Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 May 26

= May 26 =

Hollandia
The city of Batavia was renamed Jakarta during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia to erase its colonial etymology. Was the city of Hollandia (now Jayapura) also renamed during the war? As far as I can tell its other names Kota Baru/Sukarnapura were all given well after WWII. --151.41.180.137 (talk) 01:04, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * A thorough search of Google hasn't yielded any results. It was common for conquerors to rename towns, especially if the name was directly linked to the previous regime; the renaming of Stanley as "Puerto Argentino" is a fairly recent example. So it seems likely that it was renamed, but where one would look to find out, I'm afraid I don't know. Alansplodge (talk) 11:32, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Day of the week/date punctuation
I'm currently GA reviewing the article "Behind That Locked Door" and came across the following bit of prose that has stumped my inner grammar cop. "'The arrival of Harrison's fellow Beatles John Lennon and Ringo Starr on Saturday, 30 August added to the heightened speculation'" The bit that's throwing me off is the punctuation surrounding "30 August." Personally, I am inclined to treat it as a parenthetical clause and offset it with a pair of commas &mdash; i.e., keep the comma after "Saturday" and add one more after "30 August". I seem to remember Strunk & White having something to say about this, but I don't have a copy on hand. In any case, I'm not sure if either using a second comma or not is "incorrect" in any but the strictest prescriptionist sense, but what is the commonly accepted wisdom on clauses such as this? Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 03:23, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Generally aren't weekdays omitted (unless it's a direct quote) if there is no real importance?  Hot Stop   03:32, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Typically, yes, I think so. In this case I think it helps to make the chronology clearer, rather than just a series of "2x" or "3x August" dates, but I'll give it a second look and see if it might be better without them. The punctuation issue is still bugging me, though. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 03:36, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I think setting it off as a parenthetical would be correct if you intend to keep it.   Hot Stop   03:40, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I would simply remove the existing comma. There's really no need for it, and it looks cleaner without it.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  03:50, 26 May 2013 (UTC)


 * See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 135 (January 2013).
 * —Wavelength (talk) 03:42, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how that's relevant here. --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  03:50, 26 May 2013 (UTC)


 * This is from WP:DATEFORMAT (version of 02:17, 21 May 2013).
 * "When a date in mdy format appears in the middle of text, include a comma after the year (The weather on September 11, 2001, was clear and warm)."
 * Your example is of a different sort, but similar enough to indicate that a comma should follow "August".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 04:27, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, if you want to retain Saturday, then add commas after Starr and August. The full date is then parenthetical.    D b f i r s   07:24, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * (... later ...) I've done that, to see what it looks like, and now I wonder if there should also be a comma after "Beatles". If your style is to avoid commas at all costs (the modern fashion, even at the cost of readability), then the date could go in parentheses.    D b f i r s   07:31, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be a comma after "Beatles," since that would make the following clause non-restrictive, effectively implying that Lennon and Starr were all of the "fellow Beatles," when of course there was some other guy. Evanh2008 (talk&#124;contribs) 07:56, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Exactly. --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  08:21, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I wonder no longer! How could I forget Paul?    D b f i r s   16:25, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

One English word which describes both "type of solution" and "type of expression"
Looking for an English word which describes both "type of solution" and "type of expression"49.206.53.229 (talk) 11:54, 26 May 2013 (UTC)vsmurthy


 * Can you be more specific? Both words have a wide variety of meanings; e.g. in a mathematical context, words such as "quadratic" might fit the bill.--Shantavira|feed me 15:26, 26 May 2013 (UTC)


 * For idiomatic terms, 'permotinal' is the word you may be looking for, although it has not been used since the late 1800's. Standard English will not except this word. --Ordeerligg (talk) 19:24, 26 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Could you please cite your source for 'permotinal'? I can find no evidence that such a word exists. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:31, 26 May 2013 (UTC)


 * It seems that standard English has indeed "excepted" this word. What it has failed to do is "accept" it.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  19:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not even in the OED; did you make a typo? Nyttend (talk) 22:01, 27 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Approach. Card Zero  (talk) 19:55, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

What do Seita and Setsuko say at 5:07 in this video?
It sounds like 'hen na kappa ya de' but this makes no sense in the context, as it would mean 'You are a strange mythical animal with a plate on his head and likes cucumbers', but is translated as 'You have no chance'. Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VszIgRtKQqY&list=PLF71D83A71984C246  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  20:58, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not 'hen na kappa ya de', but 'he no kappa ya de'. 屁の河童 is an idiom and it means "trifles, easy, worthless". See, , and . Oda Mari (talk) 09:26, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Semivowels and lax vowels
I've noticed that the IPA symbol 'ɪ' is used both for the near-high near-front unrounded vowel ('i' as in 'kit') as well as for the semivowel resembling the palatal approximant ('y' as in 'boy'). A similar situation is with 'ʊ', used for both the near-high near-back rounded vowel and the labio-velar approximant ('u' of pull and of 'hound'). Why? -- Ypnypn (talk) 21:56, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you will find your answer in the article diphthong. From the section International Phonetic Alphabet: "The non-syllabic diacritic (an inverted breve below, ⟨◌ ̯⟩) can be placed under the less prominent component to show that it is part of a diphthong rather than a separate vowel. It is, however, usually omitted in languages such as English, where there is not likely to be any confusion." See also the section Difference from a vowel and semivowel: "While there are a number of similarities, diphthongs are not the same as a combination of a vowel and an approximant or glide. Most importantly, diphthongs are fully contained in the syllable nucleus[4][5] while a semivowel or glide is restricted to the syllable boundaries (either the onset or the coda). This often manifests itself phonetically by a greater degree of constriction.[6] though this phonetic distinction is not always clear.[7]" Lesgles (talk) 22:42, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Still, why is the same symbol used for different sounds? For example, [a] + [ɪ] does not sound at all like [aɪ]. -- Ypnypn (talk) 22:54, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It seems to be more a matter of style than anything, and more common in British sources like the Oxford dictionary. I learned /aj/ for "eye" last century, which I suspect is what's in Fromkin and Rodman, although my copies of that text are in storage. μηδείς (talk) 01:48, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I think in principle, there ought to be a tie or an inverted breve (see above) under the [aɪ] to distinguish it from [a] + [ɪ]. Mostly, though, it's omitted (probably too much trouble for too little gain - combinations like [a] + [ɪ] don't occur often, at least in English). Come to that, I don't believe the diphthong [aɪ] sounds exactly like [aj] either. Victor Yus (talk) 06:28, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I think if you look at spectrogram of someone saying "kit", "price", and "yes", you'll be surprised at how much more like [ɪ] than [j] the end of the "price" vowel is. Angr (talk) 12:17, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Because the second sounds of the diphthongs are in fact the same or at least very close.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:38, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Ironically, while the section dismisses the English word yes, the article lists similar examples from Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:56, 27 May 2013 (UTC)