Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 4

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[edit] November 4

[edit] Junction in spanish

how can i say junction in spanish?CholgatalK! 00:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know any Spanish, but since no one else has offered an answer, according to my mini English-Spanish dictionary, it's junta (which according to junta also means "committee"). No doubt it all depends on context.--Shantavira|feed me 10:53, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
My Spanish is not very strong, but I think that the Spanish equivalent of junction depends on what kind of junction you mean. A junta is a coming together of two or more things, like the junction of two beams in a house or two electrical cables in a switch. For a railway junction, however, the correct word is empalme, and for a road or motorway junction, the correct word appears to be cruce. Marco polo 16:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Wordrefrence.com is an excellent resource for this sort of question. Check it out here. In addition to what's listed there, My Diccionario de sinónimos y antónimos (Santillana) mentions juntura, ensambladura, acoplamiento, and soldadura, which may or may not be synonyms, dependig on context. -NorwegianBlue talk 18:06, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 19 year old - man or teenager?

In the media when referring to a 19 year old person they either refer to them as a 19 year old man/woman or a teenager, sometimes in the same news article. Which is more correct to say? Is a 19 year old a man or a teenager? --Candy-Panda 09:26, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Generally speaking, "man" (or "woman") is used to refer to an adult as opposed to a child ... thus, generally speaking, anyone over the age of 18 is a man/woman and not a child. A teenager is anyone whose age is in the teens ... that is anyone aged 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, or 19. Thus, as you pointed out, someone who is aged 19 can be referred to as a man (woman) and/or as a teenager. So, to answer your question, neither is more correct to say. They are both correct. They are not mutually exclusive. Which of the terms is preferable, of course, would depend on the context of the article in which the term is written. (Joseph A. Spadaro 09:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC))
If I were a newspaper reporter, I think I would refer to a 19-year-old male as a "youth". I'd probably use it for any male between about 15 and 21. —Angr 09:52, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Thomas Hardy said - "I was a child until I was sixteen, a youth until I was twenty-five, a young man until I was forty or fifty". Xn4 23:09, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I would have thought media style guides would ensure consistency at least in the first reference. If the headline is "X dies in fire", the sequence for different age-values of X might be something like: baby, infant, toddler, child/boy/girl, teen/teenager, youth (male only), young man/woman, man/woman, elderly man/woman. While a 19-yr-old could plausibly be characterised as a "teenager" in the body of an article (say, to emphasise his youth), I would expect a media source to refer to him as a "man" in the headline or summary. For me, a "youth" suggests 15-17.jnestorius(talk) 00:06, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
There is no right or wrong here --- as a 19-year old (male) is both a man and a teenager. As I said above, the context of the article would most likely dictate the more appropriate choice of words. If the article were about an 18- or 19-year-old high schooler who got arrested for some mischievous adolescent prank -- or about one who is a star player on the high-school / college football team, the term "teenager" would probably be more appropriate. If perhaps an 18- or 19-year-old U. S. Marine died in the Iraq War, the term "man" would be more appropriate. The "best" word depends largely on the context of the article -- and, generally, if this 18/19-year-old were participating in more adolescent or more adult activities. (Joseph A. Spadaro 04:51, 5 November 2007 (UTC))
There is a convention in many U.S. jurisdictions to report college-level athletics as "men and women" (e.g., Men's baseball team); and to report any lower-level athletics as "boys and girls". This convention, although quite arbitrary, has been used in print and broadcast media for many years. dr.ef.tymac 21:14, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] latin phrase

What does it mean in this context: "... whereby the soul apprehends God within herself 'et ea quae in Deo erant'"? Omidinist 11:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

It literally means "and those things that were in God". What that's actually supposed to mean, I don't know. —Angr 11:59, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Could it be that the original has qua, as required by grammatical agreement in Latin? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lambiam (talk • contribs) 16:40, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
quae is the correct neuter nominative plural. qua is only feminine ablative singular. —Angr 16:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. That's exactly what I needed: literal meaning. I can deduce the philosophy behind it. Omidinist 16:26, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] firenze vs. florence

Why do we change the names of foreign cities, e.g. from Firenze to Florence? Surely we can pronounce "Firenze", so shouldn't that be its name in English? Admittedly each person who coined one of the Anglicised names might have done so without bothering to find out the local name for the place, and perhaps the name stuck before we could change it, but if that were a common occurrence, we would have names that bore no similarity to the local name. "Florence," like most Anglicised names, is clearly based on "Firenze," the local name (i.e. Firenze) but is nevertheless a different name, and not a mere orthographical shift. Why does this happen so often? 203.221.127.45 14:55, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure who "we" is referring to: Wikipedians or English speakers. In Wikipedia we use the common designation in English texts, which is Florence. English Florence was copied from French Florence, which, like German Florenz and Italian Firenze, comes from the original Latin name Florentia (see History of Florence). When the Italians changed the name, the rest of the world did not follow suit.  --Lambiam 15:39, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't think you can say that your average English speaker can pronounce "Firenze". I'd be willing to bet that Italians would think we weren't saying it exactly right. Therefore, some degree of anglicization occurs naturally. The reason for the divergence of a foreign placename from its native form will vary. The French call London Londres, both from Londinium (interestingly, they call Londoners Londoniens, and they call the one in Ontario London). The same force is sometimes at work as in words like "quixotic" and "caliph", that the foreign word became familiar in written form first. Although we can suppose that English-speakers would be able to make a fair stab at pronouncing European names, when we go to China we run into trouble. Is John Smith's Beijing any closer to the actual pronunciation than his Peking? We throw up our hands and are content call it what we call it. Just be happy we don't call Moscow Mockba. --Milkbreath 17:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
There seems to be a double-standard here, we write Perú with an accent but we don't write Firenze with is most common and current transliteration which appears and any map written since the 1990s? Firenze doesn't even have any special charicters. Sure we may say fur-n-zay instead of Fear-ehn-seh but we also say pah-ruuu instead of peh-roo and the accent doesn't make a differance. If the italians change the transliteration we should use it here. It doesn't matter what most people call them because its a name, it matters what they call themselves. We wouldn't start calling George Bush Jorge Arbusto just because its the spanish equivalent just as we dont call his argentine counterpart Cri'stina Fernández—Christina FernandezCholgatalK! 19:55, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
"We" write Peru with an accent? Who is "we"? And Wikipedia policy is to use the most common English spelling. We don't want to confuse English readers. Corvus cornix 20:03, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Well the names of places do change in common culture but there is no ability to 'make changes' to english than to try convince others that your usage should be common usage. Bombay is back to being called Mumbai these days but many will still refer to it by Bombay. Poor old Bombay Sapphire must be most upset - though they have the consolation of making pretty much the nicest gin around. So if Firenze becomes more popular then it will overtake it and become known that way, but for now Florence remains more popular. To be frank it matters little, the same thing exists for literally 1000s of places across 100s of languages. English is a language, Italian is one - both have their names for things (regardless of say the nationality of the inventor) and both have their names for places too. ny156uk 23:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

For London, it was noted above that the modern French and English names are independent derivatives of the original Latin name. But consider Rome. Its local name was Roma in classical Latin and is still Roma in modern Italian, and I believe it hasn't changed in the whole 2,700+ year history of the city. "Roma" is pefectly pronounceable in English; why ever did the form "Rome" first appear? --Anonymous, XXIII:XXXI UTC :-), IV NON. NOV., A.D. MMVII.

As with Florence, it's the French form of the name and came into English at a time when French was the European lingua franca and was spoken by the English travelling classes. I imagine Cholga would have us saying "All roads lead to Roma" and talking about Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venezia. From there, it's only a short step to insisting on "Iulius Caesar", "the Emperor of Nippon" and "the President of Deutschland". Xn4 23:33, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't we insist then on IVLIVS instead of Iulius?  --Lambiam 21:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
It's a historico-cultural thing dating from earlier times. If we chanced upon Napoli for the very first time now, there's no way we'd change the name to the hyper-correct "Naples". Or render Athinai (which changed 30 years ago to Athina) as Athens. Or change Livorno to Leghorn. Or ... or ... . It's just not acceptable to act in such a culturally insensitive way these days. We'd at least try to say it the way the natives do. But we still have the legacy of our forbears forebears, and that's not going away any time soon. There's also the issue of pronunciation of the original names, which is particularly a problem with Asian tonal languages that are almost unreproducable by most westerners - the Peking/Beijing example above is a very good one. Nobody seems to have an issue with calling the former Leningrad "St Petersburg", but that's not what the Russians call it - it's "Sankt Peterburg" (no s in Peterburg; the Peter is not pronounced as in Peter Piper - it's closer to pet-air, with a rolled r; and the primary stress is on -burg, not on Peter-). Even with Firenze, I know many well educated and well travelled people who know that its Italian name is spelled Firenze, but they pronounce it Fuh-renz. So getting the spelling right is only half the problem solved. And speaking of India, we've changed some of our articles to reflect the "new" names, but others have been objected to on the ground that the "old" name is better known. Very inconsistent. -- JackofOz 23:54, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Also, we now have words such as Florentine, which have an independent life. It would sound odd to say "The Florentine period is so named because it had its roots in Firenze". -- JackofOz 23:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Continuing these examples, almost all Biblical names are different in most European languages, and different again from the Hebrew vocalisation. Compare Jesus ([χe'sus] in Spanish), Yeshu'a, Iesu, Iesos; and Bethlehem, beth-lahem, Belén, and so on. Add Jerusalem and Yerushalayim (called Al-Quds in Arabic, pronounced [əlʔʊds]) Steewi 01:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
We'd get into deep waters with some names. Yehoshua, Yeshua Mashiah, or Iēsous Christos? Xn4 07:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Have you seen our article, Exonym and endonym?
There's a curious tendency nowadays (not only in English) to abandon the long established exonyms in favor of endonyms. I don't know if it results from political correctness or a mixture of globalization and ignorance. And it doesn't only apply to Asian places like Pekin/Beijing, Burma/Myanmar or Bombay/Mumbai, but also to places in Europe. Who speaks of Ratisbon, Mayence, Lyons or Cracow anymore? — Kpalion(talk) 23:24, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I do, and it's one of those losing battles which somehow isn't ever quite lost. I think it's fair to remind ourselves that there was a time when even Ratisbon and Aix-la-Chapelle were vulgar neologisms. Xn4 01:36, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
The idea that there is a "correct" name for a place rather falls apart in polyglot countries or regions. Is Bruxelles or Brussel "correct"? Should placenames in Catalonia be rendered in Spanish or Catalan? What language should you favour with placenames in Switzerland: Swiss French, Swiss German, Italian or Latin (the official get-out used by the Confederatio Helvetica?
By the time you get to India, a country with 22 official languages (and where many others are spoken), it becames even more problematic. The idea that it is in some way "politically correct" to say Mumbai rather than Bombay ignores the fact that many people who live in that city choose to call it "Bombay", and - more importantly - overlooks the political motivations of the renaming, a Hindu nationalist attempt to sideline the other languages of India in favour of Hindi.
In short, we're better off sticking to our exonyms. 80.254.147.52 14:28, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit]  !nosine

What does this "!nosine" mean? I see the exclamation mark all over and have no idea what it indicates as no one seems very excited. And then there is the non-word "nosine" . . . Thanks for your help. Bielle 23:36, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

There's an annoying little bot that runs around Wikipedia signing people's comments on talk pages if they've forgotten. It's so fast that it doesn't give you a chance to say "Oh, I meant to sign that". Including the secret code word !nosine! in the edit summary makes it not sign for you. And so do certain other measures (if I'm right, this won't be signed...)
Thank you. Now that I know what it means, why would anyone have a problem with what it does? If you forget to sign, it does it for you, right? Is there some subtext about being reminded that is something else I don't know? Is it like having your mother remind you to take out the garbage? Too many questions here; sorry. Bielle 00:00, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
It's rather precisely like Mom, insisting that you do it now, when she wants you to do it, instead of three seconds from now, when you remember. And Mom does it for you, not by simply doing it, but by simultaneously announcing to the world that you're a worthless layabout who makes your mother do your work for you. - Nunh-huh 00:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
That's good -very funny, and informative. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bielle (talk • contribs) 00:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
It sure is fast! Bielle 00:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes; in fact, it makes reverting vandalism on talk pages difficult, because by the time you hit the "rollback" button, SineBot has already signed, so all you're reverting is SineBot's signing of the vandalism rather than the vandalism itself. —Angr 19:16, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Also, it insists on a form of signature that, for reasons I will not go into here, I do not choose to comply with. --Anon, 03:09 UTC, Nov. 6, 2007.
In Serbo-Croatian, "nosine" means "big noses", so the edit summary has an additional benefit of being funny :o). Duja► 11:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)