Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 June 27

= June 27 =

a / an
Why is it "an umbrella" but "a user"? FT2 (Talk


 * Our article on a and an says this:
 * "'some words starting with vowels may have a preceding a because they are pronounced as if beginning with an initial consonant. 'Ewe' and 'user' have a preceding a because they are pronounced with an initial y consonant sound.'"
 * — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 02:21, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Such as an um... and a yewser. Y is the unwritten consontant Julia Rossi (talk) 06:09, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * For much the same reason we might say "an hour from now" rather than "a hour from now", despite h being a consonant. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:28, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * In other words, the choice of a or an is governed entirely by the pronunciation, not by the spelling. (Although there's a sort-of exception with some words starting with "h": some say "a hotel", but others prefer "an hotel", even if they aspirate the h.)  --  JackofOz (talk) 13:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've never heard "an hotel", but I say "an historic" (as in This is an historical phenomenon noticed first in Ancient Greece...) instead of "a historic". СПУТНИК CCC  P 22:35, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * "An hotel" is a little dated these days, but it still appears in old books and among old-timers. Some don't aspirate the h (sounds like "an otel"), but some do.  Probably mainly a British phenomenon.  --  JackofOz (talk) 03:32, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I find "an historic" an annoyance because people seem to use it in order to sound more formal or more educated or more standard, when in fact (at least in American English) it seems to me to be an archaic usage. Please, America:  You don't call it an 'otel and you didn't study world 'istory, so use the fricking AN!  Mitchell k dwyer (talk) 05:34, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm confused, Mitchell. You don't like "an historic", but you seem to be advocating "an hotel" and "an history".  Have I misinterpreted your post?  --  JackofOz (talk) 01:21, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

chanbara-go
I've occasionally heard that samurai cinema uses an artificial dialect. What's distinctive about it? (I don't understand enough Japanese to tell if the language in samurai movies is any different from that in modern settings.) Is it comparable to the rustic talk sometimes heard in Westerns? —Tamfang (talk) 04:00, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You may get better luck asking over at WikiProject Japan. They do use an older form of Japanese, similar to what you'd hear if comparing Shakespeare to modern English: mostly understandable, but still unusual to the ear. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 03:17, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Hebrew
In Hebrew, are books opened from the opposite of English language books (i.e. with the spine on the right-hand side) since the script is written right to left? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Certainly. The spine is on the right-hand side as you look at the cover, open the book to view the cover page, etc. -- Deborahjay (talk) 06:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The same is true for Arabic (I even have some Arabic textbooks that are mostly in English, aside from the examples and exercises and such, but it also opens right-to-left). Adam Bishop (talk) 06:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you both. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 05:00, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Arabic for "network"?
What would the Arabic term be for "network," as in a computer network or telecommunications network? -- And, most key of all, would anyone mind transliterating that word into English or IPA for me? Thank you. I've been searching around the Internet without any luck. --Brasswatchman (talk) 07:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Did you check the network article? :) It points you to ar:شبكة, "shabaka" in English transliteration, and /ʃæbəkə/ in IPA. "Shabaka" is the usual word for electricity/telecommunications/computers etc, although it can also mean any kind of net, like a fishing net or a spiderweb. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Great! Thank you. Missed that in network. --Brasswatchman (talk) 03:58, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

private
Isn't "private" kind of ambiguous in this case:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_Historical_Society? What does "private" exactly mean? I mean, "private" could mean that it is "only open to invitees" or possibly "does not accept public donations", or something else.68.148.164.166 (talk) 09:24, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * That organization describes itself as "a private non-profit organization" on its website, so whatever ambiguity there may be in the Wikipedia article's wording may be a result of how that organization describes itself. From their website, you'll find that the SCHS does invite the public to join and to make donations to them, so neither of your two interpretations is what the word "private" is intended to mean. That organization may have chosen to call itself "private" to emphasize that it is not connected with the government, despite having "Supreme Court" in its name. --71.162.249.44 (talk) 13:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Or it could mean it's an incorporated entity but not a public company. In other words, you can't buy shares in it; but you can still donate to it.  --  JackofOz (talk) 13:21, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Is there any such thing as a publicly-held non-profit organization, though? I think 71 is correct, that it means non-government.  -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, all non-profits are privately-held, especially if they are member organizations. There are non-profits that are owned by publicly-owned companies (like the private ABS-CBN Foundation being owned by the public ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation in the Philippines), but never publicly-owned non-profits, especially because non-profits cannot financially benefit anyone (and in a public or stock corporation, this is done by means of corporate dividends, which are required to be disbursed by law). --Sky Harbor (talk) 13:52, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilia#Cilium-related_disease
What does "heterotaxic" mean?68.148.164.166 (talk) 09:42, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * From the OED: 'heterotaxy: Aberrant or abnormal disposition of organs or parts.' Algebraist 09:56, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Lace-making
Does it have a figurative meaning -- other than making laces actually? In an article about Samuel Beckett, I read that "he lived a bohemian life, [but] she [who is a pianist] preferred lace-making." --Omidinist (talk) 15:32, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, it refers to making lace rather than shoelaces if that helps. I guess there's a bit of an upper-class air to it.  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 15:37, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I interpret it as "she preferred living the quiet life at home" (doing some good old homeworking activity such as lace-making, crocheting, or knitting). I couldn't find a specific reference for "lacemaking" meaning this, but I think it represents a domestic lifestyle. ---Sluzzelin  talk  15:41, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess this is a reference to Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil? To my ear, lace-making doesn't have an 'upper-class' air about it. On the whole, those who made lace - a repetitive and painstaking activity - were the women of the respectable working class. Ladies were more likely to read books, draw watercolours, play musical instruments, sing, ride, take lovers - the kinds of things Bohemians did. Xn4  19:52, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

anatomies VS anatomy
Is anatomies a proper term to use at any time when you're talking about more than one anatomy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.167.237.153 (talk) 23:35, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sure. You could compare the anatomies of chimps and humans, for instance.  Note that the US National Institutes of Health uses the term. &mdash; Lomn 04:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

No-one vs. no one
Why do the British, judging from the BBC, hyphenate "no-one" when they seem to shy away from hyphens in general? Why do Americans not hyphenate the word when they do it with everything else? Thanks. Imagine Reason (talk) 23:42, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, this is a bit of a generalisation. Americans are tending toward using hyphens less and less. My best guess would be "tradition". ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 03:20, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Noticing that that BBC hyphenates a specific word does not mean the spelling is used nationwide; that is just the BBC's style. British publishers who follow the Oxford series of dictionaries and style guides do not hyphenate no one. I don't. No hyphen would seem to be necessary.--Shantavira|feed me 06:56, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It's really two words, and a hyphen isn't necessary. But that's preferable to spelling it as "noone".  I guess some people figure that because it's equivalent to "nobody", which is only one word, it must also be spelled as one word, and hence a hyphen is required so that it doesn't come out as "noone".  But that's a false comparison.  --  JackofOz (talk) 01:14, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Jack, I think you're on the "wrong fork of the right track", not sure how else to say that. It's really two words, that's true.  But, so are any one and some one, and they've come to be one word over time; when some one tries the same trick with no one, they logically say, "Oops, noone doesn't look right, but since it's gotta be one word like the others, I better hyphenate it..."
 * I wonder why noöne never became popular, since it seems to meet the same requirements as coöperate vs. co-operate. --Danh, 63.231.163.123 (talk) 23:39, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Because it looks like "Noone" (the surname)? --71.162.249.44 (talk) 02:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * More probably because the diaresis or umlaut is not generally recognised as a feature of English spelling. They appear only when we have to quote foreign words.  In fact, English doesn't use any diacritics at all; cedillas, acutes, tildes etc are routinely (if not always) discarded when a foreign word becomes incorporated into English (cafe, premiere, El Nino, etc.), although the pronunciation is generally preserved in common words that were originally spelled with French diacritics (we still say "ka-fay" rather than "kayf").  On the other hand, a lot of people say "el neeno" rather than "el nee-nyo", but I guess they can be forgiven since we don't generally take much trouble to educate our young in what a Spanish tilde does to a consonant.  Given that approach, many people wouldn't know how "noöne" is supposed to be pronounced; in any event, it's an attempt at a solution for a problem that doesn't exist (it's supposed to be written as 2 separate words).  In words like co-operate, a hyphen does the job admirably.  (I'm sure there are exceptions to some of the above.  Our article still spells Nino with a tilde, but newspapers generally don't, and I predict a time when spelling it the original Spanish way will be regarded as an affectation, just as spelling cafe with an acute and premiere with a grave is so regarded nowadays.) --  JackofOz (talk) 07:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Role is another example. I've lost count of the number of times I've corrected articles that spelled it as "rôle".  --  JackofOz (talk) 01:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)