Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 September 22

= September 22 =

Singular or plural?
Let's say we have a bunch of businesses, each of which makes their own decision whether to expand or not. When I refer to them collectively, is it businesses' decision or decisions? Clarityfiend (talk) 08:15, 22 September 2018 (UTC)


 * If they made different decisions then it's plural. I suppose if they all made the same singular decision then a singular form would be OK for their combined decision.   Dbfirs  09:00, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:16, 29 September 2018 (UTC)


 * What I remember from reading the MoS is that when a structure is correct but reads awkwardly, it might be better just to reword it instead. Up to you, though. (^_^)  — TARDIS builder&#128172;   &#124;     15:13, 23 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Not my writing, but I should have thought of that myself. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:16, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Translation
I don't know what language this is, can anyone translate it. Mí òhá gcú djoo, è á'àn x’àn òhá. Makuta Makaveli (talk) 20:05, 22 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Vietnamese? Not. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:57, 22 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Count on Wikipedia to use Google Translate to decipher a text. Makuta Makaveli (talk) 21:21, 22 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Baseball_Bugs: the prevalence of diacritic marks might suggest Vietnamese, but the fact that all the diacritic marks are acute or grave most definitely does not. Vietnamese also doesn't have "gc" or "dj" (or "j" of any kind, for that matter), and tends to have more than just one or two sound-segments per syllable... AnonMoos (talk) 01:36, 23 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I suspect that the orthography isn't very well suited for this language. 'gc' doesn't tell much and probably doesn't represent [gk]. I got this string of syllables from some manuscript I found, and the internet is definitely not helping me decipher it. I guess I shouldn't bother showing anymore pieces. Makuta Makaveli (talk) 03:26, 23 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Where did the manuscript come from? What does it say about the words?  For all we know it could be a made-up language. --76.69.47.228 (talk) 04:55, 23 September 2018 (UTC)


 * gc occurs in Zulu for a dental click (the c) coarticulated with another stop, and x for a lateral click. But Zulu apparently doesn't use a lot of diacritics, nor dj. —Tamfang (talk) 06:27, 23 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Some indigenous American language probably? --Theurgist (talk) 10:00, 23 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The majority of the manuscript is in Spanish, but some of its contents are written in this obscure language. Most of the Indigenous American languages I've seen are polysynthetic or agglutinative, whereas the manuscript's language is pretty much isolating. The excerpt I've given was also written, on another page, as Mí òhá tú jo, è áàn tlàn òhá.. The orthography is even worse, and the usage of tl in one and x’ in another makes me think that the sound is /tɬʼ/. Makuta Makaveli (talk) 18:28, 23 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Do you speak Spanish?  It would be helpful if you could copy us some of the sentences immediately surrounding this quote. 92.31.140.53 (talk) 09:14, 24 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Given the Spanish context, I wondered about Basque. I don't speak/read it at all, but I have a couple of Basque folk music CDs, and the sample seems not obviously inconsistent with their printed Basque lyrics. Basque seems not to use diacritics, but these might be being used here as stress indicators for the benefit of a Spanish reader, much as our article (linked above) does in places. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.221.81.75 (talk) 10:01, 24 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Here's some of the Spanish 92.31.140.53. El omne é ela bestia están ermano, non compartimos el mesmo progenitor? Makuta Makaveli (talk) 14:38, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * What dialect of Spanish is that? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I haven't got a clue. Makuta Makaveli (talk) 16:17, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * About how old is it? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:30, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * It looks old to me but I'm not good at this dating thing. Certain parts look way newer than others, like it was a working progress, and some pages have doubles with different orthography. Makuta Makaveli (talk) 16:36, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * It just doesn't look quite like normal Spanish. But if it's 500 years old, maybe it was. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:39, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Dayyum. Makuta Makaveli (talk) 16:55, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Hot dawg. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:27, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * El omne é ela bestia están ermano, non compartimos el mesmo progenitor? It looks to me more like Old Portuguese. I read it as: Man and beast are brothers, do we not share the same progenitor? The phrase Mí òhá tú jo, è áàn tlàn òhá reminds me of Yoruba. It's not Yoruba, but it has that flavor, what with the short words and the diacritics. However, if the latter text is as old as the former, it would be written very differently today. —Stephen (talk) 20:44, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Personally I think it's a made up language. To say it's an African one when the rest of the manuscript is Old Spanish is a bit of a stretch. Makuta Makaveli (talk) 21:00, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Without knowing the provenance of the manuscript, it's nearly impossible to guess. Without a time period or substantially more text, it's hard to even say what the primary language is. It resembles some form of Galician, but could very well be Old Portuguese as Stephen suggests or Medieval Spanish (Modern Spanish hombre was omne in Old Spanish and Modern Spanish mismo has been standard as such since the early 18th century, before which is was variously meismo, mesmo or mismo). As for the unknown sentence, my first instinct was that it looks like an attempt to phonetically transcribe a Celtic (specifically, a Gaelic) language, although I can't make any sense out of it as such. The initial sequence "gc" is possible in Irish, which also uses acute and grave accents. Given the possible age of the document, maybe early modern Irish? But without more info or an expert, we can only guess.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 21:29, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't even be doing that. I'll just say for the record, however, that the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the text, was Maltese.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:45, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I'll let you guys know when it deciphered. མཀུཏ (talk) 00:48, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This is unlikely to be Basque as that's an agglutinating language.  If it's Irish, Google translates it as "My eyes, my eyes, my eyes".   Is the quote the sentence immediately before the unknown language?   The spelling están rules out Portuguese - Portuguese and Spanish haven't changed much in 500 years.   Portuguese is remarkably homogeneous, but there are many dialects of Spanish.   It's probably western Galician (the language spoken in the area around Santiago de Compostela).   Galician is basically Portuguese with Spanish orthography. 92.31.140.53 (talk) 13:53, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The Spanish part comes nearly right after the unknown text. མཀུཏ (talk) 16:27, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Apparently I've read ermano wrong, just noticed it. It's really ermanos, but half the s is gone. མཀུཏ (talk) 02:08, 29 September 2018 (UTC)