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

= February 21 =

Фанера над Парижем
Does anyone happen to know the origin of the Russian phrase "Пролетел(а), как фанера над Парижем" ([s]he flew past like plywood over Paris)? Does it have anything to do with this piece of plywood? 24.5.122.13 (talk) 07:04, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * This website states that the phrase is derived from a "famous aviator", Auguste Faner, who supposedly crashed into the Eiffel Tower in 1908 while giving a demonstration flight over Paris, and the incident was used as a metaphor for the tsarist regime by Julius Martov in Iskra—the name "Faner" eventually becoming the Russian "фанера" (fanera), meaning "plywood". A couple of problems though: there does not appear to have been an aviator of that name, there does not appear to have been any such incident in 1908, and Iskra ceased to be published in 1905. There are several more folk etymologies around, mostly involving a "false friend" French name (such as Henri Fournier or Armand Fallières) or word morphing into "фанера"—none I've heard of seem to involve a literal reference to plywood or planes made of it. --Canley (talk) 12:10, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

resting his upper body on one straightened arm
The following sentence is what I have written to express a sitting position:“Resting his upper body on one straightened arm, he adopted a semi-reclined position.” I'm not sure if it is acceptable,so I would like you to check it and give me advice. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.128.175.187 (talk) 09:23, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds completely acceptable to me. FWiW 24.5.122.13 (talk) 10:35, 21 February 2014 (UTC)


 * You can say he sat propped upright by his arm. But if he is semi-reclining, he'll either be in an odd yoga position if his arm is strait, or it will bent and he will be sitting like a Roman on a couch at a banquet, propped up on his elbow. μηδείς (talk) 18:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * strait ≠ straight. —Tamfang (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Me not even pass nursy school, what you expect, Red Beard?


 * It's not wrong, but I'd more likely say something like "leaning on one hand". —Tamfang (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2014 (UTC)


 * See the top figure in the sculpture image. He is resting on one arm in a semi-reclined position. μηδείς (talk) 22:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Is it strait? —Tamfang (talk) 09:05, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Central and peripheral cases
Why does Grammatical case not mention the distinction between central and peripheral (or sometimes oblique) cases? Granted, the definitions encountered in the literature are perhaps not totally consistent, but the distinction seems central (heh) enough. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:11, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you have an example? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 00:07, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Florian Blaschke -- I've never heard of "central" vs. "peripheral", but I have heard of "direct" (i.e. basically nominative+accusative) vs. "oblique" (all other grammatical roles). For example, the Romanian language has a basic direct vs. oblique contrast for non-pronouns, though the terms seem to be avoided on the Romanian grammar article... AnonMoos (talk) 00:32, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * It doesn't mention the distinction because nobody has edited it to do so. (I'm not being funny, that is the reason - though I suppose it could be that somebody did, but somebody else removed it). Wikipedia is created by people who want to edit Wikipedia. If you think something is missing from an article, you are welcome to add it - preferably with references to reliable sources. In this case, where what you are talking about is one of many ways to analyse and discuss something, what goes in the article should reflect the prevalence of the approach; so if there are just one or two linguists who talk about case this way, the article might mention them but not spend a great deal of space on them; whereas if it is a major theoretical approach, the article should reflect this. Probably your best course is to open a discussion on Talk:Grammatical case. --ColinFine (talk) 11:04, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * The distinction is a standard one for people who study case. The central cases are ones like nominative, accusative, dative and genitive (subject, direct object, indirect object, possessive) which are the most commonly marked in languages that have case markers.  (Since I know someone will mention it if I don't there are also ergative systems, but I will not cloud the issue by going into them.)  Even in languages that have largely lost case marking on nouns, central case marking are often retained on pronouns as in English (he, him, his) and French (ils, les, leur) Then there are less central cases like ablative, found in Latin, and instrumental, found in Russian, that are less common, but not rare.


 * The peripheral cases include things like illative, expressing motion into (into a house), or abessive, expressing a lack (without a house), that are found, for example, in Finnish grammar. It is a language universal that languages won't mark the more peripheral cases with a special suffix (rather than using prepositions, for example) if the don't mark the more central cases as well.


 * As for why we don't have any material on this? No one has written it.  A good source are the Cambridge linguistic textbooks, especially Case and presumably Theories of Case, although I haven't read the latter.  The first book treats the notions at length. μηδείς (talk) 17:50, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for backing me here, Medeis. I knew it was an important distinction, I just couldn't remember the details – syntactic theories have never been my forte. By the way, the notion of "peripheral cases" includes "local cases", which are not mentioned in Grammatical case, either. In traditional philology, "oblique cases" has a similar but broader meaning than "peripheral cases", excluding the nominative and vocative, but the accusative is sometimes excluded, too, because it is the default case of (direct!) objects (as in the definition given by AnonMoos), and sometimes not (in Romance and Vulgar Latin philology, casus obliquus refers only to the accusative in the context of a two-case system). Oblique case only has the "objective case" interpretation, which includes the accusative.
 * I did remember that there is a Cambridge textbook devoted to case, but I don't have access to it at home. I just wanted to point out an important gap in Wikipedia, and thought it might be more visible here than on the talk page. Also, I was unsure whether there might be a particular reason for the omission which I'm not aware of (other than the obvious reason pointed out by you guys). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:22, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Latin character names in Russian
How are Latin characters referred to in Russian - for example, if I were telling someone the address of a website, or spelling an untransliterated brand name? Is there a conventional set of Latin character names like "а бе се де..."? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 22:15, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Basically Latin alphabet: а бэ цэ дэ е эф же аш и йот ка эль эм эн о пэ ку эр эс тэ у вэ дубль вэ икс игрек зэт. I am afraid though nowadays many people would attempt to read any combination of Latin letters as if it would be an English word.--Ymblanter (talk) 23:24, 21 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Appears to mostly be based on French letternames, with "J" and "C" probably from German... "дубль вэ" is a two-word name for a single letter, if it's not obvious, while игрек is two words in the original French... AnonMoos (talk) 00:24, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I thought "игрек (igrek)" means y and "зэт (zet)" means z. Otherwise, how do we account for there being only 25 letter names in the list?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  00:35, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I count 27 words there... AlexTiefling (talk) 00:39, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * W = "double V". —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 01:15, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * To be clear, дубль вэ is indeed "a two-word name for a single letter" (W), as Anon Moos rightly said. But "игрек зэт" is not that.  It is two words, for two distinct letters, Y and Z. There are 27 words in the list, but one pair (and only one pair) of words is a double name, hence there are 26 terms for 26 letters.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  01:38, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I made a mistake in the original form of my post, and corrected it a few minutes later. My correction would have come before your post, except that I got an edit conflict with "Scsbot"... AnonMoos (talk) 04:05, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * In Russian mathematics/geometry school text-books there is usually the table in the endpapers like this. Unfortunately very few looked there, thus explaining verbally foreign names raises great problems. Even if you try using the English letter names it also can lead to misunderstanding as most Russians especially older generations don't know English at all. Sometimes explanations give humorous moments: "ve like turned m, es like dollar, that letter, you know, like o with the tail".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:05, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * That table has a discrepancy at "J" from Ymblanter's list... AnonMoos (talk) 04:37, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I've uploaded the table from the well-known mathematics handbook by Vagodsky. It has some variations. Note while the table gives "е" in the names (бе, де, пе, те...) in fact it's pronounced with hard consonants (бэ, дэ, пэ, тэ...). --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:48, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * J can be both йот and жи, and the table reflects this.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:12, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The contrast G=же J=жи, like some other features, is consistent with French; not surprising considering the history of French in Russia. —Tamfang (talk) 09:11, 23 February 2014 (UTC)


 * See ru:Английский алфавит.—Wavelength (talk) 03:12, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You confuse the English alphabet and the Latin alphabet, whereas we don’t. It is well known that English name of “E” is, but any Russian speaker in a healthy mind wouldn’t use this pronunciation to refer to “E” in a scientific or otherwise non-English context. Nor would they use to refer to “J” unless in an English word. Russians, like other continental nations of Europe, perceive English pronunciation of many letters as a deviation from the international norm. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:12, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I recognized the difference (between the English alphabet and the Latin alphabet) before I posted my comment, but I chose the English alphabet because of its use in web addresses (mentioned in the original post) and in chemical formulas. English letters are used in the periodic table shown in the Russian article ru:Периодическая система химических элементов.  (I am aware of internationalized country code top-level domains.)
 * —Wavelength (talk) 02:36, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The English letter names are never used in chemistry in Russia. Си-два-эйч-шесть-оу for ethanol is just as ridiculous as it could be.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:34, 23 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you; I was mistaken in both of my previous posts. My attention to the details of the topic was not careful enough, and I commented hastily.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 01:11, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You're partially right. In contemporary English-dominant spheres (Internet, computing etc.) the English letter names prevail. CD-ROM, PC, DVD are си-ди-ром, пи-си, ди-ви-ди, not цэ-дэ-ром, пэ-цэ, дэ-вэ-дэ (though the last two sometimes occur). It's all contextual.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:22, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Why is "CD-ROM" (at https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/CD-ROM) categorized as German (in https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Категория:Немецкий_язык)?
 * —Wavelength (talk) 17:31, 24 February 2014 (UTC)