Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 August 11

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August 11

Chinese help - 猿仙松林 or 松林猿仙?

How would one write “Ape Immortal of the Pine Grove” in Chinese? Is 猿仙松林 correct? Or would some kind of modifier be needed? --Ghostexorcist (talk) 00:23, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Or would 松林猿仙 be correct since the location would define the name? --Ghostexorcist (talk) 00:48, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure how this would go in the older Chinese or baihua; I assume this is a character from a story, so it should be able to find the original Chinese from there. But as a guess for modern Chinese, I would say 松林(的)猿仙. It sounds better with 的 to me but maybe it could be left off; but 松林 should definitely precede 猿仙, as it's the modifier. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:40, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

The name is something that I came up with. It's based on the legends of Gibbons from ancient China. I figured there should be a 的 in there, but I didn't know what the classical variant would be. Do you know of any experts on Classical Chinese who edit here? Thanks for the help. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 23:52, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

hairy yellow sparrow wasp

The Japanese hornet was mentioned on the Misc desk. The article shows a Japanese name for it, キイロスズメバチ kiiro-suzume-pachi, which appears to mean 'yellow sparrow wasp'. But why is it in katakana when all three words are Japanese and have kanji spellings? The parallel Japanese article's title is ケブカスズメバチ kebuka-suzume-pachi, 'hairy sparrow wasp', same question. —Tamfang (talk) 00:38, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

See Katakana#Usage: "Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana." Angr (talk) 01:18, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec) I am not an expert in Japanese, but having studied it for 2 years in high school (a long, long time ago), I seem to remember that katakana is not only used for foreign words but can be used for emphasis and for writing scientific names such as genus, species, etc.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 01:21, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll second that. When I lived in Japan, I used to watch the education channel (NHK Ch.9) and whenever a species was named, they would show it in katakana on the screen. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:05, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Jamaican lingo

Does anyone know what Warren Weir is saying in this interview?:

1:14 "The love in London is very, very good ... ??? ... one love Jamaica."

3:14 "Shout up/out [?] Birmingham, London, and whole of [?] Trelawny ... ??? ..."

86.179.3.32 (talk) 02:07, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

"It's a great honour to come here and get what my country wanted. First of all I want to thank God, my mother, my fiancee, everbody"#

"Yea yea yea, the love in London is very, very good. _____ ? One Love Jamaica. "

"Shout out to Birmingham, London and the whole of Trelawny.____? "

doktorb _words^deeds 03:41, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Presumably refering to Trelawny Parish. Alansplodge (talk) 08:26, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

At 3:14 the missing bit is "No English, straight patois", so I assume the bit at 1:14 has a bit of Jamaican patois in it. He says "represent for Calabar and Herb McKenley", but I can't make out bit before that. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:16, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

"patois", of course. I was hearing "fatwa", which I assumed could not be right! I think a couple more words may be "d'you know what ... ??? ... coming here representing for Calabar ...". 86.160.215.15 (talk) 17:12, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah...actually maybe he's not speaking patois there, I think he's just a bit nervous, and muttering and stuttering. He's probably not used to the media like Bolt is! Adam Bishop (talk) 20:39, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

It was recently mentioned that Jamaican English exists in a continuum from pure Jamaican patois to standard English with a local accent. μηδείς (talk) 22:14, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia changed to Simplified Chinese as the default of varieties of Chinese locales?

Recently, i found that Wikipedia chooses Simplified Chinese as the defaule Chinese locale. And in every page, even if i enter changed my option to Chinese (Tranditional), it becomes Simplified Chinese again when i enter another page. If i enter Wikipedia via zh-hk.wikipedia.org or zh-hant.wikipedia.org, the page always display Simplified Chinese which is not the corrent i have chosen. And the small widgets on the left-ahnd or right-hand, they always displaying Simplified Chinse but not the Chinse i have chosen.

Even Simplified Chinese have been used as national language in Mainland China, it can not deny the fact that Simplified Chinese is a simplified version of Chinese. We can called SImplified Chinese a child of Chinese or a sub-branch of Chinese. This relationship will never change. I really don't understand why a sub-branch should be on top of his parent. Isn't Wikipedia a place to record knowledages and facts?

The citizens in Mainland does not even have a chance to visit Wikipedia/ They have beend blocked by the Great Fire Wall in China. They can't access Wikipedia without using illegal way (illegal in Mainland). Please don't tell me doing this is to let more people browse wikipedia easily.

In summary, i have three questions: 1) Why Simplified Chinese becomes the deafult locale of Chinese? 2) The page always show Simplified Chinese even i've chosen another version of Chinese. I have to select it again every time i enter another topic. 3) THe widgets always disply Simplified Chinese regardless which verion of Chinese I am in — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.136.106.244 (talk) 17:56, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

That's more a question for a Chinese Wikipedia help forum than for the English Wikipedia linguistics Q&A forum... AnonMoos (talk) 19:25, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

AnonMoos is correct, I just wanted to point out: Wikipedia is not really blocked in China, access is intermittent but it's not blanket blocked like Facebook and Youtube. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:36, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

The different Wikipedias are administered separately, and the editors on English Wikipedia don't generally have anything to do with Chinese Wikipedia. So if you want an answer, as AnonMoos, you should ask the people who're responsible for running Chinese Wikipedia. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:37, 14 August 2012 (UTC)