Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 June 30

= June 30 =

Freud in Portuguese: "Arquitectura animica"
I´m trying to help a friend translate a concept for a psychoanalysis peice he's writing. After a long attempt at trying to get a general understanding of the term and realizing that it must exist in english but that I just couldn´t put my finger on it, I started asking him etymological questions. The concept is "Arquitectura animica," and it was first used by Freud. Animica comes from animus which pertains to the soul or the soul's faculties. The idea (as best as I understand it) relates to concepts, assumptions about the world and manners of interpreting the world that are hard-wired into an individual´s psyche by their parent cultural and upbringing. I suggested "paradigm" and "ideology," but my friend didn't bite. If anyone can give a better translation, preferably (if possible) the phrase in common use by freudian translators into english, it would be much appreciated. --Shaggorama (talk) 01:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The original German is "seelische Konstruktion". In English it is often given as "psychic structure" (I don't know why structure is preferable to construction, nor do I understand why arquitectura is preferable to construção or estrutura). ---Sluzzelin talk  01:44, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Spainish help
In my Spanish textbook it explains the uses of lo, la, los and las and I understand it.

Yo miro la chicas = La Miro

Leen el libro = lo leen

But for the life of me I don't understand the usage of le and les Could someone explain it to me please? 4.159.183.112 (talk) 02:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * lo, la, los, las are used for direct objects (what?). le, les are used for indirect objects (to whom?). There is an exception to this; when you talk about people, you generally use le or les. Leptictidium (mt) 09:13, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Your first example is incorrect. it should be Yo miro a las chicas = Las miro.   Corvus cornix  talk  23:25, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Yo miro a las chicas = "I see the girls." (Yo) Las miro = "I see them". -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:52, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Wedding congratulations in French
Hi, what do people in France write when sending a card to someone getting married? In Korea people usually write "Congratulations on your marriage. I hope you live happily!" but I have no idea how to render the phrase in French.

If a literal translation of the above is not so good, what would be something nice to say in French? I ask because an acquaintance asked me for some help. Thanks. --Kjoonlee 06:51, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There are some e-cards here that have nice messages. I found the site by searching for "felicitations mariage". (The e in Félicitations has an acute accent but you don't need it in a search engine.) Itsmejudith (talk) 10:02, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Merci beaucoup! :) --Kjoonlee 12:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation of 'P' in German
An Austrian radio news broadcast referred to two of the main political parties, the ÖVP and the SPÖ. But the announcer pronounced the Ps in these two TLAs differently. He read the P in ÖVP as /peɪ/, which I think is the normal pronunciation, but he read the P in SPÖ as /pɜr/. (Hope I've got the IPA right; it's my first attempt, so bear with me.) Why the difference? Is it because one is at the end of a group of letters, whereas the other one is in the middle? Or is there some other reason? Many thanks. --Richardrj talkemail 08:54, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no idea, but something similar might happen if the pronunciation of P was influenced by the following Ö. (Vowel assimilation is my guess.) --Kjoonlee 09:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Help with a sentence in Turkish
How would one say in Turkish "So, where were we?", in the sense of "what where we talking about?"? Thanks. Leptictidium (mt) 08:56, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

In Azari dialect, they say: "hala haardi dukh" and also "indi haardi duk". "Hala" and "indi" both mean "now". --Omidinist (talk) 17:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Use of full-stops, closing brackets, commas etc in Setswana
Hello,

I am busy editing Setswana books as much as I can with very little knowledge of the language. I don't want to fix things that are not mistakes. These 'mistakes' happen very frequently, and although this is probably a silly question, I need to double check...

For example, is it correct to have an open bracket without a closing one?

Or, as in this sentence: '''Monna a fetole ka gore “Ao tlou! Re ka tsena jang mo ntlong re le babedi o le kanakana? E rile kere o nthuse a bo o gana”'''

Is it ok to leave out commas and full stops?

Thanks in advance, Nicky 196.25.159.167 (talk) 10:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Indonesian
Does anybody know what "Keren" means in Indonesian? Thanks in advance. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 12:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * "Cool", or "attractive" if my google-skills are up to scratch. Fribbler (talk) 13:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Name of school in Reims, France, 1945
According to a photodocument I've seen, the name on the facade of the building in which Nazi Germany's surrender was signed on May 8, 1945 is (all caps in original): COLLEGE MODERNE ET TECHNIQUE DE GARÇONS / ECOLE SUPERIEURE DE COMMERCE / VILLE DE REIMS. How to translate this to English? -- Merci, Deborahjay (talk) 13:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

It can be translated as: Modern and Technical College for Boys / Advanced School of Commerce / City of Reims. --Omidinist (talk) 15:26, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * A collège is the equivalent of a secondary school (highschool). Moreover it is a collège moderne, that is unlike a lycée where you get a "classical" education, the studies are more "practical", job oriented. And it is also a collège technique, a technical college. – AldoSyrt (talk) 19:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The école supérieure de commerce refers to the École supérieure de commerce de Reims a business school or a management school. At that time I think it was more a business school. Wiki page here: Sup de Co Reims. At the beginning the building was for a secondary school and, circa 1937, the business school settled in this building (may be the building was shared between the two schools). More here for those who can read French (page 9) [].– AldoSyrt (talk) 19:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It's international site here translates it's name into english (see logo top left) as Reims Management School. Fribbler (talk) 22:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Alphabetical order of persons' names and numbers in featured lists
I noticed that the sortable lists on some featured lists such as the list of songs in Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, the names of persons such as Billy Squier and Eddie Money are sorted strangely. Instead of being sorted by their last names (e.g., Squier, Billy and Money, Eddie), they are simply sorted by their first names. Is this intentional? Also, names starting with numbers such as "18 and Life" and 38 Special appear automatically at the top of the list when sorted, instead of being sorted by the spelling of their pronunciations (e.g., Eighteen and Life, Thirty-Eight Special). Is this intentional too? I tried asking this on the talk page for for WP:FL, but I have not received a response for nearly five days. Xnux  the   Echidna  15:15, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There are several reasons for listing items the way you describe it. First, the "first name last name" bit is an established naming convention, and that page explains the advantages of such a convention. This means that articles about people are ordered by first name within the Wikipedia database itself, so it's logical to put that same order in any article. Plus, it seems there are Wiki tools that aid in ordering lists, and obviously if you were to use them you'd get ordering by first name, not last. So, lists ordered by first name is basically the norm all over Wikipedia. What does seem strange to me is expecting items to be ordered not by their name, but by how you'd pronounce them? That is just silly! Kreachure (talk) 16:27, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * First of all, I fail to see anywhere on WP:NCP where it says to sort people by their first names. Even if the Wikipedia database automatically sorts them by their first name, this is a technical property, not a guideline. It is very easy to have lists sort by last names anyway (that's what Template:Sortname is for). As for numbers, sorting them by the way they are spelled out with letters is not unusual. See Collation, it says that when "numbers are used as names, rather than for their numerical properties, it is common to sort them alphabetically as they would be spelled." "18 and Life" and 38 Special are definitely names, and they should be sorted as such. Xnux   the   Echidna  16:43, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Would someone genuinely go to B if they were searching for Billy Joel in a list? I assume 'the' is removed from the sort, otherwise the 'T' section would be horrific. surname is (in my opinion) certainly the way to go if possible, it's how most things I see are sorted. ny156uk (talk) 22:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm terribly sorry for you, but that's just the way Wikipedia is ordered, has been, and will quite probably keep being ordered. Why? Because there are already over two million pages created, and a lot of those have lists with the 'strange' ordering mentioned. So it's not 'strange' for Wikipedia. If you want to go search each and every article looking for lists in order to change them, be my guest, but it's quite probably a near-impossible task. I'm not an expert, and I tried my best to try to figure the reasons for list orderings, seeing as you hadn't received any help yet; but now I rather regret it. Maybe it's better if you talked to the people at WikiProject Lists. (PS. I would genuinely look at B for Billy Joel here. It's just what years of using Wikipedia have taught me.) Kreachure (talk) 22:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Except that categories are sorted by last names, so we're rather inconsistent there.  Corvus cornix  talk  23:27, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, but you have to make that happen manually by using Default sort in each article. If you don't, "Billy Joel" would indeed appear in his categories under B, not J.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

One Syllable?
The English words with uncommon properties page said that "squirrelled" is only one syllable, but I would have thought that it would have been two - squer-rolled. How does this work?

Thanks, Falconus p t   c 23:53, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It depends on the pronunciation. Some say it with one syllable, others with two. I would say it with two syllables, but I've heard others pronounce it monosyllabically. Fribbler (talk) 00:09, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, thank you. -- Falconus p t   c 00:11, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I pronounce it monosyllabically; to me, it rhymes with "world". Indeterminate (talk) 00:38, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Australians (and Britain, NZ, India and Sri Lanka) pronounce it disyllabically (a word I've never used before, so thanks for the opportunity of expanding my vocab) . There's no single rhyme that I know of, but I can imagine some people have named their pet squirrel "Cyril" because they're exact rhymes in these parts (not that we have any squirrels in Oz, but that's another story). "Cyril the squorl" wouldn't work.  Maybe "Pearl the squorl" or "Earl the squorl" would sound better to North American ears.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:55, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * To me, "world" sounds disyllabical (also my first usage of that word) as well. Like Were-old.  These dialect differences are always pretty neat though.  Thanks again, Falconus p  t   c 01:10, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that "world" and "squirreled" (and by the way, thanks for giving this amateur songwriter something to rhyme with "world" other than "unfurled") sort of fall into a category of their own: the one-and-a half syllable, or the one-two syallable variant. I've written poetry in the past, such as sonnets, in which exact syllabification mattered, and I would use "world" usually as one syllable, but occasionally as two with the stress on the first as the meter required, and it sounded fine either way. "Squirreled" could be used similarly (of course, in a really Shakespearean mood, it could be stretched out to three syllables, as the Elizabethans often fully pronounced the suffix: "squir-re-led" not "squirrel'd"). Of course this is also true of "curled," my old standby "(un)furled," and any other words that end in the -urld sound. I wonder if there are any other sound patterns that result in a varied syllabification like this? - Aletheia James