Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 April 11

= April 11 =

French quotation marks
I was looking at this 1859 textbook. Are the quotation marks here an older French style? 68.18.206.78 (talk) 01:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Quotation mark, non-English usage shows that it isn't the current style for French, but it is the current style for a number of other European languages (including German and Bulgarian). It may be an older style, or they may have been using a non-standard style even for those times. Steewi (talk) 03:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The author is a guy named Dr Emil Otto, who most likely was German, having written a similar guide for German / English usage. The book may even be based on a German version of his French conversational grammar which was published in the early 1850s.
 * I guess he simply used the punctuation he was familiar with and no lector corrected it (if, indeed, it was non-standard). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 10:46, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * In those days quotation marks reflected what the printer had available rather than the language the book was written in. So if a book was typeset in Germany, it would more than likely have German-style quotes, regardless of language; if a printer relocated to a new country, he'd generally bring his old type with him; and if a printer set up shop out in the boonies, for example a missionary, he'd use whichever type he could get his hands on, which was often unrelated to his nationality. kwami (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't the typist also need the letters common in French (like é) to typeset a book with French text? If he has those, I can't see why he'd not also have the quotation marks.  &#x2013; b_jonas 11:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Early Spanish-English Phrasebook
I found a scan of a single page some years ago of a 17th century (I think) Spanish-English phrasebook, purporting to the one of the first of its kind. I have since lost both picture and title, and thought maybe someone might remember what it is, and whether the text or scan of the phrasebook are available online. Google, Gutenberg and Archive.org have not yielded anything to me, but may do so to someone with better search-fu. Steewi (talk) 03:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe it was one of John Minsheu's 17th century editions which were based on Richard Perceval's Biblioteca Hispanica (1591). See here, for example. ---Sluzzelin talk  07:24, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Minsheu was it. I was looking for Pleasant and Delightfull Dialogues in Spanish and English. Thanks, Sluzzelin. Mystery solved! (how does one add the solved button?) Steewi (talk) 02:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Just for general knowledge, it could also have been Antonio del Corro's "The Spanish Grammar" (1590), or his Reglas Gramaticales (1586), William Stepney's "The Spanish Schoolmaster" (1591), all of which were early Spanish grammars. John Sanford also produced a word list at Oxford in 1611.  Thomas D'Oyley may have produced a Spanish grammar in 1590, which appears to be lost to time.  If anyone has seen a reference to that, or any images of that, it would be super interesting to note.  It may only exist in manuscript, though it was entered into the Stationers Register in 1590 and would have been printed by John Wolf.

What does the Spanish word 'guarrindonga' mean?
I didn't found it in any dictionary. Mr.K. (talk) 12:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't use it as a term of endearment unless you know the person very well. Guarrindonga is derived from the adjective guarro/guarra meaning filthy, disgusting (the noun means pig). This site defines it as "Mujer poco curiosa o aseada" (a not very tidy woman) or "Mujer ligera de cascos." which could be loosely translated as a woman who sleeps around. ---Sluzzelin talk  14:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

A challenge by a whisker
This is more by nature of a challenge than anything else, but perhaps a list of these, or even a name for the concept, exists, and a cunning linguist can find out. I don't know what to call this, but it has come to my attention that certain written statements can be played with by an errant splodge or a filament falling on the paper. A human hair, alighting on an O turns it into a P, for example. One can come up with sentences to justify the change. E.g. on contemplating the devastating impact of cocaine, one could say that "The chaps are just a line away from chaos". Any more? BrainyBabe (talk) 18:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Both whisker- and changed-by-a-stroke-oriented: when I was a child, I was thoroughly shocked when I saw on a store shelf a product which I have recreated here. There was a small sticker on the box that fooled the eye. Meow!  --Sean 19:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Cleverly recreated! Now I wonder what cat brain tastes like in the morning. BrainyBabe (talk) 05:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Something like "Evil is a backwards way to live"? Paul Davidson (talk) 14:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It's easy to convert a Pascal into a Rascal. Maybe something can be contrived out of 20 micro-Pascals, the threshold of hearing, and 52 micro-Rascals, the threshold of pain? Okay, my pun cells are sleeping. I wouldn't know what to call this type of typographical wordplay, but it reminded me of matchstick puzzles. ---Sluzzelin talk  08:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * My tired eyes saw Brainy Babe's "pomo hoho" morph into porno hoho and worse. Her own real-word is the new and more honest maybe "real-world". In another thread kept reading "carrot" for "cannot". It's all a read-world, real word whisker thing. The current spoonervirus whiskerism isn't going away any time soon. Julia Rossi (talk) 10:03, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * In The Muppet Movie, there is a scene where the gang is looking to trade in their now busted-up car for a replacement at a used car lot. The salesman tells them that there's a $20 trade-in, and that the price on a car's sticker is the price they pay, and just at that moment Sweetums swats a fly on one of the stickers, turning a $1995 car into a $19.95 one. Less the trade-in, they come off with a nickel profit. Confusing Manifestation (Say hi!) 04:26, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Unrelated, but I do hope that the "cunning linguist" thing was an unintended pun. Either that, or I'm assuming that came from James Bond.  bibliomaniac 1 5  Hey you! Stop lazing around and help fix this article instead! 04:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Certainly it was not unintended! It is a long and honourable tradition to assume linguists have talented tongues (though strangely this doesn't stretch to, say, palates for wine tasting). I doubt the James Bond team invented that one, but thanks for the pun page.


 * That car salesman thingy reminds me to a new strip from the PFB comics: Bee. &#x2013; b_jonas 11:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)