Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 February 6

= February 6 =

Proper spanish translation
Hi, I wanted to get a critique of my translation of a sentence for an essay I'm writing for my Spanish class. I want to say, "For as long as women have existed, feminism has existed." I wasn't quite sure how to translate the exact sense of what I wanted to say. Here is what I have: "Siempre que hubieran existido las mujeres, hubiera existido el feminismo." I'm not sure if it's grammatically correct. For one, I'm not sure whether or not I need the subjunctive on that second use of "haber" and I'm also not sure if I'm using "siempre que" in the correct sense. Any suggestions or help is appreciated! 198.82.110.57 (talk) 00:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The siempre que clause sounds a little strange to my (non-native) ears, and Google translates siempre que as "whenever," so I don't think it works. I can't think of a good way for saying that first clause, though. Perhaps A través de la historia feminina, siempre ha existido el feminismo "Throughout women's hostory, there has always been feminism," but I don't really like that very much, either. Anyway, the second clause has to be indicative (i.e.  ha existido el feminismo), and hubiera is pluperfect ("had done something"), not present perfect ("has/have done something"), which is what you want (he, has, ha, hemos, habéis, han).--el Aprel (facta-facienda) 01:11, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * As El Aprel says, the subordinate clause must be built in the indicative mood, since the existence of women is a fact. I would go for the quite simple: Desde que existen las mujeres, existe el feminismo. Pallida  Mors  18:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * De toda la historia de la mujer, ha existido el feminísmoTroyster87 (talk) 05:37, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Gender and color vocabulary
My English professor claims that women have a larger vocabulary of color terms than men, and that this may be related to both cultural factors(women being more encouraged to care about colors) and the higher incidence of colorblindness in men. Is there any truth to his claim, or is this just one of those spurious "factoids" like the one about Eskimo words for snow? And if this claim about color vocabulary is true, do we know if it's because of cultural factors, differences in color vision, or both? 69.224.37.48 (talk) 03:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The daddy of aniline dyes, William Henry Perkin was no girl. Julia Rossi (talk) 04:23, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Some of the genes coding for the cone cell opsins in humans are on the X chromosome, so women (normally having two distinct X chromosomes) are often better off than men (who normally have only one X chromosome). Also, having two X chromosomes, some (probably very few) women are thought to possess 4 distinct types of cone cells, all functional; see tetrachromacy. Normal humans - both male and female - have only 3, and people with genetic color blindness have even less. --Dr Dima (talk) 06:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * To rephrase what I just wrote in simple terms, vast majority of both men and women perceive colors in the same way, and none of the two genders is better than the other. However, among the minority of people whose color vision is not normal, there are significant gender disparities. I do not know if that could have possibly affected the language; that seems unlikely to me. I personally think that historical gender inequality, and traditional gender roles in particular, are a much more likely cause of such a phenomenon. Please see the article on Gender differences in spoken Japanese for a somewhat extreme example of that. --Dr Dima (talk) 06:40, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It's probably true. I'd put that one down to cultural factors. I read an article recently in a Swedish popular-linguistics magazine ("Språk-tidningen") on how they designed the Swedish SAT tests, where a vocabulary test is a significant portion. They test the tests to smooth out gender differences and other biases. Unsurprisingly, men did better at sports terms, for instance. But what was interesting was that they also tend to encounter a good number of words with marked gender differences with no obvious explanation at all! It's a mystery. --130.237.179.182 (talk) 07:09, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The stereotype is that women (and gay men!) are more likely to know a larger number of names for non-basic shades, like "mauve", "periwinkle", "taupe", "chartreuse", "fuschia", "ecru", "russet", "heliotrope", "puce", etc. I really doubt it has much to do with color vision.  According to our article on Mauve, "Television host David Letterman once stated jokingly that `you know somebody is gay if they know the difference between mauve and taupe'"... AnonMoos (talk) 08:17, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * See List of colors. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC) / See Color analysis. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:48, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe that the "greater number of color terms" observation was made by linguist Robin Lakoff, although I don't remember the name of the source text. At any rate, Lakoff's explanation had to do with social norms rather than physiology. 128.148.38.26 (talk) 22:16, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It's on pages 9 and 10 of Language and Woman's Place ISBN 0-06-090389-9 (a 1975 book which isn't really all that great in itself, but played a significant role in catalyzing the whole modern field of linguistics and gender): AnonMoos (talk) 06:58, 7 February 2009 (UTC)


 * ...imagine a man and a woman both looking at the same wall, painted a pinkish shade of purple. The woman may say "The wall is mauve," with no one consequently forming any special impression of her based on her words alone; but if the man should say [it], one might well conclude that he was imitating a woman sarcastically or was a homosexual or an interior decorator. -- Robin Lakoff


 * I suspect it has more to do with use of language than color perception. If shown "mauve" and "taupe" I'm sure I could tell them apart.  However, if asked if a given color is one or the other, I wouldn't have a clue unless there was a color key provided.  For some reason women (and maybe some gay men) seem to put more importance on learning words for colors.  The relation to fashion is one obvious reason.  I had the Crayola 64 pack of crayons as a kid, but was thoroughly dissatisfied with the names for the colors, which I found confusing.  I would have preferred something more like compass point headings ... red, red-orange-red, red-orange, orange-red-orange, orange (and then repeat with either "light" or "dark" in front of each). StuRat (talk) 17:40, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * "ALL POINTS BULLETIN ON A 1932 STUTZ BEARCAT, MAROON."


 * "Hey chief, isn't that 1932 Stutz Bearcat ?"


 * "Yea, but it's more of a burgundy than a maroon, really. Keep looking." - Police Chief Clancy Wiggum, The Simpsons. StuRat (talk) 17:40, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Way to abbreviate "greats" in describing ancestors...
Is there a way to abbreviate the repetitive "greats" when you're describing your relationship to an ancestor? For example, let's say someone wanted to claim that Ethelred the Unready was their great-great-great-great-great...-grandfather. Would that person really have to fill in the appropriate number of "greats", or could he just say something like, "Ethelred the Unready is my 100 times great grandfater" (number and phrasing as an example only)? I suppose he could say, "I am descended from..." but that doesn't really specify the exact relationship between the person and the ancestor. Any ideas? 12.43.92.140 (talk) 17:21, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * In genealogical circles, there are two informal conventions: either 5x great grandfather, or ggggggrandfather, which tends to confuse spellcheckers no end! So for example, I am descended from Cornelius Dancer, who was my 4x great grandfather, and also from Charles Henry Wheway, who was my gggggrandfather, both on my father's side. Hope this helps. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:36, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * One disadvantage of terminology which counts the number of occurrences of the prefix great is that it is misaligned from the number of generations represented by a difference of two. Thus, it is similar to the short-scale system of English numerals, where the meaning of the Latin numerical prefix in the etymology is misaligned from the number of triplets of zeroes by a difference of one.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 22:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, but that's nonetheless the way it's done, and so it's the way you have to do it if you hope to be understood, rather than formulating your own idiosyncratic terminology. If you want to avoid the misalignment, you might say you are a 7th generation descendant of your 5G-grandfather. This is sometimes (particularly in Scottish pedigrees) abbreviated as "seventh in descent from". - Nunh-huh 23:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * My five-times-great-grandfather's five-times-great-grandfather is my twelve-times-great-grandfather (actually, one of 214 ÷ 2 = 8,192, if there are no duplicates). One trillion multiplied by one quadrillion is one octillion. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * [I just remembered to divide by two because only half of my ancestors are male.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 05:48, 9 February 2009 (UTC)]


 * All these pages are similar to each other as to the information which they have.
 * Serbian kinship
 * Wapedia - Wiki: Serbian kinship
 * Serbian kinship: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 20:13, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * See battologism. -- Wavelength (talk) 03:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, the second and third are from Wikipedia mirror sites, and so are presumably merely versions of the Wikipedia article (possibly outdated ones). AnonMoos (talk) 13:35, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I think I've heard "great-to-the-third" or something similar, but that was in fiction. --Kjoonlee 06:09, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've encountered numerical superscripts somewhere (e.g. great³ or whatever), but I couldn't say where... AnonMoos (talk) 13:32, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * My Google search for the exact wording "times great grandfather" yielded 7,440 results. I found the same exact wording in these articles: Rathfriland and Outlander (novel). -- Wavelength (talk) 23:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * My Google search for the exact wording "greats grandfather" yielded 13,100 results. I found it with various hyphenations in these articles: Charles II of England, Prince Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein, and William Mitford.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 04:56, 9 February 2009 (UTC)