Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 June 12

= June 12 =

"Motion lines"
Hello, I'd like to know if there is a name for those lines used in Manga to indicate motions, such as those used in this picture. Thanks.--K.C. Tang 06:17, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Motion lines - X201 11:22, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * O, that simple! Thanks a lot.--K.C. Tang 01:05, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Writing a speech - valedictorian
I am not happy with this line, can you help me edit this. thx
 * our parents and teachers and staff, have done everything in there power to make sure, we got where we are today.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Apesadams (talk • contribs)


 * There's not much wrong with it; mostly a case of tweaking the punctuation. I suggest "Our parents, teachers and staff have done everything in their power to make sure we have arrived where we are today." It's always a good idea to replace the word "got" with something more meaningful if you can.--Shantavira|feed me 11:35, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd use the simple past tense rather than have, particularly not have arrived, not entirely sure why. Or use past-future: "did everything to make sure we would arrive."  &mdash;Tamfang 19:35, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not a sentence at all. You might try "Thanks to our parents, teachers, and staff, who have done everything in their power to make sure we got where we are today".  Altho I think the suggestion above to use "arrived" instead may be good.  I suspect you're just pulling our leg, though. Friday (talk) 15:03, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * You're misreading it, which is no surprise given the random punctuation. Shantavira got it, though.  "Thx" is not meant to be part of the sentence.  --Richardrj talkemail 15:10, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * "Our parents, teachers and staff have done everything in their power to get us where we are today (almost out of their lives)." Clarityfiend 15:41, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This recent story makes a lot more sense to me now. --TotoBaggins 19:42, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I spoke at my high school graduation based upon my grade in the Senior Speech class. We had awards for best student in each discipline (Math, Science, History, etc.) but speakers were not chosen on those criteria.  Corvus cornix 21:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

"heathen" vs. "pagan"
Hi, I am from germany and I have been wondering for quite some time what the difference in meaning between the two above-mentioned terms is. I suppose it is some connotation thing but I am not sure if I can figure it out correctly. -- 217.232.1.231 14:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

As you guess, they have different connotations. "Heathen" is used to refer to "others" in general, with the connotation that "we" have the "one true faith" and "they, the heathen" do not. "Pagan" has been reclaimed to some extent as a name for types of synchretistic nature religion, incorporating wicca, druids, pantheism and so on, although it also has negative connotations for members of formal religions.82.46.44.139 14:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The word heathen is seldom used today, except perhaps by Christian fundamentalists, who would use it almost as a term of abuse. The word sounds a bit archaic, and it is disparaging, as 82.46. suggests.  Pagan is more current and neutral.  Marco polo 15:33, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know that pagan is more neutral. It sounds just as disparaging to me, you heathen. Clarityfiend 15:47, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree "pagan" sounds more neutral, and it's no coincidence that neopagans call themselves that, not "neo-heathens". The word heathen itself, though, isn't all that rare today, it's just rare in its original meaning "someone who does not practice one of the Abrahamic religions". Heathen today is sort of like barbarian or philistine. —Angr 16:25, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * it's a little bit more complicated than that. These days, you get neopagans that absolutely insist they are heathens and say they practice heathenry (see here for illustration). For these people, Latinate pagan has derogatory connotations while they embrace the Germanic term. At the end of the day, as so often in English, they are just Germanic and Latinate equivalents, see Paganism. dab (𒁳) 17:24, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Interesting enough there is some connotation controversy among english speakers either. I think your postings shed light on the topic from many directions creating a quite diverse picture. Just one more point: Is any of you aware of differences in connotation between Britain and the US? -- 217.232.1.231 22:06, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Just checking, do you mean "Are there any differences in the connotations of 'pagan' and 'heathen' in Britain and the US?"? (Also, if you're trying to improve your English, you might like to know that 'either' at the end of your second sentence sounds odd :-) ) Skittle 20:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I mean that. Sorry for my poor english (and not thinking about the correct meaning of "being aware of"). It's been some time since I went to school and had regular english lessons. Thanks for your hints, I'll do my very best. ;) -- 217.232.48.215 21:19, 13 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, don't worry about that. I wasn't meaning to suggest that 'be aware of' was incorrect, just that what you were asking about was ambiguous. Skittle 12:24, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Assume person A says that person B is a heathen, and in the context it is clear that this is used in a religious sense. Most people – who have never met any neopagans – would then assume that person A is a Christian, and that they are stating as their belief something like that person B is one of those who will not be redeemed, but go to hell, because they are worshipping false gods. In contrast, when a speaker uses the term pagan it does not by itself suggest that they are themself a Christian. A second difference is that heathen also has a non-religious meaning, like barbarian, or philistine, whereas pagan is rarely used in another sense than referting to someone's religion, or lack thereof. --Lambiam Talk  22:44, 13 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, in my experience 'pagan' has strictly religious connotations. 'Heathen' can be used not only in religious contexts, but to refer to anyone dirty and undesirable. (Ex. "You greasy heathen! You look like you crawled out of a garbage dump!")
 * I seem to recall my grandmother referring to unruly children as "little heathens" by which she meant to comment on their poor manners and lack of consideration for others, not their religion. Crypticfirefly 04:49, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

languAge and dreams?
I'm bilingual I speak read and write bulgarian and english. My mother tongue is bulgarian and have lived in the states for about 8 years now. I rarely remember my dreams but I am convinced that I dream in english, where as a child I clearly remember dreaming in bulgarian. Does anyone have any thoughts as to what this shift means?


 * If you use mostly English in your daily life, English will feature in your dreams. I don't think that the shift means anything more than that. I don't know, but I suspect that English is more likely to dominate your dreams if it dominates in your personal relationships.  I was raised in an exclusively English-speaking environment, but I learned German and lived in Germany for a little more than a year.  During that time, some, but not all, of my dreams were in German.  I suspect that if I had stayed there longer, most of my dreaming would have been in German.  Even today, snippets of German occur in my dreams.  I suspect that if you were to monitor it, you would find that Bulgarian still occurs in your dreams, even if you dream mostly in English.  Please forgive me for the original research.  I searched in vain for evidence of published research on this.  Marco polo 15:44, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd suggest that it means you've really assimilated English. My mother tongue is English but I started learning spanish in my late 20's.  Now after over 30 years of using Spanish I still dream in English even though I'm in a totally Spanish environment for most of the last 20.  What I did notice at one stage when I returned to an English environment was that whenever I had to think about an issue which I considered highly important, I was analyzing it in Spanish.  I concluded that this was a subconscious device I employed to make myself focus more intensely on my thoughts, since it required more effort on my part to think something through in Spanish rather than English.  -- JAXHERE  | Talk 15:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I've lived in Germany for ten years and I still mostly dream in English (I grew up in the U.S. and lived there until I was almost 29 years old). However, I'm not totally immersed in German the way the questioner is probably totally immersed in English. I work as a translator and have mostly English-speaking co-workers, I go to an English-speaking church, I contribute to English-language Wikipedia, and at home I speak a mixture of English and German with my husband. When I do dream in German, it's because I'm dreaming of someone to whom I speak German in real life. —Angr 16:21, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I lived in Japan for ten years (I'm British), and I found that the longer I was there, the more my dreams would be in Japanese. I put it down to the simple fact that most of my daily contacts were with Japanese people and I was speaking only Japanese to them. I was, like Angr, working as a translator, but English was banned in the office (!) so even then I was speaking Japanese all the time. However, I would go through short, infrequent periods where I would dream of the UK and of my family, and those dreams were always in English, so I would agree with what Marco Polo and Angr say about it being related to your personal relationships. Another thing that I would agree about is that when I have to think about something complex, I find it much easier to do it in Japanese than in English, possibly because it does help me focus more. Manga 19:20, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I've never tried thinking about complex or highly important issues in German instead of English. (I usually make it a point not to think about complex or important issues at all.) I'll have to try it next time, see if it works. —Angr 19:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

/æ/ in katakana
I've noticed that English words like cat and cash are rendered in katakana with /kya/ rather than /ka/. After any other consonant, /æ/ and /a/ are treated alike. Why is /kæ/ special? &mdash;Tamfang 19:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * is a front vowel. Front vowels tend to cause palatalization, which can sound like the insertion of a sound. Plus, it's useful to distinguish "cat" and "cut." --Kjoonlee 23:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I've no idea why that isn't done with other consonants, though.. Maybe the difference in the vowels led to a different perceived quality of the consonant, and it was most prominent with ? --Kjoonlee 23:42, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, Japanese isn't the only language that does this with English words. IIRC, the Jamaican Creole word for cat is [kjat]. —Angr 04:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)


 * When Dad was interested in speech synthesis, thirty years ago, I learned that English /k/ looks very different on a spectrogram depending on the following vowel, in a way unique to /k/. It would seem that that's not true in Japanese or Jamaican Creole, which is a surprise.  &mdash;Tamfang 06:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)