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March 20

Complicatedly inflected languages

Given that most English speakers cannot even grasp the use of apostrophes for possessive nouns, or correctly use the parts of common irregular verbs like "lie", "buy" or "spin", I wonder how speakers of highly inflected languages get on. Are they constantly making basic errors, or are they for some reason more adept in this respect? 86.160.83.116 (talk) 02:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone makes errors, some more than others. And some people have a greater natural aptitude for linguistic complexities than other people. But over and above all that is the question of education. These days, English-speaking people seem to make far more basic errors with the things you mentioned than was the case when I was younger. The things I was taught in school are no longer taught. They might be briefly mentioned and brushed over, but they're not taught. But people have surely not become less intelligent or less naturally adept at language, so the conclusion is inevitable. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

English speakers manage to do really well with our unpredictable phrasal verbs and our fairly rich periphrasis. --Atemperman (talk) 03:56, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's it, basically. In the end it all evens out more or less. The difficulties that are different from your own language just stand out more. Of course speakers make mistakes in highly inflected languages but not really any more than in English. KarlLohmann (talk) 04:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

With apostrophes, the reason many of us have trouble is that the written language is less natural to most people than the spoken one. As for lie and spin (past tense span in Britain?), the reason is that there is variation in the language, and what you're asking would really be, more accurately in my view, "Of the various alternatives that exist in the language for the forms of lie and spin, why are speakers unable or unwilling to choose the ones regarded as standard?" When the question is put this way, the reason for the difficulty is clearer. (For buy, I don't know any form besides bought. What are you referring to?)

This situation is different from ones in which everybody agrees. For example, you'll hear only nous aimons in French, practically never nous aime or anything else, so there is no variation to confuse people in this instance. Whatever errors exist are isolated. But in other forms subject to variation, one form may be frequent but be considered nonstandard. For example, the subjunctive form qu'il soye [swaj] is nonstandard for qu'il soit [swa]. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 07:03, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@OP: where do you live to claim that people don't know irregular forms? Never in my life have I heard anyone say "buyed" or some such... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 07:11, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've sometimes had the experience of "regularizing" verbs accidentally. This happens very occasionally (perhaps once every few days). It happens more often with rarer verbs, like weave. Usually I correct myself immediately. This is a different kind of mistake than would be a widespread nonstandard form like He laid [on the sofa for a while] instead of He lay, because it's not reinforced by usage. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 07:33, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

.

@Seb az86556: Is it a coincidence? Just one hour ago, my little daughter (2½) said to her brother: "I buyed you a car"... 84.229.239.89 (talk) 08:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ouch. We're not talking about children in their learning-phase, are we? Of course a two-year-old will talk like that; any child in any language will make up stuff like that. We're talking about adults. And I've not heard anyone say "buyed" in the same way people frequently screw up on "whom"/"who" (which is sad enough) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I've gone out on a limb and admitted I've accidentally regularized verbs before, are you saying you think most adults never do it? 64.140.121.1 (talk) 08:33, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's why I ask where that happens; the English-speaking world is large. The people I interact with indeed never do, and they range from university-professors to gas-station janitors (On the other hand, there are several "no parking at anytime"-signs and "you are subject to be towed"-warnings *sigh*...) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:39, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps this never happens to you. But I doubt that none of the people you interact with ever do it. I said that it's rare, but everyone makes speech errors occasionally. I've found an estimate that 0.004% of irregular verbs in the past tense are overregularized by adults. See [1] on page 45. That estimate wouldn't include people who catch themselves before making the error (resulting in a mere hesitation, which it can be assumed happens more often than actually uttering the incorrect form). 64.140.121.1 (talk) 11:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To clear something up, I don't think I've ever heard an adult say "buyed". I imagine he means the "brought"/"bought" mistake that many make. Omg † osh 09:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(OP) Yes, I mean the "brought"/"bought" mistake. 86.177.106.238 (talk) 12:32, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re: irregular verbs, just watch Jeremy Kyle to witness British adults unable to differentiate the preterite from the past participle. "I done nuffing wrong! I come over to see him yesterday!" - filelake shoe 10:16, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Many dialects of English have non-standard forms for irregular verbs. They may well be using correct dialectal forms. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The reason English speakers have trouble with apostrophes is because the suffix -s is used for so many different functions, all of which are usually homophonous. I remember once explaining to someone that the EME "checketh" is only equivalent to the 3rd person verb "checks" as in "he checks" , and this guy identified "he checks" as "the plural". This is just another example of the confusion. As with they're/their/there and other spelling errors which rely on understanding grammar, there are always going to be a lot of people who don't understand it and just write what they hear, so differentiating between the plural noun "checks", the verb "checks" and the possessives "checks'" and "check's" is too technical. In a more complex inflected language I know well, Czech, the situation is similar. They have no problem with using the complex inflection when it's phonologically unique, the errors native speakers make are e.g. between "mě" (me, accusative or genitive) vs. "mně" (me, dative or locative) which, like with the English examples, are homophones. - filelake shoe 10:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The original question makes the common error of confusing language with writing. Language, as far as we can tell is, something natural to humans in the sense that almost every human who has ever lived has acquired one or more languages as a child, with all their complexities, and without apparent effort. Writing (including spelling and punctuation) is something that over human history most people have never learnt to do (until five thousand years ago nobody had ever thought of it), and everybody who has learnt it has done so with more or less application and effort. If you believe Chomsky, we're hard-wired to take linguistic complexity (and irregularity) in our stride - other views don't see this as hard-wired, but nevertheless it is clear that at a certain age children are ready to internalise the exceptions in their language to the rules they have already acquired. There is no reason to think that we have any similarly innate capability to learn to read, write or spell. --ColinFine (talk) 13:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"The original question makes the common error of confusing language with writing." No, it doesn't. 86.177.106.238 (talk) 14:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

However, the question of "errors" according to a prescriptive written standard which are not actually errors with respect to colloquial spoken grammar is actually a rather different matter from real speech errors which are not well-formed or grammatically correct according to any speech norms. The first type of "error" is considered by linguists to be standard language / colloquial language interference more than simple speech errors... AnonMoos (talk) 16:50, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

English will change. We have dropped many complex spellings of words in the last few centuries, and we will drop more. A few decades from now there may be only the shortest spelling: 'by' and ther(e) may be accepted for all uses of the words. The apostrofee(sic) may go altogether as we learn to understand words in context. If the writer wants to make the context very clear, then the older forms may be used to do that. I remember when British rules allowed 'color' because spell chequers(sic) kept dropping the you(sic).--Canoe1967 (talk) 11:29, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Foreign Language Proper Names

Why are foreign language proper names not spelled phonetically. They often seem to have no relation to their pronunciation in English and offer little help in understanding the names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.60.184.72 (talk) 07:00, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Give us some examples of what you're talking about. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think 173 means, if somebody's name in French is Giguère, why don't we write Zheegair in English? English doesn't usually do this kind of thing, but a few languages do. For example, see az:Corc Uoker Buş, lv:Džordžs V. Bušs, tk:Jorj Uoker Buş. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 08:29, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what he means by "their pronunciation in English". Or why he's restricting the issue to proper names. (There are no words that are pronounced "the way they're written" in "Comment allez vous, je suis Jacques", if you're going by the default sound of each individual letter. But then, what about "Sinead bought eight knives for George"? That's just as much a disaster from a literal standpoint, but the difference there is we're used to seeing those words.) If you know how Giguère is pronounced, that's how you'd pronounce it, no matter what your own language is. If you don't know how it's pronounced, you'd have a go and maybe you'd get lucky, maybe not. But whatever way you say it, the spelling is what it is. Words from languages that don't use the Latin alphabet have to be romanised before most people have any chance of pronouncing them at all. Otherwise, we get by. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to transliterate Roman-alphabet words opens a serious can of worms, in trying to determine what the "correct" English pronunciation would be. I expect the average French speaker who also knows English would be amused and/or appalled at Giguère being spelled "Zheegair". First, they would probably say that's a bad attempt at it, as "Zhi-ghewoh" would be closer. Second, they might consider it to be mockery. Retaining the original spelling solves that problem. For that matter, how about the way the city Paris is spelled and pronounced? We say PAIR-iss. The French say something like pah-WEE (at least to the ears of us English speakers). But we don't spell it "Pahwee", we spell it "Paris". In Spanish it's spelled París, pronounced pah-REECE, with a light trill of the R. But guess what: They're saying it the "same" way as in French, except that French handles R's and trailing S's differently than Spanish does. In English, we should "really" be saying it "pah-REECE" (without trilling the R). But we don't. And maybe it's just as well. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, "if you can't imitate French, don't copy it." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In fairness, British English speakers generally say PA'-riss (PA as in pant, pat, parry), and the French definitely pronounce the R as a rolled R, not a W: "pa-REE"; obviously the S is pronounced if a liaison requires it. "pa-REECE" is the German pronunciation, too, but English has quite a lot of idiosyncratic pronunciations and spellings of foreign locations (and sometimes personal names, too). AlexTiefling (talk) 10:08, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I betrayed my midwestern roots with that "PAIR-iss", as New Yorkers, for example, would also pronounce it your British way, "PA-riss", the "a" the same as in pant, pat, etc. (as pronounced by Americans.) In the midwest we would rhyme "parry" with "Perry" and "carry" or "Barry" with "berry". In New York City, "parry" and "carry" and "Barry" would have a totally short "a" is in "pant". And by the way, to use midwesterners, the French "r" in "Paris" sounds like a "w". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:12, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An old French teacher once told us (a class of lttle Cockneys that barely pronounced "r" at all) that a Parisian "r" sounded like a coal miner clearing his throat. We soon managed an approximation of it. Alansplodge (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Baseball Bugs: Ah, does Pontius Pilate in The Life of Brian sound like a Frenchman speaking English to a midwesterner? "People of Jewusalum, Wome... is your fwiend! To pwove our fwiendship, we will welease one of our wong-doers! Who shall I welease?" Man in crowd: "Welease Woger!" etc. Since we're on the Language desk, I'll take the opportunity of reminding that the coal-miner-clearing-his-throat sound is called a Guttural R. --NorwegianBlue^talk 22:12, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, he sounds like a Britisher with a speech impediment akin to Elmer Fudd's. If he had said it with a French accent (like John Cleese atop the castle in Holy Grail), then it might have worked. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:05, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a Midwesterner who learned French in hi-skool and can't remember ever thinking that French /r/ sounds at all like /w/. —Tamfang (talk) 08:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a matter of tradition. Only very few Latin-written languages have the practice of respelling foreign proper names according to their own spelling and pronunciation rules, and even in some of those languages the customs are changing nowadays, as their literatures and media prefer using the original orthographies of foreign names more and more often today. See here for a previous discussion on the matter. (By the way, Claudia Schiffer's surname should more precisely be spelt in Latvian as Šifere, rather than Šīfere as I wrote then.) By contrast, in all languages using non-Latin writing systems, foreign names undergo transcriptions based on their original pronunciations and not on their original orthographies. --Theurgist (talk) 08:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Transliterations into different Latin-alphabet languages can vary. Boris Yeltsin was 'Boris Eltsine' in French, in order better to emulate the sound of the original Russian. English has often has a problem with the different Russian initial 'e' sounds, hence Yekaterinburg, too. Russian, conversely, has problems with the English (and German) initial H, traditionally transliterating it with the same character as G, but more recently more often with the 'KH' character. (So it's Adolph Gitler, but Pizza KHat.) Complicated topic, and I don't think any one language or nation has a monopoly on weird outcomes here. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:08, 20 March 2012

I remember arriving in Vienna on the day of the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, and seeing the news displays about "Boris Jelzin" and "Vize-Präsident Janajew" and figuring out who they were (Yeltsin and Yanaev, as I was used to them). "Чайковский" is an interesting name to transliterate into different languages, Tchaikovsky in English, Tschaikowski in German, Tchaikovski in French, it would probably be something like Tsaicofsgi in Welsh! -- Arwel Parry (talk) 21:09, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We'd have to start with some English names before we went on to foreign names, e.g. Ralph Fiennes, Chuck Palahniuk, John Boehner, none of which are pronounced anywhere near how they appear. - filelake shoe 10:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess Fiennes is an English name, but the other two are only "English" names because their owners live in an anglo country. Would you say that La Guardia or Hernandez or Roosevelt are English names just because English-speaking people had them? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 10:26, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'd say they are in a way now that they've been passed down English speakers long enough for their pronunciations have been dramatically changed, but I agree it's contentious.. what makes an English name? Celtic? Germanic? Do 11th Century French imports count? My point was that the pronunciations of "Palahniuk" and "Boehner" have just become arbitrarily random, completely unrelated from the original Ukrainian/German and the suggested phonetic value in English. Interestingly the ru.wiki article on Palahniuk spells the name Паланик rather than Палагнюк, so they're obviously treating it as an English name. - filelake shoe 11:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Boehner isn't random; the first vowel has moved to the nearest English vowel because English doesn't have front rounded vowels. The rest of the word is pronounced according to English spelling rules. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:31, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The diphthong [eɪ] is closest to [ɶː]? [ɛː]/[ɛə] and [ɜː] seem closer to me, though I realise these carry complications with rhotic accents; in British English it would definitely be approximated "burner". I would have said that the whole name has been moved to be pronounced like the nearest familiar English surname, Bainer. - filelake shoe 22:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't a uniform Cyrillic alphabet; each Cyrillic-written language has its own version of the script. There are letters that are present in some versions but absent from others; there are also letters that represent different sound values in the different languages where they occur. When borrowed across those languages, proper names still undergo transcriptions on a phonetic basis. The Russian and the Bulgarian versions of the alphabet are identical except for two extra letters in the Russian one, but the Bulgarian town of Търговище will appear as Тырговиште in a Russian-language text, even though the Russian alphabet does contain the letters <ъ> and <щ>. And the name of a river spelt in Serbian as Јањ will be respelt in Russian as Янь, which doesn't have a single common letter with the original version. --Theurgist (talk) 21:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Why are foreign language proper names not spelled phonetically. They often seem to have no relation to their pronunciation in English and offer little help in understanding the names." I find the way the question is stated very strange, because of the languages of which I know at least something, English is almost the furthest away from being spelled phonetically, or what I find more important, having a consistent mapping between written characters and spoken sounds. From my experience, only French is further away, what with words usually having at least half of their letters left silent and entire sentences running into a single, swiftly spoken word. JIP | Talk 20:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. I find French pronunciation more predictable on the whole than English, based on the spelling of a word. While there are cases where it's difficult to predict whether a particular consonant will be silent in French, for the most part, one can make a good guess based on general patterns. This source says "When English and French are compared, for instance, a deep orthography with many deviations from a simple one-to-one phoneme-grapheme writing system (English) is compared with a system with a much more predictable pronunciation of written words (French)." The same source considers Danish broadly comparable to English in this respect. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 20:45, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I understand your point, but do you agree that the OP seems to think that "spelled phonetically" means "spelled like in English", where in fact the two are almost as far away from each other as possible? JIP | Talk 20:58, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think "spelled phonetically" means "spelled like in English," but most likely a very conventionalized and systematic kind of spelling. For example, you wouldn't use ough in any circumstances, only oo, oh, of, uf or ou. You sometimes see spellings like this in newspaper articles to help the reader with unfamiliar names. I stated above what my interpretation of the question was. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 22:49, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Serbo-Croatian changes spelling according their pronounciations, like the Latvian case of Schiffer mentioned above. --Soman (talk) 13:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Brother-in-law", as the most bizzare relation in almost all languages, including English.

1. A is B's wife's brother, so B is A's sister's husband.

2. Either one (A or B) is the other one's brother in law.

Amazing, isn't it? Although A and B do not logically-relate to each other - the same way - as I've proved in 1, they still do nominally-relate to each other - the same way - as I've proved in 2.

However, there are two additional amazing points in "brother in law":

3. "Brother in law" (along with its obvious parallels: co-brother-in-law, sister-in-law, co-sister-in-law, sibling-in-law, co-sibling-in-law), is - probably - the only nominal relation between two persons - not logically-relating to each other the same way. For example, take the "uncle-nephew" case: A is B's father's brother, so B is A's brother's son, i.e. A and B do not logically-relate to each other the same way, and...they also do not nominally-relate to each other by any (unique) common relation, do they? (I added "unique", because they still relate to each other by the obvious common relation: "relative", which isn't unique to A and B - as a wife's brother or as a sister's husband).

4. English is not an "isolated" language on that matter, i.e. almost all of the other well known languages (probably excluding the Slavic ones) share the same bizzare property: "Brother in law" is unique (while the Slavic language do not have a common noun, as English has the "brother in law", for both wife's brother and sister's husband).

My question is whether you know of other languages (except for the Slavic ones) that do not share that bizzare property with English. In other words, I'm looking for languages which: either resemble the Slavic ones (in not having the bizzare case of "brother in law"), or have other bizzare cases (as English has the bizzare case of "brother in law").

84.229.239.89 (talk) 12:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't quite understand your threshold for "bizarre" here... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 12:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the OP is asking for examples of languages in which "wife's brother" and "sister's husband" are denoted by different, distinct nouns. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Slavic languages are already known to have different distinct nouns, so I'm looking for additional language which share that property with the Slavic languages.

I'm also looking for languages which have other examples, other than "brother in law", i.e have a common noun denoting a relation between two relatives that logically do not relate to each other the same way. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 12:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Brother in law" - is a "bizzare" relation, in the following sense: although - the wife's brother and the sister's husband - do not logically relate to each other the same way (because John is David's wife's brother, while David is John's sister's husband), they still nominally-relate to each other the same way (because either one of them is the other one's "brother in law"). Notice that the Slavic languages don't have this "bizzare" property: Just as John and David do not logically-relate to each other the same way, they also do not nominally-relate to each other the same way, because the Slavic languages do not have a common noun, as English has the "brother in law", for both wife's brother and sister's husband. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 12:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are several different ways to break this down. Firstly, English has some relation-words which are generalisable ('brother' and 'sister' have a general term 'sibling') and others which are not ('uncle' and 'aunt', for example). Whether or not we break terms down to their finest level of detail affects whether relation-words appear 'bizarre' in this sense. For example, 'uncle' can mean 'mother's brother' or 'father's brother', which appears more bizarre than 'parent's brother'. But if we generalise differently, to 'father's sibling', we don't have a word at all. And it's quite common for 'uncle' to mean 'aunt's husband' (or in same-sex marriage jurisdictions, 'uncle's husband'), which is a relationship of affinity, not kindred, and thus more different from the other meaning than the two meanings of 'sibling-in-law' are from one another.

But there are examples, from the same Germanic language family as English, which behave differently. Swedish denotes many kindred relationships with compound nouns, so that 'maternal uncle' is 'morbror' - literally 'mother-brother'. Likewise for aunts, paternal relations, and grandparents.

And I've seen examples, from as recently as the late 19th century, of the 'in-law' being dropped, and people reporting (for example in censuses) their affine relations using the exact same terms as their kindred relations.

Latin, conversely, used different words - gener and socer - for 'father-in-law' and 'son-in-law', which could not be confused with the kindred words pater and filius. I don't know if the same went for siblings-in-law, but I expect so. AlexTiefling (talk) 13:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Albanian even lumps together 'brother-in-law' with 'son-in-law', both are dhëndër. I'm not sure what 'wife's brother' would be called, but I'm assuming also dhëndër. However, 'sister-in-law' is kunatë, whereas 'daughter-in-law' is nuse or reje (depending on the dialect). Interestingly, dhëndër and nuse also mean 'bridegroom' and 'bride'. --Terfili (talk) 13:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Latin has "levir" for "brother-in-law", but could also use "gener" that way, and "glos" for "sister-in-law", but those are derived from Greek and aren't really classical words. They would normally just use "frater" and "soror" with some other word or phrase clarifying the exact relationship ("wife's brother", etc). Adam Bishop (talk) 13:23, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing about Albanian kinship terms is that nip can mean both 'nephew' and 'grand-son' and mbese both 'niece' and 'grand-daughter' (Latin had the same thing I think). On the other hand, father's siblings and mother's siblings are distinguished: axhe 'father's brother' & daje 'mother's brother' and halle 'father's sister' & teze 'mother's sister'. --Terfili (talk) 13:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure but I think Italian is similar to Albanian here, in that you can use nipote both for granddaughter (grandson) and niece (nephew). Tinfoilcat (talk) 14:13, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you are female, you use the same word for your male children, your sister's male children, and your mother's brothers. Would that be such a "bizarre" case? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing bizarre about it. A will call B (in German, e.g., Schwager), and so B will call A based on reciprocity. Note that German uses a proper word and not a composition like English. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In English an "uncle" can be your father's brother, your father's sister's husband, your mother's brother, your mother's sister's husband, or an unrelated but usually older male acquaintance. It is also commonly used to refer to great-uncles. Is that bizarre? --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:34, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm at a loss as to the meaning of the word "bizarre" in this context. Having said that, I would point out that the suffix "-in-law" has had a different meaning historically in the UK: it has also been used to refer to adoptive relatives, such as "son-in-law" meaning adopted son. --TammyMoet (talk) 15:48, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese differentiates between wife's older brother, wife's younger brother, elder sister's husband and younger sister's husband, each of which is known by a distinct term, although there is also a general term for wife's brother regardless of relative age. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OP's comment: Maybe I was wrong with the adjective "bizzare". I've changed it - by opening a new thread, in which I've also clarified my question. Please respond ibid. I still think that the Slavic languages are the only well-known languages which do not resemble English on that matter. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you were definitely wrong in the sense that the word "bizarre" has only one z but two r's. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 18:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The property I had been talking about, is not really bizarre; Yet, it's "bizzare" - in the sense I've explained above. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 19:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you're using the word 'bizzare' as somehow different in meaning from the word 'bizarre', you're going to have to define it for us, because it doesn't appear in any dictionaries I know of. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:16, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and I've defined "bizzare", see the section beginning with:

"Brother in law" - is a "bizzare" relation, in the following sense... 84.229.239.89 (talk) 22:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can't decide whether this whole thread is bizarre or merely bizzare. Probably both, really. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:28, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What about “cousin-in-law”? --84.61.139.62 (talk) 21:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you're absolutely corrrrrrrrrrect !!! 84.229.239.89 (talk) 22:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking for languages that do not have an interesting property English has.

By a "natural" relation between any two relatives, I will hereby mean: either: 1. parent (i.e. father for males, mother for females); or: 2. offspring (i.e. son for males, daughter for females); or: 3. spouse (i.e. husband for males, wife for females); or: 4. any combination of the above (e.g. spouse's parent's offspring, mother's son's wife's father, and likewise).

Note that "parent" is not a symmetric relation (because if I'm your parent - then you can't be my parent), nor is "offspring"; However "spouse" is a symmetric natural relation (because if I'm your spouse - then you too must be my spouse).

Note also that "sibling" is not only a symmetric relation (because if I'm your sibling then you too must be my sibling), but is also a symmetric "natural" relation: Because, taking A and B (as two different persons), either one is the other one's sibling, if and only if either one is the other one's parent's offspring - being a "natural" relation (per definition, sec. 4). In other words, A and B - each of which is the other one's sibling, relate also to each other in the same "natural" relation ( = parent's offspring). Therefore, "sibling" is a symmetric "natural" relation.

On the other hand, "sibling-in-law", despite its being a symmertic relation (because if I'm your sibling-in-law then you too must be my sibling-in-law), is still not a symmetric natural relation: Because, taking A and B, if either one is the other one's sibling-in-law, then either: A is B's spouse's sibling - hence B is A's sibling's spouse, or the other way around. In any case, A and B do not relate to each other in the same "natural" relation. Therefore, "sibling-in-law" is not a symmetric "natural" relation (despite its being a symmertic relation).

Now, English (along with almost all of the other well known languages), has the following - interesting - property: "Sibling-in-law" (or brother-in-law and sister-in-law - if we consider gender, along with the obvious parallel co-sibling-in-law) is the only relation (between relatives) in the language, which is a symmetric relation, yet not a symmetric "natural" relation.

On the other hand, the Slavic languages, do not have that property, because they don't have a word denoting the sibling-in-law - as a symmetric relation.

I'm looking for additional languages, other than the Slavic ones, which do not have the property English has, i.e either: languages that don't have a word denoting a symmetric relation which is not a symmetric "natural" relation, or languages that have a word denoting another symmetric relation (i.e. other than "sibling in law") which is not a symmetric "natural" relation.

84.229.239.89 (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your description is quite confusing. So apologies if this doesn't fit. Filipino languages do not have a word for "sibling-in-law", but not in the same sense as you seem to be meaning. We have two different words for sister-in-law (hipag) and brother-in-law (bayaw). Obviously if they are of different genders, A would be B's hipag while B would be A's bayaw.

It's curious, in fact, and one of the few exceptions to the rule. Except for mother, father, and Spanish loanwords (for aunt, uncle, grandfather, and grandmother), all of our other kinship terms do not differentiate genders. Age and generational differences are given greater weight than gender or even the degree of blood separation. e.g. brother and sister are both kapatid, son and daughter are both anak, niece and nephew are both pamangkin, son-in-law and daughter-in-law are both manugang, mother-in-law and father-in-law are both biyenan, etc. I suppose something similar exists in other Austronesian languages. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 19:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Of cousre your example does not fit, because neither "hipag" nor "bayaw" is a symmetric relation (because if I'm your "hipag" then you're not my "hipag", and the same is in "bayaw"). As I've explained above, I'm looking for symmetric relations. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 19:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is symmetric actually. If you and I are both male and we're siblings-in-law, we'd both be each other's bayaw. It only becomes asymmetric (in the legal/customary context) if we belong to different genders. Other than that, it's the same thing in terms of blood relation. You'd perhaps be the asawa ng aking kapatid (wife/husband of my sibling) and I'd be your kapatid ng aking asawa (sibling of my wife/husband).

On the other hand, wouldn't English "cousin" also fit the bill? It's symmetric, A would be B's cousin, and B would be A's cousin. But in terms of blood, A could be B's father's niece and B could be A's mother's nephew. If so, then our word pinsan is also the same.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 19:33, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, bayaw is symmetric (sorry), but then you just give me the obvious example of brother-in-law and sister-in-law, which are again the case of siblings-in-law - that English already has, whereas I'm looking for examples - other than the one English has, as I have already explained in the beginning of the thread - in the section where I presented my question. Notice that I'm looking for languages which do not resemble English on that matter. As for cousin: it's really a symmetric relation, but it's also a symmetric natural relation. Actually, you could give the other example I have already indicated: spouse. However, I'm talking about symmetric relations which are not symmetric natural relations, as I have already explained in the beginning of the thread, in the section where I presented my question. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 19:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That was what I was confused about actually. A cousin can both be a natural (i.e. by blood, consanguinal) relation or a legal/customary (i.e. in-laws, affinal) relation. Another example, aside from the first cousin of Atethnekos below: the son of my father's brother's brother-in-law is still a cousin, as there's no such thing as a "cousin-in-law". Plus you did not make stipulations about gender differences. Both bayaw and hipag are symmetric or asymmetric, depending on the gender of the persons involved.

I think, the criterion is simply not that clear-cut. Words can ignore or include the actual blood relationship, depending on the context (compared to what relation, in what situations, etc.) or the culture itself. In some cases extending it to unrelated people, e.g. "son" in English. In our culture where extended families are the norm, that is actually the default. We use the same words for blood relations that we do informally for unrelated people out of respect or politeness, depending on age difference (like in Chinese, I think?), especially if we do not know their names at all. e.g. I would always call an old woman lola, "grandmother". I'd also call any male the same age as my father, tatay, "dad" (only if he too has sons/daughters), or tiyo, "uncle". In turn they'd probably call me anak, "offspring/child".

I'm now curious, how do Slavic languages avoid this? Different words depending on which person you're talking about?

Anyway, like PalaceGuard's example below, the word magbiyenan in our languages means to be the parent-in-law of the other's offspring. Literally it means "co-parent-in-law". It's symmetric, but obviously not so in terms of blood. Kumare and kumpadre, meaning "co-godmother/godfather" are also symmetric but not by blood, not by gender, and they're only usable if there are more than one godparent to the child. It literally means "co-mother"/"co-father", both are from Spanish, though their importance as kinship ties in Anglophone cultures are lesser than in heavily Catholic-influenced cultures.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 21:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese has several terms for respective relatives by marriage - if my child (either gender) is married to your child (either gender), then you (either gender) are my qinjia, and I (either gender) am your qinjia. If my husband is your husband's brother, then you are my zhouli, and I am your zhouli. If my wife is your wife's sister, then you are my lianjin, and I am your lianjin.

These are the general "reciprocal" terms. In addition to these, there are some further non-reciprocal terms depending on the exact situation. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 20:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think that "brother-in-law" and "sister-in-law" are the only symmetric non-natural relation terms in English as you define these properties. For example, "first cousin once removed" and other similar cousin terms would seem to represent a symmetric non-natural relation. If you are my first cousin once removed, then I am your first cousin once removed, therefore symmetric, on your terms. However, for example, you are my parent's parent's offspring's offspring's offspring, whereas I am not that of yours, but rather I am your parent's parent's parent's offspring's offspring, therefore not naturally symmetric on your terms. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 20:32, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See the six basic patterns of kinship terminologies at "Kinship terminology".

—Wavelength (talk) 23:20, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Languages having one word both for son-in-law and for bridegroom, or one word both for daughter-in-law and for bride.

So far, I know of only two languages having the property mentioned above, namely: Albanian (dhëndër for the masculine, nuse for the feminine), and Hebrew (חתן for the masculine, כלה for the feminine). Interesting enough, because Albanian is an (isolated) Indo-European language, whereas Hebrew is a Semitic language, i.e. from a totally different language family.

I'm looking for additional languages that have that property (indicated in the title). 84.229.239.89 (talk) 18:15, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In Persian the first one is /dɒːmɒːd/ and the second one /æɾuːs/. --Omidinist (talk) 18:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Btw, it's not hard to find a phonetic connection between the (Indo-European) Persian /dɒːmɒːd/ and the (Indo-European) Albanian dhëndër: Just drop the suffix ër (really a suffix only?), and you get "dhënd", which could easily have emerged from "dhënad", so the only significant difference between "dhënad" and /dɒːmɒːd/, is the n/m replacemnet, which is very reasonable, because both n and m are nasal consonants. 84.229.239.89 (talk) 19:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Romanian has ginere for both son-in-law and bridegroom, although the use of the word to mean bridegroom is a bit antiquated: nowadays we usually use mire (which according to the dictionary is a cognate to Albanian mirë, meaning "good"), the female equivalent being mireasă (daughter-in-law is noră). 92.80.36.80 (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In Chinese, xifu can mean both daughter-in-law and wife (or bride, if you like). However, it is possible to avoid the ambiguity by using alternative terms for each -- erxi for daughter-in-law and qizi for wife (xinniang for bride). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 20:23, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See the six basic patterns of kinship terminologies at "Kinship terminology".

—Wavelength (talk) 23:22, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

However, the classic "Morgan" kinship classification is based on cousin terminologies, not in-law terminologies... AnonMoos (talk) 00:14, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to chime in with Hungarian: son-in-law (husband of one's daughter) is vő [vø:] and daughter-in-law (wife of one's son) is meny [meɲ]; bridegroom is vőlegény ['vø:lɛgeːɲ], a compound of vő + legény (meaning young man, lad, bachelor (unmarried)), and bride is menyasszony ['mɛɲɒsːoɲ], a compound of meny + asszony (a word for woman). 94.21.47.245 (talk) 12:46, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In German my spouse's sibling is my "Schwager" (m) or "Schwägerin" (f) but the relationship between my partner's sibling and my own sibling is referred to as his/her "Schwippschwager" (m) or "Schwippschwägerin". (I hope I've explained this lucidly....)

What are they talking about here?

This page is a discussion page on the Japanese Wikipedia about spoiler warnings. I'm not exactly sure what they're talking about, and Google Translate didn't help at all about understanding it. Can somebody help me here about what they are talking about? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 13:15, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know Japanese but see Wikipedia:Spoiler for the concept of spoiler warnings. There have been heated discussions about them in the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I know that they are talking about spoiler warnings, I just don't get exactly what they are talking about. I don't know if they are talking about abolishing their use (like what happened here) or if they want to change some of their policies on them (like the ability to hide spoiler warnings). Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 15:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They are talking about creating a new template at #2, stopping the use of all the templates for 6 months and see what would happen at #3, and revising a template at #5. Please don't ask me to translate. It's too complicated. Oda Mari (talk) 17:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gigs?

Is 'gig' used as a unit of duration? For example, 'three gigs ago'? --Analphil (talk) 14:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Meaning what? Three performances ago, if you're a performer? - filelake shoe 14:46, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You don't mean click, do you? That's military slang for a kilometre (which is admittedly not a unit of time ...). Maybe you could provide more context, such as a sentence you've seen it in. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Musicians perform on stage in something that is often called a 'gig'. 'Three gigs ago' obviously refers to events that happened at a past performance, but no, a gig is not a unit of duration since the time between gigs is variable (from a few hours to several years). Astronaut (talk) 15:38, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In some SciFi contexts, they have transitioned to metric time. This takes the form of SI prefix + seconds. So instead of saying "The Klingon/Kilrathi war ended a hundred years ago", they might say "... ended three gigaseconds ago", or, if you want to abbreviate in speech, "three gigs ago". -- 71.217.13.130 (talk) 15:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, how enlightening! — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:35, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it could also be an abbreviation for "gigabyte" if you're downloading a large file from a slow server. "You don't need to download that linux distribution again, I've already got it on my USB stick" "You should have told me that 3 gigs ago". 59.108.42.46 (talk) 03:10, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 21

Telekommunikationsgesetz

Please translate sections 89 and 148 of the German Telekommunikationsgesetz into Japanese! --84.61.139.62 (talk) 09:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We tend not to be too keen on doing what look like commercial translations for free. That said, maybe you'd have better luck at the Japanese reference desk, where you are more likely to find native speakers of Japanese. Marco polo (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A hint: The Japanese FM radio band overlaps mostly with the German BOS 4 meter band. --84.61.139.62 (talk) 17:09, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Essentially, Section 89 states that people operating radio receivers may not receive, or communicate about, radio broadcasts not intended for the public. Section 148 states that people who violate Section 89 or Section 90 (which you haven't linked but which apparently has to do with radio transmission rather than reception) are subject to 2 years' imprisonment or a fine. Please do not construe this as any kind of legal advice, which we cannot offer, nor is my translation the most reliable, as I am not a native German speaker. Nor do I have any Japanese language skills. Marco polo (talk) 19:10, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

British English question regarding "50p"

From BBC: "The chancellor said the 50p rate was uncompetitive, raised "next to nothing" and would fall to 45p next year."[2]. Is "50p" pronounced "fifty pence" or "fifty percent"? Assuming it's the former, in what situation does "pence" replace "percent"? Anonymous.translator (talk) 15:28, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is correctly pronounced "50 pence" but more commonly "50 pee". "Fifty percent" means 50%, not 50p. - filelake shoe 15:32, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And in the context in which George used it, he means 50 pence in the pound, which is the same as 50%. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:33, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, yeah, misunderstood the question. When talking about taxes and similar charges, "pence" often replaces "percent" to mean x pence in every pound. If you were describing it to a non-English person it might be better to use "percent" instead, and write it as 50%. - filelake shoe 15:36, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So is taxation the only situation where "pence" is used instead of "percent"? Are there any similar situations like that? Anonymous.translator (talk) 15:52, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's "50 pence [in a pound]" only when you are talking about a portion of money. So if there is a context where "50 pence [in a pound]" makes sense other than taxation, you could also use it that way.

Interestingly, in Australia, while tax rates are officially prescribed as "x cents for each dollar..." http://www.ato.gov.au/content/12333.htm], a particular tax rate would not usually be called (for example) "the 45 cent tax rate", it would be "the 45% tax rate". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:56, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For some reason, it is more commonly spoken of as 'pence in the pound'. Like PalaceGuard says, any discussion of proportions of money can be referred to in this way - here is a discussion of creditors being paid '20 pence in the pound'. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:05, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This usage originates from pre-decimal currency - when, obviously, the conversion between the two was not straightforward. It was far clearer to offer a pay rise of five pence in the pound than a pay rise of 21⁄12% - everyone would understand the former, and few the latter. Obviously converting between the two became trivial with decimalisation, but the custom of discussing such things in terms of pence in the pound has remained. Kahastok talk 21:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's slightly misleading to refer to a 50p tax rate as 50%, because of the effect the tax allowance has on the amount of tax paid and also the National Insurance contribution has an effect. You don't pay 50% of your gross income in tax, if you earn enough to fall into that tax band. You pay 50% of your income above the 50% tax band starting point. --TammyMoet (talk) 16:13, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The US solution to that issue is to refer to an "x % marginal tax rate", meaning a tax rate of x % on income above a certain threshold. For non-English speakers, probably the best solution would be to refer to a "50% tax rate on incomes above £ x". Marco polo (talk) 16:53, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a distinction between a marginal tax rate and an effective tax rate. The former is the tax that the taxpayer pays on the next dollar of income, the latter is the percentage of their taxable income (income minus deductions, but before allowances) paid out as tax. The UK is remarkable amongst other English speaking countries in that one's effective tax rate is difficult to work out, for one thing because income tax is separated into two buckets - "income tax", and "national insurance". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:09, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just had a sudden flash of inspiration about this. The benefit of the 'pence in the pound' notation is that you can easily describe the impact of a rise or fall in tax. This contrasts with percentages, which can be confusing. For instance, if the tax rate went from 40 percent/pence-in-the-pound to 50 percent/pence-in-the-pound, that's a 10p tax rise. But it is not a 10% tax rise - it's a 25% rise. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 22:36, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Or you could say it was a 10 percentage point increase. --Kjoonlee 09:41, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But that's the point, in the UK it isn't a 10 percentage point increase for the reasons given above. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:47, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is too. (See the article.) —Tamfang (talk) 08:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A late tangential chip-in: this happens on other dialects of English as well. In addition to discussing tax rates and such, when selling something for significantly less than you paid for it it's common practice in the US to say the selling price as a number of cents per dollar of the purchase price: "Due to the economic crisis, the mortgage holder was lucky to sell his home for forty cents on the dollar." "A tax rate of 36 cents on the dollar for the top tax bracket is deemed excessive by economic conservatives." ☯.Zen Swashbuckler.☠ 19:58, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 22

Is Filipino Verb-Subject-Object, Subject-Verb-Object, or both?

In Filipino (or Tagalog), we have two kinds of sentences, "karaniwan" and "di-karaniwan" (I don't know their exact English translations). An example of a karaniwan sentence is "Pumunta si Juan sa simbahan" which translates as "Juan went to church." "Pumunta" is the verb, "Juan" is the noun, and "sa simbahan" is the object. However, another way to translate "Juan went to church" in Filipino is "Si Juan ay pumunta sa simbahan", where "Juan" is the subject, "pumunta" is the verb and "sa simbahan" is the object. So is Filipino VSO (verb-subject-object), SVO (subject-verb-object) or both? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 04:52, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I have less than zero knowledge of Tagalog. But our article Tagalog grammar#Word_Order says "Tagalog has a basic verb-initial word order with the direct noun triggering the verb appearing last: verb - indirect - direct [...] A change in word order and trigger generally corresponds to a change in definiteness ("the" vs "a") in English." Based on this I would say that Tagalog does not really conform to the VSO/SVO model, but that generally the verb comes first in the sentence. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:44, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Letter

Resolved

Does the letter “W” technically have three syllables? 71.146.8.88 (talk) 06:33, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The (English) name for the letter does indeed have three syllables. --Theurgist (talk) 06:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unless you're a Texan, in which case it seems to be "dub-ya". StuRat (talk) 07:04, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But they balance that by making nukular (as in the weapons) a three syllable word. HiLo48 (talk) 22:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC) [reply]

The standard pronunciations (NOOK-lee-ur or NYOOK-lee-ur) also have three syllables. --Trovatore (talk) 22:35, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Really? Not to me, but I speak Australian. Maybe in American... HiLo48 (talk) 22:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have to agree with Trovatore here. How do you say that word, HiLo? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 02:51, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

With less than the very obvious three syllables in "nukular". Maybe it's two and a quarter. HiLo48 (talk) 16:49, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I get you. The separate word "clear" could have one or two syllables, depending on how you say it. But the ending -clear of "nuclear" is different. It would have two distinct syllables (klee-ah), since the -ar replaces the -us of "nucleus", and -cleus surely has two. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 22:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Various pronunciations are listed in the article linkted to by the OP. If it helps the OP (if he/she does not read IPA), the listed pronunciations are, approximately, "double-you", "dubuh-you", "dubuh-yuh" or "dub-yuh". The first three variations all contain three syllables, the last contains two.--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:17, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. 71.146.8.88 (talk) 02:40, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. 71.146.8.88 (talk) 02:42, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Amadou as a common first name in Mali?

President of Mali: Amadou Toumani Toure

Leader of the revolutionary forces: Amadou Sanogo

Spokesperson of the revolutionary forces: Amadou Konare

Coincidence? Or some other factor? Is it analogous to Kim in Korea?Anonymous.translator (talk) 13:44, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well Kim is a family name in Korean, even though it comes first (see Korean name). Amadou is a given name, so you couldn't really compare the two. I wouldn't be able to say myself how common it is though. —Akrabbim^talk 14:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a variation of Ahmad, a very common name in many Muslim societies (see also Ḥ-M-D). Another spelling often found in Western Africa is Ahmadou (Ahmadou Ahidjo, Ahmadou Kourouma, Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye, ...). The corresponding variation of the even more common H-M-D name, Muhammad, is Mamadou. ---Sluzzelin talk 01:53, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I assumed it was a French version of Amadeus, or Amadeo in Spanish. Rojomoke (talk) 15:06, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The French would be "Amadé". That was actually the version of the name that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart preferred; he signed himself "Wolfgang Amadé Mozart" on his marriage certificate, for example. See Mozart's name for more details. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:29, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If there is a Romance language where "dou" means God, perhaps that derivation exists too. Amadeu exists in Portuguese (for example in lusophone Africa too) and in Catalan, but all the people named Amadou I found and checked are African with no Portuguese connection, and were born Muslim. I just saw we do have an article on Ahmadu. It doesn't refer to Ahmad, but I found such references on google books, though none of them came from studies on names or even language. "Ahmad" usually got added to "Amadou" parenthetically in the examples I viewed, implying that the latter is a variation of the former. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The normal Arabic noun inflection is "-u", which does become "-ou" in French (as seen also in Abdoulaye Wade, for example). I assume that would result in "Amadou" as well, if it really comes from "Ahmad". Adam Bishop (talk) 21:22, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic Aħmadu is a "diptote" elative form, where the -u is a nominative case i'rab vowel of a type which is not usually pronounced in Modern Arabic except in certain special contexts (always in Qur'an recitation, sometimes in other formal or quasi-ceremonial situations -- the "u" in Allahu Akbar is a ceremonially-pronounced i`rab vowel). But it is true that when two words are juxtaposed in the middle of a sentence in a way which would create an unpronounceable consonant cluster, most colloquial Arab dialects tend to insert an epenthetic vowel (to break up the cluster) in a position where Classical Arabic would have an i`rab vowel, and it's considered theoretically desirable in Modern Standard Arabic to pronounce such vowels according to traditional i`rab norms -- however, only a fairly small well-educated minority would be able to consistently follow the Classical Arabic conventions. In short, it's more common than not to omit the i`rab vowels when borrowing words from Arabic to another language... AnonMoos (talk) 05:03, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I did find one reference in Islamic Names (Annemarie Schimmel, Edinburgh University Press, 1989, chapter VI, 'A name too heavy to bear', p 77), stating "In West Africa, Muḥammad can become Mamadou, and Aḥmad, Amadou. A survey of names in Guinea shows Muḥammad as Māmādī, 'Abdallāh as Būrlay, Sa'īd as Sédou, al-Ḥasan as Lansiné, Khadīja as Kediā, and the title shaykh as sékou." There is no explanation on how or in which language these names were formed, and unfortunately I can't view the footnoted reference at all. ---Sluzzelin talk 06:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe for historically/religiously important Arabic named (like Muhammad and I suppose possibly also Ahmad), the classical endings were kept? We had a question recently about Hebrew/Greek names staying the same in French and other European languages, rather than going through expected sound changes. Maybe the same happened for Arabic in West African languages. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most probably such forms were borrowed through Qur'an recitation and/or religious chanting, rather than from the ordinary spoken Arabic colloquial dialect forms of native Arabic speakers visiting Mali in the late middle ages or afterwards. Possibly the borrowed forms with final vowels could have been helped along by some historical Malian language not being fond of word-final "d" in its phonotactics. I wouldn't have bothered to go into the subject in detail, except that "u" in Abdul- is not really the same as "(o)u in Amadou... AnonMoos (talk)

Yeah...that was a bad example, it was just the first one I thought of with "-ou" :) Adam Bishop (talk) 08:06, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are various Africanized versions of Islamic names in West Africa, but the prophet or other Quranical figures are never referred to by these versions. It should be noted that when deciding names for newborns, West African parents rarely reflect upon the original, Arabic meanings (this is quite different from the situation amongst Muslims in Arab world and South Asia. I'd guess that most people are even unaware of the original Quranic meanings of their names in West Africa.). Rather names are given after a close relative, that is being honoured by being assigned as the 'godfather'/'godmother' of the child. This is accorded great cultural and social importance, and the two individuals are bonded for life through the naming. --Soman (talk) 12:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Archaic Cyrillization of Greek

Except for the cases of individual letters (izhitsa, fita, etc.) I have not found on Wikipedia a unified discussion of Cyrillization of Greek words, especially borrowed words, in the archaic Cyrillic alphabet. I am also looking for information on Greek spelling conventions in Cyrillic, i.e. Г before a velar to represent the nasal velar, or Оу for u. Does anyone have more information? Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 19:13, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Am I understanding the second part of your question correctly that you're looking for Cyrillic spelling conventions for modern Greek words?

If so, I can say that the "hard" <γ> is usually written <г> /ɡ/, and the "soft" <γ> usually becomes /j/, that is, either <й>/<ј>, or <я> for <για>, or <ю> for <γιου>, or whatever other letter is appropriate according to the orthographical rules of the target language. And <ου> is uniformly <у>.

You might be interested in a system for writing Modern Greek words in Russian. I personally find it odd that the page makes no mention of <τζ> /dz/. The /dz/ is a non-native affricate consonant for Russian, but Russians do otherwise use <дз> to write, for example, the Italian /dz/. In any case, Modern Greek <τζ> is routinely spelt as <дз> in Bulgarian and as <ѕ> in Macedonian.

Also, the page recommends <аф эф> for the Greek voiceless <αυ ευ>. While the devoicing of /av ev/ to /af ef/ is usually reflected in romanisations of Greek, it essentially is a kind of final-obstruent devoicing, a process very typical for Russian too, so I'd think it'd be perfectly fine if Russians were writing <αυ ευ> as <ав эв> in all cases. In Russian-language terms of (Ancient) Greek origin, there's always a <в>. For example, one writes автомобиль 'automobile', not афтомобиль.

I hope this helps. --Theurgist (talk) 08:10, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but I guess I wasn't clear enough - I meant Ancient Greek words, especially religious or religious-based (i.e. the last word with an izhitsa - myrrh) vocabulary. Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 19:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to Old_Believers#Main alterations introduced by Patriarch Nikon, the "Old Believer" schism in Russia was partly caused by changing the spelling of Jesus in Russian from Ісусъ to Іисусъ... AnonMoos (talk) 00:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is not any full set of orthographic rules for Church Slavonic, as well as obligatory normalizing orthographic dictionaries or grammars. The proper way of writing a word or a phrase is based almost entirely on tradition and imitation (e.g. as it is written in "approved" versions of the Bible and ecclesiastical texts – Menaion, Hirmologion, Triodion, etc.). So this is why there are also no proper rules of transliterating or adoption of Greek words, just tradition and convention. In the early age they were usually written according to their medieval Greek pronunciation. So Cyrill could be Kюрилъ or Чюрилъ. Special Greek letter (ypsilon, psi, ksi, etc.) were rarely used etymologically, for example, ѵ could be used in place of ю in Slavic words, and vice versa. Later on in the 14th-16th centuries Bulgarian and Serbian (and later Russian) grammarians began to "correct" and "clear" the language, which also meant "hellenization" of "corrupted" Greek borrowings. So they began to write Кѷрíллъ as it is closer to its Greek written form (Κύριλλος). Since then it is accepted to adopt Greek words letter by letter.
Though some exceptions are:

Diphthongs ει οι αι are ϊ and е: оѯíа from οξεία.
Several ways of representing ypsilon: ѵ after а and е, when it reads like в/ф; ѷ/ѵ́/ѵ̀ between consonants when it reads like и; digraph ου is ѹ at the beginning of words and ȣ in the middle; у҃ as the number 400.
Greek endings are usually dropped, words are adopted according to Slavic grammar: Меѳóдій, not Меѳодіос; хламѵ́да, not хламѵс (from the root χλαμυδ- of the oblique cases); кéллїа, not келлїон, etc. But: легеѡ́нъ, апокáлѷѱїсъ.
Greek stress can be shifted.
Some letters can be altered (камóра from καμάρα).
Note! There are some important peculiarities. Áггелъ (pronounced "aggel") means "a messenger of Satan". For an angel (a messenger of God) áг҃глъ (pronounced "angel") is used.

--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 18:45, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! This is exactly what I wanted. What about medieval Greek? I'm thinking specifically of the case of the first syllable of Ungro-Wallachia - Оуггро - was it pronounced Ungro, or Uggro? Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 02:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The "rules" work both for Medieval (pre-1453) and early Modern (post-1453) Greek words as they don't differentiate two periods. But note that when Medieval Greek and Early Slavonic coexisted there weren't any normalization for Slavonic, so words usually reflected their Greek pronunciation rather than their written form (see above Чюрилъ, etc). Virtually the "rules" can be applied to Medieval Greek but in practice nobody knew or used them consistently.
I'm not sure how it should be pronounced as it is not a Greek word. In Slavonic there is оугринъ (the early form is ѫгринъ /ˈɔ̃grinŭ/) "a Hungarian". So double г may indicate that it is a borrowing from Latin/Greek and the word has /ng/, as I don't see other reasons to write two г. If this had /g/, I'm sure, it would be written according to its Slavonic cognate. Where have you seen this word?--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 05:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In Cyrillic Romanian (17th or early 18th century). Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 05:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So I guess it's a Romanian word and should be pronounced like its modern or old equivalents.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 23

March 24

Red Snapper Name In Spanish

When I went to Puerto Rico, the menus listed "chillo" in Spanish and "red snapper" in English. Is this the same red snapper that's served in the US? English WP redirects "chillo" to the "red snapper" article, but there's no mention of this word in the article. It lists the names "huachinango" and "pargo" as Latin American Spanish translations. Is "chillo" Caribbean dialect or is this a different species? (By the way, the chillo I had in PR was some of the best seafood I've ever tasted.) -- 00:56, 24 March 2012‎ User:Jerk182

All the cookbooks and travel guides I found online say that it is indeed the same fish as pargo (Lutjanus campechanus). According to our list of Puerto Rican slang words and phrases chillo can also mean lover. (unreferenced in out list, but I did find it in one book on Puerto Rican Spanish where it is given as "extramarital lover", and chilla signifying mistress). ---Sluzzelin talk 12:13, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is the correct Latin?

I've got two modern academic secondary sources quoting the same Latin chronicle, the Chronicle of Melrose. I'm not sure if they are using the same published edition of it though. One gives "pedissequi patrie", and the other gives "pedisequi patrie" and "pedisequos patrie". Neither use quotation-marks, so I don't know if any are direct quotations or not. Here's an old Victorian copy of the primary source, see the second paragraph, sixth line down - [3]. I'm just wondering what is the 'correct' Latin. Which form would you use in an article?--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 08:55, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I know very little of Latin, but the first two seem to have french influence due to the double s, and ui ending, so I would go with the third if you want a translation closer to English.--Canoe1967 (talk) 09:08, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pedisequus, with one s, would be the usual spelling of the word in classical Latin, but the spelling with doubled s is a likely variant in medieval documents. With regard to the case, since, as you say, the secondary sources you've consulted don't treat the expression as a direct quotation, the authors probably just used the nominative pedis(s)equi to fit it into the grammar of their own sentences. I'd probably use a direct quotation (perhaps with appended translation) if I were writing an article, but there's certainly nothing wrong with saying that the pedissequi patrie repulsed Haakon's forces, even though the chronicle has accusative pedissequos. Deor (talk) 10:43, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fully classically-correct spelling would presumably be pedisequi patriae (nominative) / pedisequos patriae (accusative). By the way, I noticed that in a certain movie opening this week, panem in the quote panem et circenses wasn't normalized to nominative case (dictionary form) panis... AnonMoos (talk) 15:47, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Requested anonymity for confidential reasons"

One time, I was reading a news report, and it said something like "someone who declined to be named for confidential reasons". I'm not exactly sure exactly what this phrase means. From the phrase, I can assume it means that he/she doesn't want to be identified for reasons he/she is also not willing to disclose, but I would find it strange for a person to want anonymity for reasons he/she wants to keep unknown as well. So does the phrase really mean that he/she wants to be anonymous, but he/she doesn't want to make known why, or do they mean "who wishes to remain anonymous for confidentiality reasons", meaning he/she doesn't want to be identified to keep parts of the information he or she is disclosing secret? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 09:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would say the former is the best grammatical translation.--Canoe1967 (talk) 09:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm as stumped as you are. The literal interpretation is a possible one. It's also possible the writer meant "for confidentiality reasons," as you suggest. It's hard to know what this means - perhaps that they were supposed to be keeping the information confidential. 64.140.121.1 (talk) 21:21, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would interpret it as somebody who has given the broadcaster or paper information which has probably been obtained by an employee or somebody under a non-disclosure agrement or in-confidence and doesnt want to be identified and get into trouble. Sort of code for this person has told us stuff but would get into trouble if they got found out so we are not giving any clues. MilborneOne (talk) 21:29, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A few years ago (around 2003/2004 to be precise), there was a lot of criticism of newspapers for using too many anonymous sources to buttress their reports; the attributions were so vague that the sources could have been anyone or even made up. The New York Times, among others, decided to counter that by starting to use circumlocutions to describe who their sources are and why they wish to stay anonymous ("according to a senior officer within the organization who requested that his name be witheld because he is not authorized to speak to the media" is a typical such phrase). But sometimes sources just want to remain anonymous even though they don't have specific company rules or whatever to justify this. Normally, that would mean that a reporter could not use them as a source, but when what they're contributing is judged essential to the story, the newspapers will use some phrase like the one quoted by the o.p. It doesn't mean anything except "my source did not want his name used". --Xuxl (talk) 11:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Belgian place in russian

http://www.css-rzd.ru/zdm/06-2000/00907.htm refers to a railway line Маасско-Атюсской линии

What/where is Атюсской (Атюсс ?) - I assume it is in Belgium but may be in a neighboring country. Could it be Athus.? Oranjblud (talk) 16:51, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The German Wikipedia has an article on the de:Athus-Maas-Linie, so that seems to be a reasonable guess. The traject is composed of several numbered lines in the Belgian network (154, 166, 165, 167). There doesn't seem to be a useful English article. --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:31, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Btw, the name of the line in Russian seems to be Маасско-Атюсскaя линия (Maasko-Atyusskaya liniya). But every time it's mentioned in that text, it happens to be in an oblique case, being governed by a preposition, hence Маасско-Атюсской линии (Maasko-Atyusskoy linii). No idea why the Russians place the Maas before the Athus, the reverse of what the Germans do. If they did it the other way, it would be Атюсскo-Маасскaя линия (Atyussko-Maaskaya liniya). -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:04, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ok thanks. I can work with that.Oranjblud (talk) 20:45, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Japanese pronunciations

Hi

1. To what extent is を pronounced identically to お? I'm interested in a rough ball-park idea. For example, the answer might be "almost everyone everywhere pronounces them the same", or "very many people in (some regions of Japan) pronounce them differently", or something like that.

2. Do all Japanese people always pronounce じ and ぢ identically, and ず and づ identically? (I understand the different situations in which these are used; I'm not asking about that, just about the pronunciation.)

I am looking for first-hand actual local knowledge, not a reference to a Wikipedia article where this is covered. Thanks, 86.177.107.165 (talk) 20:57, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are no difference among those letters today. There are nasal and non-nasal sounds in が. For instance, ga in 怪我/kega is nasal, but almost all people pronounce it without realizing it and accept the word if it's pronounced with non-nasal. Native speakers do not care about sounds. Context and pitch accent are important. Oda Mari (talk) 10:13, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Mari. So, explanations such as the following (http://learnthekana.com/katakana-wo/) are definitely wrong, are they?

"Generally, it is pronounced ‘o’ although some dialects retain the pronunciation ‘wo’, which is also often used in songs. It is also occasionally pronounced this way when stressing the particle, e.g. to clarify when someone misunderstands what has been said."

I have read a number of different explanations of this, and they never seem to be quite consistent. 86.177.107.165 (talk) 12:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As I am a general native speaker, not an expert on dialect nor phonology, I cannot flatly deny the link. They might be right. But generally speaking, I think Japanese learners do not have to learn Japanese pronunciation much, but to learn pitch accent more. The difference among dialect is mostly vocabulary, accent, and gobi/語尾. But Tohoku dialect has different sounds called Zūzū-ben. It is too difficult to explain the sounds by words, but I can instantly tell them when I hear them. See Japanese dialects. Oda Mari (talk) 17:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 25

***phone = speakers of *, or where *** is spoken

Besides "francophone" and "anglophone," are there no other words in English to indicate speakers of a particular language, or regions where that language is spoken? This would be a neat solution in referring to the language and avoid the ambiguity as the language name might be taken to refer to the sole country or nationality whose name it shares. This Wikipedia has Russophone (borrowed from the French?) and Hispanophone (presumably anglicized from hispanohablante), though these words don't appear in English-language dictionaries I've consulted. Evidently French already has germanophone. Are these and similar words likely to enter English? -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:02, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lusophone - Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, on further investigation, we have articles on Arabophone, Francophone, Lusophone and Hispanophone, whereas Anglophone, Germanophone, Russophone and Sinophone are also well-known enough to gain a redirect. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Swahiliphone and an Italophone world map. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:32, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And a Roumanophone world map. --Theurgist (talk) 07:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary lists quite a few (some red links, though). Click on show @ "speaker of a specific language". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to that link I learned a new meaning of allophone (as opposed to allophone). ---Sluzzelin talk 09:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And I discovered "batavophone" which, far from having anything do with 18th century Javanese, simply means a speaker of Dutch. I also love "polonophone", but it's a redlink. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 10:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What do you call someone who speaks Micronesian? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They speak many languages in Micronesia. But I suppose if you were speaking at a general level, you could say "Micronesophone". Which makes as much sense as Americophone or Aboriginophone or Africophone. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:17, 25 March 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Some people who live in the Bundesland of Saxony might possibly speak both Germanic and Slavic languages. Those good people are obviously transposing Saxaphones. --Shirt58 (talk) 11:44, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Allophone is used commonly throughout Canada, not just in Quebec as the Wikipedia article claims. Canadians elsewhere may talk about allophones a bit less often, but when they need a word, the one they use is always allophone.64.140.121.160 (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We've turned up a few more words in previous discussions of this point. --Antiquary (talk) 10:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In French, you also have albanophone, bascophone, danophone, norvégophone, polonophone, slovacophone and tchécophone. Néerlandophone is extremely common (in the Belgian context), but as mentioned by Jack of Oz, the English word seems to be batavophone (from Batavia), and nederlandophone seems to be an alternative. Turcophone would be much better than turkophone, which looks silly with its un-Latin k. Swahilophone looks better to me than swahiliphone, though both can be found on the internet, and suahelophone (from lingua suahelica), which I would have expected, is nowhere. Hungarophone is an alternative to magyarophone. Swedophone (mentioned in a previous discussion) definitely doesn't look right. In French, the word you'd use to be really pedantic would be suécophone (like suecus in Latin), not suédophone (like Suède), although most people seem to use the latter. Lettophone means Latvian-speaking. The pedantic way to do things in English seems to be either to borrow the word from French or to look up the name for the language or country in Latin and add -ophone to the root, though people have obviously taken liberties. 64.140.121.160 (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

German fraktur

hello,

I have troubles to "decrypt" a caption writte in Fraktur. The image is on the right side. I managed to decode the first words, except the name of the author! :/ It begins with: "Ihr Roulette in Homburg, nach einer Originalskizze von L.B. Hi?igre". I am pretty sure that the second initial is "B" and the first letter of his surname is "H" (see "Homburg"). The next letter is what I think an "i" (but it could also be an "s" or "e") and I can not indentify the third letter (maybe it is not only one, but two coherent letters). Then I see an "i" followed by "gre". It is possibly a French name, but my French is not very good so any help is appreciated. Thanks.--GoP_T^C_{N 12:49, 25 March 2012 (UTC)}[reply]

I make it "??t Roulette zu Homburg, nach einer Originalskizze von W. Hilliger". I'm not at all sure about the name, though. I'm also not sure about the first word - I don't think it can be "Ihr" both on grounds of sense and because it seems to end in 't'. --ColinFine (talk) 16:17, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your quick response! :) Now as I found my real loup, not the Microsoft's screen magnifier, I clearly see it is "zu" and not "in". Yes, I think W. Hilliger is correct (I thought these were 2 initials instead of 1), and the last two letters look at a first glance like "re", but then I watched more carefully and saw that it is actually "er". Thanks again!--GoP_T^C_{N 17:01, 25 March 2012 (UTC)}[reply]

I linked the commons image to a full description Die Roulette zu Homburg. Note that die Roulette is the wheel and das Roulette the game. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 19:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Resolved

What are these black structures called ?

What are these black structures ? The are usually found in library shelfs. http://www.olympia-interiors.com/images/LibraryRack/WoodenLibraryRack1.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.178.163.254 (talk) 13:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bookends. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:49, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bookend. Bus stop (talk) 13:52, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The 1st vowel in the 1st syllable for the words listed in this question

I live in the southeastern United States and that's how I want to learn to pronounce thing.

Is it true that eclipse sounds like close to

the i in the word pin(1) environment, encode, endorse, embed, encyclopedia, engage, election, & edition

as opposed to

the short e in dress (2) experiment, example, exactly, excite, exclaim, excommunicate, & excrete?

If you can, tell me why and try to give me a rule.--98.88.87.149 (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can you be more specific about how you pronounce the e in all of those words? I grew up in Texas, and I pronounce the initial e in all of those words (in both groups!) except excommunicate as [ɪ], i.e. like the short i in kit. The initial e in excommunicate I pronounce [ɛ], i.e. like the short e in dress. Angr (talk) 19:43, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you pronounce exactly and environment with a short i, then you don't prounounce it like Georgians.--98.88.87.149 (talk) 20:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here in Detroit, we pronounce it E-klips. That is, we say it like the letter E was separate, as in EKG or e-commerce. (If there was an electronic clip, and they were called eCLIPS, we would pronounce it the same.) StuRat (talk) 20:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the pronunciation in this news video, the e is eclipse sounds like the e in environment, not like the e in experiment.--98.88.87.149 (talk) 21:31, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Listen carefully to 0:56.--98.88.87.149 (talk) 21:35, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it just me, or does that sound like a synthesized voice? 64.140.121.160 (talk) 05:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

98, I know you're asking about the southeastern U.S., but I'll just say that even though I'm Canadian and Angr is Texan, we agree 100% on the pronunciation of all these words. Also, your reference to "the e in environment, not like the e in experiment" is confusing to me, because I pronounce both of them with the pin sound. I don't have it here, but the Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary might be a good source for regional U.S. pronunciations. Their smaller Collegiate Dictionary, available online here, will provide the most common pronunciations in the U.S.64.140.121.160 (talk) 05:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was raised in Illinois and spent most of my adult life (so far) in California. I believe I pronounce all the en, em words with the 'dress' sound. —Tamfang (talk) 18:30, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the OP is asking if that initial 'e' is pronounced 'ih' or 'eh'. That would depend on your regional dialect, although as someone living in the Mid-Atlantic area of the US, I can say I have heard both used (OR, sorry). Merriam-Webster says the 'ih' is correct, although that is probably debatable in areas with the Pin–Pen Merger. Helene O'Troy - Et In Arcadia Ego Sum (talk) 18:12, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 26

Hawaiian translation

Can someone translate this for me?

Aloha ʻoe,

Ke hōʻike aku nei au iāʻoe, ua pau kā Geo. L. Kapeau noho ʻana ma ka ʻoihana kiaʻāina o Hawaiʻi, a ua hoʻolilo ʻia ka mea Hanohano R. Keʻelikōlani i kiaʻāina nō Hawaiʻi nei. A ʻo Hilo nei nō kona wahi i koho (choose/vote) ai e noho, e hana aku i nā hana apau e pili ana i kāna ʻoihana kiaʻāina.
Nō laila, ke kauoha aku nei au iāʻoe, e hoʻoūna koke (quickly) mai i kou palapala hōʻike (report) hapahā (quarterly), lāua pū me nā dālā apau i loaʻa iāʻoe ma kāʻu ʻoihana luna kānāwai (judge). Mai kali ʻoe o hihia auaneʻi (or there will be law suits).
ʻO wau nō me ka mahalo iāʻoe.
L. L Austin

Hope Kiaʻāina o Hawaiʻi

--KAVEBEAR (talk) 05:21, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

there's a greeting, then some stuff about quarterly results. Anyway you'd better the right thing should be done or there will be lawsuits. All this is about hawaii, I guess shareholder votes about a company there? This is pure guesswork on my behalf, based on the words in English you've already provide.d I don't speak any hawaiian. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 19:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 01:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hawaiian is not a very widely spoken language, so I'm not surprised that nobody has come along yet who can translate this. In fact, it seems that only three people have the User Box stating that they are native speakers of Hawaiian on English Wikipedia. You might be able to find them through Category:User_haw, but I don't know if they'd be willing to help. Falconus^{p t c} 10:12, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No one at level haw-4 or haw-N has been active at Wikipedia since 2009 anyway; there is no one at level haw-3, and people at levels haw-1 and haw-2 probably don't speak it well enough to translate the text. There's a discussion board at Hawaiian Wikipedia at haw:Wikipedia:Ka hui kaiaulu; you could ask there, but I don't see any evidence that comments to that board ever actually get answered by other people. Personally, I would go to the website for the University of Hawaii, find the e-mail address of someone who teaches it, and ask them. Angr (talk) 10:33, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Googling tells me this is an example from a language textbook. Assuming it is a genuine letter from 1855, "L.L. Austin" is probably a typo for S.L. Austin, who was secretary to Ruth Keʻelikōlani around that time. I can't read Hawaiian though, sorry.--Cam (talk) 12:14, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[sic] in Personal Names

If someone's name is Steven Smith, but a writer has written Stephen Smith, and I want to quote them, would I write "Stephen [sic] Smith" or "Stephen Smith [sic]"? I'm not sure if the forename and surname count as one, or if they count seperately, for the choice of the positioning of the [sic]. Many thanks for all help that you can provide. Also, I'm in England, so British conventions are cleaved to, if that matters. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 14:01, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could simply work around it. For example "I like the works of Stephen Smith for their simplicity and grace," said Hernandez could become "I like the works," said Hernandez, "for their simplicity and grace." Hot Stop^UTC 14:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, however I want to add the [sic] to make the person appear as if they are misinformed. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 14:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I think this is extremely underhanded - maybe you want to paint someone talking about Steve jobs in a wrong light. The truth is, Steven and Stephen are interchangeable, and this is why we have editors who have to look up which one is the true version. They even have a CK they add when they have really really checked the exact name. Please don't use sic just to make someone seem uninformed. It's just yellow journalism, plain and simple. Also, for a blatant typo you can usually feel free to simply silently correct it (for example if someone has has written what I just did - you could silently remove a "has". This stuff isn't gospel.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.254.208 (talk) 18:58, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with that. Their motivations are not for you or anyone else to speculate on. Steven and Stephen are both valid spellings of that name, but that doesn't make them interchangeable. An individual will use one and only one version, the one that appears on their birth certificate, passport, etc. If we're quoting another writer verbatim, and they happen to use the wrong version in reference to someone, we have no right to quietly change what they actually wrote, particularly if we're using quotation marks. That's misleading and deceptive. I've seen so many examples where public figures are quoted by journos and the exact quoted wording appears in different versions in different papers or on different TV reports - so it's apparent that some of the journos have simply made up at least some of the words that they're telling the readers were actually, literally uttered by the speaker, which is what quotation marks are supposed to mean. Or they'll combine sentences from different parts of a speech but without using an ellipsis [...], making it seem as if the sentences were spoken sequentially. So much for journalistic standards. Me, I'd put the [sic] after the misspelled word or words. So, if the person's name is Steven Smyth, but someone writes "Stephen Smith", I'd quote them as "... Stephen [sic] Smith [sic] ... ". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:55, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks JackofOz, I agree with your view, nd you have been extremely helpful! All of you have, thanks. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 22:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd ordinarily agree with you, but this person has said their intention is "to make the person appear as if they are misinformed". This is editorializing in an underhanded way. If you want to editorialize, go ahead and do it consciously. Like this: (the person's actual name is Steven). Would you add that sentence? No: you want to subtlely editorialize and, in your own words, make the person APPEAR misinformed. So underhanded. Italic text — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.254.208 (talk) 09:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[sic] is a commonly used device, perfectly valid in its place. It's as plain as day, and I can't see that there's anything remotely "underhanded" about it. Your issue is with the OP's stated motivation, not with the use of [sic] as such. I suspect the OP expressed themself slightly infelicitously; they didn't intend to make a well-informed writer appear to be misinformed - that would be dishonest - but they did want to make plain where the writer has made an error. There may be very good reasons for this. For example, a book critic will often use this device when talking about the appalling number of errors they encountered. They might quote a particularly egregious passage and use [sic] a number of times in a short space, to show just how terribly mistaken the author was. Nothing wrong with that; it's a critic's job to bring these things to the public's attention. A biographer of Steven Spielberg who sometimes spells his given name as "Stephen" should expect negative critical commentary, and if [sic] is the worst they get, they're getting off very lightly. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:35, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Of the two I vote "Stephen [sic] Smith" since it is the Stephen that is in error. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:30, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 15:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[I am adding nowiki tags around the square brackets in the section heading, to prevent problems with the section link in the Archives.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:21, 26 March 2012 (UTC)][reply]

I will assume that you're certain the original contained an error and that there is no particular reason to point out the error. In this case, your first choice should be to try to rephrase your quote so that "Steven Smith" falls outside the quotation marks. The following is a quote from the Chicago Manual of Style. (I apologize for not having a British source available.)

A verbally accurate quotation that contains minor factual or grammatical errors not noted by the author using the quotation does a disservice to readers and embarrasses the publisher. Authors who notice an error in a passage they wish to quote should paraphrase the original, eliminating the error.

If this is not practical, the Manual offers the following advice (quoted directly).

Obvious typographic errors may be corrected silently (without comment or sic; see 11.69) unless the passage quoted is from an older work or a manuscript source where idiosyncrasies of spelling are generally preserved.
Literally meaning “so,” “thus,” “in this manner” and traditionally set in italics, sic may be inserted in brackets following a word misspelled or wrongly used in the original. This device should be used only where it is relevant to call attention to such matters or where paraphrase or silent correction is inappropriate (see 11.4, 11.8[5]).

Since we're dealing only with spelling rather than "grammatical errors," perhaps you don't need to try too hard to have "Steven Smith" fall outside the quote. You can just use the correct spelling directly.

If in your case it is relevant to point out the error by using sic, my reading of the Manual's advice is that sic should immediately follow the word containing the error. 64.140.121.160 (talk) 00:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Inputing Asian characters

Hello. Every so often, I will see a sign or a page with text in a language other than English, and want to know what it says, so I inquire about it here on the Language RD. (You get a lot of that!) It is of course easy to copy down something written in the Latin alphabet, and texts in Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew alphabets are relatively easy to transcribe. But when I see something written with Asian (CJK) characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.), I can either photograph the text or attempt to scribble down the characters, but how can I transcribe them onto this page? I have the Unicode tables, but to my untrained eye it is hard to distinguish many of the characters. Also, some signs use stylized characters which makes it harder for me to determine what they are. Is there any key to searching for characters by sight only in the Unicode tables? → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:40, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you don't know the language or it's character set, it's going to be difficult to identify the characters. If you have a photo, I suggest you upload it here. Not digital ? Any place like Kinko's can scan it for you. If you needed to do large volumes of these conversions, an OCR system which recognizes characters in that language would be the way to go. StuRat (talk) 21:11, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If the characters are on a web page, you can just copy and paste them as you would Latin characters. If you are reading the characters from some other source, you can try a free handwriting recognition site such as YellowBridge. Click the brush icon and a handwriting recognition window will pop up. Using your mouse, draw the character in the window. If you draw the character correctly, the recognition software will respond with a Unicode version of the character, which you can copy and paste here, or at Wiktionary, which will provide a definition of the character and its pronunciation in various Chinese languages, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. However, if you find it hard to distinguish the characters, there is a fair chance that you won't know how to draw a character you want to understand correctly, in which case the character-recognition function will fail to produce the intended character. In that case, maybe a screenshot or photo would be the best approach. Marco polo (talk) 00:20, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) There are a number of websites and apps that will try to interpret drawn Chinese characters (or kanji). For example: http://www.nciku.com/. There are also facilities that enable you to look up characters by combinations of character elements, such as http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1R (this one is for Japanese), but these still need a bit of learning to use effectively. If you have large amounts of text then either method will be pretty laborious. In Japanese, words are normally typed phonetically and then converted to the correct characters either automatically when the software figures out correctly what you've typed, or manually from a list of possibilities when that fails (since there are many homophones). 81.159.106.29 (talk) 00:30, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

NCIKU is much nicer than YellowBridge. Thanks for that! Marco polo (talk) 14:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The name "Nikita"

In Nikita (TV series), the title character named "Nikita" is played by Maggie Q, a half-Vietnamese, half-Caucasian actress. Her features clearly appear to be Asian, which got me to wondering. Would "Nikita" be a normal seeming name in any of the major Asian languages? It has a feel that makes it seem like it could be an Asian name (at least to my inexperienced ears), but I'm wondering whether that is really the case or not. As I understand it, the Nikita TV series is actually one of several fictional works originally inspired by Nikita (film), where the title character is played by a French actress. So perhaps the character was originally envisioned as French? However, our article at Nikita (given name) suggests that Nikita is often of Russian origin (though also sometimes Indian). The TV show does interact frequently with Russians, so maybe the character was originally envisioned as Russian. Obviously, the creators of fiction are free to take liberties, and even in the real world people often have names that don't seem to match their ethnic background, but I'm still curious if "Nikita" would be a normal seeming Asian (or French) name. Dragons flight (talk) 22:51, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think you have it right, in that it's only Asian if you consider Russian to be Asian. (Well, even though Russia is culturally European, most of the nation is in Asia, so you could make that case.) StuRat (talk) 05:18, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As StuRat said - Nikita is a common Russian name, and many people who originate from the Asian parts of Russia, and some of the former Soviet republics in Asia, use that name. Many of these people look Mongoloid, and many others look somewhere in between Caucasian and Mongoloid, so Maggie Q's "look", ethnicity-wise, would actually be quite appropriate for a Nikita. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:01, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I did not realise that Nikita was strictly masculine in Russian, so having read Nikita (given name) I should add to what I wrote above and say that, Magge Q would be appropriate ethnicity-wise, but not so gender-wise, for a Russian-or-Central-Asian Nikita!

For "major Asian languages" -- "Nikita" would not be a likely name in the Chinese language. Chinese language naming conventions also generally do not allow for three syllable given names. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:14, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most TV names are dreamed up by people in Los Angeles without much concern for their linguistic origins based on how they will sound to a typical American with a mediocre education. They probably chose Nikita because it is vaguely exotic and its form sounds feminine to most Americans, who tend to be familiar with the Spanish feminine diminutive ending -ita, as in Lolita, Conchita, or unrelated names such as Rita. Marco polo (talk) 14:40, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The original film was in French (with some Italian) and had a French writer / director, so I doubt the choice of the name "Nikita" had anything to do with how it sounded in English. Though I suppose the casting of Maggie Q in the updated role could have been influenced by a perception that the name sounded Asian. Dragons flight (talk) 14:54, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have always assumed that the name 'La Femme Nikita' was used to indicate that it was a woman with a typically male name. Helene O'Troy - Et In Arcadia Ego Sum (talk) 18:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They probably chose Nikita because it is vaguely exotic and its form sounds feminine to most Americans

So, how does that work when it comes to given names like Madison and Alison? Who in their right mind ever thought either of these was a suitable name for a girl? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:05, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Madison" (a horrible name for a girl, in my opinion, unless it was really unique) traces pretty directly to the movie Splash. AlexiusHoratius 19:10, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Both of those are part of the increasing trend in the United States for middle-class Americans to turn last names into first names. Madison, Kimberly, Tiffany, Schuyler (often grossly misspelled on a phonetic plan) and dozens of others have morphed into first names, following the far rarer example of such names as Irving from earlier centuries. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:27, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's only a recent trend to give girls first names derived from last names. Boys' names derived from last names have been around the English-speaking world for centuries. Of the men who have served as President or Vice-President of the U.S. (for example), the following first names are derived from surnames: Millard, Franklin, Rutherford, Chester, Grover, Woodrow, Warren, Calvin, Dwight, Lyndon, Elbridge, Schuyler, Garret, and Nelson. Of the women who have served as First or Second Lady of the U.S., on the other hand, not one has a first name derived from a surname (unless Ilo is derived from a surname I've never heard; I don't know where it comes from). Alison doesn't have the word son in it; it's a diminutive of Alice and has always been a girl's name. There's even a medieval poem about a girl named Alysoun. Angr (talk) 20:04, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Allison Danzig wasn't a girl. I'd seen mention of "her" many times over the years (usually associated with the erroneous claim that "she" coined the term Grand Slam) before I finally became aware "she" was a he. What a comedy of errors. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:12, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

He must be a "Boy Named Sue" phenomenon then. Michael Learned and Christopher Norris aren't boys either, but Michael and Christopher are still boys' names. Angr (talk) 21:08, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Angr -- One of the first (fictional) cases of giving a girl a surname as a given name was Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (1849) -- before the book was published, "Shirley" as a name would have been considered quite masculine... AnonMoos (talk) 05:26, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reminds me of the opera singer Sherrill Milnes. What shit he must have had to put up with at school. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:28, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I do notice that the first surnames-used-as-first-names to make the jump from boys' names to girls' names are those that end in -(e)y/-ie, like Shirley, Kimberly, Tracy, Stacy, Leslie, Tiffany, etc. I think it's only relatively recently that other surnames-used-as-first-names, like Taylor, have started to be used for girls. Angr (talk) 09:52, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lists using semicolons

I know one can use semicolons in place of commas to separate items that would be ambiguous if commas were just used, such as: "Once upon a time, there was a cat, Fluffy; a dog, Woofs; and a tiger, Stripey.", but can one then continue the sentance after that, such that the list is in the middle of a long sentence, such as "Once upon a time, there was a cat, Fluffy; a dog, Woofs; and a tiger, Stripey, who all went to the zoo, where they...."? Many thanks. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 23:04, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could, but it would be far inferior to ending the sentence at "Stripey", and starting a new sentence with the words "They all went...". Unless you want to sound like a yakitty preteen girl. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Or you could avoid the rather awkward semi-colons altogether with "Once upon a time Fluffy the cat, Woofs the dog, and Stripey the tiger all went to the zoo."--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:26, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Or use parentheses (brackets). Or avoid using long lists in your prose on the grounds that readers find them difficult and tend to skip over them, and they break up the flow of your text. A good story would introduce readers separately to Fluffy, Woofs, and Stripey, before taking them all to the zoo. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:56, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tell that to the editors who insist on rewriting easy-to-read lists as prose in wikipedia articles, so that they resemble the verbal clutter described by the OP. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:13, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Amen, Brother! Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 11:27, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 27

Cotton's higher than an opium fiend

Translating Lyndsay Faye's the Gods of Gotham, I found the sentence as follows:

"Take a glass for yourself on my account, Tim, cotton's higher than an opium fiend!"

The speaker seems to be a finanacier ordering champagne, and Tim is a young barman. There seems no relevant context at all.

Could you help to figure out the meaning of the sentence?--Analphil (talk) 04:47, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I looks to be a play on words - 'high' as in the price (presumably the financier is expecting to profit from this), and 'high' as in intoxicated on drugs. See also George Gershwin's Summertime. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most of this seems to be jargon or idiom from the US from the early 20th century. "Take a glass for yourself" the barman should pour a drink for himself. "on my account" to be paid for by the speaker, not by the bar tender. "cotton's higher" the price of cotton commodities on the stock market is very high. "higher than an opium fiend" this is a comparison over a pun on the word "high" which means both "great in volume" and "chemically intoxicated." Opium fiends, or opium addicts, get very chemically intoxicated. The financier wants to buy the barman a free drink, because he is very happy, that the price of cotton commodities on the stockmarket is very high. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:58, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I got it. Which means, it is impossible to translate into another language in a single sentence...! Thank you --Analphil (talk) 05:02, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, I believe it is a form of syllepsis, which is generally very language dependent. --LarryMac | Talk 13:03, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that this is a case where the best translation would not be a literal translation, assuming you are translating this for its meaning and tone rather than trying to unpack this specific utterance semantically for a non-English speaking audience interested in the meanings of the individual English words. I think cotton and high are more important terms in the utterance than opium fiend, since they establish that the speaker cotton investments are doing well. So you would probably want to translate those terms literally. Ideally, you would find a second meaning for a translation of high in your target language that allows for a colorful double entendre similar in spirit if not meaning to "higher than an opium fiend". Of course, "on my account" is an idiom that also should not be translated verbatim. That said, I think you could and probably should translate the utterance into another language in a single sentence if your goal is fidelity to the meaning and tone of the original text. Marco polo (talk) 14:31, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK, we might say "have one on me", which would make literal translation even harder! Alansplodge (talk) 14:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rule on Abstract Nouns derived from polysyllabic Adjectives.

Greetings.

Quite some time ago (2007, to be exact) somebody on here asked about when one may appropriately use the suffixes "-ity" and "-ness" to construct Adjectival nouns. The answer given stated that -ity, for the most part, is no longer productive and has largely become subsumed by -ness.

In 21st-century English, one may create abstract nouns from practically all adjectives by simply adding -ness. To wit, while some adjectival nouns—such as availableness and incredulousness—seem awkward, they are by no means ungrammatical. But -ity, nowadays, seems practically extinct in abstract nouns derived from one-syllable adjectives. (save, of course, for a handful of fossilized nouns such as falsity and scarcity.) When it comes to polysyllabic adjectives, however, methinks that -ity's productiveness persists—particularly when said adjectives end in a Latinate suffix.

My question is as follows: If an adjective of two or more syllables ends in a suffix such as able/ible, ive, ile, al, or ous/ose, then (as a general rule) may one utilize the -ity suffix?

To my ear, agreeableness/agreeability, addictiveness/addictivity, tensileness/tensility, pluralness/plurality, and ambidexterousness/ambidexterity all sound perfectly acceptable. What do you think? Pine (talk) 09:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreeability, addictiveness, plurality and ambidexterity are perfectly normal words, while tensileness is marginally "better" than tensility IMO, but neither of the two sounds quite right since neither has ever been uttered in my presence. None of the rejects sound natural to me. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Words that appear in the dictionary should almost always be preferred over neologisms with the same intended meaning. For all of the examples listed above, there are accepted forms. Actually, tensility appears in dictionaries, whereas tensileness does not. Marco polo (talk) 19:50, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Marco Polo that the dictionary is the best guide. However, dictionaries sometimes simply append derived words like availableness to the entry for the root word, without discussing any difficulties in their use. Let me give an example which others here may or may not agree with, and for which I have no evidence but intuition. I find availableness less acceptable as an alternative to availability, for example, in discussing the "availableness of contraception" than in "One of the things I like about John is his availableness" (how he always tends to make himself available). However, there is nothing about any distinction between the two words in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. It's as if when I hear availableness, I ask myself why the speaker isn't using availability, and assume that they must have in mind some less common meaning of the word available. What do others think? 64.140.121.160 (talk) 04:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

About the words you listed, I can't find addictiveness or addictivity in my dictionary. While addictiveness sounds entirely normal to me, addictivity doesn't. Pluralness sounds like it could be a technical term in linguistics, but couldn't be used in "What sets those people apart is their plurality" (i.e., the fact that there are many of them). Ambidextrousness (note the spelling) and ambidexterity both sound fine to me, although ambidextrousness isn't in my dictionary. I might use agreeability or agreeableness in "John's agreeability" (pleasant manner) or "the agreeability of the proposal to all parties" (its acceptability), but I would hesitate to use agreeability in "what surprised me about that beach was its agreeableness.") Everything I've said is based on fairly vague feelings, so it's quite possible I'm the only one who thinks this. 64.140.121.160 (talk) 05:27, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

64.140..., I agree with all of your points except those about availableness. This may be a matter of taste, but I can't think of a single case where I would use availableness instead of availability, which is the more established nominal form, and which I think works in every situation. Otherwise, though, I agree with you. Marco polo (talk) 14:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I would prefer availability by far in that case too. I was considering the following question: if availableness had to be used, how would it be used? 64.140.121.160 (talk) 00:11, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 28

Khilafat & Khilafat-o-Ijazat

Could use some help here please, on Ata Hussain Fani Chishti there are a few non-english terms that have been tagged as needing translation, Khilafat & Khilafat-o-Ijazat, and I can't seem to find a meaning. Judging by the context they are both something which is awarded, presumably for spiritual work. Thanks--Jac16888 ^Talk 16:08, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Khilafat is from the Arabic word خلافة which in a general or religious context most often means "Caliphate" (though there are some other technical meanings). AnonMoos (talk)

So in the sentence "After the death of his grandfather, he was nurtured by his maternal uncle Ala Hazrat Meer Qamruddin Husain Monami, who completed his worldly studies as well as spiritual teachings and awarded him Khilafat-o-Ijazat upon completion." it refer to a title that the subject would be given?--Jac16888 ^Talk 20:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Businesses entities

Is the term "businesses entities" correct (with both business and entity in plural)? I saw this usage in Accounts receivable#Payment terms and found it odd. "... businesses entities can offer a discount for early payment.". Or is it a typo? Made a search in Google and it showed quite a lot of results. 148.87.19.202 (talk) 16:24, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It looks wrong to me - I would assume that "business entities" is meant, a business entity being a generic description of various types of company, partnership, sole trader, etc - see Types of business entity. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:34, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To expand on my answer, "business" is being used an adjective here, so doesn't change for the plural form. It's similar to expressions such as business process. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:38, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) The correct plural of "business entity" is "business entities". Business, in this case, is a modifier of entity (it is a descriptor which answers the question "what kind of entity". As an aside, the phrase "business entity" is a bullshit obfuscation which has become prevalent in the English language since the middle of the 20th century. The word is "business". Entity is a meaningless addition. Business is a perfectly good word by itself, and "entity" adds no meaning. Similar phrases like "emergency situation" and "workplace environment" and things like that are (IMHO) a troublesome development; they are phrases invented by and used by people who mistakenly believe that longer phrases make one appear more intelligent. They don't. If you are copy editing a document which contains the phrase "businesses entities" you can make it better by just writing the word "businesses". Strictly speaking, the correct plural is "business entities", but why be so inefficient with the language. No need to use two words when one does the same job. This video explains it nicely. --Jayron32 16:39, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see that User:AndrewWTaylor edited the phrase in the article to "business entities". And as Andrew mentioned, business entity is part of article names as well. I also see category by name "Types of business entity". So any kind of terminology correction will have to be consistent. I went through the video. 148.87.19.202 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.196.9.100 (talk) 22:23, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

French help: Control by rebel movements

Hi! To say "current control" (as of the area currently controlled by rebel movements) would I say "contrôle actuel"? For former control, would it be "contrôle ancien"?

I am trying to get terms for a French translation of File:Azawad_Tuareg_rebellion_2012.svg

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 17:19, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think "contrôle actuel" works, but the other one would be "ancien contrôle". "Contrôle ancien" would refer to ancient control. Omg † osh 18:02, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Thank you very much for your help! WhisperToMe (talk) 18:29, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Kanji differentiation

Hi, in Japanese I suppose 滿 is simply a variant of 満? I know the latter character, but not the former, and I'm wondering why the former would be used -- whether it has a different nuance, or is old-fashioned, or something like that. I just came across it in a text. Thanks, 86.160.85.74 (talk) 22:16, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

満 is a Japanese simplification of the traditional Chinese 滿. I'm not sure how long it has existed. -- BenRG (talk) 00:10, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 29

March 20

Complicatedly inflected languages

Foreign Language Proper Names

"Brother-in-law", as the most bizzare relation in almost all languages, including English.

I'm looking for languages that do not have an interesting property English has.

Languages having one word both for son-in-law and for bridegroom, or one word both for daughter-in-law and for bride.

What are they talking about here?

Gigs?

March 21

Telekommunikationsgesetz

British English question regarding "50p"

March 22

Is Filipino Verb-Subject-Object, Subject-Verb-Object, or both?

Letter

Amadou as a common first name in Mali?

Archaic Cyrillization of Greek

March 23

March 24

Red Snapper Name In Spanish

What is the correct Latin?

"Requested anonymity for confidential reasons"

Belgian place in russian

Japanese pronunciations

March 25

*****phone = speakers of *****, or where ***** is spoken

German fraktur

What are these black structures called ?

The 1st vowel in the 1st syllable for the words listed in this question

March 26

Hawaiian translation

[sic] in Personal Names

Inputing Asian characters

The name "Nikita"

Lists using semicolons

March 27

Cotton's higher than an opium fiend

Rule on Abstract Nouns derived from polysyllabic Adjectives.

March 28

Khilafat & Khilafat-o-Ijazat

Businesses entities

French help: Control by rebel movements

Kanji differentiation

March 29

***phone = speakers of *, or where *** is spoken