Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 July 17

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Felipe, Phillipines and Filipinos

If the Phillipines were named after King Philip II of Spain, and the Spanish equivalent of Philip is Felipe, why are Filipinos not known as Felipinos? JackofOz 00:11, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Because they were named after him in Latin, not Spanish. By the way, that's "Philippines", from Greek phil- "love" and hipp- "horse", with a Latin suffix... AnonMoos 01:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course. Thanks for setting me straight (so to speak). JackofOz 01:20, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

In the Philippines' infancy, the name was written in a variety of ways. Felipinas was one of them as well as Philipinas and others (like Ffilipinas). Somewhere along time way, Filipinas was chosen caught on. And the inhabitants became known as Filipino. To make matters more confusing, the /f/ sound is not found in the vast majority of Philippine languages, so Filipino and Filipinas become Pilipino and Pilipinas. The Spaniards should have stuck with the letter "L" or "M" or something to end all this confusion. hah. I mean, I cringe when someone writes Philippino. ;-) --Chris S. 01:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeh, me too. I could spend 24/7 cringing, what with the things that pass for spelling these days. So now I just shrug, sigh, sometimes I weep for a few moments, and move on. It keeps my blood pressure within reasonable limits. :--) JackofOz 02:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Learning a dialect/accent

We consider it normal to learn and speak another language, but strange and dishonest to employ a different dialect or regional pronunciation. I've always wondered why this is the case, since it would certainly be easier to learn a new accent than an entirely new language, and it might come in handy for preventing misunderstandings. But if you try it, you'd be accused of "faking" or "affecting" an accent. Is this attitude universal across all languages with multiple distinct varieties? Is it always considered duplicitous to affect an accent, or is it in some situations or cultures regarded as a natural part of acculturation? Bhumiya (said/done) 01:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't it depend on their circumstances? If a German (say) was living with an English family in order to get hands-on experience with the language, and the family happpened to be Cockneys, it would be quite natural for the German to copy that accent rather than the one used by the Queen (say). I've never heard of it being considered dishonest to do that. JackofOz 01:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

People do sometimes consider it dishonest to speak another language: see for example the Spanish controversy in the U.S.

I'm afraid I don't follow you. Do you mean that Spanish-speakers consider it dishonest to speak English, or vice versa? Bhumiya (said/done) 01:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, it does depend on context. British and Australian singers often put on American accents while singing, which is considered normal, but it would be weird if they did it in regular speech. --Ptcamn 01:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

But why is it considered so peculiar for someone to adopt a new pronunciation and set of idioms within his own language? It is certainly easier for an American than a German to "learn Cockney", yet it is less acceptable. My question is why? Some dialects are so divergent as to render communication difficult. Consider a hard-core Geordie trying to carry on a conversation with a hard-core Philadelphian. Sure, they could get through to each other, but they couldn't have a relaxed, natural conversation. There'd be a gap between them, a gap narrower than that between a German and an Englishman, but apparently unbridgeable. It's interesting. English is so vast that it sometimes exhibits features of a dialect continuum. It makes me wonder if English might have split, had things gone differently a few centuries ago. Bhumiya (said/done) 01:38, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I think this goes to show that people consider accent to be a part of one's identity, and if they deviate from that, then they're seen as not being true to theirselves, not "keepin' it real." We know the reasons why someone would speak another language, but for what reason would someone want to speak another accent/dialect if they are already understood in their native accent/dialect? --Chris S. 01:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

To be better understood, perhaps. To communicate better, more naturally and casually, with the people one meets. To get one's point across. To break down the perception that one is an outsider. Really, the very same reasons one learns another language—just on a different scale. Bhumiya (said/done) 01:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I for one (a native of U.S.A.) have lived all over this country including in New York and Hawaii. I moved to Hawaii as an adult and found it necessary to learn the Hawaiian style "pidgen" of the mid 1980s as it was spoken in the main city of Honolulu and around Waikiki. If I didn't speak pidgen, people would often ignore me or act like I wasn't speaking English. There were warnings about this in a couple of the guide books I read just before and just after I arrived. I also bothered to become familiar with the Hawaiian words and their pronounciations. I never had a negative reaction from any of the "kamainas" (locals for those who don't know).

Also, living in Texas and in the American Southeast, it sometimes becomes necessary, to put on an accent to get your point across. I've found people to be offended sometimes by a newscaster midwest accent because they think I think I'm better than they are. Just one person's experience with this.--75.20.177.181 02:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Fashion;in the UK white people talking ghetto is hilarious and sad at the same time.hotclaws**==(81.134.77.56 04:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC))

I don't know..if somebody learns a language "naturally" - that is, without using a course of some kind, through native speakers, they will paritally pick up the accent of those they learn the language from, although that will be secondary to the accent derived from their native tongue. -Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 05:11, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it's obnoxious when people adopt another group's dialect/mannerisms as a sort of fashion statement, but would it be objectionable to adopt those same features for the purpose of communication? Bhumiya (said/done) 06:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the premise is wrong. People do learn a second dialect, and quite often and then switch in and out of it. Most middle class African Americans speak both African American Vernacular English and some more standard variety, sometimes although not always with some AAVE features. Non African Americans can be surprised to hear African Americans they know switch into AAVE when speaking to other AAE speakers. In Italy and German speaking regions, non-standard dialect speakers almost always learn the standard. There is actually a bit of research on this phenomenon, one example is a book by Ben Rampton called Crosssing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents (1995 Longman) that deals with this phenomenon. mnewmanqc

I would guess that the answer to this lies in the purpose. When you learn a new language, it's practical; it's the only way to understand and be understood. When you try to learn a dialect, it's often despite already being understood and able to understand. It also may be offensive to some because it's seen as an attempt to change who you are. An American English-speaker learning Chinese is just becoming a bilingual American English-speaker, whereas an American English-speaker learning British English is trying to become a British English-speaker. In my experience, using non-native idioms is generally not frowned upon -- in the American Midwest, you have to say "pop" instead of "soda" to be understood. Again it's a question of purpose: clarity or deceit. That's my idea, but there are obvious problems with it. Thank you for a very stimulating question. - Registrar

I agree. Another possibility is that imitating an accent may be seen as parody or "making fun" of that group, especially if the accent is overdone. Speaking another language isn't seen as parody, however, unless also accompanied by an absurd accent. StuRat 00:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Verb class

Many languages organize nouns into noun classes, often arbitrarily, sometimes according to a comprehensible pattern. Is there any language that organizes verbs into classes? Bhumiya (said/done) 02:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... I never heard of the term, but there are verbs belonging to different conjugation paradigms. Like in English and other Germanic languages there are weak and strong verbs. In Spanish, there are -ar, -er, and -ir verbs in addition to irregular verbs like stem-changing ones. In Tagalog, there are -um-, mag-, -in, an, i-, etc. --Chris S. 13:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

In Hebrew, there are different classes (or "binyanim) which verbs can be in. Generally, they have different meanings (some are intensive, one is reflexive). Mo-Al 19:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. That's just the sort of thing I was looking for. Bhumiya (said/done) 23:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I know you're interested in Czech, so you may know that Czech verbs come in one of two aspects. For example, kupovat and koupit both mean "to shop," but the first is imperfective, while the second is perfective. It happens that in this case, the difference is in the verb endings -- kupovat is conjugated as an -ovat verb and koupit as an -it verb. But that's not always the case. Often, the perfective version is indicated by the use of a preposition as a prefix (for example, dělat vs. udělat). So it's not like quite like gender in nouns, since the declension of, say, a feminine noun ending in "a" almost always runs according to a consistent pattern. -- Mwalcoff 03:42, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

This is a little different from gender, though, because the difference can be significant to meaning, rather than just syntax. For example, in Russian (which I believe is pretty close to Czech in this), an imperfective verb conjugated in the present tense has present meaning---я пью чай, ya p'yu chai, "I'm drinking tea"---while a perfective verb conjugated in the present tense has future meaning---я выпью чай, ya vyp'yu chai, "I'll drink all the tea". I can't think of an example where it really matters to the meaning of the sentence what gender a word has.

A less-interesting distinction usually found in Russian-as-a-foreign-language classes is between two classes of conjugation patterns. This separates verbs into those that conjugate like читать, chitat' , and those that conjugate like говорить, govorit' , plus all the myriad exceptions. This is approximately equivalent to the distinction between -ar, -er, and -ir verbs in Spanish. Tesseran 07:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Psych

Does anyone know how to get hold of the lyrics to the Psych theme song, and possibly its credits? Black Carrot 04:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The Psych IMDb page lists Adam Cohen as the composer, and no soundtrack listing, so it might be worth a try to contact his agent or post a BB thread to the Psych or Adam Cohen IMDb page. As to the lyrics, I tried googling but there was too much junk, not fruitful. Buuuuttt... You might also try the Psych network page.--Anchoress 00:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The theme song is performed by The Friendly Indians.

To introduce someone...

Which expression is correct:

• Born in Changzhou in 1983, Yao Ziyuan attended Fudan University in 2003.
• Having been born in Changzhou in 1983, Yao...
• Had been born in Changzhou in 1983, ...
• others

Thank you. Yao Ziyuan 07:13, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The first one. Henry^Flower 07:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The second one also looks technically correct, though it's a mite awkward. Deltabeignet 08:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Those awkward mites might get more confident after they suck enough blood. :-) StuRat 00:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The first one is correct - the second one also is if there is some kind of causation implied. For instance, if you are implying that Wao Ziyuan attended Fudan University because he was born in Changzhou (but would have attended another university had he been born elsewhere), then that would be the correct expression. The third one is wrong in all circumatances. You could also say "Yao Ziyuan was born in Changzhou in 1983, and attended...". Grutness...wha? 09:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The second one could also mean that Yao himself decided to be born in Changzhou in 1983, though I don't suppose that's likely. Henry^Flower 14:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Yok in Thai

I just created a stub on the Sai Yok waterfall of Thailand. The Amphoe Sai Yok article calls it by that name, but some tourist brochures from the area also call it "Sai Yok Noi" and "Sai Yok Noi waterfall." Does anyone know if perhaps Yok means waterfall in Thai? Thanks. - Draeco 10:17, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

No, "waterfall" is Nam Tok (น้ำตก). The "Noi" (น้อย) simply means "small", because there are two waterfalls named "Sai Yok" - one called Sai Yok Yai , another Sai Yok Noi. Yai ใหญ่ means large. [1]. If you can read Thai letters a great online dictionary is http://dict.longdo.org. BTW: IMHO that article might be better part of an article on the Sai Yok National Park. andy 16:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

You're probably right, but I don't know enough (anything) about the Park to start an article. I'll move the article to Sai Yok Noi to disambiguate. Thanks for the help. - Draeco 16:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if Sai Yok actually means anything. Sai can be ficus - a kind of tree - which would make some sense, but yok doesn't appear in my dictionary (the same spelling can mean yoga - a bond - but the pronunciation is different). Henry^Flower 19:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Korean translation for the word name

°Translate please, the word for name in Korean, as in What is your name?

It's 이름 ireum. --Chris S. 13:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

이름 is informal. If you want to be formal you have to use 성명 seongmyeong, and if you want to be polite you have to use 성함 seongham. --Kjoonlee 13:51, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Uranus breaks the "Roman mythical name" tradition?

Greek_equivalency_in_mythology gives a list of Greek gods and their Roman counterparts. Saturnus is the Roman version of Cronus, Mars of Ares,....

But Uranus is not Roman but the original Greek name. Why did they break the tradition?

Thank you.

Evilbu 14:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

It's worth remembering that the "tradition" was a very ancient thing at that point... only the major planets, known since antiquity, had Roman names. It makes more sense if you think of it in terms of the other astronomical discoveries since then - the four Galilean satellites discovered in 1610 all had Greek names, and the moons of Saturn discovered by Cassini and Herschel all had the names of Greek titans. In effect, every solar-system body which had been given a name in recorded history was Greek-originating, and those where the naming was lost to time were Roman. The Roman-name tradition for planets essentially only started again in 1801 with Ceres, and then continued with Neptune. Shimgray | talk | 14:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The article you linked to doesn't exist, but as a general matter, the early Latin/Roman gods had attributes and functions, and proper rituals and cermemonies by which they were traditionally worshipped, but they didn't usually have elaborate stories and cycles of myths (like the Greek gods did) -- so the equivalence between Greek and Roman gods was originally actually somewhat approximate. Maybe there was not a native Roman divinity closely corresponding to Ouranos. AnonMoos 14:43, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

There apparently was, Caelus (though he doesn't map perfectly), but Bode just chose the Latinised form of the Greek name... Shimgray | talk | 14:45, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the article Evilbu was trying to link to was Roman/Greek equivalency in mythology. Road Wizard 14:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Uranus is the father of Cronus (Saturn) who is the father of Zeus (Jupiter). I don't know if this is just coincidental or if the namer of Uranus was going for a pattern. --Cam 14:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that Uranus is the Latinised form of a Greek name that would have been something like Ouranos. However, as previously stated, Caelus was also used in Latin.--Grammatical error 16:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Apart from naming consistency, Ouranos would have been a far better spelling (and pronunciation) in English. The unavoidable associations with urine and anus are unfortunate, to say the least. JackofOz 20:23, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Typical. Everyone else had been carefully avoiding them... Henry^Flower 22:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

That's what makes me so special, unique and loveable, Henry. (Tagishsimon, you're relieved of your duties as Official Spokesperson for the Reference Desk). :--) JackofOz 00:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Spanish translation

I am tasked with writing some speech recognition code for a call center application, and although we received very few calls from people speaking Spanish, they want me to include that as well. Since the input is primarily numbers and single words, I'm doing fairly well, however I need to figure out what a caller would say instead of "dash" or "hyphen" when entering a number such as "123-87". --LarryMac 15:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Guión (be careful, the "u" isn't pronounced in this case) --RiseRover|^talk 20:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I was confused by running that back through Google's tool and ending up with "script." The other online tool I usually use turned it back into "hyphen" though, so that's good enough for me. --LarryMac 20:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it also does mean script, or screenplay.--RiseRover|^talk 09:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Icelandic þ and ð

I am trying to get people with interest and resources in phonology to comment on whether the Icelandic dental fricatives (corresponding to þ and ð in writing) are not dental at all but rather alveolar. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Phonetics#Icelandic þ and ð. Any help would be appreciated. Stefán Ingi 18:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Aramaic

I am looking for somewhere I can Get a translation. Hope you can help me it would be muchly appreciated!

God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change

the Courage to change the things I can

and the Wisdom to know the difference

I would like you to translate this into the oldest aramaic text you can find! Thank you so much for your time, It is muchly appreciated! -Niki

-formatted to remove yellow boxes. -LambaJan 21:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't help with the translation, but the full version is here. JackofOz 23:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

If Greek is Aramaic, then here it is: Ο Θεός μου χορηγεί την ηρεμία για να δεχτεί τα πράγματα δεν μπορώ να αλλάξω το θάρρος να αλλάξω τα πράγματα που μπορώ και η φρόνηση να ξέρω τη διαφορά

This is the best I can do, since I don't know what aramaic is. -nickdsub

Aramaic is described here. JackofOz 23:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I can do the Aramaic translation. Which variety of Aramaic do you want? — Gareth Hughes 21:16, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Use of the word "ecology".

Writers often seem to use the words "ecology" and "environemnt" interchangebly. Please discuss.

Very few competent writers use the word "environemnt". It doesn't go down too well in homework assignments either. JackofOz 00:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The 'please discuss' looked weird, but your second sentence cleared that up. Which left the first sentence, but I get that too now. I must be getting slow (no, not old). DirkvdM 15:06, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Those writers probably didn't do their homework either. Anyway, see Ecology and Environment. Black Carrot 21:42, 18 July 2006 (UTC)