Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 October 28

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October 28

"successfully completed" and "successfully passed"

Google gives 3.1 million hits for "successfully completed" and 460,000 for "successfully passed". Conversely, it gives only 8,900 hits for "unsuccessfully completed" and 741 for "unsuccessfully passed".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the former two redundant sayings? Especially with "successfully completed", it just rolls off the tongue and is obviously used quite frequently. Yet its opposite (rightly so), is not. What's the deal? The Masked Booby (talk) 02:17, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

If I enroll in a college course, and I stick it out for the whole semester (rather than dropping it), but I still fail, might it not be said that I completed the course but not successfully? —Bkell (talk) 02:33, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

It might be. But it's not the sort of claim one would make in the same sorts of contexts that one claims to have "completed" or "successfully completed" a course. Except in India. Apparently it's normal for Indian people who have failed a course to claim proudly on their resumes things like "Bachelor of Surgery (failed)". They see a failed attempt as more meritorious than never having tried at all. And they might have a supporter in Michael Jordan. But in the West generally, to volunteer information about things one has tried but failed is generally seen as, well, an admission of failure, and people are strongly encouraged to play up their successes and play down their failures, to the point of never mentioning them at all. That's if they can't be reframed as "learning opportunities" or "outcomes". So, given that the only completions normally considered worthy of mention at all are the successful ones, it adds no value to claim to have "successfully" completed something. The West is obsessed with success; people are routinely described as "successful actors", "successful writers", "successful politicians", "successful singers" - but nobody ever defines what success in any of these fields actually means or how it's measured. Is it being the current darling of the talk show circuit? Is it being the celebrity who gets the most youtubular hits in a given week? Search me. (Apologies for a post that started out OK but later veered perilously close to a rant: but it never crossed the line; it's still only rantescent.) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 04:38, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

In other words, you unsuccessfully answered the question. No such user (talk) 09:03, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Define your terms. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 09:22, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

One public figure, possibly Johnny Cash, but I'm not sure, said that, "Success means having to worry about everything, except money." As for the "Bachelor of Surgery (failed)", I would say the Yoda principle applies: "There is no 'try'; 'do', or 'do not'." The guy who failed, 'did not'. Maybe I should list on my resume, "500 home runs (failed)." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:33, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

meaning of "except to the extent expressly provided for"

What actually is the meaning of the phrase "except to the extent expressly provided for"? I think I can guess the meaning. It can mean only what is expressly spelt out. It often introduces a disclaimer and a negative clause follows it (am I right?). But can it introduce a non-negative clause? A typical usage of the phrase is seen here:

Except to the extent expressly provided for by law, no municipal body or school body may, enter into any agreement or contract.

However, I see the following sentence in a Statute:

The provisions relating to foreign service in the Indian Service Rules shall apply to the teachers deputed to foreign service, except to the extent provided for in these Statutes. (Please note that Indian Service Rules and "these statutes" are two different rules.)

The above sentence is meant to mean thus: The first Rule would apply where the second Rule (these Statutes) doesn't have provisions. Is it natural for native Englishes to use this phrase thus? --117.204.87.172 (talk) 13:46, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

The phrase in the title is an example of "legalese", and so no it's not natural for native English speakers to use it, it's really jargon which means something to lawyers and will keep them in money for years to come. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:58, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

That is not my question. I should avoided the word natural in my question. My question is if it is right to use the jargon as in the second example.--117.204.87.172 (talk) 14:09, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

It's perfectly fine to use it that way, it's just not wonderful English. basically the use of the clause is to exactly specify the scope of the rules according to what is written: "No one can do anything except as explicitly spelled out; This applies to everyone except as explicitly spelled out." usually followed by copious finger waggling and the pounding of fists on tables. --Ludwigs2 14:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

In the example This applies to everyone except as explicitly spelled out.

the "except..." part is in apposition to everyone and is clear. I don't think one can say that about the second example in my original post.--117.204.87.172 (talk) 15:38, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a little more tightly contained. your second example says, roughly: "All teachers under foreign service rule are subject to the provisions relating to foreign service in the Indian Service Rules, except where these statutes provide different rules". As I said, it's bad bureaucratic writing (the 'in these statues' phrase has an ambiguous referent which can be confusing), but it's not actually incorrect. --Ludwigs2 17:01, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ludwigs2 that this phrase doesn't really work in your second example. Ludwigs2's suggestion works much better. The phrase you have quoted generally accompanies a negative clause. The usual form is "X is not allowed, except to the extent expressly provided for in Y". Since you don't have a negative clause, you shouldn't use this phrase. Marco polo (talk) 17:30, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Chinese characters to pinyin?

Is there an easy and fast way to convert Chinese websites (such as Baidu) from their original Simplified Chinese characters to pinyin on the fly? Or is that nearly impossible due to the different meanings that the Han characters can take? --Belchman (talk) 14:50, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary (English version at en.wiktionary.org) is usually good at converting individual Chinese characters to pinyin and showing their meaning(s). But consecutively copying every single character from a website and then pasting it to Wiktionary would be quite time-consuming and nerve-racking. --Theurgist (talk) 23:15, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

If you use Firefox, there's a marvelous add-on called Perapera-kun, which gives you mouseover explanations of both kanji (JPN) and hanzi (CHN Trad or Sim), including pinyin. It's realtime, so you can just run the mouse along a sentence to get a good approximation of the meaning even if you don't understand those languages. That's the best I've discovered so far. The Masked Booby (talk) 03:05, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Google Translate used to do this (albeit not perfectly, given the difficulties you have already pointed out). It seems to be deactivated, though, or maybe I just can't find it now that they've changed the interface. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks like my second guess was right: it's still there, just hard to find. Go to http://translate.google.com, type or paste in some Chinese, select "Chinese" as the FROM language and "Chinese" (simp. or trad.) as the TO, and after it's done click "read phonetically" (not a very intuitive title, it used to be "show romanization") and you'll get pinyin. It doesn't seem to have improved much since Mark Swofford ripped it a new one in the post I linked above; it's still rather easy to trick. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:13, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the pinyin.info post I linked above also includes links to several other online utilities that appear to work much better than Google Translate (and don't inquire installation or anything).

• Adso: seems to work pretty well, and passes the [admittedly relatively easy] 把书还给我 test
• MDBG and nciku: these are both dictionaries and thus aren't originally intended for sentence-level romanizing, but they also seem to do a rather good job at word segmenting (they just don't present the output in as nice a format as Adso does).

As far as I know, none of the above sites can romanize a website for you as you asked, but you could always copy and paste the content of the website into their fields. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:26, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Belchman (talk) 09:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Henning's weird accent

Why is Henning Wehn's German accent so weird (when he speaks English)? He sounds completely different from any other German person I've heard. Is he putting it on or does he come from a corner of Germany where they have a different accent?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:07, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Having lived in Germany and heard lots of Germans speaking English, I agree that his accent is nontypical. To my American ears, though, what sound especially un-German are his vowels and diphthongs, which show a definite Cockney influence. To me, he sounds like a German who learned his English in a working-class London (or Essex) environment. Marco polo (talk) 22:24, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Does he talk like Lena Meyer-Landrut sings? 80.123.210.172 (talk) 15:54, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Here he is[1]. The compare is speaking Cockney or Estuary English. Alansplodge (talk) 17:05, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I wonder how you would describe a Cockney / German crossover? "Krautney" perhaps? It must have been common once; there was a thriving East London German community which had a school and church[2] in Leman Street, Whitechapel in the 19th Century. Alansplodge (talk) 16:44, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

More information here[3] for the curious. Alansplodge (talk) 16:54, 29 October 2010 (UTC)