Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Language/November 2005

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[edit] November 2

[edit] "Czech" isn't a Czech word

Why is Czech spelled with a cz? The use of the cz digraph to represent the "ch" (IPA: [tʃ]) sound isn't Czech; it's Polish. The Oxford English Dictionary's first recorded use of the word Czech comes from 1850, long after the Czech language had replaced cz with č. So why do we use the Polish spelling and not an anglicized version of the Czech spelling (like "Chech" or "Chek")? Mwalcoff 02:34, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

that's a good question. I assume the Polish spelling caught on because people wanted to avoid the spelling check. You would have assumed that English was going to borrow the French spelling, tcheque, as in many other examples of continental geography. A spelling Tcheque would have been perfectly conceivable in English. I don't know why this didn't happen. A pertinent article is maybe Czech lands: 1648-1867, saying that
Czechs convened the first Slavic Congress to discuss the possibility of political consolidation of Austrian Slavs, including Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs.
At this time, the Polish language was certainly better established than the Czech language. dab (ᛏ) 18:57, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, maybe in Poland, but not in Bohemia. Interesting that when Czechoslovakia came into existence as a nation after WWI, the Czechs didn't take exception to the English spelling the name of their country using Polish orthography. On the other hand, to insist on starting with Č rather than Cz would have been a bit futile, as most English speakers did not (and still do not) recognise the haček, and would inevitably have ignored it, which would have led to the spelling being "Cechoslovakia" and the pronunciation would inevitably have been altered to "secko", "secho", "kecko" or "kecho", all far from the desired outcome. BTW, while "Tcheque" may have been conceivable, I don't think that it would have been acceptable or reasonable. So maybe the Czechs knew what they were doing. At least the world calls them by their correct name - which is I think a higher priority than having the "correct" spelling (spelling is, at the end of the day, an agreed convention). JackofOz 01:38, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
Why do we call the country of "Nippon" Japan? Or the country of "Me-hi-ko" "Mecksiko?" Or "Chung-kuo" China? Or "Fran-say" France? I could go on… My point is this isn't something new in the English language, actually… Garrett Albright 18:26, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
Of course not. But the difference is most English exonyms use English orthography. Czech is a word that uses neither native nor English letters. It's kind of like using Montenegro for Crna Gora, except that's explained by the traditional power of Venice. -- Mwalcoff 03:33, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Other examples are Iraq, Qatar and Kiribati.

  • Iraq and Qatar: We don't have isolated q's in English, and they certainly don't come from the native language Arabic which doesn't even use the Latin alphabet. I suspect these were by way of the French transliteration, because French was the traditional language of international diplomacy (certainly true when Irak came into existence). [Aside: I know that it's become fashionable to use -q for the -k sound in words from Arabic, but for the life of me I can't see why we do that. Some references also use all kinds of incomprehensible diacriticals when transliterating from Arabic (eg. dots under letters), which only serves to display their intellectual snobbery. Transliteration is supposed to be about rendering the source word into symbols the reader has some hope of actually understanding, so these highly over-intellectualised attempts fail miserably, in my book. Simplicity is god.]
There's a very sensible reason why the letter "q" is used in Arabic transliteration: Arabic has two sounds that are distinct, but both sound like the English "k." The one that sounds less like "k" is transliterated as "q" and the other is written as "k." For example, the Iraqi city of Kerbala is written with a "k" whereas the country, as you noted, is written with a "q." 07:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Kiribati: When the Gilbert Islands achieved independence in 1979, they announced their new name (pronounced Kiribass; spelt Kiribati). English is one of the official languages of Kiribati, but the pronunciation and the spelling do not match, so something should really have been done at that time to resolve the linguistic issue - for example, the rest of the English-speaking world writing it the same way it's pronounced, Kiribass. But that didn't happen and we now have that weird spelling of Kiribati for good. I wonder how Greek, Russian and other non-latin alphabets transliterate Kiribati - do they do a strict letter-for-letter transfer, or do they go with the pronunciation? Does anybody know?
  • the Polynesians have a bit of form when it comes to orthography e.g. a lot of Fijian names sound quite different from the way they're spelled. Nadi is pronounced "Nandi", Rabuka is pronounced "Rambuka", etc. We know why that happened, but that doesn't alter the craziness of the outcome. Lots of other countries have improved their orthography (eg. Russia) - I reckon it's time the Pacific islands did so too. JackofOz 07:57, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
    • To answer the preceding question, Greek, Russian and Hebrew all spell Kiribati with the ti at the end. -- Mwalcoff 03:17, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
It's not a k sound in Arabic; in the IPA, it's written q. Your view on transliteration is limited; some regard transliteration as an exact way to represent another script in Latin. Diacritics and not merging k and q can make it possible to disambiguate two different people or places, without complex arbitary respellings.--Prosfilaes 15:58, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
    • A related point applies to Fijian names. Nadi is spelt Nadi but pronounced Nandi as Fijian is already written in the Latin alphabet. Transliteration is not really an issue here. By suggesting that the Pacific islands need to improve their orthography you are making a very anglocentric argument that assumes because 'd' is pronounced /d/ in English it should therefore be pronounced /d/ in every other language. As Fijian (if I understand correctly) has no independent /d/ sound, only an /nd/ sound, it would be illogical to use extra letters to spell this "nd" purely for the convenience of European speakers. If any language needs to improve its orthography, it's not the basically phonetic Fijian but the hopelessly complicated English. Somewhere two Fijians are puzzlingly over the spelling of Slough /slaʊ/, Broughton /bɹʊətən/, Loughborough /lʌfbəɹə/ etc. Valiantis 16:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

All these spellings have historical reasons. It is unheard-of that the spelling of a national adjective in a foreign language was a matter of international relations, I think. We spell "Japan", "China", "Greece", all these have no similarity to the native term used, but nobody interprets that as some sort of lack of respect. With "Polish was better established" I obviously meant from the perception of the English, not in Bohemia itself: Polish was a written language with some tradition, while I don't think there was already a whole lot of Czech newspapers or literature. Most English exonyms (relating to Europe at least) use French orthography. In this case, mediation must have been via Polish rather than via French. It would be interesting to uncover the particulars. I could imagine that a reason is that at the time of the emergence of "Czechia" as an independent entity, English-French relations were not very good (Napoleon and all), so that may be a reason the English didn't opt for the French spelling. As for "simplicity is god", there is a tendency to stay closer to the native term in names that become current today. Since k and q are completely different phonemes in Arabic, and since we do have the q letter, without being forced to use diacritics even, I see no reason why it shouldn't be used. Use of q in Arabic names has nothing to do with French, it is just an attempt to get as close to a precise transliteration without using diacritics. dab (ᛏ) 09:07, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

  • My guess is that they did not consider at all the native orthography. Most of the OED entries are British ethnographers, who were working in a tradition which seems to have taken most of their terminology from French writers (i.e. Esquimaux rather than the current Eskimo). My guess is that they took the Ts spelling and eventually converted it to the Cz spelling based on some sort of semi-Slavic characters (I don't know about Polish but the Russian Ц, as the "ts" in Tsar, Царь, used be transliterated as Cz rather than the current Ts). Just an uninformed guess, though. It should also be noted that there were a number of prominent Polish ethnographers as well who may be involved here, and they had a lot of scientific connections with the British when they weren't been stifled by the Russians (that's a lot of history generalized but in my experience it generally holds true for this period of science). --Fastfission 01:57, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
So correct me if I'm wrong. Fiji came to the English language and the Latin alphabet relatively late in its cultural history. I don't know what writing system they used previously. I understand that when Christian missionaries went there, they taught the natives English and put the native names of places, people, etc into Latin script. For teaching purposes, they used some system of blocks with the letters inscribed on them, but they had a limited supply of these blocks, so the end result was that rather than transliterating the name that sounded like "nandi" as NANDI, they transliterated it as NADI, and everybody who went there had to learn the convention that in certain cases D is pronounced ND, and B is pronounced as MB, etc. This came about not through some attempt on the part of some learned linguist to apply reasonable transliteration techniques, but because of an historical accident relating to ineptitude and poor planning on the part of missionaries, who for all I know may have had training in teaching English to foreigners, but surely no training in transliterating foreign languages into English. They just made up a really dumb solution, that we're all stuck with. I maintain that the end result, whatever the causes, is crazy. Why on earth would you deliberately transliterate any foreign word into your own script in a way that guarantees that uneducated readers of that script will mispronounce the word? Surely that goes against the whole point of transliteration. I have the same issue with Gorbachev, for example. It's not pronounced Gorba-CHEV, but Gorba-CHOFF, so why on earth don't we write GORBACHOFF? Seems to work for Rachmaninoff. OK, I know that in Gorby's case it's not O in Russian but E (whether with the diaeresis or without is a matter of eternal debate), but as stressed E is ALWAYS pronounced O, why not write O in English?
As for the -k and -q argument in Arabic, I accept that they represent different phonemes, but the solution sucks, particularly when Q is in initial position. Most English-speakers who know little about the Middle East see "Qatar" and say "KWATAH". Q is never pronounced like K in English, and so the distinction between the Arabic phoneme represented in English by k and the one represented by q is entirely lost on the vast number of English speakers. This may have a place among linguists, but for the average Joe out there it's meaningless and absurd. JackofOz 02:21, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know if I'm representative of others in this, but I pronounce "Qatar" as "K'tar". This is what is the obvious pronunciation for me, I have what I suspect non-Brits would call an "English" accent (its mainly a mixture of the Somerset and Yorkshire accents with influences to a varying degree from Geordie, Derbyshire and South-Walian Welsh). Thryduulf 21:37, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
You're conflating English with the Latin script. Uneducated Fiji speakers pronounce Nadi correctly. Uneducated English speakers pronounce "through" correctly. At least a substantial minority of English speakers--most American and Canadian speakers--pronounce Qatar with a final r, demonstrating a fundamental problem with any solution of trying to transcribe a pronounciation into English. Why is "kwatar" any worse than "katar"? You keep saying the whole point of transliteration; what is that? According to the ISO standards on transliteration, the point of transliteration is to exactly represent one script in the symbols of another. What you see as intellectual snobbery, I see as precision; the easiest way to make sure that a reader can uniquely identify who a person or place is, is to spell it in a way consistent with its spelling in the original script. Playing too many games with spelling to match pronounciation or whatever can make it hard to clearly identify when two different sources are talking about the same person.--Prosfilaes 05:05, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
"Uneducated Fiji speakers pronounce Nadi correctly". That would be true of uneducated Fijians. But it is not true of English speakers from other countries who are uneducated about the ways of Fijian pronunciation. And remember Fiji was still a British colony until 1970. The names were written not just for the Fijians (maybe not at all for them, because they still had their pre-existing language and symbols), but for the English colonists. This is the very point I'm making. No English colonist would have pronounced Nadi other than "NADI" until they were corrected by somebody who'd spent time there, or a native Fijian.
Some scripts are simply not renderable letter by letter or character by character into another language's symbols, eg. Chinese and Japanese. So we have to resort to rendering the sounds. That's why, for the capital of China, we've had over the years "Peiping", "Peking" and "Beijing", all of which have tried to approximate the sound of the word as spoken by the Chinese, but all of which ultimately fail to do it justice. I do not know what the Fijian writing system was before the English arrived, but I'd bet money (a) it had no relationship with the Latin alphabet, (b) they had a different symbol for the sound N as compared with the sound D, or (c) maybe they had a symbol that represented the entire name. I just don't know. The result is that tourists have to learn a new set of rules about pronouncing their names, and this virtually guarantees names are misspelled, mispronounced, or both. The outcome does not work. If I can use a musical analogy, it's like Fijian names are written in, say, F minor (with the speaker having to remember the 4 flats all the way through, which affects the outcome for those notes), rather than in C major (where what you play is what's in front of you on the score). JackofOz 04:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
What's the source for the story about the wooden blocks? As I understand it "d" is always pronounced /nd/ etc. so the spelling is elegant and appropriate. I believe other Polynesian languages have similar spelling conventions. (We have them in English too where /ks/ is spelt "x" - only ours are less regular). FWIW, missionaries remain at the forefront of developing literacy for "minority" languages - see Ethnologue - so one shouldn't assume that missionaries were bumbling amateurs). Valiantis 13:44, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I'll never agree that it's elegant or appropriate. The readership of place names is the general public, not learned linguists. The general public might be assumed to know their ABCs and the many exceptions to spelling/pronunciation that apply in English. When it comes to words they encounter from other lands and languages that have been rendered into Latin script, the public are taught to apply the standard pronunciation rules to them, and those words ought to be spelled in English in a way that does not require special knowledge on the part of the reader. Otherwise the unspoken compact between the linguists and the public is worthless. My own country is not without fault. The first syllable of Wollongong is not pronounced WOL but WOOL (as in the sheep). The name came from a word in an unwritten indigenous language. So if the pronunciation was WOOL, why did we choose to write it WOL? Crazy. Same problem as Nadi. The "Nandi" pronunciation was there first, and the spelling should have reflected it. JackofOz 04:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Since the Fijian language does not have the sounds [b d g] except in the combinations [mb nd ŋg] it would be superfluous to use the letters b d g to stand for their English values. To a native Fijian speaker it's perfectly logical that Nadi is pronounced [nandi], because the letter d is always pronounced [nd], and that's perfectly logical because [nd] is a very common sound in Fijian while [d] without [n] before it doesn't exist. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 13:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What is the history of a bellhop?

What is the history of the word bellhop?

Bellhop is a 1910 shortening of bellhopper (1900), from the notion of hopping to action at the ring of the bell. Bell-boy was originally (1851) a ship's bell-ringer, later (1861) a hotel page. Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary. —Wayward Talk 12:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Latin Translation

My question is as follows:

Can anyone translate the following burial record which is in latin and dates from 1682?

"Clemens Salisbury huius ecclesia parochianus in sepulcrum descendit 2 Aprilis"

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Regards,

Robert

"Clemens Salisbury, parishioner of this church, was buried [descended into the tomb] on April 2." But shouldn't that be "ecclesiae"? David Sneek 16:03, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
It should. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 11:49, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A4 gate

What is an A4 gate? Sentence is: "A4 gate folded in two" and the following, separate sentence, is. "A4 gate folded in three". I can't find it in any dictionary or encyclopedia.

On the other hand, I need to translate it into portuguese (spanish would do).

Thanks in advance, Mario Cesar (Mário César) [email removed]

It can only refer to a sheet of paper (A4). I would imagine that gate here refers to folding the paper vertically when it is in landscape orientation. --Gareth Hughes 18:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Google finds nothing but helpfully suggests "A4 gatefold in two" which yields a hit referring to "...in two colours". "Two colour" and "three colours" refer to "spot colour" printing in which isolated text or graphic elements are printed in a highlight colour, in a simpler (cheaper) process than needed for "full colour" photos etc. It's common for brochures, non-colour newspapers etc. Does this have any resonance with your context? Could "gatefold" have been transcribed as "gate folded"? Sharkford 18:50, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
It's not an "A4 gate" you need the definition of, it's "gate folded". To gate fold an A4 sheet, turn it to the landscape orientation, make a fold one quarter of the way across and another fold three quarters of the way across. Fold the paper towards you, so that the ends meet in the middle (like a gate). There are more complicated types of gatefolds, for example you could have four folds so that two of the folds meet in the middle. A printing company should be able to give you more information. -- Canley 22:41, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Here's a diagram, if that helps to visualise it. I'm afraid I don't know what the Portugese term is - perhaps contact a local printing shop? Shimgray | talk | 02:10, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] word orgin saxophone

The saxophone was named for its inventor, Adolphe Sax, combined with "-phone", from a Greek word meaning "sound". Mindspillage (spill yours?) 23:34, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 3

[edit] Ecosystems Vocabulary

Hello, I'm doing a project in my class. I took three words chlorophyll, photosynthesis, and top consumers. I have to get the meaning of these words and what they're for.

[edit] Spootnik

Can someone add that fancy IPA pronunciation (for the life of me, I still can't understand the system at all as explained on our page for it) to indicate on the Sputnik page that in Russian it is pronounced "Spoot-nik" whereas in the West it is usually pronounced as "Spuht-nik"? Thanks. --Fastfission 03:14, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 13:25, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "I'm a guy who likes to work on my car..."

I was listening to that "Flip Top Box" song on Something Awful, which is remixed from old cigarette commercials. The song opens with "I'm a guy who likes to work on my car. I like to take it apart and put it back together...", and I wondered: is that first sentence correct grammatically? Should it be "work on his car", because he is referring to himself in third person, or is it correct as it is because he is referring to himself in general? Silly question, I know, I thought it up on a bus on a particularly slow and dull day. —DO'Иeil 10:50, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

You are correct, but since it's very uncool for any song lyrics to be grammatically correct these days, I'd be surprised if you can find any that are constructed entirely of sentences that can be parsed. Shantavira 13:45, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
From a grammatical point of view, the sentence is wrong. The phrase 'who likes to...' is modifying the guy, and hence the possessive pronoun would have to be tied to 'guy' (guy being the head of the embedded phrase) instead of 'I'. However, dismissing this sentence as 'wrong' and ungrammatical because it hasn't got some of its grammatical relations right is the least interesting option. There is something right about it, isn't it?
Now, no song would ever open with "I'm a guy who like to work on my car", and I'm also pretty sure that you won't run into "I'm a guy who like to work on his car". In other words, it's apparently easier to lose track of the person/number agreement on the possessive pronoun than on the verb. I think the reason for that lies in the fact that there are more relations to account for in the case of the car. 'The car' is not just the car of the guy who happens to be head of an embedded phrase, I'm not just talking about a guy who likes to work on his car, it's my car and I'm talking about myself! Because of the intimate relation between the car mentioned and the speaker of the sentence, it's not a big error (to both speaker and hearer) to turn the possessive pronoun to 'my' (at least not as big as it would be to muddle up the verbal inflection). It boils down to a conflict between semantics and grammar, where semantics speaks up a bit louder than prescriptivists might want it to. — mark ✎ 14:14, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
Think about it this way. Let's say your mechanic, Bob, really likes your car. You can say, "Bob likes to work on my car." Now if it's OK for Bob, in the third person, to work on "my car," then why isn't it acceptable for the subject "a guy" in your sentence to work on "my car?" -- Mwalcoff 07:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't think that makes sense, since we're talking about two wholly different kinds of sentences here. The sentence is not "A guy likes to work on [my/his] car" but it is "I am a guy who likes to work on [my/his] car". So the "guy who likes to..."-sentence is predicated of "I", and there is no easy way to consider it in isolation (or rather, the observation that it might be fine in isolation doesn't have a bearing on the phenomenon under discussion here). — mark ✎ 17:31, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I would disagree with you. "a guy who likes to work on my car" is the object of the sentence, a noun phrase. The relative clause "who likes to work on my car" applies to "a guy," not to "I."
Think about it this way. Let's say the speaker's name is Bob. He doesn't want to use the word "his," because there are several men in the room, and Bob doesn't want Jim or Ted or Ernie to think they're going to see him working on their cars. Should Bob say, "I'm a guy who likes to work on Bob's car?" Of course not; that would sound ridiculous. So the use of the object "a guy" does not mean that all future possessives have to be in the third person. -- Mwalcoff 22:27, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
"a guy who likes to work on my car" is the object of the sentence, a noun phrase. The relative clause "who likes to work on my car" applies to "a guy," not to "I." — that's exactly what I said. I don't think we disagree much. In making up a situation where the (prescriptivistically speaking) 'incorrect' sentence would be OK, you're making exactly my point that the grammatical relations are not untouchable, and that other factors do have a say also. — mark ✎ 08:40, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] o'clock

What does the o' in o'clock stand for? i'm wondering what it is a short form of?

"Two o'clock" is from "two of the clock", I believe. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 19:51, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
and "clock", it should be added, meant "bell", i.e. "two strikes of the bell". 80.219.217.252 22:14, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 4

[edit] Changing of voice

I need the following sentence to be changed to the active voice:

Accidents are caused by carelessness.

  • Carelessness causes accidents.
  • Failure to do one's own homework causes wikipedians to become irritable.

JackofOz 05:29, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cheese it.

What is the origin and meaning of cheese it, as in the phrase "Cheese it, it's the cops'?

  • FWIW, also from the same era, with same meaning, "Chickie". -- Jmabel | Talk 01:50, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proper name of citizens of Dominican Republic and Dominica?

My writer colleagues and I are stumped. When writing, how do you distinguish between citizens of the Dominican Republic and Dominica? Is the proper term for both "Dominicans"? To add to the confusion, "Dominicans" also refers to Roman Catholic orders. We appreciate your guidance. --129.123.81.45 23:23, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, citizens of the Dominican Republic are called Dominicans pronounced /dəˈmɪnɪkənz/ (same as the religious order), while citizens of Dominica are called Dominicans pronounced /ˌdɑməˈniːkənz/. In writing, then, they can't be distinguished. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 23:47, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Our articles on the countries use "Dominican" for both. I hit this same problem a while back, and I think got around it by rearranging my text so the two countries were discussed in seperate sections! Apparently both are the same in English, but French and Spanish have different terms: [1]. ("Guinean" and "Congolese" have the same problem, too). Shimgray | talk | 23:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
And the only way we avoid having the same problem for the citizens of Nigeria and Niger is by artificially adopting the French "Nigerien" for the latter. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 00:05, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd never even thought about Niger (it's an adjective I'd not had to use before). Another horrendous one is Equatorial Guinea, where in order to avoid them being the third country with "Guinean", we use the clumsy Equatorial Guinean or (apparently) Equatoguinean. Shimgray | talk | 00:12, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
What's the second country to use "Guinean"? Guinea-Bissau? Isn't there some word like "Guinea-Bissauan"? --Angr/tɔk tə mi 00:23, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Wiktionary says Guinean for both, and the CIA concurs. Note that it's Guinea-Bissau in the same way that the two Congos are sometimes called Congo-Brazzaville or Congo-Kinshasa - it's the original country name plus the capital, which then (unusually) became adopted as the formal name. Shimgray | talk | 00:39, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, there is a difference. The official name of Congo-Brazzaville is The Republic of the Congo and the official name of Congo-Kinshasa is The Democratic Republic of the Congo. The official name of Guinea-Bissau is The Republic of Guinea-Bissau, so "-Bissau" is an integral part of the name, not just a disambiguating suffix. I've never heard Guinea called "Guinea-Conakry", either. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 02:06, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
I have, several times. Mainly in other languages though. 84.13.51.209 05:41, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 5

[edit] How to pronounce "ineptitude"

Hi there! Today, I noticed that when I pronounce the "p" in the word "ineptitude", it sounds slightly different than the "p" and say, "peach". Are they supposed to be different? How are they written in the international phonetic alphabet? Thanks for your help! --HappyCamper 01:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

The "p" in "peach" is aspirated while that in "ineptitude" is unaspirated. The difference can be transcribed in the IPA with [pʰ] for the aspirated "p" of "peach" and plain ol' [p] for the unaspirated "p" of "ineptitude". --Angr/tɔk tə mi 02:02, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lexical gap

What's a word starting with "t", synonymous with unreliable, episodic, and ephemeral? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 09:58, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Transitory? Is this a crossword puzzle clue? How many letters? --Angr/tɔk tə mi 10:28, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Not a crossword puzzle — it's just a word I can never think of, and I'm not entirely sure it exists. Transitory is good, though I don't think it quite fits unreliable. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 17:06, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, I sure wouldn't rely on something transitory! --Angr/tɔk tə mi 19:34, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
How about temporal? We use it to refer generally to time, but I think that, especially in medieval religious thought, it would be the antonym to eternal. Something temporal is man-made, of this world, and unreliable in the sense that you can't count on it to last. JamesMLane 23:16, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, that's good too. Possibly less episodic, though. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 23:26, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Are you after transitionary? Proto t c 11:35, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

The other word I occasionally find myself looking for has as synonyms shroud, aura, aspect, identity, identifier, and mask. Both words are quite puzzling when I find a need for them — their meanings are clear to me, but they can never be properly expressed. Is there a term for this situation more precise than lexical gap? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 00:14, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Indie Bop or Indie Music

What is the meaning and origin of the terms "Indie Bop" or "Indie Music?" Thanks, stir1

Indie would be the diminutive of independent, referring to a music group not dependent on a record label or the mainstream. Bop is an abbreviation of bebop.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, indie was first used "of film production companies since 1920s, of theaters from 1942". In 1945 it was used for independent record companies, and it became associated with pop music in 1984. [2]
Bebop, a nonsense word from jazz, was in use by 1928. It was shortened to bop by 1948 and eventually (1956) came to mean "any sort of dancing to pop music". [3] ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 00:24, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
    • However, the term "bebop" as applied to jazz is still more specific, and not related to dancing or pop music at all. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 01:02, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 6

[edit] Russian keyboard in OS X

I can't tell if this is a language question or a computer question, but since there are likely more people here experience with non-English keyboard layouts I figured this might be the place to start.

I sometimes need to type in a Russian keyboard layout in Mac OS X Tiger. I usually use the "Phonetic" layout which comes with OS X, because it transposes the Cyrillic alphabet onto the QWERTY English arrangement in a way which is easier for me to understand than the traditional Russian typewriter layout.

My problem is that I can't see any easy way to add accents to letters. Russian does not normally have diacritics but for learning purposes (and I am learning) they are often used to denote where stress falls, which is very important (in some verb forms the differences between two meanings depends entirely on stress patterns). In English of course I can easily add accents with (option+e)+(vowel) (áéíóú) but this doesn't work in the Russian keyboard at all. Switching back and forth between Russian and English keyboards seems a pain in the neck and does not seem to be what Russian typists do when they add stress marks to Wikipedia entries (see, i.e. Akademgorodok -> Академгородо́к; the "o" with the accent over it is not, I do not think, the same character as the U.S. keyboard "ó").

How can I add these diacritics given my setup? What's the best solution? --Fastfission 02:07, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

You're right. "ó" and "о́" look identical (ó) in the edit window but render differently. I don't know what the best solution would be but, if you only need them once in a while then copy the real ones into a TextEdit document and paste as needed. --hydnjo talk 05:00, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Assuming Tiger…
  1. Apple menu: System Preferences
  2. Click International
  3. Click the Input Menu tab
  4. Check the "On" box next to "Keyboard Viewer"
  5. Make sure "Show input menu in menu bar" near the bottom of the window is checked
  6. Click on the input (flag) menu on the right edge of the menu bar
  7. Select "Show Keyboard Viewer"
This will bring up the Keyboard Viewer window, which will have a diagram of all the keys on your keyboard. Notice how the keys change when you hold down the Shift and/or Option keys. Keys that are orange when the Option key is held down will effect keys pressed after that key combo, as in the above-mentioned Option-E, then vowel combo. Hope this helps. (Eek, after trying all that, I tried activating Russian on my own machine just to see if I could find the proper key combos myself, but I couldn't find them… Grr. Oh well, hope this still is helpful to you or anyone else some day.) Garrett Albright 19:26, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Yeah, that doesn't work for the Russian keyboard. The other problem with just copying familiar vowels is that Russian has vowels which can be stressed that have no representation in Roman script, i.e. я, ю, и, ы, and у (which looks like a Roman y but you can't make a y-acute to my knowledge). Googling around seems to have suggested that there are a number of people with "their own" Russian keyboards which look fairly dubious to me. Sigh... --Fastfission 01:20, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Well someone managed to construct Академгородо́к with "о́" near the end. How about tracking down the editor who added that text. Unless it's a government secret, they may be able to help you out. I checked the Cyrillic characters and punctuations but couldn't find this form of accent. Be sure to let us know if you find how to. --hydnjo talk 02:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

The stress mark in question is U+0301 Combining Acute Accent (́ or ́). Unlike the Latin o-acute ó, if you want Cyrillic о with accent mark, it takes two Unicode characters to create "о́", and the second one is U+0301. I'm not sure how you could go about entering this accent mark using a Russian keyboard... it's not on any of the standard keys (the ones in the rows above the space bar), so if it was possible at all it would have to be through some Alt- or Ctrl- or Windows or Option key combination in a system-dependent way. This mark is only used in dictionaries and not in normal Russian text (except maybe things like disambiguating instrumental по́том from потом). -- Curps 09:24, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

By the way, the standard Russian keyboard layout would be worth learning... it's much more of a "Dvorak keyboard" layout than QWERTY. For instance, Cyrillic "а" is on the "f" key, so it's typed with the index finger, and so forth, and other common letters are likewise in logical places. -- Curps 09:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

The real limitation with the accents is whether I could do them over distinctly Russian vowels, such as "Ю". I'm somewhat tempted to believe at this point that to do it correctly I will need to use a specialized font (ugh) or do some sort of overprinting. But anyway... I appreciate the suggestions. Also, I don't have any plan to learn the Russian keyboard as of it -- it's hard enough to do one level of translation, much less two! If I had paste-on keys, maybe I'd try it, but otherwise it doesn't seem worth it... --Fastfission 01:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
There's no distinction between distinctly Russian vowels and non-distinctly Russian vowels with the combining accents; о́ is the Russian vowel, and Ю́ is also the Russian vowel. Common fonts included with Windows or OS X will display it properly, if not beautifully.--Prosfilaes 01:47, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese translation

How can be my name translated to Japanese? Its in Japanese format: Daróczi László. It must be with pronunciation information. Hungarian and Japanese are quite similar in pronunciation. I try to add some information regarding how to say my name: "Dar" as dar in Darude or Dark, "ó" is a bit longer o, "czi" is a hard one, do not count in the z and try to say c as in "ts" in tsunami and an i in gift. "Lá" is like li without the y sound in light, "sz" is s, "ló" is low or loo.

Or if the meaning is needed, the basic part of "Daróczi" is daróc, which means some kind of rough cloth, blanket, etc. László could be Leslie in English.

Thanks in advance! László from Budapest

Ans :ダロクズィ・ラスロ　　-darokuzi rasuro (I live in Tokyo)----Jondel 03:18, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't have access to katakana, but I think "darootsi raasuroo" would be better; the acute accent marks vowel length in Hungarian, and "cz" in names is pronounced [ts] (usually spelled "c" in ordinary words). --Angr/tɔk tə mi 06:39, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
There is no "tsi" sound in Japanese, unless you mean "tsu", of course. --Plastictv 08:24, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
No, I know there isn't, but katakana can be adopted to represent non-Japanese syllables. According to Katakana, the foreign syllable "tsi" can be transcribed ツィ. Most Japanese would probably end up pronouncing it "chi" anyway, but I think they'd spell it ツィ when transcribing a Hungarian name. So my vote for Daróczi László in Katakana is ダローツィ・ラースロー. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 13:25, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Angr's version. However, note that this is not a case of translation, but of transliteration; we are not adapting the meaning of your name from one language to another, merely adapting the manner of writing your name from one writing system to another. ギャレット・アルブライト 19:11, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for you! I'll put it in my signature. So it could be written as "ダロクズィ・ラスロ - darokuzi rasuro" or "darootsi raasuroo". For the latter, the kanji form is the "ダローツィ・ラースロー"? A little correction: cz is just said as c, because it is an old form of a sound, and long accents (' ") only means longer sounds in the case of i,o, ö, u, ü, but a and á, e and é are different sounds, so I think the correct is "darootsi rasuroo"... :) By the way, I think its harder to truly translate my name, but in anyone does it, I would be thankful. My name's approximate meaning is above. --László

Correction; ダローツィ・ラースロー is katakana, not kanji. As far as translating the meaning of your name to Japanese, please understand that this is a very strange thing to do; even most foreigners who gain Japanese citizenship will not change their names to Japanese names, and the rare slice that do will usually go with a name that at least sounds similar (see ol' Debito). But if that's what you really want… "Blanket" is 毛布 (もうふ, moufu; fur+cloth). [4] says "Leslie" means either "dweller in the gray castle" (huh?) or "small meadow;" "meadow" is 草地 (くさち, kusachi, or そうち, souchi; grass+earth). So 草地 毛布, for whatever that's worth. Garrett Albright 15:56, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
ダローツィ・ラースロー is indeed the correct transliteration. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 16:17, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, yes, it's not kanji, I missed it. The Japanese use katakana/hiragana for transliteration of foreign names. And I'm just curious about my name in Japanese, and I know that the "real" translation is when you translate the meaning... Thanks for your help! Or arigatou! --László

[edit] Meaning of polvorete

I'd like to know what the Spanish word "polvorete" means. None of the Spanish dictionaries I've tried have this word. Anybody know? KeeganB

the -te is a reflexive pronoun. It appears to be an imperative, meaning "pulverize yourself". Baad 13:36, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Does "a quickie" fit your context? It can also be a drugs term, meaning cocaine paste cut with some other chemical. –Hajor 16:28, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have pointed out that "el polvorete" is a noun. KeeganB

[edit] Use of colons

Would the sentence "Just wondering: Would you do this or would you do that" grammatically correct or not?

Thank you, Shardsofmetal [ Talk | Contribs ] 04:15, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

It's grammatically correct, and the use of punctuation is correct too. Punctuation has nothing to do with grammar, though. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 06:37, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be a comma after or, considering that there is a second subject and verb in the second clause? -- Mwalcoff 07:15, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Not really. BTW, since we're discussing grammatical correctness, Shardsofmetal's question is not grammatically correct itself. The verb 'be' is missing.
I personally think the sentence would flow better like this: "Just wondering; would you do this, or would you do that?" In fact, I'm not sure, but I do believe the colon in that case is simply wrong. Garrett Albright 19:07, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
It would be better with a hyphen and a comma: "Just wondering - would you do this, or would you do that?". You could also reduce it to "Just wondering - would you do this, or that?" Proto t c 11:38, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I would write "Just wondering: would you do this, or would you do that?". I prefer the comma, breaking up the second phrase, but I would not use a capital letter after the colon. However, today, I read for the first time that APA recommend using a capital letter after a colon if what follows is a major sentence. That's a new one to me. --Gareth Hughes 18:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I get the impression that capitalising after a colon is considerably more common in the USA than here in the UK: it certainly looks very strange to me, and if I saw it in a text I'd immediately suspect that an American (or at least a speaker of American English) was the author. Loganberry (Talk) 02:23, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I have been told to capitalize after a colon on the grounds that a colon is a form of (or equivalent to) a full stop. I'm not really convinced but I usually find myself using colons only to preceed a bulleted list in business-technical documents, and I usually find myself doing what Garzo tells us is APA advice. I think a comma after "this" would be permssible but unnceccesary and better omitted. But a hyphen in place of the colon? No. A long dash maybe, certainly not a hyphen. Sharkford 16:52, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help me please. I am looking for a word or phrase

I have been taxing my brain for a word to phrase that means this: the concept that a task may actually take longer to perform when employing technology. For example, one wants to telephone store X. One dials 411 and the computer-generated operator takes several minutes to retrieve desired number. However, if one had looked up the number in the directory it would have taken less time. I am fairly convinced that there is an axiom that illustrates this phenomenon. A close synonym is rube goldberg?

Thank you in advance for your consideration. This has been a bee in my bonnet for a few days--64.136.49.228--64.136.49.228 07:55, 6 November 2005 (UTC)Indra

It seems to me that if people want to describe this effect, they use expressions like "modern labor-saving device" sarcastically. I can't think of an expression that means it directly. Rube Goldberg isn't very close, because that refers to the technology being unduly complicated rather than unduly slow. --Anonymous, 12:15 UTC, November 6, 2005

I know that there such a phrase exists. It is there in the lexicon, I have seen it in print but because my brain is fried, I cannot recall it. I take exception to your asserting that rube goldberg is not very close, I would argue that some new technologies are unduly complicated. For example, the computer-generated operator that responds to 411 call asks several questions before one is given the number and if, Lord forbid, there are two listings, one is kicked over to a live operator to whom one is required to repeat one's request. I assert said scenario is unduly complicated and slow. --64.136.49.228 12:15, 6 November 2005 (UTC)Indra

Laziness? e.g. people can't be bothered to learn keyboard shortcuts even though in the long run that would enable them to complete their tasks a lot quicker than using a mouse. Shantavira 12:40, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Technological unintended consequences? --hydnjo talk 13:16, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Dystopia? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 00:46, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Is there a word meaning loganamnosis for a holophrase which is simply a logodaedal practice and will be little more then a nonce word and even a hapax legomenon outside of word lists? English is not an agglutinative language (yes I know this is catachrestic), wasting time on a technical solution is analogous to wasting time in search of one word, when many will express it better. Which are the nicer words; "shakesperian" or "Hamlet"? MeltBanana 01:00, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I've heard "teching" or "tekking" to be used as a phrase like that --Wonderfool t(c) 22:39, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Septanary, Octanary, 9, 10?

Are there ordinal adjectives like "Primary" and "Secondary" for 9 and 10? Thanks --Colonel Cow 16:34, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

According to Oxford Dictionaries, "The sequence continues with tertiary, quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, denary. Words also exist for 'twelfth order' (duodenary) and 'twentieth order' (vigenary)." --Heron 21:26, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Cool, thanks --Colonel Cow 22:34, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I can't find nonary in a dictionary; shouldn't this be novenary? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 00:40, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Novenary redirects to Nonary, so probably both are acceptable (plus Heron's link is from Oxford, so I'd guess it to be correct) --Colonel Cow 01:10, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

But these become increasingly obscure as one goes. I would guess that the majority of native English-speakers would never even use "tertiary", might not understand "quaternary", and certainly would not understand "quinary" or anything beyond. These are very artificial Latinisms. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Sure, this was more for personal interest than practical use --Colonel Cow 02:02, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Tertiary is in relatively common use in an educational context, where tertiary education = higher education (to a first approximation, anyway). Otherwise I'd agree; the only major use of quaternary is geological, and that's pretty specialised. Shimgray | talk | 18:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I recall seeing quinary in a Stephen Jay Gould essay on an obselete system of catagorizing living beings in groups of five, known as the "Quinary System". Economics often speaks of Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary occupations. I can't recally ever seeign a real use for an ordinal adjective higher than five. Now specific numbe grouping terms, which can be either nouns or adjectives, do see real use much higher up. I mean Couple, Triple, Quaduple, Quintuple, etc. These can simply mean to multiply by the number, but more specifically are used for a group with a specific number of members. Indeed this is often geenralized, in mathematics and computer programming, to n-tuple or simply tuple. 205.210.232.62 21:51, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Quaternary is a common word in chemistry. For example, a quaternary carbon atom is one which has four bonds, but none of them to hydrogen.-gadfium 00:19, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
This is very trivial, but it backs up the suggestion that terms higher than "tertiary" are rare in practice: the 4th and 5th radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were named the "Quandary" and "Quintessential" phases (the previous three being "Primary", "Secondary", and "Tertiary"); I'm pretty sure they were planning to use "Quaternary", but since "Quinary" would have been fairly unrecognisable, they resorted to names which sounded better - after all "Quintessential" at least contains the relatively familiar "quint-". - IMSoP 02:29, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Syllable languages

The early logic of language in symbolism and syllable languages have A) one syllable A = infinitive description of the function "wet" B) two syllables AA = verbal action "flow, stream" C) three syllables AAA = fullness, noun. [5]

What are examples of syllable languages? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 00:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Ask the author: "syllable language", as a linguistic categorization, appears to be unique to that site. From the alternately painful-to-read and hilarious context, I would guess that the term is intended to signify languages that use wholly- or largely-syllabic writing systems, like Japanese or Sumerian. It's hard to tell; the vocabulary of cranks is often obscure. —Charles P. (Mirv) 04:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Surely all languages are syllabic? However, the way languages are written varies, and some use a symbol for each syllable. i.e. a syllabic alphabet. See also abugida. Shantavira 10:59, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
The author seems to be talking about a sort of synthetic language where the number of syllables carries meaning. I suppose Mirv is right, though; that Indus script stuff is odd. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 13:47, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 7

[edit] Le pinte un cuatro al coyote

There is a Mexican ballad entitled "El Coyote" and the first line goes "Le pinté un cuatro al coyote" which literally means "I painted a four for the coyote" (Coyote is the nickname of a character in the ballad BTW) Anybody here know enough about Spanish idioms to tell me what the author meant by that?

I don't know, but we have a stub on El Coyote (fictional character), too. If the ballad is related, please mention it on that page. — Catherine\talk 19:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Are you sure it says cuatro and not cuarto ("room")? Al means "at the," not "for the." I painted him/her a room at the Coyote may make sense, depending on the context. -- Mwalcoff 22:53, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
It's "cuatro". Here's the words (and the chords!) --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 23:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

What the author of the song is saying by "Le Pinte Un Cuatro Al Coyote" is he is blessing the dead man upon his feet. The song starts how the story ended and then explains why he killed him....and by saying that he is making the cross with the motion of the hand..(If you've seen it,...it appears like a number 4,...but is a cross of blessing)..which is very traditional in the mexican culture. Marcos Rosas from Tucson AZ ...January 2nd 2007..

  mrosas42@aol.com

[edit] what is the difference between Instinct and habit

(No Question)

Instinct normally refers to a natural compulsion that you are born with, while habit is a skill that you learn, which then becomes a compulsion. For example, actions such as fight or flight reflex are instinct, while washing your hands after using the toilet is habit. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 10:05, 7 November 2005 (UTC)


What the author of the song is saying by "Le Pinte Un Cuatro Al Coyote" is he is blessing the dead man upon his feet. The song starts how the story ended and then explains why he killed him....and by saying that he is making the cross with the motion of the hand....which is a very traditional in the mexican culture. Marc from Tucson AZ

[edit] Word boggler

What is the only english word ending in MT?

Actually there are five: ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 13:35, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
  1. amt
  2. appromt
  3. dreamt
  4. promt
  5. undreamt
You might want to add definitions of those words to the wictionary, as none of them appears. -- Ec5618 13:50, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmm. Amt appears to be an abbreviation of amount and therefore doubtful, while promt seems to be a misspelling of prompt. Are we sure promt is a valid alternative? DJ Clayworth 19:23, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Amt is also a loan word from Danish or Norwegian, and refers to a particular territory division in those countries. Promt is just an archaic spelling of prompt. Appromt is an obscure word formed by prefixing ad- to promt, and means to quicken or to prompt; interestingly, it doesn't seem to have become apprompt. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 19:44, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Apparently the idea that dreamt is the only English word ending in "mt" is due to an urban legend. [6] ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 20:05, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
it is the only genuinely English word. amt is a loan from German, and prompt is a loan from Latin. un-dreamt is just a compound. 130.60.142.65 11:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
On the other hand, it is certainly true that dreamt is the only common word in English that ends in -mt. Add the qualifier (and after all, most people use only common words), and it becomes an urban fact.
Arguably the common word is "dreamed" and "dreamt" is a mostly poetic or archaic usage. DES (talk) 01:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
That is indeed arguable (i.e., wrong). Proto t c 11:41, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
sadly, dreamed gets about 6 times as many google hits as dreamt. It is still wrong of course, luckily the internet is not yet defined as the authoritative source of correct English. 130.60.142.65 12:02, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Neither dreamed nor dreamt is wrong. (And by whose authority would it be decided if one of them were?) It's not even a matter of British vs. American usage, AFAICT, since both forms are accepted by dictionaries from both countries. According to the OED, both forms are equally old, too, so neither form can claim seniority over the other. They're just variants and always have been. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 14:57, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I did not say either form was wrong, I said that by current usage, "dreamed" was more common, adn i think that even in printed sources, this is the case. Indeed i would argue that current use of "dreamt" other than in a poetic context, or an interntionaly archaic context, is rather rare. Not wrong, but rare. at lest in my experience, and I am a fairly wide reader. DES (talk) 01:24, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How is your experience with Google Print?

I seem to find it very intermittent. I'm aware of the page view limit which is there for obvious reasons. However, I'm getting all sorts of problems:

  1. Sometimes I get a 404 error and can't access the site at all.
  2. Sometimes I view a few different books and the behaviour seems to suggest to me that not only are your page views restricted within one book but within total pages over any number of books for a time period of a few hours (as, after a wait, I can seem to start looking again).
  3. Sometimes I do a search but then the 404 errors soon return.

I've tried looking at some blog searches to see if anyone else is getting many errors and haven't found anything. Anyone else getting this sort of behaviour? --bodnotbod 18:21, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quick Latin Translations

How do you say the following words in Latin?

- list - panel/committee/association - director. (Dîrector?) - associate/assistant - the act of making or creating (Creâtiô?)

Thanks! —anon

  • list → index
  • panel → index
  • committee → delecti
  • association → sociatas/communitas
  • director → rector/magister/praeses/praefectus/gubernator/curator
  • associate → socius
  • assistant → adjutor/administer/auxiliator
  • act of creation → creandum (gerund of creare) → --Gareth Hughes 22:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I should have added that creatio does mean 'the act of creation': I was just autmatically think of the gerund when confronted with 'act of' type words. --Gareth Hughes 22:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 8

[edit] meaning

What is the meaning of "clean chit"?

A vindication or a "pass" after an accusation or suspicion of wrong-doing. A clean "bill-of-health". --hydnjo talk 03:41, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Isn't clean shit an oxymoron? Grumpy Troll (talk) 20:03, 8 November 2005 (UTC).
Grumpy, as you well know a new question should have it's own section header. ;-) --hydnjo talk 20:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Finnish translation

What does the Finnish word mee mean? Is it a heavily modified verb, or colloquial? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 21:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

It's a shortened form of "mene" often used in Spoken Finnish. This form of the verb "mennä" can mean "[he/she/it] goes", or "go" as an imperative, among other uses. What's the context? 84.239.128.9 10:39, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Neat, I was guessing it was a form of mennä. I'd seen this in "älä mee", "don't go". Thanks! ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 23:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Antonym of "Antagonist"

What is the antonym of Antagonist? I'm using it in the sense of a person in a fight who was the one to start it, and want a word that means "a person in a fight who was not the one to start it". The Antagonist entry at Wiktionary gives Protagonist as an antonym, but I have always understood this to mean (in this context) "one of the people who took part", not specifially on one side or the other. Thryduulf 00:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

How about "innocent bystander" ? StuRat 00:33, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
hmm, that wouldn't work in this context - the person in question (A) is neither innocent nor a bystander. They were expecting the fight, but he wasn't the person who actually started this fight - i.e. the other person (B) threw tbe first punch (before A was ready, hoping to catch him by suprise). Thryduulf 00:40, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd call the person who started the fight an instigator or an aggressor, not an antagonist. Those don't help a lot to find an antonym, but if you're just trying to describe the other guy in a fight, perhaps he's the defender, or the victim or target of the aggressor? — mendel ☎ _ * _ 01:06, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
You might be able to work with 'catalyst' to refer to a character who was indirectly for the fight, or not blameless. Or was he a serene, civil, uninvolved party?-- Ec5618 01:19, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I think instigator and target would work for my situation. Thank you. Thryduulf 09:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Not really relevant, probably: Talmy's Force Dynamics uses Agonist versus Antagonist. — mark ✎ 22:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Question about citation

No, I'm not trying to cite Wikipedia. ;-) I'm trying to figure out a specific situation with Turabian style but the answer will probably be similar in other styles as well. I've gone over my copy of A Manual for Writers but couldn't find a specific answer to this. I imagine it would have a subheading like "Component Part within a Work by One Author Edited by Another". It's the last part that's difficult. Here's what I have so far:

Foucault, Michel. "Lives of Infamous Men." In Essential Works of Foucault, vol. 3: Power. James D. Faubion, ed.: 157-175. New York: New Press, 2000.

Now, Foucault wrote the article in question, in a book of his writings. The library catalogue of course lists Foucault as the author of Essential Works of Foucault. But Faubion has edited the volume, and needs mentioning for that reason, of course. But I worry that it could be misconstrued (by a purist, of course) as not indicating that Foucault wrote the entire book (despite the title), if another is listed as an editor. Can I indicate a primary author and an editor at the same time? What do I do if the primary author is also the author of the sub-section? It seems to violate some principle of redundancy. Or have I just lost my mind and am obsessing over the End Matter a bit too much? (Cf. Louis Menand, "The End Matter") Advice from a style stickler is requested... --Fastfission 00:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., 17.42: Editor or translator in addition to author. The edited, compiled, or translated work of one author is normally listed with the author's name appearing first and the name(s) of the editor(s), compiler(s), or translator(s) appearing after the title, preceded by edited by or ed., compiled by or comp., or translated by or trans. Note that the plural forms of eds. and comps. are never used in this position. Note also that edited by and the like are usually spelled out in bibliographies but abbreviated in notes and reference lists. If a translator as well as an editor is listed, the names should appear in the same order as on the title page of the original. —Wayward Talk 04:45, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., 17.69: Contribution to a multiauthor book. When one contribution to a multiauthor book is cited, the contributor's name comes first, followed by the title of the contribution in roman, followed by in (also roman), followed by the title of the book in italics, followed by the name(s) of the editor(s). The inclusive page numbers are usually given also. In notes and bibliographies, but not in references lists, the contribution title is enclosed in quotation marks.
I've put your example in Chicago's bibliography style below:
Foucault, Michel. "Lives of Infamous Men." In Essential Works of Foucault vol. 3: Power, edited by James D. Faubion, 157–75. New York: New Press, 2000. —Wayward Talk 04:24, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 9

[edit] Japanese etymology/word origins

I'm trying to find where the following Japanese words came from:

1. Yoroshiku 2. Gambatte 3. Shibui 4. Bimyou 5. Johcho (ga aru machi)

I've been trying to find Japanese etymological sources in English but can't seem to find any. I would specifically like to know:

Where does the word come from? Korea? China? Or is it an 'original' Japanese word? When was it coined? In what context was the word created? When did it become an "official" word (one recognized by the government)?

Even if there are no answers for it, any sources that could provide insight would be much appreciated.

Thank you so much!

The Japanese Wikipedia has a discussion page for non-Japanese speakers; maybe you could try asking there. I can't do the inter-language-nonstandard-namespace linking correctly with Wikipedia's markup, so use this to get there the old-fashioned way.
for reference the interlanguage link is ja:Wikipedia:Chatsubo for Non-Japanese Speakers ([[:ja:Wikipedia:Chatsubo for Non-Japanese Speakers]]. Thryduulf 19:43, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Adjective endings of Places

I'm writting a science fiction novel, and I've got a place named Petrograd. I keep wanting to make the adjective form Petrogravian, for reasons I don't entirely understand. I'm almost sure that somewhere an adjective form has been made by turning a final plosive into a frictive, whether it be a d->v or not, but I can't for the life of me remember where. Is this fairly normal in some situations or is this an odd way of making the adjective form?--Prosfilaes 05:15, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to your question. However, keep in mind that the city name "Petrograd" existed only for ten years a century ago and I doubt that many English-language readers would recognize the incredibly obscure adjective even if you found it. As for the "v", you might be thinking of how "Moscow" turns into "Muscovite", but that's a different matter because the latter term is derived from "Muscovy". For what little it's worth, the Russian adjectives for Petrograd are: "he is a Petrogradyets", "she is a Petrogradka", "they are Petrogradtsi", "on the Petrgadskoi beachside", "in the Petrogradskii region", "the Petrogradskaya subway stop", etc. But even in Russian, place name adjectives are often arbitrary. For example, one of the terms for a modern-day female resident of St. Petersburg is "Peterburzhenka", but few people outside the region would recognize the term. The national Russian newspapers simply write "resident of St. Petersburg" rather than risk confusing their readers, which is what I'd recommend. Good luck with the novel.
I doff my hat to the above unnamed contributor's Russian knowledge, but in terms of what to do in your novel, I would come to the opposite conclusion - use "Petrogravian" if you think it suits, precisely because such adjectives do vary; after all, look at Liverpudlian and Mancunian (which I seem to remember discussing on this page a few weeks back...). Meanwhile, it just occurred to me that there's a place called Belgravia, of which the adjective would presumably be Belgravian; possibly irrelevant, but possibly in the back of your mind somewhere... - IMSoP 23:47, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not so sure. Mancunian, Liverpudlian, Oxonian, Monegasque etc are accepted adjectives for those places. They all appear in dictionaries. Petrogravian is certainly not in that category. There's nothing to stop a writer making up the word Petrogravian for use in a novel (presuming the readers can deduce from the context what the word is supposed to mean), but that is far from saying that this word would be independently accepted as a legitimate adjective for Petrograd. Readers would certainly get nowhere if they tried to look it up in a dictionary - because it doesn't yet exist, and unless the novel is a best seller and the word is picked up and becomes a standard usage, it never will get into dictionaries. Cheers JackofOz 00:12, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
But we are talking about a novel, not about getting it "independently accepted" by anyone; we're also not, by my understanding, talking about a real place called Petrograd, but a fictional one. So, if you can make up the name of the place, why not make up the name of the adjective while you're at it? If I invent a city called "Blaumoon", what's to stop me calling its residents "Blaumunchers"? I was merely saying that not following the rules is, arguably, following the rules, given the arbitrariness of the whole thing in real life.
None of which actually answers the original question, which was whether anyone could think of a place where this was "normal", or indeed existed at all in real life... - IMSoP 00:23, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Does anyone know of an accepted demonym for a city that ends in "grad"? That might help provide a general solution to this problem. If you know of one, please also add it to List of adjectival forms of place names.
The biggest "-grad" city I could think of is "Volgograd". Looking up "Volgograd" on Google, I found a few English uses of "Volgogradian" (18) and even fewer (3) of "Volgograder". Both fall fall short of the 2 million plus mentions of "Volgograd", however. I found similar ratios for "Leningrad" and "Stalingrad". Also, are you aware that St. Petersberg was named "Petrograd" from 1914-1924 ? (After they decided having a city named by a tsar was arrogant but before they decided it wasn't too arrogant to name a city after the "people's leader".) StuRat 18:24, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm, Petrograd still refers to Peter (though this would be St Peter as much as Peter the Great. The name was changed at the time of World War I as St Peterburg is basically a German name. (See the change from House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to House of Windsor for a similar "de-Germanisation" process in the UK in the same period]]. Valiantis 13:27, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
"Belgraders" is the term used in the Belgrade article and Google finds many hits, even once you filter out it's use as a last name. "Belgradian" returns far fewer hits. "Belgravian" refers to a certain part of London. Unrelated yet interesting: List of places named after Lenin.
I appreciate the help of everyone who replied. I did now that St. Petersberg was called Petrograd; I thought it sort of sad that such a great Russian name had such a short lifespan, which is why I'm reusing it. It's apparent to me that Petrogravian would be an affection, and without an English-speaking populace in this universe, probably unjustifiable. A shame. Again, thanks. --Prosfilaes 20:52, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] why is a funeral called " funeral wake" ? when nobody rises?

why is a funeral called " funeral wake" ,when nobody rises? After all ,it is to commemorate and remember somebodys's death.

It's called a "wake" because no one sleeps during it. It's a vigil, a state of wakefulness. It's a watch over someone's dead body. If you're sitting up all night guarding a corpse, you're of little use if you're asleep. - Nunh-huh 06:41, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

See Wake (ceremony) for our article.-gadfium 07:47, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
You don't want to fall asleep in a funeral home or you could find yourself in a box. StuRat 18:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why do people "fall" in love and not rise?

I've read some explanation in an Indian newspaper long time back and do not remember that now. Can someone tell why people "fall" in love and not rise? -- Sundar \talk \contribs 06:48, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

It's a simple analogy to the exhilirating feeling of loss of control that people have in free fall. Superm401 | Talk 07:55, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks Superm. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 10:28, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Could this also be related to "falling pregnant" (a possible consequence of "falling in love")? JackofOz 13:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kite Latin Translation

How would you say "Go fly a kite" in Latin? I'm looking for a direct translation, NOT the idiomatic equivalent. Thank you! -ParkerHiggins 07:05, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

One problem is that Latin doesn't seem to have a word for the kind of kite that one flies. aquilo, from the Italian aquilone I think, is one suggested neologism; milvus chartaceus, or 'paper kite (the bird of prey)', is another. Using the former, which is much less clumsy, I come up with i[te] et aquilonem vola[te] or i vola[te]que aquilonem. These are very literal and don't have quite the same peevish ring as the English monosyllables; you could probably omit "go" without losing much of the meaning, thus ending up with vola[te] aquilonem. (Add the bracketed portions if you're addressing more than one person.) —Charles P. (Mirv) 09:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
"... doesn't seem to have a word for the kind of kite that one flies": I'm fairly sure the Vatican invented a word for that, too. It's just a matter of finding out what it is... ナイトスタリオン ✉ 07:59, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The first half was the worst. The second half was the worst too.

And the third half I didn't enjoy at all. This is a paraphrase of a Marvin quote, but that's not relevant. What is relevent is: What do you call it when someone says 'first half second half third half', and when someone says 'This is the worst. That is also the worst'? I probably didn't phrase that very well... Kid Apathy 11:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Overseas vs. offshore

How can we get the English-speaking world to stop saying "offshore" when they really mean "overseas"? Offshore is simply not a synonym of overseas. Offshore in my dictionary means "off or away from the shore; at a distance from the shore". While "a distance" is not limited, the sense is that it's a relatively short distance beyond the shoreline. It's possibly even within sight of the land, although not necessarily. An island 20 km from the mainland would still be offshore. But Indonesia is definitely not offshore in relation to Australia, or Cuba in relation to the USA. These are overseas.

What ever was so wrong with "overseas" that required it to not only be virtually discarded, but replaced with an alternative word that means something quite different? I wince every time I hear "offshore" (about 20 times a day), not only at the falsity of the usage, but also at the stupidity of the sheep-like people who feel obliged to ape every damn new-fangled form of expression just because it's become "the thing to say", regardless of its linguistic merit (or lack thereof). Oh, and please don't tell me that the language naturally changes and evolves and we must move with the times. Of course evolution occurs, but change for its own sake, and change for the worse, both of which have happened in this case, are never good ideas. JackofOz 11:28, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I've never heard the word 'offshore' misused in the UK like you describe. An oilrig two minutes flight away, or a boat a mile from the coast. is offshore. Ireland or France are overseas. I'm guessing you're in Australia from your user name, perhaps it's only taking place there. Perhaps you need to start bitch-slapping people when you hear them use it. The one that irritates me is the word 'cascade', as in 'Management have asked me to cascade this knowledge down'. Grrr. Proto t c 13:18, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. Bitch-slapping is not my style ... but I could always change if sufficiently provoked. People in Australia (the media included) now talk about setting up companies offshore, or investing offshore, or moving to offshore tax havens, or ... the list is endless. I've certainly heard it used by American TV journalists as well. Maybe Britain is the last bastion of the language - keep up the good work. Another pet hate of mine is using "transition" as a verb. What's wrong with "move", "go", or "change"? Maybe we should set up a special page so we can all "vent" (that's another one) about these extremely irritating neologisms. Cheers from the Land of Oz JackofOz 13:33, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
No, we're still keeping the faith in Canada too. Offshore isn't much used apart from oil rigs and islands (to distinguish them from islands in lakes). Overseas means pretty much that, and (presumably unlike the UK and Australia) is distinguished from International in that to go overseas you actually have to cross the sea. DJ Clayworth 17:37, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
We British have talked about Offshore bank accounts and offshore companies for as long as I can remember, almost exclusively referring to tax havens - some of which are (sort-of) offshore (e.g. the Channel Islands) but others are definately overseas (e.g. Gibraltar). Swiss bank accounts are generally referred to as such, not as "offshore", although this is not a hard and fast rule. Other than these financial uses, we're pretty good with this. Its "same difference" that gets me worked up! Thryduulf 19:51, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

As an American English speaker, I use "offshore" for shorter distances, and "overseas" for longer distances, although I do set the threshold higher. To me, "overseas" means clear on the other side of an ocean, so England would be "overseas" from the US but Cuba would be "offshore" (it's really quite close to Miami). StuRat 20:45, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

The geographical entity we call Cuba could probably correctly be described as an "offshore island" in relation to the USA, but the country we call Cuba is not an offshore country but an overseas country (and therefore, to get to it we can only go "overseas"). In this case it's a bit confusing because the nation and the geographic entity are merged. Take a different example. The island of New Guinea is even closer to the northern tip of Australia than Cuba is to Florida, so it could be called an "offshore island", but to travel to the nation of Papua New Guinea or to that part of the nation of Indonesia that occupies the western half of the island, we should still talk about going "overseas" because these are "overseas countries". This distinction is now regularly ignored, and the word "overseas" is being replaced with "offshore" in inappropriate contexts. JackofOz 01:26, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I would agree with you just adding island tax havens (even those on the other side of the world) to the list of "offshore" things, like Thryduulf said. — Laura Scudder ☎ 20:53, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] how to pronounce the name "Drijvers"?

I am reading a book written by a scholar, whose name is Jan Willem Drijvers. I am sure he is Dutch, but I don't know how to pronounce his last name exactly. I hope somebody let me know the accurate pronunciation of this name. I will appreciate anybody's kind answer to my question.

In IPA, it would be rendered [ˈdrɛivərs]; the /ij/ is an [ɛ > i] diphthong. — mark ✎ 12:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] could you tell me the origin of the word sophisticate?

see Sophism. dab (ᛏ) 17:15, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Sophistication comes directly from Medieval Latin sophisticātiōn; sophisticate is nearly as direct, coming from sophisticātus. These are related to the Latin word sophisticus, a loan word from the Greek sophistikós (pertaining to sophists). This word is derived from sophistēs (sage or Sophist), which in turn is related to sophízesthai (to act the sage, or to become wise), the basis for sophism. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 17:48, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 10

[edit] Cantonese and Aspiration (phonetics)

In the article Aspiration (phonetics) it mentions that there are two distinct "p" phonemes in Cantonese. One of them looks like a little h after the p, and the other looks like a little z after the p. Can someone give examples of Chinese words which distinguish between the two? --HappyCamper 03:22, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Whether you use Jyutping or Yale the aspirated labial plosive [pʰ] is represented as p, and the unaspirated [p⁼]} as b. In English, the two letters represent unvoiced and voiced respectively, but this distinction is not important in Cantonese. Therefore, the two letters represent the presence or absence of aspiration. The cabbage 白菜 begins with an unaspirated labial plosive, whereas a 'flat tone' 平 is aspirated. --Gareth Hughes 17:43, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Interesting...then I have another question then...I pronounce the following as "di eff, di x"
\frac{\partial f}{\partial x}
Is the "di" syllable the same as that for the word "big" in Cantonese? (And also how do you type Chinese on Wikipedia?) Thanks for all your help! --HappyCamper 03:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
There are many monosyllabic words linked to the pronunciation of "di" but none of them big. The only word associated with dai di (all d here are pronounced as voiceless consonant t) in the card game cho dai di, namely Big Two. The dai di, namely Spare 2, ranks highest among single cards. On the contrary, many meanings of "di" are associated with small. It is usually a postfix on a youth name. For example, "Wah di" is the nickname of Andy Lau Tak Wah when he was young. While number 2 ranks lowest in many card games, it is the highest rank in Big Two on the contrary. ... Another uses of "di" is an adverb meaning a bit. For example, dai di, means enlarge a bit; ngai di shorten a bit; ngo yiu yat di for I want a bit (of something). The di in Big Two is pronounced in high rising tone while the di means a bit high level tone. See also S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)#Tones— HenryLi (Talk) 01:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] English with Germanic Words

I know I've read a WP article on it before, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called! The article is on using English without words of Romantic origin, and it included a passage of the "To be or not to be" monologue, translated into Germanic English. Honestly, I'd just love to find the article again. -- ParkerHiggins 04:03, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

You're looking for Anglish. —Charles P. (Mirv) 04:09, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Did you know that this is the second time in 24 hours you've answered a question that's been killing me? You're amazing, Charles P.

[edit] Use of conditional to express past events

This has been bothering me for a while. Often Wikipedia editors use the conditional tense to describe past events that took place after an event previously mentioned. I am sure that there is a grammatical term for this, and I'd be happy if someone could identify that. My real concern is that this usage, while not incorrect, is probably best avoided in Wikipedia because (a) it is unnecessarily grandiloquent, and (b) it is potentially confusing to non-English readers. Here is an example from today's featured article, Dogpatch USA (emphasis added):

Success seemed to be on the horizon for Odom and Dogpatch USA, but the many unforeseen events of the 1970s would, collectively, cast a dark shadow on Odom's dreams. Attendance figures throughout that decade would be woefully short of expectations. In 1973 interest rates would begin to skyrocket, and a nationwide energy crisis would keep many tourists home. TV shows with country themes would virtually disappear from the American TV screen and the popularity of hillbillies would wane. The Li'l Abner TV show and restaurant chain would never come to pass, and to top it all off, Al Capp would retire, and with that one of the greatest advertisements that Dogpatch USA ever had—the Li'l Abner comic strip—would end.

Wouldn't this be clearer if it were written in the past tense:

Success seemed to be on the horizon for Odom and Dogpatch USA, but the many unforeseen events of the 1970s cast a dark shadow on Odom's dreams. Attendance figures throughout that decade were woefully short of expectations. In 1973 interest rates began to skyrocket, and a nationwide energy crisis kept many tourists home. TV shows with country themes virtually disappeared from the American TV screen and the popularity of hillbillies waned. The Li'l Abner TV show and restaurant chain never came to pass, and to top it all off, Al Capp retired, and with that one of the greatest advertisements that Dogpatch USA ever had—the Li'l Abner comic strip—ended.

My instinct is to be bold, and just go ahead and make the changes, but I want to ask editors here if they think I would be out of line in doing so. What do you think? Ground Zero | t 14:56, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Your instinct is correct. It should all be in past tense. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a novel. Proto t c 15:36, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I would agree that is overuse of that construction, but I don't think it is conditional exactly. I'm curious now what that tense would be called. It's kind of looking to the future from the past. I'm not a linguist, but it doesn't seem like subjunctive either. - Taxman Talk 15:49, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
The example paragraph uses the conditional auxiliary verb would. Other auxiliary verbs include to have, to be, to do, will, shall, should, can, may, might, and could. Auxiliary verbs are used to show actions that could occur, might occur, should occur, would occur, could have occurred, might have occurred, should have occurred, and would have occurred. These are generally considered simply the past or perfect forms of the verbs can, may, shall, and will. —Wayward Talk 01:52, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
On another note, is this from a featured article? The tone of the whole paragraph is nowhere near encyclopaedic. It should read:
Success seemed to be on the horizon for Odom and Dogpatch USA, but the many unforeseen events of the 1970s cast a dark shadow on Odom's dreams. In the 1970s, attendance figures throughout thatthe decade were woefully short of expectations less than predicted. In 1973, interest rates began to skyrocket rise, and a nationwide energy crisis kept many tourists home. TV shows with country themes virtually disappeared from the American TV screen dwindled, and the popularity of hillbillies waned. The Li'l Abner TV show and restaurant chain never came to pass, and to top it all off, Al Capp retired - with that, one of the greatest advertisements that Dogpatch USA ever had - the Li'l Abner comic strip - ended.
Proto t c 16:05, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it was kind of surprising language for a featured article. The article was well-researched, and quite thorough, so it was a good article, but there was a tendancy toward flowery language. I see that you edited. Nice job. I wonder if there is merit in trying to address this issue in the Guide to writing better articles. Something like:

Use the past tense to describe past events
If an event happened in the past, the simplest way of expressing that is to use a past tense, e.g., "He later joined the army and became a general", rather than, "He would later join the army and become a general.

Comments? Ground Zero | t 19:33, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Yee. That paragraph would appear to be terribly written. Not what one would expect to find in a featured article.... I agree that it would have been much better in past tense. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 19:47, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the conditional is a good way to describe the future from the point of view from the past. I see no reason to prohibit it. -- Mwalcoff 23:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

  • In some circumstances, it may be appropriate. The point that I am making is that it is used far too much in Wikipedia where it is not necessary. Using the past tense is simpler and therefore clearer and easier to understand, especially for non-English-speakers. I think that the passsage above from Dogpatch USA demonstrates that nothing is lost by changing the tense to the past, and, a lot is gained in making it clearer. I do suggest prohibiting it, only encouraging the use of the past tense as a simpler way of describing past events. Ground Zero | t 15:24, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I have posted a comment about this for discussion at Wikipedia talk:Guide to writing better articles. Ground Zero | t 16:05, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello Taxman :)), just a note that the tense is defined as "future in past" according to this website: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/futureinpast.html RogerK 02:55, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Greek phonology

In the time of Homer (8th c. BC), was ou already [u:], or still [ou]? And, was u still [u(:)] or already [y(:)]? And if ou was already [u:] as early as that, how do you explain Greek spelling, in the first place? other words, is Greek orthography somehow hyper-archaic, representing a stage even earlier than the actual adoption of writing, and how is that possible? In a similar vein, Old English g: They teach you to read gif as yif even for the earliest texts; if [g] was lost as early as that, how is it possible that it made it into spelling at all? You would assume that at the earliest stage of writing, spelling would be strictly phonological? dab (ᛏ) 15:26, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

AFAIK, in Homeric Greek, ου was still [ou] and υ was still [u(:)]. As for Old English, [g] wasn't ever lost. The Proto-Germanic sound was the fricative /ɣ/, which was palatalized to /j/ before front vowels. When OE orthography was developed, the distribution of the velar and the palatal varieties was still predictable enough that it wasn't felt necessary to have separate letters for them. (The same goes for /tʃ/ and /k/, both spelled c. Note also that in the earliest poetry /tʃ/-/k/ and /j/-/ɣ/ could alliterate with each other.) OE orthography also uses g for /j/ from Proto-Germanic *j (e.g. gēar "year" cf. German Jahr), so original *j and the palatalized allophone of /ɣ/ had definitely merged by the time it was written down. There's a lot more about this at Old English phonology. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 17:49, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
interesting. So you're saying OE first was written representing [j] as g before front vowels, because it was still perceived as an allophone of [g]. The "year" case I find quite remarkable. This changed in later OE (10th century?) of course. Now Wycliffe in the late 14th century still has yyfe for "give". This is rather strage, seeing that today we say [giv], not [jiv], [g] must somehow have been restituted? maybe from gave? But then, gave is hardly more frequently occurring than give? Unlike the case of g, I imagine usage of c may have been influenced by Vulgar Lating which probably already alternated between /tʃ/ and /k/ for the grapheme c, so that doesn't tell us much about Old English perceptions of phonemes. dab (ᛏ) 22:30, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Translation

Hello! :o)

I'm looking for this sentence to be translated. Problem is - I don't know what language it is to begin with. Thanks for your help. "Fecit meum facere res malus"

Sue

It's Latin, it sort of means 'I made this thing evil.' No doubt someone wise and learnéd will tell you better than I can. Proto t c 15:52, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Almost: it's "An evil thing made me do...". It is probably not what the writer intended as it isn't a complete sentence. "Res malus" is in the nominative case, and has to be the subject of the sentence; it also agrees with "fecit". "Meum" is in the accusative case, and has to be the object of the sentence. It is most probabe that the sentence is supposed to be "Meum fecit rem malum facere", "He/she/it made me do an evil thing". --Gareth Hughes 17:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Sounds rather like an attempt at Latinizing "the Devil made me do it", no? Sharkford 18:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
It should also be "res mala" (or "rem malam") since "res" is feminine. And there wouldn't be a possessive there, it's just a regular pronoun - "fecit me rem malam facere". Adam Bishop 01:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] die or dye had been cast

I know ceasar said "the die as been cast", but i've seen many people write "dye" as in an article of clothing, which is correct?

It is a die, the singular of dice. Dye is a colorant. It could be worse: I've seen "the dye is caste"! --Gareth Hughes 17:27, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I've heard that this doesn't refer to a dice, but to a die, used for casting. The implication would be that, like cast iron, the outcome was set in place. The note in Rubicon shows Caesar was talking about dice, though; oh well. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 18:05, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Although "the dye has ben cast" could be meaningful, too, since once dye is cast upon something, it's color is permanently changed, not reversible. StuRat 18:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
He said mordantly. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 18:31, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Is that mordant as in "1. Bitingly sarcastic" or "3. Serving to fix colors in dyeing" ... or both? :) Awesome. --24.20.130.253 21:32, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
See the note at the bottom of Rubicon. --Heron 20:16, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What is the current population of Hong Kong?

  1. This isn't a language question.
  2. See Hong Kong.

--Angr/tɔk tə mi 19:17, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Latin

How would you say <He is modest and ingenious> in Latin? Thank you.

Est modestus et ingeniosus I would think. Grumpy Troll (talk) 20:02, 10 November 2005 (UTC).

[edit] The meaning of a name.

Does anyone know what the name Wilanda means, as in the Wilanda Downs Forest? I would really appreciate an answer. Thanks.

It was a personal name, possibly the first owner of the forest (which I understand is in NZ?) -- the name itself is possibly a feminine form of Wieland, the mythic smith. But I see that the Dutch were called "Wilanda" in Siam in the 18th century [7], probably an Austronesian attempt at pronouncing "Nederlander" dab (ᛏ) 16:46, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Order of letters in the alphabet

Eddtheman has asked the following question on our help e-mail list. would like to know the order of 26 alphabet letters. Starting with the most used letter to the least used letter. I know e is the most used letter in the English alphabet. But I would like to know the order of the next 25 letters in the alphabet starting with the most used letter.

As promised, I am posting his question here. Capitalistroadster 22:59, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

It depends a lot on the language and the text, but overall, have a look at [8]. Searching on frequency letters or frequency alphabet or something like that gets you a lot of information - it has some interesting practical applications. Shimgray | talk | 23:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
See also Etaoin Shrdlu. - Nunh-huh 23:37, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
[Edit conflict] Yes it varies on the text so even within English you can only speak in approximates or averages. But see ETAOIN SHRDLU and Letter frequencies, though the latter appears disputed. - Taxman Talk 23:39, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Shimgray, Nunh-huh and Taxman. Thank you all for your prompt response to this question. Capitalistroadster 00:11, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I did an analysis several years ago on some of my writing -
Source 1 2 3 4 1+2+3
Total number of letters 5398 12851 25103 21703 43352
most common letter E E E E E
|
V		 T T T T T
A O O O O
I A A A A
N I N N I
R N I I N
O S S S S
S H H H R
H R R R H
L L L L L
C U U U U
D D D D D
M C G Y M
U Y Y M C
F M M W Y
P W W G G
G P C F W
W F P C P
B G F P F
Y B B B B
V V V V V
K K K K K
Q X Z J Z
X J J X X
Z Q X Z J
Least common letter J Z Q Q Q

Source 1 is a short georgraphy essay, 2 is a letter to a male friend, 3 is a letter to a female friend I hadn't seen in a year or so, 4 is a letter to my then girlfriend. Thryduulf 00:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Here is another analysis from a document with approx. 14,700 words. It shows more or less what your analysis shows but with some noteable differences. (Sorry about the messy presentation; I have some neat histograms which will have to wait until I get logged in. e 9487 t 7336 a 7058 o 6833 r 6435 n 6340 i 6064 s 5895 c 3954 l 3911 d 3016 p 2516 h 2245 m 2176 f 2143 u 1994 g 1323 y 1166 b 1038 v 967 w 810 k 487 q 296 x 255 j 147 z 89 letters 83981 words 14710

[edit] Irish translation

Hi could you translate my grandsons name'MIKEY' into irish gaelic for me? many thanks, Michael

Well, if "Mikey" is short for "Michael", then in Irish Gaelic it's "Micheál", with a fada over the "a". That said, I know a guy named "Micheal", and everyone just corrects the spelling "error", and I suspect modern Irish will tend to go by "Michael" just to ease that pain. — mendel ☎ _ * _ 02:29, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, it's Mícheál with a fada over the "i" and over the "a". If you want a diminutive that corresponds to "Mikey", it's Mícheáilín, although if he's named after his grandfather, people might rather call him Mícheál Óg ("young Mícheál") to distinguish him from you. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 07:27, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 11

[edit] German Trans.

The last two lines of the Franz Ferdinand song 'Darts of pleasure' are Ich heiße super-fantastisch/Ich trinke Schampus mit Lachsfisch. What does this mean? smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 08:49, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Ignoring spelling something along the lines of "My name is 'super-fantastic'/I drink champers with salmon" --Michiexile 09:47, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, about that. I'd have said "I'm called super-fantastic/I drink champagne with salmon", whereby Schampus is a common slang term for Champagner, i. e. champagne (beverage). ナイトスタリオン ✉ 09:49, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry the spelling's awful. That's the way they've printed it in the book, though! By the way, is the song title 'Auf Achse' (also by Franz) German, and what for? (User), (Talk) 11:41, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know what Michiexile's problem with the spelling is. It looks correct to me. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 11:48, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Someone has corrected it. It was 'Ich heisse super-fantastische/Ich Trinke champers mit lachsfisch'. (User), (Talk) 12:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
That someone was me. It hurt my eyes. ;) Auf Achse (literally "on axle") means "on the road". ナイトスタリオン ✉ 12:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for all that. I hadn't realised what an 'interesting' band Franz Ferdinand were. (User), (Talk)12:58, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "ennial" words

Hi--I need to know if there is a word meaning "every twenty years" I know about bi- tri- cent-quatri- etc. but I need the word for every twenty years, if there is one. if not, Ineed the lating word for twenty. Anyone?? Thanks

I know of only one word meaning "every twenty years", that being bidecennial. As for the Latin word for twenty, see A Guide to Latin Numerals. Grumpy Troll (talk) 10:10, 11 November 2005 (UTC).
I think these words are a wee bit confused. If something is biannual, it happens every other year. A biennium is a two-year period, and, if something is biennial, it lasts for two years. Thus, I would imagine that the a twenty-year period would be called a vicennium. --Gareth Hughes 23:21, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
You don't have to imagine<g>, "occurring once every 20 years" is the exact definition of "vicennial" given in M-W Collegiate. Vicennium is indeed the Late Latin term from which it derives: it's related to the Latin for 20, viginti, which is sorta-kinda related to the English word vigesimal for number systems based on 20. - Nunh-huh 23:42, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vocabulary learning software

I need some type of software to learn my lists of vocabulary. CAn anybody help?

I use hardware for that. Fold a few sheets of paper, cut them into little squares. Write the words in the target language on one side of the bits of paper, and the translation on the other side. Take the pile of words with you wherever you go, and keep testing yourself. — mark ✎ 10:05, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I too would like a better program. A well done program could vary the repetition rates and combine a number of different learning techniques. There is one I use for Hindi that does a little bit of that. It's not a very well polished program, but still useful. It's called KYAA and you can get it here if you want to check it out. It's really old, (DOS) so maybe the authors would be willing to open source it so that it could be improved and expanded to other languages. - Taxman Talk 15:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 12

[edit] intuitively

how do you solve complex maths and science problems intuitively?

In my very humble opinion, one only needs two things: insight and imagination. --HappyCamper 04:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I'll add to that practice. jnothman talk 14:04, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
If we could explain a foolproof system of solving problems intuitively that would be...counterintuitive. DJ Clayworth 18:40, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] non-english countries

What are some countries that do not speak english at all?--60.228.221.142

Do you mean countries where not a single person knows any English at all? There probably are none; at the very least, every country will have a diplomatic mission from several English-speaking countries. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:24, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Could you be a bit more specific? While there are very probably no countries where not a single person speaks even the tiniest bit of English, but I would imagine there are probably countries where it's spoken by a very, very small percentage of the population. Off the top of my head, Mongolia comes to mind. Also, some of the less western-foreigner-friendly central Asia republics (such as Uzbekistan).
Oh, and barring the few British immigrants, the US ;-) — QuantumEleven | (talk) 10:19, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
you will also have a very hard time to make yourself understood in English in places like Bhutan, North Korea, and many other countries. It was very difficult to find English speakers in many European countries (e.g. Italy) until a couple of years ago. dab (ᛏ) 16:31, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
"until a couple of years ago" sounds very wrong, at least for Italy. Maybe for Bulgaria, Ukraine, or even further to the east, but anyone who went to school in Italy lately must've had English... ナイトスタリオン ✉ 18:03, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
The US and UK have long had close economic ties with Western Europe, so many locals in the business and tourism industries know English. You'll find far fewer English speakers in Eastern Europe, especially in under-developed countries with governments that have long been hostile to the West, such as Albania, Moldova, the Transnistria breakaway state, rural Ukraine, etc. Many countries in the Caucuses and Central Asian regions have oppressive governments, closed borders and very little trade, tourism or other ties with the West, and thus few English speakers, e.g. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, etc. The anglaphones-per-capita figure for North Korea is probably very low. I realize I've repeated what some others said, but I wanted to offer some possible reasons for why things are the way they are. --01:00, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] German letter openners

I'm writing a letter to an Austrian university, and I think my German is slipping. I am writing to a group of people I don't know, and I typed Sehr geehrte Herren! Then I thought this might be sexist, so I changed it to Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren! Then I felt it sounded a bit too theatrical. What is the correct formal German way to begin this letter? --Gareth Hughes 16:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

If you maybe drop the exclamation mark, "Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren," will be perfectly fine for a formal letter. People will only begin to think you are being theatrical if you further expand it to Meine sehr verehrten Damen und Herren! or something. dab (ᛏ) 16:56, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
BTW, if you use the comma instead of the exclamation point, you also have to start the following text with a lower-case letter (unless it's a word that's always capitalized), because it's part of the same sentence. Thus:
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
 
ich möchte darauf hinweisen, dass...
as opposed to
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren!
 
Ich möchte darauf hinweisen, dass...
--Angr/tɔk tə mi 17:21, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, sehr geehrte Damen und Herren is almost always used as the letter opener. If you want someone to proofread what you've written, just give me a call, me being Austrian and all that... ;) ナイトスタリオン ✉ 18:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

May I ask what "geehrte" means so I can learn a new phrase in German? And is there a preference in German to place Damen in front of Herren in modern letters, or is there no difference? --HappyCamper 01:52, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Geehrt means "honored"; geehrte is the nominative plural in the weak adjective declension. If you were writing to one man, you'd have to use the masculine singular form in -er: Sehr geehrter Herr Schmidt or whatever. As far as I know "ladies and gentlemen" is always "Damen und Herren" in German. "Herren und Damen" would sound as odd as "gentlemen and ladies" does in English. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 17:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The "sehr ver-/geehrte", btw, is a remnant of 17th century Baroque excessive courteousness -- like the Sie address (3rd person plural, where else do you find anything like it). "Sehr" in the 16th century still meant "badly, dire", and only with over-use (a bit like "terribly", but "terribly" didn't quite get as far as "yours terribly faithfully" in standard letters) came to mean "very" in the 17th century. dab (ᛏ) 17:52, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Sehr is in fact etymologically cognate with English sore. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 19:24, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd say Spanish is close enough to German as far as politness is concerned. And technically, Sie is not regarded as plural... ;) ナイトスタリオン ✉ 11:46, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rare words

You know how there are lists of "most used words" right? Well is the some kind of "words from the dictionary that are least used" list somewhere? If so, I will promote the use of the rare words. --Wonderfool t(c) 22:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know of such a list in Wikipedia. In print, there is The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Words (ISBN 0140085203), and probably many others. --Heron 22:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
My favourite is "Mrs Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words". It's full of fabulous words I've never seen anywhere else (although she claims they were all taken from legitimate dictionaries). I make it a point to use one every day. BTW Mrs Byrne is Josefa Heifetz Byrne, daughter of Jascha Heifetz. Enjoy. JackofOz 00:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
The Oxford English Dictionary flags many thousands of words as rare, additionally flagging many with "-1" to indicate that only one contextual quotation has been found, and "-0" to indicate that the word has been found only in another dictionary. Shantavira 14:28, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
And, of course, some entirely non-existent words turn up in dictionaries, either as deliberate nihilartikels or as accidents (Dord). Shimgray | talk | 14:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
You may want to see the Grandiloquent Dictionary. Grumpy Troll (talk) 18:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC).

[edit] November 13

[edit] How to pronounce "siping"

How do you pronounce the word siping and put it in IPA letters? (And also, if I don't know IPA, how do I begin to learn it well?) --HappyCamper 01:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I would assume that, since it is taken from Sipe, it would sound like piping does to pipe (similar with hype, etc). That is, in IPA (at least in my pronunciation): [saɪphɪŋ] (ignoring nasalisation on the second ɪ as I couldn't work out how to type it). As to how to learn it, it depends whether you're learning it to read English pronunciations, general pronunciations or have more specialised requirements, such as as a linguist or speech pathologist. To fully get a grasp on IPA, you need to understand articulatory phonetics fairly well, but that is not important for reading English dictionary pronunciations. That wasn't very helpful, I know. But at the moment I'm too tired to really go searching. jnothman talk 13:45, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Hey HC, obviously it's pronounced sy'ping. WTF is IPA? --hydnjo talk 23:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet. jnothman talk 00:38, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Argggh, I have no clue as to how to present it to you in IPA. However, I continue to believe that it is pronounced sy'ping. h&j

[edit] How can I learn to decipher stuff like vkvg"[qwt"uqwtegu?

I'm seeing lots of character strings that I don't recognize as a known language. What are they? How can I learn more about them. Do they have a name?

Gibberish, perhaps? Nelson Ricardo 18:33, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Context would be rather important here. Where exactly are you seeing these character strings (and do they literally look like "vkvg"[qwt"uqwtegu"?) --Whimemsz 18:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
If you are talking about websites which show up incorrectly, you might make sure you have the correct Text Encoding set. For example, if I was viewing a Russian website and it came out as gobbledegook rather than in Cyrillic, I would (in Safari) go to View > Text Encoding > Cyrillic (Windows) and see if that fixes it (which it normally would). --Fastfission 04:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
It could be something as simple as someone typing on a keyboard with their fingers offset, but this does not appear to be the case in the character string you provided, and looks like gibberish to me. --HappyCamper 01:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What does وُرُود mean in Arabic?

I tried looking it up at http://tarjim.sakhr.com/, to no avail. BTW, are there any other online Arabic translators? --tyomitch 20:13, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Not sure, but the equivalent consonants in Hebrew (ורוד) make the word pink! jnothman talk 20:39, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
My Arabic-German dictionary gives "Eintreffen, Eingang, Vorkommen", which could be translated into English as something like "arrival, entrance, happening/circumstance". What's the context? --Angr/tɔk tə mi 20:40, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
(In terms of Hebrew, also possible, relating to the verbal root ורד\ירד to descend. jnothman talk 21:29, 13 November 2005 (UTC))


I've found this wordlist which gives "roses" and "flowers" as the variants. They fit in the context, but there's one more question: what are the things called "1st Plural" and "2nd Plural" in this list? For وَرْدَة ("rose" on tarjim.sakhr.com), the wordlist gives وُرُود as "1st Plural" and وَرْد as "2nd Plural" (the last one is "roses" on tarjim.sakhr.com)

I'm really confused now. --tyomitch 22:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


according to xerox, it means "appearance, arrival". Apparently, wurud is also in use as a broken plural for urd "rose". You have to pick whichever fits your context better :) dab (ᛏ) 22:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Um, what is a broken plural? --tyomitch 09:07, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
A "broken plural" is an Arabic plural that's formed by changing the vowels of the singular (e.g. ward -> wurūd) rather than by adding a suffix. See Arabic grammar#Inflection. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 11:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Angr, thank you very much for your help! If you don't mind, I'll continue asking questions on you talk page :-) --tyomitch 19:50, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
the "1st" and "2nd" plural terminology just means that there are two ways of saying "roses", wurud and ward. Now, your "singular" is really a 'singulative' of ward, wardah. Consequently, ward probably means "a bunch of roses", and wurud "several (separate) roses". But what about urd? Isn't that another singular for "rose"? (can we do this in transliteration? the diacritics are driving me crazy, I have to view them at 200% fontsize) dab (ᛏ) 22:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, my Arabic dictionary does also give wurūd as the plural of ward "Rose" as well as an independent word meaning "Eintreffen, Eingang, Vorkommen", so you have to use context to decide. I suppose the "rose" meaning is the one that's related to the Hebrew word for "pink" mentioned above. (Wardī is apparently Arabic for "pink", cf. also German rosa "pink".) --Angr/tɔk tə mi 23:05, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
so, ward is the singular for your dictionary, rather than the collective? What about wardah? And does it have urd? dab (ᛏ) 23:28, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Looking more closely I see that ward is the collective and wardah is the singular. I'm not finding urd, but I don't know how to spell it in Arabic. I couldn't find it under اورد or ارد. Any other suggestions? --Angr/tɔk tə mi 07:08, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know how the "urd=rose" got stuck in my head. Either it is Persian, or I am simply mistaken. dab (ᛏ) 18:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
The worldist I linked to gives wardah as "rose", both ward and wurūd as "roses", then ward again as "flower" (it's singular here!) and wurūd again as "flowers".
This might make sense in some way that "rose" is feminine, "flower" is masculine, and they have a common genderless plural — or am I making all this up? --tyomitch 09:07, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I should have mentioned that the Hebrew pink comes from vered (וֶרֶד), rose, which is a standard a-segholate in form, and so should form something like XaXX in other Semitic languages. But I'm not up to vowels or inflections in Arabic, so I wasn't too sure what to do with it. [The plural in Hebrew is of a fairly different form to the Arabic (veradim).] jnothman talk 00:18, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

وُرُود can be read a number of ways, so context is vital. Here are the various meanings:

  1. wurūd — coming or arrival,
  2. wurūd (pl. of warīd) — veins,
  3. wurūd (pl. of ward) — rose(s), blossoms, flowers, bloom.

The definitions are from Hans Wehr's MSA dictionary. The confusion of meaning is due to the root WRD meaning both 'to come/arrive' and, by extension, 'to blossom/bloom/redden/blush'. --Gareth Hughes 12:29, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 14

[edit] Loopwords

(I made this name up because I don't know what else to call it)

If you take the word YES, and progressively advance each letter by one letter: YES > ZFT > AGU > BHV etc, you eventually come to OUI (which of course is French for YES). I've tried various other words and most don't result in any new words at all, and of those that do, almost all of them produce words that have no relationship to the original word. The YES/OUI pair is one of probably a fairly small set.

Is there an already coined name for this .. this .. word game? Does any list of these pairs exist? Is there a website? JackofOz 06:47, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about a name or a web site for the game (or a name of the relation). But the name given to substituting letters like that is shift cipher or Caesar cipher. jnothman talk 08:19, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, famously, if you shift HAL, the evil computer, by one letter, you get IBM, the evil computer company. I suppose the name is something like 'Letter Shifting'. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 10:25, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
There are a couple thousand of these words in English. The longest is abjurer ⟷ nowhere (shifted by 13 letters), and primero ⟷ sulphur is the same length (if one accepts primero as a loan word — 1913 Webster's does, but modern dictionaries don't). The next longest mirror pairs are becuna ⟷ orphan and green ⟷ terra. I think my favorite is hushed ⟷ bombyx, shifted by six letters, though.
I'm amazed. Where can I find a list of these couple of thousand words? I confess total ignorance about Perl and its applications, but thanks anyway. JackofOz 01:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Hm, I guess I could put my list here. Notice that it has a bunch of very silly entries for things not usually thought of as words; my wordlist is supposed to be "complete". ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 02:25, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Thank you, thank you, thank you. This on-and-off 30-year quest of mine has now borne fruit. JackofOz 03:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Here's some Perl if you'd like to try this yourself. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 17:29, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
#!/usr/bin/perl

#
# Shift a word by one letter
#
sub stitute
{
        # Shift letters
        $_[0] =~ y/A-Za-z/B-ZAb-za/;

        # Done
        return shift;
}

# Read the wordlist
while (<>)
{
        # Strip newlines
        chomp;

        # Remember this word
        push @words, $_;
        $word{$_} = true;
}

# No valid words yet
my $num = 0;

# Shift each word
for my $word (@words)
{
        my $next = $word;
        my %shift;

        # Examine all shifts
        for my $shift (1..25)
        {
                # Shift
                $next = stitute($next);

                # Ignore non-words
                next if not $word{$next};

                # Remember this word
                $shift{$shift} = $next;
        }

        # Ignore unshiftable words
        next if not %shift;

        # Note the word
        print "$word:\n";
        print "\t$shift{$_} [$_]\n" for (sort {$a <=> $b} keys %shift);
        print "\n";

        # Count this word
        $num++;
}

# Count the words
print "$num ", ($num == 1 ? "word" : "words"), "\n\n";

[edit] name origin; tenneil [couldn't think of anywhere else to put it]

I was wondering if anyone knows the origin/meaning of the name Tenneil [or any variation of it]

Thanks

Just searched briefly: one baby name web site suggests Teniel is of Afro-American origin and unknown meaning [9]; a slightly more authoritative web site suggests Tenille or Tennille is a French surname that is used as a first name [10], although there it was also suggested that Tenille is a Celtic word for light [11]. jnothman talk 17:30, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Right. When in doubt, call it Celtic. I don't know of a single Celtic language whose word for "light" is even remotely similar to "Tenille". If anything, it's closer to tenebrae, the Latin word for "darkness". I'd personally go for the French surname used as a first name, but the question then is, what's the origin of the French surname? This user thinks it's from the French word for "tongs", but I'd like to see some actual published research rather than a posting to a mailing list. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 18:47, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to formally address...

I am writing a letter to someone who goes by these titles:

Honorable Sir 'Wiley Coyote', Kt, OBE

Obviously, not really Mr. Coyote. The question is: how do I correctly and formally address a letter to this person? What does the Kt stand for?

Thanks if you can help.

I think that Kt. means knight bachelor, and that one should begin the letter "Dear Sir Wiley,". --Gareth Hughes 12:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Kt. is a Knight Bachelor; Whitaker's Almanack gives the correct modes of address as being:
Envelope, Sir F__ S__; Letter (formal), Dear Sir; (social), Dear Sir F__; Spoken, Sir F__.
(F__ S__ being Forename Surname). I would assume, unless you know Sir Wiley well, you want Dear Sir. Shimgray | talk | 17:40, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jargons

I was wondering... You didn't put up a table for jargons when I need it most... Can you give me the meaning of jargon and please give me 25 examples?? Thank you. Arigato..,

DYOH. Our article on jargon may help you get started. Garrett Albright 14:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
See Category:Wikipedia articles that are too technical. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 16:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish Grammar: Ojalá with present perfect subjunctive

I'm an English speaking spanish student, and I have a question about a particular grammatical structure. We've learned, in my class, about "Ojalá + subjunctive pluperfect" (or pluscuamperfecto), but not about "Ojalá + subjunctive present perfect" (or presente perfecto). An example of the construction in question would be "Ojalá que él lo haya hecho." I was wondering what a translation of that sentence might be like, or what the significance of the construction would be. Thanks! 63.193.91.60 20:38, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I hope so!, if only!, God willing!, I hope, I wish, hopefully Nelson Ricardo 04:31, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
(God,)I hope he did it.--Jondel 04:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
By the way, I wrote the previous entry, but I wasn't logged in... Is there a difference in meaning or usage between that form (Ojalá que él lo haya hecho) and using the imperfect subjunctive form (Ojalá que él lo hiciera)? If I remember correctly, the second one implies a state contrary to fact, like "I wish he did it, but he didn't"? Thanks for the information thus far, though! --ParkerHiggins 04:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
It's as you said (but he didn't) .--Jondel 05:05, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 15

[edit] What is the word for an inaccurate quote?

When you are trying to repeat something someone said but it's not correct word-to-word, what is that called?

Thanks

209.239.26.134 01:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Are you looking for paraphrase? --ParkerHiggins 02:12, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
A "paraphrase" is where you're intentionally putting the quote into your own, different words, eg. to explain it to somebody else. But where you mistakenly believe the words you're quoting are the very words used by the original speaker, this would be a "misquotation". JackofOz 02:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Latin translation

Good morning: What do these words mean? "Taedas Ferentes"

Thank you.

It's "bearing boredom", according to [12] --tyomitch 16:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know where "boredom" comes from, "taeda" is a torch, so it's "(people, presumably) carrying torches". Adam Bishop 20:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
"taedium" means weariness. I'm not sure if there is a connection to "taeda". "bearing boredom" would presumably be "taedia ferentes", then, if such a thing were possible. dab (ᛏ) 20:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Brackets

In The Trial by Sadakat Kadri he writes "P[ain]",he explained,"is overrated" I am unable to find this "convention" or to understand its use or necessity in Shorter Oxford or on your admirable web site Can you help please Richard Morris www.richardmorrisplaywright.co.uk

Brackets normally indicate a substitution of the exact text quoted to either meet grammatical requirements or supply otherwise missing context. For example, Clinton's famous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" quote might be rendered "... with [Monica Lewinsky]" to provide context for those unfamiliar with the event. Frequently, capitalization changes are made. John F. Kennedy's inaugural address included "Ask not what...", but if used as a quoted phrase, might be rendered something like "Kennedy called on Americans to '[a]sk not what'..."
Now, for your specific instance, it's hard to say. "[P]ain" would be a lot more common than "P[ain]", so referring to the original text if possible is the best way to clear up the discrepancy. — Lomn | Talk / RfC 22:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] language of jesus

hi my name is faust i live in australia .

i m in need of an exelent translator for a short text in english to be translated in old aramaic (the language of jesus) so if you don t mind helping me i will be so greatfull (i have been surching for someone for a few days and if you know someone please send me an e-mail. <email removed>

I've removed your email, because questions are answered here by posting to this page. Also this site is copied many times and you will end up with huge amounts of spam if you post your email here. Can't help with the question. Sorry. DJ Clayworth 20:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 16

[edit] is "heliocastic" a word?

a few years ago I heard someone use the word "heliocastic" (sp?) to describe a regime that aims to remake the world by destorying everything that has come before. He used it in reference to the Khmer Rouge. I think it's a great word, but a google search yields no hits, I can't find it in any dictionaries I have at home or the office, and I don't have an OED around (and I don't subscribe to their site). The other thing that makes me suspicious is that I'm not sure if the etymology makes sense (if I'm spelling it right). Anyone have any ideas? Binkymagnus 01:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

From etymology, I would guess "holoclastic", but that's actually a kind of rock. Whatever you heard may be a nonce word, but I'll bet the final part is more likely to be "-clastic" as in "iconoclastic". - Nunh-huh 01:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd guess "holocaustic", though heliocastic seems like a pretty reasonable word. It might be used as a colorful euphemism by a group of sun worshippers — the verb heliocast could refer to ethnic cleansing, meaning "to purify for (or purified by) the Sun". As a noun it might be heliocastigation. (Never mind that I'm combining Greek with Latin here: helios, sun; castus, pure.) ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 02:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Erik Weisz or Weisz Erik

See Harry Houdini. Were first and last name switched in native Hungarian at that time? First and last name were switched before, but now someone changed it to the way we westerners do it nowadays. - Mgm|(talk) 09:28, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The Hungarian name order (and Japanese and others for that matter) is acknowledged, but it seems to have become convention to use the standard first name/surname order in English language writing. We never refer to Liszt Ferenc, but to Franz Liszt. We always talk about Imre Nagy, not Nagy Imre. Given that many Hungarian names, even those that have English-language "equivalents" (eg. Miklos = Nicholas, Endre = Andrew), look odd to English speakers, it would be difficult to tell at a glance which is the given name and which is the surname. This I suspect is why you won't see the Hungarian order appearing anywhere but in Hungary. JackofOz 11:24, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was the stage name of Ehrich Weiss (called Weisz Erik in the native Hungarian)
  • Since "Ehrich Weiss" is the English language version of his name and the native Hungarian is just given as added information, I think writing it like that is not only readable but also factually correct. Saying it was written as Erik Weisz in native Hungarian would not fit historical data. Right? - Mgm|(talk) 12:48, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I rather doubt that "Ehrich Weiss" is the English-language version of anything. It looks like a Germanised version of Erik Weisz (although Weisz also looks like a Hungarianised version of the original German "Weiss"). One should not translate surnames into other languages, but if one did, the English-language version of Houdini's original name would be Eric White. JackofOz 04:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
"Ehrich" is not German. Erich would be. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 08:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] misogynist

What is the female counerword for misogynist'?

Misandrist? —Charles P. (Mirv) 17:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Probably, but that's almost a neologism. There is no analogous, commonly used word with a Greek root, because, of course, misanthrope has a different meaning. You'll probably have to stick with Germanic roots—man-hater—or Latin roots—anti-male. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
It's not a neologism; I don't have access to the OED, but I've seen it various places, and suspect it's reasonably old. Misandry is just not commonly used because it's a concept not commonly discussed in scholarly contexts that wouldn't be happy with man-hating (or woman-hating).--Prosfilaes 19:25, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] who wrote the poem

who wrote the poem

Four seeds sown in a row one for the weed and one for the crow one to rot and one to grow

--86.130.166.251 17:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)Gilmour--86.130.166.251 17:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I found the poem in English Folk Rhymes 1892 using Google Books (link). I don't really understand the way the book cites its sources (perhaps the abbreviations refer to end notes?) and without being able to read the rest of the book it's somewhat difficult to say, but perhaps the source is Ellis's Modern Husbandman from 1750? Of course probably the poem had existed before then; that was just the first time it was written down. Theshibboleth 07:50, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Purpose of a five year plan.

Just wondering,what is the purpose of a five year plan, relating to future career choices? (Jamie, Kit, Ont.)Nov 16.

Do you mean a five-year plan for yourself, a five-year plan for a business you're planning to start (or have started), or what? If it's the former, then it's "useful" in that it give you psychological guidance, and might help you to motivate yourself in your career. Also, if well thought-out, you will hopefully never be stuck on the "I don't know what I want to do" stage. However, the benefits are, on the whole, relatively small and mostly limited to personal motivation. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 15:29, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 17

[edit] Latin translation

How would you translate "Blood makes the grass grow: kill, kill, kill" into Latin? Neutralitytalk 01:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

sanguis auget herbam: trucida[te], trucida[te], trucida[te]. (Add the bracketed endings if addressing more than one person.) You have some other choices for kill; neca[te] and occide[te] might fit the meter better if you plan to chant this. —Charles P. (Mirv) 01:52, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Antonym for acquire

What is an antonym for acquire? 220.233.72.253 03:42, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Divest. Nelson Ricardo 04:04, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Dispossess. Neutralitytalk 04:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Divest. Dispossess would be the opposite of "give", not "acquire". When you divest, you're depriving yourself of something. When you dispossess, you're depriving someone else. - Nunh-huh 05:33, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
How about relinquish? jnothman talk
How about "lose"? --User:Angr/talk 14:49, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

How'"give up"? User:Articuno1

[edit] hyphen

Sorry to bother you but I have a question and could not find the answer. I am a French translator and trying to translate 'the church of Saint John' I do not know whether to say Saint-John church or Saint John church without hyphen. I have also seen St. John's church, or the Church of Saint-John ???thank you for your help.

It would be logical to use a hyphen, as is done in French, but it is not usual to do so in English. The format culd be:
  • The Church of Saint John ← most formal word order, Church usually capitalised when specific
  • Saint John's Church ← most common word order
  • St. John's Church ← abbreviation of Saint not used in formal text
  • St John's Church ← omission of full stop after abbreviation becoming more common, especially in UK
I hope that helps. --Gareth Hughes 12:07, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Use of the full word "Saint" is rare as a title; It is akin to writing "Mister" in full. While saint is used as a noun in full (and never abbreviated, eg *"I met a St."), it is nearly never used as a title in full. jnothman talk 12:17, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
"St. John's Church" is the usual form in America, see here. The word "Church" is capitalized only when used as part of a name. "St." is only used when part of a name, and is "saint" in all other cases. Here's how you would use these, "I'm a member of St. John's Church. I enjoy going to church. This church is dedicated to St. John, he was a saint." Adding the full stop to "St." is common and well-understood in all English-speaking countries, even in the UK where they often omit it, but leaving it out would make it seem like a mistake to Americans. If this is a famous church that's known by a certain name, then you need to use it. For example do not translate "Notre Dame (de Paris)" into "Our Lady (of Paris)" because it's known here by it's French name. Also some churches use a specific word order, for example the correct names of two are "Church of Latter-day Saints" and "Roman Catholic Church". Best of luck. --Avijja 05:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nama language

I hope someone can help me with this.

I am a Nama speaker and is very grateful that you have information on this wonderful language. It is very difficult to get any info on this language, so thank you very much for putting it on your site.

My question is: How did you manage to write in Nama on this site? Because of the clicks and other 'unusual' characters, used in this language, i always thought that it wont be possible to write it on a webpage?

If i want to write entirely in this language on a webpage what would i need to do? Because i would like to further the presence of this language on the web by creating a site that is dedicated to it, so it would really be very helpful to know.

Your help in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Leidago

I don't know if you seen our article on Nama language. That article uses click letters that part of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Have a look at that article, and then maybe see Unicode. This last article shows how IPA letters can be employed in computing. --Gareth Hughes 13:27, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] why do they all have the word Guinea in it?

Guinea- Bissau, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea- why do they all have the word Guinea in it?

Read Guinea (region). --User:Angr/talk 22:02, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
New Guinea (or Papua New Guinea) is of course the exception! The "New" is clearly a colonial form, though why something in the South Pacific should be equated by the Dutch to an African region, I don't know. jnothman talk 22:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps because the people of New Guinea look so very African, at least to European eyes. --User:Angr/talk 22:42, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
That would explain New Guinea, but what about New Britain and New Ireland, islands to the north of the New Guinea mainland? There were no Anglo-Celtic-looking people there, and it sure didn't have a European climate or topography. Pure colonialism, as in New Holland, New Zealand, and New Spain. JackofOz 01:02, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Sure, but it's common for colonists to name new places after home. Naming them after other colonies is unusual, so the question was why did they do so in the case of New Guinea? --User:Angr/talk 11:20, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Your original assumption seems to be the correct one, Angr. According to the SBS World Guide (5th ed, 1996), "The name New Guinea came from the Spaniard Inigo Ortiz de Retes, who thought the people similar to those of the Guinea coast of Africa". JackofOz 01:06, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't say Papuas look very much like West Africans, but the Torres Strait Islanders certainly did to me when I saw them at the Cape York peninsula. DirkvdM 11:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 18

[edit] English verb form weirdness

Okay, I need some help with this one. A high-level student of mine delivered this sentence:

*You might have a hard time ''to pull'' Jake away [from the television] at bed time.

I corrected her, telling her it should be "pulling Jake away." She was surprised by that, but I told her that "to pull" was correct in this sentence form:

It might be difficult to pull Jake away at bed time.

That is really freaking horrible, don't you think? Anyway, why do we use the present progressive "pulling" when stating a conditional when addressing "you," but we use the infinitive "to pull" when stating a conditional addressing nobody? (I think I stated that right…) Garrett Albright 04:59, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the reason is that when "it" is used as the subject of a sentence like that, it's really just a signal that the normal word order has been switched around. (There's a word for this concept, but I can't think of what it is right now.) So the second sentence is actually equivalent to
To pull Jake away at bedtime might be difficult.
This means that "to pull" is the subject of this sentence. On the other hand, the subject of the first sentence is "you."
Another example of a word that works this way is there, so "There exist two solutions to this problem" is really equivalent to "Two solutions to this problem exist," and the purpose of there is simply a signal that the normal word order is reversed. Another example is "There once was a man from Nantucket," which is equivalent to "A man from Nantucket once was," but sounds a lot more natural. —Bkell 05:51, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
The function of "to pull" or "pulling" in the sentence is as a gerund (probably the word you couldn't think of). "Pulling" would be the more correct in a formal context, probably because "to pull" reminds one needlessly of an infinitive form. (There's a trace of gerundive in the sentence too, in that Jake ought to be pulled away from the television at bedtime, but that's probably neither here nor there.) It a matter of having the correct ear for which to use rather than being gramatically correct, I think.- Nunh-huh 06:12, 18 November 2005 (UTC) As an example "Finns like to drink alcohol." and "Finns like drinking alcohol." are equally acceptable sentences, but "Finns like to drink alcohol more than other people." is clearly preferable to "Finns like drinking alchohol more than other people." <g>
I'll drink to that. :) Although I'm sure there are rules to explain these cases, the English language is so riddled with irregularities that advanced learners eventually just have to memorize the forms accepted for the dialect they're studying. Another problem is that Garrett's Japanese students are constantly bombarded by ads, lyrics, shows and catch phrases that misuse English in hilarious ways, and thus end up inadvertently learning incorrect forms. --Avijja 07:00, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
No, "gerund" isn't what I'm talking about. There's a specific term for the role that words like "it" and "there" play in sentences like these, where instead of really having a meaning, they signal that the normal word order of the sentence has been inverted. Maybe I'll think of it. —Bkell 08:01, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, pleonastic pronoun is almost what I'm looking for. —Bkell 08:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
With English catenative verbs (where one verb is the direct object of another), the gerund (pulling) and the infinitive (to pull) often are interchangeable, but some verbs prefer one to the exclusion of the other. There are constructions which are near-catenative in the formation, where the direct object of the first verb interposes, and the second verb is the indirect object. This is the construction that is being used above. The correct form of the first sentece is: "You might have a hard time pulling Jake away from the television at bed time". Here pulling is used to describe the action of the verb to pull: the grammar is in the action. The second correct sentence was: "It might be difficult to pull Jake away at bed time". Here the infinitive is used rather than the gerund because it describes the act of verb: the grammar make the action hypothetical. Consider these two sentences: 1="It is difficult to pull a heavy weight." 2="It is difficult pulling a heavy weight." Both are grammatically correct, but sentence one is observational/hypothetical, whereas sentence 2 is spoken from the experience of grasping the rope. Going back to the original sentences, note that the subject changes from you...pulling to it...to pull: from the personal to the hypothetical. --Gareth Hughes 15:49, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
It doesn't matter who you are talking about, these are simply two different expressions, each of them "taking" its own kind of "arguments": to be dificult to x, where x is a verb in its root form, and have hard time y, where y is a verb in its -ing form.
You can take these two expressions in put them into any person, and they will sound natural:
  • For you, me, anybody, it is difficult to pull Jake away.
  • You, me, anybody will have a hard time pulling Jake away.
Notice that the first expression, to be difficult to, is really an application of one of general rules that allow you to combine adjectives and verbs in various patterns such as it's difficult/easy/funny to pull, pulling is difficult/easy/funny, etc, while "having a hard time" is an idiom with a more rigid pattern. Zocky 07:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Literature question on Anglo Saxons

Why were these people reverted?


What thread unites all the literary events that take place in Britain up to the time of Bede?

Can you please help me with these two answers I am having a very hard time with this information.

I don't understand the first question, please explain what you mean by 'reverted'. As for the second, it sounds suspiciously like homework of which you should do your own (see top of page). DJ Clayworth 21:48, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
The Battle of Hastings in 1066 reverted Anglo-Saxon rule to the Normans. William the Conqueror tried to claim the throne after the death of Edward the Confessor, but an assembly of English notables thwarted his attempt with the coronation of King Harold II. An infuriated William obtained the Pope's support, assembled a Norman invasion fleet, won the battle and gained the crown. // Literature in Britain at the time of Bede, such as the historical works of St. Gildas Sapiens, was bound using common thread, such as linen, sewn into the parchment or vellum. </sarcasm> --Avijja 23:02, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
"Reverted" makes it sound like England had previously been under the rule of the Normans, then was under the Anglo-Saxons, and then was later returned to Norman rule, which is of course wrong. The Battle of Hastings in 1066 brought England under Norman rule; it didn't revert anything. --User:Angr/talk 11:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Edward promised to make William his heir, but later changed his mind and offered the crown to Harold, an earl with no direct blood lines to the throne. William claimed this succession was illegal and reverted it to regain control of England. :) --Avijja 06:52, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, Edward had promised to make William his heir, but still England had never previously been under Norman rule. So there was no reversion to Norman rule in 1066. And since then, there has still been no reversion to English rule. --User:Angr/talk 07:43, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Ah, but England had been under Norman rule before the Battle of Hastings. You see, Harold swore allegiance to William in Normandy over holy relics in 1064, effectively making him his vassal and thus ineligible for the throne. Harold was summoned to Edward's deathbed for some last words, which Harold later claimed were Edward's offer of his wife and kingdom. This sudden change of mind was very suspicious because Edward had promised the throne to William for 15 years, and never before to Harold. Thus for all these reasons, William -- a Norman -- was the de jure ruler of England for the brief period between Edward's death and the time that Harold usurped the throne with the help of English notables. And so at the Battle of Hastings, William reverted England to his own Norman rule. --Avijja 09:02, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Traduction

There was a bit in a French article, fr:Tro Breizh that said "Une vieille légende bretonne dit que ceux qui n'auront pas effectué leur Tro Breizh de leur vivant seront condamnés à le faire dans l'au-delà, en avançant de la longueur de leur cercueil, une fois tous les sept ans". The fist bit's fine, bit the second bit is unclear to me. Did the ghosts have to walk the equivalanet distance of the tour (600km) every seven years by pacing up and down in their coffin? That makes the most sense as a good legend and gramatically, but just to make sure --Wonderfool t(c) 22:20, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

The most obvious way seems to be that once every seven years, they are allowed to advance a lenght equal to that of their coffin. Your interpretationis possible,if a bit contrived. The phrase wuld gain from being reformulated, I guess. Circeus 02:07, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
That bit is clear in french. They are condamned to complete the Tro Breizh after they passed away by moving forward the lenght of their coffin every 7 year. It is the best translation I can do. --Coyau 15:13, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 19

[edit] British American singing

Why is it that British bands generally sing with an American English pronunciation of the 'a', such as in "I can't get no satisfaction"? This is almost invariably done, with the possible exception of the Kinks. DirkvdM 14:38, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it's because America invented rock 'n' roll. Maybe it's all Elvis Presley's fault. Before that, the rest of the world sang either folk music in their local accent, or classical music in an educated accent. The result of America's influence is that much of the world's pop music sounds the same.
Despite this, there are many British bands with local accents; it's just that the ones with American accents tend to do better in the undiscriminating mass market. I know: let's start a list of British bands that don't sing in a fake American accent. ;-) --Heron 16:41, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
The same applies to Australia. Some bands choose to identify with the pop market and sing in more Americanised accents; others choose more to identify as Aussies and so sing in more distinctly Australian accents. jnothman talk 00:55, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I also think it's market pressure. The biggest, most profitable music markets seem to demand the use of specific dialects. This phenomenon isn't limited to America. For example, a singer from Osaka generally has to use a Tokyo-dialect if they want to succeed in the Japanese market because their native Kansai-ben is considered humorous by outsiders. Russian radio rarely plays music sung with Ukrainian accents because these are too provincial. Similarly if an Aussie wants to succeed in the giant and lucrative American market, they'd better learn to sing in a way that doesn't make Americans think about wombats. I personally find this rather unfortunate. --Avijja 07:51, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I thought of that too. But that couldn't explain why virtually all British bands sing with an American accent, could it? Are they all so obsessed with money that they sing in a way that goes against their 'nature'? Or is singing so essentially different from speaking? And anyway, a dialect can be successful too. There are several Dutch bands that got national fame partially because they use a dialect (eg Normaal). And, speaking of Australia, there's Kevin Bloody Wilson. But that's dialect and a specific lingo. English English is a 'real' language, spoken in a sizeable country. What about a bit of 'national pride' (which I detest, but most people are plagued by it)? Maybe it's because the use of a foreign accent doesn't mark them as being from a certain part of the British Isles, which would help national (not international) sales in other parts of the Isles. Which would be quite ironic.
One other possibility is that the American 'a' works better musically. Or do British (or Aussie or whatever) bands also use AE in other ways than with the 'a'? Not being a native speaker I don't notice this that easily. Or does it even go beyond pronunciation? Would a British band use, say, 'elevator' in stead of 'lift'? And if they sang about 'chips' what would they mean? I can't think of any examples. (And who would sing about lifts and chips anyway?) DirkvdM 10:14, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I think success, rather than simply money, is the motivator and sieve. // When I listen to the BBC, I hear many bands that sing with non-American accents. Yet very few of these are exported outside the UK. Thus as outsiders, we may get the mistaken impression that more British bands sing with an American accent than actually do. // A related discussion. // This also likely relates to terminology. Even if sung with an American accent, I doubt State-side radio would be willing to play a song about 'cagoule-wearing holidaymakers scrumping plonk from offy's and skiving jam sandwiches in a boffin's nicked articulated lorry'. :) --Avijja 13:39, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Why don't they sell in non-English speaking countries then? It's quite normal for a lot of people in the world to listen to English language songs without having a clue what they're singing about. DirkvdM 07:46, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
If the language didn't matter to them, they wouldn't be listening to English songs; they would be listening to songs of all languages. The fact that the language is American English, or at least that the songs come from America or are popular in America probably makes a huge difference.--Prosfilaes 19:30, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmmmm, I have to argue from an English standpoint against the views expressed above. That say that the reason behind many English bands' singing with a short A for commercial reasons is, to put it rather bluntly, complete folly. There are indeed several 'musical' ensembles-- I strain myself to call them this-- who sing in American, specifically Californian accents because they think that it is 'cool' somehow, or because they are trying to sell an image: Busted and Son of Dork being two examples of this. Most emo bands also sing in phony American accents. But the major reason contributing to the proliferation of short A is the fact that short A is the dominant A sound in the English language as spoken in Britain. That is not due to American influence. On the contrary: the short a sound was around in English for hundreds of years before the establishment of America! On the other hand, the broad A did not come about until the eighteenth century, and it was a Cockney 'innovation.' The broad A is confined, really, to the southernmost quarter of the British Isles, (not counting those taught received pronunciation elsewhere, or those whose dialects have unorthodox applications of the broad A.) So, when you hear Oasis or many non-Home Counties bands singing 'can't' instead of 'cān’t', 'laugh' instead of 'lāf', it's because their speech has not been corrupted as down south. The short A, one could argue, is more 'English', even though the broad A is being perceived as more belonging to these isles. It really frustrates me that, to many people, English English stops fifty miles outside of London. There is so much prejudice against the rich linguistic variations that the UK hosts, when, really, these differences need to be celebrated. So, please, let us accept that is not less English to speak in Scouse than it is in Received Pronunciation. IINAG, 20:17, November 21 2005 (UTC).
Whoa! The most recognisable aspect of high society English (the queen's English) is really Cockney? So when that is spoken in historical films, that is really an anachronism? And another thing. You use Scouse as a 'counterexample' to Cockney. I've often wondered how the North American accent came about. Many English colonists were from Liverpool, I believe. So is the short a really Scouse? And the Scousers then dropped it, while those in America kept it alive? Then again, come to think of it, the 'a' in modern Scouse is somewhere halfway between a short an long one. So the Beatles remained true to their mother tongue whilst the Stones should really have sounded like the queen? DirkvdM 05:51, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Hey, Dirk! Well, what was spoken at that time in London is not totally comparable with modern Cockney, but it is fair to say that the long ā was a Cockney innovation. (However, the long A sound was evident in West-Country speech before it came about in Cockney. Also, yes, the long A in historical films is nearly always anachronistic: the long A did not totally engulf the immediate south-east until the very end of the 1900s; up until then, it can be expected that many of the nobility would have pronounced words like 'grass' not as grās but as græs. (This can still be seen in numerous versions of American English, where the æ is tensed, (an American permutation.) The American accents that emerged after colonisation aren't the sole result of Scouse, otherwise American English would be far more interesting, with a range of exotic vowels, flaps and affricatives. (Although, Scouse to-day is somedeal different to how it would have sounded at the start of England's colonisation of America. German merchants, Celtic settlers and immigration from all corners of the Commonwealth have made it a strange melting pot. That being said, the word 'bum' and verb 'to bum' in the sense of begging were recorded in early Scouse speech, and the loosening of 'tt' to '`d' in words like 'letter', which is highly common in many dialects of American English, is Scouse-born too.) Anyhow, Scousers have not dropped the short A; indeed, in this day, there is no 'division' between short and long A like there is in Brummie, where certain words take 'ahh' and some 'a'-- it is nearly always a stressed short A that Scousers use. So, the short A was common nearly everywhere up until the mid-19th century, and even now, it is used by the plurality of English English speakers, so, we can't pinpoint America's use of the short A to Liverpool, because, through most of the colonisation period, the broad A existed nowhere but in pockets of the south-west.
As for your question on the Rolling Stones, before you, and anyone else reading, pass out from digging through my rambling, came from Kent: so, if they were singing naturally, they would not be singing in RP but in the evil that is Estuary English. The Beatles sang closer to their own dialect than the 'Stones did; I suppose that is because it is incredibly difficult to sing Rock and Roll or electric blues convincingly in such an accent; it's almost as bizarre-sounding as someone who speaks strong Hong Kong English singing Appalachian folk. iInag, 21:29, November 21 2005 (UTC).
Thanks for the education! Just one more thing. How is all this known? Through linguistic studies at the time? I can imagine that studies of something as 'unworthy' as dialects was 'not done' until, well, the late 19th century? Which is when the transition had already taken place. But there will still have been recollections of people. DirkvdM 10:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi again, Dirk! That is a good question that you pose there, and one that I can't adequately answer. Naturally, as you rightly point out, studying dialects was an uncommon thing up until the mid-19th century, when societies emerged to consider various modes of speech. (However, there are some exceptions to that; I remember reading of a guide to the speech of Worcestershire that was published in the late 1700s.) Most of what we know emerges from history and literature rather than concentrated linguistic studies, thus I assume that there are thousands of sources. iInag, 15:52, November 25 2005 (UTC)

Re: Scouse vs Cockney. Somewhere long ago I heard that the old Newgate accent of London no longer exists - in the UK; it was picked up and exported wholesale to Australia. Ever heard of this?Skookum1 00:25, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Huh, and here I thought American singers always used phoney British accents, dropping their R's everywhere. --Angr (t·c) 00:36, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Occupation definition

What is your definition of occupation? I understand the definition to be: the taking possession of a sovereign area by a foreign military force. If the definition is simply: the taking possession of an area by a foreign military force, then most (if not all) countries on the planet are occupied. If the former definition is correct, than few regions are occupied.

  • "Belligerent military occupation occurs when one nation's military garrisons occupy all or part of the territory of another nation or recognized belligerent during an invasion (during or after a war)."- from Belligerent occupation. Hope that helps. Deltabeignet 01:13, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 20

(no questions today)

[edit] November 21

[edit] How can i write the word "love" in various scripts?

How can i write the word "love" or the phrase "i love you" in various scripts like in arabic, french, chinese, japanese etc? Also, what symbol is used for "love" in egyptian hieroglyphics and/or in various other symbolic scripts? Motifs are used all over the world for certain words in various languages. I wanted to know the motive used for "love" in various languages, countries, or in other sign languages etc.

There are numerous lists of such things (common words in various languages, also phrases like "I love you" and "Good bye"), but you could also just look in a dictionary with multiple language translations, such as Wiktionary. See wiktionary:love for many languages. jnothman talk 10:59, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Also, from that same Wiktionary link is this one: wiktionary:I love you. Awesome. --Fastfission 14:25, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
In Inuktitut, this is ᑕᑯᑦᓱᒍᓱᑉᐳᖅ (takutsugusuppuq). ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 16:45, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
In Chinese it is 愛 (ai) in Mandarin, and (oi) in Cantonese. --HappyCamper 01:32, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
In Japanese, the word "love" is also 愛 ai and the phrase "I love you" would, I believe, be written 私があんたを愛する watashi ga anta wo aisuru ("I [subject] you [direct object] love [informal]"). Grumpy Troll Talk 17:28, 22 November 2005 (UTC).
In french, "love"="amour" and "I love you"="Je t'aime". Kuxu 02:11, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Plural of the word legislation?

Is there a plural of the word legislation? Could you say that the 'legislations are backward' , or that the 'legislations are extended' ? I can find the phrase 'legislations are...' , by googling, but it sure looks and sounds strange. Thanks if you can shed light.

I think legislation is often used as a mass noun and so "The legislation is backward" would be correct when talking about multiple laws. jnothman talk 10:51, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

According to this resource: http://law.anu.edu.au/studytools/STCommErr7.asp :

The word legislation is a bit like the word cake. We say 'one piece of legislation' or 'two pieces of legislation' or 'the legislation' (to refer to one Act or many). However, unlike with cakes, there is no such word as 'legislations' - the plural form remains legislation. To indicate a plural, you need to refer to the number of pieces of legislation. If you find this confusing, use the terms 'Act' and 'Acts' (or 'statute' and 'statutes') instead. These are made plural simply by adding an 's'.

I'll bet that Scrabble experts accept legislations as a valid word. Just because the plural is rarely if ever encountered, does not mean that some context cannot be found in which it would be correct. Eg. The Ruthenian legislation on gargleblasting says X, but the Calathumpian legislation on the same topic says Y. The legislations differ. JackofOz 09:20, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew translation for English word

In Genesis (King James English), God told Adam and Eve to "replenish" the earth. Webster's Dictionary says that this word means "to fill again". I would like to know what the Hebrew translation says, and is the precise translation to English "replenish"? Carrie, San Diego, CA

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:28 KJV)
The following is from my King James Bible that has Hebrew and Greek translation notes:
replenish, Hebrew הלא הלא, maw-lay’, maw-law’: A primitive root, to fill or (intransitively) be full of, in a wide application (literally and figuratively): - accomplish, confirm, + consecrate, be at an end, be expired, be fenced, fill, fulfil, (be, become, X draw, give in, go) fully (-ly, -ly set, tale), [over-] flow, fulness, furnish, gather (selves, together), presume, replenish, satisfy, set, space, take a [hand-] full, + have wholly.
Note that the word אה (ayth) follows replenish: Apparently contracted from אוה in the demonstrative sense of entity; properly self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely): - (As such unrepresented in English.) Strong's Hebrew Lexicon.
replenish, Greek μεστόω, mes-to’-o: to replenish, that is, (by implication) to intoxicate: - fill. Strong's Greek Lexicon. Wayward 23:09, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know if you realise that the Hebrew text above bears little relation to what you're trying to say: I hope it's not taken directly from your book. From the Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensia, the 'replenish the earth' bit is Hebrew: ומלאו את־הארץ‎, which is transliterated as ûmilʾû ʾeṯ-hāʾāreṣ. It would be wrong to read anything more than 'Fill the earth' into it. --Gareth Hughes 23:25, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I was confused by Wayward's misspellings of Hebrew words, and even more confused by his transcription scheme. Rather than הלא, he meant מלא. Rather than אה, את. But I have no idea what he is getting at with את~אות(?). As Gareth says, there is little meaning to מלא other than "fill", and את is merely an object marker. The only word that could be questioned here are subtle differences in meaning of "הארץ" ("the earth"). jnothman talk 00:57, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] japanese term

what is the japanese term for college?

Probably ユニバーシティー, which is "university." George 23:49, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that we must first know what definition/meaning of "college" you're trying to translate. As George said, it could be "university," buti might potentially refer to secondary or junior secondary school, or a component institution/school within a larger university. Or, slightly less commonly, a trade association (or religious organization). --Dpr 07:40, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
大学(daigaku) corresponds to university but is also used many times for college.--Jondel 04:41, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 22

[edit] what does the word effete mean?

  • See for yourself. In the future, I'd recommend that you use a dictionary for definitions, as encyclopedias aren't made for that purpose. Deltabeignet 05:25, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Translation of the name Jack, if appropriate?

Hello. I am a first time visitor to this site and not at all as informed as I might wish about the Inuit. I recently was given a young male husky-wolf mix dog a friend found in the wilds along the Arizona-California border he named Jack. My family has decided to find an Inuit translation to call him by if possible so that we could honor what we currently believe to be the native herritage of the breed. I am not sure if this is even an appropriate question, so please accept my apology if it is not. If is is appropiate please help with a translation to English along with a phoenetic spelling to help with pronounciation.

             Patrick, Tammy, Tanner, and Brandy Mitchell
Inuit syllabics
This is the perfect place to ask this question. How the name is translated depends on whether you want to translate the meaning of the name into Inuit or just the lettering (so it is still pronounced "jack" but is written in the Inuit alphabet).
The first problem is that huskies can come from as many different places as there are variants of the Inuit language. To name a few breeds, there are Alaskan, Canadian, Greenland, and Siberian. There are also various Alaskan, Canadian and Greenlandish variants of the Inuit language.
To start with, I'll try to figure out how "jack" would be written in Inuit, which is pronounced in English /dʒæk/ according to IPA notation. According to Inuit syllabics, /dʒæk/, you'd have to use two symbols: the first would correspond to "ja" in this chart, the second would correspond to "k" or "q" - I'm not sure which.
For the other method of translating the name you'd have to go back to the roots of "Jack". It is a name that is derived (somehow) from "John" [13], and John means "God is merciful" in Hebrew [14]. To translate this you'd need an expert in Inuit who could not only translate the words and their meaning but also their structure. I hope I've put you on the right track, you only need to find an Inuit speaker now! I'd recommend that you ask at the following language Wikipedias: Inuktitut (Canadian Inuit), Iñupiaq (one of the two Alaskan Inuit languages) and Kalaallisut (one of the three Greenlandish Inuit languages) - sadly, these are all quite small and a response may take a while. --Oldak Quill 16:55, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
I thought "Jack" came from Jacob ("grasps the heel"), which is also written "James". Although it is frequently given as a nickname to Johns. 66.95.123.6 22:13, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, I hadn't known we had sites for Iñupiaq and Kalaallisut... the main problem iu: has had is that there are very few people who know enough Inuktitut to contribute much. However, there are Canadians editing iu:, and they might answer questions at iu:Wikipedia:ᐹᕐᓂᖅ.
I don't know enough Inuktitut to be able to answer your question, but note that Inuktitut "j" is IPA: [j], pronounced like English "y". I think Inuktitut also does not have the [æ] vowel, so ᔭᒃ (jak) would be pronounced "yawk" and ᔭᓐ (jan) would be pronounced "yawn". ᔪᓐ might be more correct (pronounced [jɔn]), but I'm not really sure of that. Phonetically, probably the closest to "Jack" would be ᑦᓴᒃ (tsak), which, incidentally, is close to ᐊᑦᓴᒃ (atsak, aunt) or ᐃᑦᓴᒃ (itsak, temple). Actually translating the name may be difficult; good luck! ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 20:08, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
it may be better to ask for common Inuit dogs' names rather than translating "God is merciful" or something, which will be a mouthful, and which I imagine will sound weird as a dog's name to Inuit ears :) dab (ᛏ) 20:46, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Quite right. According to our Inuit language article:
Exotic as traditional Inuit names sound, both the names of places and people tend to be highly prosaic when translated. Iqaluit, for example, is simply the plural of the noun iqaluk - "fish". Iglulik simply means place with houses, a word that could be interpreted as simply town; Inuvik is place of people; Baffin Island - Qikiqtaaluk in Inuit language - approximately translates to "big island".
Why not, in this tradition, find the Inuit word for "dog" and name your Husky this? This would "honor what we currently believe to be the native herritage of the breed" more than an outlandish, long name meaning "God is merciful". By the way, the Canadian Inuit for "dog" is 'kringmerk' [15] - how beautiful. --Oldak Quill 21:21, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Another meaning of "Jack" is "worker" as in "lumber jack" or "jack of all trades". So, you might want to find the Inuit word for "worker". StuRat 21:18, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blue/green IBM badges

I don't understand what badges they're talking about in this Kuro5hin thread. Can someone please clarify it to me? Samohyl Jan 13:24, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

It seems someone has answered this one on the thread itself. Seems it's an old tradition at Intel (not IBM) of issuing colour-coded badges (name badges, I guess) to different categories of staff. - IMSoP 22:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blutgericht

On Carloman, son of Charles Martel, I found the term bloody judgment of Cannstatt. This is an overly literal translation of Blutgericht zu Cannstatt. Now, 'Blutgericht' was simply the term for any jurisdiction with the power to pronounce death sentences. What would be the most accurate English translation of this? Since the term is particular to the Holy Roman Empire, we may have to settle for Blutgericht, as with reichsfrei, but maybe there is a current English term? dab (ᛏ) 16:57, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Cassell's says just "Criminal Court". -- Jmabel | Talk 08:20, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I think there is no exact translation. google has "blood court" for a painting by Paul Klee; other translations I found include "court rights". I think the point is that the term cover two meanings, (a) the right to hold such courts, and (b) specific actual courts. dab (ᛏ) 09:56, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, Gericht has a number of different translations in English, and one has to be careful. A Thai restaurant here in Berlin has a menu in German and English, on which "Thailändische Gerichte" is translated "Thai Courts". --Angr (t·c) 16:44, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
yes, but this term is misleading even in German, since "Gericht" does not convey meaning (a) anymore; you would expect Gerichtsbarkeit for that in Modern German. So, no English equivalent of Blutgericht, then? (I have done a stubby Blutgericht in the meantime). dab (ᛏ) 19:13, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I have come across this same problem, too, with the related German terms Hohe Gerichtsbarkeit (corresponds to Blutgericht, sense (a)) and Niedere Gerichtsbarkeit on Swabian War. See Talk:Swabian War and de:Hohe Gerichtsbarkeit and de:Niedere Gerichtsbarkeit. I have used the tentative translations of "high jurisdiction" and "low jurisdiction", but frankly said, I have no idea if that makes sense or what terms medievalists in English-speaking countries use. Lupo 08:54, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I did see a couple of translations of Blutgericht to Bloody Assizes, which struck me as odd but may as well report it. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 06:06, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

(Resetting indentation) It appears I wasn't that far off with my translation: at least we have an article on high, middle and low justice. However, that article needs work, and doesn't give any sources. (For instance, I have never heard of "middle justice", and the article's explanation that "this intermediate level is the least well defined, and sometimes absent in a specific jurisdiction" isn't exactly helpful.) Lupo 09:20, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Military jargon: "Actual"

I didn't see this on military slang--what does "actual" mean when referring to something over radio? As in, "Charlie Six Actual, do you copy?"? grendel|khan 20:21, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but for what it's worth in the current Battlestar Galactica it's used to refer to the actual commander of the unit i.e. Galactica Actual is Commander Adama, rather than just Galactica referring to anyone who just happens to be manning the radio. -- Arwel (talk) 02:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
If this is real then it probably isn't slang, it's radio procedure. The British Army uses (used?) codewords to indicate particular people within an organisation, of which Sunray for commanding officer is the best-known. The purposes is to avoid giving away more information about the unit than is necessary. For example talking to Charlie Six and referring to 'your colonel' would give information about the unit size, whereas 'your sunray' does not. DJ Clayworth 18:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
c.f. "proper" in heraldry? Ojw 20:22, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Characters exclusive to one language

I'm looking for a list of Unicode characters that are used exclusively in one language (for instance, "ß" is used exclusively in German and "ĉ" is used exclusively in Esperanto. Both Google and Wikipedia searches didn't turn up much. Can anyone help me out? --Mcmillin24 23:19, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I am not aware of Ŵ being used in any language other than Welsh, and I remember reading something about unique characters in the Vietnamese alphabet article. Thryduulf 00:36, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I've seen Ŵ used on Malawian postage stamps, though the government of Malawi doesn't seem to use it on its own web sites. -- Arwel (talk) 02:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, Ŵ is used in Chichewa as well as Welsh. Malagasy apparently uses n with an umlaut, for which there isn't even a Unicode character. --User:Angr/talk 06:22, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
However, it is possible that Ŷ is used only in Welsh. I don't know of any language besides Latvian that uses Ģ, Ķ, Ļ, Ņ, and Ŗ. --Angr (t·c) 18:40, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
There most certainly is a Unicode representation for an n with an umlaut (diaresis); there just isn't a precomposed character. (In fact Unicode discourages the use of precomposed characters.) You just have to stick a combining umlaut on an N -- see the article for Heavy metal umlaut for how they spell Spinal Tap (with HMU on the "n"). 66.95.123.6 21:50, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe Romanian Ș/ș (S/s with comma) and Ț/ț (T/t with comma)? Uncommon enough that in the English Wikipedia, we don't normally use them, because so few fonts include them. Instead, we use Ş/ş (S/s with cedilla) and Ţ/ţ (T/t with cedilla). See Romanian alphabet.

Most (maybe all) of the unique Vietnamese characters do not actually have Unicode code points, they have to be at least partially decomposed. For example, LATIN A WITH ACUTE ACCENT might be followed by COMBINING TILDE to produce LATIN A WITH ACUTE ACCENT AND TILDE. (I'm not even sure that particular combination exists, but you get the point. And you'd do the same for the N WITH DIARESIS that Angr calls an "n with umlaut" above. It's not an umlaut.)

Of course, once you get out of the Latin alphabet, there are a lot more. For example, even with Han unification, most Chinese ideographs are exclusively Chinese. The kana are exclusively Japanese.

Similarly, I believe Hangul is used exclusively for Korean, and I think Thai language and Khmer language each have a unique script, too. Then there's Sinhala script for Sinhala, Malayalam script for Malayalam language. Devangari, Syriac… A lot of Asian languages have unique alphabets, though some do share. Can't think of which are unique off the top of my head, and I've already taken about 20 minutes replying, but it should be only a few hours research to work out pretty comprehensively. See http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html for a comprehensive list of scripts supported by Unicode. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:50, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

See also the Inuktitut characters posted a couple of sections previously on this page. Thryduulf 09:23, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Nope. Those were originally for the Cree language, and were borrowed by Inuktitut and other languages of the region. Possibly some particular character among these Canadian First Nations syllabics is unique to some one language, but most aren't. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:24, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Yep, a huge variety of the scripts in South and Southeast Asia are used for only one language. Brahmic family has a discussion and list of the derived scripts, including some in Unicode, and some not. Some of those, like Devanagari are used in more than one language though, so you'd have to do some further searching. I would imagine a similar situation for African languages that have writing systems. - Taxman Talk 19:09, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
It's arguable whether with s with comma and t with comma are actually distinct from s with cedilia and t with cedilia. The typographers on the Unicode list didn't think so; the reason it's in Unicode is because Romania wanted it, not because the experts thought it was a seperate letter. I own a Romanian book for what looks like a kindergarten, and it mixes the s with comma and s with cedilia. It's really a font difference.--Prosfilaes 22:04, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I believe that letters with the double acute accent are fairly rare: ӳ is used in Chuvash (only?), and ő and ű in Hungarian (only?) - Nunh-huh 19:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

in Denmark we have the letters: å, ø and æ that is only used in Denmark

Not true. All three are used in Norwegian as well; å is also used in Swedish, and æ is used in Icelandic, Old English, and occasionally in Modern English by people who like to spell encyclopedia "encyclopædia". --Angr (t·c) 11:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

The O-cedilla: I notice in the Wikipedia character-set at the bottom of the edit pages all the other vowels are given with cedillas: Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ų ų ; why is this not available for O-cedilla (see Old Norse Talk page).Skookum1 00:10, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Because there's not a precomposed o-cedilla in Unicode. You can create one using precomposed characters; o̧ and O̧ are the proper letters, but may not display right everywhere (not that there's any assurances on the other vowels with cedilla, either.)--Prosfilaes 07:50, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ų ų do not have a cedilla, they have an ogonek ("Polish hook"). There is a precomposed Unicode character for o-ogonek (ǫ; it's at U+01EB). As far as I know, it's used in Old Norse (and I don't even know if it's actually found as such in manuscripts or if it's just a modern editorial convenience), in the romanization of Old Church Slavonic, and in the Southern Athabascan languages (e.g. Navajo). It's also used in reconstructed Proto-Slavic to stand for a nasalized o and in reconstructed Proto-Romance to stand for an "open o". Real cedillas under vowels are rare, but Unicode has U+0228 for Ȩ and U+0229 for ȩ. I have no idea what language(s) that character is used in, though. --Angr (t·c) 15:58, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 23

[edit] What languages do Wikipedians speak?

This is a hypothetical question on word origins and etymology I guess...What languages do "Wikipedians" speak? Or rather, what "should" a Wikipedian speak?

Wikipedians come from Wikipedia, and they speak Wikipedianese? --HappyCamper 01:48, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I could only really ansewer lots of them. jnothman talk 04:49, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I think the question doesn't address languages in the general sense of "what is your mother tongue?" but implies that there ought to be a word to describe the tone and style of discourse here, along the lines of "journalese", "doctor-speak" etc. Yes, Happy? There is something to the idea. "I think it's a CSD, G4, but the inclusionists are arguing keep" would be a meaningless sentence to a non-Wikipedian.
As for which word, I notice a general cultural trend toward the mono-syllabic but full word 'speak' and 'talk' suffixii (er, suffixes), which would suggest "wikispeak" or "wikitalk". Note that this trend is eminently Germanic. On the other hand, there is some deference to Latinate forms here, such as "deletionist" and "inclusionist" rather than "deleter" and "includer." Thus, as you suggest, "Wikipedianese" or "Wikipedese" make sense. Perhaps in time a word will emerge. Here is a good reference: [16]. Marskell 09:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
But "wiki-speak" and "wiki-talk" aren't just related to Wikipedia, but to all wikis, then. --Wonderfool t(c) 13:06, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Sure! If we Enlishers tend toward something, presumably it will be borrowed elsewhere if the root makes sense (and "wiki" is the basic root everywhere, I believe, where the alphabet conforms). I don't speak it, but I've followed links to the German wiki. Artikel is used there. From? In English the etymology is absolutely predictable--MidE, Old French, Latin. I presume German borrows it from English, adding another tier. If "wikispeak" shows up here, then there... well, it'll just confirm a general pattern: English is the borrowed-from language of the globe. Marskell 21:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What is the main verb in the following sentence?

Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.

kind regards Vineet Chaitanya

It is a sentence fragment that lacks an overt main verb. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:24, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I wasn't going to respond because it's a homework question. But I'm not sure I agree with you, Jmabel, and I wouldn't want any of our friends to be misled. It is indeed a fragment, not a sentence, but that's not the point of the question. "By bulldozing" and everything after it describes how pennies are saved two at a time. The principal clause is "pennies saved two at a time", hence the main verb is "saved". Do you not agree? JackofOz 08:34, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I would agree with Jmabel. A principal clause in a compound or complex sentence should have a subject and predicate and it should be capable of standing alone as a simple sentence [17]. "pennies saved one and two at a time", hence, is not the principal clause. on the whole, the original sentence is a fragment masquerading as a legitimate one. --Tachs 09:16, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
"saved" would be an adjective in that fragment. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:19, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

But this debate completely misses the point of the question. The question is not whether or not the words comprise a complete sentence, it's "what is the main verb?". JackofOz 02:46, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

No, that was answered in the first response. There isn't one.
More precisely, there isn't an "overt" verb; with context, there might be an implied one. (In "I bought a car. A big yellow car." the second sentence is a fragment with no verb, but "I bought" is implied. The "pennies" example is a fragment just like "A big yellow car", but with a more complicated structure within it.)
--Anonymous, 04:05 UTC, November 24, 2005

Unless, of course, "Pennies" is a person, persons or an organization who saved house numbers one and two at a time... In that case "saved" is the overt verb. Zocky 14:52, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese sentence.

Could someone translate this Japanese sentence into an English one? :o) Thank you.

hai seimazen. cohee, cohee! hotto, doozo... arigato gozaimasu!

Are you sure this is the correct transcription of the roumaji? hai = yes, seimazen looks like a mistranscription of "sumimasen" (general meaningless politeness or "excuse me" or "I'm sorry"), cohee looks like a mistranscription of kohii (coffee), hotto could either be a Japanization of English "hot" or could be referring to quantity, doozo = please, arigato gozaimasu = thank you very much. Is this a conversation at a coffee shop? -- 66.95.123.6 22:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
To me it looks like

sorry. coffee, coffee! hot, thanks!

Gerard Foley 19:52, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese and Russian

How would I say 'Hello, Physics Teacher' in these languages? I don't understand IPA, but feel free to answer in it if you must. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 19:20, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I am learning Japanese and so cannot be sure, but would assume "Hello, physics teacher" would be said 「今日わ、理化学の教師」 Konnichi wa, rikagaku no kiyoushi. Grumpy Troll Talk 19:58, 23 November 2005 (UTC).
Usually you put the name of the person you are addressing before the greeting. Also, when speaking to a teacher, sensei is more polite. I would suggest 「理化学の先生、今日は」 Rikagaku no sensei, konnichiwa. Like GrumpyTroll, I am not a native speaker, but I am pretty sure you will be fine saying it this way. -Parallel or Together ? 14:12, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
And as for Russian, you'd have "Здравствуйте, учитель физики" Zdravstvuite, uchitel' fiziki (Hello, teacher (of) physics). --Borbrav 03:15, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Just as a note, Russian has a number of different words for different types of teachers (grade school, college instructors, professors). I believe учитель is a grade school teacher. If they a college (or high school?) instructor use преподаватель/prepodavatel', if they are a college professor use профессор/professor. If you are trying to pronounce these verbally, the hardest part will be Здравствуйте, which to a native English speaker will sound like "Zdrast-voo-tee-yay" but said alltogether. The rest is pretty much as it looks transliterated (u-chee-tel, fiz-ee-kee). --Fastfission 21:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


Most definitely NOT "Zdrast-voo-tee-yay" but "Zdrast-voo-ee-tyay" !!! JackofOz 22:05, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of a phrase

Where does the phrase "Nothing can go wrong...can go wrong...can go wrong", ironically indicating that something has already gone wrong (the robot is malfunctioning or the record or CD is skipping) originate?

I don't know the origin, but I'll strike a guess at the date being between 1950 and 1962. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:28, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Makes me think of Westworld. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 06:01, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Or Itchy and Scratchy Land ('Where nothing can possibli go wrong...') smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 11:41, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
It's definitely much older than Itchy and Scratchy. I heard it in the context of a joke about the 'first completely automatic plane', and that was at least twenty years ago. DJ Clayworth 17:00, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 24

(No questions today)

[edit] November 25

(no questions today)

[edit] November 26

[edit] Does the Rubiyyat do this as well?

What is the word for the omission of a letter or word from a literary work's entirety?
--Travis Froggatt

[edit] catchphrase "Do I not like that" who said it

That would be Graham Taylor (football manager) (see this site) who uttered these immortal words while watching a Norwegian player galloping down the pitch to score against England. Taylor was being filmed for a documentary called "An Impossible Job" which showed him in rather a poor light when it was broadcast. The odd phrasing and the inherent comedy value in ridiculing Taylor (who was doing rather poorly as England manager at the time) led to the phrase becoming a catchphrase. --Spondoolicks 18:44, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
There was a freeware Pengo clone for the Amiga with sampled speech. If you won a round it would say "Yes. I like that." If you died it would say "Do I not like that." If you hung around for a while without winning a round or dying it would say "Can we not knock it?" Are these all from Graham Taylor? — JIP | Talk 10:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Is a Canadian/British "fire check" the same thing as an American "smoke detector"?

As a kiwi, I'm not familiar with the term "fire check", but maybe it's what I would call a fire break.
Google hits seem to refer to fireproof doors or simply to checking that everything is fire safe (candles and cigarettes extinguished) before going to bed or leaving the house.-gadfium 21:05, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
In British English a fire check would probably mean a fire safety inspection. Smoke detectors are called such, and a fire break would be a forest clearing designed to halt the spread of fires. It is possible that 'check' could be used for a fire break, but context would be needed for the phrase to make any sense. --Gareth Hughes 21:40, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm a law student editing an article written by a Canadian professor. She refers to a case dealing with a patent for a "fire check" device involved with gas burners. The more I read the case, the more I think that a "fire check" is something used in gas burners and less to detect smoke in houses. Thanks for your help.

In that context (gas burners), "fire check" would be the device that checks to see if a flame is lit when the gas is escaping from the stove. I think the one in my stove works on heat detection (definitely not smoke), if there's no heat then it stops the gas escaping.--Commander Keane 17:48, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm Canadian (Toronto) and I've never heard of a "fire check". I have smoke detectors. If my house burned down, my insurance company might give me a "fire cheque", but that's beside the point. Ground Zero | t 14:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard of a "fire check" either in England, Scotland or Ireland - I would assume from context it's not a smoke detector (sometimes "fire detector" is used, but this is generally technicall inaccurate), but rather an inspection to physically (or remotely) check for fires. Shimgray | talk | 14:49, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I have also never heard of a 'fire check' in neither Britain nor Canada. I would support your guess that it is to do with the burner. By implication it is presumably something that 'checks' (i.e. either restricts or prevents) a fire in some sense. DJ Clayworth 16:58, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  • One possibility, if you have the patent number, is to look it up in the European patent database and see what it is described as. --Fastfission 21:33, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Agree that in Britain if it means anything it probably means fire safety inspection. Ive never heard the phrase but "(annual) gas check" is certainly used as a synonym for gas safety inspection. Jameswilson 23:59, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

In British architecture and building, a smoke detector is usually called a smoke detector, though no doubt electrical engineers will have some technical name for them. The term fire check is used to specify doorsets (door and frame) to meet regulation requirements for controlling the spread of fire and smoke: "Fire-check doors are those which either comply with the construction specification given in BS 459: Part 3 or have given an equivalent performance in fire tests, fire resisting doors have a higher standard of integrity.[18]" From googling I note an intumescent paint and a plasterboard maker using the term for their fire resisting products, but that's not normal usage as far as I know. ...dave souza 17:50, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Translation of the Dutch word cabaretier

How would I correctly translate the Dutch word cabaretier to English? An example of a cabaretier is nl:Wim Sonneveld. —R. Koot 21:33, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

  • It looks like cabaretier could be translated "cabaret performer". --Metropolitan90 06:00, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Weird law!

Why is it illegal to name a child Monica in Equatorial Guinea?

Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia! This statement was added to our Monica article by User:Meweight but IMO is very suspect. You could try asking that contributor here. Shantavira 18:10, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
This seems to be the source of the claim: " In Equatorial Guinea, it is against the law to name your child Monica." --Oldak Quill 23:36, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
There is another reference to it here. --DannyZ 23:45, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] leverback?

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.130.117.72 (talk • contribs)

[edit] November 27

[edit] How frequently a "non-finite subordinate clause" masquerades as a "proper sentence" in English?

It was observed in the answer to the question "What is the main verb in the following sentence?" that the given "sentence" was really a "sentence fragment". As far as I know in my language Hindi a "finite subordinate clause" may be represented as an "orthographic sentence" but not a "non finite" one.

I would like to know, "How common is it to represent a "non finite" clause as an orthographic sentence in English? Does this happen only with past-participial forms or with other forms also?

I thank all the commentators for an enlightening discussion on my previous question.

Vineet Chaitanya

Huh? I'm not sure that some of these concepts even exist in English. If they do, they are quite esoteric and were never learned (or possibly now forgotten) by this university-educated individual. Nelson Ricardo 00:46, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
here [19] there is a paragraph which throws light, dim though it is, on the subject --213.42.2.10 08:59, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] words

The understanding of how words fit together, how words rhyme, and how changes in sounds change words is called what? --67.177.139.171 18:33, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

At least the first two would probably fall under prosody. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:07, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Broadly, phonology, I guess... I wouldn't call it prosody, although that includes some aspects of rhythm and rhyme. jnothman talk 11:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 28

[edit] Difficulty of Hebrew

On a scale of difficulty from, say, French to Russian, how difficult is Hebrew to learn for a post-adolescence native English speaker? --Fastfission 02:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I suspect it's at least as bad as Russian. It's fundamentally non-Indo-European and I've read nothing that indicates that it's a particularly simple language.--Prosfilaes 09:23, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
There's also a big difference between Modern Israeli Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew. I suspect MIH is easier to learn than BH, but if you learn BH you're only expected to passively read it, not actively speak it. --Angr (t·c) 10:07, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I think MIH has an almost "Standard Average European" syntax, by now, and is much assimilated to Russian, since a substantial fraction of speakers have Russian ancestry. It's very far from BH now (Compare Middle English to Old English, maybe). dab (ᛏ) 10:16, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd say about as bad as Greek. This comparison works no matter whether you're referring to Biblical Hebrew oder Israeli Hebrew. ;) ナイトスタリオン ✉ 10:17, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
It's a fairly funny question. Modern Hebrew, as above, will have sort of a familiar syntax, and some familiar vocabulary. Verbally, rules are often not followed, so as long as you are talking about understanding or producing speech, that would not be entirely difficult compared to Russian. In terms of reading, there may be a fair difficulty in a very different alphabet system to English or Russian, where vowels are often not given. With regards to biblical Hebrew, reading difficulty would be similar, but grammar/morphology is more strict and detailed; in addition, one is not able to have any immersion in biblical Hebrew speech as there is none present today. jnothman talk 11:35, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Finno-Ugric

I've noticed the names for days of the week in Finnish are all Germanic. I'm guessing this is mainly due to Swedish rule and consequent enforcement of Swedish timekeeping. Historically, did Finnish timekeeping differ much from the modern system, and in particular, what would days of the week have been called? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 13:28, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Modern Finnish has sunnuntai, maanantai, tiistai, keskiviikko, torstai, perjantai, and lauantai.
  1. Are these mainly adaptations from Swedish, or from German?
  2. Is keskiviikko an adaptation of mittwoch?
  3. Was there an intermediate name for Wednesday derived from Swedish onsdag?
  4. Is there any connection between perjantai and Russian pyatnitsa?
  1. I think they are from Swedish.
  2. Yes.
  3. Not to my knowledge. — JIP | Talk 13:36, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  4. I don't know what "pyanitsa" means but I should think not. "Perjantai" comes from the Nordic goddess Freja, or however it is spelled, exactly like Swedish fredag. — JIP | Talk 19:17, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Ah, okay; thanks. I'd been puzzled by how Freja would become Perjan — is the "n" possibly a genitive suffix? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 20:41, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
The "n" is indeed a genetive suffix in Finnish. I don't know why "tiistai" and "torstai" don't have it, though. Maybe they retain the "s" genitive suffix from Swedish (tisdag and torsdag). — JIP | Talk 21:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Estonian has pühapäev, esmaspäev, teisipäev, kolmapäev, neljapäev, reede, and laupäev.
  1. Püha seems to correspond to Finnish pyhä; was there at some time a pyhäpäivä?
  2. What was this day called before the introduction of Christianity?
  3. Is lauan- cognate with lau- or with Swedish lör-?
    [Apparently all three are equivalent.]
Finnish is pretty regular. "Perkele's Day" probably ought to become perkeleentai (or ukontai, considering the connotations of perkele). ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 11:36, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] November 29

[edit] Skeleton crew?

What is a skeleton crew?

It means the smallest group of people that can operate a facility. A big ship might have hundreds of people in its crew when there are passengers on board, but if it has to be moved from one dock to another without passengers, the owners might save on costs by just having a few people on the bridge and in the engine room, and wherever else they are needed for safety. If you imagine a skeleton compared to a person's whole body, you see why they call this a skeleton crew. The term can be used for minimal staffing in any similar situation.
A decent dictionary should mention this phrase either under "skeleton" or in an entry of its own. For example, like this.
--Anonymous, 07:20 UTC, November 29, 2005

[edit] 30 November 2005

[edit] SOS

What is the Morse code for S.O.S?

...---... Angr (t·c) 00:21, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
See also SOS for more information. It is worth noting that this is no longer officially a distress call, though it is of course widely recognised. The similar ring tone from mobile phones actually spells SMS. Shantavira 12:37, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, how appropriate! I never realized that spelled SMS. —Keenan Pepper 16:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
What does it sound like? I don't have a cell phone... --HappyCamper 01:37, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
SMS is "...--..." --Anonymous, 06:08 UTC

[edit] Learning Arabic

The Wikipedia Help Desk has received the following question from Jane Galligan.

I am interested in learning Arabic. After doing a bit of research, I found that I could learn Eastern Arabic or Egyptian Arabic. Which would be more useful in today's world in your opinion?

Sincerely, Jane G.

I have advised her that our Arabic article states that Egyptian Arabic is more widely used but would welcome any assistance that you may be able to offer.

Capitalistroadster 00:49, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

You might look into the demographics of where different languages and dialects are spoken, and what the cultures are there, and if you feel you would be comfortable interacting with them. There are Muslim cultures that restrict freedom of women compared to Western cultures, such that a woman coming from the West might not be able to make a comfortable living. So you pick what you want to learn based on your comfort levels with whay you have learned about the culture and legal structure there. AlMac|[[User talk:AlMac|<sup>(talk)</sup>]] 06:58, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

From what I know, Egyptian Arabic is more widely understood across the Arabic-speaking world in general than Levantine Arabic, because of Egypt's cultural influence (as the article elaborates). I know someone (a Brit) who speaks Egyptian Arabic and has used it successfully in Iraq and other middle eastern countries. Mattley 16:03, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Most classes teach Modern Standard Arabic, which is understood throughout the Arabic-speaking world. However, it can sound quite stilted when used for everyday purposes. For good colloquial Arabic, I would recommend Levantine Arabic, as it is closer to MSA (well, that's how it sounds to me). However, many Arabic speakers have heard enough Egyptian Arabic to understand it, but it is very different from MSA and most other colloquial Arabics. If you are starting from scratch, this doesn't really matter too much, as you'll have to learn the basics first. If there's a course with a good teacher, go for that. It is very unlikely that a good, well-accredited teacher will teach an obscure dialect to foreigners. --Gareth Hughes 16:45, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Edgar Allan Poe

What is Edgar Allan Poe's foster mom's maiden name?

I haven't had any luck finding her maiden name, but in case anybody else is actively looking, you should know here name was Frances Allan, and she was the wife of John Allan. Also, the wiki page on Poe could use a little cleaning up, so I'm going to get to that. --ParkerHiggins 04:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
FYI. In the future, put questions like this at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. Thanks. Superm401 | Talk 04:21, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Idioms in the English Language

The phrase " touch base" has an origin. Does anyone know the origin of this phrase? Is it a sports term applicable to baseball or an action term applicable to location ?

I've always understood it in terms of baseball. Specifically, see Out (baseball) and the rule about "passes a base without touching it". --Anonymous, 00:21 UTC, December 1, 2005

Its not used in Britain (although we do understand it) so I imagine it must come from baseball. Jameswilson 02:57, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Baseball origin seems likely, but it more likely has to do with a runner on base touching base in order that he can't be picked off than touching the base while rounding it. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Infant" and "Infantry".

On an exciting debate I'm watching, the following was said: Ever wonder why babies and soldiers destined to be ground into hamburger had the "same" name? The Indo-European root "fa" is one used for speech and communication. The prefix "in" is used as a negation. Neither babies nor infantry men have a voice; they're not capable or entitled to have one and make their own decisions. Is this, in fact, where the words "infant" and "infantry" both come from? grendel|khan 19:23, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

you don't have to go back to PIE. Latin infans "mute" [20] is enough. The PIE would be n-bhH-nt-. dab (ᛏ) 19:28, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
"Infantry" does derive from a word ("infant") meaning "mute", but this doesn't mean the word is actually derived from the word for mute - rather, it was derived from the word meaning child, and the earlier quote is a bit of a false etymology. The OED tells us:
a. F. infanterie, ad. It. (Sp., Pg.) infanteria foot-soldiery, f. infante a youth, foot-soldier: - L. infantem INFANT n.1 For the development of the It. infante cf. the apocopated form fante 'a man or woman servant or attendant; also, a footman or soldier seruing on foot; also the knaue or varlet at cards' (Florio); cf. also the history of footman, groom, knave, knight, lad, etc.
Hope that clarifies matters... Shimgray | talk | 19:40, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
This is true, but it doesn't invalidate the parallel between babies and infantry :) knight is a good parallel, except for the sudden rise of prestige of the word in the Late Middle Ages. gillie is another similar case. dab (ᛏ) 19:55, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

From what I understand, the word 'infantry' comes from the concept of 'raising' (also in the sense of 'nurturing') local armies under the old feudal system. Knights were local feudal lords owning land, and all people living on that land were subjects of the knight. In times of war or strife, small 'armies' would be put together from amongst these subjects, mostly utilising weapons and equipment that they had at home. As most of the subjects were poor people, they did not have horses (or, if they did, they were either too valuable to use in battle, or of the wrong type), so they fought on foot. That is why the term 'infantry' came to mean 'foot soldiers'. --Givnan 13:12, 3 December 2005 (UTC)