Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 April 30

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[edit] April 30

[edit] Definition

"...for sexual attraction and sex drive..." That is the quote from libido. Does it mean sexual attraction and sex drive are the same thing? I know what is sexual attraction. It is attracting sexually. But I cannot find "sex drive" in neither the dictionary nor Wikipedia. 69.218.214.249 01:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I think sex drive is another way of saying libido. It's not the same thing as sexual attraction. One might go to a club in order to find someone to take home and have sex with - that's their sex drive operating - but may find nobody there to whom they're sexually attracted, so they go home empty handed (which might not stay empty once they get home) . -- JackofOz 01:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
A good example for a straight-forward understanding of differences in definition, but I would have to posit a more complex interaction between the two in actual practice, at least in my experience. To what extent does each influence, inform or act on the other? I may go to the club for no explicitly libidinous purpose, but while there incidentally meet someone who elicits a strong sexual attraction thereby bringing my previously unconsidered libido to the fore. On the other hand(insert joke), my sex drive may be acting so powerfully and immediately that when I go to said club I may find that I am sexually attracted to nearly every single mammalian bipedal creature in the vicinity...which could be dangerous if, like himself, Jack's club is in Australia, as I doubt a 'roo would appreciate any overtures.--Azi Like a Fox 08:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I don't know - even roos have to have babies somehow. -- Joey of Oz.  :)
Very true, however, after a brief perusal of marsupial reproductive traits I'm left with the feeling that any female kangaroo might be entirely unsatisfied by my distinct lack of a two-pronged penis, leaving me with a lasting and damaging sense of inadequacy.--Azi Like a Fox 06:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
However, we have plenty of foxes in Australia, Azi, imported though they may be. I'm sure there's a vixen somewhere here that's just right for you.  :) JackofOz 06:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Ahhhh, thanks Jack, mighty sweet of you to say. Visiting your fine country/continent has always been a goal of mine and even if I didn't find the right vixen, a feisty little native She-Devil might be right up my alley.  :) Azi Like a Fox 08:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
More likely you'd be right up hers. :) JackofOz 09:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I had a strange(prescient as it turned out) feeling that that last phrase was leaving me open to double entendre, but I laughed none the less heartily for it...and if the apparent bent of your mind is generally indicative of Australians I'd certainly like my chances.  ;) Cheers -- Azi Like a Fox 11:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
You might be disappointed, Azi. As far as I can tell, I'm unique (or maybe that's very unique?).  :) JackofOz 00:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Easiest / Hardest language

If completely equal access to learning materials for every language in the world were available, which language would be the easiest for a native English speaker to learn? Which would be the hardest? 68.231.151.161 03:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

A linguist's answer would be that they're all extremely difficult. Which is the same thing as saying that they're all extremely easy. ;) However, if a language is similar to English then you might find it easier in the beginning. --Kjoonlee 04:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
And which language is most similar to English? Some say Scots and some say Frisian language. --Kjoonlee 04:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Which language is the most difficult for English speakers? Please see Talk:Korean language#Hardest Language to master? for what the US government thinks about it. --Kjoonlee 04:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Baby Sign would be easy. A.Z. 04:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with those linguists who say they're all extremely difficult, assuming they're talking about learning it to the same degree that native speakers learn their own languages. Learning a new language so that you can, eg. read War and Peace in the original, does not necessarily mean you've learned that language well enough to write well in that language, to understand a movie in that language, or to conduct a conversation in that language. I disagree that saying they're all extremely difficult is the same as saying they're all extremely easy; it just means they're all difficult. Some might be easier for some than for others, but none of them is easy in absolute terms. The younger one is, the better one's chance of learning a new language like a native becomes, if one is in that phonic environment more-or-less full time. Outside such an environment, it's very difficult to learn the new language, no matter what the person's age is. That's not to say it's not worth trying. It's certainly possible to learn enough of the language to get by, if that's enough for your needs, but even that takes commitment and patience. JackofOz 05:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 March 24#Easiest language for native English speakers to learn?.  --LambiamTalk 06:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
"That question recurs frequently."-- DLL .. T 07:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The March27 thread above pretty well sums it all up. My only personal experience was with learning Nepali, on the one hand easy because only 5 irregular verbs, no irregular spelling and I was totally immersed in it. On the other hand difficult because I had to learn devangari script and it is a (partially) tonal language, in that intonation affects meaning in a way different than English. Bottom line, if you are immersed in the language and you don't want to sit in a corner wondering if everybody around you is talking about you (and they probably are), you figure it out pretty quickly.--killing sparrows (chirp!) 07:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The Defense Language Institute has actually classified the languages they teach into degrees of difficulty for English speakers. You can see the results at the bottom of http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wbaxter/howhard.html. —Angr 08:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I was surprised on that list to see German is harder than any other European language, even Swedish, I was under the impression that, in terms of language families and the like, German was closer to English than Scandinavian. I found the grammar tricky, but the vocab similar to English (kind of opposite to French)137.138.46.155 07:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
German isn't listed as harder than any other European language; Bulgarian and Greek are listed as being equally difficult as German, and Czech, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian are more difficult. At least as far as European languages are concerned, it's clear that morphological complexity correlates positively with difficulty on that list. —Angr 10:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
German is closer to English, genetically speaking, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's more similar. German still has cases that both English and Swedish have lost, while it has undergone sound changes that the others have not (e.g. English pepper ~ Swedish peppar ~ German Pfeffer). --Ptcamn 10:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I question the classification of Chinese (Mandarin) as more difficult than, say, Czech. Having studied both Mandarin and Czech, I found Czech much more difficult. Chinese is completely uninflected, and its grammar is fairly straightforward. The difficulties for the English speaker are mainly the tones and the complexity of aspect. These did not seem as hard to me as the Byzantine declensions and verb forms of Czech. Marco polo 12:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Chinese requires the learning of tones for the spoken language, and a completely different non-alphabetic writing system for the written language -- without the existence in Chinese of hardly any of the words which commonly occur across many European languages. For example, by examining the interwikis for the article Telephone, it seems that the Czech word for "Telephone" is "Telefon", while the corresponding Chinese word would not resemble English "Telephone" in writing or pronounciation. AnonMoos 18:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say Latin, at least for me. It's easy to read and write because many of the root words pertain to English; Farmer, agricolae, agriculture, farm, farmer, etc. Of course those endings are tricky. But it opens the door to understanding other languages especially when you get a handle on the roots. I always thought Japanese was the hardest to learn?

[edit] etymology of 'mufti'

hi all, could someone help me understand why 'mufti' is slang for the casual dress of someone who usually wears a uniform? the Mufti article does not seem to have any references to dress. Perry-mankster 14:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The answer can be found at Mufti (dress). (Which isn't linked from Mufti. But should be. And soon will be.) - Eron Talk 15:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
(...And now it is. As it was, and ever should be.) - Eron Talk 15:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I added the synonym "civies/civvies" and considered adding "plain clothes", but decided not to, since that is more versus a police uniform than versus a military uniform, as in a "plain clothes detective". StuRat 17:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What Is the "Rate" of a "High Rate of" Speed?

We often hear the expression: "... travelling at a high rate of speed" (e.g. this article). What is the meaning of "rate" in this context? Why not just say: "travelling at high speed" (or "travelling fast" for that matter)?--JLdesAlpins 16:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Technically, it's an error. Gramatically, it's a tautology. Notinasnaid 16:23, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yep. It's a bit like entering your PIN number into the ATM machine. Ned Wilbury 16:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
If those aren't tautologies, they are in close proximity to tautologies. StuRat 17:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
They certainly have more than a family resemblance to pleonasms. Stabilizer 04:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Irregardless of its inelegance and redundancy, people use it all the time. dr.ef.tymac 17:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
At this point in time, I would say that English skills are going downhill at a high rate of speed. Clarityfiend 23:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The reason why this is, is because people put a cheaper price on their words than the stuff they do. :) JackofOz 05:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
It's redundant, but redundancies are not errors. They're just redundancies. They might be undesirable, but they are not incorrect.
Clarityfiend, people have believed that for as long as there has been a language called English. --Ptcamn 07:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Doesn't it come from the Naval expression "a high rate of knots"?hotclaws**== 09:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Gramatically, redundancy is not an error. However, science and mathematics require greater precision in language, frequently assigning meaning to repetition beyond the common meaning of emphasis, and it is most definitely an error from that point of view. Speed is, scientifically, rate of change of position. Rate of speed, therefore, would be rate of rate of change of position. What is that? Well, rate of change of speed has a word: acceleration. So it is not clear in "rate of speed" whether the speaker has forgotten to say "change of", and means acceleration, or something else. Notinasnaid 09:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Emparée

Can someone please translate emparée for me? I've checked two dictionaries and asked a French speaker, none of them knew.

The word in context (French Wikipedia); Cléopâtre est un personnage dont la légende s'est emparée.

DuctapeDaredevil 17:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Emparée is the past participle of the verb (s') emparer, which means to take over or to dominate or subjugate. The sentence transcribed above could be roughly translated as "Cleopatra is a person who has been taken over by her legend." - Eron Talk 17:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Literally, the verb means "to grab, to snatch." Hence the figurative meanings involved in the approximative translation. Circeus 04:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Greek equivalent of Sol Invictus

What would be the Greek equivalent of the Latin "Sol Invictus", and by that I mean strictly the name. What would be the translation? Cevlakohn 21:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "strictly the name". Sol Invictus means "the Undefeated Sun"; one way to say this in classic Greek is ὁ Ἀνίκητος Ἥλιος.  --LambiamTalk 22:09, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, by "strictly the name" I meant I wanted a Latin->Greek translation, instead of, say, a Greek title or deity that was comparable to Latin Sol Invictus. Thanks. 69.77.226.236 22:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)