Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 July 27

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Nichevo

There's a Russian word, I think it's transliterated (is that the right word?) as "nichevo", it means something like "there's nothing to be done, it can't be helped." Does anyone know how to pronounce it or how it's written in Russian? Thanks! Emmett5 02:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

It's spelled in Russian as ничего. It means "nothing" in the accusative and genitive case. It's pronounced nichivó or in IPA, to the best of my knowledge, [ɲitʃi'vo]. --Chris S. 02:55, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

It's also used colloquially to mean something like a non-enthusiastic "OK", "not bad", or "alright" in answer to "How are you?". JackofOz 06:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Emmett5 19:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The correct transliteration is nichego, and I believe that IPA is something like [nʲiʨɪ'vo] ("n" is palatalized but not nasalized). Conscious 19:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean, "n" isn't nasalized? It's a nasal consonant; if it weren't nasalized it would be [d]. User:Angr 19:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm not good at terminology. I mean it doesn't turn into a palatal nasal, but is a palatalized alveolar nasal (can it be correct?). Conscious 19:35, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction - that's how the word sounds like to my Anglicized brain. ;-) --Chris S. 19:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

As to semantics, there's another interesting meaning. When used as a predicate, it means "not bad" is an approving sense (Музыка ничего! == The music is not bad!). The word doesn't mean "there's nothing to be done", but sure will be part of such a phrase. Conscious 19:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

crossword help II

could u help me wid these clues

1 mournfull poem or song -5 (**E*Y)

ELEGY--Anchoress 05:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

2 american - song-6,6 (**N*E*D*O*L*)not sure

Yankey doodle --Kjoonlee 06:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Try yankee doodle. JackofOz 06:28, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Yikes, no wonder [[Yankey Doodle]] didn't work. (I had wanted to link Yankee Doodle.) Thank you. --Kjoonlee 10:24, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

3 clear mindedness - crappy cities (anag)-12 (***S*I*A*R**)not sure

PERSPICACITY - you must have one of the words crossing this one wrong. --Ptcamn 06:00, 27 July 2006 (UTC)it is not fitting is there another word ,please

i think i got the clue "not sound"(7) wrong i tought it was reveled is it correct?

'not sound'? Wouldn't that be SILENCE?--Anchoress 06:30, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

bend in 2 (with laughter or pain)(6,2) {is it double up}

its not in the sense of noise but mental stability

OK. maybe ERRATIC?--Anchoress 08:16, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

UNSOUND.

Language check

Is it possible to get someone to check a certain page for mistakes (grammar, spelling, word order etc)? I'm pretty good at English, but I'm by no means an expert. What if I come across an article (or I create an article) and I'm not sure if it's 100% correct from a language point of view? Surerly there are native English users that could easily spot any such mistakes. Giuseppe86 12:28, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

You could add a template ({{copyedit}}) to the page; btw, which article is the one in question? Lectonar 12:31, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

If you're not sure there are problems, I'd suggest just leaving it- there's enough work to do on articles which we know have problems. Henry^Flower 12:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. I had no particular article in mind, but since joining I've noticed some doubtful articles, but there's no need to worry. Mostly they're related to Romanian football (one of the reasons I joined this forum was to improve the quality and quantity of articles related to this subject, but I realize this isn't a particularly high importance topic, so I'm in no hurry). There have been a few pages where I see many poeple have edited and not all contributions were written in proper English. I've tried to sort them out myself, but as I said I'm no expert. I only asked so I know what I should do as a last resort measure. Greets! Giuseppe86 12:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Basilic

The Ottomans used the Basilic cannon in an attempt to breach the Walls of Constantinople. What's Basilic mean? It's obviously related to basileus but I can't figure out the exact meaning.--199.89.64.177 18:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Wild, unfounded speculation: it's not related to basilisk by chance, is it? —Bkell (talk) 18:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Or maybe it's just named after a guy called Basil. - THE GREAT GAVINI {T-C} 18:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Just a guess, but perhaps it was housed in, or designed to protect, the basilica?--Shantavira 18:41, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it simply means king cannon along the lines of tsar bomba MeltBanana 19:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Inflection in Indo-European languages

I have two questions:

1. What is the most heavily synthetic Indo-European language ever? Am I correct in thinking that Proto-Indo-European was more synthetic than any of its daughter languages?

2. Is there any living Romance language (apart from Eastern Romance) with a complex case system? By "complex", I include any sort of regular declension, even if only into an oblique case. I know Old French had this feature.

Thanks! Bhumiya (said/done) 18:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

It used to be the consensus among PIEheads that PIE exhibited a highly complex synthetic grammar that has become progressively less synthetic as the languages have split and changed. That would make PIE the most synthetic IE language, but it is quite hypothetical. This view combined the most juicy bits of Sanskrit, Balto-Slavic and Hittite grammar. However, there is a serious questioning as to whether all the rich features of these languages were present in PIE, or whether they developed independentaly, perhaps with contact with non-IE languages. Then the problem is comparison: different languages can show a similar amount of synthetic features in their grammar, but show them in completely different ways. Thus, we cannot easily construct a mono-dimensional spectrum of amount of synthetic grammar. I'm not sure about Romance languages. You are right in saying that the general trend in Western Romance is towards more analytical grammar. — Gareth Hughes 19:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Gareth. I have heard that the trend from synthetic to analytical language is not a hard and fast rule, and certainly any attempt to reconstruct PIE grammar must be highly speculative. I wonder if there has ever been a clear case of a language, IE or not, becoming substantially more synthetic. I think that would be an interesting process to study. Bhumiya (said/done) 20:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Tocharian is considered to be more synthetic than Proto-Indo-European; at least, it definitely had many more cases for nouns. This is believed to be due to contact with Turkic languages, though if anything it looks almost Finno-Ugric in its complexity. User:Angr 07:42, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Really? I never knew that. Our article on Tocharian says next to nothing about its grammar. Bhumiya (said/done) 17:59, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it doesn't! But according to Tocharisches Elementarbuch by W. Krause and W. Thomas, Tocharian has Nominative, Oblique (basically accusative), Genitive, Vocative (Toch.B only), Instrumental (Toch.A only), Perlative, Comitative, Allative, Ablative, Locative, and Causal. So each dialect has 10 cases (though not the same 10); PIE is thought to have had 8 cases. Okay, that's not many more cases for nouns after all, but still Tocharian has added 4 cases that PIE didn't have (perlative, comitative, allative, and causal) while losing 2 (dative and either vocative or instrumental, depending on dialect). User:Angr 09:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

That's fascinating. It does begin to look almost Finno-Ugric. Too bad it died out—It would have been fun to learn. Bhumiya (said/done) 21:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)