Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 July 11

= July 11 =

The Netherlands
I suspect I made an error when creating a category 'Warehouses in Netherlands'. Please comment/advise here or at Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 62 --CiaPan (talk) 07:46, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Quarter daisies

 * (Post by banned user removed. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:55, 11 July 2019 (UTC))


 * wut ——  SerialNumber  54129  10:10, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Named for saints, not necessarily their days, the index of Geoffrey Grigson's The Englishman's Flora has St Anthony's Nut, St Anthony's Turnip, St Barbara's Herb, St David's Rose, St James's Wort, St John's Nut, two plants called "St John's Wort" - Chelidonium majus and Hypericum perforatum, St Leonard's Lilies, St Mawes Clover (though this is named after the place), St Patrick's Cabbage and St Patrick's Cabbage (with hybrids of the two) - both also known as Leaf of St Patrick, St Peter's Bell, St Peter's Herb & St Peter's Keys, St Peter's Wort for both Hypericum dubium and Hypericum tetrapterum, and St Peterworte. DuncanHill (talk) 10:42, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Although
In school, we were taught to use the word 'although' as follows:


 * Although he is tall, but he cannot reach the box.

However, to me (basically a native speaker), the 'but' seems to make it rather redundant. Am I mistaken? TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 11:42, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The "but" has no place in that sentence. "Although he is tall he cannot reach the box" is fine, the comma seems superfluous to me. BrEng native. DuncanHill (talk) 12:07, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't use the comma either — this is the exact example we were given. (The comma was a smaller part of my confusion, but it's acceptable, whereas the 'but' seems completely wrong.) TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 12:58, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Either "Although he is tall, he cannot reach the box" or "he is tall, but he cannot reach the box". --Khajidha (talk) 12:37, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * It sounds as if either your school or your memory is faulty. "Although ..... but ..." is not a valid construction in standard English.   Dbfirs  13:08, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I have it written down, so it's the school at fault. I didn't expect better from a teacher who doubted that 'hurries' is a word. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 13:15, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * My reason for asking is that while I have native-level proficiency in English, years of hearing that construction have me doubting myself. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 13:19, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * CanEng native speaker. I would always use a comma in that construction. I accept that it's not technically required, but I find "Although he is tall he cannot reach the box" difficult to parse, despite being a short sentence. Matt Deres (talk) 13:23, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Huh. Maybe it's a BrEng+IndEng thing. I would also never actually use 'cannot'; it would be can't. Is there a pause in your speech when you say it? There isn't for me. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 13:38, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not the person you asked, but this American would always use a comma there and does pause at that point in the sentence. --Khajidha (talk) 13:41, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * , apologies for doubting your memory. Teachers do sometimes get things wrong. I prefer the version with the comma, too, and have a slight pause there. Db<i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  13:47, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * It's fine. Heck, it's what I'd've done. Also, now that I think about it, sometimes I'd use a comma, sometimes not. It's one of those things which you just know, and can't explain to a non-native. Edit: I think I've got it — I'd definitely use a comma with 'cannot, but it varies with 'can't'. If it was 'Though he is ... the box', I'd use it. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 14:15, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * (e/c) I would typically use can't as well, but cannot is fine too, especially if I need to emphasize it for some reason. Come to think of it, I would probably use couldn't/could not unless the action was happening in front of me and I was commentating on it; cannot/can't is strictly present-tense for me and so inappropriate for later reports. And, yes, there would be a pause for me between "tall" and "he". Matt Deres (talk) 14:22, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Same here; I was just sticking as closely to the original as I could. I would use 'can't' if he (for whatever reason) had to regularly remove the box, though. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 14:25, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Doubt
In Indian English, the word 'doubt' is used as follows:


 * The students were encouraged to ask their doubts about the subject.

It is similar to a 'query', but is generally about an explanation (as opposed to a statement or rule) and conveys a sense of semi-formality, while 'query' feels more formal. For example, you would ask a doubt to your physics teacher about, say, Ohm's Law, but a question to the principal about the timings of the school would be a query.

The other use ('there was some doubt in their minds') exists, but is rare.

Is this use not found in any other varieties of English? Edit: Removed something rather insensitive from an American perspective. It was not very relevant anyway. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 13:15, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * In British English, one might have a doubt, and would ask about it. The sentence from Indian English would be understood in the UK, but would not be regarded as standard.  One would normally ask a question when one has a doubt or a query about a subject.  <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  13:36, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * In British English, might one really "have a doubt"? In my North American English, "doubt" in the singular is strictly a mass noun.  One can "have doubt" or "have some doubt", but not "have a doubt".  (Curiously, the plural "have doubts" does exist.)  I used to work with people from India and I remember tham saying "I have a doubt", and it always sounded wrong/foreign to me. --69.159.11.113 (talk) 21:10, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes one might. It might sound foreign to you because, from your perspective, it is. Much as the American English "I could care less" sounds bizarre to me. Bazza (talk) 21:19, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * "I could care less" sounds worse than bizarre to this American. --Khajidha (talk) 13:34, 12 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's supposed to be "I couldn't care less" (since they don't care at all, it isn't possible to care any less). When they change it to "could", they reverse the meaning. SinisterLefty (talk) 13:52, 13 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Not found in American English and I'm not even sure if it would be understood. --Khajidha (talk) 13:37, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * PS - I would "ask a question" in all of the given situations. "Query" as a noun is fairly rare in the dialect I am familiar with. You might query a person, but you would not speak of having a query or asking a query. --Khajidha (talk) 13:39, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The use of 'query' is rarer here, but definitely existent. On the other hand, here we never query anyone, we only ask queries. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 14:13, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * In American English the closest we have is "express their doubts", but that means announcing that they are skeptical about something. SinisterLefty (talk) 13:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The same in British English. Google ngrams finds zero examples of "ask a doubt" in British or American English, and zero for "ask a query" in British English.  It finds only a very few examples of "ask a query" in American English, and these are all recent in the context of querying a database.  It finds a single example from Indian English.   <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  14:01, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * It's used very commonly in speech, but in writing it's always the British version. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 14:13, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm not very familiar with how ngrams works, but I'm wondering if "ask a query" is uncommon because there's an element of code switching? A "query" is more formal, so it gets submitted to the database or directed at a person. "Ask" is for more everyday usage. Matt Deres (talk) 14:27, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, ngrams finds only the exact phrase in the corpus it searches. "Submit a query" is eight times more common than "ask a query"   <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  14:35, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * TotallyNotSarcasm, are you sure that this is common in Indian English? I don't claim to know Indian English myself, but the NOW and iWeb corpora are extraordinarily large, and when I looked in each for "ask [word] doubt(s) about" [NB this is what I was looking for, not the search string I used], expecting to get dozens if not hundreds of tokens, I got just one: (from this article in The Hindu). Note that it's a slightly different construction from yours: people aren't asking their doubts, they're instead asking somebody doubts. I haven't looked for all the imaginable permutations (you can do this if interested), but I did look in iWeb for "asked doubts about", and I got zero tokens. -- Hoary (talk) 23:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * My Indian colleagues, when asking about some detail in a project spec, will sometimes say, "I have a doubt." I've not heard them use the construction the OP posed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:19, 12 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Yeah, "doubt" means "question" in Indian English and it's not specific to the construction the OP gives as an example. Quora is full of people asking about this. Haukur (talk) 00:34, 12 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see. But iWeb has a number of Australian and other tokens of "raised a doubt", several among which seem, I sleepily think, to be about questions expressed to others rather than about insufficiencies of certainty. -- Hoary (talk) 13:40, 12 July 2019 (UTC)


 * As I said earlier, it's common in speech, but in writing we only use the standard forms/uses. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 16:19, 12 July 2019 (UTC)