Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 September 21

= September 21 =

Translating Ionesco
It's been over eleven years since I read Ionesco's La Leçon, and I've been wondering about this ever since. Has anyone translated La Leçon into English (or any other language, but for the sake of discussion I'll assume an English translation). If so, how did the translator handle the line in which the Student asks the Teacher, "Comment dit-on 'grand-mère' en français?" A literal translation would lose the absurdity. An obvious (and appropriately Ionescian) solution would be to translate it as "How do you say 'grandmother' in English?" but I'm not sure how this would square with the translator's responsibility to maintain the integrity of the author's words. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.23.124.236 (talk) 04:02, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Translators make decisions like this all the time. Ever read poetry translated from a foreign language into English which still rhymes?  The translator's job is to maintain the integrity of the original work while also working to present the reader in both langauges with the same experience, and that often requires idiomatic vs. literal translation, and all sorts of other choices that a translator makes.  It is not an easy choice to make, and one which isn't unique to translating Ionesco.  -- Jayron  32  04:18, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

You can find the translation by Donald M. Allen on Amazon (in the collection The Bald Soprano and other plays) and use the preview, a trick that often works when Google Books fails you. Allen translates as follows:

"Pupil: Oh well, one would say, in French, I believe, the roses... of my... how do you say 'grandmother' in French? Professor: In French? Grandmother."

As it's understood that both are speaking French, the absurdity remains, though of course it's still not quite the same.--Rallette (talk) 07:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Etymology of patent leather
Where did patent leather get its "patent" name? I followed up the government invention patent idea, but the process seems to be very old and not originally patented. There are government invention patents on the process, but I don't think the term originated via invention patent. This website says patent leater came from: "After the Patten shoe which the young women wore in the buttery. When the cream spilled on their shoes, the fat would tend to make the leather shiny." Sounds good, but not sure whether it is true. Etymonline.com does not have an entry. -- Utmoatr (talk) 12:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The OED says:
 * The process of making patent leather was improved and commercially developed by Seth Boyden (1788–1870), U.S. inventor, but was not invented by him: see Sci. Amer. (1850) 3 Aug. 368/3.
 * Many of the other etymologies on that site seem pretty fanciful, frog in your throat probably wasn't about medieval doctors using frog medicine, the "chew the fat" etymology is rejected here so I wouldn't put much trust in their folk etymologies.  meltBanana  12:43, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It is a large dose of conjecture but it seems likely that Boyden named his development "patent leather" to suggest a wholly new process and one that was protected by patents to warn others off from it. Lacquered leather was a considerably older and similar invention from China, while this article mentions Edmund Prior and someone called Mollersten as earlier developers in 1799 and 1805 respectively.  meltBanana  13:38, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * That, to me, also seems the most plausible explanation, having regard to the meanings of the word patent. Is it possible to do a search on an online database to see if there is a 19th-century patent for this form of leather? Also, perhaps the Scientific American article has more information on the matter. — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 14:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't really - all it says is that patent leather, a European product, was known about in America, but nobody had any, except for a small group of coach-makers: and Seth Boyden, who worked for those coach-makers, "happened on one occasion to discover a small piece of patent leather" and, as it were, ripped it off. Wikipedia's patent leather article (which contains a lot more information now than it did when I last looked, thanks to the OP's editing work) says that what Seth Boyden had to work from was a German military cap front; I don't know what that would be doing in a coach maker's shop in Newark, New Jersey. It also cites three earlier inventors as holding (overlapping?) patents for shiny leather (starting with "Hand's patent leather" mentioned in The Bee).  Card Zero  (talk) 16:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, doesn't the fact that the article refers to the patents confirm the etymology of patent leather? — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 16:56, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * There are thousands of patents related to leather, and not just the shiny kind. There are millions of patents, and the subject matter of those patents do not automaticaly take on "patent" as part of the popular name. The automobile is called automobile, not patent automobile. Pants are called pants, not patent pants, even though there are early patents related to pants. I haven't seen any reliable sources that establish "patent" in "patent leather" came about because such leather is patented. Even the short version of the OED did not take on the task of figuring this out (If someone has access to the long version OED, please check). Patent leather's name originating from patten (shoe) seems more plausable, but still no reliable sources on that, either. The German military cap front was shiny leather and Boyden used that to improve the process. -- Utmoatr (talk) 12:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
 * "Patent" leather refers to Edmund Prior's 1799 patent and Charles Mollersten's 1805 patent, both of which were only effective in England and its colonies of the time. Boyden's 1818 process -- which was in all essential details identical to Mollersten's improvements on Prior -- merely popularized the method and the term used to describe it. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 19:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * If you have a reliable source for that, we can put it in the article. -- Utmoatr (talk) 12:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
 * And e-mail the information to OED. :-) — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 13:22, 22 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Ngrams shows a popularity of the term "patent leather" over time. There doesn't seem to be any dramatic jump in usage of the term. -- Utmoatr (talk) 13:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Regional accents of Northern Ireland
While it's very easy to differentiate between a Belfast and County Tyrone accent, I personally think the Portadown and Lurgan accents sound alike. But are they really? Are there any noticeable differences between the two accents, despite the towns being close together geographically? Thank you.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 15:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd seriously struggle to find any difference between the two, especially since the two towns are little more than five miles apart. --  the Great   Gavini  20:44, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * To my ears they sound exactly alike, but I wanted to be absolutely sure. In one of the neighbourhoods I lived in Dublin, the accents changed drastically just one street away!!--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 05:52, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I suppose it depends on whether you're from that area or somehow familiar with the local accents. I can clearly (and instantly) hear the difference in accent between the town in Scotland where I grew up and that of the next town, just 5 miles away, but I doubt anyone from the other side of Scotland could hear the difference, let alone anyone from even farther afield. I suspect the situation will be similar in Ulster. Zedeeyen (talk) 10:05, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

BBC's at it again
How does this sentence strike a non-Japanese speaker? How does the 'A-chan' fit into this gentleman's name? Is there nothing strange about it? In actual fact, this is a nickname, or term of endearment, and not part of the gentleman's name at all. I find it odd that the BBC has even included it in the news item. KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  17:03, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yokosuka resident Atsuhiko A-chan Hayasaka said strong winds were battering his house.
 * Sadly, it doesn't strike at all; it's entirely overlooked by this westerner, who presumes it might be part of the chap's name. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:06, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Just as I thought. Cheers. To me it's like having a news item about a hurricane which has just killed five people, etc., and an interview with William "Billy the Kid" Wilson, or something. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  17:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's his facebook page which links to "A-chan's Official Home Page!!" - Atsuhiko-A-chan-Hayasaka seems to be what he calls himself.  Card Zero  (talk) 17:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I really did not expect that..... :) Maybe that is actually how he has got in contact with the BBC - through Facebook.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  17:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, it's bad form in English, where such nicknames are usually put in scare quotes: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. μηδείς (talk) 17:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, it should be in quotes, if anything.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  17:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * If I didn't know anything about Japanese, I would have thought it was his middle name. Knowing a tiny bit about Japanese, I would have thought it was a woman (first name ending in -ko, the use of a kawaii nickname ending in -chan) if you hadn't said "this gentleman". Angr (talk) 18:00, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * '-ko' is indeed a female ending, but in this case it's 'hiko', which is generally male. 'Chan' can be used for men, but it's jokingly said, or as an extreme form of endearment, which is why I was surprised that the BBC were using it. As you know, Japanese don't have middle names (generally - some children from international marriages do, but they are not official).  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  18:48, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

asterisks for multiplication
Some (all?) computer programming languages required everything to be written using only characters on standard keyboards. One can write 3 x 4 (with the letter x as a substitute for ×) when one types a letter, but in programming languages one wants that letter to be available for other uses, so a workaround was adopted, the asterisk: 3 * 4.

But within Wikipedia there's a little menu from which one can chose the "×" character, and in TeX and LaTeX and the like one can write
 * $$ 3\times 5,\qquad 3\cdot 5,\qquad 3\otimes 5, \qquad 3\boxtimes 5,\qquad 3 \odot 5, $$

etc., etc. There's no need for uncouth substitutes or workarounds.

But within Wikipedia and elsewhere, even today, one finds people eating mashed potatoes with their hands when silverware is available, writing
 * $$ 3*5 \, $$

in TeX!

Are people being taught in school today that the use of the asterisk for this purpose is a standard thing rather than a substitute used in the remote wilderness when limited to keyboard characters? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * PS: I will post this to the math reference desk as well. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Fewer keystrokes to enter, displays correctly in text console (nope, VGA text mode still doesn't do Unicode), can be pasted directly into a program, and can't be visually confused with an "x". There are many points in favor of the asterisk. The fancy symbols are just snobbery as far as I can tell. 67.162.90.113 (talk) 02:25, 22 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Agreed. The "×" was never a good idea, as it could easily be confused with the "x", which is widely used in algebra and up. Perhaps it's use should be restricted to when talking about a vector cross product versus a dot product. StuRat (talk) 03:51, 22 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think people are being taught to use an asterisk in schools, but keep in mind that many people who know how to use TeX are also people with experience with programming, and thus using * for multiplication probably seems natural to them. Also, the use of the asterisk makes some sense given that even on paper people often use a dot rather than an "x" for multiplication. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 04:22, 22 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Schoolchildren are certainly taught to use the asterisk for multiplication within computing, IT, and business classes, owing to its widespread use in programming languages and in business/financial software. There's a wide range of ways of representing multiplication, and it seems surprising to single out the * for a rant on Wikipedia, as it is considerably less ambiguous than the alternatives "x", ".", or placing letters side by side with no symbol.  But I hope you feel better having got this off your chest. After all, Wikipedia is here to help you. --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:41, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The asterisk was actually used for multiplication at around the same time as × was first used (1628 or 1631). It was used in Johann Rahn's Teutsche Algebra (1659), the source of our modern symbol for division, the obeliscus (or obelus): ÷. The obeliscus, as is obvious, is the direct opposite of the asteriscus, long before they were used for math. Both were originally used for editorial notation and invented by Greek scholars. The asteriscus for editorial additions, the obeliscus for editorial deletions - both surviving into modern typography as the notations *, †, and ‡; and in mathematics as ÷. So while the switch back to the asterisk might have been forced by keyboards, it was not entirely without precedent--  Obsidi ♠ n   Soul   14:57, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Definitely a far better answer than that writetn by Colapeninsula. Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:19, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
 * See the images at Tuf | Board Game | BoardGameGeek.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 06:25, 23 September 2011 (UTC)