Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 October 22

= October 22 =

Can someone find this original Galileo quotation?
Hi! A few months ago I read The Information by James Gleick, which at one point quotes Galileo saying that "names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards". I am going to go ahead and assume that Galileo didn't actually say that in modern English. Could someone please source the original quotation for me? Thanks. Kisses. Equinox ◑ 06:18, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I found a partial quote in an 1843 edition of Vocabolario degli accademici della Crusca. It reads as follows:  Gli attributi si deono accomodare all'essenza delle cose, e non l'essenza ai nomi.  link. I found this by Googling gli attributi devono accomodarsi all'essenza.
 * This is a dictionary entry for the verb accomodare, and it seems to be referenced to Gallil. Macch. Sol. 2. 95, if that helps. --Trovatore (talk) 08:40, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Found it. It's from Prima lettera di Galileo Galilei a Marco Velseri circa le macchie solari in risposta della precedente.  The quote in context is:
 * Ma che elle non possano esser nel corpo solare non mi par con intera necessità dimostrato, perchè il dire, come egli mette nella prima ragione non esser credibile, che nel corpo solare sieno macchie oscure, essendo egli lucidissimo non conclude, perchè tanto doviamo noi dargli titolo di purissimo, e lucidissimo in quanto non sono state vedute in lui tenebre, o impurità alcune: ma quando ci si mostrasse in parte impuro, e macchiato, perchè non doveremo noi chiamarlo, e macolato, e non puro? i nomi, e gli attributi si deono accomodare all'essenza delle cose, e non l'essenza ai nomi; perchè prima furon le cose, e poi i nomi.
 * link --Trovatore (talk) 09:08, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It's a little convoluted and it's late for me to be translating something so involved, but here's a quick try, might be guessing wrong at some pronoun referents:
 * But that they [spots, I'm guessing?] cannot be in the solar body does not seem to me to be entirely necessarily proven, as to say that it is not credible that there are dark spots within the solar body, because the Sun is very bright, is not conclusive. We must grant him [the Sun] the title of most pure, and very bright, as no shadows have been seen in him, nor any impurity whatsoever, but when he were to show himself to us in part impure, and spotted, why should we not call him so, and stained, and not pure?  Names and attributes must accommodate themselves to the essence of things, because first were the things, and then the names.
 * Well, more or less anyway. It's a bit hard to parse. --Trovatore (talk) 09:18, 22 October 2016 (UTC)


 * If you read Italian, there's a bit more backstory at Mark Welser (translated as Marco Velseri in the Italian source). It seems that Christoph Scheiner had seen the spots, and come to the conclusion that, as the Sun was an "incorruptible celestial body" per Aristotelian doctrine, they could not be marks on the Sun itself, but must be stars between the Earth and the Sun.  Welser wrote to Galileo asking for his opinion, and Galileo responds above.  I think the first egli in the passage, which I took to be impersonal, actually refers to Scheiner. --Trovatore (talk) 19:14, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Terms for eighths
For the 150th anniversary, we have sesquicentennial; where sesqui means "and a half". For 125th and 175th, there's quasqui (meaning "and a quarter") and terquasqui (meaning "and 3 quarters".)

Now let's deal with the thousands. We know that 1000 is millennial and 2000 is bimillennial. We can use the above prefixes quasqui and terquasqui for the 1250th and 1750th anniversaries. But because the interval of 1000 years (between the 1000th and 2000th anniversaries) can be divided into eighths, we need a similar prefix for "and an eighth" using consistent etymology with the above prefixes. What would this prefix be, attaching it to "millennial"?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:37, 22 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Quasquicentennial (which I've never encountered before) appears to have been made up in 1962 by somebody who didn't know or didn't care how Latin combination works. It follows no regular pattern, and is effectively a portmanteau word: 'quarter' (or 'quadrate', or 'quattuor', who can tell) and 'sesquicentennial'. This suggests that you can make up 1 1/8 however you like; but since the common part of Latin words for eight, eighth, eighty etc is 'oct-', that would suggest 'octesquimillennial', which I find rather unwieldy. --ColinFine (talk) 17:22, 22 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Amazingly enough, Latin does have an attested word for "one and one-eighth": "sesquioctavus". "Sesquitertius" is also attested for one and one-third (both were used by Cicero to translate Greek fraction words). Then several centuries later, Boethius used "sesquiquartus" (and so forth) to complete the sequence. They're adjectives though, so I'm not sure how we could stick them onto another word as a prefix. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:50, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Sesquitertiocentennial, sesquiquartocentennial, sesquioctavocentennial? Just guessing; no sources here. — Kpalion(talk) 12:20, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Mutual intelligibility between Igbo dialects
We have a problem over at the sister project Wikivoyage. voy:Igbo phrasebook is a candidate for Featured Travel Topic, but there is still one important question unanswered which would need input from someone speaking or familiar with Igbo.

There apparently is a "high variation and low mutual intelligibility between many Igbo dialects". In which Igbo-speaking areas is a user of the voy:Igbo phrasebook (with its vocabulary and pronunciation guidelines) likely to be understood well, to some extent, or not at all? Ypsilon from Finland (talk) 21:17, 22 October 2016 (UTC)