Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 January 1

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[edit] January 1

[edit] Color me curious

My copy of The Straight Dope says that the word "orange" (as a color) was first documented in 1620. What did they call orange colored objects before then? Like say carrots or time traveling Lucille Ball impersonators. Or was it something like this:

First guy: I like the color of that fire. Let's name it.
Second guy: Naah. Let's sack Rome instead.
First guy: Okay.

Also, did the fruit show up in England around this time, and thus give birth to this meaning of the word? Clarityfiend (talk) 04:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I think this etymological online dictionary is all the reference I can give you by now. Happy new year! Pallida  Mors 04:15, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
They called it red or yellow...Latin, for example, has lots of words for red, which cover orange too. Also, colours in different languages do not always match the usual English colours. Sometimes yellow and green are the same, or blue and purple, etc. Note though that Orange, the place in France and the Dutch dynasty, is much older, and I guess their use of the colour must have been adopted on purpose later. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:39, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Related articles on the blue-green turquoiserie: Blue-green across cultures, Grue and Bleen, and the book Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution by Paul Kay and Brent Berlin. ---Sluzzelin talk 05:23, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
There's also an article on orange (word), and it states:
"Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the colour was referred to as geoluhread in Old English, which translates roughly into Modern English as yellow-red."
---Sluzzelin talk 06:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Aaah, that's the article I want. Thanks all for your other insights. I never even considered that other languages might not even deem orange to be a color. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:16, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Here's an exampe of how the word orange is relatively new to a language: In swedish, the word orange (for the color) is common. There are however plenty of people who consider it an undesireable word borrowed from English, because some deflections of it become awkward. The traditional word they prefer is brandgul, lit. fire-yellow. /Kriko (talk) 13:16, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Slightly OT: Colours are one of the reasons there are problems in semantics. Is my orange the same as your orange? When does orange become red or yellow? How do you define 'orange' in simple terms, without using scientific vocabulary (i.e. the light spectrum) or outside/circular reference (orange is the colour of an orange. What's an orange? An orange fruit). Steewi (talk) 23:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese 'th'

How is the Voiceless dental fricative represented when English words are written in Katakana? And what about the Voiced dental fricative as well? 195.189.142.119 (talk) 10:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

They're rendered as s and z respectively. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 11:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
But Anonymous asked about a voiceless dental fricative, Angry. That's what /th/ (/θ/) is called (rightly or wrongly).
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 13:11, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
I know; that's the question I thought I was answering. The English fricatives /θ ð/ are rendered as (converted into) /s z/ when transcribing English in katakana. The name Smith is スミス sumisu, while the name Heather is ヘザー hezā. (And it's Angr, not Angry; my user name is derived from my real name and has nothing to do with anger!) —Angr If you've written a quality article... 13:58, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Fine, Angr. Thanks for clearing that up.
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 00:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand Noetica's objection, not that it matters now. —Tamfang (talk) 03:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I need Korean names for Korean characters.

I'm writing a story and I need help coming up with Korean names for three of the characters in it. I know very little about the Korean language, but I want to give them authentic names and I don't trust baby name websites for anything. I am unreasonably serious about names.

Two of the characters are twin girls named Lunaria and Lilium. In the context of the story, they were named after both flowers and the two moons of the fantasy-Earth they live on (the bright moon, Luna, and the dark moon, Lilith). But their mother (who is the third character who needs a name) is actually a Korean fox demon called a kumiho, who took the form of a woman and seduced their father, then left him with the baby girls after they were born.

Their father gave them western names, but I wanted to also give them Korean names from their mother. I first tried to go with Korean translations of the flowers they were named after, but I wasn't sure that they were right, and they didn't fit in with the general two-syllable naming scheme common for real Korean names.

I'd like it for the twins to have names that begin or end with the same syllable, such as "flower" or "moon", then character's such as bright/white and dark/black for the second syllable. This is, of course, if those words are even appropriate for use in names. If they aren't, I'll need a similar naming scheme that's acceptable.

As for the kumiho mother, I was trying to find a one-syllable flower name (I think lotus is "yun" or "yon") combined with a word like "beauty". I don't need a last name because I figure kumiho wouldn't have last names.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated (and please include both the romanized and hangul readings of the names/syllables if you do). Thanks! And happy new year, Wikipedians who use the new-year-starts-on-January-first calendar!

--69.207.99.230 (talk) 11:32, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Latin (2)

In the following sentence from Copleston, vol.ii, p.449, what do the Latin phrases mean? "... we do not discern the divine light or concurrence, nor are the eternal ideas objects directly perceived; we know them rather as principles which move the intellect to know the created essence, ut obiectum movens et in aliud ducens, not as obiectum in se ducens. --Omidinist (talk) 12:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

"..., as moving an object and shaping it into something else, not as shaping an object into itself." Instead of an object, also the object is a possible translation. The verb duco, which I translated here tentatively as "to shape", is one of these general verbs that has many meanings: to lead, conduct, guide, direct, draw, bring, fetch, escort, produce, form, construct, make, fashion, shape, mould, cast, dispose, receive, admit, take, get, assume, deduce, derive, move, incite, induce.  --Lambiam 15:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Lambiam. And Happy New Year (if you are Christian). --Omidinist (talk) 16:27, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a New Year for non-Christians, too! —Angr If you've written a quality article... 16:48, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, of course not for all of them. But, sorry for the guff, anyway. --Omidinist (talk) 19:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 凤玲

TRANSLATE FROM CHINESE TO ENGLISH PLEASE. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.9.2 (talk) 15:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Isn't this simply a name (Feng-ling)?  --Lambiam 16:32, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it looks like a name to me. The first character, feng1, means 'phoenix'. The second character, ling2, refers to the tinkling sound of gem pendants when they hit each other. Both are common characters in a girl's name. Steewi (talk) 23:49, 1 January 2008 (UTC)