Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 January 30

= January 30 =

Song Portuguese?
I have this song. I think its Portuguese, but I'm not 100% sure. What is it?

Song Its in .wma format

thanks Omnipotence407 00:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I'm deleting the song of the internet after this question is archived.
 * It sounds like Brazilian Portuguese to me. The first line is Essa não é mais uma carta de amor. São pensamentos soltos traduzidos em palavras. I don't know the song. ---Sluzzelin 01:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * A lyric search on Google seems to support that the song is called "O Que Eu Também Não Entendo" and it is by Jota Quest. --Cody.Pope 01:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

thanks, that makes sense. the person i got the song from believed that they got it from a foreign exchange student from brazil. Thanks again Omnipotence407 04:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

"Fail Upwards"
Does this expression mean what I think it means? -Quasipalm 04:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * That rather depends on what you think it means. JackofOz 04:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you think Quasipalm is thinking what I'm thinking? ---Sluzzelin 04:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Only if you know that I think you know what Quasipalm thinks I know about JackofOz. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 04:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Excuse the silliness, Quasipalm. I'm not a native English speaker and I couldn't find it in a dictionary. To my best knowledge to fail upwards means to rise in one's career, - professionally, at school, politically - inspite of constant incompetence and failing. ---Sluzzelin 04:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Then again, could it also mean to rise in one's career because of one's incompetence? As in when your supervisor is the problem and the management can't fire him, so they bundle him away by promoting him to a higher position (hopefully, with less factual responsibility). ---Sluzzelin 05:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There are many Google hits that talk about "failing your way to success" . JackofOz 05:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * In fact, Wikipedia could be regarded as the prime example of that philosophy. JackofOz 05:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd have said George W. Bush was the prime example. He started out as a businessman, and did it so badly he became governor of a state. He was such a poor governor he got re-elected, and then ran for president. When he lost the election for president, he was appointed to the job anyway, and went on to become the worst president in at least 80 years. I wonder what the future holds for him -- the first married man and the first Protestant to become Pope? —Angr 10:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Greetings, Idon't think personal attacks are needed to get your point across. AlexanderTG 18:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The Peter Principle states: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks all. I thought it meant either "being promoted because of failing" or "being promoted in spite of failing" but I couldn't find a definition online. It appears to be a newer phrase and I wasn't sure about the exact meaning. Thanks for the clarification all. -Quasipalm 16:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * As it happens, I just heard the expression used today in a Law & Order rerun from 2005. In this case the police were talking to a suspect with a record of petty crimes, and they said something like "from drug possession to murder and kidnapping, now that's failing upward".  I took the line to be a joke about progressing in one's career. --Anonymous, January 31, 2007, 23":35 (UTC).


 * Failing upwards and rising to the level of incompetance mirror the idea that a person incapable of doing something well will rise towards a position in an operation (such as a workplace or university staff) to where they can do the least damage i.e. at the top. This may not be true, but it is understood by many workers. This may be a bit of a 'sour grapes' statement as you are referring to someone with authority/power/expertise often in a prompted position whom others do not like and is percieved as incompetant in that role. Whether they actually are incompetant/unsuitable is not at issue - people don't say this kind of thing about people they like. Robovski 03:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Reality
Can someone please add "Reality is a commodity" to the Wikiedia entry for reality, and attribute it to me, please? I cannot figure out the proper way to do so myself... thank you SO much!!! -


 * That page is protected from vandals right now (due to truthiness). What is "Reality is a commodity"? And where should it be added? And why? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It's more Colbert BS. The sheep have descended. No personal info, newbie. --Chris Griswold (  ☎  ☓  ) 06:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Taking credit for someone else's work shows poor character. You know hes not actually going to give $5 to the person who did it, right?  Also, I'm sure before the protection came down, someone had already beaten you to it before you even finished typing the question here. Cyraan 21:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Troy and Trojan cognates?
Are Troy and Trojan cognates? --Masatran 11:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think they're more likely doublets. 惑乱 分からん 11:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Not doublets, because they're not even the same part of speech, besides having entered into English from the same source. Whether you consider them borrowed directly or indirectly from Latin Troia, Troianus, the adjective as we have it was originally derived (in Latin, by the Romans) from the place name.  The two words are cognates only in a general and trivial sense that should probably not be employed (in that they are both formed on the basis of the name Troia).  You could say simply that "Trojan is derived from Troy," as long as you understand that this production of one word from the other happened before their transformation into English.  Wareh 16:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Word common to many religions?
I read somewhere that Aum, Amen, etc. are the same word, found in many religions. Can someone confirm, deny, or give references? --Masatran 11:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I had troble finding any real information about the etymology on "Aum", my first impression was that it was just a fuzzy connection, based on outward similarities. "Amen" could apparently be traced back to Hebrew words, but "Aum" is seemingly only a "holy syllable", containing the "basic sounds" or something, also Sanskrit is of Indo-European origin, Hebrew of Afro-Asiatic so a connection seems improbable or very distant. 惑乱 分からん 11:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In South Asian theology, 'Aum' is believed to be the sound that was made to create the universe. If you like, it was the sound that the big bang made, and the sound that continues to echo on to this day - hence its relevence as a primal, universal chant. 194.80.32.8 16:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, those two words have very different meanings. I would be extremely surprised if there was any link.--Shantavira 18:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Semitic etymologies most often procede by Triconsonantal roots (in the case of Amen, the root is glottal stop - m - n) so any connection with Aum is highly dubious. AnonMoos 18:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The word 'Abbe' meaning father crops up time and again in it's various forms in various prayers - I wondered if you were thinking of that.87.102.23.143 21:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Abbé is from abbot, originally from Aramaic abba, but this seems to be an even further diverge from amen in sound and meaning, I think on a level akin to English "dad" and "dat's it". 惑乱 分からん 13:01, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The thing you read probably also mentioned Amun. Still, it's very unlikely there's any connection between these three. A related common "factoid" that may feed into this is the word Amen supposedly being in more languages than any other word because of its religious use.--Pharos 06:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear, the Semitic word for father — אב (’āḇ) in Hebrew, אבא/ܐܒܐ (’abbâ) in Aramaic — is in no way related to the root אמן (’-m-n) with the base meaning of 'trust' or 'steadfastness', from which we get Amen. Also, the former does not mean 'daddy'. As Egyptian is not a Semitic language, yet still related to them, more complex sound changes are in action. The spelling of the name Amun in Egyptian is ỉmn and has the base meaning of 'hidden'. There appears to be no semantic overlap between the two words, and the complex phonetic correspondence of the Egyptian ỉ with the Semitic ’ is not a straightforward one. Any assertion that the words are related rests on very shaky ground indeed, without any convincing evidence to support it. — Gareth Hughes 15:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)