Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 October 16

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October 16

Sentence construction

Hi,
Does the following sentence read correctly? As a birthday gift, Jack went mini golfing at Hole-in-one, a company owned and operated by Fred.

Or should it instead be: Jack went mini golfing as a birthday gift at Hole-in-one: a company owned and operated by Fred.

Thanks, --Fir0002 00:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Both examples are permissible syntactically. The first emphasises that the mini-golfing was a gift for Jack's birthday. The other is emphasis-neutral. WRT punctuation, a dash or a comma is better than a colon after "Hole-in-One". Steewi (talk) 00:49, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - I was a bit worried that 'Jack went mini golfing at Hole-in-one' might be regarded as a parenthesis (which it's not - it's a key part of the sentence). --Fir0002 01:08, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Both of these make me cringe due to the ambiguity and ugly sentence structure. Is it Jack's birthday? Or Fred's? Or Jill's (Jill being Jack's mini-golf-loving spouse ;-)? I think there are too many details to comfortably fit into one sentence. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:37, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Further to Stephan's comment, I think the word "went" is a problem. It allows the possibility that Jack went golfing alone. If the golfing was a present to Jack, then "Jack was taken mini golfing" would be better. If it was Jill's birthday, then "Jack took Jill mini golfing" would be clearer. Wanderer57 (talk) 17:05, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry that I didn't make this clear at the start but I'm only interested in whether the above sentence was grammatically correct. I'm not worried about the ambiguity as when the sentence is in context it's not an issue --Fir0002 02:26, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Did somebody give Jack a mini-golfing package as a birthday gift, or did he think that he was so special that his deigning to appear at Fred's company was a gift for Fred? Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 20:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I say the word "company" is wrong. You don't go mini-golfing at a company, you do it at a mini-golf course (or some such expression). Informally you might say "at Hole-in-one, a course owned and operated by Fred". (Formally, if it's an incorporated business, the course is owned and operated by the company and the company in turn is owned and operated by Fred.) --Anonymous, 21:11 UTC, October 16, 2008.

The above was an artificial sentence to parallel what I'm actually writing so don't get too worried about "company" etc. --Fir0002 02:26, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Netherlands in espanol

Why is it in Spanish "Netherlands" and "Kingdom of the Netherlands" is Países Bajos and Reino de los Países Bajos, but "Netherlands Antilles" is Antillas Neerlandesas and their language is neerlandes? Grsz^X 00:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Probably for the same reasons that in English, the people from the Netherlands are the Dutch, but the Pennsylvania Dutch are from Germany, a country the French call Allemagne. Probably because some words are translated, and some words are borrowed from the native language, often without any apparent logic or reason. Apparently in Spanish the word for the nation is translated directly, while the word for the adjectival form is transliterated from the Dutch word. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Also the Low Countries were known in Spain long before some of the Antilles were Dutch. And of course "nether lands" is "low countries". Saintrain (talk) 01:18, 16 October 2008

Which might lead one to logically conclude that in English there's a one-to-one relationship between the Low Countries and the Netherlands. Which would be wrong - the Low Countries also includes Belgium, and possibly a bit of France as well. The Netherlands is also commonly referred to as Holland, although to the Dutch that refers only to two provinces of the Netherlands, not the whole country. Then there's the landmass on which the mainland of Australia is located - Abel Tasman dubbed it New Holland, but at least he named it after the then province Holland, not the country some English-speaking people call Holland. The British renamed it Australia in 1824, but the Dutch continued to call it Nieuw Holland till late in the 19th century. "Australia" originally meant just that large island, and was a strictly geographic term. It did not include Van Diemen's Land, although from 1788 Van Diemen's Land was part of the colony of New South Wales, which was otherwise located on the island of New Holland (it only became a separate colony in 1825). Over time, "the Australian colonies" came to include Van Diemen's Land, which was renamed Tasmania in 1856 in honour of the person who named it, Abel Tasman. Then Australia became a political term when the colonies, including Tasmania, federated in 1901. Later still, it became a geographical term once again when geographers in their wisdom decided to define a continent that extends beyond the country of Australia to include the island of New Guinea - as "Australia": see Australia (continent). New Guinea itself has been split between various powers, and the western part of it was once part of the Dutch East Indies, and is now part of Indonesia. All terribly confusing. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:51, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

So, why, in Japanese, is it 'Oranda', as I expected this to come from Spanish/Portuguese.--ChokinBako (talk) 21:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Probably a transliteration of the Japanese pronunciation of "Holland". Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 22:14, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

No, by the proper rules that would be 'Horando'.--ChokinBako (talk) 23:15, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Except that the Spanish word for the region of the Netherlands called Holland is Holanda. Steewi (talk) 23:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I thought there must have been a word in Spanish like that. Thanks!--ChokinBako (talk) 23:51, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Quu

Are there any words in English with a Q followed by two U's? February 15, 2009 (talk) 04:24, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The only one I can think of is "squush", an alternate spelling of "sqush". Lantzy ^talk 05:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I can't think of any, but you may be interested to know that there are several words in Latin with that combination. Adam Bishop (talk) 05:41, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The only two in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary are equus and squushy. —Angr 05:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

a broader search finds many Latin medical and Linnaean names, and quux, a metasyntactic variable. jnestorius^(talk) 23:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Bahrain

Since "Bahrain" is the genitive part of the idafa in "Mamlakat al-Bahrain", does anyone ever just call it "the two seas", "Bahraan"? I'm guessing from the first line of Bahrainona that "Bahrain" is the normal name even without the preceding "Kingdom of" but I was curious anyway. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:50, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I would guess that preference for Bahrain reflects more colloquial Arabic patterns (where the classical Arabic nominative "sound" masculine plural/dual endings are supplanted by the oblique endings). The pure classically-correct suffixed form of Bahrain, treated as a dual noun, would be Bahraina بحرينا anyway; the form "Bahrainuna" suggests that the noun is not synchonically treated as a true dual word... AnonMoos (talk) 09:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Switch engines off or switch off engines

This has been bugging me for some time! Every day at lunch I go for a walk and pass a bus stop where buses sit parked for a while (it is a terminus or something like that). There is a sign next to the stop, which reads "Drivers must switch engines off if laying over for more than two minutes". Is "switch engines off" correct usage? Shouldn't it be "switch off engines"? Also, what type of word is "off" in "switch engines off"? Switch is a verb, and engines is a noun, but what is off? An adverb? Thanks everyone! 121.44.51.63 (talk) 10:36, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I would probably go with "switch off engines", but only because the rhythm of it is nicer. There's nothing wrong with "switch engines off" from a grammatical point of view. As for "off", I would say it's a preposition. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 10:42, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not a preposition in this sentence, though. There's some special term used in English grammar for words like this, but I can't remember what it is. They have the strange property that they can either precede or follow full nouns (as both switch off engines and switch engines off are grammatical), but can only follow pronouns (switch them off is grammatical but *switch off them is ungrammatical). —Angr 10:46, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary indicates the part of speech adverb for off in the example switch off. It is probably wrong though, because they indicate the part of speech preposition for across in structures like come across (but for me they should be the same part of speech). --Lgriot (talk) 11:13, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Chambers has "off" as both an adverb and a preposition. I went for preposition on the basis of this partial definition: "ín or to a position or condition that is not on". --Richardrj ^{talk email} 11:22, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary's example sentence for "come across" with an object is "In the meadow he will come across a rare flower." However, *"In the meadow he will come a rare flower across" is ungrammatical. But both "In the parking lot he will switch off his engine" and "In the parking lot he will switch his engine off" are grammatical, suggesting that "across" and "off" are different parts of speech, or at least that "come across" and "switch off" are different constructions. Calling "off" an adverb is okay to the extent that adverbs are the catch-all grammatical category assigned to any word that can't conveniently be called any of the other traditional parts of speech. —Angr 11:31, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

In Limburg we call it a non-verbal part of the verb (ónwèrkwaordelik deil vèrbs) hae zèt de moeater aaf -> he switches off the engine, while some say it's a postposition (afterzètsel) --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 11:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

See Phrasal verb, especially the "Particle verbs" subsection. Deor (talk) 12:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The fact that you can say either "switch off (the) engine" or "switch (the) engine off" proves that it isn't a proposition. When it is a preposition, you only have the first choice: when talking about taking a side road you can say "turn off the road" but not "turn the road off". I'd consider it an adverb, but the analysis that it's part of a phrasal verb also makes some sense. --Anonymous, 21:15 UTC, October 16, 2008.

This could just be a difference in styleor usage. Think of "switch" in the sense of "change to another state." So you switch the engine off, then you switch it on. If the engines aren't running, the sign's working. Or would you tell the drivers "knock off it" instead of "knock it off?" --- OtherDave (talk) 16:19, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

In 'Switch it to "off".', "off" is a _____? Looks kinda nounoidal to me. Saintrain (talk) 18:08, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, from a practical rather than grammatical point of view, the order "switch engine off" works a lot better than "switch off engine"; if you put the state (off) before the switch (engine), then you have to remember the state while you locate the switch, or read the instruction more than once. Maybe not a problem with the OP's sign, but a major hassle if you have a long checklist to go through. FiggyBee (talk) 18:18, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Switch off the engine! Why not?--Radh (talk) 19:51, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

“The banks just are not lending.” vs. “The banks are just not lending.”

What sounds more natural? Mr.K. (talk) 12:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The banks are just not lending. --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 12:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Source of the first here,(NYT).--Mr.K. (talk) 12:11, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Both are possible, but the second sounds "more natural". --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 12:17, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think there's a subtle meaning difference between the two. The first implies that not lending is the only thing the banks are doing which should be considered. The second emphasises the not part of not lending. Tricky to explain now I think about it, but I do read these differently. Bazza (talk) 16:09, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think I know what you mean, Bazza 7. There's a discussion going on about various things that banks have stopped doing, and someone says "Look, the only thing the banks have stopped doing is lending; they're still doing everything else". If that's what they meant, I guess I could imagine someone trying to express it as "The banks just are not lending", but it's ambiguous because it could easily be misinterpreted as "the banks are just not lending", meaning "the banks are simply not lending". -- JackofOz (talk) 16:19, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps "The banks are not lending" would convey the intended meaning. Wanderer57 (talk) 19:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

To me (1) looks like a subeditor rewrote "The banks just aren't lending", which is fine; for me, (1) as written doesn't sound right, in either of the interpretations suggested. jnestorius^(talk) 23:22, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

"I think it is more important than ever that he win." vs. "I think it is more important than ever that he wins."

What version sounds more natural? --Mr.K. (talk) 12:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The two sentances appear identical? Am I just too tired? Note I am seeing "I think it is more important than ever that he win." vs. "I think it is more important than ever that he win." incase of a later edit which makes me look foolish. 88.211.96.3 (talk) 12:24, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, now they are different. --Mr.K. (talk) 13:24, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

You're asking a question that can only be answered subjectively. Many would say #2 sounds more natural because that's their way of expressing themselves. I would say #1, mainly because I was taught about the subjunctive case and when and how to use it, and #1 is what I would naturally write. So it all depends whom you ask. -- JackofOz (talk) 13:48, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that the answer may vary somewhat by national varieties of English. In the American version of Standard English, the subjunctive "that he win" is required, and I think that this subjunctive form will sound more "natural" to many Americans. I have noticed that news announcers and printed works from the UK tend not to use the subjunctive in this case but instead use the indicative "that he wins". So that form might sound more "natural" to Britons. Marco polo (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Is "that he win" really required after "it is important"?--Radh (talk) 21:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

In North America, yes. "I think it is important that he wins" is possible but it means something else: "he wins, and I think this is important". --Anonymous, 21:18 UTC, October 16, 2008.

I don't think most Americans would really notice if the "s" was added on. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:30, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The historically "correct" version in British English is to say ".. that he should win". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 15:56, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Is it al-Maliki or Maliki

If I want to refer to the surname of Nouri al-Maliki, is it al-Maliki (is it capitalised as in "Al-Maliki"), or can I shorten it to Maliki.

In the Nouri al-Maliki article it looks a bit inconsistent and seems to use both forms as in: "In 1979 Maliki fled Iraq after hearing the government of Saddam Hussein ..."

and then: "As Prime Minister, al-Maliki has vowed to crack down on militias..." ExitRight (talk) 12:37, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

A lot of times the "Al-" is simply completely omitted when transcribing Arabic names into English -- In Arabic, Gaddafi's name is actually al-Qaððafi, etc. However, if it's included in the accepted English rendering of a particular Arabic name, then it it would probably be better to include it consistently... AnonMoos (talk) 13:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks AnonMoos. ExitRight (talk) 04:46, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes a conscious choice is made, as with Mohamed Al-Fayed, who is said to have added the al to his name only when he arrived in London in 1974. His son Dodi Fayed declined to add the prefix and did not use it. Nevertheless, our article on him is at Dodi Al-Fayed. Strawless (talk) 14:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Sentence structure

"How one can make a contribution to the society to make the present condition of the society developed" ? Is this statement correct?--202.168.229.245 (talk) 15:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "correct". This is the language ref desk, so my first comment is that it's faultless grammatically, if a somewhat unusual way of expressing the idea. But it doesn't have much meaning logically, and that may concern you more. If you take the present condition and develop it, what you get is a future condition (from today's standpoint). Did you mean "How one can make a contribution to the society in order to develop it"? And were you talking about society in general, or a particular organisation called the Society of <something>? If the former, you don't need the "the" before society. -- JackofOz (talk) 16:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

"to make the present condition of (the) society developed" is simply utterly wrong. At least I can see no way around that. The whole sentence is way to complicated. It simply asks How can we help our society? What is needed to develop our society? How best to develop our society? --Radh (talk) 21:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

"The" society sounds wrong, unless you are referring to a particular society. "The society of English-speakers", for example. If you are referring to "society" in general, I would leave off the "the"s. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 20:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

"One" makes it formal if not stilted, suggest if not an organisation (the Society of...), then why not: "How one can make a contribution to improve society." Shorter though, my two bits... Julia Rossi (talk) 08:44, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Honouring fatalities?

In the article Canadian Forces casualties in Afghanistan, this sentence appears:

"Subsequent fatalities have been honoured by much smaller services."

It seems to me that funeral services and memorial services honour people who died. "Honouring fatalities" does not say the same thing, IMO.

Other opinion please. Am I offtrack on this? Wanderer57 (talk) 18:38, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

You are quite right. This is an example of an euphemism run wild. Strictly speaking, "there were 531 fatalities" refers to the 531 acts of dying, not to the victims. A nice example of newspeak at work. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

But we can say that a man "became a fatality" when he succumbed to his injuries, which shows that "fatality" can mean a person. I don't really like the sentence, but I don't see it as wrong. --Anonymous, 21:05 UTC, October 17, 2008.

Sure we can say that. But it's a fairly recent and secondary meaning. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:27, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

To me "became a fatality" suggests a person becomes a statistic, otherwise he simply died. Julia Rossi (talk) 08:39, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

And the person who said "I am become Death" meant something else again. —Tamfang (talk) 17:19, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Neat segue into Julia's question in another place about "Death Becomes Her". -- JackofOz (talk) 23:50, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Number of languages needed to speak to 50% of world

How many languages (and which ones) would you need to learn to speak to 50% of the world's population... or 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%.....? It's hard to tell from lists such as this - List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers, because many people have two or more languages they speak, so those figures overlap. - Tea-shirt (talk) 19:09, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Well... If a person speaks a language as a second language, you could still talk to them if you both knew that person's second language, couldn't you? You could speak to me in English, and it's not my mothertongue. I'm guessing you would count me in the part of the world population percentage you can speak to, even though I'm pretty certain you can't speak my mothertongue...

From the top of my head, I'd say English and Spanish would get you on pretty good track. Maybe throw in Mandarin as well, for good measure. If that doesn't help, maybe this article can: List of languages by number of native speakers. TomorrowTime (talk) 20:28, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

According to this article: List of languages by total number of speakers, ignoring some assumptions which lead to rather large errors (such as the grouping of macrolanguages such as "Chinese" and "Arabic" under a single listing), using the Ethnologue data, which is the most conservative WRT the number of speakers for the most spoken languages, you could speak to 3.68 billion people (over 1/2 the world) knowing 8 languages: "Chinese", English, Hindi, "Arabic", Spanish, Russian, Bengali, and Portuguese. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:41, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

But, as the questioner pointed out, there are huge overlaps, e.g. especially English and Hindi, but also English and most other languages. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:46, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Does anybody know how many Chinese will actually speak Mandarin in their real life? --Radh (talk) 21:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The WP article on Madarin mentions 836 million speakers. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, the article is really useful--Radh (talk) 09:12, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

As Jayron and Stephan Schultz point out, there are problems with using the numbers in the list of languages by total speakers to answer this question, because "languages" such as Arabic and Chinese actually consist of several mutually unintelligible dialects. Also, I strongly suspect that the "highest estimates" in that list must include people who know only a few words in a given language, such as "Hello" or "Good morning, teacher!" (which I heard from children numerous times during my travels through Tanzania, although I was not their teacher and had never seen them before). Traveling through India, which supposedly has a large proportion of English speakers, I found that most Indians outside of tourist centers could not really communicate in English. If your goal is communication, not just for travel necessities "Where is the train station?", but actual conversation, you should steer away from the higher estimates. Finally, there is the problem of overlap, particularly for English, since probably a large percentage of the non-native speakers of English also speak one of the other top ten languages, especially Hindustani. Given these concerns, it would be best to stick to our list of languages by number of native speakers and to allow for maybe 300 million additional proficient speakers of English, most of whom would be Europeans, and probably 100 million additional proficient speakers of Malay-Indonesian. Then you have to discount the numbers for Chinese and Arabic to reflect the numbers of people really proficient in the most widely understood mutually intelligible dialects of those two languages (Mandarin Chinese, with maybe 1 billion proficient users, and Standard Arabic, with maybe 100 million). Taking these precautions, and avoiding languages (such as German, Punjabi, and Javanese) a large proportion of whose native speakers are likely to be proficient in a more widely spoken second language, you would need the following ten languages to reach 3.3 billion people (about half of the world's present population): Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindustani, Spanish, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Malay-Indonesian, Japanese, and Standard Arabic. Marco polo (talk) 17:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

'Law words'

I'm a student in Llb Law, also taking a unit in German. Wiktionary says that the word 'law' comes from Old English lagu, which is from the Norse lög. Wiktionary says that Jury comes from the Anglo-Norman juree, from Mediaeval Latin jurata, from Latin jurare. In German there is the word Jura (no article), which means law (as in that which one would study). Does that mean that the German word Jura came from the Latin? I would find this odd as the German word for 'law' (as in an act of Parliament/Congress or a law which one must follow) is das Gesetz. Is there any reason for this or am I just getting it wrong with the connection? --Joe^Talk_Work 22:45, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

No, you are right. In areas such as law, religion, and philosophy, which were conducted in Latin throughout Europe until quite recently, many languages including German have borrowed terms from Latin. We have just such a doublet in English: jurisprudence is part of the academic study of law. --ColinFine (talk) 23:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Not really surprising. First, "Gesetz" and "Jura" are not really synonymous, though closely related - one is "a law" or even "the law" (as in the body of all laws), the other is the field of study of laws. Just as pig flesh and pork meat are the same, but from different roots, so are "Jura" and "Gesetz" in German. "Jura" is the name of the field of study, inherited via medieval universities, where Latin was the language of instruction and debate. "Gesetz" ("that which has been set down" is my highly speculative etymlogy - compare "law", "that which has been laid down") is the less fancy native German term. Yet another term is "Recht" (that which is right), which also is used instead of "Jura" (that is, you can study "Jura", or "Recht", or "die Rechte" - all the same). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:07, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, the two forms, jury and Jura, come from two different Latin words, which however share a common deep root. Jury, as you have seen, comes from the past participle of the verb jurare, meaning "to swear, to bind oneself by an oath'". Jura is the plural form of the Latin noun jus, which means "that which is binding or obligatory" and by extension "right, justice, duty". Obviously, the common sense is something like "being bound or obligated" even though they have both come to pertain to the modern notion of law. Marco polo (talk) 17:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)