Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 August 23

= August 23 =

Article title
"List of sportspeople who died during their career". Does that sound correct? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:19, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * No, it's definitely wrong -- "their" requires a plural "careers". Looie496 (talk) 03:03, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * No. The plural is okay in this example, but consider the sentence "Everybody raised their hand".  They raised one hand each.  "Everybody raised their hands" would suggest that they raised both hands.  --Anonymous, 04:10 UTC, August 23, 2010.


 * OK, thank you, I'm going to rename the article. If anyone objects, I'll send them to this page and let the authorities work them over a bit. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:08, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I disagree with Anonymous. "Everybody raised their hands" is not a good example for making a point about "List of sportspeople who..."  because everybody is formally singular ("Everybody likes ice cream", not "Everybody like ice cream*"); whereas sportspeople is unambiguously plural.  Also, everybody has two hands, whereas everybody has only one lifetime career to lose at death.  So the two utterances are anything but parallel.  "List of sportspeople who died during their career" suggests a disastrous event that killed—all at once—an entire team with a shared, singular career.  These people did not have a shared career.  They had careers.  Therefore, the title above should be plural.  Marco polo (talk) 12:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, change my example to "They all raised their hand". The point stands.  --Anon, 19:12 UTC, August 23, 2010.


 * I'm not sure about the word "during". Doesn't a statement that something happened "during their careers" imply that their careers continued afterwards?  I don't think we have hard evidence that angels play baseball, do we?  It seems more likely that their careers ended at that point.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:44, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That is kind of funny. But to word it absolutely correctly it gets kind of lengthy: "List of sportspeople whose careers were ended by their respective deaths." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:47, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "List of sportspeople whose careers were ended by death" ...?  Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:59, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think there are competing meanings of the word "career".


 * If, as Marco polo says, "everybody has only one lifetime career to lose at death", then everyone dies during their career. In order for the category to make sense, perhaps it should be made clearer that it is a list of people whose active sport career was prematurely ended by their death.


 * Is this title too long? "List of sportspeople who died during their active playing careers".  Wanderer57 (talk) 12:56, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * (ec) Ghmyrtle, the title assumes a distinction between (a) sportspeople who retired from sport, thus ending their sporting careers, and died at some later time, and (b) those who died while still actively pursuing their sporting career. This is about people in the latter category.  Is there a parallel construction to "politicians who died in office"?  "Sportspeople who died in mid-career", perhaps?      --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   13:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I repeat.. their careers ended at that point.  Retrospectively, how is it "mid-career"?  Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:09, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It was mid-career 5 minutes before they took ill. Or even 1 minute. Only when they died or were disabled, were their careers over. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:24, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I know what you mean. However, it seems odd to me that - in a retrospective biography written after their death - we describe someone as dying "mid-career", a term which to me means "in the middle of their active career, which started when they first played at a senior level, and ended when they died or retired."  If someone started playing at age 16, and continued until they dropped dead at, say, 32, I would describe their "mid-career" as the period between their "early career" (say, 16-21) and their "late career" (say, 27-32).  They might have thought themselves in "mid-career" at the point immediately before they died - if they planned on playing until, say, 45 - but, retrospectively, it's clear that they were wrong.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:40, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Ghmyrtle, though this is starting to sound like the brouhaha over mentioning someone's death as "premature". I haven't checked the article, but lists like this (a group of unrelated people who have one thing in common) always seem better suited to categories to me. Matt Deres (talk) 14:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Lives are lived forwards, but encyclopedia articles take an overview of the whole. Which approach has priority in terms of article titling?  Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:37, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "List of sportspeople whose careers ended at death". Or, perhaps more chipper, "List of dead sportspeople who never retired". --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:58, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Instead of retired, they expired. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:40, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * How about "List of sportspeople whose careers were ended by death" as opposed to "List of sportspeople whose careers can only be ended by death" (you know who you are) . Clarityfiend (talk) 02:07, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * How about realising that nobody ever had a problem with "... died during their careers" until Ghmyrtle's observation above. Has anyone ever read this and somehow assumed their careers continued for some time after they died?  I'll answer that: No.  Maybe it's not logical to the nth degree, but language is often this way and we seem to get on ok.  No change is required.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   20:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

One year vacation
What's it called when someone takes a year long vacation from work or studies, usually to travel? (In Swedish its called sabbatsår, is there a English translation?) P. S. Burton  (talk)  19:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * This phenomenon is virtually unknown in the United States, except in academia, where it is known as "a sabbatical". Marco polo (talk) 19:42, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * We also have an article on gap year. ---Sluzzelin talk  19:45, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, gap year, was what I was looking for. P. S. Burton  (talk)  19:48, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Just be aware that if you use the term gap year, few people from the United States will understand you. Even in other English-speaking countries, I think that this term implies a year that a young person takes for travel before university or perhaps between university and work.  I don't think that the term usually refers to older adults taking a year off from work.  Marco polo (talk) 20:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * In the UK, "sabbatical" is the term used in professional or academic circles for someone taking a year off. More generally, there is "year out" or "year off".  "Gap year", as Marco polo says, is for younger people between school and university, or university and work.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:54, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I used it to refer to my travels in Australia between High School and University. I learnt the word in Australia, but just couldn't remember it. P. S. Burton  (talk)  22:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It depends. "Gap year" in Commonwealth countries usually refers to a break between graduating from high school and starting post-secondary studies (or possibly work).  "Sabbatical," as someone pointed out, typically refers to a long break taken by a teacher, usually at a post-secondary institution, and the leave is sometimes paid.  A "leave of absence" usually refers to unpaid leave from work or study.  Exploding Boy (talk) 23:03, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I haven't read Eat, Pray, Love, did Elizabeth Gilbert use any such terminology in her memoir? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 23:08, 24 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I think "career break" is a good choice, at least in the UK, to describe time taken off from work to discover the world. In the public sector, people can take such a break and return to their employer; in the private sector, such a break might be negotiable, but people might conceivably resign from one post, disappear for a year and then seek a new job upon their return.  "Gap year" would, to my mind, certainly only mean the year between graduation from university and embarking on a career (or the year between A-level results and the start of university.95.149.131.187 (talk) 13:07, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Spanish - native meaning of "Retales"
According to the dictionary "retal" means scrap piece or oddment - does it refer to cloth usually, and does "retales" actually mean something like patchwork ??Sf5xeplus (talk) 23:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "Retal" usually refers to a scrap of a piece of cloth or lace. --- cymru lass (hit me up)⁄(background check) 01:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks I though it was cloth rather than rubbish - so does "retales" have a specific meaning - is there a good equivalent in english - not "rags" or no ? 03:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)