Language desk
< October 12	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	October 14 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 13[edit]

French verbs[edit]

Approximately what percent of all French verbs are irregular, even if it is a small irregularity or form change such as préférer (je préfère but nous préférons) or even manger (nous mangeons). Also, what percent of these are common (ie, at least once per week or 2 weeks) use. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 02:26, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure that the question has a well-defined answer the way you asked it, since the more words you include which are relatively rare, the lower the percentage of irregulars will be, since the -er conjugation will predominate. Also, do you mean irregular as a percentage of dictionary listings, or irregular as a percentage of verb forms used in running text? AnonMoos (talk) 07:58, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you are including all those as "irregular", then it is probably quite high. Most of those, however, are not really considered 'irregular'. Even some verbs that are taught in foreign textbooks as "irregular" but are somewhat predictable (such as sortir/partir, and the whole "irregular" -ir set like tenir) are actually, I think, considered regular in non-L2 stuff. (I'm not too familiar with the actual linguistics literature on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there they are maybe considered irregular verbs with gang effects.) In any case, they're not as irregular as, e.g., être, avoir, faire, aller. Anyway, things like préférer and manger are certainly not irregular, as the changes within them are driven entirely by rule and as far as I know there are no common exceptions to them. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:11, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A majority of irregular verbs see fairly frequent use. In fact, the more irregular a verb is, the more frequently it is used, as a general rule of thumb. I would expect that, in spoken French, a majority of verbs in a typical (everyday) discourse are irregular. Marco polo (talk) 15:00, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That is a good point. This article (among others) also confirms that the most frequent verbs tend to be the irregular ones. (A situation not any different than the one for English.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:11, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

English is conspicuous for the way that the verb "to be" is hyper-irregular (i.e. includes whole morphological inflectional categories which simply don't exist for any other verb in the language, as well as multiple suppletions). AnonMoos (talk) 07:14, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can you say that in English, please, Anon? :) Seriously, though, can you explain with some examples. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 08:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No other verb in modern English has anything comparable to the am-are-be distinction or the was-were distinction, so where all other verbs have a maximum of five distinct inflectional forms in the same paradigm (e.g. "take", "takes", "taking", "took", "taken"), "to be" has eight distinct inflectional forms. Also, the forms other than "be"-"being"-been" all derive from separate stems (as far as purely synchronic analysis is involved), so where a verb like "go"-"went" has two separate roots in its paradigm, "to be" appears to have six. It's not really a standard term, but I think "hyper-irregular" would be a good way to describe "to be" in English... AnonMoos (talk) 09:08, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. Maybe this is what Hamlet was worried about. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:06, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In addittion to the above, the list of irregular verbs is fixed (there are about 150 of them), any newly coined verbs should be regular (and ending with "er") now, unless they're just a prefixed form of an existing irregular verb. – b_jonas 12:05, 17 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gender of non-Romance toponyms in Spanish[edit]

In Castilian, one says "Nueva York" and "Nueva Jersey", but "Nuevo Hampshire" and "Nuevo Brunswick". In Catalan, Portuguese and Galician, however, all these terms are feminine. How did this strange state of affairs come to be? Why are "Hampshire" and "Brunswick" considered masculine while "York" and "Jersey" are feminine? Was the assignment entirely random, or is there an etymological logic to it? LANTZY ^TALK 08:31, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is short, but might interest you all the same. Apparently, Nueva Hampshire exists as well, as do both Nueva México and Nuevo México, which is what prompted the q & a I linked. ---Sluzzelin talk 08:37, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These Lecciones de navegación ó Principios necesarios á la ciencia del piloto from 1819 even use the feminine and masculine version of New Hampshire on the same page! ---Sluzzelin talk 08:42, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One would expect the femenine gender for non-Latin-derived names of cities [fem. ciudad]: that is the reason behind Nueva York. Similarly, since New Hampshire is the toponym of a state (masc. estado), we have the preferred form Nuevo Hampshire, cf. for instance this and this. Of course, this is in a way arbitrary, but at least explains the logic.
For the case of Nuevo México (cf. [1]), most speakers would not consider using the femenine form, since México has a stable state as a masculine toponym in Spanish. Pallida Mors 10:32, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose the ciudad-estado distinction explains it pretty well, since the gender of the state seems to correspond to the gender of the thing that the namesake is: "Nueva (ciudad de) York", "Nueva (isla de) Jersey", "Nuevo (condado de) Hampshire". The weird one is "Nuevo Brunswick". In Spanish, as in antiquated English, "Brunswick" is a city in Germany, so you'd think the Canadian province would follow the template of "Nueva York", and be "Nueva (ciudad de) Brunswick". LANTZY ^TALK 16:29, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Except that the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (el Electorado de or el Ducado de ...) was a historic state, with a masculine gender in Spanish. In fact, the ruler of Brunswick-Lüneburg became King George I of Great Britain in 1714, the same year in which the town in New Jersey was named New Brunswick. This can hardly be a coincidence, and although our article states that the town was named after the town in Germany, it seems more likely that it was named after the home duchy of the new king of Great Britain. Marco polo (talk) 17:39, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense, but I suppose you could retroactively justify using either "la" or "el" for just about any place name: la (isla de) Jersey vs. el (bailiazgo de) Jersey. LANTZY ^TALK 01:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I just think that the femenine or masculine adjectives were applied considering the respective category of the toponym, not having precisely the ellipsis in mind. And the categories city and state are simple, encompassing and well-known [hey, I haven't heard bailiazgo before in my life!]. On the other hand, the term provincia is more or less a femenine equivalence for estado. Pallida Mors 12:56, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just throwing in another Romance language for comparison, French has "Nouveau-Brunswick", and if Wikipedia is correct "Nouveau-~~Mexico~~", both masculine; but New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire keep their English names. Nova Scotia, as the Latin form used in English suggests, is feminine: Nouvelle-Écosse. --Anonymous, 06:00 UTC, October 14, 2010.

In French it's (le) Nouveau-Mexique. — AldoSyrt (talk) 13:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Petit Larousse (2004) gives fr:Nouvelle-Galles de Sud for New South Wales. Also:

* (presumably masculine:)
Nouveau-Brunswick (New Brunswick)
fr:Nouveau-Mexique (New Mexico)
* (presumably feminine:)
Nouvelle-Amsterdam redirected to Île Amsterdam (Amsterdam Island in the Southern Indian Ocean)
fr:La Nouvelle-Amsterdam (New Amsterdam now New York City)
fr:Nouvelle-Angleterre (New England, U.S.A.)
fr:Nouvelle-Bretagne for New Britain
Nouvelle-Calédonie (New Caledonia)
fr:Nouvelle-Espagne for New Spain (Mexico)
Nouvelle-France for New France (French Canada)
fr:Nouvelle-Grenade for New Granada (viceroyalty of greater Colombia)
fr:Nouvelle-Guinée (New Guinea)
fr:Nouvelle-Irlande (New Ireland)
Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans)
fr:Nouvelle-Sibérie (New Siberia)
Nouvelle-Zélande (New Zealand) and
fr:Nouvelle-Zemble (Novaya Zemlya)

I'm too sleepy and forgetful to see the logic or illogic of this (for example Wales is le Pays de Galles), and I can't remember all the masculine and feminine countries off-hand.—— Shakescene (talk) 18:13, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that was stupid. I followed the link to fr:Nouveau-Mexique, made a mental note of the Nouveau part, and forgot the other half. Sorry. --Anon, 03:52, October 15, 2010.

Being reminded from the preceding post how to enter wikilinks from Wikipédie, I entered them in my list above, and also encountered this item from the fr:Wikipédie search box [converted to this Wikipedia]:

fr:Nouvelle-Néerlande (New Netherland)
Not to be confused with fr:Nouvelle-Hollande (Brésil) or fr:Nouvelle-Hollande (Australie).

—— Shakescene (talk) 04:58, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I corrected some typos in the above list (Méxique → Mexique, Grénade → Grenade, Brétagne → Bretagne) — AldoSyrt (talk) 09:25, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What language is this?[edit]

Resolved

– gibberish vandalism, IP blocked. Looie496 (talk) 19:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This was reverted and the user was chastised.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:56, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect we have a vandal.[2][3]Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For future use, we have a page to alert admins in cases where a vandal does not respond to repeated warnings, Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism; though I have never used it. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:37, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The person has now been blocked.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:53, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just so you'll know, the person who did the reverting in the first case didn't call it vandalism, so I gave the person the benefit of the doubt until I saw the other contributions. Not that this was not proof the person was confused instead of a vandal, but action has been taken.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:45, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

French[edit]

What is the difference in usage (when would each be used) between French la langue and le langage. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 21:13, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See this article. Speaking from a technical linguistics point of view, those two are translated as "code" and "capacity" and go back to Ferdinand de Saussure, who wrote of the difference between a communication system (for example English or French etc) as it exists abstractly and independently of any one speaker ("code") and on the other hand your own personal "capacity" to implement that system that exists inside your own head.

But, from a non-technical point of view, you would use "langue" + the name of the language: "la langue francaise, la langue japonaise"etc; and you would use "langage" to talk about the idea of language with out referring to any one specific language: "la development du langage". See [4] and [5] for more examples! Duomillia (talk) 23:27, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But if I were to say like, French is a beautiful language, would I say "C'est une belle langue" or "un beau langage"? 24.92.78.167 (talk) 00:21, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

La belle langue française - because you are referring to a specific one. Duomillia (talk) 03:15, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

However, in French we say: Ada, Pascal, Java, Python, Lisp sont des langages (langages de programmation) — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:06, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Computers a a law unto themselves; we Brits have to put up with "programs" instead of "programmes". Alansplodge (talk) 08:15, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]