Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 December 23

= December 23 =

Somebody wrote me a message in Arabic
Tonight, I was browsing the Arabic Wikipedia (even though I can't understand a word of it) when I noticed someone had left me a note on my user page. Does anyone know what it says? I imagine it's just a welcome template, but that would be rather strange, since I've never made any edits on that wiki. I'd also like you to look into the contributions of the user who left me the message. Does s/he compulsively go around leaving welcome messages to users who have never edited? This user should be got after and looked at (yes, I know this only the Reference Desk no the Arabic AN/I, but still....).--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 02:29, 23 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It is a welcome template. The Arabic wikipedia has a page just like this. Anyone who wants to welcome all new users can use that log to do so. It's perfectly ok. I hope that clears things up. Happy editing! JW.. &#91; T .. C  &#93;  03:10, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I just clicked on the link you gave and got one too. Looks like this bot welcomes new users on ar.wikipedia.  —  æk Talk  03:16, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Most of the individual language WPs have that feature. If you have established a global account, you'll get such a message the first time you visit each particular WP version. Deor (talk) 03:22, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, dude. That is seriously fucked up.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 05:41, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Shoes
What is shoetips?174.3.102.6 (talk) 05:46, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The tip of your shoes, I would imagine. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 05:59, 23 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The text that's being asked about is:"...within each U.S. subculture there is little variety in headgear among U.S. men. That is because fashion sense is considered unmanly in the United States and because for those men who defy this cultural bias, fashion sense is usually more a matter of shoetips and the cut of one's clothing."Here the author is saying that for these particular Americans, fashion sense means more than the shape of the tips of a man's shoes or the cut of his clothes. The tips of some shoes are of a different color or material than the rest of the shoe, some are very round, some are very narrow and sharp, some are wingtips (with, Wikipedia says, "a toe cap in a W shape") and some (required for construction work) have steel toes. There have been different cultural associations with different types and shapes of shoes, including their tips. It's not my field, but narrow-pointed shoes have at times been popularly associated with an rebel teenage culture, and wingtips with a more suburban, middle-class one. —— Shakescene (talk) 10:00, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It could be an alternative name for shoe taps -- that would certainly indicate a sense of fashion."  DRosenbach  ( Talk 14:59, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * When a reference is made to "shoetips" it is a reference to the phenomenon in which very small variations assume great fashion significance such as in the design of very classically and conservatively styled men's dress shoes. Wingtips are a general example. Bus stop (talk) 18:06, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Hirsebeutels Hymne
What would be this title's literal meaning, and what might be its significance in the context of the Nazi era? The poem—three stanzas in German, undated, author unknown—makes ironic or cynical note of how the vaunted purity of the German Reich, that puts "Abraham" to the knife, is maintained by sloughing its sins off on "our" children. -- Deborahjay (talk) 13:26, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Hymne in German means "anthem" (not really "hymn" as that word is used in English). Hirsebeutel sounds like a name; the -s at the end puts it in the genitive case. However, "Hirsebeutels Hymne" gets 0 Google hits, so I'm at a dead end for further research. +Angr 14:15, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it is probably a misspelling for de:Hirschbeutel. Still no hits for a hymn though.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably not a mis-spelling: Hirsebeutel means "millet bag" -92.11.141.194 (talk) 16:39, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, true.·Maunus· ƛ · 16:52, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd arrived at the "millet bag" via Leo, which prompted me to post here in hopes that some such allusion might be familiar to German-culture cognoscenti. The possibility of a misprint for "Hirsch..." occurred to me because of a handwritten notation in what's apparently Polish orthography: "Hirsz..." – though that sort of mishmash is frequent enough in this archival material at the hands of polyglot immigrants. As for the title and text, I doubt they'd have made it to the Internet. The lack of provenance on this item is frustrating. Any insights are appreciated! -- Deborahjay (talk) 21:04, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Among the only 8 google hits I received for "Hirsebeutel", there was one text from 1884, where a (typically daft) recruit is addressed as "Hirsebeutel" by his commanding officer See here. Maybe the "millet bag" was an accessory sometimes used metonymously for lowly recruits, or maybe not. (The usage of "Brotsack" ("bread bag", a small bag carried by Swiss soldiers) in the title of Max Frisch's Blätter aus dem Brotsack suggests that the author is not an officer, for example). I have never heard the term "Hirsebeutel" in any remarkable way, personally. As an aside, the Word "Hymne" can also mean a type of poem in German, something like an ode; its meanings aren't limited to anthem. Is it possible for you to post or link to the entire text, or do you have any other information regarding this Hymne? ---Sluzzelin talk  21:36, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Did anyone search Google for key phrases in the poem, rather than the (uncertain) title? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:32, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The document was acquisitioned in mid-1993; from its appearance it's possibly a page from a self-published slim volume of poetry, otherwise quite anonymous. A Google search of its more idiosyncratic phrases yields nothing. -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:54, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

OP adds: Singling out a word from a poem or artwork's title and querying its significance in the source language's culture is a favorite research device of us translators. Whether Hirsebeutel or Hirschbeutel, it seems peculiar, hence likely a deliberate choice and one that escapes my understanding. As a sample of the text, the first of the three stanzas begins identical to the Deutschlandslied and continues with a presumably eponymic reference to a "Nachmann" (where the last line's "Abraham" quite clearly stands for the Jews):  Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, über alles in der Welt, solange der aus Nazi- schlamm Geborene vor den Nachmanns auf die Knie fällt.  (punctuation verbatim). Sorry to have so little to offer, but this is how it goes. -- Deborahjay (talk) 08:08, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Where is this "A" originally from???
Hi. I'm not sure this is the most adequate Reference Desk for this question (it would depend on the answer), but here goes. I've been trying to trace the origins of this particular and very common A design, but I have absolutely no clue where it comes from originally. I've seen it in many, many places... For example, I happened to find a contest for designing a logo for "Alpha Elevators" here, and many of the entries used this special "A" design (like this one, this one, and this one). Why is this particular "A" so popular? And where did it come from??
 * File:AdobeSystems.svg
 * File:Tabula_Rasa.jpg
 * File:Nintendo_GameCube_logo.jpg

...Might it be some weird variation on Delta, or the capital Lambda? It certainly looks to me like a middle ground between Lambda and the modern L (or the more similar phoenician Lamedh: ). I've tried looking for a similar figure across several alphabets, but so far the closest thing I've found to it is the Coptic equivalent of lambda:. Or maybe, it's simply a design someone used once for their company or store logo, and people started ripping it off? Perhaps I'm complicating myself too much? I really have no idea. Does anyone know about this? Any help is greatly appreciated! Kreachure (talk) 17:42, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Another possibility is that a particular font or goup of fonts featured an A that looks like that and use of such a font occurs enough that it's gotten popular. Though I'm just guessing here. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  18:43, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Stop" by Aldo Novarese (part of the Linotype library) has a similar though not identical capital "A": the gap or opening is on the top left, not on the bottom right. See here. ---Sluzzelin talk  19:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There is also the Sinaloa font family. What I think the Adobe "A", the Stop font, and the Sinaloa font have in common is that they were designed in the 1970s or early '80s to have a streamlined, "futuristic" look.  I am fairly certain that this has little or nothing to do with the ancient Greek, Phoenician, or Coptic scripts.  Marco polo (talk) 20:31, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The A in the Star Trek: The Next Generation title looks kind of like that Stop font. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:05, 23 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It looks to me like an abstraction of the lowercase italic a; it's the only sensible way to trace it in one line. &mdash; Sebastian 22:56, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's what I thought as well. --Kjoonlee 06:16, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Look at some of the a's in uncial script, just before (as I understand it, perhaps wrongly) capital letters became distinct from what (after the printing-press) we now call lower-case. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:22, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The A in the Adobe logo, was designed in 1982 by Marva Warnock, wife of John Warnock (one of the two founders of Adobe Systems). The original log (which you can see on page 4 of this PDF) was a bit different than the current one, in that it spelled out "ADOBE" and the right limb of the A didn't extend all the way down. As Marco Polo said above, the font was certainly intended to have a "futuristic" geometric look, and is unlikely to be a direct reference to "ancient" scripts. Abecedare (talk) 07:48, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much... :3 Kreachure (talk) 14:55, 24 December 2009 (UTC)