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May 19

Lunchbox in Portuguese

Hello, I'm looking for the original of the Thai word ปิ่นโต /pin.to/ (lunch box). I've learned before that the original word came from the Portuguese word. However I could not find the reference for that. The only word that I found is "pinto" meaning chicken.

Thank you for any question. I searched on the Internet and found one lunchbox that similar to Thai lunchbox [1], but it's written in English not the Portuguese --Manop - TH 03:52, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure it's not from the Japanese bento? Henry ^Flower 09:44, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very likely from the Japanese (the Thai ป isn't really a p, but sort of half way between p and b).

That said....

The Portuguese past participle bento, related to the Portuguese verb bendizer (to bless), stems from the Latin benedire, "to bless" (literally "to say well").... as in benedictus.

The Japanese word bento (弁当, べんとう) is said to have originated from a 16th Century military commander called Odo Nobunaga [2]. Odo Nobunaga had close links to the Jesuits [3], so it's possible that he borrowed the word from a Portuguese blessing.

If that's the case, then the Thai tiffin carrier might have same root as the name of the Pope. TheMadBaron 11:02, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all. --Manop - TH 16:30, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bento is also a very common Portuguese name (forename, surname and placename, and the name of at least one ship, São Bento (named after Saint Benedict, lost in 1554 [4]). Interestingly, Bento Fernandes, one of the "great missionary personalities of the time," was a contemporary of Odo Nobunaga, and active in Japan [5].... so maybe it was his lunchbox.... TheMadBaron 20:48, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have my kanji dictionary at hand but I'm quite sure the kanji for bentō are ateji (as opposed to it being a Sino-Japanese compound, or a fully Japanese word), which is an instant indicator of an old Japanese word not of Japanese origin. Since Portuguese words are abundant in Japanese (second only to English), it's a pretty safe bet that that's where it came from. freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 16:08, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's entirely possible, I suppose, that "bento" might have been a Portuguese term for a food carrier at the time, even if no longer used in modern Portuguese. If that's the case, the Thai word is perhaps as likely to have been borrowed directly from Portuguese traders, without Japanese influence. Either way, assuming that Freshgavin is correct, all signs indicate a Portuguese origin. TheMadBaron 21:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to a Japanese etymology site, the term bento has been used sinse Kamakura period [6], which predates Japanese contact of Portuguese. It says the term is derived from Chinese 便当, meaning convininent. Another theory is it may be derived from 面桶, meaning 'a bucket for a meal' but the site rejects this theory because pronunciations of 面桶 and 弁当 differs in classical Japanese. --Kusunose 03:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very nice site. I'll look at that one again. freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 17:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki language codes for "Chinese simplified" and "Chinese traditional"?

I am creating a wiki using some of the content of http://www.dmoz.org.

I would like to know what interwiki language codes to use for the content of:

I am getting the codes from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias.

For example, the interwiki language code is "fr" for:

http://www.dmoz.org/World/Fran%c3%a7ais/

I imagine one of them will use "zh"

Which ones do I need for Chinese Simplified and which for Chinese Traditional:

zh
zh-yue
zh-min-nan
something else?

Thanks!

Brusselsshrek 09:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we have separate traditional and simplified Wikipedias: they're both the same language, so they're both covered by zh. I suspect that zh uses unicode characters which you can view in either traditional or simplified fonts. Yue and Minnan are for the Yue (Cantonese) and Minnan dialects/languages respectively, and are definitely not what you want. Henry ^Flower 09:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks. Hmmm. Let me ask a follow-up question then. If I map BOTH dmoz Simplified AND Traditional pages to wiki "zh" pages can you see a problem with overlapping? i.e. will pages, as far as you can see, end up with the same wiki name? I don't know enough about the two systems to know if the URL strings would be distinct. Let me give an example: If I start with the English page (phew!) http://www.dmoz.org/Science/ I can see that it has a link to language versions in both Chinese (Traditional) AND Chinese Simplified. These pages are:

Since the suffix of these two is different, I could render these two pages in a wiki as (I suppose):

zh.mywiki.com/%e7%a7%91%e5%ad%a6/
zh.mywiki.com/%e7%a7%91%e5%ad%b8/

BUT, is it 100% safe to assume that they will ALWAYS be different in the suffix of the URL? Thanks again! Brusselsshrek 09:59, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't think they will be different. Compare this one and this one: these use the same characters in simplified and traditional forms, so the suffix is the same. I think you would need to either merge them, or add something to the suffix to distinguish them. Henry ^Flower 10:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, thanks, this is all very helpful to a non-Chinese speaker with the task of sorting this out. Since wiki seems to think a single "zh" suffices, is this Simplified/Traditional Chinese rather like the American/British English thing that a wiki page could be written in either as long as a whole page is consistent? (Sure, I understand traditional chars a lot more complex). My thought would be just to take ONLY the Dmoz Simplified pages into the wiki. In your view, would that lose a lot of valuable Dmoz info, or is the Simplified/Traditional content basically just a duplication but in a "different" language? Brusselsshrek 10:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, a page can be written in simplified encoding, traditional encoding, or unicode. The simplified dmoz will list simplified and unicode pages, while the traditional dmoz will list traditional and unicode pages, so there will be some duplication. I don't know how popular unicode is versus the specialised encodings, so I don't know how much duplication there would be. Using simplified only is probably the best easy solution, although you'll certainly end up with content which has a lot from the PRC and not much from Taiwan. Henry ^Flower 10:53, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Simple and traditional refers primarily to the writing system, only secondarily to the encoding. I suspect that the simplified dmoz will try to list only Unicode pages written in Simplified Chinese. It's not merely American/British, where it's 99% mutually intelligible; it take more education, but I don't know if most Chinese get that education.--Prosfilaes 16:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Slovensko and Slovensky wiki language codes?

I am creating a wiki using some of the content of http://www.dmoz.org. I'm making good progress with finding each of the wiki language codes to use, but I would like to know what interwiki language codes to use for the content of:

I am getting the codes from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias.

For example, the interwiki language code is "fr" for:

http://www.dmoz.org/World/Fran%c3%a7ais/

My Slovensko and Slovensky is even worse than my Chinese (which itself is limited to "Special Fried Rice").

Thanks! Brusselsshrek 11:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Slovensko is Slovenian, Slovensky is Slovak. Slovenian is sl, Slovak is sk. :) Henry ^Flower 11:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikis here use country codes (see ISO 3166-1) as language codes. There must be inventions sometimes (aulde english, pidgin ...) --DLL 19:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is strange, because "Slovensko" is also the native name for Slovakia. You can see how George Bush confused these countries. -- Mwalcoff 00:00, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I rather suspect that the etymological similarity had nothing at all to do with why he confused these countries. Plain ignorance, more like. Arbitrary username 17:59, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How's that strange? The countries have the same name, etymologically. --BluePlatypus 08:40, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Taiwanese wiki language code?

Thanks User:Henry_Flower, you're great at this! (How come you know all this stuff?)

Finally, what is the wiki language code (see above questions) for Taiwanese:

http://www.dmoz.org/World/Taiwanese/

Ah, that's an easy one. Taiwanese is Minnan, so zh-min-nan. Henry ^Flower 12:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"ye high"

Where does the expression "ye high" come from? Old English?

I've been looking for a good definition, but there's just none to find (somebody add it to wiktionary, please).

Usage (I think): "He's about ye high (holds up hand to indicate the height of a person)" -Obli (Talk)^? 19:39, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would have spelled it "yea" or "yay"; here is one page with some information seeming to indicate that it's a fairly recently coined slang term or idiom. --LarryMac 19:53, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to Google searches, "yea" is only slightly more popular than "ye", I guess that's what happens to new words that are only used in speech. Thanks for the emytology, I'll add it to wiktionary, myself. -Obli (Talk)^? 20:01, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it's substantially more popular; searches for just "ye high" or "yea high" or "yay high" by themselves are loaded with false results. Googling for "about [yea/yay/ye] [high/big/tall]" shows that yay is more popular than yea, which tends to be about four times as popular as ye. —Zero Gravitas 20:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In older English there's "ye" as in "all ye", meaning "you". Then there's "ye" for the definite article "the", where the "y" is actually a thorn (þ), and which is pronounced just as "the". Then there's "yea" as in "yes". But that's it, AFAIK. --BluePlatypus 08:34, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard it used a lot in the Irish Republic - so probably dialectal as well as archaic. Greatgavini 17:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A nuance I don't see mentioned in any link so far is that it tends to indicate a bit of estimation is going on. I don't know where it came from, but for what it's worth, I first heard it from my big brother, and the only other time I came across it was in a comic strip, which argues well for the 'recent slang' interpretation. Black Carrot 19:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was certainly around in Britain when I was young. Which was some time in the 80s. Henry ^Flower 19:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The OED uses the spelling "yay", and the first quotation they have is from 1960. Lesgles (talk) 20:16, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

speech synthesiser

Does anyone know of a speech synthesis program (preferably free or maybe commercial, and for either Windows or Linux) which lets you input the required sounds phonetically in IPA or maybe say SAMPA / X-SAMPA rather than as orthography? It seems that most packages do "text to speech", but it would be nice to have a bit more control. Thanks. Arbitrary username 21:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt it; IPA phonetic notation doesn't convey enough information for a speech synthesiser to do its work. MBROLA uses a .pho format, which is SAMPA with numbers for length, tone, pitch, volume etc. -- EdC 16:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for the tip. That makes sense; I don't mind providing more specific information. I'll have a look into MBROLA. Arbitrary username 17:50, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's this from Microsoft. I haven't read about it, though. Ardric47 02:01, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, though I fear that that one may be a few too many steps removed from the end-user for me to cope with. Arbitrary username 17:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So far to date

Is it corret to say "So far to date" or should one stick to just either "so far", or "to date"?159.134.255.9 00:04, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it does appear redundant. However the two phrases have different nuances. It would be best if I heard the entire sentence to choose which of the two sounds better. Loomis51 00:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I could imagine someone saying "Our company found the sources of 12 items so far to date." I wouldn't use the "so far" and I really don't like the sound of that sentence but it does get across the additional meaning that they expect to continue to find more sources in the future. freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 16:00, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It still sounds redundant. Only one should be used. Perhaps this is oversimplifying, but "so far" seems to me a more "casual", while "to date" seems to be a more "technical" expression. In many cases both would be acceptable, but I'll give a few examples of where one is clearly more appropriate than the other:

If you're waiting for a friend to call, and she hasn't yet, you'd definitely say "She hasn't called so far" and NEVER "She hasn't called to date" (with a few exceptions, for example if she's gone missing for many years, it might sound appropriate to say "she hasn't called to date.")

For more scientific statements, "to date" is more acceptable, but "so far" seems acceptable as well. For example: "To date, we have no hard evidence of extra-terrestrial life." But, as I said, so far can be used as well, but with a less "professional", "scientific" sound. "So far, we have no hard evidence of extra-terrestrial life."

Bottom line, when in doubt, use "so far" and you probably won't go wrong. Loomis51 23:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another variant I like is "up until now". JackofOz 02:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

May 20

Hung for a sheep as a lamb

While reading Sex Drugs and Economics, written by a British author, I came across the above phrase and I thought it was lovely but it was a novel expression to my American eyes. A few hours later I was listening to Neil Gaiman read on of his stories where an American tourist used the phrase and I realized it was nothing an American would have used as far as I know.

I would love to know how, where and when this phrase originated or at least a site that will not give me the run around while I'm trying to search for it.

Thanks so much for any assistance. - Kubzz 07:10, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The first result on Google UK: [7]

The Oxford English Dictionary has a quotation from Richardson, "Clarissa" (1748): "In for the lamb, as the saying is, in for the sheep." The saying must be older; I don't know by how much.

'I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.' If the consequence of failure is the same in either case, then go for the option that yields the greatest reward if the venture succeeds.

Suggested origin:

Until at least 1800 in England, the penalty for stealing sheep, irrespective of the animal's age or gender, was execution or deportation. Since there is more meat and wool on a fully-grown sheep, why bother putting the same effort into stealing a lamb if the consequence of being caught for either crime was the gallows?

Someone might see their way to adding this to Wiktionary. -- EdC 16:43, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is anything exclusively British about this phrase. Perhaps it has passed out of use in the USA, but it is generally understood in the UK today. A little search shows that US author Horatio Alger used the phrase in this book. Notinasnaid 18:40, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is also generally understood in Australia. Not surprising, since we've had more than a bit to do with both penal transportation and sheep. JackofOz 22:51, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank so much for the quick responses. :) - Kubzz 07:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Everyman Dictionary of Quotations and Proverbs it was listed in John Ray's Collection of English Proverbs (1670). MeltBanana 14:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I,ve always understood it to mean that, having already stolen a little lamb, you might as well go on to steal a big sheep as well, because the punishment is going to be the same - ie having committed one offence you might as well carry on and commit others. Jameswilson 00:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In for a penny, in for a pound. Basically the same I always felt. Thought: English usually has opposite proverbs and sayings. Is there one for the opposite of this? I can't really think of one, apart from "stop digging" which doesn't really count. Skittle 09:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just re-watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, so I thought it meant hung--as in having large...genitals...but that's just me. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 ^{(T | C | @)} 00:10, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Same pronunciation

This line from Canadian raising puzzles me: "So, whereas the General American pronunciations of "rider" and "writer" are identical [ɹaɪɾɚ], those whose dialects include either the full or restricted Canadian raising will pronounce them as [ɹaɪɾɚ] and [ɹəɪɾɚ], respectively."

One of those words has a d in the middle, the other a t. I don't pronounce them the same and I grew up not far from the "classic" General American" region. Is this really correct or are only the vowels the same in both words. Rmhermen 22:43, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like my cut-and-paste of those useless IPA characters didn't work. We need sound more samples! Rmhermen 22:45, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They're useful to me... I pronounce them exactly as shown in normal speech. —Keenan Pepper 00:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added in Template:IPA, so they should show up now. Ardric47 02:04, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it was also noting "the North American English process of flapping, which merges /t/ and /d/ in [ɾ] before unstressed vowels", but I see someone has now changed "writer" into "spider" and the reference to sounding identical to a reference to rhyming. To a Briton, the "Classic" American accent involves pronouncing 't' as 'd' in many places, and I think this is the accent it is refering to. ie "Warder" instead of "water". Skittle 13:49, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As a Canadian, although I might pronounce the "d" and the "t" differently, by far, the more noticeable difference would be in my pronunciation of the "i". The "ri" in "rider" whould be pronounced like the grain "rye", whereas the word "writer" would rhyme with "fighter". Is it actually any different in American English? Loomis51 23:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So, you're saying the article is right? But now I'm really intrigued because I pronounce the vowel in 'rye' the same as the vowel at the beginning 'fighter'. What's the difference to you? Skittle 23:17, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another Canadian here. I pronounce them like the first example. Can't input IPA here so "rai" and "fuy". The article is right (ruyt), and I remember hearing about this (along with cot, caught, and all that) on a TV show about the Canadian accent a couple years ago. freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 17:05, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and about the t and d. Both are flapped for me and would probably be written identically in IPA, but because the dipthong of "rider" is a little bit longer than "writer", the flapped "d" from "rider" is a little bit stronger than the flapped "t". freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 17:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In North American English, the vowel in rider is often longer than that in writer. That is the only difference. I'm no expert on Canadian raising, but as I understand it, the rule is that before voiceless stops, the diphthong nucleus of (ay) and (aw) begins higher at [ʌ] (in the article, it says [ə], but never mind) and in other contexts remains lower at, e.g., [a]. This is the same phenomenon that leads to the stereotyped pronunciation of about. The case of writer shifting but not rider would, to my mind, suggest that the mechanism in question is not really the following consonant directly, but diphthong length. mnewmanqc

May 21

Help needed

Following are lyrics (Persian) of Shakila's song Yegaaneh, which I completely love. It would be *awesome* if someone can translate it for me. Thanks a ton!

تا کی به تمنای وصال تو یگانه
اشکم شود از هر مژه چون سیل روانه
ای تیره غمت را دل عشاق نشانه
خواهد به سرآیدشب هجران تو یا نه
جمعی به تو مشغول و تو فارغ ز میانه
هر در که زنم صاحب آن خانه تویی تو
هر جا که شدم پرتو کاشانه تویی تو
در کعبه و در دیر چو جانانه تویی تو
منظور من از کعبه و بتخانه تویی تو مقصود تویی ...کعبه و بتخانه بهانه
ای تیره غمت را دل عشاق نشانه
بلبل به چمن زار گل رخسار نشان دید
پروانه در آتش شد و اسرار نهان دید
عارف صفت حمد تو از پیر و جوان دید
یعنی همه جا عکس رخ یار توان دید
دیوانه منم ..من که روم خانه به خانه
ای تیره غمت را دل عشاق نشانه
جمعی به تو مشغول و تو فارغ ز میانه
عاقل به قوانین خرد راه تو جوید
دیوانه برون از همه آئین تو پوید
تا غنچهء نشکفتهء این باغ که بوید
هر کس به زبانی صفت حمد تو گوید
بلبل به غزل خوانی و قمری به ترانه
رفتم به در صومعه زاهد و عابد
دیدم همه را پیش رخت راکع و ساجد
در بتکده رهبانم و در صومعه زاهد
گه معتکف دیرم و گه ساکن مسجد
یعنی که تو را می طلبم خانه به خانه
ای تیره غمت را دل عشاق نشانه
بلبل به چمن زان گل رخسار نشان دید
پروانه در آتش شد و اسرار نهان دید
عارف صفت حمد تو از پیر و جوان دید
یعنی همه جا عکس رخ یار توان دید
دیوانه منم ..من که روم خانه به خانه
ای تیره غمت را دل عشاق نشانه
جمعی به تو مشغول و تو فارغ ز میانه

deeptrivia (talk) 00:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In case no one answers here, you could try browsing Category:User fa-N for a friendly face. The only person listed at Wikipeida:Translators available for Persian-to-English is User:Nima.nezafati, but s/he hasn't been here since March. Angr (t • c) 10:05, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If the stupid mullahs hadn't seized power in Iran, the maybe an Ataturk would Romanize the Persian script which would make it easier for people to learn Persian and look up words in a Persian-English dictionary.Patchouli 01:20, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ROTFL! As I've said on this page before, Romanization will be a stupid idea, because the Roman script is one of the dumbest, and doesn't make any sense at all. In fact the whole world should switch to a real phonetic Brahmi-based script. [^_^] Oh no! I'm talking about it again! deeptrivia (talk) 03:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Right word

What word refers to the process by which a company expands too fast and therefore loses its focus? For example, Yahoo! was created as a collection of favourite pages, and now they offer everything under the sun, and seem to have lost their focus. Google used to offer only search, but now they offer social networking and other services that have nothing to do with search. These services usually do not reflect the usual Google quality and corporate culture/values.

Another example could be an company initially offering high-quality online communication services, which clearly reflect their corporate culture and values; but then expanding into online games, then software, then telecommunications, etc. and their products in these new markets do not reflect the quality of their online communication services or their corporate culture/values.

This process does not occur if a company expands quickly, but still retains their focus, quality and corporate culture/values. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 00:40, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Selling out? Black Carrot 02:12, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Peter principle? User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:18, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Diworsification? ByeByeBaby 09:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Conglomeration, maybe... AnonMoos 16:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It can be a precursor to the company "reinventing itself". Although that would come later, after they realised they'd lost their focus. JackofOz 02:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How is "re" pronounced?

How does one pronounce "re," the short form of "regarding," as in To: John Doe From:Jane Smith Re: The pronunciation of the word at the beginning of this line!

Since it is a short form of "regarding" it seems "re" should rhyme with "tree."

I have had a boss who is sure it's pronounced as if it were spelled "ray," as in the musical notes "do, re me...," or as if it were Latin such as in the phrase "in re your estate," for example.

I don't like mispronouncing words and would love a definative answer!

Thank you.

--67.150.213.166

AFAIK, it's not a short form of "regarding", it is Latin, the same word as in "in re your estate". Nevertheless, the word can be pronounced either way ("ray" or "ree"), because Latin words used in English often get anglicized pronunciations (such as pronouncing c like /s/ in et cetera, or pronouncing the first syllable of habeas corpus "hay"). Angr (t • c) 10:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See IETF (RFC 3834) : "Just as the (Latin-derived) prefix "Re:" that is commonly used to indicate human-generated responses ..." --DLL 17:57, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: is derived from the Latin word rēs, meaning thing or matter, and rē is the genitive form, translating roughly as of or concerning the matter. So while ray is close enough to the way the Romans would've pronounced it, I think it's safe to say that people will understand you regardless of how it's pronounced.Straughn 20:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've always heard it as "ray". Although I think the only place I've heard it is the Jeeves and Wooster TV series, "in re" being one of Wooster's typical phrases together with "right ho!". (I seriously recommend Wodehouse to anyone who loves the English language, BTW) --BluePlatypus 22:39, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard anyone say it as "ray". Then again, I've never heard anyone say it at all...--M1ss1ontomars2k4 ^{(T | C | @)} 00:07, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Punjabi

What is the difference between Pakistani Punjabi language and Indian Punjabi language?

See Punjabi language. There are many dialects of Punjabi, but these don't correspond to the India/Pakistan border. Henry ^Flower 14:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rules for syllable counting (in English)

What are the rules for counting syllables in English? Does a syllable necessarily contain a vowel (phoneme)?

In the examples below, how many syllables do you count?

roster
glide
slack
mirage

Based on some simple (simplistic?) rules I've seen, I got 2, 1, 1, and 2 respectively. The thing that I'm not sure about is in words like "slack", whether the whole word is one syllable or whether the "s" is in a separate syllable by itself. --68.238.243.228 16:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You do not need a vowel in an unstressed syllable in English. Any sonorant consonant will do, but there is a tendency to favor nasals as syllable nuclei over liquids. So, for instance Kevin and possum are more likely to be pronounced with a syllabic consonant than Michael or butter. All these words will have vowels pronounced in careful pronunciations.

As for your examples, you are correct except that in mirage the vowel can be deleated in rapid casual speech, and in that case there would be one syllable: [mɹɑʒ] in my pronunciation. As for the case of slack, the pronunciation of an empenthetic vowel before the s is a feature of Spanish influenced learner English. mnewmanqc

(Hope you don't mind, I used {{template:IPA}} on your IPA). I think it's an interesting thing, this syllable counting. For example, even if I try to pronounce 'mirage' quickly and casually as Mnewmanqc's IPA indicates, I end up with what I would count as two syllables. m+schwa-rahj (with the 'j' indicating soft french ending. I'm no good at writing IPA). Maybe syllable has some guidelines, since I can't believe linguists would leave it subjective. Skittle 16:53, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First off, I think Mnewmanqc has it backward: liquids are more likely to be syllabic than nasals. Michael is much more likely to be [ˈmaɪkl̩] than possum is to be [ˈpɑsm̩], and butter is pretty much never [ˈbʌtəɹ] but rather [ˈbʌtɚ] (or [ˈbʌtə] in nonrhotic accents). Both l and n are pretty uniformly syllabic after other alveolar sounds though: [ˈbɑtəl] for bottle and [ˈbʌtən] for button sound distinctly odd. As for how to count syllables objectively (i.e. purely on the basis of some acoustic or articulatory property as opposed to an instinctive gut feeling), it's actually very difficult. Consider the difference between the name Bowie (as in David Bowie, two syllables BOE-ee) and the word boy (one syllable). If you look at spectrograms of the two, you're going to have a very hard time telling them apart; whatever distinctions there are will be incredibly subtle. But every native speaker knows "instictively" Bowie is two syllables while boy has one. It's sad but true, the most reliable way of finding out how many syllables there are in a word is usually to ask a native speaker. Angr (t • c) 17:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Angr is right about liquids being at least equally likely to be syllable nuclei. I was going by what I think I read in a textbook I used Kreidler's Pronunciation of English. A Course Book in Phonology, I may be wrong in my memory, but the thing is I do both and have no intuitions there. If so, I apologize.

As for syllable structure, I think you might not look at the spectrogram but the waveform itself. I just did it myself using Praat, and I saw two peaks much more clearly both in the intensity and visible waveform itself in Bowie than Boy. As for Mrage. I do get the complete reduction, but I'm from NYC, and I've done almost all my phonetic analyses of this kind of speech from NYers. I wouldn't be at all surprised that others have less than full reduction in this context. [mɹ] is not normally phonotactically permissible in careful English; so it may also not be in rapid casual speech for many speakers. mnewmanqc

That's cool about the waveform. I have heard that clusters impermissible in careful speech are often permissible in rapid speech; the canonical example is [ˈpteɾo] for potato in two syllables. Angr (t • c) 22:47, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

EnglishLanguage - singular/plural

How many words in the English Language are the same in the singular as the plural (for example: sheep, fish)? - Jayuu

Not sure how many, but "craft" (in the sense of a vessel) and "aircraft" are two more examples. --68.238.243.228 18:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And "offspring" and "species" are yet two more examples. Is there a term for words like these?--68.238.243.228 18:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Read the article on mass nouns. You will see that forms like sheeps and fishes do exist.--El aprendelenguas 19:44, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a native English speaker, but surely sheeps must be incorrect, whether it be used as a count or a mass noun? Google returns 19 hits for "several sheeps" and 29,300 for "several sheep". I did find one mention of sheeps on the BBC's web site but still... --Vibo56 20:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree with the way sheeps was used in that BBC article, but the forms do exist, though rare. A good example would be "fishes of the coral reef". If you just say "fish of the coral reef", you are referring to the masses of fish in the reef, plain and simple. "fishes" puts the emphasis on the different types of fish, rather the fish (plural) of each species. It's a very vague difference and not all native speakers will use the words in that way. freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 16:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this again an example of the distinction between count nouns and mass nouns, as mentioned by El aprendelenguas above? "Fish" is mentioned on the mass noun page as an example of a word which confuses the distinction because both "fish" and "fishes" are acceptable plural forms. My point was that "two fish" or "two fishes" is a matter of personal preference, but there is no such thing as "two sheeps". --vibo56 21:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It could be but I don't think so. If had a bunch of different breeds of sheep in a room, I think it would be correct to call them sheeps, but maybe that's just me. freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 13:30, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you've uncovered a shocking gap in our coverage: List of English words with identical singular and plural forms does not exist. 'Deer' is another, by the way. There must be some reason why animals are disproportionately represented. Many words of foreign origin are (or can be) the same, though: yen, kimono, baht, etc. Henry ^Flower 20:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's because they're from neuter nouns. Old English used to have lots of animal names that were neuter, and neuter singular and neuter plural looked the same. I can't remember the details, but I guess you can start some research of your own by looking at History of the English language and Old English language. --KJ 00:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't seem to find anything relevant on Wikipedia. Here are some links to get you started: [8] [9] --KJ 00:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is certainly complicated. For instance, cattle is a mass noun but unlike fish, you cannot have a cattle. In fact there is universally accepted no word representing one member of the species. On a related notes, I saw this in the mass noun article:

"Thus, the following are all correct:

"There are sands in the hourglass." (count)

"There is sand in the hourglass." (mass)

"There is a sand in the hourglass." (count)"Rmhermen 00:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The second is certainly correct, the first could be correct if there were say black, white and green sands in the hourglass but I don't see how the third could ever be correct. Rmhermen 00:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think if I saw the 3rd sentence in an article, I would probably edit it to read either as the 2nd sentence or as "There is a grain of sand in the hourglass," depending on the context. --DavidGC 08:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible. I want to buy a type of sand for some purpose. I look at the ones you offer me, but I don't like them. I ask, "Do you have any other sands?" You say, "There is a sand in the hourglass". Henry ^Flower 09:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

May 22

What does this mean?

What does the word "Debauche" mean? I've looked it up on WP but to no avail. Help me. I hate words that aren't familiar.

I think you mean 'debauch'- as a verb, 'seduce'; as a noun, 'orgy'. The spelling with an e seems to be unusual. Henry ^Flower 08:48, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The noun form is debauchery, isn't it? СПУТНИК^{ССС Р} 15:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two different words: a debauch is one instance of debauchery. Henry ^Flower 18:24, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's also "debouch": To emerge, issue". Generally from a small confined area into a wider, more open area. User:Zoe|^(talk) 18:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Debauch as a transitive verb means to corrupt, to reduce the value of. See dictionary.com's page on the word. The give the etymology as old French de+ bauch - apparently bauch is a sort of beam, so I take debauch to mean "to steer away from the straight and narrow". --Hughcharlesparker 19:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Words are not enough:) Thanks for the help guys. I can now use it in my english assignment without looking stupid when my teacher asks me what it means. --AQjosh 13:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Film Review Format

Is there any specific film review format? What I can find from the web is about what can be include in a review, but this is not exactly what I want.

When you write a film review for a magazine, newspaper or review web site, they will probably have a "house style" for you to follow. If you are writing an essay for school or for your own entertainment, you can write any format you wish. Wikipedia does not carry film reviews, if that was the question. Notinasnaid 13:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a school assignment. In my rubric, there is a row which is called "genre format," so it is probably just about the style I write but not any specific format, is that right?

I may be taking it out of context, but film genre is an important aspect of writing about a film (because the expectations and conventions that flow from the choice of genre). Notinasnaid 18:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Cinematic genre. While you're there, check out the "See Also." I suppose reviews of different types of films might have different formats. --Halcatalyst 01:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know Latin

How do you say "In spirit and in truth", "Way, Truth, Life" and "In the Light of the Lord" in Latin? I have looked up various dictionaries but there are just too many options they offer, and I don't know which ones are the best words to use! Thanks a lot!

In my rough knowledge of Latin, I would guess that In anima et in vero would be "In spirit and in truth", "Way Truth and Life" would be Via, Verum, Vitaque (I particularly like the ring of that!) and "In the light of the Lord" would be In Luce Domini. СПУТНИК^{ССС Р} 15:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If any of these are direct quotes from either the Bible or the traditional Catholic liturgy, it would be better to find the original Latin than to translate it back into Latin from English. And "truth" is Veritas, not Verum. Angr (t • c) 15:36, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it sounds like they woudl be from the Catholic liturgy. And as for truth, the first word that popped into my head was veritas. I wrote that, but I wasn't sure, so I checked in my Latin textbook, and it gave verum instead. However, my textbook is rather unreliable and I assume that you are more correct. In that case, it would be Via, Veritas, Vitaque, but would it be In anima et in veritate"? СПУТНИК^{ССС Р} 15:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, "in spirit and in truth" is from John 4:24 "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth", which is Spiritus est Deus et eos qui adorant eum in spiritu et veritate oportet adorare in the Vulgate. "Way, truth, life" is from John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth, and the life", which is Ego sum via et veritas et vita. "In the light of the Lord" is from Isaiah 2:5 "O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD", which is Domus Iacob venite et ambulemus in lumine Domini. So, the answers are:

In spirit and in truth = In spiritu et veritate
Way, Truth, Life = Via et veritas et vita
In the light of the Lord = In lumine Domini

Angr (t • c) 17:01, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was close. СПУТНИК^{ССС Р} 18:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you guys a whole bunch! This really helps me a lot :)

U.S. piano tuner strikes chord against embargo, doctors instruments in Cuba

'Strike chord' or 'Strike a chord have been used often to discribe being touched by something, correct? What is the imterpretation of the subject/headline in layman's term?

SY

It's a pun. "Strike a chord" is an idiom that means something like "make a point". It's a pun because "strike a chord" literally means to play a chord, for example on a piano, which makes sense because it's a piano tuner. —Keenan Pepper 18:55, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The odd thing is that the idiom "to strike a chord" means something more like "to cause a feeling of familiarity." The writer of the headline seems to have conflated "strike a chord" with "strike a blow [for freedom]," for which Google reports 11,000 results. Thus, my interpretation, as a layman, is that the headline writer needs a good editor. --LarryMac 20:25, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(Edit conflict)I thought 'strike a chord' idiomatically meant something more like 'seems true to the other person/is in accord with their feelings' than 'make a point'. So The Matrix 'struck a chord' with people who felt there had to be more to the world. But I'm guessing it is used in Keenan Pepper's sense, in America, hence perhaps SY's confusion. Sounds very odd to me. Skittle 20:31, 22 May 2006 (UTC) Reading LarryMac's comment, maybe it is just as wrong as it feels. Skittle 20:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"To strike a chord" is a musical metaphor suggesting a somewhat sudden, harmonious, and pleasing connection or resolution. --Halcatalyst 22:07, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a reference, not that distinguished IMHO. --Halcatalyst 22:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Voice Jitter and Shimer

Hello,

In the Praat program for Audio/Voice analysis they use Jitter and Shimer to describe pulses in the Voice.

Is it a standard experssion? since I didn't found any reference outside.

What is the meaning of high or low jitter and shimer? In the sense of what causes it? what is it reflecting?

Thanks, Mushin

Here's a technical tutorial reference. "Jitter" and "shimmer" are also everyday English words. --Halcatalyst 21:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

October

If the prefix "octo-" means eight, then why is october the 10th month of the year?24.107.18.136 20:54, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Check out our article on October - the answer's in the third paragraph. Matt Eason 20:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Same reason September, November and December have prefixes referring to the numbers seven, nine and ten, respectively. Loomis51 09:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reading Quotations

Iranian President Ahmadinejad said quote the Iranian nation doesn’t give a damn about such useless [U.N.] resolutions unquote.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad said quote-unquote the Iranian nation doesn’t give a damn about such useless [U.N.] resolutions. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12851815/page/2/

Which one is preferable in American English when a person is speaking, quote "..." unquote or quote-unquote "...?" Patchouli 20:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

None. Iranian President Ahmadinejad said quote the Iranian nation doesn’t give a damn about such useless [U.N.] resolutions. (Slightly lengthened pause). Otherwise, the first is less objectionable. --Diderot 21:09, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If I wanted to immediately proffer my opinion without pausing before another person in a discussion interjects, then it would be permissible for me to say unquote, right?Patchouli

What might be called a someone-said statement can be followed with the expression "quote unquote" for emphasis (often uttered semi-belligerently, so with no fine touch for accuracy of quotation!). --Halcatalyst 21:45, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

'Racism' Inside a Race

Is there a word for someone who favors one ethnic group over another? For instance, if a Hutu discriminates against a Tutsi or if a Japanese discriminates against a Korean. I can only come up with the word racist, but here the discrimination is inside the race.

I know that there is no ethnicist; is there another single word?Patchouli 20:59, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I routinely use ethnocentric when referring to such behaviour. --Diderot 21:04, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe ethnophobe? --Halcatalyst 21:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Race is such a slippery term that racist applies perfectly well. EdC 23:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or, you could go even broader and just call them a 'bigot'. Black Carrot 02:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or, since "race" doesn't have a scientific meaning, just call them racist. I accuse my West German husband of being a racist when he makes derogatory remarks about East Germans. Angr (t • c) 07:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At a pinch, you could also use the word partisan, though that usually has the meaning of supporting one cause over another. Grutness...wha? 12:03, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

May 23

Sentence Challenge

In a coffee break at work, my colleagues and I debated the possibility of coming up with a valid English sentence of at least ~~four~~ seven words, where every word has exactly 9 letters. Can this be done? A barnstar (or maybe a brainstar) for the longest sentence. JackofOz 02:08, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about "Everybody considers elephants necessary"? Does it have to make sense logically or just grammatically? This shouldn't be too difficult, you just won't be able to use any of the most frequently used Germanic-based words. Adam Bishop 02:24, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally it would be a sentence that nobody would take any exception to at all. But we don't live in an ideal world, so ..... (not sure if that answers your question or not). JackofOz 03:03, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Extending that, "Everybody considers Ukrainian elephants necessary." Or "Everybody considers Ukrainian elephants necessary drawbacks." Although, that last one's stretching it, there should really be a "to be" in there. Black Carrot 02:30, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's fine, Black Carrot. I wouldn't have let "consider to be" through. I consider it a tautology. :--) You're the leader at the moment. Or you would be, if I hadn't taken the view that four words (and even six words) was too easy, and hadn't retrospectively raised the minimum number of words to seven. (Such is the magic of Wikipedia). JackofOz 03:03, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Let's make it ~~nine~~ten. "Virtually everybody available privately considers untrained Ukrainian elephants necessary drawbacks." I'm not sure it can get any longer without stacking adjectives... —Zero Gravitas 04:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But an extra adverb could work: "Normally, virtually everybody available privately considers untrained Ukrainian elephants necessary drawbacks" (eleven) JackofOz 01:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hah! "Virtually everybody available helpfully considers verbosely formatted sentences, tautology following tautology, validates immediate deletions forthwith." That's 15! Proto||type 12:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent. Impressed. JackofOz 12:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but 'sentences' requires 'validate', making it too short. Sadly, as it is a wonderous creation. Skittle 17:41, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Condoleez' consider'd hammering Uzbek'stan ? (4*9) --DLL 18:53, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Normally, virtually everybody available helpfully considers verbosely formatted sentences, tautology following tautology, abhorrent misusages requiring immediate deletions forthwith." 18! —Zero Gravitas 02:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just thought I'd point out that normally has only eight letters. —Bkell 19:50, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Everybody considers aluminium elephants following tortoises unusually abhorrent. -- LarryMac 19:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC) (an American who used the funny non-USian spelling for "aluminum")[reply]

OK, scrub "normally". (Thanks, Bkell). ZeroGravitas is still in the lead with 17: "Virtually everybody available helpfully considers verbosely formatted sentences, tautology following tautology, abhorrent misusages requiring immediate deletions forthwith". I could quibble and say that "immediate" makes "forthwith" redundant (and vice-versa), but given the content of the sentence I think it is fitting. In my infinite discretion I hereby award the inaugural "Brainstar" to ZeroGravitas. If anybody can better 17, they're welcome to try. Thanks to all those who gave a damn about this truly Earth-shattering subject. JackofOz 22:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've got an even longer one! "Generally, responses answering extremely eccentric Reference questions regarding pastatute emphazing, welcoming incessant weirdness, generated confusion; everybody endlessly misspells "emphasize"." That's 19, and it's Reference Desk-themed, too! I don't know if it's entirely grammatically correct, though, because it suddenly jumps to the present tense, but it's the best I could find. I'm not sure about the spelling of "emphazing", either, but emphaziing is too long."JackOfOz's difficult, extremely enjoyable brainstar challenge generates prolonged sentences." works too, but it's a bit shorter -- only 9 words. (These sentences are fun!) --Cadaeib (talk) 21:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

verb form of "Wikipedia"

What is the verb form of "Wikipedia," if there is an accepted or prevailing form? Aside from contributing to the decay of the English language, a verb would be of great convenience. I would no longer have to say, "I want to look up an article on [topic] in the Wikipedia," simply, "I want to [verb] [topic]."

I use the word wikipedia itslef, as in "I'm going to wikipedia English verbs." This construction is analogous to Google's, as in "He googled a famous celebrity," which is now more established or accepted.--El aprendelenguas 02:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely. When in doubt, wikipedia it. —Keenan Pepper 03:42, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One thing I have always liked about English is that it sounds better the more originally you use it. That's why I "hit the 'pedia", "WP it up", or maybe even "give it a wik'" if I'm in high spirits. freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 13:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then what is the gerund form? I usually use "wikipediing," but perhaps there is another form that would be more aesthetic. (While someone's at that, find a nice form for the participle too.)

I would usually shorten the root to 'wikiped-', as it makes things easier and smoother, but others may differ on this. Hence, "I Wikipede, You wikipede, He/She/It/Sie wikipedes", "wikipeding", "wikipeded", "wikipode (?)". Not so sure about this for the pluperfect. "He'd wikipode all day, but still had the urge for more wikipeding." Skittle 09:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Am I the only person to find such gratuitous usage hideous to the ear? And the idea that any would be preferred like standardising toothache? Maybe there's a word for unreasonable fear of verbing? Notinasnaid 09:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we should make an end to making use of any excessive verbs. How many verbs is there a need for a language to have anyway? I will be sure to have limits on my verbs in the future :-) Skittle 14:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Detroit, Michigan - using IPA

I recently was told that the IPA spelling for Detroit is off. However, I am not sure exactly what it should be and would appreciate some feedback on this. Pentawing^Talk 04:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What specifically do they say is wrong? I'd say it's fine. Of course, pronunciations vary. For example (depending perhaps on my mood, setting, surrounding words, who knows?), I myself use |i| and |ə| interchangeable for the e (maybe even |ʌ| on occasion and |e| in a "Frenchish" setting but speaking English). -user:rasd

The message concerning the IPA spelling was left at Wikipedia:Peer_review#Detroit, Michigan. Pentawing^Talk 22:24, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

x

What does /x\ mean or stand for? I have searched wiki and google and have only come up with unrelated results.

/x/? Do you mean voiceless velar fricative? --KJ 06:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It could be a smiley face. Looks to me like a smiley face expressing grief, not unlike >_<. freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 13:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Ya gotta help me, doc. I keep dreaming about teepees and wigwams. It's driving me crazy." "Take two of these," the shrink replies. "You're two tents."

So, with the right font, maybe /x\ is a smiley for tense? --Halcatalyst 15:10, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If we're talking IPA, it's probably X-SAMPA for voiceless palatal-velar fricative.--Prosfilaes 05:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mind you, it could be Leet for a capital M... Grutness...wha? 12:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The trend of Japanese writing

When I visited Japan recently, I was astonished by the prevalence of the use of Katakana which replaced a lot of Hiragana or Kanji. I wonder where can I find official or academic survey about this phenomenon.

"Replaced" is a little bit presumptuous, the official spelling will probably never change. There is a misunderstanding about katakana that it is only used to signify borrowed words. Katakana has also been used historically in a manner similar to italics in English. Though it is true that katakana are often used for style (いいネ！) as opposed to italic emphasis (スゴイ！), it would be extremely difficult to determine which case is which, so I doubt there's any possibility of finding any academic papers on the topic. I have seen a few papers on popular writing style though, so there might be some information about katakana use there. Another thing to remember is that animal names are almost always written in katakana (カエル, イルカ) and this is standard style. Kanji for animal names are generally quite complex (キリン, giraffe, is 麒麟) and as most of them come direct from Chinese, while the words themselves generally don't, it's difficult for Japanese people to remember which kanji to use, so it's understandable that they are rarely used anymore (though names like 海豚, meaning "sea pig", or dolphin, are popular for quiz shows). freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 13:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

origin of a phrase

Hi everyone

What does 'to lose one's thread mean literally and what is the origin of the phrase. Thank you v much.

"To lose the thread" means to cease following (or understanding) how different parts of a story or argument are connected. I think the origin is the myth of Ariadne, Theseus and the Minotaur. David Sneek 10:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good ol' Theseus did not lose his. It could be, more flatly, a weaver's fault. You have to find the thread and make a knott and roll it back in the shuttle. Or a spinster's ? --DLL 18:46, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure it has to do with Theseus. We have the same way of saying in Italian, but to refer to a topic thread we also use "filo conduttore", which means "conductive wire" (as "filo" means either "thread" and "wire"). And "filo di Arianna" (Ariadne's thread) means "a way/expedient to get out from a difficult situation". I tend to think the way of saying the OP points out just originates from the "means to connect things" sense which is intrinsic in the word "thread". This is just my hypothesis. —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 15:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

holus bolus

I am trying to find the correct spelling for "holus bolus", as well as, the original language, and, the English translation. It seems to be a less popular phrase these days.70.27.185.36 13:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably unrelated, but I can't stop thinkin hocus pocus. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 15:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm skeptical that this was intended to have any very definite meaning, but in Latin "holus" is a vegetable and "bolus" a throw, while in early modern English a "bolus" was a pill. AnonMoos 16:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"bolus" is still a pill in medical circles. User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:59, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or a large dose of liquid medication given through an IV or nasogastric tube.... - Nunh-huh 07:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What does it mean anyway? Jameswilson 22:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When I want to know how to spell a word, I look it up in a dictionary. Mine says the word is spelled "holus-bolus", is first attested to in 1857, that its etymology is probably reduplication of "bolus", and that it means "all at once". - Nunh-huh 07:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"holder-bolder" and "holderste-bolder" are phrases found in Flemish and Afrikaans. Both languages still use it, in a humorous sort of sense. The earliest reference I find is in 1880, 25 years before Afrikaans even became recognised as a language! It means something like "all bundled together" "head over heels" "a rushed tumbling together". The early reference, in a developing Dutch derived language, makes me think it must have corresponding phrases in Dutch or German, but it could even be English, or derived from a Scottish phrase. The English phrase I have not heard before, but if I did I would understand it as meaning something similar to the Flemish/Afrikaans, given Nunh-huh's explanation. I will see if I can find something in the library. --Seejyb 23:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He he. "holder-bolder" reminds me of the alternative name for a brassiere, "over-shoulder boulder-holder". JackofOz 00:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hence the German, BH? :-) Skittle 09:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Backwards story

What is the name for a story which begins with the ending, and then travels backwards in order to show how the events shown happened? smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 14:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You mean like Memento? The only term I can think of is "confusing". The article on Memento, though links to Reverse chronology. Angr (t • c) 14:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One of the Wayside stories was written backwards, with each paragraph following the one that should have come before it. Then it kind of loops back on itself. Black Carrot 02:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I was thinking of the music video for Coldplay's The Scientist, where Chris Martin lives a day backwards, ending/starting with a car accident. SMURRAY|IN|CHESTER 19:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Correct pronunciation

I've heard umami pronounced several ways. Who knows? --hydnjo talk 17:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you're Japanese, then /umami/. --KJ 17:50, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite, Japanese "u" is unrounded: [ɯmami]. —Zero Gravitas 18:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Close back unrounded vowel says it isn't quite the same. --KJ 05:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you explain as "sounds like" or "rhymes with" -- thanks. --hydnjo talk 18:42, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this correct? --hydnjo talk 19:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to check out the article on the International Phonetic Alphabet. "Sounds like" and "rhymes with" isn't that helpful because English is pronounced differently in different parts of the world. That said, the wav file you linked two is roughly saying [juː.mɑ.mɪi]. The vowels would be promounced differently, and the opening sound is wrong. (If anything, "tsunami" would probably be the closest "rhymes with", assuming Japanese pronunciations).--Andrew c 23:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it helps at all, I've always heard it as 'oo-ma-mee', with a short 'a' like in cat, and the vowels fairly short ('oomammy'?). But this is in no way definitive or correct, as far as I know. Skittle 23:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many people pronounce "cat" with the vowel [æ], which is not the same as [a] in most parts of the United States (in which I think most people perceive [a] phonemically as /ɑ/). Ardric47 23:51, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Damnit! Why can't the simple example be simple? Now I think about it, the stereotypical American accent in my head doesn't pronounce 'cat' with a short 'a'. In fact, almost with a diphthong. Skittle 09:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In many methods of teaching literacy, [eɪ] is considered a "long a" and [æ] a "short a." I do not like that terminology at all from a linguistic stand point, but when teaching a person how to read, the instructor has to simplify names for vowels sounds. Explaining the sounds as "long a" and "short a" can be useful for teaching literacy since they are usually represented by the same grapheme, i.e. <<a>>.--El aprendelenguas 02:22, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all for your responses. :-) --hydnjo talk 11:50, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A word to describe...

Is there a word that is used to describe a word which describes itself. I cant think of any examples but say, for example:

the meaning of the word" elaplozaba" is simply "elaplozaba"

Heh, I know it sounds like a silly question but yes.

Thank you

self-referential? --hydnjo talk 21:09, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The word pentasyllabic is self-descriptive because it means "having five syllables" and it has five syllables. I don't know what elaplozaba means (or even what language it is) so I don't know if you're talking about the same thing. —Keenan Pepper 21:18, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It was a made up word they were using as a place-filler Skittle 09:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about autological. Also take a look at List of autological words. --hydnjo talk 22:08, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like the autology heteroradical (having mixed roots). smurrayinchester^(Talk) 14:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Word/phrase meaning "it proves itself"

I am trying to find a word/phrase that means something that proves itself... Such as the fact that such and such exists is proof enough of its right to exist. It's not syllogism, or Q.E.D. but something in that ballpark. Thank you for any help (Annie).

I don't understand what you mean. It's logically invalid (begging the question) to assume the thing you're trying to prove. "Right to exist" isn't a mathematical or logical concept. —Keenan Pepper 23:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you thinking along the lines of 'Raison d'etre'? Or tautological? Or something more akin to circular logic? Skittle 23:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Res ipsa loquitur? Henry ^Flower 23:29, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Although this is a specific real-life example, there are things called self-authenticating documents. Ardric47 23:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ipso facto? Adam Bishop 01:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Self-evident?--Jondel 02:24, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think ipso facto is what you're looking for; it means literally translated from Latin, "by the fact, itself" or "because of the fact itself". J. Finkelstein 02:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ipso facto is an adverbial phrase (or something like that). I'm not sure that this is what we're after. Ipso facto is used to describe how something means what it means or how the mere existence of one fact leads immediately to another fact (eg. I am an Australian citizen, and ipso facto I am subject to Australian law). But it is not used to refer to something itself, in a pronominal or adjectival sense (eg. we never talk about "an ipso facto", or "an ipso facto expression"). I'm leaning towards Jondel's self-evident, or even obvious. JackofOz 10:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can I use the word Solipsism (n.) in this way? (Annie)............"c'est le va sans dire"??hotclaws**==(82.138.214.1 13:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Mathematically one would say axiom / axiomatic. To what extent does that concept apply to your requirement? --Seejyb 20:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Self-illuminating ? Cela va sans dire .. mais cela va tellement mieux en le disant. (Goes without telling ... so much better to tell anyway).

Even G...d won't try to prove himself. .In today's world, either something is evident, either it's not. In maths, either is is an axiom inside a specific corpus, either it must be proven. --DLL 22:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

May 24

Pedometer lovers

(moved from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities)

A pedometer or step counter is a device, usually portable and electronic, which counts each step a person makes.

So what are people who likes pedometers a lot called? Ohanian 00:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pedometer fans. Or, to give an answer as close as possible to what you're hoping someone will say: pedometerphiles. So you're close to getting your punchline, but not close enough. --DavidGC 01:09, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This should be in the Language section, but OED says the "pedo" in "pedometer" comes from the Latin prefix "ped-", meaning "foot." The "pedo" in "pedophile" comes from the Greek prefix "paido-", meaning "child." -- Mwalcoff 01:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So it could mean a person who loves to measure children?schyler 01:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Extrapolate from "podiatrist." It would be, podimeterophile, while the foot fetishist might be a podiphile, and people very fond of certain sea creatures might be pseudopodiphiles. Geogre 02:43, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A bit of the problem for the confusion lies in the ~~annoying~~ habit in American English of leaving out ~~useful and necessary~~ vowels. It would be muich more clear cut talking about pedometers and paedophiles. Grutness...wha? 03:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, Grutness. I assume your vowel restoration campaign has already started (or is "muich" an established Enzedism?) :--) JackofOz 04:20, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, I don't think the American English language suffers much from being unable to find a single word to describe pedometer aficionados. --DavidGC 03:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now if English had been more true to its Germanic roots, you could simply form "stepcounterlover" or similar. But ever since it fell head-over-heels in love with Latin and Greek, it seems it's been trying to forget its roots and family. :) Well I'm just going to say "schrittezählerfreund", damnit. ;) --BluePlatypus 06:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Count is Romance too, I'm afraid. It would have to be "steptellerlover". Angr (t • c) 07:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I knew it! Newspeak had a real-life counterpart! schyler 10:23, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't a foot fetishist be a podophile?

Strange script

Which script is this, in which this Pali bible is written ? deeptrivia (talk) 04:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that Sinhala? --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 05:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
it looks like burmese--Dlayiga 05:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is the Burmese alphabet. This is the same passage in Burmese. Sinhala is similar, but not the same. Angr (t • c) 07:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So, burmese it is, then. Thanks! deeptrivia (talk) 13:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. The language is Pāli, but the alphabet (or strictly abugida) is the Burmese one rather than Devanāgarī (which is what Pāli is more usually written in). Angr (t • c) 14:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

10,000 year period

The following are well known: 10 years = 1 decade, 100 years = 1 century, 1000 years = 1 millenium. Does anyone know if there is a name for a 10,000 year period? (if not, lets invent one) Thanks

Wànsuì, manse, banzai. See ten thousand years. Notinasnaid 15:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Latinate word would be decamillennium, although I've never seen it used. —Keenan Pepper 20:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A myriad is 10 000 of anything, in Greek. Adam Bishop 05:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take two. --DLL 12:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about biitbibibiidithexsolloop or bi'tbibibi'dithexsol'oop ;-)

Which transalted from Sigsumedsi(Portal) as '2710 star cycles'?

10,000(hexdecmial) 65536(decimal) star cycles would be hexitititsol'oop BTW

Hmm maybe hexititita in english for 10,000 years?

ShakespeareFan00 14:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic transliteration

I am making a map of Sudan in the SVG format. The map I'm using as a base (Image:Sudan political map 2000.jpg) uses a system of Arabic transliteration that includes the characters H with cedilla (Ḩ), D with cedilla (Ḑ), and T with cedilla (Ţ). None of these characters show up properly when the SVG is uploaded to Wikipedia, probably because the Wikimedia servers don't have fonts installed that include these characters. I could, of course, disregard the cedillas, but I want to be as accurate as possible. The Encyclopædia Britannica seems to use a dot under the letters instead of a cedilla, but the dotted versions don't work either. Is there another recommended system of transliteration for AL BAḨR AL AḨMAR, AL QAḐĀRIF, and AL KHARŢŪM? —Bkell 19:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I put Template:Unicode around your uses of those characters. It helps the software select appropriate fonts...I have absolutely no idea whether this is applicable to your image, though. Ardric47 02:11, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, thanks. Unfortunately I can't do something like that in an SVG image. —Bkell (talk) 02:15, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are quite a few transcription systems for Arabic, but almost all of them that properly distinguish between separate Arabic letters use diacritic combinations which are not in ISO-8859-1, so if you can't use characters outside of ISO-8859-1, then switching transcription systems won't really help. The dots are more common than the cedillas in most fields -- in this case, I would just manually position the dots underneath the letters using an ordinary non-diacritic period or stop character. AnonMoos 02:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or you could just translate them -- al-Baħr al-Aħmar is Arabic for "red sea", Shamal Darfur is "north Darfur", Gharb Darfur is "west Darfur", Janub Darfur is "south Darfur", ash-Shamaliyya is "North (region)" etc. ... AnonMoos 02:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some characters outside of ISO-8859-1 work just fine, such as Ā and Ū; see Image:Bkell-test.svg, for example. I've considered using the translations of the names of the states, too, but then the problem would surely arise again in the names of some cities. —Bkell (talk) 03:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that Wikipedia can display them, but it is a matter of having the right fonts on your machine to see them. For example, the table in Arabic transliteration: at my computer at home I see all the letters nicely because I have fonts that can show them, but here at work I see squares for a lot of the letters. --Cam 19:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We're talking about the built-in SVG (vector) to PNG rasterizer, not multilingual HTML (which is displayed differently by different browsers). AnonMoos 19:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you add something to your slam poetry page?

I was pleased to find that on your slam poetry entry there was Regie Gibson, a slam poet. He came to our school and we all loved him very much. I was wondering if you could find out a little more about him and post it on this site. I think that he would appreciate this very very much. He has a very kind soul and loves kids. This would mean a lot to him. Regie taught our classes a lot including, slam poetry, how to make your own poems, the sound of language, the rythm in language and many others. Thank you very much.

Be bold : gather data and add them to the page, it's easy. No personal souvenirs please. --DLL 21:54, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ESL

In your opinion, what is the easiest, least confusing, and successful method of teaching for a student learning English as a second language when the student and the teacher share a common language by which to communicate? If you do not have the name of the method, please mention some of the techniques, such as using many pictures to represent words. Thank you.--El aprendelenguas 21:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cohabitation. If that's not an option, you would need to specify (at least) whether they are operating in an English-speaking country, and whether we're talking about classes or one-on-one tutorials. Henry ^Flower 21:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Emmersion. The teacher should not use the other language as a crutch. --Nelson Ricardo 02:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is that an electronic version of immersion ? :-) StuRat 22:39, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Podcasts. There is a good podcast for free at http://www.eslpod.com.Patchouli 03:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback so far. To clarify further, I am looking for a method to teach English as a second language to a Spanish-speaker in the United States. Therefore, the student has already been emmersed in an English-speaking environment. I have been instructed to use the Laubach Method to English as a teaching basis, but I can include other teaching methods as well to better cover the required material. I speak Spanish, but the Laubach method is designed enable a instructor to teach a student English with no means by which to communicate. For example, the Laubach method says to use universal gestures for "listen" and "repeat." Is it okay for me to use Spanish when I am teaching the student, at least for these gestures? How about to explain English grammar? To provide a definition for English words that are unfamilar to the student?--El aprendelenguas 01:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Theory for language syntax determining thought patterns

A friend of mine studying language in France mentioned a theory to me that holds that the syntax of a language plays a role in determing the thinking patterns of those who grow up with that language as their primary language. For example, if your language has no word for numbers higher than 100, you will likely have difficulty conceptualizing large numbers of things. I remember this theory from my university studies too, but have completely forgotten the name of the person who originally proposed it. However, I'm certain that it's not who my friend is studying, as that person only wrote his thesis about 50 years ago, and I think the theory is older than that. Can anyone offer any leads as to who originated this theory? I would run a search for the name of the theory, but I've forgotten that as well. Thx. --DavidGC 23:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It might be related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. —Bkell (talk) 23:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's it exactly! I remembered the name as soon as I read it... annoying how that works. :) Thanks for your help! --DavidGC 23:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another name for this theory is "total bollocks". Angr (t • c) 11:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, because the correlation between language and genes is clearly strong. --DLL 21:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

May 25

Cursing at buddies

I've noticed some American english and Mexican/American Spanish speakers use swear words as terms of endearment between friends (i.e. ¿Qué pasa güey? or 'Tsup, bitch?). Do any other languages do this? I'm guessing it's cultural, but I'd be interested to know if such a thing exists in any other european or asian languages.-- The ikiroid 03:00, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In Japan, the closer people are, the more offensive the pronoun they use when referring to each other, though it's probably not as common as it is in English. It's difficult to classify them as "swear words" because they have no real literal meaning, but the effect of the words (for example, omae, koitsu, konoyarō) is identical. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 06:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

a'Strayin, the native language of Australia, often encompasses swear words as terms of endearment between friends. For example "How ahh ya today ya f&*cking badger?" or "how's it goin', boxhead?". --AQjosh 13:54, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this also happens in the Spanish from Spain (among males mainly), provided it's an informal circumstance, there's enough confidence between the friends and a certain intonation/body language is used. --RiseRover|^talk 17:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Same in Thai, although for females as well as males. Henry ^Flower 18:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My friends don't, but my mum's friends do. We're Korean. --KJ 01:33, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the Midlands of England, "Cock" is used a lot (see #6).
Slumgum | yap | stalk | 01:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What word describes someone who can't stand the sight of blood and gore?

What word do you use to describe someone who can't stand the sight of blood and gore? The only one I can think of is "squeamish". Do you know of another (and perhaps better) one? --68.238.243.228 04:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to sound all psychological, you can say "hemophobia", meaning the fear of blood. But "squeamish" is certainly better for most purposes.--Pharos 07:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An Utopia

I came across this while writing an essay. Usually, all words that begin with a vowel are preceeded by "an" instead of "a". However I noticed I didn't write this in the sentance "How do we achieve these goals of a utopian future". Why don't I write "an utopia" - it doesn't sound right, I know, but why is it an exception to the rule? What other exceptions are there? --DanielBC 06:53, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's not really a vowel, it's the consonant Y. Adam Bishop 06:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"An" is used with words beginning in a vowel sound, not merely spelled with an initial vowel letter. As Adam Bishop noted, it's a consonant, the palatal approximant, [j] in IPA. —Zero Gravitas 07:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See a, an for more information. —Bkell (talk) 08:38, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The same being true for when a word begins with a consonant but sounds like a vowel, thus is preceded by "an", as seen in "An historical event". Although apparently "a historical event" is acceptable too.

"A historical event" is correct in the U.S., since we pronounce the "h". --Nelson Ricardo 14:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Historical" is weird one. If someone asked me how I pronounce it, I'd probably include the h. However, when actually using it in conversation, I think I skip it. I think that may be true of a lot of 'h's, although they're not always completely inaudible. I think that's why it's so hard to decide, and neither 'a' nor 'an' sounds quite right (to me). Skittle 14:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the H in honor is ever pronounced by anybody, so honor is usually my example word: An honor. —Bkell (talk) 18:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The choice of indefinate article depends on your pronunciation. In some English dialects, "an 'orse" is perfectly valid, but for non-native speakers, "a horse" would be more appropriate. --vibo56 20:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Encourage to speak in English

What is the most effective way to encourage my fellow students to speak in English. I live in the Philipines and English is the second language here. thanks.

Are you Filipino? There is peer pressure to not speak English. But I don't know if this normal. (I imagine in France, they don't want to speak English even if they could )Sometimes you get misinterpreted as being pretentious or elitist despite the fact that English is one of the most spoken languages. Speaking English is construed as pretending to be 'rich'. The truth is almost everyone , even waiters, jeepney drives, etc can (but won't )speak English. They (we) get conscious. It is only for the media, TV , government, church, school, etc.--Jondel 07:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Encouragement will almost never work. If you’re a teacher, the most you could probably do is expect that they talk to you in English in classroom situations. It might get most of them pissed, but it works, and they’ll probably respect you for that. Trying to get a Pinoy, even one who is an Anglophone, to speak English colloquially among his schoolmates (or in university) is hopeless. Going at it alone (i.e. speaking English regardless of what language they respond to you in) is also not recommended (unless you’re a woman, it seems, then it’s okay; but you’ll appear snooty and unapproachable).

But I guess the key here is to expect, and not merely encourage. —Manlalakbay 09:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why should they speak English? As Filipinos, it is only right that they should speak in Tagalog, much as Americans should speak English. --Nelson Ricardo 14:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Preference. Many, but definitely a tiny minority of, Filipino families are Anglophone, and whole communities of these exist throughout the country (or at least in the Manila metropolitan area). —Manlalakbay 14:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it is in an English class, it's up to the teacher, not a student, to figure out how to encourage English use in class. I tried the old coffee-can trick a couple of times (coin in the can for every time you speak Spanish, Catalan, whatever--money to be spent on a party in the end).

If you want English conversation practice, you are better finding a group that does this kind of thing, or starting one yourself. An English lunch group, or something like that. But I don't think it's too much to say that it is a unversal desire for people to speak their native language preferably to other native language speakers. French, Tagalog, or English as the case may be. mnewmanqc

What is the name for the backside of a sunset

Like when you're looking to the East as the sun is setting, and it's all different colors and a different sky than the one at sunset. Whats that Called?

Don't know if this is the correct word for "the back of a sunset", but... if you see suns rays around the sun at sunset, they're known as crepuscular rays. On rare occasions, you can see them appear to converge on the side of the sky directly opposite the sun. When you see that, they're called anti-crepuscular rays. I'd say that, by extension, you'd be looking at the anti-crepuscular view of the sky. Grutness...wha? 12:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Riding shotgun

I seem to recall hearing this expression when I was younger - does anyone know what it means? — QuantumEleven 08:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It means you're in the front passenger seat of a vehicle. —Bkell (talk) 08:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can also call shotgun, which is to stake a claim to the front passenger seat (if a group of friends is going somewhere in a car, for example). —Bkell (talk) 08:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase first meant acting as an (armed) guard in the seat next to the driver of a vehicle. —Bkell (talk) 08:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We even have an article on it: Calling shotgun WP 09:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

El Filibusterismo, or El filibusterismo?

What is the correct capitalization of titles of novels in Spanish? I’ve always been told that only the first letter of the title (excluding names of places, people, etc.) is capitalized, but then I’m not really sure as I’ve never had to write a book report in Spanish. —Manlalakbay 09:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to this website in formal writing you only capitalize the first letter and any proper nouns, so El filibusterismo would be correct. --Think Fast 13:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Usage

Many of the wikipedia articles on biology use latin terms. One common usage is

The Viperinae is a subfamily of venomous snakes commonly known as true vipers, although the term viperines is more specific and distinguishes them from the larger viperid family.

I understand that the Viperinae could be treated as a collective noun or as a class like how one would use birds. I imagine that the correct usage should be the

The Viperinae are a subfamily of venomous snakes commonly known as true vipers<snip>

Can someone confirm the correct usage. Shyamal 11:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few differences between US and British English when it comes to the agreement in number between verbs and their subjects (British English is more flexible). However, in this case, although Viperinae is a Latin plural, it signifies a unitary sub-family. Also, note that, when the verb be is used thus, the sentence is an equation: Viperinae is on one side, and the singular noun subfamily is on the other. — Gareth Hughes 12:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't write biology articles, but I would probably omit the definite article, writing "Viperinae is a subfamily of venomous snakes…". Even though I'm from the United States, "the Viperinae" sounds too plural to use is. If I omit the definite article, then Viperinae sounds like just a Latin name for the subfamily, rather than a name for all the animals within the subfamily. —Bkell (talk) 18:23, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help with some Latin?

Got two phrases that I would like to render in Latin. I haven't taken it in uh, a decade so its a little rusty.

1. "I came, I saw, I snooped". I can't find a good synonym for snoop in the Latin dictionaries online, so right now I've just got "vini, vidi, ..."

2. "They shall not hide". Would "non abscondobunt" work?

Thanks! Namlemez 23:57, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

with 1, speculari means "to spy". I know it spoils the scan, but would that do? Grutness...wha? 01:52, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it "veni, vidi..."?--El aprendelenguas 02:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is "veni", yes, and if you want to use "speculari", it would be "speculatus sum" because it is deponent. For "they shall not hide", if you want to use "abscondere", it is third declension, so it would be "non abscondent". Adam Bishop 02:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]