Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 June 11

= June 11 =

skill vs technique
What is the diffrence between "skill" and "technique"? Skitechni (talk) 02:56, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Some starting points: Skill and technique. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Skill is an attribute that a person may have. Technique is a process to do something. As an example, I could state that I can kick a football (a skill) and show you the method I use do to it (the technique). You would never ask someone "Are you techniqued in kicking a football?" or "Can you show me the skill for kicking a football?" 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The first question is an ungrammatical sentence because the word technique exists only as a noun. --Lambiam 11:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Both words have countable and uncountable senses. In many contexts, the difference is not strong. The idiomatic expression is survival skills, but these skills are actually a bunch of practical techniques.
 * In the following sentence,
 * Brigitte Engerer's interpretation of Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2, played with masterly ______&thinsp;, earned her a standing ovation,
 * one can use either term without change of meaning.
 * A difference is that skill indicates a person's ability to achieve a result, while technique refers to how a result is achieved. For example, in
 * now that you've mastered the technique of cutting bone out of chicken, you can showcase your skill in preparing boneless chicken with the following recipes,
 * the word skill cannot be replaced by technique, because here it refers to the ability to achieve the result (you can prepare boneless chicken) and not about how this result is achieved. The word technique could be replaced by skill, but in the context technique is the better fit. (Moreover, using the word twice in this sentence is stylisticly awkward, but that is an unrelated issue.) --Lambiam 11:06, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "The idiomatic expression is survival skills, but these skills are actually a bunch of practical techniques." But you need to be skilled in them for them to work. You can know the technique for starting a fire without matches, but unless you have some skill at doing it, you won't get your fire going. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:37, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

On the name of antimony
The paper from 1953 mentions Sb as a case similar to tungsten/wolfram, with different languages using names based on either "antimony" or "stibium". So – what language was prominent in chemical publishing in 1953 and used a derivative of stibium for antimony's name? (It surely can't be Latin, since Fe and Sn for example are not listed.) Double sharp (talk) 09:49, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I would initially have suspected German, but looking through DWDS, it seems as if the term Antimon was adopted early. I found a few examples of "stibium"-like translations on Wiktionary, but they were often synonyms and basically never from any language "prominent in chemical publishing", even in 1953. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:24, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I have no idea if this is of any help, but back in the 1960s I did my undergraduate Science degree at the University of Melbourne, which likes to give the impression it follows in the tradition of the great British universities, particularly Oxford. To get a degree, students had to demonstrate competency in a Science Language. There were three choices, French, German, and Russian. HiLo48 (talk) 00:12, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * For my Ph.D. I had to do both French and German, though I think Russian was also a possibility. But calling it "competency" is setting the bar pretty low.  Basically you had to be able to follow a math paper and translate it.  I think it's well known that that's a lot easier than actually knowing the language, at least if you can follow math in the first place. --Trovatore (talk) 05:32, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It's more or less as I suspected, but it only deepens the mystery, since none of those three use a derivative of stibium. French has antimoine, German has Antimon, and Russian has сурьма (a Turkic loan). This is looking more and more like it's a mistake in the paper, then. Double sharp (talk) 05:00, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * In the 1950s, German-language works compiled in earlier decades were still major international chemical reference texts (since most of the material was still valid, having been built on rather than superceded). Isaac Asimov, well known for Science Fiction (and also an author of many mystery stories and numerous popular science and other nonfiction works) but academically a Doctor of Biochemistry, wrote a story which hinged on someone posing as a chemist not noticing that another character's surname was Beilstein, the same as that of a German author of a foundational German-language chemical reference, which if a genuine chemist he would certainly have found memorable. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 00:34, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Couldn't they have made it just a little more different from antinomy? --Trovatore (talk) 05:22, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I will freely translate a part of the DE article on Antimony here: "The word antimon is derived from latin antimonium and goes back to Arabic iṯmid, which like Greek στίμμι, is related to Latin stibium, going back back to Egyptian-Coptic stim (from ancient Egyptian sdm). It is possible that the name as Greek Anthémonion goes back to the late Greek anthemon ("blossom"). This describes the stem -like crystals from Stibnit (antimonsulfide, SB2S3) that appeared as tuft -shaped blossoms." Its use goes back a rather long time (11th century at least), and might help to explain why the term was used when it came to naming the chemical element: it had already existed for quite some time. Lectonar (talk) 10:08, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Questions

 * 1) Why stressed form of article a is pronounced /eɪ̯/, not /æ/ like stressed an?
 * 2) Are there any monosyllabic function words in English with unstressed full vowels?
 * 3) Are there any oxytones in English with more than two syllables?
 * 4) Are there any stressed suffixes in English?
 * 5) Are there any expressions or proverbs mentioning kilometer in English?
 * 6) Is there any Germanic language other than English where half-hour (:30 in digital clock) refers to next hour, rather than previous?
 * 7) Is it correct to say It were you? In this sentence, it is a predicative and you is a subject. In Finnish, it is possible to say Se olit sinä.
 * 8) When English speakers see 24-hour digital clock times, do they read hours from 13 to 23 as their usual words?
 * 9) Are there any languages in Russia written in Latin alphabet, other than Karelian and Veps?
 * 10) Are there any verbs or adjectives in English that use letter J for /j/ sound?
 * 11) Are there any placenames in English-speaking countries that use letter J for /j/ sound?
 * 12) Is it correct to say I eat pizza and you eat too?
 * 13) Is it correct to say the following: A: We didn't drink coffee. B: We drank coffee.
 * 14) Is it correct to say the following: A: Do you like him? B: Yes, I like.

--40bus (talk) 19:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)


 * 12: No. Correct is, I eat pizza and so do you (assuming the person addressed is a pizza eater).
 * 13: A is only correct if the speaking party didn't drink coffee; otherwise it is a fib. B is only correct if the speaking party did drink coffee.  --Lambiam 19:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 14: A is grammatically correct. B is not. If the respondent likes the person referred to, they should answer, Yes, I do. --Lambiam 19:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary has some remarks on "The meaningless use of do in interrogative, negative, and affirmative sentences [...] mandatory in most questions and negations." We like saying do and we say it a lot more than is strictly necessary, we do. Card Zero  (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You may find our article on do-support interesting. DS (talk) 22:05, 21 June 2024 (UTC)


 * 8: Yes. Deor (talk) 20:10, 11 June 2024 (UTC)


 * As for 1, consult checked and free vowels yet again... AnonMoos (talk) 20:44, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * As for 4, "-ation" is stressed, and "-ary" and "-ory" are stressed in American English (usually not in British). AnonMoos (talk) 20:46, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * As for 10, only a few loanwords, not too assimilated (except maybe "fjord") use the letter J to write IPA [j]... AnonMoos (talk) 20:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)


 * 7. No, only it was you? or was it you? work as standalones. You could see it as part of a larger sentence though, such as [would you act the same way if] it were you? GalacticShoe (talk) 23:08, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * GalacticShoe -- In "Would you act the same way if it were you?", the verb "were" is subjunctive (in traditional terminology), not plural. See If I Were a Carpenter etc. AnonMoos (talk) 19:50, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Whoops yeah, my bad; I switched over to just considering the sentence fragment without regard to the original intended meaning by accident, that's on me. GalacticShoe (talk) 23:38, 15 June 2024 (UTC)


 * 5. In everyday British life distances are still measured in miles (which appear on road signs, etc.) Engineers and scientists (etc.) may use kilometers, but only in their professional disciplines, and English-language proverbs (in Britain) generally date back to before the (perfidious French) invention of kilometers. I cannot speak for other varieties of English.
 * 10. As far as I know, only in foreign loan words that use it, or foreign names (though in my experience most English speakers would read such names incorrectly – I am a fan of a couple of Dutch musicians with 'J-' names, and hear them mispronounced constantly). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 00:54, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Bert Jansch, on the other hand, has been a victim of hypercorrection. —Tamfang (talk) 21:12, 15 June 2024 (UTC)


 * 6. Didn't you ask that one before?
 * 8. If the clock has 24 hours, you can either read it that way or "translate" it to its 1-12 hour equivalent and add P.M.
 * 14. Or you could say "Yes, I like him." Saying just "Yes, I like" is a dead giveaway that one is not a native English speaker.
 * ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)


 * 188.220.136.217 -- As for Dutch names, I noticed long ago that Arabic Wikipedia uses a transcription of Famke Janssen's name based on an English-language (mis)pronunciation, not the original Dutch pronunciation, and it's still true today: Arabic article. The Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia uses an Arabic-alphabet spelling which means that her surname will be pronounced in Egyptian Arabic beginning with a [g] sound, which doesn't even really exist in Dutch.  The Hebrew, Russian, and Greek Wikipedias use transcriptions which correctly indicate that her surname begins with a "y" sound (IPA [j]) -- AnonMoos (talk) 09:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * [g] as in golf, not as in gin? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:02, 12 June 2024 (UTC)


 * The Arabic letter &#1580; is often pronounced "dzh" (English spelling "j" or soft "g") in Modern Standard Arabic, "zh" in a number of Levantine colloquial Arabic dialects, but [g] (English spelling hard "g") in Egyptian Arabic. See Wiktionary and Egyptian Arabic phonology (though it's buried rather deeply there, despite being well-known among Arabic-speakers). AnonMoos (talk) 14:45, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I was horrified to find that a Bible translated to some Polynesian language spelled Hebrew names according to English pronunciation. —Tamfang (talk) 21:13, 15 June 2024 (UTC)


 * 8. Some English speakers, when talking about full hours, multiply the numbers by 100, e.g., they read "13:00" as "thirteen hundred hours", even though it doesn't make any sense. — Kpalion(talk) 23:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that's the standard form for the British armed forces. Alansplodge (talk) 11:36, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * A military usage in the U.S. as well. AnonMoos (talk) 19:49, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Doesn't standard military notation omit the colon between hours and minutes? Thus, 1:00 pm becomes 1300. That would explain the thirteen hundred, though "thirteen hundred hours" is still a little odd. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:48, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * And on railway stations, as I am based in UK. For my made up example, this is what you would expect to hear while waiting at a UK railway station 'The next train to arrive at platform 7, will be the 15:00 [pronounced fifteen-hundred; 3pm] East Midlands Railway service to Luton Airport Parkway. But anyway, it seems like those in the UK use either the 12 or 24 hour format on display (I set all my phones, tablets, laptops, etc. to 24 hour clock) but almost always the 12 hour clock in speech. In the USA, its mostly 12 hours for display but very rarely 24 hours in speech with the most notable exception of the military, hence military time. See Date and time notation in the United Kingdom. JuniperChill (talk) 20:25, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 9. Yes. For example, when people in Russia write in English, they use the Latin alphabet.
 * 10. Hallelujah (verb), "to cry 'hallelujah' in praise". Jagiellonian (adj.), "of or relating to the royal dynasty founded by Jogaila" (pronounced ¦yägə¦lōnēən according to Merriam-Webster). — Kpalion(talk) 23:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 11. I don't think so. Even foreign names that start with a /j/ sound often have an English exonym with a /dʒ/ sound, Jerusalem for example. Alansplodge (talk) 11:44, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Number 12 could be acceptable if it means "I eat pizza, and you also eat (something, which may or may not be pizza, but probably is not pizza because if it were I wouldn't have put it this way)." --Trovatore (talk) 02:03, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 1: Because /æ/ is never final. 5: No.  6: Note that Americans do not say "half seven" in either sense.  7: No; what do you mean by that?  8: Either.  12: It is correct, but does not mean what I imagine you intend.  13: Yes, why not?  14: Unidiomatic, but may be said jocularly. —Tamfang (talk) 21:15, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 7. I think such a sentence would need to be rephrased to something like "That was what you were." or similar. Even "It was what you were." sounds a bit off. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:58, 15 June 2024 (UTC)