Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 January 29

= January 29 =

Surname ordering
Is there a single article (or several) that goes into this? More specifically, how does it work in Portugal and Brazil (maternal or paternal surname)? Clarityfiend (talk) 03:45, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is definitely and for sure always referred to as Lula. In Brazil I believe we use the second to last name on second reference. I will leave it to someone else to explain what parent that is and why. Elinruby (talk) 04:07, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We have an article Portuguese name with subsections on Brazilian-specific patterns and Brazilian surnames. --Lambiam 11:21, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Clarityfiend, not exactly an article, but Template:Family name footnote has a lot of detail about this, for dozens of languages or ethnicities, which were unified from an equal number of templates by . There were a few stragglers, that didn't fit easily into the general scheme, and as it happens, one of those was Template:Portuguese name (which also covers Brazil), so that one still sits apart from the general case, probably due to the Portuguese name suffixes like filho and neto. See the template for details. In some cases, you have to know more information about the individual involved, as Filho can be a legitimate last name, or it can also be a suffix (meaning "son", analogous to "Jr." in English). Adding . Mathglot (talk) 11:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Okay, Portuguese name says to order by last surname, with nothing about Brazilian ordering (if different). Thanks. Clarityfiend (talk) 11:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Brazilian probably isn't different. I specified Brazilian because the dialects are apparently quite different and I have only ever attempted Brazilian topics personally. I don't vouch for anything about Portugal.Elinruby (talk) 07:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Slavic(?) "starting to do (something)"
in articles about Eastern Europe I frequently notice sentences about how somebody started to do something (in the 9th century for example). A concrete measurable action.

I have been changing the phrase to passé simple and wondering if the person who wrote that first learned a language that doesn't have a past tense? It seems odd, but no odder than not using either definite or indefinite articles? Any thoughts on whether there is such a language and what language(s) this would be? Based on topics (Kievan Rus', khaganates, steppes) I'm guessing Russian or something proto-slavic? Elinruby (talk) 04:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

''(Slightly later): here is an example from Primary Chronicle, and actually this is also in past tense, isn't it. I don't have a word for this. '' Elinruby (talk) 04:43, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * As a British English speaker/writer, I find this fairly natural. It indicates that the described action (in this case, asserting something) had not been done previously, and that it went on for some significant span rather than being a short-lived phenomenon. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.103.187 (talk) 07:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Slavic languages do have a past tense. What they lack, though, is present perfect (or any other perfect tense for that matter). Which means that if you wish to translate something like "Since the 17th century, writers have been asserting that…" into a Slavic language, you'd have to use instead the equivalent of either past simple: "In the 17th century, writers started asserting that…", or present simple: "From the 17th century (onwards), writers assert that…". Note: Slavic languages make a distinction between perfective and imperfective verbs, but that's something else than perfect and simples tenses. — Kpalion(talk) 10:44, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A present perfect gives us "Writers have asserted that ..." "Writers have been asserting that ..." combines that with a continuous aspect. English is, amongst European languages, remarkable for its heavy use of the continuous aspect. Something with "Writers started to assert that ..." would also be the normal way to say this in for example Dutch, which has a present perfect similar to English. PiusImpavidus (talk) 18:42, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It is common enough in US English too: "started to notice", "started to resemble", "started to wonder". --Lambiam 11:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * , Russian (and I believe, other Slavic languages) have a verbal feature that is neither a tense, nor a mood, nor a voice which are all familiar to speakers of English or Romance languages and is called "aspect" which does not correspond to anything in English verbs. Aspect can be seen in the distinction between Russian "шёл" ("went") and "пошёл" ("headed over"; my translations) which is normally used to distinguish completed action for ongoing action, but can also be used to indicate initiating action. HTH, Mathglot (talk) 11:07, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Aspect is also common in Romance languages, by the way. Just about all of them differ between past actions performed habitually or only once. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Aspect is a universal category in languages. In Western European languages it is often not discussed, because it tends to be subsumed into the category of "tense". But the distinction between "I worked" and "I was working" is aspectual. ColinFine (talk) 13:06, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Aspect is the word I was missing. But there is a time element that on reflection isn't clear if you aren't up to your elbows in the article. It isn't .that Nestor is thought to be the author and this began in the 17th century. This was was brought up in the 17th century but except for fringey writers, most authors accept that this would involve time travel, since he died before these events took place. Elinruby (talk) 18:46, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * judging from the blank looks and stunned silence, that wasn't very clear, so trying again: In the above text, whether Nestor is the author of the Primary Chronicle is just an example of sentence structure. The words "started to" seem superfluous and misleading to me, since from context it is clear that ir isn't that academics have believed that Nestor was the chronicler since the 17th century, it is that they believed it at the time but today's academics no longer do and haven't for quite some time. The strange sentence construction could be the an idiosyncrasy of a particular editor, but I have seen it quite a bit now, and I am starting to wonder if this has to do with a particular language's (ru?) understanding of verbs, analogous to Spanish not having an indefinite article. I hope that's clearer.Elinruby (talk) 01:09, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And as I originally tried to explain, that is exactly what this construction, common in English, conveys. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.103.187 (talk) 02:02, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Er, no? It does not convey that somebody did something either once or gor a period of timr, and is no longer doing it. At least not to me. For example if I said "about then I started to wonder if my question was getting bogged down in the details of my example." it would be correct to conclude that I have decided to try the question again later with a different example. I am pretty sure that you.and I are working different conceptions of "that" in your sentence. Thank you to Mathglot for the vocabulary term "aspect".02:30, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it makes sense in context: "17th-century writers started to assert that Nestor wrote many of the surviving chronicles… From the 1830s to around 1900, there was fierce academic debate about Nestor's authorship, but the question remained unresolved, and belief in Nestorian authorship persisted… Modern scholars have concluded that Nestor was not the author."
 * So the belief in Nestor's authorship was not limited to 17th-century scholars. The assertion that Nestor was the author was something that began in the 17th century and persisted until around 1900. — Kpalion(talk) 09:22, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * what you say is true. i am going with bad example. i don't have another handy though. Elinruby (talk) 20:33, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Update: so many people said it made sense as originally written that I put "started to" back in the sentence and edited a bit. Feel free to comment on that effort if desired. I may come back someday to "starting to". Elinruby (talk) 07:22, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

translation for German word "Aktus"
Hi friends, I know there are native speakers of German here, can you help? The Jan 28 wördle.de surprised me when the second K was gray, and the solution turned out to be: Aktus. I can't find this in any of my dictionaries. So what does it mean? Thank you70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:17, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not a native German speaker, but this site suggests it's an obsolete word meaning a function, event or celebration. --Viennese Waltz 16:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I believe the classifier veraltet could mean both 'archaic' or 'obsolete', somewhat depending on context. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:49, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Langenscheidt (a well-known German dictionary) says "school ceremony (archaic)". DuncanHill (talk) 16:53, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Uses on the German Wikipedia show the noun (invariant under declension) had a variety of meanings, some of which correspond to senses of the English noun act. A synopsis of the late 18th-century comic fantasy Leben des Quintus Fixlein shows the term used as meaning some part of festive school ceremony (Schulfeier). It appears to be an archaic or obsolete form of present-day Akt, which also has this range of meanings; in the festive sense, it is a synonym of Festakt. Possibly, traditional schools clung longer to the obsolescent form. --Lambiam 18:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I was rather surprised when I first found out that one of the meanings of "Akt" was "artistic nude depiction"... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] AnonMoos (talk) 20:08, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I have never heard that word (and I suppise I know more than average). I really wonder this was still used in the 2nd half of the 20th century. --KnightMove (talk) 23:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Cassell's German & English Dictionary (12th ed., 1968) has "celebration; School Speech Day; public act". DuncanHill (talk) 23:21, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Could be seen as a remnant, and have something to do with the tendency in 18/th19th century Germany to use latin, greek and french words and kind of "teutonize" them. Often associated with higher education, see de:Burschensprache (sorry, no English article, but might actually be interesting to translate), for greater context perhaps Burschenschaft. Lectonar (talk) 11:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you everyone. I'm surprised it's so obscure but perhaps the creator of that wordle version wants to keep everyone on their toes :) Do you have any sense of how specific it is - would it apply to schools in general or is it something like Montem, applying to one school only?70.67.193.176 (talk) 19:55, 30 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Got no comment on your question, but I would guess that rather than an intentional word choice, it could be that the creator just has a somewhat outdated word bank. Google Ngram Viewer suggests that the word was used relatively more commonly in the decades leading up to the 2000s, so that might be why. GalacticShoe (talk) 03:45, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't be specific to one school only. Lectonar (talk) 09:09, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you again!70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)