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

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March 1

Gaba, the company

What is gaba?

What is team pursuit (in regards to ice)?

What is isIs there single pursuit, in regards to ice? Not the biking.174.3.99.176 (talk) 00:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

1. , A company offering tuition on speaking the English language, as the website you linked to explained..
2. , See Long track speed skating#Team Pursuit
3. , See Long track speed skating. Nanonic (talk) 00:19, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

How is this different from relay?174.3.99.176 (talk) 04:59, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

In a relay, competing teams each start one runner, who tags or passes an object to a teammate, who then continues the race, and so on until one runner reaches the finish line. There is at any time only one "live" runner per team. In team pursuit, a group of teammates start together and can help eachother in reaching the finish line as fast as possible; usually, more than one of the teammates has to cross the finish line for the race to be considered complete. --207.236.147.118 (talk) 18:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

How do they help each other?174.3.99.176 (talk) 05:55, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Usually by taking it in turns to take the lead, which is more taxing than skating behind someone because of the slipstream effect. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:27, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Any Kurdish speakers here?

A website I follow has recently been hacked by Kurdish hackers, and they left some Kurdish on the site. This is the message they left:

Kuşlar gibi uçmasını, balıklar gibi yüzmesini öğrendik Ancak bu arada çok basit bir sanatı unuttuk; kardeş olarak yaşamayı.

Greetz to all kurdish hackers

BU STE KURT HALKI VEDE ABDULLAH OCALAN UZERINDEKI TECRIT,IMHA VEDE INKAR POLITIKALARINA KARSI MISILLEME OLARAK VURULMUSTUR!!!!!15 ŞUBAT KOMPLOSUNU KINIYORUZ!!!!1

Ey kendini dünyaya bedel sanan mahluklar Ey kendi kanindaki kanin asil ve özel olduğunu düsünen zavalilar Ey çaresizlikten saga sola saldiran kuduz it Ey 2 gramlik beyninizin yüzünden günde trafik kazasinda 50 ölen insan kilikli nesneler Ey sarhosken anesiyle yatan yüce millet Ey iki bardak alkol aldiktan sonra dünyayi fetheden çakal ordusu. SıZ KıM OLUYORSUNUZDA KÜRDÜ YOK ETMEYE ÇALIsIYORSUNUZ, AKITTIGINIZ KANLARDA BOGULACAKSINIZ!

Now, I'm just curious as to what all of that means. It's not life-and-death to me, so I don't think I'll be bothering any Kurdish speakers on Wikipedia directly, but if anyone who can speak Kurdish happens to be seeing this, I'd appreciate a quick and dirty break down of the message. I don't expect it to be much more than your run-of-the-mill script kiddie boasts, anyway.TomorrowTime (talk) 00:26, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure that's Kurdish? I have a Kurdish friend I could send this to, but to be honest it really looks like Turkish, or at least something Turkic, to me. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:47, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It's definitely Turkish (-lar plurals, dotless I's, etc). If you Google the first sentence it is attributed to Martin Luther King, but I'm not sure why ("Kuşlar gibi uçmasını, balıklar gibi yüzmesini" means "birds like to fly, fish like to swim"). Abdullah Ocalan is Kurdish, of course, but it's not actually in Kurdish. It's probably just gibberish or nonsense. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:15, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Hm, I was just assuming it was Kurdish because of the greetz quip in English in the middle and because there was a Kurdish flag as well. And there was indeed a picture I later found was of Ocalan. Oh well. TomorrowTime (talk) 06:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the quote must be "We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not yet learned the simple art of living together as brothers" (my knowledge of Turkish is, apparently, exceptionally poor!). I'll leave the rest alone :) Adam Bishop (talk) 07:55, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Japanese

What's the Japanese word for pearl? --70.250.214.164 (talk) 02:12, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

According to Wiktionary, 真珠, shinju. [1]. Tevildo (talk) 02:17, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Which pearl are you referring to? There are at least four nouns and three verbs, each with a variety of meanings. 114.162.51.169 (talk) 02:37, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I mean as in a pearl, the shiny sphere formed by a mollusk around a grain of sand or dirt. --70.250.214.164 (talk) 02:40, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Then this has already been answered: 真珠. 114.162.51.169 (talk) 02:55, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

PS, next time you can use Wiktionary -- it has translations for most common words...there' a "Translations" bar beneath the English definition of the entry (for English-language entries) --14:16, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

And in some cases, including this one, if you look up the Wikipedia entry (here, Pearl), you can look at the "in other languages" column, where you might find the corresponding article in the target language's Wikipedia (here, ja:真珠). Doesn't always work, but it often does. +Angr 14:31, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Lokavibhaga

Where online can I find an English translation of Lokavibhaga? --70.250.214.164 (talk) 02:24, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

This question sounds familiar somehow. Have you looked in the ref desk archives? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't come up when entered in the Ref Desk archive search. But I'm not finding it either in any of my usual places to look for online books. Only a Hindi translation comes up: [2]. Anyone else? This might be a case where a library is your best bet? Best, WikiJedits (talk) 18:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I did a fairly extensive search of libraries and did not find an English translation. I don't think an English translation exists. It's apparently available only in Sanskrit and Hindi. Marco polo (talk) 18:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Ctrl+F

What is a ramp roller (ramp roller skate)?174.3.99.176 (talk) 06:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Why did you head this question "Ctrl+F"? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:03, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems to be a skate specifically set up to do tricks on a ramp like a half-pipe. Dismas|^(talk) 08:33, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Aggressive Roller Skating

What is aggressive roller skating? Not sure if it is similar to aggressive inline skating, which would be doing tricks on a skateboard, but minus the skateboard and plus the inline skates.174.3.99.176 (talk) 07:56, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

This is the language reference desk. For questions about sports, you're probably better served by the entertainment reference desk. +Angr 10:11, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Lingua franca of 10th century Al-Andalus?

What was the lingua franca of 10th century Al-Andalus? Was it Andalusian Arabic? I'm wondering how the Ghubār Numerals would have been pronounced back then. Where can I look up how to pronounce zero to nine in this language? --Sonjaaa (talk) 23:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Classical Arabic was the standard written language; for the standard classical Arabic forms, see Arabic_grammar#Cardinal_numerals. I would tend to doubt whether more than a few specialized scholars (who are unlikely to be hanging around Wikipedia) would be able to reconstruct with a good probability of correctness what the Andalusian Arabic forms would have been. AnonMoos (talk) 23:38, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Mozarabic was probably more common among the general population. --Belchman (talk) 21:57, 5 March 2010 (UTC)