Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 September 7

= September 7 =

Pronunciation - Japanese
Does anyone know what these two places are called in Romaji? 門池 and 東仙峡金山湖, cheers. KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  10:52, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * jp:門池 says Kadoike (かどいけ), and ja:岩屋ダム says Tousenkyoukanayamako (とうせんきょうかなやまこ). That's a mouthful. Effovex (talk) 20:02, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Tax haven and tax heaven
Is the second form just wrong? Or does it imply a more negative attitude towards countries used by companies to avoid paying taxes?OsmanRF34 (talk) 16:08, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Heaven is always intended as a positive word. A company that locates itself in a tax haven likes the low taxes and considers itself to be in (tax) heaven. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:47, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, then if you say a country is like heaven for terrorists, you probably are saying somethign positive about it? The second form implies that it's a heaven for those not paying taxes. OsmanRF34 (talk) 16:55, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Right, tax heaven is heaven from the point of view of those who want to avoid taxes, and terrorist heaven is heaven from the point of view of terrorists. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:03, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, do you have some source for this? I still wonder if the heaven bit is only used by foreigners who speak French as first language. People who use such tax havens/heavens have normally positive opinion of them, and generally call them offshore biz whatever, not tax haven/heaven. OsmanRF34 (talk) 21:14, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * No, I'm not going to look for a source. I'm a native speaker who has heard the expression "tax heaven" and more generally "... heaven" before and understood it from the context. Duoduoduo (talk) 21:21, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, I've seen it too. And I've seen 'seperate' 'your late', 'their is' and much more. But what kind of people use such expressions? OsmanRF34 (talk) 21:34, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Heaven is the sky and a haven is a port. They are from different words, but their similar sound in English and some vague similarity in their concept has probably led to some confusion. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:44, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, they are separate roots, and I have never heard of nor seen the phrase "tax heaven". μηδείς (talk) 01:58, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Nor have I, but maybe Osman has heard it somewhere. The closest I can think of is a 1960s comic who was parodying some religious leader of questionable credibility. He was asked where the donations go. He said they went into "The Lap of Heaven". When prodded on that point, he said that was the name of his Swiss bank. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:56, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Tax heaven and confirm that it exists. OsmanRF34 (talk) 12:52, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * According to the editor who created that redirect, it's "a common misspelling". So there ya are. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:26, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, of course mispelings exist, and redirects for them. And some of the google results seem to be intentional plays on words.  But there is no conventional separate concept "tax heaven". μηδείς (talk) 17:43, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * This may not be relevant, but the equivalent in French is "un paradis fiscal" which mean "a tax paradise", and never "un port fiscal" which would mean "a tax port/haven" so I guess it is not just in English that there is a linguistically-biased view that it is a good place to be (if you want to avoid tax). --Lgriot (talk) 11:27, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
 * That simply seems like a coup de gras. The words refuge and havre are available, and the choice of port seems intentionally misguided--one wouldn't say a tax port in English either. μηδείς (talk) 19:09, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not I get this. Anyway just to be clear, in French one does not say "refuge fiscal" or "havre fiscal", the only accepted phrase is "paradis fiscal". And in French it is "coup de grâce". --Lgriot (talk) 07:08, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I said coup de gras because that's exactly what I intended to say. English speakers often make this misinterpretation.  It's quite likely the French have done the same thing, replacing haven with heaven, just as we replace their grace with fat. μηδείς (talk) 16:56, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok I get it, sorry. So you are ssuming that the English word existed before the French one. And that the French borrowed it, wrongly. --85.119.25.27 (talk) 07:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC) (forgot to login, that was me, lgriot)

Ælfræd gréata?
In Old English, what was (or were) the spelling(s) of the title we now render as "the Great" for King Alfred? I thought perhaps "se Micel", but "Ælfred se Micel" gets virtually no results on Google. I saw ang:Ælfrēd se Grēata, but the OED's earliest quoted use of "great" in this sense is Wyclif, "And a name writun in the forheed of hir, Mysterie, Babiloyn the greet, modir of fornycaciouns, and of abhomynaciouns of erthe", the biblical "Whore of Babylon" passage. I can't imagine the OED missing references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, so presumably they didn't use the ancestor of the word "great". I don't have convenient access to the Chronicle, and in what little bits of it I remember, he's simply "Ælfred cyning". Nyttend (talk) 16:50, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Does one even exist? Our article says "Consequently it was writers of the sixteenth century who gave Alfred his epithet as 'the Great', rather than any of Alfred's contemporaries." which suggests your recollections of the Chronicle could easily be the standard terms. Straightontillmorning (talk) 17:10, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

German translated needed!
I collected a package from the postman in my area (I live in Scotland), and I opened the box addressed to a former resident. I open the package and inside was a bottle of Gesalzenhirschkäferentfernungepulver. The package was from Germany. What does Gesalzenhirschkäferentfernungepulver mean? Thank you. --Ashplkoop (talk) 18:18, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Gesalzen is "salted". A Hirschkäfer is a stag beetle.  Entfernung is "distance" or "removal".  Pulver is "powder".  At face value, you would seem to have a product that repels or possibly eradicates beetles. If you haven't noticed any around recently, maybe this was not the first consignment your predecessor received? -  Ka renjc 18:52, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * (after edit conflict) It doesn't look like a word compound put together by a native German speaker. The Partizip Perfekt "gesalzen-" wouldn't be used a the first part of a compound noun. It's trying to mean "salted stag-beetle-removal powder", if you insisted on at least retaining the last three elements being compounded it would be "gesalzenes Hirschkäferentfernungspulver". ---Sluzzelin talk  18:57, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * What makes you think that you can open a package that's not for you? OsmanRF34 (talk) 21:09, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I assume you're American, Osman, as I'm aware that Americans have all sorts of laws about opening other people's post that arrives at your house, and seem to have a cultural horror of it. This is not shared by the rest of the world, and is in any case not relevant to helping answer this question. There's lots of valid reasons to open the post of former residents when it arrives, and if you'd like to discuss this further I'm sure the talk page, or your personal talk page, would be excellent places to discuss it. 86.164.30.45 (talk) 21:44, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * If you're going to make condescending remarks about citizens of other nations, at least get your facts right. It is against the law in the UK to open mail that is not addressed to you. The Postal Services Act 2000 states "A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person’s detriment and without reasonable excuse, he opens a postal packet which he knows or reasonably suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him" . In practice, prosecutions are seldom brought under this law except against people who work for the Royal Mail . Nonetheless, as the appropriate action is to return a wrongly delivered letter/parcel - which may potentially be returned to the sender, who may then potentially identify the correct address of the intended recipient - opening a package addressed to someone else and removing the contents is clearly intentional and to the detriment of the intended recipient and therefore a crime (which attracts a sentence of up to 6 months jail and/or a fine of up to £5000). (I've taken the liberty of correcting the indent on the post below by 31.17.153.69 so that I could post this aside in the correct place). Valiantis (talk) 03:22, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * "intending to act to a person’s detriment and without reasonable excuse": you have no idea of anyone else's motivations in opening post addressed to previous occupants. I was not being condescending: my experience if these discussions is that Americans online tend to assume that opening post addressed to someone else is an almost unthinkably wrong and illegal thing to do, and any discussion of that is best held elsewhere. Would you like to come to the talk page, or would you like me to come to your personal talk page? I am happy to discuss this further. 86.164.30.45 (talk) 07:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You'll note I am not commenting on the OP's behaviour as that would constitute legal advice. He may well have a reasonable excuse for opening this package. However, whilst I do not know a random person's reasons for opening someone else's mail, if those reasons were to act to someone's detriment, then there is a crime. I also note that you have provided no references to back up your assertion that only Americans care about opening other people's mail. This is a reference desk and your assertion appears to be your personal opinion and nothing more. OsmanRF34's comment was unnecessary. Your response to it was equally unnecessary, and contained an unreferenced assertion, which is contradicted to some degree by the actual references I have posted, given that if something may be a crime, then that at least suggests there is a cultural aversion to it. I have no interest in taking this to the talk page. I am not addressing OsmanRF34's comment; I'm addressing your unreferenced comment which you made on this page and I have nothing further to add. Valiantis (talk) 00:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm German and the word Gesalzenhirschkäferentfernungepulver does not exist, not even in dialects. Theoretically a "Hirschkäferentfernungspulver" could exist, that would be a "stag beetle removal powder" (maybe an insecticide), a "gesalzenes Hirschkäferentfernungspulver" would be a "salted stag beetle removal powder." The adjective gesalzen is not part of the compound noun and for grammatical reasons it is gesalzenes instead of gesalzen. Also, it is Entfernungspulver instead of Entfernungepulver (s, not e!).--31.17.153.69 (talk) 22:24, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * PS: Not even in spoken language that word would exist, so a German analphabet wouldn't write a word like that either. Maybe it has been written by a foreigner.--31.17.153.69 (talk) 22:29, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Ashplkoop, are you just making this stuff up? You did the same as the other day. It's not funny. Please stop trolling this board. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:24, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Side question, is Waldschluchtsbeerenentferner properly constructed, or should it be Waldschluchtbeerenentferner, or something else? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:00, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It's the latter, without the "s". I can't really explain why it's clear that "Schluchts-" is wrong, and according to the German article on Fugenlaut the rules aren't consistent either. The "Fugen-s" also appears in words that normally wouldn't use a genitive-"s", such as Hochzeitskleid, Liebeslied, Abfahrtszeit, Arbeitsamt ..., but not Schluchts-. If you said "Schluchtsgeräusche" meaning "sounds of the ravine" people would misunderstand it as "Schluchzgeräusche", "sounds of sobbing". (Not that "Schluchtgeräusche" would be a particularly likely or elegant compound, but "Talgeräusche", sounds of the valley, is easily conceivable, and googlable). ---Sluzzelin  talk  06:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)  ---Sluzzelin  talk  06:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * In between Wald and Schlucht is another case. Waldesschlucht with the full genitive sounds more archaic or poetic than Waldschlucht. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 09:44, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * + 1, I added a photo that I felt to fit in here, for it shows similar stuff. I am not the OP. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 09:10, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The question in my case, Waldschluchtbeere, came up when my friend's German roommate in college asked what a dingleberry was. Making up compounds with it was the running joke for the rest of the semester. μηδείς (talk) 17:39, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Translation from English into Manx?
Hello, I searched the whole Internet for the Manx version of the Decleration of Human Rights, but I could not find anything. Can anybody in here translate me the second article of the Decleration into Manx?
 * Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
 * Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

I would appreciate if somebody could help me out!--31.17.153.69 (talk) 22:19, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Try the Manx wikipedia for this. OsmanRF34 (talk) 22:29, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I did, about a month ago, but there are not many writers, obviously.--31.17.153.69 (talk) 22:33, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

There's a partial translation at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/manx.htm / http://www.omniglot.com/udhr/celtic.htm. If anything more exists, Michael Everson a.k.a. User:Evertype might know about it... AnonMoos (talk) 23:00, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * This is addressed to the original poster. You can find Manx-speaking Wikipedians at Category:User gv.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 01:50, 8 September 2013 (UTC)


 * In the future, try searching relevant sources at amazon.com. If you look at Campbell's Compendium of World Languages, and "search inside" for Manx you will find the same text at the end of the article, given it is used as a sample text in a lot of sources.  There is also christusrex's Convent of Pater Noster, which has the Lord's Prayer in hundreds of languages. μηδείς (talk) 02:52, 8 September 2013 (UTC)