Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 October 24

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October 24

Cuneiform

(Re-posting question from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 March 11, hoping for one last chance to get it answered before the RD closes for good.)

Can somebody help me identify the characters on this tablet?

The left column looks like A AB BI A2 ALEPH U I, and the top of the middle column like AL MA GAR; but the rest of the characters are too difficult for me to match against the list of cuneiform signs.

According to the image description page, the sculpture is from the 1870s, and the success in decyphering cuneiform was in recent news at that time: Sir Henry Rawlinson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in February 1850 on account of being "The Discoverer of the key to the Ancient Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Inscriptions in the Cuneiform character." The sculptor, Thomas Nicholls, and the architect, William Burges, probably couldn't read cuneiform (or other ancient languages) themselves; I presume the sculptor had copied a sample of cuneiform from some reference, same as he copied the Aramaic alphabet. (The sculpture in question is part of a group of five.) --132.67.171.83 (talk) 09:24, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Our list may not be that useful; you'd probably have to consult a publication from around that time, such as Carl Faulmann's Buch der Schrift. His list starts on page 69. There, "it, id eine" (about the 18th character on page 70, left row) seems a much better fit for the fourth character in the left column, which was presumably what you identified as "BI" (third character in your question). — Sebastian 12:31, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks SebastianHelm -- his list does definitely get me further! The third character in my question (BI) does indeed match "bi, kaš" from his list, whereas the fourth (A2) does match his "it, id eine". Yet, some of the characters on the Cardiff tablet are absent from his list, e.g. the middle one in the right-hand column (single vertical two-way stroke); -- these must have been taken by the sculptor from elsewhere? --194.213.3.4 (talk) 17:31, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Maybe the single vertical two-way stroke was just artistic license; maybe the artist just invented it to fill the empty space? BTW, we had a little spin-off conversation at User talk:AnonMoos#Assyrian cuneiform which might be of interest to you. — Sebastian 07:28, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

132.67.171.83 -- Cuneiform in the Unicode standard is based on the early Babylonian forms of the signs. This has some advantages, but it isn't the form of the signs that was first deciphered, or which has traditionally been used in modern scholarly grammars. In July, I finished uploading the glyphs of a neo-Assyrian cuneiform font (which may be more relevant to your problem) as SVG files, but I'm only about 30% done with post-upload tasks of doing cross-checking and making minor corrections. You can see the SVG files at commons:User:AnonMoos/Gallery (Assyrian cuneiform)... -- AnonMoos (talk) 05:26, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

The character that looks like this: < could mean "ten," and likewise <<< could be "thirty". I'm no Assyriologist, but I believe a lot of cuneiform tablets are bookkeeping records. Maybe this could have been copied from one of them? Herbivore (talk) 14:28, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Turris Babel ædificationis adhortatio linguis sex

Athanasius Kircher adorns an illustration of the Tower of Babel with six banderoles containing the exhortation Gen 11:4. On each of these, there is small writing that might refer to the language, but unfortunately, is undecipherable due to the low resolution. What are the six languages? Obviously, there's Latin and Greek, and one of the two square scripts must be Hebrew. One appears to be Arabic, but then there's another script of Aramaic descendance that looks similar to Syriac, maybe Serṭā, but contains some distinctive letters that have no correspondence there, above all the Z turned right 45°, which I can't construct as a ligature, either. Is that used for Aramaic, or is the other square script used for that language?

Bonus question: If anyone here can write Akkadian cuneiform, it would be really cool to add that to the list. There's room to the lower left; I'm sure the venerable Master of a Hundred Arts would appreciate it. — Sebastian 10:53, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

You can view a high resolution scan at the Internet Archive here. In fact, maybe we should replace the commons image with a higher res version. - Lindert (talk) 11:11, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Wonderful! Now I can read the small writing with ease. It says in order:

1. T. Latinus
2. T. Græcus
3. T. Syriacus
4. Text. Hebræg [sic!]
5. T. Arabicus
6. T. Chaldai[cus]

That answers my main question. As for the cuneiform, the lack of replies to the previous question suggests that I may have to give up that hope. — Sebastian 11:38, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

The second Hebrew script, incidentally, is the Targum (specifically Targum Onkelos). הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 14:54, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. So, I understand, then, that the language is Aramaic. That was what I thought, since Chaldaic redirects to Biblical Aramaic, and I'm assuming that the phrase in that article "It should not be confused with the [...] targumim" might be a more recent distinction. — Sebastian 22:17, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

To clarify, "the Z turned right 45°" in the Serṭā fragment is the word ܠܢ lan --46.19.86.100 (talk) 04:48, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, I see how that makes sense from the Contextual forms of letters given for ʾEsṭrangēlā and Maḏnḥāyā. — Sebastian 07:18, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

By the way, there's a book about Athanasius Kircher titled "A Man of Misconceptions". His diagrams, and maps of Atlantis (with north on the bottom and south on top) etc. can be fun to look at, but I don't know that I'd place great confidence in things that he originated (his attempted decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs was a fiasco)... AnonMoos (talk) 05:34, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Verb forms for people using singular "they" pronoun

Over at Candace Gingrich there's a disagreement over whether people who chose the singular "they" pronouns for themselves and what verb forms are to be used in sentences where the pronoun is not present' it it "Pat is a lawyer" or "Pat are a lawyer"? --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:00, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

"Everyone loves his or her mother" is obviously the correct form, but it's commonplace to reduce the construction to "their". There is no such excuse with the OP's example: "Pat are a lawyer" is wrong. 92.27.49.50 (talk) 14:08, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

The article now reads "Candace Gingrich were born..." and "Although Gingrich's sexual orientation were ..." Whatever gender she claims to be there is only one of her. Someone please change it back. 92.27.49.50 (talk) 14:19, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I see what the problem is. There is a sentence which now reads: "They served as the Human Rights Campaign's National Coming Out Project Spokesperson for 1995 and were named one of Esquire's "Women We Love" and "Women of the Year" for Ms. magazine." If you accept that a woman can be described as "they" that construction is correct, because the plural pronoun requires a plural verb. As explained above, that does not imply that there are two of her. 92.27.49.50 (talk) 14:27, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I've been trying to change it back; there's only been one other editor, the one pushing the "Candace are" usage, so I've come here to get the input needed to end the edit war. I have no problem with that last sentence you cited; it's those previous two. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:34, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, and to justify themselves they claimed the construction was subjunctive - which is nonsense. 92.27.49.50 (talk) 14:39, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

There are always people in the world who will be offended by anything. So, instead of trying to please the world, just do what makes sense to you. In this case, the singular construct is a well known linguistic controversy. Some people insist that the form is legitimate. If you feel uncomfortable or believe that it is incorrect, then do what works for you. If other people criticize you for this trivial gender rule, then the problem is on them, not you. Keep in mind that there are languages in the world that do not put so much weight on linguistic gender and subject-verb agreement. Mandarin is one of them. In my own English writing style, if the gender is unknown and the subject is singular and personal, then I will either use "it" for an animal or object or "he" for a person. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:30, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Nat_Gertler -- In the speech and writing of some people, the "singular they" pronoun can have its own special reflexive/emphatic form themself (which some other people will object to), but the verb agreement manipulation does not sound like anything that happens in ordinary English... AnonMoos (talk) 05:42, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

I can't see why Wikipedia should be bound by anybody's personal preferences. If we know for a fact that the person in question is a woman, then we should refer to her as "she" rather than reinvent English grammar for her sake. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:19, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

We should use the gender the person self-identifies with, including the choice of pronouns they expect for themselves. If the person wishes us to use the pronound "they", then we use it. To do otherwise is to illegitimize their own identity. On the grammitical issue, we simply directly use the proper agreement for the immediate usage. Thus "Candace is" but "They are". "Are" is neither plural nor singular, and anyone insisting otherwise is ignoring the use of "are" in agreement with the singular "you". --Jayron32 13:25, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

It usually makes sense to use a person's self-proclaimed gender identity, rather than trying to do "original research" (and the necessary information for such research would not be publicly available in most cases, anyway). However, Wikipedia can't really use grammar innovations or attempted reforms of the English language in writing about people with non-standard gender identities. "Singular they" was created by ordinary English-speakers even before the 20th century, and has been slowly gaining in acceptability for many years, so there's little problem with using it more or less in the way that many people are already using it. However attempted innovative top-down "reforms" such as Sie and Ze and whatever, which would not even be understood by the great majority of English speakers, cannot be used in ordinary Wikipedia article text (only when actually explicitly discussing issues of pronoun reform). AnonMoos (talk) 14:03, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

"Singular they" has existed for a very long time in English, but not where the referent is a specific, known individual. It's used to refer to generic persons ("someone", "anyone"), or occasionally to an unknown person. Referring it to a specific named person is maybe not as much of an innovation as "sie" or "xe", but it's still a quite recent grammatical innovation that has arguably not entirely caught on. --Trovatore (talk) 02:18, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

There's certainly some truth in what you say, but slightly expanding the semantics of an existing construction is less of a leap than introducing a brand-new innovation which would feel unfamiliar and alien to English-speakers. One of the reasons why "Ms." caught on (when many analogous proposals didn't) is that many people (especially in the South) already pronounced "Mrs." as "miz", and often loosely applied it to unmarried women who were not youngish... AnonMoos (talk) 09:49, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Less of a leap, I agree. But still a pretty big one. Personally I still find the construction quite jarring, borderline ungrammatical. --Trovatore (talk) 05:46, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but the main question facing the OP here is whether "Candace are" or "They is" are ever appropriate constructions. They would not be. We would use the proper grammatical constructs. If Candace wishes referents to include an ungendered pronoun, then "They are..." is the only approrpiate construction here if we are to use a pronoun at all. The source of the controversy, forcing "Candace are" into the narrative, is just plain wrong. --Jayron32 15:37, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

To put it another way: English lacks a gender-free singular 3rd person pronoun (the choice we have is "he", "she" or "it"), and if we don't want to be gender-specific, we have no choice but to improvise, so we sometimes use the plural pronoun "they" in reference to single people. Once we've chosen to use "they", the verb must agree, hence it's "they are" and not "they is". But that's as far as it goes. Just because we've used a plural pronoun and associated plural verb to refer to a single person, that does not mean that we now use plural verbs when referring to that person by name. So, you could have: Candace is a lovely person. They are kind and generous. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:01, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

(ec) Phone operator to boss: "There's a caller who wants to speak to you." Boss: "Ask them to wait, I'm busy." In English, 'them' is the only option. Akld guy (talk) 01:22, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Your ec took over 4 hours to manifest. Must be slow ether in your neck of the woods.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:47, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@JackofOz: The edit conflict was with Matt Deres' post below mine. It's quite strange. My post actually went through with no edit conflict, and then I noticed that his post was already there, below mine. I then added the (ec) to indicate that my post was made after his, since his appeared to disagreed with mine. In fact, his was made while I was typing out mine. The sequence begins here. Akld guy (talk) 19:24, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Maybe I missed it, but I don't think anyone has yet linked to singular they, which is pretty detailed and well-referenced. Regarding Jack's assertion above that our choices are "he", "she", and "it" when it comes to third-person pronouns, I submit third-person pronoun, in particular, the table here which suggests there are others (with varying degrees of general acceptance). Matt Deres (talk) 01:19, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

THanks folks. Just to be clear: I was well aware that "Candice are" was wrong; it's just one of those things that was so obvious that most sources would not even talk about it. I just needed someplace I could point the other editor to to show it was wrong, and this has been accomplished. --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:52, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Matt, I was waiting for this article to be linked here. I had great hope for such gender-neutral pronouns, which is why I created {{genderneutral}} in 2006. But since then, acceptance rather dwindled. Some three years ago, I spoke with a linguist about it, who said "we've lost that battle long ago". — Sebastian 10:11, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

The word battle is telling, don't you think? μηδείς (talk) 20:49, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

"You" is not singular. The singular form is "thou". Other languages don't have a hangup about the use of the second person singular pronoun. Different languages address the problem of inappropriate familiarity in different ways - French (like English) uses the plural (vous), German uses the third person plural (Sie) and Portuguese adopts a noun form a Sra. (the lady). 92.8.218.38 (talk) 15:23, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

92.8.218.38 -- either "you" is the 2nd person singular pronoun in modern English, or modern English doesn't have any 2nd person singular pronoun. The existence of "yourself" alongside "yourselves" would appear to be evidence that "you" can sometimes be singular (just as the existence of "themself" alongside "themselves" is evidence that "they" can sometimes be singular -- though of course "yourself" is completely standard and accepted English, while "themself" has a shakier status). AnonMoos (talk) 02:55, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Queen Victoria once complained that her prime minister William Gladstone "addresses me as if I were a public meeting." Foreigners point out that English people speak to their family and friends the same way. All languages (so far as I am aware) have a second person singular. English is no exception. It's used in churches (though less frequently than of yore) and in Yorkshire dialect ("Tha's Ripper, tha'" said the Bradford policeman who arrested him). The fallacy that "you" and its derivatives is singular is demonstrated by plugging "yourself" into a sentence - "You, yourself, are wrong" is grammatical, not "you, yourself, art wrong", or "you, yourself, is wrong". 92.8.223.3 (talk) 14:01, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

You have a preconceived notion that the verb form "are" can never be singular, but the linguistic analysis of English is simpler in most respects if it's assumed that "are" (and also "were") can be singular in the second person... AnonMoos (talk) 01:35, 30 October 2017 (UTC)