Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 December 22

= December 22 =

spanish english translation
Can someone translate in spanish the word compelling in Spanish? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.142.81.232 (talk) 20:54, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In the sense of evidence/argument it would be convincente or persuasivo. In the sense of a story or book it would be absorbente. In the sense of a compelling need it would be imperioso. Richard Avery (talk) 21:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * If you provide a sentence as example or background, it would be easier to give you a precise translation. Nevertheless, I think Richard's list is quite compelling. Pallida  Mors  23:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Japanese translation
Can someone translate this into English please? Thanks. 70.162.25.53 (talk) 21:12, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This is not a translation – my Japanese reading skills are not good enough for that, and I don't have a dictionary here – but (in case you did not know this already) the text is a recipe for a noodle dish, using sōmen. I hope someone else better versed in Japanese will provide a translation, but if not, here is a recipe for Teriyaki sōmen noodle, using chicken – but you can substitute beef (or other things like jumbo shrimps or mushrooms, for that matter). --Lambiam 00:31, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Here is the translation of the recipe. But it's not a somen recipe originally written by a Japanese. Japanese people usually don't use クレソン/watercress, uncooked しいたけ/shiitake, and uncooked カブラ/turnip or beet for this kind of dish. Though I'm a Japanese, I have no idea what 海底の蜜 (literally translated as honey of the sea bottom) is at all. I tried google search and found the recipe is coming from the movie  Cloverfield clues official site. The dish doesn't seems to be genuine and tasty, better not to try it. I also found some blogs by Japanese people laughing and joking about the mysterious 海底の蜜. I recommend you to try the teriyaki somen instead. Oda Mari (talk) 15:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Applied foreign languages vs. foreign languages
What is the difference between these two concepts? I have the slightly feeling that the 'applied' here doesn't mean anything. 217.168.3.246 (talk) 21:18, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have heard this term once or twice used by US students who do part of their course as exchange students on a European university.
 * If I remember correctly, AFL is a specially tailored multi disciplinary approach to studying a particular language which aims - apart from the obvious basics of speaking / understanding language X - at familiarising the student with the particular vocabulary applicable to, say, medicine or engineering. "Applied" then means, for instance, the German language as it is applied to the discipline of psychiatry / psychoanalysis (Freud´s "Angst") or physics (Heisenberg´s "Unschärferelation").--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:37, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In some U.S. universities, there are classes teaching French / German to graduate students who are usually interested in learning just enough to read scholarly articles in their own particular subject area (and so satisfy the foreign language requirements of their degree program) -- and nothing else. These technical passive reading knowledge courses are very different from general-purpose French or German language classes for undergraduates (though I'm not sure if they're often called "applied"...). AnonMoos (talk) 22:51, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * We call them "Reading German" or "German for reading knowledge" or some such thing. As in "you will never have to speak this and you will never read anything but articles in your specific subject area" (or in my case "you will never ever use this again after passing the exam"). Adam Bishop (talk) 00:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I wish it were easier to find language-teaching material for people interested only in reading a language, not speaking it. There are lots of languages I have no interest in learning to speak (as I have no intention of traveling to where they're spoken, and if I do, I'll just speak English) but which I would like to learn to read well enough to understand a newspaper article or short story. Examples in my case are Romanian, Modern Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. But if I try to find teach-yourself materials either printed or on the Web, they're always focused on teaching you to carry on such fascinating conversations as "Hello, how are you? I am well, and you? This is my friend Michael. Hello, Michael, it's nice to meet you. Shall we go to the beach? Yes, and then we will go to a café and afterward to the cinema." Yawwwnnnnn...... —Angr If you've written a quality article... 15:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Angr: you will find a handbook of Romanian here which, with a decent dictionary and a source of reading material, plus a native speaker who is wiling to help, might help you to tackle the language. It's a method of learning that requires motivation and discipline, but it's possible. Alongside that, something like the "colloquial" series can be useful. SaundersW (talk) 16:22, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that link; I actually already had that PDF, though! But you see my point: that file is a reference grammar, not a textbook for learning to read Romanian. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 16:50, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Angr, my German textbook had useful translations of conversational phrases like "Hmmmmm?" (apparently also "Hmmmmm?" in German). The excuse I always hear is that you can't understand a modern language if you don't learn how to speak it, but that didn't prevent me from understanding the basics of any western Romance language, just based on knowledge of Latin and French (which I also cannot speak). Adam Bishop (talk) 20:05, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Angr, all you need is at least one dictionary, at least one grammar book and the Wikipedia in whatever language you want to learn. --Taraborn (talk) 01:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)