Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 July 20

= July 20 =

Ambiguity in "everything is $1" joke
Is there a term for the sort of ambiguity expressed in this joke? Here, the word everything is interpreted as both "each item considered individually" and "all items considered collectively." It doesn't seem like a matter of quantifier scope, but I could be wrong. 2602:306:321B:5970:91B4:C260:DD4A:615C (talk) 04:05, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The general concept of using ambiguity in the meaning of words for humor is called word play. The intentional use of a word with two meanings so as to play on the ambiguity of both meanings is called a double entendre.  -- Jayron 32 12:00, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * A double entendre usually has a second meaning which is, in some way, sexually suggestive or offensive. It would not normally be used to describe that particular joke. Wymspen (talk) 13:15, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * No, innuendo means suggestive or prurient. Double entendre can (and often does) mean "one of which is innuendo", but it is not exclusively so.  That is 1) The term does not require prurient intent (though it does often) and 2) there is no term which means "double entendre, but not in a sexual way".  The term for "double entendre, but not in a sexual way" is "double entendre".  -- Jayron 32 17:08, 20 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Entendre means "hearing" or "meaning". So there's no requirement for any salaciousness. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * No, but that is the usual meaning. See:  .  Incidentally, entendre is actually in the infinitive form and means "to hear", not "hearing".  Although standard in English, the expression is actually bad French. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 18:00, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * French also places modifiers after the word in most cases, so it's doubly bad French. -- Jayron 32 18:07, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The Oxford English Dictionary defines double entendre:

"A double meaning: a word or phrase having a double sense, esp. as used to convey an indelicate meaning."
 * It defines innuendo:

"an oblique hint, indirect suggestion: an allusive remark concerning a person or thing, esp. one of a depreciatory kind."
 * -- 20:47, 20 July 2017 213.104.204.223

To attempt to answer 2602:306:321B:5970:91B4:C260:DD4A:615C's original question, I believe that "Every individual item in the store is $1" is the distributive reading, while "All items in the store together are $1" is the collective reading, though there appears to be little which is directly relevant to this on Wikipedia (our Quantifier (linguistics) article is very brief)... AnonMoos (talk) 14:57, 21 July 2017 (UTC)


 * By the way, the Loglan/Lojban artificial language is designed to avoid logical ambiguities, but I don't know how it would do so in this particular case. There's a specific Lojban word joi whose purpose is to indicate collective interpretations, but it's a conjunction, and so probably wouldn't slot into the Lojban translation(s) of the "Everything is $1" sentence... AnonMoos (talk)`
 * Off the top of my head (and my very rusty memory) Lojban would distinguish "ra le dacti" (each-of the-individual-described-as is-a-thing) from "pira lei dacti" (point-all-of the-mass-described-as is-a-thing). --ColinFine (talk) 21:17, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * OP here, thank you both for the informative replies! I knew that the ambiguity hinged on the meaning of "everything" but wasn't sure how to characterize that. 99.33.181.151 (talk) 01:40, 23 July 2017 (UTC)


 * A coin dealer claimed that "1920 pennies are worth eight pounds".  He was technically correct (one pound was 240 pennies). 92.8.217.19 (talk) 13:25, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * That's the best kind of correct. --Trovatore (talk) 04:35, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * That's an equivocation on 1920 either as a number or as the name of a year. It only really works in writing, since 1920 the year is almost always pronounced "nineteen-twenty", while when referring to 1,920 items, it would generally be "a thousand nine-hundred and twenty"... AnonMoos (talk) 14:49, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Chinese reader wanted
Hi wikipedians,

is any Chinese-speaker here? Or someone with a good OCR software for chinese?

I would like to get the text from these JPEGs with Simplified Chinese characters:

It has to do with coal.--BiggTime (talk) 12:45, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * This blog sets out the information that is in the third picture. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:16, 21 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi, what do you need exactly? To type out the texts in the pictures? Alex ShihTalk 11:56, 21 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, I need the text. Because I understand Chinese only by translator.--BiggTime (talk) 13:57, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Okay. Can you leave a message at my talk page to tell me what it's for? And then I'll type the text out later. Alex ShihTalk 14:46, 21 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Recognised Inner Mongolia (內蒙古)... company (公司) straight off in the first one. And yes, it's about coal (煤炭) ... then thought to myself, was the OP really the copyright holder of that image and able to release it into the public domain? The docin.com website has ©2008-2017 DocIn.com Inc. All Rights Reserved down the bottom. --Shirt58 (talk) 00:49, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The pics are also watermarked to the "@yuxerdos" public account on Wechat. --165.225.81.8 (talk) 12:09, 23 July 2017 (UTC)