Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 August 21

= August 21 =

'Scale out-ability'
Just as the verb 'scale' can be changed to the noun 'scalability', with a sense of 'potential', what about the phrase scale out? Can anyone think of a concise and succinct way to say this in natural English? --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  06:26, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Extendibility? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.64 (talk) 06:58, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a nice one - I didn't think of that. I was thinking of 'horizontal scalability'. For the record, I have already settled for simply 'scalability' and delivered the project, as it would be understood from context whether the author meant 'up' or 'out'. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  07:08, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Question: (what can replace "with" in this sentence?)
How to express "Does not access Google search on startup for users with Google as default search" if do not use "with"? This sentence is too difficult to understand(-ing?) for me. Thank you!--124.119.134.85 (talk) 10:06, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * -"Does not access Google search on startup for users who have Google as default search"? Is this better? --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:15, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * "for for users having Google as", or "for for users employing Google as". Although for me, the bigger problem is in the last three words. What are you trying to convey there? "Does not access Google search on startup for users employing Google as their default search provider"? --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:35, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * "using" ? For me the problem with this sentence is having it start with "Does", making it seem like a question.  Perhaps it should say "The computer does..." or something like that.  "Also, the end "Google as default search" might need to be expanded to "Google as the default search engine" StuRat (talk) 20:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I did assume the OP had purposefully dropped the subject, though that it not necessarily so (c.f. on a packet of nuts: 'Contains nuts' - no subject needed). The phrase is obviously taken from a bug/error report or some such, where the context would make it perfectly clear. Also, I kept the answer simple, as the OP is obviously not a native speaker of English, hence the question, and the self-correction.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  23:26, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

The Most incomprehensible English Dialect
What is the most difficult, incomprehensible English dialect in the world? 174.114.236.41 (talk) 19:37, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Incomprehensible to whom? -- Jayron  32  19:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * All English dialects are highly comprehensible to the people that use them. Falconus p t   c 19:44, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Which English dialect is the most incomprehensible to Standard English speakers? 174.114.236.41 (talk) 20:13, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * My native dialect is not particularly difficult to understand, but I can make it incomprehensible to outsiders by choosing words that are uncommon in standard English, and by using older pronunciations. The same is true of most dialects, but the degree of incomprehensibility reduces with exposure to the dialect.  The answer will be vary with location and between individuals, but of the accents within a hundred miles of my home, I find Glaswegian the most difficult to follow -- often more difficult for me to understand than accents from the other side of the world.  I'm sure there are some obscure dialects of English that are even harder for the average speaker of English to comprehend.    D b f i r s   20:17, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Of the 'native' English dialects spoken in England itself, Geordie is probably the hardest to understand for those not acquainted with it (it is probably closer to Scots). AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Cockney rhyming slang is rather opaque to most English speakers. StuRat (talk) 20:34, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Nah, that's cobblers, Cockney rabbit is easy - take a butchers at the article. ;-) AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:16, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Geordie and Scots English diverged from what evolved into Received Pronunciation and General American a long time ago. Cockney and urban Black American English have been purposefully modified to confound outsiders.  This clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5XLny8Wmc is particularly informative. μηδείς (talk) 20:45, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

In the U.S., the only time I've encountered a fellow American whose accent I couldn't understand, he was from northeast Maryland (somewhere near Havre de Grace, I think). Pais (talk) 21:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The hardest by far to understand was spoken by only one person, Stanley Unwin (comedian). Check out some of the mp3s on his official site. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 23:10, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I am a speaker of something close to General American, the "standard" American accent. The most incomprehensible dialects to me are Ulster Irish and many of the Scots varieties, including Glaswegian.  Almost as incomprehensible to me is the Southern Appalachian dialect of eastern Tennessee, which is in turn apparently derived from an Ulster Scots dialect.  I have a much easier time understanding even a working-class Londoner or Australian with a heavy accent than a working-class person from eastern Tennessee.  Marco polo (talk) 23:25, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * (ec)I can't agree with that. Unwinese was extremely comprehensible in context (by design, I suspect, as Unwin was a very clever man with his use of language, which he used with deep joy). For example there's no such word in standard English as "fallolloped", but on being informed that someone had "fallolloped over" the meaning is obvious (and rather richer than simply "fallen"). On the other hand my uncle from Gateshead used to tell the story of his time in the then Malaya doing National Service. With a weekend pass one night he said to the assembled barrack hut "Howway wi' we te toon" and only one other man stood up (Howway is Geordie for "come on", "wi we" for "with us" and "te toon" means "to [the] town"). The original poster's question is about as meaningful as "how big is a horse?" I was born a Geordie though I've lost the accent. I speak "Standard English" but would find many British accents, from Geordie, Pitmatic, Glasgow, Ulster, Devon and many more difficult to comprehend, and that's without going beyond the UK. Perhaps the OP might like to read Accent (linguistics) and the pages linked to it. Tonywalton Talk

A friend from high school had a Mother from Edinburgh and a father from Glasgow. She was a pleasure to listen to and he was incomprehensible. Funniest thing was seeing them portrayed to a tee as Mike Myer's parents in So I Married an Axe Murderer. (Mike's "father" was more scrutable than my friend's though.) Blew our minds. As for incomprehensible Americans again, try certain urban dialects and Rosie Perez before she took diction lessons. And worst accent of all time was a guy I met at Cornell with a very thick accent. I asked him where he was from, he said. Bayonne. I said, oh, France? He said no, Bayonne, NJ. μηδείς (talk) 01:34, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm a GA speaker, and the only English speakers I've been completely unable to understand are a Welshman and a Newfoundlander. That said, on my first trip to London, I was completely unable to understand what the locals were saying to each other or the words on a TV comedy program, not because I didn't know the vocabulary but because I couldn't make out the words themselves. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:22, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * If you've seen Snatch, you'd know it's Pikey. ;). Vespine (talk)

I find some of the mumbling teenagers in my own country, Australia, sometimes the most difficult to understand. The other night on TV there was an episode of the local version of The World's Strictest Parents, showing a young Australian girl staying with a Swedish family. The Swedes were easy to understand, but I wish they had used subtitles for the Australian girl. HiLo48 (talk) 08:07, 22 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I can't understand Scottish accents most of the time either. Ulster Irish is pretty hard sometimes...my wife has relatives in Belfast, and the older generations are pretty easy to understand, but her cousins who are our age or younger are very difficult to understand. I think maybe they just speak more lazily...I mean, I mumble a lot so people can't understand me either, and sometimes that is mistaken for a peculiar accent. Both my wife and I have relatives from Newfoundland, so that accent is easy to understand, if they are just speaking normally with an accent. If they start using particular Newfoundland words and phrases then I have no idea what they're saying. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:20, 22 August 2011 (UTC)


 * There are a lot of patois, pidgins, and creoles that are derived largely from English, making it hard to say if they are dialects of English or independent lanugages; e.g. Jamaican patois, in which many of the common words (pronouns, forms of "to be", etc) are very different from standard British or American English. The problem with answering this question is that there's no clear division between a dialect and a separate language. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:21, 22 August 2011 (UTC)