Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 October 11

= October 11 =

complex structure grammar sentence
this long sentence is excerpt from agriculture in italy on english wikipedia.

Countries whose borders were not threatened by powerful enemies were exploited to feed the population of Rome, the "womb" of the Empire, where hundreds of thousands of former warrior peasants, stripped of their land by the aristocracy and the class mercantile, they claimed their right to receive bread and circuses as citizens of the state, panem et circences.

what is the meaning of stripped of their land? i mean the former warrior peasants is the case. why they use of between stripped and their? i think that sentence above are very complex and hard to understand what they typing. hundreds of thousand peasant were stripped their land by the richies of roman people.

what is the meaning of they claimed their right? the word they refers to peasants, aristocracy, population of rome, or class mercantile? i dont know please someone can correct this situation? thank you. 2404:8000:1027:85F6:DDD6:E279:3EAC:4E8C (talk) 03:31, 11 October 2022 (UTC)


 * It should be "claimed their right", not "they claimed their right". --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:49, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅Now fixed. --Lambiam 06:34, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * "Stripped of their land" = "Had their land taken away". "Stripped" is a past participle, and the whole is a participial clause.
 * The peasants (who had been stripped of their land ...) claimed their right. ColinFine (talk) 04:15, 11 October 2022 (UTC)


 * The words "class mercantile" are in a strange order. Also, the sentence is about how taxes paid by the inhabitants of the outer provinces of the Roman Empire were used to support inhabitants of Italy whose families had formerly been small agricultural landowners, but were squeezed out by the consolidation of large estates worked by slaves, and by the burdensome service of adult males in the Roman army which often made it difficult for them to hold onto their lands; they then moved to the city of Rome itself, where some of them become part of the city mob.  They were not "warriors" in the sense of fighting individually for themselves, but served in Roman military formations... AnonMoos (talk) 07:27, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The words "class mercantile" give this away as a translation from a Romance language. Indeed, in the article Storia dell'agricoltura italiana on the Italian Wikipedia we find:
 * I Paesi i cui confini non sono stati minacciati da nemici potenti vennero sfruttati per alimentare la popolazione di Roma, "ventre" dell'Impero, dove centinaia di migliaia di ex-contadini guerrieri, spogliati dei loro terreni da parte dell'aristocrazia e della classe mercantile, rivendicavano il loro diritto di ricevere, come cittadini dello Stato, panem et circenses.
 * --Lambiam 16:26, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That also accounts for the redundant they. —Tamfang (talk) 02:43, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Only as a mistranslation. The subject of rivendicavano is centinaia di migliaia di ex-contadini guerrieri, not a pro-dropped essi. --Lambiam 12:19, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * In this alimentary context I'm more inclined to see Rome as the hungry belly of the beast. --Lambiam 16:59, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Is English an official language of Nicaragua?
We're redoing the English location map, and I'm stuck on Nicaragua. "English" is evidently official as a local language in the two Caribbean provinces (the Miskito coast), but I can't tell if that's actually English, or Miskito Coast / Rama Cay creole, or perhaps all three. Please ping. — kwami (talk) 20:34, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Per the Constitution of Nicaragua "El español es el idioma oficial del Estado. Las lenguas de las comunidades de la Costa Atlántica de Nicaragua también tendrán uso oficial en los casos que establezca la ley." The same wording appears in the 1st article of "LEY DE USO OFICIAL DE LAS LENGUAS DE LAS COMUNIDADES DE LA COSTA ATLANTICA DE NICARAGUA" (https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/92475/107753/F-1251053459/NIC92475.pdf). The law specifies that the local languages are "mískitu, creole, sumu, garifona y rama", no mention of English. So rather it would be English-based creole. ping --Soman (talk) 22:38, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks! — kwami (talk) 00:02, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * See Miskito Coast Creole. If what Soman says above is true, perhaps that article needs to be updated, as it says it is not an official language.  It appears from the article that it is part of a dialect continuum with other Western Caribbean English-based creole languages and like many creoles, they are all probably on a dialect continuum with Caribbean English.  Speakers of these languages probably, depending on the social context, code switch fluidly.  Still, "English" as such is not recognized, but "Creole" is; whatever "creole" means in this context.  It could also be one of the Spanish-based creole languages, I don't know the intent of the law.  -- Jayron 32 11:04, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The mutual intelligibility of geographically separated creoles across natural boundaries is very limited. The English-based creoles of Suriname (Sranan Tongo, Saramaccan, Ndyuka) are not on a continuum with English dialects. --Lambiam 11:48, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That is true, but the continuum of mutual intelligibility does apply within communities within the same general area, especially when there is contact. Consider Jamaican patois "Jamaican Creole exhibits a gradation between more conservative creole forms that are not significantly mutually intelligible with English,[6] and forms virtually identical to Standard English.[7]"   "Gradation" being the important concept here.  Also see Scots language "Broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English at the other.[15]"  It should also be noted that while not Every English based creole is mutually intelligible with every other English based creole (which is also not anything I ever said or made any statement which would lead any person to believe that I meant to say), there are dialect continuums between some groups of English-based creoles that DO cross national boundaries.  As noted at the article I already cited before Miskito Coast Creole, which states "Miskito creole is nearly identical to, and hence mutually intelligible with, Belizean Creole, and retains a high degree of intelligibility with all other Central American English creoles. It is also sometimes classified as a dialect of Jamaican Patois creole but this classification has been disputed."  Which is to say that there is enough mutual intelligibility with Jamaican Patois to lead to it to sometimes be classified as a dialect of it.  Insofar as there are native English speakers in the Miskito Coast region of Nicaragua who speak some recognizable form of standard English, likely Caribbean English, they will also be on a dialect continuum with the local speakers of the local Creole as well, often within the same person (see code switching).  These kinds of mutual intelligibility concepts are not hard and bright lines, and there are multiple dimensions to consider here.  It's a topic with much nuance and complexity, and not open to the kind of facile pigeonholing of "is it or isn't it" type classifications. -- Jayron 32 14:45, 12 October 2022 (UTC)