Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 December 16

= December 16 =

Horse meat
Is there an English word for horse meat that is prepared for human consumption? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Williamleslie33 (talk • contribs) 00:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Research in OED shows that horseflesh (horse-flesh, horse flesh) is far more common than horse meat. And the adjective chevaline, usually meaning "of or pertaining to horse" can also be a noun for horseflesh: "1868 A. S. Bicknell Hippophagy 10 Horseflesh or, as I propose henceforward to call it...Chevaline." And yes, hippophagy does mean "eating horseflesh", and it too is in OED.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 00:32, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I have to say that when I'm heading to the grocery store or the butcher shop, the OED is not the first reference I'd consult while making my list. Some U.S. - dwelling family members used to buy horsemeat (not horseflesh) for dog food; Belgian bars in Michigan featured horsemeat steaks.  And wherever people raise, ride, or race horses, you'll hear the non hippophagic usage, "a good judge of horseflesh."  Silly words like "chevaline" just annoy people -- a horse of a different choler, so to speak.  --- OtherDave (talk) 01:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * So they just annoy people do they, OtherDave? We wouldn't want to do that, now, would we? :)
 * The question, I remind you, was this: Is there an English word for horse meat that is prepared for human consumption? And that is exactly what I answered. There was nothing about everyday use, or anything else to do with register in the question. Yes, there are three that are recorded in the definitive twenty-volume standard authority on the English language, OED: horseflesh, horsemeat, and the very rare chevaline. By the way, OED records that horsemeat meant first of all (and it's not marked obsolete) "Food or provender for horses." Just so you know, OtherDave.*
 * * Knowing is a good thing.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 02:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The OED is no guide to current usage, especially in that part of the alphabet; some entries may be decades out of date. So "not marked obsolete" doesn't prove anything.  Personally, "horse meat" is the only expression I'd recognize as a correct answer the original question.  --Anonymous, 02:29 UTC, December 16, 2008.
 * Read with more attention, Anonymous; otherwise you waste your fellow editors' time. The question was not restricted to "current usage". Why presume that the anonymous question did not come from the author of an historical novel, or someone researching the history of dietary restrictions? We get all sorts of enquiries here, for all sorts of purposes. Some OED entries are, of course, out of date. But that is not particularly relevant to its records of old and recherché terms, which for all we know are exactly what the questioner wanted. I wish questioners would more often give a context, and a reason for asking. Till then, we answer the question as asked.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 02:50, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Speaking of reading with attention, you might note that my comment about the OED was specifically related to the previous poster's bit about "not marked obsolete", not to the original question in general. (But no offense was taken.)  --Anonymous, 04:40 UTC, December 16, 2008.
 * Speaking of reading with attention, you might note that I was that previous poster! But no offence is meant or taken.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 10:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Pardon me for butting in, but Anonymous might also like to note that Noetica's parenthetical comment about "not marked obsolete" was not an answer to the original question in any case, but was an aside in response to OtherDave's comment. --Richardrj talkemail 15:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * No, williamleslie, it is not always quite so childish. Sometimes we get answers that do address the question. Please don't blame yourself ;-)) Richard Avery (talk) 16:55, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Richard Avery, what does that contribute? Do you mean to suggest that the question was not answered – ten minutes after it was posted?
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 22:35, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Here's the horse-barn star for celerity, then: *
 * I wanted to clarify for the original poster that "horseflesh" does not always mean "meat from horses, for consumption by people."  --- OtherDave (talk) 03:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well done, OtherDave. Here's the barnstar for a perfectly proper and useful supplement to a swift and accurate answer: «№2».
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 04:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * From the Depression era until some time in the 1980s, I believe Seattle's Pike Place Market had a shop called "Horse Meat Market". I'm not absolutely sure whether it was "Horse Meat" or "Horsemeat". -- Jmabel | Talk 22:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * From the Depression era until some time in the 1980s, I believe Seattle's Pike Place Market had a shop called "Horse Meat Market". I'm not absolutely sure whether it was "Horse Meat" or "Horsemeat". -- Jmabel | Talk 22:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

No, Williamleslie33, there is no specfic and widely understood word. It is a matter of interest that most of the other animals that the Anglosphere kept for food had at least two terms, one for the live beast and one for its flesh, considered as a culinary ingredient. Hence cow/beef, calf/veal, deer/venison, pig/pork, sheep/mutton. Horse does not have this handy built-in barometer of the historical climate (Saxon swineherd/Norman chef), as noted at the relevant section of the horse meat article (on which I worked, caveat lector). The article also claims, unsourced, that the meat has been marketed euphemistically as "cheval meat", cheval being the French word for "horse". By the way, don't be distracted in your research by results for events such as the Horse Meat Disco, which do not, I am reliably informed, sell horse meat, neither as Austrian leberkäse nor as Belgian steak tartare. BrainyBabe (talk) 02:09, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

French question
I'm reading this PDF, which is linked to at Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing, and on p.2, it says that the glyph for elieyikw meaning ‘ils marchent’ is "en forme de l'empreinte de raquette." I understand ‘in the shape of the print of ______’, but what does raquette mean in French? Babelfish is of no use. Thanks! —anon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.19.21.120 (talk) 02:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "Snowshoe" is the sense of the word that seems to be operative here. Deor (talk) 02:49, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Given that "raquette" likely means tennis racket, this seems to be an exact description of a typical snowshoe. --Jayron32. talk . contribs  04:27, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * French Canadians can suffer from mal de raquette, otherwise snowshoe sickness. Xn4  ( talk ) 04:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This reminds me of grade 8 when we learned how to talk about sports and household chores, which always seem to start with "faire de" - "faire de la raquette" is "to go snowshoeing." Adam Bishop (talk) 16:21, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you so much. Another question about the same document: I have attempted to translate the following passage. Could anyone please check my translation and tell me whether it is accurate or how it could be improved? (I have preserved the quaint capitalization and punctuation.)

''Nôtre Seigneur m'en inspira la metode la seconde année de ma Mission, où étant fort embarrassé de quelle maniere j'enseignerois les Sauvages à prier Dieu, je m'apperçûs que quelques enfans faisoient des marques avec du charbon sur de l'écorce de bouleau, & les comptoient avec leur doigt fort éxactement, à chaque mot de Prieres qu'ils prononçoient : cela me fit croire qu'en leur donnant quelque formulaire qui soulageât leur memoire par certains caracteres, je pourrois beaucoup plus avancer, que de les enseigner en les faisant repeter plusieurs fois ce que je leur disois.

Our Lord inspired the method in me in the second year of my Mission, when, being totally stuck as to how I would teach the Savages to pray to God, I realized that some children were making marks with coal on birchbark, & were very exactly pointing out with their finger every word of the Prayers that they pronounced: this made me think that by giving them a certain [I don't know how to translate formulaire] that would relieve their memory by means of certain characters, I would be able to make much more progress, than by teaching them by making them repeat many times what I said to them.

Thanks again! —anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.19.21.120 (talk) 16:58, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * forumlaire is most likely formulary. I mostly know that word from the health insurance business, meaning a list of approved drugs for certain plans, however the article I linked seems a much more apt application of the word.  You have translated the last sentence literally correctly, but it might be easier to read if the last phrase was something like  "rather than teaching them by rote memorization".  --LarryMac  | Talk  18:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Fomulaire can also mean a standardized form (formulaire de télégraph = a form for writing a telegram), and I think in this example that's the general sense -- some sort of (physical) model, pattern, or cheat sheet. Here is my freeform take at the translation; I'm going more for the sense than word for word.
 * In the second year of my mission, when I'd been completely unable to determine how to teach the savages to pray, the Lord showed me the way. I had noticed that some children used burnt wood to make marks on birchbark.  They also carefully counted with their fingers each word of the prayers they recited.
 * This led me to think of giving them a form to aid their memory by means of certain characters. I could then make much more progress than trying to teach by making them repeat over and over what I said to them.
 * I use "burnt wood" for charbon because I suspect (without doing research) that the kids weren't writing with coal from a mine, but rather the leftover bits of wood from a fire. But I've been wrong before.  --- OtherDave (talk) 03:21, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Suggest "charcoal" as it is burnt wood. Like the "voice" keeping the sense of the times it was written. Julia Rossi (talk) 03:33, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I thought about charcoal, too, though my mind was set on the bagged stuff and the fact that it's more or less baked -- but your comment led me to see in the charcoal article that the first use of "coal" in English was for charcoal. --- OtherDave (talk) 12:24, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Partially burned wood, charcoal is. Probably good to point this out for younger persons, who might be puzzled that charcoal gets burned as a fuel. French distinguishes charcoal as charbon de bois: "obtenu par la combustion lente et incomplète du bois" (Petit Robert). Charcoal as used in drawing is fusain. The other sort of coal then gets specified as charbon de terre, or charbon minérale. Coke is French is coke (m); in English coke used to mean charcoal (LME, says SOED); but now it means only "Coal deprived by dry distillation of its volatile constituents; the solid substance left after heating petrol etc." (SOED).
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 22:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * My suggestions for the translation above:
 * charbon > charred wood (char: "Burn to charcoal; scorch, blacken with fire." SOED)
 * quelque formulaire > some sort of crib sheet ("a written or graphic aid (as a sheet of notes) that can be referred to for help in understanding or remembering something complex." MW Collegiate, entry for "cheat sheet", linked to from "crib sheet"; also in OED; cf. "aide-mémoire")
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 22:35, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys. 8-) —anon

Russian (Cyrillic) surname suffix in English transliteration
I don't have the Cyrillic source, but is there a general rule for contemporary English-language transliteration of the surname suffix "...skaia" vs. "...skaya"? -- Thanks, Deborahjay (talk) 09:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It depends which romanization of Russian you're using, but I think -skaya, as per the BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian is more common in English-language contexts. The Library of Congress uses the ALA-LC romanization for Russian, though, and there it would be -skaı͡a, which could be simplified as -skaia. —Angr 09:27, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

German Grammar
"Erinnert sei hier nur an die Polemiken zwischen Schelling und Fichte, Jacobi, Hegel bereits um die Jahrhundertwende." (Quoted from Manfred Bubr's foreword in Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie)

I'm confused by this sentence structure. I think "sei" here signifies the use of imperative ; but then I don't understand why "erinnern" in partizip II? What is the translation of it? "Be reminded only of the polemics between..."??
 * Yeah, something like that. An idiomatic translation would be "One should only remember the polemics..." or even "Let us just remember the polemics..."; most literally it would be "Let it be reminded of the polemics..." but that's atrocious English. Sei isn't an imperative in this case, it's a 3rd person singular subjunctive being used impersonally. —Angr 09:53, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to pick it apart a bit further, part of your confusion might come from the combination of subjunctive ("Konjunktiv I") and passive voice and impersonal object ("es"). I think this type of Konjunktiv I can also be called "Jussiv", because it summons someone to do something. For an impersonal example using the active voice, there is the famous "Man nehme ..." (found in recipes, "man nehme sechs Eier" for example, literally: "Let one take six eggs") or, staying with "erinnern", you could say "Man erinnere sich ..." ("Let one remember"), but your passive-voice example sounds a bit less pushy and is used more often in scholarly texts, especially in footnotes (in my experience). ---Sluzzelin talk  15:07, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In Latin grammar, the term hortative applies to the 1st person, imperative to the 2nd and jussive ist used with the third person. WP states that both cohortative and jussive moods are not used in English.  I can´t add to the translations given above.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:02, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * This is academese. I believe the reason why it's partizip II is that it is modeled after Latin (as in "benedictus sit"). &mdash; Sebastian 10:01, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Surname pronunciation
How do you pronounce the surname Mamouney and what country does it come from? --124.254.77.148 (talk) 13:52, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It can be Arabic, Persian, or Turkish. It is pronounced in three distinct syllables: ma+mu+ni (ma like in mat; mu like you; ni like knee). After the first syllable, you have a strong glottal stop. --Omidinist (talk) 17:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Russian for lazy
Can anyone tell me the Russian for 'lazy'

Or point me to an on-line translator which doesn't give me the answer in cyrillic!

Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliankaufman (talk • contribs) 19:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary gives ленивый as the (masculine, nominative) Russian for lazy. Algebraist 19:04, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Since the OP asked for an answer not in Cyrillic, it may be helpful to mention that ленивый can be transliterated lenivyy. —Angr 19:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Algebraist probably thought of mentioning that but was just a tad lazy. :)  JackofOz (talk) 22:23, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Perfect! Thank you both —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliankaufman (talk • contribs) 19:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The accent is on the second of the three syllables. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yemen Ellerinde Veysel Karani (English)
A friend of mine asked me who Yemen Ellerinde was because she had receive a powerpoint slide show with a song she had enjoyed ... and it read at the end "music: Yemen Ellerinde".

When I looked it up on the net I found out that Yemen Ellerinde was actually the name of the song (not the singer). However, I do not know the origins of this song. I looked it up and there is little information about this in English. I found what appear to be the lyrics for the folk song. When I typed Veysel Karani... this is what I found: http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veysel_Karani (not in English) http://tr.wikisource.org/wiki/Yemen_Ellerinde_Veysel_Karani Also, there are various versions in YouTube.

I don't know what language this is (if it happens to be Turk why do they say "Yemen"?). I would like information about the song (in English, please). I would like to know about the origins (if it's Turkish or Arabic, etc) I would like to know if it's just a folk song or if it has some religious meaning. And I would very much enjoy a translation of it. Please help me out. I just know it is from the Middle East, but that's it. Help! Thank you. Allav82 (talk) 20:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * My Turkish does not exceed tourist point, gesture and utter level. If you click the English link on the sidebar of the Turkish Wikipedia page you linked you get this: Uwais al-Qarni. So he came from Yemen. The second are the lyrics of the song about him.  If no one here can help you this site  might help. (Don't know about registration/fees there.) 76.97.245.5 (talk) 23:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Ellerinde usually means "in hand", but it might mean something else here. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 23:20, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * More specifically, 'in his (or its) hands'. I think the 'it' here would be Yemen. --ColinFine (talk) 00:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Here’s an English translation. Hope it helps.--K.C. Tang (talk) 04:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all for your imput. Now I understand better. I appreciate it guys. Still... what language is it then? Arabic? Turkish? the web page suggested before is about "turkish-lyrics-translation"; however, is Turkish spoken in Yemen? It's my understanding that it isn't. Could you just clarify this, please. Allav82 (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The song is a turkish hymn. I'm not exactly sure of the meaning but it does have to do with religion. If its translates word for word the hymn loses its meaning.d