Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 August 28

= August 28 =

Terms and condtions (as in business)--
Isn't each of these 'terms' covered by the other? If not, what is the diff between terms and conditions--79.76.196.178 (talk) 02:52, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Look upwards at the "null and void" section... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] AnonMoos (talk) 03:12, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Some of the word-pairing allegedly comes from the combining of Norman French with English; it's just as likely some came from the desire of the legal profession to erect battlements of obfuscation around their lucrative and self-regulating fiefdom. "Null and void," "cease and desist," "last will and testament," "give and bequeath," "breaking and entering," "goods and chattels."  As Fred Rodell has said, "There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content." — OtherDave (talk) 09:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with 'breaking and entering'? They're separate acts, and you have to do both for the common-law definition of burglary to apply. Algebraist 11:25, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Nowt wrong with "cease and desist" either. The first means to stop doing something, the second means not to start doing it again. --Richardrj talkemail 13:24, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Quod erat demonstrandum. -- OtherDave (talk) 16:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sed nil disputandum that legal English (and Middle Dutch, for that matter, and I suspect quite a few other languages) does use repetition. A number of explanations seem to co-exist: definiteness, ritual phrasing, invariance. Bessel Dekker (talk) 22:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * There remain these three: definiteness, invariance, and ritual. But the likeliest of these is ritual.  (St. Paul, Epistle to the Corinthian Bar Association) -- OtherDave (talk) 23:28, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This rather thirteenish point of view, however, begs the question why ritual should be so important in legal language. Precedent would be another (and more or less synonymous) explanation. Bessel Dekker (talk) 00:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Pairing of Norman French with English. I've heard that explanation before, but a quick search on dictionary.com shows that they list all of null, void, cease and desist as coming from French. Could dictionary.com be wrong? --Kjoonlee 03:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Void and cease definitely come from French. Null and desist could come either from French or directly from Latin. At any rate, none of these 4 words is Germanic. —Angr 10:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've started an article at legal doublet. I asserted (unsourced) that the origin is due to the different-languages thing just to get the ball rolling, but my personal belief is that it's ritualized to indicate that you're talking about a specific well-defined legal term not subject to ad hoc interpretation.  If they didn't use "null and void" to describe that legal concept, then they would be obliged to say "the contract was void (and by 'void' I mean 'void' in the way defined in Toto v. Baggins, not in the usual English sense of the word whose nuances might be quibbled with)".  --Sean 13:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've put a query on the talk page about sources. Great little list, though.  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:55, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Whoever vs. whomever
Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn @ Origin of the theme contains the line:
 * To date, no other mention of the so-called "St. Anthony Chorale" has been found, leaving open the question of whether the Chorale is even attributable to whoever composed the Divertimento.

My first instinct was to change whoever to whomever, but an inner voice held me back. The whole phrase "whoever composed the Divertimento" is the object of "attributable to", which suggests objective case for whoever, = whomever. But can that word be considered independently of its phrase in order to determine what case it should be in? I suppose if it had been "attributable to he who composed the Divertimento", it would have to be "him". The whoever case seems somehow different, but I can't quite explain why. Any ideas? -- JackofOz (talk) 06:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Your inner voice is right. "Who(m)ever" takes the case assigned by the lower clause, not the higher one. "Whoever" is the subject of "composed", so it's in the nominative, regardless of the fact that it is also the object of "attributable to". —Angr 07:08, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * That makes a lot of sense, Angr. But why does the nominative have precedence over other cases?  Is this related to the "lower" and "higher" clauses you refer to?  What exactly do you mean by lower and higher?  I've thought of a similar example: "For a bit of fun, I've decided to marry/kill/have sex with whoever next walks through that door".  I agree that whoever sounds right, and whomever sounds wrong - in both examples; but my inner pedant will not be silenced.  My voices have a lot to answer for (which is why I'm taking Joan of Arc as my personal patron saint). .  --  JackofOz (talk) 09:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In cases like this I always try and replace the questionable word or phrase with something else and see if it makes sense. In your second sentence, you could replace "whoever" with "the person who" and it would clearly be correct ("whom next walks through that door" is obviously wrong).  As for why it's correct, I leave that stuff to the linguists.  --Richardrj talkemail 09:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally, I prefer whomsoever over whomever as it seems to fit more applications and has the wonderful ability to sound so much more posher and obsequious. Nanonic (talk) 09:04, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * See also this video from The Office (US) and the links below it, particularly this one which has an in depth analysis. the wub "?!"  11:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a lovely website and I've bookmarked it for future reference. Thanks, but it didn't seem to answer my precise question here.  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Jack, it's not that the nominative has precedence over other cases, it's that the lower clause has precedence over the higher one. If the lower clause calls for accusative, and the upper clause calls for the nominative, then "whomever" is used: "Whomever Jack marries will be a lucky man indeed". —Angr 18:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not being deliberately obtuse, but I still don't get what you mean by "lower clause" and "higher clause". Which is which in the example you just gave, and which is which in the original example?   --  JackofOz (talk) 21:42, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, sometimes I forget not to use linguistics technical terms in this venue. The "higher clause" is the main sentence ("Someone will be a lucky man indeed"/"The chorale is attributable to someone") while the lower clause is the sentence fragment controlled by "who(m)ever" ("Whomever Jack marries"/"Whoever composed the divertimento"). —Angr 22:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, that's clear now. Thanks.  In Jack-speak that would come out as: The case of who(m)ever in "Whomever Jack marries" is not governed by the rest of the sentence but solely by the internal construction of the clause in which it appears.  Hence it makes no difference whether the clause is the subject or the object of a sentence.  Or, indeed, any other part.  Eeeexcellent.  --  JackofOz (talk) 23:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Jeez, you can tell none you ignorami have studied Latin. Look up nominative, accusative and dative cases for the answer.
 * NB joke for Latin educated people only: BTW Did you hear of the Latin student, who, when asked by his female teacher to congugate, declined? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.200.98 (talk) 22:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "none you"? "ignorami"?  "congugate"?  --  JackofOz (talk) 23:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah 'none you' obviously means 'none of you'. This is well understood in the northern hemisphere (around here anyway). ;). Also ignorami is the proper (Latin) plural of ignoramus (but I'm sure you knew that). And to conjugate (conjugation of verbs)) is to recite the different cases of the verb: I am, you are, he is etc.--79.76.200.98 (talk) 01:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ignoramus is a Latin verb meaning "we do not know". It's already 1st person plural, so it can't be further pluralised.  It's been taken into English as a singular noun, and singular nouns can of course be pluralised.  But to make it ignorami, on the assumption that it had been a Latin singular noun - when it was in fact a Latin plural verb - betrays an ignorance of Latin.  It's as wrong as talking about 2 omnibi (or, in modern-speak, 2 bi).  I don't quibble with people using the word "ignorami", as long as they don't try to maintain that it comes from "the Latin noun ignoramus".  I know what conjugate means, but I was less sure of congugate. :)  --  JackofOz (talk) 22:32, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Why not be easy on ourselves, and use a simple substitution?
 * The Chorale is attributable to [X].
 * The Chorale is attributable to [whoever composed the Divertimento].
 * We do not know who X is. We do know, however, that X is identical to some person, and that person is [whoever composed the Divertimento].
 * Alternatively, try to read a pause after *whomever. If that word really teamed up with to, such a pause should be natural. It is not. In fact, to combines with whoever composed the Divertimento in its entirety. A slight pause after to would even be more natural.
 * Differently put again, to whoever composed the D is prepositional object. If *to whomever were the prepositional object, what could be the subject of composed? Ah well. Bessel Dekker (talk) 23:04, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * That's pretty much what I said above, everyone else has ignored my post though, maybe you'll have better luck. --Richardrj talkemail 23:54, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * No-one ignored you (or at least I didn't), we just didn't have anything to say in reply. Algebraist 23:57, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, after all my reply did (IMHO at least) conclusively nail the query, so I guess there wasn't much to say in response :) --Richardrj talkemail 00:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, Richard. I just tried to expand on your explanation a bit, but of course I agree with it. Bessel Dekker (talk) 00:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I didn't ignore it either, Richard (I just appeared to have done so). I considered it, but it still didn't quite explain what I wanted to know.  Angr finally came up with the goods (see above).  Thanks for your contribution.  If there's anyone else I failed to acknowledge, consider yourselves acknowledged now. --  JackofOz (talk) 00:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Pronouncing the name Alcide
How would you pronounce this name? It's in my family tree, and I'm just curious. It's Italian in origin, and I'm thinking Al-see'-day, but I'm not sure. Thanks.Somebody or his brother (talk) 15:28, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The Italian pronunciation would presumably be ahl-chee-day (in informal transcription)... AnonMoos (talk) 15:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The DOP agrees with AnonMoos (stress on the "chee"). --Cam (talk) 20:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've seen it as a French name as well, pronounced "al-SEE". Steewi (talk) 01:59, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Translation of some Japanese text
Quick question: what does this text mean? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.15.116.95 (talk) 17:17, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * 外来語/Gairaigo means "loan word" or "borrowed word". Oda Mari (talk) 18:38, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Poster Text
This text is from an old poster, or, more precisely, a reproduction of an old poster.

Loden dal Brun Schio (Veneto)

Figl'ali:
 * Milano
 * Roma
 * Napoli

Cataloghi -- campioni gratis

Scrivere: "Loden dal Brun -- Schio"

Based on the city names, I guessed this is in Italian. The Babelfish translation site gave a partial translation as follows:

loden from brun schio (the Veneto) figl' it tows Milan Rome Naples catalogues champions gratis to write

This is not enough for me to grasp the meaning. Will someone please assist? Wanderer57 (talk) 19:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Loden (qv) is a greenish wooly material used for peasant style coats and the like. The poster by Achille Beltrame seems to be a sort of advert for this, presumably giving the shops / cities of avalability in Italy.   Figl´ali ... would mean something like "branches in Milan, Rome and Naples", assuming that the main shop is in Venice.
 * A bit of a guess. Italy is the next country down South West, but I don´t speak the language since Latin went out of common use.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "Loden dal Brun"
 * In the city of Schio (Venitian province)
 * Branches in Milan, Rome, Naples
 * Catalogues and samples for free
 * Write to: "Loden dal Brun" in Schio
 * --Lgriot (talk) 00:13, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you both. Wanderer57 (talk) 02:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

French -- how bad is it to not use accents?
Ok, this is something about my company that's sort of bugged me for a while. We have a factory in Quebec, and when stuff ships from that factory, we use bilingual (i.e., French/English) shipping documents (Bills of Lading, packing slips, etc.). Invoices are also bilingual. However, the system-generated documents we use end up omitting all the accents. So, for exmaple, "sold to" becomes "vendu a" (sic). How big of a deal is that, and how dumb does it make us look? I've been tempted to say something, but the use of those documents far pre-dates my working for this company, and I figured if nobody before me (including the people who actually work in the Quebec plant) said anything, then maybe it's not that big of a deal? Dgcopter (talk) 19:24, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Where is the 'stuff' being shipped to? Wanderer57 (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, the powers that be (over)simplified things to the point such that anything that ships from that plant, regardless of destination, gets bilingual documents. Acutally, they went further than that -- anything that ships from any of our Canadian factories (there are several) gets bilingual documents.  Kind of overkill, I guess.  But to answer your question, some shipments are within Quebec, some are to other provinces.  Dgcopter (talk) 19:41, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Not overkill if that is what the law requires (which the Canadian federal government may require for shipping, I don't know for certain). Remember bilingualism is a national thing in Canada, not just a Quebec thing. Even here just across the border in the U.S., we get a lot of dual labeled products - but French/English labels, not the Spanish/English labels I remember from growing up deeper in the U.S. Rmhermen (talk) 23:56, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting question. I would say that it depends on the Quebecois. If they say it matters to them, then as long as the costs of changing the system aren't prohibitive, I would say it should be changed. However, "vendu a" is very understandable and could not be interpreted in any other way. Another question, if you do want to take this further, is how far to take it. For example, if the product being sold if feminine, then the correct way would be to append an e to "vendu" as such, "vendue à", but it seems pretty impractical to do this.PGScooter (talk) 21:12, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeeks ... the masculine/feminine thing would be a pain. I'm pretty sure nobody really cares, regardless.  Although, I was just looking at the bill of lading again, and I noticed something else kind of problematic.  In English, there's a section that describes the density of the item being shipped as being "more than x but less than y pounds per cubic foot".  This gets abbreviated on the form to "M/T x B/L/T y LBS. PCF.".  But they didn't translate all of the abbreviation, so the French version appears as "M/T x B/L/T y LIV. PCF."!  That seems worse than leaving out the accents...Dgcopter (talk) 21:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * For those who don't speak French: "livres" is the correct translation of "pounds", but the other three abbreviations are all wrong. If the same style of abbreviation was used (I've never actually seen it used in French, but I don't read this sort of document in French normally), it would be "P/Q x M/M/Q y LIV.PPC."  And that C for cubique could equally well stand for carré (square)!  But, good grief, why not use metric units and their standard symbols?  This is not the US.  (No, don't answer that.)  --Anon, 19:34 UTC, edited 23:16, August 29, 2008.


 * It's always amused me that a language where half the letters in any given word aren't pronounced at all should go to such lengths to ensure there is no confusion over the slightly different pronunciations of the letter "e". Koolbreez (talk) 21:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Haha, a very amusing point Koolbreez makes. As for accents, though it is no longer "officially" accepted, it could look better if you write in CAPITALS. That kinda gives you an excuse to not put accents.--El aprendelenguas (talk) 22:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Rather than using capitals, you could opt for 🇦🇹, as (combined with initial caps) they are a little less ostentatious. Of course, the accents can make for a difference in meaning: sur "sour", sûr "certain"; and, I think, congelé past participle, congèle 3rd present sigular. Bessel Dekker (talk) 23:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If you're looking for opinions, I think the lack of accent marks does make the company look dumb, or at least indifferent to its French-speaking clients. It's not like the cost of the ink is going to set them back much, and the translators could provide the accents from the start.
 * I suspect that those who set the documents up long ago didn't really care all that much; they were grudgingly complying with official-language requirements.
 * Here's one way to look at it: what's your reaction as a businessperson when you get ungrammatical or incorrect English in documents from suppliers? Years ago, I worked for Amtrak.  I helped evaluate bids from contractors.  One contractor -- American, native speaker of English -- sought $500,000 in business yet repeatedly spelled the company's name "Amtrack."  Fairly or not, we took this as a sign that he didn't care enough about the 500 grand to learn to spell our name the way we did.
 * He didn't get the contract.
 * Impossible n'est pas français.. — OtherDave (talk) 23:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Got his just dessert, that contracter did! Seriously though, people who would not dream of offering you a soiled visiting card will send you misspelt correspondence. Bessel Dekker (talk) 00:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And those pristine visiting cards may themselves contain spelling errors. Many take the view that it doesn't matter anymore as long as the communication is effective.  Other Dave's example puts the lie to that monstrous misconception.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:38, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Whenever I saw spelling mistakes (in either language) on business correspondence, I wondered what else that company did poorly or sloppily. It is never a positive sign. ៛ Bielle (talk) 00:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Remembering this thread, I was amused by the following. I just got back from my local supermarket where I bought, among other things, a Swanson frozen turkey pie. What it said on the cash register receipt was "SW PATE TURKEY"! Well, "turkey pie" in French is "pâte au dinde" -- so you see, writing French without accents is the sort of error committed by people who can't even keep it straight whether they're writing in French or English! :-) --Anonymous, 10:10 UTC, August 31, 2008.

Hmm. Submitting the above edit, I got an internal error from the Wikipedia database engine -- in the function ExternalStoreDB::store. Store? How thematic is that!? --Anon, 10:12 UTC.
 * What do you mean, pâte à la dinde or pâté à la dinde? I guess the latter…
 * The main problem for a native French speaker (reader?): a text without accent is difficult to read (although most of the time one can read it with the help of the context.) Can you read this: Le coup de de de de Gaulle? Add the accent and the sentence becomes readable: Le coup de dé de de Gaulle.
 * -- AldoSyrt (talk) 07:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, blame Swanson, or more precisely, blame Pinnacle Foods. :-) I knew the word pâté existed but wasn't sure if it meant pie or something related, so I checked the spelling on the box and it was pâte.  My dictionary tells me that pâté is correct for pie while pâte actually means paste or dough.  Oops!  --Anonymous, 08:04 UTC, September 2, 2008.

Slovar
Where can I find a free Russian—Russian or Russian—English dictionary? I've seen some some versions of wikitionary in Deutsch in .pdf format... Is there any Russian versions? Thanks in advance Mdob | Talk 22:32, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Besides the regular Russian Wiktionary & the Russian words in the English Wiktionary, our article on the Russian language links to some dictionaries in its external links section. Regards, Ev (talk) 01:37, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This was one I found quite useful. Steewi (talk) 02:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Not quite what I wanted... I was thinking of an off-line downloadable dictionary. But thanks anyway. Mdob | Talk 16:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Lingvo is an excellent free online dictionary; they also sell a downloadable version which is very popular among the Russians I know. Tesseran (talk) 20:49, 31 August 2008 (UTC)