Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 April 17

= April 17 =

Why doesn't anybody pronounce Dick Cheney's name right?
Obviously almost everybody says "Chay-knee", but the man himself says "Chee-knee", and it's spelled with an "E", not an "A" like Lon Chaney, so what the devil? Thanks. --69.134.124.30 (talk) 00:25, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe because we try not to listen to him? Or is it taboo avoidance, the way some people say "dang" for "damn"? ;) kwami (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It's spelled with an e because it comes from the French chêne, which means oak. And, at least in modern French, that's pronounced like the English spelling "shen," which is closer to Shane than it is to Sheen.  Having said that, I agree that everyone has the right to pronounce their own name as they choose.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 00:47, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * That's right. It can be considered disrespectful to say it a different way (e.g. the way you think it ought to be said).  I can't say I've ever heard Cheney say his own name, but if he really does say "Chee-knee", I think we ought to be guided by that and say it the way he does.  --  JackofOz (talk) 01:17, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think if I was him, I'd stop pronouncing my name "Dick", whether I was one or not.--ChokinBako (talk) 10:25, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I thought it was pronounced "Mud"... Clarityfiend (talk) 04:13, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I find it hard to believe that every American newsreader that I've heard speak his name, and there have been a lot, have all pronounced his name wrongly. Are we sure someone isn't playing a joke on us? DJ Clayworth (talk) 17:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No, I think "Dick" is perfectly correct. I'd call him that even if he spelt it differently, like 'Jack' or something. It's funny, though, that in the Whitehouse we've got both a 'dick' and a 'bush'. Plus and 'condo' for them to stay. Quite bizarre. --ChokinBako (talk) 12:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Thesaurus
Do all languages have thesaurus, or just English? And while I'm at it, what's the plural? Thesauri sounds right, but I still remember the bitter pill of octopode. 195.60.20.81 (talk) 10:34, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * They do indeed exist in other languages - if you're referring to the word "thesaurus" itself, you can see by the article's interwiki links that many other languages do call it "Thesaurus" or a similar term. As for the plural, both "thesauri" and "thesauruses" are standard, though I'd personally tend to prefer the latter. -Elmer Clark (talk) 10:39, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure, you can get a thesaurus for all sorts of languages. The Greek word on which thesaurus is closely modelled is θησαυρός (treasure, treasury, storehouse), so it's a hoard of words. If the plural followed the Greek closely it would be thesauroi, but we have the word in its Latin form, so the traditional plural is the Latin one: thesauri. A more modern plural is simply thesauruses. (This is all quite a standard way with such words.)
 * Our word treasure is derived from thesaurus also. The r was added in French along the way; but some other European languages lack that r: Italian and Spanish have tesoro; Portuguese has thesauro.
 * – ⊥ ¡ɐɔıʇǝoN oetica! T– 10:49, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I did mean if other languages had enough synonyms to warrant such a thing as a thesarus, or if it was only a few. 195.60.20.81 (talk) 11:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * With respect, Anonymous, it helps us to help you if you put the right question to us.
 * Of course all languages have synonyms: but some more than others. The complete set of a language's words is its lexicon. This is also called its vocabulary. The article Vocabulary gives some good starting information about how many words there are in English and a few other languages. Some of the listed references give useful leads to take things further.
 * – ⊥ ¡ɐɔıʇǝoN oetica! T– 11:43, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * – ⊥ ¡ɐɔıʇǝoN oetica! T– 11:43, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Bill Bryson in his book Mother Tongue quotes English maven Charlton Laird on books of synonyms: "Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist." I invariably use the plural "thesauruses" on the principle that this is the twenty-first century. --Milkbreath (talk) 13:16, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry but you are all wrong, if the word "thesaurus" is being used properly. AFAIK there is no thesaurus for any language other than English, since a thesaurus is not just a dictionary of synonyms.  Roget's Thesaurus is unique in that it classifies the English language according to concepts, and gives all the words and phrases associated with that concept.  --Richardrj talkemail 13:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey! I wasn't so wrong. --Milkbreath (talk) 14:13, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * And in a like spirit of good will and ecumenism, I am sorry that you are wrong, Richard. For a start, the word thésaurus is alive and well in French. Petit Robert includes this sense:
 * "2. (mil. XXe; sous l'infl. de l'angl.) Doc., ling. Répertoire alphabétique de termes normalisés pour l'analyse de contenu et le classement des documents d'information. Les thésaurus techniques."
 * So much for the word itself. As for things meant by the English word (such as we have been discussing), they certainly exist in other languages, and bilingually as well. The traditional Roget schema is by no means essential to a work's qualifying as a thesaurus. There are many such pedagogical and reference works in French, bearing names like Dictionnaire de synonymes, mots de sens voisin et contraires. Some of them are raisonné in the manner of Roget, some not – just like the heterogeneous range of works called thesaurus in English.
 * Your faith in some Platonic "proper use" of the word is touching. As for you MB, stop being wishy-washy immediately.
 * – ⊥ ¡ɐɔıʇǝoN oetica! T– 14:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps linking to an online French Dictionnaire de synonymes is in order. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  14:29, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I didn't really mean you were all wrong, but I stand by my position that only a book that classifies a language by concept can properly be called a thesaurus. The OED has this to say: "A collection of concepts or words arranged according to sense; also (U.S.) a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms".  Well, I'll take my chances with the Americans; the first definition is the only correct one.  As for "Platonic proper use", I have no problem with that.  I'm not entirely sure what raisonné means, but if you can point me to a work that classifies the French language in the way Roget does English, I'll be very happy. --Richardrj talkemail 14:41, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * For raisonné you might read classified. As for a Roget style of organisation, you can start with Broché's Thésaurus, then check out the Robert Dictionnaire des synonymes, nuances et contraires ("200 000 synonymes et 22 000 contraires clairement regroupés par sens". The rest I leave as an exercise.
 * – ⊥ ¡ɐɔıʇǝoN oetica! T– 15:05, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Bah! You're all wrong.  Thesauruses are all well and good, but look for a one-word synonym for "synonym" and you'll look in vain.  :) --  JackofOz (talk) 01:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Language being the democratic phenomenon that it is, semantic change can and does happen. In the case of the word "thesaurus", the term has come to denote something much more general than Roget's original work, and there are plenty of books that can properly be called thesauruses/thesauri that do not classify their contents hierarchically.  By definition, 375 million native English speakers can't be wrong; that's how language works. --Diacritic (talk) 05:27, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

What's the term for a word that illustrates itself, like "pentasyllabic"? kwami (talk) 05:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Er, lexicoautoinvagination? Nah. Have a look at List of autological words (which I see lacks the word sesquipedalian). OED gives this meaning for autology:
 * "Self-knowledge, scientific study of oneself."
 * But it seems not to have a word for words that describe themselves. Autonym is also used around the place but for it OED gives only this definition:
 * "A book published under the author's real name."
 * – ⊥ ¡ɐɔıʇǝoN oetica! T– 07:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

German Translation of "Defective by Design" (done)
Hello Wikipedians. At dewp we were wondering how to translate "Defective by Design" into German. I thought it'd be a good idea to ask some en-N-speakers about the exact meaning of this term. Defective is pretty clear (in German defekt or coll. kaputt), but what is "by Design" about? Does it merely mean that the failure is caused by the design (Causality), or does it imply more, that it is intentionally broken by whomsoever it constructed? Some more like "defective because it was constructed badly" or "defective because the creators ignored/didn't care about its defect" or "defective because the creators wanted it to be defective". You don't have to be able to speak German to answer this :-) Thanks in advance, -- en-2, de-N Church of emacs (Talk | Stalk) 14:22, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you are asking about the name of the "anti-digital rights management (DRM) initiative by the Free Software Foundation", not whatever the phrase might mean outside that context, in order to have an article about it in German. It seems to me that the implication is that Microsoft has built in a "defect" (DRM) deliberately, not seeing it as a defect or mendaciously touting it as a feature or blithely crufting through ineptitude; take your pick. The "defect" is only a defect if you look at it through the eyes of the Free Software Foundation. None of your three guesses above hit the nail on the head. It's more like "designed with what in our opinion is a built-in defect", but I'm not perfectly happy with that rendition.
 * It doesn't mean that design caused a defect. "By design" is idiomatic and can mean something like "on purpose", and this is not that, either, but it is a play on that meaning. When a machine does something that the user finds somewhat unexpected but is normal for the machine, you can say the machine does that by design, meaning something like "not accidentally". For example, when my stupid camera turns itself off just as I'm about to take a picture, it does that by design. It isn't broken. The Free Software Foundation is using the expression in that rather negative way with the further "joke" that Microsoft can't tell that they've produced a faulty design. Hope this helps. --Milkbreath (talk) 15:47, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Based on Milkbreath's explanation and my limited knowledge of German, perhaps the word eingebaut would work well? As in defekt eingebaut?  Marco polo (talk) 18:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That would work with the noun Defekt rather than the adjective defekt – Defekt eingebaut would then mean defect built-in (using the same syntax as found in "satisfaction guaranteed"). If you want the translation to remain an adjective phrase as the English name is, you could go with absichtlich defekt ("intentionally defective") or mit eingebautem Defekt (with built-in defect). However, both of these translations loses the word-play of the English, because neither of them has in German a direct allusion to the product's design. A product's design can be called its Entwurf in German, maybe defekt entworfen ("defectively designed") would come closer to capturing that aspect of the English, but still without the word play. The English isn't exactly a pun, but it does play on two meanings of the word "design", and (as far as I know, I'm not a native speaker) German doesn't have a single word that has those two meanings. —Angr 19:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * P.S. de:Defective by Design glosses it Fehlerhaft aufgrund des Entwurfs ("faulty because of the design"), which does not suggest intentionality. —Angr 19:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If alliteration were possible that would be extra icing on the cake. --Kjoonlee 19:53, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Vorsätzlich verkackt. (Das ist alliterierend genug?)
 * – ⊥ ¡ɐɔıʇǝoN oetica! T– 07:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks everyone for your opinion. Angr changed it to "absichtlicher Konstruktionsfehler" which is ok in my opinion. :-) --Church of emacs (Talk | Stalk) 12:12, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Kinship terms in languages
Related question was also asked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages. Please check it out if you're interested. Thank you.

Hi, there are many branches of linguistics. Where would the study of kinship terms fit? Pragmatics? Sociolinguistics? Corpus analysis? Would it be more closer to cultural anthropology? Your ideas, please. --Kjoonlee 19:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Anthropology. If you have access to JSTOR you can search through the American Anthropologist journal for many many articles and book reviews on this topic. They were especially obsessed with kinship terminology in the earlier days. But, other folks have been interested in this as well, like psychologists, linguists, and other cognitive scientists interested in categorization and prototypes. Also, lexical semanticists are interested in how kinship terms relate to each other. – ishwar  (speak)  20:11, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * There is the subfield of linguistic anthropology, which would take a linguistic interest in kinship terms. Marco polo (talk) 00:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I understand the term 'linguistic anthropology', since linguistics is a branch of anthropology. kwami (talk) 04:55, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm... that depends on your point of view, I think. For some linguists, language is to be studied completely independently of the people who speak it. —Angr 05:49, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, true. But then, for many of them language is to be studied completely independently of speech. kwami (talk) 17:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
 * for many [linguists] language is to be studied completely independently of speech Hmmm. Is this an allusion to historical linguistics and philology? If this is case, then perhaps but otherwise I think few linguists would say that about modern linguistics (ie. after Saussure). I have a vague memory of some topics covered under linguistic anthropology. Let's see... John J. Gumperz' work, Goffman's theory of footing, Dell Hymes, John Austin, Judith Butler, gender theory and language (Robin Lakoff and critique, Deborah Tannen). Obviously, they're all cross-disciplinary, but taking a look at the article on linguistic anthropology, seems like a vibrant and growing discipline. — Zerida  ☥   18:58, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No, it is rather the difference between formalist (aka a priori, structuralist in a general sense not in the sense of pre-generative structuralism) theories and functionalist (aka emergent, interactive) theories. The formalist position (one of which is Chomsky's) views language structure as an autonomous and modular (i.e. self-contained) system which is primarily mental. The functional position (various versions of which are followed by the folks you mention above) does not view language as autonomous but rather as part of a larger communicative system, which is primarily societal (in other words you look at social functions of language, language style, etc.). You can do historical linguistics from either a functional or a formal perspective. In reality, not all linguists are strictly either one or the other: some "functionalists" may be rather close to formalist ideas while others are more at the other pole. So, it's a matter of degree. The extreme formalist would study language as abstracted away from the people who speak it and independent of speech (and not pay much attention to Gumperz, Goffman, Halliday, etc.). (also, note that functional here doesnt mean functional in the sense of grammatical relations as in Relational Grammar). – ishwar  (speak)  19:43, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No, it is rather the difference between formalist ... theories and functionalist... theories  Oh, that! I was thinking in terms of speech vs. writing, not competence vs. performance. I see, scratch earlier question. What's a good example of an "extreme formalist"?... — Zerida  ☥   21:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Frederick Newmeyer, Noam Chomsky are far on the formalist side. – ishwar  (speak)  05:44, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey, this brings things full circle. I know an anthropologist who studies Chomsky: the man himself (as an object of study), and why so many people take his theories seriously. I guess that would be linguistic anthropology! kwami (talk) 06:05, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Latin Tournament
What is the word in Latin for "tournament"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.233.6.203 (talk) 22:22, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * My Oxford Latin Dictionary has both decursio equestris (feminine) and ludus equester (masculine) as entries for "tournament." These both apparently refer to a competition involving horses or cavalry. Any particular context for the "tournament" in question? Ginogrz (talk) 00:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If you have in mind one of those medieval or Renaissance knightly competitions with jousts and mêlées and the like, tornamentum was, I believe, the most common term; though, since France was the center of their popularity, English writers sometimes use conflictus Gallicus. Deor (talk) 01:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * In one particular context (i.e. Latin Scrabble tournaments among my fellow students), we use "certamen". (By the way, we have an article about the medieval tournament.) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.210.170.49 (talk)

About the tournament's context: I had in mind a sword-fighting tournament, without any horses. —Preceding unsigned
 * Adam Bishop's certamen ("contest," roughly) is a good all-purpose word for competitions. Ovid, for example, wrote that Atalanta excelled "certamine cursus"—in contests of running. I think a tornamentum would have to involve horses, since a chevalier, etymologically and historically, was a mounted warrior. Deor (talk) 00:13, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm, well for a sword fight you could use "gladiatores", which is literally just gladiators but if you say "ad gladiatores" it means "to (see/go to/attend) the gladiatorial shows". Romans didn't fight with swords for fun, that was something debased that took place at the games. There must be medieval Latin terms for duelling, trials by combat involving swords, etc, but off the top of my head I can't think of them. Adam Bishop (talk) 05:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hastiludium ("lance game") was the most commonly used term during the Middle Ages for all kinds of martial games, according to Juliet Barker. The torneamentum was generally used specifically to refer to a mounted sporting "battle", so is not what you're looking for.  Quascumque aventuras ("seeking adventures") was a euphemism to refer to martial games if specific ones were banned. Some tournaments and festive martial events were called nundinae ("market-day"), also tyrocinium, which refer to the whole occasion.  You might be thinking of a feat-of-arms which was often fought with swords, on foot or mounted, but I don't know the latin term. Gwinva (talk) 03:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)