Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 April 16

= April 16 =

Can someone translate this?
Well, I just visited the official website of a popular Japanese voice actress, only to be greeted by this message. I can't understand much Japanese, but from my knowledge of hiragana and katakana it seems to be talking about her fan club. Can someone at least partially translate it to give an overview of what it's saying? Also, I'm leaving for France tomorrow (see my earlier question above), so a quick response is appreciated. Thank you. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 07:30, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It says her contract has ended (31t March 2013), apologizes for the short notice, and the official fanclub will end from April 2013. It also asks for members who have paid until after that date to contact them.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  09:18, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Avex does not "ask for members", the company says "they will contact those who have overpaid". Oda Mari (talk) 10:23, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Aye, the usual problem. だれがやってるか、だれがやらせてるか、だれに？名詞とかあるじゃん、使えばええやん！. :)   KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  08:39, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Grammar and style - two verbs together
I recently wrote a sentence that said "We are considering purchasing...", but it looked odd so I changed it to "We are considering whether to purchase". Since then I have noticed several instances of this construct, like "we are continuing running this service" and "She is beginning exercising regularly". I have a few questions:
 * Is this construct grammatically correct?
 * Is it good/bad/or indifferent style?
 * I can see cases where you have the first verb in simple tense; "I consider exercising". Can you ever have the second verb in simple tense (I assume that in "I consider exercise" the "exercise" is an abstract noun)? - Q Chris (talk) 10:36, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's ungrammatical but it sure looks awkward. Like you, I would rephrase them to avoid the conjunction of the two verbs both ending in -ing. — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:34, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Technical term is serial verb construction. It occurs in "Go see the manager", "Go find the cat", etc., but is semi-marginal in English. AnonMoos (talk) 13:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * What does "semi-marginal" mean? Bordering on acceptability/grammaticality (if there's such a word)? — SMUconlaw (talk) 13:54, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * It means that serial verb constructions only occur in a somewhat limited and narrow range of contexts in English, and some prescriptivists or strict grammarians would take exception to them even there. AnonMoos (talk) 15:36, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I am not sure that it is a serial verb. In serial verbs both verbs seem to refer to the object. In the above examples "I am considering purchasing a car", or "Fred is dreading going to school" the first verb applies to the second verb more than the object. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:10, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In "Go find the cat" you're not "going the cat"... By the way, "try and find" as opposed to "try to find" is another quasi-serial construction, which  some prescriptivists object to... AnonMoos (talk) 15:36, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In "go find", is "find" not a bare infinitive subordinate to "go" (parallel to "help find" or "dare find")? In the more unlikely event that "go" is conjugated, would we not say "he goes find..." rather than "he goes finds..."? (Indeed, can we even say that?) Victor Yus (talk) 20:10, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Finite "go" doesn't seem to work too well, but plenty of preceding auxiliaries are possible: "He would/could/should/might go visit his mother every Saturday" etc. Not sure about "help find", since this seems to be a laconic contraction of constructions with an intervening pronoun ("Help me find the remote" etc.).  And "dare" has been a kind of quasi-auxiliary verb in some uses, with special inflected forms "daren't", "durst", "durstn't" in traditional usage... AnonMoos (talk) 23:48, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

"We are considering purchasing" is not a serial verb, it's a progressive transitive verb, hence having a participle, considering, whose direct object is the gerund purchasing. (In modern English the gerund and participle happen to have the same form, but this was not always the case and is normally not the case in other languages that have such forms.) There is nothing wrong with this construction that wouldn't also be wrong with "we are thinking about purchasing." μηδείς (talk) 17:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC) You mean "nothing wroing with this construction"?165.212.189.187 (talk) 18:31, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * (ec) Yes, there's certainly nothing grammatically wrong with this construction. As for style, it does sound a bit clunky, perhaps because of the two heavyish verbs, but that's up to the writer. I do think, though, that the other sentences you cited are unidiomatic; I would prefer "we are continuing to provide this service" and "she is beginning to exercise regularly". Lesgles (talk) 18:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I would use "considering purchasing" naturally in everyday speech (and perhaps wonder afterwards whether it was grammatically correct). "Continuing offering" looked OK to me when I read it the posting, but I think if an airline company announced "In spite of x, we are continuing offering service to..." I would make a mental correction to "continuing to offer". "Beginning exercising", however, grates on the ear and I would much prefer "beginning to exercise", but I'm not sure why. Perhaps "exercising" implies an act already in progress and one can't begin an act already in progress, but I really don't know. On the other hand I would say "I'm thinking about going to the movies" rather than "I'm thinking about whether to go to the movies", which would sound awkwardly formal to me. Far more objectionable is the spelling of "exercise". This is perhaps the only word I commonly use that I simply cannot spell correctly without a great deal of thought. An x is used for a ks sound, fair enough. But then a c is used for an s sound and an s is used for z sound??!!! We have a perfectly good word "size", why not use this spelling? "Except" only confuses me further. --Wikimedes (talk) 19:33, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

one word arabic translation
Can you translate/scribe the label name written in black in an image here? trespassers william (talk) 23:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * It's annoyingly calligraphic in the middle, but I can make out the consonants t-š at the beginning, and f-r-n (or possibly f-w-n) at the end. Could possibly end in "-phone", which was a common ending for old record labels (Parlophone etc.)... AnonMoos (talk) 23:56, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The label appears to be "Tichkaphone" which fits. (I got it via the "TCK" index, top right, and as usual with the help of google). ---Sluzzelin talk  00:21, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you both. But I can't reproduce your search Sluzzelin, can you spell it out? And what the name might mean? trespassers william (talk) 01:26, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "tck" + morocco + music led me here where it's called "Tichkaphone". As to the meaning of Tichka-, our article on Tizi n'Tichka says it means "it's difficult" (?). That pass is quite prominent in Morocco (it's the only Moroccan mountain pass with its own article on WP), so maybe the label got its name from the pass. ---Sluzzelin talk  03:44, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Alright. Happier days might find me more concentrated. trespassers william (talk) 23:53, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It seems the correct way to write it is تشكافون --Soman (talk) 18:21, 21 April 2013 (UTC)