Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 October 10

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October 10

Gallus gallus

What's the etymology behind calling chickens French twice? KageTora says Latin for chicken is "pullus"; why not "pullus pullus"? This is something of a joint question from both of us. Vimescarrot (talk) 00:07, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

According to wiktionary, gallus is the Latin for rooster. Algebraist 00:12, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

In Latin, gallus (rooster) and Gallus (Gaul, or inhabitant of present-day France, Belgium, or northern Italy) are homophones. Gallus (Gaul) is an ethnonym probably based on the name that a Celtic people used to describe themselves. Gallus (rooster) is a word probably derived from the Indo-European root *gal-, which meant something like "call" and/or which may have been an onomatopoeic imitation of a bird's call. The English word call is probably derived from the same root. It is something of a coincidence that the two words are homophones, but the Romans liked puns about Gauls and roosters. Marco polo (talk) 00:32, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

As to "why not Pullus pullus?", you'd have to ask Linnaeus - he made the decision, and, by the Principle of Priority, his name for the species stands. Tevildo (talk) 00:36, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Nicely done! And swift, too. KageTora says: "that's what teamwork gets you! a speedy, well-worded and informative set of answers!" So he likes it, too. Cheers, keep up the good work! Vimescarrot (talk) 00:41, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, see Gallic rooster, one of the national symbols of France, hence Le Coq Sportif. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:42, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah! Now it all comes nicely together! Cheers all! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 02:43, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

If I may contribute a pun: There's also the long standing rumor that the element Gallium was named not after France alone, but also after its discoverer Paul Emile Lecoq ('the rooster'). --Pykk (talk) 19:47, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Also on the naming things twice: It's not uncommon for common animals, who've given name to their families, to have such a double-name. I'm far from being a birdwatcher but I do know the magpie is 'Pica pica' and the eagle-owl is 'bubo bubo'. Oh and a funny one: The ocean sunfish is 'mola mola'. --Pykk (talk) 19:51, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I know; rattus rattus, puffinus puffinus. Double-naming has a name, but I don't remember what it was. Vimescarrot (talk) 20:59, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

There's also octopus octopus. It seems like sometimes Linnaeus ran out of branches to his naming tree, but each branch needed a name. It's funny how the French went with Middle English for their word for rooster. Spanish stuck with the Latin-based "gallo". →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 21:10, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

There are even triplets, of course, if one includes subspecies names, my favorite being Gorilla gorilla gorilla, the Western Lowland Gorilla. Deor (talk) 02:20, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

That's a gorilla megillah. :) →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:35, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Some biologists have been known to employ a dash (or more) of humor in naming species. (I seem to recall that we have a list somewhere; but I can't find it at the moment, so see here.) I wonder if there's an organism out there named Lui lui. Deor (talk) 12:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Poking around at the site I linked in my preceding comment, I found that binomial names like Gallus gallus are known as tautonyms. In addition to our article on the topic, we also have a List of tautonyms. Deor (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Tautonym, that's it! Cheers for that. 90.195.179.24 (talk) 21:48, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

"contract conclusion" meaning entering into vs. finishing a contract?

I was given some policy documents to translate at my Chinese firm and upon doing so have been told that my choice of vocabulary doesn't match up well enough with the PRC's English legalese. That's well and good and an easy thing to change, but one particular sticking point that's bothering me is the use of the word "conclude" or "conclusion" when discussing contracts. In this PRC legal document sitting in front of me it's used to mean entering into or beginning, as seen here:

The conclusion of employment contracts shall comply with the principles of lawfulness, fairness, equality, free will, negotiated consensus and good faith.

...not really too striking there as understanding it to mean conclusion of negotiations isn't difficult, but deciding to use "conclude" in this fashion forces the author/translator to write this in another section:

The conclusion, performance, amendment, termination, and ending of employment contracts by state authorities etc. etc.

...which just sounds wrong to my American no-legal-experience ears, especially the "ending of" part - that just looks silly and in my mind should be where conclude is used. I get the impression that the translator simply looked up the CHN word in a dictionary and just chose the wrong word. Conclude works - sometimes - as in the first example, but is the wrong word at other times - like in the second example.

OR, this is a common legal document convention that I am ignorant of - a reasonable possibility and the reason I'm driven to ask this question here... Thank you for any clarification you may be able to provide...218.25.32.210 (talk) 05:42, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

In UK law, "formation" is the general term, although "completion" is used of certain types of contract, specifically those for the sale of real property (real estate). (I imagine this is where your translator went wrong). The actual process of creating the contractual documents is "execution". "Termination" occurs when the contract ceases to operate before it's fulfilled according to its terms ("fulfilment" might be better than "ending" in your translation). See Contract. Tevildo (talk) 11:00, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Quick follow-up - if your lawyers tell you to use "conclusion", use "conclusion". That's what they're paid for. :) Tevildo (talk) 11:07, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

OP here, at home now. Thanks for the quick reply. This isn't a lawyer-related issue, it's just my boss looking at the PRC English version of the law that our policy is based on, and comparing it to my translation of the company's Chinese document, and asking me "why are you using contract composition when they say contract conclusion?" and me answering "because I think the government's official translation is wrong...61.189.63.208 (talk) 14:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

If there's an official English translation of the statute, then it makes sense to use the language that's in the statute, even if it's not the word that would appear in an English legal document. I fear that saying anything else would stray into the area of legal advice. Tevildo (talk) 18:22, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I would interpret it the same as you, but I can see why "conclusion" could mean the start of the relationship described in the contract. "Contract" can be a verb as well as a noun, the verb referring to the act of negotiating and signing the contract - that act is concluding when the relationship starts. --Tango (talk) 18:36, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Some of the problems in a goevrning statute are the prerogatory rather than statutory as they appear. In social science, it also refers as ‘sanctimonious prose of the orthodoxy’ (not of the religious prose). A small firm may also have such prose. However, a written contract usually a statutory nature with of a prose like: The employment contracts shall comply with the principles of lawfulness, fairness, equality, free will, negotiated consensus and good faith. Nevill Fernando (talk) 23:53, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the Chinese translator went to an American school and is getting his own back for being told that "commencement" is at the end of the term. Sussexonian (talk) 15:31, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

OED, s.v. 'Conclude (v)', meaning 11. "trans. To bring (a matter) to a decision or settlement; to decide, determine (a point, a case at law). b. To settle, arrange finally (a treaty, peace, etc.)." I certainly do not find anything odd about the phrase "concluded an agreement". But I agree that it could be ambiguous. --ColinFine (talk) 22:22, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

That's probably where it comes from - the _contract_ comes into existence when the _agreement_ is concluded. It's still not normal (or legal) English to compress that into "the conclusion of the contract", though. Tevildo (talk) 22:43, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Translation from Polish (?) Bulgarian

Could someone translate the following text for me? The information may be helpful in tracking the orthography of a name for an article, unlikely as the source may be. Note that copy-paste has not worked very well for many of the letters, but I don't know enough to make the corrections. The link shows the correct version, I hope:

Kaloyan-Atanasow izmyslil kompiuter zaedno z Clifforden Berry 1939 godina w Iowa State Uniwersity proektiral ustroistwo ABC (Atanasoff-BerryComputer) samo ima edin problem nikuga nie prorabotil taka 4e ako gleda6 6ol na Slavi te towa nie go kazacha estestweno a za Bulgary nie mi gowori gywiach tam i znam dobre kakyw narod sa i nikuga nikuga nie oceniawaj cal narod po niakolko chora ty si ot tozi typ chora kojto gywejat z minalo z towa si izbiwa6 kompleksy 4e w momenta ste naj .....sam si dowyr6y

Thanks. Bielle (talk) 16:27, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I can't read the language, but the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (which was not what we understand as a "computer" today) was built by John Atanasoff and his assistant Clifford Berry, if those are the names whose spelling you want. --Anonymous, 18:00 UTC, 2009-10-10.

Thanks, 208.76.104.133; I am interested in anything that casts light on the Atanasow/Atanasoff difference. Atansoff's father changed his name to "Ivan Atanasoff". I am looking for the exact form of his name prior to the change which seems to have originated at Ellis Island, and then was formally confirmed by him later. Bielle (talk) 18:18, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I presume you're aware that in Polish words/names written as "-ow" are pronounced (roughly) "-off", and that American officials at Ellis Island documenting immigrants (many of whom were illiterate and/or non-Anglophone) were apt to write down names according to their own orthography as they thought they heard them, without regard to those immigrants' own usages or preferences? 87.81.230.195 (talk) 19:03, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

It's Bulgarian, as is the name (Атанасов), which would usually be transliterated as "Atanasov". (Meaning "son of Atanas", a common Bulgarian name, itself derived from Greek Athanasios) The -ov ending is common in Russian and Bulgarian names. (Actually Polish names don't usually have it, they use -ski, but they do have a lot of people of Russian heritage, and in those cases it'd become "-ow", since 'w' is the 'v' sound in Polish) The "-off" transliteration isn't random, I believe it's a French transliteration variant that got carried over into English, esp. in the 19th century. E.g. the Orlov diamond was often written 'Orloff'. And inconsistently: an old edition of the Chekov play might read "Ivanoff, a play by Anton Chekov". Anyway, the original name here would definitely be written "Atanasov" in English today. --Pykk (talk) 19:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I assumed, rather than knew, about the "ow" sounding like "ov", and I did know about the Ellis Island informal name changes. (It happened in other places, too.) The Greek root for the name is interesting and something I did not know. Bielle (talk) 22:19, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I recently read an article (possibly linked from the RD!) asserting vigorously that the popular notion of Ellis Island as a hotbed of linguistic ignorance is a myth: there were translators on hand for Polish, Yiddish and so on. Of course, Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic, so the spelling would have to change anyway. —Tamfang (talk) 07:43, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Just in case. . . while I am appreciative of the information provided above by so many, I would still like a translation if that is possible. Continuing thanks Bielle (talk) 01:59, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I changed the title of you question to attract Bulgarian-speaking users' attention. I hope you don't mind. — Kpalion^(talk) 11:46, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Not being a Bulgarian speaker myself, but it's Bulgarian written by a forum user who has a non-Cyrilic keyboard (see Volapuk encoding) which makes it look like Polish. It starts something like:

"@Kaloyan: Atanasov thought up [the] computer togethr with Clifford Berry in 1939 at ISU [and] planned to build the ABC but one problem, noone [or nowhere?] would take on the work" Why it is written on a Grand Prix forum in an article about Murray Walker I have no idea. Hopefully a proper translation will be along later! Sussexonian (talk) 15:25, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

It's nothing like Volapuk encoding (which I hadn't come across - thanks!), but what makes it look odd is the use of 'w' to transliterate Cyrillic 'в': this transliteration works for Polish and German, but in English sources we are more used to seeing it transliterated as 'v'. Incidentally, in Polish the ending cognate with '-ov' is '-ów', pronounced /uf/, not 'ow'. --ColinFine (talk) 22:40, 11 October 2009 (UTC)