Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 December 17

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December 17

Hindi and Tamil

How you write "Jilani Adam" in Hindi Devanagari and Tamil script? Sorry if I use my name on the site. please answer the question, thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.53.89 (talk) 00:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

It will only be a transcription (linguistics) and most probably doesn't mean anything in the respective scripts. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand, both Jilani/Gilani and Adam probably have standard forms in both languages. —Tamfang (talk) 05:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Translation, Please

What, if anything, does this collection of characters translate to in English? A new user has just registered with this name. 荣耀之神 Bielle (talk) 01:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

It means "the glorious God".--K.C. Tang (talk) 01:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, K.C. Tang. It wouldn't bother me to have a user with such a name, but I suspect there are a host of others it would bother. I appreciate the promptness of your help, though it took me a while to get back to the question. Is that "God" with a capitalized "G" specific in the Chinese text? Could it mean "a glorious god"? Please understand, I am not trying to second guess your translation, but there is a huge difference in English, as you know. That may be why you have been so exact. I'd just like to confirm my understanding. Thanks again. Bielle (talk) 05:49, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Without context, it can be "a glorious god/glorious gods/the glorious God". It's not a set phrase in Chinese Christian discourse, although 荣耀 is a common word (used as both noun, adjective and verb) in it. So the phrase sounds rather Christian to my ears. But perhaps it's just me.--K.C. Tang (talk) 06:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Hebrew use of the words "hummus" and "za'atar"

Should the word "hummus" used in a Hebrew text be considered an Arabic word (like quiche is a French word)? And likewise for "za'atar"? The reason I'm asking is that there is an editor whose sole purpose appears to be to expunge references to Hebrew and Israel from our articles on Hummus and Za'atar. While this has the appearance of being politically motivated, perhaps it is reasonable, just like we wouldn't include in the Haggis article the information that in Russian this dish is called хаггис.  --Lambiam 07:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

well, the words are originally Arabic, so that would surely be enough for the lead? Unless one of the other languages was a major source for English usage (e.g. in couscous there's both the Berber and Arabic, as it is the different Arabic form which is the source for the English word), but I doubt that in these cases. So I'd say just have the Arabic there. Drmaik (talk) 06:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Continuation of my prev. question

How do languages that don't use Latin or Cyrillic alphabets (and apparently don't have the benefit of italics) emphasize words on paper? Do they just make do with bolding or SHOUTING? A related question: how do they capitalize? Do they even have capitalization? Clarityfiend (talk) 07:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

See Emphasis (typography) and Capital letters.--K.C. Tang (talk) 08:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

It can also be done with word order and by using certain words which denote emphasis. Latin itself did this, since it didn't originally have any punctuation. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

but all languages "didn't originally have any punctuation"!--K.C. Tang (talk) 13:54, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Good point...so how would any language emphasize words without punctuation or typography? Adam Bishop (talk) 01:50, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I hope we're still only talking about written languages here -- spoken languages always manage to indicate emphasis without italics, capital letters, or punctuation. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:48, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

For one example, Japanese writing sometimes uses dots placed next to each character to indicate emphasis, or by using a different colour of ink (typically red instead of black), and the rough equivalent of capital letters is to use katakana in the place of hiragana (e.g. on a telegram). But these are certainly not exact equivalents. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 00:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Hardest language

This question has probably been asked a few times before. I know that the difficulty of learning a new language depends a lot on the learner's mother language (i.e., a Swede will learn Danish much more easily than a Zulu), but which is the hardest language on average? -- Danilot (talk) 11:34, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you need to clarify what you mean by on average. If someone were able to produce a list of mother languages, population speaking the language, and hardest language for them to learn, how would you calculate the average? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 12:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

You're right. This question has been asked before, and more than a few times. There almost certainly is no definitive answer. (General note: We really do need some FAQs for questions like these. I'll be raising this on the talk page.) -- JackofOz (talk) 13:06, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

By saying on average... I mean, a language with five cases is easier than one with twenty cases and harder than a language with none, a language with only one definite article is easier than one with three definite articles, a language in which one letter = one phoneme is easier than a language in which the same letter may represent different phonemes, a language with many irregular verbs is harder than one without any irregular verbs... simply because there are less words and exceptions to be memorised. So, taking all this and maybe other factors into account, which language is the hardest, or at least, the most complex? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Danilot (talk • contribs) 13:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

This question is typically predicated by "which is the hardest language for a native speaker of X to learn". When X is English, a quick Google survey reveals several sources which go for Chinese ([1], [2]), but "also rans" include Japanese [3], Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, Basque and Arabic. For non-English speakers, English itself seems to be ranked quite high in the difficulty stakes. I think the real problem here is coming up with an objective measure of difficulty. Surveys will suffer from selection bias, as the people with first-hand experience of learning a language such as Estonian will be (a) relatively few in number and (b) more likely to be highly motivated and experienced linguists. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

By corollary of what you just posted, it most likely is a choice between the swing and the roundabout.

A language with "simple" declension and unisex gender may have a more complex syntax or use grammatical mood and lexical aspect which are somehow implied in the "harder" language. A language with a simple vocabulary may well require prolix constructs to express subtle semantics and thus turn simplicity into complexity.

When starting to learn a new language you at first may stumble over the threshold of the hard bits and find later that the rest is an easy ride; alternatively, what you perceive to be a simple language at the beginning may show itself to be a confusing quagmire of barely noticeable shifts in meaning by virtue of syntax or the wealth of synonyms. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 14:09, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

As Cockatoo says, there are swings and roundabouts. English has little inflection, but a complex system of tenses, a large lexicon and non-phonetic spelling. It is my own private hypothesis, never properly explored, that all natural languages have comparable complexity, one way or another, and the difficulty of learning them depends on how far one can assimilate the structures within. SaundersW (talk) 15:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

English is easy for almost any speaker, especially for native speakers of Romance languages. Its grammar is extremely simple: no declensions, no genders, few verbal tenses, few irregular verbal forms (you just have to learn the simple past and past participle form of them, and they aren't many), verbs remain almost unchanged when preceded by different personal pronouns, relatively easy pronunciation... the list goes on. Non-phonetic spelling doesn't complicate things much since any decent dictionary provides the IPA transcription and, with a little practice, you can guess some pronunciations (and, honestly, I find it much easier to remember that "door" is written with double o rather than that "fenêtre" needs the circumflex accent). Additionally, almost all of its "difficult" vocabulary was borrowed from Latin and French. Words that may be unknown by young speakers of English are straightforward for Romance languages speakers. The Latin background also helps with English spelling.

Regarding the original question, it's very hard for us to answer that since there are countless languages in the world, but I'd say that I'd be frightened if I had to learn the fascinating Silbo Gomero, despite it is based on Spanish. --Taraborn (talk) 15:33, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

English mayn't be seeming difficult to a native speaker but there never the fewer are for certain certain very not obvious rules which, while not comprehension preventing, may be triping up a person who was not in an English speaking culture birthed.. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there's anything "relatively easy" about English pronunciation. Far too many vowels for my tastes and the spelling is horrible at representing them. The double 'o' in 'door' is one thing - but distinguishing between the vowels in 'boot' and 'foot' is a nightmare. Haukur (talk) 23:45, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 April 30#Easiest / Hardest language.  --Lambiam 15:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Relatively easy pronunciation? Complex consonant clusters that appear at the end of words is very hard for many speakers, and English combines that with 11 vowels. The r/l distinction and the dental frictives are also notoriously hard. Non-phonetic spelling means that it's hard to write, and it's hard to read much casual writing, as it's hard to look up misspelled words. I'm not sure that most learners of English are really impressed with how much easier it is than Spanish or German.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

You clearly don't know the meaning of the word "relatively" and I'm not going to explain it. Native speakers of English aren't precisely the most reliable source if you want to know the difficulty of English since they never had to LEARN it as a foreign language. And, incidentally, I find the fact that native speakers of a language are outraged when someone says their language is easy to learn rather interesting. It is not an insult to your intelligence, believe me. --Taraborn (talk) 12:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow, proof by insult, that's effective. I look through the Handbook of the IPA, and find that Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, and Taba look like they have easy pronunciations. English is not really in the running for the most complex, but relatively easy, no, not really. I haven't heard from most non-native speakers that English was a particularly easy language to learn.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

"proof by insult", I've never insulted anyone in this thread, but perhaps you "feel" insulted. I just don't understand why you feel insulted when someone says your language is easy (and, forgive me, but, your personal "social study" about the opinions of a handful of foreigners doesn't seem to be actually rigurous). --Taraborn (talk) 11:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Your response to my critique of your claim of "relatively easy pronunciation" was dismissed with "you clearly don't know the meaning of the word 'relatively'". That's an insult. I didn't claim that my study was rigorous, but I thought this was a fairly casual forum; there certainly was no rigor in the posts I responded to.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:16, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Whatever, this isn't going anywhere. When I said that English had a "relatively easy" pronunciation I just meant that it lacked exotic things such as click consonants, which may be really hard to master. My sole and humble intention was to say that learning a language always means hard work, but English, probably, is among the easiest, for already mentioned reasons. --Taraborn (talk) 19:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I've heard that Germans consider English easy to start learning, but difficult to master, while English speakers consider German difficult to start learning, but then comparatively easy to progress with once the initial hurdles are overcome. I have long shared SaundersW's hypothesis that all languages are equally difficult, but they distribute their easiness and difficulty in different areas. I have no idea what the morphosyntax of ǃXóõ is like, but I bet it's fairly easy, to "make up for" the incredible complexity of its phonological system. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 16:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. English seems fairly simple to begin with (as people may assume due to its lack of grammatical gender), so the initial hurdle is small. However, the deeper you go the more difficult it gets. I found German to be the opposite. Once you got all the cases and grammar down, it becomes more logical. But that's just me! --Bearbear (talk) 18:14, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

we need a hardest language article... at least in the form of a disambiguation page like "oldest language", if not something similar to "oldest tree". We might even need "SaundersW's hypothesis" (if we can find a more canonical name for it). here is a "Hardest Language to Learn Survey". dab (𒁳) 16:56, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I've started that article. Contributions are welcome. I haven't been able to find an equivalent of "SaundersW's hypothesis" in any citable source so far. dab (𒁳) 18:15, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Late contribution - the availability of pedagogical texts and teachers will also have a large impact on the learnability of a language. Steewi (talk) 00:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I once attended a two-month language training center that taught more than 130 languages, primarily to native English speakers. The faculty there repeatedly mentioned that of these languages, three were considered to be the most difficult for English speaking people to learn: Icelandic, Korean, and Finnish. The reasons were due to complex grammar and, in the case of Korean, an added difficulty of learning a very different writing system. Icelandic was considered the most difficult of the three. It is a very archaic language, having been preserved almost intact from the Old Norse language the Vikings spoke. It has very many exceptions to its grammatical rules, so I hear. Saukkomies 20:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Icelandic is fairly closely related to English so I can't believe it's unusually difficult for English speakers to learn. Here's a little puzzle, see if you can figure out what the following means, using only your knowledge of English and some guesses: "Anna og Jón komu heim. Þau voru hungruð. Þá kom Pétur. Pétur gaf þeim gott brauð að éta. Þau voru líka þyrst. Pétur gaf þeim mjólk að drekka. Köld mjólk er best." You can mentally replace 'þ' and 'ð' with 'th'. Of course I wrote this text specifically with English cognates in mind but I didn't have to go out of my way to do so. It should suffice to illustrate that Icelandic isn't particularly alien to English speakers - even if Chomsky supposedly calls it "the ebola of linguistics". Haukur (talk) 13:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Saukkomies, as a person who reads and writes Hangul I must say that the Korean writing system is no more difficult than the English alphabet. Spelling is a totally different matter though, and I admit Korean spelling can be challenging. Nevertheless, it's still mostly morphophonemic, making things easier for native speakers. --Kjoonlee 20:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm a native English speaker, and I will do the translation of the Icelandic above. 'Anna and John came home. They were hungry. Then came Peter. Peter gave them good bread to eat. They were thirsty. Peter gave them milk to drink. Cold milk is best.' Hardly a useful chat-up line, is it?--ChokinBako (talk) 13:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

No, not hardly :) You got it quite right - you just missed one word; 'líka' means 'also' or (going for the cognate) 'likewise'. Thanks for playing! :) Haukur (talk) 13:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, it is important to separate the issues of learning how to read a language and learning how to speak a language. And overall difficulty would have to take into account these issues. For example learning a tonal language, especially one with many tones, will be very difficult to master for someone who has no experience with tones. Likewise, learning a "click language" (i.e. in the Khoisan family of language) would also be difficult. Certain types of glottal stops also would be very difficult for someone who doesn't use them or uses them sparingly. Ignoring how to read the language would make English much easier to learn given it's notorious problems with spelling. And it would seem very pedantic to require someone to both read and write the language (if applicable) to be considered a fluent language user.--droptone (talk) 13:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

at/in usage in this sentence

This is a caption of an image. Which one would be correct?

• The starting line-up of the team that won the tri-championship in 2000 in their home ground, the Estadio Monumental.
• The starting line-up of the team that won the tri-championship in 2000 at their home ground, the Estadio Monumental.

I think the correct one is the second one, but they both sound funny. --MicroX 14:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

On their home ground? Oda Mari (talk) 15:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

On sounds most natural to me. But whichever word heads "__ their home ground, the Estadio Monumental," there remains the question of whether the phrase functions adverbially (that's where they won) or prepositionally (that's where they are depicted). The caption context results in the prepositional reading, but the style is problematic. Something like "Starting line-up for 2000 Tri-Champions Universitario de Deportes on their home ground, the Estadio Monumental"? Cyrusc (talk) 17:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

At their home ground. "Ground" in British English is commonly used with the meaning "sports stadium", particularly for football clubs. See home ground - which redirects to home (sports). If "home ground" were meant as an idiom with the sense "native soil" etc. then "on" might be appropriate, but in this sense the team's home stadium is called the Estadio Monumental." Valiantis (talk) 14:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Bestevend?

I'm having trouble finding the meaning of the Dutch bestevend, from the title of this map. "The Coast of Chicora between Florida and Virginia by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón and others, sailing from Hispaniola"?—eric 17:41, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that in this instance it means 'as described' if I apply my knowledge of German word order to sort of reverse engineer the Dutch to the translation here and hoping that their translation is correct. So, The Coast of Chicora between Florida and Virginia as described by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, and others, from Spain.. Best estimate I can muster. Lanfear's Bane | t 19:42, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The word is not in a Dutch dictionary I have, although it occurs as a verb form in a list of Dutch words from 1914, which – alas – does not give a meaning, but only the spelling. In general the prefix be- turns an intransitive verb into a transitive one. The intranstive verb would then be *stevenen, which is not in the dictionary either. But steven is, as a noun; it means "the front part of a ship", "stem", "bow", "prow". There is a Dutch word bezeilen, which means "to sail on (a given destination)". My guess is that the verb bestevenen basically means or meant the same. Looking at Google hits for the word (also in inflected forms), there is definitely a connection with ships and sailing, and the maps using the term typically mention a captain or navigator who did the bestevenen, like in this case Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón. This van der Aa map states that the bestevenen was done in Twee Scheeptogten, which also is not in my dictionary but can plausibly be assumed to mean something like "two ship voyages". Of course, for the cartographer to benefit from the navigator's having sailed on some coast, the latter would have needed to make some description, so the message implies that the map is based on a description of the navigator referred to.  --Lambiam 00:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Enter the cavalry... or the Dutchman, whichever you prefer :) Bestevenen, as Lambiam indicates, is no longer used in Dutch. It comes from the noun "steven", which indeed means bow. Literally, bestevenen would translate as "to turn one's bow towards", or "to sail upon". The title, "De Vaste Kust van Chicora tussen Florida en Virginie door Lucas Vasquez d'Ayllon En Andere, van Hispaniola Bestevend", translates as "The coast of Chicora between Florida and Virginia by Lucas Vasquez d'Ayllon and others, sailed upon from Hispaniola." Aecis^Brievenbus 12:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. The Chicorans, they are the ones shown milking their domesticated deer in the map illustration, thank you also.—eric 16:23, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I just want to post a quick follow up on this and confirm that the word does indeed come from the noun "steven". Generally speaking the verb "bestevenen", does translate as "to set course for". 81.83.80.223 (talk) 20:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

How much does morpheme:syllable ratio vary, why, and with what result?

I don't know if I'm posing that question right with "morpheme" and "syllable"--the specific question that prompts it would be "why does Latin verse use fewer syllables than English translation of the same?". But I want to know how this effect plays out globally, and especially what does a given language have to "gain"--what selection pressure could explain a historical process of taking on more syllables in order to say effectively the same thing? I'd rather not get into the Orwellian "such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." Unless that can actually explain it on a millennial and not just millenarian scale.Cyrusc (talk) 18:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Book Critique Help

Okay, I have a last minute question on a Book Critique due for my english class. I have to have some cited allusions from the adventures of huckleberry finn. The last time I got some but the teacher said that those weren't allusions.

--80.148.24.133 (talk) 18:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

What allusions have you found? We need to start with the work you have done already. Bielle (talk) 20:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried a google search on the word allusions and "huckleberry finn"? Lots of promising links from the look of it. Pfly (talk) 04:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

meaning of a Welsh word

What is the role of "dydy" in dydy hi ddim yn darllen? The meaning of the sentence, of course, is "she does not read", but why is "dydy" necessary? -- Danilot (talk) 19:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Dydy is necessary because it is the only finite verb form in the sentence (just as "does" in English "She does not read" is the only finite verb form). In form, the Welsh sentence is parallel to English "She is not reading" (and it can mean that as well, in addition to "She does not read"); dydy is the form of the verb "to be" used in negative sentences. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 19:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

So does dydy change according to person and number, just like bod? -- Danilot (talk) 20:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Dydy is a form of bod. Basically, dydy...ddim is the negative of mae. If you know French, think of dydy as "n'est" and ddim as "pas". —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:56, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Historically, dydy is nid ydyw, so it's even closer to n'est than might be immediately obvious. Another part of it is dwy (nid ydwyf - 'I am not').ColinFine (talk) 00:36, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

LAKE

A small water in the forest, approximately on the size of half a soccer-pitch, this can be called a LAKE, yes?

Becoz LAKE can be in many sizes?

Pond would get to small to call it, no?

85.164.187.94 (talk) 19:43, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I would go with "pond" for something half the size of a soccer pitch. To me, that feels too small to be a lake. Hundred-Acre Pond in Mendon Ponds Park is about three-eighths of a mile (600 m) in diameter, and it's still called a pond. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 19:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The article on pond opens with "A pond is typically a man made body of water smaller than a lake. However the difference between a pond and an artificial lake is subjective." Pond#Nomenclature offers a variety of definitions: shallow enough to walk through, shallow enough for sunlight to reach the bottom at its deepest point, "generally smaller than one would require a boat to cross", or surface area smaller than 10 acres (but see also Great Pond at 34 km² (13 sq mi for those living across the pond)). The article on lake is far less specific and starts out with "A lake (from Latin lacus) is a body of water or other liquid of considerable size contained on a body of land." (my emphasis). ---Sluzzelin talk 20:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

In some parts of the US, especially the west it seems, the word "lake" is used even for quite small ponds. Wikipedia doesn't have pages on most of them, because they are so small not notable. But in the city of Seattle there is Haller Lake at 15 acres and Bitter Lake at 19 acres. Up in the mountains there are many named lakes of a much smaller size. But in general, yes, I would tend toward "pond" for the OP's description. Pfly (talk) 23:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The "pond" in On Golden Pond was definately a lake. DuncanHill (talk) 13:09, 18 December 2007 (UTC)