Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 June 20

= June 20 =

Chinese corpora
The Chinese government (not the Hong Kong SAR government) included in the political provisions for a separate written standard for the lingua franca that was and still is spoken in Hong Kong SAR. I know probably the greatest standardized source of Cantonese characters are in the scripts of Cantonese operatists. But most importantly, compared to some other places that are more rural than Hong Kong, the Cantonese written standard first started off in Cantonese opera; as playwrights wrote scripts (these are the pages from which actors read, [dialogue [or discourse]]) for their actors and actresses, they wanted to incorporate the vernacular so they used characters not found in Classical Chinese {Cantonese has characters that are not found in 中文}. Are there any other corpora for any dialects?68.148.164.166 (talk) 09:42, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Try searching online using some combinations of "語料庫", "corpus", and the Chinese/English names of the dialect for the query terms. --71.162.249.253 (talk) 11:49, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

UN languages
The UN offers a radio broadcasting in its 6 official languages and additionally, it also offers Portuguese and Kiswahili. Although it may seem evident why these both languages are important, I wonder if they have a special status for the UN. GoingOnTracks (talk) 11:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Portuguese and Kiswahili are important African languages, supposedly covering eastern, western and southern Africa. The six official languages should do a good job of covering the rest of the world in terms of UN Radio coverage.  However, I doubt that these languages would receive any special treatment outside UN Radio. --Sky Harbor (talk) 13:51, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Portuguese is also spoken by the 186 million people of Brazil. My hunch would be that at least one of the 6 official UN languages can be understood by most people with a secondary education around the world.  However, this is probably not true for Brazil, which is a large country like the United States where most people never have a need for a second language.  So the broadcasters added Portuguese for this reason and to reach African countries where the language of education is Portuguese.  I suspect that Kiswahili was added more for political reasons so as to have a language indigenous to Africa, since people in East Africa with a secondary education are likely to understand English.  Marco polo (talk) 19:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think a lot of educated Brazilians can understand Spanish, though. —Angr 20:44, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That's right. Many Brazilians can understand Spanish, especially those in urban areas and in areas close to the border with Spanish-speaking countries.  As Spanish is the virtual lingua franca of South America, it would be very important for Brazilians to learn it.  However, this is not the case for Africa, where there are multiple common languages (West and Central Africa have French, North Africa has Arabic, East and Southern Africa have English and East Africa has Kiswahili). --Sky Harbor (talk) 23:03, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

male sonantes
Is there an English one-word equivalent for the above Latin expression? --Omidinist (talk) 12:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There is cacophony/cacophonous. ---Sluzzelin talk  12:17, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Din. Julia Rossi (talk) 12:42, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Dissonant? Adam Bishop (talk) 13:54, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * English and Latin are different languages, flourishing in different ages of the world. You shouldn't expect to find one-word equivalents for anything, beyond the simplest things like numbers and body parts. Strawless (talk) 23:38, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Helpful answers. Thanks, everyone. --Omidinist (talk) 01:43, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No, wait – this leaves me (while not the OP) wondering: does the Latin male sonantes connote "cacophony," "dissonance," and/or "din"? Leaving aside the requirement for a one-word equivalent (since the Latin is two words) and technical music terminology, these three have distinct, if related, meanings in mainstream English-language usage. I've asked OP Omidinist to provide context, as the term is possibly a figurative rather than literally auditory usage. -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Deborah. In the context, it figuratively -- as you say -- means: discordant, incongruous. I appreciate your concern. --Omidinist (talk) 12:13, 21 June 2008 (UTC)