Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 January 11

= January 11 =

OE El-ge --> Ely
Can anyone help me find sources that explain the etymology of OE Ēl-*ġē for our Ely, Cambridgeshire article please. I think I am close, but not sure I fully understand what I have found as follows:
 * Mills[1] says ". Elge 731, Elyg 1086 (DB). ‘District where eels are to be found’. OE Ēl-*ġē"
 * Reaney[2] tells us that "Ely occurs first, in Bede's Ecclesiastical History,[3] as Elge 'Eel district'. The second element is the archaic ge, corresponding to the German gau, ... in the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede, the name appears as Elig 'Eel island
 * In Bede[3] we read "Est autem Elge in provincia Orientalium Anglorum regio familiarum circiter sexcentarum, in similitudinem insulæ, vel paludibus, ut diximus, circumdata, vel aquis, unde et a copia anguillarum, quæ in iisdem paludibus capiuntur, nomen accepit ...". Gile's 1843 translation into English is found in the reference[3] below. An off line source (I have no permission to name the person here) tells me that "Bede actually wrote Elƺe, with a yogh"
 * In VCH "Elge, meaning ell-district, appears to be the correct origin of the name, though willow-place and eel-island are explanation almost equally apt". The same off line source tells me that "the ‘willow’ bit should be utterly rejected – it is definitely wrong"


 * Sources
 * (also available on line via "Ely" Oxford reference Online )

I suppose I have a number of questions relating to the above. -- Senra (talk) 23:26, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Questions
 * 1) What do the symbols on and around the letters ge in "*ġē" mean?
 * 2) What does the German gau mean?
 * 3) I am guessing I can use secondary sources such as [1] and [2] in the article. Can I use source [3] or is it a primary source?
 * 4) Given all of the above, can anyone re-write (or suggest a re-write) of the existing etymology prose in the article?


 * Gau means "district", as indicated above (as in Gauleiter etc.). There was no distinction between graphemes ƺ and g within Old English orthography itself... AnonMoos (talk) 23:34, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In response to your first question, the asterisk means that "ge" is a reconstruction, not a word that the etymologists are certain existed in that format. The dot over the g is, I think, an indication that g could be softened to sound like modern English j, or zh, or y. That is consistent with what AnonMoos says about no graphical distinction between yogh and g. The line on the e indicates that the vowel is long. So Bede's elge might have been read aloud "elyay". Itsmejudith (talk) 23:49, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * With regard to question 1, the asterisk means that ge (in this sense) is an inferred form that isn't actually attested in OE. The dot over the g is used by some folk, mostly in the teaching of OE, to indicate that the g is palatalized (i.e, it sounds more like a modern y than a modern hard g); I think it's unnecessary myself, as g would always be palatalized before e. The macron over the e just means that it's a long vowel. (By the way, the 731 date in Mills refers to Bede's use discussed in Reaney.) Deor (talk) 23:54, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Q 2: "Gau" also occurs in Rheingau.
 * Q 3: You can certainly use [1] and [2]. I think you could use [3] if there were reason to discuss the question deeply in the article, but I don't see that there is.
 * Q 4: It seems fine to me, except that I would remove the '*' and the special 'g' (which is rendering oddly to me). I'd keep the macrons though. --ColinFine (talk) 00:31, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you to everyone that responded. The above has cleared it up for me nicely. I modified the article. Thank you all so much -- Senra (talk) 01:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Just a note, in Old English ⟨g⟩ before ⟨e⟩ was not always palatalized. If the e (long or short) arose by umlaut from earlier *o (long or short), then the g retained its velar pronunciation, e.g. OE gēs 'geese' was pronounced [ge:s], not [je:s], as shown by the fact that the modern English word is geese, not *yeese. The dot over the ⟨g⟩ in *ġē is thus not redundant at all. Angr (talk) 11:01, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Are You Grammatically Correct Tonight?
Silly edit war going on at the Elvis Presley article:


 * ''By the time he graduated from high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.
 * ''By the time he graduated high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.

Which is right? (U.S. English of course. Brits don't 'graduate' from school at all). AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:12, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Both are equally correct in U.S. English, so whatever it is right this second should stay, since it absolutely and totally isn't worth changing, and definitely isn't worth changing twice. So, all people should just leave it exactly as it is, unless someone changes it, and then no one else should bother to change it back.  -- Jayron  32  01:07, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * My take: "graduated high school" = young punk's version; "graduated from high school" = somewhat older punk's version; "was graduated from high school" = doddering fossil's version. (I personally can't see "X graduated high school" without picturing someone inscribing marks at equal distances up the side of the building.) Deor (talk) 01:14, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Merriam Webster actually has a usage note about this: (click on verb entry). Their conclusion is that though in the 19th century the "graduated from" was condemned, usage appears to have changed, with "graduated from" being preferred and "graduated high school" being the one condemned. The English usage podcast Grammer Girl Grammar Girl also has several episodes on this , concluding the most preferred form is "graduated from", though "graduated high school" is commonly observed. -- 140.142.20.101 (talk) 01:17, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I cannot let you get away with "Grammer" [sic] Girl on the Language Ref Desk. It's grammar. --  Jack of Oz  [your turn]  02:26, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Egg on my face. That explains why it was a red link. - Please don't let my error spoil your opinion of the provided references. They know what they're talking about, even if I don't. 140.142.20.101 (talk) 02:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In BrE, we always graduate from a place (albeit, as mentioned, not from school). Therefore, if AmE is fairly neutral on this point, I think the version with "from" is preferable as pleasing more of the people more of the time. 86.181.204.244 (talk) 02:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Meanwhile, the edit-war seems to be continuing. I think at this point a little trout-slapping might be required. Personally, I'd immerse the trout in liquid nitrogen first, for a little extra impact... AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It is really simple: "graduate from" is the "I think this sounds better and most people say it"-version. "graduate" w/o "from" is the "Shut the fuck up you motherfucking illiterate idiot moron and get off my page or else I bitchslap you to the moon"-version. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 07:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm an American and grew up with graduated from. I never heard it without the "from" before I was about 25 years old. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:23, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

logo21.gif
What does http://www.chicagojs.com/jpn/sumirehomepage/logo21.gif say in Japanese? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 03:34, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's "News/announcement from the kindergarten". This 園 is a shortened form of kindergarten. Oda Mari (talk) 05:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, so the characters are "園からのお?らせ" - What is the other kanji character? (the one in place of the "?")
 * Thanks
 * WhisperToMe (talk) 05:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * 知. Oda Mari (talk) 06:05, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Mari, I'm curious, could you tell purely from the the text 園からのお知らせ that 園 specifically means "kindergarten"? I figured it out, but only after finding http://www.chicagojs.com/jpn/sumirehomepage/endayori.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.161.61.78 (talk) 14:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't understand what 園 means at first. I googled and saw this page and knew it was kindergarten/幼稚園. Oda Mari (talk) 16:03, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 22:32, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Sentences that mean the same thing and sound similar in unrelated languages
For years now, I've wondered how the Hungarian sentence Ki ez? and the French sentence Qui est-ce? mean the same thing ("Who is that?") and are pronounced almost identically, despite Hungarian and French not being related to each other. Are there any other such cases, where sentences meaning the same thing are pronounced similarly in two unrelated languages? J I P &#124; Talk 20:24, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Not sure about full sentences, but you may want to look at false friends as a starting point. One example I can give is that in Osaka dialect Japanese, the word for 'you' is 'anta', which is the same in Egyptian Arabic. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think you may have confused false friends (similar words with different meanings) with false cognates (similar words with similar meanings but different origins). --Theurgist (talk) 00:45, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I did indeed. thank you for the clarification. -- KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:34, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I happen to know that Hungarian "szia" and (American) English "see ya" are pronounced almost identically. --Theurgist (talk) 00:21, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * My hungarian friend said that is actually where it comes from. If we had a hungarian version of etymonline.com, we might be able to check. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:29, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Unlikely. The new edition of Magyar Értelmező Kéziszótár claims “szia” is derived from the greeting “szevasz”.  “Szia” is too old to be likely to have come from an English phrase: not only I remember it being common already when I was young, but also Teknős Péter, Kérdezz! Felelek mindenre (Móra, Budapest, 1975, a non-fiction FAQ book on everyday knowledge targetting children) already claims it had been popular earlier.  &#x2013; b_jonas 15:58, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I can't find any verification of this, but I recall reading long ago that the Chinese expression transliterated as "ho ping" has a similar meaning to its English homophone. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Not sure about that. Chinese doesn't have an 'o', unless you want to diphthongize it, then it becomes 'ou'. The old old Wade-Giles system of romanization used 'o' for what is now in pinyin 'e', which is more like an 'ur' sound when you have a bad cough, or a North Yorkshire accent. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * And W-G "ho ping" is "he bing" in pinyin, which could be 合并 ("combination or merger") - but I can't think of any word or phrase meaning anything close to "hoping" which is pronounced "he bing".
 * W-G "ho p'ing" is "he ping" in pinyin, which can be 和平 ("peace"), but again nothing meaning anything like "hoping" fits "he ping" either.
 * The English pronunciation of "hoping" is probably best approximated in Chinese (in pyin) as "hou ping", and I can't think of anything pronounced like that which would mean "hope". The usual Chinese expression for "hope" is 希望, romanised as "xi wang" in pinyin, "hsi wang" in W-G. --16:55, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * "Ach so!" (German) and "Aa soo" (Japanese) both mean "I see", and both take on the role of an almost meaningless affirmative to keep conversations going. A friend of mine who works as a Japanese translator in Germany says she always finds it baffling when she overhears people saying it on the train. Smurrayinchester 20:33, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the most striking example is that mama and papa have similar pronunciations in many languages. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 06:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Japanese pun in Final Fantasy VI, can someone explain it?
In Final Fantasy VI, there is a place (Darill's Tomb, if anyone is interested) with four tombstones, carrying four pieces of text.
 * かに - すら
 * よや - とも

If you read them from bottom right to top left, it says "Tomo yo, yasuraka ni." "Rest in peace, my friend." But I heard that if you read them in a different way, it translates to "rot and wither". Can anyone confirm this? How would you have to read them to get that line instead?84.198.182.236 (talk) 20:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Nope, if you read them that way they say 'moto yayorasu nika' which makes no sense. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:16, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * OP here. The kana are on four different stones. You read the stones from bottom right to top left, but you read the kana on each stone from left to right. So that would make it とも よ やすらか に. That's the one way to read it, I'm still at a loss for the other way.212.123.1.140 (talk) 11:32, 12 January 2012 (UTC)