Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 March 31

= March 31 =

Hardness as a personal trait
Neue Deutsche Härte is translated in the article as New German Hardness. As far as I can see, this term is most often used to describe physical properties of substances in English. But of course, the term hints at being hard as a personal trait. Is it ok to use this expression? Might there be a better one? --KnightMove (talk) 09:37, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hard is used in English in this sense. It refers to someone who is unyielding or unsympathetic.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 09:39, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * No, it describes such a someone. —Tamfang (talk) 01:13, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * As with Moses and the pharaoh, the latter having "hardened his heart" each time one of the plagues had ended, having previously promised to give Moses' people their freedom. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:54, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, there's the song Harden My Heart. StuRat (talk) 12:06, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * "O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
 * Knew you not Pompey?" (Marullus, Julius Caesar) Martinevans123 (talk) 12:23, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * "Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed.. " (Matthew 25:24) Martinevans123 (talk) 12:27, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * ... which gives new meaning to "A hard man is good to find". :)  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  18:59, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * "Why should men love the Church?... She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft." T S Elliot, Choruses from The Rock. Alansplodge (talk) 18:37, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

It seems I got the meaning of hard wrong in English. Let's pose the question in a different way: Does the noun hardness carry the same connotations as the hard in hard rock? If no, is there a better noun for that purpose? Toughness, maybe? --KnightMove (talk) 15:43, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * See here/. Several of these common definitions involve personality traits.  Since I don't speak German, I don't know what  the proper sense-for-sense translation should be here, but hard can certainly be applied to personalities.  -- Jayron  32  16:28, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * You seem to be asking specifically about "hard" as applied to rock music, which is not really the same as either "hard" or "tough" (or any other personality trait) as applied to persons; it's about the sound. That's not to say it's completely unrelated (my unsourced observation is that hard rock tends to be unsentimental, as compared to several other subgenres of rock) but it's not the same thing. --Trovatore (talk) 18:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Almost as heavy as New German Wellies?? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:12, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, it seems that I've seen a problem where none is. Thanks. --KnightMove (talk) 03:00, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I do speak German, and the word hart, when applied to people, usually does not mean the same as hard in English. Hard in English would usually correspond to something like streng in German, whereas hart in German is more like tough in English.  Marco polo (talk) 20:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * ... so hart in German means the same as hard in Scouse?   D b f i r s   21:46, 1 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Hard rock may have been named by analogy with hard liquor. —Tamfang (talk) 01:13, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * ... or possibly Hard Scousers. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:50, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * "What is 'hard' about the 'hard sciences'? An investigation of the extended meanings of 'hard' and 'soft'" looks at all sorts of hard and soft pairings (data, money, drugs, pornography, -ware, ...). ---Sluzzelin  talk  21:05, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * That's quite an exhaustive survey, although Victoria Muehleisen doesn't cover, in any detail, rock music, hearts or people, alas. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:12, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Cover is perhaps saying too much, and certainly not in detail, but she does classify "cheese" under sense #1 (soft = easy to press; opposite of hard), "rock (music)" under sense #4 (hard = intense), and "-heart(ed)" under sense #9 (hard = unsympathetic, unfeeling). ---Sluzzelin talk  21:46, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know, but she also has a Section 8 "A look at some cases in detail". Apologies my edit summary was meant to be (like 90% of my contributions) an ironic pun. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I hadn't even noticed your edit summary. Actually what happened is that, sloppy reader that I am, I first missed your "in detail", then had typed out my reply with quotes, then noticed that part in your post, then decided to post mine anyway for the sake of the OP etc, sorry, I didn't mean to imply you hadn't read it, ... and only now did I read, at the very bottom of Muehleisen's text, "Pick your favorite search engine (I recommend Alta Vista)" ... nostalgic sigh. ---Sluzzelin talk  22:02, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * awww, that's so quaint Martinevans123 (talk) 22:08, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

High English?
Which variety of English is presented in phrases like "fear not, John, for we shall avenge", "Men of the South, be not dismayed!", "survive we will", "You tempt the wrath of the Khala" or "Tassadar be praised"? That is it may be literary English or the so-called high English, but I'm unsure. Thanks --93.174.25.12 (talk) 19:46, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds like good old Will Shakespeare to me. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:35, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It's basically just (British) Modern English, but spoken in a slightly more formal or literary mode than is common for the vast majority of current speakers. The speakers/writers are speaking in standard grammatical forms that would have been taught in any school up to the 1950s, and in many schools until probably the 1970s. For what it's worth, my family speak like this at home and with friends (though sometimes ironically when with friends), and with other people like us, and this mode of English is my mother tongue. I generally remember to speak less precisely at work or with people I don't know, of course, because it's polite to speak to people in their own language. One entertaining feature of being part of a minority linguistic community is watching the next generation learn which mode applies in which social situation, and to whom, often with amusing results. RomanSpa (talk) 02:10, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Literary English is a better description than High English. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:08, 1 April 2014 (UTC)


 * This kind of English is not any more or less precise than standard English, or for that matter, any other language. --Bowlhover (talk) 16:59, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes it is. For example, in formal speech there is a clear distinction of between future tenses formed with "will" and "shall". In informal English no such distinction exists. RomanSpa (talk) 18:48, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


 * That's archaic literary language. When it's not used authentically, it can be called Wardour Street. &mdash;JerryFriedman  (Talk) 21:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)


 * English in the style of the Book of Common Prayer was still used in the liturgy of Anglicans and other denominations. Until the 1950s, those writing new hymns or prayers felt the need to address God as "thou" and use other quirks of 17th century formal language. I had always believed that this style was called "Prayer Book English" but Google hasn't found anything to confirm this for me. Alansplodge (talk) 10:17, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Correction: texts in this style are still being written today - see the The Coronation Anniversary Prayer written for a service in 2013, includes the line "thou wilt pour upon her thy choicest gifts" (a version in modern English is also provided). Alansplodge (talk) 12:32, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Since at least two of these are from Starcraft II, I can say with fair certainty that it's intended to contrast the princely and technologically advanced Protoss with the much more... down to earth... Terrans. "Literary English" gives the sense of education, of class, than vernacular English — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:48, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Anfechtung
What are all the linguistic nuances of Anfechtung in 16th century German? How do you pronounce it anyway? 140.254.227.30 (talk) 20:00, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Well I can't claim to sense all the nuances, as I haven't read that much 16th century German, but if you're referring to Luther, "temptation", "trial", "affliction", and "tribulation" have been used in English translations according to "The Concept of Anfechtung in Luther's Thought" (1983) by David P. Scaer who writes that "each of these English words develops one facet" of Anfechtung ("temptation" for being tested by Satan, "trial" for the probationary period before God, "affliction" for the individual's actual suffering and "tribulation" for the affliction as "suffered by all Christians"). The author wonders whether Anfechtung is perhaps best left untranslated, but admits that this would be "the route of theological and literary cowardice".
 * Nowadays it's pronounced (I don't know how to represent the "ich-Laut" without the help of IPA).
 * It's based on the verb "anfechten" which these days usually means "to contest", "to challenge", "to dispute" etc, but rarely "to bother" or "to afflict"; you might still hear "Was ficht dich an?" ("What's wrong with you?") or "Das ficht mich nicht an" ("That doesn't concern me"), but it has a touch of silliness/irony nowadays. The verb "fechten" without the prefix is a cognate of English "to fight". (In modern Standard German it means "to fence"). The prefix "an-" has many possible meanings. Here I sense it has something to do with initiating the action, making first contact, toward a fight/Gefecht, similar to angreifen ("to attack"). Sorry, this is all a bit unstructured. Hopefully others have more to add. --Sluzzelin  talk  11:02, 1 April 2014 (UTC)