Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 March 27

= March 27 =

April fools help required.
I'm trying to get the statement: "Did you know...that the citizens of Picoazá elected foot powder as their Mayor." onto the Wikipedia front page for April 1st (see April Fool's Main Page/Did You Know). Sadly the article on Picoazá is too short to qualify for DYK - so I have to find something interesting and relevant to say about the place to pad the article out some. I've found a reference to the history and traditions of the place - but it's in Spanish. Google translate makes an incomprehensible mush out of it:


 * http://www.picoaza.galeon.com

I don't need a full translation - but if someone could glean a half-dozen interesting/relevant facts about the town from those two pages, it would make a great reference for the article.

TIA SteveBaker (talk) 04:59, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Reading a poem in New Yorker
Summer Evening by the Window with Psalms is the poem. Here's the first stanza: Close scrutiny of the past.

How my soul yearns within me like those souls

in the nineteenth century before the great wars,

like curtains that want to pull free

of the open window and fly.

What does the first line mean? --117.204.92.194 (talk) 11:28, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking at the past very, very closely, as if with a magnifying glass, as per this definition: --TammyMoet (talk) 13:40, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Or, stop (close as verb) scrutinizing the past?--117.204.87.114 (talk) 14:38, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * it's a poem: you get from it what you get from it. without looking at the rest of the poem it's hard to tell, but my sense would be that it's meant as 'careful' not as 'shut'.-- Ludwigs 2  16:01, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * A poem isn't something imprecise, although imprecision may be a property of some poems. I don't think a poem, or any other work of art, should be understood to be taking a scattershot approach to its own meaning, although there certainly are certain works of art that endeavor to do just that — have their "meaning" arrived at randomly. Bus stop (talk) 14:04, 28 March 2010 (UTC)


 * A poem is a form of communication. It is written by the poet who (if he is good) uses sophisticated constructions of language to express subtle points, and read by others who interpret those subtleties within the bounds of their own understanding.  In a perfect word there would be a 1:1 correspondence between intended expressions and interpreted understanding, but that doesn't even work for the simplest of prose.  Ambiguity is not randomness, and the 'art' of poetry lies in the struggle with that ambiguity.  And wow, I need some frigging coffee.   -- Ludwigs 2  15:23, 28 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Ordinarily I would agree with 117 and not with Ludwigs that "close scrutiny" could and probably does have a double-meaning; double-meanings in the first line of a poem are probably deliberate. In this case, however, the poem is translated from Hebrew, and it seems extremely unlikely that the close/close meanings could have a parallel in Hebrew.  On the other hand, the word "shade" in the line "how many valleys of the shadow of death do we need to be a compassionate shade in the unrelenting sun" could very well be an intelligent translation of a Hebrew word that implies both "ghost" and "shadow."  As for "close scrutiny," the narator seems to be reading the Bible carefully while thinking of those like Herzl who wanted a homeland for the Jews in an era of violent pogroms -- and so is scrutinizing the Psalms while considering early Zionists, who presumably read the Psalms, too. 63.17.63.71 (talk) 01:05, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Letter
Hello Everyone,

What is this weird first letter in the title of this article Æthelred the Unready and how do you pronounce it?

Thanks in advance, 89.211.217.89 (talk) 12:18, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Æ Algebraist 12:22, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Note that in British spelling, it's sometimes used where an "e" is used in American spellings, such as in encyclopædia and pædophile. I pronounce it like "ay". StuRat (talk) 14:36, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Then you're saying it wrong. "Encyclopedia" is pronounced the same way no matter whether you spell it with -pedia, -paedia, or -pædia.  Likewise with the "oe" ligature as in fetus, foetus, or f&#x153;tus.  This is no doubt why American English normally uses the plain E spelling for both.  --Anonymous, 20:19 UTC, March 27, 2010.


 * I've heard the British say both words, on BBC News, and it sure sounds like "ay" to my American ears. StuRat (talk) 20:37, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * This quote is from the article Algebraist linked to "In Old English, the ligature was used to denote a sound intermediate between those of a and e (IPA [æ]), very much like the short a of cat in many dialects of modern English." I agree with Sturat about the usual pronunciation. Richard Avery (talk) 15:02, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Although the unfortunate Æthelred doesn't enter into everyday speech often in the UK, when he does, rightly or wrongly his name is usually usually pronounced like Ethel. Alansplodge (talk) 18:29, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * He's pretty commonly spelt Ethelred, too. Algebraist 18:31, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

The name of the character æ or Æ is "ash" if you're talking about old English; in the modern Scandinavian languages it's a letter in its own right, so Æ is its name; and when talking about it in modern English, you can say "a-e ligature". --Anonymous, 20:20 UTC, March 27, 2010.


 * Keep in mind, though, that in general an æ you happen upon could be a distinct letter or merely a stylistic ligature. More at typographic ligature. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:25, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Strangely, Æthelred is normally rendered as Ethelred, but Æthelstan as Athelstan, despite the first halves of their respective names being the same. Something to do with the nice qualities of the rhyme with the last syllables I assume. 92.4.74.144 (talk) 22:31, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * One satirical writer, and I can't recall if it was Will Cuppy or Richard Armour, mentioned several letters invented by the Romans "which were later dropped because no one could pronounce them." Given the many ways to pronounce this one, as per the discussion in its article, Armour/Cuppy was onto something: long a; short a; long e; short e; dipthong. Oy. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:37, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * They were probably on to the Claudian letters. Matt Deres (talk) 16:58, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Derivation of term
I'm looking for the derivation of the term 'executor'. I guess 'ex' means out, but what does 'cutor' mean? --79.76.129.127 (talk) 23:27, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's "one who executes" (where execute means "to carry out"). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 23:36, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Aha! 'exsequar' is the original latin verb. Does 'sequar' mean follow?--79.76.129.127 (talk) 23:48, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The actual Latin verb "to follow" is sequi. As per Webster's, ex- means "out of"; and the rest of it, in its various forms, comes from sequi, "to follow". It started as exsequi, and evolved to exsecutio(n). At some point the 's' was dropped. The "to follow" part is basically the second half of any given action: The first half is deciding what to do, the second is actually doing it: Planning vs. Execution. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:48, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * And as the OP may be leading up to, both "ex-" and "sequi" are fairly diverse roots. Many words begin with "ex-"; and "sequi" appears in words such as "sequel", "sequence", "subsequent", "sequitur", "consequence". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:52, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't surprise me if the Latin root for "second" was also related. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:54, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * "To follow" in Latin is sequi, in Italian is seguire, in Spanish is seguir and in French is suivre. The English verb form of the Latin root is "to sequence", which seems to have come directly from Medieval Latin into Middle English, hence it looks more like the Latin word than the French word. "Follow" itself comes from the same Germanic root as "folgen", and the various German words for "execute" are more than I feel like getting into here. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:07, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, "secundus" is also from the same seq- root (as is its own derivative word "secundum", "according to"). With the ex- prefix, a word beginning with S usually loses it; you could see "exsequor" in Latin, but not as often as "exequor". By the way, that word does have a narrower meaning of "carry out a punishment", which is one sense that has survived into English. But it mostly means following through, completing anything. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:25, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * As, for example, a manager calling for a bunt, and the batter either succeeding or failing to execute the bunt properly. And, yes, technically an execution means carrying out a death sentence, with the meaning having transferred to the prisoner himself, which is technically incorrect, but that's English for ya. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:24, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, you could do that in Latin too, so that's not new. (By the way, I screwed up above, it's more common to see "exsequor" than "exequor" in Latin...I must have been thinking of some other combination.) Adam Bishop (talk) 04:39, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * You could do what in Latin too, "execute" a prisoner? — Note that for intelligent software the ultimate penalty would be nonexecution. —Tamfang (talk) 01:21, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Er, yes, that too, but I meant transfer the meaning of a word like English does. Adam Bishop (talk) 05:41, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure there is any transfer of meaning in the case of judicial killings. The person who carries out any order executes it.  Where the order is to kill a convicted prisoner, the executioner still carries out the order, and the prisoner is the recipient of the action. --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   19:06, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * So would you accept "execute the prisoner" as describing the carrying-out of a non-lethal sentence? —Tamfang (talk) 22:46, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No, but I've just cottoned on to what Bugs was saying. I strongly suspect this particular transference of meaning from the authority to take an action (the order) to the ultimate recipient of the action (the prisoner) is not just confined to English.  --  (JackofOz=) 202.142.129.66 (talk) 01:14, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I certainly could have said it more clearly. "Execute" means "carry out", so substitute it and it makes sense. The sentence is "carried out". The prisoner is killed by the carrying out of the sentence. The dead prisoner is also "carried out", on a gurney, but that's different. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:02, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, I got it now. There's a term for this sort of transference - meta-something or something-osis or something vaguely resembling something vaguely like that.  Or not  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   07:57, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I can say from personal experience that transference of meaning is seen in other languages. At least in Spanish, it is quite common, and the word "ejecutar" has experienced it in Spanish as well (unless it was already transferred in Latin).  --Cromwellt&#124;talk&#124;contribs 17:51, 1 April 2010 (UTC)