Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 September 15

= September 15 =

French idiom
Hi all - I'm trying to remember the French idiom for an artistic work that is little-known, and commercially unsuccesful, but celebrated by critics and the literati. Thanks Adambrowne666 (talk) 01:43, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Succès d'estime ref.– AldoSyrt (talk) 06:50, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Spot on! thanks! Adambrowne666 (talk) 11:11, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Emma Zunz - mistranslation?
I have a linguistic doubt about Emma Zunz (original text here) that I'd like to resolve once and for all. In the fourth paragraph we find the following: "[...] fue con Elsa a un club de mujeres, que tiene gimnasio y pileta. Se inscribieron; tuvo que repetir y deletrear su nombre y su apellido, tuvo que festejar las bromas vulgares que comentan la revisación." (Italics mine.) I first read the story in the English translation by Andrew Hurley, who renders the passage thus: "[...] she went with Elsa to a women's club that had a gymnasium and a swimming pool. They joined; she had to repeat and then spell her name; she had to applaud the vulgar jokes that accompanied the struggle to get it correct." As a result of reading this, I went away thinking that the name "Zunz" must resemble some obscene word in Spanish, though I could never discover that word. Now, years later, sufficiently competent to read the Spanish original, I conclude that Hurley made a major error. My idiomatic counter-translation: "[...] she went with Elsa to a women's club with a gym and a pool. They signed up; she had to repeat and spell out her name, had to seem amused by the vulgar jokes that peppered the physical exam." The word revisación is sufficiently peculiar to be overlooked by the RAE, but it's pretty transparently an inbred Argentine cousin of revisión, the standard term for a medical examination. Evidently Hurley failed to recognize the word and pressed blindly ahead, putting his faith in context. But wouldn't his translation have been proofread by a native speaker, and wouldn't a native speaker have been given pause by this little inexplicable scene, conjured up by Hurley's carelessness, of receptionists making dirty jokes about the name "Zunz"? Is it perhaps the case that, by pure coincidence, the name "Zunz" does indeed resemble some Spanish profanity, so that Hurley's erroneous translation is nevertheless plausible? Or is Borges weird enough in his choice of words that even Spanish-speakers are willing to swallow the occasional mystery and move on? Or is this more likely a case of simple editorial oversight? I appeal to the hispanophones out there, and particularly the Argentines if there are any among us: What was Borges's intent when he wrote that sentence? (Assuming it was not merely to set in motion a charming little hiccup of translation.) L ANTZY T ALK 04:43, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The French translation (by Roger Caillois) reads "elle dut rire des plaisanteries vulgaires qui agrémentèrent la lecture de l'inscription". Nothing about a physical exam. I get a sense that Emma's last name sounds somewhat ridiculous in Spanish, which fits with her being a bit of a social outcast, hence the stupid jokes. --Xuxl (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It looks like Caillois had precisely the same interpretation as Hurley. I think they're both wrong. I'd really love to hear from a native speaker, though. I'm especially curious about "revisación" and how it would be understood. If it isn't in the RAE dictionary, then it must be confusing to a lot of Spanish speakers. Incidentally, I presume an Argentine would pronounce "Zunz" as [suns], not [tsunts] as in Yiddish. L ANTZY T ALK 06:55, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Argie speaking here. Revisación is the typical word for the physical examination undergone when being granted access to a swimming pool (or similar sports facilities). No doubt as it as the first meaning. Can't think of a vulgar implication of her name so far. I guess Borges just played games with his translators. Pallida  Mors  15:08, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * So Lantzy was right! Good job! I was curious as to how this would turn out. Rimush (talk) 19:49, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Pallida_Mors, would you say that "revisación" is characteristically Argentine? I asked a Colombian acquaintance if she'd ever heard the word, and she hadn't. Not once in her life. First she insisted that it "wasn't Spanish", then haughtily conceded (in response to a suggestion from me) that it was "the kind of thing you might hear" in Argentina. Not that I place much stock in that, but it set me to wondering whether Argentines also say stuff like "televisación" and "circuncisación"... Some haphazard Google research suggests, to my surprise, that they do show this tendency. "Televisación", for instance, seems to be used chiefly in the context of Argentine sports. As for "circuncisación", that's clearly a nonce word, but the first result is the Argentine Yahoo! answers site. Could it be that "revisación" is part of a more general Argentine propensity to using -ación? Or is this a misapprehensation on my part? L ANTZY T ALK 04:57, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, revisación is here exclusively used in the sense of medical/physical examination; for the editorial sense, we use revisión. Here this dictionary lists the variant as Argentinian/Uruguayan. Generally speaking, the -ación is perfectly valid and productive; so, many instances of this derivation are not even listed on the dictionary, which just lists the solid, uniformly accepted productions (that's why televisación will have to wait). Here the RAE explains the origin of -ción and -ación. For the case of revisión, the obvious note is that we Argentinians have in use two forms: revisión, directly derived from Latin' revisio. And then, the apparently unnecessary form derived from revisar+(a)ción, alas, only used in the specific sense already commented above. But come on, circuncisación!! That's going too far! :P Pallida  Mors  09:03, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If I haven't made myself clear in the previous answer, let's clarify it a bit. The formula of 'noun derived from the verbal root plus -ación' is in general valid, though of course may sound overproductive or plainly wrong. The case for televisación is understandable, since it conveys the idea of "the action of transmitting something on tv". The verb televisar, relatively new, has no other verbal noun associated with this meaning. The case for circuncisación, on the other hand, is more pathetic: what's the need for it, when we have circuncisión? Pallida  Mors  09:21, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. In English I suppose we say "televising" more often than "televisation", but Google reveals that the latter form is not infrequently used. I was just curious as to why the "-ación" forms were so strongly correlated with Argentina. A Bit of Fry & Laurie once had a sketch set in an American courtroom, and the lawyer and judge kept using bizarre, overwrought formations like "bruisality" and "dismissulate". Evidently, to British ears, Americans have a tendency to add suffixes willy-nilly. (Although the only real-life example I can think of is "burglarize".) I was wondering if Argentines had the same reputation in the Spanish-speaking world. L ANTZY T ALK 03:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't give you a precise answer over that; maybe the case is that you describe. I guess some foreigner Spanish speaker living in Argentina can give you a precise answer on the topic. I might note that generally speaking, Argentines are not afraid of easlily producing new words through suffixation. Pallida  Mors  08:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I have never, ever heard or read the word "televization" until now; do people really sometimes say that where you live? Textorus (talk) 04:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've never heard it in speech. Google reveals it to exist, at least in writing. L ANTZY T ALK 08:42, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I remember stumbling over Hurley's translation of the title "Funes el memorioso" as "Funes, His Memory" (he does explain his rationale in the book, but to me it remains an eyesore). Lantzy, you might be interested in this and part 2, for one example. ---Sluzzelin talk  10:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * "Funes, His Memory" sounds like "Dem Funes sein Gedächtnis" which would be used to avoid the genitive. Rimush (talk) 14:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for those links, Sluzzelin. Evidently I'm not the first to have noticed something wrong with Hurley's translations. It's a shame they relied on him for the big fancy edition of Collected Fictions a few years back. As for "Funes, His Memory", I've always hated that. Honestly, what's wrong with "Funes the Memorious"? It sounds cool, and it's not as if English speakers are going to stare at it for hours and wonder "What the hell does that mean?" It's transparent. L ANTZY T ALK 03:07, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Since recently
Hello! I'm having a brain freeze: is the expression "since recently" correct in English (as in the phrase, "Since recently, they have a new car"). It doesn't sound right to me, yet Google seems to turn it up on pages with otherwise good English. If it's not a good expression to use, does someone have a suggestion for a better expression? Thanks in advance! &mdash; QuantumEleven 12:10, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * "Of late, they have had a new car?" Or "lately"? I've seen 'since' used like this in Bollywood translations and I know what you mean - it sounds wrong. I think "since" has to precede a fixed time. Sandman30s (talk) 12:26, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * 'Of late' and 'lately' have connotations of temporarariness, particularly since you've changed 'have' to 'have had'. The sentence is trying to say they have a new car, and will continue to use this car, but they haven't had it for a very long, which isn't at all surprising since it's a new car we're talking about.  There comes a point when a new car ceases to be a new car; when that is ...?  But it's not a question of tautology to combine 'recently' with 'new car' because they might have recently bought a second-hand car.  How about "They recently bought/purchased/acquired a new car"?  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   19:39, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Formulations of this kind have a tendency to sound extremely foreign: "Now we're old and gray, Fernando. Since many years I haven't seen a rifle in your hand." But QuantumEleven's example isn't quite as bad as ABBA's. The problem isn't the pairing of "since" with "recently", but the use of the simple present tense in the subsequent clause. It would sound perfectly natural were the main clause put in a perfect continuous tense: "Since recently, they've had a new car." L ANTZY T ALK 06:35, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * ... "since recently" still sounds slightly "foreign" to my British ear. Jack's suggestion is better British and Australian English.    D b f i r s   11:53, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * On further consideration you're probably right, and one would be unlikely to phrase it in such a way. But if a native speaker (or a self-assured foreigner) were to tell me, "Since recently they've had a new car," I don't think it would give me pause. L ANTZY T ALK 03:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you all for your help, I'll try to rephrase it to a non-continuous action (such as "they recently bought a new car"). Cheers! &mdash; QuantumEleven 13:52, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I don’t care for “since” with the original tense either. Another paraphrase that would sit better with me: “Since recently they’ve been using/driving a new car.” I think the construction is more common when “recently” is modified, e.g. by “just” or “only”. Odysseus1479 (talk) 01:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

word for decorative arrangement...
Hi I've asked this question years ago and didn't get the right answer. It's one of those words that I've known before (when dinosaurs roamed) and it will forever bug me until I can find it again! If I get it, I will stamp it on my forehead to never forget it again and will award a barnstar of torment alleviation!! It's the word to describe such an arrangement: a glass bottle or jar filled with decorative multi-coloured chillies/peppers (and possibly small onions too) and preserved with vinegar or alcohol. It's the word for the entire arrangement, not just the jar or its contents. It's sometimes given as a gift for the alcohol to be drunk but I don't know if anyone is mad enough to drink chilli flavoured alcohol. I was given this gift again and nobody knows what it's called! Sandman30s (talk) 12:20, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * (For reference, here is the unanswered question Sandman asked two years ago. Just so people get a head start, and don't spend brains or time on coming up with the same answers. ) ---Sluzzelin talk  12:36, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If it's not potpourri like some suggested two years ago, then I'm at a loss. Rimush (talk) 14:23, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Like this one, I suppose? No, that wouldn't be a potpourri. But I don't know the answer either, so Sandman will have to live with his curse a bit more. No such user (talk) 14:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC) For what it's worth, the particular square type of the bottle is called quadrotta, though it probably isn't what you had in mind. No such user (talk) 14:41, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * There may be an Italian loan-word for it: a google search for 'decorative vinegar bottle' turns up a good selection of the kind of things you mean, and they are usually presented as part of an Italian themed designs. Bit they always seemed to be called 'decorative vinegar bottles' in English.  -- Ludwigs 2  14:48, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * just as an afterthought, you might be thinking of one of the related words: infuser, cruet, amphora. None of them are specific to this, but they apply indirectly.  -- Ludwigs 2  15:00, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the Italian wikipedia has a reference desk? If so try asking the question there (in English). The photo found by No such user seems to indicate it's Italian. 93.95.251.162 (talk) 15:48, 15 September 2010 (UTC) Martin.
 * Maybe this or this? -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 15:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Janet Fish paints items not-so-distantly-related, for whatever that's worth. See some here. Bus stop (talk) 16:31, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If it's olives they are called "Placed olives" (in contrast with "Thrown"). Ariel. (talk) 18:18, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The curse lives on! Maybe the word was potpourri then, but I'm 90% sure it was Italian sounding. Thanks guys... Sandman30s (talk) 08:33, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Conserva? --Pierpao (talk) 11:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * or Salamoia? --Pierpao (talk) 11:15, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Try also in Spanish Wiki: for English-speakers Italian and Spanish sound much the same way...--93.32.36.184 (talk) 12:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I tried a google search in Spanish, and came up with this. The product is made in China, and appears to be called a "Botella decorativa de la Navidad" in Spanish (Christmas decorative bottle)... --NorwegianBluetalk 19:06, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sottaceti?--Bedo2991 (talk) 12:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I can only supply the names of different types of conservation: Pickled vegetables in vinegar are called sott(')aceti, in oil they are called sott'olii, in salt water they are called in salamoia. Hans Urian (talk) 12:41, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Giardiniera? --62.98.87.206 (talk) 17:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There is even the article Giardiniera on en.wiki :)87.18.100.14 (talk) 18:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Coins that are 1/10 of dollar
Coins are "cents" from centi. But since it's time to abolish the penny :) what do you call coins that are 1/10 of a dollar? Decies? Decis? Decs? Deces? Ariel. (talk) 17:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Dimes in US currency (from Latin decima through French desme). -- Ludwigs 2  17:47, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Penny (1/100) - Nickel (1/20) - Dime (1/10) - Quarter (1/4, obviously). Rimush (talk) 20:33, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I know what the name of the coin is, I was wondering about giving a new name for the unit (not the coin), and was wondering which was most correct. Ariel. (talk) 21:24, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The US penny is not going out of circulation any time soon, for various political reasons. But the 1/10 dollar bit is a "dime", and I haven't heard any other suggested names for it. And I remember when it could buy a cup of coffee. PhGustaf (talk) 21:42, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Historically and officially, the dime is the name of the unit in the US, not of the coin. That's why it makes sense that the coin is marked ONE DIME.  (And the 5¢ coin used to be marked HALF DIME, not FIVE CENTS.)  It's just that the word has transferred itself to the coin (and also, in everyday usage, to the corresponding Canadian coin, which officially is a 10¢ piece).  --Anonymous, 11:50 UTC, September 16, 2010.
 * That sounds plausible, but Wikipedia's dime page doesn't mention that meaning, and dime (United States coin) even says of one design, 'on the reverse is the lettering "10C," making it the only dime minted with an explicit indication of its value (subsequent issues are inscribed with the words "ONE DIME")'. Should this be fixed? Some online dictionaries mention the currency-unit meaning (e.g. Webster's 1913), others don't (e.g. American Heritage 4th ed.). -- BenRG (talk) 20:01, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd say so. The dime is defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 both as the name of a coin (in section 9) and as a unit of money (in section 20).  But the wording "ONE DIME" clearly indicates that the latter meaning is being used.  Several copies of the act can be found online, not all with identical spelling; in one of them the relevant part of section 20 reads: "That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units, dismes or tenths, cents or hundredths, and the milles or thousandths, a disme being the tenth part of a dollar, a cent the hundredth part of a dollar, a mille the thousandth part of a dollar".  --Anon, 03:52 UTC, September 18, 2010.


 * In practice, it's unlikely there'll be one, even if the penny as a coin is de-facto abolished. Most countries which have abandoned the smallest-unit-coin happily keep calling the larger ones by the old names - see, for example, India, where the smallest denomination coin is the ten paise (100 paise to the rupee). You'd only be likely to change if you revalued (or renamed) the currency as a whole, and even then... Shimgray | talk | 21:37, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * In China, 1/10 of a dollar is a máo (毛), and that's generally used as a unit of currency (i.e., for ¥1.50 you wouldn't say "1 kuài 50 fēn (cents)", you would say "1 kuài 5 máo" or just "1 kuài 5"). Cents (fēn) are only used in like banks, department stores, chain grocery stores with cash registers, and other "official" places. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 21:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Australian coins don't seem to have names. We just concern ourselves with what they're worth. HiLo48 (talk) 22:09, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * They used to, prior to 1966 decimalisation. Well, a mixture of formal and informal names anyway.  We had halfpennies, pennies, threepences, sixpences (known as zacs), shillings (known as bob or deeners), and florins (= 2/-, called 2 shillings or 2 bob, but never 2 deeners).  --  202.142.129.66 (talk) 23:43, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I can see how you get "zac" from "six", and "bob" is relatively standard for a shilling, but why "deener"? It had a sheep on, which seems to rule out the obvious guess that it came from the design. Some kind of linkage with "dinar" is possible - compare the old UK use of "dollar" for a crown coin, after large numbers of Spanish dollars were in circulation for a while valued at five shillings - but I don't see any reasonable point at which that would have come into use! Shimgray | talk | 00:03, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Here's something about deeners (see under deaner). Also, a threepence was called a "tray" sometimes.  --  202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:23, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Since in Britain there are ten pee to a florin and ten florins in a quid, you could call the unit a florin. "Brother, can you spare a florin?" No, somehow I don't think it would catch on. -- Hoary (talk) 15:03, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The expression needs to be updated for inflation, since there's little one can buy with the equivalent of a dime these days. An upper-class British type who's fallen on hard times might ask "Brother, can you spare 5 guineas for a hazelnut mocha mugaccino?". :)  --  202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:03, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * £5.25? Where are you buying coffee? The Ritz? 86.164.78.91 (talk) 11:08, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Naturally. One never lowers one's standards.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   11:23, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * God, has even The Ritz sunk to selling "hazelnut mocha mugaccinos" nowadays? Whatever happened to proper coffee? DuncanHill (talk) 04:46, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Is there or has there ever been a language that used a phonetic alphabet?
Or at least one that came close (like, 30 letters for 32 sounds)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.22.79.251 (talk) 18:11, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If you mean a phonemic alphabet, plenty of languages do. The most famous example is probably Korean (Hangul). Turkish (and many of its close relatives, such as Uyghur, Uzbek, and Kazakh) also have a more or less one-to-one phoneme-grapheme correspondence. The reason I am calling these phonemic rather than phonetic is that they only encode sound differences that also trigger meaning differences, rather than context-dependent sound differences; for example, Korean has both [s] and [ʃ], but those are actually variants of the same phoneme (in some contexts it's pronounced [s], as in Seo-ul신울, whereas in others it's pronounced [ʃ], as in 신촌 Shin-chon) so it's written with the same letter.
 * I don't think many languages use alphabets that are fully phonetic (i.e., alphabets that represent unimportant differences in pronunciation) because the information they would convey is redundant and not necessary for expression. For instance, if [American] English used a fully phonetic alphabet, "bank" would be spelled "bangk" or "baŋk", "kicked" would be spelled "kicket" or "kickt" or "kikt", etc. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 19:03, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Serbian would come close. So would Tongan. --Theurgist (talk) 20:14, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I was kinda hoping the link under "Serbian" would be to Vuk Karadžić :) But even if the rule "write it as you speak it" does apply to Serbian, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with calling it a "language that uses a phonetic alphabet" - in essence, all that the rule seems to accomplish is to have foreign names written in the closest approximation to Serbian pronunciation rules (cf.: New York vs. Njujork), but if those foreign names use phonemes that aren't domestic to Serbian, those get glossed over for the closest approximate. If you were to include Serbian, than many other languages can be included as well - many, if not most languages don't have the convoluted writing/reading rules of English or French and really put down words in fairly good approximations of how stuff is actually pronounced - as Rjanag has already pointed out. Also, I'd like to mention Japanese (more precisely, its use of kana) here. TomorrowTime (talk) 22:48, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, the exceptions on foreign names that you mention really aren't exceptions: the scope of the alphabet are the language's own 30 phonemes, and the foreign ones don't count. When foreign names are written as approximation to Serbian pronunciation (Njujork/Њујорк), they are also pronounced using, well, Serbian pronunciation (['ɲujɔrk]). The Serbo-Croatian writing system does not distinguish allophones, of course, and there are some exceptions where consonant voicing/devoicing is not recorded in writing (although it occurs in speech), in order to preserve at some morphology. ɲNo such user (talk) 08:17, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * See Alphabet --ColinFine (talk) 22:18, 15 September 2010 (UTC)