Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 January 1

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January 1

Latin translation requested

What would "nothing comes between us" be in Latin? My best guess, and a poor one, would be "nil *something* inter nos". Thanks in advance. Peter Greenwell (talk) 01:14, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Oddly enough, this might relate a little bit to the next section. "Come" and "between" are Anglo-Saxon words. I can't do Latin conjugations, all I can give you is the Latin infinitive. "Come" is venire and "between" is inter. This might start to look familiar. The Latin-via-French for "come between" is "intervene". So it would, or at least could, be something along the lines of nil venire inter nos. That's fractured Latin, but it's a start. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:58, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

When translating, you need to be careful not to do a literal translation of a figurative expression. Figurative meanings tend not to translate. Inter nos nil venit literally means something like "Nothing comes among us" or "Nothing comes into our midst". Instead of this literal translation, I would try for a translation of the meaning behind the English expression, which is really something like "Nothing breaks us apart". So, based on my imperfect knowledge of Latin, I would try something like Nil nos dividit. Marco polo (talk) 04:14, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Latin has two specific compound verbs, intercedo (literally "to go between") and intervenio (literally "to come between"), but neither can really mean "to separate" or "to be a cause of dispute" (though intercedo can mean "to interfere" and intervenio can mean "to interrupt"). My suggested translation would be NIL NOS DISSOCIABIT. AnonMoos (talk) 07:55, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Nihil nōs sēparat. [1] -- Wavelength (talk) 08:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the help. Peter Greenwell (talk) 14:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

May I suggest nihil nōs sēparābit? [Using the future indicative.] Pallida  Mors 12:23, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Entertention?

At the New Years Eve party I was at last night, they were playing a video of "Let me entertain you". Naturally, I started wondering about the words 'entertain' and 'entertainment'. It occurred to me that, since the noun from 'detain' is 'detention', and since 'detain' and 'entertain' are etymologically related, then the noun from 'entertain' could reasonably be 'entertention'. But no. There's only 1 google hit for entertention, and it's not used in a serious way. Why don't we have 'entertention' rather than 'entertainment'? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 02:33, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

The most amazing questions can arise when you've had a few Fosters. Both "entertain" and "detain" come from the Latin tenere, "to hold". The Latin-based suffixes "-ment" and "-tion" both mean "action, state, concrete instance, result" and the like. The nearest I can come to figuring out the difference is that "-ment" is used to describe a process more than a single action. So why isn't it "detaintion"? Probably just the way it evolved. Detention, retention, intervention [see previous section]; vs. entertainment, containment, and whatever else. The versions with the second "e" seem to be closer to the Latin. The ones with the "ai" seem to more filtered through French. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:49, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

There is the word "contention", but it's not thought of as related to "contain", but to "contend". OTOH, "retention" is from "retain", not from "retend", whatever that might be. (Oh, and I was drinking Cascade, if that makes any difference.) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 03:01, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Ya learn something new every day, I tell ya. In the USA, "Cascade" is one of the leading brands of dishwasher detergent.

The root of "contend" is tendere, "to stretch", hence terms like "tension". Oddly enough, "tender" comes from tenere, not from tendere. Then there's "tentacle", which comes from tentare, "to handle/feel". I have to think that there's some common etymology among all those different Latin verbs that start with ten-, but that would take a more cunning linguist to investigate. I should point out that my source for most of this stuff is my old Webster's. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:13, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it's the Laphroaig typing, but I can't resist noting that there's an article about tentacles that one would not feel comfortable displaying to one's maiden aunt from Dubuque. PhGustaf (talk) 03:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you don't know my maiden aunt. She's heavily into tentacles.

That one illustration might have been a rejected idea for a poster, for a certain James Bond film. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:40, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

That would be the movie Licence to Krill. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 17:01, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

All of the -tain verbs come from prefixed forms of the Latin verb teneo/tenere by way of the (Norman) French tenir. In the cases of detention and retention, a version of a Latin noun (respectively detentio and retentio) came to English through French. By contrast, containment and entertainment were formed directly from -tain verbs in medieval or early modern times by attaching the -ment suffix (which likewise came from Latin to English via French). There is or was, for example, no Latin noun *intertenementum. In fact, the verb entertain itself lacks a Latin cognate. (There is or was no *interteneo/intertenere, so there could be no *intertentio.) Entertain was coined in Middle French by combining the prefix entre- (from Latin inter) with the verb tenir. Marco polo (talk) 04:44, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Marco Polo and everyone else for those answers. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 12:08, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation of surnames

What is the pronunciation of Chriqui in Emmanuelle Chriqui, Dushku in Eliza Dushku and Schmidt in Rob Schmidt? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Qoklp (talk • contribs) 03:11, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I can't say about the first two. The third, if it's pronounced the conventional way in English, is German for "Smith" and is pronounced "shmit", if that helps. The "d" is virtually silent. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:19, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems from this clip that Emmanuelle Chriqui pronounces her name /ʃəˈriːki/ (though I would've guessed by her Quebecois origin that it was /ˈʃriːki/). In this clip Dushku is pronounced /ˈdʊʃkuː/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:24, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

In this clip Dushku says "it's 'Dush' like 'push'."--Cam (talk) 15:47, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

An earlier version of the Chriqui article had the pronunciation described to be like "shriek-ee". Dismas|^(talk) 03:18, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

IPA symbols for generic sound classes

Let's say I'm attempting to transcribe some speech in the IPA, and I hear a sound which(due to bad recording, background noise, etc) I can't identify specifically, but I know its general class(say, stop consonant). Are there IPA symbols which denote "unidentified stop consonant/fricative/sonorant/etc"? 69.111.79.27 (talk) 07:37, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

No, but you can establish your own ad-hoc conventions for that sort of thing. For example, you can use a symbol that doesn't have an IPA value (capital letters are good for this) and inform your readers that you're using it to stand for an unidentified stop or whatever. +Angr 14:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Such ad- hoc conventions usualy are the interjection and exclamations. —Mihkaw napéw (talk) 16:06, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Mihkaw, did you mean "Such ad-hoc conventions usually use exclamation marks and question marks." ? 86.177.121.171 (talk) 17:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

No, the suprasegmental feature is an example. —Mihkaw napéw (talk) 18:56, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

The OP didn't ask about suprasegmentals, he asked about cases in which you can't even identify what the segment is. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:16, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

The ad-hoc symbols are common even at Wikipedia. Numerous articles describe the phonotactics of a given language using notation where C means a consonant and V means a vowel. This is not IPA, but clear nonetheless. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:53, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Correct grammar

Which is the correct headline for a newspaper? Happy New Year or Happy New Year's

I'd say Happy New Year. +Angr 17:15, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Happy New Year vs. New Year's Day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:41, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I've heard "New Year's" used to mean the holiday period surrounding New Year's Eve.

• "What are you doing for New Year's?" - "We're spending a few days at the beach house".
• "And what about New Year's Eve itself?" - "Oh, <whatever>". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

"New Year's" would imply the time around New Year's Eve and/or New Year's Day, or something connected specifically with the year rollover as opposed to the entire coming year. Hence I don't think you would ask, "What are you doing for New Year?" as that could imply the full year. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:22, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

You haven't indicated which country you are asking about. In the UK, "New Year's" is uncommon. --ColinFine (talk) 00:52, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

"pre-dumptial"

Has anybody shared the word 'pre-dumptial'? it is an agreement that dating couples sign that describes behavior during and after the relationship ends.Dbrior (talk) 17:41, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard the word before, but it is clearly a reference to pre-nuptial agreements. --Tango (talk) 20:29, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

It's a cute neologism, but it has no googlehits and Wikipedia is not for things made up one day. Karenjc 18:53, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

There's also nothing at Urbandictionary.com. Dismas|^(talk) 09:54, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard that word before but I have heard of things like that. Mostly it's among Christian couples who agree to what levels of intimacy they're willing to go to before marriage, must be introduced to parents, things that must be done before co-habitation, etc. Steewi (talk) 02:31, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

A Japanese translation.

Could anyone help me out by telling me the English translation (or translations, if the words have multiple possible equivilents) of http://i45.tinypic.com/1zy8mmv.jpg? I'd appreciate it a lot.

It looks like a title for a porn movie. Do you really want to know what it means? --Kjoonlee 19:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Yup.The Fantastic Mr. Fawkes (talk) 19:40, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

The Japanese title is 〜実録のドキュメント〜豊満巨女のリアル性癖, which roughly translates as "Documented Real Account: The Real Inclination of a Large-breasted Woman". Like Kjoonlee indicated, it's likely the title of a porn movie. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:02, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I assume "inclination" as in "desire", rather than "angle to the horizontal"? Either would work in context. :) Tevildo (talk) 00:14, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, of course it means tendency or propensity. It could be translated as preference in the context. As for 巨女, means an obese or big woman. Oda Mari (talk) 05:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. I don't really speak Japanese, but... reading the Kanji (with my knowledge of Hanja) made it sound more like "Authentic Documentary: The Real Propensities of a Buxom BBW" to my ears. --Kjoonlee 05:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it does actually mean 'fat woman', but the size of breasts (as Nihonjoe) pointed out can be implied. '性癖' means 'sexual habits', as well as just simply meaning 'habits, inclinations, propensity, etc.' --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 13:23, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

You can see the full cover here if you wish (Google strikes again!). In this case, it's definitely a large woman. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 08:41, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Dictionaries and language change

I'd like to make up for a boring, easy question by asking something interesting, but I can't think of anything. How about: had dictionaries not been invented, and set definitions, acceptable words and spellings/pronuncations in stone, do you think English would be quite different today? Shakespeare got all the fun of making up words, it seems sad that we've pretty much lost that. (Although we gained the ability to torture some people by saying "there writings definately effected us".) The Fantastic Mr. Fawkes (talk) 19:20, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Definitions, acceptable words, spellings, or pronunciations are definitely not set in stone by dictionaries, making this an "invalid" question, in my humble opinion. --Kjoonlee 19:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, if you try to work new words into conversation, even if their meanings are perfectly clear, a lot of people will object because they're not in the dictionary and thus not cromulent. That's something that wouldn't have happened 400 years ago.The Fantastic Mr. Fawkes (talk) 19:40, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

There's an invalid reaction in that response, I think. Let me explain, please. Dictionaries record words and their meanings that already exist; if a perfectly acceptable new word isn't in the dictionary, then it just means the word didn't meat the criteria for inclusion (maybe the word wasn't very wide-spread, or maybe the word is related to a fad and could die out soon) or the dictionary is lagging in updates. --Kjoonlee 19:55, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Many of the words invented by Lewis Carroll are now in all standard dictionaries. You might be interested in Wiktionary's policy on neologismsand protologisms. Dbfirs 20:08, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki link: Neologisms Protologisms

I appologise if I sounded tightassed. You have a good point and they're good valid questions. I feel this must be said. --Kjoonlee 20:27, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Also inaccurate in the OP's question is the assertion that "Shakespeare got all the fun of making up words." Shakespeare is cited as the earliest known usage for a good number of words, but that doesn't mean he coined them, it means he was the first to write them down. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:59, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the question should not just be about dictionaries, but about language standardization in general; I think we can all agree that English (or any other standardized language) would be different if it hadn't been standardized. But speculating about what the specific differences would be is probably not very productive. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:13, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

English is standardized? o_O?? --Kjoonlee 04:00, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it has a standard variety. (Actually, Britain, Australia, the US, and even India each have different standard varities, but it's still standardized, as opposed to, say, Monguor or some undiscovered Polynesian tongue.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:14, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd say that's different from having a standardization body (as in Korean, French, or Icelandic). --Kjoonlee 05:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Old English was "standardized" (the written form had a standard variety, more or less) at Alfred the Great's Winchester before there were dictionaries. Or standard spellings. --Kjoonlee 05:36, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

So if I understand your use of the word "standardized" correctly, there may well be a previously-undiscovered Polynesian tongue with several dialects, one of which is the influential "standard." --Kjoonlee 05:41, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Having a standardization body (such as the Académie française) isn't a prerequisite for being a standardized language. Standardization just means that a particular variety of a language has been set down as "correct" and, therefore, becomes more resilient to change (there still is change, it just happens more slowly--with English, for example, the vocabulary has grown, but syntax has changed little in 200 years). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:42, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I begin to see what you mean, although I respectfully disagree with some of it. ;) Well, if there were no standard dialect, I guess it would (quite obviously) have lead to more variation, as you have just implied. --Kjoonlee 05:49, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Old English had a standard dialect but it didn't stop the language from changing its syntax or morphology and what not. --Kjoonlee 05:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

So then an adequate rephrasing of Rjanang's earlier assertion is that English would have been different if its standardization had a different character (e.g. a different dialect chosen as the prestige variety, a greater or lesser degree of artificially imposing Latin grammar, a body that regulates the coining of new words into the language, etc). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:21, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I just mean if English had never been standardized--if concepts of prescriptively "correct" and "incorrect" hadn't come about, grammars hadn't been written, etc. I think that's roughly what the OP was asking in "had dictionaries not been invented...". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 10:25, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The language and spelling in England are still changing, of course, despite standardisation! Dbfirs 16:12, 3 January 2010 (UTC)