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

= March 7 =

Synonym
Are there grades of synonyms? Are there dictionaries or at least lists of perfect synonyms?--Mr.K. (talk) 11:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you referring to a thesaurus / Roget's Thesaurus? This  is an online tool which you may want to check.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 12:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I think what you might want to check out is visualthesaurus. While it may not indicate perfect synonyms, it does show relative closenesses of words.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  19:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Typing Korean on Windows PC
How is it possible to type Korean on a Windows PC? I have installed the language bar and have the Microsoft IME input method, but it doesn't work the way I want it to, i.e. properly. I try to type 'hanguk', and get ㅗ무혀ㅏ, which is obviously wrong. What is the point in this IME, anyway? It works perfectly well for Chinese and Japanese, but not Korean. Can anyone help me here?--KageTora (talk) 19:46, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Korean is not typed in romanization. Each phoneme is mapped to a key. You need to learn this layout. For example, 한국 (hanguk) is gksrnr. See here. Regards, Bendono (talk) 23:28, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Right, Keyboard layout has the details as well. BTW, I wouldn't call Hangul typing phonemic. --Kjoonlee 16:03, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

arabic word noor
what is the meaning of arabic word 'noor', light or reflected light


 * My Arabic dictionary defines &#1606;&#1608;&#1585; nūr as "light, ray of light, light beam, brightness, gleam, glow, illumination, lamp" (with further meanings in combination). However, the main word for "light" in the abstract (as opposed to light in specific manifestations) is probably &#1590;&#1608;&#1569; AnonMoos (talk) 23:02, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I've heard نور in the abstract quite a bit, though. Wrad (talk) 23:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Noor is used a lot in the Names of God, particularly Nur Ad-Din. Steewi (talk) 23:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Horse sense
As far as I know, the term "horse sense" is a synonym for "common sense". Is that correct? If so, what exactly is the connection with horses? I can't seem to find anything good on-line about this. Does anyone have any ideas? Does the term refer to the sense of a horse (i.e., that a horse himself has good "common sense")? Or does the term refer to the sense of a human (i.e., in dealing with a horse or any horse-related matters ... similar to, say, "fashion sense")? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC))


 * Yes, it's a near-synonym. Wiktionary gives the definition 'Common sense, especially with a connotation of folk wisdom independent from, and trumping, formal education'. I can't find an authoritative etymology. Google gives a number of possibilities, such as it being related to the perceived shrewdness of horse-traders, or being 'from the same association of "strong, large, coarse" found in horseradish' (Online Etymology Dictionary). Algebraist 20:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Yes, I was not able to find anything decent on-line ... hence, I posted here.  I also found that comment about the "strong, large, coarse found in horseradish" ... and I have no idea what that statement is even trying to say.  Any help?  Thanks.   (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC))


 * I think what it means is that in horseradish, horse means strong, large, coarse, and this may be the case in horse-sense. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 22:18, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * However, horses are considered pretty sensible as animals go, so in the absence of evidence, that would also make sense as the origin. To tell the truth, it never occurred to me that it was anything else until the question was asked here. --Anonymous, 05:03 UTC, March 8, 2009.


 * One possible origin for the phrase (OR alert) is that horses will (or are widely believed to be able to) take their riders home even if the humans get lost. The horse has enough common sense to know where the oats and dry stable are, and will act on that animal intuition/knowledge.  If you want sources for the phrase, you could do worse than post your query at Wikiproject Equine. On the other hand, English is not a logical language. We also have the phrase "eats like a horse" to mean a voracious and indiscriminate eater, but horses can be quite finicky, and lethally stupid (will eat unripe apples, get bellyache, and die of colic). So don't expect language to make sense. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I think of eating like a horse as referring to eating large quantities of healthy food, like an athlete in training. I would describe a voracious and indiscriminate eater as eating like a pig. Matt Deres (talk) 15:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Eating like a pig = eating truffles ? :-) StuRat (talk) 02:02, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Subject verb agreement
This sentence comes from the Michelangelo article: It was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in the next major movement in Western art. I am confused about the subject / verb agreement. If you remove all of the "extraneous" (descriptive) words, this sentence is simplified to "It was the attempts." The pronoun "it" is singular, the verb "was" is singular, and the noun "attempts" is plural. Something seems not quite right here. But, the alternatives also don't seem right. So, can anyone explain if the original sentence is correct ... and why exactly? I understand that the original question can be re-worded in style and structure to avoid this problem ... but that is not what I am asking about here. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC))
 * It were the attempts. - This sounds awful and can't be correct, I think?
 * They were the attempts. - This also sounds bad and doesn't accurately get across the concept of the sentence.
 * It was the attempt. - This also seems wrong, since it was not one attempt (but many attempts) that resulted in the next art movement.
 * It was is correct usage as far as I know as a native speaker, but I don't know why specifically, I'm sure someone else may be able to help. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 22:16, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This may be an expletive it, which does not refer to any specific entity (there is no antecedent to the pronoun).  PS: I am not a native speaker, so wait for the gurus.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * (after ec) 'It' is an expletive subject: syntactically it is the subject, and the verb agrees with it, even though semantically 'attempts' is the subject. (Actually, I suspect that it would be more accurate to say 'the verb is in the unmarked form, which is singular', rather than talking about agreement, but that would be OR, including my assumption that the (morphologically more complex) singular is the syntactically unmarked form). --ColinFine (talk) 22:31, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * PS2: "It" may also be a cataphoric it, representing the subordinate clause "the attempts of artists to imitate". Same proviso as in my posting above.--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:34, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, at a purely syntactic level the subject of the sentence is "it", so the verb is in the singular in agreement with it; "attempts" is a predicate nominative. German syntax works differently: a verb agrees with a plural predicate nominative, so the translation would be Es waren die Versuche (lit. "It were the attempts"). This difference between English and German constantly trips up speakers of one language trying to speak the other one. (Incidentally, this "It was X that did Y" construction meaning "X did Y" is called a cleft sentence in syntax, not that anyone asked.) —Angr 22:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Angr, thank you for the additional information, about German syntax and about the expression cleft sentence. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The fact that a particular word is the subject "at a purely syntactic level" does not mean that the verb has to agree with it: a famous example is "a number of", as in "a number of men were walking by." However, the sentece we were asked about does not behave that way.  If the subject is just "it", the verb does always agree with it.  --Anonymous, 05:09 UTC, March 8, 2009.


 * True. Which is part of my reason for arguing that it's not a question of agreement at all. --ColinFine (talk) 18:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Reminds me of Alice in Wonderland: AnonMoos (talk) 23:13, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Mouse: I proceed. "Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable—"
 * Duck: Found what?
 * Mouse ("rather crossly"): Found it, of course you know what "it" means.
 * Duck: I know what "it" means well enough, when I find a thing, it's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?