Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 November 2

= November 2 =

Plural of häuptling?
What is the plural of the German word häuptling? Thanks! 210.239.12.93 06:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The nominative and accusative plural are (die) Häuptlinge. Ein Häuptling, zwei Häuptlinge. The genitive plural is (der) Häuptlinge, the dative plural is (den) Häuptlingen. Please note that, in German, Häuptling (in every case and grammatical number) is always spelled with a capital initial letter. ---Sluzzelin 07:14, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. (I was the anonymous poster.) So, for an article I'm working on, "The Germans called such individuals Häuptlinge (chiefs) . . . " should suffice? — BrianSmithson 07:37, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * You're very welcome. Your suggestion sounds good to me. Another, possibly less ambiguous, English translation is chieftains. (You would never translate chief, as in highest rank of an office, with Häuptling. Häuptling always refers to the leader of an indigenous tribe or variety thereof.) ---Sluzzelin 07:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Hello, just a hint : this online dictionary is pretty good and it usually gives the plural as well : Evilbu 10:49, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Isn't there a standard declination for all nouns ending in -ling? 惑乱 分からん 12:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Most are masculine and follow the same declension, yes. Some words, however, such as das Peeling, or das Feeling, are borrowed from the English present-participle form, and are neuter. They follow slightly different rules, and are usually not used in their plural form. I couldn't think of any feminine German words ending in -ling.---Sluzzelin 12:43, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Although that ending clearly has another origin. (The cognate ending to -ing, German -ung, such as in Fühlung and Hoffnung is feminine, btw.) Theoretically, if German would borrow some English word ending in -ling, such as "underling", which declination would be likely used? 惑乱 分からん 13:40, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * In the case of der Underling, it would most likely be masculine, because it refers to a person, and the German language is sexist enough to usually give nouns for people a masculine case by default. And of course you're right, das Peeling is neuter because German speakers recognize it as a present-participle, and nounified(?!) verbs are always neuter in German (e.g. das Schälen (the peeling)).---Sluzzelin 14:03, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe I'm just ranting, but in Dutch "stem of a verb"+"ing" (like "opening"="opening") is always female. The equivalent of that rule in German is for nouns ending in "ung", like "die Verteilung".  However, I recently discovered that blind trust in a German-Dutch correspondence can be catastrophic.... Evilbu 15:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Just a small addendum. After a few hours of sleep I did think of a feminine German word ending in "-ling": die Reling, borrowed from nautical English (or possibly Dutch?) and meaning the railing. So we've come full circle now, regarding Wakuran and Evilbu's posts.---Sluzzelin 12:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay! As a digression, "reling" has also been loaned into Swedish. 惑乱 分からん 16:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Strange plurals

 * 1. We often say "Mary is friends with Ben", rather than "Mary is a friend of Ben". Why?


 * 2. Cigarettes usually come in packets of 20 or 30 these days. If you ask for a packet of X brand, you'll probably be asked "Do you want 20s or 30s?".   Why is the plural of these numbers used?  There's only one lot of 20 (or 30) in a packet, not many lots of 20 (or 30).  JackofOz 12:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Is it possible that the first example is a variety of Mary and Ben are friends, in other words, put together they are friends, or Mary is friends (together) with Ben? In this case it wouldn't be all that illogical, after all it takes at least two for a friendship, but this doesn't help explain your second example, I'm afraid.---Sluzzelin 13:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Could 2 be in genitive, instead of in plural? 惑乱 分からん 13:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * 1 I think that "to be friends with" is an idiomatic expression derived from "X and Y are friends".  It describes a relationship, like the expression "to be in love with".
 * 2. I think that this is a kind of verbal shortcut used by cashiers with a long line of customers rather than "Do you want a 20 pack or a 30 pack?". It works fine to say "Do you want 20s or 30s?" when the customer is ordering multiple packs ("Give me 4 packs of Marlboros."). This then becomes the automatic quick response to any unquantified request for one or more packs of a brand.
 * Marco polo 13:54, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe Wakuran is right, neither are plurals, they're in the genitive. It's another example of retained genitive "s"es in English (see above on genitive prepositions). "Mary is a friend of Ben", becomes "friends with". "A packet of 20" becomes "A packet of 20s". --BluePlatypus 14:38, 2 November 2006 (UTC)u


 * I find this really doubtful, at least for the second example. The retained genitive "s" is a historical vestige and not a productive feature of the language.  The second example is clearly a recent development that can only be as old as cigarette packs, which long postdate the productive use of a genitive in English.


 * The first example is less clear. To my ear, it has a modern feel.  Blue Platypus gives "Mary is a friend of Ben" as the modern equivalent of "Mary is friends with Ben."  But in this example, it is Ben that is in the genitive.  If there were a retained genitive, the expression would be "*Mary is a friend Bens", which doesn't make sense, though you can say "Mary is a friend of Ben's", but this is not related to "Mary is friends with Ben", and the two sentences have different focuses (the first one on Ben's friendships, of which the friendship with Mary is one; the second on the relationship between Mary and Ben).  If "Mary is friends with Ben" involved a retained genitive, then the meaning of the sentence should be close to "Mary is of friend with Ben".  This is not implausible, if the genitive carried an attributive sense, so that "of friend" could mean "friendly".  But for this to be a retained genitive, the expression "friends with" would have to be quite old.  There would need to be a citation from the 15th century or earlier, when the genitive was productive in English, for this to be convincing.


 * Marco polo 15:00, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Would BluePlatypus's suggestion mean that the possessive 's' can be added to the possessor noun (20s) as well as to the possessed noun (friends)?---Sluzzelin 15:08, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, and this is certainly not true for English. Furthermore, to a native speaker, "20s or 30s?" with reference to packs of cigarettes does not make sense as a "retained genitive" purely on grounds of anachronism.  (This use of the genitive died out long before there were packs of cigarettes.)  However, I have taken a look at OED, and there are examples of "to be friends with" as well as "to make friends with" in Shakespeare.  Shakespeare is much closer to the time when the genitive was productive. Also, the expression "to make friends with" looks likely to be a retained genitive, especially considering that the expression already existed in Shakespeare's time.  So, I think that the suggestion of a retained genitive is plausible after all for the first example.  The original meaning could have been "Mary is of friend (friendly) with Ben".  "Make friends with" would have meant originally "make of friend (friendly) with".  Marco polo 15:26, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughts so far. Interesting, but I welcome further debate. (PS. I'm retiring from my job today (Friday here), and am taking an enforced 3-day wikibreak while I move to the country.) JackofOz 22:45, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It's been a while since I looked at this, but don't cigarettes normally come in 10s and 20s?
 * In my part of the world, the most popular sizes are 20 and 30. They also come in packs of 50, but I can't remember the last time I saw a pack of 10 being sold. It may be different where you are.  The sizes are not the important issue, though, it's the pluralisation of the number that I'm curious about.  It occurs to me it's probably just a marketing thing - even though the pack says, eg. "20" and not "20s", it's common to pluralise names of certain products, so people just do it without thinking.
 * I think that the whole genitive thing here is a red herring. "being friends with" is an idiom, and friends is clearly plural "Sue is friends with Bob" simply means "Sue and Bob are friends". The other example, 20s and 30s is also normal plural of a word which has been converted to a noun, exactly like 1980s and 1990s, or other examples like reds and blues. In the example of 20s and 30s, the plural is used by analogy to "cigarettes". Zocky | picture popups 19:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree it's idiomatic, and the genitive explanation doesn't wash with me either. Does anyone know where and when the idiom originated?  JackofOz 02:23, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

1) "Friends" is plural. Its easier to see once the sentence is broken down, thusly:
 * Mary is the subject of the sentence.
 * is is the copula.
 * "friends", is the object of the verb and is most defiantly plural.
 * "with" is the preposition of accompaniment.
 * "Ben" is also the object of the sentence, albeit modified by "with".

So why is "friends" plural? In this case, it is a state of being that includes two beings.

Personally, I feel that "Mary is a friend of Ben" has a different meaning, but that could just be me.

As for why we use it more, its an idiomatic phrase, and they are more "natural" to a native speaker than the formal way of saying something.

2) Breaking "20s and 30s" down helps as well, this time into their actual spelling (i.e. "twenties and thirties"). The suffix -ies is the plural of the suffix -y, which is the diminutive.  The diminutive in this case is used to break a longer expression down into simpler one.

The diminutive is very common in English, so much so that it is easy to miss. The word cookie, for example, imported from the Dutch koekje, only occurs in the diminutive form in English. --Lim e tom 08:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC) I never noticed this until I started learning Italian, where you say, for example: mille (one thousand) but due mila (two thousand s ) which actually seems more logical than the English. Does anybody know the reason why we don't have a plural in English (nor in French nor in German for that matter) - or did we have them once and they've just been dropped over time? --Wren-3talk 18:59, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
 * changing subject slightly, why do we not make plurals of 'hundred', 'thousand' etc?

Dangherous sadly died in 2080?
In Wikipedia, would I be right to assume we don't say "she sadly died". I've had a look on the Style Guide, but couldn't see if there was a bit on saying "sadly". Without getting into a philosophical discussion about how sad or happy death may be, am I right to remove the adverb "sadly" wherever I see it describing a death in a Wikipedia article? --Dangherous 13:46, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It would be more correct to say "sadly, she died", as it is presumably the fact that "she died" that is sad, rather than that she died in a sad mood. However, given that the vast majority of deaths are, to some people, sad, "sadly" is somewhat otiose. I wouldn't necessarily always remove "sadly" in relation to deaths. Some deaths can reasonably be said to be more tragic than others.--Shantavira 14:09, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd remove them, period. We don't need to think or feel for the reader. For almost a year now, an otherwise pretty useful editor has been tweaking Eleanor Roosevelt by adding such language (for example, changing "...died at the age of 78" to "...tragically died at the age of just 78"). --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 15:08, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, apart from the split infinative, this is an encyclopaedia; we should be non-biased, and thus not have such an emotional adverb. Englishnerd 16:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well with over 7000 Google hits for "sadly" in Wikipedia, someone is going to be kept quite busy. I hope the editing doesn't depress anyone, especially with such moving statements as "Walter was, sadly, unable to control his bladder,".... (I see no split infinitive, though). --Shantavira 16:58, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I can think of one case where "sadly" might be appropriate; where describing an uncompleted great work. For instance "...planned to complete her revolutionary thingamaflip on return from Tahiti. Sadly, she died in a yodelling accident before this was possible." Flows better with the sadly connecting the sentences. Notinasnaid 17:03, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's even appropriate then. You're still editorializing by saying a) the work is great and b) it would be better if finished. Let the reader decide. Also, death is not always sad or tragic. It's a natural part of life. -- Charlene 08:16, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd guess that "tragically" can also be snipped out the article. I've seen the likes of "Sadly, Firstname McGeneric-Surname tragically lost his life due to a terrible illness. His kids and pet dog will miss him dearly. "--Dangherous 20:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I want to underline what everyone else said: Please, please remove adverbs like these whenever you see them. This is one of my pet hates on Wikipedia ("ironically" is particularly irksome). You can even read about it on my user page. --Grace 14:14, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


 * An event is not "sad", "happy", or any other kind of feeling. Sadness is a feeling that can be only experienced by people.  I might be sad to hear about the passing of a particular person, but others may be dancing in the streets.  Wikipedia does not know how everyone feels about the deaths of notable people, and we cannot speak for everyone, nor should we pretend to.   Get rid of them.  JackofOz 02:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Chiffonade
Is this term a noun, a verb, or an adjective? I'm trying to figure out how to describe a vichyssoise I made with potatoes and a chiffonade of bitter greens. Is that correct, how I just wrote it? Could I say 'chiffonaded' bitter greens? Anchoress 20:45, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * "Chiffonade" is a noun. In analogy to how des verts amers sautés becomes "sauteed bitter greens", you could go with des verts amers chiffonnés becoming "chiffoneed bitter greens". In analogy with "marinaded" you get indeed "chiffonaded". Either would be a neologism, though, although the latter form has some 429 unique Google hits. What is the problem with using "a chiffonade of bitter greens"?
 * Thanks for the detailed reply! I don't like 'chiffonade of bitter greens' because it's waaay too formal when I'm describing it to my mom and my friends. Sounds like something The Galloping Gourmet would say, or Batman's butler. That's all, lol. Anchoress 05:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

English pronunciation of Kant
I've been wondering about this for a while now. Do English speakers pronounce Kant's last name like can't, or do they approximate the original pronunciation? Rueckk 21:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * In my experience, English speakers usually pronounce the philosopher's name roughly as a German would pronounce "*Kahnt" (except that English speakers may end the word with a glottal stop rather than a "t"). To my ear, this is similar to the pronunciation of "can't" for speakers of British English, but for Americans, this pronunciation is very distinct from the pronunciation of "can't".  Marco polo 22:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * In the early 1970's, the English comedy group Monty Python crafted The Philosophers' Song (which attempted to discount all philosophy to the rambling of drunkards). It opens with the words "Immanuel Kant was a real pissant."  You can hear it here.  It clearly rhymes with "can't". dpotter 00:28, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


 * No, it doesn't. They pronounce Kant as . "Can't" is in British English, as Marco polo said. --Ptcamn 04:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

word search
what are the three words in english finishing in ...gry. Angry, Hungry and ????


 * I've come across this before, and I needed to look at the way the original question was phrased. Perhaps this link will help you.  sʟυмɢυм • т • c  23:57, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. It explains everything. now i must try and confuse others as I feel it has been answered.:-)


 * There is actually a Wikipedia article on this: Gry  Wareh 01:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * P.S. ARTFL allows you to search an unabridged dictionary with all kinds of operators, so you can search for word-endings, alternate word-middles, etc. (example). And the Regex dictionary is very similar.  Wareh 01:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * may be relevant. --Ptcamn 13:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)