Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 April 23

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April 23

Demonyms for Niger and Nigeria

Surely they aren't both Nigerian. --75.40.204.106 (talk) 02:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Nope. According to our articles on Niger and Nigeria, they are Nigeriens and Nigerians respectively.  :-) Dismas|^(talk) 02:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

And as I understand it, they're distinguished in speech (following English and French pronunciation) by emphasizing the second syllable in Ni-GER-ian (from formerly-British Nigeria), pronounced "nigh-JEER-ian", and the last syllable in Nigeri-EN (from formerly-French Niger), pronounced very, very roughly "knee-zhairy-YAHN". —— Shakescene (talk) 05:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

There are online audio samples of these pronunciations courtesy of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary: nigerian and nigerien. Gabbe (talk) 13:50, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Funny. I'd expect Nigérois (Nigerese). —Tamfang (talk) 23:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

What, like Parisois? I'm sure we've had this discussion before... Alansplodge (talk) 18:11, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Here it is. Apologies, I used the same gag last time too. Alansplodge (talk) 16:29, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Gag? In the sense of something funny? —Tamfang (talk) 06:41, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Like algérois (of Algiers, fr:Alger) vs algérien (of Algeria). —Parisien may be influenced by the i-root of the ancestral word Parisios. —Tamfang (talk) 06:41, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I (non-native speaker) had always been inclined to think of *Nigeran as a possible English demonym for Niger; I don't know why. --Theurgist (talk) 00:33, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Cryptic crossword

Resolved

The clue is "Spout thrown overboard by Sam". Three letters, middle letter is E. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:43, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I would guess JET, as in "jettison", but I have no idea how Sam works into it. PhGustaf (talk) 03:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that's it, as in the word "jetsam" HiLo48 (talk) 04:02, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that'll be it. Thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 04:08, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Please, how does 'spout' figure in this? As some sort of code word? Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 04:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

"Spout" gives us "jet" HiLo48 (talk) 04:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

See Cryptic crossword for more info on this type of puzzle. The clues are typically in two parts, and the trick is (where appropriate) to figure out where the dividing line between the "straightforward" definition and the "cryptic definition". In this case, it's "spout | thrown overboard by Sam". The second part is "jetsam", and I take the "by" to suggest "minus", the net effect being "jet". And "spout" is a straightforward synonym of "jet". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, kind of, when jet is 'by' (next to) Sam it is something that is thrown overboard, so 'by' indicates next to. Cryptic clues are often like jokes, they are sometimes intuitive and look strange when you pull them to pieces. Richard Avery (talk) 07:35, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

This is why I'm not too crazy about cryptics. So, what is the complete and correct breakdown of the clue? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:29, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

My reading of this is that Spout=JET is the definition, and the wordplay or subsidiary indication is that if you put JET "by" SAM then you get JETSAM, which is something thrown overboard. The second part might be considered a bit unsound by strict Ximeneans AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

No kidding. Spout = JET, which is the answer. Thrown overboard = Jetsam. They need to indicate how "sam" disappears from "jetsam", or else I'm misreading it. I was thinking that "by" was implying "something that's skipped", like a "by week" in the NFL, or the "bypass" something. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:34, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Googling the clue itself, within quotes, I get a very few references that don't help, including this,[1] the actual puzzle. The answer should be in the next puzzle, which I can't find - but they don't give explanations anyway, which is rather annoying. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:59, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It's pretty clear, spout = jet, and jet by sam = (that which has been) thrown overboard. Not a hard one at all. DuncanHill (talk) 10:08, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure, except the answer is not JETSAM, it's just JET. Jet by Sam = JETSAM. So which part of the clue removes the "Sam" part? Or are they "throwing Sam overboard"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The first part of the clue gives the answer (spout = jet). The second part of the clue is the joky bit (jet by sam = thrown overboard), think of that part as being "what, when put by sam would mean thrown overboard?" Nothing removes the "sam" part because it is not part of the answer, it is part of the clue. DuncanHill (talk) 10:44, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I understand the joke. However, the cryptic part of the clue also needs to yield JET, and "thrown overboard by Sam" does not accomplish that, from what I can see. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

"Thrown overboard by Sam" yields jet, not jetsam. "Thrown overboard" could yield jetsam. The answer to "thrown overboard by Sam" has to be something that, when put by Sam, means "thrown overboard". DuncanHill (talk) 20:29, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I was interested to see that the entire crossword found by Baseball Bugs (in time out magazine, from gulf-times.com) is identical to the one that I did, but in a completely different publication - mine was in The West Australian. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:14, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

If I may explore the grammar of this weird pastime a little further, would any of the following variations be considered fair clues for 'jet'? Spout thrown overboard with Sam

Thrown overboard spout and Sam

Spout and Sam thrown overboard

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 18:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the clue itself is just poorly written. To make it work, it needs to say, "Spout thrown overboard WITHOUT Sam." Then it works. Unless "by" and "without" can be equated somehow. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It's already easier than almost everything I've seen (of course, there are always one or two). As Duncan says above, a "jet" is not thrown overboard, so we do need to "add" the 'Sam', not take it away. Otherwise, it sounds like we get something meaning 'spout' remove the letters "sam" and we get the answer, something 'thrown overboard'. [The first clue I ever got was Gold in broken pot on Pacific island. We see the distinction referred to a lot above more clearly.] Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

@ Baseball Bugs, No, the clue is fine, it's a good clue with succinctness and wit. Just because you didn't understand it doesn't make it poor. You admit further up the page that you are "not too crazy about cryptics" which implies a dislike or lack of understanding but here you go pulling down the clue on the back of your naivete. OK, rant over. Caesar's Daddy (talk) 21:43, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I read it as: spout / thrown overboard / by Sam. Thrown overboard is the jetsam, but they only want a word that means spout, and that word is by (or next to) "sam" in "jetsam." --- OtherDave (talk) 01:14, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Finally, an explanation that makes sense. Thank you! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:23, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Deltas And Tributaries

So a river that flows into another river if called a tributary.

What is a river that flows out of another river called?

(Think of the Mississippi watershed. Many rivers flow into a stream due to gravity; the main river (Mississippi river) is on the lower elevation. In a delta, many streams flow out from a stream because all these streams "follow" lower elevation (height).)Curb Chain (talk) 10:13, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

A river or stream that flows out of another is called a distributary. DuncanHill (talk) 10:16, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Literal translation from Spanish = Sexual harassment?

If you translate a certain sentence directly from Spanish, you end up saying in English: "You're spending too much time touching your balls. Why don't you go to work?" instead of the more idiomatic "you are too long siting around your butt. Why don't you go to work?."

The original Spanish sentence is informal Spanish and can be rude at times, depending on context and intonation, but, like the correct English translation, does not have a sexual connotation.

Recently, a Spanish lecturer has been accused in Princeton of sexual harassment, since he reprimanded a grad student, who was teaching undergrads, with the first sentence. (see here for the whole background story [[2]].

So, is that sexual harassment? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.169.177.5 (talk) 19:21, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

No it is not. There is nothing sexual about lazily sitting around scratching one's balls. It is ridiculous, it is not even what sexual harrasment means. Damn American neo-puritans. ·Maunus·ƛ· 19:29, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I presume the more idiomatic version was meant to read "you are spending too long sitting around on your butt", not "you are too long siting around your butt", particularly as one of the students is quoted as saying “I want the holes to be filled before I can move on.” -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:48, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The question of what behaviour is legal and what isn't is beyond the scope of this reference desk. That is up to legislators (and courts) to decide. Gabbe (talk) 19:54, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

In the (American) company I work for, either comment could be considered a violation of company policy about harassment and creating a poor work climate. Legalistically, it would depend on the interpretation of federal and state laws. Sometimes company policies are more stringent than the law, for fairly obvious reasons. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

You have to analyze the context of the situation in order to determine whether the matter is or is not sexual harassment. Answering your language question, if taking the correct meaning of the translation, they are both inappropiate ways of handling a situation in a work environment. What may sound playful to me or my friends is not necessarily going to be the same for others. In other words, both the English and Spanish versions of the statement are insults. However, as Gabbe mentions, determining whether this is a legal issue or not is not the purpose of this reference desk.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 23:46, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The bottom line on the question of "Is this harassment?" is (1) if you have to ask, it probably is; and (2) know your audience, because if you do, you'll likely never be in position to have to ask number (1); and (3) if you maintain proper office decorum, items (1) and (2) should never even come up. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:22, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

This is very similar to a case at Penn in the 1990s, when a Jewish student, translating a phrase word-for-word from Yiddish, referred to some loud black women as "water buffalo." He meant that they were being loud, not that they were fat and ugly. The women thought it was a racial insult. The college agreed and tried to discipline the student. It wound up being a national cause-celebre before the college dropped the case. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:50, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia article Water buffalo incident. Among the notable features of that shabby episode was that every single student who lied got off scot free -- only the single student who was willing to be entirely truthful was persecuted... AnonMoos (talk) 07:57, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Unless he was a total idiot, it should have occurred to him that calling someone a "water buffalo" was not likely to be taken well. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:02, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

That's nice -- it was an insult. However, he wasn't persecuted for being insulting, he was persecuted on shabby faked-up charges of being a racist. AnonMoos (talk) 08:07, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

He showed poor judgment all the way through the incident and its aftermath. Specifically, he did act in his own best interests. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:11, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

He reacted to a bunch of loud obnoxious disruptive assholes. The "poor judgement" came in when he told the truth -- because everybody who lied was rewarded by getting off scot-free. AnonMoos (talk) 09:17, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

At no time did he act in his own best interests. Perhaps he will, in future. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:20, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

The University of Pennsylvania certainly "taught" him that it's better to lie than to tell the truth. If you think that's what universities should be teaching, then you can choose to regard it as a victory for higher education. AnonMoos (talk) 09:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

There are some gaps in the article. Somehow it goes straight from his yelling at somebody to being made an offer. I read this as one of those cases where a guy yells something offensive, and then somehow it's the targets' fault tht they didn't know what he "meant". He was at fault. He should have simply apologized and promised not to do it again. Instead, it looks like he decided to stonewall (or got talked into it by some lawyer) on a bogus "free speech" argument. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:48, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

If you haven't followed all the baroquely Kafka-esque twists and turns of the "process" at Penn (with frequent rule-changes in the middle of the game, and exquisite touches such as Jacobowitz and his faculty defender being placed under a gag order so that they couldn't publicly defend themselves while others smeared and slurred him, and then Penn officials subsequently lying about whether or not a gag order existed), then maybe it would be better for you to refrain from sweepingly categorical dogmatically pontificating pronouncements. Jacobowitz could have apologized for being insulting (though under great provocation from other people who were behaving worse than he was), but the whole case was triggered by the fact that he refused to apologize for being racist. Since it basically took the threat of a congressional investigation and huge national negative publicity to inject some small sliver of basic sanity into the Penn "process", it's pretty useless to blame Jacobowitz for anything except not lying (since if he had lied instead of telling the truth, he would have got off scot-free along with all the other students who lied). AnonMoos (talk) 14:34, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

The reason that makes people think that literal translations of idiomatic expressions will make sense in a foreign language is beyond me. --Belchman (talk) 02:49, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

The reason is probably that people believe that their expression are so logical and obvious that anyone will understand them in the same way. People are not conscious about why things are the way they are. Quest09 (talk) 15:27, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Some people still ask "Why?", but it's a dying art. Not hard to do, really. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:18, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK, such expressions are very normal and common in Spanish and they generally don't have sexual connotations. Some languages are more sexist than others. If you want to learn a sexist language well, you have to learn to speak in a sexist way. It's almost impossible to avoid. A lecturer who does not use the language he teaches in the most natural way, including expressions that can be misunderstood by non-native speakers who come from a different culture, is not doing his job properly.

In that specific case, based on the report (which of course may be misleading), the university management sacked the lecturer for doing well what he was hired for. Normally they would definitely get away with it because they can hide behind a bureaucratic reason. But due to the lecturer's suicide it appears possible that they may have to explain to a court why they used anti-harassment rules as a tool to harass and sack a lecturer for doing his job. Hans Adler 19:32, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

If the lecturer committed suicide, that might bolster the school's case, on the grounds that he was mentally unstable. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:25, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Types of sexual harassment

While I don't want to get into the details (and research) right now, it should be kept in mind that current U.S. jurisprudence about racial and sexual harassment covers at least three broad types:

1. the direct kind of harassment, where someone physically attacks or verbally abuses someone else because of his or her race, sex, sexual identification, nationality, religion or disability,
2. the misuse of power to coerce someone into doing or avoiding something based on sex, ethnicity, belief or disability (e.g., basing promotions or discipline upon sexual favors, deliberately changing work schedules to include someone's sabbath day, introducing unnecessary wheelchair obstacles or physical challenges), and
3. creating or tolerating a "hostile work environment". The last can be something as blatant as hanging nooses where they'd be seen by black employees, or something as hard to establish or distinguish as continuous, persistent, and unwanted sexual banter or the continuous, ubiquitous display of sexual images around a firehouse. What's difficult about the the last kind of example, as with the Spanish slang phrases above, is that (unlike the nooses) something that may have never had a discriminatory intent (that's the way the guys have always been) can have a definitely discriminatory effect. Male chat has always been full of macho terms that mock weakness, homosexuality and effeminacy, but who knows what effect that would have, or indeed may have had, on someone who's not a vigorously heterosexual man (and if that person is genuinely distressed, is he or she intimidated from complaining by the workplace culture?) —— Shakescene (talk) 03:27, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

When we had a sexual harrassment seminar at a former workplace of mine, the guy emphasized that it doesn't matter if you intend to offend; it matters whether someone else is offended. You might find a Playboy centerfold to be perfectly appropriate to tack onto your cubicle because you think the human body is a thing of beauty or whatever, but someone else might find it offensive in the workplace. You have to avoid doing things that other people are likely to interpret as harrassment, even if you think they're OK. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

That seems a rather extremist and not very practical view. Surely you have to be able to reasonably foresee the likelihood of offence even if you are liable for the full degree of offence, no matter how unreasonable, per the eggshell skull rule. Say if you put up a newspaper clipping from a serious, mainstream newspaper (not The Sun) that no reasonable person would find offensive, and your work colleague entirely unreasonably finds offence in it, then that is hardly anything you could foresee and it is the offendee's own problem. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:46, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, there's stuff that people should know may cause offense and there's stuff that doesn't fall into that category. At the seminar I mentioned, the facilitator passed out a copy of the definition of NSFW from Fark.com and said those were the kind of things you shouldn't pass around at work. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:50, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

@ Palace Guard: It may well be true that you could not possibly have known a certain picture is going to cause anybody any offence. But if it actually does cause offence to someone, what then? Just because it wasn't reasonable for you to be expected to know this in advance, does not mean that the offended person is being unreasonable about it. How do you know they're being unreasonable if they tell you they're offended by what you did? If you know they're deliberately setting out to find the slightest fault in everything you ever say and do, that's one thing - and it means you've got a bigger problem with that person than just this single episode. But if their expression of offence comes out of left field, what then? If you have inadvertently caused true offence, regardless of any intent to do so, are you not obliged to rectify it? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:17, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

If you, through no fault (whether by intent or negligence) of your own, causes someone loss or injury, are you obliged to compensate them? If someone finds something about you offensive when it is through no fault of yours (whether by intent or negligence), are you obliged to change it just to please them?

If your neighbour finds the sight of grass offensive, are you then obliged to pave over your lawn? If your work mate genuinely and sincerely finds your gender, race, religious belief, or sexual orientation offensive, are you obliged to change it for their sake?

If it s reasonable that someone would find (even slight) offence in something you do, then you should try your best to avoid doing it. But if this would not be reasonable, then there should be no obligation to change what you do just to suit someone's idiosyncracy. Whether you would do it out of your own, personal respect for that particular person is an entirely different matter and a personal one between you and that person. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 03:54, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

You can never go wrong by keeping things G-rated at the office. Follow that philosophy and you're very unlikely to run into trouble. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:02, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we are really talking about things that are not "G-rated", whatever that means. Post this article somewhere in your office, or just have it lying around, and it is entirely possible that a female coworker will consider it sexual harassment. (In case you can't see it, I can explain where the male chauvinism is in this article.) She shouldn't get away with it. Hans Adler 07:24, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Why I would leave an article about a submarine lying around my office, I have no idea. But if you're talking about ships being called "she", that's a long-standing practice, whether it makes sense or not. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:29, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

You could have a son working on that submarine, or maybe you attended the decommissioning celebrations, but that's not the point. Regardless of how long-standing the practice is, it's not entirely PC, some women object to the practice, and I can understand why. See WT:Manual of Style/Archive (ships as "she") for a related discussion, where "the association between women and objects, particularly objects used mainly by men" comes up as a pretty good explanation of the problem. Hans Adler 07:40, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

You're posing a very unlikely scenario. But just in case, if she gripes about the use of "she" in the article, then you disarm her by saying, "Yeh, it's a stupid tradition, isn't it?" Then you change the subject and talk about how proud you are of your son who works on that sub, and be sure to refer to the sub as "it" instead of "she". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:44, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Personally I have never had such a problem and I am not afraid of running into it. I was responding purely to the insane principle that someone should be held responsible for how others react even when the reaction is unreasonable. The hypothetical co-worker could escalate the situation no matter what I did. Similar situations do arise here, and we usually solve them reasonably. I could easily pretend (that I believe) that you were personalising this discussion and trying to paint me as a male chauvinist with a son in the Royal Navy. Nobody would take me seriously if I dragged you to ANI because of that, and that's how it should be. Formulations according to which only the effect matters are just a lazy trick to avoid a proper definition of harassment. Whenever they are used in anything approaching a legal context, they are always implicitly restricted to the case when a reasonable person could expect the effect and the effect wasn't primarily caused by someone else's eccentricity. At least one of the commenters above appeared not to be aware of that principle. Hans Adler 10:13, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

In any work environment, it's important to get along. If someone finds something offensive, then put it out of sight. It's not rocket science. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that, in the UK at least, the principle at work is that harassment/bullying is deemed to have taken place if the person on the receiving end believes that it has, not if the person doing such behaviour intends it to be felt as such. That, at any rate, seems to be the starting point for any action. I have no evidence for that opinion and it's purely OR, but it seems generally accepted over here. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:36, 25 April 2011 (UTC)