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February 14

living languages

What is the oldest living language?--95.247.22.171 (talk) 10:24, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Languages change gradually over time, and it's not possible to assign a certain moment in time where one language has become a different language. Although some languages are mixtures of other languages, many languages spoken today have developed gradually from prehistoric protolanguages. For example, many Australian Aboriginal languages have a rather short documented history, but no one knows how these languages have developed in the millennia before the first written sources. So, apart from arbitrary definitions, there's no way to answer your question, unfortunately.

You may be interested however in the article List of languages by first written accounts. The earliest attested language on the list that is still living in some form today is arguably Greek, though Coptic, descended from ancient Egyptian, is used to this day as a liturgical language. Again, this does not imply anything about languages not on the list, which did not survive in written form. - Lindert (talk) 10:53, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Because languages change continuously (there was no moment when, for example, people stopped speaking Middle English and started speaking Modern English) in a sense we must assume that all living languages are equally old – with a few exceptions: pidgins, creoles, constructed languages and most sign languages have histories with known discontinuities. —Tamfang (talk) 08:28, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Icelandic has changed very little in the past thousand years. Sanskrit is still used, and is in fact still an official language in some parts of India. Latin is still used in the Vatican (but not Classical Latin). KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 14:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

English understanding problem

Peeps, I don't understand/don't get the following: "Education through recreation is the opportunity to learn in a seamless fashion through all of life's activities." Can someone explain this in a more simpler way please. -- (Angelos|Angelus (talk) 19:44, 14 February 2015 (UTC))

FYI... I may be wrong, but I think your signature is supposed to refer to your actual user ID. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 07:24, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, I've seen a few people who have different names including their original... Plus, I'll be dead if my girlfriend finds out. So I have to... -- (Angelos|Angelus (talk) 07:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC))

This is a poor way to keep a secret! —Tamfang (talk) 08:30, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Lol. I couldn't find anything better; religious studies manipulated me... -- (Angelos|Angelus (talk) 18:38, 15 February 2015 (UTC))

No one objected when (for a while) my sig was my mundane name. —Tamfang (talk) 08:30, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

To paraphrase and break it down more: 'Learning through playing allows one to learn more easily. This easier learning applies to many subjects.' Ian.thomson (talk) 19:56, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

"You can continue to learn through doing things you enjoy all through your life"? AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:56, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

We do this kind of thing when teaching volunteers on archaeological digs. We try and make the learning process fun so that people are lore likely to retain information. This plus a hearty helping of compliment sandwiches (compliment—suggestion—compliment) help people to learn better and enjoy what they're doing so that they're pros after a week. You're more likely to remember something you learned in a fun context. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | 26 Shevat 5775 03:48, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

And note that the two examples above substitute more common English words for multi-syllabic Latin-based words. Typically straightforward English is easier to comprehend "get". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 20:12, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I know, and I'm happy learning new things... This is the best school (Misplaced Pages) I've been to, and the best teachers (Wikipedians) I've ever met in my life. Well, every since I started self-teaching... I'd be happy if I could meet you all in the near future...whoever helps out all the time here in the Ref desk (especially me...) -- (Angelos|Angelus (talk) 07:51, 15 February 2015 (UTC))

I had considered recommending a thesaurus (instead of a dictionary), though some of the more comprehensive once can potentially lead one astray on more particular meanings of words (then again, so can a dictionary). Ian.thomson (talk) 20:14, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Lol. -- (Angelos|Angelus (talk) 07:51, 15 February 2015 (UTC))

Does anybody know which 'Thesaurus' & 'Dictionary' will provide nothing but formal words only. I'm sick and tired of using 'a' for 'apple', I wish to start using 'a' for 'aberrant'... -- (Angelos|Angelus (talk) 07:51, 15 February 2015 (UTC))

* In other words, Mo, hemless slacks are the best for masturbation. μηδείς (talk) 03:19, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

@Medeis: Sorry, I have to do this since it is available, i.e., -- (Angelos|Angelus (talk) 18:33, 15 February 2015 (UTC))

February 15

Czech transcription of Chinese

Apparently Czechs have their own transcription of Chinese: cs:Standardní česká transkripce čínštiny. Since I can't understand Czech, I would like to ask if it's official in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Names of articles about Chinese cities seem to follow this transcription. Are these the only two languages written with Latin letters that don't use Pinyin, which is an ISO standard? --2.245.89.47 (talk) 02:08, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

There's nothing in the article about it being "official", just a standard based on the Wade-Giles system, adapted for Czech. μηδείς (talk) 03:29, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Slovakia, there is this document by the Slovak Academy of Sciences, which contains rules for transcription of Chinese, Japanese and Korean (pp. 47-51). Particularly the Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Vietnamese Wikipedias pretty consistently apply their own spelling rules to Chinese names (someone more knowledgeable about Vietnamese will have to explain whether what the Vietnamese do is just phonetic transcription, or some other form of nativization). And there are some languages, like Latvian and Azerbaijani, in which all foreign names, even those originally written with Latin letters, undergo transcriptions (Gerhard Schröder is lv:Gerhards Šrēders in Latvian and az:Gerhard Şröder in Azerbaijani), so they don't use Pinyin either. --Theurgist (talk) 04:57, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Vietnamese indeed has its own system of transliterating Chinese. Basically it's based on the way Chinese was pronounced by the Vietnamese when they made it their official language after independence from China (or thereabouts), after which it has followed all sound changes Vietnamese has gone through (such as s > t, leading to Shanghai being Thượng Hải and the like), and then you just apply usual Vietnamese spelling rules to the result. MuDavid (talk) 13:25, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd've

Jack's question above about transcription has got me thinking. If I were to transcribe "I'd've" (as in "I would have done that" or "If I had've done that"), but the 'v' is not pronounced, how shoulld I spell it? "I'd'a"? KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 09:56, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Not a scientific answer, but most on-line lyrics sources for the third verse of If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake give "I'd a-hired a band", and there are plenty of similar examples ("I'd a-known"). "I'd-a known" and "I'd 'a known" are also common - one word with three apostrophes ("I'd'a") or no apostrophes ("Ida") are less common but still attested. Tevildo (talk) 10:44, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd go with I'da. I'm pretty sure I've seen that spelling used; Google Books claims 550 hits on an exact-phrase search for "I'da done it" (but I don't know if it's really taking accout of the apostrophe, though the first few search results show it the way I used it). That spelling is also listed in Wiktionary but not in any "real" dictionaries I've checked. --70.49.169.244 (talk) 17:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Not definitive, but my English teacher, who was very strict about these things, insisted on apostrophes (so "I'd've") when writing words spoken in pure English, but permitted alternative spellings without apostrophes when writing dialects or the speech of the uneducated (so "I'da"). Her summary: "If you respect someone, they get apostrophes". RomanSpa (talk) 11:56, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Adding to what your teacher said, it's my understanding that, in general, respellings (either as eye dialect or pronunciation respelling) to indicate nonstandard or casual speech is deprecated in literature. Doing so typically makes the speakers seem uneducated, unintelligent, or even less likable. — Ƶ§œš¹ 16:24, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Despite the fact that every character in a soap opera, or every footballer, speaks in one dialect or another, and yet they are revered like some sort of god or whatever? This is because when people hear a local dialect, they become more attached to the character(s). They can, in some way or another, identify with them. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 16:58, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe. But the problem is that respellings aren't a good way of getting a reader to "hear" a character's dialect. — Ƶ§œš¹ 19:45, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you have any alternative suggestions for getting a reader to hear a character's accent, other that IPA, which the majority of the population don't even know exists, never mind how to read it? Most people would think it referred to India Pale Ale. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 04:24, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

You can leave cues through altered syntax, punctuation, word choice, and even (as our article on AAVE says) use of rhetorical strategies. The idea is to prompt a reader to access their memory of a given speech pattern. Not only do non-orthographic signals accomplish this without the potential baggage that mispellings come with, but if a reader is unfamiliar with a given variety, no amount of misspelling (especially given our opaque spelling system) is going to work.

If you're curious for examples, take a look at The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein and End of California by Steve Yarbrough, with narrative voices written with (what seems to be) a Russian accent and Southern American English in mind, respectively. — Ƶ§œš¹ 04:46, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Altering the speech actually defeats the purpose of a faithful transcription, however. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 05:11, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

That's the difference between literature and transcription. But really, unless you're doing some sort of linguistic analysis, a "clean" sort of verbatim that keeps the speaker's grammar intact should be faithful enough. If I heard , I would probably write "I'd have" and move on. — Ƶ§œš¹ 06:00, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Reference in King Lear in Edgar's letter about killing his father, Gloucester

In Shakespeare's King Lear, Edgar purportedly writes a letter indicating his intent (or desire) to kill his father (Gloucester) in order to obtain his inheritance. The exact words that he uses are: "If our father would sleep till I waked him." (Act I, scene 2, lines 56-57). What exactly is the reference? How does this translate to "I want to kill my father."? I assume that the word "sleep" is a euphemism for death. I don't understand the "waking him up" part. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:36, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

It always puzzled me. Two possible readings of that line discussed here are that it means "if our father would remain deceived until I kill him", or alternatively "if our father would remain sleeping, or be killed in his sleep, until I awakened to find myself Earl of Gloucester". See what you think. --Antiquary (talk) 19:34, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. It's a pretty tricky line to interpret. Both of those suggestions do seem to make some sense. (That was also an interesting link, for other information contained therein.) The only interpretations I could manage on my own were these two. (One) "If our father would remain asleep, and then I would wake him up from his sleep, in order to kill him at that moment." And (Two) "If he would sleep (i.e., be subjected to the process of getting killed by me) until I changed my mind and let him awake (sarcastically). And, there is no way I will change my mind and ever let him wake up." In the second interpretation, I picture Edgar putting a pillow over the sleeping father's face to smother him. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:55, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

• It's a pun: "If he would sleep till I threw his wake." μηδείς (talk) 00:44, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. So the pun is the word "wake" (meaning "to stir him out of his sleep") and the word "wake" (meaning "the ceremony of grieving before the funeral")? Is that the pun? Did they have that second meaning of "wake" (the funeral ceremony) back then? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:22, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

The above is my OR that it is a pun, but it was the first thing I thought when I first the heard the play (which is my favorite). And yes, to waken, to watch, and to stand vigil are all cognates, see EO. μηδείς (talk) 04:50, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, wake: "To keep watch or vigil over (a dead body) until burial;" is attested in the OED from 1300 onwards. Dbfirs 09:02, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

That's genius. Both Shakespeare and Medeis. --Dweller (talk) 15:06, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. That's quite a compliment; but hardly fair by an order of magnitude or more. It's sort of like saying the Grand Canyon and a grand piano are both grand. μηδείς (talk) 15:54, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

You don't say to whom the comparison is unfair. -- Jack of Oz 21:18, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Aha! But I cleverly aligned the terms in analogical order Shakespeare:Medeis::Grand Canyon:grand piano to stave off just such a challenge. μηδείς (talk) 00:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Given the choice, I'd definitely prefer to have a grand piano in my living room over the Grand Canyon. Now, as for having dinner with Shakespeare or Medeis, that's a real toughie. Let me get back to you on that. -- Jack of Oz 21:06, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I can assure you my table manners would be better and my knowledge more au courant, but even I would rather have dinner with Shakespeare than myself. μηδείς (talk) 02:26, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Number of REGULAR verbs (in English)

Hello to many people. Today I faced a strange situation; we were 5 teachers speaking of the irregular verbs in English and in French. I’m French. A British woman who teaches French made a strange remark “All the English verbs are irregular”. The 3 French people there disagreed. Three pages for these verbs in English and a book for the French ones. I checked here English irregular verbs and it appears that there are less than 200 irregular verbs. Although these 200 verbs are the most commonly used, I have questions that puzzle me. Q1) Do we know approximately the number of REGULAR verbs? Q2) Is there a list of such verbs? Q3) Is there a list of verbs that can be both regular and irregular? Regards and thanks.--Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 21:25, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Since nearly any noun can be verbed in English, I don't think there is such a list. The closest approximation to it is a large dictionary, but it won't have them all, as new ones are made up, if not every day, certainly every month. There might be a list of verbs that can be strong or weak, but I don't know where. --ColinFine (talk) 23:36, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

One, Jojodesbatignoles, she may have been speaking ironically. If she said "ALLLL the English verbs are irregular" with stress and lengthening it was probably irony.

Two, the -ed ending in "regular" verbs has three forms: -/ɨd/ after 't' and 'd'; and otherwise -/t/ after voiceless sounds (like s,p,k,f) and -/d/ after voiced consonants (like z,b,g,v,n,l) and after vowels. So the regular verbs are not all the same, but they vary according to a predictable rule.

Three, short common verbs tend to develop irregular form by analogy: dive/dove < (drive/drove); light/lit < (bite/bit) & even sneak/snuck. Native English speakers get all this with a little correction from their elders at the ages of 3-5 when they will say things like "he taked it".

Four, she might view dealing with irregular verbs while teaching ESL students as an onerous burden compared to English noun plurals and genders.

Then there is the question of preposition stranding and of idiomatic phrasal verbs like "to take off" and "to take out" meaning to depart and to defeat/kill, not predictable from their parts; while meanwhile one can still literally "take off a sweater" or "take out the trash". μηδείς (talk) 00:40, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

In the French understanding, English may have only irregular verbs. French, of course, has three classes of "regular" verbs: the -er verbs, the -re verbs, and the -ir verbs, each of which follow very strict rules of conjugation. English does not have any "regular" infinitive endings as French does, so since English infinitives are not "marked" by the presence of anything like the three French infinitive endings, they must all seem "irregular". Of course, English does have a "regular" conjugation pattern, whereby ALL verb forms EXCEPT the third person singular takes the unmodified infinitive form (less the preposition to) while the third person singular takes -s on the end. For example, "I walk, you walk, he/she/it walks, we walk, you walk, they walk" is the way "regular" verbs work in English. Because the infinitive form "to walk" is not marked in English (except by the preposition "to"), from the French perspective, all verbs feel very irregular (where in French, infinitives are marked by a particular one of three suffixes). See Regular and irregular verbs for a more thorough discussion of the topic. --Jayron32 03:21, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

But Jayron, that's not a standard view either in linguistics or among people who teach English to French speakers. "Walk" is precisely a regular verb, as are "play", "attend", "realise", "stack", "view", "click", "jump", "comprehend", "download", "text" and thousands of others. Colin Fine is correct, it would be impossible to count all the regular verbs, because newly-created verbs are always regular. These verbs have only four forms: play, plays, played, playing. An irregular verb like "sing" has five forms: sing, sings, sang, sung, singing. And it is very different from "bring": bring, brings, brought, bringing. I'm sure it would be useful for learners to have a list of some of the common regular verbs, but I don't know where you would find one. It's rare for a verb to be "both regular and irregular". There's "dive", where the simple past is "dived" in British English and "dove" in American English, but I can't think of any others, and I wouldn't think you could find a list. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:42, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Strange to disagree with me, when I first pre-agreed with you by already writing the point you're trying to make. When I stated that English does have regular verbs, what I meant by that was that English does have regular verbs. They're different regular verbs than the French regular verbs are, but I clearly gave an example of a regular verb, called it a regular verb, and even gave examples of how to conjugate regular verbs in English. Perhaps you missed all of that when you wrote your response agreeing with me? --Jayron32 21:13, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

There's a list of verbs which are regular in British English and irregular in American English, or vice versa, here. --Antiquary (talk) 14:46, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

To slightly clarify, the basic devision of English verbs are "to be", with 8 forms; defective auxiliary verbs — the class of preterite-present verbs; with only two: can/could, may/might, shall/should, or just one form: must, ought to. The rest are strong verbs and weak verbs. Regular strong verbs show five forms: speak, speaks, spoke, spoken, speaking. The show vowel alternations in various classes, and past participles in -n. Some of these are evolving to make the past tense form the same as the participle: he slings, he slang, he has slung becoming: he slings, he slung, he has slung.

Then their are the weak verbs, listed above by Itsmejudith as "regular" verbs, which have dental (usually -ed) past and past participle forms, and no inherent vowel alternation (although this has developed in cases, like sleep/slept. To have and to do are the only weak verbs that are irregular in the third person, e.g., with has instead of *haves, and past had, instead of *haved. Most of the weak verbs are regular as noted above. There are some like put that have only three forms: put, puts, put, put, putting. And some like sleep, sleeps, slept, slept, sleeping with four forms and vowel alternation. To go is a strong verb whose simple passed was replaced (suppletion) by went. That reminds me, I should of went to the store this morning. If I'd've done it then, I wouldn't need to tonight. μηδείς (talk) 18:40, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Interesting — so what would be the "regular" preterite of go? Maybe I gew? Has this form ever existed in English, and when did it die out? --Trovatore (talk) 21:37, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Per our article Go (verb), it was previously ēode - which was no more etymologically related to "go" than went is - until the fifteenth century. This source notes gaed, apparently a new coinage, used instead of went in Northern England and Scotland.

The same pattern applies in across the Germanic languages, and article Go (verb) - plus Wiktionary entries gan and gāną - suggest that there may never have been a regularly-formed past tense of to go as far back as Proto-Germanic, except for new words such as "gaed" formed by analogy. Kahastok talk 22:18, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks much! But what about modern German ich ging? Is it another invention-along-the-way like gaed? (It's strongly reminiscent of Scots gang, as in what the best-laid plans do agley, but you would more expect ging as the present tense and gang as the past if you saw them in the same Germanic language.) --Trovatore (talk) 22:47, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary, Trovatore: German "hängen" has past "hing". --ColinFine (talk) 23:23, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah, OK. So then what is the exact relationship between German ich ging/ich bin gegangen and Scots all the seas gang dry? --Trovatore (talk) 02:36, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Don't forget to say, a third weak verb that is irregular in the third person in speech (similar to to do). Kahastok talk 22:18, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there are many classes of English weak verbs, with plead and pled, bleed and bled, and pay and paid being other versions. Both the weak and strong forms have a huge number of versions and common exceptions. μηδείς (talk) 02:15, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Only in some accents, Kahastok. Here in Yorkshire many people pronounce says as /seɪz/. And I have always interpreted the American eye-dialect spelling sez as indicating that the pronunciation /sɛz/ was regarded as non-standard. --ColinFine (talk) 23:23, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Eode is from the same widespread Eurasiatic root i- "to go" found in Latin, Russian and elsewhere. "To go" is of uncertain etymology, it may have cognates in Greek and Sanskrit EO. But it may also be a result of Verscharfung or a borrowing from a non-PIE source into Germanic. In any case, it hardly affects the main divisions of Germanic verbs. μηδείς (talk) 02:10, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• For the conjugation of "aller" in French, look at the three stems shown, developed from the Latin ire "to go", ambulare, and vadere. "to wade". μηδείς (talk) 02:24, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Don't forget the English word gangplank. It doesn't mean a plank with a gang on it. It means a plank for someone to go. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 16:56, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I'm the OP. I thank you all for these long and rich answers and explanations. I noticed that those explanations turned to be a "discussion forum" of scholar linguists speaking far above my knowledge.--Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 15:20, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

If you think about it for a moment, if ALL English verbs are irregular, that means that every single verb has some characteristic that is unlike ANY other verb. That would require children learning their native language to remember thousands of unique sets of verb forms, ultimately extending to the hundreds of thousands for adults. As loopy as English can be, it just isn't that stupid. For all the exceptions we have to remember, there are still the core rules about verb forms, which apply in most cases. The truth is that regular English verbs WAY outnumber irregular ones, and I'd be surprised if any language on Earth has it any other way. -- Jack of Oz 21:00, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I've read somewhere there was a language with myriads of conjugated forms. Even if all verbs were regular, remembering all those forms is already very much. --2.245.69.61 (talk) 23:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's the Georgian language. If God speaks Hebrew, Satan speaks Georgian (no offense). See Georgian_grammar#Verbal_system and Georgian verb paradigm. The Navajo language is similarly complex, with Navajo made easier: a course in conversational Navajo literally saying something like there are no regular verbs in the language. We do have a Navajo speaker here who at least used to frequent these desks. μηδείς (talk) 02:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The lead of the article on the Archi language (permanent link) states:

... has a remarkable morphological system with huge paradigms and irregularities on all levels. Mathematically, there are 1,502,839 possible forms that can be derived from a single verb root.

The references are:

1. Archi language home page of the Surrey Morphology Group
2. Kibrik, A. E. (2001). "Archi (Caucasian—Daghestanian)", The Handbook of Morphology, Blackwell, pg. 468

I googled {archi verbs}, and there came up a brief explanation how this number is calculated. --Theurgist (talk) 14:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Italian slang phrases for politicians

I'm looking for any colourful Italian phrases used to refer to bad or corrupt politicians or bureaucrats. Not necessarily common phrases, but something that wouldn't seem completely out there to Italian speakers. Thanks,  Liam987(talk) 21:48, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I could give you a whole slew of Italian curses, but I trust there's also regional and dialectical expressions. For those, I can consult friends from various regions. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | 26 Shevat 5775 22:18, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

You could always use a joke. Most jokes translate fine, except for puns. Here's one appropriate for the time of year: "It's so cold today that the politicians have their hands in their own pockets for once." You can make it specific to a politician, party, etc., if you prefer. StuRat (talk) 23:20, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

There is also the elephant in the room.... That exchange would go something like this: "Davvero, 'sto stronzone e' il nuovo Berlusconi!" "Ma che cazzo di me hai detto, figlio di putana di merda?!" (Yes that much swearing is necessary). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | 27 Shevat 5775 01:00, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

February 16

proto-language

How many is the proto-languages?--95.251.179.126 (talk) 19:04, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Just the one, I'm afraid. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | 27 Shevat 5775 19:09, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

If the OP meant how many branches there are from the original proto-language (that is, how many language groups like Proto-Indo-European language or Proto-Semitic language there are), that part of the tree hasn't been figured out yet. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:33, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I would interpret the question as meaning "How many times (do we know about) that language has independently developed?" This is a perfectly reasonable question, and the answer is, we don't know. Proponents Proto-World believe that the answer is once, and that we can go some way to reconstructing the one. Most linguists, I think do not accept that. My opinion is that all known languages probably do go back to a single proto-language, but that we will never be able to demonstrate this. But nobody knows, and I suspect that nobody ever will. --ColinFine (talk) 23:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

List of proto-languages --— Rhododendrites \\ 03:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• Caveat lector: what is ranked as a proto-language is almost always a matter of current reconstructed knowledge, not of any necessarily important node in actual history. See, for example, Ritwan and Algonquin versus Algonquian-Ritwan and Anatolian languages and PIE versus Indo-Hittite. μηδείς (talk) 02:14, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

February 17

Gars and Sharks?

The accepted etymology of the very sharp-toothed predatory fresh water gar is the PIE root *ghaiso-, meaning "spear". But the word carchar- is accepted as meaning "sharp (toothed)/maneating shark" in Greek. Is it possible there is a root *ghar- (PIE or not) connecting the two terms? See Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Science#Genus species. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 01:57, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I took the liberty of fixing your link. An offshoot - you mention the root "ghaiso". In German, the word for fish is Fisch and the word for shark is Hai or Haifisch. Might that root be the source of the German word? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 02:51, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I cannot answer your question, but according to Wiktionary's entry on χάρτης the Ancient Greek χαράσσω (to scratch, to inscribe) is connected to PIE *ǵʰer- which it translates as "to scratch". The entry in Wiktionary's PIE-appendix I linked to gives "to enclose" for *ǵʰer-. So, ... %-) (Also, I'm not even sure κάρχαρος is related to χαράσσω, I only found something in Wilhelm Pape's Griechisch-Deutsches Handwörterbuch which is obviously not the latest in linguistics. — Bugs, Wiktionary has something on the etymology of "Hai"). ---Sluzzelin talk 19:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'm royally pissed off now. Whenever I tried to use "gar" as a word in Scrabble, my dictionary told me there was no such word, the marine creature actually being a "garfish". So I got the message and stopped going down that path. Time for a new dictionary, methinks. -- Jack of Oz 19:58, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• Bugs, the usual development of *ghar- in Greek would be *khar-, and, according to Grassman's Law a reduplicated form would lose the aspiration (the h) in the first syllable. So *ghar-ghar- would become καρχαρ- ("carchar-" when latinised). In Germanic, the normal development would be PIE *ghar- > PG *gar-. And PIE *ghaisos would become proto-Germanic *gaizaz with intervovallic z > r and final z lost in Western Germanic, giving the *ger- root for spear which shows up in the name of Germany itself. EO. PIE *gh- does change to h- in Latin, and there are other exceptions, but they are usually explained as dialect borrowings.

Sluzzelin, that just makes me think all the more that carcharos is a reduplictaed form meaning bite-bite.

Jack, I am surprised your dictionary has this lack, in America I have seen these fish on occasion; they frequesnt the banks of slow streams and freshwater lakes, near the edge where they can see you through the refraction of the water's surface, and they are always called gars, never garfish. (See German Walfisch.) μηδείς (talk) 00:19, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I must be losing my mind. I've just consulted my dictionary, the same trusty one I've been using since 1975, and there it is, "gar", large as life, as a noun with 3 meanings, and also a transitive verb. "Garfish" is a separate entry. I swear I've checked this multiple times previously and "gar" was never there. Thanks for the enlightenment. (I've recently entered the hallowed halls of grandparenthood; I blame everything on that now.) -- Jack of Oz 21:14, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Don't worry, it is simply due to the fact that garfish comes before gar alphabetically. μηδείς (talk) 00:17, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Not usually. I actually prefer to go from the back of the dictionary forward, though, so for me it would. StuRat (talk) 17:36, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I'll have to check to see if there's a cognate in any of the other Eurasiatic languages for gar. The words squalus and whale have cognates meaning large fish, (Finnish kala, Turkish balıq') clear across siberia to Eskimo, where wikt:iqaluk means "salmon" μηδείς (talk) 00:19, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Gar meaning spear is in garlic -gar-leek and in Roger -hrothgar. Itsmejudith (talk) 00:50, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Iqaluk can mean a fish in the salmonid family such as the Arctic char, also known as an iqalukpik (same external as before) or lake trout also known as ihuuqiq (same external as before). But it can also be a generic name for any fish. And of course a salmon can be called an iqalukpik. But there are other names as well for the trout and char never mind the Arctic grayling. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 04:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Itsmejudith and CBW. What I am wondering is, is there a KAR like word in any language of northern Eurasia besides "gar" which means something like predatory fish. By capitalizing the consonants, I mean to indicate phonetically similar sound sequences, like /qor/ /har/ or /ger/. It's entirely possible that, as conventionally assumed, gar(fish) and Ger(many) are cognates with the word for spear as part of their base. That would be the null hypothesis. But it is also possible the connection is a coincidence and a folk etymology. PIE has plenty of homophones. Maybe there were two roots, one meaning garfish and one meaning spear that were conflated because the garfish is spearshaped. See folk etymology and false etymology for cases where this has happened. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Probably a coincidence, but 'ika' means 'squid' in Japanese. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 08:49, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, KageTora. Having looked it up, the suggested Altaic cognate in Japanese is kara "plaice". μηδείς (talk) 19:31, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It's actually 'akagarei' (with the 'aka' meaning 'red') KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 20:05, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes? That still works as a possible cognate, given many g's in Japanese originate from a k that is in intervocalic position, and what you are suggesting is a compound of two roots. proto-Macro-Altaic (Turkic, Mongol, Tungusic, Korean, Japonic) is supposed to be as old as or older then PIE. If PIE can give

Avestan: kara- `a mythical fish'

Old Greek: áspalos = ikhtǘs (Athaman.) Hsch.; aspaliéu̯-s 'angler'

Baltic: *kal-- m.

Germanic: *xwal-a-

Latin: squalus

Then Altaic's turkic balIk, Mongolian xol and (aka)-garei seem unproblematic. But I am still interested in the English "gar", which would imply a root like *ghar- if it were not related to the word "spear" found in Al Gore or Germany. μηδείς (talk) 01:33, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Not sure if this is relevant, but bulls can 'gore' people. This, however, may be a loanword from French. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 07:49, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Etymonline says c.1400, from Scottish gorren "to pierce, stab," origin unknown, perhaps related to Old English gar "spear" (see gar, also gore (n.2) "triangular piece of ground"). KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 07:53, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the roots dealing with stabbing and spears, gore v., German, etc., are derived from a PIE root *ghaisos where an intervocalic /s/ often becomes an /r/ in Germanic. The word gear is also related. The normal assumption is that gar as in fish comes from it's spearlike shape: "spearfish". But it is also possible gar comes from a separate root, and that the association with a spear is just a folk etymology based on the name. μηδείς (talk) 19:33, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Human languages

I once asked the BBC- Post Mark Africa- this question, and I am going to ask again. Suppose two dumb People are isolated lets say an island where there are less contact with normal people, but are provided with all human needs and are left to bear children. can their children also be dumb, gesticulate like their parents? If they can be normal and can speak, can they develop their own speech or languages?12:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)12:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Momoh G. Musa (talk • contribs)

Nicaraguan Sign Language answers the second part of your question. As for whether the children of these two hypothetical non-speaking people would also be unable to speak would be depend on a number of factors, one of which would be a genetic link to their parents' deafness. It's likely that the children would start off in life using their parents' sign language, and then gradually develop their own 'ideolects'. If they can hear and speak, it's possible that a spoken language would arise, but I guess it would take at least a few generations for that to happen, as the original children would not have used spoken language - not having been taught to - and therefore would not regard it as a normal method of communication, as they already have sign language. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 13:07, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

It's hard to find a direct answer to the question, because it almost never happens that a group of children are exposed to no spoken language at all. However, there is a related phenomenon that might be of interest. When a group of adults who share no common language are put together and forced to communicate as best they can, they tend to develop a pidgin, which is a very simplified form of language, with a small vocablulary and very crude grammar. In the next generation after a pidgin is formed, it develops into a creole language, a fully complex language with a sophisticated grammar. This "creolization" is done spontaneously by the children who grow up learning the pidgin form -- the adults who formed the pidgin never do learn to speak the creole properly. So the inference is that whether or not children have a capability of inventing a spoken language from scratch, they do have an innate capability for elaborating a grammar. (Derek Bickerton has written extensively about this process.) Looie496 (talk) 14:54, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Some content at feral child may be relevant. --70.49.169.244 (talk) 19:07, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Poto and Cabengo might also be of interest. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 07:02, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Ancient script

What can anyone tell me about the script on the image half way down the page here? (The image I refer to is the one with the person carved in relief, with an amazing hairstyle). What language is it and what does it say? I thought it could be Aramaic in Hebrew script, but if so I can't decipher it. The penultimate word looks like "tomato"! Cheers --Dweller (talk) 13:51, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Far from being able to read it myself, but the statue is described elsewhere on the web as being from Palmyra (; this would match the filename chosen by the BBC article, "_81049540_palm-stat-1_464.jpg"), and the overall character of the letters would seem to match the Palmyrene alphabet (), which was presumably used to write Aramaic. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:17, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh good call. I'd love to know what it says (both transliteration and translation). --Dweller (talk) 14:33, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The last word appears also in File:PalmyraWoman.JPG. --84.58.246.235 (talk) 15:02, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Looks a bit like (right to left) aleph vet lamed, which is Hebrew for mourning, but that's too neat to possibly be right. --Dweller (talk) 15:08, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The first letter is definitely not Aleph, but probably Ḥet. - Lindert (talk) 15:36, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

You could be right. Or even taf. The first word in our BBC image looks like "v'aveylat" or possibly "v'achalta". But I wish someone with some expertise would show up! --Dweller (talk) 15:46, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Looking at this article, it seems likely that the image contains a funerary inscription, the final word חבל, translated "alas!" is found in other such inscriptions as well. Additionally, the ligations found on the second and third line appear to form בר, or "bar", the Aramaic for "son". So, although I cannot make out all the letters, it seems to me that the gist of the inscription is this:

"

son of

son of

alas!" -

My best guess at a transcription would be "והבלת/ברשמכוד/בראמתא/חבל". Lindert (talk) 16:02, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

February 18

Help locating possibly Arabic tweet?

I've been having a bit of trouble believing The Daily Mail, as strange as that may seem. They've said an al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula-linked Twitter account called the killing of Muath al-Kasasbeh "conclusive proof of Isis' deviance". Those English words only show up on the web in reference to their story, as far as I can see, and searching for the Google Translation (دليل قاطع على الانحراف إيزيس) doesn't find anything.

Is that translation accurate, and is there any evidence of something like this being said by someone like who it's attributed to, or is this another hazy "Too extreme for al-Qaeda" deal? InedibleHulk (talk) 23:35, February 17, 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what إيزيس is, but it's certainly not the Arabic quasi-acronym corresponding to ISIS/ISIL, which is داعش... AnonMoos (talk) 00:28, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

According to Google, it's lowercase "Isis" (like the goddess), which is actually the form The Daily Mail used. Tweaked my capitalization above. How am I supposed to paste the new word in place of the old one? Goes at the "front", regardless of where I try, and I can't type it. Even trying to highlight it is confusing. Can you (or someone) try looking for the correct phrase on Twitter, and tell me what you find? InedibleHulk (talk) 00:56, February 18, 2015 (UTC)

There are well-known browser interface issues when editing mixed LTR and RTL text (due to the fact that the Unicode "bidi" algorithm is applied recursively each time a character is added or deleted), which you may be encountering. I would feel it necessary to do some intensive dictionary work to verify whether the rest of the Arabic makes any sense before I did any searching, and right now a nap sounds more appealing, sorry... AnonMoos (talk) 01:04, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

No, that's fine. I completely understand napping, even when dreams don't reveal the truth. Thanks for the Isis/ISIS distinction. Every bit helps. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:25, February 18, 2015 (UTC)

This is the best I can do without expending an inordinate amount of time: site:twitter.com انحراف OR تحريف داعش site:twitter.com. The phrase تحريف داعش appears to get some results on Twitter... AnonMoos (talk) 15:15, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

"Distorts Syria", eh? InedibleHulk (talk) 23:22, February 18, 2015 (UTC)

Nope, تحريف داعش is a plausible rendering of "ISIS/ISIL deviance/deviation" (though I don't know if it's what was used in the tweet). In general, Google translate cannot override dictionaries. AnonMoos (talk) 00:59, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I meant the last thing you said. What appears to get some results. What's that by the dictionary? InedibleHulk (talk) 02:24, February 19, 2015 (UTC)

I really don't know what you're trying to say. As I mentioned, تحريف داعش is a plausible rendering of "ISIS/ISIL deviance/deviation". If Google translate gives a radically different translation, then Google translate is flat-out wrong... AnonMoos (talk) 07:33, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, brainfart. That last phrase is the same as the second. I could've sworn I looked twice before my last comment, and they looked different. Weird. Anyway, yeah, Google Translate's apparently not up to that task. A lot of what I read on the Twitters sounded like nonsense, too. I've asked the writer. He should know. Thanks for your patience. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:39, February 19, 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that Google Translation is going to be useful - whatever its merits, it's extremely unlikely that something translated into English and then back into Arabic is going to have any resemblance to the original Arabic. In any case, do we have any idea what this AQ Twitter account might be? If we knew that first, it would be certainly be easier to find. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:51, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

If I knew that, I wouldn't have gone the long route. It's possible they're trying to avoid driving traffic to what could be seen as enemy propaganda. Or they could just be making it up. But yeah, machine translating something back and forth is often better for shits and giggles than anything helpful. (But yes, something translation back and forth often the best machine for shits and laughter of anything useful.) InedibleHulk (talk) 23:21, February 18, 2015 (UTC)

Just spent a good while longer than I should have auto-translating what I found through the above terms and the various names AQAP uses. Aside from maybe getting on a few watchlists, I'm still at square one. For a few of them, the relevant dates are beyond where Google lets me scroll, so maybe there's hope there.

It might be easier for me to just ask the guy who wrote the article where he'd heard it. I'll try that, if nobody else yells eureka soon. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:20, February 19, 2015 (UTC)

Pronouncing /sts/ in English

As a non-native English speaker, I'm having trouble with pronouncing /sts/. When I try to pronounce it, such as in 'lists' or 'costs', I end up mumbling some sort of /s/ with a partial stop.. it doesn't sound right and my tongue fumbles. If I pronounce it slowly, I can pronounce the full /sts/ with the back of my tongue touching the roof and blocking air / producing a stop, but when I pronounce it quickly and try to do that I just end up mumbling. I've read that some speakers skip the /t/, is that common for BrE (specifically Australian spoken English)? How exactly should my mouth positions be for pronouncing /sts/? ☃Unicodesnowman (talk) 13:34, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

The important thing is whether you systematically pronounce this differently from /s/, /st/, and /ts/, not whether you can identify three clearly distinct segments in sequence in your pronunciation of /sts/... AnonMoos (talk) 15:18, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I suspect that would be interpreted as texts by those around you with no trouble. Now, if you started saying , like my brother does, then there might be some confusion. — Ƶ§œš¹ 15:36, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Can you say "tsar" and "star"? How about "boots"? I'd work on those, then move to "boosts" - and I totally second AnonMoos - intelligibility is what you're after, and that comes from making the proper distinctions, not from pronouncing things exactly the way a native speaker does. In case it helps, when I say "boosts" the stop is very brief, and though the whole tongue is engaged, the back never fully hits the palate, and the main action is on the sibilant, with the front of the tongue. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:48, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is hard to pronounce, and requires slowing down to do so clearly. So, if preparing a speech, say, I'd look for another word with the same meaning. For example, in "John boosts many charitable causes", I would substitute "promotes". StuRat (talk) 17:23, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

• Can we ask the OP's native tongue? See Blackfoot language if you want to see more interesting consonant clusters. μηδείς (talk) 23:02, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

There are artifacts of an earlier-learned language that don't hamper comprehensibility of a later-learned language so I would just "pronounce it slowly" as you say "If I pronounce it slowly, I can pronounce the full /sts/..." Bus stop (talk) 23:14, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Slowing it down will produce better results in general. As with the "I'd've / Ida" discussion recently. Talking at normal speed, words like "costs" sound a lot like the "t" has been dropped. I'm reminded of how Victory Borge used to say Franz Liszt: "List-s-s-s". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 01:22, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• My advice would be to repeat the sentence "List six best songs" or the like (make up your own) over and over (a dozen times each, a few times a day, for week) until the sequence becomes easy. Russian has the consonant shch as one sound (shchistya "happiness"). English speakers can learn this by repeating "fish chips" and gradually deleting the fi- and changing it into "'sh chips". μηδείς (talk) 02:01, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• • Or she thrusts her fists/against the posts/and still insists/she sees the ghosts. --Trovatore (talk) 05:54, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• What I was trying to suggest was putting together two separate words of which neither has the full /sts/ sequence in it, but which, like "best" "songs", Unicodesnowman could probably pronounce separately without trouble.

The sequence would be to say "best s/ongs" then "best/s ongs" then drop the ongs and now, with practice, you can say bests.

This is how you can learn difficult initial sounds in Russian and Zulu. "And where...?" In Russian is "a gdye...?" Gdye is impossible in English, but "a/g dye" is not.

Likewise in IsiZulu, Mina ngifunda... "I read..." has the impossible ngi- sequence for English speakers. But "Mina/ng ifunda" is quite easy, and with practice one can drop the "mina" and just say ngifunda. μηδείς (talk) 19:17, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

And then you can jump straight to Polish and try to pronounce words like kostce . — Kpalion 10:15, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah, yes, the people who say psziepsziepszie according to my grandmother. μηδείς (talk) 19:19, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for all the help! I can say tsar, star, etc fine, just /sts/ bothering me. I'll just concern myself with making myself intelligible, I've practiced it more and I think I'm getting the hang of it. ☃ Unicodesnowman (talk) 10:17, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Is the sentence "He have bought a new car last week" grammatical?

Is it right the sentence "He have bought a new car last week". -- 17:13, 18 February 2015 117.194.152.25

Only if you remove "have". (You could put "had" in place of "have", but it's better without it, in my opinion.) StuRat (talk) 17:16, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. "He bought a new car last week" is better, because it specifies a definite point in time (i.e. 'last week'). If you replace the 'have' with 'had', then that would require an explanation of context, such as "and that's when he used it as a security for a loan", for example - i.e. another action which happens after the original action of buying a car. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 17:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

For reference: simple past, pluperfect, past perfect. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:48, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

117.194.152.25 -- Verb agreement requires "He has"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

"Has" could work, but it still sounds awkward, like a non-native speaker saying it. Kage's initial response is the better way to say it, i.e. leave out any form of "have". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 01:18, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It's still a grammatical error. "Has" is present tense, but "last week" is in the past. Unless the speaker has a time machine, I don't see how that could work. — kwami (talk) 01:23, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Leaving it out was my initial suggestion. StuRat (talk) 01:25, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Oops, yes, it was your comment first. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:32, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The present perfect is not used when an adverb of past time is also used. In a declarative sentence, "has bought" and "last week" are normally mutually exclusive. The pluperfect, "had bouht" can be used with "last week" as long as another verb more recent is given. "The car he had bought last week got stolen yesterday." μηδείς (talk) 01:50, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I can think of an example where it kind of makes sense: "He has bought a new car just last week." However, it's still awkward phrasing. Your counterexample works. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:32, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It's arguably grammatical with a very strange meaning. If you interpret the word have as being in the mandative subjunctive mood, you could read the sentence as "let the past change to make it the case that he bought a car last week". Of course I'm really just quibbling here as that's not a meaning that really even makes sense, as the past to the best of my knowledge is immutable, and even if the meaning did make sense, I don't think there are many sane native speakers who would naturally produce that sentence to express it. But I like quibbling :-) --Trovatore (talk) 05:30, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Keeping in mind that "He have..." does not work. "I have..." or "He has..." or "I/he had..." are grammatically valid in the right circumstances. "He have..." isn't. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:34, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Bugs, I don't think you really read and understood my point. --Trovatore (talk) 05:50, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• Unless "He" is the name of a band, and we're speaking BrE... — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:46, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Let's put it this way. "He has bought a new car" on it's own, without an actual time reference is fine, as it means 'he bought a new car sometime fairly recently and still has it'. Compare "He has gone to the bank" (implying he is still there) and "He has been to the bank" (implying he has visited the bank recently and has returned). However, when a time reference is added, we use the simple past - "He bought a new car last week." - as it is a specific point in time, rather than a continuous experience. "I have been to China", for example, means that I actually have the experience of going to China still in my mind, but when adding a specific point in time, "I went to China in 1992" would be correct. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 08:42, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Spanish phrase

Hi. Trying to verify a translation for líneas tiradas a hilo sobre tabletas. Might it mean 'lines drawn continuously (e.g. boustrophedon) on tablets'? Currently translated as "lines drawn with a string". — kwami (talk) 21:16, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd need the wider context to be sure. It seems to mean lines drawn on tablets by thread, which is what I would go with without a wider context. μηδείς (talk) 00:08, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I concur with Medeis. Hilo generally means "thread" but can also mean "wire" (electrical wiring, etc) or "cable" (internet cable, telephone cord, etc). AFAIK, it doesn't have the sense of "threaded" as in English "a threaded conversation", making "boustrophedon" unlikely. Tirada a hilo translates directly to "drawn by thread" or "thread drawn". But, as Medeis also points out, more context would help pin down the meaning.--William Thweatt 00:31, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The context is our article Rongorongo, I would assume. Tevildo (talk) 01:19, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes.

I thought a hilo was an idiom for "continuously".

Not much of a context: it was a translation of the Rapa Nui kohau. They might have been aligned by thread, I suppose, but that seems odd. — kwami (talk) 01:22, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I suspected, and from the above it is obvious, they are talking about a thread drawn taut and used to make a straight line. See chalk line, where a carpenter snaps a taut inked or chalked thread to make a straight line on the underlying surface. This has nothing to do with boustrophedonic writing per se, just the way of making the lines. (What threw me was a hilo, which is not an idiom I know, I would simply have said hilo tirado. The curve you see in the image at rongorongo is simply due to the curvature of the surface. I would go with "lines drawn on a tablet using a taut thread." As my father's eldest child and, hence, little helper I used to use this method with him whenever he was doing a project that needed a temporary plumb line represented on a flat surface. μηδείς (talk) 01:38, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm familiar with that from carpentry, but have not come across an account of doing that for rongorongo. (If anything, one would be more likely to draw or score the wood along a thread.) I'll leave the translation alone, though. — kwami (talk) 03:09, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Tirante means taut, so I think you would be justified in changing it to a taut string. The problem is that tirar means draw as in pull, but not as in make an image. (Perhaps the spanish is a bad translation from English, and we are looking at a reverse translation.) Again, the terms lineas and hilo seem reversed. Otherwise I don't disagree with you. μηδείς (talk) 05:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The Spanish is the original. If anything, it's the English which would be bad. It can't be the string that's taught taut, and "lines pulled with a string" doesn't make any sense. — kwami (talk) 18:09, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I am assuming taught is a typo, and you do realize I have been talking about a taut (tight) string? A taut string over the curved surface you see depicted in the article rongorongo would give the lines shown. μηδείς (talk) 01:08, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

But if that's not what the Spanish says, what difference does it make? The string isn't taut, the lines are, and that doesn't make any sense. — kwami (talk) 02:14, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Variants of tirar a hilo get less than ten hits. In any case, lines (meaning straight marks on surfaces) cannot be taut, only string can. μηδείς (talk) 18:40, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. So tirada can't mean "taut". So if it doesn't mean "lines drawn with a string", and it doesn't mean "lines with a taut string", what does it mean? — kwami (talk) 18:49, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

February 19

Chinese translation

Could anyone please translate what's written in this image: http://img.redocn.com/sheji/20140818/2015chunjiegongxifacaihaibao_2920203.jpg I want to post it to someone and I'm scared I might offend. I know the middle says Happy New Year, but what do the scrolls say? Thanks in advnace! 15.227.185.74 (talk) 10:52, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

On the left: I think that is in traditional form "八方財寳進門庭" (simplified "八方财宝进门庭") which looks to be a set phrase that means "wealth come through house from everywhere" or something along those lines, which I guess just means "be prosperous". ("八方" is literally "eight directions", but it means "all directions".) --Shirt58 (talk) 06:45, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

On the right, "四面貴人相照應" - huh? "elegant echos on all four sides?". I must definitely have that wrong. --Shirt58 (talk) 07:03, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The middle really is an idiomatic salutation that blesses people with great joy and prosperity, not necessarily "Happy New Year". "新年快乐" translates literally as "Happy New Year" and may be used to refer to New Year's Day on the Gregorian calendar, which most people in the developed world use. I have no idea what the scroll on the right means. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 17:31, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Sort question

Adding a DEFAULTSORT to article Los de abajo (film), should I sort on "Abajo", or "de Abajo" ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 12:12, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

You may want to look at WP:MOS and see how they recommend dealing with foreign articles (a, an, the in other languages). As an example, Arabic words starting with "al-", it mean "the-", but Misplaced Pages style might indicating treating it like any other word. Either way, it could be educational to go to the Spanish Misplaced Pages and see how they handled it. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 12:26, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It definitely needs a defaultsort (as Los = The) but the issue is with the 'de' in the middle, is it part of the sort ? GrahamHardy (talk) 13:23, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

This is not necessarily definitive, but if you look at "Category:Spanish musical duos" you will see that the group Los del Rio is alphabetized as if "Los" were any other word. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 15:08, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Los is not an article in this case but a pronoun, cf. . The literal translation would be "Those from below" or something like that. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:17, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

D'oh! Good point. "Los" is used both as pronoun and article in Spanish. So it should be alphabetized simply as "Los de abajo", the same way "Los del rio" is taken as-is... and which literally means "Those from Rio". (Presuming "Rio" is a city name - "rio" itself means "river".) ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 15:21, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The article has Los de abajo translated as 'The Underdogs', is that correct ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 15:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

That would be an idiomatic translation. The literal translation of those three words would be "the ones / those -- -- below / down." ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 16:28, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "miso"

How is "miso" (the Japanese fermented bean product) pronounced: . Does the "mi" rhyme with "we" or with "why"? . Does the "so" rhyme with "go" or with "goo"? Bh12 (talk) 14:39, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Roughly speaking, the syllables rhyme with the "we" and "fee" of English and the "go" and "dough" of English respectively. But the latter isn't a diphthong. I mean, whereas the vowel sound of "dough" starts off as a kind of "o" and turns into a kind of "u", the "so" in "miso" is just a kind of "o" (there's no "u" sound of any kind in it). -- Hoary (talk) 15:01, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Would it be like the "mi" and "so" in "do re mi fa so la ti do"? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 15:05, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but the simplest way to describe it is just as saying "me" and "so" together. As Jar Jar Binks would say: "Me so want some miso". StuRat (talk) 15:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Jar Jar came to my mind also (despite my effort to prevent it). ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 15:44, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

My brother absolutely loved that character, so that makes a total of one. StuRat (talk) 15:56, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to assume that miso is a Japanese word, in a transliteration that uses IPA vowels? —Tamfang (talk) 09:16, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Generally speaking, if you want to know how to pronounce culinary terms, just do a Youtube search for them, and you'll find a large number of knowledgeble chefs who are pronouncing them. For example, here is Gordon Ramsay saying "miso" , and here is a program called "Japanese Cooking 101" talking about it . You always have to be careful about ignorant people and trolls, but if you watch a number of different videos, most of the time you can quickly tell what the most common English pronunciation is. -- 162.238.240.55 (talk) 14:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

A Certain Old Norse to Icelandic Shift

Why did Icelandic gain more instances of /þ/ and /ð/ than its source language already had? Was it due to hypercorrection? Was it due to a process similar to what English went through for a while (the one that caused Old English fæder, mōdor, slidrian, gaderian etc. to have their Proto-Germanic /ð/s restored in Modern English, resulting in father, mother, slither, gather, etc.)?

Examples of what I am talking about are (note: these transcriptions are broad, not narrow):

Old Norse þat /θat/ ("that") → Icelandic það /θað/ ("that")

Old Norse vit /wit/ ("we two") → Icelandic við /við/ (we)

Old Norse at /at/ ("at, to") → Icelandic að /að/ ("to")

Old Norse ér /er/ ("you") → Icelandic þér /þer/ ("you")

etc. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 16:19, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

You have to understand that there were lots of dialects of both Old English and Old Norse. In both cases, some phonemes remained in the standard modern languages of today. Also, some were words developed by analogy. It was not hypercorrection, as both languages did not have a written language in proto-germanic. KägeTorä - (_虎) (Chin Wag) 16:56, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

February 20

Pronunciation of "Catholicism"

Usually, the word is pronounced by stressing on the second syllable. This source agrees with my statement. The website provides US speakers and one UK speaker, and all of them stress on the second syllable. Now, recently, there was one guy I met who pronounced "Catholicism" by stressing on the first syllable. He's a professor of English, but when he's overseas, he'd teach American Studies in collegiate classrooms. Is this a common pronunciation? What dialect is this? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 01:06, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Did he pronounce the second "c" like a "k" or an "s"? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 01:47, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I think he pronounced it with a s. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 02:01, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Bugs, geolocate, and see this user's previous questions on Pietism before you waste mental energy on parsing his BS questions. μηδείς (talk) 01:52, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I've expended about as much mental energy on this issue as I felt like - i.e. not much. :) ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 02:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I wondered if they emphasized the first syllable, maybe they would have said it as "Catholikism". That would be more logical. (Not that English is particularly logical.) ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 02:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I do not think the pronunciation is idiosyncratic. This video on the French Revolution does pronounce "Catholicism", while emphasizing the first syllable in the phrase "Catholicism is dead". It is an American video, made by a studio based in Hawaii. I don't want to say it's a Hawaiian accent, but it may be Western United States? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 02:09, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I've never heard it pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. Maybe another expert here can help. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 02:12, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

English has a general practice of moving the stress forward one syllable when appending suffixes. Thus... "ge-OG-raphy" but "ge-o-GRA-phic". The moving forward works for any number of suffixes, so we only tend to move forward one syllable regardless of how many suffixes we add to the root, so "ge-o-GRA-phic-al" and "ge-o-GRA-phic-al-ly" are all standard stress patterns. You can find this pattern all over English. "CA-tho-lic" and "Ca-THO-li-cism" matches this pattern well. --Jayron32 02:56, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm... I believe that some people may have subconsciously refrained from moving the stress forward, creating an unusual pronunciation. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 13:09, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I would have said that Jay was talking about moving the stress backward, not forward. Is "forward" what actual phoneticians say to refer to later syllables? --70.49.169.244 (talk) 16:41, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The forward direction of time is always later. The arrow of time is generally considered to be "behind = past" and "in front = future". Later syllables in a word are said after the earlier syllables, thus "forward" of them. Am I really explaining the concept of time here? Or does time work differently for you than for the rest of us? --Jayron32 22:23, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

An obvious analogue is Protestantism, which (as far as I can tell) remains stubbornly stressed on the first syllable. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:40, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Here in Detroit, I stress the 2nd syllable, and pronounce the first as "pra". StuRat (talk) 18:09, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Wurstkissen to mean "toilet paper to stop the water from hitting your ass"

This guy claims that the Germans have a special word, Wurstkissen, to describe "toilet paper to stop the water from hitting your ass". Is this true? Googling "Wurstkissen" and "Wurstkissen Toilettenpapier" yielded nothing useful. WinterWall (talk) 06:57, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Google translate yields "sausage cushion". Sounds like a joke. Like the fake German word for brassiere: "Schtoppenderfloppen". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 08:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

But the German for "exhaust" is "auspuff" and "glove" is "handschuh". Wierd? Widneymanor (talk) 11:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

German is a very straight-forward language many times. Skunk is das Stinktier, for instance. Also, capitalise your nouns! Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | 1 Adar 5775 13:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Germans do have a bit of an obsession with avoiding splashback - viz the German step toilet - see Terrifying German Toilets - Ach mein Gott! Alansplodge (talk) 13:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I thought those were Austrian. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | 1 Adar 5775 13:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

There's a horrible pun about Pan-Germanism there somewhere, but there is much cultural commonality between Germany and Austria. About half of the toilets in Luxembourg are of the Germanic type, in my experience. Alansplodge (talk) 17:28, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

According to our Flush toilet article, it's called a Flachspüler and may be found in "...the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and some regions of Poland". Alansplodge (talk) 17:36, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

These toilets haven't been produced since the 90s, so you can still find them in older houses (Toilette). As for "Wurstkissen", it's just a pillow for your excrements (sausages). You have to consider that in Germany, some renown publishers actually print youth dictionaries, which you can get in bookstores. They are collections of words people think the young say since they are made by adults. Another example is "Ticketficker" (ticket fucker) for train conductor. No one really talks like that, not even the worst self-proclaimed "gangsters" (probably because they aren't smart enough to invent these words anyway). They omit letters and ignore grammar, but if they really used such words, it would just sound wrong. People even try to decode that so-called slang on game shows. Just some comic relief. --2.245.101.41 (talk) 17:53, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Danke schön. Alansplodge (talk) 22:54, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Can someone translate this English sentence into actual English please?

Positivist assumptions provided the epistemological foundations for Social Darwinism and pop-evolutionary notions of progress, as well as for scientific racism and imperialism.

Many thanks, as I find it slightly internally contradictory, or making somewhat contradictory claims within the single sentence. Readability is negative 30, and a grade level of 22. Collect (talk) 19:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Hard to say without context. I think it is referencing Logical positivism, and claiming that the assumptions made by that school of thought have provided a basis (i.e. and epistemological foundation) for the concept of social darwinism. Additionally, it is claimed, these unspecified assumptions provide a basis for imperialism and scientific racism. So that's what the sentence is saying, but I certainly wouldn't believe that claim without a lot of further evidence and rationale. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh, the quote is from here , if anyone wants to read the whole piece. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:01, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

As I understood it, Positivism relies only on empiricism and rejects "assumptions" and are the four results all going to arise from it in unison, or is the writer only saying Positivism may result in one of the four listed? The quote appears to be sought as a basis for saying that Positivism results in scientific racism, which I found a bit of a stretch here. Collect (talk) 22:48, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• Sounds like a good reason to cancel your subscription. In any case "positivist assumptions" is ambiguous. "Assumptions that were positivist" is a possible, but irrelevant statement (it's like saying English assumptions, when you mean assumptions written in English. Likewise "the assumptions of Positivism" would simply be a false claim. Perhaps the author uses the postmodernist essay generator to create articles for which he gets paid by the word? This is nothing we can provide references for, other than asking you to look up our articles on Positivism and so forth. μηδείς (talk) 23:46, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

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