Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 June 18

= June 18 =

Is "northeast" a word?
My spellchecker (set to Australian English) doesn't think so. I tend to agree. But another editor thinks it's fine. (It was only a minor Edit skirmish.) Our manual of style includes such words. Is such usage common anywhere? HiLo48 (talk) 09:01, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It's fine for this American English reader. Especially since I live in the Northeastern United States.  Google thinks it's fine as well.  Dismas |(talk) 09:09, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * In the States, it's not only a word, it's pretty much obligatory. "North east" as two words is simply incorrect, and "north-east" with the hyphen looks affected. --Trovatore (talk) 09:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * When did the two words get joined up? HiLo48 (talk) 09:24, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * According to Dictionary.com, before 950. Dismas |(talk) 09:35, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Then I wonder why my Australian spellchecker objects? HiLo48 (talk) 09:38, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * HiLo48, your spellchecker won't object to that last sentence, but I will. Do you mean "why my Australian"?  For a counterexample, see North East, Pennsylvania and comparable communities in New York and Maryland; I had friends in college from the Pennsylvania community (which is in the state's far northwest!), and my spellchecker never liked the name of their hometown.  Nyttend (talk) 11:30, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd say the evolution of the phrase or word is ongoing and has not reached a conclusion yet. Separate 'north east' and 'north west' are commonplace in the UK. Richard Avery (talk) 12:15, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Just noting that the Wikipedia Manual of Style (at MOS:COMPASS) says: "Notice that compound compass points are usually concatenated in American English, for example northwest, while in British English they are sometimes written as separate words or hyphenated, as in north-west. This also affects names of regions such as Southeastern United States and South East England." Deor (talk) 13:01, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I wonder if Hitchcock had to have his movie title translated for UK audiences? Wouldn't want them taking the wrong direction to the theatre and getting lost. Matt Deres (talk) 14:28, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * As a point of interest, the title "North by Northwest" is malformed, insofar as it doesn't mean anything with respect to direction! See boxing the compass. Sort version: following conventions, only the cardinal direction names can come after "by". So "Southwest by South" is a valid direction, but "South by Southwest" is not. Point is, it can't be 'translated' into a direction, because it never was ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:18, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, if we're going to be really picky, the title isn't malformed at all - just confusing. The character flies "north" by "Northwest". Well, kind of. :) Matt Deres (talk) 16:55, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Does not. He flies from Chicago to Rapid City, South Dakota, which is approximately west, more accurately west by north. The choice of airline was probably a play on the movie's title. --70.49.171.225 (talk) 07:24, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Off-topic personal observation &mdash; was there ever a filmmaker more uneven that Hitchcock? He made one stunning, timeless masterpiece, probably the best movie of all time.  That was Vertigo.  He made one more truly remarkable film, namely Rear Window.  And he made one thoroughly entertaining piece of fluff, which was North by Northwest.  If he did anything else that was even worthwhile, I'm not aware of it (I admit I haven't seen The 39 Steps or Rope; I feel like I ought to, but what if they turn out to be overrated dreck like Psycho or The Birds?). --Trovatore (talk) 08:35, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * As this was a response to me, I figure I get one chance to reply. I've seen almost everything Hitch made since the mid-1930s and a couple of earlier ones. I say Vertigo is badly overrated, while Rear Window and North by Northwest are my favorites.  But I also love The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Foreign Correspondent, To Catch a Thief, and for real fluff, The Trouble with Harry.  In the next group I'd put Sabotage, Saboteur, Suspicion, Strangers on a Train, and also a couple that don't start with S, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Lifeboat.  And most of the others have their moments.  Including Psycho, with its two very unexpected deaths and its surprise ending.  Yeah, he did a lot that was worthwhile, whether it's to your taste or not. --70.49.171.225 (talk) 18:18, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I have to speak up in favor of Vertigo here. To me it's a brilliant movie for (at least) two almost unrelated reasons, one about content, the other about the technical craft of storytelling.
 * The technical coup is the absolutely masterful misdirection, which I have never seen equalled (or, really, even attempted) in any other film by anyone. When you think the movie is over, that's when it's really just getting started, and what it's really about has nothing to do with what you thought it was about up to then.  If that had been done less than perfectly, it would have looked like a silly stunt &mdash; but it was done perfectly.
 * The content point is the exploration of the nature of good and evil, and specifically how a good man, Scotty, falls into evil through misguided pursuit of the good. It's a very Catholic theme.  I am not Catholic personally but find this very well done and thought-provoking in this film.
 * Too bad about the ending, though. Call it wabi-sabi. --Trovatore (talk) 20:34, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I also support The Trouble With Harry. And will nobody speak up for Dial M for Murder?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  08:54, 23 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I think Wolfgang Petersen fits this bill. Though not nearly as prolific as Hitchcock, his films have tended toward either excellence or godawfulness, with only one middle of the road entry that I can think of (...that I've seen).  On the one hand, you've got Das Boot, The Neverending Story, and (for some, anyway) The Perfect Storm.  But on the other hand, you've got Enemy Mine, Air Force One, Troy, and Poseidon.  Outbreak was enjoyable but not spectacular.  I've seen all of these except Enemy Mine and The Perfect Storm; but that strikes me as some heavy weighting toward the extreme ends of the good-bad spectrum right there.   ☯.Zen  Swashbuckler  .☠  19:06, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Since we have directions like "north by north northwest" (, page 45) I think more than one system of names is in use. Rmhermen (talk) 19:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Your link seems to stop at page 40, but anyway, the phrase gets lots of other ghits. Both "north by northwest" and "north by north-northwest" seem pretty clear, though; I imagine they both mean the direction that's officially called "north by west", but really they make more sense than the shorter form.  I guess the first form, "north by northwest", is a little problematic in that some people probably use it to mean "north-northwest", and given that it's not a standard form, it's hard to tell.  --Trovatore (talk) 20:03, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, that's not part of the 32 point compass, nor the 128 point system in our article (which gives the US Navy and Royal Navy systems). It seems to indicate a direction between North by West and North. But I have no idea if it's supposed to mean NbW1/4N, NbW1/2N, NbW3/4N, or perhaps something else entirely. Perhaps there is a system in which that phrase maps unambiguously to some direction, but it's also possible the author or copy editor of that article didn't use the conventions properly... Post EC with Trovatore, we can see that reasonable people have very different guesses as to what this might mean :) I completely disagree that putative "NbNW" and "NbN-NW" should mean the same thing though! I am also completely unimpressed with Ghits and usage as evidence that these forms make sense, in contradiction to our excellent and well-sourced article points of the compass. Navigators throughout history have devised a very sensible and consistent system. The fact that many people don't do it right doesn't give legitimacy to nonsense. (NB the pdf is searchable, and when I downloaded it I found the ref on page 45.) I am interested though, if anyone has a WP:RS explaining these forms that I claim are incorrect. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:13, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I thought about it a little, and here's why I think the official system is counterintuitive. First you learn north, west, south, east, all good.  Now "northwest" is halfway between north and west, makes sense.  "North-northwest" is halfway between north and northwest, sure, why not.
 * Now what do you call halfway between northwest and north-northwest? Surely not "northwest-north-northwest"; no one can keep track of that.  So, brilliant idea, call it "northwest by north" -- that's now a *quarter* of the way from northwest to north.
 * Alright, so what's a quarter of the way from north to northwest? "North by northwest" makes perfect sense; it has a pleasing symmetry with "northwest by north".
 * Instead, the official nomenclature is to call it "north by west", which now looks like it should be less northerly than north-northwest, because it has fewer norths in the name.
 * Of course, none of that matters to mariners. They have a system that works for them, and it's more efficient because it requires fewer words.  It's systematic within its own paradigm; you just remember that "by" means &pi;/16, and Bob's your uncle.  But it is not necessarily the most natural-seeming extension of the simpler forms. --Trovatore (talk) 21:01, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * 10,000 beheaded in Iraq, 35,000 a day smuggled without papers, cash, friends,ffamily or support into Texas, and my damn spellchecker is causing me problems? Is this a ref desk question? μηδείς (talk) 20:31, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:PAPER; we are not exhausting a precious resource by discussing a question that interests the asker and respondents. Also recall that no question needs to meet any standard of importance or interestingess to be asked here. If anyone is wasting your time, it is yourself, by typing up an irrelevant comment. Finally, aren't you a bit of a linguist? Seems like anyone who is interested in languages should be a little more tolerant of curiosity about history of spelling and orthography. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:15, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Remember "Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere"? —Tamfang (talk) 00:49, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, NOTPAPER is wrong. When skyfall cometh this archive is the first one we humans will delete in order to save vital sever space. μηδείς (talk) 01:38, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

surfer rosa
hello wikipedia community, can someone tell me what does Surfer Rosa mean? i'm not english. 2.181.97.247 (talk) 11:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, according to the article, 'Black Francis described the concept as referring to "a surfer girl," who "walks along the Beach of Binones, has a surfboard, very beautiful." ("Binones" is most likely Piñones, one of several Puerto Rican references). A "surfer" is someone who surfs, and Rosa is a female given name. No doubt, it's also a reference to Surfer Girl, released 25 years earlier. ---Sluzzelin talk  12:04, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Also according to the article, "The "name" of the cover woman, and the album title, comes from the "Oh My Golly!" lyric, "Besando chichando con surfer rosa."" "Oh My Golly!" is the 10th song on the album.  Without any knowledge of where the name came from, my mind immediately went to a play on words involving sub rosa.  Dismas |(talk) 13:39, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Couldn't it also be "pink surfer"? Maybe the female counterpart to the Silver Surfer :-) --Trovatore (talk) 21:15, 18 June 2014 (UTC)