Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 October 23

= October 23 =

why would a great reckoning in a little room strike a man dead?
If someone were unaware of the Marlowe reference, what would this mean: "it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room." (Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, 3). Why would that strike a man dead? (I am not referring to the whole line, i.e., the idea of being misunderstood, etc. -- just the idea of a "reckoning in a little room" and why it might be fatal.)71.101.96.129 (talk) 01:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It is widely believed that this is a reference to the murder of Christopher Marlowe, who was stabbed after a meal in an argument over the "reckoning" or bill (or check, if you're American). --Nicknack009 (talk) 07:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * ... and I would guess that the scandal was fairly well known to Shakespeare's audience, especially with its suggestion of corruption in high places. Was Shakespeare getting in a dig at  Thomas Walsingham, or at  Robert Cecil of the Secret Service, just as modern comedians weave in comments on current scandals?    D b f i r s   08:20, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * And to actually answer the original question (which specifically said "If someone were unaware of the Marlowe reference"): not a thing. Without that context it is an image with no import. --ColinFine (talk) 14:23, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks Colin. Is there anyone who disagrees with Colin's statement that the phrase is meaningless except in the context of Marlowe?  "Reckoning" can also mean "the end" in a religious sense, or "the bad consequences" in a historical or personal sense.71.101.96.129 (talk) 20:25, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * No, I thought Shakespeare was just playing with the words (aware of the partial double meaning), but didn't dare state so in case I'd missed something that experts were aware of. Thanks Colin.    D b f i r s   21:45, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Although I have always assumed it was a reference to Marlowe's death, I will play devil's advocate here and point out that the phrase isn't completely meaningless if simply taken literally. A great reckoning could mean the most serious kind of retribution -- as in "Day of Reckoning" -- and a small room is a space in which evasion or retreat might be impossible. Mandrakos (talk) 16:28, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Question: A long sentence
"... the Japanese doujinshi industryis widespread and legal action by companies whose characters and fictional properties are being used without their formal permission is uncommon."

- Golden_Sun_(series) Like this sentence, what's mean of "is widespread and legal action by companies"? (Or use simple sentence to express this complex sentence.) Thank you!--铁铁的火大了 (talk) 02:27, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * You're breaking it in the wrong places. It should be:


 * ... the Japanese doujinshi industry is widespread ...
 * ... and ...
 * ... legal action by companies whose characters and fictional properties are being used without their formal permission is uncommon.


 * In the last part, "companies whose characters and fictional properties are being used without their formal permission" is one big noun phrase. The core idea of this part is "legal action by companies is uncommon". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.116.118 (talk) 03:19, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * 86.179.116.118 (talk) 03:11, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you!--铁铁的火大了 (talk) 05:29, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The grammatical rule is that a comma should be placed between two independent clauses, which the original writer of that section failed to do; putting a comma between "widespread" and "and" immediately clarifies the sentence . . . which is the point of the rule. I've now fixed it.  Textorus (talk) 11:41, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Unfamiliar word
In Hattendorf, it gives a definition of the word "habirarion". Only problem is, I can't find any ghits for it. Is there a word in actual use that fits the definition? Clarityfiend (talk) 03:15, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I was going to say that in light of that lack of evidence, and noting that "Habirarion names are those family names which are dirved [sic] from ...", I would doubt such a word exists.
 * But then I found 139 hits for "habirarion". --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  04:10, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * But every one of those hits is either Wikipedia or a mirror, or scanning errors for "habitation", which is the word that would make the most sense in the Hattendorf article. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:00, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * ... so let's just correct the article before someone adds "habirarion" and "dirved" to wiktionary, citing all these usages.   D b f i r s   07:34, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ya dirved us to it. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:16, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem with traditional Chinese character: three-stroke water radical on the left, 門 with a little 東 underneath
Hi all. Context: Heilan Home, as previous versions of its parent corporate group may well have pre-dated simplified Chinese characters. When I enter what I (WinXP, Firefox 8.0) see as the character, it comes out as eszett and a capital N with a tilde. Komatta na! Is it something I'm doing wrong with the character encoding? --Shirt58 (talk) 09:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This one? 瀾 But it's not 東 in 門, but 柬. Oda Mari (talk) 10:39, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * :-)--Shirt58 (talk) 12:02, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Italian learners' podcasts
Greetings all. I find the RFI news podcasts very helpful for my French aural comprehension (and when I was beginning, the français facile podcast with a transcript was great). Is there something similar available in Italian? I have a decent Italian vocabulary -- I could read a newspaper without too much trouble, and struggle through a novel with a bit of help -- but my listening skills are not so good. Therefore something with a transcript would be best of all, but news-type podcasts where I would have a good idea what they were about would be helpful too. Any suggestions? Tinfoilcat (talk) 14:10, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Roman
When was the word "Roman" first used, like in Roman Empire or "he is Roman".--Doug Coldwell talk 18:09, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you're referring to the English language word, the Online Etymology dictionary says it goes back to the Old English word "romanisc". Not to surprising, since the Romans ruled England until the mid-400's. Looie496 (talk) 18:27, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, it derives from the Latin Romanus, so presumably it's as old as Rome itself. (What A.U.C. is it today?) -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  18:29, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Except that "Roman" is an English word, and the English language did not exist in the 8th century BC. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  18:57, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't have references handy, but the Old English romanisc would have morphed into Romanish in modern English. Instead, we have Roman, which is surely derived from Old French romain or an Norman cognate.  Anglo-Norman forms such as this gained currency in Middle English during the 15th century, so it is likely during the early 15th century that Roman took the place of Romanish in Middle English, though the first use could have been up to 3 centuries earlier.  Marco polo (talk) 19:11, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

The Etruscan name for the Tiber was Rumon which may be related to the PIE root *sreu- which gives stream in English. Their word for the city was Rumaχ. The name likely predates Latin dominance. μηδείς (talk) 19:26, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for answers.--Doug Coldwell talk 11:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Vowel length in Japanese songs
Hi, in English, vowel lengths in song lyrics can be dramatically altered to fit the melody. As far as I can gather, the same thing happens in Japanese, but does this make it even harder to understand the meaning of lyrics, given that vowel length is essential to meaning in a way that is usually not the case in English? I mean, Japanese already has an outrageous number of homophones, and if long and short vowels also potentially become confused I'm surprised anyone has the faintest idea what a song is about! 81.159.110.218 (talk) 20:33, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily! The power of context to shed meaning on a confusing usage is really amazing. On the other hand, you are right that it can make things more difficult, and it makes for a lot of clever (and occasionally unintended!) wordplay, which can really make another tired Ayu song into something pretty entertaining.Matttoothman (talk) 20:44, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't speak Japanese, but a similar question is often asked about Chinese (regarding tones rather than vowel lengths), and the answer in that case is also pretty much what Matt said. Even without tone/length to tell you exactly which word the singer means, context tells you. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 20:51, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There are some good examples at Soramimi, too. Matttoothman (talk) 20:53, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, in fact, I am a bit confused about whether Japanese long vowels are actually always identical to short vowels except held for longer, or if there is sometimes also a difference in quality. For example, listening to the pronunciation of 負う (おう) at WWWJDIC, it definitely seems like two sounds to me, yet in other cases the おう combination sounds more like just a longer version of お. Why is that? Also, is おお identical to おう? Is えい identical to ええ? Could anyone help clarify all this stuff? 81.159.110.218 (talk) 22:10, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In my (non-native-speaker) experience, おお/おう and えい/ええ are pronounced identically - as long as you're talking about using the vowel digraphs for lengthening. This may not be completely relevant, but just for clarity's sake - for something like 思う（おもう）, where the おう segment/sound crosses a morpheme boundary, both vowels are pronounced separately. Orthography is a tricky business, and I usually just blame kana weirdness. Matttoothman (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Acronyms and redundant spelling
This is a great prescription/description question. In a clause like "...the ability to connect multiple NES systems together..." or "...protocols for different ATM machines..." would any of you prefer "...the ability to connect multiple NESs together...", etc. to avoid, what in my mind at least, reads as 'Nintendo Entertainment System systems' or 'Automatic Teller Machine machines'? The former example clearly wins on readability, but I could understand arguing for the latter. "ATMs" doesn't bother me, but "NESs" does. Matttoothman (talk) 20:35, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The article about this RAS syndrome doesn't exactly answer the question, and I'm not sure there's a hard-and-fast rule for acronyms in any case. For example, "Runs Batted In" gets abbreviated to both "RBI" and "RBIs" (or "RBI's"). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:31, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * For the plurals of acronyms, there is an exception that says you can use an apostrophe, so NES's would be the preferred plural in most publications, I believe. --Lgriot (talk) 08:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * What's wrong with NESs/NES's/NESes? Is it just the spelling?  You could always say "multiple NES consoles" or "NES units" if you're upset by the redundancy but find the S-s combination unwieldy. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:45, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The use of apostrophes to form plurals of acronyms is an unpleasant practice in my opinion. PC's, CD's, DVD's ... yuk, horrible. 86.177.106.20 (talk) 11:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It helps clarify that it's a pluralization rather than being part of the acronym itself. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:26, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There is that, but then, how many acronyms mix upper and lower case letters? Very few, it seems to me.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:42, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * MiLB comes to mind immediately. Although there's only one of them. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:00, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * And IMDb and IBDb, but only one of each. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  05:51, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's a few more: SoHo, TriBeCa, NoMad, VoIP, DoS, TfL, Gbps, perhaps Wi-Fi and Hi-Fi, LHCb, MoEDAL, and my favorite, WoO. Pfly (talk) 08:16, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps I should have asked how many acronyms mixing upper and lower case letters are used more or less every day of the week by "the man in the street". Even fewer than "very few".  And none of the above.  I agree with Friend 86.177.106.20: apostrophes are most unpleasant creatures, and it's distressing to delicate and sensitive people to see them sticking their noses in where they're not needed. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  18:37, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, if "use" includes saying out loud, a lot of people say SoHo and TriBeCa, in NYC at least. Of course many, maybe most may not know they are acronyms. Anyway, this is all tangential to the original question. Me, I almost always just add an -s without an apostrophe, and even if the result was NESs. Occasionally I come across an exception, where I feel an apostrophe would be useful to avoid possible confusion. Pfly (talk) 22:30, 26 October 2011 (UTC)