Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 April 29

= April 29 =

Ancient Hellenistic cruise/party ship
What is the correct spelling for "Telemago", an ancient Hellenistic cruise/party ship mentioned on the Ancient Discoveries televesion program "Ships", 2005? Hxbuff (talk) 00:40, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you mean Thalamegos, which is described here. --Cam (talk) 02:50, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Cantonese Writing
Cantonese writing has a tradition in Cantonese opera. Are there other Chinese languages besides Ancient Chinese that have this kind of tradition?68.148.164.166 (talk) 00:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * There are many traditions of Chinese Opera (Sichuan, Suzhou, Beijing, to name a few) which are performed in the local speech, and previously had a manner of writing them down in characters, which has not been continued in some dialects. Suzhou dialect has a manner of writing in characters that is no longer commonly used, but was used in the famous novel 海上花 Haishang Hua. It is very difficult for a modern speaker of Suzhou dialect to read the original text. Is that any help? Steewi (talk) 01:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That helps me unbelievablly! Thank you!  Can you list all of them?  Thanks!!!68.148.164.166 (talk) 02:28, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * There are as many styles as there are cities in China, but the article Chinese Opera lists many of the main styles, some of which have their own articles. Steewi (talk) 00:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Really? Every city has a body of literature, even at least one work?  Even just a character on a scrap piece of paper?68.148.164.166 (talk) 01:15, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Not exactly. The major cities have the Chinese opera traditions. But each region (often each county) will have its own folk songs, meant to be sung in their own dialect. There may or may not be an accepted way of writing them down in characters. A good source for local folk songs is the county's xianzhi (县志 county gazette), which often has an example of a folk song in the dialect section. Steewi (talk) 05:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

And Is there any way to find out if there is an accepted way of writing folk songs down in characters?
 * Is there any way to find out what would be considered a major city? And Is there any way to find out if there is an accepted way of writing folk songs down in characters?68.148.164.166 (talk) 18:27, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Major city, no. The list in the article gives a good idea of the way things work, opera-wise (mostly by province). The way of writing down folk songs is in no way standardised. When there is an obvious character to use, most people will use the same one, but there are a lot of dialect words for which there has never been a standard character, so people will write them down (if at all) with a homophonous character. However, not everyone will choose the same character. This only happens when people want to write in dialect, which is quite rare in most parts of China. Cantonese is exceptional in having widely accepted dialect characters. Steewi (talk) 23:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Excatly: Cantonese is special be cause of Standard Dialect Characters. The reason: Cantonese opera.


 * When scripts were written for Cantonese opera, the characters were standardized. My question is are there any dialects that had this process, or the like?68.148.164.166 (talk) 00:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

latin gerund
My "Teach Yourself Latin" book (very old edition) tells me the Latin gerund has no nominative, then later refers to this very thing, the nominative of the gerund. The example it gives is:
 * We must pay regard to peace
 * Paci a nobis serviendum est.

The book is clearly saying that serviendum is a nominative, and moreover, since esse is intransitive, I don't see how it would be correct for serviendum to be in the accusative case. For example, "the man is good" would be something like "Is (or hic?) est bonus" not "Is est bonum". Is it true that the gerund has no nominative, and if so, how does the latin sentence from the book actually play according to the rules? 203.221.126.206 (talk) 05:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It's wrong, if it says that - that is a gerundive, used impersonally. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Chinese term
Is there a Chinese term 嫡孫 meaning "the eldest son of the eldest son"? DHN (talk) 07:03, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * From the Chinese Wikipedia articles on 嫡庶, 嫡 is a character used to designate the wife of a man, as well as the children of the man with his wife. This is in contrast with 庶, which designates other women with whom the man has sexual relations (such as his concubines) and their children. 嫡子 is a son of a man with his wife. 嫡孫 is a son of a 嫡子 with his wife. 嫡孫 doesn't seem to have implication that the male descendants involved are the eldest among siblings. 嫡长孙 is a term used in the article to refer to the eldest son of the eldest son. --72.78.102.49 (talk) 20:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The BBC is a Quack!
On the BBC News Website and this story in particular, a US air chief criticises Heathrow Airport for basically being a dump. At one point he says:


 * "If you look at the fabric of the building, if you look at where customers check in - missing light bulbs, duck tape on the floor. I would have to say that Heathrow is in many ways the worst of all the airports that my company flies to in Europe."

Now, while I see numerous examples of poor spelling and grammar on this website every day (plus sentences that seem to end mid-edit), I would like to make sure the spelling of 'duck tape' is correct. I thought it was 'duct tape'. Any ideas?--ChokinBako (talk) 08:10, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Both names/spellings are in common use, and apparently there is some confusion about which one was the original name; see Duct_tape. -- Ferkelparade &pi; 08:23, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The BBC article says duct tape now. H YENASTE 16:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Interesting. It's worth reading the rest of the duct tape article. Apparently it's useless for sealing ductwork, which would support the "duck" idea. (Not that it's much use on ducks either; "duck" is the material it's made from.)--Shantavira|feed me 17:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Not useless; it just doesn't work very well. (The last EL says quite plainly that it is so used, and shouldn't be.)


 * To add to the confusion, a common brand of duct tape in my part of the world is made by the Duck Products Company. --Sean 19:40, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

There's no way to know from the quote whether the guy actually said "duck tape" or the writer didn't know the correct term. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 21:25, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, that's what I was thinking, to be honest. As 'duct tape' and 'duck tape' sound practically the same when spoken quickly, I wondered whether the BBC journalist just actually didn't know the correct term and chose the latter. I have since read the Wikipedia article and can now see that it's not really an 'error', although I would prefer the term 'duct tape', considering 'duck tape' to be more colloquial, possibly because 'duct' sounds more technical than 'duck' (ducks may disagree). Anyway, the BBC seems to have amended the article now. --ChokinBako (talk) 22:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

From what I've seen, "duct tape" is the general term (even though it's not useful on ducts) while "Duck Tape" is a brand name (technically "Duck Brand Duct Tape").  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  00:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Please to read the article as discussed above. 79.66.99.37 (talk) 11:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think we've all read it, thank you. Maybe you should read the discussion 79.66.99.37. --ChokinBako (talk) 16:45, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If Rspeer had read the article, why add such a gratuitous comment that seems to completely ignore not only the contents of the article but most of the discussion above? 130.88.140.11 (talk) 15:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I do apologize, but it was actually my question in the first place and you don't either seem to have read the whole thing. --ChokinBako (talk) 16:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Phrase in Ma Baker
Lyrics quote:
 * she met a man she liked
 * she thought she'd stay with him
 * one day he formed with them
 * they did away with him

What does it mean to form with someone? --KnightMove (talk) 19:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Listen at 1:48 to the rendition here. I think the line is "when he informed on them", which fits.  --Sean 19:49, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * These guys had it right --Lisa4edit (talk) 21:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * While this makes sense, Googlefight results in 293:24 in favor of the version I wrote... --KnightMove (talk) 05:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * "Millions of flies can't err. Eat trash!" :-) I often get that with misprints or errors in dictionaries. All of a sudden everyone from that country misspells or misuses the word.  Doesn't make it right. There are cases where the majority wins, but I still think that having a cold is no fun, even if everyone has one. (Preceding comments please to be taken in good humor.)--Lisa4edit (talk) 07:52, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, now I have listened several times again and you're definitely right. Btw, I was shocked to see how many people think that "she really moved them down". --KnightMove (talk) 09:00, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Simple grammar of English
Does anyone know of a simple grammar of English that can be learned easily by a child of school age? It doesn't have to account for the more advanced and uncommon constructs in English, but simplicity and ease of learning is highly desirable. Ideally the grammar should have only the minimum number of concepts and rules needed to describe the formation of English sentences. --72.78.102.49 (talk) 19:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Seidl Grammar 1 (Grammar one). The series goes on up to Grammar four. Oxford University Press. Amazon.co.uk has it. US Amazon doesn't.
 * (Skip the "Have got" section.)
 * Also check out these: http://www.funbrain.com http://www.manythings.org/    http://www.wordpower.ws/

For later maybe http://esl.about.com/od/beginningenglish/u/start.htm and  http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ and http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/ ''"Schoolage" is a rather broad term. First graders will "ooh" and "aah" at things that will gain a "yuck" or a yawn from teenagers.'' --Lisa4edit (talk) 20:29, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * My favourite is David Crystal's Rediscover Grammar, which is organised in bite-sized chunks, and illustrated with cartoons as well as diagrams.--Shantavira|feed me 07:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)