Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 16

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.

March 16

Polytheama / Politeama

I was sent here from the Humanities desk:

There are several Politeama theaters in Italy, Portugal and Brazil. Apparently there is even a Polytheama in Greece. So what is the story behind the name? What does Polytheama mean in Greek? Is it a famous theater of Antiquity? A placename? A mythological character?

From the answers there, it means something like "a theatre or act where different kinds of shows are performed". Can you confirm? --Error (talk) 00:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

As near as I can figure, it's a compound of Πολυ and Θεαμα "spectacle". Unfortunately, the newly-revamped Perseus.tufts.edu search interface to the full Liddell & Scott lexicon appears to have a lot of quirks and errors, so I'm going by my smaller paper version... AnonMoos (talk) 01:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The word in modern Greek is defined as "an organized spectacle, composed of many individual elements and artistic events (sound, music, dance, movement, drama, pictures, etc.)" ([1] and Google translate). Lesgles (talk) 03:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

AnonMoos, the LSJ on Perseus gave me "polytheamon", or "things having been seen" or something like that. It didn't give a root verb for it though. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The whole Perseus search form didn't give me anything very directly relevant to ΠολυΘεαμα (see further my comment on Talk:A Greek-English Lexicon); polytheamōn with omega is an agent noun with the rather different meaning "one who sees / has seen much". However, the basic verb is Θεαομαι "to view, look at". AnonMoos (talk) 10:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Brazilian Portuguese

The article Brazilian Portuguese says that "Roughly speaking, the differences between European Portuguese and standard Brazilian Portuguese can be defined as comparable to the ones found between British and American English." It links to a supposed source for this claim, but I don't actually see where the supposed source says this, or anything like it. I've read elsewhere that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are greater than those between BrE and AmE. Does anyone here have any knowledge of this? 86.160.218.94 (talk) 04:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I've no idea whether this is true, but saying that it "can be defined" looks over-exact. It is worth pointing out that there are two different issues when considering linguistic difference - those between spoken variants, and those between written ones. (there is also the question as to whether 'British English' is a particularly useful concept to use for comparisons, given the wide variations, and less-than-universal comprehensibility...) AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

According to this source and our own article (from which the sentence you cite seems to have been removed), the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese include substantial and profound differences in grammar, including differences in personal pronouns and in verb conjugations. These differences, and wide differences in pronunciation, mean that speakers of "standard" dialects of Brazilian may have trouble understanding speakers of standard European Portuguese. They also mean that the two versions of Portuguese amount to separate languages for translation purposes, in that a translation into Brazilian Portuguese would not be acceptable to readers of European Portuguese and vice versa. Clearly, the differences between the English of southern England (to avoid Andy's objection to the overgeneralized term British English) and the English of the United States are not as extreme as this. There are small, subtle differences in grammar between these two versions of English, but not enough to impede comprehension. Certainly, there is very little difference in the use of pronouns and verb forms (apart from a handful of irregular verbs). Also, a translation into either version of English requires only minor edits before publication in the other market. So, I think there is a strong case that Brazilian Portuguese is further from European Portuguese than American English is from the English of southern England. Marco polo (talk) 15:24, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, sorry, some time after posting my original question here, I made this edit, which I forgot to note here. 109.153.234.145 (talk) 20:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I used to work for a Brazilian reinsurance company in London. There were a couple of Portuguese nationals working there who didn't seem to have any difficulty conversing with the Brazilian management. When asked, they also used the US/British English analogy. That said, I once heard one of the Portuguese hold a long conversation with an Italian ice-cream man without either being able to speak the other's language. Alansplodge (talk) 12:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

An Exultation of Larks

I am hoping to find an electronic copy of this book AN Exultation OF Larks by James Lipton availal on the internet for payment or not. It is about collective nouns. Does anyone know? 117.241.120.50 (talk) 06:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

It appears to still be in print. If you can't find it via Google, have you tried contacting the Bravo TV network where Lipton works, or the publisher Penguin Books? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

i have not because I suspect they would just send m to by a printed copy wich are readily avail.able in the US (though I' m not there!!!) I am looking for an ebook therefore 117.241.121.182 (talk) 09:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Have you looked into the various e-book devices that are out there, and whether this book is available on any of them? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes. I ve also tried the old-world mode of searching google 'exaltation of larks lipton ebook OR pdf' to no avail......... 117.241.123.203 (talk) 09:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Is the book orderable from the Penguin website? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Your not being helpful -- I want the book in electronic fromat. It is not availble in electornic format from any of the obvious places I ve looked. Obviously. 117.241.122.193 (talk) 04:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Why don't you at least try to contact the publisher? Don't presume that they're going to not help you. Give them a chance. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:27, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

According to Worldcat, the only place with a digital edition of Exaltation of Larks is The Hathi Trust Digital Library. Their copy was digitized by the University of Michigan. Access is limited to searching within the text. Number of search matches and their page numbers are visible; the actual text search results are not. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a handy tool to use, if you already have a hard-copy of the book and are trying to find something specific. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

They also suggest it as a tool to decide whether a book is worth purchasing/chasing down at some obscure library, &c. Search a general but hard-to-find orthopedics title for Dupuytren's disease and see how many times it hits, for example. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 18:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

No need to go to that trouble. Just ask me, I'll tell you whether it's worth buying or not. The answer is, Yes, it's worth buying. I've had it in my personal library for about 25 years and I would not part with it for a lashings of Chinese tea. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The bottom line is that the only legal electronic copies you're likely to find would have to originate from the publisher. If someone else transcribed it, it is likely a copyright violation. The ref desk will not aid and abet copyright violations. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

At least not for good books... --Ludwigs2 18:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Commentary on a writing issue

I'm after some commentary so that I can better get my head around an issue. See this edit, where an editor has merged:

• He is particularly notable for his choral music

with

• He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge

to produce:

• Particularly notable for his choral music, he was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.

Now, those 2 facts seem as unrelated as:

• He was an only child, and
• He married his second wife in 1893.

I certainly hope I never see a sentence like: An only child, he married his second wife in 1893. But many Wikipedia articles seem to suffer from this obsession some editors have to connect facts by use of the form: <clause phrase>, <main statement>, where the two parts often have only the most tenuous of connections, so one day I'm sure it will happen.

Does this construction have a name or is it better described than my feeble attempt? Why is it so favoured by many writers, even where the raw materials contraindicate its use? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I would have called it a non sequitur, although our article doesn't really reflect my understanding of a non sequitur.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Neither "An only child" nor "Particularly notable for his choral music" is a clause, contra the question. The former is a noun phrase and the latter an adjectival phrase. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Tks for the correction. Question amended. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I actually don't see any problem with the merged sentence: it reads like things I came across when studying music, and particularly things from Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe, Tammy, it's a case of "see an error often enough and it no longer seems like an error". But maybe calling this an "error" is overstating things a little.

Stanford was indeed particularly notable for his choral music. He wrote choral music throughout his life, starting decades before he ever became a professor of music. The problem is that connecting these activities in the one sentence suggests the former led to the latter. It certainly wouldn't have hurt, but he also wrote a pile of symphonies and much organ music, so what about them? There is no particular connection between him writing choral music and him becoming a professor of music. Some professors of music (most, in fact) are completely non-notable as composers, some hardly composing anything at all. Most composers never become professors of music. There is no innate connection between these two things, but the merged sentence would seem to have us believe otherwise. Or, if it's not intending to say the one led to the other, what justification is there for putting them together like this? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I would have agreed with you had the sentence used the word "became". However, it didn't, so I don't see that implication there. --TammyMoet (talk) 12:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Right. So again I ask: if being a noted choral composer is quite separate from being a professor of music, what is the reason for putting these facts together in the same sentence? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:37, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

In support of your initial claim I would suggest "none whatsoever". If the events are unrelated, then merging the sentences only serves to confuse the reader. Even if the events were indeed related, then the sentence should reflect that relationship (Hypothetically: "Due to his notable work on choral music, he was made professor [...]" or "During his time as a professor [...] he made some of his most notable work on choral music"). --DI (talk) 10:43, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense, thanks DI. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I forget the formal term for this (there is one), but it's an argument by improper association. it's related to the syllogistic fallacy illicit process of the minor term, in which two unrelated qualities are connected simply because some object happens to have both. --Ludwigs2 18:08, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I was actually after the grammatical terminology, not the rhetorical. I mean, I'm sure there's a better way of referring to these constructions than "a phrase followed hopefully by a comma and what would, had it not been for the leading phrase, have been a sentence in its own right". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Akihito's speech

Can any Japanese speakers dispense some linguistic wisdom regarding the emperor's speech to his country? As a non-speaker, I'm wondering first of all about his greeting, which sounded to me like "konnotamino", but if this is the true rōmaji I haven't been able to find the word through Google. It certainly wasn't "konnichiwa" anyway! News reporting I've seen in the Anglophone media has mentioned that his style was, although formal, perhaps surprisingly direct. In any case, the difficult courtly register of his father's 1945 broadcast seems to be a thing of the past. Or is it, behind the scenes, or in the emperor's new year addresses, for example? Next, I noticed throughout that he often ended sentences with a word that sounded like [mas] (nine or so times by my count), with most of them ending in what sounded like [te.i.mas]. What does this mean? Finally, has anyone got a link to either a video with a dubbed English translation of the full speech, or a transcript of it in English. BBC and others have been broadcasting excerpts totalling about 30 seconds, but it would be good to read the full thing. Actually, one more thing! I noticed that he bowed at the start and end, something which as it happens I asked about yesterday at Talk:Etiquette in Japan. Any input welcome. Thanks! 82.32.186.24 (talk) 15:36, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Couple of things-he may be saying "contamination"-modern Japanese includes perhaps 10% foreign words. The "kono" may be "this" as in "this and that". Words that end in "-masu" are action verbs, like "ryorishimasu"-to cook, "arukimasu"-to walk, "hashirimasu"-to run.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 16:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

It was konotabino/このたびの. See this. As for desu and masu, see です and suffix ます. He always talks like that. Oda Mari (talk) 17:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict:merge with previous question) I've read that when Emperor Hirohito addressed the Japanese people to tell them WW2 was lost, few could understand anything he said, because he spoke some sort of "court Japanese" or formal archaic Samurai Japanese rather than the language of the people. Was the difference one of vocabulary and grammar, or just of pronunciation, so that when written out everyone would read and understand it? Did Hirohito give public speeches in the postwar years, and did he switch to common Japanese? In English, what would be an analog to Hirohito's non-understood 1945 radio speech? Would it be as if Queen Elizabeth delivered in address in Shakespearean English? Now Emperor Akihito has addressed the Japanese people on TV. Did he speak ordinary Japanese, and did he also speak Hirohito's formal version? Edison (talk) 16:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

This is how the British newspaper "The Telegraph" described it:

Dressed in a dark suit, and seated against a backdrop designed to evoke the appearance of a traditional paper screens, Emperor Akihito spoke in mannered but modern Japanese – not the formal courtly language which is incomprehensible to many of the country’s residents.

Roger (talk) 21:13, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

That might be interpreted to the effect that the "court" still speaks the "formal courtly language," whatever it is. Does Wikipedia have an article discussing that type of Japanese versus the commonly used version? Edison (talk) 22:25, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

This is outside my area of expertise, but I think that courtly Japanese was based on classical Japanese, with extensive use of honorifics. An analogy to English might be something like the court language of the Tudors, as if Queen Elizabeth II were to say "Our graces vouchsafe to bestow upon our dearly esteemed subjects our very gravest sorrow for the disaster lately visited upon their esteemed selves. May the heavens forfend that their suffering endure...". I suspect that courtly Japanese isn't much used outside of ceremonies any more and that the emperor's mannered but modern speech is something like his everyday speech. However, it would be good for someone more knowledgeable to confirm this. Marco polo (talk) 02:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't know Japanese that well, but do know Chinese, and the Chinese Wikipedia page gives a side-by-side translation of Hirohito's speech (as well as providing images of the original document) here . The text is described as 日文文語體 (Classical Japanese, Bungo-文語), and as a comparison of the translation between the original text and the formal (i.e., non-colloquial) Chinese translation attests, is essentially lexically very similar to Classical Chinese (but syntactically very different due to the inversion of the word order). The pronoun the Emperor used to refer to himself (朕) was the form of address that Qin Shihuang used to refer to himself, and the text is terse and very literary in form. The important thing to keep in mind is that Hirohito's speech was a recitation of a written document that was composed in an archaic style utilized solely for written correspondence, it was (I'm 98% sure) not reflective of any spoken vernacular utilized at court. I found the Japanese text of Akihito's speech on the Imperial Household's Agency's website:

この度の東北地方太平洋沖地震は，マグニチュード9.0という例を見ない規模の巨大地震であり，被災地の悲惨な状況に深く心を痛めています。地震や津波による死者の数は日を追って増加し，犠牲者が何人になるのかも分かりません。一人でも多くの人の無事が確認されることを願っています。また，現在，原子力発電所の状況が予断を許さぬものであることを深く案じ，関係者の尽力により事態の更なる悪化が回避されることを切に願っています。

現在，国を挙げての救援活動が進められていますが，厳しい寒さの中で，多くの人々が，食糧，飲料水，燃料などの不足により，極めて苦しい避難生活を余儀なくされています。その速やかな救済のために全力を挙げることにより，被災者の状況が少しでも好転し，人々の復興への希望につながっていくことを心から願わずにはいられません。そして，何にも増して，この大災害を生き抜き，被災者としての自らを励ましつつ，これからの日々を生きようとしている人々の雄々しさに深く胸を打たれています。

自衛隊，警察，消防，海上保安庁を始めとする国や地方自治体の人々，諸外国から救援のために来日した人々，国内の様々な救援組織に属する人々が，余震の続く危険な状況の中で，日夜救援活動を進めている努力に感謝し，その労を深くねぎらいたく思います。

今回，世界各国の元首から相次いでお見舞いの電報が届き，その多くに各国国民の気持ちが被災者と共にあるとの言葉が添えられていました。これを被災地の人々にお伝えします。

海外においては，この深い悲しみの中で，日本人が，取り乱すことなく助け合い，秩序ある対応を示していることに触れた論調も多いと聞いています。これからも皆が相携え，いたわり合って，この不幸な時期を乗り越えることを衷心より願っています。

被災者のこれからの苦難の日々を，私たち皆が，様々な形で少しでも多く分かち合っていくことが大切であろうと思います。被災した人々が決して希望を捨てることなく，身体（からだ）を大切に明日からの日々を生き抜いてくれるよう，また，国民一人びとりが，被災した各地域の上にこれからも長く心を寄せ，被災者と共にそれぞれの地域の復興の道のりを見守り続けていくことを心より願っています。

Which is written in modern colloquial Japanese (including foreign loanwords like magnitude マグニチュード). As Oda Mari pointed out, his first words were この度の konotabino, which is not a greeting, it means "this time, this particular instance". Hope this helps. 71.167.144.217 (talk) 05:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

An English translation of the speech is now available online: [2] 82.32.186.24 (talk) 18:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Ambiguity of 'free' in other languages

Do other languages also have the ambiguity of the English 'free'? I know for sure that in German and Spanish there is no way of confusing both meanings...

Which two of the many meanings of 'free' are you referring to? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:31, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I assume he means the two most common definitions, being free as related to liberty, and free as related to money. In english this is commonly expressed as "Free as in beer" versus "Free as in speech"; as always WHAAOE, the article Gratis versus libre discusses the two meanings in some detail, though it doesn't really delve into how other languages deal with the two concepts. --Jayron32 19:55, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course German has the ambiguity. Free software = freie Software, free beer = Freibier. That Freibier is written in a single word is just an accident. What is different in German is that there are several very natural ways of expressing free as in free beer. Using "freie Software" for software that is free of cost would be slightly less natural than "Gratissoftware" or "kostenlose Software", but that's enough to reduce the potential of confusion. Hans Adler 19:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I would never understand Freibier as anything different than gratis bier. In German, excluding the case of "freie Software" which could be misleading, I don't see much potential for confusion. 212.169.179.181 (talk) 19:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

??? Would anyone understand "free beer" as anything other than gratis beer? Of course the question was about free software. In English it's ambiguous and potentially confusing. In German it's just as ambiguous as in English, and it's also potentially confusing, although slightly less so. That was my point. Hans Adler 20:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Finnish most certainly has no such ambiguity. Finnish has two entirely different adjectives for "free": vapaa is free as in speech, i.e. not restricted, while ilmainen is free as in beer, i.e. not costing anything. JIP | Talk 20:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no ambiguity in English when you understand that "free" beer or software is an abbreviated way of saying "free of charge". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

In fact, "gratis" to mean "free of charge" is a relatively new concept. "Gratis" actually means "(for) thanks", as noted in EO:[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

But the problem is that free software is a different concept of "software at no cost". It is entirely possible for such software to exist that is available free of charge, but is still completely proprietary, meaning that the only thing you can practically do it with it is run it in your own personal use. I certainly have seen many examples of it. JIP | Talk 21:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

You can download it at no charge, right? I assume you're making a distinction between free-of-charge and (not-)free-to-distribute? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

That is the distinction, yes. It's not something JIP has just coined. As far as I'm aware, free software doesn't have to be free of charge, only free to modify. Vimescarrot (talk) 22:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

That would be the opposite situation from what I'm describing. Each is "free", but neither is "totally free". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

In Polish, the word wolny is ambiguous, but in a different way: it means both "free" (as in "free speech") and "slow". Interestingly, powolny means both "slow" and "obedient", so it's at once a synonym and an antonym of wolny. "Free" as in "free beer" is darmowy, completely unrelated to wolny. — Kpalion^(talk) 21:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Sadly, the term "free beer" is rarely heard in the UK. If anyone knows where it is in common use, perhaps they would be kind enough to let us know. ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 12:34, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Doubled consonants

Hi. I've noticed some languages, such as Arabic and Italian, have (in their IPA phonetic transcriptions) doubled consonants. FOr example, the word prosciutto is pronounced /prɔsˈʧuttɔ/ (scroll to the bottom, sorry it's French Wiktionary but the French just seem better at building a dictionary; the enwikt has no Italian IPA for this entry). How is the /tt/ pronounced? The only way I can think of not to run the /t/ together is to add a glottal stop in between but this would sound ridiculous even to me who does not speak Italian. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

In many lnguages geminat consonants are pronounced as having longer duration than single consonants , meaning that there is a longer pause between the stop and the release of the airflow. Also if there is a syllable break between the two consonants there is often two separate releases for every consonant. ·Maunus·ƛ· 21:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The technical linguistic term is "geminate" or "geminated" consonant. The easiest hint is probably that one syllable ends with a consonant sound, while the immediately-following syllable begins with this same consonant sound. The consonant is pronounced distinctly as part of both syllables, but there's usually not any "release" between the two parts of the geminate. So in languages with a distinctive contrast between aspirated and unaspirated consonants (ancient Greek, Sanskrit etc.), a doubled t^ht^h becomes tt^h (i.e. the breathy release of the first consonant is suppressed) and so on. AnonMoos (talk) 21:37, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The French Wiktionary has no French for pronunciation and the Italian Wiktionary no Italian for pronunciation. I don't see that the French is much ahead in this instance. But maybe we all say it the same way? 75.41.110.200 (talk) 21:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Consider the difference between /t/ in whiter and /tt/ in white-tie. Deor (talk) 21:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

However, there's a kind of a stem-boundary between two stressed syllables in "white-tie", and the "t" of "white" would be heavily glottalized in some accents of American English, none of which would happen in the Italian pronunciation of a word like otto ("8")... AnonMoos (talk) 22:51, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Would penny and pen-knife be better examples? --Kjoonlee 00:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

It certainly avoids the problem of the changes which affect "t" in various positions in various dialects of English, but there would still probably be some differences with respect to the Italian contrast between -n- and -nn-- -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:17, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

See Gemination. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

You can hear Prosciutto here: http://it.forvo.com/word/prosciutto/#it For PALA/PALLA see here: http://it.forvo.com/search/pala/ http://it.forvo.com/search/palla/ --151.51.60.184 (talk) 02:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

There is a mistake in the French Wiktionary: it should be [proʃˈʃutto] (by my dictionary), not *[prɔsˈʧuttɔ]. At any rate, there is no ʧ sound. Lfh (talk) 10:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Are there any Italian words with the sound sequence [sʧ]? --84.61.170.180 (talk) 10:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

No.--151.51.60.184 (talk) 02:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)