Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 December 27

= December 27 =

What language is this?
Hi, can someone please tell me what language this is:
 * "Alman Rock müziğinin en önemli gruplarından kabul edilen Faust müzik yazarı Uwe Nettelbeck’in dönemin önemli plak şirketi Polydor’dan aldığı kredi ile 1970 senesinde kurulmuştur."

The full text is here and relates to the German krautrock band Faust. Thanks. --Bruce1ee talk 10:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's Turkish. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 10:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that! --Bruce1ee talk 11:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * See also: Turkish dotted and dotless I --Kjoonlee 17:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The letter ğ is also a clue, as is the domain name of the website, anatolian rock.com.  --Lambiam 23:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The name of the website is a better clue than either the ğ or the dotless i, since both of those letters are also used in Azeri. The evidence that the language is Turkish and not Azeri is only negative: Azeri uses x and ə, but neither of those letters is found on the page linked to. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 23:56, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Form of exclamation
The following passage is from a 19th-century manuscript that I am editing. "Speaking of being alone — in Italy, this is scarcely possible. What a world of polite, disinterested attention the traveller does receive, to be sure! He cannot go out into the streets, nor even into the lanes and byways, without becoming the centre of attraction and the object of many little delicate and pointed attentions. A very large class of the community has nothing else in the world to do than to look out for a stranger and to press themselves thus gently upon his notice. How many the dirty caps pulled-off in his honour, with a lowly bow and a 'long life' to his eccellenza, and how many the dirtier hands extended (always with hollow palms upward) in warm and affectionate greeting!" The last sentence I thought to be a rhetorical question until I arrived at the exclamation point. I guess this follows the pattern of "Que tant de" in French, but it is strange in this century. Would the last sentence be better if written: "How many a dirty cap is pulled-off in his honour, with a lowly bow and a 'long life" to his eccellenza, and how many a dirtier hand extended (always with a hollow palm upward) in warm and affectionate greeting!" LShecut2nd (talk) 13:13, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If I were writing that sentence today, I'd probably phrase it, "How many dirty caps are pulled off ... how many dirtier hands are extended ... in warm and affectionate greeting!" —Angr If you've written a quality article... 13:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think all three of those patterns, "How many the dirty caps...", "How many a dirty cap..." and "How many dirty caps..." are reasonable, although "Howm many a dirty cap..." doesn't sit completely right in my head. It makes me think that there's bad number agreement between "how many" and "*a* dirty cap". Steewi (talk) 02:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "How many dirty caps are..." doesn't work. That would be a question. There's already an elliptical "to be" in there: "How many [are] the dirty caps...". "Many" means "numerous". --Milkbreath (talk) 03:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps "So many...!" rather than "How many...!" would be more modern? —Angr If you've written a quality article... 08:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

-ity/-ness
What's the difference between the suffixes -ity and -ness, and when do we use one or the other?

I've noticed that these suffixes appear to be interchangeable in many circumstances, even if one form is much more common than the other. For example: "sincerity" versus "sincereness", "clarity" versus "clearness". Some forms are invalid: "wellness" but not "wellity", "curtness" but not "curtity", "changeability" but not "changeableness".

The dictionary says that "-ity" is from Middle French and "-ness" from Middle English; is it just one of those Germanic/Anglo-Saxon differences again? 82.95.254.249 (talk) 13:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say one big difference between them is that -ness is productive, while -ity isn't. Thus if a new adjective, say glick, were to be invented, speakers could automatically coin glickness to mean "the quality of being glick", while *glickity simply wouldn't be possible. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 14:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Dictionaries tend to be right. -ity comes in turn from the latin suffix -itas, having the same use as Anglo-Saxon -ness. But -ity is only applied to Latin-derived roots, like the ones the OP points at.
 * The fact that -ity is not actually productive derives from the fact that English is not Latin, and it has its own way of producing abstract nouns. Thus, abstract nouns ending with -ity have essentially a latin-related etymology. Alas, no matter how productive -ness seems to be, does solidariness sound right to you? One last comment: "Latin-derived" is ment to include " originating in adopted from French".  Pallida  Mors  16:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "Solidariness" only sounds wrong because there is no adjective "solidary". "Solidness" and "solitariness" both sound fine. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 19:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's true. What about serene/serenity? Pallida  Mors  21:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It's entirely possible, and I'll go out on a limb and actually predict this, that various people will read this Question and think "Hmm, glickity: the quality of being glick - what cool words!" and start using them. Just what they'd use them for is down to them.  But people use "funky" and many other words in very individual ways that are beyond the powers of mere lexicographers to pin down, so why not "glick/ity".  If my prediction comes true, the world will have Angr to thank.  (That can be taken any way you like - :)   --  JackofOz (talk) 21:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If they do that, though, they'll simply be adopting the word glickity already fabricated. My point was, if only the adjective glick enters the language, the corresponding abstract noun would be coined as glickness. That doesn't mean a noun glickity could never enter the language on its own accord. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 21:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd stick with the Germanic/Latinic differentiation - which is more noticeable when you find pairs of words with similar meanings, one from each source (cloudiness/nebulosity; coldness/frigidity; likeness/similarity). Note that the French use -ité endings for their words and any word with -less at the end (a Germanic suffix) can only form -lessness. As far as the productiveness of the two is concerned, remember that English is primarily a Germanic language with a Latinate gloss (largely (re-)introduced by the Normans). As such, it's more natural to use Germanic forms for neologisms in general. The Norman link also means there's a bit of a class division. Latin forms tend to be a bit more "high-falutin'" (you don't just need know-how to use them, you also need savoir faire). As such, they're a little more resistant (from the point of view of the English speaker's psyche, if nothing else) to new coinings. Grutness...wha?  21:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, -ity is indeed a suffix derived from Latin -itas (through French -ité), and in the great majority of cases what precedes it also has a Latin origin. Typically for English, that Latin is often filtered through some sort of French form (charity < charité < caritas). In very many cases Greek precedes that Latin (eccentricity, through Late Latin but with Greek ekkentros as a source). In some modern cases a Latin word is merely presumptive, and the Latin suffix is added to purely Greek elements (klendusity < Greek kleis + endusis + Latin -itas). And yes, in the odd case there is no Latin or Greek involved in what precedes (oddity < English odd (originally Old Norse) + Latin -itas).
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 21:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

(resetting indent) There is a difference between an oddity (a thing that is odd) and oddness (the state of being odd). However that distinction can't be generalised. I would not agree with Angr that -ity is unproductive, though. Some words and situations do seem to me to call for -ity rather than -ness, and considerations would include whether the word to be reified was or sounded to be of Greek or Latin extraction, whether the coining were in a learned or everyday context, and the euphony. SaundersW (talk) 11:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, SW. SOED gives this for oddity: "1 a An odd or peculiar thing; a strange event. L16. b An odd or peculiar person. M18. 2 An odd characteristic or trait, a peculiarity. E18. 3 The quality or character of being odd or peculiar; peculiarity, strangeness. M18." Definition 3 is your "state of being odd", is it not? But I think SOED is a little obtuse, here. Oddity is not, after all, applied to numbers. We wouldn't normally speak of the oddity of the number 17, would we? Just its oddness. But for oddness SOED gives only this (in the entry for odd): "n. the quality or fact of being odd; something odd, a discrepancy, a peculiarity: LME." Tsk.
 * Myself, I don't think that -ity is very productive for suffixing to fully naturalised English stems. We acquired the adjective mauve in mid-19C, and there is no standard noun from it. Make one now, as an experiment. Two candidates: mauveness and mauvity. Intuitively, it seems to me that mauveness wins. On the other hand -ity is productive for new formations from Latin and Greek sources. I gave the example of klendusity, above. Quite new: mid-20C. We raise no eyebrow at that, do we? Nor at many similar mid- and late-20C coinages: saprobity and saprobicity, helicity, ionicity, narrativity, tensegrity, speciosity, syllabicity, synchronicity, zygosity, and so-on-icity. Productive? On the evidence, yes.
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 11:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * While we are following slightly different tracks to the same conclusions, I think we reach the same points: that -ity and -ness are not totally interchangeable, and that -ity is not unproductive. I yield all quibbles on oddity, with good grace! SaundersW (talk) 13:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * With equal grace I agree to agree, SW.
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 20:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

what is the sentence pattern?
what is the sentence pattern of this sentence: May God bless you..

and what is the subject of that sentence? thank you very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.69.24.196 (talk) 14:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The subject is God. The main verb is "bless", in the subjunctive mood constructed using "may". Marnanel (talk) 15:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

The subject found within the verb phrase? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.5.95.50 (talk) 08:02, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, syntactically speaking, the auxiliary verb may has been raised out of the verb phrase to a position left of the subject. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 08:06, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Russian spelling
How do you spell the word goluboi meaning "light blue" or "gay" in Cyrillic? How would it be transliterated—with a breve (˘) over the i? Thanks, anon.
 * In Cyrillic, it's голубой. How it's transliterated into Roman depends on which romanization of Russian you're using; your best bets are goluboy for a non-specialist English-speaking audience and goluboj for a more scientific approach. If you're working for an American library, goluboĭ with a breve over the i may be the way to go. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 22:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, in IPA it's . Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  00:12, 28 December 2007 (UTC)