Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 November 28

= November 28 =

Feminized form of Radecký
Is it Radecková? 203.188.92.71 (talk) 03:00, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be in Czech. But since it's Polish, it would be Radecká.  --  JackofOz (talk) 03:04, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh. Well, I intend the character and his wife in my short story to be Czech, though assuming it isn't just a Polish surname. 203.188.92.71 (talk) 03:17, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That's fine. Lots of foreign surnames get feminized with -ová in Czech, so Radecková would sound much better to Czech ears than Radecká.  --  JackofOz (talk) 03:25, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * But Radetzky was apparently Czech, and the Czech version of his name... So it's a Polish surname? 203.188.92.71 (talk) 03:43, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That particular Radetzky was Czech (well, Bohemian at that time); and the Bohemians would have spelt it Radecký (Radetzky being a Germanised spelling). But the incredibly turbulent history of Eastern Europe means that many of these names cross political divides and crop up in multiple countries.  I'm still fairly confident that Radecky was originally a Polish name, but that's irrelevant now that I know you're talking about a Czech person rather than a Pole.  It's like Tchaikovsky - his forbears were originally Ukrainian and Polish, but he himself was thoroughly Russian.  In Russian, his mother's, sister's and wife's surname was Чайковская (Tchaikovskaya); but some female ancestor in Poland would have been a mere Czajkowska.  --  JackofOz (talk) 04:33, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Strange, I always thought that the feminized form of Tchaikovsky was Tchaikovska. 203.188.92.71 (talk) 04:37, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Certainly not if you're talking about a Russian woman. See .  --  JackofOz (talk) 04:45, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Just to confuse things, there were some Russian ballerinas who were never anything but Russian, but chose for whatever reason to use Polish-ending names. Tatiana Riabouchinska was born Riabouchinskaya (Рябучинская), but used the shorter form professsionally.  Mathilde Kschessinska was born Kschessinskaya (Кжесинская), although that name was a Russianised form of the originally Polish Krzesinska.  The form in which we have her name is Germanicised to boot (sch for the 'sh' sound); a strict transliteration would be Kzhesinska(ya).  --  JackofOz (talk) 05:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Jack, neither Radecký nor Radecká could possibly be Polish in that spelling, since Polish doesn't have the letters ý and á. —Angr 07:35, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Angr is right. If it were a Polish surname, it would be spelled "Radecki" in masculine and "Radecka" in feminine. &mdash; Kpalion(talk) 10:49, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

It is Radecká in Czech. Radecková is nonsense. — Emil J. 11:11, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * And the reason for this is that "Radecký" is an adjectival surname where "-cký" is a masculine adjectival suffix. So a feminine form of the name is made simply by changing the suffix to the feminine "-cká". Practically, any name that ends in the letter "ý" in masculine is an adjectival name. A different case would be a nominal surname which behaves like a noun, not like an adjective. A feminine form of such name is made by adding the feminine possessive (rather than adjectival) suffix "-ová". For example the feminine form of the name "Novák" is "Nováková" which literally translates as "Novák's (daughter or wife)". See also Czech name. The pattern is similar in other Slavic languages, although some (like Polish) no longer use the possessive suffixes in feminine forms. &mdash; Kpalion(talk) 17:15, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You learn something every day. Thanks.  Well, in that case, 203, please ignore the non-operative parts of what I said.  --  JackofOz (talk) 18:41, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Active Voice
Exactly how do I write in the active voice? 203.188.92.71 (talk) 05:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You just did. The passive version of your question would be "Exactly how is the active voice written?", or "Exactly how would the active voice be written by me?".  In active, it's basically  , e.g. The cat ate the mouse.  In passive, it's  by , e.g The mouse was eaten by the cat. --  JackofOz (talk) 05:21, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * How about this: Kneeling down, he touched it, saying “Jan, you must be dreaming.”? (My English teacher gave me nightmares with it; she said that the active voice involves the present. The problem is that once I write like that, it doesn't seem like me... But enough with my going off topic.) Vltava   68   (contribs)  06:47, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You can use the active voice in the past, present, or future:
 * The king has happily received the news of thy success.
 * (Passive: The news has been received by the king.)
 * We love him highly.
 * (Passive: He is highly loved by us.)
 * You shall put the night's business into my dispatch.
 * (Passive: The business shall be put by you into my dispatch.)
 * In each case, the subject of the sentence is performing the action, even if the action seems "passive" (as with "to receive"). Some people struggle when the action is in the past, because they mistake active forms ("he received the news," "he has received," "he had received") for passive ones ("the news was received...," "has been received...," "had been received...")
 * I don't see "Jan, you must be dreaming" as passive -- Jan is performing the action of dreaming. If you don't believe that Jan is a real person, you might say, "You must have been dreampt up."  Note how the passive comes in: another party has done the dreaming, and Jan is the result.   --- OtherDave (talk) 13:31, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If your teacher gave "Jan, you must be dreaming" as an example of passive, they themselves were dreaming. Or they themselves should go back to school.  That's an example of an intransitive verb, and passive cannot possibly exist without a transitive verb.  What's the passive of "I breathed easily"?  Answer: it doesn't exist, because in this context "breathed" is intransitive.  But what's the passive of "I breathed air easily", where "breathed" is now used transitively?  Answer: "Air was breathed by me easily".  Conversely, what's the active counterpart of "Air is breathed"?  Answer: you have to interpolate some nominal subject, such as "Humans breathe air".
 * The only part of "Kneeling down, he touched it, saying Jan, you must be dreaming" that can be made passive is "he touched it" - it was touched by him - but that doesn't work in the context of this sentence, because you'd end up with "Kneeling down, it was touched by him, saying “Jan, you must be dreaming”, where the "it" is now doing the talking. You could split it into 2 sentences - "Kneeling down, he touched it.  Jan, you must be dreaming was said by him."  - but that's bad writing.  --  JackofOz (talk) 19:04, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The articles go into technical minutiae, but when most people use the term "active voice" in reference to English, 99% of the time they basically mean "not passive voice". When the term "active voice" is used, it's only to draw distinction with the more infrequently used passive voice. To a first approximation, using "was (verb)ed by" constructs or the equivalent is passive voice - everything else is active voice. -- 128.104.112.75 (talk) 19:02, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Did your teacher say that "Jan, you must be dreaming" was in the passive voice? He or she probably confused the passive voice ("to be" and the past participle) and the progressive aspect ("to be" and the present participle).  This is a common error that I have seen in more articles than I can count.  For example, "I am seen by you" is in the passive voice whereas "I am seeing you" is in the progressive aspect.  "Jan, you must be dreaming" is definitely not in the passive voice, so is it in the active voice?  That depends on one's perspective.  If one thinks of "be" as an auxiliary verb and "dreaming" as a main verb, "Jan, you must be dreaming" is definitely in the active voice.  One can also think of "be" as a copulative and "dreaming" as an adjective.  Copulatives are not in the active voice (because they do not express action); they are called neuter verbs.  Some linguists would agree that "dreaming" is an adjective and not a verb.  This view has a strange implication...that there is no passive voice.  What is known as the passive voice can be considered a copulative and an adjective.75.89.21.210 (talk) 00:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Persons vs People
I don't know if this was discussed before, I googled it and it wasn't successful. When I walk around I often see 'persons'. I don't think the term 'persons' considered ungrammatical, but are the two terms exchangeable? Is there any difference in meaning or subtle connotation to persons? which one do you prefer, "There are three persons in the room." or "There are three people in the room"? Janviermichelle (talk) 06:28, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * They're not interchangeable. 99% of the time, you'd say "three people in the room". The only time you'd really want to use "persons" is to indicate that they're somehow unusual/significant/more important than regular people. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:07, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If the three persons in question happen to be the first person, second person, and third person, or if they happen to be the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you'd never say "three people". —Angr 07:29, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "Persons" is more distant, eg a police officer might say there were three persons in the room in a report (maybe even advancing westward to the drinks cabinet). Out of interest, the popup dictionary gives: (like "persona") it comes from Latin, then Old French for mask or role; "people" comes from Middle English : from Anglo-Norman French poeple, from Latin populus "populace." That almost makes it more "popular". Julia Rossi (talk) 11:34, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this has indeed been discussed before, when Daniel asked "What's the difference between people, persons, and, for that matter, peoples?" Strawless (talk) 15:03, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think 'persons' is (mis)used where 'individuals' is meant. In contrast to 'people', which carries a sense of collective. -- Fullstop (talk) 14:30, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Two matters, Fullstop (setting aside anything to do with peoples, theological personhood, grammatical personhood, etc.):
 * 1. Why is persons not normally a better word than individuals? Most of us in The Rest of The World use the word person where many Americans prefer individual. But I can think of only one occasion for preferring individual: when it is desirable explicitly to exclude corporations, which are non-individual, "composite", and artificial legal persons. (Actually, that article is dreadfully muddled – in its lead, especially. Must fix it sometime.)
 * 2. Why do you say that people "carries a sense of collective"? In its most common everyday use as a plural of person, it need not imply collectivity at all: There were five people in the room; Some people never learn! I grant that persons is preferable to people when such matters as personal health, dignity, safety, soteriology, or rights are under discussion: Strokes are no respecter of persons, and may occur without warning; The Boddhisattva vows to assist the salvation of all persons – indeed, of all sentient beings; Persons are given more consideration under the law than, say, anencephalic neonates. But even in some of these people is just as idiomatic.
 * – ⊥ ¡ɐɔıʇǝo  N  oetica! T– 00:22, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Many laws distinguish corporations from humans by referring to the latter as "natural persons" (as if such a thing as an unnatural person could ever exist). --  JackofOz (talk) 21:13, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

meaning of jewish word
what does Yuntiv mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.163.91.137 (talk) 14:25, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I know very little Hebrew, but you hear people say "Good Yuntiv!", which I think means "Good holiday!" Strawless (talk) 14:46, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * According to Jewish holiday, "In Hebrew, Jewish holidays and festivals, depending on their nature, may be called yom tov ("good day") (Yiddish: yontif)..." Checking on Google, it seems that Yontif! is the spelling most often used after 'Good...' Strawless (talk) 14:55, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, yuntiv/yontev etc. (lots of spellings indicating various dialects of Yiddish) is the Yiddish pronunciation of Hebrew yom tov. —Angr 15:29, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * ...and they're not saying "Good" but gut or git – again depending, as Angr notes, upon the speaker's regional pronunciation. I would further say, that this is not a Hebrew-language term per se but adopted into Yiddish to mean "holiday." In well-wishing, the Hebrew word for "holiday," חג, is always coupled with the adjective "happy" (שמח) rather than "good"; pronounced ['xag sa'mejax]. This greeting is of course inappropriate for a fast day or day of mourning.-- Deborahjay (talk) 21:54, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

References to foreign languages
Why do we always refer to foreign languages using "the", as in, "Translated from the German by..."? 69.177.191.60 (talk) 15:34, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Do we? I've never seen it. I would expect to see "this is a translation from German" (or whatever). Surely you'd only say 'the' if you were referring to an individual (e.g. this is a translation from the german Peter Pan's work). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I've seen it quite frequently, but typically in older texts. Never in the way you suggest, however. 69.177.191.60 (talk) 16:20, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That's not the usual way of referring to a language anymore...it sounds very 19th-century. It's really short for "the X language", where the name of the language is an adjective, not a noun. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:20, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Contrary to A.B.'s assertion, above, I'll offer a different meaning (descriptive if not prescriptive). It doesn't mean translated from the language, but from the version of a source text in that language. I've both seen and used this form. It's particularly relevant in the case of a mediated translation, e.g. a Hebrew-to-English translation of Arabic poetry in a Hebrew rendition (as has been published recently in the Haaretz English Edition), or academic citations of works in translation, rendered by the author (or hired translator) into the language of the target text. -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:53, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with Deborahjay. While I'm doubtless older than most Wikipedians, I'm not so old as to make my English "19th century". It is undoubtedly a somewhat academic and intellectual usage, but I would hope that an encyclopedia would be considered a somewhat academic and intellectual undertaking. - Jmabel | Talk 18:53, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote Sonnets from the Portuguese, which I've just discovered were not translations at all. --  JackofOz (talk) 19:46, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "The Portuguese" was almost certainly her nickname. - Jmabel | Talk 02:04, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Is this some naughty reference like the "D flat" that Chopin refers to in his love letters? - (search for "D flat") -- JackofOz (talk) 02:30, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Naah, more on the level of my almond-eyed but otherwise puro Ashkenazic-American relatives being nicknamed "the Chinee" (more genteel than "Chink"). But till I followed Jack's link, I was guessing "D Flat" to be an oblique reference to a fourth-floor apartment...?! My musical notation humor seems stuck at elementary school level ("See sharp or you'll bee flat!"). Now I'll never hum "Là ci darem..." again without blushing. Thanks! -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:43, 29 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't mean to imply that anyone here is stuck with Victorian sensibilities, but what immediately sprung to my mind were Bible dictionaries of "the Chaldee" and "the Hebrew", heh. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:57, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I wonder whether "translated from the French" in some cases parallels the tendency to drop the word "valley" or "river" after a geographic feature -- in other words, "translated from the French (language) by a scholar in the Shenandoah (valley)."
 * "The Portuguese" was a nickname Robert Browning used for Elizabeth. I'd heard this as an undergrad, and this site repeats it, saying it was due to her complexion, but the site isn't exactly a primary source. --- OtherDave (talk) 11:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think Deborahjay is closest to the mark here - my understanding of "Translated from the German" would be not "Translated from the German language" but "Translated from the German text". The former could be rendered as "Translated from German", but conveys a subtly different meaning; the latter implies that there was a definite source which was in German, of which this is a translation.
 * Consider a phrase such as "translated from the original German"; here the "the" cannot be dropped, and no claim is being made about the originality of the German language, only the text being translated. - IMSoP (talk) 16:37, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. That's how I've seen it used and take it to mean. It's a kind of academic shorthand and "text" is implied. Often when an English translation is being offered for the benefit of the reader/audience. Julia Rossi (talk) 22:15, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Old English "to be"
I'm trying to learn Old English, and one thing that's kind of frusterating is that there are three different variants of the verb "to be": sindon (ancestor of forms like "is"), beon (ancestor of "be"), and wesan (ancestor of "was"), and I haven't found any semantic contract between them. (Declined here) On the Wikipedia article it kind of hints that wesan is used more for past tense and beon is used more for future tense. Does anybody know of any semantic difference?

Perhaps "sindon" is more of a permanent form (like Spanish ser) and "beon" is more temporary (like Spanish estar), but that's just guessing from it's relationship to the word "become". So, if you're asking someone how they're doing in Old English, would you say "Hu bist þu?" or "hu eart þu?"

Thanks! Jonathan talk 17:58, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If anything, it's the other way around. In A Guide to Old English by Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson (ISBN 0-631-13625-8) on pp. 108–9 the authors say that bið and the other b-forms have a future meaning ("will be") but are also used "for the statement of an eternal truth (a use sometimes called 'gnomic')", giving examples glossed as "Fate is quite inexorable" and "Then the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto (the) ten virgins". I think those sentences would be translated with ser in Spanish. An example using is is glossed as "The plain is beautiful", which I think would be translated with estar in Spanish. (However, they say there are exceptions where is is also used in a statement of eternal truth.) The similarity between "beon" and "become" is complete coincidence: "become" is just the "be-" prefix (related to the preposition "by") plus the verb "come". —Angr 19:20, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The OED in the article for be v. notes this "...OE. béo-n to become, come to be Of the stem es-, OE. (like the oldest extant Teutonic) possessed only the present tenses, indicative and subjunctive (orig. optative), all the other parts being supplied from the stem wes-, pa. tense was, which, though still a distinct and complete vb. in Gothic, was in OE. only supplemental to es-, the two constituting the substantive verb am-was. Béon, be, was still in OE. a distinct verb (having all the present, but no past tenses) meaning to ‘become, come to be’, and thus often serving as a future tense to am-was..." Omahapubliclibrary (talk) 16:31, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * To clarify, with regard to your final question: Hu eart þu? is the way to go. Similarly, if you want to wish someone good health, you would—see The Lord of the Rings—use the imperative Wes þu hal (as in wassail), not Beo þu hal. Deor (talk) 03:39, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks for all the help, eall gé. That answers my question quite nicely. To sum up, in Old English beon was still had its own distinct semantic meaning of a more permanent "to be", but the verb wesan had merged semantically with sindon so that they were practically the same verb together (which explains why people stopped using the present forms of wesan; the present forms of sindon were taking their place), conveying a more temporary "to be". Also, I get the impression that the meaning of these two verbs only contrasted in the present and imperative, because only beon was used for the future tenses, and only sindon/wesan was used for the past tenses. Jonathan talk 16:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Help me find Japanese engineering book
I am trying to find a general Japanese engineering book. I´ve tried the Science RD with not too much success. Can someone with good Japanese knowledge tell if here in Amazon.jp are there any good works?--Mr.K. (talk) 19:32, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Really, you would need someone with good Japanese AND a good knowledge of engineering to tell if they were good or not. For somebody like me, who only translates engineering texts, it would be impossible to know whether the books in question would be 'good' or not, or even what you are looking for (i.e. what sub-field in engineering - even though you say 'general', this may be relevant. Correct me if I am wrong, but, hey, it just shows how much I know if I am wrong!).--KageTora - the RefDesker formerly known as ChokinBako (talk) 20:35, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Librarians should have no problem finding a good book. I suppose someone with good Japanese would have a good chance of finding something descent. He could take a look at what books are used at Japanese universities at the introductory courses, for example. Mr.K. (talk) 10:31, 29 November 2008 (UTC)