Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 February 9

= February 9 =

Chinese-English transliteration: Jiang Jieshi and the Qing Dynasty
When I was taking high school world history and learning about China, I remember being puzzled about the names I was learning and their transliteration and pronunciation in English. There were a few questions I had:


 * 1) I was taught that the Jiang Jieshi I was learning about was known to my parents as Chiang Kai-Shek, and that the former name was more accurate to the Chinese pronunciation or something.  How could something roughly pronounced "jee-shee" be mistakenly transliterated as something pronounced "kie-shek"?  I have trouble believing that it was simply an issue of an ignorance of Chinese phonemes.
 * 2) Also, I was taught that Qing was pronounced "Ching".  I was told that what used to be transliterated with a ch was now being rendered with a q, to more closely match the Chinese alphabet from which it came.  This did not make sense to me, as I reasoned that the purpose for transliteration was to use the target language's alphabet accurately, original alphabet be damned.  Just because English doesn't have a letter to represent the first phoneme in Qing doesn't mean that we should completely redefine an unrelated letter, especially when we are only expected to pronounce it with the English ch phoneme.

I understand that I am most likely tragically misinformed and shamefully ignorant of all the linguistics involved, so feel free to completely and callously undermine my undoubtedly incorrect base assumptions behind my questions. I am just trying to rectify what I was taught six years ago with what is actually going on. Thanks &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 03:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Jieshi" is not pronounced "jee-shee", it is pronounced more like "jye-shi" (ye as in "yep", sh as in "shred"). Standard Mandarin does not have an alphabet, but a system has been developed by the Chinese government to transliterate Chinese, pinyin, in which "q" represents the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate. "Chiang Kai-Shek" is an example of a transliteration in the older Wade-Giles system, now somewhat obsolescent. One must remember that when transliterating from Mandarin tones into Wade-Giles, the letters do not make the same sounds as they would in normal English. For a more thorough treatment of the odd behaviour of the Latin alphabet in Wade-Giles transliteration, see Wade-Giles. However, if you do not speak Mandarin, it is not likely to be of much help. Intelligent  sium  04:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec) In response to your first question, Jiang Jieshi is the Mandarin pronunciation of the characters 蒋介石 (his name); Chiang Kai-Shek is the Cantonese pronunciation. (Chinese characters have different pronunciations in different Chinese languages. A comparable example is this: two is the English pronunciation for the symbol "2", and dos is the Spanish pronunciation for the same symbol.) He was famous before Mandarin had become the national language of China, so the Cantonese transliteration was the one more commonly used for him at the time (and is still more commonly used in most Western countries). And, for what it's worth, "chiang" and "jiang" are roughly the same pronunciation, it's just that ch and j are two different ways for transcribing the sound sound ʨ (ch is how that sound is transcribed in Wade-Giles and the older Cantonese romanization, j is how it's transcribed in pinyin). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 04:12, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * As for your second question, q is what is used in pinyin to represent the sound ʨ|ʨh, which sounds similar to  to English speakers. This letter was chosen because ch was already being used in pinyin to represent a different sound voiceless retroflex affricate, which to English speakers sounds more or less the same. So anyway, nowadays we use Q because that's what pinyin uses. (Using the 'native' spelling or transliteration is not all that common&mdash;for example, we don't respell French borrowings, we still write savoir-faire instead of savwar-fair.) r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 04:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * That was a stunningly accurate and complete answer; well done! However, a student encountering Jiang Jieshi / Chiang Kai-shek for the first time really just needs to know that there are several systems for rendering Chinese characters into alphabetic symbols, and that most publications will use the most common version. Hence, Chiang Kai-shek for a well-known historical figure, but Beijing (not Peking, Peiking or other variations) for the capital city. DOR (HK) (talk) 09:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Am I right in thinking that Peking / Beijing is another Cantonese / Mandarin equivelent? Alansplodge (talk) 09:34, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Beijing vs. Peking is a slightly more complex issue. No it's not directly due to the Cantonese-Mandarin divide. The first factor at play is transliteration: the "b" is Beijing is the same sound as the "P" in Peking, using the now-obsolescent Wade-Giles romanization...technically Chinese doesn't have a voiced "b", so the first letter of Peking and Beijing should be pronounced the same. (The old spelling "Tao" as in "Taoism" is an example--pronunced "d", now spelling "Dao" in the pinyin system. Second, the "king" part comes from an archaic dialect of Mandarin used by nobles in Beijing several hundred years ago -- see Mandarin_phonology (the "ki" sequence).--71.111.229.19 (talk) 12:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * What he said: Peking/Beijing just come from two different romanization systems for transliterating the same word. Since Mandarin has many sounds that aren't present in most languages using the Latin alphabet, people had to map Mandarin sounds onto Latin letters, and different systems had different mappings. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 16:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * My parents know Chang Kai-shek as Chang Kai-shi for some reason. Apparently that is how he is known in Russian and by extension also in Communist Romania. It seems neither Cantonese nor Mandarin. Dubious. Rimush (talk) 13:32, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably just the way an unfamiliar name was originally adopted into their language's phonology. The same thing happens with, for example, Greek names coming into English and Romance languages (Plato is Platon in French and Spanish, Aristotle is Aristote in French and Aristóteles in Spanish). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 16:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Jiang Jieshi is pronounced using two consonants that don't exist in English and didn't exist in Latin. As others have said, the Pinyin system of Romanization (as opposed to the alternative Wade-Giles system) happens to use J and SH to represent those consonants.  About the closest you can come to the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of Jiang Jieshi with a phonetic spelling in American English is .  (The Mandarin sh sound modifies an i following it to sound something like ur in American English. ) As you probably know, the Chinese normally do not use either system of Romanization to write their own language.  They use characters, each of which corresponds to one syllable in Chinese.  The most common systems of Romanization aim to represent the pronunciation of each Chinese character in the Mandarin Chinese language (or dialect).  In fact, the same system of characters is used to represent several different Chinese languages.  These languages are sometimes called dialects, but they are as different from one another as are languages such as, say, French and Italian.  (See Varieties of Chinese.) Anyway, Cantonese is a Chinese language alongside Mandarin, using the same (or nearly the same) set of written characters.  It so happens that Jiang Jieshi's name in Cantonese sounds more like Chiang Kaishek.  Chinese has not had a unified spoken language since at least the time when Latin was a widely spoken language so it is not surprising that the same name would sound so different in two Chinese languages.  A French name like Jean-Jacques Rousseau doesn't sound much like Giovanni Giacomo Rossello, but that is how Rousseau's name would sound in Italian if it had evolved in Italian from the same Latin roots.  The same process of divergence explains the different forms of Chinese names in different Chinese languages. Marco polo (talk) 18:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * As an extra reference, the eponymous article has a section on his different names. Pre-PRC/ROC Chinese historical figures had a number of names, even aside from dialect/language variation. 130.56.65.24 (talk) 00:44, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * (Not OP.) I get most of the above, which was interesting, but I thought I'd ask to see if I could clear one thing up. I've always, rightly or wrongly, pronounced Chiang Kai-shek with a trailing hard "K", something to my eyes completely missing from "Jieshi". Why is this? I'd struggle to believe that this is a Mandarin/Cantonese transliteration difference (maybe it is). - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 21:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not just a transliteration difference. These are different languages (or dialects, according to some) - please see the examples of different pronunciations of "2", or of "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" vs "Giovanni Giacomo Rossello" above. &mdash; Sebastian 21:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I fully understand the difference in status between Mandarin and Cantonese, I was merely suggesting that the "K" was unlikely (and I'm probably wrong on this point) to be a difference between a Cantonese and Mandarin interpretation of his name, or what he was called by those groups of people. I take it, then, that that is that point on which I am wrong, and not in my pronunciation with a hard "K"? - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 21:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, if you're just concerned about pronouncing his name correctly, then don't worry. In English, I pronounce his name with the final "k", too, since I think that's the closest to how he would have pronounce it himself. &mdash; Sebastian 23:16, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

It's no different than "c" having pronunciations as both "k" and as "s" (or other fricatives in other Western languages) and "g" having pronunciations as both hard "g" and as "j" (or other fricatives in other Western languages). The original Latin C and G were palatalized in some contexts in the ancestors of each modern language, and not in others. Suppose you see the word "gye" or "gie" in an English sentence, would you pronounce it like "guy" or like "jee-eh"? In East Asia, the length of time the different Chinese dialects have been diverging is also almost 2000 years. Mandarin has had wholesale palatalization of many syllables where Cantonese has not. On the other hand, Hokkien and Vietnamese have even less palatalization than Cantonese. As for losing final "k", this is analogous to the loss of many final consonants in French, that are often still written but no longer pronounced. --JWB (talk) 23:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

So, if we got a do-over ...
So, knowing what we know on this subject today, would we have all been better off understandingwise, if we had used "Chinese" ONLY as a nationality, and NOT as the name of a language? Would everything be clearer if we got it through our heads that "Some Chinese people speak Mandarin, and other Chinese people speak Cantonese, and those are two different languages?" Or, is that going a bit overboard? DaHorsesMouth (talk) 00:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's a little more complicated than that. There are a lot of factors that influence how languages are grouped together, and with the so-called Sinitic languages (or Chinese languages) it's particularly messy. The shared literary tradition and shared Chinese characters give the languages a sense of "togetherness", and even today some people get offended if you talk to them about the "Chinese languages" (such people often insist that the others are dialects or ). A good reading on this topic is the following:
 * r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 00:41, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Great answer and link, but I think there is a simple answer to DaHorsesMouth, which is "Yes". Given that we have a term like "Sinitic languages", we don't need to say "Chinese languages". (That still doesn't mean that we have to rename that article, because we have to go by the most common name, not by the most logical one.) &mdash; Sebastian 17:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Chinese language" means different things in different contexts. It can mean any or all Chinese languages depending on the context.
 * Like it or not, logically speaking, there is a concept of a unified Chinese language, and it's one of the unifying factors of the Chinese nation. That said, the same language is called, in Chinese, not the "Chinese language" but the "Han language", since there are millions of Chinese people whose first language is not a/the Chinese language. And for these people, "learning Chinese" is, almost without exception, the same as "learning Mandarin", or "standard Mandarin" to be precise.
 * By the same argument as you raised above, should we abolish the concept of "Mandarin" because it's imprecise, and refer individually to "standard Mandarin", and (for example) Beijing Mandarin, Shandong Mandarin, etc?
 * Langauges are rarely logical, and whether two tongues are different languages or different dialects are determined by a more or less arbitrary line which is deceptively accurate. It's a useful distinction, but its deceptive simplicity masks all the complexities of reality. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 22:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sigh! We are not the self-appointed Committee for The Establishment of Correct Names for Sinitic Languages and for the Abolition of Incorrect Names, we're just a bunch of volunteers who are trying to help with people's questions. A simple question deserves a simple answer, and there's nothing wrong with saying that things would be clearer if we didn't use "Chinese" for "Sinitic languages". &mdash; Sebastian 22:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * PalaceGuard's comment about the Chinese word for the Chinese language brings up an interesting point. In addition to "Han language" (汉语), the other common appellation is 中文. The first character refers to the nation of China (it means "middle", as in "Middle Kingdom") and the second emphasizes written language rather than spoken language, and so this focus on written language could be construed as stressing the politically important claim that "China" shares a common written language even if people speak differently. (That's not really linguistically accurate, but whatever.) Another common appellation, although less formal, is 中国话 (literally "speech of China"), which also emphasizes the national characteristic of it. (The girl-band S.H.E. even has a horrible patriotic song about how the whole world is learning 中国话, and they're not even from 中国...). Anyway, none of these terms are unique to Chinese (there are analogous terms for all the other major languages) but the way they are used in China does reveal some interesting political/cultural stuff.
 * That being said, I agree with Sebastian that only a simple answer is needed. At this point we're just having a chat :) r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 22:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, one can have different opinions on how much we want this to be a chat room; I'm just a bit weary of this particular discussion. We had a very similar discussion here, and it still seems not resolved. &mdash; Sebastian 23:02, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I did what a reference desk is supposed to do, which is direct the user to further resources that can answer their questions. After that, I don't think there is any harm with chatting in more depth once the OP has been helped. If someone isn't interested in the discussion, they're free to ignore it. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 23:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not like I'm offended by the thoroughness of the answer that I have received :). Yes, my question was initially answered, but the following discussion was not off topic and was incredibly informative (continuing to provide more references), unlayering many aspects of my initial misunderstandings, etc.  This kind of thing is what makes WP:RD so unique and useful.  In the end, it should always be treated like a reference desk, but it can be (and is) so much better than that. &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 13:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feedback. That's good to know! &mdash; Sebastian 16:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feedback. That's good to know! &mdash; Sebastian 16:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

cantonese pronounciation for beijing would be bak-geng. chiang kai shek would be jerng gai shiek. nanking=nam geng.

"Brinjal" and "jackal"
What is the correct pronunciation of the word brinjal and jackal as per British English —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.99.85.69 (talk) 07:26, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by John C. Wells, brinjal is and jackal is  (i.e. "jack all") in RP. The second pronunciation surprises me, as I (an American) pronounce it  to rhyme with "hackle", which LPD suggests is less well received in Britain than "jack all". (I don't have any intuitions about "brinjal", as I never heard the word before reading this thread.) +Angr 08:46, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Just confirming that ("jack all") is the British English pronunciation. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:19, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * According to the horse's mouth - or, to be strictly correct, a horse's mouth (I refer to my Sri Lankan partner) - brinjal is pronounced - bringe-all.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   09:10, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I, as a Brit, have only ever heard to rhyme with "hackle". --Frumpo (talk) 09:19, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm amazed. Perhaps that's an age-related thing?  The usual British pronunciation is in my view undoubtedly "jack all" (with the emphasis on the first syllable).   Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Oops. I was mid-reading the pronunciation as having a long second syllable.  Having thought more about the shapes that my mouth is forming I agree with Ghmyrtle.  Sorry about that.--Frumpo (talk) 10:00, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's my London accent, but "jack-all" and "hackle" pretty much rhyme when I say them! Alansplodge (talk) 09:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * That's curious. Do you say "crackle" and "crack-all" the same way, Alan?  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   09:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yup - as long as you're using a very short "a" and not a long Aussie one. Alansplodge (talk) 13:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * And do you rhyme them with Jacko? (L-vocalization) &mdash;Tamfang (talk) 20:02, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * UK native here - I thought jackal was said as seen, with both a's pronounced as in "apple". I've never heard it pronounced in any other way! --TammyMoet (talk) 09:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Ditto UK native. I would never say jackle as in jack-all - the second a is far too long.  It's much closer to jack-ul - rhyming, as others say, with hackle and apple.  (Phil Holmes) --205.168.109.130 (talk) 12:25, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think is correct but "jack all" is a confusing representation of what it sounds like.  The emphasis should be on the first syllable.  We are reading "jack all" as 'jack-awl' when we really need something like 'jackuhl'.--Frumpo (talk) 13:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, "JACK-uhl" is about right. Alansplodge (talk) 13:19, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * That's the way I've always heard it in the USA. Hackle and Jackal rhyme. Not to be confused with Heckle and Jeckle. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Meh. I disagree re the British pronunciation. My Concise Oxford Dictionary says: jǎ'ckal (-awl).  I agree with that.  It also says brĭ'njal (-awl).  (From Portuguese berinjela, aubergine, by the way.) Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I've never heard the word 'hackle', but I assume it rhymes with my pronunciation of 'jackal', which in turn rhymes with 'cackle' and 'tackle'. --   KageTora - (影虎)  ( A word...? )  13:58, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Interestingly enough, my 1960 Webster's has "cackle", "crackle", "hackle", "shackle", "tackle", etc., pronounced with a trailing apostrophe-l, while jackal has a trailing o topped by a caret, which makes the word to be "jack-awl", as with the other dictionaries. However, I've always heard it in the USA as "jack-'l", so that could be just the evolution of the language. For comparison, the word "record", as in phonograph record, used to be pronounced "rec-ord", and over time it has come to be pronounced "rec-'rd". We do that in English. Maybe kind of like how "forecastle" came to be pronounced as if it were spelled "focsle". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * As with so many words the pronunciation depends on the speaker and obviously North Americans are going to say the word in a different way from most UK residents. however there will be a variability in the way it is spoken in both countries by dint of regional accent and in the UK by the social class of of the speaker. For instance HRH, The Prince Charles would almost certainly say 'jeck-awl'. And of course he would be right. But then again so would everybody else. Caesar&#39;s Daddy (talk) 15:18, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * What-ho, plebs! I feel vindicated.  Spiffing.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

The OED first edition, this section of which was published in 1900, shows only the pronunciation with the vowel of "walk", i.e. jack-all or jack-awl. And it has an interesting historical note: "The English was was formerly (as still in some dialects) stressed on the second syllable; the current form, and the obsolete Jack-call, show association with the proper name Jack, and names of animals containing it." On the other hand, when I saw the movie The Day of the Jackal, I'm sure the British characters pronounced Jackal to rhyme with "hackle" and "crackle", the same as I would -- anything else would have seemed wrong to me. (Cf. The Maltese Falcon, where Humphrey Bogart pronounces "falcon" with a short A as in "fat" while Sydney Greenstreet uses an "aw" sound as in "fall".) --Anonymous, 20:50 UTC, February 9, 2010.
 * Bogart being American and Greenstreet being British. However, old-school sports announcer Vin Scully, in the days when he used to do NFL TV coverage, referred to the Atlanta Falcons as the "Fawlkens", when most every other announcer then and now calls them with the short "a". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:58, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * And yet, a person who breeds or trains falcons is always given the long a, hence the surnames Faulkner, Fawkner, and yes, even Falconer - all pronounced the same way, fawk-. --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   21:02, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's English. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Looking in an American dictionary, a 1979 edition of the RHU, the common noun "falconer" is listed with three pronunciations, all trisyllabic, none like "Faulkner". It says the first syllable can rhyme with "call", "Cal", or "caw" (i.e. "aw" with the L sound optional, or short A with the L), followed in each case by "kuh-ner" with two schwas.  It does not list Falconer as a personal name but does list it as a place name, with the first of these pronunciations: "fawl-kuh-ner". Of course, personal names may vary according to preference. --Anonymous, 19:17 UTC, 2010-02-10.

Adjectival Form
What is the adjective form of platitude?174.3.98.236 (talk) 08:18, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Platitudinous. Collins Concise Dict. (2008)Richard Avery (talk) 08:26, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

self-determinate, as a verb?
A student rights about an indigenous groups 'right to self-determination'. At first glance, it reads awkwardly. I can't quite decide why it would be gramatically wrong. Of course, we usually talk about the 'right to self-determination', which is something you might have. Self-determinate would be, I guess, something you would do. Maybe the student is trying to be stylistically interesting. Is there anything clearly incorrect about the 'right to self-determinate'? Thanks if you have a considered opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.238.113 (talk) 19:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The right to self-determination is a fairly well established idea in politics, referring to the rights of an indigenous group to have political control over their territories, resources, social structures, and etc. it was a response to colonial era tendencies to try to 'bleach' native people (reform their societies and cultures to mirror European norms) while subjecting them to political control from afar.


 * I'm a bit confused, however - you are talking like you are grading someone's paper, but your own writing has several spelling errors, awkward phrasings, and an apparent lack of knowledge about conventional political tropes (which you could have easily gotten from a google search). what's am I missing here?  -- Ludwigs 2  19:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Including the fact that "determination" is the conventional noun and "determine" is the conventional verb. The word "determinate" is less-used, and it's an adjective, not a verb. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * (ec) I'm having trouble interpreting your first sentence. I know it's only setting the context in which 'right to self-determination' appears, and is secondary to the main point - but still, I can't work out whether it's about a student's rights, or some students' rights, or maybe it's a student writing, or even some students rioting.   And then, it would be an indigenous group's 'right to self-determination'.  On the main question, 'right to self-determination' can be used holus-bolus in the same way as 'right to freedom of expression' can be, without any need to change a noun into a verb.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   19:58, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I assumed his first 'right' was intended to be 'write', but who knows? In any case, that IP only edits about once a month. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I need to be more careful. I did write the question too quickly. I did, in the first sentence mean 'write', but wrote right, since the question was about 'rights'. Right? Here is what I was trying to ask...a student wrote this sentence: "Despite the successes of these movements--which helped them gain national and international attention on their political, cultural and socioeconomic situation--indigenous peoples in Latin America have been unable to attain the right to self-determinate." Yes, I am giving feedback on the paper. Since I do know what the 'right to self-determination' is, I could have easily advised the student to change the sentence to the most common usage. But I thought, 'well, maybe this student is trying to write something a little more stylish'. Whenever I do that, somebody is quick to criticize. Maybe I'm not so stylish myself. So I thought I could check here on whether or not the phrase 'self-determinate', which as the student used it would be a verb I think (an action, something people (or in this case, 'a people' would do), is somehow incorrect grammar. Is the student's original formulation grammatically incorrect, or just uncommon, and if it is incorrect, what is the mistake, so that I can properly advise the student. I'm not an editor, and I hoped I might find some useful information here. And since my quickie question was so full of mistakes, maybe I should post grammar questions here more than about once a month, though what the point of that comment was escapes me. Baseball Bugs, 'what's up, Doc' with your comment, though I don't take it negatively? Finally, I won't forget how to spell the word grammatically again. Cheers people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.238.113 (talk) 21:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * My "once a month" comment had to do with concerns that you might not be back here for another month, but here you are, so no problem.
 * That clarifies a couple of things, especially what the student actually wrote. "The right to self-determinate" is not correct, as it's an adjective. Maybe "right to be self-determinate" could work, but that's kind of awkward usage. "Right of self-determination" would be grammatically better than "right to self-determination", as the latter also treats "self-determination" like a verb. But it seems to be in common usage that way. "Right to self-determine" could work also. Not so commonly heard, though. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * No problem about the mistakes; I was just confused by them. I think if I were in your shoes, I'd advise the student that 'right to self-determination' is a phrase that can't be broken down into its component parts:  either s/he should say "indigenous peoples in Latin America have been unable to secure their rights to self-determination" or s/he should say "indigenous peoples in Latin America have been unable to attain any measure of independence sovereignty.".  The phrase in its entirety should be treated as the name of a concept, not as a normal phrase.  -- Ludwigs 2  22:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC) sovereignty is actually more apros pos in this context.  -- Ludwigs 2  23:09, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * "Self-determinate" is a perfectly reasonable, and perfectly comprehensible, back-formation from "self-determination", which doesn't happen to have been used very often (or, perhaps, at all) or made its way into any dictionaries. It has parallels in the verbs 'determinate' (listed as obsolete in the OED) and 'terminate' (very much alive). Perhaps some day it will achieve currency, but at present it appears to be a nonce-word. --ColinFine (talk) 23:43, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The phrasing is conceptually incorrect. A "right to self-determination" is a right to have a status, a thing called "self-determination", which is not the same as "determining [one's] self". Broken down, this might be described as "a right to undertake a process where a people (as defined in international law) can determine their own collective national status and political system, the process which we call "self-determination" as a shorthand."
 * As Ludwigs pointed out above, "self-determination" is thus a concept by itself. "Determinate" is not a word, but even back-forming "self-determine" would change the meaning of that special concept, because it loses the legal meaning of "self-determination", and simply reduces to the common meaning of the words "self" and "determine" - to "determine [one's] self", which of course is nonsense.
 * The correct way to avoid using "determination" and to use a verb here would be to talk about "the [name of people]'s right to determine their own political system/national status/etc etc". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Conceptually incorrect it may be, but that tells us nothing whatever about whether or not it might get used in that sense. Language is what people use to communicate, not what pundits say they should use. Your argument would rule out 'baby-sit', which is certainly a (back-formed) word in use, but is not "*sitting a baby", whatever that might mean. I would not be at all surprised to hear that some nationalist group had demanded the "right to self-determine". --ColinFine (talk) 23:29, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't you? I've never heard it used in this sense. A google search for "right to self-determine" seems to indicate that that phrase is used as an unrelated technical term in relation to, I think, euthanasia. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I haven't heard it used that way either, but it would not surprise me to come across it. --ColinFine (talk) 23:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Ukrainian translation
I'm trying to translate the map at right. I've got the place names down, but the key in the lower left is hard to even transcribe, much less translate. I think this is the text:

Північне наріччя (говори) 1 західнополіський 2 сердньополіський 3 східнополіський південно-східне напіччя (говори) 4 надднпірянський 5 слобоžанський 6 степовий південно-загідне напіччя (говори) 7 волинський 8 подільський 9 наддністрянський 10 надсянський 11покитьско-буковинський 12 гуцульcький 13 боиківський 14 закарпацький говори напічч закодоном говори з рісами певого наріччя
 * лемківський


 * Could any Ukrainian speakers translate these? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  23:19, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * See Category:User uk. -- Wavelength (talk) 04:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Google Translate produced the following. Northern dialect (talk) 1 western 2 serdnopoliskyy 3 shidnopoliskyy south-east napichchya (talk) 4 naddnpiryanskyy 5 slobožanskyy 6 steppe South-zahidne napichchya (talk) 7 Volyn 8 Podolsky 9 naddnistryanskyy 10 nadsyanskyy 11pokytsko-Bukovinsky 12 hutsulckyy 13 boykivskyy 14 Transcarpathian talk napichch zakodonom talk with risamy pevoho dialect
 * Lemkiv
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 05:19, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Ukrainian to English Translation produced "North narichchya (speak) 1 zakhidnopoliskii 2 serdniopoliskii 3 skhidnopoliskii South-eastern napichchya (speak) 4 naddnpiryanskii 5 slobožanskii 6 stepovii South-zagidne napichchya (speak) 7 Volyn 8 podilskii 9 naddnistryanskii 10 nadsyanskii 11 pokitskobukovinskii 12 hutsul 13 boikivskii 14 zakarpatskii lemkivskii speak napichch zakodonom speak with risami pevogo narichchya" but I was not able to copy it electronically and so I copy-typed it letter by letter (including the hachek for number 5). -- Wavelength (talk) 06:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

After examining the legend more carefully, I changed п to р in the second heading, ž to ж in number 5, and г to х in the third heading, and I inserted н in the last entry. Then, I wikified the expressions to potential entries in the Ukrainian Wikipedia. uk:Північне наріччя (uk:говори) 1 uk:західнополіський 2 uk:сердньополіський 3 uk:східнополіський uk:південно-східне наріччя (говори) 4 uk:надднпірянський 5 uk:слобожанський 6 uk:степовий uk:південно-західне напіччя (говори) 7 uk:волинський 8 uk:подільський 9 uk:наддністрянський 10 uk:надсянський 11 uk:покитьско-буковинський 12 uk:гуцульcький 13 uk:боиківський 14 uk:закарпацький uk:лемківський uk:говори напічч закодоном uk:говори з рісами певного наріччя
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 06:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

[I am making the change to number 5 that I thought I already had made. -- Wavelength (talk) 06:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)]
 * I'm getting close to finishing, but I'm not sure I understand what the distinction between говори and напічч is. The last two items "говори напічч закодом" and "говори з рісами певного наріччя" seem to translate as "trans-national dialect dialects" and "dialects with features of a dialect", respectively.  — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  09:11, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Speaker of another Slavic language here. I think that, in Slavic linguistic tradition, "naričie" means a "dialect", "dialect group" or "super-dialect", while "govor" means a "speech" or "sub-dialect". Don't know what are the criteria to classify something as a "speech" or a "dialect", but the point is that the one is subordinate to another. I think that translations make more sense now. No such user (talk) 10:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * First, a caveat: I don't speak Ukrainian, but, as a native Polish speaker and learner of Russian, I can undersand some of it. From Ukrainian Wikipedia I can see that Ukrainian linguists distinguish three levels of dialects: a language is subdivided into several наріччя (narichchia), these are further subdivided into говори (hovory) or діалекти (dialekty), and these into говірки (hovirky), the lowest level. Here's my translation of the legend:
 * Northern dialects:
 * 1. West Polesian
 * 2. Central Polesian
 * 3. East Polesian
 * Southeastern dialects:
 * 4. Dnipro
 * 5. Sloboda
 * 6. Steppe
 * Southwestern dialects:
 * 7. Volhynian
 * 8. Podolian
 * 9. Dniester
 * 10. San
 * 11. Pokuttya-Bukovina
 * 12. Hutsul
 * 13. Boiko
 * 14. Trans-Carpathian
 * Lemko
 * Dialects spoken outside Ukraine (not sure here, but закодоном seems like a typo of за кордоном, "abroad")
 * Dialects with features of a (different) high-level dialect
 * — Kpalion(talk) 10:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The uk: has these articles: uk:Наріччя, uk: Діалекти, uk:Мова, uk:Говір, uk:Говірка. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot guys. I've uploaded the translated image.  I figure "dialect" works for the most part.  — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  04:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Can we see the translated map, please? — Kpalion(talk) 23:14, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * [[image:Map of Ukrainian dialects en.png|thumb|275px]] Sure. I had modified the original, though someone pointed out that the English Wikipedia is not the only one that uses the image so it was reverted and reuploaded.  See translated image at right.  — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  07:28, 14 February 2010 (UTC)