Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 February 27

= February 27 =

Cyrillic text help
What is the Cryllic text at http://www.newgracanica.com/ ? I want to put it in the Diocese of New Gracanica - Midwestern America article. WhisperToMe (talk) 05:00, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you mean the words at the top of the page? They're СРПСКА ПРАВОСЛАВНА ЕПАРХИЈА НОВОГРАЧАНИЧКО-СРЕДЊЕЗАПАДНОАМЕРИЧКА.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  05:16, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant the words on the page. Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 05:22, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, what's the cyrillic text at http://www.westsrbdio.org/images/zaglavlje_plavo_a.jpg ? WhisperToMe (talk) 05:34, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Западно америчка епархија. Lesgles (talk) 06:28, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 06:31, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

"A discussion that resulted in his being sanctioned."
Oh, help! I think I'm going to have to give up trying to speak English, and just resort to grunts and hand gestures. It's just too hard. ;-) Can anyone help me determine which is correct, between these two sentences, when referring to a discussion that took place in the past?

(A) "I took part in a discussion that resulted in his being sanctioned."

(B) "I took part in a discussion that resulted in him being sanctioned."

My inclination is to go with "A"; that's the way I'd probably say the sentence out loud. But it also introduces the possibility that it was his being, his soul that was sanctioned, rather than just "him", i.e. it raises the possibility that "being" could be construed as a noun. Can anyone clear this up, and perhaps explain why his preferred choice is correct? Thanks, –  OhioStandard  (talk) 09:04, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * This is related to the Grammar - "without me having to" question above. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  09:07, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jack. I read that thread after you pointed me to it. I'm definitely going to go with my grunts and hand gestures idea now. –  OhioStandard  (talk) 09:39, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * If further explication helps, I would say that (A) would be considered by many to be formally correct, though (B) would be acceptable and unremarkable in less formal writing and speech. The ambiguity in (A) you suggest exists in theory, now that you point it out, but in practice would not arise because although the term "a being" in the sense of an entity or a (human or non-human) person is common usage, one does not refer to the being of somebody or belonging to somebody as a synonym for his/her soul or related concepts. To put it another way, a being is someone in their entirety; it cannot be a mere part or attribute of somebody. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 12:09, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * In our desire not to be seen as old-fashioned prescriptivists, we at the language desk sometimes provide somewhat equivocal and bewildering answers, I think. The simple fact is that no one can go wrong with A here; if I were still working as a copy editor, I would emend B to A without even thinking about it (unless it occurred in a direct quotation). If, for some difficult-to-conceive reason, what was sanctioned was the guy's being, one would have to say ". . . that resulted in his being's being sanctioned". Deor (talk) 13:31, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't see any ambiguity in A. Consider if we replaced "being" with "soul":
 * "I took part in a discussion that resulted in his soul sanctioned"
 * This is clearly incorrect, as would be "I took part in a discussion that resulted in his being sanctioned" if "being" is taken to mean his soul or self. Instead one would say
 * "I took part in a discussion that resulted in his being being sanctioned"
 * I think. At any rate, the whole problem can be avoided by simply refusing to take part in such discussions, especially if it is a matter of imposing sanctions on a person's eternal soul. Even the ArbCom doesn't do that (I hope). Herostratus (talk) 14:41, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks Jack, IP 87+, Deor, and Herostratus! Now I won't have to resort only to grunting after all! And excellent points re the usage of "being", too. @Herostratus: I think there was a proposal recently to set up a new board as part of the dispute resolution process that would have allowed that, but only if the people who proposed it didn't like you. ;-) Best, –  OhioStandard  (talk) 14:54, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It would only work if both sanctor and sanctee believe in the existence of eternal souls. Such people seem to be a dwindling bunch, while those who believe in the impending end of the world in December 2012 are legion.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:06, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Hanzi and pinyin for Ms Wenwen Han please!
Hi all, Going by her name and the context, it would appear that one of the bilingual Ms Han's native language is Mandarin Chinese. (Article could do with some work too, if you are minded to so do. The lass in question is only 16 years old - WP:BLP concerns a fortiori.) As always, your help and guidance greatly appreciated! --Shirt58 (talk) 09:44, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 韓雯雯. 韓/Han, 雯雯/Wenwen.  Oda Mari (talk) 10:39, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 御苦労様、 まっちゃん.--Shirt58 (talk) 11:39, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Mnemonic for semantics of "to trade A for B"
This will sound beyond silly, but I'm not a native speaker and when I read something like "Will you trade A for B?" I'm never 100% sure whether I have to provide A and then receive B or vice versa. Is there some kind of mnemonic for this, like a saying or the title of a book or film? Thank you in advance. 83.81.50.146 (talk) 14:03, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * it just means give. "I'll trade you my ____ for your _____".  You can tell it can only be that way from these two links.  Okay, WTF.  I expected the second link to have like 13 results, because it's ridiculous.  I guess some people just make a mistake.  Just think "trade = give" I'll trade you my __ for your ____ = I'll give you my ___ for your ____ . 109.128.182.182 (talk) 14:19, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * You made that sound simple. Which it is, I guess. Thanks! 83.81.50.146 (talk) 14:37, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I think that it commonly goes either way, as those Google searches suggest. I'm a native speaker and I get confused. -- BenRG (talk) 02:40, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Pawn to Rook Seven?
What does "Pawn to Rook Seven" mean?

I don't know much about chess. --Analphil (talk) 16:08, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * See Descriptive chess notation. Deor (talk) 16:12, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * It means a pawn moves to the seventh square ahead of the original position (called "rook one") of a rook (also known as a castle) of the same colour. The statement assumes there is only one pawn that can legally do this, otherwise it would have to specify which of the two rooks is meant, the queen's rook or the king's rook.--Shantavira|feed me 17:03, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks all of you.--Analphil (talk) 17:55, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Ol Chiki and Avesta fonts
In spite of I have got several types of Ol Chiki and Avesta fonts installed in my computer, I cannot read the (anyway rare) words of santhali and avesta languages in wikipedia's articles. What kind of font files are used in Wikipedia and Wiktionary? Thank you in advance for any indications. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.131.139.33 (talk) 17:13, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think Wikipedia and Wikisource specify any particular font. They just use Unicode characters, and rely on users to install fonts capable of displaying them. If your fonts are Unicode-compliant, I don't know why they don't work. You might get better help at the help desk than here at the reference desk. Pais (talk) 18:37, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * See Help:Multilingual support.--Shantavira|feed me 10:04, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for both of you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.131.138.111 (talk) 10:29, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

A gang of fifty strong?
Strong has a meaning "said of a group, etc: made up of about the specified number".

I wonder how 'strong' became to have such a meaning.--Analphil (talk) 17:54, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I believe this is generally used when the number is large enough to make the group strong in the usual sense. In any case, the meaning goes back at least to the 1700s, since Samuel Johnson lists it in his dictionary.  The OED might give more info but I don't have access to it at the moment. Looie496 (talk) 18:52, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's exactly the derivation. From the OED, "strong" in the sense of "powerful" has been used in English for nearly 900 years, and the specific sense applied to a group (meaning "powerful to the extent of") is first cited from 1589 (R. Greene Menaphon) ("... in that place within three dayes with tenne thousand strong").    D b f i r s   20:38, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Polish translation needed
I took this picture of a statue of Josef Pilsudski, the marshal of Poland, in the Wieliczka Salt Mine last July. There is some Polish text written on the base of the statue. What does it say? J I P &#124; Talk 17:57, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Appears to be "To be defeated and not give in is a victory. To win and rest on your laurels is a defeat.". Achieved from |en|byc%20zwyciezonym%20i%20nie%20ulec%20to%20zwyci%C4%99stwo%20zwyciezyc%20i%20usi%C4%85%C5%9B%C4%87%20na%20laurach%20to%20kleska google translate followed by an appropriate google search. It's a phrase attributed to JP. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:39, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Native Polish speaker confirms. — Kpalion(talk) 20:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Latin translation
Hy there, could someone help me? I need a translation into Classical Latin of the verb 'win' in the 1st person singular past tense (i.e.: I won). Much obliged. Flamarande (talk) 19:04, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Hard to beat "Vici"... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] -- AnonMoos (talk) 19:27, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Maybe also "superavi"? It might depend on what is being won. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:33, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * In case the OP does not know much Latin, it might be worth pointing out that 'vici' means 'I won (in battle or similar), ie I was victorious. Superavi means more like 'I overcame' which again implies we are talking about some kind of competition. If the context is something like 'I won a prize' then the usual phrase would be 'adeptus sum' (or adepta sum if the winner is female). As Adam points out, the context would be helpful here. Maid Marion (talk) 15:48, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * In any meaning of English "win" which involves exerting effort to prevail over rival competitors, I think that vici is at least as good a translation of English "I won" as any other simple one-word Latin rendering... AnonMoos (talk) 08:49, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Wrinkly grandmother...
Due to a bet, a friend of mine needs translations of the sentence "Your wrinkly grandmother buried the cook and played with the goats" in as many languages as possible. Please help, mates. :) --KnightMove (talk) 23:55, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Do they need to be a good translations ? If not, perhaps Bablefish automatic translations will do: . StuRat (talk) 06:14, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Alright, I'll give you two. One obscure, one not. Both irregularly represented at this desk, as far as I can tell. (I know you speak German, so I won't give you that one)
 * Zurich German: "Dis runzlige Groosi hät de Choch vergrabe und mit de Geissli gschpilt."
 * Italian: "Tua nonna rugosa ha sepolto il cuoco e giocava con le capre." (colloquially, the last part reads more easily as "colle capre"). ---Sluzzelin talk  07:45, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Lantzy makes some good points, and others have accordingly given varieties. Grumpy for having applied a sexist reading, I'm now delivering the versions for a female cook:
 * Zurich German: "Dis runzlige Groosi hät d'Chöchin vergrabe ...". Further correction: "Groosi" actually means "Granny". It should be "Dini runzligi Grosmuätr hät...". Note also, that I used an informal tone and singular, not the formal (singular and plural) "Sie" (>> "Ihri runzligi Grosmuätr...")or informal plural "Ihr" (>> "euri runzligi Grosmuätr"). I guess I was quite liberal with this one.
 * Italian: "Tua nonna rugosa ha sepolto la cuoca ..." For formal singular "Lei": "Sua nonna rugosa ..." ("Sua" capitalized). For formal plural "Loro": "Loro nonna rugosa..." ("Loro" capitalized). For informal plural "voi": "vostra nonna...". ---Sluzzelin talk  18:07, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Afrikaans: "Jou verrimpelde ouma het die kok begrawe en met die bokke gespeel." Roger (talk) 10:27, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The ambiguities and possible innuendos of the original English have all been preserved. I suspect most (all?) Lower Franconian languages would be able to do this quite easily. Roger (talk) 08:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Swedish: "Din rynkiga mormor begravde kocken och lekte med getterna."Sjö (talk) 11:01, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Quick and dirty Middle English: "Hir ywrinkeled grandmoder biried the cook and pleyed med the gootes" --Shirt58 (talk) 12:05, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "Hir" doesn't mean "your", it means "her" or "their". I'd go with "thin". Pais (talk) 12:12, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, and I'm wrong. I have only the tiniest bit of Englisc, my Middle English is read-only, and as for my Early Modern English... ah, but that's another story ;-) --Shirt58 (talk) 14:00, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: That Middle English looks a lot like modern Scots. Roger (talk) 14:15, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * There's reasons a-plenty for that....--Shirt58 (talk) 15:42, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * French: Ta grand-mère ridée a enterré le cuisinier et joué avec les chèvres. Latin: Ava tua caperata coquum sepelivit et capris lusit. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:57, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Japanese: "皺だらけのあなたのお祖母さんは、料理人を土のなかに埋めて、山羊たちと遊びました. " Oda Mari (talk) 15:23, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Another easy one, Spanish. Tu abuela arrugosa enterró el cocinero y jugó con la cabras. Richard Avery (talk) 16:31, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that should be enterró al cocinero (compare with ). NorwegianBluetalk 21:46, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not as confident about this, but Arabic: "دفنت جدتك متجعدة الطباخ ولعبت مع الماعز" Adam Bishop (talk) 16:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Finnish: Ryppyinen isoäitisi hautasi kokin ja leikki vuohilla. (I understood "play with the goats" as use goats as playthings. If they were her friends and equals and they played together, replace the last word with vuohien kanssa.) J I P  &#124; Talk 18:51, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * A bit of cracker-barrel translation theory which may or may not be of any concern to the OP: This accumulation of translations does not take into account the many profound ambiguities inherent in the sentence. To start with there is lexical polysemy: first the phrase "play with", which in the context of so surreal a sentence could refer not only to the act of frolicking among the animals as an equal, but also (for instance) to harassing them mischievously, or joining them in a jam session, or manipulating their genitalia. Likewise "bury the cook" could refer not only to interring the cook literally in a grave, but could refer figuratively to swamping him with work or of outliving him. (As in "your wrinkly grandmother will bury us all!") For that matter, is the cook male or female? Most European languages do not permit this kind of ambiguity with regard to professions. "Goats" may refer not to livestock but, figuratively, to a collection of philanderers or pariahs. Also, "grandmother" is, in many languages, a concept that would be expressed differently according to whether she were maternal or paternal. And while it is clear that there are multiple goats, their exact quantity is unspecified, so there would be some doubt when rendering the sentence in a language which distinguishes between, dual, paucal, trial, etc. Is this a pair of goats, a small smattering of them, or a huge flock? One must also consider the implied T-V distinction. To me, "wrinkly" suggests that a familiar or disrespectful attitude has been adopted towards the addressee, but this does not rule out the possibility of a V form. (And that's ignoring languages like Korean in which there are more than two levels of address, and languages like Japanese in which a concept like "the grandmother of the person I'm talking to" is expressed in a totally different, non-pronomial way.) On top of that, there are questions of tense and aspect. Tense seems clear enough, unless you're translating to one of those Australian languages with proximal and distal past. Still it's not totally clear just when these grandmotherly actions took place, whether they transpired yesterday or in the distant past. Am I being advised of what my grandmother did this morning, or of what she did as a free-spirited young maiden, back before I could have known her? As for aspect, while it seems clear even out of context that "buried the cook" refers to something perfective and unitary, for "played with the goats" it could be either perfective ("she just got done playing with the goats") or generic ("she was a woman of the sort that plays with the goats"), though the latter seems less likely in light of the parallelism between the two actions. Still, there are languages in which such things must be made explicit. The "and" may or may not imply a logical relationship: Are we dealing with coincidence or consequence? Other considerations are evidentiality, definiteness, register, etc. Also, I don't know how to term this concept, but the use of the adjective "wrinkly", combined with the fact that a person has two grandmothers, creates the possibility that "your wrinkly grandmother" is being used to specify which of your two grandmothers is being discussed: "Your wrinkly grandmother buried the cook and played with the goats (but your smooth grandmother behaved herself)", and in some languages there would be no such ambiguity. Figuring conservatively, and only for the ambiguities that I have mentioned here, there would be 3,328 fundamentally different and mutually exclusive ways of parsing the sentence. That doesn't, of course, translate to 3,328 possible translations, because so many of these ambiguities are cross-linguistic (because, for instance, neither English nor the Romance languages distinguish between plural and dual, or between proximal and distal past). However, the more distant the target language in terms of its structure, the more you will need to clarify these ambiguities. L ANTZY T ALK 21:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Lantzy. I believe thousands of students worldwide are at this very moment copypasting that into their essays..... --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  21:52, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Norwegian: Din rynkete bestemor (applies to both maternal and paternal grandmother) begravde (put in a grave) / overlevde (outlived) kokken (male or female) / kokka (if you know the cook was female) og lekte med (played like children do) / spilte med (chess, musical instruments) / antastet (played with their genitalia) geitene. --NorwegianBluetalk 21:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Norwegian Blue, I ought to qualify what I said above: a lot of the ambiguities I mentioned are pretty marginal, in particular "buried the cook", which even in a bizarre sentence devoid of context can be presumed to refer to a literal interment. L ANTZY T ALK 12:26, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Did anyone do Esperanto yet? Cia sulkeca avino enterigis la kuiriston kaj ludis kun la kaproj. I think that's right, in that it duplicates most of the meanings and ambiguities of the original. L ANTZY T ALK 12:26, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Surely there must be a Klingon speaker out there to really give this discussion a real zing?--Shirt58 (talk) 12:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Why sulkeca and not sulka? --KnightMove (talk) 16:45, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * To duplicate the emphatic nature of "wrinkly" when the word is applied to an entire person rather than to, say, an inanimate object or a specific body part. But maybe "sulka" would be better. There are many other options: sulkoplena, sulkigita, malglata, velkita, cxifita... 129.174.54.244 (talk) 18:02, 1 March 2011 (UTC) [Lantzy, not logged in]

I'll try to illustrate what Lantzy was writing about by providing two Polish translations with different sets of assumptions:
 * Twoja pomarszczona babka pochowała kucharza i bawiła się kozami. This one implies that you're on a first-name basis with the addressee, that the cook was male, that the grandmother was present at the burial, but was not necessarily an undertaker, that she used the goats as her toys, and that the goats were either female or of mixed sexes. Due to the ambiguity of the word koza, this sentence would be more likely understood to mean that she played with her boogers.
 * Pańska pomarszczona babka pogrzebała kucharkę, a grała z capami. This one implies that you're not on a first-name basis with the addressee and that the addressee is a man, that the cook was female, that the grandmother was the actual undertaker, that she played some sort of game with the goats or played music with them, that all of the the goats were male, and that you are contrasting the two facts, as if she shouldn't have played with the goats, if she had buried the cook. — Kpalion(talk) 16:40, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Russian: "Твоя морщинистая бабушка похоронила повара и поиграла с козами." (other possibilities depending on choice of T-V distinction, aspect, gender of cook and goats). Lesgles (talk) 18:19, 1 March 2011 (UTC) Or actually, повар can be male or female, but there is also кухарка, which is only female. Lesgles (talk) 18:20, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * And based on that, I think Ukrainian would be something like "Твоя зморшкувата бабуся поховала кухаря і пограла з козами", and Belarusian is probably "Твая маршчыністая бабуля пахавала кухара і пагуляла з козами." Lesgles (talk) 18:34, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you all! --KnightMove (talk) 07:57, 2 March 2011 (UTC)