Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 December 23

= December 23 =

Languages closer to "no common word for big island"
What languages have relatively weak dichotomy between the ideas of continent and island? Are there any languages with more than two basic land size levels? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:13, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You could argue that all the continents are islands. Either way, Australia is often called "the island continent". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:10, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * With the definition of the term "island" in our article Island, no continent is an island. You could also argue that all islands are continents, but then you'll probably not find many followers. --Lambiam 09:34, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * New Zealand is sometimes called "continental islands", because (unlike e.g. Hawaii) it sits on a small patch of continent-type crust. —Tamfang (talk) 01:39, 24 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Europe and Asia aren't islands but part of Eurasia, or Afro-Eurasia with Africa. North and South America are part of the Americas. Mainland Europe is a peninsula, maybe also Africa since it's smaller than Eurasia, and South America which is smaller than North America. Man-made canals don't count, especially the Panama Canal which isn't at sea level and relies on locks. Europe is an artificial continent invented by Europeans to get their own continent. Not that I complain about that as a European but honestly, we're just an Asian peninsula. Well, I personally live on an island. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:13, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Though it didn't start out that way, Europe was named when the first "classical history" culture had limited knowledge and the Black Sea and Aegean seemed major. So it became the only continent that wouldn't be an island or almost an island if English hadn't had two basic size-level words for island. Maybe Eurafrasia and America (the Americas) would be islands in these languages in some or all uses. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:18, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The word "continent" can mean just the land-mass or the land-mass plus adjacent islands.  For example, "continental Europe" excludes islands such as Britain and Iceland, but the term "continent of Europe" includes them. 82.13.210.231 (talk) 15:54, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Continental Europe sometimes refers to countries, including European islands of countries which are mainly on the continental land-mass. And then there is the issue whether continental United States includes Alaska. It does include islands of the 48/49 states. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:10, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Is that an issue? I thought it was clear that continental includes anything on the North American continent, hence Alaska. Co(n)terminous or contiguous means just the lower 48. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:31, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * That would be logical, but language often isn't. See e.g.: https://www.pewresearch.org/2010/09/27/what-do-you-mean-by-continental-u-s/: "The definition of “continental United States” that we and most other major survey organizations use includes the 48 contiguous states but not Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the other U.S. territories." PrimeHunter (talk) 22:42, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * What do they call the 49 excluding Hawaii? --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  02:03, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's a usual category. Most Lower 48ers tend to think of Alaska and Hawaiʻi as the two "special-case states" as it were.
 * I tend to suspect that there may be a contingent of Wikipedia editors who would like to change the language on this point. People keep putting Alaska back into West Coast of the United States and Pacific Northwest; it doesn't belong in either category by most Americans' reckoning (though far southeastern Alaska, the bit around Juneau, might count as PNW if you include British Columbia). --Trovatore (talk) 02:09, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 49 states would probably be understood were the need to arise. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:35, 24 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Searching along the lines of “language with no word for continent” I’m only turning up discussions of languages from the past before wider world geography was known. Another thing you can try is using the links in the left sidebar (desktop version) to check how other languages are translating the two terms. For example, German and Hindi Wikipedias consider the definitions arbitrary and unclear but German describes Australia as a continent and Hindi as both continent and island . Or French Wikipedia’s solution is to say islands can be continental and call Australia an “island-continent”, while Polish and Serbian Wikipedias say there are no clear criteria. Chinese Wikipedia has the widest definition I saw in my quick sweep, including Greenland as a “subcontinent” 70.67.193.176 (talk) 23:24, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I've sometimes seen the European variant of the Spanish language being referred to as "Continental Spanish", as if the Americas are not continent(s). --Theurgist (talk) 03:11, 24 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a European chauvinism, I'm pretty sure America is a continent in Spanish. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:46, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Or two, actually. The term "continental" by itself can mean "European", as in "continental breakfast" or as used in "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:46, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Here in Britain we distinguish between "full English breakfast" and the lighter "continental breakfast". 95.149.135.151 (talk) 11:27, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Mainland is written on the assumption that "the U S mainland" includes Alaska. 95.149.135.151 (talk) 11:37, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This sounds like another attempt at changing the language through Wikipedia, which we ought to push back against. I really don't think that "US mainland" includes Alaska in ordinary American usage.  --Trovatore (talk) 07:49, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The government begs to differ. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:20, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Though officially and logically correct I would just write "the 49 states" instead or "49 states+DC" which both seem less likely to be misunderstood. Alaskans are only 0.2% of Americans and call their 49 states "the Outside". Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:36, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * So first of all I don't see anything there that's responsive to the point on "mainland", "West Coast", or "Pacific Northwest".
 * Perhaps more importantly in relation to anything mentioning the US Board on Geographic Names, they may be "official", but they're sort of officially idiotic, and have been for more than a century. They don't use correct English punctuation; the correct name is, for example, Pike's Peak, with the apostrophe, and if they think otherwise then they're wrong. --Trovatore (talk) 01:17, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Australian geographical mandarins have long adopted the same idiotic policy. I live close to the Princes Highway. It was named after a prince, namely the Prince of Wales who later became King Edward VIII, and later Duke of Windsor. So it's the Prince's Highway. Except that apostrophes are banned in geographical names. Hence many people who have lived near the highway all their lives call it the "Princess" Highway. They either don't know they're making a mis-utterance, or they don't care. English is over-full of exceptions as it is, and the common understanding of correct apostrophe use is clearly an extremely fraught issue as it is, without deliberately setting the cat among the pigeons and making a bad situation much worse. And all for what? Saving a few dollars on apostrophes on signage? Rage, rage against the dying of the right use of apostrophes! --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:57, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * In Oz I couldn't say. Stateside, it seems to be some sort of "this land is your land" ideological statement, the position being that the possessive implies that the thing belongs to the person named, instead of To All Americans or what have you.  Of course that's nonsense, not least because a property relationship only one of the things that the English possessive means, and clearly not the one intended in this case. --Trovatore (talk) 04:01, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Here we have a similar problem, the Princes' Gates in Toronto, which everyone calls the "Princess Gates". Adam Bishop (talk) 13:36, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Kings County and Queens County are over half the population and land of New York City and are named after a single king and queen but never spelled that way. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:49, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

German question
I found this quote in a German Donald Duck pocket book: "Manchmal denke ich, er macht es mit Absicht." According to my understanding it means "Sometimes I think he does it on purpose." Now from what I learned in school about German, the word order should be: "Manchmal denke ich, daß er es mit Absicht macht." Are both correct? If so, is there any difference, and which of them is used more? J I P &#124; Talk 19:12, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ich denke, beide Konstruktionen kommen mit der gleichen Häufigkeit vor. "I think both constructions occur with equal frequency." That's another example and the answer to the second part of your question. It's perfectly grammatical, and the choice between both constructions is merely stylistic. –Austronesier (talk) 19:26, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * As someone who's learning German casually, is one allowed to reorder the subordinate clause like that? I've been learning that subordinate clause verbs have to go to the end like JIP mentioned, though this webpage seems to suggest that the convention is sometimes ignored in spoken German today. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 🎄 Happy Holidays! ⛄ 02:29, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It is a standard construction that is specific to reported indirect speech in German. You can either use the conjunction dass (the spelling since the German orthography reform of 1996) with the SOV inversion in the dependent clause, or leave it out and then use the SOV order of main clauses – but in either case with the finite verb in the subjunctive mood. For examples, look here under "Indirect Speech with “dass”" and "Indirect Speech without “dass”". The latter has a more informal ring but can be heard on the news, less so in newspaper reports, although not at all uncommon there (e.g., "Er sagte, er sei eine gute Woche lang nur betrunken gewesen." The use of the indicative mood as seen in the Donald Duck quote (macht instead of mache) is heard in everyday speech. --Lambiam 09:55, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Just a small correction: with verbs of thinking in the first person, the use of the indicative is not really restricted to everyday speech but is standard in formal language too. The subjunctive would be quite odd here. The difference is that in these contexts the speaker reports on his or her own thoughts, not on what somebody else thinks or says, so you don't want the distancing/hedging effect of the subjunctive. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:45, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with Fut.Perf. and in addition the indicative aligns so well with: "Manchmal denke ich: Er macht es mit Absicht." --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 18:26, 24 December 2020 (UTC)