Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 January 20

= January 20 =

Stamps
Hello. I need to create a category in Commons for the kind of manually printed stamps like this or this. Ink stamps? Rubber stamps? Suggestions? Thanks--Pierpao (talk) 11:58, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia suggests rubber stamp. Bazza (talk) 12:07, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks but does rubber stamp suite both to the instrument and the ink stamp on the paper?--Pierpao (talk) 12:14, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * A rubber stamp is a particular form of printing technology which uses ink to produce an image on the receiving medium, such as paper. Your two example images would, I suggest, fall into several categories: printed images; impressions; rubber stamp images; etc. (The second, though, is in fact a virtualisation of the real thing, so may not count here at all.) There is unlikely a hard-and-fast answer to your question, and opinions from other reference desk editors would be a help. Bazza (talk) 12:36, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * See Franking for a particular kind of rubber stamp. 196.213.35.146 (talk) 13:04, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Wikimedia has a category for imprints of Chinese seals at commons:Category:Seal imprints. Your first image is similar to this category, just not Chinese. I would suggest something like "Stamp imprints". The second image, which is a drawing made to look like a stamp imprint, could go into the same category, or a sub-category like "Simulated stamp imprints", or "Drawn stamp imprints", or something. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, searching for that first suggestion got me to commons:Category:Rubber stamp imprints, which I think might be what you need. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:13, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot to all of you, User:PalaceGuard008, 196.213.35.146 User:Bazza 7 for you generous answers--Pierpao (talk) 17:04, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

receiver, receptor, recipient
Receiver, receptor, reception, recipient all are nouns of to receive. Why don't people use the same endings for the noun?
 * The electronic mail recipient
 * The cell receptor
 * The wedding reception
 * The telephone receiver

140.254.77.208 (talk) 18:34, 20 January 2016 (UTC)


 * This is extremely common, especially in English, which has not only its own native words, but words borrowed from other Germanic Languages an Latin, Greek, and the Romance Languages. In this case we have a Latin verb, recipere which developed into Norman French receivre and was borrowed into English repeatedly in different forms.  See doublet (linguistics).  BTW, the -cip- in the Latin verb comes from the same PIE root as does the word "have" in English, and the -tion ending gives abstract nouns, while -ient is a participial ending.  See also -er and -(t)or.
 * μηδείς (talk) 19:06, 20 January 2016 (UTC)


 * "Some languages borrow words from other languages. English takes other languages into a back alley and roughs them up for spare change" (paraphrasing a description I read once).  The deal with English is that it is, quite literally, a creole of two other languages: Anglo Saxon and Norman French.  Because of the way creolization works, English is sort of a bastard, from a linguistic point of view, having developed from a pidgen of Anglo Saxon and Norman french; Pidgens are highly simplified, losing much of the parent languages inflections and cases and genders and the like.  That's why English doesn't have the sorts of systematic complexity of the parent languages.  Practically, English will borrow words from one language, tack on endings from other languages, etc. etc.  It's all a mess.  And since this languages are all related (being Indoeuropean languages), they will all have subtle variations on different words, so one variation may be borrowed from Middle French and take on a Germanic ending, another borrowed directly from Latin with its own ending, one borrowed from Norman French and having undergone various changes from Middle English, etc.  -- Jayron 32 19:25, 20 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The creolization theory of Anglo-Saxon > Middle English is still a very common one, but I'll point out that it is not currently credited, especially after Thomason, Sarah; Kaufman, Terrence (1988), Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics (first ed.), Berkely: University of California Press. They spend the middle third of that work debunking the idea.


 * Basically, for a creole to come into existence, there has to be a generation of children raised in a pidgin language that was not the native language of either of the children's parents. That happened in the Caribbean, for example, when slaves from various African linguistic backgrounds had to communicate in a French, Portuguese, or Spanish based pidgin which was not the native language of either parent.  This means a radical break in the genetic transmission of a language, since the pidgin itself is an oversimplified instrument with a very limited vocabulary and lacking most grammatical endings and complex syntactical structures.


 * There was never any such radical break in English. Children still learned English from their mothers.  Basic vocabulary remained natively English, with of the 207 basic words of the Swadesh List, they, give, sky come from Norse, while animal, count, forest, and mountain come ultimately from Latin.


 * Case and verb endings were lost very slowly, over a long period, due to native changes in the vowel and accent system that had nothing to do with French, and which parallel developments in other Germanic languages not colonized by a Norman aristocracy. French and Latin had huge influences on English as lexifier languages, providing prestige vocabulary, but at no point was there a true creolization.


 * μηδείς (talk) 20:21, 20 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Middle English creole hypothesis notes that it is neither fully accepted, nor fully debunked. Let's call it an open question and an area for further research.  -- Jayron 32 02:38, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The best I can say about that article is it's short. And I forgot to mention the mixed pedigree "because" in the list of borrowings into the Swadesh list.  I'll stick with Thomason and Kaufman, which I strongly recommend.  Before I read them I thought the creolization theory was obvious, but that's only if you look at Beowulf and then Chaucer half a millennium later and wonder, "How did that ever happen?"


 * But what documentation there is shows the process was one of gradual phonetic change leading to a loss of desinences. There was never any stage of pidginization or loss of genetic (mother-to-child) transmission for the language.  French's influence was vast, but there was never any sort of reanalysis such at the production of the ti question particle found in Haitian Creole or the entire reworking of the verb system that it shows in comparison to French.


 * μηδείς (talk) 03:10, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The interesting thing about the example listed by the OP is that all three of the nouns that mean "receiving thing/person" come from French. I don't know whether the original French words meant different things, or were simply different tenses of the same word? ("Reception" does not mean a "receiving thing/person", it means an "act of receiving".) --165.225.80.101 (talk) 19:33, 20 January 2016 (UTC)


 * That's not quite accurate; three of the four constructions come from Latin directly, even if they may have been borrowed through learnèd French from Latin. Only the verb receive is actually a French root, and receiver is an anglo-norman term. -Medeis


 * Why don't people use the same endings for the noun? Because they have different meanings. Scicurious (talk) 23:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Term sought
Mr. Zoot Cig Bunner (talk) 20:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * A group of boys/men can be called guys.
 * A group of girls/women can be called _____________
 * A group of boys/men and girls/women together in whole can be called ______________ - I believe formally is ladies and gentlemen, what can be stated informally?


 * The answers to your second and third questions are also frequently "guys". The slangy equivalent to "guys" as strictly male, though, is typically "gals". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:39, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Formal English lacking a second person plural pronoun, many dialects have invented one, notably "y'all" in the southeastern US and "yins" in Appalachia. I only bring that up to note that the construction in the Northeastern US filling this role is "you guys", even when talking to a group of only females.  -- Jayron 32 03:32, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Two things. First, if you want to be pedantic about it, what Formal English really lacks is a true second person singular pronoun, since "you" has origins in the second person plural. (I don't really disagree with you, though.) Second, "you guys" is a pretty frequent construction in the Northeast, but "you all" (not "y'all") is also pretty frequent. And in certain (mostly white, ethnic, urban) places, one also hears "youse guys" (/yoos/). StevenJ81 (talk) 05:38, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * True, but "youse guys" is still applied to a group of females. "Youse gals" would be rare... -- Jayron 32 16:52, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * And while we're being pedantic, calling "you" a plural pronoun means you are applying the etymological fallacy to modern English. You is clearly singular in modern English, because dialects have taken to invent the perceived missing pronoun, the invented pronoun (y'all, yins, you-uns, you guys, yous guys) is universally plural, meaning "you" must be perceived as singular.  How it used to be considered back when English preserved the T-V distinction is interesting, but immaterial when considering modern usage.  -- Jayron 32 16:56, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * If you are indicating a group of males over yonder, you could say "those guys", to their face you might say "guys"; in an equivalent situation for a group of females, "y'all" isn't really an equivalent. "Guys", "gals" or "girls" could work, but "ladies" is much more acceptable in a casual setting than "gentlemen" would be for men ("gents" could work"). For a mixed gender group, probably the equivalent would be "people" - i.e. "those people", and to their face, "people". --185.46.212.75 (talk) 11:52, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * In some areas (I'll speak for Ontario), terms like "y'all" would be seen as humorous or else marked as rural - or even uneducated. In informal groups, "guys" gets used a lot. In slightly more formal settings, such as co-workers at lunch or something, "folks" is sometimes used. You can also usually re-phrase things to incorporate many different terms ("Hi everybody!", "Hi everyone!", "Good morning, team!", etc. etc.). The mere fact that it's informal means that there are likely to many options available. Matt Deres (talk) 15:28, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I think the word you're looking for is "people". --TammyMoet (talk) 18:45, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * "People" will sound inappropriate here (in WP) I believe. Some of what Matt stated is acceptable along with the word "guys". I knew the word "guys" used for male and female, I just didn't want to be rude to the Wiki-Ladies.
 * Thanks "team" -- Mr. Zoot Cig Bunner (talk) 20:29, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

List of Ranks:
What’s before the word soilder? The ranks? I kinda forgot... -- Mr. Zoot Cig Bunner (talk) 20:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * More likely prefixed by the country whose military they are a part of: US soldier, UK soldier, etc. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:40, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know, what praised a lot? -- Mr. Zoot Cig Bunner (talk) 20:29, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * List of comparative military ranks may be a good place to start your research. -- Jayron 32 02:36, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks J; its gonna take sometime to go through... Regards. -- Mr. Zoot Cig Bunner (talk) 20:29, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Surname Davies in the UK
I'm American and occasionally watch some British shows. Among them are QI and The Big Fat Quiz. (Using just these as a test sample, you guys do quiz shows very well!!) The former has Alan Davies as a regular guest and the latter had Greg Davies. Both of them pronounce their names "DAY-viss". I would think that they were pronounced "DAY-vees". Is this "viss" pronunciation a pretty standard British English thing? Dismas |(talk) 20:53, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't be surprising, considering they pronounce Ralph like Rafe, and Maurice like Morris. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:58, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I've been noticing Ralph Fiennes name being said as "rAfe" lately as well. Dismas |(talk) 21:03, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Lately? It's always been Rafe Fines, mate.  If you've been calling him Ralf Feens, you've been saying it wrong all along.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:24, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, until recently, I've always heard it as "ralf fInes". Never "feens". Dismas |(talk) 00:19, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Some Welsh-speaking parts of Wales tend to use "DAY-vees", and that's true of both Welsh speakers and English speakers there, although moreso for the Welsh-speakers. In my experience it may even be used to distinguish more Welsh DAY-veeses from the more English DAY-visses. But it does vary quite a lot. This is all completely WP:OR on my part, as I can't find any sources to support what I've heard. But I've never heard DAY-vees used by an English speaker in England. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:46, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Here in London, I know an English Davies family who say "Daviees" and a Welsh Davies family who say "Daviss". It defies logic. Alansplodge (talk) 11:17, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * We (Brits) may pronounce Maurice as Morris, but that's no excuse for you (US) to pronounce BERnard as bernARD. :-) Widneymanor (talk) 22:46, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * In a further oddity, the names "Bernard" and "Barnard" both come from the German Bernhardt, yet it's usually bern-ARD and BARN-ard. Go figure. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:29, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * However, as both of our nations use the French spelling, their pronunciation lies somewhere inbetween the two. You say tomayto... Alansplodge (talk) 11:17, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Here in northern England, Ralf is usually pronounced /ralf/, but it is conventional to use the pronunciation preferred by the owner of the name, so Ralph Fiennes would be /reɪf/ /faɪnz/ because he is a southerner. Similarly, Davies is pronounced like Davis by most people here in the north, but a Welsh or southern owner of the Davies surname might well pronounce it "DAY-veez" in which case we would follow that practice.    D b f i r s   23:19, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I never thought /reɪf/ was a Southern pronunciation. I had always assumed it was determined by class and/or by what public school one had attended. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:28, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * You might be right that there is a class element as well. I don't know any East Enders called Ralf.    D b f i r s   23:37, 20 January 2016 (UTC)