Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 May 7

= May 7 =

4th-iary
After the primary sources document a topic, the secondary sources interpret the primary sources, and then tertiary sources sum up the secondary sources, and in some cases there can be "4th-iary" sources giving meta-analysis on the tertiary sources. There could even conceivably be n-thiary sources for n>4. Are there proper words instead of "4th-iary" etc.? That is, what comes after tertiary? I mostly care about n=4 right now, but if there are some after that, it would be of interest too. Thanks. 64.160.39.217 (talk) 06:35, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Quandary (as an adjective; confusing since it also serves as an etymologically distinct noun), though you don't hear it that often. Evanh2008 (talk) (contribs) 06:54, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Never mind that last bit; I could have sworn I've heard "quandary" used in that way before, but no dictionary is backing me up on that. In that case, I'll shut up and wait for someone who knows what they're talking about. : ) Evanh2008 (talk) (contribs) 06:58, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Quaternary. Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 07:03, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * You are correct! I think I was thinking of this. Evanh2008 (talk) (contribs) 07:32, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Here's a list of relevant stems ("distributive numerals") from my Gildersleeve and Lodge grammar (remove final "-i" and add final "-ary" to Anglicize): AnonMoos (talk) 08:17, 7 May 2012 (UTC) etc.
 * 1: Singuli
 * 2: Bini
 * 3: Terni (sometimes Trini)
 * 4: Quaterni
 * 5: Quini
 * 6: Seni
 * 7: Septeni
 * 8: Octoni
 * 9: Noveni
 * 10: Deni
 * 11: Undeni
 * 12: Duodeni
 * 20: Viceni
 * 30: Triceni
 * 40: Quadrageni
 * 50: Quinqageni
 * 100: Centeni
 * 200: Duceni
 * 300: Treceni
 * 400: Quadringeni
 * 500: Quingeni

According to Quaternary, the series continues as follows: These match the above except for 20 (vigenary rather than vicenary). -- ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  08:22, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * quinary (5)
 * senary (6)
 * septenary (7)
 * octonary (8)
 * novenary (9)
 * nonary (9th)
 * denary (10)
 * duodenary (12)
 * vigenary (20)
 * centenary (100).


 * Numeral prefix, which is largely an old list of mine Jack could probably improve on. — kwami (talk) 09:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, and for numerical bases, you switch systems somewhere between trinary and octal. I think the two might overlap in the intermediate range. — kwami (talk) 09:58, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, the Gildersleeve list seems to mismatch even at n=1 (it indicates singulary, binary and ternary instead of primary, secondary and tertiary). I'm surprised it doesn't say unary rather than singulary.  It looks like what I actually want derives from wikt:Category:Latin ordinal numbers.  I was having trouble identifying the series of prefixes last night, but looking up "primus" in wiktionary found that category.  The Wiktionary list at "quaternary" says "quartary" for ordinal 4, but doesn't go beyond that.  I think quarternary, quinary, etc. are supposed to indicate cardinals (i.e. quantities) rather than ordinals (i.e. ranks).  I guess "quartary" suffices for my purpose (I mostly needed the word for n=4).  64.160.39.217 (talk) 17:14, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The ordinals go primus, secundus, tertius, quartus, quintus, sextus, septimus, octavus, nonus, decimus, vicesimus, centesimus etc., and so don't match "quaternary" at all... AnonMoos (talk) 00:26, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Btw, "duodenary" had me wondering about why the duodenum would have been so named. duodenum confirms the relationship to 12: its length is supposedly equal to "the space of 12 digits".  The things you read.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  20:34, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Which explains its German name Zwölffingerdarm, literally "twelve-finger intestine". Angr (talk) 21:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Remind me to avoid Intestine City on my next trip to Germany. --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  00:06, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Spanish abbreviations
In Spanish, "S." is San and "Sn." Santa, correct? Can I rely on the n making it feminine? — kwami (talk) 12:18, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I could be wrong, but I thought that Sto. and Sta. were the usual abbreviations of Santo and Santa. See, for instance, the abbreviation used for "Santo Domingo" in the publication info here. Deor (talk) 13:03, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Never mind. It appears both S. and Sn. are "San".
 * Thanks. — kwami (talk) 14:28, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Do love, do friends
Marina and the Diamonds' song Oh No! starts with "Don't do love, don't do friends...". I fail to understand: What exactly does the do mean in both cases? --KnightMove (talk) 13:08, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It is telegram style for "I don't do love. I don't do friends" meaning something like "I don't maintain romantic relationships or friendships with other people." ---Sluzzelin talk  13:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * "I don't do X" (the I is omitted but understood in the song) is an informal way of saying, roughly, "X is not a thing I involve myself with" or "X is something I avoid". For instance, a teetotaler might say "I don't do alcohol", or a person declining an invitation to a black-tie affair might say "I don't do formal wear". Deor (talk) 13:38, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Here are William Safire's thoughts on the phrase "don't do X" ("I Don’t Do ‘Do’" ---Sluzzelin talk  13:47, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Back in the 1950s or 1960s there were several jokes about a maid who tells her employer "I don't do windows" (i.e. refuses to clean windows as part of her cleaning duties), and "I don't do windows" was kind of a minor popular catchphrase.... AnonMoos (talk) 15:05, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Indeed, Safire mentions it in the article I linked: "It struck me that this latest fad use of do was rooted in the stern warning of the prospective maid (later domestic servant, later domestic worker, now cleaning lady): I don’t do windows. I ran this speculation past Ben Zimmer of visualthesaurus.com, who replied: I think your hunch is correct about the provenance of the ‘I don’t do X’ phrasal template. There must have been a major influence from the stereotypical maid’s stipulation, ‘I don’t do windows,’ which attained catchphrase status by the mid-1970s as a staple of sitcoms and cartoons." ---Sluzzelin talk  15:13, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I haven't heard the song, but I would interpret "I don't do friends" to mean "I don't have sex with friends", using a different definition of do. Angr (talk) 21:30, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that interpretation is very unlikely. 86.181.205.76 (talk) 13:59, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

There are already questions about François Hollande

 * 1. Given that the surname is Hollande and not just Holland, shouldn't the "d" be sounded?  I've yet to hear it from anglophone media persons.


 * 2. Do the French separate the two parts of his name with a glottal stop (/franswa/ /olan(d)/)? I thought they weren't too cracked on glottal stops.  I assumed from the spelling that it would have taken an epenthetic z, which would make it sound like /franswahzolan(d)/ (a second cousin of Franz Swaziland).

(Forgive my rough approximations of French sounds; they're not central to my question.) -- ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  21:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * (1) Yes, the /d/ is pronounced. The failure of anglophones to pronounce it is probably attributable to hyperforeignism. (2) No, the /z/ is not pronounced; that would be the female name Françoise Hollande. There's no liaison between first names and last names AFAIK. Neither is there a glottal stop; there's simply vowel hiatus: [frɑ̃.swa.o.lɑ̃d]. Angr (talk) 21:34, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * In the UK,Auntie Beeb is usually hot on this sort of thing. They seem to have settled on "Fron-swar 'Ollond", as can be heard in this video (may or may not be available in the colonies). - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:35, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * It came through loud and clear here in Australia (no idea about the colonies, though). That answers my questions nicely, thanks to Angr and Cucumber Mike.  (In my perverse way, I might still prefer to call him "Monsieur Swaziland".)  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  22:14, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I should also point out that even if there were liaison between first names and last names, Hollande and its derivatives (like hollandaise) start with an h aspiré, so they behave as if they were consonant-initial anyway, never taking liaison. Angr (talk) 22:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Angr. That settles an unasked question I still had in my head about the rules.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  00:02, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * ABC Evening News here in the US last night didn't even try to pronounce it like the French and just called him "Holland". 69.62.243.48 (talk) 22:35, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Japanese stroke order
Why do the strokes have to be written in a specific order? Isn't the end result the same no matter what order you make the strokes in? --108.206.4.199 (talk) 22:42, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * When writing every stroke carefully the result is the same, but there are several handwriting styles where the strokes are not written individually . If the stroke order is incorrect, the result will have the wrong shape and be unrecognisable. See for instance grass script. --ColinFine (talk) 22:50, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * You can kind of see this in everyday Latin writing as well. For example, I start my B (printed, not cursive) at the top, pull down and back up for the side, and then do the curves, which in fast writing ends up looking a lot like eszett (ß) with an extra-thick line.  However, if I started at the bottom curve, it might look more like lower-case beta (β), and starting at the top curve it would look like a 3 with an upwards hook on the bottom.  Now, in English this doesn't matter, but with a script that has a much greater number of letters, where many are quite similar, you're more constrained as to the possible shapes a given glyph can take and still be recognized: if English used B ß β, I might rely entirely on stroke order to account for the differences.  Lsfreak (talk) 03:37, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * We should also mention that Eastern philosophy holds that the process of creation is as important as the creation itself (sometimes even more important). For example, sand paintings aren't made to last, it's the process of creating that's the important thing.  So, somebody once declared that there is a certain proper order to the strokes, then that became a tradition.  StuRat (talk) 04:41, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * My father taught music in Japan for a few years in the early fifties and shocked his students by writing a treble clef on the blackboard in one stroke, starting from the bottom, instead of in two top-to-bottom strokes. Apparently the Japanese insistence on correct stroke order doesn't apply only to Japanese characters. Angr (talk) 06:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * OP, did you see our article stroke order, Japanese calligraphy, and Chinese calligraphy? Stroke order is important and you should know it when you write ja/zh with a brush, especially when you write cursive script (East Asia). Stroke order is thought as the most efficient way of writing characters beautifully developed over thousands of years, interestingly, stroke order is different by country though. Angr, I write a treble clef in one stroke, but not from the bottom. I start from the end in the middle near the G4, go to the top, then to the bottom. Oda Mari (talk) 07:27, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly how I've always done it (because I was taught that way). --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  07:38, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I myself am of the two-stroke treble clef persuasion, because I can never get the top loop just right otherwise. Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 07:45, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I write it in two strokes if I'm being careful, and in one stroke from the bottom (like my father) if I'm being sloppy. Oda Mari and Jack's way, starting with the loop around the G4, strikes me as willfully perverse. Angr (talk) 20:46, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Huh? I just said it was the way I was taught to do it. i.e. 100% compliant with that teaching.  This is exactly 180 degrees away from "wilfully perverse".  Anyway, it's a single (curved) line, so anyone who writes it using more than one continuous stroke has some explaining to do.  Are you sure we're talking about the same thing? --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  22:18, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Willfully perverse? But that's the most common way in Japan and it is taught in school. See, , , and . Oda Mari (talk) 10:14, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't say it was the two of you being willfully perverse. Whoever thought up writing it that way and then decided it should be taught that way in schools was the one being perverse. (Anyway, I'm just teasing!) I notice the last link Oda Mari provides also indicates that quarter rests should be written from the bottom up, which is the exact opposite of how I've always written them. Angr (talk) 17:28, 9 May 2012 (UTC)




 * Angr, I still don't get why you use more than one stroke to write a treble clef (see right). That would create a discontinuity in a curve that doesn't have one.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  20:12, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, like you, the way I was taught is what I consider the right way. And to confirm that I'm not making this up, here are three sites that teach the two-stroke method of treble clef drawing:, , . (Actually all of them divide the second stroke up into several steps, but I don't think they mean you should actually stop and pick up the pen.) Angr (talk) 22:50, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Those examples are what I would describe as stylised versions of the symbol, designed mainly for young people to get them started (in the same spirit as their teachers show them how to draw alphabet letters to get them started, but nobody grows up continuing to draw them exactly that way). For example, I would never depict the "vertical" central stroke as mathematically perpendicular; it's noticeably slanted in my head's version, as it is in the version on the right.  However, I realise this is "head-of-a-pin" stuff and there is no one "absolutely correct" version of these things.  All I can say is that, if I were teaching someone how to draw a treble clef, it would not involve any more than one continuous movement of the pen, and it would certainly not involve a straight-edge.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  23:22, 10 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I write it in one continuous stroke, starting from the middle of the spiral bit and ending at the bottom. 86.160.209.216 (talk) 02:23, 9 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Back when I was grading introductory linguistic homework, some students seemed to insist on writing the [æ] phonetic symbol as separately written "a" and "e" letters jammed together (which always looked unclear and ugly), despite having seen the instructor write "æ" with a single looping stroke (starting at top left and ending at bottom right) on the blackboard... AnonMoos (talk) 11:21, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I've seen that too, and the problem with it is that most people's handwritten a is of the "one-story" variety (ɑ), and if you mash that kind of ɑ up against an e, it's too difficult to distinguish æ from œ. Perhaps not a big problem in introductory linguistics where only English phonemes are being taught, but it's good to nip that sort of thing in the bud before the students go on to study proper phonetics where they have to learn the symbols for other languages' sounds as well. Angr (talk) 20:46, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Anyone who writes æ like that should be strangled (with a ligature, of course). StuRat (talk) 23:07, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Any western calligraphers reading this will know that stroke order is very important in scripts such as Italic script, Uncial, Carolingian minuscule and Blackletter, which are constructed from a series of downward strokes. This is because a traditional quill pen can only be pulled along the paper and cannot easily be pushed. More modern pens (I've got some rather nice fibre-tip calligraphy pens) also give much better results if you use this technique. This is a beginners script called "foundation hand" - each letter here is made from two strokes, starting with the main stem of the letter. So if I were writing a treble clef with an italic nib (to achieve the broad and narrow lines in Jack's example), I would use three strokes; 1) the central line down to the tail 2) the diagonal going right to left and 3) the central curl. Alansplodge (talk) 18:41, 10 May 2012 (UTC)


 * You don't even have to be a calligrapher, you could just be a person reading other people's handwriting. If you're just writing each letter on its own, it doesn't matter that much, so long as the letters are relatively true to their printed shapes. However, once the letters start attaching one to another (as they often do once you start writing more quickly) it becomes very important.
 * If seen people who used a non-Latin script for their native languages who weren't taught proper Latin penmanship, and it resulted in some very awkward letter shapes. For example, most people would write 'd', first as a 'c', starting on the top, and then add an 'l', also starting at the top. Starting the 'd' at the top and finishing with the loop gives a very different result, something like an insular g than a 'd'. Similarly, 'e' is usually formed with a line across (left-right), and then a stroke around it, or, more rarely, a 'c' with a left-right stroke added afterwards. I've seen it written as a 'c' with an added afterstroke that looks more like a '/' than a '-' giving the letter more the appearance of 'ɑ' than of 'e'.
 * So while the stroke order might be more important in langauges such as Japanese or Chinese, even in a script as simple as the basic ISO Latin alphabet, it carries great importance, and not just for the calligrapher, but also for the casual writer who wants his scribble to be legible for others. V85 (talk) 19:22, 10 May 2012 (UTC)