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

= January 29 =

"La Mano Desasida"
Here's a poem by Martín Adán:

"La Mano Desasida"

¡Y tú Machu Picchu, soledad intacta Pero siempre pisoteada de turistas, Tú eres lo que eres lo que es el feto en la mujer, Todo lo que es antes de la muerte y la vida, Todo lo que es antes del numen y la cátedra, Todo lo que es antes de la verdad y la mentira, Todo lo que soy, Con la mano a cualquier cosa asida!

I have little Spanish: I'm using online translators and a literal reading given to me by a friend who's a native Spanish speaker. With all that help, I can't make sense of the title: Desasida? Is there a better translation, in the context, than "disengaged"? Thanks for your assistance. --Halcatalyst (talk) 00:19, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It means "the unclutched hand" or perhaps "the hand letting go". Desasir is a somewhat uncommon irregular verb. Lantzytalk 00:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps 'released', although I like 'unclutched'. It has the same feel as 'desasida', like it's a word revived solely for the occasion. 130.56.65.25 (talk) 00:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It's a slightly archaic verb, so the target verb ought to be a bit brutal and primordial. Either 'clutch' or 'cling'. Here's a not-particularly-literal translation, just for fun:
 * And you Machu Picchu, solitude intact
 * But always treaded on by tourists,
 * You are what you are, a fetus in the womb,
 * All that comes before living and dying,
 * All that comes before the numen and the bishop's throne,
 * All that comes before lying and the truth,
 * All that I am,
 * With one hand clinging to whatever it can! Lantzytalk 01:26, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Here's my final version... I've borrowed... and I took a few liberties. --Halcatalyst (talk) 01:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

"The Unclutched Hand" Martín Adán

And you, Machu Picchu, your solitude intact, But always trampled by tourists, You are what you are, a fetus in a woman, All that comes before death and life, All that comes between spirit and church, All that which is above truth and falsehood, All that I am, With one hand clinging to whatever it can!
 * Not shabby. I approve of the use of 'spirit' for 'numen'. Lantzytalk 02:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * And with that nihil obstat... :) --Halcatalyst (talk) 02:29, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Hold the press!
 * Hmmm... sufficient. But unclutched is unlovely in meaning and sound, and not redeemed by greater fidelity to the Spanish. A better title, I think: The hand unheld. And church is not really good for cátedra, which is indeed the throne of authority, not cathedral. It is, by extension, dogma as opposed to the numinous, numen literally meaning a local god, or generally a divinity. Therefore: All between dogmatic and divine. You need to preserve more by way of metrical regularity, too, to match the original.
 * The Hand Unheld
 * Martín Adán
 * Machu Picchu – solitude intact,
 * Though forever trodden on by tourists,
 * You're what you are: a fetus in a woman,
 * All that is, before both death and life,
 * All between dogmatic and divine,
 * All that lies above both truth and falsehood,
 * All I am, as well:
 * My hand is holding on to what it can!
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 02:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course "unclutched" is ugly. It suggests crags, dead rocks, and doggedness. Lantzytalk 02:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course, but there's unloveliness and unloveliness. The holding of a hand is a beautiful thing, and its negation is a matter of soft-felt regret. I think I would want my hand unclutched and unclutching, but not unheld or unholily unholding.
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 03:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps. I agree that clutch is inappropriate in this particular instance. But 'hold' is generic, squishily imprecise, and worst of all quotidian, whereas 'desasir' is somewhat rare, and elicits a certain response because of its rarity. I would suggest 'clasp' as a compromise. Lantzytalk 02:34, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It is easy to colour an expression of opinion rhetorically with qualifiers like squishily. In any case, sometimes imprecision is our friend, in poetry. How is La Mano Desasida precise, to begin with? And do you really think that The Hand Unheld is quotidian, even if hold is an everyday verb? Look at its "poetic" credentials: well-balanced alliteration, brevity, suggestive ambiguity, iambic rhythm, easy to say, fittingly Anglo-Saxon in its simplicity, with reversal of standard everyday word order for a non-everyday purpose.
 * In the end, there is no accounting for preferences in these matters, of course. And we would both have to look at the whole piece that bears the name La Mano Desasida, with all its drafts, to get some context, would we not? Not just this isolated crag.
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 03:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Awwwww, I LIKE "numen"! QuorumAngelorum (talk) 06:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 03:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Awwwww, I LIKE "numen"! QuorumAngelorum (talk) 06:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Lithuanian
english-lithuanian dictionary —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.35.228.35 (talk) 08:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you looking for a free online English-Lithuanian dictionary, do you want to know which is the best available hardcopy English-Lithuanian dictionary, do you need a translation of a word or a phrase, or what is your question? Here is what google delivers for english+lithuanian+dictionary. (And thank you, Noetica, for your heroic efforts to specify generic headings!) ---Sluzzelin  talk  10:12, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Source of a quote
I recently ran across the phrase "It is to laugh", and it seems like I've heard it before. Where's it come from? Black Carrot (talk) 09:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't know where you've heard it before, and it seems to get used rather frequently. All I can offer is that, to my non-English ears, it sounds like a Germanism, or a literal translation of "es ist zum Lachen" which I (the non-native speaker) would render as "it is laughable" or "it is a laughing matter" in English. Following my own lead, I found this discussion, which mentions Bugs Bunny and Yiddish as well. ---Sluzzelin  talk  10:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It is not entirely knew: . Perhaps it was popularized by Robin Hood Daffy. --Lambiam 10:32, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it kind of has a reputation as a nerdy phrase in English... AnonMoos (talk) 12:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The OED has no entry for the expression under "laugh" despite a draft entry update as late as May 2003. It is a direct translation of the French expression "c'est à rire". I think Lambiam is right about Daffy—maybe he'd been hanging out with that skunk. --Milkbreath (talk) 16:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I do wonder how "it is to laugh" has come to be a sneering put-down.  Corvus cornix  talk  18:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It could be a direct translation from all sorts of languages. As mentioned above from German and French, but also from Yiddish (es iz tsum lachen.), Italian (é da ridere) and so forth. I'm still curious as to when, where and how it slipped into the Anglosphere. ---Sluzzelin talk  22:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There was a thread on the newsgroup alt.usage.english about this in 1998 in which they went round and round and got nowhere. It was pointed out, however, that c'est a rire is not France French, that es iz tsum lachen means something different, and that there is a citation from 1897. We can only guess where Daffy got it now that Chuck Jones is gone. My guess is that it's ultimately from (perceived) French as so many other little mock-elegant expressions are, like "moi?" and "apres vous". --Milkbreath (talk) 01:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, ok. Tooshay and maircee, Milkbreath. ---Sluzzelin talk  01:59, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I have never heard the phrase before - if I did hear it, I would assume that the speaker was German. DuncanHill (talk) 02:02, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Capitalisation, Manual of Style
Many places in the United States, such as Lumberton, Mississippi, are located in multiple counties. My typical practise with such articles is to have "___ and ___ Counties in the U.S. state of ___". Someone has questioned this idea, saying that it's more standard not to capitalise "counties" in this phrase; I cannot find anything on this question, either way, in the Manual of Style. Any help? Nyttend (talk) 16:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I would write:
 * Lumberton is a city in Lamar County and Pearl River County in the U.S. state of Mississippi.
 * If you were to use your phrasing, I would agree with your capitalisation. But then I'm British, and we like capital letters... Sam Korn (smoddy) 16:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, The Chicago Manual of Style and Words into Type (two widely used U.S. style manuals) both recommend lowercase for a plural generic noun following two proper nouns—"the Mississippi and Missouri rivers," "the Chrysler and Empire State buildings," etc.—even though the same nouns are capped when used as part of the name of a single entity (as in "the Mississippi River"). Deor (talk) 17:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * And yet there are some of us who say that that is just plain wrong. In order to get a bit of data on actual usage, I did a Google search on the phrase "the mississippi and missouri rivers" (the search is case-insensitive, of course), asking for 100 hits "in the text of the page".  I then scanned the result synopses.  They were almost equally divided, so clearly both styles should be accepted as correct.  (A small majority favored "Rivers" over "rivers", 51-46 if I didn't miscount, but that doesn't mean anything with such a rough sampling method.)  I think the same result can be presumed to apply to counties.  If I saw the wording Sam suggests when editing an article, I would change it to "Lamar and Pearl River Counties" and consider this an obvious improvement. --Anonymous, 23:43 UTC, January 29, 2008.
 * Anonymous is right. Let's ignore the style guides and authoritative references and follow our individual hunches, no matter that one person's hunch will be inconsistent with another's. Marco polo (talk) 00:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It's very simple; style guides that disagree with me contain errors and therefore are not authoritative. :-) But seriously, look at the data I presented.  Both styles are commonly used and therefore should be acceptable unless the relevant style guide says otherwise. --Anon, 01:58 UTC, January 30.

Associated Press style says Lamar and Pearl River counties. Perhaps that's because capitalizing "Counties" may give the impression that "Lamar and Pearl River Counties" is itself a geographic name. (Like Prescott and Russell United Counties.) -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * My view is that since the words "counties" and "rivers" are not part of either proper name, it is wrong to capitalize them. And if the name of the county is "Lamar County", that is what should be written, not "Lamar and". Googling this sort of thing, though interesting, is a very unreliable way of establishing correctness.--Shantavira|feed me 09:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * A Google search is not a good way to settle matters of style for oh so many reasons. Style within a publication must be consistent and is therefore defined somewhere, except in Wikipedia where it's going to take a few hundred more years to flesh out the Manual of Style. Questions such as this one have been hashed out already in the real world, and it is generally agreed that you go with lower-case here. You have to ask yourself what the plural of the proper noun means, for one thing. The mechanics of style are not a matter of opinion but of prescription for consistency. Go with lower-case; those who care will approve, and those who don't care won't notice either way. --Milkbreath (talk) 12:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * First, if it was generally agreed, the Google search data would confirm it. Second, "those who care will approve" is wrong, because I care and I still say lower case is wrong.  Get it into the Manual of Style and I'll shut up.  Actually, I'll shut up now in this thread in any case, because I have nothing to add.  But just don't tell me "those who care will approve". --Anon, 16:32 UTC, Jan. 30, 2008.


 * Sorry, you're right. "Those who care and have a clue", then. How can Google confirm anything? Just one way it it can fail is to have most of its hits all be from the same ill-edited text. And I'd be happy to join you on whatever page one uses to propose new entries for the MoS. Let me know. --Milkbreath (talk) 16:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I said I'd shut up, but then you asked a question. Google searches can confirm that expressions are frequently used by finding many examples of them, in comparison to how many examples they find of competing expressions.  And now I'll shut up regardless.  --Anon, 00:01, January 31.


 * True, Google searches can confirm frequency of use. They'll confirm spellings like "alot" (a lot), "im" (I'm), "reknown" (renown), "your" (where you're is required), "there" (where either their or they're is required), interchanging "effect" and "affect", interchanging "its" and "it's" ... you get the picture.  These usages are not correct, no matter what anyone says (no offence to descriptivists).  So Google doesn't necessarily help in matters like this.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Sigh. You are ignoring the part about comparing results. Let's just take the simplest of your examples, one where there are no similar words or capitalization or punctuation issues to complicate it. Renown, 4,500,000+ hits.  Reknown, 500,000+ hits and a red "Did you mean: renown".   This shows that the "incorrect" usage is significantly rarer (although, frankly, not by as much as I would have expected; perhaps it is starting to become acceptable).  It is quite true that there are various reasons why evidence based on Google search results may be misleading, but if the tests are carefully performed, they are usually meaningful.  May I now shut up? --Anon, 04:45 UTC, January 31.

And as if that wasn't enough, I find that I have something further to say on the original question as well. Say you wanted to write to someone and ask them to meet you on Church Street at the place where it crosses State Street. In some parts of the world you might very well ust call that the intersection of "Church and State", and you might abbreviate Street, but suppose you didn't. Would you then write "Church Street and State Street", "Church and State streets", or "Church and State Streets"? I know I'd use the third one every time: wouldn't you? And if so, why then is it logical for rivers or counties to work differently? --Anonymous, 04:54 UTC, January 31, 2008.


 * Nope, your second example ("Church and State streets") would be correct according to most style manuals, regardless of your instincts. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 07:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Don't be silly, Church and State are not allowed to intersect! Adam Bishop (talk) 07:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Tell that to the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. 80.254.147.52 (talk) 13:59, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

First, I didn't ask what the style manuals say, I asked what "you" would write. My question was about people's instincts as educated speakers of English. I consider "Church and State Streets" to be an everyday expression that people ought to know how to spell.

Second, up till now I've assumed that people know what they're talking about when they cite the style manuals. But on this particular point, I decided to check the office copy of the Chicago Manual of Style. It's the 14th edition, dated 1993. And it agrees with me: "Church and State Streets" is correct. That's in section 7.47, which covers "such terms as avenue, boulevard, bridge, building, church, fountain, hotel, park, room, square, street, or theater ... when part of an official or formal name". They give the example "Carnegie and Euclid Avenues".

Further, sections 7.42–7.43 say that the same rule applies for topographical terms "such as lake, mountain, river, or valley ... when used as part of the name." One of the examples is "Hudson and Mississippi Rivers". I further note that the section says that this is "now" the rule, and "formerly such plural terms were capitalized only when preceding the proper names". In other words, in an earlier edition they did recommend lower-casing "rivers" there, but as of this edition they agree that that was a bad choice. The current edition is the 15th (from 2003): can someone specifically check this edition and see whether they've really changed back?

In the 14th edition, the section that covers counties and other political units is 7.40. It gives pretty much the same rule as the other sections, i.e. words such as "county" are capitalized only when they are considered part of the proper name; but the actual case in question, where two political units of the same type are mentioned jointly, is not addressed. There is no recommendation to write either "Lamar and Pearl River Counties" or "Lamar and Pearl River counties" or to avoid the form. Has this changed in the 15th edition?

If people are going to go by what the style guides say, let's be sure they correctly cite what they do say. --Anonymous, edited 23:43 UTC, January 31, 2008.


 * I don't have the 14th, but I do have the 15th. All relevant examples show only the lower-case form, but it says "usually lowercased" in the accompanying text (I hate it when they do that. I'm not looking in the style guide for interesting usage statistics, I want it to say which way to do it.). This isn't a discussion forum, so I didn't and don't want to debate the relative merits of the two methods. The OP asked which way it should be, and I gave the best answer I could to that question. We can discuss this on the MoS talk page, if you like. --Milkbreath (talk) 00:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The Chicago Manual people made several changes in the 14th edition that were received so badly by the book's users that they were rescinded in the 15th edition. This was one of them. Every edition except the 14th recommends lowercase in this situation. Deor (talk) 01:27, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, count me surprised and, finally, silent. Thanks for checking. --Anon, 07:21 UTC, February 1.