Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 January 1

= January 1 =

Central Asia and Azerbaijani languages Turkish and Russian
Before Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan became USSR states, did their languages have sound totally turkish or were they the same as today with Russian words? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.16.143 (talk) 02:03, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * They had their own languages even when they were USSR states. Languages don't correspond to political boundaries. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 02:11, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * By the way, it's been alleged that the Soviets sometimes made rather arbitrary decisions as to what were to be considered separate languages and what were to be considered mere dialects, based more on political motives than pure linguistics, and that the newly-adopted writing systems for the various Turkic languages were made needlessly different from each other. The first writing systems adopted under the Soviets were based on the Latin alphabet, then converted to Cyrillic under Stalin... AnonMoos (talk) 12:10, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Languages of the Soviet Union has some infomation, though not as much as one might hope. --ColinFine (talk) 16:31, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Besides any alphabet issues they are different enough to treat all of them as different languages. All the Romance languages are written in the Latin alphabet nevertheless this does not make them any closer to each other. Blaming Stalin and communists in everything even in the special evil intention to differentiate the Turkic alphabets and as a result the languages is a conspiracy.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 19:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I think anon. is asking whether the massive Russian loans in Soviet Turkic languages preceded the Soviet Union. AFAIK, they did not: most came in with the development of technical, educational, political, and administrative vocabulary under the Soviet government, with Russian as the model. There may have been some Russian loans before that, but they would have been far fewer and more likely to be for Russian cultural things: the Orthodox church, maybe, or food or music, the kinds of terms you would pick up from your neighbors. Foreign administrative terms would probably have been Persian. — kwami (talk) 22:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Before the October Revolution they were all strong sincere Muslims so firstly they wrote in the Arabic script and secondly their languages had a strong Middle-Eastern influence. And as a result their written languages contained a lot of Arabic and Persian words, which usually were not understood by common uneducated people (then more than 90% could not write nor read at all). Like in Turkey in 1920-1930 there was just popularization and simplification of the languages, which usually meant not Russification, but Turkification. There are not many Russian words in the "Soviet Turkic" languages, maybe 5% or about so. Moreover they are not Russian but rather international words (mashina, avtomobil, tramvay, subyekt, obyekt, resbuplika, konstitutsiya etc.), as Russian has borrowed many Greco-Latin and European lexicon itself (about 20-30 thousand only common known words! In medical and technical texts they can reach 50% or more). I suppose that there are more French words in Turkish or Latin words in German, than Russian ones in the "Soviet Turkic" languages. I've checked for own curiosity through the first 52 articles of the Constitution of Uzbekistan and found out only 20 "Russian cognates" of about total 500-600. These are bank, gerb, demokratik, demokratiya, institut, konstitutsiya, norma, normativ, organ, partiya, pensiya, prezident, printsip, respublika, referendum, subyekt, suveren, suverenitet, telefon, texnika. As you can see they are neither Russian nor Slavic at all. The only Russian word I've noticed is sud "a court". I suppose more simple fiction texts contain the minimum of such words at all.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 19:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Isn't gerb/herb a Slavic word? (Certainly not Greco-Latin.) -- AnonMoos (talk) 10:08, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Is "lost" in Latin "perditus"?
Also, how would it be pronounced, /pur-dih-shus/ or /per-dit-oos/? 99.242.47.208 (talk) 03:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, it means lost and is pronounced /per-ditoos/. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 03:22, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * /per-di-toos/ I believe. Rmhermen (talk) 03:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * With the stress on the first syllable. Angr (talk) 08:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That is the nominative singular masculine form - for a different case, number or gender it would have a different ending. See Latin declension. --ColinFine (talk) 16:34, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Anon, the pronunciation would depend on whether you're trying for a Latin pronunciation, or an English approximation. But I don't see how you'd get an "sh" sound, since there's no i after the t. — kwami (talk) 22:09, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

"Danish pasting"
I've seen this phrase used, but "Korean pasting" does not show up (when searched), for example. Why?Curb Chain (talk) 03:41, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Probably a play on "Danish pastry"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Need your help translating the following document
Does anyone know Arabic? TheCuriousGnome (talk) 08:34, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I can't help you, but if it's an Ottoman document, it must be in Ottoman Turkish, not in Arabic. --Theurgist (talk) 11:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It's rather small and blurry (except for the tughra and heading at top), so it would probably need a pretty good expertise to decipher). AnonMoos (talk) 11:55, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

linguistics
am a student and i need some help in linguistics: difference between chomsky and hymes in communicative competence !! thnk u — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.1.114.118 (talk) 09:56, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Communicative competence is being able to successfully convey your intended meaning to your listener(s) -- not always the same thing as speaking a language correctly... AnonMoos (talk) 11:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Anyway, that's how I would define it, but we actually have articles Dell Hymes and Communicative Competence which say something slightly different... AnonMoos (talk) 11:51, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * For a student to be asking this homework question outright, without proffering any evidence they've at least done some simple searching to begin their quest to answer it, is not acceptable. I can understand it's holiday season and all, and you can't be arsed to do the work yourself.  So you come here and effectively ask us to do it for you.  Not on; we have a policy of not doing people's homework for them, and we have it for very good reasons.  Come back when you've done some groundwork, and ask a MUCH more specific question, which we'll help you out with IF you can demonstrate you've tried to answer it yourself but failed.  Happy New Year. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  18:38, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * How do you know it's a homework question? The OP might be doing revision or confused over course materials. --Colapeninsula (talk) 23:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Vexillonerdologically (not to mention philatelonumismatovexillonerdologically)
I saw this word in a section above and turned to Google search to get its meaning, precedents, record of use, etc. Google only found one use which happens to be the one I saw above.

Is this because the word was only recently coined or does it have a prior history of written use that has not yet been placed on the internet?

Also please what is the meaning? The root words "vexil" and "loner" and "dologic" seem clear but that is as far as I can take it today. Thanks, and very best wishes for 2012. Wanderer57 (talk) 22:24, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I have an extremely strong suspicion that the word was coined VERY recently. Yesterday, in fact. HiLo48 (talk) 22:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Technical name is nonce word... AnonMoos (talk) 23:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Even more recently than that, HiLo48. I coined the (relatively) short version yesterday, but it appeared in its full glory for the first time only this morning (our time; 2nd January).  It's gonna be a great year, I can feel it in my bones.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  01:23, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It's a word coined by Jack of Oz in the thread above, from vexillology, with nerd stuck in the middle and -ically added to make it an adverb, presumably meaning "in a way characteristic of a nerd interested in flags". Adding philatelo- and numismato- extends the nerdishness to include two other obsessions of some nerdish youngsters, stamps (philately) and coins (numismatics). Deor (talk) 22:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Great word! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.171.174.74 (talk) 00:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  01:23, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Nonce word - "not expected to recur".  Pity.  Perhaps a campaign to create questions and situations which cry out for the use of "Vexillonerdologically" could be mounted?  There must be scads of them.
 * This raises the question, what word was used to convey the same meaning until this sparkling new one was coined? (Or minted, or printed?)  Wanderer57 (talk) 02:59, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't encourage him! Jack is always making up words and trying to get others to adopt their use (when he's not employing them to cheat at Scrabble). Deor (talk) 11:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Cheat? Me?  Never, sir.  It's one thing to use a made-up word, knowing that one's fellow players will accept it as yet another of those obscure but valid words I happen to know and they don't, and they won't challenge it, and may not even ask what it means, but if they do, I'll come up with a plausible answer (well, it's up to them to check in the dictionary, and if they're too damn lazy, that's their lookout; I can't be blamed for being a human being who sometimes makes .. er, mistakes).  But cheat?  Me?  Never, sir.  :)
 * The pity is I'll never be able to use my new baby in a Scrabble game, unless they more than double the number of letter-spaces on each side of the board, which would have other consequences. (Anyone for a septuple word score?)  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  21:08, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Btw, "philat ... ically" scores 455 with a septuple word score. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  02:54, 3 January 2012 (UTC)