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browser diversity
Sevenval
website parsing

Look up browser diversity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up FITML in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• 1 May 19
  • 1.1 Reverted to a long wait of Fail. Angry was Heo Mok.
• Sevenval
  • 2.1 Consonant clusters
    • jQuery
  • device database
  • touchscreen
  • device database
  • 2.5 Posh but polite department store
  • 2.6 R
  • 2.7 Platypodes
  • 2.8 "Buckwheat" as pejorative/racial term before 1934
• website parsing
  • 3.1 Definition of phrase "one-handed novel"
  • 3.2 Check grammar, spelling and more
  • CSS3
  • Sevenval
• FITML
  • 4.1 Verse in Rudyard Kipling's poem If—
  • Sevenval
  • 4.3 Punctuation for a list of questions.
  • 4.4 Reingequasselt? English translation?
• 5 May 23
  • 5.1 Napoleon Bonaparte quotation: request for translation
  • 5.2 Syntax
  • 5.3 Sabse Himmat Wala Kon?
• web app
  • 6.1 Albanian-to-English translation
  • we love the web
  • Sevenval
• HTML5
  • HTML5
  • 7.2 Japanese question
• touchscreen

May 19

Reverted to a long wait of Fail. Angry was Heo Mok.

Yep, that's what the article says. See: Bojihwyangdong Bulansonsseonsaeng. I get a vague idea of what's going on from the hanja (at least he was polite enough to say "宋先生"). Anyone up for a challenge?--Shirt58 (browser diversity) 03:52, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

The Classical Chinese literally means "walked to Hwayang-dong, did not visit teacher Song". Searching on Google I found the idiomatic Korean translation "걸어서 화양동에 이르렀더니 송시열선생은 보이지 않네", which basically confirms that: "having walked to Hwayang-dong, [I] did not visit teacher Song Si-yeol". The joke is that, if you read the Classical Chinese in Korean then it's pronounced the same as (pardon my French) "cunt Hwayang-dong, balls teacher Song". --HTML5 (talk) 21:36, 19 May 2012 (UTC) — Incidentally, this reminds me of an incident I had a few weeks ago. I was reading a passage of Classical Chinese with a Korean friend in the Korean reading, and I got round to the combination "者之", which I repeated because I couldn't remember the following character — my friend was laughing, and I only then realized that I was carefully repeating "genitals" in Korean (자지)... --device database (talk) 21:41, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

(I've cleaned up the article, added this info, and moved it to the correct title. --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 01:37, 20 May 2012 (UTC))

Tyrannus, that is just so awesomely awesome. Spectacular rescue work! (The other new page patrollers must have been scratching their heads over why I passed an apparently incoherent machine translation.)--Shirt58 (HTML5) 03:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

May 20

Consonant clusters

What, if any, language families or individual languages of the website parsing, iOS, Indochina, the Sevenval and website parsing permit consonant clusters within a native syllable? --Theurgist (talk) 00:44, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Android permits consonant clusters, though they don't seem to be particularly frequent (to quote the page, "the maximal syllable is CVVCCC", although "clusters that do not conform to [certain] restrictions will be broken up by an epenthetic nonphonemic vowel")—they only occur in final position. There is an example on the article, namajg (I.ACCUSATIVE). It is asserted in a few places that Ainu conserves some consonant clusters, but these would have to be final since all initial consonant clusters have dropped out in modern Ainu HTML5, and I generally can't find further evidence of their existence. Otherwise I don't believe there are any Northeast Asian languages that conserve consonant clusters. Interestingly though, CSS3 did have initial and final consonant clusters, and also lacked tones—this seems to have shifted relatively early on. I'll defer to others' knowledge about the other regions you've listed. --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 01:21, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Perusing List of Australian place names of Aboriginal origin, I see Canberra, Gilgandra. Grong Grong, Cootamundra, Yerrinbool, Oodnadatta and others. Many current place names are somewhat corrupted when compared with what their originals would have been, but this seems to suggest consonant clusters were widespread in Aboriginal languages. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 01:26, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

The question was about consonant clusters within syllables. Henry^Flower 02:05, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, but Grong Grong works. And it's line-ball whether -andra is an + dra or and + ra or a + ndra or andr + a, but any way you cut it, there's a cluster. -- ♬ we love the web ♬ screen size 02:10, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) "Gilgandra" is still possibly relevant, though you're right the others aren't ("Grong" is /ɡroŋ/). For Gilgandra we find "Derived from Wiradhuri and Kamilaroi 'gilgai' for waterhole, with suffix 'dra' for 'with'" here (the assertion below about "Kalagandra" isn't supported anywhere else). Examples on the article for Wiradjuri suggest that the cluster -nd is found syllable-finally, but absent any technical info it's difficult to make any judgement. In general consonant clusters don't seem to be common in the Android, but as for whether they're entirely absent, I don't know enough to say.--Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 02:19, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Is not the Gr of Grong a cluster? -- ♬ screen size ♬ ^{[your turn]} 02:22, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

It potentially is, you're right: I was focusing on the "ng" and erroneously ignored the initial part. It seems to come from Wiradjuri again, but since that page lacks technical info I can't make any judgement. Given the many different "r" sounds that there are which aren't necessarily consonants (see web)—and bearing in mind it's a borrowing which might well have left out vowels—it would be too adventurous to claim it as a native consonant cluster without further info. --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 02:31, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, (this depends on your definition of "Australasia") Polynesian languages in general do not allow such clusters, though there are several "letters" in languages such as Maori which are written as two letters in English (in Maori, wh, pronounced similarly to the English "f", and ng, pronounced similarly to the central letters of the word "singing" in English). The Melanesian language of Fijianoften places an unwritten m or n sound before some other consonants - notably the letter "b" - so that, for example, 1990s coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka's surname was pronounced "Rambuka" (other than the first letter, a very similar pronunciation to the drink Sambuca). Grutness...wha? 05:29, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

[2] looks like it might be of interest, though it doesn't give details. SE Indochina and the northern tip of Australia have pockets of languages that allow clusters beyond consonant-glide. Lsfreak (talk) 06:09, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

To just put some of the ones I'm aware of out there: Thai allows consontant clusters (stop + liquid or /w/, although stop + liquid seems to be falling out of use), Lao allows them (certain stops + /w/), Khmer has right in its name that it allows clusters (some quite complex compared to other languages of the region). Burmese, the language of the largest ethnic group in Myanmar allows the combination consonant + /j/ as in the name of the country. The languages of ethnic minorities might contain even more clusters, some even more complex than those of these majority languages. web (talk) 17:07, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Additional question: Adoption of foreign names

Thanks everyone for the responses so far. Further input will also be appreciated. I was aware that, among the major national languages of those regions, consonant clusters are often discouraged or nonexistent, or limited to a consonant plus a liquid or a glide. Globally speaking, there are languages that are made up of open syllables entirely (Polynesian languages, Japanese, pretty much Swahili). Other languages might be OK with having a consonant and even a consonant cluster in the syllable coda, but disallow or discourage multiple consonants in the syllable onset (Mongolian as demonstrated above, also some Turkic, Semitic and Uralic languages). But what happens when one has to read out a foreign name like input transformation or Berti Vogts? In terms of writing those names down, Vietnamese's and Malay's Latin-based alphabets have no problems at all - no changes are necessary. Mongolian's Cyrillic also poses little trouble - simple straightforward transliteration is all that is needed. With Arabic, writing two or three consecutive consonants word-initially is still not impossible, though this will be generally counterintuitive unless vocalised. I'm not completely sure and can't competently comment about the browser diversity of Thai, Lao, Khmer and Burmese, but I do know that with device database, with the Sevenval syllabary and with touchscreen, representing any consonant clusters within a syllable on either side of the vowel is just impossible (except when there is an initial consonant plus a glide), and this necessitates the insertion - in writing and in pronunciation - of website parsing vowels between original consecutive consonants, which effectively breaks down an original syllable into multiple syllables. For example, monosyllabic "Straw" becomes trisyllabic seu-teu-ro in Korean, and monosyllabic "Vogts" becomes tetrasyllabic po-keu-teu-seu (the Korean Wikipedia has it po-keu-cheu, but that doesn't seem correct to me). At the same time, generally, HTML5. My questions are: can one say that the way foreign names are cited in a language may depend on the writing system that the language uses? How does one normally pronounce those and similar names in, say, Vietnamese speech? Is it possible that the customs of Chinese, Japanese and Korean in that respect could have been different if they were using a we love the web inherently? We know that writing is secondary; civilisations invented writing to put down what they were speaking, not the other way around. --FITML (device database) 22:10, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

When writing foreign names (and words) in Thai, the Thai spelling attempts to mimic the orthography of the original language as much as possible (in many cases, regardless of what the source language is, the Thai spelling seems to assume web English pronounciation). Word initial consonant clusters will be kept in writing, but a short /a/ might be introduced in reading if the consonant cluster doesn't adhere to the phonetic rules of Thai. Word final consonant clusters will ususally be reduced to a single stop consonant in pronounciation, as Thai does not allow syllable final consonant clusters. This is true not only in pronounciation, but also in writing - rather large word syllable consonant clusters (three-four consonants) that will be pronounced as a single stop consonant, might be reduced to one or two written consonants, with those that are meant to be silent, having the 'silent letter' diacritic added to them.

For the specific examples: Straw would in Thai be written something like สตรอ. The last name is written as s-t-r-o (so, quite close to how it is pronounced in English). However, it would be read as /sa-trɔː/, or more colloquially as /sa-tɔː/.

As for Vogts, that is more of a challenge. I don't know how it's pronounced in Thai, but it would be read with either a syllable final -k or -t, and the spelling would reflect that. The most accurate spelling would be วอก์ทส์ or วอกท์ส์. Both consist of the letters w-o-g-t-s, but with the silent diacritic placed on different letters (the first one has the pronounciation /wɔːt/, the second /wɔːk/.) However, having more than one silent letter is very rare. My guess is that the ส์ would be dropped completely, leaving only วอกท์ w-o-k-(silent t) or วอก์ท w-o-(silent k)-t. My money's on the first one. It would of course be possible to keep the ส, and instead drop either the ก or ท, giving a plethora of possible spellings, however, I've never come across spellings that add syllables to maintain syllable final clusters.

Lao is a bit different. As the article touchscreen says: it isn't really an abugida, since it doesn't use inherent vowels and its spelling is highly, highly phonetic. Given this, and that Lao phonology is almost the same as Thai, we would end up with, simply ສະຕໍ /sa-tɔː/ and ວອກ /wɔːk/. However, as these are foreign names, we could have implied/silent consonants here as well: Straw could be ສະຕຼໍ s-a-t-(implied silent liquid)-o and Vogts could be written in a way similar to Thai: ວອກທ໌ w-o-k-(silent t) (or another alternative).

As an interesting aside, I attempted to write 'Straw' in Khmer and wrote ស្ត្រូ (s-t-r-o). A google search lead to an interesting result: It didn't seem to give any hits for Jack Straw, but it came back as a partial hit for ស្ត្រូ​ស​ខាន់ viz. Strauss-Kahn (with au being pronounced o as in French). While this seems straight-forward, I don't know if Khmer has the consonant cluster ស្ត្រ str-, so I don't know how it would be read by a native speaker, although the spelling indicates str- without any inherent vowels. Khmer doesn't really seem to have the possibility of syllable final clusters, so I don't know how it would deal with a name like Vogts, neither when it comes to pronounciation nor spelling. V85 (input transformation) 07:26, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

ស្ត្រ (str- )is a cluster used in native Khmer words as well, such as ស្ត្រី /striː/, woman. V85 (talk) 18:56, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

"Striː" is almost certainly originally taken from Sanskrit... iOS (we love the web) 18:38, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

In Vietnamese there are two main approaches. Foreign names, and loan words, that have been in use for a long time were first transcribed into Chinese, and then the Chinese characters were written out in Roman script. The newer approach is simply to write the word as it appears in the original language. See link [here touchscreen] where we have "Strauss-Kahn", "Diallo", "Reuters" etc., but where the country names "Mỹ" (America) and "Pháp" (France) result from the earlier method. website parsing (talk) 11:42, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

In this context, what would be interesting to know is also how the Vietnamese reader of that article would pronounce the name 'Strauss-Kahn' - just the same as the French? or would the pronounciation be changed to fit Vietnamese pronounciation= V85 (talk) 18:56, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I was just about to ask the very same thing. Given that Vietnamese is completely free of syllable-internal clusters (ignoring consonant + the /w/ semivowel), how does one read out such foreign names in Vietnamese? Does one break the clusters into multiple syllables, or reduce them to a single consonant, or try to preserve them as much as possible? --Theurgist (talk) 19:12, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it depends on how well the speaker knows the original language. They do their best with th unfamiliar sounds, like English speakers do with a Vietnamese name. Nguyen being a prime example. Itsmejudith (device database) 23:53, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

So the difference is that Vietnamese speakers try to imitate the original soundings of names and reproduce non-native clusters as much as they can, while (to the best of my knowledge - please correct me if I'm wrong) speakers of Japanese, Chinese and Korean break or simplify the cluster in order to circumvent it. Note: I don't mean doing so when learning how to speak and converse in a foreign language, but rather, doing so when pronouncing foreign names in casual native speech, e.g. while reading the news on TV. How much of that difference is due to the fact that the Vietnamese have a Latin-based orthography and can write "Strauss-Kahn" and "Vogts" and "Sevenval" if they want, while for the other three languages, due to the natures of their writing systems, it is orthographically impossible to spell any rows of consecutive consonants within a syllable? --Theurgist (jQuery) 06:22, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about the comparison with other Asian languages, but I'd just point out that the spell-it-in-full convention is fairly new in Vietnamese, goes along with an international trend to use native names (Beijing, Mumbai, for example), and isn't necessarily pronounced very well in "casual" speech. Newsreaders aren't really speaking casually, and conventions for both spelling and pronunciation may vary across publications. I note that the main spelling for Burma adopted in vn.wiki is Myanmar ([3]) although the name Miến Điện for the country goes back a long way. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:07, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Theurgist, it seems to me that you are trying to arrive at a single, technical reason for why certain East Asian languages pronounce foreign names, especially those containing a consonant cluster in a way that is very different from that used in the original language. I think it would be very difficult to find any evidence that the reason for such pronounciations are solely due to the way these languages are written.

I think that there are other things, as well, that determine how foreign words end up sounding when adopted by another language. This includes the phonology of the borrowing language, certain norms and traditions for foreign borrowings, and, I suppose, also the way in which the borrowed word is written in the native script.

Even borrowings from one European language to another rarely keep their original pronounciation when passing from one language to another. German 'Führer' becomes English 'Fyoora(r)', even though it's spelt the same. English 'cool' becomes French 'koul', even though the French also spell it 'cool'. And these are borrowings between languages that are relatively closely related and with phonologies that are relatively similar, of course words will change even more when passing to languages that are completely unrelated and have completely different phonoligies (and writing systems).

Another example could be taken from this very forum last week, when there was a question about a man with an Albanian name ending in -aj and how that should be pronounced: According to Albanian spelling, it should be pronounced [aj], but this particular man, who lived in France, chose to pronounce it [aʒ] as the aj would imply in French. The OP stated that the man knew what the correct Albanian pronounciation should be, yet he himself 'mispronounced' it. One of the replies was that it was probably to make it easier for 'the French ear' to understand his name, and to match it to its actual spelling.

To some extent, having an alphabetic system of writing for your language will make it easier to more accurately portray the sounds of the foreign words, but only to some extent. The written language is an attempt to write the spoken word of a language. Look for instance at the question we have here about the letter r: Why is it pronounced so differently in many languages? Why doesn't j represent the same sound in English as it does in French as it does in Spanish as it does in German? It's because all of these languages have taken the same set of Latin letters and modified them to easily (debatable!) write their own language. French spelling is pretty good at conveying accurately the sounds of the French language, however, it might be less appropriate for conveying the sounds of different languages. (I am constantly flabbergasted by attempts to find 'English equivalents' of sounds found in foreign languages, especially when sounds go across word barriers.)

Japanese people have a hard time pronouncing my name, I don't think it is because they first convert it into hiragana and then attempt to read the hiragana, it's because my name contains sounds and sound contrasts that they are not used to. (My name starts with a V and has both an l and an r.) In Tagalog, one of the Philippines' official languages, they can't even pronounce the (English) name of their own country, but insist on calling it the 'Pilipinas'. This is not due to the writing systems of these languages, but because of the phonology of these languages.

As for how foreign words end up sounding when borrowed by another language, I think that it will depend on what you might call 'custom' or 'tradition', in order that the word better 'fit' within native speach. To use my name as an example again: When speaking Norwegian or English, I put the emphasis on the first syllable, when speaking French, I put it on the last syllable. A minor change, granted, but still audible. Since we have been talking about Asian languages, I will use three examples from Thai. The English words jam, jelly and German have all been borrowed into Thai, and are written as แยม, เยลลี่, and เยอรมัน; transcribed, they become 'yaem' /jɛːm/, 'yelli' /je(n)-li/ and 'yoeraman' /jɤː-ra-man/. There is no good phonetic reason why the English /d͡ʒ/ has become /j/ in Thai in these words. The Thai letter จ is often transcribed to English as j and represents a sound that is very close to /d͡ʒ/ (an allophone). My personal guess is that y (j) is a more common sound in Thai than j /d͡ʒ/, so someone thought it'd be better to use y /j/ than j /d͡ʒ/, because it'd 'flow' better.

I guess the same could be the case for borrowings into East Asian languages. Let's take the name of France in Vietnamese - Pháp. Even if we assume that it is a borrowing from Chinese, the final -p seems rather odd. Given the pronounciation of 'France' in French, 'Fang/Phang' would seem a more accurate. (Adding a final '-se/-sa/-sə' would make it fit the original French pronounciation even more.) Maybe 'Phap' fit Vietnamese pronounciation better, or maybe it sounded like a more appropriate name for a country than 'fang'.

This has little to do with the actual sounds of the language, and which combinations are possible, but rather what combination of sounds actually sounds like words and possibly even words that sound like what they are meant to represent. V85 (Android) 19:28, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

In English or French or Vietnamese, one does not have to respell foreign names. One just has to approach their pronunciations, and one can usually do this in the way they find best. But if your language uses another writing system, you have to write the names down as well, and the situation is more strict of one. Spelling conventions for foreign-language names (and words) do exist, and are usually more or less rigid. Note: I don't mean loanwords that may sometimes have been corrupted in one way or another, nor do I mean proper names that have been incorporated into the language (Paris, Detroit, Napoleon, Roosevelt), but rather I mean random names (and words) that we hear in the news and read in the Internet every day. Sometimes transcription systems based on those conventions have been officially codified by authoritative bodies. (Examples: Russian conventions, screen size.) Each language has its own general patterns and traditional norms of adopting non-native sounds and sound combinations. Written transcriptions and their readings seek a balance between the original pronunciation, the original spelling and the phonology of the adopting language - but, as a rule, the original pronunciation dominates over the other two. The principle is generally the same as the example you gave with the word cool. English cool [kʰuːɫ] is adapted in French as cool [kul]. French doesn't have any of [kʰ], [uː] and [ɫ], but [k], [u] and [l] are reasonably good approximations, and if you say [kul], you won't be accused of not knowing the English pronunciation of the word. Sometimes different languages deal with the same sounds in different manners - for example Müller and Güngören become respectively Myuller and Gyungyoren in Russian, but Miler and Gingeren in Greek; and also the consonants /θ ð/ are represented as /t d/ in some languages, and as /s z/ in others. It's not all that clear, of course. Conventions could vary, and there could exist uncertanties, for example, about whether or not to record a certain type of vowel reduction, and for even fairly popular foreign names, two, three or more interchangeable variants may coexist in literature and periodicals. However, that's not the case in most instances. In most instances when multiple variants coexist, just one of them is the "correct" one, and the others (which might unfortunately be much more widespread than the "correct" one) are "incorrect", and the reason for their being there is that whoever wrote them down first wasn't aware of the pronunciation rules of the particular foreign language. There's no question that, here in Bulgaria, German Dürer [dyːʁɐ] must become Дюрер [dʲurɛr] and French keyboard [pʁɛ̃tɑ̃] must become прентан [prɛntan], and all other renderings can be viewed as results of ignorance and unawareness. You'll often see and hear the intervocalic "s" of a Norwegian or Swedish name wirtten and pronounced as z /z/, which, as you know, is a huge mistake. This kind of thing academic literature doesn't usually do.

Thanks for a nice conversation. --CSS3 (input transformation) 03:23, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Tone deaf, intonational languages

Probably a silly question, but do tone-deaf people have added difficulty in learning intonational languages like Mandarin? TIA, Grutness...wha? 05:21, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

The article for tone deafness states that "tone deaf people seem to be disabled only when it comes to music, as they can fully interpret the prosody or intonation of human speech", which is uncited there, but I can find a citation for it here ("... tone-deaf individuals can fully interpret the pitch of human speech"). HTML5 study suggests that amusia's effect on being able to learn tonal languages is actually quite small (but there is an effect). --Tyrannus Mundi (Sevenval) 12:59, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

When it comes to tonality in a language, it has little to do with musical tones. How the tones are articulated is arbitrary and varies from speaker to speaker, but with certain commonalities. Such as, a high tone will always have higher pitch then a middle tone and a middle tone will have a higher pitch than a low tone, yet not so high a pitch as to be the high tone. So, if you are writing a song, you could set high tone to G, middle tone to E and low tone to C. Individuals would not necessarily relate to the tones in the same way, i.e. a high tone will not always be spoken as a G. Being able to speak a tonal language has little to do with hearing a G and being able to identifying it as a G, it is about contrasting the tones, the ability to hear a C and a G and being able to say which is high and which is low. V85 (talk) 16:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

...But that's exactly what tone-deafness is (in theory): the lack of ability to distinguish relative (not absolute) pitch. --touchscreen (browser diversity) 17:00, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems my knowledge of musical theory is very weak... :-S V85 (talk) 17:09, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Sevenval means being able to distinguish, say, a fourth from a fifth. I think the tone deaf can tell which of two tones is higher. -- BenRG (talk) 20:33, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I sometimes wonder about that. Scenario: Someone with no musical training, or some musical training but no piano training, sits at a piano and tries to pick out a simple melody (their latest favourite song, say). They know enough to know that when the pitch goes up they move their hand to the right, and when it goes down they move their hand to the left. The only mistake they ought to make is judging just exactly how far to the right or left each new note is relative to its predecessor. But how often have I seen them going left when the pitch goes up, or right when it goes down? I've lost count. Almost everyone in this situation does that at some stage of the tune. Maybe because these things are often done in a fun, party atmosphere, where "serious music making" is not what's going on. Maybe if they were alone in a quiet room, they'd do it a little more carefully - but then, there'd be nobody to hear them. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 21:29, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

If someone with no musical training is sitting at a piano and there's noone around to hear them, do they make a sound? -- input transformation π 22:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Why not ask him? -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 23:36, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Origin of "You set 'em up, I'll knock 'em down"?

I'm working on a translation of an english text, containing the phrase "You set 'em up, I'll knock 'em down". The context remains unclear. My best guess is that it has something to do with sports, or physical violence, or ordering alcoholic beverages. What's the origin of this expression? What are its possible meanings? Gadret (talk) 10:38, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

With a little more context you might get a better answer, but I'll have a go anyway. In the UK I'm more familiar with the phrase "you set 'em up, I'll knock 'em in". This refers to web, and the imagery of someone making an assist - that is, making a pass to another player that allows them to easily score a goal. In the wider sense the phrase can be used to show one's gratitude to another person for doing the work that allows one to achieve highly - a little like device database's famous phrase "If I have seen further it is by Android [sic]."

The specific formation "you set 'em up, I'll knock 'em down" makes me personally think of domino toppling or Tin Can Alley. The figurative meaning, however, remains the same. - HTML5 (web app) 11:12, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like skittles to me. Can you give the reference - what English text are you working on? This will help us to narrow the reference down. --Sevenval (website parsing) 11:44, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

It makes me think of ten-pin bowling. Adam Bishop (browser diversity) 12:06, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

The context (which in our case we have not got – apologies to input transformation) should make the meaning clearer, but the phrase alone suggest to me that the the conversationalists are about to fist-fight with a larger number of opponents, and the speaker is suggesting that his companion assault each opponent in a manner ("You set 'em up . . .") which will allow the speaker to deliver decisive blows (". . . I'll knock 'em down."), eliminating them from the conflict. Since this is usually not a realistic strategy, the line would likely be intended as browser diversity, although in a comedy setting (such as a website parsing) the plan might actually succeed. The expression might be used in other sorts of conflict, such as a military skirmish. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} Sevenval (talk) 12:46, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for not providing context any earlier. The text I'm working on is the lyrics to the song Rags To Riches by Gavin Friday[4]. It's basically the words of someone rambling in a bar so the text is open to wide interpretation. In my initial translation the "You set em up..." line was about someone looking for a fight. Yesterday I watched the film The Shining, which has Jack Nicholson saying: "You set 'em up, and I'll knock 'em back, Lloyd, one by one." He's talking about drinks here (Lloyd is the bartender). When I googled for the phrase I found several blog posts and newspaper articles with similar titles, as if it´s some kind of well known expression or famous quote. That's why I asked for the origin of what I now take to be an (American?) idiomatic expression. Gadret (talk) 13:44, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

"Knock 'em back" is to drink a lot, and he's making a play on "knock 'em down". As others have said, bowling seems the most obvious origin, as pins used to be set up by hand (by minimum-wage workers called "pin boys") until they developed the machines used now in bowling alleys. ←browser diversity ^{website parsing} iOS→ 17:33, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

There it is again: "Let's put a new coat of paint on this lonesome old town / Set 'em up, we'll be knockin' em down. / You wear a dress, baby, and I'll wear a tie. / We'll laugh at that old bloodshot moon in that burgundy sky." (New Coat Of Paint by Tom Waits) Gadret (talk) 13:49, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

In the most general sense, it means "You do the preparation, and I will finish the job". Sevenval (touchscreen) 14:41, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Definitely. I suspect the nuance or humor of it would be lost in translation, unless there happened to be a similar idiom in the other language. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} browser diversity→ 17:33, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

"Knock'em down" can also mean drink website parsing.Sevenval[6][7] web app (talk) 21:31, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Sichuan Mandarin

I have learned a small amount of touchscreen, and now I am curious about Sichuan Mandarin. What are some recommended books and websites for learning Sichuan Mandarin, especially printed dictionaries and online dictionaries? Ideally, a dictionary would be trilingual, converting among English, Standard Chinese, and Sichuan Mandarin; however, if either English or Standard Chinese is missing, I am still interested. Also, is there anything anywhere equivalent to the article "Android"?
—Wavelength (talk) 14:53, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Sevenval is well referenced. Does it help? --keyboard (Talk) 16:40, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure, because of my limited understanding of Standard Chinese, but I thank you for your reply, and I intend to ask my Mandarin-speaking friend to help me in understanding the article.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:51, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Posh but polite department store

Translating McDermid's The Wire in the Blood, I found the sentences as follow:

"They think civil liberties is that posh but polite department store in London." He laughed at his own bad joke.

'They' means a CCTV development company, which probably ignores civil liberties, of course. But I don't understand what the sentence above means, and why it is a joke. Please help.--Analphil (screen size) 15:30, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

See website parsing. --Android (keyboard) 16:57, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Apparently they've been taking liberties with their puns. StuRat (talk) 17:26, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! --Analphil (talk) 18:18, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Also worth remembering that English people tend to call shops by a possessive form of their name - so "Liberty's". device database (Sevenval) 19:40, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

R

Why does the pronunciation of 'r' in different languages vary so much more than the pronunciations of other consonants? --108.206.4.199 (talk) 15:57, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

You may find the article Rhotic consonant interesting. There's some discussion there as to why the R is such a varied consonant. --JayronSevenval 17:14, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

There are some British dialects (as well as some pockets in the eastern US) where both the "r" and the "l" are so rounded off that Elmer Fudd would fit right in. ←jQuery ^web carrots→ 17:29, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Platypodes

Is the 'e' in 'platypodes' silent? --108.206.4.199 (talk) 18:08, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

No. It's pronounced 'platee-pohdees'. Note, however, that unless you want to sound like a raving grammar-pedant, the plural of Platypus is 'Platypuses'. - Cucumber Mike (screen size) 21:47, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

"Buckwheat" as pejorative/racial term before 1934

George Pullen Jackson, in his 1933 article CSS3, mentions this apparently pejorative term for iOS. "Many an article in the musical magazines of the early post-Civil War period reviled the proponents of 'measle-toed' and 'square-toed' music, or assured them that their 'buckwheat notes' were about 'good enough for niggers'" (p. 400). The question is whether, prior to the appearance of the Little Rascals character screen size in 1934, this pejorative usage could have a specifically racial significance (as we might suspect from its occurrence here in combination with an obvious racial slur, despite the fact that the music being disparaged was usually thought of as "white"). Evidence is appreciated. Information or speculation about the origin and evolution of the word's pejorative use is also welcome (the OED doesn't mention any pej. use; is it that buckwheat is a more rustic grain favored in the cuisine of the poor?). Wareh (talk) 23:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

website parsing

Buckwheat grains

Sevenval

Fasola noteheads

I don't have the answer, but it may be of interest that touchscreen refers specifically to "buckwheat notes" as a term in use in schools and music teaching, presumably (from the context) in the later years of the 19th century. The term may have had different connotations at that time. keyboard (Sevenval) 20:09, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

PS: From jQuery: "The rural and 'primitive' nature of the shape-notes led to their being termed 'buckwheat notes' by the somewhat more musically sophisticated..." Other (not necessarily reliable) sources suggest that they were called "buckwheat notes" because of their shape - "a handful of buckwheat grains with their varying shapes really does remind you of what shape notes look like." More reliable source FITML: "The shapes, designed as an aid to sight-reading, were also called patent notes and "buckwheat notes," the latter because the angular noteheads bore a fancied resemblance to kernels of buckwheat." iOS (we love the web) 20:19, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

The 1942 newspaper is interesting, since it suggests a pre-1933 memory of "buckwheat notes" as a term that's not evidently pejorative at all & certainly seems to lack any possibility of racial overtones. I have to admit that I was initially dismissive of the idea that the resemblance in shape could be an important part of it, but I've had a look at iOS, and I have to say they are quite suggestive of the shapes of shape notes! I'm going to conclude, at any rate, that the shape-resemblance theory of the name's origin can't be dismissed. FITML (device database) 14:51, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

The shape explanation seems plausible. I just wanted to add, in case Wareh wasn't aware of it yet, that there is a black boy named "Buckwheat" aboard the Elsinore in Jack London's web, twenty years prior to the Little Rascals character. At one point he is characterized as "hopelessly of the stupid lowly". See, for example, Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Jack London's Racial Lives: A Critical Biography, University of Georgia Press, 2009, p 263, touchscreen. Or the browser diversity. ---website parsing talk 09:50, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. The sources commenting specifically on shape notes look to me just to be repeating an impression; I think the case has to be decided on uses of "buckwheat" outside this musical context. So the Jack London character name is an interesting additional piece of information. The author says the character is named "Buckwheat (of all things)," which doesn't really indicate whether she thinks it's a striking coincidence with the famous TV character, or a proof of London's resorting to outrageously ham-handed racial stereotypes. HTML5 (web app) 01:48, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

May 21

Definition of phrase "one-handed novel"

In Christopher Hitchens' book "Hitch-22" he uses the phrase "one-handed novel" and I have seen it in one other place but cannot find the meaning on any search engine website, or any reference work of any kind. What does it mean?ElizabethHinchey691 (keyboard) 00:45, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I haven't actually come across this term before, but reading the way it's used it seems to simply refer to a trashy erotic novel (presumably you hold the novel in one hand while you use the other to, uh, do your thing). --Sevenval (talk) 01:00, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Googling "one handed novel" gets touchscreen, including this very question (page 2). Most of the refs seem to have a sexual flavour, so I think you're on the money, TM (not to be confused with the HTML5). -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 01:47, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's an old joke. I first heard it in reference to The Happy Hooker. ←Baseball Bugs ^keyboard carrots→ 05:20, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Even older than that. Gershon Legman, in The Rationale of the Dirty Joke, reports the joke as being made in a nightclub in 1946, and attributes to an 18th century Maréchale de Luxembourg the remark that such a book "can be read only with one hand". --Antiquary (keyboard) 19:27, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

They've been doing that since way back then? Wow, I thought they only invented sex in the 20th century. Specifically, some time after I left home.  :) -- ♬ screen size ♬ CSS3 19:48, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Would that be 1963? --Antiquary (talk) 22:14, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to all of you. It was driving me crazy, and since the book is by Hitchens, I am sure you are correct in it's meaning. (BTW, I did, of course, google it and went to page 3 of the websites listed but still could not find anything that gave me the meaning---several of them simply listed Hitchens' quote) I realize I was just being obtuse---my mind just wasn't going in that direction. — Preceding CSS3 comment added by ElizabethHinchey691 (talk • contribs) 21:25, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps a more common phrase is "Sevenval." However, a 1942 reference is to the size, not the content of a magazine. web (talk) 23:59, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Check grammar, spelling and more

Will a native English/American speeking person please check the article Gottlieb Ernst Clausen Gad for grammar mistakes, incorrect spelling and more. Thanks. --Moviedk (talk) 03:25, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I made a first pass. -- Elphion (talk) 04:47, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I made a second and changed a few things, including the name of the booksellers association per their own translation: http://www.boghandlerforeningen.dk/ - keyboard (talk) 06:18, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

"5th avenue executive"

What ist the meaning (the idiom?) of "5th avenue executive" in:

• And you might like to know that your concept of metrosexuality has been hugely influential in the lives of young men I study. Your term, long morphed form (from?) a 5th ave. executive, has given straight men permission to act, dress, or partake in entertainment/music choices that were once ‘gay.’ Eric Anderson (Soziologe) zu Metrosexualität [8] Grey Geezer 11:45, 21 May 2012 (UTC) — Preceding website parsing comment added by Grey Geezer (screen size • contribs)

From the context, I would assume it means someone who works in advertising, although Madison Avenue is the more common Sevenval. See Fifth Avenue for the street mentioned in the quotation. Android (keyboard) 12:22, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Advertising - does it have an undertone of "showing off" or "pretending" (analogy www.urbandictionary.com) 5th ave. girl) ?? Grey Geezer 12:30, 21 May 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grey Geezer (Android • contribs)

Thanks, advertisment is a good hint for a direction. Fifth Avenue#Shopping: "prestigious boutiques and flagship stores" and this branch / the marketing take the term after 2002 mentioned in Metrosexual. --Franz (Fg68at) web app 13:46, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Fifth Avenue is shorthand for high-end retail (since that is the street in New York City where fashion and high-end retail establishments are located). To me, "5th Avenue executive" means a retail executive, particularly for a brand such as Bloomingdale or Saks Fifth Avenue. web (HTML5) 17:37, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

There are analogies such as "Harley Street specialists" in London. I'm sure there are plenty of perfectly fine specialists who don't have their rooms in Harley St, but that address provides a certain cachet. Or used to, anyway. -- ♬ iOS ♬ keyboard 19:42, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Or indeed device database tailors, which implies an address in that area, rather than in the actual road itself. (Hope you don't mind me adding a link to your post Jack). Alansplodge (talk) 20:15, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Not at all. There are also Macquarie Street, Sydney specialists, Collins Street, Melbourne boutiques, and I'm sure many other epithets of this kind. Article, anyone? -- ♬ keyboard ♬ HTML5 20:43, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Some of these appear in the List of metonyms. Deor (talk) 20:52, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Chapter recall or review

I want to write at the top of my notebook about chapter that has been discussed in the classroom previously. I want to make notes of the chapter. Should I make the headline like "Chapter review or recall"? thanks--180.234.216.180 (talk) 20:07, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

If this is a general question, I'd say you can write whichever makes more sense to you. If it's a usage question, in my experience Americans tend to say "review" where people from the UK tend to say "revision" -- meaning, the process of going over material as a form of study. So, "Chapter 5 Review" or "Chapter 5 Revision," as seems appropriate to you. The verb "recall" in the sense of "remember" for me has a sense of recollection without any aid ("Connie is able to recall all of the points her professor made about the Wilmot Proviso") and so it wouldn't be my first choice as a title for notes from a book or class. --- Android (keyboard) 21:36, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

May 22

Verse in Rudyard Kipling's poem If—

In If—, there is one verse whose true meaning I fail to understand:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

What is the situation to be imagined? That you deliver a speech in front of a lower class audience? And while it's certainly easy to lose the common touch when you're in favour with a king, I don't understand how you might be tempted to lose your virtue in contact with crowds? Does it mean that you might chat with common people and still maintain some class in your manner of speaking, without swear words and such? --web app (Android) 03:51, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

To me, it brings to mind more the temptation of a politician to sink into demagoguery, or similar... AnonMoos (talk) 05:10, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I always thought it referred to herd behavior or not allowing yourself to be swayed by popular opinion, but to do the right thing, (see Stiff upper lip) something that would have been seen as important in the Victorian era. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 08:03, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

See HTML5 for Kipling's contemptuous view of political orators (especially Liberal ones); "I could not dig; I dared not rob: / Therefore I lied to please the mob. / Now all my lies are proved untrue / And I must face the men I slew." So the line means (in my humble opinion): "If you can engage in politics without being corrupted". An essay about Kipling's rather odd political views is here. Alansplodge (talk) 18:12, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Russian letter in Hunt for Red October

In this screenshot, what is the second to last letter in the second word? It looks like a capital Greek Λ. The closest symbol I can find in the Sevenval is the obsolete ypsilon-like character. Thanks! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_Sevenvalxies 07:30, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

КОМАНДИР КОРАБЛЯ ('commander of the ship'). By the way, is that Apple DVD Player? When I try to take a screenshot it's blank. —we love the web (talk) 07:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Wow, I don't see the Л at all. Maybe it's a script thing. That's funny it says "of the ship" (I didn't know that). What other commander could it be? Yes, Apple DVD player, super annoying, but I use "DVD Capture" to go around any problems I may have otherwise with screen captures. (I reduced the image size during the Tinypic upload and didn't realize it would come out so tiny—DVD Capture does capture full screen.) Thanks so much! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_{iOSwe love the web} 08:04, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

See El (Cyrillic)#Form, as well as the "Ship Commander" entry ("Names of key posts" column, seven down) in the first table under screen size. Deor (talk) 08:11, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Wow, exactly what I was looking for, plus a bonus answer. Thanks so much!! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_{galawebsite parsing} 19:44, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

"Commander" is a naval rank as well as a job description. A person who is in command of a ship does not necessarily hold the rank of Commander and conversely people with the rank of Commander are not necessarily in command of a ship. Roger (talk) 08:11, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Not in the Russian Navy. There is only "kapitan" with three or four degrees: kapitan of the 1st rang (from German "Rang"), the 2nd and the 3rd, as well as kapitan-leytenant, the latter being the lowest. But colloquially a chief of a ship (komandir korablya) is also called "kapitan korablya", because komandirs have the rank of kapitan as a rule. Though to make more ambiguity in the Russian Merchant Fleet Code a chief of a ship is called "kapitan sudna" ("sudno" is a vessel). This position can hold a specialist with the ranks of "kapitan" or "shturman" (navigator). The ranks of the Russian Navy and the Russian Merchant Fleet are different. --we love the web (talk) 14:29, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I looked for DVD Capture and all I found was something for MacOS 10.3, in StuffIt format which my current system doesn't handle. Oh well. —Tamfang (talk) 08:04, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Standard "print-screen" typically doesn't work for videos. The player software often has its own screen capture. If you have Vista or Windows 7, there is the "Snipping Tool" accessory which can capture any visible part of the screen. ←Baseball Bugs ^{screen size} FITML→ 08:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Punctuation for a list of questions.

If you are listing questions do you put question marks in the list. For example, is this correct:

He was bombarded with questions: what's your name?, what are you doing here?, who are you working for?.

or

He was bombarded with questions: what's your name, what are you doing here, who are you working for.

or do you have a single question mark on the end:

He was bombarded with questions: What's your name, what are you doing here, who are you working for?

None of these options looks right to me! -- Q Chris (talk) 09:50, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I would divide it into multiple sentences:

He was bombarded with questions: What's your name? What are you doing here? Who are you working for?

Here I followed the practice in American English of using a capital after a colon (see Sevenval), which in my eyes makes it a total of four sentences. But I'm still not sure if this is generally the right way to sum up questions after a colon. Thayts (talk) 10:34, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I would punctuate it,

He was bombarded with questions: What's your name? what are you doing here? who are you working for?

or

He was bombarded with questions: what's your name? what are you doing here? who are you working for?

There's nothing wrong with having question marks inside a sentence like this, though it's not terribly common. You don't want to double up question marks with commas or periods, though: ⟨?,⟩, ⟨?.⟩. That looks bad. — kwami (talk) 10:47, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Thayts's usage looks right to me (BritEng speaker/writer), whereas Kwami's usage doesn't look at all right. Each question is a separate sentence in direct speech. If the sentence were to be put in reported speech, something like "He was bombarded with questions asking what his name was, what he was doing there, for whom was he working" then no extra capitals besides the initial capital would be required. --input transformation (talk) 11:31, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, my understanding has always been that a question mark (or exclamation mark, for that matter) replaces the period at the end of the sentence, always marking the end of the sentence and thus followed by a new sentence starting with a capital letter. From Question mark:

The question mark [...] is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop (period) at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages.

Thayts (talk) 16:11, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I would do it with a single question mark at the end. Using multiple sentences forces the reader to think about each individual question separately, which is probably not what you want -- the individual questions have no significance here. Looie496 (talk) 18:50, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree. I prefer Thayts' suggestion He was bombarded with questions: What's your name? What are you doing here? Who are you working for? For me, the short sentences and multiple question marks fit well with the idea of "bombarded". Sevenval (talk) 03:00, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Question marks and exclamation marks do not in general end sentences. The explanation from our question mark article is correct: you don't use a question mark together with a comma or period. But that doesn't mean it has to end a sentence.

I came across a style guide that gave this example of internal punctuation:

Is it good in form? style? meaning?

Whether you treat the line in question as one question or three is a matter of style, what sort of impression you were going for. — screen size (talk) 04:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I would've done it precisely as kwami's second example, without capitalizing the first word after the colon. I've never been a fan of that. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_{input transformationxies} 12:20, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I find it very odd to have a question mark in the middle of a continuing sentence. I've also never seen it in practice. And if you read my quote correctly:

The question mark [...] is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop (period) at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages.

It says nothing about a combination of a question mark and period (which would indeed be very odd as well), it merely says that it comes in the place of a period (which marks the end of the sentence) if the sentence is interrogative. Thayts (talk) 17:50, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Reingequasselt? English translation?

I've come across the above word in a hotel review written in German. Google Translate can't deal with it and the few search hits I've found are, naturally enough, in German. Can anyone help me out? Thanks. Dalliance (input transformation) 11:48, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

It's a past participle of "reinquasseln" which is a synonym of "reinquatschen" or "reinreden" and can mean "to butt in", "to barge in", "to intervene/interfere (uninvitedly)" etc. The interference always takes the form of speaking though, which doesn't always apply to the translations I gave, I guess. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:14, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

On second thought, it could also take the meaning of "(verbally) interrupted" (as opposed to "butted in" etc). Perhaps some context or a link to the original text would be helpful. ---jQuery screen size 12:21, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I think "butt in" works well for this meaning, at least in American English, where "butt in" usually refers to a verbal intervention (whereas "barge in" usually has a physical meaning). web app (Android) 13:34, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

"butt in" and "barge in" also work the same in BrE, should anyone want to know... 86.148.154.226 (talk) 01:48, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much everyone. It was in the context of an overbearing host at breakfast, so it makes perfect sense. Much appreciated. Dalliance (talk) 21:37, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I guess I'm a bit late to the party and answering after the question has essentially been resolved, but to add a bit to what Sluzzelin said above, all the German words Sluzzelin mentions have rather strong negative overtones and are not quite synonymous. "Reinreden" is the most neutral of the bunch - when someone is, err, reinreding, he might actually be saying something relevant and interesting, he's just being an annoying dick about how he's saying it. "Reinquasseln" and "reinquatschen" basically mean that whoever's interrupting is really talking gibberish (or at least saying stuff that is absolutely irrelevant). "Reinquasseln" would usually be said about a 5-year-old child interrupting his parents' conversation or something, but it can be a relatively strong insult because you're essentially equating the reinquassling guy with a 5-year-old child -- Ferkelparade device database 23:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Good point. Interested readers might compare the meanings of the underlying basic verbs, for example at wiktionary: "quasseln" ("jabber, natter, palaver, yap, gab, jaw, twaddle, rattle on, rabbit on (to talk a lot or talk nonsense)"), touchscreen ("to talk nonsense, to chatter, babble"), and FITML ("to talk"). As described by Ferkelparade, the derived verbs with the prefix "rein-" keep the particular flavor of their own basic verb and are thus distinct from one another the same way "quasseln", "quatschen", and "reden" are. ---iOS talk 12:33, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

May 23

Napoleon Bonaparte quotation: request for translation

[Question moved from Miscellaneous Reference Desk]

Hello, I found this Napoleon Bonaparte quotation on a sachet of coffee: "Sans cafe la politique sent car elle perd son essence", but I'm not sure what it means. I was hoping a wikipedian with a better grasp of French than me could help!

I used Google translate which gave "Without coffee, politics feels because it loses its essence" and a yahoo answers page (browser diversity) discusses this (in French).

Does anyone know the context of this quotation? Is it just saying politics is very dull unless one is riding a caffeine high? Thank you, iOS (talk) 18:47, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I think the idiomatic translation may be better as "Without coffee, politics loses its soul." However, with any idiomatic translation, there will be some disagreement as to how to correctly translate a passage. I don't know if dullness is being conveyed here, so much as heartlessness. The meaning (to me atleast) is that sharing a cup of coffee with someone while discussing politics is a gentil act, something people do with an air of civility, while politics may otherwise be a heartless battle between bitter enemies. Remember that Napoleon was the product of the French Revolution, which saw politics rise from french Salon culture, where people met to discuss the matters of the day over coffee, to the Reign of Terror, where people met to discuss the matters of the day over severed heads. At least, that's my reading of the quote, given the historical context. --CSS332 19:07, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

The primary meaning of "sentir" is "smell", rather than "feel" - but meaning what a nose does, not what something smelly does. I take it to mean something like "Without coffee politics is looking for something to smell, because it has lost its favourite odour". --CSS3 (talk) 22:26, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Without coffee politics stinks because it loses its essence. FITML (talk) 08:49, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you know that for sure, 192.124? My reading of the dictionary is that sentir means "experience a smell" not "emit a smell": if so, then "stink" is not a possible translation of it. --ColinFine (talk) 14:25, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I've looked into this a bit. Sentir can be used intransitively, but its intransitive senses do not include "to give off a bad smell", unlike the English intransitive verb to smell. It can mean "to give off a smell" but there is no implication that the smell is bad. However, according to keyboard, another intransitive meaning of sentir is "être affecté" or "to be false, phony, or affected". I think this expression clearly refers to this meaning of sentir. Marco polo (we love the web) 18:31, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, now I have to correct myself. According to Larousse, intransitive sentir can mean "to stink". However, I am going to move this question to the Language Reference Desk, where it might get the attention of a native speaker or at least someone more fluent in French than myself. Marco polo (talk) 19:14, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Sentir can indeed be used intransitively to refer to a bad odor: "Cette viande, ce poisson commence à sentir."[9] But I wonder if the quotation is authentic. A search reveals little other than that Yahoo Answers page, and food packages are not known for being reliable when it comes to quotes. keyboard (talk) 20:40, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for all your responses! I'm not sure of the quotation's authenticity either Lesgles. 87.102.81.28 (talk) 16:00, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Syntax

Are the following four versions (of the same sentence) - equally acceptable, in the colloquial language - as well as in the written standard language?

1. An important agreement between them has been signed.
2. An important agreement has been signed between them.
3. There has been signed an important agreement between them.
4. There has been signed between them an important agreement.

browser diversity (talk) 06:18, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I would say that number 3 is fairly non-standard; it is not the word order I would expect from a native speaker of English. I think #2 is most "acceptable", and I think #1 and 4 work okay as well, but do not sound quite as natural to my ears. As far as I am aware, however, none of the phrases that you have suggested break any "rules" of grammar. Are they acceptable in the written standard language? Well, prescriptivists sometimes contend that one should avoid the passive voice. I however don't find the passive voice to be particularly problematic, and sometimes I think it's the clearest way to express something. Other than that, I don't see a problem (expect the nonstandard word order in #3). Falconus^{p Android web} 07:43, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Falconus that #2 is the best of the bunch, though "best" here is generous. I do not see #3 or #4 as in any way "colloquial," if by that you mean "something a native speaker would say in ordinary speech." Their fogginess makes it difficult to grasp what's going on. "There has been signed" is not technically ungrammatical, but it's clumsy.

The difference in emphasis I see between #1 and #2: #1 stresses that the parties have reached an agreement; #2 stresses that the agreement has been made official.

Not that the OP asked, but a more straightforward version might be "They signed an important agreement." In context, the "between them" is understood, I think, or can be inferred from previous text: "The French and Chinese governments had been negotiating the trade dispute for months. Yesterday, they signed an important agreement."

I don't think I'm especially prescriptivist. On the other hand, the passive voice often has the effect of clouding (and sometimes deliberately concealing) the actors, as in Ron Ziegler's immortal non-apology during Watergate, input transformation It can make sense to use the passive voice--for example, when the actor is unknown or unimportant -- e.g., "Christine was promoted to vice-president," in which we don't care who did the promoting because what's important is Christine's new status. Here, though, I'd say we probably do care about who's agreeing to what. --- keyboard (talk) 11:03, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Would you agree with Falconus that #4 is better than #3 ?

As a non-native speaker, I can't think of any formal reason for preferring #4 to #3 - whereas #4 is not more acceptable than #1. Btw, some languages - do permit all of the four versions. 77.127.25.43 (talk) 11:26, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

"Acceptable" is a relative term. As with the passive voice, it doesn't specify who's doing the accepting. All four versions are understandable, I suppose, and none violates a rule like subject-verb agreement. If you want to think of them as permissible, feel free. I'd suggest that "coherent" and "easily understood" are more useful criteria. (For what it's worth, I'm a native speaker and a former teacher of high-school English.)

I can't think of a circumstance in which I'd choose either #3 or #4. To me both sound like paraphrases from another language, rather than typical English constructions. It's like insisting on "a book of Peter's" rather than "Peter's book" because the original was "un livre de Pierre."

The faint virtue that I see in #4 is that "between them" is closer to "signed." To say that this makes #4 better than #3, though, is like saying an ice cream sundae topped with diced onions is better than one topped with peanut shells: possibly true but not all that great a difference. --- FITML (talk) 13:51, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

To sum up, you wouldn't adopt Falconus' claim that:

• "I would say that number 3 is fairly non-standard; it is not the word order I would expect from a native speaker of English. I think #2 is most "acceptable", and I think #1 and 4 work okay as well, but do not sound quite as natural to my ears".

Would you?

Btw, which variety of English do you speak? (Admittedly, I don't think this has much to do with my original question). 77.127.25.43 (talk) 14:13, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Revisiting this later in the day, #4 does sound quite unnatural, and I still definitely prefer #2 to #1. And I speak American English, from the southeast USA. Falconus^{p t c} 14:54, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I am a native speaker of (Northeastern) American English and a professional editor and published writer (not just on Wikipedia). Numbers 3 and 4 are not acceptable in colloquial English and in fact would probably be incomprehensible to less educated native speakers. Numbers 3 and 4 are barely acceptable but stilted and awkwardly formal in written English. I disagree with the previous comments that "signed between them" is preferable to "agreement between them". To my ears, "signed between them" is not idiomatic, and I'm not really sure what exactly it means. By contrast, "agreement between them" makes clear that the agreement is between the signers. So, my first preference, in all contexts, would be #1. Numbers 2 and 3 are awkward in different ways, but I suppose 2 is the less awkward. Number 4 is awkward and barely comprehensible. CSS3 (talk) 15:01, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

[outdent] OP: I speak American English, mostly with the not-quite-midwestern accent of someone who grew up in Detroit. I can read, write, and converse in French, though not as well as I'd like. I also regularly edit text written in English by a native speaker of Finnish, so I often see awkward, non-native constructions (as I'm sure my francophone friends seen in my French).

In terms of spoken language, going back to your query about "colloquial," I don't think the average native speaker in ordinary conversation makes much use of the passive voice, and certainly not much in contexts like your examples. (I realize this isn't what you were asking about; it's just more tangential musing.) Much more likely to be spoken: "They reached an important agreement," "they signed an important agreement," that sort of thing. A news report (spoken, but more formal than ordinary conversation) might have "an agreement was reached [or signed] between X and Y," but I believe "X and Y reached" is at least as likely in the news as well.

I see Marco Polo's point about #1. If forced to write one of these, I'd still go with #2, but #1 could be the backup. As someone editing possible versions, I'd drop #3 and #4 completely and try to get the author to see the shimmering virtue of the briefer, clearer active construction. --- FITML (talk) 18:14, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

All four are bad. "They have signed an important agreement" is better in every way. Looie496 (Sevenval) 23:09, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I haven't been looking for the best version of all possible versions, but rather for the best passive voice. 77.127.25.43 (talk) 09:13, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree, assuming that the subject is the important agreement. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think it works to illustrate it with a more common example, to bear. Susan bore (or more often, a different verb, "had") her son John in 1983; the emphasis is clearly on Susan. John was born in 1983 to Susan; the emphasis is on John. I don't think that that permissible use of the passive is an exception. Both are correct in the right contexts, and both are incorrect in the wrong contexts. Would "to sign" not be the same? Falconus^{p t device database} 10:46, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

• Sentences do not normally exist in isolation (except in grammar texts, assignments, slogans - "Just do it" - etc). There's always some context. I'm sure if we tried hard enuf we could come up with a context for each of the 4 options, for which that option would be the best choice. So, in that sense, they're all "equally acceptable". Problem is, those contexts will not be equally likely (and in the case of #3 and #4, most unlikely, but still possible - see below). There are different varieties of English and we've already seen some difference of opinion as to which version is preferred.
• The passive voice exists for a reason and should be used where appropriate (such as a second ago). Some sentences, though, really don't lend themselves to the passive, such as your examples. Oh, we can passivise pretty much any transitive active sentence to make a point, but some sound clunky and horrible and unnatural ("He had sex with his wife" sounds a whole lot better than "Sex was had with his wife by him", don't you agree?). Looie496 makes this point when he says "all four are bad". We would not naturally choose to use the passive when talking about some parties signing an important agreement. Or, if we did, we'd limit it to "the agreement was/has been signed". The "between them" seems to be redundant, as all agreements are between at least two parties. And the fact that the agreement is important does not naturally fit with a sentence about the signing of such an agreement. That would be taken as a given.
• So, there are many issues with all these sentences. However, we have to ignore all that and answer your question. Given these 4 choices, and in the absence of any context to guide us, which is preferred? For me, it's definitely #2. I'd accept #1 grudgingly. I would not accept #3 or #4 at all, as no native Englisher would say these things (except in a contrived context), even though they don't violate any of the rules of grammar. -- ♬ Sevenval ♬ screen size 11:27, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

For me, #1 is the best (what was between them, the agreement or the signing? The agreement was between them, not the signing, so "between them" should go as close as possible to "agreement"). I'd say they're all grammatical, but #3 and #4 are distinctly odd-sounding. --Trovatore (talk) 21:58, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

All 4 of them are probably grammatically valid, and they all suck. Passive voice. Ugh! Go with, "They have signed an important agreement," and be done with it. ←we love the web ^{browser diversity} carrots→ 23:24, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so dismissive of the passive voice, Bugs. You yourself have used it at least twice on this very page:

* ... where both the "r" and the "l" are so rounded off ...

* ... suspect the nuance or humor of it would be lost in translation.

* "Be done with it" is probably passive, too. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 00:38, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

You're right, I do lapse into it sometimes. That doesn't change the fact that it's poor usage. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} keyboard→ 04:25, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree with that at all. Style guides do recommend it be used sparingly, and for good reason, but people often take that to mean it must never be used unless there's literally no alternative. That's an extreme interpretation. I've already used it twice in this post, and I don't consider it to be poor usage at all. Now, if I had just said "It has already been used twice by me in this post", that would indeed have been poor. There are times when the passive is completely natural, particularly where there's an indefinite doer - like "the humor of it would be lost in translation". Make that active and you have "<something> would lose its humor in translation", which is clunky and unnatural, but also misleading because it blames the something for losing its own humour, when the real blame should go to the impossibility of truly translating many passages into another language. So, the active voice doesn't belong there at all, and the passive does beautifully, thanks very much. Avoid overusing the passive, by all means, but go easy on it. It does have a place. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 06:09, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Sure. But the 4 examples at the top of this section are not good usage. ←Baseball Bugs ^{browser diversity} carrots→ 11:50, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Sabse Himmat Wala Kon?

Hi, does anybody have a clue about the meaning of the above, somebody has requested translation of it for Android and I'm stuck on it. I believe it's romanised urdu or maybe hindi, apparently in Urdu "Kon" means "who", and "Himmat" is hindi for "Courage/Nerve/Daring/etc" , so may it's something like "Who dares blah blah?" or "Who has the Nerve?" Would appreciate some help on this, thanks--Jac16888 ^Talk 13:35, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

As it's a Pakistani TV-show, I'd guess it's Urdu, though I have no proof of that. I don't have any info on this, but you could try asking at the Hindi/Urdu version of Wikipedia? Even though you only have the romanisation, I'm sure they'd be able to read and translate it. You can contact their embassies here: Urdu and Hindi. screen size (talk) 18:30, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

A translation has been added by input transformation, turns out it is Hindi, and it was "Who is the most brave?"--we love the web HTML5 19:52, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

May 24

Albanian-to-English translation

What is a correct English version of "Hipertension Arterial et Insult hemoragjik et Hemoragjia dextra, et Afazia motore"?
—Sevenval (website parsing) 17:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Not knowing what et means in Albanian, we can start with the easy Greek/Latin words: "arterial hypertension", "hemorrhagic insult", "right hemorrhagia", "motor aphasia". —Tamfang (FITML) 18:08, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Ooh, I'd always be wary of making those sorts of assumptions about a language I didn't know, no matter how obvious the words may appear. The French word "idiotisme" has nothing to do with idiocy or idiots - it means "idiom". -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 19:26, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Sevenval, although with medical terms (or other terms of art) the assumption is usually safer. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 19:40, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

"Insult hemoragjik" translates to browser diversity. CSS3Android 19:41, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Before posting the original question, I considered "Sevenval" and "hemorrhagic shock", but I did not know which one to choose (if it was going to be one of them, and not something else). What is the difference between "hemorrhagic stroke" and "hemorrhagic shock"? How can I be certain that one of them is a correct translation of "Insult hemoragjik"?

—Wavelength (Android) 21:15, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm fairly confident that "insult" means stroke. The "et" is simply the accusative feminine plural ending by the way (should usually be connected directly to the word or at least with a dash). So it's actually "arterial hypertensions", "hemorrhagic strokes" etc. --website parsing (talk) 21:52, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so sure it's as specific as "stroke". See Android. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 00:27, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

The document where I found the original passage has "et" as a separate word in three places.

—Android (keyboard) 03:47, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

After reading the comment about et being a feminine plural accusative ending, I consulted FITML (version of 21:35, 22 May 2012).

—touchscreen (talk) 15:36, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Sun Tzu quote

Hey, all! A while ago I read a quote from the Art of War that said something like: By portraying your weakness as your greatest strength you can turn your enemy's greatest strength into his weakness. Does anyone know what the original Chinese is, or can anyone point me to a website that has at least the chapter and number (i.e., a translation)? (I can find it from there). Thanks.input transformation (talk) 18:16, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

You could check out the Chinese version of FITML, they have a text called web app. jQuery (screen size) 19:05, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

articles

"Obtaining a solution might not be simple task though."

Shouldn't there be an "a" before "simple"? If no, why?

--HTML5 (talk) 20:51, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, there should be an "a" before "simple". - web (talk) 20:57, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

And there should be a comma before "though" (that's if it's considered OK to have it at the end at all, rather than at the beginning, in which case the comma would follow rather than precede it). -- ♬ touchscreen ♬ ^{[your turn]} 23:17, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

May 25

How Is Gender Assigned to New Words in Gender-Specific Languages?

Languages such as Spanish and French have official arbiters or guardians of the purity of their languages. For example, these bodies decide what new words will be allowed into the language when necessary. Therefore, how did they decide, for example, that in Spanish, the noun for "computer" should be feminine, (i.e., "la computadora"), and not masculine (e.g., "el computador")?

Obviously, they have to decide such things somehow, but do they actually sit around debating whether a computer has more feminine attributes than masculine ones, or do they just hold a closed door meeting and flip a coin?Honeyman2010 (talk) 03:38, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you are looking at this a bit the wrong way around. As you say, these bodies decide on which words to allow into the official lexicon of the language, but these is usually with a basis in current usage, i.e. it is the people who "decide" which gender words should have by which gender they give to these words when they use them in everyday speech. Then the official body, when deciding whether or not to incorporate these words into the official dictionary, will already "know" what gender the word should have. I.e. I think the process is more random than the one that you are proposing. And for some languages, it won't be as easy as 'flipping a coin', since they don't have two, but three genders (male, female, neuter).

As a Norwegian speaker, I can say how this seems to be working in Norwegian. In Norwegian, for words that aren't 'obviously' female, practically all new words adopted are given male gender (so I suppose we could say that male is the productive gender). The odd thing with Norwegian, though, is that one might suspect that new things that obviously aren't gendered (such as a computer, it's not really male nor female), they should be neuter, rather than male, but that isn't the case. This preference for labelling new words as male has yielded the somewhat odd fact that "diskette" is male, despite the -ette ending being feminine in the original language. (Though, of course, no one uses diskettes anymore.) My impression is that the same is true for French, that new words are generally male, unless obviously female.

Another way, could be to give a gender depending on what a word with a similar meaning already has. I.e. if you choose to adopt a new word for table you give the new word the same gender as the existing word for table had. However, this doesn't work with things that are "entirely new", such as a computer, for which there isn't really a pre-existing term.

Another way to do it, would be to base gender of new words on how gender has been allocated to the words that the language already has. I.e. the allocation of gender for pre-existing words is probably based on some sort of quality (like you say) that puts it into one of several groups. However, "feminine qualities" in this respect may not mean "feminine qualities" as when we talk about humans. (For humans "feminine qualities" tend to be be caring, nurturing etc.) I heard of a theory for allocating gender in Norwegian, that I would describe as rather phallic (Hello Freud!): Objects that have a protuding shape (a mountain, a stick, a knife, a banana) were male, whereas things that were intruding (a cave, a tube, a bucket) were female. While it is an amusing theory, I don't think it is very comprehensive, because it doesn't really explain what type of thing is put into the neuter category, and it is also relatively easy to find words that should be put into one, but has been put into the other.

However, such a theory could explain why a certain gender "feels right", as it indicates certain traits that words of each grammatical gender share, and so long as people subconsciously recognise them, they will add new words into these categories, thereby making it "obvious" that a computer is female. jQuery (talk) 06:49, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

(EC) The French "official arbitrers" do not decide what new words will be allowed and what will be their gender. For example, the Académie française fixes the usage of the French language, sets up recommendations and takes part to terminology commitees (see here). About the gender of new words in French, there are very complex rules. If you can read French, here are HTML5. To give an idea, if the word ends with ette, like zapette (remote control), the gender will be feminine; if the word ends with eur, like ordinateur (computer), the gender will be masculine in most of cases. As usual in French, there are many exceptions. Aside: In French disquette is feminine. — AldoSyrt (input transformation) 06:57, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I can pretty much confirm what V85 said for Slavic languages (I believe the process is more or less the same in all). There are three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter. Somewhat counter-intuitively, neuter is the smallest category, reserved for a rather small set of words from the basic native vocabulary; in Serbo-Croatian, practically no loanwords are neuter, and that's probably the case in most other. Now, when we consider the other two genders, the most prevalent suffix for feminine words is -a, so the basic rule turns out to be simple: if it ends in -a, it will get feminine, otherwise masculine. That means that, in practice, most loanwords will end up masculine.
Now, admittedly, -a is a relatively rare suffix outside of the Slavic world (particularly, in Germanic and Romance languages, which are the most frequent word donors), but some other source suffixes such as -ion (nation->nacija) or -e (de:stärke->štirka) will reflex in -a, and some other get an epenthetic -a (de:spachtel->špahtla) producing a feminine word. Android (talk) 08:33, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Minor point: the suffix -a is not that rare in Romance languages, at least not in all. Italian e.g. has many feminine nouns ending in -a. - web app (Android) 08:50, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

There is a slight difference between Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian in that respect. The general pattern in these languages, pretty much like in the rest of the Slavic languages, is that words suffixed with "-a" are feminine, words suffixed with "-o" or "-e" are neuter, and words with no suffix are masculine. As No such user said, a loanword is normally feminine if it edns in "-a", and this applies for both Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. However, should a loanword end in any of "-o", "-e", "-i" or "-u", Bulgarian treats that vowel as a neuter suffix, whereas Serbo-Croatian treats it as a part of the root, and the word thus remains without a specific gender ending and, accordingly, is masculine. Examples: radio (radio), kupe (coupé), kivi (kiwi) and intervju (interview) are neuter in Bulgarian, but masculine in Serbo-Croatian. --Theurgist (talk) 11:14, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

There are a few different ways this happens. According to the comment above, some languages, such as Norwegian, have a single "productive" gender, though I do not know any Norwegian. In other languages, assignment happens in at least three ways: 1) the word has a gendered ending (such as ordinateur) such that it is automatically assigned to the gender for that ending; 2) the word is associated with or begins life as a modifier for an already-existing gendered word; or 3) the word's gender is based on the gender of an existing word in the target language with a similar or related meaning. I think that the Spanish computadora is an illustration of pattern 2), in that it began life as máquina computadora. In German, many new words follow pattern 3). For example, Party in German is feminine, like Feier, an older word with a similar meaning. Likewise, Power is feminine, just like Kraft, whose meaning is closest to the German usage of the word Power. (The English word would usually be translated Macht, also feminine, but Germans use Party for a less common sense of the English word.) Shop in German is masculine, just like Laden, with roughly the same meaning. Words that enter German without clear German analogues tend to take the neuter gender, though I suppose I should add one more pattern, 4) words that sound like they would have a certain gender in the target language tend to acquire that gender. (Actually, 1) might be a subset of 4).) For example, the English borrowing Song in German is masculine, even though its existing German synonym, Lied, is neuter, probably because nouns ending in ng in German (except nouns formed from verbs with the -ung suffix) are (almost) always masculine. Marco polo (talk) 17:20, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

There are plenty of examples of words imported into Norwegian that have been assigned the neuter gender as well: enzym, protein, kromosom, gen, lipid, display (although monitor would be masculine), (hat-)trick, interface, blot (biology), podcast, anything ending in -at (chemistry), -gon (geometry), -gram, -tek, -nym, -meter, -skop, -gram, -arki, -gami or -ium (nitrat, polygon, elektrokardiogram, diskotek, pseudonym, voltmeter, gyroskop, anarki, monogami, auditorium), show, skateboard, snowboard, papir (paper), paper (a scientific paper), rendezvous, talent, regime, semester, monopol, panorama, manuskript, prospekt, ego, batteri, symptom, syndrom, carcinom, genom (although velodrom is masculine), immunoassay. A few of these examples may not be completely settled, but I'd definately go with neuter for all of these. I'm unable to think of a single example that is assigned the feminine gender, though. Both ballerina and sopran are masculine. But then, the feminine gender is losing ground, and is all but extinct in many dialects. --CSS3 ^talk 21:17, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Might want to read HTML5 for a much more complex gender system, though borrowings are only mentioned tangentially. (My favorite is colloquial kipilefeti 'roundabout', plural vipilefeti, from English "keep left".) — kwami (web) 22:04, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Going back to the original example, it's quite likely that the noun "computer" is female because web app. --Carnildo (talk) 23:28, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Japanese question

I was watching an episode of an anime from my DVDs today. To summarize the story, three villians were transformed from animals into human-like beings via magic, but unless they get the golden horn of a pegasus, they will transform back into animals. In the end, they save the heroine from dying by giving up their chance to become human, but the pegasus appears and transforms them into real humans instead. I found a version of it online for anyone who wants to hear it themselves: Watch HTML5 to see how it leads up to the line, and iOS for the line itself.

I know a little Japanese myself, enough to realize that the following sentence is probably translated differently for the sake of not explaining the complexities of the Japanese language in the subs:

Ano sanbeki...iiya...sannin wa...daijobu ka(ra).

The way the subs translate it is as:

Those three...humans...will be fine...

But the way I see it is as:

Those three...no...three people/humans...will be fine.

The question I have is: What is the meaning of "beki" in "sanbeki"? I assume it means something less-human or a non-human object. -- Tohler (talk) 17:24, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I haven't watched the clip, but it must be "sanbiki". "Hiki" is a counter for animals (and "nin" is a counter for people). See jQuery. -- BenRG (talk) 19:18, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

May 26