Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 October 12

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October 12

P. that W.'s?

In reading a story by P. G. Wodehouse, I came across this strange phrase I've never heard before, and couldn't figure out. Now, his writing has a lot of old British slang... but I'm completely baffled by "P. that W.'s". Here it is in context:

"Well, one day he happened by good luck to blow in the necessary for the good old P. that W.'s, and now, whenever they want someone to go and talk Rockefeller or someone into lending them a million or so, they send for Samuel." -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 01:17, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Two sentences before that one, you read, "And, mark you, before he got hold of this book—The Personality That Wins was the name of it, if I remember rightly—he was known to all the lads in the office as Silent Samuel or something." Does that give you a clue? Deor (talk) 02:33, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Doh! I feel dumb now. I was caught up in assuming it was some saying I didn't even think of that. -~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.63.158 (talk) 02:35, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I was just teasing you. Actually, characters' using initials to refer to something whose identity has been established earlier in a conversation is quite frequent in Wodehouse. It must have been a recognizable feature of discourse among the members of the relevant social stratum at the time. Deor (talk) 02:47, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Though I seem to recall examples where the item was obvious without being recently named, like "egg and b[acon]". —Tamfang (talk) 05:32, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of Wodehouse

"Wodehouse was a prolific author, writing 96 books in a career spanning from 1902 to 1975."

Is "spanning from" redundant?

Would "spanning 1902 to 1975" be correct?

Or "in a career from 1902 to 1975"?

I have a sense that neither "spanning from" nor "spanning" is quite right. Wanderer57 (talk) 05:29, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

To me it reads okay without "spanning" or "in a career" assuming that if he wrote 96 books from 1902 to 1975 it implies his career and a length of time already. I'd go for a rewrite such as: "Wodehouse was a prolific author, writing 96 books in his 73-year career." With "beginning in 1902" as an optional extra. Julia Rossi (talk) 07:40, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

How about "a career spanning 1902 to 1975" or "a career spanniing 73 years". Julia Rossi (talk) 08:11, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Or how about: "... writing 96 books in a career spanning 73 years (1902 to 1975)". -- JackofOz (talk) 08:21, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you both. I made a change based on these comments. Wanderer57 (talk) 18:59, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Seasons of capitalization

Hi! In monitoring edits to some television character articles, I noticed an issue of capitalization. Is a television series season capitalized? For example, in the article Jim Halpert (from The Office) I notice conflicting examples of capitalization of "Season 4"/"season 4"... as it's simply describing the number of the season and not actually a proper noun (per se) I don't think it should be, except in cases of capitalization at the beginning of the sentence of course. My rudimentary straw poll of other characters shows that Elliot Reid has both ways. Can anyone provide some grammatical argument for either way? I think it should be consistent throughout each article, at the very least. So, Season or season? DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 06:59, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes DVDs are given season-specific titles, e.g. The Office: Season 1, Little Britain - Season 4, etc. So, if you're quoting the name of the DVD, depending on the formality of the context, you may have to use the full formal title. But if you're simply referring to a particular season of a program, then the lower case would apply. "Egbert had a conundrum: whether to watch the first episode of season 4(^) of Little Britain on TV, or to put on his new DVD The Office: Season 3". Something like that, perhaps? -- JackofOz (talk) 18:42, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

• ^ Where "season 4" is another way of writing "the 4th/fourth season". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:34, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this one can reasonably go either way. In connection with books, we write "page 4" but usually "Chapter 4" and "Part 4", and "Act 4, Scene 4" in a play. In the sort of TV series where each season has a distinct flavor due to cast changes or plot development, it makes some sense to count it like a part or chapter or act and therefore capitalize "Season 4". But the point seems arguable. I see nothing relevant at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters), and I suggest raising the question on the talk page of that article. At the same time, you might want to ask about "Episode 4", which is likely to arise on some pages. --Anonymous, 20:04 UTC, October 12, 2008.

Unknown language

Does somebody here know what language/dialect/language group this is? Maybe also a translation?

Ála nári sunt bhéran frájosli, sunt sámu θuhnithoni ét ráhtoni kwa. Sunt déhani hnés-shafn ét hónwéjθanun hón, ágent-tsha úθrásθenes enen hgájsthon bróhθirshafs i.

I think in IPA it would be:

aːlɑ naːri sunt bʰeːrɑn fraːjɔsli | sunt saːmu ðuxnitʰɔni eːt raːxtɔni kʷɑ || sunt deːhɑni xneːs.sxɑfṇ eːt xoːnweːjðanun xoːn | aːgent.tsxɑ uːðraːʒenes enen xʰaːjstʰɔn broːxðirsxɑfs i

I don't know whether the IPA transcription is okay, but it looks very likely to me. I don't think it is Italic, Germanic, Slavic or Greek. Maybe Indo-Aryan? Susyr Otlev (talk) 09:51, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Could be a conlang (the occurrence of good ol' "sunt" and "agent", along with the simultaneous use of both θ and þ, makes me suspicious). I suspect it was cobbled together partly from Latin and Gothic, and partly from somewhere else (or arbitrary invention). AnonMoos (talk) 11:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

θ and þ is my mistake, it should be úθrásθenes and not úθrásþenes. Susyr Otlev (talk) 11:20, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks pretty conlangy to me too. I'm not aware of any language normally written in the Latin alphabet that uses the letter θ. Where do these sentences come from? —Angr 15:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

θ is written as a d, but it is striked, like Ð, but then not capitalized. I don't know how I must write that letter, so I chose an alternative. It is written on a notition paper I have found inside of a book in the library. So it is a conlang based on Latin and Gothic? Susyr Otlev (talk) 17:37, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Is it ð? That's a letter used in Icelandic, Old Norse, and Old English. But you must know how to write that letter, since you used it in your IPA transcription. Is it đ? That's used in Serbo-Croatian, though sometimes it's also found where ð would be correct. It doesn't like any Indo-Aryan language I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure it isn't Old Norse, though some strings like "hafn" and "bróhđir" look tantalizingly like it. Could the book where you found the piece of paper provide a clue? Or the country where the library is located? —Angr 17:59, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Let's try something. Ála (all) nári (from nēri PIE?) sunt (they are) bhéran (to bare) frájosli (free), sunt (they are) sámu θuhnithoni ét (and) ráhtoni (right) kwa (and). Sunt (they are) déhani (given) hnés-shafn (li: -sjap, -ness) ét (and) hónwéjθanun (hón = con, wéjðanun = weitene = knowing: conscience) hón (with), ágent-tsha úθrásθenes enen (one) hgájsthon (guest) bróhθirshafs (brotherness) i (in). Article 1 universal declaration of human rights maybe? --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 18:43, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

For comparison, here's the English text: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." I think you're right about what this text is. Maybe an attempt to write it in Proto-Germanic, or a Germanic- and Latin-inspired conlang? —Angr 19:11, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't look Germanic to me, though I'm Germanic (hopefeully) Don't know Proto-Germanic to be honest, but if it would look like this, I would immediately change it... Agent, ét and sunt look very Latin, maybe a lost Old Italic language? :) --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 19:14, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't consider it a successful attempt to write in Proto-Germanic either, but it could be a poor attempt! But if you're right about what the text is, it has some definitely Germanic characteristics: the -an ending of bhéran "born", the fr- of the "free" word, and especially the apparent use of a word cognate with English "ghost"/German "Geist" to translate "spirit" all seem very Germanic. However, that word is only used for "spirit" in West Germanic languages; it's not the usual word in the Scandinavian languages or in Gothic. —Angr 19:36, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Bhéran is a past particle, no prefix looks ungermanic to me (though Scandinavian languages and some Others like English have lost them) The Welsh word for "free" is rhydd and Slovak for friend is "priateľ". If it would be Indo-European it's not Italic, unlikely to be Germanic, not Slavic, not Celtic, not Greek, not Indo-Persian. Doesn't look Albanian to me and I have no idea what Armenian looks like in Latin script, but I guess it won't be this. Has there been a period of one Germanic-Italic language? --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 07:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I've seen a proposed family tree that puts Italic with Celtic (see Italo-Celtic) and Germanic with Balto-Slavic; so, probably not. —Tamfang (talk) 05:17, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Mmm... --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 11:43, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It is đ yes. I've found it in a recepy book in a library just over the Romanian border in Ukraine in Khust. I don't know Ukrain nor do I know Rhutanian, maybe it could be? Susyr Otlev (talk) 12:34, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

It's definitely not Ukrainian or Ruthenian, or any other Slavic language for that matter. — Emil J. 12:50, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Then it could be Baltic, or maybe it is the substrate found in Germanic? Susyr Otlev (talk) 12:59, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

You mean, that was handwritten in the book? Which year is the book? Just a conjecture, but if this is really a mixture of languages, and relatively recent, it reminds to me that Primo Levi reports (The Drowned and the Saved) that during the Holocaust, people in Nazi Concentration Camps created a mixture of languages to communicate with each other. Not much is known about the linguistic phenomenon, but there are several studies. PMajer (talk) 08:46, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Based on use of the D with stroke the person writing the text presumably had some familiarity with Serbo-Croatian (or maybe Vietnamese). The language itself is almost certainly made up, considering that it uses Latinate words for “and” but a Germanic word for “all”. Kudos to Ooswesthoesbes for recognizing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I checked the text against many of the translations at this web site but to avail. --Mathew5000 (talk) 07:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

モバイルダイアリ

Is there some kind Ref Desk translator who can tell me what the title says and what language it is? Thank you. ៛ Bielle (talk) 14:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

It's Japanese Katakana and it says mo-ba-i-ru-da-i-a-ri — "Mobile Diary." --Kjoonlee 15:16, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Kjoon. That looks like some imaginative detective work, as well as language knowledge. Now that we know what it says, does anyone know what it might mean? Could it be a text messaging connection, for example? Thanks again. ៛ Bielle (talk) 15:42, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Where'd you hear it? The first google hit is a mobile phone diary (in the sense of a news journal) named モバイルダイアリ. Louis Waweru  Talk  17:04, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I have no idea if this means anything in Canada or Japan, but in Austria the term is used in "mobile patient diary", this being a networking option between medical databases and the normal mobile phones of patients. Via some special software modules patients can record relevant parameters (heart rate, Riva-Rocci, et al) and transmit such data to a central database. Vice versa, an automatic texting system is executed by the central application to remind patients to take their medicine or to call for other feedback information.

Presumably there are similar mobile blogging services available for various professional purposes. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:10, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I am searching for a specific person in Tokyo, someone with an English name. (For privacy reasons, I cannot included the name here. Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM) may be onto something as this person does have a serious illness. The title text was on a page with a lot of web sites in a list, followed by this person's name and the text above. There were a lot of other English names on the site. Now I have found the name again. This time it is beside:

は見つかりませんでした。

Can anyone translate this for me? It came from a Japanese web page about Newton Technology. I really do appreciate the help. ៛ Bielle (talk) 20:36, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Just says something cannot be found.--ChokinBako (talk) 20:41, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, ChokinBako. Even negatives may be useful. ៛ Bielle (talk) 20:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Mystery language? Code?

While googling for one of the words listed in the sentence in #Unknown language above, I came across this page, which is not written in any language I can identify. I spot-checked some of the links from that page, and they're all written in the same language (if that's what it is). The website's domain is .dk, which is Denmark, but this ain't Danish, Faeroese, or Greenlandic. After looking at a few pages of the the Lojban Wikipedia, I don't think it's Lojban either, but maybe it's some other conlang. I also considered the possibility of its being a code, but the fact that it looks basically pronounceable (vowels and consonants alternate the way they do in most languages) makes me doubtful of that hypothesis. Does anyone else recognize this language, or have other educated guesses? —Angr 18:18, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Can't identify it :( At first I would say somekind of Danish dialect (see title bar: ech ech ni) but than... --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 18:39, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

My immediate impression from Ihimli and Cekid was something related to Turkish, but as I read on, I quickly abandoned that notion. I clicked some of the links but I could not find a single word that gave me any clues. Certain words, in isolation, look vaguely like words in Maltese, but the rest of the text does not. -- JackofOz (talk) 18:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

The "-ob" endings faintly recall Volapük, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be much specific resemblance... My overall impression is of some kind of Celto-Dutch AnonMoos (talk) 18:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

What do those tables mean? And those capitalised words? Names? --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 18:55, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

No idea. Another curiosity is the absence of any diacritics or letters other than the bog-standard 26 of the English alphabet. —Angr 19:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I checked a few terms and stumbled across a page on paralingua. Just a guess, as I have no idea about this, but there are some identical words. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:03, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Examples: [1], [2]. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:14, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, it at least isn't a variant of Limburgish I'd say :) (Though Limburgish itself is often less mutually understable than Limburgish and Dutch, I do understand some Dutch, but no Hasselts or Genks...) --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 19:06, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know Limburgish, Hasselts, or Genks, but if presented with a page of any of them written down I'd at least be able to identify it as some sort of West Germanic language/dialect. Cookatoo may be on to something with the Paralingua page. —Angr 19:18, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't identify Hasselts as Germanic... (doesn't have standard spelling, so everybody uses as much strange letters as possible hsecould mean "I see") Though (Dutch) Limburgish is the only tonal language in Europe (and only Germanic language with a locative) it still looks West-Germanic indeed. That image on the first example of Cookatoo looks very frightening to me... --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 19:25, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a translator on one of the pages I linked to. The first sentence, "Cekid acte ohhesre segel ke hade" means: "God! Sleekest, cheekier headache." or "Hot-headed geek screeches alike".

I guess, the rest is quite obvious and simple :) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Good :) But what language is it? --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 19:27, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

English, written in sentence-by-sentence anagrams. But if those are really the only two possible translations, then it still doesn't say anything. —Angr 20:13, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think the page I first linked to is in anagrams, because then you wouldn't expect entire words to be repeated from sentence to sentence. But both "cekid" and "ohhesre" appear several times on the page, which makes sentence-by-sentence anagrams unlikely. —Angr 20:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

The interwebs have a couple of language-guessers, to which I fed a sample paragraph. TextCat says Unknown; XRCE says Romanian which it plainly ain't. My guess is a Markov generator. —Tamfang (talk) 05:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I still have not worked out if paralingua is a joke or not. Where is Ms Germknödel when you need her? --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:38, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

"Ms Germknödel", indeed! >:-( I can't make heads or tails of Paralingua either, but I can assure OosWesThoesBes that Limburgish is not the only tone language in Europe. (Scottish Gaelic and Swedish distinguish words by tone, and I think Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovene do too, but I'm not sure. —Angr 20:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Those are pitch accents :) --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 06:55, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

While I can shed absolutely no light on the subject of the querry, I can just quickly confirm that Slovene (my mothertongue) does indeed have a couple of distinct pitch pairs of words. However, these are very few in number, and if you ask an average Slovene about what they think makes their language unique, they'll imediately start fawning over the dual. TomorrowTime (talk) 17:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Limburgish has over 100 words which have tonality making difference in singular and plural and uncountable more of meaning, daag with different tone can mean day or days, while graaf with different tone can mean hole next to the road or grave. :) --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 17:47, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

While there are indeed repeated words among the pages, I have yet to find a link where the word displayed for the link actually occurs on the linked page. While I wouldn't expect the linked word to occur on the page every time (we are familiar with link that say 'here' or 'see also', I would have expected to find an example in the first half-dozen I tried. I conclude that it is either code or gibberish - or, I suppose, sentence level anagrams. --ColinFine (talk) 22:20, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it's a transliteration of the Voynich manuscript. :-) Deor (talk) 22:30, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Someone is having fun at our expense. This site is weird, there is no information about the webmaster, no links to any external site etc. It must be a joke in order to keep puzzling people: make it look real, while it is just gibberish generated automatically and formated into a shape that seems to be logical. Even the tables with caption and headers and everything don't make sense when you try to do anagrams on the columns and row titles.--Lgriot (talk) 04:31, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Polyglot 3000 fails to place it as any of the 474 languages it knows. The Jade Knight (talk) 05:07, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd say it's gibberish. Haukur (talk) 18:46, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

But high-level gibberish. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:33, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The letter frequencies look very similar to English, moreso than most other European languages including German and Danish[3]. (for 2 paragraphs I got a 8.39% b 1.51% c 2.89% d 4.75% e 17.81% f 1.31% g 1.99% h 4.26% i 7.08% j 0.07% k 0.62% l 3.44% m 2.20% n 6.33% o 9.15% p 1.38% q 0.00% r 5.36% s 5.91% t 8.32% u 2.68% v 0.48% w 1.93% x 0.14% y 1.99% z 0.00%) The lack of one-letter words is puzzling if it is based on English word lengths; unless it is produced by some rule that excludes one-letter words. The fact that the URLs are all of the form geko.dk?p=XXXXXXX suggests it is automatically generated. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 12:48, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

in same pages there are pictures and writings of the voynich... --20:46, 25 July 2009 62.37.152.213

Linguistics

Let me begin by apologizing, since this is not a question about language per se. It seems many people here on the reference desk are really quite passionate about linguistics, and I am a seeking advice on whether or not a minor in Linguistics is worth the time. I love languages, but I am ignorant about Linguistics. I would appreciate an explanation of a few of the pros and cons of the study as experienced by Linguistics. I am not necessarily going to base my decision on any particular response, I would just like to hear generally why people who have had experience in the field think of it. Many Thanks. By the way I am majoring in English at New York University, I speak Spanish and English, and took five years of Latin. This is my language experience. 20:24, 12 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.74.245.244 (talk)

My humble opinion, as someone with 4years of honours B.A. in linguistics and 5 years of Latin, is that Linguistic is very useful and worthwhile. First of all, it's just plain lots of fun. It will give you a clearer understanding of how language and communication works and if you are ever planning on learning a new foreign language (which is also a great thing to consider doing) it will make that fantastically easier to do. You will have no problem wrapping your tongue around new consonants and vowels, having studied IPA. You'll recognize new grammatical patters, and definitely expand semantic understanding of the world. We know that a thing is not the same as the word used to refer to it, but do we really understand the significance of that fact? You may discover that there is another way of dividing the world up into named categories - and that may expose you to a new way of seeing and thinking about the world.

Linguists get to travel the world, studying different people, cultures and the way they view the world and do things and describe all that with words. Or even (via imagination and historical linguistics) travel back in time and study previously existing people and thoughts and ideas and languages. Read the article on proto-indo-european and see if that interests you, peeking back in time thousands of years.

Duomillia (talk) 22:04, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

One good thing about learning linguistics is that you can scoff and laugh at all the stupid things the press says about language; the bad thing about learning linguistics is that you notice all the stupid things the press says about language. If you read Language Log you should get a rough idea pretty quickly, I think. --Kjoonlee 08:25, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

One bad thing about learning linguistics is that once people find out that you're a linguist, they always ask "So how many languages do you speak?", which of course is a bit like asking a music theorist how many instruments he plays. —Angr 08:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

That's because people who really do speak lots of languages, and who've not necessarily studied linguistic theory, are also called linguists. To avoid this ambiguity, maybe we should coin the word linguisticist for the theoreticians.  :) -- JackofOz (talk)

People who speak many languages are more correctly "Polyglots"... AnonMoos (talk) 20:59, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

We already have the word linguistician, but, as the Wiktionary article mentions, is a lot less popular because it's more difficult to say than linguist, though it does protect against that stupid "cunning linguist" pun. :)--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:24, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Before committing to spend N hours in a classroom, you might first read a couple of books in the field. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language by David Crystal is a useful overview (and may be easy to find second-hand). I enjoyed Historical Linguistics by R. L. Trask. —Tamfang (talk) 05:01, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Best book in linguistics ever (?): Bloomfield, Language.--Radh (talk) 16:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Signing Versus Subtitles

In the UK most television channels do a small number repeats of programs and films with sign language. This is in the form of a regular program with a small window in the corner showing a single person signing along to the action. This is probably due to some public service charter requiring a certain proportion of programs to be signed. They are usually in the form of repeats very late at night.

My question is, is any extra information conveyed over subtitling? Do deaf people (as a general rule) prefer to watch the signed version of the subtitled version, for example does it convey more emotion?

To me, although I can’t understand the sign language, it would seem to be very distracting -- more so than subtitles. However I can watch subtitled versions of foreign films and don’t feel I’m missing much, it is better than a dubbed film, which seems to be analogous to the signed, the signing seems to be essentially dubbing every character with the same “voice”.

Is signing television an anachronism in these days of near 100% sub-titling or does it still add something? 78.150.187.19 (talk) 21:24, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know the answer. But I would expect that it depends strongly on the individual, and their history. People who lost their hearing at adolescence or later will have learnt signing as a second language, and may well be happier with subtitles. People deaf from birth will have had to learn written English (or whatever language) as a second language, and will often find signing easier to follow. Be aware that sign language is usually not just a transformation of a spoken or written language, but a separate language with its own (very different) grammar. --ColinFine (talk) 22:30, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Australian television news is sub-titled in real time by transcription on teletext. The transcription is a few seconds behind the sound, but it's pretty fast, and mostly accurate. I imagine it's equally as useful as having the signing in the corner, but can't guarantee. Steewi (talk) 22:54, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

For the reasons given by ColinFine a lot of BBC children's tv programs are repeated on digital with a signer in the corner. Younger kids would not be able to read English faster enough to keep up. I don't know whether deaf children learn English reading & writing significantly later than hearing children, but my (hearing) daughter could not keep up with subtitled films until she was about 12. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:53, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Finnish/English song translation- Väkirauta by Korpiklaani

Could I get an English translation of this song? The song is Väkirauta by Korpiklaani, and I like it, but don't understand the meaning of the song. You can listen to the song on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSrNqn89Bbw

Viere vaino, vihavieras, kulki kauhu, Hiien heitto, polki mannert', anturaine tarpahutti tuhokoura.

Sai se yhen vastahansa, yhen miehen mäkimailta, kera vasken valituimman, rautakouran eikkuvimman.

Veti miekan, riisti rauan, tempo, tuisko, terävällä! Väisi, viilti, veisti, voitti! Maistoi mustaa mahtia.

Turmel' päitä tappoteivas, välähytti väkirauta. Repi, ruhjo, raiskas', riehki, vihaan sorti, vainolaisen.

Helkky loiste metsämailta, valokannel vaarahilta, soitto soiton sankarista, veisti virren voittajasta:

Se on Kauko Suomen seppo, tannermaitten takomiesi, kuka tako mahtirauan, kalkutteli väkivasken.

Riemu, rauha, rajuköyry, voittovakka vimmatuuli, vallitsevi vaarahilla, mekastavi metsämailla.

Thank you very much! C4ffinat0r (talk) 22:43, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

This [4] (possibly dodgy) lyrics site gives an English translation that looks a little clumsy. Are there advances on it? Steewi (talk) 22:56, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

That translation may be a bit clumsy, but that's not saying I could do better myself. I can confirm that it does give you the gist of it: an invading enemy is slain by a hero with a special (possibly charmed) blade, and the hero is celebrated in song.

A word-by-word or literal translation would be impossible, and it would take a pretty good poet to render it effectively in English. The original lyrics are, as you can imagine, in a very archaic style indeed, with words that aren't used in modern Finnish at all and some made-up ones as well, and that's not the worst of it. For example, there is much that appears redundant, as is often the case in "primitive" poetry, and this kind of poetry is rather difficult to properly appreciate for a modern reader or listener, even a native Finnish speaker.

For what it's worth, I'd say that the lyrics aren't half bad as these things go, they are playful and show invention. I've certainly seen much worse: modern attempts at Finnish folk poetry can be quite embarrassing, and this isn't.

As a technical point, however, this song is not in proper Kalevala metre, but in straight trochaic tetrametre throughout. In the Kalevala metre of old Finnish poetry, about half the lines are in trochaic tetrametre and the other half have a trochee and two dactyls, or deviate from the fundamental metre in some other way, even though they're spoken in trochaic tetrametre.

Hope this helps!--Rallette (talk) 08:49, 13 October 2008 (UTC)