Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language

Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

October 6

Terbium, Erbium, Ytterbium

These elements were all named after Ytterby village. Questions:

1. Which element was named first??
2. How were the element names able to deviate (independent of the statement that each element needs its own name)??
3. How was it decided which element got which name??

Georgia guy (talk) 00:38, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Looking up Svenska Akademien's dictionaries, yttrium is from 1818-1820, terbium from 1843-1844, and erbium and ytterbium from 1881-1888. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:58, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Yttrium was discovered in 1794, erbium and terbium in 1843, ytterbium in 1878. Burzuchius (talk) 16:08, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Burzuchius, please remember that this is about the names of the elements, not the elements themselves. Georgia guy (talk) 16:29, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

When it comes to advice here, ya get what ya pay for. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:25, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

But in general, the element name is only coined when the element has actually been discovered. :) Double sharp (talk) 07:48, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

As explained at Erbium#History, the names of erbium and terbium became switched along the way. Deor (talk) 17:44, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Martinus Nutius Translation

Good afternoon, hopeful for some assistance on this. An editor has requested translation on a couple of parts of the above article, and I'm having trouble with making sense of it, and I don't know where the original text came from to find context, I'm hoping you can help. The text is:

• In 1541 his address was "In Sint Jacob, naest die Gulden panne, op die pleijne van de Iseren waghe"

Which I believe to mean "In Saint Jacob, next to the Golden Roof, on the square of the Iseren wagon" (or possibly Iseren Weighing house if we say it should be waegh instead of waghe) except as best I can tell, Saint Jacob was/is a church, and the rest doesn't really fit. The second section is:

• In 1543 he was buyten die Camerpoorte in den Gulden Eenhoren

Or, "outside the Camerpoorte in the Golden Unicorn", I can find that The Golden Unicorn house was a property at the time, but can find nothing on "Camerpoorte", closest I can find is this which mentions the Golden Unicorn was in the "Kammenstraat", the printers quarter, so perhaps Camerpoorte is an error? Thank you for your help--Jac16888 ^Talk 15:45, 6 October 2024 (UTC) --Jac16888 ^Talk 15:45, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

It's Old Dutch, so the orthography differs. I guess Iseren waghe could be "Iron waves" which is befitting a golden church roof. Camerpoorte is probably akin to kamerpoort, chamber gate. My Dutch isn't that great, but hopefully it could be a start. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:22, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess panne could be pan, other than roof, as well. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:24, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

The addresses are discussed in this text. Isere waghe is translated into French as Poids de fer, i.e. "iron weight". Cammer is translated as brasseur, i.e. "beer brewer". The Camerpoorte sounds like the name of a city gate, and the Golden Unicorn would have been outside. There is a nl:Kammenstraat, and a pension (one star on Tripadvisor, got to be good) by the name of "Camerpoorte" in nearby Nationaalstraat. In Sint Jacob would mean "in the parish of Sint Jacob" (if that wasn't clear), so in today's Universiteitsbuurt. --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:16, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh, walking around on Google maps, I find an alley by the name of Izerenwaag, just off Kammenstraat, but at some distance from Sint Jacob.--Wrongfilter (talk) 17:23, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Middle Dutch iseren means "(of) iron", waghe can mean "wave", but also, more likely here, "weighing scales" as well as a building where goods are officially weighed, which typically would be located on a square. While cammer means "brewer", the expected form of a compound meaning "brewer's gate" is cammerspoorte. Camer may be a clipped form of camere, which means "vault", "chamber", so the Camerpoort may have been a vaulted city gate, but also a gatehouse accommodating some guild or guild-like society, such as a chamber of rhetoric.  --Lambiam 12:59, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

"Gulden panne" means Golden pan (as in the thing you use for cooking). I suppose that's the name of an inn or something like that. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:20, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

October 7

Is it better to put similar items together in a list?

"We began by varying the radius of the coil while holding fixed the velocity of the magnet and the number of turns in coil."

This sounds odd to me. My intuition is that the sentence should read "We began by varying the radius of the coil while holding fixed the number of turns in coil and the velocity of the magnet", so that the two items about the coil are put together. Is this a standard intuition? Is this aimless pedantry? 150.203.2.201 (talk) 04:29, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

If the velocity is a more relevant variable than the number of terms turns, to the paper and to the reader, than it's appropriate in prose to say the more relevant term prose first (but that's not a fixed rule of course). Velocity is more relevant if the subject of the paper is presumably something like Lorentz force and not ordinary magnetic induction. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:46, 7 October 2024 (UTC) [Edit: 11 October self-edit because I mixed up a bunch of words with near-homonyms because maybe I was super-tired?] SamuelRiv (talk)

German dialect

Someone on youtube comments:[1]

Merci für diä videos wo du machsch ha dis buäch sit jahrä und ersch sit churtzem usä gfundä das du YouTube machsch 🇨🇭🇨🇭

I can sort of read it but am wondering mostly what dialect it is. From the context and the Swiss flag codes, can I infer that it is Swiss German? Thanks. 2602:243:2008:8BB0:F494:276C:D59A:C992 (talk) 21:36, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, I asked chatgpt about it, and it agreed that it was Swiss German. Fabrickator (talk) 21:42, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

🇨🇭🇨🇭 would indicate Switzerland, yes. Then, Swiss German is pretty much a dialectal area, anyway. It's not a particularly uniform variety, I believe. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:47, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

You may want to pose this query on the German reference desk, available under the language selector in the header of the ref-window. Allemannic dialects are spoken from the Alsace, down Switzerland and Baden-Württemberg to South Tyrol. As mentioned above, it is a range of dialects and any written form seems unreliable. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

(native Swiss German speaker speaking) It's clearly Swiss German. As there is no standard orthography, it's not easy to say exactly which Swiss German dialect the author speaks, but it could almost even be mine. (and just in case you want to add to your "sort of" reading, this is the translation: "Thank you for those videos you make. Have had your book for years, and only recently discovered that you do YouTube." (my unauthorized punctuation) ---Sluzzelin talk 21:50, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Just curious, could you send me a link to the video? Wondering what it's about now. Taiyaki Schizo (talk) 18:10, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

It's linked in the original post; "Smart Trick to craft a Feather Stick with a Swiss Army Knife / Bushcraft - Survival - Outdoor". It's in English, though (albeit with a thick German accent). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:44, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

October 8

Popularity of Greek

On 6 October 2024, the 'Top read' article was Greek language (Still visible on mobile app; I don't know if the list can be linked from here?) with 1.6M views. Given that the Greek language is neither a singer, a YouTube influencer, a US politician, or recently deceased, what caused this outburst of interest in it? -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 19:09, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't actually Greek language, but Greek alphabet. Somebody reported the spike earlier today on Talk:Greek alphabet; nobody had a good explanation for it yet. The statistics can be seen here: https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2015-07-01&end=2024-10-06&pages=Greek_alphabet. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:35, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Also, the stats page shows it was literally a single-day spike, jumping from around 10,000 per day to 1.6M on just one day (5 October), and then immediately back to normal the next day. I'd say that almost certainly excludes an explanation by a genuine sudden spike in human reader interest – I expect it must be some bot activity, software glitch or some such. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:40, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Ooops! My bad. Thanks for the correction. But that explains why there was no mention at Talk:Greek language. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 20:03, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

October 14

Knyttr knutr

Could someone please translate the following Old Norse as faithfully as possible into English (long story short: The first Knut in history was apparently called thusly because he was a foundling found with a knot - that much I found out when I wrote de:Knut (Vorname) some years ago. But apparently it isn't clear where this "knot" was knotted - like a bandana around his head, or was it a piece of cloth knotted in the woods?):

þat var lagt vndir uidar rætr ok knyttr knutr mykill j enninu a silkidregli er þat hafde vm hofudit. þar var j ỏrtugar gull. barnnit var uafit j guduefiar pelle. þeir taka upp barnit ok hafa hæim med ser ok koma sua hæim er konungr sat yfir drykkiubordum ok hirdin ok saka sig vm þat er þeir hofdu æigi gad at fylgia konungi heim. en konungr kuazst æigi firir þetta mundu ræidr uera. ok nu sogdu þeir konunginum huat georzst hafde j forum þeirra. en hann beiddizst at sia suæininn ok let ser færa ok læitzst uel a sueininn ok mællti. sueinn sia mun vera storra manna ok betri fundinn en æigi. ok let sidan vatnne ausa ok nafnn gefa ok kallade Knut."

Thanks, --2A02:3033:700:E174:D497:BFFF:FE06:1B53 (talk) 18:56, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

This is part of the Jómsvíkinga saga, written in the Old Icelandic dialect of Old Norse. Given how conservative Icelandic is, translating it as if it is modern Icelandic should usually give one a fairly good idea. For the first sentence, Google translate produces, "[The child] was laid on the back of the head and a knot was tied on the forehead with a silk rug that covered the head."  --Lambiam 07:48, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

The full text and its translation can be found here: The Saga of the Jomsvikings, but apparently from a different manuscript since the wording differs somewhat. As regards the naming of Knútr, the editor has added a footnote (p. 2):

The saga-writer understood Knútr to mean 'knot' and so an explanation is given for its origin, as so often in the sagas. But the name Chnuz occurs among the Alemanni, (Bac A. Deutsche Namenkunde II 342, 350) and the ON word may be a loan word from OHG.

Alansplodge (talk) 08:38, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

What would the name mean, in that case? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:28, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

October 15

What my question is is is my question well phrased?

What I had had, had disappeared.

The second example is even better, because it doesn't need quotation marks (for any direct speech).

Two questions:

a) Bedises the consecutive identical words "had", are there other instances of three consecutive identical words (without quotation marks and without proper nouns), in a grammatically proper sentence, as far as the English language is concerned?

b) What about other languages (regardless of the analogous word for the English word "had" in those languages)?

HOTmag (talk) 04:08, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Your header question can be rendered more obviously grammatical with punctuation:

"What my question is, is 'is it a grammatically proper sentence?'"

Your second example likewise:

"What I had had, 'had "had" disappeared'".

In neither case are the quotation marks absolutely required, but they render the meanings much more obvious.

Regarding (a), there are doubtless other similar possibilities, and you are surely familiar with the famous "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"."? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 05:36, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the memorandum about the buffalo. But I need an instance of three consecutive identical words, without proper nouns and without quotation marks (i.e. adding them will make the sentence ungrammatical). HOTmag (talk) 06:30, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

The buffalo* sentence contains three consecutive identical common words.  --Lambiam 08:04, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Yep. HOTmag (talk) 08:19, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Then there's James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:59, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Not only does your example remain in the same frame of "had" (while I asked for another frame), it also contains no "three consecutive identical words, without proper nouns and without quotation marks", hence it does not fulfill the requirement. HOTmag (talk) 08:16, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah yeah yeah. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:49, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh, this is what I was looking for ! Thanx thanx thanx. HOTmag (talk) 12:55, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Really really really big

Great great great grandfather 115.188.72.131 (talk) 08:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

See: Eckler, A. Ross (1996). "A Soup Can Can Can-Can; Can You?". Word Ways. 29 (2): 89–95. Avessa (talk) 12:44, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I notice that those English examples heavily depend on three properties of the English language:

• In some cases, you can make a dependent clause without any form of conjunction or relative pronoun.
• You can make compounds by just putting words together, spaced, but without any linking sounds.
• Conjugation of verbs and declination of nouns is very limited.

In English, constituents may appear in relatively fixed order, but without clear markers giving the boundaries of such constituents, you can still make incomprehensible word soup. I consider parsing complex sentences in for example German easier, even when the main verb is several lines down from the subject. (My native language is Dutch.) PiusImpavidus (talk) 15:55, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Have you seen the list of linguistic example sentences? — Kpalion^(talk) 08:39, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Money money money.^[2][3][4]  --Lambiam 08:02, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Had had

The expression "had had", is exlusive in that it is (probably) the most common English expression composed of two consecutive words - with identical spellings but with different meanings (Past Simple and Past Participle of the verb "have").

It seems to be even more common than "twenty twenty" (in which: only the first "twenty" means two thousand), and also more common than any two consecutive identical words one of which is a proper noun or a word inside quotation marks, like: say "say", write "write", hear "hear", like "like", and likewise.

The same phenomenon is found in Frisian (which is pretty close to English): had had = hie hie.

Are there other languages sharing the same property, as far as the verb "have" is concerned? HOTmag (talk) 05:08, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

"Twenty twenty" is (was) a very common pronunciation for the year 2020, but is not very commonly written out in words in that form. AnonMoos (talk) 07:21, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Of course. HOTmag (talk) 07:44, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

The other Germanic languages, which would be the most likely guess, all seem to have different forms for the simple past and past participle (and some, like German and Dutch, also put the participle at the end of the sentence). Smurrayinchester 08:50, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Past participle is also found in languages other than the Germanic ones, for example: Romance langauges (e.g. French, Spanish), Celtic languages (e.g. Welsh, Cornic), Indo-Iranian languages (e.g. Sanskrit). HOTmag (talk) 09:14, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

French has the passé antérieur, a form of the pluperfect, with il eut eu. Whether you accept that depends on whether you want identical spelling or are satisfied with identical pronunciation. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:27, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes (also: eus eu, eût eu). HOTmag (talk) 17:43, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

In some AAVE English, you can have the duplicated words been been form a stressed remote past progressive tense (there are a bunch of variant aspects -- detailed in e.g. Stevanin 2004 pp. 41--42.) The first 'been'/'BIN' is a stressed marker and remote past aspect, and the second is the past progressive 'been'.

Presumably since 'done'/'DUN' can also be used as an auxiliary particle (ibid. pp. 42--43), one could similarly see the constructed aspect done done, but I haven't heard of it. SamuelRiv (talk) 16:27, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I assume then that you are not from the American South, as "done done" is pretty common. Example:

Person 1: "I'm going to mow the yard."

Person 2: "No need, I've done done it." --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:56, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

No I'm not. In that construction, is the initial "done" in that example being used in the stressed+remote aspect as "been" was described in the paper? (Sounds like it, but not sure.)

Also as an extra side note, most English usage (and most(?) other languages) has reduplication emphasis, as in these examples: "You good? Yeah, good-good."; "Do you like, as in like-like him?"; "I'm done. Done-done. Not a single thing left to do." The difference with the verb particle is (among other things) that it can be used in a full subject-verb-object sentence. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:49, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by the remote aspect. "I've done (ie "already") done it (ie "mowed the grass")."--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:57, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

"That that" is also fairly common. You can find it in Shakespeare and the KJV. --Amble (talk) 17:25, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Also: "(He gave) her her (book)". HOTmag (talk) 09:28, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

In Finnish, it is ei ollut ollut and eivät olleet olleet. And does English ever use passive forms of to be, such as "has been been", "had been been", "will have been been" and "would have been been"? --40bus (talk) 06:46, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

40bus -- English theoretically allows a "had been being X'ed" construction ("They had been being followed" or whatever), but it's usually rather awkward in practice, and it doesn't occur too frequently. Nothing with "been been" in standard English... AnonMoos (talk) 19:05, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Here's one example I can think of in Polish: Dostawca węgla miał miał na sprzedaż. "The coal supplier had (miał) coal dust (miał) for sale. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:34, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I remember an example from my school Latin classes: the accusative for "bad apple" is "malum malum". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:47, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

They had slightly different pronunciations in ancient Latin, since the "a" vowels of the two words differed in length. AnonMoos (talk) 19:07, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I remember one of them was spelled with an ā to denote a different pronunciation. That's in my textbook. But I doubt the Latins would have done that. To them, the words were exact homographs. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:40, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

In French there's the construction avoir à, whose conjugation produces a homophonous and almost homographic sequence a à, as in il a à travailler "he has to work". --Theurgist (talk) 21:24, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

October 16

Language link for Ludmila Chistovich

Could someone make the Ukrainian page uk:Чистович Людмила Андріївна into a language link to page Ludmilla Chistovich.

Also Wikidata has two different records for this person (one English, one Ukrainian). They should be merged. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Done. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:07, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

October 17

English spelling and numbers

1. Are there any spelling differences where Canadian and Australian English universally use American spelling?
2. Are there any words where ⟨sce⟩ and ⟨sci⟩ are pronounced as /ske/ and /ski/?
3. Does English use "one and half" to refer to 1.5, or 1 1⁄2? Such as "one and half" hours for 90 minutes, "one and half years" for 18 months, or "one and half days" for 36 hours? --40bus (talk) 06:38, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

As for #3, those three expressions are synonyms. Cullen328 (talk) 06:42, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

For me it has to be "one and a half", not "one and half". Double sharp (talk) 07:01, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Cullen328 (talk) 07:05, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

As a BrE speaker, I would more often say "an hour and a half" (etc.) for units of time. If making several measurement of dimensions, "one and a half inches" (etc.) would be routine, but I might still prefer "an inch and a half" if mentioning a single measurement. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 09:01, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Re #2: TIL from Merriam-Webster that scedasticity and derivatives are apparently not supposed to be pronounced with /sk/ as I always thought, even though it's borrowed from Ancient Greek σκεδαστικός which has a kappa there. Nonetheless the pronunciation with /k/ still seems common (two examples), so I still feel free to give that as an example for ⟨sce⟩. Double sharp (talk) 08:52, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Skedastic is an alternative spelling of scedastic, so naturally the latter would have an alternative pronunciation.  --Lambiam 13:53, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Old Science Fiction fans like myself (bear with me, this gets relevant eventually) like to abbreviate it as "SF" (i.e. "Ess-eff"). Decades ago, the sf fan and humorist Forrest J Ackerman coined the term "Sci-fi" ("Sigh-fie") as a pun on Hi-fi (High fidelity), which was quickly taken up by jounalists and others not part of the SF community (it became a shibboleth we used to spot lurking journalists at SF Conventions), but was applied by those within it specifically to badly written TV and Film works that used superficial science-fictional trimmings but lacked any attempts at scientific plausibility. Years later, some in the SF community started to pronounce Sci-fi as "Skiffy" when talking about SF in an ironic and/or self-deprecating manner. A somewhat niche example of 40bus's #2. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 09:17, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Sceptic. Burzuchius (talk) 09:56, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

The spelling sceptic is the British spelling; the American spelling is skeptic. The medical term scepsis is pronounced /ˈskɛpsɪs/ on both sides of the pond.  --Lambiam 10:01, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

And its derivatives, such as omphaloscepsis, contemplation of one's navel. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:02, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

In Britain, we use the spelling "programme" except for computing, where the US spelling, "program" is preferred. Alansplodge (talk) 12:18, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

1. I'd say that "program" is pretty standard in the parts of Canada in which I've resided. However, we still mostly use "ou" rather than "o" (e.g. honour). Clarityfiend (talk) 02:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

2. ASCII. --Amble (talk) 21:04, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

2. Scelp and sceuophylax, both very obscure and dubious.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:01, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

1. A programme is what you buy to find out more about the performance you're seeing at a theatre. Everything else is a program.

2. SCEGGS? Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 02:14, 20 October 2024 (UTC)