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

= February 16 =

what capital letter differs most from its lowercase version?
What letter has a lowercase and capital letter that is so different someone who had never seen the roman letters would not think they had the same value? Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.117.125 (talk) 14:55, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, that's a matter of opinion of course, but I think a lot of them are counterintuitive:

A a D d G g R r
 * This would apply to both shapes of lower-case "a" and to both shapes of lower-case "g". —Angr If you've written a quality article... 15:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd say curly-tail g is even more different from upper case G than the open-tail one. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  19:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

depends on the font mr. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Boomgaylove (talk • contribs) 02:22, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I guess ß|Eszett (ß/SS) doesn't count :( Pallida  Mors  03:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd go with Q in the Cursive style. -- LarryMac  | Talk  14:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Latin
Hello! I have a question that might be answered depending on your opinion, I am not sure if there is a correct answer. Anyway, here is the question: From all the living Romance languages, which one do you think has preserved its Latin origin more? I, personally think Spanish has so much in common with Latin that it might qualify to be the closest one to Vulgar Latin, and by extension Classical Latin. Your opinions are appreciated. &Lambda;ua&int; Wi  se  (Operibus anteire) 16:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I've heard it claimed that Sardinian is the most conservative Romance language. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 16:51, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Your question touches, at least to a certain degree, matters of opinion. My view is that Spanish is grammatically very conservative of classical latin. On the phonological side, Italian is relatively more preservative of Mediaeval latin. But in this last regard, Angr's heard claim is also of interest.
 * Finally, French is arguably the least conservative of the latin origin. Pallida  Mors  18:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Romanian has still has case distinctions... AnonMoos (talk) 19:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The answers differ depending on the aspect you're looking at. Sardinian is the most conservative phonetically (i.e. how it's pronounced), based on their retention of /k/ before high vowels /i, e/ and final -u from Latin -us (most went to -o). Grammatically, Romanian is a good candidate, as are some northern Italian varieties. Semantically, some Romansch varieties have been said to have some very old meaning distinctions still in use. Steewi (talk) 00:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

"Prouder" or "more proud"
Which one is correct, "prouder" or "more proud"? 201.252.29.247 (talk) 17:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Prouder. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 17:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Either one, but "prouder" is more common. --Anon, 22:00 UTC, Feb. 16.


 * This is not a matter of "correctness". It is a matter of style, and the choice should be sensitive to context, interpreting context very broadly.
 * Here's a ringing iambic pentameter for you:
 * A better, prouder, man was never born!
 * Here's an equally apt use of more proud, though some will prefer prouder in it:
 * I am more proud of my achievements than of my talents.
 * Verse or prose, in each of these the cadence of the whole sentence, along with other considerations of sound, determines the choice.
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 00:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Not a matter of correctness? My grammar teacher taught us that you never use "more" for words of one syllable - they always take -er or -est.  "More" is used for words of more than one syllable.   Corvus cornix  talk  05:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * There might be some exceptions to the never rule. Does "apt" make "apter"?  --  JackofOz (talk) 05:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks fine to me. H YENASTE 05:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * And "funner"? (I believe that exception is due to fun originally having been a noun.) --Estrellador* (talk) 13:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Surely a 'funner' is one who funs? btw, the OED has a (17th cent) quote for 'apter'. Algebraist 14:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Right, wrong, and real don’t add –er, so the "never" rule definitely has some exceptions. Bad, good, far and some other adjectives change their form entirely (worse, better, farther/further), hence the "always" rule ("... they always take -er or -est") also has some exceptions.  These things could be said to be generally true, but not "always/never".  --  JackofOz (talk) 01:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup. All generalizations are false, including this one. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 07:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Or: there are no absolutes. Gwinva (talk) 07:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Except in Esperanto, apparently. I've never studied it, mainly because a language that has no exceptions to any rules is of little interest to me.  --  JackofOz (talk) 23:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Well then: -u is imperative, except in the words iu ĉiu kiu neniu tiu; adjectives adverbs end in -e, except those that don't ... —Tamfang (talk) 04:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll add that to my "List of Yes-Buts". Thanks, Tamfang.  --  JackofOz (talk) 23:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I forgot unu, du, plu. —Tamfang (talk) 23:47, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

The fighting Jondas
Does anyone know - why are the Slovakia national football team nicknamed "The fighting Jondas" (Bojovni Jondovci)? Nanonic (talk) 17:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Especially, what "Jondovci"/"Jonda(s)" does mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Slovakia_national_football_team)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.27.244.204 (talk) 21:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have not found the nickname Bojovni Jondovci on any Slovakian webpages. No article on the Slovakian Wikipédia has a name that starts with Jond. --Lambiam 08:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I am not familiar with the Slovak Futbol team but I was in Austria for the EUROS and there were loads of Slovak supporters there carrying on about their team and they were calling themselves the fighting jondas.
 * Hello! It is a huge monstrosity, it's vandalism! I am from Slovakia and watch soccer regularly, and this is stupidity! I am a Wikipedia editor Slovakia and I have over 11 000 edit, so I can believe. Look here - nothing. Many of taken over the media to Wikipedia, which is a huge loss - . Translate by translate.google.com --Marián 2 (talk) 21:00, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It comes from the large number of Slovak immigrants who took the surname Jonda. The slovak supporters were known as a rowdy bunch and the term Fighting Jondas refers to the fans as well as the actual team. http://www.englandfootballonline.com/Seas2000-10/2008-09/M0872Svk2009PreSvk.html

Germanic ge- prefix, Latin.
1. Where does the German ge- come from and what does it mean? Why are there two words for brain: "hirn" and "gehirn"? Why gehirn? Are the two any different?

2. Is Latin always SOV? Do I say "mors est principium" or "mors principium est"? -- nlitement [talk]  18:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * According to word order, sentence structure is flexible but SOV is most frequent outside poetry. I don't have an actual example of a non-SOV latin sentence. Algebraist 19:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Some say it's the same as Latin "com" and Sanskrit "sa". No, word order can be fairly free in Latin in many cases, whether for emphasis, rhetorical effect, in poetry, etc.  The use of "esse" as copulative is not necessarily the same as a true transitive verb in any case... AnonMoos (talk) 19:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I'm from Germany: Concerning 1.: Well, as in many other languages, german language sometimes have more terms describing only one thing, as it is with the words for brain, for example "hirn" and "gehirn", as you said. German prefix for example "ge-" often shows a past-form when used in verb-forms, but that has nothing to do with the substantive "gehirn" (but substantivated forms of past-verb-forms also could appear ("ich habe geschrieben" --> "Geschriebenes" ("I have written" --> "things, which have been written") ). To describe the difference in the words "hirn" and "gehirn" (as they are substantives, in german they are absolutely always written with a big letter in the beginning): "Gehirn" has more the connotation way of "mind" (for english "mind" in german doesn't exist a term), has more to do with the mental aspect, and is more often used in the normal language. (place of reason, mind:) http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Verstand --> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Verstand "Hirn" is, as it is shorter, more used in slang language, or, the opposite, it is used in anatomic ways, for example, biologist classificationers or surgeons in a hospital would refer to the explicit intelligent mass in the brain as "Hirn"; plus, if brain mass of an animal would be sold in a supermarket, for example of cattle, it would be described as "Rinder-Hirn" (as animals are not as often associated with possessing such a thing like reason/mind). To say it short: "Gehirn" has more to do with the aspect of active thinking, as centrale of intelligence and emotions, and "Hirn" would rather be used in an unemotional, cold context, sometimes in an abject manner, a verbal slander, for example, another word for idiot (so somebody with a very low IQ) in german is "Hirnie" (meaning someone, who only posseses a "Hirn" instead of a full developed "Gehirn"). Last to say, that, as both terms aren't totally synonym, they both refer to meanings of "brain", thus it can't be said, that, when "Hirn" is used, using "Gehirn" would be totally false; or, when saying "Gehirn", that using "Hirn" would be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.27.244.204 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * There is a very famous Latin sentence that is SVO: "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres". SOV is the very basic word order and supposedly would have sounded the most natural to a Roman. But for stylistic emphasis it could have any order, at least in writing - Caesar goes on to describe the three parts so it is stylistically appropriate for "three parts" to come directly before that. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * As others have said, SOV is the default word order for Latin. However, Latin as used after the fall of the Roman empire was much more varied; people whose native languages were SVO might be inclined to write with that word order in Latin. Strad (talk) 19:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Because of the case marking, Latin (especially in poetry) could be written/spoken in a variety of orders. There were, however, some orders which were considered to sound better than others, just like in English there are sentences that are correct, yet don't sound 'good'. SOV was considered a 'good' way to construct a sentence. Esse was often a strange case though, and had its own rules of good use. Steewi (talk) 00:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Very briefly, the start and end of the sentence are the places in Latin where the emphasis falls. The words or phrases which carry the most information or interest are put in these positions, "To be" is, as a copula, rarely a carrier of much information and so rarely occupies one of these privileged positions. SaundersW (talk) 10:43, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

information about Wikipedia
I am trying to use Wikipedia for a source for a research paper. What is the publishing city and company of Wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.48.182.27 (talk) 20:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * If you want to cite a Wikipedia article, just click the 'cite this page' link in the toolbox on the left-hand side of the article's page. See WP:CW for more information. Algebraist 21:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Better so, just cite Wikipedia's sources, don't cite Wikipedia, ESPECIALLY in a research paper. -- nlitement [talk]  23:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If you intend to cite this so-called "encyclopedia" in a research paper, you're a fool and will probably be graded accordingly. Seriously. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 00:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * You're really not supposed to use enycyclopedias for research papers. Strad (talk) 01:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

professors HATE wikipedia, and they will chastise you, probably in a ver condescending manner. cite wikipedia's sources, or follow links from articles to find sources. just because wikipedia is a good source doesn't mean its respected. and to actually answer your question, i believe it is Naples, Florida. wikipedia is not a company nor is it owned by one. It is run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. however, the particular article you are referring to may have last been written before that, when the project was the Wikipedia Non-Profit Organization or completely owned by Jimmy Whales. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Boomgaylove (talk • contribs) 02:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Let's not assume things - the OP could be writing a research paper on Wikipedia or some other internet-related subject for which it is an appropriate source. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced. All in all I think it was a reasonable assumption, despite WP:AGF and all. --Kjoonlee 19:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC)