Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 November 3

= November 3 =

Questions about Id al-Adha
1) Am I right that it should be pronounced ʿīdu l-ʾaḍḥā and neither ʿīdu ʾal-ʾaḍḥā nor ʿīd ʾal-ʾaḍḥā? And that the IPA transcription in our article is not so correct? 2) Where have ey-/ay- in the first word come from?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 03:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * In quasi-classical Arabic, it would be ʕīdu-l-ʔaḍħā in the nominative case, ʕīda-l-ʔaḍħā in the accusative, and ʕīdi-l-ʔaḍħā in the genitive... AnonMoos (talk) 07:57, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Has the WP article to be corrected?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:35, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * There's just more than one way of pronouncing the same thing. I think the pronunciation in the article is fine as it is, even if it isn't the only one. [ˈʕiːd{ʊæɪ}lʔɑdˤˈħaː], [ˈʕiːdʔælˈʔɑdˤˈħaː], [ˈʕiːdælʔɑdˤˈħaː] (the one used in the article), even [ˈʕiːdælɑdˤˈħaː]... And on top of that ʔaḍḥä can also be pronounced [ˈʔɑdˤħaː].
 * As for your second question, it's just an irregular romanization thing, where "ei" stands for [ʕiː] (I believe it's easy to see how it could sound like English/German [aɪ] to some). Nobody said there has ever been a truly standard way of romanizing Arabic.--Serafín33 (talk) 00:34, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Why would a [dʔ] cluster be likely to occur in the pronunciation of this phrase? It doesn't strike me as a very linguistically-plausible deviation from the classical Arabic rules... AnonMoos (talk) 02:32, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not describing the most formal traditional Arabic reading style, which would only accept the first of the four options I gave (-[d{ʊæɪ}-]). I'm just pointing out it happens in practice.--Serafín33 (talk) 05:29, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Cases and wasl in Arabic transliteration
General questions: 1) How to transliterate similar wasl combinations in general? 2) Should one transliterate nominative ending when a word done in isolation? Is عيد ʿīdun or ʿīd? Is العيد ʾal-ʿīdu or ʾal-ʿīd? --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 03:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * There's no one single "right" answer for how to transcribe i'rab in all circumstances. In classical Arabic, it was not usually pronounced at the end of a sentence, but was generally pronounced elsewhere in a sentence according to the rules governing word-joining (sandhi).  In modern standard Arabic, it's not too often pronounced except in a "high" formal style, or in certain fixed phrases and closely-joined syntactic constructions -- and only a relatively few people can consistently produce the correct case forms etc. in spontaneous speech.  It all depends on what purpose your transcription is intended to serve... AnonMoos (talk) 07:43, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * In the case the endings are not pronounced, will ʾal- be pronounced in its full form: ʿīd ʾal-ʾaḍḥā etc.? Or ʿīd l-ʾaḍḥā?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:36, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * First off, the definite article does not begin with a glottal stop except at the beginning of sentences. In colloquial Arabic dialects without real iʕrāb the article often has an inherent "e" or "i" vowel (this explains the "el-" often seen in journalistic versions of Arabic names).  I would guess that in at least some types of modern standard Arabic pronunciation, it could often be "al-" if the preceding iʕrāb is dropped, but I don't know that from direct experience... AnonMoos (talk) 12:29, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * In short: in the simple situations it is advised to transliterate the article always as al-, and ʾal- at the begining of sentences, and drop the case endings. So we have two options: ʿīd al-ʾaḍḥā (simplistic) and ʿīdu-l-ʾaḍḥā (quasi-classical). Right?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:19, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That's my understanding, but I don't have direct personal knowledge of modern standard Arabic pronunciations outside of the classical Arabic rules. AnonMoos (talk) 12:33, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah. In practice, it often happens that speakers pronounce الـ with a glottal stop, even at the middle of sentences.--Serafín33 (talk) 00:34, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Transliteration of Arabic talks about some different systems of transliteration, if you haven't read that yet. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:39, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately it's a little vague and does not explain minor peculiarities.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:19, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The transliteration system I've usually been told to use is by the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. There are some charts there that might help. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:35, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Writing Russian with an abjad
If you write Russian with only consonants and not vowels (as in Arabic, will written words have too much ambiguity when they are out of context?
 * Example: Zdravstvujte (Hello) becomes Zdrvstvjt. --Write English in Cyrillic (talk) 09:04, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Н нктрх рсскйзчнх фрмх бл гр, кгд пльзвтл бщлсь, спльзй тльк сглснй бкв. Й н знй, нскльк пнтн мй прдлжнй.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:32, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You've broken Google Translate - 09:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Ай хоуп ит уон'т брейк самбади'з брейн.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:53, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Polish has been written in Arabic script by Muslim Tatars, so it wouldn't surprise me if Russian has, too. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 10:46, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Polish? Have you meant Belarusian?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:13, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Friendly grammar note. The perfect is rarely used with to mean in English, and not in the way you just used it.  More idiomatic would be "do you mean" or "did you mean".  You might see the pluperfect as in "it was unclear what he had meant by that". μηδείς (talk) 19:07, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I personally like the perfect tense. :) Maybe this is because of interference from my first and third foreign languages (German and French respectively). The simple past seems for me to describe more distant past actions.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:56, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, French uses the perfect much more than English, as do some dialects of German. Mean is a static verb, here are a list of them.  Many of them do not normally take the simple perfect except in unusual circumstances, or with a change in meaning.  This is like Grammatical aspect in Slavic languages.  One does not normally say "the box has contained nothing", "the word has meant nothing" or "I have loved you".  But you can say "the box hasn't contained anything for years" or "I have loved her since I first saw her" or "the word has meant different things in different periods."  As an example of a change in meaning, "she agrees with John" and "she has agreed with John" mean two different things, the second simple statement is not the perfect of the first.  The first simply means they have the same opinion. The second sentence means they have talked and come to a mutually acceptable negotiated arrangement. But again, "she has always agreed with John" means they have always held the same opinion.  Almost as complicated as Russian. μηδείς (talk) 19:02, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

"Н нктрх рсскйзчнх фрмх бл гр, кгд пльзвтл бщлсь" - this was pretty hard to read (much harder than that piece in which the letters were transposed (English equivalent)) Don't know if it's ambiguous, though. I suppose one could write a program to see if removing vowels results in many ambiguities Asmrulz (talk) 20:23, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Given Russian has fewer vowel distinctions than English, losing the information carried by the vowels should remove less of the signal than it would in English, which is easy to read in abjad form given enough context. Indeed, in spoken Russian there is a severe reduction of contrast (/a/ and /o/ and /e/ and /i/ merge when unstressed, and all four merge after soft consonants when unstressed) meaning that almost all information is carried by only one stressed vowel per word.  You can look at English phonology, Russian phonology, and the various links at redundancy. μηδείς (talk) 16:25, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Dbt thts hrd t ll fr ntv rssn spkrs. μηδείς (talk) 20:52, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It was for me and I am one:) Asmrulz (talk) 20:55, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Как 'немецкий' человек, Я понимал "не, когда" и "был". μηδείς (talk) 21:16, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * ясно. Всё равно трудно читается без гласных. Впрочем, я не настаиваю, что это справедливо для всех "нэйтивов" русского. Есть, наверно, люди, кто даже вот такое читает без проблем :) Asmrulz (talk) 23:05, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Friendly grammar note. Unlike English I, Russian Я is never capitalised unless sentence-initially.  On the other hand, Вы (you) is capitalised in some types of writing.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  21:50, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Funny, almost looks like I was typing in English. I actually added the kak nemetskij comment afterwords, the Ja had been the beginning of the sentence at first, I just failed to decapitate it. μηδείς (talk) 17:21, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Two misses: «нa» and «была». This clearly shows that Russian vowels are also important even if they are reduced in speech.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:56, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, but not being a fluent Russian speaker I wasn't able to use context the way Bielle did to scrute my sample English sentence. So I make a very bad example here. μηδείς (talk) 18:01, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Dbt  thts   hrd  t  ll fr  ntv    rssn    spkrs.
 * Doubt that's hard to ll for native Russian speakers.
 * This native English speaker is stumped for the 5th word. Bielle (talk) 21:24, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Got it: Doubt that's hard at all for native Russian speakers. Bielle (talk) 21:26, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * okey-dokey, here goes: the longest ambigouos string of consonants (ignoring declensions, what part of speech the word is, etc) is стрфтгрфчскй, which gives астрофотографический (astrofotografichesky) and стереофотографический (stereofotografichesky). The string which yields the most words is пр (about 30 words.) (using aspell's dictionary) Asmrulz (talk) 21:29, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * But real abjads let you know if a word begins with a vowel (even if the vowel is not specified). —Tamfang (talk) 00:59, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

It will be less ambiguous if you mark where vowels are or separate syllables. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Write English in Cyrillic (talk • contribs) 23:35, 3 November 2012 (UTC) I said "In some Russian language forums there was a game when users communicated using only consonants". It is not so difficult to understand for natives, it's like some sort of rebuses, but it can be only a language game. Abjads do not fit Russian for serious purposes.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:56, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It does not matter. «б*л*» can be read «была, было, были, бала, балу, бале, балы, боли, бела, белу, белы, била, били, било» etc.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:02, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Is this another AE/BE difference?
In reading news reports on Hurricane Sandy in both US and UK sources, I note left-of-the-pond uses "swath" vs right-of-the-pond "swathe". I've perused our article on the subject and learned nothing, and "the harder I thinks, the confuseder I gets": So, what about swath and swathe?
 * In US/AE, bath and bathe are two different (but related) words, and are pronounced differently as well;
 * Likewise, lath and lathe are different and UNrelated words, pronounced differently;
 * 1) Are they pronounced the same?
 * 2) Do they have the same meaning, a strip of something (usually land)?
 * Or, are they two completely different words?

(And I expect Jack to chime in on his local usage too, just for completeness...)

Thanks! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 18:51, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

See swath and swathe. μηδείς (talk) 19:00, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The Wiktionary entry omits the dialect word swath (from Old English swearþ) meaning the rind of bacon. This is the only usage that I've ever heard for the voiceless fricative, so I regard "swath" and "swathe" as two different words with different pronunciations (swathe with voiced fricative being both noun and verb, as an exception to the rule below). Is is this dialect sense used anywhere outside the Yorkshire dales?    D b f i r s   00:02, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

DaHorsesMouth -- Part of what you mention is due to the phenomenon of nouns ending with a voiceless fricative, while corresponding verbs end with a voiced fricative (only somewhat imperfectly reflected in English spelling). So "a house" [s] / "to house" [z], "strife" / "to strive", "breath" [ɵ] / "to breathe" [ð]. Of course, in some cases noun plurals also have voiced fricatives... AnonMoos (talk) 19:21, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever come across the word "swath". It's a nasty, mean, spiteful little word I would not use even if I knew of it. --  Jack of Oz   [Talk]  20:37, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Discursion on American versus British English
Here endeth the helpful, on-topic discussion, for which I thank the the responders. Past this point it's just a bunch of ref-desk-regulars amusing themselves. . . --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:55, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The Old English is swæþ, for which the New English should be swath, thus pronounced. Do you insulars actually say /sweɪð/?  μηδείς (talk) 20:48, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, we continentals* actually do, and we spell it 'swathe'. Mind you, it's mostly found in journo-speak, such as in references to the area of carnage (human and other) carved out by Sandy.  (* We gave up our claim to being the world's largest island when it was generally agreed we're more properly regarded as a continental land mass; the smallest one thereof. But that's OK, we're not size queens - not about that sort of thing anyway.) --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  01:13, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You live on a continent made up of two large islands, Australia and New Guinea. Australia by itself is not a continent, although just like Great Britain compared to the Isle of Wight one could call it the mainland. μηδείς (talk) 17:54, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * So you agree I do live on a continent. I see you've tried to change the title of Australia (continent), just as I have.
 * Anyway, the term I think you were looking for is islanders. That other word is mostly used pejoratively, but although I know you would never use it with that intent, others might get the wrong idea, and we couldn't have that.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  20:39, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I do agree you live on a continent ...called Sahul. Australia doesn't have any active volcanos, does it? μηδείς (talk) 03:00, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Called Sahul by some; not by WP though, not yet. There are no active volcanoes in the lands generally thought of as Australia, but Mawson Peak and McDonald Island, in Australian territory, are active.  Why do you ask?  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  04:39, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Just curious given the huge contrast between the major northern and southern landmasses of Sahul. μηδείς (talk) 18:54, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * When I was a young'n in school, Australia was referred to as "the island continent". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:42, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Me too. But geographers tell us it can't be both, so we encyclopedarianists have to choose.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  00:45, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The distinction I was making was between the accent of the island dwellers of Australia, Britain, and New Zealand and the North American continentals. That's pretty obvious and hardly pejorative. I must say It's curious whether whole swathes of you insulars take deep relaxed breathes as you sit in your in your relaxing hot bathes. μηδείς (talk) 01:27, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * There are numerous varieties of English, which, if I may make an apparently obvious statement, have separate existences because there are differences between them. No allusions to logic, reason or consistency will ever have any effect on these differences.  Here are some of them.
 * A word to the wise: If you go too far down the path of noticing or expressing curiosity about oddities (from your own perspective) in other Englishes, you'll be sure to have plenty of your own drawn to your attention. If you upset the natives too much, you might even get deathed.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  02:09, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Does that rhyme with breathed? —Tamfang (talk) 02:28, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * They rhyme if you spell them "deathéd" and "breathéd". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:31, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Berkeley Breathed certainly pronounced it that way. -- Jayron  32  03:00, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Where did our capitalisation rules for headings come from?
Wikipedia's Manual of Style requires that we use sentence case for article and section titles, capitalising only the first word. That breaks all the rules I was taught at school, and all the rules being taught to kids at the Australian school where I teach (not English, but I checked with some English teachers). Our rule is to capitalise everything but the minor words - and, the, of, etc.

I can accept Wikipedia's rules (although I still struggle to get it right sometimes after several years of editing here). I'm just curious as to where they come from. HiLo48 (talk) 23:19, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Here are links to some previous discussions.
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12 (version of 14:10, 22 September 2010) (April and May 2005)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 55 (version of 14:32, 22 September 2010) (August and October 2006)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108 (version of 17:12, 13 October 2010) (May 2009)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 121 (version of 07:31, 13 May 2011) (April 2011)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Headings (version of 07:39, 13 August 2011) (November 2006)
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters (version of 16:18, 3 November 2012) (July 2012)
 * —Wavelength (talk) 01:00, 4 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, in those links I see considerable debate, with extremely assertive and absolute posts on either side, a claim that we're following the latest trends, and another one that we've always done it that way. I think my question still stands. How was it decided? Is title case more common in the part of the world where Wikipedia began? HiLo48 (talk) 01:24, 4 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Here is a link to the revision of 16:12, 1 March 2003, in which an editor added this statement: "Capitalize the first word and any proper nouns in headlines, but leave the rest lower case." That tells us something about "when", but I still do not have an answer to "why".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 02:50, 4 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I've found a few cases where the capitalization disambiguates. —Tamfang (talk) 04:38, 4 November 2012 (UTC)


 * What are those cases?—Wavelength (talk) 14:59, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Not remembered. Sometimes it's the title of a work of fiction (more caps) vs an ordinary phrase (fewer caps); e.g., hypothetically, Red shift vs Red Shift (in fact those both redirect to redshift). —Tamfang (talk) 17:34, 4 November 2012 (UTC)


 * ISO uses "sentence case" for the titles of their standards - if you deem the em-dash in the title to be a "sentence" delimiter. Likewise they generally capitalise only the first letter of the title of each section/clause within the standard (based on my experience with dozens of their standards). Mitch Ames (talk) 07:22, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

HiLo48 -- in the case of book titles, you're indisputably correct. However, the question is whether these are truly analogous to book titles... AnonMoos (talk) 10:51, 4 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Some scholarly journals capitalize only the first word of an article title, and some capitalize all important words. My impression is that math journals tend to capitalize only the first word (e.g. Forum Geometricorum), while economics journals tend to capitalize all major words (e.g. the American Economic Review). I always wondered about the origin of the distinction. I assume the origin of the Wikipedia style is based on what some early Wikislylists were used to in academic journals.


 * Also I would note that the British magazine The Economist capitalizes only the first word of an article title, whereas the American magazines National Geographic and Scientific American capitalize all major words. So I wonder if it is in part a British versus American thing. Duoduoduo (talk) 14:05, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I was taught by an English teacher (for English language) to do as you say the American magasines do, so maybe it is not an AE/BE issue. Also it seems to me that this "rule" to only capitalise the first word, for article titles it seems to only apply to "homemade" article titles, as in List_of_sosos_in_soso, but not when the article-name is an already existant title - e.g. The good, the bad, and the ugly redirects to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. --Pardon my German (Fiiiisch!) (talk) 18:21, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Sentence case in titles and headings is not really rare in books, journals, etc., even if it's in the minority. I've never heard of it as an American/British issue. In WP, the use of sentence case in titles was originally to make it easier to make links inside sentences without piping, redirects, or case errors, I think. This is still a valuable benefit. In the case of headings, I suspect it was primarily for consistency with the style chosen for titles, but I don't really know. Dicklyon (talk) 04:50, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree with Dick. Looking at why many house styles have gone for normal case in titles over the past 15 years or so ... I'd put money on the fact that computers now allow us a huge range of formatting, compared with the caps and underlining we had in the typewriter era. And with that range comes the advantage of not dissipating the standard symbolism of upper case (chiefly to indicate proper names), and an aesthetic smoothness. Thank you Wikipedia for choosing title case long ago. Tony   (talk)  06:32, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Data
Is "data" singular or plural? --168.7.232.246 (talk) 17:50, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It is the plural of the Latin datum, "given". It is commonly treated as a mass noun in English, which agree with singular verbs.  Some purists kvetch it must be treated as a plural.  You can use whatever you like, but be consistent, and follow a style guide when you are required to do so for school or publication.  (If you say the data are, make sure you say the datum is when referring to just one fact.)  See data. μηδείς (talk) 18:08, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * There's also the question, "Do you rhyme the first syllable with rat or with rate?" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:29, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That's in free variation. μηδείς (talk) 20:10, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * And those two are not the only options. I say data to rhyme with barter, carter, charter, farter, garter and starter - all non-rhotically.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  20:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. The non-rhotic way of saying "darter" would be essentially an exact homophone to what I assume to be the "proper" or Latin-based way of pronouncing "data". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:33, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * How about martini? μηδείς (talk) 20:50, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Datini? No, that's not how I say it.  How do you pronounce it?  Oh wait, maybe you're offering me a martini.  No thanks, I never drink before 9 AM. --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  21:42, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I'll be at an exciting "Professional Development" session at my school tomorrow, where a greatly anticipated agenda item is titled "College Literacy and Numeracy Data". I must pay attention this time, to at least note how people pronounce the word data. HiLo48 (talk) 03:07, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm also curious how they pronounced "numeracy", since that's not a word I've ever heard spoken out loud. We expect a full report from you with your data about data. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:28, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, ain't English wonderful. We all think we speak it, but.... Around 80% of the data rhymed "with barter, carter, charter, farter, garter and starter - all non-rhotically", as Jack described above, but an obvious variation of rhyming the first syllable with rate for about 20% of usage. Nobody rhymed the first syllable with rat. I think we would see that as an American pronunciation. As for numeracy, wow. It's an incredibly common word in education in Australia. Hard to imagine that it's not in the US. But I do believe you. It's like literacy, with the first syllable being the same as the Australian (and British) pronunciation of new, i.e. "nyu". HiLo48 (talk) 19:16, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The aspect of this that sometimes confuses people is that the usage changed as computers became widely available. Before the computer age, "datum"s generally came in small numbers.  With computers, "datum"s started to come in numbers too large to be distinguished as individuals, like grains of sand on a beach. Looie496 (talk) 02:52, 4 November 2012 (UTC)