jean-Paul" (even officially in Quebec), otherwise they are two distinct given names (In France we can give more than one given name, but, in the current life, we use only the first one - dans l'ordre de l'Etat Civil). But it is only since the middle of the 19th century that this rule is applied, according to the French WP. — AldoSyrt (talk) 06:47, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting, AldoSyrt. I wonder how it is policed? I'm envisaging a Monty Python-esque skit: "You called him "Yves Marie? Let me see that written down." "No hyphen? Aha? To the Bastille!" Thanks for the cites; information is always better than opinions and guess work. Bielle (talk) 17:53, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is not policed, but your passport or ID will show either one or the other. If your passport shows Yves-Marie, then everyone will assume that is your first name. If your passport shows Yves Marie, then it is assumed that they are your first and second names. And everyone will call you Yves by default unless you correct them. They might ask you: "why not hyphen, then?". I certainly would ask, I'd be curious. --Lgriot (talk) 09:40, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But who goes around checking their new acquaintances' passports or other ID to discover their true names. If someone was introduced to me as "Yves-Marie", I'd assume this was a hyphenated name and not "Yvesmarie" or a person who goes by both his first and middle names, as sometimes happens. If they were introduced as "Yves", and I later discovered their middle name was Marie, I wouldn't take it upon myself to connect the two names with a hyphen. If I had any doubt and I needed to know, I'd check with them.

Thanks to Bielle and the others for the replies. What I get is that if there's any doubt, consult reliable sources. That's always good advice. My only concern, as I pointed out in my question, is that this isn't a great deal of help when reliable sources disagree among themselves. But that isn't confined to this issue. With historical people, the issue is affected by the change in the French rules about name-hyphenation, the details of which I'm extremely hazy about, but I have read about somewhere, sometime. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:52, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rendering of transliterated Hebrew word

I'm transferring a section of a book to HTML. I always try to be correct with Unicode characters (accented characters, ligatures, em dashes, etc.), so this word I'm encountering is vexing me. It's the Hebrew word for prophet, "nabi", and I've put a scan of how it's printed here.

So I have a few issues with this. Is that "a" just a standard "a" with an acute accent ("á")? The angle seems different than how I usually see it printed, but that might just be due to the typeface. As for the "i"... that looks like an "i" with a circumflex ("î") except for that odd accent in the upper right. Is there a unique character in Unicode that represents this, or would I have to combine two or three characters to make it? I'm assuming that's not just an apostrophe, it's an accent of some sort.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!—Chowbok ☠ 23:17, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that is the usual transcription for the letter aleph. It is normally transcribed as an apostrophe. The Hebrew word is נביא . --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:28, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aha. So then I would transcribe the HTML as "nábîʾ" (nábîʾ)?—Chowbok ☠ 02:14, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't thin #702 (unicode 02BE - "MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING") is particularly appropriate: As KageTora says, it is usually simply an apostrophe. In phonetic transcription, a glottal stop (UNICODE 0242) is sometimes used.

On another subject, the accented vowels used in your transcription are not standard for Hebrew transliteration, and have no particular meaning today. I'm guessing that you are preparing a faithful transcription, and so wish to preserve the accents; but if the purpose is to be informative rather than faithful, it would be better to omit them. --ColinFine (talk) 13:54, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. That'll teach me to listen to Wikipedia! Seriously, our aleph article says to use U+02BE, so that's where I got that. But I'll change it to U+2019 if you guys think that's more appropriate.—Chowbok ☠ 14:06, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't use the apostrophe. It's functioning as a letter, not as a punctuation mark. That's what the modifier letters are there for. However, I wouldn't use the modifier letter right half ring at U+02BE to transcribe this passage from the book. I'd use the modifier letter apostrophe at U+02BC. It looks the same as a curly apostrophe to the naked eye, but the software will know the difference and won't treat it as a punctuation mark. Angr (talk) 14:41, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not disagreeing with you, but, again, this contradicts our articles modifier letter right half ring and aleph... maybe those should be changed?—Chowbok ☠ 15:05, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm talking about faithfully digitizing what the original source document says, not about the optimal transliteration of Hebrew aleph. I'd never recommend using U+2144 TURNED SANS-SERIF CAPITAL Y for the close back unrounded vowel either, but when I'm digitizing a source text that uses an upside-down capital Y to stand for that sound, I follow the source as faithfully as Unicode will let me (the letter is serifed in the original, while the Unicode character is defined as sans-serif, but otherwise it's close enough). Likewise here: if I were preparing my own text about Hebrew, I'd use the half-ring (or even the IPA glottal stop symbol ʔ) to transliterate aleph; but if I'm digitizing this previously published text, I'd use the modifier letter apostrophe. As for the diacritic over the "a", it's hard to tell if it's intended as an acute, a macron, or something ad-hoc in between. A macron is more usual in the transliteration of Hebrew, but as we've seen this author doesn't necessarily follow the most common transliteration. Does the text use either unambiguous macrons or unambiguous acutes in other contexts? Angr (talk) 16:48, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The transliteration is, in fact, pretty normal and the accented vowels do have a clear meaning - the author is transliterating Tiberian Hebrew, which is really what philologists normally do, when not specifically treating modern Jews and modern Israel (Wikipedia is weird in using modern Hebrew transliterations in the leads of articles concerning Biblical characters etc.). The diacritic over the a must definitely be a macron (the similarity to an acute is most likely to be due to some technical defect) and designates the length of the vowel (well, actually, the rounded quality of the vowel in Tiberian times). The diacritic over the i is a circumflex and designates the length/roundedness of the vowel and the fact that the vowel is marked with a separate consonantal letter Yodh in the Hebrew script (Biblical Hebrew orthography). The final apostrophe-like letter is, as others have said, aleph and is normally transcribed as something similar to an apostrophe, although it's true that some use the IPA glottal stop sign and some use the half-ring. The apostrophe-like sign is OK in the wiki article Proto-Semitic language, for example. The only thing missing is that the b should have been underlined to show that it is transformed into a fricative and does not retain its original stop quality (in terms of Hebrew orthography, it doesn't have a dagesh) - perhaps the author was aiming at a pre-Tiberian pronunciation, preceding the fricativization. All in all, I'd render the transcription as nābîʼ. What this means technically for HTML purposes, I don't know.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:39, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

July 17

“San ling sheng jiang ji”

What is “san ling sheng jiang ji”? --84.61.162.29 (talk) 09:59, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Probably 三菱升降机 (Sānlíng shēngjiàngjī), "Mitsubishi elevator". Lesgles (talk) 17:15, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Literal translation versus poetic translation

What is a literal translation and what is a poetic translation? (Please answer on my talk page) ColderPalace1925 (talk) 10:05, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is partly answered (though not in one single place) in the article Translation. --ColinFine (talk) 14:00, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

“Spicken macht Faß”

What is “Spicken macht Faß”? --84.61.162.29 (talk) 11:27, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's a deliberate spoonerism in German. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:49, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ficken macht Spaß "Fucking is fun." μηδείς (talk) 16:22, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As the other two said. Literally: Larding (or cheating as in using a cheat sheet) makes barrel. This does not make more sense in German than it does in English. Not a particularly successful example of a spoonerism. In the recent German orthography reform, Faß became Fass, but the spelling of Spaß did not change because in the most standard pronunciation the a is long. In this context one might pronounce the word with a short a, though. Hans Adler 16:32, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Larding makes barrel" - a great t-shirt slogan. It'll be a talking point among your friends, who'll then be confused when you tell them it's a spoonerism ("Barding makes larrel"?). (That's those who know what a spoonerism is, of course.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:47, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with everything Hans said, particularly on the vowel "a" and also on the lameness of this example. It belongs to the category of tee-hee-hee-coded-profanity spoonerisms. There was a garage band named "Nickende Fichten" near where I grew up ("nodding spruces", spoonerified "fickende Nichten", "fucking nieces"). There are funnier examples using "ficken", such as Kentucky schreit: "Ficken!" = Kentucky screams "Fuck!" (as in a collective order to do so) but it's a spoonerism of Kentucky Fried Chicken (with appropriate German accent). German also has the playful tradition of Schüttelreime where both versions are given in a rhyming couplet. Example using the f-word: "Erst war es nur ein Blickgefecht /dann hat er für den Fick geblecht." (At first it was only a battle of gazes / then he paid for his fuck). ---Sluzzelin talk 14:25, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you want tee-hee-hee-coded-profanity, look no further than the clothing company fcuk. Nobody can tell me it just came out that way without any prior thought, and that nobody noticed it until a fax from their Hong Kong office to their London office used it for the very first time. Utterly unbelievable. No, it was an initialism forced into life through a desire to be as naughty and eye-catching as possible without actually crossing the line into running foul of certain laws in certain places. It has most certainly been exploited that way after the fax episode. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:34, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another example is the Flick Off advertising campaign in Canada. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:36, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Latin meaning and explanation

When I put into Google Translate the letters "je" I get IN PSALMUM of Latin translation. What does that mean exactly?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:53, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Latin in psalmum would mean "in(to) the psalm." The translation makes no sense, and is obviously an artifact of how google translate works by statistically matching text strings to text strings without any direct conscious application of grammatical rules. See Google Translate. μηδείς (talk) 20:58, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

July 18

Miscellaneous vocabulary questions (French and German)

I am working on building my French and German vocabulary by using flashcards assembled by someone whom I do not know, in anticipation of spending a year in a bilingual French and German speaking city. It is going well, and the flashcards have already done wonders in a very short period of time, but the French set is in British English, and I have been verifying all of them as some of them seem to differ from what I understand as a US English speaker (for example, when I think of a trolley, I think of a public transportation system, where the flashcard program was referring to what I call a shopping cart). Also, some of the definitions seem to be extremely odd usages of a word that I cannot verify ("la bourse" = purse?), so while most of them are spot on, I have decided to triple-check all the words I haven't seen before, using a combination of the French Wikipedia and online dictionaries. It is working out well, but there are still occasionally some problem-words. The first question I have, is how would someone say, of all things, "trowel" in French, not as in a masonry trowel "la truelle", but a garden trowel (and in that vein, are "la pelle" and "la bêche" both acceptable ways to say "shovel" or "spade"?) I doubt I'll ever use those words next year, but now I'm curious. Also, the article on French Wikipedia w:fr:Ruelle corresponded to the English article Ruelle, which was obviously a mistake, and I changed it to correspond to Alley. The article "Alley" in turn corresponds to w:fr:Allée. Now, I suspect that w:fr:Allée, a type of "Ruelle" has little to do with the English definition of Alley, so should I fix this (change the link in w:en:Alley to w:fr:Ruelle), or am I wrong? To compound matters, the French Ruelle also corresponds to German w:de:Ruelle (Begriffsklärung) which seems to be equally incorrect. Should it be w:de:Gasse? My German is still not very good, so I cannot tell for sure. Thanks Falconus^{p t c} 06:26, 18 July 2011 (UTC). If this looks different than what you remember, I updated it about 15 minutes after the original post, but as there were no responses, I felt safe to change it up Falconus^{p t c} 06:40, 18 July 2011 (UTC).[reply]

"Une bourse" means a coin purse ("La bourse ou la vie" means your money or your life). It also means Exchange_(organized_market).

A garden trowel is "un transplantoir".

On the french wikipedia, w:fr:Ruelle is an stub/disambiguation page. I think it's better to let the link to Ruelle, and let the Alley linked to w:fr:Allée (which is a quite bad stub).

194.6.163.244 (talk) 09:34, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ruelle is a diminutive form of rue (unless I'm very much mistaken), so "alley" seems the right English translation (and German Gasse is correct). An allée (as well as the German Allee) is characterized by the trees that line it; the closest English term I could find is Avenue (landscape). --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:39, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are some garden spades [8] here, called bêche. Une pelle is what you would use for shovelling sand on a building site, but it is different from the shovel that a UK builder would use, has a longer handle and doesn't necessarily have the sides that distinguish a shovel from a spade in the UK. Pelle is also pelle méchanique or pelleteuse, a mechanical digger. A garden trowel might be called une petite pelle, although I don't doubt that "transplantoir" is more exact. Looking through builders' merchants' online catalogues could be a good way to build up your technical vocabulary. Some also have "how to do it" leaflets for the general public, that illustrate the tools.Itsmejudith (talk) 10:01, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The English, French and German Ruelle articles are all disambiguation pages. Hence you should not link the French disambiguation page Ruelle to the English alley. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 14:24, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thank you all. That has been quite helpful. And Pp.paul, thanks for changing that back. Falconus^{p t c} 16:09, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The old problem of translation... Language evolves and not the same way everywhere, the Ruelles of Montréal seems to be quite different from what I would call a Ruelle, a small street between buildings. fr:Allée forgot (so far) that is some places in France it is the entrance of a residential building... Ideally we should be able to have one interwiki link per entry in a disambiguation page... For Translation, I usually use the Wiktionary, with help on Wikipédia when neccessary. --Cqui (talk) 17:45, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the wiktionary, we equate (en) alley, de (Gasse) and fr (ruelle), but also with other words. The American notion of an alley differs nevertheless from the European notion, for the cities are completely different. Neither block nor alley have German or French equivalents. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 18:59, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would have said a Ruelle translates as a twitten, but I see that is the same as a ginnel. I have also seen The Lanes (Brighton) translated as "Les Ruelles". Sussexonian (talk) 23:27, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the archaic past participle of to tweet. μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The full ~~principle~~ principal parts are of course tweet – twat – twitten. Angr (talk) 09:13, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see you're a man of ~~principal~~ principle, Angr. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:03, 19 July 2011 (UTC) [reply]

Now I am. *Sigh* Angr (talk) 11:52, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a better card(s) instead of the "la bourse" = purse would be "le porte-monnaie" = purse or "le Portefeuille" = Wallet. I've generally understood "la bourse" to be the stock exchange in common usage. As for the gardening implement, according to Wiktionary a trowel is "un déplantoir". The French Wiktionnaire suggests "ruelle" is translated as "alley" or "alleyway". Astronaut (talk) 16:39, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How to start my study for Spanish language?

I'm a beginner of Spanish, but i dont know how to start my subject by self learning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maggie Tong Tong (talk • contribs) 08:40, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The BBC is a good resource. Have a look here. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:44, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

About.com[9] might be worth a look too. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:28, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've had good results with Pimsleur recordings, which may be available at your public library. This is a good way to get a quick start, but to really progress you need to interact with a native speaker either in person or through Skype or the like. Marco polo (talk) 19:53, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you studied any other language? Are you taking no formal classes? Where are you located? Do you have a spanish speaker to help? What is your ultimate goal? Advice would be more narrowly tailored were that known.

My experience has been that anything with the word "conversational" in it is suspect, that there is no substitute for two semesters of structured formal study at the university level, and that strict attention to and comprehension of grammar and pronunciation are of paramount importance.

My advice to someone enrolled in a beginning course would be to purchase a copy of 501 Spanish Verbs, to practice out loud for at least 30 full minutes daily, and to listen to spanish music and watch spanish movies as often as possible, even if the movies are watched with subtitles. Load the iPod with La Lupe.

Immersion is the best option. I worked with and lived for six months with Spanish immigrants, having studied French formally and having bought a copy of 501 Spanish Verbs.) I was fluent in six months to the point of dreaming in spanish and of being mistaken for a native speaker by native speakers. (I understand that's not always a possible option.) μηδείς (talk) 23:37, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I like http://www.learner.org/series/destinos/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/index.shtml --Nricardo (talk) 01:32, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Review of English language

Hi, i'm not English as mother language, could you take a little review to the contents here?

Thank you! --El cestofilo (talk) 19:48, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You did a good job, I only found a few things to comment on. In the first article, I cannot quite tell what is meant by the sentence "Only in those years while playing in Legadue, in front of league's regulations for capacity, the home arena was PalaCastellotti in Lodi." In the second article, I made some changes; look over them them and see if you agree with what I did. I think that "register to participate in the championship" is a little clearer than "inscribe" (you wrote "iscribe", but I assume you meant "inscribe"?), and I replaced "as like as" with "as did". We can use "as" or "like", but I can't think of a time that we use "as" and "like" together. Finally, I changed "grew up" to "began his career", as "to grow up" implies a sense of "going from being a small kid or infant to an adult", which is probably not what you meant. If I am wrong about him starting his career there, then we can use something else. I hope that helps. Again, you did a good job :-). Falconus^{p t c} 23:06, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have edited both articles to idiomatic English, but the sense should be checked to make sure Falconus and my interpretations are reasonable. If there is a further issue, feel free to comment on my talk page to make sure any issues are addressed. μηδείς (talk) 23:23, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

July 19

I'm like how come?

How did the ubiquitescent expression "I'm like" ever come to mean "I said" or "I thought"? Do other languages have their own counterparts of this? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For research purposes, this use of like is often called the quotative "like". One source states: "The process of grammaticalization is most obvious in like as a quotative. There seem to be no data of when like was first used in this way; [...]" (Simone Müller, Markers in Native and Non-Native English Discourse, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2005, p 201). There is something similar in colloquial German "und ich so ..: "[whatever it was I said]" ---Sluzzelin talk 04:10, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone old enough and close enough to the phenomenon can tell you it developed from people saying "Then I said something like..." "Then she went like..." "Then I was like..." μηδείς (talk) 04:21, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Heard today from a 17 year old girl discussing another girl at the recent deb(utante) ball - "She like looked like real good." I liked it. HiLo48 (talk) 08:35, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

French youths seem to use genre in a similar fashion.[10] "Et je suis, genre, ouais, quoi encore?" ("And I was, like, yeah, what again?") --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:15, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Obligatory sex-based gender marking for animals

In English dogs, cats and goats are usually just that, unless you want to elaborate with "bitches" (pardon me!), "billy-goats" and so forth. In French the generic noun for the animal is arbitrarily masculine or feminine, sometimes with an optional variant for the opposite sex. But how about a language with an obligatory [semantic] gender distinction, whereby (i) sentences with a subject, object and noun do have an overt gender distinction for the subject, and therefore (ii) "The llama stole my shoe" differs according to whether it's a male or female llama? (Surely there'd be an option for a llama of unknown sex; but at least in principle you'd have to remember which sex every example is.)

I did look in grammatical gender but I don't think it answers this. -- Hoary (talk) 05:33, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have thought if the gender-distinction was actually obligatory, you'd have to say "A male-llama or a female-llama has stolen my shoe" - you cannot make a statement about 'llamas' in the abstract, because they don't exist. Or to look at it another way, you are using a language where female-llama' is a subset of 'female', rather than a subset of 'llama'. Biologically speaking, this is possibly justified. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:50, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See List of animal names. Oda Mari (talk) 05:56, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...Or even better, don't. Our List of animal names article looks like a prime example of stuff that would have been deleted years ago if anyone had noticed it existed. Marked as lacking citations in 2007, and still full of arbitrary nonsense: a horde of Gerbils, anyone? AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:10, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec x2)The only example of this issue that I could think of in English - what is the neuter singular word for cattle; one Bos taurus of unspecified sex? Roger (talk) 06:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That would be an ox. DuncanHill (talk) 07:55, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary includes "especially an adult castrated male of the domestic species" in its definition of ox. I would certainly balk at calling a cow a "female ox", which sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. Angr (talk) 09:16, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) Not true. One meaning of "ox" is "a castrated male".[11] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colapeninsula (talk • contribs) 09:17, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Chambers 20th Century: ox a general name for male or female of common domestic cattle (bull and cow), esp. a castrated male of the species" - so the castrated male meaning is one meaning of it (but I must say one I never heard growing up in dairy country). It is the ordinary English neuter singular of cattle. DuncanHill (talk) 09:26, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the word can have both meanings, but I think for a lot of people the castrated male meaning is the most salient, so if you use it in the more general sense you're likely to confuse people if you don't say specifically what you mean. Angr (talk) 09:37, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sexual dimorphism is so marked in cattle that one rarely does need to refer to a neuter singular Bos taurus. There isn't another word (except steer, which to my mind is much more strongly associated with a castrated male, and rather American anyway) for a singleton B. taurus. DuncanHill (talk) 09:52, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For reference, the several horns of this particular dilemma are addressed at Cow#Singular_terminology_issue. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.82 (talk) 10:08, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Sexual dimorphism is even more marked in human beings, and certainly more relevant to human beings, and yet we have at least three gender-nonspecific terms for a singleton H. sapiens: human, human being, and person. There's also cow, which is probably the most common generic term for a singleton B. taurus among city-dwellers who rarely encounter live ones. If you ask 1000 English speakers "What animal does beef come from?", what percentage do you think will answer "Cow" and what percentage do you think will answer "Ox"? Angr (talk) 10:15, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reminds me of a commercial with three young attractive people, one of whom has a bowl of cereal but no milk. He looks out to the field where the cattle are grazing, locates a specimen, and takes his bowl out to milk the animal onto the cereal. The girl remaining in the cabin says to the last lad, "are you going to tell him that's a boy cow?". Response: "he'll figure it out." --Trovatore (talk) 23:48, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hoary, when you say "how about a language...", do you mean "Do such languages exist?"? In German, some animals have a generic term in the neuter gender (Pferd "horse", Schwein "pig", Rind "domestic bovine"), a masculine term for the male animal (Hengst "stallion", Eber "boar", Stier "bull"), and feminine term for the female animal (Stute "mare", Sau "sow", Kuh "cow"), but that's a minority. Many more animal names have a generic term in either masculine or feminine gender that does double duty for the corresponding sex (Hund "dog; male dog", Katze "cat; female cat", Ente "duck; female duck") and then a different (sometimes morphologically related) term for the opposite sex (Hündin "female dog", Kater "male cat", Enterich "drake"). And some animal names only have the generic term, and sex has to be marked with an adjective (Lama "llama" / männliches Lama "male llama" / weibliches Lama "female llama"). I don't know if there is any language in which the sex of all animals has to be explicitly grammatically marked. How would they handle hermaphroditic animals like worms? Angr (talk) 06:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed I have never heard of a language where the gramatical gender has to match the biological gender. That is not how gender works in languages. --Lgriot (talk) 08:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for the input. ¶ Of course, natural languages don't have boneheaded lexical rules that apply wherever imaginable; I'd had in mind sex distinctions that are at least moderately conspicuous to "normal people" -- those likely to be concerned, whether farmers or others -- and not only to those equipped with patience and microscopes. The llama example was deliberate as I guessed that the word for llama would be relatively new in most if not all languages known to people here, too new for it to be likely that there'd be an anomalous term. ¶ German sounds similar to English and French: you have the generic term but also sex-specific options. ¶ Lgriot, I partly agree: correlation with actual sex is of course not how grammatical gender (as we usually think of it) works. (And indeed there are famous instances where it obviously does not work, e.g. German Mädchen, the neuter girl.) However, it is one element of grammatical gender. ¶ Email from a Czech acquaintance suggests that there's a lot of division in Czech of the kind that I have in mind. Apparently slon and slonice are male and female elephant respectively, and also verbs are (or can be) marked for gender. What I don't yet know is whether slon is to slonice what Hund is to Hündin, or whether it's what bull is to cow. I rather suspect the former. -- Hoary (talk) 09:35, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Two Observations

First, there simply is no unmarked English singular for cattle. If necessary you can say one head of cattle, or a bovine.

Second, it is a mistake to expect Indo-European languages necessarily to have a strict opposition male/female with each form equally differentiated from say, a hypothetical *can- 'dog', *cano 'sire', *cana 'bitch'. It simply doesn't work that way because strictly, the grammatical gender oppositions

neuter/masculine/feminine

do not represent the biological sex distinctions

unspecified/male/female

but rather the metaphysical distinction

inanimate/animate/animate-marked-for-feminine

It is a mistake to view the masculine/feminine distinction as primary. Indeed, the who/what distinction is primary, as is reflected in the fact that Hittite has that distinction, but no feminine, that Greek and Latin retain forms which distinguish only between common gender and neuter, and that the common gender system has re-arisen time and time again such as in Dutch and Scandinavian dialects.

μηδείς (talk) 15:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

harvesting equipment history

In Edward Thomas's poem "Haymaking" line 22: "Haymakers rested. The tosser lay forsook" The "tosser" is probably a machine. Where is that word defined or where illustrated? Thank you, Neal Rubenstein

Removed email address, postal address, and telephone number

I removed your contact details. Your question will be answered here. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are machines that turn the hay, but I think this is more likely to be a reference to the person who tosses the hay onto the cart, in the primary meaning given in the OED of "one who or that which tosses". I suppose it could mean the pitchfork, but that is not noted in the OED.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:24, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to think the poem refers to a piece of equipment rather than a person, because it doesn't make sense for most of the team to "rest" while one member lies "forsook." Shantavira's guess of a pitchfork seems plausible. My first thought was that it might refer to a tedder, which does sort of toss the hay in order to fluff it up. I'm not finding strong evidence the two terms are used interchangeably. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 16:47, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Anything's possible in poetry. I'd normally expect to see "forsaken" in such a construction, not "forsook". But he needed a rhyme for "brook" (here's the poem). -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 21:02, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

article 5 of Statute of ICJ

Article 5 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice prescribes:

"At least three months before the date of the election, the Secretary-General of the United Nations shall address a written request to the members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration belonging to the states which are parties to the present Statute, and to the members of the national groups appointed under Article 4, paragraph 2, inviting them to undertake, within a given time, by national groups, the nomination of persons in a position to accept the duties of a member of the Court."

Can anyone please explain this provision in normal language to me? I've read it repeatedly but I still don't clearly understand it. Especially, I don't understand why the phrase "by national groups" is there; not knowing what is the function of that phrase (to deal with the phrase "within a given time" in order to express the meaning that such time is given by the national groups?).

Thank you so much. --Aristitleism (talk) 19:53, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really understand it either, but I'll have a go. My reading is that "by national groups" is independent of "within a given time", and it means the nomination is to be carried out by national groups. As best quick googling can tell, the national groups are the up-to-four people each state has on the Permanent Court of Arbitration or has appointed by Art 4 para 2 which basically says "exactly the same conditions apply". [12] is an Irish Foreign Ministry page sort of indicating that. [13] seems to be about the (proposed?) similar organisation for the Arab League, and section 3.2.1 is a discussion of the system of nomination to the ICJ. Does that make any more sense? 95.150.23.60 (talk) 00:59, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Esperanto

Why hasn't Esperanto been adopted as an international auxiliary language? --134.10.113.198 (talk) 17:13, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Our article on the International Auxiliary Language Association answers this question directly, and you can find a lot more information in the International Auxiliary Language article. Looie496 (talk) 17:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But note that Interlingua, the language promoted by IALA, has never taken off to the extent that Esperanto has. Comparing the number of articles in the Esperanto and Interlingua Wikipedias is instructive. The fact is that although Esperanto has a number of defects, as identified by IALA, it does have a substantial following. Esperanto, although not perfect, was good enough to achieve a certain amount of success, and no subsequent artificial language has ever been able to overtake it. --rossb (talk) 21:15, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why adopt a fake language that practically nobody speaks when you can use a real one (like English) already spoken by millions and millions? --Nricardo (talk) 23:18, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Because natural languages all have political connotations; i.e. why do the evil colonial imperialists get to "win" by having their language become the universal language simply because they had the force of arms to destroy all the good, peaceful cultures of the world? The advantage of a constructed language is that the constructed language doesn't have a history... --Jayron32 23:31, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And also because English, with its crazy spelling and wild mixture of Romance and German-derived words, is a very difficult language to learn for most of the world's people. Looie496 (talk) 23:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, which makes it so unlike every other language in the world, which are purely analytical systems which are entirely internally consistent and easy. --Jayron32 00:03, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

English is very easy to learn, so long as you start at birth. Much easier than learning Esperanto as an adult. DuncanHill (talk) 00:06, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

July 20