Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 July 29

= July 29 =

Translation request - Bulgarian to English
I have a Bulgarian text that needs to be translated. I don't know how to type in cyrillic, but here's a rough transliteration: zdraveto e stastie 74.140.170.112 00:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The easiest way to type using the Cyrillic alphabet is to pick the appropriate Cyrillic letters from the big list of characters that appears under the Save button when you edit. StuRat 01:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Judging by your transliteration, it probably says the health and happiness. I can check it again if you type it in Cyrillic letters. —Daniel Šebesta {chat | contribs} 09:16, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Its says "health is happiness" in Bulgarian. -K. Weigand

Dictionary of Old English Corpus
Could anyone with access to UMich DOE Corpus at please verify whether the text at the bottom of Image:Caslon-schriftmusterblatt.jpeg (looks like "Ða he da mid grimmum fwinglum & tintregum wæced wæs & he ealle þa witu ðe him man dyde geþyldelice & gefeonde sor dritne abær ar" to me) is taken from the Old English translation of Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum? If not, then where is it from? --tyomitch 06:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Bede,I.7 EETS p.36 line 33; the d in da should be crossed, and it should have swinglum, for Drihtne; the last word (aræfnde) is incomplete. I believe the sentence is the one Wikisource translates "He, being most cruelly tortured, bore the same patiently, or rather joyfully, for our Lord's sake.". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:37, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help! I'm going to add that citation to the image description page. --tyomitch 05:42, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Logo
why dont you correct your spelling mistake in your logo?


 * Assuming you mean the "Devanagari (non-)character", have a look at the replies to July 12's question. ---Sluzzelin  talk  14:45, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Regression -statistics
How does the word regression work in the sentence below, with respect to 'onto'. Is it correct, or should it be something like regressing 'with respect to', or regressing 'by', or 'for' ...?

"Regressing health-related quality of life onto age, gender, adherence to medical advice, and overall autonomous- and controlled motivation resulted in regression models that were not significantly different than the H0 model"

Thanks if you can help...


 * This is a question about mathematical jargon, so I suggest asking on the math reference desk. --Anonymous, July 29, 2007, 19:39 (UTC).
 * Searching for similar jargon finds on google "However, the results of regressing health-related quality of life (PCS scores) against scores of physical function revealed some sex-specific differences...", so there is precedent for against; but it would be preferable to recast the sentence into English. Perhaps, "Controlling for [list of factors; what does "autonomous- and controlled motivation" mean?] did not signficantly change the H0 model"? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:46, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

It's already English, and it's already correct. Please have a look at regression analysis. --Kjoonlee 22:17, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, to be fair, it's specialized jargon despite being English, so here's a paraphrase. Performing regression analysis between "quality of life" and "age, gender, adherence to medical advice, and overall autonomous- and controlled motivation" gave results that were not much different from the h0 model. The null hypothesis is usually the opposite of what you want to prove. You want to reject the null hypothesis, and you do that by showing that the possibility of your results being pure chance (the p-value) is close to zero. But in this case, the results were not significantly different from the null hypothesis being true, so there were insufficient grounds to suppose that age/gender/etc. really make a difference in the quality of life. --Kjoonlee 22:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

John Whitgift's Latin Name?
John Whitgift was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1583 to 1604. Would he have used Latin in his everyday life (or at least for "official" writings)? More to the point, would he have had a Latinized version of his name for such usage? How would I go about finding the name out, if it existed?

Thanks. D aniel  (‽) 21:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * As Archbishop, he would have signed himself Joannes Cant., for Cantuarius; most of his writings appear to be in English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:48, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * As Rowan Williams signs himself as Rowan Cantuar, I would have thought Joannes Cantuar would have been used. — Gareth Hughes 00:14, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a short-form of Cantuaria (Canterbury) or Cantuariensis (the adjective form, "the guy from Canterbury"). Is Cantuarius a form of Canterbury too? I thought it was always -ia (but the short-form was used so exclusively that I doubt anyone even remembered the original Latin form!). Adam Bishop 08:08, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * IIRC Cantuarius is the adjective, "from Canterbury", masculine to agree with the name. The conventional abbreviation changed in the eighteenth century, after an epigram about the appropriateness of one Archbishop signing himself as John Cant, in the sense of "hypocritical talk". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:21, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Am I right in concluding that he would have Latinized "John" to "Joannes" and followed it with the Latin for "of Canterbury", but would have left "Whitgift" alone, as it would not be used in these circumstances? Thanks. D  aniel  (‽) 17:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, bishops, royals and peers traditionally sign with their Christian name followed by their see/estate/title. Diocesan bishops of the Church of England, and some other churches, continue to sign in this way — e.g. Thomas Dunelm, John Oxon and David Sarum. I haven't seen modern-day bishops latinise their Christian names as weel, though. — Gareth Hughes 15:57, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Hebrew possessive suffixes
I really hope there's someone here who knows Hebrew. I'm looking at a table of possessive suffixes in a learner's text (which uses סוּס as an example noun), and I have two questions. 1) How do you pronounce the forms that they give meaning "his (male) horses", סוּסיו (kamatz under the second samekh), and "his (female) horses", סוּסוֹתיו (kamatz under the tav)? It seems as if they'd be "susaiv" and "susotaiv", but that seems weird to me because vav was originally a semivowel, and I can't imagine a single syllable ending in two semivowels, "aiw". Am I missing something here? 2) The table says that "his horse" is סוּסוֹ, "suso", but then earlier in the book it says that "his father" is אביו, "aviv". Why isn't it אבוֹ, "avo"? --Lazar Taxon 22:18, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The third person singular masculine possessive endings for plural nouns (like סוסיו "his horses") are pronounced -av (or in Biblical Hebrew, -aw). The spelling is just a little irregular. The yod is there because in an even earlier form of the language, before Biblical Hebrew, the ending was pronounced -ayo, but by the time of Biblical Hebrew the yod was no longer pronounced and the ending became -aw. סוסיו is pronounced "susaw" (modern susav). The same applies in the feminine: סוסותיו "susotaw" (modern susotav). The form אביו "aviw" (modern aviv) is just an irregularity. The only other word that uses -iv in the singular that I can think of is אחיו "achiw" (modern achiv) "his brother". Macnas 22:46, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the explanation! --Lazar Taxon 00:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I just wanted to point out that it looks funny in this font. Gzuckier 17:49, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * That might be only on your computer. It will depend on what fonts you have installed.  --Reuben 22:39, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Hebrew words needed
(apologies for the double posting but I'm new to wikipedia)

I'm trying to get the hebrew writing for Zillah and Zara. Could someone please post them?

Mooji 23:02, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The names? As they appear in the Bible they are צִלָּה (Tzilah) and זֶרַח (Zerach). Macnas 23:15, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

thanks - my flatmate intends to get them tattooed on each wrist. I understand that they mean shadow and sunrise (?) Are the words above reflective of these meanings or has she got it totally wrong?

Mooji 02:32, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, those are where the names come from originally. The actual nouns that they come from are צל (tzel) "shadow" and זריחה (zerichah) "sunrise". Macnas 04:39, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Warning. It is an unfortunately common occurrence that a tattoo artist, working with characters in a writing system they are not familiar with, produces a result that looks fine to them, but is actually not. For example, for Hebrew, ה and ח are different characters, and not variants. I further think – but I'm not an expert in Hebrew tattoos – that, normally, one would leave out the vowel points. --Lambiam 16:08, 30 July 2007 (UTC)