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

= December 12 =

Snow name?
As I'm sure we all know, the First Nations do _not_ have fifty different names for snow - however, I was wondering if anyone does have a name for the type of snow that's falling round here at the moment. It consists of a very large quantity of little tiny _weeny_ snowflakes - if it were rain, I'd call it Haar, but it's quite definitely frozen (and very pretty). Types of snow isn't very helpful on this question, unfortunately. Tevildo (talk) 00:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Would you quantify that with Haar measure? --Trovatore (talk) 02:34, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't that be powder? μηδείς (talk) 02:21, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Do you have a picture of it? Where do you live? Adam Bishop (talk) 11:21, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Graupel, perhaps? Or maybe diamond dust, although the latter is not a "snow", but rather a fog frozen in a particular way. No such user (talk) 12:28, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The description of diamond dust sounds exactly like the weather conditions here (Hertfordshire) last night, although it wasn't particularly cold (certainly well above -10 C). Thanks for the info! Tevildo (talk) 21:49, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Please define "First Nations". Roger (talk) 12:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * First Nations. In this case, the reference is specifically to a well-known meme about Inuit languages. AlexTiefling (talk) 12:38, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I am actually familiar with that meme. I've obviously failed in my attempt to make a veiled point that one should not presume that all readers of WP Refdesks are fully conversant with the jargon of Canadian political correctness. Roger (talk) 12:50, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * And according to the article cited, "First Nations" specifically does not include Inuit. But I concur with Roger that unless a Canadian context has already been established, the phrase is puzzling to me. --ColinFine (talk) 12:55, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Graupel is rather like hailstones only a bit less dense, each pellet being a snowflake with an accumulation of rime ice. Graupel is sometimes called "soft hail". A good website about snowflake structure can be found at A Snowflake Primer... The basic facts about snowflakes and snow crystals and A Guide to Snowflakes ... A look at the different types of falling snow. Snowflakes form as hexagonal prisms, the classic snowflake shape is caused by an accumulation of water molecules on a basic prism shape. Alansplodge (talk) 14:06, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Graupel is definitely what we were getting yesterday in Milwaukee; thanks for that word! -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  14:16, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * For some reason Environment Canada does not believe that ice crystals occur when the temperature is above -16 C but they do sometimes. can't believe nobody linked to Eskimo words for snow. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 01:11, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Are eskimos in the common English language sense equivalent to "First Nations" the way OP uses it? I had been under the impression that "eskimos" are more or less the same as Inuits and live across the arctic north of North America (US, Canada and Greenland), whereas "First Nations" are basically Canadian American Indians, who are actually not "eskimos" at all. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The term "First Nations" does not include Inuit or Metis. "First Peoples" or "Aboriginals of Canada" are the inclusive terms. The term, "Eskimo" is now generally only used by Alaskans. Rmhermen (talk) 14:27, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * What Rmhermen said. And to be really pedantic Inuit is already the plural, Inuk is one person and Inuits is French. Of course in some dialects inuit (the lack of a capital was deliberate) does not refer to the people formerly called Eskimo but to all people from anywhere. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 04:01, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

@Twitter
What does the "at" refer to? Shouldn't it be "follow us on twitter"? bamse (talk) 09:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes and that's what is said when asking people to follow one on Twitter. The @ relates to aiming a remark at someone - plus it's a symbol whose name is "at" so is easy to use. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

"On" television/"in" a movie?
I am wondering if this strange divergence of idioms is purely an Americanism or if it manifests throughout the Anglosphere. It seems to me that there should be no linguistic distinction between the two. If one is in a film, then why would the same person be said to be on a television show? Why does the preposition magically change depending on the medium? And does this peculiarity manifest in any other languages? Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 12:01, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Sometimes it depends on the medium, or the actual physical apparatus. You can be "on TV", which means someone is watching you on an actual television. You can be "on a TV show" as you say, but also "in a TV show". You can be "in film", meaning you work in the film business somehow, and "on film", meaning someone is filming or has filmed you. You can be "in a movie", but not "on a movie", which differs from TV because TV shows are ongoing while movies are not. Mostly though, I suppose the answer is that prepositions are pretty arbitrary and never make any logical sense. Something similar happens in French I guess, where you can say "sur la télé" or "à la télé", but also "dans la télé", and always "dans un film", which is "sur l'écran" (or "sur l'affiche"). Adam Bishop (talk) 12:16, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I have to intervene here, if you are "sur la télé", you are actually sitting or standing on the TV set. If you are "dans la télé", you are actually inside the TV set. The only one I have heard of, for the telly, is "à". You can be "dans une émission/un film" in French, though, "in" a TV programme or movie. A movie is not "sur l'écran", but "à l'écran", "sur" sounds like someone printed frames of the movie and sellotaped them on the screen. But all this reinforces your correct statement: prepositions are set completely arbitrarily (at least in western languages, maybe in most languages which have prepositions). --Lgriot (talk) 10:13, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The phrase "dans la télé" is used in sub-standard French (e.g. by persons from the working class) to say "à la télé". Similar phrase was used for the radio: "Ils l'ont dit dans le poste" (Here I quote my grandmother). — AldoSyrt (talk) 07:56, 14 December 2012 (UTC)


 * In general terms though, the usage is the same in the UK as the US. In colloquial British speech however, there is another construction; "The time I met that bloke off of Blue Peter" ie "the person that appears in whatever". Also in British English, "a movie" is "a film" and "a television show" is "a television programme", although the American alternatives are widely used and understood. Alansplodge (talk) 13:49, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * "Off of" is British English? Bazza (talk) 16:22, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes. A feature particularly of colloquial London and South Eastern speech, often disparaged by pundits, and equivalent to "from" in many of its uses. --ColinFine (talk) 16:55, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Most of us on this side of the pond would omit the redundant preposition and just say "off Blue Peter" (or whatever), but it's still colloquial, so I suppose it doesn't matter what redundant prepositions you insert. As Colin says, formal English would be "from Blue Peter".  D b f i r s   18:48, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I think ultimately "on television" derives from what Adam is talking about: "There I was, on the television set, winning Ben Stein's money!" Television is a continuing, perpetual event. By contrast, an individual film is a discreet non-continuous entity: "I was in the movie Finding the Future." We do sometimes say that a person was "in" a given television series, when we mean that that were part of the ongoing cast; which I think derives from thinking of that series as a discreet whole, as if it were a long serialized film: "Ron Pearlman was in Beauty and the Beast (the real one, not the hack remake)." -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  14:13, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Similarly, "on" radio, but "in" the cast of a radio program. And "on" screen, "in" a movie. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:09, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * "I object to all this sex on the television. I mean - I keep falling off!". Unfortunately the old jokes don't work so well in these flat screen days. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 19:47, 13 December 2012 (UTC)