Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 February 20

= February 20 =

Pronunciation of "Catholicism"
Usually, the word is pronounced by stressing on the second syllable. This source agrees with my statement. The website provides US speakers and one UK speaker, and all of them stress on the second syllable. Now, recently, there was one guy I met who pronounced "Catholicism" by stressing on the first syllable. He's a professor of English, but when he's overseas, he'd teach American Studies in collegiate classrooms. Is this a common pronunciation? What dialect is this? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 01:06, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Did he pronounce the second "c" like a "k" or an "s"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:47, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I think he pronounced it with a s. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 02:01, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Bugs, geolocate, and see this user's previous questions on Pietism before you waste mental energy on parsing his BS questions. μηδείς (talk) 01:52, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I've expended about as much mental energy on this issue as I felt like - i.e. not much. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I wondered if they emphasized the first syllable, maybe they would have said it as "Catholikism". That would be more logical. (Not that English is particularly logical.) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I do not think the pronunciation is idiosyncratic. This video on the French Revolution does pronounce "Catholicism", while emphasizing the first syllable in the phrase "Catholicism is dead". It is an American video, made by a studio based in Hawaii. I don't want to say it's a Hawaiian accent, but it may be Western United States? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 02:09, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I've never heard it pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. Maybe another expert here can help. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:12, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * English has a general practice of moving the stress one syllable towards the end of the word when appending suffixes. Thus... "ge-OG-raphy" but "ge-o-GRA-phic".  The moving towards the end of the word works for any number of suffixes, so we only tend to move towards the end one syllable regardless of how many suffixes we add to the root, so "ge-o-GRA-phic-al" and "ge-o-GRA-phic-al-ly" are all standard stress patterns.  You can find this pattern all over English.  "CA-tho-lic" and "Ca-THO-li-cism" matches this pattern well.  -- Jayron 32 02:56, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... I believe that some people may have subconsciously refrained from moving the stress forward, creating an unusual pronunciation. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 13:09, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I would have said that Jay was talking about moving the stress backward, not forward. Is "forward" what actual phoneticians say to refer to later syllables? --70.49.169.244 (talk) 16:41, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * The forward direction of time is always later. The arrow of time is generally considered to be "behind = past" and "in front = future".  Later syllables in a word are said after the earlier syllables, thus "forward" of them.  Am I really explaining the concept of time here?  Or does time work differently for you than for the rest of us? -- Jayron 32 22:23, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * But the front of the word is the first letter. Am I really explaining the concept of space here? Or am I asking for references on how actual phoneticians describe this? --70.49.169.244 (talk) 01:04, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Look, we're not treating each other respectfully, and I'm to blame for that. I apologize first to you, and secondly to our readers.  This side discussion has nothing to do with answering the OP; we both understand what I meant, and what you mean, and debating the inconsequential isn't a good way to move forward.  I apologize to you for treating you with disrespect, it was inexcusable on my part.  I'm hatting this to avoid any further trips down this unnecessary road we're traveling on together.  I've changed my original post to avoid ambiguity.  I don't need to be right here, it's not useful to you or others for me to continue to press forward in this direction.  I hope you can accept my apology and we can move on.  -- Jayron 32 01:20, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * An obvious analogue is Protestantism, which (as far as I can tell) remains stubbornly stressed on the first syllable. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:40, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Here in Detroit, I stress the 2nd syllable, and pronounce the first as "pra". StuRat (talk) 18:09, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Compare "PRO-test" with "pro-TEST-ant" and "pro-TEST-ant-ism". The first clearly uses a stressed vowel on the "pro" syllable, the second clearly uses a schwa.  -- Jayron 32 01:23, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Much to my surprise the OED lists the pronunciation with first syllable stress, albeit after the pronunciation with second syllable stress. William Avery (talk) 13:44, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Wurstkissen to mean "toilet paper to stop the water from hitting your ass"
This guy claims that the Germans have a special word, Wurstkissen, to describe "toilet paper to stop the water from hitting your ass". Is this true? Googling "Wurstkissen" and "Wurstkissen Toilettenpapier" yielded nothing useful. WinterWall (talk) 06:57, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Google translate yields "sausage cushion". Sounds like a joke. Like the fake German word for brassiere: "Schtoppenderfloppen". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * But the German for "exhaust" is "auspuff" and "glove" is "handschuh". Wierd? Widneymanor (talk) 11:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * German is a very straight-forward language many times. Skunk is das Stinktier, for instance. Also, capitalise your nouns! Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 1 Adar 5775 13:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Germans do have a bit of an obsession with avoiding splashback - viz the German step toilet - see Terrifying German Toilets - Ach mein Gott! Alansplodge (talk) 13:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I thought those were Austrian. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 1 Adar 5775 13:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * There's a horrible pun about Pan-Germanism there somewhere, but there is much cultural commonality between Germany and Austria. About half of the toilets in Luxembourg are of the Germanic type, in my experience. Alansplodge (talk) 17:28, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * According to our Flush toilet article, it's called a Flachspüler and may be found in "...the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and some regions of Poland". Alansplodge (talk) 17:36, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * These toilets haven't been produced since the 90s, so you can still find them in older houses (Toilette). As for "Wurstkissen", it's just a pillow for your excrements (sausages). You have to consider that in Germany, some renown publishers actually print youth dictionaries, which you can get in bookstores. They are collections of words people think the young say since they are made by adults. Another example is "Ticketficker" (ticket fucker) for train conductor. No one really talks like that, not even the worst self-proclaimed "gangsters" (probably because they aren't smart enough to invent these words anyway). They omit letters and ignore grammar, but if they really used such words, it would just sound wrong. People even try to decode that so-called slang on game shows. Just some comic relief. --2.245.101.41 (talk) 17:53, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Danke schön. Alansplodge (talk) 22:54, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Slightly off-topic, but in Japan, the Japanese use toilet paper placed into the toilet to mask the sounds of their 'deliveries'. Some also flush the toilet while doing their 'business' so no-one can hear them. One thing I have noticed, however, is that both Germany and Japan have a lot of toilet humour on TV, despite being so reticent about letting people know about their own toilet habits.  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  01:00, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Can someone translate this English sentence into actual English please?

 * Positivist assumptions provided the epistemological foundations for Social Darwinism and pop-evolutionary notions of progress, as well as for scientific racism and imperialism.

Many thanks, as I find it slightly internally contradictory, or making somewhat contradictory claims within the single sentence. Readability is negative 30, and a grade level of 22. Collect (talk) 19:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hard to say without context. I think it is referencing Logical positivism, and claiming that the assumptions made by that school of thought have provided a basis (i.e. and epistemological foundation) for the concept of social darwinism. Additionally, it is claimed, these unspecified assumptions provide a basis for imperialism and scientific racism. So that's what the sentence is saying, but I certainly wouldn't believe that claim without a lot of further evidence and rationale. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Oh, the quote is from here, if anyone wants to read the whole piece. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:01, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


 * As I understood it, Positivism relies only on empiricism and rejects "assumptions" and are the four results all going to arise from it in unison, or is the writer only saying Positivism may result in one of the four listed? The quote appears to be sought as a basis for saying that Positivism results in scientific racism, which I found a bit of a stretch here. Collect (talk) 22:48, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The author is using "epistemological foundations" as a (rather inaccurate) circumlocution for "excuse". The basic argument the author is condemning goes something like "Positivism enables us to reject as unfounded traditional moral platitudes such as 'All men are created equal' and look only at the facts.  The facts are that poor people are less healthy and have shorter lifespans than rich people, and therefore must be genetically inferior (Social Darwinism), and that black people are less successful, less powerful, and worse at IQ tests than white people, and therefore must be genetically inferior (scientific racism)."  Tevildo (talk) 02:13, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a good reason to cancel your subscription. In any case "positivist assumptions" is ambiguous.  "Assumptions that were positivist" is a possible, but irrelevant statement (it's like saying English assumptions, when you mean assumptions written in English.  Likewise "the assumptions of Positivism" would simply be a false claim.  Perhaps the author uses the postmodernist essay generator to create articles for which he gets paid by the word?  This is nothing we can provide references for, other than asking you to look up our articles on Positivism and so forth. μηδείς (talk) 23:46, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The review of Harris is an interesting read, but the main idea I get from it is that both Sam Harris and Jackson Lears are bozos in their separate and distinct ways. I'm mainly familiar with Positivism in the context of mid 20th century linguistics, where it decreed that any hypothesis which was not stated in terms of concrete measurable quantities or entities was "unscientific" (also known as methodological positivism or operationalism -- see my old comment at Talk:Operationalization). The Jackson Lears quote appears to have more to do with the 1960s Positivism dispute (as far as I can tell)... AnonMoos (talk) 06:38, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
 * For an early, and well written, critique of "positivism" in sociology see C. Wright Mills on Talcott Parsons. A few years ago I had really had it up to the neck with the post-modernist crowd and their obsessive rooting out of supposed positivism everywhere. Then I had to read a load of econometrics and suddenly understood that the po-mo people, though wrong about so much, did have a real quarry. The two sides can be summarised as "never measure anything" and "we don't have a clue what it is but we're going to measure it anyway". Thank goodness that we have critical realism to take a middle road between them. I find the original sentence to be quite comprehensible and its main point plausible although somewhat sweeping. The person who it is mainly aimed at is Francis Galton. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:09, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
 * An Empiricist Empire Exemplar? Interesting fellow! Collect (talk) 00:46, 22 February 2015 (UTC)