Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 November 4

= November 4 =

The Big Street's name
I had a guess that "The Big Street" is actually a slang for 'The Broadway'. Maybe Runyon made up this slang, maybe it was an exist slang of The Broadway criminals. Can anyone approve or disapprove my guess? Did Runyon call The Broadway "The Big Street" in other stories he wrote? Thank you, --אביתרג (talk) 07:06, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's a variant of "broad street". Back then, Broadway was called Great White Way (or Gay White Way). --212.186.133.83 (talk) 08:54, 4 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The term shows up a few times here and it does seem to mean Broadway. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 10:07, 4 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot, אביתרג (talk) 09:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Largest geographic language
What are the three largest languages in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of having the predominant geographic distribution of native speakers Pls provude sources. Basri sheyhat (talk) 18:15, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
 * If you're asking which languages are spoken over the widest areas, this will be closely related to total number of speakers.  In Nigeria, Hausa has 44m, Yoruba 30m and Igbo 24m.   In Ethiopia, Oromo has 40m speakers.   The individual articles (Igbo language etc.), give an indication of where the speakers reside. 2.25.226.253 (talk) 18:50, 4 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Possibly Swahili: “Swahili serves as a national language of four nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the DRC.” Loraof (talk) 01:22, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * There is a better saying that Swahili was born in Zanzibar, grew up in Tanzania, fell sick in Kenya, died in Uganda and was buried in the DRC. Шурбур (talk) 09:06, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * You may want to take a look at a linguistic map of Africa. Again, it depends whether one counts native dialects of, say, Malagasy or Somali as separate entities. Шурбур (talk) 09:06, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The OP didn't specify African-origin languages, just native speakers, so let's not forget colonial languages. French as a first language is not necessarily widespread, but Portuguese appears to be, with our articles saying up to 40% of the populations of Angola and Mozambique speak it natively. Those are two pretty big countries. And while Afrikaans is only widespread in the western half of South Africa and southern half of Namibia, that's still a large area. --Golbez (talk) 21:21, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Somali looks big at File:Map of African languages.svg. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:33, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

In the low-cost airline, intercity train and intercity bus market
How much profit does the cheapest seat that showed up make? Compared to not selling that seat but not having to buy the extra fuel and other costs for 1 extra passenger? Did those intermetro area busses that sold the first seat of each bus for $1 sell that seat at a loss? That's an order of magnitude cheaper than before they entered that market! Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:21, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Some links:, . 2.25.226.253 (talk) 19:06, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I would recommend the YouTube channel of Wendover Productions. They do video essays on a variety of different topics, but one of their specialties is the economics of air travel.  There's dozens of good videos there, including an entire one titled "The economics of airline class"  That would be a good launching point for your research.  -- Jayron 32 13:16, 5 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Or read our article Marginal cost for the mathematical method the business uses to find the optimal cost-profit(aka price) spot. --Kharon (talk) 13:52, 5 November 2018 (UTC)