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

= January 9 =

Which is the subject?
There's been a radio commercial I keep hearing, and while their intention is clear (or maybe not, considering how bankers act,) I'm not sure about the language. The government has been bailing out the banks, now it's your turn! They imply that it's now the government bailing you (the listener) out, but isn't the strict meaning of the sentence state that now it's your turn to bail out the banks? I've been having trouble with this one, since my inherent distrust of banking institutions makes me believe that this statement was deliberately worded. Anyway, isn't government the subject of the sentence, and the next replaces the subject with that "your," thus implying that it's your turn to bail out the banks? Or, is there no clearly defined English language rule covering this (or a rule covering it the other way, that since banks is the last noun, your replaces that? Taggart.BBS (talk) 07:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It's ambiguous, it could mean "the government has been bailing out the banks, now it's your turn [to bail out the banks]", or "the government has been bailing out the banks, now it's your turn [to be bailed out]". Judging by syntax alone, the first sort of interpretation is more common. But in this example, without any further context, I can't say for sure which reading is intended (or whether it's deliberately ambiguous). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 07:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec)The problem is that it's incomplete, and hence it's ambiguous when taken as-is. Who's running the ad? Because I can't tell just from the words. To be complete, it would need to say, "...now it's your turn to bail out the banks", or "...now it's your turn to be bailed out by the government." Taken as is, it's not clear to me which idea they're trying to say. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:33, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I have seen the commercial as well. Although I don't remember the product or service that is being promoted, the statement in the context of the ad is definitely trying to make the viewer beleive that it is now "their turn" for some government asisistance. As I remember, the ad is misleading in the premise. 10draftsdeep (talk) 17:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Meaning of "so funny"
Is "so funny" a sarcasm. If so funny is ironically what does so funny means.--69.226.34.161 (talk) 00:01, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Sometimes it's sarcasm, sometimes it's not. If it's not wikt:sarcastic, it means "that's funny". If it is sarcastic, it means "that's not funny" (that is how sarcasm works). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 01:38, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * In the example provided, it's being used for sarcasm. Dismas |(talk) 02:21, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * And combining the two ideas, the wife's frequent comment, "That is SO not funny!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Eytmology
What is the etymology of niggly?174.3.101.61 (talk) 06:40, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I tried googling it. Its origin seems uncertain, "possibly Scandinavian". It's obviously a slangy kind of term, for petty or annoying or some such. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:23, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * As with most slang terms, the origin is uncertain. The OED has "App. of Scandinavian origin, being current chiefly in northern dial., and corresponding both in form and meaning to Norw. nigla (Aasen and Ross), with the variants nagla and nugla. The precise meaning in some of the early examples is not quite clear."--Shantavira|feed me 08:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd imagine that niggly is an alteration/corruption of niggling, which is the present participle of niggle. As Shantavira mentions, the etymology listed for niggle is likely from the Old Norse nigla and/or nugla. -- 128.104.49.117 (talk) 02:18, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Anyone planning on using this word in a public context might want to read Controversies about the word "niggardly". BrainyBabe (talk) 22:57, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Longest English word with letters in alphabetical order
Here's an interesting one – well I find it interesting, anyway. What is the longest English word with its letters in alphabetical order? Like "best", for example, only longer. Thanks, --Richardrj talkemail 10:56, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * According to Longest word in English, "Aegilops". However, I would be reluctant to describe that as an _English_ word, even though it's in English dictionaries.  More research is needed, I think. Tevildo (talk) 11:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This site gives the rather more credible "almost", "biopsy", and "chintz" as genuine English words with the appropriate characteristic. And "bijoux", but that's open to the same objection as "Aegilops" and two letters shorter. Tevildo (talk) 11:14, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There's a whole list of candidates here. It includes aegilops, and I wonder why there's reluctance to accept it as an English word.  It's apparently a genus of mollusc, a genus of grass and an ulcer in the eye.  There's no argument that it's not a commonly occurring English word, and of course it was borrowed from a foreign language; but to exclude it on that basis would be to more than halve the number of English words.   --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   12:44, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Taxonomy of Wordplay has a link to http://www.questrel.com/records.html#spelling_alphabetical_order_entire_word_letters_in_alphabetical_order.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 16:18, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I bet this could be figured out pretty easily with some scripting and a corpus--for example, using Perl or Python or whatnot to go through the Brown Corpus to make a list of words with letters in alphabetical order (simply comparing the ASCII value of each letter to that of the preceding one) and then ordering that list by word length. Of course people can disagree on what corpus would be better to use, but it's at least a quick and dirty way to get the job done. I know someone at this desk has NLTK installed (don't remember who, though), and s/he could probably do this quickly if s/he is interested. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 16:22, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * According to Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 November 17, NLTK was mentioned by User:Rspeer. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Hebrew
How is the word "FREEDOM" written in Hebrew? Thank you very much.Ants4three (talk) 12:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Google Translate gives these:


 * חוֹפֶשׁ
 * חֵרוּת
 * דוֹרִיָה
 * חוּפשָׁה
 * חוֹפשִׁיוּת
 * דְרוֹר

Or did you mean how is the English word 'freedom' written phonetically in Hebrew letters? --  KageTora - (影虎)  ( Talk? )  13:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Assuming the person wanted a translation, you might want to look at Wiktionary in the future: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/freedom. There are usually translations provided, which would more than likely give you the most common word used to translate the English word you're looking for. Wiktionary gives: חוֹפֶשׁ (khófesh) (m), though I'm not a Hebrew speaker. --达伟 (talk) 17:06, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Cheers, DaWei. חוֹפֶשׁ (khófesh) is the first one on my list, anyway, probably for the same reason that it was the one that Wiktionary gave (i.e. most common). --  KageTora - (影虎)  ( Talk? )  17:22, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, חוֹפֶשׁ (khófesh) refers more to a break, as in vacation. חֵרוּת is the word for freedom, as in, מעבדות לחרות "from slavery to freedom" or זמן חרותינו, "The Season of Our Freedom," both references to Passover (the first can be found in the Birchat HaChodesh and Hagaddah and the second in the Ya'aleh VeYavo prayer).  דְרוֹר means freedom (as in Leviticus 25:10 and the associated Talmudic reference in R"H 9b) -- but it's a more archaic word, one that would likely not be used in modern Hebrew.  The others are derivative of the 3 on which I've commented.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 00:50, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Pre-planned
What does this dreadful word mean? How is it different from planned? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  13:08, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Planned before you were forced to plan, I guess. (i.e., if your project hits a problem and you need to figure out how to deal with it, that is planning a solution; if you foresee a problem before it occurs and deal with it, then when you do deal with it you're using a pre-planned solution.) That's my best guess; I use the word sometimes but can't put my finger on exactly what it means. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 14:01, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I would say that it just means planned before the event, as opposed to doing your planning as the event unfolds, to use two more dreadful words, proactive rather than reactive. Mikenorton (talk) 14:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Like a pre-meeting meeting (to use an expression of Dilbert's boss). Perhaps used by those who tend to "over-exaggerate". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:37, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I recognize "preplanned" mostly from the phrase 'preplanned funeral' where you definitely plan it immediately before the event or "preplan" it farther in advance. Makes a large difference in who gets to do the actual planning. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 14:41, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I remember my father complaining once about someone who canceled an appointment with him because she had "unexpected plans". "If they're plans, how can they be unexpected?" he said. +Angr 14:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds post-planned to me. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  15:15, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The post-plans trumped the pre-plans. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It means "planned beforehand". Next question? --ColinFine (talk) 16:22, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * But don't all plans come "before" whatever the action is? It's in the same class as "pre-book".  All bookings are done before the event, so all are "pre-" (how can one book something after it's already started?)  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   20:07, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Often they are just tautology (or should that be pleonasm?), but don't we often use this just for emphasis? Occasionally, as in funerals, or bookings before the official "book" is started, these "pre-" expressions can have a distinct meaning.    D b f i r s   20:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * See the etymology of prepare. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:03, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * @Dbfirs: exactly my point. If somebody says "I planned it beforehand" few people are going to object to that expression. But if you pack it into a single word, it suddenly triggers some people's pedantry circuits. Like most pedantry the reactions abstract a linguistic object from its context and find something to criticise about it; but in context the claimed fault (in this case, redundancy) often vanishes, or can be seen to serve some rhetorical or discourse function. --ColinFine (talk) 01:05, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It's like what you do when taking an insurance and create fire exits. You preplan for what will happen when the fire starts, so you don't have to plan everything from scratch when you wake up in the middle of the night and realize you have to plan to get out of a house on fire. The Great Cucumber (talk) 19:10, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Czech help;
How to translate this passage? (from, I tried through google, but the result wasn't clear-cut); "Mezinárodní proletariát odpověděl na krveprolití v Berlíně tím, že prohlásil den 1. srpna za mezinárodni den boje proti imperialistické válce. Buržoazie všech evropských zemí provedla ostrá policejní opatření, aby akci znemožnila. U nás byl zastaven všechen komunistický tisk, na jehož místo nastoupily desítky závodních časopisů, ilegální Rudé právo a také vídeňské časopisy Jiskra a Průkopník svobody. Byly k nám dopravovány v masovém nákladu a policii se nikdy nepodařilo vypátrat, jakou cestou k nám byly dováženy." Is it correct to understand that the publishing of Průkopník svobody was somehow interrupted? And which is the event that is referred to in the text? --Soman (talk) 17:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Hrmph. As a speaker of another Slavic language (Slovene), I can make out about 80% of the meaning. What (I think) it says is: After the bloodshed in Berlin, Mayday was declared the International day of Anti-imperialism. The burguasy of several European lands stopped this with harsh police actions. Here, a lot of favourable Communist press was established, like the illegal Rudé právo and also dailies like Jiskra and Průkopník svobody. They were delivered here in massive quantities, and the police never interfered, eventhough it was delivered by road". I think that's what it says - I'm not 100% sure about the last two sentences, though. I'm also not sure where "here" is... TomorrowTime (talk) 19:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The word you're looking for is bourgeoisie. +Angr 20:43, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I couldn't figure out how it's written in English. I tried a quick Google search, and got some sorta legit looking hits for the spelling above. Oh well. Also, Kpalion's version makes more sense. I suppose Polish is after all closer to Czech :) TomorrowTime (talk) 22:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * As a speaker of yet another Slavic language (Polish), I'll also give it a try:
 * International proletariat responded to the bloodshed in Berlin by declaring 1 August the International Day Against Imperialist War. The bourgeoisie of all European countries implemented harsh police crackdown to prevent the action. In our country, all Communist press was banned; in its place appeared dozens of workers' (?) periodicals, including the illegal Rudé právo ("The Red Law"), as well as the Viennese Jiskra ("Spark") and Průkopník svobody ("Pioneer of Freedom"). They were smuggled to us en masse and the police never found out through which routes they were transported.
 * I think it makes a little more sense, but let's hope a native Czech speaker will enventually drop by and provide an even better translation. — Kpalion(talk) 21:21, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Your translation is actually quite accurate. Závodní časopis is a small-circulation periodical made by and distributed internally among workers of a particular company. — Emil J. 14:12, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * As to the event referred to in the text, the preceding paragraph says: "The blood shed in the early days of May 1929 in the streets of Berlin had not dried yet, when..." (Na berlínských ulicích ještě neuschla krev, prolitá v prvních květnových dnech roku 1929, když...) which clearly refers to Berlin's Bloody May of 1929. We don't seem to have an article about it in English Wikipedia, but we do have on in German: Blutmai. No idea though, why they picked 1 August as the day to commemorate the event. — Kpalion(talk) 21:37, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Just a speculation: the choice of 1 August may have something to do with the beginning of WWI, which was considered a prototypical "imperialist war". — Emil J. 14:12, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks like you're right, Emil. I found this in Al Richmond's Native daughter. The story of Anita Whitney:
 * "Beginning with 1929 and for several years thereafter, the Communists initiated international demonstrations against imperialist war on August 1, anniversary of the outbreak of the World War. Anita herself was jailed for picketing in connection with the first of these August 1 demonstrations. A newspaper photograph shows her marching, carrying a placard reading: 'August First Is The International Day Against Imperialist War.' Anita and others arrested with her received 30-day suspended sentences."
 * — Kpalion(talk) 19:06, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot everyone. --Soman (talk) 22:42, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Numbers 1 to 10 in Proto-Afroasiatic language?
Note - this was originally asked on the entertainment desk - moved here. Exxolon (talk) 21:01, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Can anybody conjecture what, in Proto-Afroasiatic, the numbers for 1 to 10 were? Or suggest a link to a website out of Wiki, that deals with this question? Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 07:07, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * For Semitic, see Proto-Semitic. Due to the time-depths involved, and the fact that only Semitic languages and Egyptian are usefully attested from ancient times, only very limited progress has been made in reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic... AnonMoos (talk) 21:35, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * See Zompist.com and Numbers in Over 5000 Languages. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:37, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * But there is no proto-Afroasiatic list there. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:47, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * See eight languages under "Afro-Asiatic" at http://www.zompist.com/oldnum.htm.  I understood the anarthrous "Proto-Afroasiatic language" to be plural, but perhaps it was meant to be singular ("the Proto-Afroasiatic language").
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 04:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * "Proto" in the context of a language family means "the hypothetical ancestor of all the languages in the family". It can't be plural. --ColinFine (talk) 17:37, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks.  Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 01:59, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Rusyn? Ukrainian?
Regarding the article Social Democratic Workers Party in Subcarpathian Rus, how to write the Rusyn (or Ukrainian?) name in Cyrillic? I have transcribed the name from a German book, but which doesn't specify the language of the name. --Soman (talk) 22:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Соціал-демократична робітнича партія на Підкарпатській Русі (Sotsial-demokratichna robitnicha partiya na Pidkarpats'kiy Rusi). I'll add it to the article. I think it's Ukrainian, but I don't know how different Rusyn is from Ukrainian. There may be no difference in the spelling of the party's name in these two languages. — Kpalion(talk) 09:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * (linguistic hack alert) AFAIK the primary difference between Russian and Ukranian orthography is that Russian uses и in place of Ukranian і. And a good amount of words are different, but the languages for the most part are mutually intelligible. ZS 06:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * True, but we're talking about Rusyn, not Russian here. As far as I know, Rusyn is basically a dialect of Ukrainian with some Slovak and Polish influences. — Kpalion(talk) 10:10, 14 January 2010 (UTC)