Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 June 15

= June 15 =

Sued for $1m
If an article says that X sued Y for $1m, does that always mean the suit was successful, and that $1m in damages was awarded? Or can it mean "filed suit for"? IBE (talk) 05:39, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * "Sued" always only means "filed a suit in a court of law". If the suit was successful, the language would say "X was awarded $1M as a result of a suit against Y"  To sue is merely to initiate the lawsuit.  The difference is between swinging a bat and hitting the ball.  Not every swing results in a hit; and not every suit results in an award.  -- Jayron  32  05:43, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Aye. If I were to claim Neil Hamburger stole my phrase "They Can't All Be Zingers" and sold it to Primus, I'd likely come out countersued for defamation and losing, on top of my lawyer's fee for both suits. As I also once said first, "You Gotta Know When to Hold 'Em". InedibleHulk (talk) 04:49, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Alan King said that he once filed an injury lawsuit against someone. His lawyer explained the standard procedure to Alan: "If we lose, I get nothing. If we win, you get nothing." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:38, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

What is the correct form: "From where?", or: "Where from?"
Somebody says: "I came from abroad". How should I ask them? "From where?", or: "Where from?" 84.228.230.31 (talk) 06:51, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Either could work, but they're not exactly the same -- "From where" is a prepositional phrase of preposition plus interrogative pronoun, while "Where from" is an elliptic sentence with implied predication... AnonMoos (talk) 07:07, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * In other words, you mean that "where from" may be interpreted as an abbreviation of "where [did you come] from", am I correct?
 * Anyways, the editor who answered after you (just below), is a Brit who claims that "Where from? would be more natural in normal speech". Is this valid in the States as well? (I remember you're American, aren't you?) HOOTmag (talk) 10:37, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * "Where from?" would be more natural in normal speech. "From where?" sounds a bit stilted or formal to me. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:57, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * More stilted still would be "Whence?" Ericoides (talk) 10:33, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Very archaic. HOOTmag (talk) 10:39, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * My perception is opposite to AWT's. —Tamfang (talk) 22:47, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Both could sound natural in specific contexts. If someone told you, "I flew in from Shangri-La by way of Narnia", then if you wanted to skeptically question this itinerary, "From where?" would be the question to ask. On the other hand, if someone said "I arrived yesterday, and I'm still jet-lagged", and you wanted to casually and colloquially ask where they departed from, then "Where from?" would be appropriate... AnonMoos (talk) 04:44, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * "Where from?" sounds backwards to me, like something Yoda might say. That's not to say it's bad or uncommon, and shouldn't cause weird looks. "From where" seems short for implying "From where did you come?" By that logic, the other'd be "Where from did you come?". That's bad and uncommon. Some could say it's short for "Where did you come from?", but I don't think you should drop the middle in abbreviations without an apostrophe or ellipsis.


 * If someone told me they were from abroad, I'd simply ask "Where?" They already introduced the "from" part, so it can be omitted without fear of confusion. Otherwise, may as well go the whole nine yards and ask "From where abroad did you come?" InedibleHulk (talk) 23:46, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd ask "What country?". CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 04:36, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Inconsistency (?) at vowel
Not sure if I understand the terminology correctly, so I'm asking here first. I quote from vowel:"In all oral languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages that have them) coda. However, some languages also allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic l in the English word table [ˈteɪ.bl̩] (the stroke under the l indicates that it is syllabic; the dot separates syllables), or the r in Serbo-Croatian vrt [vr̩t] 'garden'."What's the difference between "r̩" and "l̩" here, and the vowels in "hurt" and "bull" respectively? I'm left wondering whether this use of consonants as vowels is actually just an orthography thing, not a matter of phonetics. Nyttend (talk) 18:28, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It is indeed phonetics. We have an article about the topic (Syllabic consonant). Syllabic consonants are common among the world's languages. And it's not only the liquids that can be syllabic. Nasals, for example, are also commonly syllabic and in a few languages other consonants such as /ʃ/ are said to be syllabic.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 19:15, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Nyttend -- "Hurt" and "Bull" contain syllabic or quasi-syllabic consonant sounds only in certain dialects of English, while unstressed syllabic "n" and "l" (as in "table") occur in many or most English dialects. The syllabic-sonority sound in "hurt" in many American English dialects is more often transcribed as [ɝ] then syllabic "r".  And as far as I know, "bull" has a syllabic or quasi-syllabic "l" consonant only in dialects where [ʊ] tends toward [ɨ] in some contexts.  In standard British, these words would be pronounced [hɜːt] and [bʊɫ], without any syllabic consonants... AnonMoos (talk) 21:31, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * AnonMoos, now I think I begin to understand better. Is this something related to the merger of Mary and merry with Murray?  Nyttend (talk) 00:35, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know of any dialect where Mary/merry merge with Murray; it certainly isn't a common feature of quasi-standard American English (except as a strained joke in certain intentionally-distorted pronunciations of the word "American"). I've personally observed that in some American English dialects, [ʊ] tends toward [ɨ], or even merges with it in certain contexts, but I don't know if or where this has been described by linguists. AnonMoos (talk) 00:46, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Never mind; it's "marry", not Murray. I'm talking about the first subsection of "Mergers before intervocalic R" at English-language vowel changes before historic /r/.  Nyttend (talk) 01:41, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

primigravida and primipara
Primigravida and primipara are medical/scientific terms. The former means a female (of an oviparous or viviparous species) who is pregnant for the first time. The latter means a female ~ who gives birth for the first time. If a viviparous female is pregnant but does not give birth to viable offspring, then does that mean that she is "primigravida" and then "nullipara"? What is the female called when a viviparous female is pregnant and does give birth to viable offspring, but the offspring only survives a short time (due to biological defects or infanticide)? Is she still nulliparous? 65.24.105.132 (talk) 20:59, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Our article suggests no to the first question (Gravidity and parity: 20 weeks gestation mentioned for primipara). Rmhermen (talk) 21:12, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

How did this Engrish mistranslation come to be?
"Wikipedia fried with eggs". It appears to me that this couldn't come from a machine translation, because the word "Wikipedia" in this context appears ridiculous. Please explain how this translation was made. 171.226.35.245 (talk) 23:37, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Not sure, but you could search for "Free optical character recognition" and run the picture through whatever option you find. Then machine translate it to see whether it's merely ridiculous or impossible. If you use Google Translate, try to use the version for the country this is from (China?), rather than .com. Not sure it makes a difference, but maybe. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:03, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * All your translation are belong to us. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:58, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't know the answer, but there are two phenomena which I have often seen invoked in LanguageLog postings about this sort of thing; I suspect that one or both of these was relevant here. 1) Most modern Chinese words are polysyllabic, and are written with two or more characters; but in some circumstances (eg common phrases) they may be abbreviated to a single character (single syllable). Where the word is a foreign name, written phonetically, the abbreviation may out of context mean something quite different. (See this posting, for example) 2) Google Translate has a set of heuristics, by which it chooses among possible translations of an ambiguous word according to the feedback it has received from users.
 * My thought is that if one or two of the characters in the example form part of a common way of writing Wikipedia in Chinese, then Google Translate may choose that as the translation rather than their literal meaning. However, none of the characters in the example are in the standard way of writing Wikipedia in Chinese, so I may be wrong. --ColinFine (talk) 23:16, 16 June 2014 (UTC)