Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 4

= August 4 =

Paragraph numbering
Say we turn to a new page in a book. At the top of the page, the last paragraph from the page before continues. A few lines later, another paragraph begins. For sake of simplicity, there are four paragraphs on that page that are both started and ended; that is to say, the page begins with a page-fractured paragraph, and ends with the last line of a paragraph.

Now, what exactly is the rule for the numbering of these paragraphs? If I want to quote the first new paragraph of that page, what paragraph number is it? Is it 1, or perhaps 2 because of the fractured paragraph before it? Is there any agreed-upon rule, or is irritatingly different between, say, APA, MLA, yadda-e-yadda?-- The Ninth Bright Shiner 00:00, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, those fragments of paragraphs are known as widows and orphans. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, a widow occurs only when a single, unfilled (final) line of a paragraph stands alone at the top of a page or column. But Orannis, why would one need to cite a specific paragraph? Usually, citing a page number is sufficient in a reference, and that's all that's called for in the style guides you mention (which is why I think Vimescarrot's suggestion below is unwise; if you're quoting material that's on page 96, you don't want to be citing page 95.) If I wanted for some reason to refer to a specific paragraph, perhaps in giving instructions to a printer, I'd say something like "the first [or second or third …] full paragraph on page 110." If I wanted to be even more specific, I'd refer to "page 110, line 15" or similar. Deor (talk) 12:20, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you quote it as being the last paragraph from the page before. So if you want to quote from a broken paragraph at the top of page 96, you instead say "paragraph 5, page 95". Vimescarrot (talk) 08:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think there are any formal rules for this. If the document is one that is meant to be cited by paragraph, it will have numbered paragraphs.  In speaking, however (e.g., among a group of editors or proofreaders), my experience is that people differentiate, referring to "the carryover paragraph at the top of page 95" or "the second full paragraph on page 95."  John M Baker (talk) 19:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, confusions confusions. Well, I'm not really making references per se, such that you'd need those style guides, but I thought there might be some sort of Ye Olde Grande Association of the Englishe Language that actually gives some sort of completely agreed-upon outlook on it. I could always cite the line number, but I was just curious about paragraphs. Thanks for the info, though!-- The Ninth Bright Shiner 19:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

"bless you" in Japanese
When I was studying Japanese at my university a girl said "bless you" in response to another student sneezing. That sparked the conversation of how to say "Gesundheit" or "bless you" in Japanese to which our Japanese teachers responded "erm, we don't know- I guess we don't say anything.. I think" after a long pause. Is it true that they don't have any equivalent phrase, or were my teachers mistaken since they didn't seem quite sure? --85.220.18.92 (talk) 05:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It's true that Japanese don't say anything and don't have any equivalent phrase. But if you want to say something, say お大事に/odaijini. Oda Mari (talk) 06:01, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * What does that mean? Vimescarrot (talk) 08:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * According to this it means "take care of yourself." Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 08:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's worth pointing out that "gesund" means "healthy" and "Gesundheit" is translated as "health", although its literal translation is probably more like "healthiness". However, English speakers use "Gesundheit" as if it were literally equivalent to "bless you". Among the Romance languages, in Spanish, for example, "salud" is the preferred expression, and that also means "health". It's English that has this "bless you" (or "God bless you" in times past) variation, which is why "thank you" is the proper response when someone says "Gesundheit". Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 08:40, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The French equivalent is "à tes souhaits" or "à vos souhaits" (lit. to your wishes). I'll try and get around to updating the article mentioned below. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 12:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Can't salud also mean (spiritual) 'salvation'? The reason for a blessing, as everyone knows (possibly falsely), is that you can sneeze your soul away, or some such. —Tamfang (talk) 15:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * (ec)The Japanese, or Asians in general, are stereotypically more polite than westerners. Americans tend to say something when coughing or sneezing, such as, "Excuse me," and the "bless you" response to sneezing is an old habit. But one school of thought (which I believe in) is that comments on either side merely call further attention to it. And that might be why the Japanese basically ignore it rather than saying something. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 08:33, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

You Language Deskers could helpfully expand Bless you, which is still rather anglocentric, despite the efforts of a few. --Dweller (talk) 11:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course it's "anglocentric"; the article is about an English-language expression. The place to add equivalents in other languages is bless you. +Angr 12:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It should also cover "bestowing blessings upon others sneezing" in more languages and cultures, even though the phrase is English. It could have the section "Equivalent phrases in other cultures". --85.220.29.58 (talk) 14:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * But it isn't an article on Responses to sneezing, it's an article on the English expression Bless you. +Angr 15:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * In some languages, the same expression is used for proposing a toast and as a response to sneezing. That's true for Slavic lanuages, e.g. Polish na zdrowie (lit. "to health"), or, AFAIK, Turkish. — Kpalion(talk) 17:26, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

-ear- pronounced -ar-
Offhand, I can think of only four English words (excluding plurals etc) where -ear- is pronounced -ar-
 * hearken
 * heart (+ derivatives such as hearten, heartfelt, hearty etc)
 * hearth
 * the surname Kearney (some Kearneys pronounce it to rhyme with Carney, although others rhyme it with "fear knee").

Are there any others? Why so few? -- JackofOz (talk) 08:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I can't answer the question, but to add to the confusion I can think of another four words where the sound is -air- : bear, pear, tear, and wear. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:07, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

"Sergeant" and the old pronunciation of "clerk" are related. These only seem to occur with a consonant after the "r"... AnonMoos (talk) 11:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * And "derby"? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 11:12, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Returning to -ear-, there's the nonstandard pronunciation of learn as "larn", as in, "That'll larn ya!" +Angr 11:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Is that a geographic thing? I've never heard that word pronounced "larn", even in that context. --Dweller (talk) 12:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's an Appalachian thing, as in Snuffy Smith (example). --Sean 14:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Heard that one long ago ("herd", not "hard", FYI). I think that old expression is obsolete. In a related matter, though, the old song about Davy Crockett refers to a bear as a "bar", which is how he supposedly said it. So this may be a regionalism. Southerners often pronounce the word "hair" as "har", for another example. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 15:25, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I pronounce "hearth" like "hurth" (or, like "earth"), but maybe that's because I've never actually heard anyone else say it... Adam Bishop (talk) 13:31, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You and I should meet up - I've never heard anyone pronounce it another way! --Dweller (talk) 13:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, it occurs to me that when I was a kid, reading about Greek mythology, I came across that word and pronounced it the way it looked. But now I do remember hearing it as "harth", in numerous classical studies courses throughout the years. It still looks like "hurth" to me though! Adam Bishop (talk) 16:12, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * And I thought "forecastle" was pronounced "forecastle" when I first saw it in print. "Foke-sull" was not a pronunciation this landlubber would have guessed. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 16:17, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hearth admits only the "harth" pronunciation. If I went to a reading of The Cricket on the Hearth and the reader rhymed it with "earth", I'd walk out.  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A Cockney might call our home planet "hearth" to rhyme with "hurth". Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A lisping hearse manufacturer named Hearst might refer to his company as "Hurtht'th Hurtheth". Then he might feel like cutting what's left of his tongue out.  (Sorry) :)  --  JackofOz (talk) 08:28, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * "Jints", the old nickname for New York / San Francisco Giants, is supposed to rhyme with "pints", but some announcers who don't know any better rhyme it with "mints". Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 15:27, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Firearm and sidearm. :) --Sean 14:19, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Very funny. Two words combined into one. For those who don't get the joke. :) Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 15:28, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Spelling can cause one to be misled. As a child, I always thought the very word "misled" was the past tense of "misle", and I pronounced it accordingly.  What "to misle" meant, I had no idea, but it sounded a perfectly plausible word to me.  --  JackofOz (talk) 20:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I second that one. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The OED lists "misle" as an alt spelling of mizzle. Algebraist 20:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I did't know that. I pronounced "misled" as my-zəld.
 * Re "clerk": I would defend the "clark" pronunciation as still being the "proper" one. The surnames Clark and Clarke came from this word.  The phonetic pronunciation has become prevalent, but those of my ilk will continue to spurn it.  --  JackofOz (talk) 20:56, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * We'll not cry over spelled ilk. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:30, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * In junior high school, I had a science teacher who pronounced infrared as if it were the past tense of *infrare. Deor (talk) 23:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Something they mis-heard or mis-read while in school and never got corrected or heard someone else say it. That happens. There's no apparently reason why "clerk" would be pronounced "clark", or for that matter why "gaol" would be pronounced "jail" instead of "gay-ohl". However, there are a lot of things in English that are done for no apparent reason. But if you check your word origins in your unabridge dictionaries, some of these oddities start to become clearer. "Clerk", for example, comes from the Old French "clerc" (akin to "cleric"), and if you think about how French vowels are pronounced, it's not to much of a stretch to "clark" spelled as "clerk". Likewise with "sergeant", which comes from French. Words like "hearken" (which is a variant on "harken" and "hark") and "hearth" and "heart" come from cousins to English where pronunciations of vowels didn't quite match modern English. "Air" comes from Latin and is originally from Greek "aer". "Bear" comes from "bera" (Yogi fits with both). "Tear" when pronounced "tier" is basically the original spelling. "Tear" pronounced "tare" comes from "teran". "Wear" comes from "werian". "Pear" comes from "pera".
 * Hey, that reminds me... did you know that you can do Cockney rhyming slang in Spanish?
 * apples and pears = stairs
 * manzanas y peras = escaleras
 * Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 00:01, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * IIRC, Bill Bryson mentions something about the vowel signs moving up in the mouth to create the "a" sound, whereas the written form was more change-resistant, and failed to match up with the new pronunciation. I think it's covered in The Mother Tongue. Something like 1750 - 1800, but I could be a hundred or more years out on that. It explains the rather limited scope of the change, since it stopped suddendly, I believe.- Jarry1250 [ In the UK? Sign the petition! ] 17:24, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'm thinking about how French vowels are pronounced. French /klɛr(k)/ → English /klɑrk/ strikes me as opposite to the general pattern of the GVS. —Tamfang (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Any fool knows that the 's' in misle is silent. — Re ilk, see Fowler's Modern English Usage. —Tamfang (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Liskeard, Kirkby Malzeard. --ColinFine (talk) 23:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Bill Bryson was not the first to discover the Great Vowel Shift. Algebraist 17:27, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, he merely reported on it. There's the consonant shift also, between German and English, which is why they say "Schiff" and we say "ship", for example. I would guess that the fluidity of the language reduced as people became more literate and hence were more inclined to conform to "conventional" English. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:29, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll note that Kearney Street in San Francisco (like my neighbor Kearny) has /ɝ/ as in earn. On yet another hand, I also know a family who spell it Karney. —Tamfang (talk) 15:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * According to Irish name, Ó Cearnaigh produced variants such as Kearney, Carney and Carnie (and we can add Karney to the list now). It looks like the original pron was /kar/, but the /keer/ and /ker/ versions are just as prevalent now, in places that are not Ireland.  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Help with Arabic
I received an email from a Bot, in Arabic, that pointed me to the ar: talk page of my SUL account. Can anyone tell me what is written there, other than welcome gumpf? Thanks. --Dweller (talk) 11:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * When I went to look at yours, I saw I had one too! Of course it's just a standard welcome template. You can see a machine translation of it at . +Angr 11:30, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. But I'm now even more puzzled. Why would a bot send me an email just to see a welcome template? I'll paste the email contents here. --Dweller (talk) 11:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

عزيزي Dweller، إن صفحة نقاش المستخدم:Dweller في ويكيبيديا قد تغيرت إلى تم التغيير من قبل CipherBot، لرؤية النسخة الحالية من الصفحة انظر: Dweller. انظر لكل التغييرات منذ زيارتك الأخيرة. ملخص تعديل المحرر: مرحبا بك في ويكيبيديا العربية اتصل بالمحرر: بريد إلكتروني: صفحة المستخدم: لن يكون هنالك أي إخطارات أخرى عن أية تغييرات تتم في المستقبل إلا إذا زرت هذه الصفحة. يمكنك أيضا أن تعيد تصفير عداد الإخطارات لجميع الصفحات التي تراقبها في قائمة مراقبتك. نظام إخطار ويكيبيديا -- لتغيير إعدادات قائمة مراقبتك، اذهب إلى: للاقتراحات والحصول على مساعدة إضافية:


 * You doubtless have the box "Send me an e-mail when my talk page is changed" checked in your preferences at Arabic Wikipedia; this seems to be the default setting. +Angr 12:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, how gruesome. I'm not sure I'd be able to navigate the prefs there to switch the darn thing off. And worse, do I need to go through all the Wikipedias to remove that setting, or is that only on ar:? Thanks for the help. --Dweller (talk) 12:48, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it's on all of them, I'm afraid. Preferences is always third from the left, once you click on it the first thing you can do is change your interface language to English, then you can see which box to unclick so you don't keep getting e-mails every time a bot welcomes you to some project you've never edited in a language you can't read. Actually, you can just add "?uselang=en" to the end of the URL to make the current interface language English; that should get you to the preferences page too. +Angr 12:58, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Helpful. But what a bother - I have an account on a lot of Wikipedia sites - but I've never had an email before. --Dweller (talk) 13:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've gotten several such e-mails myself. Now I always unclick "send me an e-mail when my talk page is changed" first thing whenever I visit another Wikimedia project, since visiting projects when you're logged in is what automatically creates you a new account. +Angr 14:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Happened to me when I clicked on the Indonesian page for Bali (to see how complete it was). Got an email informing me that a bot had welcomed me. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 16:20, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

A handy trick to help navigate the basic tools of a Wikipedia in a language you don't know is to manually add "?uselang=en" to the end of every URL ("&uselang=en" if the URL string already contains a "?")... AnonMoos (talk) 17:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

The meaning of "Kohad" in different languages
The Indian surname Kohad is a word in different languages, namely Eastern European ones. What does it mean in different languages? Vikramkr (talk) 16:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * How do you know it means something at all? And in which East European languages? Note that "East European" is a geographic classification, not a linguistic one, and many languages in Eastern Europe are completely unrelated. — Kpalion(talk) 17:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the lack of clarification. By searching for Kohad on Google, I found webpages that were in Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish, amongst others perhaps, that had "Kohad" written in them. - Vikramkr (talk) 17:53, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If you get no help here (there may be no users who speak any of these languages and watch this page), you can try contacting individual users who belong to these categories: Category:User hu, Category:User et, Category:User fi. — Kpalion(talk) 19:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * As an aside, finnish, hungarian, and estonia are not slavic languages but Finno-Ugric languages which curiously is not supposed to derived from an indic root, but from a central asian root, which makes it odd that "kohad" is also a word in indian (there are better known links between 'indian' and western european languages (see Indo-European languages)83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It appears to mean "place" though I'm not a speaker.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:44, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Surnames don't have to mean something. I am not sure if 'Kohad' itself means anything in the corresponding Indian language. They can be completely random permutation of letters and it is perfectly possible as a sheer coincidence that you found this particular word (which may actually mean something or maybe not) in these languages written in Latin alphabet. There could exist hundreds of other such words. It could well be that there is no link between the same word in these languages and corresponding Indian language, in case your search is motivated by trying to find a connection. Also as a side note, Finnish and Estonian are North European languages and not East European, geographically speaking. Hungarian can also be considered Central European, although Hungary is sometimes included in Eastern European domains by some institutions. - DSachan (talk) 23:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * you should read Finno-Ugric languages linked above - the phrase 'north european language' has nor real meaning in that context. 83.100.250.79 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:58, 5 August 2009 (UTC).

I do not care if there is a direct connection with the surname or not; I am simply curious as to what "kohad" means in other languages. I have gathered some specific instances I came across on an Estonian webpage: Lohesurfi kohad, Tuulised puhkuse sihtkohad kuude lõikes, Eesti Surfikohad, Lumised sihtkohad Skandinaavias, Speed ehk kiirus tegemise kohad Eestis. - Vikramkr (talk) 21:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * They look like Third-Person-Singular verbs to me, or at least the end bits of some of them. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 08:21, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

"Kohad" does not mean anything in Finnish - a Finnish word basically cannot end with a "d". In some Finnish dialects "kohat" means places, spots or positions, and online Estonian dictionaries seem to confirm that "kohad" has the same meaning in Estonian. 84.239.160.214 (talk) 18:46, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Name of grammatical relation
For example, the British say "at the weekend" and the American "on the weekend", what kind of relationship is that of this substantive, "weekend" requiring the preposition "at" or "on"? Or seen it from the other side, the relation that makes the prepositions dependable from the substantive. --Quest09 (talk) 19:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The only name I can think of for the relationship is 'selection', which we don't appear to have an article on in this sense. Subcategorization is related, and the definition given in that article would seem to apply; but I don't think this is correct, as in my understanding subcategorization refers to heads selecting their complements and adjuncts, while your question is the other way round.


 * You are right that choosing the right preposition (or equivalent) is often one of the most idiosyncratic parts of a language, and indeed of a dialect. Notable UK/American differences are 'at/in school' and 'for/in years' (as in "I haven't seen him for/in years"). --ColinFine (talk) 23:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that collocation may be a partial answer to the OP's last question, if I understood it correctly. 190.1.53.214 (talk) 05:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)