Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 April 12

= April 12 =

Ejective consonants
How can I say ejective consonants? --108.206.4.199 (talk) 00:47, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * See Ejective consonant. Basically you just produce a closure somewhere in your mouth, and just "push" some air through it without "breathing". r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 00:57, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Italian help
Hello. I have a colleague whose surname is 'Guardalabene', a clearly Italian name. He was interested in the meaning and origin of this name but unfortunately I could not be of much help; I have tentatively translated it as 'Watches her well' (and by a leap one can guess 'her' refers to the Virgin Mary) but that doesn't make any sense. Can somebody help me out? Thanks. 24.92.85.35 (talk) 05:02, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it may be a varient of "good looking" similar sentiment, other Romance languages have similar surnames, c.f. Beauvoir in French (literally "beautifal view"). Google translate gives "Guarda la bene" as Italian for "view well", which is fairly close to the other surnames.  The Spanish equivalent is Bellavista or Buenavista, which are fairly common place names.  -- Jayron  32  13:42, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * My Italian is limited, but I think that the questioner's translation of the name is more accurate than Google's. Guardare means not only "look at" but also "look after" or "protect". The Italian equivalent of Bellavista would be either Bellavista (same as Spanish) or Bellaveduta.  The Italian equivalent of Beauvoir is Belvedere, which of course occurs in names of places in English-speaking countries.  I think Guardalabene originally did mean "look after her well".  Italian surnames often started as nicknames.  While the "her" in the name might have referred to the Virgin Mary (if the bearer of the name was the handyman for the "Our Lady of X" church, for example), it might also have referred to the wife of the original bearer of the name.  Marco polo (talk) 13:54, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Hence the proverb, dagli amici mi guardi Iddio, che dai nemici mi guardo io &mdash; "God protect me from my friends; from my enemies, I'll protect myself". --Trovatore (talk) 00:59, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Guardalabene would translate as "look after her well". I just confirmed this with my son whose first language is Italian. Protect in Italian is proteggere. I know a man whose surname is Guardala.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:01, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I was told by my Italian grandmother it means "guard her good" or "guard her well" who she is I don't know a wife ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:6000:ffc0:7c:4434:918d:1147:400 (talk) 02:58, 11 April 2017 (UTC)


 * "She" could be any feminine noun, including for example anything ending in –zione. —Tamfang (talk) 04:18, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Grammar
hello,

what is the difference between "as I did [before]" and "like I did [before]"? Thanks.-- GoP T C N 08:15, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The first sounds more formal, the latter more colloquial. — kwami (talk) 08:16, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * MWCD has this to say, re. those who object to its use in place of "as":
 * Like has been used as a conjunction since the 14th century. In the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries it was used in serious literature, but not often; in the 17th and 18th centuries it grew more frequent but less literary. It became markedly more frequent in literary use again in the 19th century. By mid-century it was coming under critical fire, but not from grammarians, oddly enough, who were wrangling over whether it could be called a preposition or not. There is no doubt that, after 600 years of use, conjunctive like is firmly established. It has been used by many prestigious literary figures of the past, though perhaps not in their most elevated works; in modern use it may be found in literature, journalism, and scholarly writing. While the present objection to it is perhaps more heated than rational, someone writing in a formal prose style may well prefer to use as, as if, such as, or an entirely different construction instead.
 * — kwami (talk) 08:25, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The entire controversy, even today, is centered around a 60-year-old cigarette ad. We even have an article about it: Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 11:59, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

As knows him..?
Hi, Translating Faye's the Gods of Gotham, I found the sentences as follow:

"Thank you. Shake hands with Julius Carpenter for me."

(........)

"Oh, any of us see him as knows him, that we will, Mr. Wilde."

I don't understand what the second sentence exactly means. The speaker of the second sentence is an Afro-American living in the slums in New York in mid-19th century.

Please help.--Analphil (talk) 15:51, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

But this periphrasis loses a lot of the verve of the original! ('As' is being used as a colloquialism for the correlative 'who': "Anyone as knows him" = "Anyone who knows him".) -- Elphion (talk) 16:13, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Roughly: Any of us that sees him, and knows him (to be Julius Carpenter), will do that, Mr. Wilde.


 * Thank you! --Analphil (talk) 16:46, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I read an implied 'if' before 'any'. —Tamfang (talk) 18:39, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Civil Union in Spanish
What is the best way to translate "Civil Union" for Spanish-speakers in the U.S.? Is it as simple as unión civil? The only other translations I could find through googling are unión concubinaria, which appears to be uniquely Uruguayan, and unión homosexual, which isn't always accurate or appropriate. 205.156.136.229 (talk) 15:54, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Unión civil seems to be widely used. See these examples:    Marco polo (talk) 17:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Unión civil. TheMysticThought (talk) 19:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)