Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 June 5

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[edit] June 5

[edit] Section8

To the honorable Michelle R. Bloomberg, I am a resident of the Bronx, Ny.I recived a vocher from Nyc housing of October of 2007. The experation date for the vocher was Apirl,2008, in the process of having this vocher i then found housing before my experation date but ther was a change in my budget. Therefor the rental/transfer office then informed me that my applications would have to go back to applications for a budget resessment due to a 17% budget change therefore i am now without a vocher, and now listed to be a catagory 9 when i have already recived a vocher.My vocher # is 0593591. I am now trying to find out why my vocher was took away from me and given to someone else, they now have my lease from the apartment that i found,along with other doucments. So, my question is why do i not have a section8 vocher because of the lact of business admintration. Now i am trying to fight for what i feel is righfully mine...Where do i go from here?? I need assistance to find out what happpen from the month of october 'till now. Knowing that the apartment was found in the month of December,2007.That is my question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.119.85.222 (talk) 00:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Who is Michelle R. Bloomberg? Adam Bishop (talk) 00:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Michael Bloomberg's wife? Nope, his wife is Susan. Not sure. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
It is amazing what people think we can do: the language reference desk can solve any problem! Need a girlfriend? Ask the LRD! Need a flat? Ask the LRD! Need to settle a dispute with an administration? Ask the LRD! :-) --Lgriot (talk) 06:50, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
We are an encyclopedia, not New York City Hall. It is not very likely that Mr. Bloomberg, or someone who acts on his behalf, will see your posting. Here is a link to a contact webpage for the New York City Government.  --Lambiam 08:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I suspect, based on your question, that you found one of our over two million articles, and thought that we were directly affiliated in some way with that subject. Please note that you are at Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this page is "Language Reference Desk" of the English Wikipedia. We have no inside track on the subject of your question. You can, however, search our vast catalogue of articles by typing a subject into the search field on the left hand side of your screen.
However, you might have more luck visiting New York City Housing Authority (Official site) or calling 3-1-1 toll free. If you really think Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the best person to solve your issue, he can be contacted here. Astronaut (talk) 08:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
3-1-1 is definitely the way to go here. - Nunh-huh 11:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Translation of text on an image

Hello. Can someone please translate the text on the image at this page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GriechTheater2.PNG. It is stated that the terms are in Greek language and Latin letters. Not sure what the means, but hopefully you'll understand, lol. I would like the terms translated into English please. Many Thanks, POKEMON RULES (talk) 03:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It means they've been transliterated from the Greek alphabet into the Latin alphabet. Since they're all rather specific technical terms, they probably don't have different English translations. Rather, the Greek words (transliterated into the Latin alphabet) would be used in English. —Angr 06:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia has articles and definitions for some of the terms: diazomata, skene, proskenion, pinakes, parodoi. This site gives definitions for the other words. DAVID ŠENEK 10:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your help, POKEMON RULES (talk) 01:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Words ending in Z

I have noticed a recurrence of words ending in Z on the net recently, in deliberate misspellings such as "haz". Iz thiz some kind of internet meme, and if so where did it originate from? --Richardrj talk email 13:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I think it's of feline origin. DAVID ŠENEK 14:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Wow, is there anything at all that Wikipedia doesn't have an article on? Many thankz. --Richardrj talk email 14:26, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Well... hiphop culture does it too (e.g. Boyz n the Hood), and that's older than the lolcats. —Angr 16:03, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Heck, I ain't no damn lolcat, and I've around longer than most of those boyz. (You cannot imagine what it took for me to write that last "word". What sacrifices one makes for humanity.) -- JackofOz (talk) 20:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Jeez haz been roun' longr dan dat. (No, no Richardrj, "thanx", aight?) Julia Rossi (talk) 08:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, but I was definitely thinking of the lolcats thing, which is a recent internet phenomenon and distinct from boyz, jeez etc. Thanks all. --Richardrj talk email 09:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Auxiliary verbs in English

There seems to be auxiliary verbs in Finnish (and Swedish too) that I can't translate to English directly. These include:

  • jaksaa (sv. orka): have the energy to
  • ehtiä (sv. hinna): have the time to
  • viitsiä: can be bothered to

Also, I am confused by the English auxiliary verb "may", because it can mean either "be allowed to" or "be possible to". The first meaning is saada in Finnish and få in Swedish. The second meaning is voida in Finnish and kunna in Swedish.

Finnish also has two separate verbs for "can":

  • osata: know how to do
  • voida: be possible to

Can some explain to me if these can be translated to English more succintly than what I have written here? JIP | Talk 17:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Norwegian has (roughly the same meanings I think): orke, rekke, gidde. Never really thought of the fact that some of these don't have English translation, though it might have struck me. The first is the hardest, your translation is OK though at least in Norwegian it's mostly used negatively (jeg orker ikke å... --> I don't have the energy to...). Manage in English could replace the second one, I think, though then the time dimension would have to be implied from context. Bother could in some cases replace the third. But someone else could probably answer this better than me... All in all, you seem to have a good grasp of these things! Jørgen (talk) 19:36, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Seeing from your userpage that you're Finnish, I apologize... I thought you were an interested English-speaker. I'll still let my answer stand in case someone finds it interesting. Jørgen (talk) 19:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Some words that may or may not help are tired, lazy, hurry. – b_jonas 08:36, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Five years of fighting"

I heard a report on the radio this morning about Darfur, in which the correspondent started a sentence with "Five years of fighting have led to..." I would have said "Five years of fighting has led to ..." But as I got to thinking about it, it's possible that we're both right. Opinions? Corvus cornixtalk 17:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

"Has" is right. Don't listen to all those others who say the other thing. It's not the same thing as "five dogs have peed on my azalea", where "has" would be impossible. --Milkbreath (talk) 18:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Well you can carefully say 'has' if you like, Milkbreath, but I will continue to use either depending on whether I have the years or the fighting as salient in my mind when I say it. --ColinFine (talk) 18:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Milkbreath, I was taught years ago that the verb should agree in number with the word (or words) before the "of". Waz I taught wrong, or have the rules changed?--Eriastrum (talk) 19:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
You were taught wrong, and there are no rules. (Actually, I don't think I'm getting what you were taught.) Grammatically or logically speaking, it can go either way. "Years" is the subject, "years" is plural, therefore the conjugation is "have". "Five years" is a block of time whose overall effect has culminated in whatever, so "five years" is to be construed as singular, making it "has". (I don't understand Mr. Fine. The years considered individually are not what is meant.) The trouble is, when we actually go to write it, we have to pick one, and we should use the one that makes the sentence make sense, the right one. --Milkbreath (talk) 19:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I think in this case it makes more sense to choose "have"; otherwise the listener might be confused as to whether the subject of the sentence was "years" or "fighting". When people aren't paying attention to what they're saying, it's a common error to simply conjugate a verb based on the word directly before the verb, rather than the actual subject of the phrase. Indeterminate (talk) 19:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't think we should consider the sensibilities of a listener who starts out that confused. We should write for sane people of at least average intelligence. It would not make sense if "fighting" was the subject. The listener is perfectly capable of understanding that it was the five fighting years that led to the deplorable state of affairs we're faced with today, I guess. --Milkbreath (talk) 19:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Was it the five years, or the fighting, that "led to..." (whatever it was that 'it' led to)? It was the fighting, which is the subject. The simple sentence "fighting _has_ led to..." was expanded with a modifier about how much fighting to get "Five years of fighting _has_ led to..." Okay, I'll shut up and listen, now. -SandyJax (talk) 21:03, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
This also seems like a case where national/regional dialects come into play, much as how American and British English differ in the treatment of sports teams -- Americans tend towards the plural (The Colts have won 5 NFL championships) vs the British singular (The only major honour that Manchester United F.C. has never won is the UEFA Cup). As such, there is not necessarily a universally correct answer. — Lomn 19:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
We Americans would indeed say that the Colts have won it, "colts" being plural, but Indianapolis has, where Manchester have. --Milkbreath (talk) 19:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Show of hands: who would write "Five years are a long time"? --Milkbreath (talk) 20:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Ah, but that's a different case, mate. (this is where the ec happened) Logically, I'd be inclined to agree with my esteemed lactohalic colleague about his first response. But logic is not the thing. It all depends on how the speaker is conceptualising the situation. Maybe from a johnny-come-lately journalist's frame of reference, the 5 years of fighting is a single entity. Darfur used to be a nice place, then this "thing" happened, and now it's hell on earth. Thus "5 years of fighting has led ...". But from a local's perspective, it would not be one "thing" but a long series of separate, individually ghastly events, which have culminated in whatever. And if they say "five years of fighting ..." they may have all those separate bloody events in mind, not some disconnected thought about the time period. So I can't support the view that it's always wrong to say "have". In other words, what Colin said. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Can't agree, dude, I mean mate. Whatever a local might think, that's not what the sentence means. It doesn't make sense to arbitrarily divide the time up into years. If it had been one-and-a-half years, would we say "Eighteen months of fighting have led to...."? It is the span of time, not some arbitrary units, that is, not are, the subject of the sentence. Isn't English a glorious mess? --Milkbreath (talk) 21:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Not sure we're on quite the same wavelength. To some speakers, "five years of fighting have led to" is shorthand for "many horrible events that took place over a five-year period have led to". Just as "the group went their separate ways" is shorthand for "the members of the group went their separate ways". I can see where you're coming from, though. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


See, my thinking is that "five years of fighting" is a single, fixed thing. That's why "has" seems appropriate. To me, "have" would only work if you're thinking more about the years as individual entities, each with its own impact on the situation. Corvus cornixtalk 20:36, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Poem analysis...?

Hello everyone. Would it be okay (and helpful to me :) if I put up a poem here for analysis? It's not homework or anything, I just want to know what it's about ^^. (If this is absolutely not the place for such a thing, please tell me where I can go to get some help!) Thanks in advance, Kreachure (talk) 20:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

You'd probably get better responses at the Humanities Desk. --Milkbreath (talk) 21:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Really? Well okay... if you ask me, there's a little bit of ambiguity between the two desks regarding this subject (not that such a thing has been asked for in either according to Google), but thanks anyway. Kreachure (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC) PS. I don't have to remove the question from here in order to ask at the other desk, right??

I just answered you, I'm not the guy to see about this. That said, if I were you, I'd go ahead and post away and let the devil take the hindmost, whatever that means. It's happened before that someone has slapped a bit of poetry up and asked for analysis. Watch the copyright thing is all. --Milkbreath (talk) 22:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Copyright is okay for purposes of study or teaching, no? Julia Rossi (talk) 08:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't know. My eyes start to swim around like a couple of goldfish about three sentences in whenever I try to read up on the matter. Common sense tells me, though, that whatever your intention, to post a piece on the internet for anyone to read or copy violates copyright. To quote one stanza in an academic work is fair use, I guess, or even to include the entire poem in a critique of that poem, but on paper. But I am not a lawyer. --Milkbreath (talk) 10:01, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
You likely need a pair of legal-eyes, then. Julia Rossi (talk) 07:49, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Examples of languages with pre-noun and post-noun placement of adjectives

Hello, I'm looking for a very short list of a few examples of languages that place the noun after the adjective (e.g. casa verde), and a few that place it before (e.g. green house). If you can find a link to a list I'd really appreciate it, but just listing a few examples would work just as well. If possible, I'm also especially interested in Russian. I tried searching through the archives but couldn't find much, and our articles surprisingly don't seem to cover this. Thanks in advance for your efforts! --YbborTalk 21:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not having much luck finding a list either. Many languages allow them in either position, and many have exceptions to the usual placement (e.g. French, where adjectives normally follow the noun but certain adjectives can precede the noun under certain circumstances). For European languages, I'd say adjectives typically follow the noun in Romance and Celtic languages and precede the noun in Germanic languages. I don't know enough about Slavic languages to generalize, but I notice that Russian for Red Square is Красная площадь (red square), not Площадь красная (square red). —Angr 21:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
The absence of the present tense of the verb "to be" in modern Russian means that, context-free, Площадь красная would be interpreted as "The square is red". It's not that you can never put the adjective after the noun, and literature is full of counter-examples, but generally speaking it goes before just as it does in English. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I thought there might be a list at Head directionality parameter, but there isn't. It mentions Japanese as a language that is pretty strictly head-final (as with German, quite long phrases can occur as modifiers in a noun phrase, preceding the head noun). Hebrew is an example of noun-adjective, and is the converse of JackOfOz's observation about Russian, in that there is no copula and 'adjective noun' would tend to be a sentence, not a phrase. --ColinFine (talk) 23:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
In Spanish, adjetives preceding nouns are frequently of an epithetic nature (i.e. of an appositive, rather than delimiting, character). Adjetives following nouns generally act as delimiters; since adjetives delimit more frequently than express an intrinsic property of something, it comes as no surprise that noun-adjective is a more common order than the other way round. But there are many subtleties that make the matter elusive. For instance, superlatives mayor, máximo, etc. usually precede nouns; and un pobre hombre has a very different meaning from un hombre pobre (pobre meaning doomed or pathetic in the first example and impoverished in the second one). Pallida  Mors 18:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)