Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 June 3

= June 3 =

Orwell
The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find—this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify—that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

Does anyone here have "sufficient knowledge to verify" this?--Goon Noot (talk) 06:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear, you're asking whether anyone here can verify that German, Russian, and Italian deteriorated between 1930 and 1946 as a result of dictatorship? Personally, I have no idea. I think 15 years is a pretty short period of time to analyze from a historical linguistics perspective... and "deterioration" can be awfully subjective.
 * On the other hand, maybe you're asking about whether dictatorship has a stifling influence on language growth in general. That, I think, is a fascinating question, but I don't know the answer to that either. I wonder if there have been any studies on Korea, for instance, and the changes between the dialects spoken in North and South Korea over the last 60 years. Indeterminate (talk) 07:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * No one would have sufficient knowledge to verify this because it is not true: languages simply do not "suffer" from politics or individuals, they slowly evolve on their own path, as and when a large number of its speakers feel it is appropriate to change little aspects of their language. The idea that a language "suffers" or "impoverishes" is ludicrous, it evolves, that's it. Saying that the result of the evolution is an impoverishement or an enrichement is not objective. My view is that people claiming to have sufficient knowledge to prove Orwell's statement would instead have imcomplete knowledge that would lead them to the above wrong conclusion. --Lgriot (talk) 07:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I suspect that the "language" being referred to above as "suffering" is not so much the language itself, but rather the culture of communication the language is used in. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 08:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We have to remember the quote above is by the same person who believed an authoritarian dictatorship could actually change the way people think by imposing restrictions on language – in 1984, the ultimate goal of Newspeak was to make it impossible for people to even think of illicit things like freedom. Fortunately, in the real world, there's no evidence that would work, and examples like creolization and Nicaraguan Sign Language suggest that when children are presented with an impoverished language to learn, they don't grow up to be intellectually impoverished at all, but rather that they enrich the language they're learning so that it can accommodate their thoughts. —Angr 18:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, literature generally deteriorates heavily under a dictatorship. With free expression restricted, the production of prose, poetry, etc. quickly becomes derivative and soulless. There are exceptions, of course, but generally, the 90%-of-everything-is-crap Sturgeon Principle quickly becomes 99% of everything is crap. Steewi (talk) 02:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I would agree that published literature may have been impoversihed, but I am pretty sure that behind closed doors, authors still enjoyed the same quality of expressiveness. even though their audience would be seriously reduced. --Lgriot (talk) 07:23, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Just one instance of this trend in Russian (and one which Orwell probably knew about) is the word likvidirovat, which means to settle affairs or debts. It gained the further meaning of 'kill' or 'eliminate' at about the time of the October Revolution, and it's even possible that Lenin himself was the first to use it in that sense. Xn4  00:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Hang on, Angr. Do you have evidence that Orwell believed that "an authoritarian dictatorship could actually change the way people think by imposing restrictions on lanaguage"? That was the plan in the book indeed, but you could say that the book itself illustrates the failure of this thesis: i.e. the need for more conventional forms of coercion. And just because an author puts a thesis in a work of fiction doesn't necessarily mean he believes or accepts it. --ColinFine (talk) 18:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The quote reminds me of the modernist architect (can't remember who, sorry) who said ornament is a manifestation of an oppressive political system. Adambrowne666 (talk) 00:25, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

who and whom
can u plz explain the difference between 'who' and 'whom' in a precise manner? regrding that issue, who did u contact to? regrding that issue, whom did u contact to? which 1 is correct and why?Lovindhawan (talk) 08:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)lovindhawan


 * Use whom rather than who exactly where you'd use him rather than he. Did you contact he?  No, you contacted him; thus the question wants whom.  (On another hand, some people find any use of whom unnatural, archaic, stilted; 1 wd have thot that any1 who rites like this, when not paying by the ltr, wd be among them.)  —Tamfang (talk) 08:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Um, they're both wrong :) Actually, the 'to' in both phrases is grammatically incorrect and unnecessary. Removing these, the second one is correct, although using the first one is common in everyday life, precisely because many people like you don't know when to use who and whom. Kreachure (talk) 13:24, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd go so far as to say that practically nobody knows when to use which, and that's why "whom" is moribund. I know, but half the time I have to think about it, and that's too much like work for just talking. It does have a little life in it, though, when it immediately follows "to"; it's actually hard to pronounce "to who did you give it". See our article Who (pronoun). --Milkbreath (talk) 13:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * For me it's a question of register. I always (attempt to) use "whom" correctly in writing (although I don't necessarily always use pied-piping in writing), but in speech I probably use it very rarely. —Angr 17:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Moribund? I don't know...when a preposition precedes the word, my experience is that everybody automatically use 'whom'.

"For whom is this letter?" "I asked him for whom the letter was."


 * Rhinoracer (talk) 18:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I guess I meant moribund in general speech. Nobody around here would say "For whom is this letter?" but "Who is this letter for?", which also technically demands "whom" but never, ever gets it. Same goes for "I asked him for whom the letter was.", which I'm not sure is even possible, decaying within nanoseconds as it does into "I asked him who the letter was for.", which again goes begging for an "m". Even when "whom" is strictly idiomatic, as in your examples (the examples were not idiomatic for my dialect, but the use of "whom" within them was), it sticks out like a sore thumb. Q: Whom shall I say is calling? A: Meem. --Milkbreath (talk) 19:05, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * There are certain standard phrases ("To whom it may concern") and well-known quotes and titles "Do not send to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee", and "For Whom the Bell Tolls", where the use of "who" is just wrong. But you can get away without "whom" in many cases that would have been been considered mandatory in bygone days.  The people for whom these old grammar texts were designed are themselves approaching moribundity.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Parenthesis in quotations
When someone says something that would be written in brackets, how can you prove it that the person is actually saying that and not addressing the audience? E. g. in this sentence: "The one that has MP2 (you know what I mean) on its front cover?". Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 11:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Before we get started, I'd like to suggest we call these "parentheses". I think of "brackets" as the general word for things of that kind, encompassing, [], {}, etc. I'm not sure what you're asking, but the example you have provided, "The one that has MP2 (you know what I mean) on its front cover?", says to me that the speaker has said every word between the quotation marks but has said "you know what I mean" sotto voce. If you want a remark to stand outside the text as a direct comment from the writer to the reader, it should go inside square brackets: "The one that has MP2 [you know what I mean] on its front cover?". I think, though, that it's a bit awkward like that, asking punctuation to do so much; the quotation marks should be left alone to do their work without the square brackets muscling in and temporarily overriding their prerogative.  Milkbreath (talk) 12:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Another way to write the same thing which might make it clearer that it's still the speaker talking would be with dashes: "The one that has MP2 – you know what I mean – on its front cover?". --Sean 13:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * That's all well and good, but that's not exactly what I mean. I meant if the person was saying that to another person in the story. Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 13:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * In that case you can do it a million ways: "The one that has MP2," he said, pausing to murmur a conspiratorial "you know what I mean" to Tebra, "on its front cover." Don't use any kind of bracket. Punctuation has to be invisible in fiction. --Milkbreath (talk) 13:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I think I understand your question (but only after re-reading it a bunch of times). Your question being: how can you know if a part in parenthesis within quotation marks is meant to be heard by the one being talked to, or only the reader. Having a parenthesis within quotation marks, as in your example, most usually means that the person talking is saying that part in parenthesis to whomever the person is talking to (like the rest of the speech), not only to the reader. The difference would be that the person has said that part in a lower voice, or with a different tone to make it less important than the rest, or even in such a way that the person being talked to was barely able to hear it. Kreachure (talk) 13:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Also, unless the speaker is quoting his/her own words, he/she wouldn't say "you know what I mean" but "you know what he/she means/they mean". (If you know what I mean.)  :)  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

German translation
An advertisement for a children's playground reads "Damit auch dein Geburtstag der Hit wird." I think this can roughly be translated as "With us, your birthday will be a hit". Is this reasonable? And if so, a few follow-up questions:
 * What is the function of the auch?
 * Why "der Hit" rather than "ein Hit"?
 * With nouns such as "Hit" which have been borrowed from English, how is their gender determined?

Many thanks, --Richardrj talkemail 17:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a very rough translation; there's nothing in the German that directly corresponds to "with us". A more literal translation (for the purposes of discussing it linguistically) is "So that your birthday too will be a hit." The function of auch is to suggest that other people's birthdays have been hits in the past, and now yours can be one too. I don't know if I can explain why it's der Hit rather than ein Hit, but think of similar expressions in English like "That's the bomb!", "That's the shit!" and "You the man!" Many nouns borrowed from English take the gender of native German synonyms, so in this case it's probably "der Hit" because of "der Schlag". Other examples are "das Callgirl", neuter because of "das Mädchen"; "die E-Mail", feminine because of "die Post"; "die Band" (in the meaning "rock band" or the like), feminine because of "die Gruppe/Truppe". There are also exceptions, though, like "das Team", neuter in spite of "die Mannschaft". English nouns ending in -ing are always neuter in German (e.g. "das Meeting"), because they're felt to be equivalent to substantivized infinitives ("das Treffen"), even though -ing is etymologically cognate with the feminine suffix -ung. —Angr 18:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Angr, as always. I was confused by damit; I thought it could be translated as "with us". Clearly I was wrong.  Of course I know that auch means "too" or "also", but for some reason I didn't connect it with dein Geburtstag, I assumed that it ran something like "also, your birthday will be a hit" and I couldn't see what the "also" might be referring back to. Thanks again. --Richardrj talkemail 19:05, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Damit can mean "with it" but never "with us". The way to tell apart the "with it" meaning from the "so that" meaning is to see where the verb is. If I were selling a new product and wanted to say "With it, your birthday too will be a hit" I'd have to say Damit wird auch dein Geburtstag der Hit with the verb in the second position of the sentence. But when damit means "so that", it introduces a dependent clause, meaning the verb has to go to the end of the sentence, and that's what we have in your example: Damit auch dein Geburtstag der Hit wird. —Angr 19:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Funny anecdote: There is a German Beamter in a dark basement office somewhere in Berlin (Bonn), sitting at his desk looking at lists of new items musing "die Computer", "das Computer", "der Computer".  He then issues an official statement in triplicate. :-)--76.111.32.200 (talk) 22:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It's that simple: "You are THE Man!" -> "Du bist DER Hit!", "The Party 's gonna be THE Hit!"->"Die Party wird DER Hit!", but you can also say "Die Party wird EIN Hit!" - just depends on you, how you meant to say it... in german, BOTH ways can be used in many different other situations.
 * The German "auch" simply means "also" or "too", while in german "also" means the english "so".

Examples: German->English "Also, was machen wir heute, Heinrich?"->"So, what do we gonna do today, Henrik?" "Ich bin auch krank"->"I'm also sick (of this or that)", or "I'm sick, too (like with a headache)."
 * The word "Hit" in german is always "male" or how you call it in english, you can't say "Die Hit" or "Das Hit".

Hope it helps a bit, - "Auf geht's, Schnitzel essen!" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.177.189.93 (talk) 17:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

"Eitherly"
From page 116 of Iain Banks' novel 'Matter'(Orbit Books):

[...]Oramen often felt overwhelmed in complicated social environments and had at such times (so that they all cancelled each other out), or none at all.Eitherly, the result was that he would just stand there, or sit there [...] (bold letters mine)

Eitherly?

I don't recall encountering this absolute adverbial before, and yet-- I like it. Prettier and more concise than "In either case" or "Either way". Is this a neologism?

Banks is a Scot...is this word common in Scottish English?

Whatever the verdict, I believe I will adopt this word! Rhinoracer (talk) 18:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * A full-text search of the OED shows nothing for "eitherly". Too bad, I like it, though I don't remember having seen it before. --Milkbreath (talk) 20:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * 220 ghits is better than I get for some dictionary terms. It'd be interesting to see if it comes from someone mistranslating some foreign language, it's an old term or local to some group.  Meriam Webster didn't know it either (-ly:-).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.111.32.200 (talk) 22:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC) grrr I' going to get that bot --76.111.32.200 (talk) 22:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Google books gave 27 examples, some dating back quite a bit, none of them a dictionary definition, the first example even implying its non-existence (as if we said "bothly", "eitherly", "neitherly"). From what I could tell, the sense is usually that of either, not of either way as in Rhinoracer's example, and the usage wasn't particularly Scottish. Eitherly, see for yourself. ---Sluzzelin talk  03:30, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If we all pledge to use the word in our Wikipedia writings, then the ghits will increase until they reach such a level, the dictionaries will be forced to acknowledge it. :) Gwinva (talk) 03:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

You are right,Gwinva (talk), and so shall I proceed.

Jorge Luis Borges, in an interview, lamented the lack of invention of new words. (He was not speaking of nonce-words such as, say, Obama-ness.) An example he cited from a British author was "everness"-- which strikes me as a useful and beautiful new word.

I'm rather conservative in my language, but it were foolish to frown on every neologism. Rhinoracer (talk) 16:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It might work, or it might not. The OED adds words every year. Eitherly, it would be worth a try. Fribbler (talk) 23:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC)