Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 December 3

= December 3 =

Double oxymoron/paradox
Hi. Consider the following phrase "I am not claiming to be a false prophet". Is it a double (or triple) oxymoron, or a paradox, or something else altogether? It does not seem to work as a regular paradox because changing one word does not seem to reverse its meaning. Thanks. ~ A H  1 (TCU) 00:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You could consider it a form of litotes, with an added double negative. The whole makes for a subtle attempt to claim to be a true prophet when appearing to do the opposite. Grutness...wha?  00:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's kind of an ambiguity. He's denying that he's a false prophet. But is he thereby asserting that he's a true prophet? Or is he denying being any type of prophet? From just that one sentence, you can't tell. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Slightly off-topic, but I'm reminded of an incident a few years ago in a pub where my Science Fiction group used to meet twice monthly to discuss both SF/F and other literary, scientific and philosophical matters of interest to us. One of the daily regulars who didn't enjoy having his near-solitude interrupted once got up and left in a huff with the parting admonition of "You lot should stop pretending to be pseudo-intellectuals!" 87.81.230.195 (talk) 13:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * See also excluded middle and fallacy of the excluded middle. -- 128.104.112.95 (talk) 16:21, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see how this is an oxymoron or a paradox at all. It means precisely what it says. Whether the person is saying he's a 'true prophet' or just saying he's not claiming to be anything, can be derived easily from context. (Although, if we're getting into that issue...when would this ever be uttered anyway? Who would ever call himself a false prophet, and who would accuse someone of doing such?) r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 15:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. "I am not claiming to be a false prophet" would only ever be uttered with the intent to obfuscate. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 17:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe that's where Astro's notion of paradox comes in. One does not 'claim' to be a bank robber, rapist or murderer unless one is proud to be such, but one might 'admit' or 'acknowledge' it.  So, if someone were claiming to be a false prophet, they'd be in the business of obfuscation to begin with, and proud of it.  So, the original sentence could be seen as "I'm not admitting to being a false prophet ... because it doesn't suit my present purposes to make such an admission; but I'm not denying it either, because I am in fact a false prophet, and proud of it ".  That is, obfuscating about being an obfuscator.  --  JackofOz (talk) 20:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Knights and Knaves.Synchronism (talk) 20:47, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * By the way, what is that kind of phrase called, e.g. "obfuscating about being an obfuscator"? Is it called a self-referential? ~ A H  1 (TCU) 00:47, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

J and Y in English
In English, J is pronounced as in Jane, but everwhere else it is a Y word. For instance, Jew, Jerusalem, Jericho and Jesus are ALL Y words in their original Hebrew. Count Yorga sounds like a frightening name, but replace the Y with a J and you get the familiar George - Count George, Vampire - doesn't have quite the same impact, does it? What is this called and how did it come about? Myles325a (talk) 00:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * don't you get "Jorga"? :-s Rimush (talk) 10:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The article J has a lot of information about the letter. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 02:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not universal. For example, in Spanish it's a guttural sound similar to the "ch" in Loch. And in French it's like a "zh", which is kind of a transitional stage to the English "j". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It went the other way around, [d͡ʒ] (English "j") was a transitional stage to the current [ʒ] in French. — Emil J. 14:35, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's due to the general shift of initial "y" to "j" (i.e. "dzh") that happened from Latin to Old French. For example, the Latin word Iudicem (pronounced yoodickem) became "juge" in French, resulting in the English word "judge".  However, "Yorga" does not have the same origin, but would appear to be due to the Greek shift of "g" to "y" before "i" and "e" vowels, or something similar... AnonMoos (talk) 07:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * More in general, from Latin to Romance languages. --pma (talk) 13:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Capitalising the i in iudicem creates the illusion that it's a lower case el. --  JackofOz (talk) 21:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * A similar question was asked two months ago. See: Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 October 6 . — Kpalion(talk) 11:07, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

How do you translate "勢" in Chinese into English?
What would be a good English translation of the Chinese ideogram "勢"? The character is used in terms and expressions like "形勢", "勢力", "氣勢", "勢均力敵", "大勢已去". The character is in the title of Chapter Five of The Art of War. I've seen it translated as "potential energy" or "momentum" in that context (which I don't think are very good translations.) Is there a word in English with a closely matched meaning? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.114.146.196 (talk) 04:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added a Wiktionary link to the character. --JWB (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * WWWJDIC has momentum, energy, and military strength, and several of the compounds containing the character have translations containing "force". --JWB (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * There's not really a "translation" for single characters like this. It is used in many compound words, but by itself only has a very broad, general meaning. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 04:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, just FYI, Chinese characters are not really "ideograms", they are more like logograms; the distinction may seem trivial, but it was quite a source of contention in the past. For more information see Ideogram and Chinese character classification. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 04:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * To me, there's broad concept that's common to the occurrences of "勢" in the examples I gave. The way I'd phrase it, it refers to some abstract notion of strength or power that's based on the totality of factors and circumstances. I tried to come up with a good English translation that matches that meaning, but couldn't. --173.49.10.60 (talk) 13:40, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That's what I said above. Modern Standard Mandarin is mostly a bisyllabic language, so most characters like this only have "general concepts" and cannot be translated directly. In Classical Chinese, some of these characters did have just one meaning and could be translated, as they were full words by themselves (although their meanings may have varied depending on the context), but today, they are only used as parts of compound words. Oftentimes these compound words are built out of analogy to the broader connotations of the characters, and sometimes one character has more "weight" in the word than others (for example, in words like 火车 "train" and 汽车 "car", the character 车 for vehicles gives a lot more to the word's meaning than 火 'fire' and 汽 'steam'; you certainly would not take 汽车 as evidence that 汽's broad meaning has something to do with vehicles or transportation). Therefore, there's not really one single translation for most of these, as their meanings have spread out through analogy and metaphor and they are never used by themselves anyway. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 15:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * "勢力" means "effort". The second character means energy or force, and the first character could be interperated to mean brave, worked, or whatever you get when you subtract energy/force from effort. ~ A H  1 (TCU) 00:57, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Subtraction" is not really a way to derive the meaning of most Chinese characters. Again, take my example above. You can't look at 火车 and say that 火 is "whatever you get when you subtract car from train". r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 02:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * For a very in-depth discussion of how compounds like this are formed and how the meaning of single characters contributes to the meaning of the compound, Jerome Packard's The Morphology of Chinese is an excellent resource. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 02:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Single or double quotes when referring to a word
For example, is it:

I like the word 'book.'

or

I like the word "book."

20.137.18.50 (talk) 14:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * British or American English rules? Googlemeister (talk) 14:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Let's say American. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 14:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Double, unless you're already within a larger double-quoted phrase. But outside of formal contexts it doesn't really matter. For instance, in conversations on Wikipedia, I use whichever one I feel like at the moment. r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 15:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * [ec] The American standard is to use double quotes in most cases, including this one. Quotes could be used in this case.  However, the house style where I work is to make a word called out like this italic:


 * I like the word book.


 * I prefer this style, since it makes a distinction between a word under discussion and an actual direct quotation. Marco polo (talk) 15:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * [double edit-conflict] I'd use italics rather than quotation marks: I like the word book. Usual American usage is to use double quotes whenever you put anything in quotation marks (except quotes within quotes), but in linguistics the tradition is to use single quotes for English glosses of foreign words thus: I like the German word Buch 'book'. +Angr 15:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In which circumstances would the period/full stop be outside of the quotes? 99.166.95.142 (talk) 19:27, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It simply depends on what style you're using. The Wikipedia manual of style mandates that punctuation be placed outside the closing quotation marks in such cases, and I believe that's the practice advocated in British style manuals. U.S. manuals, on the other hand, tend to advocate punctuation inside the closing quotes. I agree, however, with the respondents above who suggest that italicization rather than quoting is the usual treatment of isolated words referred to as words. Deor (talk) 19:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * There is some related information at Use–mention distinction. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

For clarity, the rule is to alternate the use of double (first instance) and single quotation marks. For example, “Well done, ‘young’ sir," said the elderly butler to my father. I later reported to my brother, “That ‘well done, “young” sir’ comment was said in jest.”
 * Nobody's mentioned the very comprehensive article Quotation mark, which answers most of these questions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pleasantman (talk • contribs) 16:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, an excellent article, and it correctly reports that there is no such thing as an "American Rule" and a "British Rule", just differing styles in both countries.   D b f i r s   17:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Tasty appetite
If your 'carnal appetite' is satiated, what is the word for your stomach being full? Your comestible appetite satiated? It's something obvious, isn't it? FreeMorpheme (talk) 16:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think so: "satiated". --jpgordon:==( o ) 17:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Ha! Another word for my collection of words that are shorter in German! It only has one syllable: "satt". If we assume "that languages organize their lexicons in the way that the most frequent words become the shortest ones", it would seem to indicate that Germans talk more about being satiated. Of course, that's only superficially true, since English speakers just talk about being "full" instead. &mdash; Sebastian 17:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Does satiated = sated? - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 17:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * There does seem to be something of a connotation that "satiated" is an excess, while "sated" is just full. --jpgordon:==( o ) 19:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * "Carnal appetite" means sexual appetite: is that what you mean? Afterwards you would be sated. Update: actually carnal appetite means sexual desire. 89.242.105.246 (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, right - I am looking for the food-based equvalent of 'carnal' FreeMorpheme (talk) 21:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't really need one. Appetite implies "food-based" unless otherwise qualified. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You could use "gastronomic", though as Clarityfiend points out, it's not really necessary. "carnal appetite" is really being used as a metaphor for "real" appetite. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  23:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Replete" is the word used in polte circles. Or for those who prefer plain speaking, what about "full". Alansplodge (talk) 23:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, if I had paid more attention in English Language class I could ask this question better. If we take the word 'sex' and derive the words 'carnal' and 'sexual' from that word - what are those words called? Let's dub them 'present parsive-adjunctives'. Now what I am looking for is the present parsive-adjuctive of the word 'food'. 195.60.13.52 (talk) 10:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The word "carnal" is not in any way derived from the word "sex". <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 03:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So what you're looking for is a Latin-derived adjective meaning "of or relating to food"? How about alimentary? +Angr 11:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC) 'Alimental', 'comestible', 'nutritional' or 'victual' might work in certain contexts. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 11:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Note that "carnal" was originally derived from "flesh" or "body" (according SOED), not "sex". Mitch Ames (talk) 03:22, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Gustatory" seems like a reasonable candidate. Tevildo (talk) 01:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Offered to
It says on the front page today of Wikipedia "... that in the 1920s the Italian ambassador to the United States offered the U.S. authorities to disband the Fascist League of North America." This is bad grammar where I live in the UK; a more correct thing to write would be "offered to the US authorities". Is "offered the US authorities" correct in American english please? 89.242.105.246 (talk) 21:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it's a confusion of idioms. The "She offered me a kiss" form cannot be combined with the "She offered to kiss me" form. I'd recast it as ".. the Italian Ambassador made an offer to the United States to disband the Fascist League ...". --  JackofOz (talk) 21:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It sounds bad to my American English ears too. Rmhermen (talk) 22:17, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is definitely bad grammar in American English. Marco polo (talk) 02:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything wrong with "offered the U.S. authorities": what I don't like is the infinitive as the direct object of "offer". "The Italian ambassador offered the U.S. authorities the chance to disband the Fascist League" sounds fine to me, because the direct object is the noun "the chance". +Angr 11:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) But the meaning, I think (without looking at the actual history), is changed. He offered to disband the League. He wasn't offering permission or an opportunity for someone else to disband the league. And probably the ambassador himself wouldn't have done the actual disbanding. Either the American fascisti themselves would have disbanded; or the Partito Nazionale Fascista or government in Italy would have done so (or given orders to do so). Perhaps the sentence should be recast to finesse the issue by putting the disbandment in the passive voice without a subject, or turning the disbandment into a noun phrase, or perhaps using a different principal verb. E.g., something like: Did you know ... ...that, in the 1920s, the Fascist League of North America's disbandment was offered to the United States authorities by the Italian ambassador? or ...that, a proposal to disband the Fascist League of North America was offered to the United States authorities in the 1920s by the Italian ambassador?—— Shakescene (talk) 12:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Declension/translation of taxi in Czech
My (awful) Czech text indicates that the translation for taxi is "taxi/taxík". It's not entirely clear whether these are to be considered two alternate words or variations on a single word.

What is/are the declension pattern(s) to be used? I'm currently assuming that they're two alternate words for taxi and that taxi is declined by the pattern stavení and taxík by the pattern hrad. Am I correct? Donald Hosek (talk) 22:18, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * '-k' is not an ending of Czech declension. It may be an alternate word, as an abbreviation for "taxicab", but the article cs:Taxi doesn't mention it. &mdash; Sebastian 22:41, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Which is why I was thinking that it's an alternate word. I did find taxík in wiktionary, so I guess it is an alternate form. All that remains, then is to verify that I have the correct declension patterns for the two words. Donald Hosek (talk) 22:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I see, sorry! From our article, the only pattern that fits to 'taxík' is indeed 'hrad'. I'm not sure about 'taxi', though; 'stavení' ends in a long vowel, and the other two patterns, which end in '-e', might apply, too, if it's length that counts. (All three patterns end in a soft vowel, so that wouldn't make a difference.) What do you need this for? &mdash; Sebastian 22:57, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * My own education. I'm making a point of writing out full declensions for each noun. I suppose it would make sense to look at the Czech wikipedia article and see how it's used there... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Donald Hosek (talk • contribs) 23:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * And no, the Czech wikipedia article tends to use yet another word for taxi in preference to all else, so I'm still stumped on the correct declension pattern. Donald Hosek (talk) 23:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I still don't see what you need this for. You write "for each noun" - that's impossible; there are millions of nouns in this world. You gotta be more specific than that! Not that you have to tell us, but it's hard to help you when we don't know what you need help for. For all I know, the word "taxislužba" can already solve your problem. If you're doing this for every Czech noun, then you probably already know the declension of "služba". &mdash; Sebastian 23:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I meant for each noun in my book. Writing out the declensions is my way of learning the patterns and making connections. At some point, most likely before I reach the end of the book, I will likely stop doing this since I'll have developed the skills to decline on sight, but in the mean time, I find this a useful exercise. Donald Hosek (talk) 02:46, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that taxi in Czech is a non-declinable form that is mainly used to build compounds. I think that the normal word in Czech for "taxicab" is taxík, which would decline as a regular inanimate masculine noun ending in "k". The word taxislužba means "taxi service" rather than "taxicab".  Marco polo (talk) 01:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Both taxi and taxík can be used as a standalone word for "taxicab", taxík is more informal. The noun taxi is indeed indeclinable, taxík is declined by the pattern hrad, or rather by its subpattern which is labelled as slovník on cs wiktionary (for the lack of a standard name). — Emil J. 11:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)