Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 5

= March 5 =

Fandex?
Does anyone know what 'fandex' means? It appears to be used extensively in fantasy wargaming, and seems to refer to army lists, but I am not sure. My confusion comes from a possible etymology I have thought of, being that it comes from the combination of 'fan' + 'decks', as in 'card-decks', leading me to believe that it refers only to 'armies' used in card-based wargaming (similar to Magic: The Gathering, only in a full-scale battle context) and not just a simple list. Does anyone know? Cheers. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * (EDIT) Through looking around at some actual 'fandex', I have established that it can, in fact, mean a preset army for tabletop battles. Now all that's bothering me is the etymology. Would I be right in my assumptions? --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:58, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Looking through some of the uses, my guess is that it comes from fan + index. Deor (talk) 12:26, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Aha - I didn't think of that one. Makes perfect sense! --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  12:57, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, there may be two different origins involved. The Workman Publishing Company publishes a series called Fandex Family Field Guides, where either decks or index (or both) may have been involved in the naming. (The series includes guides to trees, birds, U.S. presidents, and various other topics—including DC comics characters and Star Wars characters—that consist of individual rectangular cards for the various individual items treated, hinged to open out like a fan.) The wargaming uses may be derived from that, although many of them don't seem to involve actual decks of cards; so the meaning "an index of individual characters, listing their powers, appearances, and so forth" may be more prominent there, with fan = fanatic rather than fan = hand fan being taken as the first element. Deor (talk) 13:24, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * And here I thought it was Spandex as worn by fans of something. Like Tron Guy. —Angr (talk) 13:40, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! Thanks! I think I'll put a RESOLVED badge on here before the jokes start pouring in.....''doh! too late...!'' ;) --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  14:20, 5 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Another example of "fan deck," as in this photo, is a collection of color samples for paint or ink. You can readily find fan decks at decorating stores, paint shops, and printers (fan decks of the Pantone colors). --- OtherDave (talk) 19:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Why did Beijing used to be called Peking?
--75.15.161.185 (talk) 19:11, 5 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Beijing discusses the k ~ j change. As for p ~ b, that is because Chinese distinguishes its plosives by aspiration rather than voice. Older romanisations (specifically, Wade-Giles) distinguished the aspirated and unaspirated labial plosives as p' and p (and didn't use b at all). The pinyin system mostly used today writes these two as p and b, which is a bit misleading for English speakers unfamiliar with the system, but does not require the apostrophes. --ColinFine (talk) 19:30, 5 March 2011 (UTC)


 * ColinFine's answer sums up all the reasons for this change. Just to clarify: the name of Beijing has not actually changed, Chinese speakers still pronounce it the same way they have for a long time; all that has changed is the way we non-Chinese spell that sound. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 02:50, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * ...and consequently pronounce it. HiLo48 (talk) 02:56, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Very true! Although for some things we still use the pronunciation based on the old spelling (Peking duck, Peking opera, Peking University) because I guess that's what everyone's gotten used to. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 03:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * So does a Chinaman say "Peking" or "Beijing"? DuncanHill (talk) 02:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * He says "北京", or /beɪˈdʒɪŋ/ in IPA. HiLo48 (talk) 03:03, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * He says :) r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 03:11, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * It depends on which Chinese he speaks. Listen more. Oda Mari (talk) 09:56, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * All of those seem to have a long delay between syllables, making me think it would be better translated into English as two words, perhaps "Bay Jing", or maybe hyphenated as "Bay-Jing". StuRat (talk)


 * Nah, those are just very (unnaturally) slow pronunciations, clearly given specifically for us foreigners to make sense of. You can hear more natural pronunciations in running speech (for example, 0:37 into this video). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 01:39, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, dude, "Chinaman" is not the preferred nomenclature. L ANTZY T ALK 01:29, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No worse than "dude", chum. DuncanHill (talk) 01:33, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * As I read the section I linked to, Mandarin pronunciation has changed in the last four centuries. Or is it saying that the /kʲ/ pronunciation was already obsolete then, but that the romanisers chose to represent it? --ColinFine (talk) 10:46, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't agree that using p and b is misleading compared to using p and p`. I think the reverse is true. An English speaker who approximates the pinyin b with the English b would generally be understood quite well by a Chinese speaker, but an English speaker who tries to approximate the pinyin b with the English p, as the W-G spelling suggests, would be less likely to be understood, especially because an untrained speaker, whether English or Chinese, would not understand the distinction attempted by p` and p. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:32, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, both systems are misleading to some extent, but for speakers of different languages. Pinyin is the less misleading system for speakers of most Germanic languages, where either voiceless plosives are redundantly aspirated or the historical voicing distinction has been replaced by one of aspiration. Wale-Giles is the less misleading system for speakers of Romance and Slavic languages, where the distinction is only or almost only one of voicing, and for people familiar with IPA and/or with multiple languages, who expect by default the Latin letters to distinguish voicing and not aspiration.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:00, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

French speaker help
I know the word pétillant means something like 'effervescent', as in un champagne pétillant. However I have seen it used as a modifier of 'un regard', as in, 'Elle a un regard pétillant'. In this case, what does it mean? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 20:18, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Larousse translates "avoir le regard pétillant" as "to have a twinkle in one's eyes". ---Sluzzelin  talk  20:41, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * See also pétiller:
 * (intransitive, of a liquid) to fizz, to be fizzy, bubble, bubble up
 * (intransitive, of fire, flames etc.) to crackle
 * (intransitive, of eyes) to sparkle, twinkle, flutter
 * Son sourire fit pétiller les yeux de son amant.
 * Her smile set put a twinkle into her lover's eyes (sic)
 * ---Sluzzelin talk  00:10, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess one English translation that works for champagne as well as eyes is "sparkling". ---Sluzzelin talk  00:37, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Notorious
Is there a common form of modern English in which the word "notorious" doesn't mean "notable for something very negative"? I've recently found a few articles where individuals (luckily no BLPs) are said to be "notorious" for something neutral or positive (Zara Cully, for instance). --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 23:11, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No, not in my opinion. I'd guess here that it's simply well-meaning editors who are either replacing or using "notorious" in place of "notable". Depending on the sentence, there are a couple of alternatives available: celebrated, distinguished, eminent, famed, etc... (watch out for unintentional "peacockery", though). "Noteworthy" is a pretty good synonym, usually. — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;•&thinsp;Contribs) 23:32, 5 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The OED lists notorious to mean notable with no negative connotations with quotes from the 90s, while similar uses are marked obsolete. But I think notorious is often just used loosely for extra emphasis, there is often a bleed across of meaning, Cully for instance being "notable for playing someone notoriously bad tempered" can easily become "notorious for playing...".  meltBanana  00:29, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, 1983 edition, has it "now only in a bad sense". DuncanHill (talk) 00:39, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * That's what my dictionary says too - always negative. I agree, too, that most are simple good faith errors. I'll search for more mistaken uses next week when I feel better. Thanks, everyone. --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 00:53, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * My sense is that "notorious" always has a negative connotation, is all. Even if such meaning is generally "light", the negativity is still there. I can think of vernacular uses where the meaning isn't really negative, but the reason that the word is used that way is because it contains a negative... uh, aspect. Make sense? (ps.: I'd think that it would go without saying that we should avoid vernacular uses of words within articles.) — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 01:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a legal usage related to adverse possession that in some sense is not necessarily negative; at least, if you want to prevail on such a claim, your possession must have been "open and notorious". Maybe even "open, hostile, and notorious" if I recall correctly.  So the notoriousness would have been negative in regard to your relations with the other party,  but positive insofar as it affects your claim.
 * Also, I think a common-law marriage must be "open and notorious". --Trovatore (talk) 21:12, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Related is the use of "infamous" to mean "famous." I have had to edit that out of Wiki articles before. Also, Time writer Megan Gibson referred to Martin Luther King's "infamous I Had a Dream speech" in the first published version of this article. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 18:53, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You know, in-famous. That's when you're more than famous.  Like the in-famous El Guapo. --Trovatore (talk) 01:58, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

coordinate adjectives comma use
Nothing like a bit of grammatical minutiae to pass some time, eh? What do you think is better:

Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933), is a Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal, Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia and Primate Emeritus of Brazil.

Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933), is a Brazilian, Roman Catholic, Cardinal, Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil.

Or actually, now that I'm really looking at it, maybe something like:

Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933), is a Brazilian, Roman Catholic, Cardinal. He is Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil.

(Note that the use, or not, of harvard comma's here is completely secondary. What I'm really curious about is opinions on the comma's between "Brazilian, Roman Catholic, Cardinal".)


 * Actually, (and yea, go ahead and call me a dork for answering my own post here) whatever this is, it can't be "coordinate adjectives", since the words being separated by the commas are not adjectival forms... I knew that already, it's just that I couldn't find a better title for what I was wondering about, here. I'd guess that this would fall under "general comma use". — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;•&thinsp;Contribs) 23:35, 5 March 2011 (UTC)


 * To start off with, I can give you a free opinion on your inappropriate use of the apostrophe in "comma's", if you like. Wait, I think I just did.  :)  But to return to the question, there should be no commas between "Brazilian, Roman Catholic, Cardinal".
 * To summarise: no commas and no comma's. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  23:42, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * heh, busted! In my defense, I had meant to change that, I just became rushed and ended up posting instead of previewing... *shrug* — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 23:50, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * If you put the commas in, it makes "Roman Catholic" an incidental description rather than a phrase specifying "Cardinal". That could make sense in certain circumstances (if the context were discussing a load of cardinals, some of whom were RC and others not) but aside from that (counterfactual?) context, it reads oddly. --ColinFine (talk) 00:28, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Good point. I think that what I'm getting hung up on here is the way that his nationality is being smushed into the sentence. My reading is similar to your own in that "Roman Catholic" and "Cardinal" are very close here, if not inseparable. The "Brazilian" trait, on the other hand, is rather distant to the rest of the construct. I mean, that he is Brazilian has very little, if anything, to do with his Roman Catholic Cardinal-hood; and vice-versa, of course. So... there should be something changed in the way that sentence is constructed, no? — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 01:14, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * All three are wrong. Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933) is a Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal. He is the Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. No commas whatsoever. (Edit to add: the comma after the date is also grammatically wrong. No commas at all can be used in this paragraph as written.) --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 01:10, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd dispute the date comment, Nellie. Standard date formats are: 19 October 1933 (British and Commonweath) and October 19, 1933 (North American).  If you didn't have the comma in the latter version, you'd be butting 19 up against 1933 (October 19 1933), which looks very unorthodox, to say the least.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  02:17, 6 March 2011 (UTC) (I misinterpreted the comment)


 * I think everyone's suggestion that most of the commas should go is right; in particular, the comma after the date is just plain wrong, it's not a style issue. Basically, there are three things that Agnelo is:
 * a Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal
 * Archbishop Emeritus of Sao Salvador da Bahia
 * Primate Emeritus of Brazil
 * These things can be separated by commas, put into separate sentences, or whatever. But commas shouldn't be used within any of them.
 * To get rid of the ambiguity about Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal (is he a Roman Catholic cardinal who happens to be Brazilian, or is there a branch of Catholicism called Brazilian Roman Catholic, and he is a cardinal of that?), you can reword that bit to "A Roman Catholic cardinal of Brazilian nationality"
 * So basically my suggestion, similar to Nellie's, would be something along the lines of ...is a Roman Catholic cardinal from Brazil. He is the Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 02:56, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That's basically where I'm at, as well. The only hang-up I have left is the apparent (and, to me, somewhat odd) aversion to commas in general which is being displayed here. I just don't get it. So, my (current) version would be: Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933), is a Roman Catholic Cardinal from Brazil. He is the Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. As was already pointed out above, there are four data points here: Brazilian, RC Cardinal, Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. These are worked into two somewhat compact sentences, with two data points given to each sentence. Within the individual sentences the data points are then separated by commas. It seems to me that's what a comma is for, isn't it? — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 03:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * But why have a comma after the closing bracket? You wouldn't write: Bill Smith, is a Canadian geologist ..., would you?  The birth date is parenthetical, requiring either a set of brackets or a set of commas, but not some mixture.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  03:57, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see that comma now... Not sure where, or why, that snuck in there. You're correct on that point. So, were at: Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933) is a Roman Catholic Cardinal from Brazil. He is the Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. — <span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace ;font-style:italic">V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 04:11, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Your second sentence now reads "He is A, and B." The comma before the "and" should be removed: Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933) is a Roman Catholic Cardinal from Brazil. He is the Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. —Angr (talk) 18:11, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No, it most certainly should not be removed. See: Serial comma. — <span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace ;font-style:italic">V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 00:47, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As that article explains, the serial comma is only ever used with a list of three or more items. You would not write "The flowers are blue, and yellow." or "France, and Germany went to war." Some writers may occasionally put a comma between two items when the second item is added as a sort of afterthought ("He is the Archbishop of Canterbury, and an excellent tennis player"), but even that is not usual and I don't think that is your intent here. In short, and as Angr said, you have a choice between "Agnelo is A, B, and C" and "Agnelo is A. He is B and C". Lesgles (talk) 01:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * "France, and Germany, went to war."
 * Anyway... I'm getting weary of this (I have to type too many colons in order to reply now, anyway!). Thanks for the conversation, folks. — <span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace ;font-style:italic">V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 05:11, 7 March 2011 (UTC)