Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 July 24

= July 24 =

Request translation from Polish to English, of Wikipedia page.
I would like to see the information from http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotunda_Zamojska, translated to English, and linked to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamosc_Fortress , which is in English. Also if possible, whether information could be added, including diagrams or images, to explain or show exactly where the Rotunda was located in relation to the rest of Zamosc Fortress, and the old town/quarter of Zamosc City.112.213.180.150 (talk) 00:32, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * A good place for this request is here, which is specifically intended for translation requests. Tonywalton Talk 22:47, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * What Tonywalton linked to is the place to report non-English pages that someone wrote or copy-pasted in English Wikipedia. The place to request translations from other Wikipedias into English is Translation.
 * As for the Zamość Rotunda, I could translate it, but the original Polish article, sadly, does not include any inline citations and I wouldn't want to replicate unsourced information in English Wikipedia. For you convenience, I can try to summarize it here, but I can't vouch for the article's accuracy.

The Zamość Rotunda was built in the years 1825–1831 as a battery emplacement by Gen. J. Ch. Mallet-Malletski who oversaw the modernization of the Zamość Fortress. It is located about 500 meters south of the Old Town. The rotunda is a ring, open towards the town, built of bricks and stones, and covered with a layer of earth. Its walls are 7 meters thick and about 9.5 meters tall. It contains 19 cells (there used to be 20, but one was destroyed during a German bombing raid at the beginning of World War II) with embrasures on the outer side of the rotunda and entrances on the inner side. The rotunda is surrounded by a moat from the west, south and east.

During World War II, the Germans set up in the rotunda an interim camp for resistance members and other arrestees. From 1942/1943 it was also a place of mass executions of the inhabitants of the Zamość region, including children. Bodies were burnt and the ashes dumped into the moat. It is estimated that the about 8 thousand people were killed there. After the war a cemetary of Rotunda victims was set up outside the walls. In 1947, a Martyrological Museum of the Zamość Region was created in the rotunda as well.


 * I couldn't find any diagram of the rotunda's location, but here are its geographic coordinates, so you can use Google Maps to see where it is for yourself: 50.71078°N, 23.24722°W.
 * I hope that helps. — Kpalion(talk) 05:16, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

How do you spell the names of the letters of the English alphabet?
Where can one find, other than at English alphabet, a standardized spelling of the names of the letters of the English alphabet using full words, rather than the vowels as themselves--something along the lines of ay bee cee dee ee eff gee aitch igh jay--as we have set spellings for alpha beta gamma delta epsilon...? μηδείς (talk) 02:13, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think that letters in the English-language alphabet have names. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:34, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The standardized spellings are: A B C D ....  Sorry, but that's all there is.  Presumably the rationale is that a person who doesn't know the letters won't be able to read their names in a lengthier format anyhow.  (I don't think the Greek letters have names in Greek.) Looie496 (talk) 02:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The OP isn't mistaken. I once saw an old spelling bee (Scripps if I'm not mistaken) where one contestant was asked to spell "H".  The kid was confused by the word and asked to have it used in a sentence.  The judge did so by saying something like "H is the eighth letter of the alphabet".  The spelling that they were looking for was the same as what the OP used, aitch, if my memory further serves me.  Dismas |(talk) 03:18, 24 July 2011 (UTC)


 * See also wikt:Category:en:Latin letter names. ---Sluzzelin talk  03:20, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Consider the absurdity of saying that the arabic numeral symbols 1, 2, 3, etc., don't have names in English, they are just pronounced "1, 2, 3..."

Just like the Arabic numerals, the letters of the Latin alphabet have English names which are canonical English words consisting of sequences of standard English phonemes capable of being spelt--just as one can spell "one, two, three"--even if with letters it is rarely done.

The English language has its own names for the letters of the Latin alphabet no less than do the Spanish, who call 'x', 'y', and 'z' equis, i griega and ceta' or the Germans who speak of Ix Ypsilon and Zett.''

What I am looking for is some prescriptive source, a typesetters' manual, an old Encyclopedia, a 19th century grammar, or the like, which spells out the English names of the letters as spoken words rather than using the letter symbols to represent themselves. μηδείς (talk) 04:12, 24 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I looked up "aitch" in Wiktionary and got this page. At the bottom is See also Latin script letter names, then a link to each one. But the very first one, ei (the supposed spelling of A) takes me to a page that doesn't mention it at all.  The third one is cee (for C), which spelling surprised me, I must say.  There don't seem to be sources for the spellings, so I cannot say how canonical they are.  Most of them don't appear in my own trusty dictionary.  I wonder what the OED has to say about this.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  05:50, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The OED has an entry for "aitch", Name of the letter H. And mentions "Also ache." It mentions "aitch" under its "H" entry. For most of the letters, it says the letter name is the same as the letter, and mentions various plural forms. For example, "a is usual as the name of the letter in classical Latin, and hence in English....The plural has been written aes, A's, As." For B is merely says, "The plural has been written Bees, B's, Bs." However, it does have an entry for "bee": "The name of the letter B, used for ‘bloody’ (see bloody adj. 8, 2); so bee aitch, bloody hell; bee eff, bloody fool. slang." For "Q", however, it goes on for several pages. Pfly (talk) 06:47, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * If you've ever played Scrabble, you will know that some of the letters of the alphabet do have spelled-out forms that are accepted in the game. I had a look at the OED and this is what I found: bee, cee, dee, ef, gee, aitch, kay, em, en, que, ar, ess, tee, vee, double U, zed/zee/izzard. "wikt:Category:en:Latin letter names" pointed out by Sluzzelin seems have additional ones that are not recognized by the OED, such as el (the OED defines this only as an L-shaped building, not the name of the letter). — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 07:10, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

(after multiple WP:edit conflicts):
 * "See them down in Soho Square, "Dropping aitches everywhere" — Henry Higgins, "Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?", My Fair Lady (book by Alan Jay Lerner), Act One, Scene 1. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:21, 24 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I'll have to search for a good external source, but there are very commonly accepted "spellings-out" of i, y and most of the consonants except Q. The other vowels a, e, o and u are spelled out less uniformly, perhaps because one can pronounce a vowel without a consonant, but not vice-versa. These spellings-out are usually recognized, e.g. in Esso (S.O. for Standard Oil), tee shirt, Jaycee {J.C. for Junior Chamber of Commerce), Deejay (DJ for disc jockey), em space, aitch-dropping, or the Pee Dee River. (Especially in the U.S., they can also stand in place of initials in people's given names, e.g. Jay Gould, Dee Brown and Mary Kay Ash.) At the cost of ambiguity, many of those letters sound like, and are spelled like, common English words, e.g. "eye" as in Eye Street (I Street) in Washington, D.C. (spelled out to avoid confusion with the Arabic and Roman numerals for the number one). This certainly isn't the prescriptive, definitive source you're seeking, but having thought about this off and on over the years (and having learned how to pronounce the alphabet in several other languages), this is my best approximation (doubtful spellings shaded):


 * —— Shakescene (talk) 07:21, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

The fact that the OED recognises the names of certain letters (as distinct from the letters themselves) but not others, strongly suggests to me that there simply are no "formally" accepted spellings for those others (viz. A, I, J, L, O, P, U, X, Y), because if there were, the OED, of all places, would have them. This is a very surprising result ... but then, it goes a long way to explaining why Medeis and the rest of us are having trouble locating the horse's mouth: there is no horse. Nay. -- Jack of Oz   [your turn]  07:35, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I did think this was odd too. The letters included in the list in my earlier posting were the only ones which the OED defined as "the name of the letter ...". Some of the other letters have spellings but only as part of other terms or with distinct meanings (for instance, as mentioned earlier, el meaning an L-shaped building). — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 08:59, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * This discussion prompts a follow-up from me: Do the Latin letters have names in Greek? For example, seeing an image of a B, we might say, "That's not a beta, it's a bee." How would that be said in Greek? — Michael J 11:35, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

These links have relevant comments: μηδείς (talk) 16:31, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * ampersand on letters as themselves
 * Anglo-Saxon runes OE names of runes
 * Latin alphabet Latin pronunciations of letters
 * Latiniko Alphabeto Greek article, doesn't give names or pronunciations
 * Bee Cee Dee - a search of books containing that sequence between published between 1500 and 1945.
 * Johnathan Swift on the matter - note he spells aitch either as each or ach.


 * According to Russian Wikipedia, traditional Russian names of Latin letters exist. They go as follows. — Kpalion(talk) 03:58, 26 July 2011 (UTC)


 * {| class="wikitable"

! Letter !! Russian name !! English transcription
 * A || а || a
 * B || бэ || be
 * C || цэ || tse
 * D || дэ || de
 * E || э || e
 * F || эф || ef
 * G || жэ || zhe
 * H || ха || kha
 * I || и || i
 * J || йe || ye
 * K || ка || ka
 * L || эл || el
 * M || эм || em
 * }
 * H || ха || kha
 * I || и || i
 * J || йe || ye
 * K || ка || ka
 * L || эл || el
 * M || эм || em
 * }
 * K || ка || ka
 * L || эл || el
 * M || эм || em
 * }
 * M || эм || em
 * }
 * }

Surprisingly or not, traditional Bosnian names of Latin letters exist as well and are identical to their Russian counterparts. Surtsicna (talk) 09:48, 26 July 2011 (UTC)


 * That's an interesting observation. Russians etc learning English will be given the above table, and English speakers learning Russian have a similar table.  But Engish speakers learning to read and write in their own language would never need it.  They're told the names of the letters orally and practise and learn them likewise; they never need to see "bee", "eff", "eks" etc. written down, because they know exactly what "B", "F" and "X" mean and how they're pronounced.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  21:02, 26 July 2011 (UTC)