Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 February 5

= February 5 =

User languages
I have just discovered the Babel function on Wikipedia for User pages, and as I am a native English speaker, a reasonable French Speaker and a poor German speaker, I have inserted that on my user page. My question is is there categories for other languages on Wikipedia - for example I am an excellent speaker of Neo-Melanesian and an intermediate speaker of Bahasa Indonesia. Can I install tese as languages on my user page too. Thanks John D. Croft 08:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello, John D. Croft. Babel lists existing templates for language userboxes. Here's the section for Bahasa Indonesian templates. Here's the section for Tok Pisin templates. ---84.75.119.250 09:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Wali al-'Asr

 * 1) What is the literal meaning of it?
 * 2) Does it refer to Mahdi?

--Patchouli 09:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * ولي العصر (walī al-‘aṣr) means something like 'guardian of the era', which sounds like a title for the Mahdi. — Gareth Hughes 13:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you.--Patchouli 13:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Couldn't help noticing that this has been copied directly into the article as a "Shia source", which seems -- no offense to Gareth -- a bit fishy. Tesseran 18:07, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * No offense taken. To be honest, I thought that my wording was sufficient for this to be taken as preliminary opinion rather than the presentation of fact. Maybe I should remove it until someone confirms that it is in fact a title of the Mahdi. — Gareth Hughes 18:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Hughes was almost definitely right. See Constitution_of_Islamic_Republic_of_Iran .--Patchouli 19:26, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Present/perfect mixup
One thing that strikes me about the Germanic languages is that the Germanic present has some similarities to the Latin perfect. Two things especially: The Germanic 2nd singular indicative ending "(e)st" seems just like the Latin perfect ending "-isti"; and the Germanic languages often use the labial stem for some of the present-tense forms of the verb "to be", just like Latin did for the perfect tense: "bin, bist" versus "fui, fuisti". (About "est/ist/etc." there seems to be no confusion though.) So my question is: what is the ultimate origin of these mixed-up features (2nd person "-st" and the labial stem of the verb "to be"), and how did they get mixed up? --Lazar Taxon 17:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For information about verb in the common (reconstructed) ancestor, see Proto-Indo-European language. — Gareth Hughes 17:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks. --Lazar Taxon 17:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * To answer one of your questions quickly that isn't addressed on that page, the similarity between Germanic 2nd sg. present -st and Latin 2nd sg. perfect -isti is a coincidence. For one thing, the Germanic ending wasn't originally -st at all, it was -s; the t that both German and English added to it came from the pronoun þū when it was placed after the verb. The Latin -istī is from the PIE perfect ending *-th2e with some stuff of obscure origin on either side of it. —Angr 20:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Interesting. This also explains forms like early modern English "wilt" and "art" ("Where art thou?") and Dutch "bent".  Thanks.  Marco polo 22:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Cemet Nosce
what does "Cemet Nosce" mean? --Shanedidona 20:26, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It appears near the beginning of the Matrix Revolutions (the oracle gestures towards a sign with that text) --Shanedidona 20:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it should be Temet Nosce. See the article on Know thyself. ---Sluzzelin 23:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks :-) I was very curious  --152.7.60.125 02:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That is me ^ --Shanedidona 02:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply,

In the first Matrix she points to a sign in the Kitchen and says it is Latin for "Know They Self"