Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 July 18

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July 18

Miscellaneous vocabulary questions (French and German)

I am working on building my French and German vocabulary by using flashcards assembled by someone whom I do not know, in anticipation of spending a year in a bilingual French and German speaking city. It is going well, and the flashcards have already done wonders in a very short period of time, but the French set is in British English, and I have been verifying all of them as some of them seem to differ from what I understand as a US English speaker (for example, when I think of a trolley, I think of a public transportation system, where the flashcard program was referring to what I call a shopping cart). Also, some of the definitions seem to be extremely odd usages of a word that I cannot verify ("la bourse" = purse?), so while most of them are spot on, I have decided to triple-check all the words I haven't seen before, using a combination of the French Wikipedia and online dictionaries. It is working out well, but there are still occasionally some problem-words. The first question I have, is how would someone say, of all things, "trowel" in French, not as in a masonry trowel "la truelle", but a garden trowel (and in that vein, are "la pelle" and "la bêche" both acceptable ways to say "shovel" or "spade"?) I doubt I'll ever use those words next year, but now I'm curious. Also, the article on French Wikipedia w:fr:Ruelle corresponded to the English article Ruelle, which was obviously a mistake, and I changed it to correspond to Alley. The article "Alley" in turn corresponds to w:fr:Allée. Now, I suspect that w:fr:Allée, a type of "Ruelle" has little to do with the English definition of Alley, so should I fix this (change the link in w:en:Alley to w:fr:Ruelle), or am I wrong? To compound matters, the French Ruelle also corresponds to German w:de:Ruelle (Begriffsklärung) which seems to be equally incorrect. Should it be w:de:Gasse? My German is still not very good, so I cannot tell for sure. Thanks Falconus^{p t c} 06:26, 18 July 2011 (UTC). If this looks different than what you remember, I updated it about 15 minutes after the original post, but as there were no responses, I felt safe to change it up Falconus^{p t c} 06:40, 18 July 2011 (UTC).

"Une bourse" means a coin purse ("La bourse ou la vie" means your money or your life). It also means Exchange_(organized_market).

A garden trowel is "un transplantoir".

On the french wikipedia, w:fr:Ruelle is an stub/disambiguation page. I think it's better to let the link to Ruelle, and let the Alley linked to w:fr:Allée (which is a quite bad stub).

194.6.163.244 (talk) 09:34, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Ruelle is a diminutive form of rue (unless I'm very much mistaken), so "alley" seems the right English translation (and German Gasse is correct). An allée (as well as the German Allee) is characterized by the trees that line it; the closest English term I could find is Avenue (landscape). --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:39, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

There are some garden spades [1] here, called bêche. Une pelle is what you would use for shovelling sand on a building site, but it is different from the shovel that a UK builder would use, has a longer handle and doesn't necessarily have the sides that distinguish a shovel from a spade in the UK. Pelle is also pelle méchanique or pelleteuse, a mechanical digger. A garden trowel might be called une petite pelle, although I don't doubt that "transplantoir" is more exact. Looking through builders' merchants' online catalogues could be a good way to build up your technical vocabulary. Some also have "how to do it" leaflets for the general public, that illustrate the tools.Itsmejudith (talk) 10:01, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The English, French and German Ruelle articles are all disambiguation pages. Hence you should not link the French disambiguation page Ruelle to the English alley. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 14:24, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thank you all. That has been quite helpful. And Pp.paul, thanks for changing that back. Falconus^{p t c} 16:09, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The old problem of translation... Language evolves and not the same way everywhere, the Ruelles of Montréal seems to be quite different from what I would call a Ruelle, a small street between buildings. fr:Allée forgot (so far) that is some places in France it is the entrance of a residential building... Ideally we should be able to have one interwiki link per entry in a disambiguation page... For Translation, I usually use the Wiktionary, with help on Wikipédia when neccessary. --Cqui (talk) 17:45, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

In the wiktionary, we equate (en) alley, de (Gasse) and fr (ruelle), but also with other words. The American notion of an alley differs nevertheless from the European notion, for the cities are completely different. Neither block nor alley have German or French equivalents. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 18:59, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I would have said a Ruelle translates as a twitten, but I see that is the same as a ginnel. I have also seen The Lanes (Brighton) translated as "Les Ruelles". Sussexonian (talk) 23:27, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah, the archaic past participle of to tweet. μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

The full principle principal parts are of course tweet – twat – twitten. Angr (talk) 09:13, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I see you're a man of principal principle, Angr.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 11:03, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Now I am. *Sigh* Angr (talk) 11:52, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe a better card(s) instead of the "la bourse" = purse would be "le porte-monnaie" = purse or "le Portefeuille" = Wallet. I've generally understood "la bourse" to be the stock exchange in common usage. As for the gardening implement, according to Wiktionary a trowel is "un déplantoir". The French Wiktionnaire suggests "ruelle" is translated as "alley" or "alleyway". Astronaut (talk) 16:39, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again for all your responses; they helped clear some things up. Falconus^{p t c} 01:08, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

How to start my study for Spanish language?

I'm a beginner of Spanish, but i dont know how to start my subject by self learning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maggie Tong Tong (talk • contribs) 08:40, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The BBC is a good resource. Have a look here. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:44, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

About.com[2] might be worth a look too. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:28, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I've had good results with Pimsleur recordings, which may be available at your public library. This is a good way to get a quick start, but to really progress you need to interact with a native speaker either in person or through Skype or the like. Marco polo (talk) 19:53, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Have you studied any other language? Are you taking no formal classes? Where are you located? Do you have a spanish speaker to help? What is your ultimate goal? Advice would be more narrowly tailored were that known.

My experience has been that anything with the word "conversational" in it is suspect, that there is no substitute for two semesters of structured formal study at the university level, and that strict attention to and comprehension of grammar and pronunciation are of paramount importance.

My advice to someone enrolled in a beginning course would be to purchase a copy of 501 Spanish Verbs, to practice out loud for at least 30 full minutes daily, and to listen to spanish music and watch spanish movies as often as possible, even if the movies are watched with subtitles. Load the iPod with La Lupe.

Immersion is the best option. I worked with and lived for six months with Spanish immigrants, having studied French formally and having bought a copy of 501 Spanish Verbs.) I was fluent in six months to the point of dreaming in spanish and of being mistaken for a native speaker by native speakers. (I understand that's not always a possible option.) μηδείς (talk) 23:37, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I like http://www.learner.org/series/destinos/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/index.shtml --Nricardo (talk) 01:32, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Review of English language

Hi, i'm not English as mother language, could you take a little review to the contents here?

• Unione Cestistica Casalpusterlengo
• Basket Rimini Crabs

Thank you! --El cestofilo (talk) 19:48, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

You did a good job, I only found a few things to comment on. In the first article, I cannot quite tell what is meant by the sentence "Only in those years while playing in Legadue, in front of league's regulations for capacity, the home arena was PalaCastellotti in Lodi." In the second article, I made some changes; look over them them and see if you agree with what I did. I think that "register to participate in the championship" is a little clearer than "inscribe" (you wrote "iscribe", but I assume you meant "inscribe"?), and I replaced "as like as" with "as did". We can use "as" or "like", but I can't think of a time that we use "as" and "like" together. Finally, I changed "grew up" to "began his career", as "to grow up" implies a sense of "going from being a small kid or infant to an adult", which is probably not what you meant. If I am wrong about him starting his career there, then we can use something else. I hope that helps. Again, you did a good job :-). Falconus^{p t c} 23:06, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I have edited both articles to idiomatic English, but the sense should be checked to make sure Falconus and my interpretations are reasonable. If there is a further issue, feel free to comment on my talk page to make sure any issues are addressed. μηδείς (talk) 23:23, 18 July 2011 (UTC)