Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 March 15

= March 15 =

Kanji variants
Hi, please see the image at:

http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/4779/kanjit.png

What is the difference between these two? Are both used in Japan? If so, is there any difference in usage? Does this same variation exist in other characters too? (I know quite a few kanji with the lower left-hand element, but I can't think of any other cases where I've seen the upper left-hand element.) 86.177.107.46 (talk) 00:14, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Seems like the same character (餌) in two different fonts. I think it is used both in Japan and in the traditional Chinese (Taiwan/HK/Macao) writing. (The left part of the character is the radical 食 ["food"], the right part, the phonetic). The simplified Chinese (PRC/Singapore/Malaysia) version of this character is 饵. -- Vmenkov (talk) 01:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * P.S. The zh.wiki article on radical 食, zh:食部, seems to say that the version 𩙿 (which is on top in your image) is the traditional Chinese Clerical script (and, I think, it is also used in the usual Japanese fonts), while the version 飠is its usual appearance in modern Chinese fonts (that is, wherever/whenever Chinese is written in traditional characters). Although the two versions are really the same radical, many (but, apparently, not all!) characters including it actually have 2 versions in Unicode (Unicode compatibility characters); see e.g. 飯 (U+FA2A) vs. 飯 (U+98EF) in http://ctext.org/faq/normalization for a partial list. This is why list of all Unicode characters with this radical (in whichever variety) would contain both 飯 and 飯, although many browser fonts would display the two characters the same. -- Vmenkov (talk) 02:17, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Hagia Sophia
The article lists /ˈhɑːɪə soʊˈfiːə/ which agrees with how I've heard it pronounced aloud. Why is the 'g' not pronounced? How did that happen? 67.164.156.42 (talk) 08:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Help:IPA_for_Greek indicates that the Greek γ is pronounced as ʝ, which is roughly equivalent to a y-sound in English. HenryFlower 09:05, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * There are many languages where the letters remain written like they were in the past but their pronunciation is a lot softer than they used to be, or sometimes not pronunced any more. See in English the word "doubt", where the b isn't pronounced any longer. Greek is no exception, the γ today is a lot softer than when the equivalence between the Latin Alphabet and the Greek Alphabet (γ->g) were decided. --Lgriot (talk) 09:25, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I have heard that the "b" in "doubt" was never pronounced in English but was artificially put back into the spelling to recognise the Latin root. 81.159.104.4 (talk) 12:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * 67.164.156.42 -- Technically, when you start with [g] and apply both the changes of spirantization (or fricativization) and palatalization to it, then the result can end up merging with "y" (IPA [j]). The same thing happened in Old English, which is why English "yellow" is cognate with German "gelb", etc. AnonMoos (talk) 11:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The answers above are correct (apart from the 'b' in 'doubt', which as 81.159 says is a red herring) as far as they go, but they are only half of the story. The other part is that for historical reasons it is conventional to transliterate Greek into English according to its spelling, rather than according to its pronunciation. The pronunciation of Greek has changed enormously in the last two and half millennia, but the way it is written is mostly very conservative. So for example, the classical Greek sound /b/ has become /v/ in most contexts, but is still written with the letter we call beta (in modern Greek, 'vita'). When transliterating modern Greek names into English it is common to transliterate by sound, so for example the name "Βασίλης" is usually Englished as "Vassilis" rather than "Basiles". But historical names are usually transliterated by spelling, so Ἁγία Σοφία is rendered as "Hagia Sophia" rather than "Aya Sofia" which is how it is pronounced in modern Greek. (The pronunciation in English is often a compromise, with the initial /h/, which was pronounced in ancient Greek, but not in modern Greek). --ColinFine (talk) 13:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, indeed doubt was a bad example. What do you all think a better example in the English language of this phenomenon would be? The word hour (no h pronounced), Leicester (no "ice" pronounced), island (no s pronounced) or some other word? --Lgriot (talk) 15:49, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * So the Turkish rendition; Ayasofya is more phonetic? Alansplodge (talk) 17:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Any words starting in ps- are good examples (psychiatry, psalm, Psycho ...) . The Greek sounds out both the p and the s (because they're inherent parts of the single letter ψ, psi), but we drop the p component in our pronunciation.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  19:31, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Canonical English example: "knight" -- Elphion (talk) 21:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * As a point of reference, the French pronounce the "P" in all of those words, so "Psychology" is pronounced /psi kɔ lɔ ʒi/ (psee-caw-law-dzee). -- Jayron  32  21:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * jayron's comment is right, but that last syllable should be "zhee" not "dzee". μηδείς (talk) 19:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Does it make sense to ask why?
Regarding to language, does it make sense sometimes to ask why things are like they are? I fail to see how it can be explained that adjectives in English are places before names (E.g. "red carpet"). English could have developed in a different direction, as other languages. However, things like placing the adjective immediately near the name seems to be something that could have an explanation. So, can we discern into things that are just they way they are, and things that have a reason to be like they are. OsmanRF34 (talk) 15:21, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Scientifically, it does make sense to ask why, however the language is the result of millions of people talking every day and each potentially adding features or accepting someone else's new feature (see all the slang words that started in small groups of people like thieves or the army, or the navy, or specialised vocabulary like the one of butchers or smiths etc.) So unless each 'adoption' by a group of people of a particular way of talking is documented, we cannot find a reliable answer. The example of adjective positions in English was set before the time where French started influencing the English language, and the influence of French did not have an impact on that particular feature for some reason, but no one was busy recordign the various groups of Normans and Saxons in each region of England and Wales and writing down what they were saying. However the "general mechanisms" that languages evolve through are relatively well understood, please see this most excellent book: "The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention" by Guy Deutscher. --Lgriot (talk) 16:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

OsmanRF34 -- there's a classic 1963 paper on linguistic typology by Joseph Greenberg which examines correlations of word order between languages in subject-verb, object-verb, possessor-possessed, noun-adjective, preposition or postposition etc. constructions. See Greenberg's linguistic universals. That's probably the most meaningful "explanation" now available... AnonMoos (talk) 16:39, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * That kind of argument can give partial answers, in that it can show that some patterns are more likely than others (though the reasons even for such implications are rarely clear). But we can almost never give a convincing answer to "why is this particular pattern or feature or change found in this language and not in that one". --ColinFine (talk) 23:52, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Would this be acceptable in scientific writing?
It is common practice to use passive voice in scientific writing. Is this by convention, or do people write like this because the purpose is to remove the person? If the purpose is to remove the person, then can the writer personify the objects? Or is the purpose to remove any implication of free will?

Examples:
 * We used 50 pea plants with white flowers and 50 pea plants with purple flowers.
 * 50 purple-flowered pea plants and 50 white-flowered pea plants were used in the study.
 * 50 purple-flowered pea plants and 50 white-flowered pea plants were used in our study.
 * 50 purple-flowered pea plants and 50 white-flowered pea plants participated in the study.
 * 50 purple-flowered pea plants and 50 white-flowered pea plants participated in our study.
 * We used 100 pea plants in this study, 50 of which have white flowers and 50 of which have purple flowers.
 * 100 pea plants, 50 of which had purple flowers and 50 of which had white flowers, participated in our study.
 * 100 pea plants, 50 of which had purple flowers and 50 of which had white flowers, participated in this study.
 * We sampled 50,000 men and women from the United States in this/our study.
 * 50,000 men and women from the United States were sampled in this/our study.
 * 50,000 men and women from the United States were randomly drawn and asked to give consent to participation for this/our study.
 * 50,000 men and women were randomly selected. They participated in the/this/our study. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.185.79.52 (talk) 19:29, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

75.185.79.52 (talk) 19:18, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The ones that talk about plants "participating in a study" are the only unacceptable ones. Only animate beings, and even then usually confined to humans, can participate in anything.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  19:26, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * That means that it's not about active voice vs. passive voice, isn't it? It's more about the implication of free will, assuming that humans have free will and plants don't? 75.185.79.52 (talk) 19:32, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * In my experience, it's mostly about avoiding the first person singular ("I"). "We" sentences in the active voice are common. The examples beginning with a numeral are also not acceptable, since that's not correct style. Either you have to write the numeral in words when it begins a sentence ("Fifty thousand"), or rework the sentence. For scientific writing, rework the sentence because you want to use the numeral for precision. (It's far more likely to be 50,109 participants than an even 50,000). 184.147.116.201 (talk) 20:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I also think "the" is better form than "we" or "our", which sound too informal. StuRat (talk) 20:45, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * For the first sentence, I'd say:


 * "One hundred pea plants were used in this study, 50 of which had white flowers and 50 of which had purple flowers."


 * Note that "used" goes with "had", since both are past tense. I prefer to avoid repeating the term "pea plants", as some other sentences did.  It's also good that the color is specifically linked with the flowers, as the stem or other parts could also be purple. StuRat (talk) 20:50, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I also wouldn't say people were "randomly drawn", as that makes me think they were all tossed into a large barrel and some were drawn back out. "Selected" avoids this image. StuRat (talk) 20:52, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

The versions where the plants "participate" in the study made me think of the following: The problem is that "participate" is an actual personification with strong connotations of free will on the side of the plants. However, the following would work. Grammatically it also turns the plants into actors, but here it's just a common manner of speaking with no strong connotations: It's not particularly good, though. Hans Adler 21:05, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * After clearance by the ethics committee, 100 pea plants could be convinced to volunteer for our study.
 * 100 pea plants, 50 of which had purple flowers and 50 of which had white flowers, made up our study.

How about "The study used 100 pea plants. 50 had purple flowers, 50 had white flowers." - Cucumber Mike (talk) 23:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Is this the study where Peter Piper picked a peck of purple-flowered pea plants? ~  74.60.29.141 (talk) 23:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Is this the study where Peter Piper picked a peck of purple-flowered pea plants? ~  74.60.29.141 (talk) 23:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * There is a convention that science is supposed to be impersonal and objective, so for years teachers and encouraged impersonal writing, such as the use of passive sentences. I have never heard any suggestion that a question of free will is involved. --ColinFine (talk) 23:56, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * As StuRat says, many journals object to starting a sentence with a digit. This leads to constructs like "A total of 50,000 men and women from the United States were randomly selected...". Things like "in this study", "in our study" or "in the present study" (ugh) are superfluous, and should me omitted IMO. You need to state how you "randomly" select 50,000 people, that is not obvious for the reader, and could influence the interpretation. Using "we" is quite common, but I think the reason why "I" is rarely used, is that most scientific papers have more than one author. Here's an example of "I" being used in a recent paper: Kallenberg CGM. Pathogenesis of ANCA-associated vasculitis, an update. Clinical reviews in allergy & immunology. 2011;41(2):224–31. . From the introduction: "In this contribution, I will discuss pathogenic concepts currently considered relevant in the AAV." In the acknowledgements section, "I" would certainly be the correct pronoun to use if there is only one author, although you'll also find constructs like "The author thanks..." . In one of her first papers, Polly Matzinger dodged the issue by including "Galadriel Mirkwood" (her dog) as a co-author. She was subsequently banned from The Journal of Experimental Medicine. Click here for more information about the story. --NorwegianBluetalk 07:55, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * 184.147.116.201 said that (or should I say "One hundred eighty-four, one hundred forty-seven, one hundred sixteen, two hundred and one said that" ?). StuRat (talk) 08:03, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Some journals want the number written out if full like in your example, but if the number is larger than 12 I would personally try to avoid it. Check the "instructions for authors" of the journal you're planning to submit your paper to. Their policy on starting sentences with a digit may be mentioned there. Major journals copy-edit your paper heavily before it is printed, and such trivial deviations from their style guidelines would be corrected in that process. --NorwegianBluetalk 08:18, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Or even "One hundred and eighty-four, one hundred and forty-seven, one hundred and sixteen, two hundred and one said that". Which version do Canadians (like the IP) use? Bazza (talk) 09:53, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Either way, depending on the speaker. Personally I say "one hundred and" (although if I was reading an IP address I would just say each number individually...) Adam Bishop (talk) 19:55, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

"En" in French
I know that the phrase "Je t'en remercie" means "I thank you" in French.

Given my limited knowledge of French, I don't understand the usage of "en" in the sentence. Why can't I say "Je te remercie"? Can you provide other examples on the usage of "en", so it becomes clearer to me. Thanks! Hia10 (talk) 21:46, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * See French_personal_pronouns - English doesn't have a direct equivalent for the French en so it's not possible to translate it directly, in the sentence Je t'en remercie it means roughly "for that" -- Ferkelparade &pi; 21:51, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Some people call them "prepositional pronouns" -- en stands for an occurrence of de+noun subordinated to a verb, while y stands for an occurrence of another preposition + noun subordinated to a verb. In  many cases en can be called a "partitive pronoun", but not in your sentence... AnonMoos (talk) 01:12, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * If you say Je te remercie it would mean "No, thanks!", though I do not understand why the meaning changes in this way.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:02, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I disagree : je te remercie means I thank you. Je t'en remercie means I thank you for it, or I thank you for that. Both are correct. --Lgriot (talk) 17:09, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * My Le Petit Robert says this:
 * "Spécialt (à la 1re pers.) Refuser poliment. « Voulez-vous que je vous accompagne? — Je vous remercie » (cf. Non, merci). — Iron. Sortir avec lui? Je te remercie! (cf. Merci* bien)."


 * Also similar. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:42, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * "Thanks" in English can mean "No Thanks." But unless it is quite sarcastic, "Thank you very much" or "Thanks for that" cannot be. μηδείς (talk) 21:48, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Cannot be what? --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  22:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The same. μηδείς (talk) 02:52, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Lgriot. Thanking someone can be sarcastic but usually isn't. Je te remercie means I thank you.Je t'en remercie means I thank you for that. The second one is a little more natural in French. Generally,if it is possible to slip in an en the it is worth doing so. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:08, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Itsmejudith; using en is simply more natural in certain situations, such as "Je vous en prie". French sometimes uses forms that in English would be considered redundant (such as reflexive verbs, eg je me couche). Ashleyleia (talk) 18:40, 20 March 2013 (UTC)