Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 March 9

= March 9 =

Sinjun
I recently had to read the novel Jane Eyre in my English Class. After we took all of the tests and wrote all the essays, we watched a movie version. Towards the end, when after Jane leaves Mr. Rochester and arrves the peoples house, who are actually her cousins, the people there pronounce the man's name as SInjun. In the novel it looks as if it is Saint John. The article says that it is ponounced Sinjun but no other resaons or anything. I was wondering if it was just some British English quirk and how it's pronounced. Thanks. schyler 00:39, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Very much a British English quirk, developed through elision I think. Often to do with class "we've got a long name on our calling card but only those in the know can pronounce it". See also Cholmondeley.  meltBanana  01:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The name is always spelt "St. John"; it is never written in full. --Lambiam Talk  10:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yep, it's a quirk, although I know of some fellow Brits who use 'Saint John' when it's on its own. When it's part of a hyphenated surname, however, it's always (as far as I know) pronounced 'Sinjun', as in 'Sinjun-Smith' or 'Sinjun-Thomas'. Oddly, I had a university textbook written by someone with the surname 'Taliaferro' who pronounced it 'Tolliver'. Phileas 21:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * And then there's Sinjin Smith. Corvus cornix 03:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * And did these odd, shortened ways of saying names originate in Worcester (AKA "Wooster") ? StuRat 16:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Deutscher vs. Deutsche
How to distinguish these 2 words in listening? Their difference seems subtle. Also, are the any reasons for their spelling? er may refers to "der", and e to "die"... is it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 61.92.239.192 (talk) 02:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC).
 * Yes, the words differ in gender. As for how to tell them apart, there should be a subtle 'r' sound at the end of the former word, though it may not be present in every dialect. ObtuseAngle 03:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * AFAIK all dialects will distinguish the two. For most speakers, the first one ends in a more open vowel and in many dialects would sound just like Deutscha. The distinction between them isn't always one of gender, though it sometimes is; the rules for inflecting adjectives in German are complicated. For example, while "a German" (masculine) is ein Deutscher, "the German" (masculine) is der Deutsche, so both forms can be masculine in the correct context. —Angr 05:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

A related question: If two Germans meet each other when traveling abroad, would they more typically say, "Sind Sie deutsch?" (adjective) or "Sind Sie Deutscher?" (noun) when speaking to a man, "Sind Sie Deutsche?" when speaking to a woman. In English, it would be the same form "Are you German?". Danke für Ihre hilfreiche Aufklärung!--Foros2000 12:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * "Kommen Sie auch aus Deutschland?"--80.136.166.31 13:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not a native speaker, but I think "Sind Sie Deutsche(r)?" (noun) would be more common. —Angr 13:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * As a pseudo-native speaker (some would argue that my mother tongue is High Alemannic, not German) I agree with everything Angr said. When spoken fast, the phonetical distinction of the final syllable in Deutscher vs Deutsche can be very subtle in certain dialects, but it's always there. As for the follow-up question, using the substantivated adjective (Sind Sie Deutscher/Deutsche?) definitely sounds better. ---Sluzzelin talk  15:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Odd idioms or sayings?
I would like to find some odd idioms or sayings from various countries. Any sugggestions?  bibliomaniac 1  5  03:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC) PS: My best so far is probably the African "Be careful when a naked man offers you a free shirt."


 * Wikiquote would be a great place to dig around. The Jade Knight 04:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You should be aware that a lot of these oft-quoted "strange wisdom from foreign lands" proverbs are bogus, particularly the Chinese ones.--Pharos 06:39, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * here are some funny ones from iceland Think outside the box 12:39, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * "It's too late to grab your ass when the shit is already in your pants"? Lovely.  bibliomaniac 1  5  00:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * That is not an Icelandic saying. Stefán 00:39, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I recommend you go over and make revisions at Wikiquotes, then. The Jade Knight 09:51, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

US (Appalachian ?): "There's not even enough room in here to swing a cat by it's tail." StuRat 16:40, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a figure of speech, not a proverb. A proverb has to express some sort of wisdom.--Pharos 09:02, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

explain the meaning
what is the meaning of concocted —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.141.145.245 (talk) 05:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC).
 * Take a look at concoct. —Angr 06:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Greek translation
What do these Greek words mean: --Doug talk 13:05, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * ἐ κκαιδεκαετηρίδα
 * ἐ ννεακαιδεκαετηρίδα


 * See the entries in the standard lexicon: .   Wareh 14:47, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! That happens to fit right in very good with what I am studying. That explains it. --Doug talk 15:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Note that the first word should be spelled with a spiritus asper: ἑκκαιδεκαετηρίδα, and that neither word should contain a space. --Lambiam Talk  15:47, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Great! It all "Greek" to me. My understanding is then, the second word should NOT have the "ἐ" and should only: "ννεακαιδεκαετηρίδα". You have helped me before on Latin translations. I really appreciate it, it is most useful. I am presently working on the Latin biographies of Jerome's De Viris Illustribus and about half way though with an article on how Jerome wrote each of his versions of each of these "Christian authors" with a link in the main article (that I originally wrote up). I also wrote up the article on Petrarch's De Viris Illustribus.--Doug talk 16:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * No, the second word should be ἐννεακαιδεκαετηρίδα, which has a spiritus lenis. The first has ἑ with a mirrored comma over it, and the second has ἐ with a normal comma. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lambiam (talk • contribs) 16:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC).

Great, now I get it. Thanks for making large, otherwise I would have never figured that out. Like I say, it's all "Greek" to me. If you get a chance, take at look at my work and article links on Jerome's De Viris Illustribus. Right now I am at Chapter 61 and working on it in a sandbox. This is where I came across these Greek words. In a couple of days I should have Chapters 61 - 66 done. Each day I add a few biographies and then link the biographies to the main article. --Doug talk 16:58, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

(Early Modern) Swedish word question: lagandes
Hi. I have a question about a word that I encountered while reading Then Swänska Argus. Here's the whole sentence:

Man skall i så få rader innefatta en wiktig sak, och framdraga det bästa som derom kan säijas, altid lagandes at Läsarens smak blir förnögd i det både saken och skrifarten är behagelig, så att Folket får så stor Lust at läsa Arken, som de hafwa at weta nytt.

I googled lagandes and found out that it is apparently still used today, but I still cannot parse it. It looks to me like the present participle of laga + -s, but that doesn't really make a lot of sense. My questions: 1) what does it mean?, 2) what is it (passive, deponent, something else entirely)? Rueckk 17:21, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It means "making". 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (&lt; \) (2 /) /)/ * 17:54, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I'm still wondering about its structure, though. Further googling also turned up läsandes. Are these forms completely lexicalized? Because they sure look like present participle + (medio)passive marker to me, and I don't see how that makes sense. My grammar textbook is silent on the matter. Rueckk 19:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't speak Swedish but are you sure the form lagandes is not just the present participle pure and simple. For example, this google search suggests that lagandes mat is Swedish for making dinner, as in staying at home all day and making dinner. Still, I can not make sense of the grammar in the sentence but this is probably because I don't speak Swedish. Stefán 20:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't speak Swedish either, but your mention of the "medio-passive marker", which as I recall is a kind of reflexive formed with a particle originally meaning "oneself", suggests to me that it might mean "making oneself (herself/itself/himself/themselves) ...". Is this possible?  If this is true, then "lagandes mat" would really mean "making oneself dinner".  Hopefully Wakuran or some other Swedish speaker will come back to correct me.  Marco polo 20:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It might be the gerund, anyway, it's an extremely archaic form. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (&lt; \) (2 /) /)/ * 21:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Here is a discussion (in Swedish) of the final s. In summary, it seems that the present participle, when used as a verb, has occurred both with and without a final s in Swedish ever since medieval times. The two forms were and are largely interchangeable, despite various attempts by linguists to define separate roles for them. The -s forms are still seen occasionally in printed Swedish (e.g. de kom springandes), but carry a regional or highly informal flavor. In your Argus quote, I would translate alltid lagandes as while always making sure that. --mglg(talk) 20:28, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you all. That link in particular explains it perfectly. Rueckk 01:53, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Wording
Is there a better way to say this: She is bilingual, speaking both English and French. The way it's stated seems to me to be rather redundant. Dismas |(talk) 17:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess you could lose the word both? ---Sluzzelin talk  18:01, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I would say She is fluent in English and French. --Richardrj talkemail 18:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I would say She speaks English and French. Petershank 21:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * But neither "She is fluent in English and French" nor "She speaks English and French" mean the same thing as "She is bilingual in English and French" (which is how I'd put it). —Angr 21:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I would use the same. Fluent in English and French don't give the information that she doesn't know a third, so to keep all information intact, you can really only take out the word "both". --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 21:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree with Angr and Wirbelwind.  As I understand it, the phrase "she is bilingual in both English and French" means that she is both "bilingual in English" and "bilingual in French."    But the prefix "bi" means two; you cannot be bilingual in one language, thus neither clause is sensible.


 * That said: if the phrase is non-sensible, how can one possibly suggest that another phrase does or does not "mean...the same thing"?  Instead, I'd propose that, as the root "lingual" MEANS "speaks the language," either of the phrases "she speaks French and English" and "she speaks English and French fluently" could have been what the original speaker meant to express, but the former is probably closer to the intent.  Jfarber 22:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the both is unnecessary in she is bilingual in both English and French, but that doesn't make the sentence either ungrammatical or uninterpretable. Leaving it out and saying She is bilingual in English and French is certainly better. My point was just that "bilingual in X and Y" implies a fully native command of both languages, while "fluent in X and Y" implies very good but not necessarily native command of both, and "speaks X and Y" implies some command of both, but not necessarily very good command of either. —Angr 23:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * But that would only be true if "bilingual" meant "possessed of full and native command (of/in)" as in reference to a language. Instead, Bilingual has that sticky "bi" prefix as part of its meaning -- it means "having proficiency/fluency in more than one language". The term, in other words, already has the word in IN it. You can't say someone "has proficiency in more than one language in English and French." As such, I maintain you cannot be bilingual IN anything, linguistically speaking.


 * For a true retranslation, then, and using Wiktionary and Wikipedia (which redirects to Multilingualism), which tell us that bilingual means "proficient in two languages" -- though there are indeed varying levels of proficiency, and the latter source seems to suggest near-native as an equivalent term -- I propose EITHER "She is proficient in English and French" or, alternately, "She is bilingual." (with the two languages to follow later in the paragraph, as it comes up.) Jfarber 00:15, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Hadn't seen Wirbelwind's comment above, which notes that we want to make sure we specifiy two and only two languages here; I agree this might be important -- thus, if you want to make sure you include the idea that she speaks ONLY two languages, but stay true to the grammar, I'd propose "She is proficient in two languages: English and French." Jfarber 00:18, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd say we trying to improve on what to me was from the start the best form of expression, Dismas' original phrase She is bilingual, speaking both English and French. All the above attempts seem to be poorer and more deficient in expressing what Dismas seems to want to express. I don't see any redundancy in the original phrase. The first clause tells us that she's fluent (to one degree or another) in two languages. The second clause simply elaborates upon the first, specifying just which two languages her bilingualism consists of. Nothing redundant about it to me, as each word has an independent purpose.


 * Just one side note about the notions of "fluency" and "bilingualism". I must disagree with Angr that "bilingualism" implies a stronger grasp of a second language than "fluency". In my view, the opposite is the case. Rather coincidentally, my first language is English, and my second is French. To me, the term "fluency" carries with it a much stronger ability in a language than "bilingualism" says of one's ability in one's second language. In contrast to Angr's assertion, I regularly refer to myself as "bilingual" in terms of my proficiency in English and French, yet I never refer to myself as being "fluent" in French. Perhaps it's just me, but "fluency" seems to imply a form of "effortlessness" in speaking a language. Though I'm certainly "functionally" bilingual in the sense that I'm able to communicate more than adequately in my second language, still, speaking French is far from "effortless" for me. Loomis 03:17, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Angr and Wirbelwind; I'd only use "bilingual" for mother tongues or extreme fluency. "She is bilingual in English and French" is how I'd put it as well. --Kjoonlee 07:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * ... assuming that that was what the author meant, of course. If the original author just meant bilingual to mean that she just spoke two languages, I'd say "She speaks English and French" or something like that. --Kjoonlee 07:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with Angr. The reason that "She is bilingual in English and French" doesn't have the same meaning as "She is fluent in English and French" is that the former is not a well-formed sentence. You can be bilingual, and you can speak more than one language (indeed these might be taken as definitionally equivalent), but you cannot be bilingual in a language. In contrast, you can be fluent in a language, so it makes sense to say "I'm fluent in two languages". Meaning no offense, since judgements like this are purely personal feeling, the sentence "She is bilingual in English and French" smacks of playground conversations to me; kids use words that they've heard without completely understanding the meaning, leading to sentences like "Your mom's so ancient, she's infinity old!"

Also, "bilingual" certainly does not always imply "fully native fluency". As Loomis pointed out, being bilingual merely requires speaking more than one language, without saying anything about the degree of command. For example, children who grow up in a bilingual household (for example, where one parent is a native speaker of one language, and the other parent a native speaker of another) will quite often be bilingual; yet such children can be far from fluent in one of their two languages (sometimes having more trouble learning it than foreign learners). Tesseran 10:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * "She speaks seven languages fluently, but doesn't seem able to say 'no' in any of them." StuRat 14:56, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

"Bilingual" may have a specific legal meaning if she is applying for a job with the government of Canada or with a provincial or territorial government in regions where French and English are both official languages. If so, check first. Otherwise, if she is in Canada and looking for a job, bilingual generally means "proficient" in the job market. If she can carry on a professional conversation in both languages, she is what most people would consider bilingual and she should use that word in her resume. "She is bilingual and is proficient in both spoken and written French and English" would work. Avoid saying she only "speaks" French and English, because many people are proficient in a spoken language without being proficient in the written form. -- Charlene 23:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The definition of "fluency" also seems to vary in different places, depending on the place's relative level of multilinguality among the population. For example, here in Quebec I'm definitely not considered "fluent" in French, in Ontario I likely would be, in Alberta I definitely would be, and in the US I tend to be regarded as a veritable Parisian! Loomis 10:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)