Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 May 4

= May 4 =

Quiz with rough homophones - sounding out border cases
In a quiz, the task is to find countries by images giving clues. The images showed derived terms (e.g. Brazil nut, Panama hat...) and/or homographs (e.g. turkey, china, Michael Jordan...), or rough homophones including puns: Given those examples - would fit the bill? Or is this too far away in pronunciation, compared to the others? Do your guts say that they all actually work? --KnightMove (talk) 11:23, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * orcas -> Whales
 * the leading roles of Grease -> Greece
 * seashells -> Seychelles
 * a hand grenade -> Grenada
 * many neckties -> Thailand
 * a shopping mall + a person diving -> Maldives
 * an ant + a tiger -> Antigua
 * a crow + a map of Asia -> Croatia
 * caribous -> Kiribati
 * Sounds like a kind of rebus. I would say "caribous" is too far from Kiribati. Antigua doesn't really work either. The rest are OK. --Viennese Waltz 11:39, 4 May 2017 (UTC)


 * As with Concentration (game show). Such as Bob Uecker + rain -> Ukraine. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)


 * To me, caribous is very close to the first pronunciation given at the Kiribati article: kɪrɪˈbæs/ KI-ri-BAS.--Wikimedes (talk) 04:43, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed, this motivated my question. I am aware that the vowels in both words are pretty different, but still I think this is more similar than "ant-tiger". --KnightMove (talk) 06:43, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
 * It works better with ant-Tigger. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:55, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

"Expressiveness" of different natural languages
I do not claim that the definition I am using is a standard one, nor even that it is much of a definition. I will attempt to give it some meaning.

If a language cannot possibly express certain concepts, it lacks expressiveness in the relevant respects. For example, in English, unless one permits RGB representations (or something similar) most colours cannot be exactly described using English words. In fact, I'm not sure if an RGB representation would be adequate: maybe someone who has been exposed to the three constituents can never imagine a shade that they have never seen based on the triple of numbers to which I refer.

So, are their known differences in the expressiveness of certain languages?--Leon (talk) 14:51, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The concepts you probably want to familiarize yourself with is Chomsky hierarchy, Regular language, and Productivity (linguistics) and Lexicalization. I'm not sure if Chomsky came up with the actual concept, or merely stated it well, but one of his core theses is that all natural human languages (classified as "regular languages" in Chomsky's hierarchy), and are as fully capable of expressing any concept or thought as any other language.  This is because any human language is "productive", that is it has innate rules for the formation of new words or phrases from existing morphemes or by borrowing words from other languages, and thus any human language can undergo lexicalization to create new words on demand as needed.  From Chomsky's point of view, there is no language which is more or less capable of expressing any particular idea than any other, if a language lacks a way to express a new concept, a new word or phrase will be found and become part of the language organically and naturally.  -- Jayron 32 15:01, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Colours can't be described exactly in any language, because there are an infinite number of gradations. That doesn't matter for most purposes. Does it matter very much whether someone says "that's a nice shade of wool, sort of bluey-green" or "that's a nice turquoise shade of wool", when you would have to take a sample into the wool shop to match it exactly? And if you look at a booklet of technical instructions for equipment, written in multiple languages, the translators manage to find words for whatever they need to get across, usually not very well. If the assembly instructions say "push the duct rail guard (A) into the protective flange (B)", it will mean precisely nothing to the reader unless they have the machinery in front of them, and looked back forth at the diagrams several times. The text will be longer in some languages than others, but that doesn't mean that the meaning is more difficult to express. Some languages will use a lot of borrowing, but again that is not really a problem. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:03, 4 May 2017 (UTC)


 * This is ignoring the difference between denotation, basically "definition" and connotation which often carry emotional subtleties which need to explained at length to non-native speakers. Tell a Spanish speaker a tree es un árbol and there won't be much confusion.  But words for animals and body functions can be very dangerous.  The word "cat" in the Hollies' "Long Cool Woman" is a compliment, but calling her catty would be an insult.  Calling a woman a dog means one thing, males friends using the same word mean another.  See also the examples at http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-connotative-words.html and consider all the meanings of "red" and its synonyms.  Languages differ greatly in their native connotative expressiveness. μηδείς (talk) 20:42, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I also wanted to point out that many languages without recently developed technologies and literatures, such as isiZulu exhibit a phenomena where words we would not consider at all similar are the same for extrinsic reasons. For example, as my professor made a point to bring to our attention, many "pairs" like umuthi (search https://isizulu.net/) exist which happens in this case to mean both "tree" and "medicine".  The reason being most medicines were prepared from plants.  Also Ndlovu, which means "elephant", is also a prestigious surname. μηδείς (talk) 01:19, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Star trooper, see Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate for a discussion that's relevant to your question as well as the issue you're trying to understand. There's a term for phenomena, such as colour, that cannot be expressed with words (but unfortunately I can't remember the term); they have to be experienced, and the person who cannot experience them cannot understand the concept properly, e.g. a congenital achromat can't understand how a "red" sky is different from a "red-orange" sky.  I think the word is similar to "adiaphora", although the meanings are completely different of course.  See also Tacit knowledge, an emphasis of Polányi Mihály's contributions to philosophy.  Nyttend (talk) 00:50, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The word you seek is qualia. -- Jayron 32 00:52, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hm, yes it is; no similarity to adiaphora whatsoever. Nyttend (talk) 01:04, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Manner of writing Roman letters
A native English writer does not seem to have a fixed form. Some writers write almost illegibly, while other writers write very steadily. Then, I examine the Roman letters of a native Chinese writer, specifically from mainland China, and they look very uniform or consistent in a very specific way. There may be slight variation in the letters, but overall, it appears as though the letters are intended to look in a very specific way, like a medieval monastic. Does anyone observe this habit? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 16:39, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In English-speaking countries, schools are less likely to teach penmanship, which leads to less uniform handwriting. -- Jayron 32 17:59, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks to me as if this writer was printing the letters.  Printed letters are fairly homogeneous.   Cursive writing varies in legibility and style, depending on how the writer was taught at school. 86.171.242.107 (talk) 18:05, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, I have seen printed handwriting by native English writers, and they still look widely different. I'll go with Jayron32's answer. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 18:15, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Even where handwriting is on the curriculum, there is still massive variation in the style which is being taught. The way I was taught in the 1960s was quite different to the style that my parents were taught in the 1930s and 40s and different again to that used today, and I doubt that there is any kind of national standard. However, I suspect that there is little room for individuality in the Chinese system, or is that just a stereotype? Alansplodge (talk) 20:05, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * When I was a kid, I, like most kids, was taught the Palmer Method (although I got poor marks then, and the way I write now shows little influence of that teaching). I'm sure, however, that many who were so taught have cursive handwriting that is recognizably based on that system and is to that extent similar. If Chinese students are generally taught a single system of writing the Roman alphabet, it stands to reason that their efforts would be pretty uniform, especially since it's not their native writing system. Deor (talk) 21:19, 4 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Chinese are taught to write each character of their language in a very specific way. If you do not write the letter in the correct stroke sequence, you are doing it wrong. Further, each stroke must be written in a specific direction. Characters are intended to be written with a brush, so a stroke varies in width along its length in a specific way. There are penmanship competitions that have at least the same level of participation and interest as the national spelling bee in the US. Since the school system is organized to teach this method, I speculate that they teach the printing of each roman letter in a similar manner. Even if the romanji is self-taught, a student would tend to think in these terms. -Arch dude (talk) 02:54, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * At my primary school, everyone was taught handwriting using a method of which the headteacher, Geoffrey Hazzard, was very proud.  He said he had devised it himself and its unique feature was that you would form letters, whether upper or lower case, starting on the line and finishing on the line.   Is this claim correct? 86.171.242.107 (talk) 09:57, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In the classic copperplate script, the ligatures nearly always descend to the baseline. The tail of the "o" does not, to avoid confusion with an "a". Alansplodge (talk) 13:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The acquisition of handwriting in the UK says "No uniformity is imposed centrally, at the governmental level, or locally, by Local Educational Authorities... it is left to the individual teacher of handwriting to adopt whatever method they feel comfortable with. Moreover, even at the beginning of learning to write it is not usually expected or demanded that the child should faithfully copy the learned system, and, later in life, it is common for teenagers to change their writing style".
 * The style that I learned at primary school in the 1960s (using a dip pen and inkwell) was devised by Marion Richardson in 1935. A sample is here - it features the Classical Roman-style block capitals favoured by Edward Johnston which I still use. Alansplodge (talk) 10:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Regarding the above question of whether there is any room for individuality in writing Chinese characters, my Chinese wife (OR here) says that everyone has their own recognizably distinct handwriting. Loraof (talk) 15:32, 5 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I can well believe that when someone writing in a non-native script (so to speak) would write in a more careful, methodical way than when writing in one's own script. I've dabbled a bit in learning Russian handwriting, and I can see that my efforts are much less fluent (or sloppy, take your pick) than what a native would produce. Herbivore (talk) 15:46, 5 May 2017 (UTC)


 * The lack of an administration-wide standard can lead to particular problems for the children of families who move frequently.
 * Like Alansplodge I began my schooling in the (early) 1960s, and my father was in the Armed Forces, in a particular situation that led to him being re-posted even more frequently than the theoretical norm of every 3 years. Consequently, I had changed schools 6 times by the age of 10.
 * All the schools involved were either local state schools in England, or schools for Forces and other UK personnel's dependents in the Far East, but because of non-standardisation, I had to cope with different paces and orders of curriculums in general, and differently taught levels and styles of handwriting in particular: on one occasion I moved from a school that taught printed letters with looped descenders, at the next I was told I must not loop descenders; I later moved from a school where I had already learned joined-up writing to one that insisted (for that year) on printing only.
 * All this did not help me to achieved a practised and neat hanwriting style, and taught me scepticism for authority – as a teenager (settled in a boarding school) I introduced several personally devised quirks into my handwriting which seemed to me to increase efficiency without sacrificing legibility. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.60.183 (talk) 09:14, 6 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Personal experience, but my students' handwriting styles are mostly distinct from each other, though students of the same gender who went to the same primary and secondary schools have comparable handwriting. The repeated letters in any given students's handwriting usually seems more internally consistent than my own handwriting.  Thanks to Confucius and Mao, China's education system generally encourages a mindset that there's only one right way to do things (and I'll give you one guess which country's way that is).  I've had a few students try to correct how I write A and 4, a and d, 4 and 9, I and L, M and N, and g, i, and j on the board because it wasn't how any of them or their other teachers wrote it (and I'm not the only foreign teacher that's happened to, though 4 and 9 seem to be the most common glyphs).  As a result of this attitude toward how things must be written, every semester, I have at least one student who assume I must have meant to write and say that my name is "Lan Thomas" instead of "Ian Thomson."  (I do write the I with the horizontal lines on the top and bottom, btw).  Ian.thomson (talk) 09:36, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Edit for clarity in italics Ian.thomson (talk) 13:41, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Does it make a difference whether the students watch you writing or simply see text you have written in their absence? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:53, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * They usually beat me to class, so I don't have much of an experience sample for writing for writing in their absence. This site has some samples of handwritten Arabic numerals in China.  The last digit in this photo (ignoring the other 9s and 4s) shows how easy it is to get the two mixed up... Unless they write it like an unfinished 8. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:41, 8 May 2017 (UTC)