Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 June 29

= June 29 =

'Backwards' compound words
Are there any languages that form compound words 'backwards', with the main part at the beginning? (e.g. the word for 'songbird' is formed as 'bird'+'song' rather than 'song'+'bird') --108.225.117.142 (talk) 01:36, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * English does it a bit with words like attorney-general, governor-general, etc, and even pluralises the main part (attorney, governor) as one would with "general governors", "general attorneys". --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  01:53, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The terms Jack mentions are all French, of course. Spanish has compounds such as abrelatas can-opener (literally openscans) and matamoscas "flyswatter" (literally killsflies). See Compound (linguistics) and check out your library for A Mouthful of Air and books by Mario Pei. μηδείς (talk) 02:08, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * 108.225.117.142 -- one technical term for what you want is "modified-modifier compound", as opposed to the usual "modifier-modified compounds" of English. JackofOz's examples are old French-language noun+adjective phrases compressed into a single word in English, while Medeis's examples are "headless" or quasi-bahuvrihi verb+object compounds (the only fully productive compound construction in some of the modern Romance languages).  For languages with basic "modified-modifier" order in noun compounds, you can look at the Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic etc.) -- see construct state for something on this (though you have to dig a little there_... AnonMoos (talk) 02:27, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * That is the normal order for many languages. There are some borrowings into English from Celtic languages which show this, such as menhir (Breton men hir = stone long), and claymore (from Gaelic claidheamh mòr = sword great). --ColinFine (talk) 13:30, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Male/female language
What languages use different words depending on the sex of the speaker? I know Polish does, but are there others? bamse (talk) 06:09, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Hebrew. I'm guessing there are countless others. Evanh2008 (talk 06:13, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Does French make a distinction between "je suis désolé" and "je suis désolée"? Does that count? J I P  &#124; Talk 06:16, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I would say it does, but you have chosen a very bad example. If the person speaking is saying 'I am French', there will be an audible difference: male 'Je suis français' vs. female 'je suis française'. The same goes for other adjectives where the male form ends in a silent consonant or a nasal. V85 (talk) 08:26, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see. To write an awful rendition of the pronunciation as if it were Finnish, it should be zö svii frasee versus zö svii frasees, right? J I P  &#124; Talk 15:04, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, something like that. (Both with regards to the pronounciation and how awful it looks.) :-P V85 (talk) 18:49, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi bamse! Aren't you forgetting Japanese? See Gender differences in spoken Japanese and Japanese pronouns. Oda Mari (talk) 06:45, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I suppose it depends on how deep you want that difference to be. In French, the difference that applies, is the same that would apply to any object (noun) that the language identifies as male/female, i.e. it primarily affects the adjectives that the speaker uses when referring to him-/herself. If that is all your interested in, there are likely to be many, I would guess a lot of Indo-European languages would fall into that category. However, if what you are looking for is something beyond adding feminine endings to adjectives when referring to themselves, such as in the case of Japanese, it's going to be fewer.
 * One language that is similar to Japanese, but perhaps not as encompassing (I don't speak Japanese), is Thai: men add the particle ครับ /kʰráp/ at the end of sentences, women use ค่ะ /kʰâ/ for statements and คะ /kʰá/ for questions. It is also reflected in the pronoun for I in 'polite'/'ordinary': ผม /pʰǒm/ for men and ฉัน /t͡ɕʰán/ for women. In more casual speech, men use กู /kuː/ for I and มึง /mɯŋ/ for you when talking to other men, while women use ฉัน/เรา /t͡ɕʰán/rao̯/ for I and แก /kɛː/ for you. V85 (talk) 08:43, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm uncomfortable with the idea that the Japanese language has sex differences in speech. The so-called masculine language is really just a bunch of coarse/rude words that no properly raised woman would ever use, and the feminine language is a bunch of soft, deferential words that no manly man would ever use. The fact that people still sometimes speak in these stereotyped ways even in professional settings is much more cultural than linguistic. -- BenRG (talk) 17:22, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * If that really is all that the difference boils down to, then I suppose most languages would have such a language gap, as thost stereotypes also apply to other languages, i.e. men are coarse or cruder in their speech than their female counterparts. One thing is assertiveness in language, but is that also the case when it comes to different pronouns being used by males and females? V85 (talk) 18:24, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I would disagree with BenRG's assessment that the difference in gender-speech is uncomfortable. I spent a decade and a half in Japan and I found that females would use male speech in the presence of males, and males would use female speech in the presence of females, in certain circumstances. I found this very interesting, and paid a lot of attention to it. I think it must have been because of a need to 'fit in'. Or maybe it was just the dialects I was exposed to at the time (Nagoya and Kansai).  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  16:55, 2 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Russian past tense singular endings are differentiated, depending on the grammatical gender of the subject. For example, я работал (ya rabotal) = I worked (male speaking); я работалa (ya rabotala) = I worked (female speaking).  Same deal for 2nd and 3rd person singular.  But they're all the same for plural.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  08:44, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

In the Sursilvan dialect of Romansh, there is a gender distinction for predicative verbs and adjectives. So a male person would say "Jeu sun staus" 'I have been', "Jeu sun ius" 'I have gone', or "Jeu sun staunchels" 'I am tired', whereas a female speakers says "Jeu sun stada", "Jeu sun ida", and "Jeu sun stauncla". Or in the plural: m. "Nus essan stai/nus essan i", f. "Nus essan stadas/nus essan idas". That's nothing really special though; the article Language and gender has a section on more unusual cases. --Terfili (talk) 09:50, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * English is one of only a few languages that have only neuter first person pronouns. Roger (talk) 14:50, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Really? I cant think of a single other Indo-European language which uses gendered first person pronouns (uralic languages most certainly don't either). Many IE mark for gender elsewhere in a first person sentence, but not with pronouns - filelake shoe  &#xF0F6;   15:04, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * First person plural pronouns can be gender-specific in Romance language. Nosotras (for we (plural, feminine)) in Spanish, for example.  69.62.243.48 (talk) 18:39, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * How many counts as "a few" ? Because our article on gender-neutral pronouns lists Armenian; Bengali; standard Chinese; Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian and other Uralic languages; Georgian; German; Kiswahili; Malay and Indonesian; Persian; Turkish and other Turkic languages ... Gandalf61 (talk) 15:15, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Related, and interesting, are the "mother-in-law language" systems in languages like Dyirbal. Sex of both speaker and listener is significant. Matttoothman (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Some languages have a "woman's speech" that is not just different in grammatical gender as the above examples, but is an entirely different set of words (and sometimes even different phonological inventories) used by females. So it would seem to an outsider that the women and men were speaking two separate languages to each other.  Some examples that exhibit(ed) this feature: Sumerian language, some Paleosiberian languages like Chukchi language, and some Native American languages (both North and South America).--William Thweatt TalkContribs 17:55, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Very interesting, thanks for all the replies. (Oda Mari: Indeed I had forgotten about Japanese) How about other groups, children, old people,... ? bamse (talk) 07:43, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Gender differences can be be found in children from the very early stage. Parents teach the differences. But boys only use "boku" and "ore". Old people in novels, their sentence finals are sometimes emphasized and used what we think as archaic or old-fashioned. In reality, their talk are not different from other groups. Oda Mari (talk) 06:44, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Only relating to pronouns, not to other features, Vietnamese has complicated rules for how to say "I" and "you". The genders and relative ages of the two speakers, as well as familiarity, come into play. In English we only talk like this with very young children: "Come and sit next to auntie", rather than "Come and sit next to me". In Vietnamese, a number of relationship words are used in this way, with adults too. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:43, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * That is also the case in Thai (and I assumes other SEA languages as well). Familiar terms (dad, mum, auntie, uncle, grandpa, grandma, etc.) are used as though they were pronouns. It even happens in other contexts, such as military men referring to themselves by their rank, rather than a pronoun (e.g. a sergeant uses 'จ้า' [sergeant] for 'I' and others will use the same word when talking to him, but then, obviously, in the meaning 'you').

defense line
Kindly explain to me what a defense line is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.240.243.100 (talk) 06:15, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd need to see the phrase in context. Presumably, the most straightforward meaning of the phrase would refer to a "line" of troops and armament, fortified and set up to protect a high-value location during an armed conflict. (See Mozhaisk Defence Line and Defense line of Amsterdam.) There are other possibilities, though, such as sports-related terms, that I can think of. Could you maybe post the full paragraph in which you saw the phrase? Evanh2008 (talk 06:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * At that time, South Korean forces had been pushed to retreat till the Nakdong river defense line. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.240.243.100 (talk) 07:29, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Then, yes. It's definitely an arrangement of military troops. In this case they were set up along the Nakdong River to protect their territory from enemy attacks. Evanh2008 (talk 07:35, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. A river too deep to ford is a natural line of defense, as the enemy ground troops would need to capture or erect a bridge, to cross it with tanks an such, which is difficult to do while under fire. StuRat (talk) 07:45, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.240.243.100 (talk) 07:38, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Some more information about the Nakdong river defense line here. The Nakdong River formed part of the Pusan Perimeter. As Sturat says, the North Koreans needed a bridge to get their tanks across, so the bridge at Waegwan was blown-up while it was crowded with South Korean refugees, for reasons never clearly explained. We don't really have an article about defensive lines, but by 1950, you would expect it to have been designed with the principle of defence in depth, and comprised of field fortifications such as fox holes, slit trenches and machinegun nests at varying distances from the river, positioned so that they were mutually supporting. Alansplodge (talk) 16:31, 30 June 2012 (UTC)


 * We have a category Category:Fortification lines, with subcategories... AnonMoos (talk) 23:14, 30 June 2012 (UTC)


 * A defence line is a far more abstract concept than being discussed here. While a river makes a natural defensible obstacle, choosing to site a defence line will rely on logistical and strategic considerations.  For example, a river may present a defensible obstacle, but other considerations may mean that the river shall be used as the first phase of a mobile defence that retreats towards its actual supply points.  Correspondingly, a defence line could be established across a boundary with no natural defensible obstacle, but merely be established to protect, for example, a logistical route.  Defensibility matters in the establishment of defensive lines, but defensive lines are about a chosen deployment of forces, not an obstacle. Fifelfoo (talk) 06:58, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
 * This is true. The Imjin River in the same conflict was shallow enogh to walk across, but impossible to cross without exposing yourself to defensive fire. Also, a river usually sits in a valley, thus giving an advantage to the defenders who have good vantage points and have to be attacked uphill. Engineers tend to look for natural obstacles no matter how slight to give them an advantage. I work close to the remains of the Outer London Defence Ring, the chosen barrier here being a tiny brook no more than a metre across, which dries-up in the summer. But sometimes you have to make do with what you've got - the Ypres Salient had no natural obstacles at all, but it didn't stop the British Army from sitting in it for the best part of four years. Alansplodge (talk) 23:00, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

"Mir ist heiß"
My German tutor warned me that one should not say "Ich bin heiß" to mean "I am hot", because that is a colloquial way of saying "I am sexy". One should say "Mir ist heiß" instead. Fair enough, but how does one conjugate that? How do you ask a friend if they are hot – would "Bist du heiß" be acceptable? What about "we are hot" – would "wir sind heiß" be OK, or is that also capable of misinterpretation? And so on. Thank you, --Viennese Waltz 15:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * If you translated literally, "Mir ist heiß" would give "to me is hot". Thus "mir" is not the subject; the subject is unstated -- the "it" in "to me it is hot".  The corresponding way of putting it in the second person would be "is hot to you?", i.e., "Ist dir heiß?".  (Disclaimer:  my German skills are marginal, so take this with a grain of salt.) Looie496 (talk) 16:23, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * According to http://www.askanativespeaker.de/blog/?p=49 you would do it in the same way - using the dative. Therefore you would say 'Ist dir heiss?' and 'Uns sind heiss'. These forms use the dative, and are effectively saying 'it is hot to me' - the same difference as between 'it feels hot to me' and 'I am hot' in English. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:25, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * My German skills are equally marginal, so I'm glad to see we both agree! - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:27, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I would say 'Uns sind heiß' is incorrect and should be 'Uns ist heiß'. - Lindert (talk) 16:32, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Correct, "uns ist heiß" = "it is [not: *it are] hot to us". You can actually say "ich bin heiß", but that would mean that you have a high temperature, rahter than you feel it. For example: "it (e.g., a pan) is hot" = "er/sie/es ist heiß", and if that pan were able to talk, it could say "ich bin heiß" to express that. --Theurgist (talk) 16:46, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, quite right. I meant to write that, and then got carried away with my verb agreements. Rap on the knuckles for me. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 16:49, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The same A similar idiom is used in French (and other Romance languages), where "I am hot" = "j'ai chaud". Apparently saying "je suis chaud" would be similarly risky in polite company. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:54, 29 June 2012 (UTC)@
 * And not only in Romance languages, it is used in Dutch as well: 'Ik heb het heet/warm'. - Lindert (talk) 17:06, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * ...and in all Slavic languages, as well. Croatian "Meni je vruće" = To me [it] is hot.; "Ja sam vruć" = I'm hot (either literally or with sexual connotation). No such user (talk) 08:43, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * To sum up: Whether used literally to mean "having a high temperature" or metaphorically to mean "sexy", the heiß as used in "ich bin heiß", "du bist heiß", "es ist heiß", etc, expresses a quality, as opposed to a feeling. --Theurgist (talk) 17:08, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

It's the same way in Finnish too. Minä olen kuuma ("I am hot") would mean "I am sexy". Minulla on kuuma ("It is hot to me", similar to mir ist heiß in German) would mean "I feel a hot temperature". J I P &#124; Talk 07:21, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Viennese Waltz, see "Quirky subject".—Wavelength (talk) 18:40, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm looking for a word...
Personification means to conceive of something as a person. I think there's a similar word for conceiving of something as an object, but I can't remember it. 65.92.7.168 (talk) 22:40, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Objectification. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:45, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * That's why I hate C++, it makes me treat everybody like an object. :-) StuRat (talk) 05:28, 30 June 2012 (UTC)


 * See reification.—Wavelength (talk) 22:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Reification was what I was looking for, thanks. 65.92.7.168 (talk) 23:56, 29 June 2012 (UTC)