Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 April 18

= April 18 =

Gorilla name: Patty Cake or Pattycake?
While working on expanding a new stub about a gorilla who recently died, I discovered something strange. From the time of her birth in 1972 until the early 1990s, she was called "Patty Cake". Then, for some strange reason that I cannot figure out, from the early 1990s until her death in March 2013, she was called "Pattycake". Was there a naming convention for gorillas that changed in the 1990s? Any help with this is much appreciated. Viriditas (talk) 04:55, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I strongly doubt there is such a thing as a "naming convention for gorillas". Maybe you should contact the Bronx Zoo to ask what the official name was. — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 05:56, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Da zoo's obituary called her Pattycake. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:37, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've established that. However, she was called "Patty Cake" in all official sources between 1972 (her birth) and the early 1990s.  I've found at least one source in the 1980s that called her "Pattycake" but the majority did not.  This is a bit odd. Viriditas (talk) 07:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I discovered the answer in a correction by the NYT: "An earlier version of this post rendered incorrectly the name of the gorilla who died at the Bronx Zoo. Her name was Pattycake, not Patty Cake. Although her name was previously written many times as two words, the Wildlife Conservation Society says one word is correct." Now my question is, why did they wait 40 years to correct this?? Viriditas (talk) 08:35, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Addendum: I'm afraid that the claim by the Wildlife Conservation Society doesn't really hold up. Ronald D. Nadler of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center has confirmed (in his comment on the NYT website) that she was known to him as "Patty Cake" not "Pattycake".  Someone is clearly playing Orwellian games with history, but I'm not going to waste any more time on this topic here. If they want to change the name, then fine, but pretending that her name was always "Pattycake" isn't reflected by the sources nor by the primate experts who wrote about her. Viriditas (talk) 09:01, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Compound nouns often become single words over time, just as hyphenated ones tend to lose their hyphens, despite the huffing and puffing of those who grew up with the earlier version. (The recent appearance of "hardshoulder" on UK motorway signs has had that effect on me, close to 50 and set in my ways as I am.) Both versions may appear during transition. Even if Ms Cake was originally doubly named, she may have suffered the effects of pattycake becoming, over 40 years, the more usual spelling for the children's game.  After all, it's unlikely that many people who worked with her at her birth were still associated with her when she died, and she wasn't in a position to wave a birth certificate herself and insist on the original spelling. -  Ka renjc 21:26, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Archival reports by the Associated Press and others show that the official name was "Patty Cake". Viriditas (talk) 08:08, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Sentence Question
Is there anything wrong (not information-wise, I mean) with this sentence:

"Portrayals of gangsters over time often portrayed them as tough, evil, wealthy, fancy, and dishonest."

And Yes, this is a serious question. I'm trying to improve my English skills. Futurist110 (talk) 07:39, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It's grammatically correct and perfectly understandable. The correctness of the Oxford comma (after "fancy") is a matter of debate, but you're in good company by using it.  The only real issue is the repetition between "Portrayals" and "portrayed".  I would recommend changing "portrayed" to (say) "depicted" or "represented". Tevildo (talk) 07:47, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Is repetition always a bad thing, though? Futurist110 (talk) 21:52, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Not grammar, but style: "over time" doesn't add much to the sentence. I would be tempted to cut it out, and the "often" too, and recast as "Gangsters were portrayed as tough, evil, wealthy, fancy, and dishonest." Itsmejudith (talk) 07:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * What about replacing "over time" with "since the 1920s" or whatever and replacing "often" with "frequently"? Futurist110 (talk) 21:52, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree that "over time" is out of place here, but not for the same reason. It clearly adds something, but isn't quite the right expression - it doesn't gel with the English idiom. You want to say that it has been going on for some time, but "over time" is usually used to refer to changes happening, rather than things remaining constant. As in, "over time, he got used to her strange habit of drinking coffee just before bedtime" but less usually "over time, he continued to like her pleasant demeanour". If you have more detail for your example, you can use that, as in, "since the 1920s, gangsters have been portrayed as ..." but if you just want the point as stated, then you go "gangsters have conventionally (typically/often etc) been portrayed as ..." IBE (talk) 17:38, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Talking of idiom, "fancy" strikes me as being rather unidiomatic as used here, and I'm not sure what it's intended to convey: it would normally be used to describe people's clothes, manner, lifestyle etc rather than the people themselves. Secondly, aren't gangsters dishonest more or less by definition? AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:06, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * You might have a point about the word "fancy." As for this--"aren't gangsters dishonest more or less by definition?"--not necessarily--for instance, some gangsters could theoretically value honesty in certain cases. Futurist110 (talk) 21:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * See Honor Among Thieves (disambiguation). --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  02:20, 19 April 2013 (UTC)


 * You have a major logical problem here, namely, a redundancy, with "portrayal" and "portrayed". This is a lot more than just a stylistic error. Changing "portrayed" to "depicted" or "represented" does not solve the problem, because you still state the exact same idea twice, regardless of the words you use. I would write it as follows: "Gangsters have long been portrayed as tough, evil, wealthy, and dishonest." As others haev noted, "fancy" doesn't fit here. I'm guessing that the idea you're trying to get across is something like "impeccably dressed" or "sophisticated", but I'm not sure. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 02:11, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Typo when typing
I have a semi-frequent problem whereby I misspell certain words when typing (but not when writing) by repeating letter combinations that occur early in the word later in the word, where they don't belong. For example, I'll type "mananger" instead of "manager" or "damamge" instead of "damage". Any chance there's a name for this mistake or, though it's not really that much of a burden, a suggestion as to how to correct it? FWS (talk) 10:34, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * This sort of mistake is called dittography (though that term is usually used in the context of copying an existing document rather than composing one on a typewriter). I don't have a miracle cure, though. Deor (talk) 12:37, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It has a name? Who knew? :) — SMUconlaw (talk) 13:55, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * See "TypingWeb" and Learn to Type | Teach Typing | Free Typing Tutor and Typing Lessons.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 16:04, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I've done vast amounts of mistyping in my type but not that one. It seems to me that mistyping reveals a lot about how the brain processes letters. (Nearly wrote "the brian" there.) My own problem is transposing pairs of letters. Including the space bar. "Join the army" might turn into "Jonit hea rmy". This mainly happens when I am up to 120 wpm or more. I can also transpose two pairs of transposed letters. "Join the army" w=could become "Jot nihea rmy". Reversal is diagnostic of dyslexia, but I wouldn't generally describe myself as dyslexic. More like hyperlexic. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:23, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Me too, Judith. Being a good speller is just about my only claim to fame, but two words I always, always get wrong first time round are 'syllable' (I always type "syallable" and have to immediately correct it) and 'interpret/ation' (my first go is always "intepret").  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  20:32, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I think there's multiple things being talked about, here. One is simply fingers - whether on one hand or between the two - getting "out of sync" and, as a result, there are mix-ups.  At least for me, it doesn't have to do with the cognitive problems that dyslexia does, but simply timing errors in muscle memory.  The faster you type, the bigger the potential problem is.  Though there are some words I repeatedly mix up (though I can't place any at the moment) which makes me think it might be something else going on with those specific words.  I've had the OP's problem of disjoined double-presses as well, I'm not sure what it is but it at least feels like something more cognitively involved than simply accidentally pressing the key twice.  And these both seem different than "genuine" misspellings (occassion/ocassion/occasion), and common mistypings that have more to do with how the keyboard is arranged (of/or is my big one).  Lsfreak (talk) 05:05, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Brain fart165.212.189.187 (talk) 14:38, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

"New-Gnu" distinction - what's it properly called?
Hi all,

There is currently happening a loss of the distinction between "new" /njuː/ and "gnu" /nuː/ in Australian English. What's the proper name for the "New-Gnu" distinction?

--Shirt58 (talk) 11:58, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Yod dropping. It's a feature of American English. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 12:07, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm sure somebody will disagree, but I'm certain that they're homophones in the UK (well in London at least), otherwise none of those "and here is the gnus" jokes would work. Alansplodge (talk) 12:14, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * That's udderly ridiculous. EVERYONE knows that, in the UK, "gnu" is pronounced with a very, very distinct "G" sound. Proof? Here you go: []. By the way, we even have an article on that. See Gnu song. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 12:23, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Currently looking up pod-casts of Australian Broadcasting Corporation news for evidence of pronounced as /nuːz/. So far only found a scratchy recording of Berty Brecht singing a "zonk" from the Dreigroschenoper. --Shirt58 (talk) 12:57, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I've usually heard it pronounced "wildebeest". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:31, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That's agonother gnu. --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  13:41, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * New, knew, gnu, all the same in British English. (All the dialects I know of anyway.) Yod dropping is present but regarded as non-standard. "Why didn't I and the antelope? Because the icthyosaurus and the gnu knew." Itsmejudith (talk) 19:10, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Definitely not the same in standard British English, though they are in some modern variations where yods are dropped presumably where Alan & Judith live. (Does Judith also have an intrusive "r" in "saw us"?)  The OED has /nuː/ for "gnu", but /njuː/ for "knew" and "new".  Adding yods to gnus is not to be recommended!    D b f i r s   20:13, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I've only ever heard gnu with the yod - not that it comes up in conversation very often. I stand corrected and will henceforth pronounce "gnu" yodlessly, except for comic effect. Alansplodge (talk) 21:50, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I also have only heard gnu with yod, and have not heard it often. I don't normally yod-drop and have intrusive r in fast speech but not always in careful speech. Sorus rather than saw us but drawing rather than drorin(k). That's South East England for you. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:42, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not an animal that I speak of regularly either! I thought that the comic (with initial letter) pronunciation was also yodless (to rhyme with zoo), but perhaps there are variations?    D b f i r s   07:00, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Just to let everyone know, I recently quit my very humble public service job to take up an exciting career in raising exotic livestock. You see, I herd the Gnus today, oh boy.--Shirt58 (talk) 10:37, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Awesome. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:36, 20 April 2013 (UTC)