Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 September 10

= September 10 =

Antonyms
Hi,

What are the antonyms for the greek prefixes "endo-" and "sym-"? They don't have to be commonly used, I'm trying to make a new word. Thanks. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 12:37, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The opposite of endo- is exo-. Syn- (or sym-) doesn't really have a direct antonym, but ana- or apo- would probably usually fit. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:43, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the perfect answer in only 6 minutes! Aaadddaaammm (talk) 12:58, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Sometimes the prefix "anti-" is used antonymously for syn/sym. Examples: synonym/antonym or syn and anti addition in organic chemistry. ---Sluzzelin talk  13:50, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Language
What is the most efficient language? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Myname12029200 (talk • contribs) 14:04, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Hard to say, and depends on your definition of efficient. You might be interested in archived questions from Sep 2008, Oct 2008, and July 2009. ---Sluzzelin talk  14:09, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sign language. 0 consonants.  0 vowels.  a large number of words.  Googlemeister (talk) 14:59, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There are many signed languages, though, so who knows which one you're referring to. Also, in place of consonants and vowels, sign languages have numerous cheremes. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 17:04, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It's hard to answer the question too meaningfully in the current state of knowledge, but if you mean which language has the least inessential distractions which appear to serve no absolutely necessary communicative functional purpose (such as irregularities of inflection, morphophonogical alternations, grammatical gender classes, etc.), then the answer could very probably be one of the creole languages... AnonMoos (talk) 17:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Do any of them have an army and a navy, though? It's certainly a tricky question; for example, English might have "efficiency credit" for not having genders and "efficiency debit" for having so many near synonyms (Latin v. German, etc.). How would you balance something like that? And is Russian "efficient" or "handicapped" for their (non)use of articles? If you're counting words rather than syllables, something like German might appear very efficient... Matt Deres (talk) 18:29, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Using AnonMoos' criteria, would one of the artificial languages such as Esperanto score highly? Rojomoke (talk) 18:30, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * First of all I have no idea what an army and a navy have to do with anything; languages would be just as efficient or inefficient (however that may be defined) with or without such military appurtenances...
 * Rojomoke -- The Esperanto plural accusative adjective ending -ajn is the kind of thing which probably serves no "absolutely necessary communicative functional purpose"... AnonMoos (talk) 23:34, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Matt is refering to the difference between a dialect and a language, summed up (for some) by "A language is a dialect with an army and navy". - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 13:16, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've been well aware of that quote for probably almost 30 years now, but I fail to see what relevance it has in the current context... AnonMoos (talk) 13:37, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * My mistake. I think the suggestion is that Creole languages might not necessarily be the sort of "languages" the OP is after. Perhaps Matt can clarify. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 15:14, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The relevance was simply a small jest that the languages (in the most inclusive sense) that do the best job of being a language (in the sense of being efficient) might not qualify as a language if you used the old saw about requiring an army and navy. Matt Deres (talk) 02:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * My initial take was that the OP was asking which language can convey meaning in the smallest number of words. Chinese, for example, generally requires fewer words than English, while French typically requires somewhat more.  If this is the meaning, I suspect that the answer would be one of the dialects of Chinese or another Asian language.  John M Baker (talk) 18:57, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Mine own take was that the OP is a redlink with 1 contrib, fitting the pattern of a certain compulsive poster we have been experiencing for quite a while. Forgive me if I am wrong, and I will attempt to add an answer to this part of the discussion. I do not think that using the smallest number of words is necessarily an indicator of an 'efficient' language, whatever the OP meant by that, because a certain element of ambiguity then arises. Take this extreme example from Japanese: 'Inu, tabeta?' (two words) can mean either 'has the dog eaten?' or 'did you eat my dog?' (and plenty of other meanings, too). The same thing(s) can be said in exactly the same way in Chinese. Normally the context will supply the meaning, but not always. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  21:50, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Practically speaking, the most efficient language is the one in which you and your audience are most fluent. Having to stop to repeat, explain or translate something makes communication far more difficult than any intrinsic limitations of a language. -- 174.21.233.249 (talk) 19:41, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Spanish phrase
What does this Spanish sentence mean? "Quiero que me llame." It seems to be "I want to talk to myself" but I'm sure that's not right. Lexicografía (talk) 19:33, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It means "I want you (singular, polite)/him/her/it to call me."—Wavelength (talk) 20:12, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * See llamar and es:wikt:llamar (section: Conjugación) (part: Modo subjuntivo).—Wavelength (talk) 20:20, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Muchas gracias, Wavelength Lexicografía (talk) 22:52, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

"I call myself" would be me llamo. That's the way Spanish speakers tell you what their name is: Me llamo Juan or whatever. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Mmm... except that "llame" in this context is subjunctive, so technically (and I realize this is a stretch), it could also mean "I want myself to call myself." If we were to change the "Quiero" ("I want") to "Quiere" ("He/She wants") and the "me" to "le," we would have "Quiere que le llame," which would mean "He/She wants me to call him/her.")  Just to be thorough.  Kingsfold   (Quack quack!)  17:04, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Languages in the USA. English in the world
I've realised that this is probably a better place to ask a question I just put in Discussion on another article...

Often in Wikipedia, when different versions of English spelling are an issue, some posters love to point out that the majority of native English speakers are American. Seems a possibly reasonable claim, but I'd like to see some figures. Recent trips to the US have shown me that a lot of American residents now would be native Spanish speakers, rather than English. I suspect there would still be other significant other language groups.

Is there a good place to tell me, firstly, what is the breakup of "native" languages in the US, and, secondly, how the US percentage of native English speakers really does compare with the rest of the world?

HiLo48 (talk) 23:57, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * In relation to Wikipedia articles, Manual of Style (spelling) and Manual_of_Style 82.44.55.25 (talk) 00:06, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * (e/c) According to the 2000 census, 215 million Americans speak English at home, while 28 million speak Spanish. The Census does not care whether the language is native or not. 215 million is roughly 3.5 times the population of the United Kingdom.
 * Although they are still very much in the minority, Spanish speakers (especially those who don't know or are bad at English) are becoming an important niche population. This was evidenced in September 2009 and 2010, when Univision, the 600-pound gorilla of Spanish television, beat the English-language networks in primetime ratings for a couple of weeks. (To be fair to the English networks, they were showing reruns while Univision shows new programming all year.)
 * To compare to other countries, a negligible amount of Britons (less than 5% of the population) speak languages other than English at home. The largest group is Punjabi speakers, who number just over 500,000. In Canada, according to the 2006 census, 58.8% spoke English at home, 21.6% spoke French, and 19.6% spoke "other" languages -- presumably indigenous languages. Xenon54
 * While the majority of native English speakers may well be in the US, the number of people who speak English as a second language probably dwarfs the number of native speakers, and many of them learned British English. So using those kinds of numbers as an argument in favor of using AmEng on Wikipedia doesn't make much sense. That's why there is no formal rule on Wikipedia; as you can see in the links the IP gave, we handle things on a case-by-case (article-by-article) basis. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 00:35, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for those responses, but I'm not sure we've got there yet. I'm quite comfortable with Wikipedia's spelling conventions. Most spelling discussions re articles are pretty quickly settled based on the subject of the article. But it's those broader questions of who actually speaks what that intrigue me. It seems to me that American English is spoken in America and not many other places with large populations. British English and similar variants are spoken in lots of places. As an Australian, I am used to some less well educated Americans thinking we speak Austrian, hence the funny accent, but really there are 23 million of us and we almost all spell (nearly) British English. 5 million New Zealanders would probably like to be counted too. Because of their colonial histories British English would be common enough in India and many African countries, with a total of over 2 billion to be a "small" percentage of. Has anyone ever done the Maths? (Yes, we put an "s" on the end of Maths! )  HiLo48 (talk) 01:55, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I am a Brit, born and bred, and have been ever since I was born, and I do not care one iota which version of English is spoken here, so long as it gets the point across. Problem with that? I am a professional translator, and never - I repeat in italics never - have I come across anyone who has insisted that '[blah blah blah] dialect is better than [blah blah blah other] dialect because it is spoken by more speakers/the King uses it/Britney Spears uses it' or [whatever-insert-your-personal-vogue-of-choice-here]. Language is language. Its purpose is to communicate. Some people do it slightly different from others. Live with it. It's surprisingly not hard (and quite fun at times). Seriously. . --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  06:17, 11 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Giggle: "...a Brit, born and bred, and have been ever since I was born". Thanks for the concept of a changeable birthplace, Kage Tora.  :)  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   20:50, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * No worries, Jack. It was purposeful. I always find a bit of humour takes the edge off what would otherwise be conceived as a pointless rant :) --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  21:35, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * List of countries by English-speaking population breaks it down by native speakers and non-native speakers, for what the numbers there are worth. ---Sluzzelin talk  08:16, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Linguists such as David Crystal and Braj Kachru demonstrate that English is developing in a lot of different directions, and the UK and USA have little control over its future. Native English speakers in the US, and worldwide, are a minority of those who use the language. David Graddol has written at least two reports for the British Council about the role of English globally. Hope this leads you towards an answer. BrainyBabe (talk) 14:38, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

(Rethinking where best to place this contribution) I have to refute Xenon54's assertion above, wrt Canada, that "19.6% spoke "other" languages -- presumably indigenous languages". Our article Aboriginal_peoples_in_Canada, referring to the Canada 2006 Census, states that aboriginal people are under 4% of the population; there is no way that the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis have been anything like 1 in 5 of the population since before Canadian Confederation in 1867. Also, many aboriginal people, especially the Metis, speak English (or French) as their mother tongue, or possibly their only language. It is not clear from looking at Indigenous languages of the Americas how many indigenous Canadians speak an indigenous language. The 2006 Census figures make it clear that the "home languages" (their phrase, meaning "the language spoken most often or on a regular basis at home by the individual") are predominantly those of relatively recent immigrants, with Chinese languages bundled together being the largest (3%). BrainyBabe (talk) 14:38, 12 September 2010 (UTC)