Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 November 17

= November 17 =

Gamers
Okay, so someone who plays video games a lot is a hardcore gamer, and someone who plays video games occasionally is a casual gamer. What about someone who plays video games moderately and someone who never plays video games? JCI (talk) 00:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * For the last one, guessing VirGin? Julia Rossi (talk) 01:30, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm confused by the question. What's the difference between moderate and casual use?  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  05:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps they mean like someone that plays every day, but still stops often enough to have a woman touch his genitals once in a while?!? --Jayron32. talk . contribs  12:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Or a man. In fact, I hear that some girls might even be better than guys! Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:34, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I've never heard of a girl having trouble getting any action from men. Generally, men will be willing to have sexual relations with any woman that is "alive" and "offering" --Jayron32. talk . contribs  20:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * See Genesis 39 Bible in Basic English.
 * (7) And after a time, his master's wife, looking on Joseph with desire, said to him, Be my lover. (8) But he would not, and said to her, You see that my master keeps no account of what I do in his house, and has put all his property in my control; (9) So that no one has more authority in this house than I have; he has kept nothing back from me but you, because you are his wife; how then may I do this great wrong, sinning against God?
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 04:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This is one of those passages in the bible that probably shouldn't be taken literally, like the virgin birth or the seven day creation. 194.171.56.13 (talk) 11:17, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Other examples are Hippolytus and the heterosexual version of the Narcissus story. —Angr 10:32, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * See Reference desk/Computing. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:47, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

German pronunciation of Streusel
Whenever I have to listen to a recent IHOP commercial I get the creeps. Where in Germany did they locate someone who would say "Stroossl"? Lubbock,TX?? At any bakery I've been to and "Kaffee und Kuchen" event (German version of 5 o'clock tea) it was always pronounced "Stroissl". So is there an area in Germany with such a weird accent, and how widespread is it?76.97.245.5 (talk) 00:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The standard German pronunciation of the word is /'ʃtʁɔʏ zəl/ or something like "SHTROY zul". I cannot think of a German dialect in which the word would be pronounced "stroossl".  Marco polo (talk) 00:30, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Since IHOP is a U.S. chain, perhaps their ad agency, in creating an advertisement for the U.S. market, considered the Lubbock, Texas, pronunciation more appropriate than the Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, pronunciation. Deor (talk) 01:06, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe they were getting confused with strudel. Streusels and strudels are often sold at the same bakeries.  --  JackofOz (talk) 03:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Is it likely English speakers automatically say "oo" when they see -eu in written form? I'm thinking Dr. Seuss ("often pronounced /ˈsuːs/ or /ˈsjuːs/, though he himself said /ˈsɔɪs/"). Julia Rossi (talk) 05:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Wow, we learn something every day. That tidbit is not in the biography that I recently finished reading; likely it was unknown to the author, or whoever gave it the title The Seuss, the whole Seuss and nothing but the Seuss. —Tamfang (talk) 04:18, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * English has LOTS of words derived from other languages (French, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Nahuatl, whatever) which are not pronounced like the words they are derived from, but are properly pronounced in English. Why is this word any different from, say, the other 90% of the English vocabulary?!?--Jayron32. talk . contribs  12:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * See Anglicisation. A loanword can be pronounced in an approximation of the native way, allowing for the differences in phonology between the two languages.  Depending on how exotic this pronunciation is, some or all elements may become nativized: there are opposing forces of sounding pretentious and sounding ignorant.  This can in principle happen within a speech community purely based on spoken language; but an extra factor is the spelling, which will increase the tendency for speakers to apply elements of common grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the target language.  Some patterns seem more susceptible to this: English pronunciations of sake vary and some are less Japanese than others, but I doubt if anyone pronounces it like sake in "For Pete's sake". jnestorius(talk) 14:16, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Is it possible that it's Swiss German? Sprechen sie Dootsch? 80.254.147.52 (talk) 15:11, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure. "Düütsch" or "Tüütsch"  is close to, but not quite "Dootch". More importantly: unlike deutsch/düütsch, where Swiss German has preserved the old monophthong, the verb "streuen" is diphtongized in most modern Swiss German dialects, just like in Standard German. It's usually "streue", not "strüüe", and the noun "Streusel" remains "Streusel" in most dialects. (I don't think I have ever heard it pronounced "Strüüsel" by a native speaker). I guess there might be a dialect that pronounces it strüüe/Strüüsel, and in old dialects it might have been pronounced that way. So it's possible, but I find the other explanations of anglicisation more likely. I also noticed that googling "struesel" renders 14,700 hits, most of them streusel recipes in English. ---Sluzzelin  talk  17:22, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a good example of the Schnitzel Syndrome. --  JackofOz (talk) 20:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not Swiss German and I can't imagine any other German dialect in which "Streusel" (SHTROY-zul) would be pronounced "Strusel" (SHTROO-zul or (STROO-zul) or even "Strüsel". In my dialect it's more like "Streisel" (SHTREY-zul), but this is even further away from "Strusel". So the pronunciation in question is either due to ignorance or confusion with "Strudel", or to some anclicisation/loanword process. -- 93.132.170.2 (talk) 17:14, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

"he" and "she" nouns
Hi guys,

Could you tell me if there are other "he" and "she" nouns like the noun "ship" in English? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.136.243.215 (talk) 16:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * In addition to ships, Grammatical_gender mentions countries, cars, and machines for she, and animals for she or he (depending on their gender). The article on gender in English only mentions animate examples with masculine or feminine gender (no inaminate examples like ship).
 * Finally, the article on she has:
 * "She is also used instead of it for things to which feminine gender is conventionally attributed: a ship or boat (especially in colloquial and dialect use), often said of a carriage, a cannon or gun, a tool or utensil of any kind, and occasionally of other things."
 * "She refers to abstractions personified as feminine, and also for the soul, a city, a country, an army, the church, and others."
 * And:
 * "Rarely and archaically, she referred to an immaterial thing without personification. Also of natural objects considered as feminine, as the moon, or the planets that are named after goddesses; also of a river (now rare), formerly of the sea, a tree, etc."
 * Two more articles with some information are gender-specific pronoun and he. This is what I found on Wikipedia. Now let the stylistic debates commence! ---Sluzzelin talk  17:40, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Anything that can be described as a "beaut" in Strine may be rendered feminine. "She’s a beaut, she is" may refer to cars, scenery ("That Grand Canyon,_____”) or bodily functions. DOR (HK) (talk) 07:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Or the old standby "She'll be right, mate". Or "She's apples" and "She's Jake" (whoever the hell Jake is).  --  JackofOz (talk) 19:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There's also dialect to consider - it was said that in the Dorset dialect everything (including clearly female humans/animals) was "he", except bulls, which were "she"! AJHW (talk) 11:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)


 * In my firmware days I sometimes heard my peers saying 'he' for the machine we were working on. —Tamfang (talk) 04:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Japanese automatic translation
I tried to translate automatically the following text:

有关“增长与利率的论战”，除了在理论上以外，在历史性论据方面也展开了讨论. 竹中平藏总务大臣主张较之国债利率更重视较高的名义增长率，

他所所 引用的是以前提到的曼求（哈佛大学）的论文.

and obtained the following:

Possession 关 “增 长 giving interest rate 论 战”, other than on removal Ryo resident in reason 论, resident in 历 history characteristic 论 据 direction 也 spreading/displaying 开 Ryo 讨 论. Takenaka flat 藏 总 务 minister of state main 张 较 之 national 债 interest rate 更 it is heavy 视 较 high mark name 义 增 长 ratio, the stopping arriving at 曼 seeking (哈 佛 university) mark 论 sentence of time before the other here and there quotation right.

How far is it from the original? Why did some parts like 关 “增 长 or 哈 佛 university didn't get translated?

Mr.K. (talk) 16:50, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The sentence you gave is in Chinese, so I'm guessing not very close. Try the Chinese autotranslator and see if the result makes more sense. TomorrowTime (talk) 17:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * O, nice tip. I gonna try it. 80.58.205.37 (talk) 17:33, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's written in Simplified Chinese characters. 竹中平藏 is Heizo Takenaka, 总务大臣 is Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications and 哈佛大学 is Harvard University. Oda Mari (talk) 17:46, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Nice catch on the Japanese personal name. That'll probably be distorted by the autotranslator into something like: "bamboo inside flat warehouse". TomorrowTime (talk) 18:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be 'flat warehouse inside bamboo'. Prepositions come AFTER the main word in both Japanese and Chinese.--ChokinBako (talk) 20:42, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * One more. 主张 is insist. Oda Mari (talk) 18:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You Japanese speakers amaze me, 'cause you always seem to know some Chinese too :)) 80.123.210.172 (talk) 21:34, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's the other way around: those literate in Chinese can spot Japanese or Korean a mile away. DOR (HK) (talk) 07:24, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

A google search reveals that the Chinese is in fact a sloppy translation of the following Japanese from Nihon Keizai Shimbun:「成長・金利論争」では理論面に加え歴史的な証拠についても議論が展開された. 国債金利より高い名目経済成長率を唱える竹中平蔵総務相が引用したのが、前に述べたマンキュー氏（ハーバード大）の論文である. --K.C. Tang (talk) 02:50, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

How did you know that?
Something I've wondered about for years, but never found a good place to ask... For those like me, whose ancestors came from northern Europe, HOW can you tell Chinese from Japanese just by looking at a string of symbols? Korean is a bit more distinctive, but I couldn't tell you whether 除了在理论上以外 was Chinese or Japanese if my life depended on it. Any clues for the clueless? --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 22:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, my ancestors (and me, I suppose) came from Southern Europe/Central Europe, depends on how nationalistic the person you ask, and I have no problems with it. It basically comes down to whether you can speak Japanese (or Chinese) or not. It's simple after you've mastered one of the two - there is a world of differece. The simplest way to know is the usage (or non-usage there-of of Hiragana - the Japanese use it, the Chinese don't. TomorrowTime (talk) 23:55, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, if you don't speak either Chinese or Japanese, the best you can do is keep a sharp eye out for hiragana, which only occurs in Japanese. Unlike the blocky and often complicated Chinese characters that are common to the writing systems of the two languages, hiragana appears simpler and more cursive, with a little practice you should be able to scan a text to pick them out and make a positive ID of Japanese (and if you can't find any at all, then it's almost definitely Chinese). Using the texts given above as examples (I'll omit the punctuation at it doesn't help), compare the Chinese text 有关增长与利率的论战除了在理论上以外 with the Japanese text 成長金利論争では理論面に加え歴史的な証拠についても議論が展開された.  The hiragana parts you can pick out in the Japanese are では に え な についても が and された. Notice the different shape and more open feel these have compared to the blockier Chinese characters. (Note the Japanese also use a third script, called katakana, which is also unique to that language, but it's less common than hiragana, so you can't rely on it being in a block of text.) Thylacoleo (talk) 00:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * See Language recognition chart. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Easier: If it has ま, お or は it’s Japanese. If it has 세, 여 or 다 it’s Korean. DOR (HK) (talk) 07:31, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Even easier: if it has ANY hiragana at all, it is most likely Japanese, and ANY hangul at all, it is most likely Korean, regardless of the random ones DOR just gave.--ChokinBako (talk) 17:55, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I am not an expert, but in my experience, if you see Chinese or Japanese proper names transliterated into English (or simply spoken), you can often determine the correct origin by the number of syllables in the name. Single-syllable names tend to be Chinese and multi-syllable names tend to be Japanese.  There are probably exceptions, however. Thomprod (talk) 19:14, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If it is spoken to you, can't you just ask the person where he/she is from? Quite simple, really. If it is transliterated into English, what would be the point of asking for a translation?--ChokinBako (talk) 21:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Gender or sex?
I realize these words have become overlaid with various meanings and connotations. Is it still possible to answer this question?

Bob is male, Sally is female. Which is better usage?

- Bob is the opposite sex to Sally.

- OR

- Bob is the opposite gender to Sally.

Thanks, CBHA (talk) 18:34, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not that simple, unfortunately - at least not in my world (academic studies of gender and sexuality). Note: this is entirely what I would use, and this is what I understand sex and gender to be. Some may disagree.
 * In my usage, if Bob is biologically male-bodied (that is, he has male genitalia) and Sally is biologically female-bodied (female genitalia), then I would say that they are of the opposite sex.
 * If Bob identifies as male-gendered (male gender roles, male outward appearance, etc.) and Sally identifies as female-gendered (gender role, outward appearance, etc.) then I would say that they are of the opposite gender.
 * Thus it's possible to have a "gay" same-sex marriage where the partners are opposite-gendered and vice-versa (which certainly complicates the issue of "same-sex marriage".)
 * You may want to look at sex and gender, as well as sexual identity, gender identity, and sex and gender distinction.
 * Hope this helps! СПУТНИК CCC  P 19:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Ignoring the ideological playground of identity politics, the answer is quite simple: sex is a biological term, whereas gender is a grammatical term. Thus, people have sex, and words have gender.
 * In this context, then, "Bob is the opposite sex to Sally" is the correct way of phrasing it. "Fils is the opposite gender to fille" (given that one is masculine and the other is feminine) would be the correct (ie traditional) use of the word gender. Malcolm XIV (talk) 00:17, 18 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Some businesses/governments feel that it's for some reason inappropriate to refer to the "sex" of their clients/members/subjects, so they use the word "gender" instead. But this is taking PC to ridiculous levels.  "Sex" does not have to make people think about sexual activity (and even if it does, so what); it often just means the basic biological differences between men and women, and if that's what the context is, then "sex" is the best word to use.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:31, 18 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's obvious enough what's mean in 'Bob is the opposite sex to Sally' and it is less stilted than putting in gender so I'd do that. However in other circumstances particularly in short headings where there might be confusion I think 'gender' is better. For instance 'influence of sex' in an article could easily be misinterpreted as referring to the influence of having sex, rather than differences arising from the sex or sexual orientation of people. Dmcq (talk) 10:35, 18 November 2008 (UTC)


 * But if the text of the article was all about the latter, and you used the word "sex" throughout, wouldn't the heading then become misleading, or at least inconsistent, if it referred to "gender"? I'd recommend rewording the heading, without using the word "gender".  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:35, 18 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Generally Id agree with you. On Wikipedia in particular though I'd err on the side of gender unless sex was the obvious word. The word sex could easily be used in an article about the difference between camogie and hurling or about the design of toilets for the space station for instance. However the articles might then come to the top in a search about whether sex before a game was a good idea or whether anyone had had sex in space. This can make them a target for vandals who not finding what they wanted in an article go and blank it or put in rude words. Unfortunately there are a lot of eejits out there and there's no need to turn articles into vandal magnets. Dmcq (talk) 08:36, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I applaud (to the death) your noble intentions, Dmcq, but I differ in the preferred solution. The fact is that "gender" simply does not mean "sex", and should not be used as a synonym.  Admittedly, there's the appearance of a kind of overlap, because we can talk of the sex of a physical cow (female) and also talk about the grammatical gender of the word "cow" (feminine in many languages).  There's a basic cultural assumption that females act/dress/speak in feminine ways, and males do so in masculine ways.  Well, we all know many counter-examples to this, so it doesn't always apply.  Hence the words "female" and "feminine" are not necessarily synonymous and the words "male" and "masculine" are not necessarily synonymous.  Thus, "sex" and "gender" are not synonymous at all.  Vandals will always be with us; sex-focussed teenagers (and much older people) will always be with us.  Changing "sex" to "gender" in a piecemeal way in an effort to avoid vandalism is wrong in principle; but even if that were not so, it would be as effective as changing "Muslim fundamentalist terrorist" to "Mohammedan first-principles-focussed Ostrogoth", or "Christian theologian" to "Nazarene religious expert".  The essence of good writing is to mean what you write and write what you mean, not what you think others might be expecting you to write. --  JackofOz (talk) 22:07, 22 November 2008 (UTC)