Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 May 17

= May 17 =

Bronze two-pounders
Hello. I am a french speaking contributor. In the french translation of Artillery of Japan, the translation of the sentence "[these cannons] were bronze two-pounders, about 9 feet long, ..." is nonsense, but I don't understand the meaning of two-pounders in english. No need for you to translate, just to explain. Thank you for your help. Dhatier (talk) 02:11, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * A "two-pounder" must be a cannon that fires a projectile weighing two pounds. 86.179.7.22 (talk) 02:33, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * That's 0.90718474 kilograms. I'm unclear if the cannon is bronze or the cannon balls, however. StuRat (talk) 02:45, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Er, no. It's 0.9 Kg. What you said is 2.0000000 lb. --ColinFine (talk) 08:31, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Er, no. Significant digits don't apply to medieval spoken terms.  That system came along later.  I have no idea what the precision was on that 2 pound figure, so I gave the conversion with plenty of digits, just in case. StuRat (talk) 15:36, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * You tell 'im, Stu. Now's the time to extract your 0.45359237 kilograms of flesh.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  19:53, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Two-pounders were cannons for sure, and bronze cannons were somewhat developed type of them at the end of the Middle Ages. Here's a related article on Gun Powder Artillery. --Omidinist (talk) 03:45, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

For clarification, the cannon is bronze; the cannonball may be lead, stone or an explosive. DOR (HK) (talk) 09:25, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. The term "two-pounder" describes the type of cannon. Hence "bronze" does also. By comparison, if you said you had a bronze .44 magnum, you would be describing the weapon, not the bullet as such. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:10, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. Dhatier (talk) 17:48, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * For a more recent two pounder, see Ordnance QF 2 pounder. Alansplodge (talk) 01:05, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Grammar checker like grammarly or whitesmoke
That is effective without costing a significant sum? (Grammarly is $130 per year) 96.21.250.92 (talk) 16:59, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * If you have a word processing suite like Microsoft Office, many of these come with grammar checkers already installed. -- Jayron  32  17:05, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * See Microsoft Word Spelling and Grammar Check Demonstration.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 21:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Kant (German)
The article Heligoland presents the following verse:

Despite apparently making little sense, this translation of "Kant" as "brim" seems widespread, except for one place where I found it translated as "cliff". All I can think is that "Kant" refers to the "edge" of the island, i.e. the cliffs, and this has been unidiomatically translated into "brim" by someone who didn't really understand English and picked a word at random out of the dictionary. However, can anyone confirm what "Kant" does literally mean here? I, um, kant seem to find it in any dictionary. Also, is that apostrophe after "Kant" correct? 86.179.113.84 (talk) 17:19, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The Standard German (High German) word is Kante, hence the apostrophe in the Standard German version of the verse, and you are right that the best translation is "edge". Possibly the translator wanted a word that rhymed with land or sand, rejected edge as too sharply dissonant, and settled on brim. I'm guessing that the original language is (Standard) German; neither of the other two versions has the same meaning as the German verse, whose literal translation is "Green is the land, Red is the edge, White is beach, These are the colors of Heligoland." Marco polo (talk) 17:26, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. 86.179.113.84 (talk) 19:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * If they wanted rhyming, then they should have used rand. Bazza (talk) 14:24, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * No, it rhymes perfectly. Because of Final-obstruent devoicing German words can't end in a /d/. KarlLohmann (talk) 18:01, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I meant in the English translation: rand is an English word meaning "edge", and rhymes with land and sand. Bazza (talk) 09:09, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I have never heard of that word, and I would think that 99% of English speakers would be the same. Wiktionary says it is "obsolete except in dialects". 86.181.204.203 (talk) 17:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The "Low German" version is messed up. Heligoland is traditionally Frisian speaking, but because most of the contacts of the small island were with Low German speaking areas many of the islanders knew Low German too. The "Low German" text above is neither Frisian nor Low German but a wild mixture of both.
 * The Low German word "Kant" is cognate with Standard German "Kante", but has the additional specialized meaning of "coast, shore" (many speakers of Standard German may know the Low German loan "Waterkant" for "coastal area"). The apostrophe in the Standard German version designates that the "e" of "Kante" was dropped to fit the rhyme. Low German drops final "e" by default. --:Slomox:: &gt;&lt; 22:37, 20 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I earlier made some changes to that article on the basis of this discussion; specifically, to replace "brim" (which makes pretty much no sense at all to me, and looks like a failed "dictionary translation"), and also to mention that "Strand" literally means "beach" (so "sand", though tolerably close, would be just for the rhyme). I would encourage anyone knowledgeable about these languages to make any further corrections necessary, or even to delete the "Low German" text altogether if it is unfixably messed up. 81.159.108.150 (talk) 22:53, 20 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay, I tried to dive a bit into the history of the verse and the oldest reference I could find was from 1839 in Eine Fahrt nach Helgoland und die Sagen der Niederelbe. It's a Low German version and it uses "Rand" instead of "Kant" and "Teken van't Helgoland" (signs of Heligoland) instead of "Farven". But a version with "Kant" is only one year younger: . Besides "Teken" and "Farven" there are also versions with "Flagg" (flag) and "Wapen" (coat of arms). This last link (a book by Friedrich Oetker) also mentions versions with "Wand" (wall) instead of "Kant" and with "Strand" (beach) instead of "Sand" (this also occurs in the version you cite in the original post in this thread).
 * Oetker assumes that the rhyme is not too old and probably not originally from Heligoland, because the rhyme does not work in Frisian. --:Slomox:: &gt;&lt; 00:11, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

What's an "of character"?
In The Female of the Species (Kipling poem), we read: "It is recited by the of character Dennis Thatcher..." What is an "of character"? --KnightMove (talk) 20:17, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd say the sentence contains a mistake and should read "It is recited by the character of Dennis Thatcher..." - Lindert (talk) 20:34, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC) A mistake, added in this edit. I've corrected the article to read '...by the character of Denis Thatcher'. Note also the spelling of Denis, which I'm just off to correct as well. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:40, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. As "the of character" has over 2,7 million Google hits, I had believed this to be correct. --KnightMove (talk) 20:46, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * No, just 2.7 million other people who don't check their writing before uploading to the net! :-) Interestingly, when I searched from Google UK (rather than AT) I get 29.3 million hits. I'm not sure what this says about the standard of writing in the two countries... - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:58, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The Google hits number is only an estimate and is sometimes quite wrong. If you click to the final page of results, you'll see there are only 192 hits, or 346 if you include the "similar results". Lesgles (talk) 21:07, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * "Quite wrong" is the very least one could say about a discrepancy between 346 and 29.3 million. --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  21:34, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Lesgles, thanks for the link. Now for the first time I understand why adding a search term increases the projected number of results.  Nyttend (talk) 21:44, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * There ought to be a public information programme explaining to people that Google hit counts are large random numbers. The number of times these demonstrably meaningless figures get trotted out, even by the mainstream media, is amazing. In my experience, quoted strings containing common words – of which "the of character" would be a prime example – seem to give the wildest discrepancies. 86.179.113.84 (talk) 21:53, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * See Search engine test.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 00:39, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Um, yes, but I was actually thinking about something with slightly higher visibility than a Wikipedia page that probably three people have ever read... 81.159.108.150 (talk) 03:03, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The page view statistics for Search engine test suggest that about 100 people a day visit that page.BrainyBabe (talk) 14:10, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Of onions and tildes
I quote from ñ —"The palatal nasal sound is roughly reminiscent of the English consonant cluster in 'onion' . While this common description is enough to give a rough idea of the sound, it is not precise (it is analogous to giving the pronunciation of the English word 'shot' as 'syot'). A closer approximation is the ny in 'canyon.'"Is "ˈʌnjən" a common pronunciation of "onion"? I'm much more familiar with the pronunciation that puts ŋ as the first consonant. Moroever, if we pronounce it "ˈʌnjən", how is that any different from "canyon"? Nyttend (talk) 21:41, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Especially so, given that "canyon" is the Americanized version of the Spanish "cañon". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:38, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm always amazed at the varieties of English. I've never heard onion pronounced with ŋ.  For me the consonant clusters in "onion" and "canyon" are identical. -- Elphion (talk) 22:18, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * In my neck of the woods, it's usual to hear "ˈʌnjən", which is how I've always said it. You do hear "ˈʌŋjən" sometimes, but it's considered a little uneducated.  Maybe the sort of thing that would be spoken by people who say "somethink" and "nothink".  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  22:24, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * In most parts of America, "onion" rhymes exactly with "bunion" (or "Bunyan"). One exception would be the Cajuns in Louisiana, who put a French twist on it and nasalize the trailing "n" (or at least that's how Justin Wilson said it). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:53, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I am from the UK and I have never knowingly heard any pronunciation other than . Specifically, sounds weird and wrong. 86.179.113.84 (talk) 23:17, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Is the "j" in that IPA gibberish supposed to be pronounced like an English "j" or a German "j"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:40, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * German "j". L ANTZY T ALK 23:42, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * German -- a 'y' consonant in English. -- Elphion (talk) 23:43, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * So they're saying it could be "onyyon"??? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:19, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * "ungyen" (with 'ung' as in "sung") -- Elphion (talk) 01:53, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a good way to put it — say "sung yen" as one word, and then drop the "s". Except to approximate my pronunciation, I suppose you'll need to take out the mid-central vowel and replace it with the near-close near-front unrounded vowel — I say it like "SUNG-yin" without the "s".  Nyttend (talk) 02:13, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The question is, why do you say it that way when it's not spelt that way and most everybody else says it differently? Do you say "minion" as "mingion"? or "pinion" as "pingion"? or "canyon" as "cangyon"? or Enya as Engya?  Why make it hard for yourself?  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  05:30, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't see how it's any harder. However I am not familiar with Nyttend's pronunciation, harder or not.  Is it a New York thang? --Trovatore (talk) 05:32, 18 May 2012 (UTC) (checks user page) I mean, Midwest? --Trovatore (talk) 05:33, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Definitely not midwest, in fact I never even heard of it until now. "Ungyen"? Very strange. Ironically, I mentioned "Cajun", which is from "Acadian", just like the slurrish term "Injun" is from "Indian". There are other examples of that kind of thing. But "ungyen" doesn't fit that pattern. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:48, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * You're from the Midwest? I figured you for a Brooklynite, like your namesake (or is that Bronx?). --Trovatore (talk) 06:12, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Jack — that's how I grew up saying it; you don't easily change pronunciations by accident :-) It doesn't have a practical effect, as I found out last night; I have a couple of friends at my house overnight, and when I asked them to pronounce the name of the white roundish thing in the vegetable dish, they said ˈʌnjən.  When I said ˈʌŋjən and remarked on the difference, they were confused because they heard no difference at all.  Nyttend (talk) 13:00, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Northeastern Iowa here, I use a velar ŋ as well. The Wiktionary talk page has some discussion of this, with people in the Ozarks and Appalachia regions having this as well.  Like you said, it's not going to be something many people pick up on, like the difference between n and ŋ in incorrect/increase/include, this is just less expected.  Whether it's dialectical or idiolectical I'm not sure.  Lsfreak (talk) 15:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't you mean /ɲ/ rather than /ŋ/? --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:16, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * No, I definitely don't mean ɲ — if I did, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because I wouldn't have been confused enough by the passage in question to start the discussion. Nyttend (talk) 13:00, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I am a native speaker of American English who is somewhat familiar with other varieties of English, and I've never heard onion pronounced with /ŋ/. Maybe /ɲ/ as in Spanish 'ñ', but never /ŋ/ as in English 'ng'. Marco polo (talk) 17:03, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I can't say I've heard it that way either, but it seems it is not uncommon. I'm curious, Nyttend; do you use /ŋ/ in any of these words: bunion, companion, continue, genius, granulate, junior, manual, menu, monument, reunion, unused, unusual? Lesgles (talk) 23:57, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * No. I can't quite twist my tongue to say things like "juŋior" or "geŋious", and the rest I could pronounce but never do.  Nyttend (talk) 23:50, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

"Official" website
What makes a website "Official"? The specifics regard Billy Hill (gangster). During his lifetime he was a self-publicist but he did die before the internet era. The Official website is run by his son mainly using Hill's personal records and, barring obvious POV, agrees with independent references I have seen. I've got no "edit war" beef with the description; just curious for opinions. Tom Pippens (talk) 23:32, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that WP:RSN may be better equipped to answer this. -- Jayron  32  00:27, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * "Official website" means whatever the proprietors want it to mean. The intended implication is that the site is controlled by the subject or people who represent or act for the subject, but there is not necessarily any way of verifying this. --ColinFine (talk) 07:43, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The word "official" has been become quite degraded of recent years. It's used by the media, for example, whenever some celebrity confirms rumours about the state of their love life or marriage;  ("It's official - ex-Beatle to marry for 9th time") or when some group of people get together and decide, on criteria they alone decide, that a certain city is the most liveable or a certain song is the "best" in the past X years.  The media then mindlessly report their opinions as "official", and most everyone just as mindlessly goes along with it, yet not a single person in the world has any concrete idea of just exactly what it means or why they're bothering to employ the adjective at all.  More often than not, it is just a means of self-aggrandisement.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  08:25, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Origin of "What mockery is this?"
I have heard this expression many times: "What mockery is this?" The usage seems so idiomatic that I feel this must be a quote or an archaic expression. Does anyone know its origin? 138.16.42.247 (talk) 23:57, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * It occurs in James Shirley's The Doubtful Heir (1653), Nicholas Rowe's Lady Jane Grey (1715), Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759), Sheridan's The Duenna (1775), and Dickens's Barnaby Rudge (1841), but I suspect a more proximate source inspiring its current usage. Perhaps it just became used enough in Wardour Street prose to persist to the present. Deor (talk) 01:13, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The OP geolocates to Rhode Island. I must say, I've never heard this expression in any context. Where is it used? L ANTZY T ALK 02:43, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * South Park has used it a few times. Satan says it in "Best Friends Forever" and Father Maxi says it in "Margaritaville." Sorry I can't find any clips. 138.16.42.247 (talk) 05:51, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * For context, here is some dialogue from South Park
 * Man 9: Council, I bring news of discord! A young Jew was in the town square speaking blasphemy about the Economy!
 * Randy: 	What?!
 * Man 9: 	He was saying that... your ideas are false and the Economy is not vengeful. He was rallying people to spend more!
 * Father Maxi: 	Spend more?! What mockery is this?!
 * Randy: 	Relax, Father Maxi. What harm can one Jew do against our... economic recovery movement?


 * ---different scene


 * [Satan watches on his TV, which is much nicer than the one in his bedroom. The hooded figure stands nearby]
 * SATAN: What mockery is this?!
 * HOODED FIGURE: My Lord...
 * SATAN: The feeding tube has been pulled! If the child dies and his soul returns to heaven, God will have his Keanu Reeves! 138.16.42.247 (talk) 14:59, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * For such an old expression, it's quite understandable today. Mockery, of course, is "making fun" of someone. StuRat (talk) 06:12, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I suspect it's a bowdlerisation of "fuckery". --TammyMoet (talk) 10:34, 18 May 2012 (UTC) Amy Winehouse used it in her "Me and Mr Jones": "What kind of fuckery is this?" (I'd link to the full lyrics but I suspect a copyvio.) Therefore it could have become a radio edit to make the song playable on air. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:36, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Er, no. See Deor's answer above yours. HenryFlower 01:45, 20 May 2012 (UTC)