Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 April 30

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April 30

Arabic name for an Iraqi/Syrian turtle

(الرفش)

Anyone here reads Arabic and is interested in zoology? I have just put a "History" section into the article Euphrates softshell turtle, but as I know no Arabic, I would like someone knowledgeable to check it over.

In 1797, Guillaume-Antoine Olivier shot a big turtle when crossing the Euphrates, and said that the locals call it rafcht. (He wrote in French, so his ch is like English sh). The creature was accordingly named by the zoologists of the day Testudo rafcht; later the name was apparently misread as Testudo rafeht; eventually the species was reclassified from the catch-all Testudo genus into its own genus, which was accordingly named Rafetus.

As Olivier does not say what rafcht meant, I tried to look it up in a dictionary, and the closest word they have is rafš(رفش), i.e. "spade". And indeed, a Google search does find some articles which apparently (based on what Google Translate says) say that the locals still call the creature ar-rafš(الرفش). There are a couple relevant links in the article Euphrates softshell turtle. If anyone can confirm or correct, that would be much appreciated. -- Vmenkov (talk) 03:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

How do you find your missing pen?

"How do you find your missing pen?" seems mean "You think your pen is good or bad?", But Chinese usually translate it to "你是(do you)怎么(how)找到(find)你的(your)丢失的(missing)笔(pen)" and think should answer "The pen under the desk." or "My friend helps me find it."
Now, I really want to ask "By which way you find your pen?", how should I express it?
And is this mistake only in Chinese?--铁铁的火大了 (talk) 05:46, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, if the person actually has found his pen already (找到了他的笔), you will probably use the past tense in the question: "How did you find your missing pen?". The meaning ("in what way did you find it?", rather than "how do/did you like it?) is usually clear from the context. One would also respond in the past tense ("It was under the desk", etc).

If the speaker really wants to emphasize the "how" ("怎么...") part, I guess one can ask, "How were you able to find XXX?" (if the search has been completed successfully), or "How can you find XXX?" (if he's still looking, and if you are wondering whether he can do it successfully). Or even "How are you looking for XXX?", if the search is still in progress. -- Vmenkov (talk) 06:09, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! And now I understand this question.(Tense is dreadful...)--铁铁的火大了 (talk) 07:15, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

'Find' means 找到 and therefore implies a completed action (or soon to be complete). You would use 'look for' (寻找) if the person hasn't actually found the pen yet. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the same! Our teacher has told us this difference, but I forget it... --铁铁的火大了 (talk) 11:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

How about “Have you found the pen? Where was it?” – b_jonas 09:35, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

笔找到了吗？在哪里？ rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:33, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Lay/Lie down

If telling a dog to get into a prone position on the floor, which is correct? "Lay down" or "Lie down"? And why? This isn't homework, I'm just curious as to which is correct and therefore whether my wife or her mother is correct. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 10:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I imagine it would depend on your dialect (and the dogs'). From memory of various sheepdog trials I've seen (they were all found guilty), both commands are used. - Arwel Parry (talk) 10:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Well, language changes, and many people nowadays use "lay" intransitively. When I was at school, we had it rigorously drummed into us that one lies in bed, or lies down, and that 'lay' can only be used when talking about person A laying person B down, e.g. helping them into bed, tucking them in, etc. 'Lay' also crops up in "get laid". Lay is also used in "Now I lay me down to sleep" - but that's still OK because it's understood as "I lay myself down". There, you couldn't have "I lie myself down". Although, you could say "I, myself, lie down" in the right context, but not "I, myself, lay down".

So, you tell your dog to lie down, not to lay down. But, as I say, language changes, and maybe this is considered outmoded now. And that's no lie. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:18, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

But if you made it much longer and turned it into verse it might be a lay. Mikenorton (talk) 10:48, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Simply say "Down!". [1] Oda Mari (talk) 10:22, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It basically comes down to the prescriptive/descriptive dichotomy. Prescriptively, "lie down" has traditionally been considered correct, as Jack says, because "lie (down)" is intransitive and "lay (down)" is transitive (exception: you can say "the hens are laying" because the direct object "eggs" is understood). But descriptively, native English speakers (certainly in the U.S., maybe in other countries too) have been using "lay down" intransitively so pervasively for so long that it can no longer be considered ungrammatical, however much it annoys prescriptivists. As for Oda Mari's suggestion, I think "Down!" addressed to a dog means "Get down" (i.e. stop jumping up on people, or get down off the sofa) rather than "Lie down". —Angr (talk) 10:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Angr, you are wrong. Did you see the link? "Down!" is a commonly used command to lie down. Take a look at our article Obedience training#Commands. And see these too. [2][3] [4] Oda Mari (talk) 15:07, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not wrong, I simply disagree with what the link says. If I had a dog, I would distinguish between the commands "Down" and "Lie down", regardless of what some dude on the Internet says. —Angr (talk) 19:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

For some catty discussion of it, see here. My two penn'orth would be that since we have two different verbs, we may as well keep them for different meanings. As for your wife and her mother, if either says that lie is wrong, she's wrong. Otherwise they may take their picks. Henry^Flower 15:44, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

This sentence is in the present tense: In the aftermath of the tornado, many tree branches lie on the streets.

This sentence is in the past tense: In the aftermath of the tornado, many tree branches lay on the streets.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks all for the effort but I'm still just as confused. And in my house, we use "down" for lay/lie down and "off" for getting off of people, counter-tops, couches, etc. Dismas|^(talk) 23:41, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

What more can we tell you. You lay a tablecloth on a table; or you lay your cards on the table; those are transitive because there's an object involved (tablecloth, cards). When it's a person or an animal just resting prone on a bed or whatever, they are lying (from the verb "to lie"), not laying. That's an intransitive verb, because there's no object involved; they are not lying <anything>, they're just lying. So, when you ask a person or a dog to get into a prone position, you ask them to lie down, not to lay down. If you want a person to surrender their weapons, you might ask them to lay them down. If you carry your sleeping child over your shoulders into their bedroom, you lay them down in the bed. But if you want your awake child to stop pestering you when it's after midnight, you ask them to lie down and go to sleep. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 00:49, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Bob Dylan had trouble with this, too. Bielle (talk) 01:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Another lyric that always annoys the hell out of me is "If I just lay here", which is repeated several times in Chasing Cars. "LIE here", I repeatedly shout at the radio... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.205.4 (talk) 11:50, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

See wikt:lie and wikt:lay and wikt:prone and wikt:supine. See also http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/lay.html and http://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/confusing-words-3.asp and http://www.confusingwords.com/.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Jack, for this latest explanation. A lot of what is said above is wishy-washy and doesn't really say it succinctly enough for me to get it. But now that I see that 'lay' has to have an object, I think I have it. Dismas|^(talk) 02:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Luckily for me, most of the people I try to lay bring their own objections with them, so it's easy to remember... Matt Deres (talk) 14:49, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I suspect the dog only knows the word down and you could say "elf down" and it would lie down. Googlemeister (talk) 19:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

"[..] the French government anticipates its becoming an Outermost Region"

..I've found this phrase here and it has been found faulty in a review in de:Wikipedia:Kartenwerkstatt for a map I'm working on. Is it a common phrase or maybe even wrong? Is there a somewhat more common phrase, e.g. "anticipates it to become"? Kind Regards, --Alexrk2 (talk) 12:44, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with it. Anticipate is followed by a gerund, not by to + infinitive. If anyone doesn't like it for aesthetic reasons, anticipates that it will become would also be fine. Thanks for introducing me to the new German verb zu guttenbergen, by the way. Henry^Flower 15:51, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The German WP commenters may be unfamiliar with the English construction, but it's not wrong. Deor (talk) 16:00, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I guess for us Germans the gerund is somewhat unusual. --Alexrk2 (talk) 18:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Just to anticipate any further discussions you may have with other editors, "anticipates it to become" is bad English (it may not be grammatically wrong, but it's poor usage), while "anticipates its becoming" and "anticipates that it will become" are perfectly acceptable. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Fou vs. fol in French

When I learned French lo these many years ago, I learned that the word for "crazy" is normally fou in the masculine singular, and the variant fol occurs only before vowel sounds (unless they're protected by h aspiré). And Wiktionary's article fol confirms this. If that's the case, why in "La chanson des vieux amants" does Jacques Brel sing "Vingt ans d'amour, c'est l'amour fol" instead of "...c'est l'amour fou"? Is it purely poetic license, so that it will rhyme with envol in the next line? Is it the sort of thing that's only permitted in poetry, but would be considered ungrammatical in prose? —Angr (talk) 22:17, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Editors can see the lyrics at http://comnet.ca/~rg/ch_b016.htm.

—Wavelength (talk) 22:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I think poetic license is the right explanation. See [5]: "La forme fol est employée, sans raison d'euphonie, dans le style archaïsant ou p. plaisanterie" and "on l'emploie encore dans des domaines archaïsants tels que le droit, la poésie; on la conserve dans les proverbes : bien fol est qui s'y fie..." Lesgles (talk) 00:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a mistranscription because amour is feminine and the feminine of fou is folle (homophone of fol). 72.128.95.0 (talk) 03:57, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

No, amour is indeed masculine. --Wrongfilter (talk) 07:14, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I know that in formal singing, poetry and recitation (rhetoric) in French, many consonants are pronounced that are dropped in normal (and proper) conversation. I wonder if that would have any relation to the choice of forms in writing poetry or very formal, stylised theatre. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:24, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Amour in modern speech is treated as masculine, but in the context of a poem or song it may also be feminine, especially if the writer is trying to write in a literary or careful registre. One can see in the first line that he says 'nous eumes', which implies this is the case. Ou peut-être je me trompe. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 15:19, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

That would be possible, but two things point against it. First, even in the literary language, amour is normally feminine only in the plural, though there are exceptions. Second, Brel usually pronounces his e muets, but there is no hint of one in the word fol in his recording[6] (and if he had used folle it technically wouldn't have rhymed with envol). Lesgles (talk) 15:36, 1 May 2011 (UTC)