Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 April 19

= April 19 =

Portuguese help
I need help translating a sentence on the Commons

What is "If media related to Brazil as a whole is added, please go to the article Brazil and add to that page too." in Portuguese?

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 01:02, 19 April 2011 (UTC)


 * That's an unnecessarily long sentence in English. I suggest simplifying it prior to translation.  Perhaps "If media related to Brazil as a whole is added, please link to it from the Brazil page".  The "as a whole" is a bit awkward, but removing it would change the meaning, so I'd leave that in. StuRat (talk) 13:02, 19 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Another thing that makes the English sentence hard to digest is the passive voice. What about the following English sentence as a starting point?


 * "If you add media related to Brazil as a whole, please add the media to the Brazil page, too."


 * Using online tools and my very limited Portuguese, I come up with the following translation:


 * "Se você adiciona meios de comunicação sobre o Brasil como um todo, por favor, adicione os meios para a página para o Brasil, também."


 * However, hopefully, a fluent Portuguese speaker will be able to correct this. Marco polo (talk) 14:36, 19 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I'll revise it to "If you add media related to Brazil as a whole, please add the media to the Brazil page, too." - I guess the person who made the sentence may not have been a native English speaker WhisperToMe (talk) 17:18, 19 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The sentence at commons:Category:Brazil has been revised. Now I am awaiting the input of a Portuguese native speaker WhisperToMe (talk) 17:20, 19 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't like "add the media to the Brazil page, too". If they mean to add a link to the media, then they should say that explicitly: "If you add media related to Brazil as a whole, please add links from the Brazil page to those media.". StuRat (talk) 19:22, 19 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Alright, I'll make that change WhisperToMe (talk) 13:29, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

French translation
Not necessarily asking for a full translation, as I believe it is very extensive. In these pieces of French "inventory information" PDF I was sent from a museum in Lyon does it tell the history someplace as to how the museum acquired the fragment of the Cloth of Saint Gereon tapestry that they have in their inventory? --Doug Coldwell talk 14:24, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Fragment 1
 * 2) Fragment 2
 * 3) Fragment 3
 * For a larger view, click on "Actions", then "View all sizes".--Doug Coldwell talk 14:27, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The only information is that it was an 1875 purchase ("achat") by the museum. See the end of the "Cartel" entry in the first linked document and the "Entrée" entry in the second. Deor (talk) 14:36, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you.--Doug Coldwell talk 14:51, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

French adjectives
Why is it that many French adjectives entered English in their feminine forms rather than their masculine forms? For example, we say "He is naïve" not "He is naïf", and "Three consecutive integers", not "three consecutif integers". Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 14:37, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a bit of something under wikt:-ive. ---Sluzzelin talk  14:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * English has certain phonemic "rules" which establish which sounds tend to occur at the end of words, and which do not. Generally, all consonantal sounds exist in voiced/unvoiced pairs. In english you can see this readily with sounds like "b"/"p" or or "s"/"z" or "v"/"f".  For certain of these pairings, the voiced partner is preferred as a final consonant; for example the unvoiced "s" sound is rare unless preceeded by another unvoiced consonant, so most English words tend to end in the voiced "z" sound (compare "roofs" to "rooves").  Vowels are, by necessity, always "voiced", so in English, final consonants following a vowel also tend to be voiced.  Thus "consecutive" sounds more natural to English than "consecutif".  There are, of course, numerous exceptions (often in single syllable words like "stiff"), but this best explains the general trend.  It is only coincidental that one of the ways that French produces the feminine form of a word is to voice an unvoiced final consonant (its not the ONLY way, however).  -- Jayron  32  14:55, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

French capitalisation of adjectives and nouns in titles
I asked a question @ Talk:Le Bourgeois gentilhomme on 7 April, but it's yet to receive an answer. Can anyone help me here? --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:03, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * There was a previous discussion of this subject here, from which it appears that more than one convention is used. That helps to explain why I've always been confused about how one should capitalize French book-titles. --Antiquary (talk) 20:39, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * In this case bourgeois is a noun and gentilhomme is an adjective. Now, apply the rule "§2 - 2nd bullet" from this document, and you get your answer. — AldoSyrt (talk) 20:54, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * (ec, Aldo got there first) But that doesn't solve Jack's question. If we treat bourgeois as an adjective placed before the noun, the two conventions would give either Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (capitalize everything up through the first noun) or Le bourgeois gentilhomme (capitalize the first word only), but not Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. This capitalization, however, seems to suggest that the noun is bourgeois, and that gentilhomme is in fact serving as an adjective placed after the noun, which is not capitalized in either system. A more accurate translation in English might then be The Gentleman Bourgeois. Lesgles (talk) 20:55, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Have you read the rule? le bourgeois gentilhomme is a noun phrase (not a sentence), hence you capitalize Le and the first noun Bourgeois, and the adjectives that precede the noun (here none): Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Other examples : Le Grand Homme but L'Homme grand. For a sentence, only the first word is capitalized: Le bourgeois est gentilhomme. — AldoSyrt (talk) 21:20, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, perhaps my response wasn't clear, but I agree with you. My "doesn't solve" was in response to Antiquary (hence the lack of an extra indent). Le Bourgeois gentilhomme is indeed correct according the the traditional system of capitalization. Some publishers, however, do use a newer style of capitalization in which only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized. (A skim of Amazon.fr reveals examples of both options.) Lesgles (talk) 22:16, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the enlightenment. It would never have occurred to me to switch the roles of noun and adjective, since I've only ever heard it translated as "the bourgeois gentleman/nobleman". Is "gentilhomme" used as an adjective in other contexts? It sure looks like a noun. hence my, and others', confusion. --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  03:50, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * 1/ @ Jack of Oz. Here is a quote from V. Hugo where gentilhomme is used as an adjective.
 * 2/ @ Lesgles. Sorry, I didn't notice that you answered to Antiquary.
 * 3/ @ Lesgles. The list from Amazone.fr show examples of what may appear of "new style of capitalization". But, these are front covers, and they belong to "graphic art" more than "pure typography". In numerous cases, when the title shown on the front cover doesn't follow the traditional rules, the title on the title page (inside the book) does. (See the books from Le livre de poche). In the Folio collection, the titles on the cover usually follow the traditional rules, but not always as in Le petit Nicolas (by Sempé).
 * 4/ @ all. I shall confess that my previous explanations are wrong. I have checked gentilhomme in Le Petit Robert and in Le Grand Robert. In these dictionaries gentilhomme is only a noun, not an adjective. Moreover they give Le Bourgeois gentilhomme as an example of its usage as a noun. Therefore, we have to infer that gentilhomme is a noun put in apposition to bourgeois. If we apply the traditional rules, only the first noun is capitalized, and we get the result: Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Nonetheless the direct translation shoud be "the nobleman/gentleman bourgeois" as for le roi soleil translates to "the sun king".
 * — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, this makes a lot of sense. Merci, AldoSyrt.  I've just amended "le Roi Soleil" to "le Roi soleil" @ Louis XIV of France.  But I can probably expect some flak, since the French article calls him "le Roi-Soleil" - both nouns capitalised, but hyphenated.  On that basis, we maybe ought to have "le Bourgeois-Gentilhomme" - except Molière didn't spell it that way.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:41, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Be careful! 1/ The explanations I gave are for the French rules. I do not know how to capitalize a French title in an English/American book/paper. 2/ Le Roi-Soleil is not the title of a book (it could be), it is the nickname of Louis XIV le Grand. In French typography, nicknames follow different rules. According to my Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l'Imprimerie nationale all the nouns and adjectives that are part of a nickname are capitalized, hence: le Roi-Soleil (French typography). Why an hyphen? Because roi and soleil are both nouns, but the nickname of Henri IV is written le Vert Galant (adjective + noun) — AldoSyrt (talk) 20:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * So, are you saying that Molière would have been justified in naming his play Le Bourgeois-Gentilhomme, but since he didn't, we have to use whatever title he did use? (Mind you, it wouldn't be the first play or book to be spelt in a different way now, compared to the title the author gave it.) Or have the French spelling/capitalisation rules changed so much since then that we can't extrapolate back to what he might have done?  And does that mean that we can't be sure exactly what the title means - or, if we are sure (and you're saying we are sure), how do we know?  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:53, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * No that's not I want to say. These are problems of (French) typography. I am talking only of the rules applied today. Molière in his play told the story of a bourgeois who wants to become a gentleman (we are sure because we have the text of the play). Molière gave the following title to his play "le bourgeois gentilhomme" (I do not capitalize anything on purpose) with two nouns in apposition (it is not a nickname, we are sure because there is no phrase such as "monsieur Jourdain le bourgeois gentilhomme" in the play except perhaps in the list of characters with a colon after Jourdain). If we obey the typographic rules, the title shall be written "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme". Had he given the title "le sot bourgeois", the title would had been written "Le Sot Bourgeois". Notice that there are many levels. For example the nicknames also obey typographic rules. If we want to include a nickname in a title, both the rules for the nicknames and for the titles apply. Example: Someone has written a book about Louis XIV, its title could be "La Biographie nouvelle du Roi-Soleil". — AldoSyrt (talk) 21:54, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You can see here the first page of the Bourgeois gentilhomme, printed in 1671 (Molière was alive). — AldoSyrt (talk) 22:27, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This gentilhomme gentilhomme thanks you for a most interesting discourse. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  10:10, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Just checked the Trésor de la langue française, and they have some other interesting examples of gentilhomme used the same way: "− Emploi adj. L'Espagne est essentiellement le peuple gentilhomme qui, pendant trois siècles, s'est fait nourrir à ne rien faire par les Indes et les Amériques (Hugo, Alpes et Pyr., 1885, p. 176). P. anal. Comment se nomme (...) ce vin de haut bord, Qu'importe! L'on est d'accord Qu'il est un vin gentilhomme. Et philosophe au surplus (Muselli, Strophes contre-fort., 1931, p. 88)." 

Question on biblical latin
From the Vulgate, John 5:7: "respondit ei languidus Domine hominem non habeo ut cum turbata fuerit aqua mittat me in piscinam dum venio enim ego alius ante me descendit..." What is the grammatical form of turbata fuerit? It seems to me I have come across this many a time in the Vulgate, as if it were a proper tense, consisting of the past passive participle followed by a form of sum based on the perfect stem, eg. amatus fu-it. I am not aware of it in Classical Latin, so what is going on? To my understanding, the form in the quote ought to have been turbata sit or something like that, and it looks as though instead Jerome has decided to put the verb esse in the active form of the passive that he is using, eg. above, he seems to be aiming for the passive perfect subjunctive, so he puts esse in the active perfect subjunctive. Thanks in advance, It&#39;s been emotional (talk) 23:32, 19 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah it should be "turbata sit", probably ("when the water is disturbed"). We had a question about this recently, and I noted that the adjectival use of a participle is of course well-attested in classical Latin, but not in conjunction with a finite verb form. It's very common in ecclesiastical and medieval Latin though. Actually I've seen it go one step deeper, the form "factum fuisset", so clearly they had stopped thinking of the whole phrase as a single verb form. They separated it into its component parts, a participle and a verb, with the participle acting as an adjective, and all the info about tense and aspect transferred to "esse". Presumably this had already happened in spoken Latin, since it works this way in Romance languages too. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:38, 20 April 2011 (UTC)