Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 February 6

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February 6

Could you please have a look at this text in German?

Hello. I'm writing an article about a prehistoric creature on Wikipedia, but no free photos of it exist. I've decided to e-mail the only museum which has a specimen of this creature, but it's in Germany. That's why I'd like someone who's fluent in German to have a look at the text and correct any problems. Please bear in my mind that I'm using a plural "you" because I don't know who's going to read the e-mail and thus prefer to address the entire museum staff. Danke schön!--Leptictidium (mt) 16:58, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Sehr geehrte Herren,

Jetzt schreibe ich einen Artikel an der Säugetierart XXX. Diese Art ist aber nicht sehr bekannt, und deshalb ist es schwer, freie Bilder von ihr zu finden. Man hat mir gesagt, dass ihr ein Spezimen von XXX in euerer Versammelung habt: YY YYYY. Würde es für euch möglich sein, ein Bild von diesem Spezimen unter einer freier Lizenz zu veröffentlichen, und mir es senden? Ich verdanke euch vorschüssig für eue Hilfe. Entschuldigung für meines armseliges Deutsch. Mit freundlichen Empfehlungen, ZZZ.

Hi, native speaker here. Suggested improvements (the plural "you" is not required in German as "Sie" / "Ihnen" etc can be both singular and plural):

• Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren!
• ... einen Artikel über die Säugetierart ...
• ... dass Sie ... in Ihrer Sammlung haben. Würde es für Sie möglich sein ...
• Ich danke Ihnen im voraus für Ihre ...
• I have left a few samples of "armseliges Deutsch" for authenticity. BTW, your grammar is excellent. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:46, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Not a native speaker, but several points i noticed: Damen can be museum staff too. The formulaic "everyone" is typically (meine) sehr geehrte Damen und Herren. If you want it for Wikipedia article, you may want to mention that explicitly - it would go towards explaining why a free license is needed. (German has a Wikipedia too [de.wikipedia.org], and it's the largest after the English one). Finally, spellcheck. Most word processors have an option to switch to a German dictionary, and it'll avoid problems with writing eue when you meant eure. -- 174.24.195.38 (talk) 17:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Oops, that should be ... im Voraus, ie capitalised. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:51, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Not a native speaker, but I know that in modern German, 'ihr' is the plural of 'du', i.e. the intimate or informal address to multiple people. In French and Russian the plural form is the same as the polite form, but in German they are different. --ColinFine (talk) 18:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

See German declension, where an example of the declension of the formal Sie is given. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 18:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it "Versammlung", not "Versammelung"? Pais (talk) 09:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It's "Sammlung" (collection). "Versammlung" is an assembly or a gathering. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of rewriting it a bit:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

ich schreibe im Moment einen Artikel über die Säugetierart XXX für Wikipedia. Da diese Art nicht sehr bekannt ist, ist es schwer, frei verfügbare Bilder zu finden. Ich habe aber erfahren, dass Sie ein Exemplar von XXX in Ihrer Sammlung haben. Wäre es Ihnen möglich, ein Bild dieses Exemplars unter einer freien Lizenz (vorzugsweise der "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0" Lizenz) zu veröffentlichen und mir eine elektronische Kopie für die Verwendung im Artikel zur Verfügung zu stellen?

Vielen Dank im Voraus. Bitte entschuldigen Sie mein schlechtes Deutsch.

Mit freundlichem Gruß, ZZZ

Apart from the language, I added that you want the picture for Wikipedia (assuming they will be more helpful for a free project than, say for Time Magazine), and I've suggested the particular license (you may want to add the URL), so that they don't get confused about "free" vs. "extremely cheap". I've left in the "Thanks in advance phrase" that I personally try to avoid (what if they politely decline?). Good luck! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure leaving "Bitte entschuldigen Sie mein schlechtes Deutsch" in your revised version was entirely necessary...:) -Elmer Clark (talk) 11:25, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You have no idea ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:56, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't know if I should say this, but there is a 99% chance that the person receiving your email will speak pretty good English. Looie496 (talk) 19:54, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Spoilsport! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:38, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

"Standard" languages in fantasy settings

Very often in a fantasy setting, such as a fantasy novel or film, there is the concept that all the languages are fantastical too, and not the same languages that we actually use on our Earth. But then, of course, the actual fiction has to be expressed in a language that we real-world humans understand, so often the author picks one fantastical language and denotes it as the "standard" language, which is transcribed into a real-world language, while all the others stay fantastical even when viewed from our world. But how often have there been cases that this "standard" language is also depicted as it would appear inside the fantastical universe? I can only think of one: In The Tombs of Atuan, when Ged is teaching Tenar Hardic (the "standard" language, transcribed into English) he says "give me the rock" to her in Hardic, which is physically written as Arkemmi kabat, presumably from arkemmi "give me" and kabat "rock". JIP | Talk 18:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I think this may happen in the Lord of the Rings series, although I can't think of any off the top of my head. Lexicografía (talk) 18:48, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

You're right, but a better example is The Silmarillion which predates LOTR but was only published posthumously:

'When Fingon heard afar the great trumpet of Turgon... he shouted "Utulie'n aure! Aiya Eldalie ar Atanatari, utulie'n aure! The day has come! people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" And all those who heard his great voice echo in the hills answered crying: "Auta i lome! The night is passing!"'

(Apologies to the purists - I left out Tolkien's copious diacritics). I suspect Tolkien was the originator of this - unless you know better! Alansplodge (talk) 23:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Possibly the originator in fantasy fiction, but he will certainly have been familiar with the Bible. The phrasing you quote is very reminicent of parts of the Gospels, where something is said or a name given in Aramaic, followed by the Greek translation (or, obviously, the language the rest is translated into). 212.183.128.67 (talk) 12:08, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

If the "Utulie'n aure! Aiya Eldalie ar Atanatari, utulie'n aure!" and "The day has come! people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" parts are supposed to be actually represent the same language, and this language is whatever language the characters are really speaking when they're shown as speaking English, then this is what I was after. But if they are supposed to represent different languages, then it's not what I was after. One language being transcribed into modern English and another into ye olde Englishe is not what I was meaning either. JIP | Talk 19:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

This is easier in film, of course, since we can cheat with subtitles. (For instance, in Avatar. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen the film, so I don't know how the language issue is handled there. But I remember seeing some TV show about cavemen, and they all spoke in an unintelligible language that was supposed to be caveman language, and it was subtitled in Finnish (I guess it would have been English in the original version of the show). JIP | Talk 19:44, 6 February 2011 (UTC)4

Are you sure it wasn't The Clan of the Cave Bear? If not, it would be an example of a film done along the same lines (the caveman language isn't even entirely verbal). -Elmer Clark (talk) 11:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Another example is Quest for Fire where the languages were developed with the help of Anthony Burgess and Desmond Morris, according to the subsection Quest_for_Fire_(film)#Historical_accuracy. ---Sluzzelin talk 13:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think it was The Clan of the Cave Bear. JIP | Talk 19:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

This is SF rather than fantasy, but... I remember being rather impressed by the way the two protagonists in the novella Enemy Mine interact with each other - the setting is the following: humans start flying into space, meet our closest neighbors and promptly get involved in a war with them. Then we have a lonely planet where one of each species gets hopelessly stranded, and they have to communicate to survive. At first, none of them speaks the other's language, but as time passes the human starts mixing the alien's words into his English, and the alien mixes English words into his language. The whole transition process is pretty skillfully described. TomorrowTime (talk) 19:53, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

If the humans in that novella are supposed to represent real-world humans, speaking English or another real-world language, I think that this does not relate to my question at all, because in that case, the "standard language" would simply already be a real-world language, instead of being transcribed into one. JIP | Talk 19:59, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I must say I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to say - by "standard language" you mean the language spoken by the characters, and not the language the actual thing is written in, right? Kind of like how the Russian nobility keeps speaking French in War and Peace, and it's all there in the conversations, in actual French, with endless footnotes for those of us who don't speak French? Well, the two languages in the novella are given equal grounds - there are only two people in the whole thing (well, one human and one alien) and the alien is no Man Friday, and while he takes up some English, the human also takes up some of his language in the same amount and they end up meeting halfway and speaking a pidgin mix of both (that the reader also understands) - and the pidgin uses words from both languages. There is no initial stage of a couple of foreign words that get translated and then after a point, it all switches into English because one of them had mastered the other's language (or as TVTropes calls it, gratuitous foreign language) and there's no translator microbes, either - that's the whole point that impressed me, they coin their own pidgin that is understandable only to them (and the reader) and it's in their dialogues, written down as is. Ah well, maybe it's just the linguistic geek in me, I thought it was very well written. TomorrowTime (talk) 21:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I gather from the above than in the novella Enemy Mine, English and this alien language are treated as equals, with none being translated or transcribed into the other, but this is not what I was meaning. I was meaning things like Hardic in Earthsea, Westron in the Lord of the Rings, or Galactic Basic in Star Wars, where there is need for a language that is written as English (or another real-world language) in the book so it can actually be read, but within the story, is actually a fantastical language. Federation Standard in Star Trek probably won't do, as AFAIK it's supposed to be actually based on English even inside the universe. JIP | Talk 19:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

What Lexocografia may be referring to above is Tolkien's assumption that Westron was a modern form of an older language common to Men, and the Rohirric form of it was translated as Old English, while Westron was translated as modern English. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

In one of the appendices, Tolkien gives the "real" Hobbitish names of a few of the characters, that he has "translated" into English-derived names in the book. --ColinFine (talk) 23:04, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Although others made up names in invented languages - Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels for instance, I'll wager that J. R. R. Tolkien was the first to create a full language (actually several seperate ones), complete with grammar and script, to support a work of fiction. Alansplodge (talk) 00:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

In Tolkien's case, my understanding from much reading on the subject is that he invented the languages first as a hobby in itself and then created the world of Middle Earth in order to give them a plausible background. See the article on Conlang, which suggests that Edgar Rice Burroughs has priority in this application. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 12:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh well, lost my wager. See also Silmarillion#Concept and creation. Alansplodge (talk) 16:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Also possibly the first language to seep over into another series, and a different genre to boot. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:51, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

French question: Sans versus Cent

Hello Everyone, I have a basic command of French so the following confused me:

A TV commercial about a food product announced that the product is 'sans calorie'. When I heard that, I was confused if the product has '100' cent calories or if it is 'without' sans calories.

Is there a pronunciation difference that clues us to whether the meaning is 'sans' or 'cent'?

Thanks, 78.101.161.145 (talk) 21:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

If you check Wiktionary: sans = sɑ̃(z), cent = sã(t). PS: It also has audios for both. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

In case OP can't find it, here are the wiktionary links: sans, cent. Lexicografía (talk) 21:58, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

As the above pronunciations imply, there is no difference when the words are followed by consonants. When they are followed by a vowel, there is liaison and you can tell the difference, e.g. san-z-oignons [sɑ̃zɔɲɔ̃], "without onions," and cen-t-oignons [sɑ̃tɔɲɔ̃], "100 onions." Hearing more of the context of the commercial might help to clarify which one is meant. Lesgles (talk) 22:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Our article on French_phonology#Low_vowels states that the difference between /a/ and /ɑ/ is vanishing and might even be absent in some dialects and the actual pronunciation of the two can vary from speaker to speaker. For the nasalized variants, the article only mentions ɑ̃ so there might be no actual difference at all. 178.26.171.11 (talk) 22:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, the a - ɑ distinction only occurs when these vowels are non-nasalized, and even then, only with certain speakers (most Québécois, for instance). Lesgles (talk) 22:26, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no difference in pronunciation between "cent calories" and "sans calories"; however, there should be a difference in the verbs that precede these phrases. Either the product a cent calories ("has 100 calories") or est sans calories ("is without calories"). If the phrase occurs in isolation, as a kind of exclamation, then I would think it must be "sans calories!". If it were cent, I'd expect "seulement cent calories!". Marco polo (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)