Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 11

= November 11 =

Japanese field
Both these kanji - 野 and 原, seem to translate as "field". Are they perfect synonyms or does each of them mean a different kind of field? Hús ö  nd  03:43, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Not the perfect synonyms. The difference is subtle and very difficult to explain in other languages. It depends on context and when combined with other kanji. The word 野原 (nohara) can be translated as a field, the green, a plain. The word 原野 (genya) can be translated as a field and a plain too, but it means more like wasteland, a wilderness, a moor and uncultivated land. Oda Mari (talk) 07:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * In Chinese, 野 (ye3) and 原 (yuan2) are very similar, but 野 has a 'wilder' feeling to it, like Oda Mari says. 原 can also mean 'original' or 'previous'. Steewi 11:20, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you both. :-) Hús  ö  nd  23:36, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

translation from latin
What does this sentence mean: "The concept esse adunatum has as its correlative concept esse non causatum, esse causatum involves esse non causatum, esse secundarium, esse primum, and so on. Omidinist 07:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * As regards the philosophical background: no idea, I'm afraid. adunatus should be something like "unified, united". Bessel Dekker 21:36, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, that probably has something to do with first causes and ontology and whether God himself was created, etc..."The concept 'to be united' has as its correlative concept 'to be uncaused', 'to be caused' involves 'to be uncaused', 'to be secondary', 'to be first', and so on." Adam Bishop 21:58, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Very convincing, thanks! Bessel Dekker 22:12, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both. Omidinist 05:46, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

sufficientiae, by Avicenna
Is this name a translation of Al-Shifa, meaning "cure", or something like "Sufficiencies"? 09:07, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Liber sufficientiae (singular "sufficiency") is indeed an alternative translation of the title of The Book of Healing. Wareh 16:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Use of 'absolutely' and Spanish 'absolutamente'
If I look up in the Spanish word 'absolutamente' in a dictionary, I just find the meaning 'absolutely', in the sense of complete. However, I have the impression that many Spanish speakers use the word 'absolutamente' with some different meaning. If they answer a yes/no question with 'absolutamente' it seams that they mean 'no', but in English 'absolutely' in a similar situation would mean 'yes'.

Could some Spanish speaker corroborate or rebut this assumption? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.57.66.241 (talk) 13:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * You may be thinking of the expression "en absoluto", which means exactly the opposite of what an English speaker would expect - it means absolutely not. --NorwegianBluetalk 18:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, NorwegianBlue is right in a way. En absoluto has that meaning. Alas, absolutamente has taken over that meaning, too.


 * So, whenever you get absolutamente as an answer, you might think that en absoluto was implied.


 * This discussion also reminds me of the phrase en modo alguno, which in spite of the structure has a complete negative meaning.
 * Pallida Mors 76 21:50, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I use absolutamente when saying yes and en lo absoluto (notice the lo) when saying no, but I use Puerto Rican Spanish, so I don't know if this is how the word is used internationally. -- Agüeybaná  20:58, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect plurarily?
I just saw a sentence on a box of washing powder that has been bugging me, it says "1 in 8 babies needs special care". Is it me or is this bad grammer; surely the word "needs" should be singular.

Another related question, when referring to organisations or clubs, should they be referred to singularly or plurally, for example "The football club HAS released its latest report" OR "The football club HAVE released their latest report". Both of them sound OK unlike the soap box example but I saw a sticker in a car saying "XYZ Football Club Is The Best!" and it made me wonder. GaryReggae 16:45, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * 1 baby needs special care, 7 babies need bog-standard care. needs is correct, as it is the singular form of the verb, and agrees with the 1 baby needing special care. It does sound a little odd though, and I would suggest to the detergent manufacturer that they reword to "1 baby in 7 needs special care", as the additional emphasis this form give to the 1 baby makes the sentence sound more natural. DuncanHill 16:50, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Also see Collective noun and American_and_British_English_differences. --Milkbreath 17:35, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The contrast between formal and notional agreement is certainly enlightening. It depends whether we think of the subject as one or as a number.
 * The Internet has Harrods have got a horse riding section in their sports department, and while Harrods is sigular (Harrod's), this makes sense.
 * Wikipedia (United States of America) has The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations, and surely this, too, makes sense?
 * Surprisingly, perhaps, Wikipedia (United Arab Emirates) has The UAE is rich in oil besides Before 1971, the UAE were known as the Trucial States or Trucial Oman. Bessel Dekker 21:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not surprised, BD. WP is written by different people at different times, using different styles, standards and English skills. We have various editors whose sole or main interest is removing such inconsistencies.  I do quite a bit of that sort of work myself.  --  JackofOz 07:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all your comments, interesting indeed! I didn't realise there was so much inconsistency with this!  Personally, I would always tend to say that "Eight babies [need] special care" as it sounds 'right' to me. GaryReggae 11:33, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * There is a tendency for the number of the verb to gravitate to the nearest noun, as you have it. In fact, even approaching the question logically there are two interpretations: We aren't really talking about one baby, since there are more than eight babies in the world, but for the purposes of this sentence we are. (I vote for "needs".) Take your pick, and speak out boldly. In the end it's the babies that matter and not the grammar. --Milkbreath 12:44, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * This is also a difference between American and British English. American, except for United States, uses a singular verb with a formally singular subject; British English will vary with the internt as above. In Amderican, the Administration is; in British Government is decided or Government are divided. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:19, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Website
What's the best website for an english speaker who wants to learn a foreign language# —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.128.148 (talk) 19:32, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * What language? -- Falconus p t   c 19:40, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Perl —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.128.148 (talk) 19:52, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

That's not exactly a foreign language... schyler 19:57, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I was kidding. I want a site for any language. Any help?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.128.148 (talk) 22:30, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Your question is so general that it can elicit only the vaguest answers. What exactly do you want to know? Which languages are learnable, perhaps? (Some are not!) Or how to select a language for learning? Or once you have made your choice, how to set about it? How to plan your training? Whether to seek instruction or to (forgive me) self-instruct? Do you want to focus on reading, writing, listening, speaking? A host of other questions suggest themselves, but for very general orientation you might wish to consult . This is just an arbitrary suggestion: there are literally millions of websites on language learning, so it would be presumptuous to try and tell you which is best. Bessel Dekker 22:40, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm intrigued by your claim that some languages are not learnable. Life must be hard for the young children in communities where unlearnable languages are spoken. —Angr 21:19, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think anything is 'unlearnable', obviously some languages are easier to learn than others. English is often considered difficult to learn due to the many inconsistencies in the language while personally I think languages that do not use the Roman alphabet (eg Arabic, Chinese etc) would be harder to learn for an English speaker than other Roman alphabet based languages such as French and German.GaryReggae 22:54, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * By "Roman alphabet", I assume you also exclude Greek and languages that use Cyrillic script. I can't speak for Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Greek as I've never studied them.  But I have studied Russian.  People would often say to me in my student days "But it's such a difficult language, with that funny alphabet".  I told them that learning the alphabet was not hard, and once it becomes internalised you never think twice about it.  There are much harder aspects of Russian (and other Slavic languages) than the Cyrillic alphabet.  To me, the look of written Polish (I'm not talking about pronunciation) is far more off-putting than any Cyrillic script.  When you know that cz is pronounced ch, and rz is pronounced zh, it becomes a little less frightening.  --  JackofOz 07:27, 13 November 2007 (UTC)


 * As a language teacher I can assure you that there is no such thing as "unleranable" languages. The humna mind is a true wonder, you can learn anything you really want to. Even Hungarian,which is said to be the most difficult language after Chinese. :) But the difficulty of learning a language defers from person to person. One may find English difficult to learn, the other may find Russian or German difficult. I had classmates who suffered with English while for me it was easy and fun. I know people who loved learnign German while I have goosebumps even of thinking about it :) (no harm meant to Germans, it's just the sound of the language that doesn't fit me). So dear anonymus, if you want to learn a language, you must select which ones you prefer. There's no such site on the web where you would have the ability to learn any language... Browse throug wikipedia and see which languages catch your attention and then ask again :) sure then we will be able to find you some good websites. Cheers, --Teemeah Gül Bahçesi  09:04, 13 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The other issue that always needs to be mentioned in these discussions is what level of learning you're talking about. If you want to travel and need to know enough to get by, that's one thing.  But if you want to take part in a long heated argument between, say, Chinese speakers, then you'd need a vastly greater knowledge and fluency.  By and large, adult learners never get to that stage - although there are expections.  Little children do far better in learning their language than adults from foreign parts ever manage - but then, kids have time on their side, not that that's always an advantage.  In many cases, immigrants who've been in their new country for many, many years are still less knowledgable about their adopted language than their own children are.  --  JackofOz 22:22, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!
Hi. I'm making Christmas cards and I want to have on them the words "Merry Christmas!" in many languages.

English: Merry Christmas!

Esperanto: Gajan Kristnaskon! Xn4 20:32, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Spanish: ¡Feliz Navidad!

Portuguese: Feliz Natal! Hús ö  nd  23:38, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

French: Joyeux noël DuncanHill 19:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

German: Frohe Weihnachten! (or Fröhliche Weihnachten!) Xn4  20:25, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Greek: Καλά Χριστούγεννα or Kala Christougena if the greek typeset isn't available - Dureo 07:15, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Russian:С Рождеством Христовым!

Mandarin: 圣诞节快乐 (shengdanjie kuai le!) Steewi 01:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Japanese: Lots of people just say メリクリスマス　(meri kurisumasu), but there may be a more literal translation. Steewi 01:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It should be メリークリスマス　(merī kurisumasu). Note the chōonpu in the Japanese script and the macron in the romanization. --Kusunose 02:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Arabic:

Hebrew (may be stretching it): Mo’adim Lesimkha Xn4  20:32, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * This literally means "Happy Holidays" and is usually used for Jewish festivals. Christmas in Hebrew is Khag HaMolad (חג המולד), so theoretically (I've never heard it) one could say Khag Molad Sameakh (חג מולד שמח). СПУТНИК CCC  P 21:03, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, there we have the age-old dilemma of translating anything. Xn4  01:28, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually the Hebrew greeting for a happy holiday is "Xag same'ax" (the [x] representing the gutteral eighth letter, otherwise called hhet and pronounced - and sometimes transcribed - as [kh]); the "Mo'adim le-simxah" given above is only used for the intermediate days of festivals. I would support "Xag ha-Molad Sameah" (חג המולד שמח) as the phrase has a similar structure to those indicating a particular Jewish holiday. As for its occurrence: Israel has a sizable population of Christian believers among the Arab and Russian-immigrant populations, who in discourse between them might well use Hebrew rather than English as a lingua franca. -- Deborahjay 00:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Egyptian: The main language of Egypt is Arabic. If you mean Coptic, then you can say Nofri sai! (happy feast!) Xn4  19:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Tongan:

Swedish: God jul! DuncanHill 19:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Dutch: Vrolijk kerstfeest! risk 22:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much to whoever can help! schyler 19:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: THank you to whoever already put some translations up. If you could put your sig next to the translation so I know who did it, that would be great. schyler 19:58, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * There are already lists of this online: see Google. Wareh 20:22, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm betting that a lot of those are machine translations and may not actually convey the meaning that I want. THat's why I came here. schyler 20:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * By "Egyptian", do you mean the language of the pharaohs? Do you want this in hieroglyphs? --Lambiam 21:41, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I think in Arabic it is "'Ayd al-milad sa'id", which is عيد الميلاد سعيد. Google says "milad majid" but I learned it the first way... Adam Bishop 21:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Indonesian: "Selamat Natal."
 * Javanese: "Sugeng Natal."
 * Dutch: "Gelukkig Kerstfeest." (Or, if you are a Roman Catholic: "Zalig Kerstfeest.")
 * As regards sites in Google, I looked one of them up and it seemed fairly reliable for the few languages I can recognize — except that as often as not it gave equivalents for "Merry Christmas  and a Happy New Year". Bessel Dekker 22:09, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * "Gelukkig kerstfeest" sounds awkward to me. The common phrase is "Vrolijk kerstfeest en gelukkig nieuw jaar" (merry Christmas and a happy new year), which has a more comfortable rythm (in fact, the same meter as the English version) than the other way around. Could be a regional thing though. risk 22:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Partly regional, I suspect, partly a matter of content. To me, "vrolijk" emphasizes the jolly aspect of Xmas (and as such is, admittedly, the better equivalent of "merry") whereas "gelukkig" has more solemn or religious overtones ("happy"). I would certainly use it myself, without feeling awkward about it. (Google hits: 26,900 in FF, 5,540 in IE.)
 * Of course, "Prettige Kerstdagen" would be yet another option. Bessel Dekker 22:26, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I had no idea that wishing a Dutchman a Merry Christmas was such a minefield!DuncanHill 23:40, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Then there's always the option of "fijne kerstdagen" or simply "fijne kerst". More informal with less religious connotations than the alternatives Risk and Bessel have provided. A  ecis Brievenbus 23:51, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * A minefield it certainly is, Duncan, but also a molehill! I am sure this is more (or less) than Schyler had bargained for in asking his question, and he would be forgiven for ignoring the Dutch version altogether. At any rate, you can see how busy the Dutch must be in December, studiously committing their isogloss charts to memory in order to avoid terrible gaffes during one more unmerry Christmastide! It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. Christmas holidays to foreign parts, it seems, are becoming more and more popular in the Netherlands.
 * I fully admit, though, that I have added to the confusion by adding my Dutch version. I had not even seen Risk's, and if I had I might have kept my mouth shut. Bessel Dekker 00:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * On the plus side, you're not going to get this kind of depth from some googled list of translations. :) risk 01:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Similar to the Dutch variations, in Ireland "Happy Christmas" is more common than "Merry Christmas". It is also quite common in Britain. See Merry Christmas. --jnestorius(talk) 10:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't forget the 'classic' use of Hawaiian 'Mele Kalikimaka!' Steewi 01:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

When I said Egyptian I was just trying to think of a languge spoken in Africa. How about Afrikaans (i think that's the right spelling). Also thank you very much to everyone who helped with the translations. THese will do nicely! schyler 01:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Afrikaans would be 'geseënde kerfees'. And if you want even more translations, Merry Christmas has what you are looking for. 68.231.151.161 02:24, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a useful link. But do concentrate on the first section there; the ones that follow list a number of quite different holidays. (It would never do to wish someone Selamat (A)Idulfitr(i) for Christmas.) Good luck! Bessel Dekker 03:21, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Ahh! I meant to link to wiktionary, not wikipedia...68.231.151.161 03:26, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * In Persian or Farsi, it is: krismas mobarak (کریسمس مبارک). Omidinist 05:50, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

toDwI′ma′ qoS yItIvqu′. — Klingon   (Note: Don't change the capitals and lower case letters. In Klingon, they are different letters ... D and d are not the same letter, neither are T and t, for example)

Mele Kalikimaka! — Hawaiian

Gleðileg Jól! — Icelandic
 * Rather: Gleðileg jól! Stefán 23:21, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Wanikiya tonpi wowiyuskin! — Lakota


 * — Michael J  06:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Nollaig shona! (nullag hunna) - Irish Fribbler 11:34, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Hungarian: Boldog Karácsonyt! --Teemeah Gül Bahçesi  08:54, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Bahasa Melayu/Malay: Selamat Hari Natal (also commonly said as Selamat Hari Krismas). See ms:Krismas. x42bn6 Talk Mess 12:12, 13 November 2007 (UTC)