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May 13

Intrusive word

Hey, me again, sorry for two questions in such a quick succession but my Spanish-speaking roommate is out and this is kinda urgent (for a paper due tomorrow). In Spanish when the subject precedes the verb one can cram an incredible amount of information between them with relative ease. When it comes after (as it sometimes does, due to the flexibility of Spanish syntax), this is still possible to a much more limited extent. My question is, in the latter case how much is "too much", as a rule of thumb (and what kinds of information can and cannot be crammed in)? For example, does it work to say "Hay muchas cuestiones a que se enfrenta hoy nuestra sociedad" (with hoy the "intrusive word"?) Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 02:31, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

That does sound a little inflated to me. I am by no means a native speaker (re: below). It would seem that the use of "hay" and "hoy" in the same sentence make for redundancy. Choose one or the other: "Hoy se enfrenta muchas cuestiones nuestra sociedad" or "Hay muchas cuestiones se enfrenta nuestra sociedad." Schyler (one language) 03:09, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

My Spanish is very limited, but I think that at least the second sentence proposed by Schyler is quite ungrammatical in Spanish. I'm not sure whether the first is ungrammatical or merely awkward. Hopefully we will get a fluent Spanish speaker to comment. Marco polo (talk) 17:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

"Hay muchas cuestiones a las que se enfrenta hoy nuestra sociedad" is a more natural phrasing--85.55.199.51 (talk) 21:36, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Reading Method

I have recently been attempting to read articles from a religious publication in Spanish. Is it better to translate word-for-word, looking up the words I don't know along the way? or should I read through and try to grasp the main idea? I find myself switching reading methods every other sentence. Thanks Wikipedians! Schyler (one language) 03:05, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It is believed in the Scientology organization that understanding of a book requires first complete understanding of the words. Their textbooks carry an introduction that warns the reader never to read past a word they cannot understand without getting it defined. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

They borrowed that from Winston Churchill, who may well have borrowed it from someone else. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:25, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

But that's at odds with everything I've ever heard from language pedagogy. It's best just to try your best to get the gist, only stopping to look up words if you find yourself totally lost. Often if you're a bit patient you can figure out unfamiliar words from the context. rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's a pedagogical method that should be obvious to anyone who has helped a child acquire their first language: you need to have a certain amount of exposure to more 'advanced' language and vocabulary, in context, that doesn't make immediate sense, and which you do not completely understand, to advance in natural language. Humans can only stand the 'look every word up and completely understand all possible meanings' approach for a very limited time, and it doesn't make for natural idiomatic language. That way lies people claiming compound words and idioms cannot possibly mean what they clearly do. 86.164.60.255 (talk) 20:32, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It depends if you're doing a translation or a paraphrase. For example, the King James Bible might be regarded as a translation, but the Living Bible is regarded as a paraphrase, where the words are translated from the original and then translated again into modern English. Do you want to share the exact translation, or convey the sense of the Spanish using idioms an English speaker would understand? --TammyMoet (talk) 14:58, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I definitely want to be pedagogical and definitely do not want to follow instructions from the church of scientology. I do indeed have both an English and a Spanish translation of the same magazine, so getting the gist is not difficult. I want this to help me to become a better Spanish reader, speaker, and listener. Schyler (one language) 15:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I can offer you these suggestions.

• First, read through the English version.
• Next, read through the Spanish version, highlighting with a yellow marker the words which you want to research.
• Then, research the words which you have highlighted.
• Finally, read through the Spanish version a second time.

I do not know your level of vocabulary, but you might find these links to be helpful.

• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Spanish_Swadesh_list
• http://www.infovisual.info/index_es.html
• http://www.watchtower.org/s/my/article_00.htm ("Las historias se cuentan en lenguaje sencillo.") If you change /s/ to /e/ in the web address, you can see the English version.

—Wavelength (talk) 18:42, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

OR: the first time I read a book in Swedish, at the beginning there were plenty of words I didn't understand, but I got enough to be able to follow the story and get the momentum to keep going, and by the end I was understanding far more. When I have tried to read books in Polish and Russian, though I understand some of it, there are just too many holes so I have never managed to build the momentum to keep going. (It's possible that the writing style had something to do with it - I got further with a novel by the Strugatsky brothers than one by Stanisław Lem). --ColinFine (talk) 00:13, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Word "few"

Where can i find the differents among few, afew and the few.124.43.25.100 (talk) 06:46, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

You might want to work on your spelling first. That's "grammar", "I" (capitalized), "differences", and "a few" (2 words). See wiktionary:few. As for "the few", that sometimes refers to an elite, as in "The few. The proud. The Marines." StuRat (talk) 06:52, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The original "The Few" was of course the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae but probably the best known The Few are the men of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain - they were immortalised by that appellation in a speech by Winston Churchill. Roger (talk) 11:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

few [1] noun: a small elite group ("It was designed for the discriminating few")

noun: an indefinite but relatively small number ("They bought a case of beer and drank a few")

adjective: a quantifier that can be used with countable nouns and is often preceded by `a'; a small but indefinite number ("A few weeks ago")

a (as in a few) is the indefinite article. Do not omit the space between a and few.

the (as in "the few") is the definite article.

Click on the links above for more information. The Languages Ref. Desk is a good place for this type of question. I changed the question title for easier reference. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:12, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It's also amenable to be qualified. In the following, "a few" has rather different meanings:

• How many people came to the meeting? Only a few.
• How many people came to the free drinks afterwards? Quite a few. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:28, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I find it noteworthy that "few" and "a few" actually mean almost opposite things. "A few" emphasises that there are more than zero, but "few" emphasises there are not enough. JIP | Talk 19:44, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being "not enough"; "few" merely means a small quantity of something. Juliancolton (talk) 23:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but the emphasis is on "not many", while in "a few", it's on "more than zero". JIP | Talk 03:13, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

JIP is right that their meanings are opposite; "few" is treated more or less the same as a negative in theoretical accounts of quantification. Compare, for example, the messages expressed by the following two sentences: "A few studies have investigated this issue"; "Few studies have investigated this issue." rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

太平洋 (Japanese)

Hi, in the Japanese 太平洋 for Pacific Ocean, has the use of 平 been influenced by the name "Pacific", or did the Japanese independently deem the Ocean "flat", "calm" or "peaceful"? 86.160.220.82 (talk) 13:58, 13 May 2011 (UTC) PS: I just thought to look up the Chinese, and I gather the written name of the Ocean is the same, 太平洋, so please replace "Japanese" with "Chinese" in my question as necessary.

太平洋 is a literal translation of "El Mare Pacificum". Oda Mari (talk) 15:42, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Mari, that's interesting. I thought that the Japanese/Chinese name for the ocean would have predated European contact -- but maybe in those long-ago days the people in the region only knew one ocean, so just called it "ocean"? 86.181.170.112 (talk) 17:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Note that the English language did not have a name for the Atlantic Ocean (as opposed to other oceans) until the 16th century [2]. Until then, the Atlantic was known simply as the Ocean or the Ocean Sea. [3] Marco polo (talk) 17:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Japanese people didn't take the ocean comprehensively. They call a body of water regionally like Sea of Hyūga, 日向灘 or 日向洋 in ja. You can see it on this 1880 map. This 1792 old map called the ocean "East Sea of Japan" (日本東海). Oda Mari (talk) 09:11, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

The Chinese name is also a translation. Before contact with that concept, the Chinese divided the various parts of the Pacific ocean closest to the Chinese coast into parts like the East China Sea and the South China Sea, with further sub-divisions. Most of these names are still used today. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 06:02, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Figures of speech

If I stuttuttutter that might be onomatopoeia. But if I break off in the middle of a senten... Or if I'm not so think as you drunk I am, is there a term to cover the use of words as examples of the situation? hełþ. In the exact situation broken, interleaved, sentences are used to express fragmentation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.139.247.229 (talk) 14:34, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Stream of consciousness? (Think James Joyce's Ulysses.) --TammyMoet (talk) 14:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Self-exemplars, maybe? Monty Python (in one of their books) came up with a much more elaborate listing of figures of speech in this vein... AnonMoos (talk) 15:11, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Deliberately breaking off in the middle of a sentence is aposiopesis. Deor (talk) 16:00, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

They are examples of a perlocutionary act. HTH, Robinh (talk) 02:46, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

See also self-referential sentences - the collection Metamagical Themas has an article on them. Sort of related: fumblerules. ---Sluzzelin talk 02:56, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Very many thanks to all. I was expecting one (perhaps greek) rhetoricians' term; your answers have been really useful. Fumblerule prize to See also: Muphry's Law. Be in touch, HJP —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.139.247.229 (talk) 17:08, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

"16 e.o."

I posted an ad for a sublet on craigslist, and I got a response from someone whose first language may be Russian that started: "I'm looking for a room for my friend from Russia. She's 16 e.o." Does this mean that she is 16 years old? I looked at a russian-english dictionary online, and the word for year that it gave me didn't seem to start with the russian version of an e.... Thanks for your help! I don't really want to live with a teenager in my house! :) Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:35, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't answer the question (maybe just a typo?), but be aware there are various scams (on both the tenant and landlord sides) around relating to this sort of situation - see here. The response you got sounds a lot like bait for something dubious. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:54, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It might be that she is sixteen eons old, in which case you probably have some sort of wizard on your hands! Lexicografía (talk) 21:45, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

If the writer is Russian, it could be because the "ye" of year would be transliterated into Russian as the single letter "e", which is identical with the English letter "e", and he/she's confusing the transliteration with the English original. That's easy to do when some letters in Russian are identical with those in English in both look and pronunciation, while others look the same but are pronounced differently. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

May 14

Official English Name for Japanese Organisation

Resolved

• 経営科学系研究部会連合協議会

Would this be the Council for Scientific and Economic Research? Google doesn't seem to know anything about them, so I am guessing this is not the official English name. Does anyone know? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:30, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

技術開発本部 of NTT DATA was in it. Ask at here. Oda Mari (talk) 09:14, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

経営科学系研究部会連合協議会 appears to be a Japanese organization consisting of 7 member organizations, which are mostly research groups within academic organizations. (See parenthetical explanations of the organization in [4] and [5]). 経営科学 seems to be the Japanese word for management science. I doubt "Council for Scientific and Economic Research" is the official English name of the organization. --173.49.9.195 (talk) 09:41, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, right, thanks, both of you. No apparent official name, then? Ah well. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

[EDIT] - Thanks, Mari - I contacted NTT Data, and they told me the English name is JASMAC, or Joint Association Study Group of Management Science. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:05, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Whence vs. from whence

Ever since a friend pointed out an "improper" use of "from whence" in a sentence where "whence" by itself would do, I've noticed the use of "from whence" whenever I see it. Looking in the OED just now I see many many quotations using either form, and wonder whether there is a pattern to when "from whence" (or "of whence") is better than "whence". Some examples: Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, "Of whence, I pray? Tra. Of Pisa, sir." But also Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, "Let him walke from whence he came." Dryden's translation of Virgil's Æneis, "Resolve me, Strangers, whence, and what you are." But also from Dryden's same translation, "From whence these Murmurs, and this change of Mind‥?" Other examples include C. Brontë, Shirley, "The laughter and mirth of her uncle and Hannah and Mary, she could not tell whence originating." Dickens, Oliver Twist, "The little room‥looked into a garden, whence a wicket-gate opened into a small paddock." Dickens, Bleak House, "From whence have we derived that spiritual profit?" Is there any rhyme or reason to "from whence" vs. "whence"? Is "whence" by itself considered more "proper", unless the context requires a "from" or "of"? Pfly (talk) 03:46, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Fowler has a bit of a diatribe about the use of whence and whither vs. where from and where to. Much of it is diffuse and very much contrary to the spirit of the "plain speech" he advocates. But at the end, he comes right out and says it clearly: .. occasions arise now and then ... to which whence and whither are ... more appropriate than any equivalent. They should be allowed to stand on their own feet; not even the examples that can be found in the Psalms and elsewhere justify the use today of the tautology "from whence". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 04:03, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you can hardly go wrong with just plain whence unless you're Bob Dylan, who used "you better go back to from where you came" in "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues". Deor (talk) 04:18, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, and I see now that even the quotes above that seemed to require a "from" or "to" don't really. This originally came up after watching the Fellowship of the Ring movie, in which Elrond says "The ring must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came." Afterward my friend commented on this, claiming that Tolkien would never have written such a thing (I had never considered it before) And, googling "lord of the rings" "from whence" just now, I see there are many web pages out there making this exact point. Perhaps saying "from whence you came" is like saying "to whither you go"... Dylan's "to from where" is great. Reminds me of Pogo. Pfly (talk) 05:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, "from whence" is used no less than 27 times in the King James bible (compared with 45 uses of "whence" without "from"), but the tautology, probably used there for emphasis, is best avoided in modern English (if you use "whence" at all) unless you are deliberately aiming to sound archaic. Dbfirs 06:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

"From whence" has a long precedent. It's likely to be a remnant of the middle english case system. It's only been criticised as "redundant" or "tautology" recently by literary critics (who are mostly NOT linguists) who probably still use perfectly modern tautologies such as "boxing ring", "Guinea pig" or for a closer to home example, "for free". Personally I feel that if you just have "whence" on its own without "from" it looks more archaic and overly formal. 94.112.33.204 (talk) 22:36, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

... and if you don't want to sound archaic and formal at all, just use "from where" and avoid "whence" completely. Dbfirs 06:57, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I used to wince at "from whence" until I realized how old its usage is. A quick search of the 1611 Authorised King James Version of the Bible yields no fewer than 35 hits, of which the most familiar is almost surely the first verse of Psalm 121 beginning "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." See all 35 hits here There are also 11 examples in John Wycliffe's earlier translation of the New Testament alone, and even the "21st-century King James Version" keeps "from whence" for the solitary case of the 121st Psalm, no doubt because the phrasing's so ingrained in Christians' biblical memory. [I earlier tried similar searches from on-line versions of Dickens and Shakespeare, but the search engine there doesn't seem to be working.] So, contrary to my earlier opinion, I don't think anyone (including you) should doubt the correctness of using "from whence". The more difficult question is where it would be better or more euphonious than "whence" without "from". "To whence" (as in "go back to whence you came") is actually more compact and elegant, if archaic, than any alternative I can think of ("back to where you came from", "go back where you came", "go back to from where you came", etc.) —— Shakescene (talk) 07:37, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

The King James bible contains many usages that now sound archaic, and "whence" on its own occurs more often in that translation than "from whence", but I agree that your "to whence" usage is the neatest form. Perhaps it is just a matter of taste. Only 27 of your claimed hits are genuine. (Google is not always your friend.) The New International Version, the English Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, The Message, the New Living Translation and the Contemporary English Version (and other translations in modern English) have no instances of "from whence" so modern translators evidently consider this phrase to be obsolete or archaic. Dbfirs 17:42, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I was using the count from Bible Gateway's own passage search of different versions, not Google. But then seeing the selection of bibles you searched (heavy on the Evangelical side), you must have been using Bible Gateway yourself. I agree that "whence" isn't common contemporary English: too often one can consciously or subconsciously think of "when", just as the "where" in "wherefore" has misled countless audiences in Juliet's Balcony Speech ("Wherefore art thou Romeo?). —— Shakescene (talk) 08:14, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that they use Google, but I might be wrong. Their search engine certainly uses Google's annoying habit of returning finds whenever the words occur anywhere near each other. I searched the King James bible text using Word, where only exact matches are found. Dbfirs 16:36, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

(after edit & archive conflicts) My mistake was not seeing the choice for "exact phrase" in a letter-box at the top. Using that, I got 27 results, too. If you enter "from whence" at a site that includes more of the Apocrypha, you'll see ten more hits (apparently in order) here, out of 82 for any "whence" Even for "whence" alone, the New Revised Standard Version yields no hits in its original American form (National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA), but the "Anglicized version" has one in the (far-from-universally-canonical) Fourth Book of Maccabees 13:12, here. (I may report later on what I found from searching the Roman Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible (1582 & seq.), New American Bible and New Jerusalem Bible.) —— Shakescene (talk) 04:00, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

What is the honorific treatment for a friar?

A Catholic priest is called father, as in "Father Raymond blessed this house". Is it correct to say "Fray Simon gave bread to the poor"? Fray is the treatment given to friars in Spanish. I'm currently working in the translation of the article National University of San Marcos from its Spanish version. There's been some controversy on whether Fray should be translated, but no one seems to know what would be the translation. Fray is used on other WP articles on historical figures who were friars, but the talk pages of such articles have the same unresolved issue. The question remain, when called by their name, what is the title that friars receive in English? Asinthior (talk) 04:09, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Friar Tuck was apparently called "Friar Tuck". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 04:42, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Fra Angelico, Fra Lippo Lippi, Fra Luca Pacioli. I don't see why Spanish and Italian friars should be treated differently. The best Wikipedian way to answer the question would be to look at any of the examples you found that use Fray and see how that person is named in reliable English-speaking publications (history books, Britannica etc). Then use that word in English, or if Fray is used, use this as a reliable reason to follow suit. Sussexonian (talk) 07:55, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, the treatment changes in each language, men are treated by Mr. in English, Señor in Spanish and Signore in Italian. So Fra is the exact equivalent of Fray in Italian. The problem is to find the equivalent in English. I have no access to history books in English, but if Friar Tuck was actually called Friar Tuck, that should solve the issue. I'll perform a google search and see if the term is used in the same way in English as Fray is used in Spanish. Thanks for the help!! Asinthior (talk) 14:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Roger Bacon was definitely called "Friar Bacon" (at least in the sixteenth century) - see Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. However, it's a decidedly old-fashioned usage - a contemporary friar would probably just be called "John Smith OP", assuming he wasn't ordained priest. Tevildo (talk) 17:11, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

If you're going to use something other than Friar or Fra or Fray, I would suggest "Brother", which is a literal translation, and has frequently been used for monks. (Friars are basically monks without a monastery.) Looie496 (talk) 17:32, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Looie496 is right - I wasn't sure if friars (rather than monks) would be addressed as "Brother", but here's something that looks reasonably official [6] where a Franciscan cardinal is described as "Brother Wilfrid Fox Napier, OFM". Tevildo (talk) 19:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict) Modern Franciscans apparently call themselves "Brother" or "Br" for short. Friars were chucked out of England at the Reformation and not allowed back in until the 19th century(citation needed) so addressing them as "Friar" is probably rather archaic. Alansplodge (talk) 20:02, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Didn't get that right - a history of Franciscans in England here.

So this is my fault for not providing more context. What you all say about Frair being a bit archaic is totally true, and actually that was the reason why I didn't know how to translate it. In modern Spanish, friars are called brothers. The section of the article I'm working on is the history of the university. As the oldest university in America (the continent) it was founded on the 16th century. Back then, friars were not called "hermano" (brother in Spanish) but fray, hence Friar Tuck being exactly what I was looking for. Since I'm not a native speaker, this is a character I'm not very familiar with, so I couldn't think of it by myself. Thanks again for all the feedback. Asinthior (talk) 22:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

So the decision is that based on the Fray-ing pan, it's in with the friar? Clarityfiend (talk) 01:20, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, brother... --Jayron32 01:33, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Probably a bit late, but I've just remembered Friar Laurence. Alansplodge (talk) 22:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Interpretation of words spelled the same

• "In just a minute I can give you a hand with that."
• "In just a minute amount of air, you will find traces of Helium."

Despite both sentences beginning the same, I find it easy to read one word as /ˈmɪnɪt/ (1/60 of an hour) and the other as /maɪˈn(j)ut/ (very small). These are two separate words (AFAIK), and even though they are spelled the same, I have no trouble with reading the "correct" word, even before getting to the context clues in the rest of the sentence.

My question is: Is there a term/explanation for this kind of automatic reading comprehension? How does my brain know which word is which before I can determine it from context? ^Avic_ennasis @ 05:05, 10 Iyar 5771 / 14 May 2011 (UTC)

The words themselves are homographs but not homophones and so are heteronyms.

I can see no way you could possibly know which meaning is intended in either case, without reading the context, so I surmise you must read beyond the word "minute" but do so so quickly that you don't realise you've done it. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 05:10, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with J of O. Richard Avery (talk) 07:28, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Quite possible, I'm sure - Although it still kind of amazes me. :) ^Avic_ennasis @ 07:38, 10 Iyar 5771 / 14 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, try this test. Assume you've never seen these sentences before. Put a card over all the words after "In just a minute", in both sentences. Can you tell what comes next, in either case? Of course you can't. Now uncover the next word of both sentences - aha! it's already obvious the bottom one is referring to a small amount and not a unit of time. And the top one is probably the other one. When you look at a relatively short written sentence, you do NOT restrict your view to just the first word, then just the second word .... then just the last word. You see the whole gestalt, because your brain demands information in order to make sense of what it's taking in. It's probably far more complex than that, and I'm no expert on how the brain processes visual information. But suggesting you somehow just "know" which is the correct interpretation without ever seeing any of the context necessary to come to that conclusion is just fanciful, as I hope I've just demonstrated. (ec with Brainy Babe below, whose post is relevant to what I've been saying.)-- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:45, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a phrase for this, although I can't remember it. It is known in the teaching of speed reading (and reading comprehension generally) that the eye -- or more correctly, the brain -- can see and absorb some distance around the point that appears to be its focus. It's a specific example of the usefulness of peripheral vision. BrainyBabe (talk) 09:34, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I know it as "chunking". When reading, we tend to read about 6 words at one time without realising it, and I have taught speed reading using this concept. --TammyMoet (talk) 16:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

It works with numbers as well. Telephone numbers are best presented as separate chunks of digits rather than as one continuous series of digits, e.g. 5149 1274 is much easier to remember than 51491274, because we see it as 2 numbers each meeting the "5 plus or minus 1" condition, rather than 1 number that's too much. Or for mobiles, 0413 611 112 is better than 0413611112 - which is why the Yellow/White Pages always does it that way. I'm forever correcting clients' resumes about this. This is so incredibly basic, that it's apparently considered not worth teaching at school. Problem-solving techniques include breaking a gargantuan problem down into "smaller bite-size chunks" and working on each separately, and this works on exactly the same principle. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:24, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

There's a good picture at Reading (process)#Methods that illustrates how we read. What's important to know is that fovea has very high visual spatial acuity, but it drops off from there. Things are blurrier the further they are from the thing you're looking at. But you can still sort of read the blurry words in the periphery, which gives you clues about the context of the current word. So when you're looking at the word "minute", you are also read the following words, and based on part of speech information, you pick one pronunciation or the other. ~~Andrew Keenan Richardson~~ 02:06, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

summarizing English language, history, and culture with a brief line or two of verse?

Which brief line or two of verse would best act as a reminder or summary of the English language, history, and culture (the primary emphasis being on language). To give you a better idea of the question, I imagine it would be by a preeminent writer such as Shakespeare or someone like Alexander Pope, it could be extremely densely packed with imagery, and it could be grammatically interesting enough to be worth remembering on that point as well. I imagine it would be by someone with a pretty sweeping ken.

So, some candidates for the kinds of things I am thinking of:

"Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

This is interesting in that it summarizes life as a whole, is in English, and refers to the "storyteller" explicitly. Any other candidates? 78.92.80.250 (talk) 08:58, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" seems to capture something rather profound... --Jayron32 09:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

This was from a letter to the editor on the subject of British citizenship, and how much immigrants should be expected to integrate or adapt. (Hence "British" rather than "English".) I paraphrase: "I always thought the best definition of Britishness is to be able to laugh at oneself, in English." Pithy! BrainyBabe (talk) 10:08, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

My husband is fond of telling me of a book a German friend of his once showed him, which contained something like the following: "Throughout history, wars have been fought to decide which is the best race, colour, or creed. The British have never needed to fight such wars because they know they are the best race, colour and creed." I just wish he could remember what this book was!--TammyMoet (talk) 13:44, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't it Cecil Rhodes who told someone: "You, sir, are an Englishman, and have therefore won first prize in the Lottery of Life!"? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:10, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

If you want something inspiring, there is nothing better than the "band of brothers" passage from Henry V:

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.

Looie496 (talk) 19:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

o/~"The English are all that a nation should be, and the flower of the English is Donald and me!" Perhaps that doesn't work so well out of context, although it _does_ satisfy the "gramatically interesting" criterion as Swann has (correctly) put "is" rather than the more natural (but incorrect) "are". But it should also be "Donald and I", although that wouldn't rhyme. Tevildo (talk) 20:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Why should it be "Donald and I"? Surely it is accusative, and hence "me" is not only natural, but perfectly pedantically absolutely correct? Is there an actual reason, or have you been muddled by being corrected to "x and I" so many times? 86.164.60.255 (talk) 11:26, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not accusative, since it's not the object of a transitive verb. The verb is is followed by a subject complement, which is in the nominative case. Deor (talk) 12:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. :) To descend about as far into pedantry as is safe for this sort of discussion, the English cases are subjective and objective, not nominative and accusative. See English personal pronouns. More seriously, I can't think of any non-humourous verse specifically about the English language - The Chaos is widely cited, and there are many shorter rhymes on the subject of English orthography, but has any poet actively praised English as a language? Tevildo (talk) 15:19, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes; James Elroy Flecker wrote "O friend unseen, unborn, unknown, / Student of our sweet English tongue, / Read out my words at night, alone: / I was a poet, I was young."[7] ("To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence"). He's a bit neglected now but I love "The Golden Journey to Samarkand". Alansplodge (talk) 16:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

He is an Englishman!

For he himself has said it,

And it's greatly to his credit,

That he is an Englishman!

For he might have been a Roosian,

A French, or Turk, or Proosian,

Or perhaps Italian!

But in spite of all temptations

To belong to other nations,

He remains an Englishman!

-- AnonMoos (talk) 22:54, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't recall anything specific right now but I believe Rudyard Kipling's works could be worth examining. Roger (talk) 07:50, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course, there's always John of Gaunt's dying speech from the first scene of Act II of King Richard the Second:

This royal throne of kings, This scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, This seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, This little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,...

This blessed plot, This earth, This realm, This England.

or more pithily (or some would say emotionally)

There always be an England, and England shall be free, if England means as much to you, as England means to me!  [8]

—— Shakescene (talk) 08:34, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

"To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery of life", attributed to both Kipling and Rhodes. 92.28.245.12 (talk) 14:59, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I mentioned that (in slightly different wording) above. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:30, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Kardomah

This is an old tea and coffee brand name, founded in Liverpool in the 19th century, whose owners opened a chain of coffee shops (Kardomah Cafés) in England, mostly in the North, and Wales. I've googled the origin of the name, but the best I can find is hearsay that it's either Arabic or an Indian language and means 'pavilion'. Does anyone recognise it? --Heron (talk) 13:13, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

There were still some Kardomah cafes in the City of London when I started work there in the 1970s. Watch this space... Alansplodge (talk) 19:05, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

You could try asking at the Kardomah Blogspot. Some quite interesting stuff there not covered in the WP article (except of course, the origin of the name! Alansplodge (talk) 19:15, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I deliberately avoided using that blog as a source, to avoid contaminating WP with possible plagiarism. But it wouldn't hurt to ask about the name, I suppose. --Heron (talk) 19:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

All I can suggest I'm afraid, after half-an-hour of furious but fruitless Googling. Alansplodge (talk) 19:39, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I have emailed the blogger and I'll report back if I learn anything new. --Heron (talk) 21:26, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

According to this result from Google Books; "At the Liverpool exhibition (1887) were sold the first cups of "Kardomah" tea, whose exotic name became that of a chain of cafeterias." The footnote links it to a book called "A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea" which suggests a Sinhalese origin may be more likely(?). Alansplodge (talk) 13:11, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

This site implies that it was a word made up to sound exotic, deriving from Mikado. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:31, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

A pure guess: any connection to cardamom, which in some Arab cultures is used with coffee (and in Ethiopia with tea)? BrainyBabe (talk) 15:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I thought of that - it seems to come from the Greek word for cress[9]. The Arabic is Habbahan or Habbu al-hal.[10] Alansplodge (talk) 15:28, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Is there a free-licensed list of the 65,536 most common English words?

There is a truly miserable piece of legislation proposed in the U.S. called the "Protect IP Act", a successor to the failed COICA. It strives to force search engines and DNS servers to censor results for sites accused of hosting copyright violations.^[11] I think it would be instructive to create a browser plug-in whereby people type in two or three English words, which are converted to a four or six number IP address which is then accessed. The first step is to find a free licensed or public domain list of more common English words which has 65536 entries (the word's position in the list determines its numbers). Ideally it would be possible to get the 65536 most common English words (with no duplication of entries according to whether they are capitalized), since that way any humdrum sentence a person cares to write contains as many IP addresses as words, minus one. Wnt (talk) 19:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

There's a pretty good compilation of lists (not sure on the capitalization bit though) at wikt:WT:FREQ#English, a couple of which go out to as many as you are looking for. Lexicografía (talk) 01:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

There are lots of freely available text corpora that have this sort of information. The Linguistic Data Consortium lists a lot of them. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't see the LDC response when I started, but as I browse through these it seems like many (all?) of them are very much unfree. For this application it is best to have a list that is not merely free licensed but absolutely and irrevocably publicly available, even if the source were pressured to remove it from public access. I tried Wiktionary's Gutenberg text set, and it sort of works, with the caveat that it is very much not English. I worked it down to 67,000 entries by pulling out the most garbled stuff, and ended up with what I call the "a kanaka" set (because 127.0.0.1 translates to that). Wikipedia's IP of 91.198.174.232 translates to "pewter freundlichen", and Google's present 209.85.146.105 translates to "mauleon serment". It's unarguably a nice mnemonic aid - I could memorize the text 100 times faster than the IP number - but it isn't quite to the point where a given IP can accidentally come up in conversation. The Gutenberg list has a whole lot of this foreign crap, but it's missing nearly all of the ordinary common English words that I just think of off the top of my head. "muggy", "swordfish", "petunia", "firebrick" - that's 0 for 4 on a test I just did.

Perhaps I should reduce my request simply for freely licensed dictionary lists of English words, without looking for what is common - because even if there are really a million English words, I couldn't find more uncommon words in a dictionary unsorted by usage. Wnt (talk) 06:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

65,536 seems a lot. There may not be that many English words recognisable to the average English speaker. Of course, it makes quite a difference whether you count plurals and verb forms (-ing, -ed, -s) as separate words... 86.160.83.169 (talk) 13:54, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The article on English language suggests there might be a million words. Missing 4 out of 4 convinced me that a much larger set than the English subset of the Gutenberg frequency list should be possible. Wnt (talk) 18:12, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I am pretty confident that almost all of those million words, if they exist, will not be recognisable to the average English speaker. I would be very suspicious of the quality of 60,000+ word list that doesn't contain the four you mentioned. I have a list of 59,000 words collected from various (non-free) sources. I am fairly sure it contains essentially every word that I know (including your four!), plus large numbers that I don't, plus some proper names, plus some garbage and non-words too. 86.160.83.169 (talk) 19:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, it's an enviable list. The U.S. doesn't have database copyright, so I doubt a mingled, flat, unsorted list of words from various sources is conceivably copyrightable. Is it available? Wnt (talk) 09:15, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I am very sorry, but I have made a stupid mistake. I hadn't looked at that file for some time, but I remembered it was extremely comprehensive. I did a quick line count but misread the result. It is not c. 59000 entries but c. 590000. On this basis you may wish to ignore all my comments in this thread. 86.183.0.69 (talk) 12:51, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

You may also be interested in the PGP word list 67.162.90.113 (talk) 23:32, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I looked into this and quickly moved over to S/KEY, an interesting alternative. It has a standard dictionary, and is relatively straightforward... except for an impossibly confusing parity scheme. I have RFC 2289 and RFC 1751 and looked into the examples, and sometimes it's all collinear (the words versus the bytes, that is) except for the last word, or the second word, or most of the words, and I don't know why at all. Using a Stupid Me version where I simply add a "1" at the end to fill out a set of three 11-bit words, and the standard 2048-word dictionary, 127.0.0.1 gets "up a act" (which I'll 'name' this method to distinguish it from others), Wikipedia gets "orb ike brad", and incredibly that Google IP I used above comes up as "coed bite arts", ISYN. Wikileaks' 64.64.12.170 comes up as "jim act gem" (the coincidental "act", because 64.64. and 0.1 both contain many binary zeroes). Since every word in the S/KEY scheme is four characters or less, the Google address is as long as a phrase can be in this system. Of course, it is possible that with such small dictionaries a sorting out could be done to make better parts of speech. The only deficiencies here are that a) it still lacks is my original desire to make it so that virtually any sentence contains IP addresses, such that it is truly impossible, even in concept, to distinguish "forbidden links" from "ordinary speech" and b) it just lacks a certain panache to use such a simple word set. Wnt (talk) 09:15, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

This reminds me of RFC 1605 SRICE_{13 (TALK | EDITS)} 03:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Alas, this RFC from 4-1-94 lacks precision on the technical details. Wnt (talk) 19:20, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

May 15

approximately how many ancient Greek writers would we have any material at all from?

Hi, Approximately how many ancient Greek writers would we have any material from, even quoted by someone else? Are we talking dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands?

According to this part of Classical_demography#Ancient_Greece_and_Greek_colonies our article, there were only some 700,000 people in all of Greece in the eighth century, which increased to only perhaps 3m as late as the fifth century (the "Golden age of Greece").

that's not that many people - nothing like America these days, and in addition I don't know how high the literacy rate was, but people wouldn't have had as much free time to write, I imagine, and there would have been no Internet to make it very easy to do so, etc, etc. And finally, there is 2000 years in which manuscripts could have gotten lost or misplaced.

So, it seems, that out of the "hundreds of thousands" or "several million" ancient Greek people who existed, we certainly wouldn't have writing by hundreds of thousands or several million people?

so how many people do we have writing in any form by? It must be more than dozens, but is it hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of ancient Greek writers? 188.157.228.177 (talk) 09:31, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

A lot of the Greek writings stems from the Hellenistic period, where Greek culture and language had spread over a vast area, prompting many non-Greeks to write literature in Greek (this continued in the Roman era as well). --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:54, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

so that's what, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of writers...? 188.157.228.177 (talk) 10:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the number of Greek-language authors from the archaic period to the 5th century AD (just to make an arbitrary division, since Greek literature flourished in the Eastern Empire much longer than that), it was certainly in the thousands, but I wouldn't dare make a more precise estimate. However I should think scholars in the field would be able to narrow it down further, since a lot of the scholarship has revolved around registering lost authors through the use of citations and quotations in extant works. I have seen claims made that only 10% of all ancient Greek literature has survived to this day, but I can't find any precise citation for it at the moment. --Saddhiyama (talk) 10:52, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The German WP has a featured article on the loss of books in late antiquity. It says that around 2000 names of Greek authors active before 500 CE are known and (parts of) writings of 253 authors are extant. The source (quoted in English) for "less than 10%" is given in a footnote. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:04, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

This is the exact kind of response I was looking for. Wow, we only have [even] a single sentence of original ancient Greek writing from 253 authors in total?? That can't possibly be right, can it? I could just download ALL of ancient Greek literature as one big volume with no more than 253 authors? 188.157.228.177 (talk) 12:23, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "a single sentence"? Plato alone fills a decent book shelf, Aristotle another. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I've changed the sentence to be clearer by adding the word "even". I mean that even a single sentence second-hand (but a direct quotation, not just an oblique reference or paraphrase) is enough for me for that author to qualify as "extant". So, even by that very loose standard, it appears that there are 250 or so Ancient Greek authors who I could read in their original words, however few. 94.27.166.8 (talk) 14:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Good find, Wrongfilter. Yes, according to the German article you linked it is the 2000 remaining known authors which today only exists in a single sentence of reference, while the 253 are authors with one of more relatively extant works. If we take the "less than 10%" extant literally that would mean that there was approximately 20.000 active Greek authors in during the period (of course this is conveniently disregarding the fact that the 10% is mentioning written works, not individual authors, and the amount of works extant by each author varies greatly, so it could be even less). --Saddhiyama (talk) 14:21, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

No, 2000 names are known, and for the majority of these we have nothing. For Greek authors, we have writings (unclear how much we need to count them) of a little more than 10%. If Latin authors are included, we have writings for less than 10% of antique writers. --Wrongfilter (talk) 14:52, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

You could look at the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae site, or ask them... AnonMoos (talk) 13:44, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

This is one of those tragedies of the humanities that is usually forgotten. There were playwrights who won numerous prizes and of whom we have nothing more than their names ... or so I've heard. Is anyone up for translating the German FA? (Is there a movement or policy to translate FA articles from all languages into the English Wikipedia?) Please post this request elsewhere, if you can think of any useful place. BrainyBabe (talk) 15:12, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

A lot of miscellaneous information about now-lost books of antiquity is preserved in Suidas. Before the battle of Manzikert, Anatolia was actually kind of the center of gravity of the Greek-speaking world within the Byzantine empire (with a far greater number of Greek speakers there than in Greece itself), so a lot was lost in the early Turkish invasions, and then of course the 4th crusade... AnonMoos (talk) 15:46, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I once asked this question of a friend studying Classics at Oxford. He waved at a shelf-full of Loeb and said (paraphrasing from memory), "everything we have from the ancient Greeks is there". Matt's talk 15:00, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Prooemium

Years ago I read a book that had a preface, a foreword, and an introduction. Today I was pleased to discover another word meaning more or less the same thing. Prooemium, or prooemion (when I looked it up, I found both spellings.)

-Are there other words that mean an introductory section in a book before the main body, or have I now found them all?

-Prooemium or prooemion?

-Are these words interchangeable or do they have shades of difference, in the past if not now?

Acknowledgements and dedication also come to mind as "preliminary sections" before the main text of a book, though I think they are not introductory in the same way. Are there other rarer "things" of this sort? Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 14:08, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Prooemium/prooemion is often anglicized as proem. See Preface for some distinctions commonly drawn. Deor (talk) 14:44, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary lists the following words under the category "prologue or introduction": forespeech, prologue, preface, proemy, preamble, proem, exordy, prolocutory, forespeaking, prooemium, preparation, introduction, induction, introducement, prelude, proposition, foretalk, exordium, prolegomenon, epistle, inducement, isagoge, propylaeum, motto, programma, foreword, foretalking, programme.

Great Scott! Wanderer57 (talk) 22:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

German estzett versus Greek beta?

Greek β (left) and German ß (right) in Times New Roman (top) and Arial Unicode (bottom)

Could you compare the difference between the German estzett and the Greek letter beta for me? They look the same to me, I'm trying to copy the Greek alphabet and it seems I should be writing the same letter (German estzett), which I know. What's the difference? This is where I'm copying from:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Greek_Handwriting.jpg

and here's the German estzett: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F

It just looks the same to me. 94.27.166.8 (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

In Code page 437 they were exactly the same, but in various fonts they have different forms... AnonMoos (talk) 14:37, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

They look coincidentally similar, but they're not literally the same thing. Estzett is literally a combination like ʃ + Ʒ (I've written U+0283 Latin letter Esh (s) and U+0292 Latin small letter Ezh (z), but I don't know if those are actually the most appropriate comparison). By comparison, of course, the Greek beta is one letter. Wnt (talk) 18:09, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

It's ſz (ſʒ) or ſs. Read eszett: the derivation is obvious in Fraktur. It's only in Roman that it becomes obscure. — kwami (talk) 05:40, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Know thyself

I've read the article, but I'm still not sure what "know yourself" is suppossed to mean either in classical times or now. 1) Does it mean "know your place", do not be ambitious or have pretentions? 2) What is one suppossed to know if one does "know yourself"? Some idea of one's own personality perhaps, or other things? 3) What is suppossed to happen to a person who does not "know themselves"? Thanks 92.15.25.241 (talk) 16:26, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The full quotation is "Know thyself - nothing else". I agree, it is a bit confusing, but considering where it was written, I suppose modern man shouldn't be surprised! There is another quotation "The proper study of man is man himself" (Alexander Pope), which I guess is related. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:15, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The exact quotation from Pope is "The proper study of mankind is man", which is in fact preceded by the line "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan" and therefore seems closer to "know your place" than any more modern idea of self-knowledge. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 22:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

And then there's what Socrates supposedly said: "The unexamined life is not worth living". Also, hippies always used to say they needed to "find themselves". StuRat (talk) 04:57, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Not for some ways you could "know yourself":

1) Know who you are attracted to, so whether you are heterosexual, homosexual or something in-between.

2) Know your capabilities and limitations. As Clint Eastwood said (or rather his Magnum Force character, Dirty Harry, said) "A man's got to know his limitations".

3) Know your likes and dislikes.

4) Know your opinions on all issues. This may seem simple, but many people have no opinions at all on many issues.

5) Know your religious beliefs.

6) Know your political beliefs.

7) Know your philosophical beliefs. StuRat (talk) 05:03, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it is meant to suggest that one should not just form opinions from emotion, but should adjust them in the light of knowing one's own biases and jealousies. 92.28.245.12 (talk) 15:03, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

The writings of the Baha'i Faith equate knowing oneself to knowing God: --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 15:24, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

“ O My servants! Could ye apprehend with what wonders of My munificence and bounty I have willed to entrust your souls, ye would, of a truth, rid yourselves of attachment to all created things, and would gain a true knowledge of your own selves -- a knowledge which is the same as the comprehension of Mine own Being. ” — Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, sec. CLIII, p. 326-27, quoted in Psychology and Knowledge of Self

"Know thyself? If I knew myself I'd run away." - Goethe

I found this quote a few years ago. Whether Goethe actually wrote or said it I do not know. Wanderer57 (talk) 22:30, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

very pregnant

How does "very pregnant" compare with simply "pregnant"? (The phrase "very pregnant" is used 86 times in article mainspace).Smallman12q (talk) 18:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Any woman who is "with child" is pregnant, whether her condition is noticeable to a casual observer or not. "Very pregnant" is usually used to describe a woman whose condition is glaringly obvious, with a huge belly. Deor (talk) 18:56, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

deor is correct, but there is another sense in which it can be used. Applying qualifiers like "very" or "a little bit" to "pregnant" is used idiomatically to indicate that there's no such thing as a matter of degree when you're talking about something. generally it takes the form of the first speaker asking a question, like so

Man 1: "did you make a mistake?"

man 2: "a little bit"

man a: "so you did! don't tell me 'a little bit' that's like saying 'she is a little bit pregnant!'"

that might be a midwestern US thing but I've heard it fairly often HominidMachinae (talk) 07:47, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't follow this conversation at all, HM. Not at all. What roles do the three men play in relation to each other? Why are two of them known by numbers but one by a letter? Why are two of them merely "men" but the other is a "Man"? Why is "man a" very sure "man 2" made a mistake but Man 1 is so unsure, he has to ask a question? If the mistake was not obvious to Man 1, how can "man a" be so sure there even was a mistake? I just don't get it. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 08:47, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

It looks to me like "Man a" was supposed to be "Man 1", too. There's no reason why the speakers need to be men, of course. The rest makes perfect sense. I don't understand your "men" versus "man" comment. They all say "man" now. Maybe it was changed (or do you refer to only "Man 1" being capitalized) ? StuRat (talk) 16:37, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that. The whole thing reminded me of the infamous "1, b, 4" sequence. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:27, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

If one is describing the fact that a pregnant woman is close to the time of delivery, it might be better to say that or to describe her as "heavily pregnant", rather than as "very pregnant". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:51, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

No woman wants to be described as heavy! I find "very pregnant" always presents exactly the image I want - someone who is very large out front through being near delivery time. It takes fewer words or syllables than any alternatives I can think of, and doesn't seem to offend anyone. HiLo48 (talk) 08:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary notes, in its "pregnant" entry: "a heavily pregnant woman (= one whose baby is nearly ready to be born)". Gabbe (talk) 21:23, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

@ HominidMachinae: It’s not only a midwestern US thing. In Germany we also say that “there is no such thing as being a little bit pregnant”.-- Irene1949 (talk) 16:10, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

The word 'gravid' looks like it refers to a woman heavy with child, but it simply refers to the state of pregnancy. A woman in the very early stages of gravidity may not even know she is gravid. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 06:50, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

May 16

Translation for film title

What is the best translation for the film title "一只狗的大学时光"?

Apparently it could be "The Only Dog of College Times" - But is there a better translation? WhisperToMe (talk) 02:56, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

You've got it a little backwards. It would be the college years of a (certain) dog. I'm not sure about a colloquial translation. "One dog's college years", maybe. (The Chinese doesn't say "years", but I think that's how you'd normally say it in English.) Or maybe "A dog's college life", "The college life of a dog", "One dog's time in college". — kwami (talk) 05:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I would go with "A dog's college days" or something like that. Your (Whisper's) confusion was due to the character 只, which is homophonous/homographous (is that even a word) with the character meaning "only" but in this case it is a classifier commonly used for small animals like dogs, cats, and birds. (In traditional characters I believe it would be written 隻 instead of 只, in which case there isn't the ambiguity.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:34, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, "days" sounds better. But for A dog's college days, wouldn't you normally just say 狗的大学时光? — kwami (talk) 05:43, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

"狗的大学时光", without anything modifying the "dog", would be something like "college days of dogs", like a certain part of every dog's life, which doesn't quite make sense here. Without context, I might suspect it's about the college life of a person called (nicknamed) "Dog". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:59, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

"A" can have that generic sense as well. I was thinking "one" would better convey a particular dog. But maybe it's too far the other direction? or doesn't 一只 have the connotation of a particular? — kwami (talk) 10:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

That is true, "a" can be generic whereas "one" is more particular. But I think in this context it's sufficiently clear that we mean "of a *particular* dog", or at least just as much as the original? I think that "一只" isn't quite clearly "a particular" - that would be, say 某一只 or 那只. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:19, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I think "The University Days of a Dog" or feels the most apt, because it's got that slight formality (compared to A Dog's College Days) present in the original title. No special objection to "College" except on variety of English grounds since in my particular variety "university" is the equivalent of 大学 and College means something else. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:55, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, guys! I will use The University Days of a Dog

WhisperToMe (talk) 13:29, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Brazilian Portuguese help

Hi! What would be the Brazilian Portuguese words for "Recovered" and "Unrecovered" as in the recovery or lack of recovery of a human corpse? What is "Storage"? And is "Cozinha" used for an aircraft galley?

It's for a translation of an Air France 447 seat map

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 13:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Self services ice cream machine

For the customers, should i put " After use, Pull the handle all the way up" Or "After you use it, pull the handle all the way up" What is the correct wording?

The first one is in a better tone for written instructions. - filelakeshoe 15:35, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Except that the "P" should be lowercase. StuRat (talk) 16:43, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Neither is correct, because both are vague. Does the customer have to pull the handle up immediately after some operation is finished, or simply at some point in the indeterminate future? If you replace "after use" with a precise description of the condition requiring the handle to be pulled up, the problem will probably solve itself. Looie496 (talk) 16:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I think if you read the section header it's quite obvious what they mean. After you've filled the ice cream cone (by pushing the handle down), put the handle back to the top. Obviously immediately, since the customer then takes their ice cream cone and walks away. - filelakeshoe 16:54, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, if you make the instructions too long in the quest to eliminate all ambiguity, then nobody will read them, and the ice cream will continue to dribble out. StuRat (talk) 22:39, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Looie's version of a stop sign:

"Stop your vehicle's forward motion entirely, relative to the frame of reference of the Earth, unless you are in an emergency vehicle, and are current engaged in an emergency response. After your vehicle has fully stopped, you may proceed." :-) StuRat (talk) 22:42, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

[ʎ]

Hello all. I am learning Spanish and I cannot get the [ʎ] sound quite right. I usually realize it when I come across it as a [j] or [ʝ], which isn't too bad but I would really like to get it right since the distinction is made in the dialect of Spanish that I am learning. Your article seems to imply that the only difference between [ʎ] and [j] is that [ʎ] is lateral, with air flowing over the sides of the tongue, whereas [j] is central. I don't really understand how to pronounce a /j/ sound to make air flow off the sides of the tongue; can give tips on how to pronounce it? THanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 21:06, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

It's probably best to start from the [lj] cluster found in English words like million. Basically [ʎ] is an [l]-sound produced with the blade of the tongue against the hard palate (i.e. a palatal consonant) instead of the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (an alveolar consonant). If you try to compress [lj] into a single consonant instead of a cluster of two consonants, you'll be getting close to a proper [ʎ]. (For Spanish, as you mentioned, it's not really necessary to use [ʎ] for ll since increasing numbers of dialects use [j] or [ʝ] instead, but it's good to be able to make a [ʎ] anyway, in case you want to learn Italian, French, or Portuguese later.) —Angr (talk) 21:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

French? I wasn't aware that it was present in French. What would be an example word? --Trovatore (talk) 23:33, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Fille, although in most accents [j] is preferred. - filelakeshoe 00:01, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Another way you might try is by making a [l] (which is a lateral you probably can do), and then curl the tip of your tongue forward so that rather the tip being on the alveolar ridge, the middle is sort of resting on the palate a bit further back. Or make a [j] and raise your tongue so that it's touching the top of your mouth. Both of those will get you close enough. - filelakeshoe 22:07, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

What accent are you learning? In Spain the [ʎ] has all but disappeared in recent times, though you can still hear it in rural areas of Extremadura. --Belchman (talk) 23:30, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Just looking at this discussion, [ʎ] seems to be one of those sounds which gets bullied out of languages. In Slovak I swear I very seldom hear native speakers pronounce it.. they seem to replace it with a dark [l] or [w] (like a Polish Ł). Is there any language where it's actually a phoneme in relation to sounds next to it? - filelakeshoe 00:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Italian, apparently: take voglio [ˈvɔʎʎo] ("I want") compared with volo [ˈvolo] ("flight"). Lfh (talk) 10:08, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Right, voglio sounds very different from volo, but the more interesting question is whether it would be distinguished from *volio, if there were such a word (as far as I know there isn't). I think the rendering of the -gli- sound as [ʎʎ] is a little misleading; that may be the actual phonetics on the oscilloscope, but it's *perceived* more like [ʎj]. --Trovatore (talk) 19:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Well then, does maglia rhyme with Italia? In theory, no. In practice, I don't know! Lfh (talk) 20:24, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's an off-rhyme. The [ʎ] sound is definitely used, at least in the area where I lived. Whether it's used distinctively is another question; can't think of a real example of that. --Trovatore (talk) 20:53, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's alive and well in Serbo-Croatian. It's not as healthy in Macedonian, despite having a separate letter for it (Љ). No such user (talk) 11:14, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

May 17

Referenced in

Is "he is referenced in school textbooks" good standard American English? It sounds poor to my Br. Eng. ears. I would say "referred to in school textbooks" or, better "mentioned in school textbooks". The meaning should be "mentioned", not "used as a source". This is for a biography of an American, so I want it to sound right in US English. Thanks. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:50, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

To me (also British) "Einstein is referenced in school textbooks" means that works he authored are used as references. "Einstein is referred to in school textbooks" means that the books mentioned Einstein". I think this is what Itsmejudith is saying too. Are we saying that the meaning is different in American English? -- Q Chris (talk) 10:55, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I was wondering whether it is good American English for the meaning "he is mentioned in school textbooks". I think we have some American copywriters around who would know. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:44, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The New York Times Manual of Style (1999 ed.) states "reference is business jargon when used as a verb. More natural substitutes include cite, mention, and refer to." Unfortunately, I don't seem to have access to a more recent style guide that discusses the word. My non-expert guess would be that in the 12 years since the NYT guide I quoted was published the use being questioned above has crept into common enough use that it's more or less acceptable. As someone with what I would consider a fairly strong grasp of American English, I have to say the word as used above strikes me as not really right and not the best choice, but only because it was pointed out to me. If I encountered it in a piece of writing or everyday speech, it probably wouldn't set off any alarms. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 12:42, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much, so "mentioned" is slightly better but it isn't a big deal. Will leave it till the article is proofread, then. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:24, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm also an American English speaker, and I would interpret it exactly the same way as Q Chris. "He is referenced in school textbooks" means his works are listed as references; it's not the same as "He is referred to in school textbooks". —Angr (talk) 21:01, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed (by another US English speaker). StuRat (talk) 09:29, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Hellenic State

I would like to find the official German and Italian translations of the name of the Hellenic State. As far as I know, these names should exist, considering that it was a puppet government of both Germany and Italy.
I'd like also to know the official Japanese transcription (if it actually existed) of the various names of its former puppet states: in the Mengjiang article, only the Chinese romanization of 蒙疆聯合自治政府 is given (Měngjiāng Liánhé Zìzhì Zhèngfǔ). In the Reorganized National Government of China article, 中華民國, along with a lot of other alternative names, is romanized only as Zhōnghuá Mínguó.
Just another question: what's the (official) German translation of Mengjiang United Autonomous Government? Thanks --151.41.226.47 (talk) 11:51, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Mengjiang is 蒙古聯合自治政府 in ja and the Hepburn romanization is Mōko rengō jichi-seifu. Reorganized National Government of China is 汪兆銘政権/Ōchōmei seiken or 南京国民政府/Nankin kokumin-seifu or 中華民国南京国民政府/Chūkaminkoku Nankin kokumin-seifu. Oda Mari (talk) 14:35, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

After searching in vain for possible German and Italian translations of "Greek State" or "Hellenic State", I'm wondering if that was ever truly an official name for anything. Even in English there aren't really any references for "Hellenic State" referring to the Axis government. Is this one of those things that was just made up for Wikipedia? Adam Bishop (talk) 15:24, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The WP article seems to suggest the official name in Greek was Ελληνική Πολιτεία. As a puppet government it probably didn't have an official name in German, so would just be translated somehow, like how the WP article says it can be translated as either Hellenic State or Greek State into English. Not being able to see the references really doesn't help, it might well be an invented term. - filelakeshoe 16:07, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The name Ελληνική Πολιτεία was used in official documents in the occupation period; see here for example. The name "Griechischer Staat" may not have been commonly used as a long form at the time in German. The Gothaisches Jahrbuch für Diplomatie, Verwaltung und Wirtschaft (1943) often shows long-form names for the countries it lists, but Greece is called "Griechenland (Helliniki Politia)." In the article it refers to the "Umwandlung des Königreichs in einen 'Griechischen Staat' (Helliniki Politia) 7. Mai 1941" (conversion of the kingdom into a "Greek State" on May 7, 1941). Note the quotes around the name.--Cam (talk) 03:31, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Reflection

This is the third time that "Louie496" has deleted one of my posts. Please stop!92.15.1.9 (talk) 14:05, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Is there another word I can use instead of "reflection" in the sense of thinking about one's actions with a view to improving them next time? An essential part of professionalism, but the word is easily misunderstood to refer to mirrors etc. 15:05, 16 May 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.28.245.12 (talk)

Can't think of one off the top of my head, but if you say "self-reflection" then that rules the mirror ambiguity out. - filelakeshoe 15:07, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

"Self-critique" would be clearer; other options are "self-assessment" or "self-appraisal". Or if you want to be clever you could call it a post-mortem. Looie496 (talk) 16:40, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Or "self-correction" or "self-improvement" ? StuRat (talk) 16:45, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Gibbs Reflective Cycle is a pretty standard model for reflective practice in nursing and teaching. (Why don't we have an article on this? I know - write it yourself! How much of the linked article can I get away with nicking?)--TammyMoet (talk) 18:39, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Introspection? Contemplation? Meditation? Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 13:07, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

May 18

The Spanish word for hair

I was taught in school that the Spanish word for hair is pelo. But I was reading the instructions on my shampoo bottle today, and the English instructions were translated into French and Spanish, and in Spanish, they used the word cabello for hair. What is the difference between pelo and cabello? 216.93.212.245 (talk) 18:58, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

In Spanish I'm not sure, but if it's the same as in Italian, then cabello (Italian capello) is a hair on your head, whereas pelo (same word in Italian) is a hair on your body, or on an animal. --Trovatore (talk) 19:22, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The correct, accurate Spanish word for hair on your head is cabello, but colloquially you almost always say pelo, which means hair in general. --Belchman (talk) 21:59, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Why do we write "table" and not "tabel"?

Count Iblis (talk) 19:06, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The spelling shows the influence of (Old) French table. In the absence of such influence, we'd probably spell the word tabule (since it's origin is Latin tabula) rather than tabel. Deor (talk) 19:19, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, it would result in a change of pronunciation. The word "bell", for example, has a short 'e' sound. The word "table" is pronounced with a sound more like a short 'u'. If we were to have spelled it "tabel", the "bel" in it would be pronounced like "bell" not "bull". Aacehm (talk) 19:27, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Right, so, 'table' does not rhyme with the female name 'Mabel', or some people's pronunciaton of 'Babel'? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:35, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, English spelling and pronunciation really don't correspond so simply. The English pronunciation of "table" has already changed a fair amount since we took it from French, where it's pronounced /tabl/ (as one syllable). - filelakeshoe 19:50, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't try to find consistancy in English orthography, like ever. You can find reasons why a word is pronounced, but then to claim that this is some how incredulous or wrong or shouldn't be the way that it is simply doesn't work, if you did that, most of the English language would have to change the way it is spelled. Consider tomb/bomb/comb and your head will explode if you care too much. It is what it is, and you can't argue with it. Just accept it as it is. --Jayron32 20:02, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Jayron, people are incredulous, things are incredible. People can sometimes be incredible, but no thing can ever be incredulous. Oh, and I still admire the consistency with which you spell 'consistency' as "consistancy".  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:12, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I've never claimed to be smart, or right, about anything. In fact, I'm pretty well convinced that everything I do is wrong. --Jayron32 05:31, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Read this and you'll never need to ask a question like this again :) - filelakeshoe 21:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Some of the wording on that page is very similar to some of the wording in my copy of the book Crazy English.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:47, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

May 19

Agent Smithspeak

In The Matrix Revolutions, we see the character of Agent Smith appear again, who throughout the trilogy has a very distinctive way of speaking. But what's interesting and amusing is how well Bane, who is supposed to be infected with Smith's mind via the Matrix, manages to copy this same distinct pattern of speaking. What's amusing is that the ability to talk in just this manner is clearly infectious; just as the seed of vampirism has spread throughout "Vampire Goths", it is plausible that someday a whole high school subculture will have millions of children infected with this Agent Smithspeak. But I'm not very observant linguistically and it's hard for me to tell - does the uniqueness of Smith/Bane's speech depend on what they say or how they say it? How hard is it to copy this speech pattern convincingly? Wnt (talk) 03:56, 19 May 2011 (UTC)