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December 31

हमैं अतीत को भूल जाना हैं और आगे की ओर देखना चाहिए

हमैं अतीत को भूल जाना हैं और आगे की ओर देखना चाहिए...

(translated to we should forget the past and look forward)

This in topic for my FA in hindi, can some one tell me some points/दोहे/poems on it for a essay--Aryan ( है?) 04:42, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Someone simultaneously asked the same question elsewhere; let's keep all discussion in one place. —Tamfang (talk) 09:05, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Pho questions

There are two Vietnamese restaurants near me. One is Pho Dang and the other is Pho Hong. The pho article says that it's a type of soup. Meanwhile, Google Translate tells me that Pho Dang means either "cheese spread" or with various accent marks, "Deputy published", "Deputy party", "Vice Down", or "Deputy Facebook". It also says that Pho Hong means "Deputy Hong". And to top it off, neither of the articles on Hong or Dang say anything about Vietnam.

Could someone both transliterate and translate these two restaurant names for me? (If only they made it easier on us dumb Americans by just naming their restaurants like the local Chinese places, Wok 'n' Roll and Men At Wok.) Thanks, Dismas| 19:29, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The most likely thing is that Dang and Hong are names. It's not possible to say for sure without the diacritics (accents). Hong is quite likely a given name meaning Red/Rose (cf the English given name Rose). Dang could possibly be the surname, also used in Chinese, where it's spelt Deng. Pho are rice noodles, usually served in broth with meat and vegetables. This would be the meaning in these restaurant names. With different accents pho can mean "vice" as in "vice president". Itsmejudith (talk) 20:54, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

In Vietnamese it's spelled Phở. The difference is more than diacritics; in the Vietnamese alphabet, the letter "ơ" is a completely different letter than "o". "ơ" is pronounced /ə/ and "o" is pronounced /ɔ/. So "pho" is the wrong word and typing it into a machine translator is like typing "lick" when you're looking for the meaning of "luck". The "hook" over the "ơ" is a tone mark that, in southern accents, indicates a "dipping" tone (Vietnamese is a tonal language). As for transliteration and translation, phở is /fəː˨˩˥/, and refers to the noodle soup itself, the entire dish (the rice noodles are called bánh phở). Your "hong" is probably hồng, since Phở Hồng is a fairly common name for a pho restaurant, in which case judith is right in that it can mean "red" or "rose" (and, less commonly, "persimmon" or "wild goose") and is pronounced /hoŋ͡m ˨˩/. It's impossible to say for sure what "Dang" is without the right letters. Vietnamese has two "D"-shaped letters: D and Đ and three "a"-shaped letters: a, ă and â and six possible tones, making 36 possible combinations (not likely that all would be words though).--William Thweatt 23:06, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

• I can reassure User:Dismas that it is not at all unusual for Vietnamese restaurants to be soup kitchens (in a non-derogatory sense). I lived for two years off-campus with Vietnamese roommates, and whenever I went out to eat with them to their preferred haunts they only ordered soup (with a specialized ladle) and were dismayed that I wanted platters of appetizers, like mothers telling me I would spoil my appetite. The funny thing was that we were all three cooks, they at Chinese restaurants, and myself at American restaurants (and at one Swiss German) where all the kitchen staff I worked with were hispanohablantes. In any case, you could order whatever you wanted, as long as it was soup. Happy New Year, as they have started the fireworks. μηδείς (talk) 04:23, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

January 1

Ancient Chinese idiom "留中不發 (trad) / 留中不发 (simp)"

What does it rally mean? Million thanks! --YURi (talk) 09:42, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

"Be kept at the imperial palace without an answer; be shelved (of a memorial)" apparently. It looks like the sort of thing Heo Mok famously complained about: a long wait of Fail. Guesswork only, but looks like it contrasts 留中 being inside someplace with 不發 lacking success. (I've never really understood what 發 means - it seems to have about a bazillion different uses.) Hopefully the people that know the real answer will be along soon. --Shirt58 (talk) 02:06, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like they might be talking about the tendency of bureaucrats to keep people waiting for long periods of time. This can be done to demonstrate their power, to force a bribe to get them to act, or merely because they are overloaded with work. StuRat (talk) 07:48, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

"發" does not mean "to make lots of money" here, it is used in the literal verbal sense of "sent forth" (issued, dispatched, etc). The four characters mean, individually and literally, "keep", "in the centre", "not", "sent forth". It means a memorial has been sent by a minister to the emperor, but contrary to normal procedures the emperor has simply kept it in the palace (i.e. in his private office), and has neither countersigned his approval nor sent it down for discussion during an audience. Generally, if the emperor does this to one's memorial, one should know that the emperor does not even want to discuss the matter, and hassling the emperor further about the issue might really make him angry.--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:44, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Chinese Misplaced Pages has a curious article (zh:口袋否決) drawing parallels between "留中不發" and the American pocket veto. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:45, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

January 2

Have you ever heard "eight-to-two" used for "eighty-to-twenty" or "four-to-one"?

From Ann Coulter's ¡Adiós, América!: "‘‘Hispanics will never vote for Republicans unless they pass amnesty.’’ First of all moron Republicans, if they can't vote, they can't vote against you. Voting machines don't register angry glints in people's eyes. Second Hispanics who are citizens don't care about amnesty. They're already in. They vote eight-to-two for the Democrats because they like big government". (This was transcribed from the audio book so apologies for any mistakes). But what's with "eight-to-two"? I've heard "eighty-to-twenty", or "four-to-one", but never "eight-to-two". Could she actually be reading what is in fact a typo? (She's "narrating" her own book). Plus, I think the real proportion is more like eight-to-one, so that too makes me wonder. (In the United States presidential election, 2012 the ratio was about seven-to-three). Contact Basemetal here 22:28, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

My guess is she was thinking "eight out of ten," which would be a much more common way to phrase it, but then either she reworded it awkwardly or it was poorly revised during editing so that the sentence could start with "they vote" in order to create a parallelism with "they like" later on. And just for the record, even eight to two is actually an exaggeration. -Elmer Clark (talk) 22:45, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

What is the context? If she was referring to a state election in which there are 10 candidates, her breakdown of "eight-to-two" actually makes sense. Of course, if it's other than 10, simple division should have rendered it as "four-to-one". Akld guy (talk) 23:48, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

No, I provided above all the context that seemed relevant. It is a completely general statement regarding the Hispanic vote. Everyone so far seems to agree that expressing a ratio as "eight-to-two" seems a bit eccentric. And why not "twelve-to-three"? Of course, like you say, in specific cases, the context could explain such a choice, but I promise this is not one such case. Elmer Clark may be correct to suggest that this may have started as "eight out of ten vote for etc." and then got revised into "they vote eight-to-two for etc." after a rewrite. Also could the fact that "eighty-to-twenty" is used (because here we're talking percentages) have made this sound less awkward than say "twelve-to-three"? Contact Basemetal here 00:21, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

It's a code, man. Possibly an area code? Nothing to see here, folks! InedibleHulk (talk) 10:20, January 3, 2016 (UTC)

January 3

Name for insect vegetarian

Eating insects appears to be a coming trend in the Western world. I could imagine that some vegetarians would eat insects, just like some eat dairy, fish or poultry. These varieties of vegetarianism all have specific names, listed in Vegetarianism#Varieties. If the term followed the same linguistic rules as those, what would a vegetarian that also eats insects be called? Sjö (talk) 08:44, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Insects are not vegetables. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 09:58, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Mmmm...Colorado potato beetle. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:40, January 5, 2016 (UTC)

Vegetarians by definition do not eat fish, poultry, or insects. Someone who ate insects could call themselves an insectivore.--Shantavira| 10:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I think Sjö meant varieties of "semi-vegetarianism" which would include Pescetarianism. The term Vegetarianism is seldom used to mean a strict diet of vegetables only. Insectivores eat just insects. "Entomotarianism" has been suggested elsewhere, but I don't expect it to become a dictionary word. Dbfirs 10:14, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Among people who actually are vegetarian, the habit of certain people who are not vegetarian of calling themselves vegetarian is annoying, as it tends to confuse caterers. And its use to mean, you know, actually vegetarian, is not "seldom". --ColinFine (talk) 22:24, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

There's another term for "semi-vegetarian": It's "omnivore". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 15:14, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Japanese translation request

Howdy, I'm dealing with some users who keep adding unsourced or improperly sourced television episodes to articles. In most cases they are doing so in contravention of WP:CRYSTAL. In this edit a user adds back an episode and cites this as the reference. I'm curious if anyone can tell me whether or not both the episode title and air date appears in that image:

• 地獄の皇帝
• Jigoku no Kōtei
• January 24, 2016

Thanks, and sorry for the weird question. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:46, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, looking quickly for every の in the image, I don't see one in the middle of 地獄の皇帝. —Tamfang (talk) 06:02, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

In what order are digits written within a right-to-left text?

I've noticed Hebrew and Arabic text editors, etc. switch to left-to-right when you start writing numbers. Do speakers of those languages also do that when writing by hand? I would assume yes and that that's why text editors do that but I'd like to check. How about old mechanical Hebrew typewriters? (I have never even seen an mechanical Arabic typewriter). Normally the carriage moves left-to-right to allow you to write right-to-left. Did the carriage of those typewriters switch to moving right-to-left when you started writing a number? I don't suppose they did, but again I'd like to check. Contact Basemetal here 19:06, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

In Arabic, you always have to interpret what you read or what you hear, because many things can be understood in a way or in an opposite way. Your example, the numbers: If you say 1989 (one thousand nine hundred eighty nine) in English, there is only one way to say 1989 and to write it. In Arabic, you can say "one thousand nine hundred nine eighty" or you can say "nine eighty nine hundred one thousand" they both mean 1989, but you have to be smart enough (constantly interpreting what you read or what you hear) to guess whether the text direction suddenly changes or if it sticks to the right-to-left. Akseli9 (talk) 19:25, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Are you a Taylor Swift fan? Saying a number "upward" (what's the right phrase? there is one but I forget what it is) as in "nine and eighty and nine hundred and a thousand" used to be the standard order in both Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew. However, as far as I know, absolutely no one does that any longer in the modern languages. The order is now invariably "a thousand eight hundred ninety-nine" and left-to-right is the only order I've seen used in Arabic text editors when writing numbers. But it is a good question whether when Arabic speakers used to still use the "upward" order they also wrote the numerals right-to-left. Contact Basemetal here 20:14, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

How do Japanese people view those who pronounce the particle を as 'wo'?

I've run into Japanese people who insist on pronouncing 'wo' the object particle を which everyone else pronounces 'o'. Sometimes you hear it in songs too. This is clearly a case of hypercorrection influenced by the writing system. These are not people who have kept the syllable 'wo' in their phonological inventory somehow, since in all other cases they, like all other Japanese, pronounce 'o' the syllables that used to be pronounced 'wo'. It is only in this one case that they retain the syllable 'wo'. But how do Japanese people view people who do that? Eccentric? Pedants? Sophisticated? Cool? Old-fashioned? Or do they not even notice? Contact Basemetal here 19:35, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

In what order are digits spoken within a left-to-right text?

As an addendum to the query above:
In English:123 = 100 + 20 + 3 = hundred twenty three
In German: 123 = 100 + 3 + 20 = hundert drei und zwanzig (hundred three and twenty)
Reading from left to right is, at least in Indo-European languages, the standard. Applying the same principle to numeric “words” would seem natural.
The question is: Why / when did German develop this oddity of switching the last two digits? And yes, I am aware that 13 / three-ten to 19 / nine-ten in English does the same.
Sorry, Googling gets me to totally useless pages unrelated to the question. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

The spoken order of the lower numerals in Germanic developed long before Germanic people learned to write, in whatever direction, and even longer before they learned to write numbers with the present (Indo-Arabic) numeral system, so there's no oddity involved at all. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:12, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

It is still odd that those languages mix two orders. Is it a feature of all Germanic languages? (Except those like English where it became obsolete, although you can still find in Early Modern English things like "three and twenty", etc.) Any other Indo-European language family that does that? Any explanation how such a feature would arise? Contact Basemetal here 21:36, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Latin has the same: un-decim, duo-decim, tre-decim etc. for 11–17, and optionally either viginti-duo or duo et viginti for the larger combinations. It seems that numeral systems are simply not invented in a single go, as a coherent system. People learn the smaller numerals first, and use them much more often, so languages may end up having older, more conservative or simply idiosyncratic forms for them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:09, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps it belongs to the same logics as leaving the verb at the end of the sentence? (In German, the verb is at the end of the sentence, like this: "In German, the verb at the end of the sentence is") Akseli9 (talk) 22:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

That is an idea that many people have, although it wrong is. In German put we verbs in the end only in subclauses, while we in mainclauses the main part of the verb in second position place. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:09, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

And no, seriously, I don't think there is a common logic there. While it's true that word order differences between languages are often interrelated, via the principle of common left- or right-Headedness (e.g. languages that have objects before the verbs will also most often have adjectives before their nouns, and so on), I'm not aware that the order of the spoken numeric digits is typologically correlated with any of these (numerals are more like coordinating compounds than like headed phrases anyway). Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:17, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Related previous discussion. Deor (talk) 00:02, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

The order is occasionally still seen in English: four and twenty blackbirds. Dbfirs 10:16, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

January 4

Disambiguating "may not"

The sentence "he may not have have acted alone" can mean either "it is impossible he acted alone" or "it is possible he did not act alone". You could disambiguate the two by clarifying the structure of the sentence by having a slight pause between "not" and "have" for the first meaning and between "may" and "not" for the second meaning. But suppose that pause is missing, does stressing "not" suggest to you the first meaning and "may" suggest the second meaning? Or the other way around? Or neither (i.e. it is still ambiguous)? Contact Basemetal here 08:18, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

The sentence isn't ambiguous in standard English - it can only mean "it is possible he did not act alone". "He may not act alone" is ambiguous - it can either mean "he is not permitted to act alone" or "if he acts, it's possible that he won't be alone". To disambiguate, it would be usual to put the stress on "not" for the first meaning, and "alone" for the second. Tevildo (talk) 08:58, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I would reword "He may not act alone" to either "He must not act alone" or "He might not act alone", to make it unambiguous. StuRat (talk) 09:10, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't see how - "He might not act alone " - may be of help here. Let's assume somebody says: "I didn't turn to the right, because I thought I might not do that", can't this mean "I didn't turn to the right, because I thought I was not permitted to do that " ? HOTmag (talk) 12:46, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

'Might' is both a conditional and a past tense. In principle 'might' in "I thought I might not do it" could be both but I find that 'might' is relatively rarely used as a past tense (especially in an independent or principal clause) but it occasionally happens: e.g. Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Blubeard", 1st line: "This door you might not open, and you did." Contact Basemetal here 13:25, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

e/c) I don't see how it could mean "it is impossible he acted alone".

At a stretch, I could sort of accommodate the meaning "he was not permitted to act alone". -- Jack of Oz 09:00, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

• How about "he could not have acted alone"? Contact Basemetal here 09:20, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

• Also, is "he may have not acted alone" good English? Contact Basemetal here 09:40, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

• Yes. StuRat (talk) 09:46, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

• Better would be "he may not have acted alone". -- Jack of Oz 20:36, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

• StuRat do you then also accept "he could have not acted alone"? Contact Basemetal here 10:50, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

• Iffy. StuRat (talk) 00:16, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

The answer for the OP's original question is as follows:

The meaning of "not " in "He may not " depends on the meaning of "He may ": If "He may " is intended to mean "He is permitted to " (e.g. in "He may enter ") - then "He may not " means "He is not permitted to ", but if "He may " is intended to mean "Maybe he will " (e.g. in "He may notice it ") - then "He may not " means: "Maybe he will not". HOTmag (talk) 13:13, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Both those usages come from "may" as in "is able to". The subtlety is that if you say, "You may not leave", there's an implication that you will be prevented from leaving, i.e. that you will not be able to leave. In modern usage, it's often said on the "honor system", i.e. that you are trusted not to leave even if you're not being supervised directly. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 15:12, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

But following on what HOTmag wrote, the first usage ("He is not permitted to") must be followed by an present infinitive: "He is not permitted to act alone." In order to get to "to have acted alone" with this sense, you would have to start with "He was not permitted to have acted alone," and in any event the "was not permitted" would allow you to finish with "to act alone" and still get a past-tense sense of the sentence. No, only the second sense ("maybe he will not"/"maybe he did not") works in Standard English. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:11, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Please note that I've never claimed the sentence "He may not have acted alone " can have two meanings: I've only pointed at the linkage between, the meaning of "may not " - in any given context, and the meaning of "may " - in that context. If "may " - in any given context - means: is permitted to, then "may not " - in that context - must mean: is not permitted to. In our context, being the negative sentence "He may not have acted alone ", the word "may " does not refer to a permission but rather to a possibility, so the parallel positive sentence: "He may have acted alone " should have meant: Maybe he acted alone, and that's why the given negative sentence "He may not have acted alone " - can only mean: Maybe he did not act alone. That's exactly what I was trying to say to the OP, and thank you for letting me clarify myself. HOTmag (talk) 09:40, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

You "reasoning" is invalid. For example "He could have acted alone" means "it is possible he acted alone" but "He could not have acted alone" means "it is impossible that he acted alone". Contact Basemetal here 10:38, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I've only been talking about "may". "Could" is another issue, and has another semantic rule - having nothing to do with the semantic rule of "may". Anyways: the rule I've given for "may", is not logical - but rather semantic, and is definitely valid and correct. HOTmag (talk) 12:46, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

January 5

Looking for the name of a logical fallacy

I got into an argument with someone about the differences between Republics and Democracies and he made the contention that Republics give protections to minority opinions while Democracies do not. I countered that by pointing out that African Americans were enslaved in America and America gave no protection to their opinions, namely the opinion that they should be freed. He rebutted that by saying that African Americans were slaves and thus didn't count. This to me sounds like a logical fallacy, it's like saying the police never harm or kill any innocent person only criminals. But using this guy's logic, you could define anyone that the police harmed or killed is automatically a criminal, and thus any brutality inflicted is justified. Is there a name for this fallacy? *EDIT* Now that I think about it, it might be a special pleading fallacy. ScienceApe (talk) 07:10, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

It's at least related to No true Scotsman, since it shares the theme of narrowing the scope to exclude any counterexample. MChesterMC (talk) 09:12, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Madsen Pirie calls it "definitional retreat", which appears on our List of fallacies but doesn't have its own article. Tevildo (talk) 09:21, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Stupidity? 131.251.254.154 (talk) 09:40, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I suspect it's not really a fallacy. The extent of validity - of the argument you don't agree to, depends on whether you accept previous (arbitrary) definitions (e.g. a definition which excludes slaves), whereas you cannot claim the definition itself is invalid, since every definition is arbitrary. For instance, if somebody claims that - killing animals (or slaves or embryos) should not be regarded as a murder - just because the very definition of "murder" refers to human beings (who are free and who have already been born), then I don't see any fallacy in that definition (although my definition may be another one, and may include animals and/or slaves and/or embryos). HOTmag (talk) 13:24, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

At best, it's an informal fallacy. It isn't a logical fallacy, which is an error in formal logic: No error in formal logic has been made, so if a wrong conclusion is reached, it isn't because the logic is faulty, it's because the inputs to the logical process are faulty: that is, you're dealing with an error in premise, not an error in logic. Errors in premises are called informal fallacies. --Jayron32 14:17, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Our article informal fallacy does not support your definition for that concept. The examples given there are not about errors in premises but rather about inadequacy of premises (for reaching the conclusion). HOTmag (talk) 15:41, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

This whole argument you got into is nonsense. If you "give protection" (as you put it) to minority opinion, then that means you give no protection to, you go against majority opinion. A regime that "gives protection" to minority opinion over majority opinion is called an oligarchy and I don't see that as particularly desirable. What happened is not that the opinion of the minority (the slaves) was suddenly "given protection" but that the opinion of the majority changed. As far as I can recall, at least in the opinion of one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, a democracy is a direct democracy whereas a republic is an indirect, i.e. representative democracy and the difference has nothing to do with the status of minority opinions. Contact Basemetal here 15:54, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I kind of get where he was going with his argument. The electoral college does give a lot more weight to the votes of people living in low population states like arizona than it does to people living in high population states like california. It's just the way he phrased it was completely wrong and easily refutable. ScienceApe (talk) 22:53, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Interwiki link

Hi can someone confirm that German Misplaced Pages article Soziologische Grundbegriffe corresponds to English Misplaced Pages article Basic Concepts in Sociology and assuming it does can somebody add the appropriate Interwiki links? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 09:27, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

There seem to be differences. The English stub is about a specific book, whilst the German article is about the concepts discussed in that book and others. Fgf10 (talk) 09:44, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

The book in question would seem to be part one of this. Fgf10 (talk) 09:50, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Former Australian cyclist

An editor rephrased "former Australian cyclist" into "Australian former cyclist" with explanation that the subject is not a "former Australian" but a "former cyclist". While I can't argue with that, I also find the new formulation slightly jarring, but I'm not a native speaker. According to English adjective order , age (former) should typically precede nationality (Australian). Actually, I'm genuinely interested in opinions: what would be the preferred adjective order in a professional publication (that Misplaced Pages only aspires to be)? No such user (talk) 11:51, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not a native speaker either but I'm pretty sure writing "former Australian cyclist" does NOT indicate that this cyclist is not anymore an Australian. I don't find either that it indicates anything else but this person was a cyclist and isn't a cyclist anymore, and I find also it quite clearly without possible doubt, indicates that this person is still Australian. That was for one opinion. Akseli9 (talk) 12:04, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

As a native speaker of American English, a couple of points: (1) former Australian cyclist is probably conventional usage; and (2) that construct can be made fun of, as he's still an Australian, just not a cyclist anymore. This is the risk of trying to use too few words. Is "Australian" describing the subject's nationality? Or his cycling team? Or both? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 12:41, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

"Probably"? It is certain here, not probable, that the nationality of this cyclist is Australian. Whether or not he was part of the Australian Team during the Olympics, is developped in the article. Think of it as the article about his birth date, not the main article about him. People in those dates articles are described in two or three words at most. Akseli9 (talk) 13:41, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I suggest a WWW search for order of english adjectives.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:00, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Native French speaker or French native speaker?

In which case should I say I'm a native French speaker, and in which case should I choose to say I'm a French native speaker? Thanks! Akseli9 (talk) 12:07, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Similar problem as the above. Are you a native of France and also speak French? Or are you a native of some other country whose national language is French, and you also speak French? I was born in America, so I'm an American native, though not a "Native American". And I speak English natively, though I'm not English. So I could say I'm a native American English speaker - even though it sounds excessive. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 12:45, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

You could say you're a native American English speaker, but could you say you're an American English native speaker, and in which case? Thanks.

Same question to a Brit: You could say you're a native English speaker, but could you say you're an English native speaker, and in which case? Thanks. Akseli9 (talk) 14:07, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I realize now my question could be easier to answer with the motherlanguage parameter. So, my mother language is French, I'm French, born in France, so in which case should i say "native French speaker" and in which case should I say "French native speaker"? Thanks. Akseli9 (talk) 14:48, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

You're trying to convey two meanings in a single word, which is not really possible without being unclear. "Native French speaker" is the phrase you need for your criteria. The other, "French native speaker", does not appear correct to me. Bazza (talk) 15:10, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Should one use a singular or plural in this case?

Should one use a singular or plural in this case? Or is either acceptable? Sentence A: The student selected Yale University because of their excellent reputation. Sentence B: The student selected Yale University because of its excellent reputation. It seems to me that Sentence B is technically correct (Yale University is singular). But, we see constructions like Sentence A all the time. Is that flat out incorrect? Or is it acceptable nowadays to use either construction? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

The plural for organisations is common in British English, though perhaps not in the most formal texts. It's less acceptable in American English. Dbfirs 21:06, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

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