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There appear to be a small number of names in English which begin with "Ff" or "ff". (For example, novelist Jasper Fforde). What is the origin of this? My only guess would be that it's from Welsh, but that's hardly an educated guess. (And regardless of origin, why is the first F sometimes not capitalised? Something to do with the ff ligature not having an appropriate version?) -- 203.97.105.173 (talk) 06:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) The first one does indeed sound better, being easier to enunciate. But as for correctness, only the second one ticks the boxes. If it were "There ... two boys in the garden", there'd be no doubt as to what word would fit - "are", because it's a plural subject. Same for the plural subject "a boy and a girl".
But both of these alternatives could and almost certainly would be replaced by "There's a boy and a girl in the garden" in colloquial speech. There's has virtually become the default norm, regardless of the number of the subject.
It's almost the same reason you say "it is raining cats and dogs". Cats and dogs are actually the object in that sentence so it's not exactly the same, but in "there is a boy and a girl", the boy and the girl are appositive to the impersonal construction "there is". The main subject is "there". As you said, the only time this doesn't work is if the following word is a number. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@ Baseball Bugs: That seems rather ... synthetic to me.
"A boy and a girl ... in the garden" - is it 'is' or 'are? Only 'are', obviously. Turn it around to the "There is/are" form, and nothing changes, syntactically speaking.
@ Adam Bishop: It's one thing to say "It's raining cats and dogs" (although I disagree that "cats and dogs" is the subject: that is the object, the subject being "it"), but would you ever say "Look, there is cats and dogs running all over the garden"? I hope not. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 08:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@Adam Bishop: "There" is almost certainly not the subject here. In generative syntax (at least the versions that I'm aware of), boy and girl are considered to be the subjects and "there" is an expletive. And even in high school style prescriptive grammar, they teach that boy and girl are the subjects (although I believe they call it "empty subject" or something). rʨanaɢtalk/contribs08:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My construct assumes the first sentence is correct, which I'm not so sure of. If you change it to "there is 2 children", it doesn't sound right at all. If you switch it around and say "in the garden there is a boy and girl", that doesn't sound right either. So maybe "there are" is correct. I wonder if there is an actual English major and/or someone with an English grammar textbook reading this page? ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 08:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This doesn't exactly answer the question, but it might provide some insight on pinning it down. My old Webster's doesn't have a grammar section as such, but under "there" it has some usage notes which includes this: "There is sometimes used with some intransitive verbs, frequently to be, as an anticipatory subject, as in once upon a time there lived a king who had three sons." ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 08:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One style book on my desk says, "After introductory here and there a singular verb is usually preferred when the logical subject consists of substantives joined by and, with the first one singular in number" (Words into Type, p. 355). Deor (talk) 11:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How about "the king and the queen"? I think that "Here are the king and the queen" - is grammatically correct, and this is also the case when "here" is replaced by "there", right? However, "there are a king and a queen" - doesn't sound correct, probably becuase of the "a" following the "are". HOOTmag (talk) 17:14, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is a different sentence structure, and a different "there". It's not existential, it's "pointy" (i.e., you say it as if you're pointing to them). There's the king and queen! doesn't mean "the king and queen exist", it means "hey, i see the king and queen right there!" (If you don't believe me, many other languages express these two concepts in entirely different ways. For example, French has il y avait un roi et une reine for the existential, and Voilà le roi et le reine! for the pointy.) Incidentally, the other thing that makes this sentence different is definiteness: sentences with "the" are more likely to have the pointy reading, sentences with "a" more likely to have the existential. rʨanaɢtalk/contribs20:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That said, for me, There is has become almost like Spanish hay as an indeclinable form for number in colloquial speech. I still use it correctly in writing. Steewi (talk) 01:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I notice that different people have different absolute ideas of what is appropriate. There is no central regulating authority in the English language, so is it possible that there is no single standard for this case? Also, perhaps it could be different in US English, UK English, Australia English, etc? Just a thought... Falconusptc22:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In what context? A base hit that goes over second base is "up the middle", past the middle infielders. The "middle of the road" politically is "moderate", metaphorically, as opposed to stripe that runs down the middle of a road. We refer to our stomach as our "middle". It's a rather diverse word. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 09:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The most obvious synonym for "middle" is "center". In fact, I often use "middle" rather than "center" in contexts where I don't want to commit myself to British or American spelling. +Angr15:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The word "enough" is often used with mass nouns, as in "enough water", "enough money", or "enough participation". This sounds fine to my ear. However, I am now trying to write a sentence in which "enough" is used with a count noun: "If the paper is folded enough times to make 63 creases, the 41st crease will be an 'in' crease." This sounds awkward and clumsy to me. Is my unease justifiable here? I could say "sufficiently many times", but I am wondering if that sounds too mathematically formal for a casual audience. Suggestions? —Bkell (talk) 11:14, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's good. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm still curious whether there is something wrong with "enough times" or if I'm just hypercorrecting based on the distinction between "less" and "fewer". —Bkell (talk) 11:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, "inward" is better than "in", but the book I am referencing contrasts "in" and "out" creases, so I am using those terms. The connection between 63 and 41 is that folding a strip of paper in half repeatedly always results in a number of creases that is one less than a power of 2, and 63 is the least power-of-2-minus-1 that is at least 41. In fact the number of folds is irrelevant, as long as there are enough of them so that it makes sense to speak of the 41st one. It turns out that the idea I was trying to explain was wrong, so I ended up removing this sentence anyway. Oh well. —Bkell (talk) 21:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When all else fails, try it. :) I assume what they mean by a "crease" is each portion of a fold that helps delineate a smaller square or rectangle. Fold a paper once, you get one crease, which is inward. Fold it again, the opposite direction, and you get 2 "long" creases, except the "long" creases forms the edges of 4 squares, hence 4 "short" creases (3 of them inward, 1 outward). Fold it crosswise a third time and you have 8 squares bordered by 10 short creases. Fold it crosswise a fourth time and you have 16 squares bordered by 24 short creases, of which 10 are outward and 14 are inward, if I counted correctly and if I'm understanding the concept correctly. And so on. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 22:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
41 is just a number I picked out of the air to use as an example. In my sentence I am saying that we can determine whether the 41st crease (or any other particular crease) is "in" or "out" without needing to know how many folds were used to produce the creases, except for the silly requirement that we have to have at least 41 creases so that we can talk about the 41st one. The folding process is done on a long strip of paper, and consists of repeatedly bringing the right-hand side of the strip to lay on top of the left-hand side and pressing it flat. The folds go the same way each time, so the creases do not cross each other. Folding a strip of paper in half five times will produce 31 creases—not enough to have a 41st crease to speak about. But fold it in half a sixth time and you'll get 63 creases, and the 41st crease from the left will be an "in" crease. This remains true if you fold it seven times to get 127 creases, or eight times to get 255 creases, or whatever—the 41st crease will always be an "in" crease. Anyway, this has become quite a tangential discussion from my original question. —Bkell (talk) 08:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm very curious to learn what the lyrics to Pata Pata, by Miriam Makeba, mean. The song is easily found on YouTube, Google, what have you, and so are the lyrics, but I can't find a translation anywhere. (Well, there's one for a cover of the song by someone called El General, but these seem unlikely to be the original ones.) --Trovatore (talk) 11:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the first five or so, every one of them looked fine to me. I have nothing further to say on this conversation, as your lack of gratitude for a volunteer's attempting at assisting you is telling. Woogee (talk) 22:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, just so anyone observing can judge for him/herself, this is the first hit for the exact string "pata pata" lyrics english, with the double-quotes as marked: http://www.lyricsdownload.com/miriam-makeba-pata-pata-lyrics.html. It has no English translation at all. There are a few English words; they are present in the easiest-to-find performance by Makeba herself, and are not a translation. --Trovatore (talk) 23:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can't find a translation into English, but this purports to be the lyrics in Spanish. It doesn't quite map to the Xhosa version, so it might be in error, but I suspect it is probably a Spanish version sung by Makeba. Warofdreamstalk23:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I appreciate the effort (and even Woogee's effort, as far as that goes; I just didn't appreciate the implication that I was incompetent to do a simple search). But I don't think this is a translation of the original. You see that it mentions Thalia, who like El General appears to be someone who covered the song with a Latin reinterpretation.
There are no "translations" in the first two links. Maybe that's what threw Woogie off. Those are English words spoken to the audience in the middle of the song. --Trovatore (talk) 05:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I am teaching myself Italian but am slightly worried that, while I know how to pronounce words, I may not be stressing the correct syllable and wondered if anyone had any advice on where I might find a program that pronounces words for me somewhere on the web that I could download or, indeed, any other suggestions anyone might have. Thanks 131.111.247.136 (talk) 15:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(Interesting site, that Forvo, but it looks like the phrases are chosen kind of at random; I didn't get the sense that you were likely to find the pronunciation of the specific word you wanted).
A few general remarks that you may already know:
The map from Italian spelling to pronunciation is mostly deterministic; stress is one of the few things that isn't always clear.
In almost all cases, if stress is not explicitly marked by an accented vowel, it will be on either the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable (second or third to last).
Oh wait, I thought of another exception here — a word that ends in a compound vowel is stressed on the final syllable: andAI, potEI. I can't think of an exception to the exception; if anyone thinks of one please let me know. --Trovatore (talk) 02:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is a number of adjectives indicating material which terminate with -eo/ei: acqueo argenteo aureo bronzeo...plumbeo sulfureo vitreo, and few substantives like cuneo gluteo. I can't find a counterexample to the rule you said with -ai (just Sinai), while counterexamples with -io seem more common than examples (actually I don't know if you referred to diphthongs or not). Here Latin helps, in any case. --pma20:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, these are good points, but in those cases I hear the last two vowel letters as separate syllables. I meant when they're a single syllable. I'm not sure how Italians consider syllabicity in these cases — I have heard a native speaker say come stai with stai pronounced (as I hear it, anyway) as two syllables. --Trovatore (talk) 01:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Unlike English, there is no notion of "secondary stress" — one stressed syllable to a word. Not sure if this applies to ripidevolissimevolmente, but for normal words anyway.
One common systematic one to remember is the third-person-plural imperfect, like anDAvano. This is always third-to-last.
And third-person-plural past subjuctive: FOSsero, andASsero.
However second-person-plural of all of these is second-to-last: andaVAte, poTESte.
But of course that still leaves some cases where it isn't clear. Sometimes these can even affect meaning: ANcora "anchor" versus anCOra "still, again". (Sometimes the first is spelled àncora to disambguate.)
Why is it widely published that J.K. Rowling in answer to the question 'how did she INVENT the word Muggle' says she toog the MUG a in 'a mug - foolish person?' and added GLE. She DID NOT INVENT the word, I and a multitude of boys used it to signify a 'Marble' the game being 'Mugles'; and was in use in my childhood in 1935. This word has been used in this context and is to be seen in print in quite a few books.
The entry should be corrected to USED the word; she may have thought she invented it BUT SHE DID NOT and to perpetuate the myth is wrong!
You want to update the page to say that you used the same word to mean something different in 1935? Even if you could prove it enough for Wikipedia's standards, that's not in the least relevant. If I remember correctly, the Oxford English Dictionary has listed the word "emailed" from its early days, but that doesn't mean people had invented email back then. (It's a heraldic term meaning "covered with (plate) mail".) Marnanel (talk) 17:06, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In addition to all the points other have made, W E Gibson (and please don't SHOUT at us!), even if the word had been in use in a similar sense, that doesn't mean that Rowling couldn't have invented it for herself: unless you can show that she was likely to have heard it, you have no grounds for saying she did not invent it. --ColinFine (talk) 20:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
SOED says muggle L20. [ORIGIN Invented by J. K. Rowling, the Brit. writer of the Harry Potter books, and used by her to mean ‘a person without magical powers’.] A person who is not conversant with a particular activity or skill. (It also list a separate word muggle meaning marijuana.) Mitch Ames (talk) 01:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My 1960 Webster's doesn't have any version of "muggle" or "mugle", but one of the several slang meanings for "mug" says "(British) a dupe." I wonder if that relates - someone who is basically a greenhorn or a rube. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 01:26, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Muggles, 1928Jazz lovers were familiar with the 1928 Louis ArmstrongMuggles (recording) long before Rowling first set pen to paper, with the meaning of a joint of marijuana. Armstrong is said to have been fond of muggles. Time magazine wrote about these muggles in 1931. It was a very common term. Edison (talk) 22:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a one-word name for coins and notes? "Cash" would not do as that includes cash in the bank, which is more likely to be electronic than tangible. "Money" is too general a word. Thanks 89.242.94.72 (talk) 23:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I"m not sure that anyone would confuse cash in the bank with physical cash if the context is clear, though I tend to think of "Cash" as bills only. If someone were to ask how much cash do you have, I wouldn't assume it to mean what's in my wallet plus what's in the bank. Aaronite (talk) 00:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Contrary to both OP and Flyguy649, I note that our Cash article says (with my bold for emphasis): "Cash refers to money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins", and our Currency article says "... currency can refer either to a particular currency, for example the US dollar, or to the coins and banknotes of a particular currency." The SOED says cash is "Ready money, actual coins, notes, etc ... coins, or coins and banknotes, as opp. to cheques and orders", but also "{colloquially) money, wealth", and currency is "The money or other commodity which is in circulation as a medium of exchange". Mitch Ames (talk) 01:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And yet, the meaning seems to be changing. I often see TV ads for one-day sales, where buyers are told "cash only". But often, these are furniture stores, where individual items can cost many hundreds of dollars, sometimes into the thousands, so they're surely not expecting customers to have that much ready cash on them. In that case, it means they can still access their bank accounts using plastic cards and do not have to carry any physical banknotes or coins. But payment arrangements such as "no deposit, no interest, no payments for 20 years" or whatever outlandish gimmicks they generally have these days, are not available. And payment by cheque is out of the question (for the vanishingly small number of outlets that still generally accept cheque payment these days). You have to pay in full, on the day of purchase, but contrary to the literal meaning of "cash only", you don't have to fork over actual physical banknotes to the value of, say, $1,500 for an item selling at $1,500. -- 202.142.129.66 (talk) 02:16, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's quite common to see lotteries or promotions advertising "cash" prizes, often for large amounts (eg tens of thousands of dollars) that are unlikely to be paid in actual notes - more likely as cheque or bank deposit. Here's an example, which includes the following text: You will win a cash prize ..., and further down: Winnings can only be paid by cheque: we cannot pay winnings using cash, .... Here's another one (PDF) that says Cash prizes will be paid by cheque. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, both "cash" and "currency" are correct answers for some people, but other people -- or maybe the same people at different times -- use the words with other meanings. It's English. You can't win. :-) --Anonymous, 04:55 UTC, January 24, 2010.
Perhaps "ready money" or "readies" (UK) is the term you're looking for? "Cash" in the UK certainly can mean cash at the bank as well as actual notes and coins. An estate agent welcomes what he calls a "cash buyer", particularly in these credit-poor times, but the purchase price is transferred by CHAPS from the buyer's bank account, not handed over in a briefcase. A car dealer is less keen on a "cash buyer", since this prevents him selling the customer a car loan and earning commission on it, but he will accept card or bank draft payment for the full amount, and will refuse to accept more than a certain amount in notes - most large dealers display signs to that effect. Part of the change in meaning may be to do with the international clampdown on money laundering, which has made it harder to use large sums of physical cash money for this kind of transaction, alongside the rise of the debit card as an effective replacement for ready money. Karenjc12:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A long time later but came across this while searching for something else. In NZ you will sometimes get a better deal at stores during negotiation if you are a 'cash' buyer which would normally include EFTPOS a debit card but one where the fees, if any, are incurred by the card holder, unlike credit cards where the store will incur a fee. Nil Einne (talk) 14:36, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
