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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 March 16

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March 16

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“T kofschip”-rule (Dutch grammar)

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How did the dutch grammatical “t kofschip”-rule originate? Are there any known reasons for this? I have read the Wikipedia article, but want to know more about why this rule came into being. Trakorien (talk) 11:42, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The spelling d or t comes from pronunciation. The 'rule' collects the letters that lead to a t spelling in a simple to remember Dutch word, kofschip or fokschaap. It's more an ezelsbruggetje (mnemomic) than a rule. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 12:19, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Martin.[reply]
See also Talk:'t kofschip for more info about the real rule and the mnemonic. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 12:27, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Martin.[reply]

Period and quotes

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when you type quotes, does the period come before or after the quotes? 199.8.158.111 (talk) 13:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In American English, the period comes before you close the quotes and in British English, as logic would dictate, the full stop goes after you close the quotes. See the fourth bullet at Differences_between_American_and_British_English#Punctuation. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 13:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's wrong. If the period is ending both the outer sentence and a complete sentence in the quotation, it's inside the quotes in British practice as well as American. (A fully "logical" style would require two periods, inside and outside, but nobody does that.) --Anonymous, 04:24 UTC, March 17, 2010.
My answer was incomplete but calling it wrong unconditionally is likely to mislead the questioner. In any case, they would have realised the actual British usage in the case you describe when they clicked on the link. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 14:24, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Russian Cyrillic

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Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2010_March_3#Russian_Runes

Some people confused that I was talking about the russian runes in the discussion preceding, but I was talking about the reforms about the cyrillic alphabet.

Let's give this a go again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.3.107.176 (talk) 14:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could you please restate your question from scratch, because the original one did use the word "runes". Maybe the questioner was confused, not the respondents. Re-reading that thread, I'm confused as to what you're asking now. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:11, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't even see a question at all, much less understand what the questioner is trying to get at. I wouldn't say pre-reform Cyrillic was syllabic, nor that instances of it are scarce. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 20:28, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the second part of the original question was related with sentence "Attempted further simplifications in the early 1960s and late 1990s were met with public protest and were not implemented." I googled a bit and did not find any evidence of such proposals, so it would be better removed from the article, as it's unreferenced (well, just like the rest of the article); I'll mark it as such until a Russian speaker clarifies the situation. However, 174, this is really a question for the article's talk page. No such user (talk) 08:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the question:

Attempted further simplifications in the early 1960s and late 1990s were met with public protest and were not implemented.

What were these proposals?174.3.101.191 (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody here knows, apparently. Maybe someone responds at Talk:Reforms of Russian orthography#"Attempted further reforms". No such user (talk) 08:44, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

can you be very good at reading and writing a language

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but cannot speak? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.217.109 (talk) 14:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. This is actually somewhat common for people who learned a language from books, rather than audio recordings or a native speaker. A number of languages (e.g. English) have non-trivial letter/glyph to phoneme matchings. Even for those with regular patterns, how they're matched may be different from what a non-native speaker is used to. For example, in Italian the pronunciation of the "gli" construction tends to give language learners issues - it's consistent once learned, but can be hard to understand unless you can hear someone say it. Some languages have sounds that might not have a direct correspondent in a learner's native language. For example, it may be all well and good to say that a particular vowel is pronounced as the œ in "bœuf" (an actual example from a dictionary pronunciation guide), but if you've never heard "bœuf" pronounced before, it can be difficult to match. Likewise instructions telling you that a sound is a voiceless palatal lateral fricative is not anywhere close to as helpful as listening to a native speaker pronounce it. For "dead" languages where all we have is the written form, historians may be adept with translations but may *never* know how they were pronounced, as we have lost the word->phoneme map that was implicit in the speakers' knowledge. -- 174.21.235.250 (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Forgot to add that even when one can learn pronunciation from a native speaker, it may be difficult or impossible to replicate it. The classic example is the difficulty native Japanese speakers have with /r/ and /l/ in English. The problem is there really aren't separate /r/ and /l/ phonemes in Japanese, the closest thing is a single one that's slightly between the two. Growing up speaking Japanese, the brain lumps all /r/ like and /l/ like sounds together under that phoneme, so transitioning to a language like English where they fall into distinct categories requires rewiring the sound processing and production centers in the brain, so that they can consistently distinguish and produce them as separate sounds. English speakers have similar problems transitioning to tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese. Native English speakers' brains aren't set up to distinguish between mā (high level tone) and mà (tone descending), and it may take some time to consistently recognize that these are very different words in Chinese. -- 174.21.235.250 (talk) 15:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That works the other way around as well - I've met Anglophone people in Japan who could speak very good Japanese, but the Japanese sounded awkward because they just couldn't wrap their heads around the concept of the monophtong and they would automatically diphtognize everything. Nothing was wrong with their Japanese, other than that they couldn't pronounce it properly. Me, I'm having problems with spoken German - I learned German as a kid in school and from watching hours upon hours of German satellite programs, but I never really had the chance to practice everyday conversation, so I can understand German perfectly, but I have difficulties forming anything above the most simple sentences. I think if I went and lived in a German speaking country for a while I'd probably be able to overcome this in a month or two, but as it is right now, I understand German, yet cannot speak it properly. TomorrowTime (talk) 17:56, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK at reading and writing Spanish, poor at speaking, and almost useless at understanding the spoken language. (I think, in part, this was because I studied the language in high school, in an area where there were virtually no native speakers, including the teachers. The spoken materials I listened to were all "teaching aids" where the speakers spoke very clearly and carefully, compared to ordinary people. And of course the words they used were restricted to those we had studied, etc.) -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nowadays, Latin is more often written and read than spoken or heard, but you can hear it spoken at YLE Radio 1 - Nuntii Latini.
-- Wavelength (talk) 17:04, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is my problem with all languages. I don't even speak English very well and it's my native language! I can read French, and I can even understand it when spoken, but I can't speak it. There is a French bookstore in Toronto, and when I went there I knew what they were saying, but just smiled like a moron because I couldn't respond. I also know people who have learned to speak Latin, but I find it impossible to follow along. What's the point? Adam Bishop (talk) 17:29, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My experience with many business people from Japan is that they have studied English in school for many years, but they did not practice spoken English, which matches the question you pose pretty exactly. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To answer a trivial aspect of the original question: Yes, for example, a number of deaf people are excellent at reading and writing English without being able to "speak" a single word of it. Gabbe (talk) 19:16, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A part of my job is to give my clients (job seekers) a questionnaire that helps to ensure they get the best support. Part of it is about their abilities in reading, writing and speaking English. Each of these 3 questions has a range of answers, from Very Well to Not at All. Typically, all 3 answers are the same, but they need not be. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I knew an American professor of Chinese history who starting his studies in the 1950s. He didn't think he'd ever be able to go to China, so he didn't bother to learn to speak the language, just read and write (extremely well). In the late 1970s, he finally got to go to China, and his contacts were astonished that he couldn't speak a word of Chinese. DOR (HK) (talk) 09:07, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese has mutually unintelligible spoken dialects that are all written the same way, so I think you could be a native speaker from Beijing and not be able to understand anyone from Guangdong. There's similar issues (less severe) with other languages. I can understand (some) French as spoken by French people but not by French Canadians. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 05:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"all written the same way" is an overstatement. Our article Written Chinese says in part "This version of written Chinese is called Vernacular Chinese ... Vernacular Chinese also permits some communication between people of different dialects, limited by the fact that Vernacular Chinese expressions are often ungrammatical or unidiomatic in non-Mandarin dialects". (This clarification does not invalidate the point being made, however) --ColinFine (talk) 08:37, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What the hell?!?!

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How the hell does a construction like "what the hell" make sense? I can understand "what on earth", but why why why has the "on" apparently transmogrified into a "the" in many expressions?

Aaadddaaammm (talk) 17:07, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"What the hell" is short for "What in the hell", which is analogous to "What in the world..." Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:52, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A common albeit coarser variant is "what the fuck", which can't be explained by reference to a place. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:59, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@ Tuttle: actually, I think it's short for "what in the name of hell", a reversal of "what in the name of God". could be wrong, though. --Ludwigs2 19:07, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Similarly, "for hell's sake". The "F" terms were probably derived from all the "H" stuff, when "H" was no longer "strong enough". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:12, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Similarly, the "heck" terms, in the other direction. --Tango (talk) 23:33, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have any references for those claims, Tuttle and Ludwigs? The OED (s.v. "Hell", P4.d.) does not give a specific etymology for the phrase, and gives "in" as an alternative to "the", but its oldest citation (1785) is of "what the hell", and it doesn't list an example of "what in hell" before 1874 - which suggests to me that "what in hell" is an emendation by people trying to make sense of an opaque expression, rather than the other way round. Also notice that the parallel "what the devil" can hardly be "what in (the) devil", though it could be "what in the devil's name" I suppose.
There are other grammatically obscure uses of 'hell' and other expletives. The same OED article gives "the hell with" (again, recorded much earlier than "to hell with"); "does it hell!" "get the hell out of" (in this case the more readily explicable "get to hell out of" is recorded earlier); and "hell-for-leather"--ColinFine (talk) 23:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's the only explanation that makes sense to me. It's called an "oath" when you use a religious term in this way, and swearing by the name of the devil or hell simply adds more invective to the exclamation. "What in God's name", "what in the name of hell," etc. are all oaths cut from the same cloth, though much abbreviated when used simply as expletives. Paul Davidson (talk) 09:29, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It may make sense to you. But the annals of etymythology are crowded with explanations which "made sense" to people but are nevertheless wrong. In the absence of evidence, and given that the OED records "what the hell" nearly a century earlier than "what in hell", your explanation has little weight. You might be right, but without proof, I would not accept that. --ColinFine (talk) 18:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Te voy a llevar a un pinche vaile!"

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Moved from the Science Desk, Nimur (talk) 18:23, 16 March 2010 (UTC) [reply]


what does "Te voy a llevar a un pinche vaile!" mean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.246.254.35 (talk) 17:35, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Te voy a llevar a un pinche Baile!" is a Spanish sentence and means, more or less, "I'll take you to a goddamned ball(dance)". Note that in Spanish V and B have usually the same pronunciation. --151.51.62.111 (talk) 23:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Here's some word history, from various dictionaries: The normal use of pinche is "prick", i.e. a puncture or pin-prick. It would seem to be a cognate of the English "pinch", which my dentist uses in reference to the sensation of a novocaine injection, but "pinch" actually has a different term in Spanish, pellizco (from pellizcar, "to pinch"). The usage of pinche as in "damned" is an Americano slang term, origin not stated, but maybe someone equated being cursed with being punctured??? In any case, the sentence does translate roughly as "You I am going to take to a cursed dance/ball!" The Spanish verb for "to dance" is bailar (as in Para bailar la bamba...). The English terms "ball" and "ballet" (as well as "ballad") come from Old French baller, "to dance". French still uses bal for "ball" (a social event centered on dancing), and ballet of course refers to a specific type of dance. The verb now used for the more general "to dance" in French is danser, from Old French dancier, and baller seems to be obsolete in French. In Italian the verb forms are ballare and danzare. Late Latin also has ballare, which is from Greek ballizein. The classic Latin term for "to dance" is saltare, whose Spanish descendant is saltar, "to jump" or "to leap", which is also one usage of "to dance" in English. The English "sally" as a verb meaning "to rush forward", comes from Latin salire, "to leap". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is the expression to be taken literally, or does it have a colloquial meaning not obvious to those of us outside its cultural context (like, say, "We're going to make love" or "I'm going to beat the shit out of you")? 87.81.230.195 (talk) 17:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are very few google references to that entire expression, be it with a V or a B. So it would probably take a native Spanish speaker - maybe at the Spanish wikipedia ref desk? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Vaile is clearly a typo for baile. The suggestion on a bloody/dammed good meaning seems quite reasonable to me, though I must say that in my country the idiom pinche... is not used. We would go for Te voy a llevar a un baile de la hostia, or something like that. Maybe a Mexican fellow wikipedian can confirm/correct what has been said so far. Pallida  Mors 14:31, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Living in Grand Central Station

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What is the meaning of the simile "like living in Grand Central Station?" It is used by Beyoncé in the song Telephone. Arickp (talk) 21:20, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A common jab, perhaps mildly accurate, is that the New York City Subway is "home" to many of New York's homeless population. This New York City Dept. of Homeless Services Report encountered some 220 homeless individuals (12% of the surveyed population) living in the subway. Nimur (talk) 21:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I don't know the song, but the phrase generally means living somewhere very busy, where people are always coming and going. It has variations...I might as well be living in a bus station; this place is like an airport terminal. Gwinva (talk) 22:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Concur: the traditional British equivalent is ". . . Piccadilly Circus." 87.81.230.195 (talk) 00:11, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There should be an article cataloguing the national varieties of this expression. In New South Wales, the comparison is usually made with Pitt Street, Sydney. In Victoria, it's more like Collins Street, Melbourne, but it doesn't seem to be as often-used an expression as the Pitt St one (maybe that's because I learned my English from Sydney-born parents). Other Australian states no doubt have their stock expressions. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Without knowing the context, either of the above could have been correct. I googled [telephone "lady gaga" "grand central station"] and several lyrics sites popped up. The context is, "I am sick and tired of my phone ringing / Sometimes I feel like I live in Grand Central Station / Tonight I'm not taking no calls / 'Cause I'll be dancin'..." That indicates that Gwinva has the right answer. It's a common joke, in the US at least, that if the phone has been ringing frequently, someone will finally pick it up and say, "Grand Central Station!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:26, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the New York area, it just means a very busy place with lots of people and/or noise...For example if a large number of people crowd into a room for a party, someone might say something to the effect of "What is this, Grand Central or something," or "I can't hear a word, it's like Grand Central Station in here"--达伟 (talk) 01:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, same idea - a place that's very busy, in particular maybe a little too busy for the one using that expression. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Forget the subway. The expression is about the railway station whose official name is Grand Central Terminal (or maybe before that, a predecessor "Grand Central" station on the same site -- see Grand Central Terminal#History). Today Grand Central this is a terminus for commuter/suburban trains only, but it can still get very busy at times. But at one time it was one of the city's major gateways for long-distance travelers as well, when it was also used for long-distance trains and those were a primary means of travel. In other words, it had a role like a major airport today, but all in one building. --Anonymous, edited 04:40 UTC, March 17, 2010.

Some time in the 1970s, Amtrak began closing Grand Central Terminal for a few hours each evening (from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. or so). Until that time, it had been open round the clock. Railroad police discovered three or four dozen people who'd been living in the place. Few of them would have been as attractive as Beyonce. --- OtherDave (talk) 02:11, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Grand central station" is a metaphor for a relative absence of restriction on the flow of people into and out of the indoor space referred to thusly. Bus stop (talk) 02:26, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What Wikipedia projects have well-established standards for language-specific transliteration?

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I am trying to find out what languages used on the English Wikipedia for article content have relatively well-defined standards for how to use language-specific transliteration schemes (not IPA) in articles. Within the Hindu and India category there are a variety of opinions on best practices. I want to see how various languages that require transliteration do it on the English Wikipedia. By "language-specific transliteration" I mean standardized ways of using diacritical marks with the English alphabet in order to show a range of sounds not present in English. The objection to using transliteration is that people who don't know the system are confused by diacritical marks. The benefit is that people who understand them will see more accurate rendering of language. Buddhipriya (talk) 23:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I found Wikipedia:Romanization, but it does not list any languages from India. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is Wikipedia:Manual of Style (India-related articles), marked as inactive. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the suggestions, the Romanization article is very helpful. I am pretty familiar with the issues for the India-related articles, and you are correct that the effort to standardize there is at a dead end. I am trying to see how other languages that need diacritcal marks handle them, but I am too ignorant to know which languages those may be. Chinese? Greek? Plataplavian? Buddhipriya (talk) 00:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You might find something useful in these pages (not all of them active).
Also, you might wish to post your question at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
-- Wavelength (talk) 02:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See also Wikipedia:WikiProject India and its talk page. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What is Plataplavian?174.3.107.176 (talk) 03:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent suggestions all, keep them coming. I am adding all your suggestions to a list that I am compiling for my own use. Regarding the languages of India, I have been trying to keep track of this issue for some time on a user note page of my own at [[1]]. That page has absolutely no value as a guideline, it is just my own set of notes on Indic issues. Any further ideas on languages that require diacritical marks are welcome. Plataplavian is a word that I made up because it sounded to me like a language that would require diacritics, sorry if someone has been researching it in vain. :) Buddhipriya (talk) 03:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Arabic can be transliterated with various diacritical marks. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Arabic) and Romanization of Arabic have more info. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You can search in Category:WikiProjects and Category:Wikipedia style guidelines and Category:General style guidelines.
-- Wavelength (talk) 04:27, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See also Phonetic Comparison Algorithm for Indian Languages – Santhosh Thottingal
and Kamat's Potpourri:The Trouble With Indian Names. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:02, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The following link is not directly related to your question, but it has some relevance. I am mentioning it, not for the Roman transliterations which it uses, but for the interrelationships between the four alphabets shown. Possibly, this website is helpful for your work, if that involves several different languages.
-- Wavelength (talk) 22:12, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CHINESE has standards for Chinese romanization. Keep in mind that "transcription" doesn't necessarily mean diacritics; many languages can be transcribed in the Latin alphabet with no diacritics at all. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:29, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again to all of you for such great links. If any of you want to post additional ideas or just see the summary so far, feel free to edit my work page for this project: User:Buddhipriya/LanguageTransliterationStyleGuides. Buddhipriya (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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