Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 May 21

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May 21

Flattery that's hard to understand

I have an intelligent lady friend who is exchanging a lot of email with me because we can't be together for a while. I'd like to flatter her in perhaps ridiculously, obviously, overblown ways - preferably using achaic, obscure, difficult words that'll send her scurrying for a dictionary. I've been doing reasonably well for a few days - but I'm running short of good words. I just know you smarty-pants here can come up with some good ones in the name of silly romanticism. Oh - and if there are some doozies in French or Italian, that would also work. TIA! 70.112.128.105 (talk) 00:53, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

If you want archaic and obscure, try reading some of Shakespeare's sonnets (it's been awhile, but he was good at that sort of thing). Be VERY careful, he loved double entendres, and (if I recall correctly) can be fairly explicit sometimes. As for specific words, none are coming to mind, but my brain doesn't always work too well that way. I suspect you could also find some stuff in some of his plays, such as Romeo and Juliet for example. Many, if not most of his plays involve some crazy romance in one way or another, which obviously are expressed in 16th-17th century words. Falconus^{p t c} 03:54, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Double entendres are OK...just so long as she'll have a mental work-out to find that to be the case. 70.112.128.105 (talk) 11:36, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

And for French, Cyrano de Bergerac comes to mind. That being said, French is not my first language, and I have not found need to focus my efforts on building vocabulary around romance. I cannot tell you if Cyrano's words are "doozies" or not, but it's the best I got. Falconus^{p t c} 03:58, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

When you can be together in the future, she might impress you by "preparing" fine cuisine. Would you like to find out later that she had purchased the food from a luxurious restaurant?

—Wavelength (talk) 04:46, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I can tell you've never eaten something she cooked...I choose option B!  :-) But seriously, a better analogy would be whether I'd prefer she first considered what food I like, then researched new culinary techniques to produce that goal - then shopped for the finest, freshest ingredients, then prepared the meal with loving care. That is how I write to her - and here I am looking for the precise ingredients for my letters to her. 70.112.128.105 (talk) 11:31, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't be so judgemental. We're not here to pass judgement on why the OP is asking this, or why he shouldn't be. --Viennese Waltz 09:07, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Heh, a luxurious restaurant as a metaphor for the Wikipedia Reference Desk? More of a greasy spoon, I'd say. Pfly (talk) 09:30, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Hardly fair - I'm making an effort to make my soul-mate happy (and this will do that - because she has that kind of a mind and that is why I love her). So I need to expand my vocabulary. Is that so terrible? Now the decision is justified - how do I proceed with this goal? I search for a virtual roomful of linguistic experts (Hi! <wave>) and beg them to teach me what I must urgently know to make her happy. This is the thing that will produce her girly laugh when she opens her email tomorrow - there can be no more important thing. If I wish to give her a perfect rose - should I have to grow it from seed? Will a quick trip to the flower store not be adequate expression of my feelings? (Well, perhaps not - but that's life!)

So get with it linguophiles! Her golden eyes are saddening as we speak! You would not want that if you had but glimpsed the depths of the whirlpools therein. This is a full-scale philological emergency dammit! 70.112.128.105 (talk) 11:31, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

You could always give her the traditional Yorkshire chat-up line: "Get thi coyt lass tha's pulled" and see if she understands that! --TammyMoet (talk) 13:25, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, this is boring! Not one good word? She likes to go walking - and Wiktionary turned up a good word for my sign-off line last night: "Goodnight fair ambulatrix.". But this is hard work! Need help. 70.112.128.105 (talk) 13:55, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Your idea of using a thesaurus is a good one, but you need to make sure that your thesaurus is equally good. The Oxford Historical Thesaurus includes the following words (among others) as synonyms for a beautiful woman: wlonk, sheen, violet, beryl, blossom, bonny, spark, bellibone, bonnibel, nymph, venerilla, houri, belle dame, peri, pantheress. Some of these are obsolete, but that should fit your purpose.

Quotations and poetry are also good sources for this kind of overblown compliment. Phrases like "blushing bud of ever-blooming beauty" (W.S. Gilbert) and "my Luve's like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June" (Burns) should be good. John M Baker (talk) 17:05, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Sentence in the Article Problem of evil

In the article Problem of evil I find this sentence:

Elihu states that God is perfectly just and good even though He allows evil in the world, because God does is not held to human standards of morality.

This sentence seemes to be flawed. Should the word "does" be removed? Or do you think there is a better formulation? -- Irene1949 (talk) 14:34, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I would imagine the original author started off with something like "God is not to be held to human standards", or "what God does is not to be held to human standards", and didn't like all the "to"'s. If it's not meant as a translation of a specific phrase, how about "God is not [to be?] bound by human standards"? Tevildo (talk) 15:18, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

(I must say that I'm not finding it easy to extract that sentiment from Elihu's speech - he certainly doesn't say it explicitly. Perhaps Job 34:18-19 ("Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art wicked? and to princes, Ye are ungodly? How much less to him that accepteth not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the rich more than the poor? for they all are the work of his hands.") is the reference, but it's by no means unambiguous). Tevildo (talk) 15:32, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your help regarding the formulation. I introduced it into the article.

I don't know whether it is correct to attribute the idea in question to Elihu. I assume that you are right when you doubt that. Maybe it would be good if you edit that. -- Irene1949 (talk) 18:46, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I've bunged in a couple of {{Cn}}s - let's hope someone can come up with a source or (better still) an interpretation that's supported by the text. Tevildo (talk) 16:43, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the logic of the statement seems flawed, too. Perhaps it would make sense to say "you can't judge God to be evil and unjust", since those terms don't apply. But how can you argue that God is "perfectly just and good", because those terms aren't defined for God ? StuRat (talk) 06:02, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. This is getting a bit off-topic, but I would interpret Elihu as saying "God is (by definition) perfectly good and just, so any _percieved_ injustice in the world is due to our imperfect human understanding of God's purposes." But that would be WP:OR in the article. Is the disputed sentence referenced anywhere? Tevildo (talk) 13:22, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

In Talk:Problem of evil#Book of Job - interpretation?, I wrote some information about professor Bart D. Ehrman’s interpretation of the Book of Job. -- Irene1949 (talk) 22:15, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Synthetic language?

Mandarin Chinese is probably the most analytic language. What is the most synthetic language, or, what are some of the most synthetic languages? I would prefer an Old World language, comprising IE, Semitic languages, etc, even if you have to take a dead language that's fine. Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 18:19, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Couldn't tell you which one exactly, but old American languages (Mesoamerican and Canadian) tend to be highly polysynthetic. Check out some of the ones listed here. - filelakeshoe 19:13, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Many Old World languages like German, Afrikaans and Welsh all have examples of ridiculously long compound words, like Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft, Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, but I suspect this is not what you mean by "most synthetic language". Gabbe (talk) 20:45, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, the Welsh name (LlanfairPG) that you quote was made-up as a publicity stunt at the end of the 19th century - follow the link for details. Finnish might be a better example, with "lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas". Alansplodge (talk) 20:51, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

That's right. Apart from a few artificially created place names, Welsh is not especially given to unusually long words. —Angr (talk) 22:06, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

As Filelakeshoe mentioned, many Amerindian languages are highly polysynthetic. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:39, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

If you want polysynthetic langauges in the Old World, a good place to start is some of the languages families of far-eastern Russia, such as Chukchi. Voikya (talk) 21:30, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

My first thought was Esperanto, but I don't think that's what you're looking for. Completely synthetic, though, right? Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 14:29, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Are north and south strongly connected with up and down everywhere?

I'm in Australia. It's very common here, particularly in spoken English but often enough in written language, for people to use the word up when describing travel to a place north of them, and down for places south of them. Obviously this relates to standard northward orientation of most maps. For example, Brisbane is north of Melbourne, and it's quite normal for someone from Melbourne to say. "I went up to Brisbane." Down would be used to describe the reverse trip.

People in Sydney, a coastal city, who engage in snowsports, always a southward journey, commonly speak of going down to the snow. Not being from Sydney myself, and finding that I usually have to go up a mountain to find snow, I find this a rather odd expression.

What I'm interested in is whether this usage of up for north and down for south is common throughout the English speaking world, and even in other languages. HiLo48 (talk) 22:12, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

It certainly is in the U.S. When I was a kid, we moved from New York State to Texas, and shortly after we arrived there, I was talking with a local neighborhood kid who startled me by saying "up in North Carolina", since I was still used to thinking of North Carolina as "down". In Irish, on other hand, suas "up" is always "south" and síos "down" is always "north": suas go Corcaigh means "up to Cork" (which is in the south) and síos go Doire means "down to Derry" (which is in the north). West is siar "back", as well. East is soir, which originally meant "forward", but that meaning is really rare nowadays; normally it now only means "east". —Angr (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't have an answer, just wanted to link to http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1955. 22:25, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I've often noticed that the choice of "up" or "down" in our dear land of Oz has nothing, necessarily, to do with either geographic north-south alignment or topographic relative elevation. People could talk of "going down" to Cabramurra (from anywhere), or "going up" to Sydney from Byron Bay. I hear echoes of "We'm come up from Somerset". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:29, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't know for sure, but I assume you would find it anywhere that the mapmakers' convention of putting north at the top of the map is observed. History of cartography says that that dates to Ptolemy, although it doesn't seem to be universal from that time.

On another note, I'm impressed that you have time to worry about it. I'd think it would be distracting, having to hold on to the ground to keep from falling into space. --Trovatore (talk) 22:30, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It absolutely wasn't universal for many centuries after Ptolemy. File:Hubbard map 1677.JPG is from 1677, and oriented with West at the top. In fact, during this era, it seems that "West=up" was something of a standard File:The Carte of all the Coast of Virginia by Theodor de Bry 1585 1586.jpg and File:1527-TeraFlorida.jpg from the 1500s also feature west = up. --Jayron32 23:12, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I guess it's like that in most cultures nowadays, but probably not for the Guugu Yimithirr people, at least not historically. See Guugu Yimithirr language#Grammar for the reason (last sentence). Hans Adler 23:11, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Related discussions are archived at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 June 2#Downtown, uptown

and Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 February 24#up/down the street.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:27, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 February 20#Who's down under? there is a (less closely) related discussion.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The terminology that comes most readily to my mind in this regard is "up north", "down south", "out west", and "down east". I'm in Canada.

(See next section for a somewhat related topic.) Wanderer57 (talk) 01:22, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that this is a Euro-centric (or Eurasian-centric) practice. That is, once people had a general idea of how the "old world" continents were laid out, the Europeans were certain to put themselves on top. (They might have preferred the center, but obviously Europe isn't the center of Europe, Asia, and Africa.) If there was a dominant culture in the Southern Hemisphere, the directions might have been reversed.

I've noticed that "upstream" and "downstream" are also sometimes used to determine "upper" and "lower", as in Upper Egypt (in the South) and Lower Egypt (in the North). StuRat (talk) 05:54, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

It is the same with Upper Canada and Lower Canada. (These are historical, not current terms.) Wanderer57 (talk) 23:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses folks. All useful. And I agree that the up/north and down/south connections are due to mapping conventions. And clearly the usage exists in North America as well as here in Australia. (Even if Jack thinks we're directionless.) I'm still wondering about elsewhere, particularly in other languages. (Oh, and Trovatore, I appreciate your concern, but we're a tough bunch down here.) HiLo48 (talk) 05:47, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

In your maps in Australia, do you conventionally position north at the top of the map? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:39, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Yep. Although some fun maps are available which are up the other way and which seem to place Australia closer to the middle, still using proper projection of course. HiLo48 (talk) 08:11, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Just to reiterate what I said above: in Irish, it's the exact opposite. Up = south and down = north. Whether the Irish ever drew maps with south at the top, I don't know. —Angr (talk) 06:05, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

In the UK we use "up north" and "down south". We also have another directional usage of up, which is that people go "up" to University (Oxford, Cambridge etc) and "down" when terms closes and they go back home, or they get "sent down" if they are expelled. We also say "up" when going to London, and I suspect that this is similar to the Irish usage, in that Dublin is in the south of the country. --TammyMoet (talk) 07:57, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Wanderer57, in Canada people say "down east"? What does it mean exactly? Is it anything like the use of Down East in Maine? I always found that an odd term. People in Boston saying "I'm going down east this weekend", meaning they were going north (and a bit east) to Maine. I understand there's a historical reason for the term. In the US, on a large-scale (ie, cross country), the terms would be "up north", "down south", "out west", and "back east".

Also, while traveling "up" tends to mean north, and "down" south, in some cases elevation trumps cardinality. In Colorado, for example, a person in Boulder might say "I'm going to drive up to Leadville", even though Leadville is southwest of Boulder. Similarly, someone in Yellowstone National Park, camping perhaps, might say "I'm taking a quick trip down to Bozeman, even though Bozeman is north. I live near Seattle and, when suggesting a trip to Mount Rainier would always phrase it, "let's go up to Rainier", even though Rainier is to the south. Pfly (talk) 08:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Railways in Britain typically designate tracks as "up" and "down", with the former generally being towards the principal terminus of that line, the location of the headquarters of the company that originally built the line, or, when on a branch line, towards the mainline. As the principal termninus of most lines was London and most branch lines radiated away from London, "up" is most commonly towards London. As London is in the south of Britain, this means most "up" trains are travelling southbound and most "down" trains northbound. Thryduulf (talk) 09:49, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Pfly, "down east" means in the Maritime/Atlantic provinces (which are physically lower, on the St. Lawrence and the ocean, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it). "Out west" means to the prairies or Alberta (people from down east often go out west to work in the oil fields). "Up north" could mean as far as the arctic, but normally means cottage country in Ontario (which is still much further south than most of the country). Adam Bishop (talk) 15:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

This thing about how in Irish up means south and down means north has me curious. I googled it a bit but couldn't find a clear explanation or theory about how this came about. But I got the sense that it has to do with facing east (toward the rising sun maybe?), with the rest following from that, making east "forward", west "backward", south "right", and north "left". Then link to this the old notion of left being "weak" (apparently the word "left" is from Old English lyft, meaning weak). Somehow these ideas lead to the notion of left/north being "down" and right/south being "up", although I'm not sure about all this and am curious. Cardinal direction#Germanic origin of names says the word "north" comes from Proto-Germanic, meaning "left, below", i.e. "to the left of the rising Sun". And south from a word that "is root-cognate to Sun itself, thus "the region of the Sun"". There's more hints on the Relative direction. Also some clues from this book, Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture, p. 159. Can anyone shed more light on this? I find it most curious! Pfly (talk) 09:03, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

In England, southerners will speak of places like Leeds as being "up north", while northerners will speak of places like Oxford as being "down south". On the other hand, "going up to London" can be used from almost anywhere in southern England or even the Midlands, while northerners and Scots tend to say "going down to London". As for the kids going "up to Cambridge/Oxford" (as in university), I've always considered that to be more of a comment on social standing rather then a geographical direction. Astronaut (talk) 10:53, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

It's an old tradition that Oxford or Cambridge Universities are "up"[1] but anywhere else in the country is "down". Hence Doctor Spooner's famous injunction; "Having tasted two worms, you will leave by the next town drain". Alansplodge (talk) 20:02, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

To answer Pfly's question. Yes, in Canada "down east" means the Maritimes, i.e., the Maritime provinces - New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Googling "down east" +maritimes will find many examples of the use. I imagine the origin of "down east" is that to get to the Maritimes from Quebec and Ontario you go east and for a long time the only practical route was down the St. Lawrence River. Wanderer57 (talk) 15:04, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Here in the Shenandoah Valley, the Shenandoah River and its tributaries run northeast, thus north is the lower end of the valley— we locals often refer to north as down. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:16, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

See "Yemen" at List of country-name etymologies#Y.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:18, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese maps and compasses had South at the top, and North at the bottom. Further, one speaks of previous periods of time as “up” and yet-to-occur periods as “down.” This was explained to me (accuracy questionable) as based on the cultural belief that the “old days” were better than current or future times, a sort of arch-typical ideal. DOR (HK) (talk) 03:59, 26 May 2011 (UTC)