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March 13

Chinese phrasing for how a character is composed?

Okay, now it's my turn to ask one. What's the Chinese phrasing for describing how a Chinese character is composed? I'm thinking of something like "join 金 (metal) with 同 (together) to produce 銅 (copper)". How would that normally be worded in colloquial Chinese, say if this were a difficult character you were describing to someone you were speaking with? Or in formal Chinese, say in a book teaching children how to write? Thanks, — kwami (talk) 01:13, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

If I had to colloquially describe the character to someone, I would break it down into its radical components and say something like this: 铜，铜器的铜，左边是金部，金属的金。右边是同，相同的同。65.96.127.245 (talk) 03:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

In a book I might expect something like this: 金字旁加“同”组成“铜”。The radical name plus the character. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Colloquially I might also simply say 金属的铜 or 青铜的铜 -- "铜 as in the metal", or "铜 as in bronze".

More generally, some characters which commonly cause confusion - especially surnames and other characters commonly used in names - have colloquial names such as "草头黄" for "黄" - "Grass head 黄" --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

If you're just trying to distinguish it from others you can say 金字旁的铜, or like 65.96 says, refer to words that use the character. You could also describe it as 金子跟同学的同那一字. Steewi (talk) 03:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, y'all. I'm familiar with some of these, so let me give you the context:

In the article on rongorongo which I've been working on, a few early researchers got recitations from some Easter Island elders who claimed to be able to read the old tablets. However, the resulting "creation chants" were almost gibberish, had nothing to do with Polynesian creation mythology, and have been no help in deciphering rongorongo. A couple of the more intelligible verses are,

Grove by copulating with Trunk produced the ashwood tree.

Killing by copulating with Sting Ray produced the shark.

One of my references suggests that these, besides being badly translated, might actually be old rules for how to compose rongorongo characters. A better translation might be,

By joining 'Grove' into 'Trunk', that the ashwood tree come forth.

By joining 'Killing' into 'Sting Ray', that the shark come forth.

The author compares this to Chinese characters, where you might say something like "By joining 金 with 同, so that 銅 results". I was wondering if something like this was actually said in Chinese, or if it were just something that potentially could be said. 金字旁加“同”组成“铜” isn't too far off, but I'm looking for something that better illustrates the parallel, if such phrasing exists. — kwami (talk) 09:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Mnemonics exist for certain characters, see Biang. 65.96.127.245 (talk) 11:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

From a Google search, I found this "real life" examples: "“同”字加上“金字旁”就是“铜”". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I think the biang biang article will do nicely, and maybe the real example too. — kwami (talk) 04:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, in the biang article, the line 掛個丁丁叫馬杠 from the ditty got left out of the translation. — kwami (talk) 06:24, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm a native too, my answer: we might have some 'phrases' for straightforward characters, but we would most likely describe characters like spelling it. The common surname 李 may be described as 木子李 (the structure is easy), while 偉 may be 偉大的偉 (the word is easy). Even some easy characters are difficult to describe, if natives bother to, like another common surname 陳. I'd say it's 姓陳的陳, or, orthographically, 左(邊是)阜, 右(邊是)東. I don't think there are fast and hard rules for this.--61.92.239.192 (talk) 11:18, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It's called "耳东陈". Where does 阜 come in?? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I didn't log in :). Yes, that's also correct, though I can't remember that until you said it. 阜 is the radical. 耳 is more common and colloquial.--Fitzwilliam (talk) 12:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki checking request at Legal code (municipal)

Not sure if this is the right place for this - I thought of Wikipedia:Translation but this isn't a translation request per se...

A bit of background: the Legal code article started off being about the philosophical concept of "code" as opposed to "law". It then somehow morphed into an article about municipal codes - such as building codes. This was clearly not what the majority of links to that article were contemplating. So I moved Legal code to Legal code (municipal), and redirected Legal code to a new article Code (law), which is about code law, such as the Civil Code.

In this process, I noticed that many of the interwiki links on the old legal code article, now at Legal code (municipal), were about code law and not municipal codes - I have moved the ones which I could determine to be so from the foreign language articles. There are a few, though, that I'm not sure about. Could I ask the experts on this page to take a look at de:Gesetzbuch, lt:Kodeksas, pl:Kodeks (zbiór praw), ru:Кодекс, and sv:Lagbok to see whether they are about municipal codes (like building codes) or code law (like the Civil Code)? If the latter, the link should probably be moved across to Code (law).

If it helps, mentions of the Justinian Code probably indicates the latter. Many thanks, --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The German article was about code (law). I've added the appropriate interwiki links. -Elmer Clark (talk) 03:56, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Etymology of Sweater

Why is that thick cotton shirt called a sweater? Is it because it makes the wearer sweat? --~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 03:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Dictionary.com lists the etymology as "sweat + er", dating from the late 1800s, so it sounds like you're right. That's what I've always assumed, too. Does seem a little weird, though; most people wear sweaters to normalize their temperatures. --Masamage ♫ 04:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone know where I've put my temperature-normalizer? Hmm, doesn't have quite the same effect, does it.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 04:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

In British English they are called 'jumpers', which makes even less apparent sense. FreeMorpheme (talk) 08:24, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Here we go, from the OED:

• Clothes in which a horse or a man in training is exercised, to produce profuse sweating. (now obsolete)

• A woollen vest or jersey worn in rowing or other athletic exercise, originally in order to reduce one's weight; now commonly put on also before or after exercise to prevent taking cold.

• Hence a similar garment for general informal wear.

So the derivation is almost exactly that of more recent 'sweats' (sweat pants, sweat shirt, etc.)

As for 'jumper', it seems that was originally a 'jump', which may have been a corruption of 'jupe'. — kwami (talk) 09:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

According to http://www.io.com/~dierdorf/ww-39.html, jumper is derived from Arabic jubbah (a long open coat) by way of Spanish aljuba and French juppa. There is a similar German word "Joppe" of identical etymology. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 09:51, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

There are a few more interesting bits mentioned in the link given. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 09:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Marines: must it always be capitalized?

I have heard (from several friends in the Marines) that the word "Marines" is always supposed to be capitalized. I was wondering ... is this true? Is that a "real" rule of grammar? Or is that just something that Marines do as a symbol / convention of respect, etc.? (I am talking about US Marines.) And, furthermore, does this mean that the word "Marine" is always a proper noun and never a common noun? Thus, "John was the oldest Marine at the party" ... is that a proper noun or common noun? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 08:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC))

The US Marine Corps is a proper noun, and a 'Marine' is derived from that. It's a common noun, but like 'American', the capital letter shows you it's derived from a proper noun. Perhaps the same is true in Britain for the Royal Marines? However, in the generic sense, a marine officer is simply an officer serving aboard a ship, and you'll often see "the marines" in this sense. Capitalization in such cases is often irregular. — kwami (talk) 09:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

You have to capitalize if you mean "Semper Fi" jarhead, as in your example: "John was the oldest Marine at the party". Always, no exceptions, yes. It's not grammar, it's style, by the way, and it's not about respect, it's about typographical convention and the meaning of a capital letter. It does seem unfair, though. We don't capitalize "sailor" or "soldier" (but we can "private" or "seaman" if we mean a particular individual). Every Marine is a Marine in a stricter sense than every member of the U.S. Army is a soldier or every Navy man a sailor. You could call an admiral "sailor" and he would not be at all insulted, but it would be unusual, whereas the Commandant of the Marine Corps is a Marine, pure and simple. It's a bit of an anomaly, to be sure, now you've made me look at it.

It's pretty rare to see the lowercase generic "marine" these days, because all our marines are Marines, if you take my meaning. Before they were a separate branch of the armed forces, you could talk about lowercase marines serving on board ships, and you still would if you were writing about those bygone days. --Milkbreath (talk) 11:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Almost always capitalized when referring to a specific marine corps such as the U.S. Marine Corps. For example: My brother is a marine. It is a generic term. Unless you mean specifically My brother is a (British Royal) Marine. Then it should be capitalized. But since my dad is a Marine, yes you should always fucking capitalize Marine. But if and I think my father would use a term like "little grammar bitch" no, it doesn't always have to be capitalized from a purely gramatical standpoint. hoo rah.

You've got me worrying now. How is your second sentence an example of the principle you expounded in your first? Unless, perhaps, it's an example of one of the exceptions I infer to exist from "almost always". -- JackofOz (talk) 20:23, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

There are no hard and fast "rules" for things like this. There are only official styles adopted by organizations and professions. The U.S. military might establish a style that "Marine" is to be capitalized when referring to a member of the USMC. But your workplace may differ. My advice is that if you are in doubt, trust an authoritative source like the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which uses lower case for "a marine" in all circumstances. (Compare the entries for "marine" and "Realtor.") -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Not entirely unrelated, on May 19, 1994 the Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton decreed the word Sailor when used in Naval correspondence and referring to Sailors of the U.S. Navy – Sailor will be capitalized. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker in October 2003 and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper in May 2004 decreed the same for the words Soldier and Airman respectively. Because Marine (when referring to a person in the Marine Corps) is a proper noun it will always be capitalized.

Badge in Spanish

How do you say "badge" as in a policeman's badge in the Spanish language? Is it credencial? Does it vary by country? Do policemen in Spanish speaking countries carry badges or some other form of identification? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.1.91.172 (talk) 11:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

And how would you say, estate, such as my father's estate or I live in Redwood Estates, or I inherited a large estate as in porperty/land. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.1.91.172 (talk) 11:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Placa is the precise translation for badge. Identificación could also be used, especially if no plaque is present. This last term is the most frequent here in Argentina. I don't know what's the case elsewhere.

Estate is a really hard word to translate into Spanish. Propiedad inmueble is a generic translation. Bienes raíces or bienes inmuebles are two technical terms for it. Finca and hacienda are more specific than propiedad; the former could apply to a rural or urban property, while the latter is more or less specific to rural estates.

Establecimiento is also another option, especially for productive rural properties, at least here in Argentina. Pallida  Mors 14:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Either/or

An LSAT review books offers this as an answer choice: "Either Wilma or Vivian's appointment is at 10AM." However, because "Vivian is only restricted to the 11AM or 4PM appointments," the answer choice is ruled out. Is that how you usually use "either...or..." in a sentence?! Thanks. Imagine Reason (talk) 15:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The words following either and or should normally be syntactically parallel: "Either Wilma's or Vivian's appointment …" Since it's a distracter rather than a supposedly correct answer—and since the question doesn't appear to be a test of grammar anyway—I'm not sure that it matters much in this instance, though. Deor (talk) 16:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I wasn't clear. I didn't even notice that error, but you're correct. What I was wondering, however, is that even if Vivian's appointment isn't at 10AM, that sentence can still be true, no? Does it on the LSAT only refer to the case where both Wilma's and Vivian's appointments can be at 10AM? Imagine Reason (talk) 16:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I'd failed to see what you were asking about (perhaps because this is the Language desk rather than the Logic desk). My take is that unless it is established somewhere that Wilma also cannot have a 10 A.M. appointment, the sentence is not logically flawed. There's no logical error in saying "Either John or Mary is dead" even if it has been established that one of them is in fact alive. (By the way, the only in the book's sentence explaining the incorrectness of the answer is redundant. I guess lawyers need be neither logicians nor prose stylists.) Deor (talk) 16:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Haha, you're right again. Thank you. Imagine Reason (talk) 17:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The "only" is not only redundant, but being out of the place it would belong to if it weren't redundant, it's misleading. It suggests that he's restricted to 11AM or 4PM, but not restricted to any other possible times, which, as well as being one of the best non-sequiturs I've seen in many a long moon, gives the initial false impression that he has a wider choice of times than he actually has. If it belongs anywhere, it belongs before 11AM, but it would still be well, wrong there. What I'm really saying is that if you're going to rob a bank, it's better to take only $100 rather than $10,000. (Maybe I didn't get enough sleep last night ...) -- JackofOz (talk) 20:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, may be; what's a long moon? But you're right about everything except Vivian's sex. We can't just dismiss the whole problem by saying "it's only a distracter", either. The whole test should be in regular English, not some garbled junk. As for the logic, logic per se does not apply in language, which has its own logic. "Either Wilma or Vivian's appointment is at 10AM" means that only one is, and if we already know which the sentence is nonsense. --Milkbreath (talk) 20:56, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

"Long moon"? Hmm, maybe I was confusing "many a long day" with "many moons". But I rather like my new unconsciously spawned brain-child, so thanks for drawing it to my attention, Milkbreath. Vivian's sex? Vivian Campbell, Sir Vivian Richards, Vivian Stanshall, and Vivian Ellis were all males last time I looked under their dresses. Oscar Wilde named one his sons Vyvyan. So while it is predominantly used as a female name, let us pay due regard to the minority groups among us (I refer to those poor put-upon men named Beverley, Kay, Vivian, Kerry, Patrice, Joán, et al). Say, that gives me a great idea! I'm going to create a literary character named "Vivian Longmoon". You heard it here first. Vladimir Nabokov would be proud of me. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Are you trying to tell us that we can discover your real name by playing around with the letters of "Vivian Longmoon"? How can that be, when there's no j, c, or k in it? Deor (talk) 21:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention f or z. But how transparent of me. You've guessed it. My real name is Anvil von Ooming (my Urlicht-affected parents worshipped the Norse god Thor and used the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore as their personal anthem), but I'm thinking of changing it to Olga von Von Mini. (I'll explain the double "von" thusly: I'm descended from an Italian family named Mini that moved to Germany and was ennobled back in the dim dark ages. Rothbart von Mini was mixed up in some local revolution, was deprived of his aristocratic estates and titles, and was exiled to Iceland via Mongolia, but nevertheless had his surname registered in Reykjavik as "Von Mini". My great-grandfather Lars Von Mini moved back to Germany, and was re-ennobled, as Lars von Von Mini. Please stop me any time now ...) -- JackofOz (talk) 22:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Are you quite certain you are not the famous Dutch-Italian star of silent movies, Vino Van Looming? - Nunh-huh 02:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I deny that with the last breath in my body. Anyone for tennis? Speaking of tennis and men with girly names, I often read (past tense) that the originator of the tennis phrase "Grand Slam" was a journalist named Allison Danzig, and I always glibly assumed she was a woman. It turns out she wasn't ... er, he wasn't. It further turned out that it wasn't even he what done it (the coining), but John Kieran, and I would love to be able to report, despite contrary appearances, that he was in fact a woman - but in fact he wasn't. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe Vivian accidentally made an appointment for a time when they are not actually available, overbooking the time slot.  --Lambiam 22:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe it's just the review book. I've not found one GMAT or LSAT review book that includes fewer than several errors, but this one easily takes the crown. After every group of questions is a list of the answers, which ALWAYS have a few deviations from the explanations of solutions that then immediately follow. Someone must have been terrible drunk or absent when they put together the book. Imagine Reason (talk) 02:21, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but -- to be fair -- the statements that you quote in the original post are probably taken from a larger context. It might be helpful to provide all of that context ... that is, the entire question. Usually, those LSAT-type questions involve a lot of scenarios (conditions) happening simultaneously. Which allows the examinee to include or exclude certain facts. Which ultimately allows the examinee to deduce the correct answer. So, I assume that the original post was accompanied by other facts / sentences / conditions --- which would provide more context to the LSAT practice question and the original poster's question. Otherwise, the answer to your question is "yes". That is indeed how one would normally use "either / or" in a sentence. To parse: this sentence ("Either Wilma's or Vivian's appointment is at 10AM.") ... is a short-hand / abbreviated version of saying "Either Wilma's appointment is at 10AM or Vivian's appointment is at 10AM." In plain English, one of these individuals has a 10:00 appointment and the other does not. Contrast logically with this: "Wilma's or Vivian's appointment is at 10AM." This new sentence (deleting the word "either") now means something altogether different. The new sentence is a short-hand / abbreviation version of saying "Wilma's appointment is at 10AM ... or Vivian's appointment is at 10AM ... or both appointments are at 10AM." Thus, if we delete the term "either" ... we are left with three possible scenarios: one lady has the 10AM slot, the other lady has it, or perhaps they both have it. I assume that Wikipedia has articles on the disjunctive "or" ... which can be either inclusive (one component or the other component or perhaps both) or exclusive (one component or the other, but never both). (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:28, 14 March 2008 (UTC))

search engines as concordancers, or free online ones

We're all familiar, I take it, with using Google as a sort of basic concordancer. You can search for a string in quotes (e.g. "raining cats and") and see what words follow and precede the phrase. Has anyone systematised this? Are there any research papers about the technique? Or are there any good free concordancers that would be usable with learners? An acquaintance of mine who is teaching English wants to use one with his students learning the language. BrainyBabe (talk) 16:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

For web work, try Webcorp [1]. For desktop use with hand-built corpora, I believe Laurence Anthony's AntConc [2] is still the last word in freeware (has some issues with certain encodings, but that shouldn't be a problem if you're just using English). However, your colleague will also want to consult some of the abundant literature on data-driven learning and the promises and pitfalls of providing students with direct access to raw linguistic data. -- Visviva (talk) 04:13, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Orthographic usage: centimeter and centimetre

There is a anonymous contributor changing some units thinking there is an orthographic error. For instance, centimetre has been changed into centimeter. In fact both are in the English language, the first is British usage while the second is American. Is there an official usage in this wikipedia or is there discrimination against Britsh and Canadian users? What to do when someone is systematically changing the units like that? Pierre cb (talk) 19:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

See WP:ENGVAR. The spellings used in an article should be consistent, and an editor should not change British to American, or vice versa, without good reason. Such changes can be reverted with a citation of the relevant guideline. (There's a template, {{subst:uw-lang}}, that one can place on the user talk page of an editor making such unnecessary changes.) Deor (talk) 19:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Pierre cb (talk) 19:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

However, don't revert if the user is only changing the spelling in articles related to American topics (places in the U.S., people from the U.S., etc.), or in articles where American spelling is otherwise established in the article's history. In those cases, changing from British to American spelling is acceptable. (And vice versa, mutatis mutandis, of course.) —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

In the case in point, the user that Pierre cb noticed was Americanizing the spellings at Radar. The very oldest version of that page uses American spellings, so the anon was actually justified in his actions. (However, it would have been more politic not to call fibre and centimetre "spelling errors" in the edit summary.) —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Of course it's quite possible that he's simply unaware that those are the correct British spellings. -Elmer Clark (talk) 08:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

And, of course, radar is a British invention, so British spelling would be more appropriate as per WP:ENGVAR. Malcolm XIV (talk) 10:39, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that doesn't follow at all. The relevant part of WP:ENGVAR says, "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation." The radar (which according to History of radar actually appears to be a German invention) does not have stronger ties to Britain than to America, so the next section "Retaining the existing variety" applies instead. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 22:32, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

In the specific case of SI units I believe it is policy to use the UK/euro version, in general other cases (color/colour) I think US is standard..87.102.83.204 (talk) 12:06, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:UNITS#Units_of_measurement deosn't seem to state whether to use meter or metre..87.102.83.204 (talk) 12:10, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Also the wikiprojects will often settle on what version to use, depending on context, so if there is a relevent project - get advise there.87.102.83.204 (talk) 12:51, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

It would be a very poor idea to always use UK spelling for SI units, since that would often result in articles with inconsistent spellings. The main thrust of WP:ENGVAR is that any given article should be internally consistent. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 22:32, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

One editor changed the SI units from UK to US spelling in an otherwise US-spelled article, claiming that was Wikipedia standard. I reverted it; as Angr says, it looks bad. — kwami (talk) 04:14, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

March 14

How to pronounce: Leah Buechley?

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~buechley/about_me/about_me.html

I don't have a dictionary of surnames at hand... Searching yielded no results... Thanks... The Other Saluton (talk) 11:50, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

If you pronounce it bju:tʃli you may not be right, but it's a safe bet that she'll have heard it before. —Tamfang (talk) 21:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I stink at IPA, so maybe this is the same thing. Just glancing at it, I'd pronounce it "Byooklee". ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 02:58, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That's what I'd guess too: /ˈliːə ˈbjuːkliː/. — kwami (talk) 04:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

It could also be Bucklee, Bewlee, Barklee or Byoochlee. Unfortunately, I can't find it in my surname dictionaries. Gwinva (talk) 02:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I met her: It's Lee-ah Bee-kly. There's also a video online in which she's demoing her LED bracelet and at the beginning, she says her name.

If Australian books have their spelling and grammar changed...?

Not sure if this is the correct reference desk to ask this, but: If Australian books have their spelling and grammar changed when released in America, why isn't it the same when American books are released in Australia? 124.176.160.139 (talk) 11:56, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Cultural ignorance? (Dons tin helmet. Heads for bunker) - X201 (talk) 11:58, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

America is a (far) bigger market and so can expect better 'localisation' perhaps, of course I find it odd that any change is neccessary since the two 'languages' are mutually intelligble (as far as I know).87.102.83.204 (talk) 12:04, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Mostly intelligible, but can still be irritating rather than defeating. Little things like Fall instead of Autumn, faucet instead of tap, trunk instead of boot. Non-US readers can understand them but it gives off the feeling that the publisher can't be bothered with you, wants the sales but can't be bothered to put in any effort to get them. Same is true of US companies that use their US TV ads in Europe and just re-dub them, it engenders a feeling of "you can't be bothered to make an advert for me and my fellow countrymen, I can't be bothered with your product" And I suppose to answer the original question, it's probably mostly down to economics, population and sales wise it's the equivalent of asking them to produce a Texas only version. - X201 (talk) 12:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Other than "boot", all of the examples you gave are used in the United States. I don't think either "Fall" or "Autumn" is more commonly used than the other, and I hear both "faucet" and "tap" used regularly. There may be regional differences (New Englind vs. California vs. the South vs. the Midwest), but I've heard all four used all over in the States. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 02:37, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Australia is a comparatively small market, and rarely warrants its own edition from an economic standpoint. As a result, books in global English release sometimes see a British and American version. Given the general variety of English used in Australia, it gets the British version. Often the British version will use metric measures, British spelling, but pounds for monetary units. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

We Australians also grow up with the American terminology around the place, so we understand it easily, even if we don't use it in everyday speech. Most people can say 'X is the American word, Y is the British one, we say Z (or X or Y).' Sometimes we get them confused, but they're definitely understood. Steewi (talk) 00:34, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Chinese annal and article

I need to know the most commonly accepted English name for the Qi Guo Chunqiu Houji (七國春秋後集). I know it is related to the Spring and Autumn Annals. Is there an article for this already? --Ghostexorcist (talk) 14:33, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Dunno about the translation... all I know is that it is a novelisation of the historical events of the Spring and Autumn Annals. My stab at translating it would be something like "Latter volume of the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Seven Kingdoms" --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:39, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you know where I can find a page that describes when it was written? I know it mentions Sun Bin and Pang Juan as being disciples of the celestial Gui Guzi (Master Ghostvalley). I will be adding the material to a featured article. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 14:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The Seven Kingdom might be the Seven Warring States in the Warring States period. Oda Mari (talk) 15:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

According to the entry in the Baidu Encyclopedia on "Romance on the Record of the Struggle Between Sun and Pang" 《孫龐鬥志演義》 one of the earliest copies of the aforementioned "Romance" is a late Ming version in the Naikaku Bunko (內閣文庫)collection. The end of the "Romance" coincides well with the beginning of the "Spring and Autumn of the Seven Kingdoms, Part II" 《七國春秋後集》, which leads the author to believe that the "Romance" was based on Part I, which is no longer extant. The earliest version of "Part II," also stored in the collection of the Naikaku Bunko, is from "Collection of Historically Themed Vernacular Tales of the Yuan Dynasty"《元刻講史平話集》 (literally "printed/carved in the Yuan") . The full title of the story is " New Fully Illustrated Vernacular Tale of Leyi Plotting Against Qi - Spring and Autumn of the Seven Kingdoms, Part II," divided into three chapters.《新刊全相平話樂毅圖齊七國春秋後集》３卷 The Baidu article gives some information about the evolution of the story, starting with Sima Qian's biography of Sun Bin, but the story in its current form probably originated at some point between the Song and Yuan dynasties.

See http://baike.baidu.com/view/420249.html, and http://www.guoxue.com/gjzl/362/gJ_06.htm 65.96.127.245 (talk) 16:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Couple of notes to the above post: Naikaku Bunko is the "cabinet library" of Japan, which preserves a great deal of ancient Chinese books which have been lost in China derived from the collections of the Edo shogunate.

元刻: "engraved in the Yuan dynasty". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:25, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

English usage: "Me either" v. "Me neither"

I have an argument with a friend of mine over the usage of "me either" versus "me neither". It started in a conversation of ours:

ME: "I can't find a book."
HE: "Me either."

My position is that "me either" is incorrect here, as it would require a negative verb in the same sentence. The correct phrase would have been either "I can't either" or "Me neither". I draw support from the following websites: Washington State University Professor on English, Website by the British Council. Now, it would seem an English Professor and the British Council are good authorities on that, but my friend had an interesting argument for his position (that "me either" is correct): He contends that his usage implicates an Ellipsis and is thus correct (i.e. "(I can't find a book) [me] either.") However, I think that an ellipsis cannot be used here. As an indication for that serves the fact that "me neither" actually exists. If he were right, there would be no need for "me neither". The fact that "me either" appears to be on the rise as vernacular for "me neither" is disregarded in this discussion.
Who is right? Your answers, comments and ideas are greatly appreciated. --Florian Prischl (talk) 15:53, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment? You two should get married. Sheesh. As for the question, I think that both are so informal and colloquial that no standard of correctness can apply. They both sound OK to me, if that matters. --Milkbreath (talk) 16:00, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Is 'me either' an Americanism? To me (English) it sounds horribly incorrect. Algebraist 16:35, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Googling gives some evidence that it is an Americanism. I supposed "neither" to rhyme with "breather" is, too? --Milkbreath (talk) 17:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not a question of "correct" per se. If you want to get all formal about it, since HE is referring to himself in the nominative case, an ultra-ultra-pedant would be horrified that he uses any pronoun other than "I", and would insist on "Neither can I" or even "I can't find one either". But "Me neither" is an absolutely stock standard expression that pedants of the lesser varieties have no qualms with. It's in the same class of expressions such as "Me too" when used nominatively. "Me either" is wrong; it appears to be a well-intentioned hyper-correction, based on "I can't find one either", but it only goes half-way. Going the whole hog would give us the absurd "I either", and going a further hog would result in the equally absurd "I neither".

(Interestingly, I've just noticed for the first time that, although normally when I say "neither" I use the nigh-ther pronunciation, when it's part of "me neither", I automatically switch to the nee-ther version. "Me nee-" has a euphony that I subconsciously seem to favour, and one that "me nigh-" lacks; which may be part of the story behind why it's become acceptable to use a phrase starting with "me" when we're all taught to use "I" in such cases. If we stuck to the "rules", we'd have HE saying "I can't find one either", or at least "Neither can I". But "Me neither" is shorter still, is highly accepted outside of formal writing, does the job beautifully, and has the advantage of being more euphonious than either way of saying the relatively jarring "Me either". (Me ee-ther - yuck! Me eye-ther - double yuck!) -- JackofOz (talk) 17:27, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

English: How do I speak good grammar?

How do i speak good grammar? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.206.239.148 (talk) 18:54, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

First step, get a hold of that classic learning aid, English As She Is Spoke.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 22:11, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Love: how to say "I love you" in Italian?

How might someone go about saying 'i love you' in Italian? being a native speaker of English, i find that the language has ten times as much grammar as I'm used to, so I'm a bit lost. It looks (based on wiktionary) like it should be something like Io tu amare, but I'm almost certain some part of that is wrong. Someone help. 172.141.96.215 (talk) 22:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Ti amo. Deor (talk) 22:22, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I also note that the Italian translation of the song 'happy birthday to you' doesn't actually mention birthdays at all. Is there a reason for this? 172.141.96.215 (talk) 22:20, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

They sing it as follows: Tant'auguri a te (a voi in plural). Used on any 'celebratable' [ < is this an existing English word? ] occasion, not just b-days. Patio (talk) 08:55, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Ti adoro sempre di più, tesoro mio!

 

 

♥

 

 

But be careful. It's powerful stuff.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 23:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I thought "Ti voglio bene" was standard for a declaration of romantic love Rhinoracer (talk) 13:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Here we go again ... singular versus plural

In anticipation of tomorrow's anniversary of Caesar's assassination (God rest his soul) ... which is correct and why?

• The Ides of March is ...
• The Ides of March are ...

Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC))

Is. There's no such thing as an Ide. Corvus cornix_talk 01:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

So, if we eliminated the preposition, we'd say: "Wow, the ides is tomorrow! This year flew by quickly!" Is that right? (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC))

Is or are. The fact that there is no Ide doesn't help much. We don't say scissors is useful, do we?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Ides as a plural noun used with singular or plural verb forms, like barracks or works. Pallida  Mors 02:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

"Ides" is actually parallel to "Nones" and "Kalends". See Roman Calendar. AnonMoos (talk) 08:13, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it seems that in English there is an "Ide", or at least there was: see OED (online) which quotes "1641 HOWELL Vote in New Vol. Lett. (1650) Iij, The soft gliding Nones and every Ide". and "1834 LYTTON Pompeii I. iii, ‘It stands fixed for the ninth ide of August’, answered Pansa."

OED also says "ides, n. pl.", which seems to demand "are". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:19, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

"Idus" was plural in Latin, although I'm not familiar with any sentence where "Ides" would require its own verb, especially "is/are". (It's usually an ablative expression, "on the Ides of [whatever]"). Surely some ancient author must have explained them somewhere, maybe Ovid in the Fasti? I don't know. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:48, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

"Beware the Ides of March" - that's accusative in English, I believe (even though it's equivalent to "Beware of the Ides ...", which isn't). -- JackofOz (talk) 11:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah...that reminds me, the Ides of March thing comes from Plutarch, and in the English translation on LacusCurtius it has "the Ides of March are...". Unfotunately he wrote in Greek (the Perseus website has the Greek but it's maddening to find anything there) so that doesn't help with the Latin, but it solves the English question! Adam Bishop (talk) 11:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

This reminds me of the weird case for kudos. My vocabulary textbook (Merriam-Webster) notes that kudos, which is originally Greek, is technically singular, but the s at the end has led English speakers to use it as a plural. So in colloquial English...no singular/plural rules exist? Sad...--~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 21:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

All right, I should have brought this up earlier, from the AHD:

“ ides (īdz) pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb). The 15th day of March, May, July, or October or the 13th day of the other months in the ancient Roman calendar. [Middle English, from Old French, from Latin Īdūs.] ”

--~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 21:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Kudos? True, some English speakers use it as a plural. But I think well-informed people regard it, use it, and pronounce it as a singular noun, not as the plural of "kudo". Kudos to them. It's just a question of whether well-informed people are in the majority. Everyone's on the internet these days, so the answer is probably "no". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

March 15

Pain interjections

I'm just curious about this. I'd like to know pain interjections for other languages like the English "ow" or "ouch" or the Chinese "ai ya." bibliomaniac15 01:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

In Spanish, the most common pain interjections are ay and huy. Oh or ah could also be possible (normally exaggerated as in ahhh). Ouch and things like agh are not uncommon, but they can't be considered standard Spanish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pallida Mors 76 (talk • contribs) 02:34, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

In Japanese, the most common "ouch!" word is itai 痛い. Offhand, I can't think of any others (outside of slang version of the word). ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 02:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't forget "tai-tai-tai!" when it really hurts. :) And, as per Kwami's comment below, "achi-achi-achi" when something's painfully hot. Paul Davidson (talk) 09:24, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, "tai-tai-tai" is just a colloquial version of "itai". ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 22:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think itai counts, because it means "hurts." --Kjoonlee 12:01, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

So does "ouch". ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 22:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, what I meant was that itai can be analyzed as an adjective, but ouch can't. --Kjoonlee 23:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The morphology of "itai" doesn't necessarily make it any less significant or meaningful as an interjection. Paul Davidson (talk) 12:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I always thought (and I still think) an interjection is what you get left over when you've analyzed/categorized all the rest. --Kjoonlee 13:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

In German, common pain interjections are "Au" or "Aua", also "Auweh" (less used nowadays) and "Autsch" (possibly from the English "ouch"). --Florian Prischl (talk) 03:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Japanese is unusual from an English perspective in saying itai "it hurts!" or atsui "it's hot!" rather than using an interjection. — kwami (talk) 03:49, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

There was an article in the Los Angeles Times about this in the mid-1980's, and one thing that emerged was that Albanians claimed that the Albanian language doesn't have a pain interjection -- instead, they preserve a stoic silence... AnonMoos (talk) 08:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The Korean word for ouch is aya. The ya part can be reduplicated, as ayaya or ayayayaya. --Kjoonlee 12:02, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The Korean equivalent of Japanese atsui ("it's hot") is [a(t)] tteugeo ([ow] it's hot).--Kjoonlee 12:06, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

French: Aille! (pronounced ay) --Lgriot (talk) 13:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

What is 'Lacanians' and 'Freudian' ?

Jacques Marie Emile Lacan - 1901-81

You can be Lacanians, if you want. As for me, I'm a Freudian.

'Le seminaire de Caracas' 12 July 1980, 30 - I. Transcription printed in L'Ane, 1981. Trans. O.Zentner(ed), Papers of the Freudian School of Melbourne.'

What is 'Lacanians' and 'Freudian'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aforapple (talk • contribs) 02:08, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

A "Lacanian" would be someone who believes in or practices the form of psychoanalysis which originated with Jacques Marie Emile Lacan, or who uses the concepts of that school of psychoanalysis as explanatory mechanisms in other fields, such as literary criticism.

A "Freudian" would be someone who believes in or practices the form of psychoanalysis which originated with Sigmund Freud, or who uses the concepts of that school of psychoanalysis as explanatory mechanisms in other fields, such as literary criticism. - Nunh-huh 02:17, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That's so neat Nunh-huh. Fwiw, here's mine: :(removed since vanished) Lacan was a 60's and 70's psychoanalyst who centred on Freud's ideas (such as the unconscious) while introducing the importance of language to subjectivity (see poststructuralism) and applied his ideas to other disciplines while inversely applying the ideas in other disciplines to his own. He is supposed to have invented the three-minute session but that could be a furphy. Both Lacan and Freud are considered sexist, but Lacan is associated with postmodernism while Freud is seen as modernist. Happy reading. Julia Rossi (talk) 02:36, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

alternate for 'fuck'

Okay, I'm back. I need a word for 'fuck' that is appropriate to use in a normal Wikipedia article. I'm translating a phrase, and am trying to get it to flow right. It needs to be a transitive verb, so 'copulate' is out, and it's okay if it's vulgar. The original describes animals (hacer coito los animales. [Es expresión grosera.]), but in my context it appears to mean 'join into' rather than literal coitus. — kwami (talk) 05:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

"Animalistic rutting"? AnonMoos (talk) 08:06, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I need a transitive verb, like A fucks B, and it would be nice if it had the connotation of joining in general. Couple kinda works, but is a bit sterile. — kwami (talk) 08:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Mounts? Adam Bishop (talk) 09:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that might work. By A mounting into B ... Maybe closer than By coupling A into B ... Thanks. — kwami (talk) 09:44, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Is "couple" used as a transitive verb? He coupled her? I doubt it. If vulgar is ok, how about "screw"? -- JackofOz (talk) 11:25, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The previous Wikipedian presumably was referring to the antipodean term "to frimble". As in eats, frimbles and leaves... --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 11:48, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

How irreverent!! But that reminds me, does anyone have a pair of nose-hair clippers handy?  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 23:50, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking at kwami's Contributions list and wondering what it's for. Is it something that comes up in one of the Rongorongo texts? Probably not biang biang noodles, Anne Brontë, moons of Saturn, or Taoiseach. —Tamfang (talk) 04:04, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm coming along rather late here, but I'd like to suggest "mate with". --Anonymous, 23:30 UTC, March 17, 2008.

Perfect and in the nook of time. Julia Rossi (talk) 07:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Also rather late, and fairly embarrassed to be participating, but "pump" seems relevant. Or you can go all Austin Powers on it. --Masamage ♫ 07:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

My friend Quasimodo has suggested "hump".  :) ----JackofOz (talk) 10:09, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, y'all. I think mounts probably works best, even if it's not carnal enough; the others seem too colloquial. Well, good enough for now. And yes, it was for the rongorongo article. — kwami (talk) 10:54, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

One Word for "repressing sexuality"?

Hello,

Is there a single word that means 'to repress one's sexuality'? Or a word that means 'to remove pleasure from a (sexual) activity?'

Thank you for your help,

-Grey —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.58.172 (talk) 12:17, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

these are probably not the words you want, but.... at least in Freudian psychology, sexual energy always goes somewhere. Ideally, into sex; if not, cathexis is the investment of libido in a person, thing, or idea, and a special case of this is sublimation, which is the investment of libido in a pursuit of a higher end. - Nunh-huh 12:21, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

One general term is anhedonia. You could call the exact concept you're looking for "Lie-back-and-think-of-Englandism" ...AnonMoos (talk) 14:34, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The term celibacy may be deployed, though it is a moot point if celibacy is effective and at what cost to an individual it is maintained.

On a tangent, there is the concept of asexuality, which according to the artcle, is affecting 1% of the population. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:00, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

On further reflection and in my humble opinion, watching a sex movie starring Ms Paris H. may make celibacy and asexuality quite attractive. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:13, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

• prude, prudish, uptight, repressed, unsexual, antisexual, virgin, catholic, abstinent, celebrate, crazyW-i-k-i-l-o-v-e-r-1-7 (talk) 00:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

March 16

Colour perception: what differences can language make?

I was reading about how different languages differentiate colours at different places on the spectrum, a common one is how many languages do have have a different word for blue and green. So is it possible that the speakers of these languages will not notice the difference between a blue and green card unless pointed out beacause of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.240.203.201 (talk) 01:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about not noticing that difference. Cyan (█) and navy (█) are pretty intensely different, and yet I think both of them are blue. That's why there are extra words that we add, like "sky" or "robin's egg" versus "dark" or "midnight". From what I hear, the Japanese used to disambiguate blue and green in the same way: blue was aoi like the sky and green was aoi like the grass. --Masamage ♫ 01:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

A good starting point is WP's excellent article Color, Anonymous.

Now, in English and most other European languages we nearly always call red (█) and pink (█) by different names. Are red things and pink things the same colour, but different shades? Objectively, we might say yes. But the language pushes us to say no. Are dark green things (█) and light green things (█) the same colour, but different shades? The objective situation is the same as with red and pink, but in this case our language supports that objective fact. See? Look at the greenery in a garden. You say it's green. Look at parts of the same scene in autumn, and you might say it's red and pink. Hmmm. Are we perceiving differently, in a way influenced by that linguistic difference? Many say we are.

That's the situation with shades (by which I have meant different saturations), when we are exposed to light of the same spectral mix except diluted with different amounts of "white" light (roughly, light of uniform distribution across the visible spectrum). Similar things can indeed be said about distinguishing blues (as a group) from greens (as a group), etc. Quite striking! Distinctions can certainly be made by all comers, but some distinctions are more salient and easy than others, it appears, depending on whether those different groups are named differently or not.

Much more could be said. There is a huge literature on this.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 01:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

After reading your explanation, for the first time ever, I agree with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. HYENASTE 02:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Australian national colours are a quite specific green and gold. But as far as the populace is concerned, any old green and any old gold will do - not because we can't distinguish various shades of green or gold but because our language is deficient in failing to provide separate names for all the possible spectral shades of green or gold. But is it really a deficiency? Do we really need all these separate names? We can get more descriptive whenever we really need to (dark green, light green, yellowy green, lime green, bottle green, olive green etc), but mostly we don't need this level of specification. We have no separate names for dark blue vs. light blue, whereas Russian does - sinyi and goluboy respectively - and they fail to have what we consider a must: a general word for "blue". How can they possibly get by with no single word for "blue"? But they seem to have managed. They might well ask "How can those silly anglophones possibly get by without distinguishing sinyi from goluboy?" But we seem to have managed as well. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

In languages which lump blue and green under one color word, the prototype of that color is still either blue or green, depending on the language. In Japan, traffic lights are red, yellow, and blue. I wonder if that's due to translating 'green' as aoi back in the Meiji Era, and the prototypical aoi being blue. — kwami (talk) 06:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

When a Japanese painter mixes blue paint with yellow paint to produce green paint, how does he distinguish between the blue and the green when talking about what he's just done? -- JackofOz (talk) 06:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Modernly, he just calls the green midori. But in the past (I mentioned this above) I'm told they just said stuff like "aoi of the sky" and "aoi of grass". And yeah, I've wondered that about the traffic lights, too. --Masamage ♫ 07:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You assume that English colors are basic. If an English painter mixes red paint with orange paint, how does he distinguish the results? It's not that languages don't have ways of expressing color, only that they have different basic color words. — kwami (talk) 08:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone else notice variation within a language? What I consider red extends well into most people's perception of orange and brown. I just Googled red-orange, and found that I considered almost all of those items inarguably red. I also own a red chicken that everyone else labels brown. HYENASTE 08:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

That's not uncommon, but I bet your pure red or best red is very close to what other people consider pure red. People vary a lot more on the margins. — kwami (talk) 09:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the Chinese see colors like what Anglophones do. We also call cyan as "blue-green" and navy blue "navy-blue". We simply put colors as dark or light or describe more obscure colors like what Anglophones do (I mean, at least like in English). But if we come across hazel, most people would just say 'brown'.

I think natives (I mean, not overseas ones) would have more difficulty describing how different peoples look like. I never knew Nicole Kidman was a redhead until I read about the red hair in this Wikipedia. I thought her hair was fairly 'brown', or 'hazel' in English; I found it hard to distinguish between brown and hazel and strawberry red (hair). I do see people's hair or eyes have different shades of colors. Yet, we say a redhead is a 'red haired person', or a blonde a 'golden haired person', but we don't have 'redhead' and 'blonde'. We don't have a word for 'brunette', either. Any shades of red or golden or brown hair are just red, golden and brown. The dozens of words Anglophones can use for hair and eye colors don't exist in Chinese at all. We only have the simplest colors to call those physical traits.

The same goes for skin colors. We think two of the main peoples are white and black as you think, but we don't have the word for 'brown people' - I mean, if a non-Asian people is neither white nor black, we'd only know their nation, like 'Brazilian' (when Brazil is rather ethnically diverse, which not many of us have knowledge of). We know that Arabs, Indians, Thais, Indonesians and Mongolians look different, but then we have no words rather than just 'Asian' or their nationalities. It seems like 'yellow' has become something very negative in the Western culture, but then many of us still call ourselves 'yellow people'. In general, many don't think there is anything wrong with calling most Asian peoples as 'yellow' (or Asian, of course).--Fitzwilliam (talk) 12:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you know if 'yellow' has anything to do with Chinese Imperial Yellow, or is that just coincidence? — kwami (talk) 18:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't know about that, but a Vietnamese friend of mine says that "blue" and "green" are said the same way. Odd. --~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 18:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

In case nobody was clear on this; no matter what, language will not affect someone's perception of colors. Everyone (provided they don't have some sort of color blindness) will be able to tell the difference between similar colors that they don't have words for. The language's treatment of colors might have an impact on their attitude, memory, and description (which is sort of obvious) but not in how they see it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:38, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

As the perception of colour is a qualia (or probably a qualium ?) this last statement is, at least, not verifiable.

If I (a native speaker of German), were to perceive the grass to be blue and the sky to be green this personal sensation would never be noticed by anybody. As people call the sky blue and the grass green I would simply apply the term blue to what I see as green and the term green to what to me is blue.

And if I were to paint a landscape I would, of course, use MY proper blue for the trees. That everybody else calls it green is not my business.

So much for communication. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

For Latin lovers: quale is the singular, qualia the plural. Oops. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I was referring to the question on whether the ability of one's eyes to distinguish colors is affected by language. It is not. This ability is very much verifiable and if I recall correctly has been studied by researchers. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

My speculation: yellow might be considered a homophone of 皇 (meaning empire). The Qin kings and Qin Shi Huang believed that BLACK was lucky for some reasons. I'm not sure, but at least for Qin Shi Huang after he unified China, he thought that black represented the WATER element which he believed to represent the Qin power. It was a unique era when black was regarded the royal color. In later eras, YELLOW was a symbol for the dragon (the golden dragon) and especially for the Manchu emperors. During the Qing Dynasty, yellow was the royal color and only the royal family members could wear in yellow. It's notable, though, that I can see people like Song emperors wearing in RED instead. Yellow isn't, at least, the only royal color for ALL the dynasties. I can only say yellow is one of the lucky colors in the Chinese culture (one other being red).

In contemporary eras, yellow is more like a symbol of identity. While yellow connotations might have become offensive (I mean, the Mongoloid ones), people still feel it is alright to consider themselves yellow people, but this has nothing to do with empire anymore.--Fitzwilliam (talk) 13:54, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles. University of California Press, 1969. Berlin and Kay presented a hypothesis (which certainly works generally, if not completely) that certain colour terms are more likely to appear than others when only small numbers of basic colour terms are present in a language. Off the top of my head there are languages (in PNG) that have only two basic colour terms. They have no problem telling the colours apart, but don't have consistent basic terms for them. Rather there are referential terms (the colour of a tiger, the colour of the sky and so on). When there are more colour terms added, the progression of which colour terms are added first can be predicted to an extent. Black, White, Red and Yellow are some of the first, then Blue, Green, Brown, Orange, Pink, Grey, and then Light/Dark Blue (as in Russian or Spanish). Steewi (talk) 00:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if this has been mentioned but our article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language) on the subject of distinguishing those colorus across languages is quite indepth and interesting. ny156uk (talk) 17:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Strength/weakness: one word

Please see Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Strength/weakness: one word87.102.75.250 (talk) 10:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Check if principle of double effect (Thomas Aquinas) is useful to you. It is closely related to ambivalence, which was already offered to you as an option. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You might want to have a look at Niels Bohr's notion of profound truth as in this quote "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." 200.127.59.151 (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the principle of double effect is very close to what I'm looking for (thank you for the link!), but 'ambivalence' is not. --Masamage ♫ 17:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Is Uruguay unique?

I occasionally suffer from insomnia (it's a hallmark of genius, apparently), and I've been sitting here since 3:37 a.m., wondering if there's any other English word apart from Uruguay (ignoring Uruguayan) in which the same vowel appears 3 times and is pronounced in 3 different ways (yoo in the first syllable; oo in the second; w in the third). Oh, I know some people pronounce the first syllable "oo", but I'm giving "yoo" all my attention.  :)

Damn it, as I was typing the foregoing I just thought of another one - extreme (counting the silent e at the end as a separate pronunciation). (Which makes my header kind of redundant now, but it's eye-catching so I think I'll just leave it.) There must be others. Any ideas? -- JackofOz (talk) 18:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like someone's got a case of the 'holism... Don't worry, there's treatment. Here's my offering: Catalonian. According to the AHD, the first a is a long vowel, the second is tripped over (moving straight fom the t to the l), and the third is pronounced /ɘ/. --~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 18:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Fairly remote and sparrow´s fart time at 7 AM, but how about AustrAliA ? --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I'm with the OED on that one (at least for my accent): Catalonian has one /æ/ and two schwas. If you're counting silent Es, then extremeness has four in one word. More threes plucked from the OED at random: catalase, archipelagian, fertilization and various similar words. Algebraist 20:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Approaching this from the opposite direction, I think Uruguay is technically pronounced oo-roog-why, at least by the people who live there (and for some reason by me; I don't know why that should be). What you list is the standard Americanized/Australianized pronunciation (my husband says it that way, even), but is mispronouncing something from another language all it takes for it to count as English and be useful to this puzzle? Because if so, that makes it a lot easier. :) --Masamage ♫ 20:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

icebreaker is another one; immobilization might have four for some speakers.

While we're talking about Uruguay, is this the only Spanish word that has the dipthhong /wai/ that isn't a second person verbal conjugation? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, there's Paraguay. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

True. Not sure if I should include those at Spanish phonology, though. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

(reindent) Ƶ§œš is asking for occurences of the triphthong uai in Spanish. Apart from common instances of the second person (plural), and the two afore-mentioned countries, I can only remember the interjection guay. Pallida  Mors 03:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't class Yoo-roog-why as a mispronunciation, Masamage. In Spanish, yes, but not in English. It's a normal (and, I suspect, the predominant) pronunciation among anglophones. We say "France" different from the way the Frenchies do; we say "Mexico" different from the way the Mexicans do; etc. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow your phonetic spelling. Do you mean you pronounce it /'jurugwaɪ/? I can't remember ever hearing anything other than /'jʊərəgwaɪ/ in England. Algebraist 21:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC) corrected stress

Are you saying you pronounce it with 4 syllables, and the stress on the final syallable? I have never heard it said that way, and can see no justification for it. The first version you gave, but with the stress on the first syllable - /'jurugwaɪ/ - is how I say it. Or maybe /'jurəgwaɪ/ would be closer. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

No, that's three syllables (I had the stress mark wrong though. oops!): the dipthong of tour, then a schwa, then the vowel of eye. Algebraist 01:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, all a bit confusing. When you say "the diphthong of tour", I read that to mean the double sound u-ə (sort of), which to my ears is 2 syllables. If you say you only count it as 1 syllable, I'm not sure how it's distinguishable from the plain u (IPA). -- JackofOz (talk) 01:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

No one pronounces it "yoo-roo-gwai" in English. My dictionary suggests /jʊərəgwʌɪ/, and that's pretty close to how I say it.Paul Davidson (talk) 01:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I checked out IPA before I answered Algebraist's post, and it seems diphthongs are marked with a superscripted second symbol. If a symbol is not superscripted, it's pronounced separately from the ones on either side. Can anyone explain where I'm going wrong in my understanding of this? (We really need a video-conferencing facility for these sorts of questions; the written word is sometimes hopelessly inadequate.) -- JackofOz (talk) 01:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you give an example of a diphthong being written as a vowel+superscript? I've never seen that, and I think this is where your confusion might come from. HYENASTE 02:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, scrub the superscript idea (I must have read something too quickly and got the wrong impression). I've now boned up on diphthongs and their IPA representations. Maybe it's just my unique way of saying things, but for the life of me I cannot hear any diphthong in the opening syllable of Uruguay. The example of ʊə in the diphthong article is the word "lure". There's no way that sound is present in my pronunciation of Uruguay, or that of anyone else I've ever heard. "Uruguay a land" rhymes exactly with "You require land" and would be a perfect mondegreen. Would anyone represent the latter expression starting with /jʊərə-/?-- JackofOz (talk) 06:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, superscripts are sometimes used for diphthongs, but I've only seen them for falling diphthongs (eye [a^j] etc.). Ideally, IPA diacritics modify the sound of a base letter, and as an extension of this, you may superscript any symbol to modify an adjacent one. So [t^ʃ] for the ch sound, especially if you have reason to think of it as a kind of t (as in Japanese), and the same for diphthongs. But it's not particularly common. — kwami (talk) 07:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

As for Spanish uai, I notice it only seems to follow /g/. Maybe this isn't a triphthong /uai/, but a diphthong /ai/ following a consonant /gw/? /kw/ and /gw/ are common in European languages, and /kw/ is often cognate with /hw/ ([ʍ]) in English. — kwami (talk) 07:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

If I understand the way Spanish works correctly, [w] and [j] are only present as vowel nuclei. That's certainly how they're analyzed in the sources at our Spanish phonology page. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep. Uai is one of the triphthongs of Spanish, in line with what I posted above. Anyway, w in gw is a semiconsonant, so distinction between consonantic or vocalic sounds in this scheme is not strightforward.

By the way, -guai is not the only phonetic group in which this "triphthong" appears. Cf. licuáis, actuáis, etc. Incidentally, u looks more consonantic to me in triphthongs following a voiced consonant (i. e. Uruguay, buey) rather than a mute one (actuáis). Pallida  Mors 17:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

"Haha, look at this country - You Are Gay!" (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) Adam Bishop (talk) 07:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I submit the word "Panama". As pronounced in Amercian English, it's pænəma, although in Spanish the vowels should all be pronounced the same. Thomprod (talk) 22:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Very nice, Thomprod. And "Panamanian", and "Mandalay" and probably lots of others. How silly of me not to even consider "Australia" (thanks, Cookatoo) - however there's more than one way to say it, and it does depend on which version you choose. Normally, I use schwas at the start and the finish. But if I say it carefully it comes out as "Os-trail-ya", which qualifies. Maybe a shorter list would be one with words with 4 different pronunciations of the same vowel letter, of which Algebraist's "extremeness" is a good example. Maybe for another time, though. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I would like to go on record as protesting the inclusion of Australia, because the sound of first syllable is comes from the Au diphthong, not just from the A ("no I never heard it at all, till there was U.") --LarryMac | Talk 15:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

True, it is a diphthong, although its pronunciation varies widely. (Afaik, the only people who start the pronunciation of Australia like "author" or "Audrey" are stereotypical upper-class Britons, who may hardly even exist anymore. I think the Queen says it like that. When we Aussies say it slowly, it's "Oss-" (as in ossify), that's as far as we go towards "correctness"; spoken quickly, it's "Əs'".) But the fact remains that the letter group includes the letter A, and its pronunciation can vary from those of the other 2 "a"s. Your protest has been noted, and will be held against you in forthcoming legal proceedings.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 10:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Canada follows the same pattern, although I'd say that's /ʌ/ as the last vowel in "Canada", and the last vowel in Panama can be /ʌ/ or /ɑ/. Paul Davidson (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

As a means _____

Is there a preferred preposition after "as a means..." (i.e., to, of, etc.) or are they pretty much equivalent? Thanks. Imagine Reason (talk) 21:15, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It depends on the rest of the sentence as to which prep you'd use, and they're not interchangeable.

• As a means to an end, this proposal sucks.
• As a means of getting to an end, it still sucks. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The phrase

• a means to ..." will generally be followed by a noun, whilst
• a means of ..." is followed by a gerund. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

March 17

whats mulling mean?

Specifically in this sentence.

"Olympic official: athletes mulling Beijing boycott"

Does it meaning, complaining? considering? anxious? what? The wiktionary is no help. All every dictionary says is see mull. And it means something about windows...seems to need an update.W-i-k-i-l-o-v-e-r-1-7 (talk) 01:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know which dictionaries you've checked, but either chuck them out or you may need to consider getting your eyes tested. My dictionary gives 3 definitions of the verb mull:

• to ruminate over, especially in an ineffective way; to ponder
• to make a mess or failure of
• to heat, sweeten and spice a drink.

It's the first definition they're using here. They're thinking about it, but haven't come to a decision yet. I have no idea what the references to windows is, but I've never heard of such a meaning of "mull". -- JackofOz (talk) 01:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you ran across "mullion" looking for "mulling". I like onelook for an online dictionary. "Mull" is headline lingo for "consider"; they use it because it's shorter. --Milkbreath (talk) 01:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, be aware that "Olympic official: athletes mulling Beijing boycott" is a headline, and consequently written in headline-speak. In normal language, in the sense we're talking about, you don't "mull" something, you "mull over" something. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Mulling can tire, as Sir P. McCartney pointed out after pondering lengthily about a settlement. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:26, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Oriental or Asian?

What is the difference between the words Oriental and Asian? I remembered there was a difference, but I forgot what it was. --~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 01:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

While Asian has a very specific, clear-cut meaning, Oriental is a term of relative connotations whose meaning has changed through time. The article Orient mulls over these differences. Pallida  Mors 03:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Another difference is that it used to be common in English (at least American English) to refer to people of East and Southeast Asian origin as "Orientals", but today that term is considered politically incorrect and "Asians" is preferred. My mother will still describe someone as "an Oriental" when she means he was either Chinese or Japanese, but she doesn't know which. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 05:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Oriental is not only Asian, but also North African, specifically Egyptian. Look at this article: [3]. --Omidinist (talk) 05:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Geographically speaking, the Orient might include the Middle East and Magreb (especially in its contrast with the Occident), or else just East Asia; but it seems that Oriental as an ethnic term is used in the vernacular for mainly East Asians (from Malaysia to Japan, roughly). Paul Davidson (talk) 07:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

To me, the commonplace meaning of oriental is restricted to the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and maybe Mongolians. I don't normally associate Filipinos or Malaysians with the word, though the fact that many of them are ethnic Chinese complicates things a bit. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

"Oriental" means "eastern", and hence is a relative term (east of where, exactly?). This presumes that the speaker is from somewhere west of the "Orient", and regards that as the absolute, normal or unmarked state. "Asian" is an absolute term, in that the position of Asia does not depend on the position of the speaker. "Oriental" can only have meaning in a western-centric view of the world. (Which is pretty much what Pallida Mors says, only in more words!) SaundersW (talk) 09:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Colloquially in the UK, "Asian" means "Indian subcontinental" (India, Pakistan, etc) and "Oriental" means "North east Asian" (China Korea Japan, etc). Elsewhere, "Asian" means the same as "Oriental" colloquially, but Oriental is often seen as archaic and slightly derogatory because of its Euro-centric perspective.

Although - if one thinks about it "Asia" is rather Eurocentric, too, since it started out as a European term meaning a small bit of land near the east coast of the Mediterranean, and has somehow been adopted - even by Far Eastern countries - to refer to bits of the continent which 400 years ago would have had no idea what "Asia" meant. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The switch from Oriental to Asian in North America mainly or at least at first is a fascinating example of how the arbitrary quality of words is both denied and justified. In the US, Oriental really only usually was equivalent East Asian before it began to be condemned as Eurocentric. It's proposed replacement is of course, as has been pointed out, just as Eurocentric in its origin. In fact, the division between Europe and Asia is really Eurocentric too, Europe being culturally and geographically less coherent as a unit than other parts of what is called Asia. mnewmanqc (talk) 18:06, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

In British English these terms have specific meanings, and yes, it can get confusing. Some years ago I was told that a Chinese woman was black in the inclusive sense (i.e. not white, see Black British) but not Asian in the colloquial sense (i.e. not British Asian, from the Indian subcontinent). BrainyBabe (talk) 07:52, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

A Chinese-American person I once knew used to say that rugs are Oriental but people are Asian. Just goes to show you that every minority group must at some time change its name. As noted above, "Asian" is also a European term, originally used by the Greeks to refer to what's now Turkey and vicinity. When the Chinese transliterated the European word "Asia" in to Chinese characters, they got 亞細亞, or 亞 for short; 亞 means "inferior." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 11:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I can recall that Liang Qichao began calling his native continent as 亞細亞 in the 1890s (like writing political stuff in his journals), at the time when the Chinese had names for Belgium, Poland and Turkey, etc. I'm afraid, though, that I can't be certain whether "Asia" was a name coined by Chinese scholars like him or people like Matteo Ricci.--Fitzwilliam (talk) 01:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

strain in spanish

how do you say strain as in virus strain in spanish?W-i-k-i-l-o-v-e-r-1-7 (talk) 03:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the translation is "variedad" as in "variedad de virus". --Victor12 (talk) 11:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Cepa. Pallida  Mors 16:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

US vs USA

Why does it sound odd to say "USA forces" and "USA government", but entirely natural to say "US forces" and "US government"? 67.201.161.119 (talk) 04:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

This is probably a topic in the realm of the purely subjective; I'd hazard an answer that it's a combination of (a) the familiarity of the "US" form which makes "USA" seem discordant and (b) the more comfortable liaison of the sibilant S in US with the following letters. The A in USA has a y' sound at the end which doesn't blend well with most following consonants. Retarius | Talk 04:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd hazard a guess that it's because "USA" is a short form of the name of the country, which operates overall as a noun, when what we need before "forces" and "government" is an adjectival expression. The same thing applied with the good 'ol USSR. We talked of Soviet aggression, Soviet hegemony etc, rather than USSR aggression etc. Perfectly reasonable. -- JackofOz (talk) 05:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

With a "normal" country, we'd have an adjective for such purposes such as "government of France" - "French government". With countries known primarily as acronyms, it becomes difficult, so some other method of modification has to be found - in the case of the US, "US" has sounded okay-enough to have become common.

As Jack mentioned, one way is to substitute a non-derivative adjective: so Soviet for USSR, British for UK, American for USA. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Although it's interesting that we do also talk about "the UK government", "UK citizens" etc., as well as "British government", "British citizens" etc. Then there's The China Syndrome, not "The Chinese Syndrome", but that might be a different situation. -- JackofOz (talk) 12:09, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

"China Syndrome" may be due to the fact that the syndrome isn't Chinese, it's about China. As in, the "China problem". Corvus cornix_talk 16:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It may also have to do with prosody; a stressed syllable after the "A" in "USA" produces an awkward rhythm. 194.171.56.13 (talk) 19:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Expand it out: You wouldn't say the United States of America(n) government, but you can say the United States government. Or just follow Dos Pasos and say the Usonian government. — kwami (talk) 10:45, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Japanese Sound Symbolism

Has it always been in Japanese? Has onomatopoeia always been found since the start (or "dawn") of the language?68.148.164.166 (talk) 08:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't know how far back it goes, but similar subsystems are found in a number of languages: see Ideophone... AnonMoos (talk) 09:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, as far back as we have Japanese literature (early 8th century). A few examples include:

• bisi bisi
• kaka
• ko₂woro₂ ko₂woro₂
• moya moya
• sawi sawi (also sawe sawe)
• saya saya
• tawa tawa
• ura ura

Bendono (talk) 12:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

What are those ₂s? --Masamage ♫ 20:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

ko₂ contrasted with ko₁. See Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai for a very poor description. Early theories were that OJ had eight vowels, but more modern research suggests that it was more likely a glide -w or -j. The issue is still highly argued today. Bendono (talk) 21:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure about the history of Japanese onomatopoeia, but Robbins Burling in The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved, points to onomatopoetic words as as iconic (resembling the thing that they stand for) while most words are symbolic (the connection between the meaning and form is arbitrary). As even captive chimpanzees have gestured spontaneously in an iconic (or indexical, that is, having some logical or physical association with the referant) manner. It is very likely that human language developed from non-arbitrary iconic and indexical "gesture-calls" and on page 81 Burling states "Since gesture-calls first develop by the ritualization of instrumental behavior, they begin with the inherent iconicity of all istrumental actions. With the passage of enough evolutionary time, communicative signals tend to become increasingly stereotyped and even to lose their initial motivation, but until stereotypy takes over completely, signals retain soem of their original iconicity or indexicality."

So I'd say that onomatopoeia has been with us for a while. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Meitei Mayek script

http://tabish.freeshell.org/eeyek/history.html describes Meitei Mayek script as having "18 alphabets":

According to the very few Puyas that survived, such as, Wakoklon Thilel Salai Singkak, Wakoklol Thilel Salai Amailon, Meetei Mayek comprised of 18 alphabets.

The problem is that the link is in ==External links==. So then that means the link should be accurate. So, DOES Meitei Mayek have 18 alphabets? Or is it just one abugida?68.148.164.166 (talk) 12:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know anything about this language, but I get suspicious of that statement immediately because the grammar is so very broken. They might even mean 'letters' for as far as I trust their command of English--although a language with 18 alphabets would be pretty awesome. --Masamage ♫ 20:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems fairly common for people from the Subcontinent to translate "letter" (akshara) as "alphabet", and if you check the Omniglot site, you'll see they do list just 18 akshara for the basic script. — kwami (talk) 10:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

How to say in Japanese...

Argh, I'm tearing my hair out trying to figure this out for a short composition due tomorrow; when I turned in my draft, my teacher marked what I had as wrong, but I don't see the correct form anywhere in the textbook or online. What I'm trying to say is "My brother had a lot of friends, but I did not have many friends"; I wrote 私の弟がたくさんともだちをもっていましたでも私はあまりともだちをもっていませんでした。(which romanizes to "watashi no otoutou ga takusan tomodachi o motteimashita demo watashi wa amari tomodachi o motteimasendeshita"). Apparently I can't use motsu to mean I have friends - what verb is correct here? I suspect it's one of those idiomatic phrases, like it'll be literally "friends there were a lot of" or something, but I'm so lost... thanks for the help. Kuronue | Talk 23:08, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

What about 'imasu', which is the equivalent of 'arimasu' but for animate objects? That affects where you use 'wa' and 'ga', too. I would also say 'kedo' rather than 'demo', since you're connecting two sentences, and you can probably leave off the 'watashi no' at the begining, since the informality of "little brother" makes it clear you're talking about your own. So that leaves you with "Ototo wa takusan tomodachi ga imashita kedo, watashi wa amari tomodachi ga imasen deshita." There might be a little more refining possible, but that seems okay to me. --Masamage ♫ 23:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, is that how I have to do that? I thought it was some idiom like that. My brother there were a lot of friends, of course, how silly of me ()-,- thanks a lot. Kuronue | Talk 23:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It's kind of 'has', but yeah. X) "As for my brother, a lot of friends existed." Anyway, I hope that works! I think I've said something similar to my teacher and gotten away with it, so I'll cross my fingers for you. --Masamage ♫ 23:34, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you need to say "takusan no tomodatchi" — or even better, 弟は友達がたくさんいます… Paul Davidson (talk) 07:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Paul's latter form would be normal. — kwami (talk) 10:34, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

March 18

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Does anyone know why the film is called The Bridge on the River Kwai and the book on which it was based The Bridge over the River Kwai? Why would the preposition be so significant as to warrant a change? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC))

It's worse than that, Joseph. The original French title was Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï, which translates literally to "The Bridge of the River Kwai". But that sounds unidiomatic in English, so the English-language title of the book had the word over. When it came to the movie (one of the all-time greats, imho), I guess they wanted a title that sounded a little less clunky and a little more marketable than "over the River..", so it became "The Bridge on the River Kwai", which flows more easily from the tongue. That's just my guess, though. -- JackofOz (talk) 05:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Le Pont etc means River Kwai Bridge which is not in the least poetic, more like a mapmaker's documetnary. I didn't realise movie titles were tested for their rolling off the tongue qualties but since you've raised it, maybe they are... Julia Rossi (talk) 07:21, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

You mean like The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger or Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (gasp)? Clarityfiend (talk) 07:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

They're also checked for ease of pronunciation a la Betelgeuse/Beetlejuice - X201 (talk) 15:28, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

In case anyone's interested, Boulle's book was based on real events but shamelessly distorted part of the truth about the building of the Burma Railway bridge over the Khwae Yai River... in particular, transferring the spirit of collaboration from French officers to an invented Englishman: l'ennemi héréditaire strikes again! To counter some of the misinformation in the film, see Philip Toosey. Xn4 18:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I am interested - since I heard the Poles cracked the enigma code, not the Brish or Americans. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

That's only somewhat true: Marian Rejewski and his team were the first to break a form of enigma, but lacking the resources to keep up with improvements to the system, they handed over their work to the British and French in 1939. It was the British who broke the (massively stronger) forms of enigma used later. The americans were not involved at all, but did break the Japanese purple code. Algebraist 22:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

"The americans were not involved at all" which seems a good enough line for me to point everyone towards the Historical Inaccuracies section of U-571 (film). It didn't do very well at the box office on this side of the Atlantic, can't think why.... - X201 (talk) 22:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Matthew Mcconaughey is enough reason for any film not to do well. SaundersW (talk) 16:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the input ... I guess it makes sense. But .... in terms of marketing, are there significantly different marketing concerns for a book versus a film? If so, what? In other words, if the preposition "over" is too klunky / non-poetic of a title for a film, it is equally so for the book ... and should have concerned the book publishers, just as it did the film producers ... no? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 06:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC))

When I was writing my post above, I just knew you were going to come back with a question like this, Joseph, because the same query occurred to me. It may - and this is purely another guess - have something to do with fact that the French book was translated into English in 1954 by a Briton named Xan Fielding, whereas the producers of the movie were American, and the slight difference in title reflects a slight preference for one word over another in those 2 countries. Since they were making a film depicting the story as originally told by Boulle, not of any one translation of the story (I assume there are more than just Fielding's), I guess they didn't feel obliged to comply exactly with the title of any one translation. There are always more than one way to translate a title. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Generic country names

Am I correct in thinking that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is actually a common noun, not a proper noun? Unlike, say, the United States of America or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which contain specific geographical referents. Although the term Soviet came to be treated as a proper noun, is it not originally a common noun? Is there any other example of a state with a common noun as its name, or whose name was originally a common noun? Lantzy ^talk 17:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

For me, it's a proper noun. To say "a union of soviet socialist republics", would infer something quite different from "the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", a term which described and was and is the name of a particular political union, hence the capital letters. Xn4 17:58, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

But it is correct to say that "the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" is a country name made up entirely of words none of which is a proper noun. Other examples that come to mind are Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Provinciën (Republic of the Seven United Provinces) and Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów (Commonwealth of the Two Nations). The official name of the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary was die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council). Of course, if you look at our List of country name etymologies, you will find that almost all country names ultimately derive from common nouns. — Kpalion^(talk) 19:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Of course, both 'union' and 'republic' are common nouns. Thanks, Kpalion, I'd never heard that name for the bits of Austria-Hungary that weren't Hungary. The name may have helped the British Foreign Office in 1914 to resolve the vexed question of whether or not the British Empire was at war with Liechtenstein! (After a lot of head-scratching, our boys recognized Liechtenstein's neutrality.) Xn4 19:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Holy See would be another example as both terms are far from being proper nouns. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 00:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It may not be quite true to say that the "Soviet" in "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" would otherwise have been an improper noun. In the Russian, it's Sovyétskikh, which is the genitive plural form of Sovyétskiy, the adjective formed from the noun Sovyét (Which has only 2 syllables, not 3: sə-VYET. Note: I put the stress marks in to show the stress is on the 2nd syllable in all these words, not on the first as we tend to say it, SO-vi-ət. The stress marks are not part of the written language, as they are in French, for example). "Sovyét" simply means what "Council" means to us, although in English we also use the word "Soviet" in reference to these Russian councils. One could argue that when used generically, "council" or "soviet" would not be capitalised; but each individual one would be "the Moscow Council/Soviet", "the Novgorod Council/Soviet" or whatever. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:49, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

But then, the same goes for words like "republic" or "union". Not capitalized when used generically, but capitalized in names like "the Republic of France". So "soviet" is not any different, although I don't know why "council" is not used instead (as in "the Union of Council Socialist Republics"). As for the Holy See, I was thinking about it too, but it's not really a country (the State of the Vatican City is, but "Vatican" is a proper noun). — Kpalion^(talk) 17:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much, Xn4, Kpalion, Cookatoo, and Jack. I knew there had to be other, better examples. Lantzy ^talk 18:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Numbers written out?

Can I copy (English) written numbers from 1 to 1000 from somewhere? --212.149.216.233 (talk) 17:20, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean in the sense of a PDF with them on a document with them handwritten on? You can 'create' a list of the numbers very rapidly in Excel, but to write them by hand would take more work. Your best bet might be to hand-write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 and then do some sort of photo-copying/clever system to copy them rather than having to hand write every number. ny156uk (talk) 17:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I did, but apparently something went wrong. See the thing below if you feel like searching for errors. It's weirdly formatted because it's for Project Euler Problem 17.

I hate this template

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eighthundredandseventytwo
eighthundredandseventythree
eighthundredandseventyfour
eighthundredandseventyfive
eighthundredandseventysix
eighthundredandseventyseven
eighthundredandseventyeight
eighthundredandseventynine
eighthundredandeighty
eighthundredandeightyone
eighthundredandeightytwo
eighthundredandeightythree
eighthundredandeightyfour
eighthundredandeightyfive
eighthundredandeightysix
eighthundredandeightyseven
eighthundredandeightyeight
eighthundredandeightynine
eighthundredandninety
eighthundredandninetyone
eighthundredandninetytwo
eighthundredandninetythree
eighthundredandninetyfour
eighthundredandninetyfive
eighthundredandninetysix
eighthundredandninetyseven
eighthundredandninetyeight
eighthundredandninetynine
ninehundred
ninehundredandone
ninehundredandtwo
ninehundredandthree
ninehundredandfour
ninehundredandfive
ninehundredandsix
ninehundredandseven
ninehundredandeight
ninehundredandnine
ninehundredandten
ninehundredandeleven
ninehundredandtwelve
ninehundredandthirteen
ninehundredandfourteen
ninehundredandfifteen
ninehundredandsixteen
ninehundredandseventeen
ninehundredandeighteen
ninehundredandnineteen
ninehundredandtwenty
ninehundredandtwentyone
ninehundredandtwentytwo
ninehundredandtwentythree
ninehundredandtwentyfour
ninehundredandtwentyfive
ninehundredandtwentysix
ninehundredandtwentyseven
ninehundredandtwentyeight
ninehundredandtwentynine
ninehundredandthirty
ninehundredandthirtyone
ninehundredandthirtytwo
ninehundredandthirtythree
ninehundredandthirtyfour
ninehundredandthirtyfive
ninehundredandthirtysix
ninehundredandthirtyseven
ninehundredandthirtyeight
ninehundredandthirtynine
ninehundredandforty
ninehundredandfortyone
ninehundredandfortytwo
ninehundredandfortythree
ninehundredandfortyfour
ninehundredandfortyfive
ninehundredandfortysix
ninehundredandfortyseven
ninehundredandfortyeight
ninehundredandfortynine
ninehundredandfifty
ninehundredandfiftyone
ninehundredandfiftytwo
ninehundredandfiftythree
ninehundredandfiftyfour
ninehundredandfiftyfive
ninehundredandfiftysix
ninehundredandfiftyseven
ninehundredandfiftyeight
ninehundredandfiftynine
ninehundredandsixty
ninehundredandsixtyone
ninehundredandsixtytwo
ninehundredandsixtythree
ninehundredandsixtyfour
ninehundredandsixtyfive
ninehundredandsixtysix
ninehundredandsixtyseven
ninehundredandsixtyeight
ninehundredandsixtynine
ninehundredandseventy
ninehundredandseventyone
ninehundredandseventytwo
ninehundredandseventythree
ninehundredandseventyfour
ninehundredandseventyfive
ninehundredandseventysix
ninehundredandseventyseven
ninehundredandseventyeight
ninehundredandseventynine
ninehundredandeighty
ninehundredandeightyone
ninehundredandeightytwo
ninehundredandeightythree
ninehundredandeightyfour
ninehundredandeightyfive
ninehundredandeightysix
ninehundredandeightyseven
ninehundredandeightyeight
ninehundredandeightynine
ninehundredandninety
ninehundredandninetyone
ninehundredandninetytwo
ninehundredandninetythree
ninehundredandninetyfour
ninehundredandninetyfive
ninehundredandninetysix
ninehundredandninetyseven
ninehundredandninetyeight
ninehundredandninetynine
onethousand

--212.149.216.233 (talk) 18:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The obvious errors are the lack of hyphens in numbers like twenty-one or ninety-five, and the lack of spaces before and/or after "hundred" or "and". --LarryMac | Talk 19:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Also see our excellent article Names of numbers in English. Thomprod (talk) 20:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

About those errors, I probably should have said, the task was to count all letters but no spaces or hyphens. --212.149.216.233 (talk) 20:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as I see, you didn't make any mistakes in typing out the numbers (you are my hero if you did it by hand!) What I did was I copied your numbers to an MS Word file, run a replace tool to replace every of "twenty", "thirty", ..., "ninety", "hundred", "and" with "twenty ", "thirty ", ..., "ninety ", "hundred ", "and " (added spaces after the words) and then run a spell check. Word didn't find any problems, word count shows that there are exactly 1000 lines, so I concluded you typed the numbers right and didn't skip any. There are 21,124 characters used in there. Why do you think that something went wrong?  ARTYOM  20:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Meanwhile — I've heard that in Hindi the numbers up to 99 have been so strongly affected by sandhi (and not regularized by analogy) that one has to learn them separately; where might one look for a list, either in Devanāgarī or transliterated? —Tamfang (talk) 04:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I've heard the same about Nepali, but thought Hindi was fairly regular. Actually, even in Nepali most of the numbers are reasonably close to being regular, though few are entirely predictable. — kwami (talk) 05:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You are my hero ARTYOM, as you gave the correct answer. I got 23,124 in my own calculations and was clever enough to try subtracting 1000 from it to take out the newlines, but I forgot my good old Windows version of *nixy word counter wc expects one byte new lines (lf) instead of the Windows style two byte (cr-lf) new lines, so all the new lines get doubled. Thanks! --212.149.216.233 (talk) 05:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Haha! And now I got involved in Project Euler too :o)  ARTYOM  08:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

March 19

Attribution of movie quotes

In a situation where a quote comes from a movie, and you can't pin down the exact creator of the words because:

(a) there were various scriptwriters and it could have been any one of them, or any pair of them, or any three of them .. or ...or all of them, that were involved in producing the final words; or

(b) the words came from the book on which the movie was based, but with some slight alteration by the scriptwriter/s, or

(c) you don't know and it's not really possible to find out which, if either, of these is the case,

to whom do you attribute the quote? -- JackofOz (talk) 11:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If you were using the quote in a scholarly work of some sort, you would, I believe, cite the script as the source, and the scriptwriters (all of them) as the authors. Less formally, I might be inclined to attribute it to the character who actually says the lines in the movie. Carom (talk) 11:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Even in some scholarly work, I've seen quotes attributed to the characters in the movies, presumably because of all of the above problems JackofOz mentioned. But then again, these scholarly works have been outside the realm of drama and film departments, so they may prefer a different standard.--droptone (talk) 11:50, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Another reason to attribute to the character is that the writer usually is not speaking in his/her own voice, i.e. it might contradict the writer's own opinions. —Tamfang (talk) 19:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Gänsefüßchen

From a non native speaker: I always thought that "quote" was a verb and "quotation" was the associated noun, meaning that there is no such thing as "a quote". Checking some online references to make certain, I got confused.

• It is always listed in its function as a verb, but some of the dictionaries also have it as a noun, equivalent to "quotation". One or two definitely state that it must not be used as noun.
• On the fairly synonymous cite vs. citation there is no such ambiguity, as "cite" is exclusively listed as a verb and "citation" is exclusively listed as noun.
• Of course, I have heard "quote" being used as a noun, but I always thought this to be colloquial usage.

--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 11:53, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your last point. You can use "quote" as a noun, but not in formal written English. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 12:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If it comes to that, you can use "cite" as a noun too, but not in formal written English. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 12:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

A "quote" is a perfectly valid noun in insurance circles. Corvus cornix_talk 18:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you to richard in .at, Angr in .de (I think) and Corvus Cornix.

I was aware that "quote" is used commercially in the meaning of "estimate of payment required for...", but I considered this to be irrelevant to the language desk. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

That use of 'quote' is still colloquial. Strictly speaking, builders, insurance companies and the like should give you a quotation. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 19:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

dictionary.com doesn't think it's colloquial. Corvus cornix_talk 20:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard of a builder or insurance agent giving a quotation. Quote has definitely become an acceptable noun here in America. — Laura Scudder ☎ 21:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

K ever pronounced in a word including kn?

I am wondering if there exist any word in English which includes the letter k immediately followed by n, and where the k is pronounced. --Lgriot (talk) 13:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Darkness, for one. Deor (talk) 13:37, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Any word that is not an obvious composition? --Lgriot (talk) 13:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Cockney for another, although I think the OP was angling for words starting with kn where the k is pronounced. - X201 (talk) 13:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if this counts as an English word, but: Vermicious knid. Carom (talk) 13:40, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I want to say knish, and pre-empt to "not English" objection by saying that it's the only word available for ordering such an item at the deli. "English" is a rather fluid language, full of words that came from somewhere else. --LarryMac | Talk 13:56, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You can construct a list of such words starting with kn- easily enough using a dictionary: all the kn- words are together and there few enough that it's practical to look at all the pronunciations shown. Using my 1979 Random House Unabridged, the only other such word I find is knaidel, another cooking word from Yiddish. The dictionary also lists the proper nouns Knesset, Knut, and Knute, but it seems clear that these should not be considered English words. --Anonymous, 14:07 UTC, March 19, 2008.

This word-initial sound combination is really outside the phonotactics of English. English speakers with a knack for non-native phonetics can of course produce the sound combination, but typically when Americans order a knish, they pronounce it kɘ 'nɪʃ (kuh NISH). Other foreign borrowings with this combination of letters get a similar added syllable with an unstressed vowel. Marco polo (talk) 14:13, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Outside the phonotactics of Modern English, perhaps, but not those of Middle English, in which the initial k in knight, knock, knee, etc., was pronounced (as it was in Old English, where the usual spelling was cn). Deor (talk) 14:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Knuth

Is Donald Knuth's surname another form of the name Knut/Knute/Canute/...? It looks like one, but looks can be deceiving in etymology. --Anonymous, 14:07 UTC, March 19, 2008.

If this is correct http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Knuth-name-meaning.ashx ....83.100.183.180 (talk) 15:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Translation from Hebrew, please

Hi. Please will someone help with a precise translation of these instructions for making Wassabi. I think I've got the gist, but want to be sure.

לערבב אבקת ווסאבי עם מעת מים לקבלת מחית אחידה ויציבה.

Many thanks --Dweller (talk) 01:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

"[One should] mix the wasabi powder with a little water until a homogeneous and smooth paste is formed." Enjoy! СПУТНИК^{CCC P} 02:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)