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Contents

August 29

What sound would you say cicadas make?

Would it be "chirping"?

Also, do we have any onomatopoeia for it? (I told my friend that we don't, but maybe you guys can think of something I couldn't.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

To me it sounds like a buzz. Before I knew what cicadas were (when I was a small kid) I always thought that it was the sound of electricity going through the power lines. It made sense to me since the noise was coming from the general direction of the lines above my head. Little did I know that it was coming from bugs in the trees near the power lines... Dismas|(talk) 03:03, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
As a kid I was told that that sound is made by "tree frogs", which I assumed were literally frogs who lived in trees. It was only in the past couple of years that I realized that didn't make any sense (and that other people looked at me funny when I mentioned it). I'm still really disappointed that there are no tree frogs...Adam Bishop (talk) 06:08, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_frog Rimush (talk) 06:35, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Right, sorry, that was poorly worded, I mean, what I thought was a tree frog is not a tree frog. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:27, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I just call it bloody loud! I know we have a very loud variety around these parts (SE Australia), but it's so loud it's almost impossible to discern a particular sound to be onomatopoeic about. It's a kind high pitched squeal. HiLo48 (talk) 04:39, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Rrrreee rree rree rree rree rreeeeeeeeeeee!!!
In Japanese it's ミーン　ミン　ミン　ミーーーン (miiin min min miiiin).
Shrill? Whir? Exploding Boy (talk) 06:19, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
There are many onomatopoeia of cicadas sounds in Japan. It depends on species. "Miiin min min miiiin" is one of them. Onomatopoeia of Tanna japonensis are "KIKIKIKIKI", "KEKEKEKEKE" and "CANNAT KANAKANA ...". Graptopsaltria nigrofuscata is "G...jijijiji/jirijiri". You can listen to the different calls at here. Put the cursor on the image. Oda Mari (talk) 08:15, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
From our article: "The name is a direct derivation of the Latin cicada, meaning "buzzer". In classical Greek, it was called a tettix, and in modern Greek tzitzikas—both names being onomatopoeic." Rimush (talk) 13:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I was really asking about current English onomatopoeia, not etymology. But thank you guys for your comments. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:39, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I call it a high-pitched whine. Matt Deres (talk) 14:41, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Stridulation Adambrowne666 (talk) 22:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

"Sire" vs. "Your Majesty"

Are there any rules regarding when one of them is preferable to the other in a dialogue with the king/Emperor? K61824 (talk) 04:58, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Our articles Style (manner of address), Royal and noble styles, Sire... don't deal with this. AFAIK, I think Your Majesty is used for the first address, Sire being used thereafter; I'm assuming it is the male equivalent of ma'am (see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ma'am). Of course, this would only hold in English; the only current monarch styled "Emperor" in English is that of Japan. If you're writing fiction or similar, you have poetic licence, naturally. -- the Great Gavini 07:35, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I believe "sir" would be used nowadays (from memory of reading reported conversations with George VI). But we haven't had a king for 70 years, so who knows. "Sire" certainly has an over-archaic ring to it. I'll try to find a reference later. Alansplodge (talk) 09:19, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
...fifty-eight. And of course that king was also an emperor. Marnanel (talk) 15:42, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Oh yes, sorry, s/b nearly 60 years. Doh! Alansplodge (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

girls

If a girl with blonde hair is a Blonde, and a girl with brown hair is a Brunette and a girl with red hair is a Redhead, what do you call a girl with Black hair? What about Pink hair? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.144.125.153 (talk) 19:16, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I personally also call girls with black hair brunettes. Rimush (talk) 19:30, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
See also this archived question. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:37, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
And people who color their hair pink or blue or whatever you can just call idiots, no offence. Rimush (talk) 19:45, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
And people who judge others based on something as stupid as their hair color can equally be called idiots. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 22:35, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
This [1] lady might disagree with you there. ;-) Let's see, does she have her own Wikipedia entry yet? if not, someone should create it, as she is already mentined in another entry. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 21:14, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Being mentioned in an existing entry is not in itself a qualification for a Wikipedia page. See Wikipedia:BIO for the full details. Marnanel (talk) 10:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Not in itself, no, but if you do look her up, you'll notice she might be relevant enough for her own Wikipedia entry. That said, there are more skilled editors than me, and it was only meant as a heads-up for those - I have no intention of writing the entry myself. Being a "fanboi" doesn't go well with Wikipedia:NPOV. ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 13:17, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Neat trick that, Rimush. Calling someone an idiot without intending to offend them. You must let me into your secret. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:43, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Oh, that's quite simple. They should know they're idiots, however they shouldn't take this personally... Eliko (talk) 21:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Another neat trick: being an idiot, but still having enough self-awareness to know you are one, and also having the skill not to take it personally or be offended when people call you one. I wouldn't mind being an idiot under those conditions. Where do I apply? -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:40, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Raven-tressed. Bus stop (talk) 22:07, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Oh the humanity! 86.161.108.172 (talk) 01:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
When I lived in Tennessee, I heard the term "blackhead". When I first heard it, I asked for clarification and was given "redhead" as a related example. Dismas|(talk) 01:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

French the odd one out?

The major romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. I know that Spanish and Portuguese are very close, due to goegraphy and stuff, and they are probably upward of 70-80% mutually intelligible. My Spanish teacher recently said of Portuguese that she could "speak Spanish and be understood by a Portuguese waiter [who spoke only pt]" and of Romanian that she could have a broken dinner conversation using Spanish with Romanian-speakers. THis reminded me of one of my Hispanic friends saying earlier that Italian is "very much like Spanish". But my teacher also said that though she could see similarities between written French and Spanish, when she went to France she was like (and I'm quoting) "W.T.F." because there was virtually no mutual intelligibility in spoken French and Spanish. Why is this? French doesn't have any major influences from other language groups, and Romanian is mixed with the Slavic languages. 68.248.229.115 (talk) 19:20, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I don't think Romanian is a problem for other Romance speakers because of the Slavic influence, but because of the weird pronunciation of words inherited from Latin that are otherwise quite similar. Same goes for Portuguese, which in its written form is much more similar to Spanish than in the spoken form (same with Danish and Norwegian, from what I've heard - you also get asymmetric intelligibility in the two cases: Portuguese and Danes understand Spanish and Norwegians respectively better than the other way around). To stay on topic, I can say that from my experience with French, as a guy who speaks no French at all, I can understand a lot of written French (although I'm not sure which of Romanian, Spanish, or English helps me more), but spoken French is a b*tch. Rimush (talk) 19:28, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I once heard a Portuguese friend hold an apparently productive conversation with an Italian ice cream salesman, each in their own language. A Romanian friend says that he can understand spoken Spanish but they can't understand him. Alansplodge (talk) 20:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
It's fairly notorious that Portuguese-speakers can understand Spanish more easily than Spanish-speakers can understand Portuguese, but there's not full comprehensibility either way. In any case, the great difference between French and the other well-known Romance languages is its strongly altered phonological system -- a great reduction in the number of syllables in words as compared to ancient Latin, the deletion of many word-final consonants in pronunciation (which correspond to medial consonants in ancient Latin), etc. So where Spanish has agua and Italian has acqua, French has monosyllabic eau (pronounced [o]), etc. etc. AnonMoos (talk)
"eau (pronounced [o])" - this is why I don't want to learn French Rimush (talk) 19:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
It gets worse, Rimush: the plural 'eaux' is also pronounced [o], but the word following it, if any, can sometimes change its pronunciation. But not always. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:52, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Anthony Burgess also complained about eau, saying that if the French could have contracted it further they would have done so. French words, he writes, are at their most French when they are monsters with heads but no tails. Living in Monaco, he could not entirely avoid speaking French, and shuddered every time he had to turn Jesus Christ into Jésu Cri. — Mu (talk) 21:10, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
My favorite is the response to a sneeze: souhaits /swɛ/. Eight letters for just three sounds. Pais (talk) 11:32, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
In "ils mangeaient", the second word is [mãžɛ]... AnonMoos (talk) 14:50, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Then there are the question particles: Qu'est-ce qu'on... [kɛskõ].—Emil J. 15:05, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Another French peculiarity that I love is when the addition of "s" results in the deletion of a sound, as in œuf [œf]/œufs [ø] or cerf [sɛʁf]/cerfs [sɛʁ]. Pais (talk) 16:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
To be fair, we have Ough (orthography), pronounced oo, aw, o, off, uff, ow and uh. 81.131.53.18 (talk) 11:06, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
My impression is that before the Renaissance French was pretty similar to the others. Maybe the cultural dominance of France during the period 1600-1800 caused it to undergo more rapid changes. Looie496 (talk) 23:06, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
In the late middle ages, French pronunciation was a little bit like Catalan with nasal vowels (to greatly oversimplify). It would be very difficult to correlate rather purely phonological changes (such as the last few rounds of final consonant dropping) with external cultural factors, and except in certain cases where sound-changes are driven by contact between different languages, most linguists don't even try... AnonMoos (talk) 05:19, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm Italian. Italian speakers have usually a good understanding of spoken Spanish, expecially if spoken slowly. The understanding is even greater if Spanish is written (you have problems almost only with different etymologies, like estate and verano). With Portuguese it's a bit more difficult, because of the apparently strange pronounciation of words that, if written, would be more recognizable. With spoken French, you usually understand only some word here and there. This is because of the aforementioned French custom to make almost every word monosillabic (It: es-ta-te, Fr: été). Luckily, written French is more conservative of its Latin origin, so it's a lot more understandable. To my ignorant eye, Catalan looks like a mixture of Spanish and French. I don't have much experience with Romanian, but it's not very intuitive for an Italian eye/ear, maybe some very Latin-like words. I had a look at the Corse Wikipedia and I can safely say that I can read every single word of it. --151.51.145.104 (talk) 23:10, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Back to the original question: the answer probably has a lot to do with the fact that after the Roman Empire subsided, modern French evolved from the Vulgar (spoken) Latin dialects in Northern France - which were heavily influenced over the centuries by Gaulish (Celtic), Frankish (Germanic), and Norman (Scandinavian) speakers. So you are mistaken in thinking that "French doesn't have any major influences from other language groups" - it does, quite a lot. See French Language, History of French, and Old French for more details on these historical developments. Textorus (talk) 01:31, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
And Occitan in southern France is a lot like Spanish and Italian. (Or more like Catalan, really.) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:21, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

August 30

Chinese root

In Vietnamese, the term "hàn lâm" means "academic" and it seems to stem from a title for a mandarin during feudal times. I'm guessing that it originated from the Chinese term "寒林", but that term means "winter forest". Is there an instance where the term "寒林" is used in any academic sense? DHN (talk) 07:11, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
My guess is that it's 翰林, hànlín, i.e. a member of the Hanlin Academy, where scholar-officials who had passed the Imperial examinations would be assigned before being appointed to government posts. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:34, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! DHN (talk) 19:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
One more question: does "Hanlin" literally mean "a multitude of quills"? DHN (talk) 15:30, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
I doubt it. In modern Mandarin, 寒 means 'cold' and 林 means small forest. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:35, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
We're talking about "翰" DHN (talk) 18:12, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Japanese translation help needed

Hi, over at the computing RefDesk, a question has cropped up dealing with a router that has a Japanese-only manual. We need to disable DHCP on the router. If you're able to translate the relevant parts of the manual, please stop by here - the link to the PDF is in the paragraph starting with the word "Supplemental" - and help us help User:Hoary. Thank you! -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 12:32, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Is this an example of pathetic fallacy?

Hello, ants. I know you love the smell of the durian mooncakes, but they are to be eaten by me, not you. Please find food elsewhere. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.216.150 (talk) 15:58, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
The "fallacy" would be the assumption that ants understand English. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:02, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
"Who would have thought that the rabbits understood Latin?" LANTZYTALK 16:29, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Yes, Walter. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:46, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I don't know about Latin, but they can certainly understand Lapine. —Angr (talk) 17:03, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't seem to me that the Pathetic fallacy is really much of a fallacy anyway, at least not in the sense of unsound or mistaken logical reasoning. When you address ants directly, you may be Anthropomorphizing them or apostrophizing them or Personifying them, but you're not committing a fallacy. —Angr (talk) 16:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I'll concede that they might understand antonyms. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:53, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi, Homo Sapiens. Sorry, but I don't accept your opinion about who the durian mooncakes are to be eaten by. Hence, I'm not going to find my food elsewhere. I eat whatever smells sweet and tasty. Take care, good luck. Eliko (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Why "Homo Sapiens"? He didn't call you Lasius flavus or something. Also, it's Homo sapiens or even Homo sapiens sapiens. Rimush (talk) 19:50, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Oh man, we didn't like the way they'd called us ("ants", as if we were ants, while we are Lasius flavus), so we responded them in such a way they wouldn't like either. Sapiens or double sapiens or triple sapiens, who cares? The taste of mooncakes is more interesting... Eliko (talk) 20:41, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

United States presidential election, 2012

There's a section in United States presidential election, 2012 called "speculated candidates". That seemly wrong, grammatically, I'd think "speculated-on candidates", but that sounds awkward. Any ideas? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 18:36, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Speculative candidates? Rojomoke (talk) 18:39, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Possible candidates. --- OtherDave (talk) 18:47, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
'Presumptive candidates' would be best in this context. 'Presumptuous jackanapes' would be more accurate, however. --Ludwigs2 20:28, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
"That seemly wrong, grammatically" - that seemly wrong, too. :) -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 22:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Well, that's because I can't type, not because I can't grammar. :) Everard Proudfoot (talk) 18:04, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Or, as the apparently Wiki-departed User:Milkbreath once famously said, "My spelling is better than my orthography would indicate". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:50, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Power is my mistress

I have heared thied quiote attributed to Napoléon I. Is this an accurate attribution and what is the original in French? 76.230.225.80 (talk) 22:06, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Not an easy quotation to source it seems, though the English version is all over the internets. On the talk page of Napoleon's wikiquote page it is listed among the quotes that had to be removed because it lacked citations. This book however says it is something he said to Pierre Louis Roederer in 1804. But.. when I look for a French version I can only find "Je n’ai qu’une passion, qu’une maîtresse ; c’est la France : je couche avec elle" ("I have but one passion, but one mistress: it's France. I sleep with her"), noted down by Roederer in 1809. That doesn't mean the English quote you ask about is incorrect, of course, but I do not find anything like it in French. The book to check is probably Roederer's Bonaparte me disait (textes choisis par Maximilien Vox; Le Roman de l’Histoire, Union bibliophile de France, Horizons de France, Paris, 1942). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 10:20, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
It's not impossible that he said that, but I find it unlikely because power (le pouvoir) is masculine in French. — Kpalion(talk) 12:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Boodah?

In John Twelve Hawk's novel The Dark River,

"Boodah had an African-American father and a Chinese mother.His nickname came from his enormous stomach, which appeared to protect him from all the craziness in New York."

I don't understand how this explains his nickname Boodah. Does it mean 'Buddah'? Even if so, I don't think Buddah is famous for his enormous stomach.

Any opinion?

--Analphil (talk) 22:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

See Budai (aka "the Fat Buddha"). ---Sluzzelin talk 22:32, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. It makes sense.--Analphil (talk) 23:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Possessive reflexives

In English, several reflexive pronouns are similar in form to possessives, for example "myself" looks like "my self", "ourselves" looks like "our selves", etc. Not all of them follow this pattern, for example we have "himself" rather than "hisself" and "themselves" rather than "theirselves". In any case, this possessive-reflexive thing does not happen in any other language that I am aware of, definitely not in German, French, or Latin. Does any reader of this desk know of any language other than English in which any of the reflexive pronouns have a possessive form? (Intensive forms would also interest me.) Looie496 (talk) 23:15, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

See http://latindiscussion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7059. -- Wavelength (talk) 23:54, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure that Latin discussion is talking about the same thing...but Latin does have a pronoun intensifier ("-met", as in "egomet", "memet", etc). French also has "moi-meme", etc. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:31, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Uyghur (and, therefore, probably Turkish and a bunch of related Central Asian languages) has precisely this. öz is the reflexive pronoun and it takes person-number agreement marker to specify my/your/him/our/etc.-self. That agreement marker happens to be the same as what you see in possessive constructions. See pp. 188-9 of this book. For a quick summary, here are some examples:
  • öz-üm "myself" (compare to köl-üm, "my lake")
  • öz-ingiz "yourself" (compare to kitab-ingiz, "your book")
  • etc
rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
The Semitic languages. e.g. Arabic: ruhi = myself. Hebrew: atsmi = myself, etc. Eliko (talk) 06:53, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
In Finnish, reflexive pronouns are formed by declining the word itse ("self") as the object of a genitive subject, i.e. as a thing someone is possessing. For example, itseni' ("myself"), itsesi' ("yourself"), itsensä' ("him/her/itself, themselves"). The genitive pronoun itself is omitted because the the subject and the owner of the object are the same. JIP | Talk 07:12, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Cool, thanks for the answers, it seems that examples are pretty numerous. Would you happen to know how Intensive pronouns are handled in these languages? By the way it's curious that the Finnish "itse" is so similar to the Latin "ipse", given that Finnish belongs to a whole different language family. (For what it's worth, my reason for asking all this is that I'm working on book chapter on the concept of Self, and trying to get a grasp of how various language other than English handle it.) Looie496 (talk) 16:50, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
As for the Semitic languages, one simply says: "by oneself", using the preposition "b", that means both "by" and "in/at". Additionally, you might be interested to know that the concept of Self is expressed by the concept of "soul/spirit" (ruh) in Arabic, and by the concept of "bone" (etsem) in Hebrew (so that "myself" is simply "my bone", i.e. "my skeleton"). Eliko (talk) 17:41, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
In Finnish, an intensive pronoun (as in "I did it myself") is always simply itse. I think the relation to the Latin word ipse is pure coincidence. JIP | Talk 17:53, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
On the Syntax of Possessive Reflexive Pronouns in Modern Georgian and Certain Indo-European Languages by Shukia Apridonidze discusses how Russian and Georgian have "both groups of reflexives: personal and possessive". ---Sluzzelin talk 18:12, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 August 31

September 1

Meaning of Korean first name Isang

On the German Wikipedia's reference desk someone asked abotu the meaning of the Korean first name Isang (Hanja 伊桑) as in Isang Yun. The meaning of the Hanja does not give me a great clue ("He mulberry"), I was also wondering whether it might be the Korean transcription of the name Ethan, since the biblical Ethan might have been a cymbalist and since I have seen this (symbolic) transcription used for mandarin. That's just speculation though, does anybody know more? Thanks, -- Arcimboldo (talk) 01:52, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Korean first names don't necessarily have meanings; sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. Also, there's a practice where all the clan's boys, of the same generation, will share a letter in their first names. Sometimes it can be the first letter, sometimes it can be the second. I'm not sure about Isang Yun, but either "i" or "sang" could be one of those shared letters.
Hypothetical scenarios:
  • Isang has brothers and/or cousins called Hosang, Deoksang, Yunsang, Pilsang, etc. (Sang doesn't necessarily mean anything.)
  • Isang has brothers and/or cousins called Ijin, Idan, Ihyeok, etc. (I doesn't necessarily mean anything.
  • Isang's name is unrelated to his cousins'. (The "shared letter" practice is getting rarer than before.)
More info is at Korean name#Given names and Generation name. 211.192.198.220 (talk) 04:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for the helpful explanations and links. In case anyone has a hint that Isang might actually have a meaning then of course it will be welcome still. -- Arcimboldo (talk) 14:13, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Graudejus (surname)

What is the origin and pronunciation of this surname? 149.169.211.122 (talk) 02:50, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't know about the pronunciation, but it is apparently German (see this map, so I would guess "grau-day-us". Adam Bishop (talk) 05:17, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I wonder though, whether it's originally German. According to that map there are, at most, 70 registered phone book entries for Graudejus. That's less than Bishop, quite a bit less than Milosevic, and far far less than Yilmaz. When googling surnames, I've often seen that German site pop up. I was wondering whether there is a connection to the name Graudenz, like a German latinized form for someone from Graudenz/Grudziądz. There are all sorts of weird names like that, but I couldn't find anything. Googling "graudeius" (with an "i" instead of "j") gave me exactly one hit, which is rare enough to celebrate. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:44, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
The -ejus is a dead giveaway for a Baltic name - Latvian, Lithuanian or Prussian. Which one of them I'm not sure, but they would all likely pronounce it similarly - grau-DAY-ooss ("grau" rhyming with 'how', "day" pronounced like "day", ooss rhyming with puss). Steewi (talk) 09:34, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I was thinking Lithuanian as well. 92.81.6.24 (talk) 10:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
That sounds very plausible. Probably not connected, but "grauzējus" is the accusative plural of the Latvian word grauzējs ("rodent", nominative plural grauzēji at Latvian Wikipedia). ---Sluzzelin talk 14:42, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I thought it looked Lithuanian too, but Google only came up with German results. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:11, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps Prussian, then. (Or Sorbian?) Steewi (talk) 10:23, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorbian is Slavic, not Baltic. Sorbian last names (to the extent Sorbians don't just have German last names) look like Polish or Czech last names. —Angr (talk) 19:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Only too happy

We'd be only too happy to help you in any way we can.'

This and similar expressions (only too pleased; only too willing) are meant to demonstrate a very positive attitude or a strong willingness to do something. That's fine. But it's a very odd collection of words if you think about it. Someone who’d never heard this expression before would probably do a double take and wonder what the hell was being said. It's very well known in Australia, but it's only ever used colloquially.

My brain is telling me it's an idiom of Irish origin: is that correct? Does it appear in all the major varieties of English? Are there parallel constructions in other languages? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 12:13, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

It's widely used in England, especially the RP version; I've never thought of it as being Irish, but you never know. In my days in the London insurance market, you would often see it in business letters, so maybe more of an Idiom than a colloquialism (?). Alansplodge (talk) 12:21, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
It's used in the US as well, and was first recorded in 1899, according to this source.
Your hypothesis sounds reasonable. "only too", meaning "very", may be derived from Irish, like the expression "it was only dreadful", and likewise. See here.
Eliko (talk) 13:05, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Concrete Roofing

Is there a word like "Lenter" or "Lantre" or something close in western languages that means a roof built with cement and bricks ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 18:19, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
The Latin for brick is later. That is most likely the root of whatever you're after. (Another, far less probable possibility is the Finnish laatta, "tile".) However, the only modern descendant of later seems to be the Spanish ladrillo, which doesn't sound much like "lenter" or "lantre". LANTZYTALK 05:35, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Latin

What's the Latin name for the Roman Republic? --75.33.216.97 (talk) 21:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
The infobox of our article Roman Republic claims its official name was simply Roma, and Senatus Populusque Romanus after about 100 B.C., though I really doubt the latter was ever in any meaningful sense the name of the Roman Republic. Latin Wikipedia calls it Res Publica Romana. —Angr (talk) 21:23, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, they didn't really have a name for it, since a "republic" was not a special form of government that they recognized. "Res publica" basically means "the public thingy", since theoretically everyone was supposed to take part and it, whatever it was, was supposed to benefit all of society. Cicero wrote a book called De Re Publica, and while he was describing the constitution and government and it can be translated as "On the Republic", that's not really what he meant. The Greeks, as far as I am aware, were more advanced in abstract philosophical notions of this sort, and they did have names for their various forms of government, which the Romans sometimes borrowed. Aristotle's and Plato's works which are sometimes Latinized as "Republic" are actually "politeia", which specifically refers to the governance of a city. The Greeks also used "oligarchia" and "tyrannis". The Romans consciously modelled their republic on the classical Greek republics like Athens, but they didn't have their own fancy name for it. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:41, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Res publica in Latin literally means "the public matter/concern" or something close to what we mean by "politics" or "government". Marco polo (talk) 00:36, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

September 2

Auxiliary verbs

We often say in response to questions like "Do you work on weekends?" or "Will you come to the party?" with constructions like "I do" or "I will". How do the French do this (or do they just say oui?) The French don't have the modal verb "will" and don't use "do" like that, so any response to the equivalent questions "Travaillez-vous les week-ends?" or "Viendrez-vous à la soirée?" would be very long. As an aside, I forget the difference between le samedi and samedi, as in Le samedi, je ne vais pas au travail; can someone refresh my memory? 76.199.146.176 (talk) 00:23, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

"Le samedi" means "every Saturday", doesn't it? For the first question, they tend to repeat the verb, often with an object pronoun (so the answer to "Do you work weekends" could be "I work them"/"je les travaille"). Of course, that is really just an unusual feature of English. Can any language use auxiliaries like English does? Adam Bishop (talk) 00:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Echoing Adam here: yeah, the usual response (as far as I know) would be with a "yes" and repeating the verb. As in "tu viens a la soiree demain?"//"si, je viens".
As for other languages, well, Chinese doesn't have a system of "auxiliaries" comparable to English, but there are limited cases that are similar. For example, the verbs 要 yào and 会 huì are used for events someone intends to do, like English "will", and you can repeat them to answer a question, just like in English (although in Chinese you drop the subject in such a case). For instance, ni yihou hui bu hui zai lai zhongguo ya? ("will you come back to China in the future"?), hui a! ("I will!"). rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:44, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
How do the respective parties say their equivalent of "I do" at non-English weddings? (I should have some idea about this, being married in a Russian Orthodox Church, but the details are lost in the mists of time). -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 01:43, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
They simply say "yes" (or "I agree", or stuff like that). Eliko (talk) 07:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Examples: Spanish usually Sí, quiero ("Yes, I want (to).") or Sí, acepto ("Yes, I accept."); French usually Oui (je le veux) ("Yes (I want it)."); Italian similarly Sì (lo voglio) ("Yes (I want it)."). Sorry for the lack of non-Romance examples; I'm sure verbs of volition and the word "yes" are also commonly used elsewhere (though I haven't seen "I agree"). I don't doubt that 202's response was something more complex than да though (maybe involving хотеть "to want"). -- the Great Gavini 09:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
As a possibly interesting aside, German has the noun Jawort ("yes-word", wiktionary translates it as "word of consent"), which is often used in the nuptial sense. dict.cc translates "das Jawort geben" as "to say 'I do'" and "das Jawort hauchen" as "to breath 'I will'". ---Sluzzelin talk 09:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
je dois, -rai = I shall
je veux = I will
je nécesse = I mot
je fais bien = I do
je sais = I can
je peux = I may
je dois = I owe
-lysdexia 15:00, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Am I alone in wanting to question almost the entire bullet point list above?86.135.25.224 (talk) 19:24, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
No; lysdexia is a banned troll. It's just nonsense. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Adam Bishop is a libeller and malapropist, abusive of users and things he doesn't understand. See how he doesn't back up anything he says? My edits are as earnest as anyone's.
An electronic mail message, Usenet posting or other (electronic) communication which is intentionally incorrect, but not overtly controversial (compare flame bait), or the act of sending such a message. Trolling aims to elicit an emotional reaction from those with a hair-trigger on the reply key. A really subtle troll makes some people lose their minds. (1994-10-17)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © Denis Howe 2010 http://foldoc.org
an internet user who sends inflammatory or provocative messages designed to elicit negative responses or start a flame-war. (As a fisherman trolls for an unsuspecting fish.) : Don't answer those silly messages. Some troll is just looking for an argument.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition. Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
There is no bullet list; it's a list, with a indent. Nothing's wrong with it. If you can tell me/us of any flaws, then do so; otherwise, 86, you'd be as bad as these crooked admins. sais is the best thruwend for can for want of a scis (of Latin scire). scire means cunnan, and therefore scientia cunninghead. Writers are often not lingvists, are clueleas of English roots, and thus will often tell ye malliterate paradighms for English. I know in Francish would be je gnais.
lysdexia isn't wholly banned but indefinitely blocked. -lysdexia 21:25, 2 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.128.79.3 (talk)
I'm almost sure that most (if not all) of the human languages have both: "Yes" and "Yes I was", as legitimate responses to "Were you there?", and the like. What still interests me is whether there's any human language, other than English, that has the following stuff: Question: "<word> you see?" (i.e "Do you see?") Answer: "Yes I <word>" (i.e. "Yes I do"), while the <word> is the same word in the question and in the answer (anyway, the <word> doesn't need to have anything to do with the verb to do, however I don't care if it does have). Eliko (talk) 07:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm assuming you won't allow <word> to be an auxiliary verb in the conditional mood (e.g.: <word> = "would" in English). Am I correct? ---Sluzzelin talk 08:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't care what the <word> means (so it may mean "would"), however, as I have already pointed out, the meaning of the whole conversation should be: Question: "do you see?" Answer: "Yes I do"', and the whole conversation should go like this: Question: "<word> you see?" Answer: "Yes I <word>"', the <word> being the same word in the question and in the answer.
Additionally. the verb "see" is an example only, and can be replaced by any other verb.
Eliko (talk) 08:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah ok, I misunderstood. My example (German) only works in the conditional, and means "would you want it". Swiss German dialects have an unpredictable way of sometimes using "tuä" ("to do" / "to make") as an auxiliary verb in the indicative mood, and you could ask: "Tuäsch es welle?" ("Do you want it"). But to answer with "Ja, ich tuä" or even "Ja, ich tuä's" would be highly artificial if not incorrect. You'd either just say "Ja." or perhaps "Ja, ich tuä's welle", but more likely you'd avoid the auxiliary verb construction and say "Ja, ich wott's". ---Sluzzelin talk 08:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
You say that to answer with "Ja, ich tuä" or even "Ja, ich tuä's" would be highly artificial if not incorrect. I don't care whether it's incorrect, but can one here this (at least rarely) from native Swiss adults? Eliko (talk) 08:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, by incorrect, I meant that it goes against a native speaker's intuition (at least against mine). There is no standard grammar taught in Swiss German. Formally, the dialects aren't taught at all to native speakers, and this makes its usage fluid even within a particular dialect. Though I can't exclude that my artificial example has been uttered, it just doesn't sound right. Sorry, that's all I got, but I'll ask around. ---Sluzzelin talk 08:57, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. Eliko (talk) 09:04, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't think you're going to find other languages that do this; English is widely accepted to be one of the only (if not the only known) language that has Do-support. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:36, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
That's exactly what I'm not sure about yet, because for being sure one must scan all of the human languages, and I haven't done that yet. Anyways, English is not the only known language that has do-support, because in Swiss German too, one could ask: "Tuäsch es welle?" (i.e. "Do you want it"?), although one can't answer: "Ja, ich tuä" nor "Ja, ich tuä's" (i.e. "yes I do"), as Sluzzelin has pointed out. Eliko (talk) 10:51, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
At this point, I need to emphasize that "Wottsch es?" (without auxiliary verb) would be the standard way of asking "Do you want it?". It works better with verbs that, unlike "welle", can't be modal verbs in their own right. And I think it mainly depends on which sounds less awkward. Examples: Intransitive "Tuesch söile?" ("Are you making a mess?") sounds much better than "Söilsch?", while transitive "Tuesch es ässe" ("Are you going to eat it?") and "Issisch es?" are both acceptable. "Tuä" is also often used as an auxiliary in the imperative mood, particulary when the sentence is negative. I'd probably say "Tuä's nöd ässe!" (Don't eat it!) instead of "Iss es nöd!", but both are correct and commonly used. Finally, in some German dialects, not just Swiss, "tuä" is also used as an auxiliary verb in the conditional mood ("Täätsch das welle?" = "Would you want that?"). Here the usage is similar to that of "würde" in Standard German or "would" in English.---Sluzzelin talk 11:19, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Finnish has no such auxiliary verbs as "do" or "will". Instead, verbs are declined in four cases: indicative (example: lähden "I leave"), conditional (example: lähtisin "I would leave"), potential (example: lähtenen "I probably leave") and imperative (example: lähde "leave!"). Responses to yes/no questions are made simply by repeating the verb in the same declination as in the question. However, Finnish does have verbs that can have other verbs as objects, similarly as in English, for example haluta "to want", uskaltaa "to dare", etc. As for weddings, the general question is tahdotko sinä M.M. ottaa tämän N.N.:n puolisoksesi? "Do you M.M. want to take this N.N. as your spouse?" and the response is tahdon "I want". JIP | Talk 08:00, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
"tahdotko sinä..ottaa" means "will you take" and "tahdon" means "I will". -lysdexia 15:00, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that is the accepted meaning in the wedding protocol, but literally, tahdon means "I want". JIP | Talk 16:43, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

What about periphrastic tenses?

However, what would be the answer if the tense is Periphrastic? For example, Avez-vous vu le chat?. Is the answer full "Si, j'ai le vu", or is perhaps "Si, j'ai" acceptable? In my native tongue, we just repeat the auxiliary, but to my very limited French, "Si, j'ai" sounds somewhat crippled. No such user (talk)
I don't know about French, but in Finnish, this question uses the perfect tense of the verb, which is expressed with the auxiliary verb olla "to be". The full question (using the singular second person for clarity) is Oletko nähnyt kissan? and the answer is simply Olen. JIP | Talk 09:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Oui, surely? -- the Great Gavini 09:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Si is used only to answer negative questions or statements. Oui is the correct answer in this case. You can also say Oui, je l'ai vu. but not Oui, j'ai since it wouldn't mean anything to me, I would think that you are trying to say yes, I own which in this context would be very surprising, I would ask Vous avez quoi?. --Lgriot (talk) 09:36, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

How is Leeuwenhoek pronounced?

As in Anton van Leeuwenhoek. --75.33.216.97 (talk) 01:04, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

You have it here. --Omidinist (talk) 04:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Italian dentals

I am learning Italian from Pimsleur recordings. According to our articles on Italian phonology and Denti-alveolar consonant, Italian /d/ and /t/ are dental or denti-alveolar. Now, on the Pimsleur recordings, one of the speakers seems to have a mostly denti-alveolar articulation, but another seems to have an alveolar articulation. Is the latter a regional or social variant in Italian, or are my ears deceiving me? Thanks. Marco polo (talk) 01:31, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Many years ago I got the 1st set of Pimsleur recordings for learning Russian. One of the benefits but also frustrations was that not every native speaker sounds the same — I strongly suspect simple regional variation. It was more of an issue with Russian as I would try to figure out the Cyrillic spelling from the sound, it's less obvious with Russian where you have probably five different variations on the "i" sound. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 14:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

was used to

in some books you see "I was used to [infinitive]" whereas today we say "I used to [infinitve]" or at a pinch "I was used to [participle]"> Is the first usage still correct? What is the difference? 76.229.183.8 (talk) 03:07, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Depends on the context. These can mean different things. "I was used to X" can mean "I was accustomed to X" (i.e., "Back then I was used to running every day, but not anymore"). On the other hand, "I used to X" means "I habitually did X", as in "when I was little I used to go to the beach every summer". I don't think I've ever seen "I was used to [infinitive]" in English, and I don't know what it would even mean. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:26, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
"I was used to [infinitive]" isn't anything a native speaker would say, except perhaps while inebriated. "I was used to [gerund]" would unambiguously mean "I was accustomed to [gerund]", not "I used to [infinitive]". But the OP is vague. S/he writes, "In some books you see..." but just what books are these? In order to assess the writer's purport, we'll have to see the phrase in context. LANTZYTALK 05:47, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
"I was used to shore up the number of men in the group." Matt Deres (talk) 13:18, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Or "I was used to run errands". And here's where the oddities of "use" come into play. If you say "used" with a soft "s", it sounds like bad English in those sentences, becaused "used to" with a soft "s" means "accustomed to" (unless there are some regions where they say it like a "z" in those circumstances). I wonder where that expression comes from anyway. But if you say it with a "z" sound, those sentences mean "employed to" or possibly "exploited to", and are good English. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:26, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Etymonline [2] unexpectedly lists used to under the verb form of use (that is, the "z" form). "The pronunciation is affected by the t- of to", apparently. It seems to say that, archaically, there was a present tense "I use to" construction... so I guess "I use to go running" would have meant "I go running regularly". 213.122.3.229 (talk) 16:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I remember being told when I was very young that "I used to <infinitive>" is common and vulgar, and the 'proper' way to speak is "I used <infinitive>" (e.g. I used like bananas, but I prefer strawberries now). That advice never rang true then, even in a family that prided itself on how teddibly correct it could be in an upper middle class sort of way, and it doesn't now. What this has to do with anything is marginal, but I thought I'd throw it into the mix. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 06:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
If they really told you that, they needed to go back to school themselves. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:26, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree it's "was used to [gerund]" being the proper form of which "was used to [infinitive]" is simply bad grammar. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 14:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Another question about "used to"

I have read from an American comic that when used as an active verb, "used to" retains the "d" even when used with the "do" auxiliary verb, such as "didn't you used to...?" To me, this sounds wrong. Is this correct usage or not? JIP | Talk 14:57, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
It's not. Auxiliary verbs take the imperative mood. -lysdexia 15:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
It's not correct, as you probably know, that auxiliary verbs are always imperatives (!), but you are right that "didn't you used to..." is incorrect. It should be "didn't you use to...". (In colloquial American English, though, both forms are pronounced identically.) Marco polo (talk) 15:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
No, the subordinate verb is imperative. -lysdexia 15:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.64.168.136 (talk)
Indicative?86.135.25.224 (talk) 19:19, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
No it's neither the imperative nor the indicative but the infinitive. In this case the form of the infinitive without "to" - in its turn it governs another infinitive, in this case with "to" --rossb (talk) 23:22, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
A simple explanation for ESL learners, and a similar thing with a little more explanation. When I'm having a blank moment, I find these things 'ping' me back into the language and I wonder what I was thinking! You can substitute in another verb like like, and it becomes clear: "I liked to eat..."/"I didn't like to eat...", adding the corollary that "used to do something" is always in the past. Interestingly (to me), discussion of used to (for example, in Imperfect) seem to treat it as a phrase, whereas I thought it broke down as "(I) (used) (to eat)..." and "(I) (didn't) (use) (to eat)...", with the to forming part of the infinitive. 86.161.108.172 (talk) 23:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Singular or plural

  • I want one of these certificates
  • I want one of this certificates
Which one is correct?--180.234.28.102 (talk) 18:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
"These". —Angr (talk) 19:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
It is "these" because it's plural. "I want this certificate," would be the correct use of "this." Falconusp t c 22:06, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Another Italian question

I know that my log-in name suggests that I am a native Italian speaker, but I am not. (I chose the name because of my interests in history, geography, and travel.) Anyway, I am learning some Italian in preparation for a trip to Italy. I will be traveling with my male partner, who speaks almost no Italian. I anticipate needing to say My friend and I... a lot. Here is my question: If I say Io e il mio amico... does this imply that he is my boyfriend/partner? I ask because if I Google this phrase, I see more instances of Io e un mio amico... ("I and a friend of mine..." or "A friend and I...") I am wondering if Italian is like German, where mein Freund usually means "my boyfriend/partner", and you have to say ein Freund or ein Freund von mir to mean "my friend". Can anyone answer? (He is in fact my partner, but I want to be conscious whether I am outing myself due to the possibility of a homophobic reaction.) Thanks. Marco polo (talk) 22:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm a native Italian. Don't worry, amico only means friend. You have to avoid Io e il mio ragazzo (me and my boy/guy) which almost universally means lover. Have a good trip here, Marco! --151.51.145.104 (talk) 06:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

September 3

Dutch Het

(Copied from the Wikipedia Help Desk Rojomoke (talk) 10:41, 3 September 2010 (UTC))
I need to know what het means in Dutch. I found it used everywhere and looks to be a definite article.

In this instance please: "Usils- genitivus van Usil, Sol, zon (in het Sabijns: Ausel)".Zanzan32 (talk) 08:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Het can be a definite article or the third person pronoun ("it"). "Usils – the genitive of Usil, Sol, sun (in the Sabines: Ausel)".—Emil J. 11:20, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
See Gender in Dutch grammar. Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:20, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
EmilJ's translation is good, except that in het Sabijns means "in Sabine" (that is, in the Sabine language). Marco polo (talk) 13:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you.Zanzan32 (talk) 07:08, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Leaving monkhood

With respect to Buddhist monk, is there a specific pali or English term for an act by which a Buddhist monk leaves his monkhood (and becomes a layperson again)? For example, an act by which he enters monkhood is called "Upasampada" or "Ordination".

182.52.102.58 (talk) 15:38, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The usual English expression for a priest to leave his profession is called either "Defrocking", "Unfrocking" or "Laicization" all meaning the opposite of "Ordination". These are primarily christian terms though. --93.241.232.86 (talk) 16:18, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I thought that defrocking means to be sacked as a priest, rather than leaving voluntarily. Alansplodge (talk) 17:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Slander and libel in online social contexts

Now I know that slander refers to spoken defamation of character, and libel to published, written defamation. When I think about online forums however, where the posts seem to be of a more conversational manner than normal online publications like newspapers, do these terms still apply the same? I find it strange to call someone 'libelous' when it almost feels like a prolonged conversation. I'd be tempted to call online defamation of character, in this sense, slander. Am I wrong? Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  20:26, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't know where this falls legally, but in everyday usage I feel the distinction between "slander" and "libel" has worn pretty thin anyway. A lot of people use them interchangeably. rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I do agree but I'd say, rather than the line wearing thin, it's more of a case of people using the two inappropriately and then others learning the bad habits. It's frustrating, to me at least, when people refer to newspaper lies as slander. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  23:32, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I think that's usually how lines wear thin... rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:32, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Language learning

I'm italian and i'm learning english language. When i'm reading in english I translate in my mind every word in italian. I want to ask if this way it's right. I think not but I dont know how to do.--93.47.40.126 (talk) 21:48, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I think that's inevitable when you're learning a language. I don't know how fluent you are, but when you become more fluent you'll rely less on your own language to understand. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  22:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
What he said. It's the natural course - at first, you translate everything, then you start subconsciously thinking in the foreign language when you speak it. Then, if you pursue your language studies long enough, you may wake up one morning and discover you just dreamed in a foreign language - that's quite a ground-shaking experience. TomorrowTime (talk) 22:46, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Ecco due collegamenti utili. Here are two useful links.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:55, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
The article on Language immersion isn't quite what I had in mind, but in general "immersion" means surrounding yourself with people speaking the language you want to learn. Kind of like the way kids learn a language, but accelerating the pace. That would probably be the best way to learn, if you have the opportunity. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:42, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Deewa / Pashto

Hello. This week I was listening to Voice of America in Pashto and was surprised to learn that there is a new and different version, VOA Deewa, apparently in "Pakistani Pashto," in supplement to the regular Pashto service. My question: is "Deewa" the name of the Pakistani Pashto dialect / regional variant; or is that the name of the radio station? Our relevant articles have no information on "Deewa" and I am curious what this word means. Any ideas? Thanks, Nimur (talk) 23:03, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

differentiate Slavic languages

hey guys. I like languages. I can speak French, Spanish, and English, and I can understand a lot of most Romance languages and tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese and Korean. However I can only tell if something is a Slavic language; I can't identify it. Can someone give me some tips on how to differentiate the Slavic languages in their spoken and written forms? I'm only interested in differentiating the ones that have major differences/are not mutually intellegible. 99.13.222.181 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:03, 3 September 2010 (UTC).

The written forms are easy. Almost every Slavic language has orthographic idiosyncrasies. Also, of course, some Slavic languages use versions of the Cyrillic alphabet, while others use versions of the Latin alphabet. See, for example, Polish orthography, Czech orthography, Croatian orthography, Russian orthography, etc. As for spoken forms, I agree that Slavic languages are generally closer phonetically than are the Romance languages, but there are substantial differences. For example, Polish has nasal vowels that don't occur in other major Slavic languages. If you study one or more Slavic languages, you will learn to hear what is distinctive about each of them. Marco polo (talk) 00:04, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
If there are a lot of consonant+z combinations in running written text, then there's a good possibility it's Polish; if there are a lot of hachek diacritics, then there's a good possibility it's Czech... AnonMoos (talk) 01:22, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Minor nitpick - South Slavic languages have plenty of hacheks too. However, the hachek on the r (Ř) is a distinctively Czech feature, so that's a good indicator. Similarly, the l with stroke (Ł) is a distinctively Polish feature. D with stroke (Đ) is a South Slavic thing, used in all ex-Yugoslav Slavic languages except Slovene (where you may still find it used for the sake of convenience when writing personal or place names that are Croatian or Serbian in origin). As for differentiating the languages when hearing them... That might be a bit more difficult for someone who doesn't speak a single Slavic language, unfortunately. I could tell you that to my ears, Czech sounds like a melodic language with plenty of diminutives that make it sound like a cute, almost childlike language, whereas Russian sounds like it's using all the right words, but assigns weird, unthought of meanings to them (for instance, where "krasno" means "wonderful, beautiful" to me in Slovene, it means "red" in Russian, for some inexplicable reason), but that doesn't help you much :) TomorrowTime (talk) 07:01, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Language recognition chart. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:19, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
On a side note, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are unrelated languages, so it isn't surprising that it is not hard to tell them apart. The Slavic languages, however, are by definition closely related, as are the Romance languages. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:40, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

September 4

Danish letter

I want to see if someone here (preferably a native speaker, but anyone fluent or knowledgable will do) can translate the following letter into Danish, or the accompanying dialect spoken near Sakskøbing.

Good Day! My name is Schyler Raadt, and I live in Texas, United States. There is an old family story that says our progenitor hails from your very estate! I hope and plan to someday visit your beautiful town as well as stay at your Bed & Breakfast. I have seen the pictures and they are amazing, but nothing is like real-life! I was wondering, are there any documents concerning this matter, specifically, illegitimate children born of local nobility? Also, are there any portraits of the nobility that once occupied your grand estate? I want to take this time to send my many thanks to you yourself as well as the entire people of Denmark. Your society is an example for the whole world!

Thank you Wikipedians for any help you can provide! schyler (talk) 01:31, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Help Desk Query

Wikipedia:Help desk#Need a Translation of Kanji. Any takers? (already suggested they come here). 220.101 talk\Contribs 03:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Miyazaki Shigesaburou - Japanese Wikipedia article on him is here. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:01, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your help, KageTora. If you would please, I need to have a Kanji List of IJN Personell DOUBLE-CHECKED against a Translation List of the Names to see if I made some Identification Errors.
Kanji - IJN Personnel
  • Isoroku Yamamoto
  • Soemu Toyoda
  • Mineichi Koga
  • Shirō Takasu
  • Nobutake Kondō
  • Jisaburō Ozawa
  • Chūichi Nagumo
  • Nishizō Tsukahara
  • Shigeyoshi Inoue
  • Takeo Kurita
  • Gunichi Mikawa
  • Seiichi Itō
  • Jinichi Kusaka
  • Boshirō Hosogaya
  • Takeo Takagi
  • Kakuji Kakuta
  • Matome Ugaki
  • Takijirō Ōnishi
  • Raizō Tanaka
  • Ryūnosuke Kusaka
  • Shōji Nishimura
  • Sadaichi Matsunaga
  • Kiyohide Shima
  • Chūichi Hara
  • Hiroaki Abe
  • Sentarō Ōmori
  • Tamon Yamaguchi
  • Takatsugu Jōjima/Takatsugu Jyojima
  • Ikuzo Kimura
  • Masafumi Arima
--Arima (talk) 05:22, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

How did British English and American English come to use different quotation marks?

How did British English and American English come to use different (primary) quotation marks? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.114.146.39 (talk) 07:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
British publishers have recently (in the last 50 years) changed the traditional rule that double quotes come first. Many of us in the UK ignore them and prefer the traditional British rule which is the same as the American one. Dbfirs 07:54, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
This sort of punctuation usage (along with other conventions such as spelling and layout) is more a matter of House style rather than national rules, and the most important consideration is to maintain consistency within an individual work. No-one ever (successfully) set out an official standard for such things (since no-one had the de-facto authority to do so), so originally individual writers and printers went with their own judgement. Eventually the majority in each 'national publishing community' somewhat converged in their practices, but every publisher had their own set of preferences and until quite recently most major publishers issued style or house-rule booklets to their authors and editors for guidance (I possess several). Some of these, notably the Oxford University Press's, were published for general (optional) use and became a more generally observed standard, but none constituted "the English/American rules."
Inter-work consistency is obviously important in, say, a series of textbooks or references written by various hands, but is less so in fiction, and most publishers would allow a fiction author to use their own preferred punctuation and other styles rather than the house's default if he/she felt strongly about the matter. Then, too, titles are often individually designed overall to achieve a look consistent with their subject matter (which might be historical romance or futuristic space fiction), and their punctuation style might be modified to fit within this context.
People who frequently read books published on both sides of the Atlantic usually assimilate unconsciously the conventions of spelling, grammar and punctuation of a particular work in its first few pages and thereafter don't consciously notice them, just as one is not normally confused by different people speaking in different regional accents. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 10:21, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Two passages in Dutch

I have difficulty in understanding the following:

"Sommige Etruskische steden raken op de achtergrond, andere komen op. Zeker voerde Etrurie zelden of nooit als natie -wat het niet was-of als federatie- wat het ook niet was -oorlog". ...

"Afgebeeld zijn o.a. een gebonden man genaamd Caile Vipinas die bevrijd wordt een zekere Macstrna. Zijn broer Aule Vipinas doorsteekt een tegenstander en op een andere schildering wordt Cneve Tarchu Rumach...gedood door een andere aanvaller uit Vulci.

Ondanks de vele raadsels die blijven, krijgt toch Claudius' versie van de Tarquinius servius Tullius affaire vastere grond onder de voeten, temmeer omdat een te Veii (en dat is veel dichter bij Rome) gevonden vaas een inscriptie draagt: Avile Vipiennas. ... De pikante mogelijkheid dat macstrna niets anders is dan een Etruskisering van de Romeinse titel 'magister'... opent duizeliingwekkende vergezichten".

...

Wie de Romeinse verovering van Etrurie puur beschrijft als mensen werk, vergeet -wat de Romeinse historiographie in tal van legenden heeft verwoord- dat Etrurie's ondergang en Rome's opkomst volgens de antieke opvatting bovennatuurlijk bepaald waren. ...

De reeds eerder genoemde Aulus Vibenna was na zijn dood nog niet uitgesproken. ....

Andere bronnen verduidelijken de zaak: het hoofd heet "Caput Oli", deze Olus was niemand anders dan Aulus Vibenna, het hoofdt wordt gevonden tijdens het funderen van de tempel op het Capitool, de uitleg van prodigium werd gegeven door een Etrurier.

Sorry for the length and thank you for your help.Zanzan32 (talk) 07:48, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Entymology of "-ish"

What is the entymology of the English suffix "-ish"? Is it related to the colloquial usage in the UK meaning "sort of", "somewhat" or "a bit"? --Rixxin (talk) 11:28, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, 1983 edition has "-ish, adjective suffix signifying somewhat... or like or similar to... sometimes implying deprecation" and gives the root as the Old English suffix -isc. The colloquial usage simply shews that it is still a productive suffix. DuncanHill (talk) 11:33, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
It's cognate with ancient Greek -isk-os, as in "Meniscus"... AnonMoos (talk) 12:06, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
@Rixxin: just FYI, what you are asking about is called Etymology. Entomology is the study of insects. rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots the relevant root is *-(i)ko-, which also, through various routes, gave rise to a number of other English adjectival suffixes, such as -y, from OE -ig; -ic, from Latin -icus and Greek -ikos; and -esque, proximally from Italian but derived from a Germanic root. Related is the Slavic -sky seen in English coinages such as brewsky and Russky, as well as such names as Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky. Deor (talk) 12:50, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
According to the SOED: ORIGIN Old English -isc corresp. to Gothic -isks, Old Norse -iskr, Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Frisian -isc, German, Dutch -isch, from Germanic: cogn. with Greek -iskos dim. suffix of nouns.
Is it related to the colloquial usage ... meaning "sort of", "somewhat" or "a bit"? Probably. SOED includes: (d) colloq. from names of hours of the day or numbers of years, with the sense ‘round about, somewhere near (the time or period of)’, as elevenish, fortyish. Wiktionary also agrees with this. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:30, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
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