Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 November 15

= November 15 =

"I do do my laundry."
Is this sentence grammatically correct? "I do do my laundry." (In response to "You don't do your laundry.") Thanks! -66.108.149.44 01:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Certainly. Here's another example, "Do what you do do well".  JackofOz 01:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Btw, washing the do-do out of your pants is an icky problem. Best of luck.  :)  JackofOz 01:44, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah I see it now! But.... do do you think you should have mentioned it? --Light current 01:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * That last interrogative sentence seems the strangest to me, maybe it should be "do you do think" (or maybe not...)? 惑乱 分からん 02:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with the last non-interrogative parenthetical statement - "maybe not". In fact, definitely not.JackofOz 05:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * What? 惑乱 分からん 14:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * In "to do one's laundry," "to do" is used as a normal verb. Just like you say, for emphasis: "I do ," you can say: "I do ." Likewise with "to do something": "I do ." Note that when spoken the emphatic auxiliary verb "do" is stressed. In "Do you think so?", on the other hand, "do" is a dummy auxiliary verb and cannot be emphasized by another "do". In general auxiliaries are not stacked because this requires an infinitive they are lacking *"I will can walk and I shall can walk." The auxiliary "do" is exceptional because the verb can also be used as a normal verb and then has an infinitive. However, it appears to me that as an auxiliary verb it is equally defective: *"I will do eat meat." --Lambiam Talk  08:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * While the do-do referred to above is more scatalogical and is more commonly spelled "doo-doo" (or poo-doo if you are in a Star Wars film). Robovski 04:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

question
hello :this website is available in 14 languages. why not the arabic language also ? there is over 400 million arabic people in the world. thank you

If you check the main page and look in the lower left hand corner there is a box with a ton of other languages. Maybe that will help? 152.3.72.50 03:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * See Arabic Wikipedia / http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/. Possibly the article you looked at didn't have a corresponding article written in Arabic, yet... 惑乱 分からん 03:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The previous posts have pointed out what is probably your misunderstanding. But please be aware an article exists in Wikipedia (in any language) for one reason only: because somebody was interested enough to start writing it. If you want more articles in the Arabic Wikipedia, please start writing some! --ColinFine 05:27, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, every different language Wikipedia is unique in its userbase and the information covered. The articles are rarely directly corresponding translations of other language articles... 惑乱 分からん 14:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Latvian
Can anyone find me a good (and free) Latvian-to-English block text translation site? I've been trying, but they aren't as easy to find as German- and French-to-English. And I think there might be a dialect problem, since some words I type into those I can find work, and some don't. Black Carrot 06:14, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

About the English Language
Hi, I wanna know how do we study and improve our grammar and vocabulary? I don't do well in my composition, comprehension and in English language itself so I'm trying to improve them. How do we extend our vocabulary? And how do we improve our grammar? I really want to learn more about the english language and of course get better results for my upcoming test. So do you guys have any tips on how to improve my English Language? Anyway, I'm a Singaporean.

By the way, what is another word for "good and bad"? As in this sentence - "My birthday was both good and bad, my mum bought me a xbox 360 but my girlfriend ditched me." And what is another word for "asking for too much"? As in this sentence - "He wants a playstation 2, billabong shorts, many cd games, a cool ipod nano, a brand new computer, and a latest handphone design! Isn't he asking for too much?" Denester 13:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * For improving your vocabulary: read a lot of literature with a good dictionary at your side and look up every word you don't know. Write stories in various styles (humoristic, literary, historic, ...) and let people who know English very well correct them. Use a thesaurus to find the right words, or nice alternatives. I don't know a specific word for simultaneously good and bad. "Ambiguous" indicates multi-interpretability, which would include "both good and bad" but is much less specific. You yourself may be said to be "ambivalent" about that memorable birthday. For "asking for too much" you can say "greedy" in one word, but that does not imply the "asking" aspect (he could just be taking everything). --Lambiam Talk  14:27, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * You could possibly say something like "My birthday left me with mixed sentiments", or something similar... 惑乱 分からん 14:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * There's always "bittersweet." Wareh 15:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It's common for Americans to say something was "Okay" (or OK) when they actually mean "it could have been better" (and is usually followed by an observation of something that would have been better or could have been different) so you could say (for example) "My birthday was Okay; I just wish Jean had turned up." Robovski 04:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Also, you need to decide which English you want to learn. From your use of the word "mum", I'd say you're going for UK English (in US English, it would be "mom"). Your English looks quite good to me, however, compared with many of our posters (even those who are allegedly native English speakers). StuRat 17:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * This might not work on a very large scale, but one thing that helped me with my vocabulary was attaching images or stories to the words. In fifth or sixth grade my English teacher read us a book that used stories to illustrate the meanings of some advanced (for a fifth-grader, anyway) words, and they helped enormously.


 * For example, one that i will probably always remember is the story for the word 'ubiquitous'. First it gave the dictionary definition. Then it described a scenario with a person named 'U.B.', who was going on a trip or something so he'd called in to work. At some point two people from his job went to the train station to find him, and they each saw him boarding different trains (in other words, he appeared 'ubiquitous' to them). The author wrapped up the whole story by having the boss exclaim, 'U.B. quit us!'


 * There were several stories like that in the book and i think the words they described were instantly etched in my mind. They were somewhat complex words for a kid that age, but i understood them just as well then as i do now, because of those stories. Of course, i'm a native speaker of English, so i'm not sure how well that would work for someone who's learning it as a second language, but if there are any words that you're struggling to comprehend it's worth a shot. Look up the word, write your own short story to illustrate its meaning, and study the story a few times. Might work.


 * Music is another good way to learn vocabulary. Most of the German i know, for example, i learnt from Rammstein and Megaherz songs. Jackie Chan, i believe, had a similar experience — a lot of his vocabulary in English comes from listening to country music (which he said works good for learning English because of the slow pace).


 * For the good-and-bad thing i would say it left you with 'mixed feelings' (which is probably a more common, and less 'stuffy', term in conversational English than 'mixed sentiments'). ~ lav-chan @ 19:10, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Very true about music. Most of the Italian and German I know, I learned from opera and lieder. JackofOz 02:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * In the context you gave, "asking for too much" is "greedy". He's greedy.  -THB 04:38, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all your comments. I guess I should start reading the newspapers and magazines to find out more new words to add into my vocabulary. I did learn some new words from what you guys written above. For the "good and bad" word, I guess is ambivalent and mixed feelings/sentiments was the word I'm looking for. And for the "asking for too much" word, I'm shocked that the word greedy didn't went through my mind, greedy should be the answer. But there's still one unsolved question - How do I improve my grammar? And, do you guys know any good dictionary? By the way, I'm only 13 years old. Thanks again. Denester 06:13, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I prefer www.dictionary.com because it has entries on each word from several dictionaries as well as a thesaurus. For slang I use www.urbandictionary.com although you can't always trust what it says 100%.  The best way to improve vocabulary is to read and if you don't know what a word means, and can't figure it out from context, to look it up in the dictionary.  To improve grammar, read well-written books.  You can also study grammar.  Another option, because of your age, is to go to the best schools and universities you can get into and afford to pay for so that you will be exposed to people who use language well. Overall, the best way to learn a language is to use it by reading, writing, and speaking, with native speakers. Good luck! -THB 06:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok i'll go for www.dictionary.com. Well in Singapore, we usually speak Chinese (for chinese people. Malay will usually use malay and Indians will usually use Tamil) but not English. So there is hardly any native speakers here. Last request from me - Can you guys spare me any good and useful vocabulary words? Any words which is good and useful. Thanks in advance. Denester 08:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * You can listen to a lot of British radio programs over the internet.Search for the BBC and you'll find loads available as live broadcasts,repeats and downloads.They have dramas,news,sports humour etc and good webpages. Hearing English spoken is often a real help.hotclaws**== 14:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * For vocabulary words, sign up dictionary.com's Word of the Day. You may also use lists like this: http://www.freevocabulary.com/.  However, I still think the best way to build your vocabulary is to incorporate words that you run across while reading because those words are more likely to be useful to YOU.  Using a thesaurus also builds your vocabulary, but in depth, not so much as breadth, making the language you use richer. -THB 16:12, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, I have long said that the best way to learn a language is to date someone who speaks it. You should probably wait a while for that, though! -THB 16:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The best way to learn (grammatical) spoken language is indeed to speak it. But I'm guessing that, if you're interested in improving your grammar, you probably want to be able to write grammatically.  Without doubt, the best thing you can do is to read as many well-edited books (i.e., not the internet) in English as possible.  Even expert writing instruction and corrections to your writing are of no use without reading as widely as possible (and I say that as a college professor who sometimes teaches writing and corrects students' papers; it's only too obvious that their weaknesses come from not having read enough books).  Wareh 16:38, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * You can get some good classics free at http://www.gutenberg.org. -THB 17:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok! Thanks for your help. I hope I could improve my English asap!Denester 04:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Your English grammar is already good enough for informal writing; "didn't went" marks you as a foreigner or a child (should be "didn't go") but that's the sort of thing you'll inevitably pick up if you read attentively. You might benefit from reading Fowler's Modern English Usage, which alerted me to some flaws in my own writing; it's not so much "this is right and this is wrong" as "this is best avoided because it creates an ambiguity."  &mdash;Tamfang 17:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

IPA question
I have a IPA question as follows. Lingerie article give pronnunciation as French original and as English. My question is why is one using /../ and other [..] in these IPA? when is to use /../ and when [..]? I did read IPA article but does not say. Thank you.

Hevesli 14:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * slashes mean phonemic transcription; in this case, "dance" is transcribe like or.
 * square brackets mean phonetic transcription; in this case, if you insert a sound between  and, then you trancribe it as  or . --Kjoonlee 15:50, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * So in short, phonemic transcription is what you do to write down what's in people's heads, or what people try to pronounce.
 * Phonetic transcription is what you do to write down what comes out of people's mouths, or what people actually end up saying.
 * --Kjoonlee 15:51, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The default bracketing characters for IPA are square brackets. The use of square brackets doesn't imply anything about what is being transcribed other than that the symbols inside are IPA characters. Slashes on the other hand, explicitly mean phonemic transcription, as contrasted with any transcription which is not phonemic. It is perfectly legitimate and reasonable to put phonemic transcriptions in square brackets. Using slashes is typically only necessary in cases where a distinction between phonemic and nonphonemic transcriptions is important, which tends to only be in discussions of phonology. On the other hand, many times broad, phonemic transcriptions are written using slashes even if it is not necessary. The International Phonetic Association does not recommend the use of slashes for IPA, but permits them to be used for phonemic transcriptions.


 * In general, claiming that a particular transcription is a phonemic transcription carries with it a substantial set of assumptions and conclusions about the phonology of a language, which, even for a well-studied languages like English, are not generally agreed upon, even among linguists (especially among linguists). While this is a somewhat subtle point, the use of phonemic slashes for IPA transcriptions on Wikipedia might be construed as violating NPOV policy, because it presumes that the phonological theory used to generate the transcription is correct. For example, some phonologists argue that the vowel of sum and the second vowel of sofa are the same phoneme, with the difference being that the former is stressed and the latter is reduced. As such these phonologists would transcribe those vowels using the same symbol—in this case the schwa symbol ə. Other phonologists consider them to be separate vowels and use separate symbols for transcribing them: ʌ for the vowel in sum and schwa for the reduced vowel at the end of sofa. Thus, if you see a transcription for sum that looks like /səm/, there is the implicit claim that the "short u" vowel is the same as schwa, which is not something everyone agrees with. On the other hand if you see a transcription like [səm], the claim is much less strong, because this represents just a surface rendering of the speech which even if it is underlyingly /sʌm/, could very well be produced like [səm]. Nohat 06:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

What is "the rhythm divine"?
My e-mail:


 * First - questions on the WP reference desks are answered on the wiki, not by mail. I have removed your email, as you probably don't want it on the wiki where it can be harvested by spammers.


 * Secondly, you'll have to give more context for your question. Google gives many references to songs and radio programmes of that name, but I don't know what you are asking about.


 * Please sign your contributions with four tildes ( ~ ) --ColinFine 17:56, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If your question is: what do these words mean? – it is a bit old-fashioned poetic way of saying "the divine rhythm". It has no inherent meaning; it just means: the rhythm that has the quality of whatever the speaker means by "divine". --Lambiam Talk  22:13, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to see the context to be sure, but would guess that means the movement of the planets and moons, and the daily, monthly, and yearly cycles those cause on Earth. StuRat 01:35, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Lambiam has said what the words mean. Another answer would be:  "Rhythm Divine" is the title of a song by Enrique Iglesias (lyrics).  Wareh 16:41, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

German "zum Nachbarn"
I don't understand why the above phrase (meaning, presumably, "to the neighbours"), which I have seen in written German, is the way it is. As I understand it, the German for neighbour is der Nachbar, and the plural is die Nachbarn. 'Zu' takes the dative, so shouldn't "to the neighbour" be translated as "zum [zu dem] Nachbar" and "to the neighbours" be rendered as "zu den Nachbarn"? --Richardrj talkemail 19:33, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * There's also Nachbarn for singular genitive/dative/accusative.--gwaihir 19:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, OK. I knew it added an 'n' in the genitive but didn't realise it changed in the dative and accusative as well.  Thanks. --Richardrj talkemail 20:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Just as a follow-up, I had a look at German nouns which says that "most nouns do not take declensions in the accusative or dative cases. A small class of mostly masculine nouns called "weak nouns" takes the ending -n or -en in all cases except the nominative." Presumably therefore der Nachbar is one of those weak nouns?  Is there any way of recognising them? --Richardrj talkemail 09:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't know, I'm merely a native speaker.--gwaihir 18:04, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Go to this page: and check out the section marked "weak declension". That should answer your question. Lesgles ( talk ) 02:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Spanish question
I was reading the newspaper El Pais the other day, and I noticed a something interesting in the article Liberados tres de los 150 secuestrados en un centro de estudios de Bagdad: Separaron a los hombres de las mujeres, les quitaron los teléfonos móviles, los sacaron del edificio a punta de pistola con las manos atadas y se los llevaron en 20 camiones. Y todo en unos 10 ó 15 minutos. Why is there an accent on the "o" in the final sentence? Or is it just a typo?
 * It's to help keep it from being mistaken for a zero. --Anonymous, 23:35 UTC, November 15.
 * Probably not, but as for my answer: No se. (I hope I'm not missing accents... I suck at those...) Cbrown1023 00:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, if your Spanish was trying to say "Not himself", then you're okay, but if you wanted to say "I don't know", then it's No sé. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:44, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * "Probably not"? Well, that's what it says here; that's all I know. --Anon, 05:00 UTC, November 16.
 * Definitely yes, as the plexoft link above states. It used to be used more widely, but now is restricted to numeral lists. mnewmanqc 13:27, 16 November 2006 (UTC)