Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 April 14

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[edit] April 14

[edit] suggest a name for my new pet?????

I've got a soft toy of a sweet little tiger. i want to name it in some language other than english, please suggest me a name in any other language which means- ''TIGER, CUB OR SWEET KILLER OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.....'' pleasesuggest me a good name.124.7.90.161 07:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

"Sweet Killer"? That doesn't make a lot of sense.
Why do you want it to be in a language other than English? I mean, you could use Spanish tigre ("tiger", pronounced approximately "TEE-gray") or something if you wanted, but...well, it's your choice, I suppose. --Miskwito 07:24, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm a fan of naming pets after historical figures. Consider Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli or Mar-biti-ahhe-iddina. Cevlakohn 08:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

thanks fr ur suggestions.... but i want some good sweet word , something of two syllables...rhyming... please buddies124.7.90.161 07:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC) Agni

Tora? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 07:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


Tora sounds really very nice, i'll think over it..... hey guys i wil be glad if along wid the name u'll give its meaning and language it belongs to.....124.7.90.161 08:04, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth: Torah (pronounced like TO-ra) is the Hebrew word (that's entered into English) for the first five books of the Bible, particularly revered in the Jewish religion. -- Deborahjay 15:14, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, tora is Japanese for tiger, in this case. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 18:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
In Norwegian, Tora is a female name, see for instance Tora Berger. May also be spelled Thora (as in Thora Birch). "Th" and "T" are both pronounced "T" in modern Norwegian. T(h)ora is the feminine version of T(h)or. --NorwegianBlue talk 20:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Great, I had a huge list of Tiger in other languages that I collected myself, but after that edit conflict now they're all deleted! :( (By the way, "tora" is Japanese for tiger) --Candy-Panda 08:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tiger which has a long list of foreign equivalents. --Shantavira 08:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

For a more literary bent, you could name your tiger after any of various fictional tigers like Shere Khan, Hobbes, or Richard Parker. (The last two don't really meet your criterion of being non-English, though.) —Angr 17:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

... or indeed Tigger. Gandalf61 17:24, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

How about Ojibwe "Bizhiw" (lynx), which for most non-native speaker is a homophone to the French "Bijou" (jewel). CJLippert 23:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

How about Rajah? --Candy-Panda 07:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
But that means "king", not tiger. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 07:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • But it was the name of Jasmine's tiger in Aladdin! --Candy-Panda 07:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English word for Marathi word

I want to know the English word for Marathi word "sathekhat" this is a document made during purchasing of real property. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.124.21.43 (talk) 11:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC).

In case we don't have a Marathi speaker, can you tell us what a "sathekhat" is or does? Marco polo 19:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I believe you are looking for "deed". However, I don't understand Marathi and don't know the exact meaning of "sathekhat", so it's possible I've misunderstood your question.--Pharos 00:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
The word "deed" had occurred to me, but because I don't know Marathi, I decided not to suggest it. There are other documents made during real estate transactions, such as a title, mortgage, purchase-and-sale agreement (or offer to purchase), covenant, and so forth. Unless we know more about the "sathekhat", I don't think that we can conclude that it is a deed. Marco polo 13:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, non-Marathi speakers can't conclude it one way or the other, but since the questioner obviously understands English except for a few special terms, it's probably helpful to link to possible answers, and the questioner will be able to tell from the article's definition whether this is the term they're looking for. Thanks for adding the other possibilities.--Pharos 14:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Dear All, I am the same guy who has raised the question. Finally I could find out the English word, it is ""Agreement to sale". This is for everyones knoledge & information please. - Fast track

That sounds like what would be called a "purchase-and-sale agreement" in the United States. Marco polo 22:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What Cyrillic letter is it?

What is it ru:Ять йотированный? Can anyone translate it into English? --✉ Hello World! 15:31, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't read Russian, so I can't translate the article, but it seems to be an iotified yat. —Angr 16:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
It is said to be an old Cyrillic letter, used occasionally on a few old monuments (an 11th-century "Izbornik" monument is mentioned). It is dubbed "Iotated Yat" after its appearance: it looks like the old letter І (still used in Belarusian and Ukrainian, derived from the Greek letter iota) followed by the letter Ѣ ("yat"). Apparently not found in the Glagolitic alphabet, it was probably pronounced as [jæː] or [jeː].  --LambiamTalk 17:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Here is a summary of the article from my Tajik teacher (who is also fluent in Russian)--"This ligature, which is called “Yated yat,” is an old Slavic letter, which is used in some old manuscripts. For example the “Izbornik”–Collection(form 1073). It consists of two letters І and Ѣ. It is not part of the Cyrillic alphabet. It does not have a code. Its real name is unknown. It is used in the beginning of the words and after vowels. There is an ongoing project to include this ligature in Unicode."--Myzembla 04:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Who can create an article about this? --✉ Hello World! 15:40, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] shebadeska

In the 70's I had a friend at work who used the phrase "ah so shebadeska" as a substitute for "Now I understand". The phrase stuck in my head but I have lost contact with him. I believe he picked up the phrase while stationed in Korea during the 50's. Can you tell me the meaning of shebadeska? The spelling is phonetic and might not be correct.

Hoffy

It sounds like Japanese. "Ah so" is basically an interjection meaning "Now I understand" in Japanese. I don't know about the sheba part of "shebadeska", but the "deska" part sounds like desu ka, where desu is the verb "to be" and ka is a particle indicating that the sentence is a question. —Angr 17:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
In fact, the u in desu ka is unvoiced, making it sound to non-Japanese ears like desska with a lengthened s. The proper way to write the phrase in the Latin alphabet is A so desu ka, without an h. No idea about the "sheba" either.  --LambiamTalk 17:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
「あー、そう知ばですか」(A~, sō shiba desu ka) is "Ah, I should've known!" CJLippert 23:59, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Are you kidding [1], CJLippert? Japanese native speakers, including me, won't agree with you. (I'll appologize if your phrase is on firm grounds, but for now it seems a bit hard to believe to me.) --Tohru 01:19, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
But my mother and all my aunts used THE SAME PHRASE! It may have been just a regionalism of the 東北弁, but the root here is 知る. CJLippert 03:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Interesting. Thank you for the clarification, and I'm sorry for my last post. My mother tongue 金沢弁 is also full of strange conjugations and phrases deviated from standard Japanese, just like your dialect... Now I have to admit that you know what I don't know. Cheers :) --Tohru 04:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I need a list of Biblical place names

Alright, so I'm putting together a pen-and-paper role-playing game, and I'd like some place names to use in it. The game has thousands of cities/towns and ruins, so I can't just pick up ones from the Bible. Rather, I'm creating a table of words that can be put together to generate a place name. I need the following words in Biblical Jewish:

north, south, east, west, central river, gorge, lake, mountain, sea, plains/expanse, forest white, red, black, yellow, grey, blue, green the numbers 1 through 10 capital, city, province peaceful, long, old, clear, cloudy, winding

Thank you for any help you can provide. Palaskar 22:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

See this. Search through it for things you're looking for, see if it can help you. Corvus cornix 00:06, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Remember that in Hebrew compound place names, the meaning of English forms such as "Y X" (compound) or "X of Y" (phrase) is expressed as "X Y", where X is in the special construct state inflectional form. So Bethlehem is Beyt Leћem or "house of bread", where Leћem is the Hebrew word for "bread", while Beyt is the construct state form of Bayit, the Hebrew word for "house". AnonMoos 09:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
If you're searching for material on your own, the language is Biblical Hebrew and not as you've stated. The only language that might be called "Jewish" would be the English meaning of the name "Yiddish" - which is not the language to which you refer for your Biblical place names. -- Deborahjay 00:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] what is the most spoken language in world? detailed reply will be appreciated.

what is the most spoken language in world? detailed reply will be appreciated. l thought it was english but I got told it is spanish. how can this be? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.9.232.119 (talk) 23:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC).

Actually, neither English nor Spanish are the most spoken, if you count native speakers only. That distinction would go to Mandarin Chinese. Counting nonnative speakers would bump English much higher, but the problem is for the nonnative speakers English ability is extremely variable. ColourBurst 23:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It depends what your criteria are. Are you just talking about which language has the most native speakers, or which has the most speakers when you include speakers of it as a second language? Either way, I believe it's Mandarin Chinese. If you're just going by number of native speakers, Spanish and English are about tied for second/third place. If you're including non-native speakers who've learned the language, then English far outranks Spanish as #2, though still behind Mandarin. See List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers. --Miskwito 23:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with Miskwito. As you can read at Standard Mandarin, surveys in 2004 and 2006 found that only about 53% of the Chinese population, or 700 million people, could communicate in Standard Mandarin. Estimates of the total number of English speakers (native and non-native) go up to around a billion (although as ColourBurst pointed out, the number of non-native "speakers" of English could be highly variable). --Lazar Taxon 13:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)