Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 January 27

= January 27 =

Are there any volcanoes on Antarctica?
Active or extinct. Roger (talk) 08:13, 27 January 2012 (UTC)


 * See List of volcanoes in Antarctica. Mikenorton (talk) 08:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Air New Zealand Flight 901 will tell you about the time a DC-10 ran into one of them. All 257 passengers and crew died. HiLo48 (talk) 08:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Wow, the flight crew was given new coordinates for the flight, which took them right over the mountain, without anyone telling them they would now be flying over a mountain and needed more altitude. That's some serious incompetence. StuRat (talk) 18:40, 27 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks! WP:WHAAOE wins again! Roger (talk) 12:02, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Country name suffixes
Countries that end in "land" are easy to understand, but do we have an article about the suffixes "stan" and "ia"? --Dweller (talk) 11:28, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Try this page for stan. For -ia, I don't know. To my knowledge, -stan means... land. That's why we have Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan etc. It's the land of their people. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 11:37, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * To be pedantic, Pakistan isn't "land of Paki" (which can cause linguistic problems - in the UK, Paki is one of the worst ethnic slurs), it's an acronym for Punjab, Afghan Province, Kashmir, Sind and Balochistan, the territories that formed the country. It was created to deliberately emulate the "land of X" names of other Central Asian countries though (and it does after all include the genuine name Balochistan, named after the Baloch tribes). Smurrayinchester 12:37, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * "-ia" is a common Latin suffix for forming country names, found in Latin and late/neo-Latin placenames such as Italia (Italy), Gallia (land of the Gauls), Hibernia (Ireland), Caledonia (Scotland), Ruthenia, etc. This use is in Latin Wiktionary (sense 2 for "-ia"; the definition is in Latin).  Variants are widely used in Slavic as well as Romance languages and English: e.g. the Russian suffix "-ия" (transliterated "-iya") as in Россия/Rossiya (Russia). --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:53, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Is the "y" suffix - Germany, Burgundy, Saxony, Normandy - derived from the Latin "ia" suffix? Roger (talk) 18:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, via Old Norman French -ie. Marco polo (talk) 19:40, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Course Name
I shall be much obliged if you answer the differences of M.Eng and M.Sc in aeronautical engineering course in U.K. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.198.100.130 (talk) 14:47, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Master of Engineering in the UK is generally a 4 year undergraduate engineering qualification, which will take you well on the way to becoming a professional engineer. Master of Science in the UK is typically a taught 1 or 2 year postgraduate course, although some are purely research-based; most will require an undergraduate degree in a relevant subject. (See the Wikipedia articles I linked.)
 * However, degrees vary from institution to institution (Oxford, Cambridge, and Scottish institutions tend to have different systems, but others may also vary) so you will get the best answer by comparing the different syllabuses of individual institutions. You could start by searching on Prospects. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Spanair as a Spanish company
Why is Spanair a Spanish company? Being 94% owned by the SAS Group and all. 88.26.74.157 (talk) 23:05, 27 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Presumably because it was headquartered in Barcelona. List of companies of Spain is "a list of well-known companies from Spain" which is vague and inclusive, but e.g. List of companies of the United States is "a list of notable companies headquartered in the United States". With many companies being owned by shareholders distributed around the world, the nation where they are incorporated and headquartered can be more important than the location of the people or funds who own the company (or the people who own the money that's in the funds). People like to assign nationalities to things even when it's not clear-cut (SAS Group is itself owned by 3 governments and funds in various countries). --Colapeninsula (talk) 00:15, 28 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Indeed. People still think of the "Big Three" U.S. automotive companies as actually American, but Chrysler was controlled by a German firm (Daimler AG), and is now currently a subsidiary of an Italian company (Fiat).  Likewise, there's no more American beer company than Anheuser-Busch, makers of Budweiser, and yet they aren't American anymore either; being owned by the Belgian company InBev.  Miller Brewing Company isn't American anymore either.  It's a subsidiary of a British/South African company, SABMiller.  Yet people still think of these brands as inherently American.  -- Jayron  32  06:17, 28 January 2012 (UTC)