Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 April 28

= April 28 =

Redundant
I'm an American who doesn't understand the way that the word "redundant" is used in British English to mean that someone has been laid off from their job. I know that redundant means that someone/something isn't needed because there is already someone/something doing whatever job already but the use of the word doesn't seem to fit in this context. Is the word used because person A is already doing the same job as person B and therefore person B is seen as redundant? Am I on the right track? This seems like a bit of a stretch of the definition since I see it as there not being enough work for person B to stay busy. And also, why would someone be "made redundant" if they were laid off? Wouldn't they "be redundant" and thus force the lay off? Dismas |(talk) 00:11, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Being made redundant means there are no jobs for them to do, and so they are laid off, usually due to company cut-backs. It is different from simply being redundant, as that would, in British English, imply still being employed but having nothing to do. When a person has been made redundant, they don't say "I am redundant" at the next job interview, as it would imply they are useless, they would say "I was made redundant" or "I am unemployed". "Between jobs at the moment" is another one, albeit a euphemistic way of saying all of the above.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 00:35, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry but I guess I still don't understand the made part. How does being laid off make them redundant?  Dismas |(talk) 00:45, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Think of it as meaning "declared", like when someone is promoted and says "They've made me a manager." --Anonymous, 01:46 UTC, April 28, 2009.


 * But when you are "made a manager" that means that you are now/currently a manager. If you're "made redundant" you are not now/currently redundant.  You were but are not now.  There is the root of my problem with the phrase.  Dismas |(talk) 03:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * You were redundant for about one minute until they laid you off. Or it's just an illogical euphemism. Take your pick. --Anon, 03:55 UTC, April 28.


 * I see what the OP is saying. Being laid off doesn't make one redundant, being redundant makes one laid off. But in British English we use the two phrases to mean the same thing, but 'made redundant' is actually a slightly more formal way of saying 'got laid off', I think. I think the difference is more that factory workers and the like would use 'got laid off' while office workers would use 'got made redundant', at least in my part of England (North-West).--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 02:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Exactly! Your second sentence hits the nail on the head.  Dismas |(talk) 03:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The concept of redundancy has a specific legal meaning in UK law (as I understand it - IANAL), where employers and employees have certain statutory duties and rights, and there are rules about levels of how much "redundancy pay" someone is eligible for. See this government site for example. On the linguistic point: as others have said, this is just the way people use the word in the UK, illogical though it is. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It's possible we use it in this way because people find out that they will be made redundant before they are in fact redundant (usually), i.e. actually still having work to do because the machines haven't arrived yet, for example--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC), so they say 'I am being made redundant' (future tense).--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * In UK employment, it's the position that is redundant and the person is not required. This is an important distinction. Because the position is redundant, a person cannot then be recruited to fill that position as it is deemed not to exist. There are legal penalties to back this up. This was brought in to stop unscrupulous employers declaring their workforce "redundant", which attracts Government assistance, and then re-employing new staff (usually at lower rates of pay) to do these jobs. The phrase "I've been made redundant" implies that the loss of the position is not the fault of the employee (who would, in that case, have been fired, resulting in loss of benefits), but the fault of the employer (which doesn't result in loss of benefits or face). --TammyMoet (talk) 12:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Mandarin Pronunciation of "@"
Just a thought, but considering Mandarin Chinese has no syllables ending in 't', how is the symbol '@' pronunced? I would assume that in Cantonese it would be 'at' like in English. Japanese also doesn't have syllables ending in 't', and they call it 'atto-maaku' ('at-sign').--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

It's usually referred to as 圈a or 花a, although sometimes phonetically transliterated as 爱特. Aas217 (talk) 11:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That makes sense. Thanks!--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:54, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * See At sign. -- Wavelength (talk) 12:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See also http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/@. -- Wavelength (talk) 13:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * [I removed the wikicode. -- Wavelength (talk) 13:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)]


 * Excellent! Thank you for that link. I was going to ask that, too.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 13:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably depends on the individual, the amount of exposure to foreign languages/non-Mandarin dialects, and (therefore) their ability to approximate the "t" ending. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:09, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Plural or singular?
Which of the following versions of this question seems more correct?

Where was ancient and medieval Europe?

Where were ancient and medieval Europe?

Thanks. Marco polo (talk) 12:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd say "was" since you're really only talking about one entity (Europe) at different stages in its life. —Angr 13:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you expecting two different answers? An answer for ancient, and an answer for medieval?  In which case, using "was" makes it sound like you are expecting only one answer.   Mae din \talk 13:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the question itself is redundant, as ancient and mediaeval Europe were both in the same place as modern Europe, in a geographical sense. It should be 'where is Europe?'.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 13:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That depends on context - it might be metaphorical: "Where were ancient and medieval Europe when the pyramids of Egypt, already thousands of years old, were gently sinking into the sands?" (for example). Tonywalton Talk 13:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Of course that's right, KageTora, but I need to pose the question in this form for editorial reasons. It is not a metaphorical question.  Thanks to Angr and Maedin.  Tonywalton, can you explain why you chose the plural?  Marco polo (talk) 13:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * TonyWalton's answer is good. If you are treating them as two separate entities in two separate periods of time, then of course the plural would be warranted. If you treat them as a single entity - in fact, I can't think of an example - then it would be singular. I'd go with the plural, unless you can supply more context.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 14:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Because in my ficticious instance you're talking about two things which are distinct over the passage of time; "Ancient Europe" and "Mediæval Europe" (even though in the example I gave the two aren't further distinguished). You would however ask "where was Europe when the pyramids…", Europe in that instance being treated as a single entity". Given more context (below) the singular looks appropriate; as Angr says, it's parsed as "Ancient-and-Mediæval" Europe. Tonywalton Talk 15:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The question is placed next to a locator map showing ancient and medieval Europe on a world map as a single area of color (not including remote regions now part of northeastern Russia and northernmost Scandinavia that did not figure in Europe's ancient or medieval history). Marco polo (talk) 14:12, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That sounds very much like the singular is needed then. You have one map with one area of color designating [Ancient and Medieval Europe] as a single entity. —Angr 14:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * How about 'Where was Europe in Ancient and Mediaeval times?'--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 14:29, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I have the impression that plural Europes is needed if the plural verb were to be used. Am I wrong? Pallida  Mors  16:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * You can have a plural verb with a singular noun (other than the collective) when the noun is preceded by adjectives that are shorthand (not the correct linguistic term) for a longer compound. For example, "Both eastern and western Europe were mainly Christian" or "Both eastern and western Europe use alphabets derived from archaic Greek alphabets."  In these cases "eastern and western Europe" stand for "eastern Europe and western Europe", so they amount to a dual subject.  This is why a plural verb sounds natural with "ancient and medieval Europe".  It suggests that we mean "ancient Europe and medieval Europe", which would call for a plural subject.  In this case, though, I think I mean "Europe in ancient and medieval times" although I can't quite use that wording.  Marco polo (talk) 18:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I see. Thanks for your explanation. :) Pallida  Mors  19:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It's really not a matter of which is more correct, but rather the plurality of subject:
 * You can say
 * "Where was ancient and medieval Europe?"
 * or
 * "Where were ancient and medieval Europes?".68.148.149.184 (talk) 05:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

German or Chinese translation
I'm researching a city in China's Guangdong province, once spelled Tak Hing, now Deqing. We don't have an article about it, but de:WP does. The city lies along a river (called the "West River" in my sources from the early 20th century), and the de:WP article gives the Chinese name and a German translation; however, several other rivers are also named (assuming "Fluss" = "River"). Can someone give me the name of the river along which the city lies, according to this article? I don't care about the other "_____-Fluss" names. Nyttend (talk) 14:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In the second sentence of the article, "Er liegt am Sui-Fluss" means "It lies on the Sui River." Deor (talk) 14:05, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * My Google Search gave a river called the 'Xi Jiang' which does, in fact, mean West River, and is in Guangdong. 西江 in Chinese.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 14:11, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, now that I've read Nyttend's related question on the humanities desk, it's clear that the "West River" is the Xi River. Deor (talk) 14:18, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much! I missed "Er liegt am Sui-Fluss" in the intro; although I don't speak German, I can understand a few basic words enough that, if I'd seen that, I wouldn't have wondered.  Now if we could find the location of that city I asked about on the Humanities Desk :-)  Nyttend (talk) 15:09, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Sui might be a Toisan pronunciation of Mandarin Xi, remember. Steewi (talk) 00:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

a female mouse is a doe?
Is a female mouse a doe and male a buck and baby mouse a kitten?--Drumstickmajor (talk) 17:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/kids/animals/malefemalechild/. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The answer for horses seemed way out of wack to me so I'd distrust the rest.I've never heard them called anything but baby mice when I used to breed fancy mice.I've just looked everywhere and can only find "baby mice"hotclaws 07:31, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I used to breed hamsters and mice, and we just called the male ones males and the female ones females, and the babies were called babies. It seems silly to call them kittens, as you have suggested, since actual kittens eat them.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hamsters? So do their parents. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 03:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That would be buck, doe and pup. Exploding Boy (talk) 06:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Naming a baby boy
Has any baby in recent history been named Michael Schmickel? And if so, WTF were his parents thinking of when they thought it up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.107.29 (talk) 18:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, there seem to be a fair number of people with that name, so probably. However, we're not telepathic, so you'd have to ask his parents. Clarityfiend (talk) 19:20, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Much better than being called Number 16 Bus Shelter!--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 19:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * See Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This is actually being discussed on the Humanities Desk.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 20:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * At the risk of sounding stupid, what's wrong with that name? TomorrowTime (talk) 21:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Because is Yiddish replacing the first sound of a word with 'schm' means the same as 'schmuck' which means 'shit' in Yiddish. It's an insult. Like "McDonald's SchmuckDonald's" and so on. Even I know that and I'm British!--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 21:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Um, ah. "Schmuck" (from the German "schmuck", jewelery) means "penis" in Yiddish, and is used rather like "prick" is in English. Which reminds me: The circus was in town, and Schmendrick got himself a job riding a camel through the city for publicity. Schmendrick had to heed a call of nature, so he tied up the camel and used the facility. When he returned, the camel was gone. He reported the loss to the police, who asked him a series of questions about the stolen item. When they asked him what sex the camel was, he was at rather a loss. "I don't know! I don't know!" Then suddenly he said, "Oh, wait, it was a male camel." The police officer inquired, "Oh, how did you figure that?" "Well, all day, I heard people saying, 'Look at the schmuck on that camel!'"--jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 05:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * From Online Etymology Dictionary: Schmuck, "contemptible person," 1892, from E.Yiddish shmok, lit. "penis," from Old Pol. smok, "grass snake, dragon." Not the same word as Ger. schmuck, "jewelry, adornments". &mdash; Kpalion(talk) 19:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See Shm-reduplication. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * But surely the shm-reduplication of "Michael" is "Schmichael", not "Schmickel", which doesn't even rhyme. L ANTZY T ALK 02:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Having personally known a Michael Hunt, I can attest that parents do not always think things through when naming children. If you need an explanation, I can provide one.  Just use the most common nickname for Michael and say it out loud.  It will become all too clear... --Jayron32. talk . contribs  02:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * There were (believe me!) both a Michael Hunt and a Warrick Hunt at my catholic boys' school, so I can attest to that.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 02:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

CUm
What is cum-bravado?68.148.149.184 (talk) 19:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * 'cum' is Latin for 'with' and bravado means bravery.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 19:57, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The Encarta dictionary shows this word as having entered mainstream English, meaning (somewhat beyond KageTora's reply): "together with, along with, in combination with, or functioning as." In this particular case, you've cited the source incompletely: the phrase (entirely hyphenated) was "black-humor-cum-bravado" = a grim sort of humor functioning as a posture of bravery on the soldiers' part. The first hyphen is probably superfluous grammatically but was added to connect all four words and prevent just the sort of disjointed excerpting you've done. (I should know; I wrote it.) -- Deborahjay (talk) 21:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * As a non native (in English cum Latin): On a more literal level, it may refer to the courage of 500 million sperm who happily swim off to meet statistical oblivion.  Of course, present company is excluded, though the probability of us all existing concurrently is infinitesimal cum luck.  If sperm where any brighter, they would calculate their survival chances and stay home.  What pity their brightness even diminishes with old age (as this posting clearly documents)--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Comical, yet irrelevant answer.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 22:08, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Word for a certain type of addiction
Is there a word for someone who was addicted to something, for example drugs or video games or alcohol, but has seen the light, so to speak, and advocates rehabilitation for others who are addicted or will potentially be addicted (as in, "don't even start"), but still has pangs for the addiction and still even does it (like some so-called Rock Stars)? This is an extremely specific question, I know, but it does seem to happen. Besides 'hypocrite' and stuff like that, I'd like a word that can be used in a psychiatric sense.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 21:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The articles on alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous speak of "remission" and "recovering [alcoholic]"; do they help? Tonywalton Talk 21:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Not really. I am thinking more of people who "say this is hell from experience" but keep doing it anyway.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 22:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I know precisely what you mean. It's a common affectation among smokers to say 'Don't do this', or to refer to cigarettes as 'cancer sticks'. It's similar but not quite the same as preemptive self-criticism, as when a housewife warns everyone that her turkey is dry (an attempt to head off criticism by others). For the smoker, it's more about advertising a certain indifference to one's own health while still feigning concern for the health of others. Which, if you think about it, conforms precisely to a certain ideal of male behavior. Many smokers like to emphasize their awareness of the danger of smoking, because if they know that it's harmful, then presumably they continue not out of ignorance or weakness of will but out of sheer bad-assed indifference, which is more appealing to potential sexual partners. Also, since knowledge implies volition, it creates an impression that one is choosing freely to be addicted. L ANTZY T ALK 00:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't call it an affectation. "Just don't smoke" is still very good advice, even if it comes from someone who was shortly to die of smoking-caused lung cancer.  Parents who routinely require a higher standard of behaviour from their children than they're prepared to exhibit themselves ("do as I say, not as I do") are pretty much a waste of time, and usually produce kids with serious issues.  But they're still mistake-prone humans, and it sometimes happens even in the best families.  Any parent who smokes and feels they just can't stop, but doesn't make an active attempt to guide their kids away from ever starting and making the same mistake they did, is derelict.  Some parents take the view "I know it's dangerous, but who am I, a smoker, to tell anyone else not to smoke?" - they need to sort out what's more important: protecting their kids' health, or not wanting to be seen as a hypocrite.   I'd generally say that anyone who regularly operates under the "do as I say, not as I do" rule is exhibiting a lack of integrity.  But there are many exceptions to this: what right-minded parent would allow their 7-year old son to drive a car, for example?  --  JackofOz (talk) 01:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * We're talking about two completely different behaviors. On the one hand there are addicts who acknowledge their addiction as a form of bravado, which is certainly an amoral affectation; on the other hand, as you mention, there are addicts who acknowledge their addiction in order to make cautionary examples of themselves, either out of principle (in the case of Yul Brynner) or simply as a gesture of responsibility, a half-assed, self-serving disclaimer. I'm referring to those smokers who, rather than suffer the genuine responsibility of not smoking in the presence of children, simply say 'Don't smoke, kids!' and then indulge themselves with a "clear conscience". That's certainly an affectation, even if it is disguised as good advice. L ANTZY T ALK 02:26, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * So, 'affectation' would be the word? Hmm...--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 16:39, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Not if you were serious about finding something which could be used in a psychiatric sense. For that kind of terminology, it really would make a difference whether the person was truly addicted to something with immediate negative consequences, such as heroin; theoretical consequences in the future, such as tobacco; or with only social consequences as with video games. If would also make a big difference whether the person was actually using, or abstaining and experiencing cravings. If the person still engages in the behavior but altruistically warns others not to, the technical term might be something in the area of resistance as psychoanalytically defined. Other possibilities would be "in denial" if the person is using, or "sublimation" if they are not. Check out the various terms for psychological defense mechanisms--you'll find one you like!Rose bartram (talk) 00:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, the reason I ask this question is more personal than I made out in the original question. I work with kids, and I smoke, but I never smoke in the presence of kids. I always go outside and find a 'quiet corner' in which to enjoy my coffin nails, but the kids have found where that quiet little corner is, and they keep coming out to join me in my little respite from teaching, turning my quiet little corner into a noisy little corner, and I then have to tell them not to smoke, at which point they ask me why I am doing it. So, what am I?--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * A normal human being. Everyone who has or works with children wants them to turn out better than one did oneself. —Angr 11:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Grammatical gender - useless?
I checked the article on "grammatical gender" briefly but was unable to determine the reason for maintaining the assignment of genders to nouns. What purpose does it serve? If none, can't they be dropped? Seans Potato Business 23:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * There are a couple. One purpose is to maintain two separate classes of nouns that can be distinguished. It saves a certain amount of space. If you have two things that are distinguished only by gender, you don't need two different word shapes, but just the one word-shape distinguished by an alternation of vowels at the end of the word (for example, in Spanish or Italian). Another is the maintenance of gender distinction in animate nouns. Instead of having separate words for hen and rooster, or saying male chicken and female chicken (as in Chinese), you simply have gallo and galla (in Spanish). The third reason is that the loss of grammatical gender is a large change for a language. Languages lose them, for sure - English did - but it's not particularly frequent. Steewi (talk) 00:26, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Minor correction: The Spanish term is gallina, not galla. Pallida  Mors  16:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Another issue is that in many languages, gender isn't random. Generally, words are assigned a gender based on the general class of objects they work from.  For example, in French most clothing and food words are feminine.  Such distinctions provide an additional layer of meaning to nouns that genderless languages like English do not readily have.  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  00:46, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Grammatical gender helps listeners (and readers) of a language recognize words faster because it gives them more clues about what an upcoming word is going to be. So, if a French speaker hears "belle voix" and an English speaker hears "beautiful voice," the French speaker will recognize the word "voix" faster because they they have been clued in by the word "belle" that they should expect a feminine noun. The English speaker doesn't get any sort of clues that narrow down the range of nouns that could follow "beautiful," so it takes longer for them to recognize the following word. (The phenomenon is called "gender priming." You can do a Google scholar search to find abstracts on the topic.) The tradeoff of this system is that it makes a speaker do more mental work to come up with adjectives and nouns in the first place, since they have to come up with the correct forms of each word to agree with the gender. So languages which have a lot of grammatical gender agreement put more cognitive work on the production end, but give a break to the listener / reader. And languages which have very little gender marking (like English) assign more cognitive work to the listener / reader. Katya (talk) 01:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * But 'the reason' for maintaining the assignment of genders isn't any of these. It's the same as 'the reason' for pretty well any other feature of natural languages: because that's how that particular language works (at a particular stage in its history). Why has English retained a distinct form for the present 3rd person singular of verbs ('walks') when it has lost all other personal inflections of verbs? Why do all European languages insist that you keep deciding whether you are talking about one, or more than one, of almost anything you mention, when many Asian languages dispense with this distinction unless you specifically want to make it? Why does English say 'It snows' (or more usually 'It is snowing') while other languages use the equivalent of 'Snows' or 'Snow snows'? You can give historical descriptions of how these differences arose, you can make hypotheses about why they arose, and in some cases you can discover psychological or neurological data about their consequences, but you can't explain them in any predictive way. And a speaker of French or German or Arabic does not have the choice of whether to use genders (well, they do, but they would be speaking a very strange form of French, German or Arabic, that many would regard as 'wrong'). --ColinFine (talk) 22:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Right, but a particular language doesn't keep "working" a particular way unless there's some sort of an underlying cognitive advantage to it. Katya (talk) 13:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Algebraist 14:19, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * To expand on Algebraist's reply, Katya's statement is at first sight plausible, but I suggest that it is wrong. Communication of information is only one of the purposes of language: others are communication of status, and cohesion of social groups (both including insiders and excluding outsiders). Cant may sacrifice 'cognitive advantage' - sometimes deliberately - in the interests of either secrecy or social cohesion. And it's hard to imagine what cognitive advantage accrues from a distinction between 'give' and 'gives' that would not be even greater by distinguishing between '(I) give', '(we) give', '(you) give' and '(they) give'. --ColinFine (talk) 11:29, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

to watch/see/hear the concert?
An article has a video clip with a concert. When pressing play you both hear music and see the musicians play.

My question is:

Is it called:
 * to watch the concert?
 * to see the concert?
 * to hear the concert?

Thank you for helping. Fanoftheworld (talk) 23:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It may be different in Brit. English but as an American, I've seen the first two more than the last one. Dismas |(talk) 23:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Also as an American, I've mostly heard people say "see", as in "I saw [band] last night." I haven't ever heard "hear" when referring to a concert. Xenon54 (talk) 00:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * In the case of a video clip with audio, I would definitely go with "watch". In the case of an audio clip, I would go with "listen", not "hear". L ANTZY T ALK 00:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for helping. Fanoftheworld (talk) 06:51, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If I recall correctly from a discussion in War and Peace, peasants watch a concert because it's all a spectacle to them, while the la-di-da upper crust listen to a concert because they're there for the music. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

With things like movies and TV shows, "see" is the word for viewing the whole thing (viewed as a single event), while "watch" is the word for the activity of viewing (viewed as an extended event over time). For example: "Have you seen the new Star Trek movie?" "Only the first hour! I was in the cinema watching it when the power went off." For radio, "hear" and "listen" work the same way.

I think for a video clip, even if it's of a concert, it has to be "see/watch" rather than "listen/hear". So if the question is how to caption the button, it should be "Press here to see" the clip.

--Anonymous, 01:53 UTC, April 30, 2009.
 * Because my father grew up in the era of listening to programs on the radio, even as an adult he would occasionally speak of "listening to a TV show" rather than watching it. —Angr 06:09, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That's fascinating. I had no idea that anyone did that. L ANTZY T ALK 06:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)