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July 23

Are gulls 'gullible'?

Does the word 'gullible' have anything to do with (sea) gulls? They don't seem like particularly 'gullible' birds to me. Actually, they seem more quick-witted and 'street-smart' than most. --95.148.107.208 (talk) 16:17, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

The "gullible" page at the Online Etymology Dictionary says that indeed the word may come from "gull", in the sense of "someone who will swallow anything thrown at them". Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:52, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

My dead-tree Oxford English Dictionary is a bit convoluted and ambiguous on this one. It claims of gullible that "historically it seems to have been a back-formation from gullibility" which is "apparently an alteration from [and appeared "much later" than] cullibility after gull" in the particular meaning (one of several) of "a credulous person . . ." which is "of doubtful and perhaps mixed origin", natural as a transferred use of "gull" in the meaning of "an unfledged bird . . . (from gull meaning yellow) and perhaps also from gull meaning "to delude", which may be "an application of gull, to gorge, 'cram'."

Meanwhile cullibility means "the quality of being cullible . . . easily made a 'cull' or fool of", while cull in the sense of "dupe, silly fellow, simpleton, fool; a man, fellow, chap" is "perhaps [an] abbreviation of cully, "one who is cheated . . .; a man, fellow; a companion, mate."

Now, gull in the sense of seagull is traced back (by the OED) to various Celtic-language words (Welsh gŵylan, Cornish guilan, Breton goelan, Old Irish foilenn, all presumably from Old Celtic *voilenno-) referring to the bird, while cully is "originally slang or rogues' cant, of uncertain origin . . . connexion [sic] has been suggested with cullion ["a base, despicable, or vile fellow; a rascal"] or its Italian cognate 'coglione', a noddy, a fool, a patch a dolt . . . (Florio) . . . Leland thinks it of gypsy origin, comparing Spanish Gypsy chulai man, Turkish Gypsy khulai gentleman." Incidentally gullet, the oesophagus; a water channel; a gorge or defile, is traced back to Latin gula, the throat.

Phew! What all this seems to suggest is that the words (sea)gull, gull (= unfledged bird), gullet and gullible/cullible have ultimately different origins but may have through metaphorical applications and perhaps repeated confusions influenced one another's meanings over the centuries. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 22:21, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Which is most gullible: a gull, a dodo, or a booby? --Wavelength (talk) 14:38, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Th in older German orthography

Many German words that are currently spelled with a T were at one time (up to say the 18th Century) spelt with a TH - for instance That, thun, Thur. Did the TH ever represent any different pronunciation, or is there some other reason for it? --rossb (talk) 21:15, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Neanderthal is probably the most famous example and our artilce discusses the spelling and pronunciation. Rmhermen (talk) 22:35, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Words spelled in modern German with 't' that were spelled 'th' before the 1901 spelling reform have been pronounced /t/ since the time of the earliest written records of Old High German. Incidentally, I don't think that the 'th' spelling appears in most Old High German texts. I do not know the circumstances of the origin of the 'th' spelling for the /t/ sound in certain positions, and it will be interesting to see if anyone can find an explanation of its origins. My guess is that this spelling developed with the advent of printing in early modern times because, in some older versions of Fraktur, 't' was a rather indistinct character that might have been mistaken for 'r', 'i', or 'k' when reading quickly, and that 'h' was added in certain positions to improve legibility. Marco polo (talk) 01:49, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

From the article th (digraph):

Because neither /tʰ/ nor /θ/ were native sounds in Latin, an original <θ> in Greek loanwords soon came to be pronounced in Latin with /t/. They continued to be spelled with <th> in deference to their etymology. This practice was then borrowed into German, French and other languages, where <th> still appears in Greek loan words, but is pronounced /t/. See German orthography. Interlingua also employs this pronunciation.

In early modern times, French, German and English all expanded this by analogy to words in which there was no etymological reason for it, but for the most part the modern spelling systems have eliminated this. A rare example of unetymological <th> in English is the name of the River Thames.

In English, <th> for /t/ can also occur in loan-words from French or German, such as Neanderthal. --151.51.156.20 (talk) 11:32, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Hypercorrection affected what became the English word "author" (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=author&searchmode=term).

—Wavelength (talk) 13:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I notice that many, maybe most, of the German words that were spelled with ‹th› in the 19th century but are now spelled with plain ‹t›, like roth, thun, That, Thal, Thon, Thor, etc., would have only 3 letters in their basic form (without inflectional endings or any affixes) if spelled without the ‹h›. Perhaps there was a feeling that 3 letters wasn't sufficient for a content word, so they added an ‹h› to pad the words out to 4 letters. The ‹th› spelling was then kept in words derived from these, like erröthen, gethan, Thätigkeit, Thäler, thönern, and thöricht. +Angr 14:47, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

On the German "th" I can´t find any hard facts, but I read one reasonable explanation: One linguist argues that the th (but also the less frequent/obsolete ph and rh) may have been / may be a remnant of medieval scribes who transposed the Greek spiritus asper not only to words with a Greek root, but also to Germanic words containing a T, an F or an R. The fact that Martin Luther, a major influence on the development of the language, used the "th" extensively, would have helped to make this a "standard". --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:21, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Luther's own name is of course an example of this - the h is clearly silent in German, and hence the normal English pronunciation of "Luther", "Lutheran", etc, has no etymological justification. --rossb (talk) 14:09, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

July 24

Latin to English translation from Venus and Adonis

Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.

This quotation is at the beginning of William Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis. What is the English translation? Thank you. (64.252.34.115 (talk) 01:38, 24 July 2010 (UTC))

It's from Ovid's "Amores". "Let the crowd admire vile things; but let golden Apollo supply me with cups full of Castalian water" (i.e., the water of the spring where the Muses lived). Adam Bishop (talk) 04:12, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your helpful reply. Thanks. (64.252.34.115 (talk) 16:24, 24 July 2010 (UTC))

Persian question

A hopefully simple question on Persian: The title of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is translated as پیرمرد و دریا (pir mard o daryâ ?). As far as I know, in Persian adjectives are postponed with Ezafe, so I would have expected مرد پير mard-e pir instead of پير مرد pir mard (or pir-e mard?). But I'm sure there is an explanation. --84.190.141.240 (talk) 11:30, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Its verbatim translation is "mard-e pir o darya". Its more literary and more famous translation is "pirmard o darya". Nouns and adjectives can sometimes change their places, as in this case that "mard-e pir" and "pirmard" mean the same thing. In the former case we have two words (noun + ezafe + adjective), while the latter is only one word. I think I have seen its parallels in English too, but I can't remember any right now. You may help me. --Omidinist (talk) 15:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Japanese

Honorifics are so confusing! Could someone help me? Thanks! --138.110.206.99 (talk) 12:58, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

See Japanese honorifics. -- Wavelength (talk) 13:15, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a less all-encompassing question? What particularly is it that confuses you? TomorrowTime (talk) 17:09, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Here's the quick & dirty guide:

Honorifics are added after a name (family name for more politeness or given name to show closeness). The most common is "san."

~san = most common, polite and usually a good default. ~sensei = always add to the names of doctors, teachers or professors. ~chan = used for babies, toddlers, pets and little girls. Although very "cutesy," it can be used for a woman if that's what the individual prefers. Listen to what others call her and follow suit. ~kun = used for young boys. Sometimes men to be friendly may refer to a woman or younger man with this. It gives kind of a brotherly or fatherly vibe. Older men seem a bit more likely to do this.

SPECIAL CASE: older family members. If you're close you add "chan" after their title (grandma-chan, father-chan, etc.) Families that are more formal with each other might use "san" instead. In otherworldly contexts like anime other suffixes might be used amongst family members but in reality that's pretty rare.

Less common honorific suffixes: ~sama = this is never used in real life except ironically, but in historical contexts or the alternate reality of anime is a sign of great respect or worship applied to the nobility or sometimes the person a main character has a crush on or their idol. ~dono = "my lord." Very archaic. Don't use in real life unless it's obviously ironic. Might come up in historic contexts or anime.

There are some others that are almost never used outside of things like anime. Don't worry about them. 108.3.173.100 (talk) 05:41, 26 July 2010 (UTC)TorreyOaks

Origin of "th" sound in English.

A question yesterday started me thinking. Is English the only Germanic language with a "th" sound? Modern Germans famously find it very difficult to pronounce. If so, did the invading Anglo-Saxons pick it up from the local Brythonic speakers (Welsh has both "th" and "dd" and Cornish has "th" and "dh")? Alansplodge (talk) 16:24, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Proto-Germanic did have a th-sound (written as þ), which developed through the Germanic sound shift from Proto-Indo-European *t (cf. PG *þrijiz < PIE *treyes). Besides English, Icelandic is the other Germanic language to have retained it (cf. English three, Icelandic þrír). German (including Low German and Dutch) shifted this *þ to d, hence we have German drei and Dutch drie. A shift to t seems to have happened in the Scandinavian languages other than Icelandic (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian all have tre). And then there is also the voiced th as in brother, making things even more complicated, but I won't elaborate on it now. Anyway, you can see that English th is not an innovation but a retention. But of course you cannot rule out that Celtic substrate helped in retaining the th, though it could be difficult to prove that. --BishkekRocks (talk) 16:51, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

We also have an article on Thorn (letter). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

According to the article on voiced dental fricative (as in "there"), that sounds occurs in Danish as well (example: the final consonant in "hvid"). ---Sluzzelin talk 17:47, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Faroese also has ð, but it "isn't assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons" Rimush (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks one and all, especially BishkekRocks. Job done in style. Alansplodge (talk) 19:36, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Southern American accent

Where can I listen to (the longer the better) a video that clearly shows what is generally known as a "Southern accent"? Most Youtube videos are made by non-Southerners attempting to do it instead of real speakers of the dialect. --Belchman (talk) 18:09, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, there is no single "southern accent", so you might have to narrow it down. Texas sounds different from Florida, and from South Carolina, etc. Here is Civil War historian Shelby Foote, who was from Mississippi. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

If you can find a video of Lucas Black, he has a genuine, and very thick, Alabama accent. +Angr 21:21, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Here's an example of him talking. +Angr 21:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

If you listen to both clips, you'll hear the two accents are very different, and I don't think the difference is primarily due to the geographic distance between Mississippi and Alabama. Shelby Foote has an educated, relatively upper-class, non-rhotic Southern accent, while Lucas Black has a working-class rhotic Southern accent. The age difference between them (Foote was born in 1916, Black in 1982) probably has something to do with differences between their accents as well. +Angr 21:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I think the second factor is primary, not the first one. Non-rhoticity used to be a feature of the South(-East) in general, not some kind of "Trans-Atlantic" mark of its upper class only. Most Southerners have reverted to rhoticity in the course of the 20th century, presumably to conform better with GA.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 20:49, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Even within a single state, you will find a wide range of accents, from thick to moderate to almost non-existent, among even the natives. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Parts of rural Virginia and North Carolina also pronounce certain words which sound, to me, like Candian: oot and aboot, for example. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 00:33, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

There are some Youtube videos with Hodding Carter III, who has a Mississippi accent. Also Red Barber, who likewise was from Mississippi. You can search for interviews of Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is from North Carolina. Or Southern politicians like Trent Lott or Thad Cochran. Someone seems to have uploaded the Eyes on the Prize documentary miniseries on the UK version of Yahoo Video -- that has the voices of black and white people from across the South. Really you can just find the names of prominant southeners on Wikipedia and then search for videos of them speaking on the Internet. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:28, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Bugs is quite right that even natives of Southern states often have little or no discernibly Southern accent. Julia Roberts, for example, was born and raised in the Atlanta area but speaks fairly region-free General American, although as an actress she may have consciously suppressed her Southern accent if she ever had one. +Angr 05:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Andie MacDowell supposedly lost some roles because of her southern accent... AnonMoos (talk) 21:29, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Andie's voice got dubbed over by Glenn Close in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, because her accent was so strong. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:23, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Holly Hunter has an accent that could make paint peel. Fortunately, she didn't talk in The Piano. +Angr 05:58, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Our article on Southern American English links to "Tawkin' Suthern" which has a number of audio clips (and in turn refers to the Wikipedia article). I only listened to a couple of the recordings, and am not the best judge on authenticity, but supposedly they are spoken by native Southerners. ---Sluzzelin talk 05:55, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I think they're authentic. It's interesting though that when he discusses /aɪ/-monophthongization (which he calls "lilt truncation" for some reason), he seems not to notice that the woman he's recording does not monophthongize /aɪ/ before voiceless consonants. He says, "light turns into laht", but then you play the audio and she very clearly says [laɪt] and not *[laːt] (although in other Southern accents, monophthongization does happen before voiceless consonants and it is [laːt]). +Angr 20:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, the male speaker, when asked to say "I feel good", says "I feel good", not "I fill good". He adds: "I'm not sure about that. I think we do pretty good with 'feel' ". ---Sluzzelin talk 21:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I've also heard rural northerners say "fill" instead of "feel". There's a built-in assumption that the midwest accent is as flat as the midwest is. However, there are rural accents that are distinctive and are not "southern" as such. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:38, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

July 25

Words with two definitions where only one can be pluralized

Sorry, I know that subject line is confusing. I just thought of the word JUSTICE, which means both (1) the quality of being just and (2) a judge. You can pluralize it to JUSTICES for the second definition, but the first definition doesn't have a plural. Can anyone think of any other words like this? I'm sure there are more, I just can't think of any. Thanks! Fbv65edel — t — c // 19:54, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Beauty: (1) the quality of being beautiful - unpluralizable; (2) a person displaying the former quality - pluralizable. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:02, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There are quite a few. I was paid attention to was taught to pay attention to those in my English classes. Hair and experience could be examples. --Theurgist (talk) 20:04, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

some off-topic material

Since you mention your English classes, I'll point out that you probably meant either "I paid attention to them..." or "They were called to my attention...". I hope this doesn't come across as mean. I offer it purely because it's an odd phrase that I thought you'd like to use in a natural way. 86.164.66.83 (talk) 20:14, 25 July 2010 (UTC) Thanks for the remark! To the best of my understanding of English grammar, the sentence is not incorrect, however odd it might appear. And if it is wrong after all, then I'm not the first one to err that way. It's stricken now, and replaced with something more common as a phrase. --Theurgist (talk) 20:29, 25 July 2010 (UTC) Yes, the expression you used originally is common enough, but it means that someone (usually the teacher in this case) paid attention to you. Dbfirs 20:47, 25 July 2010 (UTC) The original expression was not "I was paid attention to", but instead "I was paid attention to those". The same construction has been used by someone here and here. --Theurgist (talk) 20:59, 25 July 2010 (UTC) I think the writers meant "my attention was drawn to" in these examples. Dbfirs 12:35, 26 July 2010 (UTC) Those are execrable examples of "English". I strongly advise you not to emulate them. The only acceptable passive form of "I paid attention to X" is "Attention was paid by me to X", but it's stodgy, clumsy and unnatural. Having one's attention drawn to X by a third party is not a case of "being paid attention to". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:13, 25 July 2010 (UTC) OK. --Theurgist (talk) 21:21, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Strength? The physical quality is not pluralized but in the sense of "something you are good at" you can have many strengths. (While thinking about this, it also occurred to me that "brains" works the opposite way - you can have a roomful of jars of brains, and brains in the sense of lots of intelligence, but you can't have only one of the latter.) Adam Bishop (talk) 20:36, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Another one is humor. The four humors/four fluids v ha ha humor. ---Sluzzelin talk 21:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

"Two heads are better than one when counting how many head of cattle are on this property". There's another well-known use of 'head' that applies only in the singular. It has to do with a kind of donation.  :) -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:11, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article mass noun gives some examples.162.40.211.165 (talk) 03:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

July 26

Pronunciation of Los Angeles

I was watching a very, very old film (black & white)... at 1:52-5 in the narrator says "Los Angeles" and pronounces the latter part something like [eiŋgʌləs]... like the word "angle" followed by the word "us"

Here's the video so you can see it for yourself: http://video.google.ca/googleplayer.swf?docid=-3660820995851036415&autoplay=1

Is this the way the city's name was pronounced? When did the hard "g" become soft and the initial "a" change from the sound it makes in "ate" to the sound in "at"? Do some people still say it this way?

Or do you think the narrator's just saying it wrong...? 108.3.173.100 (talk) 05:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)TorreyOaks

You're not alone, because I've once heard in a modern movie (forgot which one), which pronounced it as 'Los Angs'. I've checked the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary and it shows neither Angles or Angs. Kayau Voting IS evil 05:26, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The first pronunciation listed in Kenyon & Knott is [lɔsˈæŋɡələs], while [...ˈændʒələs] (by the most common pronunciation I've ever heard – including that of my parents, who both grew up there in the 1930s and '40s) is listed second. The third pronunciation given is [...ˈændʒəˌliːz], which I associate with British speakers. Then there's a note saying, "Other pronunciations exist. A resident phonetician writes, 'The only one I've never heard is [losˈɑŋheles] [i.e. the Spanish pronunciation].'" (I wonder whether that resident phonetician was Peter Ladefoged.) I seem to remember that the narrator of Dragnet pronounced it [...ˈænələs]. +Angr 05:45, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

[ændʒəliːz] has always grated on my nerves -- anything but that! AnonMoos (talk) 05:55, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Linguist Dwight L. Bolinger actually led an ad-hoc city-appointed commission about 50 years ago to decide on the pronunciation of the city's name, resulting in [las ændʒələs] being the generally-accepted American English pronunciation; before that time, there was more variation... AnonMoos (talk) 05:51, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Wow... thanks all! Especially Angr & AnonMoos. You are awesome. 108.3.173.100 (talk) 05:57, 26 July 2010 (UTC)TorreyOaks

They should do likewise in Missouri, where some say it "mih-zir-ee" and some say "mih-zir-uh". Jack Webb on Dragnet always said it the way I expect to hear it, which is "loss ANJ-uh-luss" (sorry, IPA doesn't work on my PC). If you listen to a proper Spanish pronounce, that latter English pronunciation is really not too far off. Contrast that with a 60s song, "flying into Los Angeleez, bringin' in a couple o' keys" or whatever it was. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Not too far off? "Lodge" is not too far off from "Loch Ness", and "Jay" is not far from "Hay"? Hmm.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 21:05, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I say Missourah just because it's more fun. Rimush (talk) 07:45, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree, AnonMoos' done a great job here – never dreamt that someone would do that just to decide on the pronunciation! Mind you, I will try not to pronounce 'Los Angeles' in front of you because I pronounce it as [ændʒəliːz]. HeeHee! Kayau Voting IS evil 07:48, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Or just do it the easy way: "L.A." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:43, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

That's not a pronunciation, that's a spelling. L.A. is pronounced 'El Al' (i.e. like the airline, but with the final 'l' silent) in German ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:39, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe how non-Hebrew speakers pronounce the name of the airline El Al! That's correctly pronounced EHL AHL (equal stress on the two syllables and divided that way), whereas the abbreviation of Los Angeles (in the 60's through early 1980s when I lived there) is pronounced eh-LEY. The pronunciation of "Los Angeles" by locals varies widely, as it's one of the most cosmopolitan, mixed-ethnic and immigrant-populous cities on the planet.-- Deborahjay (talk) 18:44, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

(slightly off-topic) Someone proposed the change of Estonia's name in English to "Estland", and the Georgians officially demanded new names for their country in Hebrew and Lithuanian. --Theurgist (talk) 14:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the pronunciation given by the OP [lɔs 'eiŋgʌləs] is a pronunciation I've heard often from German speakers. Marco polo (talk) 17:25, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Sam Yorty, the LA mayor elected on a platform of having garbage and recyclables picked up on the same day, pronounced the city's name "Los Angle-eez" -- Mwalcoff (talk) 19:37, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

There was a trend, starting in the 19th century among Anglo settlers of the Mexican Cession, to pronounce Spanish place names based on their spellings, using interpretations of those spellings as remote from Spanish pronunciation as possible. For example, Pueblo, Colorado was pronounced something like [pju'wɛbloʊ kɑlə'ɹædoʊ]. I'm guessing that [lɔsˈæŋɡələs] or, even more so, [lɔsˈæŋɡəliz] is probably an instance of this trend. Based on my acquaintance with old-timers from this region, this kind of pronunciation was motivated at least partly by contempt for the existing Spanish-speaking population and by a desire to assert that these were now English-speaking places. Marco polo (talk) 19:51, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I think pronouncing the ending -es of "Los Angeles" as if it were spelt "Los Angeleeze" actually seems somehow classicizing - as in "Hercules", "Pericles", "faeces" etc..--91.148.159.4 (talk) 21:05, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The LA suburb of El Segundo is pronounced with a short "u," but it wasn't a name left over by the Spanish. The name dates to the 1910s and Standard Oil's second oil refinery on the West Coast. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 21:27, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Jack Webb in Dragnet used to pronounce some geographic feature called "San Pedro" as if it were spelled "san peedro". He also pronounced "Figueroa" as "figure-owe-uh". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

San Pedro, is, in general, pronounced Peedro. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:26, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

reference

I would like to use the followig article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesthetic_learning but I have no idea where to find citation information for it. Can you please help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.20.213.115 (talk) 15:56, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

At the bottom of the "Toolbox" list on the left side of the page is a "Cite this page" link that will lead you to the information you need. Deor (talk) 16:17, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Odd Phrasing in BBC News Article

This BBC article says something which strikes me as very odd.

"In 2005, as part of an event in the run-up to the 600th anniversary of Zheng's first voyage, the Chinese paid a visit to Lamu to undertake DNA tests on a Swahili family, who were found to have had traces of Chinese ancestry."

'The Chinese'? Like, all of them? Considering there is no mention anywhere in the text of any kind of team or anything, it strikes me as very odd phrasing that the name of the nationality should be used for 'a specific group of people of this nationality that we haven't mentioned before and will not mention again'. What if this had been 'the Australians', or 'the Cockneys', or 'the inhabitants of the Isle Of Man'? Any thoughts on this? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:41, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

It's a way of quickly implying some sort of official group sent to represent the interests of the wider group. So, a group standing in for, and representing, the whole of China paid a visit to Lamu to carry out DNA tests. It strongly implies the group were representing the Chinese government in some way. 86.164.66.83 (talk) 17:34, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the comment above - however, I have to agree that the phrasing is somewhat loose for an organisation like the BBC, whose English is normally more precise. Gurumaister (talk) 17:44, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, that is exactly what I am thinking - the BBC is our flagship news agency, supposedly, and I would never expect this kind of phrasing in an article by them, as acceptable as it may well be during a chat down the pub. Of course, the meaning itself is not lost on me - I would guess it was a group of scientists or a research team and not an Olympic skating team, given the context. The phrasing, however, is just not right to me. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:52, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Well it sounds fine to me. The BBC news website is not an academic journal, it's a reliable news source written for an intelligent lay audience. You get that sort of phrasing all the time in journalism, where space is often at a premium and the word count is important, so that things are often boiled down somewhat. I don't think it's odd at all. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 17:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I read BBC all the time. You'd be surprised how many of their articles contain small mistakes, especially the newest ones before they get corrected, and those from faraway places (from my eurocentric perspective). I don't mind at all. --84.46.39.217 (talk) 21:08, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree; I would expect better from the BBC. --Tango (talk) 18:15, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I think a bigger problem is "found to have Chinese ancestry". What does that mean? They just happened to stumble on a family that interbred with Chinese sailors 600 years ago? Sounds more like a publicity stunt, especially since Zheng He's other supposed voyages are so popular at the moment... Adam Bishop (talk) 18:47, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

That's true. I have just noticed the ambiguity in that phrase, too. The Swahili family was found to have Chinese ancestry? Was this before the DNA tests or after them? If after, then why was this family singled out for such tests? If they were found to have Chinese ancestry before the DNA tests, how did this happen? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:53, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

The word "bread" meaning "money"

When was the first use of the word "bread" meaning "money"? Where did it originate from?--Christie the puppy lover (talk) 23:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

This page (and numerous others) suggests that it is cockney rhyming slang, money rhymes with "bread and honey", which of course also carries the connotation that money quite literally means bread on the table. Such origins would probably mean that it could be quite old, a least a couple of centuries, possibly more, with the first written recorded usage being from the mid 19th century. --Saddhiyama (talk) 23:13, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This generally reliable source says that it's from the 1940s. The OED, which says that it's of U.S. origin, has a citation from 1939, but the citation is bracketed, indictating that the lexicographers aren't sure that the word is actually being used in the relevant sense. Both that citation and the next-earliest one deal with the world of jazz, so I think it's safe to assume that this use of bread originated in jazz musicians' slang. Deor (talk) 23:21, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Oddly enough, "dough" used to also be slang for money, but you don't often hear it anymore. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:07, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Not bread strictly speaking, but wheat was used as a symbol of wealth back to ancient cultures. Googlemeister (talk) 13:46, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

See http://www.fun-with-words.com/money_words.html. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

In Spain they use pasta, "¿Tienes pasta amigo?" - "Got any dosh mate?" Richard Avery (talk) 15:35, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Japanese translation?

Can anyone help to translate the text found in File:Japan Labour-Farmer Party poster 1928.jpg? --Soman (talk) 23:31, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The words across the top are 黨農勞本日。Note that until the end of WWII, Japanese, when written horizontally, went right-to-left (nowadays it goes left-to-right like English). That just means (literally) "Japan Labor Farm Party" but spells "labor farm party" in an old fashioned way. The spelling has since been simplified from 勞農黨ーー>労農党　（Note that I wrote all that from left-to-right like in modern Japanese so you can see how the characters evolved). "Farm" (the middle character) stays the same, but the modern spelling for "labor party" is 労働党. That's a start anyway... I'll add more later when I have time if someone else hasn't translated the rest. Good luck! 108.3.173.100 (talk) 00:26, 27 July 2010 (UTC)TorreyOaks

It's a fill-in-the-blanks poster. 月/month, 日/day, 時/time, and 於/at. 政見/political views, 議長/chairman, 大演説會/big speech meeting, and 辯士/speaker(s). I'm sorry but the three black characters on the red background are too small to read. Oda Mari (talk) 05:35, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

So basically, it is sort an empty template for announcing meetings of the party? --Soman (talk) 15:20, 27 July 2010 (UTC) I read Oda's comment to rash, not noticing the "fill-in-the-blanks" sentence, thanks. --Soman (talk) 15:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Latin Translation

What’s Latin for “We come in peace”? Venimus et quaerimus pacem ...? 108.3.173.100 (talk) 23:56, 26 July 2010 (UTC)Rorrim

That could work, but there is some extra info that's not in the English. "Venimus in pace" would suffice. (You can find "in pace" elsewhere, like "requiescat in pace", "ite in pace", etc.) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:27, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

The word "venimus" as such is ambiguous. I learned Latin with macrons. The word "venīmus" (present tense) means "we come; we do come; we are coming". The word "vēnimus" (perfect tense) means "we came; we have come". Help:Macrons can help editors to type with macrons. The conjugation of "veniō" (with macrons) can be seen at http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/venio. My translation of the text is "Venīmus in pāce."

—Wavelength (talk) 14:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess, but that's an artificial modern teaching tool. No one ever wrote Latin with macrons (well, actually, lines like that were used for abbreviations and numbers, but not to distinguish vowel length). It's no more ambiguous than "put" or "let" or any other English word where the present and past are the same. I still have to use the macrons when scanning poetry, so I don't mean to sound like a pompous ass (again), but they aren't part of normal Latin and people shouldn't depend on them. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:20, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

People in the Renaissance sometimes used a light sprinkling of circumflexes to mark selected long vowels in brief Latin texts (especially the ablative singular first declension ending, which is only distinguished from the nominative singular by length). AnonMoos (talk) 02:44, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Multas gratias vobis ago! :) 108.3.173.100 (talk) 21:51, 27 July 2010 (UTC)Rorrim

July 27

Does Portugal have this problem too?

Hi all. As a speaker of "traditional', "British", "Commonwealth" English (however you want to describe it), I know the problems that variety of the language faces from the media and web saturation of American English. The differences may be only subtle between the two, but US English is different than/from UK English and its use subtly colors/colours speech and writing, as well as making projects like Wikipedia more difficult to organize/organise.

What I've wondered for a while, though, is does Portugal have the same problem with Brazil? Brazil has a considerably larger population than Portugal, and is one of the world's up-and-coming economic and media hubs (as the old joke goes, Brazil is a future world leader, and always will be). Do Portuguese speakers of the language have difficulties with the subtle differences which surely must exist in Brazilian Portuguese?

Thanks in advance, Grutness...wha? 00:28, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Might not be what you had in mind, but I'll answer from a Brazilian perspective. I'm half Brazilian and from what my Brazilian parent and relatives say, Portugal Portuguese & Brazilian Portuguese sound quiet different and it can be hard for them to understand Portugal Portuguese. They find Portugal Portuguese rougher (but they're biased, obviously). But even within Brazil there are many accents! For example in Rio there is no "ch" sound, this is replaced by a "t" sound, but up north in the country there is a "ch" sound and they don't use "t" as much...

There's no danger of influence from Portugal Portuguese, because Brazilians (based on anecdotal evidence from my family) mostly don't like the sound and so usually won't watch TV from Portugal. Hope someone can give you an answer from Portugal's point of view! 108.3.173.100 (talk) 00:48, 27 July 2010 (UTC)TorreyOaks

I wonder if the same thing occurs within the Spanish language community? Spanish language novelas come from a variety of countries, do they use some sort of standard Spanish, or do Mexican viewers watch Argentinian shows with no problems with the pronunciation? BTW, "Different than" is substandard in American English, too. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 02:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I can only give you an anecdotal example about Spanish. One is that in Cuba that almost don't say the "s" in many cases, so "How are you?", spelled ¿Cómo estás? sounds almost like ¿Cómo e-tá? Another very obvious difference is the lisping of the "s" sounds in Castilian Spanish, which is typically not done in the western hemisphere. I think they can all understand each other reasonably well, though. Then there's Catalan, which is kind of a cross between Spanish and French, but that's another story. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:32, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Bugs. Couldn't resist here. I spent two years in Spain, and I heard all sorts of stories about how the Castilian "zeta" began. I might just be overly defensive of the language because I speak it and enjoy it, but it's actually not a "lisp" any more than the "th" in English words like "think" and "thousand" are "lispy." Additionally, it's not pronounced on S's, but only on Z's and soft C's. So, a word like paciencia ("patience") is pronounced somewhat like "pathienthia" in Spain, where it's pronounced "pasiensia" almost everywhere else. However, I've always considered the zeta quite a bit gentler than the English "th" sound, in that the tongue barely touches the back of the teeth, if at all. It's pretty. It also allows, without relying on context, differentiating between words like (off the top of my head) casar ("to marry") and cazar ("to hunt"). When people I meet tell me that Castilian Spanish has that funny "lisp" thing, I try to remind them where the Spanish language originated. Oh yeah. Spain.  :-) Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 12:04, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

And again, I may just be over-defensive because my two years in Spain were spent in Catalunya, but writing that Catalan is a cross between Spanish and French is kind of an oversimplification. They're similar, but there's a lot more rolled in there than that. Fun to answer a question (or try to) about Castillian and Catalan today, though. Thanks! (Or should I say, "Grathias!" Ha! Ha!) Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 12:04, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Distinción makes Spanish very hard to understand for someone who is not a native speaker and who learned the language the seseo way. Rimush (talk) 13:56, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

See also Reforms of Portuguese orthography especially the reform adopted in 2009 where Portugal seemed to get more changes than Brazil's style did. See ther http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7807116.stm BBC article] which mentions some resistance in Portugal to "Brazilian spellings". Rmhermen (talk) 02:19, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

To answer another part of Everard's question, I'd say that Spanish dialects are almost perfectly mutually understandable, either in written or oral form. You will find "neuter" editions of novels, but you have to suffer dialectical novelas. The suffering part derives from the content, not the dialect! :(
And, since the phonetical aspects of peninsular ceceo distinction have been mentioned, let me tell you that, as a Latin American speaker with seseo, I find it fascinating and quite pleasant to my ear!
On a side note, I'm watching some Galician TV for a planned trip to Galicia, and I understand 98% of the stuff. I can't match that figure with the aforementioned Catalan, though. Pallida  Mors 16:04, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I remember my Portuguese ex-girlfriend was very cross that "Portuguese" on the web (and elsewhere?) often really meant "Brazilian". 213.122.65.209 (talk) 03:24, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

The article Brazilian Portuguese discusses differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese.

—Wavelength (talk) 14:32, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

In Portuguese Wikipedia (permanent link here),

"Portuguese articles can contain variations of writing, as European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese have variations in vocabulary and usage. Articles can contain written characteristics of one or the other variant depending on who wrote the article.

In 2005, a proposal to fork Portuguese Wikipedia and create a Brazilian Portuguese (pt-br) version was voted down by the Wikimedia community."

—Wavelength (talk) 15:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

A word that means either a patronym or a matronym?

Is there a word that can refer to either a patronym or a matronym? --173.49.12.202 (talk) 08:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Not quite sure what you are looking for. You mean like the word surname?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:34, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I think he means a general term that refers both to a surname reflecting your father's given name and to a surname reflecting your mother's given name. But I can't help. I imagined something like "parentonym", but I only find it on a couple of Norwegian websites, so it's clearly an ad-hoc neologism in Norwegian.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 11:27, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's correct to call it an "ad-hoc neologism". Those Norwegian websites to which you refer, pretty much confirm that "parentonym" is an established term in Norway (One is the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police, another is from the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen. The word has also been acknowledged by the Norwegian Language Council. decltype (talk) 11:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

You're right. I didn't bother to actually read the google hits. Still, while the government has apparently introduced the term in 2002, it doesn't seem to have caught on very much anywhere.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:59, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's reasonable to expect new Norwegian words to "catch on" anywhere outside Norway. It's not as if Norwegian is a widely spoken international language. Or are you saying it hasn't even caught on in Norway itself? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:09, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I think the IP may have been implying the latter, but keeping in mind that parentonyms are unusual in Norway (for example, the notability of Audhild Gregoriusdotter Rotevatn rests in part on her parentonym!), I think the term is unlikely to occur outside of discussions directly related to the 2003 amendment to the Naming Law (which explicitly allowed parentonyms), and thus unlikely to garner a lot of google hits. decltype (talk) 16:13, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, patronyms may be little used today in Norway, but they are actually a very old tradition both in Norway and in Scandinavia (in fact, in much of the per-modern world), and remained common throughout Early Modern times, indeed as late as in the beginning of the 20th century. The reason why nobody has needed the cover term "parentonym" is probably because matronyms have been very uncommon. Even this is surprising, since matronyms tend to turn up wherever you also have patronyms, and one would have expected a cover term to have been devised at least in scientific circles. The OP's question was about English, and it is even more surprising that "parentonym" or something similar hasn't been created as a scientific term outside of Norway yet. Perhaps the right word is in fact out there and we just haven't been able to find it yet. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Help translating from German, please

From this document I am having difficulty translating a very long sentence. In German it is:

• Eine alte Tradition sagt nämlich, daß im Jahre 286 zu Trier unter Rictius Varus, dem Präfecten des Kaisers Maximianus, theils am linken Ufer der Mosel in der Nähe der Brücke, wo im Mittelalter die Kirche zum h. Victor gestanden, theils in der Nähe der St. Paulinskirche, wo ein Campus Martius als Lager und Uebungsplatz der Truppen eingerichtet gewesen, eine Cohorte der Thebäschen Legion hingerichtet wurde, weil sie Christum bekannte, den heidnischen Göttern nicht opfern und gegen die Christen, welche aus Furcht vor der Verfolgung sich zu den empörten Bauern (Bagauden) gesellt hatten, nicht kämpfen wollte; genannt sind nur ihre Anführer: Thyrsus und Bonifacius.

With some tweaking, an online translator gave me this:

• An old tradition says that in 286, Rictius Varus, the prefect of the emperor Maximian in Trier, and partly on the left bank of the Moselle stood near the bridge, where in the Middle Ages, the Church of St Victor, partly in the vicinity of the Paulinskirche St., where a Campus Martius as a warehouse and training ground of troops have been set up, a cohort of Theban Legion was executed because they confessed Christ, the pagan gods and sacrifice not against the Christians, who for fear of persecution revolted to the were peasants (Bagaudae) joined, did not want to fight, only their leaders are called: Thyrsus and Boniface.

And, largely ignorant of German and not entirely understanding what's going on, I've come up with this:

• An old tradition says that in 286, Rictius Varus, the prefect of the emperor Maximian, was stationed in Trier, where a Campus Martius as a warehouse and training ground of troops had been set up (where in the Middle Ages, the Church of St Victor, partly in the vicinity of the Paulinskirche St., and partly on the left bank of the Moselle, stood near the bridge). A cohort of the Theban Legion, along with their leaders Thyrsus and Boniface, were executed here because they confessed Christ and would not sacrifice to the pagan gods against the Christians, who for fear of persecution had revolted and joined the peasants (Bagaudae), but did not want to fight.

May I please request improvements, suggestions, corrections, advice? I'm not sure my "translation" is accurate enough, nor that it even mostly reflects the author's intended meaning. There also seemed to be a verb missing, relating the prefect to the Campius Martius, so I added "was stationed". But I clearly need a German speaker to make more sense of this! (For context, I've got all of the text and a rough translation here.) Thanks, :) Maedin\^talk 12:03, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

This is what I've come up with (also inspired by what you already had): An old tradition says that in the year 286, under Rictius Varus, prefect of the emperor Maximian, a cohort of the Theban Legion (only their leaders, Thyrsus and Bonifacius, are named) was executed in Trier, partly on the left bank of the Moselle (near the bridge, where the St. Victor’s Church had stood in the Middle Ages), partly near the St. Paulin Church (where a Campus Martius had been set up as a warehouse and a training ground for the troops), because they had converted to Christianity, did not want to bring sacrifices to the pagan gods, and did not fight against the Christians who had joined the outraged peasants (Bagaudae) out of fear of persecution. Rimush (talk) 13:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

That's excellent! It's so much better than what I got, :) Thank you! Maedin\^talk 14:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I think Rimush's translation is basically right, but he missed the last phrase, which means: "only their leaders are named: Thyrsus and Bonifacius". Marco polo (talk) 19:21, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmmmm? It's there? "...a cohort of the Theban Legion (only their leaders, Thyrsus and Bonifacius, are named) was executed in Trier..." Maedin\^talk 19:25, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

If I were translating this professionally, I would break it up into three or four sentences, as the original author should have done. There's simply no excuse for this kind of writing. +Angr 19:37, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

@Marco Polo: I added it in there somewhere, because I took some inspiration from what Maedin had done himself herself. @Angr: I agree, such sentences are not even fit for German :D Rimush (talk) 21:46, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I am a "herself", :) And yes, there are several sentences in the document that are desperately too long. Once the more literal translation is completed, I intend to edit for style. Can't guarantee that I'll improve it much, but I'll try! Maedin\^talk 05:54, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

All the more glad to have helped you if you are a "herself" :P Rimush (talk) 08:19, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

May I suggest a few further tweaks:

"viz.: An old tradition says that in the year 286, under Rictius Varus, prefect of the emperor Maximian, a cohort of the Theban Legion (only their commanders, Thyrsus and Bonifacius, are named) was executed at Trier, partly on the left bank of the Moselle (near the bridge, where St. Victor’s Church would (later) stand in the Middle Ages), and partly near the Church of St. Paulinus (where a Campus Martius had been established as a camp and a training ground for the troops), because they were of Christian confession, did not want to bring sacrifices to the heathen gods, and did not want to fight against the Christians who had joined the rebellious peasants (Bagaudae) for fear of persecution. Ehrenkater (talk) 16:19, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I can only agree. And I sure hope you're a native speaker. And maybe you could help with the rest of the translation on that talk page. Rimush (talk) 18:02, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That's a good improvement on Rimush's already good work. Thank you, too! It's probably not worth you German speakers having a look at the rest until I've done more of the grunt work, and at the moment I'm only half-way through the document. Of course, you're welcome to, but I don't want you to waste your time with the rubbish beginnings, :) Maedin\^talk 19:20, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

British accent

Hey all! I'm an amateur thespian and I've got a part in a play next month. The trouble is, I play a British character whereas I'm just a stupid Yankee ( ; ) ) and I can't quite seem to get the accent down. I also sometimes mix up a British accent with an Australian accent because I've been exposed to Australian English more than British English. Any tips on how to "sound British" (i.e., how to pronounce certain vowels, stress, how a setnecne goes "up and down",etc)? This accent has to be really convincing like people might think I'm really from England because this is a major play and it will have professional critics and everything. And also can somebody give pointers on the differences between AuE and BrE? THanks so much! 64.118.100.189 (talk) 15:54, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I can think of two pieces of advice:

1. DON'T over do it. Keep it simple and subtle. (ie don't copy Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins :) 2. Pick up a copy of a nice British film from the local video store, or tune in to some BBC on your computer. Or listen to some Youtube clips. The best way to pick up an authentic accent is to listen to someone speaking it. By the way, does your character in the play come from a specific region of Britain? Duomillia (talk) 16:22, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

It's a bit technical, but you might find IPA chart for English dialects useful.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:26, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Australians are prone to high-rise terminals. Kittybrewster ☎ 16:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

1. Research your character. As part of your usual research, think about what kind of British accent they are likely to have. This doesn't have to be too arduous: is there a character with a similar background in a British film or TV series? Go with that accent.
2. Research that specific accent. If you've picked a British celebrity or character with a lot of available footage of them talking, you can listen to that repeatedly and work at mimicking it. If you're mimicking a particular person, you're more likely to stay in the accent.
3. Don't try for a 'generic British' accent, since you'll go all over the place and slip into Australian. Pick an individual, and stick with it. 86.164.66.83 (talk) 16:43, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

You might search the archives at http://news.bbc.co.uk for a story they ran a year or two ago about a coach who specializes (specialises) in teaching British actors how to speak American, and vice-versa. The first thing American clients ask her, she says, is to make sure they don't sound like Dick ("Chim-Chim-Chimeree") Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. —— Shakescene (talk) 16:48, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I just read this talk page discussion. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Here's the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7509572.stm . (For a particularly horrid example of Britons Americanizing Badly, see the earlier episodes of As Time Goes By.) ¶ I have to second what everyone else here has said: please be more specific about your character's geographic origins, class and occupation. Just as there is no such thing as a generic "American accent" (broadcasting schools teach something Midwestern like Walter Cronkite from Missouri, Dick Cavett from Nebraska, Johnny Carson from Iowa or David Letterman from Indiana, on the theory that it's equally understandable in all parts of the U.S.), there's no single "British accent". This was brought home to me rather vividly in May when the BBC showed returning officers with authentic local accents announcing the General Election results of individual constituencies from Land's End to John o' Groats and from Belfast to Brighton. If your character is from the classes which use Received Pronunciation, London, the Home Counties or the Southeast (not East Anglia), I could give you some pointers, since I was born in London and have lived in the U.S. since 1960, but those pointers might be worse than useless for other parts of Britain. After all, as you can learn from The Story of English (which I highly recommend watching), many individual features of what's considered an American accent originated from somewhere in the British Isles. ¶ And having crossed the Atlantic thrice between the ages of 6 and 11, I instinctively and patriotically resisted re-Americanizing after re-Anglicising, so although I've done my share of acting in public, I still, after half a century in the 'States, don't trust my ability to reproduce an American accent believably on stage. Break a leg! —— Shakescene (talk) 20:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

And, of course, if varies with time, but there's a limit to how accurately you can represent that. The typical middle-class southern accent is much more Estuary in general than 10, 20, 30 years ago. But picking a likely individual to mimick gets around all of this. 86.164.66.83 (talk) 21:09, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

The most recognizable British accents in North America are Received Pronunciation, or RP, and Estuary English. (Scottish English accents are also recognizable in North America, but they are somewhat complex and varied, and therefore difficult to zero in on.) Unfortunately, English accents vary both by region and by class. You might want to cultivate an RP accent if your character is an educated member of the upper middle class. If your character is lower middle class and could be from Southeastern England (including London), Estuary English could work. If your character is clearly working class or underclass, you are going to have to choose a heavier regional accent, such as Cockney on London's eastern periphery, or perhaps a northern accent such as Scouse. Probably the best suggestion is to pick a character from a British film whose persona is close to the one you want to emulate and to closely study and emulate that person's speech. Marco polo (talk) 19:17, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

To British ears, Americans trying to do a "British" accent, even professionally, often sound ludicrously wrong (and no doubt the opposite is also true). For example, lurching between upper-class RP and Cockney in the same sentence. As others have said, there is no single British accent, but see American and British English pronunciation differences for some specific points. In particular be careful of the short "o" sound, as in hot, and other vowel sounds, and note that British speech is generally non-rhotic - e.g. "caught" and "court" are exact homophones. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I think you meant only one 'non' there, Andrew. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:20, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Oops: non-non-non-rhotic it is - corrected. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:01, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

They aren't exact homophones in my (roughly) RP accent. The vowels are very slightly different ("court" is slightly more rounded than "caught", that's the only difference I can pin down, but I think there is more to it than that). --Tango (talk) 00:21, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

XVIII century translation, please

Hello. I am a french contributor, and trying to translate this text, the highlighted part of the sentence has absolutely no meaning for me. Can you translate it in french, or in modern english. Thanks.

« ANNE, by the Grace of God, &c. To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting: Whereas Our trusty and welbeloved subiect, Henry Mill, hath by his humble peticon represented vnto Vs, That he has by his great study, paines and expence lately invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters, singly or progressively, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great vse in settlements and publick recors, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery. »

Dhatier (talk) 16:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

"By his humble petition, [Henry Mill] has represented to Us". rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:47, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Great and fast. Thank you very much. Dhatier (talk) 17:01, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

And if you need that clarified further, it only means "Henry claims that he has..." DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:36, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Languages of Russia

I'm trying to find a good map of Russia with regional languages marked. A map similar to this one ([1]) would be amazing. --151.51.156.20 (talk) 20:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

This http://www.ethnologue.com/show_map.asp?name=RUA may help. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:58, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

And here's the European Russia counterpart on the same site. Oddly enough, Ossetic is neither on the map nor on the list.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:54, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Ethnologue only features "Osetin" as non-immigrant language under Languages of Georgia and Languages of Turkey (Asia)]. On ethnologue's Languages of Russian Federation (Asia) Ossetic is mentioned as an "immigrant language" with an estimated 515.000 speakers. Perhaps they exclude what they consider immigrant languages from the maps? ---Sluzzelin talk 22:20, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

"100 percent" in Spanish

Which is the correct expression for "100 percent" in Spanish: cien por ciento or ciento por ciento? 69.117.4.4 (talk) 23:53, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

According to this site[2] it's cien por ciento. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:04, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Is that a good source? According to some Spanish-language websites, the Royal Spanish Academy apparently considers ciento por ciento the correct usage. Can someone verify this? 69.117.4.4 (talk) 05:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard ciento por ciento till now. A site says it's common in Mexico. Then again, someone also says that their dictionary mentions cien por cien, which is also supposedly correct. Rimush (talk) 08:16, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe both versions are acceptable in some sense, as their meaning would be clear to a Spanish speaker, but cien por ciento might be the "more correct" way to say it. A word that is used as a modifier in front of a singular masculine word (as opposed to the normal positioning afterwards) often drops the trailing "o". As an example, you would say buena suerte ("good luck") but you would say buen viaje ("good trip" i.e. "bon voyage") rather than bueno viaje; although if you said bueno viaje I'm sure you would be understood, it just might evoke a snicker. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:51, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

My copy of Diccionario de la Lengua Española, published by La Real Academia Española says ciento por ciento but I have usually heard cien por ciento and cien por cien in conversation in Andalucia (where they tend to be more relaxed about these things). Richard Avery (talk) 15:25, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

cien por cien, cien por ciento or ciento por ciento are all acceptable, cf. [3]. For these cases, I can't help recommending the DPD (Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas, published by the RAE). Pallida  Mors 17:46, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Of course, each region or dialect may have a "more preferred" choice. Here in South America, cien por ciento or cien por cien are used. Pallida  Mors 17:53, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

This discussion also serves to illustrate the apparent "limitations" of Spanish vs. English. Cien por ciento would literally mean the redundant sounding "[One] hundred per hundred". In English it sounds a little more elegant somehow: "One hundred per cent". However, that's just a fancified way of saying "One hundred per hundred." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:00, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed Bugs, but a language that has different words for an outer corner and an inner corner can't be all bad! Richard Avery (talk) 21:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

July 28

Pre-Germanic English in modern English

Your articles about the origin of the English language say that it mostly came from German languages with a lot of French words thrown it. What I can't find is how many words in English came from the language of the people of England before the Saxons got there. I found Lists of English words of Celtic origin, which lists words that came from the old Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and Gaul languages, but has anything survived from the pre-Saxon language of England? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:22, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by 'pre-Saxon language of England' if you do not mean the languages of the Celtic peoples on these islands? The Saxons arrived around 500AD (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has the earliest arrival of Saxons at 449AD, I believe) and the languages of the Britons had already broken up into Old Scots, Old Irish, and Old Welsh by that time. Proto-Celtic (or whatever the branch specific to Britain would be called) would not have influenced the language of the Saxons, as it was spoken at least a thousand years prior. There is, however, evidence of Celtic influence in certain Proto-Germanic words, such as the word for 'five' and a few other words which did not survive into the Old English period. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:35, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

After Proto-Celtic had broken into Old Scots, Old Irish, and Old Welsh, but before 449AD, what language were the people of England speaking? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Right, the area we now call England only came to be called England after the Anglo-Saxons arrived. Prior to their arrival, the area now called England was just part of a broader land called by the Romans 'Britannia' - or 'Britain' as we call it now. This land was inhabited by the 'Britons', which is the name we give to the Celtic tribes living on the largest island of the British Isles. There were fundamentally two types - Goidelic and Bretonnic (various spellings exist for both of these) and the Bretonnic people were the ones that gave rise to the Welsh and Cornish languages. Before the Saxons turned up, these people weren't confined to Wales and Cornwall, though - they were everywhere, but through various processes (war and assimilation) the Saxons and their language became dominant in the area we call England. Therefore, it is safe to presume that the language spoken here immediately before the Saxons arrived was a slightly older version of Old Welsh or Old Cornish or other very similar 'languages' or 'dialects' (depending on how you might look at them at that time in history). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:33, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

My understanding is that there was remarkably little influence. Normally an invading population will at the very least take place names from the natives, simply because it is so annoying to have to invent new ones -- just think of all the Indian names for places in the United States. But in England virtually the only Celtic-derived place names are for a few major cities such as London, York, etc.. This suggests that there were no Celts around that the Saxons could ask "what is this place called?" The few written accounts say that the Celts were devastated by a plague (in fact the Bubonic plague hit in the 540's), and the few survivors fled to the mountains of Wales. But it's hard to be certain of the truth of that. Looie496 (talk) 02:00, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, both London and York come from the Latin names of those cities, and many of the larger settlements will also follow this pattern, having probably been home to large Roman armies ('-caster' and '-chester' in many placenames both come from Latin 'castra', meaning 'camp'). It is actually the smaller lesser known places that are more likely to have names of Celtic origin. Hill hill hill hill is a fun example of how the Saxons (and others) probably did ask the original locals what a place was called before deciding to call it that and then adding their own word to it to describe the surrounding area (in the sense that it includes the word 'penn', from a British word meaning 'head'). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:12, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I take it if there was little language transfer there was also little intermarrying. Were the people of England (minus Cornwall) from 449 to 1066 almost pure German? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

There probably was a fair amount of intermarrying. It is just a fact that one of the languages (English) became dominant in this area (England). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:33, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

There was evidently a shift in language from Brythonic (Welsh) to English without a correspondingly large change in population. At least in the northeast of England (Yorkshire ~ Northumberland), the local modern English dialect shows Brythonic influence in the grammar, but not in the vocabulary, suggesting that native speakers were for a time a rather small minority among English language users, with the majority of English being spoken by native Brythonic speakers to each other. If one language is perceived as having greater value, languages can be replaced without any population replacement at all. Recently this happened in Angola, which is now maybe 80% Portuguese speaking despite having very little Portuguese ancestry. — kwami (talk) 05:13, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

How is Brythonic substratum influence visible in the northeast? I have never heard about such a thing before.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:59, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It would be more correct to say northwest - see Cumbric language and Hen Ogledd. Alansplodge (talk) 21:04, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

BTW, KageTora, the names of London and York are of Celtic origin. The Latin names are just Latin renderings of Celtic words. And I don't think it's true that "in England virtually the only Celtic-derived place names are for a few major cities". There are really a lot of Celtic place names in England (Kent, Dover), especially the names of rivers (Thames, Severn, Avon). And even if it were true, I wouldn't take the lack of Celtic town names as evidence that there were no Celtic speakers there before the English arrived. After all, the part of England under the Danelaw now has mostly Norse town names, but that doesn't mean it was devoid of English speakers before the Norse arrived. +Angr 06:03, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, Angr, I suppose I should have made a clearer distinction between direct borrowing and indirect borrowing (in this case through Latin). And, ftr, the rest of your post does not refer to my post but to the one above it :) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:25, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Towns, and substantial settlements generally, didn't really exist before the Romans and mostly didn't continue for long afterwards. The only place names which would have - and, in some cases, did - survive relate to natural features, especially rivers, and also in some places the remnants of tribal names. For instance, place names like Devon and (the first element of) Dorset contain Celtic elements, deriving from the pre-Roman tribes which the Romans called the Dumnonii and Durotriges. Ghmyrtle (talk) 06:59, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

There is material relevant to the foregoing discussion in Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, if you haven't already seen that. Also, I recall that someone has recently put forward a radical re-interpretation to the effect that Germanic languages were widely spoken in Britain even before the Roman Conquest. Unfortunately I can't recall his name, although I'm sure we must have material on this somewhere. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 16:13, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Stephen Oppenheimer? Adam Bishop (talk) 00:13, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Cowboy slang...from the movies.

It's borderline whether I should be asking this on the Entertainment desk...but here goes.

I'm writing a computer game based around cheesy cowboy movies - and I need to get the lingo right for a crowd of guys in a bar. To be completely clear: I'm not in the slightest bit interested in 'realistic' speech from that era - certainly not if if comes out like the 'Deadwood' TV series!

What I need is some vocabulary - what words identify this as a "cheesy western movie"? Some I can think of are the word "Mosey" - meaning "To Walk", Burro for "Mule". But I'm short on ideas.

Go nuts...what words can you think of that fit the genre?

Thanks in advance... SteveBaker (talk) 01:14, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Pardner (roughly equivalent to 'buddy'), hoosgow ('jail'), Madame & bordello (for some reason westerns never have male pimps). really, just go rent any old John Wayne movie, and you'll be inundated with this stuff. --Ludwigs2 01:47, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Critter, varmint, tarnation, ornery, tombstone, gulch, vittles, plumb tuckered out. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:20, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

There's a good one at the end of this 40-second clip[4] and it's well known, yer dern tootin'! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That clip also has Mexicans saying "vamonos" ("let's go") which was corrupted into the western expression "vamoose". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:25, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hey, Bugs, you old carrot-chomping septuagenarian whippersnapper, happy birthday! —— Shakescene (talk) 03:41, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hey, t'anks, Doc! Just t'ink - 70 years and only one gray hare! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:55, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

So Wiktionary says, but I don't see why they pick on vamonos rather than vamos. 213.122.9.117 (talk) 07:17, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Dang nabbit! That blasted scallywag done vamoosed with mah horse! Ifin I gits my hands on him, I’ll string ‘em up! I’m a gonna stretch that no good polecat’s neck! It’ll be a real necktie party! Come on, boys! We’ll head ‘em off at the pass! Who’s with me? DOR (HK) (talk) 08:58, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Just want to add posse, saloon, gun slinger, tumble weed, shoot out, round up, outlaw, rustler to the list. The "critter, varmint, tarnation, ornery" suggestion given strikes me as more Kentucky/Tennessee/Davy Crockett/hillbilly than cheesy Western? By the way, the best film to watch for inspiration is Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, because as a piss-take on Westerns you get all the clichés, :) Maedin\^talk 10:31, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Also check out the overlooked Rustlers' Rhapsody. Andy Griffith plays a hilarious parody of a cattle baron. For motre vernacular, check out Cowboy Lingo. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:22, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll add "fourflusher" (one who cheats in gambling), "bushwhack" (to ambush) and the noun "bushwhacker", and "tenderfoot" (or, if you're John Wayne, the synonymous "pilgrim"). Deor (talk) 14:32, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

"vamonos instead of vamos" - it's a little more informal in the reflexive form, 'let's go' rather than the imperative 'we go'. Richard Avery (talk) 15:16, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. There's "dogey" (as in "Git along, lil dogey!"), meaning an orphaned calf. And make sure you pronounce "coyote" as "ki-YOTE". And don't forget your character needs to have "a plug a' tabacky" in his cheek when he says this stuff. Matt Deres (talk) 15:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You need to watch Carry On Cowboy[5] for every Wild West cliché known to us Brits. Alansplodge (talk) 16:30, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't remember how much stereotypical cowboy slang it has, but an early send-up of horse operas was the song "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande", written by Johnny Mercer for Bing Crosby. See http://www.cmt.com/lyrics/roy-rogers-country/im-an-old-cowhand/7413395/lyrics.jhtml (an apparently legitimate, unpiratical link, CMT or Country Music Television, citing proper sources, copyright and terms of service). —— Shakescene (talk) 17:49, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Yippee-i-o-ki-ay! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:57, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Greek and Russian alphabet?

Why do the Greek alphabet and the Russian alphabet have some similar looking characters? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.80.1 (talk) 05:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Because the Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:53, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

The name Tsvetelina

Tsvetelina is a Bulgarian name. Does it have any corresponding forms in other languages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.61.234.225 (talk) 08:21, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Svetlana, perhaps? Best, WikiJedits (talk) 09:34, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think Svetlana is the same name. Svetlana derives from the Slavic element svet meaning "light, world". Tsvetelina seems to be related to names like Tsveta, Tsvetanka and Tsvetan (male). They come from Slavic цвете, flower. Names with the same etymology are Květa (Czech), Kveta (Slovak), Kveta/Kvetka Cveta/Cvetka/Cvetana/Cvetanka/Cvetina (Croatian and Slovene). Names with a similar meaning are Flora (Latin/Italian/Spanish...), Virág (Hungarian), Bluma (Yiddish). --151.51.156.20 (talk) 10:02, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

South Slavic variant is actually with <C> (/ts/) "Cveta/Cvetka/Cvijeta", but you're right about etymology. Those names are the most popular in Bulgaria, and the more common form is Tsvetana (Цветана). No such user (talk) 10:16, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

The site behindthename.com could be a useful source. It's particularly good at tracing etymologies of given names, but it doesn't seem to contain Tsvetelina in its database. Bulgarian Цветан, Цвета, Цветана, Цветанка, Цветелина (Tsvetan, Tsveta, Tsvetana, Tsvetanka, Tsvetelina) are derived from Proto-Slavic *květъ, meaning "colour" or "flower". Svetlana (and its cognates) comes from Proto-Slavic *světъ, "light", and so is unrelated. Behindthename.com mentions also Croatian Cvita as what would be a corresponding form of Tsvetelina, though I would doubt it could be extremely common. --Theurgist (talk) 11:01, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I suppose Cvita is an Ikavian variant. +Angr 17:27, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That's actually quite possible, given the vowel in *květъ, *квѣтъ, is the yat vowel. --Theurgist (talk) 20:49, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

July 29

Official test for Russian

Is there a standard, broadly accepted test scheme for Russian, like the DELF/DALF exams for French? Cod Lover Oil (talk) 00:08, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

There is ТРКИ. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:16, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Macedonian and Bulgarian

Is there an article about the differences between Macedonian and Bulgarian similiar to Differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish, Differences between Spanish and Portuguese and Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish? I'm particularly interested about orthographical differences. --151.51.156.20 (talk) 01:46, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I did not find one in Category:Language comparison. -- Wavelength (talk) 04:29, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

There was a 1950's book by Horace Lunt, a well known comparative Slavic scholar, which was kind of the first full English-language treatment of a separate Macedonian written language; of course it would not be up to date... AnonMoos (talk) 05:50, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Did Confucius really say that?

"One hundred women are not worth a single testicle" is a favorite saying on the web that is attributed to Confucius. No one seems to know where it came from, though. Please help. Thanks. 67.243.7.245 (talk) 02:37, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Is there a website that might have the collected works of Confucious? I wouldn't trust any unattributed quotes, as a lot of quotes attributed to famous people are something that simply "sound like" something they might say. For example, Yogi Berra might well have been quoting Confucious when he stated, "I never said half the things I said." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:06, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Whoa, I can't imagine such a great philosopher saying something so sexist! Kayau Voting IS evil 04:05, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Aristotle said some rather dismissive things about women, but it was in the context of speculations in natural and/or political philosophy, not vulgar popular misogyny. There has been a whole genre of "Confucius say X" jokes in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere in the English-speaking world) for well over fifty years, but they are not authentic quotes, nor ever intended to be... AnonMoos (talk) 06:03, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Phonetic Alphabet

124.43.25.100 (talk) 10:54, 29 July 2010 (UTC)Where can I find the Phonetic Alphabet (I am not sure about the correct name)where a for alfred, c for charles, d for david,..........l for london, m for mary, k for kelvin, x for xray, y for yellow and z for zebra. thank you.124.43.25.100 (talk) 10:54, 29 July 2010 (UTC)