Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 7

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 7

Help with Russian, Turkish, and Arabic

How do I say "Schools in Paris" and "Secondary/High schools in Paris" in:

• Russian
• Arabic
• Turkish

I want to add those names to Commons:Category:Schools in Paris and Commons:Category:Sixth form colleges in Paris

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 05:21, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Why do you want to add those names to those categories? If the Russian, Arabic, and Turkish Wikipedias have corresponding categories, their names will be decided by editors at those Wikipedias, and then interlanguage links to them will be added by either editors or bots. And if those Wikipedias don't have corresponding categories, there's no need for our categories to list the foreign phrases. —Angr (talk) 06:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

These are commons categories, Angr (they have the extension ":Commons"). They are supposed to have multiple languages.

The Paris municipal government prints documents relating to educational services in those languages, so I presume that many children enrolled in Paris government schools speak those languages

WhisperToMe (talk) 07:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Oops, you're right. I missed the bit about Commons. Sorry! —Angr (talk) 07:16, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I can do Russian. Schools in Paris = Школы в Париже. Secondary schools in Paris = Средние школы в Париже. Lesgles (talk) 22:26, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Adding Russian... WhisperToMe (talk) 22:33, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

In Arabic: Schools in Paris المدارس في باريس , High Schools in Paris المدارس الثانوية في باريس , via google translate. --Soman (talk) 00:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

If you don't mind, I'll wait until an Arabic speaker confirms whether Google Translate did a correct job. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I know some Arabic, but looking at it one should remove the "al" determined article. So it should be مدارس في باريس and مدارس ثانوية في باريس. This fits the pattern at Arabic wikipedia [1]. One could also use مدارس باريسية, which would correspond to 'Parisian schools'. But I think the first option is the preferred one. --Soman (talk) 16:42, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Soman! WhisperToMe (talk) 23:28, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Turkish: "Schools in Paris" = "Paris'ta okullar"; "High schools in Paris" = "Paris'ta liseler". But I wonder whether "Paris'in okulları" and "Paris'in liseleri" ((High) schools of Paris) wouldn't be better. --ColinFine (talk) 00:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

For the Turkish I'll pick the first, but defer to the second if Turkish speakers say that the second is better... WhisperToMe (talk) 04:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Pretest Probablity and Statistics

The term is "pretest probablity". It is used to determine what is the probable cause of a disease or the cause of patient's symptoms. In which possible way can the term "pretest probablity" be related to the field of "statistics". To put it straight, In which possible way can "pretest probablity" be related to the studies of Statistics i.e. for example pretest probablity with respect to sampling? aniketnik (talk) 05:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I correctly understand your question but I'll take a stab at it. Judging by your explanation, "pretest probability" is a concept in medical statistics, which is why I'm not sure why you are asking how it relates to statistics.

In terms of other related statistical concepts, based on your explanation, it sounds like "pretest probability" could be related to the prior in Bayes' theorem, and thence, perhaps the prior distribution in Bayesian statistics. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:20, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

(BTW, as much as I enjoy revisiting my hazy memory of statistics, does anyone else think this should move to the Science desk?) --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:41, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Chinese and Tamil help

For the image File:Minatkulim.jpg the sign displays something in Chinese and something in Tamil, but they are hard to read.

The first letter of the Tamil is மீ WhisperToMe (talk) 07:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I would say that the tamil says mīnāṭ, மீனாட், but uses a nonstandard ligature for nā னா. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 07:45, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

It's third under "non-standard consonant-vowel combinations here". ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 07:46, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll add the Tamil to the Commons image description WhisperToMe (talk) 07:48, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, the first Chinese character seems like yóng 永. No clue what the second one is; if it's not a compound expression, it'll be hard. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 08:03, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Doing a Google search with the first character, I found "永顺" - MDBG says it is "Yǒng​shùn​" - does that look correct to you? WhisperToMe (talk) 08:40, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

The Chinese characters do look like "永顺". I think the term means "forever smooth" or "forever successful" ("顺利" (shùnlì) means "smoothly; successfully; without a hitch"). Not sure if the Malay and Tamil terms mean something similar. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 11:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanls! I'm assuming it is "永顺" WhisperToMe (talk) 16:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

"Farther" in British English

Is "farther" incorrect in British english? I thought the correct spelling was "further". For example, "It is only three miles further to Canterbury". Thanks 92.29.124.221 (talk) 12:29, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

They are semantically different words, apparently. (I know, it comes as a shock to me too.) See the usage note here: [2]. 213.122.10.143 (talk) 12:47, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I was taught in school (Los Angeles) that farther indicated distances, but I never heard it was deemed incorrect usage in British English.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:54, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly in the UK, "farther" is falling into disuse (except among pedants), probably because of the potential for confusion with "father", pronounced identically. The reference in the usage note at the Dictionary.com page to the use "in informal speech" of the wording "This is all the farther the train goes." seems incomprehensible - I have no idea what it even means, but do know it is never used in that way in BritEng. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Fowler discusses farther/further (from a British perspective, obviously) in the original edition of his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, noting that "most people prefer one or the other for all purposes, & the preference of the majority is for further". Deor (talk) 13:59, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard farther used as a verb, as in "to farther his purposes". Mind you, except in that stock phrase, I don't think I've heard further used as a verb either. Maybe in very awkward corporate-speak, e.g. "it is inadvisable to further the project". Generally it seems that further can do stuff farther can't, although neither is restricted to distances. 213.122.57.180 (talk) 16:13, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be "to further his purposes"? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

213.122 said he's never heard "to farther his purposes". Pais (talk) 16:42, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I guess I should have specified that, in the bit I quoted, Fowler was referring to adverbial/adjectival uses in which the distinction between literal distances and figurative uses is sometimes made to differentiate the words. He does say that further is almost universally used for the verb. Deor (talk) 20:25, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and I forgot to include this exchange from Horse Feathers:

FRANK WAGSTAFF (Zeppo): Anything further, Father?

PROF. QUINCY ADAMS WAGSTAFF (Groucho): "Anything further, Father"? That can't be right. Isn't it "Anything farther, Further"?

— Deor (talk) 17:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

"There", "they're", "their" confusion.

The phenomenon of "there" taking over the role of its homophones "they're" and "their" seems to be spreading across the globe, like a particularly virulent cancer, in the last decade or so. Is there any scholarly research out there to explain the how and why of it? Another one that gets up my nose is "then" replacing "than". It seems as if an entire generation of illiterate, allegedly English speaking people has suddenly appeared out of thin air and spread over the entire English speaking world. Just to declare my "systemic biases": I'm a 43 year old, white, male, native speaker of South African English. Roger (talk) 16:32, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

It's all the fault of the generalization of literacy. Back in the good old days when only 1% of the population knew how to read and write at all, you could be tolerably sure they all did it correctly. Of course they also had the advantage that spelling wasn't standardized yet, so nothing they wrote was really wrong. But nowadays, we have spellings set in stone by dictionaries, and schools trying to teach every Tom, Dick, and Harry to read and write: there's no hope that every written shopping list or kitchen-table note is going to be perfectly spelled and punctuated. Pais (talk) 16:39, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Spelling doesn't necessarily reflect English proficiency. The fact that someone doesn't know how to spell some words in Standard English doesn't mean s/he is not "English speaking". Granted, it's annoying, and it's something you don't want to see on CV or some other formal context; it doesn't, however, mean that the person is not a user of real English, just that the person's English is not the same as what we were taught is the "correct" English. For what it's worth, your usage of commas is also incorrect in every national variety of English I am aware of (should be "43-year-old white male native speaker of South African English"), but that doesn't mean your English is somehow less English than mine. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Their even doing it at the BBC on they're website: "they went there seperate separate ways"...... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:02, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

That might be their source. (Depends if they're transcribing a spoken statement, I suppose). We also have a growing division in written forms. A lot more informal writing is done these days – there being no equivalent to the texts, emails and social media today in the past. OK, so letters are on the decline, but there are far more emails, texts, facebook messages etc. than there ever were letters. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:05, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe they've changed it since KageTora looked, but it does at least say "separate" now. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:10, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. Forgive me, as unlike the BBC, I do not employ an army of 'editors'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:13, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

(EDIT) - The BBC have now corrected their spelling on that page. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:40, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) It's all part of the eternal battle between anal-retentive sticklers with bees up their collective butts, who constantly lament the degeneration of language, culture, and civilization, and the ocean of people who could care less about always using the single correct word, phrase, or style as long as it sounds just about like what they wanted to say - "you know what I meant!" ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 17:30, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

So, how come it's the responsibility of other people to have to work out what the writer is saying, just because the writer is too lazy or whatever to find the commonly accepted form of expression or spelling to reflect what they are thinking? "Good enough" is not considered good enough anywhere else, and rightly so. Imagine a surgeon's response to your family's criticism after he removed your brain instead of your tonsils: "Oh but you know what I meant to remove, so go away and stop being all anal about it". Or you board a flight to New York but you get put off in Los Angeles: "Well, you're at least in the right country so stop nitpicking". Look, I agree that getting all picky can be a colossal bore, to say the least, and there should always be room for human creativity. But this isn't about being creative. It's about people not giving a fuck, and dumping a load of trouble on others. Is that OK? Not in my books. It's also about people not taking any pride in their own work. They'll strive and struggle and aim to achieve and seek to improve themselves in every other way, but when it comes to this subject, they completely drop the ball. Somewhere along the way, during their education or childhood, they were given the message that it's OK not to have high standards in this single field of human activity, but everywhere else, such high standards are mandatory. Why this exception? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Where do you get the idea people have high standards in other areas? And anyway, I think it's a much bigger problem when writers don't actually have anything interesting to say, and try to cover up for that fact by repeating platitudes and clichés, or just flat-out Ctrl-C'ing other people's work and Ctrl-V'ing it unattributed into one's own dissertation than when they mix up their theres and theirs. —Angr (talk) 19:00, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, so you're fighting for lower standards? Interesting. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:53, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Jack, I suspect if we knew clearly the answer to your question (i.e. why's it OK not to care about clear expression), the field of pedagogy would be in much better shape than it is today. There's some extent to which "proper" language (and perhaps even spelling) is seen as the purview of prissy, effete rich people who are so out of touch with regular (read: "real") people that disregarding standards of spelling and grammar is a prerequisite to any sort of hipness or cred. Despite Sputnik and the Internet, we still live in a world in which taking open pride in intellectual achievement is for losers, commies, and elitists (while sometimes the achievement itself is tolerated or even sought). Using the linguistic conventions of the ruling class is tantamount to saying that not only do you want to be a member of it, but also you think "real" people deserve their less enfranchised station in life. It is a prelude to ditching your friends, zarking off to some über-pretentious locale, and shitting all over your roots while laughing with the pack of spoiled brats you now call your friends. Having knowledge is OK; expressing it clearly is a declaration of class warfare. Now I may well be overstating the case; but this is the impression I get living right across the river from one of the most famous of über-pretentious locales. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 20:02, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not "fighting for lower standards", what gave you that idea? I'm saying it's better to have a piece of writing that actually says something but gets some of the spelling wrong than to have a piece of writing that says nothing and gets all of the spelling right. Wringing our hands about poor spelling is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic in this day and age when fewer and fewer university students are able to formulate, argue, and defend an original idea of their own in writing - or for that matter read, understand, and summarize an idea of someone else's. That's where the educational system is failing, and the issue of people remembering how to spell [ðɛr] and [ðən] in which environment is trivial in comparison. —Angr (talk) 21:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe combining these words is a good idea (which would answer the OP's question). While you're coming up with examples, can you think of any examples of sentences where substituting "there" for "they're" or "their" would cause ambiguity? Does the OP have a reference for it spreading like a virulent cancer, rather than like a particularly charming species of wildflower?

Edit: Found one for their/there: "Our guests have returned to London, and there meals no longer need preparing." Can't find one for they're/there, yet.

Edit 2: This one works three ways: "Many mime artists perform on the streets of Paris. They're dogs, and small children, at least, are impressed by them." I guess it was a bad idea after all. 81.131.50.237 (talk) 21:34, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

To take my BBC example above, 'they went there separate ways' could mean 'they journeyed to the location via differing routes/modes of transportation', and not 'they parted' as was no doubt intended. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

It appears to be the consensus of this discussion that the blame lies not in the collapse of civilisation as we know it by the agency of what passes for "edyewkayshun" these days, but rather that the illiterate masses have always been with us and they have only lately achieved the ability to publicise their ignorance in global media. Apologies for my earlier abuse of the lowly comma, I was labouring under the misapprehension that I was writing a (comma separated) list of adjectives; which upon reflection is a misapplication of the aforementioned modest little glyph. Roger (talk) 18:01, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I have found for the past decade or so that I can spell English better than many native speakers, even though I learned English as an entirely foreign language. But then again, my English pronunciation is horrible compared to native speakers. I don't know how to stress syllables properly, some consonant sounds (particularly "th") completely elude me, and I have a hard time distinguishing between things like "ch" in one word and "ch" in another, or the soft "g" and the soft "j", which native English speakers find self-evident. The reason for this must be that Finnish spelling is almost entirely phonetic, with a good correspondence between spoken phonemes and written glyphs, whereas in English it's much more complicated, there is a huge amount of different sounds expressed with a small alphabet, and the mapping between spoken and written language is very complicated, and nowhere near bijective. JIP | Talk 19:33, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

While most of the kinds of people who contribute to Wikipedia think good spelling matters, many other people don't. HiLo48 (talk) 19:59, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

There are certainly some contexts where spelling doesn't matter all that much. An encyclopedia is not such a context. You cannot have a blanket philosophy that it doesn't really matter anywhere at all, but that's what some people seem to think. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 00:09, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

My impression is that while a there/their/they're confusion is not uncommon, it's not nearly as widespread as misuse of I/me/myself, which has reached epidemic proportions. I hear "between you and I" at least weekly on television, from writer's pens to actors lips, and I feel physical pain each time. The strangest part of this is that it seems it is part of an over-correction backlash. About 15 years ago many people became aware of the misuse of "me" when "I" was proper and there was something of a campaign to fix this. The result is not ideal. Now everyone avoids "me" in any sentence involving more than one person, using "I" instead, and where the native ear recognizes "I" as clearly wrong, "myself" gets shoehorned in. At least three times over the past five years or so when I have said "between you and me" someone has attempted to correct me! By the way, why is it that half the population says supposably instead of supposedly?--141.155.143.65 (talk) 01:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

141, 15 years is a recency illusion on your part - I believe that dispute has been going on since around the end of Queen Victoria's reign, if not longer :-) . 87.81.230.195 (talk) 16:58, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Me and the guys agree. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:21, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed exactly the same tendency to over-use "I" when "me" is the correct personal pronoun, even from educated speakers on BBC Radio 4. The recent change is the over-correction. I can remember when it was much more common to hear "me" used instead of "I". The worst example of the modern trend, heard a few years ago from a deputy head in a secondary school, was "Sheila's and I's". Dbfirs 18:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I've just been reading The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher (linguist), and he gives examples going way back of people saying "language is going to pot nowadays". On the other hand, your/you're, its/it's - just get it right! AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

They're alot of people who say there are many ways to use those words. I'm not their spokesman, though. GoodDay (talk) 19:59, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

There are a lot of people who write "alot" when they mean "a lot", too.  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

That's true. GoodDay (talk) 20:49, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I also get annoyed by people who don't use the proper spelling. I should probably question my motivation, though. Am I just annoyed because I needed to learn the distinction, and they don't care ? I suppose I could argue that the different spellings help us to avoid ambiguous sentences, but the question comes up as to whether (or should I say weather ? :-) ) the cost of learning the different spellings of homophones justifies the benefit. I do feel that having all words spelled phonetically would make literacy far simpler, and that's a worthy goal. StuRat (talk) 21:44, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Chroo. Saddly, dhats probbebly nevver gonna happen, and az long az dhe prezzent sistem iz yoozd, peeple riting in Inglish can onely doo dhayr best too ubzurv its roolz. (Yeah, I know that was predictable, but I just couldn't help it.)--91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:38, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Stu, you mean the annoyance caused by people insisting on spelling the possessive pronoun "its" as "it's" (which means "it is" or "it has")? Yes, that is very annoying.  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:45, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I also see no point in following bizarre grammar rules that make artificial distinctions between how possessives are used for proper nouns versus pronouns. It's similar to how I feel about other languages that consider inanimate objects either masculine or feminine. Some such rules seem almost designed to prevent the masses from attaining literacy. StuRat (talk) 04:53, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, the distinction is not quite artificial. The possessives of the personal pronouns ("its", "his") don't work in exactly the same way as the "Saxon genitive" (*it's, *he's). You say "I saw its cover" with reference to a book, but you normally don't say "I saw the book's cover" - rather, you say "I saw the cover of the book" (but not "the cover of it").--91.148.159.4 (talk) 17:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

IPA transcription

IPA transcription of Weierstrass in standard German please. Thanks you. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 23:40, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

[vaɪɐʃtʁaːs]. Lesgles (talk) 01:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The a in strass is short (not sure about the etymology, but it's not a street). --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

There's a recording of a German saying the name at Forvo, but unfortunately no IPA. Pais (talk) 14:00, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The Duden Aussprachewörterbuch (Duden 6) confirms that Lesgles is correct: the /a/ is long. —Angr (talk) 18:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's actually Weierstraß, so it's not irregularly spelled. --Atemperman (talk) 06:44, 9 March 2011 (UTC)