Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 May 10

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May 10

Livid

Until today, after reading your article, I was absolutely positive that the word livid indicated an emphatic or overly demonstrative point of view or expression.

Ronald J. Rooney —Preceding unsigned comment added by Primorjr (talk • contribs) 02:42, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure a rock festival is the clear cut main meaning, but Livid (disambiguation) has a wiktionary link. Remember, Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:38, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Use of the present Subjunctive in English.

Greetings. I'm trying to find an historical rule apropos the present subjunctive tense in the English language. Most sources state something such as "[M]odern writers tend not to feature it as much as past writers did.", or that it —in the present tense— "[A]ppears in modern English to show compulsion, obligation, necessity, or suggestion."

I can't, however, find any dated authority as to when the present subjunctive (as opposed to the present indicative) applies in English vis-à-vis Latin or other Indo-European languages. Specially in the following cases:

1.) After a negative verb and a subordinating conjunction.

Indicative: "I don't think that she is ill."

Subjunctive: "I don't think that she be ill."

2.) After an emotional reaction and a subordinating conjunction.

Indicative: "It's a shame that he doesn't have a job anymore."

Subjunctive: "It's a shame that he don't have a job anymore."

Indicative: "I'm happy that it hasn't rained today."

Subjunctive: "I'm happy that it haven't rained today."

3.) After a verbal (or prepositional) phrase acting as a subordinating conjunction.

Indicative: "I'll give him the money as soon as he arrives."

Subjunctive: "I'll give him the money as soon as he arrive."

Indicative: "She'll lend him her book provided that he returns it."

Subjunctive: "She'll lend him her book provided that he return it."

Indicative: "We'll arrive at the station before the train leaves."

Subjunctive: "We'll arrive at the station before the train leave."

or 4.) After present tenses of "to want" or "to hope." (This one is particularly confusing.)

Even today, the subjunctive is universally used in prepositional phrases acting as adjectives modifying the object.

e.g. "I want him to win." Even an illiterate wouldn't say "I want him to wins."

Not only that, but (as in other languages) the present subjunctive is replaced with the infinitive when the prepositional phrase in question is used reflexively.

e.g. "He hopes to win."

—But what about other sentences with "to want" or "to hope?"

Indicative: "I hope he wins."

Subjunctive: "I hope he win."

I, for one, favor the present subjunctive in these cases, not the indicative. I wish, however, I could find some kind of respected authority concerning verbal moods in said situations.

Even if somewhat dated, would it not behoove somebody to favor the subjunctive in highly formal writing? Is there any reliable source out there to back this up (or discredit it)? Pine (talk) 06:51, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

First off, "to win" is an infinitive, not a finite inflected verb, so subjunctive is completely irrelevant in that case. And in fact, the modern productive use of the subjunctive (as opposed to certain fossilized phrases, and "If I were"/"If he were") is pretty much confined to a few constructions of the type "I demand that he leave the room!" or "I request that he be granted clemency" (and even there, British English tends to use the subjunctive a lot less than American English). AnonMoos (talk) 08:27, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It's apparently alive and well in the US. I heard about a woman who arrived at LA Airport, jumped into a cab, and asked the driver, "Can you please take me some place where I can get scrod?" To which he replied, "You know, ma'am, that's the first time I've heard it in the pluperfect subjunctive".  :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:11, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I live in the UK and mostly mix with people with well above-average education. I don't think I have ever heard anyone use any of those subjunctive forms. Some of those forms are only familiar to me from TV/books hamming up stereotypes of dialect or poor education and even then mostly from overseas, such as slaves in the USA. --Dweller (talk) 11:36, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree. None of those forms are used in standard English. Although I occasionally use it, one can get by in educated British English without ever using the subjunctive except possibly in a few set phrases mentioned above. I assume you have read the article on subjunctive. Dbfirs 14:36, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I am an overeducated native speaker of American English. As others have pointed out, "to win" is an infinitive rather than a subjunctive. Aside from that, all of the examples listed above are incorrect in American English, with the possible exception of "provided that he return it" under number 4. I'm not sure about the exception for "provided that", and I can't think of a rule that would explain the exception. Using the subjunctive with "provided that" sounds old-fashioned to me, but I think that I have heard that usage. However, I'm fairly certain that most speakers of American English (myself included) would say and write "provided that he returns it". Given the questionable status of the subjunctive in that case, I would not advise a non-native speaker to use it. That said, there are a few cases in which American English does use a subjunctive form, which our article Subjunctive describes. Even those uses of the subjunctive are beginning to fall out of use, particularly among less educated people. Marco polo (talk) 15:02, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Same boat as Marco Polo here. The only one that doesn't sound completely wrong is the "provided that he return it" one, which I might or might not perceive as sounding funny if I heard it in an innocent context. It sounds completely natural, though, to say or hear, "It is important that you be early", and this indeed has a different meaning from, "It is important that you are early", although context is likely to make the intended meaning clear even if the indicative is used when the subjunctive "should" be or vice-versa. --Atemperman (talk) 14:14, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I hate to correct you, but "I want him to win." is very much a present subjunctive, not an infinitive. In the original Latin, it's "Volo ut suus vincet."

And just as in Latin, the present subjunctive is replaced with the infinitive when the prepositional phrase in question is used reflexively. e.g. "Is spera vincere." "He hopes to win."

The question I asked, however, is whether there is any kind of historical rule apropos the present subjunctive tense in the English language (and not just the —somewhat lacking— modern rules).

Does anybody know of one?Pine (talk) 04:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

No, "to win" is infinitive. It's subjunctive in Latin, but that was Latin, this is English. "To win" is not a prepositional phrase, it's a verb in its non-finite form; this is not the same "to" as the one in "he went to the store". rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:33, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Try "I would that he win" for a subjunctive (not "I want him to win"). Dbfirs 18:09, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Dear Twinpinesmall, I know that you think that the existence of a subjunctive adds something to a language, but almost everything that you said in your original posting was either wrong in general or wrong in modern English. For modern English, the situation is pretty much exactly as I summarized in my first posting -- certain fossilized phrases ("be he alive or be he dead" etc.), the use of "were" after 1st. person singular and 3rd. person singular subjects in counterfactual clauses, and a rather narrow range of constructions of the "I demand that he leave the room!" type (mainly confined to American English nowadays). If you're interested in the subjunctive as used in the English of 500 years ago, then there are a number of sources you could consult. In any case, if you want to see an example of a subjunctive which is slightly less decrepit than that of modern English, then you could look at the French language, where the subjunctive is actually used in many of the contexts you originally mentioned. However, despite any romantic linguistic illusions which some may hold, my experience of French leads me to very strongly doubt that the existence of a subjunctive adds anything very valuable to the language... AnonMoos (talk) 16:51, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, in Spanish, sometimes two distinct meanings are conveyed solely by the mood of the verb; in other languages, different words are used. For example, aunque can mean "even if" or "even though", depending on whether the verb in the subordinate clause is subjunctive or indicative. Salgo aunque haga (subj.) frío = "I'm going out even if it's cold", while Salgo aunque hace (indic.) frío = "I'm going out even though it's cold".--Atemperman (talk) 14:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Certainly some languages have a strongly functional subjunctive conjugation, which plays an active role in the language. I was actually referring to languages with moribund subjunctives, which are more decaying fragments of ornamental linguistic bric-a-brac than an essential part of the language. (This is the case in English, and is almost the case in French.) I'm not sure that it serves any real purpose to get sentimental over such subjunctive remnants.., AnonMoos (talk) 15:58, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Proboscis

Apologies for the cross-post, but on reflection, I should probably have posted the question "Pronouncing proboscis" here.

I could do with some of your expert views, (English pronounciation and Ancient Greek etymology in particular) but as discussion is already under way, I'm loathe to move the thread.

Apologies once more for my stupidity. --Dweller (talk) 11:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

See http://www.onelook.com/?w=proboscis&ls=a and http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=proboscis&searchmode=none and wikt:loath and wikt:loathe and wikt:pronunciation. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:00, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Re loath, I did include a disclaimer that I'm stupid. --Dweller (talk) 16:11, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Learning a new language

For quite some time I have had strong desire to acquire fluency in at least one other language. My motivations are general, as I think knowledge of a language is priceless, and I'm kind of person that think no knowledge is useless, so this is more of personal development project. I am native speaker of Croatian and I have formal recognition of English competence. I decided I'd like to know another European language, preferably one of official languages of EU. But I have trouble deciding on specific language. I am considering between French, German, Spanish or maybe Polish. I have definitely ruled out Russian, any South Slavic language, Italian, Portuguese. I probably won't try any northern European language or something like Modern Greek or some language with insignificant number of speakers, but if you can make convincing case for it, I'll leave it open.

At this point I really cannot come up with convincing argument for any of those mentioned, and some aspects of those languages scare me (ie. ambiguity of pronunciation in French, compounded words in German). Since I imagine most of you who answer questions on language desk have strong grasp of few languages and their European context, in your opinion, which one would be most useful (ie. languages is used internationally and has greatest number of speakers), relatively easy to learn (I'm all for challenge, but if learning it will be like torture, no thanks), and there is plethora of language learning support materials (online texts, courses, projects like Simple English Wikipedia and so on). Also, I do not want to dabble into a language. If I decide on it, I am striving for relatively high fluency, and ability to hold average conversation with native speaker.

I am also a full time university student of "History" and "Security, Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism" which means I cannot commit to any formal classes, there is no way I can fit it in with my job, so, some advice on self-teaching techniques would be great (is it worth to memorise all the grammar rules and basic vocabulary, or just pick up a book or something like Rosetta Stone which attempts to teach it the way you acquire your first language). I acquired English over 8 years so I don't really know how would adult go about picking up a new language, and I am looking to acquire this new language in much shorter time-frame, and without direct involvement in the culture of that language.

Also, I'm considering trying for some kind of student exchange program, so this choice is effectively my choice of country I might go into.

Sorry for TL:DR and sorry for this question not being really specific or straight forward, but I don't really know anyone who can offer me insight into multiple European languages, since I live in Australia, and second (or third) language knowledge is not that prominent. My university doesn't even offer any languages but Biblical Hebrew and I think Old Greek. Thanks --203.59.83.53 (talk) 12:10, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd say Spanish. It's an official language of the EU, it has a huge number of speakers and, being a Romance language, it will help you understand other closely related languages such as Portuguese, French or Italian. Also, being already fluent in English means that you already know an enormous number of "difficult" or "not so commonly used" Spanish vocabulary (e.g. representation->representación, result->resultado, imagination->imaginación...) since English has tens of thousands of Latin loanwords - this last thing doesn't happen with, for example, German, which uses Germanic roots that you'd have to learn. --Belchman (talk) 13:05, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, "ambiguous pronunciation" in French is almost nonexistent. Once you know the spelling system, almost all pronunciations and spellings are predictable, unlike English. But really, in the end you should choose based on what culture and what language you find most interesting. All of the languages you've listed have a large population of speakers and will be useful, so it's not like you would be "wasting your time" with any of them—just follow your gut. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:50, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The Croatian language has no grammatical articles (see the map), so you might wish to choose a language which is similar in that respect.

-- Wavelength (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

[I am revising my comment, by inserting the definite article "the" before the noun "map". -- Wavelength (talk) 15:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)]

While I agree that Spanish (or Italian) is a good choice, similarity of English and German is, of course, much larger than between English and any Romance language. English essentially is a Low German dialect with several layers of rape-and-pillage words piled on top (other languages may have "loan words", but let's not kid ourselves about how English expands its vocabulary). If I could poof any given Western European language into my brain, I'd probably chose French. There is a large amount of literature (from Dumas to Verne to Leo Malet and George Simenon) in that language, and it has been the international language of polite society and diplomacy for a few hundred years. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:50, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The compounded words of German are more-or-less just like the noun phrases in English, except without spaces between the words. For instance, if the previous sentence were in German, "noun phrases" would be written as a single word. As a native English speaker, I found it quite hard to understand spoken French, even though I had a strong Spanish background (could read the paper just fine, engage in conversation about somewhat sophisticated topics and understand and be understood just fine) from having lived in Spain for half a year. So even though I picked up the ability to speak French rather quickly, I always had to ask speakers to slow down or repeat themselves. I haven't done research on this, but my impression is that French has more homophones and near-homophones than either Spanish or German, and it doesn't have the rhythm that either Spanish or German have that make it a lot easier for me to understand what other people are saying. Despite what most people think, French doesn't have any inherent stress in words, so only the last full syllable of a prosodic unit (which typically encompasses three to eight words) receives stress -- the rest of the syllables are all more or less the same length and intensity and are not separated at all (to my ear) at word boundaries. German in particular is spoken very clearly (at least among Northerners), even if certain other aspects (for this English speaker, mainly case, unpredictable gender, and knowing which preposition to use) are more daunting. Even though English and German are more closely related than English and Spanish, I found the use of Spanish prepositions extremely logical. Gender is also close to a no-brainer in Spanish. --Atemperman (talk) 14:40, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

If you can figure out the difference between ser and estar you've pretty well got it covered. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:52, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your input. What I meant with "ambiguous pronunciation" is that it is almost impossible to me to separate words and sounds. I am not linguist so I can't really say exactly what I mean, but if I had to take any foreign language and write it in Croatian spelling system by how I hear it, English is easy, German is harder but doable, French is impossible. Don't know it that makes much sense. I am aware that its probably impossible to have any messier spelling-to-pronunciation system then English. And yes, I found (still do) articles in English challenging just because Croatian doesn't have them, but I'd like to think that I have solid grasp on them, so I will not base my choice on articles of that language. That bit about German was pretty informational, but I forgot to mention one other thing that I find scary in German: capitalisation of all nouns. Seams like idiotic system. And, do I understand this right: written questions in Spanish are written same way as corresponding statement, difference is in inverted question mark at the start of the sentence? How do you distinguish them when talking then?--203.59.83.53 (talk) 03:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Like I said, it is not correct that French is not "spelled how you hear it". Once you are used to the spelling system, it is very systematic and much closer to having a one-to-one correspondence of spelling and sound than English does.

As for your other questions... well, capitalization of nouns doesn't make the language any harder to speak or read, and there's nothing "idiotic" about it (there are very little things about languages that are "right" or "wrong", "better" or "worse", "idiotic" or "sensible"). As for Spanish, you can recognize questions by context and by the use of intonation, which is pretty common (in English the word order changes for questions, but that is certainly not the case for all languages). rʨanaɢ (talk) 06:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

All nouns being capitalized in German can actually be helpful, as it provides a clue when reading as to what's a noun and what's something else. I think what the OP might mean about French being "impossible" might just be that it's harder to understand French. With regard to word order for questions in Spanish, when there's a question word (an English "Wh" word like "who", "which", "what", etc., or in Spanish, very often a "Q/Cu" word like "quién", "cuál", "qué", etc.), the word order indeed changes, unlike, say, Chinese (I think). In Spanish as in English, the Q/Cu word gets moved to the head of the clause normally, so the usual interrogative counterpart to "I'm eating a potato" is "What am I eating?" rather than "I'm eating what?". If there's no Q/Cu word, then the usual SVO word order changes to VSO. Spanish is more flexible than English in word order, in speech as well as writing, but as Rjanag said, context and intonation are reliable guides. As an English speaker, I can't ever remember getting confused about whether someone was making a statement or asking a question in Spanish. As with the capitalization of all nouns in German, the inverted question marks in Spanish are a helpful guide when reading.--Atemperman (talk) 05:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I very much disagree with Belchman's recommendation of Spanish. Unless you are intending to travel in Latin America, I think Spanish will be of limited usefulness to you (and even then there will be small differences). If I understand correctly, you want maximum travel and border opportunities for your effort within the EU—Spanish is definitely not the best choice. In terms of simple borders, Spain touches France (both Romance languages, but you would still struggle with French pronunciation) and Portugal (languages are somewhat similar, but you will still have to learn a very gutteral r, ;-) ). France and Germany, on the other hand, both linguistically and in terms of borders, essentially sit in the heart of Europe, and either language will get you far. Belgium (59% English, in cities ~95% speak French iiuc), Luxembourg (60% English, French and German are official), the Netherlands (89% know English, 70% German), Austria (over 90% know German, 58% English, 10% French), Switzerland (64% German, 20% French). And, just to make the figures even more enticing, in France, Spanish beats German by only 5%, and in Germany, about 15% know French. (I pulled most of these figures from the "Languages in ..." articles.) French will also be useful further afield, being an official language in Canada, several countries in Africa, and a few select island tourist destinations (Mauritius and Madagascar come to mind, :-) ). As I said, if you are not planning on visits to Latin America, I think you can see that Spanish has limited "travel" compared to French and German. As for how you go about the studying (either French or German, or both for an ideal choice), I recommend the Michel Thomas introductory courses (see them on Amazon here: [1] [2]). Consistently high ratings on Amazon (not that it says much). They are cheap enough, and easy enough to use, that you could get both and see which you end up preferring, and then follow it with the advanced course. One thing can be said about Michel Thomas: he certainly dispels the "frightening" aspect of a new language, and for not much money and no commitment you can dip your toes in. Maedin\^talk 06:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm a native speaker of English, but I also speak French, Russian and Spanish. I really wish I also spoke German, but I don't.

I'll begin with my views on difficulty, and then talk about usefulness.

I understand what you mean about French pronunciation. If you hear [œ̃nɔm] un homme 'a man', for example, and your vocabulary doesn't yet include homme, then you will be left guessing as to whether what you heard was un homme or un nomme. (There is in fact no noun nomme.) Final consonants in one word can very well form the onset of a syllable when combined with the following word. In this case, the syllable is {{IPA|[nɔm]}. So there is a problem with dividing utterances into words. Another complicating factor is that in French, individual words don't bear stress the way they do in English or in German. Instead, the last syllable of each "rhythmic group" (or "phrase") is stressed. So while in English you might have

This morning I got up around seven.

with all words except function words stressed, in French you would probably have

Ce matin je me suis levé vers sept heures.

Rhythmic groups can be as long as ten syllables in French. So when you're just starting out, it can be harder to tell where the boundaries between words are. That being said, after a few months, most people stop having this problem, since they recognize most of the words in any sentence.

Since you talked about becoming very proficient in the language, French may actually be a good choice. My personal experience has been that it is much more common for adult learners to reach native-like ability in French than in English.

I can't really talk about the difficulty of German, since I don't speak it. Spanish was easy for me because I already spoke French when I learned it, but I imagine it is about equally difficult. There is not the initial difficulty of words running together that there is in French, but as I said, that is only a transitory problem.

As for Polish, my experience with Russian has been that native speakers of Polish or Bulgarian I've met have been able to become very proficient in it with much less effort than for the rest of us who aren't native speakers of a Slavic language. If you choose to learn Polish, it is virtually certain that the effort involved will be much less than for the other languages.

As to the relative usefulness of these languages, I think French is the clear winner. It's the only language besides English that you're likely to find speakers of practically everywhere. It's happened occasionally that in Italy or Romania, I would address people in English and they would look at me blankly and ask if I spoke French. Polish is the language I've always thought I'd learn if I decided to learn another Slavic language. German, I understand, is virtually as widespread as English and Russian as a second language in parts of Eastern Europe (Hungary, the Czech Republic, etc.), so it seems very useful too. Spanish is useful especially in Spanish America, but is now also the number one foreign language in Brazil (ahead of English, which used to be number one, and French, which was number one before English was.) Spanish is not uncommon as a second language in France.

I'm surprised you left out Italian. I know a couple of Croatian women who speak excellent Italian and say that's not uncommon in Croatia. Ucbear (talk) 11:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Arabic

I was curious about some junk mail I got (I guess it is, first time ever in Arabic) - what does this mean? thanks, --AlexSuricata (talk) 15:03, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

 رسالة أنثى سعودية إإلى حسن عسيري‏

Google claims it means "Message FEMALE Arabia Aali Hassan Asiri". Probably not much use, but until somebody with knowledge of Arabic comes along, it will have to do.--Melmann^(talk) 15:12, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a typo, it should be إلى not 'إإلى'. --Soman (talk) 15:19, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

"Female Saudi message to Hassan Asiri." Is this all it said? Wrad (talk) 15:21, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like very good Arabic. Like whoever wrote it didn't write in Arabic much or was careless. Wrad (talk) 15:22, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It would something like 'Message of a Saudi woman to Hassan Asiri'. There a wikipage on Hassan Asiri in arabic wikipedia, http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%AD%D8%B3%D9%86_%D8%B9%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%8A. --Soman (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Nice! Looks like he's an actor. Wrad (talk) 15:26, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The google machine translation says the article is a "girl stub" for some reason. DuncanHill (talk) 10:40, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Hebrew inscription?

What does this inscription say? -- noosphere 17:02, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

What it's trying to say is כשר לפסח (kosher for Passover), but the last letter of the first word looks more like a ד to me than like a ר. +Angr 17:13, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The letter U inside an O means that the product is under the Rabbinical supervision of the Orthodox Union situated in New York and the letter P means that it is Kosher for Passover. Simonschaim (talk) 07:04, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The Orthodox Union may be headquartered in NY, but they certainly have supervisors living in many locations around the globe. And there are traditions from Persia (such as in modern-day Iran) that the ד and the ר look nearly identical or actually identical, and that letter usage is determined via context. I just heard about such a thing last week when I listened to this lecture by R' Aharon Kahn from Yeshiva University. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 05:35, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Spanish word for bottle

In Nicaragua I heard a word for bottle which I can't exactly remember. The reason it stood out to me was because it sounded like chingar, but with another syllable at the front. pachinga is coming to mind, but that doesn't seem to be a word. Anyone know what word it is? 149.169.84.149 (talk) 20:15, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, pachinga. It's in this list:[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:31, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Isn't that a Japanese pinball machine? PhGustaf (talk) 20:34, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

[PhGustaf, you might be thinking of pachinko. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:12, 11 May 2010 (UTC)]

Among the many internet references, imititating a repetitive sound is among its uses. I wouldn't be surprised if pachinga is somehow related to chingar, given its shape and operation. Except you wouldn't expect that to be a mainstream term. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:42, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

According to the Wiktionary entry for bottle, pacha is used in Nicaragua to refer to a baby bottle. Perhaps it's a derivative of that? Deor (talk) 20:46, 10 May 2010 (UTC)