Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 July 14

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July 14

Cyrillic to Latin

бял

I tried three different online translators, and they gave me three different results: "bial", "byal", and "bjal". --138.110.206.101 (talk) 02:09, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Those are all different spellings of the same sound, [bjal] in IPA. Which spelling to use probably depends on what language this is (Cyrillic and Latin are alphabets, not languages; different languages use them in different ways). rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:18, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Bulgarian --138.110.206.101 (talk) 02:19, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Then per Bulgarian language#Alphabet, it should probably be byal (using the official Bulgarian romanization standard). rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:23, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary here [1] gives бял > byal. Note that japanese チェレン and ベル probably refer to generic slavic roots for black and white, instead of specifically Bulgarian. They are common to a lot of slavic languages: Bosnian: bijela, Croatian: bijela, Czech: bílá, Polish: biel, Old Church Slavonic: бѣлъ, Russian: белый, Serbian: бела, Slovak: biely, Slovene: bel, Ukrainian: білий.
Or Bulgarian: черно, Croatian: crna, Czech: čerň, Polish: czerń, Russian: чёрный, Serbian: црна, Slovak: čierny, Slovene: črn, Ukrainian: чорний. --151.51.156.20 (talk) 05:49, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

бял is the masculine singular form of the Bulgarian adjective "white", and it's also its base form, so it is бял that one would expect to find against "white" in an English-Bulgarian dictionary. The official system of romanisation of Bulgarian requires that the rendering of the letter я should be "ya", therefore бял is byal. But note that this system is often not observed, especially in informal contexts, so bial and bjal could serve as transliterations as well. There is also an unstandardised Bulgarian chat alphabet, which is very widely used informally when sending Latin-script Bulgarian-language text messages when Cyrillic is not available, and which allows Latin characters, numbers, and various other symbols. It could serve as an analogy of the Arabic chat alphabet or Greeklish, and any language rules are barely observed when it is being used. It could give results for бял such as bql (most often), byl, b9l, or others, in addition to the above mentioned byal, bial and bjal. --Магьосник (talk) 18:57, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Japanese name for...fashion designer?

Resolved

Hi folks! Let's see if anyone can help me out here. I've got a blurry text from a fashion magazine to translate, and one part of it has the name of a piece of clothing (it's a blouse) and next to it the price in JPY, then something in brackets which is hard to make out. By comparing with other parts of the text, I can guess it's the name of a fashion designer or company. Problem is, I can read all of it except the first katakana. So, what I see is, ＊ラミューム (where the ＊ represents the blurred kana I cannot see). Googling the bit that I can see doesn't help at all, because there is a plant called a ラミューム, and I just get a load of hits for that. Can anyone guess what it is? For those who can't read katakana, the above says '*ramyuumu'. Also, for various reasons, I cannot upload the picture, so we have to make do with my explanation. Cheers, folks! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:32, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

By a process of elimination, you can do a Web search for the string of characters, substituting each of the different katakana for the unknown character.—Wavelength (talk) 02:57, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I thought of that, but while that takes a little time (time which I could spend actually finishing the rest this translation), I thought it might be easier to ask you guys. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 03:08, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

It might be a brand name, Flammeum/フラミューム. I searched "ブラウス" and "Xラミューム" as Wavelength suggested. It took only a few minutes. Oda Mari (talk) 04:47, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Mari. Oddly, I am sure I did search for フラミューム and got zero results, and now I search again I get 115,000 results.... Anyway, I suppose my question should have been 'what is the best wild card for searching in Japanese?'. Cheers, though, that was the one I wanted! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:01, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

What did you use for the search? When you want to search something Japanese, you can have better results by using Google Japan or Yahoo Japan. Oda Mari (talk) 18:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I used Google UK the first time (yesterday) and got zero results. I then used Google UK the second time (today) and got 115,000 results. As I say, I don't know what I did wrong the first time (unless it suddenly became popular overnight :)). I used Google Japan just now, and got the same 115,000 results as Google UK. Anyway, thanks. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:36, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

When the pronoun is the object of one verb and subject of another

I suppose the classic example is the Biblical one:let he who is without sin cast the first stone / let him who is without sin cast the first stone. The hypothetical innocent is the object of the verb to let, but the subject of the verb to throw: should the sentence therefore have an object pronoun, or a subject pronoun. What is it that determines the correct pronoun? Kevin McE (talk) 10:04, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

It should have an object pronoun. It's the "who is without sin" clause that confuses people: if you leave it out, you get Let him cast the first stone which is unambiguously correct. No native English speaker would dream of saying *Let he cast the first stone. Incidentally, the actual wording in the King James Version is "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." +Angr 10:26, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it should be him. You could classify statements in the form "Let [direct object] [verb]" as a type of imperative or jussive in English. This expression is akin to "May [subject] [verb]". These two, I think, are really the only ways of forming a third-person imperative/jussive in English. Both of these expressions require the second verb to be in the bare infinitive form. In terms of the deep structure of the sentence, it is true that, in your example, him is really the subject of the sentence, even though it is in the objective case. However, in more traditional terms, the subject of the sentence is "you", supposedly implicit in the imperative form of the verb let. Marco polo (talk) 13:23, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, none of the common English Bible translations use the subject pronoun. Indeterminate (talk) 18:41, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 November 9#Ho hum he him, I smell the blood of a grammarian.

-- Wavelength (talk) 01:01, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Similar expressions are found at http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/10-12.htm and http://bible.cc/revelation/22-11.htm

and http://bible.cc/revelation/22-17.htm. -- Wavelength (talk) 04:55, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Human Resources Associate or HR Associate

Hello there, I am currently applying a job in a HR and management consulting organization. In this Link they are looking for fresh grad for the position of Human Resources Associate. At the bottom of that page they said to mention "HR Associate" in the subject line of candidates email. I want to keep resume subject precise. So I have written "Human Resources Associate of an established company". Is it grammatically correct or should I go for "HR Associate of an established company". Thank you--180.234.156.251 (talk) 10:47, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Why do you want to say "an established company"? The email address on that page is an "info@..." address so it would typically receive all sorts of emails. I think an appropriate subject would simply be "HR Associate" or maybe "Application for HR Associate position". Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:14, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and plus why would you want to spell out Human Resources in full when the job advert already tells you that they just want you to put "HR Associate" in the subject header. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 12:13, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

It's likely that it's going to be automatically filtered, and spelling it out formally will just defeat their system and cause your application to end up in the wrong folder. 213.122.25.117 (talk) 12:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

• • Is there anything wrong with "an established company"? Previously, I wrote "......an established company" and it was successful though. So what can be the alternative ( of "an established company")?--180.234.145.206 (talk) 18:54, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Well yes, there is something wrong with it - it doesn't fit in the subject line of an email that is sent to the company that you're talking about. It's just wrong. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 19:23, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Yep - it's just not necessary. They know they're an established company - the purpose of the subject line is to inform that the email is an application for the HR Associate position. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 20:59, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I am talking about resume subject, not the email subject.--180.234.145.206 (talk) 22:42, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Is it considered poor form in the US to use your name as the subject of the resume? After all, the firm knows what it is they have attached to the email, it's a resume. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:33, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I also thought it was a question about what to put in the subject line of the email to which the application will be attached, but s/he's actually wanting to know what to put as "the subject of the resume". Unfortunately I'm not clear what this refers to. If you're asking what to put in the space on the application form marked "Post applied for", then you should just put "HR Associate". If there's no form to fill in and they just want your CV (resume) and a covering letter, you should put "Application for HR Associate position" as the subject line of the covering letter. If you're asking what to name the file that will contain your resume, I'd go with Tammy's advice and call it "John Smith resume.doc" or similar - it will be easier for them to keep track of it. As for "Human Resources" vs "HR", they obviously know that they are one and the same thing, and I don't think you'd make a significantly different impression using one version or the other. Karenjc 18:08, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

world languages

How many different languages are there in the world? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mohsen kohandel (talk • contribs) 11:54, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Have a quick browse through Language. I then defy you to come back and tell us you still want an answer, without defining far more precisely what you want to know. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 12:07, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Ethnologue claims there are 6909 known living languages. I suppose that means there are 6909 ISO 639-3 codes in use tagged "living" (there are also codes for extinct languages, ancient languages, historic languages, and constructed languages). That's not unproblematic though as the assignment ISO 639-3 codes is often controversial. There are codes for entities that many people consider dialects of a single language rather than separate languages, while other entities do not have a code despite being considered a separate language rather than a dialect by many. The number isn't constant either; ISO 639-3 codes are constantly being added and retired. But maybe "roughly 7000, give or take a few thousand" will give you a ballpark figure you can work with. +Angr 12:16, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

That averages at around 25 per country. Wow. 213.122.25.117 (talk) 14:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Yup. Ranging from 2 for Uruguay (only one of which is spoken, the other is a sign language) to 830 for Papua New Guinea. +Angr 15:30, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

That link for Uruguay only shows the official languages, though. What about the unofficial ones, by which I mean, the languages of the indigenous (pre-Columbian) populations? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:32, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I strongly doubt Uruguayan Sign Language is official, and Ethnologue is generally very good about showing indigenous languages. If they don't list any for Uruguay, it presumably means that to the best of the editors' knowledge, no indigenous languages of Uruguay survive. +Angr 21:17, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Ethnologue says there is a sole language spoken in the Falkland Islands, Saint Helena, the Cayman Islands, and Bermuda. Also, Iceland like Uruguay has two, one of which being a sign language. --Магьосник (talk) 22:26, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

New Zealand Sign Language became an official language of New Zealand in April 2006, alongside Māori and English.

—Wavelength (talk) 04:57, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

"All but"

The freshman entered the gym. He was all but four feet tall, but he could run like the wind.

As in the example provided above, it seems as though the term all but cannot be understood literally; on the contrary, if someone is only 4 feet tall, he would best be described as being "nothing but four feet tall." Is there a missing word in the idiom or something else going on here? DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 15:12, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I would say that "but" should read "of". Doesn't make sense as it is. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 15:25, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

You could also delete the "all". Perhaps whoever wrote this was mixing "He was all of four feet tall" and "He was but four feet tall". +Angr 15:32, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

But then the repetition of 'but' is awkward. Actually thinking about this again, all but four feet tall does make sense, it means "very nearly four feet tall", but I still don't like it. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 15:36, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

You can also read this: "He was - all-in-all - nothing but... :)". HOOTmag (talk) 15:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

As with Waltz's second comment, it means "so close to four feet tall that you might as well call it four feet tall...but technically not quite four feet tall". It doesn't mean "four feet tall" as everyone else seems to think... Vimescarrot (talk) 15:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think everyone else does seem to think that. I think it would be an odd thing to say, since I usually hear all but used to emphasis how big something is, whereas this clause should really be emphasising how small he is (hence why it is surprising that he runs so fast). All of and but (as mentioned in the earlier comments) would emphasis how small he is. You might say "He was all but 7 feet tall, with feet to match, and buying shoes was a serious problem.", for example. 86.164.79.167 (talk) 18:34, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I've heard this used a lot in the expression "all but finished" to mean very nearly finished. 81.152.252.72 (talk) 19:06, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

"All but four feet tall", if it means "nearly four feet tall", wouldn't be a very common way to say it in modern English, but I don't see anything wrong with it. And the only problem with the "but... but" is that it's repititious, and that's easily worked around. For example, "He was not even four feet tall, yet he could run like the wind." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:18, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

"All but" is used to slightly exaggerate something, and often something that's already in some sense extraordinary. It would much more naturally apply to someone who's 6 feet 11½ inches tall, who might be said to be "all but 7 feet tall". Applying it to someone who's only 3 feet 11½ inches tall doesn't really make sense; that person, if an adult, is extraordinarily short, so an exaggeration of that characteristic would have the effect of making them even shorter. "All but 4 feet tall" is a slight minimisation of their shortness, not an exaggeration of it. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:11, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Could be sarcasm, like "a towering colossus at four feet tall..." 81.131.22.238 (talk) 21:25, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that could work, but it would have to be clear from the context or otherwise that it was being used in a sarcastic way, otherwise the point of it would be lost. Or all but lost. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:29, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

It was said in the sarcastic -- I thought it was either obvious or didn't matter. Thanks all! DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:12, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it works at all. "All but..." means "everything except...". It tells you little about what something is, it only tells you what it isn't. "He was all but dead" means he wasn't dead. We can infer that he was close to dead, but only because you can only be close to death from one direction. That's not true of height, you can be close to 4 feet tall either positively or negatively. "All but 4 feet tall" would mean he wasn't 4 feet tall but was some other unspecified height, which is nonsensical in that context whether sarcastic or not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.18.23.2 (talk) 09:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Makes no sense to me at all, at least not without further context. — kwami (talk) 19:21, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

weird English grammar (or maybe not)

What's the name for a construction like this: "There's 25 moles in there..." (i.e. "there's" followed by some sort of plural)? No one would say "There is 25 moles", but it seems to work with the contraction. Is this correct grammar or not? Thanks in advance. Rimush (talk) 18:22, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Just to be absolutely clear, are you asking about the unit of measurement, or the animal, in your example sentence? 86.164.79.167 (talk) 18:29, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it was a bad example, it's from a joke that includes a biologist and a chemist. I don't think it matters, but let's say the animal. Rimush (talk) 18:37, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

"There are" would be proper, but there's really no viable contraction for "there are" ("there're"? seldom used) which might be the reason people often say "there's" for plurals. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:15, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

For many people (in some registers) "there's" has become an invariable expletive. Consider "There's you and there's me". --ColinFine (talk) 21:13, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I use there's as a contraction of there are all the time. I prefer to think of it not as violating subject-verb agreement but as a phonological dissimilation of /r/ to /z/ after a preceding /r/. +Angr 21:22, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

"There're" (ˈðɛərə) is not uncommon in English English. Bazza (talk) 12:38, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

True but I imagine that this would be a bit of a tongue-twister in rhotic accents. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:44, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

If by rhotic accents, you mean people who pronounce the R instead of rounding it off like Brits and New Yorkers do, there's no problem saying "there're". It would be a homophone of the surname Lehrer, for example. But it's two syllables, and "there's" is one, and "there's" is a little bit easier to say than "there're". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:17, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Not exactly a homophone, Bugs, but definitely a rhyme. Homophones are word pairs like "by/buy", or "groan/grown", which sound the same in all respects (at least in some dialects) and the only way to tell them apart is the spelling and/or context. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 12:19, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I would, and have, said "there're" many times. I'm an American with a Midwest accent. Dismas|^(talk) 07:30, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

... as do I in northern England (except when I am using local dialect when "the's" is the usual contraction). Dbfirs 18:54, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

"There's" with a plural referent is AFAIK still considered substandard in the US. You won't find it in formal writing. But it's extremely common, and is established usage in many spoken registers. — kwami (talk) 19:18, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

"This is she"

Fran, when answering the phone and someone asks for Fran, responds with, "This is she." Is that proper? It sure sounds ridiculous! DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:20, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

What would you prefer to be said? "This is she." is grammatically correct, because the "she" is the subject or nominative form of the 3rd person, feminine pronoun. -Andrew c ^[talk] 23:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

... However, common usage would be "this is her", regardless of how grammatically correct it is. See Objective pronoun#Examples of usage. Hayden120 (talk) 23:50, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

If it helps, I don't know any young people who would ever say this. I've only heard it from my grandparents and old TV shows. West coast USA. --mboverload@ 01:25, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

See Subject complement#It is I/It is me. --Tango (talk) 01:48, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Common usage would be "That's me", wouldn't it? Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:47, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Reminds me of a cartoon I once saw in the New Yorker. A woman is standing just inside her apartment door which (stereotypically for New York) is locked shut with about eight different locks, and is saying to the person on the other side of the door, "I don't know anyone who says, 'It is I.'" +Angr 05:34, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

It is I, Leclerc --TammyMoet (talk) 11:10, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I seem to recall Helen Hunt's character on Mad About You saying it once and I wouldn't qualify that as an "old" TV show yet. 83.81.60.233 (talk) 16:11, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I just say "Speaking", though not when someone asks for Fran. :) Matt Deres (talk) 13:29, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. "This is he/she" is indefensibly pompous. --Viennese Waltz ^talk 13:33, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

No it isn't, it's just old-fashioned and polite. "Speaking" as a substitute, even so, has been around for many decades. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:10, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, given the amount of telemarketing nowadays, if someone whose number I don't recognize calls and asks for me (or anyone else in the house), my first response is, "Who's calling, please?" Also, in a work environment, we're typically taught to answer the phone with "This is [your name]" and answer the question before it's asked. That's also polite. (Where telemarketers are concerned, politeness don't enter into it.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:13, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Politeness is never out of place and never goes out of fashion. Not even with telemarketers. A quick, assertive "No, thanks" is all that's necessary, then you hang up. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:45, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

The point being that if someone you don't know calls and asks for someone by name, you need to exercise caution. Phishing is not just done over the internet, you know. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:07, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I fully understand that. You can adjust your approach to people appropriate to the circumstances without ditching politeness. In extreme cases, it's not impolite to just hang up. I guess we're saying the same thing in different words. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:00, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

"It's me" reminds me of the way this is said in French: They don't say "C'est je", they say "C'est moi". -- Irene1949 (talk) 18:23, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I say "This is she" myself, if someone calls and asks for me. Of course, my father was an English professor and it was drummed into me that only "This is she" was correct. "Indefensibly pompous"? Sorry, but grammatical correctness is defensible even if you don't happen to be used to it. Yes, I know the language changes-- that doesn't make older forms wrong. I don't like to hear "Speaking"-- it sounds a bit low-class to me, I'm sorry. Wave of the future is "That's me" like French "C'est moi." Evangeline (talk) 07:30, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

The reason for "she" not "her" is that the verbs to be, to seem, to appear and to become all take a complement (subjective case) not an object or so I was taught, many years ago . Dbfirs 18:47, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Evangeline, with your hang-up about low-class speech, I'm surprised at your reaction to "purchase" below. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:00, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

In the French sentence “C’est moi”, “moi” is neither the nominative nor the accusative form of the pronoun. The French don’t say “C’est je”, but they don’t say “C’est me” either. The form “moi” is equal to the form they use after prepositions (“pour moi”, “avec moi”, …). Maybe the word “me” in the sentence “It’s me” is something like the French word “moi”, but maybe grammar specialists didn’t recognize that because the form of “me” is not different from the accusative form? And because there are languages where such forms cannot be found. In German, pronouns are followed by the accusative case or by the dative case, rarely by the genitive case. And the sentence “It’s me” would be “Ich bin es” or “Das bin ich” in German – there “ich” is the word for “I”, and “bin” is not the word for “is”, but the word for “am”.

By the way, when I answer the phone and someone asks for me, I say “am Apparat”, meaning “at the apparatus”. There, “Apparat” is not the usual word for “telephone” – the usual word is “Telefon”. -- Irene1949 (talk) 09:38, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

The use of the nominative case after a preposition is Latin, not AFAIK native English. But English doesn't really have a nominative case anymore. "me" and "her" are used not just after prepositions and copulas, as here, but colloquially even after conjunctions such as "but" and "and". Usage after "and" is disparaged as 'incorrect', but is very common and quite persistent. — kwami (talk) 19:28, 20 July 2010 (UTC)