Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 July 7

= July 7 =

The Ventures - Nihongo or no-go?
Although the Ventures were very big in Japan, to the point of naming quite a few songs after Japanese things (Kyoto Doll, Hokkaido Skies, Ginza Lights, Stranger in Midosuji, Yohara no Hoshi, etc), did any of them ever actually learn Japanese? Our article is silent on the topic. The only clue I can find is this YouTube clip of their 1993 tour, where the drummer embellishes his English remarks with a few Japanese particles. It seems to me that they must have had ample time and opportunity to learn the language, since they performed more than two thousand shows in Japan over the course of five decades. L ANTZY T ALK 00:14, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, since Bob Bogle was married to a Japanese woman (Yumi) who "learned English" after they got married. I assume he spoke some Japanese :-)   71.236.26.74 (talk) 14:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The name of the rose
I'm reading the original Italian version (I'm italian :-))of The name of the rose / Il nome della rosa' by Umberto Eco. In this version, Salvatore, one of the characters, speaks with a strange mixture of italian dialects, Latin and Occitan-Provençal. A native Italian speaker can, with little effort, understand what he's actually saing. I'm wondering how the English (and other languages as well!) translators managed to convey this kind of speech. Do they used ancient words, dialects of kept it unchanged? --151.51.47.101 (talk) 10:50, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I haven't read the book, but if I remember the film correctly, he spoke a mixture of English, Italian, French, German and Latin. +Angr 13:52, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly in the film, Ron Perlman played Salvatore using a very strange accent. Astronaut (talk) 14:17, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's the same in the book. Here's a sample (from page 308 of the U.S. edition) in which he's commenting on basilisks: "Cave basilischium! The rex of serpenti, tant pleno of poison that it all shines dehors! Che dicam, il veleno, even the stink comes dehors and kills you! Poisons you … And it has black spots on his back, and a head like a coq, and half goes erect over the terra, and half on the terra like the other serpents. And it kills the bellula. …" Deor (talk) 14:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * My dad read a giallo in which much of the dialogue is Sicilian. His wife read a translation of the same, and Dad was disappointed that it was all put into plain English.  I suggested that Sicilian could become Scots.  —Tamfang (talk) 22:23, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Parts of speech of "one"
A question for the syntacticians in the room: What part(s) of speech is the word one in the following examples? In (1) I'm tempted to call it a pronoun because it's replacing the NP "an apple". But in (2) I'm at a loss: syntactically it's behaving like a noun (what else can stand in the position NP[the red ___] besides a noun?), but at the same time it's replacing the noun "chair", which makes it a bit like a pronoun – except that pronouns usually stand in for complete NPs, not individual nouns within an NP. +Angr 14:39, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) There are apples in the fridge if you'd like one.
 * 2) There are three chairs in the room; the red one is yours.


 * Otto Jespersen calls it a "prop-word"... AnonMoos (talk) 14:59, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * withdrawn


 * Whatever, dude -- Otto Jespersen wrote the standard mid-20th-century academic reference grammar of modern English, and thought very deeply about these questions, even if his terminology and theoretical approach were quite different from those of post-1957 generative syntacticians. If Jim McCawley could treat Jespersen's syntactic work respectfully, then frankly, who are you to snidely sneer at it? -- especially since your own terminological proposal was glaringly inadequate... AnonMoos (talk) 15:37, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * My apologies. It appears my self-deprecating sarcasm didn't travel. Fouracross (talk) 15:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You could substitute another noun without too much difficulty: "There are Bramleys in the fridge if you'd like an apple ." or "There are three chairs in the room; the red stool is yours." The confusion comes because it is an cardinal number, so we are used to seeing it used in an adjectival role. Fouracross (talk) 15:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I really don't think it's a noun in (1), because it's "if you'd like one ", not "if you'd like a one ". In the second, it's behaving syntactically like a noun but semantically like a pronoun. Maybe that's what Jespersen means by "prop word" (a term I haven't heard before). +Angr 15:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe in terms of X-bar theory, it could be considered a pro-N' (as opposed to normal pronouns, which are pro-NP). I remember very vaguely having come across a proposal somewhat similar to this somewhere... AnonMoos (talk) 16:03, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Webcomic categorization
Some webcomics that I read, like Sam and Fuzzy, Achewood, and The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, follow story arcs and recurring characters. Others, like Amazing Super Powers, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and A Softer World, consist of individual stand-alone comics featuring no recurring characters. What terms would be used to describe the differences between these groups? I feel "serial" would describe both, since they are all updated regularly, and I couldn't think of any particular words that fit the bill. Thanks &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 17:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Episodic versus plot driven? --Dr Dima (talk) 19:10, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Among comic-strip aficionados and artists, the ones in which each strip is self-contained are usually called "gag-a-day strips," whether or not there's a stable of recurring characters (see this WP search). I'm not sure whether there's a standard term for the first kind; I've seen "serial strips," "story strips," and similar terms used. Deor (talk) 21:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * What about Continuity (fiction)? Penny Arcade (which goes back and forth between the two types you talk about) has joked about "dreaded continuity" several times, and it seems to be a general comic book term. Indeterminate (talk) 03:59, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Czech and/or Slovak translation
Can anyone provide me with the official Czech or Slovak versions of the Pittsburgh Agreement? To my surprise, that article doesn't have any foreign language versions; moreover, nothing about the agreement appears to be in the Czech or Slovak versions of the article on Pittsburgh, and "Pittsburgh" doesn't appear in either language's version of History of Czechoslovakia. I have a picture (ready to upload) of the site of its signing, and I'd like to have at least a little bit in both languages. Nyttend (talk) 22:18, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The article exists in both languages but neither are linked from or link to the English version. They are cs:Pittsburská dohoda and sk:Pittsburská dohoda. The original text exists in Slovakian Wikisource. There are also versions in German, Esperanto, and Polish Wikipedias - again, all link to each other but none to the English. Xenon54 (talk) 22:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You mean Slovak Wikisource. — Emil J. 10:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I do. Thanks for catching that. Xenon54 (talk) 12:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Singing in a tonal language
Is Western traditional stanza-based singing possible in tonal languages? It's easy in English: for example, the biblical text Psalm 23 is often sung in a five-stanza common metre translation with the simple tune "Crimond". Of course, one could make a five-stanza common metre translation of this text into Chinese or Vietnamese, and I suppose that it would make a reasonably understandable poem, at least to those who understand Western-style poetry. However, if it were sung to a Western tune, would the changing notes cause the tones to go off and thus change the meaning of the words sung? Nyttend (talk) 22:33, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The tones of the words sung are hardly ever a significant factor in the composition of modern Chinese songs. The words are sung as if they are atonal, and most of the time there is no difficulty in understanding them.
 * Ancient sung poetry were sometimes more elaborate, though, and poetic meters had strict rules as to tone.
 * The popular Ci form, for example, started out as a set of standard tunes. Poems (lyrics) were composed to fit a particular tune, and in order for the tones of the words to match the music, there were (fairly) strict rules as to the tone of these words. Today, these poems are still composed in accordance with these strict rules, but they are no longer sung to the original music. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:07, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * That’s true of Mandarin, but not of Cantonese (perhaps also not of some other dialects). The words in a Cantonese song are supposed to be sung in their proper tones. Poetic license is allowed, but being “off-tone” is certainly not the norm. Sung atonal, the words just sound funny to a Cantonese ear. And let me fess up: I often have a hard time understanding off-tone words in a song, be it Cantonese or Mandarin. Cantonese hymns sung in churches are “notorious” for being atonal, though, perhaps because the lyrics are originally written to be sung in Mandarin.--K.C. Tang (talk) 10:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Even in English, meaning can be hard to understand in a song if it hasn't been written to match the music to the rhythm and tone of the phrases. I can only imagine this is much worse in tonal languages. 89.168.106.72 (talk) 21:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * In Vietnamese, the words to songs must also be sung in their proper tones. Poetic license is allowed in some cases, but they're fairly rare and are most often found in more "modern" songs. The popular luc bat poetic form also has some strict tonal rules. DHN (talk) 07:11, 9 July 2009 (UTC)