Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 October 16

= October 16 =

Ambiguous phrase in a poem, "Coast of High Barbaree"
I attempt translating this, and the phrase "For we have got some letters To be carried home by you" puzzles me. Is the pirate claims he is to deliver letters, receive them, or the Americans do? Is this a trap by either side? The full text of the poem can be found here, and the ambiguous phrase in in the 3rd verse. אילן שמעוני (talk) 10:16, 16 October 2015 (UTC)


 * In context (see the US lyrics) the captain of the warship asks the other vessel if it is a "a pirate or a man o'war" and the pirate replies "O no! I'm not a pirate, but a man o'war". The warship captain then asks the pirate to stop as he has some mail for them to carry - he's probably suspicious. In the days when a warship's voyage could last for years, the only way to get dispatches back to base was to stop another ship which was going that way and get them to carry them. The pirate refuses to stop and a battle ensues. Alansplodge (talk) 10:51, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! אילן שמעוני (talk) 12:20, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Anatolia
I suspect that there is a philological connection between the Greek ἀνατολή and the Arabic tolu'---     طلوع. May someone please confirm or confute that?-Omidinist (talk) 17:49, 16 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Unlikely. The Greek word is a compound whose second element, tel-, probably comes from a proto-IE root *kʷel which has reflexes in multiple other branches of Indo-European (although the derivation appears to be complex and not entirely certain). The Arabic form appears to be a regular derivation from a triconsonantal Semitic root, ط|ṭ-l-ʿ. These are thus unlikely to be loanwords from each other. Unless you were to posit some form of deep relationship via a Indo-Semitic macrofamily, I don't see much of a scenario for a possible etymological relationship. Just one of many curious cases of chance resemblances, quite common between unrelated languages. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:33, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * 'Confute'? Presumably you meant 'refute'. Akld guy (talk) 01:42, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Confute means refute, though it's rarely used these days. Omidinist (talk) 04:54, 17 October 2015 (UTC)