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

= May 30 =

Naal
What does "Naal" mean in Punjabi? Thanks


 * Can't you find a Sikh? &mdash;Tamfang 07:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Hii, it means WITH.. for example if you say: tere naal??..means with you.

If English has a hundred words for money...
Do most other languages have as many terms for money as English does, relative to their overall vocabulary size? What about for sex? Neon Merlin  02:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Er... I'm pretty sure English doesn't have a hundred different words for money. Where d'you get that from? --Ashenai 04:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * accommodation, allowance, assets, banknote, bankroll, beans, bill, bond, boodle, bread, bucks, budget, bullion, cabbage, capital, cash, cent, change, check, chicamin, chicken feed, chips, clam, coin, coinage, collateral, color, copper, corn, credit, currency, dead president, deposit, dime, dinero, dollar, dough, ducats, earnings, filthy lucre, finances, floater, fund, funds, gold, grand, gravy, green, green stuff, greenback, grubsteak, guarantee, hike, increase, jack, jangle, jawbone, kitty, legal tender, line, loan, long green, loot, lucre, mazuma, mint, money, moolah, nickel, note, pawn, pay, payment, peanuts, penny, pesos, pledge, poke, prepayment, principal, property, quarter, recognizance, resources, retainer, riches, rise, roll, salary, score, scratch, security, shekel, silver, single, skin, smackeroo, specie, stake, sugar, surety, take, touch, treasure, two bits, wad, wage, wampum, warrant, warranty, wealth, wherewithal...
 * I think that's about 100. The problem is, most of these words don't mean "money" and nothing else. Counting "terms for money" depends entirely on your definitions of "term" and "for money". See Inuit words for snow and Sasha Aikhenvald on Inuit snow words: a clarification. When they give some impressively large figure, it always refers to a list like this. —Keenan Pepper 05:08, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The list doesn't include emolument or remuneration, but I'm not going to renumerate it. (lol) --  JackofOz 05:33, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Most people won't recognize most of those words as representing money. For example, chips, clam, line, roll, take, warrant... Basically, most everything that has a highly prominent use as something else. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 08:33, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I can't read Dutch
Can someone explain to me what GVB means in relation to the golf test that golfers in the Netherlands must take? So that you don't have to google it, here's a link or two which I think explains it:,. I'm trying to write an article about it which I've started at User:Dismas/golf. Feel free to improve the article if you can read Dutch and thus understand what is on those pages. Thanks! Dismas |(talk) 07:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * A literal translation would be golf skilfulness proof. Its basically a certificate of proficiency and is perhaps best translated as Golf Ability Certificate. Rockpock  e  t  07:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It is a license that anyone who wants to join an official golfing association and play golf in at official course must have. Like a drivers' license. The best translation would be Golf Aptitude Certificate or more colloquial Golfing license. C mon 08:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. I realize now that I didn't ask one of the questions uppermost in my mind which is what GVB expands to.  Does the sentence "GVB staat voor Golfvaardigheidsbewijs" mean "GVB stands for Golfvaardigheidsbewijs"?  Dismas |(talk) 09:46, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It does. -- Ec5618 10:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks everyone! Dismas |(talk) 12:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Albania
There are indications that Fan S. Noli once used the name "Mavromati". See these Google results. Alas they're all in Albanian, which I can't read. Is there any Albanian who can determine the nature of this name, i.e. when and why he adopted it and dropped it again? - CarbonLifeForm 09:09, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This reference (see footnote [2]) states that Theofan Stilian Mavromati was his original name. "Fan" is informal for "Theofan", and "S." is short for "Stilian". If this information is correct (see below), the remaining question is: why (and perhaps when) was the surname changed to Noli? I don't know for certain if this played a role, but Mavromati is very obviously a Greek name, and he may have decided to change this to an Albanian name when he became a supporter of the Albanian nationalist movement. However, on the French Wikipedia the article Fan Noli states that his father's name was Stylian Noli, casting doubt on the correctness of the "original name" claim. Although my knowledge of Albanian is negligeable, I have the impression that the timeline found here is saying something like that in July–August 1904 Noli contributed to the democratic Greek magazine "Noumas" (mentioned in the article Kostas Varnalis) using the name Theofan Mavromati. This may have been his original name, put again to use for the occasion, but also quite possibly a newly invented nom-de-plume. The posting on this site appears to tell us that he indeed used Theofan Mavromati as a pseudonym, other pseudonyms used by Noli being Ali Baba Qyteza, Rushit Bilbil Gramshi, Bajram Domosdova, and Namik Namazi. (Qyteza is his birthplace, according to fr:Fan Noli.) --Lambiam Talk  12:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

What do you call this?
In some education systems, many students, try to study "for the exam" instead of properly learning the contents of the textbook. For example, History students here are taught to always present their answers in a certain format - no one dares to deviate, even if an answer using a different format may be better. Rather than trying to learn how to write good compositions, many students here memorise paragraphs from model compositions which they will use as opening and ending paragraphs - and more often than not, they don't even understand the paragraph they are memorising!

They do this because they think it's more important to get good marks than to learn properly. They don't do this only on the day before an exam, but throughout the year.

Anyway, what do you call this habit of studying only "for the exam"?


 * Rote learning, perhaps? -- Azi Like a Fox 11:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You could say "studying just for good grades", or "studying just for the exam". Might the inclination of students to do this, which may be shared by all education systems that have exams with grades, be the reason why more than a few schools have the motto Non scholae, sed vitae discimus? --Lambiam Talk  11:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a widely used phrase "teaching to the test". See, for example, the fourth paragraph of Standardized testing and public policy.  By analogy, what you describe could be referred to as "learning to the test".  Marco polo 13:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There's a bit of overlap with observer effect and Goodhart's law. jnestorius(talk) 21:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)