Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 April 26

= April 26 =

Spanish/Catalan translation of bulb review
I am looking for a high wattage LED bulb and the only review that is three stars instead of five says "In dóna la potència llumínica that d'altres làmpares de la mateixa potència (almenys en el cas de la de 150 w)." The Google translate doesn't really make it clear what is being said "that light output which gives the other lamps of the same power (at least in the case of 150 W)." Does it make more sense to a speaker of Spanish or did they mistype? --78.148.99.149 (talk) 04:36, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * All that I know about Catalan comes from occasionally perusing the book "Teach Yourself Catalan" (ISBN 0-340-19499-5), but I can tell you that the word "that" does not look Catalan to me... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] -- AnonMoos (talk) 13:40, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Logically, it has to mean "Giving the same light output as other lamps of the same power" - though the grammar seems a bit muddled. Wymspen (talk) 14:12, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * If it was performing the same as other lamps of the same power, I wouldn't expect it to be given only three stars. --78.148.99.149 (talk) 22:18, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * If you consider 3 stars to mean average, and it's light output is average, that doesn't seem so surprising. StuRat (talk) 23:21, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * BTW, high output LED bulbs are very expensive (as are CFLs). To get around this, I use splitters.  I replaced a 150 W equivalent CFL with four 100 W equivalent CFLs, to increase the light level from 150 W to 400 W equivalent, while reducing the price from $15 for the big bulb to $4 for the four smaller bulbs ($1 each).  As a bonus, if one burns out, I now have 3 backup bulbs.  (3 would have to burn out for it to be darker than it was before.)  This solution doesn't fit in all fixtures, but when it does, it's a good one.   StuRat (talk) 23:24, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * [Edit Conflict] Based purely on my knowledge of domestic light bulbs (in the UK market), I would expect an LED bulb to be described as 'giving the equivalent light output to an incandescent bulb of 150 Watts' (or words to that effect), which would be around 2700 lumens.
 * Such an LED bulb would actually consume only around 24–30 Watts, while an LED bulb that was actually rated at 150 Watts would be extremely bright, in the ballpark of 15000 lumens, and equivalent to the output of a 1000 Watt incandescent bulb, if such a thing were available.
 * A star rating might be an assessment of the average lifetime of the bulb (some designs/makes last on average longer than others), and/or its energy efficiency (some are a little more power hungry than others). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 23:44, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Such things are available, but usually just in outdoor floodlights or industrial-type environments.  D b f i r s   19:28, 27 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Your phrase "In dóna la potència llumínica that d'altres làmpares de la mateixa potència (almenys en el cas de la de 150 w)" is damaged in some way. There is no such Catalan word as "that," and the initial "in" is suspect. About all I can make out of it is:
 * which gives light output... (or maybe: in a given light output...)
 * ... other lamps of the same power (at least in the case of 150 watt). —Stephen (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * [Stephen, I have amended your indentation to clarify that you are responding to the OP, not to my post immediately above yours. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 04:59, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

When Latin decayed as language of science
Why has Latin lost its central role as language of science? Why would scientists back then accept to lose contact with their fellow scientists? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clipname (talk • contribs) 12:54, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Latin remained fairly strong through the early 18th century. The question of which language to use was whether a scholar wanted to communicate mainly with a tiny international elite, or with a broader segment of people in their own country.  To start with, publishing in Latin guaranteed that very few women would be able to read a book... AnonMoos (talk) 13:35, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Scientific Latin, as we understand it, is known as New Latin, or sometimes "Neo-Latin". That article has information on its demise.  -- Jayron 32 13:40, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * This being the Language desk, I should point out that "decayed" is the wrong word here. That would imply that Latin became inferior.  What you meant is that it "fell into disuse". StuRat (talk) 13:55, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The term dead language is fairly wide spread, the use of similar metaphor to describe the use of languages is common enough, i.e. dying language, etc. -- Jayron 32 15:06, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Death and decay are rather different things, in the case of language. "Death" is no longer being used, and is a factual statement, while "decay" is "not being as good as it used to be", which is purely subjective. StuRat (talk) 15:24, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * If that were true, you would have to get ALL of these scholarly and reliable sources to print a retraction:, , , , , , , , as well as several of the cited sources at the Wikipedia article titled Language death. -- Jayron 32 15:43, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * There's a difference between decay of a language and decay of its use in a particular context. I'm sure the OP meant the latter in their question.  For example, French has decayed as a language of international diplomacy, but French itself has not decayed.  In most cases, as StuRat says, when someone says a language has "decayed", they're making a subjective judgement that the normal process of language change has resulted in something that they find distasteful.  Jayron's cites are a strange mix, mostly articles arguing that English has NOT decayed, but they happen to use the word "decay" in the title.  A linguist would only use the word "decay" as a part of the process of language death, when a language no longer has enough native speakers to remain viable.  CodeTalker (talk) 18:28, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Exactly. --Clipname (talk) 21:03, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, Jayron goes for quantity, not quality, in his links. I doubt if he actually read any of them (his post being 19 minutes after mine doesn't seem to have even allowed enough time to do so). StuRat (talk) 19:13, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Jayron goes for links. Hint hint. Reading the stuff you choose to pull out of your ass is a job for a proctologist, not the ref desk readers. Matt Deres (talk) 19:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Unlike Jayron, I try to only include links when they are both necessary and useful, rather than extraneous. But if you also want quantity over quality, here's a Google search that found 32.5 million articles with the phrase "language decay" in them: . Enjoy your reading ! StuRat (talk) 20:54, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * "Decay" in the context of language may well mean "no longer as good as it used to be", but most people probably view decay as something that happens after death. As in "festering death". But I guess once a language is no longer in use, then "decay" is no longer logically possible. And "dead" isn't really the case for Latin, it's still used, particularly in biology for naming things. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:37, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Here is an interesting article on the changing preferred languages for scientific publication. It gives a bit of a timeline: Latin from the 15th to 17th centuries, the scientists' local languages over the 18th century, French/German/English in the 19th century and early 20th century, and overwhelmingly English since. The article agrees with AnonMoos that the driving factor was always the desire to reach a wide audience. And it links to another good read here. 174.88.10.107 (talk) 21:44, 26 April 2017 (UTC)