From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Language desk
< August 7	<< Jul | August | Sep >>	August 9 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

Contents 1 August 8 1.1 correct preposition use 1.2 how many sign languages exist? roughly? 1.3 Listening foreign languages

[edit] August 8

[edit] correct preposition use

Which is correct? Do you stand "on line" or "in line"?24.239.163.133 00:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)Eve

Well, generally Americans stand in line, and British stand on line. Correct? Therefore, it depends on the subject of the article. i ^said 00:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I think Brits tend to stand on queues ALTON .ıl 02:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

No, we stand (or wait) in queues. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 05:13, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I think we would be more likely to queue than to stand or wait in a queue. DuncanHill 07:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

A Canadian friend, who has taught ESL for 15 years in Asia, and who is currently living in New York, ranted to me just last week about the prevalence of "stand on line" in the Big Apple. "In line" is certainly the Canadian version. Bielle 01:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I think "on line" is a New York thing sometimes also used in Philadelphia. -- Mwalcoff 02:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I think its just new york

This falls into the area of language in which you can't accurately say that one word is correct and the other incorrect, as there is no final arbiter. What you can say is that one is more usual than the other. Google produces 1,060,000 hits for "stand in line", but only 24,300 for "stand on line", and that strikes me as a pretty decisive difference. Xn4 15:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] how many sign languages exist? roughly?

Roughly how many different sign languages could be said to exist in the world today?--Sonjaaa 04:22, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

That might be difficult to determine. Ethnologue lists 121 "deaf sign languages", but doesn't include Manually Coded Languages or auxiliary sign systems. The subsection List_of_language_families#Sign_languages shows some uncertainty of demarcation. See also List of sign languages. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for that list of families. I had wondered about that. It's interesting to note that in at least a few cases a sign language crosses boundaries between unrelated spoken languages. I expected that, since ASL grammar is unrelated to English grammar, but had no empirical information until now. —Tamfang 17:10, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

That was the original reason for sign languages, wasn't it: The Plains Indian Sign Language for communication between tribes, etc.? Rmhermen 04:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Bit of an aside but I have read that there are regional variations or 'dialects' in sign-language just as they are in verbal language. I guess that makes senes but I just remember hearing that and finding it interesting, so there you go. ny156uk 23:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Listening foreign languages

I'm looking for free resources in French, Italian and Portuguese, such as movies, TV news... with subtitles in the same language. I would like to improve my listening skills in those languages and I thought a good way of doing so would be to have, for example, a news program from a Portuguese channel with subtitles also in Portuguese. That way, I would be listening to the person and if I get lost or don't understand something I could quickly see the "solution" by looking at the subtitles. It's rather odd, since, aside from me and deaf people, who would like to have subtitles in their own language. Anyway, does anyone know where can I get them? --Taraborn 18:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Depending on what kind of TV you have, or how new it is, if you put it on mute it might give you the closed captioning, which will be in the same language as the program. (At least, this seems to be true for English and Fernch programming in Canada...) Adam Bishop 18:25, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

You can turn on closed captioning without muting with most modern TVs in the US. I leave it on usually just in case I don't know the spelling of a word or I'm not familiar with a word (and the closed captioner is good enough to know it). Don't know of any place you could find any free programming like that though. Recury 22:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you to both. --Taraborn 07:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)