Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 May 12

= May 12 =

Difference between Native Americans in the US and Mexico
Culturally, what are the differences and similarities between the Native Americans in what became the US to those who were in what became Mexico? --Llaanngg (talk) 00:31, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * you're going to have to get far more specific...I'm not sure your question is particularly answerable as stated..68.48.241.158 (talk) 00:41, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Each ethnic group had/has their own distinct culture. Native Americans in the US aren't all the same. They can be broadly grouped, usually by local geographic region, but Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast have very little in common with the various groups called "Plains Indians" and both these groups have very little in common with Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. The same applies to Caribbean, Central American and the various South American groupings. I suggest taking a look at Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas for starters.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 00:58, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * If you want to get into it, there is a big geographic barrier that separated the Native Americans in what became Mexico and those in what became the U.S., so they did develop upon distinctly unrelated cultural lines, with little interaction. Mesoamerican chronology is a good introduction to the Mesoamerican cultural zone, the best known groups of which are probably the Olmec, the people who founded Teotihuacan. the Aztec, the Maya.  These people interacted and shared common history, culture, language, and mythos to a considerable degree, but were isolated from other parts of the Americas by the impenetrable landscape:In the South at what is today still known as the Darien Gap, and in the North by the expansive deserts (the Sonoran Desert, the Mojave Desert, the Chihuahuan Desert, etc.  There only known contact between Mesoaamerican and Northamerican peoples was some limited trade with the Anasazi people who lived right along the edge of the desertlands of what is now the American Southwest.  In North America, the Native American groups are generally divided into several linguistic and cultural spheres, such as the Mississippian culture of what became the Southern U.S., the Algonquian peoples which lived along both the East Coast and along great swaths of what is now Canada and the Great Lakes region, and the Plains Indians which occupied the Central portion of the continent (mostly Siouan peoples, but also some Algonquian speakers in there), and various smaller isolated pockets of native cultures in the Mountain and Coastal west (the Salishan, the Uto-Aztecan peoples of the Rocky Mountains (Paiute, Comanche, Shoshone, Ute), the Anasazi, and probably several others, not excluding the northern groups, such as the Athabaskan, the Inuit, etc.  -- Jayron 32 00:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Are you thinking of specific ethnic groups who were arbitrarily divided by the European creation of the US-Mexico border? There are, for example, the Pima people. From our article:
 * the Keli Akimel O'odham and the Onk Akimel O'odham have various environmentally based health issues that can be traced directly back to that point in time when the traditional economy was devastated. They have the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the world, much more than is observed in other U.S. populations. While they do not have a greater risk than other tribes, the Pima people have been the subject of intensive study of diabetes, in part because they form a homogeneous group. The general increased diabetes prevalence among Native Americans has been hypothesized as the result of the interaction of genetic predisposition (the thrifty phenotype or thrifty genotype as suggested by anthropologist Robert Ferrell in 1984 ) and a sudden shift in diet from traditional agricultural goods towards processed foods in the past century. For comparison, genetically similar O'odham in Mexico have only a slighter higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes than non-O'odham Mexicans
 * There are other groups (peoples or nations) divided by the imposition of a border. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 23:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Organs in German
I quote from Talk:Organ (music):"Improvisation in E (Münsterorgel Dinkelsbühl) I tried googling both, nothing came up, what does Münsterorgel Dinkelsbühl mean in German? I'm guessing I tried translating it, part of it comes up as organ, but not musster and Dinkelsbuhl. Is it a proper noun? The snare (talk) 04:00, 19 October 2015 (UTC)"The context is File:06 Auszug e.ogg, which in this article is captioned Improvisation in E (Münsterorgel Dinkelsbühl). Any ideas? Nyttend (talk) 13:03, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The piece is called Improvisation in E, played on the organ located in the Minster (church) (probably St. George's Minster) in the town of Dinkelsbühl. Lectonar (talk) 13:07, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree. As far as I can tell, St. George is the only minster in Dinkelsbühl. We have an article at de:St.-Georgs-Kirche (Dinkelsbühl). The church has a description of the organ here. As you probably know, German loves compound nouns. Münsterorgel is Münster-Orgel, or "organ of the minster". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:23, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

More than one is/are ?
I was just wondering, why do we say "if more than one room is available" when logically "more than one" is a plural? "If more than one room are available" seems logical but sounds totally wrong! -- Q Chris (talk) 13:28, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * See formal agreement and notional agreement. There is not any universally agreed upon correct answer; and there will be dialectical differences between when to use one or the other.  Some dialects of English will agree "is" with "room" (formal agreement) and some dialects will agree "are" with "more than one..." (notional agreement).  This style guide has some ways to make it work.  As you can see it gets confusing.  This forum post, which cites several style guides, may also give you some guidance.  -- Jayron 32 14:12, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * In principle you're right, but a quick googling of "more than one room are" found no examples of its use (relevant examples, that is, where "more than one room" is the subject). I'd be interested to see some. HenryFlower 15:39, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * You can read anything here and get more information if you like. "More than one...are" and "More than one...is" are both attested according to many of those sources.  -- Jayron 32 15:44, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I see examples of "more than one are", but not of "more than one X are". HenryFlower 16:49, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The first and third both contain that construction. I stopped looking after that, since it's obvious even you didn't get that far.  -- Jayron 32 01:09, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The first does not. Trying to assume good faith, I suppose google may be providing you with different results from me. HenryFlower 14:01, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry. For me This is the first link and it discusses the following: "Q: Which is better: “More than one person is going” or “More than one person are going”? Put more abstractly, should the verb agree with the meaning of the word “one” or the meaning of the phrase “more than one”?".  If that's not your first link, I apologize for assuming so.  -- Jayron 32 14:47, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That is also my first link, but I think that we just have a misunderstanding. That's somebody asking the question "is this OK"; it's not an example of somebody using the construction in the belief that it's OK. My idea of an "example" would be the latter, and I still haven't found one in this instance. HenryFlower 15:27, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * In which case, the third link here contains some information. There are some sources there (archaic) which have the construction "Everie one of you are", which is pretty similar.  It also has links to other discussions on the matter, and to some pretty good sources.  It may lead you interesting places for your research.  -- Jayron 32 16:58, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Mm, I see again a question: "Would any native speakers here have said/heard the structure ... "more than one + singular noun + are"?" I still suspect the answer is "no" (at least for "said", and perhaps changing "native speaker" to "competent speaker"). (Those archaic examples are interesting, but a bit of a detour for our purposes. (If we have any.)) HenryFlower 19:31, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I think in this case, people tend to pluralise X; searching for "more than one rooms are" turns up a couple of examples. Warofdreams talk 20:47, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That sounds totally ungrammatical to me. Not that it's something I might not say, if I got lost in the middle of a sentence, but still ungrammatical. --Trovatore (talk) 20:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. I doubt that "people tend to pluralise X" in that case.  I've never heard anyone say this.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:40, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, "more than one room is available" seems correct to me on the ground that the 'more' refers to the second room available. There might be multiple rooms available, but the 'more' doesn't need to refer to them; all it's concerned with is the fact that there's a second. Akld guy (talk) 07:15, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't buy it. Then wouldn't you also say "*more than two rooms is available"?  But you don't.
 * Aside: This reminds me a bit of One Thousand and One Nights, which in some languages is rendered ... Night instead.  (E.g. Le mille e una notte in Italian, Tausendundeine Nacht in German.) --Trovatore (talk) 07:32, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you got me there. Akld guy (talk) 09:09, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The Italian is plural "nights"...also in Arabic the title is actually "one thousand nights and one night". Adam Bishop (talk) 10:22, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * No, the Italian (for this work of literature in particular) is singular "night". See the article I linked. --Trovatore (talk) 18:54, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Embarrassingly, I'm not actually sure whether this is specific to the Arabian Nights, or a general rule. I've asked a question at the Italian equivalent of the refdesk.  it:Wikipedia:Oracolo. --Trovatore (talk) 19:53, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * "When a noun immediately follows ventuno and compounds of -uno, it must be in the singular, unless preceded by an adjective: quarantuna lira (= 41 lire); trentun cavallo (= 31 horses); but trentun buoni cavalli." (Teach Yourself Italian, by Kathleen Speight, page 104)
 * —Wavelength (talk) 20:31, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. At the Oracolo they seem to feel that this rule is somewhat suspect, perhaps dated. --Trovatore (talk) 20:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Ha! In Russian it's very peculiar and complicated. 1001 is "thousand and one night" (nom. sing.).  But 1002-1004 are "thousand and two/three/four nights" (nom. pl.), and 1005-1020 are "thousand and five ... twenty of nights" (gen. pl.).  1021 is back to "thousand and twenty-one night" (nom. sing.). It all depends on the last word, so that 1, 21, 31, 41 ... 101, 121, 131 ... 1001, 1021, 1031 ... 1,000,000,000,0001  .... all take nominative singular for the object of the number. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  12:21, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Note, that it can be declined further, even when the base form is in Gen. pl. (пять ночей, пятью ночами, пяти ночам, о пяти ночах, but *пять ночи). Actually, the declension of Russian numerals is so obscure and tangled that even native speakers make mistakes regularly.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:44, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Тысяча раз спасибо (1,000 thanks) for that confirmation. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:38, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * In Norwegian, we use the singular "Tusen og en natt", yet we use the plural in "101 Dalmatians" and usually also if we were to say "I have told you a thousand and one times...", although the singular doesn't sound totally ungrammatical in the latter case. The journalist and author Åsne Seierstad has written a book called "Hundre og en dag" (hundred and one day) about her experiences during the Battle of Baghdad (2003), but I assume the title is a reference to a 1001 nights. Interwiki-links may be useful in investigating this further. In German, the title is singular: de:Tausendundeine Nacht, yet the plural "1001 Nächte" is used in the article. In the Italian article it:Le mille e una notte, the plural "notti" doesn't appear in a context which clarifies the question of whether the singular is used only for the literary work. In Spanish, the plural is used for the title: es:Las mil y una noches, as it is in French: fr:Les Mille et Une Nuits. --NorwegianBluetalk 21:40, 14 May 2016 (UTC)