Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 May 30

= May 30 =

Fancy letter at beginning of a paragraph
I'm blanking on this. What is the name of the fancy letter that is sometimes at the beginning of a chapter of a book? Dismas |(talk) 00:26, 30 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Initial, Historiated initial. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:34, 30 May 2016 (UTC)


 * (e/c) Dropped capital or dropcap, which both redirect to Initial, which is a bit misleading since in common parlance all first letters are called "initial letters". --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  00:35, 30 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I know it by the name "decorated initial".—Wavelength (talk) 00:36, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! I think I was thinking of dropcap. Dismas |(talk) 02:26, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Chinook language
According to Nelson A. Miles, who was military commander of the Department of the Columbia in the secnd half of the nineteenth century, Chinook Jargon was invented by the Hudson's Bay Company.  "In the absence of any such method of communication, the Hudson Bay fur traders were obliged to create one, and this eventually came to be known as the Chinook language, consisting of a few words whose meaning was agreed upon to express the ideas most used in ordinary conversation." Is this true? It sounds very unlikely to me. Maybe the Hudson's Bay Company documented it and regularized it for employee use but surely they didn't invent it. I am especially unwilling to trust Miles as reliable when it comes to linguistic questions as he also says that Plains Indian Sign Language "...constituted a language almost identical with that used by the deaf and dumb of the present day in the asylums and schools established for their benefit." I am even more certain that that is incorrect, although Miles does seemingly contradict himself in a footnote by saying the the language of the deaf is based on alphabetic signs whereas PISL is ideographic. SpinningSpark 11:12, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * As a language reference desk, can one be even more certain? 86.168.81.140 (talk) 15:04, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
 * A lot of pidgin languages emerge as a means to facilitate trade. It's not impossible that one was deliberately created for the trading needs of the Hudson's Bay Company. --Xuxl (talk) 12:53, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * But why would they base it on Chinook? English or French would have been a more natural choice.  Also, I believe a strong native trading network already existed in the area prior to the arrival of the Company. SpinningSpark 15:11, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * There are arguments that Chinook Jargon pre-dates European trade, according to Jim Holton's Chinook Jargon: The Hidden Language of the Pacific Northwest (1999). The chapter on history can be found here. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 16:27, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * See also Jespersen's second-hand account starting p. 228 here. HenryFlower 16:38, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Pronoun case for object of to be
Which is correct, and why:

Marlowe "Tamburlane the Great" Accursed be he that first invented war.

Shakespeare "Macbeth"  Damned be him that first cries hold enough.69.146.148.2 (talk) 16:50, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * As opposed to "...cursed be he that moves my bones"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:56, 30 May 2016 (UTC)


 * The Macbeth sentence is the "wrong" one. 'Be' here is the subjunctive form, and the phrases could have been replaced with
 * "may he be accursed..."
 * "may him he be damned"
 * "may he be cursed..."
 * μηδείς (talk) 17:17, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * In A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, vol 7, p. 258 they explain it as reflex of the active voice "damn him". --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 12:19, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
 * You'll have to explain then what they mean by a reflex. The normal traditional term would be predicate nominative, since "be" is a copula, and doesn't traditionally take "objects" as such.
 * Of course, "I want to be him" is common nowadays, but in this case, "him" would best be described as a disjunctive pronoun, for which we can conveniently blame that foul nest of all such incromulence--France. μηδείς (talk) 21:41, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, "I've Gotta Be Me" should really be "I Must Be I". --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:05, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Don Quixote? --Trovatore (talk) 21:39, 2 June 2016 (UTC)