Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 April 5

= April 5 =

French expression « le suivi transversal »
I came across this while translating the French Wikipédia article fr:Hubert Derache, it appears in his official bio (at a Government of France web page): en outre chargé du suivi transversal de Mayotte et de Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. Neither my Collins-Robert nor Google Translate is of any help. On EU web sites, the phrase gets translated as "transversal follow-up". For example this French text: La discussion porte en particulier sur le Forum pour l’avenir de la démocratie, plusieurs délégations estimant qu'à l'avenir, il conviendra de veiller au suivi transversal des sessions.

is translated as: Particular mention was made to the Forum for the Future of Democracy, where a number of delegations considered that in the future attention should be given to the transversal follow-up to the sessions.

But what does that mean? A Google search on the English phrase "transversal follow up" shows a number of pages that are obviously translations from French (including the one I just did of the article Hubert Derache)!

I've also noticed that a few French government departments have a "comité de suivi transversal"

Could anyone please explain what is meant by this expression? —Mathew5000 (talk) 05:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * For "transversal" you could use the English "transitional". I assume Derache must be in charge of the transition of Mayotte to a département? "Un suivi" can be a "follow-up" but in English we could also say "watch" or "monitor". The phrase is also used in a medical and insurance context, to see what happens to patients after they are treated. I wouldn't use "transition" in that context, but it is something like "changing from one status to another", whether it is a territory changing to a department, or a sick person becoming healthy, and "un suivi" is the observation of this to make sure it goes smoothly. Adam Bishop (talk) 06:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Derache is following both Mayotte and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, that are far away from each other. He is not in charge of transition. I don't know how to translate, but Adam Bishop is wrong. I would say it's an idiomatism, something like "global observation of the evolution of Mayotte and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon". See for "suivi" 80.169.233.244 (talk) 08:35, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * For figurative usage, Larousse suggests " Qui recoupe plusieurs disciplines ou secteurs." . An adjective or gerund describing something which cuts across (or in this case covers) multiple fields might work too. ---Sluzzelin talk  08:58, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That's right. A "Comité de suivi transversal" would not focus on a particular point, and would be composed of people from different fields (police, healthcare, designated representants of the population, ...)194.6.163.244 (talk) 09:12, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that "transversal" is not relaterd to the meaning of "transition". It seems to be a cross-department function, or cross-ministerial function. I am not sure what is the usual term in English government organisations for this. --Lgriot (talk) 09:46, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Aw, my French sucks :( Adam Bishop (talk) 11:20, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe "inter-departmental" or "interdepartmental"? The un-hyphenated version has lots of Google results. Personally, I like hyphens but they seem to be out of favour these days. Alansplodge (talk) 12:22, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * "Cross-discipline" perhaps (with "cross" nicely translating "transversal", but I added the "discipline" bit because there are only a few things you can stick "cross-" on the front of like that. --ColinFine (talk) 18:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Discipline suggests academia rather than government. —Tamfang (talk) 00:32, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much everyone for your help! I edited the article to use the phrase "cross-discipline". Mathew5000 (talk) 22:52, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Odd German e-mail from cousin
This morning I received an email from my cousin Michael, we have not seen each other for over five years as he lives in Florida and we do not communicate frequently, the entire content of the email was as follows "helfen Sie mir, es ist eine Krake auf meinem Gesicht", to the best of my knowledge Michael does not speak german, how should I proceed from such a message, he is also not answering his phone. Jeremy Wordsworth (talk) 11:28, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Either your friend is screwing with you, or you are screwing with us. Maybe Michael should ask the octopus on his face why he is now speaking German... -- Jayron  32  12:57, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Or some kind of spambot has infected his email account. Marco polo (talk) 14:59, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Maybe a malfunctioning Babel octopus? DuncanHill (talk) 16:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * If I receive an entirely uncharacteristic message from a friend - especially one I have not been in contact with for a while - I generally suspect that their account has been compromised. --ColinFine (talk) 18:22, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * OT, but could German speakers here tell me what the difference between "es ist eine Krake auf meinem Gesicht" and "es gibt eine Krake. . ." is? Thanks. --Atemperman (talk) 02:25, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * "Es gibt..." would be the normal way of saying it. That whole sentence strikes me as awkward; I doubt it was written by a native speaker.  "Es ist" to mean "there is" rather than "it is" is, I believe, only used in set phrases like "es war einmal" (once upon a time) nowadays. -Elmer Clark (talk)


 * "Es gibt..." refers more to a general existence of something (without the implication that it has just appeared) rather than of something actually being somewhere. "Es ist..." is a little better in this case, although it sound awkward and rather stilted. Colloquially, one might say "Da ist eine Krake auf meinem Gesicht", whereas in writing one would prefer the standard "Eine Krake ist auf meinem Gesicht..." --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:37, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It could be one of those Stuck in London scams. You could try phoning him.  &#x2013; b_jonas 20:48, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I added a more useful (sub)title. StuRat (talk) 21:45, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Looking for a word
I'm looking for a word that means 'to be better than' and can be passive. Also, I don't want any prepositional phrases or whatnots that need to follow it - I'm looking for concision. Thanks!  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 15:54, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Surpass, outdo, outclass? --Viennese Waltz 15:57, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Exceed, overshadow, pwn, outshine? —Tamfang (talk) 16:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I don't think these words are what I'm looking for. Surpass. outshine and outdo seems to imply one comes before another; exceed needs to be followed by something else (exceed what?); I've considered overshadow before, but the superior thing in question is not really considered superior by most people. I'm looking for something like outclass, but a tad weaker. Is pwn a tyop? Again, thanks!  Kayau  Voting   IS   evil 16:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * pwn for teh n00bz. Lexicografía (talk) 16:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * "Beat"? AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:46, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * "Bettered"? "Bested"? Can't any transitive verb be made passive, by the way (like I did just there with make)? 81.131.0.73 (talk) 18:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Exceptional and high caliber can be used as a word or term for "to be better than". aniketnik 05:03, 11 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Please illustrate with a sentence, keeping in mind the provisions of Kayau's request. —Tamfang (talk) 08:03, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

One of the main reason for AXIS Bank’s exceptional rise in customer base is the high caliber performance delivered by it’s employees resulting in complete customer satisfaction year after year in a row,in comparison to other banks that are in the race to get the number 1 ranking. Thus the customer first choice is AXIS Bank because they feel that AXIS Bank is better than other banks when it comes to opt for a private banking. aniketnik 06:07, 12 April 2011 (UTC)


 * And how do you make this passive? ALLIES Bank is exceptioned by AXIS or ALLIES Bank is high-calibered by AXIS?  If you can't or won't read the question.... —Tamfang (talk) 21:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

After reading your question I came to the conclusion that you wanted a word/term for "to be better than" so I gave the above words "Exceptional and high caliber".

The point of concern is whether it is active or passive, this depends on the subject matter that you must be having, the topics that you are dealing with, so even if I put the above words provided by me in a passive sentence, which again will be a different sentence from the above, I do not think that it is going to resolve the issue. After reading the question, I gave more emphasis on the fact that the term that you want must be on the lines of "to be better than". Again, to make a sentence active or passive is completely different thing. May be your question is not having all the required things, like what is the subject matter that needs to be put into passive from active.

The only thing that I understood from your question is that you need a term for "to be better than" and once the term is applicable and making active and passive is easier. If you can provide me with your content than I will look forward to make the sentence in active or passive. aniketnik 05:25, 13 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It's not my request, but I did take the trouble to read it. The first response above fits the request: X surpasses Y, X outdoes Y, X outclasses Y; Y is surpassed by X, Y is outdone by X, Y is outclassed by X. It's not that tricky.
 * Exceptional and high caliber are not verbs; thus they cannot be passive; so they do not answer the request. Nor are they (grammatically) comparative; that is, they do not readily combine with than. But except for that, hey, great job, thanks for participating. —Tamfang (talk) 19:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Moose/elk
In the moose article, "known in Britain as the elk,[2] and in North America as the moose. The British English word elk has cognates in other Indo-European languages, for example elg in Norwegian, älg in Swedish, Elch in German and łoś in Polish." Now to me, łoś sounds more like moose than elk. Is it really derived from the same word as elk? (Also Česky: Los evropský, Русский: Лось, Slovenčina: Los obyčajný, Српски / Srpski: Лос) 75.41.110.200 (talk) 20:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes. Here's Vasmer's etymology of Russian лось: "Proto-Slavic *olsь, related to the Old Icelandic elgr 'moose' (*algi-), Old English eolh m. (*еlhа-), Old High German ёlаhо 'moose', Latin аlсēs (Caesar), Greek ἄλκη (Pausanius), and ultimately, probably, Old Indic ŕ̥c̨уаs 'he-antelope', Pamir rus 'rock sheep', and Old High German elo 'reddish, yellow'". So it seems some sort of metathesis occurred in the Slavic languages (o and l were switched). In any case, all of these words have a much older history in European languages than moose, which was borrowed into English in the 17th century from Abenaki, one of the Algonquin languages. Lesgles (talk) 21:25, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Metathesis is a disambiguaiton page, but Slavic liquid metathesis and pleophony may be of interest here. — Kpalion(talk) 12:08, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * See also Centum-satem isogloss. It appears from these samples that the ancestral word had a front velar, which would become a plain velar in Germanic and Italic, and a sibilant in Slavic and Indic. —Tamfang (talk) 00:30, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Relative pronouns
I've always understood that individual humans or unincorporated groups thereof take 'who': The man who never was; those people over there who are talking too loudly.

But organisations of people like clubs, associations, trade unions and the like take 'which' or 'that': The club that I joined in 1943 is not the club we have today; The party, which has not been in government for over a century, has a diminishing membership.

I came across a sentence that combines humans and organisations:


 * The Australian Labor Party is a democratic and federal party, which consists of both individual members and affiliated trade unions, who between them decide the party's policies, elect its governing bodies and choose its candidates for public office.

The 'who' after 'trade unions' jarred. But substituting 'which' would not work either, as my short-term memory is not so bad that I’ve already forgotten about the 'individual members' by the time I get to 'affiliated trade unions'. The basic structure of the sentence is fine and I don't want to fiddle needlessly with it. Is there a simple solution to this? --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  21:52, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sure -- break it into two sentences. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:24, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Or reverse the two subjects: " . . . affiliated trade unions and individual members, who . . . " {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.111 (talk) 00:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Your ear may disagree, but I for one see no reason really why "trade unions" should not be followed by who in that sentence. Who is quite regularly used of corporations, as in these examples from the OED: "The Hanse-towns, who were then at war with both France and England." "The Midland, who first introduced American railway notions in their Pullman cars."--Rallette (talk) 07:30, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * "... in that sentence"? Are you saying the "human-ness" of the organisation varies depending on the linguistic context?  I'm not sure I can really swallow that idea.  Would you say "The trade union who represents me is ...", or "The Lunatics' Union, who has a million paid-up members, is ..."?  I would never do that.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  09:53, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I mean just that. In that context (the role of the trade unions as members of the Party), the suggestion of a kind of personhood is warranted. The unions take part in decision-making alongside individual human members. "The Lunatics' Union, who represent the nation's loonies..." sounds OK to me, but I'd never say "The Lunatics' Union, of whom I am a member..." But that's just what sounds right to me. I think the OED is on similar lines (but I don't mean to whack you on the head with the OED, and I'm not a native speaker).---Rallette (talk) 11:16, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I suppose the bigger picture is that most rules are breakable, sometimes very desirably so. You hear a knock and ask "Who's there?".  Anyone who answers "It is I" .. well, that's when you reply "There's nobody here but us chickens".  If "It's me" is virtually mandatory despite being prescriptively incorrect, then I guess the "sounds right" test applies most anywhere, and the black-and-white rules can just sort of take a little holiday.  The rule I was assuming here is "Once a non-human, always a non-human", which works just fine for scientists, but lucky linguists love leeway.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:01, 6 April 2011 (UTC)