Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 September 20

= September 20 =

Old English
Where's a guide to understanding Old English? Shakespeare's plays are often incomprehensible. --71.153.45.75 (talk) 01:08, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Um, Shakespeare actually falls into the category of Early Modern English, not Old. If you find it too difficult to read the plays in the original, Sparknotes has several of them in "modern" English at No Fear Shakespeare.  Textorus (talk) 01:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * As far as understanding Shakespeare, most reputable English dictionaries cover most of the unfamiliar words used there. There are also modernized versions of his plays available. (As well as No Fear Shakespeare that Textorus mentioned, there's No Sweat Shakespeare along the same lines.) Lexicografía (talk) 01:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If you really want Old English, it is for all intents and purposes a foreign language, and you can't understand it with a "guide" alone. People take Old English classes just like they would take French, German, or Chinese classes; you have to approach it as a different language. 129.237.245.186 (talk) (=Rjanag) 01:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Just as a bit of shakespeare-reading advice, you need to keep in mind that a lot of the chatter in his plays is bawdy innuendo and double-entendre's that would have made perfect sense to Elizabethan peasantry, but not so much so now. for instance, the whole extended bit about "biting one's thumb" at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet is the equivalent of saying 'eat me', and all the dialog is chopped logic as the manservants try to insult each other without looking like they're insulting each other.  Same crap you'll see in grammar school, where each side is trying to egg the other to do something that they can run to the teacher about, just couched in 17th century euphemisms.  it often helps to think about the context of the scene first, and then try to interpret odd phrasings in terms of whatever silliness the characters seem to be involved in.  -- Ludwigs 2  05:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Like the many episodes of The Office in which Tim keeps asking Gareth about whether he'd invade another man's tunnel, take an enemy from behind, or various things like that... r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 05:13, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Shakespeare's Bawdy (1948) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0415050766) is the classic work on all the naughty bits in Shakespeare's work, by lexicographer Eric Partridge. And there's a lot of that, which was not really aimed at peasants, who were rural farm workers, but rather to the urban types who attended the plays, from working class groundlings up to people of rank.  But Shakespeare and his contemporary writers were also in love with creating new and exuberant ways of expressing their thoughts in words, and in wordplay; which his audiences delighted in as being part of the entertainment.  Nowadays, we generally prefer serious plays and movies to use ordinary language, though comedians have more leeway with puns and metaphors, etc.  (Think Groucho Marx or Monty Python.)  It really, really helps to watch a video or see a live performance of the play, not to read it out of a book - that wasn't at all how Will intended his work to be enjoyed.  Watching the play being performed, you quickly pick up the sense of the words in a way many people find difficult to do from the dry black-and-white text alone.


 * You may (with justice) hate this suggestion, but the best way to learn a working (non-academic) knowledge of what Shakespeare's saying is to participate in a play of Shakespeare or one of his contemporaries, or to join one of the many renaissance faires or similar historical reenactments in some capacity. It definitely beats going (as I did in high school English) line by line, footnote by footnote through the text, most of which was written not for the printed page but as a screenplay is today: to be spoken and heard, while being kept under the severest guard from the jealous eyes of rival companies always looking for fresh material to steal (no effective copyright in those days, so usually not intended for publication). You'll consult the footnotes from time to time, but with a much better understanding of what they're talking about, and in live exchange with others who also want to figure out the best way of presenting the spoken text. It's also easier when you know roughly where a scene or act is going, and can keep the characters straight because you're seeing live human beings rather than names on a page. ¶ Comparing your favorite Bible passages (and I'm not proselytising here, since I'm not a believer myself) in the Authorised/King James Version of 1611, [or the contemporary Catholic Douai version, or the Jewish Publication Society translation of 1905] with any of several excellent English translations of the last 60 years, can also be very helpful. See http://www.biblegateway.com for the 1611 and many later English translations (with the unfortunate exception of several important Jewish, Catholic and Anglican ones that don't accord with the site's Evangelical beliefs or else may not have given it the necessary rights). ¶ As for videos of Shakespeare plays, two that I think are excellent are Derek Jacobi's portrayal of Richard II in the British/PBS Shakespeare Plays series of the 1970's, and Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. Robert de Niro is also good in The Merchant of Venice and I found, to my pleasant surprise, the Leonardo diCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet to be both a lot of fun and rather good even with its conscious popularisation set in the beach town of Verona, California. (Regrettably, Branagh's other two Shakespeare films, Hamlet and Much Ado about Nothing, are failures in my book. Directing yourself is fraught with perils that will usually defeat you.) Shakespeare in Love, while only using brief extracts from the Bard himself, is very true to the spirit of his plays. [Details about all these films and videos can, of course, be found, together with other opinions and other productions, at http://www.imdb.com ] —— Shakescene (talk) 06:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The original Douai Bible (before the 18th-century Challoner revisions) was known for often being a literalistic translation of the Latin Vulgate, and sometimes having inappropriately Latinesque vocabulary and syntax... AnonMoos (talk) 13:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Good point that I didn't know (at least in detail) before. When I said "contemporary", I was thinking mainly that it was translated at almost the same time as the series of Protestant Bibles that culminated in the Authorised (King James) Version of 1611. Bible Gateway, I see, now lets you see passages (or books) from the 1899 version of the Doaui (or Douay-Rheims) Bible. I have no idea if the (U.S.) JPS translators of 1905 were working from an earlier English-language text, or created one of their own cast in roughly the same language as that of the Authorised/King James Version, the Revised Version and the American Standard Version. —— Shakescene (talk) 22:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * When I was at school we had some books that acted as guides and explained all the obscurities. Blowed if I can remember what they were called though! "So-and-so's guide to Henry V" or something like that. You might like to see if you can find one of those. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:15, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Cliff Notes? ;)
 * Anyway, a good edition of a shakespeare play will also often include a glossary and explanatory glosses/footnotes for difficult cultural references and stuff. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 13:22, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There's a way to make understanding Shakespeare a doddle - learn Middle English. There is in fact a very well-known bit of the Canterbury Tales that sums this discussion up perfectly:


 * Experience, though noon auctoritee


 * Were in this world, is right ynogh for me


 * To speke of wo that is at refrense deske


 * For, sith I post myn firste own requeste;


 * Than me was toold, certeyn, nat longe agoon is,


 * That I ne sholde fede them yclept trolles.


 * --Shirt58 (talk) 14:09, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Bravo! Lexicografía (talk) 14:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Another vote for watching a play - either live or DVD. The actors' job is to help you understand the meaning, even if some of the words are unfamiliar. Try not to concentrate on catching every single word but just allow the overall meaning to come across to you. You'll find as your ear becomes more tuned in, you'll pick up more. It's also best to try to find a production that has been well praised. My most recent favourite is the RSC Hamlet with David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius. With a DVD, you can also turn on the subtitles which might help. If you are in the USA (Canada, too, I think) you can stream this production of Hamlet for free from PBS Great Performances site - it will be available from there for some years.
 * Or, indeed, pick up a paperback and bellow bits at the kitchen wall a few times. Not only will it help make it comprehensible, but it'll provide hours of light amusement for anyone in earshot. Shimgray | talk | 18:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed, but I think I'd prefer to take advantage of the RSC's 8 weeks rehearsal time that the actors put into making Hamlet understandable rather than my own unaided efforts, but perhaps you are a better actor than me!! Here's a fascinating 'scrapbook' of the RSC rehearsal process:

http://www.rsc.org.uk/downloads/hamlet_2008_scrapbook.pdf

Website Summary
Hello. Can someone please give me a short summary about the following websites (i.e., what the sites are all about), preferably including links to English language Wikipedia articles (or websites) where I can find more information about the sites:


 * 1) http://eurodesvilles.populus.org/rub/87 (French, just the page), and
 * 2) http://www.deutsches-reich-heute.de/ (German, the site). (found out myself, see below) 125.163.228.192 (talk) 05:01, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I came upon the links the other day, became curious about the sites' contents, tried Google Translate and searching Wikipedia on a number of keywords, but no satisfactory results. Many thanks. 125.163.228.192 (talk) 02:03, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * (1)[[image:Blason ville fr Savigny-sur-Orge (Essonne).svg|thumbnail|100px|Arms of Savigny-sur-Orge ]] Louis-Nicolas_Davout.jpg Although it sometimes has problems with tense (e.g translating past as present perfect as in "I've been" instead of "I was"), the Google Chrome translation of the home page http://eurodesvilles.populus.org/ gives the general idea. Apparently, before the formal introduction of the euro and the suppression of the franc, mark, lira, peseta, etc., some towns in France were allowed to mint their own temporary "euros" for short periods between 1992 and 1998 to exchange at a fixed rate, in order to get citizens used to the new currency. The website's creator collects these relatively rare and highly temporary coins which are no longer legal tender. Before its adoption, the French favored calling it the écu (European Currency Unit), which is also the name of an old French coin; while the Germans and others successfully championed the name "Euro". (I personally think this was a bad choice, because I can think of half a dozen different pronunciations of "Euro", each of them perfectly valid in some language of the Eurozone). Hence the website's name Ecus et Euros de Ville ("Municipal Ecus and Euros" or "Ecus and Euros of the City"). The specific page for [[Savigny-sur-Orge]] (a commune or town near Paris) discusses both sides of the coin, one of them showing the lion from the commune's coat of arms, and the other the Napoleonic Marshal [[Louis-Nicolas Davout]] [1770-1823] (born D'Avoût, but removing the aristocratic prefix during the Revolution, later named Duke of Auerstaedt in honour of his service at the Battle of Jena-Auerstaedt), who after serving the Emperor during the Hundred Days, became mayor of Savigny during the Bourbon Restoration of 1814-1830. Click the "français" link to the left of the articles for Savigny and Marshal Davout to get more information, pictures, maps, etc. (You might also have more luck with the automatic machine translations of those pages than you've had with others.) Although I could try a full formal blazon of the town's arms, let me try to describe it in semi-popular terms as a red lion rampant holding a Polish lance (with Polish pennant) on gold, underneath the gold French royal fleur-de-lys (lilies) on blue.  —— Shakescene (talk) 03:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the excellent explanation. By the way, do English language Wikipedia have article on the (temporary Euro) coins? Also, was the coin legal tender only in the commune or also in entire France? 125.163.228.192 (talk) 04:03, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * See History of the euro and the extensive set of Wikipedia articles listed in the Euro navigation box at the bottom, which, however, doesn't seem to answer your question directly. Now that some of the linguistic murkiness has been clarified, you might want to post the question about the status of these local coins at the Miscellaneous or Humanities Reference Desks, in case they're being watched by a numismatist (I was more of a philatelist in my youth). I didn't want to do detailed translation of those pages (my French being weak enough that it would take me significantly longer to do so than someone who speaks the language more fluently), but I should add one point from the Savigny page, that the coins weren't issued by the municipality itself, but by her merchants, partly to promote the 10th anniversary (1986-96) of their Marshal Davout fair (with the slogan "why search elsewhere for what you can find close to home?"). Along the edge of the reverse, you can read "The merchants of Savigny-sur-Orge"; "1986-1996 Davout Fair [or market]"; along the obverse, "5th anniversary [?] of the Euro, 18-31 March 1996" with the 12 stars representing the Eurozone's members at the time. The Savigny page also gives the merchant's website for information (no coins), together with the e-mail address and telephone numbers of "Francis", who might have some coins to offer (no guarantee, of course, that he speaks English). —— Shakescene (talk) 05:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

About the second site (www.deutsches-reich-heute.de): In short, it is apparently a Kommissarische Reichsregierung group. The group's obscurity, my lack of knowledge about German topics (and language), as well as its German content, made the site's identification rather difficult. 125.163.228.192 (talk) 05:01, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * One interesting part of that site (I speak almost zero German myself) is the 1941 order from the Fuehrer via his secretary Martin Bormann deprecating the use of Fraktur (Old German) lettering as being the product of "Swabian Jews" in favour of the Latin type and script we're used to seeing today. There's also a PDF showing different types of German script and their finer points, such as ligatures and double-S. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Latin translation request
Afternoon Reference Desk. Sorry for bothering you, wondered if some of our Latin translators could help with the following request. I need something close to "We care only when asked" translated into Latin. It's part of private research. Any help would be fantastic. doktorb wordsdeeds 14:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Opera nulla sine prece? Extremely rusty Latin but there's something to start a discussion with.  Textorus (talk) 16:49, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * V2, a little more sophisticated: Non curamus nisi desiderāmur.  But still rusty I think.  Textorus (talk) 17:08, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * "Curamus solum rogati"? Or Textorus' way, "non curamus nisi rogati", or "nisi rogamur". It's hard to do this unless we know what you are trying to say in English. You could also use "attendimus" or "animadvertimus" for "care", "quaesitus" for "asked", or numerous other words. Adam Bishop (talk) 17:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you all...I gave dictionaries and guides a good half-an-hour before realising that it was quite an obscure request. Thanks for the help, appriciate it. doktorb wordsdeeds 21:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Translation in French
Translate fullness in French —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kchirara (talk • contribs) 15:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If you had said s'il vous plaît, I might have done it. But you can do it yourself here or |fr| here, très facilement.  Textorus (talk) 15:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Use Babelfish, but never trust Babelfish. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:14, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * "Fullness" isn't even a normal word in English. You won't be able to get anything other than a very silly translation unless you provide some context. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 22:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Fullness is surely a normal word. An approximate French translation would be plénitude, I think. Lexicografía (talk) 22:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I expect Rjanag will come to this realisation in the near future, at the end of the day, or in the fullness of time, whichever occurs first. --  202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Har de har har.
 * Sure the word exists, but it is far from being in common usage. Your message above is the first time I think I've seen it used at all outside of like song titles or something, and you were using it in a marked way for pragmatic effect. Anyway, this whole issue is neither here nor there, as it's tangential to the OP's request (which Lexicografia has already addressed anyway, at least as best as can be addressed without further input from the OP). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 03:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh no, you don't get away that easily. 'Fullness' is not a word most people use every day, but so what?  Dieticians often talk to their clients about stopping eating as soon as they have a feeling of fullness, and nobody blinks an eye. When was the last time you said the words 'macroscopic', 'bluster' or 'frenetic'?  They and many others remain "normal" words despite the infrequency of their use.  --  202.142.129.66 (talk) 03:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * 27.4 million raw Google hits, 1.25 million raw Google Books hits, I think it'd be safe to say it's a common word. Lexicografía (talk) 12:04, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with 202.142. Having worked the ref desk for a whole week now, I'm seeing a definite trend:  so many questioners and respondents seem to have the idea that anything they personally don't know, say, or do has no existence or validity; that their one tiny circle of experience constitutes the center of the cosmos, and the One Right Universal Way of thinking, being, and speaking.  Most interesting.  Is this what comes from a childhood run/ruined by helicopter parents?  Just hypothesizin' . . .   Textorus (talk) 04:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I hope the trend of pseudo-psycho-analyzing other editors doesn't catch on. ---Sluzzelin talk  13:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Should I just call them childish jerks instead, O Wise One of Saintly Virtue? Textorus (talk) 13:54, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, congratulations all you guys, you have Shown Up Another Editor on the Reference Desk&mdash;I know that is a lot of people's ultimate goal. Perhaps I chose my wording poorly when I said "normal" instead of something else, but the point I was making should have been clear: asking for a translation for such a word without providing any context is pretty hopeless. Now, like I said, this entire discussion is off-topic (as the OP didn't ask for an analysis of how common the word is for English) and the original question has already been answered anyway (twice), so... r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 14:13, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You've really Shown'em Up, rjanag. Oh no, wait, now I've Shown You Up, too. Let's call this the day of Showing Up, and everybody kiss each other :) No such user (talk) 15:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If an editor says that something is so, and I have good reason to believe that it is not so, especially if it affects the answer to the asked question, I will find sources and say that the editor was wrong (if sources back me up). This is not Showing Someone Up, but correcting false information. This is especially relevant when the false information would suggest any true answer given was 'very silly'. Separately, implying insults towards editors and their parents is a stupid and disruptive thing to do: perhaps we should all ignore any contributions that do so, unless they bite newbies (in which case they should be removed)? 109.155.33.219 (talk) 23:21, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * For French, I sometimes look things up at wordreference.com, they often have several translations, depending on which meaning you mean. Fullness, for example, gets four possible translations ("ampleur", "richesse", "rondeur", and "plénitude", as suggested by Lexicografia), plus a translation for "fullness of time" ("avec le temps"). ---Sluzzelin talk  13:59, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The phrase "In the fullness of time" is in fairly common idiomatic use (662,000 results for the complete quote on Google) and comes from the King James Bible (Galatians 4:4 and Ephesians 1:10); a "traditional rendering of two similar Greek expressions". However, "fullness" doesn't appear in my otherwise reliable Collins French College Dictionary. Alansplodge (talk) 12:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It does in my  Le Robert & Collins senior French-English, English-French dictionary (6th edition). Abondance, richesse, ampleur, exhaustivité (of a description), richesse de goût (of flavour), volume (of hairstyle), cœur débordant de chagrin (out of the fullness of his sorrow), avec le temps  or en temps et lieu (in the fullness of time). — AldoSyrt (talk) 07:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Spanish pronunciation
I'm wondering if the sound is present anywhere in Spanish. I'm a student of the language and the ŋ sound seems to be slipping in to my pronunciation of words like "quién", "con" and "están". Is this OK? Lexicografía (talk) 17:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * According to Spanish phonology, it only appears as an allophone of /n/ before velar consonants (just like in English bank --> [bæŋk]). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 17:07, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * So it's ok before velar consonants, but not before vowels? Lexicografía (talk) 17:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That seems to be the case. Here is the paragraph in question: "Although there are only three nasal phonemes and two lateral ones, /l/ and the nasal consonants assimilate to the place of articulation of following consonants[27] even across word boundaries.[28] Nasals are only contrastive before vowels; for most speakers, only [n] appears before a pause, though in Caribbean varieties this may instead be [ŋ] or an omitted nasal with nasalization of the preceding vowel.[29][30]" So in other words, you get contrastive [m], [n], and [ɲ] word-medially before vowels, a bunch more allophones before consonants (but they don't contrast with each other), and in word-final positions only [n] (at least, according to this WP article). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 17:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I speak Caribbean Spanish, and I definitely tend towards an sound, especially when it comes to "quien". Rimush (talk) 17:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * (That's a good point; the WP article is only talking about Castilian in Spain, as far as I can tell.) r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 17:40, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you both! Lexicografía (talk) 17:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)