Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 January 10

= January 10 =

Subject/predicate question.
This question is for English homework, I am having a bit of trouble deciphering the predicates of sentences, because in these it is not really clear what it is. I have a few ideas that might be correct, but I need help to make sure.

In the sentence "Asbestos does not burn or conduct heat." I know the simple subject is asbestos, but I do not know what the simple predicate is. Is it "does", "does not" or something else: "Burn, Conduct"? In the sentence "Wall Street is the heart of the financial world.", the simple subject is "Wall Street" and the simple predicate is "is", correct?

I also would like to know if the sentence "Without an education, your possibilities of advancement are limited." is in transposed order-- i believe it is. Could you also please tell me the full subject and full predicate? Thanks for your help!! It is much appreciated! 98.114.27.101 (talk) 02:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * 98.114.27.10 -- These terms do not always have fully standardized meanings in grammatical/linguistic terminology, so the answer for your class is whatever the course materials say, but other people might use other definitions (as discussed above in previous sections). AnonMoos (talk) 05:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Well I think we can all agree on the subject of each sentence, and if "predicate" means "everything else" (not an analysis with which I am familiar), then the splitting should be easy. The last sentence is indeed in transposed order, so the subject is in the middle.  I agree with AnonMoos that you should read your course materials to find how "predicate" is interpreted.  I would be surprised if it means just the verb that you seem to be picking out.    D b f i r s   10:07, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In most U.S. textbooks, "simple predicate" is used basically to mean "verb" (without the objects, adverbs, adjuncts, etc., that might make up the rest of the full predicate), so the OP's analysis of the "Wall Street" sentence appears to be correct. Regarding the other sentence, the simple predicate would usually be said to be the compound "does burn or conduct". Deor (talk) 12:40, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and with regard to the last paragraph of the OP's question, it depends on whether one considers the introductory prepositional phrase as modifying "possibilities of advancement" (in which case the full subject is everything except "are limited") or as modifying "are limited" (in which case it, along with those two words, would constitute the full predicate). Deor (talk) 12:52, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Your US textbook usage seems to contradict our article on Predicate (grammar), but I'm not at all familiar with this analysis which sounds very strange to someone taught "subject, verb, object, subordinate clauses etc" in the UK. I just don't see how the isolated verb "is" can be a predicate unless it means "exists", but the original advice given by AnonMoos seems best.   D b f i r s   14:27, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying I agree with the textbooks; I'm just saying that that's what they teach, which is the context in which the OP's question seems to have been asked. Here's an example. Deor (talk) 16:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I can only see bits of it, but it seems to be saying the "simple predicate" is a synonym for "verb". Thanks for the example.  "Predicate nominative" seems to be a synonym for what I call a "complement".   D b f i r s   17:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I hate it when Google Books does that. In any case, if you search for "simple predicate", you can probably find something similar that you can see; the term seems little-used outside such schoolbooks. Deor (talk) 19:34, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I wonder why the school texts can't use a simple four-letter, one-syllable unambiguous word like "verb"?   D b f i r s   20:28, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Romance languages
Which Romance languages are the most distant from one another? That is, which two have the largest barrier to communication, or alternately what are the Romance languages A and B such that the language A is hardest to learn for native speakers of language B? Thanks. 24.92.70.160 (talk) 02:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Romanian, surely, perhaps especially because it has been so influenced by Slavic languages. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that Romanian is at one end of the spectrum. At the other end is probably French, or perhaps Portuguese.  Marco polo (talk) 03:22, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The proposed solutions (Romanian and French, or Romanian and Portuguese) seem plausible, but I think this is a very hard question that may not have a good answer. E.g., while Romanian and Portuguese are geographically at opposite ends, they share a number of traits because they are both in the periphery of the language continuum and so have missed some of the innovations that started in the centre. I don't know if this makes French a better candidate than Portuguese, though. It's interesting to go through Romance languages and Romance languages with this question in mind. Hans Adler 06:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * French at the other end, I think, rather than Portuguese, because it has vocabulary borrowed from Germanic languages. I believe that quite a lot of Romanians learn French. When a language is widely learnt, things are easier for new learners, just because there are classes, textbooks, people to help you. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:52, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a Romanian friend who says that he can make sense of spoken Spanish, Portuguese and Italian but not French. Alansplodge (talk) 11:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Native Romanian speaker here. I have no problems with written French, but spoken French is a bitch. The same for Portuguese, but I can gather a lot of what is said in Portuguese because I know some Spanish. Then again, about the French, I also speak English and German so those two are probably very helpful in getting the gist of written French. So, to summarize, it's definitely Romanian at one end and French of Portuguese at the other :P 131.130.223.97 (talk) 15:45, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Is "nobody" singular or plural?
The article plural says: "in English..., the plural form is used for zero or more than one, and the singular for one thing only." However the quote "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" seems to indicate that "nobody" is singular. Or is "Nobody know the trouble I see" correct? (English is not my first language). Bo Jacoby (talk) 11:44, 10 January 2011 (UTC).


 * "Nobody" generally takes singular agreement, but "none" can take plural agreement in some cases. You can peruse Jespersen's classic English grammar for many examples of semi-irregularities and complexities in verb agreement and pronoun reference... AnonMoos (talk) 12:33, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Just because "nobody" refers to zero people doesn't mean it has zero number. Can you imagine answering "What's wrong?" with "Nothing are wrong!"? Marnanel (talk) 12:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Interestingly enough, everybody also is singular ;-). Or, to be boring, "nobody" is a singular word denoting a class over the set people with cardinality zero. Since there is only one such set, its naturally singular. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "Every language is different", "each language is different". Not "are different". Itsmejudith (talk) 13:20, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for answering! So "What's wrong?" is answered by "nothing is wrong" (rather than "nothing are wrong"), and "something is wrong" (rather than "something are wrong"), and "everything is wrong" (rather than "everything are wrong"). And "Who's wrong?" is answered by "nobody is wrong", "somebody is wrong" (even if, say, two out of ten people are wrong?), and "everybody is wrong". But is it also "none of you is wrong", "some of you is wrong", and "all of you is wrong" rather than "none of you are wrong", "some of you are wrong", and "all of you are wrong" ? Bo Jacoby (talk) 13:24, 10 January 2011 (UTC).


 * It is "none of you is wrong" but "some/all of you are wrong". I guess the irregularity comes from the etymology (or at least interpretation in the minds of speakers) of nobody, everybody and none as no body, every body and no one. The negation or qualification with every does not change the number, which for one and body is one. Hans Adler 13:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Some people would in fact say "None of you are wrong"Google... AnonMoos (talk) 14:26, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Oops. You are right. The traditional prescriptivist advice says it's always singular, but the language itself is less sure. Webster's Dictionary of English Usage concludes: "Clearly, none has been both singular and plural since Old English and still is. The notion that it is singular only is a myth of unknown origin that appears to have arisen late in the 19th century. [...]" Hans Adler 14:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The OED agrees, saying: "Many commentators state that none should take singular concord, but this has generally been less common than plural concord, especially between the 17th and 19th centuries.". I suppose it depends to some extent on whether you really mean "not one" or "no people or things" or other nuance of meaning, but the modern "logical rule" seems to be ignored by many good writers.    D b f i r s   17:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The logical approach is to equate "none" and "nobody" with "not a single one" and "not a single body/person", which will always require singular agreement. But when people say "None of you are wrong", they're thinking "All of you are right", and they may even accompany that with an appropriate hand gesture encompassing all of them.  It's hard to point at "not a single person", so the obvious thing to do is to point at everyone, and the language gets adjusted accordingly. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  18:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * For me, the distinction between "None of you is..." and "None of you are..." is the mindset of the speaker on the word "None" For me, "None of you is..." means the speaker is considering each person individually while "None of you are..." sounds like the speaker is considering the entire group as a unit.  Another way to look at it is "None of you is..." sounds like the antonym to "Each of you is..." while "None of you are..." sounds like the antonym to "All of you are..."  Just my sense on this... -- Jayron  32  19:21, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * See also these old threads:
 * WP:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 June 2
 * WP:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 September 2
 * WP:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 25
 * --Anonymous, 06:42 UTC, 1/11/11 (or 11/1/11 or...).


 * Likely the writer was thinking of sentences like these:
 * There are two apples. There is one apple. There are no apples.
 * Two children were injured. One child was injured. No children were injured.
 * —Tamfang (talk) 19:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * No children were injured. No child was injured.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for these answers. Bo Jacoby (talk) 00:33, 12 January 2011 (UTC).

german sentence help
Is this a terrible sentence? "Ich brauche eine einmal einfach Fahrt." I want to say, "I need a single one-way ticket (train)." Not sure about the "ein ein ein" repetition, doesn't seem right. Thanks. Howie26 (talk) 18:52, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As a native speaker, I'd say something like: "Ich brauche eine Einzelfahrkarte". (Einzelfahrkarte=single ticket) Your original sentence isn't that bad either if you put eine and einmal in the correct order: "Ich brauche einmal eine einfache Fahrt." Hope that helps ;) --87.173.123.84 (talk) 19:04, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It sounds terribly naughty either way. :)  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed :) As a well-behaved individual, you should of course say "Ich möchte..." ("I'd like to have...") --87.173.123.84 (talk) 19:19, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In any case, the word "einmal" is unnecessary. -- Irene1949 (talk) 19:31, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "Einen Einzelfahrschein, bitte." or "Einen Einzelfahrschein, einfache Fahrt, bitte." (the second one clarifies that you don't want a return ticket). Forget about the well-behaved "ich möchte", the "bitte" is polite enough.
 * Remember, this is Germany, not Japan. ;-)
 * To add the name of the origin and/or destination city/cities, change the part before the (first) comma as follows:
 * "Einen Einzelfahrschein von ORIGIN nach DESTINATION"
 * By the way, German Rail's web site is available in English (just select your country in the drop-down box on the top of the page, and click on the little arrow icon next to it), and you can order tickets online (which you can print out yourself, so no need to wait for international snail mail).
 * The URL is: http://www.bahn.de
 * -- 78.43.71.225 (talk) 19:40, 10 January 2011 (UTC) (German native speaker, with a history of railroad staff in my family tree that goes back more than 3 generations, and volunteer at a vintage diesel railbus club ;-))
 * Thanks for the great help. The problem is that this sentence, part of a longer language assignment, should stick to words that have been introduced so far, and we haven't learned "Einzelfahrschein".  We learned "einmal" for single, "einfach" for one-way, and "Fahrt" for train ticket.  I've used "möchte" and "will" and "bitte" loads of times in the rest of the assignment, I decided to be a little more brusque in this sentence, just to change things up a bit!  Again, thanks for the help, I enjoyed reading the responses.  Wish I could use the really cool word Einzelfahrschein.  Howie26 (talk) 20:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * To Irene: part of my instruction is to state "how many tickets I want". I guess they want me to say "einmal" and that if I just use "eine" I will lose marks.  Howie26 (talk) 20:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe I'm nitpicking here, but Fahrt is more like ride - a ticket would be ein Fahrschein, eine Fahrkarte or ein Ticket.
 * Another approach would be "Eine einfache Fahrt für eine Person, bitte." if you can't use the word Fahrschein or Fahrkarte. -- 78.43.71.225 (talk) 20:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, they do give Fahrkarte for ticket, my error. I was confused because they sometimes used "einfach Fahre" and I hadn't realised they weren't then referring to a ticket.  I'm not sure what is worse, the language course materials or my idiocy.  Howie26 (talk) 07:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Your mistake with respect to einmal was that you used it as an adjective. It is an adverb. That's why 87.173... above placed it before eine. --Wrongfilter (talk) 00:10, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. Thanks.  Howie26 (talk) 07:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * @ Howie26, you have written: "To Irene: part of my instruction is to state 'how many tickets I want'. I guess they want me to say 'einmal' and that if I just use 'eine' I will lose marks." – When you say "eine", it is completely clear that you want one ticket, not several tickets. I don't know whether you win marks by adding unnecessary words – that would surprise me – but I do know that in doing so, you will not win better German sentences. -- Irene1949 (talk) 19:01, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How about "Es tut mir furchtbar leid, die gnädige Frau so zu stören, aber wenn Sie es doch erlauben, würde es mich sehr freuen, einen Einzelfahrschein zu kaufen dürfen"? J I P  &#124; Talk 19:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Klugscheißerei. Also, it would be kaufen zu dürfen. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 19:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Dang, I knew there would be some small mistake. And I even double-checked the spellings. But anyways, I found it nice that I understood "Klugscheißerei" ("clever shitting") without looking it up. J I P  &#124; Talk 20:03, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I actually wanted to be pedantic and say that it's supposed to be tut mir Leid, but then I found out that the capital L was only valid from 2004 to 2006 or something like that. Crazy Germans and their spelling reforms (when it's actually the French who urgently need a spelling reform :P) BTW, I checked your User Page to see if you are French or not because of the French joke, and I saw that you are Nordic. I love Nordic people, so sorry if I upset you in any way :D 80.123.210.172 (talk) 20:11, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * JIP is confusing German 101 with Japanese 101. ;-) -- 78.43.71.225 (talk) 20:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I gave up on learning Korean because of honorifics and politeness and all that. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 20:11, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm Nordic, but not Scandinavian. (Our Viking brothers to the west of our country are quite adamant about that.) Regardless of my fairly good knowledge of English, German and Swedish, I understand only very basic French, and next to none Japanese or Korean. J I P  &#124; Talk 20:21, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't care about petty distinctions. If you have a Nordic Cross on your flag, you're good (take that, Greenland!) :P I'm Romanian, and I speak English, German, and some Spanish. I am also User:Rimush, but for some reason I don't feel like signing in. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 20:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How fascinating humans are sometimes. It would take somewhat less effort to sign in, than to not sign in and then identify yourself and explain why you've chosen not to sign in.  I like it.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  23:31, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You have something against me, don't you? Rimush (talk) 08:50, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Not in the slightest. I exult in all manner of perversity and absurdity. They make life interesting.  As Anatole France said, "It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion".  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  09:36, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I know Japanese and I've never understood why people complain. You can speak English without knowing that Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is correctly addressed as "Your Majesty" on the first mention and "Ma'am" subsequently, or that the correct salutation for a letter to a U.S. Senator is "Dear Senator Loyal" (according to Judith Martin). Honorific language is disappearing from Japanese just as it's disappearing from English. The da/desu distinction is not disappearing, but it's essentially the same as the T-V distinction that exists in practically all European languages except English. -- BenRG (talk) 03:49, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * They get too upset if you get it wrong. I remember watching Gaki no Tsukai and everybody was shocked that Tanaka hadn't used the correct honorific towards Matsumoto. Maybe they're not as upset when non-natives get it wrong, but still... 80.123.210.172 (talk) 10:13, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I also speak German and what you have written is perfectly grammatical, if a little baroque, as far as I can tell. I'd probably say to an actual ticketing agent simply "Einfach nach Berlin" or whatever, but that's informal, I don't think it'd fly in class. Also, "eine" would suffice just as well if not better than "einmal" as mentioned. 65.29.47.55 (talk) 00:36, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Bovine feces. "Ich brauche eine einmal einfach Fahrt." is plain wrong, period. Maybe you speak German (to a degree), but you're obviously not a native speaker, otherwise you would have noticed that. Please don't confuse people trying to learn a new language with wrong replies. The replies above clearly explain what's wrong with the statement and what alternatives would work.
 * "Einfach nach Berlin." is not only informal, but actually rude, even by German standards. "Einmal nach Berlin, bitte." would be good for a start, upon which you'll get the reply "Einfach oder hin und zurück?" (One-way or return ticket?), if the guy on the other side of the counter is worth his salt. -- 188.105.132.219 (talk) 18:59, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How about "Einmal einfach, bitte"? Pais (talk) 19:09, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That depends on the context - it's missing the destination, but if the destination is clear or it is irrelevant for the price (maybe because there is only one destination, say, you're buying a ticket on the train and the next stop is the terminal, or you're buying a tram ticket and all stops along the line are in the same zone), it would work. -- 188.105.132.219 (talk) 20:06, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't speak German natively, but from what I understand, I agree that "Ich brauche eine einmal einfach Fahrt" is plain wrong. It's not even grammatical. As previously said, "Ich brauche einmal eine einfache Fahrt" would be grammatical. AFAIK "einfach" can also be used as an adverb, but then its meaning changes. "Ich brauche eine einfache Fahrt" means "I need a one-way trip" but "Ich brauche einfach eine Fahrt" means "I simply need a trip". J I P  &#124; Talk 22:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Expand Russian request
I would be indebted to a Russian speaker who could fulfil the Expand Russian tag on Collegium of Commerce. It seems the exact nature of founding of the collegium (коллегия) was a fairly subtle affair, and, unfortunately, Google Translate doesn't really do subtlety. It seems from the comments on the talk page that the present article is factually incorrect in this respect, and I would like to be able to make sure it isn't wrong for the very long (referencing WP:the truth can come later). Thanks! Any help appreciated! - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 19:15, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

written symbol in English, French, other languages
At the end of a word, in English, in a printed aricle such as a post on the internet: A lower case a, over which is an inverted v, in the opening of the ^ (inverted) is a symbol, perhaps an umlaut. Next to this a is an upper case C. Through the C are two horizontal lines extending from the a edge, through the C. At the end of those lines, in a superscript is the logo TM. This symbol is more and more appearing, apparently randomly, in script. What does the symbol intend to communicate? What is the purpose of that inscription? 75.211.93.76 (talk) 20:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Could you provide a link to such a symbol, maybe scan it if you only see it in print, and upload it? So far the only thing I could come up with from reading your description is â€™... 78.43.71.225 (talk) 21:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sometimes a web browser, or maybe the website itself, flubs up unicode and you get strings of apparently random characters. Other times, OCR programs screw up some text.  Perhaps this is one of those examples... -- Jayron  32  21:12, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * â€™ is a right single quotation mark encoded as UTF-8 and then decoded as Windows-1252. It seems to be a common problem. -- BenRG (talk) 21:23, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * See Mojibake. Pais (talk) 10:46, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to tie up the loose ends and complete this topic, the string â€™ consist of the following: "â" is a lower case A with a circumflex diacritic; "€" is the symbol for the Euro currency; "™" is the Trademark symbol. Roger (talk) 11:10, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In other words, it's not a symbol at all, but a malformed representation of the right single quotation mark, because of character encoding problems. The "symbol" you are seeing should not even exist, if things worked like they should do. J I P  &#124; Talk 19:47, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

菱
Is 菱 the most common kanji which is not a jōyō kanji? --84.62.209.181 (talk) 21:00, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Not if you're talking about the current version of the joyo kanji list - 韓 has 6.01 million Google hits on .jp sites, and 阪 has 3.1 million, compared to only 1.62 million for 菱. But both of those characters are on the new list that will be taught starting from 2012, perhaps it's possible that 菱 will be the most common character remaining after that. 59.108.42.46 (talk) 04:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Just out of interest, how did you get those results? Doing the obvious I don't see anything like those numbers. However, 誰 came to my mind as a possible answer to the OP's question, and I do get "About 19,100,000 results" with the search 誰 site:*.jp (Having said that, I do not trust Google hit counts at all. Sometimes they are absurdly incorrect -- by many orders or magnitude -- when compared with the length of the actual list of results returned.) 81.159.77.192 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:50, 13 January 2011 (UTC).

Why is 菱 one of the most common kanji which are not on the jōyō kanji list? --84.61.131.41 (talk) 17:18, 14 January 2011 (UTC)