Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

Select a section:

WP:RD/L

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

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

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

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

December 17

OmegaWiki

It's been almost 3 days that when trying to access the OmegaWiki website the only thing appearing is "500 Internal Server Error". Anyone knows what's happening?85.58.45.208 (talk) 23:50, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are people mentioned on the link you added that you could contact. Or, try the talk page. The project is still in the proposal/development stage, and there is mention of moving to another server, etc. 107.15.157.44 (talk) 03:31, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

December 18

More than one sentence preceding reporting clause

"Do you smell that? It's like sulfur," he said.

Is it stylistically okay to put two sentences before the reporting clause ("he said") in English? In German, this is something that would make the copy editor turn down your book immediately. If you choose to put parts of your dialog at the beginning, you must insert the reporting clause after the first sentence at the latest. Otherwise, it can't be one unit structurally if you use a closing punctuation mark in the middle. I have to say I'm transcribing existing audio, so the words have to be uttered in this order. The first part is undoubtedly a question, and I see no other way than to put a question mark there.--2001:16B8:31F9:DA00:E0E4:2154:4A4A:BA30 (talk) 07:20, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have never heard of such a rule. The example seems perfectly standard to me.

Just out of interest, I just did a Google Books search on "he said", and was amused to find that a book exists with the title He Said, She Said: Writing Effective Dialogue (it's by a Laura E. Koons). Searching within the book for the phrase, I found this sentence in an example dialogue: "Excuse me. Do you think you could help me?" he asked. So this author agrees with me that it's an acceptable usage, and therefore everyone else does too. --174.95.161.129 (talk) 09:14, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) When a text hits the desk of a copy editor, it has usually already been accepted for publication. Different publishers have different style manuals; I doubt very much that there is a general rule against multi-sentence direct speech in reported speech with inversion. If there is, the memo did not reach the copy editor of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.^[1] A very complicated case, where the reported direct speech itself contains some seven sentences - most of which are themselves reports of direct speech - can be found in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.^[2] If you study this, you'll see that there is some funny business going on with the sentence structure. A common approach in literary styles is to put the reporting clause in the middle of the reported speech:^[3]

"Do you smell that?" he said, "It's like sulfur."

In older writings authors are less queasy about using question marks other than as sentence-closing punctuation marks; you might see something like,

"Do you smell that?--it's like sulfur," he said.

--Lambiam 09:37, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looks perfectly fine to me. The quotation marks enclose both sentences, removing any ambiguity as to them being made by the same speaker. --Khajidha (talk) 14:50, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It all works. Clarity is the most important thing. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 16:15, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why yes, yes I am, but it's not really necessary to say so. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:04, 20 December 2020 (UTC) [reply]

NB: the more usual term is "dialogue tags" (no wiki article! an opportunity!). It's hard to reference no hard-and-fast rule existing, but if you google search something like "position dialogue tags" you will see most of the advice given for English is to place them where rhythm dictates. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 17:17, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hardly deserving of an article on its own, the term could find use in the article Direct speech. {{Sofixit}}. IMO it is a misnomer, since no dialogue need be involved. (“What the hell time is it?” muttered the old man.^[4]) --Lambiam 08:31, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We do have an article on Tom Swifties. -- AnonMoos (talk) 02:31, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is also the notion of a said-bookism, observed Lambiam sadly and bookishly. --Lambiam 08:31, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I see this frequently in English novels. As someone who has been learning German for a while now, rules like word order and comma use still baffle me to this day. English tends to be a little more freeform in comparison. --Tenryuu ² ( ¬ o Contributions/Tenryuu ) ( Wishlist! ) 23:19, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One may well come to that conclusion if one reads stuff online. Since the teaching of restrictive/non-restrictive clauses (not to mention nouns, verbs, adjectives .......) was abandoned as trivial, (note comma) the placement of commas has become somewhat random. That sad fact provides never-ending fodder for editors such as I, (note comma) who were not the victims of deprived childhoods. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:33, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Solidarity

This should be an easy one: what's the Latin word for solidarity? My dictionary doesn't have it. There might not be an on-the-nose one, I'm looking for one that could mean both political or personal solidarity and oneness and the like. As in the song Solidarity Forever by Guthrie. "Semper solidaritas?" Temerarius (talk) 23:20, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It might not be so easy, due to differences between ancient and modern societies. I'm coming up blank for a single word in Classical Latin... AnonMoos (talk) 02:30, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. `Asabiyyah is a famous word in medieval Arabic (though that doesn't help in Latin). AnonMoos (talk) 02:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to the OED, the word "Solidarity" was only introduced into English in the mid-19th century from the French (Solidarité). The OED's earliest quoted instances are:

In 1848 the People's Press (Vol II pp161/2) stated: "Solidarity is a word of French origin, the naturalisation of which, in this country, is desirable."

In 1851, Antonio Gallenga wrote (Italy in 1848 p429): "Actuated . . . by a feeling of national solidarity----to borrow a French word----which induced all of them to run the same risk."

This suggests to me that the concept itself, which is a metaphor, was only being formulated in English (and European) thought around that time. I suspect that if it had existed, and had a word, in Classical Latin, the many prior centuries of Latin's use by English and European theologians and scholars would surely have introduced it much earlier. Possibly if Classical writers did approach the concept, they used a different metaphor based on ideas like brotherhood or coherence (from Latin noun cohaerentia, "a clinging together, coherence, connection; verb co-haero to stick or hang together, cleave, [etc.]" according to William Smith's Smaller Latin-English Dictionary of 1870). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.56.237 (talk) 06:36, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to the dictionary of the Académie française, the French term solidarité is a learned derivation formed from the adjective solidaire with the suffix -ité, first attested in 1693.^[5] Such new formations in analogy to existing forms inherited from Latin nouns formed with -itas are not rare; another example is sexualité, although this may have been borrowed from the earlier attested English sexuality, also not from Latin; the term has instead been borrowed from modern languages by authors writing in (New) Latin.^[6] The adjective solidaire is in turn again a learned formation from solide + -aire; there is no (Classical) Latin adjective *solidaris. But solide is inherited from Latin solidus. The absence of an English adjective corresponding to French solidaire is striking; French strikers may tell each other, soyons solidaires,^[7] which Google Translate translates as "let's be united" (IMO "let's stand together" conveys the idea better), but the stand-alone adjective is hard to translate. (There is an English adjective solidary borrowed from French, but it lacks currency.) --Lambiam 08:06, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How about societas? Dr Smith (1851) glosses it as "fellowship, association, union, community, society". It apparently is possible to equate the two words. --Antiquary (talk) 12:46, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's easy to find some Classical Latin words whose definitions contain at least part of the meanings of the English word "solidarity", but it's hard to find a word which doesn't also have different and strongly-distracting meanings... AnonMoos (talk) 20:03, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To me, societas doesn't have any of the shades of affection and fraternite that solidarity does. Temerarius (talk) 23:32, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, just as for sexualitas, the word has been borrowed into New Latin as solidaritas, as in the motto Opus solidaritatis pax ("The fruit of solidarity is peace") coined in the encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.^[8] --Lambiam 10:47, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Rather strangely, though, that motto is rendered as Opus hominum coniunctionis pax in the Latin version of the encyclical,^[9] which also contains other occurrences of the term hominum coniunctio, literally "the connection/unity/friendship of people", which in the English version of the encyclical becomes solidarity. --Lambiam 11:03, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is Latin productive enough to create new words? Surely, when it was a language in wide usage it had the means by which to create new words. Why can those processes not be used today? --Jayron 32 14:50, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are certainly the whole areas of New Latin and Contemporary Latin with many added words. But, for example, "computatrum" for computer is a rather recent coinage, which some Latin enthusiasts strongly object to, and which was basically disseminated by Latin Wikipedia. If you're trying to convey profundity with your motto, you might not want to include a computatrum-type form in it... AnonMoos (talk) 15:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

December 21

range of French y

Can the French object pronoun y stand for à [noun phrase] in senses other than locative? For example:

Vois-tu un homme à barbe rousse? — Oui, j'y vois un homme.

I do not recall ever encountering such a usage, and my instinct says no (je vois un tel homme feels more natural), but that proves little. —Tamfang (talk) 04:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

y as indirect object: J'y pense souvent. [Je pense souvent à ça], Je n'y crois pas. [Je ne crois pas au Père Noël], Je n'y suis pas encore habitué. [Je ne suis pas encore habitué à manier la faux]. My reference Le_Bon_Usage, 12th edition. AldoSyrt (talk) 08:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The example by the OP is not a good one as the verb (voir) is direct transitive. Better: Penses-tu à un homme avec une barbe rousse ? — Oui, j'y pense. AldoSyrt (talk) 08:39, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Or Vois-tu un homme à barbe rousse dans ce photographie? — Oui, j'en y vois même deux. Here y refers to the location identified in the preceding sentence. The rule as I learned it for not literally locative uses is that y is used for prepositional phrases starting with á and its variations (as used in songer á quelque chose: Oui, j'y ai songé profondément = "Yes, I have considered it deeply"), while en is used for phrases starting with de (as in songer de quelque chose: Oui, j'en ai songé ce nuit = "Yes, I dreamt about it last night"). --Lambiam 09:47, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Typo "dans cette photographie ?". - AldoSyrt (talk) 11:16, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As usual in French, there are exceptions to the rule: in some cases the "y" is not mandatory. As-tu réussi à changer de pneu ? — Oui, j'ai réussi., but As-tu réussi à l'université ? — Oui, j'y ai réussi. - AldoSyrt (talk) 11:14, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose the original poster's example Vois-tu un homme à barbe rousse? — Oui, j'y vois un homme. doesn't work mainly because à barbe rousse is not really a constituent of the clause, i.e. not an argument of the verb, but a post-modifier of the object noun phrase. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. Vois-tu un homme ? — Oui, j'y vois un homme. doesnt' work because "y" refers to a location (because "voir" is not followed by "à"). But the context can be implicit: — Regarde sur la plage. Vois-tu un homme ? — Oui, j'y vois un homme is correct. One could also say (better French): Y vois-tu un homme ?- AldoSyrt (talk) 16:33, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but I don't really see how that relates to the point I was making. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:05, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Fut.Perf. Why did you revert the example "Honi soit qui mal y pense"? It is a good example for a "non-locative" y. (Sorry I am not allowed to write on your talk page) - AldoSyrt (talk) 20:31, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That posting was by a banned user. Nothing special about it otherwise, other than that it was also rather off-topic. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:03, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Garth-king

Where this word (garth) has come from in the title of the Byzantine emperor? Thanks. Omidinist (talk) 05:51, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe from Micklegarth, one of the names of Istanbul? Clarityfiend (talk) 06:11, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

yes, that's it. Thank you. Omidinist (talk) 06:49, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Garth in this case cognate with "guard" and meaning "wall", likely referring to the Theodosian Walls. --Jayron 32 14:53, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually cognate with "yard"... AnonMoos (talk) 15:14, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Yes, sorry, you're correct. There's a confusing mix of similar meanings and etymologies of the Germanic "gar-" words (i.e. Asgard) which became English "yard" and the Latinate "gar-" words (i.e. garderobe) which became the English word "ward" (the former meaning enclosure and the latter meaning to watch). Etymonline makes such clear distinctions [10] [11] that I confused when trying to remember which derivation we were using here. It's clear the Viking word would have been the gar/yar version. Mea culpa. --Jayron 32 15:55, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There's no need to feel excessive shame, but words related to English "yard" had an original initial g- in Germanic, while words related to "guard" had an original initial w- in Germanic, which was only changed to gw- (later g-) when borrowed into Medieval French (so in English we have doublets like guard / ward, guardian / warden, guarantee / warranty etc., where the first word of each pair was borrowed back into English from French -- see also the contrast between English war and French guerre).... AnonMoos (talk) 16:11, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In either case they probably weren't thinking of the ultimate Proto-Germanic derivation..."Mikelgard" just means "big city", which is what Constantinople was. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:47, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The article linked by Clarityfiend at the outset has: "...Varangians used the Old Norse name Miklagarðr (from mikill 'big' and garðr 'wall' or 'stronghold'), later Miklagard and Micklegarth. This name lives on in the modern Icelandic name Mikligarður and Faroese Miklagarður". Alansplodge (talk) 16:32, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So it does, but the references in that article and in any other book I can find about it say that it means "great city". Adam Bishop (talk) 01:02, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Noticed something odd about the way British English seems to be omitting pronouns for agents or actors in clauses preceded by "so"

I just saw it again in the article about Katalin Kariko. I've seen it in a number of edits over the past five years by editors who appear to be based in Europe, and I've also noticed it several times over the same timeframe in published articles in The Economist and The Guardian. I'm curious as to whether this is a regular usage in British English or if these works are authored by people who weren't trained properly in formal written English.

The sentence that irritated me as ungrammatical in the Karikó article (in computer science terms, triggered exception handling) is as follows: "Karikó realized she would not get a chance to apply her experience with mRNA at the University of Pennsylvania, so took a role as Senior Vice President at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals."

A native speaker of American English would use a pronoun in that second clause after the "so" to expressly refer back to the agent or actor who is the subject of the first clause. For example:

"Karikó realized she would not get a chance to apply her experience with mRNA at the University of Pennsylvania, so she took a role as Senior Vice President at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals."

Can anyone shed some light on this? --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:39, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a speaker of American English. I've never even been to the UK. I can say that both sentences sound perfectly natural, neither is marked in any way, and I would describe both versions of the sentence to be in free variation with each other. --Jayron 32 18:44, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Another American who has never been to the UK. The version without "she" seems a little odd to me, but would seem normal if "and" were added before "so". --Khajidha (talk) 20:16, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The addition of the "she" seems odd and unnecessary to my British eyes and ears. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was definitely wrong, but it doesn't look like something a native would write or say. DuncanHill (talk) 20:49, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Same here (BrEn). "she" has already been established earlier in the sentence; had it not, I'd likely add it: "Karikó did not get a chance to apply her experience with mRNA at the University of Pennsylvania, so she took a role as Senior Vice President at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals." Bazza (talk) 21:22, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. Without "she" it looks telegraphic or informal to me. I wouldn't object to ...and so took a role..., with "so" in the sense of "therefore". I hadn't really had this flagged in my head as a Brit/Yank difference before now, but it looks like maybe it is. --Trovatore (talk) 21:39, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the original poster: eliding the pronoun looks wrong to me, and I see it done more by British sources. But I certainly encounter it being done by North Americans. Just one of those things some people do one way and others do another way, it seems. --174.95.161.129 (talk) 22:07, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As an additional note, my mental grammar has a similar rule prohibiting elision when the conjunction is "because". ("It was prohibited because [it was] too heavy".) I'm not aware of any other conjunctions I feel that way about. --174.95.161.129 (talk) 09:05, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Either one works. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:38, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm baffled that anyone would find that sentence weird. In fact, if a student has sent me that with an added 'she', I'd have recommended removing it, on the principle than no sentence should have more words than required. Divided by a common language eh? Fgf10 (talk) 01:02, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

December 22

Is there a tool that shows these IPA chart spots and phonemes and nothing else?

Pick two languages, a list or visual diagram of what's in the red zone then appears. Or one list or visual for vowels and one for consonants, doesn't have to be both in the same list or visual. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So Spanish-English would show their halfway between v and b sound, ñ, their halfway between w and g sound and second flavor of r and like 7 vowels (more in some Englishes) on the English side and maybe a few more differences. Japanese-English would have that u-like sound, that halfway between p and f sound etc and a lot of vowels. German-English might have one or 2 vowels left over but on the non-English side this time. As they are phonemes in German but not English. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:42, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]