Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 November 15

= November 15 =

seeking a defintion
I am seeking the definition of the word "rollac" from the Oxford English Dictionary, if anyone happens to have access to one. Cheers. — Cactus Writer |   needles  13:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Try rollac, which uses the OED as one of its references. Hope this helps. --Sky Harbor (talk) 14:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have a second-edition OED, and rollac does not appear as a lemma in it. Deor (talk) 14:54, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Then I am not sure with the writer of the article. The article was written only a month ago.  Maybe (s)he has copies of the three additional series to the OED second edition, or is a subscriber to OED Online. --Sky Harbor (talk) 15:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * (ec) I certainly hope the other "sources" listed in our article Rollac check out better than the OED does. Google and Google Books searches for various combinations of words therein—such as rollac +arms, rollac +garment, and rollac +lutter—do not yield results that would suggest that the article is anything but a hoax. Deor (talk) 15:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The article Rollac was, of course, the reason I needed to know. Without finding any references during an extensive internet search (using a bunch of different variables), I figured the article as a hoax. The OED was my last check -- the second edition should have it. I am going to list the article for Afd. Thanks again for your help. — Cactus Writer |   needles  15:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If it is a hoax, then I'll gladly support its deletion. You're welcome, by the way. --Sky Harbor (talk) 15:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Now that it's been deleted (by the time I read the above, all the rollac links were in red!) I'm really curious what it could have been! Do any of you have the old version, could you copy it here for the sake of our curiosity? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.199.126.76 (talk) 17:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Please don't copy the whole thing here; it was some kind of semi-stupid meandering about arm braces in past fashions. AnonMoos (talk) 19:03, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * FWIW, the closest I could find in the OED is rolag: A roll of carded wool ready for spinning. (Gaelic)--Shantavira|feed me 10:13, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Bangladesh
According to your article "Demographics of Pakistan", it says that besides Urdu and English, the provincial languages are Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi and Pashto; regional languages are Saraiki and Hindko; religious language is Arabic and cultural languages are Turkish and Persian. So, I want to know that besides Bengali and English, which languages do Bangladeshi people consider religious and which languages do they consider cultural? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.119.240 (talk) 17:21, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * For Muslims, Arabic is typically the only real religious language as such... AnonMoos (talk) 19:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * For Sunni Muslims, perhaps, but the Shia may also have others. StuRat (talk) 19:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Bangladeshi Muslims make up about 90% of the country's population. Of these, 96% are Sunni, and 3% are Shia.  For both Sunni and Shia Muslims, Arabic is really the only religious language.  About 9% of Bangladeshis are Hindus.  Sanskrit is the main religious language for Hindus. Most of the remaining 1% are Buddhists, for whom Pali is the main religious language. I don't think that there are "cultural languages" that have a similar status in Bangladesh to Persian or Turkish in Pakistan.  The only language that I think might count as a "cultural language" in Bangladesh is English.  Marco polo (talk) 02:49, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

House style?
In the absence of MOS:!VOTE, I am wondering what pedants consider the appropriate way to format an XfD !vote. Should the first letter of the first word after the bolded !vote be capitalized? If the bolded |vote has more than one word in it, should they all be capitalised? Should a punctuation mark separate the bolded !vote from the comment? If so, what? the skomorokh 20:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Just comment on the discussion. If you want your "vote" or "non-vote" or whatever you want to call it to stand out, it is common practice to bold a one or two word summary of the conclusion of your reasoning, but it is the reasoning that follows this bolded word that matters, not the word itself... --Jayron32. talk . contribs  21:06, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You appear to be a reasonably, nonchalant individual. I'm afraid I was looking for input from pedants of the highest degree. Thank you for your effort, but please try to be more anal in future. Regards, the skomorokh  21:29, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, in a world where WP:IAR rules, pedantics tend to run into more trouble than pragmatics. Wikipedia as a culture tends to reject the pedantic in favor of the pragmatic.  To be honest, no one really cares how you choose to bold your !vote.  It really makes no difference, so long as you don't try to be obnoxious about it.  Anyhoo, that's the best I can offer! --Jayron32. talk . contribs  01:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

"Non silba sed anthar"
What language is this? If it's Latin, what are those strange words silba and anthar? Many Ku Klux Klan websites translate it as "not for oneself but for others", but I would say that in Latin as "non sibi sed aliis". What's the deal? —Keenan Pepper 21:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You expect the KKK to get something right? The deal is simply that they are as ignorant of Latin as they are of biology, and everything else they ever "think" about (and I use the term loosely). —Angr 21:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, even if it's incorrect, I'm sure it has to have some origin... —Keenan Pepper 00:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Never heard of those words in Latin. However, the 'not for oneself but for others' calls to mind the poem from the Appendix Vergiliana in which a series of images is presented, each one ending with 'sic vos non vobis', the only one of which I can remember off the top of my head is 'sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes'. I'm sure others can supply the full reference, but whether it is connected with KKK I just don't know. Maid Marion (talk) 00:16, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) I think it is an intentional mix of Latin and Germanic. The 'non' and 'sed' are Latin while 'silba' could be Gothic and 'anthar' is, I don't know, Old High German or something. Why would they want to make such a mix? I don't know, though the idea isn't unique to them. Haukur (talk) 00:37, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, Zamenhof (i think) used Germanic or Slavic roots mainly when Romance roots, adapted to his morphology, were ambiguous. —Tamfang (talk) 01:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This indicates it's Gothic.  Little Red Riding Hood  talk  00:34, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, yes, you're right - they're both Gothic. Taking a wild guess I'd suggest a mix of two venerable representatives of two European language families was intended to represent European/white solidarity or something like that. I also suppose a dative plural was too much to ask for. Haukur (talk) 00:43, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Isn't KKK itself some bastardized Greek phrase? Adam Bishop (talk) 01:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It is. Ku Klux came from the Greek word kuklos, or circle. --Sky Harbor (talk) 02:39, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Sherlock Holmes, in The Five Orange Pips, suggests that the Klan's "name [is] derived from the fanciful resemblance to the sound produced by cocking a rifle" Malcolm XIV (talk) 13:30, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * So we can say "Non silba sed anthar" meens something like "Not self but other". With help of this and my mothertounge german, things become a bit clear to me: silba --> selber (present german) --> self; anthar --> anderer (present german) --> other. But why do this numbskulls mix a bit of all dead european languages? This is not really a sign of care for cultural heritage... by Jox, the 21.5.2010