Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 28

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[edit] November 28

[edit] 1337? Foreign 1337?

Hello, I wasn't sure where to post this whether it be in the Misc. Section or here, but since 1337 is a language....ehh....

While surfing on the web, I was reading comments that people leave behind on Youtube and Myspace and so forth when a question popped out at me. A person wrote "Can you write 1337 in any other language"?... Now that I think about it, CAN you write 1337 in any other language besides English? If 1337 is the partial/total substitution of words for corresponding numbers, then it SHOULD be possible to write in any other language. However, when posed with this task, I managed to make only meek sentences with Spanish/1337, and it doesn't stop there:

1. Sentences with "accents" (like é, á, ć) are automatically impossible unless you change only simple things or words that are small

2. In some languages, such as Spanish, there are HUGE differences between the words Sí and Si and adding 1337 would screw up the system.

So, Is 1337 a language that applies only to English?

Can anyone prove/disprove of this?

Oh, when you answer, please answer as if partial and total are DIFFERENT. Ex: "It's possible to write partially, impossible to write fully".

Thanks! ♥ECH3LON♥ 02:37, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about 1337 in Spanish, but I do know there is "shortened" language, for example, texting. One could say "Adios" as "A2" (a-dos, it sounds similar) and most would understand. As for the Sí/Si, it really depends on context. I deal with a lot of speaking as opposed to reading, so you really just have to say "Does it make sense to say 'If, I would love to go to the mall' or 'Yes, I would love to go the the mall'.
I feel like I kind of avioded the questions, but I hope I gave you a little bit to go off of =] 71.57.26.126 (talk) 03:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
The difference between accented letters in Spanish can be minimal in context. Sí and si aren't used in the same context and they're pronounced the same, so most speakers can tell the difference. Also, in online stuff (AIM, MySpace etc) many people leave them off altogether (like we leave out letters in English: u, r, etc.). It's most certainly possible to write in 1337 in most any language that uses the latin alphabet, but the non-English users are few. I've seen other versions in Spanish based mostly around typing quickly, e.g. "boy l scuela, pk m profe m dijo k debo asistr clase" for "Voy a la escuela, porque mi profesor me dijo que debo asistir a clase."
There are some ways of typing in non-latin alphabets (such as Russian, Japanese, Greek, which are analogous to 1337, but somewhat different. I think they have articles, but I don't remember their title. Try the See Also at leet. Steewi (talk) 03:13, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
They are not pronounced exactly the same. "Sí", as other accented pronouns such as "qué", "cómo" or "cuándo" are pronounced stronger than its non-accented homologues. That's why in spoken language you can easily tell the difference (because they sound clearly different), so without the context you would (or should) still be able to tell them apart. --Taraborn 09:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
There are French abbreviated forms of different registers. K7 (ka sept) for cassette was current in the 80s. 7AC (sept a cé) as a house name (C'est assez) existed from at least 1995. I have seen "cé" for "c'est" and "po" for "pas" used in game chat, amongst other abbreviations. It's not exactly the same as 1337, but adapted to different languages. Leet has different aspects though: would you include rofl in it, or "teh"? Is "Yuo si teh suxxor" leet in your book? SaundersW (talk) 09:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Similarly, Germans use "n8" for "nacht," which I guess qualifies. -Elmer Clark (talk) 21:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Not 1337, but sometimes Korean youngsters use look-alike characters to type Korean. Kind-of like using cyrillic letters to write in English. Kind of like ТЕТЯIS. --Kjoonlee 23:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)


Why does the language have to have a main latin root? Does it make a difference between a Romance Language and a Non-Romance Language? Does the substitution of letters in different languages affect the context significantly? oh, and excellent answers BTW! ;) ♥ECH3LON♥ 00:56, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

In Chinese there's a similar "internet slang" using sound-alike numbers to write sentences. See, for example, this Chinsepod lesson, or 网络语言 in Chinse Wikipedia (sorry I don't know the correct way to interwiki).--The Photon (talk) 05:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sentence construction -- 'me' followed by verb-ing

Haven't been able to clear this up one way or another, so here goes -- is it correct to write 'me' followed by a verb in the continuous tense? For example --

"Yesterday began with me getting up at 2pm."

or --

"The evening began with me making tea."

There's something undefinable about these sentences that bothers me. Or can someone define it?

Brrk.3001 (talk) 09:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

A professional linguist can explain this better than I can, but I think that your disquiet has to do with the fact that you're talking about yourself performing an action, which, on the face of it, suggests that you are the subject of the phrase and therefore the right pronoun would be "I". But it follows the preposition "with", which demands the accusative "me". As it is, the object of "with" is "me getting up at 2am". There's more to this than that, but it's a start on an explanation. Or maybe not. -- JackofOz (talk) 12:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm no linguist, either, but I'd say what's bothering you is that you sense the absence of the possessive, what some insist on calling "genetive". That has fallen away in many dialects of English. Where I come from, it would be "The evening began with my making coffee." (You'll no doubt have noticed that the tea became coffee, because that what they drink where I come from.) The evening began with something. It didn't begin with me, it began with an act of mine, my act of making the culturally correct beverage, my making of some coffee, my making coffee. Of course, it would be possible to parse it "X began with Y', where Y equals "me making coffee", where "me making coffee" forms a kind of grammatical unit like a picture caption, the whole thing being the object of "with". The "I-me" thing is up in the air grammatically. It seems that English speakers aren't perfectly comfortable with the idea of grammatical case in pronouns and ignore it when it suits them. I find that phenomenon sufficient to obviate the need to explain "me" in "me making tea" (you got your tea back), either in your sentence or in a caption where a case could be made for "I". I have a pet theory I call the Do-re-mi Theory that "me" is the name we call ourselves, not "I". --Milkbreath (talk) 12:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
What everyone needs to do is: 1) go and read Gerund; User:Milkbreath linked to this helpfully, but unhelpfully called it by the name of a noun case and didn't mention the word "gerund", which is a shame because that's exactly what we're talking about: a gerund is a verb, or verbal phrase, which behaves like a noun, such as "me making coffee". ("This is a picture of a fire engine": clearly a noun phrase. "This is a picture of me making coffee": clearly a verbal phrase which behaves like a noun.) 2) People need to stop calling the continuous aspect a "tense". Tense, mood and aspect are three different things. Marnanel (talk) 13:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I think it's pretty impressive that I got through that whole explanation without mentioning gerunds once. I try to put things in layman's terms. The picture caption I was referring to was "Me making coffee", the phrase in question, not "This is a picture of me making coffee" which obviously has "me" as the object of a preposition. (For one thing, we don't say it's a picture in a caption; we know that.) I was unclear. I construed the caption "Me making coffee" as short for "This is me making coffee", which parses "This is me, making coffee." The copulative "is" demands the nominative "I", but nobody in their right mind uses "I" there. That's what I meant by the Anglophone resistance to case. And who mentioned "tense"? --Milkbreath (talk) 13:35, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Ugh, why does everyone think linguists care about grammar? That's a grammarian. Why does everyone think linguists know lots of languages? That's a polyglot. I'm training in physics but I studied and researched in linguistics as well as an undergrad, and my work was exclusively focused on cognition, neuroscience, and computer science. The only grammar I care about is the one that says that you need to have a closed parenthesis after every open parenthesis (i.e., a context-free grammar). The only languages I know well are English and C++. Now there are linguists who do comparative studies of grammar and who do ethnographies where they have to learn multiple languages, but the study of language is a much richer field than that. SamuelRiv (talk) 13:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, I think it's clear that some linguists care about grammar, namely syntacticians. Of course, the popular idea is also that mathematicians spend their days doing arithmetic. Marnanel (talk) 13:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I think you can read "This is a picture of me making coffee" as "...me, making coffee", or a picture of "me making coffee" (which would be a gerund). I wasn't trying to attack you or your explanation; I'm sorry if I was hostile or appeared to be. I think it is helpful to mention technical terms, though, even if it's not the whole explanation. And you didn't mention tense, but User:Brrk.3001 called the continuous aspect a tense in posing the original question. Marnanel (talk) 13:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Don't mind me, I'm just a little cranky this morning, nothing to do with y'all. Right, the original questioner mentioned tense; I didn't notice that. Looks like I'm a little unobservant this morning, too. I see what you mean about the caption, but I think it's asking too much of the reader to expect him to wait for more grammar after getting as far as "me" in "This is a picture of me...." --Milkbreath (talk) 14:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I should add that I had clearly not had enough coffee yet for so early in the morning: I thought "This is a picture of making coffee" and wrote ..."me making coffee". Marnanel (talk) 14:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
In the phrase a picture of me making tea, the participle making functions as an adjective modifying me; making tea could safely be omitted. But the sentence cited by the OP cannot be reduced to The evening began with me; the evening began with an event, namely making tea, and here making is a noun not an adjective. (English is unusual in having participles and gerunds of the same form; if I understand right, it's because the old participle was replaced by a phrase containing the gerund, on doing, which eroded to a-doing and finally to doing.) You wouldn't say "Norman rule in England began with William invasion." —Tamfang (talk) 20:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I was about to respond to what you wrote, Tamfang, but in the meantime you unwrote it and wrote something different (great toys, these computer-thingamies). Nevertheless, my brief glimpse at your first thought allows me to make the distinction between:
  • "The evening began with my making coffee" and
  • "This is a picture of me making coffee".
Both of these are fine. However, folks where I live would use "me" in the first example without a second's thought; they're educated enough to know that "my" is formally correct, but they would regard with suspicion anyone who actually says it. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:50, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
And where I come from (which is the field where the Oxford Book of English Verse meets a chalk stream) most people also say 'me' but think of it as slangy and write 'my'. Xn4 21:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone, for the prompt replies. Brrk.3001 (talk) 02:22, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Japanese and Chinese languages

Why are the two languages similar (as it seems, superficially) if the two countries didn't have much to do with each other in history? -- Mentifisto 10:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Please read Japanese language#vocabulary and Sino-Japanese. Oda Mari (talk) 10:16, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Japanese and Chinese are about as different from each other in linguistic terms as, say, Arabic and Chinese, in terms of them having no clear original ancestor. There are a number of similarities that came about precisely because of the historical interaction between the regions: invasion, conquest, the adoption of the writing system, the eventual isolation and the final reopening of Japan, but in terms of the fundamental structure of the languages, they could not be more different. Next time you hear someone speaking Chinese or Japanese, just take a moment to listen to the sounds. Compare it with the next time you hear someone speak the other language, and you'll understand the difference - it's really not difficult to tell one from the other (hint - Japanese uses a lot of vowel sounds similar to Italian or Spanish, and uses intonation similar to Western languages. Chinese has vowel sounds that are much more central in the mouth (I suppose you could qualify them as "less sharp") and an intonation that changes with each syllable (called phonemic tones, as opposed to English and Japanese which use suprasegmental tones). SamuelRiv (talk) 13:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I think the OP was referring to the fact that both languages use kanji. Well here's how it breaks down: the Chinese were prospering and had exported a rather large amount of literature throughout East Asia. China then (and now) used pure kanji for their writing - the Japanese had a verbal language but no way to write it. The way modern Japanese works, though, is not with a long stream of kanji but with kanji representing roots of verbs and adjectives, along with some nouns. The ancient Japanese so adapted it, using kanji plus a new syllabary derived from it called man'yōgana. Both were pretty different from what came before - the kanji were split into pronunciations that either represented the Chinese word (On'yomi) or the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese word (Kun'yomi), and the manyōgana were excessively simplified kanji not present in the Chinese language.
The manyogana eventually were separated into the smoother hiragana used for the latter part of kanji phrases (for example, "i adjectives" like 広い begin with a kanji character or characters (広), then typically add hiragana i (い) at the end for conjugation into past, negative, or both forms) and the sharper katakana used primarily for loanwords (for example アイス・クリーム,"aisu kuriimu", or, obviously, ice cream)). So all three Japanese syllabaries originated in Chinese writing. Sidenote: what makes you say they didn't have much to do with each other in history? Looking at conflict alone, they certainly got into a lot of important power struggles, and their conquests in China and Russia (we must have an article on this, but a Russian fleet once sailed all the way around Europe, Asia, and Africa, the hard way: backwards, to engage the Japanese fleet and were defeated via a crafty Japanese maneuver in less than a half-hour!) would partially lead to their arrogance in declaring war on the Allies! -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 14:14, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
The article you referred to is Battle of Tsushima. What made their route "backwards?" Surely they proceeded the quickest and surest way, considering the need to refuel along the way? Edison (talk) 15:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I was taught (or remember being taught!) that the fleet was anchored much farther east than our article says - far enough east that sailing the other way would rightly be seen as "backwards". However, this seems to be incorrect as the soon-to-be-sunk fleet was comprised mostly of parts of the Baltic Fleet. Apologies! The humor is not lost though, considering either way it's a long journey for quite a quick and decisive outcome. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] —Preceding comment was added at 15:16, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Since the most conspicuous similarity is in the writing system, perhaps it would be more instructive to say Chinese and Japanese are about as closely related as English and Hungarian. ;) —Tamfang (talk) 20:35, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Even though the verbal communication is impossible, the similarity of the writing system makes it possible to understand each other by writing Chinese character/kanji as far as the topics are simple. Oda Mari (talk) 07:30, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Poem suggestions

Can somebody please suggest a good poem that I (memorize and) recite for a competition at my university? Thanks in advance--202.164.138.32 (talk) 11:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

My current favourite poems for recital are The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Easter, 1916. But you should really be looking for something you enjoy and feel you can do justice to. Algebraist 13:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
For something completely different, there is "Sheridan's Ride [1]. Edison (talk) 14:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I like The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow reciting all of it would be a bit much but parts of it like his childhood or the wooing of Minnehaha would entertain. If you want something amusing try The Lion and Albert,[2] it needs to be read in a north of England accent for full effect but has some nice, gentle irony. To rouse everybody to personal strength and moral good you might think about If by Kipling, sneered at these days but a well crafted poem.Richard Avery (talk) 15:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
At the risk of sounding sexist, If— only really works if the original poster is male. If you want to show off, Jabberwocky is always good, and fun. Neil ☎ 16:25, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Why does Jabberwocky help show off? Algebraist 19:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Because it's a hard poem to remember and recite aloud for us normal people. Neil ☎ 09:18, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Ulysses (poem), Do Not Go Softly... (Thomas), The Hollow Men, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Ozymandias... Steewi (talk) 23:37, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I believe you mean Do not go gentle into that good night, not 'Do Not Go Softly...' Algebraist 01:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
"There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu" does it for me!DuncanHill (talk) 09:58, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks guys! I'll select one from the list.--202.164.141.180 (talk) 14:45, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Oops, I'm late to the party, but I like The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service; mostly because I heard it recited by a fellow traveller on a frozen night in Churchill, Manitoba. --LarryMac | Talk 16:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I would suggest "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo", in the original Latin. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Catullus? If you can get the rhythm right it sits nicely. That is, of course one of the scary ones :). Oh, and thanks for the correction, Algebraist - I don't know what I was thinking. Steewi (talk) 23:55, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh, why stop halfway? Do [Catullus 97]. Charles Sheffield wanted to include the last line (in English) in one of his stories, and his editor found that there were indeed things he found unprintable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Autumn by John Keats is lovely to say,rolls round the tongue like honey...(Hypnosadist) 21:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Neil: Jabberwocky is fairly easy, being 28 lines which both rhyme and scan (I memorised it without trying, just by rereading the book a few times). Prufrock is hard. The Waste Land is very hard. Steewi: it's easier when you've memorized the thing :) Algebraist 03:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Memorizability suggests relative shortness. A very short but ineffably beautiful poem is Tennyson's Crossing the Bar. It would work best if you're the last speaker, but you may not know that. -- JackofOz (talk) 04:43, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] aka sgt

How are the most used abreviations for "Sergeant" and "also know as" written? I found a lot of different versions and would like the most widely accepted. ~Thank you Keria (talk) 16:15, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

What different versions have you seen? Are you saying, perhaps, that there is a mixture of capitals/lower case letters, full stops, etc? I would say that "aka" could be written AKA, aka or a.k.a. It doesn't much matter, as long as you're consistent. As for "Sgt", that should be written Sgt (not SGT), and should always have a capital S, but it doesn't really matter whether it has a full stop at the end or not, as long as you're consistent. --Richardrj talk email 16:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
According to American style, there should always be a period (full stop) after "Sgt." British usage, I think, is less strict on that point. Marco polo (talk) 17:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
For sergeants, you may want to follow the style used by the particular military force you're interested in. I believe the US Army has dropped the traditional "Sgt." and now uses "SGT" in block capitals with no period, while other forces are more likely to use mixed case. It would be best to see what publications of the particular force use, rather than external sources, if that's the way you wnat to go. --Anonymous, 18:35 UTC, November 28, 2007.
The appear to use "SGT" for internal communication as in recent handbooks, while outgoing communication such as news bulletins appear to stick to "Sgt." with a period, like here.  --Lambiam 19:37, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Note carefully the use of full stops in these abbreviations. British usage favours omitting the full stop in abbreviations which include the first and last letters of a single word, such as Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr and St; American usage prefers (A) Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. and St., with full stops. Most other abbreviated titles, however, require a full stop, as shown above. [3] Thus in UK usage, Sgt (no full stop) would be correct. SaundersW (talk) 22:57, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
And for a shortened form used primarily orally (at least in the US), how about "sarge" ? StuRat (talk) 16:39, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bungs

From The Guardian: "Harry Redknapp, the manager of Portsmouth F.C., was held by City of London police as part of its investigation into alleged bungs."

What are "bungs"? Our article is about something totally different, and I can't find an appropriate definition on dictionary.reference.com either. howcheng {chat} 22:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Bribe. While you'd hardly take the Urban Dictionary to be the most reliable or definitive of resources, see this. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I suspected as much, but couldn't really find confirmation. Thanks. howcheng {chat} 23:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
See also the wikitionary entry. I believe it transpired from the use of Bung as a verb to throw, as in 'bung me that screwdriver' or 'bung him a quid to keep him quiet'. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 23:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
[Origin unknown; perh. f. prec.] trans. To bribe; to pay; to tip.
1950 P. Tempest Lag's Lexicon 27 "Did he bung you?" = did he give you a tip? "I will let you have some grub if you will bung me." = I will let you have some food if you will pay me . . . 1967 J. Burke Till Death us do Part i. 24 Don't forget the solicitors . . . They'll want bunging. (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed.) —Wayward Talk 05:35, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Agree with the above but in the football world it has a more specialised meaning as a bribe paid to facilitate a player's transfer from one club to another. In theory such business is conducted between the two clubs however players' agents have been known to bribe team managers who will then lobby for a particular player to be bought or sold. TheMathemagician 15:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

And this link[4] is to the particular scandal that popularised it's use. - X201 15:39, 30 November 2007 (UTC)