Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 July 23

= July 23 =

Pronunciation of this Latin name
Eustachius Benedictus De Lannoy How to pronounce this name in its original (non-anglicized) style? 58.216.233.166 03:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * You-stah-key-us Bay-nay-deect-us Day Lan-noy would be how I'd pronounce it, but I don't think that the name is Latin. Eustachius Benedictus could be, but the "De Lannoy" doesn't make any sense to me, as I have never seen 'de' used in a name and Lannoy doesn't look like anything vaguely Latin to me.  That being said, I have only had three years of Latin, so I may be wrong. --Falconus 03:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Aha. A quick search gave me this.  Looks like he was Dutch.  I have no idea how to pronounce Dutch though, sorry. --Falconus 03:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * In today's Dutch this comes out more or less like . There may have been significant sound shifts in the 250 years or so since his days. Although "Lannoy" looks like it might be an old French name, that region of France was part of the Netherlands till the middle of the 17th century and is in the (until recently) Dutch-speaking part of France, so it should be pronounced the Dutch way. --Lambiam 06:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * In my (limited) experience, many Dutch people have forenames which are in a Latin form on birth-certificates, passports etc, but a shorter Dutch form for everyday use, eg, my friend Paul is always called Paul, but his passport says Paulus. DuncanHill 09:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Two Japanese characters2
I wanted to know what does the red neon sign say. 354d 07:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe the second letter is れ (re). Haukur 09:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It's をれ (wore). What that's supposed to mean I don't know. --Ptcamn 10:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I googled it, and をれ (wore) seems to be an older form of おれ (ore - 'I'(male)), though I had never seen this before.--Manga 14:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * But why would an archaic personal pronoun be on a neon sign? :o Haukur 14:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Does the vaguely readable kanji below the sign give a context or clue? A possible explanation that comes to mind is that this is a shop for traditional men's clothing. --Lambiam 16:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

omg wow! you're awesome. idk that could be a hoax or whatever just as well. I have to disappoint you (lol) that's not IRL it's from a video that I initially thought was just some random shit but then I noticed it had a plotline or whatever and that neon sign was hugely emphasized. Is it possible to think of wore and ore in some somehow culturally competitive context like "wore vs. ore"? 'Cause it's weird that there's such a substantial concept ("I") on that sign, that it doesn't, actually, have any meaning. 354d 22:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Surely its a simplified image of a person walking, well that's what appeared to me when I first looked at it. Richard Avery 06:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Transcription
Who can transcribe the following names:


 * William Chen
 * Metehan Ozten
 * Michael Shaner
 * Megha Manjunath
 * Keith Avery

to Arabic, Russian, Greek, and Hindi? And can anyone provide a transliteration of the transcription? -- hello, i'm a member  |  talk to me!  07:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * In Arabic, if you want all the vowels to be represented by Arabic long vowels:
 * William Chen - ويليام تشان (wīlīām tshān) (there is no separate "ch" letter in Arabic)
 * Metehan Ozten - ماتاهان وزتان (mātāhān ūztān)
 * Michael Shaner - ميكال شلنار (maykāl shānār)
 * Mehga Manjunath - ماهجا مانجوناث (māhja mānjūnāth) (j is pronounced g in some dialects)
 * Keith Avery - كيث ايفاري (kīth ayfārī) (Arabic has no v)
 * And do you want modern Greek or classical Greek? Adam Bishop 08:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Cyrillic
 * William Chen - Уильям Чэнь
 * Чжэнь, per Cyrillization of Chinese from Wade-Giles --Ghirla-трёп- 20:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Metehan Ozten - Метехан Озтен
 * Оцтен, if the name is German. --Ghirla-трёп- 20:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It is not; see below. --Lambiam 00:31, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Michael Shaner - Майкл Шейнер
 * Mehga Manjunath - Мехджа (Мехга/Меджа/Мега?) Манджунат
 * I think Мехга is correct. --Ghirla-трёп- 20:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keith Avery - Кит Эйвери or Эвери
 * ---Sluzzelin talk  08:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The name Ozten is a Turkish name, spelled Özten in the Turkish alphabet and pronounced . I don't know if that makes a difference for the transliterations to Arabic, Cyrillic, and Devanagari, but I imagine it might show in the Greek transliteration, seeing how Goethe gets transliterated as Γκαίτε, and Schröder as Σρέντερ. --Lambiam 17:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * In Russian, Öcalan gets Оджалан, or here:Казнь Оджалана не остановит курдов. So I assume it would remain Озтен. ---Sluzzelin talk  07:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

For the Greek transcription, I want modern Greek. Thank you for all the help! -- hello, i'm a member  |  talk to me!  18:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I think the Arabic transliteration of Ozten should be اوزتان since و in the beginning of words corresponds to /w/ rather than to a vowel. — Zerida 02:56, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Ack, you're right! How silly of me. Adam Bishop 03:44, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, it is Megha and not Mehga. The gh represents an aspirated velar stop, which (if not present in the target system) is best approximated by the unaspirated . I don't know how to fix this for the Arabic transliteration, but for Russian I think it would just be Мега. --Lambiam 23:26, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * For modern Greek:
 * William Chen – Ουίλλιαμ Τσεν
 * Metehan Ozten – Μετεχάν Οζτέν
 * Michael Shaner – Μάικλ Σαίνερ
 * Megha Manjunath – Μέγκα Μάντζουνατ
 * Keith Avery – Κιθ Άβερυ
 * I had to guess which syllables have the stress in Megha Manjunath. For Metehan Ozten I've used what seems to be the traditional way of ascribing stress to Turkish names in Greek transliterations, even though it does not accord with the actual stress pattern. --Lambiam 23:24, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Straßenmeisterei
What does the German word "Straßenmeisterei" mean? Breaking it up seems to yield "street master", but this doesn't make much sense, especially not in the context of this image, which is of a large brine tank, so I'm guessing it's idiomatic. Frustratingly, the German Wikipedia has an article de:Straßenmeisterei, but it doesn't link to an English equivalent, and neither my very shoddy German skills nor a babelfish translation can make much sense of it. Laïka 10:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It's a road maintenance authority. Is there anything specific you need to know about it? Haukur 11:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * "Road maintenance depot", according to this translation tool. MalcolmSpudbury 11:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * correct. It's a term of FRG legalese. Historically, Meisterei is the status of an independent artisan, and also for the workshop of such an artisan. The -ei suffix is that of other terms for artisan workshops, such as Schneiderei (taylor's workshop) or Schreinerei (carpenter's workshop). It is (non-trivially, both seem to have obscure origins in Vulgar Latin) related to English -ery (as in pot:pottery, nun:nunnery) dab (𒁳) 14:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Alright, thanks! Laïka  16:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * -ei appears to be the origin of Esperanto -ej 'place for *', as in lernejo 'school'. &mdash;Tamfang 23:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Bibliography etiquette
I've been reading Breaking the Spell and noticed that although the author has an extensive bibliography, it isn't exhaustive in that some things which are referenced or actually quoted in the text are not listed. This raises three questions for me: JAXHERE | Talk 14:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Is it the author's perogative as to what is included in a bibliograpy or would it be better form to at least attempt to be comprehensive?
 * 2) Would it be expected to include the Bible, the Koran, and similar texts in a bibliography? (and do we write "The Bible" or "the Bible"?
 * 3) What would be the correct form of citing the Bible and the Koran when the form used was: "Author(s). YEAR. Book Name. Publisher"?


 * There is a distinction, not always properly maintained, between: (a) the apparatus needed for proper citations and references; (b) a list of material for further reading included as a service to the reader; and (c) a list of "works consulted" – not needed if already subsumed by (a) and (b). For an academic publication the rules for proper citation are much more stringent than for publications aimed at the public at large. In the latter case, citations and a bibliography are more of a courtesy to the reader. In the academic context, a citation is de rigeur if it used to support an argument forwarded by the author, or if the author conversely attacks the position of the cited text. If a quotation is used essentially as a literary device (as, for example, in: "Or, as Montesquieu expressed it, liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit") I think it is the author's prerogative to decide whether to provide a bibliographic reference for such a quotation.
 * How the Bible or the Quran are to be cited, if they are cited, will depend on the citation style in force. Clearly, the format "Author(s). YEAR. Book Name. Publisher" does not work. For the Bible, you'd normally give the name of the book, chapter and verse numbers, and the edition cited. In a bibliography, the edition will suffice. For the Quran, you can identify the sura and if necessary the ayat, and if you quote a translation, the edition.
 * Use The Bible at the beginning of a sentence, but the Bible in the middle of a sentence. --Lambiam 18:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * If the work is related to the Bible, you should quote the edition of that too, especially if the work is about Bible codes or the like, where exact word order is important; just look at how different the various renderings of John 3:16 are. Laïka  22:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

United States Army Corps of Engineers
Is the possessive of Corps Corps' or Corps's? Corvus cornix 17:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Because the s in Corps is silent, the possessive (pronounced korz) is normally written Corps's. See further Apostrophe#Singular nouns ending in s, z, or x ("Some prefer Descartes' and Dumas', while others insist on Descartes's and Dumas's...the theoretical question is whether the existing s is the one that is sounded, or whether another s needs to be supplied."). New Fowler's Modern English Usage and New Hart's Rules say to write Dumas's. MLA Handbook6 gives "Descartes's" as an example, but that's meaningless since they're of the school that every singular takes s (cases such as "Jesus'" and "Aeschines'" not mentioned).  "Rabelais's" has been in use for quite a while,, though I don't know a way to do a decent search for Rabelais.  A 1966 book review published in Modern Philology remarked, "The possessive form...is now generally accepted, and logically so, as 'Rabelais's' and not just with the apostrophe as used by the author [A.C. Keller, of the book under review, in English, published in Frankfurt, Germany]."  The "now" does raise the possibility that Rabelais' (endorsed by The Times: see this discussion) was previously considered the better usage.  Wareh 18:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * That's what I thought. Thank you.  Corvus cornix 18:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S. A more focused Google Books search shows that Pope, Addison, Sterne, and Swift all published works in the 18th c. using the form Rabelais's. So I'm going to stick with that.  Wareh 17:30, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The rule I've adopted (I dunno where I first saw it expressed, possibly in the Chicago Manual of Style) is to omit the s only if the noun is plural (Corps is singular) and ends in s. &mdash;Tamfang 23:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Does this sound right to you? (help with an English phrase)
I was reading an introduction to a chemistry thesis and the usage of the word 'before' struck me as a bit weird. It doesn't sound right to me - but I might be as well mistaken. Look at the sentence:

Before introducing the main topic of my internship I would like to...

Does the usage of the word 'before' fit in this sentence? Or is there one that would fit better? Thanks for your replies, --Missmarple 21:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine to me. --Richardrj talkemail 21:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Using 'before' in that context (as above) creates this very common phrase in American English; I think using 'prior' would also be OK, but I personally think that's worse. -- hello, i'm a member  |  talk to me!  21:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Would that be 'prior to introducing...'? --Missmarple 21:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. Tesseran 22:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Ugh, don't give such ideas! Prior to ought to be used only when one thing precedes the other by logical necessity rather than merely in time.  Otherwise its only function is to say "I'm too highbrow to use a plain English word."  &mdash;Tamfang 23:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Basically, it's just a way to use two words instead of one. Sounds weaselish and buzzwordy. Bhumiya (said/done) 04:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * "Introducing" is only right if the people you are speaking to are unaware of what the main topic of your internship is. If they are aware of what it is, "discussing" might be better. "Before" is fine, though.  Neil   ╦  15:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It's also proper (imho) to "introduce" ('lead in') a subject if it hasn't yet been mentioned in the present environment, even if the audience knows all about it. &mdash;Tamfang 17:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

What is going on here is several people trying to persuade you to use their way of speaking. Your sentence makes perfect sense, is gramatically correct (within the general ambit of spoken English) and will be easily understood by any speaker of English. Use your style and good luck with your presentation. Richard Avery 06:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Germanic "state of being" suffixes
There seem to be four main suffixes in Germanic languages for describing state of being, condition, or extent/amount. These are cognates of English -ship (friendship, assistantship), -dom (freedom, wisdom, kingdom), -ness (blindness, bitterness), -hood (likelihood, childhood). What seems patently strange is that English is unusual among Germanic languages in the rarity of its use of -hood, especially in making a noun from an adjective. In German for example, -heit, with its derivative -keit,(cognate of Eng. -hood) is the usual choice. Blindness and deafness, not blindhood and deafhood, but German Blindheit and Taubheit, not Blindnis and Taubnis. Wisdom and freedom, not wisehood and freehood, but German Weisheit and Freiheit, not Weistum and Freitum. Dutch also uses its equivalent -heid as the main choice. My question is: Why do all Germanic languages except English use the equivalent of "-hood" for the majority of state of being or extent nouns, but English usually uses -ness? That is to say, how can one "historico-linguistically" explain this difference in usage?

-User: Nightvid


 * I think the primary reason is because -hood is for nouns and -ness is for turning adjectives into nouns as well as it's state of being. German uses -heit, our word -hood is related in that it used to be -hád and -hæd, However, -ness is just as important, we share it with Icelandic (-nes) and Gothic (-(n)assus), which German does not use. I guess it's like we're stuck between -- or more likely we obtained it from the Vikings, just like our use of They, Them, etc but I can't be 100% on that. However, both are just as valid and Germanic, it's just German is stuck with -heit as being for both, and we've got one for nouns specifically and ones for adjectives (usually). --Anthonysenn 00:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * German does have it: German wild = English wild, German wildnis = English wilderness (If only we didn't have the 'er' part!), German bitter = English bitter, German bitternis = English bitterness (although 'bitterkeit' is the more common German word for 'bitterness'.) German Ersparnis "savings" (very literally "spare-ness", German sparen = to spare). German -tum, as in wachstum "growth", literally "wax-dom", "to wax" = wachsen.


 * Also, the -ship and -dom suffixes correspond to German -schaft and -tum, Frisian, Dutch -schap (?) and -dom. Interestingly, the compound "friendship" is common Germanic (Dutch vriendschap, German Freundschaft, Swedish vaenskap, Norwegian vennskap, Danish venskab). -User: Nightvid


 * Okay, I must be really thick now because it's my native language - but where does Icelandic use a -nes suffix? Haukur 20:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Laxness? :) --Lambiam 16:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that the vast majority of '-hood' words in English relate a) to humans, and b) to roles or relationships rather than qualities - i.e. the answer to 'what are they?' rather than to 'what are they like?'. The OED does not directly corroborate this, though it does say "... -hood can be affixed at will to almost any word denoting a person or concrete thing, and to many adjectives ...", but if I search in it for "*hood", the first few pages of entries (omitting those that are entirely different 'hood's, such as 'acoustic hood' and 'Robin Hood') are
 * Adamhood
 * adulthood
 * all-hood
 * angelhood
 * animalhood
 * anthood
 * apehood
 * apostlehood
 * apprenticehood
 * archbishophood
 * archpriesthood
 * arghhood
 * aunthood
 * babehood
 * babyhood
 * bachelorhood
 * back-hood
 * bairnhood
 * baronethood
 * barrenhood
 * beadlehood
 * beasthood
 * beastlihood
 * beautyhood
 * beerhood


 * Of these, almost all meet my characterisation above - the exceptions are 'all-hood', 'arghhood' (cowardliness) 'back-hood' and 'barrenhood', all of which are marked as obsolete. (Note that 'beautyhood' is not defined as 'beauty', but as "A woman's ‘reign’ as a beauty; society of beauties, also beauties collectively", and 'beerhood' similarly as " A beer-drinking class or set". This last actually seems to me to represent a distinct meaning of '-hood' not listed by the OED: a collection of people united by some role or character. --ColinFine 23:03, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

gender priority in latin
I've been googling for this but haven't got anywhere, so I thought it was time to ask. What is the gender priority in Latin for a sentence like "The X, Y and Z are excellent?" Is "excellent" in the masculine, feminine or neuter form? What about for adjectives used as nouns, like "Summum bonum"? Here, I can see that bonum must be either neuter or, if masculine, in the accusative case, so I suppose it's neuter, but is this a general rule? Thanks in advance, 203.221.126.205 23:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Singular adjectives used as abstract nouns tend to be neuter. In "summum bonum", the abstract "bonum" is neuter. If you have a group of people, both men and women, then by default they are all masculine (even if there is one man and 1000 women). If you have a group of things, say an apple, a fig, and a date palm (neuter pomum, masculine ficus, and feminine palma), they are collectively neuter if you want to add an adjective like "excellent" (how about "praestantissima"). Just to make it more fun, sometimes you can make the adjective agree with the nearest noun (so in the above example it would be feminine), and sometimes a whole group of things will simply be masculine, like with people. But for things I would go with neuter. Adam Bishop 23:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Adam (and the vocab builder as well). Just to follow up, if you had things, not people, and they were masculine and feminine, with no neuter objects, would you go for masculine or neuter in that case? Also, am I the only person who finds it strange that you can bend these rules and just make the adjective agree with the nearest noun? It seems like the rule ought to hold fast, otherwise, in a language that relies on inflexions rather than word order, it looks like a way of creating possible confusion, or at least imprecision. 203.221.126.205 01:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * In that case the neuter plural is preferred ("ficus et palma praestantissima"), although the same options would apply - you could attach an adjective to the nearest noun (also "ficus et palma praestantissima" since the feminine singular and neuter plural have the same ending; or masculine if you switch them the other way around "palma et ficus praestantissimus"; if you had plural fruits, fici et palmae, then "excellent" would be plural too, praestantissimae), or use the masculine plural ("ficus et palma praestantissimi"). I am using Bradley's Arnold Latin Prose Composition by J.F. Mountford for this, by the way, and yes, it can be very confusing, and I hope I myself am reading the explanation correctly! You're right about the imprecision too, because "ficus et palma praestantissima" could mean you have a really amazing date and only a regular ho-hum fig. There are other ways to make it more precise though - you could say "ficus palmaque praestantissima", then you know you are referring to both the fig and the palm and not just one of them. I don't think Latin grammarians really ever tackled this particular problem, so we can't look to them for a prescriptive rule, and instead have to look at hundreds of years of actual usage in Latin literature, which can be inconsistent. Sorry, I got a little carried away there! Anyway, I would use the neuter for all your examples, that seems to be the most acceptable and least confusing way of doing it. Adam Bishop 03:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again, very much appreciated, and for the book ref., which is in my uni library. Just to clarify one final point, if you use the feminine adjective, I take it it would be illegitimate to put that in the plural, "ficus et palma praestantissimae" (I think that's what I'm after: -ae is first declension plural nominative)? If so, in fact it makes sense: if you can only use the singular form, then the grammar is in fact correctly typed - the listener can assume if he wishes that the adjective applies to the whole set, but theoretically it applies to the date palm. 203.221.126.227 01:06, 25 July 2007 (UTC)