Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 October 30

= October 30 =

Chinese (?) translation request
Hi, can anyone tell me what the characters in this image say? I know there is a bunch of symbolic uses of the mantis in some Chinese culture, but all WP seems to say is that the Chinese Mantis is an inspiration for Northern_Praying_Mantis_(martial_art). Thanks, SemanticMantis (talk) 14:47, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * If I'm not quite mistaken, it's just the same three characters given also as our gloss at the beginning of the Northern Praying Mantis (martial art) article: 螳螂拳, Pinyin: tāngláng quán Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:12, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Aha! I actually considered that, but my character recognition ability is very poor. Barring any serious dispute, I think that's it. Thanks! SemanticMantis (talk) 15:18, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Any mistakes in the Korean in this image?
If any Korean-speaking Wikipedians are interested...

Please compare everything in Korean in File:Seatmap of Air China Flight 129 (ko).svg (except the Korean in the box since that content was originally in Korean) and check if it is a proper translation of File:Seatmap of Air China Flight 129 (en).svg

Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 16:36, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I know enough Korean to be dangerous, so it would be great if a native speaker can chime in. In case they don't, though, here are my comments:
 * "중국 국제 항공" would usually be written without spaces as "중국국제항공".
 * "flight 129" should be "129편" instead of "비행 129".
 * "바상구부" looks as though it should be "비상구".
 * I would have expected "날개 비상구" rather than "날개 부분의 ..." for overwing exits, but I'm not certain what term is actually used.
 * I can only guess whether "첫째승무원", etc. is the right way to count flight attendants.
 * Hopefully we'll have comments from someone more authoritative! --Amble (talk) 19:36, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

ø versus œ (ö) in Swedish IPA
I proposed a change to Help:IPA_for_Swedish_and_Norwegian on the talk page for the article, regarding English equivalents, but I don't have the expertise to make the change myself.


 * Currently the article says that ø has no usage in English, while œ is pronounced as the vowel in "burn". As a native speaker of Swedish (Gothenburg dialect) I don't think this makes much sense. The two vowels are quite similar, and I usually don't make any distinction between them. There are also large differences between Swedish dialects that makes it harder to define exactly how they're supposed to be pronounced. I propose that the two different symbols are kept, but both are explained with the English words "girl" or "burn".

I don't know if the right place to discuss is this page or said talk page. 95.80.46.25 (talk) 17:45, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * There actually is a difference between those vowels in IPA, but not one that you could easily clarify with examples from English. The problem with using examples like "girl" or "burn" to illustrate these vowels is that the quality of those vowels varies quite a bit across English.  In rhotic American English varieties, it is hard to separate the vowel from its R coloring, which isn't really a distinct consonant.  In non-rhotic American and British varieties, the quality of those vowels varies regionally.  Even within my own (largely non-rhotic American) region, there is variation by subregion and generation in the quality of the vowel.  I think it really may be best to illustrate these vowels with reference to German or French words with a standard pronunciation. Marco polo (talk) 18:22, 30 October 2014 (UTC)