Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 March 11

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[edit] March 11

[edit] Versus title

I can't find anything about this. I have a title that is eight words long and has the the word versus in it. Is it appropriate to capitalize versus or leave it lowercase?

In the US the most common style is to capitalize all words except perhaps a few stop words like "of" and "the"; if written in full "versus" is then usually capitalized (Joe Versus the Volcano, Godzilla Versus the Sea Monster, etc., but Kramer vs. Kramer). Elsewhere capitals in titles are used more sparingly. The Wikipedia style for article titles is to capitalize the first word and further only words that would also be capitalized in running text (Nature versus nurture, Scientology versus the Internet).  --LambiamTalk 20:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Definitely capitalise it, like Lambiam said. Even abbreviated to vs i would argue that it should be capitalised; it's not a preposition or a short conjunction, which are (pretty much) the only words that should be uncapitalised in standard title case. Of course, you are certainly allowed to be creative and simply ignore standard title case. ~ lav-chan @ 22:57, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
In Kramer vs. Kramer it's not capitalized because it's supposedly taken from the name of the divorce case, and "vs" or "v" is not normally capitalized when it's in the title of a lawsuit. (So when you send your law student off on a wild goose chase to locate a copy of United States v. Nixon, you don't capitalize the v.) When you use the word as an actual word, though, you should spell it in full and capitalize it if it's in a title. --Charlene 23:23, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
"Versus" certainly is a preposition. As you have seen, there is disagreement as to whether prepositions get capitalized always, sometimes, or only if they are long words. Treat it the same as you would another preposition of the same length. --Anonymous, March 12, 2007, 00:41 (UTC).
The classic guide line revolves around five letters (i think 'five or more' is the classic rule, but i guess 'more than five' is probably another variation — either way 'versus' qualifies) as the limit for 'capitalisable' prepositions and conjunctions. ~ lav-chan @ 22:55, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) America (The Book) has a joke in it about an appellate-court case, which went through five judgments, between Thomas Pynchon and the producers of a TV miniseries. The decisive fifth round was named V. v. V V. There are much funnier jokes in the book. -- Mwalcoff 01:06, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Slightly off topic. A friend of mine, learned in the law, once told me that the word versus (whether or not abbreviated to vs.) should be pronounced "and". This was at the time "Kramer vs. Kramer" was released, and he always insisted on referring to it as "Kramer and Kramer". Is this correct? JackofOz 01:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
It's often pronounced like that in Commonwealth countries, but not in the States. There it's usually just abbreviated to 'v.' (as in Kramer v. Kramer), which is pronounced either as 'versus' or just as 'vee'. The abbreviation 'vs.' is mostly reserved for non-law situations (like sports and video games). ~ lav-chan @ 02:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Kramer vs. Kramer itself seems to be an exception. Or maybe it was just Hollywood making it up. JackofOz 02:41, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, yeah, right. But Kramer vs. Kramer is a movie, not an actual court case. In 'real' American law (court papers, text books, &c.), it's almost always 'v.'. (Not to imply that 'vs.' is wrong per se; it's just not often used by 'the pros'.) This is speculation obviously, but i'm guessing the use of 'vs.' in the title of the movie is playing to a public that would naturally be somewhat unfamiliar with legal terminology. ~ lav-chan @ 07:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Technically, in English law it should indeed be said as Kramer and Kramer, but most people in the UK would probably say it as Kramer versus Kramer (including, I suspect, many legal professionals unless they were actually being formal). And it's always "v" instead of "vs". -- Necrothesp 17:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
According to [1] "In speech the "v" is never said as "vee" or "versus" In a civil action the “v” is said as "and" while in criminal cases “v” is said as "against". " Mmortal03 (talk) 03:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ไอ้เหี้ยขอเย็ดที

ไอ้เหี้ยขอเย็ดที — What language is this, and what does it say? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 19:21, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

It's Thai (at least it's the Thai alphabet), but I don't know what it says. —Angr 19:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't know what it means either, but a Google search suggests that the first part ไอ้เหี้ย is rude and is used as an insult ("you bastard"?).  --LambiamTalk 21:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both for identifying it as Thai. After browsing user categories for native speakers of Thai, I asked User:Kaiteng316 for a translation and he says it literally means "Can I fuck you once, motherfucker?" − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 04:43, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reconstructed words

Is there an online resource which [reliably] lists reconstructions of Afroasiatic? There's a lot about PIE, but I can't find much about Afroasiatic. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:55, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

All I know of is the Proto-Semitic roots index of the American Heritage Dictionary. But it's only Semitic, not all of Afro-Asiatic, and it's far from complete as it only includes roots that have descendants in English. —Angr 21:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
There aren't really too many "reliable reconstructions" of Afroasiatic (in the same sense as there are for Indo-European, Semitic, etc.). The time depth of Afroasiatic seems to be even greater than that of Indo-European, yet for most of the branches of Afroasiatic, there's very little significant linguistic data available before the 19th century. For two branches (Semitic and the consonants of Egyptian) there are ancient texts going back for almost 4,000 years or more, but Semitic and Egyptian actually share relatively few basic vocabulary words, and it's extremely difficult to "reconstruct" things according to rigorous neogrammarian sound correspondences. Instead, people like Diakonoff do things like pointing out certain inflectional patterns which occur in 3 or 4 branches in Afro-Asiatic (i.e. in at least one language in each of 3-4 branches), and claim that such inflectional patterns may have also occurred in the proto-language. We're a very long way from being able to write a "The Sheep and the Horses" style fable in proto-Afro-Asiatic! AnonMoos 01:51, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English first names translated into other languages

–68.239.175.48 21:35, 11 March 2007 (UTC) Dear Wikipedia, I am conducting a multicultural festival and want attendees to have their names written in several languages. I am looking for lists of English names and their approximate translations into other languages. I understand exact translations are impossible but that isn't necessary in this case. This festival and holiday is aiming to foster connections between people of different cultural groups. Please look at our website www.allpeoplesday.com If your organization could provide such a list we would greatly appreciate your efforts.

68.239.175.48 21:35, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Compiling such a list would be immensely time consuming, especially because we don't know which names to include. Conveniently, there are many websites out there which will "translate" names (really, provide a name of equivalent meaning) for you...but you'll have to do all the work! Here's one I've used before. You might also try purchasing a multilingual book on baby names at your local bookstore; I seem to recall getting totally overwhelmed by such possibilities before we decided to give up and name all our children after trees. Jfarber 03:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Be very careful: many websites and lists are inaccurate. The worst ones are those that treat Chinese characters as if they were letters, and claim that somehow you can "spell" a Western name with characters. There's a guy on hanzismatter.com who had what he thought was his daughter's name spelled out in Chinese characters - the tattoo actually said "healthy woman flow". --Charlene 03:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Here's a list for Jèrriais: [2]. The Jade Knight 04:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Here's a list for Korean [3] and a translator for Japanese [4]. Foreign names are spelt phonetically in those languages, so you wont get any crazy meanings like with Chinese. Speaking of Chinese, here is the chart which the Chinese Wikipedia uses for spelling out foreign names. [5]. Hope that helps. :) --Candy-Panda 05:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

The best way is to look up the name of a famous person with the name on Wikipedia, then use the "in other languages" box on the left to see how the name is translated in different languages. Using the George W. Bush article, we can see that "George" is spelled "ג'ורג'" in Hebrew, "ジョージ" in Japanese and "דזשארזש" in Yiddish. (Apparently, Yiddish uses "dzsh" to represent the "soft g" sound, while Hebrew uses "g" with an apostrophe.) -- Mwalcoff 00:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

There's a list on Wiktionary. -- Necrothesp 17:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is the difference between oppression and repression?

Clearly the terms are closely related, and are often used interchangeably. Is there a subtle difference? Is it incorrect to use them interchangeably? So far, my best guess is:

  • oppression - the perception of tyranny by the population (such as fear, uneasiness)
  • repression - the tactics used by a tyrant (such as propaganda, military intervention...)

Any ideas? Nimur 22:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Curse me for having an incredibly trivial memory Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2006_November_10#suppression.2C_repression_and_oppresion meltBanana 22:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I can think of one instance where they have sharply different meanings: "a repressed homosexual" versus an "oppressed homosexual". StuRat 16:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)