Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 February 4

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February 4

Verb placement in Sneewittchen

I found the full text of this story from http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/grimm/maerchen/sneewitt.htm (Sneewittchen).

In the middle of the story, there is:

Da erzählte es (Snow White) ihnen ([she told] the dwarfs), daß seine Stiefmutter es hätte wollen umbringen lassen [...]

And in this page: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sevendwarfs/index.html,

I found an English translation:

Then she told them that her step-mother had wished to have her killed [...]

My questions, then, are: how actually do I put the whole chunk of verb, hätte wollen umbringen lassen? To translate that into English, should I put it the order 1)hätte 2)lassen 3)umbringen 4)wollen? If I put the chunk in a main clause, how should it be? The difficulty is that it is in the subjunctive (the main verb) with 1 modal verb and lassen which can act like a modal verb. Is it a general rule that, when translating such a chunk in a subordinate clause, we should translate the (conjugated) main verb, followed by every verb behind in an "inverted" order?--Fitzwilliam (talk) 10:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

If we take the order from the English translation you are quoting and re-order the German verbs accordingly, we get hätte wollen lassen umbringen (which, of course, is not proper German). So the proposed rule is not the right one. What is strange to English ears here is most of all the inversion in umbringen lassen. When you go into the mode of these strings of infinitives in German, the originally active verb goes to the end: Sie läßt ihn gehen → Sie hat ihn gehen lassen. If there are more infinitives the "higher" ones can go in front or to the end: Sie hat ihn wollen gehen lassen or Sie hat ihn gehen lassen wollen. So there is no simple rule for sorting it out when translating to English. There is just only one interpretation that makes sense: had + wish + kill + have = had wished to have killed. With some contortion, it could theoretically also mean that the evil step-mother had let Snow White want to kill (with an elided direct object of the verb "to kill"), but no-one hearing the text will actually interpret it that way.  --Lambiam 12:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Does that mean "hätte wollen umbringen lassen" could have been "hätte lassen umbringen wollen", or are they just "very similar", if not the same? When it is put into a main clause, is it just

Seine Stiefmutter hätte es wollen umbringen lassen. ?--Fitzwilliam (talk) 13:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This is one of those cases where I count myself really lucky to be native German; the correct order of infinitives feels totally natural to me, but I guess when learning German as a second language, it looks horribly convoluted and confusing. In the sentence you quoted (where there is no pronoun in between the verbs), the only possible word order is "hätte wollen umbringen lassen" - "Hätte lassen umbringen wollen" would mean "she would have let her want to be killed". If the sentence were phrased with the pronoun "es" (referring to Schneewittchen) in between the verbs, it can be phrased either as "hätte es umbringen lassen wollen" (the more recent, colloquial word order) or "hätte es lassen umbringen wollen" (a pretty archaic word order and today restricted to some dialects, but nonetheless correct), but not "hätte es wollen umbringen lassen", which was the only correct word order whern there is no pronoun (although this is also possible in some Southern German dialects - then you would treat the two infinitives "umbringen lassen" as one immutable phrase with a fixed word order, which is strictly speaking not correct German, but my native Swabian dialect thinks that way). -- Ferkelparade π 14:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I had thought of, exactly, "hätte es umbringen lassen wollen". I'm not even native in English, and though I have to think in English as a crutch, I sort of think that having "wollen" (1) before "lassen" (2) makes more sense to me. My reasoning is that, in regard to translation, it is "to want (1) to have sth. done (2)" (where the English construction corresponding to "lassen" complicates the picture, because it is a verb plus a participle).

My grammar books imply, if you translate "hätte es umbringen lassen wollen", the order would be "hätte (1) es umbringen (4) lassen (3) wollen (2)". It actually doesn't explain clearly this Sneewittchen scenario with 4 verbs and 2 of which can act as modal verbs. In the modern usage they describe, the infinitives would be translated in this inverted order, just like a combination of just two (like: ...haben (1) das sehen (3) können (2)).

Has the usage changed much enough in the past centuries that the "chunk" of verbs becomes...archaic or difficult to "analyze" like when it is presented in a grammar book? I posted this question just to look into some theoretical knowledge because I haven't yet seen this combination of verbs. In real terms, I'd just accept "had wished/wanted to have her killed" and... for the sake of originality, I'd just remember "ah, here it happens to be wollen umbringen lassen, but not any other combination".--Fitzwilliam (talk) 16:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Hätte has to come after es in the original sentence because it's a dependent clause (introduced by dass), and in a dependent clause, normally all the verbs pile up at the end, after everything else like direct objects (in this case es). Normally, the inflected verb comes last of all, after the nonfinite forms, but there's an exception in the case of inflected helping verbs like hätte in combination with modal verbs like lassen when there is more than one infinitive present: in this case, the inflected verb comes first in the string of verbs at the end of the clause. Hence

Da erzählte das Schneewittchen den Zwergen, daß seine Stiefmutter es [hätte wollen umbringen lassen].

If there were only one non-finite form, hätte would be at the very end:

Da erzählte das Schneewittchen den Zwergen, daß seine Stiefmutter es [umgebracht hätte].

If this were a main clause (or at least syntactically equivalent to a main clause), es would come after hätte:

Da erzählte das Schneewittchen den Zwergen, seine Stiefmutter hätte es wollen umbringen lassen.

Make sense now? ;-) —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice. Is this "hätte" the only exception? How does the sequence "wollen umbringen lassen" (as in the original text) matter? Does it just matter as what Ferkelparade has said above?--Fitzwilliam (talk) 14:15, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it will only be finite forms of haben that appear before a string of nonfinite verbs at the end of a subordinate clause, but I'm not 100% sure. As for the order that the infinitives appear in, I'll have to take Ferkelparade and the other native German speakers' word for it. My non-native intuition doesn't extend that far, and I don't know of a rule for it. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 14:34, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Best defence

Who first said or where was the idea formulated that "the best defence is (to) attack"? I couldn't find references in either google or wikiquote. Thank you. 200.127.59.151 (talk) 11:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

"the best form of defense..." is a proverb - ... ?87.102.90.249 (talk) 14:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This link might be useful. MalcolmSpudbury (talk) 15:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

According to Carom in this thread from last year, it goes as far back as Ovid. -- BenRG (talk) 19:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I posted the original question forgetting to sign in. Am I wrong in thinking that it is found in Sun Tzu's `Art of War? Keria (talk) 22:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that's where it comes from. In Korea, he's widely quoted as saying "Know yourself and know your enemy. Then in a hundred battles, you will have a hundred victories," which is a misquote, actually. He said "you will never be in peril." In Japan, he's widely quoted as saying "Wind, Forest, Fire, Mountain." Which means:

• When you move your troops you should be as swift as a tempest
• When you do not advance, as calm as a forest
• When you strike and plunder you should be as wild as a spreading fire
• When you defend against the enemy's attack you should be as still and massive as a mountain

I might be mistaken, but I've never heard he said that about the best defence.. --Kjoonlee 18:01, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Oops, while Sun Tzu wrote the original, the short version of "Wind, Forest, Fire, Mountain" seems to come from Takeda Shingen. --Kjoonlee 18:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Old Phrase

Where does the phrase "Shut 'er down, Clancy, she's pumping mud!" come from? It has been one of my favourite phrases for a long time, and I know it has to do with oil pumps exhausting a petrolium deposit. But has this line ever been uttered by anyone in the occupation? If so, by whom? Is it from a movie or a TV show? It has been bugging me for quite a while. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 15:02, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can recall, it's the punchline to a vulgar joke, although I don't recall the specifics. Googling for the phrase revealed that it has been used as an error message in a couple of computer system implementations, thus making it a somewhat of a "meta" joke. If the phrase has been uttered by somebody in the occupation, I'd imagine it also would be at the meta level. --LarryMac | Talk 16:45, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at Dr. Dobb's Report, ddj@newsletters.sdmediagroup.com It is a error message in a 1987 Texas Instruments computer operating system left in by accident by its programmer Stu Barrett. Contact Jonathan Erickson jerickson@ddj.com, chief editor of Dr. Dobb's — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.168.37.136 (talk) 20:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Specifically, the error message meant that the system was thrashing. "Thrashing" is the state where a system has run out of swap space (aka virtual memory) and instead of reporting that it is out of swap space, it has started swapping the contents of swap space itself in and out of RAM and disk. Since each swap increases the amount of data being swapped, this cycle is endless, and often, the only way to handle the condition is to forcibly power off the machine. This fits in with the oil well origin, meaning nothing useful is going to happen from this point forward. I have no cite for this other than experience. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.125.176.58 (talk) 23:24, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

My father worked in the oil fields of the Midwest from the 1940s to the 1980s, and I heard him use this expression (minus Clancy) many times. It means: stop pumping, the well is dry. But I believe it WAS the punchline of a dirty joke, which I'm not sure I ever heard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.67.122.101 (talk) 20:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Translation

Hi. I would like to incorporate this piece of text into en.wiki from de.wiki as there are no references in this article (Indira Radić). Could someone who can read German look over this excerpt and possible translate it if it's usuable?

In den Nachfolgestaaten Jugoslawiens war die bosnische Serbin zunächst vor allem in Bosnien und Herzegowina, Serbien und Montenegro erfolgreich, aber gibt seit 2004 auch in Kroatien Konzerte und etablierte sich auf dem dortigen Markt ohne größere massenmediale Kontroversen auszulösen.

Thanks kindly. Seraphim♥ ^Whipp 15:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

"In the successor states of Yugoslavia, Radić, who is a Bosnian Serb, was initially successful especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, but has also given concerts in Croatia since 2004 and has established herself on the market there without triggering great controversy in the mass media." —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:02, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank-you :D Seraphim♥ ^Whipp 17:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Angr, I notice that part of your translation was slightly free, in that you rendered "die bosnische Serbin" as "Radić, who is a Bosnian Serb" (the original German made no mention of her name). Was that just because you thought it sounded better with the name added, or was there some other reason? Many thanks. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 09:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I did that because in German (especially in journalistic style), unlike English, it's common to add new information about someone with a definite noun phrase serving as a kind of appositive. In German, you can say something like "Indira Radić is a singer who was born on 14 June 1966. The Bosnian Serb was initially successful...". In English, that sounds really bad. We might write "Indira Radić is a singer who was born on 14 June 1966. A Bosnian Serb, she was initially successful..." or, if there's more information in between the two sentences, "Indira Radić is a singer who was born on 14 June 1966. She specializes in turbo-folk and pop-folk, and her most popular song to date is Lopov. Radić, who is a Bosnian Serb, was initially successful...". So I gave a translation that is idiomatic in English, rather than word-for-word. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:37, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Conventions used with Roman alphabet

It seems that languages that use the Roman alphabet seem to share some conventions that they use with it, such as:

• Words are separated by spaces (though if I am not mistaken, Vietnamese goes a step further and separates syllables by spaces)
• Sentences begin with a capital letter
• Personal names begin with a capital letter
• Numbers, when not written out in words, are written in Arabic numerals (or occasionally in Roman numerals), never in (say) Chinese characters

Have I made any errors? Do we have a list of such conventions here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.13.229.34 (talk) 16:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, Latin originally had no lower case, so points two and three didn't apply, and they didn't separate words with spaces either. It's sometimes conventional to write Latin without capitalizing the first letter of sentence now (at least it was in the textbook I used in school). -Elmer Clark (talk) 18:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think he was asking about conventions commonly used in writing modern languages with the modern Latin alphabet, and not actually about what the ancient Romans did (however, the Romans did in fact indicate word-divisions more often than the ancient Greeks).

The list seems reasonable -- except that in most European languages other than English, adjectives derived from proper names are not usually capitalized... AnonMoos (talk) 19:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

A comment: separation by syllable in Vietnamese is due to the fact that it was previously written using Chinese characters, where each character is pronounced with one syllable. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

In regards to bullet point three above, I believe all nouns are capitalized in German. And in regards to bullet point four above, whole numbers (integers) from one through nine are usually spelled out, while numbers from 10 up are written in Arabic numerals. Thomprod (talk) 03:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The conventions for spelling out numbers as opposed to writing them with numerals vary greatly within English, and even more greatly across languages. Within English, some style guides recommend what you suggested, others recommend spelling out one through nineteen and using numerals above that, others recommend spelling out numbers consisting of a single word (one through twenty; the decades thirty through ninety; hundred; thousand; million; etc.) and writing the others in numerals (21-29, 31-39, etc.). German uses numerals more than English and has no convention disallowing them in sentence-initial position, as English does. Nouns are indeed all capitalized in German, including adjectives and infinitives used as nouns. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:08, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

All languages that use the Latin alphabet are written from left to right, right? They all share similar punctuation -- commas, periods, question marks, exclamation points. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:58, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Partially, but Spanish has prefixed "upside down" question marks and exclamation points (¡¿) which are not used in most other languages, and the punctuation conventions used for quotations of various types differ strongly between different languages. Also, examining the rules governing the use of commas in German, for example, would reveal that some of the same punctuation marks can be used in rather different ways in different languages. AnonMoos (talk) 04:53, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

If you are counting pinyin for Chinese, there are these considerations: often "words" are not separated by spaces, and often "words" have spaces within them. It depends what is understood by "word". Also, proper nouns may not be capitalised.

French uses guillemets, which we hardly see in English. Spacing around punctuation marks varies a great deal, too: in French and in other European languages.

– Noetica^♬♩ Talk 06:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

As to pinyin, it depends on how you define "words". A "single concept", consisting or one or many syllables, is regarded as one "word", and therefore written without spaces. Proper nouns, in the sense of names of people and places, are always capitalised.

These are the "official" rules as set down by the National Language Committee in China. Some organisations, e.g. the Library of Congress, use slightly different pinyin rules. Interestingly, under the official rules, foreign, Latin alphabet names translated into Chinese are still transliterated by their original spelling: e.g. Clinton translated into Chinese and transcribed using pinyin would still be "Clinton", not "Kelingdun". This rule does not seem to be followed by some other organisations, possibly because the original spelling is "lost" when the name is translated into Chinese. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:44, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

If you are talking about transliterations, with ITRANS the capitalisation and punctuation rules disappear. E.G.

aa.Nkho.n me.n hamane aap ke sapane sajaaye hai.n -- Q Chris (talk) 10:51, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

"That will help my English"

What's the best way to say the above in French? I'm saying that studying foreign languages helps to improve your English grammar as well. Thanks in advance --Bearbear (talk) 19:18, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Cela me permettra (également) d'améliorer mon anglais. "That will allow me to improve my english (as well)." You can replace Cela with Ça the longer form is more literary but it would usually be spoken with the shorter form. I`m pretty sure you don't need to capitalize the first letter of a language in French.

Ça améliorera mon anglais. "It/this will improve my English."

Keria (talk) 22:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

That is certainly correct, though I think that the future tense sounds a bit formal in French. For a more conversational tone, you might try Ça va améliorer mon anglais. Marco polo (talk) 01:34, 5 February 2008 (UTC)