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Reference Desk

See also Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Language/FAQs for answers to frequently asked language and usage questions.

Eviatar

I heard of Eviatar Zerubavel and I was wondering where the name Eviatar comes from. Does anybody know?

March 21

Global Warming

What are the major causes of this phenomenon

Global warming. Search before asking. --Slumgum | yap | stalk | 00:29, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Global warming is caused by excess heat off people angered at having science questions listed improperly on the Language Reference Desk. StuRat 01:40, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention having homework questions asked at any Misplaced Pages reference desk. Angr/talk 10:29, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Language translation

Hi! I'm trying to find a good language-translation website & I need help, please! Anything free would especially be good! (EricSpokane 01:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC))

The best you can do for free is word-for-word machine translations that ignore the context. Those are highly unreliable translations, but I've used them anyway, such as the Babel Fish translator available at . StuRat 01:37, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Hint: if you do use machine translations like that, do a "round trip", such as English -> French -> English, so you can have some idea how badly your sentence has been raped. StuRat 02:39, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

If you're looking for a machine translation site like StuRat described, it would help if you told us which languages you're interested in translating. Dforest 04:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Google's translator is as good as any other automatic translator I've used. —Keenan Pepper 16:39, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm gonna have to say that Google's translator is the best free translator. I had some fun with it once by browsing the Google-translated German Misplaced Pages, and it works really well! :D —OneofThem_(contribs) 20:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It's fun to run sentences through the machine translators a few times to see what they come up with. Here's what happens with "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party" when Google translates it to French, then back to English again: "Is now the hour for all the good men to come using the part." --Halcatalyst 05:28, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Aramaic Lanuage

What is the meaning of the Aramaic name, Hagneia?--64.12.116.134

It actually seems to be a Greek word meaning "purity" or "chastity". If you were to give its spelling in the Hebrew or Aramaic alphabet, then I might be able to tell if there's any connection there. (By the way, scholars have been arguing for centuries as to what the original Hebrew or Aramaic word behind the transcribed Greek name "Essenes" might have been, since this Greek transcription leaves open so many possibilities.) AnonMoos 07:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Word Origin and Spelling

I was looking for the origin of a character in literature. The name of the character is pronounced "milk toast" but I know that is not how it is properly spelled. It is now used as an adjective to describe people like the character and I would like to look up what that means but I am stumped without the proper spelling.

Can you help me with the proper spelling and the origin?

I hope this is a proper way to ask a question as I am new to using Misplaced Pages.

Grateful thanks,

PompeedPompeed 02:28, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

See Caspar Milquetoast. StuRat 02:36, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I've seen it spelled "Milquetoast" and it appears to be used as a derisory name for a weak or effeminate male in American literature in the 20's and 30's.I think both Robert Benchley and James Thurber have used it in their work. hotclaws**==

origin of a saying.

I would like to know the origin of the saying "He's a heel". Why do we use this part of the foot to describe a male's personality.

Thanks for the help.... D

heel (n.) "contemptible person," 1914 in U.S. underworld slang, originally "incompetent or worthless criminal," probably from a sense of "person in the lowest position." From the Online Etymology Dictionary. I hope this helps. --Rueckk 13:48, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

quote

Is the title of the Shirley Jackson book "We Have Always Lived In The Castle" a quote?It sounds like one but I can't track it down.Thanx

It's too vague, it looks, as most of book titles nowadays, as a catchphrase so you shall remember it. --DLL 18:47, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

How to write a letter about inviting someone as a honorary patron?

Dear all,

Would you please advise me of some ideas or samples for an English writing about an offer to someone of an appointment as a Honorary Patron on behalf of a Society. I would like to know what sort of content should be composed of and also what mode of language should be appropriately used?

Thank you very much for your kind help.

Find out if the person has a title and what the proper form of salutation is.Set out the aims of your society and what they hope to achieve.Tell them why you think they are appropriate for this post and could help in this cause.Use simple ,grammatical language so they can easily see the points you're making.Put in what they will get out of it,gratitude,personal satisfaction and publicity are good ideas.You could also try asking why they won't if they refuse and even if they have ideas who you could approach.Thank them anyway,even if they refuse,they may accept next time. Good luck!

hotclaws**==

Thanks for your help^^

Punctuation

Can you explain the difference between steady state used as a noun with no hyphen and steady-state pharmacokinetics (hyphenated because it is an adjective)? Is there a punctuation rule that covers this hyphen usage? Thanks, Brenda

I think you've covered it. When two words form an adjective + noun pair (It's in the steady state) they're not hyphenated, but when they're used attributively like an adjective (steady-state pharmacokinetics) they are. Angr/talk 14:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

These days, though, as often as not the hyphen is dropped, and you'll need to work out from the context whether the hyphenated adjective was intended, or the adjective + noun pair was intended. JackofOz 14:49, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

French

Comment les seigneur disaient-ils "bonjour" au Moyen-Age ?

What was the middle age knights' hello ? Salut ? The chansons de geste - try reading some - are not plentiful of dialogues, people there outcry or make love (courteously meant) without preliminaries as you would expect in a modern play or a novel. --DLL 18:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

On ne disait pas "bonjour" (ou "bon jour"/"bonne journée")? C'est assez près du latin, "bonum diem". La forme "jour" datant du 13ème siècle. --BluePlatypus 19:10, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Opposite of French Spacing

What's the opposite of French spacing? (I.e., the term for using only one space after a period). Is there a Misplaced Pages article on the dispute in general, rather than that specific part of it? -- Creidieki 23:42, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

March 22

Noun possessive form question

I have always been confused when writing nouns that end with the letter "s" in the possessive form. I am not sure when - 's - should be added to the end of the noun or when simply - ' - should be (e.g. Thomas's house or Thomas' house). Could someone very familiar with English grammar inform me on this please? - Conrad Devonshire 00:15, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

There is no right answer; it depends on the style you're using. Associated Press style is to use s's with common nouns ("the floss's length") and s' with proper nouns ("Flanders' house"). -- Mwalcoff 00:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Strunk and White says always use s's no matter what. —Keenan Pepper 03:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Unless it's a Biblical name. :( "Charles's house is big and Jesus' house is small." Why does this exception exist? Just to make life difficult, I think. —Seqsea (talk) 04:05, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Presumably conservatism. Swedish is worse at that, even though it doesn't use genitive apostrophes, having gotten rid of them a century ago. It uses pseudolatin irregulars for both "Jesus" and "Kristus"; "Eriks hus" (Erik's house), but "Jesu hus" (Jesus' house) and "Kristi hus" (Christ's house). --BluePlatypus 04:23, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Strunk and White also say that "people" should never be used as the plural for "person". I would never willingly listen to Strunk and White against my better judgement. The Jade Knight 04:19, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Really? What do they say should be used for the singular of "people"? Dforest 06:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

? All they say is that "people" shouldn't be used with words of number, e.g. "one person, three persons", not "one person, three people". I don't interpret them as saying you can't say things like "many people", just that you shouldn't use it with a number. --BluePlatypus 08:32, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

In formal English, people is a singular noun: "the people of the U.S. is...", "all the peoples of Asia are...". —Keenan Pepper 13:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd say it can be a singular noun, but the singular usage is so rare that almost all uses, including that first example, are just wrong. Mark 22:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Um, so you're saying the first example is wrong but the second is fine? —Keenan Pepper 18:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Americans are mongrels, not a people. Mark 22:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing to say a people cannot be composed of individuals all or most of whom are mongrels.  :-) JackofOz 06:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Government Language Programs

I already asked this on the Humanities section of the help desk, but thought I'd ask it here as well: Assuming they do not already speak the language, how do employees of government agencies (such as the State Department)learn the necessary languages? I realize that most of these employees are probably hired already speaking the foreign language required for the position, but what about a current employee who is transferred and most speak a new language? Any special programs, etc? Thanks, Ryan

So basically, you're asking if the US Government does "in-house" language training? I don't believe it does, outside the armed forces/intelligence community. I think civilian employees learn from private language-training companies on GSA contracts. --BluePlatypus 04:14, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, I've gone through a Spanish program while working for the government (albeit for the County Government in a Library). They hired someone to come in and teach us basic library Spanish. There was nothing particularly special about it. The Jade Knight 04:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The Department of Defense uses the Defense Language Institute, while the State Department, FBI, and others use the Foreign Service Institute. I also found this PDF on foreign language usage in the government that focuses on the people learning/speaking the languages. —Seqsea (talk) 04:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, State Department Foreign Service officers who are assigned to an embassy abroad go through paid language training for about six months. Brian G. Crawford, the so-called "Nancy Grace of AfD" 16:19, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The answer is they do it just about like anyone else would but in a structured way. This isn't specifically on gov. employees, but I found this list of resources from SIL that are pretty useful, especially those in the 'Essays on Field Language Learning' section: . The language learning in the real world paper is pretty good and quite extensive. - Taxman 23:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

What is Back of a Napkin?

Hi, I have come across terminologies like back of a napkin ? What does this really mean ? Does it have something to do with any business model also ?

Thanks, Praveen K. Jha

This seems like a combination of two different expressions that both refer to something that wasn't carefully thought out; instead it was just casually written down on any piece of paper that was handy. Maybe you have a letter in your pocket that's still in the envelope it came in; the back of this envelope is probably blank and may be handy to write on. Or if you are eating, there may be paper napkins at the table, and you would write on a napkin. The back of a napkin isn't anything special, but as I say, I think someone has just combined the two expressions "written on the back of an envelope" and "written on a napkin".

What is being written, in these expressions, could be anything. If it's something that you would expect to be carefully planned, like a business model, then this is surprising: either it's just a first try and you're saying that it needs more work, or else the point is that the person who wrote it is very smart and doesn't need to plan it any more, or else it's the opposite, they're very stupid and their business is headed for disaster. Without context it's hard to tell which is meant.

--Anonymous, 05:20 UTC, March 22, 2006.

One meaning of the phrase is to suggest that the subject was thrown together quickly, and might not be the most accurate or detailed. "My back of the napkin calculations show that π ≅ 3." It's derived from the experience of being somewhere and having a brilliant idea, but only having the back of a napkin (or an envelope, or some other scrap of paper) to write on. In the sense of a business model, Google suggests that the idea is that your business plan should be simple enough to explain to others in the space of a napkin—that way you can persuade people to invest, no matter where you are. —Seqsea (talk) 05:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

See Back-of-the-envelope. Also, there is a widespread (albeit false) myth that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address on the back of an envelope while on the train to Gettysburg. Dforest 06:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Another apocryphal story apropos of jottings on an envelope or napkin is that of the genesis of the Laffer curve; Laffer, our article tells us, readily concedes that he didn't invent the concept (though he did popularize), and doesn't recall the napkin incident (although I expect he would have written on the front of the napkin rather than on the back :)). These stories certainly add color to the respective histories; it seems remarkable that something scribbled on an envelope or napkin could later become so important (notwithstanding, well, actual history). Joe 06:46, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

In my experience napkins are remarkably ill-suited to writing on. The writing implement tends to just tear the napkin to shreds. Unless of course you use a cloth napkin, in which case the problem is keeping it flat and stiff enough to write on comfortably. Angr/talk 08:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

A felt-tip marker can work on a napkin, so long as you hold the napkin down on all sides. StuRat 13:46, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Mortal lock?

What is the origin of the phrase "mortal lock" used to mean something which is certain or a sure bet? It's the "mortal" part of the phrase which strikes me as odd -- one might have expected the phrase to be "immortal lock" since "mortality" suggests the possibility of failure. --Metropolitan90 05:57, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Could it be related to "I'd bet my life on it" ? StuRat 13:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it's an allusion to the idea that death in inevitable, kind of like nothing is certain but death and taxes. ×Meegs 18:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

french huh?

hey i received this message scribbled on the back of a utility bill this morning can you help? it looks like french adn i have no idea what it says and maybe it will help me figure out who wrote it. Italic textce n'est vraiment pas drôleparce que je biseaute pense à une autre maniére devous dire combien je t'aime--Crazypinkster 08:22, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about biseaute, but otherwise it says "It isn't really funny because I (something) think of another way to tell you how much I love you." The weird thing about it is it uses different forms of "you": de vous dire combien je t'aime (to tell you how much I love you ). The context seems to require "can't" in the position where biseaute is; but French for "I can't think" is je ne peux pas penser, not je biseaute pense. Angr/talk 08:40, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

the verb biseauter is rather technical, have no idea what it means here... some slang usage?--K.C. Tang 11:56, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I've got it! The person meant to look up "can't" in an English-French dictionary (seeing as a native french speaker wouldn't mix tu and vous) but read off the wrong line or something and got the unusual word "canted", for which "biseaute" (beveled) is a translation! --BluePlatypus 13:23, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

"Looked it up", my cul. The person in question typed "this isn't really funny because i cant think of another way to tell you how much i love you" (note the missing apostrophe in "cant") into Babel Fish (website) (http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr) and asked it to "translate" (I use the word loosely) from English to French. I just tried it myself and the output is exactly the sentence ce n'est pas vraiment drôle parce que je biseaute pense à une autre manière de vous dire combien je t'aime. I don't really blame Babelfish for getting confused about the secret admirer's poor punctuation, but you'd think it could at least keep its tutoyer and vouvoyer straight WITHIN A SINGLE SENTENCE. Yet another reminder of how pathetic machine translation is.... 140.251.36.17 02:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Mystery solved. Reminds of something I read once that had been translated from German into English: "Fräulein Maria disgusted Jever with freedom of the city". Disgusted? Disgusted? Looked at the German original, the verb was verleihen "to grant". Makes perfect sense in German... then my eye fell on something in the dictionary: verleiden "to spoil something for someone, to disgust someone with something". Another time I was reading something translated from French into English about a woman in Africa who went to the market to buy "bananas, lawyers, and mangos". I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what was meant. Angr (talk • contribs) 13:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

avocado / lawyer. There's this dish I once had in France called the "diable d'avocat", which was some kind of avocado pudding. That was one of my first experiences of a French pun, which I found rather amusing,

--Knotted 17:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Word for fetish/fantasy to be rescued?

What words might relate to someone who gets "kicks", or sexually aroused by being rescued from danger or something like that? For example, a kind of damsel in distress kind of complex? Thanks 81.151.89.234 22:29, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The closest thing I can think of is masochism, but that's more enjoying being tortured before the rescue. I remember some CSI-like show had an episode where a couple paid to have the woman kidnapped, so the man could then rescue her and both would be suitably aroused. StuRat 16:59, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Need some help with a tranlsation form Arabic to English

Could some translate the following two pasages from me. I do not even now if the start and end with a complete sentence, but it's the part about al-Khwarizmi that is important.

وذكر أنه لما اعتلّ علته التي مات فيها وسقى بطنه أمر بإحضار المنجمّين، فأحضروا؛ وكان ممن حضر الحسن بن سهل، أخو الفضل بن سهل، والفضل بن إسحاق الهاشميّ وإسماعيل بن نوبخت ومحمد بن موسى الخوارزميّ المجوسيّالقطربّليّ وسند صاحب محمد بن الهيثم وعامة من ينظر في النجوم، فنظروا في علّته ونجمه ومولده، فقالوا: يعيش دهراً طويلاً، وقدّ روا له خمسين سنة مستقبلة؛ فلم يلبث إلا عشرة أيام حتى مات

الخوارزمي واسمه محمد بن موسىوأصله من خوارزم وكان منقطعاً إلى خزانة الحكمة للمأمون وهو من أصحاب علوم الهيئة وكان الناس قبل الرصد وبعده يعولون على زيجيه الأول والثاني ويعرفان بالسند هند وله من الكتب كتاب الزلزيج نسختين أولى وثانية كتاب الرخامة كتاب العمل بالاسطرلابات كتاب عمل الإسطرلاب كتاب التاريخ سند بن علي اليهودي ويكنى أبا الطيب كان أولاً يهودياً وأسلم على يد المأمون وكان منجماً له وهو الذي بنى الكنيسة التي في ظهر باب الشماسية في حريم دار معز الدولة وعمل في جملة الراصدين بل كان على الأرصاد كلها وله من الكتب كتاب المنفصلات والمتوسطات كتاب القواطع نسختين كتاب الحساب الهندي كتاب الجمع والتفريق كتاب الجبر والمقابلة.
 

Cheers, —Ruud 13:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It's kind of difficult to translate because I don't understand some of the Arabic words (ancient Arabic or Persian words) and the punctuation is terrible, but here it is. I made the words you're probably looking for bold. Much of the following is transliteration because I couldn't figure out the meaning.

"...and he mentions that when he became ill (the illness by which he died) and his stomach he asked to bring the astrologists, and so they were brought. Among those who were brought Al-Hasan bin Sahl, Al-Fadhl bin Sahl's brother, and Al-Fadhl bin Is'haq Al-Hashemi, and Ismael bin Nobekht, and Mohammed bin Mousa Al-Khwarizmi Al-Majousi Al-Katarbali*, and Sanad, the companion of Muhammad bin Al-Haitham, and other astrologists. So they examined his illness, star sign, and birthday, and said: He lives a long time. They saw he will live 50 more years. He lasted but 10 days then died.

*Al-Majousi Al-Katarbali could be his extended last name, or could mean the magus (Zoroastrian); the latter is less likely.

Al-Khwarizmi, his name is Mohammed bin Mousa, and his origin is Khwarizim. He was isolated in a "Khizanat Al-Hikma" (lit: Wisdom Locker) of Al-Mamoun, and he was one of the astronomers**, and people before and after (scoping?) relied on his two (Zaij? Persian word, could mean stars) that are known as Sand Hind(sic). He has written Al-Zalilij book (Persian?) with two editions, first and second, and Al-Rukhama book, the Manual Book of Astrolabes, the Work of Astrolabes Book, the History Book. Sanad bin Ali Al-Yahudi (the Jew), called Abu Al-Tayeb "was the first Jew" and became a Muslim by Al-Mamoun. He was his astrologist and he was the one who built the church in which (Bab Al-Shamasiya) appeared in the harem of Mou'ez Al-Dawla. He worked amongst the astrologists/astronomists; indeed, he was the head of all astrologic/astronomic (scoping?). He had the books: "Al-Munfasilat and Al-Mutawassitat", "Al-Qawati'e" with two editions, the Indian Arithmetic Book, the Summation and Subtraction Book, the Algebra and "Al-Mukabala" Book (hisab al-jabr wa'l-muqabala).

**Ancient Arabs rarely differentiated betweem astronomy and astrology.

-- Eagle 20:18, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Can you Translate this into any language other than English?

Dear Reader,

I am attempting to get the following paragraph translated into as many languages as possible.

"Nature is nowhere accustomed more openly to display her secret mysteries than in cases where she shows traces of her workings apart from the beaten path; nor is there any better way to advance the proper practice of medicine than to give our minds to the discovery of the usual law of Nature by careful investigation of rarer forms of disease. For it has been found in almost all things, that what they contain of useful or applicable nature is hardly perceived unless we are deprived of them, or they become deranged in some way."

William Harvey (1657)

If you can help, please do. Your help will be much appreciated.

Warm Regards,

Apurva

Latin

Here's an effort in Classical Latin - anyone with a dictionary by them will no doubt be able to correct. 'Nusquam solet Natura arcana sua mysteria apertius revelare quam cum vestigia suae operationis longe a via trita exhibeat; nec meliorem inveniamus viam medicinae recte adhibendae quam ut animum nostrum intendamus ad inveniendum solitum ius Naturae ex indagatione rariorum morborum. Nam, ut in omnibus fere rebus notum est, vix percipimus utilitatem cuiusquam rei nisi cum nobis erepta fuerit aut aliquam mendam susceperit.' It will be hilarious (not!) if it turns out that Harvey's original was actually in Latin, no doubt more elegant than the above. Maid Marion 15:15, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Maid Marion, there should be no doubt that Harvey originally wrote the text in Latin, assuming that the quotation comes from a book (I believe he might have written some of his letters in English, but this is my speculation.) Of his two major books, at least one was printed also in English in his lifetime, but — focussing on your point — each one had a Latin original. Your translation is certainly laudable; remember that Latin was not Harvey's mother tongue either. :)

— 11:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Dutch

Dutch: "De natuur is nergens zo gewend haar verborgen geheimen te laten zien als in die gevallen waar ze de sporen van haar werking buiten de vaste paden toont; noch is er een betere weg voor de vooruitgang van de juiste geneeskundige praktijk dan onze geest te richten op de gebruikelijke regels van de natuur middels de zorgvuldige studie van zeldzamer vormen van ziekte. Want het is in vrijwel alle dingen ontdekt, dat wat ze bevatten aan nuttige en toepasbare natuur, nauwelijks wordt waargenomen tot we ervan zijn beroofd, of ze op de een of andere wijze zijn verstoord." David Sneek 14:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

French

In a French rather as old as Harvey, this would be (word for word by googl tools, then amended) :

La nature n’est nulle part accoutumée plus ouvertement à montrer ses mystères secrets que dans les cas où elle découvre des traces de ses fonctionnements indépendamment des sentiers battus; et il n’est meilleure manière de faire avancer la pratique vraie de la médecine que de dédier nos esprits à la découverte des lois habituelles de la nature par une recherche soigneuse des formes les plus rares de la maladie. Car on a trouvé dans presque toutes choses, que ce qu'elles contiennent de nature utile ou applicable est à peine perçu à moins que nous soyons privés d'elles, ou qu’elles se trouvent perturbées d'une manière quelconque.

For a proper and modern French translation, you have to think seven times. --DLL 18:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

PS - there is such a great similarity in the structure of the English and French phrases that one could think that scientists did think in French at that time, or that the difference was slighter than now between languages : which would explain why the automated translation was not so bad (try by yourself). Try also to figure out how to translate the original into modern English. --DLL 18:49, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

He thought in Latin — that must explain it! :)

— 11:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The modern now, but not so up to date : Les cas plus évidents dans lesquels la nature révèle ses mystères sont ceux qui s’éloignent des sentiers battus. Et la meilleure façon de faire progresser la pratique médicale est d’analyser les règles qui prévalent dans les maladies orphelines. En effet, la plupart des informations utiles sur les objets sont masquées au regard de la conscience, sauf dans l’état de privation de ceux-ci ou dans les perturbations qui les frappent. (But Harvey did not use this orphan disease concept)--DLL 19:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Russian

Ни в коих обстоятельствах не расположена более природа открывать свои потаенные секреты, чем в случаях видимого отступления ее от наторенного пути; и нет также лучшего способа развить действенную практическую медицину, нежели посвятить наши умы открытию общих законов природы, но изучая редчайшие формы болезней. Ибо известно, что мы осознаем полезность и практичность большинства вещей, лишь будучи их лишены, или же когда они приходят так или иначе в негодность.

— 11:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Spanish

La naturaleza no esta acostumbrada a demostrar sus misterios secretos mas abiertamente en ningún momento que no demuestre pistas de su trabajo fuera del camino golpeado;ni hay una manera mejor de avanzar la correcta practica de la medicina que entregar nuestras mentes al descubrimiento de la inusual ley de la naturaleza mediante una investigacion cuidadosa de las enfermedades mas raras.puesto que se ha encontrado en casi todas las cosas, que lo que contienen de util o aplicable es dificilmente percibido a menos que seamos alejados de ellas o que sean perturbadas de alguna manera.--Cosmic girl 20:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese

大自然沒有到處宣揚她的奧秘，她只要人類不斷發掘；她亦沒有告訴我們治病良方，她只要人類不斷研究。除非我們享用大自然資源的權利遭到剝奪，或者生態秩序變得混亂不堪，否則人類根本不會知道大自然可貴之處，就像不知道其他所有事物的價值一樣。--ka hang 12:11, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Simplified Chinese

大自然没有到处宣扬她的奥秘，她只要人类不断发掘；她亦没有告诉我们治病良方，她只要人类不断研究。除非我们享用大自然资源的权利遭到剥夺，或者生态秩序变得混乱不堪，否则人类根本不会知道大自然可贵之处，就像不知道其它所有事物的价值一样。 --ka hang 12:06, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

French translation

Someone dropped us an email about Image:National Front.gif. Les immigrés vont voter... et vous vous abstenez?

The translation we have is the very clumsy "The immigrants go to vote...and you abstain?" He didn't seem quite sure what the best way to phrase this was, and my French is rusty... anyone? "The immigrants will vote" seems best for the first part, but the double vous in the second line confuses me. Shimgray | talk | 16:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I think "to abstain" must be a reflexive verb in French, so the first vous is the subject pronoun and the second one is the direct object pronoun. The paradigm would then be

je m'abstiens     nous nous abstenons
tu t'abstiens     vous vous abstenez
il s'abstient     ils s'abstiennent

Right? Angr (talk • contribs) 16:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure Angr is right. Apart from a very slight change (The immigrants are going to vote, rather than 'go to vote') the original translation sounds just fine to me. Maid Marion 16:47, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. What about "The immigrants are going to vote ... and you, you abstain?"? --BluePlatypus 18:14, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I just looked it up in the dictionary. "To abstain" is definitely s'abstenir, a reflexive verb. "You, you abstain?" would be vous vous abstenez, vous? Angr (talk • contribs) 21:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably these translations are too formal: The immigrants are going to vote... and you hold back? Septentrionalis 15:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Or ...and you stay home? Angr (talk • contribs) 15:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

No youyou please : the reflexive in unused in English for that. Vont : the clumsy one is far better, the sense is not "... are going to vote ...". There is a frequentative hint, and also a stress, so : "... vont voter ..." would be "...do vote ...". Nothing is perfect in translation, just say : "The immigrants do vote ... and you abstain?" --DLL 17:55, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Being a Natl Front poster (I should have read some lines up), it must be in France, where immigrants have no rights, so the sense is : They will be allowed to vote. Then "are going to vote" is correct. --DLL 18:08, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

DLL, they use the term "immigrants" to mean non-white. So here its second-generation blacks/Arabs who are French citizens and therefore do have the right to vote now that they are complaining about. Its the same usage in Britain. If somebody goes on about "bloody immigrants" they mean all "Blacks and Pakis", not just recent arrivals. So it is present tense here. Jameswilson 00:08, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Right, like Mexicans here in Texas. Dirty immigrants.

I think the most natural, and compact, translation would be, "Immigrants vote...and you don't?" Black Carrot 16:50, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

UK or U.K.

What is the correct way or abbreviating a place. For example: UK or U.K.? Not much more to be explained I don't think. Anyone know if they are both right? What would you say is the one to use? --Thorpe | talk 20:39, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Judging from the Misplaced Pages article on the United Kingdom, it appears that "UK" is more correct. The Jade Knight 21:01, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Both right. It's a style point, not a language point. The only slight difference in meaning is that U.K. makes it more obvious that you are abbreviating from a two-word name, while UK makes it more obvious that the term has become a word in its own right. But in practice we're unlikely to care about either of these implications when using it. Mark 21:07, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with that. On a related note, some Americans seem to get quite concerned when others refer to their country as "the US", rather than "the U.S.". What difference it makes to anything escapes me. JackofOz 22:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably for some it's just a sense of what's "right." If there are some deep thinkers out there with this preference, they might say the separation entailed in U.S. better represents states' rights :D . --Halcatalyst 02:44, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, "U.S." is an exception to the Associated Press' rule that acronyms should not have periods. I believe the reason is that "US" could be mistaken for the word "us." -- Mwalcoff 05:16, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is a problem with headlines in all caps, for example "IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM WORRIES US". All caps can cause other similar problems, like one I saw saying "LAX SECURITY A CONCERN IN CALIFORNIA". It turns out they were talking about Los Angeles International Airport, which has airport code LAX. StuRat 11:15, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

In the second headline, the meaning is probably the same with either LAX. Rmhermen 17:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

US is not an acronym. If it were, it would be pronounced like the pronoun "us". Americans tend to prefer periods in abbreviations, while the Brits prefer without full stops. --Nelson Ricardo 05:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Are FBI and CIA among the prominent exceptions? JackofOz 09:21, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

What is the word for sun glare off of snow?

One word. May begin with the letter "a".. may contain an "s", "p" and/or "tion".. just can't recall or find elsewhere, and it's driving me nuts. Not snow blindness, but a single word. Thanks, in advance, from Colorado198.176.189.201

Probably not the word you want, but albedo is the term for the reflectivity of a surface. --LarryMac 22:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that is it exactly! Here's sun in your eye! Thank you!198.176.189.201 22:42, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Latin -> English translation_English_translation-March_22-2006-03-23T23:44:00.000Z">

Hello! What does the name Omnis Arcanum mean? I'm guessing it's Latin, though I could be wrong...

"Omnis" means "all" (as in "omnipotent" - all-able) and "arcanum" means "secret" (as in "arcane" - difficult to understand) --BluePlatypus 23:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)_English_translation"> _English_translation">

I don't have a dictionary handy, but I suspect it means "secret of everything." Brian G. Crawford, the so-called "Nancy Grace of AfD" 01:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)_English_translation"> _English_translation">

As blueplatypus said "Omni: means "all." Merriam-Webster says "Arcanum" means "mysterious knowledge, language, or information accessible only by the initiate..."

So with my two years of high school Latin, I'd agree it's "All secret." I do recall that Latin could get along without verbs in cases like this. Did you read our Blood Ravens article? --Halcatalyst 02:40, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, not quite: if nominative, omnis is masc/fem, while arcanum is neuter. 'All is secret' would be 'omne arcanum'. But omnis might be genitive, giving 'secret of everything'. However, none of this sounds at all plausible: this is just cod Latin. Maid Marion 08:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Just to confirm what Marion said: It's Pig Latin, more or less. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 13:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Pig Latin is very different from that. 64.198.112.210 21:11, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks all of you for your informative replies! I looked at the Blood Ravens article but it said nothing about the etymology of the name, which is what I want. So if Omnis Arcanum is pig Latin, what's the most "correct" way to say "secret of everything"?

According to my Latin dictionary, Tacitus uses the phrase omnium secreta rimari "to delve into the secrets of everything", so I guess omnium secretum would mean "the secret of everything". Angr (talk • contribs) 10:05, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

March 24

The easiness to learn a language

Hello.

I'd like to know that is there any scale or index created to rank how easy to learn a language?

Thx~

---User:cpcheung 23:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

No. It's not even really feasible. A Spainish speaker will find Italian a lot easier to learn than an English speaker, and the English speaker will find it a lot easier to learn than a Japanese speaker will.--Prosfilaes 03:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

While I agree with Prosfilaes, I've come up with my own short list of the easiest languages for an English speaker to learn fluently (in order):

1. Scots
2. Spanish (particularly for Americans, it loses some edge to Brits and Canadians)
3. French
4. Norman (particularly Jèrriais)—Norman is nearly as easy for an English speaker to learn as French.

The reason no Germanic languages are on there (excepting Scots, which is a German-Norman hybrid, like English) is because, while it is easy for English speakers to pick up basic Germanic vocabulary, most more complicated German words are much more difficult to learn, unlike (particularly in French and Norman) the oodles of advanced cognates some Romance languages have (stuff like English "electrocution" and French "électrocution"), making it much easier to gain full fluency in these languages. The Jade Knight 03:46, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

From an objective standpoint it would not be feasible, as already stated above. If certain languages were inherently more difficult to learn, then certain children would take longer than others to reach linguistic maturity, and this is not the case. Of course, some languages are more complex than others, as explained in this post by Jacques Guy, but that doesn't translate into "difficulty" per se.

Anyway, while there is no way to establish the objective difficulty of a language, one may establish their difficulty with respect to speakers of any given specific language. I believe the U.S. military ranks languages according to the difficulty they pose to English speakers. I don't recall the scoring system, but I remember that Chinese was the hardest and Spanish the easiest, with Arabic, Japanese, and Russian somewhere in the middle.

I came across this interesting article, which mentions an unpublished document known as the "The Missionary Training Center Language Difficulty Index" (LDI), which may be what you're looking for. It compares the native language to the target language in seven categories: writing system, phonology, tones, genetic relationship (e.g. cognates), morphology, syntax, and "sociolinguistic issues" (ostensibly this would include Japanese honorifics, avoidance speech, and other culture-specific linguistic devices). The LDI uses a sixty-point scale to quantify the level of difficulty. At the link you can find an in-depth explanation of the process. As an example, they compare English to both Mandarin and Cantonese. In the end, it is established (in every category) that Cantonese is more difficult than Mandarin for English-speakers. Of course, if they were compared to, say, Tibetan, instead of English, Cantonese might turn out to be easier. It's completely relative. Bhumiya/Talk 04:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

All of Bhumiya's points are quite well-made, and I haven't much to add, except to cite this site, which divides languages into three categories based upon the facility with which a native speaker of English might learn them; I think the system referenced by Bhumiya as used by the U.S. military (to-wit, the Defense Language Institute) is similarly-styled, although it may consist (or may have consisted), IIRC, of five categories. Joe 06:40, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I have heard that Latter-day Saint missionary language-learning materials (such as the LDI) are quite good, but unfortunately they do not seem to make them available to the general public. The Jade Knight 10:19, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Of course,desire comes into it.If you really ,really want to learn a language then the task is easier.If it's forced on you,i.e. at school the required motivation is absent.I would like to learn Vietnamese or Welsh and would try really hard but simply could'nt be arsed in school with German...... hotclaws**==

The Defense Language Institute of the US military ranks languages by difficulty for native English speakers. Per the DLI, the four hardest languages for English speakers are Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. The next tier includes Russian, Farsi, Vietnamese, and Greek among others. Here's the DLI website giving the full list. As a side-note, the Guiness Book of World records best linguist in the world, Ziad Fazah, claims of the 58 languages he has mastered, Mandarin was the hardest because of all the homonyms which force the learning of entire phrases not just words. 69.228.207.237 23:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I, frankly, don't find Farsi that hard to comprehend. I mean, I have studied a LOT (to which my babel thing is testament)of languages, so maybe I'm a bad person to talk, but I guess my brain is just built that way. I have not studied any non-Indo-European languages, so I would venture to say that they are harder. I am nowhere near fluent in Farsi, but so far, it hasn't been so tough. Dlayiga 02:38, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I, personally, don't find Mandarin that difficult, once you get pronunciation down. The Jade Knight 02:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Define anozinizing

The authors of South Park recently issued the following statement: "So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!" (Emphasis mine)

I've never heard the word "anozinizing" before. Anyone know what it means?130.225.96.2 10:26, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Given the source, they probably just made it up. Angr (talk • contribs) 14:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

And given the context, it seems to be a parody of Scientology-speak. Mark 19:09, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

At the end of the episode, all of the names in the credits have been changed to "John Smith" or "Jane Smith." The word is probably a parody of Scientology language meaning "to make anonymous."TheSPY 20:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Hubbard, Scientology's founder, was fond of coining words and phrases, like "suppressive person", thetan, dianetics, e-meter, and of course Scientology itself. Superm401 - Talk 03:11, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Like Maternal

What's the word for the love a child feels for their mother/parent? The equivalent of maternal/paternal/fraternal? I tried searching, but obviously using the word 'love' in association with 'child' gave only distressing results. 57.66.51.165 15:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

You mean filial love? Maid Marion 16:05, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

--Nice one, Maid Marion Don420 20:04, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Native English Pronunciation

"I have not considered it."

In the above sentence, does have sound like ash or does the vowel possess a schwa sound by standards of colloquial American accent?

If not weren't there, the vowel in have would sound like a schwa; does not change anything?Patchouli 15:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

We'll need a more specific term than "Native English," i.e. British English, American English, Australian English . . . Even so, myriad dialects within each one might result in a different answer. In the American English that I speak, which is not particularly "southern" or "midwestern", the a in have sounds like the a in ash; the presence of "not" makes no difference. --LarryMac 16:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

He said American English. In ordinary spoken colloquial English it would be contracted to "I've not considered it" or "I haven't considered it", so it's difficult to say how the uncontracted form should be pronounced. Obviously both and would be understood, and neither would be called wrong, but I suppose would be more common. And no, the presence of not doesn't make a difference. Angr (talk •contribs) 16:14, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

would be nonstandard here. The Jade Knight 19:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I speak a dialect of Western American English, and for me, the "a" is also pronounced æsh, regardless of "not". Even in the expressino "I haven't", the "a" is still pronounced the same ("I've not" is not usual for my dialect, though I use it occasionally). The Jade Knight 19:46, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Mea culpa, I completely skimmed over the "colloquial American accent" part. --LarryMac 16:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

The"a" gets longer or shorter depending what part of the UK you live in.Also in many local dialects the"H" would disappear from the begining of "have"hotclaws**

There are several issues getting confused here. I think the question involves mainly reduction. English (essentially all dialects) often has what are called reductions when vowels are not stressed. A schwa is one level of reduction (disappearance is another). It appears when have is not stressed. In "I have not considered it," if the have is stressed the vowel will not be reduced, and it will probably rhyme with ash. If the not is stressed it will be, and will be either a schwa or possibly elided.

Another question are the various dialectal differences involving historical English short a, which affect words like have (when stressed) and ash. I am not an expert on the distribution internationally, but I suspect that they are usually perhaps always going to rhyme, and that most of the time they will be pronounced , but not in every dialect. see Broad A ==

Both could be possible. It depends on the context. The problem is that whereas some people write "I have" or "I've" to show the pronunciation, other people were taught NEVER to write "I've", "can't", "we'd", etc, so it's impossible to tell which they mean. They use the contractions in speech but not in writing. Jameswilson 00:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

• I thank everyone for its responses.Patchouli 10:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • "It's"? Aren't they "they"? 64.198.112.210 21:22, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Grammatical Case Loss

Is there any reason to explain why grammatical cases have fallen out of use in several languages in favor of using word order to indicate syntax? For example, Spanish comes from Latin, but Spanish nouns and adjectives indicate only number and gender, not case. In addition, Ancient Hebrew used to have full-functioning nominative, genitive, and accusative cases, but even by Biblical Hebrew, only lemmata and usage traces of these cases remained. --152.163.100.134 17:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I would see this as a larger move towards analytic language. However, I can't think of one example of the reverse, languages gaining new inflexions, happening. — Gareth Hughes 18:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

In Otto Jespersen's Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin the gradual disappearance from many languages of grammatical cases and declensions is discussed as a general process of improvement, a movement towards simpler and more effective means. I don't know if his theories are accepted by modern linguists, but it sounded very convincing to me when I read it. David Sneek 18:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

What puzzles me is that so many languages retain gender, which serves no purpose at all. Mark 19:07, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I would like to hear more about your assumption, Mark. Don420 20:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

What assumption? Mark 20:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

My question is why languages have gender to begin with. -- Mwalcoff 23:42, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I have an interesting counter-example showing that analytical language is not always "movement towards simpler and more effective means" — specifically, the “effective” part. :) I am a native speaker of a highly inflected language (Russian), and for this micro-study I asked a few native only speakers, what would they reply on a phone ringing while at barber's, if the other party asked what they were doing? The common answer was: "I am having my hair cut." (rarely “getting,” but this is unimportant.) And inflected languages? Here you go: Latin tondeor, Russian стригусь (brackets are to mean that the pronoun is optional.) Analytical languages may be simpler — although "simpler" is as in "to walk is simpler that to eat nuts from a bag: you have much fewer muscles to supervise;" language is used unconciously, and thus "simple/complex" axis is apparently unapplicable to it at all — but not at all more pragmatically effective, if efficiency may be correlated with the number of lexemes or phonemes used: for what Latin does in 7 letters, English needs 6 words :)

Anyhow, the subject has been interesting me for a while. The IE languages lose inflection over time, while new cases over the original 8 appeared rarely, and hardly survived (Russian prepositional case, which is morphologically same as the extinct locative, is in full use but is "more synthetic" as it requires a preposition; Lithuanian, the most conservative modern IE language, has lost 2 of 3 "extra" cases, and the third, the illative, is waning). While the tendency to eliminate irregularities is very much explainable, the tendency to eliminate rules is not. Another fascinating and closely related subject is the origin of the complexity of proto-IE; this one has hardly been systemathically taken upon. I'd be awfully grateful (and this is not just a figure of speech!) to see any pointers to the new research in these areas.

— kkm@pobox.com 07:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

It is also interesting that several languages have moved towards using tones (and then more tones), rather than away from this. My guess, however, is that language tends to be cyclical—words get smashed together and shortened, and then recombined into long words, which get smashed together and shortened again, slang takes over and words switch out, grammar gets simplified and word order gains prominence… but then normal words turn into particles, and particles transform into cases, and grammar complexifies itself once again, only to repeat the cycle.

IE was probably very case/conjugation heavy, explaining why most of its descendants now have become much more simplified—but was proto-Finnish as complicated as modern Finnish, I wonder? The Jade Knight 20:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

IMO, languages like Finnish and Hungarian don't quite fit into this hypothesis, since they're more or less agglutinative languages.. I said it here before, but I think there's little reason to believe that the language will develop the same way if you start with over 20 cases as when you start with 8. That said, Finnish and Hungarian have indeed lost some of their cases. --BluePlatypus 20:37, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's a question of increasing or decreasing complexity. In the case of Chinese at least, the move towards tones didn't make the language more complex, because the tones replaced certain phonemes. Similarly with cases: information isn't gained or lost, it's just moved from one form of expression (declension) to another (prepositions). Mark 20:42, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

But that's exactly my point! Complexity moves around. It may move from particles to word order, but it's still there. When you drop cases, you have to add prepositions. Drop prepositions, you have to add cases. The Jade Knight 20:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah; when you talked about grammar getting simplified and becoming more complex again, I pictured these taking place seriatim. If you mean simultaneously, then I quite agree. Henry 01:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Lost cases as compared to the language 2000 years ago? The Jade Knight 20:49, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't think anyone really knows what those languages looked like 2000 years ago. But certainly if you compare Finnish with Hungarian with Sami, it's obvious that new cases must have appeared and other ones disappeared. --BluePlatypus 14:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you to everyone who has given his or her input on my question. The topic of case loss is evidently more complex than what I initially imagined. It is interesting that languages (namely, the Romance languages) that have lost their declensions have retained somewhat extensive conjugations, most of which have null-subject attributes. While prepositions eliminated declensions, pronouns did not eliminated person and number from conjugations. Once again, thank you all. (New username of who posted the question)--El aprendelenguas 02:04, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

A late thought, if I may. Mwalcoff, your question was why languages have gender to begin with. I prefer to ask "what does the fact that languages have gender tell us about humans' propensity to distinguish between male and female?". This is because language is nothing if not a reflection of society. Males and females have always fallen into different camps, in all societies and not just human ones. Whatever they may have in common, males and females are different things, and have different names. Children differentiate males from females quite early, well before that knowledge could be of any practical use to them. It seems to be innate, which is probably a good thing for the future of humankind. The bonobos don't seem to have quite got the idea yet, but they're learning. (I'm coming back as a bonobo in my next life, btw.) JackofOz 13:43, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

That question seems to presuppose that all languages divide their nouns into genders based on sex. They don't. Some languages use other types of grammatical gender, such as animate/inanimate, or based on the shape and/or flexibility of the object. Many language have no grammatical way of distinguishing males from females at all, not even a difference between "he" and "she" in pronouns. So there's nothing universal about it at all. Angr (talk • contribs) 14:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

During the evolution of my comment, at one stage I conceded there would be many counter-examples, and I was speaking generally. Seems I was over zealous with my editing. OK, so maybe it's not innate. I assume the proportion of languages that don't have grammatical gender is very low (I'd hazard a guess at less than 1%). My question would be, "Why do these languages differ from the norm?". JackofOz 15:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

---origin and end of gender--- The key point is that gender is simply a system of word classes, that get different patterns of agreement with complements (e.g., adjectives), determiners (e.g., articles), pronouns, and often verbs. So you get el niño bueno, la niña buena. However, there gender does not necessarily associate with sex; that's just the pattern in Indoeuropean and Semitic languages, which are the most familiar to us. Bantu languages often have 10 or so genders, with a vague semantic motivation, (long object, food, etc.) which is not consistent any more than masculine and feminine gender are in IE languages.

I'm not an expert on this area, but my understanding is that gender originates historically from classifiers. Classifiers are words that describe a type of something and end up being obligatorily used with words that fit that type. For instance in Vietnamese, which may or may not be the best example, though it's the only one I know at all, the word for meat is thith (not sure of spelling). To say chicken, you say thith ga. To say beef, it's thith bo, and so on. It's as if in English we had to say chicken meat and cow meat. In that way, you classify the animal as meat. As time goes on, these words can be reanalyzed grammatically as bound morphemes, and can be reduced phonologically. They can then get repeated on determiners or complements. It's possible to speculate that the masculine ending in Protoindoeuropean began as something like the word for male or man, became a classifier (male child, male person, male sheep), got reduced to a bound, inflectional morpheme, and spread to all words that were analyzed as grammatically masculine, whether or not they had any meaning of maleness. The form may have begun by attaching to or becoming determiners and/or complements (e.g. adjectives) or through its phonological form changed the sounds of those words or some other process created different patterns of determiners or complements for masculine words, as opposed to feminine or neuter ones.

Another fact is that there appears to be a natural tendency for humans to organize words into classes, and have all the members of a class act in concert. When an emerging gender morpheme gets associated with some members of a particular class, it may then spread to all.

Gender disappears through phonological leveling, that is sounds that were once distinct become merged. There is a natural tendency for mergers to overcome distinctions. So the caught/cot merger is spreading inexorably. In English, we no longer have gender (him and her are sex reference not gender) because the final vowels in many words, which formerly distinguished them, merged to schwa. It is also speculated that Scandavian speakers in late Old English early Middle English times, had a somewhat different gender system, and when they mixed with English speakers, the system became neutralized. Perhaps in the future, we'll develop systems of classifiers in English and the process will begin again.

Again, this isn't my area of expertise, but that's more or less the outline.

March 25

Swearing in Misplaced Pages Articles

Hi I was wondering what is Misplaced Pages's policy on swearing in articles? I dont mean as in just swearing for the sake of swearing, I mean are you able to put the actual words 's-h-i-t' etc.. in quotations?

Thanks for your help in advance --Sahafan 09:18, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Profanity. The Jade Knight 09:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for such a quick response :) --Sahafan 09:30, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

You're very welcome. The Jade Knight 09:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Shaving tackle

I've come across this word in a piece of fiction full of old words. All I can find is references to football and fishing. Can anyone tell me what a shaving tackle is? - 82.172.14.108 13:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Tackle in this sense means gear or equipment. Shaving tackle is razors, brushes, foam, etc. Fishing tackle is rods, reels, baits, etc. There's also "wedding tackle", an Australianism for genitalia. JackofOz 13:45, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

(Posting after edit conflict) Shaving tackle appears to refer to the implements necessary to shave (old style): Strop, straight razor, soap brush, styptic etc. Image listed as Sterling Silver Shaving Tackle in Velvet Case. And here, Reference.com lists the following for tackle: 3. Gear, stuff. Example "shaving tackle". --Fuhghettaboutit 13:50, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Alphabetical Order in Japanese

Do Japanese characters have an agreed upon order, like the Roman alphabet? I'm curious how the three different character sets are alphabetized with each other. And, what about Kanji? How do Japanese readers order a list of Kanji? It seems there are far too many characters to organize in a specific order. If there are phonebooks in Japan, how do they order the characters used for names? -Quasipalm 16:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Just found the answer to my own question. See: Collation#Radical-and-stroke sorting.

Another form of collation is radical-and-stroke sorting, used for non-alphabetic writing systems such as Chinese logographs and Japanese kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by convention. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called radicals in Chinese and logographic systems derived from Chinese.

Characters are then grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. When there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation. For example, the Chinese character for "mother" (媽) is sorted as a thirteen-stroke character under the three-stroke primary radical (女).

-Quasipalm 17:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

See also Kana#collation. --Kusunose 02:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

German bird

Hello deskers, could you tell me what a Felsenpfeifer is? My German-English bird translation skills aren't that hot. It's for my new article Birds of the Faroe Islands. Thankyou, --{{User:Wonderfool/sig}} 16:57, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

It literally means "rock piper", but you probably knew that already. I can't find it on Google, except on mirrors of the Misplaced Pages article. Bhumiya/Talk 18:20, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I suspect it's the rock pipit, Anthus petrosus. Angr (talk • contribs) 18:29, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand German, but this might help: Stelzen (Familie) The Jade Knight 02:42, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

• Cross referencing with this might be helpful. But I think I agree with Angr -- rock pipit. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 03:22, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

The Russian translation for "Black"

I'm writing a historical fiction novel in which Russia occupies an unnamed American city. One of the characters is a mulatto and is often a victim of rascist remarks from the occupiers. Is there an English transliteration for the word mulatto, or a word similar in definition? If not, what about the word "black"? I googled it and found several variants, but don't know which one to choose: chorniy chornogo chrornomu chornym chornom chornaya chornoy chornuyu chornoye chorniye chornyh chornym chornymy

Which one of these would refer to an male individual whose race were being referred to in a derrogatory manner as "black"?

I don't think those are different words, they're just the same word in different cases, number and/or gender. You'd need to give a whole sentence, or at least a whole phrase, to know the right form. What do you mean by 'English transliteration for the word mulatto'? Mulatto is an English word. Henry 21:22, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Those are various declensions of "чернота" (chernota), that is "black" (the color). Mulatto is "мулат" (mulat). A derogatory term used would be "черножопый" (chernozhopiy) "black-ass". Note that term is also used against those who look Caucasian. That is, people actually from Caucasus, not white people. (Yes, Russians do seem to find the American usage of the term as synonymous with "white" amusing) --BluePlatypus 22:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I think they're declensions of the adjective чёрный (black). The first 5 are masculine, the next 3 are feminine, the next 1 is neuter, and the last 4 are plural. JackofOz 06:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll venture a guess that chorniy is masculine nominative, which is likely the form you need. I also have a question. Is this historical Russia that occupies the city Soviet Union? If so, Soviets as communists and internationalists would have likely viewed themselves as liberators of oppressed minorities from the racist capitalist government, so I don't really see their soldiers engaging in such activities. Zocky | picture popups 23:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Like Zocky said, if your story takes place 25 or more years back, keep in mind that racism by the occupiers would be covered up and looked down to. E.g. take a look at First International, Socialist International or even The Internationale. However, keep in mind racial dynamics in Russia (e.g. oblasts with mostly non-Slavic population, racial distribution between Asian and European regions, etc.). Now, some names for a black person in Russian would be негр (negr, which is not offensive as English nigger or even negro nowdays), or чёрный (cherniy - nominative, masculine). негр is a noun, while чёрный is an adjective. I suggest you also take a look at Color_metaphors_for_race#Russia. --dcabrilo 23:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The things there are articles on never ceases to amaze! But I agree, the opression of blacks in the USA was a staple of Soviet propaganda. The most applicable form of racism (if any) to US conditions would probably be anti-semitism, which has deep roots in Russia (as in much of Europe), although the official stance varied widely depending on the time period. --BluePlatypus 00:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Also note that in recent years Russians have wisened up to the fact that in English "nigger" is a derogatory term for Blacks, and sometimes use its direct transliteration "ниггер" when they want to degrade them. This, however, is only a recent development and would not have been used 10 years ago. In addition, "обезьяна" (obezyana), meaning "monkey", is also used as a derogatory term, and can be combined with the aforementioned "chernozhopiy" (black-assed), producing "черножопая обезьяна" (chernozhopaya obezyana) to express extreme hatred and prejudice. You should also note that in Russian, the word "mulat" (mulatto), has a somewhat positive connotation, as does "kreol" (Creole) or "mavr" (Moor), invoking an image of an exotic and interesting character in literature, perhaps because there is very little association between those terms and people a Russian is likely to have seen. In addition, when using the feminine for a mulatto (mulatka) or a Creole (kreolka), it is almost implied that you are talking about an attractive person (again, this is probably the result of images from literature). --Aramգուտանգ 08:45, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

March 26

Mopeds,gopeds,and energy usage

I was wondering, are you really doing anything to prevent energy consumption when you use a moped instead of a goped?t still runs on electricity, and that runs on oil anyway so are you really doing any good?

I don't know much about mopeds or gopeds, but there are numerous ways to obtain electricity without using oil—Hydroelectricity, geothermal power and Nuclear power are all such examples. The Jade Knight 02:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The main advantage of mopeds is that, when compared with cars or SUVs, they don't use much energy. StuRat 03:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Latin translation

Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam.

What does the preceding mean? (I presume it is Latin; this comes from here. zafiroblue05 | Talk 02:04, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The best I can make out is "the language of Tuscany is better suited to literature." --Fuhghettaboutit 02:36, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

"The Tuscan tongue is better suited to the letter or literature." —Keenan Pepper 05:10, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm just guessing, but I suspect there is a slight mis-quotation - I suspect the original author wrote 'literas' rather than 'literam'. Maid Marion 09:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Where to learn german

Hard question,But I was wondering if someone know where can i learn German in Queens(New york city)

Try checking out materials from a local library. The Jade Knight 03:31, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Reading books won't be accurate.

Generally, you can find all sorts of multimedia materials in libraries—this is about the best resource you'll find short of having a professional teacher. If you're looking for someone to exchange language practice on the internet, there are websites which can help with that (such as this one). The Jade Knight 05:20, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Practicing on the Internet is a very good way to hone your skills. You might also want to check out this link to some language centers in the New York area. Naturally it's more expensive than learning from books or CDs, but learning at a center could be faster and more effective. Bhumiya/Talk 19:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

With some judicious internet searching I was able to find extensive audio and video lessons, pronunciation guides, exercises, practice stories and vocab lists. I combined that with what my local library had and ended up with some very good resources—for Hindi no less, a much less commonly taught language than German. You should find a lot more for German. Misplaced Pages isn't bad either, if you find some spoken versions of German articles that will amount to a lot of pronunciation practice, and movies are good too. See also what the local universities have. They may have resources you can go there to use such as audio lessons, etc, even if you're not a student. So far I haven't spent a dime, though as Bhumiya mentioned, you could if you wanted. - Taxman 15:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Prepostions

Is there a list of adjectives, nouns or verbs with their suitable prepositions? It is difficult for Germans to use phrases like "typical of" "difficulties in" or "give away" correctly.

Section 4 of this page may be helpful. David Sneek 12:48, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The Dnieper River

What is the meaning of the word "Dnieper"

'The river in the rear' , from Scythian via Greek. Henry 10:31, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Transcribing an old text

I am working on 1633 printing of John Donne's Poems which can be found here. I have two questions. First in general, what does everyone think of variety in spacing following punctuation. I have been trying to copy as closely as possible but it is hard to judge because each line is spaced slightly differently. Is there any rhyme or reason to why there is you;but in one place and turne ; and in another and then ſeene; he in yet another instance? Secondly a specific question. What is the character in the word correctness? Not the long s(ſ), the really odd c connected to t?--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 21:45, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The "ct" is just a ligature -- no special meaning. --Chl 21:59, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

You can find a font here that includes the ct ligature if you are word-processing the printing and trying to preserve the character of the original as much as possible. Theshibboleth 22:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes I am trying to reproduce it at s:Poems (Donne). Is there any advantage or disadvantage to trying to replicate the odd spacing with the puntuation? Are they are just the printer being careless, or is the some reason any one would care to see it replicated?--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 22:23, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing that it's the printer either being careless or trying to space the line to fit or be fully justified. If you want to keep absolute fidelity to the original, keep it. If you want to clean it up to make it easier to read, fix it. The Jade Knight 23:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Well I am not keeping the original line breaks so I shouldn't keep the spacing to justify them. I just wish I knew better what sort of spacing was standard in that time period. I didn't have any luck with the ligature, as I am trying to put this on wiki rather than being able to use a special font on my word processer. I found one place that suggested using c‍t as a workaround, but I amagine no one would understand that. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 23:54, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

It might help to think about why you're trying to reproduce it accurately. Are the printer's intentions important to you, or only Donne's? Henry 00:22, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

That is a good point. Generally I would say the authors intentions are most important. But in something as old as this the way it was presented is of no small interest itself. That said the scans are available freely online if anyone wants to see the printing. On the other hand if is no great effort to be accurate, why not go for it? If anyone wants a more readable version they can read the 1896 edition that is modernized. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 00:38, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

• Textual critics who study printed sources generally make a large distinction between "substantive" and "accidental" variations. The latter are those introduced in the printing process, and they can be non-trivial; for example, one Freudian literary critic went on and on about "soiled fish of the sea" in Melville's Pierre, but the author actually wrote "coiled." However, for the most part they are insignificant. It's not at all like e e cummings. You'd have to make the case that Donne ever intended punctuation to be part of the meaning, because it certainly isn't obvious that he even had much control over the publication process (most authors past and present do not).
• Here's where you can can read about the 1995 critical text of Donne's works. Definitely not modernized. --Halcatalyst 02:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Poem lyrics

Does anyone know where I can find the lyrics of Amir Khusro's poem Roop Saroop Jalwa Fadan ? Thanks! deeptrivia (talk) 23:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

March 27

Colorado/Rocky mountain English

Is there information available anywhere on the dialect in this region? I've tried searching Misplaced Pages and Google on the issue and turned up nothing. I started with Colorado, and finding nothing on that dialect, expanded my search to the Rocky Mountain area, with no success. I can easily find information on the Midwest, the South, or even a state-sized area such as California. For Colorado I have nothing but a few bits of self-analysis I've done, but that is unreliable. (not to mention the fact that since I left CO I've picked up german, with several new phonemes, as well as the fact that I've lived in Texas for three and a half years and self-educated myself in phonetics).

Specific questions at the moment: (I have what I think are the answers to these, but I'd like confirmation)

Is the Lenin/Lennon merger present? My own answer would be yes, but I've found little info on that merger in general, let alone its geographic distribution.

Is the Cot/caught merger present? Once again, I'd say yes. This is supported by descriptions of a "western" dialect I've seen, but I don't like the idea of lumping the Rocky Mountain region and everything to the West into one dialect group because the West coast has several features that I don't think happen in the RM region (or at least not in CO), such as the rang/rain and king/keen mergers.

Are the rang/rain and king/keen mergers present? As I said above, I don't think so.

Is there a split between the consonant + vowel /ju/ and the vowel /iw/? Yes, from my own analysis (A single instance of the letter "u" is "a u" /@ ju/, while a female sheep is "an ewe" /@n iw/, and I have a three way minimal pair between "use" /juz/, "ewes" /iwz/, and "ooze" /uz/). Most other dialects seem to lack this split. However, there is little or no information on the split anywhere.

How is /{/ tensed before different consonants? /{/ appears as the basic sound, /{:/ appears before /n/ and /m/ (although maybe /{_r/ would be the better symbol. It seems to be tenser rather than longer, but I couldn't find any X-SAMPA diacritic for tenseness), and /{i/ seems to appear before /g/ and /N/. All three are allophones of /{/.

Again, I think these represent features of the Colorado dialect, but I'm not at all certain. Confirmation would be great. Linguofreak 00:09, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Some, but not all, of these questions will be answered in The Atlas of North American English by William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 3110167468). Maybe you can find a copy at your nearest major university library, though the book was only published in December and is extremely expensive, so perhaps even they won't have it. You can buy it yourself from Amazon if you have $620 lying around and nothing better to do with it. You could also trying joining the e-mail list of the American Dialect Society and asking the people there what research has been conducted on the Colorado accent. Angr (talk • contribs) 05:12, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't have $620 lying around, and I'm currently living about 90 minutes drive away from the nearest large city, which with today's gas prices equates to exactly $621 to get to the nearest university library. :-) But I'm hoping to get to University of Arizona next year, which I understand is a fairly descent linguistics school, so they might well have it. Of course, I don't have the $24,000 a year they want for out-of-state students lying around either... Speaking of which (a bit off topic): exactly how good is U of A's undergrad ling program? What schools have better UG ling programs? Are there any good UG ling schools in Texas? And maybe something that could answer all of those at once: is there anything available on the web where I could find a listing of schools with UG ling majors ranked by the quality of their ling programs? Linguofreak 05:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Both University of Arizona at Tucson and University of Texas at Austin have very good linguistics departments, though I'm not sure to what extent they're good for undergrads too, or only good for grad students. In general, linguistics departments tend to focus on their grad students rather than their undergrads; my impression is that's true throughout the country. I don't know off the top of my head of any ranking of undergrad linguistics programs, but maybe you could snoop around http://www.lsadc.org/ and see what you find, or write them an e-mail and ask. Angr (talk • contribs) 05:52, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Little survey

it's often said that a vowel-rich language is more pleasing than one which is consonant-rich in terms of sound, i don't know if everyone can agree with that (i myself often doubt that), so i venture to have a little survey here: do you feel that a vowel-rich language is audioly more pleasing than a consonant-rich one? e.g., do you think Italian sounds better than German? i know the question is oversimplifying, a possible response is: "well, it depends on who speaks that language, every language can be spoken beautifully..." but let's have a very general survey...--K.C. Tang 00:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I've always appreciated the sound of Russian, and disliked the sounds of Spanish and French, but it's hard to tell how much that's connected to other feelings about the languages.--Prosfilaes 00:22, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

If you just want general opinions I'd say "Nein, Deutsch ist viel schöner als Italienisch." (German is much more beautiful than Italian). Linguofreak 00:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I am very partial to Persian. There's something about the vowels that just gets to me. I also really love Xhosa.Dlayiga 00:26, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Short answer: no. Longer answer: there's a bit in Ulysses where the two characters, Bloom and Stephen, overhear a couple of Italians talking. Bloom says that he thinks Italian is a beautiful language, and asks Stephen what they were saying. Stephen says, "they were arguing about money". Henry 00:27, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

A vowel-rich language sounds more like music, since vowels can have tones, and thus, sounds "more pleasing." Spanish is my favorite, since it is a harmonious language with pure vowels and favors open syllables. While there is, of course, some personal preference involved in the question above, many people would agree that certain sounds simply do not sound pleasing. Take the epiglottal sounds, for example (see International Phonetic Alphabet).--El aprendelenguas 01:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

À chacun son goût. De gustibus non est disputandum. Verweile doch, du bist so schön. Beautiful in thought as well as tongue. The rest is silence. --Halcatalyst 01:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know that so many of the guttural sounds are by nature displeasing, it's just that the ones not found in English (or your own native language) tend to be mispronounced by English speakers learning languages that have those sounds, thus, they sound bad to English speakers, since lots of our exposure to other languages comes through English speakers who have learned them. A properly pronounced /x/ is in my opinion one of the most beautiful sounds there is (certainly moreso than English's hard, abrupt k). Most English speakers' can't say /x/ properly, though, so we don't think much of German. An English speaker says: "Letztuh Nokkht hæbuh ik meinuh Howsufgoben gemokkht. Ikkh hæbuh es hoytuh gebrok(choke)t." As opposed to the German, who lets loose with a flowing, "Letzte Nacht hab' ich meine Hausaufgaben gemacht. Ich hab' es heute gebracht."

I totally agree with you on this point. In , the back of the tongue does not touch the roof of the mouth or the uvula. Is there a name for the horrible sound English speakers use instead? It's not really a unvoiced uvular trill, but it's close. —Keenan Pepper 05:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I dimly remember a story about an Englishman, a Spaniard (??) and an Italian (??) arguing about which language is the more beautiful, and focusing on the respective words for 'butterfly' in these languages. A German overhears and interjects with 'Was ist los mit Schmetterling?'. Maid Marion 09:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not just the English who can't pronounce the . In Der Rosenkavalier, Valzacchi is an Italian whose bad German pronunciation (and grammar) gets some laughs in Act III:

Ik rat' Euer Gnad'n, seien vorsicktig!

Die Sittenpolizei sein gar nit tolerant!

Sogleich in Anfang. Wird sogleich zur Stelle sein.

O weh, was macken wir?

Ick excusier mick. Ick weiß nix. Die Herr kann sein Baron, kann sein auch nit. Ick weiß von nix.

JackofOz 12:46, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about that theory.. Norwegian and Swedish for instance have quite a lot of vowel sounds, and also a melodic prosody. They're not usually accused of sounding ugly, but don't seem to top anyone's lists of most beautiful either. (Danish, which uses the glottal stop instead, is widely considered to sound pretty ugly though) I think the gutteral sound of the Dutch "g"/the last sound in the Scottish "loch" is considered ugly by quite a lot of people. (Certainly much worse than the German "ch") Certainly languages that have melody are usually considered more beautiful. (So not Finnish or Japanese) Personally, I think Romanian sounds cool. :) --BluePlatypus 13:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

BTW, here is a page with sound samples of Danish dialects. Judge for yourself. At your own risk :) --BluePlatypus 13:08, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

so much from you guys! :) --K.C. Tang 13:30, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not Danish or speak it. I can read and write it at an intermediate level (say, a newspaper) but those dialects (except Copenhagenian) are near-incomprehensible to me. OTOH, they're nearly incomprehensible to a lot of native speakers as well, which says something about how inarticulate the language is. --BluePlatypus 17:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Median

This thought crossed my mind this evening and I wanted to see if it made any sense. Could the word median, meaning "middle", derive from the fact that the ancient Greeks called the Persians "Medes" and the war fought against Persia was known as the "Median Wars"? Perhaps because Persia was located in the middle of the world as it was known at that time (and even today, with the name "Middle East"). If this is true, which word came first? Did the Greeks call the Persians "medes" for some reason unrelated to the present term? (And yes, I realize that the Medes are actually a people distinct from the Persians.) Thanks, Ryan

Median is from the Latin word medius, "middle", which is from the PIE root *medhyo-. Mede is from the Greek μηδος (mēdos), which could possibly be related. If so, the sense of "middle" came first. —Keenan Pepper 04:58, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

For another use of the Latin, see the Misplaced Pages article In medias res.

Pronunciation of "Jehovah"

What is the IPA notation for "Jehovah"? I am particularly curious to see if there are any similarities between its native pronunciation and its Chinese transliteration...thanks for your help! --HappyCamper 12:11, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

"Jehovah" itself is a medieval invention, based on a misunderstanding of the Hebrew manuscripts, so it doesn't really have a native pronunciation. See Tetragrammaton and Jehovah for more discussion. Angr (talk • contribs) 12:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

\ji-'hō-və\ is the pronunciation based on the phonics of Merriam-Webster. I am a former Jehovah's Witness, though I never got baptized and quit after 1.5 years.Patchouli 20:14, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

<unsolicited>I suggest you watch Life of Brian to find out what happens to those who pronounce Jehovah</unsolicited> --Fuhghettaboutit 21:08, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I honestly don't understand the M-W system, but I (in the midwest United States) hear people say /dʒəhovə/. Ardric47 09:51, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

List with articles to translate

I hope this is the right section, in case it's not please tell me where I have to ask. I have a question regarding translations from the German Misplaced Pages. As there are lists for everything here, where do I find a list with articles that exist in German but not in English? Just like the Requested articles, only more specific. — Shantris Te'Amdoraja 14:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Here is a list. David Sneek 15:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

...which proves that there are really lists for everything here! That's great, thank you! :) — Shantris Te'Amdoraja 15:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

My pleasure. David Sneek 17:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

March 28

Gender

The grammatical gender article doesn't mention the possible origins of the subject, are there any books or websites that we can get the relevant info? (i heard that one of the hypothesises was that grammatical genders were related to mythology: the goddess of moon in the myth of a certain peopel is a woman, then "moon" is feminine in that language...) It seems a very big subject anyway, and inseparable from the idea of noun class...--K.C. Tang 00:38, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

gender origins

I added this to the article under march 24, when the subject came up. I'll repeat it here for convenience

The key point is that gender is simply a system of word classes, that get different patterns of agreement with complements (e.g., adjectives), determiners (e.g., articles), pronouns, and often verbs. So you get el niño bueno, la niña buena. However, there gender does not necessarily associate with sex; that's just the pattern in Indoeuropean and Semitic languages, which are the most familiar to us. Bantu languages often have 10 or so genders, with a vague semantic motivation, (long object, food, etc.) which is not consistent any more than masculine and feminine gender are in IE languages.

I'm not an expert on this area, but my understanding is that gender originates historically from classifiers. Classifiers are words that describe a type of something and end up being obligatorily used with words that fit that type. For instance in Vietnamese, which may or may not be the best example, though it's the only one I know at all, the word for meat is thith (not sure of spelling). To say chicken, you say thith ga. To say beef, it's thith bo, and so on. It's as if in English we had to say chicken meat and cow meat to refer to the food as opposed to the animal.

As time goes on, these classifiers can be reanalyzed grammatically as bound morphemes, and can be reduced phonologically. That is, they lose their status as independent words and only exist attached to another word. Perhaps an imperfect parallel would be gonna (it's imperfect because of course gonna is a verb plus pronoun that became an auxiliary verb, but that's the kind of process that happens. The new bound morphemes can then get repeated on determiners or complements, which is the process of agreement.

Therefore, it's possible to speculate that the masculine ending in Protoindoeuropean began as something as the word for male or man, became a classifier (male child, male person, male sheep), got reduced to a bound, inflectional morpheme (maychild, mayperson, maysheep), and spread to all words that were analyzed as grammatically masculine, whether or not they had any meaning of maleness. The form may have begun by attaching to or becoming determiners and/or complements (e.g. adjectives). Another fact is that there appears to be a natural tendency for humans to organize words into arbitrary classes, and have all the members of a class act in concert. When an emerging gender morpheme gets associated with some members of a particular class, it may then spread to all. There are also issues of how sound changes happen that I won't go into here because it would be too complicated to explain.

Gender disappears through a process called phonological leveling, that is sounds that were once distinct become merged. There is a natural tendency for mergers to overcome distinctions. (So the caught/cot merger is spreading inexorably). In English, we no longer have gender (him and her are sex reference not gender) because the final vowels in many words, which formerly distinguished them, leveled to schwa. It is also speculated that Scandavian speakers in late Old English early Middle English times, had a somewhat different gender system, and when they mixed with English speakers, the distinctions also became leveled. Perhaps in the future, we'll develop systems of classifiers in English and the process will begin again.

Again, this isn't my area of expertise, but that's more or less the outline. Maybe you got more than you bargained for!

Thanks your explanation! so the key point is "there appears to be a natural tendency for humans to organize words into arbitrary classes"?--K.C. Tang 08:04, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah: that's the heart of genders/noun classes along with the existence of agreement that follows these classes. Note that we have a somewhat parallel phenomenon in verbal conjugation paradigms, the most familiar and obvious case being (-ar), (-er), and (-ir) verbs in Spanish. An interesting point in the field is that the existence of gender agreement patterns have been used as an argument by formalist linguists against structuralist ones since it is hard to imagine a purpose for it. mnewmanqc

"Tendency for humans to organize words into arbitrary classes" : yes, and everything else. Reference Desks, living species, castes, political parties, nations, colors and all are arbitrarily structured by opposing/complementary or multiple terms also. --DLL 21:22, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Latin translation check

Am I right in thinking that omnis malos in terra expurga igni tua is a reasonable translation of " purify by your fire all evils on earth"? Granted, it doesn't make much sense from a mythological viewpoint to the best of my knowledge, but I'm thinking of making it a motto for a pet project. - RedWordSmith 03:24, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Ignis is masculine, so it should be igni tuo. Other than that it looks fine. —Keenan Pepper 03:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd say "omnia mala" for "all evils." Brian G. Crawford 03:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Me too. omnis malos is early Latin for omnes malos and would mean "all wicked people". Angr (talk • contribs) 05:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

What do you think about changing in terra to ex terra? That makes it analogous with expurga. In addition, some Latin grammar books condemn the placement of a vocative at the beginning of a sentence, (Jenny's First Year Latin is one), but poets have broken this rule. Nevertheless, if you feel compelled to follow this, consider "Expurga, Fortuna, omnia...."--El aprendelenguas 21:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like Carmina Burana =) Ardric47 09:55, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm a little worried by the nature of this project. The voices didn't tell you to do it, did they? Henry 20:14, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes, though, one's lack of Latin proficiency forces one to create slogans or stories that, viewed otherwise, would seem rather strange. When first I studied Latin my freshman year in high school, the book we used consisted largely of stories about a fictional family in Pompei, such that the vocabulary we learned was rather esoteric; when we had to write stories about the family after just a few weeks in class, our being familiar with an odd variety of words forced me to craft a narrative in which, after the Vesuvian eruption, the family dog and mother, thinking themselves to be the only creatures left on the planet, repeatedly tried mating to preserve life on Earth. Though I got an "A", the teacher never looked at me quite the same way again. Joe 20:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

could also be "purify by fire all evils on your earth (terra tua)". --DLL 21:03, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

articles wrongly added to the english zone

I have writen some articles in Portuguese. I would like to post them on the portuguese zone of the wikipedia, but I was mistaken and I have added them to the english zone. If I cannot move them to the portuguese zone of the wikipedia they will be deleted in 2 weeks. Can you help me solve this problem so I won't be mistaken again and could you tell me how can I add articles directly to the portuguese zone. Thank you very much!

The articles were:

Sequenciação multiplex

Oligonucleótido

cromossoma walking

The way to add them to the Portuguese Misplaced Pages is to use the prefix "pt" instead of "en", thus:

• http://pt.wikipedia.org/Sequenciação_multiplex
• http://pt.wikipedia.org/Oligonucleótido
• http://pt.wikipedia.org/Cromossoma_Walking

Just cut and paste the material from the English Misplaced Pages to the Portuguese Misplaced Pages pages at the above addresses. Also, please note that encyclopedia articles should not be signed. (I see your signature on the articles here at en:, but it should be removed when you move them to pt:.) Angr (talk • contribs) 12:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, I see Portuguese Misplaced Pages already has an article pt:Oligonucleotídeo. Angr (talk • contribs) 12:10, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Japanese word "Asami"

What is the meaning/definition(s) of the Japanese word Asami ? Thank you for your reply.

Curtis Tantillo

I don't know, but there's an article about it at Japanese Misplaced Pages: ja:あさみ. Seems to be a player for Gatas Brilhantes H.P.. Maybe there's a lexical meaning, too, but if so, it isn't at Wiktionary. Angr (talk • contribs) 15:26, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Etymology of Greek Ptolemaios and Italian Tolomeo

I have some etymological questions related to issues I am trying to clear up at Ptolemy (disambiguation), which might eventually be detailed enough to warrant moving to something like Ptolemy (name). The questions are:

- Can anyone clarify the Greek origin and etymology of Ptolemaios? This is already briefly discussed at Ptolemy (disambiguation) and given in Greek polytonic (whatever that is), but I'd be grateful for further clarification and additions, especially of possible root words in Greek. Also, any relevant spellings in other languages would be great as well, though I think the Greek, Italian, Egyptian (hieroglyphics and cartouches) and English versions (not all these languages are there at the moment) would be enough to be going on with.

- Can anyone comment specifically on the etymology of Tolomeo (apparantly a name still in use in Italy today)? I have seen sources that say the name comes from the Ptolemaic pharaohs, but I am wondering if the name spread directly from Macedonia to Italy, rather than via Egypt? Though later, obviously, it could have taken both routes.

And any examples of the name Ptolemy in use today would also be great! Thanks. Carcharoth 15:35, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

According to my smaller Liddell and Scott, ancient Greek Ptolemos is an "Epic" variant of the word Polemos "war" (as in Polemic). In this context, "epic" means found in authors like Homer. I have no idea why the is inserted here, but it's also found in the apparently unrelated words Ptolis and Ptolisma (for Polis and Polisma). AnonMoos 20:31, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Moos. A serious check everywhere (and we beat Britannica).

Bartolomeo (Bartholomew) could also give Tolomeo in Italian ; I'm sure Ptolomeo can. Some languages like double initial consonants, some don't (don't you say 'sychology ?) --DLL 21:13, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Ooh! Good point! I may have to remove some of the Tolomeos if it is uncertain whether they are from Ptolemy or Bartholomew. Maybe Tolomei is the correct rendering/borrowing of Ptolemaios into Italian? Though looking at the Bartholomew page, I see that some of the names in other languages have a very similar ending to Ptolemaios.

I also see that the etymology of Bartholomew is given as 'son of Tolmay', so I tried to find the etymology of Tolmay. Unfortunately, the only Google hits on a search for "Tolmay" and "etymology" was Misplaced Pages or copies of Misplaced Pages. Worrying. I was hoping to find that the Aramaic 'Tolmay' is in some way related to the Greek Ptolemaios Carcharoth 22:06, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Looks like Misplaced Pages is not reliable for the etymology of Bartholomew... I found a source that said the etymology of Bartholomew is the Aramaic phrase "son of Talmai". And this gets 598 Google hits. Can anyone clarify this and confirm what is correct (from a reliable source), and then the Bartholomew article can be changed.

For now, I have found this source that says that the phrase is "son of Talmai", and that is does probably mean "son of Ptolemy", and my suspicion was correct: "The Hebrew name TALMAI is derived from the Greek PTOLEMY, and bears witness to the extent to which Israel had become Hellenised by the time of Jesus." This is, remember, some 300 years after Alexander the Great conquered the known world and brought Greek culture to places as widespread as Egpyt and India (and Israel). The most famous Ptolemy was his general who ended up ruling Egypt, but it looks like there were plenty of Ptolemies in other areas as well!

But this doesn't answer the question about whether Tolomeo is more likely to come from Ptolemy or from Bartholomew. It would be rather ironic if the sequence went: Ptolemy, Son of Ptolemy, Bar Talmai, Bartolomeo, Tolomeo! The Ptolemy bit surfacing after thousands of years being under the thumb of the Son! Carcharoth 22:21, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

All - Not

English speakers in the midwest u.s. seem lately to be confusing the order with sentences that include the words 'all' and 'not'. For example, instead of 'not all people are children' many people would say 'all people are not children'. The latter is clearly wrong because some people are children, but nevertheless it is common to hear someone say the latter while clearly meaning the former. Has anyone else noticed this development? outside of the midwest? Any theories about why this might start to happen (language instability, lanuage contact, education, etc...)? Is this actually a new development or am I just noticing something that's been going on for a while? Thank you. -LambaJan 21:42, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Origin of "Semper Fidelis' use in a Warrior/Military group ??

  Somewhere back some time ago I vaguely 

remember the motto "Semper Fidelis" being used in some ancient Celtic/Irish warrior

group or some other such people in ancient 

Ireland, perhaps the Red Branch Knights, the

Tuatha Da Danaan, etc???.  Does anyone have 

information on this?

              edlo1984@aol.com