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October 2[edit]

Ummm...why is October called October?[edit]

Somebody's gotta ask something today. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because it was originally the 8th month of the Roman calendar. Which is likewise how September, November and December got their names. Basically, Latin prefixes for 7-8-9-10. See October. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Good stuff. Any idea why they weren't changed once they clearly didn't make sense anymore? InedibleHulk (talk) 03:41, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Per Bugs, the many old calendars used to started in March. There was, in Europe, for literally over a millennium, a dispute over what was actually New Years Day. Some traditions held that the year started on January 1, a practice that dates from Julius Caesar and the invention of the Julian Calendar. However, other traditions held that the year began on or about the Spring equinox, which was settled to be officially March 25 by the middle ages. Old Style and New Style dates#Differences in the start of the year discusses some of the confusion that arises from having two different dates for New Years Day. Despite the fact that Caesar himself declared that the year started on January 1st, much of Europe continued to observe the Equinox (or a day close to it) as the start of the year. It wasn't until countries (in a somewhat piecemeal fashion) began to adopt the Gregorian calendar that we reached a consensus that the year should start on January 1, which again took literally over 1000 years to reach consensus. And the modern Gregorian calender didn't reach worldwide acceptance even among European countries until the 20th century. (That's why the October Revolution bears the name it does even though it started on November 7 under the Gregorian calendar. Russia was still on the old Julian calendar in 1917). If we suppose that the year started at the Equinox in March, that makes September the 7th, October the 8th, November the 9th, and December the 10th month. Other months got names from Roman gods and/or politicians (the difference was minimal in Roman times). January = Janus, February was named after the Roman term for "Spring Cleaning", March = Mars, April = unknown origin, possibly Aphrodite, May = Maia, June = Juno, July = Julius Caesar, August = Augustus Caesar. Of course, you could have learned any of this by looking at the Wikipedia articles on the month names. The October article specifically says "The eighth month in the old Roman calendar, October retained its name (from the Greek "οκτώ" meaning "eight") after January and February were inserted into the calendar that had originally been created by the Romans." If you read Roman calendar it discusses how the year started on March 1 (called Martius at the time). Before people thought to assign months to the 60 odd days of deep winter, the space in the calendar currently occupied by January and February literally didn't belong to any month on the Roman Calendar. Apparently nothing interesting (beyond freezing your ass off) happened during that time, so it didn't occur to anyone to actually make those days parts of actual months for quite some time. Julius Caesar decided these new-fangled winter months would go at the start of the year, but it took (as previously noted) several hundred years for anyone else to agree to that; most European countries considered January and February to have been added to the end of the year. --Jayron32 03:46, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. That's pretty thorough. Thanks!
I see that in the eighth year of the second third millenium, the American Emperor though "Baracktober" might be nice. That's according to an ancient false prophet, but still backed by the USA Today. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:02, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry IneligibleHunk, but your OP was 3:10 too late. There is actually no question for October 1.  —71.20.250.51 (talk) 07:22, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It was still October 1 in my time zone. Eligible! InedibleHulk (talk) 23:24, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Err, third millennium, surely, unless someone's got a TARDIS. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 07:58, 2 October 2014 (UTC) [reply]
Yeah. No excuse for that one. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:24, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? I thought the American emperor was this guy. As opposed to this other guy who was merely the soi-disant King of America, of course. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:01, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Was, sure. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:24, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Along with January 1 and the spring equinox/March 25, some places in the Middle Ages also dated the beginning of the year from Easter, which of course varies every year. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:43, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
An additional piece of trivia: July and August were originally called Quintilis and Sextilis, after Latin words for five and six. Later they were renamed in honor of Julius (Caesar) and (Caesar) Augustus. Incidentally I'm not sure that in Julius Caesar's time the year started on January 1st. What makes me doubt that is that Julius Caesar was the driving force behind the Julian reform that introduced leap years. Now the fact that it was February that was chosen as the month that would change (switch from 28 to 29 days) seems to show that at the time of the introduction of the Julian calendar February must still have been the last month as these kinds of adjustment are usually done at the end of the year. Cf. Jewish calendar: it is the month of Adar which is doubled every once in a while to catch up with the solar cycle and at the time it was Adar that was the last month. I'm sure all of this is explained somewhere in one or several WP articles which I will go read when I get a round tooit. Finally I doubt October has anything to do with Greek οκτώ. October was based on the Latin word "octō" which also means eight. You can check Wiktionary and any reputable Latin dictionary for the etymology of "octo" and "october". I wonder how long the Greek bit has been in WP. Contact Basemetal here 11:58, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Oct- meaning 8 has predated Latin for sometime. Yes, the Romans were using their own word for 8 when naming October, but they got it from the Greeksed: struck per below, and Oct = 8 seems to date from the time of the putative Proto-Indo-European language. Etymonline also agrees that the year changed in 46 BCE with the Julian calendar reforms, see [1]. Also, Caesar did not strictly invent January and February, nor did he strictly create the leap year. His reforms were mainly 1) to move January and February from the end to the beginning of the year (a move not widely accepted, as noted above with references, and which would take until the Gregorian reforms before being universally enacted) 3) To match the length of the year to the solar year in terms of whole days (the old Roman Calendar had only 355 days) and 2) to standardize the way leap years are dealt with by introducing the practice of adding the extra day every 4th year. Reforms 2 and 3 are important to this discussion, Romans dealt with the drifting calendar in a haphazard way: Mercedonius was a "leap month" added to the calendar every few years to align the 355-day Roman Calendar with the 365-and-change-day Solar year. Caesar's reforms simply replaced the leap month with a leap day, but he kept it in the same place (after February, where everyone expected the extra days to go) while simultaneously moving January and February to the beginning of the year. It wasn't that Caesar was introducing a novel practice of adding extra days to the calendar, and arbitrarily chose February. He was modifying a long-standing practice to be more uniform and predictable. --Jayron32 12:53, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for these clarifications. However Latin "octō" (eight) does not come from Greek "οκτώ" (eight). The Latin word is not a borrowing from the Greek. Both words are cognate. They have a common origin in PIE. That is very different. Therefore to say that the Latin words "octō" and "octōber" have anything to do with Greek οκτώ is incorrect. The words being cognates certainly does not authorize one to say that. That would be on a par with saying that the Latin word comes from Sanskrit because Latin "octō" is cognate with Sanskrit "aṣṭam". In any case I have not seen one single reference work that refers to the Greek numeral when discussing the etymology of Lat. "octō" and "octōber". Therefore WP is out on its own on this one. Contact Basemetal here 14:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Romans did not get their word for eight from the Greeks. The Latin word and the Greek word are both descended from the Proto-Indo-European word. The two words are "cousins", not "mother and daughter". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:00, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. I saw this with horror and thought that "Greek" gaffe might have been one of those ourtrageously dumb errors that sometimes slip into Wikipedia and get carried along for years and years, but fortunately it turns out the error was only introduced in the article by some IP a few weeks ago [2]. Now fixed. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:34, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the clarification. So corrected. --Jayron32 14:45, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars leads to one of my favorite bits of trivia: Cervantes and Shakespeare both died on April 23, 1616, but they didn't die on the same day. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:43, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

InedibleHulk -- The most meaningful answer to your question is that at a very early period (when Rome was just one city, not an empire), the purpose of the Roman calendar was to keep track of the agricultural cycle, and religious observances which were mostly tied to the agricultural cycle. Since basically nothing happened in Roman agriculture during the two-month period after the winter solstice, at that time the calendar consisted of just ten months, with March the first month (so that only later were January and February squeezed in to the uncalendared period). This explains why all the numbered month names from Quintilis to December are based on March being the first month, and why February has a weird length, and why leap-year adjustments happen towards the end of February. Of course, the Roman calendar went through many further vicissitudes during the Republic before eventually being reformed into the Julian calendar; if you want to research the subject in detail, you can consult The Calendar of the Roman Republic by Agnes Kirsopp Michels (1967)... -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:55, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but this doesn't explain why people continued using the names in the 12-month calendar, rather than renaming them, like Quintilis and Sextilis. Maybe that book does, but it's not really important to me. I just thought this section looked a bit empty, and "October" was the first word I saw nearby. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:31, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The French tried but with no great success. The power of tradition is the answer for why.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 01:08, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
At least there are several unofficial alternatives (according to Google). Rocktober, Cocktober, Socktober, Scotchtober, pre-Movember. But yeah, old habits die hard. Here are the (alleged) ten dumbest ones. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As for why October is October while the other similar names are -ember, this is because the Latin words for the numbers were septem, octo, novem, decem. Why there was this broken pattern is less clear (novem should have been noven if it had developed normally, but seems to have been altered by analogy; and it has been suggested that octo retains the old dual ending seen in duo ('two'), and originally meant 'two hands' or 'two palms'). --ColinFine (talk) 09:51, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To bollock someone[edit]

Inspired by none of the questions above, why do we say (at least in my dialect), 'bollock [someone]' or 'give [someone] a bollocking'? Since when did this become a verb meaning 'to reprimand'? KägeTorä - (影虎) (Chin Wag) 10:19, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Urban Dictionary has definitions dating back to 2003: [3], The Free Dictionary has the same definition, but provides no etymology, as does Wiktionary. Merriam-Webster has the testicle/nonsense definition of "bollocks" and dates it to 1774. It does offer a link to the definiton of "bollock", which is enticing, but requires me to register, and ain't no body got time for that. Etymonline only has bollocks, (it offers the unhelpful definition for "bollock" as merely "singular of bollocks" without the verb/gerund sense above) and says the meaning of bollocks=nonsense dates to 1919. If someone has membership/access to the unabridged OED maybe they could shed some light on it. --Jayron32 12:37, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OED has bollock, meaning to reprimand or tell off severely, dating back to 1942. Earliest citation is "1942 A. Lewis Last Inspection xiii. 144 "He'd gone round bollucking them [sc. his men] right and left." DuncanHill (talk) 12:46, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The testicular meaning goes back to Old English, earliest dated citation is to c1350, but it is recorded much earlier (but undated). DuncanHill (talk) 12:49, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(multiple ec) Presumably the comment above is based on the online OED. In the second edition of the dead-tree version, the entry for the verb meaning "reprimand" is under the spelling ballock (with the note "also bollock"), and the earliest citation is to the 2nd edition (1938) of Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, though the first cited usage in prose (which has the spelling "bollock") dates to 1950. On the basis of the OED's evidence, the usage would seem to have originated in British armed-services slang of around the Second World War. Deor (talk) 13:13, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I was referring to the online OED, which has bollock as the headword for all meanings, ballock as a variant, and notes "The α. forms predominate in early use (until at least the 17th cent.), but the β. forms are now more common. (The β. forms are of uncertain phonological development, perhaps showing rounding as a result of the influence of a preceding labial consonant: for some possible parallels see E. J. Dobson Eng. Pronunc. 1500–1700 (ed. 2, 1968) II. §194 note 3.) The word is sometimes written with asterisks, dashes, etc., to represent suppressed letters, so as to avoid the charge of obscenity." The α forms are spellings with a not o, the β forms are those with o. DuncanHill (talk) 13:22, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And by the way, anyone who is a member of a local authority library in Britain should have full free access to the OED online using their library card number. DuncanHill (talk) 12:51, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OED gives 1919 for the nonsense meaning, with a citation to Digger Dialects by W. H. Downing (a digger is an Australian). DuncanHill (talk) 12:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Surely getting someone "by the bollocks" must figure somewhere in the origin? Perhaps we should re-name AN/I as AN/IB? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:43, 2 October 2014 (UTC) [reply]
OED has bollock meaning "In a fight: to grab an opponent's testicles forcefully. Now rare." earliest citation "1787 G. Greive in tr. F. J. de Chastellux Trav. N.-Amer. II. 192 (note) In their combats..they are admitted ‘to bite, b-ll-ck, and goudge’". It is listed as the first meaning of the verb, with reprimanding as the second. DuncanHill (talk) 13:50, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Urban Dictionary says bollocking is described as, when one is lectured, criticised or reprimanded. When one receives things Bollocking they have just been bollocked. Alternatively bollocked is used to describe a high state of inebriation. I found from, English Language and Usage that, "Ælfric (a prolific writer whose works are an important source for Old English) uses the term "beallucas" c. 1000 (this was absolutely not vulgar at the time and he also happily uses "ars"). There might also have been some Norman influence because the French version is "Balloches" (small balls) and it's still used very commonly in French under this form for testicles (colloquial, not vulgar). "Alors ? T'as rien dans les balloches ?" (So ? Got nothing in the balls ?). In addition, the surname "Baloche" (cf. the America Singer) is specifically rooted in Normandy. This time there is no allusion to the testicles. The origin instead is that "Balochers" were people in charge of a particular type of balance in which the weights were made of small balls." The last source of information comes from Wikipedia itself saying that the word has a long and distinguished history, with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) giving examples of its usage dating back to the 13th century.Memma123456 (talk) 01:07, 4 October 2014 (UTC)memma123456[reply]

How can Chinese people understand Japaneses Kanji?[edit]

I was talking to a Chinese person here in China, and I asked him whether he could understand Japanese Kanji. He told me he could understand about 80% of it. Later it occurred to me that this hardly made sense - sure the Japanese borrowed from the Chinese, but Chinese script is syllable-based, not word based. A lot of the characters are for one-syllable words, and hence, for those, a character has a straight lexical meaning. But for multi-syllable words, that doesn't work. So how do they understand Kanji? Yes, I know I could wait and ask someone offline here, but I usually forget, and it's actually hard communicating. IBE (talk) 14:57, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

First off, a single written character can have a multiple-syllable pronunciation in Japanese. I think that Chinese could usually catch the gist of the subject-matter of passages of written Japanese, but I doubt whether they could really fully "understand" most sentences... AnonMoos (talk) 15:08, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Saying you can understand about 80% of something does not necessarily mean comprehension. I can understand about 80% of what I hear in proper Russian, but that usually means missing two words out of ten, and if one of those is a main noun, verb, or adjective I am probably only getting the gist of the topic, not any real understanding of it. Since there aren't that many kanji, he might be saying he knows the syllable each stands for for 80%. That's not weird. The average American probably knows a few dozen to 100 Spanish words. To get a better idea of what he meant you'd have to question him more closely.μηδείς (talk) 16:29, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I was confusing kanji with katakana and hirigana, but the point still applies. μηδείς (talk) 19:31, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe what that Chinese fellow meant was that he could understand about 80% of the meanings of individual kanjis. I very much doubt he could understand 80% of a typical Japanese text especially considering he would have no clue as to the meaning of the bits in kana. In fact I believe it is more likely in the other direction. A Japanese person would probably be more likely to make out the gist of a modern vernacular Chinese text than the other way around, though even then surely not 80%. Pardoxically I believe it would be easier with a classical Chinese text, at least if that Japanese person had practiced kanbun diligently in high school. This said I don't know how many Japanese high school students are enthralled by their kanbun class though. "Not that many kanji"? It's all relative of course. You may be a very gifted fellow. I personally find the 2000 to 4000 kanjis which are needed to be able to fluently read Japanese way more than enough. Contact Basemetal here 18:29, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think he meant he could understand written kanji. Because a lot of characters/words have the same meaning in both languages, pronunciation is totally different though. Modern Chinese has a lot of borrowed words from Japanese. For example, PRC is 中华人民共和国 in Chinese and 人民/people and 共和国/republic are Japanese origin. I am Japanese and have never learned Chinese. I don't understand spoken Chinese, but I understand written Chinese a bit. The title of this page is 现代汉语中的日语“外来语”问题. If I can read it correctly, it would be translated as "The issue of Japanese borrowed words in modern Chinese vocabulary". Here is a list of borrowed words from Japanese in Taiwan. Oda Mari (talk) 19:02, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I am largely able to read (modern) Chinese (native language American English), and I can confirm that Oda Mari got the meaning of the Chinese title right. Marco polo (talk) 22:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm Chinese and I've never learned Japanese. I definitely can't understand 80% of anything written in Japanese. To begin with, the majority of the characters aren't kanji. I can usually guess at the meaning of the scattered kanji (the differences in meaning aren't THAT big), but usually that's nowhere near enough to understand a whole paragraph. I have no idea what this is saying, for example:
ブンデスリーガ（独: 2. Fußball-Bundesliga）は、ドイツのプロサッカー2部リーグである
But sometimes it's much easier to guess. Take this sentence from the Japanese wiki:
台風は、北西太平洋や南シナ海（赤道以北、東経180度以西100度以東）に存在する熱帯低気圧のうち、中心付近の最大風速が17.2 m/s（34ノット、風力8）以上のものを指す[1]。
Typhoon...north-west Pacific...south...ocean...(north of equator, west of 180 degrees, east of 100 degrees longitude)...exists...tropical low-pressure...vicinity of center achieves greatest wind speed of 17.2 m/s (34...wind strength 8) above...refers to --Bowlhover (talk) 06:46, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Japanese kanji are mostly the same as traditional Chinese characters, right? Can most modern Chinese people read the traditional characters fluently? 86.190.50.55 (talk) 22:59, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe someone else can help you more, but it is pounded into them in school, through the study of classical Chinese literature (especially poetry). They find it hard (maybe almost as hard as English according to some), so I can't argue about whether it is fluent or not, but they certainly have a lot of training in it. IBE (talk) 08:57, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Bowlhover: this is what I'm getting at - are these syllables or words? How many characters do you take to say "typhoon"? What about "tropical low pressure"? If a word takes two characters to write, is it borrowed directly from a two-syllable Chinese word, or is it a two syllable Japanese word? IBE (talk) 08:57, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many words in Japanese are coined by combining two Chinese words/characters/syllables (with their Japanese conventional pronunciation of course); in those cases a character does correspond roughly to a syllable. —Tamfang (talk) 09:14, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(Warning: I don't know any Chinese.) Japanese has a huge vocabulary that's borrowed directly from Chinese, written with the original characters (most often two of them), and pronounced very roughly as in Chinese (though Japanese and Chinese phonetics are so different that these words are probably mutually unintelligible when spoken). These words are often glued together into longer kanji compounds using what amounts to Chinese grammatical rules. It's also very common to use a single Chinese character for a native Japanese word (or stem) with a similar meaning, but keeping the Japanese pronunciation. A Chinese reader ought to be able to recognize a lot of these in written form.
There are also many (but far fewer) multi-kanji words that use the Chinese pronunciations, but are Japanese coinages. There are some examples at Sino-Japanese vocabulary#Words 'made in Japan'. Some of these have been borrowed back into Chinese, and others a Chinese reader could probably figure out from the individual characters, though some are completely random, like 馬鹿 (baka, "idiot", literally horse-deer).
In Bowlhover's first sentence above, there are only two kanji, 独 (short for 独逸語, doitsugo, "German language", which is an example of ateji and probably unintelligible to a Chinese reader) and 部 (bu, "division", Chinese-derived pronunciation, probably understandable to a Chinese reader, but obviously meaningless in isolation). In the second sentence almost all of the kanji are pronounced as in Chinese, and I think most of them are Chinese loanwords, often several in succession without Japanese grammatical glue. For example, "tropical low-pressure" is 熱帯 低気圧, net-tai tei-ki-atsu, which is two Chinese words with Chinese-derived pronunciation, without the の (possessive particle) that would probably appear between them if they were native Japanese words. "Typhoon" is 台風, tai-fū. The only kanji with native Japanese pronunciations are 南, 指, and possibly 海, and Bowlhover correctly read all of those too (south, refers to, ocean). -- BenRG (talk) 05:02, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@BenRG:, the origin of the words 熱帯 and 低気圧 is Japan. They were coined as translated word from English in Meiji. Sources are [4] and [5]. Additionally, the pronunciation is totally different. Listen to the Chinese pronunciation. 熱帯 and 低気圧. Bowlhover made one mistake. He thought 南シナ海 as "south...ocean", but he must have had the right answer, if he remembered 黄海/Yellow Sea and guessed 海 should be sea in English. South xx Sea? It's South China Sea! シナ is 支那 in Kanji. Oda Mari (talk) 09:01, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the correction about the origin of 熱帯低気圧, but the pronunciation is not totally different. The modern Cantonese pronunciation is jit6 daai3 dai1 hei3 aat3 (source) and the Japanese is netsu tai tei ki atsu. They clearly have a common ancestor even if they're too different for mutual intelligibility -- BenRG (talk) 17:17, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to both of you - especially BenRG for a very thorough explanation. IBE (talk) 05:32, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Native UK here. On my first day in China, many years ago (1992), I was on a train for 20 hours, and this guy sat next to me. I had just come from Japan. I couldn't understand what he was saying so we communicated by writing on paper. I wrote in Japanese, he in Chinese. We got along really well - we understood eachother. KägeTorä - (影虎) (Chin Wag) 08:51, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Kanji are originally traditional Chinese characters. Like Chinese, Kanji has undergone their own simplification, but not as much as Chinese and simplified Kanji don't have to be exactly like their simplified Chinese counterpart. So Chinese can only read the Kanji in a Japanese text. However, the Japanese meaning of the Kanji may not be the same as in Chinese. There are many false friends and different meanings due to different development of the languages. One remark: 支那 Shina_(word) is considered offensive in today's China. --2.245.115.115 (talk) 16:40, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I have a Chinese friend. We've known each other (originally as penpals - remember those days?) since we were children. I wrote back to her one particular time, and wrote in Chinese, saying "Thank you for your 手紙" (sorry, can't write Chinese on this computer), and her next letter said "I didn't send you any toilet paper." KägeTorä - (影虎) (Chin Wag) 09:40, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple adjectival morphemes[edit]

Take for example "symmetry" - if an object has symmetry, we can also change the word to an adjective, and say it is symmetric. But "symmetrical" also exists, and seems to be redundant, in that it uses two adjectival endings. The meaning remains the same, and there are many similar examples, such as diabolic/diabolical, dynamic/dynamical, problematic/problematical. Usage seems comparable for many of these pairs, but highly disparate for others [6]. The questions are

  1. Why do the -ical forms exist at all, when the -ic suffix suffices? From wiktionary, it seems that both -al and -ic come through Latin via French, so it's not an example of of using two different heritages of adjectivization [7] [8]. Perhaps some form of hypercorrection in the morphology?
  2. Are the usage differences just spurious habit, or are there some style guidelines that prefer one form to another? There doesn't seem to be any consistency, e.g. 'diabolical' comes out ahead of 'diabolic' in usage, but 'dynamic' far surpasses 'dynamical'.

Thanks, SemanticMantis (talk) 16:22, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Another link: There is a style prescription for -ic forms as presented without justification here [9], and I think it makes sense in many cases. But of course we almost never say "theoretic", and vastly prefer "theoretical" [10]. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:33, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just a bit of speculation, and also a bit of half-forgotten memories from a 20-year old Linguistics 101 class, but I believe the -ic...-ical...-ically is a pretty standard progression; and the existence of the smaller suffix is presumed by the usable presence of the larger one. Thus, since theoretically is a valid word, it presupposes the validity of both theoretical and theoretic. This may be some form of hypercorrection or a similar phenomenon. I think the adjectival -ic form is being confused here with the noun -ic form. Consider metric (noun), metrical (adjective), and metrically (adverb), or medic (noun), medical (adjective), medically (adverb), or logic (noun), logical (adjective), logically (adverb). This progression gets preserved even when it doesn't make perfect sense, as when we have both -ic adjectives and the redundant -ical adjectives, as with symmetric and symmetrical. Symmetrical contains a useless syllable (as symmetric is a near perfect synonym of symmetrical), but English seems to need the -ical form to then produce the -ically adverb form. The word symmetricly has a little red squiggle, meaning I can't merely append the -ly adverb suffix to symmetric and get a proper adverb as I can with words like quick/quickly or thick/thickly and the like. The -ic adjective form will not take -ly, and requires the addition of the -al adjective form as well. No idea why, but the rule -ic --> -ical --> -ically is clearly productive as we have numerous examples of valid, but logically redundant -ic and -ical adjective forms side by side: theoretic/theoretical/theoretically symmetric/symmetrical/symmetrically hermetic/hermetical/hermetically etc. --Jayron32 16:51, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Sometimes the two forms have different (though sometimes overlapping or confused) meanings, as in economic (relating to the economy, or to economics) vs. economical (cheap), or historic (famous) vs. historical (old). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)Symmetric sounds American to me, symmetrical British. cf geologic/geological. DuncanHill (talk) 17:19, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is what OED has to say about the -ical suffix:

Sometimes forming an adjective from a noun in -ic, as music, musical, but more frequently a secondary adjective, as comic, comical, historic, historical. Its origin appears to have been the formation in late Latin of adjectives in -ālis on nouns in -ic-us, or in -icē, e.g. grammatic-us grammarian, grammaticē grammar, grammatic~āl-is grammatical, clēricus clergyman, clerk, clēricāl-is clerical. So in medieval Latin, chīrurgicāl-is, dominic-āl-is, medicāl-is, mūsicāl-is, physicāl-is. In French, adjectives of this type are few, and mostly taken directly from Latin formations, as chirurgical, clérical, grammatical, médical, etc. But in English they are exceedingly numerous, existing not only in all cases in which the term in -ic is a noun, but also as the direct representatives of Latin adjectives in -icus, French -ique. Thus we find before 1500 canonical, chirurgical, domestical, musical, philosophical, physical. Many adjectives have a form both in -ic and -ical, and in such cases that in -ical is usually the earlier and that more used. Often also the form in -ic is restricted to the sense ‘of’ or ‘of the nature of’ the subject in question, while that in -ical has wider or more transferred senses, including that of ‘practically connected’ or ‘dealing with’ the subject. Cf. ‘economic science’, ‘an economical wife’, ‘prophetic words’, ‘prophetical studies’, ‘a comic song’, ‘a comical incident’, ‘the tragic muse’, ‘his tragical fate’. A historic book is one mentioned or famous in history, a historical treatise contains or deals with history. But in many cases this distinction is, from the nature of the subject, difficult to maintain, or entirely inappreciable.

DuncanHill (talk) 17:22, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • R. W. Burchfield in the New Fowler's has quite a lot to say on this - too much to quote at length here, but he supports the impression that -ic tends to be American and -ical British, going on to say "the distribution is erratic, and is much influenced by the practice of particular publishing houses". DuncanHill (talk) 17:29, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all! Duncan's OED quote seems pretty clear on both some of the meaning distinctions as well as the history. I'm a bit surprised that the -ical forms often predate the -ic forms, and was not aware of a Br/Am split in usage. I think I'll call this resolved, but will also be interested in further comment. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:59, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved
Thought it might be worth quoting a bit more of Burchfield - he gives geographic, geologic, immunologic, lexicographic, pedagogic as examples where American usage is -ic but British would have -ical. He goes on to say that for many pairs "the distribution is not governed by geography but by idiomatic or rhythmical considerations in a given context". DuncanHill (talk) 18:45, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos/Archive 3#Misspelling of "publicly" (June and July 2013).
—Wavelength (talk) 18:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is what Burchfield has to say about publicly "... it is a curiosity that all the above pairs of words have -ically as their adverbial equivalents, not -ly. The main exceptions are that public (which has no corresponding adj. form in -ical) has only publicly as the corresponding adverb; and there is no form politicly. DuncanHill (talk) 19:03, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Arguendo[edit]

Is this word a Latin gerund dative of purpose? If not, what is it and how do we get its meaning "for the sake of arguing"? Thanks! ÷seresin 16:53, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wiktionary it's ablative rather than dative. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:00, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In this specific legal Latin sense, it is ablative. It gets that meaning from Latin itself. I guess the simplest way to explain it is that the ablative forms of gerunds often mean "by [x]ing", whatever the underlying verb is. So "arguendo" means "by arguing", or more idiomatically, "for the sake of argument". I want to say the more common expression is "in arguendo" (or whatever verb), but that might be more of a medieval construction than a proper classical one. Adam Bishop (talk) 17:18, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Latin dative and ablative gerunds are always identical in form. Only the meaning can tell you if you're dealing with a dative or ablative. In the case of Latin arguendo the Wiktionary page only gives ablative which is incomplete. It should say "dative or ablative". Btw the way I learnt Latin traditionally the accusative gerund is quoted with the preposition "ad" since it is only found in the form "ad arguendum" ("in order to argue") etc. so I would have expected "dative or ablative of ad arguendum" but I guess that's a matter of tradition or even a matter of choice to some extent. In any case with the meaning "for the sake of arguing" the gerund would be labelled "dative", whereas "by arguing, through arguing" it would be labelled "ablative". So in this case I would agree with the OP that it's a dative. Contact Basemetal here 17:30, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My thinking tracked with Basemetal because our article clearly suggests the meaning is "for the sake of argument" rather than "in arguing." Had it been the latter an ablative would make perfect sense. ÷seresin 19:29, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
But that's just a result of rendering it idiomatically in English, isn't it? I wonder if it is taken from a longer phrase in Latin...that would help figure out what case it's supposed to be. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:03, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The OED defines arguendo as "In the course of the argument. Also loosely, for argument's sake" and derives it from "medieval Latin, ablative of arguendum, gerund of arguĕre argue (classical Latin make clear, assert)". Lesgles (talk) 05:35, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Famous phrases in fictional languages sought[edit]

I was testing some language recognition websites to see what they guessed about fictional languages. So I used some famous phrases in fictional languages, but I would like to have more to test with. I've already used:

  • "Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!"
  • "Kreegah! Tarzan bundolo!"
  • "Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul."
  • "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
  • "Bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Are there any others? My criteria are:

  • The phrase must be from some famous work of fiction, and must be a signature phrase of some sort, to be notable in itself.
  • The language of the phrase must be entirely fictional.
  • The phrase need not have any actual known meaning, and the language it's in need not have a defined grammar.
  • The phrase must have a known, consistent spelling.
  • The phrase must be written in the Latin alphabet. Simple diacritics are allowed.

Does anyone have any more examples? JIP | Talk 18:04, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • The opening lines of A_Elbereth_Gilthoniel are rather famous. (As an aside, I wonder if Sindarin is really a fictional language, since it does have a complete grammar, and it has many current speakers...) SemanticMantis (talk) 18:48, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Both Sindarin and Klingon qualify. I said the language need not have a defined grammar, not that it must not have one. The only requirement is that the language must have been constructed almost entirely from scratch. I don't count languages such as Volapük or Esperanto as fictional, as they were real-world attempts at creating universal languages, not languages that were fictional to begin with. JIP | Talk 19:08, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo" ("A star shines on the hour of our meeting"); Frodo in The Lord of the Rings (sorry Deor, I see now that you beat me to it). Alansplodge (talk) 20:39, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Both look like Quenya to me. —Tamfang (talk) 09:19, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Hoi, hoi u embleer Hrair, M'salon ule hraka vair!" (“Hoi, hoi, the stinking Thousand, We meet them even when we stop to pass our droppings!”) said by the rabbits of Watership Down to taunt their predators, in the Lapine language. If I remember rightly, "hrair" is any number greater than five four, because rabbits obviously can't count more than the number of toes on one paw. Alansplodge (talk) 20:25, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Kudos. A great book, one of my favorites, corresponded with my cousin over this recently, and am actually tutoring it on and off to an English student--cant believe I didn't think of it. μηδείς (talk) 03:34, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Eih bennek, eih blavek!"" ("He who rubs himself there gets stung"); the national motto of Syldavia from The Adventures of Tintin, perhaps suggested by Scotland's Nemo me impune lacessit. See Syldavian. Alansplodge (talk) 20:39, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm somewhat annoyed I can't find a sentence that is completely in Nadsat without any English words - it's one of the best-known fictional languages. BTW, can anyone remember where the Nadsat userbox is? It says something like "this lewdie govoreets Natsat real horrorshow" or something like that. --Shirt58 (talk) 05:56, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Shirt58: Template:Userbox/Language1 has a setting for Nadsat. DuncanHill (talk) 06:00, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Shirt58: also see Wikipedia:Userboxes/Non-ISO_Languages#Droog_.28Nadsat.29. DuncanHill (talk) 06:02, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you will find whole sentences in Nadsat with no English words - it was/is/will be a slang, rather than a language. DuncanHill (talk) 06:05, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. It was a fictional slang instead of a fictional language. I should give my own vonny rot a bolshy tolchock with my own rooker for being such a nadmenny, as that "fictional languages" was slovos before your humble narrator's glazzies, my droogs. --Shirt58 (talk) 13:13, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure the language was fictional, but there was a sentence that Johnny Weissmuller as Jungle Jim used for virtually all purposes when conversing with the natives, and it went something like: "Una tola bibi, ungawa". -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:06, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
He was speaking Pseudobantu. μηδείς (talk) 17:50, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Excuse me, sir, your balls are showing. Bumblebee tuna/Bumbawe atuna! InedibleHulk (talk) 06:11, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Or maybe I'm thinking of Bomba, the Jungle Boy, or even Tarzan. So confusing, the way those shows all shared characters and actors. My childhood ruined my life. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:58, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Totally enjoying this nerdfest. Thanks, guys! — SMUconlaw (talk) 05:49, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Valar morghulis. Valar dohaeris. Dracarys! Nemebetas! Valyrian for "All men must die", "All men must serve", "Fire!" (the hot kind) and "Fire!" (the shooting kind). See Valyrian languages. There's also Dothraki language, but learning to speak it may make you sound unlearned. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:28, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Check this sentence[edit]

Please write the correct form of this:

"Regarding to marks and situations, the above evaluation method may be changed."--86.57.25.86 (talk) 19:29, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming I understand what is meant, in American this would be "The evaluation method above may change according to grades and circumstances." μηδείς (talk) 19:43, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Medeis: Thanks, but I don't wanna an equal sentence. I meant correct the grammatical errors. The main possible mistakes are:Regarding to and ...may be changed. (Regarding marks and situations, the above evaluation method may change.)
The second one is true or the first?86.57.25.86 (talk) 20:30, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding to is wrong. According to is right. Situations is an abnormal usage here, it should be circumstances. Marks is odd in American above the elementary school level, if it's alright in your country then use it. The inverted sentence order is awkward and pretentious, but not a problem for comprehension to experienced English speakers--it might confuse beginners. If all you mean by grammar is conjugation and verb agreement you are okay as is, but if you mean all the nuances of writing, including idiomatic usage and clarity, then my version is better. μηδείς (talk) 20:40, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think Medeis may have misunderstood the intended meaning, although its difficult to properly evaluate without context. British English would be happy with "As regards (the) marks and situations, the above evaluation method may be changed." Bazza (talk) 22:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think that "situations" may be wrong - does it refer to the position of each candidate in the final list of results? If so, "rankings" or "placements" might be better. Tevildo (talk) 22:13, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you all. For the sentence usage take a glance over here--86.57.15.17 (talk) 07:21, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's not obvious what the sentence means as it stands. Do you mean that the "marks and situations" elements of the assessment can change, but the other elements can't? If so, "As regards" would be right, but I think you need to say which elements are "marks and situations" and which aren't - does "marks and situations", for example, mean the two written exams and the student's presence in class? However, if you mean that all the elements of the evaluation can change, "Depending on marks and (other) circumstances" would be better. "Hint" should also be "Note". Tevildo (talk) 11:19, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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