Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 October 25

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October 25

Japanese translation

I feel I understand what is being said, but I would like a second opinion. In the sentence 『CLANNAD』は自分の中でもシナリオではもう行き着くとこまで行っちゃって二度と越えられない壁になってます。 (which references Clannad) I believe it says, "Clannad has already become, among all my scenarios, an impassable wall that I will never reach again." or so. The speaker is Jun Maeda, the main scenario writer for Clannad.--十八 06:12, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

How about this? Inside of me, the scenario of 'Clanned' was developed to the full extent and now I found a brick wall that I could never break through. Oda Mari (talk) 06:44, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

That still conveys the same message, right? In that Maeda is saying he reached the limit of his writing ability with Clannad, and now he believes he'll never write something as ambitious, or more ambitious, than what he did with Clannad, right?--十八 08:59, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, he is saying he got to a wall that I will never be able to get over again. --ChokinBako (talk) 09:48, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the responses.--十八 20:53, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

A note on masculine as default grammatical gender

I just wrote something about this, but then the section was archived from under me: see my scintillating contribution here.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 08:23, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I am not surprised to find that non-Indo-European languages differ in this; statements about what "all languages do" are all too often claims about IE, possibly adding Semitic or Magyar. In Proto-IE, feminines seem to have been marked, many of them with the ā ending; so masculine was the default. There may have been an assimilation between the feminines and the neuter plural in a. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Punctuation [in Charade, and in Shakespeare?]

This line from Charade has me in a quandry: "Well, wasn't it Shakespeare that said, 'When strangers do meet in far off lands, they should e'er long see each other again'?" Assuming that the "Shakespearean" line is complete, should there be a period after "again" or is there some rule against having two punctuation marks one after the other (sort of)? Clarityfiend (talk) 08:30, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Certainly nothing closely resembling that line occurs in Shakespeare. But even if it did, there would be no point in consulting such a source. Shakespearian punctuation is variable and illogical by our standards.

Anyway, no: there should not be such a period. See WP:MOS, where this is dealt with quite well.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 08:55, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

MOS doesn't say that (their first example is Arthur said "The situation is deplorable and unacceptable."), and it's not so. If the period is in the material "quoted", it is harmless, even under so-called "logical" punctuation, to include it as part of the original material. It doesn't really matter whether this quotation is spurious; Grant's character is quoting it as though it were real. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Under no punctuation system that I'm familiar with would one include both a period at the end of the internal quotation and a question mark at the end of the sentence (which is what the OP was asking about). See the example "Did Martha say, 'Come with me'?" at WP:PUNC in the MOS. Deor (talk) 18:56, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

That's right, Deor. I'm surprised at PMA's remarks here. The example he cites is irrelevant, since as it is presented at WP:MOS no further punctuation follows. If Arthur's sentence had something else after it that required a comma in the embedding sentence, the full stop would have been dropped:

• Arthur said "The situation is deplorable and unacceptable", and Guinevere fell silent.

I doubt that any authority can be found for a contrary view. Many editors would want this comma to precede the quotation mark, but that's a separate issue.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 21:26, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Not relevant to your question, but that line doesn't even make sense. e'er should probably be ere. Algebraist 10:09, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

That line was just part of a joke (hence the quotation marks) to allow Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn the opportunity to be charming (and they are). Clarityfiend (talk) 21:30, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Kde domov muj? [Czech pronunciation]

How is "muj" pronounced? Once again, I am pretty illterate in IPA, so avoid using it. Come to think of it, where is the diacritic that's supposed to be on the u? I could only find the ring for the a, the one that looks Swedish. Vltava 68 (talk contribs) 09:00, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you are referring to František Škroup's song Kde domov můj? Where is the diacritic? There is the diacritic! I believe můj is pronounced /muj/! That is, like Spanish muy. The u is roughly pronounced like the u in English put, or in German Mutter.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 09:27, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

In fact you can find that ů in the "Latin" options below the Edit Box:

Á á Ć ć É é Í í Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ó ó Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ú ú Ý ý Ź ź À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù  â Ĉ ĉ Ê ê Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Î î Ĵ ĵ Ô ô Ŝ ŝ Û û Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü Ÿ ÿ ß Ã ã Ẽ ẽ Ĩ ĩ Ñ ñ Õ õ Ũ ũ Ỹ ỹ Ç ç Ģ ģ Ķ ķ Ļ ļ Ņ ņ Ŗ ŗ Ş ş Ţ ţ Đ đ Ů ů Ǎ ǎ Č č Ď ď Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ľ ľ Ň ň Ǒ ǒ Ř ř Š š Ť ť Ǔ ǔ Ž ž Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū Ȳ ȳ Ǣ ǣ ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ğ ğ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ Ċ ċ Ė ė Ġ ġ İ ı Ż ż Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ǫ ǫ Ų ų Ḍ ḍ Ḥ ḥ Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ Ṃ ṃ Ṇ ṇ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ Ṣ ṣ Ṭ ṭ Ł ł Ő ő Ű ű Ŀ ŀ Ħ ħ Ð ð Þ þ Œ œ Æ æ Ø ø Å å Ə ə

And yes, můj (alternatively múj) is indeed pronounced like /muy/, but with a longish and more rounded u than the unadorned letter. (Source: Routledge Czech Grammar.)

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 09:32, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

It is pronounced [muːj]. There is nothing more rounded about it than <u>, and there's no such alternative spelling as "múj". — Emil J. 10:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Really, Emil? A Google search on múj at pages restricted to .cz gets 22,000 hits! While a similar search on můj gets 14,700,000 hits, there is at least prima facie evidence that múj is currently an alternative. The Routledge grammar I referred to (Czech: an Essential Grammar, James Naughton, 2005) says only that ú has longer duration than u, and that this long vowel is normally spelt ů except as the first letter of a word. But as we can see, usage seems to allow ú in other contexts, "properly" or not. As for rounding, Teach Yourself Czech (WR and Z Lee, Hodder & Stoughton, second edition 1964) says of this long vowel:

The lips are rounded as for u or more so.

Of course I may be wrong; but this is evidence to reckon with.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 01:39, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but using Google to answer questions about grammar in this way is completely ridiculous. You can find almost any sort of crap written on the internet if you look hard enough, and the 0.15% you got is actually below what I'd expect as the normal misspelling rate. Google also finds 17,700 hits for "usgae", are you going to claim that usage seems to allow it as an alternative spelling to "usage"? "Múj" is plain ungrammatical, and it would be recognized as a spelling error by any literate Czech speaker. — Emil J. 11:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and your grammar got it wrong anyway. The actual rule is that [uː] is spelled "ů" in those word where it is derived from an earlier [oː] > [uo] > [uː], hence "ú" also occurs in the middle of words such as "zúčastnit se" (due to a morphological boundary) or "túra" (due to its being a loanword).

As for rounding, I am a native speaker with a Master degree in linguistics, so be that kind and spare me of using a Czech-for-foreigners textbook (and an outdated one, at that) as a reliable source for anything, and especially for details of phonetics. — Emil J. 11:25, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Generally I agree, Emil, that Googling is a blunt tool for such questions. But it is not entirely useless. I am not an expert on the sounds and spelling of Czech, so of course I defer to you as a native speaker one qualified in linguistics. We can normally go by what published sources tell us, though; and in fact the culture at Wikipedia is that we should do so. I have looked also at the history of u, ú, and ů in Entwistle and Morison's Russian and the Slavonic Languages (Faber and Faber, 1964). You might say it is written long ago for (and by) "foreigners", and so counts for little; but it is a very thorough and scholarly study. Anyway, they say that an old diphthong uo "is still represented in Czech spelling (ů); in Polish and Czech the diphthong has become a narrow vowel [u], which remains long in Czech but has been shortened in Polish" (p. 297). Now, exactly what do the authors mean by narrow? That's unclear from the context, and the term has uncertain application in modern linguistics. They could mean something about roundedness, or they could intend narrow as OED defines it:

[1. d.]Of vowels, in contrast to broad or wide.

1844 Proc. Philol. Soc. I. 283 The Greek substituted a long and broad vowel for the short and narrow vowel of the nominative. 1890 Sweet Prim. Spoken Engl. 4 Each of the vowels is either narrow or wide, according as the tongue and uvula are tense or relaxed.

In any case, it is well to keep an open mind, despite what credentials one claims and despite what familiarity with the material one has. Sometimes familiarity breeds an inability to see what "outsiders" can more dispassionately uncover. There are features of American English that I find most Americans oblivious to, though some of us Australians are instantly aware of them.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 21:52, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The obvious explanation is that they use narrow as a synonym for close, which is apparently also what the OED describes (IIUIC). The change [uo] > [uː] indeed consists of making the second part of the original diphthong more close. — Emil J. 10:44, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Obvious? I don't know. Others use narrow in connection with labiality. For example, in Ladefoged's "traditional features" (see Clark and Yallop, An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, 2nd edition 1995, p. 433), the feature round is explicated as "inverse of distance between corners of lips" (surely a kind of narrowness), and by Chomsky and Halle explicitly as "narrowing of lip orifice" (ibid. p. 431; see also p. 26, for correlation of roundedness with other features). I am suspicious of the "obvious".

This should not drag on; but I am intrigued now. If the change from the diphthong to modern ů is as described, must we think that the resulting sound is precisely the same as an elongated [u], so that it is represented perfectly satisfactorily by [uː]? And if so, only in real contemporary speech, or also in more abstract norms of pronunciation (closer to practice in the time of Jan Hus, perhaps)? Exact correspondences in quality are the exception, between "equivalent" short and long vowels. Look at many English vowels, or the sounds represented in Hungarian by a and á.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Does a word/phrase exist for this type of "getting caught"?

Is there a specific word or common phrase in any language for this kind of situation?

Example 1) You are a law-abiding driver and always have been. In your small town you have never seen a police car, ever, in your many years of living there. That one time you ever consider rolling through a stop sign and do it, you see the lights and sirens in your rear view window.

Example 2) You're at your office cubicle and have an itch in your nose. You think to yourself, "someone will see me if I scratch it and they'll think I'm picking my nose". You wait and wait for the itch to hopefully go away on its own. Ten minutes later, nobody has walked by your cubicle and your nose feels like it is crawling with fire ants, so you go for the gold. Within the exact same second or two that you put your finger in your nose, your boss comes around the corner out of nowhere to talk to you.

Example 3) You're playing a first-person shooter, with a sniper rifle to keep an area clear for your teammates. You keep a reputably-troublesome hallway scoped for a few minutes when you don't see any action at all there the entire time. You figure the frontline action moved forward in the game, and staring at a wall is boring, so you proceed toward that hallway to reach wherever you think your teammates are... the moment you enter the hallway and almost reach the end, a superiorly-equipped enemy comes around the corner and destroys you without blinking.

With things like the second example, I always used the word "Seinfeldian", but that's an adjective :)

Also I wonder if Statisticians have studied this phenomenon. It kind of nullifies the idea of patience being a virtue. --75.165.11.199 (talk) 17:20, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I remember it discussed by Scott Adams years ago, but he didn't have a name for it either. Seems to be a corollary of Murphy's law. jnestorius^(talk) 17:55, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

See Murphy's laws. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:03, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

sod's law ?hotclaws 07:02, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, Spear of Destiny put out the Sod's Law album and there seems to be a spear of destiny operating in this kind of dumb luck, often enough to seem precisely planned. Karma? in the sense that what you avoid most gets you without warning. Julia Rossi (talk) 01:28, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation guide

Can you please use a pronunciation guide like "The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language" pronunciation guide, or at least a pronunciation guide that divides a word into syllables. All American children were taught learn the pronunciation of a new word by this means in elementary school. Please do this. The pronunciation guide that you use is difficult and it is not helpful. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.118.229.108 (talk) 18:28, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The AHD pronunciation guide won't be helpful to non-Americans who didn't learn it at school. IPA has the advantage of being an international standard. Moreover, any English-specific pronunciation guide will be useless at accurately describing the pronunciation of words from other languages which may have sounds that don't exist in English. If IPA is difficult for you, you may try Wikipedia:IPA and Wikipedia:IPA for English to start learning it. — Kpalion^(talk) 18:46, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I have never understood this position. Because, of course, we only use British English and tell Americans to go learn to speak right. And we only use metric and tell Americans to go learn to measure correctly. Not to mention only using day-month-year format and only BCE/CE dating. Only IPA seems to be granted this special status and forget that making actually accessible articles is the goal. Rmhermen (talk) 14:01, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

A British person would say "Because, of course, we only use english and tell Americans to learn to speak properly. And we only use metric and tell Americans to learn to measure correctly."78.151.135.45 (talk) 21:36, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Nope, no special status for the IPA. Other pronunciation respelling systems are allowed in addition to the IPA at Wikipedia. They're just rarely used because they're even more complicated, counterintuitive, and inaccessible than the IPA allegedly is, and they don't work for languages other than English anyway. —Angr 14:09, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Phobia name

I realise this is a bit of a silly question, but does anyone know what the Latin name would be for a phobia of dropping one's keys into the gap between a lift car and the floor? Something we'd been arguing about in the pub, but nobody knew the answer. — FIRE!^{in a crowded theatre...} 18:50, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Clearly, this is medical advice. Grab your car keys, hop into the elevator and drive to to your physicia - ooops, drat - walk to your physicians surgery.

Unfortunately, it will be locked as the good doctor dropped her keys into the storm water drain when she climbed into her car through the side window. The reason for her unusual boarding maneuvre can easily be guessed, but the terminology currently escapes me... --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:19, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not even going to try to pretend to go Greek for this -- using Latin stems, one possibility might be Clavirimophobia (clavis, rima). AnonMoos (talk) 21:21, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

See The Phobia List. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:07, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

How about ptosikleisophobia? (from ptosis, falling, and kleis, key) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 09:55, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Kleis is a case form (nominative singular if with an acute accent, nominative/accusative plural if with a circumflex accent), not the stem used for compounding. The stem is kleid- ... AnonMoos (talk)