Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 February 1

= February 1 =

French and German
How do you say "Map provided by the Brazilian Air Force shows where the wreckage of the Air France plane was sighted, and where they focused their search" in French and German? This is from File:MapaAF447_Aeron%C3%A1utica.jpg Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 06:26, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * French: "La carte fournie par l'armée de l'air brésilienne montre [l'endroit] où l'épave les débris de l'avion d'Air France a été vue ont été aperçus et où elle a concentré [/focalisé] ses recherches." or "... où ils ont concentré [/focalisé] leurs recherches". In the first sentence elle refers to the "air force" (l'armée de l'air), in the second ils is used as "they" in English. — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:46, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm, actually I would use "débris" instead of "épave" because for me me épave would mean that the wreck was still in one piece (which it wasn't), and instead of "vue" perhaps "aperçue", because vue seems to generic. Lectonar (talk) 10:18, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * You are right, for both. The verb apercevoir, in this case, is more precise and closer to the meaning of "to sight". In my Petit Robert dictionary: Apercevoir : distinguer, après une effort d'attention et plus ou moins nettement qqchose ou qqun. — AldoSyrt (talk) 12:08, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * German: "Diese von der brasilianischen Luftwaffe zur Verfügung gestellte Karte zeigt, wo Wrackteile der Air France Maschine gesichtet wurden, und auf welche Bereiche die Suche konzentriert wurde". This is not literal, but it catches the meaning. Lectonar (talk) 08:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much! WhisperToMe (talk) 03:39, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Me and Thrak
Hello, I'm curious, is the rule against saying "me and X" too, modelled after Latin (which the rule against split infinitives is said to be, because Latin was so prestigious at the time the grammars were written)? Is "John and I" good English because "Ioannes mecum" (rather than "ego cum Ioannes" or something like that) was (was it?) good Latin? Asmrulz (talk) 11:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's anything so erudite! But then, the 'rule', such as it is, isn't what you're claiming. Let's break this into two parts:
 * For reasons of grammatical consistency, use "...and I" in all places where you would use "I" if you were unaccompanied. Similarly, use "...and me" in all places where you would use "me". Eg: "He and I have both seen her." "She has seen both him and me." (Note the case-change He > Him, as well.)
 * For reasons of politeness and euphony, put other people ahead of yourself in such constructions: "He and I", rather than "I and he", unless there is a good reason of emphasis to do it another way.
 * Does that clarify matters? AlexTiefling (talk) 11:20, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It does (the rule is two rules, the reason is politeness not Latin) Thank you! Asmrulz (talk) 11:43, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * You don't use "cum" for this in Latin, by the way - they would say "ego et Joannes". I guess it could come from French though, where you don't use the subject pronouns here, you would say "Jean et moi". Adam Bishop (talk) 12:20, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Joint = travel?
I have been living in the UK for 10 years, but I still hear words that I have never heard before. Today, one of my colleagues asked "Do you have any more joints planned?" and seeing my quizzical expression, he then explained he meant 'any more travels, or trips'. I am not sure it was joints or juints, or doints, or even something else. Is that a well-known meaning? --Lgriot (talk) 12:06, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Did he perhaps mean jaunt? AlexTiefling (talk) 12:06, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * That seems most likely to me too. Alansplodge (talk) 12:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It could also just mean "thing"; in African American Vernacular English, "joint" can be a general placeholder noun, like "thing". See This entry at Urban Dictionary, #6, letter B or definition #10, which has really good examples of this usage.  The next several definitions have the same sense as well.  -- Jayron  32  14:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I've never heard that usage in the UK though, and as Alex's "jaunt" is in common use here, it seems far and away the best fit. Alansplodge (talk) 14:35, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Alan. Here in the UK, the commonest slang meanings of 'joint' are 'cannabis cigarette' and 'bar, club, or other hostelry'. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:01, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Is jaunt really in common use (like on television, or stand-up comedy)? Took me some time to remember where I had seen the word before: Stephen King's The Jaunt, not sure what I thought it meant; the teleport trip I guess... Ssscienccce (talk) 15:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I would hardly regard TV or stand-up to be reliable guide to the idioms of the wider population. I'm a Londoner, and I hear people use it reasonably often, though it's hardly an everyday word. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:47, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean to imply it wasn't common, it's just that the word is unknown to me, apart from the SK story. My main source of spoken english is TV and a big collection of stand-up comedy, so I was wondering, is it a word that "slips by" easily, or is it rarely used on tv? Ssscienccce (talk) 16:51, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * (Edit conflict)Agree with Alex. In particular, in the form of words used by the OP as a rather jocular word for a trip or holiday, is reasonably common here (London again). A few seconds in Google found these results:    . I also found it in some US pages, meaning a pointless or wasteful overseas trip by a politician, for example: Mitt Romney’s overseas jaunt and Obama’s Latest Overseas Jaunt. Alansplodge (talk) 17:07, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Also common in the north of England, with the same slightly jocular connotation.   D b f i r s   08:37, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * See Jaunting car; I remember I had to pay huge money for that, to be driven around the Lakes of Killarney. Lectonar (talk) 15:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Was it a jaunty jalopy? --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  21:48, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks everyone, must be jaunt indeed. --Lgriot (talk) 11:02, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Testing accuracy of language reconstruction techniques
I know that linguists use currently observed languages to try to reconstruct, as well as possible, their common ancestor or at least some of its vocabulary and grammatical features and phonology. It seems to me that the efficacy of the reconstructive techniques could be tested, thus establishing a level of confidence in its results, by reconstructing a language that is already known directly. For example, one could use the Romance languages to reconstruct Latin, and then compare the reconstructed version to the real thing. To eliminate potential researcher bias, one would have to have it done by someone who knows the reconstructive techniques (say in the context of Germanic) but who doesn't know the target language (e.g., Latin); it might be hard to find a researcher like that. This approach would be analogous to testing a statistical technique on simulated data that was created with known characteristics, to see how accurately the technique infers those characteristics.

Has this sort of thing been done? Duoduoduo (talk) 14:55, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This question has already been asked, very recently. The answer is that it can't be done. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:31, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Nope, not the same question, Bugs. Duoduoduo (talk) 21:11, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * In theory, at least, there is no reason why such a test couldn't be done. In practice, though, the problem is that we do not have any completely accurate records of past spoken languages.  (Or at least, not of languages spoken more than 120 or so years ago, when audio recording was invented.) So there is nothing to test the reconstruction against.  In the case of the Romance languages, they are not descended from Classical Latin, which was the written form of that language at the time when the spoken Romance languages began to diverge.  Instead, they are descended from Vulgar Latin, or spoken versions of the language, which were different from Classical Latin in vocabulary, grammar, and, over time, in pronunciation (increasingly so as time went by). Vulgar Latin is not well recorded.  There are some hints in the written record of spoken forms, and these tend to confirm linguists' efforts at reconstructing the parent language of the Romance languages, but there is no way to do a thorough test of those reconstructions. Marco polo (talk) 20:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Marco. So Latin doesn't work -- are there any others, like maybe Icelandic as a proxy for the common ancestor of Northern Germanic? Or are there really no conservative living languages that have multiple descendants? Duoduoduo (talk) 21:11, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Latin--Vulgar Latin-- works very well. It's simply an impossible project to fully reconstruct a pre-proto-language once certain data has been lost through change. μηδείς (talk) 00:41, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * What I'm saying is that we do not have a completely accurate record of any spoken language from much farther back than a century ago, so it's not possible to do this test in a scientific way. What we know or think we know about Vulgar Latin fairly closely matches reconstructions of proto-Romance and thus supports the validity of reconstructive techniques.  But because the data on Vulgar Latin are incomplete and uncertain, we can't do a thorough test.  Actually, I think that Old Norse might come closer to offering a standard that we could test reconstructions of proto-North Germanic against, since there doesn't seem to have been as big a divergence between the written and spoken language, though even here there are  uncertainties about the relationship of Old Norse written corpus to the actual spoken language in a given time and place.  Icelandic differs much less from the proto-language than the other North Germanic languages, but it still differs, so it isn't the same as a reconstruction, nor could you test a reconstruction against it for that reason.  Medeis is referring to a completely different issue, namely the limits of reconstructive techniques.  They work fairly well for reconstructing the ancestor of a group of related present-day spoken languages (such as proto-Romance).  They work somewhat less well, but still with some degree of credibility, for going back another "generation" (to, say, proto-Indo-European).  However, proto-Indo-European involves enough conjecture and probably misses enough of that language's actual grammar, vocabulary, and phonology that it isn't possible to reconstruct a credible common ancestor of proto-Indo-European and another possibly related proto-language. Marco polo (talk) 04:09, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, in case, I wasn't at all disagreeing with what you had said, Marco, but was emphasizing to Duo that the method works splendidly--it just doesn't necessarily give the results we would expect. The bottom line is that these things are historically contingent.  So one simply cannot generalize or predict.  Stephen Jay Gould wrote some brilliant stuff on historical contingency. μηδείς (talk) 04:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * When attempting to reconstruct Old English in it's earliest (pre-Norman Conquest) recorded form, and we chose a simple everyday word like 'that', using only modern languages, we may choose Icelandic, German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian Languages wjile the Scandinavian languages lose it entirely. Icelandic and English are the only ones which use 'th' in this word, while all the others use 'd'. I think most people would go for the majority, which would be incorrect. I know that Old English is not the ancestor of all the Germanic languages, so this is just an example, but the principal is the same. The same sound change can happen in multiple languages simultaneously (or at different times), leaving the actual (undocumented) parent language un-reconstructible. If you went back in time and started speaking with your reconstructed language, passport control in Gothiskandza might detain you for while until they work out what you are talking about when you are complaining about the expensive sandwiches on the time machine. :)   KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  08:47, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * "That" wasn't really a separate word in old English; it was the neuter nominative-accusative singular form of the definite article and weak demonstrative se, sēo, þæt. Even in modern English there is a conjunction "that" and a demonstrative "that" which are often pronounced differently (the conjunction is often pronounced unstressed and with a reduced vowel, while the demonstrative almost never is).  I really don't think that the case of the historical development of "that" is too simple... AnonMoos (talk) 17:21, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I was actually talking about the sound change of one single consonant, really, and used 'that' as an example. As another example, modern English has 'father', while Icelandic retains the sound in 'faðir'. German uses 'Vater', while the Scandinavian languages lose the sound entirely, in 'far'. Dutch uses 'vader' as in, "Luke, I am your..." :), so based on these words, it would be difficult to predict which one of these consonants was the original: ð, t, d, or indeed þ, as Old English orthography used both þ and ð interchangeably, as we do now with the two pronunciations of 'th'. Even if we opt for ð in 'that', Icelandic uses þ, so even that in itself is different, and uses ð at the end of the word. This is the only language that does. Going back in time a little bit, even the Gothic language - the earliest well-attested Germanic language - didn't. In fact, I made a mistake in my (corrected) comment above. The Scandinavian languages lost the initial sound in 'that', to make it 'at', or 'att' (something which colloquial British English does too).  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  05:10, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, even on the strictly phonological side, modern English [ðæt] shows the word-initial [ð] which is confined to function words in English...  As for reconstruction of Germanic dental sounds in general (leaving aside "that"), English shows a greater number of distinctive contrasts than the other non-Icelandic Germanic languages.  While [θ] and [ð] in English show obvious signs of phonemicized split ("breath" vs. "breathe", initial [ð] occurring only in function words, initial [θ] occurring in non-function words, etc.), there is no discernible historical conditioning factor involved in the English [d] vs. [θ,ð] contrast alongside [d] in the other languages, so that general principles of reconstruction would favor positing two contrastive sounds in the proto-language (without further evidence). AnonMoos (talk) 08:21, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Duoduoduo -- to attempt to answer your original question, for various reasons such a "clean room design" test is not too practically feasible (though theoretically possible). However, one type of evidence that can validate reconstruction methods is someone postulating a feature in the proto-language based on semi-indirect evidence, and then later on direct evidence supporting this turns up. The classic case was when Saussure reconstructed abstract "coefficients sonantiques" in 1879 for Indo-European, based on structural comparison of ablaut patterns, and then in the early 20th century one of these postulated "coefficients" turned up as a concrete sound in Hittite cuneiform texts (the "coefficients" are now known as the Indo-European laryngeals). AnonMoos (talk) 17:33, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, Saussure's conjecture and its proof are one of the greatest episodes in the history of science. You shouldn't be able to get a bachelor's degree without being familiar with it. μηδείς (talk) 19:15, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Number of morphemes in English
What are the estimated numbers of morphemes (word roots, prefixes, suffixes) in English? I've googled some books:, but I do not know what is written in their prefaces where the estimates are expected to be. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem is whether you want to count free morphemes only or also bound morphemes, productive ones or unproductive, and whether only native Anglo-Saxon roots or also borrowings. The question has no one answer.  In any case the less restricted answer, if that is what you want, will be, more than any other language. μηδείς (talk) 04:34, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This is why, knowing these difficulties of the matter, I've asked more specifically about these dictionaries, as only they can give a clear answer. Maybe somebody has them at hand or even can make a scan of some important pages. I need exact numbers, even if they are not comprehensive. As of the "mostness", this thing is more about national false pride, I did not expect the discussion to go into the usual but useless "English is the greatest language in the world" manner, it wasn't the goal of the question.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:15, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * No one said anything about "greatest". It just has the largest vocabulary, assuming we go by published dictionaries.  A google search isn't encouraging if you are looking for any sorts of lists.  They'd largely be arbitrary, see here for example.  Are you going to segment nonchalant into non- and -chalant?  Does cran- in cranberry count as separate from crane?
 * Is your purpose here just curiosity, or are you trying to set up some sort of comparison? There might be proxy data you could get to stand in if you can't make a strict comparison. μηδείς (talk) 19:10, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Frankly speaking, I did not intend to compare with other languages at all, I'm just exploring now different aspects of computational/quantitative linguistics and searching some interesting facts on it. As of methodology, I am not so qualified to divide English words into morphemes, so I rely more upon other narrow specialists. :) I clearly understand that this information is difficult to obtain, it's not like 100-word Swadesh lists. I know the only one big "Dictionary of Russian morphemes" which is also not all-embracing, it has about 5000 morphemes which make only 52000 words (said in its preface). I hoped I could find analogous data for English.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:20, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I have never come across such a work, although it's not a topic I am particularly interested in. You will come acrost a lot of "vocabulary builder" books in English that will give Greek and Latin roots but take it for granted you don't need help with vulgar lowly English ones.  As a long shot you might try contacting Gyula Decsy at Indiana University. http://www.indiana.edu/~iuihsl/1faculty.html He's written several books where he gives computational analyses of Proto-Turkic, Uralic, and Indo-European roots from a phonological/structural standpoint.  If anyone is familiar with any such work on English you'd expect he would be.  You might also read How We'd Talk If The English Had Won in 1066 which I read after someone suggested it here.  It's speculative to the point of downright silliness, but it will introduce a lot of English roots, even if many are now defunct. μηδείς (talk) 04:30, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

"syllogistic bombs"
I was reading this article and the phrase "syllogistic bombs" came up. I've never encountered the word "syllogistic" before so I looked it up but none of the dictionary meanings seem to fit the context. Is this a bona fide error on the author's part or is it a comprehension problem on my part? Dncsky (talk) 17:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Happily, I think our article syllogism explains it better. The "logical argument in which one proposition... is inferred from two or more others" in this case would be that Monsanto is a big company that genetically modifies foods, therefore GMO foods are evil and all about profit. "Bombs" is probably just meant to suggest a series of such attacks. Personally, I think the phrase was a bit of an overzealous attempt at rhetorical flourish. --BDD (talk) 17:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Dncsky (talk) 18:52, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Or it could mean that, as a syllogism, it completely fails (= bombs out). --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  21:43, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I read the same article and am familiar with its author. What was meant was ideological truisms that are meant to stifle argument. μηδείς (talk) 23:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Wai u hates freedomz? —Tamfang (talk) 18:53, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Johnny Rotten
Does "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" contain a conveniently rhyming allusion to John Lydon, or is "Johnny Rotten" an idiomatic British phrase that both used? --BDD (talk) 17:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The relevant line in the song is "If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten". I'm not convinced this is a pun on or reference to Johnny Rotten at all.  But if it is, yes it's an allusion to Lydon - the name is not an idiomatic phrase. --Viennese Waltz 17:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The line is undoubtedly "jolly rotten", which as an idiomatic phrase predates Johnny Rotten by some time and is unconnected to him. It should be noted, however, that Lydon himself is directly named in the Neil Young song "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"; several commentaries on the song note the explicit connection between the song and the story of the Sex Pistols.  Our article on the song notes John Lennon's own commentary that the "better to burn out" part of the song references Sid Vicious's self-destructive life.  -- Jayron  32  17:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Hm, I suppose I've misheard it all this time. I'll listen for it next time. Thanks! --BDD (talk) 17:37, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Although the line is "jolly rotten", it's possible that the Pythons intended it as an allusion to Johnny Rotten. --Viennese Waltz 17:47, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I doubt it. It doesn't work in the song that way.  I mean, under the guise of "anything is possible", you could argue that way, but then if you're using that as your rationale, then it's a non-rationale to begin with.  I'm wholly unconvinced there are any connections to John Lydon in this case; unless evidence is provided to the contrary, it's just random guessing, and IMHO it isn't even covered by rational deduction.  There's nothing in the history of the song itself that suggests the connection, nothing to say that Eric Idle or Neil Innes were particularly connect to or interested in the Punk movement.  I'm just not seeing it.  -- Jayron  32  17:57, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * "Jolly rotten" is used here as Understatement for comic effect. It is idiomatic English English speech which went out of use in the 1920s or 1930s, but pops up every so often for the effect described in the linked article, of which the Python Team were grand masters. Alansplodge (talk) 18:12, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Phone numbers
If I have a phone number +48 1234 5678, how can I specify whether somebody calling from the country itself, i.e. from "48" (=Poland) needs to dial a "0" before 1234 5678 or not. May I write something like +48 (0)1234 5678? In case there is a difference, I'd like to know this for three languages/styles: English, German, Polish. bamse (talk) 21:51, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * In the UK, every phone number begins with a '0', so just (+44) 1234567890 is enough. People will know, but you can put the '0' in brackets if you wish.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  22:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This has nothing to do with language, but with how the person's local carrier routes the call. One would call one's operator for assistance. μηδείς (talk) 23:04, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems common in the UK to use +44 (0)12 3456 7890 if a number is primarily being written for an international audience and secondarily for a local audience. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:15, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

What do actual Japanese people think of weeaboos?
(I was unsure whether to put this on the Language or the Humanities desk - decided to go for the former)

And when I say 'weeaboos', I mean the really off-the-wall ones. Not just your regular person who has an interest in Japanese culture, or history, or Japanese anime/music, or whatever - who might unfairly get accused of being a weeaboo. Rather I mean the sort of Western people who know of Japan mainly from pop culture, think that this Japan (that probably doesn't exist and never did exist) is so much better than wherever they're actually from and think that they can actually *become* more Japanese by (e.g.) dropping random stereotypical things like "*^_^* KAWAII DESU NE *^_^*" "ANTA BAKA?" or "BANZAI NIPPON" into regular conversation and talking in intentionally broken English, narrowing their eyes to look more Asian, dressing or styling their hair like anime characters or (their idea of) historical samurai in their everyday lives, listening to mass-produced Japanese teen-pop music as though it be a cultural artefact, obsessively consuming expensively-imported Pocky (the national food of Japan, or something), taking up martial arts in order to learn to think more like a samurai, etc.?

IOW, the ones who take it too far and get laughed at on the internet when someone finds their YouTube videos or blog. Do real Japanese people find this sort of thing incredibly insulting? Just something I was thinking about... I can think of Anglophile Americans coming across all like "Cor bloimy birds and mates!, Wotcha me old wanker!, etc." and personally finding it semi-amusing rather than being offended, so I dunno... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * We do requests for references here, not chanelling of the opinions of "real Japanese". μηδείς (talk) 00:38, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay. No worries. Apologies. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:45, 2 February 2013 (UTC)