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

= October 15 =

Latin word order
When learning Latin, I'm often stymied by a lack of guidance on word order. If I'm using the dative of possession to say "I have a dog", would it be most natural to say "Mihi est canis", "Mihi canis est", "Canis est mihi", "Canis mihi est", "Est mihi canis", or "Est canis mihi"? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 02:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I confess I don't know the answer, but word order in Latin is essentially quite free, as you no doubt know. The usual order is SOV, so "The doggus the cattum bit", not "the dog bit the cat." The main exception is esse, which doesn't usually go at the end of the word. So "Lazar Taxon est intellegens" not "Lazar Taxon intellegens est". But this is much of a muchness in your example, since the subject-verb-object or subject-esse-adjective structure is not there. My guess would be "Mihi est canis" as the usual order. IBE (talk) 04:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * "Esse" does tend to be placed earlier in the sentence rather than at the end; for example, from Caesar, the famous "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres", but on the other hand, a random example from Livy, "Tum ita factum accepimus, nec ullius vetustior foederis memoria est." For other verbs, they are usually placed at the end, but not always. For Latin it's more accurate to say that the word order depends on what you want to emphasize, not a strict abstract notion of SOV or SVO. "Est mihi canis" means that the dog is less important; you are saying that something exists and that it belongs to you, and that it happens to be a dog. "Canis mihi est" means the dog is most important; you have a dog, and it belongs to you. "Mihi est canis" emphasizes your ownership of something, and incidentally it is a dog. Hoc dicto, for a sentence as short as this, I would say the word order is not very important, and every variation of these three words can mean simply "I have a dog". Adam Bishop (talk) 09:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Adam Bishop. The least marked word order, without any particular emphasis on anything, is probably Canis mihi est, and any word order putting the verb first would be quite unusual, but in fact any permutation of the three words will be grammatical in Latin. Any good textbook on Latin prose composition will help you develop a feel for what word orders sound most natural. You have to think about things like old information vs. new information, what the main topic of the sentence is, what you're contrasting with what, what you want to emphasize, and things like that. Generally, putting things in an unexpected position is a way to draw attention to them, so a good way to emphasize the subject of a sentence is to put it last—precisely because that's the position where it's least expected. (But you want to do that sort of thing sparingly—if you start putting the subject last in every other sentence it loses its effect and just sounds like bad Latin.) And of course, read, read, read! Read the good prose writers like Caesar and Cicero and pay attention to their word order. And when a sentence isn't simply SOV, see if you can figure out why not, and what the author is doing by using a different word order. You'll soon get a feel for it. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

What is the etymology of the biscuit "Ginger Nut"?
Google (or my store of patience) has failed me: where does the "nut" part of the name for this biscuit come from? Some results had a vague notion of it being because these biscuits are hard like a nut, but I was unable to find anything to substantiate this. 203.96.156.179 (talk) 08:08, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Most likely influenced by Pfeffernüsse.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 09:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * OED Online says ginger-nut is a shortening of gingerbread-nut, defined as "a small round button-like cake of gingerbread". Thus, it appears that the nut portion of the term refers to the appearance of the item. — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 09:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Hiberno-English
Is it some kind of language? Is it like Spanglish?  Miss Bono  [hello, hello!]  15:04, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * No, it's just the dialect of English spoken in Ireland - see Hiberno-English. There is some influence from Irish, but it's not a blend of two languages like Spanglish is. --Nicknack009 (talk) 15:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's no more language than American English or Cuban Spanish. Though I suppose some time ago there could be a variant of broken English spoken by Irish (Gaelic) speakers.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * And see Shelta. Rojomoke (talk) 18:48, 15 October 2013 (UTC)