Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 December 8

= December 8 =

Written/typed kanji
Why are the written and typed forms of 心 so different? --168.7.238.166 (talk) 00:31, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Are they? The examples I can recall seeing are pretty similar. 86.171.43.129 (talk) 03:43, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * It depends on the handwriting of the person, and, in the case of typed forms, the font.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  06:14, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Some English cursive letters are quite different from typed letters, too. StuRat (talk) 07:05, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * There is also calligraphic writing. Just type 'kokoro' into a google image search and you'll see (but you'll get a massive amount of manga pictures, too).  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  08:05, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Searching instead for kokoro+kanji narrows it down some. —Tamfang (talk) 05:47, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * When taking notes, Japanese tend to write in a shorthand cursive form called gyosho. They look like Hiragana.--Jondel (talk) 08:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As I say, it depends on the person. Many females write in a very rounded and clear style, whilst most males write more like gyosho.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  14:38, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * In Grass script just about every character's written form is very different from ordinary printed forms... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] -- AnonMoos (talk) 13:12, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * But there is no reason to think that the written and typed forms of 心 differ more than is the case with other characters, right? In fact, I would imagine that they typically differ less than most other characters... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.86.8 (talk) 14:33, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Write out, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." on a piece of paper. Then compare it with what's written here on your computer screen, and you'll see how different they are.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  18:31, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That response does not seem to bear any relevance to what I wrote. 86.160.86.8 (talk) 20:26, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, if you cannot accept the fact that people do not write like computer fonts, then whatever. As a side note, why are we getting so many idiotic questions on the lingo desk recently? Is it because school has just recently started? I'm getting sick of this.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  23:49, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The answer to "why stupid question" is almost always "geolocate Rice University". μηδείς (talk) 05:10, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As I suspected. Cheers, Medeis. I had forgotten to geolocate the IP.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  08:27, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Idiots. 86.130.66.40 (talk) 12:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * 1. OP should refrain from gratuitous abuse of other users, calling Medeis and Kage idiots does not help your question getting resolved.
 * 2. OP geolocates to Surrey, in the UK.
 * 3. The answer to the initial question was given in the first coupel of responses: hand-written forms of Chinese characters differ from printed script just like in any other language, and there is nothing special about 心 that would make it differ more or less than any other character. If you saw some especially fanciful rendition of 心, that was probably just the writer being exuberant. If there is a particular example that you really can't understand, post a picture and perhaps the editors here can opine on the particular circumstance. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:15, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

"Duchess of Cambridge hoax call nurse"
As in Duchess of Cambridge hoax call nurse found dead - is it just me or does this construction sound strange to native speakers as well (in other words, how many attributes can you pile on a noun until it doesn't parse any longer...?) --217.227.57.128 (talk) 10:17, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Not sure ... sorry, going out to get myself a tall, skinny, sugar-free iced latte now. — SMUconlaw (talk) 11:04, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This kind of construction (common in British headlines) is called a crash blossom - see also Language Log on the subject; and more examples at www.crashblossoms.com. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:37, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Judging by that link, it's a rather different aspect of journalese. That's an irritating neologism to refer to an ambiguous headline; here we're talking about the habit of piling up attributive nouns (note, not adjectives, so the coffee example is also irrelevant) with no particular ambiguity. HenryFlower 11:48, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * :) — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:37, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * No-one writing good prose would ever think of piling all these nouns together attributively, and such constructions can be difficult to comprehend for people who have not been following the news. I suppose we just get used to parsing "headline English", but I'm slightly surprised at (and disappointed by) the BBC for descending to tabloid headline style.    D b f i r s  
 * How should the BBC have headlined it? Any old nurse being found dead wouldn't typically merit a BBC story. They had to identify the significance of that particular nurse. P.S. Consider yourself lucky it wasn't German. They probably would have made a single word out of it all. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:31, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "Nurse taking Duchess of Cambridge hoax call found dead"? Only one more word. — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:37, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * She wasn't found dead as she was taking the call (and being really picky, the fact that she took the call was not the issue). "Nurse involved in DoC hoax call", yes, but then two attributive nouns versus three doesn't make a huge difference, and separating the subject from the verb probably causes more intelligibility problems than it solves.
 * Bottom line: anyone who expects good prose from a news headline is setting himself up for a world of pain. HenryFlower 12:44, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * . I'd actually thought of "Nurse who took ..." first, but thought I would save a word by substituting taking instead. — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:47, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Some papers might go with something like "Nurse found dead; took Duchess of Cambridge hoax call". Deor (talk) 13:04, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Compounding the problem is that there were two different nurses unwittingly involved in that "practical" joke. The one that later died took the initial call. She handed it off to someone else whose voice is the one you hear on those recordings. So as wordy as the headline is, it's still ambiguous. P.S. I myself could probably do a better imitation of the Queen than that Aussie woman at the radio station did. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:29, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * There could have been 20 different nurses all somehow involved in the incident; one took the call, one gave the information out, and the others all somewhere in the intermediate chain. But the headline has done its job: got the readers' attention.  It's not meant to specify, bone-crunchingly unambiguously, precisely which nurse they're talking about.  That's the job of the actual article.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  17:54, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

217.227.57.128 -- If you can read French, the 1958 book Stylistique Comparée du Français et de l'Anglais by J.P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet (ISBN 2-278-00894-3) has an interesting discussion of English-language headlinese, contrasting it with completely different French conventions for headline language... AnonMoos (talk) 13:08, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Getting back to the Language Log comment, they usually call it a "noun pile"; it becomes a "crash blossom" if it causes ambiguity. Here's a recent example, with links to previous posts on the subject. Very common in British headlnese, but rare in American, e.g. "Ben Douglas Bafta race row hairdresser James Brown 'sorry'" (the word row is also uncommon in American English). Lesgles (talk) 00:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If you haven't, do check out Lesgles' recent example above. Very cool. μηδείς (talk) 05:08, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Why doesn’t Classical Latin have descendants?
Topic. --66.190.69.246 (talk) 10:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * What? Like excluding all of the Romance languages collectively? There may be another one somewhere.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  12:02, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Since the OP specified Classical Latin, and given the chart on the page he linked to, I suspect the point is that the Romance languages are descended from Vulgar Latin. Classical Latin doesn't have descendants because it was a standardized literary language, and the languages that get passed on from generation to generation are not the standardized literary languages but the colloquial spoken languages. Angr (talk) 12:08, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, very basically, classical Latin is not a real language. It's just what we call the standard high literary form of Golden and Silver Age authors like Cicero and Virgil, and Seneca and so forth. It's somewhat artificial, in the sense that no one really spoke like that normally. You don't really speak English following the highest literary standard either. The people who colonized Europe, even the ones who lived in Italy, didn't speak Latin like Cicero wrote it, so the languages that evolved from the Vulgar Latin that they spoke instead. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:09, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I would say the Romance languages and Classical Latin are both descendants of Vulgar Latin. And the reason why Classical Latin has not greatly changed since then is that it's one of the literary written languages and they are not used to change significantly for many centuries.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:43, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not accurate to suggest Classical Latin is descended from Vulgar Latin. That would suggest that Grammatical complexities which existed in Old Latin and its predecessors but which disappeared in Vulgar Latin somehow reevolved in Classical Latin.  Rather there is a situation of Diglossia with Classic as the High Variety and Vulgar as the Low Variety. μηδείς (talk) 01:36, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't things like Renaissance Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin count as descendants of Classical Latin, though? -- Ferkelparade &pi; 12:48, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Like in Template:Latinperiods. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 21:18, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As our article explains, there's a distinction to be made between Vulgar Latin, which in its earliest stages was similar to if not identical to Old Latin, and Proto-Romance, which was a late (and morphologically simplified) stage of Vulgar Latin. Classical Latin was not a descendant of Proto-Romance, but it was a descendant of, or more accurately a construct from, an early stage of Vulgar Latin. I agree that Renaissance and later versions of Latin are in part descendants of Classical Latin, but more directly descendants of Medieval Latin, which was derived from Classical Latin but heavily influenced by Proto-Romance and other early Romance (and to a lesser extent Germanic) languages. Marco polo (talk) 00:41, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Vulgar Latin is defined as the spoken form of Latin which has lost the neuter gender, has reduced the cases to nominative and oblique, has introduced the use of the definite article and the perfect with habere, or at least in the process of these changes and others over the centuries. To say that Classical Latin is a construct from this is simply false.  Classical Latin (as opposed to Old Latin) is a conservative, learned literary form. μηδείς (talk) 01:36, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly. My point was that Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin must be related, both being called 'Latin', and therefore the descendants - the Romance languages - do exist.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  09:32, 9 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Classical Latin did not come from nowhere. At some point before its written development Latin was mainly or only spoken, that is it was "vulgar" anyway. Classical Latin then was polished and "frozen" as any other literary language, but Vulgar continued to change. Vulgar Latin did not begin in the 5th century, in the 1th there already existed Vulgar Latin if not in the -1th century. Vulgar Latin appeared when Classical just did.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:17, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps part of the confusion here is using Vulgar Latin as if it means the same thing as spoken Latin. There was always some form of spoken Latin.  It only becomes identified as Vulgar Latin at a later stage (when Classical Latin is being written) and when certain developments have occurred, such as the simplification of the case system, etc., mentioned above.  Classical Latin at that point did not develop from Vulgar Latin.  Both, rather, had developed from the spoken Latin of prior centuries, with Classical Latin being cultivated and retaining older forms and the spoken Latin which later became called Vulgar Latin in contrast losing those forms and gaining others like the perfect and future synthetic tenses with habere.
 * This is very similar to English where formal written English resembles the spoken English of centuries back, before things like auxiliary verb contractions (e.g., "can't") developed as opposed to spoken English, where you'll hear "I'ma cap 'im, a'ight?" (/amə kæpm a'ʌɪʔ/) which means I shall shoot him, do you understand? (literally, "I am going to cap him, all right?"). If, in some future time, all that remained of the English language were articles from The Economist and the lyrics to rap songs, one might then refer to them as Classical and Vulgar English.  But it would be in no way correct to say that the Classical English of The Economist had developed from Vulgar English.  They would just be the contemporary high and low varieties of a language with diglossia which had developed in parallel from the spoken English of earlier centuries. μηδείς (talk) 18:14, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Medeis, some scholars may define Vulgar Latin as a form of Latin that has lost the neuter gender, but all of the sources that I find in a quick search (including our own article on the subject) simply define Vulgar Latin as the form of Latin that was spoken by the common people (as opposed to patrician elites). Obviously the common people spoke some version of Latin at the time of Cicero. That version is known as 1st century Vulgar Latin.  Classical Latin is probably based more on the Vulgar Latin of the 1st century BCE.  The Romance languages are derived from what is known as Proto-Romance, probably the Vulgar Latin of the late 2nd or early 3rd century, after which disorder within the empire likely led to increasing dialectal divergence among the provinces ultimately leading to the individual Romance languages. (It is possible that Sardinian derives from an earlier version of Vulgar Latin, perhaps with additional influences from Paleo-Sardinian.)  Marco polo (talk) 21:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The fact remains that Vulgar Latin is defined in distinction to Classical Latin, and not as the latter's origin. Different authors are entitled to their different definitions.  But the term Vulgar Latin is never used to refer to the spoken Latin upon which written Classical Latin is based.  Again, spoken and Vulgar have idfferent connotations here. μηδείς (talk) 21:28, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * In Herman's "Vulgar Latin" there is a discussion on the terminology. In general he defines "vulgar" as a "spoken form" which diverged just from the strict grammatical rules (many of them artificial) and not a simplified or corrupted Latin of the later age. Frankly speaking what I tried to say is from this book and Marco did it better than me. In the book it's also said many Latinists dislike or avoid this term at all.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:42, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, Vulgar Latin is a form of spoken Latin at some date. But the term simply does not equate to Spoken Latin.  This is so obvious as not to require separate wikipedia articles. +I am not a total idiot, Ljuboslov.  If you have a more specifically formulated question, do let me know. μηδείς (talk) 22:13, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Japanese place names in Korea
Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910 and remained under its rule until 1945. Place names were officially Nipponized using a japanese reading of the traditional hanja (note that multiple Japanese readings are possible for a single character). For example: 平壤 – Pyongyang - Heijō. The problem is that I’m not able to find a comprehesive list of official historical Japanese names of Korean cities anywhere. Even the corresponding Japanese Wikipedia article about them often report only the modern pronunciation. 咸興 - Hamhŭng is only reported in the heading as Hamufun but other sources say that it was called Kankō. Perhaps we could create a list of them similar to German place names (Alsace). PS: I have the same problem for place names in Manchukuo and Taiwan. --151.41.159.50 (talk) 11:57, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Arabic and Swahili
Hi! I found these documents: The second page of each is in Arabic and Swahili. What is the name of "Conseil scolaire de district catholique Centre-Sud" used by the documents? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 13:38, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * http://www.csdccs.edu.on.ca/publications/depliant-cic-FR_AR.pdf
 * http://www.csdccs.edu.on.ca/publications/depliant-cic-FR_SW.pdf (seems to be "Kamati ya Shule za Kikatoliki za Wilaya za Kusini")


 * In Arabic it's "مجلس مدارس الإقليم الكاثوليكي بالجنوب الاوسط". I don't know Swahili but it must be "Kamati etc" as you've already found. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:01, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! As for http://www.dpcdsb.org/NR/rdonlyres/4205E61E-C70E-4E59-89B3-823728D2344D/94644/AdmissionsFlyerARABIC2.pdf what is the Arabic name of "Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board"? WhisperToMe (talk) 14:19, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * There seems to be a couple of possibilities in there, but the heading at the top says "مدارس دوفرين-بييل الكاثوليكية" (literally "Dufferin-Peel Catholic Schools"). Adam Bishop (talk) 14:54, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! What about the sentence that begins with "تُعد منطقة دوفرين-بييل التعليمية الكاثوليكية واحدة من أكبر المناطق التعليمية وأكثرها تنوعاً في أونتاريو. ندير[...]?"

WhisperToMe (talk) 14:59, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess "منطقة دوفرين-بييل التعليمية الكاثوليكية" would be "Dufferin-Peel Catholic School District", so maybe that's closer to what you're looking for. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:27, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much! WhisperToMe (talk) 16:06, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Help for Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Malayalam
For Dufferin-Peel Catholic Schools what are the following used in these documents? WhisperToMe (talk) 16:20, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Urdu: http://www.dpcdsb.org/NR/rdonlyres/4205E61E-C70E-4E59-89B3-823728D2344D/94649/AdmissionsFlyerURDU.pdf
 * Hindi: http://www.dpcdsb.org/NR/rdonlyres/4205E61E-C70E-4E59-89B3-823728D2344D/94651/AdmissionsFlyerHINDI.pdf
 * Punjabi: http://www.dpcdsb.org/NR/rdonlyres/4205E61E-C70E-4E59-89B3-823728D2344D/94652/AdmissionsFlyerPUNJABI.pdf
 * Malayalam: http://www.dpcdsb.org/NR/rdonlyres/4205E61E-C70E-4E59-89B3-823728D2344D/94647/AdmissionsFlyerMALAYALAM.pdf
 * The question what are the following used in these documents is not clear to me, but if it is for translation, then I can say for Malayalam&mdash;it is a direct translation of the English version. ···V ani s che nu「m/Talk」 09:38, 9 December 2012 (UTC) striking on 10:51, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I meant how do they transliterate "Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board" WhisperToMe (talk) 17:22, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

In Urdu it is "ڈﻭﻓﻴﺮﻳﻦ-ﭘﻴﻞ ﮐﮯ ﮐﻴﺘﻬﻮﻟﮏ ﺍﺳﮑﻮﻟﻮں" for "Dufferin-Peel Caholic Schools" (in the title), "ڈﻭﻓﻴﺮﻳﻦ-ﭘﻴﻞ ﮐﻴﺘﻬﻮﻟﮏ ڈﺳﮣﺮﮐﭧ ﺍﺳﮑﻮﻝ ﺑﻮﺭڈ" for "Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board" (direct transliteration). --Soman (talk) 08:19, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Soman! WhisperToMe (talk) 17:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Same for Malayalam and Hindi too. ···V ani s che nu「m/Talk」 10:51, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppa Gangnam Style
The song Gangnam Style begins with the words Oppa Gangnam Style. Now Gangnam District is a place in South Korea, and Style simply means "style", but what does Oppa mean? J I P &#124; Talk 17:17, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Literally "big brother", in this case rather "your man (me) has Gangnam style".. "Gangnam style" refers to some kind of lavish fashion style, I think. - filelake shoe  &#xF0F6;   17:29, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Interesting that's cognate with avunculus. μηδείς (talk) 03:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ...it is? Adam Bishop (talk) 21:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. (?) (Hit me up on my talk page if you want further info.) μηδείς (talk) 22:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I know what you mean, but it's kind of sneaky to just throw something like that out there... Adam Bishop (talk) 23:45, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Sneaky? Controversial, perhaps, since no one who wants a doctorate in linguistics is allowed to admit that PIE is not sui generis and ab novo. Ref desk readers seeking their doctorates here are warned. μηδείς (talk) 02:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note that, unsurprisingly, our article discusses the meaning of Oppa in general and in the context of the song, with references (and I'm pretty sure it has for a long time because I read it weeks ago) Nil Einne (talk) 05:25, 11 December 2012 (UTC)