Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 January 8

= January 8 =

English grammar related question
Hi,

I have a question about English grammar. I first asked at the Teahouse and they recommended that I try here. I hope I'm in the right place. I would like to know if the following two sentences are grammatically correct.

1. This is termed "dropping" the piece or just a "drop."

and

2. This is termed "dropping" the piece or just "drop."

In my opinion, I don't think the "a" is necessary and, at least to me, sentence two sounds more natural. However, another person has said that sentence 2 is not grammatically correct. So, I just would like to hear what some other people think.

Once again, I'm sorry if I have posted this in the wrong place. Thanks in advance. --Marchjuly (talk) 01:49, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Without further context, "a drop" sounds reasonable. You''ll have to give a broader and more detailed context if you want a definitive answer. μηδείς (talk) 04:19, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. I'll try to add more context.


 * 1. On any turn, instead of moving a piece on the board, a player may take a piece that had been previously captured and place it, unpromoted side up, on any empty square, facing the opposing side. The piece is then part of the forces controlled by that player. This is termed dropping the piece, or just a drop.


 * and


 * 2. On any turn, instead of moving a piece on the board, a player may take a piece that had been previously captured and place it, unpromoted side up, on any empty square, facing the opposing side. The piece is then part of the forces controlled by that player. This is termed dropping the piece, or just drop.


 * Using "a drop" makes it clear that the noun "drop" is used for the process (not just the verb). I would find your version 2 clearer.  Version 1 does not make clear how you intend the word "drop" to be used.  If it is only used as a verb, then you have already indicated this in "dropping".    D b f i r s   08:45, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I disagree. "A drop" sounds perfectly fine as a game term whereas "drop" by itself is odd. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:49, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I concur with your disagreement, Clarityfiend. I can hardly imagine how "drop" would be used as a noun, but the only time it would appear without an article would be in a dictionary, or as a plural ("How many drops have there been so far?").  What verb would it take in the following:
 * Q. What did you do while I was getting a beer?
 * A. I _____ a drop. (made? did? effected? ...)
 * Jack of Oz  [pleasantries]  09:06, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Oops! I concur with the disagreements above. In my rush to post my comment before going out for the day, I somehow transposed versions in my reply (comment striken above).  What I'd intended to say was: "I would find your version 1 clearer.  Version 2 does not make clear how you intend the word "drop" to be used."  Apologies for confusing everyone!    D b f i r s   20:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to every one for their feedback. I was focusing on two things in sentence 1 which is probably why I thought sentence 2 was better: the use of the words the in "dropping the piece"  and a in "a drop" as well as how the italics were being used. Since only the words dropping and drop were in italics, I was reading sentence one as "This is termed dropping the piece or just drop (the piece).", even though it's not explicitly written as such. In that case, "a drop the piece" seems wrong to me. I am wondering if, in the same context, either "This is termed dropping a piece or just "(to) drop  a piece." or "This is termed dropping a piece or (to) drop a piece." is better. Thanks again for the feedback Marchjuly (talk) 21:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, if the process is never called "a drop" then I suggest that you needn't mention the last bit because "dropping" already implies that the verb is used. If you want to clarify, then use the infinitive: "This is termed dropping or to drop the piece." (or as you suggested above with the repetition of piece).  ( If the process is not currently called "a drop" then it probably will be soon because people tend to invent nouns. )    D b f i r s   22:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * @Dbfirs:  Thanks for that. I like your suggestion. May I use it? Do you think it's better to use "the piece" or "a piece"? To me, "a piece" seems more natural since the process applies to any or all captured pieces and not just one particular captured piece. Thanks again. --Marchjuly (talk) 23:56, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The original changes from "a" to "the" because, once you have said "it", you are referring to a specific piece that has been previously captured, so continuing with "the" is appropriate. It's not wrong, though, to refer back to the first part of the paragraph and go back to "a" (just marginally more confusing in my opinion).  Other opinions may differ.  ( ... and you are welcome to use my phrasing.  Phrases are not copyright, and most of the sentence was yours. )    D b f i r s   07:51, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
 * But isn't it lovely to be asked anyway? Politeness never goes out of style. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:56, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
 * @Dbfirs:  Thanks for the added details and for taking the time to reply -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:41, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
 * @JackofOz:  Thanks as well to you for your input. As for politeness, I recently had a somewhat unpleasant experience with another Wiki user, but I prefer to try and spread good karma instead of bad.-- Marchjuly (talk) 11:41, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Then perhaps you should discontinue sticking words/meanings in people's mouths they didn't say/mean, and negatively and unfairly mischaracterizing what they say. (Some people take offense to to that kind of thing, finding it aggressive, manipulative, and WP:UNCIVIL.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 20:47, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

You're right. That comment was inappropriate. I didn't intend for it to be perceived as such, but I should have chosen my words more carefully. I have struck out the offending text and am truly sorry it offended you. Marchjuly (talk) 14:14, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Bear with me, but wouldn't it be clearer to write "This is called dropping the piece or just dropping", or alternatively "This is called to drop the piece or just to drop", or even more simply "This is called dropping (the piece)"? I still don't really understand the change from gerund to infinitive. I mean, this is both about the same verb, except that you can drop omit the object "the piece", or do I still fail to understand the intention? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:28, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke:  Thanks for the input. I think your suggestion is pretty good. Sentence 1 was actually a sentence in a Wikipedia article and Sentence 2 was my attempt to improve on it (which got undone). You're right in that the easiest thing to do might be just to simply say, "This is called dropping a piece." May I add your suggestion to the one Dbfirs gave above? Thanks again. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:47, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * But of course! "This is called dropping a piece" should fully comply with WP:KISS. :-) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:11, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

is there even something slightly objectionable about two of the same word twice in a row?
Is there something even slightly worthy of revision in case two of the same word happen to follow each other? Like, "He's the one talk to talk to to find out." I don't mean replacing it with stilted "he's the one to whom you should talk in order to find out" - I just mean, would there bea n inclination to quickly refactor it as "He's the one to talk to if you want to find out" for no other reason than because it's slightly better not to repeat a word? "What we thought it was was a ..." etc. in such cases is there some small inclination to rewrite? 212.96.61.236 (talk) 02:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * No, there's no reason that that should be avoided. There is a stylistic rule that says lexical terms (nouns, adjective, adverbs and verbs) shouldn't be repeated within the same paragraph.  Novelist and essayist Ayn Rand says this rule should be ignored in the face of necessity in The Art of Nonfiction. μηδείς (talk) 03:48, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * When most people are reading quickly, their eyes do not scan each word in the printed order, but jump back and forward across a sentence as the brain picks out recognised phrases. Repeating words close together can sometimes interfere with this process and cause the reader to go back to re-read the sentence more carefully.  Good writers try to avoid any impediment to the smooth flow of the written text.  In spoken language, the words are presented in order, and meaning is made clear by the intonation, so repeated words are common.  I agree that strict following of the rule is unnecessary, and sometimes writers will deliberately repeat words to achieve other effects.  Personally, I'd just put a comma between your two "to"s, but another modern "rule" claims that commas should never be used unless really necessary (even when they improve readability).  I'm not a supporter of absolute rules.  It depends on the style of writing, and on what effect the writer wishes to achieve.    D b f i r s   08:36, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I would rewrite this as "He's the one to ask", which is both shorter and clearer. Gandalf61 (talk) 10:04, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * There are two types of people, those who don't put the same word twice in a row and those who do do it. -- Q Chris (talk) 11:31, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * See also James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher and Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo -- Q Chris (talk) 11:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * In reference to Medeis, see also figura etymologica. "He sleeps a deep sleep" tends to be avoided now but in former times it was considered rhetorically elegant – which incidentally reminds me of how puns, even quite raunchy ones, used to be appreciated much more (although such puns in Shakespeare may go over your head if you don't know the original pronunciation).
 * BTW, I think the OP intended to say "He's the one to talk to to find out", and there's nothing wrong with it, but "in order to find out" wouldn't be significantly more cumbersome. Or indeed simply write, per Gandalf61, "He's the one to ask", in this particular case. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:05, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

What is the origin of the modifier "S-class"?
So, I heard someone use the expression "S-class asshole" recently, and the S-class was tacitly understood by everybody to mean "the apex of the quality that it modifies", even higher than A-class or B-class or C-class. The only reason that I knew what this meant was because of the Chocobo Racing minigames in the Final Fantasy series. But this system of classification obviously comes from somewhere IRL. The S class disambiguation page on Wikipedia hints that it's used to brand certain luxury cars, locomotives, and military vehicles. However, none of the linked pages explains what I would like to know: what the "S" signifies ("special"?), or from where it originated. Shrigley (talk) 02:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know if it's the origin, but certainly one source of the designation comes from the German "sonderklasse." So yes, "special" is more or less it. Hopefully someone else will add to this if they know an alternative. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites  talk  |  13:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Our article on the Mercedes Benz states (no ref): "S-Class" is an anglicisation of "S-Klasse," a German abbreviation of "Sonderklasse," which means "special class" (in the sense of "a class of its own"). --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:43, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

The meaning of an English sentence
At this page a handwritten note to the word "bravery" says as I read it: Bravery hitched to a 4-horse wagon load of ignorance! That sounds like some idiom to me but I failed to find it and my English is not good enough to get an idea of the expressed attitude: support, oppose, sarcasm etc. Any help would be much appreciated. --NeoLexx (talk) 03:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a nominal, presumably a predicate nominal phrase. In other words "This is bravery hitched to a 4-horse wagon load of ignorance!" μηδείς (talk) 03:37, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I think it's intended to say something pretty much in the same vein as the rest of that page. "A four horse wagon load of..." would simply mean "a lot of". There is a problem, however, with the next word. "Ignorance" has a literal meaning of simply not knowing something. But particularly in modern English it has a second, derogatory meaning of "stupidity". To guess which meaning applies there is a judgement call. I'm not sure myself. HiLo48 (talk) 03:39, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Great thanks to both of you! As of the "ignorance" I say the note written ca.1905 (highest probability) and no later than 1926. So I guess I need to look for the most common meaning of "ignorance" at the beginning of XX. --NeoLexx (talk) 03:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * HiLo seems to have addressed ignorance well enough. I wasn't born in 1895.  But I don't find the term at all confusing.  Indeed, the etymology is simply "not knowing" and that seems quite clear in this context. μηδείς (talk) 04:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * The meaning is, he is brave but stupid. Looie496 (talk) 07:09, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Probably. But it could also lend itself to a kinder reading, that of someone who is not aware he's not supposed to be able to do something, so he just sets out.  It's amazing what can be achieved by people who've had the misfortune to be uninformed about the impossible or the dangerous.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:26, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you guys. I am fighting through news publications of 1904-05 and it seems to be often some other way to say things. For a foreigner like me it's just a deadlock sometimes. Maybe the last question on the topic, pleeease :-) This newspaper article says: H.M.S. Thetis has erected a Marconi mast for the London Times on the North Point to keep up connection with the steamer Haimun, from Chemulpo, and it is hoped to get message over 140 miles. Can you say based on the sentence, who is in Chemulpo: "Thetis" or "Haimun"? --NeoLexx (talk) 16:45, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Haimun is from Chemulpo, as far as I can tell from the sentence. --Viennese Waltz 16:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely. Looie496 (talk) 17:52, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Just to make it slightly more explicit - neither ship is in Chemulpo. Haimun was _originally_ at Chemulpo, but, at the time of the article, was 140 miles away from North Point, while HMS Thetis was (presumably) at North Point itself. Tevildo (talk) 22:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

What are these Japanese anime characters saying in this anime parody video?
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm4109722 108.180.17.36 (talk) 15:28, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Can a native chinese speaker tell me how to write the following in vertical traditional chinese?
i want "iron strength" what would something like this translate to? 鐵 實 力 is it anywhere close to what i want? thanks Additional Details — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.110.247.106 (talk) 18:39, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 鐵力 Vertical or horizontal or whatever doesn't change the characters. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * What exactly are you trying to say? If you want to talk about the physical properties of iron, you can say 鐵強度.  If you want a metaphor describing how strong someone is, you can say 堅強如鋼 (hard like steel), or the chengyu 堅如磐石 (hard to move as a boulder).  Again, context would help a lot.
 * Also, I assume that by "traditional" you mean in traditional characters, and not "the Chinese from 2000 years ago". All the phrases are gave are modern colloquial Chinese. --Bowlhover (talk) 17:32, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I suspect the enquirer wishes to use the characters for some sort of decoration, perhaps even as a tattoo. I don't think they are thinking of Modern Standard Chinese or even colloquial Mandarin, but Classical Chinese, indeed: something poetic and metaphorical, nothing to do with physics. Also, probably something positive like "I'm strong as steel!", not "I'm bullheaded!" A bit of common sense would help. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:38, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, I understand that chengyu still use Classical Chinese syntax, so your implicit description of a phrase you call a chengyu as "modern colloquial Chinese" is a bit misleading. As widely known and understood quotes from ancient literature, these are conscious archaisms. The closest analogue to a chengyu seems to be a terse Latin quote translated word for word into French (or English), even if the syntax sounds strange. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:47, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * If the OP wants to put something on a tattoo, he should say so and also tell us 1) what he wants to say, 2) whether the characters should be simplified or traditional, 3) whether he wants something classical, colloquial, formal, humorous, or something else. Then someone else could come along with a suggestion because I have very bad artistic sense, especially in Chinese.  I'm not going to guess and call it common sense in case he ends up with one of these.
 * As for chengyu, I disagree that they're necessarily conscious archaisms. They're every bit a part of the modern speaker's lexicon as idioms are in English.  Would you consider "crossing the Rubicon", "do as the Romans when in Rome", "Achilles' heel", or "straight as an arrow" to be conscious archaisms?  I think they're modern colloquial English, despite having ancient origins.  --Bowlhover (talk) 17:37, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The first time I read this I said to myself "This person wants to get a tattoo." However, I didn't post anything because I didn't think it was appropriate and because I don't know Chinese. I used to get asked quite a lot for suggestions by friends and others wanting to get tattoos in Japanese. I'm not a tattoo person so I was probably the wrong person to ask since I typically said "don't." But, I advised them to also be really careful when getting tattoos in "kanji" because there are so many characters that it's really easy to make a mistake, especially by those who don't understand Japanese or Chinese. Use the wrong stroke order and the character can look crappy; Forget one stroke and chances are you end up with something completely different in meaning; Try to combine two characters together that don't really go together and you end up with gibberish or even worse. So just be careful 109.110.247.106 and make sure you find somebody who has lots of experience doing these types of tattoos and then be absolutely sure that what your getting makes sense because if you don't you end up sites like the one Bowlhover posted above. Good luck Marchjuly (talk) 21:34, 10 January 2014 (UTC)


 * To emphasize the point: I once met a white guy while traveling, who showed me his tattoo after I said I was born in China. It read 家族, which he claimed meant "family" in Chinese.  Well, it kind of does, but more precisely it refers to organizations or companies dominated by one extended family.  It can also mean "clan" or "tribe".  In any case it doesn't have the connotations of closeness or intimacy that he probably wanted.  It shouldn't be surprising that Chinese is as rich and full of subtlety as English, considering that it's been around for thousands of years and is spoken by over a billion people.  --Bowlhover (talk) 22:34, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting example. You're totally right totally about context. Marchjuly (talk) 00:46, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
 * There was an example back here about the perils of getting tattoos in languages you can't read. A young lass gets a tattoo with the name of her family members - Amanda, Travis and Jack - in Chinese.  Well almost.  What she actually got was a tattoo of a phonetic rendering of "Amanda", a phonetic rendering of "Travis", and the word for the device you use to lift your car up with to replace a flat tyre, in Chinese. --Shirt58 (talk) 04:56, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
 * That's pretty funny, but probably happens more often than you would expect. As I said earlier, I'm not much of a tattoo fan myself, so usually advise people not to get one. But, if they are set on getting one then I usually say forget getting one in kanji, and get one in in English that they can read or get a one that's a picture instead. Marchjuly (talk) 08:57, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 家族 means "family" in Japanese, and as wikt:家族 notes, refers to immediate family, thus carries the connotations of closeness and intimacy. wikt:家族 just says it means "family" in Korean and Mandarin. --Kusunose 00:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)