Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 November 27

= November 27 =

Tuner - a movie musical?
I have an article from Variety Jan 1 1967 that twice uses the word tuner in a context that seems to mean a movie musical but I find no such meaning in the dictionaries. Can anyone tell me if tuner has ever had that meaning, or suggest a different word that Variety should have used? Below are the sentences: [The Young Girls of Rochefort] has charm, sustained human observation, mixed with catchy music, dances and songs to come up as a tuner with grace and dynamism. Though a fairly classic musical reminiscent of earlier Yank tuners, it has a Gallic froth, tinged with unobtrusive melancholy and character delineation. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:03, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Variety is famed for having a lot of jargon terms which are unique to that publication alone (or at best, are used among a rather small group of entertainment industry insiders). It was even parodied as "Varietese" in Doon... AnonMoos (talk) 09:32, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I've seen "oater" used occasionally to mean a western movie, and "actioner" for an action movie. I haven't seen "tuner" but it's clearly a formation on the same pattern.  --Anonymous, 21:45 UTC, November 27, 2009.

Byzantine surnames
I notice different noble family in the Byzantine Empire had different form of their surname based on their gender. Lekapenoi is non-gender, Lekapenos is male and Lekapene is female. I want to know what the surnames Gabalos, Martiniakos, and is in non-gender and female form. Also are the names Mamas, as in Theophano Mamas, daughter-in-law of Emperor Romanos I, and the name Zaoutzes surnames of a family or nicknames or some sort?--Queen Elizabeth II&#39;s Little Spy (talk) 12:30, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Lekapenoi is plural (and so, I suppose, would be Gabaloi and Martiniakoi). I'm not sure if you can add -e to make those names feminine so someone with better Greek will have to figure that out. (And what did they do with non-Greek names like Zaoutzes? I don't know.) Adam Bishop (talk) 18:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Aha, of course, Zaoutzes' daughter was Zoe Zaoutzaina, so there is a feminine form. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Use or nonuse of prepositions
Graduate college or graduate FROM college? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.153.5.208 (talk) 14:26, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I've seen this question here before, a long time ago. I'm not going to look for it now because I haven't got time, but I think the general consensus was that in US English the former is quite common, while the latter is more common in UK English. In either case, both are OK. --  KageTora - SPQW - (影虎)  ( talk )  14:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * KageTora is correct about the regional variation in the use of the verb, but that does not mean "either is OK". It means that the version that is deemed approriate depends on the surrounding text. In addition, British English really only collocates "graduate" with "university", not "college".  See college (disambiguation) to read about some of that word's many meanings.  BrainyBabe (talk) 16:34, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I had thought of mentioning the distinction between 'college' and 'university' here in the UK, but didn't think it was necessary because the title of the question specifically states that the OP wanted to know whether the preposition needed to be used or not. --  KageTora - SPQW - (影虎)  ( talk )  21:18, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * "Graduate college" (noun phrase) in the UK has the meaning of a college attended by graduates - maybe doing a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education. "Graduate from college" (verb phrase) means that you complete your course and pass it, hence you graduate. Also in the UK we generally use "university" for the place where higher education is taught, but this usage is gradually changing following the liberalisation of higher education courses in the past 10 years or so. --TammyMoet (talk) 16:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * TammyMoet is correct about the noun phrase, which I had not taken into account. It is my impression, however, that one completes or finishes a college course, but graduates from university. For more info on post-compulsory education, see further education and Universities in the United Kingdom. BrainyBabe (talk) 17:32, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I searched the Archives for "graduate", and from the top 100 results I selected the following discussions as seeming to be the most relevant.
 * Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 August 11
 * Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 April 18
 * Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 January 26
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 17:40, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Search for examples of non-pronounced H and for explainations
Hello, I'm French. As you know it's not easy for us to remember that the H at the beguinning of a word must be pronounced in English because we don't do that in French.

But there is at least one exception. To say it's 1h30 you say "one (h)our and a Half". So 2 questions.

1) Do you know other examples of such words ? 2) Can you explain this or these exceptions ?

Thank you for your explainations. Reims (Champagne area)-France---82.216.68.31 (talk) 17:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe they've formed in English as they did in French, with the letters carried over from the preceding word, to skip the "h". In any case, any word with a initial "h" preceded by "an" instead of "a" is a candidate. These include: heir, honest, hono[u]r and hour, and derived words. Some speakers may create others, like "an 'otel" (like the French), but that's not universal. More information about how this came about can be found here.- Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 17:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a small number of English words in 'h-' where the 'h' is never pronounced: Jarry's list above has most of them, but I'm sure there are a few more. ('Heritage' is not in the list, even though 'heir' is; and 'herb' is in this list for Americans, but not for British speakers.)
 * In all other English words an initial 'h-' is pronounced, except for some speakers when they want to put the indefinite article before a word that begins with 'h' in an unstressed syllable. These speakers drop the 'h' and use 'an' instead of 'a': "an historical event". But nobody says *"an history lesson", since 'history' is stressed on the first syllable. --ColinFine (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Or you're coming to London, you could learn Cockney and forget the "h" at the start of words like the rest of us. Alansplodge (talk) 20:35, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * We've been fighting against Cockney stereotyping for years, although that's mainly an American thing (the stereotyping, that is). - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 20:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The way Cockneys talk is not the fault of Americans. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:33, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No, but Dick van Dyke is! --ColinFine (talk) 23:45, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * So have we here Down Under. Many foreigners come out with Cockney when trying to do an Aussie accent, and they think they've nailed it, but to us they're laughably different.  As different as the Australian and New Zealand accents are to each other.  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:52, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Most Britons (so far as I know) pronounce the H in "herb" and "herbal" but many—probably most—Americans omit it. I've never been quite sure why. (The French say l'herbe rather than la herbe.) —— Shakescene (talk) 00:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The American pronunciation is the older one, as shown by the /h/-lessness of French herbe. The British inclusion of /h/ is a spelling pronunciation that became established. There are other cases where the /h/-ful spelling pronunciation became standard on both sides of the Atlantic, such as humble: pronouncing it "umble" nowadays sounds either quaintly dialectal or downright wrong, but 200 years ago the "h" in humble was as silent as the one in hour. +Angr 07:47, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that sounds as if the "h" in "hour" had remained unchanged. But according to David Crystal, Cambridge Encyclopedia of language, 2nd ed., p. 331, "hour" was pronounced like "whore" in As You Like It, allowing the bawdy pun of Act 2, Scene 7. (That was course twice as long ago.) Since it came from Old French, it must have come without the "h", and then changed back and forward. &mdash; Sebastian 08:20, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The OED has an enormous note on the history of h in English, which is probably worth reproducing in its entirety.


 * Algebraist 17:12, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * An interesting assortment of tidbits! I'm not sure how trustworthy all of them are; at least one can be easily refuted: "in modern Italian it is entirely omitted, as in eretico, istorico, orribile" - did they forget the ubiquitous "ho, hai, ha"? Moreover, how can an an article about "H" bring up Italian and omit the one thing that's special about the Italian H, its use in words like "che", "chi", and "Ghia"!?) Also, it is odd to write that Greek "used PH, TH, KH", without mentioning the letter Η and its history. That, btw, is nicely described in our article Eta, and the discussion of the disappearance of /h/ there leads us back to the original question. So, "hour" was pronounced without /h/ when the English got the word from the French, with /h/ by Shakespeare, and then it lost it again? &mdash; Sebastian 21:05, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "1h30" is not said as "hour and a half"; in referring to the time it is spoken as "one thirty" while as a period of time it is "one-and-a-half hours". This is usually written as 1:30 and not 1h30, although if the time is in p.m. then it is 1:30 pm in the 12-hour clock and 13:30 in the 24-hour clock. There are other ways of writing it, for example 1300z if it is 1:30 UTC. ~ A H  1 (TCU) 23:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

"Etc." in French
In French, there typically isn't a comma before the "et" at the end of a list. If a list ends with "etc.", is the comma still omitted before it, since the meaning of "etc." ("and so on") contains the word "and"/"et"? --70.247.253.131 (talk) 17:27, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know the answer, but I observe that 'et' in 'etc' is Latin and not French. I doubt if French speakers feel that 'etcetera' contains the French word 'et'. --ColinFine (talk) 19:02, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The older convention in written English (sometimes called the Oxford comma, q.v., after the Oxford University Press's style guide), was to put a comma after every item in an enumeration as in:"men, women, and children"and this is what was taught to me in the British schools of the late 1950's, but the more recent and more American convention is to omit commas before conjunctions, as in"men, women and children"This is a current and recurring topic of discussion in various contexts at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style: not so much whether to require the Oxford (or serial) comma, but more whether any guidance should be given one way or the other.
 * It seems to me that, since "et" stands for "and", one's preference for including or excluding a comma before "etc.", "&c." and "et al." would probably follow one's preference for including or excluding a comma before English conjunctions like "and" and "or". —— Shakescene (talk) 00:38, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * But on second thought, I almost always put a comma before "etc.", and almost never before "et al." and "&c.", so (since I usually though not always omit the comma before "and") I must be applying a different logic. The commas are there to separate different items, and the "etc." in "red, green, blue, etc." probably looks as if it needs separation from "blue". Another consideration is that "etc." usually stands for at least two more items not enumerated individually, so if the list were expanded to "red, green, blue, yellow, orange and brown", "blue" would precede a comma; I think putting a comma before "etc." indicates that more than one item is to follow. In the case of "et al." and "&c." the "and"-equivalent is more apparent. —— Shakescene (talk) 10:40, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe that the only way to deal with those who mispronounce et cetera as EXSETERA is EXecution with EXtreme prejudice. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:32, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * LANGUAGE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! If most people pronounce it that way, it is not a mispronunciation. Anglicising foreign words and phrases often involves some metathesis to make them fit common English patterns. 86.166.148.95 (talk) 17:19, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * etc = et cetera = "And the rest" in Latin. The French language borrowed "et" for their language, but in this case it is Latin A8  UDI  14:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * In French typography there is always a coma before "etc." except when there is an ellipsis, a question mark, an exclamation mark, etc. before it. My reference: Traité de la ponctuation française, by Jacques Drillon, Gallimard 1991, section 134. — AldoSyrt (talk) 17:15, 29 November 2009 (UTC)



"Tens of ..." vs. "Dozens of ..."
As a native speaker (b. 1953) of American English, I grew up with the expression "dozens of [something]." I can only recall encountering "tens of..." since relocating to Israel, where I figured it influenced by Hebrew-English translation, or perhaps otherwise British English usage. Today I read of "...tens of generations..." in this article in the International Herald Tribune, which as far as I know adheres to AE usage as well as spelling. Is this perhaps a case of the author's preference, approved by the paper's editors, or because this is a science article, or what? Whence this decimal fixation, and what's happened to "dozens of..."? I've persisted in using the latter in my professional writing (which often goes unedited), but now I feel obliged to get this straightened out if possible. -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:24, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I was going to quote some Google numbers when I found that Google gives 8,250,000 hits for "tens of" and 7,230,000 for "dozens of". However, it gives 7,980,000 for "tens of thousands" and 43,400,000 for "tens of millions" - i.e. five times as many "tens of millions" as "tens of"; so I don't trust its numbers. '"tens of" -thousands -millions -billions' gives 4,600,000, which (if it can be trusted) is significantly smaller than the number for "dozens of".
 * Certainly "dozens of" feels more colloquial to me (British), except in those phrases: I have no reason to think that there's anything particularly British about 'tens of'. French has the word 'dizaine' as well as 'douzaine', and they seem to get 5,480,000 and 1,690,000 ghits respectively. --ColinFine (talk) 19:15, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree "tens of" is weird - I think the use is satirical as in the headline: Tens of Bush Supporters Take to the Streets. I think I've heard it in English only satirically - like, "literally tens of (sth)", which is quite funny in a satirical way as normally the expression would be tens of thousands, etc.  92.230.68.207 (talk) 19:20, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I concur (British English), and would always assume satire unless otherwise prompted by context. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 19:47, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It's interesting that we say "tens of thousands" but "ten thousand". I wonder why not "ten thousands".  --  JackofOz (talk) 20:21, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "Thousands" suggests a quantity between 1,000 and 9,999. "Tens of thousands" suggests increments of ten thousand, such as 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000. "Ten thousands" would be 10,000. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but we don't say "ten thousands" when we mean 10,000; we say "ten thousand". Why is this?  --  JackofOz (talk) 23:53, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Er, because it's only one ten thousand. If it was more than that (i.e. 20,000 or 30,000) we would  say "tens of thousands". To be honest, I'm not sure I understand why you're perplexed: we say fifty thousand, not fifty thousands and four hundred, not four hundreds, so it's not like there's a parallel being breaking down. When I say "ten thousand", that's exactly equivalent to saying "ten times a thousand"; if I had a thousand units of something in a bag and ten bags, I would say "I've got ten thousand units." But the term "ten thousands" isn't equivalent at all and is really rather ambiguous - do I mean "ten times a thousand" or "ten times some number of thousands"? Vagueness is okay - and sometimes desirable - but ambiguity is rarely useful outside of wordplay. For once English is being sensible; just be glad! Matt Deres (talk) 02:40, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Not sure I'm making myself clear. I'm not losing any sleep over it; just idly curious. You say:  .. because it's only one ten thousand. If it was more than that (i.e. 20,000 or 30,000) we would  say "tens of thousands".  Well, I'd say "twenty thousand" and "thirty thousand".  But apply your argument to "million" - "one million" is only one "million"; but "two million" is two "million", so why not "two millions"?  That gets me back to square 1.  Normally, we add a plural ending to a noun if it's plural; we say "one apple" but "ten apples".  "Thousand" in "ten thousand" is by definition plural because it's governed by "ten", so why not "thousands"?  Here's a quote by William Pitt referring to "three millions of people".  That sounds rather antiquated now, but it at least shows these words were once pluralised in the standard way. --  JackofOz (talk) 03:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Usually the "tens of thousands" is used with an semi-indeterminate amount. For example, if you know some quantity is in the range of 10,000 to 90,000 but you don't know it exactly, you can say it's "in the tens of thousands". -- 69.128.159.185 (talk) 04:09, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, we may be talking past each other a bit. To me, "one thousand" (or "one million") is singular; I have one group of a thousand. "Two thousand" is multiple; I have two times a thousand. But, saying "two thousands" is both redundant - the two has already indicated we're dealing with multiples of a thousand - and ambiguous - if "one thousand" is one times one thousand, is "two thousands" two times one thousand or two times some indeterminate number of thousands? There are specific times where it's okay though, such as if you're literally dealing with bags of a thousand jelly beans or something, you could say that you sold "seventeen thousands" to distinguish it from the bags of hundreds you'd sold: "Yeah, I sold seventeen thousands and ten hundreds." But at the end of the day, you'd say that you sold eighteen thousand because eighteen thousands is ambiguous - and in this case, very specifically incorrect. Matt Deres (talk) 13:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Imagine this conversation:
 * A. How many people live in Ruritania?
 * B. Millions.
 * A. Yes, but how many millions?
 * B. Seven million.
 * So, we use the plural form of these counting words (hundred, thousand, million ..) when the number is indeterminate, but as soon as we specify a number, we revert to the singular. It would be like saying "many houses" but "three house".  We're all used to saying and hearing "seven million" and it doesn't sound odd, the way "three house" would.  I'm just trying to track down why we make this exception now, when we didn't always do so.  --  JackofOz (talk) 19:47, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a way of grouping. If you saying "ten thousand", you are estimating about 10,000. If you say "tens of thousands", you are saying it is several groups of 10,000. I mis-stated something earlier. "Tens of thousands" wouldn't be 10,000. It would be 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 or something under 100,000; indeterminate, except that it's several groups of 10,000 each. Does that make it clearer? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:01, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No, but see Shakescene's tangent below, which is exactly what I've been on about here. --  JackofOz (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Restating the original query: What are the usage rules in practice for "tens of [x]s" vs. "dozens of [x]s," where [x] is a quantifiable noun (not another order of number)? Of possible relevance: AE or BE.-- Deborahjay (talk) 05:42, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The only thing I can think of here is since decimalisation in the UK, "dozens" has fallen into some disuse as it belongs to the imperial system of measurement: the metric system is now taught in schools in the UK, and generations have grown up using tens, centimetres, grams etc. Whereas our generation (now 50 plus) were used to dozens, inches, stones etc. Of course, imperial terms are still used because so many are still familiar with them and so you will still hear "dozens" used by (mainly older) people. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I once read a quotation from a woman in a metricating New Commonwealth country saying how she'd have to get used to getting ten-egg cartons rather than dozens of eggs. I presume that you can still get eggs by the dozen in Britain and Ireland, or has the Heavy Hand of Harmonisation ended that, too? Twelves fit not only into "12 inches to a foot" but also into "12 pennies to a shilling, so 3 shillings a dozen meant threepence each. —— Shakescene (talk) 11:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes eggs are still in boxes of 6 or 12 because a box of 5 doesn't fit well with machines. However, I saw a box of 15 eggs in Tesco's last week and had to buy it for the novelty value! --TammyMoet (talk) 12:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Here in Germany eggs are available in cartons of six or ten. If you want a dozen, you have to buy two six-packs. +Angr 13:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * When you're feeling flirty, do you play 30.48 centimeteries under the table with your beau? Matt Deres (talk) 13:36, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

--TammyMoet (talk) 15:51, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * On the original query, what I understand is that these expressions are colloquial and correct, which are understood free from ambiguities but are ‘week adjectives’ to form their semantic possessiveness. On the comment of the plural form of its quantifiable noun (e.g. thousand), it seems there aren’t any rules for explanation, other than, as pointed out that it is an irregular plural form for which the singular counterpart is in an equal grapheme and phoneme relation. Mihkaw napéw (talk) 16:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Could be day, week or month adjectives for all I know. But they provide an order of magnitude. "Dozens" is more than a single dozen but less than, say, a gross (a dozen dozen). "Tens of thousands" is several groups of 10,000 but probably well under 100,000, otherwise you would say "nearly 100,000" or "about 100,000" or "a little over 100,000". Orders of magnitude are what these numbers are about. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Tangentially, the British used to write (and presumably say) phrases like "seven millions of people" or "twenty millions of pounds". —— Shakescene (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * And indeed some older people, including polititians, still do, particularly when referring to money: I'm fairly sure I've heard Gordon Brown do so quite recently. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 15:01, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Eureka! Someone knows what I was talking about up above.  I was sure I wasn't dreaming about this pluralisation of words like "million". --  JackofOz (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

OP again. Kindly advise me on these representative examples: would "tens of" be mandatory/preferred usage, or a matter of choice, or still peculiar (as this pre-millenial writer persists in using "dozens of")? -- Thanks, Deborahjay (talk) 05:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Tens of children were already on line when the mall's Santa Claus arrived.
 * Tens of local homeowners attended the "Neighborhood Watch" meeting.
 * Tens of pet dogs will need to be quarantined in the current rabies scare.


 * They all sound unnatural to me. Susbtitute "dozens", and they would be much better.  --  JackofOz (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)