Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 March 4

= March 4 =

Italian speaker needed to help find book
I need an Italian speaker to help me locate the book The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources. The book appears to only be offered through the Italian Studi orientali. I tried to locate the book in the US and only found a copy in the rare books room of my former college. Nobody seems to have it. Not even the usuals like Alibris, Abebooks, and bookfinder. Even if they did, I bet the seller would sell it for more than what its average selling prince is.

I just need to know how much it will cost for right now. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 01:17, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * My research efforts suggest that the book is out of print. You would have to find a used copy for sale.  As far as I can tell, there are no used copies currently being offered online.  There may be a dusty copy in a used bookstore somewhere in Europe, but I can't think of any easy way to know whether there is.  According to this site, which seems to be out of date, it was selling for around €85. Some online used booksellers allow you to ask to be notified if a title comes on the market, but I don't know how long you'd have to wait for this one.   Marco polo (talk) 02:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * It doesn't appear to be that rare a book. Worldcat shows tons of libraries with copies.  If you just want to read it, maybe you can try an interlibrary loan. 75.62.109.146 (talk) 02:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I want to own it. There is a copy in the rare books room at my old college 20 minutes from where I live at, but I can't take it out of the building. Could a person possibly contact Studi orientali directly to see if they have any back copies? They have a website. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 02:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think that is the publisher. The publisher is Bardi Editore and there is an order page for the book here.  I have no idea whether it works, of course. 75.62.109.146 (talk) 05:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for finding that. I have written them a letter asking if they do international shipments. I did a bilingual letter using an internet translator. If the Italian is unintelligible, they hopefully they can read the English. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 14:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't speak any Italian but it's pretty obvious what everything on that page does. You can click the "Aquista" button and order the book.  The shopping cart takes you to a usual checkout form where there is a "Nazione" pulldown with a long list of countries, so that would suggest they can handle international orders. 75.62.109.146 (talk) 14:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * If I were an Italian publishing company, I think I would rather receive a letter in English alone than in both English and machine-translated Italian. +Angr 15:00, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

borrowed words
Which language borrows words from the most number of other languages —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marinada (talk • contribs) 13:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * If it's not English, that would be very surprising. If you can find something about the total number of words in each of the major languages of the world, that would be a clue. Recently there was a question here about French, in which I think it was stated that French only has about 1/4 of the words of English. That's due in no small part to (1) French having an academic body that tries to keep French "pure"; and (2) English being a blend of Old German and Old French, among others, so it has many words from both languages which are synonyms, adding to the overall total. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:42, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The question is about the highest number of languages borrowed from, not the total number of borrowed words. Of course, I have no clue.  Presumably a language that was developped in close proximity to many other languages would have borrowed words from all of those sources. Buddy431 (talk) 16:18, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

What about Esperanto, which is entirely made up of loanwords? --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  17:04, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * That's not entirely true, there are some "a prioristic" (invented) forms (e.g. in the correlatives etc.) And the great majority of words were borrowed from Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages only. AnonMoos (talk) 17:54, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think Japanese is a good example of an heavy borrowing language. "Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese and Dutch have also been influential." Also, look here: --151.51.54.120 (talk) 19:04, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Korean, though, has borrowed just about as much from Chinese as Japanese has. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 22:05, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Nah, Japanese borrows heavily, but from a fairly limited number of languages. I'd venture to say about 80%to 90% of their borrowings is from either Chinese or English. Given what was written bellow, I'd say English is the undisputed winner in the field of number of languages it borrowed from. TomorrowTime (talk) 08:59, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the question was about the number of languages that loanwords came from rather than the nu,mber of words (which has been pointed out to me above, as well as pointed out prior to my own answer). In this case, I think we would have to define 'loanword'. Also, it could be said that the names of most languages originally come from native words in the languages themselves (whether words for the language or for related concepts or completely unrelated concepts (c.f. Mandarin vs. Putonghua), so it could be said that practically every language in existence has at least one loanword borrowed into English as well as other languages. Therefore, the question is unanswerable. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  19:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * English has borrowed words from at least 58 languages. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:13, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * In fact, it's likely way, way more than that. There's probably 50 native languages in the Americas alone from which English has borrowed one or more words. That's not counting all the major European languages (another 30 or so). There's been a lot of contact with Asian, African and Pacific Ocean languages, all of which have left a few words in the language, so it's easily over 100 languages, and likely many, many more. In spite of its reputation for being closed to foreign borrowings, French would also have words borrowed from most of these languages because of its global reach (likely the same words, too), and Spanish won't be too far behind. --Xuxl (talk) 21:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Way more, indeed. There were somewhere between 350 and 750 Australian Aboriginal languages, depending on whether they're counted as dialects or distinct languages.  Australian English would have borrowed at least 1 word from many of them.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   13:59, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Sinhalese
Is there anybody here who speaks/understands Sinhalese, and can tell us what ලෝක යුද්දය is about, and if its worth keeping. We have no idea at WP:PNT and there are no active editors with a si babel template on their user page. Thanks-- Jac 16888 Talk 16:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't speak a word of Sinhala but you might want to try contacting someone from the following websites; I found the links (in the midst of an English-language description box) on Sinhala Wikipedia:
 * http://practicalaction.org/?id=region_south_asia
 * http://www.icta.lk/
 * http://www.felidae.lk/
 * http://www.sinhala-online.com/
 * I tried the two words in the following dictionary but no entries came up--http://www.freelang.net/online/sinhala.php?lg=gb. --Dpr (talk) 21:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Ken Loach's films
Recently, I watched a film by Ken Loach and was wondering - do all people talk like that in Glasgow? If yes, could we consider that as a separate language from English? Or does he just want to represent the lowest class? Quest09 (talk) 18:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think all people in Glasgow talk in a way that is difficult to understand for speakers of more "standard" varieties of English. I think that the heavy Glaswegian language or dialect tends to occur among older and less educated people.  However, I have not spent much time in Scotland, and I hope that someone who has will comment.  As for whether it is a separate language, see our article Scots language.  Marco polo (talk) 19:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * See also Glasgow patter. Marco polo (talk) 19:48, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * My grandmother came from the east end of Glasgow and although she moved to the south of England in the 1920s, many found her difficult to understand 70 years later. Some of my friends can't make sense of the sitcom Rab C. Nesbitt which is set in Govan. I went to see Ratcatcher at the cinema and the English couple behind me were quite unable to follow the dialogue. As Marco Polo says, younger Glaswegians seem to be more intelligable. This appears to be a trend with British dialects; whether this is a good thing or not, I'm not certain. Alansplodge (talk) 15:56, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

American language in the 1930s
I'm writing an essay that's supposed to be written by someone in the 1930s about literature. I'm curious if there are any specific words or sentence structures used a lot during the 1930s in America. I'm not really interested in slang of the time because it's still supposed to be a formal essay. Thanks! ? EVAUNIT 神になった人間 19:13, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, maybe you could start by reading some books written or set in the 1930s for some ideas? Googlemeister (talk) 19:21, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Or, maybe better still, some literary criticism written during the 30s, since that is what you are trying to emulate. Marco polo (talk) 19:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Much more formalistic language than today...much longer sentences...perhaps more "latinate" vocabulary...George Orwell's criticisms of writing styles from the '30s-'40s would be a good place to start--if you do what he says not to do, you'll probably end up sounding a lot like the mainstream academic writers of the day.--Dpr (talk) 00:08, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * George Orwell's famous essay referred to above, "Politics and the English Language", is here. He was of course writing about the British English writers of his day, but many of the same points hold true more universally. BrainyBabe (talk) 12:13, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

23 skidoo. Gabbe (talk) 15:01, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I would recommend ANY piece by H.L. Mencken -- if you can do a half-way decent imitation of Mencken (particularly his dry humor and pseudo-bombast) you will nail a highly influential stylistic progenitor from that era (although he was not a literary critic as such). To be really ambitious (and to refer to an actual literary critic), try to combine it with the much more restrained but also prototypical stylings of an Edmund Wilson essay (or diary entry, or book chapter). 63.17.82.123 (talk) 05:02, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Mencken's The American Language could be useful, too. It was first published in 1919, but had supplements that took it into the 40s. It's the most fun linguistic read ever. PhGustaf (talk) 06:39, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Premiere/premier
Premiere makes no mention of any alternative spelling, apart from (imo the unnecessarily diacritised) première.

What I’m often seeing lately is premier: The work had its United States premier in Philadelphia on August 9, 1963.

Is this a recognised variant nowadays, or still just a spelling error? The only premier I would recognise is a head of government. --  Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   19:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it would be a spelling mistake. Googling 'United States premier' does not give anything other than an article about Banksy (in which it is spelt 'premiere') and then 'United States'+'premier' in separate parts of articles referring, variously, to heads of state and names of companies. 'Soviet premier' gives articles about Soviet heads of state, and 'World premier' gives "Did you mean 'world premiere'?" then articles containing heads of state, companies and the word 'world' in. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  19:48, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that's what I thought. Premier in the governmental sense tends to be used for sub-national leaders, although there have been exceptions.  The Premier of the entire World seems to be a rather under-stated title for such a lofty office.  :) --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   20:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I concur; it's a spelling error. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

In my 1960 Websters, at least, "premier" is listed as a normal word, and "première" as a foreign word. Basically the former is masculine and the latter is feminine. Both derive from the same Latin root as the English "primary". Both literally mean "first". The former is used for the chief executive of a nation. The latter was used for the leading lady of a play (as with the Italian term prima donna, "first lady"), and also the debut of a performance. I may be wrong, but I don't think the leading lady variant is used much anymore. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:59, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Nope, never heard any person referred to as a "première". Thanks for that.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   13:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Ellipt.
What is ellipt.?174.3.110.108 (talk) 20:45, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I fail to see the point of this question, or its relevance to the reference desk. Issues about manual of style should be made at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. User:Curious Cactus 20:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The point is: What is the meaning of "ellipt."?174.3.110.108 (talk) 20:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Why don't you try using google first? The first result is en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ellipt which explains what it means. User:Curious Cactus 20:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, in the context of the OED (from which the poster at the MOS talk page was quoting) it's an abbreviation of elliptical or elliptically, and is listed as such in the table of abbreviations at the beginning of the dictionary. The relevant Wiktionary page is here, on which see sense 2. Deor (talk) 20:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * In other words, the OED is staying that "historic" was used by itself as a noun with the meaning of a historic work, picture, etc. -- in the same way that we now say "a musical" instead of "a musical play" or "a musical movie". This is, of course, nothing to do with the subject of the question on the talk page.  --Anonymous, 01:03 UTC, March 5, 2010.


 * Curious Cactus, if you can't be bothered to answer the questions, at least don't attack the questioner. Woogee (talk) 00:18, 6 March 2010 (UTC)