Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 December 10

= December 10 =

What language is this
While exploring the web, I found this newspaper. It turns out to be Kamchatskaya Pravda, a newspaper published in Kamchatka Oblast. In the header of the newspaper, there are the motto "Workers of the world, unite!" in four languages.

I only know the first upper one language. The rest is ambiguous. Please help. Possible languages is listed in here.--Jeromi Mikhael (talk) 11:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, Google Translate guesses Kyrgyz for the bottom left, and Swahili for the top right, just pasting in the words transcribed by Jeromi. For the fourth one if I paste in the whole thing it guesses Dutch, which is obviously wrong, but if I paste just the last word then it guesses Kurdish (Kurmanji). --76.69.46.228 (talk) 11:52, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Swahili is surely wrong. It's a central-african language, probably was never heard in Kamchatka. Just try to translate 'Workers of the world, unite!' from English to Swahili and you'll see it is completely different from what's in the paper header.
 * The Kamchatkan languages article suggests some relation to Chukotkan languages, which in turn lists Chukchi, Koryak, Alyutor, and Kerek language...  --CiaPan (talk) 12:06, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Swahili also doesn't use x or ы, nor (i think) final consonants. —Tamfang (talk) 21:10, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * A person from Kamchatka informs me that the bottom left is Even language, pointing out that ивулдэдэй is Even for "unite" --My another account (talk) 04:59, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * ДЁГРИ means 'poor man', -л is one plural ending. -дук is an ablative ending, but I can't find those two words. There were two national districts in Kamchatka region, those for Evens and Aleuts (before Koryak and Chuckchi national 'okrugs' were included in July 1934). Шурбур (talk) 08:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The upper right looks like Aleut. Шурбур (talk) 08:21, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sounds rather unconvincing: gives aguxtaq for "worker", tanaq for "land", ŝluq for "world", ŝlung for "country", and adgukuqing or taxaxakuqing for "gather". None of these words look similar to the ones in the upper-right motto. --185.23.175.83 (talk) 07:13, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Taken from a dictionary of Bering dialect:
 * агўaӽ - work
 * агўазаӽ (pl. агўазас) - workman
 * танаӽ - land (танам - some oblique form)
 * ʼӯзу (pl. ʼузуӈис) - all, whole
 * агӣтал - with
 * тичих, тхичих - you pl. obj., also a verb ending as in ӄаӈӯӽтхичих (you pl.) please enter! (ӄаӈул to enter)

American Aleut dictionary:
 * awaq - both work and workman
 * tanaq - land (tanam - some oblique form)
 * ủsu - each, all
 * txici - you pl.

Шурбур (talk) 08:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The bottom right could be either Koryak or Chukchi: according to, in both these languages, "land" is nutenut (pl. nutet), and "gather" is umeket. --My another account (talk) 20:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

borgesian map
I came across a sentence:"Pragmatics might become like a Borgesian map." What does it imply? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.249.208.126 (talk) 13:12, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * See On Exactitude in Science --82.102.169.113 (talk) 14:41, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

How to solve problem with single quotes and apostrophe
The second letter on this Amy Dickinson column has a response from Amy where she suggests what the letter writer would say using double quotes. As advice columnists often do, she makes up a name for the letter writer's son and puts in in quotes, which have to be single quotes because they are inside double quotes. But the son's room is mentioned, meaning an apostrophe should be used for the possessive. It is possible such a situation could come up on Wikipedia, I suppose.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  19:05, 10 December 2018 (UTC)


 * It seems you're referring to this sentence:
 * Say, “Hey, I want you to know that we are getting slammed by pot smoke over here. It’s especially strong in ‘Benny’s room. It’s like it comes right through the walls. Can you guys smoke outside?”


 * The only real issue is the room belonging to 'Benny'. That should be rendered as:  'Benny '' s room.  I know it looks like it starts with a single quote and ends with a double quote, but that 'double quote' is in fact a single quote followed by an apostrophe.  The way it appears in the original, it looks like the room belongs to  'Benny [sic], which can't be right since an opening quote must always be followed by a closing quote. And that applies no matter what other punctuation may happen to be in the mix.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:17, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * And Wikipedia has a template for this sort of situation. If you type 'Benny's, the template inserts a thin space between the closing single quote and the apostrophe—i.e., 'Benny's—so that WP doesn't take your two "single quotes" in a row as a signal for italics. Deor (talk) 19:49, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I thought that might be the way to do it, and I'm glad to see Wikipedia is prepared for such a thing.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  20:45, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * In American texts, I don't think I have never seen a usage such as 'Benny '' s. I would have sworn that it would be incorrect. As far as I can remember, I have only seen "Benny's" and 'Benny's'. —Stephen (talk) 09:00, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm British, and I've never seen that usage either. I've only ever seen the quotes encompassing the whole [Benny's].  (Also, in my experience, once it is established that "Benny" is not their real name, you don't need to put quotes round every subsequent instance). Iapetus (talk) 09:48, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * In my experience, the writer would simply state something like "for convenience, I will be calling the son 'Benny' in the following text" and then just use the name as normal. --Khajidha (talk) 13:34, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

If you really want to be pedantic, Unicode has separate characters for U+0027 APOSTROPHE ('), U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK (‘) and U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK (’). So you could write something like. I just wouldn't worry about it. We write for humans, not machines. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 05:06, 13 December 2018 (UTC)