Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 February 2

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February 2

Vets In Practice

This is a question about British-English spelling. There used to be a BBC television series called Vets in Practice.

I am confused - according to the British-english spelling rule discussed here recently, it's "ice" for a noun, and "ise" for a verb. Yet would not the sense of practi*e in the title be a verb, so it ought to be spelt practise?

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons article includes the text that the public can "rest assured that their individual vet is properly qualified and fit to practise, and now the same assurance can apply to practice premises". So was the series title an over-subtle pun?

I am very unclear about the phrase "in practi*e", such as "While reputed to be boring, accountancy in prati*e is fascinating" - is it an noun or verb? How is it spelt in British-english? Thanks 92.24.191.10 (talk) 11:49, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

My veterinary friends here in Australia run a Veterinary Practice. Practice there is a noun. Not sure about "...in Practice". I'd be happy with a bit each way.  ;-) HiLo48 (talk) 11:56, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

But it is obviously a noun. I don't see why the phrase "in practice" confuses you: preposition "in" cannot possibly precede a verb. No such user (talk) 13:08, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Quite so, it is clearly a noun. Think about "Women in business". DuncanHill (talk) 13:13, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

So regarding "I had to pan my camera while taking photos of racehorses in training", the "in training" bit is not a verb phrase? The "in practi*e" part means you are doing something, ie a verb. "Women in business" means that they are busy making goods or providing services - surely a verb and not a noun. 2.97.220.121 (talk) 20:02, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I business, you business, she businesses ..... - I rather think not. "I will be attending training this morning" is no different from "I will be attending school" or "I will be attending the brothel" - these words are all nouns. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:16, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd add that defining parts of speech adequately can be complicated. The old notion that a noun is a "person, place, or thing" and that a verb denotes an "action" are inadequate; you pointed out yourself that "practice" in this phrase seems to mean a kind of action. But that's true for a lot of words that are obviously nouns, e.g. execution in "The sergeant carried out the execution."

• JackofOz gave one way to figure this out: to try to inflect the word. *"She businesses" (a verb inflection) does not work, but "two businesses" (the plural noun inflection) does.
• Another property of nouns is that they can serve as the subject, object, or predicative complement, or as the object of a preposition. "Business is booming these days" (subject); "Mind your own business" (object); "Mr. Jones is an opponent of big business" (object of a prep.).
• Training is a gerund, which is a little more complicated. In form it is the same as the present participle (I am training the employees), but functionally it is more like a noun: "I love this training"; "The trainings are tedious". Unlike normal nouns, however, it can take an object. "Training the employees is tedious."
• Practice the verb was also derived from a noun, but through other means, in the 15th century or earlier. Despite its similarity to its verb cousin, however, it is a noun through and through. In "vets in practice," practice is the object of a preposition, in. You can theoretically replace practice with any other noun: business, town, school. It doesn't work with verbs, however: *"Vets in eat"; *"Vets in operate on horses". "Vets in love" does work, but love here is the noun, not the verb.

If you can get your hands on it and have the patience, I'd recommend looking up the relevant sections in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language or the shorter student version, both of which go into much greater detail. Hope this helps. Lesgles (talk) 21:26, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

The article says that a gerund is a "non-finite verb form". So therefore, "training" is a kind of verb. As would be running and driving below. 92.15.14.91 (talk) 17:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

What about "I am in business, your are in business, she is in business" compared with "I am running, you are running, she is running"? Or "I had to pan my camera while taking photos of racehorses running", or "Women running". You are going to tell me that running or driving are not verbs? 2.97.220.121 (talk) 21:05, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Oops, close edits. See about training above, but I'll try to clarify. "Am in business" and "am running" are similar in that they're both predicates; they make some proposition about the subject, I. But predicate is a larger category than either noun or verb. Your first example has a prepositional phrase "in business" which serves as a complement to the verb am. That phrase is neither a noun or a verb in itself, but it contains the noun business. The second contains the verb run in the present progressive tense (see grammatical aspect, which in English is formed with the auxiliary verb to be and a present participle in -ing. In your last examples, the participle is used to modify the nouns racehorses and women. Lesgles (talk) 21:45, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

The "in" is the clue - you can be in business, or in a cave, or in America. You can't be "in" a verb. DuncanHill (talk) 21:31, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec) As Lesgles pointed out earlier, "running" and "driving" in these contexts are deverbal adjectives (specifically, participles).

Just because something expresses action or activity doesn't mean it's a verb. "Verb" is a syntactic category, defined by the role it plays in the structure of a sentence, and not a semantic element defined by whether it expresses "activity" or "thing". Nouns can also express action (e.g., "the defeat of the army"—"defeat" expresses an action or event but it plays the role of a noun in the sentence's structure). In your "running" example, "racehorses running" has the same meaning as "racehorses that are running", but running in the latter example is a verb within a relative clause whereas in the former example it's an adjective. Both words express the same meaning but are at different places in the sentence structure.

So, to go back to your original question: while "in practice" or "in business" semantically expresses an activity that they are doing, syntactically they are sitting where the object of the preposition "in" sits. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:40, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Is the "in Practice" part of the expression actually adjectival, in that it describes the Vets? Think about "Vets in retirement". The word "in" is an important bit here. Of course, I don't know whether the adjectival form should contain an s or a c. HiLo48 (talk) 21:39, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in this case the prepositional phrase is used adjectivally, but that doesn't change the spelling of the object of the preposition in the phrase, which is still a noun, just like retirement. Lesgles (talk) 21:54, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

So semantics and syntax are out of kilter for verbs? 92.15.14.91 (talk) 17:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Latin & Spanish

Are they the same? GlennRichardAllison ^{Mr. 900 Jr.} bowling

No. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Explain why. GlennRichardAllison ^{Mr. 900 Jr.} bowling —Preceding undated comment added 18:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Read the articles, and find out for yourself. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Glenn: you might want to read the article on Spanish and the one on Romance languages. "Romance" is the term for languages that have their origins in so-called Vulgar Latin, the Latin of ordinary people as opposed to Roman aristocrats. To oversimplify, Spanish (and other Romance languages like French and Italian) is a linguistic grandchild of Latin. To overextend the metaphor, you are descended from and share genes with your grandparent, but the two of you are not (presumably) the same person. --- OtherDave (talk) 18:33, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Unless you're Philip J. Fry. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:45, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec) But your approach is colossally wrong-headed, Glenn. For some reason known only to yourself and God, and without even apparently bothering to check out Latin or Spanish language, you seem to have assumed they're the same language. You come here for confirmation, you are quickly disabused of your assumption, and you then demand "explain why". Where do you get off? It's like demanding to know why Barack Obama and Hosni Mubarak aren't one and the same person. It's suspiciously trollish behaviour, and that can only lead to a bad outcome. For you. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no need for us to explain it here. A quick look at the articles Latin language and Spanish language will explain the basic idea. The languages are closely related, but not the same thing at all. Spanish evolved from Latin, but has diverged into a separate, different language, because it is used by far more people far more often than Latin. JIP | Talk 18:57, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Your sounding like a troll yourself, I was just asking a question. No need to get out of hand... GlennRichardAllison ^{Mr. 900 Jr.} bowling —Preceding undated comment added 18:43, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

If you go to the top of any Reference Desk page, you'll see this Q & A:

Is there any way I can get a faster answer?

Yes, you can search first. Please do this.

I'd encourage you to do that, because by your own admission on one of the other pages, you asked before looking. You're not the first person to do so, but now you're aware that people providing responses aren't obligated to do so. Not only is Wikipedia the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, it's the one anyone can search. --- OtherDave (talk) 19:12, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I would also direct you to the article Language change, which will help to answer your question why. Marco polo (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

And since this is the language help desk, it's pertinent to note that the request "Would you explain why, please", is a more appropriate way to address volunteers than the order "explain why". More likely to get you the answer you want. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Arabic numbers

In which order are numbers in arabic read/pronounced ? Left to right as in European languages, i.e. (roughly) millions first, then thousands, then hundreds, then multiples of ten, then multiples of one? Or right to left?

I know how in which order the numbers are written, I just wondered if the order of reading changed upon adoption by the Europeans. Arabic numerals does not really make that clear. Yaan (talk) 22:37, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Even in English, numbers are not always read from left to right. For example, 19 is read "nine-teen". -- Irene1949 (talk) 23:32, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess I have to congratulate you on your command of English numbers. ;)

I had actually hoped that the word 'roughly' would make sufficiently clear that I am not so interested in the little subtleties of how numbers are read in English. Also I am not really interested in European languages that follow a 'twenty and one' rule, but otherwise still read numbers from left to right.

Basically, I had hoped someone could tell me what 1234567890 looks like in Arabic words, and which of the words/compounds are for which power of 10. Thinking of it, Farsi might be OK too, and Turkish would at least be interesting. Yaan (talk) 00:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

It is usually the biggest first, like we do it. "1001 Nights" for example is "alf layl wa layla", literally "a thousand nights and one night". They wouldn't say "one and a thousand". However, for smaller numbers, the smaller number comes first; "twenty-three" is "thalath wa ashrayn", "three and twenty". For "1234567890" it would start with "one billion", etc, and the only difference would be in the tens ("two hundred and four-and-thirty", and so on). Adam Bishop (talk) 00:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a bit more under Arabic writing, mentioning telephone numbers too, but unreferenced. ---Sluzzelin talk 01:19, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I think what the OP is trying to ask may be answered like this: '23' in Arabic is written '23', same as in European languages, but is read as 'three-and-twenty', and is read from right to left in this way, and in keeping with the script. '123', however, would be read 'a hundred and three and twenty', and not 'three and twenty and a hundred', for some reason. Now I am not sure which stick I've got the wrong end of.... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Since the OP asked about Turkish, the order there is the same as the English one: 23 is yirmi üç, which is litterally "twenty three". 123 is yüz yirmi üç, also litterally "hundred twenty three". --Xuxl (talk) 16:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The OP's initial question seemed to be predicated on the fact that Arabic is written right to left, but the numerals are written left to right. Turkish is written left to right, so there is unlikely to be a conflict when reading. --Jayron32 16:36, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

But Turkish was written right to left until about 90 years ago. Presumably the way numbers are pronounced didn't change at the same time the writing system did. Pais (talk) 16:46, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

See Endianness#History (permanent link here).

—Wavelength (talk) 17:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Many, many years ago, I worked for a company that was creating computer systems for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The terminals were Arabic. As you typed, the letters moved from right to left, since Arabic is read right to left. But when you typed numbers, they appeared left to right, since that's the way Arabic numbers are read. What was the funniest, to a person used to the Roman alphabet, is that Arabic characters are written differently depending on whether they appear at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a word, so as you typed letters, they changed shape on the screen. Corvus cornix_talk 20:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the answers. I had always assumed that arabic numbers are read and written from right to left.

Also thanks a lot for the link to endianness. The question was actually in part inspired by a computer problem. The article over there actually claims that "the most significant digits are written [...] last in languages written right-to-left.", which I guess is mistaken? Yaan (talk) 01:53, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

You need to make the distinction between written as numerals and written as words. For example, in the case of 2005 (two thousand five), when written numerically in Arabic, the "2" will be to the left of the "5" (so the most significant digit will be written last, when starting at the right and moving left). What was discussed above is that when the number is read out (or written as words) the Arabic equivalent of "two thousand" will come before the Arabic equivalent of the word "five" (the "two" will be to the right of the "five"). Again, this dependance on digits versus words would be similar to left-to-right languages (such as German), where numerically it's written 46, but when written in words it's "six-and-forty" ("sechsundvierzig"). -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 02:20, 5 February 2011 (UTC)