Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 February 20

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February 20

one more question about "lean"

I have one more question about "lean". Can I say "He leaned back and lay down on the ground."? I'm not sure if the sentence is wordy. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.221.151.107 (talk) 01:06, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

You can say he leaned back and lay on the ground. The word down is redundant and should be left out. μηδείς (talk) 02:26, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't think I agree. To me, to "lie on the ground" is static, but to "lie down on the ground" is a change of state. If you're currently lying on the ground, you can continue to lie on the ground, but if you're currently standing, that's when you'd lie down on the ground. (I'm not saying "lie on the ground" is an error as a change of state, but it doesn't seem as natural.) --Trovatore (talk) 02:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I think you are agreeing with me. The leaning back is the motion and the lying is the resultant state. Having the down in there is redundant, as it references the motion twice. μηδείς (talk) 17:10, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

No, the leaning back is the first part of the motion, and the lying down is the second part. By the time you start lying down, you've gone back further than can reasonably be described as leaning back. --Trovatore (talk) 10:17, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

The only remaining issue is the past tense of lean: leaned, or leant? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:09, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

The tree leant over the brook. Although my co-worker leant me $400 on payday, the bank had already leaned my house. David leaned into the camera shot, and said, "Cut!" I gave up tilting for leant. μηδείς (talk) 19:31, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

"My co-worker leant me"? Is that a joke? As far as I know, "leant" is not an alternative spelling of "lent" in any recognized English variety. --Trovatore (talk) 20:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

If that's the point at witch ewe stopped reading, eye am offend it. μηδείς (talk) 03:14, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Having to ask whether something was a joke is prima facie evidence that the interlocutors live on different planets. But which planets, that's the really interesting question. And is either of them necessarily Earth? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:18, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Then there was the health-conscious hunter who tilted the carcass against the wall in order to make the meat lean. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:12, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Deutsche Physik

I've often heard that the Nazis renamed the 'Hertz' unit of frequency because of the jewish ancestry of Heinrich Hertz. If so, what did they rename it? Are there other notable scientific terms that were renamed by the Nazis? A possible example I heard is 'Röntgen rays' ⇒ 'Lenard rays'. --151.41.241.93 (talk) 02:48, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

According to this article in 1939 some (German) physicists proposed to replace the Hertz with a unit called Helmholtz (after Hermann von Helmholtz), thus retaining the abbreviation Hz. The practical difference between the two is small, of course, because physical units are very rarely spelled out. According to this page the unit was probably not actually (or officially) renamed (though of course some individuals may have pronounced Hz 'Helmholtz'). It is however clear that streets named after Hertz were renamed by the Nazis, e.g. the "Hertzstraße" in Berlin became "Grammestraße". - Lindert (talk) 18:20, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

The pegion is back.

To me, the phase is simple like ' the answer is back'. During old time, people use pegions for communications, letters were carried by pegion from the sender to receiver. But some people refer that phase as bad-mouth, is it right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.245.48.2 (talk) 04:43, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Are you asking about references to the Carrier pigeon? I've never heard the phrase, so I can't help with it's connotations. Dbfirs 07:55, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I think that this is a question about whether " the answer is back" could be confused. "The answer is back" is totally acceptable and would not be confused with the phrase "to answer back", i.e. to reply rudely. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:47, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Not sure what that has to do with pigeons? The Rambling Man (talk) 12:48, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Nor am I. If someone said or wrote "the pigeon is back", I could probably guess by the context what they meant, but I would take it as an attempt at humour or sarcasm, based on the slowness of the reply or the difficulty in obtaining it. In a formal context, and to avoid misunderstanding, I would use "a reply has been received". Dbfirs 13:19, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

There's always IP over Avian Carriers... -- AnonMoos (talk) 13:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Google turns up a few references to "pegion" as being some kind of alternate spelling or perhaps transliteration of "pigeon". Given that, it could refer to homing pigeons. I've never heard that expression, though. The closest I can think of is "The chickens have come home to roost", but that's not really the same idea. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:09, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

That's only in pedgin language. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:22, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Inconsistencies in Sochi Cyrillizations

In the half-pipe events at the winter Olympics, when athletes are poised to start their run, their names can be seen on the video wall behind them, alternating between Latin and Cyrillic. I've noticed that some of the Cyrillizations of originally Latin-alphabetic names seem to be based on pronunciation in the original source language, while others seem to be based on superficial Latin-Cyrillic letter equivalences regardless of pronunciation. I can understand why they might not want to transcribe some first names fully phonetically, to avoid presenting a strange appearance in Russian (i.e. Давид instead of Девид for English "David" etc.), but this doesn't come close to explaining all the inconsistencies. For example, the surname of Torin Yater-Wallace [yeɪtər wɒlɪs] was transcribed Ятер-Воллес, where the second half of the name appears phonetically (except for the ornamental double Л), while the first half of the name is based on superficial letter equivalences. Does anyone have an idea on these inconsistencies? AnonMoos (talk) 13:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I have no expertise on things Russian. (I can read Cyrillic, and based on a limited knowledge of Czech, can sometimes piece together meaning based on cognates.) However, according to our article Cyrillization, principles for Cyrillization vary by source language. Languages with phonetically consistent scripts, such as Finnish or Spanish, are Cyrillized mainly using character-to-character correspondences. Languages with phonetically inconsistent scripts, such as English, are supposed to be Cyrillized phonetically or phonemically. The Russian Wikipedia article on the Cyrillization of English confirms this. So in your example, the Cyrillization of "Wallace" was closer to the standard than the Cyrillization of "Yater". This suggests that Russian Olympic transcribers are unfamiliar with the rules for Cyrillization. Perhaps they lack the appropriate training, as they are sports journalists used to covering domestic sports, or perhaps the person doing the transcribing is the daughter, mistress, or son-in-law of somebody important. Marco polo (talk) 16:27, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I doubt that the U.S. delegation was asked to indicate the pronunciation of each athlete's name. "Ятер" was probably the transcriber's best guess at spelling the name phonemically. In any case, I suspect that just as English-speakers outside libraries and academia rarely consult one standard consistent set of rules for transliterating Russian, most Russians do not strictly follow one consistent set of rules when transliterating English. --Cam (talk) 17:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

• Mike Wallace's name in Russian is Майк Уоллес; i.e., Majk Uolles, which is based on pronunciation, not arbitrary letter equivalence, since Mike Vallase couldhave been used, although it wouldn't sound at all like the English, while the first spelling does. It seems these names are being transliterated ad hoc. The first name name of the American coach the Russians were protesting, Brad Meier, was spelt with an e: Bred. This indicates knowledge of the pronunciation. The situation is really not surprising given the horrible irregularity of English spelling. μηδείς (talk) 17:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
• Воллес and Уоллес are both acceptable cyrillizations of Wallace. (I personally prefer Уоллес, but I guess they have some guideline - he must have obtained Russian visa, and what is written in his visa in Cyrillic is decided by the Foreign Ministry policies).--Ymblanter (talk) 17:44, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

• There are lots of compromises that have to be made with this stuff. Eg, there is no true Latin equivalent for the Russian rolled р, and no true Cyrillic equivalent for the English unrolled r. But they're made with sort of the same parts of the mouth (although р puts the tongue to a lot more work than r does), so we pretend they're equivalent. They're certainly closer than r is to щ. Then there's rhoticism. If cyrillising phonetically, an American Yater might be Ейтер, while a British Yater might be Ейта. If cyrillising on letter "equivalents", it becomes Ятер, which when sounded out (yah-teh-rrr) is the least true of all to what we started off with. I have a Russian-origin 1st generation Australian friend whose maiden name was Leymanshteyn. That was originally the German name Lehmanstein, then it became cyrillised as Лейманштейн, which was re-romanized based on English letter equivalents rather than the original German. If there were a German person named Tschaikowsky (the German way of romanizing what we prefer as "Tchaikovsky" but should really be "Chaykovsky"), that might be cyrillised as Тсчаикоускй or Тщаикоускй unless someone twigged it was originally Чайковский. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:04, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Agreed with Jack. I just want to point out that /r/ is etymologically related (in most cases) between English and Russian (and most PIE languages), so the connection is not arbitrary. The words brat "brother" and smert' "death" in the Slavic language Russian are cognate with and show an arr in the same places as the Germanic English broth(er) and murd(er) and the Romance French frere and mort. Historically, the trilled arr is original in English as well, and is retained in Scottish dialects. μηδείς (talk) 19:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Also, the English and Russian rhotics still differ mainly in manner (approximant vs. trill), but not so much in place of articulation. In German dialects where a trill is used, such as Eastern Franconian, it can take an approximant-like realisation, showing how easy the phonetic transition is. Basically, it's simply omitting the trilling. There is no Russian phoneme or even phone that's closer to the English rhotic than /r/, anyway, and if one were to conceive a Cyrillic-based orthography for English (as has been done for a fictional Russian-controlled Northwest Pacific in Ill Bethisad), this one would be a no-brainer. One wouldn't use a diacritic to show that the rhotic is untrilled, one would simply use р and leave it at that, especially considering that the trill is still an acceptable alternative (or even locally dominant) realisation of the rhotic in several English dialects. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:54, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• The problem exists not only in Russia but in every country not using a Latin-based orthography, and is enhanced by the general lack of knowledge of rarer languages providing names to be transcribed. Sometimes multiple variants of a foreign name exist. Sometimes a foreign name that has been mistranscribed in the first place has become so popular that it is hard to suddenly introduce a new, albeit correct, transcription. --Theurgist (talk) 19:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

As exemplified in Note 2 @ Muammar Gaddafi: Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various different ways. A 1986 column by The Straight Dope lists 32 spellings known from the U.S. Library of Congress,[7] while ABC and MSNBC identified 112 possible spellings. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:14, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Theurgist -- speaking of Cyrillization problems, the one of the main catalysts of the Old Believer split was introducing a new Greek-to-Cyrillic transliteration of the name of Jesus (though of course the dispute was more about who had the authority to order such changes than the technical linguistic matters involved)... AnonMoos (talk) 04:18, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

How old is the Arabic language?

Just how old is the Arabic language? Venustar84 (talk) 18:49, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Did you read the article? μηδείς (talk) 18:57, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Classical Arabic (or actually Pre-Classical or Old Arabic at the time) is attested as early as 328 AD (there's an even older inscription from the 1st century BC, and in the 5th century BC, Herodotus mentions Ἀλιλάτ, which is clearly Arabic, not North Arabian or South Arabian, judging by the definite article al-), but certainly Allah didn't conjure it out of thin air. It must have diverged from other Semitic languages, such as Ancient North Arabian, sometime in the Bronze Age. 4000 years ago there was probably no Arabic language in the same sense as 2000 years ago there was no English or French language (in any meaning I can think of).

Are you aware that questions like "how old is language X" are notoriously hard to answer because there is more than a single possible interpretation of the question? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:52, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Questions of the form "how old is X language" hardly ever have a clear-cut answer. How old is English? If you go back a thousand years, you'll find a language which scholars call "Old English", but you'll hardly understand a word of it. It's called "Old English" (sometimes, "Anglo-Saxon") because it demonstrably developed into modern English, and into nothing else (in contrast to, say, Vulgar Latin of 1500 years ago, which developed into French, Spanish, Italian etc); and also because we know that at the time it was referred to as "Ænglisc". So is English older or younger than a thousand years? It depends on which starting point you want to focus on. --ColinFine (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

English is a bad example for your point. It's rather clear that it began when the Anglo-Saxons landed in Britain and severed the direct continental influence, while acquiring a Brithonic and Latin sub/adstrate. The earliest attestation of Chester will be diagnosticof the birth of English, separate from Continental West Germanic. μηδείς (talk) 20:05, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

While English isn't the best example, there is also the issue of Scots. Many consider it a separate language from English, if closely related. If so, then Old English is not only the parent of modern English but also of Scots. In which case, English with its modern identity is only as old as the split with Scots. It probably wasn't until the Great Vowel Shift that mutual intelligibility was seriously compromised.

A better example of the difficulty of answering the question "How old is X language?" might be German. There is no obvious point when German became distinct from the western Germanic dialects that gave birth to it, nor did those western Germanic dialects ever have a real identity distinct from other Germanic dialects. One might say that German is as old as Proto-Germanic. Alternatively, one is forced to use political developments to mark the beginning of German as a distinct language, such as the founding of the Kingdom of Germany at the Treaty of Verdun. But such developments did not mark any change in the language. 67.132.19.18 (talk) 21:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

True, but (unless you count Low German and perhaps Dutch as fully part of German) one would find it difficult to identify any Germanic dialect as "German" prior to the High German sound shift. I doubt most people would consider unshifted inscriptions like the one on the Pforzen buckle as being written in a form of German. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:10, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

"knight-rider"?

Is there an expression or word knight-rider or knight rider in actual use in English? de:Knight Rider literally translates the name of the show as "knight-errant". On Talk:Knight Rider (1982 TV series)/Archive 1#Name, I've found the claim that the allusion is rather to Night Rider, which rings more plausible, although which character or term exactly is referred to mystifies me – perhaps the chess term or the Mad Max character? Or is there a more general meaning to nightrider (somebody who drives a car or other vehicle in the dark? Or is it related to fly by night or free rider? Or is there a sexual connotation?) or riding the night? It seems there is some cultural importance behind it that completely eludes me.

This is a very common occurrence for me with titles of songs and albums (and song lyrics in general), band names, book/film/etc. titles, names of characters, slang terms and the like: you suspect there is a cultural meme alluded to (often in the form of a pun), but you have no idea what, even though at the time of publication it was presumably obvious to a large segment of the domestic population, or the target group (oblique references to drugs or sex, but sometimes also religion, politics, race and the like being particularly notorious, these often being insider gags opaque even to many adults). Usually I'm completely oblivious to such references, and I don't like the feeling I'm being excluded from a joke or withheld from getting a reference. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:30, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Please don't disembiggen your script when unnecessary, it becomes difficult to read. I suggest you consider the serious of purpose of someone who is willing to risk riding a horse at night. He must be on some serious mission. μηδείς (talk) 19:34, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

OK, I've dedisembiggened it. So the original expression is literally about riding a horse? Any idea what I might translate the intended metaphor as? It seems the term is also used in the sense of "sleepwalker". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:05, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the undisembiggening.  :) My comments are speculation, but consider the serious yet sinister connotation of Strider as the name for Aragorn, and his reputation for travelling in dark, dangerous places. Or the name The Dark Knight for Batman. Even the description of a stranger as tall, dark, and handsome. There's a bad boy image of someone dangerous, yet attractive and, perhaps, heroic. μηδείς (talk) 20:12, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

That makes sense, thank you. :) So, a night-rider would be (roughly) an archetypical "bad boy", a harter Junge or harter Kerl in German? (Who may also be a seducer/playboy and generally a hedonist who cares little about conservative morals.) Can you imagine the expression night-rider being used with this meaning or connotation in conversation? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:36, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Not unless it was an allusion to something, like "That curly-haired guy with the Corvette who stopped to help us with our flat tire was a real night rider." It wouldn't be used in normal speech without some odd context. It is too poetic for that. μηδείς (talk) 20:51, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Hmm, if it has a poetic sound, it should be fairly old. Time to check the OED, perhaps? From searching the web, there does seem to be a sexual connotation, but it appears to be a stock character of Westerns, too, a kind of outlaw (who may use the veil of night more as protection and for mystique), so perhaps it is a distinctly American concept. By the way, your description also made me think of Johnny Cash. :) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:12, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Cash at 40 would have been perfectly cast as Strider. I wonder if you have seen Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings? μηδείς (talk) 22:49, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Speaking of the Man in Black, in country music the term "night rider" or "midnight rider" almost always connotes an outlaw (sometimes a bootlegger). 24.5.122.13 (talk) 07:27, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Ah, yes! Valuable information! But wait ... Michael Knight is not an outlaw, he's a law enforcer! Or perhaps the allusion is ironic? Or playing on the fact that Knight is a crime-fighter outside government-sanctioned law enforcement?

Medeis: Actually no, I haven't. I should do that sometime. :)

OK, but back to my original question: Is knight-rider or knight rider an actual term, meaning "knight-errant", or is it not? Could anybody check a larger dictionary? I can't find any indication in the English-language web that such an expression exists, and if it is really a misinformation, I don't want to see it perpetuated. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:37, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Michael Knight is a vigilante. That is an outlaw. Outlaw doesn't mean criminal per se or de facto, but oustide the law de jure. μηδείς (talk) 22:48, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Good point. Thank you. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:16, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

It does appear that this is a real thing, with a cromulent etymology: [1]. AlexTiefling (talk) 00:43, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

For "night rider", the OED says "A person who rides by night, esp. on horseback; (U.S.) spec. a member of a mounted gang committing acts of violence, esp. as a means of intimidation. Also (occas.) Brit.: a kind of fairy that is said to ride at night." with cites from 1856 onwards, but it has no mention of "knight rider". I like Alex's find of the London street along which knights rode. Dbfirs 12:53, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both very much (and of course Medeis and the IP too)! So the claim found at German Wikipedia is most likely wrong; there appears to be no word knight rider in the sense of "knight-errant", and the real origin appears to be a pun on night rider in the sense of "a kind of outlaw", alluding to the fact that Michael Knight is a vigilante operating outside established government structures (in fact, for the government he doesn't even exist, so he is an outlaw in the classic sense); in a way he's a good, chivalric (knight-like) variant of a night rider. Moreover (as pointed out at German Wikipedia) he rides a sentient car (which is black as night), thus a modern, updated version of a horse, making him a futuristic or sci-fi version of a medieval-fantasy or Western-story archetype (a typical trope of 1980s pop-culture), the lone rider who is "dark" (outside regular civil society, and acting in secret, according to his own rules) but heroic (and might ride a black horse) – not unlike Batman, who is also a vigilante with a futuristic black car, and called the "Dark Knight" (compare the ambiguous stock character black knight as opposed to the clearly evil robber knight). Excellent!

Erm, is there a way to tell the archive bot that this section can be archived now? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:16, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

--Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:32, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Your analysis of the name is spot on. It's also fairly certain the show was called Knight Rider (with the clear aural association to night rider) to make the name more distinctive for marketing and merchandise trademark purposes. As for archiving, threads stay up until their date is archived, someone can always chime in with something unexpected. You can express your satisfaction by adding {{resolved}} after you last post, which generates a green check icon and the word "resolved". μηδείς (talk) 18:00, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

If it's resolved, then should I guess I should not mention the Kolkata Knight Riders? Pete aka --Shirt58 (talk) 06:07, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

What is the origin of the surname Soulodre and Lecuc?

Venustar84 (talk) 21:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Origins of the surnames "Houdek" and "Vostrejs" and "Roshak" and "Gallenstein" and "Bethel"

I have a list of surnames - Houdek, Vostrejs, Roshak, Gallenstein, and Bethel - of which I wish to find the meanings and origins. Roshak seems to be an Eastern European/Polish type of name. Gallenstein looks German. Bethel looks English? What about Houdek and Vostrejs? Is Vostrejs a made-up name, because I discovered that from The Magic Coin, written by Jessica Houdek. 140.254.227.23 (talk) 21:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

User:AndyTheGrump has already shut you down today, Venustar84. Please don't spam the desk with multiple questions under different user names. μηδείς (talk) 21:57, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Per the talk page, I've reverted the closure as it's entirely unclear this is Venustar84. Nil Einne (talk) 14:25, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Bethel was a place mentioned in the Bible, whose name meant "House of God". A number of places around the world have been named after it (see Bethel (disambiguation)). Three of these are in Britain, where many surnames come ultimately from placenames from which an individual came when surnames were being adopted – the same is probably true in other cultures. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 16:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Place-Names in Wales says that Bethel, Anglesey is "called after a Nonconformist chapel in the village" as these are "generally denominated after Scriptural place-names". I couldn't find references for the other two, but Biblical place names in Wales (and I suspect, Cornwall) are generally of recent origin, Bethesda, Gwynedd springs to mind, which the same source says was "the name of a Congregational chapel built in the place in 1819".[2] As most indigenous English and Welsh surnames were fixed by law in the 16th century, it seems this is an unlikely route. Our Surname article says "When Jewish families in Central Europe were forced to adopt surnames in the 18th and 19th centuries, those who failed to choose a surname were often given pejorative or even cruel nicknames", so if this is indeed a Jewish surname, it's possible that the family selected a place from the Bible. Alansplodge (talk) 20:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but Jewish families in Central Europe almost never adopted Hebrew surnames in the 18th and 19th centuries. They usually adopted names in one of the local languages, usually German. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 01:44, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Have you tried the search page at ancestry.com? It searches the Dictionary of American Family Names and has entries for Bethel, Hudec -> Houdek, Roshak and Gallenstein. - Lindert (talk) 18:40, 21 February 2014 (UTC)