Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 July 20

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[edit] July 20

[edit] I have just got to know

Somebody changed my wording Englishman A "has just gotten engaged" to Scotswoman B, to "has just got engaged". Is this something used on the other side of the Atlantic? Clarityfiend 01:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe so. —Tamfang 01:43, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Change to "become", thereby avoiding both the problem and the ugly sounds. Bielle 04:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
"Become engaged" sounds somewhat stilted to me. I've never heard it used in British English. "Got engaged" is fine. --Richardrj talk email 05:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Sime side of the pond here... So far no one from across the way has answered, but in American English your original wording was correct. With "has" or "have" one would use "gotten" instead of "got" -- "They got engaged" and "A has gotten engaged to B," are both correct, but "A has got engaged to B" sounds horribly wrong to my ears. 152.16.59.190 05:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I answered it, and I'm from Britain, as I hoped was clear from my reference to British English. --Richardrj talk email 06:30, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
"Gotten" is basically obsolete in British English but remains in use in American English; see American and British English differences#Verb morphology. —Angr 05:34, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The change is in line with using British English for British people. But I suppose you could use a neutral alternative. Just a quick question, does 'got' just sound wrong to Americans, or does it really grate horribly like 'gotten' does to me? Cyta 08:26, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, in that case, "got" sounds wrong to Americans. Americans do use the construction "has got/have got", but only to indicate possession. (For example, "We've got lots of talent here" or "Dave has got a house on the hill" are correct in American English.) However, for other senses of the verb "to get", such as to become or to obtain, American English requires "gotten" as the past participle: "Jane has gotten a bottle of milk at the store" or "Mary has gotten engaged". To an American, using "got" in the latter cases sounds as wrong as a statement like "Jim has sang at the church every Sunday". Marco polo 14:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, "I have got to know" is also correct in American English. (Where "has/have got to" = "has/have to" or "must", "has/have got to" is the only correct form in American English. ) Marco polo 14:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not "got" that sounds funny, it's "has got". "He has got a D in English" sounds pretty bad, to me anyway. Gzuckier 14:35, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
"I've got a D in English, but I'm hoping to raise my grade before the end of the quarter." Tesseran 22:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Has got engaged sounds fine to me, and I'm an American. Whether it sounds right or wrong to Americans in general is debatable. Strad 21:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

"Has got engaged" sounds like "bad English" to me, along the lines of "ain't." (I'm American.) It's ironic, because Americans generally think of British people as speaking a more-refined version of English than ours. -- Mwalcoff 02:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I was taught in school, in the paleolithic era, that almost every use of "got" or its variations is "lazy English", that there is always a better, more exact word, if I were just to exercise my vocabulary a little bit more. Thus: "became" engaged, "have" lots of talent - this is doubly awkward to my ears as the "got" is entirely unnecessary -, "bought" or "owns" a house, "must" know, "received" a D, "bought" or "picked up" a bottle. Because of this training, "got" and particluraly "gotten" always sound ill educated to me, whichever side of the pond I am on when I hear it. Bielle 18:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Very well put. I remember that at school too; the teacher went so far as to ban "lazy English" in any work we did (a sign in his classroom displayed the word "nice" with a thick red cross over it). Funny how you don't forget things like that.
Anyway, if you must use it, a quick look in Chambers reveals both are valid, although gotten is more common in the US. --Micheals 18:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

Is the phrase to peomote our symbiotic growth correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.167.227.151 (talk • contribs)

It should be "promote" not "peomote". DuncanHill 10:26, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Promote: Those kings who favored defending their castles with an encircling water-filled trench. StuRat 22:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

It's grating and pompous. How about "to work together"? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 04:47, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dialect in MN?

I'm watching "Fargo" which is set around Minnesota and North Dakota, and I notice they have such an annoying dialect. What dialect is that? I checked some articles and the Yooper dialect seems to be the one most similar, but it's an Upper Peninsula dialect. So what dialect is it really? Jack Daw 12:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

North Central American English? Recury 13:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Generally goes by the name "Minnesotan"; for a full but satirical treatment, you are referred to How to Talk Minnesotan, ISBN 0140092846, by Howard Mohr. Minnesotan is quite similar to Yooper dialect, of course, and to other dialects of the northern woods and prairies. -- Visviva 13:24, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] To be buried

  1. Is it correct to say "buried at sea" when a body is disposed of from a ship?
  2. Would one say "buried in space" if an astronaut's body were ejected from a space ship?
  3. How would one express "buried at sea" in other languages, such as Spanish? Enterrado en el mar, to me, seems wrong since enterrar implys covering with earth whereas the English bury doesn't necessarily mean covering with anything in specific. --JAXHERE | Talk 16:16, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
1) Yes. 2) That's open for speculation, since it hasn't happened yet. Space burial (which is really just sending a few ounces of ashes into space) uses that phrase; you might also be interested in "In Event of Moon Disaster". 3) Dunno about Spanish. In German it's Seebestattung, and in Dutch it's Zeemansgraf. --TotoBaggins 16:39, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
It's interesting that es: Categoría:Ceremonias funerarias has cremation, entombment, and even viking long ship burial, but I don't see a burial at sea. — Laura Scudder ☎ 18:10, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I was a deckhand on a ship for a burial at sea (Australia in 2000), the deceased was cremated beforehand and the ashes scattered downwind.Polypipe Wrangler 22:59, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Words beginning m e n

please list all words that begin with the letters m e n thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.115.120.129 (talk • contribs)

There are too many to list here, you might find the Wiktionary at [1] a better place to look DuncanHill 16:55, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
There are quite a few, so I put them at User:Keenan Pepper/Words that start with "men". If you have a Unix system (which includes Linux and Mac OS X), you can probably produce such a list with the command grep "^men" /usr/share/dict/words. —Keenan Pepper 17:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
On at least some UNIX systems, a shorter way to do that is look men. --Anon, July 21, 02:32 (UTC).

[edit] Words/Sounds at the End of sentences

What do you call those words or sounds at the end of sentences that are meaningless to the sentence but add a pause. E.g. In English "...What, What" or in South African English they add "...yaa" or Chinese (Cantonese?), "...hayaau". Perhaps a modern British English example is how some add "... init".

I'm sure Wikipedia has a good (if inaccessible) article on it as linguistic terms seem well covered, but what are they called?

If not, what is the purpose of these words and how frequently do they evolve? Caffm8 17:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Probably something like discourse particle or one of the articles linked to from it. Recury 17:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Maybe tag question is better. Recury 17:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Discourse Particle seems closer, I wasn't necessarily thinking of questions particularly. One of their purposes seems to be to enable turn-taking, allow you to end a statement. And this paper seems to describe the Cantonese Final Particles which add emphasis. Caffm8 18:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "wrong on many levels"

Does anyone know the origin of this phrase? The Jade Knight 21:37, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't find anything on origins, sorry, but I believe the phrase "wrong on so many levels" is the more common wording. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:42, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

This is just an offhand guess, but it looks like a response to the saying "On some level...," which is invariably used when the speaker doesn't really have any idea what level he is talking about, or even how truth can be assessed in such a manner. "Wrong on so many levels" is like a blanket term for whatever level the other person may have been thinking of. Just a guess. 203.221.126.205 22:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bikur cholim

Can somebody help me find the Hebrew alphabet way to write Bikur cholim? Thanks. Neutralitytalk 23:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

ביקור חולימ 76.80.21.81 04:21, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
It's given at the beginning of the article as well. If you're having trouble seeing it, you'll have to install Hebrew-alphabet support for your browser. -Elmer Clark 21:16, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
It's in the article because Neutrality added it shortly after I answered his question. Donald Hosek 14:33, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Needs a memsofit (i.e. 'final mem') at the end (i.e., left hand side) of the last (i.e. left hand) word instead of a mem. "Its shape changes from מ to ם." I see the article has it correctly, now anyway. Gzuckier 17:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)