Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 September 7

= September 7 =

A fast system to deplagirize text?
Hello, I am wondering if anyone knows of the fastest way to text someone else's text and rewrite it so it's your own words? If I try to rewrite it in my own words outright it takes a long time and I end up unconsciously being unable to think of new ways to write things. If I just switch words with synonyms, run it back and forth through an automated translator, then run it through MsWord grammar check it takes a very long time and then it doesn't change it enough. If I try to do the main points, then it shrinsk the text to about 10% of the original size and it's no good as I want to keep the length in. Anyone know any good techniques for fast work on this? Is there any kind of computer software that would help in this? Juanita Hodges 03:49, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If you want to rewrite it using your own words, you need to use your own words. Changing words in a text and saying you wrote it is still plagiarism, in my definition of plagiarism. A.Z. 04:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree. In the words of the old saying, "Stealing from one author is plagiarism, stealing from many is research".  Even if you replaced every single word of the original text with a synonym, it's still the original author's word order and concepts you're presenting, just with different words.  --  JackofOz 04:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you know a way to do this fast? It's really really really hard and takes forever. Juanita Hodges 04:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, I'm not so much into making it my own words, but just not the other person's. Juanita Hodges 06:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Maybe a spammer can give you some advice: they're always struggling to avoid having their pitches match a template. —Tamfang 07:02, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't undesrstand. Juanita Hodges 07:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If you want to avoid committing plagiarism, you have to say it in your own words. That means you have to work for it. --Lambiam 11:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Even if you change all the synonyms, it would still be a derivative work, and fall foul of copyright law. There are no shortcuts here. Exxolon 13:54, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You may have wondered why spammers so often misspell words like "Viagra" and "Rolex": it's because even the crudest spam-filters will notice if they're spelled correctly. 419 scam mail doesn't contain such clear keywords, but it's still easy to catch automatically if many copies of it use the same sentence (like "I am the son of former President Sani Abacha" or "Do not feel sorry for me as I believe we will all die someday.")  You're trying to avoid having your writing detected as a copy of something you found on the Web, I guess, so you can probably learn something from the tricks spammers use to avoid having their writing detected as copies of, well, itself.  &mdash;Tamfang 01:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

If this is work for school, you are asking for help cheating. Rewording might make it harder for your teacher to catch you with Google, but it would not lessen the offense of plagiarism. If your teachers have suggested to you that handing in the work of others, simply reworded, as your own is acceptable, they have misled you&mdash;this is the sort of thing that gets students expelled from college, employees fired from their jobs, and writers' careers ruined. Up-front attribution would be required: "The following are the exact ideas of (AUTHOR) (TITLE), copied except for rewording." (A citation of the source that did not make the wholesale derivation of your work from it clear would be dishonest.) Wareh 14:10, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Natural language processing is a notoriously difficult area of computer science research. I don't think there's a piece of software that even comes close to what you want to do. In fact, many of the Human Interface Tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk amount to "paraphrase this text", precisely because humans can do it better than algorithms. 128.186.40.148 17:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi there, Juanita Hodges, go take a look at Text_simplification and the related links from that article. Then take a look at The (futile?) quest for an automatic paraphrase engine. dr.ef.tymac 22:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You can be kicked out of school for plagiarism, and asking a question on Wikipedia about the fastest way to do it, and then signing it with what appears to be your own name, is not a very intelligent thing to do, as when the teachers put your essays into their plagiarism checking software that scans the internet for matches, it'll find your name at the end of that question. If you are going to cheat, be happy with the cheating methods you are stuck with. If they take too long, do the research and do the essay yourself.--Manga 23:38, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Do native speakers of English understand following type of sentences easily?
In linguistics books one comes across following type of sentences: 1. Problems involved in this, my East Coast friends are difficult to talk to about. 2. John is tough to believe the university would fire. 3. The prisoners are alleged to have been ordered to pick up the money.

As a non native speaker of English I find the above type of sentences pretty hard to understand. Do native speakers understand these type of sentences easily? Thanks 196.12.53.9 10:35, 7 September 2007 (UTC)Vineet Chaitanya


 * 3 is easy to understand and unambiguous, it might be slightly awkward but it's easy to work out what is being said. However 1 and 2 are horrible and either completely incorrect or very ambiguous and could be written much better. I can't work out what they are trying to say. Capuchin 10:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Sentence #2 is not so bad. It's not really correct, but I can imagine somebody saying it, and it would be understood.  I agree with Capuchin, though, it doesn't sound quite right and you'd want to reword it.  Sentence #1 doesn't really work.  I think a similar construction could be OK in context, though.  A big part of the difficulty is the very vague "problems involved in this."    --Reuben 10:54, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) I agree, 1 and 2 are horrible. My best guesses would be "It's difficult to talk to my East Coast friends about problems relating to this" and "It's hard to believe that the university would fire John". — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 10:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Assuming I understand what you these sentences are trying to say correctly, here is how a native english speaker would possibly write these sentences.


 * 1 - "It is difficult to talk to my East Coast friends about these (sort of) problems."
 * 2 - Is VERY amibigous - It could be "John found it tough to believe that the university would (could?) catch fire." or "John found it tough to believe that the university would fire him (her? someone?)" Assuming it was a difiicult-to-understand but correct sentence, I thought the meaning would be "John is tough (emotionally) to believe the university would fire (a gun or suchlike)." Quite when one would use such an unlikely sentence, I don't know. Skittle 21:49, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 3 - The original sentence is ok, but I'd write "Allegations were made that the prisoners were ordered to pick up the money." Exxolon 14:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Note that there's an ambiguity in 3, as to whether "pick up" means from the ground or has been used colloquially to mean "collect". --Dweller 14:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess this is a book on syntax with examples of dislocation and what not. Some of these phenomena might make sense only to people with certain dialects. --Kjoonlee 19:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I gathered that 2 meant "It is difficult to believe that John would be fired from the university" or "that the university would fire John". "tough to believe the university would fire" seems to make sense, then fire takes an object, which I expect in this case is John, and thus the subject is unstated, leaving it to be ambiguous or "I" (so perhaps "I have trouble believing the University would fire John"?) depending on what language it's translated from. Kuronue | Talk 21:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Sentence 2 is modeled on sentences like "John is a tough nut to crack" or "John takes a lot of patience to deal with". The reason that Sentence 2 doesn't work is that John is not the object of "believe". "John is tough to believe, because everyone knows he is a liar" is fine. (If you want to keep the word order, you could say "John is someone whom it's tough to believe the university would fire.") All these sentences should be grammatical and understandable. Tesseran

I agree with Capuchin that sentence three is the only one that a native English speaker could actually be expected to produce. Do these sentences have an asterisk ("*") in front of them, or are they part of a discussion of "transformational" syntax. These sentences look like the purported "underlying sentences" of "It is" constructions. Mike Dillon 23:53, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * No, the sentences are not marked by the asterisk! Such sentences are discussed under the heading "tough movement".Here is one more example from http://hpsg.stanford.edu/hpsg-l/1994/0059.html

"Getting herself arrested on purpose is hard for me to imagine Betsy being willing to consider _ ."

I would also like to thank all the respondents for their comments. 196.12.53.9 10:59, 9 September 2007 (UTC)Vineet Chaitanya


 * I could imagine all of the given sentences being understandable in conversation, with the right stresses and intonation. For example, if someone said "With things going as they are, most people's jobs are uncertain. Betty could be fired at any moment, I was expecting Bob to go, but John? John is tough to believe the university would fire." However, it wouldn't necessarily be ideal. Skittle 18:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The Communist Party of China and the human soul
The opening sentence of the English version (the "official" English version) of the "Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" is: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution now unfolding is a great revolution that touches people to their very souls and constitutes a new stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country, a stage which is both broader and deeper. I always thought it was strange to see the word "souls" here. The human soul (usually thought of as immaterial), a somewhat religious notion, seems very much out of place in the context of (materialist) Mao Zedong thought. Bourgeois mysticism! So, my question: does anybody know if the word that was used in the original Chinese text has the same connotations, or is it the translation? Skarioffszky 14:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm hoping that a Chinese speaker will come along, but on the Chinese Wikisource page, I found the following compound that may have been translated into English as "soul":


 * 灵魂


 * According to online dictionaries, this word can also mean "spirit". I am not familiar with Chinese Communist metaphysics, but it seems possible to believe that people have a noncorporeal component without also believing in deities.  This belief would conflict with radical philosophical materialism, but I'm not sure how committed Maoists were to such a philosophical stance. I'd be fascinated to hear from someone who is more knowledgeable about this. Marco polo 20:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * That being said, I'd say that the human soul is not a somewhat religious notion but a purely religious one. --Taraborn 21:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The Proto-Germanic word *saiwalo the English word soul descends from did not have a specifically religious meaning, and neither did Latin anima, Greek ψυχή (psychē), and Hebrew נפש (nephesh). When Christianity took existing words for a religious concept, it did not mean that all other meanings were thereby been pre-empted. Any decent dictionary will list several other meanings, such as a person's emotional or moral nature. --Lambiam 07:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The word "灵魂" is indeed used quite casually in modern Chinese, not necessarily with any religious connotations. You can just take that as a metaphor, to mean something like "essence". You can use the word "魂魄" if you want to refer specifically to the non-corporeal existence in traditional Chinese belief. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 06:57, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Skarioffszky 08:53, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Prepositions Preceding Surnames: A Collective Term and Their Alphabetisation
Is there is a term for prepositions that precede some surnames? For example, von, van and de. Also, I understand that it customary not to involve these prepositions when alphabetizing a list of names. For example, T. S. von Sperl, when alphabetised, would appear: Sperl, T. S. von. Can anyone clarify this? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.210.112.48 (talk) 14:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * In Dutch, it is called a "tussenvoegsel". In the Netherlands names starting with "van", "van de" "van der", "van den", "de" etc. are filed under the following name proper when alphabetizing, but in Belgium they go under "v" (or "d"). Skarioffszky 15:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * French has la particule (in full, la particule onomastique), which covers de, des, de la, du, d', and also von, van, etc. (Some French people also refer to the Mac in Scottish and Irish names by the same term.) There's also the term particule nobiliaire (not all particules are to do with noblesse). If there's an English word, I don't know it, but I've heard English speakers say 'the particule ', using the French word and pronunciation. The French and the Germans almost invariably index names without the particule. The English used to, but I'd say it's becoming a little old fashioned. Xn4 21:36, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Related thread. A.Z. 21:41, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed. The short answer is "nobiliary particle".  --  JackofOz 02:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

It was a dark and stormy night
I'm not a native speaker of English and I don't fully understand why that excerpt is so bad or amusing for its style. Can somebody, please, tell me why? --Taraborn 17:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I've read again the article and now I think that maybe it's not that it is bad but that it has become something like a cliché. --Taraborn 18:01, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The phrase alone is not all that horrible, but the full opening sentence as quoted in the article is quite a travesty. -- LarryMac  | Talk  18:12, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I see but, could you please elaborate a little? I don't get it much. --Taraborn 21:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * This, my answer to you, plucked from those kinder recesses of my soul, and recorded verily unto the unknowable recesses of Time Ineffable, when Men retire from their pursuits, and the Series of Tubes is darkened forever, might -- I have no little hope -- serve to elucidate the broad style of writing known as purple prose, which counts in its convivial company the aforementioned phrase entitling your gentle query. --Sean 00:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I think you should put that last answer up for the Bulwer-Lytton prize next year. Well done, Sean. That is about as ornate as English gets. Bielle 02:04, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the language is so intricate and it runs on for a long time without a break. As Bille indicates above, there is an annual Bulwer-Lytton Prize for the writer who can come up with the most amusing intricately-written opening sentence.  Corvus cornix 18:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

The Peanuts character Snoopy begins his book with this sentence and proceeds to "write himself into a corner" (idiom). I think the line that later followed was: A prirate ship appeared on the horizon. I'm sure a Peanuts fan can clarify.LShecut2nd 17:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * "A shot rang out. A maid screamed." I remember these from forty years ago so I cannot say for sure whether it's authentic Snoopy or from, e.g., a (further) parody. —Tamfang (talk) 09:12, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Proper adjectives
Is there any language besides English that capitalizes so-called proper adjectives (like adjectives of nationality)? --Lazar Taxon 19:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

What does the English idiom game, set, and match mean?
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks, anon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.155.166.86 (talk) 21:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It is from tennis, I believe, where, in a tournamnet, the winner is the one who takes the match (the best two out of three sets) and each set is won by the player who wins 6 games first a set of six games by at least two games, or the number of games then increases after 6 until one player wins by two games. So the winning game takes that game, the set and the whole match. It is an idiom for the unbeatable move, or the last word in an argument.  Not being a tennis player myself, I am sure there are others who can explain in a tidier fashion. Bielle 21:21, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Bielle has got it spot on, except that (some irrelevant points) the term is not only used in tournaments, and matches can run to more than three sets. So long as a tennis match is being played, it's at least theoretically possible for either player (or either pair of players, in doubles) to win enough of the remaining points to win the match. The umpire says the words "Game, set and match to Miss X" when she wins the game which wins the set which wins the match. So it's all over and the other player can't come back. Xn4 21:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It's also used metaphorically in non-tennis contexts. Such as, you're in a discussion with a friend about something you have opposing viewpoints about, and you come up with a convincing argument that puts his/her opinion to shame.  You could end with "That's all there is to it. So I win - game, set and match".  It's not too far removed in meaning from "Lock, stock and barrel" or "Hook, line and sinker".  --  JackofOz 01:58, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Or "checkmate." -- LarryMac  | Talk  14:45, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Or "You doin' the damn thing!" - Some people aslo use it to express sexual prowessCholgatalK! 17:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Double Dactyls
I've been meaning to write a Double Dactyl poem to challenge myself, and since I feel in a creative mood I'm thinking of trying to form one today; my only problem is, I can't seem to think of any single-word double dactyls that haven't been used in poems I've just read. I feel that if I had the one-word portion of it, I could easily construe a poem around it, so my question is this: what are some good examples of single-word double dactyls? Preferably ones not listed either in the wiki or on this page, as I'm familiar with the poem examples on each and thus would tend towards a highly similar poem. Thanks for the help! Kuronue | Talk 21:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Heliophobia, Autosplenectomy, Hypervelocity, Octogenarian, Saudi Arabia, Ponderability. (in case you were also looking for famous double dactyl people to write about, which is what I thought at first: Booker T. Washington, Francis Ford Coppola, and Emily Dickinson.) ---Sluzzelin talk  23:10, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Nice! Saudi Arabia is two words, but the others I can use! Incidentally, I did think of one myself in the intrem, but it was the only one I could come up with off the top of my head: autofellatio Kuronue | Talk 04:54, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I invented polyprosodical for that very purpose (it describes the meter of William McGonagall's verses). &mdash;Tamfang 00:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It also applies to Ogden Nash, but his name is unsuitable. —Tamfang (talk) 22:58, 10 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Why, that makes you a superneologist. :)  JackofOz 02:30, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Mean of "Macavity"
Author Tom Holland uses "Macavity" in his fine book* Rubicon to describe a characteristic of Crassus. I am unable to find a definition for this work in my simple library and the Wikipedia definitions (two), though excellent, are a questionable fit. I would apprecitate a confirmation or expansion of the Macavity definition.


 * Tom Holland, Rubicon, Anchor Books First Edition, March 2005 (paperback), Chapter 8: Triumvirate, page 223, line 4

Thank you.

22:39, 7 September 2007 (UTC)Tyro Pi


 * I'm not familiar with Tom Holland's book, but supposedly it's an anachronistic reference to T. S. Eliot's Macavity, meaning a character pulling the threads and up to all sorts of mischief, but clever enough to always get away with it. Does he mention it in a special context, or is this Holland's overall characterization of Crassus? ---Sluzzelin talk  23:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I need to know what "apostel" is regarding certification of a birth certificate.
I've been told "apostel" refers to some sort of certification of birth certificates in Spanish. It is paperwork I need to bring my daughter back from Mexico. Please help me figure this out, I can't find any other help.

Thank you, Angela Thatcher —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.255.38.216 (talk) 23:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC) (Deleted email address to protect from spam.) Bielle 23:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Babelfish does not recognize the word "apostel" in Spanish. However, there is a word apostille, which is French and has to do with international certifications of various sorts. From what I can gather from the article, you will likely need professional help with this.  There is a company on Google that advertises itself as apostilla.com, but I have no further information about it; I can't even say if it is legitimate or not. Perhaps there is a native speaker of Spanish who can be of more help. Bielle 23:41, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If the birth certificate was issued in Mexico, then you will need to have the birth certificate notarized in Mexico and then sent, along with the notarization, to a Mexican government office that issues the apostille. You can download a document (in Spanish) that explains where to get an apostille in Mexico from this address. Your IP address indicates that you are in Oregon, United States.  If the birth certificate was issued in Oregon, this website explains how to obtain an apostille for the Oregon birth certificate. If you need help with a Mexican birth certificate, you might try asking for help from the Mexican Consulate in Portland.  Their phone number is 503-274-1442.  It would help if you spoke Spanish.  You need their office of "documentaciόn".  The word for birth certificate is "acta de nacimiento".  Marco polo 01:56, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Schedule conflicts!
Earlier today I got into a rather lively discussion with an American colleague of mine over the correct pronunciation of the word schedule. Being British, I favo(u)red "sh", while he believed "sk" to be correct. To "prove" our points, we came up with lists of root words with hard and soft "sch"s, with a pint of Guinness going to the winner.

Hard (Him):
 * School
 * Schem(e)-
 * Schizo-
 * Schooner
 * Schism-
 * Schrod (Didn't believe him at the time, but Google seems to confirm it)
 * Schol(astic) (Probably matches School, but it passed)

Soft (me):
 * Schmooze
 * Schtick
 * Schmaltz
 * Schnapps
 * Schlep
 * Schnoz
 * Schadenfreude
 * Schiltrom (with Schlock still in reserve!)

As you can see, I won the prize, but was it because I was right, and soft sch-s are more common, or was it just a better vocabulary on my part? (Nice to have a win/win :).) And yes, we were both aware that the differences between American and British English meant that technically we're both "correct". Chalk it up to Anglo-American rivalry and a prior argument about the correct choice between caravan and travel trailer. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 23:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * All the = "sh" words you found (except "schiltrom", which I've never heard before so I have no idea about) are borrowings from German or Yiddish. The = "sk" words are mostly older borrowings, from Latin or Greek (the Latin words ultimately of Greek origin anyway). Since "schedule" is such a word, I award the prize to your friend. Or maybe I'm just biased because I'm an American :) --Miskwito 23:27, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * To be fair, prior to playing Medieval II: Total War, I'd never head of the schiltrom either. And double Bah! upon you for siding with the man clearly in the wrong! :) GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 23:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Where sch- has a sk- sound in English, it can also come from Dutch (e.g., schooner, schiedam, schipperke, schelm) or Italian (scherzo). Xn4 02:52, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

You're both wrong. They're both correct and acceptable, to different people. --Kjoonlee 12:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * ...which I already mentioned that we're both aware of. Humo(u)r me. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 14:07, 8 September 2007 (UTC)