Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 October 4

= October 4 =

I double dog dare ya
What it means to double dog dare someone to do something? Are the consequences of declining a double dog dare somehow different than those for a single dog dare? What about for the issuer of the dare, if the dare is accepted? Is it possible for the recipient to escalate a double dog dare to triple dog before accepting it, and does this happen often, or is the original dare typically withdrawn at that point? Thank you for any enlightenment. 207.241.238.217 (talk) 06:51, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, we can't answer legal questions at the reference desk. —Angr 07:52, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Nor can we help someone to abuse an animal's rights. BrainyBabe (talk) 08:26, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Someone's been watching A Christmas Story. Deor (talk) 11:54, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think these answers do justice to the question.


 * As I understand it, relying on old memories, "I double dog dare you to do X" means "I threaten unspecified but DIRE consequences if you do X.


 * If there is such a thing as a single dog dare, I don't recall it. Higher multiples of dog dares are certainly possible and were used. "I triple dog dare you." "I quadruple dog dare you."


 * Once a discussion went into dog dares, a common outcome would be an exchange of blows and a bleeding nose.


 * With all deference to BrainyBabe, I do not think the SPCA was concerned with double dog dares. But her name illustrates the value of alliteration, a very important feature of the name "double dog dare".


 * In regard to A Christmas Story, the term "double dog dare" goes back much further than 1983, when that entertainment was released.


 * Wanderer57 (talk) 02:32, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * But, of course, that movie takes place in the 1950s. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:03, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't; according to A Christmas Story it probably takes place in 1939. Anyway, I disagree that "I double dog dare you to do X" means "I threaten unspecified but DIRE consequences if you do X". I think it means "If you do X, I will keep or gain respect for you, and if you don't, I will regard you as a coward." —Angr 13:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Ned Flanders might be able to answer this question. He's well known for his tmetic utterings.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

My reference to A Christmas Story was not intended to imply that "double dog dare" was coined for the film, merely to point out that the OP's questions seem to have been inspired by the flagpole scene in that film, in which Jean Shepherd's narration involves some of the finer points of the etiquette of dares (such as whether it's permissible to escalate directly from a double dog dare to a triple dog dare without uttering a plain triple dare). Last night, I looked through my copies of Shepherd's In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories to see which story contained the scene, and it was nowhere to be found; so I guess Shepherd or one of the other writers came up with it for the film script. It certainly sounds like echt Shepherd, though. Deor (talk) 13:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the responses. I hadn't heard of that movie but have enjoyed some other work of Jean Shepherd so I may try to check the movie out. I heard the term "double dog dare" in some recent news commentary about a US presidential campaign speech (I forget which one) and I had to wonder how that was different from a single dog dare, so decided to ask here, etc. To BrainyBabe: I share your concern about animal cruelty issues but I'm fairly sure that no animals are harmed in an $$n$$-dog dare for nonnegative integer $$n$$. Dares involving fractional or negative dogs can of course be gruesome, and can result in dire retribution (see Hounds of Tindalos). We won't even talk about dares involving Schrödinger's dog (zero and one dogs simultaneously). 207.241.238.217 (talk) 11:54, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

How young are young people?
Following on from the discussion on teenagers....

The phrase "young people" is used in British English almost to the exclusion of "teen", "teenager", "adolescent", etc. It is inherently ambiguous, in that it can refer to young adults, economically active people in their 20s (Young people have a hard time getting on the housing ladder); to minors (Young people must stay in education until they are 16); or to no clear age at all (Young people are responsible for most crime).

When did the phrase first ocme to be used in this all-covering and thus dubious way? Is it a euphemism? Is it used in this way in other dialects of English? What other phrases are used instead elsewhere? BrainyBabe (talk) 08:25, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you may be confusing ordinary, demotic or formal English with journalese. "Young people" in this ambiguous sense sounds just like the kind of lazy phraseology journalists employ. Malcolm XIV (talk) 13:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it is, but it is also the UK government phrase of choice (along with "black and minority ethnic"). And from national and local government use, it appears everywhere in "services for young people".  Does this include those of age? I do not know. BrainyBabe (talk) 17:00, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not journalese, and I think the inherent ambiguity is what makes it so useful. A 19 year old is a teenager, but not all his/her friends will be.  And neither can you call the group "students", since some won't be.  So "young people" covers it.  12 year olds aren't teenagers, either, but might need to be discussed in any education context.  And so on...
 * I say "not journalese", because I've regularly heard it used in conversation, often to refer to a specific group context. (Club, church group, family grouping, crowd of friends etc) "What are the young people up to this weekend?" "The young people are organising a ski trip" etc.  Gwinva (talk) 19:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * So a 30 year old and her 12 year old daughter are both "young people"? It's a muddle! BrainyBabe (talk) 20:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, they are, but in different contexts. The daughter would not refer to her mother as a young person, but her grandmother might.  Journos would not use young person as the primary description of anyone.  You wouldn't read "The shop was held up by a young person", because even journos understand that such blatant ambiguity is unuseful.  But they might get that label later on in the text, only after they'd already made it clear at least roughly how old the alleged offender was.  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

"Indian-American"?
Is there a short and unmistakable way to name an immigrant to the USA from India (like Apu)? --KnightMove (talk) 10:01, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I would say "Indian-American". The Jade Knight (talk) 10:14, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, and this would not be confused with American Indian? --KnightMove (talk) 10:38, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Not generally, though, if you want to be really explicit, you would say "Indian American from India", or, if you're young: "Indian American, like from India".  The Jade Knight (talk) 10:56, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * We even have an article on Indian Americans. It says the U.S. Census Bureau prefers "Asian Indian" to avoid ambiguity. —Angr 11:48, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You could escape by making it more specific: Bengali-American, Tamil-American. —Tamfang (talk) 15:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Briefest/most efficient written language
Which language expresses information with the fewest characters, with (or transliterated into) the Roman alphabet? I know it depends on the topic because some languages have more words for certain things, depends on the speaker, etc., but in general. (For example, "volo" is more efficient than "I want" or "quiero.") Thanks. 72.88.210.96 (talk) 17:07, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * In his book Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen made the case that Chinese is the most efficient language, though his standard for efficiency may have been a little different from yours. For example, Jespersen didn't just look at the number of words used, but also thought that languages in which speakers must remember a lot of grammatical cases (rosa, rosae, rosae, rosam, rosa in Latin) are less efficient than those in which the word always stays the same (rose in English), because the word order makes clear if it's the subject of a sentence or the object, or something else. It's been a while since I read that book, but if I remember it correctly Jespersen also had a look at different translations of the bible and found that the Chinese version needed far less words. D AVID Š ENEK 18:27, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

The Hawaiian language only uses 12 letters from the Latin alphabet, plus the ʻOkina, a glottal stop transliterated by an apostrophe. Little Red Riding Hood  talk  01:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, but with only 12 letters, you have to assemble some really long strings of them to make up the rest of the language. --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 02:11, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I supposed one way of finding out would be to obtain all the different-language translations of a long novel, say the ubiquitous War and Peace, and see which translation produced the fewest pages, after correcting for font size, page size etc. Not saying this is super-practical, but .... -- JackofOz (talk) 02:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd say you hit the nail on the head when you say it depends on the topic. Languages all contain their own unique shorthands, and when a speaker can utilise these shorthands, it saves a lot more time than if he had to explain every concept he was using. Ninebucks (talk) 04:48, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Homework help
Doing homework for my English class I came upon a sentence for which I cannot give a correct answer within the parameters given.
 * In this way, you can begin to unlearn a negative piece of body language - and if you suffer from headaches, you should find yourself suffering from them much ______.

At the end I need to write in the last word. The solution that comes immediately to my mind is "less often". Problem is it has to be only one word. And I really cant think of any one-word solution. Of course I will ask my teacher next time I have classes, but considering the rest of the exercise was IMO pretty easy this one problem is driving me nuts. &mdash; Shinhan  &lt;&thinsp; talk &thinsp;&gt; 17:09, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think "less" on its own would be fine. --Richardrj talkemail 17:13, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Infrequenterly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.120.111.254 (talk) 19:22, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * "less" does look like a good solution. Is that a short form of "less often", "less frequently" and similar?
 * But "Infrequenterly"? Is that a misspelling of infrequently? &mdash; Shinhan  &lt;&thinsp; talk &thinsp;&gt; 20:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I suspect "infrequenterly" was intended as a joke. Myself, I'd have said "infrequentlier", or simply "rarelier". (Again, as a joke.) More seriously, "seldomer" would work. I don't think I've ever used that word myself, but it does appear in print. —Angr 21:09, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * No, "less" is not short for "less frequently". It just means you are suffering less.  It could mean that the headaches are less frequent or less serious or both.  --Anonymous, 04:39 UTC, October 5, 2008.


 * Please share with us your teacher's answer and also the connection between body language and headaches. Wanderer57 (talk) 02:39, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The text talks about smiling and frowning. &mdash; Shinhan  &lt;&thinsp; talk &thinsp;&gt; 09:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Ayatollah means...?
I know it means "Sign(s) of God" but what part(s) though? I was reading "Aya" means "Sign(s) of" is this true? So, does this mean "tollah" somehow means "God"? I just need a short, simple & correct breakdown of the word, that's all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by L3tt3rz (talk • contribs) 22:09, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * See this article. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * That doesn't really say anything about the grammar. "Ayat" is "signs" but the T is not pronounced unless it is part of a phrase, as it is here. Grammatically it is really "ayatu" with the nominative ending -u, which is sometimes also pronounced -o. I think in Persian -o is standard. So in the phrase "signs of Allah" the "al-" part, which is really the definite article, takes on the preceding vowel, in this case -u, and it is pronounced "ayatullah" (or "ayatollah"). This kind of phrase is called an idafa in Arabic grammar. I hope that makes sense; maybe AnonMoos or someone else with better Arabic can explain it more easily. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Āya or āyat are both singular in āyatollāh (sign of god). O or U in the middle just conjoins the two parts, āyat-o/u-(a)llāh. "Signs" (plural) is āyāt, a little different from āyat. --Omidinist (talk) 08:12, 5 October 2008 (UTC)


 * For a bit more clarity, the word is آية الله in Arabic (but written آیت‌الله in Persian). It is made up of two words. The first word is آية, āya, which is the singular word for 'sign' (the plural, 'signs', is آيات āyāt). The '-a' at the end of the singular word here becomes '-at' when followed by a vowel (the spelling doesn't change in Arabic, but does in Persian). Also, in Classical Arabic, case endings are added to words. In this example, آية is in the nominative case, which means it ends in an '-u', making its pronunciation āyatu. The second word is الله, allāh, which means 'God'. When this word follows one that ends in a vowel, the initial 'a-' disappears in pronunciation. Thus, āya+allāh becomes āyatu+llāh, or even āyatullāh, meaning 'the sign of God'. In some pronunciations, especially in standard Persian, the short '-u-' in the middle sounds like an '-o-'. Thus, the standard Persian transliteration, whence the English, is âyatollâh. — Gareth Hughes (talk) 19:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)