Language desk
< March 5	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 7 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 6

Latin: pecatoribus or peccatoribus?

In Latin, is pecatoribus spelled with one C or two? Neon Merlin 00:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Two, normally, although some medieval manuscripts may offer an alternative spelling. Iblardi (talk) 00:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thought-terminating clichés

Do "So's your mother", "That's what your mother said last night" and similar count as Thought-terminating clichés? --90.240.8.194 (talk) 03:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. But there should probably be a separate section for inane non-sequiturs, as opposed to platitudes. LANTZY ^TALK 05:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have only recently discovered the rich seam of mother insults. Your mom! BrainyBabe (talk) 06:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The dozens is an enlightening read, for more on this topic. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:39, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dangling superlative on CNN

How come I find the CNN slogan "The most news in the morning." so grammatically unsatisfactory. My mid keeps screaming for an adjective or defining phrase. "The most informative news..." would sound better. Even "The most news you can find on TV in the morning," doesn't cause the same discomfort. "In the morning" just isn't a satisfactory phrase to go with "most". Is that just me, and what's the cause? 76.97.245.5 (talk) 04:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's perfectly satisfactory if you infer "Of all news channels, CNN has..." They leave that part unsaid, because if they didn't, it would be a pretty lousy slogan. The meaning seems perfectly clear to me. LANTZY ^TALK 05:38, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I never normally pay any attention to CNN so I hadn't noticed this phrase, but I have to say my first thought on reading the slogan was exactly the same as the OP - my brain parsed it as a sentence with a missing word; and while on a second reading it does make perfect sense, for some reason it does sound wrong to me too. It may just be because I think the slogan's a fairly vacuous one, so my brain went looking for a less-stupid meaning. ~ mazca ^t|c 11:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think it could equally be taken to mean that the majority of news on CNN is in the morning, as opposed to the afternoon, evening or night. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which in many cases may be true, because news stories from overseas would generally break in the US in the morning, and later bulletins would be "updates" of the same story (which often means no additional information whatsoever). -- JackofOz (talk) 17:08, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not looking for an interpretation, I'd like to know why it feels as though it's wrong grammar. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 17:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's simply because 'the most x' as a superlative is far more common - particularly in advertising - than 'the most' as a quantity. It's almost a garden path sentence. --ColinFine (talk) 17:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Colin! I can almost smell the fish pond. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 22:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And I've just realized a further point: people who are discriminating about their news sources are likely to care more about quality than quantity. So if that's how you feel, you don't expect them to want to advertise that they have "the most news"; you expect them to want to advertise that they have "the most accurate news" or "the most up-to-the-minute news". When they talk about quantity, it seems wrong to you because that isn't much of a virtue, so it wasn't what you expected. But, of course, if that is the way you feel, then you're not the sort of person they're advertising to. --Anonymous, 02:53 UTC, March 7, 2009.

In many cases I'd settle for quantity. Take CNN Headline News, which (at one time) was on 24 hours a day. That meant 24 hours of news, right ? No, because they repeat it every half hour. Then 10 minutes is ads, 5 minutes is weather, 5 minutes is sports, and 5 minutes is fluff. So, you're lucky to get 5 minutes worth of hard news out of it each day. StuRat (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To me the problem is that they used a comparison term, "most", without listing what they're comparing. Are they including newspapers, radio, or the Internet ? StuRat (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Latin>English translation to verify, please

This Latin epigram, from a Crusader-era text, discusses the identity of Acre in relation to another Eastern Mediterranean city:

Non est urbs Accaron

quam quilibet estimat

Accon illa Philistea

Ptolemaida dicitur ista.

If the following English translation is inaccurate (particularly estimat in this context), I'd appreciate corrections:

It is not the city of Accaron

that is recognized [?or valued]

It is Accon of Philistea

That is called Ptolemaida.

Thanks, Deborahjay (talk) 21:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty much; I might say "It is not the city of Accaron that anyone thinks is Palestinian Accon; that city is called the Ptolemaidan city." (i.e. Ptolemais) Where is this from, by the way? Adam Bishop (talk) 04:09, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The author of the translated text I'm editing gave no more detailed citation than what I provided above. "Accaron" is a putative reference to Ekron, if that's relevant. As for your wording (which makes better sense than what I started with, translated by a Franciscan monk (!): Now I'm confused again about the antecedents Accaron vs. Accon! If punctuated, would there be a semicolon at the end of the third line, and that city in the last line refers back to Accaron (and not Acco[n] in Philistea/Palestine) being the Ptolemaidan city? -- Deborahjay (talk) 08:34, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, it refers to Acco - Ptolemais was one of the crusader names for it (well, it's a Hellenistic name, really). I should have Googled, apparently the epigram comes from Thietmar of Merseburg and was quoted in some pilgrim texts. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:44, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Need quote attribution

Hi sir or ma'am, Do you know who said: Health is wealth. I found a reference to Virgil, but that seems unlikely since it rhymes in English. Perhaps he said something close to that. If you have an idea of the correct source, please let me know. Thank you for your time and attention to this. -Connee —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.175.110.44 (talk) 21:34, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'The first wealth is health,' if that helps. Here is the link.--KageTora (talk) 10:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Virgil guy might be the one who said "A healthy mind in a healthy body" (I don't dare trying my Greek on you) That has been translated, shortened, modified etc. but may still be credited to the original author. (Especially when the one saying the modified quote isn't well-known.)76.97.245.5 (talk) 11:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, "that Virgil guy" was Roman, not Greek. Secondly, mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) is a quote from Juvenal. Malcolm XIV (talk) 11:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mens sana in corpore sano... AnonMoos (talk) 11:57, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish

I believe "dios" is spelled correctly and means like "I am" or something. Now "dios lepake", what does that mean? I'm using "romanji" for "lepake", in that this is the word it sounded like.96.53.149.117 (talk) 22:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dios means "God". I'm not sure what you're hearing, but my guess is Dios le pague, which means "May God pay you (for it)". It's another way of saying thank you. —An gr 22:43, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]