Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 December 18

= December 18 =

Japanese
What's the difference between 天 and 空? What about 川 and 河? --107.207.240.46 (talk) 02:39, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

天 -the heavens, home of the gods, emperor 'feeling'. 空- weather, the sky 'feeling'. 川 the normal ordinary 'river'. 河 -used in names /place names.--Jondel (talk) 02:46, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * 空 is simply the sky and used with "air"-related words like air/空気 and airport/空港. Other meanings are emptiness and vanity. 天 is also the sky and it connotes something celestial. Astronomy is 天文学 and Milky Way is 天の川. 川 is general rivers. Originally 河 was a proper noun and it meant Yellow River. 河 is bigger rivers, but it is correct to use 川 for river names like Hudson River/ハドソン川 in ja except some Chinese river names. Oda Mari (talk) 17:43, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Chinese reading
The name Min Yingjun 闵应军 - Which "ying" is in the name? It's for the article Chenpeng Village Primary School stabbing ‎ WhisperToMe (talk) 19:29, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * It's the middle one. Normally pronounced 'xing', but in names it can be 'ying'.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  23:50, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

：:Based on WhisperToMe's previous questions, I think this is about the correct tone for the character (应 can be pronounced either yīng as in 应该, or yìng as in 回应; as far as I know it's never pronounced as xing). I'm afraid I don't know the answer, but I'm fairly sure that's what is being asked. 59.108.42.46 (talk) 04:28, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * sorry, I completely misunderstood the question, and also mistook the character for another one (the 'xing' in 'gaoxing'). Disregard my previous answer.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  12:14, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

What I want to know was the correct tone for 应, would it be Yìng or yīng? WhisperToMe (talk) 16:05, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I believe it's yìng (mǐn yìngjūn). Marco polo (talk) 17:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree with Marco - using the character in a name in the sense in which it is read as "yīng" would be really odd, so I would assume "yìng" (4th tone) unless we have contrary information. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:09, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 17:34, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Japanese pronunciation
If n is directly before an m, is it still pronounced n, or does it become m like before b and p? For example, how is "Gunma" pronounced? --107.207.240.46 (talk) 21:23, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The "n" is pronounced typically (any possible exceptions to this escape me at the moment). I am no linguist so please forgive my nonsense explanation but I would pronounce it gu-n-ma (three syllables), closing the "u" sound with the "n" then proceeding with "ma". Someone else can probably explain much better. SassyLilNugget (talk) 21:32, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I know virtually no Japanese, but I'm doubting it's 3 syllables. --  Jack of Oz   [Talk]  21:40, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Not exactly three syllables, but 3 morae - yes, "n" really counts as a full syllable/mora in Japanese -- Ferkelparade &pi; 22:22, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It's [m] in Jimmu. I thought it was generally assimilated, but I am far from a fluent Japanese speaker. --ColinFine (talk) 00:42, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Listen to these native speakers' pronunciation. and at 00:16. Oda Mari (talk) 06:19, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Translating Japanese Article
Can someone here who speaks Japanese (preferably fluently) please manually (without an online translator) translate this article--http://www.saga-s.co.jp/news/global/corenews.0.2352588.article.html? I am a member of a forum on supercentenarians, as are some other Wikipedia users. We're unsure if this article is talking about Jiroemon Kimura currently being hospitalized or about him previously being hospitalized in July (or both). Thank you very much. Futurist110 (talk) 21:39, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

"According to [the] Guinness[Book of Records], the oldest person was a lady of 115 years of age, and who died on the 17th, of old age, so Jiroemon Kimura became the oldest person alive, at the age of 115.

According to Kyoutangou City, Mr. Kimura was working at the post office until the age of 65, and now lives with his older son's wife and grandson's wife.

It is said that 'early to bed and early to rise' was his way of life, and lived by saying 'delicious' at meals. On the 15th, his health deteriorated, and was hospitalised, just in case. He could speak and eat, and his health gradually got better, but there is no outlook on him returning from hospital."  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  23:36, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * On the 15th, do they mean July 15 or December 15? Futurist110 (talk) 23:46, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The article does not mention the month, but from the photos - interview with Guinness Book of Records journalist - it seems that he was being interviewed in October, and it looks like he was at home, and the date on the article is December 18th, so I would hazard a guess that it was December.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  23:55, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I think that you might be right about it being December. Thank you very much for your amazing help here. Futurist110 (talk) 00:12, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Not a problem. That's what we are here for.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  00:14, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Naming of the Wikipedias
Are there are discussions concerning the naming of the Wikipedias of the various languages? For example: Did the German Wikipedia members ever discuss whether to name it Wikipädie instead Wikipedia, or the French Wikipedia members ever discuss whether to name it Wikipedia instead of Wikipédia? Perhaps a secondary question: Has any Wikipedia community considered an entirely different name for their version (i.e., a name not based on variants of "Wiki-" or "-pedia"/"-παίδεια"?  Perhaps some actually do (calques or otherwise)? -- Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 22:44, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * de:Wikipädie was a hoax discussed in 2005 (result: delete: 6, keep: 1) . --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 08:45, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The Galician Wikipedia main page welcomes you with "Benvido(a) á Galipedia", but I guess "Wikipedia" is nonetheless the official name, because that's what the logo reads. --Theurgist (talk) 12:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The （simplified character) name of the Chinese version is 维基百科, which transliterates Weijibaike. The first part, 维基, is used in Chinese like the English "wiki".  It is a very rough transliteration of the English into Mandarin using characters that mean something like "connect" and "base, foundation".  The second part, 百科, has really no connection to "-pedia"/"-παίδεια" except that the first character sort of approximates the pronunciation of the first syllable of "-παίδεια".  The two characters together mean "a hundred branches of study" or "a hundred areas of knowledge".  Marco polo (talk) 17:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "百科" is short for 百科全书, which is encyclopedia in Mandarin Chinese. — SMUconlaw (talk) 20:01, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And 百科全书 means literally "the complete book of a hundred subjects". "全书" is a traditional term used for large compilation volumes, such as the Siku Quanshu, the term "百科全书" was coined to refer to the modern Western encyclopaedias and emphasises the comprehensive nature of the subject areas covered. In colloquial speech, 百科全书 is often abbreviated to "百科".
 * I am pretty sure that 百科 was never intended to be a transliteration of "-paedia". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:58, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * See a early version of deutsche.wikipedia.org here: "Dies ist der/die/das neue deutschsprachige Wikipedia."  Rmhermen (talk) 20:45, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Why the "der/die/das"? Could they not decide what gender Wikipedia has? I would have thought it would follow from Enzyklopädie (i.e., die). — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 13:33, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The Welsh version, Wicipedia, is basically a transliteration of "Wikipedia" into Welsh orthography since we haven't had the letter "k" in the Welsh alphabet since the New Testament was translated in the 16th century (the English printers didn't have enough K's in their font sets to meet Welsh requirements, so we standardised on "c" for the hard "k" sound). Strictly speaking, I think we should have spelt it "Wicipîdïa" to get the long "e" and the "iya" sounds, but it didn't occur to me when I relaunched the Wiki in 2003 (it was basically me that restarted it after it went dormant, for the first few months it was just me writing the basic articles), but there's a general tendency to feel that too many diacritics looks silly, and we'd probably then get into an argument about whether we ought to use some sort of portmanteau of "wici" and "gwyddoniadur" (encyclopaedia). -- Arwel Parry (talk) 21:48, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * However, for English speaking Britons, Wikipeadia is a lost cause ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 13:03, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't you mean Wikipædia? OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 14:02, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I must get round to buying one of those Qwærty keyboards. Seriously though, and in my defence, I refer you to International Encyclopeadia for Corporations & Partnerships, Encyclopeadia of European Elections, Encyclopeadia of Jewish Communities of Lithuania, RHS Encyclopaedia of Planting Combinations and many more, if you can persuade Google not to auto-correct the spelling into Americanese. Good old Brittanica has stood by the classical æ spelling, even for its CD ROM version. Alansplodge (talk) 16:43, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I was curious about whether "Wikipædia" redirected to the Wikipedia article. It does! You can see Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia, and hide links, for more fun stuff. szyslak  ( t ) 15:07, 20 December 2012 (UTC)


 * As someone whose name historically includes the letter ash, I find this entire discussion offensive. And funny. μηδείς (talk) 23:58, 20 December 2012 (UTC)


 * On a somewhat different note, some Wiktionaries have namings not derived from wiki and dictionary (i.e., from Medieval Latin dictionarium). Example: the Icelandic version is called "Wikiorðabók" which is "Wiki" + "orðabók" (itself from "orð" (cognate with "word") and bók (obviously "book")). Same for the Old English edition: Wiciwordbōc (Wikiwordbook). πr2 (t • c) 04:40, 21 December 2012 (UTC)