Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 April 25

= April 25 =

Etymology
What is the etymology of pissing contest?174.3.123.220 (talk) 03:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * What etymology? The two words perfectly describe the first meaning given there. --Anonymous, 05:28 UTC, April 25, 2010.


 * I think they're asking about when and where it was first used in it's more figurative usage. StuRat (talk) 06:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Dictionary.com gives the first recorded use as 1970s. Similarly it records pissing as an adjective "This pissing weather" from 1937. Pissingly as an adverb "this pissingly awful weather" at 1971. Caesar&#39;s Daddy (talk) 07:22, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I've no doubt that schoolkids have been holding pissing contests for at least hundreds of years. For some reason none of them thought to publish the details.--Shantavira|feed me 16:27, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

monospace (fixed-width) East Asian characters same as Latin width?
Is there a font that provides both East Asian characters and Latin letters that are all exactly the same width? For instance, I would want these three examples to be the same width:
 * 漢字
 * ii
 * 齉W

Alternatively, I'd also be happy with one that consistently maps Latin characters as half the width of a Chinese one. This is the only one I found so far: http://www.ascenderfonts.com/font/mingliu-traditional-chinese.aspx but it doesn't seem to be free.

--69.165.131.155 (talk) 06:50, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * In East Asian input methods there's often a little switch that toggles between full/half width characters, or between ａｂｃｄｅｆｇ and abcdefg. Full width form is the same width as Asian characters so it would be like "漢字ｉｉ齉Ｗ". --antilivedT 10:40, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * MingLiu used to be given out by Microsoft when you browsed a Chinese-language web-page in MSIE 5.5 running under non-Chinese Windows ME, and a little box popped up asking you if you want to download the Chinese-language browser support package (that's how I got it). The version I have is oriented towards traditional Chinese, and has only limited support for simplified characters... AnonMoos (talk) 12:28, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * PMingLiU has good support for simplified characters (although it looks like the OP is using traditional characters anyway), and I believe it comes already installed if you download OpenOffice. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 13:58, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

'Correct' English
Is it grammatically correct to spell things like carpet's with an apostrophe? I have seen signs and menus where the plural has been given an apostrophe, such as chair's, menu's....I always used to think that this meant it belonged to whatever the thing is...for example Bob's would be mean it would belong to Bob...Am I right? Chevymontecarlo. 10:16, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You are correct. An apostrophe to signify a plural is incorrect. Now we sit back and await the exceptions -  if there are any. An associated mistake I have seen is paninis as a plural for panini. Panino is singular, panini is plural. Graffito is singular, graffiti is plural. Richard Avery (talk) 10:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Quite right. But see Earl%27s_Court_tube_station. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  10:52, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * See also this about the the so-called "greengrocers apostrophe". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:46, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Panini is plural of panino in Italian. In English, paninis is plural of panini.  Woogee (talk) 21:29, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Then there are the so-called 'pirozhkis', which is wrong in 2 ways (double plural; wrong stress if pronounced pi-ROZH-kis). Maybe it's different in Polish, but in Russian one of them is a пирожок (pron. piro-ZHOK), and many are пирожки (piro-SHKI).  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   17:26, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's different in Polish – the stress is almost invariably on the penultimate syllable (sing. pieróg, pl. pierogi; diminutive sing. pierożek, pl. pierożki). But the sin of depluralization of foreign words is not restricted to English. In Polish, we typically add the "-y" or "-i" plural suffix to English words that already end in "-s": dżinsy (jeans), bryczesy (breeches), Beatelsi (the Beatles), etc. — Kpalion(talk) 09:22, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Welsh has a different way of depluralizing English words. Most Welsh nouns are like nouns in any other European language: they're morphologically unmarked in the singular but take a suffix in the plural. But there are a few nouns, mostly referring to things that are small or tend to occur in groups (trees, leaves, flowers, mice, children, etc.) that are unmarked in the plural and take a suffix in the singular (-yn for masculine nouns, -en for feminine nouns). Welsh borrowed the English word "rags" as rhacs, which is plural. But the singular of rhacs is rhecsyn ("a rag"), with the singular suffix -yn and with the umlaut-like vowel mutation that suffix triggers. +Angr 09:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You can stop waiting, Richard; I'm here with some exceptions. :-) In what is perhaps now a somewhat old-fashioned convention intended to prevent misreading, apostrophes have been used in forming the plurals of individual letters ("What river's name contains four s ' s and four i ' s?") and numbers ("I could barely tell the difference between his 1's and his 7's"). There are a couple of other similar cases, but they're too minor to go into in detail. Deor (talk) 15:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The reverse side of the coin is that an apostrophe is always required with a possessive of a noun (Wikipedia's policies, Mary's husband, the chair's colour, the twins' names, etc). The only exception I can think of is geographic names in possessive form, such as Pikes Peak, the Princes Highway, etc, where the (often government-decreed) convention is to do without apostrophes. In general language, however, a peak belonging to Pike would be Pike's peak, and a highway owned by a prince would be the prince's highway.  Yet, possessive apostrophes are becoming a thing of the past for many younger people.  To compensate, they'll add them into plurals, where they're almost always out of place.  Modern language education, hah! --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   21:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, yes, "modern language education". For further information, see oxymoron. Meanwhile, it's nearing supper, so I'm heading out for some Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:00, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks everyone...this has been really bugging me... Chevymontecarlo . 17:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Just while I'm here: Something that continues to mystify me is lists of plural things where some items are given apostrophes and some aren't. Putting aside the rules for a moment, I'd have thought it'd be an all or nothing thing in the mind of the writer.  I mean, why would certain plural words qualify for an apostrophe but others not?  The common example is restaurants or cafes that offer: "sandwiches, pies, hamburger's [sic], pizza's [sic], drinks, ...".  I know I've harped on this before, but as I say it still amazes me.  I'm all for consistency, and I'm on record as saying that if you're going to misspell things, you can be forgiven if you at least always misspell them the same way, in the fervent belief that your principle is sound.  But this blows that theory out of the water.  I'm tempted to conclude that these people have no principles; but there must be something else that explains this apparently irrational behaviour.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   17:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Most people who use an apostrophe plus the letter s to make a singular noun plural are simply ignorant (or forgetful) of the rules of English grammar. That useage is incorrect.  The increasing presence of that incorrect useage seems to give some people the impression that it is becoming acceptable.  This is somewhat similar to people believing that something is true because they saw it on the Internet, or heard it on a television news program. --Thomprod (talk) 17:18, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. But how can someone remember the rules for the first few words in a list, then forget the rules for the next few, then remember them again ...  I just don't get what's going on there.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   21:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Language identification
Hi, can I get an identification of the languages of the greetings spoken at 3:28 in this youtube? thanks. 121.72.182.113 (talk) 11:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * They're all dialects of Mandarin, possible exepting one or two. 76.230.148.6 (talk) 16:33, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * What are you talking about? They are dialects of Chinese. Mandarin (a dialect of Chinese) is in there, as well as Cantonese. The others I don't know which dialects they are. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  17:12, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I beg to differ. Mandarin Chinese is a branch of Chinese, comprising many dialects. You are probably thinking of Standard Mandarin, a dialect of Mandarin Chinese. See Mandarin_dialects. 76.230.148.6 (talk) 17:16, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is indeed what Wikipedia says. However, Mandarin variously gets called a dialect, a branch, and even a separate language, depending on who is saying it (this topic comes up every so often here on the RefDesk - feel free to look through the archives for the relevant discussions). In any case, the 'languages' in those greetings are not dialects of Mandarin. They are dialects, or 'branches' if you so prefer, of Chinese. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  17:40, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * (Obligatory mention of this article, the same one I always cite when this issue comes up.) FWIW KageTora is correct here; regardless of what you call Mandarin, the greetings on the video linked are from various varieties of Chinese, not from various varieties of Mandarin (most of them are not Mandarin). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 20:29, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

If you actually listen to what the announcer says at the beginning of the video, she clearly states that the signal from the debate is being simultaneously broadcast on all channels in order to let the greatest number of people experience the historic debate between a sitting president and a leader of the opposition party. She specifically mention that the Hakka channel and the Aboriginal channel, as well as CTS, are broadcasting the debate. President Ma greeted the audience first in Mandarin, then Taiwanese, then Hakka, then Cantonese (?), then something aboriginal (Amei? Paiwanese??? good luck finding out which). If you understand contemporary Taiwanese identity politics, this sort of linguistic pluralism has become de rigeur for almost all public occasions and and in all public venues 96.232.190.148 (talk) 23:52, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * President Ma mixed in a few phrases of Taiwanese during the debate as well. Why doesn't Tsai Ing-wen feel the need to do this? 121.72.217.70 (talk) 07:11, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the 4th is Cantonese. --Kvasir (talk) 07:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Malayalam bot message
Hello Language Reference Desk. I have a strange request. User:Jotterbot left me a message on my Malayalam talk page. (I didn't even know I had one, but thanks to unified accounts, I do!) In any case, I can't read any of this, because I have never actually learned to speak or read Malayalam; and I need help translating this message so I can decide whether I need to respond. Any Malayalam speakers want to help translate this into English for me? Nimur (talk) 19:23, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It's just ml:ഫലകം:സ്വാഗതം, the Malayalam equivalent of welcome. Algebraist 19:57, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I get messages like this all the time in obscure languages I don't know, because of unified accounts and because at smaller wikis just automatically welcome everyone who registers an account - even when that's done automatically because of unified accounts. Now whenever I visit a new language's Wikipedia for the first time, the first thing I do is go to my preferences and switch the interface language to English (so I can see what I'm doing) and turn off "Notify me when my talk page is changed" so that I at least don't also get e-mail in obscure languages informing me that I have talk page messages in obscure languages. +Angr 09:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I never got a Wikipedia welcome message, on any of my accounts. In fact, Angr, the only welcome message I ever got was from you. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  14:28, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I haven't regretted that yet! But do you have single user log-in? If not, sign up for it, and then just start visiting random pages at random Wikipedias. You don't even have to edit – just viewing a page when you're logged in here will be sufficient for your account to be automatically created, and then you'll start getting welcome messages from bots. And if your preferences are set to "Notify me when my talk page is changed" (and if you have registered your e-mail address), you'll also start getting e-mails in random languages informing you that you have messages on your talk pages. +Angr 14:37, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

IPA
This wasn't answered on the misc desk (Reference_desk/Miscellaneous) so I thought I'd try here: Hi, I've googled but can't find an answer so I hope you can help. How do you write the Asian sirname Advani (pronounced Ad-var-nee - that's the best I can do to write it phonetically) in IPA. Thanks. 86.180.29.26 (talk) 22:39, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It would help to know what language it is. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 23:17, 25 April 2010 (UTC) I suppose it's Hindi? r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 23:19, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * According to this article, there exists the Sindhi name आडवाणी, the romanisation of which would give Advani, and according to the same article, the IPA transcription of that name is . By the way, I can't view the letter ᶑ that has been used in the transcription. Does anyone know a font that supports it? --Магьосник (talk) 01:42, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * D with hook and tail mentions Charis SIL and Doulos SIL. Algebraist 01:47, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have misread the text there. It reads: "Those that do include Charis SIL and Doulos SIL", and I erroneously read it as "Those do not include Charis SIL and Doulos SIL." It's 5 in the morning where I am, therefore such mistakes can happen sometimes. :P Thanks! --Магьосник (talk) 02:05, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all very very much! Really, thanks. I couldn't find it with an extensive Google and Bing search, I should have really thought of checking Wikipedia's articles beyong the disambig page. 86.180.29.26 (talk) 19:58, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, it was exactly Google that I used and the very first hit gave me the result you needed. :P --Магьосник (talk) 22:13, 26 April 2010 (UTC)