Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 November 21

= November 21 =

Japanese Collective Nouns
Do the Japanese use collective nouns the way we do, like "pride" and "gaggle" and "herd"? If so, what's the collective word for a large group of swans? Black Carrot (talk) 00:30, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You can say 白鳥の群れ or simply 白鳥群.--K.C. Tang (talk) 02:32, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe the first two symbols stand for swan. What's the other one? 99.7.49.133 (talk) 06:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * 群れ represents the native Japanese word mure ("group"), 群 alone represents the Sino-Japanese morpheme gun (also "group").--K.C. Tang (talk) 08:34, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I would be surprised to hear that other languages had anything corresponding to the fanciful list of collective nouns which various writers have saddled (or endowed, if you will) English; but Japanese certainly has a range of counter words which partly answer the same function. --ColinFine (talk) 16:22, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I never thought of counter words as being collective nouns, as they always come with a number, and even come with 'one', while collective nouns indicate an unspecified number of [put your noun here], and always indicate more than one. However, nice way of thinking of things, there, Colin. I shall use that example next time I am teaching the subject!--ChokinBako (talk) 23:10, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Maori
Are the Maori called /maʊri/ or /mаɪˈɔri/? -- hello, i'm a member  |  talk to me!  03:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I've been hearing moe-ri (as in mow grass) more and more lately, sometimes moe-ou-ri close together. My pop-up says: ˈmourē . Julia Rossi (talk) 03:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * A Maori would pronounce it ['ma:oɾi].--K.C. Tang (talk) 03:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * So the first one is more correct? (I mean /maʊri/) -- hello, i'm a member  |  talk to me!  04:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's less obviously wrong. What suggested /mаɪ/? —Tamfang (talk) 05:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * [maʊri] would be a sensible guess for one not familiar with Polynesian languages, but [mаɪˈɔri] ... I can't see how one comes up with it.--K.C. Tang (talk) 05:52, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * At www.thefreedictionary.com, there's mour'ẽ but the spoken version sounds like "mau-ri" (as in owch). Are you working on the article? because it has /maʊri/.  Julia Rossi (talk) 07:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * /meɪˈɔri/ is the pronunciation Ben Stiller uses in Zoolander. Given that his character is a moron, that does not make it correct. jnestorius(talk)


 * Simple answer: it varies according to your own accent. The OED accepts:maʊri/, U.S. /maʊri/, N.Z. /maori/, /mæuri/, /mari/, /mɒəri/.  It even differs amongst Maori (as do all words) .  If you listen to various news reports on Radio NZ you'll hear a few.  Gwinva (talk) 03:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem is the letter a is never pronounced as /ai/ in English (the original questioner suggests /mаɪˈɔri/), isn't it?--K.C. Tang (talk) 13:05, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Is there a name for this distinction?
Is one or the other wrong? I definitely prefer the first. .froth. (talk) 06:17, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I am A, but as a Q I am Z.
 * I am A, but, as a Q, I am Z.


 * Both are correct, but they mean different things. In the first one, the absence of commas marks the clause "as a Q" as restrictive.  In this case it limits the applicability of Z to those occasions when being a Q is important.  That might be all the time, but the sentence does not say so.  The second version has a non-restrictive clause.  It implies that you are a Q all the time, and therefore Z all the time.  Compare:
 * "I wear a cap when I'm fielding, but as a batter I have to wear a helmet."
 * "I like solid colors, but, as a Yankee, I have to wear pinstripes."
 * --Anonymous, 06:52 UTC, November 21, 2008.


 * (After edit conflict) There could be a distinction in meaning if you read as 1) in one case as describing a further definition or 2) in the other case as describing something similar. The following example that came to mind is not perfect, but might illustrate the point. (it's too late to find a better one)
 * 1) I'm a democrat, but as a spokesperson I'm a liberal, too. i.e. the speaker is also a spokesperson
 * 2) I'm a democrat, but, as a spokesperson, I'm a liberal, too. i.e. just like a spokesperson
 * (Better example would require my brain to be able to tune out the news in the background.) These guys have better ones and a nicer explanation - 76.97.245.5 (talk) 06:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * For 2) to have that meaning it would have to be "like a spokesperson". —Angr 07:05, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'am not a native speaker, but I would agree with Angr. At least it's what I've learned about the difference in usage between as and like (in formal language). (Swan, Practical English Usage sez: like+noun/pronoun -- as+clause/preposition phrase ) -- 93.131.91.169 (talk) 20:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

"Wissembourg Gap" en français
Anyone know the name of the Wissembourg Gap in French ? Thanks, --W. B. Wilson (talk) 18:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Here it says la trouée de Wissembourg. -- 93.131.91.169 (talk) 19:55, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks! --W. B. Wilson (talk) 20:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but I think that is a term for the Wissembourg lines, a system of reinforced ramparts crossing the Wissembourg Gap / de:Weißenburger Schneise built for defence prior to the Franco-Prussian wars, possibly the Spanish War of Sucession. Marshall Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars, the designer of those defence lines, certainly was involved in battles when Bavaria sided with the Bourbons, but I don´t have any proper references here right now. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The (part of the) text to which a have given a link above roughly translates as: "The fortified region of Lauter had to assure the blockage of two large potential passages: the Bitche-Rohrbach plateau in the west, the Alsacian plain opposite to the Wissembourg trouée in the east." So doesn't trouée here refer to the gap in question? (Cf.) -- 93.131.91.169 (talk) 21:11, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * My small dictionary says that trou mens hole, so it could be either the gap or a reference to the part of the W. lines which were trenches. Unfortunately I have forgotten the little French I learned long ago and I suspect that I am wrong, based on the full sentence.  Sorry!!!  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Concise Oxford French Dictionary, s.v. trouée: "Opening, gap, breach; pass." I'd say that 93.131.91.169 is correct. Deor (talk) 01:24, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Trouée de Wissembourg is the correct translation. According to the TLFi (Trésor de la langue française informatisée) Trouée A -- 4. is a: Dépression naturelle entre deux massifs montagneux facilitant le passage d'une région à une autre, notamment en temps de guerre pour les armées en campagne. Roughly translated as: Natural depression between two mountainous massifs so that it is easy to get through from one region to another, especially during wartime for the armies in the field. AldoSyrt (talk) 11:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If you search on Google Earth "Wissembourg Bas-Rhin Alsace France" you will see what a trouée means (geographical sense). AldoSyrt (talk) 15:11, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

If "trouée de Wissembourg" is the correct translation, then it seems odd to me that there are only three google hits for it, of which one is its use in our own Wissembourg Gap article, added yesterday. I have an idea that the French must use some other name. Strawless (talk) 16:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There are also a dozen Google Books hits, and they seem to be references to precisely this region. Deor (talk) 16:22, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Simple Google hits aren't always and in any area of expertise the measure of all things. -- 93.132.169.170 (talk) 16:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, indeed, 93.131.91.169, but a very low or a very high number may perhaps mean something. I see there are 129 ordinary google hits for "Wissembourg Gap" and 56 for it in google books. And this is a geographical feature in France. Strawless (talk) 21:55, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It's actually located in Germany, not in France. It may be called something completely different in French, perhaps refering to a German town name, as there are almost no hits for "trouée de Wissembourg" (the one on-line reference about the Maginot Line seems to refer to something slightly different). I looked around a number of French-language websites about the town of Wissembourg and the battle, but couldn't find anything definitive; I also tried with "percée de Wissembourg" and other equivalent terms with no more luck. A French-language atlas would be the best source. I'll see if I can find one. --Xuxl (talk) 17:02, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

After further research, I'm not even sure that thee "Wissembourg Gap" exists as a topographical feature. It seems to be only a part of the Rhine Valley. The German term is likely a military one, used to describe a particular location where the Rhine Valley meets the French border. It has a strategic usage, but is not the equivalent of something like the Cumberland Gap or Pennington Gap (to use two well-know US examples). Because it's a German military term, it does not really have a French equivalent. All googlable references in German are military-related, the English ones all seem to point back to the Wissembourg Gap article here, and there is no French term that receives any significant google action. ASs mentioned above, there is no mention of this feature in French sites where it would normally be referenced, if it was the type of feature described in the wiki article. My guess is that someone found the term Wissembourg Gap in a military history book, wrongly surmised that it refered to a specific geological feature and created an article based on that misunderstanding. --Xuxl (talk) 15:16, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Trouée is a geographical term that is mainly used by the military (the reason is in the definition from the TLFi), so that it will be difficult to find this word on a map. You can google "Trouée de Saverne" to be convinced of the geographical/military sense of trouée. Moreover, have you taken into consideration the Google Books hits as suggested by Deor? The diversity of authors and the publication years that range from 1879 to 2007 are strong arguments. I am French, although I have never heard of Wissembourg and its trouée, it makes sense to me. AldoSyrt (talk) 21:11, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Cipher
I am trying to decode the following cipher, however, I do not know which cipher it it. Is there any way to find out? (Please check to see if it works out before answering.)

Esheo Aorht Disas Eomta

Keyword: Death

http://www.scioly.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=325&p=11390

Thanks in advance.

--Chaffers (Something | Something else) 20:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Presumably probably some kind of Anagram... AnonMoos (talk) 01:01, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * ...Except the what's the keyword for? --Chaffers (Something | Something else) 01:39, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe that "death" is one of the words in the anagrammed phrase (the letters are all there). AnonMoos (talk) 09:44, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Good idea.  I'll have to try that.  Thanks.  --Chaffers (Something | Something else) 12:01, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I start with the assumption that it's a Vigenère polyalphabetic, in which the letters of the original are mapped (in rotation) to five different alphabets, one starting with D, the next starting with E, and so on. The cleartext is thus HWHXV DSRAA GMSTZ HSMMH.  —Tamfang (talk) 03:52, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe it's a Playfair cipher; those use keywords. Taking DEATH as the keyword, we get the unpromising-looking TQTDM HMUTA HBRTQ TNLAE if we put I and J in one square; TPTDR DUPTA HBRTP TSJAE if we omit Q, and HPTDQ DSQTA HBQHP HRJAE if we omit X. —Angr 10:42, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's also possible that it's a simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher, with DEATH somewhere in the cipher alphabet (e.g. a maps to D, b to E, c to A, d to T, e to H, and the remaining letters are somehow filled in). I tried this in several different versions with DEATH at the beginning, and nothing looked remotely interesting, though, so if I'm right, DEATH is probably somewhere else. 69.177.191.60 (talk) 15:31, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * DEATH is always somewhere else, until it's HERE! —Tamfang (talk) 21:21, 2 September 2023 (UTC)