Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 October 22

= October 22 =

How to pronounce the word Wayland in American English
In particular, the pronounciation of the "-land" portion of "Wayland".

Does the portion pronounce like "England" or like "wonderland"? - Justin545 (talk) 05:23, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The merriam-webster.com entry for Wayland the Smith shows IPA \ˈwā-lən(d)\ which looks like the "England" version. I speak American as a first language, and that is how I would naturally pronounce it having never heard it before. I'd be hard-pressed to find a "correct" American pronunciation, other than the dictionary one, which is apparently not US-specific.


 * The above may not apply to your Wayland (display server protocol), I don't know. It may be like Linux, which isn't pronounced how most Americans would naturally pronounce it. If you're looking for the correct computer-geek pronunciation, you might want to try Reference desk/Computing. &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  05:43, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Your answer is a very good reference. Thanks Mandruss. - Justin545 (talk) 07:32, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The purported IPA transcription above is not actual IPA, if it were, it would be indicating something rhyming with the way most Americans say Holland. American dictionaries are notoriously poor on their phonetic transcriptions. μηδείς (talk) 15:22, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I've been to a different Wayland (I took the infobox photo), and while I didn't speak with anyone there about the town name, I would pronounce it like "England". I can't account for the server protocol, however.  Nyttend (talk) 20:55, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Short form of newspaper name
Referring to The New York Times, should one write "the Times" ("the" neither capitalized nor italicized), or "The Times"? The former seems more natural to me, but it's not consistent with the long form of the name. &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  06:48, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd say "the Times" is preferable, because Times here is an abbreviation of The New York Times, so what you are saying is "the Times [newspaper]". If you italicized The as well, there is a possibility that a reader might think the full name of the newspaper is The Times. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:24, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Excellent, thanks. Anyone: Is this addressed in the style guides? &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  19:40, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Unless it's immediately obvious, e.g. within an article on NY or NYC, I'd always go with The/the NY Times or even NYT, because 'The Times' is a major London-based newspaper. 91.84.115.95 (talk) 19:48, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Understood. I was referring to cases where the full name was stated earlier, and close enough to provide context. In such cases it would be unnatural to repeat the full name. &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  21:17, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

what does "inline" and "online" mean?
Sorry for asking this silly question but my english-to-arabic dictionary does not contain both words. could you please tell me what does these words mean? for example in the "inline citation". thanks.2.179.239.209 (talk) 18:36, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * If you think of the article's text as a "line of words", the citations are "in" that line of words, or imbedded in it. Wikipedia uses the term to distinguish these citations from references that are listed near the bottom of the article but are not referred to from within the body text.


 * As for "online", see if this dictionary definition helps. &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  19:16, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, unless there is another kind of citation that I'm not aware of, "inline citation" seems a bit superfluous. "Citation" would work just as well. &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  22:37, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Some articles have a list of references, without footnotes. There's a tag for that. Also see Inline citation. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:51, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Another Relative Question
Sorry to bore you all again with this. My brother's wife's daughter (from a previous marriage) has just announced that she is pregnant with a baby girl. The daughter has not been adopted by my brother, and also is not a blood relative. I do, however, refer to her as my neice niece, in a similar way that I do for the person referred to in my earlier question. However, when the baby is born, what would she be. It's really dificult getting my head round this. KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 ) ( Chin Wag )  20:54, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * You can think of this as a constructed familial relation based on feelings and experience, or you can think of it in terms of Consanguinity. In the former sense, if you call the expectant mother a "niece", then her daughter is a grandniece (or greatniece ), and you are her great uncle (or grand uncle -- spacing, hyphens and great/grand have several variations, check google, dictionaries, etc, or just use your preferred form). If you want to be more picky about the blood lines, then you could refer to your sister-in-law's daughter as your niece-in-law, regardless of any adoptive status. Then you could call the expected baby a great niece-in-law. (I actually don't have much interest in familial relationships but I like these questions because they deal in controlled vocabulary, ontology, and graph theory - good exercise for the analytic mind ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:53, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I suspect most people would misunderstand niece-in-law and looking at your link I'm not clear that the definition of niece-in-law in that article you're relying on ("daughter of one's sister-in-law/brother-in-law") has any real currency in English. I would understand my niece-in-law only to mean "my nephew's wife" as "in-law" means "by marriage". The normal term that indicates that a person is related by remarriage is "step". So the OP's brother's wife's daughter is his step-niece and her daughter will be his step-grand-niece. I doubt this is a term that many would use frequently as "brother's stepdaughter's daughter" or "brother's wife's granddaughter" or "sister-in-law's granddaughter" all convey more information about the actual relationship while using only terms that most people are comfortable with the meaning of. Valiantis (talk) 22:25, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems we agree on great niece or grand niece then. I see your point on ambiguity between a sister-in-law's daughter and a nephew's husband, but those overlaps are also documented in the linked article. The same expected child is both a daughter of KT's sister-in-law, and a step-daughter of his brother. The 'step' modifier might not be preferred in this case, e.g. if the niece was an adult when her mother remarried, and never thought of KT's brother as her step father. Anyway, all the options discussed of the form [(step) (great/grand) niece (in-law)] seem to have the support of usage. SemanticMantis (talk) 13:13, 23 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Hey Kage, shouldn't a linguist know I before E except after C? :D &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  22:33, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Translators use spellcheckers to save time while we try to meet deadlines :D Unfortunately, my Waterfox browser doesn't have one. Just an excuse. I have always had trouble with that particular word. Anyway, there is no scIEnce in that claim - in fact, according to QI, there are more exceptions than examples that follow the rule. Our specIEs is a finnickety one :)  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  01:16, 23 October 2014 (UTC)


 * That is wEIrdly sufficIEnt. &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  08:13, 23 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd just go with "niece's daughter" and leave it at that. Marco polo (talk) 00:40, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

The dreaded lurgi seems to have mutated
I became aware of this word from The Goon Show, in it's original form, with an "i" on the end, and have always believed that to be the only spelling. Someone has just made an edit to List of British words not widely used in the United States, claiming to be correcting the spelling to lurgy. The change is sourced to http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ which, sure enough, gives the new spelling, but saying it was originally spelled "lurgi" in the Goon Show. But the Oxford doesn't have an entry for "lurgi" at all.

How can such an important word change its spelling like that? Yes, I know language changes and I accept that, but I'm interested in this specific example. I still spell it "lurgi". Who spells it the other way? When did this change happen to such an iconic word? Has the original spelling really disappeared in the UK during my lifetime? HiLo48 (talk) 22:08, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The OED states "Also lurgi" and gives 4 examples. The first from the Goon Show in 1954 is spelt lurgi, the remainder are from 1969 to 1974 and are all spelt "lurgy". The entry has not been updated since 1976. I would probably spell it "lurgi" if I did write it. I've tried engramming the two terms and "lurgy" wins out but as both terms appear to have been in use as much before the fifties as after I followed the links to the books the ngram data is sourced from. Most of the "lurgi" entries relate to the Lurgi process and most of the "lurgy" entries are OCR errors caused by the hyphenation of "metal-lurgy". However, One "Lurgy" entry (and an Australian one at that) seems to suggest a possible explanation of the spelling with "y" as it gives what appears to be a folk etymology i.e. "from allergy". I seem to recall reading this supposed origin before and if it was widely believed that lurgy is derived from allergy then this might well influence the spelling in the same way that the spelling of femelle changed to female as it was analysed as being derived from or otherwise related to male. Valiantis (talk) 22:53, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I had the idea to ngram search for "dreaded lurgi" and "dreaded lurgi" to weed out the mis-hits. (That is the full expression for those unfamiliar with the phrase). The term "dreaded lurgi" does not appear anywhere in Google's corpus of books in English! "Dreaded lurgy" is the only match and the full book source search reveals a usage of the spelling with Y earlier than the OED's 1969, specifically from 1963 . So it appears the Goon's own spelling was overtaken from very early on. Valiantis (talk) 23:05, 22 October 2014 (UTC)