Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 June 28

= June 28 =

Chinese verbal particles and complements
I am learning Mandarin Chinese from Pimsleur recordings, which have the disadvantage of failing to fully explain grammar. The recordings indicate that, for the verb 到，the correct way to express action completed in the past is 是到的 (e.g., 我是到的), whereas for other verbs, the recordings seem to use 了 to indicate completed past action, so that I would have expected 到了 (e.g., 我到了). Does the 是. . . 的 construction express a different aspect or other grammatical quality than 了, is the 是. . . 的 construction specific to a certain class of verbs, or is there some other explanation for when each form is used instead of the other? Thanks. Marco polo (talk) 00:55, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * 我是到的 is not idiomatic modern mandarin. If you are trying to express "I have arrived" I would expect "我到了", this can be varied to carry different meanings, e.g. "我已经到了" for "I have already arrived", "我早就到了" for "I arrived ages ago", "我到了北京站" for "I arrived at Beijing Station", and "我到[了]北京站了" for "I have arrived at Beijing Station".
 * If I heard "我是到的" in conversation I would assume that I heard "我是倒的", "I am [always / by nature] upside down", where 倒的 (or 倒着的) is an adjective rather than a verb, and which I imagine may make sense in some specific context. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:24, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * 是. . . 的 is used when you're not saying that an action happened, but giving some further information about some event that we already know happened. For example, if I were asking you how you came to Beijing (thus entailing that I already know you got to Beijing), you could say "我是坐火车来北京的", "I came to Beijing by train". r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 06:50, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh I didn't think of that possibility. So similarly, in the same conversation, to the question "so when did you arrive" you could answer "我是昨天到的", which is most naturally "I arrived yesterday" but is lexically something like "my arrival was yesterday" (from this perspective, Rjanag's example might be seen as soemthing like "my coming to Beijing was by train").--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:20, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. This starts to clear things up.  In fact, the utterance on the tape was "我是昨天到的".  But how is that utterance different from "我昨天到了"?  Would the first utterance be used only if the speaker and listener understand and/or have already discussed that the speaker had been away and recently returned?  Marco polo (talk) 14:28, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, the latter would only be used if you are recounting the fact without context (new information), whereas the former is used if you are giving clarification/details about an event that is already known (given information). In the most explicit example, if someone directly asked when you arrived ("你什么时候到北京的", "你来北京多长时间了" or something like that), you would definitely answer with 我是昨天到的. Of course, I don't think this distinction is maintained 100% of the time in spoken/informal language, especially if the other person is not directly asking you when you arrived&mdash;in some situations it might be a little fuzzier what part of the utterance is meant to be the "new" information and what part is meant to be the "given", so in those instances there may be a little more flexibility in which structure gets used. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 16:15, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Question about the word "HAVE" in Latin
Hi, I'm hoping someone here will know a lot about Latin and Ancient Rome. So anyway, I took this photo of a mosaic "Welcome mat" (for lack of a better word) outside a house (large villa) in Pompeii, back in 2009, when I was there. I want to know what exactly it means; now I know that the word "AVE" means Hail or Welcome, but what does it mean with a H in from of it? Is this just a spelling variation of AVE? Or something else? I've tried putting the word "HAVE" into online translators, but they just come up blank and I also couldn't find any reference to the word anywhere else (probably because Google thinks I'm just searching for the English word have).

Anyway, I was just reading the article on Ave and thought that my photo of the Pompeii mosaic might be a good picture for the article (and perhaps for the Pompeii article to), but since the spelling is different I wasn't sure how to proceed. So can anyone tell me if this means what I think it means and whether it's right for those articles? Thanks. --Hibernian (talk) 01:44, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * That's at the House of the Faun; our article has a photo of the same mosaic. Here's a dictionary entry for the verb in question showing that it was indeed spelled with an H at times.--Cam (talk) 02:41, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah yes, I remember the name of the building now, so does it mean the same thing as AVE? Because the description in the other photo says it means "Translated to modern day English = Have (to own, possess etc)". Come to think of it that image is very low resolution, I think I should replace it with my own (it's a lot clearer to). Thanks for the info. --Hibernian (talk) 02:54, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The uploader probably assumed "HAVE" was a form of the verb habeo which means "to have".--Cam (talk) 03:17, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I think I'll replace it then, with an explanation. --Hibernian (talk) 03:54, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * In Vulgar Latin at least, the "H" of Classical Latin was completely silent, so many less-educated speakers would not write H's where they should've been and added them where they shouldn't've. It may just be that the person who made that mosaic misspelled it. Voikya (talk) 04:09, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's definitely "Ave" with a silent H. There are other words spelled with or without an H in the classical period - "(h)abundantia", "(h)arena", for example. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:21, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps someone could link us to the Latin poem (by Catullus, I think) which records mock-horror at the dropping and adding of 'h's. 86.164.67.252 (talk) 11:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Haha, yeah, I forgot about that. Catullus 84. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:43, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I've answered at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Latin, where this question was cross-posted. My answer is basically the same as Voikya's. —Angr (talk) 13:35, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the answers everyone, very interesting stuff. I put the photo on Ave and House of the Faun, I'll add that it is a spelling variant of Ave. --Hibernian (talk) 17:10, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Note that if Ave (the greeting) is from a Punic word for "to live" (root ḥwy), as has been argued (confirmation easily found on google books), then the spelling with H was the original one, and its loss was the distortion. The gutturals were being weakened and lost in Punic itself, though, so the variation may have been found in the original language as well.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 22:32, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Questions on meanings of some words from Mrs Amworth
I was reading Mrs Amworth by EF Benson and found some words confusing. Can anyone please clear my doubt. From this paragraph,


 * "The village of Maxley, where, last summer and autumn, these strange events took place, lies on a heathery and pine-clad upland of Sussex. In all England you could not find a sweeter and saner situation. Should the wind blow from the south, it comes laden with the spices of the sea; to the east high downs protect it from the inclemencies of March; and from the west and north the breezes which reach it travel over miles of aromatic forest and heather."

What does heather, downs, spices, inclemencies mean here? The definition provided by dictionary is difficult to fit here. For example, my dictionary says inclement means "stormy weather" or "merciless". How does this meaning fit here? Similarly what is the meaning of "spice" in this context? --111Engo (talk) 13:38, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Heather refers to a large group of plants, see Ericaceae and the heather disambiguation page for more. Down (or more usually downs) refers to hills. See North Downs and South Downs for examples. Inclemencies means exactly what you think; the downs are protecting the area from the worst of the March storms. The spices of the sea presumably refer to the pungent saltiness of air that's come in off the ocean. Matt Deres (talk) 13:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * (ec) Spices of the sea refers to the smell of sea air, heather just refers to heather, a fragrant, downs are a landform in England. Inclemencies refers to bad weather in March ("comes in like a lion, out like lamb"). Could be worse; I grew up between an onion field and a sheep farm so I always "knew which way the wind blows" as well. Rmhermen (talk) 13:51, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I see why sheep would stink, but think an onion field would smell nice. StuRat (talk) 14:20, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The terrain type could be called a heath or heathland in England, also note the "see also" section of that article for a variety of terms for similar terrains around the world. You may find one that you're more familiar with :) SemanticMantis (talk) 14:56, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Ashdown Forest is the largest Sussex upland meeting that description. The Winnie the Pooh stories are set there. Beautiful place, but I don't think the south winds bring any spicy scents from the sea. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:17, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * (Ashdown Forest containing Five Hundred Acre Wood, the basis for the fictional Hundred Acre Wood where Pooh and friends lived.) StuRat (talk) 13:13, 2 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Here is a picture of Gill's Lap in the Ashdown Forest which may help you to visualise the scenary. The low vegetation in the foreground is heather, the taller yellow flowered one is Gorse. The trees in the background are Scots Pines. This is the hilltop in the Pooh stories; "by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleons Lap". One of my favourite places on a sunny day, without too many tourists. Alansplodge (talk) 22:06, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Fussable Chasselais
Hello, dear friends, how are you all tonight? Well, I trust. Good. Then let's begin.

In the famous Monty Python "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch, they use the expression (sounds like) "very fussable". Was "fussable" a recognised word before then, and in which idiolects does it occur? I assume it means something like "so good, it's worth making a fuss over". Has it entered the lexicon? I can't say I've ever heard it used anywhere else.

What they're making a fuss over is a wine they call (sounds like) "Château de Chasselais". Is this a real brand? I've discovered Château de Chasselas, which has a vineyard as many French châteaux do, but there's no mention of any export trade. Is this the same thing, or were the Pythonists just making it up surreally as they went along? --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  14:00, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Found approximately here. Also here. And here. Bus stop (talk) 15:00, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * This non-Yorkshireman, but one-time Yorkshire resident, thinks they're actually saying "passible . . ., very passible", which in this case is normal British understatement meaning "very good".
 * While I can't say anything definite about the name of the wine, it was in the UK a rigid convention on the (non-advertising) BBC channels never to mention a real-life brand name (except in a news context or similar), so in such fictional sketches, even if not originally for the BBC, most writers would automatically make up something plausible sounding. (This sketch (actually pre-Python) was pretty certainly scripted, not ad-libbed, even on the first of the several occasions it was performed (on an ITV (advertising channel) show, Bus stop's second link), so the writers may either have invented something that, by chance, comes close to a real châteaux that they'd never heard of, or deliberately varied a known name to retain verisimilitude. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.117 (talk) 17:04, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I've always heard it as passable too. HiLo48 (talk) 17:31, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It is certainly not "fussible", which in a Yorkshire accent would have the vowel /ʊ/ as in "foot". I'm sure it's "passable". And on the 1948 show version they say "Chasselas", not "Chasselais". I'm startled! Looking at those clips, I can only conclude that I've never actually seen the sketch before. I've heard it certainly (I'm pretty sure it was on I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again before it was ever on TV), but my mental picture has always had the four sitting round a pub table in flat caps and scarves with pints in front of them, not DJ's and cigars. --ColinFine (talk) 19:57, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * How dumb of me; of course it couldn't have been 'fussable'/'fussible' in that accent. For approximately 40 years I've had the wrong idea about that word.  That's quite some rut.  Never too late to change, as they say.  But maybe I'm not the only one to get it wrong.  Fussible is a member of Nortec Collective, and most of them seem to have made up names, so I'm guessing they've misheard it too.  If it's not a legit word, it should be, and I will now use it whenever the occasion demands.  Thanks.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  21:29, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Colin, the flat-caps-and-pints version you remember may be from The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979), when (as the article says) it featured John Cleese, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Rowan Atkinson. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:30, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's "passable" - my source is The Utterly, Utterly Amusing and Pretty Damn Definitive Comic Relief Revue Book, 1989, which contains the scripts to many fine old sketches. Card Zero (talk) 11:52, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Korean text
What is the Korean text found in this image? http://web.archive.org/web/20070108093549im_/http://www.ntsb.gov/events/kal801/Kor_link.gif

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 17:13, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * It must be KAL801기 사고 청문회. --Theurgist (talk) 18:01, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 18:11, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Also what is the full text at File:Kor banner1.gif? Part of it is "KAL801기 사고 청문회" but there is additional text. Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 19:08, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I think the text must be: 청문회에 관한 다음의 번역된 글을 읽기 위해서는 한글 소프트웨어가, 사용하고 있는 컴퓨터에 설치되어 있어야함니다. --Theurgist (talk) 06:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much! WhisperToMe (talk) 06:24, 29 June 2011 (UTC)