Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 June 19

= June 19 =

Use of Roman numerals in Japan
Hi, how widely are the Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, ...) used and/or understood in Japan? 86.160.82.156 (talk) 03:11, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The book A History of Writing in Japan by Christopher Seeley says: "Roman numerals also occur occasionally, e.g. for chapter numbers in some books, volumes in a series, and dates on buildings."—pretty much the same uses as in modern English-speaking countries. Strings of Natural Languages: Unsupervised Analysis and Segmentation on the Expression Level by Markus Stengel also says that Roman numerals are usually used in Japanese writing "to denote order", also citing chapter and section numbers in books. --Canley (talk) 05:24, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Are Roman numerals used with other Asian languages? I know that Khmer has a certain knack for using them. (I've particularly noticed it for boats and hotels/restaurants. - When a hotel restaurant opens up a 'second' or 'third' branch, it will be called the same as the first one, but the name will be followed by a Roman numeral, in both Khmer and Latin script.) V85 (talk) 17:25, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, JIS X 0208 contains the roman numerals from one to ten in both uppercase and lowercase. -- BenRG (talk) 00:58, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Old Greek Ablative
Hi. My Ancient Greek teacher mentioned in passing that a funny word we came upon was actually a relic of the old Greek ablative. I started to wonder whether it was anything like the Sanskrit '-at', or if it was more like the elongated vowels that Latin'a ablative uses. So, does anyone know what the old Greek ablative looked like? Singular, dual and plural would be best. Thanks.Van Gulik (talk) 13:17, 19 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Some forms of ancient Greek (not really Classical Attic, though), had -phi and -then endings (-φι, -θεν). The -phi suffix corresponds to ablative case endings in some other Indo-European languages, but doesn't really have an "ablative" meaning in Greek.  The -then suffix could be considered to have something of an ablative meaning in Greek, but I'm not sure what its origin is.  Neither one is really part of the ordinary noun inflection paradigm in ancient Greek (forms with these suffixes do not distinguish singular and plural etc.)... AnonMoos (talk) 13:46, 19 June 2012 (UTC)


 * You may find this paper interesting; on page 43 the author mentions an ablative singular form in Mycenaean Greek ending in -o (as in Latin). - Lindert (talk) 13:51, 19 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The Latin ablative in -ā and -ō derives from a form -ad, -od (widely attested in Old Latin inscriptions) which is directly related to the Sanskrit -at. The Greek -φι derives from an Indo-European instrumental singular/plural in -bʰi. I have not come across the -θεν ending that AnonMoos mentions (but I've hardly studied Greek at all). --ColinFine (talk) 14:44, 19 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Anyway, the -θεν ending apparently survives vestigially into classical Attic, where it is attached to adverbs to form other adverbs (εξωθεν etc.), so that's probably what Van Gulik's teacher was referring to... AnonMoos (talk) 22:51, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

This is a fascinating topic. Gamkrelidze, Tamaz V.; Vjacheslav V. Ivanov (1995). Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans. Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-014728-9. treats the ad/od ablative and the -bhi dative/instrumental at length. See also the English prepositions by and at''. μηδείς (talk) 01:36, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you all for your insightful answers. I wonder as well whether the '-αδε' in 'οικαδε' is a relic of some PIE 'movement-towards' case independent of the accusative. One sees these 'relics' quite frequently in Greek, but not so often in Latin. I'm sure they're there somewhere, but they aren't apparent.Van Gulik (talk) 14:00, 25 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, -δε is generally added directly to the accusative case (αγορηνδε etc.). I didn't mention it because it can't be considered "ablative" by any stretch... AnonMoos (talk) 22:08, 25 June 2012 (UTC)