Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 January 18

= January 18 =

Latin Question
How are direct questions,direct statements,indirect questions, and indirect statements formed in Latin? Thank You!Blesson John 172.192.32.5 01:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Start with the overview here (sections C&D), and then read the relevant chapters linked from here. Wareh 22:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Two english word questions
I heard a word spoken by someone recently but have forgotten it. I had a vague suspicion when I heard it that the guy who said it made it up, so I decided to look it up later, but recent attempts at looking various words that I felt it might have been have turned up dry on an internet dictionary. I'm probably a couple letters off or something, so I was going to post a bunch of the possible made-up words that come to mind and hope somebody might come up with what I'm getting at, if the word really exists. Something like: incarcigence, incansigence, incalcitrance (don't really think that one). At any rate, if any of that sounds like any real word to anybody, please tell me what I might be approximating.


 * Intransigence ? It would help if you would give us the context/meaning. StuRat 06:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Or "recalcitrance"? Marco polo 13:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Nah. Not intransigence or recalcitrance. I know both of those. And to be honest, idiot that I apparently am, I forgot to remember the context when I decided to remember the word to look up. Entirely. It was mentioned in a conversation about the difficulties of writing a history book, if that helps in the slightest


 * Intractable/intractability? JackofOz 04:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The other word involves a slightly embarassing situation at school. I wanted to get into an exculsive (I'm oversimplifying here) English class, and I asked the head of the English department whether it was possible for me to "finagle my way into the class." Before answering, he remarked that that was an incorrect usage of finagle. I am convinced it is not. Any input here? If it's wrong, what's wrong? What might the guy have been talking about? He does know his English quite well, so the odds that he has a shaky definition of the word and I don't is pretty unlikely. But I've looked it up and talked to friends about it and all, and it seems like a pretty weird comment for him to have made. Thanks for any help, 70.108.219.115 06:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Finagle means to achieve something by means of trickery or devious methods. Obviously, that would have been the very last thing on your mind. Perhaps he thought you should have been using the word "finesse" (Refinement and delicacy of performance, execution, or artisanship. Skillful, subtle handling of a situation; tactful, diplomatic).  JackofOz 07:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Using the word "finagle" in that context wasn't strictly wrong - I could substantiate my opinion with some grandstanding about how that English teacher isn't some form of dictionary deity who has the last word regarding the language usage of everyone around him, but I won't bother because it sounds to me like he was simply being unneccessarily rude and condescending. ````Erdkunde

Yeah. I guess he was just getting at how I didn't mean to imply the use of trickery. And to defend the guy against people who will never meet him, he's a great teacher, does have a real encyclopedic knowledge of a lot of English literature and language, and wasn't meaning to be condescending. Thanks for everyone's help. I think I'm just going to assume the British guy was making the word up, though he did come off as pretty smart and not too egoistic. Sashafklein 01:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Merriam-Webster gives "to obtain by indirect or involved means " as the first sense of finagle . Nohat 02:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

"Brilliant" in UK English ?
In US English, "brilliant" means either "gives off light" or "intelligent". In UK English it seems to mean something like "good", as in "that was a brilliant chocolate bar". Do I have it correct ? If so, do you have any idea how this usage originated ? StuRat 07:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You do have that correct, and I'm somewhat amazed that it's not also used that way in the U.S. As to its origin, I can only guess that it developed from one of the other meanings of "brilliant" that you did not mention - glorious or splendid. Grutness...wha?  07:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The "glorious" and "splendid" meanings don't seem to be used in the US. The Wikipedia disambiguation page for brilliant does state this difference: "Brilliant", in British English, in addition to its common definition, is also used as an adjective meaning "very good" or "excellent. I also added this distinction under the brilliance disambiguation page. StuRat 17:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think you may be overstating the differences. It always seemed to me that US and UK use of "brilliant" is fairly similar, only differing when it's used as a stand-alone exclamation. The example you give above about the chocolate bar doesn't ring true for me. It seems like a strange hyperbole, like an American saying "that was a wicked candy bar." I can see a Briton biting into a candy bar and exclaiming "Brilliant!" However, I can't see it being used within a sentence as an adjective. That's just my impression. Bhumiya (said/done) 10:55, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, Grutness seems to disagree and say that my example above is normal UK usage. Would anyone care to settle the tie ? StuRat 06:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * A former neighbor born and raised in Scotland, when invited to dinner at my home, would often enough pronounce the main dish or dessert "gorgeous." We questioned this when that adjective didn't seem appropriate to the food's appearance, and indeed, she clarified that she was referring to how it tasted. -- Deborahjay 15:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The formal definition is exactly the same in the UK as the US, and the word is used in precisely the same way. The second application is much more colloquial, used in the context you have given by younger people in the main. Clio the Muse 08:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps, then, this latter usage is actually slang? I can remember my younger brother (b. 1960) sometime around the early 1990s in Southern California, praising a local fast food outlet for making what he called "rad[ical] burgers." I never encountered that usage elsewhere, so don't know if it was prevalent in US regional or local vernacular at that time.-- Deborahjay 15:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that was fairly wide-spread slang. We had an NES game called 'Rad Racer', and characters in cartoons used it. Skittle 17:01, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Native English Dictionary
Can anyone recommend a dictionary of only the English words that have been part of the language since Old English? Many thanks. --Philosofinch 09:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I seriously doubt such a dictionary exists. I can't imagine a market for it. —Angr 09:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Germanic words for a Germanic people: English without wimpy Europeanisms - It might find a market among the true adle-minded in the Dittohead set. Although, I'm not sure I could even give it a title that only had attested Anglo-Saxon terms. --Diderot 10:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * People??? Hrrmpphff, it should be folk... 惑乱 分からん 21:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected. --Diderot 22:14, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You might have problems with "Europeanisms" too :) Grutness...wha?  01:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I couldn't come up with a good synonym, mostly... Seemed overkill to create new words for concepts lacking a Germanic counterpart... World-speech? Not particularly good (even if europeanisms is bad, too)... It was sort of an ironic reply, too.... 惑乱 分からん 11:32, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Even "Germanic" is a pretty blatant Latinism. I suggest Dutchly words for a Dutchly folk: English without wimpy Westlandnesses. —Angr 12:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That's the spirit! ;) My main issue with "Europeanism" would be that it would be incorrect, though. There's many common words of Germanic origin in non-Germanic languages, and probably also some of Latinate origin that only is used in English... 惑乱 分からん 12:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * An English tongue for the English folk: Being done with outlandish words --Diderot 13:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Quite good, even if "outlandish" rarely is used for "foreign" in Modern English nowadays. (Cognates in other Germanic languages mostly are.) 惑乱 分からん 13:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It was an etymological translation of the German Ausländer, Dutch buitenlander. The German fremd, Dutch vreemd doesn't have any cognates I could think of.  But I was really thinking of my grandmother-in-law, who thinks that what foreigners think and do is "outlandish".  Although, to be sure, she says the same about Democrats. --Diderot 15:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * And who counts as a foreigner by her standards? One friend of mine told me his grandfather, from Devon, considers people from Cornwall to be "foreigners". —Angr 15:22, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Let me put it this way: She says she can't understand when black people talk. She doesn't mean black people speaking some fairly opaque dialect of AAVE or some inner city rap patois. That I could understand.  No, she means Will Smith, or Jesse Jackson, and don't even get her started on Martin Luther King, Jr. (She thinks he was a Soviet agent.)  Now, consider that she's from Compton - that's how tightly she draws the boundaries of The Other. --Diderot 15:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Uhhh, and she has English as her first language? Sometimes, intelligibilty depends on a person's willingness to understand, though... @_@ 惑乱 分からん 16:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * How about An English tongue for the English folk: Being done with words from overseas lands? Grutness...wha?  02:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think such a thing exists as yet, but have a read of the Anglish page which offers a link to a proto-dictionary for such a concept. --Neo 10:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately that proto-dictionary is pretty poorly done. It coins words needlessly when the words are already all Anglo-Saxon ("Aftermorrow" for "Day after to-morrow").  Even worse, it coins words ("False-swear") when there's already an Anglo-Saxon word ready for the same service (in this case "forswear," which goes back all the way to "Gyf ehadod man..forswerie oe forlice").  One would be better off using an Old English dictionary whose entries include the Modern English derivatives.  (See also Word-hoard: an introduction to Old English vocabulary by Stephen A. Barney, Yale UP, 1977, a nice little book that surveys Old English vocabulary root by root.)  Wareh 22:20, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Poul Anderson once wrote an article in some SF magazine in which he imagined a modern world in which Anglo-Saxon had never been "corrupted" by French. The article was a physics treatise, in which he had to invent Anglo-Saxon forms of words like "atom", "element", etc.  User:Zoe|(talk) 03:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That article is Uncleftish Beholding---that is, "Atomic Theory". Full text here. Tesseran 21:44, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Awesome, Tesseran, thanks. User:Zoe|(talk) 05:00, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

What's the word "desmense" meant to be?
In the article about Fernando Colón, son of Christopher Columbus, it states: "He had a generous income from his father's New World desmense, and used a sizable fraction of it to buy books, ..." What's "desmense" supposed to be? I can understand what the word is trying to say - the money Columbus obtained from his voyages, but I can't think of a word for that. The best google could do is offer "dispense" when I typed "dismense", which doesn't help. Graham 87 10:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think its a mis-spelling of demesne - the personal lands of a person (as opposed to lands over which they might rule as King, Duke, etc). --Neo 10:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks - that is probably correct according to this google search for demesne+columbus. Graham 87 10:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Alphabet I don't recognize
Take a look at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8f/SerBac.jpg which has some Arabic script and another alphabet, which looks like Cyrillic or less likely Greek but to my eye has letters that don't appear in either alphabet. There are titles of these saints, and the word at the top of both titles is probably "saint"; this is not important though. I need to know what their names are. It looks like they say "Sergios" and "Bacchus" but I'm not completely certain. Can anyone help? Especially helpful would be both a translation and the original used. I think I see sigmas in there at the end, but again, I don't know. — coe l acan t a lk  — 13:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's Saints Sergius and Bacchus, and the alphabet is (rather stylized) Greek. What you expect it to say is Ὁ ΑΓΙΟΣ ΣΕΡΓΙΟΣ and Ὁ ΑΓΙΟΣ ΒΑΚΧΟΣ, but it looks like the Ὁ and the Α of ΑΓΙΟΣ have been merged into one letter. Also, the artist has misspelled ΒΑΚΧΟΣ as ΒΑΚΧΩΣ. —Angr 13:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Awesome. Thanks so much for the quick response, Angr. =) — coe l acan t a lk  — 14:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The Arabic script also says "Saints Sergius and Bacchus", by the way. Adam Bishop 14:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Adam Bishop. And thanks for the update on my talk page, Angr. This reference desk is great! — coe l acan  t a lk  — 14:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The merging that Angr mentions is common on the icons that I've seen in Greek Orthodox churches. (I've seen it for female saints too, but I don't speak enough Greek to recall exactly what it says.) Tesseran 21:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * For a female saint it ought to say Ἡ АГІА whoever. —Angr 22:56, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

What does this mean ??
"Te quiero mucho para siempre!"

i think it's spanish.... need to know..

thank you 83.108.24.120 15:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)krikkert


 * It means "I love you very much forever!" —Angr 15:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Tibetian Writing/language
Can Tibetian script be writen verticaly also. If I do write it verticaly, will it still have the same meaning? Example: Would the om mani padme hum mean the same writen verticaly, top to bottom? Thank you, cec144.35.254.16 19:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Y o u

c a n

w r i t e

a n y

l a n g u a g e

v e r t i c a l l y .

--Nelson Ricardo 04:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I expect the original questioner was wondering if Tibetan would be written vertically, or if, like English, it would be really bizarre to do so. To answer that question, no, Tibetan would not under any normal circumstances be written vertically. I have never seen it written that way, and the script was most definitely not designed that way. It is based on an Indic script (it is not known which), and is therefore written horizontally. Not only would vertical be weird, but it would interfere with the way Tibetan stacks consonant clusters. It would probably make more sense to write English vertically than to write Tibetan vertically. By the way, if you're interested in a taste of just how bizarre the Tibetan writing system is, I suggest you read this kuro5hin article. Bhumiya (said/done) 11:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Om Mane Padme Hum is sometimes written vertically, especially on posters and banners, but books are usually written horizontally, from left to right.CCLemon-ここは寒いぜ！ 09:44, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you perhaps thinking of Mongolian script which is usually written vertically? --ColinFine 23:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)