Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 February 13

= February 13 =

Contracting In French
What is the longest French word that contracts its final vowel to an apostrophe before a word that begins with a vowel? No word I know that does this has more than seven letters, for example lorsque, puisque, and quelque. I'm asking because I want to know if this word could precede the word aujourd'hui, which is already a contracted word, thus creating a very long triple contraction. Inter change  able | talk to me  01:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * One used to be allowed to spell "parce que" as one word. "parceque", and searching for "parcequ'aujourd'hui" in google books gives a number of results in texts from the early 19th century. I'm not saying this is the longest (or exactly what you're looking for :-) ---Sluzzelin talk  02:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * fr:Apostrophe (typographie) has a list of these words. None is longer than seven letters. Presumably, the list is meant to be exhaustive. (But as is frequently the case on the French Wikipedia, no source is given.) 96.46.204.126 (talk) 07:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You can refer to this grammar book (in French). For example, it is correct to write puisqu'aujourd'hui il pleut…. — AldoSyrt (talk) 09:33, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I would have guessed "quiconque", but that never seems to be contracted. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:25, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Quelconque is a letter longer than that, but none of the examples at its French Wiktionary entry show that it can contract. What I find particularly curious is that no word that contracts begins with a vowel, so except for aujourd'hui it's not possible to have a triple contraction. Inter  change  able | talk to me  17:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I count only 2 contractions in puisqu'aujourd'hui. Are we counting the concatenation of "au" with "jour" as a contraction?  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:40, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * By "triple contraction" I'm referring to the number of words involved, which is three (counting hui as a separate word). Inter  change  able | talk to me  23:54, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * So, looking at "aujourd'hui" alone - do you regard that as a double contraction, or just a contraction? --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  00:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I look at it as only a contraction, but my logical fallacies aren't really relevant. Inter  change  able | talk to me  01:16, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * From five words to one: À le jour de hui = Aujourd'hui. (hui in old French = Aujourd'hui, even nowadays one can say Au jour d'aujourd'hui.) — AldoSyrt (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And "hui" is from "hodie" in Latin, which is itself a contraction of "hoc die". Adam Bishop (talk) 10:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And puisque is from an old use of the word puis and que, so puisqu'aujourd'hui is really eight words. Lesgles (talk) 20:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Is it pronounced "fanshaw"? :)  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  01:58, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

What's mean of "lack of teeth"?
"despite its lack of teeth...Golden Sun remains a franchise with plenty to say."

- Golden_Sun:_Dark_Dawn

I can't understand "lack of teeth", it's mean "for children"? And this sentence is too difficult to understanding...--铁铁的火大了 (talk) 11:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * If something has teeth, then it has influence, power, control, etc. Think of it like a dog.  A dog has teeth and therefore can influence other creatures.  If the dog didn't have teeth then everyone would know that it can't hurt them.  Dismas |(talk) 11:22, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It's related to the word "toothless", which is often used to describe something that lacks power in one way or another. Someone could call a book or a game "toothless" if they thought it wasn't challenging. It looks like reviewers thought the game wasn't very hard, which is why they described it as toothless, or lacking teeth. (The idea of "teeth" meaning "power" is pretty common in English. Something strong or challenging is called "biting" or said to have "bite", while if you make something weaker you "defang" it.) Having "something to say" or "plenty to say" means that you have interesting ideas - usually ideas that other people have not had. The sentence as a whole means roughly "Golden Sun games are not hard, but they are interesting and unique". Smurrayinchester 11:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The "lack of teeth" here could be a bit of irony with the "plenty to say" in the closing of the sentence. Both of the responses above are correct, as "teeth" in this sense is related to power or influence. Reworded, the sentence could read, "despite its [lack of influence]...Golden Sun remains a franchise with plenty to say." The sentence as it is worded here still presents the verbal irony. Tarheel95 (Sprechen) 15:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The OP is apparently Chinese, so it may help to point out that saying something lacks teeth is like saying it's a paper tiger (紙老虎). Angr (talk) 15:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * A paper tiger is something which appears fearsome but has no teeth, as it were. I don't think you have to appear fearsome in order to "have no teeth". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think I would ever say something "has no teeth" unless there was some way in which it might be expected to have teeth. Angr (talk) 12:22, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Tarhell195 beat me to the point - but I wouldn't say "Golden Sun is a paper tiger"... --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:22, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Not in this particular sense, no. It's more on the lack of credibility by the franchise. Tarheel95 (Sprechen) 14:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

classical tamil
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=300511656662697&set=a.238201186227078.50987.100001115949574&type=1 with respect to the article in the above link, regarding the age of tamil language, it is stated that it is 20,000 years old. can you help us to know, how old is the tami language 202.129.199.21 (talk) 15:04, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's off by an order of magnitude. Tamil has been attested for about 2300 years, not 20,000. See Tamil language and the references cited there. Angr (talk) 15:10, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Those are the Devaneya Pavanar theories, which are not accepted by modern mainstream linguistic scholarship. Any language which hasn't gone through a pidgin/creole stage has of course evolved by slight successive modifications over tens of thousands of years.  However, the coming into existence of a distinct Tamil language separate from other Dravidian languages is unlikely to have happened too much more than three thousand years ago, and the existence of a written Tamil literary language can only be traced to less than 2,300 years ago.
 * The article Classical language has been disturbed by a long series of people trying to elevate Tamil as a literary language to a putative earlier chronological status than Sanskrit, and you can read a long series of boring disputations about this in the article talk page archives... AnonMoos (talk) 15:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Writing a thesis/article in Canadian University standard
Hi I am an international Masters student in Canada. I submitted an article couple of times to my supervisor but he rejected it. He told me I have not written it up to a required standard. Please I need your advice.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.39.9.1 (talk) 16:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Your university probably has a Writing Center where they can help you with grammar and style issues. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 16:37, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * If the issue is grammar and style, then Rjanag's suggestion is a good one. Another possibility would be for you to hire an editor who is a native speaker of English.  Preferably, you should hire an editor with some knowledge of current terminology in your field of study.  However, if you aren't sure that your supervisor objects to your paper because of how it is written, then you should first ask your supervisor how your paper fails to meet the required standard.  If the issue is something unrelated to language, such as your research goals or methodology, then you may need to redo the research in response your supervisor's critique. Marco polo (talk) 16:45, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * All that is good advice. Also, proof-read the writing yourself, to the best of your ability. Run a spell-checker through it. Check and double-check your use of capital letters. Another thing that can easily mar work if English isn't your first language is use of definite and indefinite articles, so check for that too throughout. See if you can ask another student, who has English as their first language, to check through your writing, and in exchange, comment on their essay. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:02, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Estonians and Finnish
Having just visited Tallinn, I came to wonder. How is the situation with Estonians and the Finnish language these days? I had grown accustomed to Estonians, at least in Tallinn, understanding Finnish fairly well and being comfortable with it, especially since the Estonian language is so closely related to it. But when I last visited Estonia before my recent visit (also in Tallinn), I was told (by other Finns) that these days young, trendy Estonians don't like to speak or be spoken to in Finnish, they even prefer English over it. So when I visited the restaurant Kohvik Moon I spoke English to the staff, because although I understand Estonian somewhat because it's so closely related to Finnish, I don't speak it myself. It felt odd speaking an entirely foreign language to a people whose language is pretty much the closest relative to my own language. But when I now visited Tallinn, I went to a barber shop in the Old Town, and the staff had no problems with speaking in Finnish. One staff member seemed to understand Russian better than Finnish or Estonian, and as I speak pretty much zero Russian, another staff member translated my Finnish to Russian for her. So what is the deal here? Are Estonians somehow making a conscious movement not to speak Finnish? Is this somehow specific to young, trendy people in Tallinn? J I P &#124; Talk 19:54, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I have little knowledge of Estonia, much less of current cultural trends there, but it seems plausible to me that Estonians might be uncomfortable with their country's dependence on investment and trade with Finland. They might therefore prefer to learn and speak English, which might be seen as a language offering a connection to many countries other than Finland.  Even though the languages are close, it apparently takes a bit of effort for speakers of one language to communicate clearly in the other language, and it may be that Estonians now prefer to make the much greater effort to learn English.  Another thing to consider is that, until 1990 or so, many Estonians would have wanted to make an effort to learn Finnish because learning it was the easiest way for them to access free, uncensored media (TV and radio).  Since 1990, free media have developed within Estonia, and it is no longer necessary to learn Finnish for that reason.  So people younger than 30 or so have had less incentive to learn Finnish than older Estonians. Estonians who aren't confident speaking Finnish might also feel that it is more appropriate for a Finn visiting Estonia to take the trouble to learn a bit of Estonian than for them to have to struggle to speak Finnish. Marco polo (talk) 20:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know about the use of Finnish in Estonia, but perhaps Finland and Estonia should teach each other's languages in their schools, only for passive understanding. For example, this is done in Scandinavian countries, so a Swede can make himself understood to a Dane in Swedish and then understand the latter's replies in Danish.
 * Concerning the Russian-speaker, it is quite possible that Russian was their native language. At the time of independence, Estonia was probably about 40% Russian-speaking. It's a bit lower now with emigration, but is still very high, at about 26%. The reason Russian is not very visible there is that languages other than Estonian are restricted in many ways. At one time, languages other than Estonian were banned from signs. These measures were undertaken specifically to give the appearance of a unilingual country. Russian-speakers haven't been able to oppose the measures because many of them have been denied the right to vote, on various grounds. (Mainly, their family doesn't go back to 1940 in Estonia and they don't speak Estonian well enough, but there are many other conditions.) Here is more on the human rights situation on Estonia from Amnesty International: Estonia: Language police gets more powers to harass 96.46.204.126 (talk) 21:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * To be fair to the Estonians, they probably see it as an attempt to right past wrongs, since the Soviets had a damned good try at extinguishing the nationalities of the Baltic states and replacing them with Russian culture at immense human cost. See Sovietization of the Baltic states which says "10 percent of the entire adult Baltic population was deported or sent to labor camps". Alansplodge (talk) 18:07, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You're going back to the time of Stalin. On that logic, perhaps the civil rights of all non-indigenous people in the United States and Canada should be curtailed because of past wrongs. I don't think vendettas against disadvantaged minorities in order to "right past wrongs" are a recognized exception to human rights protections. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 23:58, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * No, we're going back to the 1990s. The Soviets removed Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians from any position of authority (such as shop manager or teacher) and packed them and their families off to Siberia and kept them there. They were replaced by ethnic Russians who were maintained in their posts until independance in 1991. I take your point about human rights, and I mostly agree with you, but there are two sides to this coin. Alansplodge (talk) 06:02, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What you wrote appears to me to be a gross mischaracterization of life in the post-Stalin era. I am certain that serious political dissent continued to be repressed, and that there was undoubtedly a measure of discrimination against ethnic Estonians. It is also clear that the Russian language had disproportionate status, particularly under Brezhnev. However, after much effort, I've been unable to find any reference to mass deportations during that period, or any kind of actions approaching that level of gravity. Overall the picture is one of coexistence and some tension between Russians and Estonians, with both groups and languages very present in public life. In essence, the main threat to Estonian culture was Russian immigration, not oppression. Here are some quotes from "Estonia and the Estonians", by Toivo Raun (an Estonian-born American academic with an Estonian name, by the way).


 * "[W]ithin a few years many of the surviving deportees returned from the camps and from exile. Gradually the Estonian intelligentsia began to reassert itself, and in the course of the 1960s nothing short of a cultural renaissance was taking place."
 * "In the ECP Central Committee the ethnic Estonian role was more important, ranging between approximately 70 to 80 percent in the 1960s and 1970s." (He goes on to say however that ethnic Estonians remained seriously underrepresented in the ECP Buro, until this changed in the mid-1980s)
 * "[T]he census data for the period between 1959 and 1979 indicated almost no Russification among Estonians in the ESSR. Although the proportion of Estonians in Estonia that habitually spoke another language rose slightly from 0.7 percent in 1959 to 1.0 percent in 1979, the absolute numbers were tiny - 3,591 persons - and could be attributed almost entirely to the continuing Russian-Estonian immigration. Indeed, it is noteworthy that in 1979 a larger proportion of Russians were Estonianized (1.56 percent) in the ESSR than Estonians were Russified (0.99 percent). The most probable source of assimilation was ethnically mixed marriages."
 * "[B]y the late 1970s several factors had combined to bring about increasing ethnic tensions: the continuing influx of non-Estonians into Estonia [...]; the appointment of Karl Vaino [...] as ECP first secretary in 1978; and an all-Union campaign, beginning particularly in the late 1970s, to give the Russian language a greater role in the non-Russian republics. [In statements by Estonian intellectuals] the fear was expressed that the Estonian language and culture were in danger of losing their leading role in Estonia as Russian increasingly became the language of administration and was emphasized in education."
 * "In 1956-57, 77 percent of the elementary and secondary schools in Estonia used Estonian as the language of instruction; in 1972 the figure was 73 percent." (He goes on to say that in 1981-82 the percentage of the curriculum taught in Russian had risen to almost 40%. Compare this with the current situation in which Russian-language schools are forced to have 60% of their upper-grade curriculum taught in Estonian. It was even proposed to make this 100%.)
 * "The study of Estonian in Russian-language schools in the ESSR began in third grade."
 * "The ethnic composition of the scholarly community in the ESSR remained overwhelmingly Estonian (85 percent in 1973)."
 * "Whereas radio broadcasting remained overwhelmingly Estonian [...], television programming in Estonian declined [...] to 17 percent in 1980. [...] In 1979 less than half the local television broadcasting in the ESSR was in Estonian.
 * "For the Estonian population in the northern third of Estonia, the availability of Finnish television provided a unique avenue to the West." (This suggests a possible reason people speak less Finnish now: it's been longer since they last needed it to get unbiased news, as suggested by Marco Polo. Also, there may be a regional component.)
 * "In contrast to the situation in the late Stalinist era, original native belles lettres once again came to dominate among literary publications in the Estonian language [...]."


 * Summing up, Raun says this.
 * "[I]n the mid-1950s conditions began to improve markedly, and within the next decade life became almost unrecognizable as compared to the late Stalinist years. Mass repression stopped, and significant numbers of surviving deportees returned. [...] Most striking, Estonian culture had revived and even flowered within the parameters of the Soviet context by the early 1960s. The continued influx of non-Estonians remained cause for concern, but the Estonian share of the ESSR population (75 percent in 1959) was still substantial. The mid-1960s to the mid-1970s can be characterized as a period of consolidation of the gains made in the earlier post-Stalin years. [...] In the mid-1970s, however, the mood began to shift, and in the next decade there was increasing cause for pessimism." (I've omitted mention of some significant unrest in 1980, in which police force was used against peaceful demonstrators. This seems to have been the most serious use of force by the Soviet authorities in Estonia after Stalin, together with arrests of individual dissidents.) 96.46.204.126 (talk) 11:58, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thankyou for your research. My comments were formed by contact with a friend who was active in the Lithuanian community in London before and after independence. It may well be that the stories he passed on of the repression of Lithuanian langauge and nationality were exagerated or just propoganda. One wonders why the Estonians have enacted such draconian laws against Russian immigrants if life in Estonia under Soviet occupation was as equitable as Ruan contends. But as this is Wikipedia, your reference beats anything I can find. Alansplodge (talk) 19:59, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I focused on the positive aspects. I don't think the overall message from Raun would be that the situation was equitable in every respect. Some Estonian grievances about this period are undoubtedly legitimate. But I hope what I did quote puts these complaints in perspective somewhat. Also, it should be noted that many of the people affected by the current Estonian language legislation were born in Estonia, hence it would be more appropriate to call them descendants of immigrants than immigrants.96.46.204.126 (talk) 22:56, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed; "immigrant community" would have been a better phrase. Alansplodge (talk) 16:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)