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

= October 10 =

Japanese translation
Hi, there is an example sentence at Japanese writing system:


 * ラドクリフ、マラソン五輪代表に1万m出場にも含み

translated as


 * "Radcliffe to compete in Olympic marathon, also implied to appear in the 10,000 m"

To me, "also implied to appear" reads strangely, and I feel sure there must be a better translation, but I am not clear exactly what 含み means here. I raised this on the article's talk page ages ago, but no response, and this annoys me every time I see it, so can anyone here help? 86.148.154.96 (talk) 01:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Expected? --Lgriot (talk) 07:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Hinted? Oda Mari (talk) 14:12, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "May appear"? Inter  change  able | talk to me  15:58, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, does 含み qualify マラソン and 1万m, or does it only qualify 1万m? 86.160.217.249 (talk) 19:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think both based on にも, but I look forward to being corrected if that's not right. Matttoothman (talk) 20:47, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The sentence can be translated as "Radcliffe, (already selected as) a marathon runner for the 2004 Athens Olympics, (hinted she) also wanted to/might compete in 10,000m". According to these, Radcliffe was already selected for the marathon. and . But she had to qualify 10,000m at that time.  Please paraphrase my translation more like a newspaper headline. Oda Mari (talk) 09:50, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Mari, does it mean that Radcliffe herself hinted that she wanted to/might compete in the 10,000 m? 86.177.107.234 (talk) 13:29, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably yes, I have no idea what the article on April 19 said though. But, she said so in this Guardian article on April 17, two days before the Japanese article. Oda Mari (talk) 15:24, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, I have changed it to "Radcliffe hints she may compete in Olympic 10,000 m as well as marathon". If anyone has any better ideas then please go ahead! 86.181.173.171 (talk) 19:53, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Explaining the concept of את (as in et, not at) to a non-Hebrew speaker
So I am wondering, how do you explain the concept of את to someone who's never studied Hebrew? Also, does a similar concept exist in other Semitic languages? If so, what is this concept called? I know a shoresh is basically a semitic root or tri-consonantal root, so this must have a name. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 12 Tishrei 5772 07:29, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * See Modern Hebrew grammar and wikt:את.
 * If I were to explain it to someone, I would probably say that את is a preposition that introduces semantically definite direct objects after transitive verbs, i.e. it introduces direct objects that are definite rather than indefinite by virtue of their meanings, including proper names. See the two links for other types of examples.
 * Like other prepositions, את incorporates personal pronouns into itself, and thus produces אותי, אותך, אותך, אותו, אותה ("me", "you" (m), "you" (f), "him", "her"), etc.
 * I think Arabic expresses this by means of the accusative case, and on other Semitic languages I cannot comment. --Theurgist (talk) 10:46, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Right, I've used definite object before, but never thought of also including transitive verbs in the definition (parlty because I didn't learn the actual difference in elementary school between transitive and intransitive). I say things that have the definite article of (-ה) before them or named things and a verb (sort of accusative) acting on them, but it's kind of eh. Ah yes, I messed up the second and third person plural on my most recent exam though. xD Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 12 Tishrei 5772 15:26, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't speak a word of Hebrew and those explanations make perfect sense to me, so you know you have something right! Inter  change  able | talk to me  16:00, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Classical Syriac has an accusative marker ܝܬ yāṯ, which is an obvious cognate of Hebrew et. It is said to be rare and archaic, but it does occur in the Syriac translation of Genesis 1: ܒܪܝܫܝܬ ܒܪܐ ܐܠܗܐ ܝܬ ܫܡܝܐ ܘܝܬ ܐܪܥܐ bə-rēšīṯā bərā ʾalāhā yāṯ šəmayā wə-yāṯ ʾarʿā ("In the beginning God created heaven and earth"). In this case it might be a calque of the original Hebrew. Arabic does not have anything of that kind. --188.110.100.141 (talk) 18:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not quite the same - for a start, it's a suffix - but in Amharic, the accusative ending "-ን" ("-n") is obligatory only if the object is definite. According to David Appleyard, Colloquial Amharic, "if [the noun] is indefinite, the object marker is usually left off, and is only added for clarity.". --ColinFine (talk) 23:20, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Child preference for accusative
While English doesn't decline many words, I've noticed when there are declined forms of words, small children seem to learn and use the accusative in preference to the nominative (or object/subject, whatever). So an example small child of my acquaintance, while now having a fairly sophisticated grammar and vocabulary, still produces in excited, spontaneous speech, things like, "Him's going to..." and "Them's want to...". Younger children seem to substitute 'me' for 'I' fairly often.

I've heard the use of 'him'/'them'/'me' in place of 'he'/'they'/'I', and even things like 'hims' in place of 'his'. But I have never heard the reverse substitution, with 'I' in place of 'me'/'he' in place of 'him', outside of adult hypercorrection. Is this the case in other languages? Do small German children use 'mich' and 'dich' in place of 'ich' and 'du', for example? 86.163.1.168 (talk) 12:10, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I would guess that it's a preference for the emphatic or independent or stand-alone pronoun forms (not the accusative), and certainly for the first person singular, in ordinary spoken English the stand-alone pronoun is "me". More relevant than German would be French, which has separate subject ("je"), object ("me") and stand-alone forms ("moi"). AnonMoos (talk) 12:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Indeed, in French, it's very common for smaller children to say Je parle à elle instead of the preferred Je lui parle (when trying to say "I speak to her"). -- 22:17, 10 October 2011‎ User:Omgosh30


 * It's not just children. You'll hear adults say "Me and him did it" or even "Me and him done it" (but not "Me did/done it" or "Him did/done it").  --  Jack of Oz  [your turn]  18:42, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I recall that many Romance nouns (or perhaps just French?) originate in the accusative forms of the noun, rather than the nominative. I would make a guess that these are related phenomenon.  Lsfreak (talk) 14:34, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The rule for "I" and "me" that Emonds (in Grammatically Deviant Prestige Constructions) suggests is the most likely one inducible by a child from the available input is "The subject pronouns I, 	we, he, she, and they 	are used as a noun phrase (NP) if and only if the phrase is an immediate 	constituent of a sentence (S) which contains an inflected verbal 	element". Little to do with case (which he suggests is so vestigial in English that children are unlikely to acquire it as an innate category), mostly a structural rule. If this is correct, then these subject pronouns are the marked alternative, in narrowly constrained contexts, and the "object" forms are the unmarked case, which one would therefore expect to be acquired first. --ColinFine (talk) 23:31, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Cool, that's very informative, Colin, and just the sort of thing I was looking for. I'm also interested by the French example above. So the pattern is different in childhood speech in other languages, depending on the markedness of the forms? 86.163.1.168 (talk) 15:27, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Origin of word yep
I am curious how the US slang term "yep" for the word yes came about. Would anyone happen to know the origin of "yep"? Thank you.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I assume it came about through people firmly closing their mouths at the end of the word "yes" to emphasize that that's all they had to say (the opposite is "nope"). The French word "ouiche" derived from people prolonging the word "oui" as an unvoiced vowel (i.e. IPA [wiçççç] became [wiʃ])... AnonMoos (talk)
 * The Wiktionary entry seems to agree with AnonMoos: Representing yes pronounced with the mouth snapped closed at the end. See also Nope. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:09, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Wherever it came from, it's been around quite awhile. "Yup" is a variation. I've also heard people say "yeppir" instead of "yes sir". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:12, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLdFFD8II8U Not particularly helpful, but I just have to... rʨ anaɢ (talk) 13:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * And 'yep' is so much easier to say than 'yes', and still carries the meaning if not the style. Richard Avery (talk) 15:32, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Is "yep" used anywhere outside the US? The British usually say yeah as I did when I was a teenager in California. I always presumed it had an origin from cowboys and the Old West.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 15:48, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Up here in the frozen north you can hear yep, yes, and yeah at various times - but that may just be from American influence. Inter  change  able | talk to me  15:58, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * yup. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:34, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, we say it over here in the UK too, but I imagine most people would know it's an Americanism. Probably from all those Wild West films that you kindly sent us over many decades. Alansplodge (talk) 17:39, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Gary Cooper was renowned for it. I remember the day he died and I still miss him.  --  Jack of Oz  [your turn]  18:36, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * He wore his finest for his funeral. He was dressed up like a million-dollar trooper. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:21, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "Yep" is used a lot in Norwegian, and has been around for as long as I can remember (which is not quite back to WW2, but close). The Norwegian spelling is "Jepp". The negative equivalent is "Niks", btw. I've never really thought of it as an americanism, but maybe it is. --NorwegianBluetalk 19:44, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * See Google Ngram Viewer: "yeah,yeh,yep,yup".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 21:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Spanish translation
As usual, when I try to translate a story in Spanish I am pretty good until just the end and thus I lose a lot of the point. This is from Tomás Rivera's ...y no se lo tragó la tierra. For context, in the earlier part of the story the narrator saw two people having sex on the floor of a tailoring store just before his first communion. I get the impression that the parts set off by em dashes are supposed to indicate dialogue, between the narrator and someone else, but I do not know who. If anyone here could help me with the translation, estaría muy feliz!

Here is the text:

—Y, éste qué tiene? Qué atenciones!

—Ándele, déjelo, compadre, no se apure por mí, yo tengo los míos. Estos chicos, todo lo que piensan es en jugar todo el tiempo. Déjelo, que se divierta, hoy en su primera comunión.

—Sí, sí, compadre, si yo no digo que no juegen. Pero tienen que aprender a ser más atendtos. Tienen que tener más respeto a los grandes, a sus mayores, contimás a su padrino.

—No, pos, eso sí.

Recuerdo que me fui rumbo al monte. Levanté unas piedras y se las tiré a unos nopales. Luego quebré unas botellas. Me trepé en un árbol y allí me quedé mucho rato hasta que me cansé de pensar. Cada rato recordaba la escena de la sastrería y allá solo hasta me entraba gusto al repasar. Hasta se me olvidó que le había echado mentiras al padre. Y luego me sentía lo mismo que cuando había oído hablar al misionero acerca de la gracia de Dios. Tenía ganas de saber más de todo. Y luego pensé que a lo mejor era lo mismo.

And here is my attempt at a translation. Some parts of it I figured out, some I thought I did but it doesn't actually make any sense, and other parts I can't get anything from.

—And what does this have? What attention!

—Come, let it be, friend, do not rush me, I have my own. These kids, all they think about is playing, all the time. Let it be, that it be fun, today in their first communion.

—Yes, yes, friend, if I do not tell them that they don't play. But they must lear to be more attentive. They must have more respect for the greats, their elders, much less their godfathers.

—??

I remember that I went to the mountain. I picked up some rocks and threw them at some cactus. Then I broke some bottles. I climbed a tree and remained there a long time I tired of thinking. Every time I remembered the scene at the tailor's and even there ??. Until I forgot that I had told lies to the pastor. ?? I felt like knowing more about everything. And then I thought that the better thing was the same. 68.54.4.162 (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You got a lot of it, here's one from a pro:
 * -So, what's the matter with him? Such manners!


 * -Ah, compadre, let him be. You don't have to be concerned on my account. I have my own. These young ones, all they can think about is playing. Let him have a good time, it's the day of his First Communion.


 * -Sure, compadre, I'm not saying they shouldn't play. But they have to learn to be more courteous. They have to show more respect toward adults, their elders, and all the more for their padrino.


 * -No, well, that's true.


 * I remember I headed toward the thicket. I picked up some rocks and threw them at the cactus. Then I broke some bottles. I climbed a tree and stayed there for a long time until I got tired of thinking. I kept remembering the scene at the cleaners, and there, alone, I even liked recalling it. I even forgot that I had lied to the priest. And then I felt the same as I once had when I had heard a missionary speak about the grace of God. I felt like knowing more about everything. And then it occurred to me that maybe everything was the same.
 * I remember I headed toward the thicket. I picked up some rocks and threw them at the cactus. Then I broke some bottles. I climbed a tree and stayed there for a long time until I got tired of thinking. I kept remembering the scene at the cleaners, and there, alone, I even liked recalling it. I even forgot that I had lied to the priest. And then I felt the same as I once had when I had heard a missionary speak about the grace of God. I felt like knowing more about everything. And then it occurred to me that maybe everything was the same.

This might be moving into RD/H territory, but do you or anyone have an interpretation of this last part (I know without the full story that might be difficult)? Maybe I missed something in the Spanish earlier in the story, but the three final sentences don't really make sense to me. Some of the context of my reading this is coming of age stories, so my thought is that it might be about sexual knowledge and how that changes people. But I don't really know how that would be supported by those last three lines, and the last one in particular which doesn't even mean anything to me. 68.54.4.162 (talk) 21:08, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * (this is Evangelina Vigil-Piñón's translation, p.116-117) Matttoothman (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh cool, thanks. I'm taking from this that the dialogue is between the two unnamed adults who were discussing the narrator's behavior as he ran out from the house.
 * I too read it as two unnamed adults, commenting on him running out of the party thrown for him. Maybe father and godfather (?), hence the "..all the more for their padrino." I think the last line is just an awkward translation - maybe "I guess you're right" would be better. Coming-of-age is a good theme, but also the traumatic nature of growing up and how childhood illusions get ruined. This (http://www.utpa.edu/dept/modlang/hipertexto/docs/Hiper9Socha.pdf) is cool, esp. with reference to "is he a child or man at the time of writing/recalling?" Also, what's RD/H? Matttoothman (talk) 21:26, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * RD/H is short for WP:RD/H, which is the humanities section of the reference desk. --NorwegianBluetalk 19:35, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

However?
I've been told recently by two different editors that "however" should not be used at the beginning of a sentence. However, I'm not convinced. Also, I've seen sentences that go "[yadda yadda yadda], however [blah blah blah]", which I think is wrong (though I'm really not sure). Where are the grammar police when you really need them? Clarityfiend (talk) 21:19, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * "However" at the start of a sentence is fine. It becomes tiresome if overused, however. "[yadda yadda yadda], however [blah blah blah]" is wrong. 86.160.217.249 (talk) 21:40, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * In prescriptive high-school grammar, "however" is a post-positive, which means it shouldn't come at the beginning of a clause (i.e., it's not a conjunction). For instance, He yadda yadda. However, she yadda yadda should (prescriptively) be He yadda yadda. She, however, yadda yadda. But this is one of those persnickety rules that has gone the way of the split infinitive and the ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition (i.e., rules that even most grammar nazis do not worry about much anymore). 

rʨ anaɢ (talk) 21:45, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * By "gone the way of", I take it you mean "returned like them to the oblivion it came from before somebody arbitrarily invented it"? --ColinFine (talk) 23:34, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In the second example, the however is preceded by a comma. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:47, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That doesn't matter. The rule isn't about whether or not it's preceded by a comma; it's a rule against however appearing at the beginning of clauses. rʨ anaɢ (talk) 04:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In that case, it's a comma splice. Nyttend (talk) 11:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Aaah. Thanks, Nyttend. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:17, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Professor Irwin Corey used to begin lectures with "However..." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * However did he manage that‽ -- Q Chris (talk) 07:55, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * See also WP:HOWEVERPUNC in the Wikipedia Manual of Style about this issue. —Bkell (talk) 11:27, 12 October 2011 (UTC)