Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 March 9

= March 9 =

Commons closed captioning template
Template:Closed_cap on Commons: Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic

For Commons:Template:Closed_cap

This concerns the English phrase "Replace LANG part with your language code and press Go button"
 * Would it be "Reemplazar "LANG" con su código de idioma y pulsar el botón Go" in Spanish?
 * What would it be in Japanese, Korean, and Arabic?

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 01:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Update: A user added the Spanish - All we need is Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:51, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The button label and step one are in Korean WhisperToMe (talk) 10:04, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Did I do it right? I couldn't figure out what else to edit. --Kjoonlee 01:45, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You added it to some parts to the template, but there are others that still need Korean:
 * "Available closed captioning files." (Immediately after langswitch, to say that there are closed captioning files available)
 * "To view the subtitles along with the video (an example; there are other ways):


 * download this video file (right click → save target as)
 * 1) download a subtitle file (  file format) from below (right click → save target as) to the same folder and name it
 * 2) view the video with VLC media player (subtitles will be usually be automatically shown)"
 * "full list"
 * "Create new translation or edit existing"
 * Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 06:17, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 06:17, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

"a few/a little" origin
Why do these set constructions have an indefinite article despite being used before nouns in plural? Shouldn't the phrases such as "a few years" contradict logic? I can suppose either there is something missing (e.g. "of" after "few") or "a" is a prefix written separately.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:17, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know the answer, but I have always found it interesting how much trouble Russians have with English articles. Even your post is an example:  you used "the phrases" where "phrases" would have been correct.  No other language has as much trouble with this, as far as I can tell. Looie496 (talk) 02:39, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Is "such" not a specifier here? Yes, the usage of (the?) articles is my weakest point. Honestly, I think they are useless at all. :) It's still magic for me how native English speakers use them properly. :)--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:46, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Russian and other Slavonic languages have no articles, so it's perhaps not surprising that their speakers have trouble with them in English, though in my experience it's more common (or perhaps just more noticeable) for them to omit articles in places where native speakers would use them. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, unlike others I sometimes overuse articles. :)--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Logic is a very unreliable friend when thinking about language. Languages work the way they do, not the way that logicians, educators, pundits, classicists, pedants or restaurant chains want them to. Certainly "a few" and "a little" were originally (heads of) noun phrases, requiring a complement linked by 'of', and they are still used that way when the complement is definite ("a few of them", "a little of the oil"). But where the quantificand is indefinite, they have become fixed phrases, functioning as quantifiers in the specifier of the noun phrase. It is a moot point whether the 'a' is still the same word as the indefinite article in them.
 * Notice also that if "a" is omitted the result is usually grammatical, but with a very different meaning. "Few people" always implies something like "one might have expected, or thought, or hoped, that there would be many people, but there are only few". This implication is absent from "a few people". --ColinFine (talk) 12:20, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I also thought this came from the omission of "of" from "a few of" construction, as "a" is unlikely a prefix here. Is there a source where I can read some details, don't you know?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese
Why are all the chinese pages in simplified chinese? I think there used to be a choice to choose between traditional and simplified chinese, but now all the translated versions are in simplified chinese. Please bring back the option or just simply list traditional and simplified chinese as two different tabs under the "Languages" bar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.38.187.31 (talk) 05:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about Chinese Wikipedia (zh:)? The option is still there. Just to the right of the Talk button there's a menu allowing you to select zh-cn (simplified), zh-hk (traditional), zh-sg (simplified), or zh-tw (traditional). If you're logged in, you can also select which version you prefer in your Preferences. Angr (talk) 10:00, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The default form displayed is the one used by the initial contributors. If you look at Hong Kong and Taiwan topics, you'll likely get traditional by default. Kayau (talk · contribs) 12:24, 10 March 2013 (UTC)