Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 May 13

= May 13 =

Intrusive word
Hey, me again, sorry for two questions in such a quick succession but my Spanish-speaking roommate is out and this is kinda urgent (for a paper due tomorrow). In Spanish when the subject precedes the verb one can cram an incredible amount of information between them with relative ease. When it comes after (as it sometimes does, due to the flexibility of Spanish syntax), this is still possible to a much more limited extent. My question is, in the latter case how much is "too much", as a rule of thumb (and what kinds of information can and cannot be crammed in)? For example, does it work to say "Hay muchas cuestiones a que se enfrenta hoy nuestra sociedad" (with hoy the "intrusive word"?) Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 02:31, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * That does sound a little inflated to me. I am by no means a native speaker (re: below). It would seem that the use of "hay" and "hoy" in the same sentence make for redundancy. Choose one or the other: "Hoy se enfrenta muchas cuestiones nuestra sociedad" or "Hay muchas cuestiones se enfrenta nuestra sociedad." Schyler  ( one language ) 03:09, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * My Spanish is very limited, but I think that at least the second sentence proposed by Schyler is quite ungrammatical in Spanish. I'm not sure whether the first is ungrammatical or merely awkward.  Hopefully we will get a fluent Spanish speaker to comment.  Marco polo (talk) 17:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * "Hay muchas cuestiones a las que se enfrenta hoy nuestra sociedad" is a more natural phrasing--85.55.199.51 (talk) 21:36, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Reading Method
I have recently been attempting to read articles from a religious publication in Spanish. Is it better to translate word-for-word, looking up the words I don't know along the way? or should I read through and try to grasp the main idea? I find myself switching reading methods every other sentence. Thanks Wikipedians! Schyler ( one language ) 03:05, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It is believed in the Scientology organization that understanding of a book requires first complete understanding of the words. Their textbooks carry an introduction that warns the reader never to read past a word they cannot understand without getting it defined. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * They borrowed that from Winston Churchill, who may well have borrowed it from someone else. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  11:25, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * But that's at odds with everything I've ever heard from language pedagogy. It's best just to try your best to get the gist, only stopping to look up words if you find yourself totally lost. Often if you're a bit patient you can figure out unfamiliar words from the context. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 12:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's a pedagogical method that should be obvious to anyone who has helped a child acquire their first language: you need to have a certain amount of exposure to more 'advanced' language and vocabulary, in context, that doesn't make immediate sense, and which you do not completely understand, to advance in natural language. Humans can only stand the 'look every word up and completely understand all possible meanings' approach for a very limited time, and it doesn't make for natural idiomatic language. That way lies people claiming compound words and idioms cannot possibly mean what they clearly do. 86.164.60.255 (talk) 20:32, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * It depends if you're doing a translation or a paraphrase. For example, the King James Bible might be regarded as a translation, but the Living Bible is regarded as a paraphrase, where the words are translated from the original and then translated again into modern English. Do you want to share the exact translation, or convey the sense of the Spanish using idioms an English speaker would understand? --TammyMoet (talk) 14:58, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I definitely want to be pedagogical and definitely do not want to follow instructions from the church of scientology. I do indeed have both an English and a Spanish translation of the same magazine, so getting the gist is not difficult. I want this to help me to become a better Spanish reader, speaker, and listener. Schyler ( one language ) 15:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I can offer you these suggestions.
 * First, read through the English version.
 * Next, read through the Spanish version, highlighting with a yellow marker the words which you want to research.
 * Then, research the words which you have highlighted.
 * Finally, read through the Spanish version a second time.
 * I do not know your level of vocabulary, but you might find these links to be helpful.
 * http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Spanish_Swadesh_list
 * http://www.infovisual.info/index_es.html
 * http://www.watchtower.org/s/my/article_00.htm ("Las historias se cuentan en lenguaje sencillo.") If you change /s/ to /e/ in the web address, you can see the English version.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 18:42, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * OR: the first time I read a book in Swedish, at the beginning there were plenty of words I didn't understand, but I got enough to be able to follow the story and get the momentum to keep going, and by the end I was understanding far more. When I have tried to read books in Polish and Russian, though I understand some of it, there are just too many holes so I have never managed to build the momentum to keep going. (It's possible that the writing style had something to do with it - I got further with a novel by the Strugatsky brothers than one by Stanisław Lem). --ColinFine (talk) 00:13, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Word "few"
Where can i find the differents among few, afew and the few.124.43.25.100 (talk) 06:46, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * You might want to work on your spelling first. That's "grammar", "I" (capitalized), "differences", and "a few" (2 words).  See few.  As for "the few", that sometimes refers to an elite, as in "The few.  The proud.  The Marines." StuRat (talk) 06:52, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The original "The Few" was of course the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae but probably the best known The Few are the men of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain - they were immortalised by that appellation in a speech by Winston Churchill. Roger (talk) 11:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * few noun:  a small elite group ("It was designed for the discriminating few")
 * noun: an indefinite but relatively small number ("They bought a case of beer and drank a few")
 * adjective: a quantifier that can be used with countable nouns and is often preceded by `a'; a small but indefinite number ("A few weeks ago")
 * a (as in a few) is the indefinite article. Do not omit the space between a and few.
 * the (as in "the few") is the definite article.
 * Click on the links above for more information. The Languages Ref. Desk is a good place for this type of question. I changed the question title for easier reference. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:12, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * It's also amenable to be qualified. In the following, "a few" has rather different meanings:
 * How many people came to the meeting? Only a few.
 * How many people came to the free drinks afterwards? Quite a few.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  10:28, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I find it noteworthy that "few" and "a few" actually mean almost opposite things. "A few" emphasises that there are more than zero, but "few" emphasises there are not enough. J I P &#124; Talk 19:44, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being "not enough"; "few" merely means a small quantity of something. Juliancolton (talk) 23:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the emphasis is on "not many", while in "a few", it's on "more than zero". J I P  &#124; Talk 03:13, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * JIP is right that their meanings are opposite; "few" is treated more or less the same as a negative in theoretical accounts of quantification. Compare, for example, the messages expressed by the following two sentences: "A few studies have investigated this issue"; "Few studies have investigated this issue." r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 16:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

太平洋 (Japanese)
Hi, in the Japanese 太平洋 for Pacific Ocean, has the use of 平 been influenced by the name "Pacific", or did the Japanese independently deem the Ocean "flat", "calm" or "peaceful"? 86.160.220.82 (talk) 13:58, 13 May 2011 (UTC) PS: I just thought to look up the Chinese, and I gather the written name of the Ocean is the same, 太平洋, so please replace "Japanese" with "Chinese" in my question as necessary.
 * 太平洋 is a literal translation of "El Mare Pacificum". Oda Mari (talk) 15:42, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Mari, that's interesting. I thought that the Japanese/Chinese name for the ocean would have predated European contact -- but maybe in those long-ago days the people in the region only knew one ocean, so just called it "ocean"? 86.181.170.112 (talk) 17:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note that the English language did not have a name for the Atlantic Ocean (as opposed to other oceans) until the 16th century . Until then, the Atlantic was known simply as the Ocean or the Ocean Sea.   Marco polo (talk) 17:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Japanese people didn't take the ocean comprehensively. They call a body of water regionally like Sea of Hyūga, 日向灘 or 日向洋 in ja. You can see it on this 1880 map. This 1792 old map called the ocean "East Sea of Japan" (日本東海). Oda Mari (talk) 09:11, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The Chinese name is also a translation. Before contact with that concept, the Chinese divided the various parts of the Pacific ocean closest to the Chinese coast into parts like the East China Sea and the South China Sea, with further sub-divisions. Most of these names are still used today. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 06:02, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Figures of speech
If I stuttuttutter that might be onomatopoeia. But if I break off in the middle of a senten... Or if I'm not so think as you drunk I am, is there a term to cover the use of words as examples of the situation? hełþ. In the exact situation broken, interleaved, sentences are used to express fragmentation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.139.247.229 (talk) 14:34, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Stream of consciousness? (Think James Joyce's Ulysses.) --TammyMoet (talk) 14:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Self-exemplars, maybe? Monty Python (in one of their books) came up with a much more elaborate listing of figures of speech in this vein... AnonMoos (talk) 15:11, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Deliberately breaking off in the middle of a sentence is aposiopesis. Deor (talk) 16:00, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * They are examples of a perlocutionary act.  HTH, Robinh (talk) 02:46, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * See also self-referential sentences - the collection Metamagical Themas has an article on them. Sort of related: fumblerules. ---Sluzzelin talk  02:56, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Very many thanks to all. I was expecting one (perhaps greek) rhetoricians' term; your answers have been really useful. Fumblerule prize to See also: Muphry's Law. Be in touch, HJP  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.139.247.229 (talk) 17:08, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

"16 e.o."
I posted an ad for a sublet on craigslist, and I got a response from someone whose first language may be Russian that started: "I'm looking for a room for my friend from Russia. She's 16 e.o." Does this mean that she is 16 years old? I looked at a russian-english dictionary online, and the word for year that it gave me didn't seem to start with the russian version of an e.... Thanks for your help! I don't really want to live with a teenager in my house! :) Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:35, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't answer the question (maybe just a typo?), but be aware there are various scams (on both the tenant and landlord sides) around relating to this sort of situation - see here. The response you got sounds a lot like bait for something dubious. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:54, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * It might be that she is sixteen eons old, in which case you probably have some sort of wizard on your hands! Lexicografía (talk) 21:45, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * If the writer is Russian, it could be because the "ye" of year would be transliterated into Russian as the single letter "e", which is identical with the English letter "e", and he/she's confusing the transliteration with the English original. That's easy to do when some letters in Russian are identical with those in English in both look and pronunciation, while others look the same but are pronounced differently.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  21:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)