Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 February 26

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February 26

TEXTBOOK --- its etymology, perhaps

Hello there! I have actually read an article here in wikipedia about textbooks; however, I am curious about its etymolgy.. Why are schoolbooks called TEXTbooks? Thank you for any answer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.3.99.18 (talk) 03:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello right back at you! We had no conclusive answer to this question when it was asked almost two years ago. I hope we do better this time around! ---Sluzzelin talk 03:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, text-book is from 1779. One meaning of the word text is textbook. The relation of these words may be that text in this sense is a shortened form of textbook, but another possibility is that text in the sense of "written material for a course provided next to the orally presented lectures" is older, and that text-book originally referred to a collection of such material bundled into a book.  --Lambiam 08:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, here's the oldest uses of 'text-book' in the OED:

1730: Text-Book (in Universities) is a Classick Author written very wide by the Students, to give Room for an Interpretation dictated by the Master, &c. to be inserted in the Interlines.

1779: The letters of the immortal Earl of Chesterfield, which I intend to use as my text-book on this occasion.

1795: Lord Bacon's Essays..have been the text-book of myriads of Essay-Writers.

So yes, it appears that a text-book was originally a bound collection of texts for study. The question then is what 'text' meant at the time. The OED defines the word as "the wording of anything written or printed", and especially "the very words and sentences as originally written". The contemporary quotes are:

1678: The most of Plato's Followers..offering all kind of violence to his Text.

1720: Say, Stella, when you copy next, Will you keep strictly to the text?

I assume then that a 'text-book' was a collection of scriptural, Classic, poetic, or prose texts that were bound in a volume for a student to study. The 1730 definition specifies that it was double spaced so the students could make notes as interlinear glosses. And indeed, another definition (of several at the time, even ignoring scriptural use), is "That portion of the contents of a manuscript or printed book, or of a page, which constitutes the original matter, as distinct from the notes or other critical appendages." :

1700: When his broad Comment makes the Text too plain.

1749: where the comment is of equal authority with the text.

So a text-book was a book of texts, to which the student under instruction added commentary and notes.

I seriously doubt there would have been any illustrations in the early days, except maybe a plate facing the title page in a more expensive edition. kwami (talk) 07:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Snowplow in Spanish

How do you say Snowplow in Spanish? My guess is "quitanieve"? The only way that I can think of describing it is Camiones removedores de nieve or maybe Limpiacalzadas?Icamepica (talk) 03:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The TV news uses 'quitanieves'. And oddly (just like the UK) they always seemed to be taken by surprise by the first snowfalls. Richard Avery (talk) 08:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

When it snows in Mijas on the Costa del sol, the children get the day off school. It has only happened once in the last 30 years or so. They are justified in being surprised, I think ៛ Bielle (talk) 00:30, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The Simpsons episode "Mr. Plow" was called "El Sr. Quitanieves" in Spain, and Don Barredora in Latin America. --Sean 15:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Metric feet

How is it decided where one metric foot ends and the next one starts, if there are several ways to divide a given verse? For example, is each of the following lines from the chorus of "Nymphetamine" a tribrach followed by a primus paeon followed by a spondee, or a quartus paeon followed by a dibrach followed by a bacchius?

Six feet deep is the incision

In my heart, that barless prison

Discoulours all with tunnel vision

...

Sick and weak from my condition

This lust, this vampiric addiction

To Her alone in full submission

NeonMerlin 05:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know the song, but I could scan the verse mostly in trochees, with a sprinkling of amphibrachs at the starts of the lines. The simpler the better!

Six feet deep is the incision

In my heart, that barless prison

Discolours all with tunnel vision

...

Sick and weak from my condition

This lust, this vampiric addiction

To Her alone in full submission

SaundersW (talk) 10:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

But then you end up with vampiric which can't be right. Surely the emphasis is the inverse of that? 130.88.140.108 (talk) 12:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it can be right. -pir- is definitely the least stressed syllable in "vampiric." The syllables that Saunders stresses and I don't are partly stressed in the song. But it's definitely two fully stressed syllables at the end of each line. NeonMerlin 17:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. -pir- would be the stressed syllable when I say it, so I wondered if this was a US/UK thing. However, Merriam-Webster and the American Heritage Dictionary agree with the OED that the second syllable is stressed, so I don't know what's going on there! It is the only vampire-rooted word I can think of or find in which vam- does not carry the stress. Skittle (talk) 18:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I would agree with vampiric in general, but vampiric is needed here, I think, otherwise the meter trips very oddly. Is the verse spoken or sung, by the way? SaundersW (talk) 19:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Some words do change their metre when they're made into adjectives: maniac becomes maniacal, because maniacle sounds like a made up word; and vagina becomes vaginal in the USA (although it's still vaginal most elsewhere). But in poetry, we have much more freedom to stress words wherever we damn well want, in ways we wouldn't normally contemplate, in order to make the poem work. This is the "freedom of stress" principle - unfortunately for the poor poets who have to grapple and struggle with these things, it doesn't equate to "freedom from stress". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I see. So it wasn't that people are saying they normally stress 'vampiric' is this manner, just that the lyrics are sufficiently carelessly written :P to require it. Personally I would say that called for a rewrite, unless it was for comedy purposes. But what do I know? Skittle (talk) 13:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Japanese Stroke Orders For Writing Dakuten And Handakuten

What are the stroke orders for writing dakuten and handakuten? Thanks.68.148.164.166 (talk) 05:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

As illustrated:

--Sushiya (talk) 13:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Splitting clauses

1. Schools with green uniforms suck; to the core!
2. Schools with green uniforms suck! To the core!
3. Schools with green uniforms suck. to the core!
4. Schools with green uniforms suck - to the core!

Which of the above is/are correct? Or would other punctuation be better? (I know I can simply not use any punctuation after "suck", but doing so would not achieve the intended effect.)

What do you call this literary device, whereby one adds a punctuation mark to split the sentence into two clauses to emphasise one part? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.126.19.150 (talk) 08:22, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The only incorrect one is 3. If you have a period (full stop), you must commence the next sentence with a capital letter. The ones that appeal to me most are 4 and 2, in that order. Number 1 is ok, but doesn't have the same impact. If you make the "t" in 3 a capital, it would be acceptable, but it would come last in my list. It's all a question of style, and having the greatest impact with the tools you've got, not of correct/incorrect as such. -- JackofOz (talk) 09:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Sentences 2 and 3 are Sentence fragments though aren't they? (I.e. not complete sentences). --Joe^Talk_Work 10:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

A sentence is a unit of thought, not grammar. It would be too restrictive to permit only "sentences" that stood up to the schoolmarm's definition of one. It becomes obvious in dialogue that what we call a "sentence fragment" can be a complete sentence. "How?" is one example.

To describe the sample sentences above as splitting a sentence with punctuation is only one way of thinking about what happens there. "To the core" is not a clause, either. I don't think there is a name for this. There is nothing incorrect about the samples provided (except for the mistake Jack has already pointed out). The overall impression conveyed is one of forceful juvenile exuberance, so by the only standard of correctness I can think to apply, that of form being consistent with style, number 2 is right. --Milkbreath (talk) 11:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the dash is best, the exclamation mark next best, and the period is third best and requires the next word to be capitalized. I consider the semicolon wrong.

On the matter of sentence fragments, I suggest that the word "sentence" has two meanings: it's either a unit of thought delimited by certain punctuation marks (or in speech by the manner of speaking), or else it's a grammatical construct. In other words, a "sentence fragment" in one sense can be a "sentence" in another sense. And having said that, I can say that the semicolon is wrong because grammar requires a semicolon, in the use seen here, to combine two things that each are complete sentences in the grammatical sense.

I said "the dash is best" rather than "4 is best" because 4 was actually written with a hyphen instead of a dash, and that's wrong -- although it is something people get lazy about. (Here I've used a double hyphen instead of a dash; that's a typewriter-ism and also lazy.) --Anonymous, 23:23 UTC, February 25, 2008.

Pardon my curiosity, but wouldn't it have been simpler and less laborious to just use the dash, as you're advocating, rather than do the very thing you've just said is "wrong" and then justify why you did it? You took about 90 keystrokes to do that; a dash is one. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

But those 90 keystrokes are a lot quicker than remembering that your new keyboard doesn't have a dash key, forgetting the alt code for en-dash, looking it up, hitting show preview to make sure it works, discovering that it was actually "฿", going back to the internet to find a correct alt-code, only to come back and realize that there is a dash on the Insert: line right below the Save page button, then getting frustrated because you get an edit conflict, then having to retype everything because IE doesn't save your edits like Firefox does, then hurrying so as to not get a second edit conflict, so forgetting to sign, so SineBot comes in here with his little tag, then going back to erase it because you don't want to look stupid because you forgot to sign. 199.67.16.60 (talk) 17:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, 199.67. My curiosity is assuaged. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Wrong guess why. If I wanted a proper dash I'd just type —, no muss, no fuss. But "--" is still 5 less keystrokes (counting the shift). And I didn't do what I just said was wrong, i.e. failing to distinguish between hyphen and dash. I just used a lazy form of dash. --Anon, 04:55 UTC, February 28.

I see. Thanks, Anonymous. (Btw, do you drink coffee, and have you ever considered applying to become Secretary-General of the UN? You could call yourself "Coffee Anon".  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 23:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Huh. Guess I should've previewed that last item before posting it. What I meant to say I'd "just type" was —. I wrote it as <nowiki>&mdash;</nowiki>, assuming wrongly that the <nowiki> tag would prevent the entity from being recognized. I should have typed —, as I did earlier in this paragraph. (And, of course, to get that, I just typed —. And to get that... well, never mind.) --Anonymous, 00:44 UTC, February 29, 2008.

Grammar: "is" or "are" for a group?

which is correct please

"helping hands" ARE a group of ladies formed to help animals

or

"helping hands" IS a group of ladlies formed to help animals

• I'd say "is". But then, I'd spell "ladies" without an "l" after the "d", and I'd be more likely to say "women" anyway. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 18:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Using "are" here is British English, "is" would be American. --Kannan91 (talk) 18:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually this Brit would use is, but some might use are: Americans often think we always say The government are... but we also say The government is..., depending on the way the subject is viewed. This misperception is because people notice difference more than sameness. Drmaik (talk) 19:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

"Ladies formed to help animals" sounds... wrong. SaundersW (talk) 19:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, out of context - yes. But in context we can see that "formed" is refering to the group, not the ladies. As for the actual question, I would use "is". Group is a singular noun, so the verb should also be singular. The usage of "are" exists when if you use it in such a sentence as "'Helping Hands' are doing so-and-so", I believe. I really don't know because I, as a person from the US, would actually never use "are". Hope that helps. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 21:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

That's my instinct as an Australian, too. I'm not sure why it is "Helping Hands are doing X..." rather than 'is', but using 'is' in that context sounds wrong. Perhaps because when you are talking about them performing an action, you are referring to the members, rather than the group? Steewi (talk) 00:10, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 September 6#invitation question....  --Lambiam 22:34, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The ubiquitous A or An question

I'm pretty sure of the answer but just need others to confirm. An IP user keeps changing "a ubiquitous cigarette." to "an ubiquitous cigarette." I'm pretty sure "a" is correct but I've decided to check here just in case there's some odd English language clause that I've missed

From our Team Fortress 2 article:
The spy is dressed in a team-colored pin-stripe suit with a full-face balaclava and smoking an ubiquitous cigarette.
or
The spy is dressed in a team-colored pin-stripe suit with a full-face balaclava and smoking a ubiquitous cigarette.

Thanks - X201 (talk) 23:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Phonetically, "ubiquitous" begins with a "y" consonant sound (IPA [j]), so "a" would be correct. There are some cases where there are legitimate grounds for dispute ("a historic" vs. "an historic" etc.), but "a ubiquitous" is not one of them. AnonMoos (talk) 23:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

That sentence has problems other than the a/an one, though, including a poor use of ubiquitous and a lack of parallelism of "is dressed" and "smoking". Deor (talk) 23:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is a ubiquitous question. To avoid a tiresome duplication of effort concerning a and an, h and u, see this answer from the archives.

Absolutely definitive. :)

– Noetica^♬♩ Talk 23:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I pronounce "ubiquitous" with an "oo" sound at the beginning... Adam Bishop 03:43, 27 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.210.170.49 (talk)

That pronunciation is not even ubiquitescent. -- JackofOz (talk) 06:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess I've never actually heard anyone pronounce "ubiquitous"! I just assumed it started with "oo" based on the Latin. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:01, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

And fair assumption too. It's just not pronounced that way, though. See also universe, unanimity, uniform, etc - all "yoo". Even the letter "u" is pronounced "yoo", unlike the way the Romans did. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

But all those words begin with [un]. Surely [ub] is different since the second letter is a bilabial. Like umbrella and all of our wonderful uber-words. 199.67.16.60 (talk) 14:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, the entire group of words that begin with the un- prefix. 199.67.16.60 (talk) 14:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Given the inconsistent correspondence between English orthography and pronunciation, one can hardly be faulted for guessing the wrong pronunciation of a word like ubiquitous. But a deficient orthography doesn't change the fact that the word has only one accepted pronunciation. --Diacritic (talk) 18:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Adam, tThe root of those words is not un- (not) but uni- (from the Latin unus, one). In the unanimity case, the i is dropped. Ubiquity is from ubi, meaning "where?". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:31, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

True. But I am not 199.67 :) Adam Bishop (talk) 01:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Entirely OR, but I've never heard anyone say "oobiquitous" instead of "yuubiquitous". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

And I've never heard the other. Let's call the whole thing off! Personally I blame it on the word not coming up enough in conversation. The first time I used 'eunuch' out loud I had a similar problem. Skittle (talk) 12:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

If words such as "eunuch" and "ubiquitous" don't appear regularly in your conversation, you don't do enough talking. The art of conversation seems truly lost. Alas. (lol) -- JackofOz (talk) 23:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Jack :) In case I was misleading previously - what I meant to say is that I have heard "ubiquitous" spoken fairly often, and have never heard it pronounced with an "oo". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

My original reply placed the blame on the poor vocabulary of those with whom I talk, but that seemed slightly unfair. Sadly, much of my vocabulary is confined to the written word, locked away for the sake of social harmony. There are few people I chat with who would correct a mispronounced word such as "ubiquitous". It was my luck that the first time I used "eunuch" I was talking to one of them :) 130.88.140.10 (talk) 12:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC) (Skittle on a public computer. 130.88.140.10 (talk) 12:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC))

It occurs to me that I must have heard "ubiquitous" spoken at some point, so either everyone pronounces it wrong (unlikely, as I know a wide variety of Canadians and Americans), or I just never paid attention (more likely!). Adam Bishop (talk) 12:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Stroke Order

Hi, I was wondering what are the stroke orders for the following:

• (yi)
  
• (wu)
  
• (ye)

Thanks.68.148.164.166 (talk) 11:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I've never learned to write these, but by analogy to チ and テ I would expect the two horizontal strokes of wu to come first, in the order from high to low, and the vertical stroke last. By analogy with イ I expect the diagonal stroke of ye to come before the vertical stroke, and in general I'd expect a horizontal stroke at the bottom to come last. This is all in conformance with the basic rules of stroke order. The stroke order for yi cannot be clearly deduced from the basic rules, and I see no obvious analogon among the other kana, but the top-to-bottom rule suggests that the vertical stroke comes before the diagonal.  --Lambiam 23:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks; where do the strokes start?68.148.164.166 (talk) 08:31, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Applying the op-down, left-to-right rules seems to resolve the stroke orders for the first and third kanas fairly easily. The second apparently derives from the Chinese 于 (yu), which is written horiontal top, horizontal middle, vertical and tick. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:28, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks; where do the strokes start?68.148.164.166 (talk) 08:31, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The strokes are made left to right for horizontal strokes, and high to low for vertical and diagonal strokes: .  --Lambiam 08:40, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That rule appears to be violated by the diagonal stroke of yi, and is definitely violated by the long stroke of シ. How about this rule: – strokes left to right, | strokes top to bottom, \ strokes top left to bottom right, / strokes thick end to thin end? -- BenRG (talk) 15:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

"Thick end" is hard to tell in "sans serif" fonts. To really work out the stroke order/shapes of kanas from scratch, one really needs to know its etymology (i.e. the radical or character from which it derives via cursive script), and then the cursive script writing convention of that original radicial or character. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree about yi. I think it has to be in the order downstroke-diagonal.

Are these supposed to be real kana? I've asked several Japanese language teachers, including (if I remember correctly) one who taught Classical Japanese, and they all denied there ever were kana for these sounds, that /je/ merged with /e/ before kana really became established (though there were separate man'yōgana), and that if there ever was a */ji/ or */wu/ it was long before even that. Are you sure ye isn't just a hentaigana variant of エ? kwami (talk) 10:06, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I didn't make this up; the article katakana lists it.Asrghasrhiojadrhr (talk) 06:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. No, I wasn't accusing you of making them up! kwami (talk) 06:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me, I meant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#Table_of_katakana lists it with references.Asrghasrhiojadrhr (talk) 06:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)