Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 August 21

= August 21 =

Cryptic Pregnancy in Chinese
There is an article called Cryptic pregnancy which describes a condition where someone is unaware of their pregnancy until they go into labor. I have tried in vain to look for a Chinese term to describe this condition - not even Google search results for this topic in Chinese seem to be helpful. Can someone help me find an appropriate Chinese term for this condition? 69.120.134.125 (talk) 04:11, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

What was that again?
Suppose a guy introduces himself as "Frank Geary". You aren't sure whether you heard "Frank" or "Hank". I always go "Frank?" and they go "Geary". I go "yeah, yeah, ...Frank??" and they just repeat "Geary". Then I just give up and assume I was right, but it's annoying somehow - what if they didn't hear my "Frank" very clearly? Now I'm in China, and non-native speakers do this to me all the time, and I need a quick way of clarifying what I've heard. So be Frank with me - how do I get the first part of that, without going into detail? Overclarifying is tedious, so I want the simple way. Why does everyone (native or foreign) assume I want the second part? Is there a tone of voice that gets the idea across? IBE (talk) 06:02, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * How about, "could you repeat that please?" Always works for me, in any language. --jpgordon:==( o ) 06:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Ask "Did you say your first name was Frank or Hank?". --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:25, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, I hear you, but the point is that I instinctively do this, then realise I'm not being understood. Is there a "right" way? It interests me in and of itself, as well as being simpler if I can just use the right abbreviated way (assuming such a thing exists). It just seems strange that it comes out wrong much more than 50% of the time. IBE (talk) 10:19, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * How about repeating the entire name instead of just the first name? Or "Say again, please?" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Those suggestions actually might work, although the first one only works with something short. I used the example of a name because, although it happened 10 years ago, it's still fresh in my mind. At the time I couldn't work out for the life of me why he kept repeating his surname, when I asked him about his first name. "Frank?" "Geary." "Frank?" "Geary." "Frank??!!" "Geary!". I gave up, and figured it out afterwards. It's now happening with sentences in China, so I say the first bit, and they repeat the rest of the sentence. It usually means I've heard right, but I'm instinctively doing the dumb thing of just repeating myself. Just curious as to what the "canonical" way is of doing it without the laborious (and strangely unintuitive) trick of actually explaining yourself. IBE (talk) 11:55, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * When you say "Frank?", you're inviting him to fill in the rest of his name. That might sound counterintuitive, but that's how it works.  You've obviously got the first name correct, and as far as he's concerned you want clarity only about the surname.  If you said "Hank?" and his name was actually Frank, he would correct you with "No, Frank".  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  12:01, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I sometimes repeat the phrase with 'what' or 'who' filling in the part I don't understand. E.g. "[who] Geary?", or "The great [what] of China?" With some practice, you can even vocally imply the square brackets/variable nature of the 'who/what' :) This might be a little familiar for very professional contexts, but it's always worked well for me in friendly situations. Since you're repeating every part you heard, it's very easy for people from different cultures and linguistic backgrounds to understand which part you didn't understand. For long phrases, you only need to repeat the words adjacent to the word you didn't catch. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:42, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * They say you only get one chance to make a first impression. I agree. If I don't hear a name, I just don't use it. In one-on-one dealings, they're not so important, anyway. If it's important to you and you catch the last name, you might try "Good to meet you, Mr. Geary" and hope for a "Call me Frank." Not surefire, of course. Plenty of people would still rather be called Mister.


 * If you questioned my first name, I'd repeat it for you, not my last. But I know it's common here to take it as a trailing "Frank...?", too. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:40, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

How did the Iago Sparrow get that name?
There's a "did you know" today about the Iago Sparrow, but the article, unless I missed it, doesn't explain how the poor bird happened to get named after one of the most despised characters in Western literature, a man whose evil is so unmotivated that it represents a flaw in an otherwise masterful play. Only Nurse Ratched comes close. (Is there a bird named after her?) --Trovatore (talk) 07:52, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * According to Iago_Sparrow it was "first collected by Charles Darwin ... at the island of Santiago". Iago is a form of Jacob or James; presumably Darwin (or whoever named it) wasn't thinking of the Shakespearean baddie . AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks much. I don't think I would ever have made that connection. --Trovatore (talk) 08:04, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Santiago Island is rather surprisingly named after King James I of Great Britain according to Galapagos Conservancy - my guess would have been Saint James the Great but you can't be right all of the time! Alansplodge (talk) 18:56, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * One might take exception to that description of Iago's character. See Iago, and, from a non-expert perspective, he hates his boss and wants to ruin his marriage.  Is this so unimaginable a situation to be in?  See Going postal.  One might also recommend a viewing of Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of Iago in which this element of the character is brought out very positively. Tevildo (talk) 20:38, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Translation of Shakespeare's date of death
I read this in a footnote (note 36) in the Shakespeare's life article: His age and the date are inscribed in Latin on his funerary monument: AETATIS 53 DIE 23 APR. Can someone please translate exactly what this means? And, also, what exactly would a "funerary monument" refer to? I assume it is something different than his gravestone (since his gravestone has that famous poem inscribed on it)? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * See Shakespeare's funerary monument: it means that he died at age 53 on April 23 (1616). AETATIS is short for "anno aetatis suae", meaning literally "in the year of his age", best translated "at the age of", DIE is ablative of "dies", meaning "day" and APR just means April, so AETATIS 53 DIE 23 APR means "at the age of 53 on the day of 23 April". However, that's part of a longer inscription (see linked article). - Lindert (talk) 16:54, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I did not know that we had an article for Shakespeare's funerary monument.  I will read that.  So, in the meanwhile, a follow up question.  Why would it say age 53 instead of 52?  Or even 51, for that matter?  Thanks.    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:21, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * You are 52 during the 53rd "year of your age", as you only have that birthday at the end of the year. Rojomoke (talk) 18:06, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * According to Google Translate, anno aetatis suae 53 means "at the age of 53". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Google Translate is (as usual) wrong. It definitely means 'in the 53rd year of his age'; anno = in the year, aetatis = of age, suae = his (and agrees with aetatis, not anno). AlexTiefling (talk) 21:07, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. But, I am totally confused. Does this mean (according to the customs and language/"wording" of his times), that he died at what we today would consider age 52? or age 53? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:43, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * He died at what we would today consider age 52. Despite Google Translate, anno aetatis suae 53 does not mean "at the age of 53" but rather "in the 53rd year of his life", i.e. during the period between his 52nd birthday and his 53rd birthday. (Think about it: the first year of your life is the year between your birth and your 1st birthday, not the year in which you are called "1 year old".) This method of counting a person's age got started before Europeans had a firm grasp on the concept of zero, and is still common in German, where you see things like "Sale of spirits is prohibited to anyone who has not completed the 18th year of his life", which means anyone who not reached his 18th birthday. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:49, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year/goin' home to a place he'd never been before. So he was actually 26, I guess?  I wonder what Denver had in mind. --Trovatore (talk) 21:27, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I was born at a very young age, too, but being born at the age of 26 ....? Poor Mrs Deutschendorf.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Especially with that wide mouth. Anyway, the time frame of his move to Colorado appears to coincide with having turned 26 and not having turned 27 yet. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:31, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * If the facts in William Shakespeare are correct, he actually died 3 days short of his baptism day, so he was either just about to turn 52 or had just barely turned 52. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:52, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It's more complicated than that. In 1582, when WS was 18, the Gregorian calendar came into existence.  England did not adopt it until 1752, but it's nevertheless useful to consider it when working out his actual lifespan.  Had Shakespeare been Italian, Spanish, Polish or Portuguese, we'd say he died on 3 May 1616 (NS), which was 7 days after his baptism day, not 3 days before it.  So, did he complete his 52nd year and was already a week or so into his 53rd; or had he not quite completed his 52nd?  It seems we have a great deal more to learn about "year", particularly around that time.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:40, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't follow what you are saying. If England adopted the new calendar in 1752, how does that affect Shakespeare's death date in 1616?   Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, think of it like this: Consider a person who was baptised in France on the same day as Shakespeare, and who died in France on the same day as Shakespeare.  Regardless of anything else, we'd say their life spans were identical, right?  Yet, the French guy would be recorded as having died on 3 May 1616, seven days into his 53rd year, while Willy boy was still three days short of completing his 52nd year.  How can this be?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:55, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, I understand that. But, in the case of France, the individual's age is being calculated according to a calendar that has changed midway through his life span.  That is not the case with Shakespeare (as I understand your post).  The calendar in use when he was born (1564) is the same calendar in use when he died (1616).  So, if the "new" calendar did not take effect until 100+ years later (1752), how is this relevant to the computation of Shakespeare's age?  Not the French guy's age, but Shakespeare's?  Thanks.    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:11, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That's why I said "regardless of anything else", which meant "regardless of any changes to calendars, and whether such changes applied to them equally or not". Their actual lifespans were identical, so how can their ages at death be different?  I guess this is where the meaning of the word "year" takes on some importance.  It isn't always the same thing, and we already accept that because we're quite happy living in a system where it's sometimes 365 days and sometimes 366 days.  But in 1582, in certain countries, it was only 355 days because of the switch to the Gregorian calendar, which required 10 days to be dropped.  Then other countries gradually came on board by dropping as many days as appropriate for when they changed.  When Britain changed in 1752, they had to drop 11 days.  And Russia had to drop 13 days in 1918.  Same for Greece in 1923.  What's all this got to do with Shakespeare, I hear you cry.  Well, I guess we're implicitly saying that we can justify saying his age at death and that of his French double were not the same, even though their lifespans were identical, because the set of "years" in Shakespeare's life wasn't the same set of "years" in the French guy's life.  Hence the difference.  I just felt the need to think this through aloud, so to speak.  Please carry on. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:09, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Before 1752, England's new year was March 25 (iirc) – which is irrelevant to an event in April. HTH. —Tamfang (talk) 07:19, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Related question
Thanks. So, in light of the above discussion, what is all this confusion about his "real" birthday? We know the date on which he died, correct? And we know that he was age 52 upon death, correct? So, does that not conclude that his real birthday was, in fact, April 23? If, indeed, he were born on April 24 or April 25 or even April 26, they would have listed his age as 51 at death, no? What am I missing here? Or is the notion that he might have been born before April 23? I am so confused. Also, do we not "trust" his contemporaries, that they would get "correct" the age to inscribe on his funerary monument? Or do we have reasons to doubt that the contemporaries of that time got it (his age of 52) correct? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk)
 * Two answers to that, I think. (1) He could indeed have been born before April 23; all we know is that he was baptized on the 26th. See Birth-baptism intervals for family historians: "Family historians working on the early modern period can usually assume that any date they uncover either in a parish register or on the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which specifies baptism will normally be no more than a week after birth." (2) We may indeed have reason to doubt the accuracy of funerary monument, since it was probably made several years after Shakespeare's death. Lesgles (talk) 22:15, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * See this preview of The Quest for Shakespeare by Joseph Pearce, which discusses the fact that 23 April is England's patronal festival, that may have influenced its adoption as his birthday. Alansplodge (talk) 12:18, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:19, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Alphabetical order
I have a question about the alphabet and alphabetical ordering. I read both of those articles, and they did not seem to answer my question. I clearly understand the concept of "alphabetical ordering" (e.g., the word "apple" comes before "boy", which comes before "cat", etc.). My question is: Is there any particular reason or rationale or philosophy as to the order of the letters of the alphabet? In other words, for example: Why is "D" the fourth letter, when it could just as easily be the 18th letter? Why does the letter "K" come before the letter "Q", when it could just as easily come after it? Things of that nature. Where and why does the present order come from? Was it just some random ordering? Or is there some rhyme and reason behind it? I am referring to the English language alphabet. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The order, for the most part, inherited from its predecessor alphabets. Perhaps Latin alphabet, Latin script, English alphabet and/or History of the Latin alphabet will have the exact answers you're looking for.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 18:03, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * This image summarizes things nicely. הסרפד  (call me Hasirpad) 19:01, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * That's a nice picture, but what exactly is it saying? What do the columns mean?  What do the colors signify?  Thanks.  Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:45, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * The middle column is the Phoenician alphabet, from which the Greek (2nd from left) and Latin (left) alphabets are derived. The history of alphabetical order is shown by the background colors: Phoenician and Hebrew retain the original Semitic order (or rather, one of two original orders—see Ugaritic alphabet). הסרפד  (call me Hasirpad) 22:19, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Generally, new letters get added to the end of the alphabet. Some letters can be split (I and J) retain their earlier places.  This of course doesn't explain the base that we began with. Barney the barney barney (talk) 19:36, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Apparently, we don't really know the origins of alphabetical order in the Phoenician and earlier Semitic abjads from which our alphabet is derived, but this article discusses some of the theories. Marco polo (talk) 19:42, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It might also be worth pointing out that "alphabetical order", in the sense of ordering words like in a dictionary, is historically a function of only secondary importance, and much more recent than the first and foremost function of the order of the letters in the alphabet: that of serving as a handy mnemonic for learning the set by heart. Alphabets could have been invented simply as unordered sets of characters, as far as their actual function in writing was concerned, but in fact, from the earliest times, they seem to have been always handled as sequences with a fixed order, and with letter names to go with it, simply so that learners could have something like our modern alphabet songs to recite by rote when learning it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * sub question : do we have any good articles on WP that talk about the i/j split? The article i doesn't mention it, and j only gives a cursory mention, and gives a 1524 for use in Italian. I've heard from other sources that these letters and ampersand have been the most recent changes to the Latin alphabet, as used in English. For instance, Thomas Jefferson is said to have signed his name with an I, and the i/j split is sometimes given as a reason for why J is skipped in street names. So is there any info on when this settled down in AmEng? SemanticMantis (talk) 21:40, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure, but I think the U/V/W split is almost as recent. At least in German uppercase I/J were not distinguished until the 19th or early 20th centuries, depending on the style of type (see J). הסרפד  (call me Hasirpad) 22:19, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Joseph A. Spadaro -- The Latin alphabet ordering is an imperfect continuation of what scholars call the North Semitic or Levantine alphabet ordering. The earliest attestation of this North Semitic ordering is in the first 27 letters of the 30-letter Ugaritic alphabet. There's no evident rationale for the ordering of these 27 Ugaritic letters. Here's a table taken from Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 March 8, showing which modern Latin letters correspond to which letters in the Ugaritic ordering (note that the Latin alphabet does not actually directly descend from the cuneiform Ugaritic alphabet, but rather from a mostly-unattested non-cuneiform alphabet of similar date): Some things are a little more complex than can be shown in this format (particularly "s"-"X", which has a kind of structural relationship, but no actual shape correspondence with the North Semitic letter). AnonMoos (talk) 23:00, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * The Semitic–Latin correspondence is better when one considers that Latin descends from the Phoenician alphabet, which (like Hebrew and Syriac) lacks characters for ḫ, ḏ, ẓ, ġ, and not from the Ugaritic alphabet. Thus:


 * (AnonMoos: I am a little confused regarding š/ṯ. Isn't S derived from š, not ṯ?) הסרפד  (call me Hasirpad) 23:49, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, but the Ugaritic alphabet (not the Phoenician alphabet) provides the earliest attestation of the North Semitic alphabetic ordering, and available indications are that the 27-letter alphabet probably preceded the 22-letter alphabet. The correspondence in order between Ugaritic ṯ/θ and Phoenician š is one such indication -- there was a historical "Canaanite" sound change of θ > š (also ð > z etc.), which meant that there would then be two letters writing [š], and when the 27-letter alphabet was reduced to 22-letters as a result of such mergers, it happened that the letter originally used to write θ was kept, while the letter originally used to write š was discarded. If one were to adopt the reverse hypothesis, that the 27-letter alphabet which underlies the 30-letter Ugaritic alphabet was expanded from 22 letters, then the correspondence in order between Phoenician š and Ugaritic θ wouldn't make much sense (William Foxwell Albright realized this over 60 years ago, almost as soon as Ugaritic "abecedarium" tablets were found). AnonMoos (talk) 00:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * AnonMoos: Thank you. I was aware of the Canaanite sound shift, but was under the (apparently wrong) impression that the alphabetical order follows that of the original characters. The shin, and consequently S (your favorites, no?), are derived from the glyph for š, not ṯ—is that correct? הסרפד  (call me Hasirpad) 01:03, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I never really saw much point in trying to compare Ugaritic cuneiform letter shapes to non-cuneiform letter shapes, so I'm not the one to ask about that... AnonMoos (talk) 01:49, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:20, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

A billion here, a billion there - pretty soon, you're talking real money
Do those wacky British use "billion" in reference to money as meaning 1,000,000,000, or do they write "thousand million"? Do they sneer at Bill Gates for being a mere thousand millionaire? Do they differentiate between a "billion dollars" and a "billion pounds"? Also, is "bn" the British abbreviation for billion? Clarityfiend (talk) 21:50, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * This is in the context of a business/financial document. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:09, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * (ec) There's such a word as milliard, there's never any need to use a "thousand million", whether you're using the long or short scale. Anyway, see numberphile's video on this. The short system is increasingly dominant in the UK, so they would use "billion" in the same way as Americans, but if some really conservative Brits wanted to say £ 1,000,000,000 they would say a milliard pounds, not a thousand million. And though I'm not aware of any English usage of the word 'milliardaire', meaning billionaire in the normal sense, other languages, including French do use precisely that to describe Bill Gates. - Lindert (talk) 22:16, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Huh? Can you please provide some cites where British (or any anglophone people) use "milliard" and expect general readers/listeners to know what they're referring to?  The word may exist, but relatively few people know of it, and relatively few of them know what it means.  It is not in general usage.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:26, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That was my impression too. A few traditionalists in the UK (and maybe some other Commonwealth countries?) say "thousand million"; virtually no one says "milliard".  But I don't have much to go on; I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who's genuinely sighted "milliard" in the wild, in English, used by a native English speaker. --Trovatore (talk) 23:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I use "English Billion" for a million million, and "American Billion" for a thousand million. I would like to use "milliard" but refrain from doing so because few would understand what I meant.  It was Harold Wilson who decided that Britain would use the American Billion for government purposes.  ( I've never forgiven him!  )  Since the English (and European) Billion was rarely used before Harold Wilson's time, it has now fallen almost completely out of use except by those of my generation who remember pre-Wilson times.    D b f i r s   12:01, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I concur with Jack. The OED has a couple of citations from the 1990's, but in the sense of "a very large number". The latest citation it has that is unequivocally the specific meaning is from 1977. --ColinFine (talk) 13:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Generally speaking, nowadays British people mean 10^9 when they say a "billion". This is especially true when people are talking about money.  Bluap (talk) 13:44, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The BBC always use the Americanesque billion in their financial news.  They have a feedback programme called Points of View, which sometimes featured letters from disgruntled older viewers complaining about the use of the American-style billion, but the BBC news editors always replied that it was widely understood and would only cause confusion if they reverted to the old method. I was taught at school that the European billion was obsolete, back in the 1970s. And yes, £12bn equals GBP 12,000,000,000.00. Alansplodge (talk) 16:19, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Not exactly, Alan. "£12billion.00" would equal GBP 12,000,000,000.00, but plain "£12billion" or "£12bn" equals GBP 12,000,000,000.  I sometimes see house prices as, e.g. "$875,000.00" (or "$875000.00") and I wonder if it would ever be anything other than zero cents, and if so, would the vendor refuse to sell if the final few cents weren't paid.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Apologies, Jack. I started off without the decimal point but decided it looked a bit underdressed without one so I went back and put the pence in. Twenty five years' work in the City has its effects on one. Alansplodge (talk) 17:09, 23 August 2014 (UTC)


 * We have relevant articles on Names of large numbers and Long and short scales. They give a pretty good idea of who is using what terminology (although not much mention of Asian countries/languages). According to the article, modern Brits use "billion" in the same way Americans do: 10^9, and this corroborates the two preceding responses. As for the business or general culture of the language, I imagine most people who have any idea what's up just deal with it. Sure, a young smoker in the USA might chuckle if a Brit asks her for a fag, and some Brits will blush if an American mentions her fanny pack (which means something rather different to each of them), but mostly, educated adults learn to get over these kinds of usage differences. Unlike the silly American refusal to metricate (Mars_Climate_Orbiter), these differences in large number terminology don't seem to cause many problems. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * A billion thanks, give or take. Clarityfiend (talk) 18:41, 22 August 2014 (UTC)