Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 February 17

= February 17 =

place name and family name
It may or may not be true, but it is a reasonable guess, that Marvin Minsky is descended from someone who once lived in the city of Minsk.

There does not seem to be a city called Chomsk. Any idea where Noam Chomsky's forebears might have hailed from, going just by his name? (Looking up his actual biography doesn't count; I'm wondering more where these names get their origins).

Thanks. 66.127.55.192 (talk) 06:13, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * www.traveljournals.net/explore/belarus/map/m2709382/chomsk.html - Chomsk is in Belarus. (That site is blacklisted).  Woogee (talk) 08:01, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. Since it wasn't in wikipedia, I figured it didn't exist. 66.127.55.192 (talk) 08:03, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The sinister obverse of "Wikipedia ergo sum". Clarityfiend (talk) 09:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If Wikipedia did have an article on it, it would be at Khomsk; the Russian spelling of the last name Chomsky is Хомский, although Noam Chomsky himself is sometimes called Ноэм Чомски in Russian. (I once heard that there are Russians who have heard of both the outspoken American political dissident Ноам Хомский and the American linguist Ноэм Чомски but don't realize that the two are the same person; I can't verify that that's true though.) +Angr 10:23, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * We do have pl:Chomsk and be:Вёска Хомск though. According to my (bad) understanding of Polish, it had 1700 residents in 1921, and was seat of a gmina, but since most were Jews, it was practically wiped out during the Holocaust. While it is certainly not a proof, it may well be prof Chomsky's... what's the correct XXXnym here? Eponym? No such user (talk) 13:15, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * See List of places named after people. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * But that's not what he means. The idea is that the Chomsky family is named after Khomsk, not that Khomsk is named after Chomsky. +Angr 15:59, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * See also http://www.pbase.com/chiz/ww2chomsk. No such user (talk) 13:19, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I see there is also a city called Kholmsk, in a part of Russia quite distant from Belarus. Also, WP search for "Khomsk" finds the biography of David B. Steinman, which indicates that Khomsk is/was part of Brest, Belarus, which is a bit more of a population center and therefore likely to have produced more emigrants than a town of 1700 people could. 66.127.55.192 (talk) 02:32, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I think there's a mix-up there: there's only one Khomsk/pl:Chomsk in Belarus (I saw census data in the meanwhile), which is in the area of Brest, Belarus indeed (pl:Obwód brzeski). Noam Chomsky's father has origins from present-day Ukraine, which is near enough. The fact that the village of Chomsk had only 2,000 people doesn't mean that it was the source of numerous immigrants: all it takes that one man back in time gets named "Chomsky" (after the village or something else), and that he has a sufficient number of male descents so that the surname does not get extinct. Likelihood of pl:Chomsk being the origin of Noam's surname is increased because it had a numerous Jewish population, so it matches his origins. No such user (talk) 07:50, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Interestingly, it looks like there is a city formerly named Trotsk. I knew that Leon Trotsky was a self-selected nom-de-guerre, so I wondered if it was inspired by the name of the city.  But it looks like the city was (temporarily) named after Trotsky instead. Which makes me ask, ok, how did Lev Bronstein pick the name "Trotsky"? 66.127.55.192 (talk) 05:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Or was it Leiba Bronstein who chose the name Lev Trotsky? --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   07:23, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess it was a real surname he had encountered, because other people have it (see Trotski (disambiguation)). Could be a distorted (contracted) form of Troitsky, a surname and adjective corresponding to to the locality name Troitsk, both ultimately derived from troitsa, "(Holy) Trinity". Another theory is that it comes from Troki (an old name of Trakai, Lithuania). As for why he chose it, I don't know anything and it may be that he never gave any explanation, but I suspect it was just for the resonant sound of it; it sounds kinda militant and rrrrevolutionary, with a Russian rolled R. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 17:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

It should be pointed out that many, but not all surnames in -sky correspond to localities in -sk. -sky is a suffix meaning -ian or -ish that can be added to any word. For example, Nevsky as in Alexander Nevsky and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky comes from the river Neva.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 17:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

translation
Dear sir/madam

I need translation from English to Nepali or Nepali to English.

what can I do for it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marker100 (talk • contribs) 10:15, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Try http://nepalitranslation.co.uk/ --Sir or Madam (talk) 12:21, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * You might try Category:Wikipedians in Nepal and ask one of the Wikipedians listed there. Woogee (talk) 19:51, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

what is the official term for
the aspies ability to shut out the world and concentrate on something? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.8.228 (talk) 17:07, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * It could be a variety of Flow--91.6.27.234 (talk) 17:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Aspies is redirected to Asperger syndrome. I am mentioning this to clarify the context for readers of this discussion.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 18:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * You've got the perfect user name in relation to what I call it: "Tuning it out." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:09, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Can't 'normal' people do this when doing something that enthals them? --Polysylabic Pseudonym (talk) 07:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hear I Only Have Eyes for You by The Flamingos on YouTube (3:37). -- Wavelength (talk) 02:07, 19 February 2010 (UTC)


 * People on the autism spectrum and neurotypical people can miss important details. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:58, 19 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hyperfocus? 66.127.55.192 (talk) 08:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

i do not find these words in my dictionnary, gulp > help
i just watched again One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and was wondering about the meaning of the title : answer : Title interpretation : ok ok ok but (my mother tongue is french) i do not understand some words of the rhyme (probably kiddy pronunciation?!) and its whole meaning anyway, sigh--- Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn = ??? -- thanks in advance for any help -- kernitou talk 17:18, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think they are oldish words for various common farm-related things: 'vintery' is likely related to grapes of wine processing (like the word 'vintner'), 'cutery' is a place or a thing involved with cutting (possibly another name for a mill), 'corn' (obviously) is grain. 'mintery' - at a complete guess - is someplace where farm tools are fabricated.  The sense of the rhyme, though, has to do with the cuckoo, which is a metaphor for an unsavory transformation (cuckoos lay there eggs in other bird's nests, so from the perspective of other birds, their offspring turn into monstrosities) - basically it implies that just by randomly flying around the countryside one can find oneself 'changed'. -- Ludwigs 2  18:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Just nonsense rhyming slang - unless Lugwigs2 can find a source for his guess. Rmhermen (talk) 18:23, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * not nonsense - more like 'hey nonny nonny'-sense  -- Ludwigs 2  19:23, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

thanks y thanks y - kernitou talk 20:21, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds more like a Yan Tan Tethera to me. --jpgordon:==( o ) 06:30, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If you google those 4 words together you find all kinds of references, some to just the poem and/or the film, others to past questions on other sites about what the first line actually means, and no one seems to know except that it seems to be simply a nonsense rhyme. Maybe a bit like "hickory, dickory, dock; the mouse ran up the clock". That word "dickory" seems to be made up. I also saw versions that start with "Intery" instead of "Vintery". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:49, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If I saw the word cutery (without context), I would assume that it was cutlery misspelled. Googlemeister (talk) 19:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Chinese translation...
What does this mean? (Google's translation was gibberish) --Belchman (talk) 18:51, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

你有冇仆街d呀 比隻生既雀仔條蛇食!!!


 * I can't help with the translation, but I can tell you why Google's translation was gibberish - the Chinese you have written here is Cantonese, and Google only does the standard language of China. --  KageTora - (影虎)  ( A word...? )  21:25, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The sentence uses non-standard characters / idiomatic character usage to reflect Cantonese pronunciation / usage rather than standard mandarin.
 * My stab at a translation "Are you an idiot? Feeding a live bird to a snake!!!" But I'm not a native speaker of Cantonese. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:29, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * What is the Latin letter "d" doing there? +Angr 23:30, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Those sometimes show up in informal Chinese and slang, sometimes as borrowed abbreviations (such as "ML" from 'make love'--even though no one in English says "ML", I've heard it in Chinese) and sometimes because the letter sounds like a Chinese word (such as "B" for 屄, which is pronounced bi in Pinyin and means something quite bad). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 23:38, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I second PalaceGuard008's translation as a native Cantonese speaker, although the original tone is more vulgar (but not quite full on insulting) than what his translation may appear. --antilivedT 00:15, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * PalaceGuard008 got it right. THANK YOU! --Belchman (talk) 13:49, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I would dearly love to know the context of this! --jpgordon:==( o ) 06:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * First thing I thought of was a reference to ADVENT--one of the puzzles requires you to get past a giant snake, and the way you solve it is by releasing a small bird into the same room. The bird then attacks and drives off the snake. *shrug* Anyway, it's what came to mind. Not sure why it would be referenced in Chinese (well, Cantonese) or why it would be insulting, so I'm probably wrong. 24.247.163.175 (talk) 00:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 仆街 is a vulgar slang. In this context, "dumb-ass" would be a closer translation. 仆街 is used in a variety of vulgar ways other than just "idiot". In here actually, 仆街 is used as an adjective, not a noun. --Kvasir (talk) 22:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)