Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 January 16

= January 16 =

Maybe
Is maybe a word in English? I doubt it. But a judge once wrote to me and the only thing I remember from his letter is that he split an infinitive. So if his English had been a little better it may be that his intended message would have fixed itself in my mind. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  00:41, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Then what is your question? To maybe or not to maybe? My 1980 OED accepts it, fwiw, IBE (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * And incidentally, the modern OED apparently accepts split infinitives, but they say it takes a careful judge, IBE (talk) 01:10, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you asking if the word "maybe" is recognizable by English language speakers? I doubt you would find a single English Language dictionary that would be without it, nor would you find a single fluent English speaker who was unfamiliar with it.  You have access to dictionaries, I presume, so I don't think you need us to look it up for you.  -- Jayron  32  01:04, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Both "maybe" and "may be" exist.
 * maybe = perhaps, probably, possibly
 * may be = may + be - same as "may eat", "may sleep", "may die", and same as "might be", "can be", "should be"
 * --Theurgist (talk) 01:07, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The article Split infinitive discusses whether split infinitives are grammatical, and notes that "most modern English usage guides have dropped the objection to the split infinitive". --09:49, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * They've been descriptively grammatical forever, since English speakers and writers, for some odd reason, have never felt the need to follow the rules for Latin or any other foreign language. How naughty of them.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  18:51, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Source translation needed from French
I've been trying to seek out sources for the woefully undersourced Muhammad Ilyas Qadri article - there's very little out there, but there are two passages in Soufisme et politique au Pakistan by Alix Philippon which might be worth a look. Unfortunately, my graps of French is based on Eddie Izzard shows, and so anything not involving a monkey in a tree is a bit beyond me. If some helpful Francophone has a few spare minutes and wouldn't mind translating the relevent passages for me, they can be found here. Thanks in advance, Yunshui 雲&zwj;水 13:35, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * One paragraph, starting from end of p138, to p139:
 * Ilyas Qadri exhorts (us) therefore to "fear the punishment of God" and to "beg forgiveness" from him, and gives an overview (?) of all that Islam forbids, and which could lead straight "into hell": mixing between men and women at public gatherings or ceremonies, taking photos, watching television, going to the beach and looking at women etc. Exchanging of looks between men and women is particularly condemned by Qadri and is subject to a specific punishment, that of "the nails" (??), which God would have told/indicated to to the prophet at the time of his miraculous journey (the mir'aj). This punishment applies similarly, according to a poem of Qadri included in the brochure, to those who look at photos or listen to music, fishermen (???) likened to "allies of Satan." In their case, the nails will go "in their eyes and their ears." Laughter is also a condemnable practice. Qadri invokes a hadith and a work of the Imam Ghazali to support the idea according to which "The person who has laughed too much in her life will cry a lot the day when she goes to hell." Fear is in effect one of the emotions which Muhammad Ilyas Qadri attempts regularly to arouse in his readers: "Perhaps you will not have the heart to finish this reading, but perhaps it will help you on the day of the last Judgment," he writes in the introduction of one of his many discourses (no 25), "The uninhabited palace". There he recounts the story of the Sufi Junaid Baghdadi who went to Kufa where he saw a grand, floodlit palace, swarming with servants busy helping the guests totally dedicated to their pleasures and their entertainment. (don't know if it means the guests are dedicated to their own pleasure, or the servants are dedicated to it, suspect the latter). At the entrance of the palace, a singer hums "No one will be sad, no one will destroy this house." A few months later, Junaid returned in this direction, but he found the palace empty. Only the singer was present, who explained that the prince and his servants were dead: "This house is an example to those who have faith in this life and not in the other," she said. According to Ilyas Qadri, this story teaches a fundamental lesson: life is a trickster, it it is necessary not to forget the reality of death. He therefore exhortes his readers to focus every day on this inescapable issue, that they may neglect the pleasures of this low world, and not hold in contempt the Day of Final Judgement. In a poem, he writes: "Change the style of life (?)" "You should not be interested by this world" or again "You should change your life now and beg forgiveness."


 * NB: I'm fr-2, so I used a dictionary a lot. Better get confirmation on the things I've put in brackets if you need them. IBE (talk) 16:04, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Pêcheurs = "sinners", I think, rather than "fishermen". --ColinFine (talk) 16:09, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, and "Change the style of life" is more "Change your lifestyle".  Omg †  osh 16:21, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You are almost certainly correct, even though my dictionary says pêcheurs is fishermen and pécheurs (note the accent) is sinners. The text has the former, but either it's a typo or the language has shifted, because only "sinners" makes sense. Didn't see it in my dictionary, because it was buried in another definition. IBE (talk) 16:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, it's an orthographic mistake in the text, which is odd because these aren't the homophones that they may look to an English speaker.  Omg †  osh 16:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Extra H
What is the effect on pronunciation of the second "H" in the name of Surjit Singh Chhokar (murdered in Scotland in 1998, and described as the Scottish Stephen Lawrence)? I can't believe it's an English ch followed immediately by an h. Rojomoke (talk) 14:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Punjabi differentiates a voiceless unaspirated palatal affricate, a voiceless aspirated palatal affricate, and a voiced palatal affricate. Some sources use "c", "ch", and "j" respectively to transliterate these but "ch", "chh", and "j" respectively are reasonable alternatives.  This forum post says that "chh" was sometimes used for the voiceless aspirated palatal affricate in transcribing Punjabi.  (I can't find what language/ethnic group Chhokar was from but his name sounds Sikh, and Punjabi is the usual language of Sikh names.) --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:22, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * So actually English "ch" followed by a "h" sound isn't too far from the truth (it's a little further back in the mouth). --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:30, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If you put a hand in front of your mouth when you say the words "pot" and "spot", in most English accents you will feel a puff of breath with the "p" in "pot" but not in "spot". The "p" sound in "pot" is said to be aspirated but the "p" in "spot" is not. The distinction is not significant in English - it just depends on the phonetic environment of the consonant - but in many languages, including most of the languages of India, the sounds /pʰ/ and /p/ ('p' with a puff and 'p' without) are distinct sounds, heard as different and often distinguishing different words. The sounds sometimes transcribed "chh" and "ch" (/cʰ/ and /c/ in IPA) are related in the same way. --ColinFine (talk) 16:06, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks! Rojomoke (talk) 16:32, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Khasi
Okay, this might just be one of those few questions that goes unanswered in the ref desk, but I might as well try. I uploaded a friend's photo on Facebook, and tagged her, so one of her friends (from her state, Meghalaya, India) commented under it in Khasi. I don't know Khasi, and neither the commenter, nor my friend are willing to tell me what it means, but since it's been made in a very public portal, under one of my own uploaded pics, I feel I have a right to know. So here's the comment, and I'm hoping somebody here can decode it :"Lol meh dang pynkhih lbong hi? ". (PS, I guess "Lol" here is the standard "laugh out loud"). 117.226.245.51 (talk) 17:52, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This has actually been answered multiple times on the Misc Desk where it was originally posted.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  01:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

that means "Lol, äre you still moving your thighs? can mean anything — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.199.64.206 (talk) 08:41, 17 January 2012 (UTC)