Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 July 24

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July 24

Rio Grande de la Costa

Please review the article "Rio Grande de la Costa" and my revision of it at 00:00, 24 July 2013. This is best done by someone fluent in both English and Spanish, and knowledgeable about Venezuela. In some places, I could not be certain about whether a caption was a generic expression or a specific proper name. I have not (yet) added an acute accent to the "i" in "Rio".
—Wavelength (talk) 00:09, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't suggest anything beyond nitpicking that would be unnecessary in the naming of files. μηδείς (talk) 00:46, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation of Ali Al-Naimi

What is the correct pronunciation of the name of Saudi Arabian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi in Modern Standard Arabic? The German page de:Ali Al-Naimi gives his full name in Arabic as Arabic: علي بن إبراهيم النعيمي and the Romanized transcription as ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm an-Naʿīmi. However, searching for Arabic: النعيمي in Wikipedia turns up several individuals from the U.A.E. whose Romanized names are Al Nuaimi or Al Noaimi. The name seems to come from the Al Nuaim tribe, and the list of the members of the tribe given on that page includes an Al Nuaimi, an al-Nuaimi, an Al Noaimi, and two Al Naimis. The spelling Al Nuaimi or Al Noaimi would seem to suggest the pronunciation is Nuʿaymi instead of Naʿīmi, but the spelling Al Naimi seems closer to the latter. Are both pronunciations used and are equally valid, just depending on personal preference? Or is the pronunciation Nuʿaymi correct even in the cases where the name is written as Al Naimi? Iceager (talk) 15:34, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Both pronunciations are acceptable and both are widely used. In fact, such variations are very minor to an Arabic ear. The difference is not as noticeable as it might appear in English. _{Hia10 (talk) 15:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC)}

Thanks. Does that mean Nuʿaymi and Naʿīmi are in free variation with one another, or could someone with the name still prefer just one of those forms to be correct for himself? If the person spells the name Naimi in English, would it then be safer to use the pronunciation Naʿīmi or would it make no difference even then? Iceager (talk) 20:59, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Arabic names won't go into English, exactly, for their consonants are not the same as ours, and their vowels, like ours, vary from district to district. There are some "scientific systems" of transliteration, helpful to people who know enough Arabic not to need helping, but a washout for the world. I spell my names anyhow, to show what rot the systems are. -- Lawrence of Arabia

It's not entirely true, but when dealing with both standard/Classical Arabic and diverse dialects, it's sometimes a little too close for comfort... AnonMoos (talk) 16:28, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

How to say this in Japanese?

How do I say "the official address is 15 The Ridgeway but actual address is 270 Lake Avenue" in Japanese? - It's so I can add instructions to a photo request for the New York Japanese School (ja:ニューヨーク日本人学校) Thank you WhisperToMe (talk) 19:01, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

According to this page, they say their address is Lake Avenue and The Ridgeway was the old/former address. Oda Mari (talk) 19:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

That person is such a *pill*

The wiktionary entry for "pill" [1] says it can mean A) a comical, entertaining person or B) an contemptible, annoying person. What's the etiology of what seems like opposite meanings for the same word? --157.254.210.11 (talk) 19:03, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

My first thought was that sense B might be a contraction of pillock, but the history of usage doesn't support this. The OED has a figurative sense "A remedy or solution, esp. one which is unpleasant but necessary; (more generally) something unpleasant which has to be accepted or endured." for one of the meanings derived from classical Latin "pilula", and the US slang seems to have come from this older sense. I've never heard of sense A. Is there evidence for it? I suppose it might derive from the same root via a pleasant remedy? Dbfirs 20:08, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, according to one dictionary at least, it is a contraction of "pillock"

An offensive term for a person who is regarded as behaving in a thoughtless or unintelligent way (slang insult) [Mid-16C. Contraction of earlier "pillicock" 'penis' + cock]. Bloomsbury Concise English Dictionary 2nd edn. A. & C. Black. London. 2005.

Never heard it used in this sense, though. Only in the "funny guy, you crack me up" sense.

They probably belong to two non-overlapping subsets of slang, distinguished by time, location and probably social background.

Btw, I'm a 53 year old American from northeastern Pennsylvania. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:18, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, a decade younger Delaware Valley native. A thing and sometimes a person may be called a bitter pill, but otherwise about a person it means amusing. μηδείς (talk) 01:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, the OED doesn't derive sense B from there, but it's not particularly good at American slang. I thought that pillock wasn't used in the US. I suppose it's possible that both derivations are valid. I couldn't find usages of sense A. Is it more common than B in the US? Dbfirs 01:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Dominus and Medeis: actually I'm in the opposite camp, I've never before heard it use in a positive way, and only in the negative sense (e.g., when my friend's cat was refusing to take his medication all weekend, she said "He's being such a pill."--so I guess basically the same meaning as "pain"). I'm also from Pennsylvania, and another decade younger than Medeis. Although now that I think about it, the one or two people I remember using the term in this sense were New Englanders. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

The first person I heard use the term was a waitress from Georgia 20 years my senior. The rest since then have been Northerners with the same sense of amusing, not necessarily on purpose, though. Perhaps the bridge is "amusing despite oneself". Etymology on line gives only the negative sense. The positive usage may have ben sarcasm misinterpreted as praise. See the development of nice from "ignorant" to "silly" to "pleasant". μηδείς (talk) 01:29, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't find any good references past what has been cited above. A native New Englander here, and I can only recall ever hearing it in the (more or less) negative sense, but generally there is a slightly bemused quality: a friend would be "being a real pill" if she insisted on making blonde brownies for the church bake sale instead of apple crumb cake like the committee asked her, or a neighbor might be "such a pill" if every autumn he griped and moaned a little bit about the leaves from your Japanese Maple falling in his yard, but never got truly hostile or took any real action. I'd say that whenever I've heard the term used, it suggested that an otherwise decent and likeable person was being mildly irritating in an easily dismissible way that was easier to laugh off than to get upset over. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 13:27, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if the Bloomsbury dictionary has any evidence for their claimed derivation. The history of the word (that I've found) just doesn't match this development, but I might have missed something. They are correct about the usage of "pillock", of course, but I haven't found the contraction to "pill". I'm not able to see enough of the 1882 British usage in "The Engineer" (Volumes 3-4 - Page 104) to determine whether this is an example. Dbfirs 12:56, 26 July 2013 (UTC)