Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 November 1

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November 1

Spanish party name

Anyone got a good translation of Partido Concentración Obrera? 'Workers Concentration Party' just sounds weird. --Soman (talk) 04:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

This link has some alternate English translations of concentración. The sixth on the list gives a definition with the sense of manifestación ("demonstration"). "Workers Demonstration Party" sounds good.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 04:19, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

We don't have a Spanish version of the English article. Thweatt's research seems useful. Normally I would say ask Soman, but unfortunately he's the one asking the question. Miss Bono may be able to help if she can explain this to us in a sentence or two, rather than just using one or two synonyms. I'll leave a not. μηδείς (talk) 05:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

More parties with similar names:

• Partido Concentración de Fuerzas Populares (Ecuador)
• Partido Concentración popular (Argentina)
• Partido Concentración Mexicana.

--NorwegianBlue ^talk 10:17, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe another way of saying "consolidated"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:20, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The spanish language article for the old argentine party is here: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentraci%C3%B3n_Obrera Cfmarenostrum (talk) 10:22, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

You beat me to it. :) It's simply Concentración Obrera rather than Partido Concentración Obrera. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:24, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The spanish language article for the "Rassemblement Populaire pour le Progrès" (a political party in Djibouti) is "Concentración Popular por el Progreso". The name of the english language article for the same party is "People's Rally for Progress". OTOH, "Rassemblement" in the name of the former french party RPR is translated as "Reagrupamiento" on es.wikipedia (in order to keep the initials?) and still "Rally" on en.wikipedia.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentraci%C3%B3n_%28desambiguaci%C3%B3n%29Cfmarenostrum (talk) 10:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The word is rally... I think (O_o) What is exactly what you are looking for? Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 13:02, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

• Perhaps it's "Labour Party: the Gathering". μηδείς (talk) 03:14, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Being a sugar daddy vs. keeping a mistress or concubine or prostitute

What is the difference between being a sugar daddy and keeping a mistress/concubine/prostitute-sort of thing? Have there been concubines documented in the United States? You know, a situation where a woman lives with a man and assumes a position lower than the man's legitimate wife but the wife is OK with it because the wife can use the woman as her maidservant or surrogate mother? 140.254.227.58 (talk) 11:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Being a sugar daddy does not inherently imply a mistress. It has more to do with an oldish man and a youngish woman. The situation with Anna Nicole Smith and that geriatric guy she was married to was kind of an extreme. There have certainly concubines among the wealthy (JFK comes to mind), but the specific scenario you're describing might be harder to find. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:23, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Being a sugar daddy is the same thing as keeping a mistress, with the assumption that the man is older, and that usually is the case anyway. Given the population of the US, I'm sure that there must be documented cases of what you describe as concubinage. For a start, there are men who have had two wives legally in another country and then bring both of them to the US. Only one of the marriages would be recognised in the US of course, but if they can manage to get through immigration then there is nothing to stop the three of them living together. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:54, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The term redirects to Age disparity in sexual relationships, and neither the word "mistress" nor "concubine" appears in that article. Perhaps it needs revising? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:02, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that the redirect is unfortunate. I believe (although I would need to check sources before editing an article) that th3e slang term "sugar daddy" in this sense clearly implies an economically unequal relationship, that is, it is simply a slang term for a man who has a mistress, that is a woman who he supports in return for sexual favors and companionship. It often but not always implies an age disparity as well, but then, at least in western culture, the man is usually older in such relationships. (By the way there have been a few cases where US courts have recognized plural marriages as legitimate (for example Kobogum v. Jackson Iron Co.. See Laughing Whitefish (book for more info.) Some such relationships may amount to concubinage in the sense that the OP mentions, and others will not. I don't think the term implies anything about that one way or another, but the image is of a woman being supported in a separate residence, I think. DES ^(talk) 17:20, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps it should redirect to Mistress (lover) instead, if a mention of the term for the male was inserted there. DES ^(talk) 17:27, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

How do you classify the Anna Nicole Smith situation? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:02, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't remember all the details of that case, to be honest. But in any case such slang terms describe general situations or even stereotypes, they are not tightly defined technical terms, as I see it. People use them as they see fit, fashion changes, and some use them more broadly than others. I thinkg "Sugar daddy" is a bit old fashioned now, i see it more in fiction (or news accounts) from the 1960s or earlier than I do in current writing or discourse. That may be a national or regional variation, i don't know about current usage elsewhere than the US, and esp the Northeast US. DES ^(talk) 20:28, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Sugar daddy is not the same as keeping a mistress. The former pays (the sugar part); someone who keeps a mistress may or may not. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:14, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Keeping a mistress means paying for her keep. Similarly, the sugar in sugar daddy is the money. I agree that the term recalls an earlier epochs That's because nowadays women are able to earn their own keep. When "My heart belongs to Daddy" was a hit, everyone knew what was meant, double meaning and all. Itsmejudith (talk) 06:57, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

"Keep" has two possible meanings here - "have" and "pay for" - therefore not synonymous. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:59, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe the term 'sugar daddy' used to mean only "keepng a mistress" (which implies he is married to someone else) but these days it more broadly means someone wealthy enough to pay for the girl's expenses in exchange for sex, irregardless of whether he is married or not (and thus whether the girl would be called his 'mistress' or not). There are websites with girls looking for sugar daddies. El duderino ^(abides) 05:10, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I thought Sugar Daddies could marry the woman in question and still be a sugar daddy. Maybe not? Mingmingla (talk) 02:13, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Wouldn't he be a sugar hubby then?  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:28, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

It might be kind of a cliché, but I think it's still around. That term "daddy", by itself, implies a man who is controlling someone, as in "Who's your daddy?" The "sugar" part would be a bonus for women who are willing to be "kept". Meanwhile, I'm reminded of this line from "Cocaine Blues": "Shot her down / Because she made me sore / I thought I was her daddy / But she had five more." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Hangul transliteration help

Hi all,

• Down at the bottom of the Park Geun-hye article is a "Party political offices" listing Park as succeeding "Choe Byeong-ryeol" as "Leader of the Grand National Party"
• In the Saenuri Party section "List of Chairpersons" is "Choi Byeong-yul (May 26, 2003 – March 22, 2004)"

Is this the same person as ko:최병렬?
Pete aka --Shirt58 (talk) 12:14, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Edit: my new years resolution for 2011 was to learn Arabic and to finally get around to learning Korean. My new years resolution for 2012 was to learn Arabic and to finally get around to learning Korean. My new years resolution for 2013 was to learn Arabic and to finally get around to learning Korean. Pete "My new years resolution for 2014 is to learn Arabic and to finally get around to learning Korean" aka --Shirt58 (talk) 12:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Do not waste your time for the things you never directly experience in your everyday life or you will never experience in your immediate future, and be happy. Learning or at least constantly planning to learn languages which are not used by you in everyday life is really annoying and upsetting from psychological POV, I witness it by myself. I tried to learn many languages but failed, because no real motivation, no actual use and benefits - no success. When you really need Arabic or Korean you'll learn them without any resolutions and with much success. If you still have not learnt them then you do not need them. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:43, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Learning to read the Arabic and Korean scripts is trivially easy though, if you just want to compare transliterated names like this. For this name, 최병렬 certainly says "Choi Byeong-ryeol", but the R and the L are not really distinct like they are in English, and the R is more of an alveolar flap. As our Korean phonology article says, R/L "is unstable at the beginning of a word, tending to become [n] before most vowels, and silent before /i, j/..." So, almost certainly, the R of -ryeol is just swallowed because of it's position in the name, assimilated into the previous and following sounds. It's spelled -ryeol but pronounced -yul. Also, I don't think -yul alone is a permissible combination of Korean sounds, so Byeong-yul couldn't be that guy's actual name and there would be no way to spell it in Hangul. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

@Lüboslóv Yęzýkin: I live in a city of 3 million people. I bicycle past two mosques, a Greek Orthodox church, and a Saint Thomas Christians secondary school on my way to work every morning. --Shirt58 (talk) 13:16, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Living in a city with many diasporas does not necessary imply the need in the languages of the diasporas. And living near a mosque or a Greek church does not mean you need Arabic or Greek. Though people would be glad if you try to speak in their language, but the most of others can get along only with a local lingua franca which, in this instance, is English. So it's most probable, quite easy and expected to live all life in Melbourne, Sydney, London, New York etc. and not to know any language but English.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:00, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Adam Bishop -- Korean orthography is heavily morphophonemic, and Korean phonology involves a number of allophonic alternations and positional neutralizations, so to pronounce Hangul correctly you have to know a fair amount about the morphology and phonotactics of the Korean language. And basic Arabic script lacks any written indication for almost all short vowels, and has confusing contextual shape changes of many letters (which do not correspond to anything in pronunciation), and many consonants (including some pronounced very differently) are distinguished from each other only by the presence or positioning or number of dots. The basic organizing principles of the Korean and Arabic writing systems are both somewhat simple once you understand them, but I would not consider it "trivially easy" to learn either system... AnonMoos (talk) 00:13, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Worse, vowels in Arabic bear grammatical meaning. I always wonder why some claim that Arabic script is very appropriate for Arabic as "all the meaning is in consonants". And without knowing the language itself or the diacritics (which are very rare) you cannot read aloud or transliterate the most of texts, these are just unintelligible lines of consonants. The only help in such situations is dictionaries with transcription such as Wehr's.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:13, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

As a historical matter, it seems unlikely that the first alphabet ever invented would have taken the form it did (a pure consonantal alphabet) if it hadn't been invented for a Semitic language with consonantal roots. It's observable that Semitic languages generally added vowel indications to forms of this alphabet rather slowly over time, while when a Semitic alphabet was borrowed to write a non-Semitic language, there was usually a sudden expansion of vowel indications (i.e. the Greek and Indic alphabets -- the very strange Pahlavi adaptation of the Aramaic alphabet is an exception). AnonMoos (talk) 12:38, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

From what I can see, this person's name in hanja is 崔秉烈, and he is a former mayor of Seoul.--Shirt58 (talk) 13:54, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Michele

How is Michele pronounced in English (IPA)? See also Talk:Michele (given name). The article text has "mi-shell" and "mee-KEH-leh" whereas the box in the article has "muh-SHELL, mee-SHELL, MEE-shell, mee-KEH-leh (Italian)". --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 17:46, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

You'd have to ask the person who's name it is. As a teacher, I get students with many different names, and literally every one of those pronounciations is possible. --Jayron32 17:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The conventional US pronunciation would be mi-SHELL. As with many English words, the exact pronunciation can vary a little bit depending on the context. But if you listen to newscasters saying the names of public figures with the first name Michelle (Bachmann, Kwan, Malkin, Obama, Pfeiffer, Phillips, etc.) they typically say it mi-SHELL. Some might argue they're really all saying muh-shell, but the difference is very slight and they're consistent in any case. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:00, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

It might be worth recalling the popular song that rhymed Michele with "my belle" and with the french "ma belle". That shows that the songwriter, at least, thought such a rhyme natural. DES ^(talk) 20:30, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

That was Paul McCartney trying to sound French, and trying to make the word fit the pattern of the notes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:49, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

When singers regularly sound like "Ah lerv mah herney chahl" (non-rhotically), it's impossible to tell whether Macca was saying "my belle" or "ma belle", without the printed lyrics. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The mumbling with music (which is wrongly called "singing in English") must be forbidden by the UN.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

How is "muh-SHELL" pronounced? --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 11:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Like it's spelled, but kind of run together, almost "m'shell", like the British way of saying "my lord" as "muh-lord" or "m'lord". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:17, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

For me (Iowan) it's [mɪ̈'ʃɛɫ], or more broadly /məʃɛl/ (afaik I have two reduced vowels, /ə ɪ̈/, but I seem to disagree about half the time with whatever dictionaries give). Lsfreak (talk) 18:35, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you all. I used this answer as the most concise one [1]. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 09:18, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

And if you needed an academic source the best option was to look at a dictionary.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:19, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Terrific. Thanks. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 01:36, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I've just noticed. In Jones's dictionary RP-based Gimson's system is used but in Wikipedia there are the own rules which are a strange mix of systems and dialects. To convert to the Wikipedia format /e/ should be changed to /ɛ/: /mɪˈʃɛl, miːˈʃɛl/.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:35, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I have more than once heard the Italian male pianist Michele Campanella (/mi-ke-le/) referred to as /mi-shell/ by some radio announcer who'd never heard of him before and assumed he was a woman. This sort of error sets bells ringing in my inner belfry, and if I hear it too often I get driven batty. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:01, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

A battalion of bats, at your service. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:57, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

It's a cloud or a colony, apparently, but thank you. I will treasure this always. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:55, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I can see why they would call it a 'cloud', although this is not much of a cloud, more like a 'rack' of them... As in bat rack. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:01, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't Batrack one of the three guys that Nebuchadnezzar chucked into the burning fiery furnace? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:25, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but they wouldn't burn. It turned out that their mommas didn't raise no fuels. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:32, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Articles (or not) with epithets

I've only just noticed this.

Adjectival epithets given to humans tend to be of the form the <adjective>. Examples include:

• Alexander the Great
• Catherine the Great
• Pope Leo I 'The Great'
• King John 'The Posthumous'
• Ivan the Terrible
• Gorm 'The Old'
• and the vast majority of names at List of monarchs by nickname.

On the other hand, adjectival epithets given to musical works usually dispense with the 'the'. Examples include:

• Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 Pathétique
• Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 Choral
• his Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor Moonlight
• Chopin's Prelude No. 15 in D-flat Raindrop
• Schubert's Symphony No. 9 Great
• and the vast majority of entries at List of classical music sub-titles, nicknames and non-numeric titles.

It's only when we refer to the latter group as, say, the Moonlight Sonata, the Choral Symphony etc that a 'the' gets into the act.

So, it's never "Ivan Terrible" or "Catherine Great" etc on the one hand, and never "Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 The Pathétique, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 The Choral" etc on the other.

Why? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:46, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Some counter-examples come to mind - Edward I "Longshanks", Henry I "Beauclerc", The Eroica, The Four Seasons... Tevildo (talk) 20:58, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

"The Four Seasons" is a bad example, the article is in the title. I would say that Piano Sonata No. 14 is generally called "The Moonlight Sonata", not just "Moonlight Sonata", although "Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata" is also a common way of referring to the piece. Tevildo (talk) 21:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The Eroica is not a counter-example. Its formal title is Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major Eroica, but sometimes people talk about "the Eroica Symphony" or just "the Eroica", just as they say "I heard a very moving performance of the Pathétique tonight". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Alexander "the great" as opposed to his lazy nephew, Alexander "the underachiever"; or his plus-sized and unvirtuous niece, Alexandra "the big easy". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:15, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The difference is that the phrases designating people are part of the English language, but the phrases designating musical works are not, or at least not part of spoken English. You might meet them in a catalogue or programme, but I don't think I've ever heard anybody say them, unless reading reading out a programme. The normal English for them is either "Tchaikovsky's Pathetique (Symphony)", or "Tchaikovsky's symphony no 6, the Pathetique". --ColinFine (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Bugs would seem to have the correct answer. There are Alexanders who were not so great. Phillip's son is the great one. The other Edwards were not known as roundheads. Hence no comparison of Edward *the Longshanks to other shortshank Edwards. And of course, it's a matter of arbitrary historical convention. μηδείς (talk) 03:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

No no no! Here, as in all other ways, the English language follows a completely transparent, consistent, and logical set of easy rules! Why do you think Jesus wrote The Bible in in it? ;-) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:09, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

One point is that articles and possessives (like the Saxon genitive) are both types of determiner; an English noun phrase usually has at most one determiner. So "Beethoven's Eroica" or "the Eroica", but not "Beethoven's the Eroica". The the is not part of the title, of course: by contrast, you could say "Mozart's The Magic Flute" or "Mozart's Magic Flute"; people fight over which is better — what Arnold Zwicky calls faithfulness vs well-formedness. jnestorius^(talk) 18:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The English word "mayhem"

I am sure I keep hearing people say mayhAm, not mayhEm. I am not lying. Here is my audio evidence. I need a thorough explanation.--98.88.145.182 (talk) 22:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Ah, Wikipedia on a Friday evening. Looie496 (talk) 23:19, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that this is related to the Mary–marry–merry merger. Perhaps an American English speaker might like to comment. Alansplodge (talk) 11:23, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

If that's occurring in the US, it must be a regional think. In the Midwest it's may-hem. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:15, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The video link above is an American news presenter with a story about Los Angeles - I'm not clever enough to tell where the accent comes from. Alansplodge (talk) 12:37, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

It's nothing to do with the Mary merger. Just sounds like she lowers her /ɛ/ vowels, at least in that context. I'll look later in our article on American vowels. μηδείς (talk) 15:22, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Alansplodge -- the "Mary–marry–merry" merger is part of a whole series of changes involving pre-r vowels in many American English dialects (including the complete neutralization of the contrast between long/tense vs. short/lax vowels before an "r" which is in the same syllable as the vowel, among other things). It doesn't have much to do with vowels not before "r"...

My overheard vowel pronunciation annoyance is that some of the city buses where I live run pre-recorded announcements with the word "stop" pronounced in an ultra-Californian manner (with a strongly fronted unrounded low vowel). I'm not sure whether this would really be appropriate even in much of California, and it definitely sounds linguistically out-of-place here... AnonMoos (talk) 23:51, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the woman in that video has the California vowel shift, and you've misinterpreted her lowered /ɛ/ as /æ/. The vowel that she uses in "mayhem" doesn't sound very different from the one she uses in "fell" and "direction". --Lazar Taxon (talk) 11:59, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Here's our article on California English which barely mentions the phenomenon. I though we had a more general treatment, but I haven't been able to find one. μηδείς (talk) 03:29, 4 November 2013 (UTC)