Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 February 19

= February 19 =

Chinese translation
Could anyone please translate what's written in this image: http://img.redocn.com/sheji/20140818/2015chunjiegongxifacaihaibao_2920203.jpg I want to post it to someone and I'm scared I might offend. I know the middle says Happy New Year, but what do the scrolls say? Thanks in advnace! 15.227.185.74 (talk) 10:52, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * On the left: I think that is in traditional form "八方財寳進門庭" (simplified "八方财宝进门庭") which looks to be a set phrase that means "wealth come through house from everywhere" or something along those lines, which I guess just means "be prosperous". ("八方" is literally "eight directions", but it means "all directions".) --Shirt58 (talk) 06:45, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * On the right, "四面貴人相照應" - huh? "elegant echos on all four sides?". I must definitely have that wrong. --Shirt58 (talk) 07:03, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * "四面" literally means "four sides" but, like "八方", is an idiomatic expression meaning "all sides" or "everywhere". "照應" (simplified Chinese version: "照应") means "to look after, to take care of". I believe "四面貴人相照應" means "noble people everywhere care for each other". — SMUconlaw (talk) 11:01, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * The middle really is an idiomatic salutation that blesses people with great joy and prosperity, not necessarily "Happy New Year". "新年快乐" translates literally as "Happy New Year" and may be used to refer to New Year's Day on the Gregorian calendar, which most people in the developed world use. I have no idea what the scroll on the right means. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 17:31, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The phrase in the middle is "恭喜发财" (in Mandarin, gōngxǐ fācái), and means "congratulations and prosperity [to you]". As pointed out above it does not literally mean "happy new year", but it is a very common new year greeting. Having said that, nowadays some people find the reference to gaining wealth a bit crass, and use a variety of other expressions to greet others. — SMUconlaw (talk) 11:09, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Sort question
Adding a DEFAULTSORT to article Los de abajo (film), should I sort on "Abajo", or "de Abajo" ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 12:12, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * You may want to look at WP:MOS and see how they recommend dealing with foreign articles (a, an, the in other languages). As an example, Arabic words starting with "al-", it mean "the-", but Wikipedia style might indicating treating it like any other word. Either way, it could be educational to go to the Spanish Wikipedia and see how they handled it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:26, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It definitely needs a defaultsort (as Los = The) but the issue is with the 'de' in the middle, is it part of the sort ? GrahamHardy (talk) 13:23, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * This is not necessarily definitive, but if you look at "Category:Spanish musical duos" you will see that the group Los del Rio is alphabetized as if "Los" were any other word. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:08, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Los is not an article in this case but a pronoun, cf. . The literal translation would be "Those from below" or something like that. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:17, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * D'oh! Good point. "Los" is used both as pronoun and article in Spanish. So it should be alphabetized simply as "Los de abajo", the same way "Los del rio" is taken as-is... and which literally means "Those from Rio". (Presuming "Rio" is a city name - "rio" itself means "river".) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:21, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The article has Los de abajo translated as 'The Underdogs', is that correct ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 15:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That would be an idiomatic translation. The literal translation of those three words would be "the ones / those -- [from / of] -- below / down." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:28, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * This all means, of course, that no DEFAULTSORT is required. It's an odd thing, but that parameter is used only where the title is to be treated in some way other than its natural English order (or whichever language it's in), i.e. absolutely NOT the default.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:42, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "miso"
How is "miso" (the Japanese fermented bean product) pronounced: . Does the "mi" rhyme with "we" or with "why"? . Does the "so" rhyme with "go" or with "goo"? Bh12 (talk) 14:39, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Roughly speaking, the syllables rhyme with the "we" and "fee" of English and the "go" and "dough" of English respectively. But the latter isn't a diphthong. I mean, whereas the vowel sound of "dough" starts off as a kind of "o" and turns into a kind of "u", the "so" in "miso" is just a kind of "o" (there's no "u" sound of any kind in it). -- Hoary (talk) 15:01, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Would it be like the "mi" and "so" in "do re mi fa so la ti do"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:05, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, but the simplest way to describe it is just as saying "me" and "so" together. As Jar Jar Binks would say: "Me so want some miso".  StuRat (talk) 15:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Jar Jar came to my mind also (despite my effort to prevent it). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:44, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * My brother absolutely loved that character, so that makes a total of one. StuRat (talk) 15:56, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Is there any reason not to assume that miso is a Japanese word, in a transliteration that uses IPA vowels? —Tamfang (talk) 09:16, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Generally speaking, if you want to know how to pronounce culinary terms, just do a Youtube search for them, and you'll find a large number of knowledgeble chefs who are pronouncing them. For example, here is Gordon Ramsay saying "miso", and here is a program called "Japanese Cooking 101" talking about it . You always have to be careful about ignorant people and trolls, but if you watch a number of different videos, most of the time you can quickly tell what the most common English pronunciation is. -- 162.238.240.55 (talk) 14:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

A Certain Old Norse to Icelandic Shift
Why did Icelandic gain more instances of /þ/ and /ð/ than its source language already had? Was it due to hypercorrection? Was it due to a process similar to what English went through for a while (the one that caused Old English fæder, mōdor, slidrian, gaderian etc. to have their Proto-Germanic /ð/s restored in Modern English, resulting in father, mother, slither, gather, etc.)?

Examples of what I am talking about are (note: these transcriptions are broad, not narrow):

Old Norse þat /θat/ ("that") → Icelandic það /θað/ ("that")

Old Norse vit /wit/ ("we two") → Icelandic við /við/ (we)

Old Norse at /at/ ("at, to") → Icelandic að /að/ ("to")

Old Norse ér /er/ ("you") → Icelandic þér /þer/ ("you")

etc. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 16:19, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * You have to understand that there were lots of dialects of both Old English and Old Norse. In both cases, some phonemes remained in the standard modern languages of today. Also, some were words developed by analogy. It was not hypercorrection, as both languages did not have a written language in proto-germanic.  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  16:56, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * You are exemplifying two unrelated phenomena here. One is the weakening of Old Norse final /t/ to /ð/ after vowel (only in unstressed, clitic words?), which is simply a form of lenition. The other is the addition of the /θ/ in þér, which is due to word boundary shift, a kind of morphological reanalysis (the 2nd person plural ending -þ was misinterpreted as part of the following pronoun; a similar phenomenon resulted in the addition of /t/ in the Old High German and Old English 2nd person singular, such that OHG nimis became nimist by way of nimistu "nimst thou, takest thou", modern German nimmste, re-analysed nimmst du). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:41, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. Interesting. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 22:17, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Parallelled also in the Modern Swedish 2pl pronoun "ni"; cf. English "ye". --ColinFine (talk) 21:55, 22 February 2015 (UTC)