Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 August 9

= August 9 =

Arabic al/el
At Suez Canal Bridge it says:


 * The Suez Canal Bridge [...] is a road bridge crossing the Suez Canal at El Qantara. In Arabic, "al qantara" means "the bridge".

I gather that "el" and "al" are variant transliterations of the Arabic article, but is there any significance in "El" being used in the place name yet the explanation using "al"? It would be clearer for readers if "al qantara" in the explanation was changed to "el qantara". Is there any reason not to do this? 109.147.186.22 (talk) 02:53, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I gather that it's pronounced el in Egyptian dialects and mostly al elsewhere. —Tamfang (talk) 06:10, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * So is it correct to say that "El Qantara" means "the bridge"? Because this is (to me) so obviously a simpler and clearer thing to say, I just feel there ought to be some reason why it wasn't done. 86.167.125.78 (talk) 11:50, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. I suggest you look at the article's talk page to see if there has been a previous discussion of the question, and if there hasn't, be BOLD and change it. If somebody disagrees with you, they will change it back and then you can have a discussion on the talk page. Perhaps you might say "In Egyptian Arabic" ..., but either way the statement should be referenced. --ColinFine (talk) 14:31, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * 109.147.186.22 -- "Al-" is the form of the Classical Arabic definite article at the beginning of a sentence. However, the definite article can also have the forms "ul-" and "il-" in the middle of a sentence in Classical Arabic, when it follows words ending in a -u or -i vowel (e.g. the middle vowel of "Bismillah"). In many colloquial Arabic dialects, the basic form of the definite article is "el-" or "il-".  I would assume that "El-Qantara" is the dialect Arabic pronunciation, while "al-qantara" is a standard Arabic form taken from a dictionary.  Welcome to the world of diglossia... AnonMoos (talk) 12:31, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, Arabic has sun and moon letters, but qāf does not affect the consonant lām in the definite article.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 18:44, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

chalkies
The following is taken from Martin Amis's latest novel "Lionel Asbo": "School – Squeers Free, under a sky of white: the weakling headmaster, the demoralised chalkies in their rayon tracks uits, the ramshackle little gym with its tripwires and booby traps, the Lifestyle Cons ultants (Every Child Matters), and the Special Needs Coordinators (who dealt with all the ‘non-readers’). " I am not sure about the meaning of "chalkies" here. Could you explain it for me. Thank you! —added by Mandy 17:04, 9 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiewenyan (talk • contribs)


 * I understood "chalkies" as slang for teachers, related to the use of Blackboards otherwise chalk boards. MilborneOne (talk) 09:11, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, "Chalkie" is a traditional British nickname for a teacher. DuncanHill (talk) 09:44, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * FWIW, "chalkie" is also a term for a bookie or bookmaker's clerk.   Collect (talk) 11:55, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Now you can’t get enough of it
In the following context from the novel "Lionel Asbo", what does "Now you can’t get enough of it" refer to?Does it mean that the boy has not got enough fun. Your help would be much appreciated. --Elisa 17:14, 9 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiewenyan (talk • contribs)
 * On the other hand, Squeers Free had in its staff room an exceptional Learning Mentor – a Mr Vincent Tigg.
 * What’s going on with you, Desmond? You were always an idle little sod. Now you can’t get enough of it. Well, what next?
 * I fancy modern languages, sir. And history. And sociology. And astronomy. And-


 * From the small bit you quote it appears that the boy has turned from an "idle little sod" into somebody who is now working hard, cant get enough of it relates to more learning/knowledge. MilborneOne (talk) 09:29, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * In general, "you can't get enough of X" means you are insatiably greedy for more X.
 * I added bullets to make the dialog clearer, and left-aligned your signature for obscure technical reasons. I hope you don't mind. —Tamfang (talk) 05:34, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Skiprope and Hopscotch
I don't understand the meaning of "Skiprope and Hopscotch " from the novel "Lionel Asbo". what does "Skiprope and Hopscotch" refer to?What does it mean in the following sentence? Are they just names?
 * He seldom bunked off, he never slept in class, he  didn’t assault the teachers or shoot up in the toilets – and he  preferred the compa ny of the gentler sex (the gentler sex, at Squeers Free, being quite rough enough). So in the normal course of things Des would have been savagely bullied, as all the other misfits (swats, wimps, four-eyes, sweating fatties) were savagely bullied – to the brink  of suicide and beyond.
 * They called him Skiprope and Hopscotch, but Des wasn’t bullied.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiewenyan (talk • contribs) 09:22, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I am sure an expert will be along in a minute but I took it that Skiprope and Hopscotch are jumping games and was allusion that he managed to avoid the bullies by keeping out of the way. MilborneOne (talk) 10:34, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Skiprope & Hopscotch are not normal terms of abuse so the bullies are calling him names refering to him playing with the girls but not bullying him. JMiall  ₰  10:37, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Hopscotch and skiprope are traditionally played more by girls than by boys. —Tamfang (talk) 05:38, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

true
What does "true" mean in the following sentence? Once a term, true, Lionel escorted him to Squeers Free, and escorted him back again the same day (restraining, with exaggerated difficulty, the two frothing pitbulls on their thick steel chains). Mandy 17:25, 9 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiewenyan (talk • contribs)
 * It is a bit superfluous as written. If the previous sentence was something like 'Lionel never came to school' then 'true' would act like the word 'although' between the 2 sentences. JMiall  ₰  10:44, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The "true" signals irony. "Once a term, true, Lionel escorted him to Squeers Free, and escorted him back again the same day (restraining, with exaggerated difficulty, the two frothing pitbulls on their thick steel chains." Lionel takes no interest at all in the child's education, with the insignificant exception of walking with him to school once a term. Even this is no more than an opportunity for Lionel to show off what a "hard man" he is with his dangerous dogs.
 * Amis is difficult. He's a satirist of the harshest (and thus most enjoyable) kind: no sentence he writes is unambiguous. Probably best to start with the short story collections: Einstein's Monsters, Heavy Water. And I think we are doing someone's homework for them.  Pete "BA (hons) in Eng.Lit." AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 05:11, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Another question from Martin Amis's latest novel "Lionel Asbo": But it would be foolish to suppose that each and every gangbanger and posse-artist (and every Yardie and jihadi) in the entire manor had heard tell of the grea t asocial. And it was different at night, because different people, different shapes, levered themselves upward after dark … Des was fleet of foot, but he was otherwise unsuited to life in Diston Town. I am not sure about the meaning of "different shapes" here.Does it have the same meaning of different people?And how to understand "lever themselves upward after dark."I have no idea about it.Also I have looked up the dictionary about "fleet of foot".It turns out to be the meaning:"people act quickly".But I am wondering how to link it to the next part of the sentence "unsuited to life in Diston Town". Can you explain "And it was different at night, because different people, different shapes, levered themselves upward after dark … Des was fleet of foot, but he was otherwis e unsuited to life in Diston Town."these two sentence for me?Please reply me ASAP! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiewenyan (talk • contribs) 09:34, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It relates to different people appear at night that you dont see during the day, fleet of foot is more to do with the fact he can keep himself out of trouble but he didnt fit in with the life and culture. MilborneOne (talk) 10:30, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I have not read the book but I take it to mean that various odd looking things (presumably people if you looked at them closely) that in daytime are out of sight put in the effort to drag themselves up out of the gutter (either literally or figuratively) at night and roam around the streets. JMiall  ₰  10:39, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * To be fair, many creatures of the night take exceptionally appealing forms, which is why they're out all night. They don't need to buy their own drinks, work in the morning or do homework. If this passage and the "Renaissance boy" one are homework assignments, Amis is either angry because he doesn't write for children, is indifferent because he doesn't write for anyone or has a brain injury. As the talking shirt above says, none of his sentences are unambiguous. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

resemblances ceased and girls
The following is taken from Martin Amis's latest novel "Lionel Asbo": ＂Respectfully averting his eyes from the Times, the Independent, and the Guardian , Des reached for the Sun, which at least  looked  like a  Lark , with its crimson logo and th e footballer’s fiancée on the cover staggering out of a nightclub with blood running down her neck. And, sure enough, on page three (News in Briefs) there was a hefty redhead wearing knickers and a sombrero. But then all resemblances ceased. You got scandal and gossip, and more girls, but also international news, parliamentary reports, comment, analysis …＂.I can not figure out what the sentence(But then all resemblances ceased.) means here.And I am wondering what "the girls" refer to.Your help would be much appreciated. Mandy 17:39, 9 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiewenyan (talk • contribs)


 * The girls is a refence to the fact that the tabloid newspaper The Sun as a liking for displaying semi-naked girls between the news stories. MilborneOne (talk) 10:25, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I take this to be resemblence to a lark. So Des wanted to read a newspaper, but a fun one (a lark) not a serious one. He counts the front cover and Page 3 as fun enough but then even The Sun's normal mixture of scantily-clad women and brief bits of news became too serious for what he wanted.  JMiall  ₰  10:48, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * The Times, Independent, Guardian are "serious" non-tabloid newspapers which do not run "Page 3 girls" photographs, while the Sun is famous for them... AnonMoos (talk) 12:18, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * More context is needed to understand this properly. From the full text, it becomes clear that "a Lark" is a reference to a (fictional?) newspaper called the Morning Lark, and that "all resemblances ceased" is talking about resemblances between the Sun and the Morning Lark. 86.167.125.78 (talk) 13:44, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Haven't we already done this passage? —Tamfang (talk) 05:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Lifestyle Consutants(Every Child Matters)
Martin Amis describes Squeers Free School in his "Lionel Asbo" as follows: "School--Squeers Free, under a sky of white: the weakling headmaster, the demoralised chalkies in their rayon tracksuits, the ramshaclke little gym with its tripwires and booby traps, the Lifestyle Consultants(Every Child Matters), and the Special Needs Coordinators(who dealt with all the "non-readers")." I don't see the relationship between "the Lifestyle Consultants" and "Every Child Matters"(in the brackets). I am looking forward to your kind reply. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.128.176.247 (talk) 12:11, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It's a school which he doesn't like because he thinks it's trying way too hard to be trendily up-to-date in a rather feeble way. "Squeers" is a reference to Nicholas Nickleby... -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:18, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * "Every Child Matters" is probably the slogan of the Lifestyle Consultants. 86.167.125.78 (talk) 13:54, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Possibly, but Every Child Matters was also the name of a far-reaching government initiative, partly in response to the Victoria Climbié incident, that affected a lot of stuff in schools to do with child safety and what could be termed lifestyle education. Skittle (talk) 14:07, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Does that mean someone thinks that the importance of child safety is nothing more than "trendy"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:33, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Amis is implying that his characters have that attitude, yes. Whether this is a realistic representation of actual consultants in this field is another matter. Tevildo (talk) 20:29, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Odd use of capitalization in the United States Constitution
I was reading up on some of the text of the US Constitution. I noticed that the document has an odd, irregular, and inconsistent practice – at least by today's standards – of employing capitalization of words. Was this the normal practice of that period? Or was this specific to the Constitution and other governmental documents? Was there any significance to when, how, and why a specific word was capitalized? As I read some text, it seems that some relatively minor and unimportant words were in fact capitalized. I just selected a very random sample of some text from the Constitution, as an example to highlight the odd practice of capitalization: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.  Any thoughts on this matter? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:08, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Capitalization of this type was quite common in the 18th century. There's a strong tendency to capitalize most nouns, which is basically what German still does today, although it's not totally consistent in that (see the second "person"). Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Also, the word "time" is another noun that is not capitalized.  Is there any reason why most nouns are capitalized, yet some are not?  Do the non-capitalized nouns have any reasons for being formatted so?  Or is this just an oversight?  Or just a typo?  Thanks.    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:18, 9 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It strikes me that the capitalized nouns seem to be those that have a specific (legalese) meaning in the document. Person, Citizen, Adoption, Office, President, Resident - the specific intended meaning of all these nouns are either defined in the document itself or in other associated documents. This is similar to the "fine print" in many modern contracts that contain specific definitions of certain words used in the contract - these definitions are usually narrower than the normal everyday of the words. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:22, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Not really; "person", "age" and "years" are hardly specialized terms (and "person" is capitalized once but not the second time although it's being used in the exact same meaning in each.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:42, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * "Years" can need some definition in law to deal with the edge cases. For example, would a person born on February 29th qualify on the 28th February, or the 1st of March? "Age" might also have clarifications to allow for those who do not know their exact birth date.  "Person" has a legal definition which is generally broader than the normal English definition (see Corporate personhood) MChesterMC (talk) 08:59, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Capitalization and Sentence case have some Information that may be Helpful to you in Understanding how the practice of Capitalization varies across Languages and Time. My Understanding is that that in the Constitution, certain Words are capitalized semi-Randomly to help emphasize certain words as Key Concepts. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:15, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I just checked our Copy of the Document on Wikisource, and am now pretty certain that the very large Majority of the Capitalization Decisions in this Text were really made just according to the grammatical Criterion of Noun versus Non-Noun, rather than by that of Emphasis. I couldn't find a single Instance of Capitalization that wasn't a Noun in those Parts I read. Verbs or Adjectives, no matter how important, seem never to be capitalized (just think of "self-evident", "equal", "alter", "abolish" in those famous intro Sentences, which surely would be among the most important Key Words!), and conversely there are only some few Nouns here and there that are not capitalized. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:34, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Although, interestingly, it changes style just where it comes to the most elevated, solemn bits: "We, therefore, [...] do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States...". These seem to be the only capitalized verbs, at least as far as I've seen so far. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I found the top-rated reply here to be enlightening. Gabbe (talk) 17:37, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:56, 14 August 2014 (UTC)