Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 23:30, 26 September 2022

Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

Shortcut

WP:RD/L

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
Note:
- We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
- We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
- We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
- We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

September 19

How much Hindi is written in Latin online?

When I see content in Hindi online it is mostly written in Latin characters, especially on social media. For instance:

Sony Entertainment Television's Twitter account: https://twitter.com/sonytv
StarPlus's Twitter account: https://twitter.com/StarPlus
Star Bharat's Twitter account: https://twitter.com/StarBhara
Even on some government websites, e.g.: this logo

And yet our page about Hindi does not say anything about this practice (we have an article about Roman Urdu though). Do we have data about this use? Is it only limited to social media? Informal texts (SMS for instance)? Are there regional differences in India (more Latin in Mumbay and Delhi? less in rural areas?)? A455bcd9 (talk) 16:02, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The link "Romanized Hindi " redirects to Devanagari transliteration, which says "Many webpages are written in ITRANS. Many forums are also written in ITRANS." -- AnonMoos (talk) 16:24, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, unfortunately this section isn't sourced. And we don't know how much ITRANS is used ("many websites": 1% of Hindi content? 10%? 50%? 90%?). A455bcd9 (talk) 17:30, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Many webpages are written in ITRANS. Many forums are also written in ITRANS"—This statement is not just unsourced, but plain wrong. ITRANS is a specific scheme for the scholarly transliteration of Devanagari (more specifically, it is a scheme that only makes use of ASCII characters, replacing diacritics by upper case letters and punctuation characters). However, the use of such scholarly transliteration schemes is almost entirely restricted to the academic world. In non-academic contexts (websites, social media, messaging, etc.), an non-standardized informal type of transcription is used. --Jbuchholz (talk) 07:45, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I added "citation needed span", but it may be better to remove this sentence entirely. I'm surprised that I cannot find reliable sources on this subject. For Arabic, there are many articles on this subject (example). A455bcd9 (talk) 08:00, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I found this source: "Romanized variants are the dominant form of native language expression online. In a collection of YouTube comments [...] Hinglish [note, here: Romanized Hindi, 52% of comments, vs 46% for English and 1% for Hindi in Devanagari] was by far the most used form of expression." They also offer a map of India with the regions where Hinglish is more used (vs Hindi in Devanagari).

I'll update the related Wikipedia articles accordingly. A455bcd9 (talk) 07:58, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

September 21

How old is use of singular they as a specific (e.g. nonbinary) person's pronoun?

Singular they says use of they to refer to a nonbinary person is a 21st-century thing. That seems surprising to me given how long singular they has been in use and how long other nonbinary pronouns have been in use — e.g. "Ve held up vis right hand; I reached down and took it, and began to haul ver up; ve shook vis head impatiently", using ve as a specific character's pronoun, is from a 20th-century book. Are there 20th-century (or earlier) examples of they being used as a specific individual's pronoun? -sche (talk) 00:40, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You can look at "What's Your Pronoun: Beyond He & She" by Denis Baron (2020, ISBN 978-1-63149-604-2) for a whole long list of proposed third person singular gender-neutral pronoun proposals starting from 1792, but the great majority of them were invented to solve the generic masculine problem, and to have a pronoun that could refer to both men and women equally. Alternative gender identities aren't mentioned until 2003 on the list. "Ve" was coined in 1971, as part of an early 1970s period of feminist exuberance; some of the proposals from that period were used to refer to specific persons, but so that the listener or reader wouldn't be constantly (some would say unnecessarily) reminded of an individual's male or female status, not really to express alternative gender identities. However, in her 1928 novel "Orlando", Virginia Woolf uses "their" twice to bridge the transition of the character Orlando, who mysteriously and spontaneously transitions from male to female while sleeping (like Gregor Samsa I guess, but much less disgusting...). AnonMoos (talk) 08:28, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One use of singular they that I suspect arose in the 21st century is to refer to a known, specific individual who does identify as one of the two traditional genders, as in: "A friend of mine told me that they were interested in buying a new sofa for their living room", when the friend in question actually uses either "he/him" or "she/her" pronouns. Up until the 2010s or so, I only heard this usage when a gay or lesbian person was trying to conceal the gender of their partner (we called it "playing the pronoun game"), but since then I've heard it from younger people all the time, when they aren't actually trying to conceal the gender of the person they're talking about, they simply consider it irrelevant to the conversation. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:16, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here a 1992 use is quoted, apparently intended to conceal the gender of the referent of the pronoun, known to the speaker. --Lambiam 10:27, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My 1987 Chambers 20th Century Dictionary says "often used as a sing. (with pl. vb.) of common gender, he or she...". DuncanHill (talk) 11:02, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I can trace that definition at least as far back as the 1959 edition. DuncanHill (talk) 11:22, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1794:

In 1794, a contributor to the New Bedford Medley mansplains to three women that the singular they they used in an earlier essay in the newspaper was grammatically incorrect and does no ‘honor to themselves, or the female sex in general.’ To which they honourably reply that they used singular they on purpose because ‘we wished to conceal the gender,...

Bazza (talk) 10:40, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would be interested in seeing the original "honourable reply" -- if they really used the word "gender" rather than "sex" in 1794, I would find that surprising. I thought "gender" meaning anything other than grammatical gender was considered -- at least imprecise, well into the 20th century. --Trovatore (talk) 19:59, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So, using singular they to conceal gender happens for non-LGBT-related reasons as well, which isn't surprising. But using it even though there's no desire to conceal gender really seems very new to me. It's almost as if indefinite noun phrases like "a friend of mine" are being treated as indefinite pronouns like "someone". —Mahāgaja · talk 13:22, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We could be overthinking this. It's quicker and easier to say "their" rather than "his or her" and no meaning is lost. 2A00:23C3:F780:EC01:945:BF17:9FE0:1DC6 (talk) 13:30, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but it's not quicker in cases where a known "him" or "her" is being referred to. I think force of habit might start coming into play. I use singular they so often when corresponding on the internet, it has bled over into face-to-face conversations where I know someone is a she/he, but "they" has just become more natural. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 14:09, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I personally remember people saying they when either they did not know or did not want to mention the gender of the person at least as early as the 1970s. But it was considered slang and the same person would have written "he or she." So it was spoken rather than written English. If one wants to find an example of its usage, TV scripts or transcripts would probably be a good place to look. TFD (talk) 20:10, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User:Mahagaja -- That usage sounds like it falls solidly into traditional "singular they" going back to the 18th century to me. The hallmark of traditional "singular they" is indefiniteness, or lack of specific concrete information about what the pronoun refers to. If you're trying to conceal someone's identity ("My friend called, and they said..."), then there is a lack of specific information in the mind of the listener. "Singular they" used for the purpose of expressing an alternate gender identity seems to have exerted little influence on general usage before the 2000s. AnonMoos (talk) 20:37, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th ed, 2007: Use of they (with its counterparts them, their, and themselves) as a singular pronoun to refer to a person of unspecified sex has been recorded since LME [late Middle English, 1350-1469], and became more common in L20 [1970-1999] as the traditional use of he to refer to a person of either sex came to be regarded as sexist. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:22, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks; I appreciate these responses; but a lot of them miss what I'm trying to ask, perhaps because I couldn't think of a good way to phrase it: how long has they been used as someone's preferred / correct pronoun? Ve was proposed in the 1800s as a way of avoiding he/she, presumably for generic use, but by the 20th century there are examples of it as specific people's/characters' pronoun, e.g. the book I quoted above which refers to one of the characters as ve who moved vis hand next to ver etc (which I didn't interpret as just a conceit to reflect uncertainty or concealment of vis gender, I interpreted it as ve being the character's pronoun, although perhaps I'm wrong!). Other "neopronouns" also date to at least the 1970s-1990s. Given how long they has been in use for generic reference and for pronoun game, as you all say, it seems surprising to me that it'd only come to be used of specific people later (21st century) than "neopronouns", so I'm wondering what the earliest uses of they as someone's pronoun are, if any references keep track (sometimes dictionaries try to find the earliest cites) or if we can find early books where someone gives their own pronouns as they/them, etc. -sche (talk) 16:33, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I think I get your point. The answers are all about singular they being used in situations where you are not specifying whether the person is a he or a she. But you are actually asking about situations where you are specifying that the person is neither a he nor a she. I don't think that usage could have occured much before the late 1990s at the earliest, and not to any great degree for another decade after that (as AnonMoos suggested). --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:41, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As for your question about they vs neopronouns, I don't find it surprising. Using they for a specific person of a specific gender (even if that gender is not "male" or "female") comes across as a little off-putting to many people. It can seem to deny the individuality (both numerically and identity-wise), so there would be a desire for a true parallel to "he" and "she". Unfortunately, there were multiple options advanced (ve, xe, ze, etc) and none took hold in widespread usage. Which would leave singular they as the fall back ("Well, if no one can agree on a new term, we'll just expand the usage of an older one"). --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:53, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do you speak Hindi?

I'm going to India and to avoid harassment by crooks I have to learn how to say in Hindi "I don't speak English". Now, according to Google Translate the sentence is: मैं अंग्रेज़ी नहीं बोलती हूँ - Is this the correct sentence? 147.236.232.254 (talk) 06:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What are you going to do if the next thing they say is the Hindi expression for, "Give me your wallet"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:32, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a tourist. If I don't speak English I don't speak Hindi as well. 147.236.232.254 (talk) 06:37, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What country will you pretend to be from? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:38, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm living in a tiny tiny village 100 km from Dudinka, north Siberia. 147.236.232.254 (talk) 06:47, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm already found it. [1] 147.236.232.254 (talk) 08:32, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you answer in Hindi, the mugger will think you speak Hindi. If you answer in Russian, he might leave you alone. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:14, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Or if they'd pick up a knife and a gun, you might respond with a puzzled look on your face as in -"Now, what is that peculiar utensil?" 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:06, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A good expression to retain after the robber has stabbed or shot the victim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 15:26, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I would say, speculating a bit... in India, generally speaking, the risk to get mugged in the streets isn't that big at all. In urban/touristic areas it's much more likely that your belongings would be stolen without out you noticing. So you'd rather pratice your language skills for filing a case for your insurance at the local police office. Moreover, reading "मैं अंग्रेज़ी नहीं बोलती हूँ" out loud would just sound weird and theatrical. Better just say "angrezi bol nehi nehi". Your mugger is unlikely to be a grammar pedant. --Soman (talk) 15:34, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Royal game

My Google-fu has failed me. I'm struggling to find references/sources/meaning for the phrase "royal game". I may have it all wrong but the meaning I recall is something that is untouchable/off limits/not done. My recollection is that it originated in England and that deer (and possibly other animals) were the exclusive property of the king no matter where they were. Hunting/killing "royal game" by commoners was punishable by death. Later it became idiomatic. For example:

Me: Hey dude! Check out that beautiful woman. I think I'll ask her out. Friend: Forget it. She's royal game.

Have I totally got it wrong? This question was inspired by the post above. When I traveled in certain countries I experienced 2 extremes. In some places tourists are regarded as "royal game" and the locals would not hassle you in any way for fear of the wrath of the authorities. Other places you're "fair game". 41.23.55.195 (talk) 13:34, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seems well-attested [2]. 2A00:23C3:F780:EC01:945:BF17:9FE0:1DC6 (talk) 14:02, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK there are royal fish, and even Royal Swans (see also Swan upping), but I have never heard of animal species reserved to the British sovereign, and Hunting and shooting in the United Kingdom makes no mention of such. Other realms' mileage may vary.

You may be thinking of the heinous crime of hunting in the Royal forests, where ancient and complex laws governed which animals could be hunted and which actions (including collecting firewood) were permitted. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 20:30, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Verbarson -- Royal and aristocratic deer parks were well known in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but most of them disappeared in the English Civil War of the 17th century, when their royal and noble owners could no longer protect them from the hatred that rural commoners had toward them. After that, upper-class hunters changed their main target from deer to foxes. We have an article Deer park (England), but it's quite odd that it seems to obfuscate why most of them disappeared (attributing it to changing upper class fashions)... AnonMoos (talk) 04:44, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

fuþorglbasm

What is the etymology of the wonderful Old Norse word fuþorglbasm? (Warning before you google: NSFW). Thanks The Great Zaganza (talk) 19:57, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to be some sort of compound word, where I don't think there's any undisputed interpretation. This paper by Tommy Kuusela proposes that the first part should be read "fuð-ǫrg" where fuð means cunt and ǫrg is the feminine form of argr which means something like transgressively effeminate. It's unclear what that would correspond to in a female context. Kuusela would think it would mean something like slutty, whereas I'd guess it would rather be something like butchy. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:00, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One hypothesis is that the word would mean "nymphomaniac", and that it has been written down by a woman or queer man as sex magic. James E. Knirk, Carita Holm. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:13, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently this word occurs on a line of its own, on the reverse of a stick with the line felleg er fuþ sin bylli.^[3] There appears to be a stick in which this line, with the variant spelling byrli, is accompanied by the shorter word fuðorg.^[4] I have seen no attempt at explaining the remaining part -lbasm, and one wonders if the transcription is correct. This is supposed to be an image; its quality is low, but it seems to me that the final rune is unambiguously a ᛉ (z). --Lambiam 08:50, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see now the inscription is in Younger Futhark, so the final rune is a ᛘ (m). --Lambiam 09:46, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

September 22

"My phone can’t spell for carp"

This site by Grammarly gives "My phone can’t spell for carp" as a fun example for ending emails (with "carp" resulting from the auto-correction of "crap"). Though what I don't get: What exactly is that "for" doing there? (Asking as a non-native speaker ...) Hildeoc (talk) 07:56, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Follow links from wikt:for shit, to wikt:for toffee, to wikt:for the life of one, for the etymology. "For" makes slightly more sense in "for the life of one". Mitch Ames (talk) 08:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly the development went like for crap ~ for shit < for the love of shit < for the love of God. --Lambiam 08:57, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mitch Ames, Lambiam: Thanks a lot to both of you. I was actually guessing something of that sort, though I was unable to find even a single pertinent entry for "for crap" as such. So is that a common term in fact? Hildeoc (talk) 09:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how common it is, but here are three uses found through GBS: [5], [6], [7]. --Lambiam 10:30, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: But "for the love of God" is always non-restrictive, whereas "for the life of one" is (without a comma) restrictive. So it would have to be "For carp, my phone can't spell" or "My phone can't spell, for carp", with a comma in either case, and it means the same same as simply "my phone can't spell" - the "carp" is an expletive only that adds no semantic value. Whereas "My phone can't spell even if my life depended on it" adds extra semantic value. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:36, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you interpose for the life of one, which does not enter into my putative development? The prepositional phrase for the love of God is frequently used in a non-restrictive sense.^[8][9][10] The prepositional phrase in my phone can't spell for <excrement> also appears to be non-restrictive. --Lambiam 10:21, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mitch Ames: Interesting, but from where exactly do you infer that distinction? Why can't "for the life of one" be regarded as an expletive as well, provided that the meaning conveyed ("even if one's life depended on it") in fact serves nothing but the same purpose of underscoring that the phone really can't spell, [← This comma is advisable here, right?] in an ornate manner? Hildeoc (talk) 10:22, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard the standalone expression "for the love of God" (expressing a negative emotion), but I've never head the standalone expression "even if my life depended on it". Mitch Ames (talk) 23:30, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why the comma? I might not be a native speaker, but to me it sounds needlessly prescriptive in the second example. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:52, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm familiar with the expression "for crap", meaning you're terrible at something. It's hard to search for, but examples are out there: e.g. "You can't dance for crap.", " I’m a great graphics artist, but can’t code for crap." Clarityfiend (talk) 10:28, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In all examples, also those I linked to above, the idiom appears to be <someone> can't <perform some task> for crap. --Lambiam 10:33, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: Thanks again. But didn't you mix up "restrictive" and "non-restrictive" above, considering that apparently all the examples you've linked lack the comma (though invoked by you as cases of non-restrictiveness)?--Hildeoc (talk) 13:20, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambian: Did you see my above objection? Hildeoc (talk) 16:30, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The comma rule only applies to relative clauses. When God is referred to in a comma-free way as our loving Father,^[11] the intention is not to distinguish Him from our non-loving Fathers. The modifier can be removed without changing the meaning in an essential way. One cannot set off this non-restrictive modifier by commas. In speech the ambiguity can be resolved by prosodic stress, but in writing one needs the context and common knowledge. --Lambiam 07:07, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There's the old G-rated version, "for the love of Mike" (whoever Mike might be). There's also the Minnesotan expression used by someone who makes a serious mistake: "Oh, for dumb!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:14, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mike (or in other cases Pete) is simply en euphemism for God. --T*U (talk) 16:43, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's a play on the "can't x for toffee" idiom. DuncanHill (talk) 17:31, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The OED defines "for shit" as Chiefly U.S. In negative contexts: at all; in any way., with the first citation from 1951: We couldn't stomach your outfit for shit. It lists several other citations which don't conform to the "can't perform a task" model: The damn thang(sic) don't fit for shit. and You guys didn't know Drew for shit. The OED surprisingly does not list a similar definition under "crap" but I think "for crap" is just a variant of this use of "for shit". Under "toffee" it has the phrase not to be able (to do a thing) for toffee: to be incompetent at it., with the first citation from 1914: Their opponents cannot ‘shoot for nuts’ (or ‘for toffee’, as one Tommy more expressly put it). The "for shit/crap" phrase seems of somewhat wider applicability than "for toffee", since the former can be used in cases that don't refer to a person's incompetence. CodeTalker (talk) 17:58, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also "can't _____ worth a shit/crap".--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:36, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A similar (but dated) British phrase is "for tuppence" (i.e. "two pence"), an example is here:

...she's a lovely girl but she can't cook for tuppence.

Alansplodge (talk) 18:46, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But can she cook for Tommy?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:04, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Khajidha What's the term for rhyming slang without the rhyming? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:24, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

[Non-]restrictive relative clause

In Leonine verse, it says: This "history" is composed in Latin verses, all of which rhyme in the center. But is this really a non-restrictive clause, thus demanding a comma? If you left out "all of", wouldn't you get a genuinely restrictive clause defining a specific kind of "Latin verses"? I'm somewhat confused at present. Hildeoc (talk) 18:42, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One can divide the information over two sentences without essential change of meaning: This "history" is composed in Latin verses. All of these verses rhyme in the center. This shows that the meaning of the noun phrase Latin verses in this context is not restricted to verses which rhyme in the center; it is additional information. In my opinion, however, the distinction is somewhat artificial. One could likewise split the first part into: This "history" is composed in verses. All of these verses are in Latin. Yet grammarians consider the modifier Latin in Latin verses restrictive. And when it comes to relative clauses, many writers do not strictly adhere to the comma rule. As a way of disambiguation it only works for relative clauses and not for other modifiers, but in practice there rarely is a true ambiguity that is not cleared up by the context. It is one of the many somewhat arbitrary rules that have been invented to make the life of writers more difficult. --Lambiam 22:38, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: Thank you. But, once again, what if you leave out the "all of" here – wouldn't that actually be a typical example of a restrictive clause? Hildeoc (talk) 14:24, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It depends. Do all Latin verses rhyme in the centre, or is it just the ones referred to in this quote? I have no idea of the answer to that.

If all do, then a comma is required regardless of the "all of". However, I'd recommend removing the "all of", as it introduces an ambiguity. With it, it's not certain whether you're referring to all Latin verses, or just the ones under consideration here. Without it, the meaning is clear.
If only these particular ones do, then you have a choice between:

(a) This "history" is composed in Latin verses that* rhyme in the center. (* you may prefer "which" here), and
(b) This "history" is composed in Latin verses, all of which rhyme in the center. (Comment: Once you choose this version, it can only be "which", not "that"; and it has to have a preceding comma regardless. Yet, as above, the words "all of" introduce an ambiguity, so, again, I'd cut them out and choose (a) instead.)

What this question does is bring to light a tension between two rules that, depending on the truth of the statement and the meaning you're trying to convey, ~~can't~~ may not be able to be satisfied simultaneously. One (the "all of which" version) requires a comma after "verses" in all cases, while the other mandates an absence of comma in certain cases. If those two things meet, it's like matter meeting anti-matter, or an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:13, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JackofOz: Thanks a lot for those profound deliberations on that issue. Are you really sure though that "all of which" always has to go with a comma? Hildeoc (talk) 00:06, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be pleased to see an example where it's not required. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:41, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JackofOz: This? Hildeoc (talk) 16:26, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The first "all of which" in that sentence needs a comma and the second has one. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:44, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To say nothing of the fact that the sentence is otherwise awkward in several ways. Deor (talk) 20:35, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Next try. Hildeoc (talk) 23:00, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My initial impression is that even native English speakers might write sentences which are dang near incomprehensible... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:18, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It is clearly awkwardly formulated. The parallel noun phrase all the existing entities shows that the intention is, all entities that have being. It is the only interpretation in which the argument makes any sense; otherwise the sets D and E could coincide and everything collapses. --Lambiam 23:33, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, troublesome at best. As I see it, you could generally replace the "which" in "all of which" with "them", and hey presto! we have a run-on sentence (= not ok, despite billions of online texts). Same for "some of which", "many of which", "none of which" etc. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:52, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JackofOz: Am I wrong assuming that your interpretation (which to me differs from Lambiam's restricitve understanding "all entities that have being") is reliant on the fact that the term "entities" already implies existence, thus making the phrase all of which have being tautological (i.e. non-restrictive)? (Otherwise I'm admittedly somewhat at a loss here ...)--Hildeoc (talk) 00:23, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since the Medieval Latin philosophical term enti-tas literally means being-hood, it is possible that the author of the text takes the position – and assumes their readers follow them in this respect – that entities by definition have being. In that case the clause is presumably not meant to be restrictive. --Lambiam 14:22, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Limericks

Are limericks an exclusively English form of poetry? I've never come across one in any other language. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:08, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No. They might be more common in English, but they're not exclusively English. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:24, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Right; for example, although most of the German limericks quoted in de:Limerick (Gedicht) are translations, it mentions several authors (Georg Bungter, Günter Frorath, Ulrich Roski, Dieter Höss, ...) who wrote original German limericks. -sche (talk) 22:15, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Dutch article nl:Limerick (dichtvorm) has some original Dutch examples. --Lambiam 22:50, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And given their name, are they also composed in Gaelic? -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 10:44, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This Reddit thread may give you some leads. --Jayron 32 11:56, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Limericks are quite popular in Norwegian, partly thanks to competitions frequently arranged by newspapers and not least the national broadcaster company. --T*U (talk) 08:22, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But there are some people (e.g. Gershon Legman, I think), who stated that only dirty limericks are true ls.--Ralfdetlef (talk) 16:36, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, foreign language limericks might or might not be dirty by themselves, so the point is moot. Anyway, I could mention that limericks also exist in Swedish, both translated and original. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:27, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

All published German limericks I know off, are clean as f... and about as dreary.--Ralfdetlef (talk) 22:28, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Swedish aren't... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:29, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

September 24

Generation

The Slavic (here Russian) word for "generation", поколение, unambiguously per dictionaries comes from the word колено, here meaning "kin", "tribe", with another (and more widespread) meaning being "knee". But I couldn't find which one came first in this context: the "kin" meaning or "knee" meaning? Was "knee" somehow related to kinship in колено and then in поколение?

Fun tidbit: this says that "the fact that the genitive case of Latin genu (knee) looks identical to Latin genus (origin) appears to be a coincidence. This extends to English generation, which comes from Latin genus (origin) through suffixation". Brandmeister^talk 16:44, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wiktionary, the meaning "knee" is original, and the meaning "lineage" is perhaps from an unrelated, homonymous root. [12] 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:29, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The same pair of roots turning up in kin and knee (and in γένος and γόνυ). ColinFine (talk) 22:35, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, the Finnish word for "generation", sukupolvi, literally means "family knee". The word polvi ("knee") can even be used on its own in some situations, such as jo toisessa polvessa ("already in the second generation"). I don't know if the etymology of the word comes from literal anatomical knees. JIP | Talk 12:15, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This can hardly be a coincidence, but we should consider the possibility of semantic loans. Compare how the word sinus in the mathematical sense was introduced in Medieval English: as a semantic loan of a misunderstood Arabic word. Scholars may have created vernacular terms based on the mistaken idea that the Latin nouns genus and generatio derived from genu. The false friendship in Latin has been put forward as a possible etymological explanation of the second component in Dutch evenknie (someone's equivalent), ostensibly a compound of even + knie.^[13] (The first part is also seen in evenbeeld (spitting image)). --Lambiam 13:22, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Looked up the entymology in Polish, and it appears that both the "knee" sense" and the" generation" sense are derived from the meaning of the common root, which signified "limb or member" (both of a group and of the body) (see Polish "członek", "member").

Related is the word "człowiek", or "human being", which apparently originally meant something like a member of the extended family or household, and the English word "colon" (punctuation), which came from a Greek word also meaning "member". But NOT "colon" (intestine), which came from a similar, but unrelated Greek word.

Also, I mistakenly assumed that "pokolenie" (generation) was somehow derived from "koło" (wheel or circle), but that is not the case.

Celtic "clan" is not related, because it derives from the Latin word "planta" (plant). The P was changed to a C when it entered Celtic because the Celts who borrowed it could not pronounce "P".

About kin vs knee and cognates, this is a pure coincidence, and has nothing to do with the Slavic words mentioned above, which are not calques from Greek, Latin or Germanic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:195:C300:7C30:1D30:2E7F:E856:D2CC (talk) 21:22, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

September 26

First use of 'K' in currency?

Roughly when did k come into common usage as an abbreviation for "thousand dollars", e.g. $20K for twenty thousand dollars? I don't think I recall hearing it prior to the 21st century, and assumed it was influenced by the term "Y2K Bug". Muzilon (talk) 13:36, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The OED has a citation for its use for a thousand dollars from a job advert in 1968. It certainly does not strike my British ears as particularly new. One would expect to hear Kojak or Regan & Carter using it. DuncanHill (talk) 13:51, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would have expected Kojak to say something like "twenty grand", actually :) Muzilon (talk) 14:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've always assumed it was derived from the kilo prefix (since that means 1000 as well after all), but is that actually the case? If it is, I very much doubt the usage started in currency. Fgf10 (talk) 14:59, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Online Etymology Dictionary entry for k says "Slang meaning "one thousand dollars" is 1970s, from kilo-." --Amble (talk) 17:11, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In the '70s if someone said "I have two kilos" it would be assumed to mean 2 kilograms of cocaine or somesuch, not $2000. (Aka "a couple of keys") 136.56.52.157 (talk) 18:36, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

K, for 1000 in currency is from its use as an abbreviation for kilo, per OED, but that does not mean that anyone would have said kilo for a thousand in money. OED has k for "thousand" initially in computing (1966) and transferred to money a couple of years later. DuncanHill (talk) 18:43, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if K was adopted more quickly in US (or UK) English then. When I googled it, the first hit was this article by a US underwriter which doesn't really answer my question about timeframes, but points out that M (the Roman numeral) is also used in the accounting world to mean $1,000. Muzilon (talk) 22:43, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The OED's 1968 cite is US ("Salaries $15–45K"), but there is a UK one from 1970 ("Sal. from £1,600 to £2·4k" — note incidentally that the raised dot was then still the decimal point in Britain). Those dates are close enough to say that we can't tell which was really first. --174.95.81.219 (talk) 23:30, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 199: / Line 199: @@
 :::K, for 1000 in currency is from its use as an abbreviation for kilo, per OED, but that does not mean that anyone would have said kilo for a thousand in money. OED has k for "thousand" initially in computing (1966) and transferred to money a couple of years later. [[User:DuncanHill|DuncanHill]] ([[User talk:DuncanHill|talk]]) 18:43, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
 ::::I wonder if ''K'' was adopted more quickly in US (or UK) English then. When I googled it, the first hit was [https://www.orsurety.com/blog/is-it-m-for-thousand-and-mm-for-million-or-k-for-thousand-and-m-for-million-im-asking-for-a-friend this article] by a US underwriter which doesn't really answer my question about timeframes, but points out that M (the Roman numeral) is also used in the accounting world to mean $1,000. [[User:Muzilon|Muzilon]] ([[User talk:Muzilon|talk]]) 22:43, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
+:::::The OED's 1968 cite is US ("Salaries $15–45K"), but there is a UK one from 1970 ("Sal. from £1,600 to £2·4k" &mdash; note incidentally that the [[interpunct#English|raised dot was then still the decimal point in Britain]]).  Those dates are close enough to say that we can't tell which was really first. --[[Special:Contributions/174.95.81.219|174.95.81.219]] ([[User talk:174.95.81.219|talk]]) 23:30, 26 September 2022 (UTC)