Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 June 5

= June 5 =

T.S.Eliot
Please, what is the meaning of the work Pervigilium as in Prufrock's Pervigilium from The love song of J Alfred Prufrock. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.74.96 (talk) 12:48, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I presume you mean "word" not "work". Wiktionary defines it as "wakefulness; mild insomnia (archaic)". Prufrock suffers from such insomnia in the poem. --Viennese Waltz 13:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Thank you. Type o — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.74.96 (talk) 14:00, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Would welcome a native Dutch speaker to check two quotes-18th century Dutch text, how much to modernise spelling
Hi all. I've recently been doing a rewrite on the article for the 18th-century engraver Joan Michaël Fleischman, adding sources from his lifetime.

I've transcribed sections of his obituary and a memorial from a coworker, citations 2 and 14 at the moment. Obviously these are in 18th-century Dutch with 'y' replacing 'ij', the long s and period spelling. Could someone who really speaks Dutch take a look at them and check what more I need to do to update the spelling correctly, assuming that's a good plan? (For the second one I modernised the spelling a bit more to run it through Google Translate; the first, shorter quote is unchanged.) I don't imagine this will take more than a few seconds for a native speaker, but I don't know Dutch at all well. The original texts for both are free to view on Google Books, it's just that OCR isn't much help. Blythwood (talk) 20:14, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * First, according to Wikipedia policy (see WP:NOENG), quotes in another language should always have an English translation as well, and maybe it is better to trim the quotes a bit, especially the second one. I include my own translations below. Feel free to improve upon them, as they are fairly literal, and English is not my native language (I'm Dutch).
 * The first quote seems fine to me, I don't think it's really necessary to modernize the spelling, as it is common to keep dated spelling in quotations. It does however seem to contradict the article saying that he was born in 1707, whereas the source claims that he was 'about 67 years old' when he died in 1768. Also, we should note that the Latin 'dito' refers back to May 1768, which is mentioned earlier in the source, e.g. "Den 27 [May 1768] stierf te Amsterdam ..."
 * The second quote uses essentially modern spelling, except for the capitalization of nouns, which is not done in modern spelling, so personally I would either keep the archaic spelling or use lower case for the nouns. There's a transcription error in the part "boog in waarde te bouden", which should read "hoog in waarde te houden".
 * Translation of the first quote:"The 27th of [May 1768] in Amsterdam, Mr. Joan Michaël Fleischman died, born in Neuremberg, at the age of about 67 years, who was in life the most skilled punchcutter that has ever been in the world since the invention of the printing press."
 * And the second: "We have the honor to send you a sequel to our large font sample, in which you will find several scripts by which we have enriched our type foundries; we particularly recommend the 'double dessendiaan' cursive letter in which this letter is printed, being, as the artist himself assured us shortly before his death, the final and not the least piece of art of the great J. M. Fleischman, the loss of whom cannot be made up for, except by keeping the man's works in high regard. If you need anything, we request the honor of your favour, and we remain at your service after [this] offer. - Lindert (talk) 00:52, 6 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Could 'double dessendiaan' be rendered as "double descender" perhaps? That English phrase is used in Typographies of Performance in Early Modern England (p. 67 - footnote 67) - I can't speak Dutch but I've dabbled in calligraphy. Alansplodge (talk) 11:52, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * A descendiaan is a 10-point letter, so I guess a dubbele descendiaan is a 20-point letter. --Lambiam 13:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * This is brilliant, thanks. I hadn't planned to put in a translation as I'd forgot about WP:NOENG but this is a tremendous help. Regarding topics raised, yes, the DOB he gave for himself doesn't match his birth register, it's discussed in a footnote. And yes that's the right meaning of "double dessendiaan", although I've also seen it listed as 22pt. Blythwood (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The size of a point in these days was not standardized; for example, 20 Didot points would be about 21.8 Fournier points. In Fleischman's time the Didot point had not yet been introduced; I don't know what was then usual in the Dutch Republic. --Lambiam 18:20, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I've put the translations in the article, thanks so much! (I changed "cursive letter" to script typeface, the normal name in English.) Blythwood (talk) 03:03, 7 June 2020 (UTC)