Language desk
< September 20	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 22 >

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.

September 21

Name of class for: male, female, young, and group

What type of nouns are the names for male, female, young, and groups of animals? Like stallion, mare, foal, herd. Do these types of names all belong to a class? If so, what is the name of that class? The Transhumanist 14:01, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "type of nouns" and by "class". (All of them are concrete nouns, for instance, and the terms for groups are also collective nouns; but it's not clear whether that's the sort of thing you're looking for.) Could you clarify your question? Deor (talk) 14:51, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Herd" is an example of a collective noun. Some people think these are lots of fun: a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, etc. List of collective nouns. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:49, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More specifically, terms of venery. --Trovatore (talk) 20:07, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List_of_animal_names has tables with words for young, male, female, etc. I don't know of any word that is a common name for the idea "words that are names for young animals" or "words that are names for male animals". SemanticMantis (talk) 15:51, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. Why the heck does en.wikipedia has such an article? That kind of thing belongs to wikt:Appendix:Animals. I didn't know there was a duplicate. Does someone want to compare and merge them? – b_jonas 17:02, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

May I correct "it's" etc. in the Reference desk?

I don't normally hang out at this desk but this must be the place for me to ask this:

Is it acceptable to correct things like wrong use of "it's" in reference desk questions (and answers)? Perhaps I should leave everything as people wrote it, but sometimes they drive me a bit crazy.

I do it a lot in Wikipedia articles, where I am sure I'm making a real contribution. Hayttom (talk) 19:40, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, you should not edit others' comments to correct their use of language on talk pages. See WP:TALK (I haven't looked at it recently but I'm pretty sure it's covered there). The reference desk is different from article talk pages in some respects (for example, it allows comments not directed towards what should appear in an article), but for this purpose it's the same. --Trovatore (talk) 19:44, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

But you have our deepest sympathy, Hayttom. Many of us here have been driven certifiably insane by such things. And not just here; everywhere where English is written, orthographic offence is now our daily bread. From royal pronouncements to incoherent jottings by anonymous internet jerks, and everywhere in between. This is apparently something called "progress", and we are asked to believe that our modern education systems are the best money can buy. Hmmmmmmm. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:24, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't someone eventually banned for just this exact reason? It seemed to be a thing when I first started editing here, so I don't remember the details. μηδείς (talk) 21:28, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that was a user named "Cuddlyable" or something like that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:50, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, he wasn't banned for that. He was banned for doing it disruptively when asked to stop. Big difference. --Jayron 32 00:58, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes, and you were one of his frequent targets, as I recall. He insisted on treating everyone here like elementary school students, and that approach wore a little thin after a while. The right approach, as noted below, is for the editor to let the user know on his own talk page. An exception might be if someone gets some verbiage grossly wrong and it should be pointed out here. But no editor should mess with another editor's comments here directly, except section titles if necessary, as the users don't own the title. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:52, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Another exception is if the editor has made a mistake with the wikimarkup (which can happen to anyone) that is messing up other stuff. The most common examples are failure to close off italics or a <small> tag. --Trovatore (talk) 05:56, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For sure. Things that affect formatting of subsequent comments are subject to correction. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:06, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the best approach is to not care. I've found that exactly 100% of people who don't give a shit don't bother others about the shit they don't give... --Jayron 32 11:15, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I do care, but I come from a family which valued proper usage and was open to correcting improper usage. I told Cuddlyable that he had permission to fix anything that I wrote here. He never took me up on it, which convinced me that he was really just a troll. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 16:19, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Baseball Bugs: Then you, sir, are a confessed

SNOOT (n) (highly colloq) is this reviewer's nuclear family's nickname à clef for a really extreme usage fanatic, the sort of person whose idea of Sunday fun is to·look for mistakes in Safire's column's prose itself. This reviewer's family is roughly 70 percent SNOOT,which term itself derives from an acronym, with the big historical family joke being that whether S.N.O.O.T. stands for "Sprachgefühl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance" or "Syntax Nudniks of Our Time" depended on whether or not you were one. — Wallace, David Foster (April 2001). "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage" (PDF). Harper's Magazine: 41, n. 3. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 18:08, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't think I'm nearly obsessed enough with it to qualify. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:29, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Hayttom: If it really bugs you, send a note to the offending editor on their user talk page. → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 03:56, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Or, if it helps, you can conceptualize an inappropriate it's or an erroneous its as an indicator of ignorance; the information otherwise purveyed is correctly looked at with a jaundiced eye, and we can't have you going around erasing such surrogate markers... - Nunh-huh 04:12, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's a little harsh. An editor can know the rule perfectly well, and still not be immune to the occasional typo. --Trovatore (talk) 04:44, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's harsh if taken entirely seriously. But there's an element of truth in it, just as there is an element of truth in the proposition that misspelling in an Internet posting ought to reduce the degree to which it is given credence. - Nunh-huh 07:43, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mistakes with the wiki markup are not an exception. They're not the words of the editor. People routinely play around with the indenting and shuffle posts around. 92.25.66.15 (talk) 09:23, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, let's put it this way. I would be justifiably annoyed if you edited my comments to add italics that weren't there, or remove italics that were there. You may not be literally changing my words, but you're changing my meaning, or at least there's a risk that you are.

However, if I forget to close off my italics, and it's italicizing everything below my comments, then you're justified in doing something about that. --Trovatore (talk) 16:09, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's OK to point out a mistake here, but not fix it, if you genuinely think the author would want to fix it. However, if the author is aware of it and chooses to use grammar or spelling you don't like, then continually reminding them is just nagging, and should be avoided. Of course, at times it's so bad that nobody can figure out what was meant, like those who don't use any punctuation or sentences. Then something does have to be said. StuRat (talk) 17:39, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't you got form for this, Sturat? I seem to recall you used to put "it's" for "its", even though you knew it was wrong to do so. I haven't noticed you doing it for a while, though, so that's good. --Viennese Waltz 08:32, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everybody. I think what I've learned is what I knew deep down: I should not interfere. [Please let me add here that I am sure that I have erred here and there in my own questions or answers.] I will aim my pedantry at actual Wikipedia articles! Hayttom (talk) 17:25, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Sure, but there's no need to call it "pedantry". Preferring the right spelling of words and good grammar is no different from choosing the right mix of colours when painting a canvas, or choosing structurally sound and otherwise appropriate materials when building a house, or choosing notes that actually work together when composing a piece of music. Listen to someone singing a well-known song, and if they make even a slight glitch in the music or the words, you're instantly aware of it, and it could well spoil your experience. It's the same for readers. They are expecting - they have been invited - to temporarily enter into the writer's world, and to be diverted even momentarily by things that cause them to wonder what the writer meant, and have to work it out for themselves, is far from ideal. So, please do not feel the need to justify or downplay your passion for well-written text in article space. Wikipedia depends on such passions; be proud of them. It's just that other people's contributions on talk pages and the ref desk are untouchable, except as outlined above. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:55, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think part of the issue is the refusal to recognize the validity of Situational code-switching, or the importance of linguistic register in different situations. Insofar as language and culture and self-identity are intractably tied, people often take offense when one corrects another language in casual conversation. To tease another person over their casual conversation can feel like an affront to their personal self-identity, and even something as small as correcting an apostrophe in the social context of the sort of conversational writing that goes on here can feel like correcting people in similarly conversational situations (like correcting the "aks" for "ask" etc.) In some contexts (a formal speech in front of a crowd, a job interview, formal encyclopedia writing) the use of a certain linguistic register is expected, and if a person uses a less formal register in that context, it is definitely a correctable offense. In casual, informal contexts, the correcting of the language of another could be seen as offensive or rude, where formal, standard English is not expected in that context. It is just as important to recognize and honor the proper language register in non-formal settings as in formal ones. Correcting a missing apostrophe in an article is a VERY different thing than correcting one on a talk page, and it's quite understandable how a person could expect one, and be offended by the other. --Jayron 32 01:57, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Meanwhile, I've just been put under some sort of investigation. Hayttom (talk) 02:42, 26 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

German question

As you people don't know as I've not told you about this beforehand, I reserved a sleeping place on a train from Munich to Hamburg this July, and it turned out that Deutsche Bahn had screwed up, and there were no sleeping cars on the whole train. I sent a complaint about this to Deutsche Bahn, and they replied with a letter. I got 33 € in compensation, even though I originally paid 67 € for the sleeping place.

Now my questions are only about these parts of the letter:

Bitte beachten Sie, dass die Gutschrift im Falle weiterer Fahrkartenkäufe oder bei bereits bestehenden Forderungen seitens der Bahn, intern verrechnet wird.

Fahrkartenwert: 67,00 €
Abzüglich genutzter Leistungen: 34,00 €
Abzüglich Erstattungsentgelt: 0,00 €

I understood somewhat that they compensated me for the difference between a sleeping place and a resting place, as I got a resting place for free. I don't know what "verrechnet" means and I don't know what "abzüglich" means. I got the general gist of the letter, they expressed their condolence about my discomfort and told me that it was an exceptional condition that couldn't be avoided, but I still want to know what the part I've quoted above exactly means. JIP | Talk 21:56, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Breaking it down using Google translate, a couple of online German dictionaries, and my hazy memories of O Level German: "wird" is an auxiliary verb meaning something like "will be", "verrechnet" means "calculated" or "charged", and "abzüglich" means "minus" or "less". So the message as a whole reads:

Please note, that in the case of further ticket purchases or existing orders (?), credit will be calculated internally by the railway.

Ticket price: 67,00 €

Minus services used: 34,00 €

Minus reimbursement fee: 0,00 €

Best I can do, anyway. --Nicknack009 (talk) 23:28, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that's basically it. "Forderungen" would be any amounts you might owe the company (from earlier interactions), in which case the two amounts would be internally offset ("verrechnet") against each other before being paid out. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Meta-question: Why "Indo-"? Also, the German word for question is not 'question', it's "Frage". AlexTiefling (talk) 12:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The title of the thread was changed by an IP. I've reverted both his edits. Deor (talk) 12:45, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]