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July 15

Triple parenthetical phrases

We use [brackets] to enclose parenthetical phrases that are inside another parenthetical phrase. That is, brackets are for a double parenthetical phrase. But what do we use when there are three levels of parenthetical phrases?? What do we use?? Georgia guy (talk) 11:54, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're talking in English, right? What I've seen, on the rare occasions where it was necessary, was curved brackets {}: (enclosing [this {enclosing this} thusly]). --Orange Mike | Talk 12:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From DPDk, with two levels it is (algunos estudiosos consideran su obra Fortunata y Jacinta [1886-87] la mejor novela española del siglo xix) but in mathematics and chemistry it is reversed [(4 + 2) × (5 + 3)] − (6 − 2). I remember from math class {2 × [3 × (4 + 5)] + 6} . Bracket (mathematics) says:

Square brackets are also often used in place of a second set of parentheses when they are nested—so as to provide a visual distinction.

--Error (talk) 22:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

~~Bracket (mathematics)~~ Glossary of mathematics#Brackets:

{□}

1. Sometimes used as a synonym of (□) and [□] for avoiding nested parentheses.

--Error (talk) 22:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia_guy -- I think it's as common or possibly even more common (based on what I've seen) to use parentheses within parentheses: (...(...)...). This convention is reasonably clear (though it can be a little bit visually jarring if multiple ")" marks are side-by-side at the end). AnonMoos (talk) 22:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bracket says:

Parentheses may be nested (generally with one set (such as this) inside another set). This is not commonly used in formal writing (though sometimes other brackets [especially square brackets] will be used for one or more inner set of parentheses [in other words, secondary {or even tertiary} phrases can be found within the main parenthetical sentence]).

--Error (talk) 22:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Scientific transliteration

Why can't every language romanize Russian using scientific transliteration? It would eliminate irritating conventions using ⟨y⟩ for iotated vowels and ⟨sh⟩ for Ш etc. and reflect language's Slavicness better. --40bus (talk) 19:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why can't the English teach their children how to transliterate Russian? They can, but they don't feel like it. --Amble (talk) 20:33, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Languages do not romanize. Did you mean, why can't publications in every language use scientific transliteration for Russian terms (presumably mainly proper nouns)? Many languages do not use a Latin alphabet, and in several of those that do some of the transliterations use letters not in their alphabet. Even if it solves a problem, it addresses only a minute part of the general problem; most non-Latin scripts do not have a "scientific" transliteration, and many romanization schemes rely on the English pronunciation of letters. --Lambiam 21:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40-bus -- We discussed this exact same topic not too long ago. My basic answer is the same as before: Most English-language speakers have been rather resistant to the use of diacritics (except as optional marks of sophistication for some semi-unassimilated loanwords borrowed from a few foreign languages which use the Latin alphabet, especially French). In the case of Finnish, Finnish speakers are accustomed to diacritics, due to the use of ä and ö in the orthography of their language, and there's no native Finnish way of spelling the "sh" and "zh" sounds, so there was no problem with introducing š and ž into Finnish practices for transcribing foreign words. However, none of that applies to English. The average native English-speaker reading an article about Eastern Europe, if he cares at all about how words transcribed from Cyrillic are pronounced, wants a rough practical approximate guide based on customary English spellings, and does not want to worry about strange little marks flying around various letters. (And that's assuming that his news source would even include the diacritics -- in the days of Wade-Giles, its diacritics and apostrophes were almost always omitted in mass-market English-language newspapers, as has also been explained before.) AnonMoos (talk) 22:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But West Slavic names usually appear with diacritics in English texts. If Russian used Latin alphabet, then there were no irritations and the alphabet would be similar to Czech alphabet. Thus I hope that Russian will eventually switch to Latin alphabet in next 30 years. --40bus (talk) 06:25, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You may well hope, but there is no chance that Russian changes alphabets. Cyrillic is perfectly adapted to the language, has been in use for centuries, and is known by the entire Russian population. Why should there be a switch, except to please a few eccentrics in foreign countries who don't even speak the language? Xuxl (talk) 09:34, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And most English speakers generally ignore the diacritics on West Slavic names. They get printed, but the average reader doesn't give a shit about them. My question is "why can't 40bus accept the fact that different languages are different?" Seriously, you keep asking questions phrased in such a way as to suggest that you know best and that any language that dares to deviate from your preferred methods is in some way deficient or wrong. STOP DOING THAT. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:35, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

He won't stop until he's forced to stop. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:03, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No one can force so well-augured a user to stop—according to Myles na gCopaleen, "Fortuna favet 40 bus". Deor (talk) 16:36, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting that you refer to "West Slavic" and then only mention the Czech alphabet. Do you think Polish orthography, which also uses digraphs, insufficiently reflects the language's Slavicness?

(In fact Polish does transliterate Russian using the Polish conventions, e.g. pl:Anton Czechow.) Double sharp (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If Russia does after all decide to switch to the Latin alphabet, it may actually go for the English style, with ⟨sh⟩, ⟨y⟩, etc. That style is more internationally recognisable (which languages that chose diacritics weren't too concerned about when they did so), would make Russian orthography distinct from those of related languages, and already serves as the mainstream standard for romanizing the language. On the other hand, scientific transliterations, as the attribute scientific suggests, seek linguistic precision but not necessarily user-friendliness. --Theurgist (talk) 22:13, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They could. It would be more recognisable for native English users, but wouldn't be much more helpful to native Latin alphabet users who aren't native English users. A user-friendly transliteration system must be tuned to the target language, otherwise it isn't any more user-friendly than a scientific system. Russian ш is transliterated as š for a Czech or Croatian audience, sz for Polish, sch for German, sh for English, sj for Dutch or Norwegian etc.

The problem of English-based transliterations is that they only work well for sounds that not only exist in English, but are also the standard pronunciation of some letter combination, which, given the chaotic nature of English spelling, is far from given. (Zh is a remarkable counter-example. The sound /ʒ/ occurs in English, but the zh digraph doesn't; yet it's understood.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:36, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pinyin and the Hepburn system, both pretty much universal romanization standards, already use ⟨sh⟩ for "sh"-like sounds. If Russian switches to Latin, other Latin-written languages will no longer adapt Russian names but will cite them as they are. A ⟨sh⟩ would then be a clearer indicator of something going on than a diacritic over a ⟨s⟩, which, as discussed, would be ignored by many and often even omitted. --Theurgist (talk) 00:49, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, ch is in the Slavic languages using that digraph (Czech, Slovak, Polish) used for /x/, as it is used in German, Dutch and the Celtic languages. Using ch for /tʃ/ in transcriptions from Russian is more confusing for people who expect /x/ than using č. Over here, the newspapers usually get the diacritics right for Slavic languages. (Here, Russian /tʃ/ is usually transcribed tsj.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where is "over here"? The Netherlands? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:10, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How likely is that Uralic languages in Russia will move to Latin alphabet? --40bus (talk) 17:58, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Considering that Tatarstan was not allowed to restore the Latin script, I'd call it extremely unlikely in the foreseeable future. Double sharp (talk) 09:07, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]