Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 April 30

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April 30

Would be

I'm trying to find the form of "desu" that would be the equivalent of English "would be", e.g. "Who would he be if he were a fictional character?", "He would be the Cheshire cat." I have a book on Japanese, but it doesn't mention many forms of "desu", and the page on Japanese verb conjugation doesn't seem to have a form for "would VERB" listed. Filosojia X Non(Philosophia X Known) 00:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

You can use the so-called volitional form (だろう, でしょう, etc.) for that kind of expression. "チェシャ猫でしょう" Paul Davidson (talk) 00:48, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

thank youu! Filosojia X Non(Philosophia X Known) 00:54, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Translate the Latin Phrase: "Turn Quantity Into Quality"

One day, I will catalyze the process to found the Kansas Institute of Technology in Chapman and Lindsborg, KS. Tentatively, the motto will be: Turn Quantity into Quality

The reason why I chose this motto is because these two university campuses will have an open-admissions policy. The aim will be to turn the abundant quantity of students into quality graduates. In short, K.I.T. will turn quantity into quality.

Now as most university mottos are also said in Latin, how will this motto be said? (Google Translate does not have a Latin language option, and machine translating doesn't always return accurate results anyway.) --70.179.176.30 (talk) 05:47, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Literally Converte quantitatem in qualitatem. More elegant in Latin would be ex quantitate qualitas "from quantity, quality". --Ioscius ^∞ 11:40, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the more classical style would be "E quantitate qualitas". Marco polo (talk) 13:51, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi again. This is the original poster. Thanks for your responses. Which style do colleges use more often for their mottos? Ioscius's elegant style or Marco's classical style? --129.130.99.196 (talk) 19:57, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Either is fine really, but Marco's "E quantitate qualitas" would raise no objection from even the most pedantic pedant. And colleges have some of those, I believe. So I would go for it. Andrew Dalby 20:09, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Qualitas is a technical term in philosophy, coined by Cicero to represent the Greek poiotes (Cassells), and quantitas is a medieval innovation. Perhaps more classical: e multis optimi. 71.178.54.201 (talk) 20:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

But I would certainly read "e multis optimi" as "out of many, the best (ones)", which immediately suggests a process of selection, which was not present in the original (and, I believe, not intended). Perhaps a multitudo fiat optimum - "by means of many may be created the best (thing)". --ColinFine (talk) 12:22, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

In that case you would need "multitudine", of course. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:28, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Ex/e all the same. E probably better. Esto ergo e quantitate qualitas.--Ioscius ^∞ 20:29, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

USA and Canada

A Brit asks... Are there any common informal/slang terms in use that a US citizen would use to refer to a Canadian, and vice versa? Terms that would be generally understood in North America, I mean? If so, what are they? --Hence Piano (talk) 09:17, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

A Brit replies...Canuck? Also, Yankee can apparently be used as a general term for U.S. citizens (not necessarily from New England). AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 10:53, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Canuck is a somewhat comical term that is used in the United States. (I once knew a guy who referred to himself as a "Canuckistani," which reliably brought chuckles.) That said, we normally don't use slang terms but refer to our northern neighbors simply as Canadians. I've never heard a Canadian refer to an American as a Yankee or a Yank, though I don't doubt that a Canadian has occasionally used the expression. Normally, they call us Americans. (One point about the expression Yankee or Yank as used within North America. Its most common use within the United States is by Southerners referring to Northerners. I think that this is a leftover from the American Civil War. I think that a Southerner might be offended or at least amused if he were referred to as a Yankee, particularly in a Canadian accent, which sounds like a Yankee accent to Southerners.) Marco polo (talk) 13:57, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

It's worse than that. The other northerners, "yank" means a New Englander, to other New Englanders, it means a resident of New York State, and to other New York Staters, it means a resident of NYC. It also once meant the Dutch faction in NYC, but that meaning is pretty much gone by now. StuRat (talk) 15:11, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, that's not what Yankee says. There, the aphorism (attributed to E. B. White) is: "To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner. To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander. To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter. And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast." +Angr 15:36, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

As a Canadian, I'd say "American" is the most common term for Americans here (Toronto area). You don't really hear "Yank" or "Yankee", although most people would know what you meant. -- Flyguy649 ^talk 13:56, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Having grown up in Texas, I'd definitely be offended (or at least pretend to be) if anyone called me a Yankee. Canuck is supposed to be offensive, except that I doubt anyone would seriously be offended by it; more likely amused. You can also refer to Canadians as a group euphemistically as "Our Neighbors to the North", but really the only common term is Canadian. +Angr 14:16, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Is there anything offensive about the team name of the Vancouver Canucks? Woogee (talk) 21:47, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Some refer to us as residents of Soviet Canuckistan. -- Flyguy649 ^talk 14:35, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

On a talk show once, Dave Foley said, "We're so liberal we make Castro look like a Republican!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:24, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

This is going a bit in the opposite direction, but you can also comically call their country Canadia. I've heard that, but it seems to get on Canadians' nerves more than Canuck does. Like the latter, it's "marked" and not normally used, it's playfully derogatory. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:31, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

That like calling Americans "United Statians" or some such. I've honestly never heard that one, but it comes across as ignorant -- which is why it can probably be amusing. -- Flyguy649 ^talk 14:35, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

(A friend of mine insists on "United Statesian", and corrects me if I say "American", because she spent some time in South America where they use the equivalent term in Spanish, estadounidense. There are some political issues behind that term... rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC))

"UnitedStatesian" simply doesn't work too well in the English language, but an alternative which achieved some degree of prominence in the mid-20th century was "Usonian"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:09, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

WHAAOE - Names for U.S. citizens. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:08, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Yep we use "Yanks" and "'mericans", but usually that's in a demeaning way, ex: "those stupid/ignorant 'mericans." --Kvasir (talk) 15:13, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

"'mericans" and not "merkins"? That's the slang version I meet most. 86.178.225.111 (talk) 21:49, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Canadian immigrants to the U.S. are occasionally jocularly called "snowbacks" (by contrast with "wetbacks").... AnonMoos (talk) 17:09, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

"Yanks" or "Yankees" gained a vogue in Australia and the UK (and probably other countries) during WW2, from the U.S. soldiers stationed there. It's still used by people of my parents' generation in reference to them. There was a 1970s' film Yanks that reflected this terminology. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of the country itself, Canada is also sometimes referred to as "America Jr." though I've seen Canadians take offense at this when none was intended. And then there's this shirt which, again, is meant as humor and not as an offensive statement. Dismas|^(talk) 04:11, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

See also Captain Canuck. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2010 (UTC) Martin.

Words spelled exactly the same way in different languages, but with entirely different meanings

This is somewhat related to false friends and false cognates, but here is what I am actually looking for:

A string of letters which exists as a word in various languages using the Latin alphabet, but has an entirely different meaning and, if possible, different etymology, in each language. Specifically, I'm looking for examples exceeding three different languages.

Example for three languages: "rot" (can mean purefaction (noun) in English, red (adjective) in German, or burp (noun) in French).

I don't care about capital letters (so, it can be a noun in German, e.g.), but it shouldn't use diacritics in any of the foreign languages. Thank you very much in advance! ---Sluzzelin talk 11:22, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary is organized well for checking candidates. For example, it tells me that rot has different meanings again in Norwegian, Swedish, and Tok Pisin. Algebraist 11:26, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Algebraist! (no idea why I didn't think of it). I'm happy to see that "rot" seems to be a good choice. I will check more candidates on wiktionary. Still, if anyone happens to think of other examples, I'd really appreciate it! ---Sluzzelin talk 12:46, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

However, Wiktionary does care about capital letters, even if you don't: wikt:rot and wikt:Rot are different entries. +Angr 13:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Car means "car" in English, "cart" in Romanian, "because" in French, "dear" or "expensive" in Catalan, and "tsar" in several Slavic languages (e.g., Polish). — Kpalion^(talk) 14:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Only 2 languages, but dick means, well, dick in English and thick in German. Cracks me up. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 14:27, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Cap means "cap" in English, "head" in some Romance languages (e.g., Catalan, Romanian), "male goat" in some Slavic languages (e.g., Polish, Slovak), and "seal" or "stamp" in Indonesian. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:36, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Pies means "pies" in English, "feet" in Spanish, "magpies" in French, "dog" in Polish, and "(I) piss" in Dutch. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Pole means "pole" in English, "field" in Polish, "he polishes" in Spanish, "isn't" in Estonian, and "slowly" in Swahili. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:01, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it would more fun to try and find the longest word of this kind. So far I couldn't come up with anything longer than four letters. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:03, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, one question, Sluzzelin: do you accept words written in other alphabets which look like words written in the Latin alphabet? Such as Russian сор ("garbage, dirt"), which happens to look like сор (English "cop", Catalan "hit", Czech "braid", French "pal").— Kpalion^(talk)

"cop" in Russian is the Cyrillic alphabet, so that wouldn't count, or it would be in a different category. The "c" is more like an "s", I think, and the "p" is definitely an "r", as with the Greek letter "rho". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:46, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I know, that's why I'm asking the OP if it counts or not. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:56, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

"Gift" famously means poison in German [1], but it does seem to be difficult to find longer words, though I can think of some homophones.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:39, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

According to my dictionaries, the German for "to give" is "geben", which makes sense, but the word for gift is "Geschenk". I wonder about the etymology of "Gift" (verb form "vergiften") and "Geschenk". I can't think of any English cognates for those two. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:00, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Gift is a wonderful example of what we're collecting right now, because it means both "poison" and "married" in all Danish, Faroese, Norwegian, and Swedish; "poison" in German; and "donation" in Dutch. Note that all of those languages belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, exactly as English does. --Магьосник (talk) 20:50, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking about chore, five letters, but it seems to mean different things in only three languages (English, Polish and Portuguese), not above Sluzzelin's threshold. — Kpalion^(talk) 15:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes a conjugated Latin word looks like a different English word; one that springs to mind is "emit", which means "he bought". The English word comes from Latin, but from a completely different word. Also "dies", which means "day", and has two different meanings in English. (There are more, maybe some longer than four letters, but I'll have to think about it.) Adam Bishop (talk) 19:36, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Some others - "grates" is a word for "thanks" in Latin, and the English word comes from a different Latin word ("cratis", where we also get "crate"). A good one that is purely Germanic is "reddens". In Latin that means "giving back". Also "dares" which in Latin is "you might give". Adam Bishop (talk) 19:54, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

(Of course, now I see you were looking for three or more languages, sorry...but to add to the "pole" list above, it is also the vocative of "polus" in Latin, if for some reason you wanted to address the sky.) Adam Bishop (talk) 20:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

A good one (though rather short): baba means "father" in Albanian and Turkish; "old woman" in Polish and Serbian; and "drool" in Portuguese and Spanish. --Магьосник (talk) 21:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

A five letter one, baste, with five languages, English, Dutch (part of the verb bassen to bark), Sami (spoon), French (either an interjection, or something to do with card games), Spanish (part of the verb bastar, to suffice) and Norwegian (bind or tie - at least in my 1964 edition dictionary). Mikenorton (talk) 23:09, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

We have for some reason forgotten about inflected forms. They may give a lot of examples. English surrender means "surrender", but German surrender is a present active participle meaning "buzzing", as in ein surrender Bienenschwarm, "a buzzing swarm of bees". Turkish emerim means "I suck", but Latin emerim means "I may/should/would have bought". I'm sure many, many more ones could be found, one just has to know enough languages well enough. :P --Магьосник (talk) 12:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone, for your wonderful suggestions! Responding to Kpalion: I hadn't even considered Cyrillic variations. I guess I originally would not have allowed them, but this makes for a wonderful twist. I will be weaving a lot of your suggestions into a puzzle I am preparing for my Dad, a logophiliac whose 70th birthday is coming up. Thank again! ---Sluzzelin talk 10:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I just found one more: aber can mean "monkeys", "but", "estuary" or "submerged river valley". — Kpalion^(talk) 08:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

grammar

Is the sentence "The river runs deeply" grammatically correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnnyboi7 (talk • contribs) 13:37, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

It could be, but wouldn't make much sense. What you probably want is "the river runs deep". rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:28, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The reason being that "deep" modifies "river", not "runs", correct? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:11, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd have said 'the river gets deep', because the actual flow of the water is not what determines the depth of the river. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:26, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd have simply said, "The river is deep." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:29, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Using a rivery verb like "runs" makes it a bit more poetic-sounding, even though the technical meaning is just "the river is deep". Compare to (pardon my nerdiness) "the trees are strong, my lord; their roots grow deep", which means the same as "their roots are really deep". Or something like "the water there flows cold" or whatever, which means the same as "is cold". rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:38, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Compare "Still waters run deep", which is slightly different. That's saying it appears to be still or calm on the surface, but down below there's stuff going on. Just like me, really. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:01, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Like all of us, really, especially after too much Thai food. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

what is an emergency door cock?

in a bus —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.218.185 (talk) 16:17, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Probably vandalism of the letter L in "Emergency Door Lock"; the lock for the emergency door at the back of a bus (where it is easier to carry out such vandalism without the driver seeing you). Astronaut (talk) 17:31, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I doubt it. A cock is a type of valve. If the bus has pneumatically powered doors, this is probably a control that modifies the action of the driver's door controls, for use in an emergency. It might allow the door to be opened by hand, or it might allow the door to remain closed when the driver's control normally opens it and another door, or possibly it might allow the bus to be driven with the door open when ordinarily that is not possible.

Here in Toronto the subway trains have hidden controls to be used in certain situations. At one time the positions of two of these controls were marked with the initials DIC for "door-isolating cock", which took that door out of service in case it was malfunctioning, and TCIC for "tripcock-isolating cock". The tripcock was part of the train stop mechanism, but only the one on the front car of the train was supposed to be active; so when a train was put together, the TCIC would be used on the middle cars to deactivate their tripcocks. Then someone apparently got sensitive about the word "cock" and all the DIC and TCIC stickers were changed to DIV and TVIV! --Anonymous, 17:18 UTC, April 30, 2010.

Cock is also another word for handle, but it's often found in Chinese signs, etc. from machine translation. I was thoroughly amused to find a fire hydrant in Shanghai marked "Fire Cock". Steewi (talk) 01:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Native language

How many native languages is the most that one can have? I know that some linguists and language enthusiasts can learn a lot of languages, but I was wondering about native languages. I was thinking about 4, like for a Swiss person, but do Swiss people even learn all four simultaneously? THNX 76.199.144.250 (talk) 21:22, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

See our article on Multilingualism. --Kvasir (talk) 21:25, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The article is interesting but doesn't directly address the questions. A more relevant article would be First language. It is very unusual for a person to have more than two native languages. Occasionally children may have three (or conceivably more) native languages. Most people, including most Swiss people, have only one native language. This is the language spoken by one's parents and by most people in one's community. Even in Switzerland, this will be a single language for most people in most communities. People who have more than one native language are typically people whose parents speak a different language than the language dominant in the community and/or who live in a community where there is more than one widely spoken language. I think that few Swiss learn all four official languages of the country. Swiss schools teach in a single main language. Students typically study at a school that teaches in the official version of their native language (or one of their native languages). In primary school, Swiss students study a foreign language in addition to their native language. This is often English. In secondary school, Swiss students study two foreign languages in addition to their native language, one of which must be a foreign language that is one of the official Swiss languages. So most Swiss speak only two of the national languages. They may not be fluent in the second national language, and it is usually not a native language. (This is complicated by the fact that the most widely spoken native language of Switzerland is actually Swiss German, which is not easily intelligible with Standard German, and which some linguists consider a separate language. So most Swiss Germans speak Swiss German natively, Standard German more or less fluently, and two other languages (often French and English) with varying degrees of proficiency.) Marco polo (talk) 00:53, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

This is also complicated by the issue of heritage languages: languages that a person may have spoken in the first few years of life but has given up in favor of the dominant language in his community. (For example, a Korean family moves to the US with a 3-year-old baby; he was a Korean speaker as a baby but starts attending US schools and English becomes his primary language, to the point that as an adult he may only be able to speak a little bit of Korean.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:06, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I haven't found references, but I believe that the comments about Switzerland above are rather Europe-centric. In many parts of Africa and also in Papua New Guinea, I believe that many children grow up fluent in at least three languages - often those of the two parents and a national or regional language. --ColinFine (talk) 12:33, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, "As a child, Charles [ Berlitz] was raised in a household in which (by his father's orders) every relative and servant spoke to Charles in a different language: he reached adolescence speaking eight languages fluently. jnestorius^(talk) 16:36, 6 May 2010 (UTC)